But he made it obvious that he did not propose to conduct the interview. He did not even sit down, but stood near the door, with his hand on the knob.
Mrs Sturgess still had her hair over one shoulder, but she had dressed soberly, and looked as if she had had a sleepless night. Brian Sturgess looked washed out, too: a tall man, with curly oiled hair, who was passing into fleshiness from what might have been a handsome, lady-killing youth.
He began with a forced laugh.
‘Thought I’d better come and get things sorted out, before the local bobby claps his hand on my shoulder. That would be bad for business.’
‘Half the story——or all of it?’ Wright asked Mrs Sturgess.
‘I’ve told Brian everything,’ she said in an affectedly faint voice.
Her husband put his hand hammishly on her shoulder.
‘I’ve told her: I couldn’t really expect to keep this kind of goings-on in half the family. This has done us a lot of good, sergeant——brought us together, you might say.’
‘How often did you meet Barson?’ Wright asked him.
‘Twice.’
‘Both times at your home?’
‘Yes. He wouldn’t come to the office, or meet me in public, for fear of compromising his plans.’
‘Which were?’
‘The first time, he was throwing the name of Sir Howard Lesueur about. I think you already have a rough idea of the proposition.’
‘And the second time?’
‘He dropped Sir Howard. Lesueur was just a blind to get me interested. He was quite open about it. He wanted to branch our on his own.’
‘Is it the sort of business you’d have been glad to handle?’
‘On Lesueur’s money, yes. On our own capital, and on what little Barson could have put into it, it would have been out of the question.’
‘You told him so?’
‘No. I played him along for a bit. There were other little ventures I thought he might back.’
‘Just a quickie,’ Kenworthy interrupted. ‘Did you tell this to Warren, Mrs Sturgess?’
‘More or less. He seemed to know already that Barson was trying to double-cross Lesueur. I can see now that it was a shot in the dark to get more out of me.’
‘Thank you,’ Kenworthy said, letting himself out of the door. ‘——See you, sergeant——’
Wright persevered with the interview, but it was more for the sake of form than in the hope of discovering anything new. There was nothing to be added to the picture of Warren, and Lesueur was a somewhat legendary figure, frankly beyond Sturgess’s horizon. And nothing fresh emerged about Barson, except a caricature of commercial ineptitude, which Sturgess drew with scornful relish.
Wright asked again if either of the Sturgesses had visited Fellaby before. Sturgess’s denial was as vehement as his wife’s had been.
‘You didn’t just nip over here to cast your own eye over the development site?’
‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t give this a second thought, as far as Salamander was concerned. Look here, sergeant——I thought you had a youngster under lock and key?’
‘He’s already been released. The case is still wide open, Mr Sturgess.’
Sturgess looked bewildered.
‘We know where to find you, if we want you, Mr Sturgess. If you think of anything else you think we ought to know, you know how to contact us.’
The Sturgesses crept out like souls in limbo. Wright closed his notebook. There was hardly any point in recording the interview. Kenworthy had already seized the only relevant point, and that merely confirmed his own hypothesis.
‘Sarge!’
The constable’s head appeared again.
‘Yes?’
‘Someone else to see you. I suggested he should wait for superintendent Kenworthy, but he seemed to want to get on with it. Says it’s urgent. He refuses to talk to any of our own officers.’
Wright looked at the portly, elderly man who stood hesitant in the doorway, wrapped in a thick grey overcoat, with a homeknitted woollen scarf visible under its collar. He was hatless, his iron grey hair was cut short all over his large head, and he was wearing round, tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles of pre-war pattern.
‘Do come in,’ Wright said.
The newcomer held out his hand.
‘You’re one of the officers from Scotland Yard? Working on this terrible business of alderman Barson? I always like to know who it is I’m dealing with.’
He spoke with deliberation, in full, north country vowels.
‘I’m sergeant Wright. Superintendent Kenworthy is out at the moment. He’s not likely to be back before lunch, perhaps not even then. I know he’s heavily committed all day.’
‘Aye, well, I expect you’ve all got plenty to do, and I’ll not keep you long. Only I haven’t been able to sleep for nights. I had to come and see someone about it. My name’s Durkin——Albert Durkin——Councillor Albert Durkin. You’ll have heard of me. People will have talked.’
Wright indicated facially that he had heard of the man.
‘Aye, well, it’ll depend on who you’ve talked to, what you’ll have heard. I’m a self-educated man, sergeant. I’ve served the welfare of this borough to the best of my ability, almost since I was a boy. And a few of them may have laughed at me, because I’ve never had the taste or the training for wrapping things up in fine-sounding phrases. But I was always taught to be honest.’
He put his hand inside his coat and brought out two foolscap envelopes, stamped and addressed in the meticulous copper-plate of the Edwardian copy-books.
‘I’m a ruined man, sergeant Wright. This one’s to the town clerk, resigning from the Council. This one’s to my own party secretary, apologising for the harm I’ll have done them——and likewise resigning——after more than forty years, thirty-eight of them in one unpaid office or another.’
He left the letters lying on the table.
‘I’d half a mind to ask you to post them for me. But that’s something I must do for myself.’
Durkin picked up the letters and tapped a nervous tattoo with their edges.
‘It’s useless dithering like this,’ he said. ‘One minute you’re one of the town’s leading citizens——they were just talking of making me an alderman, you know. The next moment, you find you’ve cut all the ground from under your own feet. I’ll come to the point, sergeant.——It’s those paving-slabs, from the Highways Department——I had a dozen of them for my own gardenpath.’
‘At the same time as alderman Barson?’
‘Aye.’
Wright felt obliged to give him a formal verbal caution.
‘Though actually, this will have to go to inspector Malpas. He’s handling this particular case.’
‘Aye——Malpas.’
Durkin stared in front of him.
‘Well——Malpas and I know each other well enough. Known each other for years.——I’ll ask you to do one thing for me, if you wouldn’t mind.——Have a word with Malpas first, will you——just so I don’t have to start from the beginning with him?’
‘I’ll do that, certainly.’
Wright wondered whether this were an instance where Kenworthy might have operated the Nelson touch. Malpas had discovered no ramifications. The men on the corporation lorry had said nothing about Durkin. The quantity surveyor had asked for no additional cases to be taken into consideration. Durkin’s confession was the only thing that could lead to his undoing. But the peccadillo was too near to the heart of the main case to be canalised into oblivion. Once it arrived in Malpas’s hands, there could only be one outcome. And, in any case, there was no telling what the town clerk’s internal researches might reveal.
‘You’ll be thinking it’s funny,’ Durkin said, ‘me working hand in glove with Barson. I expect you’ll know that we two were always going hammer and tongs at each other. But we weren’t fools enough not to be on speaking terms, when there was no political issue between us——which was rare enough. B
arson was always friendly with the yard foreman. He offered me those slabs——oh, don’t think I’m trying to shelter behind him——I’m telling you this, just so you’ll be able to carry away a fair angle on my character——for what that’s worth. Barson said they were faulty material——couldn’t be used. Couldn’t be returned to the manufacturers, either. And no charge to the ratepayers. I let myself believe it, as a sop to my conscience——but I knew, in my heart of hearts, of course, it wasn’t true. And it’s clear to me now, why Barson cut me in on it——though may the good Lord forgive me for suggesting such a thing. If the deal had gone wrong, he’d either stopped the mouths of the political opposition——or he’d have brought my side down with him.’
‘We’ve been left with no illusions about Barson,’ Wright said.
‘No, perhaps not. But I was his critic, not his judge. I knew Barson and his background long before he came into politics, even before he went into the army. It was rough, sergeant Wright. It was the sort of thing, thank God, that we’re coming near to extirpating from English society. It was the sort of thing that would have made most men join my party. I used to tell Barson he belonged to us. He didn’t see it that way. I’m sure he was wrong, but he had to be where he thought he could be most active. He had to hit out——hit out hard and all the time. Often he wasn’t too particular who got hurt in the process. Neither was I, in my early days. It’s a strange thing, sergeant Wright, what a similarity you might find between Barson and this lad who killed him. I’ve known Chick Stanway since he played in the gutter——Barson’s gutter.’
‘The news hasn’t travelled round, yet, then,’ Wright said. ‘We’re no longer holding Stanway.’
‘Oh?——Does that mean you’ve got someone else? Or are you as far from it as ever?’
‘We have some ideas.’
Durkin looked into space. Wright could see that his mind was running over the possibilities. A man like Durkin knew Fellaby probably better than the town clerk——better than Grayling, Dunne, Putty, Lenny, or the rest of them put together.
‘It’s no use,’ he said suddenly. ‘I don’t belong here any more.’
‘Nevertheless, there are one or two highways and byways on which I’d value your opinion.’
‘You can have it——for what it’s worth.’
‘Did this man Warren——the famous character in the green hat——call on you?’
‘No. I’d have told him where to go. It’s fairly obvious what he was up to.’
‘Oh?’
‘Collecting gossip.’
‘On whose behalf?’
‘His own, like as not.’
‘You know him, do you?’
‘I know of him. We’re near enough to Bradcaster.’
‘Blackmail, do you think?’
‘What else?’
Suddenly, Wright knew that he was a man he could trust.
‘Do you think he might have been blackmailing Lesueur?’ he asked.
‘Now, young man, you know that asking a question like that can only bring out the worst in me.’
‘All the same——’
‘He might.’
‘About what?’
‘I’m not guessing.’
‘About Lesueur and Barson and the redevelopment plan for the High Street? Would that surprise you?’
Durkin cleared his throat contemptuously.
‘We knew all about that, on our side. We’d have been ready for them, sergeant.’
‘Would you say Colonel Hawley was tarred with the same brush as Lesueur?’
Durkin gave a little chuckle.
‘My bitterest enemy, in theory. I’ve said Bill Hawley is the best socialist the Tories have got. He’s saved many a man from the worst Lesueur might have done for him.’
‘Did you know that Barson’s affairs at home were not all they might have been?’
‘I don’t listen to gossip.’
‘That he was keeping a woman at Kirby-le-Dale?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me. But I’d regard it as Barson’s business, not mine.’
‘Warren made it his business, too. So he did the fact that Barson was married to Lesueur’s illegitimate daughter.’
‘She wasn’t,’ Durkin said, looking enigmatic.
‘Who wasn’t?’
‘Enid Sawyer wasn’t Lesueur’s illegitimate daughter. A lot of people thought that. I know different.’
‘And what do you know?’
‘I’ve already told you, sergeant——I don’t gossip.’
‘But this is the one link in the chain that we lack.’
‘The last knot you want for the rope, you mean.——Besides, it doesn’t follow, sergeant.’
‘What doesn’t follow?’
‘That Enid’s father killed Barson.’
‘No. But it’s an interesting thought.’
‘That’s why I’m saying nowt.’
Durkin brought out the north country negative with an impact of decisive finality. And Wright knew that it was final.
‘Because too much trouble in this world is caused, sergeant, by people having interesting thoughts. Can we go and see Dick Malpas now?’
The old man rose, simple-minded and obstinate, as determined to keep his piece of vital information to himself as he was to rule Finis at the end of his political career.
‘You wait here,’ Wright said. ‘I’ll go and see the inspector.’
Kenworthy would know for a certainty whether to put the pressure on Durkin. And if the pressure had to be put on, Kenworthy was the one to do it. Wright went to see Malpas, and the inspector was irritated at this unexpected postscript to what he had considered a tidy little case.
‘Oh, gawd!’ he said, with abortive comicality. ‘Does the town clerk know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘This will break his heart. All right, sergeant. Thank you. I’ll go up and see Albert.’
There was nothing more for Wright to do in the police station. He went over to the Report Centre and found the skeleton staff idle almost to the point of immobility. It was time the Report Centre was wound up; but such decisions were not for Wright even to consider.
He wondered whether Durkin himself might be the girl’s father. But even allowing for the oddest quirks in the old man’s character, that would make it difficult to account for Barson’s meteoric rise on the wrong side of the political fence.
The town clerk, even? Sphinx-like and detached, yet shaping the outcome of every real decision made in Fellaby, he was the confidant and constitutional adviser of both sides. Servant of right and left equally, he owed nothing to either of them. Even Barson had had the sense never to attack Belfield.——Barson had never attacked Belfield.——And Belfield had been enigmatic about Enid Barson’s parentage.——He was a man whom even Barson respected——even Durkin——
Wright was cut short in his speculation by a telephone call from Kenworthy. Speaking from Fellaby Moor Hall on a bad line, the superintendent seemed remote and unusually officious.
‘Sergeant——go and check that Sir Howard was drinking after hours in the Griffin on the night of the murder.’
So Lesueur was claiming an alibi. And it did not seem a very promising assignment. No publican was going to stick his neck out. And it was unlikely that his memory would be any too precise about his own law-breaking.
The Griffin was a pretentious, artificial pub with contemporary decorations on the corner of a council estate that Wright had not visited before. The landlord looked in his engagement book.——Yes, there had been a ward party political meeting that evening, in the private bar. And Lesueur had certainly been there. It was most unusual that he should come out to one of the estates like this. But it was not unheard-of, especially when there was a bit of bother on. And there were warring factions out here, that were splitting the party down the middle. Some of the women——Oh, the meeting had broken up at about a quarter to ten, but some of the men had stayed on to drink a jar or two. After hours? Well, of cours
e, no drinks were served after, but some of the men wanted to stay on and talk. Well, it went on till just after midnight. They’d probably have been there half the night, if Bill Hawley hadn’t caught the landlord’s eye and broken the party up. A bloody nuisance, if you’d pardon the term, because the landlord and his wife needed their bed as much as anyone else. But you had to keep an eye on the future, when you were dealing with men like Lesueur.
Wright returned to the town. Lesueur was in the clear. So was Colonel Hawley. Perhaps Rhys was making better progress with Warren.
There was nothing else to do, either at the Report Centre or the police station. The morning came lamely to its end. Wright thought it as good a time as any to carry their bags from the hotel to the station. But as he handed them in at the drowsy left-luggage office, he reflected that he more than half expected to be trudging back to the hotel with them in the early evening.
Chapter Twenty
Kenworthy returned whilst Wright was queueing for liver and bacon at the police cafeteria counter.
‘You checked at the Griffin?’
‘Yes. Lesueur was there throughout the operative period.’
‘Not that he needed that to clear him,’ Kenworthy said.
Wright told him what he had learned from Durkin.
‘It makes you think, doesn’t it, Shiner?’
‘It certainly does, sir.’
‘I wonder if it makes you think what it makes me think?’
‘That depends on what you think, sir.’
Wright did not want to be cornered into voicing a suspicion that probably Kenworthy would laugh to scorn. But Kenworthy was unwilling to make the first move, either.
‘There must be hundreds of decent folk in Fellaby, Shiner. Not, of course, that it’s often our lot to move about amongst decent people. I’m hoping that Rhys will have been able to pin it on to Warren. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’re going to have to pin it on one of the few men in Fellaby decent enough to have murdered Barson.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of, too, sir.’
‘Well, come along, Shiner——who are you thinking of? As the one who will shortly be reporting to your superiors on the way you’re making out, I have the right to insist on an answer.’
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