Bleeding Hooks Read online

  He sighed, but, like most of his compatriots, he had learned to curb his impulses in the cause of mammon. So, instead of clipping Sir Courtney under the chin and putting up the trout rod which he always hopefully brought out in the boat with him, he eased himself on the seat, and glanced inquiringly at his employer, hands on oars, as a hint that it was time for lunch.

  But the General was not ready for lunch. He did not, in fact, care whether he had any lunch or not. He had seen a slight swirl in the water about half-way down the drift, which might have been made by a salmon, and he intended to drift as nearly as possible over that particular spot all day until he saw it again.

  But as he opened his mouth to tell his ghillie to pull again to the head of the bay, he caught sight of a red parasol waving violently on the shore.

  “Lunch,” he said briefly.

  Ethel did not like to be kept waiting.

  Mr. Winkley, who had just landed his eighth fish, lit his fifteenth cigarette, and looked across at his ghillie who was disentangling the tail-fly from the net.

  “Any use going over that last drift again, David? I rose a few good fish, you know.”

  David glanced unnecessarily over his shoulder at nothing in particular.

  “I wouldn’t say it is, sir. You’ve only picked up one trout on the last two drifts. I should say the one o’clock rise is over, sir.”

  “Right. We’ll give it a rest then. If we get as many fish again after lunch, we shall have a pretty basket to show in the hall.”

  “We shall indeed.” said David; “but it was a pity you lost that big fellow. He’d be three pounds if he was an ounce, sir.”

  “Oh, I’ll get one as big as that this afternoon, if that’s all that is worrying you.”

  “’Twas a pity all the same, sir,” persisted David. “They’d have made a grand pair, the two of them.”

  “Get away with you, you old ruffian,” laughed Mr. Winkley. “You’re never satisfied.”

  David spat on his horny hands and pulled on his oars with steady, unhurried strokes.

  Mr. Winkley placed his rod in a horizontal position along the side seat of the boat, pulled out a yard or two of line, and placed a small lump of grey rock on it to act as a check. He did this as a matter of habit, without much expectation of hooking a fish on the trailing flies, then he slipped down on to the bottom boards of the boat, and lay there in dreamy placidity, surrounded by numerous navy-blue and gold cigarette tins of various shapes and sizes, in which he invariably kept flies, casts, and an occasional Silver Spoon or Golden Devon.

  He fingered the flies of long-forgotten seasons which clung by their rusty hooks to the lapels of his tweed fishing jacket, and surveyed the lake through half-closed eyes, for the light reflected from the water was strong in spite of the sheltering brim of the old trilby hat which he rescued year after year from the lumber room.

  He drank in the peace of the scene with the deep thirst of a town-parched soul. During the past week, London newspapers had been full of “Indian Summer” headlines, with the attendant observations on city typists discarding their stockings, and the usual predictions of “the hottest October for forty years”. The tube he travelled on had seemed stuffier and noisier and more crowded than any other. His little office at Scotland Yard, which always appeared to have been as much of an afterthought on the part of the authorities as Mr. Winkley himself, had seemed more stifling than any other part of that illustrious building. His work had seemed more difficult, the Assistant Commissioner more exacting... In a word, Mr. Winkley had needed a holiday.

  He lay and wallowed in the bliss of the sudden change; in the exhilaration of the fresh, warm, sea-laden air, in the pleasant contentment of having caught eight fish on his own rod, in the peace of the quiet Welsh countryside. Already he had half-forgotten the dust and noise and rush of London, had half-forgotten his work, and crime statistics, and whether the Irish gangsters would really carry out their threat for Christmas Day, now that their cherished code (which he had deciphered by luck and a knowledge of the islands in Killarney Lakes assimilated during a disappointing week’s fishing there) lay locked in his desk. For three blissful weeks now he could let his brain lie fallow, and think of nothing but Coch y Bonddu, Orange Grouse, Red Palmer, Black Zulu – names which made music for his fisherman’s soul.

  For him, now, Scotland Yard was non-existent. Fishing was the thing!

  Chapter 7

  Mrs. Mumsby pulled the last piece of lobster out of its claw and crammed it into her mouth. She flung the shell towards the edge of the lake, where it immediately sank amongst the other discarded coral-pink shells which fringed the margin of the water, then she bit heavily into a hard-boiled egg, and looked around her.

  She knew that there must be at least four or five other people near the little beach where she was sitting leaning against a convenient grey rock, for few of them continued to fish after half past one without taking lunch, yet the only living creature within sight was a small black bullock which grazed incuriously on the short crisp grass a few yards to her right. She could not even see her ghillie, although she knew that he was somewhere within hailing distance, waiting for the last cup of coffee from her flask. She had noticed him a moment ago talking to one of the other ghillies – about fish, of course; these men never talked about anything else.

  A murmur of voices came from the other side of the rough wall to her left, which was built of the grey stones which lay scattered everywhere in the fields and on the mountainsides.

  No, there was no need for her to sit alone. She had only to walk a few yards to find company where she would always be sure of a welcome as long as she could talk about fish. But today she did not want company. Like a certain well-known actress, she wanted to be alone.

  She had thought that things were beginning to go well with her at last, and that all her schemes were succeeding. But since last night she had not been so sure. She needed a little time to herself. She would have to think things out very carefully...

  She stretched herself, and yawned so widely that the hinges of her jaw emitted a slight click.

  I’ve eaten too much lunch, as usual, she thought cheerfully. But it’s a lovely day; I can have a nap for an hour if I like, thank goodness.

  She emptied the dregs of coffee from her thermos flask, added milk, and four lumps of sugar, and cooed for the ghillie.

  With scarcely a sound he came towards her from behind a tall, neighbouring rock, and took the cup from her hands.

  “You can see where my mouth’s been, by the lipstick,” she said, looking up at him coyly through the artificial eyelashes which cost her five shillings a pair, and came off in the rain. “Here, take some more to eat, John, and don’t disturb me for half an hour at least. I’m going to have forty winks. I’ve had too much lunch.”

  She slapped her enormous stomach, giggled, and proceeded at once to make herself as comfortable is possible in a half-sitting, half-lying position against the grey rock.

  The ghillie nodded in reply, picked up an unopened package of sandwiches, and made his way slowly out of sight in the direction from which he had appeared. He walked away until he was sure that he was well out of earshot, for he knew from experience that Mrs. Mumsby was far more likely to disturb him than he was likely to disturb her. He lowered himself on to the grass without spilling the coffee from the cup, and stirred it with one horny finger while he reflected, with true Celtic despondency, on the ills to which his life was subject.

  The ghillie’s name was John Jones, and you might have met half a dozen other men so named in Aberllyn. Like them, too, he was short and black-haired, and his face in repose was shadowed by a dark, brooding look which some people thought untrustworthy. But his eyes were a distinguishing feature, for one was china-blue and the other brown, like the eyes of a half-bred Merle Collie. Perhaps this was why he habitually looked at the ground when he was walking.

  Like all the other ghillies, he hated working for Mrs. Mumsby. He knew of nothing more tir
ing than being in her company for six or seven hours each day, evading her attempts at seduction. Oh, it was no exaggeration. Every ghillie in Aberllyn knew that she was man mad.

  She did not seem to understand that a man had his profession to think of. A ghillie was not a common boat-puller like those fellows who touted up and down on the promenades of fashionable seaside resorts, pestering people with their everlasting, “Nice day for a row, miss.”

  Any man could row a boat, but a ghillie had to be highly trained and experienced. He had to know the parts of the lake where the sea-trout lay, and their movements from the first run of those with the sea-lice on their backs, to their final journey to the spawning beds. He had to know where the best drifts began and ended, and how to row to them without disturbing the fish for others. He had to know when the wind was likely to freshen, so that he did not get caught in the middle of the lake by a sudden gale, for the lake was deep, and storms sudden, so that an inexperienced man might well drown there. He had to be a weather prophet, and know whether to persuade a faint-hearted client to go out on the lake or stay in the hotel. He had to know how to land a fish by net or gaff, and be equally proficient in the vastly different techniques of lake fishing and river fishing. He had to know always a little more than his client, and had to be a good psychologist into the bargain, so that he could restrain the over-enthusiastic, or cajole the hypersensitive man.

  He had to do all this because his one object was to bring in as many fish as possible every day until he became known as a first-class ghillie, and so gravitated automatically to serve the best fishermen among the many visitors to the hotel. And John Jones reckoned that he earned his ten shillings a day and the two drinks supplied to him free every evening in the public bar of The Fisherman’s Rest.

  There were tips, too, reflected John, and Mrs. Mumsby was known to give larger tips than anyone else. Nevertheless he disliked working for her. It advertised too much that he was regarded as the least proficient of any ghillie now employed. In the season, she would have been unable to secure the services of any man except that old toper, Evan Griffiths, who was so deaf that he replied to every remark with a jerk of his head and a beery “Yes – yes”.

  It would not have been so bad if Mrs. Mumsby had been in the least interested in fishing, but she usually only tried for an hour, and then handed him her rod, and lay in the bottom of the boat, staring at the various parts of his anatomy, asking about his love affairs, and telling coarse stories which it would have been difficult to cap even in the Sailor’s Club in the village. At first he had felt ashamed, but after a few days he had grown so used to it that he never listened, but merely punctuated the pauses, like Evan Griffiths, with an inane “Yes – yes”.

  He mustn’t grumble. It all meant extra money in the Savings Bank, so that he was a little nearer to marrying Pegi. If Mrs. Mumsby wanted a few lessons in sex-appeal, Pegi, with her saucy black eyes and provocative mouth, and that heart raising twist of her short skirts, could give them to her.

  He glanced up at the sun.

  Mrs. Mumsby wouldn’t be awake yet. There was time enough for him to do what he had promised.

  He rose to his feet, cleaned out the cup with a piece of newspaper, put it in his outer pocket, and walked off.

  Half an hour later he returned, and made his way reluctantly back to Mrs. Mumsby, gazing down at the ground until her preposterous body came into view.

  Then he looked up.

  Mrs. Mumsby lay where he had left her, her body contorted, her face purpled, and her eyes and mouth wide open. Beside her sat Claude’s little monkey, patting her warm, dead body as callously as it had patted the cold, dead bodies of the fish, while, like the sound of a soul in agony, the cry of a curlew arose from the marshy ground beside the lake.

  Chapter 8

  Police Constable Thomas Lloyd pedalled his bicycle slowly along by the lake towards Aberllyn village.

  He was a dark little man of insignificant appearance even in uniform, yet when on duty, he assumed some small measure of dignity by virtue of his own egotism. He had all the pomposity and officiousness of Ernest the Policeman, without his geniality of manner, and he looked a man with a grievance, as indeed he was.

  The nephew of the local postmaster, Thomas Lloyd had always had a desire to enter the police force. To that end he had pored over books, learned traffic regulations, first aid, the Morse code, and the answers to such General Knowledge questions as could not by any stretch of imagination be of use to a policeman. At length, after the usual training course, he had been detailed as constable to his native village by what he firmly believed to be string-pulling, and what was undoubtedly an oversight on the part of the police authorities. But any idea he might have had of achieving fame and respect through his local associations had quickly been dissipated. The people of Aberllyn remembered him as a sticky-fisted youngster who had gone barefooted to the little village school. He was still “that young Thomas Lloyd” to them, an object of fun rather than of dignity.

  When he had warned the local midwife to keep her hens from straying across the road, she had laughed, and said, “Why, Thomas bach, you can’t summons me. Didn’t I bring you into this world before that lazy, good-for-nothing doctor came, and a sicklier child I never knew. Why, if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be here today. Just you get along with your job and leave my hens alone!”

  When he’d warned young Evan Jones that he’d lock him up next time he found him drunk and disorderly, Evan had only hiccupped in his face and said, “You’re a nice one to talk indeed, Thomas Lloyd. Wasn’t it you that first made me drink apple cider behind the hayrick on my father’s farm?”

  But perhaps his bitterest experience had been when, after lying in wait to catch the boys who were systematically robbing Farmer Owen’s orchard, he had heard their shouts of “Run! Run!” change to “No, it’s only Thomas Lloyd.”

  From that moment he had become ruthless, and was now the best hated man in Aberllyn. He never lost an opportunity of prosecuting man, woman, or child for an indictable offence, and filled twice as many note-books as any other member of His Majesty’s Police Force in the British Isles, Irish Civic Guards not excepted. At holiday times he stood on duty at the cross-roads close to The Fisherman’s Rest, with an eagle eye for an “L”, and a sharp instinct for the driver who had forgotten to renew his licence. In this way alone could he be sure of keeping his name in front of the authorities, so that he would ultimately earn promotion through attention to duty and be transferred from a district which had become loathsome to him to one where his origin would be unknown.

  As he cycled along the dusty road, he searched his mind for some means of ensuring a fresh crop of prosecutions for the forthcoming District Court. A gap in the hedge showed him a vista of the lake glittering in the sun. He could not understand why there were no boats out there, until he looked at his watch and saw that it was two-fifteen, and guessed that it was the end of the fishermen’s lunch-hour. He might call at The Fisherman’s Rest, he thought, to see whether any visitors had forgotten to take out a salmon or trout licence. Mrs. Evans could explain, of course, that the licence had been taken out, but that the amount was to be added to the bill, which wasn’t the law, as he’d often had to tell her. However, she and the doctor were the only two people in Aberllyn of whom he was afraid, and although he knew he would never dare to prosecute either of them, still the licence idea might be worth a drink, when he was off duty.

  He spat into the dust of the road.

  I’m wasted in a little village like this, he thought. A man with my devotion to duty should be at the Yard by now. But the Bible truly says that a prophet is unhonoured in his own country. The trouble is that I’ve no chance to show the chief constable what a fine policeman I am. It’s too peaceful in Aberllyn. All I can hope for is a few drunk-and-disorderlies, out-of-date licences, exceeding the 30-mile limit, bicycles without lamps, and an odd fight or two. It will take a few thousand convictions like that to earn promotion. What
we want in Aberllyn is a nice juicy murder!

  He heard a shout behind him, and, looking over his shoulder, saw a man running towards him from a point in the road which he had just passed. He turned and cycled back, and recognized the man who was ghillying for the Westons.

  “What’s wrong? Somebody dead?” he asked hopefully.

  The ghillie looked shocked.

  He had expected to startle the constable with his news, but it looked as if he knew all about it already. But how could he know? And why was he cycling along the lake road at this time of day, when he should have been on traffic duty at the cross-roads? Well, it was none of his business, and it was best to keep in Lloyd’s good books.

  “Yes,” he replied. “A lady from The Fisherman’s Rest, name of Mumsby. She’d been fishing, and died after lunch.”

  “H’m. Surfeit of palfreys,” was the constable’s amazing reply. He had once read 1066 and All That, and had taken it seriously. “You’d better fetch the doctor. He’s fishing the river away back along the road. I passed his car not long ago: you’ll see it standing by the road. And when you’ve found him you’d better warn Mrs. Evans and tell her to send a car to the landing-stage. Here, take my bicycle. You can leave it at the cottage when you’ve done. And mind what you’re doing with it, man; it’s Government property!”

  Two minutes later he was looking down at Mrs. Mumsby’s dead body, and there Mr. Winkley found him when he belatedly joined the little circle formed by Mr. Weston, Claude, Major Jeans, Mr. and Mrs. Pindar, and their respective ghillies.

  The constable was already writing details in his note-book in a form of shortened longhand, legible only to himself. Like the old-fashioned stage policeman, he sucked his pencil from time to time, but had introduced a touch of originality by using one of the copying-ink variety, which left purple striations on his tongue and round his mouth.

  “’I came back and found her lying dead’,” he repeated, as he wrote the ghillie’s final words. He looked up. “Can anyone corroborate that?” he asked.