“What did you think of Sam?”
“He was the elder brother and seemed to keep Vincent under his wing. Rather a proud, dogmatic man, who says little, but likes his own way. When Vincent broke our engagement, Sam called to see me and tried to excuse him. Sam had a big influence on Vincent and appeared to regard him as younger and more helpless and in need of protection. It was a nice feeling, but silly and overdone. What does a man of Vincent’s age need with a bodyguard of that kind? I was glad to be free. Better a return to poverty-stricken existence than that. I realised the responsibility and even horror of a married life in which one partner needed the perpetual watchfulness and excuses of the other for his lack of character and childish immaturity.”
There was another pause as the waitress brought the coffee and spread out the cups and plates. Lydia Horninglow gave Littlejohn a queer questioning nervous look, as though she understood there were more and harder answers to give. Littlejohn took the plunge.
“Forgive me if I mention even more unhappy matters from the past, Miss Horninglow, but were you, at one time, associated with Flight-Lieutenant Cranage, at Mareham-le-Fen?”
A spasm of pain crossed her face, which filled Littlejohn with sadness and compassion. Why be for ever fated to place his finger on the raw wounds of unhappy people? He poured out the drinks, pretending not to have noticed her distress.
“Yes. Who told you his name? I thought it was all forgotten. Few people here knew of it.”
The hardness had vanished from her look and, with her cheeks flushed with emotion, she was quite attractive. Yes, attractive …
“That is quite all right. But I’m sorry I must revive it all. I have merely consulted the old files from Mareham. I’ve not questioned anyone else about it. You have not forgotten, I see. You loved him.”
He said it very gently without making it a question. She bit her lip and nodded. She was quite different now from the bitter woman who wandered regularly, grim and forlorn, from the church to the town, and back. Her aggressive, intense manner had given way at the very mention of Cranage’s name, which perhaps nobody else had uttered for many years.
“He was said to be irresponsible and fond of every woman he met by those who didn’t know him properly. His wife left him because she was jealous. And yet, he was nicer to me and sweeter than any man I have ever met. It was the strange times we were living in, I suppose. Not knowing what a day would bring, that made him as he was, a bit irresponsible and almost desperate to live to the full. He promised to marry me as soon as his wife would divorce him. He didn’t love Grace Beharrell. He told me so. She threw herself at him. She was a pretty girl, with a fixed sweet smile, as hard as nails, and cruel to men and animals. He would have come back to me …”
A gentle touch, a sympathetic word, and Lydia Horninglow was ready to stammer out a full apologia for herself and Cranage. Littlejohn felt a spasm of bitterness himself at the harsh blows life rains on the innocent. For she did seem innocent somehow, sitting primly there in her little straw hat, crumbling a biscuit and with a tender look in her eyes as she conjured up the virtues of the man Upper Square unanimously called a cad. During the years since he had betrayed her, Lydia Horninglow had slowly built up a fantastic novelettish romance around Cranage to comfort her loneliness.
“You were always trying to find out what happened to him. Calling at Bank House and enquiring about what went on there from Mrs. Trott?”
She looked up at him and smiled forlornly.
“I wasn’t much of a detective, was I? You must be laughing at me. You see, I knew Gilbert was seeing Grace Beharrell. He told me it was the doctor giving hospitality, but I guessed and feared the truth. If a woman takes a man who has left another woman for her, she must not be surprised if he repeats the process again and betrays her too, in time. But Gilbert was true to me in his heart, I know. I was the only woman who ever gave him a child … And that must have counted for something. My father says he told you all about it. I’m not ashamed.”
“Did you guess what happened the night he vanished?”
She looked across the street at Bank House as though living through it all again.
“That night, I followed him here. She had telephoned him at Mareham and he left in a hurry. I begged a lift from another officer who was coming to Caldicott. I pretended my father was ill. I found Gilbert waiting in the garden there in front of the memorial. I hid myself in the doorway of the Guildhall. Grace came out and met him there. It was moonlight and I could see it all.”
Another look of painful remembrance, as though she saw again their furtive embraces and joy at being together.
“I crept up and listened. I had no shame or pride at all. All I heard was them planning to meet again at nine o’clock. People kept coming out of the surgery, and I guessed the doctor was busy and they were taking advantage of his absence. Then she went inside.”
Littlejohn could see it all, just as if he were looking through his bedroom window on the first floor of the hotel.
The waitress came and gathered up the cups and took them away. Outside, the magistrates from the petty sessions were standing in front of the Guildhall and one of them was pointing across to where the murdered rag-and-bone man had been found the night before. He made some comment and they all began to laugh.
“Gilbert sat on one of the seats smoking. I stood there behind the nearest tree. Had he strolled as far as he finally threw the end of his cigarette, he would have found me spying on him. I wanted to go and plead with him, but I didn’t. Then the front door of Bank House opened and the doctor came out carrying his bag as though off on a case. He vanished down Sheep Street. As soon as he’d disappeared, Grace appeared again, crossed to where Gilbert was sitting, and they spoke a few words and both went indoors. The doctor had been urgently called to a case on the other side of town and would be away about an hour … I heard her tell Gilbert. I was as near to them as that.”
Littlejohn could follow it all, working up to a climax, like an old melodrama. He could even have taken up the tale.
“As soon as they got indoors, the doctor returned. He must have been hiding round the corner. The lights were on in the drawing-room. I could see a thin streak through the blackout curtains, and I wondered if Gilbert was a liar after all and had told me the same lying tale he’d told to all the women before me. The doctor came quietly back to Bank House, but, instead of entering by the front door, he unlocked the one in the basement and went that way. His movements were exaggeratedly furtive and I wanted to cry out or run and warn Gilbert. There was a sense of disaster in it all. There was nothing I felt I could do. Suppose, after all, I’d given the alarm and the doctor had merely come back for something … medicine, instruments from the cellar?”
She looked cold and forlorn again.
“Nobody came out again that night. Neither the doctor, nor Gilbert, nor Grace. I waited till dawn. Gilbert didn’t come out. Then, I went away. I thought perhaps when the doctor came in, Gilbert had crept away quietly by the back. When he didn’t turn up at Mareham next day, I telephoned my father on some pretext or other. He told me that Gilbert and Grace had eloped in the night and that the whole square was agog and Dr. Beharrell distracted. I fainted and was very ill for a long time.”
She looked about her for her coffee cup and found it had gone. She lowered her hand in a pathetic gesture.
“I will never believe Gilbert did that. But I had to have proof if he had been caught by the doctor and killed, or people would think me mad. The child came, there was all the worry and sorrow … My brother and my mother died. But I could not rest because I didn’t know what had become of Gilbert. I tried to find out by questioning Beharrell’s servants and anyone who might have been about the square that night. I was ridiculed. They said I was setting my cap at the doctor because his wife had gone. Other people thought I was mad … an embittered spinster.”
She raised her large and agonised eyes to Littlejohn.
“I believe Dr. Beharrell killed
them both out of jealousy that night. But I could never find out the real truth. Where were their bodies? Nobody found them. If I could only know the truth now, I would be happy. If the doctor killed them, they didn’t elope, and I’m sure Gilbert would have come out of the house and back to me.”
She wanted Cranage to be dead, murdered by a jealous husband, instead of alive and well and living with the woman with whom he’d betrayed her! Well, well. Beautiful, tragic irony of life.
Littlejohn took her gloved hands in his own.
“I’m sorry, Miss Horninglow, but I believe what you think is true. Cranage was murdered along with Mrs. Beharrell by the doctor on the night you waited for him. And now, Nemesis has caught up with Beharrell and he, too, has paid the price of his crime.”
“Where is his body?”
“I don’t know, Miss Horninglow. But does it matter, now?”
“No … Perhaps it doesn’t. I think I’ll go. Please excuse me.”
She rose and extended her hand with a tired smile.
She turned and walked out of the room with her head high, the old grim look softened by one of fortitude. Littlejohn never knew whether she was glad Cranage had died because of his betrayal of her, or because she somehow fancied that had he lived, he would have returned to her and his child, and had only been prevented by Beharrell’s crime.
The waitress entered and found Littlejohn quietly smoking.
“Telephone, sir.”
“The tin you sent, sir. There were prints on it which tally with some we found on the lead pipe.”
The voice of the smart officer at Dofford again and then an expectant pause as he waited for Littlejohn to grunt with satisfaction and perhaps denounce the murderer.
Instead … “Thank you very much. Goodbye.”
The Superintendent left the telephone box, returned for his pipe in the coffee room, and looked absently through the window. Cromwell was approaching after another visit to Gibbet, the barber. Littlejohn had forgotten that in the course of their walk in the town, he’d asked the sergeant to make a call on him again.
“Yes, sir. Gibbet says he was having a cup of tea in his room at the back at five o’clock last Friday. He saw Tommy Drop snooping round the backs of the houses and felt happy that he himself had nothing movable about. He didn’t see what went on, as somebody came in the shop and he had to leave the workroom. I thought we’d get something from Gibbet. He misses nothing that goes on. I expect he saw Tommy Drop enter the square and went behind to see he didn’t get in mischief on Gibbet’s premises or property.”
Through the window Littlejohn saw something which stirred his imagination.
Gibbet at the door sweeping out his shop. Madame Alcardi welcoming a pupil. Mrs. Trott cleaning the late doctor’s brass plate. Macfarlane passing in his Mercedes. The Hopes moving one of the shrubs in a tub from the front of the hotel. Gralam standing at his door admiring a good-looking woman who was passing his shop … a modern china shepherdess. Sam Pochin just leaving his office. Everybody except Vincent Pochin, who might, at any moment, rise from his hospital bed and walk on the stage, too. All the characters of the drama, parading, as they normally did, in the square before the audience on the benches in front of the tin soldier. Parading in front of the curtain after the end of the melodrama.
But the end was not yet!
17
THE SHOT IN THE DARK
LUNCH came and went and still Littlejohn didn’t seem inclined to move. He sat a long time smoking over coffee and then he wrote a long letter to his wife. Cromwell was used to this sort of thing and kept his chief company, wrote home, too, puffed his own pipe, a replica of Littlejohn’s own, and maintained a sympathetic silence. He knew that the Superintendent had mentally spread the pieces of the Upper Square jigsaw before him and was sorting them out in his mind.
In the bar, George Hope was talking to some reporters from London, whom the second murder had quickly brought down like bees round a honey-pot. The newshawks were drinking beer, telling one another stories, and quizzing George Hope, who was drinking harder than anyone.
“My wife’s packing her bags and going back to her uncle’s,” the landlord had confided to Cromwell earlier in the day. “She says she’s got to think things out. Isn’t that just like a woman? She’s the guilty party, but she puts me in the wrong. And after I’ve explained everythin’ and apologised. If she leaves this place she’d better not come back … I’ve told her …”
Finally, the Mayor of Caldicott turned up.
“It’s high time you and I had a serious exchange of views, Superintendent. One murder’s bad enough. Now it’s two. The town’s in a turmoil wondering who’ll be the next … Have you seen this?”
He held one of the popular London dailies in his hand and spread it out like a banner.
CALDICOTT KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!
And two columns and some more pictures of the midnight gathering round the corpse of Tommy Drop. They’d even got a picture of him and his donkey. As usual, the creature was braying.
The Mayor was quite polite about it all, but frosty. He was somebody in the town. A man of money, which he’d inherited, and a surgeon into the bargain. He had once been head of the Caldicott Hospital and done most of the operations, although he’d run a general practice, as well. Then on the appointed day, when the hospital had been nationalised, a very competent consultant had taken his place and it had been hinted that general practice might suit Mr. Percival better. He had thereupon retired and entered politics. He was somewhat of a thorn in the flesh of the hospital management committee …
“I don’t like to interfere, Superintendent, and no doubt you have your own methods of doing things, but I must have your reassurance that all is going well with the case. It’s my duty to the citizens of the town.”
Cromwell knew from the way Littlejohn smoked his pipe that the Superintendent was amused. It sagged in the corner of his mouth and, instead of puffing it, he gently blew wisps of smoke through the bowl.
“What did you want to know, Mister Mayor?”
The mayor started to perspire and shuffled his great weight from one foot to the other. He didn’t quite know himself.
“Watson … Why was he killed? Surely not a homicidal maniac?”
“No, sir. Just someone eliminating a blackmailer.”
“Ohhhh …”
Mr. Percival looked wise. Blackmail, eh? Now for some scandal!
“But who … what?”
“I can’t say yet.”
The mayor looked round as though seeking somebody to whom to express his disgust. Instead, he met the slightly mocking eyes of Cromwell, whom he’d disliked from the start.
“And is that all …”
“I hope to clear it all up very soon. In fact, my colleague and I may be on our way back to London tomorrow.”
“At least, I hope you’ll have the murderer by then.”
“We’ll try.”
The Mayor looked deflated. He’d just come from a meeting of the councillors at which the crime had been discussed, and he’d told them he was going to get to the bottom of things, once and for all. Now he’d have to make up a tale on the way back. The Superintendent had told him, in confidence … Yes, in confidence. He squared his shoulders.
“Well, see you make an arrest quickly, Littlejohn. We don’t want a killer at large any longer than is necessary.”
The waitress was in the room again, fussing, and indicating in pantomime that Littlejohn was wanted on the telephone.
“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor.”
The Mayor ignored Cromwell’s presence whilst he waited. The sergeant didn’t mind. He started to read again the latest bulletin from his little sweetheart at home.
Littlejohn was back.
“You were saying, Mr. Mayor …?”
“I hope you’ll make an arrest soon.”
“You want an arrest?”
The Mayor bridled, but instead of laughter, he met the bland grey eyes of the Superintendent.
> “We’re just off to make one now. Mr. Vincent Pochin.”
“What! Surely he didn’t murder Beharrell?”
“I didn’t say so. He’s tried to commit suicide twice in the last twenty-four hours. The message was to tell me that he’s just attempted to throw himself from a third storey window of the local hospital. Luckily, the sister came in time to prevent him.”
Of course! It wasn’t to be expected that Vincent would try again without someone there to prevent him!
The Mayor was furious.
“It’s disgraceful, the discipline at that hospital! When I was in charge, they wouldn’t have been allowed to leave patients long enough, or get them in the depressed condition which leads to such attempts. I shall take up the matter right away. A full enquiry …”
He flung his fat arms about.
“You’ll excuse us, sir. We’ve to go to the hospital right away.”
“And I hope you’ll make somebody sit up for this. Disgraceful! In my time …”
They left him raising the roof in his anger.
“She’s just booked a seat on the night plane to Nice tomorrow …” said Hope as they left the hotel. He seemed intent on supplying them with up-to-date bulletins of his case, even if nobody seemed to know much about theirs.
“Why don’t you do the same?” threw out Cromwell as he closed the door.
Vincent Pochin was sitting up in bed when they arrived in the ward. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes wide and wild, but he was drinking a cup of tea and eating yellow slab cake, all the same. Sam was sitting at the bedside.
“He’s tried to do away with himself again. I’ve just been begging of him to consider other people.”
“I can’t stand it. Mother isn’t well and somebody, it seems, has told her I’m a suspect in this case. Although, as Sam says, I couldn’t have killed Watson, because I was here all the time, and if you find out who murdered Watson, you might find who killed Beharrell.”
“It’s not quite as easy as that, sir. Watson was killed some hours before they found him. You were at large at that time. But don’t worry … We’ll soon find out who did it, and then the clouds will lift for you and all will be well.”
Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 20