The Case of the Demented Spiv (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 9

  “Yes. Nobody but I touched them.”

  “What’s the meaning of all this? You’re not suggesting that one of us did this thing…?”

  James thrust his face close to Littlejohn’s.

  “Don’t be fussy, Jim. The Inspector has to ask these questions. It won’t mend matters to be obstructive.”

  Andrew looked anxious to get it all over and go to bed.

  “Who removed the glass and plate?”

  “I took them away with me,” said Mary. “They’ll still be on the kitchen table ready for the maid to wash in the morning.”

  She accompanied Littlejohn downstairs. The dishes were where Mary had said they would be and they brought them back with them.

  The next day, the flags in the town were half-mast; the autopsy revealed strychnine poisoning; the homoeopathic pills were analysed and among half a bottleful of innocuous ones, a solitary pillule of five grains was discovered.

  Someone somewhere in his journeys had tampered with Mr. Fenning’s apparently harmless medicine and introduced a lethal pill or two among the rest. Enquiries at the chemists and by telephone from the makers assured the experts that it was impossible in the course of manufacture to make a mistake. The unmedicated sugar pillules were soaked in a solution of a certain percentage of the drug and could not absorb enough to prove fatal.

  At Fennings’ Mill, Littlejohn saw Miss Lackland again.

  “Yes. I remember Mr. Fenning being carried in the office. He had heard the books had been falsified and called to see where. I was having lunch, but left my meal to get him what he wanted. He saw the stock-book which Ambrose was said to have altered.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No. But he grew quiet and serious. He was quieter than usual.… Oh, yes, and he asked if Mr. Barrow used one of those new stylograph pens. I said he didn’t. He used an ordinary fountain-pen which he filled with ordinary ink here.”

  “May I see the books…? Especially the stock-book…?”

  They were brought to Littlejohn. He could not be certain, but it looked to him, too, that the alterations had been made with one of the new patent pens.

  “I saw Mr. Fenning testing the ink by wetting his finger.…”

  Littlejohn made the same experiment. The ink of the alterations left an impression; that of the original figures didn’t. A shrewd old bird was Mr. Fenning!

  “I’d better take this ledger with me, Miss Lackland.…”

  “But I daren’t. Mr. James would.…”

  “This is my responsibility. I won’t keep it for long.”

  “Very well.…”

  “Did you happen to see Mr. Fenning taking pills whilst he was here, Miss Lackland?”

  “Why, yes. He was always taking some pills or other. He had a little bottle with him and put it on the top of his desk as he examined the books.”

  “Did he leave it there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was anyone with him?”

  “Mr. Carter, the cashier. I’m his assistant.”

  “Is Mr. Carter about…?”

  Mr. Carter arrived. A tall, grey, faded man, with weariness and failure written all over him. His long nose was purple from cold and bad circulation and he wore a tattered office jacket with pins stuck all over the lapels.

  “You wanted me?”

  Carter kept screwing up his nose as though it itched violently and with each twitch he would close his eyes tightly. In time, you felt like doing the same thing yourself and had to fight against the inclination.

  “Mr. Carter, were you in with Mr. Fenning, senior, when he examined the books yesterday?”

  The cashier contorted his features and pulled hard at his nose as though trying to remove it from his face. He had a pompous, condescending way with him. He did a lot of reading in his spare time and thought himself highly intellectual. Detectives weren’t usually very well read. Mr. Carter was lofty.

  “Well.… I was with him for a time. But he dismissed me. I’d other important things to do. Miss Lackland stayed to deal with anything he might have wanted.”

  His voice was nazal and affected.

  “Did you see a bottle of pills on the desk when Mr. Fenning was here?”

  “Homoeopathic ones…?”

  He mouthed the words ponderously.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I did. He took a dose and then put them back in his pocket.”

  “Did anyone else go in the room besides you and Miss Lackland?”

  “No. No they didn’t.”

  Mr. Carter looked in a perfect agony of nazal itch and contortion. His mouth and eyebrows joined the general convulsion.

  “No.…”

  Littlejohn left the mills feeling more at sea than ever. Incident piled on incident and, as yet, not a single trail had appeared.

  At the hotel he found a letter from his wife waiting for him.

  Another constable had been shot! This time near Hungerford Bridge. Right on the doorstep of Scotland Yard.

  The Inspector had thought of sending for Cromwell to give him some help. Now he wouldn’t. For the time being, the Brockfield murder took second place. Somebody had shot a policeman and probably it was an officer Littlejohn knew.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  INQUEST AND OTHER THINGS

  WHEN Littlejohn woke up, the first thing he saw was the brass knob at the foot of the bed. He screwed up his face in distaste.

  But he felt better. The sun was shining as he drew the curtains. Below, across the street, the brush-maker and his girls were just starting sticking bristles in their brushes again. The rain seemed to have washed the street and the atmosphere, and everything looked brighter for it.

  The maid brought a can of hot water and Littlejohn shaved, bending gingerly before the dressing-table mirror because the hinges were loose and the glass wouldn’t stay where you put it. He had to switch on the electric light too in spite of the sunshine for someone had conceived the bright idea of putting the dressing table in the very spot where you stood in your own light.

  Littlejohn chose a shirt and tie with care. He hoped he wouldn’t be here much longer. He was fed-up with the place and his stock of clean linen was going down. He’d have to write home for more and he didn’t like the idea. It seemed to carry with it the seeds of a long stay.

  He slipped his trousers out of the portable press he always took with him. You never find Littlejohn looking as though he’d slept with his clothes on. He had an idea that being well-groomed is a tonic in itself.

  Somehow he hadn’t yet found anything in the case to fasten on. With patience, he knew that eventually something would come, but patience was a decided virtue in a town like Brockfield. Already, outside, somebody’s chimney was on fire and bathing the nice clean street with a film of soot and a cloud of smoke. The brushmaker rushed to his door, examined the chimneys for the guilty one, found it was his own and tore inside again presumably to apply remedies or denounce somebody. All his assistants came into the street to look at the phenomenon, held a meeting and were called to book by their employer who, shovel and rake in hand, was probably trying to get up the chimney before the police arrived. He was too late, however. A young constable, book in hand, was already on the trail.…

  Ambrose Barrow is strangled whilst selling cloth to a spiv on Saturday night. The spiv was such a poor little shrimp physically that he couldn’t have done it without rendering Barrow senseless.

  Who else wanted to kill Barrow?

  Andrew Fenning, who was presumably in love with Barrow’s wife? But why kill Barrow for that? Was he blackmailing Andrew, or had he and Penning had a row and fought about it? Andrew Fenning had no alibi except his brother’s word that they were at home together at the time of the crime.

  What was Flo. Barrow doing with James Fenning when Littlejohn called at the office? Of course, it might have been a settling-up of her husband’s affairs. But was that all?

  Then, there was the affair between Barrow and Miss Lackland. H
ad a member of her straight-laced family intervened and settled Barrow’s hash?

  The disguise. This had presumably been put on by the murderer after Barrow’s death. The method indicated this. Had the man seen entering the mill about the time of the crime, by the little clergyman, been the murderer? And, having known he’d been seen entering, had he transferred his disguise to the dead man and made off another way? The only other way was by the river bank.

  Littlejohn went down to breakfast pondering the case. There wasn’t as yet a single line to follow.

  Downstairs the landlord was talking in the dining-room with a man Littlejohn hadn’t seen before. He was tall, dark and pale. He had a shifty look and his clothes were shabby. He had a case under his arm.

  “This is Dr. Martindale, sir. Inspector Littlejohn, on the Barrow murder, you know.…”

  The landlord introduced them quite proudly. He’d been drinking already. So had the doctor.

  “Had to call in the doctor to my wife this morning. Got a touch of bronchitis and had a bad night.…”

  He said it to Littlejohn with alcoholic confidence as though they’d been bosom pals for years.

  The doctor looked anxious to get away. Littlejohn caught his queer look and could have sworn he saw vague fear in it.

  “I must be going.… More patients to see. Tell your wife to do as I say and I’ll be in again in two days. Goo’ morning.…”

  He bustled off without another word.

  “Good doctor, but a bit on the loose. He comes here a lot, so when I can, I put a bit o’ business in his way.…”

  The landlord laughed hoarsely at his own joke and went to see about Littlejohn’s breakfast. It wasn’t worth mentioning. Sausages or something.… It made Littlejohn eager to solve the case and be off.

  The inquest on Miles Fenning was held in the new courthouse. The coroner’s court was a lofty room, panelled in new pitch pine with a strong aroma. The acoustics were poor and everyone had to shout because the height made it resonant.

  Littlejohn picked up Faddiman and they in turn were picked up at the door by two constables, one with a highly polished bald head and the other with a bad cough which later caused no end of irritation to Mr. Erasmus Bisby, the county coroner.

  Mr. Bisby was a tall, thin man who looked like a clothed skeleton. He was very worried about his weight for, in spite of the fact that he had an appetite like a horse, which his wife tried to satisfy by frequent and expert excursions into the local black market, Mr. Bisby never added even half an ounce more tissue to his bony frame. That morning, fresh from his bath, he had weighed himself on the bathroom scales, and found he’d lost half a pound! He was almost too distressed to conduct his enquiry, although his doctor had reassured him when he found him first on the mat that morning.

  The first thing you noticed when you met Mr. Bisby was his collar. Like a section of a stiff linen drainpipe and almost, it seemed, as he sat there high above the rest, six inches high. Mr. Bisby’s head and neck projected from this adornment like those of a snake emerging from a gun-barrel. And, unable at its normal length to bend his neck far enough over the obstacle to see to write, Mr. Bisby had, when making notes, to stretch his neck over the edge of his collar with such force that he looked to be in the process of decapitating himself in a very novel way.

  Faddiman was busy making a statement concerning the state in which the police found Mr. Miles Fenning. Dr. Mabane followed with his version, and then the police surgeon, who confirmed Mabane’s diagnosis of strychnine poisoning. At least five grains had been administered, presumably from the homoeopathic medicine bottle. Dr. Mabane, who despised homoeopathy, hoped in his heart that the pills themselves would prove to be carelessly made and cause a scare. That would teach people to mess about doctoring themselves and trying to be professionals.…

  But a chemist, rushed post haste from the apprehensive pill-makers, soon made it clear that the mistake could not possibly have been theirs. Why, they’d been making pills regularly for more than sixty years and never a complaint before!

  Mr. Sandiman, solicitor to the Fenning family, asked a few questions, just to show he wasn’t letting the grass grow under his feet. He was a small, portly, self-important man whose wife bullied him. So he took it out of whoever else he could. He tried to browbeat the pill-makers’ assistant, but failed. Following Mr. Sandiman another solicitor, Mr. Barnard Dobb, appearing for the chemist who had sold the pills because the chemist was scared to death least somehow he’d mixed strong pills with homoeopathic ones. It didn’t seem at all possible that such a thing had happened, but Mr. Wills, M.P.S., thought he might have done it in his sleep or after a night with the Buffaloes at The Queen Anne.

  Mr. Bisby was vaguely aware that something was going on and someone was talking. He stretched his neck far over his collar and wrote something down among his notes. Had he stopped eating something which had kept up his weight? He surely hadn’t taken more exercise; in fact, he’d taken less than usual since last he’d weighed himself.

  “Please speak up, Mr. Dobb.…”

  Mr. Bisby said it to try and prove that he was listening. He was vaguely aware that neither Faddiman, the pillmakers, Mr. Wills, Mr. Sandiman nor Mr. Dobb had administered poison. He had been asked by the police to adjourn sine die for enquiry. He’d give a certificate for burial and then pack-up. Maybe, this was his last inquest. If he’d lost that half pound from some internal complaint, perhaps a malignant one, he’d soon be turning up his toes.… Funny if they had to have an inquest on him. Mr. Bisby smiled a hopeless, wintery smile just as Mr. Dobb was saying that Mr. Wills couldn’t possibly have done it. Mr. Wills, M.P.S., who was sitting in court in a state of dread, noted the coroner’s expression and put it down to scepticism. He therefore expected arrest as he left. He said his prayers, for he was a religious man.

  The attendant constable kept coughing. His noise rang round the lofty room until now and then it sounded like the feeding-time for the sea lions at the zoo. In the end Faddiman himself went and sent him home and told him to stay there till his cough was cured. It was a smoker’s cough as it happened and the man was away three weeks. .…

  How was Mr. Bisby to know that his young grandson had been pulling his bathroom weighing-machine to pieces and putting it together again and that allowing for that, he’d put on three ounces in the last fortnight. He just couldn’t bring his mind to Mr. Miles Fenning. First Barrow, then Fenning and then.… Mr. Bisby saw in imagination, his own cortege passing through the town-centre on its way to the cemetery.

  “And in my opinion, the pills of strychnine must have been introduced into the bottle after purchase. They could not have been put in before.…”

  “Speak up, Mr. Dobb.…”

  Mr. Bisby looked over his collar like a tortoise suddenly awakening from long hibernation and wrote down a few hieroglyphics. He alone knew what they meant. “9 st. 3½ lbs.”

  The coroner’s jury had been listening portentously. They were local tradesmen for the most part. They kept looking at Mr. Bisby for enlightenment and guidance but like hungry sheep, returned unfed. One of them, a local barber, was against the rest, because none of them ever patronised him for a haircut or a shave. Even Mr. Bisby went to a rival. And yet they’d had the cheek to call him up for the jury. It wasn’t good enough. One good turn deserves another. He would vote against the rest. He didn’t get a chance. The inquest was adjourned.

  Mr. Bisby went to another doctor who weighed him and found he’d gained a few ounces since the last statistics were taken. Mr. Bisby was so pleased with this, that after confirming the result and finding he hadn’t been cheated, he went home, kissed his wife, told her the good news and bought her a fur coat. He also remembered something he’d overheard at the Solicitors’ table before the case began. It was one of those peculiar things you hear when you’re paying no attention and your mind’s occupied and then, suddenly later from nowhere, it comes back to you.

  He remembered Mr. Sandiman and Mr. Dobb meeting in court
before the police arrived. Dobb was a cheeky young upstart who’d once been a solicitor’s clerk and suddenly decided to become a solicitor himself.

  He was a sort of working-man’s lawyer. All the small tradesmen used him when they wanted to sue anyone and the local drunks and housebreakers went to him if they thought he could get them off. He was flabby and self-opinionated and always wore a black jacket and grey striped trousers, as though ready for a small-town wedding at any time. There was always dandruff on his collar, too. Yet, he was all-there in court. You couldnt’ say he wasn’t.

  Suddenly freed from its burden of anxiety Mr. Bisby’s mind allowed Mr. Dobb to enter.

  “Well.… This is a pretty kettle of fish,” he had said to Sandiman.

  Sandiman was the dean of the legal faculty in Brockfield and looked down his nose at Dobb.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Old Fenning dying. And just as I was beginning to get some of his business, too.”

  That was a thrust for Old Sandiman. He thought Fennings, family and mill, couldn’t get along without him.

  “What do you mean? I’m the Fenning family solicitor. What would they want with you?”

  “To tell you the truth, Mr. Fenning wanted to add a codicil to his Will. Whether he rang you up and found you out, or whether he wanted new blood, I can’t say. He asked me to do it.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  Mr. Sandiman’s already alarming blood pressure rose a few more points and he pawed the air as black dots swam before him.

  “It’s true. Why should I tell you, if it’s all a make-up? The old man’s dead and I’ve lost the chance.…”

  “What was the codicil about?”

  “Fancy you, a lawyer, asking me that? You ought to know better.”

  And old Sandiman had turned his back and walked away in a tantrum.

  Yes, yes, thought the re-invigorated Mr. Bisby, I’d better let Faddiman know. It may help and it may not.

  Bisby recollected another thing, too. He remembered Dobb, turning to his clerk, a little weazel of a man who looked more like a scarecrow than a man of law. “I bet Sandiman never had such rotten luck,” Dobb had said. “It looks as if every good client we get is bumped off. First Barrow, just as we’re ready to serve the papers; and now old man Fenning dies.…” And the weazel had bared his little pointed teeth dangerously as though looking for prey in which to fasten them.