Corpse At The Carnival (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series)

by George Bellairs

  Unofficially, of course. Littlejohn was used to that on the Isle of Man. He wanted to be free to make a holiday of it as well as a case, and he liked to think that Knell might reap some benefit from any work they did together.

  The Archdeacon was disappointed at losing his friend so soon, and Maggie Keggin was in a tearing rage. 'I don't like that Knell fellah. Him and his murders. I do believe every time the Inspector comes here, that Knell fixes up a murder to bother him and to get the Inspector to himself.'

  She refused to address Littlejohn as Superintendent. It took her a long time to get used to anything new. Besides, Inspector sounded more like a good policeman; Superintendents belonged to Sunday Schools.

  As they reached Douglas, Littlejohn was lolling in the police car, feeling thoroughly in the holiday mood again. Traa-dy-Liooar, too. Manx for 'Time enough'. The tempo of life had changed down to a leisurely pace. Knell, as a token of his affection, had brought Littlejohn a cigar and the Superintendent was smoking it. Knell was smoking one, too, with the band on, until they reached the outskirts of the town, where he threw it away as unprofessional.

  What weather! It was just turned seven o'clock and the sun was beginning to set and throwing a golden glow over the gentle green hills behind Douglas. Not a cloud in sight and the peaks sharply etched against the evening sky. The quayside and promenade were packed with holiday crowds, all in light summer clothes and with red sunburned faces. A procession of people strolling up to Douglas Head and another coming down. All enjoying the end of a perfect day and killing time until the night's fun began.

  The police-car rounded the clock tower at the end of the crowded promenade. It looked like a football match, with hardly room to squeeze in another. The policeman on duty saluted smartly and peered in the car to get a look at Littlejohn. There was a horse-tram there, ready for off.

  'Where was the body found, Knell?'

  'A good stretch along the prom, sir. Near where you can see the tall memorial, there. . . . The war memorial. . . .'

  He slowed down the car and pointed. The horse hitched to the tram gave Littlejohn a familiar kind of stare. Somehow, they always looked that way at the Superintendent. Cabhorses, dairymen's ponies, ragmen's donkeys and those in the turnouts of pearly kings. . . . They all gave him the same sort of brotherly look, almost a wink, as though they recognized a pal when they saw one. Sometimes, they even neighed at him.

  The tram-horse neighed!

  'What the 'ell?' said the driver. 'I've never 'eard' im do that before, all the time I've driven 'im.'

  There was nothing else for it. It must have been the holiday feeling!

  'Let's park the car and take a ride on the horse-tram, Knell.'

  Poor Knell! He agreed, just to please his companion, for whom, without asking why, he'd have thrown himself fully dressed in the harbour or shinned up the radar mast of the harbourmaster's office. But he hoped nobody would see him gallivanting along the promenade on a tram! He'd never hear the last of it if anybody in the force spotted him. Knell pulled down the brim of his hat to disguise himself a bit.

  Had it been in Nice, Littlejohn's friend, Dorange of the Sûreté there, would have said 'Let's have a drink first, old man . . .' and they'd have sat and watched the crowds go by. As it was, Knell was almost teetotal and bursting to get working.

  Clop, clop. . . . The muffled beat of hooves on the asphalt. It was years since Littlejohn had ridden behind a horse. He remembered his father bundling them all in the cab when they went on holidays in long-forgotten days. . . . How transitory and sad holidays were when you looked at them from the outside. . . . All these people thronging the place, eagerly squeezing every drop of joy out of a week or a fortnight in a kind of make-believe. . . . Clop, clop. . . . Littlejohn shook himself. He was growing sentimental in the sunset and sea air.

  Along the fine broad promenade, with the gardens down the middle all looking their best. On one side, the still blue sea and the Tower of Refuge like a painting on a backcloth against the skyline. On the other, a row of neat, prosperous-looking boarding-houses, with people sitting on the steps, lolling at ease and enjoying the evening beauty. A sea of cheerful faces everywhere, the tram starting and stopping, and Knell on tenterhooks.

  At last! They dismounted in front of the Villa Marina. A charming building, surrounded by gardens and flanked by arcades of shops selling souvenirs, sticks of rock, views of the Island, or vulgar picture-postcards featuring drunken red-nosed men or henpecked husbands with enormous ugly wives. . . . Bathing costumes and paper-backed novels. . . . Send your friends at home some Manx kippers by post from here. . . . Charabanc drivers touting for evening mystery tours with flashy new vehicles drawn up at the kerb.

  'This is where the body was found.'

  It brought Littlejohn back to earth.

  There wasn't anything to see! Uncle Fred was completely forgotten. The jolly crowds were walking over the very spot he'd died on. A woman in a paper cap tried to kiss Knell and he clawed her off. She left the shape of her lips on his cheek in red lipstick and, as Littlejohn wiped it off for him, he smiled and thought that anybody more unlike a couple of detectives he couldn't imagine.

  Dancing was starting at the Villa and at the Palace farther down. Already you could hear the bands jigging away and people were flocking in. After that, when it was dark enough to put on the coloured illuminations on the promenade, there was to be another carnival and a torchlight procession. No time at all for Uncle Fred, now lying in the town morgue waiting for justice to be done.

  'Shall we go and see the body?'

  Again! It was like the passing bell, reminding you of death and destruction just as you were beginning to enjoy yourself.

  Littlejohn gave Knell a blank look.

  'The body?'

  'Uncle Fred. . . .'

  'Yes, of course.'

  A buxom woman passing by handed Littlejohn a stick of rock marked with the Three Legs of Man, and walked on with a smile. Just for nothing at all . . . . A gesture of goodwill. And a girl, mistaking the pair of them for elderly philanderers on the prowl, gave Littlejohn the glad eye . . . . After all, that was what they were doing. Prowling. . . .

  The body didn't matter very much in the case now. It seemed stupid and ironical, but it had ceased to count. Instead, they were concerned with someone among the vast crowds in Douglas, perhaps someone dancing in the carnival, who had reduced Uncle Fred to a pathetic inanimate occupant of a mortuary refrigerator.

  All the meagre evidence was at the police station. The contents of the murdered man's pockets revealed nothing, not even his name. Just Uncle Fred. A wallet containing ten pounds in notes and a worn photograph of a fox terrier dog sitting on its haunches, begging, with the hand of somebody off the picture held out to keep the dog's attention. Some small change, a pen-knife, an old pipe and a worn rubber pouch half-full of what looked like Cavendish, a door-key, a clean folded handkerchief, and a coupon from a photographer.

  Flic Studios, 26b Promenade Arcade, Douglas. Your picture will be ready today after 5 p.m. Copies 2s. 6d. each.

  'We've picked up the snapshot. Here it is . . . .'

  One of Knell's satellites, a strapping big detective-constable called Skillicorn, had been on the job.

  He handed over the postcard photograph. Uncle Fred, panama, heavy serge suit, raincoat slung over his shoulders dramatically, like a cloak. He'd evidently just looked up and grimaced at the tout in either pain or anger as he found him snapping him.

  'We've had copies of the picture sent to the daily papers across the water. Somebody might recognize him. We've asked them to emphasize that he's not yet been identified.'

  Uncle Fred was a mystery. Nobody seemed to know who he was or where he lived. Which was perhaps not surprising in a place like Douglas at the very peak of the holiday season. One lonely man, probably a stranger, on his own among thousands of other strangers, birds of passage, here for a week or two, and then gone for ever. A picture in the morning papers with a caption Who's U
ncle Fred? would probably bring a quick answer to the question.

  Meanwhile, Skillicorn had closely interviewed the staff of the Villa Marina.

  The waitress who was there at the death, knew Fred well. He came for his morning stroll every day. He'd buy a paper and perhaps some tobacco from the man with the big moustaches, and sit down and have a smoke as he read the news, and then he'd lean across the rails looking out to sea, lost in his thoughts. He was never seen with anybody.

  'And how did you know his name?'

  The waitress had an easy answer to that one.

  'Sometimes, when it rained or was misty, he'd come in for a cup of coffee, black without sugar, and sit by the window reading his paper and looking out to sea as though he might be expecting somebody. . . . Just like he did outside on fine days. I once called him "sir". He didn't seem to like it. "Call me Uncle Fred", he said to me, with that pleasant smile he had. And we always called him that among ourselves ever after.'

  'You talk as if you'd known him quite a long time.'

  'We have. He's been coming on and off for several years. Sometimes he'd vanish for a day or two, and then he'd turn up again.'

  'You say you never saw anybody with him?'

  'No. . . . Never.'

  The waitress, a pleasant, homely little married woman, who worked on the job and did very well at it in the summer, and hibernated somewhere at the end of the season, was quite upset about it all.

  'It's as if we'd lost an old friend. I've known him by sight ever since I started working here four years ago. The staff are always coming and going and I've been here the longest, on and off. We all liked him. He was so civil and pleasant. You got the feeling that he'd do anybody a good turn.'

  'But nothing else . . . ? He never talked or told you anything about himself.'

  'No. Somehow, he never encouraged conversation. I don't know what he did in the winter months. I usually give up at the Villa in October and come back at Whitsuntide when the season's starting.'

  'Would you say he was fond of the women?'

  The waitress just gave Skillicorn a motherly smile.

  'They usually all are at that age. Especially if they're on their own. Nothing wrong with it. They get lonely and you see them looking longingly sometimes as though they wondered what it would be like to have a woman to look after them and sit by the fireside with them and keep them company after dark. It must be awful going home to diggings or an empty house with nobody to bid you welcome back. That's how I look at it. Others might think different accordin' to the state of their minds.'

  'He gave you that impression?'

  'Yes, sometimes.'

  Just Uncle Fred. That was all. Unless someone recognized his photograph or missed him, he might sink into the limbo of the forgotten and his murder go unavenged. Somebody would get away with it.

  Littlejohn picked up the photograph again and studied it. Of its kind, it was quite good. And suddenly 'Uncle Fred' became more than a mere label. A round, refined, clean-shaven face, with troubled eyes looking from under his old panama hat. A look difficult to assess. Blank, or stony, or even pleading. . . . In the inanimate snapshot Littlejohn couldn't tell which. A good-natured face, even if convulsed with pain or annoyance at the time. An educated man, perhaps cultured. . . . One above the average, at least.

  The Superintendent awoke from his reverie and looked closely at the picture again. He might have been imagining things, just flights of fancy. All the same Uncle Fred seemed more flesh and blood now.

  'Where's the raincoat, Skillicorn?'

  'He wasn't wearing it when they found him and we didn't find it when we searched the neighbourhood near where he died. It's funny . . . but then, the carnival crowds had just passed by and might have kicked it about and even pushed it over the promenade into the sea with their feet.'

  'That may be What newspapers did he read, Skillicorn ?'

  The constable's eyes lighted up.

  'Funny you should ask that, sir. I'd forgotten to mention it. He'd three papers; the Daily Cry, which comes over by plane first thing in the mornings, and the London Times and the Financial Times of the day before. He probably got the day's news from the Cry and the rest from the other two which arrive later by boat.'

  Littlejohn might have expected it! Uncle Fred was a cut above the average.

  'As for the Financial Times . . . I don't know whether the deceased was a monied man or not. There were ticks against some of the investments quoted.'

  Littlejohn looked through the papers which had been tucked in Uncle Fred's pockets when he died. They'd been opened and obviously read. Nothing of interest in them, except, as Skillicorn had said, some ticks on the back page of the financial paper. Investments in tobaccos, oils, and rubbers . . . BATS, Ultramar, Anglo-Asian. . . . and calculations in pencil in the margin of the paper, as though Uncle Fred might have been counting up his gains and losses. The figures were well made and neat.

  He studied the figures. According to what he could make out, there was about £257 involved in the three holdings, and Uncle Fred had made £11 by fluctuations in prices. If that was all the money he'd got, he certainly was no tycoon!

  Knell and his assistant looked hopefully at Littlejohn, like two dogs expecting a bone. It was obvious they were waiting for something oracular. Like the respectful young detectives he'd left behind at the conference in Dublin. Had they been here, perhaps they would have been busy with a vacuum-cleaner taking the dust from Uncle Fred's trousers bottoms for examination, or testing his suit and panama hat to deduce where they came from. Photographing the body from all angles for the records, having it cut up by the surgeon to see if it had any peculiarities. After all, it was one way of getting to know Uncle Fred.

  'Two hundred and fifty-seven pounds. . . . And eleven pounds profit.' Littlejohn sighed and Knell nodded loyally at Skillicorn to show that if his underling didn't understand the workings of the famous detective's mind, he, Knell, did.

  That seemed to be all for one night. Until the photograph appeared in the morning papers or somebody missed Uncle Fred and reported it to the police, they were at a dead-end.

  'I think we'd better be getting back to Grenaby, Knell. The Archdeacon will wonder whatever we're doing.'

  Outside, the streets were more crowded than ever. It was a real day of carnival. Knell drove Littlejohn to the end of the promenade and back, by way of relaxation, a bonus for his night's exertions.

  It was still sultry. The sun had set and lights were going on here and there. The villas perched among the trees on the wooded slope above the promenade were illuminated and some were floodlit. In the dance-halls the bands were hard at it drumming like mad. Crowds strolling along the seafront, singing, laughing, shouting, and lovemaking.

  'Do you know where we are, sir? We've left Douglas Head behind us. That's Onchan where the road goes up the hill and round the bend, and it follows the coast almost all the way to Ramsey. It's a lovely run.'

  Littlejohn was ready to admire it all. The hundreds of people, all happy and enjoying themselves, seemed to diffuse such an atmosphere of irresponsibility and fun that he found himself caught up in it. He couldn't take it seriously. He couldn't believe he was on a case.

  'I wish we knew who Uncle Fred was. It makes you wonder how long we'll be in the dark about him.'

  'Oh, yes . . . Uncle Fred. . . .'

  They were both smoking cigars again. Knell produced them like a conjurer pulling rabbits out of a hat. Littlejohn hadn't the heart to refuse. Knell's brother-in-law was in the wholesale tobacco line in Liverpool and sent boxes of samples over now and then. The sort which are bought on holidays when a gesture of opulence is called for. Not much to speak of, but which give satisfaction because they make you feel good to have them in your mouth.

  Somebody threw a paper streamer and it wrapped itself round the bonnet of the car.

  'That place belonged to a millionaire who went bust. . . . And there was an internment camp there in the war . . . .'

 
Knell was changing the subject because he thought Littlejohn was bored with Uncle Fred.

  The fun-fair at Onchan Head was going full blast. Screams from the scenic railway, rifles cracking in the shooting-range, and somebody playing a sentimental song on a harmonica. . . .

  You could hear the waves washing on the shore; the sea air came across in little invigorating gusts; the moon was almost full, hanging in the east over Douglas Bay. A treacly tenor singing an Italian song somewhere. . . . A really sentimental evening. Lovers walking arm in arm or else hugging one another closely, forgetful of everything else. Littlejohn felt like snuggling down in his seat and having a nap . . . .

  And then they suddenly switched on the illuminations, like a flash of lightning travelling right round the bay. A string of coloured lamps, decorations all the way from Douglas Head to Onchan. Hotels floodlit, advertisement signs in neon. You could hear the crowds draw in one huge delighted breath. . . AH. . . .

  A couple of policemen frog-marching a Teddy-boy to the lock-up for hitting someone over the head with a bottle. . . . The ambulance shot past ringing its bell. . . .

  Littlejohn felt guilty. Parson Kinrade would be sitting up, waiting eagerly for a full account of the investigation. And all Littlejohn could say was, he's called Uncle Fred, this is his photograph, we think he might be a bit fond of the ladies, he's a good sort, reads this paper and that, and seems to have investments totalling £257 on which he's just made a capital profit of £11 . . . . Ridiculous!

  They drove back in the moonlight, the beams of their headlamps catching the frightened eyes of little creatures crossing the deserted roads. It was past eleven and already the villages through which they passed were silent and asleep. Crossing the Fairy Bridge at Ballalonna, both men raised their hats like good Manxmen.

  'Good evening, little people. . . .'

  Littlejohn smiled to himself as he dutifully puffed his cigar. What would Chipchase, the forger, Craggy Knowles, the bank-robber-with-violence, or Sammy Thewless, the lady-killer in its literal sense – real toughs Littlejohn had put behind bars – say if they could see him now, raising his hat to propitiate the fairies! They'd think he'd gone round the bend properly!