Corpses in Enderby (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  Littlejohn wanted a breath of air after the mixed smells of the Medlicott tenements. Browning, grumbling, went into his flat.

  At the end of the drive, Littlejohn paused, filled his pipe, lit it, and waited. The road past the house was busy. A train roared through the tunnel and shook the place. Littlejohn imagined the piano in the top flat playing a ghostly tune. In the direction of Enderby there was a glow in the sky from the lighted town.

  Browning was taking an unconscionable time. Quarter of an hour to get on his jacket! Littlejohn strolled back along the drive, the soft, mossy earth making little noise. The lights from the screened windows shone down on the sour lawn and flower beds. The headless nymph held out her grimy arms in the direction of the door. At the foot of the statue lay a crumpled mass. Littlejohn ran the remaining distance. He shone his torch on the figure. It was Browning and he was dead. Throttled, well and truly. His swollen tongue protruded from between his teeth and his features were contorted in a ghastly grin.

  Littlejohn made up his mind at once. He ran indoors, up the stairs two at a time until he reached the Medlicotts’ door, and he flung it open without knocking. Before the fire, in his heavily-darned woollen underpants, struggling to get into a pair of black trousers, was Jubal Medlicott. His shoes were still on his feet; one spat off and one spat on. Mr. Medlicott turned astonished eyes on Littlejohn.

  “Really, Inspector!” He danced on one leg, almost fell from the effort, made a wild plunge, and drew his trousers on. From a room behind emerged Polly and Dolly, clothed in pink underskirts. Both of them screamed, put their knees together, and tottered back, like hampered runners in a sack-race. Mrs. Medlicott’s amazed face appeared round the door-frame and vanished.

  That settled the Medlicotts at any rate! There hadn’t been time for Jubal to put on the act of changing his pants after strangling Browning. Besides, the soles of his shoes were dry.

  “May I use your telephone, sir? I’ll explain later.”

  Mr. Medlicott was indignant. His whiskers bristled and he puffed out his cheeks. He’d evidently just been washing himself, too. His hair was ruffled and he was without a collar.

  “You’ll have a lot of explaining to do, sir. An Englishman’s home is …”

  “Please! There’s been another murder. Where’s the phone?”

  There were more squeals from the unseen listeners behind the bedroom door. Mr. Medlicott’s humour changed. He pranced and danced around, wondering what to do next.

  “We haven’t got a phone. We use the one on the floor below in emergencies … Miss Mander’s …”

  Presumably the woman in the wrapper! This was going to be good! Littlejohn ran from the room and down the stairs without waiting for directions from Medlicott. He knocked on the door of Miss Mander’s flat. There was a lot of scuffling inside. He had to knock again.

  “Open, please. Police. I want to use your telephone.”

  More scuffling and then the key turned and the woman in the wrapper stood there.

  “May I use your phone, please? I won’t take a minute. Where is it, please?”

  A small sitting-room, exotically furnished. Almost like a theatrical dressing-room. Two deep armchairs, a divan, a cocktail cabinet, a small gateleg table and two chairs. Framed photographs of theatrical nonentities, autographed, on the walls. Two dolls dressed in silk on the mantelpiece beneath which a gas fire burned. The place was stuffy and smelled of heavy scent. In one corner, a large wardrobe. Littlejohn thought of the man who had tried to get away and had bobbed back when he saw him and Browning. No doubt, he was doubled-up and almost choked inside the cupboard, anxiously awaiting discovery.

  The telephone was under one of the dolls. Miss Mander was too put-out by the intrusion of police and the need to conceal her boy-friend—if he was a boy and not an ageing bigwig of Enderby—even to ask questions. She merely indicated the doll, leaned over, and extracted the instrument. She had next to nothing on under the wrapper and had to pull it together at the neck with one hand to maintain her decency before the police.

  First, the Inspector rang up The Freemasons’. Cromwell was there, waiting for him. He told his colleague what had happened.

  “… There’s being a family gathering at the Fearns’ house to-night. Presumably all the Bunns will be there. Go at once, as fast as you can, old chap, and see who’s there. The Medlicotts are coming, but presumably they’re late, as usual. Check particularly if all Jasper’s family and all the Fearnses are present … I expect the home-birds will all have alibis for one another, but we’d better be sure.”

  Then the police-station to tell them to come and collect Browning and bring the technical staff. Miss Mander lit a cigarette and drew hard at it, taking in every word. At the mention of Browning’s name, she let fall the cigarette.… She was a tall blonde, with unctuous curves and golden hair. A real pin-up girl, with a face totally devoid of intelligence. She picked up her cigarette, put it in her mouth, and eyed Littlejohn from head to foot with admiring china-blue eyes. From the cupboard in the corner came shuffling sounds.

  “Mice …” said Miss Mander.

  “Thanks,” said Littlejohn and left her.

  The occupants of the flats had scented something unusual and heads appeared round door frames.

  “Excuse me,” said the galleon-maker, a tall thin man with a face like a buzzard. His eternal hammer hung in his fingers. Littlejohn hurried past to meet the police.

  They were able to attend to Browning at last, as he lay there in the light from his own window and with his unsuspecting family peeping round the blind to see what was going on. His wife at length made out the figure on the rank grass and ran out.

  “Ronnie! Oh, Ronnie!”

  She flung herself upon it. The police helped her indoors.

  There had been a bit of a scuffle on the wide flower-bed surrounding the nymph as Browning’s assailant came upon him from behind. The soil was moist and told a plain tale. The pair, Browning and his killer, had met on the lawn; their separate footprints converged and then receded. They must have met as Browning took a short cut across the soil, spoken, and then parted. Then the murderer had run on his toes with shorter steps, taken Browning from behind, and killed him. There were no marks of fingers on the throat. It might have been done swiftly and silently with a scarf … One of the technical men pointed to one of the murderer’s footprints. It was deep and couldn’t have been better for the purpose. They were making a cast of it by the glare of the searchlights from the police-cars.

  “But what’s the use?” he said to the Inspector. “It’ll be like playing Cinderella … Twenty thousand inhabitants in Enderby ..”

  “All the same, it might be useful. Carry on …”

  Cromwell later reported that all the Bunn family were at the Fearnses, except the Medlicotts. They were always late. Aunt Sarah had played merry hell at Cromwell’s intrusion and then co-operated valiantly to help him check the alibis.

  “If you want anything, in future, young man, just come to me. I’ll help you,” she said as Cromwell left. “I like you, young man, and anybody I like I’ll do anything for.” And she gave him the smile of a benevolent bulldog.

  Yes, the Bunns gave one another alibis again. A proper home-loving lot, quarrelling like Kilkenny cats among themselves in private, but a close, compact mass in trouble.

  9

  FUNEREAL INTERLUDE

  IT poured with rain for most of the day of Ned Bunn’s funeral. Mr. Blowitt personally supervised the breakfasts, carefully giving attention to the preparation of Strengtho, the patent food on which Cromwell staked his reputation. Littlejohn preferred bacon and eggs.

  “I can’t make out wot’s come over my missus,” bleated Mr. Blowitt, addressing nobody in particular and rubbing his unshaven chin. “She’s actually cheerful... no tears, no complaints, no nuthin’ … It isn’t ’ealthy, somethin’s up …”

  Across the way the coffin was being moved to the home of Sarah Agnes Fearns. So many relatives had arrived for th
e funeral and so many carriages were likely to participate in it, that the police had intervened. There must be no congestion in the town square and no interference with through traffic. The starting-ground had, therefore, been transferred to the Fearns’ home, which was more commodious into the bargain.

  The blinds of the shop were drawn. All the flags were at half-mast on the public buildings, public servants kept passing The Freemasons’ on their ways to work, dressed in black with toppers or bowlers, all got up for the day’s events. The town was in complete mourning; even the rain looked black. The boys from the florists’ shops kept scuttering backwards and forwards to the Fearns’ home, carrying boxes of wreaths, bunches of funeral flowers and crosses of evergreens. A succession of carriages, cabs and vehicles of all shapes and sizes ran ceaselessly to and from Salem Chapel, where the service was to be held at ten o’clock, before the departure to the cemetery. After the committal, there was to be a funeral meal in the Sunday School, where at least one hundred guests were expected. They were going to do Ned Bunn proud and bury him with ham, tongue, veal and roast pork …

  “Why the flower-bed? Why did the killer choose soft soil on which to impress his footmarks? Why didn’t he stick to the gravel?”

  Littlejohn said it suddenly, apropos of nothing much, but it showed that he was more concerned with his problems than his breakfast. Cromwell eyed him reproachfully.

  “It’s not good to think of work when you’re eating, sir. It was one of Florence Nightingale’s maxims that …”

  “All right, old chap. I’ll let it drop … Pass the marmalade.”

  Outside, Mr. Blowitt was arguing with someone.

  “’Ave you been up all night? The two gents is at breakfast. Can’t it wait? Oh, very well …”

  And Mr. Blowitt thereupon ushered in Hubert Stubbs.

  “Mr. Stubbs wants a word with Mr. Cromwell, gents.”

  Yewbert was clad in black from head to foot and carried a bowler hat, the use of which had inflamed the pimple on his forehead until it resembled a navigation light. Black did not suit Yewbert. It made his sallow face even more dissipated and went badly with his sandy hair and moustache. He looked like a hangman, or, as Cromwell said later, airing a new word he had discovered, a patibulary assistant.

  “Aunt Sarah wants a word with you, Mr. Cromwell. It’s urgent.”

  Hubert Stubbs got straight to business. Cromwell noticed that he already spoke of his family opponent as though she were also a relative of his. In fact, he was one of the Bunn clan already.

  When Cromwell arrived at the scene of the funeral and had sorted out Aunt Sarah from the ever-increasing mass of celebrants, he found the whole thing was a false alarm arising from a caustic remark made by the formidable old lady and, in his zeal to ingratiate himself with her, interpreted seriously by Yewbert.

  It turned out that among the wreaths which were arriving in endless streams, two mysterious boxes had been delivered. And they had so perturbed Hubert that Mrs. Wilkins had impatiently told him there were famous detectives in the town and he had better consult them for a solution.

  One box was filled with red roses and bore a card which the eager relatives had seized and whereon they had read with great consternation:

  Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicean barks of yore,

  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

  The weary, wayworn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  There were loud and outraged cries from all sides, among which the reedy voice of Yewbert was loudest in lamentations, which increased when the other box was opened. This contained white roses and a further message of a non-mortuary flavour:

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece,

  To the grandeur that was Rome.

  Above the turmoil, Aunt Sarah was heard defending Helen and denouncing anybody who said a word against her.

  “Whoever sent ’em had the right idea of wooing a girl … Sent ’em slap among all the funeral flowers. He’s not only a poet but an original lover … And as for you, young man …”

  Whereat she pointed her stick at Yewbert,

  “If you don’t know who it is, better see a detective; there are some in town …”

  When Cromwell explained what had brought him, Aunt Sarah burst into loud Rabelaisian laughter, said it was a joke, and that Hubert would have to be his own detective and pretty smart about it if he wanted to win Helen. This sally was greeted by horrified looks from the rest of the expanding funeral party, although nobody dared utter a word against the old lady on account of the money she was due to leave and her obvious imminent decease.

  “Nobody could weigh as much as Aunt Sarah and last long,” one hopeful had said.

  “Whilst you’re here, you might as well stay,” Aunt Sarah said to Cromwell. “There’s lots of local colour, likely suspects, and a good meal in the offing. Besides, I like you, young man, and you can share my carriage with me. Just ring up your boss and tell him I say you’ve to see Ned Bunn under the sod. By the way, give me your card; I want your address.”

  Somewhat puzzled, Cromwell complied. The rest of the family held their breaths and then exhaled a loud collective sigh of disappointment and rage. They were used to Aunt Sarah’s card trick. It meant she was going to include yet another beneficiary in her will … “I knew it,” said Miss Maria Bunn, who had a reputation for being clairvoyant.

  Bunns of all ages, shapes and sizes had now assembled and it seemed that before long they would overflow from the house into the garage, the greenhouses and the potting-sheds. Among others was Mr. Jethro Bunn, next after Aunt Sarah in age and wealth. He had made a fortune as The Happy Dry Cleaners Ltd., whose title belied his miserable countenance. He wore a black tail-coat and a bowler, both gone green with age, and the wire showed round the brim of his hat. He was bearded like a patriarch and when indoors, after removing his headgear, covered his pate again with a smoking cap. Uncle Jethro was heard to say in a querulous voice that but for Ned Bunn, Helen, of whom Jethro was very fond in a possessive, senile way, would have married parson Hornblower’s son. Ned Bunn had bullied Sr’ Agnes into breaking up the romance. Cromwell made a note of this.

  The assembly reminded Cromwell of a dog show. With one or two rare exceptions, all of the Bunn blood had faces like pug-dogs and their partners in marriage looked like their owners exhibiting them. There was some displeasure expressed at the sole pair of artistic oddities in the family. Augustus Bunn, an organist and teacher of music, whose main topics of conversation were César-Franck and Brahms and Johann Sebastian (as though Bach were a personal pal), arrived in a blue suit and tangerine-coloured shoes. He was therefore ordered by Uncle Jethro Bunn to borrow a suit more appropriate and some decent boots, and reappeared clad in garments of the late Ned, which were two sizes too large for him, as were also a pair of the deceased’s boots. The other freak, Sylvester Bunn, was a literary man who wrote detective stories for popular magazines. He appeared in light tweeds and brown suede shoes, but nobody bothered; he was regarded as being quite mad and past curing.

  There were thirty carriages in the cortège and Cromwell had a place of honour in the second one with Aunt Sarah, whose huge bulk made the cab ride askew, like a vessel the cargo of which had shifted in a storm.

  The service in Salem went without a hitch. It was cold and damp and the place was not heated. A building like a huge barn with hard wooden seats for mortification of the flesh, each pew boxed in by a door, and the name of the proprietor written on a card on the door, like those of the flats at Whispers. Several people started to cough and sneeze and two poor relatives contracted colds which later proved fatal, but that did not affect the aggregate of the Bunn family fund, because the victims were penniless and lived on the old-age pension.

  The Medlicotts were late as usual and entered the church after the
obsequies had started. Jubal had a daughter on each arm and a white chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. He was told at once to remove it and rebuked for behaving as though the service were for a wedding. He had left his spats at home.

  At the cemetery the first signs of something unusual occurred. The procession from the mortuary chapel, headed by the cemetery superintendent, turned left to the Bunn section of the burial ground, but the superintendent turned right. There was a hurried conference, Mr. Edgell was sorted out from the mass of Bunns and confirmed that the corporation official was correct. Ned Bunn had bought a plot on the right side and was, in death, going to rest as far away from the other Bunns as possible.

  “That will be explained when the will is read,” was all the lawyer would say and it seemed for a time that the outraged clan would refuse to agree to the committal of this rebellious member. They finally conformed with bad grace. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and that was the end of Ned Bunn.

  The mass of Bunns then turned in procession and returned via the traditional family burial-place, which held a dozen or so plots, marked by broken pillars, weeping angels, miniature Albert memorials, Maltese and Celtic crosses, and several box-like structures made of stone.

  “Where’s Timothy?” Uncle Jethro was heard to ask. “He ain’t here …” He indicated the black mass of Bunns. “And he ain’t here …”; his arm swept over the plots holding the dead-and-gone Bunns, their numbers counted and their names enrolled.

  There was a hush. Since the last gathering of the clan, Tim Bunn, a member of the Melton Mowbray branch, had, at the age of sixty, turned to drink, been sent as a remittance-man to the Isle of Man, and his name was never spoken. Somebody whispered brief details to Uncle Jethro, who protested at not being kept informed and made a note on an old envelope to cut somebody out of his will as punishment.

  Thereafter, the clan adjourned to Salem Sunday School, where food was laid out for their refreshment. They steadily ate their way through it to the last crumb, for it had been paid for and one of the family mottoes was “Waste not, want not.” After a substantial over-helping of pork, Mr. Jethro Bunn was taken ill and had to be sent to the Fearns’ home to recover, which he did, greatly to the chagrin of many others.