The Gaggle of GeeseA Pastoral Diversion"Geese are ludicrous animals," said Mr William Blackstone Wildman. "Creatures of habit and ingrained behaviour -- and oh, what a fuss when anything upsets their routine!""Such as a murder?" "Precisely, Winston." The ancient man pulled his hand from under his lap rug, where it had been concealed since the beginning of my visit a few moments ago. Cackling merrily, he flourished a handful of white feathers. "Ah," I said, "goose quills. I assume they are mementos of a case rather than writing implements?" "Indeed, and if you would be so kind as to replace the air in those glasses with a more substantial fluid, I shall be happy to tell you about the gander Henry, whose feathers these are, and the part he played in revealing a murder." ********************** In the late summer of the year 1909 (he continued after we had toasted Henry the Gander), I went to Cumberland to visit my wife's relations at their farm near Cockermouth (by the way, Winston, if you should ever come to write my biography, I'll have you know that, like Mr Wordsworth, and the infamous Fletcher Christian, I was born in that old market town -- in 1871, nigh on a century ago. That is about all I have in common with those gentlemen). My in-laws, the Minnivers, had held that excellent farm for many years, and it was always a welcome relief for me to escape the 'din of towns and cities' in this peaceful rural retreat. Boredom would soon cure my melancholy and re-energise my mind for the pursuit of crime in the busy metropolis. On the third day of my visit I was still enjoying my boredom and had no desire to have it interrupted. So of course it was. Mr Bicker, a banker and client, sent me a telegram: 'Matter of great urgency'. Aren't matters always urgent in the City? Alas, I never heard his tale for he did not arrive as expected at the farm. Where he ended up -- a hot place if we can believe the comments of his business rivals -- will be revealed in due course. I clearly remember that beautiful evening I received the telegram. My wife and I were sitting on the terrace, looking out over the hills, while I smoked quietly and drank Mrs Minniver's excellent home-brewed beer. "Listen to those infernal geese, Minerva," I said. "Like Piccadilly Circus at five o'clock." "Oh hush, William. Compose yourself. Look yonder where jewelled Venus sparkles like a diadem in the imperial heavens." (My wife, bless her, had a habit of speaking thus. She died, you know, of the influenza that winter...) "Jewelled Venus be damned. There goes Henry the gander down the chute-- plop! And there come the others, braying like jackasses -- plop, plop, plop! Damn silly animals." We observed the geese waddling along the shallow stream bed and through a hole where a wall crossed the water. They slid out from the black tunnel along a little cataract and flashed down into the farm pool beneath like white balls emerging from a conjuror's mouth. "Don't swear, William. I find the geese so reassuring, so composing. They never vary their activity. Thus have they always prepared for their evening meal and sleep. These certainties mean so much to one amidst the great flux of wordly affairs." "Bah! You can see this follow-my-leader business in any city. I came here to rest, not to be reminded of the folly of my fellow man and all the hidebound foolishness of commerce." "Here is a telegram come for you, William," Mrs Minniver said, coming out of the house. I left off watching the geese and read the thing. We had no telephone there in those days, Winston, but one could not escape the attentions of the world even in such a remote place as that. "Oh, damme! Here's business from the City. Old Bicker is coming down from London tomorrow." "William! Can you not put him off?" "I fear not, Minnie. We need his money, my dear." With Bicker put to the back of my mind, I spent the next afternoon climbing the hill behind the farm, following the stream, or beck as they called it here, up to a little artificial lake (or tarn) on the hillside. Henry stretched out a snake-like neck and hissed me away from the sluice gate. "Your reptilian manners are appalling, my man," I said to him from a safe distance. My wife had tried to convince me of the beneficial effects of exercise in the country air, and if Bicker's business should require me to return to London, it would be provident to ingest as much fresh air (and bucolic smells) as I could. I kept on climbing. Sheep fled, to turn and stare stupidly at me from afar. The view from the top of the hill was impressive. To the north the wild borderlands (my ancestors, quasi-Neolithic cattle raiders -- hence Wildman), eastward the gloomy Pennines, westward a glint of the Irish Sea, and off to the south the Lake country. Below me was the tarn, and the figures of two lazy farm labourers; the patchwork farms in the valley; and the busy country lane by the banks of the meandering Cocker. The Minniver farm clustered round its pool at the center of a network of undulating dry-stone walls. Only one cloud in the sky. I savoured that view. I ate my picnic lunch, then 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' over the hillsides toward Cockermouth. There was a good deal of to-and-fro traffic on the roads as an annual fair was in progress. Entering the town later in the afternoon, via back lanes, I enquired at the railway station for the London gentleman. In spite of the fair, there should not have been many passengers on the London train. "Little short cove, wif a Scotch plaid wescut?" A Cockney stationmaster in a Cumberland backwater, by Jove! This had always amused me on my visits to the Minnivers. "Yes, that is he." "Well, yer missed 'im. 'E arst for the Minniver farm and set off afoot just a hower ago." So, cursing under my breath, I walked back to the farm, along the main road -- only half the distance of my outgoing route. I did not overtake Bicker, and when I finally limped into the farmyard, the sun had just set. The geese were calling out the curfew. "Where's Bicker?" I asked Minerva. "He has not come, William. Did you not meet him at the station?" "He'd already left. Where could he have got to? Very odd." "Good gracious! What is the matter with the geese?" I looked. There was confusion and loud protest at the top of the cataract. Henry hooted angrily and waddled round the wall to a place where it had been broken down by sheep. He scrambled over and scuttled clumsily down the bank into the pool. The other geese followed, clamoring noisily. "Ignominious descent," I commented. "I suppose the arch is blocked with rubbish." "Poor things. William! go up there and remove the hindrance." What was I to do? Up I went, but there was nothing blocking the hole. How the devil, I wondered, do they manage to slither through that? Barely a foot between the surface of the water and the flat slab of rock that covered the opening. "Never mind, William," she said when I had returned down the muddy slope on my nether parts. "What are we to do about Mr Bicker?" "Bother Bicker. I am exhausted. He must have stopped at an inn." "But why? Very inconsiderate of him to do such a thing without word." "Well, my love, as it was such a fine day, our friend chose to walk rather than hire a trap. That, to me, indicates that Mr Bicker's urgent business is not so pressing here as it seemed in London. Rather, instead, that it is a ready excuse for a jaunt in the country. Now then, we are faced with two likely alternatives -- first, that he lost his way in the back lanes, and second, that he was side-tracked by the town fair. In either case, as it is late for a business call, Mr Bicker is very likely to have taken a room at the Wool and Feathers or some such place in town, and I very much suspect that we shall have word here tonight that this is so. Do you see?" "There is no need to pontificate, Mr Wildman." But there was no message that night, and no sign of Bicker in the morning. We raised the alarm. And after a hard day's work by our competent and industrious local constable, it was evident that he had vanished from the vicinity. Sunday evening, after his enquiries, I spoke with the constable -- having first chased away my wife, who came in to inform us, oracularly, that the geese were behaving normally. "My wife seems to think that the strange behaviour of the geese yesterday was an evil omen." "It may be foul play were done on your Mr Bicker. Bad sorts are drawn to the region by our fair. There is much drinking." Our constable said the word with loathing -- one of this steadfast man's few faults. "And nasty traits brought out in some of your local brawn. I'm afraid you could be right. But we only have the stationmaster's word that Bicker ever came to Cockermouth." "Charlie? No, he has a good head on him, in spite of being a foreigner. He met your Mr Bicker, and even had a long natter with him about the London cricket tests." "No body has been found. Nobody noticed him after he left the station." The constable snorted. "That signifies nowt. There's many a quiet spot hereabouts to hide a corp. Not for long, though. They always turn up in the end. Your countryside is never as empty of folk as it seems to a city person. I shall institute a search party in the morning." He went out, sighing: Lost children, strayed cows, pickpockets, and brawls, all because of the fair. And drinking, infernal drinking. Not too long after supper, I retired to my room and opened my private case. My wife came in after I know not how long I had been ruminating. "Phaugh!" she coughed. "The smoke! William! You are at the beef cubes and gin again. You came here for a holiday from that." "Let thinking dogs lie, woman." "Oh, disgusting!" Such a way she had, Winston, of pronouncing that word. An irritant I have sorely missed these fifty years or more. "Bah!" "What am I to do with the man?" She raised her hands to heaven and turned to go. "Here, Minnie, my dove, wait. Tell me what you think of this." "I must open the window." She did so. "Oh, Willie, you silly goose." "Silly goose indeed. Hear me, Minnie. Why did the geese go round the wall? You said once that they always follow the stream through that hole." "Did I, William? Well, perhaps always. When it is blocked or when it rains heavily..." "It was not blocked and there was no rain. The tarn on the hill is regulated by a sluice gate, is it not?" "Yes." She was staring out the window with growing apprehension. "The level of the water can be lowered by opening the gate -- yes? And the water flows down the hill into the pool. As the water runs out of the tarn, the beck runs more deeply; the clear space under the wall becomes smaller; and even a sinuous creature like a goose is unable to slither through." She pondered for a moment, and said: "That would explain Henry's queer behaviour, William. The increased water flow is not that apparent when we open the sluice gate to replenish our pool during a drought. What are you leading up to?" "What is the composition of the tarn bed?" "Why, Willie, it is mud. Awful red mud." "And there we have it, my dove. Bicker is buried in the mud under the banks of the tarn. He was interred early yesterday evening, after the sluice gate had been opened somewhat to expose a stretch of the lake bed. I am merely speculating, of course, but I saw a couple of persons lounging about there yesterday. Perhaps they waylaid poor Bicker on the road and robbed him. Let us suppose he fought back -- he would, you know, especially if they were after that Cricketer's gold watch of his -- and they wound up killing him. Then, you see, they would have carried him up to the tarn and buried the body where they hoped it would never be found." "Oh, William, how horrible!" But I was right. We did not even have to reopen the sluice gate in the morning, as the tarn, lacking the runoff of fresh rainfall, had not yet risen to its previous level. There were signs in the damp mud, and we found poor Banker Bicker with no trouble. As to the apprehension of the thieves (who turned out not to be the men I had seen -- but no matter), that you will find recorded in the proceedings of the Court of Assize. It was an easy task for the constable, as the poor fools tried to sell Bicker's watch -- engraved, mind you, with a large letter 'B' -- to a barrow vendor in the market square. From the William Blackstone Wildman Collection by Grobius Shortling[Behavioral patterns, human or animal, city or country, seem to have always been in the background of this detective's success -- he could always spot the connections via an analogical method. This story will not shake the world by its brilliance, but it illustrates the point. --Grobius] |
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