A Dangerous Deceit

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘And?’

  Joe cracked a knuckle, a habit he’d somehow picked up and was trying hard to break because he knew it set people’s teeth on edge. His aunt with whom he now lodged had told him so often enough. Besides, it annoyed Joe almost as much; he felt it was all too likely to give a false impression of nerves. Maisie Henshall, bless her, had never said anything but he wondered if she’d noticed. They were getting along very nicely, thank you – well, a good bit more than that, he’d reason to hope – and he didn’t want her to think he had objectionable habits, not if she was ever to become Mrs Joe Gilmour.

  ‘And what?’ Reardon repeated, trying to push his chair back a few inches in order to be able to stretch his long legs. There was barely room for anyone other than the occupant of the big desk that had been wedged into the cramped space found for the temporary DI, never mind Joe’s equally solid frame. But Reardon had shown tact in not asking to take over the office of the absent Waterhouse.

  Joe frowned. ‘I don’t know. Stands to reason if you fall head first into a heap of sand and you get it in your mouth and eyes, you find it hard to breathe. But you’d try to get up, wouldn’t you, or at any rate roll over to get your face out of the sand? You wouldn’t just lie there until you died.’

  Reardon was looking over the flash photographs taken at the scene. The victim was lying on his back and the depression where he’d fallen before being turned over was clear. ‘Not unless you were stunned by the fall,’ he said, and added as Joe shook his head, ‘Damp sand can be pretty unyielding. Or if you’d fainted, say, or lost consciousness – there was that wound on his temple, don’t forget – and that was why you fell in the first place.’

  ‘How many healthy men do that?’ Joe protested. ‘Just faint, I mean. There was no sign he wasn’t healthy, though he was overweight and soon out of puff, according to the foreman, and the Path blokes have agreed with Dr Dysart that the cut on the side of his head was superficial, not much more than a graze, and anyway it wasn’t recent and couldn’t have anything to do with his death. There was no sign of a struggle, no handprints or anything to show he’d tried to lever himself up.’

  ‘Hmm. Didn’t the woman in his office, Eileen Gerrity, seem to think he could have had a stroke, or a heart attack?’

  ‘Yes, but they say no to that as well. Anyway, there’s something else – if you read the report further, sir, you’ll see there’s a bruise on the back of his neck, right at the base, that can’t be accounted for.’

  ‘A rabbit punch?’

  ‘Not that sort of bruise. It’s possible he could have been held down with something heavy.’ He paused. ‘A foot? After he fell – or was pushed.’

  Reardon considered. Twirling his fountain pen between his fingers, he gazed at the map of Folbury and its environs that he’d already managed to dredge up from somewhere and pinned to the wall. His chair was sideways to the window, which faced a brick wall only feet away, and the hideous scars on his left profile were reflected in the glass. Some people found it embarrassing to look Reardon in the face; disrespectful young PCs had been overheard bandying nicknames for the ugly-faced detective inspector when he’d arrived – until they encountered the baleful glance of Sergeant Gilmour, who knew they were honourable scars, acquired during the late war. Joe knew himself to be lucky, as they were, to have escaped the trenches. He’d been conscripted but done no more than his basic training before the Armistice was declared and he’d been sent home. But Reardon’s scars didn’t seem to bother the man himself, or if they did he concealed it, and the more you got to know him, the less you noticed them.

  ‘Besides,’ Joe continued, ‘there’s the matter of the key to the foundry. That’s a puzzle.’ He explained that Stanley Dowson, the foreman, had told them the foundry door was locked when he went in, but there’d been no door key on Aston’s person, and despite a search, it hadn’t turned up anywhere else.

  ‘How many keys are there?’

  ‘Just two it seems, one that’s kept in the office next door, and Aston’s own.’

  ‘Is it a Yale lock?’

  ‘No, that’s just it, it’s a mortice. The door couldn’t have locked itself behind him when he went in, and there seems no reason why he should have locked it himself. If someone was in there with him, they turned the key and took it with them when they left. Why?’

  ‘Panicking at what they’d done, or giving themselves a bit of time, who knows? I gather the foundry hadn’t been working for a day or two, but somebody from the machine shop next door was bound to go in and find him, probably sooner rather than later.’ He threw a sharp look at Joe. ‘So what are you thinking, Sergeant?’

  ‘Looking less and less possible that it was an accident, isn’t it, sir?’

  Reardon made a non-committal sound which Joe took to be agreement.

  Murder. Manslaughter, at least. A serious crime, whichever it was. And contrary to public belief, one that could still sicken the police. The taking of a human life brought a pretty sharp reminder that police business was more than just keeping the peace, that it also dealt with matters of life and death.

  ‘Remind me, what time was he found?’

  ‘About half-eleven. Dr Dysart was called straight away and she estimated he hadn’t been dead long – three or four hours at most. His wife says they left the house for work at about half past eight.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yes. He gave her a lift as far as the shops and then took his car on to the garage where it was booked in to have the brakes adjusted. Walking from there would have taken about twenty minutes, so he should have arrived at the office before half nine at the latest, but nobody was unduly worried when he didn’t turn up – he was the boss, he didn’t have to clock in.’

  ‘All right, Sergeant.’ Reardon squared his notes together. ‘Usual procedures, then.’

  Usual procedures. That meant summoning up the fairly limited resources open to Folbury’s police, who were not accustomed to dealing with murder or the routine that went with it.

  ‘I’ll do my best to get extra manpower if it’s needed, but I warn you we probably won’t.’

  This was likely to be true, but it shouldn’t be a long drawn-out business – probably solved by the end of the week if they were lucky. This wasn’t detective fiction, just a small-town murder. Likely as not, the culprit would turn out to be someone who’d been known to have it in for the victim and seized his chance when Aston had stumbled and fallen into the sand, or had knocked him down in a fight begun in the heat of the moment. But then, more deliberately, had held him down until he stopped breathing. Somebody who knew him, where he worked, what his routine was. Unlikely they’d be looking for a stranger, anyway. Most murderers were known to their victims, and it was more than possible that someone else, who knew that bad blood had existed, would come forward and say so.

  Reardon was staring at the map again, as though making Folbury and its environs part of his inner landscape, ‘Houses on the opposite side of the road in Henrietta Street, aren’t there?’

  Joe was able to tell him he’d already sent a couple of lads door-knocking, asking if anyone was seen going into the foundry, or coming out, anybody acting suspicious lately.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nix – from those they’ve managed to talk to so far, anyway. Nobody saw anything, but we haven’t caught up with everybody yet. Sure as eggs, some old biddy will have been nosey-parkering through the curtains, and if he was followed, or whoever it was went with him into the foundry, they might have been seen – unless they were waiting for him inside when he arrived.’

  And if they’d let themselves in and been waiting there long, good luck to them, he thought, recalling the bone-cold, almost windowless black hole, with only naked bulbs from the ceiling, that comprised the foundry; there were a couple of boxes to sit on and another for a makeshift table where the two foundry men employed there could eat their sandwiches at dinner time – though when the furnace was lit, like enough it would have been hot as
hell’s kitchen.

  ‘OK. We’ll also need to find out whether anybody was likely to have had a grudge, disaffected employees or such, and what his habits, friends and/or enemies were … talk to the employees … well, I don’t have to tell you, do I? You know the form. Good luck.’ He turned back to the file, but Joe made no immediate move to leave. ‘Is there something else, Sergeant?’

  Joe hesitated. He was sometimes impulsive. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut this time until he’d spoken to Waterhouse. The inspector was a thorn in Joe’s flesh, suspicious of one he regarded as a whippersnapper with a probable ambition to overtake him and who routinely put every obstacle he could in Joe’s way. He might well choose to believe Joe had gone behind his back. On the other hand, the idea was bothering Joe … He plunged.

  ‘The thing is, it’s all put me in mind of something that happened at the end of February. A body that was found under the snow near Maxstead, a mile or two out of the village. Not far from Maxstead Court – that’s the house belonging to the Scroopes – they’re the big name around here.’

  Reardon thought for a moment or two. ‘Found when the thaw came, skull wounds, still unidentified. What about him?’

  Reardon hadn’t changed, Joe thought. As usual he’d made it his business to have everything at his fingertips so that he was on top of the job, though he’d done his homework pretty quick to have obtained the details of a cold case that was no part of his present remit. But it had been the only unexplained murder in Folbury for decades; maybe that was why he recalled it almost straight away.

  ‘DI Micklejohn’s case, just before he retired. The Snowman, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what the local paper called him, sir. Gross, somehow …’ That was how it had seemed to Joe at the time – to dub a brutally murdered man with such a playful nickname – and still did.

  ‘He was dead, Gilmour.’

  The need to be reminded that there was no room for sentiment, even – or perhaps especially – when you were investigating a murder, embarrassed Joe. ‘Yes, sir. Well. There was nothing at all to identify him, apart from a foreign coin in the lining of his jacket – and swarf on the soles of his boots.’

  And that had literally been all there was. A well-built, youngish man with his skull caved in, wearing a brown serge suit in good repair, except for where a few seam stitches had given way in a jacket pocket, through which a coin had slipped into the lining. A pair of worn but still good brown boots, with a lot of tiny, sharp metallic fragments embedded deep into the leather soles: swarf, the fine metal residue from cutting and grinding machines.

  ‘Perhaps not quite a gentleman, then.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The brown boots. No gentleman wears brown boots, unless with tweeds.’

  ‘Oh.’ Joe couldn’t decide whether Reardon was being tongue in cheek or whether it was a joke he’d missed, or just another of his obscure remarks. His wife was a teacher and he himself was reported to have a passion for books. ‘Well, I’m just wondering if there could be a connection between that killing and this one.’

  ‘The swarf, of course.’

  ‘His boot soles had to have picked it up somewhere, but we went round every brass foundry within miles and came up with nothing. The coin in his pocket was a South African shilling, so it seemed possible he’d been a potential customer from there, being shown around one of the workshops. We started with Arms Green and spread out as far as Birmingham. No shortage of machine shops or foundries, brass or otherwise, but none of the managers or owners had ever had any South African visiting them – and there was no reason why any of the men working on the shop floor would have taken particular notice of any stranger being shown around. Happens all the time.’

  ‘The coin might have been in his pocket for all sorts of reasons. Maybe he collected foreign coins. Maybe he’d visited there at some time. Doesn’t necessarily make him South African.’

  ‘That wasn’t ruled out.’

  ‘And the assumption was that he’d been killed and buried just before the big freeze, before the ground got too hard to dig?’

  ‘The ground was hard before the snow came. We’d had some heavy frosts and that must have been why he wasn’t buried so deep. Waste of energy trying.’

  ‘And since he wasn’t wearing an overcoat, nor a scarf or gloves, come to that, in that weather, he was likely killed indoors and transplanted there.’

  ‘Right. Though why out at Maxstead is anyone’s guess.’

  The place where he’d been found was at the edge of a small covert well off the beaten track, though accessible – just – by vehicle. The grave had necessarily been shallow due to the hardness of the ground at the time, covered by an insufficient layer of what loose earth the killer had managed to remove. Scavengers would have found him earlier but for the freezing temperatures; it was only when the snow began to melt and caused the disturbed earth to settle that the corpse’s boot had been revealed.

  ‘Someone who had access to a vehicle of some sort put him there,’ Joe said, ‘a car, or even a van. But we never got anywhere with that.’ Every year saw the number of private car owners or van drivers increasing, not least in Folbury, and without anything more concrete to go on, an extended search would have been fruitless. ‘Anyway, no one in the area has ever reported a missing man, and no hotel – from here to Brum – ever had a guest, South African or otherwise, who failed to turn up and claim his belongings when he should have done.’ Joe watched Reardon as he added, ‘By the way, I – er – went out to Maxstead Court only yesterday. Inspector Waterhouse asked me to let Lady Scroope – sorry, Lady Maude, they say she must be called – know that the enquiries were being suspended.’

  ‘Watch how you go, Gilmour,’ Waterhouse had warned sourly. ‘No putting your size tens where they shouldn’t be.’ The inspector had been mortified that he wasn’t the one to visit the Dowager Lady Scroope and reassure her that she need give no more thought to the matter of the dead man found on her estate: he was after all the senior officer at Folbury. But the decision had been taken out of his hands by instructions from above that her Ladyship was to be informed immediately, just as he was about to leave to catch the 12.10 for Newcastle.

  Considering his reception by the lady and the man called Frith who was with her, Joe could have wished Waterhouse the joy of it. Perfectly polite, of course – thank you very much, Sergeant, good of you to let us know, good afternoon – as if the discovery of the body of a murdered man on the estate had been nothing more than an irritating matter, albeit one best cleared up. Obviously glad to be able to forget the whole business. ‘I think,’ Joe said thoughtfully, ‘she was very – er – relieved.’

  For a while Reardon said nothing, thoughtfully tapping his pencil on the desk. ‘Then she might not be too pleased if we start making enquiries again. So keep them discreet.’

  ‘So the case might be reopened, sir?’ Joe brightened visibly.

  ‘Not at this stage, no chance. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bear it in mind, however, while we look at this other one.’ He stood up and stretched his legs. ‘Meantime, is there any possibility there might be a bigger room – or possibly a smaller desk – available for me to work from? Since you might be going to have me round your necks for longer than you imagined.’

  Joe grinned. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Waterhouse is going to love all this, he thought, but managed not to say it. When the DI returned and learnt that Joe had previously worked with Reardon, he would be sarcastic enough and all too likely to believe Joe had taken advantage of his absence to put himself forward. ‘Hope I didn’t speak out of turn, sir. It could be a fairly unlikely lead, I suppose. Until we know why Aston was killed.’

  ‘Detection’s full of unlikely leads.’

  ‘But two murders, not two months apart, with nothing to connect them after all, except possibly a brass foundry … might be just a coincidence.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, Gilmour, any more than I do.’

  ‘Not really
, sir.’

  Reardon smiled slightly. ‘In this instance we won’t dismiss the possibility that coincidences can be helpful. Stand by your convictions, Sergeant. And meantime, I’ll see if I can’t get a look at DI Micklejohn’s original notes.’

  Joe remembered Micklejohn: easy-going, coasting towards retirement after thirty years’ service. Not wanting to upset the apple cart at that stage, and not really worried that he’d be leaving with his last case unsolved, either. He’d left with the investigation still continuing. Enquiries had gone on in a perfunctory way, but nothing had ever turned up, resulting finally in the decision by the top brass to wrap the enquiries up.

  Reardon asked suddenly, ‘You’ve another sergeant on the strength here? Longton, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Just the two of us.’

  ‘Think he could cope, if you were assigned to this investigation?’

  Joe fought to keep his face from splitting into a grin. ‘Yes, sir.’ Comfortably ensconced in what was becoming his permanent position on the front desk, Longton wouldn’t exactly jump with joy at the prospect of extra work and having to leg it around – unless it was pointed out to him that it might help him to shed the surplus pounds around his waistline.

  ‘Right. Then maybe you should leave the uniform at home tomorrow.’

  Even better. Joe turned with his hand on the doorknob. ‘Er, there’s just one more thing, sir. That reporter from the Herald …’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘They only have one – apart from the editor himself and a photographer they hire from the Orthochrome when they need one, plus a young lad. The reporter’s a woman. Judy Cash. She’s always hanging around the station here. She’s out for a scoop, and if she connects Aston’s death with the Snowman, well … She was the one who dubbed him that, for some reason.’

  ‘That’s what they do, the press … drumming up readers. Beefing up the situation, giving the unknown victim an identity.’