“Yes. There’s another matter, too. This haunting business, sir.”
Old Harwood looked at him shrewdly. His filmy blue eyes were expressionless.
“Well?”
“I want to know the truth about it. Is there anything in it, sir?”
“Do you believe it, Inspector?”
“No, sir.”
“Neither do I. There’s nothing in it. I tell you the truth, although it might go against Roger. Never in the record of the family has there been anything in the way of so-called supernatural disturbance. God knows there might be after what’s gone on there in the way of debauchery in times past, but the excesses have never outlived those who committed ’em.”
“Thank you, sir. That clears the air considerably. But Mr. Burt’s clerk informs us that his late master told him that you made reference to something of the kind when he turned you out.”
“I thought I’d give him a bit of a scare. He looked a yellow-livered wretch. Some of the old women of the village used to amuse themselves and terrify strangers with their inventions, but there was nothing in ’em. They must have something to talk about.”
Littlejohn rose.
“Just one other point, sir, and then I’ll bother you no more. Was anyone else involved—as principal, I mean—in the negotiations, besides Burt?”
Mr. Harwood cackled again.
“Yes. The principal mortgagee of the estate. Fellah called Pipkin. Lemuel Pipkin.…”
Pipkin! Another awful name, thought Littlejohn and smiled.
“You may well smile, Inspector. Thieves fall out. Burt managed somehow to purchase the debt from Pipkin for less than I owed him. Swindled one of his own kidney, from what I heard. Yes … and old Pipkin swore he’d be equal with Burt for it when he found out. I’d try Mr. Pipkin, if I were you. Maybe, he killed Burt. A pious sort of humbug is our Mr. Pipkin. As holy as a snake.”
“Well, I’m much obliged by your help, sir. I hope we’ll settle this business without unduly troubling Mr. Roger, but you understand that we must get to the bottom of it.”
“Why?”
Littlejohn left the old squire without answering the question and Harwood tottered to the drawing-room, there to be received by his anxious retinue, who breathed a concerted sigh of relief to see him return without handcuffs and smiling with confidence. In fact, Mr. Harwood seemed to have lost a burden of worry, for his step was more buoyant and his eyes were sparkling. He settled down to put the hearts of his attendant admirers at rest and the two superannuated gentlemen groaned inwardly.
THE SENTIMENTAL FINANCIER
LITTLEJOHN was in for a surprise, for Mr. Lemuel Pipkin was nothing like the person the detective imagined. In the first place, he was a gentile and in the second, he was incurably sentimental.
“Dear me! Dear me!” said Mr. Pipkin to his typist. “How the trials and tribulations of this life seek out the weak spots in a man’s character, don’t they? Better write to this poor unfortunate young man and tell him that if he hasn’t paid up by month-end, I shall have to inform his employers. That will be all, Miss Drew.”
And he folded up and handed her the file of a misguided bank clerk who, two years ago, had borrowed twenty pounds on note of hand and who since had struggled in vain against the growing tide of interest on the debt.
No one cares for me; no one cares for me.
Not a friend in all the world have I.
Once a mother’s love …
hummed Mr. Pipkin.
He looked like a prosperous country clergyman. Black suit, clean high collar and white tie, round pink face with a beaky nose and innocent-looking blue eyes, topped by a shiny bald head. Meet him on his way home and you’d think he was a delegate to the diocesan conference. Perhaps that was because he was a son of the manse. His father had been a nonconformist parson in a north-country town and his mother had made money by anonymously subsidising a money-lending business, which thrived on making shilling loans on Monday and receiving one-and-a-penny back the following Saturday. It might be truly said that his progenitors lived in Mr. Pipkin, each in a separate logic-tight compartment. Like those little weather-boxes from which emerge Mr. or Mrs. Noah in shine or rain, but never together. In the storms of business out popped Mrs. Pipkin, mère; in sunshine, the large-hearted, sentimental parson came out. Only now and then did the true Lemuel Pipkin show himself at the door. It was not a pleasant sight.
“Mr. George Washington,” announced a scrubby junior clerk with a grin, and returned to his cubby-hole singing to himself: “Jeepers creepers, wheredyer get those peepers?”
As he made his way to see Mr. Pipkin, Littlejohn met the black man disconsolately descending the stairs. Poor George Washington had seen an advertisement benevolently offering to lend from ten to ten thousand pounds on note of hand alone and had been trying his luck. All he had got was a sugary lecture on the evils of getting into debt.
But, thousands and thousands who wander and fall,
Never heard of that heavenly home.
I should like them to know there is room for them all …
Mr. Pipkin halted. Jeepers Creepers thrust a card before him.
INSPECTOR T. LITTLEJOHN
New Scotland Yard.
At first, the real Lemuel Pipkin rushed out, but was quickly replaced by his father.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” oozed the financier. “Nothing wrong, I hope.”
Littlejohn himself was surprised at Mr. Pipkin in the flesh. Through the moneylender’s mind swam a phantasmagoria of his victims, dragged calm and still from gas-ovens, dripping from the river, ghastly and contorted from the noose, convulsed from the poison-cup. Or perhaps he himself had slipped-up on his interest charges. He burst into perspiration from head to foot and his underclothes clung to his fleshy body like wet rags.
“I want a talk with you about the late Solomon Burt, Mr. Pipkin,” said Litteljohn.
The moneylender heaved a great sigh of relief.
“Have a cigar, Inspector,” he said.
“No thanks,” said Littlejohn.
They got to grips.
“I’d like some particulars about the business which caused you to say you’d like to strangle Mr. Burt, Mr. Pipkin.”
“With pleasure, my dear sir. And when you’ve heard it you’ll probably agree with my sentiments. Perhaps rather forcibly and exaggeratedly expressed in the heat of indignation.…”
“Yes?”
“In brief, I held the first mortgage on Harwood Hall, Inspector. I’ll be candid. I’ve nothing to hide.…”
Mr. Pipkin pawed the air like a priest blessing the congregation.
“.… I lent poor old Mr. Harwood ten thousand on the property. A dear, good man fallen on evil days. My heart bled for him.”
“You took a mortgage on the place?”
“Yes, of course. I myself would have been perfectly content on note of hand. But I am a family man and must leave my house in order.
Should this night swift death o’ertake us,
And our couch become our tomb.…
“We never know, Inspector.”
“Yes, yes. I know all about that, Mr. Pipkin. You had full security in land, bricks and mortar for the loan. Then what?”
“I once fancied that when Mr. Harwood was called home, I might like to do the place up and live there myself. Such lovely country. I’d planned a little surprise in advance for Mrs. Pipkin. Unfortunately, however, she’d also arranged one for me by securing an option on a house at Wittering. I had to give way to the ladies. After that, I lost interest in the hall somewhat.”
“Wasn’t the place entailed?”
“No. The entail was broken. Mr. Harwood’s son—his only child—was killed in the last war. There’s only a nephew and some distant relatives in the States.”
“So you were anxious to get out?”
“Yes. I felt I could put my money to better use.”
“You weren’t getting your interest, eh?”
“No. That�
�s true. But, of course, I was prepared to be forbearing with the poor old chap. We never know what we’ll come to ourselves, do we?”
And Mr. Pipkin laid bare a double row of disorderly gold-filled teeth.
“Where were you, Mr. Pipkin, on the night of Mr. Burt’s murder?”
Littlejohn gave him the date. He knew beforehand that a man of Pipkin’s type couldn’t possibly murder in the fashion suffered by Burt. Poison or paying a gang of hooligans was more in his line. But not picking up his victim bodily and bouncing him on a marble floor from a great height!
Pipkin was feverishly looking in his diary.
“Ah! Here we are, Inspector. I was at Brighton.…”
And then realising that he had confessed to being within a stone’s throw of the scene of the crime, he turned an earthy grey colour, seized his mouth as though attempting to wring it off his face and looked as if he wished the floor would open beneath him.
“.… But I was with my wife, Inspector. I was with my wife.”
“Naturally. And I take it you were in bed, too.”
“At three a.m.! I should say so! Sleeping at the side of my wife. She’s a light sleeper and I could never have got out of the room without rousing her.”
“No one’s suggesting you did. Alibis for the small hours are difficult to find.”
“My wife will confirm it.”
“That would hardly be a good alibi, Mr. Pipkin. Most wives are loyal to their husbands to the point of perjury, you know.”
Mr. Pipkin pressed a bell at his elbow and the dainty Miss Drew entered with a query in her large blue eyes and a smile on her gold-digger’s face.
“Get Mrs. Pipkin on the ’phone at once, Miss Drew … I insist that you check this immediately without giving me a chance of priming her.…”
Mrs. Pipkin was eventually obtained and Littlejohn, after a lot of explanations, managed to confirm her husband’s statement. The lady sounded angry at what she thought was an inquisition into her husband’s fidelity. She had a loud voice which made the telephone rattle and shake and the Inspector was relieved to hang up.
“I’m glad of that, Inspector,” smiled Mr. Pipkin when it was over. “Decency is the main branch of our family roof-tree. Would that the same could be said of the Harwood Hall roof-tree, eh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Surely you’ve heard, Inspector. Why, the place is a sink of iniquity. A secluded bordel, if I may use such a term. I’m glad I’m out of it.”
“Now, now, Mr. Pipkin. Don’t talk rashly. Burt is dead. You’ve nothing to gain by depreciating the property in that fashion.”
“But it’s true, Inspector.”
“Mr. Pipkin. The tenants consist of two married couples, a middle-aged and cantankerous professor, two maiden ladies, sisters, a bachelor, and, until his death, the late Mr. Burt. You’d be wise not to repeat your statement in public.”
Mr. Pipkin grew excited.
“What about the actress? The Freyle woman. Subsidised, she was. A well-known man paying her rent there and all that. And as for the maiden ladies. Pott, aren’t they called? Well, the younger is living in sin. I repeat, living in sin with the playwright fellow, Williatt. Her deaf sister’s a mere decoy-duck, giving her the stamp of respectability. Not that the deaf one knows. But how convenient to be deaf! Why, the affair’s been going on for years.”
“Where did you get that information, Mr. Pipkin?”
Lemuel Pipkin looked uneasy.
“I must confess that I made up my mind to break Burt if I could, for the trick he’d done on me. I had a man, a private enquiry-agent, look up the tenants. If they weren’t all respectable, I was prepared to make a song about it. In the public interest, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Such hives of vice should not be tolerated. There’s too much of that sort of thing these days.…”
“So you tried to find as much dirty linen for a public washing as you could?”
“Now, don’t put it that way, Inspector. You are unjust.”
“By the way, Mr. Pipkin, you didn’t hit upon the bright idea of getting the place a reputation for being haunted, did you? And thus clearing it of tenants. Practical-joking to look like spooks, I mean.”
“No. On my word, Inspector.”
Mr. Pipkin looked startled again. He had once more put his foot in it.
Littlejohn rose to go.
“I may call again, Mr. Pipkin, if any further points arise. Needless to say, we’ll investigate what you’ve told us.”
Mr. Pipkin said he would be delighted to help in any way and accompanied his visitor to the shabby landing of his offices.
On the way down, Littlejohn met a Hindu gentleman, ascending with features glowing with hope.…
WHIRLIGIG
LITTLEJOHN lunched belatedly at one of his favourite haunts off the Haymarket and, scanning a newspaper which someone had left on the table, saw that Miss Elaine Freyle was starring at the Whirligig Theatre in a show which maintained perpetual motion from noon until midnight.
He felt that a quarter of an hour with that young lady might not be wasted.
He had to show his warrant-card and assume his most unbending manner before the stage-door keeper would admit him to the hive of industry just off Leicester Square.
Littlejohn had one or two surprises behind stage.
In the first place, nothing in the nature of high-speed pandemonium reigned as scene and turn followed scene and turn in that non-stop whirlwind of scantily-dressed beauty, snappy songs and risky wit. Calm and order prevailed and quite a number of leisurely, sophisticated-looking people, whom he didn’t know from Adam, greeted him cheerily and fraternally, as though he might be a fellow artist on his way to crack a few jokes as near the bone as possible and then wait his turn until the whirligig had completed full circle again.
The next surprise was Miss Freyle herself. Nothing of the gold-digger or fluffy fast-worker about her. When Littlejohn entered her dressing-room she had just finished her act, which consisted of clever impersonations of contemporaries of stage and screen, with here and there a politician thrown in for a change. She was wearing a very becoming evening-gown, modest as things went in that place, and received her visitor with what seemed to be eager anticipation.
Littlejohn, having heard the nature of her performances, wondered whether or not he himself might be included in her next bunch of new characters on the stage.…
The dressing-room was unlike anything of its kind Littlejohn had seen before. Nothing of the old vaudeville quarters occupied by a different star every week, a here-to-day-gone-to-morrow sort of place, reeking of grease-paint and pent-up air. This was a well-lighted room with comfortable furniture and a good healthy atmosphere. Obviously prepared by its present occupant with taste and for an extensive stay.
Elaine Freyle was tall, slender and had jet-black hair. Regular features, clever face and a look of intelligence. Large generous mouth and twinkling eyes. She gave the Inspector a firm handshake.
Littlejohn told her what he wanted.
“What attracted you to Harwood Hall in the first place, Miss Freyle?”
She replied without hesitation.
“I met Burt several times. Nothing nastier than usual about him for his type. A business man, a bit stupid, who liked to show-off. At a party we held on the stage here to celebrate the hundredth performance, he told me he had the very place for me in his new block of flats at Harwood. Said it was a lovely spot for a rest and a change. He would give me a tenancy on the most favourable terms in the best of the flats.”
“Was he making a free offer?”
Miss Freyle screwed up her nose and laughed.
“I think he was really, but one gets used to that kind of thing, you know! However, his description was so thrilling that I turned him over to my fiancé, Rex Purleigh, who’s financing this show. Mr. Burt sort of lost interest a bit then, but we kept him to it. We ran down to Harwood the following day and I was quite taken wit
h the idea. A sweet situation and an awfully jolly flat. I took a tenancy and Rex agreed that we’d make a double flat of it after we’d been married. That’s the honest-to-God truth about it, whatever anybody else might say and whatever you’ve heard from those ghastly tenants.…”
“Ghastly?”
“When I moved in and found what I’d got in the way of stable-companions, I nearly had a fit! Braun, the Carberry-Peacockes, the Pottses and that howling cad Williatt … brrr … what a lot!”
She then proceeded to give impersonations of them with such skill and realism that Littlejohn lost all his professional restraint and laughed loudly.
“But why in particular did you take such a violent dislike to them? After all, it’s not a boarding-house where you all meet at the long table every meal and get on each others’ nerves.”
“Oh, they all started to dislike me first. Sounds like persecution mania, doesn’t it? But it’s true. You see, the rumour had got there ahead of me that I was Burt’s kept-woman! I overheard whispers between the Hartwright and the Peacocke women. You should have seen them draw in their skirts and bare their teeth whenever we met! Virtue with the lid off!”
She gave some more shattering caricatures, which made Littlejohn decide to bring his wife to see Miss Freyle at work properly as soon as he’d solved his case.
“Quite apart from your professional impressions, Miss Freyle, can you tell me any more about your former cotenants?”
“Nothing much. I was only there about a week. But there’s an affair going on between Williatt and the younger Miss Pott; rather a striking girl, I thought, though older than Williatt I’d guess. And Williatt is tired of it, as one might expect. Public-philanderer number one is Arthur Williatt. The elder Miss Pott’s rather a dear old duffer. The Carberry-Peacockes have a son in gaol. The Hartwright’s aren’t proper Americans, or I’m a Dutchman. I don’t know anything about old Braun, except that he’s an ill-mannered boor, who talks about being Viennese, but doesn’t talk like one. His accent’s Bavarian.”
Littlejohn took a deep breath, like a swimmer coming up for air, after this fusillade of thumb-nail sketches.
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