Death of a Shadow (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  ‘But why?’

  ‘As I said, he was making sure that your mother’s jewellery, which meant so much to her, was safe. Maybe, also, he had some intuition that all might not be well with him much longer. At any rate, he was determined to do his best before he left Geneva. Had he told you about his suspicions of Bellin, you wouldn’t have believed him.’

  Bellin made harsh noises. ‘Cling! A do-gooder. Don’t make me laugh. He was a crook. I wouldn’t be surprised if he proved to be a foreign agent as well.’

  ‘You should know that, Mr. Bellin. You seem to know all about Cling. However, as I said, Cling found time was running out. His idea that Mr. Bellin might make an attempt to rob Mrs. Cobb seemed to be coming to nothing. Now, we arrive at the last night. Cling has seen you safely, Sir Ensor, to the police farewell dinner. Mr. Bellin is with you and leaves you as you take your place at the high table and returns to the body of the hall. Dinner is served at seven. Afterwards, the usual speeches are to be made to the usual strict schedule. You are due to speak at ten-thirty. Half-way through the dinner, Mr. Bellin leaves the hotel and taking your Mercedes car drives to Les Plaisances. All is quiet there. Mrs. Cobb is already in bed and asleep. Mr. Bellin, now quite familiar with the place, enters, takes the jewellery, and returns to the car …’

  ‘I never left the hotel. So your theories are wrong there.’

  Bellin was quite collected. He seemed sure of himself. Sir Ensor, still emulating a judge, silenced him.

  ‘The attendant who supervises the main door of Les Plaisances is prepared to swear that he saw the Mercedes car at the door between half past eight and ten o’clock. Side by side with it he also saw the Sublime, which I had hired and which Cling had taken. You see, Cling had been waiting for Mr. Bellin, who unexpectedly made his move. Cling told a good tale to the car hire depot opposite the hotel, secured a duplicate key, took my car and followed Mr. Bellin. When Bellin returned to his car, bearing what he thought were the real diamonds, Cling was waiting for him. He arrested Bellin, took him with him in the Sublime, and started back for Geneva, where, I guess, he proposed to denounce him to Sir Ensor. Physically, Cling was more than a match for Bellin. It looked as if Bellin had reached the end of the road. Then, Bellin found the small fire extinguisher under his seat. They must have been very near Geneva at the time, for he couldn’t take a chance in the open. He waited until they reached the darkness of the hotel park, then struck such a blow with the extinguisher, that it killed Cling before he knew what had hit him.’

  Bellin even yawned. He must have been well practised in the art of pretending to be bored with life.

  ‘It was, I reckon, about half past nine. Sir Ensor would be on his feet and making his speech at about ten-thirty. At all costs, the Mercedes must be back to take him home. Bellin had to dispose of the body at once and he hadn’t time to do it. And here was his problem. Sir Ensor was in the habit of closely questioning Bellin about speeches he’d made, and how the audience received them. He even repeated his jokes for Bellin’s opinion. Bellin had written the speech, I gather, but Sir Ensor had a habit of ditching his notes and giving a speech of his own off the cuff, if he was in the mood. Bellin had to know what he said or else Sir Ensor might discover that he hadn’t been there at all. He was depending on this for his alibi … That and perhaps other things.’

  ‘I shall produce my alibi in a minute when you have finished your rigmarole …’

  ‘That is all, Sir Ensor. Bellin looked for the darkest, quietest spot, which proved to be the English rose-garden of the hotel and put the Sublime, with the body in it, there. It wasn’t there very long. The porter, who with his official duties combined perhaps the pleasures of snooping round spying on couples, happened to start on a prowl round the garden not very long before Sir Ensor began to speak …’

  ‘Is that all, Littlejohn?’

  ‘Except this, sir. The Mercedes was still at Les Plaisances, as Cling had insisted on Bellin accompanying him in my Sublime. Bellin had to get back there and have it in its place in the hotel car park before you left the hall. Otherwise, the cat would have been out of the bag. He took the most available car from the park, drove quickly to Les Plaisances, ditched the stolen car, and returned in the Mercedes. The porter at Les Plaisances states that the Mercedes had gone by ten o’clock. Who else could have used the Mercedes, driven it to Les Plaisances, and then taken it away again? It was Mr. Bellin …’

  ‘Except that I have an alibi …’

  Sir Ensor raised his eyebrows at Bellin, as though he was surprised that he was making an attempt to spoil a very good story.

  ‘I was with Kate Halston most of the evening at the dinner …’

  Littlejohn sighed. What an effort! It was bound to fail from the start.

  ‘You have no alibi. Miss Halston was with a friend all the evening, who has confirmed the fact. You see, Bellin, however far matters had gone between you and Miss Halston, as soon as she guessed your intrigue about Mrs. Cobb’s diamonds, you lost your ally and your alibi. She has told me the truth. She never saw you at all from the time you went in to dinner, to the time when you joined her and Sir Ensor after the news of Cling’s death. I know you pretended to be drunk and she had to drive you both to Ferney, but the alibi you concocted and tried to get her to pass off on me, didn’t work. Also, you are, I think the only one of Sir Ensor’s staff who knew of Cling’s hideout in Eaux-Vives. It must have been you who almost tore the room apart in your hunt for the diamonds which you thought Cling had switched and hidden there. You soon found out you’d been duped when you had time to examine your loot.’

  Bellin rose to his feet and faced Sir Ensor at the desk.

  ‘I’ll be able, sir, to give you a full refutation of Littlejohn’s ridiculous theory at your convenience …’

  ‘My convenience! I want it now. Otherwise, I shall instruct Littlejohn and Cromwell to arrest you and take you away …’

  Bellin was perspiring. He closed his eyes and passed his fingers across his forehead.

  ‘I’m not very well, sir. It must be the heat. May I have a glass of water and perhaps you wouldn’t mind if the window is opened for some fresh air?’

  Sir Ensor poured out a glass from a carafe on his desk and handed it to Bellin without a word. He nodded to Cromwell to open the sash window. Cromwell did so and stood by it. A gust of fresh air, sweet after the rain and the fug of the room, rushed in.

  Bellin carefully placed the glass on Sir Ensor’s desk and then, before any of them knew what was happening, rushed like a footballer performing a flying tackle and took a header through the open window.

  The room was on the sixth floor. The three men gathered round and strained to look down the frontage.

  The street lights illuminated the roadway, still shining after the rain. A small crowd had already gathered and was growing with every second. Everything seemed soundlessly done on account of the height. Cars pulling up, people running, others pushing their ways in. In an empty ring in the middle of it all, the spreadeagled, broken body of Roland Bellin.

  An extract from George Bellairs’

  Intruder in the Dark

  THE SMALL family car descended with brake-lights flashing on and off as Mr. Cyril Savage checked his downhill flight. A corner, a little planation of old birch trees and then the village of Plumpton Bois strewn along each side of the main road and creeping into the hillsides behind it.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said to his wife.

  The car stopped with a shudder and they both craned their necks to see what it was like.

  It was early afternoon and there didn’t seem anybody about. In front of the village pub, a large black dog was asleep with its muzzle between its outstretched forepaws. On a seat by the door, an old man was snoozing, his chin on his hands supported by the handle of a walking-stick wedged between his knees. Farther down the road, two parked old cars and an unattended lorry loaded with sacks of coal.

  The inn itself was a small primitive affair with a faded sign over t
he door. Miners Arms. A name quite out of place nowadays, though not so a century ago. Plumpton Bois had then been a busy community where fortunes were being made in mining a lot of lead and a little silver. Then the lodes had run out and so had the miners and the mining companies. Rows of empty cottages had stood derelict and the larger houses of the officials had been the same. The place became a deserted village occupied only by a sprinkling of those whose roots seemed to have sunk too deeply to be moved.

  Then, during the war, the great heaps of slag and rubbish and the stones and the rusty iron of the engine-houses, offices and weigh-houses of the deserted mines had been carted away for road-making and defence works, the wreckage had been covered by nature with a carpet of grass and wild flowers and somebody, finding beauty at last in the setting among the hills, had bought a decent house there for an old song and renovated it. In less than two years the village was almost fully occupied again, this time by week-end and summer retreats of the inhabitants of nearby towns. It even attracted some commuters.

  Nevertheless, it was a deserted place for much of its existence. The owners of the small houses once alive with the lusty families of the miners, now only visited them in their leisure. For the rest of the time, most of them were shut up and locked, their modern shutters closed and their gaily painted doors fastened and staring blindly on the village street.

  Mr. Savage entered the inn. It smelled of alcohol and garlic. The interior somewhat belied the drab outside. Mr. Crabb, the landlord, who met the intruder in his shirt sleeves, had been slowly adapting himself to the influx of new blood and ideas in the village. There was a project in embryo for tearing down the Miners Arms and rebuilding it, with a swimming pool behind and a new name to match. Plumpton Bois Auberge. People liked that kind of thing after holidays on the Continent. They also liked foreign cooking which accounted for the prevailing aroma of garlic. Mrs. Crabb had started making meals in the evenings; French cuisine gathered from recipes in ladies’ magazines.

  Mr. Crabb showed no enthusiasm when he saw his visitor at that time in the afternoon. Furthermore, Savage exhibited no signs of thirst or wishing to drink. In fact, he had the look of a teetotaller. He had on his face the enquiring expression of a lost traveller.

  ‘Could you tell me where I can find a house called Johnsons Place?’

  ‘I’ll show you …’

  Mr. Crabb sought a cap from under the bar. He had a bald head and quickly took cold, although he persisted in his shirt sleeves.

  He put on the cap and shuffled to the front door – for he was still wearing his carpet slippers – gently towing Mr. Savage along with him. They faced the view across the valley. Not a soul in sight; not a breath of wind. On that sunny day it was magnificent. A green hillside sparsely dotted with old trees and divided into small square fields with cattle feeding in them or else crops flourishing there. A stream ran in the valley between the inn and the hills.

  Mr. Crabb pointed downstream to where in a patch of greenery a stone bridge crossed the water.

  ‘See the bridge? Cross it. It’s the first house on the left. A biggish, stone place in a fair sized garden. Used to belong to a Miss Melody Johnson who died about a month ago. Very old lady. Past eighty.’

  ‘Yes I know. She was my great-aunt.’

  ‘Oh, was she? Fancy that. Didn’t know she had any relations. None came during her last illness.’

  ‘I didn’t even know she was ill. In fact, I only knew she was dead when the lawyer wrote.’

  Mr. Crabb gave him a reproachful look, as though, somehow, he thought Mr. Savage had been neglecting his duty.

  ‘I have inherited Johnsons Place under my great-aunt’s will. I’m on my way with my wife to see it now for the first time. This seems a nice locality.’

  ‘Not bad. Not bad. Live near here?’

  ‘No. Our home is in London. We started out early this morning and hope to be back again there late tonight. We’re just here to look over the place and then we’ll decide what to do about it.’

  ‘Thinking of selling? Because it should go for quite a nice figure. Since they did-up this village the value of property has gone up quite a lot. There’s been a lot of enquiries about Johnsons Place already. It’s commodious and in a lovely position.’

  Savage made no answer, but moved towards the car where his wife sat watching his every move and even seemed to be trying to read his lips and fathom what he and the landlord were talking about.

  ‘Well, thank you, landlord.’

  Mr. Crabb shuffled off and left the pair together again. They followed his instructions, downhill and across the bridge which carried a byway into the hills beyond. They quickly found the house.

  The garden stood neglected and overgrown and as Savage gazed at it, it seemed to grow more vast and forbidding. He felt a mood of melancholy and frustration seize him. He had played with the idea of taking over the place himself if it suited him and his wife. The thought of setting to rights this wilderness filled him with despair. He was a tall, spare, middle-aged man with a long, serious face, quite devoid of humour. His looks now grew harassed and petulant at his thoughts. He turned to his wife and shrugged. Her expression was almost exactly like his own, except that she was nearer to tears.

  ‘Oh, dear!’

  It was very hot and still and the surrounding trees and overgrown hedges oppressed the visitors almost to suffocation. The neighbourhood seemed deserted. A few birds twittered in the bushes and in the distance someone was rushing hither and thither on a tractor.

  All the blinds of the house were drawn. It stood back from the gate at the end of the worn-out path and its soiled white façade was sad-looking and desolate. An oblong structure, low lying and sprawling, with a door in the middle of the front with a window on each side of it. Three windows upstairs and a kind of glazed trap-door in the roof. A large stone doorstep, hollowed out in the middle by the feet of long-forgotten people. There was a neglected hen-run – a wire-netting enclosure with a tumbledown shed in one corner – at one end, apparently left just as it was after the poultry had been disposed of. As Savage approached, a rat ran from the shed and disappeared in the hedge.

  The two intruders made their way slowly along the path. Now and then they stumbled over protruding cobblestones which bristled underfoot.

  Savage paused before they reached the door. He was obviously displeased. He was disappointed with everything: the village itself, the house, the damp abandon, the smell and decay, the solitude … the lot.

  He did not complain to his wife. There seemed too much to grumble about. He was hostile to the whole set-up and was now growing hostile to his wife, as well, for suggesting the visit there, although it was necessary and had to be made sometime or other. He trudged slowly to the door and took out the key which the lawyer had given him. Then, he paused and looked back as though someone other than his companion were following him.

  There was a view of the village between the trees. The scattered houses irregularly lining each side of the main road. The church tower with its rusty weathercock protruding through a thick mass of leaves. The abandoned Methodist chapel – ‘Erected to the Glory of God 1852’ – near the by-road to Johnsons Place. To Mr. Savage it was all depressing. He contemplated it with a strange dread, like a man condemned to exile from a beloved place inspecting his future prison.

  There was a bell-push on the door jamb and for something better to do as her husband hesitated, Mrs. Savage gently tugged it. There was a creak of old wire and somewhere, far away, a ghostly bell pealed in the darkness of the house.

  Mr. Savage jumped.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said hoarsely as though his wife were tinkering with something dangerous.

  He inserted the key in the lock and opened the door, which resisted him at first. Then a fetid draught of air surrounded the pair on the threshold. It reeked of damp stone floors, stored rotten apples and the greasy stench of neglected kitchens.

  They entered hesitantly, as though afraid to disturb some
waiting occupant, and found themselves plunged in cold and darkness. Mr. Savage almost ran to the window at the end of the passage and with difficulty drew up the yellow blind. A thin trickle of light spread down the long, narrow corridor from the soiled window, half obscured by an overgrowth of dead old roses and leaves from the bushes outside.

  They could make out two doors to rooms on the left and right of the passage and another one to the kitchens to the right beyond. The passage was floored in old-fashioned red and cream tiles and furnished with a hatstand of bamboo, two chairs, pictures on the walls, a coconut mat on the floor. To the left at the far end, the stairs ascended.

  Mr. Savage’s aunt had left him the house as it stood, furniture and all, and he was anxious to inspect his windfall. He didn’t quite know what to expect among the goods and chattels of the dead woman. He had never been here before. Admitted, Miss Melody Johnson had been his great-aunt. But she might just as well have been a stranger. She had been his grandfather’s sister and both of them had been born at Johnsons Place along with two other sisters and another brother, all of whom had died before his grandfather. Grandfather Johnson had left home early in life. He had never taken to mining or the life in Plumpton Bois, had quarrelled with his father, and gone to become a clerk in a tea merchant’s office in London.

  Presumably his father had cut him off without a shilling and there was no account of any inheritance in Cyril Savage’s family archives. Grandfather Johnson had never got on with his sister Melody either.

  Cyril Savage had met his Aunt Melody once when he was a child. She had been in London on business and had called on his father and mother, her sole remaining relatives. She hadn’t taken on Cyril at all, nor he to her. And she had disapproved of the rest of the family, too; Cyril’s sister, since dead, and his brother, who had later gone down-hill to the dogs. Miss Johnson had been too starchy and exacting altogether the visit had been a failure and she had said farewell and departed for good. The family had broken up later and Aunt Melody had grown into a distant memory, a sort of ghost from the past.