“Then?”
“Suddenly I found the door loose...I gently opened it. It was dark and there was nobody there. I could hear the constable fumbling in the kitchen, running water in a pan. He had called there to make tea, I suppose...I crept out...I ran...I ran all the way home. I don’t know how I got here. My wife was out...I drank a glass of whisky...I...”
He began to sob, caressing his wife’s hand, clinging to it with both his own.
“I’m terribly sorry, Kate...terribly sorry. Sorry about this and everything...all the misery...all your unhappiness...terribly sorry...”
His habit of repeating himself was no longer funny.
Littlejohn quietly withdrew and left him to be comforted.
Nineteen – The Bar at the Airport
MRS. TROTMAN descended on his heels.
“I’m so grateful to you for calling, Inspector. It might have been very serious for my husband if we hadn’t talked together. He would never have survived the shame if...”
Littlejohn had intended to arrest Trotman if necessary. Now it was all different.
“I wonder if you could tell me, Mrs. Trotman, the Paris address of Alec Crake? I may need it...”
“Why? Has he left already?”
“No. He leaves in the morning.”
She returned to the dining-room for a moment and brought back a dog-eared address-book. She turned the leaves.
“12 bis, Impasse Auguste-Comte, Paris, 12.”
Littlejohn returned to the police station. They were surprised to see him back again.
“He certainly works for his living...”
The Inspector rang up the Yard.
“Give me Sergeant Mullet, please.”
A cheerful voice answered almost at once. It was so full of vigour that Littlejohn held the receiver about three inches from his ear and yet could hear plainly.
“Mullet, I want you to do something for me, quickly, please. Ring the police in Paris. Ask for Commissaire Claparède, if he’s in. Tell him it’s for me, urgently. Inquire if there’s an Alec Crake, a young Englishman, known at 12 bis, Impasse Auguste-Comte in the 12th arrondissement. Ask what he does when he’s in Paris. Also, if there’s a girl called Ginette connected with him...”
“His amie?”
“Fiancée, he says. Ginette sent him a telegram the other day. Check what the telegram was about and then please ring me back here. As quickly as you can...”
Then he dialled Beyle.
The constable on duty answered the telephone as instructed.
“P.C. 54, sir. Harkuss...”
“Who of the family is at home, Harkuss?”
“All three. The young lady and gent are packin’ and the old ’un’s followin’ ’em around lamentin’...”
“See to it that none of them leaves on any pretext. I’ll send you some help.”
After arranging for another policeman to stand-by at Beyle with Harkuss, Littlejohn strolled into the rain again.
Church Lane was just behind the police station, a narrow cobbled street with iron posts across each end to keep out wheeled traffic, and which climbed out of the square to the church on the hill above the town.
The Hankeys occupied a house which had been a fashionable shop in days when Church Lane was the little Bond Street of Tilsey. Now the buildings were mostly humble dwelling-houses or tenements. Children were playing under the gas-lamps which shed pools of pale green light in the dark. The bow window of the one-time hat shop had been covered with gauze curtains. Mrs. Hankey, a little, dark, thick-set woman like a peasant, with a lisp, rather hesitated before asking the Inspector in. Then she led him through the dark front room to the living quarters behind.
Maud was there busy with an electric iron on a frilly dance frock. She gave a little shriek of surprise on seeing Littlejohn. Sitting in an armchair by the fire, his pipe in his mouth and an empty bottle of beer on the floor beside him, was a small, grey-haired, refined-looking man with a little pointed beard. He waved a friendly hand but before he could speak, his two women had started to bicker.
“You shouldn’t have brought him in here, mother. The front room’s the place. You must excuse the untidiness, sir. I’m going to the farmers’ ball to-morrow night.”
“I hope you enjoy yourself, Miss Hankey.”
Mrs. Hankey was annoyed at her daughter’s rebuke. She stood defiantly at the door, looking angrily at the evening frock.
“Don’t you give me imperence in front of strangers, miss. I’m your mother, remember...”
The girl flushed.
“Were you wanting something, sir?”
She was a tall, thin, delicate girl with a flat bust and a frail, pink tuberculous look which was very attractive and made men feel protective. You noticed, after her delicate features, her neatness. Hair, hands, nails, eyebrows...all well cared for. Her speech was quiet and careful. She switched off the iron.
“Do you take all the telephone calls at the office, Miss Hankey?
“Yes. Except at lunch-time. My machine’s just near the board.”
“Is Mr. Skrike particularly interested in the calls?”
“Why, sir, I don’t know. Sometimes he is. It all depends.”
“On what?”
“Lately, since Mr. Crake died, he seems to have been expecting some news to come through.”
“Why?”
“He keeps looking up from his work and saying, ‘Who’s that?’”
“Do you remember the day Mr. Kent died?”
“Rather. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
“You remember the calls that came in?”
“I can’t say I do without looking at the record-pad, and that’s at the office.”
Mrs. Hankey seemed to scent a plot against her daughter’s virtue.
“And yore not goin’ out at this time o’ night for anybody, miss.”
“Really, mother, nobody suggests I should.”
“Let me try to help you, Miss Hankey. Did Mr. Bernard Doane, of Beyle, ring up that day?”
“I think he did...”
“Whom did he ring?”
“Both Mr. Kent and Mr. Trotman, one after the other, just before Mr. Kent went off for the last time.”
Mrs. Hankey still wasn’t comfortable.
“Our Maudie’s got a good job and it’s confidential, bein’ a lawyer’s. I think you ought to be careful, Maudie, what you say. Good jobs are hard to come by, if you get sacked for talkin’...”
“But this is police, ma. I’ve got to tell them what they ask.”
Mrs. Hankey sniffed and took up the smoothing iron, spat on it to test the heat, and then switched it on and set about the frock with great vigour.
“I’ll finish this. I never saw sich a gel for wastin’ time.”
“I won’t detain you, Miss Hankey. Are you sure it was Mr. Doane’s voice?”
“No, I’m not. He said it was Mr. Doane, but I remember quite well, now you remind me, it was different some way. I recollect saying to Gerald, that’s the office-boy...that Mr. Doane was different. Sort of knew his own mind, for a change. As a rule, he waffles and wambles over the ’phone...keeps forgetting what he’s talking about.”
“Stammers?”
“Hardly that. Sort of can’t collect his thoughts and can’t tell plainly what he wants.”
“Did you listen to what he said?”
“No, sir. This time Mr. Skrike asked who it was, and listened himself. Please don’t tell him, or I’ll get into trouble.”
“I won’t. But who could it have been, if not Mr. Doane?”
“You think it was somebody else, sir?”
She started to blush and, to hide her confusion, pretended to interest herself in what her mother was doing. It gave Littlejohn his answer. He knew how young girls get “sweet” on attractive men like Alec Crake. Here was something of the kind.
“Could it have been Mr. Alec Crake?”
“It could...But what did he want ringing...? I don’t know...”
>
She grew confused under her mother’s eagle eye.
The little grey man by the fire, who had hitherto listened carefully without speaking, hereupon raised himself.
“You will see, sir,” he said, in a very refined, dramatic tone,” You will see, sir, I’m not the master in my own house. My women run it for me. I am a silent spectator...a sleeping partner. May I offer you a drink, sir?”
He looked appealingly at Littlejohn. If he could persuade him to drink, his women could not refuse him, too, and would have to increase his nightly ration of a pint.
Mr. Hankey was an artist who couldn’t sell any of his masterpieces. He had seduced his housekeeper in a moment of despair and, finding what later turned out to be Maud on the way, had had to make an honest woman of her, for she had a brother who was a boxer in a travelling circus and took on all corners for five pounds a knock-out. Now, Mr. Hankey’s two women kept him, one as a seamstress, the other as a typist. Not that he didn’t try. The upper rooms were littered with his unsold efforts to earn his bit. Heavy oils, small water-colours, calendars, Christmas cards, plaster models of horses and naked women, and even grotesque birds carved out of knots of wood.
“May I offer you...?”
“I’m afraid I must be off. Thank you all the same, sir.”
Mr. Hankey was in the habit of secretly reinforcing his beer with uncoloured methylated spirit, which he ostensibly bought for his works of art. Beneath his white crown of venerable hair his face glowed purple.
“A very good night to you, sir. A very good night. Phoebe, my dear, show our guest to the door.” He waved a dismissing hand and sank back in his chair.
Maud had grown very quiet. Two hectic spots appeared on her cheek-bones and she pretended to concentrate on the dress on the ironing-board.
“Good night,” she said stiffly without looking up.
“Who did you say he was?”
Littlejohn could hear the old man asking his daughter as Mrs. Hankey led him to the door. Littlejohn found himself in the gaslit alley among the ragamuffin children and stray cats.
Cromwell was at the airport about the same time.
“Huh!” said the bartender to him. He was a tall man in a spotless white coat. The skin hung in folds on his face and furrows of care crossed and ran down it. He was politically minded and was worried about the direction the world was taking. He also had aching flat feet due to days of standing at the bar and shaking drinks.
“Huh? Beer? Only bottled. Two shillin’s...”
Cromwell took a sip, made an entry in the little book from which he transcribed his expenses sheet, and then took another good swig.
“Ah...That’s good.”
“’Ave a good time while you can, mister. There’s ’orrible things comin’. I was readin’ in a book the other day...”
The place was quiet. The last plane had left and all the airport offices were closed. Only the light in the control tower and those in the bar and restaurant still shone. A few half-intoxicated young bloods and their girls sat in the well-carpeted, chromium-fitted lounge. They were getting fresh...almost indecent...
“Bellowin’ and purrin’...I’m sick of it. I was readin’ in a book the other day...”
“Young Crake about?”
“Eh? No. Hasn’t been ’ere since ’is mother’s funeral. Sobered him up, if you ask me. Always could down his drinks, could Crake. Recent ’appenin’s has cured ’im. I read in a book last week...‘Ho, eloquent, just, an’ mighty Death...’ It’s right, you know. We all come to it.”
He had been drinking his own wares and had grown owlish in his cups.
“You’re right. Crake was here after his mother’s death, though?”
“Huhu. ’E was. But a changed man, you know. Death made a bit of an ’ypocrite of him.”
“A what?”
“Look ’ere! Wot’s all this, eh? Wot you after? Does he owe you money, or are you out to save his soul?”
He grinned at this thrust, aimed at Cromwell’s look of muscular evangelism, black suit, black tie, black bowler and black boots.
“No...Police...”
“Wot!! Well, you ain’t got nothin’ on us. Licence quite clean and hours kept to.”
“I never said they weren’t. I’m just checking the movements of the family, that’s all.”
There was a stir among the gay party under the large palms in pots which decorated the place.
“Hi, Joe. More pink gins all round. Five...”
Joe sighed and started to pour the spirit and sprinkle drops of colour in it.
“Won’t be a tick...”
He dispensed the order and rattled the money in the cash register.
“That’ll be all this time, ladies and gents,” he called out.
“Here...What...?”
“I said no more.”
“Awri’. Keep your shirt on...”
The girls squealed and one good-looking one announced her intention of being sick.
“Out you go...”
Joe steered her through the door into the open air.
“Leave me alone...”
He returned to Cromwell.
“Wot things are comin’ to. Her ma oughter slap her behind...Too much o’ that round ’ere. Other day, young Crake was sick as well. T’aint everybody’s got the stomach for gin.”
“When was he sick?”
“You ask so many questions, you muddle me. Let’s begin at the beginning...After his mother died...shook him. He’d had a right old binge from comin’ home from Paris till the day his mother got murdered. Tight day and night, he was. Then, sudden like, he sobered. I h’actually saw ’im pour good whisky, bought for him by consoling friends, poured it over the palms there when they wasn’t lookin’. Whisky ain’t good for palms, but I didn’t mention it on account of him bein’ bereaved.”
The folds of his face sagged more, making him look like a doleful spaniel.
“Went steady, did he?”
“Yep.”
“Remember the day his uncle, Kent, was killed at Beyle?”
“I should think I did. Was the talk of the place.”
He mopped the counter and looked at Cromwell’s glass.
“No? Right. Crake was here that afternoon.”
“How long?”
“From lunch till they fetched him to tell him of the murder.”
“Right in this room, was he?”
“Yes, except, as I was tellin’ you, when we got mixed up, except when he was sick. Like that young no-good girl as just went out. Young Crake ’ad been pretendin’ to drink hard. Hypocrite, pretendin’ to drown his sorrow to get sympathy, I reckon. But drownin’ the palms with whisky instead. I saw ’im. Then he was sick...”
“What time would that be?”
“Around 4.30 to five. I know, because I rushed ’im out. Afternoon teas was on...a plane-load of people just in...nice people. No place for soaks to be sick.”
“Was he out long?”
“Oh, half an hour. Then he came an’ asked for a peppermint.”
“Sure he stayed around here whilst he was sick?”
“I never saw him go. I told the other police that. They wanted alibis. ‘He was ’ere,’ I says. Where else could ’e have been?”
“Where’s the car-park?”
“Across the tarmac by the airport entrance...”
“You can’t see it from here?”
“You can, but I never do. Too busy in the day with comin’s and goin’s.”
“So Crake might have gone off for a run in his car for some air, for half an hour, and then come back?”
“And ’im sick and unsteady? Besides, where would he want to go? His gang was here. He came back when he was better. They welcomed him like a lost brother an’ made a fuss of ’im. Some of ’em said the same that I did to the police. ‘Oh, yes. ’E was ’ere,’ they said. Nothin’ wrong with that, uh?”
“No...Except that he might not have been here that half-hour. You didn’t go after him, di
d you?”
“Why should I? And me busy with the passengers.”
“All eyes on the plane, then?”
“Yes. That’s what they come for. Drink and watch the planes. Very nice entertainment for them as likes it. Specially the last one that was goin’ as Crake came back. A bit of a sight. Flarepath lit up...”
“Thanks. That’s all. Good night...”
“Uh?”
“Good night.”
“S’long...”
Cromwell found Littlejohn standing with his back to the charge-room fire waiting for the telephone. Someone had run over a dog and the sergeant was taking down a
statement.
“...the first intimation was a bump...then another bump...Was it a big bump or a little bump...?”
Littlejohn and Cromwell compared notes.
“Looks as if poor Simpole was on the wrong track and killed himself on a wrong theory, Cromwell...”
“Damned shame...”
The telephone rang and the cheerful voice of Mullet had a lot to say.
Alec Crake lodged at the address given. The police of the district, after questioning the neighbours, said his life was riotous, to say the least. Women couldn’t resist him. He drank a lot. Seemed a man of means...always paid for what he got. There had been several girls. Ginette...Mullet laughed. Ginette was the concierge of the flats, an old woman with bronchitis and bad feet. The Paris police had been quite colourful about the telegram. Ginette had sent it...that was right. It was in English, sent from the post office in the rue de Clichy. A little joke on somebody. Old Ginette says Alec Crake telephoned another Englishman early on the day she sent it. He asked him to wire it as a joke, and dictated it over the ’phone. Ginette paid for the wire. She kept the message to prove what it cost...”
“Thanks, Mullet.”
Littlejohn lit his pipe and puffed it gently.
“Funny! That young man is too thorough. He overdid it. Trying to prove and more than prove that he’d turned over a new leaf. If he’d only been content to say that his mother’s death did it. But he had to pile it on...to try to put on an act with me. He just had to be dead sober to kill Kent and to keep his wits clear whilst he framed Trotman. He overdid it. Now, we’d better go to Beyle and ask him some questions right away. Our men have the family safely cooped-up there. I’d better get a warrant. Somebody’s going to get annoyed about warrants at this hour of night....”
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 24