The Body in the Dumb River

by George Bellairs

  ‘Are you confined indoors all the time, sir?’

  ‘No. I go out in the car now and then in the daytime. But I’m whacked at night. Had enough. Spend the evenin’s indoors.’

  What a life! The coal fire was half-way up the chimney, scorching everything within two yards of the fireplace. The room smelled stuffy and airless. The reek of whisky hung heavily about the place. And Major Scott-Harris… Theobald Scott-Harris according to the inscription on a plate screwed to a clock on the mantelpiece… It wasn’t going and had been presented to him by his fellow J.P.s on the Basilden bench in 1948.

  Scott-Harris began to struggle in his chair and before Littlejohn quite realised what he was doing, he was on his feet. He looked far worse upright than reclining. Huge, monstrously corpulent, sagging with his own weight. He wobbled to the sideboard, unlocked a drawer with a key from his pocket, and produced a box of cigars.

  ‘Have one. Got to lock ’em up. Ryder’s too fond of cigars…’

  He cut and lit one himself and Littlejohn did the same. He didn’t feel like it on an empty stomach, but it was something to do.

  ‘As I said, I’m glad you came. It’s been a bit of company for me. Couldn’t have stood the local police. If I’d still been on the bench, I’d have smartened them up. As it is, they’d have called with a lot of silly questions, written ’em down in a book, asked me to sign it, and then gone off without a word of thanks.’

  ‘They’re busy these days, sir. So much petty crime and violence about and too few constables to attend to it. They do their best.’

  ‘Might have known you’d take their side. However, I still have my own ideas…’

  Scott-Harris puffed his cigar and his head slowly nodded. Before Littlejohn realised what had happened, the old man was asleep. The cigar fell from his fingers and Littlejohn picked it up from the threadbare carpet and put it safely in an ash-tray. The Major was snoring quietly, his mouth open.

  Littlejohn looked around him. A pretty kettle of fish! All alone in the house with the owner asleep, alternating his snores with the ticking of the clock in the corner.

  Out-of-date furniture in heavy Victorian style. More trophies from the Far East on the walls. A cavalry sabre, crossed swords, and some daggers. Funny stuff for a non-regular soldier to collect. But perhaps Scott-Harris liked to give the impression that he’d travelled far. On the mantelpiece in a wooden frame a photograph of a young man with a long, eager face and a pleasant smile, dressed as a Second Lieutenant of the last war. On the other, a portrait of a sad-eyed woman, who must have been Mrs. Scott-Harris. It was fading in a nimbus of photographic chemicals. Perhaps the work of her late son-in-law, Teasdale.

  The Superintendent wondered what to do. If he left the old man asleep, he might easily turn and fall in the fire. Or perhaps this was what happened every evening after Ryder had gone for his night out. Scott-Harris made himself half-drunk and then fell asleep until the man wakened him on his return.

  The problem was solved by the noise of footsteps approaching the front door. A key was inserted in the lock and the door creaked open.

  Littlejohn met the newcomer on the mat. A little thin man in a coat a size too large for him and a black slouch hat. The light of the hall lit up his bright dark eyes and his cheeky expression. About fifty or thereabouts, with a thin hatchet face, a mean mouth, and a large nose, once broken and badly set. Probably the man who filched Scott-Harris’s cigars and, when he’d the chance, his whisky as well.

  ‘Hullo… Been callin’?’

  ‘Good evening. I’ve just been to see Major Scott-Harris. My name’s Littlejohn. Superintendent Littlejohn, of Scotland Yard.’

  The man whistled.

  ‘So they’ve got the Yard in already. I heard about Jimmie Teasdale’s murder. Bit of a surprise, isn’t it?’

  ‘Major Scott-Harris is asleep, so I thought I’d better leave him in peace.’

  ‘Been giving him a grilling?’

  ‘That’s no business of yours, Ryder.’

  ‘Sorry. He often falls off and I find him sleepin’ off his whisky by the fire when I get in. Lucky I got back early tonight. I’ve just been an errand. Finished your business with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he treat you civil?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s a tartar if he takes a dislike to anybody.’

  ‘Does he get out much, or is he mainly confined indoors?’

  ‘He goes out in the car now and then. Wonderfully active, considerin’ his age and his bulk. Always stays in of an evenin’. Likes it by the fire with his glass. By the time it gets six o’clock, he’s after the whisky, though I must say, he rarely touches it in the day, except with his lunch. A man of routine, is the major.’

  ‘I’m just on my way.’

  ‘The police car’s waitin’ for you, there. It must be something important if they’ve got you chaps from the Yard on it. Why anybody should want to murder Jimmie Teasdale, I can’t think. Always liked him although the gov’nor didn’t. Couldn’t stand the sight of him. Only last week-end, he showed him the door, after they’d had a row. I don’t know what it was about, but the gov’nor took on badly with him. The major always said Jimmie was a no-good. I didn’t agree with him. I always thought Jimmie did his best. A chap can’t do more, can he?’

  The voice had a whining note and Ryder had an unpleasant habit of thrusting his face close to Littlejohn’s as he spoke. His breath was heavy with beer.

  Littlejohn had had enough. He opened the door and let himself out, made for the waiting car, and left Ryder standing on the mat.

  It was raining now and the gas-lamps threw long shafts of light across the wet roads and pavements. In a public hall a few doors away they were dancing and the blare of saxophones came through the open door. In Scott-Harris’s garden some cats were fighting and, in their citadel, somewhere in the darkness, the Salvation Army band were playing Onward, Christian Soldiers.

  5

  Family Council

  The police car drew up at the shop in High Street. A vehicle and driver had been ordered for Littlejohn at the police station and he had arranged to take Mrs. Teasdale and her eldest daughter with him to Ely to identify the body.

  Bertram, James’s brother, had been waiting for the Superintendent at the police station, as well. He seemed annoyed at Littlejohn for being so long away. He wasn’t a bit like the dead man. Tall, beefy, bull-necked, florid. He’d been described as secretary of the local Water Board, but he didn’t seem a good advertisement for their products. His nose was large and glowing. Maybe he took water with his whisky, but it was unlikely, judging from the results. He was bald and very conscious of it. He was rarely seen without his hat. Some people even suggested that he slept in it.

  ‘Can we ’ush this up?’ Bertram asked Littlejohn almost at once.

  Littlejohn raised his eyebrows. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I want justice done. Who wouldn’t when his own brother’s been murdered? But all this ’oop-la business. Is it necessary to bring that in? It would embarrass the family no end.’

  ‘I think it showed your brother in a good light, Mr. Teasdale, if I may say so. He wasn’t making enough to bring up his family as he liked in his business, so he put his pride in his pocket and went off and took a job on a fairground. He’d got guts, I must say.’

  Bertram looked uneasy.

  ‘I admit that. He was only the size of six pennyworth of copper, but, as you say, he’d always got guts. He’d take on chaps twice his size when he was a kid. I grant you that. But I’m told by the police here, that there was some other woman involved. I can’t believe it. He wasn’t that sort at all. There must have been some mistake.’

  ‘It’s quite true. She helped him at the fair and took charge of his pitch for him when he came north to see his famil
y.’

  ‘Were they carryin’ on together?’

  Bertram’s nose glowed. Perhaps he was admiring his brother’s audacity, but he daren’t say so.

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir. I didn’t ask. She seemed a decent sort of woman and thought the world of your brother.’

  Bertram’s bleary eyes projected from their sockets with emotion.

  ‘He’d gone potty, I do declare. To run off and behave the way he did. But I always said what it would be. A snobby wife and three girls always nagging at him and looking down on him, and old Scott-Harris bullying him about not making a success of his life. It drove him round the bend.’

  ‘Wasn’t he happily married?’

  Bertram shrugged his heavy shoulders.

  ‘He never said as much. He was always loyal to Elvira. But the tastes she had and the extravagant way she brought up the girls… It was scandalous. He borrowed money from me now and then. He paid it off later, after he got…well…he said he was travelling for a Manchester business house. He was travellin’, too! To some tune, he was. ’Oop-la and livin’ with another woman. I never heard anythin’ like it!’

  He looked puzzled and melancholy now. As though he’d got the sack from the waterworks!

  ‘You don’t like the Scott-Harris family?’

  ‘I do not. He never ought to have got mixed-up with them. They’re a conceited lot, off nothing. Who is Scott-Harris? A major in the Territorials, that’s all. Lived on his wife’s money. Before he married her he was a penniless auctioneer, who never did another stroke of work after he wed Beatrice Dutton…’

  ‘Did James get on well with his wife’s family?’

  ‘They always looked down on him. Her father actually called him a no-good bum. He’d a lot to talk about. Elvira set her cap at James from the start. He was her only chance, if you ask me. There was a baby on the way and they had to get married.’

  Mr. Bertram Teasdale passed his hand across his lips. He felt like a drink.

  ‘Care to finish this talk over a drink at the club?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ve got to pick up Mrs. Teasdale and take her to Ely to identify her husband’s body.’

  ‘So I hear. I rang her up and offered to do it myself. After all, I’m his only brother. But, no. She was determined to go herself. It was her duty, she said. Now that James is dead, she’s suddenly begun to talk about her duty. She’d no such ideas when he was alive.’

  It ended there and Littlejohn went off to the shop.

  The door was locked but there were lights showing in the inner room. Littlejohn noticed a bell-push on the doorjamb and pressed it. He saw the door to the back room open and cast a shaft of light in the dark confusion of the deserted shop. It dimly illuminated a framed picture which looked to have been extracted from a Christmas almanac.

  It was ten o’clock and still raining. The dismal streets were quiet and the main road which passed the shop looked like a sheet of glass under the poor electric lights which hung from old disused tramway-standards overhead. A few cars passed. In the pub next door, someone was playing a tinny piano and they were singing a sentimental chorus. There’s an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean…

  The shop door opened after someone had turned the key and rattled a chain. The girl who answered must have been Christine, Teasdale’s youngest. Another bouncing wench, who took after her mother. Fair, lazy-looking, plump, easy-going.

  ‘Come in, sir.’

  More polished than the rest. Probably through associating with the best dentist in the town and his patients.

  The shop was in darkness and smelled of arts and crafts.

  In the room behind there was a babel of voices. It sounded as if, in spite of Mrs. Teasdale’s wishes, her family had descended upon her. All the girls were at home and, in addition, two women and their husbands. It was obvious that the women were Elvira’s sisters. All three of them looked alike, except that differences in age and circumstances had given them different lines of character. In fact, all six women, in some queer way, bore traces of Major Scott-Harris. No wonder James Teasdale had run away and fetched up on a fairground with Martha Gomm! It must have been more than flesh and blood could bear!

  Mrs. Teasdale ceremonially introduced Littlejohn all round. For some reason, he felt they regarded him as on their side and they treated him cordially.

  ‘I can’t understand it at all. A hoop-la stall!’

  That was Phoebe, the second sister, whose husband was reputed to be better off than the rest and who always said the first things which came to her mind. The comment was supposed to indicate to Littlejohn that James was an outsider and had disgraced the family. Chloe, the youngest of the Scott-Harris daughters, was normally fat and jolly. Now she was wearing a long face and endorsing all that Phoebe said.

  The corn-chandler was a heavy man who wore a deep white collar and a heavy watchchain across his paunch. Another bald head, with hairy ears.

  ‘I’ve always expected something of this sort from Jim. He wasn’t stable. These arty chaps are all alike.’

  Mrs. Teasdale began to sob again and mopped her eyes and red nose with a damp handkerchief.

  ‘He’s disgraced us all.’

  Not a word of sympathy for the murdered man. He might have engineered it all specially to spite them.

  The registrar of births, marriages, and deaths was sitting in the rocking-chair, heaving himself to and fro miserably.

  ‘This has put paid to the olde-tyme dancing contest,’ he suddenly said.

  The rest turned on him. He was small and dapper, with well-greased dark hair, probably discreetly dyed, and a small grey moustache. He looked like a shopwalker.

  ‘Walter!’

  His wife thought she ought to explain to Littlejohn.

  ‘We indulge in dancing to keep our weight down. We are this year’s champion pair in Basilden and are competing at the all-England festival. Now, of course… Well, it wouldn’t be right, would it?’

  The corn-chandler bit the end off a cigar, spat it in the fire, and struck a match, which he held burning in his fingers.

  ‘I’m surprised at you two, at your ages. Dancing! It’s not decent.’

  He puffed angrily at his cigar.

  The doorbell rang again and Irene answered it. Her face glowed as she went, for she thought it was the bookie who was courting her calling to express his condolences. Instead it was the potman from next door.

  ‘Major Scott-Harris has telephoned to ask if Mrs. Teasdale’s left to identify the body yet?’

  The corn-chandler looked alarmed.

  ‘Tell him, yes… We don’t want him down here, tonight. If he calls, it’ll only end up in another family row. Tell him she’s gone.’

  The potman cast a look of surprise and reproach on the chandler and left. Mr. Sam Geddes was a deacon of his chapel. The potman was disappointed in him!

  It gave Littlejohn a chance to remind Mrs. Teasdale that they’d a long night’s journey to make.

  ‘I’ve been telling Elvira that I ought to go with her, not Barbara…’

  Phoebe again! That must have been the cause of the family row which had hushed when Littlejohn entered. In reply, Barbara went from the room and returned with her hat and coat on. She was lugging a large shabby suitcase, too. From the looks of it, the pair of them intended staying at Ely for a week or two. Mrs. Teasdale regarded the suitcase with horrified eyes. It bore the initials J.T. They had used it on their honeymoon!

  ‘Not that one!’

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with it? The other’s full of winter underwear.’

  Littlejohn carried it to the car for them.

  ‘Have you had a meal, Superintendent? I’m afraid we’ve only some cold Cornish pasties to offer, but…’

  He hastily said he’d eaten. The Basilden police had given him tea and some large ham sandwiches. In any ca
se, he’d have declined. All the way to Ely on cold pasties was more than his digestion could endure!

  The departing pair were seen off by the whole family. There was kissing all round. An orgy of it. Chloe, the frisky olde-tyme dancer, looked ready to kiss Littlejohn. If she started, he’d have to go through the lot. He hurried to the car. They packed the women and their belongings and then there were more farewells. It was turning-out time at the pub next door and the send-off party was joined by a number of half-tipsy men and women, some of whom wept when they knew what was going on.

  The pious corn-chandler pronounced the benediction.

  ‘Bear up, Elvira. It’ll soon be over. God bless you. We’ll look after everything…’

  It was a nightmare journey. There were several diversions on the way in places where the roads were under water. The rain had ceased but they passed flooded fields and swollen rivers all along the route. The pair on the back seat seemed to sleep fitfully. Now and then, one of them would come to life.

  ‘Where are we? How long yet?’

  They stopped about half a dozen times, when Mrs. Teasdale got out, saying she had cramp.

  ‘I’ve always been troubled with it. Sometimes, I’ve thought I’d die with it. For nights on end, James had to get up with me and walk me up and down; it was so bad.’

  Night and day, poor Teasdale seemed to have had no peace!

  They reached Ely at breakfast time. Cromwell was waiting for Littlejohn at the police station. It was like a tonic to see him after the horror of the journey. Littlejohn lit the pipe he hadn’t been able to smoke on the way. Mrs. Teasdale, it seemed, had a sensitive throat. She’d told him so as soon as she’d seen him filling his pipe. She looked years older and was dishevelled from the journey. On the other hand, the dark misty patches under Barbara’s eyes gave her a mysterious added oriental charm, as though she’d been using mascara.

  ‘Where have they put him?’

  Barbara was impatient with her mother and snapped her up.

  ‘What about some breakfast first?’

  Both women ate a good meal of bacon and eggs, after which Mrs. Teasdale was ready for business.