The Crime at Halfpenny Bridge Read online

  So, it was agreed that Littlejohn should stay on with his old comrade until he could find out the lie of the land. He returned to the inn to telephone the news to his wife, who was assisting at the birth of a seventh child to her uberous sister who was married to a parson and lived at Rugby.

  Littlejohn only cycled once into Werrymouth; the rest of the time he was happier on the ’bus. He had not been pedalling along for more than five minutes when he ran into the Mercury Cycling Club, out for a week-end’s run. Try as he would, he could not shake them off. The swarm was led by a hairy fugleman astride a tandem, the back seat of which was vacant, for its usual occupant was at home suckling a son and heir who was, as yet, too feeble to propel himself along with the rest. The leader had wooed, won and honeymooned awheel and was now mentally constructing a sort of gibbet-like contraption in which he shortly hoped to encase and transport the newcomer when his wife resumed her perch behind him.

  Littlejohn made as if to pass; the hirsute drum-major haughtily gestured him behind. Whereupon, the rest of the hornets surrounded the Inspector and absorbed him in their body. As the motley crew sailed into Werrymouth, the constable on point-duty cocked an unfriendly eye at them, raised a huge paw and made the lot of them dismount. He had been strictly brought-up as a Plymouth Brother and thought it highly indecent for half-naked, dusty women, with their skins peeling from them, to be promiscuously mixing with sweaty, hairy-legged, wild-looking men. He always made a habit of stopping the phantasmagoria of rotating bare limbs whenever he could. Every time he called a halt to such goings-on, he felt he had put a spoke in Satan’s wheel.

  The bobby’s eyes therefore almost shot out of his head when he saw Littlejohn, decently clad, emerge from the writhing cohort, park his bike at the door of the police station and briskly enter.

  “Expect he’s bin robbed, or somethin’.… Serve him right,” he muttered and he waved-on the remainder, decently averting his eyes as the ladies of the troupe flung their legs about and shuffled themselves into their saddles again.

  Littlejohn was soon comfortably settled in the office of Superintendent Hoggatt, visualising the happenings of the previous night from the tale the young officer was telling him. He took a liking to Hoggatt at once. There was no stiffness or false pride about the man. He was ready to learn fresh tricks from an old hand. He was plainly a bit out of his depth in the present case, and not afraid to admit it.

  “It’s obvious, Inspector Littlejohn, this business on the quay isn’t the work of a mere footpad.… The hooligans of the town wouldn’t go to the extent of murder. I think it was a deliberately premeditated crime, but who committed it’s going to be a job.”

  “The old woman had remembered the murdered man in her Will, you say?”

  “Yes. Her lawyer tells me Sam Prank, the second victim, stood to gain about five thousand pounds by her death. She was worth a tidy penny, I hear, although she lived very humbly. She left five thousand apiece to her cousin, Jane Prank, who kept house for her, and to another nephew, James Sprankling. The rest goes to the Holy Name Catholic Church, which Miss Harriet Prank attended.”

  “Have you explored the Will angle, Hoggatt? I mean, have you checked-up where the other two more lucky members of the family were when this was going on …?”

  “Yes. As I told you, Jane was in next door getting help for her aunt.…”

  “But hasn’t it struck you that she might have smothered the old lady before she went for help?”

  “But what about Sam Prank’s fingerprints on the milk glass?”

  “They may have been there even before the milk was put in it. All Jane needed to do was, say, give Sam a drink of something in the glass and then when he’d fingered it and drunk up, preserve the prints by delicately handling the glass, fill it up with milk for her cousin’s supper after Sam had gone, and leave it handy for the police to work on.…”

  “She was sneaking off with the glass, though, when we arrived.”

  “To attract your attention, maybe, and get you on to Sam’s prints.”

  “Yes … it might be that. But I don’t think so. Jane Prank doesn’t seem to have the wits to concoct such a clever scheme. Besides, what about the dope in the milk? Dr. Swann found that sufficient digitalis had been added to knock-out, if not kill, the old girl. But somebody did the job with the cushion before the drug could act.”

  “Where had the drug come from; have you found out?”

  “Yes. The old lady’s heart was bad and the doctor had prescribed digitalis. He gave her a box of twelve pills at a time. One pill was a dose and the doctor had issued strict instructions that the dose wasn’t to be exceeded, because Miss Prank’s heart wouldn’t stand more.…”

  “And someone gave her an overdose?”

  “Yes. Three pills instead of one. Enough, Dr. Swann says, to cause severe palpitation and cardiac distress to a normal person, but enough to put ‘paid’ to anybody with a heart in the state of Miss Prank’s.”

  “I see. And you think Jane did it?”

  “I’m sure she did. I think she gave the overdose in the hope that the old lady would pass-out and the doctor would certify natural causes on account of her heart weakness. She intended to throw away the contents of the glass. Nothing easier in the world. Miss Harriett drank half the doped milk and, as was usual, left the rest until she was ready for bed. I’d say Jane intended her to die in bed.… More natural, like. The doctor had kept telling Harriet to have her bed downstairs. The nightly climb, he said, wasn’t good for her. But the old lady was stupid and wouldn’t. Jane perhaps would have said the staircase had been too much for her cousin at last.”

  “You seem to have it all worked out, Hoggatt.”

  “Yes. That part of it. I think while Jane was out, Sam Prank called, handled the glass, found his aunt helpless and, knowing of her Will, finished her off. Dr. Swann says death was from suffocation. This might have been due to heart trouble, of course, but the doctor says, all things considered, he’s sure the cushion did it. He called in a colleague from the county laboratory this morning and the specialist confirmed Swann’s findings.”

  “Jane may have done it, Hoggatt. Don’t you think so?”

  “Perhaps.… But who killed Sam? Not Jane. The Dabchicks give her an alibi there. You see, the time of Sam’s death is fixed, not only by the three men who saw the incident, but by the time the lighthouse was on. The three spectators say it was a man who did it. Wore a trilby hat and long overcoat.”

  “What about the other relative … Sprankling, I think you called him?”

  “He’s got a cast-iron alibi, which it’ll be impossible to break. This year, he’s Worshipful Skipper of the Eccentric Order of Oddfishers. Last night they held a meeting from eight until ten-thirty and Sprankling was on the ‘bridge’ all the time.”

  Littlejohn looked at his watch.

  “It’s only eleven-thirty, Hoggatt. You must have been up early in the morning to gather so much useful information with the corpse hardly cold!”

  Hoggatt flushed with pleasure.

  “It’s Sunday, you see, Inspector. People are at home, instead of being scattered at places of business and Lord knows where. I found quite a few of them at breakfast.…

  “All the same, you’ve done a good job so far. I can see you and I are going to get on fine.”

  The Superintendent seemed to glow all over!

  “And who was this Sam Prank, Hoggatt?”

  “A deck-hand on the Bluebell, a coaster registered at Werrymouth. She docked Friday afternoon. I’ve had a word with her skipper and Sam’s being on the quay at that hour puzzles him no end. Sam was fond of his beer and good company and it’s strange that he should have been wandering on his own along the docks instead of boozing in one of the pubs with his pals. That’s a line we’ll have to investigate further.”

  “Well, Superintendent, what do you say to a walk to the scene of the crime. The harbour. I mean.”

  “Of course, Inspector. Right away.”

 
The John Anderson was now past the swing-bridge and tied up in the inner harbour ready for the unloading of her cargo of cement. Side by side with her lay the Bluebell, Sam Prank’s ship. The Mannin Veen and the Ynyslan, moored end to end, were waiting, under steam, until their mates should be free to join them again after the inquest. Their skippers were together, drowning their disgust and commiserating with each other in the “Hardstone Arms” on the quay. Their two mates were surrounded by a curious crowd of dockside casuals in the bar of the “Welcome Home.”

  O’Brien was telling a long tale and Creer was roaring monosyllabic confirmations. Both were half-drunk.

  At the swing-bridge, the same custodian was on duty. He was nursing a grievance, for, although he had been kept long past his time last night, owing to the crime, the Harbour Master had insisted on his reporting for duty as usual. The custodian had no audience. Disgust had rendered him speechless and unsociable. He stood on his bridge, a picture of annoyance and protest, smoking his pipe and spitting viciously into the dark water beneath.

  For twenty minutes or so, the two police officers wandered about the docks. Curious eyes followed their course. Most of the idle fishermen and stevedores were in their Sunday clothes of blue or black, with neckerchiefs knotted at the throat instead of collars.

  When at length Littlejohn and Hoggatt reached the bridge, the keeper released his pent-up malice on them.

  “… I work alternate weeks from six to two. Then from two to eleven others. This bein’ Sunday, it’s my first early shift for a new week. An’ ’e wouldn’t even let me off for two hours. An’ me ’avin’ done all I did to ’elp the law last night. Bloody shame, it is. Two o’clock when I got ’ome last night and the wife wouldn’t believe as I ’adn’t been up to somethin’ improper.…”

  They had to cut him short and inform him that it wasn’t within their province to tell him when to come and go, but that they sympathised with him. He ended by repeating verbally what he had testified in writing the previous night. He said he had nothing to add.

  “You heard footsteps hurrying away after the second flash … er … Mr.…?”

  “Tebb’s the name, sir.”

  Tebb was a stocky, pop-eyed little man with a walrus moustache and thick grey eyebrows. He removed his official peaked-cap—with B.W., the borough initials, in red on the front of it,—scratched his thick grey thatch as though stimulating his weary brain to greater activity, and replaced it with a forlorn and apologetic look.

  “I think I did ’ear footsteps. Wouldn’t swear it. I’m so muddled through losin’ me sleep, that me brain won’t remember. I recollect dimly like, that somebody went off down Gas Street. That’s the first on the right there. Couldn’t be certain, though. When it dawned on me and the other chaps what was ’appenin’ after the first flash o’ light, we all started to run and drownded the noise, like, of anybody as might ’a’ bin runnin’ away.”

  “See you at the inquest, Tebb,” said the Superintendent. And with that they left him.

  They returned to the police station by way of Gas Street. This was a narrow, thronged part of the old town, where small squalid dwellings were clustered higgledy-piggledy on top of one another. Unsavoury smells of greasy cooking, bad air, sweat and fetid offal poured out of the little houses. Many of the householders were taking their ease and enjoying the fine morning standing at their doors. Dressed in the dark clothes which they held in reserve for Sundays, funerals and other family jubilations, they festooned the street like sombre, ragged seaweed left by the outgoing tide.

  “I suppose Sam Prank would come this way from the docks to his aunt’s house,” said Hoggatt. “That’s Pleasant Street, where Miss Prank lived, just at the far end there.”

  “Perhaps somebody saw him on his way,” answered Littlejohn. “Let’s try a pot-shot.”

  A man who looked like a docker was standing in his shirt-sleeves and collarless at an open door, puffing a short clay pipe and periodically spitting into the middle of the street with great force and precision.

  “Were you about between ten o’clock and half-past last night?” asked Littlejohn.

  The man regarded the policemen impudently, for Hoggatt was in uniform, and with the characteristic hostility of his type for the force, grunted a surly reply.

  “No business o’ yours where I wuz.…”

  Littlejohn eyed the man and sized him up. A bully, putting on a bold front.

  “Come now. None of that. We’re here investigating the murder of Sam Prank. Did you know Sam Prank? Well, then you’re interested in helping us to clear it up, aren’t you?”

  The man showed a little more interest, but seemed naturally either churlish by disposition or else to be suffering from arrested development. All brawn and no brain.

  “Me and me wife wuz out till a quarter to eleven las’ night at the “Jolly Sailor,” but me eldest daughter wuz in. She’d the toothache, else she’d ’ave bin walkin’ the streets after the men, that’s where she’d ’a’ bin.…”

  The lounger turned his bullet head over his shoulder without otherwise moving.

  “Margy!” he yelled from the corner of his mouth, after slowly removing his pipe and spitting forcibly and to a great distance by way of clearing his voice. “Margy! Come ’ere.”

  A tall, bold-looking girl, almost like a lanky negress and with her hair standing in wiry curls all over her head, put in an appearance. One cheek was swollen and she pressed it with her hand to conceal it. Obviously a bad lot.

  The stevedore jerked his head at Hoggatt and Littlejohn without a word and the swarthy wench turned her rolling dark eyes on them, still instinctively covering half her face with her fingers.

  “I understand you were indoors between ten o’clock and ten-thirty last night, miss,” began Littlejohn.

  The girl looked apprehensively at the officers, scenting trouble.

  “Yes. So what?”

  “You didn’t happen to go into the street and see any passers-by. I see there’s a dimmed lamp opposite. I wondered if …”

  “No. Me tooth was so bad. I just sat by the fire to keep it warm.…”

  The loungers draped about the street were taking a lively interest in the proceedings and many of them began to approach the official group by slow degrees.

  A small, stringy woman in the house right opposite had been bursting with curiosity throughout the interview. Not possessed of quite enough cheek to stare and openly listen-in, she had devised a number of strategic moves to keep herself informed. First, she shook a duster midway across the road; then a mop; and she followed these with a brush which needed a lot of manipulation to get it clean. Next, she brought out a can of hot water and poured it down a grid in front of her door. She then emerged with a bucket and cloth and began to remove imaginary bird-droppings from her window-sill. Emboldened by her anxiety to miss nothing, she finally appeared with another bucket and a shovel and started to spoon-up horse-dung from the middle of the street.

  Littlejohn spotted this pantomime out of the corner of his eye, and purposely pitched his voice to reach the eves-dropper, for he knew her kind.

  “We were wondering if anybody saw Sam Prank here-abouts last night.…”

  He got a bite.

  “I see ’im last night … about ten o’clock it was,” screamed the interloper, like one bidding at an auction. Thereupon, having established her right to do so, she triumphantly joined the group, smacking her lips and looking from one to another of the party like a dishevelled jackdaw.

  “You did?” said Littlejohn.

  “I did that. Just after ten o’clock as I was comin’ home along the quay I see Sam Prank comin’ out of Rosie Lee’s shop there bein’ a lamp right oppersite just bright enough to see ’is face by you bin up to no good I sez to myself knowin’ both of ’em ’atching-out some evil I’ll be bound.…”

  “Just a minute, just a minute,” gasped Littlejohn, clamping down on this torrent of verbiage and inwardly marvelling at the woman’s capacity, for she never
halted for breath.

  The woman gulped-in air and looked at him queerly. Her eyes were close-set over a hooked nose and a tight little mouth. She looked like an ant-eater.

  “How did you know the time, Mrs.…?”

  “Mrs. Govannah’s the name.… Because I was just comin’ from the chip-shop with fish-and-chips for us suppers—went to Okell’s shop at the other end of the quay they use better fat than the Menelauses besides bein’ English and not Eyetalians as I’m sure the Menelauses is … well, Mr. Okell ’as ‘is watch’ anging on an ’ook over the counter and I see it was ten o’clock by it and I waited for a few minutes for another batch of fryin’ to be ready and then I come ’ome.…”

  The woman gave in and halted for breath this time.

  “Did you speak to Prank, Mrs. Govannah?”

  “Why should I when he’s a good-for-nothing chap with easy ways as no woman is safe with.…”

  “Ha, ha, ha.… It’d ’ave to be as dark as ’ell for any man to make a mistake and try anythin’ on with you.… Missis Govannah, indeed! Nobody ain’t ever seen any Mister Govannah … nor ever will.…”

  The gathering had been joined by another woman who emerged from the stuffy interior of the house behind the docker, and thus opened a verbal broadside on the poor ant-eater who, picking up her bucket and shovel, hastily fled to her own pitch.

  The newcomer had apparently been in bed when the performance began but had risen hurriedly to be in at it. She was negroid like her daughter, but was fat and dropsical with dishevelled air and bloodshot eyes. She clung to a dirty wrapper which covered her sagging semi-nakedness. She glared venomously after Mrs. Govannah, who could now be seen watching operations from behind the lace curtains of her front window. Diplomatic relations had evidently been severed between the neighbours vis à vis.

  “What’s she want? The mangey old poll-parrot! The bloomin’ nosey ruddy parker!” wheezed the fat woman. “Mindin’ everybody’s business but ’er own. The blasted peepin’ old Tom …!”