The Case of the Seven Whistlers Read online

  The Case of the Seven Whistlers

  A Thomas Littlejohn Mystery

  George Bellairs

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  1

  THE SEVEN WHISTLERS

  ON the last day of her holiday at Fetling-on-Sea, Miss Selina Adlestrop rose early to buy antiques. On the previous evening, after it had closed, she had seen in the bow window of a curiosity shop the very oak chest she had been hunting for years. She had hardly slept a wink all night lest someone should buy it before her. She was on the doorstep at opening time on the morrow.

  The shop itself stood in a narrow street which climbed uphill from the fishing quay to the modern part of the town. There were about sixty steps in the street which gently mounted the incline. Seven steps, then a cobbled slope; then seven more steps … And so on, to the top. Tall houses with walled gardens flanked it, and the trees from the gardens hung over it and interlaced their leaves in the summer. Very pleasant. Miss Adlestrop was very fond of the street. It reminded her of Paris. She had once spent a week in Paris on a conducted tour, since when, as with most sentimentalists, the place had been mixed up in a lot of fantastic dreams. She, dear romantic spinster, was not alone in such visions. Hard-headed business men have been known to dissolve into hogwash in similar circumstances. One of them wanted to buy the street entirely and build an arcade of olde Englyshe shoppes in it. Fortunately it belonged to the Corporation of the town, who knew better than to part with it …

  Half way up the slope stood the antique shop of Messrs. Grossman and Small. Over the door swung a painted sign bearing the picture of seven birds arranged in a triangle, and the superscription, “THE SIGN OF THE SEVEN WHISTLERS,” Grossman and Small, Prop’rs. The birds themselves were plovers, although you wouldn’t have thought it to look at them. The man who first hung the sign had a sense of humour. He was a Jew, named Feinmann. You could make out his name dimly beneath those of the present proprietors, who had had it painted out when they took over. The Whistlers is the legendary name for the Wandering Jews and Mr. Feinmann chuckled as he selected it for his trade sign. He only got half a tale, however. The rest is that they are birds of ill-omen. Perhaps had poor Mr. Feinmann known that he wouldn’t have enjoyed the joke so much. He used to sit among his Sheraton chairs and Welsh dressers reading the Song of Songs, for he loved a young Jewess with eyes like a timid deer. And when she ran away with the man from the souvenir shop higher up, Mr. Feinmann drank salts of lemon. That is how his name came to be painted out …

  As we were saying, Miss Adlestrop stood under the painted sign before the shop door was unlocked. Inside, Messrs. Grossman and Small could be seen circulating among the old furniture and lovely china, glass and pottery in which they specialised. The windows and door were glazed in old green bottle-glass and behind it the partners looked like a large and a small fish floating in a clear sea.

  Miss Adlestrop had had dealings with The Seven Whistlers in the past. The proprietors’ names seemed somehow to have got mixed up, however, like the displaced tags on the relics of a bargain sale.

  Mr. Grossman was a tiny man of about five feet two, with small hands and feet and the slim figure and grace of movement of a ballet dancer. His thin sensitive face, clean and the colour of pale terra cotta, was topped by glistening white hair. His taste in glass, pottery and old lace was fastidious and impeccable. He left the bulk of the cumbersome furniture to his colleague, Small.

  Small was an enormous man with a huge paunch which hung between his knees when he was sitting. He had solid limbs like the branches of an old tree and a round florid face. His head was shaped like an orange and topped by a brown, ill-fitting wig. His thick, sloppy lips, large Roman nose, small shifty eyes and ill-fitting clothes finished-off an appearance more like that of a shady broker’s man than an expert in old furniture and prints.

  How this incongruous pair got together Miss Adlestrop couldn’t even guess.

  She much preferred Mr. Grossman. Mr. Small drank heavily, as his complexion and breath advertised. On the other hand, Mr. Grossman never touched a drop. He had confessed as much to Miss Adlestrop once in the excitement of selling her some hollow-stemmed champagne glasses for far more than they were worth. His father had drunk himself to death, he whispered, and he was afraid he might do the same himself if he started. Miss Adlestrop’s cousin Jonas had died that way. He had tried to throw some heliotrope snakes through the window of his bedroom and somehow got mixed up with them and hurled himself down three storeys as well as the snakes. This seemed a bond in common between Miss Adlestrop and Mr. Grossman.

  She had an idea that in some way Mr. Grossman and Mr. Small were relatives, but she never discovered how. The link between them seemed to be their assistant, Mrs. Doakes, a tall, muscular, good-looking woman with bleached hair, painted nails, a slight cast in one eye when you gave her a straight look, and a way of exciting men whilst putting women out of countenance. This woman called both partners ‘uncle’ and behaved as if she owned the shop. Miss Adlestrop, who suspected that Mrs. Doakes was no better than she should be, always gave her a wide berth.

  “The box?” said Mr. Grossman, prancing up to Miss Adlestrop, shaking her by the hand like a long lost friend and with the other adjusting a Dresden figure which had got too near the edge of the table on which it was standing. “The box? Thirty-five pounds, Miss Adlestrop. A bargain!”

  He rubbed his palms together like an acrobat about to do an exacting trick, and rocked himself to and fro on his heels and toes.

  Miss Adlestrop turned large astonished eyes on the dealer. She had a small button nose, like a whiteheart cherry, little heart-shaped lips and a timid, faltering manner which stood her in very good stead and hid her shrewdness in striking a bargain. She began to handle Toby jugs, Staffordshire salt-glaze figures, and an old punchbowl decorated with red and green sprays of apples and plums.

  “It’s an old and very interesting piece,” persisted Mr. Grossman, who was up to all the tricks of cunning buyers. “Quite unique of its kind. It belonged to Mr. Mark Curwen who died a month or so ago. Ask any local collector about Mark Curwen’s box. He’ll tell you it’s over three hundred years old …”

  “Any worm-holes in it?” demanded Miss Adlestrop, who had already, in her own way, made quite sure there weren’t.

  Mr. Grossman raised his eyes to heaven and vehemently denied it.

  The shop was filling up. Trippers with plenty of money and little in the normal way to spend it on were rummaging round for expensive souvenirs, silver tea services and what not, to take home and give or show their admiring friends. Two sailors were buying trinkets from Mrs. Doakes who was displaying her physical charms as well as rings and brooches. One of the sailors was obviously impressed and looked ready to ask her if she was free after business hours …

  “Twenty-five pounds!” suddenly said Miss Adlestrop.

  Mr. Grossman again raised his well-kept hands in horror, and gracefully recoiled taking care to avoid a table crowded with old sherry glasses.

  “I’m sorry; thirty is the least we can take. Even then we’d have to sacrifice all our profit on the deal …”

  Battle was properly joined. It was like a boxing match. They argued, were silent, pondered and retired to consult their own minds. The bout was punctuated by Mr. Grossman’s being called away several times by other customers. These pauses, like those granted by the ringside gong, gave the protagonists time to gather their energies for further efforts …

  As Miss Adlestrop wrote a cheque for twenty-seven pounds ten shillings, Mrs. Doakes and Mr. Small smiled at their colleague behind her back …

  Mark Curwen’s box had been knocked down at the auction to Mr. Grossman for fifteen pounds.
It had seen better days. But Grossman and Small, at the sign of The Seven Whistlers, knew all about that. They filled in the worm-holes with boot polish, replaced one of the legs which was suffering from dry rot, by a more solid one, and gave the whole a good wax-polishing.

  Miss Adlestrop descended the steep street well satisfied. She thought she had won the contest, and almost fell headlong a time or two through absent-mindedly pondering where she should put her new box, and seeing visions of numerous admiring neighbours standing before it awestruck.…

  Mr. Grossman had promised to see the chest safely on its-way for delivery at Miss Adlestrop’s home in Hartsbury. She hardly cared to trust it to the tender mercies of the railway. Or of a carrier for that matter. But she couldn’t carry it home herself, so had to be content. The Seven Whistlers had promised to pack it securely and cover it for transport in plenty of good hessian covers.

  Her head on one side and still a bit doubtful about leaving her prize to the tender mercies of a third party, Miss Adlestrop made her way back to the sedate private hotel she visited twice every year, and spent the rest of the morning packing …

  At The Seven Whistlers Mr. Grossman and Mr. Small were quarrelling. They were always squabbling about something …

  2

  WHEEL IN THE BODY

  “RICHARD! Richard! Come ’ere and give an ’and …” Sam Biles, porter, head cook and bottle-washer at Harts-bury Station, yelled across the line to his underling, a fat youth in a shabby blue suit which he had outgrown, engaged in carrying boxes of day-old chicks from the platform to the luggage-office.

  Richard Cramp slowly deposited a chirping parcel on a bench, slowly climbed down on the line, slowly crossed it and slowly levered himself upwards to Sam’s side.

  “An’ get a move on, young Dick.”

  To call Richard Cramp, Dick, was an insult. His mother said so, and what his mother said was right. Richard it was, after his mother’s cousin with money in Australia, and Richard it had to be.

  Young Cramp was undecided whether or not to give notice. He had been measured for a railway uniform and handed-in the requisite number of clothing coupons, but his panoply still hadn’t arrived after three months’ waiting. He suspected that the stationmaster at Fetling had bought a new Sunday rig-out at his expense. And now “Dick”!

  “Richard,” he said to his superior officer and glared.

  “Don’t be insulent,” replied Sam, who regarded Richard’s education very seriously, for he had attended the village school with his father and took it hard when the latter fell and drowned himself in a vat of stout at the local brewery. Judging from the amount of such stuff Cramp senior had disposed of in his lifetime, death came in a kindly congenial way …

  “Don’t be insulent. Give an ’and with this box. The things that Adlestrop woman buys and burdens us with … Addlepate she oughter be called. This thing met be made of iron or somethin’. It’s as ’eavy as lead …”

  Richard scratched his head at this mixed problem in specific gravity and took one end of the load.

  “Oo! Cripes!!!”

  The two strained and groaned and hoisted and got the large burden on a truck. It was Mark Curwen’s box, sewn up in sacking and packing, and addressed to Miss Adlestrop, Brook Cottage, Hartsbury.

  “Now, now, Richard. Langwidge! Langwidge! And you come along wi’ me and help carry it in the ’ouse. An’ no hanging round for tips. That’s my privilege … me bein’ senior man o’ the two and I’ll see you don’t suffer for it …”

  “Umph …”

  “An’ wot, might I ask, is the meanin’ o’ that noise you jest made?”

  In the very middle of Miss Adlestrop’s At Home for the Hartsbury Women’s Guild, the railway company arrived with their precious cargo, Richard pulling and Sam pushing and balancing the box on the truck.

  Inside the house a dozen or so women were knitting, sewing and gossiping, mostly the latter, whilst in the kitchen an elderly maid was preparing a light tea with the help of a hired village girl, who was very good looking in a rustic fashion and to whom Florence, the maid, was giving what she thought good advice on affairs of the heart. This wisdom was entirely negative, for Florence was a man-hater and regarded every member of the opposite sex as a deceiver and seducer.

  She put a dose of margarine on a piece of bread and then set about scraping it off again.

  “There’s ’ardly a house in this village where you couldn’t point to some hidden tragedy or other, entirely due to the deceitfulness of men …”

  She jerked her head forward like a snake striking and glared at the girl as though she had already caught her in some misdemeanour.

  “Yes, Miss Furlong,” said Anne, giving her superior officer a wide-eyed look which embodied in eighteen and a half years more worldly wisdom than Florence had accumulated in fifty.

  “And don’t stand there gawkin’. Put that teapot to warm …”

  Whereupon the railway truck appeared and caused differing reactions in the two feminine bosoms.

  To Florence, Sam Biles, a widower, was the devil in disguise; an amorous beast who had once tasted matrimonial blood and was on the prowl for more. To Anne, young Richard would have been a bit of all right if he hadn’t looked as though he’d once put on a suit that fitted him and then inflated himself until it retreated half way up his arms and legs and strained at every button.

  In the living quarters of the cottage, the Dorcases ceased work, and fourteen of them gathered round the window to watch Sam and his assistant toil and moil with their burden. These two struggled, grumbled and only with difficulty straightened their knees under the load. They certainly couldn’t straighten their backs.

  Over the red tiles of the kitchen the bearers scuffled their way to the sitting-room.

  Another figure appeared from the scullery at the back. A thin, scraggy, tough-looking woman who did for Miss Adlestrop daily. Whereas Florence and Anne were bare-headed, the char wore a shapeless black hat and worked in it. This was a form of below-stairs etiquette closely akin to the ecclesiastical rule which forbids a female in church bareheaded. A sort of graduate’s cap worn to show that the daily help didn’t live in and as such was independent to come and go as she liked, and wearing headgear as a reminder of the fact.

  “’Ellish ’eavy,” ground out Sam, forgetting himself.

  “Mister Biles!!!” gasped Miss Adlestrop suddenly materialising. “How dare you swear in my house?”

  And she dismissed him without a tip to punish him.

  “Come you ’ere at once’t and get the paste in these sangwidges,” shouted Florence to her aide-de-camp, for her eagle eye had spotted Anne exchanging amorous glances with the fat boy …

  In the centre of the village, a hundred yards or so away, P.C. Donald Puddiphatt stood perspiring from every pore and puffing like a traction engine as he argued with Seth Hale, the local joiner and undertaker. They were an ill-assorted couple. One looked to have been poured into his uniform which fitted him skin-tight owing to his ever increasing size; the other was nearly as fleshless as a skeleton with old clothes hanging from his bony body like washing on a clothes horse.

  They were talking politics. Behind them on the wall were two warring posters,

  VOTE FOR BLANKET

  The Man you Can Trust

  He’s Served You Well

  VOTE FOR GALLOPER

  The Labour Candidate

  Let’s Have a Change This Tune

  Next Thursday See That It’s

  BLANKET, Wilbraham …… X

  Galloper, Joe …………………—

  Away with Complacency. So Next Thursday:

  Blanket, W.…………………—

  GALLOPER, Joe …………… X

  The bobby had thrust his helmet on the back of his head to cool his brow on which the sweat looked to be bubbling at boiling point. The joiner wore a battered billycock which his ears prevented from falling over his eyes.

  “Now, my old father allus said as the Tori
es …” intoned P.C. Puddiphatt.

  This was his modest way of expressing his own profound and original thoughts. His parent, who had peacefully lain in the churchyard for ten years or more, never got a word in edgeways during his wife’s lifetime, for she never stopped talking even in her sleep, and he died immediately after her, some said from the shock of silence.

  “Now my old father allus said …”

  We shall never know what he said à propos Blanket and his kind, for a stream of yelling women poured out of Brook Cottage, surrounded the constable and bore him back and indoors by sheer weight of numbers.

  And somehow, Seth Hale was included in the throng and carried along with the bobby, like a piece of waste paper set dancing and jigging and drawn in its path by an express train passing through a station.

  As he entered the living room of the house, P.C. Puddiphatt gasped and his eyes slowly emerged from their sockets and looked like taking on a separate and astonished existence of their own apart from his body. The place was a bedlam. Women screaming, laughing, weeping. Three bodies, including that of Miss Adlestrop, lying on the floor, with Mrs. Hollis, the one with the hat, smacking faces, administering water, smelling salts and sal volatile.

  “All about wun little body!” Mrs. Hollis kept muttering. She was the parochial layer-out of corpses and hence rather contemptuous of death in all its forms.

  Puddiphatt, followed by the joiner, who looked more like a skeleton than ever, and performed a sort of danse macabre in the policeman’s huge wake, gazed around in bewilderment. Was it a case of mass slaughter?

  Mrs. Hollis soon put them right. Leaving her patients, she strode with great determination to the oak chest which stood amid a litter of sackcloth and unconscious women, and flung back the lid.

  The constable gingerly approached and peered cautiously inside the box, as though expecting a swarm of troubles to fly out and smother him. He gasped and clawed at the chest for support …

  Inside, with his knees bent and his head lolling on them like an exhausted child sleeping, was little Mr. Grossman!