The Body in the Dumb River Page 3

‘Four years.’

  ‘You’ve been together all that time?’

  Another nod.

  ‘How did you begin your life together?’

  ‘We met at Tavistock Goose Fair a little more than four years ago. James never worked at week-ends and asked me to take charge of his pitch on Friday afternoon till he came back on Monday.’

  ‘Four years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know why he took the week-ends off, Miss Gomm?’

  ‘Yes. He travelled north to see his family.’

  She said it quite calmly and without any hesitation or excuses. It might have been a commonplace.

  ‘How did you come to start travelling and living together?’

  ‘My husband left me and James offered me a job. I helped him at the fairs.’

  There was something about the way in which she called Lane ‘James’. As though the familiar name of ‘Jim’, by which everyone else seemed to know and address him, were not respectful enough.

  ‘Did your husband leave you because of James?’

  ‘In a way…’

  She was not being evasive. Only trying to find words to explain the situation properly.

  ‘In what way did Lane cause you and your husband to break up?’

  ‘Jack was beating me one day. He often did it when he’d had too much to drink. James intervened. There was a fight and Jack turned me out after that. The morning after, I found he’d gone. It was then that James offered me the job.’

  ‘You then began to live together?’

  ‘It was cheaper.’

  Cheaper! Just that. No sentiment, no talk about falling in love, no excuses. It was cheaper to hire a room for the pair of them and live as man and wife.

  ‘Have you seen your husband since?’

  ‘He died a year later. I saw his body before they buried him.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He was at Shrewbury Fair with the roundabouts. He got drunk one night and walked into the Severn. He couldn’t swim. They found death due to misadventure.’

  ‘Were you and Lane at Shrewbury at the time?’

  ‘No. We never went that far north. We were at Benenden in Kent when it happened. They sent out a police message for me over the wireless. I went to identify his body. He’d nobody else. The woman he lived with after me had left him and couldn’t be found. They got my name and photo from Jack’s papers.’

  She gave all the answers in a slow, colourless voice, with a trace of accent from one of the midland counties, probably Oxfordshire. As question followed question, she seemed to grow sadder, as though the recent work in the floods had brought a measure of diversion which was now wearing off.

  Clifton kept coming and going from room to room attending to the needs of rescue workers who arrived, drank tea, and took away bundles of blankets. They were too occupied with the work in hand to disturb Littlejohn and Martha Gomm.

  ‘This fight. What happened?’

  It might have been all irrelevant, a searching for useless details, but it was Littlejohn’s way and Martha Gomm didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘As I said, Jack was beating me. He was drunk. James, who had his stall near our caravan, interfered and Jack knocked him down. I thought he’d killed James, but he got up and went for Jack again. He was only a small man and he’d no idea how to fight. Jack had been a boxer in his time. But James seemed to get in a terrible temper suddenly and flew at Jack’s throat like a terrier. He took Jack by surprise, they fell, with James on top of Jack. Jack caught his head on the steps of the caravan and was unconscious when they picked him up. He was soon all right and I expected he’d seek out James and nearly murder him. Instead, he turned me out. Told me to go to James. He didn’t even threaten what he’d do to him. I think he thought James was a bit mad. At any rate, he left with the show the next day and till he died, we never crossed his path again. I always thought it would have been worse if he hadn’t taken a fancy at the time to a girl in a sideshow. She was a contortionist. They lived together till just before Jack’s death.’

  The grotesque, unequal fight between the little man and the bully, the comic finish, and the flight of Jack, reminded Littlejohn of Charlie Chaplin and of Mr. Polly and their husky enemies. Only Jack had got the idea that his rival was a madman, given him a wide berth, and run away with a spider-lady.

  ‘Did you know anything about James Lane’s private life or what he did before he became a fairground showman?’

  ‘I never asked him. And he didn’t talk much about it. He said he wished to keep his two lives apart.’

  ‘How did he manage that?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you. But he did manage it. His wife never seemed to guess what he did when he was away from home. He used to send her postcards every week from where we were, but I’m sure she’d no idea what he was doing there.’

  ‘And you never tried to fathom what was happening at the other end of his life. At Basilden, was it?’

  ‘Yes, Basilden.’

  ‘Did he never talk to you about his wife and family?’

  ‘Now and then. He had three daughters, he told me once when he was in the mood. He said he’d married above his station and his wife and daughters thought he was a failure. I’m sure he wasn’t. I’m sure he was better than they were. He was out of place in the fairground life, but said it made plenty of money for him and he could keep his family the way they thought they ought to be kept.’

  ‘Did he never hint to you what he did before he took up the fairground existence?’

  ‘I think he kept an arts and crafts shop. He was a good artist. He sometimes used to draw scenes at the fair in black and white. They were very good. He did a portrait of me, too, once.’

  It was bewildering. Littlejohn didn’t know what to make of her. A woman whose beauty would have attracted many of the good types of the fairground, to say nothing of other places. She could have married some decent fellow and had a home of her own, settled and content, for the asking. Yet, she’d preferred the little, undersized James Lane, with nothing much to offer her except an irregular union and his protection, for what it was worth.

  ‘Were you in love with each other?’

  ‘Yes, if by that you mean that we understood one another and wanted to be together as much as we could.’

  ‘And you were content to live together in the way you did?’

  ‘Yes. He told me he didn’t want to let his wife divorce him. He said it was because of the girls and the disgrace it might bring on his wife. I didn’t mind.’

  Few women had roused Littlejohn’s curiosity as much as Martha Gomm. Unsmiling, calm, making not the least attempt to exert her feminine charms or look pretty. Her large hands were rough and soiled by hard work and her nose was a bit red from the chill of the night.

  She must have been turned thirty and Lane was described as being in his early fifties. His clothes had suggested that he was a bit of a dandy. Perhaps they’d led a gay life together and, judging from her tranquility and slight air of distinction, they’d been good for one another, too.

  ‘Had James Lane any enemies?’

  Littlejohn had dropped into the way of calling him James, too, as though by using the dead man’s jaunty diminutive name, he might hurt Martha.

  ‘None since Jack died, as far as I know. I don’t think Jack hated him all that much. Jack was, as I said, living with another woman now and then, before he left me. His quarrel with James gave him the excuse he’d been wanting to go to her for good.’

  ‘So you can’t give us any idea of who might have killed him?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I keep trying to think.’

  She passed her hand across her forehead in a confused way. It was obvious that the commotion caused by the flood had softened the blow of Lane’s death for her. She hadn’t realised what had happened yet. When t
hings calmed down, then…

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘He left me last Friday, as I said, for his usual week-end trip to Basilden. He was going by road in his car. He should have got back yesterday, after lunch. He said he’d travel through the night to get here quicker, because he’d heard over the wireless that there were floods in parts and he wanted to see if I was all right and if there would be a fair or not. He never turned up.’

  ‘He should have left home on Sunday night, then.’

  ‘That’s right. Often, if the journey was a long one, he’d get back as late as Monday evening. I looked after the pitch if there was a fair on the Monday.’

  She certainly wasn’t at all like the usual murdered man’s mistress they interviewed after a crime. She didn’t put on an act, she didn’t try to look bereaved and shocked, she didn’t hesitate or stumble over her words. There was nothing pathetic about her, either. Looking straight at Littlejohn, dry-eyed, a little strained, she answered his questions clearly, asking no sympathy or pity.

  ‘Why do you think Lane was murdered?’

  For the first time, she flinched. It must have been the word murder. Whether she dearly loved this man so much older than herself, or just held him in respect and affection, she certainly didn’t wish him that.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was blackmail.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sure he comes from a place much better than a fair. As I said, he’d a family in the north and he told me they were a cut above him, to use his own words. For some reason, it seemed they despised him a bit. Why anybody should feel that way about James, I can’t think. But it did strike me that he didn’t want them to know how he got his money, in case it made them despise him more. After all, a fairground life can be a pretty low one. Suppose someone from the north found out and threatened to tell…’

  ‘But that would be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.’

  ‘I’m sure James wouldn’t stand for anybody blackmailing him. I wonder if he got in one of his rages, like he did when Jack was beating me. He might have attacked the blackmailer like he did Jack, and the blackmailer might have defended himself instead of going unconscious like Jack did.’

  ‘Yes. There’s something in that. Did you ever get the impression that he was worried about something?’

  ‘No. He seemed to enjoy the life. In fact, he once told me how happy he was to be free and with me, after the life he’d lived in the old days. I admit he must have had his troubles now and then. He used to talk to me sometimes about his family. His daughters were growing up. One, I think, was courting with a doctor. He seemed pleased about it when he heard. Another had taken up with a bookie and it upset him. But it didn’t cause him sleepless nights. He just worried a bit, but always said it would come out all right.’

  ‘His eyesight was bad, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. He wore strong glasses. He’d had them since he was a boy.’

  ‘With sunglasses over them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Summer and winter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps to hide his identity.’

  ‘That could be so. He didn’t want anybody to recognise him. He didn’t want his family to know the life he led. It was natural he should wear them, feeling the way he did.’

  ‘I wonder what his family thought he was doing when he was away from home.’

  ‘They thought he was a commercial traveller. He told me. The family thought he worked for a firm called Oppenheimer and Company, suppliers of artists’ materials and picture frames, in Manchester. He said, when I asked him, it was his alibi. He laughed about it. And he’d send his family a postcard regularly from the nearest big town where we travelled. I’ve posted them for him. Just to say he was well and trade was good and sending his love.’

  ‘You know, of course, his real name wasn’t Lane, but Teasdale?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he ever tell you what attracted him to the fairground?’

  ‘Yes. He owned a shop, as I said, in Basilden. He was by way of being an artist. He once told me that when he got married, he’d hoped to make his way in art, either by teaching or selling pictures. He’d won prizes for his painting and said he thought he might make a living in it. Well, it turned out to be a flop. So, he took a shop and dealt in arts and crafts—sold paints and things, and took photographs. He didn’t do well even then and, as their family was growing, he looked out for something else. But he had no luck. Then, one day when there was a fair at Basilden, he found a show that was making a lot of money. It fascinated him, he said, because he saw behind the stall a whole bucketful of coppers that the man had made in profit.’

  ‘So he started himself.’

  ‘Yes, but not near home. He told his wife that some people he bought picture frames from had offered him a job on the road and, right up to his death, he pretended he was away on that, while all the time he was earning money on the fair.’

  ‘By the bucketful?’

  ‘No. The game James fancied and started was declared illegal almost as soon as he’d got going. So, he began taking photographs at fairs instead. That was a flop, too. Then, an old man and his wife who ran a hoop-la stall took him on as helper. He was on his uppers then and glad to take any job. The old man died and he bought the stall from the old lady. They were called Lane. Lane’s Hoop-la. It was a well-known one at all the fairs and it did very well. You’d be surprised.’

  Clifton was back and said they’d marked the spot where the car was found and towed it into the garage at the inn.

  ‘There’s nothin’ particular in it. Inspector Diss is going over it now, but as far as I can see, it won’t help us much. An old tumbledown thing it is, too.’

  Footsteps splashed outside and then Diss arrived. He was carrying a battered fibre suitcase in one hand and over his arm, a suit of clothes.

  ‘Hullo, sir. We found this suitcase in the boot of Lane’s car. We were able to identify the car easily by the contents of the case. I thought you’d like to see it, perhaps, and I brought across the suit he was wearing, too, when we found him…’

  He noticed Martha Gomm.

  ‘Evenin’, Miss Gomm. It’s stopped raining, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

  That explained the silence, the sudden lack of something, which Littlejohn had noticed and wondered at.

  ‘Could we just look through the contents of the suitcase? He didn’t leave it with you, then, Miss Gomm?’

  ‘No. He usually took it in with him. He was always keen on having clean linen and took his laundry home with him to be changed.’

  She stood at Littlejohn’s elbow as they turned out the contents of the case. There was nothing to explain about it, or about the pathetic crumpled check suit which Diss laid beside it on the table, together with the foulard bowtie and the dead man’s clean linen and underclothes.

  ‘That’s his writing-case and diary…’

  A cheap leather writing-case with damp notepaper in it, a few picture postcards, already stamped, and some order sheets headed Oppenheimer and Company, on which he’d probably listed fake orders to show to his wife. There was a notebook, too, another cheap little thing with nothing much in it, except a schedule of dates covering the fairs at which Lane was due to appear. They were roughly south of a line from mid-Wales to the Wash, as though he gave his hometown a wide berth. Nothing more. No names, no addresses. Lane must have practised the utmost discretion in all he did, to prevent his family obtaining the slightest inkling of the double life he was leading.

  Outside, the wind was rising and sweeping up the main road, lashing the water lying everywhere into waves. It was just turned five.

  ‘Hadn’t you better go and get some sleep now, Miss Gomm?’

  ‘If you don’t need me any more.’

  ‘We’ll see you again tomorrow.�
��

  ‘Good night.’

  She left them without another word, and they could hear her splashing her way home and then the sound of her died away.

  A few people were still about outside, wading here and there, and now and then a vehicle passed, swishing water on each side. The floods would probably subside rapidly now that the rain had ceased and if there was no return of it, work would soon begin clearing up the mud and debris and drying everything out.

  Another party of workers entered and drank tea in the back room. Clifton’s family seemed to have settled down for the night and he hurried out to see to the needs of the firemen and constables who were asking for more blankets.

  What to do next?

  It was certainly a queer case. A man murdered. A little harmless sort of chap, with no enemies that anyone knew of, killed, and his body floating in the river with not a clue to guide them. Every trace of the crime washed away by the flood.

  Diss took out an imitation leather binder from his raincoat pocket.

  ‘I got this from Lane’s jacket when we hung it up to dry, sir. They’re bank statements bound together in a sort of wallet. We had to dry it page by page as it was soaked by the floods.’

  The statements had been damaged by the water, but were plainly legible. They covered a period of five years, presumably since Lane had started his new life. The pass-sheets bore the name of a bank in Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, where perhaps Lane had attended his first fair.

  The balance of the account had been small for the first year, but had then begun to rise very nicely. The present figure stood at two thousand pounds, built up in weekly payments, made at various banks on Lane’s journeys from fair to fair. ‘At Abchester’, ‘At Launceston’, ‘At Helston’… and so on.

  There were no withdrawals, except one, made two days before Lane’s death.

  Diss, looking over Littlejohn’s shoulder, was fascinated by the figures.

  ‘It’s a life at which you can pocket and hide quite a lot of money. I’d like to bet that Lane didn’t pay income tax on half he took at the fair. He never withdrew anything and that tells its own tale.’