The Worried Widow

by Gerald Hammond

  Mrs Hendrickson steeled herself and unlocked one of the doors. The smell of a powerful domestic cleaning agent wafted out to them. As Keith followed her inside, some recent workmanship caught his attention. ‘The door’s been repaired,’ he remarked.

  ‘That was some time ago, just after we moved here. There was a break-in. They didn’t touch his guns, thank goodness, just took some papers.’ She made it clear that papers were of little importance.

  The summerhouse was a single room, almost twenty feet square, warm, dry and well-lit, painted white throughout but with bright colours to the furniture and the few pictures. The floor, which was of red quarry tiles, was bare but some rugs were rolled up against the skirting. The blank south wall was fitted with a low bookcase and cupboard, and in the angle between this and the picture-window stood a desk with a microcomputer, disc-drive, printer, television set and nearby a telephone extension. An electric bell-push had been fitted to the corner of the desk. The large ashtray held a dozen or so cigarette-ends, and beside it lay a half-empty packet of desiccated cigarettes and a gold lighter. A large cassette-player-cum-radio stood on the bookcase. It was all arranged to suit a man confined to the wheelchair which still stood by the desk.

  The remainder of the room was sparse, occupied only by a low table surrounded by two armchairs and the stained couch. The arrangement was unbalanced because, Keith supposed, the couch which had stood under the picture-window had been pulled out, forcing the displacement of the other pieces. Energetic attempts at a clean-up had started but had been abandoned and these, with the disturbance left by the police and the residual stains on the paintwork, ruined the appearance of what must have been a serene room, perfect habitat for an invalid. Keith had felt an unease as he approached the building, an atavistic fear of a place made unhallowed by the events it had enclosed; but, on acquaintance and ignoring the after-the-party disorder, he found it pleasant and not unfamiliar, as if his dream of the perfect working room had been translated into reality.

  ‘Let’s sit down and talk again for a moment,’ Keith said. They took the two armchairs and tried to ignore the stains which disfigured the couch. ‘What papers were taken?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said with complete unconcern. ‘As far as I could tell, it didn’t bother Sam and he wouldn’t have the police called. But the police arrived a few days later, with a warrant and a solicitor representing the union. Between them, they took away the rest of his papers, except for a few purely personal files, so I’m afraid you won’t find much of use.’

  ‘Was Sam . . . upset when the various branches of the law came and impounded his papers?’

  ‘Sam was the only person who wasn’t upset. He was having one of his bad days. Or pretending to, I could never tell. The phone had been busy the day before and I think that that may have decided him to stay in bed. But I’ll tell you this – I was upset. I am not used to having the police around the place.’ Mrs Hendrickson’s tone made the forces of the law and order sound like an indecent infection and her usually affable expression gave way for a moment to a lofty scowl. ‘And the others were upset because most of what they wanted had already been taken in the break-in. I didn’t care about the papers, but they were Sam’s; and, anyway, I wasn’t putting up with it.

  ‘Sam had solicitors in Edinburgh, but I didn’t know who they were even if there’d been time to call them. So I phoned the local man, Mr Enterkin, who’d done the conveyance of the house for us and made some alterations to Sam’s will.’ Keith looked up sharply and Mrs Hendrickson noticed the movement. ‘After his stroke, Sam knew that he might . . . be at risk. His will was long out of date and so, being Sam, ill or not, he did something about it. Anyway, it was Mr Enterkin I phoned. He came rushing up here—’

  ‘Now I know that you’re exaggerating,’ Keith said with a smile. ‘Ralph Enterkin never rushed in his life, especially not when driving a car.’

  She stopped in mid-flow and thought about it. ‘I suppose I am,’ she said. ‘And you’re quite right. I should weigh my words, shouldn’t I? Well, Mr Enterkin set off straight away and crawled very slowly up here in his car. Is that better?’

  ‘That sounds more like him,’ Keith said.

  ‘He did all that he could in Sam’s interests, but in the end he said that it was all above-board and that I should let them have what they wanted. I told Sam about it when he was stronger, but I could tell that he had expected it and didn’t want to hear any more.’

  Keith thought that Sam Hendrickson might have been unconcerned because he thought that his health would insulate him from trouble, or because he knew that his papers had already been carefully weeded, or even because he always had the way out which he might ultimately have taken. His associates might have been less phlegmatic.

  It was difficult to visualise a marriage between this gentle mother-figure and a left-wing firebrand. ‘What did you think of his politics?’ he asked.

  ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I never gave them much of a thought. Beliefs are a very personal thing, don’t you think? Even if somebody’s making speeches, the reasons for their inner beliefs are their own, as separate from argument and logic as a faith in God. You couldn’t deny much of what Sam said about class injustice and so on. He cared very deeply about the wrongs of privilege and oppression and I had to agree with him. I think we both felt strongly about the evils of self. Our only difference was that I felt guilty that we should be so secure when other people were hungry, but Sam just said that we were entitled to the rewards of hard work and intelligence. I kept telling myself that he’d every right to come to his own conclusions even though, if I’d been politically inclined, I think I’d have come to something quite different.’ She looked up at the ceiling for a moment without even seeing the terrible stain. ‘I’d have decided that it was better to pull the underdog up rather than to knock the top dog down. But that wasn’t for me to say while Sam was alive and active.’

  Keith nodded. It was not an unusual standpoint for a wife to take. Loyalty, combined with self-interest, could obscure original thought. He could sometimes see his own views reflected in Molly.

  Mrs Hendrickson, Keith judged, was ripe for the first trick question. ‘What was the first thing you noticed when you came in here, after hearing the bang?’

  ‘The smoke,’ she said without hesitation. ‘It caught my throat even before I looked at Sam. A sort of burning, acrid smell. And it wasn’t the cigarette that he’d dropped. I thought at first that he’d set the place on fire, and then I thought that he must have been smoking something he shouldn’t. Then I saw him. I suppose the smoke was left from the shot?’

  Keith nodded. ‘Sam smoked pot, did he?’

  ‘After his stroke, somebody smuggled him in some cigarettes, just once or twice. They seemed to soothe him. But I couldn’t approve.’

  Keith could see little moral difference between cannabis resin and such drugs as the doctor might have prescribed. ‘What did the police take away after Sam died?’ he asked.

  ‘As far as I know, only the gun and the cartridge. And poor Sam’s body, of course.’

  ‘And did you remove anything?’

  ‘Only—’ she began, and broke off. She lowered her head until her face was hidden.

  ‘I understand,’ Keith said quickly. He had remembered, too late, that in her cleaning-up she had, in fact, been removing material which had once formed part of her late husband. It was not a thought for her to dwell on. It was not even one which he cared to carry in his own mind. ‘Don’t try to say any more. It’s a bad time for you. Just sit and try not to think of anything much while I look around.’

  She snuffled into a small handkerchief.

  He got up and looked behind the couch. Sure enough, on the otherwise spotless floor was the ash-trail of a cigarette which had burned its length. The remaining cork-tip was a distinctive colour, matching those in the open packet on the desk.

  Keith looked around him, digesting the scene.

  Abo
ve the bookcase, six wooden pegs were fixed to the wall, one pair above the other. The topmost pair of pegs supported a heavy, over-under, twelve-bore shotgun of Italian make. On the lowest pair, only a few inches above the bookcase, was a slim, twenty-bore, Spanish side-by-side boxlock. Both guns had been fitted with rubber butt-pads. They were well cared-for, the blueing almost unmarked and the walnut stocks showing the soft glow of a well-tended oil finish.

  Despite the cleaning-up, the stains and pellet-marks told a story which was consistent with a man in the wheelchair having turned it to face the guns, loaded the gun of his choice, put the muzzles in his mouth and pulled a trigger. The plaster ceiling showed clearly an oval pattern of small punctures where the pellets had lodged, but organic material, including tiny fragments of bone, had been spread more widely.

  Mrs Hendrickson had said that there had only been one cartridge shown to the court. Keith wondered why. His own instinct, in Sam Hendrickson’s shoes, would have been to load both barrels rather than risk the traumatic instant if he pulled the wrong trigger on the reversed gun. Or had the missing gun been a single-barrelled repeater?

  A four-drawer filing-cabinet stood beside the desk. Keith looked inside. One drawer held a few personal files of correspondence, receipts and tax-papers. Another was neatly furnished with clean glasses and a variety of bottles. Otherwise, the cabinet had been cleared out.

  Keith selected a file marked ‘Insurance’ and looked inside. He skipped over the life insurances, noting only that the late Mr Hendrickson had either valued his life highly or had been concerned about the future of his family. Among the insurances of goods and effects, the guns were listed. The missing gun had been a double-barrel, twelve-bore, Spanish sidelock of middle price but reputable make. Keith knew the model well.

  He looked through the drawers of the desk. Stationery, stamps, all the paraphernalia which a man collects, none of it significant. The middle drawer held a few basic tools and some cleaning materials for the guns. He moved a duster and found two, yellow twenty-bore cartridges.

  The microcomputer was similar to his own. The guns and some other surfaces showed the marks of fingerprint powder but the computer’s keyboard was clean. He decided to leave it alone for the moment. The television set would act as its display unit, but Sam Hendrickson would have had the option of watching his favourite programmes on it when he so wished.

  On the bookcase beneath the guns lay a pair of snap-caps – metal dummy cartridges with sprung discs instead of primers, designed to save damage to firing-pins if triggers were pulled on an unloaded gun for practice or to relieve the springs.

  Small circles which showed in the side-plates of the over-under gun were actually the ends of the axles carrying the internal tumblers or hammers, and these were marked with indicators. The engraved lines were parallel to the length of the gun, showing that the tumblers were in the fired position.

  Keith examined the upper surfaces of the desk and bookcase, moving around to catch them against the light. He saw nothing. ‘I’ll be damned!’ he said to himself.

  It was his habit to carry a pair of cotton gloves, to protect his hands from grease and guns from his acid fingerprints. He pulled them on and took down the over-under gun. The police, he hoped, would already have photographed any fingerprints. He opened the gun, holding one hand over the breech, and the ejectors popped another pair of snap-caps against his palm. He replaced the gun and took down the twenty-bore. This gun, being a non-ejector, merely lifted a smaller pair of snap-caps towards him when he opened it. Under the dusting of powder, both guns looked and smelled as if they had been cleaned not long before.

  The wheelchair at least had been cleaned. He was about to sit down in it but delicacy restrained him. He walked back and sat down opposite Mrs Hendrickson, who had recovered her composure and was watching him anxiously.

  ‘Let’s understand each other,’ Keith said. ‘For the moment, you just want me to prove that Sam didn’t kill himself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to find out exactly what happened?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Not just yet. If you can prove . . . what you said, I think the police would re-open the case. If not—’

  ‘If not, we can speak again,’ Keith said.

  ‘And do you think that you can? Prove it, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll want to see a few other people first, before I say any more. But I think so.’

  Chapter Three

  There was no immediate sign of Molly or Deborah. Keith gave three quick toots on the car’s horn and then sat, taking in a scene redolent of comfortable conformity. He was generally contented with his lot – a good business, a fine house, few debts and a loving family – but he was conscious of a fleeting trace of envy. Then he laughed at himself. It was human nature to see others as being without the problems or self-doubts which closer acquaintance usually revealed.

  The hour was approaching when civilised man takes time for a pre-prandial drink, but the scene of manicured lawns and sculptured shrubs was not devoid of people. Next door to the Hendricksons’ a male figure, presumably belonging to Ben Strathling, could be glimpsed through the hedge, hosing down a late-model Jaguar. High on a ladder a window-cleaner was working. Somebody was watching him from an upper window. The window-cleaner fetched something from a small van and moved his ladder before climbing again. There was no other van to be seen, which suggested that old Mr Rogers had finished his collection of the milk-money.

  Deborah appeared, hurrying along the short street with the familiar grin which was so like Molly’s, and hopped in beside him. Molly came out of a different house and paused on the doorstep, still chatting to a lady. Keith pulled the car forward and Molly broke away and came to join them. Keith set off back towards the middle of the town.

  ‘You were almost right,’ Deborah said cheerfully. ‘Nobody seemed to mind talking to me. One or two of the parents were a wee bit patronising about it.’

  ‘Mostly, they said that they’d rather let sleeping dogs lie and then started to talk their heads off,’ Molly put in from the back seat.

  ‘Especially about one another,’ Deborah said. ‘You’d think that people like that came together in that special sort of place because they were at least prepared to try to like each other.’

  ‘You might,’ Keith said. ‘I wouldn’t. Except for Mrs Hendrickson, who moved there because Sam already had a friend next door, they’ve mostly come together because they’re well-off and they’d rather mingle with others in the same bracket than expose themselves to the envy of proles like you and me.’

  Deborah snorted with laughter. Even her laughter was an echo of Molly’s. ‘Come off it, Dad,’ she said. ‘You could buy and sell most of them.’

  Keith looked at her out of the corner of his eye but had to return his gaze quickly to the road for the canal bridge. ‘A little filial admiration’s all very well,’ he said, ‘but don’t let it go to your head. We’re doing all right, but we’re not in that bracket yet.’

  ‘If you say so. But some of them aren’t as well-off as they’d like one to think. Do you believe that you can smell money in a house?’ she asked.

  It was a serious question and Keith thought about it. ‘Not money as such,’ he said. ‘But you can smell the results of its being spent or not. Things like the quality of soap and food. Expensive wines and tobacco. Flowers out of season. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Polishes,’ Molly said. ‘They’re the biggest give-away. And the freshness of the air. People who don’t have to worry about the cost of heating can afford to have the windows open.’

  Deborah nodded eagerly. ‘Those are just the sort of things I meant. And it goes all the way from the poorest up,’ she said. ‘You can tell. Anyway, I got a whole scad of information, some of it quite scurrilous.’

  ‘So did I,’ Molly said. ‘Do you want the highlights now?’

  They were almost back at the Square. ‘Not
this minute,’ Keith said. ‘There may be a quicker way to prove that Mr Hendrickson didn’t do himself in. Where’s Primrose Crescent?’

  ‘Just behind the High School. Why?’

  ‘Because that’s where Mrs Hendrickson’s daily lives. I’ll walk there and see her.’ Keith halted the car and turned round to speak to Molly. ‘You take the car and Deborah and try and catch your old milkman. He’s probably back at the dairy by now. Find out what he can remember and then meet me back at the hotel.’

  ‘For lunch?’ Deborah asked keenly.

  ‘I hope so. Ralph Enterkin always talks more freely over a good meal, especially if a client’s paying for it. And I’ll try to set up an appointment with Superintendent Munro for after lunch. Are you sure you know what “scurrilous” means?’

  ‘Not really. It’s what you called uncle Ronnie. Cheerio!’

  *

  It was not quite closing-time when Keith returned. The car was back, parked near his shop. This usually presented a pleasantly old-fashioned front to the Square but it was now half-hidden by a large delivery van. He unlocked the boot and carried a bagged shotgun inside. It was not in his nature to waste a journey. His partner, Wallace James, was presiding over the massed ranks of guns, fishing tackle and all the associated gear and clothing. Wallace accepted a cheque from the only customer and raised his eyebrows at Keith.

  ‘Here’s that Perazzi back,’ Keith said as the door closed. ‘I’ve got the dents out of the barrels and removed about ten years of accumulated shit from the action. Tell the silly sod to be more careful.’

  ‘I’ll t-tell him,’ Wallace said, accepting the heavy gun-bag. ‘But he won’t. There are two more for your t-tender care. I’ve put a note with each of them about what’s wanted.’

  ‘Miracles, probably,’ Keith said.

  ‘I c-can’t deny it.’ Wallace blinked in the sudden flood of light as the delivery van moved away. ‘Thank God! I was just nerving myself for another battle with old man Kechnie. Did you finish the report for Mr Wilmington?’