Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

“Well?” said Bradlaw, stamping his feet.

“That’s the number, all right,” Hillyard said. He stared up one of the roads. “It’ll not be far from here. A cottage is the best bet. Not in the village, though.”

Bradlaw looked unhappily at the sky. “We’ll have to be starting back inside another couple of hours, whether we find anything or not. We should have waited for her coming again and one of us followed her.”

Hillyard ignored this observation. Puckering his face so that his splayed teeth stood out from his mouth like a bundle of piano keys, he goggled searchingly along the left-hand fork. “Not too promising,” he said at last. “We’ll take a look at the other one first. You’d better drive from now.”

They had not gone far, however, before the road narrowed into a lane. Becoming progressively rougher, it eventually petered out into a track, deeply rutted by cart wheels. The only habitation in sight was a group of farm buildings, about a quarter of a mile away. Bradlaw pulled up. “They look a dead loss.” He nodded towards the huddle of barns and outhouses.

“Aye. Well try the other.”

Bradlaw backed the van off the track into the furrowed but firm earth alongside and, with some lurching and several stalls, managed to turn it back towards the junction. “How anyone could live in a bloody wilderness like this...”

“It has its advantages,” observed Hillyard, a trifle bitterly.

The other fork obligingly remained metalled for the first half mile or so and seemed likely to continue. At the first sight of a dwelling, a small two-storey brick house on the left, Bradlaw slowed down almost to a halt. “What do we do? Look in?”

“No. Pull up at the gate and sound the horn. Be ready to drive off as soon as we see who comes out.”

The sudden blare of the hooter rent the silent, moisture-laden air like the cry of an impaled bull. There was an almost immediate scampering and scraping and five children appeared round the side of the house. At the same time, a curtain was drawn back at one of the upper windows and a fat, wild-eyed woman stared out. Bradlaw precipitately let in the clutch and the van shot forward.

“Heaven preserve us!” murmured Hillyard, devoutly.

They had gone nearly as far again before another house came into view. It was a low-built cottage, thatched and ivied to such a degree that its windows were like the eyes of a castaway, peering through hair. The place was only noticeable at all because of the double gates that stood across the path turning in from the road. These were of a sickly sienna, highly varnished.

The cottage, or what could be discerned of it under the multitude of ivy ropes, was of plastered brick. The front door had a porch and a flagged path led through the undergrowth of the neglected garden and round the side of the building. Rank elder bushes, trees almost, crowded to the thatch on the right-hand side. Behind was the dark tracery of a group of tall oaks.

Bradlaw, who had stopped the van level with the incongruous gateway, pointed to a broad, low shed some twenty yards to the left of the cottage. “Garage,” he said.

Both men surveyed the scene from where they sat. Although the light was fading fast, no lamp had been lit in the cottage. Nor was there any smoke from the great ivy-strangled stack.

“Try the horn,” commanded Hillyard tersely.

The bellow echoed from the steep hillside beyond the cottage. There was no response, from children or anyone else.

Hillyard stared intently at the gates, then at the shed. He wound down the window on his side, stuck out his head and looked back along the road, then forward in the direction the van faced.

He opened the door and jumped down. “I’ll take a chance and look inside. You can see far enough both ways to give me a pip if anything comes along.”

Bradlaw looked at him anxiously. “I'd not do that—not just walk up to it. You can’t be sure that nobody’s there.”

Hillyard seemed not to hear. Before opening the gate, he turned and said: “You’d better stand in the road. And for God’s sake don’t forget to sound that blasted hooter if you see a car turn down this road.”

Bradlaw obediently left his seat. Glancing at the tall, lank figure of the doctor already advancing in a sort of athletic creep towards one of the cottage windows, he took up sentry-go for the length of his van. At last, made nervous by the crunch of his own footsteps, he halted and continued the vigil by turning his head this way and that and listening.

Hillyard reached the cottage and peered cautiously over the nearest window-sill. The room within was dark and at first he could distinguish only the pieces of furniture immediately in front of him. There was a console radio and a cabinet on which stood a decanter and glasses. A chair, a small table...As his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he picked out a broad maplewood couch, another cabinet of some kind and two pullman armchairs facing the fireplace. The fitted carpet of pale coffee colour was relieved by a single heavy rug in black and turquoise.

The room on the other side of the front door proved to be a bedroom, apparently furnished no less expensively, although the nearly drawn curtains limited the view from the window to about a third of its area. The bed covers, Hillyard noticed, lay as they had been turned back, although a suit of pyjamas had been folded and placed on a nearby chair.

Observing, as he passed, that both front and back doors were secured not by country latches but with Yale locks, Hillyard walked silently round the cottage. On all sides, decaying vegetation straggled almost to the wall. There was the smell of perpetually wet stone, of leaves and fungus.

The two windows at the back both gave into the same room, a fairly narrow one that extended the breadth of the cottage. It contained modern kitchen fittings, except that the sink had no taps. At one end was a small dining table and chairs. Beside the gas stove stood a large cylinder. There were a few dishes on the table, and also a jug and a packet of cornflakes.

Hillyard gave the back door a perfunctory shake. It was locked. He returned to the van.

“That’s it, all right,” he said to Bradlaw, who had got back into the driving seat and was rubbing the chill out of his plump knees. “And very nicely set up. Damn me! Very nicely. Aye!” He gave the cottage a baleful look as Bradlaw started the engine and the van jerked away.

“How do you know?” asked Bradlaw, switching on the side lamps and leaning nearer the windscreen. This was the worst time for driving, neither light nor dark. “How do you know it’s the one?”

Hillyard lit a cigarette and ignored the question. He was thinking. Suddenly he nudged his companion’s arm. “Quick, into there.” He pointed to a clearing by the road’s edge almost immediately ahead. Bradlaw braked and swung the van sharply round to the right. A tree loomed up. He stopped just short of it and swore.

“Fine,” said Hillyard. He turned and groped behind him in the dark interior of the van. The small leather case that he found there he thrust into his overcoat pocket. Then he opened the door.

Bradlaw seized his arm. “What are you going to do?” he asked, nervousness thinning his voice.

Hillyard looked over his shoulder as he stepped down. “Do?” he echoed. “I’m coming with you, friend. You didn’t think we could leave the van outside the gate, did you? It will be safe enough here until we want it.”

“Look here,” said Bradlaw, opening the door on his side and clambering out clumsily, “I thought that as...” He came round the front of the van, breathing quickly. “I thought there wouldn’t be anything for us to do now. With there being no one there, I mean.” He stared hopefully at the other’s slightly contemptuous smile. “Well, there isn’t, is there?” His arms flapped for a moment, then he pushed both hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. Still Hillyard said nothing. Bradlaw glanced round at the stockade of leafless trees within whose damp gloom they stood concealed from the highway.