Chapter 23
Whilst Alexander was having his knees patched up, Jeff Morrel had managed to obtain the necessary warrants, being able to add to his evidence the guilty flight of the suspect as telegraphed by Ida. Unable to do anything more than alert the local constabulary, Jeff retired to the train, to return to Lashbrook. He was hoping to be back in time for lunch. It was only by coincidence that he glanced out of the window at Shiplake, where the train slowed, and looked into the eyes of Edgar Thripp. Jeff swore, a habit he had learned in the force, and which would be deplored by his strict Methodist parents.
He was given a shocked look by a stern looking lady with a moustache, but heeded it not as he leaped for the communications cord. The train wheezed to a stop, and Jeff leaped out, waving his ID at the irate guard.
“Murder fugitive,” said Jeff and barrelled through the small station in pursuit of Edgar. He got out of the door in time to see the man sailing away on his bicycle.
Shiplake was a smaller settlement than Lashbrook, being no more than a hamlet, and on Dan Reckitt’s rounds as a postman for two of the four deliveries Lashbrook ranked. There were no stray bicycles to be requisitioned, and the only vehicle in sight was a six-horsepower Burrell traction engine,[1] pulling a cartload of turnips. Jeff considered requisitioning the engine, and discarded it, managing to laugh at himself over the idea of a slow speed chase. He had heard that traction engines could reach twelve miles an hour under ideal conditions, and only when well-tuned. This one was more likely to reach a top speed of five miles an hour, and a man on a bicycle could easily double that. He made a mental note to ask Ida to sketch the idea.
Jeff bethought himself of the pay-telephone in the station, and dialled the police house in Lashbrook. The phone rang until a bored sounding operator spoke up.
“Sir, the other party isn’t answering, please clear the line,” she said.
“Can you get me the station in Lashbrook, then?” asked Jeff.
“Please insert another penny in the slot,” said the operator. Jeff did so, and after a couple of rings, he was answered.
“Lashbrook station,” said Bert, or was it Jack? One of the Busby brothers, members of the chorus, and one of the brothers the ticket clerk.
“Is Fred there?” asked Jeff. “I’m trying to reach Tim Mapp.”
“I’m sorry, sir, Tim’s off ferreting out some tramp in the abandoned house,” said Jack [or Burt.]
“Can you let him know Edgar Thripp is heading back to Lashbrook, if you see him?” asked Jeff.
“Yessir, of course,” said Burt [or Jack.] Jeff hung up.
“Well, damn,” said Jeff, preparing to walk the two or three miles into Lashbrook.
“Well, damn!” said Campbell, unaware that he echoed Jeff Morrell’s words of some half an hour previously.
“People do know we’re here,” said Tim. “I didn’t hide the intent to search for the man who assaulted you.”
“We have three choices,” said Alexander. “Sit tight because people will come; use the jemmy on the hinges of this door; or go searching for the ventilation shaft many of these old cellars have to help air flow and keep things cool. I saw something in the garden which looked a bit like an overgrown beehive, and that could well be the ventilation. It stops condensation.”
“There is a zinc screen over here,” said Tim. “I... I’m trying not to panic.”
“You’ll be fine; help will come and we can’t suffocate with an airway. Pry it off, and let’s see what sort of shaft there is,” said Alexander.
Campbell made short work of stripping off the zinc screen.
“Nice forty-five degree shaft wot turns into a chimbley,” he said. “Shouldn’t be much of a climb.”
“Can you fit in it?” asked Alexander.
“Piece o’ piss,” said Campbell. “You wait there, sir, and I’ll ’ave you both aht o’ there in a jiffy.”
He disappeared into the shaft. Several cockney and a few French obscenities drifted down to the other two men. Alexander winced.
“He only swears in French when much moved,” he told Tim. “If need be, I imagine we could also get out that way, but if he comes round and unlocks for us, even better. Now! Let us use our time wisely. We have evidence to take up, and I see a few old crates in the corner into which to put it.”
Tim nodded, glad of something to do.
“I’m not keen on underground places,” he confided. “I don’t much like going to see Fred’s railway layout even. That has a shaft like this one,” he added.
“Yes, you need it in an air-raid shelter for people to breathe, as much as for stores,” said Alexander. “When this was built, it was on the outskirts of the village, which was much smaller, centred around the green and the ‘Clene Shepe.’ They would have laid in stores for the winter, no doubt.”
“We can get a good snow if the wind is in the right quarter,” agreed Tim. “I confess with a big posh house, I thought it would be a wine cellar.”
“I’m sure that some wine was kept down here,” said Alexander. “But as this is at the front of the house, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another cellar at the back.”
“There’s servants’ stairs, and a cubby under them but it’s full of junk,” said Tim. “And it’s dark and creepy at the back.”
“Well, if I buy it as a community centre, it will be cleaned and bright everywhere,” said Alexander.
“Oh! Is that what you were thinking of, sir?” said Tim.
“It seems a shame to waste it,” said Alexander. “The building itself seems in good nick, I don’t know about the roof, but it shouldn’t take much to get it mended and weather-proof. Then we can have half a dozen typewriters and sewing machines in for lessons, whether for careers or hobbies doesn’t matter, but with women taking bigger roles since the war, it seems sensible to have training for suitable roles. And not limited to women, of course. We could have room for the railway club Fred hankers after, we can make costumes for plays more easily with sewing machines, have cookery classes, which would help many a bachelor or widower, maybe gardening classes and how to prune without killing things, and start a library as well.”
“You have it all thought out!” said Tim, in awe.
“No, but I am getting there,” said Alexander, hoping that if he kept burbling on it would keep Tim from claustrophobia. “These sorts of houses often have music rooms as well, which are designed for good acoustics, where music lessons could be held. I was thinking that we might hold a subscription to belong, and have subsidised or free classes for subscribers.”
“I’d join,” said Tim. “A library would be wonderful.”
“I confess, even though I hope to be a P.I., I shall want something more to occupy me, and running a community centre could help no end,” said Alexander. “I have been thinking that with going for a little swim after Emma, and coming off my bike, I really do not want to climb that shaft. My knee is still complaining, and so is my belly. I’m not fit to be a copper, and I suspect it will be a year or more before I am. And they won’t let me stay off that long; I’d have to cash in my chips. I’ll keep up with the Yard, of course, through Jeff and others, but that little brush with mortality caused me more trouble than I was prepared to admit at first. I want to keep the ownership of the community centre so no damned county authority can mess about with it.”
“Very wise, sir, or close it down to strip the assets so some councillor can have a new car,” said Tim.
“Ah, a cynic; very wise,” laughed Alexander. “Hark! I hear the key. Either it’s Campbell or gnomes.”
“I ain’t a gnome, I got a gnome to go to,” said Campbell, coming in. “An’ ’ere’s Miss Ida ’oo I runned into in the garden, lookin’ for you.”
“Oh Alex!” said Ida, running forward to hug him. Campbell stayed by the door. He did not want anyone else shutting them in again; his chauffeur’s uniform was already somewhat spidery from the cobwebs in the air shaft and he had had an encounter with what he later described to Gladys as ‘The biggest bleedin’ spider you ever saw.’ Campbell would not profess to be scared of spiders; not exactly; but he did admit to finding them a trifle unnerving. He would rescue them from the bath stoically because he had been brought up with the superstition that killing a spider was bad luck; he was just taken aback to come face to face with a particularly fine specimen of Tegeneria parietina, otherwise known as the Cardinal Spider, so named because this species is said to have terrorised Cardinal Wolsey in Hampton Court Palace. She had woven her web to take advantage of flies creeping through the slats in the wooden beehive-like structure over the air shaft, and took exception to some clumsy human breaking through it. Her appearance had been what had moved Campbell to French, declaiming, ‘Merde! Gerratavit you ’airy-legged monster, sales araignée, une tricoteuse de Guillotine, bloody knittin’ webs in front o’ me.’
What Madame Tricoteuse replied, if anything, remains unrecorded, but she retreated before the sheer bulk of her unusual catch and waited for the wind of his passing to settle before setting out to restore her web.
Between them, without bothering to get the vicar and his man, they loaded the car with evidence, and drove to the church.
“Disturbing your distillery again, I’m afraid, Oliver,” said Alexander, seeing the lugubrious sexton cutting back grass from around the graves.
“Have you got a body there?” asked Oliver, suspiciously.
“No, only the body of evidence,” said Alexander. They unloaded the car and locked the crypt, and returned to the car as Jeff’s weary figure rounded the side of the churchyard, heading for the road to Heywoods Hall.
“Hey, Jeff, you look like you lost half-a-crown and found a thruppenny bit,” said Alexander.
“I feel rather like it,” said Jeff. “I saw Thripp out of the window and pulled the cord, but he got away on a bike. Ida, you’d have laughed and drawn my thoughts when I considered borrowing a Burrell general use engine to pursue him. I didn’t, of course, and found you out of the police house, so I called the station and walked.”
“Oh, dear, the hare and the tortoise. But the tortoise won because it was dogged,” said Ida.
“As it happens, we know he’s been in Lashbrook,” said Alexander, ruefully. “He locked us in the cellar of the abandoned house, and Campbell had to argue a spider into undoing her knitting to let us out.”
“You will be whimsical, Major, sir,” said Campbell.
“Well, if I understood your French invective well enough, that was what I understood you to say,” said Alexander.
“There was a lot o’ eyes and mandibibbles,” said Campbell.
“And you braved them manfully for which we are grateful,” said Alexander. “Truly so, I’m not taking the Mickey.”
“It was a bit much,” acknowledged Campbell. “Well, her’n’me decided not to interfere wiv each uvver.”
“Wise,” said Alexander. “Spiders can give you a nasty bite, if they’re irritable and some people are allergic, and to have you pass out on your way to release us would not have been good for either of us. No, I’m not joking, it’s not as common as people who can die of a bee sting, but it happens. I knew a lad in Arles, he had been bitten as a child, and got bitten again, he lost his arm.”
“Strewth!” said Campbell. “I’ll be real polite next time.”
“I want to search the Thripp house,” said Jeff. “He may have made a run for home.”
“Not if he knew you were after him,” said Alexander. “Oh! That was why he came here, hoping that Tim would have given it a superficial search and then he could come back to it. We have all the evidence of his poison-pen manufacturing, and I’m glad we intercepted it, there’s a filthy one to Mrs. Reckitt, accusing her of faking her illness so she can have an affaire with Craiggie and it bothers me that if her heart is weak, it could kill her from shock.”
“Nasty,” said Jeff. “I know it will upset Miss Thripp, but can we please go and search?”
“Miss Thripp is safely over the other side of the village with Miss Harmon and Miss Goodie,” said Alexander. “I suggest we use burglarious means to break in, and Ida can pack a valise for Miss Thripp and we’ll take it over and break it to her that he is a fugitive.”
“I fancy she already knows,” said Ida. “She’s very sharp. And having taken a beating from Edgar may have been a bit of a giveaway as well.”
“I imagine the whole village knows,” said Alexander. “But at least that’s two hundred pairs of eyes watching for him. If you phoned the station, Jeff, I reckon at least a dozen people listened in.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Jeff. “I’m a Londoner and I’m not used to party lines!”
“I know that there are three main party lines, and Mrs. Thruppence, Mrs. Braithwaite and Mrs. Kennings, the hardware man’s wife, you know, wait for a triple ding from one or other, and the information passes on with that,” said Ida.
“Worth knowing but at times a nuisance,” said Jeff.
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