Corpses in Enderby (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  The shed had long been disused and the uprights which held the roof beam had rotted away in the ground. As the weight of Flounder strained the roof, the post on one side gave way, the whole crazy shanty rocked once and then collapsed like a pack of cards. The beam struck Flounder and laid him out beneath the wreckage.

  Bertha started to claw and scrabble about among the splintered wood and corrugated iron and quickly cleared a space around the unconscious form of her rejected Wilfred, whose head and shoulders she commenced to hug, weeping over them, calling upon him to open his eyes, and begging his forgiveness. Wilfred Flounder, the slack rope round his neck, took no heed, but started to babble in concussed fashion, calling a woman’s name. Fortunately, it was Bertha’s he was calling for.

  Bertha Bunn scrambled to her feet, rushed through the shop, and for the second time in so brief a period, roused the neighbourhood with her shrieks for help. At once, the shop doorway resembled the turnstiles at a football match; people from the market, apparently eager to be of assistance, poured past the ironmongery into the room behind, on through the yard, to the wreckage of the shed, in which Flounder was now sitting in a daze.

  “He’s got a rope round his neck …”

  “He’s tried to hang himself …”

  “Pulled the shed down on himself to try to kill himself …”

  “’ere, ’ere …”

  The voice of the Law rose above it all and soon the procession was reversed back into the street.

  So, Wilfred Flounder was returned, dishevelled, bruised, and gabbling from concussion, to the police-station, where they put him in a comfortable cell and sent for the doctor to deal with him.

  The Chief Constable was still on the premises and he expressed himself in unprintable language about it all.

  “The strain of the police interview must have driven him off his head … I must say I think he was taxed beyond endurance by it.”

  Myers smiled grimly.

  “It looks to me almost like a guilty conscience … an admission of guilt, sir.”

  “Nothing of the kind. I grant you’re an efficient officer, Myers, and I’ve no complaints, but murder of this kind is something new to us all …”

  Colonel Cargrave flung down his cap and stick and stopped a passing constable.

  “Hi, you constable, get me Whitehall one-two-one-two.”

  Myers’ eyes opened wide.

  “You don’t mean, sir …?”

  “I do. We’re getting help and, if it can be managed, I want the fellah who dealt with the case at Blow’s Bank, at Nesbury … Littlejohn, that’s the man …”

  3

  HAPPY FAMILIES

  “AND this is where it all happened …”

  Inspector Myers led Littlejohn and Cromwell into the ironmonger’s shop and through to the living-room.

  All things considered, Myers had taken it very well. The hint that he might not be capable of handling the Bunn affair had come to him as a bitter pill. There was a vacancy for a Superintendent in a neighbouring town and Myers had been sure that the Chief Constable had him on the list. But just as he’d made up his mind that it was all off, the Chief had said quite casually, “Don’t take it to heart my sending for Scotland Yard, Myers. They’re more used to this kind of thing than we are. I’ve recommended you to the Committee for Superintendent at Selsby, by the way.”

  After that, Myers felt he didn’t care a damn. On his way to the station he hurried home to tell his wife and then met the newcomers with a cheerful face.

  “Seems all right about it,” said Cromwell, who was always a bit anxious as to how the locals were going to take their intervention.

  The same sort of town they’d been to so often before. The station a long way out from the centre; a long street leading to the heart of things; drab shops lining the route. They passed a public library and a garden of remembrance, with a war memorial and a lot of seats scattered about on which old men and loafers were sitting gossiping. Then, round the church and to the police-station … The file of the case and the story itself were short enough. There was so little to tell. A shot in the dark, nobody about as proper eye-witnesses, a serious suspicion of Wilfred Flounder, a difference of opinion between the Chief Constable and the Inspector about Flounder. That was all.

  “Flounder tried to hang himself yesterday, but it seems to have been more because he’d lost his girl … the victim’s daughter … than because we suspected him. They’ve made it up now and the Chief has sent him home under her care … Perhaps we’d better go and have a look at the scene of the crime.”

  The market square was one of the most hideous Littlejohn had ever seen. There was a large forlorn-looking church at one end, with a tower and graveyard and, at the other, a huge Victorian nonconformist chapel built of crumbling sandstone, with a portico which looked ready to fall down. Between the two, a motley assortment of shops, the bulk of which seemed to be struggling for existence. Sedate nineteenth century drapers and tailors, a wool shop and a shoemaker’s. In between, a lot of new tile and chromium grocers and dairies, milk-bars, tobacconists, butchers and multiple stores. Notices hit you from all directions. MILK SHAKES. REGISTER HERE FOR MEAT. HOT DOGS. SUITS, HALF-PRICE. FUNERAL PARLOUR, ARRANGEMENTS REVERENTLY MADE …

  And in the middle of it all, BUNN’s shop, prosperous, well-stocked, conservative in structure, free from competitors, the best of the lot. The windows were choc-a-bloc with tools, small machines, fishing tackle, sporting guns, lamps, poultry appliances and garden implements. You almost had to fight your way in past the lawn-mowers and garden-rollers on the pavement and in the doorway and the rolls of roofing-felt and wire-netting which cluttered up the public side of the counter.

  “Business as usual,” Wilfred Flounder had said after being reconciled to Bertha Bunn and, single-handed, he had covered the pavement with the customary overflow of goods and set out the shop with the usual obstacles. He was now standing behind the counter in a grey overall, selling screws. As the sole remaining support of the Bunn emporium, Wilfred had been seized with a frenzy of efficiency and was trying to deal with three customers at once. The high-spot of the day’s business had been when Mr. Ericson had called for the revolver he’d ordered, had been told that it had been used to assassinate Ned Bunn, had been impounded by the police, and was, therefore, not available. He had left the shop in anger, as though somehow this were just another piece of Ned Bunn’s awkwardness.

  The arrival of Scotland Yard in the room behind the shop caused a great commotion; there was hardly a square foot of space available. The Bunn family and its ramifications were widespread and mixed-up in every aspect of the life of Enderby. Ned Bunn’s father had had four children, two sons and two daughters, and the other three had not confined themselves to a single child, like Ned. In all, Bertha had one uncle, two aunts, seven cousins and two second cousins in Enderby alone, to say nothing of her grandfather Bunn’s relatives scattered in distant parts and now mustering for the funeral. The Enderby end of the family was a close clan, centred round Salem Chapel in the market square, which was their hobby, stronghold, matrimonial agency and source of spiritual power. Nothing went on at the chapel without the concurrence of the Bunn clan and if the parson fell out of their favour, he might just as well pack up and be off.

  When Littlejohn and Cromwell appeared, the two aunts and Uncle Jasper were holding a family council with Bertha. Several of their offspring were sitting around silently taking it all in. They had been trying to persuade Bertha by weight of numbers that Wilfred Flounder wasn’t good enough to be her husband. She had resisted, and was now enjoying a fit of hysterics. As the door between the house and the shop opened to admit the police, the cries of his girl-friend became plainly audible to Wilfred, who, brushing aside his customers, thereupon entered the family conclave and, taking the sobbing Bertha in his arms, challenged the clan to do their worst over his dead body.

  “The police!”

  A hush fell upon the gathering from which a small, unctuou
s man detached himself and started to act as spokesman.

  “I am Jasper Bunn and I’m Miss Bunn’s uncle. Since my brother’s death, I’m head of the family. We have just called to comfort our dear niece who is sorely stricken.”

  “You seem to be succeeding very well …”

  It was Cromwell who spoke and it was as though he couldn’t help it. This was the kind of thing which appealed to his astringent sense of humour. Already he was starting to enjoy himself among this galaxy of queer characters. He eyed Mr. Bunn’s bald head, pouched hazel eyes, bulbous nose and round pink face as though he were some kind of strange animal. It made Jasper quite nervous and he began to straighten his tie, polish his glasses, examine his clothing to see if all the buttons were fastened, and generally make moves which showed he was put out of countenance.

  The family stood behind the newly-appointed head wondering what to do next. A tall woman, who strongly resembled Jasper, a small nondescript shabby sister, and a lot of cousins on the fringe and lost in the shadows of the room.

  “We’d better go. We know when we’re not wanted. But we’ll be back …”

  The tall woman took the initiative, pressed it home by thrusting an umbrella and a hat in her brother’s hands, and led the party through the shop and into the street. The atmosphere cleared at once and Bertha even smiled.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Myers.”

  “These two gentlemen are from London to help in your trouble, Miss Bunn, and I’ll be glad if you’ll give them all the assistance you can.”

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. This is Mr. Flounder, my husband-to-be …”

  Then, Bertha and Wilfred told their stories for the tenth time, and they were just as unprofitable.

  Littlejohn was smoking his pipe and looking through the window. A large yard, a lot of packing-cases, a workshop, and the tumbledown shed in which Flounder had tried to take his own life and had only succeeded in bringing it down about his ears. Beyond that, a lot of slum property built in narrow rows in shabby streets, with children playing on the cobblestones …

  He turned his head.

  “Had your father many enemies?”

  Littlejohn had already seen the body of Ned Bunn in the town morgue. The square face, the massive and aggressive nose, the heavy chin, and the thrust-out swollen lips told, even in death, of a difficult man.

  “He wasn’t easy to get on with. He liked his own way and would quarrel if he didn’t get it, but I don’t think he had any enemies who hated him enough to kill him. Do you, Wilfred?”

  Flounder awoke from his reverie with a jerk.

  “Eh? No … Not that. Not enough to do murder.”

  Myers was sitting at the round table in the middle of the room, his hat on his knees. He looked up.

  “And yet, Mr. Flounder, you must admit that his survival put grave difficulties in the way of your own plans, didn’t it?”

  Flounder grew red.

  “I don’t see why you should keep picking on me, Mr. Myers. I didn’t kill him. There must have been someone in the shop, hiding, someone who planned to do it. How else would they have loaded the revolver?”

  “Did your father make a will, Miss Bunn, and do you know what was in it?” asked Littlejohn suddenly. Greed, lust, revenge, fear … It might have been caused by any of them and it was as well to get the easiest out of the way first.

  “He did make a will, but I don’t know what’s in it. Dad was like that. He liked to keep you on tenterhooks about your future.”

  That was obvious. In her younger days, Bertha Bunn had certainly been a good-looking girl. She was quite passable still, with her fair hair unblemished by grey, her clear complexion, and her Junoesque figure. But there was now about her the uncertainty, the nervousness, the eagerness of the maternal type who sees the chances of marriage passing her by. She was not femme sole of her own wishing; old Ned Bunn had been responsible and had driven away every man likely to deprive him of her presence and constant attention. Bertha had always been on perpetual tenterhooks about her father’s reactions to her various suitors. In youth, they had been many and they had all gone off and married somebody else after Ned Bunn had finished with them.

  “Did he ever mention how he was going to leave his money?”

  “Often. Sometimes he said he’d rather leave it to the Dogs’ Home than to me. But that was when he was cross about something. He often talked about altering his will. Last time he threatened to alter it because of Mr. Flounder …”

  “Is it with his lawyer then …?”

  “Yes. Mr. Edgell across the way was his solicitor. He’ll have it. Mr. Edgell’s father looked after grandfather Bunn’s estate, too. There’s still a trust there that father got income from. I never knew about it; father wouldn’t talk of it. He once said, I remember, that he ought to have had the money outright instead of tied up, but I wouldn’t know what he meant.”

  Littlejohn took up his hat.

  “Perhaps we’d better get to the bottom of this right away, Miss Bunn. I’ll go and see the lawyer, but you mustn’t expect me to tell you anything about the interview till after the funeral and the will is properly read.”

  “I quite see that, and thank you for being so kind. We both appreciate it, I’m sure. Don’t we, Wilfred?”

  Mr. Flounder vigorously concurred and with that the police left them, Littlejohn to visit the lawyer, Cromwell to look into the matter of their lodgings, and Myers to return to get rid of his day’s routine.

  There was a plate on a door adjoining a multiple tailor’s shop: Edgell, Green, Bastable and Edgell, Solicitors. It was a strain to read it, as metal polish had worn it nearly all away. A shabby staircase and then a door with a ground-glass panel on which the rigmarole of names was repeated, with the injunction, “Come In.” There was a sort of anteroom plastered with posters about property sales and a portion of it was shut off by partitions from behind one of which came a young lady chewing gum and patting her hair.

  “Yep?”

  “Mr. Edgell, please. Here’s my card.”

  “O.K.”

  She looked nonchalantly at the card and then her attitude changed.

  “Coo … er,” she said, round the chewing-gum, eyed Littlejohn with profound admiration, rolled her eyes at him, and rushed off to announce him.

  Mr. Edgell was free and eager to co-operate. He was a slim little elderly man with grey hair, a grey suit and a grey complexion. He looked to live among the masses of papers and files with which the room and every receptacle and available bit of space in it were filled. The best thing which could happen here, thought Littlejohn, would be a fire to rid Edgell of this incubus and, strangely enough, the thought must have been prophetic, for three weeks later the whole block went up in flames, papers and all, and a grey suit which Mr. Edgell was having made at the tailor’s also dissolved in smoke with the shop.

  “Well, Inspector, is it the Bunn murder you’re here about? How can I help you?”

  “That’s right, sir, and just to be quite sure about the money motive, I wonder if you could tell me if the late Mr. Bunn made a will.”

  Mr. Edgell thrust the spectacles he was wearing up to his forehead and then put on another pair. This process seemed to help him to think, his face cleared, and he said he would do what he could.

  “This is advance information, Inspector, and must be strictly confidential. The will won’t be read till after the interment, you know … Let me see …”

  Mr. Edgell thereupon turned and started aggressively to rummage in a pile of papers on his desk. He worked hard, like a rabbit digging a burrow, and in the heat of the job seemed to forget altogether that Littlejohn was waiting. At last, he came up for air.

  “Dear me! Where did I put that copy-will …?”

  He rang a bell on the desk and the girl with the chewing-gum entered again. She rolled her eyes at the Inspector as she approached the desk. She seemed able to read her boss’s mind, for, without a word, she thrust her hand among the mass of paper before h
im, drew out a foolscap envelope, and held it out.

  “This what you want, Mr. Edgell?”

  The lawyer needn’t have bothered hunting for the will. It was very simple. After all Bunn’s shouting and threatening, he’d left every penny of his money to his daughter, Bertha, and she was to be his sole executrix.

  “Well, well … Not so much there, sir, is there? Were the family … I mean the brother and sisters … acquainted with the will?”

  “I’m sure I’ve no idea, but if you’re seeking motive for killing Ned Bunn, I think you might bear in mind that it is always as well to know if you’re included in a will before killing whoever has made it. As for Bunn’s relatives, have you met them? Can you imagine any of them firing a revolver? They wouldn’t know one end of the thing from the other.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, sir. You’d be surprised at some of the things a murder enquiry brings to light.”

  Mr. Edgell started to hunt for his first pair of glasses and Littlejohn pointed out that they were across his forehead. The lawyer seemed very grateful.

  “Well, sir. Thanks for the help. I think that’s all. It clears up one motive, at least. Now, we must seek for others.”

  Edgell smiled knowingly.

  “That’s not all, Inspector, by any means. There’s another will. Not that of Ned Bunn, but that of his father, Jeremiah Bunn. The trust created by it is still alive. It will enter into the formalities when Ned Bunn’s will is read, because the trust made by Jerry Bunn ended with Ned’s death.”

  Littlejohn sat down again.

  “And this second will is of interest in our case, sir?”

  “It certainly is.”

  There then began another lot of frantic rummaging among papers until the clerk with the chewing-gum arrived again, put her hand in exactly the right place, and produced, this time, a folder as large as a pillowslip.

  “This what you want, Mr. Edgell?”

  “I’m very much obliged to you, Miss Whatnot.”

  “The name’s Watson, sir.”