Corpses in Enderby (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  The stuffy air was heavy with expensive scent. Littlejohn wondered if he’d better ask Mr. Cuffright to take a turn in the garden with him, as well!

  “Now get on with your work, Marlene.”

  “It’s about the telephone call the other night for Mr. Medlicott. I understand on the evening Mr. Edwin Bunn was murdered, someone rang you up with a message for Mr. Medlicott, sir.”

  Mr. Cuffright was annoyed and said so.

  “Yes, and I was mad about it. Piece of infernal cheek, I called it. Why can’t Medlicott get a phone of his own. Me and Marlene were just going out for the evenin’.”

  The typist thereupon turned to nod approval and at the same time placed on the back of her chair a hand bearing an engagement-ring with a diamond the size of a pea. She breathed on the stone, rubbed it on her blouse, and seemed satisfied that she had shown Littlejohn that the association was perfectly regular. She then began to type again inexpertly with the index of each hand.

  “We were just goin’ out when the phone rings. Somebody for old Jubal. I ’ad to run upstairs for him. It delayed us a bit. I showed him we weren’t too pleased.”

  “Who was it from?”

  “I didn’t ask. As a rule, they ring up Miss Mander in the front flat on this floor with the Medlicotts’ calls. She’s softer than I am. Catch me bein’ the telephone exchange for anybody! I’m a business man, I am.”

  He looked at Marlene to see if she had heard and admired his manliness, but she was engrossed in rubbing something out.

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “Oh, a woman … Probably one of the Bunn lot. They’re always round at one or the other of the family houses. Like a lot of jackdaws congregatin’ .. Haw, haw, haw …”

  Nobody else laughed and Mr. Cuffright tugged at his collar.

  “Any idea who it might have been, sir?”

  “Can’t say, I’m sure. Ordinary nondescript sort o’ voice. Can’t say I ever heard it before.”

  Littlejohn eyed the telephone.

  “You’re on the automatic, I see.”

  “Yes. Thinkin’ you might trace the call? Not a chance. It was a local call, I can tell you that, because with the others you usually get the operator’s voice first, don’t you?”

  “And that was all, sir?”

  “Yes. Old Medlicott came down after me. In a hurry, he was. Nearly fell downstairs in his hurry.”

  “You didn’t hear what was said, sir?”

  “We couldn’t help it, but there wasn’t much. He listened and kept sayin’ yes, and then all right. Then he hurried off.”

  “What time would that be?”

  “About half-nine, wouldn’t it, Marlene?”

  “Yes, about nane-thawty. We hed aw ahtdaw things on … Ay lucked et the clock.”

  She patted her aluminium waves and bared her teeth again.

  “Did you hear Medlicott go out?”

  “No. We left right away. I gingered him out. We couldn’t wait in all night. Damn’ cheek I called it.”

  And with that, Littlejohn left them to their exotic existence and climbed another staircase to see Mrs. Medlicott again.

  12

  CONFESSION

  THERE was a tarnished knocker, a squatting Lincoln Imp, on the Medlicotts’ door and it made a ridiculous rapping noise when you manipulated it. Underneath it, a strip cut from one of the tailor’s business cards: Jubal Medlicott, in a little brass frame.

  Mrs. Medlicott timidly opened the door. She expected another importunate creditor and looked relieved to find it was Littlejohn.

  “Come in, Inspector.”

  By daylight the room looked even more shabby and poverty-stricken. The jingling wires of the old piano made a faint strumming echo as they crossed the floor. Here, Ann Medlicott kept solitary house all day from the time her family left in the morning until they came home, tittering and twittering every night. On the back of the door hung a shabby light grey homburg hat, a relic of Jubal’s finery.

  “Sit down.”

  She seemed to be waiting for something. Her large blue eyes fixed themselves on Littlejohn’s face. She must, when she was young, have been the beauty of the family; a throw-back with none of the Bunn ugliness. Even now, there were traces of breeding and good looks in the haggard features. Life had dealt hardly with her. The clever member of the Bunn family had been ground down, debilitated and aged before her time through worrying, slaving and fretting about Jubal Medlicott. Now she looked in the throes of some wasting disease. Her fingers were long, worn and thin and her hands almost as transparent as paper. Her complexion, the colour of parchment, her hair white, her neck stringy and shrivelled. She had a tired, worn-out walk. And all the time, knowing that without her Jubal Medlicott would go to the wall, she struggled, smiled, and pretended she was all right.

  Littlejohn took it all in as he looked at the woman sitting opposite and the poverty-stricken tidy room in which she and her brood lived. She wore a shapeless grey frock with a cameo brooch pinned on her breast. Littlejohn found himself vaguely wondering why the brooch hadn’t gone where the rest of the family finery had probably vanished, the pawnshop, until, when the light caught it, he was able to make out that it was a fake made of plastic and pinchbeck.

  There was a portable sewing-machine on the table and a lot of cotton and pins. A portion of the cotton nightdress Mrs. Medlicott had been machining still protruded from under the newspaper with which she’d tried to conceal it.

  A train rushed through the cutting and into the tunnel just outside. The house shook, the piano played a ghostly melody, and a cloud of steam slowly rose before the window and vanished into the blue.

  “You remember the other evening when I was here, Mrs. Medlicott? I asked about your husband’s movements on the night your brother was killed. You said Mr. Medlicott was indoors, here, all the time.”

  Anne Medlicott threw him an anxious look.

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t true, was it?”

  She changed colour from parchment to grey and clutched her throat.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He has already told me the truth. He was out, in answer to what he tells me was a bogus telephone call.”

  Her colour came slowly back. She looked a bit relieved. In fact, Littlejohn could have sworn Jubal Medlicott had already confessed to her that he’d told Littlejohn that his alibi was a fake.

  “Who told you that, Inspector?”

  “Your husband.”

  She nodded her head.

  “But he didn’t kill my brother. I do assure you he didn’t. He couldn’t have done.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I did it.”

  She said it quite calmly, her chin quivering, her lips tight.

  “You!”

  It sounded so stupid, but Littlejohn couldn’t help marvelling at the love of some women. A frivolous, good-for-nothing of a husband, who’d squandered all the money which could have made her comfortable, dragged her down to living a sordid existence in an attic, made her the poor relation of the Bunns, betrayed her with other women … And now, because Jubal’s alibi had been broken, she was prepared to shield him further by confessing to the murder she thought they suspected him of committing.

  “Why did you do it, Mrs. Medlicott?”

  Littlejohn said it quietly and tolerantly, like humouring a child, but she was intensely serious.

  “I wanted my brother’s money … the trust funds, I mean. I’m tired of living this poor existence and the money would have made such a difference to all of us. I just couldn’t bear it any longer, so I went and killed Ned. He was always mocking my husband; I had no compunction.”

  “You entered the shop …”

  “I have a key. I’ll show it to you. Ned gave it to me when I nursed his wife in her last illness. I kept it. As a matter of fact, several of us have keys. You see, the lock hasn’t been changed since we were all at home in the old days. We all had keys then and I suppose they weren’t all
given up. In any case, I did it.”

  “You shot him dead with a revolver?”

  She smiled as though expecting that one.

  “Yes. I used to sell them in the shop when I worked there. We had a little range in the cellar and I could shoot as well as my brothers … Better, in fact.”

  “And Browning … Did you kill him, too, Mrs. Medlicott?”

  “Yes. He used to insult my husband. I could bear it no more. He even followed him around, spying on him.”

  “What kind of insults?”

  That got her to the quick. A spasm of pain crossed her tired face, now flushed unhealthily from her efforts to convince Littlejohn.

  “Just insults …”

  Littlejohn didn’t wish to rub salt in a raw wound, but there was nothing else for it.

  “Were you thinking of divorcing your husband, Mrs. Medlicott?”

  Another spasm of pain. It was obvious she knew all about Jubal and what people said of him.

  “Whatever gave you that idea, Inspector? It’s preposterous.”

  “Just that Mr. Browning seemed, as you say, to be spying on your husband. That’s the kind of thing matrimonial detectives do. Browning seems to have followed that occupation as a sideline.”

  Her face was stubborn; the typical Bunn look.

  “Well, I didn’t set him on my husband to spy, I can assure you. That’s unthinkable.”

  The confession was just too absurd to follow up. Littlejohn wanted news of more important things.

  “Who rang up your husband on the night your brother died?”

  “One of his friends was supposed to do so. It turned out to be a false call. Mr. Cuffright came up about half-past nine to bring my husband to the telephone. Jubal took the message and went, as asked, to his friend’s office. The place was closed. It must have been a prank; Browning might even have done it.”

  “Who was the friend?”

  She caught her breath and looked afraid.

  “I don’t know … I didn’t ask …”

  It was obvious she knew, but Littlejohn hadn’t the heart to press it.

  “Let us get this straight, Mrs. Medlicott. In the first place, I don’t think you killed your brother …”

  “But, I tell you …”

  “Let me speak, please. You think your husband killed him. He was out of the house on a rough and rainy night without any excuse or alibi. You think he killed Ned Bunn for the trust money. Your husband’s creditors are pressing. He’s almost ruined, isn’t he? To shield him, you take the blame. I can’t allow you to do that. It isn’t fair, Mrs. Medlicott. Besides, I very much doubt if your husband did commit the crime. There’s quite a long list of eligibles, you know. The large Bunn family and many more besides. I shall ignore your confession for the time being.”

  The blue eyes flashed. She thought he was trying to trap her.

  “At your own risk, Inspector. I don’t withdraw a word of it. Because it’s true …”

  Littlejohn leaned back in the old-fashioned armchair. It was comfortable, in spite of its age.

  “Do you mind if I smoke, Mrs. Medlicott?”

  She looked surprised. She’d expected being taken to the lock-up.

  “Of course.”

  He took out his pouch and started to fill his pipe.

  “Who was Ned Bunn’s father, Mrs. Medlicott? Did you ever know him?”

  She suddenly seemed to leave the present as the past reared its head. A woman who, to forget the sordid day-to-day existence, spent as much of life as she could in the old, better times.

  “His name was Jukes … Fred Jukes. He was a friend of my Uncle Walter Wood, the lawyer. Ned was a small boy when my own father married my mother, who had given Ned her own surname, of course. Father insisted on changing it to Bunn when he married my mother.”

  “What happened to Fred Jukes, Mrs. Medlicott?”

  Littlejohn didn’t need to ask. Mrs. Medlicott was full speed astern into the past.

  “He was killed in 1914 … the first months of the war. I told you of dark things which happened in this house. That was one of them, Inspector. Fred Jukes went to Australia, leaving my mother to bear his child, later Ned Bunn. Then, when war broke out, he volunteered, came to England, and, dressed in khaki, sought out my mother. There was a dreadful scene here. My father came home and found him. He knew all about the way Jukes had once betrayed my mother … There was a fight and people had to intervene. Strangely enough, my mother seems to have defended Jukes. She must have loved him still …”

  She said it in a thrilled whisper, her eyes alight with excitement.

  “We were all at home, then, and I remember our all crowding round the door of the drawing-room listening to the harsh voices of the men abusing one another and my mother sobbing. I remember my father saying Jukes could take my mother and her brat with him and he never wanted to see them again. And my mother crying out, ‘Jerry, Jerry … Your heart …’ My father had a bad heart … And my father shouting ‘Damn my heart; what does it matter …?’”

  Littlejohn could see it all; the gloomy house, Whispers; the brawling of the jealous men over a woman; the children crowding round the door; the woman weeping and bewildered; and then …

  “It all ended rather tamely. Fred Jukes went, and got killed a month later. My father seemed to think my mother loved Jukes all the time and, after that, kept to his own room and sought feminine company elsewhere …”

  And with that the gentle Mrs. Medlicott rose and for no apparent reason confided in Littlejohn.

  “You can’t tell me anything about men and their ways, Inspector. I’m not the innocent little woman I might appear to be. I have lived through it all. The last years of my father’s life, the stupid intrigues of my brothers, the wild ways of my uncles. Let anyone dare cast aspersions on my husband. I can bear it. I come from a family of rakes and loose-living women … Yes, the women, too. They only grew good and pious when their looks gave out … Let nobody point the finger …”

  Littlejohn knew that in a fumbling almost incoherent way, she was holding up Medlicott’s end, defending him.

  “… But that wasn’t all. My father changed his will. That’s why he left Ned’s money in trust. Ned had been like his own son and he was fond of him, but he couldn’t leave him equal with us in the inheritance. He simply left an income to Ned and the capital came to us when Ned died. My mother always said it was done to set the rest against Ned. Perhaps she was right … It caused his murder, didn’t it? It made me kill him to get the money …”

  She was still sticking to her confession. Littlejohn ignored it.

  “Did your father, or your mother, die first?”

  “My father. Twelve months after Jukes went to the war and was killed. In those twelve months, he painted the town red. Had he gone on, there would have been no money left for the family. He was bent, it seemed, on squandering his fortune. He actually brought home one of his women one night … here … I told you this house could tell tales … My mother met them in the hall; there was a terrible row. She ordered the woman out, of course; and she went, quickly, too. Then, she told my father she had never loved him, but that she, too, like the strumpet she’d just turned back on the street, simply wanted his money. After the quarrel my father went to his own bedroom and they found him dead the following morning, in bed, from an overdose of laudanum … They said it was suicide, but there was also a rumour that my mother poisoned him. That was very likely. It served him right. It also prevented him cutting Ned right out of his will. Ned was my mother’s darling. She loved him more than all the rest of us put together. You see, he was not a Bunn. He was the child of her one true love.”

  “How old was Ned at the time?”

  “Nineteen … My father’s death kept him out of the army. The tribunal gave him exemption. The engineering side of the business was then active and Ned was in it. My mother died at the end of the war. I think she never stopped loving Ned’s father, or ever forgave my own father for what he said about him
the time he called here.”

  It went on and on, like a gothic novel; the sombre house, the drama inside it, the tragedies, the loves and hates of the Bunn clan, and the last of them, living on her memories, penniless in one of the garrets and the rest of the house let off in a lot of little hutches to people like Browning and Cuffright and Miss Mander.

  Heavy footsteps on the stairs. As if completely to destroy the atmosphere, the milkman had called. A huge fellow with a cap over his large ears and an overcoat a size too small for him. He entirely filled the doorway and started to argue in a loud voice.

  “No more milk. You owe me fourteen shillings …”

  “But I have to get the money from my husband. He didn’t …”

  “He never does … Look ’ere, I’m sorry for you, Mrs. Medlicott, but I got a wife and fambly, too …”

  Littlejohn looked at the tired hands, the pleading face, the humble attitude of the little woman, and the insolent pleasure of the lout in the cap. He took two ten shilling notes from his pocket.

  “Here … And now, get out …”

  The man gingerly put the two bottles he was holding on the mat, keeping his eyes on Littlejohn all the time, as though if he looked away the Inspector would help him down the stairs with his foot. “Remember, you still owe them six shillingsworth of milk …”

  “Yes, sir. Certainly, sir.”

  The heavy feet descended two at a time down the resounding staircase, the piano now playing incidental music on all wires.

  “You shouldn’t, Inspector. We’ll pay you back.”

  Littlejohn didn’t know why he did it. There didn’t seem anything else he could do. Somehow, it seemed like browbeating a child and he couldn’t stand for it.

  “Are you taking me with you to the police-station?”

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Medlicott?”

  “The murder, you know. I did it. I killed Ned and …”

  Littlejohn looked down at her from his full six-feet-one.

  “Now, you know you didn’t, Mrs. Medlicott. So why complicate the case for us? You’re only shielding your husband. I don’t think he did it, either. So what’s the use?”