Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  Nunn introduced them. Bilbow was well-spoken and good mannered and quite sober. He agreed that he and Mrs. Quill had always hit it off well.

  ‘She was a reasonable woman and very shrewd. She protected her money like a tigress her young. The dividends on her investments were remitted to our firm and once a quarter, I called on her and handed over the accrued amount in cash. She then put it in a cash box which she kept in a locked drawer of a little desk she had in her bedroom.’

  ‘It wasn’t there when we searched the place.’

  Bilbow shrugged his shoulders at Littlejohn’s comment.

  ‘Did you expect to find it? I hear that it was a case of robbery with violence.’

  ‘Quite right. I suppose the pair of them used the cash to live on.’

  ‘Yes. She told me so. A strange woman. From all descriptions of the life the pair of them led, you’d imagine her as a sort of mute recluse, but when I was there, she was nothing of the kind. She talked a lot, as though, after being imprisoned by her illness for so long, she craved for news of the world outside. She asked about everybody and everything.’

  ‘Anyone or anything in particular?’

  ‘“Any news, Mr. Bilbow, since last we met?” she’d say, and I’d rack my brains and tell her odds and ends I thought would interest her. She asked questions. Mainly about her old friends – most of whom were dead – and about their nephews, Tim, Jerry and Herbert. Evelyn, her niece, was her favourite and often called on her when Harry was in town. Living as she did, Mrs. Quill wasn’t at all ignorant of what was going on outside.’

  ‘Now, this is important, Mr. Bilbow; how mobile was Mrs. Quill? Could she get around the house or even outside?’

  ‘No, sir. One arm and one leg were completely out of commission. I’d imagine she could have moved short distances by struggling from her chair and then hopping along, but I never saw her do it. She was always in her chair in the kitchen when I called. I once asked her if she’d never tried a wheel-chair. She said the inside of the house was too cluttered up with furniture to navigate properly and the outside was too rough and rocky and she’d overturn. I’d imagine she could perhaps have manoeuvred herself here and there in the house when she was alone. But I know Harry Quill did a lot for her. She once told me he did most of the housework and got the meals ready. Judging from the state of the place, Harry wasn’t very adept at domestic science. It was like a slum.’

  ‘Yes; when Mrs. Quill was found after she’d raised the alarm by firing a haystack, she was on the back doorstep in the farmyard. Quite a distance for one so immobile.’

  Bilbow shook his head.

  ‘She must have crawled then. She couldn’t possibly have walked or even hopped there.’

  ‘Her husband’s body was found just outside the door of the farmhouse. As you know, we thought, as first, that it was another escapade of the gang known as the Black Lot…’

  Mr. Nunn, who had been leaving Littlejohn undisturbed to interview Bilbow and showing his lack of concern by perusing some papers on his desk with a monocle screwed in one eye, suddenly raised his eybrows and the monocle dropped to the end of its cord.

  ‘Do you think it might be a family affair?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir. We’re starting all over again.’

  Bilbow’s teeth showed through his beard.

  ‘You aren’t, by any chance, thinking Mrs. Quill murdered Harry, are you?’

  ‘It had never entered my head.’

  ‘Because she certainly didn’t. I’ve visited her professionally quite a lot, unknown to her husband, of course, and had a chance to study her and get to know her. Had she even been face to face with him, she positively wouldn’t have been able to strike him down. It’s ridiculous!’

  Mr. Nunn’s eyes opened wide again.

  ‘No need to be so damned vehement about it, Bilbow. You ought to be well aware the police have to think of every eventuality.’

  ‘She was a very decent old girl.’

  ‘Hot tempered?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Querulous at times, but who wouldn’t be, incapacitated as she was? She was a very gallant woman, who never complained about her condition or even Harry’s goings-on when he came to town. She was mentally very efficient and well able to look after her affairs.’

  ‘Did she ever ask you about Quill’s relations with Rose Coggins?’

  Bilbow paused and coughed.

  ‘I promised I wouldn’t mention that to a soul, but now she’s dead, I guess it doesn’t matter. Yes, she did. She said she’d heard, I suppose from one of her relatives, that Harry had a girl-friend in town. I said I wouldn’t know. “Find out, then,” she said. I made discreet enquiries.’

  ‘With what result?’

  ‘I made some oblique investigations in the cattle mart and pubs around …’

  A congenial task!

  ‘… It was quite well known that something was going on between Harry and Rosie, the barmaid at the Drovers Inn. She had a room over a tobacco shop in the alley behind the mart and Quill had been seen furtively entering the separate door to the upstairs premises. I went and had a drink at the Drovers. Rosie was in attendance. I thought Harry had good taste. She seemed a nice, civil decent girl. How or why she took up with Harry I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘I’ve met Rosie. I agree with you. She swore there was nothing but friendship between her and Harry Quill.’

  Mr. Nunn made a puffing noise of contempt, but Bilbow didn’t.

  ‘She may be telling the truth. Perhaps Harry was just wanting somebody to be a mother to him. Rosie would fill the bill.’

  Littlejohn lit his pipe.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Mother or mistress, she’s genuinely upset by his death and I don’t think her interest in him was a commercial one. However, I take it you reported to Mrs. Quill, Mr. Bilbow.’

  ‘Yes, I did, next time I went to Great Lands.’

  ‘How did Mrs. Quill take it?’

  ‘Calmly. Very calmly. She thought for a bit, but she wasn’t in the least excited …’

  He paused.

  Next door someone was typing furiously, thudding the carriage of the machine at the end of each line. The little bell on the carriage kept ringing before every thud. It seemed to get on Mr. Nunn’s nerves, for he winced as the racket interrupted Bilbow’s narrative, which, now and then, seemed to get lost in his beard.

  ‘… “I’m not surprised,” she finally said. “But you’d better alter my will right away. I wish to leave all my estate to my niece, Evelyn, instead of, as now, to my husband. See to it.” I did as she asked and she signed a new will.’

  ‘How long ago would that be?’

  Bilbow thought for a minute.

  ‘I’d say four years ago.’

  ‘You seem to know quite a lot about the Quill family, Mr. Bilbow. Would any of them wish to kill Harry Quill?’

  Bilbow seemed a bit taken aback by the direct question.

  ‘Why should they? Had it been Mrs. Quill, you might have said she was vulnerable on account of her small property, but she died a natural death, really. But Harry … They all knew that he hadn’t a bean. Everybody knew that. And what the Quill family don’t know about one another isn’t worth knowing. They knew that all Harry possessed was his tumbledown farm and its wasted acres. Who’d want to inherit that? It would need a fortune to put it to rights. Have you seen it? Hardly a field that isn’t or hasn’t gone to the wild. Ditches and drainage all to pot, a lot of it marshland, acres overgrown with couch grass and weeds … Who’d want to kill anybody to acquire a rubbish dump like Great Lands has become …?’

  Mr. Nunn seemed utterly bored with the whole business and began to pace up and down the room, pausing at the window now and then to watch the workmen in the square setting up the stalls for the next day’s produce market and gazing blankly at the traffic lights busily changing from reds to greens and back again …

  Bilbow looked impatient, too. It was probably his time for slipping out to the pub behind th
e premises for his frequent stimulant.

  It was no use prolonging the interview.

  ‘Thank you both. That will be all.’

  Mr. Nunn seemed taken aback.

  ‘Nothing more?’

  Perhaps he expected some disclosures from Littlejohn now.

  ‘Nothing more for the time being.’

  Bilbow excused himself and left rather hurriedly. Mr. Nunn still seemed uneasy, as though he’d something more to say. But Littlejohn decided he’d had enough for the present, shook the proferred hand and left Nunn to his pacing.

  5

  The Rat Race

  WHEN GERALD Arthur Quill was given a small office next door to the mortuary in the Town’s Yard at Marcroft, Parkinson’s Law began at once to operate and, as there was accommodation for three persons, at a pinch, in the room, he soon gathered to himself a couple of assistants. Jerry himself was described on the door of the place: G. A. Quill, Rodent Officer. His staff consisted of Jacques, an old man as skilled in rat-catching as the Pied Piper, who did all the dirty work whilst Jerry entered details about it in the records, and Douglas, a backward lad who carried the tools, cans of poison and other lethal equipment of the department whenever they were called out to a case.

  When Cromwell arrived to see Jerry, he found him in a very disturbed state, for his Uncle Harry’s body was lying in the morgue next door. This fact was publicly manifest by the fact that the corporation’s disused steam-roller was standing in the open air in the yard. Normally, this museum piece occupied the mortuary shed, but it had to be removed whenever there was a corpse on hand. The pathologist, too, carried out his investigations there, pending the erection of a fine new laboratory elsewhere, which had, however, been postponed owing to national and local economic crises.

  Jerry gave Cromwell an ungracious reception.

  ‘I wish you police would get on with the job instead of concocting theories that don’t come off.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Quill. We’re doing our best …’

  ‘I don’t know what your worst is like, then. How would you like to have your murdered uncle’s body in the next room to you all the time? It’s distractin’. I can’t concentrate on me work.’

  ‘But the inquest has been held and the coroner’s issued a certificate of burial.’

  ‘But there’s nowhere to put him till the funeral. They can’t send him back home to Great Lands. There’s nobody there. And none of his relatives want him with them under the circumstances …’

  Jerry Quill was a tall, heavy shambling sort of man with peppery-coloured hair and a peppery moustache. His eyelids were naturally red rimmed but he looked to have been weeping a lot. His nose was large and misshapen, as though at some time he’d had it broken and it had been badly set. He wore a dark suit, a sky-blue shirt and a red tie, and brown shoes with thick rubber soles. He never went down among the rats, but held, he maintained, an advisory post. He dressed in what he thought was administrative style, but sartorially he looked a mess.

  ‘I called to ask you a few questions about your late uncle. I gather you were the only member of the family who regularly visited him.’

  ‘That is so, if you can call being kept at the door in all sorts of weather visitin’. But you needn’t waste your time on me. I’m a busy man and haven’t any to waste on you. I know nothin’ about my uncle that others can’t tell you. I suppose you found that he was keepin’ another woman. You’d better go and ask her. He thought more of her than his family …’

  ‘We’ve already done so.’

  For the first time, Jerry showed interest. His cloudy eyes narrowed.

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘She assured us that there was nothing but friendship between her and your uncle.’

  ‘You’re surely not goin’ to be taken in by a tale like that, are you? It’s as plain as the nose on your face they were carryin’ on together. At his age, too. He ought to have known better. She was after his money, that’s what it amounted to.’

  ‘Nobody has any proof that it was other than Rose Coggins says.’

  Jerry brushed it aside.

  ‘A barmaid! He might have chosen somebody better class than that.’

  Cromwell briefly pictured Jerry and his uncle together; the nephew in his bright blue shirt and brown shoes and Harry without a collar and with a brass stud shining in the neckband of his shirt. High class! Then he remembered that the Quills were a family who considered themselves a cut above most folk, however they dressed and whatever they did.

  Jerry seemed to be thinking the same.

  ‘There have been Quills in these parts for more than three hundred years. Great Lands was a sort of manor ’ouse before Uncle Harry and his dad ruined it with their excesses. Quills was a proud family in those days.’

  ‘Rose Coggins seemed a decent sort when we interviewed her.’

  ‘What do you know of her? You’ve only been here a day and met her once. Don’t jump to conclusions. My Uncle Harry was seen regular sneakin’ up to her room. What else was he goin’ there for but … but … immoral purposes? The old rake!’

  Cromwell got nettled.

  ‘Oh, dry up! What does it matter what he went to see her for? They were friends, whatever else they were. This is a murder case, not an enquiry into the victim’s morals. As I said, you seem to have been the only member of the family who visited the farm recently. What did your uncle do when he was at home? Was he occupied with farming or just loafing about watching the place tumble about his ears?’

  Jerry had started to sulk after Cromwell’s sharp words, but now he shed his grievances and started to lament again.

  ‘He was usually indoors indulging in his favourite occupation of sittin’ in a rockin’ chair, rockin’ and smokin’ his pipe. I never knew anybody so taken with a rockin’ chair. It’s a wonder he didn’t wear the floor away. You see, he’d spent all his ready cash on buyin’ back the land his father sold to pay his debts. Said he’d made old Ben a promise on his dyin’ bed. He’d nothin’ left to run the damn’ place with. My aunt had some money of her own, but she wouldn’t let him have it. So, with no stock and his farming implements just a lot of old scrap iron, there was nothin’ he could do. She provided the bread and butter, so to speak, and that was all. Now and then, when the buildings of the house got so bad that the rain poured in, my uncle would go and strip slates and such like from the roofs of the empty cottages on his land and repair his own. There’s a chapel on the land. The Quills built it more than a century ago, but as everybody left the hamlet, it fell into disuse. Uncle Harry finally stripped and sold all the pews and panelling, even the Communion table. Then he started to take slates and wood off the roof. I told him no good would come of it, robbin’ a church, and I was right.’

  Jerry tried to look affronted by such impiety, but without much success.

  ‘Did your brothers never go to visit their uncle?’

  ‘They haven’t been for a long time. It’s no joke making your way to a god-forsaken spot like Sprawle and then being chased off. That’s what Uncle Harry used to do. Refuse anybody entrance to the house and shout through the door that you could clear off. That’s what he did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He got eccentric. I think he didn’t want the family to know the state the farm was in and how poverty-stricken him and my aunt were living. After all, he’d been a proud man once.’

  ‘Are the Quills an extensive family?’

  ‘What do you mean? Are there a lot of us? Yes. Close and distant relations. I’ve two brothers, as you’ve probably already found out. Then Uncle Harry’s wife has a lot of relatives, second cousins of ours and the like. I couldn’t run through the lot, but there’s plenty. If you attend the funeral tomorrow, you’ll soon find out. There’ll be a real turnout. Always is at a Quill funeral … Here, what’s goin’ on …?’

  Jerry rushed into the open to investigate a closed van which was manoeuvring its way to the shed next door and finding some difficulty in gett
ing round the inert steam-roller standing like some fossilised relic of a former age at a short distance away. Cromwell, left sitting on a hard wooden chair, heard harsh words being bandied about.

  ‘Have you come for him?’

  ‘Aye. Can’t you shift this old roller? It’s in our way.’

  ‘Don’t be daft! You need to get steam up to move that. You’ll have to work round it. Why has it taken you so long to get on with the removal?’

  ‘He’s got to take his turn. This isn’t the only corpse we’ve had to handle today, you know …’

  Cromwell sauntered to the window to see what was going on.

  The undertaker and his men were carrying a coffin into the morgue. Jerry, who was wearing a black felt hat, removed it reverently as the empty shell passed him. The mutes seemed to make quick work of the job, for they were back again in a few minutes, bearing the closed coffin and its burden in a very business-like fashion. Jerry stood rigid again with his hat extended, like a beggar soliciting alms. The undertakers shipped their load somewhat roughly in the van and closed the door. Jerry thought a protest against the irreverent handling was due.

  ‘You might have been a bit more respectful to the dead. You’re not loading potatoes, you know.’

  ‘We’re in a hurry. We’ll give ‘im the respect due to him in the proper place, in the funeral parlour. S’long.’

  Jerry returned to his depot wearing a blank expression as though musing on what might happen to him when his time came.

  ‘You still here?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve one more question, when you’ve recovered sufficiently to answer it. Did any of your numerous relatives, on either your uncle’s or your aunt’s side, visit the farm frequently?’

  ‘From what I hear, Evelyn, my aunt’s niece, used to go to see her now and then when Uncle Harry wasn’t at home. Evelyn was always one for the money. Insults or even violence wouldn’t keep her away if there was money to be had. Anythin’ else?’