Death in Dark Glasses (Inspector Littlejohn)

by George Bellairs

  "Pooh!" said the bobby as the atmosphere of stale air, food, yes . . . and mice . . . greeted him. He was in the best bedroom. Just as Mrs. Oates had left it apparently. Like the window of a furniture shop. Everything in order, the bed made, the place tidy, but very dusty. The lounge was the same. The other bedroom was the reverse. Bedclothes filthy, bed unmade, clothes—a man's—all over the place. He drew the curtains and started instinctively to flail at the moths which flew out. Dead flies on the window-sill. . . . P.C. Mee shuddered.

  "Pore Finloe Oates. . . . All gone to pieces," he said.

  Clocks stopped, dust everywhere, letters behind the door. P.C. Mee picked up the envelopes. Gardening circulars, a few other advertisements, a number of sealed letters from Silvesters' Bank, according to the name on the flaps. . . .

  Oates hadn't been living in the dining-room either. He'd had his food in the kitchen; and what a pigsty! Grease and dirty pots all over the shop. Tins of food, stale bread, the remains of a meal. . . . P.C. Mee opened the back door to let in the fresh air. A mouse scuttered from temporary hiding and ran to a hole in a corner.

  Mee wasn't an imaginative man at all, but he felt cold shivers run down his spine. He felt someone was watching him! He'd see about that! There was only one other place. He tugged a cord hanging from the kitchen ceiling and a door in the loft opened and a ladder descended. He tried the light, but they'd evidently cut it off. He climbed the ladder and struck a match. Nothing there except a lot of old junk. He didn't even go in. It was a small place, a room made of plaster-board and his matches illuminated it to every corner. He turned to descend and then . . . There, on one side of the little loft-room, was another door, a sort of entrance to the rafters beyond, where, like as not, the water tank was kept. He'd better take a look. But first he climbed down, took a candle from the kitchen window-sill and lit it. Then he went aloft again. The little door opened easily, and P.C. Mee almost fainted. The stench was appalling. The hair under his helmet rose as the bobby realised, knew for sure, that there was something dead there. He braced himself and entered.

  The body was lying doubled in one corner and it was in an advanced stage of decomposition. There was no mistaking it, however. The blue uniform with the red stripe down the seams of the trousers, and the peaked cap with the initials C.R., Corporation of Rodley, on the front. Although the Electricity Board had taken them over now, the officials were wearing out their old clothes. It was Jack Fishlock, the electricity meter-man. He'd been a bit of a one for the girls, had Jack, and when he vanished and couldn't be found, they'd said he'd run off with one of them. His wife had sworn it. . . .

  P.C. Mee scrambled down the ladder, locked-up the house, was sick with dignity in the garden behind, and then mounted his bicycle. With limbs which seemed turned to water, he pedalled off to the nearest telephone.

  2

  THE SILENT HOUSE

  MR. DE LACY began to think it would never end. First, the frauds and death of Wainwright Palmer; then the forgeries in Finloe Oates's account and the way he had vanished; and finally the dead body of the meter-inspector in Oates's house. It seemed as though somehow fate were intent on Mr. de Lacy's downfall. The police were in and out the bank all day.

  Did Mr. de Lacy think this or that . . . ?

  Did Oates ever . . . ?

  These forgeries, Mr. de Lacy . . . did you . . . ?

  One after another, until he didn't know whether he was on his head or his heels.

  "How long has this forgery business been going on, sir?"

  It had started all over again. Now it was Inspector Montacute, of the Rodley police. The police station was right opposite the bank and Mr. de Lacy was sure that whenever the Inspector had a minute to spare or a fresh urge, he just crossed the road to pester him. He might have thought that the poor banker had no business to do other than concerning the crimes.

  "Not that he's much use," Inspector Montacute told the Chief Constable. "I ask him question after question and I'm just as far away when I leave as I am when I get there. . . . "

  The handwriting expert, Mr. Hoffman, had called in a second opinion and was now cock-a-hoop because Prediger, the new specialist, had confirmed his own findings. Their written reports had caused a terrible hullabaloo. Now, here was Inspector Montacute again.

  Mr. de Lacy licked his dry lips and turned his tired, pouched eyes on the policeman. They protruded as though you'd come upon him suddenly and given him the fright of his life. The banker was a chubby, fresh-looking man of the old school with a tall, stiff collar, black coat and grey trousers, white shirt showing gold cuff-links, and patent-leather boots. He was due to retire on pension in eighteen months' time and nursed a grievance against the late Palmer for not waiting until he'd gone before putting a light to the powder barrel which had just exploded.

  "How long has this forgery business on Oates's account been going on . . . ?"

  "As far as I can gather from the experts, it was perpetrated over a period of a month or six weeks. It began about three months ago and ended suddenly. . . . Yes, what is it?"

  A clerk entered deferentially and showed Mr. de Lacy a ledger and a cheque.

  "Where's Mr. Killgrass . . . ?"

  "At coffee, sir."

  "He's always at coffee! Return the cheque 'Refer to Drawer'."

  "Very good, sir."

  The clerk departed with apparent eagerness to do as he was told.

  "So, it ceased about two months ago?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "H'm."

  Inspector Montacute was a bit out of his depth, As a rule, police work in Rodley was comfortable and rule-of-thumb. Then, suddenly from the blue had dropped a levanting cashier who got himself killed; forgery in a local bank; a vanishing resident in a rural area; and now, to cap the lot, a nasty murder. Too wholesale by far! He'd wanted to call in Scotland Yard, but the Chief Constable had flown into a rage. They had their own C.I.D., hadn't they? What did they pay all that staff for, if they intended farming-out their tricky cases to another force? No. . . .

  Montacute was a nice fellow, tall, middle-aged, fresh-looking with a cheerful pug-dog's face. He was fond of gardening and taking his kids out for picnics, and murder wasn't much in his line.

  "The cheques were forged by somebody who knew Finloe Oates's financial position and wanted to clean him up . . . ?"

  "Obviously."

  The banker had no intention of allowing a policeman to tell him anything about finance, crooked or straight.

  "Obviously. But there's more to it than that. Oates had most of his money in gilt-edged investments. These we were first instructed by letter to sell. Previous to that, Oates had a mere hundred or two in the account. We sent our usual form for his signature and he returned it completed. . . ."

  "Were all the letters hand-written, or typed?"

  "Entirely done by hand; otherwise we might have suspected something. . . ."

  Mr. de Lacy was anxious to make a show of closing the stable-door now.

  " . . . We advised Finloe Oates that the proceeds of the sales had arrived and he wrote at once to say he was investing in property and would be withdrawing the funds in two or three instalments and would require drafts on our London office in settlement. The drafts were ordered and issued and charged to Oates's account. They completely cleared the balance. . . . "

  "Looks as if he might have been getting ready to bolt."

  "How were we to know at the time? It all seemed straight and above board."

  "And now . . . ?"

  "All the letters, the orders to sell the stocks, and the cheques for the drafts were forged. Seven thousand pounds in all. It's nearly driving me demented. I can't make head or tail of it. I hope you'll be able to solve it all."

  "What about the drafts you issued on London?"

  "They were, as instructed, made payable to Finloe Oates, and their endorsements were forged. . . ."

  "But who got the cash, and how?"

  "They were paid into the account of Oates's brother, Lys
ander, at the Home Counties Bank, Pimlico. . . ."

  "What!! Why wasn't I told? This is a valuable lead."

  "Be reasonable, Inspector. We've only just got to the bottom of it ourselves. I've got the forged drafts here. They've just arrived and I was going to send them over to you."

  Montacute almost snatched the documents from the manager's trembling hands. All this time wasted in talk, talk, talk, whilst there, on the desk . . .

  "Excuse me. I must be off at once."

  Montacute suddenly smiled grimly. Pimlico, eh? Now, they'd have to call in Scotland Yard.

  "How long has Fishlock been dead, Inspector? He was a customer here."

  To crown all, the murdered meter-man had kept a small savings account at Silvesters' Bank! Mr. de Lacy had grown quite resigned to the repeated blows of circumstance. Probably he himself would be the next victim.

  "Two months, the doctor says. . . ."

  "Then, he must . . . "

  "Yes; he was in an advanced state of decomposition."

  "Ohhh. . . . "

  Mr. de Lacy groped for the new bottle of brandy in the first-aid drawer.

  Poor Fishlock had been far-gone when his body was removed from the garret at Shenandoah. His wife had been eager to identify him and had been in a state of hysterics ever since. The police surgeon had only that morning handed to Montacute the report he would make at the inquest.

  Dead two months; corroborated by Fishlock's meter-book, which showed his last reading at eleven-fifteen on May 4th; now it was July 7th. Death had been caused by a savage blow on the head and the heavy poker which had done it was found lying in the cold hearth of the kitchen. It looked as if Fishlock had disturbed Finloe Oates in something questionable and had been murdered for it.

  Montacute went straight to the telephone and told his troubles to Scotland Yard and then took himself off to Shenandoah for a quiet browse on his own.

  The experts had been busy at the bungalow. All they had found were the fingerprints of Finloe Oates and some which might have been those of his dead wife. The funny part of it all was, there were no recent prints. The dirty dishes, for example, bore none at all. Neither did a few circulars and disused envelopes lying on the sideboard after they'd eliminated the postmen. They found a pair of ordinary household rubber gloves on the table in the kitchen. For some reason, Oates must have worn them about the house in his last days. He'd even gone to bed in them, as the absence of recent prints in the bedroom indicated.

  It was another hot, dry afternoon when Montacute reached the house. Once past the garden gate, it was like entering a land of awful silence. The abode of the Sleeping Beauty at the pantomime! He looked sadly at the neglected garden. Oates, they'd told him, had been fond of his garden, but the tale went that a short time after his wife's death, he'd shown a distinct aversion to it.

  A beech hedge divided Shenandoah from the next house. The dead leaves of last year had given place to strong green shoots and to Montacute the whole place gave that inner flurry which warns the expert gardener that nature is winning in the battle between the wild and the cultivated.

  The side door of the next house opened and a woman emerged with a basket of washing, which she started to peg on a clothes-line. A heavy-bosomed, thick-limbed woman, with a worried look and her grey hair looking wind-blown. She started when she saw the Inspector, put down her basket and sidled to the hedge.

  "Have they found Mr. Oates yet? I saw them taking away poor Jack Fishlock. . . ."

  She looked down at the washing in the basket.

  "Have to do all my own washing these days. Can't get help and my husband won't have the laundry. Washing your stuff along with other people's, he says, isn't hygienic. So . . ."

  She was trying to convince him that this wasn't the sort of thing she'd been used to. It was her husband's fault.

  "When did you last see Mr. Oates, Mrs. . . ."

  "Mrs. Burditt. My husband's the Clerk to the R.D.C. You know him. . . ."

  "Of course. When did you last see Oates, Mrs. Burditt?"

  She had it all pat.

  "His wife's death turned his brain, if you ask me. Always together. For a week or two after she was buried, he seemed all right. I saw him about the place and spoke to him. He was busy keeping the garden straight. Then, of a sudden, he shut himself up indoors. I never saw him again in the daylight. The chimney was smoking and the milk taken in and I saw someone inside the house when I passed now and then. He didn't seem to want anybody about. I called and knocked to see if he was all right. There was somebody in . . . you know how you can tell . . . you sort of feel it. After all we've done for them. . . . "

  "How long ago was that?"

  "His wife was buried in February. He shut himself up about the end of March."

  "You can't think of any reason?"

  "He'd gone queer."

  "And when Oates finally disappeared altogether, did anybody see him go?"

  "Yes. The local constable, Mee, says he saw him on his way to the station very early, and the porter says he caught the first train. He didn't speak to either of them. Didn't even book a ticket. . . ."

  "Oates didn't let you know he was going away?"

  "No. The milk-boy got a note. 'Gone Abroad' it said. That proves Mr. Oates had gone off his head. To go abroad without a word, like that. . . . It's not natural."

  It wasn't natural. That was true about the whole set-up. Why murder the meter-man on top of it all and convert himself into a hunted man? That explained, of course, why Oates had fled. He'd got a dead man on his hands and didn't know what to do with him. He'd gone queer and was turning his assets into cash. But, no. That wouldn't do. Somebody else had done that by forging Oates's name. . . .

  "Were you wanting anything else?"

  "Eh? Oh, no, thanks. I'll just go in and take a look round."

  "Me and my husband are looking out for another house. I can't stand it here any longer. After what's gone on, the place seems haunted. It ruined everything for us. We hoped to settle here after Jim retires, but this has spoiled it all."

  "Just one more thing, Mrs. Burditt. P.C. Mee tells me he knew where the key for the back door was hidden. The Oateses used to ask him to keep an eye on things when they were away or out and told him where the key was to be found in case of emergency."

  Mrs. Burditt bridled and put her hands firmly on her hips.

  "Yes; and I didn't like that. We were living here before the Oateses and we did all we could to be good neighbours and help them to get settled nicely. For all that, they couldn't trust us with the key to look round the place when they were away. It was Mrs. Oates, of course. Some women can't bear other women to see in their houses when they're not there themselves. But it wasn't right to let the bobby have the key and not us. . . ."

  "What I was asking was, did Fishlock know where the key was hidden?"

  "Yes. He called a time or two to read the meter and found nobody in. It's a long way to keep coming. So they told him, too. Neither Fishlock nor Mee would tell us. Not that I asked them; just hinted. Yes, Jack could get in. Everybody trusted Jack except his wife."

  She smiled to herself. Poor Fishlock must have had winning ways with the women!

  Montacute left Mrs. Burditt pegging the clothes on the line. He entered the house with the key he had brought. The place smelled of chloride of lime. Poor Fishlock! The Inspector walked round from room to room, eyeing this and that, gently touching objects as he passed. The house was terribly quiet in a ghastly way. He had known it at its best. He'd passed it in his car, driving his wife and little girl and boy for picnics in the country. The road led to some nice spots. They'd always said how lovely the garden looked and what a happy house it seemed to be. They'd wondered how it got its name, too. Now, more dreadful things even than Jack Fishlock's murder had gone on here. The very walls seemed impregnated with evil influence and terror.

  Montacute, his imagination smoothly running, shivered.

  Mrs. Oates. . . . They said she'd been under the do
ctor for stomach ulcers quite a while before she died. Then, one day, she'd been taken ill at the Women's Institute and died two days later. Finloe Oates, alone in the house, brooding, trying to forget in an orgy of gardening, and then going under. Shut himself up like a hermit and refused to see anyone. Meanwhile, someone started to forge his name and filch away his savings from the bank. Yet, the letters were dispatched from Shenandoah and the bank addressed its replies there. Surely, in that case, Oates was bound to find out what was going on. . . .

  The house seemed to be trying to give an answer to the riddle. Some little thing, a clue to the mystery.

  Montacute was in the kitchen. The experts had gone over it all and left things as they found them. The Inspector turned his head from side to side and took it all in, like a moving camera. All the cooking utensils, pans, pots . . . a pair of rubber gloves on the draining board. He picked them up. Fingerprints! Then it dawned on him—swept over him like a swift revelation.

  Why had Finloe Oates neglected his garden, suddenly lost all interest in it? Why had nobody seen him properly, although they said he was indoors all the time and signs of life went on in the bungalow? Why no recent fingerprints; instead, Oates had worn gloves?

  Because it wasn't Oates!