Death in Room Five (A Chief Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘All? Isn’t it enough? The rest was jest chicken-feed. The sort o’ thing you see on all these ‘oliday trips. Dawson bein’ gallant to Mrs. Sheldon and ‘er lappin’ it up. Saw ‘im squeezin’ her hand under the dinner table at Lyons after he’d ‘ad a few.’

  ‘Was her husband there?’

  ‘Of course. Nice fellow, but she’s the boss there. Daren’t say a word, daren’t old Sheldon. Just puts up with it.’

  ‘What about the Moles? Do you know exactly what kept them away?’

  ‘She wasn’t well, they said. Mole called to tell the boss that she ought to be better in a day or two and they’d fly to Lucerne and pick up the party there. Mr. Mole’s an accountant and very well thought of in Bolchester. And his wife keeps a gown shop. Maison Lola. That’s ‘er name, Lola. Best shop of its kind in the town. A good-looker, she is, too. Big, bonny sort. Bit ‘ighly strung and given now and then to tantrums. Many’s the time they’ve booked a taxi for some big local event or other an’ Mole’s had to cancel it. Another of her does, the taxi boys’ll say. Always ‘appenin’ and I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t call off this trip because she’d had a do about somethin’. They’ll turn up as if nothin’ad ‘appened when we get to Lucerne, if we ever do. How much longer we goin’ to be held up ‘ere? Not that I mind with a girl like Bertine to keep me comp’ny, but you like to know, don’t you?’

  Littlejohn almost had to push him from the room to get rid of him.

  Outside, he felt just as if, by taking a single step out of the hall at Bagatelle, he’d crossed the frontier from England into France. The hostel was, as Marriott had said, ‘ome from ‘ome, even down to the hall-stand and the drainpipe painted green which held umbrellas.

  He resisted Marriott’s efforts to tack himself on and walked to the Croisette to get a taxi or a bus for Juan-les-Pins. The promenade was busy and much of it was monopolised by a film company from England taking exotic shots they could very well have made at Blackpool or Bournemouth. The hot sun shone in a cloudless blue sky and it filled Littlejohn with the holiday feeling again. He crossed the soft, hot asphalt to the shade of an awning over a small café and ordered beer. With half-closed eyes he sat enjoying the heat and the coloured sights of the promenade and gardens.

  Damn Dawson! The Chief Inspector and his wife ought to have been mixing with the crowds, taking walks and excursions, enjoying the views and the sun. He opened his eyes and scanned the long stretch of coast with the yachts and motorboats scuttering from point to point, and the sea alive with bathers.

  Here he was, up to the neck in crime again, and no nearer. Not even a theory about who’d done it, in spite of the day’s work.

  ‘You buy carpet? Jewels? I show you postcard?’

  He brushed the dusky hawker aside, paid his bill, and lazily raised his hand for a taxi.

  It was dark and clear when his wife saw him off from Var Airport at ten-to-three next morning, after a good sleep. At six o’clock they touched down at London Airport in pouring rain. There had been no cricket for three days and although it was early summer, people were going about in winter overcoats.

  7 - Bolchester

  ‘It was just a hunch. In any case, I couldn’t have done any good hanging around Bagatelle and trying to solve the case in the holiday spirit of Cannes. I wanted to see what Bolchester was like and what they thought at home of the local members of the Turnpike party.’

  Littlejohn hadn’t even called at Scotland Yard. He’d just telephoned and asked Sergeant Cromwell to meet him at St. Pancras with a raincoat and a few other essentials. They talked together as he waited for the train to Bolchester, where the police had been forewarned of his arrival.

  As they strode on the platform, Cromwell only got a faint idea of what it was all about. William Dawson had been killed at Cannes on the Turnpike outing. His companions had been mainly the small-town shopkeeper and business types and the whole affair was confused by the fact that Dawson had been a traitor in the maquis during the war and it was quite likely that someone on the Riviera had killed him. To add to the muddle, a crooked barkeeper had been murdered on the same spot as Dawson.

  Littlejohn didn’t tell his tale very coherently. He had been travelling all night on a bumpy journey and the changes of climate and temperature had damped his enthusiasm. Still, Cromwell was like a faithful sporting dog. Provided he was hunting with Littlejohn, he was content.

  By the time Littlejohn had eaten his breakfast on the train and had a snooze, it was running into Bolchester. He was met there by Inspector Scrivener, who took him to the police station in a car right away. Littlejohn smiled as he compared Scrivener with Dorange. Tall, fair, heavy-featured, with his hair cut close en brosse, big hands and feet, no sense of humour at all, and the slow conventional police stride. A neat regulation uniform, bright buttons, official police boots…The Chief Inspector thought of the light grey nylon suit and snakeskin shoes…and, of course, the red carnation and the innumerable Pernods…

  A small, compact town squatting in a saucer-shaped valley on the fringe of the Pennines. Half a dozen main streets laid out regularly and paved in asphalt; the rest a medley of slummy, cobblestoned side alleys. Old houses in brick, many of them with black and white fronts; the remainder, a motley of modern erections, chromium-fronted shops, fake Elizabethan and Georgian. A sprawling town hall of grey stone, with a large clock tower and a lot of gothic complications on the front. Dominating the whole, the old Minster on a hill at the top of the town.

  The police station was in the town hall. Beefy constables wandering here and there. A magistrates’ court just ready to go in session, and lawyers bustling along corridors in gowns and cravats because it was also county court day.

  ‘You’ve come at a bad time, sir. I’m prosecuting in the petty sessions this morning. We’ve just run in a gang of local Teddy boys and it’s likely to last all morning.’

  ‘That’s all right, Inspector. Carry on. It won’t inconvenience me at all to find my own way around. It isn’t as if the crime had been committed in Bolchester. I’m just after a bit of local colour.’

  Scrivener looked at Littlejohn as if he’d gone mad. Local colour, and Alderman Dawson lying dead in France! He didn’t quite know what Scotland Yard were doing on the case at all. They had their own C.I.D. in Bolchester. Well…If that was the way they wanted it…

  ‘Can I help in any way?’

  ‘If you don’t mind giving me a list and a rough idea of where the various parties on the trip live, it would help.’

  Scrivener seized his mouth and nose with the palm of his hand in a nervous, bothered gesture.

  ‘I’ll send Haddock round with you. He’s a plain clothes man and we won’t need him today…’

  He rang a bell.

  ‘Send Haddock in.’

  They never needed Constable Haddock on public occasions connected with the constabulary. The cases he solved were always presented to the bench and the public by others, although he often did most of the work. The present Teddy boys, for instance. He’d told the men in uniform where to lay hands on them in the act of breaking the law, but others would appear before the magistrates and take the credit for the arrests. Haddock liked it that way.

  Henry Haddock came of a good local family and was near retiring age. In his early days, he’d been one of the smartest constables in the Bolchester force. Then he had arrested, single-handed, two local safe-crackers just as their charge of dynamite went off prematurely. Both the burglars had died and Haddock had been a bit queer ever after. He was a great favourite with his comrades and most of the good children of the town. At the annual police Christmas party, he dressed up as Father Christmas and was lowered down the town hall chimney.

  ‘This is Detective-Constable Haddock…’

  A tall, fat man, with a red face, heavy grey moustache, and sad, kindly blue eyes. He was dressed from head to foot in black and wore starched white linen. His boots shone like jet and were distorted in sha
pe, for he had bunions from tramping patiently all over the place in search of news and clues. He had the entrée where many of the uniformed constabulary would find the door shut. He carried a bowler hat and a rolled umbrella and was trying to hide the fact that he was sucking a barley-sugar drop. A heavy pipe smoker off duty, he withstood the temptation to smoke with the help of sweets which he also distributed freely among the children he met on his rounds.

  Haddock shook hands solemnly.

  ‘Sit down, Haddock.’

  The chair was so small and Haddock so large that he seemed to lose it in the heavy folds of his body and looked to be sitting in mid-air.

  A constable entered with an armful of books, a briefcase and a map, placed them before Scrivener, and left the room after a glance at the clock which ticked with a hollow, heavy sound on the wall of the office.

  ‘Have you found out who might have done it, yet, Chief Inspector?’

  Scrivener seemed to regard Haddock as a piece of office furniture and addressed himself to Littlejohn.

  ‘I’ve not been kept informed of how the case is proceeding, but I gather it’s really in the hands of the French police. I believe they don’t use our methods and everybody’s guilty till they’re proved innocent.’

  He said it in a tone of contempt, as though the French force was incapable of handling the business properly. Littlejohn wondered what Scrivener would have said if he’d seen M. Joliclerc, or, better still, Dorange, with his red carnation.

  ‘I have the complete dossier with me, sir, but it’s all in French. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘I haven’t time just now. I must be getting to court, but we’ll have a chat afterwards if you care to call, sir. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Haddock.’

  The sun was breaking out and streamed through the upper halves of the office windows, which were of stained glass, and cast patches of green, purple and blue light on Scrivener’s bristled head and florid face. He rose and gathered his papers, books and maps. The Teddy boys were obviously in for a gruelling time.

  ‘I’ll see you later, then, sir. If I can help in any way…’

  He was gone. It was obvious that Scrivener was leaving the body and the murder of the late Alderman in the hands of the French police and Littlejohn. If Dawson allowed himself to be murdered in foreign parts remote from Bolchester, it was his own look-out.

  ‘Sad loss to the town, Alderman Dawson.’

  Haddock looked ready to burst into tears. His voice was deep and musical, like a bass-bassoon.

  ‘He was well liked, locally?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Very popular.’

  ‘And yet, between ourselves, Haddock, the dossier of the case shows that most of the people on the trip to Cannes had reasons for bearing him a grudge. Funny he should be so popular.’

  Constable Haddock looked hurt. He turned his sad prominent eyes on Littlejohn.

  ‘The more you get on, the more people are jealous and resentful, aren’t they?’

  ‘I think I’d like a walk round the town, if you’ll be so good as to guide me, Haddock. I’d like to see the places where the people on this trip live and work and as we go, you can tell me something about them all.’

  Haddock rose, took up his umbrella, and carefully put on his bowler hat.

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure. Where shall we begin, sir?’

  ‘Marriott’s shop.’

  They left the town hall and crossed the square which was laid out in gardens in the middle and arranged round the statue of a politician, aggressively addressing the town in general with his fingers raised aloft.

  ‘Mr. Gladstone,’ said Haddock laconically.

  The shop was right opposite. A long, low frontage, with two shabby windows obscured by green paint to stop you seeing what was going on inside. A large dray was drawn-up in front and two burly workmen were unloading barrels and rolling them across the pavement and down a chute into the cellars. ‘That’s Marriott’s. He did the bulk of the trade in the town, but the business is going down.’

  ‘Is he a native?’

  ‘He wasn’t born here, sir, but his father bought the business and Mr. Marriott inherited it from him.’

  The sun was quite warm and the main street very pleasant, The shops were just beginning to wake up. An ironmonger on one side of Marriott’s carried out a stack of buckets and put them at the side of the door and his next-door neighbour, a pleasant little Jew, came out of his outfitter’s shop and nailed a card on the door-jamb. Sale of Raincoats. The three banks in the street were getting busy and clerks came and went, dealing with the morning’s local clearing.

  ‘Marriott and Dawson didn’t get on?’

  ‘I never heard much of them quarrelling, sir. They were on opposite sides politically and didn’t agree about that. But who does, sir?’

  Again, the sad blue eyes questioned Littlejohn’s face. ‘Hullo, Henry…’

  One of the huge brutes hauling barrels about as if they were tin buckets, paused in his toil to greet the local detective.

  ‘Good morning, Wilfred. How’s your wife to-day?’

  ‘Spent a better night, thanks.’

  ‘Where is Dawson’s coal business, Haddock?’

  ‘Just round the back here…’

  They plunged in the warren of old grimy streets. Chandlers, cheap grocers, old clothes shops, with here and there a dirty tenement between. In the end, the railway lines spanning a viaduct beneath the arches of which were huge stacks of coal protected by a surrounding paling fence with a large gate. A brick office, a public weighing-machine, and a lot of carts and lorries loading coal. Business as usual, by the look of it.

  ‘They’re carrying on the business, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s a limited company, you know. There’s a manager runs it. Alderman Dawson spent most of his time on public bodies…The council, the Infirmary, the courts…Like to see the manager? Mr. Lovelace, he’s called.’

  ‘We may as well.’

  They entered the yard, over the entrance of which was spread a sign. William Dawson & Co. Ltd., Coal Merchants. Through the yard and beyond the arches a canal flowed and after that were green fields.

  ‘It’s a very old, established firm, sir. It started on the canal bank, so long ago, and then when the railway came, it was handy. They bring the wagons down the ramp from the goods yard and the empties are hauled back by a winch.’

  About a dozen lorries manoeuvred about the enclosure, their drivers shouting above the noises of the hoppers which mechanically loaded the coal. Overhead, trains thundered across the viaduct.

  Lovelace was in his office. A stocky, bull-necked man with a large head, black moustache, and a shock of untidy black hair. A slovenly, shabbily dressed type, used to associating with the coalmen and drivers of the yard. The office was a rudimentary place, with a few plain wooden stools, a chair upholstered in leather from which the stuffing was leaking, and a roll-top desk cluttered with pieces of dirty paper and weight notes. A cheap safe and a rack holding a few ledgers.

  ‘What’s all this about the boss? Was he murdered, or what? Nobody seems to have a proper tale.’

  ‘He was murdered right enough. Will it make much difference here?’

  Littlejohn sat in the leather chair and started to fill his pipe. Haddock strolled into the yard and started talking to the man at the weighing-machine, a little fellow with a wooden leg.

  Lovelace eyed Littlejohn suspiciously as though he might have come to wind-up the firm.

  ‘It’s a company, you know, and there are other shareholders, although the boss held most of the shares.’

  ‘Who’s likely to inherit Dawson’s interest?’

  ‘Miss Blair, I reckon. She’s the only relative he has left.’

  ‘Did the Alderman spend much time here?’

  ‘Not since the war. I looked after things while he was in the forces and when he came back, he still left ‘em to me. He was busy with other things…town council and the like, although he
took his fair whack of the profits.’

  Lovelace pulled out a short pipe and started to fill it from an oiled-silk pouch. A swarthy man, with black mats of hair on the backs of his hands. Hairs even sprouted on the tip of his broad nose.

  ‘It’s a profitable business, I reckon.’

  ‘Now it is, and I might say I’ve had a lot to do with making it pay. The way Alderman Dawson ran it before the war, it never paid. Spent too little time here and took too much out. It’s been bankrupt once.’

  Lovelace had a grievance and it was manifest in every word and gesture. He thought he ought to be better paid and own a bigger block of shares than he did.

  ‘Did anybody lose much money when the business went bust?’

  ‘Dawson and two or three shareholders. Dawson saw what was comin’ and must have tucked a bit away. The rest lost a packet. They say it killed one of them, a chap called Bewmont…’

  ‘Beaumont. The dentist?’

  ‘Yes; know him?’

  ‘I met his wife. She was on the motor coach trip with. Dawson when he met his death.’

  ‘I know that. Perhaps she did him in. They say her old man lost round ten thousand pounds when Dawson’s went broke. In fact, he’d retired from his practice and it made it that he’d to set up again. Not for long, though, because he died a bit later. If he hadn’t been well insured, they say his wife would have been in the cart. She’d have had to go on the stage again…’