The Crime at Halfpenny Bridge

by George Bellairs

  And with that Captain Cobb made his exit and could be heard shouting for Tom Kitchin in a voice which reverberated round the quays and echoed across Hardstone Head and back.

  A skinny, furtive man with a receding forehead, a snub nose and a big mouth overflowing with yellow teeth presented himself, standing in the doorway as though ready to beat a speedy retreat if provoked to flight. His large ears looked like an afterthought of whoever fashioned him, stuck on his head for lifting him bodily.

  “Want me?”

  “You Tom Kitchin? Sit down, Tom.”

  The sailor did so with some reluctance, still looking like a rabbit which suspects a gun is pointed in his direction and struggles between safety and curiosity.

  “You knew Sam Prank?”

  “Yes, kind o’ style, I knew ’im.”

  “You were his pal, I hear?”

  “Well … sort o’…”

  “Know anything about what he did when he was ashore.…”

  “He was fond of ’is beer and fonder than any of us of the girls. Married or single, they didn’t matter. S’long as they was good lookers and ready, they suited Sam, kind o’ style.”

  Kitchin kept interpolating the silly phrase like a man with the hiccough.

  “You seem to know all about it, Tom. Did you go out on philandering trips with him then?”

  “Who? Me? Not bloody likely. I’m married, I am, and four kids.… Let the wife once ’ear o’ me on the tiles and …”

  Words failed him to describe the hideous punishment he would undergo.

  “But I’ve kep’ tabs on ’im for a pal o’ mine as lent Sam money and wanted to know where it was goin’…”

  “You have, Tom?”

  “Sure thing. Followed ’im at one place we put-in at and found as he’d fathered a baby on a married woman.…’orrible thing to do. And ’e was using my pal’s money to ’ush it up, kind o’ style.”

  “Who was your pal?”

  “Ain’t tellin’. Paid to keep me mouth shut, I was, and Tom Kitchin’s word’s ’is bond, kinder, s’welp me.…”

  “I see. Can’t do Sam Prank any harm now, you know, to tell me all you know.”

  “Yes, but Rosie.…”

  “Who? A woman, eh?”

  “Never you mind. Tryin’ to trip me up, kinder style …?”

  “All right, forget it then, Tom. Sam was always short of money, was he?”

  “He’s been more flush of late. Seemed to ’ave found somewhere to touch a bit.… Always usedter be borrowin’ and wantin’ advances of pay. Blued his money in like water down a drain. Then, he seemed to land in easy street.”

  “He did? And how was that?”

  Cromwell passed a cigarette to Kitchen and lit one himself. The sailor gulped down smoke and vomited it forth like a dragon from his nostrils.

  “Well, he’s dead and past ’armin’.… I think he was screwin’ it out o’ somebody.…”

  “Blackmail, eh?

  “Well … call it that if you want.”

  “Who was he blackmailing?”

  “Eh, guv’nor, ask me another. How should I know? Is it likely he’d tell me and share his ’en that laid the golden h’eggs with somebody else?”

  “No, perhaps not. But what sort of racket was it? I mean, how was he doing it. Had he seen somebody doing something or in some sort of dishonest business …?”

  “If you ask me, it was love letters he’d got. Once, when he was half-tight, he showed me a bundle as he kep’ in his pocket. Looked like letters, they did, as he’d picked-up or pinched from somewhere. My little gold mine, he sez, and winks, like. Then, he shut up, ’aving realised that perhaps he’d said a bit too much, kind o’ style.”

  “I see. And that’s all you can tell me?”

  “All as I can remember.…”

  “Did you ever see the letters again, Tom?”

  “No. I seem to reckerlect Sam saying ’e was puttin’ ’em in a safe place, which usually amounts to leavin’ ’em with a pal you can trust ashore. When you go to sea and get drunk at ports o’ call, like Sam did, safest is to leave yer valuables with a pal at home.”

  “And who might Sam’s pal have been?”

  “I can guess, but I ain’t tellin’, see? That’ud be givin’ away the bloke what paid me to shadder ’im as I was tellin’ you about.”

  “Oh indeed. Very well, Tom. You’ve helped me a lot. I hope we needn’t bother you again. But I warn you, we might want to know who Rosie is—and if you won’t tell me, you’ll have to tell somebody else in court on oath.…”

  “Well I’ll tell somebody else in court on oath, then. I’m known as a bloke you can trust and a bloke you can trust I stays, see?”

  “Right, Tom. Get yourself a drink before you sail and no ill feelings.…”

  “No ill feelin’s, guv’nor, thanks … thanks.…”

  Still expressing his thanks, the man slid through the door and was off.

  Captain Cobb returned snorting and blowing from his tour of inspection.

  “What happened to Sam Prank’s kit after he was killed, Captain Cobb?”

  “It’s on deck waitin’ for somebody to claim it. I told Jane Prank when I saw her earlier to-day, ‘Jane,’ I says, ‘Jane, if you don’t send somebody to clear off Sam’s stuff, I won’t be responsible. The crew’ll divide it up once we get out to sea.’ But she didn’t seem interested.”

  “May I look at it?”

  “Surely.”

  The Captain hurried on deck and returned with a canvas kit-bag which he dropped on the floor with a bump.

  “There ye are. Help yourself.…”

  Cromwell knew he had no right to be rummaging among the dead man’s effects, but he could not resist the opportunity.

  There was nothing of interest among the tidily arranged mass of shaving-tackle, brushes, odds and ends of clothing and cleaning materials. There was a collection of cheap studio photographs of several girls. Sam Prank’s lights o’ love at one time and another. They were all good-looking in a heavy kind of way. Prank seemed to be fond of a certain type, plump, bold, broad-bosomed.

  Cobb chuckled to himself.

  “A one for the girls was Sam.… Proper way he had with ’em. Hullo, what’s that?”

  It was a Bible.… “To Sam with love from his father and mother on his twenty-first birthday.…” A faded photograph of a comfortable-looking elderly woman taken years ago, fell out. Cromwell retrieved it and replaced it without a word.

  “Nothing here,” said Cromwell at length, carefully replacing the articles in the sack and tugging tight the draw-string. “He must have left his letters and the like somewhere else.”

  “Never kept anything like that, if I’m a judge,” rumbled Cobb. “Often used to see him readin’ his mail and then, into pieces he’d tear it and throw it over the side into the sea. Not one for keepin’ his old love letters.…”

  “But suppose he’d something else he wanted to keep? Valuable papers and such? Would anybody of the name of Rosie keep them? His best girl …?”

  Captain Cobb burst into roars of laughter which again threatened to shake down all the movables in the tiny cabin.

  “Rosie … his best girl! That’s a good one. A proper scream that is. Have you ever seen Rosie, mister?”

  “No. I shouldn’t be asking you about her if I had.”

  “Her … her.… Listen to him! Rosie’s not a woman, but one of the foulest-looking old men you’ve ever set eyes on. A pal o’ Sam’s, was Rosie. Used to lend him money, I hear.… Aye, probable that Sam left his valuables with Rosie as security.”

  “Where does this Rosie live?”

  “Lee’s the name; Rosie’s the nickname, because of his complexion … ho! ho! ho! Lives at the little newspaper shop at the far end o’ the quay.…”

  “That’s a bit of useful news.…”

  “And now, mister, I’ll have to ask you to be off. We sail next tide and I’ve work to do.…”

  Having thus outstayed his welcome, Cromw
ell thanked and bade goodbye to Captain Cobb and made off hastily to report to his chief. He tried out the Rosie Lee joke on Littlejohn and was greatly disappointed to find that his chief was not to be taken in by it and, what was more provoking still, had already met that horrid old man.

  IX

  THE HOLY NAME

  ONE of the foremost personalities in Littlejohn’s mind in the Werrymouth murder case was Canon Conant, priest at the Holy Name Church, who had caused such a sensation by his evidence and collapse at the recent inquest.

  The detective had made up his mind to interview the clergyman as soon as he was fit to be visited and with that in view had arranged for a curate to telephone him when the canon was better.

  The message came remarkably soon. Once in the capable hands of his own physician, who brought him back to normal by the judicious use of sugar-lumps and insulin, Canon Conant was quickly himself again and although not yet able to resume work in his large and busy church, was fit to receive the Inspector and answer a few simple but vital questions.

  The Holy Name serves a large proportion of the population of Werrymouth and, being the only one of its denomination there, with the exception of the chapel of Werrymouth Abbey, it becomes at times in the course of its ministrations, almost like a department-store. Coffins come and go. Baptisms never seem to cease. Marriages are continually being celebrated. Queues of penitents sit on forms outside the confessional boxes of their favourite confessors like patients in a doctor’s shop.

  As Littlejohn, trying to find his way to the presbytery, entered the building, he was met on the steps by a christening party carrying-off in triumph a newly baptised infant. They had had to rush it a bit to clear the decks for a Requiem.

  The church was a pleasant place. Plain walls, plain furnishing, simple altar, pretty side-chapels. Littlejohn stood by a large stained-glass window in which a blue and red father was depicted receiving a prodigal son, naked and purple from head to foot, with the exception of a geranium coloured loincloth. In the background stood a disapproving elder brother clad in green before what looked like a drop curtain. The artist, apparently more skilled in glass than in hagiology, had placed a halo over the father’s head and canonised him by mistake.

  Everybody was occupied and about his business and Littlejohn had to seek hard to find somebody to show him the way. A young fellow in Army uniform was, being married to a girl in Air Force blue in one of the chapels. A junior priest was tying the knot and pitching his voice in a low key as though torn between mourning for the dead—for the Requiem had begun at the High Altar—and rejoicing with the happy pair he was uniting until death did them part.

  “… marriage is a state not lightly to be entered into,” he admonished, as if he, a celibate of thirty-four, knew all about it! But he was going to give them their money’s worth.

  The air smelled of incense and candle-grease. A motley crowd of mourners stood bunched together in the nave like a flock of rooks and the smell of mothballs fought like some malicious demon with the more celestial odours.

  The voice of the celebrant, resonant as a tolling bell, rang round the building and ascended into the great void between the huddle of human beings below and the high timbered roof.

  A catafalque surrounded by candles stood out, grimly towering above those assembled about it.

  “Dominus vobiscum.…”

  “Do you, William Francis Peter, take …?”

  An undertaker, dressed in an ancient frock-coat, possibly looted from a secondhand shop, and wearing trousers which fell like concertinas over his heavy black boots, tip-toed down the aisle anxiously sizing-up how long the burial service would take, for he was in charge of a third-class funeral when the present superlative one was over. He coughed into his curly-brimmed top-hat and his boots creaked reverently. He looked like a chimpanzee togged-up for a children’s party at the Zoo. Littlejohn asked him for directions, but he was deaf to all but the priest’s final word and passed on.

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.…”

  “I pronounce you man and wife.…”

  The dead and the living each receiving his due!

  The bridegroom was kissing the bride whilst behind them, a large woman was for some reason weeping, and a man with a red nose was eagerly pawing at the happy pair in his anxiety to get the next kiss from the girl.

  “Ite. Missa est…” called the celebrant at the main event.

  An atmosphere of relief seemed to surge over the place like a breath of sea air, as the priest and his following descended to the coffin, chanting. They got busy with censer and aspergillum, like men fumigating and watering a young and precious plant instead of ushering out a tired body.…

  On the steps of the church they were having to bustle off the newly-weds. It wouldn’t have done to be throwing confetti when the bier was being borne out.…

  Desperately, Littlejohn clutched at the gown of an acolyte, who, having fulfilled his function of ringing the bell at the Elevation, had somehow been elbowed out of the proceedings when they descended to the body of the church. The boy’s face was covered in the light down of adolescence and he looked full of mischief.

  “How can I get to Father Conant’s quarters?” asked the detective.

  The boy’s solemn, set, ceremonial expression fell from him like a mask.

  “Show you the way when this lot’s off the premises, sir. They’ll be done with in two ticks.…”

  Eventually Littlejohn found himself in the shabby presbytery in Rendel Street, next door to the church. He need not have waited at all in the Holy Name, he discovered, for wedged between two warehouses was the door of the priest’s house.

  “Difficult to find your way in if you’re a stranger,” said Canon Conant, who was seated in his study in a large armchair with a rug round his feet and legs. He looked very much better and greeted his visitor cordially. Littlejohn took a fancy to him right away. He had a feeling, too, that the priest approved of him, for the scrutiny of the kindly searching blue eyes was gentle and whimsical. No doubt, on occasion, it could be very much otherwise.

  The room was dark and a large window overlooked the quay. The sounds of winches, cranes, and freight lorries combined with the tearing of gears by ’buses coming and going in the nearby depôt to constitute a kind of infernal hymn howled by a choir of demons sent by the powers below to drown every utterance of the holy man.

  Right outside the window a steamer was discharging its cargo of new buckets and zinc tanks on to a waiting lorry. The row was deafening. The dockers handled the merchandise without respect for the ears of the neighbourhood.

  Canon Conant was quite undisturbed by this torrent of demoniacal noise and, like a weaver who can carry on conversation above the clack of the shuttle, conversed urbanely as though used to the pandemonium all day and night. Littlejohn kept pausing and asking the good man’s pardon for some information he couldn’t pick-up and finally he had edged his chair so close to that of his companion that they were sitting side by side like two old cronies sunning themselves in the park.

  “I won’t take up a lot of your time, sir,” began Littlejohn when they were settled. “In fact, I oughtn’t to be disturbing you now in your condition, but I think perhaps you have some information you could give us which might considerably shorten our work on the Prank case if you’d …”

  “I’m sorry about the scene the other day, Inspector. I ought never to have gone to court in my condition. Worry and stress tend to affect me that way and I must confess a murder among my flock bowled me right over.…”

  “I’m sure it did. You never ought to have been faced with the ordeal at such a time.”

  “However, perhaps I can tell you one or two things, although, as I told the Coroner, nothing said in confession can pass my lips.”

  “I appreciate that, Canon Conant, and don’t expect it.…”

  “Very well, then. About a week ago, Miss Harriet Prank came to confession. Before we got down to business however, I had met and spoken
with her in the church. She seemed to want to talk to someone and unburdened herself to me.… She said she was sure that her cousin Jane, who kept house for her, and her nephew, Sam, were planning to rob her. She had overheard them talking. It seems Sam was short of money and was asking Jane if his aunt kept any handy in the house. He also said he wished she’d … I think the term was kick the bucket … Yes, kick the bucket … and then he’d get what was coming to him.”

  “Indeed, sir. And what did she say to that?”

  “First of all, Inspector, let’s be clear on this point. Miss Harriet was supposed to be upstairs in bed—it was early morning. Actually, she was down in the kitchen getting ready to wash. They’ve no bathrooms in Pleasant Street, of course. This wretched pair were talking, as many others do behind one’s back, freely and with a certain amount of exaggeration and bravado. We’re both men of the world enough to know that many would-be beneficiaries under the Wills of old people who just won’t die, talk like that, don’t they?”

  “I quite agree, father.”

  The priest smiled and nodded benignly and rhythmically moved back and forth in his rocking-chair.

  “I told Miss Prank that and urged her not to worry about it. She was fond of Sam and agreed that he was a likeable scamp.… But there was another matter which was more serious. Miss Harriet had grown afraid of Jane Prank for some reason. Jane, it seems, had developed a grudge against her employer. She thought she ought to be better paid. Not only that, she thought her cousin ought to hand her out something in advance … a bonus, shall we say … for the sacrifice she was making. Apparently, she thought she could earn more on munitions than in tending her relative, but didn’t make a change out of consideration for the aged lady. That was grievance number one. Number two was, I think, that Miss Harriet persisted in living on and keeping Jane from her legacy. All the family knew the contents of Harriet’s Will and were eagerly waiting. Jane was getting tired and Harriet was afraid she might hurry the course of nature one day …”