Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Read online

  There was a tap on the door, and Mary, the maid put in her head.

  ‘Excuse me, madam. Shall I serve tea?’

  Littlejohn could have laughed outright. It was well past teatime and probably the girl had been wondering why Aunt Clara hadn’t rung. And now the old woman, sworn to silence until Bilbow arrived and rigidly maintaining it against all the damning details of Littlejohn’s monologue, was invited to serve her tormentor with afternoon tea.

  Clara Quill glared at Mary, who stood transfixed by the look, and then furiously waved her out. The front doorbell rang as the maid vanished, as though bringing down the curtain on an unpleasant second act.

  13

  Order out of Confusion

  POOR MARY hardly dared enter again. She put her head round the door.

  ‘Mr Bilbow and another gentleman.’

  Bilbow’s name acted like the magic word. Mrs. Quill spoke again.

  ‘Show them in.’

  She stood waiting for the newcomers, her eyes on the doorway and as soon as Bilbow entered she greeted him.

  ‘So you decided to turn Queen’s evidence, Bilbow, did you? You little rogue. What have you been telling the police about me and Harry Quill?’

  Bilbow looked all in. He’d been trying to sort out the whole affair on his way to Longton Lodge and wondering how to parry the blows the police seemed to be raining on his head from all directions. Added to that, he’d been drinking most of the day and now he was in the half-world created by alcohol, where values seem all different and the edges of everything seem frayed and blurred.

  He greeted Mrs. Quill’s abusive welcome with a noisy response and a few shots of his own.

  ‘Who are you calling a little rogue, you wicked old woman? And who’s talking about Queen’s Evidence? If you knew your law, my dear Mrs. Quill, you’d know that Queen’s evidence involves an accomplice who becomes a witness against his fellows. I’m no accomplice of yours, nor am I a fellow of yours …’

  ‘Be quiet, you drunken sot and sit down. I sent for you to …’

  ‘You didn’t send for me. I’ve arrived with the police. And when I return, Inspector Cromwell tells me it will be under arrest. As a lawyer, I’ve naturally been giving that a good deal of thought and it seems to me there’s no way of avoiding it for the present. Please don’t interrupt. My days of being browbeaten by you are over. You’ll just listen to what I have to say and then you can tell the police anything you like. I’ll make this as brief as possible …’

  They faced each other like a couple of antagonistic politicians each eager to demolish what the other said.

  ‘I shall speak to Nunn about this as soon as possible. Does he know you’ve called here hoping to involve me in your stupid behaviour on the night Harry Quill died?’

  ‘He knows I’m here. I left a message and told him where I was going with the police.’

  ‘And what lies have you been telling the police, may I ask? Superintendent Littlejohn was indulging in a long rigmarole before you arrived. Presumably you had lodged that information to save your own skin. All that nonsense about my hitting Harry with my stick and his lapsing into a coma and dying. You have a very fertile brain, Bilbow, but this time …’

  ‘I told the police no such thing. I telephoned you that afternoon and told you that Harry was going to make a gift of your two thousand pounds loan to Rose Coggins. I thought it my duty to do so, as we were your solicitors …’

  ‘Nunn is my lawyer. You are merely his lackey, running errands.’

  She was working herself into a fury again and froth gathered at the corners of her lips. She wiped it off with a sweep of her handkerchief.

  ‘Lackey or not, I’m not running any more of your errands. And let me speak, and stop interrupting. I’m determined to tell my share of that night’s events in the presence of the police, whatever it costs me. First of all, let me tell them how you prevailed on me to do your dirty work …’

  In the fury of his dilemma, he seemed to have recovered his wits. The effects of his whisky were wearing off and he didn’t seem to make any effort to brace himself by further drinking. Cromwell could see the outline of his flask in his hip pocket, but Bilbow showed no inclination to use it.

  ‘As far as I am concerned my tattered position and reputation in the law is finally destroyed. I cannot harm myself further by telling the police why I have tolerated your bullying and insults for so long.’

  Mrs. Quill, for the first time, manifested signs of distress. Her bold front was showing fissures at last.

  ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘You had better keep quiet. You know what this will mean?’

  Bilbow remained quite calm. He even showed a little unexpected dignity.

  ‘In your strong box at the bank, you hold a cheque for a thousand pounds, payable to me, drawn on your own account and handed to you by your bank after payment. Attached to that cheque is a letter from me, referring to the cheque and stating that it was for an interest-free loan from you to me to enable me to pay off a discrepancy in the books of Nunn and Company, for which I was responsible. When I appealed to you for help five years ago, it was either prison or your mercy. God! I wish I’d chosen prison. You established a hold over me then which has totally ruined me. Thanks to Mr. Nunn, I had been able to recover somewhat from the wreck of my past. You simply thrust me back in the mud from which I’d crawled. Now be quiet. The police are going to hear what I have to say, either here or at the police station, where I hope I shall still have your company after they’ve arrested you. Last Tuesday, late in the afternoon, you telephoned me to insist that I called on you right away. I knew it was for something disreputable, as usual. When I arrived, I found you with Harry Quill in this room. He was lying on the floor unconscious. You hadn’t even had the decency to lay him on the couch or even put a cushion under his head. You said that after my message by telephone, you had faced Harry with the fact that he was going to use your loan for Rosie and not for the improvement of his farm. He had grown furious in an argument which followed and threatened you with violence. In the heat of the quarrel, you had defended yourself with your stick and he had fallen and struck his head on the desk.’

  ‘That is all lies and exaggeration … I …’

  Bilbow shouted her down.

  ‘It was not. And let me speak.’

  Littlejohn and Cromwell merely stood as spectators, listening to the duel going on between the two angry antagonists. The police might not have been there at all. Bilbow and Mrs. Quill had forgotten them in the heat of combat which would destroy either or both of them.

  ‘I suggested we sent for the doctor. But you would have none of it. You weren’t, you said, going to have the whole affair aired in court, where it would surely end if outside help were called for. You used your usual threat. Either I did as you wished, or … I was foolish enough to agree finally to what you wanted.’

  He turned to Littlejohn.

  ‘This, Chief Superintendent, is the truth, to which I will swear in court, if necessary. Clara Quill’s plan was that we wait until after dark and then I should take Harry Quill on his own tractor and place him on his own doorstep and leave him there, thus disposing of him and his vehicle. I said I would do no such thing, whatever the consequences. She then agreed that I could do what I wished with him, provided I took him and his vehicle off her premises and freed her from any connection with Harry or his condition. I finally agreed. My full intention was that on leaving and getting away from her abominable influence, I would take him to Marcroft, call the ambulance and say I had found him in the road beside his tractor, which I proposed to overturn, and make it appear he had fallen and injured himself in the accident. I could see that Harry was in poor shape and I was anxious to get away, but my plan involved being in the dark where I could act without being seen concocting the mishap. As we waited, Harry Quill died.’

  His presentation of the facts and his fluent description of the appalling situation in which they had found themselves seemed to stun even Clara
Quill. She stood staring at Bilbow without even trying to deny it.

  Bilbow shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘In those circumstances, Clara Quill’s original plan seemed the best way out for both of us. She pressed me to fall in with it. After all, she said, there was an epidemic of farm robberies with violence. Why shouldn’t Harry Quill have fallen a victim of the Black Gang?’

  He turned to Littlejohn and Cromwell again.

  ‘That’s all. You know the rest. I was in such a state after I left this infernal house that I couldn’t see the thing through without a drink whatever the risk. At the Dick Turpin I encountered bad luck. I fumbled my way out of the car park on Harry’s tractor, with his body tied to it wrapped in old sacks. She wouldn’t even provide him with decent covering in case it incriminated her.’

  He finished abruptly and stood there, his head hanging, like a guilty prisoner in the dock.

  ‘I’m sorry that, to save my own skin, I committed an unpardonable crime. Harry Quill had been a friend of mine …’

  There was a decanter of brandy on a silver tray on a side table. Cromwell half-filled a glass with it and handed it to Bilbow, who gave him a thin smile of acknowledgement and then drank it slowly.

  Littlejohn turned to Clara Quill who was now sitting at her desk shuffling her playing cards, pretending to be calm.

  ‘Have you anything to say?’

  ‘Harry Quill was a disgrace. Bilbow is a bigger one. The whole of his rigmarole is a pack of lies. I am not going to make a forensic tour de force, as he has done to try to persuade you of my innocence. I will just say this. Harry Quill called here for his money, which I had, as promised, drawn from the bank in cash. We talked and I gave him what I thought good advice about what to do with it. He said he’d remember what I said and was unusually polite, good humoured, smiling, as well he might be in the circumstances. As I was about to give him the money from my safe, the telephone bell rang. It was Bilbow advising me not to pay Harry, as he’d received information that he proposed to spend the money on Rose Coggins. I thereupon faced Harry with the news, he argued and finally admitted it was true. He also told a pitiable tale about his life at Great Lands with Millie and began to praise Rose to the skies. I cut him short, gave him my own opinion of her and we quarrelled furiously. Finally, he started to make insinuations about the life my late husband and I led before we married and compared it with his own present arrangements. I was so incensed that I struck him across the face with my stick. Then occurred what usually does after violence in a quarrel. The whole of it died down, he took it well, he wasn’t hurt and he sat in that chair by the fireplace to recover. He drank two glasses of brandy and soda and seemed to like it. He took two more and then talked of leaving. By then, being unused to strong drink, he was half drunk. I considered it dangerous for him to attempt to drive that ramshackle tractor home. I telephoned for Bilbow to come and attend to it. He arrived. They left at about seven o’clock. Harry sitting on a pile of sacks on the back, Bilbow driving. That was the last I saw of Harry alive.’

  Littlejohn turned to her. ‘What about the money?’

  ‘I felt sorry for Harry, somehow. But, in a gush of pity, I’d no intention of handing him two thousand pounds to throw away on that woman. He had already signed the mortgage deed, however, and I said I’d think it over and see him again in two days. All that, in front of Bilbow, who, I don’t suppose will confirm it in the present circumstances.’

  ‘I won’t confirm it because it’s a fabrication …’

  ‘Wait!’ said Littlejohn. ‘There’s something I’ve forgotten. I’ve an errand to make and I’ll be back here in half an hour. Meanwhile, you, Bilbow and Mrs. Quill will wait with Inspector Cromwell and unless I have your word to remain quietly as you are, I shall send for the village constable to stand in with him. Well?’

  ‘We have no choice.’

  The pair of them agreed for once.

  Littlejohn covered the distance to Marcroft in twelve minutes in the police car and drew up at the Drovers just after opening time.

  Mr. Criggan was very annoyed about his visit.

  ‘We’ve only just opened and Rosie’s only just got here.’

  ‘Send her to me without delay.’

  Mr. Criggan obeyed with a surly gesture.

  ‘Come in here, Rose …’

  She looked alarmed, especially when Littlejohn closed the door.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘Look here, my girl, suppose you tell me the truth for once. When you visited Bilbow on the afternoon before Harry Quill died, you didn’t go for advice about what sort of a business to buy, did you? You went to inform your lover what Harry proposed to do. Give you money and get you out of town in a shop of some kind … Now don’t tell me any more lies. Bilbow is in danger of being arrested for murdering Harry Quill …’

  She turned white and her mouth opened wide.

  ‘He never …’

  ‘Tell me now, he was your lover, wasn’t he?’

  She began to weep, tears rolling uncontrolled down her cheeks. She brushed them away with her hand.

  ‘You seem to know all about it. We are lovers. Have been for a long time. We’d have been married if his wife had divorced him, but she wouldn’t.’

  ‘What about Harry Quill?’

  ‘Him! I never loved him. We were just friends and he used to give me things and help me along when I needed it …’

  ‘He was going to give you the money he so badly needed for his farm?’

  ‘That was his business.’

  ‘What did Bilbow say about all this?’

  ‘He was mad about me, too. But I loved him. It wasn’t like Harry. I was just sorry for Harry. Bilbow was terribly jealous of other men. That’s why I gave up Tim. Harry was different. He was just a joke.’

  ‘You kept it very quiet, you and Bilbow.’

  ‘We had to. It wouldn’t have done for him to be talked about in the town.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’d have lost his job. He was a prominent solicitor. You know that. He’d have had hard work finding another.’

  ‘I’m sure he would. And he’d have had no money, would he?’

  She had stopped her weeping and now her face was hard.

  ‘No need to insult me. I’ve had my bad times like anybody else. I’ve no intention of not knowing where my next meal was coming from like I did after Jack died. He used to say how much he loved me and he left me penniless. I’ve learned to know what men mean when they say they love you. What about Bilbow?’

  ‘I’ve no time to discuss that now. You’d better get back to the bar, Rose. Mr. Criggan will be annoyed with us.’

  He left her and was back at Longton Lodge a quarter of an hour later.

  Cromwell had called in the village constable after all. He was sitting stiffly there, his helmet on his knees, looking with silent apprehension at Mrs. Quill, who was feared very much in the locality.

  Cromwell thanked and dismissed him before explaining his presence there.

  ‘Mr. Bilbow threatened to leave the house if you weren’t back in a quarter of an hour. I thought I’d better call in the local police and have him detained.’

  Bilbow seemed too angry to take any notice of Cromwell. He hurried across the room to Littlejohn.

  ‘What’s the meaning of all this? Leaving us in the air and going off like that. I don’t know what Mrs. Quill thinks about it, but I think it’s a damn’ bad show.’

  Mrs. Quill didn’t say anything. She had passed the time by playing a game of patience and was wondering whether to cheat herself or not and get it over.

  ‘I’ve been to Marcroft. To the Drovers Inn, in fact. I wanted to make a few more enquiries from Rose Coggins.’

  Mrs. Quill looked up impatiently from her game.

  ‘That woman again. I can’t see what you men can see in her.’

  Bilbow shouted above her voice.

  ‘What have you been pestering her again for? Hasn’t she had enough trouble without
the police hounding her out of her wits? What have you been up to?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, Bilbow. I listened patiently to the verbal duel between you and Mrs. Quill. Each of you blamed the other and your testimonies didn’t tally at all. Some of what you said bore out our own discoveries. For example, Mrs. Quill said she gave Harry plenty of brandy to revive him. Had he been unconscious, he couldn’t have taken enough to make him drunk.’

  ‘How do you know he took it at all or that she gave it to him? And how do you know he was drunk?’

  ‘The autopsy showed that he hadn’t eaten since his meal at lunch time. His aunt hadn’t been hospitable, and his stomach was empty. Except that there was a considerable quantity of brandy there. Enough to make one unaccustomed to alcohol, half-drunk at least.’

  ‘So you went to ask Rose if he’d had brandy at her place. That was clever of you, I must say. Just a waste of time.’

  ‘I didn’t go for that at all. Your emotional and insincere forensic effort before I left, when you spoke like a lawyer playing on the feelings of a jury …’

  ‘As Mr. Bilbow told me,’ Cromwell added, ‘like Marshall Hall. He thought such methods old-fashioned.’

  ‘I wished to be sure about another type of emotion connected with you, Bilbow. Your relations with Rose Coggins. It suddenly struck me that Rose was very eager to run to you for advice after Harry had told her about buying a business for her. He hadn’t even got the money then. She admitted, when I asked her, that you were her lover. She felt she was getting in too deeply with Harry and wanted you to know …

  ‘It’s a pack of lies. You have no right to bully witnesses, which I’m sure you did. I shall see to this …’

  ‘Do that, Mr. Bilbow. But now we know why you rang up Mrs. Quill and told her what Harry was going to do with her loan. You wanted to prevent his getting the money.’

  ‘I wished to warn Mrs. Quill that her cash would be put to an improper purpose.’

  ‘That was very considerate of you, Bilbow …’