John Creasey - The Toff on The Farm

QUICK MOVES

The window was open, so that Rollison could hear M.M.M.’s heavy breathing, as well as the frail voice of the old man.

“. . . . and don’t you come here trying to threaten me, or I’ll set about you, whether you have one leg or two. Now get out of my house, while I’ve a mind to let you.”

Seen from the right perspective, this was funny. Rollison duly smiled. M.M.M. obviously saw it from a different perspective, because he did not look at all like laughing. He was getting up from a high chair, and Rollison noticed how quickly he moved. He was pale and angry as he said :

“I’ll have you thrown out on your neck, you stubborn old fool.”

“Don’t you abuse me or you’ll get this poker across the head,” old Smith threatened shrilly. “No-one’s going to turn me out of my house and home, now or at any time. You can go back and tell your precious friends that. And keep your money, money’s no use to me.”

He swung the poker, and knocked a wad of notes flying off a small table; Rollison hadn’t seen them before. M.M.M. limped towards them, and picked them up. For a moment, Rollison thought that the old man would strike him as he bent down. But Smith didn’t. Clutching the wad of notes, M.M.M. turned towards the door, the old man glowered at him but did not move.

M.M.M. disappeared.

Then there was a remarkable transformation on the face of Old Smith. The rage vanished, obviously pretended. Instead of scowling, he grinned with a mixture of delight and cunning; it would not take a great deal to make him cackle. He let the poker drop with a clatter in the hearth, and then turned and went, remarkably sprightly, tothe door. His shoulders were bowed and bent, but he was nothing like a has-been.

A car engine sounded on the other side of the farmhouse. Rollison stood by the wall, as M.M.M. appeared, in a taxi. He had recovered from his leg hurt very quickly, unless he was another instance of mind omatter. He driven towards a farm track which went to the main road; there was no way of driving straight from the farm to the cottage, one had to go to the road and back again, a mile or more, instead of four hundred yards.

Rollison went to the back. The door was open, as farmhouse doors were likely to be. A huge pile of logs was quite close to it, all old and weathered. The lawns in front were overgrovm, and a few years ago there had been flowerbeds, but these had become a small wilderness. Everything carried the look and the smell of decay, and yet men had offered a fortune for this place.

Did Old Smith know why?

He was pottering about somewhere in the kitchen. Rollison went in, and saw him at a big dresser, cutting bread from a huge loaf. The stone-flagged floor had been brushed in the middle, but dust and dirt and debris was gathered round the sides, and on a draining-board just in sight was a pile of dirty crockery, old tin cans, old packages and table peelings. This was a slum in the middle of the country; no-one should be allowed to live in such conditions.

Rollison went softly up a flight of twisting stairs, each tread of which was worn low, and some of were cracked. He had to lower his head to avoid banging it. The floor erf a large bedroom was concave, and a huge four-poster bed sloped down towards the middle. Unexpectedly, the bed and the linen on it looked clean. There were three

Other rooms, all used for junk, such junk as Rollison had never seen before. Old dressing-tables, old chairs, old sofas, all in varying stages of dilapidation, stood by big packing-cases, boxes, suit-cases, piles of books, greater piles of newspapers, old brooms, old crockery, anything that might be found in a household. It was little more than a junk-house, and if anyone ever dropped a lighted cigarette in here, it would bum like tinder.

So would the farmhouse.

“Fifteen thousand pounds,” Rollison murmured.

He went downstairs. The old man was sitting at the kitchen table, eating bread and butter with jam piled thick on it, and drinking tea out of a cup which looked as if it hadn’t been washed for weeks. He appeared to hear nothing. Rollison looked through the big room where M.M.M. had been, and another, smaller room opposite, which meant that he had seen every room at Selby Farm.

Fifteen thousand pounds; two dead bodies; and a kidnapping ; and all of these still needed explanation.

Rollison went outside, and then turned back and knocked sharply on the door. Nothing happened. He banged again, more loudly, and at last Old Smith came hobbling with his unexpected speed. He had a mahogany-coloured face with deep etched lines, a sunken mouth because he had no teeth, but he also had as clear a pair of grey eyes Rollison had seen in a man, young or old.

He barred the door.

“What do you want ?” he demanded, and gave no doubt that whatever the visitor desired, he couldn’t have it.

“I want to buy the farm,” announced Rollison, in the mildest of voices, “and I thought you might be able to help me find a way of persuading Miss Selby to let me have it.” He smiled, as if taking it for granted that he would get what he wanted. ‘“Perhaps we could have a chat, Mr. Smith.”

“We can’t have a chat, now or any time,” Old Smith crackled, “I haven’t any time for talk with you or with anyone.”

“It might be worth your while.”

“It’ll be worth your while to turn round and get off quicker than you came here.” This was the tone Smith had used for M.M.M. “Now don’t waste my time any longer.”

“Mr. Smith,” murmured Rollison, “I don’t really want to buy the house at all, I just want to buy a story. It would be worth five hundred pounds.”

The old man demanded sharply : “What story?”

“Your story, and that of Selby Farm.”

“You must be daft!”

“You must have a good reason for refusing to sell the property, Mr. Smith, and “

“I’ve lived here man and boy for seventy-two years and if that isn’t reason enough I’d like to know what is,” roared Old Smith, “and you can go back and tell your editor felly that he can’t have my story for five hundred or five thousand pounds. I live a private life and I don’t want my name in any scandal-mongering newspaper. Now get out. I’m in the middle of my tea.”

“Don’t you think you’re being hard on Gillian Selby and her brother, by refusing “

“Hard be damned to them! They’re young, they’ve got their lives ahead of them, don’t say I’m being hard. All they want is easy money, like all the young fools these days. Something for nothing, that’s what they’re after. But I’ve a right to this farm while I pay my rent, it’s in the old man’s will. Ask the wench, if you don’t believe me. Her father made sure no-one could turn me out. Now good-day to you.”

“What will happen if they get a court order compelling you to leave?” asked Rollison, still mildly.

“I’d tear it up and throw it in their faces,” said Old Smith, and then broke into a cackle of laughter. “But they’ll never get a court order, they’ll never even have the guts to try. You go back and tell your editor man that, and if you meet the Selby’s, tell them it’s time they stopped wasting their breath and mine.”

He turned round and hobbled off; cackling.

He was very sure of himself. Why?

Detective Inspector Bishop and a murder team were at the cottage when Rollison got back. There were eight men in all, including a police-surgeon, who had formally pronounced that Charlie’s life was extinct. Rollison was in time to see the body carried into a small ambulance, and to see the ambulance move off. In and about the cottage, men were taking photographs, noting footprints, barricading anything of interest, drawing lines, making sketches, taking measurements; all the paraphernalia of routine which made the difference between the professional and the amateur at work.