Bump in the Night f-2 Page 11

  Leaper kept absolutely still, his face pressed into a clump of wet and malodorous weed. Not until he had heard the gate replaced and locked and the swishing of feet through the grass die away did he turn his head and look towards the caravan.

  A tall figure was standing there, to disappear a moment later into the black rectangle of the opening door. Bright light sprang from the windows and laid a glistening trail across the dew-beaded grass.

  Slowly, Leaper rose to his feet, but kept close to the fence. The woman, he supposed, would be arriving very soon. He would have to wait until she, too, was safely behind the door and the curtains drawn before he ventured out of cover. Of course, she might not be coming. He would give her half an hour. It would be exceedingly awkward if he were to meet her on the narrow path back to the road.

  A shadow crossed one of the windows. Leaper looked away from the light and tightly shut his eyes to restore their sensitivity to the night scene. On re-opening them he peered over to his left, trying to discern the outline of the group of trees beneath which was the stile. It was almost oppressively quiet now; even the moths seemed...

  The trees! They were there, blindingly clear. The fence, the field, the bushes, all flashed starkly upon his vision in an instant of electric-blue revelation. Then, in the scarlet-shot darkness that immediately followed, Leaper felt himself heaved and battered by a great bolt of noise.

  His head feeling like a belfry tweaked by an earthquake, he reeled back against the fence. For some time he could see nothing; then gradually he became aware of a faint and irregular orange radiance where the caravan’s windows had shone before. Unsteadily he walked out across the field.

  As he drew near the caravan, the shape of what remained standing was thrown into relief by fire that crept among the wreckage within like glowing maggots. At least half the structure had been split away, leaving a skewed, open-fronted shed. While still twenty yards off, Leaper found himself stumbling over splintered spars and buckled panels.

  The flames gained hold and brightened. He halted and looked about at what they revealed. A broken chair lay in a patch of nettles. Humped nearby was a small mattress. Flock had spilled from a rent in its cover and was being blown gently across the grass. The stove, lying on its side, was entangled in a tattered blanket.

  The last thing Leaper saw before he turned and fled, retching, was the body almost under his feet.

  It was understandable that he had not noticed it immediately for it had landed in a compact bundle within a slight hollow. Indeed, Leaper only recognized it for what it was when he bent down and saw the glint of a pair of shoes.

  He prayed, as he ran, that he would not tread upon what his hasty, fearful examination had failed to account for...the body’s arms and head.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Will you be taking over the arrangements for the inquest, sir?”

  Sergeant Worple looked hopefully at Purbright, who had won his considerable respect by showing an interest in his envelope collection.

  Purbright shook his head. “Oh, no, sergeant. That’s decidedly Mr Larch’s province. I’m not sure that I can claim to have anything more to do with the case now.” He did not mention the telephone conversation with Hessledine half an hour previously when he had been strictly enjoined to ‘get to the bottom of how that lunatic got the stuff to blow himself up with’.

  “You will wait for the inquest, though, won’t you, sir?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Our inquests are absolute nightmares under old Amblesby; I want to know what a decently conducted one is like.”

  “Mr Chalice is an able gentleman and very sensible.”

  “There’s no question as to what the verdict will be, I suppose?”

  Worple pursed his lips. “No, not really, sir. It’s just what everyone seemed to be expecting. He was a bit of a card, you know, this Mr Biggadyke. Had a name for getting up to queer tricks. Mind you: I must say I’m a tiny bit surprised, myself.”

  Purbright looked at him searchingly.

  “Yes, sir. It’s only a few days ago that I was sitting in with the chief inspector when he was questioning Biggadyke. Very much to the point, the chief was. As good as asked him straight out for an alibi. And Biggadyke told him about being over in Flax every Tuesday night.”

  “But you had only his word for that.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean I believed in the alibi, sir. That sounded more like a tale for the wife than for the police. It’s just that Biggadyke didn’t strike me as the type. Bombs are tricky. They take intelligence.”

  “And this man wasn’t especially intelligent?”

  “Well...clever, yes”—Worple frowned and tugged his ear lobe—“but not up to anything really high-class. If you’re with me, sir,” he added doubtfully.

  “I see what you mean,” Purbright assured him. “But that isn’t inconsistent with what happened. After three hits his cleverness ran out. He boobed. In any case it would be pushing coincidence rather far to suggest that in a town this size there are two characters mucking about with explosives.”

  “I expect you’re right, sir. The chief has the same idea. Maybe that’s why I was a bit doubtful.”

  Purbright made no comment. He was looking again at Worple’s little stack of envelopes. “Didn’t you pick anything up at the caravan?” he asked.

  “Bits like those you mean, sir?”

  “Yes. It must have been in the caravan that he made the things. Mr Larch said there was no trace of anything of the kind at his home or his office.”

  “That’s right: it was me who went round to look. But I couldn’t find anything where the caravan had been either. Of course, it was burned right out by the time the chaps in the lorry depot saw the fire and came round by the road and the path. Only Biggadyke had a key to that back gate.”

  Purbright put the envelopes back on the cupboard shelf. “You’d better not get rid of them yet awhile.” he said.

  Worple looked shocked. “Certainly not, sir. They’re the only real evidence we’ve got.”

  Two days later Purbright was able to satisfy his curiosity as to what a ‘decently conducted’ inquest was like. He was favourably impressed, in particular by the grave but kindly efficiency of Mr Ben Chalice, the Chalmsbury coroner.

  The almost total baldness of Mr Chalice lent disturbing emphasis to eyebrows that were like great bundles of wire. He had the long face of an habitual and careful listener. He never interrupted his witnesses, all of whom he treated with equal respect and patience, yet he had only to bring his penetrating gaze to bear upon the over-voluble or the pompous for them to stutter to a stop. He refrained from expressing any personal opinion, would not dream of impugning the character or intelligence of a witness, and had not been known in all the thirty-two years of his office to deliver a single platitude or homily.

  It was hard to believe that Mr Chalice was a coroner at all.

  The inquiry was held in the magistrates’ court but with none of the ceremony to which the room might have lent itself. Ignoring the row of leather-backed chairs on the bench, Mr Chalice sat at the humbler level of the clerk’s table. The four people who had been called to give evidence had found themselves places, at the coroner’s invitation, around the same table. The scene would have resembled the meeting of a small firm’s board of directors had it not been for the gaunt, overbearing presence of Larch, who stood behind the coroner’s shoulder and looked mistrustfully at each of the assembly in turn.

  Mr Kebble was wedged in the press box with three representatives of national newspapers who had been sent to extract what drama they could from the winding up of the affairs of the ‘Tuesday Terror’.

  Evidence of identification was given by the widow. She was a short, puffy-featured woman, the cream of whose former prettiness had long since been curdled by the demands and deviations of jolly Stan. Purbright watched from the back of the courtroom while Mrs Biggadyke, looking petulant rather than grieved, acknowledged that the body she had been shown in the Ch
almsbury mortuary was indeed that of her husband, Stanley Porteous Biggadyke, a company director, whom she had last seen... No, Purbright decided, she wasn’t exactly devastated: the loss was to board rather than bed. It must have been a nasty moment in the morgue though. Had she guessed why Worple had kept one hand on the top of her husband’s head while carefully slipping the sheet down a few inches?

  “Do you know,” the coroner was asking her gently, “if Mr Biggadyke was interested in explosives? Had he experimented with such things at any time?”

  She gave a slight shake of the head. “He never told me anything about his outside interests. He spent quite a bit of time in the workshop at the firm. Or so he said.”

  “And in his caravan behind the depot?”

  “He used that as an office. I never saw inside it.”

  Mr Chalice’s steel-nibbed pen recorded her replies in flowing, generously looped script. It looked a slow business but Purbright found it soothing.

  “Now I am going to mention three dates to you, Mrs Biggadyke, and I should like you to tell me, if you can, where you knew or believed your husband to be on those occasions. They are the nights of June the third, the seventeenth and the twenty-fourth. All were Tuesday nights.”

  She answered immediately. “He went to Flaxborough every Tuesday and stayed overnight. Every week it was, so I don’t have to think of any dates.”

  “For what purpose did he go to Flaxborough?”

  “It was what he called his club night. The Trade and Haulage Club. He didn’t like driving home late, so he had an arrangement with a friend there to put him up for the night. Mr Smiles he was called. I never met him personally.”

  The coroner paused after writing this down. Then he said: “I think it is only fair to tell you at this stage that evidence will be given by Mr Smiles that your husband did not stay at his home on any occasion during the past three months. Would you care to say anything about that, Mrs Biggadyke?”

  “Only that I’m not in the least surprised.”

  “I take it you did not enjoy your husband’s confidence in all respects?”

  “In no respect whatever.” She spoke as if stating an obvious and not very important fact.

  “I see. There is just one more point, I think, Mrs Biggadyke. From the series of Tuesdays I mentioned a short time ago one was missing. Tuesday, June the tenth. Can you say, of your own knowledge, where your husband was that night?”

  The woman looked doubtful. “The tenth...no, well we’ve agreed I was wrong about him going where he said. To Flaxborough, I mean. So...” Remembrance suddenly came to her. “Of course—that night I do know where he was. In hospital after his accident. He didn’t come out until the Friday.”

  The coroner having read Mrs Biggadyke’s deposition over to her slowly and clearly, she signed it. She was then directed by Chief Inspector Larch, mutely gesturing like an impatient head waiter, to remove herself a little further off. Her place next to the coroner was taken by the pathologist who had performed the post mortem.

  The doctor’s evidence confirmed that death had been due to severe multiple injuries, including decapitation, consistent with the victim’s having been within short range of an explosion of considerable force.

  “How short a range, doctor?” Mr Chalice asked.

  “Oh, inches, I should say. There was a lot of burning on the front of the body. And, as I’ve said, the hands and forearms...well, they’d almost disappeared.”

  “Would you go so far as to say the deceased had probably been handling the explosive substance, whatever it was?”

  “Certainly I should. I’ve no doubt in my own mind that that is what he was doing.”

  Again, at the instance of Larch, there was a shifting of places. The coroner found beside him a fat, sleek man in a brown suit. Mr Herbert Smiles wore that expression, half nervous, half challenging, of one who has made a lot of money just a shade too quickly. When he answered Mr Chalice’s questions he spoke with throaty solemnity. One of the best, his tone proclaimed, had passed on, and you never knew but what you might be next yourself.

  Had Mr Biggadyke been in the custom of visiting the Trade and Haulage Club at Flaxborough? Yes, he was a member and at one time had regularly spent an evening there each week.

  And afterwards had he availed himself of Mr Smiles’s hospitality until the following morning? He had, and very welcome had he been.

  When had the custom lapsed? Oh, quite a while since—four months or more. They had met, yes, and had a few drinks from time to time. On good terms? Excellent terms, excellent. Yes.

  “But in recent weeks, Mr Smiles, you are quite sure that Mr Biggadyke did not stay overnight at your house on Tuesday?”

  “Not for several months, he hasn’t. I’ll be perfectly honest, mind—I did promise him I’d say that’s where he’d been if anybody asked. But now the poor chap’s passed on, well, I can only tell the truth.”

  “As you swore to do,” the coroner dryly reminded him, nodding at the testament between them.

  “Yes. As you say...of course.” Mr Smiles regarded the little black book as apprehensively as if it had borne the imprint of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.

  The last witness was Sergeant Worple.

  He presented, with a wealth of technical detail that Mr Chalice let pass without recording, an account of the demolition of the Courtney-Snell memorial, the beheading of Alderman Berry’s statue, and the destruction of the great eye of Mr Hoole. No one, he observed, had been apprehended for the commission of these felonies (or crimes), which, at the time of the death of Mr Stanley Biggadyke were still officially ascribed to a person or persons unknown.

  On the night of July the first, Sergeant Worple continued, a call was received at Fen Street police station from an officer of Chalmsbury Fire Brigade who reported the finding of a body near a burnt-out caravan at the rear of the premises of the Chalmsbury Carriage Company. He went to the scene that night and again the following morning. On the second occasion he was accompanied by Chief Inspector Larch and Constable Wraby.

  Extensive inquiries were made and the site of the occurrence carefully examined.

  The examination, though yielding clear indication that the caravan had been destroyed by an explosion and subsequent fire, provided no clues as to the cause of the explosion.

  Inquiries also drew negative results apart from mutually corroborative statements by night drivers and fitters at the depot that the explosion occurred at 11.50 p.m. and was of considerable violence.

  “These men knew, did they, that their employer had left the premises to go to his caravan?”

  “Yes, sir. He arrived in his car at about 11.35 and told one of the mechanics to put the car in the garage. Then he walked down the yard to the fence and let himself through the gate into the field.”

  “Were you able to learn, sergeant, whether anyone other than Mr Biggadyke had access to his caravan?”

  “I did ask that question of several of the staff, sir, and they all said he was the only person who ever used it. He kept it locked and no one else at the firm had a key to it—or a key to the gate in the back fence, for that matter.”

  “Did any of Mr Biggadyke’s employees know for what purpose he used the caravan?”

  “They had no certain knowledge, sir. One or two offered guesses but I did not encourage what seemed to me to be rather improper speculation.”

  The coroner glanced up at Worple, who was looking virtuous. “And that is all, is it, sergeant, that you can tell us? Nothing else occurs to you?”

  Worple stared at Mr Chalice’s pen for a few seconds then said suddenly and decisively: “No, sir.”

  The coroner leaned back, half turning, and addressed Larch. “Is there any question you would care to put, Chief Inspector?”

  “I believe the witnesses have covered all the points that I can think of, sir.”

  Mr Chalice nodded and faced the table once more. Although he was sitting without a jury, he did not believe in recording a verdi
ct without giving his reasons. He drew the grey hair tangles down over his bright, shrewd eyes and began to speak.

  “As the last witness so properly remarked”—Worple’s chin tightened with gratification—“guessing should not enter into an inquiry of this nature. Unfortunately, however, the evidence available to us is mainly of the kind that in a court of law would be called circumstantial. And forming conclusions from circumstantial evidence is a matter of putting two and two together: it is in some degree a speculative process. What we must guard against, of course, is making the answer more than four.

  “Now, to start with, I am going to exclude the possibility that the four explosions of which we have heard today might have been unconnected incidents. The evidence leaves no doubt in my mind that the first three were contrived by one and the same person. What purpose that person entertained I cannot imagine, but some gesture or other would appear to have been intended.