The Case of the Famished Parson (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  * * * * * *

  Littlejohn explained that he was on vacation. Mr. Allain knew that already, for he himself had invited Littlejohn and his wife to stay there.

  Allain had kept a restaurant on Tottenham Court Road until the bombing reduced it to nothing and sent him scuttering to the distant seaside for a quieter time. In the old days the Littlejohns had been good customers and the Inspector had helped Allain a time or two. Especially in the matter of getting naturalised….

  “I only want you to take a watching brief for the hotel, Inspector. I feel safe if you’re about. The local police …”

  And he shrugged his shoulders to show how badly he thought of them.

  Allain might have been the head of an asylum through whose guilty negligence half the inmates had escaped and met their deaths, instead of an hotelier not responsible for what his guests did when off the premises.

  “But it’s very awkward, Mr. Allain. I’m a police officer, not a private investigator. It just isn’t done…. One policeman trespassing on another’s territory….”

  But when the Port Mervin police did arrive, it was in the shape of Superintendent Bowater. He and Littlejohn had met and liked one another in a case miles from Port Mervin, when Bowater had been an Inspector in a colliery town. So that made it easy. Bowater was only too glad of the unofficial help.

  Mrs. Littlejohn was annoyed. Her husband was already overworked. He fell asleep from fatigue here, there and everywhere, and then talked in his sleep. That was why she had come with him to look after him. She had never before been absent from one of her sister’s frequent accouchements….

  CHAPTER III

  THE DIRTY SHOES

  FOR a brief spell Mr. Cuhady kicked up such a fuss about his shoes that the murder of the bishop took a back seat.

  The millionaire had a large mouth brimming over with gold teeth and he trumpeted his lamentations and threats all over the place. He demanded an apology and a new pair of shoes from the owner of the hotel, refused to disclose the maker or the price of the old ones, and then had to be assisted to his room through blood pressure. There he remained sulking and expecting apoplexy all day….

  It was Mrs. Littlejohn who mentioned the affair of the magnate’s footwear when her husband returned to lunch from police headquarters. Littlejohn calmly enjoyed his meal and then, borrowing the shoes from the hotel manager with whom Cuhady had left them after trying to fling them at his head, he took them to the scene of the crime and discovered that the murderer had worn them. The footprints which marked the signs of scuffling on the cliffedge tallied with Mr. Cuhady’s soles.

  They did not break the news at once to the magnate, fearing cerebral haemorrhage might carry him right off….

  But before that, Littlejohn had been hard at work with the police.

  Superintendent Bowater had done a lot of hemming and hawing about Littlejohn’s status. The Chief Constable was a stickler for etiquette and the Superintendent felt he might treat Littlejohn as an interfering amateur if things weren’t put on a proper footing. So it was agreed that Scotland Yard should be officially called-in. Littlejohn thus found himself on a busman’s holiday and his wife was more irritated than ever. Bowater tried to console her by saying her husband would only be called upon in a consultative capacity on odd occasions, but Letty was not impressed. She had heard that tale before….

  The police station seemed full of people. Two doctors, the hotel proprietor, several policemen, a handful of officials, including Littlejohn, and finally, Mr. Cuhady who had called to demand an immediate enquiry into the disappearance of his shoes. Harry Keast was there, as well. They couldn’t get rid of Harry. He kept telling his tale over and over again.

  “I was gathering golf balls…. A caddy, I am, you know, and that’s extraneous to my job….”

  It took rather a long time to get statements from all the parties concerned. A young constable typed them straight from dictation. He was very patient. He abridged the lengthy ones and skilfully translated Harry Keast’s homemade English into something like sense.

  Mrs. Macintosh, the bishop’s wife, was stunned by the news and a short statement was taken from her at the hotel.

  Briefly, the information boiled down to this.

  At a quarter to eleven on the night of the crime, the telephone rang in the bishop’s room. Dr. and Mrs. Macintosh had only just entered and had not started to undress. The bishop answered the call, told his wife he had to go out, put on his hat and coat and went off without saying where he was going.

  Bowater, who took down the statement, had gently pressed Mrs. Macintosh for some reason for this strange behaviour.

  Had she not asked who was ringing at that time of night? Hadn’t she even enquired where her husband was going so late?

  Yes, she had. But her husband seemed preoccupied and apparently didn’t hear her questions. He was very absent-minded sometimes when problems troubled him. All he had said was, “I must go out for a little while and will be back soon….”

  “Was your husband in the habit of doing this sort of thing?”

  Mrs. Macintosh had looked bewildered and a bit startled.

  “No….”

  “Had he been worried of late?”

  “He seemed very worried. But I think it was overwork. That was the reason for our taking the holiday….”

  Bowater and Littlejohn were going through the statements in the calm of the Superintendent’s room. Outside, you could hear a sergeant trying to control the turmoil caused by witnesses and others.

  “I got the impression, somehow, that the bishop’s lady wasn’t telling the full tale. Not that I think she was lying. She’d be above that. But holding a lot back. Sort of knew more than she cared to tell….”

  Bowater was a tall, fat, clean, hairy man. Short dark moustache, bushy black eyebrows, bald head with the hair from one side long and plastered across it, and large, dark, protruding eyes. The backs of his huge hands were covered in thick black hair….

  Littlejohn liked him. He was a modest man and made no bones about being out of his depth in a case of this sort.

  “So that was all you got from her?”

  “Yes. But, as I said, I’d the idea she might have theories of her own. She seemed so completely bowled over, though, that I couldn’t press matters further….”

  “And the next who saw the bishop, with the exception of the murderer, of course, was Keast….”

  You could still hear Keast’s voice raised in the next room. They couldn’t get rid of Harry. He seemed to think that the bottom would drop out of the investigation if he cleared off.

  “There he was hangin’ perpendiculous down the cliff. Face to the wall, as you might say….”

  Bowater shuffled his papers.

  “Keast found him head down, feet wedged in a sort of crevice or crack in the rock. And now look at what the two constables and the sergeant say who went to investigate….”

  “The body hung head downwards, face to the rock, held rigid because the feet were firmly wedged in a crack in the rock. We had difficulty in freeing it….”

  “What do you make of that?”

  “Well, Superintendent, it looks to me that if the body hadn’t been caught that way, we might easily have thought it was an accident.”

  “Exactly. That blow might have been caused by the head hitting the rock. But, as it seems the reverend gentleman went over the top facing Bolter’s Hole, he couldn’t have caught the back of his head unless he performed a sort of cart-wheel.”

  “Right. So reconstructing the crime we get … ?”

  “Somebody hit the bishop on the head and pushed him over the cliff. Whoever did it, probably thought he’d fall right to the bottom. Next ebb tide the body would float off and be found anywhere. The blow on the head might have been through catching anything a hard knock….”

  “Yes….”

  “But pushed over face first, the bishop slides down the rocks instead of hurling to the bottom and his boots get caught fi
rmly in the … the … fissure. Nowhere could he have caught the back of his head. So the fracture was by a blow delivered by somebody whose cunning little plan failed….”

  “Q.E.D.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “That’s what we wanted to prove. It was murder…. You’re probably right, Superintendent.”

  There was an imperative rap on the door and the police surgeon sauntered in. A thin, self-important, busy little man. Port Mervin was too small to boast an exclusive police surgeon of its own. Dr. Tordopp was a general practitioner as well and thought no small beer of himself. He was serious, casual and a bit patronising, and immaculate. He looked to have come out of a bandbox instead of the morgue.

  “I’ve finished,” he said testily as though washing his hands of the police and all their works.

  “We’d better see the body, then,” said Bowater. “Coming, Inspector?”

  “I’ll stay here,” snapped Tordopp. “There’s some tea coming and God knows I need it. I’ll be here when you’ve finished, if you aren’t too long….”

  Littlejohn followed Bowater out. On the way the Superintendent spoke to one of the constables.

  “Keep Tordopp’s tea back till we return,” he said peevishly. “We’ll want some too after what we’re doing. Tordopp can wait….”

  The mortuary adjoined the police-station. A white-tiled little place recently built. Its gruesome contents reposed in large oven-like cupboards along one wall. The attendant wheeled out the remains of the Bishop of Greyle on a trolley.

  “Nasty!” said Bowater and neither of them spoke again until they left the place. The attendant cheerfully busied himself about the room, opening the oven-like receptacles and looking in, like a baker inspecting the last lot of bread. He whistled happily between his teeth.

  Littlejohn was used to this sort of thing, but when Bowater deftly turned back the sheet which covered the body, he felt a wave of horror surge over him. The man was a walking skeleton! His eyes met those of his colleague and he could see the Superintendent was thinking the same. The face had a greenish palor and to add to the ghastliness, Tordopp, in his wisdom, had transversely sawed the head in two and neatly wired it together again. The clean-shaven lips were drawn back in an awful grin, a risus sardonicus. The wound at the back of the skull had been cleaned. But it was deep. A desperate blow which had pierced to the brain….

  “Gosh!” said Bowater when they got outside. “Looks as if the bishop expected what was coming to him and as though the murderer meant him to have it….”

  Tordopp was drinking his tea when they returned to Bowater’s room. There were two cups on the Superintendent’s desk, too. The surgeon had been out and played merry hell at the delay in bringing the brew.

  “Hi, Lancaster! How many times have I told you not to put cups of tea on the leather of my desk?” shouted Bowater to a bashful young officer who seemed to be official caterer. “It leaves rings and you can’t get ’em off….”

  “I put them there,” snapped Tordopp with great relish and he gave the Superintendent another risus sardonicus, more appalling than that of the corpse.

  Bowater let it pass

  Tordopp removed his long, narrow red nose from his cup. He suffered from dyspepsia which he couldn’t cure. It coloured all his life and greatly embittered him.

  “He was killed outright by the blow on the head,” he said tersely.

  Bowater couldn’t resist a thrust. He removed his large bulbous nose from a thick teacup, like a rhinoceros surfacing.

  “Did you need to saw off the top of his head to find that out?”

  “Leave my business to me, please. It ill becomes you to meddle….”

  They looked ready for a real set-to.

  Littlejohn intervened.

  “I never saw a body so emaciated…. I mean a body of one in his position in life….”

  Tordopp gave another sour smile.

  “I was just going to say when Bowater started teaching me my business, that I gave the body a more than usual overhauling. It interested me. There was nothing wrong with the organs. In fact, it was a first-class life. Except that he was undernourished. Just famished, I’d say….”

  “But why …. ?”

  The Superintendent addressed the surgeon aggressively, as though Tordopp held the secret and wouldn’t disclose it.

  “How should I know? That’s your business. I’m not running round the town asking why the bishop was undernourished. Better ask his wife.”

  Tordopp finished off his tea, meticulously placed his empty cup and saucer on the leather part of Bowater’s desk-top, gave him another risus and put on his small bowler hat.

  “I’ll send in a written report this afternoon. Good day to you …” he yapped and closed the door with a bang of finality.

  “Jumped-up bloody little snoot,” murmured the Superintendent under his breath and catching Littlejohn’s eye, flushed and cleared his throat apologetically.

  “Fennick’s here, sir,” said the bashful young constable, entering awkwardly. To tell the truth, he had never encountered Scotland Yard before and was quite overcome. Since the age of five he had been a feverish reader of thrillers and aspired to be a detective himself one day. But not in Port Mervin!

  “Taken his statement?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me have it then. Oh, and send Fennick in.”

  Fennick looked annoyed and in bad shape. He worked by night and slept by day and they had routed him from his bed to make a statement. The sergeant-in-charge had given him a good telling-off for taking so long in getting up and putting in an appearance.

  “What’s the matter with you, Fennick? You look annoyed.”

  The night porter wasn’t in the least put out of countenance by the police. Goings-on after dark at a large fashionable hotel had long-since disillusioned him. He could tell you a thing or two about some famous ones he’d come across….

  “Not damn-well good enough. I got to get me sleep in the day. Workin’, I am, while you lot’s in yer beds. How the ’ell am I to do me job proper if you lot get me up as soon as I’m in bed. And all fer nothin’. I don’t know nothin’. ’Ow should I?”

  “Keep a civil tongue in your head, you,” snapped Bowater. “You were on duty, or should have been, when the bishop left the hotel. Just answer a few questions properly and then you can get back to bed, if that’s where you are going….”

  “Of course that’s where I’m goin.’ Where else? A chap’s got to ’ave his sleep. You lot …”

  “Shut up!”

  Littlejohn smiled to himself. He’d never met such a quarrelsome crew!

  “Now, Fennick, answer my questions and show a bit of sense. The sooner we get through ’em, the sooner you’ll get back to bed….”

  “I can’t tell yer anythin’….”

  “Leave me to judge that. First, did you see the bishop go out of the hotel between quarter to eleven and eleven o’clock?”

  “No, I didn’t….”

  “What time do you go on duty?”

  “Ten. But I ain’t a sort o’ sentry, you know. Don’t say ‘’oo goes there?’ to all as come an’ go, if that’s what you’re after. I got me duties to do….”

  “Such as?”

  “Answer the ’phone, stoke up the boilers, odds and ends of messages for those as ’as things they want after ten; an’ believe me there’s a ’ell of a lot of ’em sometimes….”

  “Yes, yes. What were you doing at the times I mentioned last night?”

  “Can’t reckerlect….”

  Fennick obviously wasn’t trying.

  “Come on now, that’s enough of that. You’re deliberately obstructing the police, Fennick, and that’s a punishable offence. So get cracking and think hard.”

  Littlejohn looked at Fennick’s moron face. Question whether he could think, let alone think hard.

  Suddenly, for some reason, the porter’s face lit up. Like putting another shilling in the gas-meter.

  “Y
es,” he said with serious cogitation. “Come to think on it. Yes, I stoked-up the fire about a quarter to eleven.”

  “How do you know it was that time?”

  Fennick’s jaws rotated like someone chewing tobacco. He looked ready to spit. It seemed in some-way connected with his process of thinking.

  “Bar closes at eleven. I looked at the clock. Yes, I looked at the clock, I did. Quarter of an hour to go, I sez to myself. Just time to feed the boilers. So I did.”

  “Why were you interested in the bar closing?”

  Littlejohn smiled. Fennick’s cloudy eyes caught the Inspector’s own and he cast at the detective a look of understanding hate.

  “I ain’t particular interested. I jest thought that, I did.”

  “H’m. How long were you in the boiler house?”

  “About ten minutes. They’d been a lot havin’ baths agen. Wot the ’ell they always want to be in the bath for, I don’t know. They’d drawn a ’ell of a lot of water off, so I ’ad to draw the damper and ’ot it up. Took out the cinders and clinkers, raked ’er up a bit, and put more coke on….”

  “You were back before eleven?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Oh, ’ell. How much more?”

  Try as he would, the Superintendent couldn’t budge Fennick on that point. He knew it wasn’t eleven and that was that. The mechanism and evidence whereby he knew weren’t plain. They all centred round that last mixed drink in the bar, but Fennick didn’t disclose that.

  “Oh, very well. Let’s get on….”

  “’urry up then. I want to get to me bed….”

  “All in good time….”

  Bowater was sadistically enjoying himself.

  “You didn’t see the bishop go out?”

  “No. I said so once, didn’t I? NO.”

  “Did you see anybody go in or out about that time?”

  “No. There was a few in the bar and they one and all stopped there till it closed. They allis do. A few as had been to the pictures got in about ha’ past ten. They all went up, else in the bar. After that lot, I see nobody till I come up from the fire-hole….”