The Gimmel Flask

by Douglas Clark

  “It does give us another line to consider. Thank you.” He addressed them all. “Well, gentlemen, that is all for this session. What we have discussed we will sleep on and then start to follow up tomorrow.”

  “Nothing more tonight?” asked Frimley.

  “You and Hoame have had a couple of tiring days and it’s now after five o’clock. My people and I want to settle in at our pub. But above all, I want you to think about what we’ve discussed and to cast around in your minds for other points and other avenues for investigation. The basis for the successful conclusion of many crimes is routine work—when there are woods to search and house to house enquiries to make. But for a crime such as this which will need thought rather than legwork, then thought it must be.”

  Telford stood up.

  “Mr Masters, I want to thank you. My boys and I have had an eye-opener. You’ve seen nobody connected with this crime, haven’t visited the scene, had no dabs or photographs or other material evidence offered to you, but yet you’ve been able, in the space of an hour or so, to take us quite a long way along the road of how to tackle the problem. And when I say take us, I mean just that. You’ve made us do the thinking and shown us how to view things. It was a professional job, and I’m pleased to have seen you in action.”

  “That’s right enough,” added Frimley. “Do you always work like this?”

  “Not quite so formally perhaps, but we brainstorm in the car, and we do what I’ve asked everybody here to do tonight—think and think widely—laterally as well as vertically. But the big thing in this sort of exercise is never to be afraid of your own ideas—lest they might be stupid—and never to laugh at anybody else’s ideas. Ideas beget ideas in your own heads as well as in a group like this.”

  They were all now on their feet.

  Telford took Masters aside. “I’m going back to HQ now. I was going to stay over to see how things went. I don’t think I need bother after this. But I’d be grateful if you could keep me informed of your progress.”

  “I’ll do that if you want me too, of course. But let Frimley and Hoame make the daily reports to you. It will give them a greater feeling of involvement.”

  “You’re right at that. But I’ll come over to see you, just the same.”

  *

  Before they left the station, Masters told Reed to pick up a street map of Limpid from the desk sergeant and to get from him the address and phone number of Hardy’s home and office. As Masters and Green were getting into the car, Reed caught them up. “Here you are, Chief. I’ve got the phone number of the nick and the pub as well, and I’ve marked all the places on the map.”

  As they drew out of the station yard, Masters said quietly: “Thanks, Greeny.”

  “What for?”

  “Putting the quieteners in. Neither of us could have backed down very gracefully if you hadn’t spoken.”

  “You treated old Telford very well after that.”

  “Because he gave me an explanation with which I had some sympathy and which I was able to take as an apology.”

  “But that show you put on to baffle him! Talk about pulling the wool.”

  “I had to do something by way of reparation, and I could see they were floundering. They’d worked hard, but they hadn’t thought about what to do and how to do it. So, if we could give them a free lesson and fly the flag for the Yard, why not? It didn’t do them any harm, did it?”

  Berger, who was driving, said without looking round. “It helped me, sir. A real eye-opener, I found it. I could feel myself starting to think. I’d been thinking before, but mostly that I couldn’t see where on earth you were going to begin on a case like this. I couldn’t see an obvious starting point.”

  Green shrugged his shoulders. “There’s your answer, George. And there’s the Swan and Cygnets. How about a dirty great pint of wallop on me before we do anything else?”

  “Why on you, Mr Green?” asked Reed.

  “You mean you don’t know?” asked Green, slightly affronted.

  “The Yard grapevine didn’t have time to work before we left,” said Masters. “Detective Inspector Green is now Detective Chief Inspector Green, and we are privileged in being present to help him celebrate the promotion.”

  Berger drove the car carefully down the narrow garage entrance of the Swan and Cygnets and pulled up in the yard behind. “This do, sir?”

  “For the time being.”

  As they dismounted, Green said: “Are you thinking of going out again tonight?”

  “After dinner. You and I. I don’t mind letting the locals in on some of our trade secrets, but not all of them. We’re not here solely as a training cadre, you know.”

  “I might have known it. Where are we going?”

  “First off, to see Hardy’s widow. After that, I don’t quite know.”

  “But you’ve got a plan?”

  “Shall we call it an idea.”

  Masters watched Berger and Reed disappear into the inn with the bags and then added. “It’s to do with that salad oil bottle.”

  “What about it?”

  “Why do you think the murderer took the risk he did in removing it?”

  “That’s easy. There was something incriminating about it. All that about wanting it for a second murder was so much crap.”

  “Why should it be incriminating?”

  “Lord knows, unless he realised he’d left his dabs on it.”

  “That’s a possibility, I suppose.”

  “But you don’t reckon so?”

  “Let me ask you this. What if it were a substitute bottle?”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “What if it wasn’t Hardy’s bottle, but one very like it.”

  “Yet different enough for somebody to tell them apart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “The daily woman, perhaps, who washes up the bottle. Don’t you grow accustomed to your household things—size, shape, colour, weight and so on? So accustomed, in fact, that if somebody was to substitute something of yours with another item that was very similar, you would immediately spot the difference?”

  “Come to think of it . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re right. You’re bloody right, like you always are. It stands to reason the murderer wouldn’t walk into Hardy’s house with his croton oil in a medicine bottle and stand there decanting it into a curved neck. His hands would be shaking so much he’d never hit the hole, and he’d spill the stuff on his own hands. Don’t forget it blisters skin. And he certainly couldn’t do it wearing gloves. So he had to find a similar bottle, prime it with croton and salad oil on one side and vinegar on the other, and then come and substitute it.”

  “Right. But he knew the bottles weren’t quite the same in some respect, so he had to whip his bottle away again, because it could be traced back to him.”

  “But why not put Hardy’s bottle back again?”

  “Good point. We’ll have to think about that one.”

  They entered the inn and signed the book.

  “So it’s a quick wash, a quick pint, an early dinner and a visit to Mrs Hardy, is it?”

  “I think so, don’t you?”

  *

  Unusually for him, Masters was driving. Green, who disliked the front of a car and would never sit on the offside if he could help it, sat in the rear nearside corner and navigated from the street map.

  Earlier, it had been suggested that Hardy’s house was isolated, but Masters had not realised quite what this meant. He had envisaged wide open spaces, but Pellucid House was in the centre of the town, barely two hundred yards from the market place. Green, nevertheless, had some difficulty with his directions.

  Limpid was, basically, a crossroads. There were, of course, scores of other roads and lanes within the huddled little town, but they were merely capillaries running from the main arteries to serve the various parts of the urban body.

  Pellucid House lay in the south east quadrant of the town, to t
he right of the road by which the Yard men had entered the town that afternoon: off somewhere opposite the spot where they had stopped and enquired the way of Benson. But there was no road leading to it from there, merely a sort of wide alley, wide enough—just—to take a car. As there was over a hundred yards of this lane, running between the side walls of houses facing the main road, then past the fronts of cottages, and finally between garden walls, with no sign of a gate, to the Pellucid House grounds, Masters stopped short.

  “Is this marked as a road?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there another way to it?”

  There was. Green showed him the map. If they were to retrace their route and then, instead of turning left, as formerly, at the High Street, they were to turn right for a hundred yards, they would come to another minor road on the right. This seemed to be as far away from Pellucid House as the road they were now on. But a track similar to the one that now faced them led from this minor road. The map showed it as a double dotted line, which led at right angles from the minor road, divided into a circle to enclose the Pellucid House grounds, and then came together again to form the track that Masters had refrained from taking.

  “Shove it into the side and walk,” suggested Green.

  Masters accepted the advice. He parked the car and they trudged up the lane. As they approached the end of the straight portion where the circle began, the walls of the Pellucid House garden stood up eight feet before them. But it wasn’t a straight wall. It was a wavy one, scalloped along its length in a wavy line. Green paused and looked at Masters. “This is a new one on me.”

  “You find it sometimes. The waves turn the wall through the points of the compass, so that you get east, west or south facing areas every eight or ten feet. You grow whatever needs heat and therefore suits south facing walls on the south bits, things that like a good deal of shade on the east facing bits, and those that like a lot of light on the west facing bits. A further advantage is that you get a lot more wall this way than you would by enclosing the same area with straight walls. That means you can grow more morello cherries or apricots or whatever.”

  “Intensive culture?”

  “You could call it that. Now, right or left?”

  “I’ll opt for left.”

  “So be it.”

  Green was correct. They came to the main gate after travelling a quarter of the circle. The house was off-centre in its grounds. Had they gone the other way they would have come to a garden gate giving to a pathway to the back of the house.

  Maud Hardy was not alone. As she ushered them into the drawing room, Masters saw that two other women were already seated there. As Mrs Hardy introduced them—a Mrs Horbium and a Mrs Wellerby—Masters thought that he could not have found three more dissimilar women to bring together had he tried. Mrs Hardy was very tall and skinny. Her bones stood out in all visible places—on her face, at her elbows, wrists and knuckles—and her legs were painfully thin. She was a faded woman. Never a beauty, he would have guessed, and never one with a figure. Green, who liked well-covered women, would be mentally cataloguing her as like two boards clapped together. But she was expensively dressed. The short-sleeved cotton frock she wore was not the sort a working girl would have been able to afford. Masters felt it was unsuitable—not because of her bereavement, but because of her age. The necklet was gold, if he was any judge. So was the heavy bracelet, while eternity rings such as the one she wore were not bought two on a card for 25 pence.

  Mrs Horbium, who had stood up with a squawk of surprise when Masters was introduced as being from the Yard, was squat and stout. He estimated her hip measurement to be twice his own—what Green would describe as built for comfortable sitting, and with a centre of gravity as low as that of a Kelly doll. Mrs Horbium was in black: a black dress with flounces intended to hide some of her girth, but only serving to emphasise her outrageous proportions. She had long, pendant jade earrings and a blue rinse, green fingernails and high heeled court shoes too small for her fat feet. She also wore too much face powder.

  Mrs Wellerby was different. She was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, attractively dressed in a tan moygashel suit, sheer nylons on excellent legs, and low-heeled tan shoes. Her hair was fair, straight and long, her face unwrinkled and her eyes bright. She looked, to Masters, wholesome, charming and intelligent. He liked the feel of her cool fingers as they shook hands.

  Mrs Horbium said, in a kittenish voice that jarred the nerves and made Masters cringe inwardly, “But how thrilling to be actually here when Scotland Yard called! We all heard that you were coming to Limpid, of course, but we had no idea you would wish to interview us so soon. I’ve never been questioned by the police before but I find myself quite looking forward to it.”

  “Grace,” said Mrs Wellerby, “I think you’ve got hold of the tarry end of the stick. These gentlemen are here to see Mrs Hardy, not us. We’d better leave.”

  “Unless,” said Green, “there is some reason why Mrs Horbium thinks she ought to be questioned.”

  The young woman flushed at Green’s tone. “Oh, I’m sure there isn’t.”

  “Mrs Horbium obviously expected us to interview her. Perhaps you would care to tell us why, Mrs Horbium.”

  “Dear me, I thought you would be talking to everybody in Limpid. I mean, nobody knows who poisoned Mr Hardy, do they? So you’ll have to investigate us all to find clues and things, won’t you?”

  “I hope not, ma’am.” Green sounded resigned: as if he were saying that he’d met some loonies in his time, but Mrs Horbium took the biscuit.

  Maud Hardy said in a colourless voice, “Grace, dear, you’ll have to excuse me now. It was very nice of you to come, and you, too, Joanna.”

  Masters exclaimed aloud, “Joanna Wellerby! Of course! I was wondering where I’d seen your face before. You’re the pianist, I believe, ma’am.”

  “One of them, at any rate.” The smile for Masters was warm and friendly.

  “I have actually attended concerts at which you’ve played,” said Masters, “so I should have known you immediately.”

  “I expect when you see a vaguely familiar face you mentally flick through a rogues’ gallery, looking for it. You probably don’t think, at first, to include solo instrumentalists in the mental identity parade.”

  “I shall make a note to do so in future.”

  She turned to her companion. “Come along, Grace. We’re outstaying our usefulness if not our welcome. Goodbye, Mrs Hardy. Perhaps you will let me come again some time.”

  While Mrs Hardy saw her guests out, Masters looked round the room. It was, he guessed, the better part of forty feet long and eighteen or twenty wide. A magnificent room, and even more important to Masters, magnificently furnished. Even Green was impressed, and he was not one usually to enthuse about fine pieces of period furniture.

  “This must have cost him a bomb.”

  “I wonder,” murmured Masters.

  “Why, some of this stuff must be worth a mint. Look at it. That sideboard thing. . . .”

  “Chiffonier.”

  “If you say so; and this swivel-topped games table. I’ve seen things like this on the telly and they cost more than I’d use for furnishing a whole house.”

  “You’re quite right about their value. I was merely questioning whether Hardy had paid the market price for them or even, wealthy though he is, whether he could afford to.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “A collection such as this, especially if it is repeated in every room in the house would take a lifetime to collect. Or even generations. But our information is that Hardy became wealthy only comparatively recently. On the other hand, he is an auctioneer, and so is, as it were, constantly handling such items.

  “You’re saying he fiddled it somehow?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “It’s a certainty, and you know it.”

  Masters wandered round inspecting the room’s contents until Mrs Hardy returned.

  �
��We’re very sorry to intrude upon you, Mrs Hardy, but you will appreciate that we must do our best to get on the trail of whoever poisoned your husband as quickly as possible.”

  “I understand.” She sat in an embroidered armchair which Masters judged, from the curved front crinoline stretcher, to be of the Queen Anne period. “What do you want to know?” She had not invited them to sit, and Masters made no move to do so. Green was restless, and Masters could guess why. Green wasn’t over-blessed with good manners himself, but he had come to expect the courtesies in others, particularly in people who lived in houses such as this. When he didn’t find what he expected he grew fidgety—mentally as well as physically.

  “Just for the moment, Mrs Hardy, I would like to talk about your double oil and vinegar bottle. Do you happen to know its provenance.”

  “Its what?”

  “Where it came from, who made it and so on.”

  “Oh, I can tell you that. Fred bought a sideboard with a few things in it about two years ago, and the bottle was in it. I didn’t know what it was, but he did, being in the trade, like, and he said: ‘Maud, this is for oil and vinegar.’ Until then he’d always had Heinz like me, but from then on, he never used anything but oil and vinegar. Fancied himself mixing French dressing in a spoon, I reckoned, particularly when we had company.” She finished her listless recital and then looked up at Masters and uttered a single word: “Why?”

  Masters ignored the question. “Can you describe its colour exactly?”

  “It wasn’t very nice. Crude, I thought it was. It was neither yellow nor green. Bit of both I dare say. Looked as if it had been made out of old beer bottles.”