Death in Room Five (A Chief Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  ‘What about Dawson?’

  ‘Mullett took Dawson with him as a sort of interpreter. I don’t know what he wanted with a chap like William Dawson, when there were so many good young men who would have done better. But Dawson seemed to push himself, and with being Mr. Mullett’s friend…When they got there, somebody shot at Dawson as he was in his parachute, wounded him in the shoulder, and he was laid up in the French Underground for weeks. He had a secret name, Vallouris, or something such, and Mullett was called La Colle. Never heard the last of it when Dawson got back. He made two or three trips all told, all about the Mullett gun.’

  ‘Was he married, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. His wife died about three years ago.’

  Probably Dawson’s subsequent trips were to the girl he’d left behind him in the maquis. The girl to whom he’d betrayed his comrades.

  ‘Was he a ladies’ man?’

  Haddock smiled, puffed his cigar, leaned back in his seat, and put the thumb of his spare hand in the armhole of his waistcoat.

  ‘On the Q.T., yes, sir. He kept his amours very dark, but the police see and learn a lot that’s not expected, don’t they, sir?’

  ‘Yes. And what did they learn about Dawson?’

  ‘There must have been somethin’ about the man that upset the ladies, sir. Married women with good husbands seemed eager to betray them on account of him.’

  He made patterns in the air with his cigar.

  ‘Such as… ?’

  ‘Well, sir, there’s a number of ladies you wouldn’t know, but I can tell you this. Some of the matrimonial trouble of the Moles was due to Dawson. At one time, he seemed he couldn’t leave Lola Mole alone. Then it fizzled out. I think Mole must have stepped in and threatened what he’d do if it didn’t stop. Dawson behaved himself for a time after that. His wife had died in the meantime, sir, and it got round that Mrs. Beaumont was to be the next. Several local ladies were disappointed at hearin’ that news, sir, and must have been relieved when Mrs. Beaumont denied it. She was a good friend of Dawson’s, but not to that extent. A cut above him, too, if you ask me.’

  ‘Anybody else I’d know?’

  ‘Well, yes. Perhaps you met on the Turnpike tour a lady called Mrs. Sheldon. Irene Sheldon. Now, I’ve got to be careful, here, so you’ll keep this dark, sir I did hear from reliable sources that before his wife died, Dawson and Mrs. Sheldon was more than friends. She was a widow, then. Mrs. Briggs. Her first husband was a major and killed in the war. It was said that Mrs. Briggs and Dawson was carryin’ on before Mrs. Dawson’s death. When Dawson’s wife died, I suppose Mrs. Briggs had hopes. Which was dashed when the rumour spread about Mrs. Beaumont, you see. So, to show she didn’t care, or out of spite, who does Mrs. Briggs go and marry, but a chap called Sheldon who’d gone from these parts to India tea-plantin’ years ago and had lost his wife out there. It seems he’d always been keen on her from boyhood, as you might say, and ‘ad wanted her when Major Briggs beat him to it. She married Sheldon, then, and has since, from all accounts, led the poor chap a dog’s life. Furthermore…’

  Haddock paused for effect, flicked the ash from his cigar, and leaned confidentially across the table.

  ‘Furthermore…It’s rumoured that she and Dawson were a bit too friendly after she married. Makin’ a mug of Sheldon behind his back, you see. But poor old Sheldon worships the ground his wife treads on. A perfect gentleman, is Sheldon, and honi soit qui mal y pense, as you might say. He wouldn’t believe a wrong thing of his wife, I’m sure. Now that Dawson’s out of the way, perhaps Sheldon’s life’ll be a bit easier.’

  Haddock paused, pondered, and a profound thought seemed to strike him.

  ‘‘Ere…I hope you don’t suspect, sir, that Mr. Sheldon did Dawson in on account of his wife. Mr. Sheldon’s the last man alive to do such a thing.’

  Lunch was over, the head waiter was unctuously handing out the bills, and the local business men were leaving. Some of them greeted Haddock and stared hard at Littlejohn.

  ‘What do we do next, sir?’

  ‘I’ve to get back to the police station to ring up Cannes. I wonder who’s been killed this time.’

  Littlejohn realised that this tepid interest in the case was not like the usual zest. Even now, he felt like sitting back and taking a good snooze. The sudden change of air and temperature, coming on top of a sleepless night, had sapped his energy completely.

  ‘Was Dawson keen on Mrs. Beaumont in her young days, do you know? Or was she friendly with him through her late husband? She seems to be a woman of strong character who could perhaps tell me a lot more than she’s already done. Do you know anything about her background and the history of her friendship with Dawson?’

  ‘Can’t say I do, sir. But I think I know who would. Miss Liddell, the borough librarian, is a great friend of hers…‘as been for a long time. She might know. Like me to try while you telephone? The library’s only just behind the town hall.’

  ‘Yes, do, please. Then we might just have another look round town before I go. I must get the night plane back. The Turnpike party will be clamouring for me, and I don’t want them to know I’ve been here and got information about some of them.’

  They put on their hats and parted.

  It turned out that Dorange had telephoned and had asked Littlejohn to ring back to the Commissariat of Police at Nice. It didn’t take long to get through.

  ‘Hullo, Dorange…’

  ‘Allo, Littlezhon. Comment-ca-va?’

  There had been another murder with a vengeance, this time. No complications of the Underground or low life of Cannes. Henri, the son of the concierge at Bagatelle, had been killed. His body had been found in some bushes on La Californie just behind Bagatelle. He had been throttled, choked with someone’s tie or scarf.

  ‘A nasty little boy,’ added Dorange. ‘The sort who might have proved troublesome to us when he grew up. However, that doesn’t say he should have been murdered. When are you coming back?’

  ‘By plane tonight, Dorange.’

  ‘See you soon, then, old man.’

  So, young Henri had seen or heard something and had either said too much or tried to cash in on his information. This new development seemed to focus the inquiry more than ever on Bagatelle. Now that the maquis motive had been eliminated, Littlejohn could imagine with what fervour M. Joliclerc would press his inquiry. Somebody at Bagatelle would be going through it!

  They were still fully occupied with the Teddy boys at the local police station and, until Haddock returned, Littlejohn felt like a fish out of water. Haddock wasn’t long. The librarian was out at lunch for an hour.

  ‘I ought to have thought of it, sir.’

  ‘Let’s take a run round to the Hannons’ house and see where the Sheldons live. And, by the way, do you know much about Humphries, the schoolmaster who’s the conductor of the Turnpike tour?’

  ‘A very decent young fellow, sir. Well-liked at the school. Nothing much wrong with him, I can assure you. He’s keen on Dawson’s niece, Miss Blair, and Dawson was dead against it. Said she was too good for Humphries, who was after her money. Miss Blair comes into quite a nice bit from her parents’ estates, I know. They were prominent drapers in the town and did well. Dawson was her mother’s brother and her guardian till she came of age, and one of her trustees till she came into her capital on marriage. Dawson used to boast about it. Said with him being the trustee, any young man who wished to marry her would have to ask his consent. “And the bank’s, because the bank’s the other trustee,” he’d say. Sort of evergreen joke. Lucky the bank’s in it, too. It stopped Dawson fiddling with the funds…’

  They got in the car.

  ‘Two nice young women, the Hannons. Miss Lizzie’s a bit on the tittering side. Their father drank himself to death. He was borough treasurer at one time and very steady. Then his wife died. He never got over it. Booze, booze, booze. It was pathetic to see it, sir.’

  The large sad eyes fell on Littlejohn, the car swerved, and Haddock
hastily turned his thoughts to the road again.

  ‘Do you know the Curries, Haddock?’

  ‘Yes. Sober, sensible, churchgoing people. Couldn’t wish for nicer. He’s manager of the local building society. If Mr. Currie had had any grudge against Dawson, we’d have known in the police, sir. I think you might cross ‘im off.’

  That’s all you know! thought Littlejohn.

  ‘Wasn’t Dawson a director of the building society?’

  ‘Oh, yes. All prominent local men. But in a concern of that size and sort, Dawson couldn’t have done Currie any harm. Did you meet that young red-head, Gauld, on the trip, sir? A bit of a bolshie, if you ask me. Prominent in local politics. And there’s rumours he doesn’t hit it with his wife and ‘as been seen around with Miss Mary Hannon. Pity those two young women ‘aven’t got an elder brother, sir, to give Gauld a proper thrashin’. Miss Hannon must have sort of got infatuated with him. But he’s not the kind to kill Dawson, believe me. For all his wrong principles, as you might call ‘em, he’s no killer. On the contrary. He’s all for non-aggression, peace campaigns, and the sort. Non-violence, if you get me, sir. And yet, sir, there’s nothing queerer than people, is there? I bring to mind that Gauld was brought up before the magistrates once for assault. Found a man beating a dog, got mad…typical red-head…and knocked the man down. Fined ten bob, I believe, and then the cruelty to animals people took up the man who was knocked down for cruelty to the dog, and he got five pounds and costs. Funny things do ‘appen, don’t they?’

  Haddock roared with laughter at the queerness of folks. ‘No, sir. No. I’d cross Gauld off as a murderer if I was you.’

  At this rate, Haddock would soon solve the case by process of elimination, if he’d anybody left to pin it on when he’d done! His sad eyes scanned the road until he saw what he was seeking.

  ‘That’s the Hannons’ place.’

  An old semi-detached house with a front garden surrounded by gloomy old trees. A large family house, which, now that the money and most of its former occupants had gone, was slowly decaying from disuse and lack of care. A coach-house and stables on one side looked just as they might have done, only more dilapidated, in the days when the former borough treasurer had gone to his office in a carriage and pair. The structure had not even been converted into a garage.

  The front door of the house was open and Haddock’s surprise at this vanished when he saw four painters sitting in the hall drinking tea.

  ‘Afternoon, Mr. ‘Addock.’

  One of them greeted him. They all remained squatting, holding their teacups in a kind of solemn Passover from which nobody must disturb them.

  ‘The young ladies having the place decorated whilst they’re away?’

  Haddock spoke more slowly than usual, careful of each word, on the look-out for his aitches. It was the patriarchal tone he used to the lower orders, or before the magistrates on the rare occasions when he appeared in petty sessions.

  ‘Four rooms, that’s all. Outside ‘ud do with doin’, too, Mr. ‘Addock, but money’s probably a bit tight.’

  Haddock looked along the line of celebrants of the ritual tea.

  ‘No wonder.’

  He strolled in with Littlejohn, apparently inspecting the art of the white-smocked men, whose tackle was all over the place.

  Old-fashioned furniture, frayed carpets, an atmosphere of stuffiness and dust, promoted by the long plush curtains and the chairs with threadbare tapestry. In prosperous days, doubtless a fine well-kept house. Now, neglected and dying on its feet. Probably a hard place to sell, even if its owners wanted to move to something more modern elsewhere. The sort of house a spirited girl would do her best to get away from, even if it meant kicking over the traces a bit. And as for a girl without much spirit; she tittered and twittered and hoped for the best.

  ‘You couldn’t say, sir, could you, that either of the two Misses Hannons was likely to ‘ave done for the late Alderman? Though livin’ here, day in day out, as you might say, must have made them both a bit queer. Livin’ in the past, eh?’

  He pointed to a large framed photograph of an elderly gentleman glaring through his glasses from above the fireplace at all in the room. A tyrant of an old man, with a great square chin, the bulbous nose and horse-nostrils he’d passed on to his daughters, and just a twinkle of spite in his eyes. A hard, firm man, and yet he’d folded up and died when he lost his wife. Her picture, a dumpy, timid-looking woman with a faint smile, hung on the wall opposite her husband’s.

  One of those obscure places where tragedy had been played out to the full with no audience to watch it.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t think either of the Misses Hannons…’

  Haddock was still eliminating. He wore his hat and carried his umbrella at the slope. You might have mistaken him for a bum, arrived to value and sell the place to satisfy a writ.

  ‘Neither would I, Haddock. Let’s go.’

  It was sheer intrusion and better ended. The workmen gave them a cheery good bye.

  ‘Bit of a tumbledown warren, eh, Mr. ‘Addock?’ one of them shouted after him. He lived in a council house with a nice wife and two kids, and tragedy of the kind written large in the place he was decorating did not strike him at all. He was only twenty-five.

  ‘What about the Sheldons’, sir?’

  ‘Is it far from here?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  The car was soon there. Darjeeling, The Close. It was a modernised cottage under the large wall which surrounded the Minster. A well-kept little garden, small tightly-mown lawns, an old stone house with all the curtains drawn. And it was here that Dawson had called on the Sheldons and, thinking her husband wasn’t looking, had smiled a knowing smile at Mrs. Sheldon behind his back. And Sheldon had spotted it and made light of it…or pretended to.

  The whole neighbourhood had a sedate, ecclesiastical air. A parson in gaiters crossed the close, two old ladies descended from a taxi and rang the bell of another neat cottage, presumably on their way to tea and muffins, a gardener mowing the grass among the graves alongside the church sharpened his scythe musically, and the clock in the great tower chimed and struck four.

  Dawson, who’d spent his life in this place and in the town below, had gone off to Cannes and been stabbed in the back on a rubbish heap. And the crime had arisen from passions roused here in the close or down in the quiet town. Littlejohn thought of the stiff body in the clinic of Les Petites Sœurs de la Miséricorde. It was fantastic.

  ‘Doesn’t look as if we’ll get in, sir. We’ve been lucky so far, but our luck ends here. It’s locked-up and blinds down. All the same Mr. Sheldon was too much of a gentleman to kill anybody. Why, he’s one of the council of the Friends of Bolchester Minster, who collect funds to keep up the fabric of this old place. I’m a nonconformist myself, but I’d hate to see this old church fall into disrepair, sir. It’s a public jewel, in a matter of speakin’.’

  Somebody started to play the organ in the church and the great swell of sound filled the close through the open main doors. A woman in an apron and an old hat emerged and started to sweep away the confetti from an earlier wedding. The man in gaiters returned holding a small dog on a lead and talking tenderly to it.

  ‘That’s Bishop Driver, sir. He’s retired now. You wouldn’t think, to look at ‘im, that he’s only sixty. Somewhere in the East, he was, and refused to leave his people when the Japs came in. Every time anybody broke rules in the camp, the Japs took it out of the bishop. He’s a great friend of Mr. Sheldon.’

  Haddock said it as though giving Sheldon a testimonial, an exemption from the murder of Dawson. The bishop passed them, greeted them, and then turned back his kindly glance to the dog, whose good brown eyes helped him to forget the past and the wickedness of men.

  ‘I’m sure Mr. Sheldon…’

  Haddock, the advocate, seemed to be pleading the cause of all his fellow townsfolk.

  ‘That only leaves Marriott, then, according to your mathematics, Haddock.’

&nb
sp; Littlejohn smiled, took out his pipe, and started to fill it. Haddock did the same; an old pouch, a little briar with a curved stem, and a bowl thick with carbon.

  ‘You might go farther and fare worse than Marriott, sir.’ Littlejohn paused.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He hated Dawson. Once he said he thought he’d have to kill him to get any peace. He was drunk, of course. It was just after the town plannin’ committee, of which Dawson was chairman, and by that I mean he more or less ran the show. Marriott’s shop is right on the development line and is to be compulsorily purchased. It’s to be set back a good twenty yards. It’s not doin’ too well and Marriott says if it’s shut up for a time or made less, it’ll ruin him. Dawson pressed it on vindictively.’

  ‘And got his way?’

  ‘Oh, yes. As usual. The night the committee decided, Marriott went to the local gentlemen’s club and got properly tight. He swore he’d get even with Dawson. All his life, he said, Dawson had thwarted him. He’d even, when they were boys, won a scholarship that would otherwise have gone to Marriott. The result was, accordin’ to Marriott, that Dawson was educated, whereas Marriott, to use his own words, was a bloody illiterate. He was drunk, as I said. But you see, he’d a deep hate for Dawson, who also opposed him and threw him off the council at the elections. If that hadn’t happened, Marriott would have been where Dawson was and saved his shop and his fortune.’

  Haddock slowly lit his pipe.

  Littlejohn did the same and, as the flame of the match rose and fell, he remembered. Marriott had been the one who’d dragged the Vallouris red-herring across the trail. He only had said Dawson’s last words had referred to his maquis pseudonym. Marriott, who’d known all about Dawson’s escapades in the French Underground, and probably of his betrayal of his friends there as well.