The Crime at Halfpenny Bridge

by George Bellairs

  The priest rocked himself to and fro in his rocking-chair and the loaders of tinware outside were creating a bigger hullaballoo than ever. There was a terrific crash as four stacks of buckets fell from the sling of a crane on the quay.

  “Why, did Miss Harriet think Jane might murder her …?” cried Littlejohn in a voice so loud that the cat left the hearth and fled under the ancient chiffonier, whilst the priest looked a bit askance at the Inspector as though mutely accusing him of unseemly brawling.

  “I gather Jane kept giving her queer looks as though wishing her ill,” he replied when the racket had subsided.

  “I see. Not much grounds for suspecting murder though, sir.”

  “No. I told her that and comforted her. But now that this has occurred, I feel that I ought to tell you …”

  “I wonder …” mused Littlejohn.

  “Eh?”

  “I wonder if that bright pair planned evil jointly against the old lady.”

  “You mean, Inspector …?”

  “I mean, suppose they did plan to do that job together. Jane, knowing the effects of the digitalis … perhaps she’d seen them when the old lady had taken too much before … knowing the effects, gave her an overdose. The doctor said it wasn’t a thumping great overdose. Perhaps three times more than she should have had and not enough, I understand, to kill a normal person. If it was discovered … well … the old lady had made a mistake. We mustn’t forget that the digitalis was in a glass of milk and the police were just in time to prevent Jane from pouring the remnants down the sink.…”

  “Dear me!”

  “Harriet only drank half the contents, however.… It didn’t knock her out properly, but Jane hoping it would, tried to make herself an alibi by going next door for brandy and assistance and taking a long time in getting them. Meanwhile, Sam calls to see how their plan is working and finds the old lady hasn’t passed-out. So he finishes off the job.…”

  “Quite a theory, Inspector, but have you any facts to support it?”

  “Not many, I’m afraid, father. Sam Prank is dead and past questioning. Jane is queer and as close as an oyster and blames Sam for it all. She also says the old lady attended to her own medicine, although I don’t believe it. Was Miss Harriet in full possession of her faculties?”

  “All of them, except her eyesight. Cataracts coming. She was handicapped in that respect and I can assure you she didn’t look after her own medicine. She’s told me that.… She was terrified of an overdose after the doctor had warned her to be careful. No. Jane must have given her the medicine that night.… I’m sure of it.”

  “In that case, I’d better call round at Pleasant Street again right away and have another long talk with Miss Jane. I must get to the bottom of this business. It’s confusing the other case.… Sam Prank’s murder, I mean.”

  “I’m sure it is. If I can be of further help, call again, Inspector. By the way, I think I ought to mention, too, that another cause of family trouble among the Pranks was religious. Miss Harriet belonged to the Mother Church; the rest, it seems, members of an old family of heretics, attended a sect called the Burning Bushers. Harriet was a convert to our Church.…”

  “So I’ve been informed, father.…”

  “You have, have you?”

  “And now I must be off and my thanks, sir.”

  They parted and Littlejohn made his way back through the church to the quay again.

  It was evening and the weather was fine. The sunset foretold a fine day on the morrow and the clear sky was reflected in the still water of the dock like a sheet of green glass. Some naked boys were swimming in one of the basins and a policeman was bawling at them from the bank to come out of it. The dockers were still busy removing what seemed to be an interminable cargo of hardware from the ship moored near the presbytery.…

  The pubs on the quayside were full. Sounds of laughter and singing echoed along the line of warehouses and offices. The man on the swing-bridge was busy collecting toll from passengers crossing to the town for the pictures. He was glaring at them as they passed through the turnstiles, for his dyspepsia was bothering him. He was at his best just after a meal. Later, his stomach got acid and poured its corrosive contents over his duodenum and the world changed from calm to storm.…

  Littlejohn made his way to Pleasant Street after tea. Already Mr. Menelaus was busily frying. A blast of hot noisesome-smelling fat bathed the street, like a bugle calling the hungry to the canteen and the inhabitants began to emerge from their houses with basins and other utensils in which to secure and bear away the fruits of Mr. Menelaus’s labours.

  The Inspector knocked at Number 27. The blind was drawn and no one seemed at home. He knocked again, louder this time. No reply. Then, from Number 29 appeared a stocky, eager-looking woman with a mop of tousled white hair and several tiers of chins. The strains of a harmonium on which somebody was trying to play piano music emerged with her.…

  “Is Miss Prank in?” Littlejohn asked.

  “Haven’t you heard?” answered the woman, rearing as though astonished at his ignorance.

  “Heard what?”

  “She’s been taken away to the asylum.… Went to chapel with a friend of ’ers and was taken bad there. Shoutin’ and screamin’, they say she was.… They say she tried to strangle somebody … Terrible … Her mind’s broke down under the strain, that’s what it is.… They say she …”

  But Littlejohn hadn’t time to listen to what they said. He was off to the police station as fast as his legs would go.

  X

  OUT GOES SHE

  THE credit must go to the Rev. Micah Scewbody for the elimination of the Harriet Prank case, which for a time cluttered up the whole of Littlejohn’s investigation into the family tragedy.

  Mr. Scewbody, that fervid fisher of men, was the high-and-mightiness of the denomination of the Burning Bushers, of which Jane Prank was a baptised member. Zeal and eloquence had raised the Rev. Micah from the lowly calling of stone-mason’s labourer to that of searing light of his sect. He was attached to no particular chapel, but held a roving commission, burning his way through the scattered congregation of the Bush, whipping them into frenzies of repentance and rededication, baptising, proselytising, scorching and terrifying them. It took about six months for the spiritual eruptions caused by his missions to die down, by which time he had travelled full circle and was back again. He thus kept the denominational kettle on the boil.

  Since the death of her cousin Harriet, Jane Prank’s behaviour had been strange. She took to wringing her hands, talking incoherently to herself and wandering aimlessly about the house with her eyes fixed on a spot somewhere in space. From time to time, Captain Sprankling, in his capacity as executor, caused a diversion by calling to keep watch on the chattels of the estate, but he soon grew tired of this. The fishing boats in the bay had struck good catches and the Captain was unable to restrain the impulse to make a few pounds. So he left the furniture to look after itself after assuring himself that the spare car and odd bits of jewellery left by the deceased were safely lodged at the bank.

  That left Jane with only Miss Toke as companion. That foreboding woman was not to be shaken off. Since the death of her father, Miss Toke had lived alone on a very meagre income. She had in mind parking herself on Jane for good if she could manage it. No doubt Harriet would have left her cousin the home intact and what more likely than that Jane would need a companion there? Jane had been glad to sleep at the Toke cottage since Miss Prank’s death and by day Clarice Toke had kept her company as she tried to sort out things at Pleasant Street.

  On the day before the funeral of the two victims, Jane Prank seemed to have reached the end of her resources, physical and mental. She had hardly slept since the murders and Clarice Toke had heard her crying out in the night as though, having dozed, she had been roused by bad dreams.

  Usually spiteful and venomous, the Toke was on her best behaviour in view of the arrangement she hoped shortly to press upon Jane.

&
nbsp; “Shall I make you a cup of tea, dear …?”

  “There, there, don’t take on so. Your aunt’s with the Lord, never fear.…”

  “You did the best you could, dear Jane. Nobody could have done more.… It’s God’s will. We all have to die sometime.…”

  And so on. Over and over again, like the turning of a prayer wheel.

  Jane lapped it up. It was mildly pleasing to have someone dancing attendance. She knew what Miss Toke was after and it wasn’t coming off.

  Only once did the dark woman’s curiosity get the better her.

  I wonder how the pills did get in the glass.… You had charge of the medicine, hadn’t you, Jane dear?”

  “Get out! Get out! Accusing me of killing her, are you? I won’t have you in the house. Get out!”

  The Toke had to use a few tears and a lot of soft soap to calm Jane, who slowly recovered from her frenzy and forgot about packing-off her friend.

  It was after early tea that Miss Toke suggested that they should go to chapel.

  “After all, Jane dear, there’s comfort to be found among one’s fellow worshippers. We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, you know.…”

  Clarice had it all off pat. Her father had been a deacon of the Bushers and she had been brought up on unction.

  “… Mr. Scewbody’s there every night this week, you remember.”

  Excess of one passion, grief, anger, even anxiety, seems to stimulate others. Jane Prank had a weakness for the Reverend Micah. He was a bachelor wedded to The Cause. Perhaps now that she was coming into money. The thought of Scewbody in the town, prowling after souls shook Jane out of her langour. Miss Toke had to remind, her that there was yet an hour to service time. Jane saw impatiently waiting with her hat on and the Toke gave her malicious sidelong glances, the livid spot on her face effulgent with jealousy and malevolence.

  They arrived late at the chapel. The ’bus along the promenade, at the end of which the tabernacle, formerly a billiard-hall, was established, was crowded and they had to walk.

  The Bushers were under way.

  So near to the Kingdom! Yet what dost thou lack?

  So near to the Kingdom! What keepeth thee back?

  To die with no hope! And thy soul to be lost!

  Unwilling to give up thy sin! Count the cost!

  They had worked themselves up already. There was fervent and shrill. Some of the congregation looked like Indians on the warpath, whooping frenziedly, heads jerking, eyes rolling.

  As soon as the hymn was finished, Scewbody was on his feet. A tall, black-bearded man with long arms, drooping shoulders and and a yellow constipated complexion. He launched into prayer at once and for twenty-five minutes brought the world and its sins in a grand march-past before the Throne of Grace. He was a spell-binder without a doubt. Once on the rampage, he had the faculty of kindling excitement in the breasts of his hearers. As he prayed, his discourse was punctuated incessantly by the exultant shouts of those in the body of the church.

  The place needed the pencil of Rowlandson properly to describe it. Games of any kind were anathema to the Bushers and they had made a good job of removing every trace of billiards from the building. At one end, a double-decker pulpit. Mr. Scewbody in the top tier; Mr. Lambert, who gave out the hymns, in the bottom. Then facing them, a series of plain wood pews, almost like cattle-pens, with high backs over the tops of which only the heads of worshippers could be seen when they were seated. In the front pew sat five deaf old people who, whenever one of the occupants of the twin-pulpit rose, elevated their ear-trumpets eagerly like a battery of horn players ready for The Royal Hunt and Storm in the Forest.

  Sometimes, when children were allowed at service, they were penned in the second pew and the occupants of the third kept them in order by hanging over the partition from time to time and poking them with umbrellas.

  The harmonium provided the accompaniment for sing-and was operated by a young lady who played vicociously. Some of the tunes she could not play at all these were, therefore, blacklisted. Others she either played too fast or too slow, according to whether she knew them well or not, thus, either dragging the singers along by the scruffs of their necks or having them overtake and trample upon her like cattle stampeding. When the singing reached fever-heat, the frenzied congregation ignored the organist, drove her along until she could stand it no more and then compelled her to drop out of the race, silence the organ, and wait for the next verse, like one who, having been thrown from a roundabout, gathers himself together and, as it comes round again, flings himself wildly back in the whirlpool.

  Jane Prank and the Toke were sucked into this stew-pond of evangelism almost as soon as they put their heads in at the door. In next to no time, they were bawling and shouting with the rest, hooting with approval as Mr. Scew-body laid on the lash.

  The sermon was strong meat. Mr. Scewbody had ordered all lights except that on his reading-desk to be extinguished. The last dim daylight filtered forlornly through the windows. The reading-lamp suffused the pastor’s face with a yellow glow and illuminated his beard and long thin nose, so that he looked like a two dimensional figure in a stained-glass window. On the white wall behind, was flung a long shadow of Scewbody’s head and shoulders, which, as he twisted and turned in the warmth of his subject, changed rapidly into a series of silhouettes. A turnip on a plate, The Old Duke, Shylock flapping his hands, a hideous bird of prey, the thief on the cross, with limbs contorted with agony, and so on. But there was nobody there with imagination enough or the inclination to enjoy the peep-show. For Micah was tracking down sin to its lair.

  He tore sin limb from limb and exhibited it to the audience. He waved it before them from his lofty perch until the very atmosphere of the place seemed to stink of corruption. Then he set about his listeners and excoriated them for still wanting sin in spite of his efforts. Turn or burn. Repent for the day of judgment is at hand. He trotted it all out. He opened the very Pit itself right in the middle of the old billiard-hall until the stench of sulphur and the burning flesh of the damned seemed to rise and fill the chapel. The congregation by this time were cowering helplessly before his eloquence. He certainly could deliver the goods! Like Hitler, stupifying his listeners by floods of hogwash. He finished them off properly, too. He talked of the judgment and of the doom of the unrepentent. The writing on the wall. Mene, mene, tekel upharsin!

  Anybody with a grain of imagination and a knowledge of showmanship could see what was coming. Mr. Scewbody turned his back on his petrified audience and with a long shadowy forefinger wrote it on the wall! Then he sat down suddenly and the lights went up.

  The congregation blinked but dared not look at each other. Mr. Scewbody seemed to have marked the forehead of each of them with the sign of guilt. He had provided the ingredients of the brew; all that was now required was the yeast to make it ferment. This was forthcoming in the form of another hymn of an interminable number of verses and with a frantic, despairing refrain. They sang it like savages whipping themselves up for an orgy, contorting themselves, stamping their feet, jerking their limbs, howling like dogs baying at the moon.

  And then, like a witch-doctor, Mr. Whimbrel, tailor and outfitter and a deacon of the chapel, leapt forth to the front of the church and called sinners to repentance. Normally a quiet little man, Whimbrel was now beside himself, drunk with the wine of Scewbody, almost foaming at the mouth. He was not concerned with his own state of grace. He seemed to take that for granted. He was busy with others. “Are you on the Lord’s side …?”

  “Have you been saved?” “Have you no sins to confess before the Throne?” And so on, and he pointed to this and that one as he asked his questions.

  They took it seriously like members adhering to the rules of the game. As drunk as Mr. Whimbrel, they came to the front of the gathering confessed, and professed themselves saved. One, a baker, had been giving thirty-one ounces in a two-pound loaf. He would restore it tenfold, he promised in a frenzy of exultation. This one had made a
false income tax return; declared thirty pounds instead of thirty-two! Another had been drunk many a night of late; he would sign the pledge.… Where was the pledge? Let him be getting at it with pen and ink! Others got on their sexual shortcomings. Some wept as they confessed them; others seemed to boast and repent in the same breath.… Mr. Scewbody’s wine was strong stuff, for nobody seemed shocked at what was said. Only eager for more.

  All this time the Rev. Micah sat with his head in his hands, as though praying that the floodgates he had opened might be closed again. Mr. Whimbrel, dancing in the excitement and ecstacy of his task, pointed a grubby forefinger here and there. “Are you …? ” “Have you …?” Straight at Jane Prank!

  At first the intoxicated gathering did not realise what she was talking about. She was standing by the side of Whimbrel, wild-eyed, loose-jawed, like one who sees a frightful vision and cannot fend it off. Words flowed. She didn’t seem to know what she was saying.

  “I’m lost.… Nothin’ can undo what I done.… No redemption for me. I killed ’er. I give ’er the pills. Not four as Sam Prank said to do, Lord. I only give ’er three. It seemed too much to give ’er four; she’d been good to me many a time. So I give ’er three, Lord. I did it, though. Gave ’er the dose and left ’er to die. Stayed away from ’er when she was dying. And, if Sam did smother ’er with the cushion, it was me left ’er on the couch: ready for ’im to smother. An’ it was me give ’er the pills.…”

  A hush had fallen over the gathering, as though someone had flung cold water over the intoxicated celebrants. They stood open-mouthed, drinking in the strange tale pouring from Jane Prank’s lips. Scewbody had risen and hung over his desk, listening, like a great vulture awaiting the end. Whimbrel, his beard flecked with foam, stood helplessly before Jane, listening too.

  It was as if the silence gradually brought to Jane Prank the realisation of what she had done. She halted, looked blankly at the gaping, tousled crowd before her and then, with a wild cry, fell upon Whimbrel, as though holding him responsible for all her trouble, and tore at his prominent Adam’s apple with her fingers.