Murderer's Fen Read online

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You’ll see, darling—they won’t be too angry when they know we’re going to get married right away.… Incidentally, I don’t see much point in your going to the Bakers now. Not if we’re going to marry in a week or two.”

  “I’ve got to go somewhere,” she said.

  “You can stay here.” He smiled at her. “After all, I can’t compromise you any more than I have done, can I? And now that I’ve got you back, I can’t bear to let you go again. We’ve so much to talk about—so many plans to make.… Do stay—please … You can cook the meals—start getting your hand in.… It’ll be fun.”

  “I’d love to,” she said. “But what about the Bakers?—they’re expecting me.”

  “When?”

  “To-night … Any time after seven, they said. They’re going to be out till then.”

  “Are they on the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you can ring them up later on—say you’re sorry, but you’ve changed your mind.”

  “Won’t I be letting them down?”

  “They’d probably sooner know now—rather than have you go along and then leave in a few days. That would mean a double upset.”

  “M’m—I expect you’re right.”

  “Good—then everything’s settled.” Hunt took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. “Nothing more to worry about at all, eh …? I’ll get another job, we’ll look for somewhere to live, we’ll make our peace with Mum and Dad, we’ll get married, and we’ll have our family. Just like any other young couple. It’s going to be marvellous.…”

  “Oh, yes.…” Gwenda’s eyes were bright with love and hope.

  “There’s just one thing,” Hunt said. “I think it might be wiser if you didn’t show yourself outside too much in daylight. You’re pretty eye-catching—and we don’t want people talking till I’ve got that job lined up.”

  “No—all right.”

  “Now what about some grub.…? A real cosy domestic meal, eh.…? And after dark, we’ll go for a stroll in the fen. You’ll love it—it’s very romantic at night.…”

  He showed her where the food was kept, and how to work the stove. Then he went back to the window. As he’d foreseen, she’d been putty in his hands. A pregnant girl, in love—of course she’d wanted to stay with him.… All he had to do now was work out a plan—a good plan.… He began to turn over the problems. Problems of timing, of moonlight, of method, of tools, of the best place to choose. Technical problems, that he felt well able to cope with.…

  It was later on in the evening that anxiety returned. The plan was taking shape nicely—but he was still worried in case he might overlook something.

  As things turned out, he was right to be.

  PART TWO

  Chapter One

  It was the receipt of an anonymous letter through the post that caused the police to look into the happenings at Ocken Fen that week-end. The communication, in the form of a letter card, arrived at the brick villa of Police-Constable Blake in Ocken village on the Monday morning. It was addressed in pencilled capital letters to “The Police, Ocken, Cambridgeshire.” As he was the only policeman in Ocken, P.C. Blake opened it. The contents were startling, and he reported them at once to his county headquarters. He was instructed to get on his motor-bike and take the letter without delay to Cambridge. There it came, in the first place, into the hands of Sergeant Tom Dyson of the county C.I.D.

  Dyson, to look at, was an impressive young officer. He had a splendid physique, dark good looks, alert grey eyes and a strong jaw line. His career had been impressive, too. On the beat he had been efficient and courageous, gaining a merit award on one occasion for tackling a man armed with a gun. In the plain-clothes branch he had shown outstanding qualities. Some detective-sergeants are born to be good plumbers’ mates, work-horses for their inspectors. Dyson wasn’t one of these. He had an independent and original mind, as well as a logical one. Great things had been prophesied for him.… But now, at twenty-nine, he seemed to have put his future behind him.

  The turning point had come twelve months before. He had been living at that time with his pretty young wife Mary and his baby daughter Linda in a small but charming stud-and-plaster cottage—largely renovated by himself—in open country just outside Cambridge. They had been blissfully happy there. Dyson, by blood and upbringing, was a countryman—a native of East Anglia, with a feeling for land and for soil, a liking for flat country and wide skies, a knowledge of plants and birds and trees picked up without effort in his childhood and his youth. Mary had shared his tastes. He had liked nothing better in his off-duty periods than to create an idyllic little garden behind the cottage and potter in it with Mary and the baby. So many of the things he saw in the course of his work were sordid and vicious that his home had seemed like a corner of heaven. He’d meant to keep it that way.

  Then Mary, out shopping one day in Cambridge, had been felled by an exuberant motorist who said he sounded his horn before he killed her. Dyson, completely shattered, had sold the cottage and all its contents and gone to live in the town with his mother, who was now looking after two-year-old Linda. The tragedy had left him desolate in his personal life, and almost pathological on the subject of motor cars. It couldn’t be helped that so many people in the world were stupid, unimaginative, selfish, reckless, but he saw no reason why such people should be allowed to arm themselves with the lethal weapon of the car. In his black and bitter moods he would ask derisively why the Government didn’t ban all private motoring and save countless lives by the issue to every adult citizen of a comparatively harmless alternative toy, like a hand grenade. Taking, as he did, this extreme view about a thing that caused a mere eight thousand deaths and a few hundred thousand injuries each year, he was naturally regarded as an eccentric, warped by his own misfortune.

  The tragedy had done more than focus his hatred on the motor car. It had left him restless in his work and indifferent to his prospects. For the moment, at least, he had no objective, nothing to strive for. It was no longer clear that he even wanted to be a policeman. Though he still did a competent job, he had lost his zest and purpose. Sometimes he behaved like a man who might any day take a boat to the other side of the world.…

  The text of the anonymous letter—pencilled, like the address, in block letters—read:

  Dear Sir,

  Yesterday evening I was up in the old hide on Ocken Fen and about half past eight I saw a man and a girl walking along one of the drives in the moonlight. I watched them disappear round a bend and then I heard the girl give a sort of squeal. I thought they were just larking about and didn’t pay any more attention at the time but later on I saw a torch flashing and I watched and presently the man went back along the drove by himself. I don’t know who the girl was but I thought the man looked a bit like the one who runs the Cosy Caravan site. Anyway, that was the direction he went off in. I dare say nothing happened, but it’s been on my mind and I thought I ought to tell you. I’m sorry I can’t give my name but I was with a friend myself and she might get into trouble.

  Dyson read the letter through twice, his face registering distaste. He disliked anonymous letters, from every point of view. They were suspect evidence, they rarely gave enough information, and you couldn’t question the writers. They were often sent in malice, and quite often by nut cases. Like that poison pen writer he’d helped track down a couple of years before, who’d accused herself of sexual offences.… Still, this fellow sounded sane enough.… Dyson looked at the postmark. The stamp had been cancelled at Ocken on Sunday afternoon. The text of the letter was headed “Sunday morning.” So the incident, if it had happened, had been on Saturday evening.… He glanced in his diary, checking the time of moonrise. Yes, that was all right.… Then he heard Chief Inspector Nield enter the office next door, and he took the letter in.

  John Nield was a solidly built man in his early fifties, tending to portliness, with a balding head and grizzled brows and moustache. He lived wit
h his wife in a small, detached house on the outskirts of Cambridge. Mrs. Nield was comfortable and domestic, an excellent cook, a natural home-maker, and the mother of a son and daughter who were now both married. She had spent much of her life keeping meals hot, postponing appointments, cancelling holiday arrangements, and generally adapting herself to the irregularities of a policeman’s lot. She had often complained, but she had never had any regrets. It had been an interesting and varied life, concerned with human beings and not with things, constantly giving her something new to discuss and share with the husband she was devoted to. At fifty-three, she counted herself a fulfilled and lucky woman.

  Though Nield’s life had been hard and tough, his features had taken on over the years a remarkably benign expression, so that he looked like somebody’s slightly quizzical grandfather. By nature he was an equable and philosophical man. He didn’t believe, as some of his colleagues did, that the human race had grown suddenly worse in recent years—or that it was ever likely to grow much better. He knew that the battle against crime would never be wholly won—or wholly lost. You just had to keep on bashing away. Nield himself had bashed, not unsuccessfully, for more than thirty years. His small triumphs had been gained by dogged effort. He had a craftsman’s pride in his job, and the tools of his craft were commonsense, humanity and diligence.

  His relationship with Sergeant Dyson was friendly and often informal. Nield recognised qualities in the young man that he knew he lacked himself—a flair, an unorthodoxy, an impulsive brilliance on occasion. He was also deeply sorry for him. Nield and his wife had known and liked Mary Dyson, and the tragedy had shocked them. Though Dyson’s hurt had been grievous, and these things took time, they both hoped that he would eventually remarry, and find a new purpose, and that the check to his career would be only temporary. He was too good a man, in every way, to be wasted.… Dyson, in his turn, had respect for the older man’s experience and know-how—though he sometimes felt that Nield had become a little too mellow in his judgments. Dyson was inclined to see things as black and white.… On the whole, though, they made a good team.

  Nield had already been given the gist of the anonymous letter on the telephone. Now, waving Dyson to a chair, he quickly read it through.

  “Yes.…” he said, after a moment. “Well—what do you make of it, Sergeant?”

  Dyson shrugged. “Assuming it’s on the level, sir, the obvious things … It was written by a man with a good deal of local knowledge, so I’d guess he lives around there. An educated man, not a rustic.… There’d be plenty of those about, even in a fen village—shopkeepers, farmers, professional people—enough to make tracing impossible, I’d say.… Somebody out on the quiet with another man’s girl friend or wife, by the sound of it.…”

  “But otherwise a good citizen, eh? Sense of public duty.…”

  “He took his time letting us know,” Dyson said. “He could have telephoned us on Saturday.… For that matter, he could have done a bit of checking up himself.”

  “Not if he had a woman with him, Sergeant. Not easily.…”

  “Perhaps not … Anyway, I don’t think much of his excuse for not giving his name. He could have told us who he was without mentioning the woman at all.”

  “He’d have known we’d have asked what he was doing in the fen,” Nield said. “He might have thought it would be awkward for him. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to be out—or perhaps he was supposed to be somewhere else. Maybe he was thinking of himself, not the woman.”

  “That’s possible,” Dyson agreed.

  Nield looked at the letter again. “He’s pretty vague about where the incident was supposed to happen.”

  “Ocken Fen’s a pretty vague place, sir. Sort of featureless.”

  “You know it, do you?”

  “I went there for a picnic once—in the old days.… It’s a very wild spot.”

  “What’s this ‘hide’ the fellow talks about?”

  “I seem to remember there were two wooden towers—look-outs for watching birds. One of them’s falling to bits—at least, it was when I was there. I think he must mean that.”

  “Yes, I see … Well, it all seems to make pretty good sense. A wooden tower would have been more comfortable for a bit of necking than the damp ground, I suppose. And he’d certainly have had a view from up there.… What’s more, being seen from a tower is the sort of thing anyone planning a bit of mayhem might not have thought of.… I think we’d better go and see the bloke at the caravan site. Did you get his name?”

  “Hunt,” Dyson said. “Alan Hunt.”

  They drove to Ocken in a black police car with a sign above the roof. Dyson was at the wheel. Nield sat back and quietly planned his approach. It would have to be cautious, since they’d almost nothing to go on. The letter writer himself hadn’t been sure of his identification. It could well have been some other man in the fen. And there was no real evidence of foul play. The girl could simply have gone off on her own. The whole thing could easily fizzle out. Better, Nield thought, not to produce the letter—not at first, anyway. There was no point in stirring up trouble unnecessarily. A gentle probe—that was the line.… Preceded, perhaps, by one sharp, testing question.…

  The fen was just over twenty miles from Cambridge—a fifty-minute journey, at Dyson’s stately pace. They had their first glimpse of it as they passed the main entrance, where the sergeant pointed out the twin towers of the hides. Then, at a T-junction in the village, Nield spotted the Cosy Caravan sign, and Dyson turned into the drive and pulled up outside the office. They both got out.

  After a moment the office door opened and a man emerged. Both detectives watched him closely. He was looking at the car, at the “Police” sign above it. He seemed mildly surprised, nothing more.

  “Mr. Alan Hunt?” Nield asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “My name is Nield—Chief Inspector Nield. This is Sergeant Dyson.… I thought you might be able to help us, Mr. Hunt, over a little matter we’re looking into.…”

  “Of course—if I can.…”

  “I believe you had a young lady with you on Saturday?”

  “A young lady.…? Why, yes.…” Hunt’s face showed sudden concern. “I say, she’s not done anything silly, has she?”

  “Not as far as I know, sir.… I take it she was a friend of yours.”

  “No, not a friend—she was an acquaintance I met on holiday.”

  “Would you mind telling me her name?”

  “Gwenda Nicholls.… What’s all this about, Inspector?”

  “We’ve received some information—I’d sooner not go into the details at the moment.”

  Hunt continued to look puzzled and slightly worried. “Just as you like, of course.…”

  “Where does this girl live, Mr. Hunt?”

  “At Peterborough.… 19 Everton Road.”

  “And she came over here to see you?”

  “Well, not exactly.… Look, I think it would be much better if you asked her about it.”

  “Now that I’m here, sir, I may as well hear anything you can tell me.”

  “It’s really not my affair,” Hunt said uncomfortably. “I don’t know that I’ve the right to talk about her.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist,” Nield said.

  “I see … Well, that’s different … I warn you, though, it’s a long story.”

  “We’re in no hurry,” Nield said, “if you’re not.”

  “In that case, I suggest we go and talk in my caravan. It’ll be more comfortable than standing out here.”

  “Very well,” Nield said.

  Hunt led the way through the line of vans. Nield walked beside him, exchanging a polite word or two about the nature of the business and the end-of-season quietness. Dyson followed a pace behind, very respectfully. Nield’s deft handling of that preliminary interview had struck him as a model. He had no reason, yet, to admire Hunt’s handling of it.

  “Right, sir,” Nield said, when they were all seated. “Let’s h
ave your story.”

  “Well,” Hunt began, “it was after lunch on Saturday. About three o’clock, I suppose. I was working on a boat at this end of the site when I saw a girl with a suitcase standing at the office door. So I went to see what she wanted. I thought there was something vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t place her. She looked at me as though she knew me, too—but with a sort of puzzled expression. She asked if Mr. Alan Hunt was around. I said I was Alan Hunt. She looked more puzzled. She said, hadn’t we met on holiday in Norway? And then I remembered her. We’d been fellow guests at a hotel for a day or two in August—the Vistasund, near Stavanger. We hadn’t had much to do with each other, so you can imagine I was pretty surprised at her showing up here. Anyway, I said I did remember her—and I repeated that I was Alan Hunt. She looked very distressed—said there’d been an awful mistake, and that I wasn’t the man she’d expected to see.… Then she burst into tears. …”

  “H’m—quite a drama,” Nield said.

  “It was most embarrassing, I can tell you. She was really upset—crying and sobbing. I didn’t know what to do with her … In the end I brought her along here to the van and gave her a drink, and I asked her what was wrong and if I could do anything. At first she didn’t want to tell me, she just kept crying, but I coaxed her a bit and suddenly she poured it all out. Apparently she’d been seduced by some man she’d met at the hotel—and she was pregnant. He’d got her tight the night before she’d left—and he’d given her my name and address. I suppose he’d seen it on my luggage or something—he must have been a proper shower. Now she’d no idea who or where he was, and she was in a real mess. She’d left home that day to start a new job in St. Neots—she’d taken it specially so she could call in here on the way. This fellow who’d seduced her had said he was a bachelor, and she’d hoped he’d marry her. Now she just didn’t know what to do.”