Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  At one o’clock it was all over and the nephew, whose name was Crumpet, restored the packing and old sacks to the van and solemnly closed it. The men then took off their green aprons, rolled down their sleeves, put on their coats, and presented themselves to their parent properly attired for lunch. Each carried a fibre case which held a gargantuan meal. They again crossed to the Red Lion.

  At ten minutes past one, there was a fearful scream from the home of Dr. Beharrell. It disturbed the municipal pigeons in the silent square and they took to the air, wheeled once round the houses, and alighted again. Then, Mrs. Trott, the housekeeper, appeared at the door waving her arms and shouting incoherently. Sergeant Plumtree had just bitten in two, a huge sandwich which his missus had packed for his lunch, and he emerged from the police station with his jaws locked in brown bread and brawn. He was met by the trio of wrestlers, led by their father and followed by Crumpet, all of them masticating their own enormous rations.

  “Wot the …?”

  They all ran across the square, the removal party looking apprehensive, thinking of broken Crown Derby, Ming and Dresden. Mrs. Trott flailed them into the house indiscriminately, pushed her way through them, and led them to a room on the first floor. It might have been the doctor’s own bedroom and was simply furnished in a calm, orderly way. The walls were ivory white, with here and there an engraving hanging on a nail. A double mahogany four-poster bed with a dark red quilt, a large Chippendale chest, two small period chairs, and little else. A bright room, illuminated by three sash windows, with heavy red curtains hanging from old-fashioned poles and brass rings.

  The first thing the party encountered was the large antique wardrobe, which, on Mrs. Trott’s instructions, the removal men had carried there and placed between the bed and the window to be properly manoeuvred into position later. The next thing was the door in the wall.

  Mrs. Trott was going to have her say and explain everything before she let the rest of the group pass her. She stood in the space between the newly arrived wardrobe and the rest of the room. Her eyes were wide with fear and her jaw trembled in a spasm of terror. She pointed at the wall opposite the door by which they had just entered.

  “I’ve been here for fifteen years and I never knew that door there would open. I thought it was blocked up.”

  It was an ordinary door, painted white, gone soiled, and stood open. Beyond was a black void.

  “I started to arrange the furniture and I thought I’d try to shift the wardrobe. I always thought it was a fixture, but when I pushed it, it moved, and there was the door behind it.”

  The wardrobe itself was also of plain wood, with panelled doors. The kind of thing known as “built-in” and fixed, as a rule, for all time.

  Sergeant Plumtree was getting impatient.

  “Well, that’s nothin’ fresh. It’s an old ’ouse and these places always ’ave queer hidey-holes here and there. It used to be a bank in the old days. Perhaps …”

  In reply Mrs. Trott stood aside and let the party pass.

  Mr. Nutt, senior, was first, and he looked in the void beyond the door, seemed unperturbed, cleared his throat, and whistled and nodded. His eldest son peeped over his shoulder, turned pale, reeled back, and had to hold the wall to keep on his feet.

  Plumtree’s turn next. He took out a pocket-torch and switched it on. Then he peered gingerly through the dark hole into the interior, blew through his moustache, drew himself to his full height, and raised a huge paw in a benedictive manner.

  “Nothin’s to be touched. Nothin’ … I ’ereby take charge in the name o’ the Law.”

  A murder was committed at Abbot’s Caldicott last Friday.

  The sergeant almost heaved a sigh of relief.

  By the light of his torch, he could make out a small platform beyond the secret door, whence a plain wooden staircase descended into a black pit.

  The body of Dr. Beharrell was sitting comfortably on the small platform, cold and stiff.

  Mrs. Trott uttered a second scream and fell unconscious on the parquet, and the youngest Nutt, the giant of the family, hurried out to find the bathroom, for he was going to vomit.

  2

  THE MAN IN YELLOW GLOVES

  THE train from Peterborough to Caldicott was a small one and stopped at every station. The compartment was overheated and every now and then Littlejohn nodded off. Cromwell, seated opposite, was already fast asleep. His bowler hat was on the rack above him and he wore a cap. A friend of his who had gone completely bald, had put the disaster down to leaning his head on the dirty upholstery of a train, and Cromwell had added another habit to the many precautionary measures he always took.

  The train started and stopped, started and stopped. Littlejohn wiped the steam from the window and tried to follow the course of the journey, but could not make out the names of the stations in the dark. A silhouette, a lamp or two, a whistle, and the train moved on. Between halts, the lights of small villages or isolated farms relieved the landscape now and then.

  There was one other occupant in the first-class compartment and as Littlejohn puffed his pipe he casually summed him up. He was dressed in a good tweed suit and a canary yellow waistcoat with brass buttons. In spite of the heat of the carriage, he had not removed his expensive showerproof and green felt pork-pie hat with a pheasant’s feather in the band. His brown shoes were highly polished and looked hand-made and he had kept on his yellow chamois gloves with which he handled an evening paper with finicky gestures. Now and then, he looked up and his eyes met those of Littlejohn, but no word passed between them.

  A country gentleman …? Or perhaps a retired colonial, a lawyer, or a bank manager? He looked about sixty—the age at which men of his type grow fussy about their appearance—with a clear rosy complexion, a long nervous face, and a small silver moustache. A large Roman nose, firm mouth and chin, blue eyes under heavy eyebrows, and a good head of grey hair receding from the high narrow forehead. He wore an expensive pair of gold-framed spectacles.

  Littlejohn looked at his watch and yawned. Another fifteen minutes to Caldicott, according to the railway schedule. He almost wished they’d travelled by road, but since early boyhood he had been fond of railways and even now obscure old lines interested him.

  The Soke of Dofford police had asked for help from Scotland Yard almost as soon as the murder was discovered. In a way, the anonymous note had brought the Yard in the picture from the start and the Chief Constable was anxious not to let them out of it. Littlejohn had left King’s Cross at three o’clock, but a breakdown somewhere on the main line had held them up, they’d missed their connection at Peterborough, and had to wait almost two hours.

  The man in the lemon-coloured gloves opposite took out a gold cigarette-case, carefully selected a cigarette, fitted it in a holder, and lit it with a lighter. All without taking off the gloves. Then he looked at Littlejohn again, half turned his head away, glanced back, and decided to speak.

  “Excuse me, sir. But are you Inspector Littlejohn, of Scotland Yard …?”

  The voice was high-pitched and cultured.

  Cromwell, who mustn’t have been asleep after all, opened one eye.

  “Superintendent Littlejohn …”

  The man looked startled.

  “I beg your pardon …”

  “I said, Superintendent …”

  “I’m sorry, Superintendent …”

  “That’s all right, sir. I was promoted a few days ago.”

  “My congratulations. My name’s Pochin, Vincent Pochin. I’m a lawyer in Caldicott and an old friend of the dead doctor.”

  He paused to extinguish the cigarette under his heel.

  “I wasn’t quite sure it was you, at first. I’ve seen your photograph in the papers from time to time.”

  His tone was slightly apologetic, an excuse for reading newspapers of the type which published detectives’ pictures to illustrate lurid crime reporting.

  “I’m surprised they’ve called in Scotland Yard already.”

&n
bsp; There was a trace of a question in the tone of his voice, as though Pochin were fishing for information. Littlejohn didn’t help him. He didn’t even tell him that what the police did was their own business, although judging from the expression on Cromwell’s face, the sergeant was ready to do so if given the chance.

  Pochin carefully folded his paper and put it in the pocket of his rainproof.

  “As I was saying, I was a friend of Dr. Beharrell. In fact, his lawyer. You know the facts of the case, Superintendent?”

  “Barely. The body was found in some kind of a secret alcove off the doctor’s bedroom and, according to medical opinion, must have been there since last Friday, when the murder occurred.”

  “That’s right. The head had been smashed in by the usual blunt instrument. As regards the place where the body was found, Superintendent … it’s interesting. Beharrell occupied an old house in Upper Square, the oldest part of the town, which was formerly the place where the wealthy people lived. I’m particularly interested in the house, because it once belonged to my own family.”

  The train trundled on, stopped and started, jolted over points, and checked at signals, although what there was on that god-forsaken line to hold it up, was anybody’s guess.

  Pochin’s voice was reedy and monotonous. The heat of the compartment, the late hour, the fug of tobacco smoke, and the shrill chant of the man in yellow gloves put Littlejohn in a stupor. He struggled to keep his eyes open and his wits working. Finally, he grew only half aware of the story; it came in odd words, like a message in a dream.

  “House in Upper Square originally built by my family. … about 1740 … big … rambling … One of oldest families in Caldicott … They were merchants … Wool trade … Then bankers. Pochin’s Bank … I’m not boring you, am I?”

  Littlejohn jumped.

  “No … no … Of course not. It’s very interesting. You were bankers, you were saying.”

  “Yes. The business was done on the ground floor, but the partners occupied a parlour on the first floor … the room Beharrell used as a bedroom. The wardrobe everybody seemed to think was a fixture was actually movable. It concealed a door which led by a secret stairway to the cellars, where there was a strong-room. The partners could thus obtain books or valuables without going down and through the main banking office.”

  “The strong-room is still there?”

  “Yes. A poor affair by modern standards, but for those days, quite a formidable job. The police found it had been forced open. They’ll already have told you, I presume?”

  “No, sir. As I said, we only got the bare facts of the case.”

  “As the Beharrell family lawyer, I naturally had to interest myself in the affair. The police told me of the safe-break. We haven’t any idea what the strong-room contained. It does make the motive look like one of robbery, doesn’t it?”

  “Perhaps …”

  Littlejohn began his struggle against sleep again. He couldn’t stop Pochin’s flow of information now he’d started.

  “Beharrell was the last of an old family … Father arrived in the town about 1850. A farrier with a flair for bonesetting. Soon, people were coming from all over the country for treatment. He wanted large premises for his patients. Pochin’s Bank had been bought over by a larger county institution. Bank House was empty. Old Beharrell bought … Bought the house next door, too. So many patients, the place was like a private hospital …”

  Littlejohn shook himself.

  “The late Beharrell was a qualified man, though?”

  “Oh, yes. The first Beharrell and his son were mere bonesetters. Then, Justin Beharrell … that’s the one who’s just died … Justin qualified.”

  “Married?”

  Pochin coughed behind his yellow glove.

  “Married a girl a lot younger than himself. He was sixty when he died. She was nearly twenty years younger than he. Ran away with an Air Force officer stationed in Caldicott in 1941. Neither of them ever seen again. Theory was they got killed in a London air raid. Couldn’t have got out of the country, could they …? Could they?”

  Littlejohn jerked from his stupor again to find the blue, rather watery eyes looking at him in a way which seemed to beseech an answer.

  “I don’t know … I don’t know the facts, you see, sir.”

  The train stopped with a jerk again.

  “This is Caldicott … Are you staying here or going on to the next station, Dofford?”

  “I understand rooms have been booked for us at the Red Lion.”

  “Right opposite the scene of the crime in Upper Square.”

  Pochin buttoned his coat, tightened his gloves, and set his green hat straight. Cromwell put on his bowler and stuffed his cap in his pocket. He was half asleep and annoyed with the lawyer for disturbing them.

  They descended to the dark platform. Two lamps illuminated a small rectangle near the booking-office and waiting-room. Nobody boarded the train which moved out and away into the night before the few passengers reached the exit of the station. Pochin must have had a season-ticket and merely nodded to the collector, who touched his cap and bade him goodnight.

  “Taxi, sir?”

  Pochin hailed it.

  “My car is parked in the station approach there and I go in the opposite direction from you. The hotel is in Upper Square, a little short of a mile away. We shall meet again. Goodnight.”

  He quickly vanished in the direction where his car waited, as though eager to get off before he grew obliged to give them a lift.

  “Red Lion Hotel …”

  They settled in the cab. Cromwell yawned.

  “It’s nearly eleven, sir. Funny chap, that Pochin. Probably a big frog in a little pool here in Caldicott. He seems to know all that goes on, too. A windbag, I’d call him.”

  The town was dead. Lights in a few windows of pubs and over shops. Hardly a soul about. They climbed a hill, entered a square of tall buildings, and halted before the Red Lion. A solitary light shone through the glass doors which were flanked by two palm trees in green-painted tubs. Madame Hope’s efforts to gallicize the place. At first, she’d wanted to re-name it Hôtel de France, but the brewster sessions had soon put a stop to that idea.

  Madame met them in the hall. A tall, dark, full-figured woman of about forty, and eager to please any good-class clients who came. She was a voluptuous beauty, who knew how to keep her good looks against the temptations of overeating and the despair of hiding her light as the wife of a small-town publican.

  “Good evening. The gentlemen of the police? Your rooms are ready.”

  She was the kind who normally might be expected to be vivacious and volatile, but either their late arrival, the tragedy overhanging the square, or some private trouble of her own was making her subdued and gave her beauty a sultry, sulky look. She could not, however, resist flashing a look of approval on the newcomers. She had fine eyes, and even at that late hour, her make-up was neat and well done.

  “You would like something to eat, gentlemen?”

  “Something cold?”

  “The roast chicken we prepared for you is now cold. Would you like some of it with a salad?”

  “Thanks.”

  “And a bottle of white wine? A nice Pouilly …?”

  Littlejohn smiled and she misinterpreted it.

  “It will all be paid for by the Chief of Police, Major Jessop.”

  “I think two pints of beer will suit us better just now, Mrs…?”

  “Mrs. Hope …”

  “You are French …?”

  “Yes. I married Mr. Hope, the landlord here, eight years ago.”

  “What part of France are you from?”

  “Cagnes, near Nice.”

  “I know it well.”

  “You will perhaps remember the Auberge du Bon Pasteur, then. I was brought up there. My uncle owns it. My parents died when I was a child and I lived with my aunt and uncle.”

  “You met Hope during the war?”

  “No. On holiday. He was
chauffeur for Dr. Beharrell at the time. They spent a holiday there. Mr. Hope asked me if I would like to come to England and have an hotel of my own. We came here.”

  “You like it?”

  She shrugged her fine shoulders. She had an air of breeding above that of a provincial publican’s wife. Her English was good and she chose her words with educated care.

  “We are all upset on account of the death of Dr. Beharrell. He was a good friend of both of us … But I must go and get the supper. I must also telephone to Major Jessop. He has been on the telephone three times enquiring about you and I promised to let him know when you arrived. Have you a message for him?”

  “Yes. Please tell him there was a breakdown on the main line and we missed our connection. It is too late now for us to report to him, so we’ll see him early in the morning.”

  “Very good, sir. Supper won’t be long. It is all ready.”

  Littlejohn and Cromwell went to their rooms for a wash. They had given them modern quarters on the front of the hotel, facing the house where Beharrell had been killed. They even had a shower apiece. The whole set-up spoke of good management and the hand of a well-trained, energetic woman about the place.

  Littlejohn drew back the curtain and looked over the silent square. Somebody with good sense on the council had succeeded in keeping the old gas lamps, which still glowed with a greenish light all round the periphery. Large, ornamental lanterns, they were, which had probably been there since gas first came to Caldicott.

  The bronze soldier, set in a flower-bed, the wallflowers of which dominated the evening air with their fragrance, was silhouetted against the trees of the perimeter. In two or three of the large houses, lights were showing on the upper floors. The dark mass of the church of St. Hilary formed the fourth side, and as Littlejohn watched, there burst from the belfry a cascade of chimes which rang the half hour. He was able to make out the steel tubes of some scaffolding which surrounded the tall square tower.

  Right opposite, the house of Dr. Beharrell, with a frontage of iron railings, a basement gate, the doctor’s brass plate glinting in the light of the lamps. A tall, square edifice, with three storeys of triple sash windows, a Georgian façade—probably added to a former building—and a fine pillared doorway. A light glowed behind the drawn blinds of the first floor.