Murder Isn't Cricket Page 2

  Nigel Moss

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MAN ON THE GREEN

  Old George Crombie hobbled madly on his bent and ancient pins across the main road which runs through Thames Pagnall, in the county of Surrey, and disappeared inside the ‘Green Man’. And those villagers who were pursuing their lawful occasions in the vicinity rubbed astonished eyes at the sight; because nobody had seen old George progressing himself at such a pace since the day the village crier had announced that, as a celebration for the relief of Mafeking, the then landlord of the ‘Green Man’ was keeping open and free house for the night.

  Inside, old George, still going strong, passed the saloon, and made his way to the top of the passage which gave access to the Big Room. He pushed open the door and poked his head round.

  “Hi!” he gasped.

  Thirty heads jerked up from the long table, and sixty pieces of cutlery were halted in surprise. The apparition looked over the double line of white flannels and vari-coloured blazers, and sought and found the eyes of Major ffolkes.

  “Ef you’ll excuse oi, Squire, an’ ef it’s all the same to you, there be a dead man a’sittin’ hisself large as life on the pitch,” he announced.

  Out of the stunned, momentary silence the voice of the major boomed.

  “W-w-what did you say, Crombie?” he demanded.

  “Dead gent, I sez,” insisted old George.

  “Dead man?”

  “Aye.”

  “On our pitch?”

  “’S’right, Squire.”

  “God bless my soul!” The major replaced the piece of fried ham dangling from his fork back on the plate, and stared stupefied at the bearer of tidings. “God bless my soul!” he repeated. “On our pitch.”

  Not even the boys of the village were allowed on that pitch; the dogs were chased off; cows from their experience had taught their calves to skirt round it in their goings and comings from the meadows; and now a dead man had planted himself there.

  The major pushed back his chair. The remaining twenty-nine of the company did the same.

  Together they surged out of the hostelry, across the road, and on to the village cricket green. It was six o’clock.

  * * * * *

  Throughout the afternoon the village green had grilled in leisurely and measured exertion ’neath the heat from the deep blue dome of a cloudless sky. To be exact, the entire compactness of the village of Thames Pagnall had grilled; for the thermometer which hoary Tom Hardcastle had installed, with a wind and rain gauge, on a suitable prospect of his ancient cottage, in dark and glowering mistrust of the official prognostications and postnates of the meteorological department of the Air Ministry, had registered a temperature of 81 in whatever shade it had been able to find.

  On the green, temper had conspired with temperature to heat to the acme of human endurance the concourse of people which had splotched a kaleidoscope of colour on its verdant sweep.

  It was the annual match between the cricket elevens of Thames Pagnall and Maplecot.

  But perhaps you should know something of the match, the better to be able to comprehend how it came about that Eliseus Leland could be murdered in full view of a thousand people, and not one of them raise the alarm, because nobody saw the deed, or its perpetrator.

  Very well. The story goes back to somewhere about the year 1598. In that year of her Majesty Elizabeth’s reign, one John Denwick of Guldeford, one of her Majesty’s coroners, deposed on oath, concerning a piece of ground in Guildford, that he,

  “being at the age of fyfty and nyne years, or thereabouts, hath knowne a parcell of lande for the space of fyfty yeares or more, and saith, being a scholar in the free schools of guldeford, hee and several of his fellowes did runne and play there at creckett, and other places.”

  Now, one of the other places where the game of cricket was played in those spacious days was the parcel of land adjacent to the palace of Hampton Court; which came, later, to the name of Thames Pagnall. From those days to the present the game of cricket has been played on that land. Trees grew up round it; houses gave shelter to generations of dwellers; by their Tudor roofs you may tell them today. And the parcel of land became the cricket green in the centre of the residences.

  Then, in the year 1800, or thereabouts, a young upstart settlement levelled up a piece of land in a riverside village some three miles away put up two sets of wickets and proclaimed itself the Maplecot Cricket Club. It also challenged Thames Pagnall to a match. Three hundred years of cricket condescended to allow the upstart on its sacred pitch. From 1800 to the present day, which is 144 years, Thames Pagnall had played Maplecot at cricket. Fifty games had been drawn by now and each side had won 47. This match, then, was a needle game.

  The village had turned out for the game, anticipating a good time being had by all. For there had been a mort of trouble at the last match—after the Pagnall captain had been given last man out with a matter of no more than three runs wanted to win, and him with his eye well in and the bowlers dead tired. He swore on his oath, in the presence and before the face of the vicar, that the ball which the umpire said was l.b.w. singed the hairs of his sidewhiskers on the left hand side.

  So, for the match on this present day, independent umpires had been on the field. Two solid months had been spent in arriving at the decision, and the identity, of the umpires. Such sinister influence as young Bill Oates, the plumber, putting a washer on the tap of Mrs. Sellars, had him ruled out by the Maplecot team, since Mrs. Sellars son, Alfred, was the slow bowler for Thames Pagnall. This deadly thrust was countered with a riposte by Pagnall against Farmer Bowen, who had as a milk customer the mother of the Maplecot wicket-keeper! The problem was at last solved by a subscription among the two teams which provided the services of two umpires from a club twenty miles away, for a guinea apiece, tea and two pints of beer.

  When lunch was taken, Maplecot had lost nine wickets for the respectable tally of 170 runs (last man 9). Ten minutes of the resumption was sufficient to dispose of the tenth wicket. The scoreboard had then clicked up 175. In their respective tents the two sides debated the prospects.

  The second over of the Thames Pagnall innings saw the awaited trouble break out. A tall, burly figure took the ball. He sent down the first of his over, and the crowd jumped as one man. The second ball shook the bails.

  A shout broke from the Thames Pagnall side of the field. “Who’s he? He ain’t a Maplecot man. Take him off.”

  The Pagnall captain, who had been watching the bowling very carefully from the other crease, approached his vis-à-vis. “Isn’t that Charlton, the Lancashire fast bowler?” he asked.

  Maplecot’s skipper grinned. “Sure,” he said. “What’s wrong with that? He’s working in Maplecot now, and eligible. Lodging there, too.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  The Pagnall fears were justified. Two wickets fell to the County man in that over for five runs. Four wickets were down for fifty; and then the squire stalked to the wicket to partner the blacksmith. They put on another fifty before the blacksmith, unsighted by a Maplecot lout walking in front of the screen, let a fast one into his wicket. Ominous mutterings broke out; and a suggestion that the visitor—who doubtless had been wandering backwards and forwards across the screen since the Pagnall innings had opened—should be lynched there and then was favourably received. With 160 on the board, only two wickets remained.

  But so, too, did the squire.

  He put two balls into the visitors’ tent, knocking up the score to 172—and then played forward too late. One man left. Three runs to tie. A snatched single sent hearts into mouths. Another . . . and a wildly returned ball brought an overthrow single.

  Level scores.

  In a silence which could be felt, the bowler walked to the start of his run, steadied himself, broke into a loping trot and hurled his thunderbolt.

  “Owzat?” came a yell.

  The 145th game had ended in a draw.

  The players slipped on their blazers, and made their way to the ‘Green Man’ for the high tea which always concluded the year’s gala day. The crowd wandered off to their own respective tea-tables, and within a few minutes the green was empty.

  Except for George Crombie.

  George was greensman, groundsman and general aide-de-camp to the club. He had been so for the last fifty years. And when the last ball had been bowled, and the stumps drawn, and the spectators departed, old George began his work. Trundling a handcart, he skirted the boundary line, collecting, collapsing, and piling on the handcart the deck-chairs, folding stools and collapsible forms upon which the club ‘fans’ had disported themselves in comfort during the match. These were subsequently wheeled to the shed at the back of Crombie’s house, which was the official store-room of the Thames Pagnall Cricket Club.

  He had circled some two-thirds of the boundary when he arrived at a chair set a little apart from the others. It was also different from the others; a spectator was still sitting in it. He lay back in the canvas, oblivious to the whistling of Crombie as he approached.

  George eyed him. . . . “’Sleep,” he communed. “Sun . . . makes some folks want to sleep . . . makes me missus sleep. . . . Bet he dunno match’s over. . . . Strange gennelman, too.”

  Considering the matter from all angles, George decided that, since he had to return that way, he would let the sleeper dream on. He rumbled past him, collected the remainder of the chairs and, some ten minutes later, was back again. The man was still oblivious to the world.

  Old George cleared his throat. “Sorry, sir. I’ll have to take the chair now,” he said.

  There was no response; he repeated his warning, more loudly.

  Still no reply.

  “Dang it! Can’t leave chair h
ere all night,” said George to himself. He tapped the man on the shoulder. . . . He tapped again . . . He pushed him.

  It was at this point that George, developing a somewhat retarded anxiety, saw the figure of Mr. Alfred Bosanquet approaching him over the green. Mr. Bosanquet was one of George’s props of existence. He occupied the large bungalow which faced the green on its longest side, commanding a cross-view of the wicket. He was one of the principal supporters of the club, a fact which was recognized by the score-board attendant, who, whenever there was a change in the score, elaborately turned to the board in the direction of Mr. Bosanquet’s residence, so that he and his friends, viewing the game from their armchairs spaced out on the front lawn, might be kept au fait with the progress of the match.

  George Crombie was the Bosanquets’ odd man about the place, drawing two hours’ pay for one hour of real labour. It was therefore with considerable relief that he now saw his employer approaching him and his problem man.

  “George! Those fowl have broken out again,” he announced. “You’d better come over and patch up the run.” He broke off. “What’s the matter?” he asked, sharply.

  “Gennelman here . . . can’t make him hear me,” Crombie explained. “He ain’t moved, though I shook him.”

  “Perhaps he’s fainted with the heat and the excitement. Let me see him.” Mr. Bosanquet stepped up to the chair and bent over the man. He slipped a hand inside his waistcoat.

  “By jove, he’s dead!” he announced.

  “Dead?” echoed George. “Go on!”

  “Quite dead. Here, you go off to the pub and tell the squire and the others. I’ll stop here with the body. It mustn’t be touched, you know. Get a move on, man. Tell the squire to come at once.”

  Major ffolkes reached the scene at the head of the thirty cricketers and attendants. “What’s this story Crombie has got hold of about a man being dead, Bosanquet?” he asked.

  “Oh, fellow’s dead all right, Major,” was the reply. “His heart isn’t beating, anyhow. I felt for that.”

  “What is it? Heat stroke, do you think?”

  “Don’t know. But I shouldn’t touch him, if I were you. Better get the local cop and a doctor.”

  “Constable’s coming now—with half the village,” volunteered one of the flannelled figures.

  “That’s that blasted Crombie, I suppose, bellowing the news round the place. They’ll be trampsing all over the pitch now.”

  Police-Constable Lambert, of the Surrey Constabulary, saluted the squire, and jerked a finger at the figure in the chair.

  “This him?” he asked.

  The squire nodded.

  “Doctor’s coming. I’ve telephoned Inspector. He’s coming, too.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  COMINGS AND GOINGS

  Detective-Inspector Carruthers stopped his car at the edge of the green, where it had a footbridge across the dyke on to the road. He walked to meet his constable, and acknowledged the eager salute of a man who had a body to dispose of.

  He eyed the multitude.

  “All these people the man’s relatives?” he asked, sarcastically.

  “No, Inspector. Gent’s a stranger.”

  “Then clear ’em off. All the lot of ’em. Right off the green.

  “And don’t walk over that pitch—none of you!” roared Major ffolkes, who had seen two wars, and counted death as merely a necessary incident. “Put the standards and ropes round it, you fellows,” he appealed to the cricketers.

  The inspector walked up to the chair and, standing in front of it, inspected the occupant. The man was lying back in the canvas sling of the chair, slouching rather than sitting. His hat, a grey trilby, was tilted over his eyes, hiding his face from passers-by. It was resting at a comical angle, as though it had fallen, or been jerked forward.

  “Anybody touched him?” the inspector asked.

  A chorus of “Noes” answered the question.

  He stooped over and lifted the hat clear. The hair beneath was a full crop of iron-grey, the face of ruddy complexion, burnt a little by the sun—and recently, for the colour was still a brick red instead of the brown which is the hall-mark of the sun-bronzed man. He wore a brown suit of jacket, waistcoat and trousers, through which ran a thin red stripe. Brown glacé shoes completed the outfit.

  “Looks as if he’s had a heat stroke, Inspector,” suggested Major ffolkes. “It’s been mighty hot out here this afternoon, and we’ve had an exciting time.”

  The inspector nodded, non-committally. “Well, we shall soon know,” he commented. “Here’s the doctor.”

  “Heat stroke be damned!” the police-surgeon announced. “Man’s been used to heat. Look at him.” He felt the skin of the face. “Warm,” he said. “It’d be cold if it was heat stroke.” He lifted up one of the eyelids and inspected the pupil beneath. “Natural condition.” He studied the position of the figure. “Position’s all wrong. Fellow’s lying easy. He’d be contorted through trying to get up. Stroke would shock him awkwardly. Whatever he died of it wasn’t heat. If you’ve finished with him, Inspector, we’d better have him on the grass.”

  Major ffolkes and the constable lifted the figure from the chair and laid him face upwards on the turf. The doctor unbuttoned the waistcoat, loosened the collar and tie, and opened the shirt. His fingers probed and felt and his knuckles tapped—without result. Nothing, either, did he glean from an inspection of the mouth.

  “Turn him over,” he said at length.

  And a second later . . .

  “Why, the man’s been shot!” he ejaculated.

  “Shot?” The inspector jumped.

  “Through the back.” The doctor pulled down the coat from the shoulders and inspected the wound. “Looks as if it went into the heart,” he said. Must have hit a bone in front, somewhere, or it would have come out. Better get him to the mortuary. I can’t do anything about him here.”

  “Just a minute, Doctor.” The inspector turned to the men standing round. “Any of you got a camera handy?” he asked.

  Mr. Bosanquet nodded. “I’ve got a cine camera with half a roll of films in it, if that’s any use,” he volunteered.

  “It would do even better than an ordinary camera, if you can spare the use of it, sir,” was the reply.

  Bosanquet left at a run in the direction of his house.

  “Now, Constable, if you’ll give me a hand we will put this chap back in the chair, as near as possible as we found him. I want a photograph.” They settled the figure, and the inspector, standing back, passed an eye over him. “I think he was a little lower down,” he insisted. Mr. Bosanquet was back before the officer was satisfied with the position of the replaced corpse.

  “Would you like me to handle the camera, Inspector? I probably know more about a cine camera than you do, and they are a bit tricky.” Mr. Bosanquet made the suggestion hesitatingly.

  “I was going to ask you if you would be good enough to do so,” was the reply. “I want pictures from the front, the back, and from each side. Then one showing the position of the chair against the road past the green—long-distance focus there.”

  “I’ll take a five-second run of each angle, Inspector. That should provide you with a dozen pictures of each pose.”