‘What do you think, Phyllis?’ she asked the young girl who served at the bakery counter. ‘Should I tell the police about Miss Souter, so they can go to find out if there is anything wrong with her?’
Phyllis Barclay was seventeen years old, and had been working for Miss Wheeler for nearly a year. She was a pretty little thing with long blonde hair, but she was rather shy and retiring. She considered the question carefully. She’d been on the sharp end of Janet Souter’s tongue more than once, and was completely terrified of her, but she didn’t like to think of the old woman lying ill on her own. Thank goodness it wasn’t her place to make the decision.
‘I don’t know, Miss Wheeler,’ she said at last. ‘Whatever you think’s best.’
The woman pursed her thin lips. Miss Souter would be livid if the policeman went up there and there was nothing wrong with her, and she’d blame the postmistress for interfering in what was none of her business. It would be better to play safe and do nothing. ‘If Derek Paul comes in today,’ she said, to salve her conscience, ‘I’ll have a word with him, but I think I’ll leave things as they are meantime.’ She picked up her pencil and started doing some calculations on a piece of paper.
Phyllis could sympathise with her employer’s reluctance to act on Willie Arthur’s information. Miss Souter was not a person you would knowingly offend.
At half past four, the boy went back to collect the evening papers, and ducked down behind the counter for his bag. ‘Did you do anything about what I told you in the morning?’
Emma Wheeler looked slightly guilty as she pushed forward a bundle of Evening Citizens. ‘No, Willie. I did mean to speak to Derek Paul if he came in, but he must have been for his Courier before you told me, though I didn’t notice.’
‘Oh well, I suppose she’s OK.’ The boy shoved the papers into his bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He forgot all about the matter until he was nearing the end of his round, but when he approached Honeysuckle Cottages and saw that there was still no smoke issuing from the middle chimney, he felt most apprehensive.
He took the steps in one leap, and ran along the path. The milk bottle was still sitting at Miss Souter’s door, and he wondered what he should do. Luckily, the door of Number One opened, and Mrs Wakeford came out. She was a pleasant, friendly woman, who often gave the boy a newly baked biscuit or a piece of sponge cake, and he decided to ask her advice.
She spoke before he could find the right words. ‘Willie, would you please post this letter for me when you get back to the shop? Here’s 40p and you can keep the change from the stamp.’
‘Mrs Wakeford,’ the boy said hastily, before she went inside again. ‘I’ll put a stamp on for you, of course, but there’s something . . . Miss Souter’s fire hasn’t been on all day, and her milk’s still at her door.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ The woman looked flustered. ‘Have you rung her bell to see if she’s there?’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But there was no sign of her in the morning, either, and she’s usually up before I deliver the papers.’
‘You should have told me in the morning, Willie. She must have been taken ill. You wait there and I’ll go and phone the police station.’
He wondered why she wasn’t going to phone the doctor if she thought the old woman was ill, but it was nothing to do with him. He slipped along to Number Three to deliver the Citizen and put his finger on the bell of the middle house on his way back, but nothing stirred. Miss Souter was definitely incapable of answering the door.
At last, Mrs Wakeford reappeared. ‘Constable Paul’s going to ask Sergeant Black to come up as soon as he comes back on duty, which shouldn’t be very long, but he told me to phone Doctor Randall as well.’
‘I’d better finish my round, Mrs Wakeford. I’ve just five for the foot of the Lane, then I’ll be back.’ Willie thought she looked as if she needed somebody to be with her, and he didn’t want to miss any of the excitement when the sergeant came.
When he ran off, Mabel Wakeford stood wringing her hands for a few seconds, before she went inside to have a small glass of the brandy she kept purely for medicinal purposes. If ever she needed it, now was the time.
Willie returned in less than ten minutes, just before the police sergeant and the doctor, whose cars arrived one after the other. They parked in the Lane, to save congestion on the High Street, and walked quickly along to the steps where Mrs Wakeford and her stalwart, rather excited, protector were waiting.
Sergeant Black took charge immediately. ‘Something wrong with Miss Souter, eh? Doctor, you’d better give me a hand to break down her door.’
‘No, no.’ The woman clutched at his sleeve. ‘There’s no need to break in, her back door’s never locked. You can come through my house, to save you going all the way round by the road. You’ll just have to go over the fence.’
‘Right you are, Mrs Wakeford.’ John Black was slightly puzzled. If she knew that Miss Souter’s back door wasn’t locked, why hadn’t she gone in herself to see what had happened to her neighbour? Still, the old woman had a reputation for quarrelling with everybody, so they may not have been on very good terms.
Mabel watched him striding over the low fence which separated the gardens, and waited for him to try the handle of Janet Souter’s back door. Her legs were shaking, and her heart was beating twenty to the dozen.
‘It is open,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t come in, though, Mrs Wakeford, nor you, Willie. Just the doctor and myself, in case there’s anything . . .’
James Randall smiled apologetically to her, then followed John Black into Miss Souter’s kitchen. Almost immediately, the sergeant’s head popped round the door again.
‘She’s lying on the kitchen floor, I’m afraid. I think she’s dead, but the doctor’s examining her now. I’d suggest that you both go inside to wait, because I’ll have to take statements from you, you understand, and it’s cold out there.’
Willie noticed that his companion seemed to be rooted to the spot, and took hold of her elbow. ‘Come on, Mrs Wakeford, I’ll make you a cup of tea when we get inside.’
She went with him, as docile as a baby, and collapsed inelegantly into an armchair by her fireside. ‘She’s been murdered,’ she whispered.
The boy’s mouth and eyes sprung wide open. ‘M . . . murdered?’ This would be something to brag about to his pals, if it were true – that he’d been there at the finding of a murdered woman. Slowly, his features returned to normal. ‘How d’you know she’s been murdered?’
‘I just know.’
It struck him that she might be suffering from shock, and hot, sweet tea was the remedy for that, as he’d learned at the first-aid class he’d attended after school a few months ago.
He went through to the kitchen, and felt quite important as he filled the kettle and ignited the gas with the torch that hung at the side of the cooker. He even began to whistle while he looked in the cupboard for cups, but he stopped the tuneless noise when he remembered what had happened next door. Murder! He might get his photograph in the papers. ‘Boy alerts police to murder of woman’, the headline would say.
When he returned to the living room with a loaded tray, he found that Mrs Wakeford was still sprawled in the same position as when he’d left her.
‘She’s been poisoned,’ she informed him in a low voice. ‘That arsenic she had was too big a temptation . . . and she told everybody about it.’
‘That’s right,’ Willie nodded eagerly. ‘I heard some folk saying what she needed was a dose of her own arsenic. But that was only talk,’ he added heartily. ‘None of them would really have done it.’
‘Somebody did.’ Mrs Wakeford stirred her tea for the third time, then laid the spoon down on the tray because the boy had not given her a saucer.
‘I came straight over,’ announced Sergeant Black, appearing from the passage. ‘I’ve left the doctor with Miss . . . the dead woman, for I can’t help him with that. Now!’ He took out his noteb
ook and held his Biro ready. ‘To business! Who was the first person to notice that something might be wrong with Miss Souter?’
‘Me.’ Willie was practically jumping with excitement. ‘I noticed her milk hadn’t been taken in when I was delivering her paper in the morning.’
The sergeant looked up, surprised that it had been so long ago, then he bent back to his task. ‘What time would that be?’
‘Must have been about twenty to nine, for I just had to deliver one at the bottom of the Lane before I went back to the shop to leave my bag. I was in the school playground just before the bell went at five to.’
Black was writing in a methodical, careful manner, and the boy paused, to give him time to catch up.
‘I thought she might be ill, ’cos she’s usually up long before I get here, so I looked in her bedroom window first. Her bed had been made, but I couldn’t see her anywhere, so I had a look in her living room, as well. She wasn’t there, either.’ Willie was relishing his starring role.
‘Did you tell anyone about it at that time?’
‘No, you see, I was a bit behind with my round, so I just carried on. But I did notice her fire wasn’t on, so I told Miss Wheeler when I went back.’
‘Ah!’ The sergeant’s Biro was moving much more quickly now. ‘Do you know if she did anything about it?’
‘She said she’d tell Derek . . . er . . . Constable Paul, but when I asked her at half past four, she said she hadn’t seen him all day. I think she was too scared of Miss Souter to do anything.’
‘I see. What time would you say it was when you delivered the evening papers here?’
Willie considered. ‘I’d say it was about twenty past five, but you can check Mrs Wakeford’s phone call to the police station, because she phoned as soon as I told her about the milk.’
‘Thank you, Willie.’ John Black turned to the woman, now sitting upright in her seat. ‘Have you anything to add to what Willie’s told me, Mrs Wakeford?’
‘It was her own arsenic that killed her.’ The whispered words seemed to be forced out of her.
The Biro hovered for a moment. ‘Arsenic? Where on earth did Janet Souter get hold of arsenic?’
‘She got it from Davie Livingstone for killing the rats in her garden, and she went round boasting about it. Anybody with a grudge against her could have done it.’
A sense of disquiet made the sergeant feel very much at a loss. ‘Ah, yes . . . well . . . but a grudge isn’t the usual reason for committing murder. It needs something far stronger than a grudge to drive a person, or persons, to those lengths.’ He stared at her intently, and she squirmed under his scrutiny.
‘At least, you know now how she died,’ she said, on the defensive. ‘That should save you time in your investigations.’
‘Where did Davie get the arsenic?’
‘They used it in the glass factory where he worked before he retired. He took some home for the rats in his garden.’
A short silence indicated that the sergeant was rather unsure of what to do next, but his puzzled face suddenly cleared. ‘Why are you so positive that it was the arsenic that killed her, Mrs Wakeford? Do you know something about her death?’
She looked more agitated than ever, and bit her lip.
‘Come now,’ Black persisted. ‘You’d better tell me whatever it is you think you know. We’ll find it all out eventually.’
Her eyes looked helplessly at him before she burst out, ‘I didn’t want to have to tell you this, and it’s maybe not true, but Janet Souter told me, last Sunday night, that her two nephews were trying to kill her. She said they’d put arsenic in her flour bin and her sugar bin. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what she said.’ The woman seemed happier now that she’d told him.
The sergeant wasn’t happier. This complication was something he could have done without, but he couldn’t ignore it. In the middle of phrasing his next question in his mind, he became aware that young Willie Arthur was standing, eyes like saucers, drinking in every word that the woman had uttered.
Clearing his throat, he said, ‘Willie, thank you very much for answering my questions so well, but I needn’t keep you here any longer. And Mrs Wakeford has just made a statement which must be kept absolutely confidential, so you must never breathe a word of it to anybody. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Willie’s blissful expression revealed his pleasure at sharing a secret with the police.
‘And Willie,’ John Black added, when the boy turned to go, ‘remember, I’m trusting you.’
‘Yes, sir. You can depend on me. Scouts’ honour.’ His tousled head was held high when he went out.
The sergeant turned to the woman, who was sitting on the edge of her chair nervously. ‘Now, Mrs Wakeford. Tell me everything you know.’
‘If anybody in Tollerton had to end up murdered, I’m glad it was that Miss Souter.’
‘Derek! That’s not a nice way to speak of the dead.’
‘She wasn’t a very nice person, Sergeant.’
‘Even so!’ Police Sergeant John Black drummed his Biro on the counter, and the young constable recognised this sign of deep thought and kept quiet, waiting for the profound utterance which should follow.
Sure enough, in a few minutes, the Sergeant looked up from his contemplation of the blank form in front of him. ‘You’re right, though, Derek. She wasn’t a very nice person,’ he declaimed, with all the wisdom of an oracle.
Derek Paul smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s a soul in the village that’ll be sorry she’s . . .’
‘I wouldn’t say that. She aye made big contributions to all the kirk appeals.’ Black had obviously tried to find at least one saving grace in the character of the dead woman.
Derek snorted. ‘My mother said Miss Souter was trying to buy her way into heaven, for she wouldn’t get in any other way, but she made such a song and dance about it, it wouldn’t work.’
‘There’s aye some sort of appeal,’ the sergeant said, ruefully. ‘My hand never seems to be out of my pocket. If it’s not Oxfam, or a disaster or Save the Children, it’s the Fabric Fund, or the Organ Fund, or some other kind of Fund.’
‘And she went to the kirk every Sunday.’ To the young constable, a non-church-goer, like most of his age group, this was the final proof of a depraved mind.
‘If you went a bit oftener, lad, you’d have more Christian charity.’ Black looked down again. ‘I’d better get this report made out. Name of deceased . . . Miss Janet Souter. Address . . . 2 Honeysuckle Cottages, Ashgrove Lane, Tollerton, Grampian Region. Age . . . How old would you say she was? Eighty?’
The young man grimaced cheekily. ‘Nearer a hundred, I’d say, by the way she spoke sometimes.’
‘Oh no. She wasn’t as old as Mrs Gray down the Lane, and she told the postie it was her ninetieth birthday last Tuesday. I’ll put down eighty, anyway.’
There was silence while the sergeant finished completing the form, then he straightened up. ‘I’d better go back to her cottage and have a proper sniff round. I got such a shock when I found her lying there, nothing else registered, and that business with Mrs Wakeford absolutely shattered me.’
‘Is this your first murder case, Sergeant?’ Derek was rather excited about it, because nothing very interesting ever happened in the area.
John Black frowned. ‘We don’t know yet if it is murder. The doctor was positive it was a heart attack, then Mrs Wakeford said the old lady had been poisoned. Everything would have been plain sailing, if it hadn’t been for that.’
‘So you’ve to wait for the result of the post-mortem to find out the exact cause of death?’
‘To confirm the doctor’s diagnosis, I hope. Where’s my hat?’
The sergeant’s cheesecutter had a habit of finding new places of concealment, but the constable located it under a pile of official communications and held it out.
Black grabbed it ungraciously. ‘You know where I’ll be if anybody needs me?’
‘Yes, Serge
ant.’ Derek Paul was quite happy to be left in sole charge of the police station. Tollerton was no hotbed of crime, and he’d have peace to finish the Courier crossword he’d started that morning. He’d only three clues to solve, so it shouldn’t take him long, though they were a bit tricky.
Outside, John Black placed his hat on his head carefully. Not at an angle, like some of those fancy TV bobbies wore theirs, but square on and well down, as befitted a sergeant with his length of service. He wondered, for a moment, about taking the car. It wasn’t too cold for November, and a brisk walk would do him good, for all the distance he had to go. The bright moonlight swung the balance, so he left his car keys in his pocket and started up the High Street.
‘Good evening, Sergeant.’
‘Oh, hello, Mrs Gill. I didn’t notice you.’ He tipped his hat and would have kept on walking, but the woman stood up, smiling knowingly.
‘You were busy thinking about the murder, I suppose. I could hardly believe it when they told me old Janet Souter had been poisoned. She was asking for trouble, of course, keeping that arsenic in her shed.’
‘Oh?’ He pricked up his ears, hoping for some relevant information. ‘Who told you about that?’
Mrs Gill laughed. ‘She told me herself, last week. She was telling everybody she met. I think it made her feel important, or something, but it backfired on her for she must have put the idea into somebody’s head.’
‘Excuse me, Mrs Gill, but I have to be getting on.’ Black felt quite annoyed, not so much by the unfruitful hindrance, but by the extra doubt the woman had raised in his mind.
James Randall had been quite definite that the old lady had died as a result of myocardial infarction, as he’d called it at first: plain heart-failure, to the layman. Then Mrs Wakeford had upset the applecart with her little contribution, and a second assumption of murder by poisoning made it two too many for the sergeant’s peace of mind.
He strode purposefully along, and was passing the chip shop when the postman came out carrying a fat bundle wrapped in white paper and sending out a very appetising aroma.
Jam and Jeopardy Page 3