They Rang Up the Police: A classic murder mystery set in rural England (Inspector Guy Northeast Book 1)

by Joanna Cannan

  In spite of misfortune and, no doubt, incipient cirrhosis of the liver, David Forbes presented an extremely attractive appearance. He was tall and dark; he looked more like a Rupert than a David; the friendly grin with which he welcomed Guy was quite disarming. Guy explained himself. “Oh, good,” said Forbes, offering cigarettes from a squashed packet. “I thought you were from some damned tradesman.”

  The relief in his charming voice sounded perfectly genuine, but Guy discounted it, summing him up as a gay deceiver. He said, “I’d like to know all you can tell me about the late Miss Cathcart.”

  Forbes had a poor opinion of the late Miss Cathcart. She was domineering, hard-boiled, had a face like a horse and a mind like a cesspool. The other Miss Cathcart — the one he’d seen about the overfed dog, the mousy one — was a complete nitwit, but the best of the family. The carroty one was as ugly as sin…

  Guy didn’t want to know about the other Miss Cathcarts. There were some purely routine questions that he wanted to ask. It had come to his knowledge that the late Miss Cathcart had threatened to write to Mr. Ross about a mistake that had been made…

  Oh, that! Well, Forbes, with an engaging smile, couldn’t deny that on the occasion of one of his visits to the Grange he’d had a couple and he’d made a slip of the tongue and ordered the wrong treatment. No earthly harm had been done, but, of course, the old bitch had gone off the deep end…

  All the same, Guy supposed, Forbes, with his unfortunate past, wouldn’t want to lose his job? Oh, well, said Forbes, his face changing, at the present time there was a shortage of veterinary surgeons, but look here, what was Guy trying to pin on him? Once a man had been in trouble — even for something that might happen to anyone — it was always the same. If anything happened within a twenty-mile radius, the police were after him.

  Guy denied that it was so. He’d had Forbes down on his list for questioning long before he’d heard of his — er — lapse. If Forbes could supply a satisfactory account of his movements on Friday night and Saturday morning, he’d hear no more about it.

  Friday night? How the devil could a fellow remember what he’d done? He’d got back late from his rounds, that was certain, and then he’d have eaten one of Mrs. Willis’s filthy meals and then he’d have gone out to some pub or other — damn it all, you couldn’t expect a man to sit in this beastly little room twiddling his thumbs all evening. What pub? Probably he had started at the Crown and Anchor and gone on to the Red Lion and the Basket Makers’ Arms. Someone might remember seeing him, but, as he never had any luck of any sort, it didn’t seem likely. Oh, yes, he would have come back here when they closed, letting himself in with his latchkey.

  Saturday morning? Yes, he remembered Saturday morning — always knocked off early on Saturdays and met a few chaps for a round. Last Saturday he’d had to go out to Little Hitherford to see a Clydesdale mare with grease and by the time he’d got back to Melchester they had opened. Yes, Guy was right; he’d have to pass the gates of Marley Grange on his way to Little Hitherford.

  Guy’s heart sank as he took down this inconclusive statement. Slow and rather solemn himself, he couldn’t help admiring this graceful sinner, and he wasn’t so successful that he couldn’t sympathize with a hard luck story. He said, “That’s the best you can do for yourself, is it?” and Forbes said it was, and Guy said, “Well, there’s nothing makes me more suspicious than a really pat alibi.” He shut his notebook and chattily remarked, “By the way, didn’t I meet your wife this morning?”

  Forbes’ dark face hardened. He stuck his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and said, “Damn clever fellow aren’t you? I’m not married.”

  “Sure?”

  “Unless I was drunk when I did it.”

  “Funny,” said Guy, going over to the mantelpiece. “I could have sworn this was the photograph of someone I met this morning.”

  “A case of mistaken identity, Inspector. That’s a girl I knew in the days of my innocent youth and she’s living in Canada now. Who’s her double? I shouldn’t mind meeting her — was in love with the original once.”

  “Mrs. Cathcart’s housemaid. Her Christian name’s Elspeth. But you must have noticed the likeness…?”

  “Only been inside the house once; the door was opened by a snorty female who wasn’t a bit like — er — Betty.”

  “Well, make a point of having a look at her next time.”

  “You bet I will, if there is a next time.”

  Refusing a whiskey and soda and an invitation to join Forbes at the Basket Makers’ Arms later, Guy walked back to his hotel.

  His room was high up, and the window looked across a narrow street to the blank wall of the Majestic cinema. It was open at the top, but there wasn’t a breath of air in the room and bluebottles were buzzing angrily as they climbed the window panes. Guy pulled back the lace curtains and opened the window as wide as a broken sashcord would let him. The bluebottles flew out and more flew in. With a sigh he took a key from his pocket, unlocked the rickety wardrobe, pulled out a rawhide suitcase, dumped it on the whitish honeycomb counterpane, opened it and stood staring down at the selection of garments packed, or not packed, by Miss Delia Cathcart. The new climbing party of bluebottles buzzed angrily; taking the corner of the narrow street, a car mounted the pavement, bent a corporation lamppost and proceeded without reporting the accident; the sashcord gave up all together and with a malicious click the window closed itself, but Guy heard nothing. Since we’ve arranged our world like that, someone was going to hang for killing Delia Cathcart, and it was not through any flash of genius but through a slow man puzzling his head in a flyblown hotel bedroom, that the smug community would obtain its incongruous revenge…

  For some twenty minutes Guy stood staring down at the contents of the suitcase; then he reached for the old-fashioned pear-shaped switch above the bed and, after turning the light on by mistake, rang the bell. Coming along the corridor, he had passed a sensible-looking young chambermaid, but the girl who answered his summons was red-haired and rat-faced, with prominent teeth and bright, shifty eyes. However, she was a girl…

  He said, “I rang because I wondered if you could help me. I’m a police officer…”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m a police officer.”

  “Ooo! One of them there detecs?”

  “That’s right. You see, Miss…?”

  “Smallbone, my name is. And my Christian name’s Sylvia.”

  “Well, Miss Smallbone, I’ve got a suitcase here. It’s supposed to have been packed by a lady who was going away from home and may have been in rather a hurry. There’s something about the things she packed that looks funny to me, but, being only a man, I don’t understand the fashions and I want you to look at the things and tell me if there’s anything about them that looks funny to you.”

  “I can do that for you,” said the girl readily. “I likes to be up-to-date myself, and I’ve got good taste too. Lovely mauve jumper I bought yesterday. Five and eleven it was — none of your cheap muck for me. Only it don’t mean that I shall get mixed up in anything, do it? I mean, I don’t ’ave to go to court? Our Mum would go on awful if I got mixed up with the police.”

  Guy reassured her and, wiping her hands on her haunches, she advanced towards the bed.

  “’Igh class underclothes,” she giggled. “I like a bit more trimming myself. These plain silk things are chick, but they ’aven’t got much sex appeal. That dressing gown must ’ave cost a lot, but it’s dark for bedroom wear. I’d sooner ’ave a pastel shade edged with nostrich feathers, like you see on the films. These are good quality stockings. Evening dress.” She shook out the brown lace dress and held it up against herself. “Too dark for my style, but quite distingy if she’d passed ’er first youth. Oh, ’ow ’ideous! Green satin sandals to wear with it…and then this dark red bag! Wot taste! You wouldn’t catch me going out in all them different shades.”

  “They’re not what the fashion papers call ‘a contrast’?”


  “That they’re not. If she wanted a contrast to this brown dress, she’d ’ave ’ad gold or silver sandals and a gold or silver bag — never these green sandals. If she’d ’ad brown sandals, that matched ’er dress, then she might ’ave carried any colored bag. I dunno…” Miss Smallbone laid down the dress and placed the bag on it. “Well, she might ’ave chanced it, but it don’t look nice.”

  Guy said, “It’s all the more funny because there’s a pair of brown sandals in her room at home. And several fancy bags. She wasn’t — isn’t a girl who has to make do, either. She’s quite well off.”

  “I say,” said Miss Smallbone in an awed whisper. “’As this got anything to do with the Marley vanishing case?”

  “You’ve been such a help to me, Miss Smallbone, that I don’t mind telling you it has. But you won’t go talking about it, will you? I’m sure you can keep a secret. You look such a sensible girl.”

  “I’ve got my ’ead screwed on the right way,” admitted Miss Smallbone. “And I’m not one to chatter. Now, if that two-faced Elsie ’ad been on duty…”

  “I was lucky,” said Guy. “I rang the bell on the chance and then I found you… Now, listen, Miss Smallbone: supposing a girl was in a hurry — would that account for her packing such a funny lot of things?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. ’Owever much of a nurry a girl was in it would be against her nature to take things that didn’t go. I packed in a nurry once myself — I was in private service in London and a telegram come to say that our Mum was took bad — and, though I ’ardly knew what I was doing, when I got ’ome and come to unpack, except for forgetting all my ’ankerchiffs, everything was OK. A girl might forget ’er ’ankerchiffs, or ’er ’ot water bottle, or ’er shoes, but what I mean is, either she’d pack the right-colored shoes, or not pack them at all.”

  “That’s what I thought. Thank you very much, Miss Smallbone. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Don’t mention it. And you needn’t fear that I’ll go round chattering. It’ll be a secret,” said Miss Smallbone, looking up at him, “between you and me.”

  “That’s right,” said Guy, folding up the dress and replacing it in the suitcase. “Well, thanks awfully…”

  But beyond taking up a more permanent position with her back against the bedrail, Miss Smallbone made no move.

  “Fancy you being one of them detecs,” she mused. “Dangerous job, ain’t it? But I should think you’re brave.”

  “Oh, there’s not much danger about it,” said Guy, shutting up the suitcase. “It’s generally rather dull.”

  “Ever copped a murderer?”

  “No,” said Guy firmly. He looked at his wristwatch and put a mundane question. “Do you think the bathwater’s likely to be hot now?”

  “Well, it’s never what you might call ’ot, but you can get a nice bath if you’re the first. I’ll go unlock the door and turn the water on.”

  Guy heaved a sigh of relief as the door closed behind her. He got out of his sticky clothes and avoided Miss Smallbone’s ambush by lurking in a dark corner till a bell summoned her to the other end of the corridor.

  The tepid bathwater brought no fresh inspiration, but it was refreshing, and, back in his bedroom, he felt competent and cool. He collected his fountain pen and a writing block, sat down in the armchair by the window and set to work on the job — never congenial to him — of turning his thoughts into words.

  He began by writing in block capitals the words OPPORTUNITY and MOTIVE. No sooner were they written than there was a knock at the door. If it’s that girl, I’ll wring her neck, said Guy to himself, but it wasn’t Miss Smallbone: it was the moon-faced constable, who, before leaving the Grange, had received orders by telephone from the Superintendent to check the alibis of Funge and Ames. Guy, already put out by the interruption, was annoyed to find that the Superintendent had entrusted enquiries, which needed tact, to this bumpkin, but the man seemed to have done the job competently: Mrs. Funge, well-spoken of in the village, testified to having heard her son enter the cottage as the lovely clock in her front room struck eleven; Miss Winnie Codstall would admit nothing and deny nothing and wasn’t to be trusted whatever she said.

  Guy dismissed the constable and turned back to his writing block. OPPORTUNITY and MOTIVE. What the devil had he meant by writing that down? Slowly he forced his mind back into the interrupted train of thought, and now in column form beside the first two words, he added the names of his suspects: Ames; Funge; Forbes; Willoughby. A few moments’ thought convinced him that opportunity would have to be viewed from more than one angle: first, the opportunity of committing the murder between eleven p.m. on the Friday night and dawn on the Saturday morning. Mightn’t he narrow this down a little? Miss Cathcart hadn’t been killed in her bed; according to the Superintendent’s report, there had been no blood on the blankets. It was highly probable, therefore, that she had been aroused by the whistle which Mrs. Hemmings had heard. Was it a prearranged signal? (If so, Ames or Willoughby were the most likely callers.) Or was it intended for one of the maids? (If so, Funge or Forbes were the most likely callers, and the crime might have been caused by Delia getting up to poke her nose into other people’s business.) But whoa, Guy told himself; keep to facts, man! Who had weak or no alibis for the hours of darkness? Ames, since the girl at Dunroamin hadn’t backed up his story; Willoughby, who had got home late from a bridge party and had left home at dawn. Forbes had put up an impractical alibi. Funge? Guy gathered his mother was a reliable witness.

  He was warming to his work. Under OPPORTUNITY he would give each of his suspects marks: Ames, Willoughby and Forbes five out of five; and Funge, perhaps, two.

  And now for another angle — the suitcase. The murderer had certainly placed this on the train to suggest that Delia had traveled to London. The packing of the bag implied access to Delia’s bedroom. Ames had cleaned the windows on Friday: again, five, no, four marks, to him. Funge had no reason to enter the house, but possessed a likely accomplice in Jessie: five marks to him. Forbes, with Elspeth as his accomplice, had equal opportunity with Funge, so five marks to him. Willoughby? Delia might have packed it herself and brought it out to the garden, but, then, where was her dress? No, he couldn’t accept the Dawes’ theory. Mrs. Willoughby had been alone in Delia’s bedroom on the Friday, but then you were dealing with a premeditated crime and Mrs. Willoughby was an accessory before the act. He couldn’t give more than two marks for that.

  That didn’t finish the suitcase. The murderer must have had the opportunity to plant the suitcase in the train. Funge and Jessie had gone into Melchester by car on the Saturday morning. They scored the maximum for that. Willoughby had left his car at the Station Garage: five marks also to him. Forbes had admitted passing the gates of Marley Grange and returning to Melchester round about eleven: five marks to him. Ames said that he had never left the Grange that morning and there was no evidence that he had. (He must check up on that.) Two marks? No, one mustn’t be prejudiced. One mark to Ames.

  Now, MOTIVE. What could have impelled anyone to kill this woman? Take Ames first again — was it the old story of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph? Was Ames just an animal, intent on satisfying his brutish instincts? Had Delia, the sex-starved spinster, led him on only to refuse at the last fence, or had her importunities exasperated him into silencing her forever? A fine choice of unsavory stories, so five, no, four marks to Ames. Then Willoughby, a man of Delia’s own class with a tiresome wife: half the tragedies in the world were based on that eternal triangle. Definitely, five marks to Willoughby. Now Forbes and Funge. Delia had threatened both, but to what did her threats amount? Possibly the loss of their jobs, but more probably just a reprimand from their employers, and we don’t risk swinging for that. One mark only to each of them.

  And now he could apply his recent deductions. The murderer (or his accomplice) had packed the bag with garments that didn’t match: what was the probability of each of his suspects making such a mistake? Ames, hurried, ignorant and a
man, must score five marks. Elspeth, working for Forbes, refined and with taste as good or better than Delia’s, was most unlikely to have erred; and Forbes scored nothing. Jessie was a rougher type than Elspeth…well, one mark to Funge. Mrs. Willoughby? She dressed sloppily but to the character that she invented for herself, and that argued clothes sense. Nought for the gallant Captain.

  And now, before he added up, he might give marks for his own impressions. Funge, a quarrelsome Bolshy fellow, whose bark was worse than his bite, who hadn’t really much guts, should have two marks out of five. Forbes, pleasant when sober, but no doubt inclined to be quarrelsome in his cups, three marks. Ames, a low type, sullen, a liar, five out of five: he could give rein to his prejudices this time. Willoughby was an unknown quantity still, and for that the symbol was X. X? What price another unknown quantity…somebody who hadn’t appeared on the stage yet, somebody whose opportunities hadn’t been enquired into, whose movements hadn’t been investigated; in short, the murderer? Mr. X would get full marks every time.

  His chart was completed. He added up the marks and surveyed the totals…

  There was no doubt about it. The Chief Constable and Dawes, pushing along like senseless battering rams, would press for an early arrest and Ames would be their man. But no jury would convict. With a sigh Guy realized that tomorrow would have to be given over to work on a case against Ames, but he determined that no amount of “What have you got?” and “Give us something definite” would drive out of his mind the last man on his list, the one who had scored full marks on every court… Mr. X.

  He put his writing materials away and got wearily into bed. It was time to call Thursday a day. The management of the Red Lion ignored such luxuries as bedside lamps, so he was unable to distract his mind by reading, and the burden of his thoughts was MOTIVE. If only he had met Delia, he might have been able to say why she was killed. He was working in the dark. If only he knew the motive…