Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Read online

  He looked earnestly in their faces for sympathy and found none.

  ‘I’ll take over. You can see her here. But don’t be long.’

  Rose arrived hesitantly. Littlejohn had never seen her so pale. All the bloom had vanished from her cheeks. There were dark rings round her eyes which made them appear larger.

  ‘Good evening, Rose.’

  She opened her mouth, but speech didn’t come. She looked first at one of them and then at the other, as though she hadn’t expected to find the pair of them.

  ‘What do you want to see me about?’ she said at length.

  She seemed ready to turn and run.

  ‘Come in Rose, and sit down. We don’t want to upset you. We’ve some more questions to ask you, though. We need your help again.’

  Cromwell brought her one of the silly little steel-framed chairs from the corner. There were no others except the swivel chair in front of the battered desk, which was on its last legs. The steel chairs were too small for all of them and seemed to become invisible when they sat on them. The scene was a bit comic, as they looked to be suspended in mid-air without support.

  Rose sat down limply. She seemed to be lost for something to say.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here in my working hours. It creates a bad impression and Mr. Criggan’s not too pleased about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but this is important. You didn’t tell us everything you knew last time we were here, Rose, and a lot of what you did say was half untrue, wasn’t it?’

  She had no resistance left in her, by the looks of her, and she took the rebuke mildly and bit her lip.

  It was obvious she was desperately worried, and had been since they saw her last. She passed her hand across her forehead in a dazed sort of way.

  ‘Have you come to arrest me?’

  ‘Whatever for? You’ve committed no crime, have you?’

  ‘No. All I did was to try to say nothing that would smear Harry’s good name. I was fond of him. He was always a good friend to me. He treated me like a lady instead of a barmaid.’

  ‘He was more than a friend, wasn’t he?’

  Somehow, Littlejohn couldn’t bring himself to ask if Harry had been Rosie’s lover. The expression seemed farcical and out of place when used about Harry, the Don Juan with the naïve ways, old suit, cloth cap and shirt without a collar and the brass head of a stud glinting in the neckband.

  ‘You seem to have found out all about us. Well, I’ll tell you this …’

  She raised her head and looked Littlejohn full in the face with some of her former confidence and energy.

  ‘I’ll tell you this: we’d have been married if circumstances had been different for Harry.’

  ‘We’ll not discuss your personal relations, Rose. We’ll take those for granted. What I want to know is did Harry Quill call at your home on the day he died?’

  She seemed relieved at the commonplace question.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I found him there when I got home at about two o’clock.’

  ‘How long had he been there?’

  ‘About two hours, he said. He used to go to my room and wait for me if I was working. He had a key. He’d made himself comfortable in an armchair and was reading the morning paper with his shoes off. He liked being comfortable.’

  Littlejohn could imagine it. Quite in keeping with Harry.

  ‘Was he drinking stout?’

  Littlejohn had to ask it to complete the picture.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  He had known the answer before it came. He slowly filled and lit his pipe as they talked.

  ‘What time did he leave?’

  ‘I made him a meal. He’d some ham and pickles …’

  Yes; just as expected.

  ‘And then some cheese?’

  She looked surprised.

  ‘That’s right. It sounds as if somebody saw us having our meal. Did they?’

  Littlejohn felt he’d known Harry Quill and his ways and tastes for years.

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘About half-past two. He said he’d some calls to make and that he’d come back on his way home. But he never did. That was the last I saw of him, disappearing down the stairs with his broad smile on his face.’

  She didn’t shed a tear or create any emotional fuss. She just said it calmly, too beaten and confused even to weep.

  ‘What was the business? Did he tell you?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘But you had an idea?’

  She looked here and there wearily. Anywhere but straight at Littlejohn now. She was wondering how much to tell him.

  ‘You’d better tell us all you know this time, Rose. The half-truths you told us last time we saw you have caused us a lot of trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t mean them to …’

  ‘It will be in your best interests to be candid. You can trust us to be discreet.’

  She hesitated no longer. It came out with a rush.

  ‘He said he was going out to raise some money for an idea he had about buying a business for me.’

  ‘A business?’

  ‘He’d got jealous about me being in the bar. He said it wasn’t right I had to put up with the coarse talk and advances of the type of men who came to the Drovers.’

  The very thought of it seemed to put a little life back in Rosie. Her colour returned and she smiled to herself as though proud of what she’d told them. And then somebody had come along and cut Harry’s idyll short.

  ‘And he was going to get you to leave here and enter into some sort of business of your own?’

  ‘Yes. He’d been hinting at something of the kind for some time, but I was surprised when he talked about making it real. I thought it was just a dream he had. But I’m sure he’d made some arrangements or was going to see somebody about the money. I told him he mustn’t think of it. I knew how short of money he was. I had some money of my own. Four thousand pounds from Jack’s compensation. I said I’d put that in, too. Harry blew up. He said I’d do nothing of the kind. He’d be angry if I touched my nest-egg. He said I’d need that some day. He insisted and when he’d made up his mind, Harry was hard to persuade against it.’

  ‘What sort of business had he in mind?’

  ‘A shop, he used to say. Not in Marcroft. Somewhere not far away, though, where I could start afresh and he could still come and see me.’

  ‘A bit risky, wasn’t it? You’d have been better where you were … at the Drovers, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘But I told you, didn’t I, that he got jealous of me being here? He didn’t like the types of men I had to deal with. Not that I couldn’t take care of myself … But when I told him that, he got annoyed. I didn’t want to upset him. Besides …’

  She paused.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Once, when we were discussing it, he said he’d like to think I would be all right if anything happened to him.’

  ‘Did he expect something to happen?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not a thing like this; not being murdered …’

  She clenched her teeth in an effort to control herself.

  ‘No,’ she said at length, ‘No. He was a good bit older than me, you see. I expect that was it?’

  ‘What sort of a shop?’

  ‘He said I could choose, but it would have to be one that would make me a good living. He had some ideas like a sweets and tobacco shop, or a baby linen place. I said a little village store and post office would be my idea. Not that I thought we were seriously discussing it. I thought we were just playing a game. The idea that he had enough money to make it real never entered my mind. I just humoured him by playing at it.’

  ‘And you found he really meant it?’

  ‘Yes. A week or so before he died, he said he could lay his hands on the money to buy the business he’d been talking about. He was full of it. More excited than I ever saw him. I didn’t ask him how much money. It didn’t seem right. Beside
s, he wasn’t much of a business man. Money to him didn’t seem to mean very much. Until he told me about being able to get the cash to buy the shop, I though he had hardly any at all. He’d lost it all on his farm.’

  ‘Did he ever talk to you about his farming business?’

  ‘Sometimes. What about it?’

  ‘Did he ever say how he got in such a wretched financial state and why he let his farm go to ruin?’

  ‘Yes. He told me all that. It seemed to relieve him to talk about his troubles, past and present. He’d nobody else to confide in, it seemed. He’d never lived anywhere else than at Great Lands. He was born there and worked there for his father until the old man died. He married his cousin and they still lived on there with his parents. His father fooled away his money speculating and had to sell some of the land of the farm. When the father died he left Great Lands, or what was left of it, to Harry, who had to keep his mother till she died. There was no money left when the old man died. The farm had been neglected and Harry had to sweat to earn enough to maintain him and his wife and his mother. All the same, he said he was determined to buy back the lands his father sold. He said he regarded it as a blot on the family selling that land. He saved enough to buy it back in the end …’

  It was what the police already knew. Old history that didn’t seem to be much help.

  ‘And, in buying it back, he broke himself,’ added Littlejohn. ‘He’d no money with which to work the farm.’

  ‘Harry told me that his wife had some money of her own, inherited from a relative. He’d depended on her to invest it in the farm. But she told him straight, not a penny would she put in Great Lands. She said she’d had enough of Harry’s financial disasters, that she’d thought him mad buying back the fields, and he could find his own capital to run the place.’

  She paused.

  ‘Harry said that from that day … to use his own words … he threw in the towel. All the time his father lived and Harry worked for him, the old man never paid him a proper wage. He kept Harry and his wife along with Harry’s mother and himself; they were boarders, so to speak, and that counted as wages. What he paid Harry after that was mere spending-money, a pittance. He couldn’t save on it. Then, when the farm became his, he’d still his mother to keep and take her interference in the farm affairs. When, at last, his dream came true, and he got back the land his father had sold, his wife wouldn’t help him. Harry just gave up. He kept a few sheep and an odd cow, but he said he never wanted to turn a single sod of the land over for cultivation or pasture. He was just worn out, exhausted with working and failing, and he’d lost heart altogether …’

  There was nothing new in that, either, except that it explained Harry Quill’s change of mind, his transformation from a working farmer to a mere layabout, an idler, scratching up just enough to keep him alive. Then, he’d met Rosie, grown fond of her, had an affair with her and grown ambitious on her behalf …

  ‘After all he’d told me, I was surprised when he talked of finding the money for me to start a new life. He didn’t say where it was coming from. He said he’d tell me when he’d got it. He didn’t want to disappoint us both. But the last time I saw him, he talked with confidence about getting it. I felt sure he’d had some luck and with his wife having money of her own, I felt I could fall in with his plan without having it on my conscience.’

  ‘How much money did he hope to get?’

  ‘He never said until just as he was leaving, he did mention an amount. I think it just slipped out in the excitement. He said again, had I thought about what kind of a shop I’d like. I said that depended on what it would cost. You see, you have to think about how much stock you need to make a business pay …’

  It was evident that Rose was more financially shrewd than Harry Quill had been.

  ‘And he said he could lay his hands on around two thousand pounds …’

  The amount he planned to raise by granting Aunt Clara a mortgage on his farm!

  ‘Again, he didn’t say where it was coming from?’

  ‘No. And I didn’t ask him. I was determined to ask him, however, before he laid it out in a business for me. He might have been using his wife’s money and I couldn’t stand for that.’

  ‘And he left you at half past two to go for his money?’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘I see. Did anybody else know about this?’

  She hesitated now.

  ‘This is most important. If you told anyone else, you must tell me who it was. Did you tell Harry’s nephew, Tim?’

  She flared up suddenly. After her subdued manner hitherto, it took Littlejohn aback for a minute.

  ‘Why should I tell Tim Quill? He had nothing to do with it. You have no right to bring him into the conversation.’

  ‘But wasn’t your statement, made when first we called to see you, a little incorrect when you said you noticed Harry Quill’s damaged hand and yourself suggested you’d dress it for him?’

  ‘That’s of no importance, as far as I can see.’

  All the life seemed to drain out of Rose again and she stared at Littlejohn white and strained.

  ‘You might think it of no importance, but when someone being interviewed by the police doesn’t tell a true story and is discovered embroidering the tale to suit her own purposes, we don’t trust the information she gives us. Harry Quill was introduced to you by his nephew, Tim, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t see that it matters how Harry and I met.’

  ‘And Harry ousted Tim from your affections.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘I had it on good authority. You’d had an affair with Tim, hadn’t you? He was very fond of you … Don’t interrupt, Rose. Hear me out and then I’ll hear what you have to say …’

  There was a knock on the door, or rather it was a series of aggressive bumps and the hollow face of Mr. Criggan appeared round it.

  ‘Hey! How much longer is this going on? The bar’s full and me and the wife are pulled out of the place. You’d better adjourn till tomorrow. We’ve had enough bother through Rose and her private affairs without having to turn customers away.’

  Cromwell gently took Mr. Criggan by the arm, turned him round, gave him a gentle push and closed the door.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done. It’s enough to get me the sack. I’d better be getting back to work.’

  ‘Not yet, Rose. Not until you’ve answered a few more questions. And if Mr. Criggan gets awkward, tell him you’re assisting the police. If he tries to sack you, refer him to me. Now, Tim Quill had also been your lover in the past?’

  ‘I suppose I must tell the truth, or else you’ll be arresting me. Somebody has been trying to ruin my reputation, though, and I resent that. Tim was very good to me after my husband died. There was an inquest and he helped me with that, paid for a lawyer and, as Jack had little money and wasn’t insured, Tim helped me along there, too. Then there was the matter of compensation which the insurance company tried to avoid. Tim saw that fair play was got for me there, too …’

  Knowing Tim, Littlejohn could imagine, perhaps uncharitably, how he would enjoy the intimacy and help he could give to this good-looking susceptible woman.

  ‘… We became friends and it developed into something else. I swear to you those two were the only lovers I ever took and then it was in peculiar circumstances.’

  Peculiar circumstances indeed!

  Tim seemed to have taken full advantage of the emotional and tragic upheaval in Rosie’s life, and Harry … Well, according to all accounts, he’d begun by calling to drink stout secretly, and ended with a full-blown, almost comic love affair, started to borrow money and throw it about on Rosie and then, probably arising from his indiscretions, got himself murdered.

  Tim, the well-dressed sophisticated philanderer, with plenty of his wife’s money to spend, had, of all people, been ousted from Rosie’s affections by his Uncle Harry. Of all the ridiculous situations!

  ‘Harry was kind and considerate,
even if he was rough and ready; Tim was cruel and possessive and was for ever reminding me what he’d done for me. I got tired of it. He was very fond of me for a while. But I wasn’t the first and I knew from what I heard that I wouldn’t be the last. He soon got over his affair with me. He’s already had two or three others since.’

  ‘Did you have a final row with him?’

  ‘Yes. It wasn’t losing me, I’m sure, that caused it; it was his pride.’

  As well it might be! The idea of his uncle showing him to the door must have been a bitter pill.

  ‘What did he say when you quarrelled?’

  ‘Quite a lot. He blackened his uncle’s character, laughed at his age, scoffed at his appearance. He was all the more angry because he’d heard about Harry’s visits here from a friend, who said everybody knew and treated it as a huge joke against Tim. He said in the end, neither me nor his uncle had heard the last of it. He’d get his own back on Harry. “He’s nearly in the gutter already,” he shouted, “and I’ll see he’s right in it before I’ve done with him.” I wouldn’t take that too seriously, though. It’s all over and forgotten now.’

  ‘Who do you think killed Harry Quill?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know either. Harry’s dead and that’s an end to it.’

  ‘Do you know Harry made a will in your favour?’

  She didn’t seem to care whether he had or he hadn’t.

  ‘He told me he’d done it. I said he mustn’t and begged him to burn or alter it. I don’t know if he did. He laughed at the time and said he’d nothing to leave me. And then he stopped and said “But I might one day be able to do something for you while I’m alive.” That, I suppose was when the thought of buying me a shop came to him. Well, I don’t hold it against him that I’m getting nothing. It’s all for the best; there’ll be no scandal if there’s no will or money for me. It just showed how much Harry thought of me and I love his memory for it.’

  Still no weeping and still no fuss. She might have been discussing someone still alive.

  ‘I’d better be getting along. It’ll be closing time soon and Mr. Criggan will be furious. He’s been very patient and kind about it all. I don’t want to impose on his kindness.’