“Please sit down...”
She indicated an armchair on the opposite side of the fire from her own. Probably Trotman occupied it when they spent a quiet evening at home.
“I’m sorry your husband isn’t well, Mrs. Trotman...”
“His blood pressure troubles him from time to time and he has to ease off. He retired with a book immediately after dinner.”
She seemed resigned and quite in repose. The type of woman to whom the adventurous, flamboyant Trotman would be unfaithful from time to time, but to whom he would always return. The kind, too, who would make the best of a situation like the birth of Alec and not create melodrama out of it or think herself a public martyr on account of it. A woman too good for Trotman, but in whose mind such a thought would never enter.
“I wished to see him very urgently...but it can wait. Perhaps you can help me...?”
“If I can...”
She looked anxious, but it was on Trotman’s behalf. She didn’t want his peace disturbing.
“I realize, madam, that this might seem like taking advantage of the situation...In other words, I ought not to ask you questions concerning your husband. I also warn you that anything you say about him cannot be used in evidence, for you cannot testify against him...”
“But, surely, he is not suspected of any of these dreadful crimes at Beyle! He is the last man to use violence. He absolutely abhors it. Why! I even have to kill the mice we catch in traps. Last week, in this very room, a mouse appeared whilst we were sitting by the fire. It would have been so easy for him to kill it with the fire-tongs. Instead, he opened the door and chased it into the hall, and left it there for Daisy, the maid, to scream about...When it comes to violence, I’m afraid he’s a terrible coward. He could never kill anybody...”
“Not even in panic?”
“He would run...”
She stopped.
“Please, don’t think he has no moral courage. He is full of it. Once his mind is made up, he will see things through stubbornly. But violence...”
She shrugged her shoulders.
The room seemed cut off from life, except that outside you could hear vehicles passing now and then, or the foot-steps of some hurrying passer-by. The heavy curtains and the circle of light from the reading-lamp made a little circumscribed world of its own. Here it was that Trotman and his wife spent their evenings. Littlejohn wondered what they did. Talk? Read? Play cards? They didn’t seem to have much in common, but it was certain that here the ageing and bombastic lawyer sought shelter in a good woman’s love and admiration for him.
“Do you mind if I mention a rather painful subject...? That of Alec Crake...?”
“Not at all. Any pain...as you call it...is of the past and, I hope, is done with.”
If she felt unhappy about it, she showed no sign. She calmly gathered her cards from the fireside table with steady hands and shuffled them automatically.
“Has Mr. Trotman any great affection for Alec?”
“None whatever. Alec’s conduct of late has considerably distressed him. All this drinking and idleness...One would feel it about any young man of one’s intimate acquaintance. But if you are referring to any paternal feelings...I fear there were none.”
“Who provided the money for this young man’s so-called studies, which, I believe, were really a long holiday in Paris...?”
“His mother. She did it with difficulty, for Nicholas Crake refused to increase the reasonable allowance he was giving the boy. My husband made her a number of advances against the life policies in her favour on Mr. Crake’s life. It was not good security and my husband was very worried about it but he felt if he didn’t help, Mrs. Crake might make a fuss which wouldn’t sound very well to the public...”
“Mild blackmail?”
“I’m afraid so. Anything of the kind worries my husband terribly. He bears it so far, and then confides in me. I can do that for him, at least...listen to his troubles and comfort him.”
“It is as well you did, Mrs. Trotman. You have probably saved him from very serious complications in connection with matters at Beyle. If he is not well and police inquisition will greatly upset him, you can save him a lot of trouble. Do you know his partner, Skrike, very well?”
“Yes. He was once chief clerk and a very good one, too, but he drank heavily and was unreliable. Such a shame, with a nice wife and family. But somehow, Mr. Skrike seems to think life has not given him his dues. Drink and malice have been the cause of that. He talks too much, too bitterly, and too publicly. Nobody would trust such a man.”
“Yet your husband made him his partner?”
“You have, of course, read David Copperfield, Inspector. You remember how Uriah Heep got his master in his power. There are many things in a lawyer’s office which lend themselves to such tactics. My husband and Mr. Kent came to an arrangement to suit all parties...”
“Are Skrike and your husband on good terms?”
“I’m afraid not. He resents my husband’s manner, I gather. But really, I don’t think one ought to be called upon to fraternize with one’s business associates in private life, if one doesn’t want to do so. Mrs. Skrike is a very nice woman, but I don’t want her and the family calling here. Mr. Skrike seems to think we ought to throw the house open to them.”
“I see...”
So that explained a lot of the little lawyer’s venom and spite against Trotman. But it didn’t solve the case...
“Your husband didn’t find it difficult to subsidize Alec Crake, then? I mean, the drain on his own resources...?”
“I can help him there. My father was a local brewer and I was his only child...I have an income...It is a nice help...”
She rose and took a log between a large pair of tongs and threw it on the fire. Then she turned to Littlejohn.
“And now, Inspector, will you please tell me what we are getting at? Your questions are not put out of idle curiosity. There is some underlying purpose. What is it?”
She asked it quite calmly, but firmly. He could decline to reply and probably miss several important links in the case, because, short of some explanation, she was not going to answer any further questions about her husband.
“I will tell you, Mrs. Trotman. We have a list of suspects in this case. Each one has to be questioned. It is your husband’s turn. He has motives. He did not kill Mrs. Crake, but we have not yet discovered the murderer of Arthur Kent. Kent killed Mrs. Crake, but...”
“Kent! Never!!”
She looked more moved than she had shown before.
“Yes. Kent and your husband were trustees for Mr. Crake of a sum of about ten thousand pounds and, infatuated, temporarily, it seems, by Mrs. Crake, Kent stole the trust funds and gave them to her. Then, when he cooled off and wanted to keep his good name, he asked for them back. She refused, she attacked him, and in the scuffle he stabbed her.”
“But I knew about the money and the trust, Inspector. My husband was helping Kent to recover it. After all, they have their firm to think of...Imagine, too, Dulcie getting all that money for Alec and leaving little Nita with, nothing but that ruin of a house at Beyle. It was monstrous. Arthur Kent confessed the crime to my husband and said he would do his best to recover it. If not, he could make part of it good from his own money. That was why Mr. Trotman told me. I said I would lend the firm the balance...”
So easy! And yet here had a complicated web of intrigue and suspicion been spun around the coward, Trotman. It was as well he was in bed and his fine wife acting as his deputy. Trotman left to himself. would never have told a straight tale out of very fear, and thus have involved himself to the hilt.
“I quite understand, Mrs. Trotman. And now, may I digress a minute. Do you know Mr. Trotman’s staff...the little red-headed office-boy and the telephone girl?”
“Yes. The telephone girl, Maud Hankey, is really their typist. She and the boy answer the telephone...Why?”
“I wish to see them...”
In Littlejohn’s mind r
ose the scene when the boy had asked him for his autograph. The office...Mr. Skrike in his glass pen...The girl typing and rubbing out. Then the buzz of the telephone...Mr. Skrike had calmly gone on reading a document...Yet Skrike had said he was interested in the telephone. Perhaps he had contained his curiosity on account of Littlejohn’s visit. On the other hand...
“The girl attends our church. Her mother asked me if I could ask Mr. Trotman for a job for her. They wanted a girl, fortunately, because the old one was getting married. She would have stayed on, but we felt that her interest would go...Besides, she wasn’t first class...Miss Hankey, the present girl, lives with her mother in Church Lane, just at the bottom of the hill as you leave here...”
“Thank you. And the boy, if we need him?”
“Gerald Shipperton? He is the park-keeper’s son and lives in the lodge at the gates of Central Park, on the other side of town. An impertinent little boy, my husband calls him, but he does his work well and, I expect, will soon be leaving for more money. They all do.”
“Thank you.”
“What have they to do with this?”
“I want to check certain happenings in the office...I will tell you another thing, too. I know he has a nice family, but at the first opportunity, your husband ought to get rid of his junior partner. He is too indiscreet. He has been questioned by the police and, candidly, his talk has done no good to Mr. Trotman. I...”
She interrupted with some spirit.
“You are not telling me anything new...But, after Arthur’s death and all this trouble, my husband is going to retire. I have told him and the doctor has told him that at the rate he is going on, my husband won’t live another year. And with Kent dead, it’s just too much for him. If Skrike cannot raise the money for the whole of the firm, he will have to be sold with it, or leave. That’s already one problem settled.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Inspector. And now, tell me plainly, is my husband suspected of killing Arthur Kent?”
“He was. You see, we gathered that he was opposed to Kent in the matter of the trust. In other words, he was interested in Kent failing to replace the funds and their being left in the name of Mrs. Crake to become Alec’s inheritance...”
“Meaning, he was working to get the money for his illegal son?”
“Frankly, yes.”
“It is not true. I hope I have convinced you of that. How else should I know...? I was asked to lend the money to restore the trust funds.”
“I am glad I mentioned it to you. There is one other matter, though. I will be candid. It is serious. After the death of Kent by violence, we found what we thought was Mr. Trotman’s hat on the table in the hall at Beyle. In his agitation, he must have left it there after following Kent. It was a damning piece of evidence and, whatever the motive, will need a lot of explaining away if it was his hat. Process of elimination seems to lead us to such a surmise.”
Mrs. Trotman rose and went to the door of the room.
“Come here, Inspector...”
He followed her. She indicated the hat-stand in the hall. There were two hats, alike, hanging from pegs. One was a bit shabbier than the other, that was all.
“Is one of those the hat?”
Littlejohn crossed and examined them. The newer one had 7¼ on a ticket in the brim.
“Yes. I think so. I handled it and this is the size.”
She took the two hats in her hand.
“That would be the one you handled,” she said quietly. “My husband has not worn it for some time. It has frayed in the band. On the day Kent died, it disappeared until next day.”
“You mean...?”
“It was taken to put you on the wrong track...The track of my poor husband.”
“But how...?”
“It is strange how your mentioning all this has brought back an incident which I didn’t really heed. Alec Crake called in the morning of the day of Kent’s death. He asked for my husband. Alec was slightly drunk...or seemed so. He never wore a hat.”
“Well?”
“He must have taken that hat as he left. I didn’t see him do it, but he took it.”
“If you didn’t see him...”
“Yes...but the following day he called again. He wished to apologize for his condition the day before. The maid let him in, but hearing his voice, I went right into the hall. I’d no intention, if he were drunk, of allowing him to come farther in. He was hanging up his hat. Now, if he never wore a hat...? I have kept a kind of mental picture of the incident, and have never noticed the peculiarity of it till you mentioned the hat...”
“Good! I’m very glad I found you in and didn’t have to disturb your husband with all this...”
But, as if the patient upstairs had overheard, there was a clanging of a bell in the kitchen, behind. The maid appeared and ran upstairs.
“He’s wantin’ somethin’,” she said as she mounted.
She was down in a minute.
“Mr. Trotman asks if there’s callers, madam, and wants to see you, at once.”
“Don’t go, Inspector. I’ll be down in a moment.”
It took longer than that. Littlejohn could hear Trotman’s rumbling voice raised in one of the upper rooms. Then his wife appeared.
“Please come up, Inspector. My husband insists on seeing you.”
He entered a large room with thick red carpet on the floor and expensive furniture. Trotman was sitting up in a large bed. He wore blue silk pyjamas and had a travelling rug round his shoulders. His hair was a bit dishevelled, but the situation of being in bed for a police interview didn’t at all put him out of countenance.
“What is all this?” he thundered, ignoring the Inspector’s polite greeting.
“I called to ask you a few questions to help in the case, sir. Mrs. Trotman has been able to answer them, so I didn’t disturb you.”
Mr. Trotman reared in his bed.
“How dare you, sir! How dare you! How dare you, I say, badger my wife? I shall complain...complain in the proper quarter. I never...never, in the whole of my extensive experience, heard of such an outrage.”
“Now, dear, don’t get excited. The doctor said, you know...”
Mr. Trotman emerged still further from beneath the eiderdown, waving his arms and the travelling rug, beating the bedclothes with his clenched fist.
“To hell with the doctor...I won’t have my wife bullied. Are you aware, sir...are you aware that you have exceeded, far exceeded, the rules of police inquiry and of decency...inquiry and decency, I say...?”
There had been two books and a newspaper on the bed, but in his rage Mr. Trotman swept them into the air and they crashed on the floor.
Littlejohn stood quiet, unperturbed, smiling at the angry lawyer. Mrs. Trotman was smiling, too. It enraged him more.
“And, may I ask, what is the joke? WHAT IS THE JOKE...?”
“There is no joke, my dear. On the contrary, it is very serious, but it has a happy ending...”
“Don’t talk in riddles...I insist on knowing all he has asked you. Why...without me there to guide you, you might have said terrible things...! AWFUL things...!”
“I’m afraid they were awful, but they’ve cleared you, my dear, of suspicion of killing Arthur Kent...”
“What?”
He pounded the bed again.
Mrs. Trotman had had enough.
“Be quiet!” she said, like a schoolmistress entering a room of unruly scholars.
Mr. Trotman looked amazed at such a change of front. It affected him so much that he slid down in the bed.
“Take the electric blanket out, dear,” he whimpered. “It’s burning me...”
She dealt with him like a spoiled child.
Then she told him all she and Littlejohn had been saying.
“Come here,” said Trotman to his wife, when it was all over. He had been all eyes for her as she told the tale and now it was as if Littlejohn were not there at all.
“Excuse me, sir...May I ask where you were at the time Mr. Kent was murdered?”
Trotman looked at him blankly.
“I was at Beyle. I was in the room under the stairs. Skrike was right. Doane did ring me up...”
“Are you sure it was Doane?”
“I think so...”
“Are you sure it was his voice?”
“He said it was Doane...”
“But otherwise you weren’t sure?”
“How could I be?”
“What happened?”
“He said Kent had found the money, would I come? I went. When I got there, the front door was open. I entered. I heard voices upstairs with Doane. I recognized yours, Inspector. I didn’t want to meet you...I resented your intrusion...I admit it. I was afraid you’d stumble across the violation of the trust. You couldn’t have annoyed me more at that time...just when I was hoping to come upon the funds. Kent wasn’t there. I hesitated about leaving. Then, I saw the little panelled door below the stairs was open. I went in there...shut myself in and listened for you leaving...”
“Right into the trap, like a mouse after the cheese. He’d worked out everything...The open front door, the panel ajar...Did you see your hat on the hall table?”
“No...Why? I’d got my hat on my head...Oh, you mean the one Alec took...I can’t believe it...He wouldn’t do that to me...”
“What happened next...?”
“The catch on the door clicked and I found I was locked in. I didn’t want to make a row by beating on the door with you there. I sat and waited and, as I waited, I heard the horrible truth. I heard you find the body of Kent, I heard the police come...I hardly dared breathe. How long I was there I don’t know. It seemed hours. I heard them post a constable on the door and leave the place with the body. I was cold with fear. I knew that nothing would save me if anybody learned I’d been where I was when Kent was killed. I could form no theory; I daren’t tell you. And there I was...I daren’t even tell my wife...”
His fleshy lips began to tremble and his hands shook like those of one with the palsy.
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 23