Snare in the Dark: A crime investigation set in the English countryside (Dan Mallett Investigations Book 3) by Frank Parrish & Roger Longrigg

Author:Frank Parrish & Roger Longrigg [Parrish, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2020-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Dan bicycled home, on his borrowed lady’s bicycle, furtive as a field mouse, in and out of ditches, as careful as he could be of his suit, but more careful not to be seen.

As he went, he used the instinctive part of his mind for steering and for staying out of trouble. He tried to use the intellectual part for solving the current outstanding problem: who should his witness be, for observing Major March’s attempt to murder him, and for reporting the attempt accurately and credibly to the police?

There were drawbacks to being a loner.

Most of the people Dan knew well he didn’t trust, like Curly Godden the delinquent cowman. Most of the people he actually trusted didn’t trust him, like Dr. Smith in the village. There were a few people he knew pretty well and trusted pretty well, like Harry Barnett the water keeper; but the police wouldn’t believe a word Harry said, not on this sort of thing. Not if it was choosing between Harry’s word and Major March’s. Harry and Dan had been at the village school together, before Dan went on to the Grammar. They’d been wild lads together, scrumping apples and bird’s-nesting and trying to tickle trout. They were still cronies, as far as a man like Dan had anything so cosy as a crony. Of course the police would believe that Harry would lie to save Dan. They’d be right. Harry would lie to save Dan.

Dan needed somebody as believable as Major March — someone, in the eyes of the police, of the Major’s weight and standing. Admiral Jenkyn, the Vicar, Sir George Simpson. Dan pictured himself asking Sir George to hide in the Priory Woods at ten on Saturday morning, to watch Major March attempting murder. The picture was so ludicrous that he almost fell off his bicycle.

He considered the problem, when hiding in ditches permitted, all the way home to his cottage.

He approached the cottage as craftily as always and saw that the bluebottles still swarmed there. It was inevitable. They knew — the Chief Detective Superintendent like a fox knew, and the Detective Sergeant like a Hereford bullock knew — that Dan was concerned about his mother, that he wouldn’t leave her for long to fend for herself and the dogs and the birds. They might applaud his concern. But they were bound to make use of it if they could. They thought Dan was a murderer.

Dan abstracted some more cash from the rabbit hole which was his Current Account. He indulged again, briefly, the dream of acquiring on Saturday morning one thousand pounds to add to the Deposit Account in the other and deeper-hidden rabbit hole.

He fished the bicycle out of a thicket, and went by an idiosyncratic route to Ighampton, a sprawling place full of newcomers, a waste of pinkish council houses. In the ordinary way nothing took Dan there. In the ordinary way nothing would drag him there. Consequently nobody knew him there. So it was the place he chose for his shopping.

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