Murder Adrift Read online

  Murder Adrift

  George Bellairs

  This is a work of fiction, the characters are entirely imaginary, and no reference is made or intended to any person, alive or dead

  Contents

  Chapter 1. Murder Adrift

  Chapter 2. The Mayor of Fordinghurst

  Chapter 3. Strange Interview

  Chapter 4. Family Business

  Chapter 5. Dinner-table Gossip

  Chapter 6. The Second Victim

  Chapter 7. Medical Opinion

  Chapter 8. Family Quarrels

  Chapter 9. The Sorrows of Sam Pollitt

  Chapter 10. The Harbour Master

  Chapter 11. A Motley Crew

  Chapter 12. Too Many Culprits

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter 1

  Murder Adrift

  Somewhere In the town a clock struck twelve. Then a carillon hesitantly began to struggle through O, God our Help in Ages Past. There was hardly anybody about in the sunlit streets of Fordinghurst, squatting snugly on the coast of Eastshire as though waiting quietly for something to happen.

  It was high tide and the bunch of pleasure boats tied up in the little port rose proudly in their new paint and polished metal above the sides of the quay. On the decks of one or two the owners were still polishing, or snoozing in chairs with their drinks beside them.

  The customs officer was standing under the Royal arms at the door of his office searching the sea with a pair of binoculars as though out to catch any suspicious craft.

  Without any spectators, a little comic turn was going on in the direction of the police station at one end of the waterfront. Impeded by a dog on a piece of rope a constable who had arrested it as a stray was on his way to impound it in the official dog-kennel.

  The dog, which was a mixture of many shaggy breeds, was resisting arrest by winding the rope round and round the constable’s legs in a sort of maypole dance, to free himself from which the bobby was obliged to perform a series of pirouettes in the opposite direction. Finally the pair reached the pound behind the police station, and the animal, anticipating good bed and board, entered it without more ado, except to lick the constable’s flushed face all over to show it was a friendly contest after all.

  Suddenly the customs officer froze on his spot, squinting tensely at the distant sea. Then he hurried to the end of the jetty, looked again, and made for the police station.

  ‘There’s something wrong with the Mary Jane. She’s adrift off Stye Head,’ he told the sergeant as he burst in.

  He was so dramatic about it that the sergeant and a constable rushed out bareheaded to confirm his statement. The binoculars were passed from hand to hand, and they all seemed convinced.

  It would have been like using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut if they had called out the lifeboat, so the customs officer and P.C. Gudgeon, who had now recovered from his capers with the dog, were sent off to investigate in a second-hand motor-boat, used by the local fishmonger for off-shore fishing and tending his lobster-pots.

  In that strange telepathic way in which anything amiss gets around, the incident soon gathered a crowd. Half a dozen men appeared from nowhere then a dozen, some whispering, some shouting. The boats in the port became alive with occupants, rising from decks and from the depths. All intent on watching the receding fish-boat, now almost at its destination. The fishmonger appeared, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, a blue striped apron tied round his waist and an old straw boater, which his father wore before him, on his head. He at once entered the police station to demand to know why his boat had been taken without permission. He quickly emerged full of his own importance and was surrounded by a crowd of eager enquirers.

  ‘It’s like this . . . ’

  And he told them what it was all about and a lot more besides, to make them believe he was well-in with the authorities. The news passed round and some of those ashore shouted the story across the water to those on the boats. Those with binoculars recited the sequence of events to those who hadn’t any.

  ‘They’re drawing alongside the Mary Jane . . . ’

  There was a short hush as though the men in the fishmonger’s boat were likely to meet resistance or something worse.

  ‘Gudgeon’s climbing aboard.’

  A loafer who couldn’t wait for news snatched the glasses from another and glued them to his face. The owner snatched them back and there was a brief quarrel.

  ‘What the hell’s Gudgeon doing?’

  The crowd was getting restless because the bobby was taking too long to reappear.

  ‘Here he is . . . He looks a bit sick. What’s up?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Garnett’s throwing Gudgeon a rope . . . They’re taking the Mary Jane in tow.’

  There was a noise like a muffled cheer from the crowd. Action at last!

  The fishmonger’s boat manoeuvred herself nimbly into position, the rope tightened, and she made for land tugging her burden behind her.

  As the boats neared the shore Gudgeon began to shout through his hands. They couldn’t hear him at first and then the message came clear.

  ‘Get a doctor and an ambulance. Heck Todd’s aboard the Mary Jane. He’s been shot. He’s dead.’

  Everybody knew Heck Todd, a wholesale wine merchant in Fordinghurst. There was a grim silence and one by one, led by the fishmonger who removed his straw hat, heads were bared. Then some of the crowd broke ranks and about a dozen of them rushed off in all directions for doctors and ambulances.

  Some of the little pleasure boats put out and went to meet the approaching pair and a little flotilla accompanied them to the jetty. The ambulance had arrived and the police doctor was there and he boarded the Mary Jane at once. The police sergeant joined him and they disappeared below. After a long wait the ambulance attendants were signalled and climbed aboard with a stretcher.

  A thin hungry-looking man in a raincoat accompanied by a photographer pushed his way to the front. He was the reporter on the Fordinghurst Advertiser. He had been busy taking notes and now tried to board the boat but a young police cadet barred his way.

  ‘Look here. I’m from the press.’

  ‘Sh . . . ’

  The ambulance men carried off the body, closed it in their vehicle and rushed it away to the mortuary. The photographer’s camera clicked as he contorted himself to take his pictures.

  Then all went quiet. At first the crowd followed the ambulance with their eyes and then broke into small chattering knots. Snell, the reporter, bustled away.

  ‘Read all about it in the morning papers,’ he said as he went on his way. ‘Murder in Fordinghurst. That’ll put us in the headlines. Especially as the head of the C.I.D. and the Chief of Police at Headquarters are in hospital. I’ve just heard they’ve both got food poisoning.’

  * * *

  The next day Littlejohn was on the case. The Chief Constable, harried by floods of illegal immigrants and a gelignite explosion at the home of a local bigwig, and with his staff depleted by the sudden illness of two of his top men after an unfortunate dinner party, had appealed to Scotland Yard for help.

  Fordinghurst was not heavily staffed with police and the force there was in charge of Inspector Bradfield an officer of about forty who was, according to his superior, ‘going places’. He was tall and well-built and not well-endowed with a sense of humour. He brooded a bit when he heard that Littlejohn was going to take over the murder business, but soon recovered. He was told that the arrival of the man from London would release him for duties at Headquarters in Portwich, the county town, which consoled him a lot.

  Littlejohn had only a brief idea about the case when he got out of his car at Fordinghurst, bringing with him a junior detective called Hopkinson – known by
his colleagues as Hoppy – who had never worked with him before.

  A man named Hector Todd had been murdered and Bradfield had sent a short memorandum of the affair by special messenger. It consisted of a sort of dramatis personae covering the chief characters in the case and some details of the crime.

  The victim, aged 42, had been shot to death with a small calibre revolver in the cabin cruiser in which he spent all his spare time. The bullet had passed through the aorta and the gun had not been recovered. He was a member of a firm of wine merchants, shipping in bulk from the Continent and blending, bottling and despatching it to retailers all over the country. Todd Brothers and Fish, Ltd., thrived mainly on vin ordinaire, pleasant, cheap varieties, and Hector Todd was joint owner of the business with his brother, Kenneth. There was no Fish in the firm; Fish had provided some initial capital and then died of a stroke in the early days of the company, leaving his name behind as his sole monument.

  Kenneth Todd, the elder brother, aged 47, was the mainspring of the business. He was chairman of the company, which owed its prosperity to his efforts. His brother, Hector, was a cipher, holding the title of sales director, somewhat of a harum-scarum, and retained mainly out of family sentiment.

  Heck Todd was married, Ken was a bachelor, and their mother, widow of the founder of the firm, was still alive.

  Littlejohn found the official report banal and confusing, as though Bradfield had compiled it in a hurry. The characters were like shadows and conveyed nothing to him. He felt unable to get to grips with them until he had seen them in the flesh. He passed the papers, half-read, to Hopkinson, who, while dutifully pretending to read them, was obviously as befogged as Littlejohn by them.

  They arrived in Fordinghurst just after lunch. A small town with a salty breeze, smelling of fish, blowing down the narrow streets. A neat little square with two main thoroughfares and a number of alleys radiating from them.

  They parked their car and asked for the police station. On their way there the few passers-by turned to stare after them and a barber sweeping out his shop greeted them cheerfully. Inside a small supermarket a number of women, visible through the large windows, were radiating round the shop.

  At the end of a narrow lane they found a smaller square with a post office and a police station side by side, facing a green lawn and the local war memorial. There was hardly a soul about. The breeze made the leaves of the surrounding lime trees flicker in the sunshine. As they approached it, they found that on the far side of the police station was the waterfront; the estuary of a small river, the quay, the river basin, with all the assorted craft of a yachting haven riding on the high tide.

  Bradfield was waiting for them in the company of the Chief Constable, a man called Pole, who had arrived to greet Littlejohn.

  Pole hadn’t the air of a police officer at all. He’d once been studying for medicine, but the war came and somehow his career had got mixed up. He had ended up as a policeman. Nor had the offices the atmosphere of a police station. New headquarters were in course of erection and meanwhile the force was occupying a large Georgian house, which had once been a private bank in what had formerly been a fashionable square in the little market town. The original paper was still on the walls, faded green, except where the furniture had once stood. There it was a darker colour indicating the shape and size of the article. In places where pictures and mirrors had once hung their shadows were left when they were removed and these rectangles were filled with official posters and illustrated handbills bearing villainous portraits of men wanted for heinous crimes of one sort or another.

  There was an odour of stale tobacco mingled with the smells of boot and floor polish and the mould of old buildings.

  Pole thought he ought to apologise for asking for outside help.

  ‘You wouldn’t think a place like this would suddenly become a centre of crime. Coloured immigrants arriving in the quiet creeks of the coast, which are also used for drug smuggling. There’s been an outbreak of arson in the neighbourhood and somebody planted a bomb in Radley Manor. We’ve been clearing up after a pop and drug festival at Witteringfield, and on top of that lot, we’re now saddled with a murder. As if that wasn’t enough, my two best men are down with food poisoning. The head of our C.I.D. belongs to a wine and dine club in Portwich and they took my Chief Superintendent and his wife to what they called a Costa Brava Dinner. They’ve got about twenty epicures in hospital fasting in bed . . . Where were we . . .?’

  They all looked surprised. As far as the crime went, they hadn’t got anywhere at all.

  ‘Where did the crime occur?’

  Littlejohn thought he’d better make a start.

  ‘We don’t know exactly. The body was found in Heck Todd’s boat. It was discovered drifting out at sea and towed in. The body was in the cabin with a shot in the heart.’

  And Bradfield went on to tell Littlejohn all that had happened around noon on the previous day.

  ‘Was the Mary Jane a large boat?’

  ‘A cabin cruiser. Of its kind, very substantial. Todd was very proud of it. It must have cost him a packet. Where he got the money from nobody seems to know. He’s a wastrel and his brother’s had to get him out of financial trouble a time or two . . . ’

  ‘Yet his brother kept him on in the firm?’

  ‘Yes. Heck was one of the directors and still held a job there. Their father started the business and did well in it. Ken, the elder brother, carried on and built up the business even more. If it had rested with Heck they’d have gone bust long ago. He was a layabout and spent too much time messing about in his boat and chasing women. The old man died when the two sons had hardly grown up, and Mrs. Todd was chairman of the company for several years. Now there’s a woman for you!’

  ‘She made a success of the business?’

  ‘As good as any man . . . even better. Reminds you of the great Widow who ran the champagne firm in France . . . What’s the name . . .? Veuve Clicquot. Head of the family, shrewd, knew the business inside out . . . ’

  ‘Is she still in the firm?’

  ‘She’s eighty! Retired on doctor’s orders about a couple of years ago. If you ask me, it was her know-how that made her husband such a success. Her one weak spot seemed to be Heck. It often happens. The mother is fondest of the naughty boy of the family. Ken tolerated him because his mother said so. Otherwise, as I said, Heck would have been out.’

  ‘The body was on the floor of the cabin?’

  ‘Face downwards. He was dead and cold. The doctors said he’d probably been dead twelve hours, roughly, and death had been instant. The gun hasn’t been found yet. It was probably chucked overboard.’

  The Chief Constable, who had been showing signs of impatience, excused himself.

  ‘I’d better be off, Littlejohn. Lot of work to do in the circumstances. Bradfield will see you settled in.’

  He made off and left Bradfield, Littlejohn and Hopkinson together.

  ‘What about fingerprints in the cabin?’

  ‘Lots of them. A real field-day of prints. Todd had held a cocktail party on board the previous Sunday and the cabin hadn’t been polished up afterwards.’

  ‘Have you any theories about what happened?’

  ‘On the face of it, Todd had been killed at sea taking a solitary passenger on a trip. Why they should be sailing about at midnight I can’t think. Perhaps they quarrelled and had a fight and Todd got shot. Then the passenger made off in the dinghy which has an outboard motor. The dinghy hasn’t been found yet, but will probably turn up later. It could have been left in any of the many coves in these parts.’

  ‘Any suspects?’

  ‘Not particularly, so far. It might have been a woman, you know. The crime occurred at night and, as Heck Todd had a reputation for that sort of thing, a luxury boat on a calm night might have been ideal for what he’d got in mind. If we assume that to be true, we’ll have a long procession of suspects. Todd must have had a long list of women in his life.’

  ‘Have
any of them been interviewed?’

  Bradfield rubbed his chin nervously.

  ‘That’s a bit awkward. Heck Todd was married, but one woman wasn’t enough. It’s a wonder his wife didn’t divorce him long ago. Perhaps she was taking her revenge by not giving him his freedom . . . ’

  Bradfield hesitated, putting his thoughts in order.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea. Todd wasn’t running around with a whole flock of women. One at a time, so to speak . . . ’

  As though there was some sort of virtue in Todd’s method!

  ‘ . . . The girl he’s been fancying lately seems to have given him the sack. She eloped with a racing cyclist last week. So Todd might have been giving a new light o’ love a midnight sail with a view to filling the vacant place.’

  ‘You don’t know who the candidate might have been?’

  ‘No. I guess the first moves were made discreetly. Hence the boat trip after dark. Perhaps she proved a bit difficult when she found what Todd was up to and, as they say, defended her virtue.’

  Littlejohn couldn’t help feeling that he was being kept on the outskirts of the case. It was obvious from Bradfield’s manner that the Todds were big people locally and must be treated with respect. Perhaps that was why the Chief Constable had asked for help and his reasons were only excuses to get an independent man on the job.

  There was a pause. Hopkinson, who was in his late twenties, had hitherto been training and this was his first case under a high-ranking officer. He was a university graduate in law, tall, lithe and athletic, and he was proud and eager to make the most of working with Littlejohn. He carried a businesslike brief-case which held a do-it-yourself kit, including fingerprint equipment, magnifying glasses and a small microscope, writing materials, the official manual of instructions, loose-leaf sheets for his notes on the case, and several memoranda on procedure which he had compiled himself during his courses of study.

  Up to now Hopkinson had simply sat-in as an observer. Littlejohn thought it time to give him a chance.