The Knocker on Death's Door

evening paper normally got its first edition into the shops by noon, today they would probably beat that time.

The village had other news to circulate, a curious corollary to the headlines from the Abbey. The doctor had been early at the house again, as everyone knew, for his had been the only non-police vehicle allowed past the gate. What was more, he was expected to pay a second visit after surgery was finished. Not merely bronchitis now, said the village darkly, but pneumonia. And for all her hardihood, the old lady hadn’t that much strength to fall back on, it was going to be touch and go.

Jenny Pelsall brought the news to the garage when she came at eight to open the office. It was worse than Dinah had ever dreamed possible. The previous evening had been a forewarning, yes, but not of this. They’ll be getting up the floor, Alix had said, and in the dusk and the confusion of her mind of yesterday, Dinah had believed her; but in the security and ordinariness of home it was hard to retain that belief. And now in full daylight, on a surprisingly bright and sunny morning—perhaps too bright to last—the stunning truth appeared monstrously inappropriate and brutal. In particular the old woman’s illness, which evidently had not been diplomatic after all.

“And Hugh will be home almost any moment!” she said, almost wishing him away again, somewhere rallying or racing happily at the other side of the country; except that even there the news would reach him as soon as he switched on the car radio, and there it might well fall upon him even more heavily. Here at least he had his own friends, his own interests and even his own home, clear of the shadow of the Abbey and its unaccountable horrors.

“It’s lucky he’s broken away as far as he has, anyhow,” Dave said, reading her mind.

“Yes, I know, but still she is his mother, and he’s as fond of her as anyone could be—I know she doesn’t exactly attract affection. And Robert’s his brother, whatever he’s done… Oh, I know he doesn’t miss them much and doesn’t go near them any oftener than he can help, not when things are normal. But when something like this happens,” said Dinah with conviction, “he’ll be off there like a shot to back them up, I bet you.”

It was a little before ten o’clock when Hugh drove in, with Ted Pelsall grinning beside him, the pair of them in high spirits. There had been no broadcast statement on the case as yet, and they had made no stop on the way, it seemed, so there had been nothing to give them any warning. Hugh sent a blare on the horn re-echoing from the wall as they turned in at speed and drove through into the rear yard. All the nearer half of the village heard it, and pricked up their ears. That would be Hugh coming home. Poor Hugh, what a homecoming!

Dinah had been watching for him, and was out in the yard to meet him as he opened the driver’s door and unfolded himself with a spring and a shout. He had an absurd Welsh doll under his arm, a present for her—not the solemn kind, but a randy caricature. His hair was on end, and his face was beaming; if his eyes looked a little tired, that was the only fault she could find with his appearance, and that was excusable, after what had probably been a very short night. She knew him. If she hadn’t insisted on his having a night’s sleep after his long stint, he would have driven straight back as soon as the results were confirmed; but as she had, he had probably borrowed half the hours of the night to spend with some of the friends and rivals he seldom saw between rallies.

He hugged and kissed her. Dave came out, sober-faced, to join them.

“Didn’t bring you the trophy, after all, old boy. Sorry about that, but it was a grand day out, take it all round…”

“Hugh,” Dinah began urgently, “listen, something’s happened here…”

The doll was thrust into her arms. “Here you are, love—name of Blodwen. I won her in a raffle at the seediest club I think I’ve ever been in. Sorry about such a poor showing, Dave, I didn’t seem to hit my form until midnight.”

“I dropped a couple of points for us, anyhow,” Ted owned sadly, “taking him up the wrong track on one of the mountain sections.”

“Hugh, will you listen…?”

He began to pick up the story from Ted, as gaily as ever, and then something in their faces reached the steadier part of his intelligence and stuck like a burr. He stopped, looking from Dinah’s face to Dave’s, and back again; the brightness ebbed out of his smile, leaving it lingering after its significance was lost.

“What’s the matter?” he asked wonderingly. “Talk about solemn faces!” He was only puzzled and disquieted as yet, not alarmed. “What’s happened?”

Dinah told him, briefly, accurately in so far as she had facts to offer him, and without once exclaiming or repeating herself.

“Oh, no!” he said in an almost soundless whisper. His hands slipped down Dinah’s arms and held her wrists for a moment, in some kind of private communication. Then he put her hands away from him gently. “But it’s crazy! How could there be…? They must be out of their minds… or else they’ve put out this statement as a bait, to start something quite different happening—to bust this other case wide open, somehow. That’s possible, surely? The other isn’t possible! How could there be a body? Why should there be?”

“We don’t know, Hugh, nobody knows. All they’ve said is just that they found it. Everything else is rumour. I suppose the police just possibly might give out something that isn’t true,” Dave said dubiously, “if they thought it would bring the killer into the open, but I don’t think it’s very likely.”

“And Rob’s all on his own with that load!” said Hugh. “Mother, on top of everything! I must go to him.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Dinah promptly.

“No, love, you won’t! I don’t want you in that set-up at all.”

“But your mother—I could make myself useful.”

“No, let me go and see, first. If we need someone, honestly, I’ll come running to you.” She saw by his eyes, which had lost their easy brightness and were looking far beyond her, narrowed to confront threatening distances, that he was already a long way from them. So they let him go without protest, and without venturing to offer more help and solidarity than he would allow.

“If there’s anything we can do, call us,” Dave said.

“I’ll do that. But all this is too absurd to stick, I tell you it’s crazy. Look, I’d better leave you the Porsche, Ted wants to go over her. Can I take the Mini?”