Peg Boone took the money for the whisky from the toper and slid it in the till without so much as a look at it. Then she raised the flap of the counter and emerged straight for Littlejohn.
‘You were wanting me?’
It was a question and an answer at the same time.
‘Yes. I want a talk with you. You are Miss Boone?’
‘Yes. Wait here till I get the barmaid…’
She left the room with the graceful poise of an Eastern woman whose gait is full of lovely rhythm from carrying water-vessels on her head. As she closed the door, all the eyes which had been upon her lost their interest, the darts flew, men drank deeply and relaxed. Danger had left them for a respite.
A little peroxide blonde entered, followed by Peg Boone, who made her look cheap and insignificant in contrast.
‘Come this way.’
It was an order.
They followed her into a small den, made like a cocktail bar, with a red and black counter, chromium and leather stools, and red upholstered seats in alcoves.
‘This is closed tonight. We haven’t many customers…’
They all sat down.
‘Drink?’
‘No, thanks…’said Littlejohn, and Cromwell smiled and shook his head.
‘You’re police, aren’t you?’
Her self-possession was amazing. She hadn’t the slightest doubt about her looks, her make-up, or her impact on her visitors. She didn’t move a hand to adjust her hair or dress. She was sure of everything.
‘Yes, Miss Boone. We’re police. Scotland Yard, to be exact.’
‘Scotland Yard? So it’s not about the road accident?’
‘No. Has there been one?’
‘Yes. A motor-cyclist was killed right in front of here this afternoon. I saw it happen. I made a statement, but I thought you were after more information.’
‘No. Do you know a man named Walter Dodd?’
Her eyes held those of Littlejohn. Nothing about her seemed to change, not even a tell-tale frown or a twitch.
‘No.’
Littlejohn knew she was lying.
‘He seems to have known you, or of this place, at least. He had a slip of paper in his wallet bearing your address. Can you explain that?’
‘Easily. Somebody must have recommended us and he made a note of it. One day he’ll be turning up for a drink.’
‘No, he won’t. He was murdered earlier this evening about a mile or so away from here. Do you know Gale Cottage?’
‘Gale Tannery place, you mean?’
‘Yes. He was found dead there. Smothered in bed. And with the name of this hotel in his pocket.’
‘I can’t help that, Inspector. I certainly didn’t smother him and leave my address. It must have been as I said.’
‘Do you know any of the Dodd family?’
‘Which Dodds?’
‘Steel people in Cambridge, I think. William Dodd is a well-known M.P. and Cabinet Minister.’
‘I’ve heard of Willie Dodd. He’s always having his picture in the papers.’
‘Yes, I know. But I’m asking about the Dodds who live quite near here. Two or three miles on the main Cambridge road, I’d guess.’
‘Why should I know them?’
‘I’m not interested in the why for the time being; I want to know if you know them.’
‘I don’t. I can’t see where this is getting us. I’ve got work to do, and I’ll be obliged if…’
Littlejohn ignored the hint, but passed over the slip of paper bearing the address. ‘Do you recognise the handwriting?’
Peg Boone scrutinised the paper and returned it.
‘No.’
‘Sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
Her eyes flashed and the tips of her well-shaped ears grew red, as though her anger were somehow concentrated there.
She was growing a bit exasperated at the two stolid men sitting facing her. As a rule, the sternest melted under her charms and smoothed away difficulties. With this pair, it was like beating against a stone wall.
‘Have you finished?’
Peg Boone rose slowly, like a cat uncurling from a chair.
‘Not yet, Miss Boone. Is your brother in?’
‘He won’t be able to help, either. Look here, I’ve tried to be civil and given you a hearing, although we’re very busy…’
‘You don’t seem so, Miss Boone. And I don’t think you’re helping at all.’
Littlejohn met her angry glance with a bland smile.
‘The handwriting on this slip is, unless I’m mistaken, that of Harry Dodd. He was the son of the murdered man, and was himself murdered the other day. Does that strike any chord?’
Peg Boone leaned against the counter, her shapely legs stretched straight, and her back wedged against the woodwork. She was quietly dressed in a jumper and tailor-made skirt, both of which emphasised her splendid figure.
‘I’ve read about it in the paper.’
‘Is that all?’
‘What do you mean?’
Littlejohn took out his pipe and began to fill it.
‘I think I’ll have a drink after all. Do you keep Hoods’ bottled beer?’
‘Yes. Will you come in the public room?’
‘No, thanks. I want to talk to you here…’
‘I’ve nothing more to tell you.’
Cromwell sensed tension in the air and wondered how Littlejohn was going to find an excuse for keeping up this fruitless interview.
‘All the same, please serve us here. My friend will have the same.’
She walked round the deserted counter, took out two bottles from behind it, and forcing off the red caps with an opener fixed on the shelf, emptied their contents in two glasses.
‘Will you have a drink with us, Miss Boone?’
‘Very well. I’ll have a bottled beer, too.’
She filled a glass for herself. There were three empty bottles and three red caps on the counter. Littlejohn felt in his vest pocket, took out the red cap found on Harry Dodd’s body, and placed it beside them. Peg Boone looked at the cap and then at Littlejohn. Their eyes met again.
‘Well,’ she said.
‘That makes four, doesn’t it? The fourth was found in the pocket of Harry Dodd after he died.’
‘Was it? There must be hundreds taken off bottles in a day in this locality.’
Littlejohn lit his pipe and pocketed his clue. Cromwell found himself hanging on his chief’s words and, judging from the tensing of Peg Boone’s hands, she, too, was feeling the strain a bit.
The Inspector seemed settled for the night. He crossed his legs and smiled gently at Peg Boone again. She might have been a little girl interviewing the doctor or a schoolmaster, instead of a lovely and attractive woman using all her powers to get out of a difficulty.
There was a difficulty somewhere, for the woman’s poise was weakening. She was afraid of something, yet hoping to break down her adversary before she herself gave way.
‘Yes…Harry Dodd had been spending the night with his friends in a place a bit like this; a country pub. He’d had a drink or two and perhaps he felt as we do, that it’s a good way of passing an evening to be with good company in a cosy, hospitable inn…’
‘I’m glad you feel that way, but I have work to do.’
‘Not much longer, Miss Boone. Just till we finish our drinks. Harry Dodd had been drinking in one of Hoods’ places earlier in the day. He’d carried off a red cap from his beer bottle. It was in his pocket when he died. Did I tell you that, Miss Boone?’
‘Yes…’
‘Harry Dodd rose as the clock struck ten. He bade his pals good night, because that was the time he usually left. He’d a fair walk uphill, you see. No sooner had he got in the dark village street than somebody stabbed him in the back with a knife!’
There was a pause. You could hear the distant voices in the public rooms and, behind a door in the far corner of the cocktail bar, somebody was moving about quietly, as i
f it might have been one of the family pottering around in their personal quarters.
Littlejohn indicated the door.
‘Is that your and your brother’s private room?’
‘Yes. What’s that got to do with it?’
From the tone of her voice it was evident that Peg Boone was immersed in Littlejohn’s tale and resented the interruption as an irrelevancy.
‘Harry Dodd wasn’t killed outright. He’d just the strength to get to a call-box, and from there he telephoned home for the women who lived with him to bring the car and pick him up…’
Peg Boone caught her breath in a noise like a dry sob. Littlejohn didn’t seem to hear it. He took a sip of his beer.
‘…Then he tried to walk home. He fell in the road just as…’
‘Stop it!’
It was wrung out of Peg Boone against her will. Her breath came noisily and her breast rose and fell in agitation. ‘Why are you telling me this…? I…I…’
She gulped and stopped for words.
‘You knew Harry Dodd, didn’t you? He used to come here. He gave his father the address, in case he needed a friend, didn’t he? You knew about Walter Dodd, and how they put him away in the asylum because he was a family nuisance, and that Harry Dodd helped him to get away to somewhere where he hoped the old man would be happier…’
‘He was fond of his father. He said he was the only friend he had when he was in trouble.’
‘You knew Dodd, then?’
‘Yes, I did. Now that I’ve told you what you wanted to know, leave me alone.’
‘How well did you know him?’
‘He called now and then for a drink. It was on his way to wherever he was living. He knew these parts. His old home was nearby. Gale Cottage, where his father died.’
‘He called frequently, didn’t he?’
‘Now and then,’ she persisted.
‘But he was very familiar with the place?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘He’d come in and help himself to a bottled beer, wouldn’t he? He’d go round the counter, get a bottle, take off the cap himself…And perhaps pocket the cap he’d got in his hand if he was talking or got excited or found something you had to tell him interesting?’
‘Plenty of our customers help themselves. It’s a free and easy place. We’re all friends together.’
Cromwell remembered the roomful of customers next door. All friends together! If being drawn by the fascination of this woman was a form of being friends together, well and good. But he doubted it…
‘Harry Dodd must have frequented one or two places where he got red-cap ale. The asylum, for instance, where he met his father sometimes. But in such places they open the beer and then bring it to the tables. The same with most other pubs where you don’t help yourself. The bar-man, or whoever it is, takes off the cap at the bar because there’s a fixture there for doing it, like the one over there. You don’t pocket the cap then…Of course, I may be wrong…’
Peg Boone showed no more resistance. They might have been discussing a dear friend. In fact, the atmosphere had changed as though their mutual knowledge of the dead Harry Dodd had become a bond between them.
‘So Harry Dodd was one of the party of all friends together. He called here now and then for a drink on his way to Helstonbury, helped himself, and then went off.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘I don’t understand, Inspector?’
She was on her guard again now.
‘If Harry Dodd was just like the rest, why should he entrust his father to you…? An escaped lunatic, officially…’
‘He wasn’t a lunatic!’
‘You knew him, then?’
‘No. But Harry Dodd said so, and Harry wouldn’t tell a lie about that.’
‘It was arranged that the old man should come here?’
‘Yes…I said we’d keep him safe till Harry could make other arrangements. It’s quiet here and he’d be undisturbed.’
‘Why didn’t he come, then? Why did he hide himself in the old home, all alone? He escaped a fortnight ago, and must have been there since then. He’d not long been murdered when we got there. An hour or so before we arrived.’
Peg Boone rose and walked up and down in distress.
‘He didn’t want to come here, he said. He’d stay in his old place. I said that was the very spot they’d go looking for him. But he said it would be all right. He’d call here for food and things after dark and keep a look-out in the day. Harry was making arrangements to get him free from the asylum, so there wasn’t much danger. Only the old man didn’t want to go back for the time Harry took to see things through for him. We had to humour him.’
‘So you were friendly enough with Harry Dodd to do that for him?’
‘Look here, Mister. I’ve got to be a bit hard in a place like this, but I’m not that hard against a poor old man. When Dodd suggested that his father…Well…I said we’d take him in and mind him for a bit. Anybody would have done the same for the poor old chap.’
‘And that’s all you have to tell me. You knew nothing else about Harry Dodd?’
‘What is there to know?’
‘You’re very distressed about his death…However, I’d better have a word with your brother. Is he in?’
‘Yes, but…’
She was interrupted in the midst of making excuses for her brother, Sid, by the entry of the very man. The door at the end of the cocktail bar opened and he appeared.
‘Look here, Peg. The place is full and…’
He stopped in the middle of his complaint and eyed the two police officers.
They eyed him, too, for he was of medium build, well set-up, as dark as his sister, with a little black moustache, and he wore a check suit, like a bookie. He had a silver ring, fashioned like a coiled snake, on his little finger.
Sid Boone stood at the open door, hesitating.
‘This is my brother, Sid. These are two officers from Scotland Yard…’
She didn’t get any further, for from the room behind the man in the check suit came an unctuous, benevolent voice.
‘Cora! Pretty Cora! Pretty Pol…Pretty Cora…’
Sid Boone stepped back a pace as if to stem the tide of parrot talk stimulated by the sound of voices, but he was a second too late.
‘Pretty Cora! I’m wild about Harry, and Harry’s wild about me!’
10—The Aching Man
‘You may as well come in our room,’ said Peg Boone wearily. There was a note of despair in her voice, as though fate had let her down and shown all the cards in her hand.
‘It’s cosier in our room and there’s no sense sitting here wasting light and getting chilled. You look like being here for some time…’
Littlejohn gave her a glance of agreement. She ushered them in their private quarters and even gave Littlejohn’s shoulder an affectionate pat as he entered them. It was a gesture made out of trust or admiration for a new friend. The Inspector had come across such sentiments before after keen cross-questioning. Instead of growing resentment, there was often forged a bond of queer friendship between antagonists in a duel of wits. His wife, who attended university extension lectures in psychology, had once told him of similar relations between the parties in psychoanalysis, but he didn’t know much about such things…
Sid Boone followed and shut the door.
‘Cora’s Harry’s sweetheart…Where’s Harry Dodd?’
The parrot kept shouting from its cage. It looked a very old and wily bird, but its expression was a benevolent one, that of an old lady who wishes nobody any harm.
‘So this is Cora…’
Littlejohn tapped the gilded wires of the cage, and the parrot gave him a gentle, unwinking glance and with a lightning gesture seized the bandage Mrs. Harry Dodd had put on his finger and whipped it off. That done, she lost interest in it, dropped it and slowly closed her eyes, the lids falling like little metallic shutters.
&
nbsp; ‘Cora…That’s me. Harry’s girl…’
‘She seems very fond of Harry Dodd,’ said Littlejohn, rescuing his bandage. Peg Boone hurried to fix it for him. Her brother anxiously seized a large baize cloth and covered the cage.
‘Please leave her uncovered. She might have something more to say.’
‘What do you want?’
Sid was sulky and a bit truculent. He kept glancing suspiciously at his sister, fearing she might have betrayed something.
‘Sit down, everybody.’
Peg Boone had ceased fencing and seemed ready to talk. The two detectives sat in chairs by the fire. The room was small and cosy, with armchairs by the hearth, a desk covered with papers in one corner, family photographs on the walls, and a standard lamp casting a cosy glow over everything. Sid remained standing by the parrot, whose cage hung from a hook on a chromium stand.
‘There’s quite a lot I’d like to know,’ said Littlejohn. He bent and picked up a coloured rubber ball, tossed it upwards and caught it. Then he handed it to Peg Boone.
‘Harry Dodd’s child?’ he asked, on an impulse.
‘Yes. What of it?’ Peg Boone replied automatically.
‘You stupid little fool! Why keep playing into their hands? They’ve nothing on us, and the sooner we get rid of them the better.’
Sid was convulsed with rage, and looked ready to hit his sister.
‘Sit down, Sid,’ said Littlejohn. ‘On the result of our further talk tonight, will depend whether or not I arrest you on suspicion of murdering Harry Dodd…’
A Knife For Harry Dodd Page 12