Pick Up the Pieces

by J F Straker

  Only Inspector Pitt seemed quite at ease. Wickery experienced a strong surge of gratitude towards the gaunt, solemn-faced policeman. He knew he ought to feel the same way about Harry, for it had been Harry who had found Mrs Loften, Harry who had clinched the case against her husband. But he could not. And you can’t compel your own emotions, he told himself.

  ‘Thank you for not objecting to our being granted bail this morning, Inspector,’ he said. ‘It meant a lot to me.’

  It meant a lot to Doris also, he knew. Had that one night he had spent in gaol marked her as he felt it had marked him? He looked at Chitty. Dave had spent two nights in gaol, and with no expectation of release in the morning. That must have been a grim experience.

  Pitt grunted.

  ‘You’re not out of the wood yet, you know. You still have to face your trial. Don’t start thinking it’s all finished and forgotten, Mr Wickery, because it isn’t.’

  ‘I know,’ said Wickery. ‘I’m not counting any chickens, Inspector.’

  They fell silent, each of the four conspirators wondering what lay ahead. Presently the Inspector said, ‘I asked you men to meet me here because I need your help. I’ve got Loften’s confession, but it leaves a few gaps — gaps I fancy he couldn’t fill because he didn’t know the answers.’

  ‘And you think we do?’

  ‘I hope you do, anyway.’

  ‘What do we get out of it?’ asked Chitty. He did not share Wickery’s liking for the Inspector.

  ‘Nothing,’ Pitt said curtly. ‘As I said before, it won’t do your case any harm if the police can assure the court that you gave them all the assistance you could. But nothing apart from that.’

  You didn’t say it to Dave, thought Forthright. You said it to the rest of us when you were trying to get our support against Dave. I wonder what he’d say if he knew about that!

  ‘What can we lose?’ he said. ‘Only how about making a bargain, Inspector, and swopping your information for ours?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Wells. ‘Even now I can’t figure out how Loften managed it.’

  Pitt looked inquiringly at the other two, who nodded their assent.

  ‘Good. Well, as Mr Forthright guessed, when Loften heard from Miss Chitty that you were planning to break into the garage he saw his chance; after you had stolen the money he merely had to walk in and kill White, and when the robbery was later traced to you (through a hint from him, if necessary) it was unlikely that your denial of the murder would cut much ice. He says now that he didn’t intend to implicate you unless the police took too great an interest in himself; and of course he had no idea that you chaps would believe that it was one of you who killed White. That was a piece of jam he hadn’t counted on.

  ‘On Tuesday night he went up to the garage and waited for you to arrive. He saw the key put in the lock, and wondered why none of you went in; and he wondered still more when about half an hour later you removed the key and cleared off.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Wells, astonished, his eyes darting from Chitty to the Inspector. ‘Are you saying that none of us entered the garage that night?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘We’ll deal with that later, if you don’t mind. But you can take my word for it that that’s how it was.’

  They looked at the red-faced Chitty, who nodded sheepishly. But Pitt gave him no time to explain.

  ‘For a while Loften waited, thinking you might return,’ he continued. ‘When you didn’t he decided he could safely go ahead. Miss Chitty’s evidence would ensure that you were still involved; and now, in addition to killing White at your expense, so to speak, he could also take the money. And that’s what he did burying the empty cash-box in Mr Chitty’s garden when he went back there to report to his sister.’

  ‘But how did he get into the garage?’ asked Wickery. ‘He did give Forthright the right key — no doubt about that.’

  ‘Miss Chitty heard you say that you hoped to get hold of a key. That meant his key, he thought — it wouldn’t be White’s —and so he had another cut in readiness. Your little ruse didn’t deceive him — he welcomed it, in fact. Having handed his key over to you he was, so far as anyone knew, without one. And that, he thought, should remove him from all suspicion.’ The Inspector smiled. Now you can see why he was so angry when you accused him of having given you the wrong key. It cut that particular piece of firm ground from under his feet.’

  ‘He didn’t know we’d planned to leave the cash-box under the scrap-heap, of course,’ said Forthright. ‘If he’d taken the money out and then put it there we’d have been properly flummoxed.’

  ‘Why did he try to blackmail us into handing over the money when he knew we hadn’t got it?’ asked Wells. ‘That was a bit daft, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He reasoned that that was what you’d expect him to do, so he did it. But there was more to it than just playing a part. He was greedy. Since you couldn’t hand over White’s money he reckoned on adopting much the same tactics as White had done — docking your wages.’

  ‘What a swine,’ growled Chitty. ‘Trying to put the screw on us for a murder he’d done himself!’ His indignation was not assumed; he saw no parallel in his having been a party to the plot to frame a supposedly innocent Loften. ‘What’s funny about that, Inspector?’ he demanded, as Pitt smiled.

  ‘That wasn’t the only occasion on which you were hoaxed, Mr Chitty,’ said Pitt. ‘You see, you didn’t kill Mrs Gooch either.’

  Forthright remembered in time that they had never admitted responsibility for the old woman’s death — not even Bert. He shot a warning look at the others, who were gazing in bewilderment at the Inspector.

  ‘No,’ he said casually. ‘That was just one of your crazy notions.’

  Pitt smiled.

  ‘All right, Mr Forthright, we’ll leave it at that. But it happens to be my crazy notion that you thought you killed Mrs Gooch — which was why you paid up when White went in for blackmail. But, as I said, you didn’t kill her. Loften did.’

  ‘But —’ began Wells — and stopped. He wanted to explain that Loften couldn’t have killed Mrs Gooch; hadn’t they seen the dead body, felt the car pass over it? Yet to explain would be to admit their guilt.

  ‘Tricky, isn’t it?’ said Pitt. ‘You don’t believe me, but you can’t argue without putting yourselves in the cart. Well, I’ll make it easy for you. Loften left the George at ten that night, but he hadn’t gone far when the car went dead on him. He had a choked jet, and it took him some time to clear it (I gather he’s not much of a mechanic); and by the time he got going again he can’t have been more than a few minutes ahead of you.

  ‘He was late for his appointment by now, and he drove faster than he should have done. It was raining hard, and the road is narrow and full of bends; he says he never saw the old lady until he was almost on top of her, and then it was too late. He got out of the car to find her dead; and as there seemed to be no one about he took a chance and drove on.’ The Inspector’s eyes narrowed. ‘Too many of these hit-and-run drivers, don’t you think?’

  ‘Did Loften tell you all this?’ asked Wickery, ignoring the question.

  ‘He did. It was the old lady’s dead body that you ran over. It doesn’t excuse your failure to report the accident, but that’s what happened.’

  None of them spoke. They waited, hoping he would continue without prompting, still reluctant to admit their fault.

  ‘I hope that makes you think,’ said Pitt, a trifle smugly. ‘If you’d acted correctly and got in touch with the police maybe you wouldn’t have had to pay all that good money to White merely for running over a dead body. Of course, you weren’t his only victims; he was blackmailing Loften as well. That was why Loften killed him.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Wells.

  ‘We have to do a bit of guessing here,’ Pitt went on, ‘but I imagine White saw the first accident and, after Loften had cleared off, was just going to investigate whe
n you four turned up. But the fact remains, he blackmailed the lot of you.’

  ‘Loften never said anything about it to us,’ muttered Wells.

  ‘Why should he? Did you tell him? And that was what White banked on, that the victims of blackmail seldom do tell.’

  ‘But wait a minute,’ said Chitty. ‘Susan told me that Loften picked her up that night before ten-thirty. She said she saw the time by his wrist-watch as he was driving; and it’s no good saying his watch was wrong, because she checked it with our clock in the kitchen when she got back. He couldn’t have killed Mrs Gooch, no matter what he said.’

  ‘Yes, she told me that too. It puzzled me a lot. But apparently Loften put back the hands of his watch before he met her, hoping she would be able to give him an alibi if he should be suspected. Later in the evening he put it right again, so that she wouldn’t notice any discrepancy when she got home.’

  ‘She might have looked at a clock before she met him,’ said Wickery.

  ‘Yes, of course. He realized that, but hoped she would take his watch as being correct — as she would have done, no doubt, when she found that it tallied with her clock at home. In any case, it was the only chance that offered.’

  ‘He was lucky,’ said Wells. ‘Damned lucky.’

  ‘In that, yes. Not that it’s done him much good.’ Pitt turned to Forthright. ‘I suppose you had no idea of all this when you accused him of murdering White?’

  ‘No,’ said Forthright. He flushed slightly. ‘I thought it was one of us.’ Haltingly, with occasional shamefaced apologies, he described how he and Wells had built up the case against Loften. ‘Even when I found Mrs Loften’s body I never connected it with White’s death; I just thought he’d done her in during one of the rows they were always having. Only seeing as how he was guilty of that, I thought —well —’

  ‘You thought he might as well shoulder responsibility for the other, eh?’ said Pitt. ‘How did you come to find the body?’

  ‘There was a bit of stuff caught on a bush — it reminded me of a sort of housecoat thing I’d seen her wearing once when I called at the house. It wasn’t what you’d expect her to wear outdoors — and she never went into the forest anyway, she hated the country. And seeing as she’d disappeared — and that Loften was worried, which he never was when she left him before — well, it all struck me as being a bit fishy.’

  ‘Did it take you long to find her?’

  ‘No. A man carrying a heavy burden like that leaves quite a trail if you know how to look for it. And he hadn’t buried her deep, only a shallow grave with dead bracken and stuff piled on top. You couldn’t miss it.’

  ‘He was in a hurry,’ said Pitt. ‘He meant to go back and finish the job later; he didn’t expect anyone to be wandering around that part of the forest in winter.’

  ‘Was I right about why he killed her?’ asked Forthright.

  ‘No, quite wrong. At least, you were right in thinking she and White were having an affair. But that wasn’t why Loften killed her; he’d known of it for a long time and couldn’t have cared less.’

  ‘Then why did he kill her?’ asked Wickery.

  ‘She was with White the night Mrs Gooch was killed,’ said Pitt. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘Good Lord! So that’s who it was!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Wickery, that’s who it was. And the tragedy of it is that even from her husband’s point of view her death was quite unnecessary. She didn’t know it was her husband who killed Mrs Gooch, didn’t know you four were involved, didn’t know you and he were being blackmailed by White. She was sitting in his car on the far side of the hedge and never saw a thing. She stayed in the car while he got out to investigate.’

  ‘Didn’t White tell her?’

  ‘Only that there’d been an accident, and to keep her mouth shut. It might cause a scandal, he said, if their association became public knowledge. After you’d gone they cleared off as fast as they could.’

  ‘Where did you learn all this?’ asked Wells.

  ‘From Loften. She told him. It seems you fellows put the wind up him Thursday night when you mentioned that White must have had a woman with him. It had never occurred to him before; but knowing the way it was between her and White, he guessed it must have been his wife. He taxed her with it, not knowing she was completely ignorant of what had happened that night; he even accused her of being a party to the blackmail; and only after he’d given himself away completely did he realize his mistake. All he could do then was to kill her; she was too anxious to be rid of him, he says, for him to expect her to keep her mouth shut.’

  ‘She’d kept it shut for over a year,’ said Chitty.

  ‘Only because she didn’t know. And if he’d thought it over calmly before accusing her he might have realized that. But then, few men in his position do think calmly. That’s why they get caught.’

  Where Wickery felt grateful to the Inspector, Wells was full of admiration for Harry Forthright. It was Harry, not the police, who had given them their freedom; without Harry’s assistance the police would never even have suspected Loften. He said, rather patronizingly, ‘Bit of luck for you, wasn’t it, finding White’s cash-box in the first place you looked? I bet you’re not often as lucky as that.’

  ‘Strangely enough we are,’ Pitt answered equably. ‘But the police don’t rely entirely on luck, Mr Wells, although we’re always glad to have it with us. In this case we just chose the most likely spot.’

  ‘Why was my garden more likely than the others?’ asked Chitty. ‘You knew we were all in it together.’

  ‘Exactly. And if a man has something incriminating to conceal he doesn’t choose his own garden or that of a friend — not with a perfectly good forest handy, where its discovery can do harm to no one. On the other hand, he might, provided he was that sort of chap, leave it where it could incriminate an enemy. That was why I picked on your garden.’

  ‘But Dave wasn’t our enemy,’ Wells protested.

  ‘He was Loften’s enemy,’ Pitt answered quietly. ‘You all were. But Mr Chitty’s garden came handiest for him that night.’

  It took a moment or two for the implication of this statement to sink in.

  ‘You mean you actually suspected Loften?’ asked Wells, incredulous.

  ‘Of course. Mind you, it didn’t come suddenly — it sort of grew on me,’ Pitt said modestly. ‘First there was that argument over the key. Guilty or innocent, he wouldn’t deliberately have given you the wrong key — you would have discovered it the moment you tried it in the lock. So why all that fuss, I asked myself, if he was innocent? On the other hand, if he’d been planning to murder White himself why give you the key when he’d need it himself? It didn’t make sense either way.

  ‘Then there was the motive. The motive that fitted you also fitted him, for he was in Tanbury the night Mrs Gooch was killed, and left only a little while before you. Miss Chitty told me that Loften met her before ten-thirty; but she added that, although he mentioned the time as they were driving out of the village, she also saw from his wrist-watch that it was correct. That, I thought, was most significant.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Forthright.

  ‘You don’t? Ever noticed on which wrist Loften wears his watch?’

  ‘On the right,’ said Wells and Chitty together.

  ‘Yes. So I noticed. But if Miss Chitty was able to read the time by it as Loften was driving he must have been wearing it on his left wrist. And a man doesn’t alter a habit like that without a very good reason.’

  ‘I seem to remember that it was on his right wrist when we met him at the George,’ said Wells.

  ‘I’m sure it was. He changed it over so that Miss Chitty could confirm his version of the time they met.’

  ‘What about that note his wife left for him?’ asked Forthright. ‘Susan Chitty saw it, and she’s positive it wasn’t a forgery.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Pitt agreed. ‘And it was the note that really confirmed his guilt in my mind. When he showed it
to me I went up to his house to have a look round, and I couldn’t find any similar paper anywhere. So I had the ink analysed — and learned that the note must have been written at least several months ago. It was, you see, written on the last occasion she left him.’

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ said Forthright. ‘She referred to White’s murder in it.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. Her actual words were ‘I’ve been planning for months to leave you, and this business of Andrew White is the last straw.’ She wasn’t referring to the murder when she wrote that, but to Loften’s discovery of her affair with White.’

  ‘Could you have nailed him for his wife’s death if he hadn’t lost his nerve?’ asked Forthright. ‘There wasn’t anything to prove he did it, was there?’

  ‘I should say there was plenty. For one thing, he told us he last saw her on Friday afternoon — whereas medical evidence shows she was dead at least twelve hours before that.’

  ‘He must have killed her Thursday night, then, after he’d heard us talking about the woman in White’s car,’ said Wickery. ‘Why didn’t he tell us the next morning that she’d gone? Why wait until Saturday?’

  ‘He couldn’t find the note,’ Pitt explained. ‘He needed that to confirm his tale that she’d left him. He spent all Thursday night and most of Friday night looking for it. He says that was why he didn’t have time to go back and make a better job of concealing the body. Personally, I don’t believe that; I think he was just plain scared. He wasn’t busy Saturday night.’

  Pop Wells was still reluctant to acknowledge any debt to the Inspector for his deliverance. He didn’t go much for policemen, he told his wife later. Willie Trape was all right, of course, he was one of themselves; but those detective chaps from Tanbury —well, it seemed like they were always right even when they were wrong.

  ‘If you were so sure it was Loften done it why didn’t you let up on us?’ he asked now, hoping to score a point.

  ‘I couldn’t see the wood for the trees, Mr Wells,’ said Pitt. ‘You fellows kept getting in the way; I didn’t know whether you were on your own or in partnership with Loften. Saturday evening I even tried to provoke you into talking, but it didn’t work; and it wasn’t until Mr Wickery decided to come clean that I was able to pick up the pieces and put most of them together. Even then I couldn’t get confirmation. Mr Forthright decided to disappear, and you and Mr Chitty wouldn’t talk.’