by J F Straker
Not quite all right, perhaps, thought Johnny. Hence their docility when Brown collected them.
He made the money an excuse for leaving almost immediately; it was late, he was tired, the notes must be handed in and checked. She did not try to detain him — she was tired too, she said; what with the children, and everything to do herself, there was no chance to relax until they were in bed — and as he drove away he thought of her with sympathetic understanding. Life was going to be tough for Judith Wheeler; it was no wonder she had been tempted to keep the money. She might even have considered she had some right to it, for she had not stolen it herself, and because of it she had lost her husband. Yet there had been no tears, no hysteria, no dramatics. She had accepted disappointment with surprising stoicism, although by now she must be sadly regretting her invitation for him to visit her.
Why had she invited him? he wondered. Not just for a chat, surely; not at that late hour. And certainly not to surrender the money. Well, whatever it was, they had never got around to discussing it. Her inadvertent disclosure had effectively barred the way to any other topic.
He smiled to himself as he recalled her parting cliché: that she hoped her loss would be his gain, that this would earn him a commendation. Well, it might at that. It was a sizeable sum, and without him it might never have been recovered.
And it was nice of her to think of it.
The officer on duty at the police station was the sergeant who had gone with him to interview Mrs Bute. Johnny, too tired to invent a plausible lie as to how he had come by the money, told him the truth; he did not think it would do Judith much harm. With this the sergeant agreed, giving it as his opinion that proceedings against her were unlikely. “I saw her when she came in Monday,” he said, busily counting. “A poor young woman like that, I can’t see a jury bringing in a verdict of guilty. Nor a magistrate neither, come to that. She’d have all their sympathy, same as she’s got mine.”
“And mine,” Johnny said. “You know, I believe she honestly felt she had some sort of right to the money, moral if not legal. And she’s worried about how she’s going to manage. Bringing up kids can be expensive.”
“Broke, is she?”
“So I gather. It’s a bloody shame, really. She’s a nice person: naive, but nice. I promised I’d try to get her a slice of the reward.”
“I wish you luck,” the sergeant said.
A constable was helping him with the count, and Johnny left them to it, contenting himself with checking the bundles as the pile mounted. He contemplated ringing the Boozer, and decided against it. If the Boozer was awake when he returned to the hotel he would tell him then; if not, so much the better. Keep it till morning, and bed would come the sooner.
It was not until the count had passed the half-way mark that he began to feel uneasy. According to the bank some seventy thousand pounds had been stolen; split three ways, around twenty-three thousand apiece. Yet it looked now as if the money piling up on the desk would fall considerably short of that sum.
It did. According to their calculation it amounted to just over ten thousand pounds.
“And very nice too,” the sergeant said, as he began to stack it back in the box. “Very nice indeed.”
Johnny did not answer. Tired as he was, he had already realized the truth: Judith Wheeler had taken him for a ride. The soft soap and the gentle pleading had been so much baloney. About the only truth she had given him was that she had found the money; the rest was lies, deliberately concocted to deceive. There had certainly been a key, and she had as certainly found it; and on opening the box she had no doubt been tempted to keep the lot. But prudence had prevailed. As long as the money remained officially missing the police, and probably others, would continue to look for it; better to let them find the half and believe it to be the whole. So she had taken her thirteen grand, relocked the box, tampered with the hasp to make it appear that she had tried unsuccessfully to force it (thus supporting her assertion that she could not find the key), and buried the box in the flower-bed. Having deposited her new-found wealth in safe keeping (perhaps posted it to a trusted friend, or left it in a distant luggage office or bank vault), she had then needed a fall guy, someone whose word was unlikely to be questioned.
She had chosen him.
For a woman presumably unversed in subterfuge it had been neatly done. The apparently inadvertent slip — not too obvious, but enough to give even a tired and friendly detective sergeant a lead he could hardly miss — followed by reluctant confession, urgent pleading and, finally, unhappy resignation; red eyes, if not tears, could be evoked by rubbing. And, pervading the whole set-up, the aura of the unfortunate and lonely young widow.
And he, sucker that he was, had fallen for it like a load of bricks!
His admission that, with Goodwin dead and Sinclair off his nut, no-one could now say exactly how the money had been divided, that her husband’s cut had been more than the ten thousand found in the box, must have given her considerable comfort. Beryl Sinclair? Even if she had been present at the share-out her word would carry little weight against that of the apparently innocent young widow. He wondered dismally if he would be called on to testify to her innocence. That would be the final humiliation; for although he knew her story to be a lie he could not disprove it. He had already told the sergeant that he believed it. Against an astute lawyer he doubted if he could even shake it.
She wasn’t home and dry yet, of course. The police didn’t give up that easily. If further interrogation failed to shake her they would keep her under surveillance, waiting for a lead to where the money was concealed, watching her expenditure. If she grew greedy and careless they’d nab her. But somehow he didn’t think she would. Prudently handled, that money represented security. And to Judith Wheeler security was everything.
Bitches! he thought bitterly. Bloody, unprincipled bitches, she and Karen both. All right, so maybe they had liked him a little. But they hadn’t allowed liking to prevent their using him for their own selfish ends. The only difference had been in the method of approach: beauty and charm with Karen, naiveté and helplessness with Judith. And because he was the complete sucker, both methods had succeeded.
“That about wraps it up, doesn’t it?” the sergeant said, affixing a seal to the metal box. “For you and your lot, I mean. Well, see you at the assizes. With Mrs Bollender in the hot seat it’ll be a sensation. Cherchez la femme, eh?”
“No thanks,” Johnny said. “I’ve had some.”
If you enjoyed Dead Man Walking check out J F Straker’s other books here: Endeavour Press - the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.
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Also in the Inspector Pitt Detective series:
Postman’s Knock
A Will To Murder
The Detective Johnny Inch series:
Tight Circle
Dead Letter Day
Death Mask
Also by J F Straker:
Death on a Sunday Morning
Motives for Murder
Death of a Good Woman
Pick up the Pieces
Dead Man Walking
The Shape of Murder
A Man Who Cannot Kill
Miscarriage for Murder
Murder for Miss Emily
Final Witness
Hell is Empty
A Choice of Victims
Arthur’s Night
A Gun to Play With
Ricochet
Swallow Them Up
Countersnatch
Another Man’s Poison
A Coil of Rope
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