Murder at Swann's Lake

by Sally Spencer

  A group of raw recruits, still itching from their new haircuts, standing in an uneasy line. A small corporal, marching up and down that line, glaring belligerently at each and every one of them.

  ‘The Army runs on discipline and order,’ the corporal had screamed. ‘Discipline! When I ask you to jump, you don’t ask me why. You say, “How high, corporal?” Order! A place for everything and everything in it’s place.’ He turned his menacing gaze on a young recruit who looked scared to death. ‘What does it run on, you big Northern snot-rag?’

  ‘Discipline and order, Corporal,’ Private Charlie Woodend had answered shakily.

  The Chief Inspector grinned ruefully. “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” he murmured.

  They had drummed it into him, and even twenty years later it was still there. He walked over to the tool rack, slipped the hammer into the vacant slot and stood back to admire the result. That little corporal would have been proud of him, he thought.

  Hatton Gardens was a very pleasant, tree-lined street of detached houses on the outskirts of Doncaster.

  “Used to be all single family residences before the War,” Sergeant Dash said, as he and Rutter walked from the car to the gate of Number Seven. “’Course, income tax was only five an’ a tanner in the pound back then. Now it’s eight an’ sixpence, an’ nobody can afford big houses any more. Most of the street’s been converted into flats.”

  “It’s still a nice area to live in,” Rutter replied.

  “Oh, it is,” Dash agreed. “Very respectable, the people in Hatton Gardens. I’m surprised we’re lookin’ for your villain here.”

  They opened the gate and walked up a path which was bordered with neat rows of flowers. There were two bells beside the door, each with a card next to it. The one beside the top bell was hand-written and said, ‘Alex Conway’. The one below was a printed visiting card with the words ‘Miss Olivia Tufton’ printed on it.

  “See what I mean?” Dash asked, pointing at the lower card. “Very respectable.”

  Rutter rang Conway’s bell, waited, and then rang again. When he got no answer the second time, he pressed the lower button. There was the sound of slow careful footsteps in the hallway, then the front door was opened by an old lady with blue-rinsed hair.

  “Miss Tufton?” Rutter asked.

  The woman looked past him at Sergeant Dash’s blue uniform. “Have you come to see my television licence?” she asked, with just a hint of panic in her voice.

  “No, madam,” Dash said reassuringly.

  “Because I’m not sure where I put it, you see. Father always used to say, ‘You’ll be forgetting where you left your head one of these days, my girl,’ and I’m rather afraid that he was right.”

  “We’re not really here to see you at all,” Rutter said. “It’s Mr Conway we’d like to talk to. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Miss Tufton told him. “Mr Conway hasn’t got a television. It wouldn’t be worth his while paying out four pounds a year licence fee for the time he’s here.”

  “Away a lot, is he?” Rutter asked.

  “He travels a great deal for his business.”

  “And what business might that be?”

  Miss Tufton jutted her chin forward. “I wouldn’t know,” she said haughtily. “Father always told me never to ask a gentleman what his occupation was. And Mr Conway is a gentleman, despite the fact that he sometimes drops his consonants.”

  “Could you describe him to us, Miss Tufton?” Rutter asked.

  The old lady’s eyes narrowed. “Why? He’s not done anything wrong, has he? I can’t believe that of him.”

  Rutter gave her one of his most winning smiles. “No, he’s not done anything wrong. We’re just conducting routine inquiries.”

  “Like Superintendent Lockheart does in No Hiding Place?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It was a very good story last week,” Miss Tufton said with enthusiasm. “The police were looking for a man who’d been left a lot of money and . . .” She stopped, suddenly. “That’s it, isn’t it? Someone’s left Mr Conway a lot of money?”

  Rutter nodded, in a way he was sure Woodend would have been proud of. “His uncle,” he said.

  Miss Tufton shook her head. “Oh dear. Mr Conway’s such a sensitive man. He’s bound to be upset.”

  “His long-lost uncle,” Rutter said quickly. “Lived in Australia. They’ve never met.”

  “Well, that’s all right, then,” Miss Tufton said, with some satisfaction.

  “You were going to describe him to us,” Rutter reminded her.

  “He’s about as tall as the sergeant,” Miss Tufton said, looking at Dash.

  “That would make him about five feet eleven.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What else can you tell us about him?”

  “He has blond hair and a moustache. And unlike a great many of the moustachioed men you see around these days, he trims his every day.”

  “How would you know that?” Rutter asked.

  “Father had a moustache and he used to trim it first thing every morning,” Miss Tufton said, slightly affronted. “I know a well-trimmed moustache when I see one.”

  “How old would you say Mr Conway is?”

  “A young man, really. No more than fifty.”

  Rutter, with the arrogance of youth on his side, suppressed a smile. “Does he have any visitors?”

  “There’s a young lady who visits him occasionally—”

  “Young?”

  “Not more than in her late thirties. Very smartly dressed. But she never stops – just rings the doorbell and waits on the pavement until he goes out to her.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Miss Tufton frowned. “There was a man, once.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “A horrid little man. I was just coming out of my apartment as he was entering the house. He didn’t look very pleased to see me.”

  “Did you speak?”

  “He spoke to me. He said he was a friend of Mr Conway’s, and would be staying the night. Then he rushed up the stairs to Mr Conway’s flat without another word.”

  “How did you know he wasn’t a burglar?” Rutter asked.

  “He had Mr Conway’s keys,” Miss Tufton said, shaking her head slightly, as if to indicate that she considered Rutter’s powers of detection to fall well below the standards set by No Hiding Place.

  “He could have stolen them,” Rutter pointed out.

  Miss Tufton looked shocked. “I never thought of that,” she admitted. “But anyway, he was a friend of Mr Conway’s, because we talked about it later.”

  “You and Mr Conway?”

  “That’s right. I mentioned the way the other man had behaved towards me, and Mr Conway was most apologetic. He said he was sure his friend hadn’t meant to be rude. It was just that he wasn’t very well educated. I knew what he meant.”

  “Could you describe this friend?” Rutter asked.

  “He was what Father would have called a ‘runt’,” Miss Tufton said. “He must have been about half a head shorter than the sergeant.”

  “What was he wearing?” Rutter asked.

  “A suit like the ones the black-marketing spivs used to wear just after the War.”

  “You mean expensive, but flashy.”

  Miss Tufton grimaced. “I don’t understand all these modern words,” she said. “All I can tell you is that it was in very poor taste.”

  “Was he clean shaven?”

  “He could have done with a shave, if that’s what you mean?” Miss Tufton said.

  “But no beard or moustache?”

  “No.”

  “What colour was his hair?”

  “Brown. And he had very shifty eyes.”

  Flashy suits, brown hair, shifty eyes? Rutter took a photograph of his pocket and held it out for Miss Tufton to examine. “Is that Mr Conway’s friend?” he asked.

  The old lady p
eered at it. “Yes,” she said. “You can tell even from this that he’s got no breeding, can’t you?”

  “You only saw him for a second or two,” Rutter reminded her. “Could you be mistaken?”

  “No,” Miss Tufton said firmly. “I’ve got a very good memory for faces.” She glanced nervously across at Sergeant Dash. “It’s only things like television licences I keep misplacing.”

  Rutter did his best to contain his feeling of triumph. All right, so he hadn’t been able to talk to Conway, but he had established a definite link between the man and Robbie Peterson, and, by implication, connected Conway to Peterson’s smuggling racket.

  He put the photograph back in his pocket. “When you see Mr Conway, you won’t mention that we’ve had this little talk, will you?” he asked Miss Tufton.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Well, you don’t want to spoil his little surprise for him, do you?” Rutter asked, winking at her.

  “Little surprise?”

  “The legacy. From his uncle in Australia.”

  Enlightenment dawned. “Oh no, of course I don’t,” Miss Tufton said, winking back at him.

  Nine

  The afternoon sun shone down benevolently on both the lakeside and the people who swarmed around it. For some, it was perhaps a little too hot. In the lakeside café, grandmothers sipped at their tea and told their impatient grandchildren that soon they could go on another ride. Fathers, modern enough to have abandoned the use of both flat caps and trilbys, now saw the error of their ways and placed knotted handkerchiefs on their heads. Teddy boys, in their distinctive three-quarter length coats, looked distinctly uncomfortable. Even some of the older children seemed to find it too warm to run around. And the detective from London had shed his hairy sports jacket and was carrying it over his shoulder.

  Woodend was standing by the roundabout, watching a succession of happy, excited faces sweep past him, only to return again a few seconds later. It didn’t seem more than a few minutes ago that he’d been one of those faces himself, clutching tightly to the central pole with one hand, while waving to his father with the other. It didn’t seem it – but it was. His old man had been dead and buried for years, and however much he might not like the idea, he himself was firmly into middle age. Yet there were still moments – like this one – when he could remember exactly how it felt to be one of those kids.

  His thoughts turned from his own childhood to those of Robbie Peterson’s daughters. Perhaps they would have been very different from each other anyway, but the experiences they’d gone through had made them chalk and cheese. On the one hand there was Jenny, the daughter who had been kept close to her dad, and who had followed her sense of duty to the extent of marrying the man Robbie had chosen for her. On the other, there was Annabel, sent away at an early age, who blamed Robbie for her own miserable life, and had done her best to make him suffer right up until the day he died. Both of them had gone to extremes, he decided, and he was glad his own daughter seemed – so far – to be much better balanced.

  He turned his back on the roundabout and wandered on until he reached the ghost train. The carriage was just pulling off, leaving the Green brothers with a couple of minutes free time on their hands, and they were using this moment of leisure to give him the looks of suspicious contempt which seemed to be their trademark. Well, if that was their attitude, Woodend thought, he’d soon give them something to be suspicious about.

  He came to a halt just in front of the train. “The Green brothers,” he said, as if he were introducing them to an audience.

  “What about it?” the elder one asked aggressively.

  “Which is which?”

  “I’m Clem,” the elder brother said, “an’ that’s Burt, but neither of us are pleased to meet yer.”

  “But you know who I am, don’t you?”

  Clem Green sneered. “Oh, we worked that out, all right.”

  Woodend smiled pleasantly. “And because you’re bright lads, you’ve probably also worked out that I think the reasons Robbie Peterson hired you had very little to do with runnin’ a ghost train.”

  “Meanin’ what?” Clem Green asked.

  “Meanin’ I think that sometimes, in the dead of night, when everyone else is asleep, you take little trips across the Pennines.”

  “If you had any proof of that, you’d have an arrest warrant in your pocket, an’ half a dozen rozzers at your back.”

  Woodend scratched his head. “Now that is interestin’,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “It’s interestin’ that you didn’t ask me what I thought you were doin’ on these supposed trips of yours. That’s the first question I would have asked.”

  Green’s sneer deepened. “Everybody knows that Robbie Peterson was smugglin’ stolen fags an’ whisky into Yorkshire,” he said.

  “I didn’t,” Woodend replied “At least, I wasn’t entirely sure about the cigarettes, and I had no idea at all about the whisky.”

  “But we had nothin’ to do with it,” Clem Green continued, “an’ now that Robbie’s dead, you’ll never be able to prove that we did.”

  “Interestin’ again,” Woodend said mildly. “Now Robbie’s dead, I can’t prove you didn’t do anythin’.”

  “You bobbies always twist honest folks’ words,” Green countered. “It’s what you’re good at.”

  The ghost train smashed noisily through the double doors and out onto the open section of the track. Burt Green went back to the booth to collect the fares from the queue which had already formed in front of it, but Clem Green, probably out of bravado, showed no inclination to move.

  “Where were you two when Robbie was murdered?” Woodend asked Clem casually. “I’m sure you’ll say you were both safely tucked up in your beds – but I’m willin’ to bet that you can’t prove it.”

  A look of triumph came to Green’s face. “Then you lose the bet,” he said. “You know The Bandbox?”

  “It’s one of the social clubs, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. It’s about a quarter of a mile from The Hideaway. Well, that night the owner was a bit short-handed an’ he offered me an’ our Burt a quid each if we’d help out. An’ that’s what we did. We started servin’ the tables at seven o’clock, an’ we didn’t stop until time was called at eleven o’clock. From what I’ve heard, Robbie was well dead by then.”

  “An’ I suppose the owner of The Bandbox will confirm this?”

  “Him, his barmen, an’ any number of the customers we served. So you’d better go lookin’ for some other poor bugger to pin this murder on.”

  “Any suggestions?” Woodend asked.

  “You could try that Michael Clough for a start.”

  “And why should Mr Clough have wanted to kill Robbie?”

  A look of surprise came to Green’s face and then was instantly gone. “Well, if you don’t know that, I’m not goin’ to be the one to tell you,” he said.

  The well-dressed young man walked down the street at some speed, and for a while it looked as if he were planning to go straight past the front gate of the house where Annabel Peterson had her secret flat. Then, at the last moment, he checked quickly over his shoulder, slowed down and headed up the path.

  Sitting behind the wheel of his battered Morris Oxford, Detective Sergeant Gower laid his binoculars on the dashboard and jotted something down in his notebook. This was the third man to have visited Annabel that afternoon, he thought, and he was starting to see a pattern – they all seemed edgy, they all wore expensive suits and they usually weren’t inside the house for more than ten minutes. Two of them he had actually recognised – one was the son of a successful local businessman, the other a nephew of the mayor. None of them, he was almost sure, had a criminal record.

  Gower lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. What the bloody hell were they doing in there? he wondered. And whatever it was, did it help to explain how Annie – who he was sure was getting no money from her father – could afford to pay for thi
s expensive flat? She couldn’t be on the game, because even the chinless wonders he’d seen going in through the front door couldn’t have got their ends away and been out on the street again in such a short time. So it had to something else. The problem was, what? He couldn’t believe the mayor’s nephew was dealing in stolen record players, and it was equally impossible to put forward the theory that Annie and he were planning an armed robbery together.

  So what was he left with? Bugger all!

  The visitor had already come out of the door and was walking rapidly down the street. It didn’t make sense, any of it. Yet Gower’s instinct told him there was something going on, and whatever it was, it was big.

  He lit another cigarette from the first, then almost choked as he saw who was coming down the road. This young man walked with nothing of the wariness of the last three. If anything, his gait was defiant. Nor was he as well dressed as they’d been. They’d worn suits, he was wearing a corduroy jacket and grey-flannel trousers. The man did not hesitate as the others had done, either. He walked boldly up to Annabel Peterson’s door, rang the bell, and was immediately admitted.

  So Michael Clough not only knew about Annabel’s secret flat, but had decided to pay a call on her, Gower thought. Now that was interesting.

  And what was even more interesting was that it was a full hour before he came out again – and when he did, he looked as if he’d really been put through a wringer.

  Woodend sat at his dented desk in what had once been Robbie Peterson’s office, the telephone receiver in his right hand. “So the Green lads were workin’ for you last Friday night?” he asked the manager of The Bandbox.

  “That’s right,” the other man replied.

  “How many waiters did you have on duty that night?”

  “Four. We were so busy that I was workin’ behind the bar myself.”

  “An’ both of the Green brothers were there all the time from seven right through to eleven?”

  A pause. “Yes,”