Death Before Breakfast Page 2

  Chapter 2

  Morning in July Street

  The rain had passed with the night and the morning was fine. That was the best that could be said of it. Now that the drizzle had gone, it looked ready to turn foggy any minute.

  Littlejohn was on the job at about eleven. He knew he might be making a fool of himself if Mrs. Jump had imagined it all. But Mrs. Jump wasn’t the imaginative sort and he felt he wanted to get at the truth, whether she’d dreamed it or not.

  He had called at The Yard, examined his post, found nothing much to worry him, and arranged with the Willesden police to join them at the station. Cromwell was with him. In a region like July Street on a dirty November morning he felt the need of some cheerful moral support.

  The Willesden police seemed to wonder what Littlejohn was bothering about. A constable had called at what turned out to be 20, July Street, the empty house with the For Sale bill in the window. The place was locked and the bobby had used the key supplied by Mr. Hollows, the agent. He had found a few handbills and a circular or two, undisturbed behind the door. He had searched the house from top to bottom by the light of his torch. There were no cellars and no attics. Intent on his work, he had even peered through a manhole at the top of the stairs and looked among the rafters. Quite a feat, fifteen stone balancing on two packing-cases, one on top of the other, and holding a torch. Nothing. Not a sign of a break-in. When he’d finished among the accumulation of dust, the constable looked like a coon.

  Added to which, Mrs. Jump had said she was going to first Mass, which was said at seven o’clock on Wednesdays, the day of her adventure. She was just in time for the start of the office. That meant she was passing along July Street at about 6.55.

  At seven o’clock, a policeman on the beat, making his way back to the station, had passed the end of July Street. The lamps were still burning and he had glanced down the street to see that all was in order. He’d seen no body then, and he was sure that if there’d been one on the spot described by Mrs. Jump, he’d couldn’t have missed it. He remembered the time well, because as he was at the end of July Street, the milk-van, a type of electric runabout, had just turned down there. He’d spoken to the milkman.

  The milkman had just been questioned when Littlejohn arrived. A little, happy man, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, called Hibbs. He must have passed the spot less than ten minutes after Mrs. Jump. Absolutely nothing unusual.

  Besides, there seemed to be nobody missing. Or, at least, nobody had reported anything of the kind to the police during the morning. If there had been a body in July Street before Mass, who’s was it and where was it?

  It looked as if Mrs. Jump had fancied it after all.

  And yet, Mrs. Jump wasn’t that sort. She’d neither screamed nor roused the whole neighbourhood when she came across the body, or whatever it was. She wasn’t the kind to start a scare to attract the limelight. All she wanted was to be left alone. She’d kept quiet about it in the first place to avoid trouble for herself. The fact that she’d mentioned it casually for something to say and had unthinkingly chosen a policeman’s wife for her confidences, had triggered-off the whole affair.

  Littlejohn called back home on his way to Willesden, just for the sake of seeing Mrs. Jump in daylight.

  She was there after her first job of the day at the bank. Impassive as ever, washing-up in a cheap flowered overall. She looked very different without her grim black hat and mourning clothes. She had a tight bun of grey hair which made her look older, and without the protection of her hat, the light fell full on her pale face and revealed lines of age and difficulty and her blue washed-out eyes. She smiled, however, when he bade her good morning and asked her if she had slept well after her excitement of the previous day.

  He asked her if she still persisted in her story of the night before.

  She turned her pale eyes on him and her mouth tightened.

  ‘I’m sure I haven’t made it up and I didn’t imagine it.’

  And she turned and began to wash-up again, removing the dishes vigorously from the sink and thrusting them viciously in the draining-rack.

  He gathered that she thought now that he was doubting her word, so he said good-bye and went on to Willesden.

  July Street looked a different place in daylight, instead of under yellow electric lamps. Two blocks of eight houses each on both sides of the street. Some of them tumbledown and badly short of paint and carpentry. Others, interspersed indiscriminately among the shabby ones, were trim, painted in all the colours of the rainbow by their owners, and generally well turned-out. This strange contrast was caused by Hollows’ Building Society, as the owner liked to describe it.

  Mr. Hollows, the agent, was, when new applicants applied for an empty house, in the habit of encouraging them to buy it for the same amounts in weekly instalments as tenants paid in rent. The snag was, that Mr. Hollows was responsible for the painting and repairs of the let properties, which he never painted or repaired, but left to rot. The purchasers paid for everything; every hazard, inside and out. Owning a house of their own, most occupiers developed a pride of possession and spent much of their spare time in embellishing it. There was even keen competition between them in painting and otherwise ornamenting their property.

  The street was full of children, some of them in magnificent perambulators, flourishing in the fetid air. Others, sturdy ragamuffins, were nearly all in mischief, watched nonchalantly in places by slatternly women. Five-year-olds scrambling over walls and railings, tormenting one another, fighting, engaged in mock gun duels in the street, even pilfering anything loose. One boy, larger than the rest, had climbed a downspout and was standing on the roof of a house, clinging to the chimney, unable to move, waiting for the fire brigade to arrive and get him down. …

  The body had been seen, according to Mrs. Jump, on the verge of the pavement in front of No. 20. Inspector Mann, of the local squad, who accompanied Littlejohn and Cromwell, had brought the key with him and let them in. It was as the constable had reported earlier, apparently undisturbed. There was dust about the place and the odds and ends left by the previous tenants – all worthless. The two packing-cases which the bobby had used for exploring the loft were standing where he had left them. They had been abandoned as worthless by the broker’s-men, who had sold-up the last occupants for back rent.

  The case, if there was one, was going to be difficult to organise. On the strength of Mrs. Jump’s statement, it looked as if the police would have to question everybody in the street about whether or not they’d seen or heard strange goings-on about seven o’clock on Wednesday morning. This wouldn’t by any means be an easy job. Some of the occupants were, to put it mildly, not likely to prove co-operative. Several had served stretches in gaol. The end house near the recreation ground was occupied by immigrants from Jamaica, too. At first, two of them had arrived as a sort of vanguard, later to be followed by most of their friends and relations from overseas.

  ‘They’re living there like peas in a pod,’ Mann told them.

  Mann was a bit supercilious about the whole affair. He’d expressed a private opinion to his colleagues that Mrs. Jump was leading them all up the garden path, and he stuck to it still.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ he said as he locked the door of the empty house.

  ‘Let’s try the houses nearest to the spot where the body was supposed to be lying,’ said Littlejohn. ‘I’ll try number 19, right opposite. You, Mann, take No. 18, and Cromwell No. 22.

  By this, half the street was out watching them. You could tell the ones who’d tangled with the police by their comments. Someone was quick to inform Cromwell that the tenants of No. 22 were out at work and wouldn’t be back until evening. The man was a porter on Willesden station and his wife was a clippie on a ’bus. Cromwell turned in at No. 24, which had a newly-painted light blue door, and strips of metal pasted up and down the windows to make them look like lead-lights. Obviously one owned with the help of Hollows’ Building Society.
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br />   No. 19 was a tidy-looking house, recently painted black outside and with decent curtains up at the windows. There was a bell on the doorpost, too, which Littlejohn pressed. It was far and away the best kept house in July Street.

  A tall woman answered the door. She looked between thirty and forty. In her younger days, she must have been strikingly beautiful. Even now, she was handsome, in a dark aquiline way and had a good figure and pale white skin. She wore a long blue house-coat and red slippers. Her hair was trimmed short and as black as jet. Littlejohn introduced himself and asked if she were the occupier of the house.

  ‘The doctor’s only just got up. Won’t it do later?’

  She spoke well, and gave the impression by her speech and movements of being, at some time or other, on the stage.

  Mann subsequently told them that the house was occupied by a retired medical man who had formerly run a practice in a large house nearby. He had spent most of his money on whisky, and had lost most of his patients through neglecting his business. The woman was his sister.

  ‘Come in, then. This way.’

  She opened the door on the left of the small passage, which was well furnished and carpeted in dark red. The room inside and overlooking July Street was probably the largest in the house. A living-room used as a bedroom, as well. The unmade camp-bed massed with an untidy hump of bedclothes in one corner; one wall covered with books; a large table littered with books and papers and, on one corner on a spot roughly cleared of rubbish, a tray of used breakfast dishes.

  The doctor was sitting in an armchair by the gas-fire, unshaved, unwashed, wrapped in an old dressing-gown. He had evidently been reading the morning paper. A glass of whisky stood on a side-table. An elderly, white-haired man, thin, with dark hollow-ringed eyes and the prematurely lined and aged face of an habitual alcoholic. His thin hair was brushed back from a broad forehead and until deterioration set-in from his excessive drinking, he must have been highly intelligent.

  He spoke in a high-pitched, spiteful tone.

  ‘I suppose you’re the police. As I was getting up, I noticed a lot of coming and going in the street. Are you hunting burglars? Or is it a murder this time? In any case, what do you want with me?’

  ‘Just a little help, doctor, if you can give it.’

  ‘Well, sit down. I can’t stand people fidgeting around the room. What help are you wanting? Not medical, I hope. That would be too much!’

  ‘Did you happen to be up and about at seven o’clock yesterday morning, sir? A woman passing on her way to Mass about five minutes to seven, tells us she saw a body lying on the pavement right opposite your window.’

  ‘Yes, I was up. I have no fixed hours for sleeping. I often read far into the night and sometimes I don’t keep track of the time and work until daylight. My time’s entirely my own and I refuse to be a slave to it. I am, at present, engaged in research on the health, illness, and mental conditions of royal rakes. I was enjoying their company at seven o’clock, or thereabouts, when Mrs. Jump passed my house. …’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Every Wednesday morning for the last five years, at least, Mrs. Jump has passed here at exactly the same time on her way to Mass. Although I may not look it, I am very interested in everything human that goes on around me. After hearing the same footsteps at the same time on the same day every week, I enquired to whom they belonged. I eventually learned from the milkman, who is sometimes on his round when the woman passes by.’

  ‘Did you look out of the window yesterday, by chance, doctor?’

  ‘I did. The sound of footsteps roused me from my work, I peered round the curtains, and saw the woman passing the lamp almost opposite.’

  ‘Did you hear any other footsteps?’

  ‘Yes. Almost immediately before those of the woman.’

  ‘Did either of them stop opposite your window?’

  ‘No. They continued until they died away, without a break. The first lot were heavier than the woman’s. Anything more?’

  He looked at Littlejohn with his deep-set, mocking eyes, as though having some kind of sarcastic joke at his expense.

  ‘Did you see any signs of a body on the pavement opposite, sir?’

  ‘I did not. There was no body there. I’d have seen it if there had been.’

  ‘Did you hear anything unusual happening outside about that time? Voices, noises other than the footsteps … ? Perhaps the sound of a closing door or a window opening … ?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would be prepared to sign a statement to that effect, sir?’

  ‘Yes, if you wish it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Still the same mocking look.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir. Perhaps if anything further occurs, I may call on you again?’

  ‘At your service; but if I happen to be asleep when you call, don’t expect my sister to admit you. She’s my housekeeper, watchdog, censor and even my doctor rolled in one. …’

  Littlejohn had noticed the absence of the woman and wondered if she were listening behind the almost closed door of the room. The stillness in the rest of the house seemed to indicate something of the sort.

  ‘Good morning, then, doctor. …’

  ‘My name’s Macready, just for the record. Good morning, Superintendent. Success to your enquiry.’

  He rose to see Littlejohn out. A tall man with pyjamas and spindly ankles showing below his dressing gown. His sister met them at the door of the room.

  ‘I’ll see the Superintendent out, Will. You’ll get cold if you stand about.

  She led Littlejohn to the door and gave him an almost patronising smile.

  ‘Good morning.’

  He might have been an itinerant vendor of brushes and combs or detergents from whom she wanted nothing. Come to think of it, Littlejohn’s present job was remarkably like that of a salesman. Knocking on doors asking the same question. He paused at the gate which stood at the end of a narrow flagged path a couple of yards or so long. The garden to the right of him was neglected like most of the rest in the street. Another overgrown, shabby rhododendron and a leafless drooping tree which might have been a laburnum. He filled and lit his pipe and watched the daily turmoil of July Street. A small boy with a single roller-skate strapped to one foot and punting himself along with the other, almost knocked him down.

  Mann emerged from No. 14, followed by a woman in a pink jumper and with bright yellow hair. She was talking animatedly to him. He seemed a bit embarrassed by her rolling eyes and the expanse of bare arms and bosom she was displaying, in spite of the chilly day. Finally, she patted him affectionately on the shoulder and told him to come again any time. She watched him off until he joined Littlejohn. Then she waved her hand carelessly at him and went inside.

  ‘You seem to have been making progress, Mann.’

  Mann gave him a queer look. Littlejohn smiled blandly.

  ‘I mean you’ve visited 14, 16 and 18 in quick time.’

  ‘I’d forgotten Marlene lives at No. 14, or else I’d have left her to Sergeant Cromwell. I’ve run her in once or twice for soliciting in the old days. Now she advertises in the newsagent’s shop round the corner. A cheeky bit of work. …’

  ‘Did she see or hear anything yesterday morning early?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t. She says she doesn’t get up till ten in the mornings and, as she has an easy conscience, she was fast asleep when it all happened. Or did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m not satisfied yet. How about the other two houses?’

  ‘They said the blinds were down and it was dark. You might expect that answer. We’ll get the same tale where-ever we try. At No. 16, they were still asleep in bed; at No. 18, the wife was in the kitchen getting her husband’s breakfast. He’s night watchman at a bank and doesn’t get home till after seven. He didn’t return until 7.30 yesterday morning.’

  ‘We’d better come back after lunch, then, and try some
more. It may be that, sooner or later, we shall get a hint which will confirm or disprove Mrs. Jump’s tale.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll have to cry-off after lunch. I’m at court this afternoon, sir.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mann. Cromwell and I will carry on. Where is Cromwell, by the way?’

  As if in answer to his question, the sergeant emerged from No. 25, shown out by a little haggard-looking man, who seemed eager to see the last of him.

  Cromwell was smiling and looking very pleased with himself. He joined the other two.

  ‘The pair in No. 22 are at work. In any case, the woman next door told me, they leave for their jobs just after half-past six. He’s on the railway and she’s on the ’buses. I went to No. 24, too. They’ve five children and the woman who was at home, asked me if I thought she’d any time with that lot, to hear anything or peep round window blinds at that hour. She was persuading them to get up, and she’d her hands full. They’re obviously expecting another, too. Her husband, it seems, was in the kitchen, making his own sandwiches for lunch. He works in the boiler-house of the local hospital.’

  ‘What about No. 25? Judging from your appearance, you had a successful visit there.’

  ‘I did. The man who let me out looked round the blind at just before seven and saw the body.’

  Chapter 3

  Whooping Cough

  Cromwell Knocked Despondently at No. 25. If he’d as much luck there as he’d had at 22 and 24 opposite, he felt he’d recommend Littlejohn to call it off. Nobody was more loyal to his chief, but this time, Cromwell was beginning to doubt Littlejohn’s instinct. Sure enough, the premonition the Superintendent seemed to have when something was wrong, hadn’t failed him often, but now they were working on the sole basis of the half-baked testimony of a daily help, a woman who might have fancied a shadow in a dark street on a rainy morning was a corpse. All this television and crime news seemed to be making hysterical people fancy murders had been committed when they hadn’t.