Murder Strikes Pink

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Flecker briskly, ‘asbestos sleeping suits will be worn.’ He took the single typewritten sheet which the A.C. held out and turned to go.

  ‘And don’t be all night about it,’ Lestrange called after him.

  Detective-Sergeant Browning, whom Flecker found looking through a large pile of photographs of missing women, was delighted at the prospect of a trip out of town. ‘Just the job,’ he said, ‘I’m browned off with this routine stuff; it’s hard work, you know, trying to settle down after a holiday.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course; North Devon, wasn’t it?’ asked Flecker. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘A really nice little place,’ Browning told him. ‘Quiet, you know, but good bathing. There was a beautiful beach, but of course the kiddies are too old for sand-castles; it’s all flippers and snorkels and surf boards now. Mrs. Browning really enjoyed it; said she’d had a real rest.’

  ‘Good,’ said Flecker, ‘and you don’t look too bad on it yourself. Now don’t take all day to pack. You won’t need much and the A.C.’s in a hustling mood so we’d better bestir ourselves. I’ll pick you up at your place in about an hour.’

  Flecker whistled cheerfully between his teeth as he drove back to Kensington. Lestrange giving him this case was, he thought, like an answer to a prayer. For, to the pleasurable prospect of being his own master for a few days and the welcome escape from the dusty heat and tired, trampled appearance of late-summer London, was added an opportunity for success. He’d never bothered much about success before, he’d always prided himself on watching the rat race from the rails, but since, on his last murder case, he’d met Lesley Carlson, success which might lead to promotion had become very important to him.

  He packed absentmindedly, and then, having arranged for his landlady to forward any letters — Lesley might write — he took the contents of his refrigerator down to the retired dressmaker who lived in the basement and was on the road again in twenty minutes. Browning wasn’t ready but while he finished his packing Mrs. Browning entertained Flecker with tea, biscuits, photographs of the Devonshire holiday and Clifford’s school report which, as usual, was exemplary. When Browning at last appeared, immaculately dressed in a lightweight suit, they stowed his large suitcase under the Chief Inspector’s smaller one and Flecker, electing to drive, handed him the single sheet of information.

  ‘At a horse show,’ exclaimed Browning, taking up the sheet when he had finished directing Flecker along the quickest route back to the main road. ‘Well, I never. Now if there’s one thing I enjoy on the television it’s the show-jumping. When they’re televising from the White City or Wembley Mrs. Browning and I never miss a night if we can help it. Thistleton,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘No, I can’t say I remember the name, but you don’t take much notice of the owners’ names, it’s the riders and the horses you’re interested in. The commentator tells you little bits about them all until you begin to feel you know them and that makes it all the more absorbing.’

  ‘In fact you’re an expert; couldn’t be better,’ said Flecker. ‘Well, you know what you can do: there’s nothing like gossip —’

  ‘I’m going to enjoy this,’ observed Browning, leaning back contentedly. ‘Puts me in mind of the old pony I had when I was a boy. I never did any show-jumping; well, there wasn’t anything like the amount of it that goes on nowadays, and in the summertime both the pony and I were kept busy on the farm, but hunting — he’d always get you there somehow, over or under or push his way through; you couldn’t stop the old pony.’

  Flecker said, ‘I don’t think, somehow, that you ought to admit to going under in show-jumping circles.’

  ‘And what have you been up to? Have you heard any more from Mrs. Carlson?’ Browning inquired with a sidelong glance at the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Yes, she wrote last week. She’s got a couple of free days towards the end of the month. Anthony’s school goes back two days before the one where she’s secretary. She’s going to stay in London; I’ve put in for leave.’

  ‘Very nice,’ said Browning warmly, ‘very nice indeed. We shall see you married yet.’

  ‘No leaping to conclusions, please,’ protested Flecker.

  ‘Well, you want to take your time about it,’ admitted Browning. ‘What with losing her first husband and getting mixed up with that murder and young Barclay; and then there was the doctor,’ he laughed reminiscently. ‘I told you she wouldn’t take him. She’ll come round to it gradually though. Settling down, having a bit of home life and eating proper meals would do you the world of good.’

  ‘I should get so fat they’d turf me out of the police,’ said Flecker, trying to prevent the conversation from becoming serious. It was all very well for Browning to set himself up as a mentor on matrimonial matters, he thought, but he never faced the real problem of class. For though Flecker considered himself to belong to the new classless society in which manners, intelligence and the fact that you were educated were all that counted, he was well aware that Lesley’s family with their public school and army traditions might not greet a grammar school educated policeman with open arms. A miner’s grandson, thought Flecker, rubbing salt into the wound. Reared in a hideous little terraced house in a midland town by a forceful schoolteacher mother and a disillusioned and generally out of work father. Lesley was no snob, but she had her son to consider; Anthony was still young enough to believe that detectives were heroes, but later on —

  ‘Hamberley,’ observed Browning. ‘Well, that didn’t take long; I don’t know what’s happened to the road works this morning.’

  Hamberley was a tidy town of no particular character, for the original Georgian buildings were now heavily outnumbered. Flecker drove down High Street, which had the disreputable look of a mouth that has lost a front tooth, for there was a ragged gap where the new Woolworths should have stood, and turned into Mason Street.

  The County Police Headquarters had long been scheduled to move further out, but no large, cheap ancestral home having fallen vacant they had remained in the red-brick building between the modern telephone exchange and the Church of St. Luke and overflowed into an annexe behind. The police station stood sideways on to Mason Street and looked across its own gloomy courtyard, where Flecker parked the car, to the yellowish brick and grey slates of St. Luke’s.

  Flecker climbed out, stuffed the single sheet of information into his pocket and led the way up the steps.

  ‘What you want,’ said Browning, ‘is a nice briefcase to carry your papers in.’

  ‘Something else to leave in buses,’ answered Flecker, and stopped at the inquiry desk to ask for the Chief Constable’s office.

  Murray and Jackson had heard of Flecker, they’d read one or two of his articles in the Police Journal and they remembered seeing a photograph of him in the national press, but they were disappointed when he came into the room; they had expected him to show more signs of success, to look more imposing. Small for a policeman with a stocky figure and an untidy profusion of dark hair, his clean-shaven face looked too amiable, his rather shapeless mouth too affable, for a man of consequence and it was easy to miss the intelligent gleam of his deepset dark blue eyes.

  Murray, looking from Flecker to Browning as they introduced themselves, thought, as people always did, that he’d have put his money on the sergeant every time. For Browning, tall, soldierly and well-dressed with his Anthony Eden moustache and greying hair, seemed to emanate self-confidence. But reminding himself that they’d heard great things of the Chief Inspector, Murray shook him warmly by the hand.

  ‘It doesn’t seem a very complicated case,’ he began as they all sat down. ‘Jackson feels that he’s on the right track, it’s just a question of proof; isn’t that right, Jackson?’

  Though he agreed with Jackson, Murray didn’t mean to assume any responsibility for the case. If Scotland Yard managed to unearth some new fact he intended to let the Superintendent bear any charge of maladroitness alone.

  Jackson pulled his nose. ‘
It looks that way to me,’ he said, opening a folder. ‘This Mrs. Keswick had the thermos of milk shake in her care all day; her marriage was breaking up for lack of funds, her husband stood to inherit the best part of a quarter of a million on Miss Thistleton’s death. And, on top of that, she was carrying bitter almonds about in her mackintosh pocket.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Jackson. You’d better give them the gen. Go ahead.’ Murray spoke with patronizing approval.

  Jackson told his story efficiently. Browning sighed and averted his eyes as Flecker made notes with the disreputable stump of a pencil on the backs of used envelopes. He’ll never learn, thought Browning, and they’d think so much more of him if he had a nice propelling pencil and a proper notebook.

  ‘Well, I have Mrs. Keswick’s passport so I don’t think she’ll get far if she does try to run for it.’ Jackson closed his folder and brought them up to date. ‘The local man looked in on her this morning and she wasn’t showing any signs of leaving then. Mr. Keswick phoned us just before you arrived to say that we shall find him at Whittam House during the day, from lunchtime today onwards; he’s moving his horses in with Miss Thistleton’s. The inquest took place yesterday and the funeral’s tomorrow afternoon at two thirty. Now, is there anything else?’

  Flecker looked through his notes reflectively. ‘These almonds,’ he asked, ‘have you sent them to the lab?’

  ‘No, but as I told you I’ve had them identified by an experienced horticulturalist,’ answered Jackson.

  ‘Yes, I’m not disputing their identity,’ said Flecker hastily. ‘I just feel that we’d better make quite sure the right stuff comes out when they’re brewed up and anyway it gives the lab boys something to do.’

  ‘Of course they should be sent to the laboratory; I can’t think why they weren’t sent at once,’ Murray broke in with a meanly triumphant glance at Jackson.

  ‘Oh, there’s no urgency about it,’ said Flecker, returning to his notes. He looked at Jackson. ‘You say that practically all the dismissed staff can be ruled out?’

  ‘Yes, there are two more reports to come in, but the rest of them have produced perfectly satisfactory evidence of their whereabouts on both Friday and Saturday.’

  ‘And you didn’t find a large bottle of oil of bitter almonds in the kitchen cupboard?’ Flecker asked with a grin. ‘I gather it’s used as a flavouring.’

  ‘No,’ answered Jackson. ‘Mrs. Maggs is a very difficult person to interview, but I came to the conclusion that she had no reason to want Miss Thistleton’s death, in fact it’s done her out of a comfortable post. As for the contents of the milk shake I’ve already said the strawberry flavouring had a negative report and the ice cream and the milk were consumed without ill effects by the rest of the household.’

  ‘Right,’ said Flecker, getting to his feet. ‘First of all I’d better see Mrs. Keswick; can you lend us a large-scale map of the district?’

  Jackson nodded.

  ‘Well, good luck.’ Murray stood up too. ‘Jackson will show you to your office and see about the map.’

  Jackson led them, by a labyrinthine route, to an office from which he’d turned out two of his own inspectors and left them saying that he would send a map.

  ‘Well, well, we are coming on,’ remarked Browning. ‘And a nice view of the churchyard too,’ he added, looking out of the window.

  Flecker sat down at one of the desks and began to go through Jackson’s folder of information. Browning dealt with a police cadet who brought the map, a policewoman with two cups of tea and Superintendent Jackson, who reappeared to ask whether they would like rooms booked at the George or whether they had other plans. ‘It’s comfortable,’ he explained, ‘but it doesn’t set out to be smart, like the Royal and the Queen’s. I know the manager so I’ll see you’re not overcharged.’

  ‘Just the job,’ Browning answered him. ‘You go ahead.’ But Jackson suggested that they had better consult the Chief Inspector, so Browning turned to the immersed Flecker and inquired loudly, ‘Stay at the George, sir? Superintendent Jackson can fix us up.’

  ‘Mmm?’ asked Flecker, without looking up. ‘Oh yes, anywhere you like.’

  ‘You haven’t even drunk your nice cup of tea,’ Browning pointed out reproachfully.

  When Flecker came to the end of Jackson’s report he jumped to his feet, announced ‘We’re off,’ and having gulped down his cold tea, he plunged out into the passage. Browning collected his hat and the map and catching up with his superior, who had already lost his way, he endeavoured to shepherd him through the rabbit warren of cream and green passages down to the street.

  After her ordeal at the police station Marion Keswick had gone to bed but, despite four aspirins, her mind had turned in weary and unrewarding circles until dawn. Then she had fallen into an exhausted sleep and had only wakened at ten o’clock when the ugly, anxious face of the white bull terrier had been thrust into her own. She had dressed hastily and had toiled round the smallholding with buckets of food for the indignant pigs and poultry, before she again let the horror of her situation crowd in upon her.

  When the disconsolate Matilda welcomed Flecker and Browning at the open front door, Marion was sitting in the sitting-room, huddled as though cold in one of the armchairs. She answered their knock and when Flecker had explained that they were from Scotland Yard and had taken over from the County Police, she pushed back her limp pale hair from her exhausted-looking face and asked, ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ answered Flecker.

  The dust in the sitting-room had grown thicker, the white hairs on the hearth rug more numerous, a few flowers in a jug on the writing desk had dropped their petals and withered unnoticed.

  Browning began to make friends with the bull terrier; squatting on the floor he pulled her ears and addressed her cheerfully. ‘Now this is what I call a real dog, madam,’ he announced approvingly. ‘She’d be some use as a watchdog; not like all these little poodles and pekes.’ Marion pulled herself together with an obvious effort. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Tilda never objects to legitimate visitors and she’s very fond of the postman and the baker and, apparently, the police, but she can be quite fierce if she suspects anyone of evil intentions —’

  Flecker, observing that Marion was swaying on her feet, said, ‘Shall we sit down?’ And then fixing her with a stern eye he asked, ‘Mrs. Keswick, did you have any breakfast this morning?’

  ‘No.’ Marion looked surprised. ‘No, I overslept and then I didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘Really, madam, you’ll be making yourself ill,’ said Browning disapprovingly. ‘Shall I make some tea, sir?’

  ‘Yes, it might be an idea,’ answered Flecker.

  ‘But I’m perfectly all right,’ Marion protested as Browning left the room, and, struggling to her feet, ‘Well, if I’ve got to have some tea, I’ll make it.’

  ‘You answer the Chief Inspector’s questions, madam,’ said Browning, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘But he’ll never find the tea, or the milk or anything,’ wailed Marion.

  ‘Yes, he will,’ Flecker told her. ‘Locating milk is nothing to a detective and if he can’t find it he’ll soon come back and ask. He’s quite all right, really,’ he added, when he saw that Marion was still fussing. ‘He loves making tea and his wife’s so competent that he never gets a chance at home.’ He produced his envelopes, tugged rather distractedly at his hair and said, ‘Now look, Mrs. Keswick, you must try to help us. First of all there are these wretched almonds; if you didn’t put them in your mackintosh pocket, we’ve got to try to find out who did.’

  Marion’s hands clenched in her lap and a mulish look came over her drained face. Flecker said, ‘Presumably you didn’t wear the mackintosh on the day of the show because it didn’t rain, so we don’t know whether they were there then or not. You see, if the murderer nipped into the horse-box and doctored the milk shake while you and Miss Dix were in the collecting ring, he or she could have put any spare almonds into
your mackintosh pocket at the same time. Can you remember when you last wore it?’

  ‘Not really.’ She drew a hand across her face. ‘It hadn’t rained for ages, had it? I only took it to the show because the forecast said there might be thunder.’

  ‘Where does it live normally?’ asked Flecker.

  ‘On a peg in the passage by the back door.’

  ‘And you didn’t leave it anywhere else before the show and you haven’t loaned it to anyone lately?’

  ‘No, not that I can remember.’

  ‘All right. Well now, this emergency basket with the thermos inside. Have you any ideas about how you came to handle it?’ he asked quietly.

  Marion put a hand over her eyes. ‘It’s rather late to start remembering now, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘Not if you do remember touching it,’ he answered.

  ‘I think I do. I can’t be certain though. It may be that I’ve tried so hard to remember that my subconscious has just obliged. I’ve a dim recollection of hurling things about in one of the panics you get into at shows when the horse should be in the collecting ring and something is lost. I seem to remember that that beastly emergency basket wasn’t properly fastened, things began to fall out and I just shoved them back and shut it.’

  ‘Well, that’s a help,’ said Flecker encouragingly. ‘And you didn’t see anyone but the secretaries and Miss Dix and perhaps the Browns enter the horse-box all day?’

  ‘I didn’t see the Browns go in,’ Marion answered dully. ‘Only the secretaries and Brenda.’

  ‘The horse-box was in a park, I gather, with other horse-boxes all round it; can you remember the people in the adjacent horse-boxes; did you know them by name?’ ‘Yes, they were all locals,’ Marion looked at him desperately, ‘but you see I’ve got Friday and Saturday hopelessly muddled up; I can’t remember who was where when.’