Chapter 21 #2
“So you don’t know him personally?”
“I bin out to his hut a few times, seeing it’s in my district, but you can’t hardly get to know a chap that can’t talk. A harmless, docile sort of chap he do be. I niver had no complaints about him.”
“Not likely, then, to have taken a swing at Enderby to avenge the honour of the family,” said Alec with a smile. He hadn’t seriously considered Sid as a suspect, only as a possible witness.
“Oh no, sir, not at all. I misdoubt he’d understand the notion—the honour o’ the family, I mean—and he’s no reason to care what becomes o’ her.”
The beachcomber had no motive. Someone else besides Coleman might, however.
“Did you ever hear of a local lad, one of Coleman’s farm-hands perhaps, being sweet on Olive?
I assume she’s reasonably attractive, or Enderby wouldn’t have been interested.
You’ve seen the only photograph we have. Even blown up it’s not much use.”
“Aye, she’s pretty enough if you don’t mind a sullen look. Some men like a pout, but I niver knew a girl that pouted as didn’t turn into a bad-tempered woman.”
“Very true, but Enderby wouldn’t concern himself with what kind of woman she’d grow to be.”
Leigh shook his head with a frown. “Didn’t concern hisself wi’ aught but his own pleasure, seemingly. Far as I know, none o’ the village lads has a fancy to Olive Coleman. Her parents work her hard and she’s hardly ever seen in Malborough.”
“The farm-hands?”
“Now, they’re another matter. For all I know, they could all be mad after her, specially as she’s the only child and’ll come into the farm some day.
Or would’ve afore she brought shame on the family.
But they’re none o’ them young men. The youngsters all went off to War and not a one came back.
Them as survived found greener pastures. We’ll take the left fork here, sir.”
After another stretch of muddy bottom, the lane started rising.
Then the hedges became banks, and soon unfenced, heather-clad slopes spread to either side.
Leigh turned off on a nearly invisible path winding through purple-belled heather, bracken and occasional clumps of bright yellow gorse.
At least the footing was much drier here, in spite of last night’s downpour. The blustery wind was invigorating.
They climbed over the brow of a hill. Another, higher, rose before them but Leigh skirted its foot.
As they rounded the shoulder, the next valley came into view and Alec saw a clear, shallow brook.
What he at first took for a heap of dead bushes resolved into a brushwood fence surrounding a patch of cleared ground where vegetables, gooseberries and currants struggled in the poor, thin soil.
On the opposite slope, explaining the need for the fence, sheep stopped grazing the wiry grass to stare at the intruders. The only sounds were their intermittent bleating, the babble of the brook, and the cry of a solitary seagull circling overhead.
The original stone shepherd’s hut must have blended perfectly into the background of the rocky crag standing sentinel at the head of the valley.
Sid Coleman’s repairs and additions were nearly as well camouflaged, built mostly of wood weathered to a silvery grey by sea and sun.
The roof was patched with sheets of corrugated iron, rusting to the hue the bracken would take on as autumn approached.
Pausing, Leigh surveyed the scene. The coconutty fragrance of gorse filled Alec’s nostrils. Attuned now to the hush, his ears picked up the constant hum of bees among the heather blossoms.
It was almost possible to envy Sid.
Leigh broke the peace. “No smoke. He may not be—” He stopped as several short, sharp sounds rang out: hammer on nail, at a guess. “No, he’s here all right.”
“We don’t want to alarm him. You go ahead. He knows you.”
The constable trudged ahead. “Sid!” he called. “Hulloa there!”
The beachcomber appeared, hammer in hand, from a lean-to shed to one side of his cabin. Alec had no time to take in his appearance before, with a wordless cry, he bolted.
Leigh was already in motion when Alec shouted, “Go after him! I’ll look around.” If the girl was there, they didn’t want her taking to her heels too.
Disappearing around the cabin, Sid had a twenty-yard lead over Leigh. By the time Alec reached the far corner, the fugitive was nearing the top of the crag.
Police boots were no match for bare feet that clung to the rock like a monkey’s.
Leigh slithered down the short distance he had managed to climb and made for the steep, scrubby slope to one side.
As he scrabbled upward, Sid appeared momentarily in silhouette against the sky, then vanished over the top.
A thud within the cabin made Alec whirl.
He found himself facing a small, glassless window.
Above it hung a piece of heavy tarpaulin, hooked up out of the way with a bent wire, a sort of outside curtain or shutter against foul weather.
A small part of Alec’s mind admired its ingenuity, while the rest concentrated on peering through the narrow opening.
No one was visible, but his field of view was limited. Straining ears heard no movement inside.
Leigh was making a fair racket as he toiled up the slope. Small stones rattled down behind him and he swore as a clump of grass came loose in his hand. Under cover of the noise, Alec slipped
around the hut, noting how chinks in the wood and stone walls were stopped up with tarred slivers of cork. Sid Coleman might be dumb but he was no idiot.
Alec came back to the west side, facing down the valley, without seeing a soul. The door stood open. He stepped into the doorway and stopped, scanning the room.
A sleek grey and black-striped cat was lapping water from a tin bowl on the floor.
It gave him a supercilious look, leapt up with a thud onto a battered old door which served as a table, and thence sprang to a shelf where an ancient knit garment made a comfortable bed.
Obviously regarding Alec as unimportant, it started to wash with an air of deliberately ignoring him.
The cat was the only occupant. Alec searched the room, a matter of a few minutes, without finding any trace of the presence of a female.
The bed was heaped heather spread with sailcloth and a holey blanket.
The sole chair had been rush-bottomed once; its deficiencies were compensated for by the lid of a cask and a cushion so salt-stained and faded that its original colour was unguessable.
A sea-chest with a broken lock held tattered oddments of clothing and another blanket.
All were as clean as soapless washing in the stream could make them.
The Panama hat Belinda had given Sid hung from a nail, several feathers stuck in its pink and purple band.
Alec was sorry his daughter had befriended the beachcomber.
He was used to the awkwardness of Daisy taking one or more suspects under her wing, but how was he to explain to Bel if he had to arrest her protégé?
Because why should Sid run for it if he was simply an innocent witness?