Death in Dark Glasses (Inspector Littlejohn)

by George Bellairs

  "Drew a blank. It seems he wasn't in it at all."

  "And the letters to the bank, the ones about the sales of securities and the like, and the one asking for the Will? You sent them to the Yard?"

  "Yes. They weren't written by Lysander. It just beats me. How many of them were buzzing round Finloe's fortune? There must have been a whole gang of them."

  "Certainly Lysander must have had a partner, if there are two lots of handwriting involved. It looks as if Lysander could just manage a rather successful copy of his brother's name, but fought shy of a full letter and had to get somebody more skilled at forgery to do it for him. Now if Gamaliel . . . But you say he wasn't in it?"

  "That's right."

  "Funny; damned funny. I'd better make a note of this."

  Cromwell, ever on the alert with his little black book, did it for Littlejohn.

  Bank drafts: Endorsements forged by Lysander Oates.

  Cheque: Also forged by Lysander.

  Letters: Written by somebody who wrote Finloe's hand well, but not by Lysander.

  "What about the postal receipts the postman said were signed for registered packets?"

  "They're finding them. Lord knows how long they'll take."

  "Any luck with Lysander yet?" asked Montacute.

  "Not a thing. He seems to have disappeared completely. He said he was going abroad, but the ports, airports, shipping offices have been combed without result. The Passport Office says he doesn't hold a current passport in his own name and the banks haven't arranged any currency permits for him. He's somewhere in the country, alive or dead. . . ."

  "Dead! You think . . . ?"

  "Well, he had a confederate, judging from the forgeries; so anything might have happened. Shall we see what Florrie Judson has to say?"

  Cromwell and Littlejohn strolled into the Naked Man at Netherby and asked for a pint of ale each. No doubt about it, the barmaid who served them was very attractive for those who liked them that way. Tall, well-built, full-bosomed, self-possessed, with painted nails and fair hair, assisted by peroxide. She looked a bit down in the mouth, probably because the papers had, that day, given an account of what they called "The Horror at Shenandoah".

  The landlord, a little chap like a jockey and dressed to match, kept a wary eye on the two strangers. He'd been killing a few pigs on the sly in the outbuildings and his conscience pricked him at the sight of anybody who might be from the police or the Ministry of Food.

  "Miss Judson?"

  The barmaid started as Littlejohn addressed her. It was a long time since anyone had addressed her by her Sunday name. It was either Florrie, Ducks or Lovely. She patted her bright hair waves.

  "Yes. What do you want?"

  She looked on tenterhooks and evidently expected something or someone to call about recent events.

  "Police. May we have a quiet word with you somewhere?"

  Mr. Chubleigh, the landlord, almost rushed forward and said "Isn't it me you want?" but stopped himself just in time. His bloodshot eyes rolled up and down the two detectives.

  "Go in the office with 'em, Flo. I'll take over."

  Not that there was much to take over; the place was deserted. Florrie led them into a small room behind the bar, where a rickety roll-top desk, a stack of papers, some betting dailies and a lot of racing pictures fastened on the walls with drawing-pins, indicated that Mr. Chubleigh was in the habit of retiring to balance his accounts, pick winners and meditate, and asked them to "be seated, please". She reserved a special form of affected speech for callers above the average.

  Florrie closed the door, greatly to the annoyance of Mr. Chubleigh, who was anxious to know what it was all about and was hanging round within earshot, breathing on glasses and polishing them with a dirty cloth. She eyed them up and down without speaking.

  "I'm sorry to bother you, Miss Judson, but it's about the late Mr. Finloe Oates. You knew him?"

  In answer, Florrie began to cry. It started with dry undulations of her unctuous bosom, rippled along her firm white throat, and flowed from her mouth in a long howl. At the same time, large tears like minute glass marbles formed and rolled one after another down her plump cheeks and off the end of her shapely chin. She seemed to be having it all to herself, too, as though nobody were there. Hugging a little sad secret and weeping over it.

  "Yes, I knew him," she gulped at length. "He was a friend of mine and very good to me. What I'll do now, I don't know. . . . "

  She hadn't yet reached the handkerchief stage. Her face was wet all over as if she'd just raised it from a washbowl.

  "Excuse me. . . . "

  She fished in the pocket of the smart and remarkably becoming scarlet jacket she was wearing over her dark blue silk frock and took out a ridiculously small handkerchief, which she applied dexterously and to good purpose.

  "What were you wantin'?"

  "Just this, Miss Judson: what were the relations between you and Mr. Oates . . . ?"

  Florrie had forgotten her grief. She was just working herself up into a state of passionate indignation.

  "Now don't misunderstand me, Miss Judson. . . . "

  "I should think not, indeed! I may be a barmaid, but I'm respectable. And I'd rather stop a barmaid than do what some do I could mention. Not that I haven't had the chance. . . . "

  They didn't know what to say to all this rigmarole. Whatever they replied would probably be wrong. They let her go on.

  "Mr. Oates and me was just good friends. Not that we couldn't 'ave been more. He was very fond of me, I'll admit it, and not ashamed of it. But 'let's keep it straight and above board, Finloe,' I told him, and he respected me for it."

  "He must have done, because he left you sole heir by his Will."

  Instead of lifting her up, the news cast her down. She didn't want to know how much or why; she was just overcome by the idea that somebody thought so much of her. She wept again.

  "I didn't want his money. I swear it. Oh, you can have plenty of men of a sort, out for all they can get. But you're lucky when you find somebody who loves and respects you for what you are. He wanted to marry me. . . . "

  She said it with pride, quite forgetting all else, and then realised what she'd said.

  "When was that?"

  "After the first Mrs. Finloe died. When else? What do you think I am . . . ?"

  "He was in love with you before his wife died?"

  "Yes. She was an invalid, he said, and nagged and bullied and didn't understand him. . . ."

  The old, old story!

  "And he fell in love with you and wanted to marry you?"

  "He told me I was the only one he'd ever loved, but he didn't propose till his wife died. Look here, what do you take us for? We wasn't all that bad. We just loved one another, that's all, and I'm proud we did. Now he's dead. . . ."

  It trailed off like a melodrama.

  "And he remembered me in his Will. That's wonderful of him. Though it won't be much. He said he only just managed to make ends meet. . . ."

  Littlejohn thought of the ten thousand pounds which had been spirited away and which would come to Florrie if he recovered it. It might come to far worse people than her, but he couldn't tell her any more than she already knew, except . . .

  "I ought to tell you, someone embezzled all Mr. Finloe's money and we're out to find it and who did it. Can you help?"

  "What! They stole his money and him hardly cold . . . ?"

  She still thought of it as Oates's, not as her own, it seemed.

  "The dirty rotters. If I could only lay my hands . . ."

  But she shrugged them helplessly. She didn't know a thing, she said.

  "I never went to his 'ouse. It wouldn't have been right and him with a wife there. He asked me to marry him after she died, but we kept it a secret till a respectable time after and I never went up to see the home he said would be mine. It wouldn't 'ave been right to the dead, so soon after. . . . "

  "And then, shortly after his wife's burial, Finloe Oates disappeared . .
. went out of circulation. He made no effort to see you, did he?"

  "I 'aven't seen him since the end of March."

  "Tell me what happened between his wife's death and the last time you saw him."

  "We'd been in the habit of meetin' just after dark in the little wood behind his house. Nobody ever saw us, as far as we knew. Nobody talked about us and you may be sure they would 'ave if they'd known. After Mrs. O. died, we met as usual, twice a week till the end of March, when suddenly, Finloe stopped comin'. I didn't know what to think. I went a time or two and still he didn't come to the old place."

  "Then what?"

  "I made some inquiries, discreet, you know, but nobody'd seen him. All I got to know was from the postman that Finloe 'ad shut 'imself up and wasn't comin' out. I went up to the bungalow after dark two or three times. Then, I plucked up courage and rang the bell, though there was no light showin'. They said he was indoors in the day, but I wouldn't dare go in daylight, with the women on the road always peepin' round the curtains. I'm sure there was nobody in the bungalow when I went. No wonder. 'E was dead. . . ."

  She wept bitterly again.

  Florrie was an amazingly ingenuous girl. She seemed to think it right to tell the police all her private affairs with Finloe Oates. As though they'd already been husband and wife at the time he vanished.

  "Did Finloe Oates ever tell you he was interested in going abroad?"

  "No. He'd made his money abroad, but said he never wanted to leave the old country again. He'd be content if he got me."

  "You mean, if his wife died. . . . Did he say he wished she were dead?"

  Florrie was up in arms at once. A real burst of maternal pugnacity.

  "Don't you DARE! He never said such a thing. He said he wished he'd waited till he found me, but never once did he so much as hint . . . "

  "All right, Miss Judson. . . ."

  To address her by her Sunday name seemed like pouring oil on troubled waters; it reminded Florrie that she ought to behave appropriately, like a lady.

  "After Finloe Oates ceased seeing you, did you ever see him at all . . . in the distance . . . any message?"

  "Not a thing. He just vanished without a word. I thought he'd tired of me. But it seems he didn't. . . ."

  Littlejohn stepped in before there were more tears.

  "How did you first meet?"

  "Here. He used to come down every night just before supper for a pint of beer. We got friendly. He seemed lonely and in need of a friend. . . ."

  There was nothing much more to do at the Naked Man. The landlord bustled up to them as they entered the bar again, eager to know what had been going on. They just bade him good-day.

  "They're just buryin' poor Jack Fishlock. . . . "

  There was a chapel opposite the inn, a small place, gaunt and cheerless, with a lot of tumbledown old gravestones in the ground which surrounded it. Fishlock had been declared murdered by person or persons unknown, and now they were putting him to rest. A thin knot of mourners, all stiff and self-conscious in their best black, gathered round a grave under the warty poplars. The widow, supported by two men, was with them. The weather was now sultry with a threat of thunder in the air. A sense of foreboding. . . .

  "Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live . . . and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow. . . . In the midst of life we are in death. . . . "

  The dry, shrill voice of the thin, starved-looking clergyman in white tie, frock coat and with white whiskers, rang round the centre of the village. Everything grew silent.

  " . . . For now I shall sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be. . . ."

  Finloe Oates might not have been murdered, but Jack Fishlock . . . well . . . there was no doubt about his fate. Poor Fishlock, who had called to read the meter at the wrong time.

  7

  NELLIE FORTY

  RAILWAY TERRACE, Norbury, was, as its name indicated, a row of cottages facing the main line. Half the row was in ruins after a German bomb hit it. The remainder was as neat as a new pin, with little squares of garden, peculiarly cultivated, in front. There was keen rivalry among the tenants in the way of gardening. A greenhouse occupied practically the whole patch which fronted one cottage; another raised vegetables of agricultural-show proportions; a third was set out in neat flower-beds and quaint rustic erections, whilst next door, the man grew roses on every scrap of ground and in as much of the air above the earth as he could conveniently reach. The late Mr. Forty had gone one better and built a tortuous rock-garden of whitewashed clinkers, old drain-pipes and carved paving-stones. Mrs. Forty carried on the good work in spite of failing health, and it was among a lot of nasturtiums sprouting from the tops of drain-pipes full of soil that Littlejohn found her.

  "Let me get rid of this lot first and then tell me what you want . . ." she said, and she indicated a basinful of nasturtium seeds.

  "I always raise me own seed. Believe it or not, these seeds come from those as Mr. Forty planted with his own hands when he brought me here years and years ago. It cheers me up to think of 'em still being here. . . ."

  A buxom, healthy-looking old lady was Nellie, on the small side, with shrivelled apple cheeks and brown eyes. She wore her white hair in a bun and was dressed in a black bodice and old-fashioned long skirt. She was bad on her feet.

  The front door of the cottage was open, and Nellie invited Littlejohn to come inside. It was a two-up and two-down place at the very end of the row. Along the side was a railed enclosure wherein the late Forty had, in his day, erected a stable and cart-shed, for he was a carrier. His widow now let these appendages to a rag-and-bone dealer and all the time Littlejohn was there, you could hear the tenant talking loudly and amicably to his donkey.

  "That's my girl . . ." as though the ass needed reassuring.

  The living-room was full of old-fashioned furniture, bought second-hand even when Forty brought home his bride. Nellie must have spent a lot of time with dusters and furniture cream, for you could see your face in the sideboard, the cushions slid uncomfortably about on the polished wood and leather of the chairs, and the linoleum was so highly glazed that it paid you best to hop from one to another of the home-made rugs which dotted the floor. Nellie sat down heavily and invited Littlejohn to make himself comfortable in a chair opposite her own.

  "I'm all right, except for my bunions," she said, apropos of nothing much. "And they'll be the death of me. I can't walk far because of 'em. Result is, I'm gettin' fat and the doctor says that's not good for me heart and chest. Yes, it's me bunions as'll carry me off."

  She laughed a hearty, wheezy laugh.

  "I never asked you what you wanted. I'm gettin' that way. Forgetful. . . . What was you wantin'?"

  Littlejohn told her who he was and why he had called. She confessed she'd thought he was somebody trying to sell something. They often called and she always asked them in for a bit of company.

  "It's about Finloe, isn't it? I read about it in the papers. Had a right good cry about it, I did, and then got over it. I suppose he died of heartbreak after he lost Marion."

  "Perhaps he did, Mrs. Forty, but they found his body in a pond behind the bungalow, you know."

  "I saw it. They said somebody must have murdered him and thrown in the body. Now why would they want to do that?"

  "For his money, no doubt."

  "Did they now. . . . "

  In her young days, Nellie had been a masterful, high-spirited girl. Many a man would have given his eyes to possess her before Forty arrived with his horse and trap and carried her off. He had treated her well, too, but his death from a long and dreadful complaint had taught his patient wife that nothing thereafter was too terrible for life to offer or for humans to bear with fortitude and now, all passion spent, she accepted whatever came with calm fatalism.

  "Lysander's missing, too. We want to find him."

  "I haven't seen either of 'em for many a long time
. They wrote to me at Christmas and on my birthday. I nursed them both as babies and stayed with the family till I wed Mr. Forty. After Forty was took, I did a bit for them both now and then, till I guess they didn't want their old Nellie any more."

  "I'm sorry to say that everything points to Lysander having robbed his dead brother's estate. Then he disappeared and hasn't been seen or heard of since."

  "He wouldn't rob his brother unless there was good reasons. Finloe must have left his money to some silly or other. He always was the most foolish of the two. They was both good boys, though. A nice family, if you ask me. Mr. and Mrs. Oates, the father and mother of the two boys, brought me up. Took me from an orphanage and was wonderful kind to me. I might have been one of their own. Then, I looked after the children when they came. Those boys wouldn't have harmed one another for the world."

  "They were on good terms, then?"

  "Always. They had a fight about Marion, I remember. Both wanted her. She lived a few doors away from the family. Balham, we lived in then. All the boys of the neighbourhood wanted Marion. Pretty as a picture, with blue eyes and long fair hair. And she chose Finloe of them all. Might have done better. . . . A doctor called Malone was after her and young Will Hazlett, the lawyer, but she chose Finloe. . . ."

  "Hazlett?"

  "Yes. His father was the family solicitor and Will followed him. Will never married when Marion turned him down."

  "You mean Mr. Hazlett in Pimlico?"

  "The same. . . ."

  Marion had chosen Finloe, then. And when she grew older and her looks faded, Finloe turned to Florrie Judson. Well, well.

  "He made all our Wills, my own included. Not that I've much, but I've no intentions of it goin' to my goodfor-nothin' next-of-kin who'll drink it all away and are waiting for me to pass on and let them . . ."

  "There was murder connected with Mr. Finloe's death, too. An electricity meter-man was found killed in the house. . . ."

  "Was he now? God rest 'im. But neither of my boys would do that. No. Kind to animals, kind to 'umans, I always say, and those boys was always fond of animals."