Surfeit of Suspects

by George Bellairs

Littlejohn was fascinated by the little lawyer. He seemed possessed of an athlete’s second wind, and went on talking long after his breath should have failed. The magistrates must have been terrified of him.

  ‘…feel I must tell you right away that Mr. Hoop has sent for me more as a friend than as his solicitor. He in no way wishes to obstruct your enquiries. As a matter of fact, he wishes to co-operate to the utmost. The deaths of his co-directors and the serious state of his father’s health, however, have confused him somewhat, and, as he isn’t very familiar with police methods… Well… You understand?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘I’m glad you do. I’ll do my best to make matters easy for you. Please don’t regard me as defending my client. I’ll just sit in at the interrogation and let you get on with it.’

  Littlejohn sighed with relief. Fred Hoop emerged from his corner, dragging his chair behind him and sat near Littlejohn, as though assured by his lawyer that the Superintendent was perfectly harmless and could be patted on the head, like a good dog.

  Littlejohn set about him right away, before Mr. Ash started again.

  ‘Have you any idea what might have caused last night’s explosion and fire, Mr. Hoop?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I wish I had.’

  ‘You know, don’t you, that it seems to have been deliberately done and that blasting powder was used?’

  ‘That’s what the police say. I haven’t any idea why anybody should want to blow the place up. As for blasting powder, well… it beats me. We didn’t keep any in the office… Or anywhere else for that matter. What would we want with blasting powder? It’s a joiners’ shop, not a quarry or a battleship.’

  He looked around at everybody, especially in the direction of Mr. Ash, waiting for an answer. Mr. Ash nodded, as though approving of the rhetorical question.

  ‘It seems very strange to me too, Mr. Hoop. Supposing someone… I say, just supposing. I’m making no insinuations. Supposing someone wished to set fire to the place and collect the insurance…’

  Fred Hoop leapt to his feet, livid, and began to thrash about with his arms.

  ‘I’ve heard that said several times before this mornin’. It’s been insinuated that I’ve done it. Well… It’s a damned lie. I never…’

  Mr. Ash raised a languid, well-manicured hand in the direction of Fred.

  ‘Don’t get so upset, Fred. The Superintendent emphasised that he was making no insinuations. Let him ask his questions. If any question or answer isn’t fair or permissible, I’ll tell you. That’s what I’m here for.’

  Hoop ceased to effervesce and cast a grateful look upon his lawyer.

  ‘Thanks, Hartley. I appreciate that.’

  He turned to Littlejohn.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I was merely making a comment, not an accusation. I was going to say that, even if someone had arson in mind, either for insurance purposes or even for revenge or spite, they’d hardly have blown the place up with dynamite. And why the office, which is a minor part of the company’s buildings and containing nothing, presumably, but records and a few items of furniture? They’d have set fire to the main buildings or the timber-yard.’

  ‘A good point,’ said Mr. Hartley Ash to Fred.

  ‘We’re therefore inclining to the idea that there was something personal about it. In other words, whoever committed the crime was intent on blowing up… or, to put it more plainly, murdering one or all of the occupants of the office.’

  Fred Hoop’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Murder? That’s ridiculous. Who’d want to murder Dick Fallows, Jack Piper, or John Willie Dodd…?’

  Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, thought Cromwell to himself.

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what we’ve got to find out. What were they doing there at that time, sir?’

  Fred Hoop looked nettled. He was supposed to know all the answers about Excelsior Joinery affairs, but this one beat him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said vaguely, trying to pass it off. ‘Dodd must have asked them to meet him about something. Perhaps a problem had cropped up about an order or the work in the factory. In any case, it wasn’t an official directors’ meeting. If it had been, Bugler would have been there taking the minutes. Lucky for him, it wasn’t. In any case, I’d have had to be there. I’m vice-chairman, you see, and with my father being ill, I’d have had to take the chair.’

  ‘To your knowledge, Mr. Hoop, had any of the dead men enemies, or had they been threatened at all recently, in any way whatever?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I suppose you’d know if they had?’

  ‘Of course I would. They were friends, co-directors, always about the place. I know all that goes on at the factory. I’d have got to know if there’d been anything like that.’

  Littlejohn wondered. Hoop wasn’t the sort he’d care to confide in, whatever anybody else’s inclination might be. Too cocky, excitable, and a bit stupid.

  ‘The relations between all the directors were amicable?’

  ‘Certainly. Why not?’

  ‘Hasn’t the company been having financial troubles, sir? If that’s the case, it might have stirred up an atmosphere of irritability, perhaps even recrimination.’

  ‘Who’s been talking? Who’s been casting reflections on the credit and solvency of the firm?’

  Hoop looked in the direction of Mr. Hartley Ash as though wondering whether or not to commence suit for slander. Mr. Ash thought that perhaps he ought to say something.

  ‘Excuse me interrupting, Superintendent, but have you any specific information about the financial state of Excelsior Joinery Company. If so, I’d like to know the source of it, although you’ll probably refuse to divulge it…’

  ‘You know as well as I do, sir, that it’s known all over the town. When you have a bunch of workmen wondering where their past week’s wages are coming from, you can hardly expect talk about the company’s solvency not to circulate.’

  ‘Thank you. Go on.’

  ‘I believe that, although he was officially secretary, John Willie Dodd had a major share in the direction and administration of the firm.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot considering you’ve only been here a few hours. I’m managing director, and the policy of the company rests with me, subject to the overall approval of the board of directors.’

  Hoop closed his eyes and puffed out his chest a bit, trying to convince them all of his status and authority.

  ‘Didn’t Dodd, however, travel about, booking orders, buying timber, generally representing the company to outsiders? You, sir, I take it, had charge of the manufacturing side.’

  Hoop looked happier now. This was, to him, a very satisfactory compromise, which maintained his dignity.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Outside, the business of the court was going on. Figures kept passing the windows on their ways to and from the bench. You could almost give them a label. Erring motorists, deflated hooligans, victims of matrimonial quarrels, including a man with a black eye, surrounded by what appeared to be all his relatives…

  ‘Who looked after the finances?’

  ‘The board. What’s that got to do with the case?’

  ‘Perhaps quite a lot.’

  Mr. Ash nodded, but in a fashion which indicated that Littlejohn had better mind his Ps and Qs.

  ‘Well, the board was responsible for that.’

  ‘Who was their spokesman, say, in banking matters?’

  Mr. Hartley Ash jerked his head suddenly. Ready to pounce on Littlejohn if he went too far.

  ‘The secretary, of course. Who else?’

  ‘Were you overdrawn at the bank?’

  Littlejohn paused for Mr. Ash’s protest. It came.

  ‘You have no authority to ask that question, Superintendent. I recommend my client not to answer. It i
s quite irrelevant.’

  ‘I can find out, sir.’

  ‘Not without an order from the court, which will, in the present circumstances, be difficult to obtain.’

  ‘Then let me answer the question myself, sir. There is an overdraft, it has reached the limit of arrangements, and the bank is not prepared to grant any more.’

  ‘I can see, Superintendent, you have been talking with someone who’s been indiscreet. I shall have to…’

  ‘Mr. Ash. The indiscretion seems to have been committed by the directors themselves. Even their workmen in the street can tell you that there’s an overdraft, that the company depends on the bank for its continuance, and that the directors have been asking for more. Some can even tell you how much they owe.’

  ‘Why, then, did you ask my client the question?’

  ‘I thought it would be more seemly for him to tell me, instead of me to tell him. However, that didn’t seem to be the way he wanted it.’

  Mr. Hartley Ash yawned.

  ‘Will you wish to interview my client much longer, Superintendent? I’ve another case in court and I’ll have to be leaving you very soon.’

  Fred Hoop began to lose confidence.

  ‘I’m not saying anything else if you’re not here, Hartley. I said so before you came and I’m saying it again.’

  Littlejohn kept his patience by taking out his pouch and slowly filling his pipe.

  ‘You talk as if we were accusing you of a crime, Mr. Hoop, instead of seeking your co-operation in a case which very much concerns you. I suggest before Mr. Ash leaves us, you tell me something about your co-directors of the firm and how they came to own the place.’

  ‘I’ve about ten minutes, and then I must go,’ said Mr. Ash wearily, as though, without some warning, Hoop would talk for the rest of the day and far into the night.

  ‘What did you want to know?’

  ‘There are… or were… five directors. How did you come by the company?’

  Littlejohn opened the file which Tattersall had given him. Most of it was there, but Littlejohn wished to hear it all again. He wanted Hoop’s own tale.

  ‘It was a family business before we took over. Henry Jonas and Son. There seems to have been about four Henrys, father and son, ever since it started. The last Mr. Henry dropped dead in the works nearly six years since. He’d no sons and his two daughters wanted to sell the business. Five of us clubbed together and bought it. It had been a very profitable firm… a money-spinner… in its day, but we found out after we bought it that it had been run down and made very small profits for a few years. The accountant who sold it to us for the Misses Jonas, diddled us… It was a swindle. He knew that without a Jonas in the company a lot of the goodwill would go. We began to make losses from the start. We all put our backs in it, but we’d bitten off more than we could chew…’

  Littlejohn liked Mr. Hoop’s metaphors and the way he tried to make out that what seemed to be obvious incompetence in running the firm was really due to a swindle in the accounts when they’d taken over.

  Mr. Hartley Ash was sighing and looking at his watch again. No use going through the rigmarole which Bugler had already given and suffering from Fred Hoop’s bitter commentaries.

  ‘How old was Dodd?’

  ‘Eh?’

  Fred’s line of thought had suddenly been switched and he had to readjust himself.

  ‘How old was Dodd?’

  ‘About fifty-five. If you want the ages of the rest – and I can’t see what good it’ll do you – if you want the ages you can have them. My father’s seventy-nine; and Fallows was nearly seventy. Is that all?’

  ‘Had they any families employed in the works?’

  ‘No. I’ve a brother in Canada and a sister married and living in London. Piper had a son killed in the war and a daughter, and Fallows had no children. Are you satisfied?’

  ‘Thank you. Now if I return to finance, don’t go up in the air, Mr. Hoop. I merely ask as it may be important in this case.’

  Hoop gave him a guarded, almost challenging look and Mr. Ash began to sit up and take notice again.

  ‘I told you before, I know that you depended on the bank for running capital to finance the business. As for buying the company from the Jonas family, you all subscribed to a pool from which the firm was purchased. Right?’

  ‘Of course it’s right. How else could we do it?’

  ‘The money came from your own funds? Savings and so on? Were there any other shareholders?’

  ‘Answer, Fred. No harm in it.’

  Had Mr. Ash not butted in with advice, Hoop might have resisted.

  ‘The directors found the bulk of the money. Their wives found a bit, too, and received shares for it.’

  ‘When the bank refused to find more money, you had to find it yourselves, I presume.’

  ‘Yes. We and a few friends collected some loan money. We ought to have gone into liquidation then, instead of throwing good money after bad, but Dodd was so persuasive. He said we’d turned the corner and would soon be making good profits. He fooled us. The loan money went the way of the rest. Now we’re in Queer Street good and proper, as you seem to be well aware.’

  ‘Did Dodd have a good share in the company?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. Of the cash subscribed, Dodd provided about one tenth. He’d no money of his own. He’d always lived extravagantly and he borrowed his share from his wife’s mother. We ought never to have allowed him in with us and certainly not given him his head the way we did. But he’d been Mr. Henry Jonas’s right-hand man, knew all the customers, knew the timber trade, and was well up in the accounts and such like. We couldn’t do without him at the time, so we let him in cheap.’

  Mr. Ash rose to his feet with a bored expression.

  ‘I must be going.’

  Littlejohn got in a farewell question.

  ‘When Mr. Ash came in, Mr. Hoop, you were discussing with Inspector Cromwell why your house was almost empty of furniture…’

  ‘Discussin’…? I like that. He was trying to browbeat me into telling him why I’ve sent the best of my furniture to my mother-in-law’s at Brantwood. Well, I don’t feel compelled to answer the question. It’s not relevant in this case.’

  Mr. Ash’s sallow face became suffused with blood.

  ‘You mean to say that you moved it in spite of my advice. I feel like letting you stew in your own juice, Hoop. It was a very silly thing to do. A futile move. The furniture is your wife’s. Her father gave it to her. If the bank call up your guarantee and take you to court because you can’t find the money, they can on no account seize either your house or your furniture, simply because it’s not yours. It’s your wife’s. You’ve moved all the furniture for nothing.’

  ‘I moved it because I once knew a man who was in a similar fix. The bank took all his goods. Every bloomin’ one. Including the bed. Turned him in the street…’

  ‘Rubbish! In the first place, no bank would do such a thing. For a few sticks of furniture they wouldn’t make their reputation stink before the public… They just wouldn’t do it, even if they could.’

  ‘Well, I know better. And while you’re at it, my furniture isn’t just a few sticks. It’s worth hundreds of pounds…’

  It was Littlejohn’s turn this time to tell the rest he must be going, and he gathered up Cromwell, the files and their other belongings and left Hoop and Ash quarrelling furiously about points of law and other more personal matters.

  Four

  The Gatekeeper

  The long new High Street of the new town of Evingden was brightly illuminated by modern flashy pale-blue tubes, but these did not spread very far. The lighting system deteriorated as the distance from the town hall increased and by the time it reached Green Lane, it was reduced to old gas lamps. The latter were a kind of ancient monument, surviving in memory of Alderman Maypole, fo
rmer mayor and chairman of the local gas board. After the glare of the satellite part of the town, the lamps of the suburbs seemed to shed a soft pale-green light over the silent street and its old houses.

  The way back to London passed near Green Lane and Littlejohn made a diversion to see what the place looked like after dark. It was deadly quiet. Lights shone behind the damaged windows, but there wasn’t a soul moving. It was as if they were all expecting another explosion at any time. In fact, someone had thought out and circulated an alarming theory that there was a sort of Jack the Ripper around, using sticks of dynamite instead of a knife. On the strength of this tale, two spinsters who lived alone and a man who believed in taking no risks had gone to stay with relatives under the bright lights of the new town housing estates.

  One solitary electric light was visible shining over the Excelsior timber-yard. The whole of this large storage area was surrounded by a wall, built years ago when such erections were much cheaper. The top of the wall was covered by cement sown with broken bottles and further fortified by a cage of rusty barbed wire. The only entrance was in Green Lane, a large wooden gate, guarded by a gatehouse.

  The man inside the gatehouse was normally a little cheerful chap, but now he was very worried. He greeted Littlejohn and Cromwell very civilly and almost at once began to confide his troubles to Littlejohn.

  ‘Have you any idea what’s goin’ to happen to the Excelsior when all this is over? Are they goin’ to carry on or will they go bust and the whole show come under the ’ammer?’

  His visitors might have been a couple of accountants or fortune-tellers instead of detectives.

  The gatekeeper, whose name was Wood, then seemed to realise that it wasn’t good manners to discuss his problems with two strangers until the formalities of introductions had been gone through.

  ‘Are you two gentlemen the auditors come to see what’s been happenin’ lately with the firm?’

  ‘No. We’re detectives investigating last night’s catastrophe. I’m Superintendent Littlejohn and this is Inspector Cromwell.’

  There was a small table nearby at which the little man had been busy when they entered. It was laid with a large teapot, a plate on which stood a soggy steak pudding from a tin, and half a loaf with a large piece of butter on a wax paper beside it.