by J F Straker
“No. Like I told the other gentleman, it wasn’t his. He must have borrowed it from someone while he was out.”
With the chief inspector’s consent — though not his approval — Johnny and Nicodemus accompanied the woman in the police car that took her home. Johnny sat with her in the back. To take her mind off the tragedy he asked her about the children; and although at first she was reluctant to talk, staring listlessly out of the window and answering only briefly, eventually he won her attention and her confidence. By the end of the journey she was telling him, not only of the children, but of her fears for the future. She did not discuss her late husband as a person. Only the change that his death would make in her life.
“There’s no pension, you see,” she said unhappily. “And I doubt there’s much in the bank. I’ll have to sell the house. But what happens then? We’ve got to live somewhere.” She shivered. “It’s terrible, isn’t it, to be stranded like this? Especially for the children.”
“Didn’t he carry any insurance?”
“I shouldn’t think so. He didn’t look much to the future. But I don’t really know.”
He was surprised to learn that she was only two years older than himself. She might be quite attractive, he thought, given smart clothes and a decent coiffure and with skilful make-up. Maybe she’d marry again. Rather on the skinny side. But some liked them thin.
The house lay a few miles outside the town, with a large, untidy front garden and an acre of land at side and back. Noting the weeds in the roughly tilled soil, the broken cloches, the unpainted greenhouses with their cracked and broken panes, Johnny decided it was no wonder that Jess Wheeler’s plunge into market gardening had not been a howling success. Yet the house itself was comfortable and well furnished. There was no suggestion of poverty there.
A policewoman had taken charge of the twins during Judith Wheeler’s absence. They were dark, gipsy-like children, excitable and noisy. The tall Nicodemus awed them, but they were soon on friendly terms with Johnny. Clinging to his hands, they skipped down the garden path beside him when their mother, at Nicodemus’s request, took them to see the Alsatians. Nicodemus, it seemed, preferred dogs to children.
There were five of them — three bitches and two dogs. At the strangers’ approach they started barking, padding up and down the perimeter of the run or leaping and scratching at the high wire-mesh fence. Neither of the children would go near them. They let go of Johnny’s hands and went to clutch at their mother’s skirt, their bright eyes wide with fear as they huddled against her.
“They’re not really vicious, are they?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “Jess said not. Only Jackson.” She pointed to a dog that displayed gums and teeth in an angry snarl as Nicodemus approached the wire. “I’ve never had anything to do with them. I don’t like dogs. Not Alsatians, anyway.”
“They’re no more vicious than other breeds,” Nicodemus said. “Any dog may turn nasty if it’s kept permanently caged. Aren’t these chaps ever let out?”
“Oh, yes. Jess took them for walks regularly. Two or three at a time. He adored them.” Her voice hardened. “Sometimes I thought they meant more to him than the children.”
Johnny said hastily, “They look in pretty good nick to me.”
“They are,” Nicodemus agreed. “What’ll happen to them now, Mrs Wheeler?”
“I’ll get rid of them,” she said, with more determination than she had hitherto shown. “Soon as I can I’ll get rid of them.”
“I dare say. In the meantime they have to be fed.”
She turned away, resentful of his interference. She would have accepted it from Johnny, but not from this aloof young man with the loud voice and the pompous manner.
“There’s a man down the lane worked for my husband part time,” she said shortly. “He’ll have to do it. If he won’t go into the run he can throw the food over to them. It won’t be for long.”
“They won’t have been fed today,” Nicodemus persisted. “Show me where the food is, and I’ll do it now.”
She indicated a green painted shed a few yards away. Then she took the twins back to the house. The dogs got excited, she said, when about to be fed. She didn’t want the children frightened.
“Pongs a bit,” Johnny said, as he followed Nicodemus into the shed.
Nicodemus did not answer. His eyes were searching the shelf. With an exclamation of triumph he reached for a large white bag and held it for Johnny to see.
“Doggo,” he said. “How about that?”
“Interesting,” Johnny said. “Not conclusive, but definitely interesting. I suppose there wouldn’t be any maggot around?” Nicodemus frowned. “Money, you nit.”
There was no maggot. He watched Nicodemus feed the dogs, throwing raw meat and biscuits to them over the wire. Then they walked back to the house, to find a harassed policewoman urging the twins to peace.
Mrs Wheeler came from the kitchen carrying a tray. “I thought you’d like coffee,” she said, placing it on a table. She looked and sounded more composed.
They thanked her. Nicodemus said, “I see your husband gave the dogs Doggo.”
“Did he? What’s that?” He showed her a biscuit, and she nodded. “Oh, them. He used to carry some around in his pockets. I was always having to empty them of crumbs.”
Speaking of her dead husband did not seem to distress her. But then Johnny had already guessed that she did not greatly miss him as a person. No doubt she had mourned his death last night, for him as well as for herself. But now that the initial shock was over it was the loss of the security he had represented that was uppermost in her mind.
She had forgotten the spoons. As she came back with them from the kitchen she caught the reflection of herself in a mirror, and paused to grimace. “My, but I look a sight!” she said. Adding, in unnecessary explanation, “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I lay awake for hours. And then, just as I was dropping off, the dogs started to bark. I don’t know what set them off, but they went on for ages.”
“You didn’t investigate?” Johnny asked.
“I didn’t care,” she said honestly. “In a way they were sort of company. It wasn’t until I remembered the children that I got up and looked out of the window. It was pitch dark, of course, but just for a second I thought there was a light. Or maybe it was a reflection. Anyway, they quietened down soon after.”
For once Johnny and Nicodemus were in agreement: Wheeler had been concerned in the bank job, and they should immediately apply for a warrant to search the house. The superintendent, when consulted, was more cautious. What, he wanted to know, had they got to justify the application? Wheeler had been absent from home at the time of the robbery, but there was only the dog biscuit to suggest he might have been at the bank. Was Doggo a popular brand? Nicodemus admitted that it was. Well, then! As for the disturbance in the kennels — a stray cat could have been responsible. If there were an intruder it did not have to be human.
“Mrs Wheeler saw a light,” Johnny reminded him.
“Thought she saw. And the state she must have been in she could have imagined anything.”
“Cats’ eyes shine in the dark,” Nicodemus said. He liked to be on the side of authority. “Maybe that’s what she saw.”
Johnny glared at him. Traitor! his eyes accused. He said firmly, “I bet you Wheeler was in on that job, sir. And I don’t think last night’s disturbance was caused by a cat. More likely one of his mates heard he’d been killed and thought it a good idea to add Wheeler’s share of the money to his own. He didn’t know about the dogs.”
The superintendent shrugged.
“Not a very close mate, then. Mind you, I’m not denying the possibility. But where would a search get us? You can’t arrest Wheeler. He’s dead.”
“We might recover his share of the loot.”
“If it’s there. And if it is, then you’re probably right about his mates. So we keep a discreet eye on the place in case they try again
. Show our hand too soon, and you’ll scare them off.”
Now thoroughly converted, Nicodemus nodded. Johnny glared at the floor. There was sense in what the Boozer said, but he disliked it nevertheless.
“We need more information on Wheeler,” Sherrey went on. “For instance, it might help if we knew who called on his wife yesterday afternoon, and who telephoned him later. But the big question is why, having left home in his own car, he was found dead an hour later in another, stripped to his underpants and wearing a borrowed raincoat, and with an unidentified blonde as driver. So suppose you go ask, eh?”
“Ask who, sir?” Johnny said, somewhat dazed by this multiplicity of queries.
“Mark Sinclair. It was in his car that Wheeler and the woman were killed.”
2
It was their repeated knocking on the Sinclairs’ front door which eventually attracted the neighbour’s attention. They saw her first at the bay window, a face peering at them from between the lace curtains. Then the face vanished, and after an interval the whole body appeared on the steps.
“They’re away,” she told them. “Both of them. Went yesterday.”
The uniformed sergeant who was Johnny’s companion saluted her gravely.
“Do you know what time they left, ma’am?” he asked.
“Different times,” she said. “Mrs Sinclair left just before nine. In the evening, of course. I know, because I was watching TV when the man called about the election, and it was while I was standing here talking to him that I saw her go. A friend called for her in a car. Then, about ten o’clock, Mr Sinclair came home from the pub — he always goes out of a Monday evening — and not long after he knocked on my door. I was a bit annoyed at first, seeing how late it was; but the poor man was in such a state that I hadn’t the heart to be angry. Proper upset, he was. He said his wife wasn’t home, and he couldn’t think where she might be. Well, I told him, of course, how I’d seen her go off with this man. He didn’t say anything; just walked off in a sort of daze. But he didn’t go back to the house; went off down the road towards George Street. I wondered if I ought to —”
Johnny decided it was time to interrupt. “Was he walking, or did he take the car?”
“Eh? Oh, walking. The car wasn’t there.” Her eyes widened. “That’s queer. I mean, he’d gone off in it earlier, but he didn’t come home in it. I wonder why.”
Johnny admitted the queerness of this. The sergeant said, “Would you know the name of the gentleman who called for Mrs Sinclair?”
“Not his name, no. But I’ve seen him here before. A tall, dark man in a yellow jersey. And he’s got one of those Minis. A red one.”
It did not take long for the incongruity of this piece of information to register in Johnny’s mind. The man, the car, the jersey, indicated Jess Wheeler; and it was to Beryl Sinclair that Mrs Wheeler assumed her husband had gone in response to the telephone call. That tallied. But the times did not. According to the woman, the car had picked up Beryl Sinclair just before nine. Yet twenty minutes earlier he had witnessed the dead body of Jess Wheeler being extricated from the wreckage of Sinclair’s Morris.
Who was trying to fool whom?
The woman was talking again. “I was that worried about poor Mr Sinclair I waited up for him. Two o’clock, it was, when I got to bed, and he hadn’t come home then. He hasn’t been home today, neither. Nor has Mrs Sinclair. If you ask me —” She paused expectantly. But they did not ask her, and she went on, “Well, it’s my opinion she and that man have gone off together, and poor Mr Sinclair is away looking for them.”
Johnny said earnestly, “You’re quite sure Mrs Sinclair couldn’t have left considerably earlier than nine? Around eight-thirty, say?”
“Oh, no! The news had started on the telly, so it must have been after ten to nine.”
“And you couldn’t be mistaken in thinking that the man who called for her was the same man you had seen here before?”
“Well —” She hesitated. “It was dark, and he didn’t get out of the car. I couldn’t see his face, of course. But I recognized the jersey. And it was the same car. That I’ll swear to.”
The sergeant was a practical man. He said, “We’ll have a word with this canvasser you were talking to at the time. Did he give his name?” She shook her head. “Well, which candidate was he representing?”
“Mrs Bollender. You know — the Independent woman. Not that she has a hope, my husband says.” A query had been at the back of her mind throughout the interview. Now it had to be spoken. “They’ve not done anything wrong, have they? The Sinclairs, I mean. Mind you, I wouldn’t put anything past her. But Mr Sinclair — well, he’s a nice little man. It beats me why he ever married her. Like chalk and cheese, they were.”
“Nothing wrong, ma’am,” the sergeant said. “But they may be able to help us in some inquiries we’re making. So if you could just give us a description of this canvasser —”
Sherrey was in an irritable mood when Johnny returned to the hotel. No reason, Nicodemus said. But Johnny knew there had to be a reason. The Boozer was that kind of man.
“Check with the candidate’s agent,” Sherrey said curtly, when Johnny had made his report. “He’ll know who was canvassing that area yesterday. And much joy may it bring you. If an inquisitive neighbour can’t supply a working description you won’t get it from a disinterested passer-by.”
In the bar before lunch Johnny and Nicodemus were button-holed by Dennis Cooper. How was the investigation going? Was there any truth in the rumour that the local man killed in yesterday’s car crash had been implicated in the bank robbery? “That sort of thing goes down well with our readers,” he told them. “Local boy makes bad! They love it. Bumps up the circulation no end. You wouldn’t care to make a statement, I suppose?”
He looked hopefully from one to the other.
“You’re right.” Nicodemus was curt. “We wouldn’t.”
“Ask the superintendent,” Johnny said. Cooper was a nuisance, but not so big a nuisance as to warrant discourtesy. “We’re only the stooges.”
“I’ve already asked him.” Cooper grinned, revealing a mouthful of rabbity teeth. “It went like a bomb, with him providing the explosion.”
So Cooper had been the cause of the Boozer’s irritation. The Boozer had a strong aversion to importunate reporters. Particularly when he was short on information.
“That’s that, then, isn’t it?” Johnny said. “You’ve had it, chum.”
“Pushes it a bit, doesn’t he?” Karen said, when the reporter had gone. “But I suppose one shouldn’t blame him. After all, it’s his job.”
Nicodemus was watching a couple seated at a table near the window. The man, broad-shouldered and with fair, curly hair, had his back to them; when he turned to look at the bar, as he did frequently, the expression on his pink, boyish face changed abruptly from polite interest to acute boredom. But it was his companion who interested Nicodemus. She was the direct opposite to the man. Her body was that of a child, tiny and slim, with a flat chest and no hips. Yet the face beneath the piled auburn hair was that of a woman; unlined, with finely chiselled features, it yet spoke of experience. A wild mink coat was draped over the back of her chair, there was the glitter of diamonds in her ears and at her throat. And when she lifted a hand to lay it on that of the man, or to raise her glass, he saw that her fingers were heavily loaded with rings.
“Whose baby is she?” he asked Karen.
The girl followed the direction of his eyes.
“That’s Mrs Bollender,” she told him. “Lucinda Armitage de Bresne Bollender, Independent parliamentary candidate for this division. Impressive, isn’t she?”
“Very. What age would she be?”
Karen shrugged. “She won’t see forty again.”
“She looks loaded,” Johnny said. “The ice-merchants and clobberers must love her. Who’s the boyfriend?”
“Charlie Goodwin. He runs the Corner Garage.” A wry smile twisted Karen’s lips. “Rumour ha
s it she would prefer their association to be more intimate, but that Charlie’s reluctant.”
“He looks bored to tears,” Nicodemus said. “Why doesn’t he quit?”
“Drop all that lovely lolly?” Johnny grinned. “Are you kidding?”
Mrs Bollender, Karen said, possessed influence as well as wealth. And the Corner Garage wasn’t exactly a flourishing concern. Her patronage could make the difference between success and failure.
“Charlie’s ambitious,” she said. “Very.”
“He’d rather be kept than kaputt, eh?” Pleased with the alliteration, Nicodemus repeated it. “Sink that beer, Johnny. In the Boozer’s present mood, tardiness is definitely not on.”
Sherrey had started on the soup when they joined him. But the scowl had gone from his face and the acid from his voice, and he made no comment on their lateness. Johnny decided that the menu had pleased him. The Boozer enjoyed his food.
“Any luck with Mrs Bollender’s agent?” Sherrey asked, mangling a bread roll.
“Afraid not, sir. He’s still away.”
“No matter.” The superintendent finished his soup, put down the spoon, and wiped his lips with a napkin. “I’ve news for you two. It seems that in addition to bank robbery we may now have a murder on our hands.”
“Murder?” They spoke in unison.
“Murder,” Sherrey repeated. “They’ve done a post-mortem on Jess Wheeler. Apparently he wasn’t killed in that crash. He was already dead when it happened.”
3
Charlie Goodwin, as Karen had said, was ambitious (or perhaps more greedy than ambitious), and he might have settled for Lucinda Bollender’s amorous advances had not his affections been firmly centred elsewhere. Lucinda, although considerably older than himself, had both wealth and position to commend her, and if she lacked beauty she was certainly arresting. But now, with money of his own — not in Lucinda’s bracket, of course, but a fair whack — he could dispense with her patronage. Provided he could convince the girl of his choice that her reason for refusing him was no longer valid, that his means were now sufficient to keep them both in reasonable comfort, then to hell with Lucinda Bollender! To hell with the garage, too! He was sick of both.