This novel was first published in 1936 and is set in an impossibly beautiful coastal area where people make a living processing chalk to turn it into lime (which is then used to make cement)--and this process turns out to be the key to the whole terrible mess at the center of the story.
How to make lime from chalk:
(1) Chalk is quarried and broken into (relatively) small chunks.
(2) The chunks are loaded into the top of HUGE--25' tall--brick kilns set up against the side of a quarry pit wall. Alternating layers of chalk and coal are loaded from the top of the kiln and, once full, a cap is placed on the kiln and the coal/chalk mix is fired up to cook at 1000C degrees. Once it has cooled, the kiln is opened at the bottom and the lime shoveled into big sacks and taken to a nearby train depot to be shipped off to wherever. The kiln is allowed to cool and then loaded up again. There are three kilns right next to each other, placed centrally among the chalk farms in the area, and they are run round the clock, every day of the year. (That's a lot of lime!)
As you can imagine, that kiln is the perfect place to dispose of a dead body. And as you can also imagine, that chalk gets all over clothes and shoes and is nearly impossible to clean off and so is an easy way to see who has been near the chalk kiln recently and what a murderer has been up to. So now that that is explained, what's the mystery here?
Well, for once we do not have a loathesome patriarch who needs killing. Instead, we have a pair of brothers in their mid 30s who co-own a chalk "farm" called, unimaginitively, Chalklands Farm. In looks, the brothers are identical: very tall and beefy from man-handling chunks of chalk and sacks of lime day in and day out. But in all other regards, they couldn't be more dissimilar. John is loud, fun, brash and full of beans. And unmarried. The other, William, is quiet, reserved, unimaginative and hard working. And married to Janet, who is about 10 years younger than him. She is described as "attractive," "fine featured," and as having a "brilliant intelligence in her eyes" that is at odds with her "Gosh, I have no idea!" behavior.
So the story starts with another fight between the brothers. This is nothing new as they disagree about everything, but mostly about the best way to manage the money generated by the farm. Is that all the fights are about? No, because it seems that Janet has long since stopped loving William and has started getting a bit too touchy feely with John--and William may be slow on the uptake, but he isn't that slow. Since both have a 50% share of the land, they are required to cooperate with each other, a fact that both resent. To William's annoyance, John announces that he has plans for the weekend that require him to drive up the coast in his brand new expensive roadster. This leaves William to work a double shift by himself. If John notices how much William is seething, he acts like he doesn't care. So, John sets off around 5 pm, intending to get to his destination around 10. (This is mid summer and the days are long.) But he never gets there. Instead, his abandoned car is found at the side of the road. It looks like he had car trouble, pulled over and was never seen again. Worryingly, his cap is laying on the ground about 20' from the car in a field and there is blood on the car seat and a trail of blood on the road.
So, police are called in and William is notified. He doesn't say anthing (he never does) but he seems nervous and worried--is he worried for John or for himself? Unluckily for William, he doesn't have an alibi as he spent the evening working alone and then went to bed early. What about Janet? She "went for a long walk to think" and didn't get home until about midnight. (A witness later cooroberates that, saying that she saw Janet walking around, carrying a large, covered basket.) Oh, and who owns the farm now? William owns it outright, unless he gained the land by crime...
Superintendent Meredith is called in. As usual, he is highly competent and has no family or personality problems. Interestingly, we actually go home with him on weekends and meet his wife who is funny, pretty, friendly and wholly competent, and their son who is about 10, loving and has a real passion for "cops and robbers" stories--he is really proud that his dad catches "bad guys" for a living.
Meredith finds a lot of clues. So many, he concludes that either the murderer is the stupidest person ever to have lived or somebody is laying out clues like Easter eggs for him to find. Among those clues are the large bones of a human male and a few buttons and cuff links at the bottom of the kiln William said he used on the night John went missing. So, that seems to mean that William incinterated a man and his clothes. Well, that doesn't look good for William. And it all makes sense except for the fact that there is no skull. Why burn the body and clothes but not the skull? And where is the skull?
THEN he finds out that, although John's body was found only 4 miles from home, the gas tank (which was full when he left the farm) shows he had driven over 40 miles before pulling over. So did he drive around in circles for a hour before pulling over? (Perhaps the MOST interesting part of the story is that that John's 1934 convertible got 40 mpg!)
Meanwhile, William is a nervous wreck: he can't account for his actions on the night of the murder, a witness saw a large man (William-sized) wearing a big floppy hat and swirling cape while riding a bicyle on the road near where John's car was found just after the time John would likely have been attacked. But what does it all mean? Then, Janet calls up Meredith in a panic: her husband, William, is dead! His body was found at the bottom of the chalk pit with a big dent in the side of his head, made (it seems) after he dove (head first) onto a giant piece of chalk. Did he slip? Well, the suicide note and full confession to his brother's murder says otherwise. So, that's that, right? William waited for John at the side of the road, killed him, road back home on his bicyle and burned up the body in the kiln. But, stricken with grief, he does away with himself and tosses himself off a cliff but not before carefully explaining how he did it. Janet is saddened, but tells Meredith that it all makes sense, and there is no reason for Meredith to keep hanging around. And, she adds, the whole place now gives her the heeby jeebies so she is moving--she's not even going to pack anything up--far, far away and never come back. (Wait--does Janet own the entire farm now? It looks like it...)
Well this IS a pretty kettle of fish! Meredith is deeply unsatisfied: Did William sabatage John's car or flag his down at the side of the road? But how the hell does a bicyle outpace a sports car--even if it is driving around in circles? And how did William get John's body to the kiln if he rode back home on a bicycle? The guy is big but he isn't THAT big...
Then things really take a strange turn: there is talk of a "caped man with a big bushy beard on a bicyle" who for the past few months has been renting a house in the middle of nowhere about 10 miles away. Here's the witness we need! He'll tell us what happened at the side of the road! But wait--a few days ago we thought that the caped bearded bicycle man was William making a getaway from the scene of the crime...what happened to that theory? But it gets weirder: no one ever sees the guy LEAVE the house--they just see the caped man ride TO the house. What they do see is ANOTHER guy--no cape, no bicycle, no hat, no beard--walk away from the house, through the fields and on to the next town where he catches a train to London. Are these two guys just one guy who uses the house to change identities? Why would anyone do that? What the hell is going on here?
And, finally, FINALLY, the shoe drops: Meredith has had the whole thing wrong from minute one. And what tips him off? A report that came from a pathologist who said that the bones found in the kiln were not fired in the kiln but in fact were cleaned and preserved as human bones are when they are prepped to be used as models for medical schools. So someone stole a set of bones--but not the skull--to fake a death by kiln...So was ANYONE murdered??? And where the hell is Janet? And what was she carrying around in that basket at midnight on the night of John's disappearance?
No comments:
Post a Comment