Pick Up the Pieces

by J F Straker

  Susan Chitty returned from attending to something in the kitchen. She felt nervous and awkward in the presence of this rather forbidding-looking man. One didn’t meet many strangers in Chaim.

  ‘I haven’t come across your brother yet,’ he said. ‘I was hoping to find him here.’

  ‘He’s not back from Tanbury,’ she answered. ‘He had to go to the oculist about his glasses.’

  She could be quite good-looking if she spent a bit of money on herself, thought the Inspector. Nice features, and a good figure if you liked them thin.

  ‘He wasn’t at home yesterday evening, was he?’

  ‘No. He was playing cards at Mr Forthright’s place.’

  ‘And at what time did he come home?’

  ‘Soon after one — about a quarter past, perhaps.’

  ‘Is he usually as late as that?’

  ‘Yes, on a Tuesday he is.’

  Her manner was half defiant, half frightened. She answered his questions as though somewhere there must be a hidden trap she had to avoid; and all the time she was fidgeting with her hands or moving restlessly where she sat. The slightest noise from outside seemed to startle her. A bad case of nerves, thought Inspector Pitt. Am I as terrifying as all that?

  He tried to put her at her ease. ‘It doesn’t sound as though your brother is likely to be much help to me,’ he said, ‘but I’ll have a chat with him later, just in case. I feel I know him quite well already; wonderful how everyone knows everyone else’s business in a small place like this. Isn’t he engaged to Mr Wells’s daughter?’

  ‘He was,’ Susan said doubtfully, his friendliness calming her fears. ‘I think they broke it off.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His tone matched his words. ‘Had they been engaged long?’

  ‘Just over two years.’

  ‘Too long,’ said Pitt. ‘I’m a firm believer in short engagements. Speaking as a confirmed bachelor, of course.’

  She smiled slightly. A pity she doesn’t do it more often, he thought. It makes her almost beautiful.

  ‘They couldn’t really afford to get married,’ she volunteered. ‘My brother’s not one for saving, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Few of us are these days, miss. I suppose the slump at the garage may have put him back a bit, too? I’m told Mr White had to ask them all to take lower wages. Just over a year ago, wasn’t it?’

  The smile left her face.

  ‘I — Dave doesn’t take me into his confidence much,’ she said truthfully. ‘I don’t know.’

  Inspector Pitt did not labour the point. ‘My main reason for calling — apart from seeing your brother, of course — was to ask about Mr Loften,’ he said. ‘I understand he was here yesterday evening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time did he leave, miss?’ As the girl hesitated he added, ‘I’m not trying to pry into your personal affairs, you know. I merely want to find out where everyone was.’

  She flushed. ‘Mr Loften and I are merely good friends, Inspector. There’s nothing for you to pry into.’

  ‘No, of course not. But you haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘He arrived about ten o’clock and left at ten minutes to one,’ she said, the flush deepening. Her eyes avoided his.

  ‘I see. Well, that seems to dispose of that. Thank you, miss.’

  The front door slammed, and a moment later Dave Chitty came into the room. His cheeks were flushed, and he had obviously been running. ‘Good Lord, Susan!’ he cried breathlessly. ‘Have you —’

  He stopped suddenly as he caught sight of the Inspector.

  ‘This is Detective-Inspector Pitt, Dave,’ said the girl. ‘Inspector, this is my brother.’

  ‘Oh!’ The expression on Chitty’s face hardened. ‘You’ll have come about the murder, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. How did you hear of it?’

  ‘I got off the bus at the garage. They told me there.’ He looked anxiously from one to the other, then slumped into a chair. The springs creaked noisily, and Pitt smiled to himself, recalling his former fancies. The room will be laughing the other side of its face soon, he thought. Was it me or my sister you wanted to see?’ Chitty asked.

  ‘Both, sir. I’m just trying to pick up all the information I can.’

  ‘You won’t get any here. Susan was at home, and I was out playing cards,’ said the other. And I’ve got three good witnesses to prove it,’ he added defiantly.

  ‘Yes, sir. Your friends told me about that. But I’d like your own version, if you don’t mind.’

  Chitty gave it. Like his friends, he was word-perfect. Facts and times both corresponded exactly with the versions given by the others.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Chitty. You’d make a good witness. But about these spectacles of yours. Broke them on the way home last night, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We took the short cut across the fields, and I caught my foot in a rut or something. Damned annoying. I can’t read a word without them.’

  Looking at the man’s eyes, Pitt believed him. Their natural smallness was accentuated by the half-closed lids. ‘Could you show me where you broke them?’ he asked.

  Dave was not prepared for this. It had never occurred to any of them that the police might be interested in such an apparently unimportant incident. And there had been no one at the garage to warn him; only Loften and the police.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said slowly. ‘I could show you the field, of course. But it’s a fair size and — well, it was pretty dark, you see.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the field, then,’ said the Inspector.

  As Chitty had said, it was a fair size; about ten acres of pasture, with a well-defined track crossing it diagonally and forking right and left some hundred yards before it reached the Tanbury road. ‘Did you keep to the track?’ asked Pitt, as he and Chitty stood looking at it over the low blackthorn hedge.

  ‘That was the idea, of course,’ said the other. ‘But it was dark and we kept wandering off it. That was how I came a cropper,’ he added, with what he considered to be a touch of genius.

  Pitt left him there, having other calls to make in the village, and Chitty climbed the stile and began to walk across the field towards the garage. He was puzzled and worried by the Inspector’s interest in his spectacles. What had the others been saying?

  ‘Hullo, there!’ said Molly Wells. ‘You look a bit down in the mouth. Worried you may lose your job?’

  He had been vaguely aware of an approaching female figure. Now, as he looked at her, appreciating her fresh young beauty, he remembered suddenly that the obstacle to their marriage no longer existed. He was free again, free to take a new job and to marry and leave Chaim. And they would have all the money they needed.

  Impetuously he caught her hands in his. She looked at him, surprised by his action. It had taken all her courage to address him; and she had only done so, swallowing her pride, because she had thought to detect, during the past week or two, an added interest in his eyes at sight of her. She had not expected a rebuff, but neither had she been prepared for such loverlike enthusiasm.

  ‘Molly,’ he said; and then again, ‘Molly.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Dave?’ She did not draw her hands away.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he said, excitement mounting within him as the prospect began to take shape. ‘Not now. Let’s get married, Molly. Soon.’

  ‘Well, really!’ She slipped her hands out of his and stepped back, looking at him in astonishment mingled with delight. ‘You break off our engagement, ignore me for months, and then —’

  ‘It was you who broke it off, not me. Not that I blame you, of course.’ He seized her hands again and drew her to him. ‘I’ve been a brute and a fool, Molly, but I’ve never stopped loving you. Here!’ He fumbled hastily through his pockets and triumphantly produced the ring. ‘Put this on again, eh?’

  ‘You haven’t been drinking, have you?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘No. Sober as a judge, that’s me.’ He drew
her closer. ‘Will you marry me, Molly? Will you?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it. I’m not going to be bullied into marrying you after the way you’ve treated me.’ It was a weak, instinctive protest against the clamour of her heart. She loved him, but pride told her that she must not capitulate too readily. ‘What would we do for money, anyway? When I marry I want a proper home, with my own furniture and —and things. I’m not going to pig it in one room, my lad.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to,’ he said. ‘I’ve got money — enough, anyway. More than you think, perhaps. And now that White’s dead I can —’ He stopped, suddenly realizing what he was saying. ‘I’ve always wanted to get away from here, you know that; and now’s a good time to make the break. I’ll get a better job — in town, somewhere. What do you say, Molly?’

  ‘You had a better job in town offered you once before, Dave — remember? Why didn’t you take that?’

  ‘I —they changed their minds,’ he lied.

  But already he was returning to reality. He was involved in a murder — perhaps it might not be so easy to leave Chaim. And if things did not go well, if their alibi was proved to be false...

  Molly saw the doubt in his face, felt it in the reduced pressure of his hands on hers. She had not meant to deter him with her arguments, but rather to spur him on. Fearful that by her quibbling she might have lost something she greatly desired, she pressed closer to him.

  ‘I’ll marry you if you really mean it, Dave,’ she said softly, hiding her face against his jacket.

  The presence of her pliant body within the circle of his arms momentarily banished doubt and fear. He put one hand under her chin and tilted her face so that he might kiss her.

  ‘Of course I mean it,’ he declared between kisses.

  She drew away from him, laughing happily. ‘You choose a fine place and time for love-making. I must say! Half the village can see us.’

  ‘Who cares?’ He kissed her again.

  ‘Not me,’ Molly confessed.

  With their arms around each other’s waist they walked slowly and blissfully to the end of the field. For a few moments they stood there, locked in an embrace — until, from across the top of the hedge, Dave saw the garage. Memory returned to him, and he drew away from the girl.

  ‘I ought to be getting back to work,’ he said.

  Molly ran most of the way home. She burst into the living-room, cheeks flushed, eyes dancing, and threw her arms round her mother in an ecstatic embrace.

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so happy! Dave’s just asked me to marry him! He says it was all a mistake our breaking it off, and he still loves me. And he’s going to leave Chaim and get a job in London, and he’s got quite a lot of money saved up, he says, so he can’t have —’ She stopped. For the first time she noticed the tall man standing by the window. She drew away from her mother, abashed.

  ‘This is Inspector Pitt, Molly. He’s come about Mr White being murdered,’ said Mrs Wells.

  She made it sound as though he had come about the rent.

  Pitt smiled at the girl. She thought he looked nice when he smiled. ‘Rather a grisly subject on such a happy day, eh? It seems I have to congratulate you, Miss Wells. Who’s the lucky man?’

  ‘Dave Chitty,’ she said, blushing.

  ‘Oh, yes. He works at the garage, doesn’t he?’ Pitt frowned thoughtfully. The girl’s announcement made the question he had to ask her all the more tricky. ‘You knew Mr White, didn’t you, miss?’

  ‘Only slightly.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘I was given to understand that you knew him rather better than that. Been out with him in his car, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Molly looked anxiously at her mother, seeking advice. Mrs Wells said nothing. ‘He — he gave me a lift home once or twice, that’s all.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know anything about his private affairs? No idea who might have killed him, and why?’

  ‘No,’ Molly said firmly. But she was relieved when he turned his attention to her visit to the Forthright cottage the previous evening. There she was on firmer ground.

  When the girl had left the room Mrs Wells turned indignantly on the Inspector. ‘Who’s been telling you tales about Molly?’ she demanded. ‘There never was anything between her and White. Why, he’s old enough to be her father! She’s been in love with Dave Chitty for years. They were all set to get married over a year ago, only...’

  ‘Only what?’ asked the Inspector, as she paused.

  ‘Well, they had a tiff. You know what young people are, always blowing hot and cold.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. You’ll be pleased to see them married, then?’

  ‘I most certainly will. So will my husband. It’s worried us a lot, knowing the way Molly felt about Dave, and him acting so queer.’

  ‘Queer? How queer, Mrs Wells?’

  She had been so set on heading him off from Andrew White that she had not thought where they were going. Oh, just queer,’ she said, intentionally vague. ‘Avoiding Molly, breaking off the engagement. But I dare say he was worried about him not earning enough to get married.’

  ‘I see. But didn’t your daughter mention just now that he had money put by? Enough for them to marry on?’

  She shuffled uneasily. ‘Young people exaggerate,’ she said. ‘Dave Chitty isn’t one for saving.’

  ‘So his sister told me. And he’s quite a heavy drinker, I believe. That runs away with the money.’

  ‘He doesn’t drink that heavy,’ she answered. She wished she knew what he was driving at. With a murder on his hands he couldn’t just be making polite conversation, he must be after something. But what? If she knew that it would be easier to answer his questions.

  ‘What sort of a man was White?’ he asked.

  ‘I hardly knew him myself,’ she said. ‘But he wasn’t popular in the village. Too much of a snob.’

  ‘What about his employees — your husband, for example? What did he think of him?’

  ‘None of them liked White,’ she said grudgingly. ‘He wasn’t an easy man to work for.’

  ‘I suppose it didn’t help when he cut their wages,’ the Inspector said thoughtfully. ‘You must have felt the pinch a bit during the past year.’

  ‘It was longer than that,’ she said. ‘But we managed.’

  ‘Unusual for wages to go down nowadays,’ he said. ‘The trend’s all the other way. Didn’t their union have something to say about that?’

  ‘None of them belongs to a union.’

  He stood up, reaching for his hat. ‘Well, I mustn’t sit here gossiping; I’ll be on my way. Good luck to your daughter —and thank you. You’ve been a great help.’

  Have I? she wondered, as she watched him walk briskly down the garden path. I wish I knew how.

  *

  They met at Forthright’s cottage that evening, after the garage had closed. It was an uncomfortable meeting. Until the gathering was complete they avoided the topic that obsessed their minds. There was no friendliness, no confidence. They sat eyeing each other with mistrust and suspicion, reading guilt in every twitch of a facial muscle, in every awkward movement of head or hand or foot.

  When Chitty arrived, late as usual, Wickery scowled at him. But Forthright gave him no chance to speak.

  ‘There’s no point in starting a slanging match,’ he told them. ‘White is dead and one of us killed him, and that’s all there is to it. Bert thinks it was Dave or me. Well, let him — that’s what I say. I’ve got my own suspicions, come to that. But none of us can prove a damned thing, so what’s the use of accusing each other? If we hang together’ — Wickery flinched at this unfortunate choice of words — ‘and try and keep one jump ahead of the police, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be all right.’

  Looking at them, he realized he was voicing a policy that all, himself included, would find it hard to follow. Apart from Pop’s almost paternal affection for Dave an affection which might prove awkward, and which Forthright suspected was not recipro
cated — there was no real comradeship to bind them. They had never been more than acquaintances, thrown together by a common trade. Each of us would shop the others, he thought, if he knew them to be guilty particularly if by doing so he could save his own skin.

  It was not a comforting thought.

  ‘United we stand, divided we fall,’ quoted Wells. He tried to sound cheerful, but his words had a mournful, last-ditch ring, and he could not keep the fear out of his voice.

  Wickery said nothing, but sat contemplating his shoes. Chitty, with Molly fresh in his mind, looked the least concerned of the four.

  ‘I didn’t kill White,’ he said defiantly. ‘I might have done if I’d had the chance, but I didn’t. It wasn’t me who went into the garage last night.’

  None of them took any heed of his denial. It was a foregone conclusion that he would make one.

  ‘Even if we knew which of us done it, it wouldn’t help much,’ said Wells, speaking mainly for Wickery’s benefit. Harry had said he could handle Bert, that Bert hadn’t the guts to stand out against the rest of them. But Wells wasn’t so sure. Bert’s sense of grievance was strong; if he could name the murderer with certainty he might still go to the police. ‘They’ll never believe we didn’t plan to kill White, that it was an accident. If one of us hangs we all hang.’

  ‘Cheerful devil, aren’t you?’ said Forthright.

  ‘What about the money?’ Chitty asked impatiently. All this palaver, he thought, was a waste of time. White was dead, and good riddance to him. Either their alibi worked or it didn’t; there was nothing they could do now to improve on it. ‘When do we collect?’

  Not yet,’ said Forthright. ‘I told you we’d have to wait a bit. That’s still more important now that White’s dead. The police won’t give up so easily.’

  ‘But I want to be off,’ Chitty protested. ‘Molly and I aim to get married soon.’