Madman's Whisper

by Richard Grindal

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

When car trouble forces private detective John Bryant to spend the night in the small village of Foxall, he is immediately struck by the antagonism and secrecy of the locals. Why was there so much hostility and fear? And why were the streets deserted after dark? Next morning the murdered body of Andrew Woodside is discovered on a nearby hill, beginning an investigation that takes Bryant to the dingy industrial town of Castington, where an atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion and intrigue prevails . . .

Release date: December 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 236

Sample

THE girl in the coffee bar had everything a girl in an Espresso should have. A pony-tail hair style, a sloppy, crimson
sweater and leopard-skin slacks cut like a drainpipe and just about as unflattering to her figure. A group of self-important youths standing near her were making ineffectual passes. One of them
made a remark which I could not hear.

Her voice when she replied was confident and controlled. ‘Remember you have an advantage over me. After all, you have never had to live down your father.’

‘Listen to her,’ one of the youths sneered, ‘poor little rich girl!’

‘Probably,’ the leopard-skin girl went on, ignoring him, ‘you have never even known who your father was. I assume you had one.’

I laughed; softly, but not apparently softly enough. She looked round and stared at me coolly. Her eyes were hazel and set rather far apart; her fair hair was cut with a fringe over her
forehead. The eyes and the fringe combined to make her face seem square and unintelligent. She might have been twenty, not more.

‘Bravo!’ I said, and smiled.

‘Are you by any chance trying to pick me up?’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it. Why, were you expecting me to?’

She made no reply but frowned, as though there might be some hidden innuendo in my words.

I went on: ‘Because if you were, I would be delighted to oblige.’

This time she laughed. Then she swivelled round on her stool by the bar, climbed down and came over to my table carrying her cup of coffee with her. I stood up.

‘Probably I’m making a mistake,’ she said, ‘but I’m bored and anything is better than boredom. At least you seem to have some manners, which is more than those
embryo juvenile delinquents have.’

We sat down on our oil drums. The Calypso coffee bar was decorated in a style purporting to be West Indian and all the seats were oil drums fitted with padded leather cushions. The tables were
designed to look like oil drums too, only larger and with portions cut away through which one could thrust one’s legs. For the teenagers of Castington, holding hands beneath an oil drum was
the thrill of the season. The Caribbean motif was carried on through the rest of the room; shaded lights made from empty rum bottles; girls in bright shirts and jeans behind the bar; a
muted radiogram playing Calypso music in one corner. The wallpaper was contemporary and four dejected tropical plants languished in futuristic flower pots on a fragile glass shelf.

‘What are you doing in this place anyway?’ I asked the leopard-skin girl.

‘Why shouldn’t I be here?’

‘You don’t seem to belong.’

‘What makes you think that?’

I shrugged my shoulders. It was difficult to explain why she looked out of place and slightly ill-at-ease among the Edwardian suits and sloppy sweaters. There was something forced in her
attitude, in her hair style, in the garish clothes.

‘My guess is that you’re slumming’, I told her. ‘Or perhaps you only think you are.’

A shadow of irritation passed across her face. She said coldly: ‘Are you always so personal with casual acquaintances? And so aggressive?’

‘Climb down from that high horse’, I mocked her gently. ‘You’re not out with the Beaufort now. This is Caribbean territory, remember. Sun-drenched, friendly and
informal.’

She looked at me thoughtfully as though she were trying to make a detached appraisal of my character and antecedents. Possibly she was wondering whether I was worth bothering about. Her hazel
eyes seemed less unintelligent when she was thinking.

All she said was: ‘Get me another coffee, will you, please?’

I persuaded one of the females behind the bar to stop gossiping long enough to pour out a coffee and then brought it back to the leopard-skin girl. While I had been away she had put on fresh
lipstick and dabbed perfume behind her ears. When she moved her head a wave of Mitsouko assailed my nostrils. I was amused that she should think I merited these renovating touches.

‘How about you?’ she asked when I sat down beside her. ‘What are you doing in the Calypso? You’re not the Espresso type, definitely. And you’re not Castington
either.’

‘No, London.’

‘Here on business?’

I explained that I was just passing through Castington and had dropped in across the road on the off-chance of meeting an old friend who worked there. As it happened he had been out when I
called, so I had decided instead to have a quick sandwich in the nearest eating place before going on to London.

‘The police station is the only building on the other side of the road’, she remarked.

‘That’s right. One of the superintendents is an old friend of our family. But he was out; tracking down one of Castington’s desperate criminals, no doubt.’

‘Oh, don’t be so blasé!’ she said impatiently.

‘Blasé?’

‘Speaking of Castington as though it were beyond civilization. Anyone would think that there was no life outside London. No life, no sex, no crime.’

Given an opportunity I suppose I would have made some reply. But at that moment a young man who had just entered the coffee bar, walked up to our table. He spared me a single, inquisitive glance
before he spoke to the leopard-skin girl.

‘How long have you been here, Rosemary?’ There was a possessive note in his question. His voice held more than a trace of the flat, local accent.

‘About half-an-hour.’

‘We didn’t arrange to meet till six-thirty. It’s only twenty past now.’ He sounded annoyed.

She looked at him and smiled lazily. In spite of the smile or perhaps because of it, I began to have the impression that she didn’t altogether care for the way he was behaving.

‘I thought I would come early and get attuned to the surroundings. I didn’t want to feel out of my depth at this party tonight.’

Her remark must have held a hidden implication that was meant to annoy him, for his face flushed with anger. As a face it might have been good-looking but for small, furtive eyes and a
complexion like suet. He could not have been more than twenty-eight but his auburn hair was receding at the temples. He wore it as long as possible and carefully waved, but nothing could disguise
the fact that he would be bald by the time he was thirty-eight. Besides a rust-coloured windcheater and fawn gaberdine trousers, he wore suede boots.

Rosemary turned to me. ‘I can’t introduce you. You haven’t told me your name.’

‘Bryant. John Bryant.’

‘This is Arthur Turner.’ She smiled wickedly. ‘Some of his friends used to call him “Art”, but that’s out of favour since he began moving up in the
world.’

The young man looked at me, opened his mouth as though he were going to make some comment, then changed his mind and shut it again. From the sleeve of his windcheater he drew a spotless white
handkerchief, raised it to dab his lips and then tucked it back in position. The gesture was too effeminate for his heavy body, his broad face.

Eventually he said to Rosemary in a surly voice: ‘I can see now why you came here early; on the off-chance of being picked up, I suppose.’

The obvious thing would have been for me to have thrown him out of the coffee bar. At least he would have learnt that bad manners can sometimes be expensive. But I must have been feeling lazy or
tolerant or both.

‘Forget it’, I advised him. ‘Sit down and have a coffee.’

‘Don’t be so damn patronizing!’ He flushed again.

‘Arthur has left it rather too late in life to learn how to behave’, Rosemary said to me. She spoke lightly, but no amount of flippancy could conceal her annoyance.

‘Anyway this man is old enough to be your father’, Turner persisted, game to the end.

‘That’s quite true’, I told Rosemary. ‘At the age of fourteen I was frightfully dashing.’

She laughed but made no comment. Her suede-booted friend stood and stared at us indecisively. I watched him and tried to keep the amusement out of my eyes. From the radiogram Calypso music
throbbed on, insistent, monotonous, mocking.

Suddenly he said brusquely: ‘I’m not staying here. Come on Rosemary, let’s go.’

‘I haven’t finished my coffee yet.’

‘That doesn’t matter. Leave it.’

‘Don’t be so impatient. Since the party doesn’t start till nine, we have plenty of time.’

He looked first at her and then at me. Something must have told him that this was the time to make a stand for his rights.

‘Well, I’m going now. Are you coming or not?’

Rosemary said nothing but merely shook her head slowly. There was enough disdain in the gesture to rile any man. For a moment he stood there, sulking, then he turned on his heel and strode out
of the coffee bar. I noticed that he moved clumsily, as though he were carrying too much weight for a body that lacked co-ordination.

When we were alone Rosemary remarked: ‘And to think I put on these clothes for his sake. Arthur was taking me to a party thrown by some of his friends. Most of them dress like
this.’

‘So you were masquerading!’

‘Yes, I suppose I was, but for the best of motives. It’s meant to be good for one to do things for other people now and then, isn’t it?’

Looking at her expression, I decided that the remark was just as naïve as it sounded and not intended to be clever. She still retained that mixture of simplicity and precociousness which
can be so attractive in a young girl, or so infuriating.

‘Why do you waste your time on that oaf?’ I asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps because I feel sorry for Arthur. Really he is only half a generation removed from my brother and myself.’

‘Half a generation?’

‘That’s all. Our father made his money twenty years ago, while Arthur’s is still in the process of doing so.’

‘You seem obsessed by the question of your father and his money.’

She gave me a look that was both frank and disarming. ‘Thirty years ago my father was a mill hand in a steelworks in Castington. He started a tiny business of his own and was lucky enough
to make a success of it. Now he is worth a packet. Robin, my brother, and myself were sent to expensive boarding schools and afterwards Robin went to Oxford and I to a finishing school in
Switzerland.’

‘What’s so hard about that?’

‘Nothing. Only we no longer have anything in common with our parents. And of course we have to pretend to the world that we are not ashamed of them or how they made their money. It’s
a problem that the children of nouveaux riches parents always have to face, I suppose.’

‘Obviously you have analysed the matter very thoroughly.’

‘Oh, yes. I’m a great one for self-analysis’, she said, and laughed.

Almost as soon as she had spoken, she seemed to put the thought from her mind. She looked at me. ‘What do you do for a living?’

I told her very briefly and she commented: ‘Well, that’s fantastic! I understood all private detectives were seedy little men in raincoats and old trilby hats.’

‘There’s nothing in the regulations to say they have to be little men. As for the rest, I’m pretty seedy and you should see my collection of trilby hats.’

She laughed. ‘Have you a business card?’

When I showed her one she read it carefully and then put it away in the hip pocket of her leopard-skin pants.

‘Do you think you may be needing my professional services?’

‘One can never tell. Not me personally though. However, it’s a pity you’re not staying in Castington for a few days. I could create quite a sensation by being seen around with
a private detective. That would be something!’

Apparently she took it for granted that I would be quite willing to take her around. But then she was probably a girl who had never had to ask twice for anything; not even for a man.

For another ten minutes we stayed on in the Calypso, trading casual fragments of conversation. The teenagers encircled us, full of chatter and bright, fashionable cynicism. They were a catholic
selection representing all the latest cults; duffle-coats, American style shirts, even a straggly beard or two; off-the-shoulder dresses, long cigarette holders, perfume that was almost expensive.
For me they were a different generation but the underlying pattern was the same; the same bravado, the same manly boasting about liquor, the same banter that I could remember from my
adolescence.

Rosemary thought differently. She suggested: ‘We’re isolated in this crowd, you and I. All these people might be from a different continent, another century. How can we even begin to
understand how their minds work?’

I looked at my watch. Time was drifting past. I had no special objection to idling away an evening with an attractive girl, even though she was really only a precocious teenager herself, but
there were still many miles between me and London.

‘I shall have to be going’, I announced.

‘Are you travelling by car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like to take me home?’

I could guess where she would live; the exclusive residential suburb of Castington. Driving her there would only take me about twelve miles out of my way. I smiled ironically to myself as I
agreed.

‘Knowing that Arthur would have his M.G., I left my own car at home. He refuses to let me drive him anywhere. I think he’s too proud. Or perhaps he doesn’t like people to know
that I have a more expensive car than his.’

We left the Calypso and went out to my Riley which was parked around the corner, out of sight of the police station. Following the directions she gave me, I drove through the centre of
Castington, past the town hall, the council offices, the war memorial Garden of Remembrance. Turning left, we skirted the industrial district and headed west for the main residential suburbs.

Before we came to the most exclusive quarter, I noticed ahead of us a large, gloomy nineteenth-century house, all granite, slate and ironwork, which stood back from the road in a flat,
uninteresting garden. As we neared the house, Rosemary told me to slow down.

‘Is this where you live?’

‘No. But it will be one day, if my father has his way. I thought you might be interested to see the direction in which Daddy’s ambitions run.’

I glanced at the house as we drove past. One might easily have mistaken it for an orphanage or charitable institution, built at a time when charity was grim and austere and orphans were
disciplined for allowing their parents to die and leave them unprovided for in a harsh world. The garden was laid out with square, precise lawns and a great many hedges. What few flowers there
were, seemed colourless and prim.

Rosemary explained: ‘The house was built by one of the old ironmasters of Castington. The most famous of them, whose name is still a legend. My father has always cherished an ambition to
live there.’

We drove on into the quiet, tree-lined avenues where the more wealthy citizens of Castington had built their homes. The house in which Rosemary lived proved to be red brick and white woodwork
with clematis in full flower on the west wall. The architect had put a lot of good taste into his design and the result was attractive, unostentatious and no doubt just as lavish as the
ironmaster’s monstrous castle.

Without thanking me for driving her home, Rosemary climbed out of the car. From the pavement she looked in through the open near-side window, resting one hand on the door post. Her fingers were
long, with pointed nails brightened with a nail varnish that was too dark to suit her complexion.

‘I wonder if I’ll ever see you again’, she said reflectively.

‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment.’

She smiled. ‘At least I have your card. Perhaps someone will steal our spoons and we can call you in.’

Something in the way she made the remark, not her tone but the expression in her eyes, her whole attitude, made it seem condescending. I found myself feeling vaguely irritated.

‘You seem very determined about seeing me again’, I replied. ‘Are you still thinking of surprising your friends with a tame detective?’

Her expression changed. She said frigidly: ‘Please don’t imagine that I have any sort of personal interest in you.’

In a sense I suppose I deserved that crack. I had to admire the supremely dignified way in which she handed it out.

As I drove away, I could see her in my driving mirror. She was still standing on the pavement, motionless, not watching me leave but as though she were suddenly immersed in some breathlessly
important problem. Leopard-skin and crimson stood out in vivid contrast against the soft, pastel colours of the August evening.

THE sound of my footsteps, sharp and staccato, echoed through the empty village street. Shadows thrown by the last slanting
sunlight formed a pattern with red brick and wallflowers. But the cottages stood strangely silent; not a single figure stirred in lane or meadow; not a dog barked; the whole world was suddenly
deserted.

Although it was early evening, the windows of every house were already curtained or shuttered. As I passed they seemed like sightless eyes that watched me.

In front of the church the road divided around a small grass plot that might once have been the village green. On one side of the green stood four or five shops, a pub and a modest garage. The
garage boasted a couple of petrol pumps and a workshop beyond. The double doors of the workshop were firmly locked but I found a bell-push which I jabbed optimistically.

Two miles further back, on the road from Castington, I had abandoned my car. One didn’t have to be a mechanic to know that the trouble lay in the back axle. No village garage would be able
to repair it in time for me to continue my journey that night, but at least the car could be towed in. However, after I had pushed the bell three times and knocked loudly on the doors without
getting an answer, I mentally wrote off the garage.

As I stood in the road and looked around, I once again had the impression that I was being watched. But not a curtain in any of the windows so much as fluttered. The silence seemed more intense
now, an intangible force that held the village, the whole world in its grip. The brightness of the sunlight seemed all at once artificial and the wallflowers unreal; patches of colour daubed on a
dead background; talismen against evil perhaps, that had lost their potency.

I laughed aloud at the fancies of my imagination. My laughter echoed back, not bright and reassuring but stilted and unnatural.

The pub on the other side of the village green had a weatherworn inn sign, which carried a discoloured picture of a mongrel dog. The name on the sign disclosed that once the dog had been blue. A
notice in one of the front windows advertised the fact that bed and breakfast were available.

Pushing open the door to the bar, I went through. The room inside was empty and silent except for the ticking of an ancient grandfather clock which stood in the far corner. There was only one
hand on the clock and it pointed enigmatically at a point mid-way between two and three. Whatever its limitations, I felt affectionately disposed towards the clock, for it offered the first signs
of movement and life that I had seen in the whole village: a village that otherwise might easily have been devastated by a sudden plague.

Crossing the room, I rapped confidently on the bar counter. There was no response. I rapped again rather more loudly and waited. Once more there was no response but as I listened I heard through
the open door at the back of the bar a faint, stifled cough. Whoever was in the room beyond must have been ignoring my knocks deliberately, in the hope of tricking me into going away. The idea was
enough to make me obstinate. I leant against the bar counter, lit a cigarette and stayed there, humming softly to myself.

It took perhaps another three minutes to break down the resistance of the person who was waiting behind the door. Then I heard footsteps moving reluctantly in my direction. A man in black
trousers and a striped, collarless shirt came into the bar.

‘Good evening’, I greeted him.

He looked at me without enthusiasm and nodded. If the nod had been briefer it would have been still-born. I pushed half-a-crown across the counter towards him and asked for a pint of bitter. He
drew it grudgingly, dropped the coin in the till and gave me change.

‘My car has broken down,’ I told him, ‘and I’m looking for a room for tonight.’

‘We’ve no vacant room here’, he said, rather too quickly.

‘Then perhaps someone in the village would put me up for the night?’

‘No. There’s none in the village that’ll take you in tonight.’

‘Why not?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘They never will when it’s harvest time.’

Drinking my beer, I considered this information. There was every chance that what he had told me was true but, on the other hand, he seemed just a shade too anxious to discourage me. I decided
that I might as well try him out a little further.

I remarked philosophically: ‘Oh, well. I’ll just have a meal here and then move on to the next village. I could even go back and sleep in my car.’

‘We’re not serving meals tonight.’

‘As an inn you can’t refuse to serve me food as long as you are open.’

‘There’s no food in the place and my wife’s out.’ He sounded positively surly now.

‘I don’t believe you’, I began bluffing. ‘And I don’t believe that all your rooms are full. Of course there’s only one way to find out. I shall have to go and
bring the police to have a word with you.’

‘There’s no policeman in this village.’

‘Then I’ll find the nearest phone box and put a call through to the. . .