The Knocker On Death's Door Part 7

"You remember it like this?" George asked causally.

"It's some time ago," Alix said, "but I do remember it, now that I see it again. I remember the vault-actually it's rather a nice one, and not very usual-and the size of the flags."

Robert stood courteously holding the door wide, not following them within; a gentle indication that though he was willing to co-operate fully, nevertheless even his time had its value, if only to him. His pale face was quite motionless.

"Thank you," said George, "I think that's all, just for the moment. But I would like a word with you still, if you wouldn't mind waiting until I take Miss Trent back to her friends. You may be able to help me over one or two matters."

Robert's enervated voice said with resignation, but still with immaculate politeness: "Certainly, I'm at your disposal."

They climbed the steps, and Robert switched out the light. The arched window showed a clinging, gossamer darkness of trees, dappled irregularly with the pallor of the sky showing through. The hall was ill-lit and hollow-sounding, a desolation. At the front door Robert said goodbye to Alix distantly, and withdrew again into the house, pointedly leaving the door ajar. In the waiting police car, Detective Constable Reynolds and Detective Sergeant Brice sat silent, watching the house while not for a moment appearing to be watching it.

"Well?" said George quietly, as soon as they were out of earshot in the drive. "Anything to comment on?"

It was left to her, of course, he was not going to prompt her, she understood that.

"Yes, something definite, but I don't know if it means anything. There's the floor-those marks as if the door dragged. But the door doesn't drag. And neither did the old one, at least not when I was here previously, six years ago. It isn't that I remember whether there were any marks on the floor then or not," she said carefully. "I think I should have noticed at the time if there had been, but I doubt if I should have remembered. But what I do know is that the old door didn't drag when I came here on that visit. It was beautifully hung-all that weight and ma.s.s, and it swung at a touch."

"You've got a special reason for being so sure of that?" asked George curiously.

It was the one thing she had not felt it necessary to include in her statement, but she told him now. They were approaching the parked car, and Dave was standing by the door waiting for her.

"Yes, I have. We were being shown round by the old owner, the one who's dead. I'm told he had a reputation as a woman-chaser. Well, he lived up to it. While Gerry Bracewell was taking some shots of the carving of the door, our host contrived to shut himself and me on the inner side of it-it was quite easy, obligingly drawing it to so that Gerry could operate freely. And so that he could, too. I moved fast, and the door behaved like silk. I remember what a surprise it was to find such a barrier moving so sweetly to let me out. That's how I know."

"Thank you," said George. "That sounds absolutely reliable, and may be more useful than you know."

But the look she gave him as they parted, level and long and silent, stayed with him as he turned back towards the house; and it was in his mind that her intelligence worked always one step ahead, and that somewhere within her, whether she had yet worked it out or not, she already possessed the full knowledge of the significance of what she had told him, and had foreseen its consequences.

In the back seat of the car Dinah said with a sigh: "I've hardly had time even to say hullo to you yet, Alix, and Dave's only known you a few days, and already we seem to have landed you in more complications than I can add up at this moment, in my confused condition. You won't let it put you off us, will you? Or off this place? We don't always behave like this, sometimes we're more or less normal."

"Murder's abnormal anywhere," said Alix ruefully. She had told them what had pa.s.sed in the house, since no one had suggested she should necessarily keep it to herself, and in any case the indications were that it, or its results, would soon be known to everybody. "At least I can't complain that Mottisham is boring, can I?"

"But what on earth does it all mean mean?" Dinah fretted. "Drag marks under a door aren't so rare, couldn't the old door have dropped a little during the last few years, since you first saw it?"

"After being in position and perfect for centuries," Dave said from the driving seat, "why should it drop suddenly now?"

"If the National Trust are taking the place over," Alix said slowly, thinking it out, "then as soon as the agreement is finally made they'll put their own experts in to see what restorations and renovations are necessary. If a place is going to be shown to the public as a historical monument, then everything possible about it has to be authenticated and doc.u.mented. Do you suppose that could be the real reason why the door was given back to the church? Not because it once belonged there, but because it would attract too much attention where it was, and might give something away that wasn't supposed to be given away? Is there any real evidence evidence that it once belonged to the church porch?" that it once belonged to the church porch?"

"Almost everything about the Abbey," said Dave, "is an open question. Before it folded, this had become a degenerate and disorderly house. Apparently the standard of scholarship was low, and what was left of the library was burned, and most of the records with it. You could make up what stories you like about the last years of Mottisham Abbey, and if you can't prove 'em, neither can anyone else disprove 'em. The door's obviously a genuine part of the old abbey set-up, but as for where it belonged, who's to say?"

"But Robert Macsen-Martel, apparently, did did say. He said it came from the south porch." say. He said it came from the south porch."

"He said family tradition said so. Who's going to argue about family tradition-especially against the family?"

"He also said," Dinah pointed out, "that there was this story about the monk and the devil and the sanctuary knocker. But now it seems there wasn't really a knocker on the door at all, not while it was in the house."

"I wonder," said Dave, as they turned into the Comerbourne road, "what would have happened if they had had left the door in position in the house? The prowling experts would be pretty quick to notice if it dragged, wouldn't they? Old, settled floors and doors don't suddenly change their habits. If that's the oldest part of the house, it would have come within the scope of their brief right away. They'd have wanted to put it right, even if they didn't burn with curiosity to find out how it ever got put wrong. Either re-hang the door, or re-lay the flagstones-one way or the other." left the door in position in the house? The prowling experts would be pretty quick to notice if it dragged, wouldn't they? Old, settled floors and doors don't suddenly change their habits. If that's the oldest part of the house, it would have come within the scope of their brief right away. They'd have wanted to put it right, even if they didn't burn with curiosity to find out how it ever got put wrong. Either re-hang the door, or re-lay the flagstones-one way or the other."

Yes, thought Alix, that's exactly what they'd have done. And now somebody else is surely doing it in their place. But try as she would, she could not see any farther ahead than that, what came next was impenetrable mystery. The question: "Who?" might by now have a potential answer, but the question: "Why?" produced only a blank silence.

Dinah turned and looked back through the rear window towards the overgrown shrubberies and old trees of the Abbey grounds.

"I wonder what the police are doing there now?"

"They're taking up the cellar floor," said Alix.

CHAPTER 9.

Moving in un.o.btrusively from Comerbourne without touching the centre of the village, three more police cars had wound their way up the Abbey drive, and found themselves parking s.p.a.ce at the rear, in what had once been the stableyard. No one here had owned horses since old Robert broke his neck, and the rank autumn gra.s.s was growing high between the cobbles, and the moss shone lime-gold on the roofs. The clock on the stumpy little tower over the entrance had not gone for years; one hand was missing from its dial, and the weatherc.o.c.k that had once crowned it now sagged upside-down against its side. Both time and season had stopped in Mottisham Abbey.

There was one more car visiting that evening, but it contented itself with circling the flower-beds, ready to leave again, and Dr. Braby, scuttling in through the hall with his bag and up the stairs to his patient, never realised that the police were in the house at all. Robert had seen him coming, and excused himself with probable relief but undoubted dignity in order to let him in and escort him upstairs. It was nearly twenty minutes before he came back into the dismal, shadowy drawing-room. Standing in the centre of this mouldering and menacing magnificence, everywhere besieged by the evidences of decay and senility, his pallor and stringiness seemed appropriate, as if he had been sucked dry by his environment long ago, and it was too late now for life to offer him any kind of transfusion.

The doctor's car fussed busily away down the drive. Robert cast a single glance after the sound, and came back to his duty.

"I'm sorry, I hope now we shan't be interrupted again. My mother is giving us cause for anxiety, but she is sleeping now. You'll forgive me if I go to her occasionally, just to make sure she's still asleep, and needs nothing. At the moment I'm alone in the house with her, you see. It isn't easy to get anyone to come out here for private nursing, but by tomorrow Doctor Braby hopes to find me a night nurse, at any rate. And tomorrow my brother will be back."

"I very much regret," George said gently, "having to trouble you at such a time, and I hope Mrs. Macsen-Martel will be improving by tomorrow. But you'll readily understand that my job doesn't allow of delays, even on the best of grounds. I'll try not to let our presence here touch your mother at all."

Robert did not question the phrase "our presence here" openly, but his thin brows soared towards his pallid hair.

"Thank you, you're very considerate. How can I help you?"

The strangest thing was that there seemed to be no curiosity in him. Tension, yes, interest, yes, wariness, yes, but no curiosity. Everything about this house Robert knows already, thought George, it's merely a question of how much others may know. And the old lady upstairs, doped with antibiotics and rustling on the edge of pneumonia? Was it equally certain that there was not much to be known here that she did not know?

"By giving me carte blanche carte blanche," said George, "to make a complete and thorough search of any part of the premises I feel to be necessary. Notably your wine-cellar, where we were a little while ago."

Something immediate and extreme, though hardly visible, happened to the clay-pale features. They petrified before George's eyes into grey granite, about as durable as anything in the world. The blue-grey eyes were like the inlaid eyes of a late Egyptian bust, brilliant and hard in lapis-lazuli, alabaster, silver, black stone and rock crystal, more alive than life, and yet fixed for ever in one dead stare.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think you have shown the necessity for any such move. What evidence can these premises possibly have to offer concerning a murder that took place somewhere else? I understand it's with that case that you're concerned?"

"The door that has played such a prominent part in the murder and attempted murder with which I'm dealing," George pointed out patiently, "formerly hung in your cellar. I don't regard that as irrelevant. Will you give us permission to investigate as we think fit-on the site?"

He waited, and the stone figure sat motionless, head raised, as if he listened for a faint call from upstairs. He closed his eyes for a moment; the lids were lofty, blue-veined, chiselled into pure, simplified lines like the eyelids of a dead man on a tomb. When he opened his eyes again they were human, defensive and inexpressibly weary.

"I admitted you, Chief Inspector, as a normal visitor. What you propose I regard as abnormal and inadmissible. I understand that I have the right to reserve any such permission as you are demanding-"

"Requesting," George corrected him very gently.

"Requesting, if you prefer. I beg your pardon. I'm sorry, but I can't accommodate you." He rose from his chair; so did George. "Good evening, Chief Inspector!"

"Am I to take it," asked George mildly, "that you insist upon a search warrant? Certainly that's your right. But innocent people often waive it."

"I do require to see a warrant-yes. I think we should avail ourselves of these safeguards. They were provided for a purpose."

George reached into his briefcase, and fished out the warrant he had taken out with a magistrate in Sergeant Moon's own proprietary village of Abbot's Bale before mounting this operation. "Very well! I would have liked to have your co-operation freely offered, but you're certainly within your rights. These also are provided for a purpose." He held out the warrant before Robert's eyes. "Please satisfy yourself that everything is in order."

Robert read, and remained standing for a long while unmoving. The stone ebbed gradually into clay again; his shoulders sagged, the lines of his face dragged downwards into a kind of resigned despondency, and melted and refined still further into a purity of withdrawal such as George could not remember ever seeing before in all his experience. When everything becomes impossible, you go into yourself; you do not necessarily close the door, but you make sure that no one else comes in after you; there is a ban on the entrance, but outward there is still a clear view, even if it has to be upon ruin. And there you sit down and watch, as unwaveringly as a viewer before a compulsive television screen.

"In that case, of course," said the remote voice coldly from somewhere within the enclosed place, "I recognise your authority. I can only protest at what I feel to be an unwarranted intrusion-warrant or no! But of course you must do your duty."

He sat down. It was more like the folding up of a jointed figure when the human hand is withdrawn. His long fingers gripped the arms of his chair and clung, but all the rest of him was lank and limp in the black leather cushions. Once he looked up at the ceiling, again listening with strained attention; but after that he was quiescent.

"We'll try not to disrupt your existence or your house too much," said George, "and in particular not to disturb your mother in any way."

"Thank you," said the dead voice, "I appreciate that." George went out to summon his reserves from the stableyard. It was almost dark now, the October evening had settled in clear and still, even the twilight breeze had dropped. A mute and eerie calm closed in upon the Abbey. Two carloads of police moved quietly through the hall to the cellar stairs. They had picks with them, crowbars, shovels, everything they needed to excavate the floor of the cellar. Robert made no effort to get up and watch their pa.s.sage or their progress. There was no need; whatever they found, he would be appraised of it all too soon.

After a while he went up to sit with his mother, though her sleep, stertorous and halting as it was, shut him out beyond appeal. At least he could take care of her as long as he was free to do so.

Quarters were cramped inside the cellar by the time they had installed a couple of lights powerful enough for their purpose, and deployed enough men to be able to deal, one by one, with the huge flagstones. This must, George thought, have been merely the private wine-cellar of the abbot's lodging, for it was of no great size. Perhaps at some time other, related chambers, rendered unsafe by decay, had been sealed off, and this one b.u.t.tressed to continue in service. There must once have been more rooms than this; but this was going to be enough to keep them busy all night.

They numbered the flagstones, and stacked them in order against the wall of the anteroom as they were prised up from their seating. The photographic team recorded the scene at every stage. And what with the concentration of lights and the hard labour in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, everyone began to sweat, even in this chilly underground atmosphere.

The soil they uncovered was darkly grey and hard-packed, with seams of reddish gravel. They had begun in the centre of the room, for two good reasons; they had more room to work there, and therefore someone else bent on hiding rather than finding would also have found this the easiest place to begin; and the deepest grooves left by the old door just touched the edges of the stone they chose to displace first. If the door had not dropped, then the stones must have risen. Flags may indeed rise and fall slightly with the vicissitudes of frost and thaw, but in that case they do not wait six hundred years before suddenly heaving themselves high enough to foul a door; and these scars were not more than a few years old. Something more than the seasonal vagaries of the English weather had unsettled this floor. Given time, thought George, it might have re-settled completely; but the evidence left by the door would still have been there, ineradicable.

"What exactly are we looking for?" asked the photographer confidentially, between sessions.

"Anything that shouldn't be there," said George laconically.

Their guess was as good as his, that was the truth of the matter; but the photographer shrugged and withdrew to his work again philosophically under the impression that the C.I. was being cagey. Yet he and everyone else in the group, if required to guess, would have come up with the same answer. What we're looking for, George thought grimly, is a motive; but what we're going to find is a man. What else gets itself buried secretly under a cellar floor? A man-or a woman, of course. The indications were so positive that there was no eluding them; yet they made no sense. They had one murder and one attempted murder on their hands, but nowhere in all this curious affair was there the least suggestion of a person lost, either man or woman. If this piece of the puzzle really existed, it was a piece that fitted in nowhere.

But if it existed, it was here, and they would find it.

It took them some time, but they had the whole night, and could afford to go about it methodically. When they had uncovered the entire centre of the floor, the cross-lights showed an area which seemed to vary slightly in colouring and texture from the surrounding hard-packed soil. They staked it out carefully and began to dig. Eight feet long, approximately, and five or six feet wide. Big enough. Big enough to receive the thing to be hidden, and for the contortions of whoever had hidden it. The earth grew more friable and workable after the first crust was off. As they removed it, it was piled carefully in the open s.p.a.ce against the rear wall, where two sweating constables began to sift it under a strong light for any unforeseen trifles it might disgorge.

The boots of the diggers gradually vanished below soil level, a rectangle of darkness sank into the earth. Picks were discarded after the first foot or so, and the shovel went on steadily hefting out dark clots of earth to add to the growing heap at the back of the room. By midnight they were three feet down, and Constable Barnes had just taken over the shovel. He was one of Sergeant Moon's young men, six feet three of solid countryman, with a light step and a light hand, a serviceable brain and an invaluable gift for looking simple-minded. His sense of touch was extremely sensitive. He drove in the spade, and halted in mid-thrust, refraining from pressing home the stroke.

"Something here-something soft but tough, that gives- Hold on!" He went to his knees, and began to excavate with hands nearly as large as the spade. Something allowed itself to be coaxed out of the soil, earth crumbing from it as he found an edge and eased it into the light. Fabric, beginning to rot, for his fingers went through the threads when he exerted too much force, but still tough enough to hold together. A b.u.t.ton appeared, and as he sc.r.a.ped the soil away, another. When he turned the edge he held, there were fragments and frayed ends of a thinner fabric, a lining.

"Tweed," said Barnes, thumbing the remnants. "There's n.o.body inside this-look, just thrown in, folded double." He sc.r.a.ped industriously until he got it free, and handed it up out of the trench, gently shaking into recognisable form a man's coat. It was of no colour now but the colour of the earth, but the laboratory would have enough material here to keep them busy for a week.

"It looks as if we're arriving," said George, sitting on his heels at the edge of the grave. "Take it gently from now on, he shouldn't be far below. If a coat had to be disposed of, there could be a hat, as well." The coat had settled one thing. This wasn't one of old Robert's ladies, more importunate and inconvenient than the rest, which had been one of the possibilities in George's mind.

"I went digging with one of the Birmingham University archaeologists, couple of seasons back," said Barnes surprisingly. "He'd have had me brushing away delicately with a little soft paint-brush, just to open up a ruddy post-hole, and here we go digging for real men, not their artifacts, with picks and shovels, and one night to do it in. If you ask me, there's something queer about that lot of values, history or no history." But all the time he was on his knees at one end of the excavated trench, using his great hands, feeling for the strangers in the soil. "Who wants a post-hole, anyhow? When I volunteered, I thought I was going to dig out the foundations of a whole d.a.m.n' castle before lunch, and the bones of half the garrison after. All I found was a couple of bits of pottery, and a beef bone, and a bit of charred wood. I din' think much of that. I never went again."

"Is that why you joined the force?" George asked with genuine interest. The huge, artistic, subtle hands smoothing away the layers of soil had halted, gently probing, quivering like a water-diviner's willow twig.

"Maybe. Live men matter more, I reckon." He withdrew his hands for a moment, brushed off loam and flexed his fingers. "Something else here. Not a hat. Not cloth this time. Something hard-listen." He had uncovered a small medallion of some flat, dingy surface, hardly distinguishable from the earth surrounding it except by its firm level. He rapped on it with his knuckles, and it gave forth a small, hollow sound, muted by the ma.s.ses of earth gripping it on all sides. "All right, I reckon the shovel isn't going to hurt this lot much."

He stood up, and began to slide his spade along the level surface, exposing it gradually from end to end. Dull, clay-coloured leather or imitation leather-the sound suggested the latter, and after all, today's plastics are practically indestructible. Barnes scooped away the earth from round it, and heaved it out of the ground by one end. A large, rigid-framed suitcase, substantial but lightweight, probably fibre-gla.s.s.

"Hmmm, all his belongings, too," said George. "Shouldn't be much of an identification problem, once we find the owner."

They hoisted it out with great care and lifted it aside. If there is anything proof against dissolution, terrifyingly enough, it must be plastic matter. Some day we may bury ourselves under a mountain of our own ingenious refuse, imperishable and dead, a cosmic paradox in pastel colours, obscenely mute, naked, textureless and perpetual. And only our computers will survive to record our submersion. In a medieval cellar haunted by centuries of living and dying, the survival qualities of this synthetic creation seemed particularly out of place.

"That's been bought new within the past six or seven years," said Barnes, briefly considering the thing as he handed it out. "That sort of lock hasn't been going much longer. Our Louie bought one something like it when she sailed for Canada to take up a job as a typist, that'd be five years back, or thereabouts. She got married a year after she went there-ask me, that's what they want these girls for. There's a lot of room for a lot of people in Canada." He retired abruptly into his pit. By this time it had become his, he was in sole charge of it. "If I was getting rid of a bloke and his belongings," he said hollowly out of the grave, "I'd put him down the lowest level, too."

Within five minutes more of gentle erosion, using only his hands, he touched something that brought him up short, freezing like a pointer, every nerve taut.

"He's here. This is cloth I'm fingering. Not just clothes- feels like blanket. Somebody wrapped him up. I can feel bone inside the cloth. You'd better find me a brush, sir, something soft, I don't want to break him..."

The heat and the rank, earthy smell in the cellar had become unbearable. One young constable had had to withdraw hurriedly, and hadn't come back, small blame to him, and another was looking so green that George found a reason for sending him aloft before he collapsed. In the centre of the minor h.e.l.l they created, Barnes sat on his heels, intent and immune, a compa.s.sionate man obsessed by his calling, and smoothed away methodically the clinging soil from the folds of a carefully wrapped blanket, now frayed into lace. A long shape, tapering away to the spot just in front of where Barnes crouched and stroked and meditated. With every motion of his hands the swathed body surfaced out of the clinging soil. Not a tall man, not above medium height. Intact enough to yield measurements without trouble, and measurements would show whether the coat could be his coat, the clothes in the suitcase his clothes. And emphatically a man, not a woman; a woman is a different shape, at least until she is merely a bundle of bones, and what was inside this blanket was decidedly more than a skeleton.

"That's it, sir," reported Constable Barnes solicitously. "I can rig a couple of slings under him nicely now, and he'll do fine. I mean, we've got to think about burying him again decent, haven't we? And there'll be relatives to think about- they wouldn't like it if we damaged him, and nor would I."

He ran his hand tentatively beneath the swathed skull, and tender was not too involved and not too personal a word for his touch, and yet his detachment preserved him from pa.s.sion. George made a note on the most sacred tablet of his mind that he must have Barnes in the plainclothes branch as soon as it could be contrived.

Somewhat after midnight they hoisted out without further damage the body of X, sent for the police van and the pathologist, and settled down to the minute examination of the dead man's belongings. Continuing, at the same time, the laborious sifting of every ounce of soil that had been excavated from his unofficial grave.

The van came to take away the body at half past two. Reece Goodwin, aggrieved at losing a night's sleep but gratified by the bizarre circ.u.mstances, had already made a preliminary examination of the remains by that time, carefully unwrapping him from the coc.o.o.n of blanket which had preserved him to a remarkable extent. The comparative dryness and coldness of the soil had tended to preserve, also. What they had found was partially a skeleton, partially mummified. The skull was a skull, clothed in dried remnants of flesh but nothing more. The clothes tended to crumble at a touch, and had consequently been touched as little as possible, for they still had, in places, texture and even colour, and the best people to draw conclusions from those were the men at the laboratory. But the shoes, almost immaculate, had challenged observation; almost everything the shoes had to tell they had already surrendered, before he was carefully wrapped up again and whisked away.

The mortuary van drove up as quietly as possible to the door, and bore away the remains with the minimum of noise and fuss. But when George closed the front door very softly and turned back towards the cellar stairs, there was Robert in the doorway of the drawing-room, lean, erect and stiff as stone, staring at him.

"Were you looking for me, Chief Inspector?"

"No, Mr. Macsen-Martel. There'll be no need for me to trouble you anymore until morning. I should go to bed if I were you."

He wanted to know, of course, desperately he wanted to know not merely what they had found-presumably he knew that already, since he was here and wide awake-but what it meant to them, what they intended, how they viewed his own position. What he did not want was to ask; and yet a man totally innocent of what lay in the cellars of his house would have asked long ago, and he must know it. Perhaps he had made a mistake in not overflowing with questions when the search was proposed, but it was late and difficult to begin now, all he could do was try to precipitate questioning from the other side. And that he wouldn't do, either, because for some strange reason time meant something to him in this connection, and a part of his mind was surely concentrated even now on conserving every moment he could.

"It would hardly be very easy to sleep, in the circ.u.mstances," he said with the fleeting ghost of a smile.

"I understand that, but it would be well to try. There's no reason at all for you to stay up. In the morning I shall have some questions to put to you, probably, but not now."

"You've finished for the moment?" He did not believe it, but it was one more try to extract a grain of information without actually asking for it.

"No, we shall be here. There are routine matters to be taken care of, but I need not trouble you with them at this stage."

For a moment they stood watching each other, both faces polite, controlled and completely closed. Robert was not going to ask, and plainly George was not going to tell him anything.

"I hope Mrs. Macsen-Martel is resting quietly?"

"Thank you, yes-she is asleep."

There was no need to be in any way uneasy about Robert's movements. He never had deserted his family and his family house, and he would not desert it now. Whatever happened, he would be here to face it.

"Good night," said George.