The Worried Widow

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Your visitor last night –’ Gowrie began.

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t say “alleged visitor”,’ Keith broke in.

  The inspector raised his eyebrows. ‘Your past dealings with the superintendent seem to have left you a bit on the touchy side. He has that effect on folk at times. But you needn’t be scratchy with me. I’ve forgiven you for making me look daft and we’re quite prepared to believe you this time around. Last night –’ Gowrie produced and opened a typed report – ‘you told our officers that your visitor’s voice bore some resemblance to the voice of “Hughie” as described by Mrs Hendrickson but not to the caller who threatened you on the phone.’

  ‘My caller disguised his voice,’ Keith said. ‘But he’d been reared in an altogether classier neighbourhood than Hughie.’

  ‘He couldn’t have been putting it on? Talking “pan loaf” as they say?’

  ‘If he was, he was bloody good at it.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘The weekend isn’t the best time to get information from a union about its members and officials, but we have word of a Hughie Reynolds who was a hanger-on of Sam Hendrickson and his crowd. He doesn’t sound the type who’d be a good enough actor to fool you. Odd-job man, keeping recalcitrant members in line, that sort of thing. Our informant described him as “the size and shape of a brick shithouse and with a voice like a randy mastiff”.’

  Keith thought back. It was some years since he had listened to a randy mastiff. ‘That sounds like last night’s caller.’ he said.

  ‘There’s no sign of him around his usual haunts,’ said Gowrie. ‘Probably keeping his head down until the lump on it goes away. There’s nothing much else to incriminate him. There was nobody lurking by the time our men got here. I’ll ask you again, do you want protection?’

  ‘Unarmed?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ve no immediate intention of using firearms,’ Keith said carefully, ‘but there are a number of guns in this house. Because of their value, I have the latest in electronic alarms; and, just in case the wires get cut, my nearest neighbours have instructions to phone your boys if the alarm goes off. I’ll call you if I have any doubts about coping but, for the moment, thanks but no thanks.’

  Gowrie put his coffee mug carefully down on a table mat. ‘The least amount of force compatible with self defence,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to have to prosecute you or one of your family for manslaughter or culpable homicide.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ Keith said. ‘Have you made any other progress?’

  ‘Miracles take a little longer,’ said Gowrie. Away from Superintendent Munro, he was given to enigmatic statements. ‘You only dropped your bombshells yesterday afternoon. And I’d been looking forward to a free weekend for once, Ho-hum! Have you had any more thoughts?’

  ‘Some,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve done my bit and been paid off, but I’d have to be a vegetable not to go on thinking about it. And you?’

  ‘Thoughts, yes. Progress, no. I tried to recover Mr Hendrickson’s trousers from his widow but she’d already sent them to Oxfam; although, as the super pointed out, any traces of linseed oil could have been there for months for all the lab would’ve been able to tell, so there’s no harm done. Before I invest a lot more police time, I’d like to pick your brains.’

  Keith made modest noises. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  Inspector Gowrie’s face was usually unlined but now his brow furrowed with thought. ‘Difficult to express clearly,’ he said. ‘We know that a noise, as of a shot, was heard. We know the approximate time of that. Unfortunately, because it was so obviously a case of suicide, the police surgeon was even less precise than usual in his estimate of the time of death. But how crucial is that time? In other words, did Sam Hendrickson necessarily die at the moment when that bang was heard?’

  ‘It’s a vague question,’ Keith protested.

  ‘I’m thinking vaguely. To be more precise, do I disregard everybody who can be accounted for at that time? Or would it have been possible for somebody to have shot him earlier and to have left some device to make the bang while he was safely in other company, returning later to remove the banger?’

  To gain time, Keith poured himself another coffee which he could well have done without. ‘There are two parts to that question.’ he said at last. ‘Could somebody have shot Sam Hendrickson without attracting attention? And could he then have arranged for a delayed-action noise to simulate the shot?’

  ‘True,’ Gowrie said. ‘But you can concentrate on the first part. The second is my baby.’

  ‘I’ll comment on the second anyway. Like my wife, I always pass remarks about other peoples’ babies. You’re thinking of some kind of a firework?’

  Gowrie nodded. ‘Or possibly a tape-recording.’

  ‘I think you can discount the idea of a recording. There was only Hendrickson’s own cassette-radio around and its speaker wouldn’t have a tenth of the necessary volume. I really can’t see somebody lugging a hi-fi system into the Hendrickson’s garden on the end of a long lead and getting it out of sight before Mrs H arrived. As for the firework idea, a squib doesn’t sound anything like a shotgun.’

  ‘I was thinking of something like an army thunderflash.’

  ‘Ah.’ Keith thought again. ‘Mrs Hendrickson describes “a muffled bang”. A thunderflash might be suitable. But it’s pretty powerful as fireworks go. It would be difficult to use without leaving traces.’

  ‘Down the nearest drain?’ Gowrie suggested.

  ‘When I was young and wicked – which was a long time ago,’ Keith pointed out quickly, ‘– I once dropped a thunderflash down a drain. It was after a party and I was showing off. Every brander in the street erupted like a fountain. You think nobody in Boswell Court would have noticed something like that?’

  ‘Leave it for now,’ Gowrie said. ‘We may find a scorched patch in the wood. What about the sound of the real shot?’

  ‘Difficult. There’s no doubt that he really was shot, or that the muzzle was inside his mouth at the time. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Gowrie said.

  ‘You can’t fit a silencer to a double-barrel gun. There are silencers, of a sort, to fit a single barrel. One of the neighbours, Beeching, has a sixteen-bore pump-gun which would suit. But such silencers as I’ve seen fitted to shotguns weren’t very effective, and they were too big to go into anybody’s mouth. Why are you so keen to upset the time element?’

  The detective inspector looked at Keith in mild surprise. ‘I’m not busting a gut to upset the time,’ he said, ‘but how can I not question it? Those who were nearest to Sam Hendrickson are too well alibied for my peace of mind. One, for instance, was seen waiting near your road-end at about the critical time.’

  Gowrie got up to look out of the window. It was drizzling steadily. He turned and sat on the window-sill. ‘Stop me if I’m wrong,’ he said, ‘but I think that what’s loosely called a silencer is only a sort of expansion-chamber to modulate a single, violent pulse of gas pressure and let it emerge gently and over a longer period.’

  ‘Near enough,’ Keith said.

  ‘You pointed out that gas pressure literally blew Sam Hendrickson’s brains out. Wouldn’t that, inside a solid and double-glazed building, be enough to modulate the sound of the shot?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Keith said. He thought about it. ‘The human skull acting as a silencer? I doubt it very much. You could prove it experimentally, one way or the other. Your nearest police lab could surely knock up something which would perform like a human head. Or perhaps you could call for a volunteer?’

  Gowrie straightened up. ‘Any man who volunteered would have a skull too thick for shot to penetrate,’ he said. ‘Tell me something else. My sergeant suggested that, if Sam Hendrickson was shot with a different gun, one with a silencer, the empty case in Sam’s gun and the dirty barrel could be explained by the murderer having fired through it a cartridge which had been previously fired and then fitted with a ne
w primer only. He said that would be very much quieter than a shot. Possible?

  ‘Not possible,’ Keith said. ‘You fire a primer up a barrel and you don’t get burned powder, you get a sticky, grey guck which doesn’t look the same at all.’

  Gowrie sighed deeply. ‘Thank you for your time. And the coffee.’

  ‘I’ve something else to contribute,’ Keith said. ‘Come back and sit down. It hurts my eyes, looking at you against the light.’

  In silence, Gowrie walked back and resumed his seat.

  From his desk drawer, Keith produced the three main components of a conventional shotgun. ‘I’ve just poured cold water on part of your thinking,’ he said. ‘Yet I’ve been doing a little more thinking of my own. I made a mistake yesterday. Put it down to trying to think of too many things at the same time.’ He hooked the pair of barrels to the action-body and closed the gun before clicking the fore-end under the breech-end of the barrels. ‘Assume that you’ve solved the other problems and that Sam Hendrickson was shot either by another gun or by his own gun using a cartridge which would be a giveaway – even a sixteen-bore cartridge, which could, with some difficulty, be fired in a twelve-bore gun. The murderer has a spent cartridge which was once fired in Sam’s gun. Watch.’

  Keith slipped the safety-catch and pulled one trigger. The firing-pins clicked. He removed the fore-end, pressed the top-lever and allowed the gun to swing open. It moved freely. ‘The cocking-action and the tripping of the ejectors are transmitted by the fore-end,’ he explained. He took a fired cartridge from the drawer and inserted it, closed the gun and replaced the fore-end. ‘There you are. If you open it now, the case will eject just as it did when you opened Sam Hendrickson’s gun. And just as if it had only now been fired in this gun.’

  ‘Now that,’ Gowrie said. ‘is very interesting. It opens up a whole spectrum of possibilities. I’m much obliged to you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Keith said. ‘Glad to have been of help. Of course, you’d still have to explain the dirty barrel in Sam’s gun and how the murderer knew in which barrel the spent cartridge had originally been fired. The lab report was quite clear. It said that the marks of the firing-pin and extractor matched the dirty barrel.’

  Inspector Gowrie sat in thought for a full minute. ‘So Sam Hendrickson was shot with his own gun?’ he said at last.

  ‘That’s how I see it.’

  ‘Which could not have been fitted with a silencer?’

  ‘No way that I can think of.’

  ‘And any alibis for the time the shot was heard will stand up?’

  ‘Yes.’ Keith watched with amusement as emotions chased each other across the inspector’s countenance. ‘You can swear if you want to,’ he added helpfully.

  Chapter Six

  Responding to the demands of the alarm clock on a damp Monday morning and trailing into Newton Lauder to open the shop came close to being Keith’s idea of hell. Years of leaving the retail side to Wallace James while concentrating on the gunsmithing, antique arms and general wheeling and dealing had accustomed Keith to a freer way of life. He might rise earlier or later as the mood took him, but he preferred to do so when he awoke of his own accord and not at the command of an impersonal machine.

  Wallace had promised him a quiet fortnight. Keith found it busy if not very profitable. The complicated logistics of ensuring that Deborah never travelled alone and that Molly was either in company or armed and safe behind the alarm system at Briesland House saved him from any risk of boredom.

  The game-shooting season was over and fishermen seemed already to have equipped themselves for the summer. But the clay pigeon season was beginning and there was a steady outflow of cartridges and clays. Heavyweight over-unders came in for a quick check or overhaul and lighter game-guns were left to be readied for the autumn. The workshop in the back premises had long since been absorbed by the retail side of the business, so any guns requiring more than minimal servicing had to be taken home for attention during the evenings.

  Keith would have forgotten Sam Hendrickson, as most of the late union leader’s acquaintances were trying to do, but for a succession of visitors, each with something to say about the case.

  *

  On the Monday afternoon Keith finished answering, on the telephone, a series of penetrating questions about the history and condition of a flintlock fowling-piece which had figured in his last catalogue of antique arms, to find a customer waiting patiently for his attention.

  He recognised Ian Albany immediately. The chairman of the local shooting club was a distinctive figure, stocky and so squat and lantern-jawed that Keith had had to alter several guns to allow for his unusual proportions.

  ‘We’re shooting for our various trophies on Saturday,’ Albany said without preamble or greeting. He placed an order for clays and cartridges. ‘And can we hire an extra trap from you as usual?’

  ‘No problem,’ Keith said. ‘Do you want Deborah to come and work a trap for you again? I can ask her.’

  Ian Albany smiled. He had a friendly smile but his teeth were not quite straight, the canines protruding so that his smile sometimes looked like a snarl. ‘I asked her myself,’ he said, ‘when she came to see me about Sam Hendrickson’s death. She thought she’d probably be available. I think I’ll use my Perazzi on Saturday. Do you have any sixteen-bore skeet cartridges?’

  Keith climbed the step-ladder. As he searched, he spoke over his shoulder. ‘One of your neighbours shoots sixteen-bore, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Jim Beecher,’ Albany said. ‘And that’s all he shoots. If you can call it shooting. He won’t come to the clay pigeons and sharpen up, although I try to tempt him. From what I hear, if he hits a sitting rabbit he buys drinks all round.’

  Keith found him two boxes. Wallace had tucked them away behind some bags of hardened shot. ‘According to Deborah,’ Keith said as he descended, ‘you cleaned Sam Hendrickson’s guns for him on that last morning and left all three of them with the tumblers down on snap-caps.’

  The smile changed subtly, became more snarl-like. ‘Are you still stirring up the mud? Haven’t you done enough damage?’

  ‘All I did,’ Keith said, ‘was to point out to the police that the sheriffs verdict didn’t account for everything. My part’s finished. Now I’m no more curious than the next man. I’d be grateful if you’d pass that word around.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Albany grumbled. ‘But the police are making our lives a misery and they’ve got us looking at each other and wondering what happened and which of us was responsible. It’s the widow I’m sorriest for.’

  ‘What I did was at her request,’ Keith pointed out. ‘She had to twist my arm.’

  ‘I wish somebody would twist my arm, using money as the lever. She’s a fine woman, Calder. Don’t take advantage of her. And leave the business alone now. You’ve done enough damage. God alone knows what skeletons may come tumbling out of closets if the police go on prying.’ Albany paused and seemed to realise that he had worded himself carelessly. ‘Not out of Mrs Hendrickson’s closet, I don’t mean that.’

  ‘Blame the police, not me,’ Keith said patiently. ‘I’m taking no more part in it. I only asked because I was interested. You can’t expect me not to take an interest. And not many people worry about relieving their springs these days.’

  Albany shrugged and his smile was a smile again. ‘I told him over and over again that it was unnecessary.’

  ‘Well, that’s right,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve got a hammerless Lancaster in stock which I don’t suppose has had its springs relieved in the last hundred years and it’s still as good as new.’

  ‘But you can’t tell them that.’ Mr Albany lit a cigarette from a gold lighter. ‘If somebody’s got that particular bee in their bonnet . . . I’ll take an aerosol of gun-oil.’

  Keith bagged the purchases. ‘Just to satisfy my curiosity, how long after you left Hendrickson did you hear the shot?’

  Albany looked at him sharply but decided to reply. ‘I wasn�
��t looking at my watch,’ he said, ‘but it must have been at least an hour. Ben Strathling came across about half an hour after I got home. Some question about the serial numbers of my guns. I have them insured through him. His business took about another half-hour. It wouldn’t have taken ten minutes, but my wife came in to get some change for the milkman and when she caught sight of Ben she wanted to chat about Sam’s condition, she thought that he’d looked even worse than usual. Ben was visibly losing patience, but he had to put on a show. I don’t suppose the old milkman was any too pleased at being kept waiting on the doorstep.’ Albany chuckled. ‘I got Ben out as soon as I reasonably could. The shot came within the next five minutes. That’s my nearest guess.’

  ‘You often buy my brand of cartridges, don’t you?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Usually.’ Albany accepted his package and his change but seemed to be in no hurry to depart. ‘I wish you kept them in sixteen-bore. I’m getting a bit past carrying the heavier gun when I’m not expecting a shot. In twelve-bore, I like your cartridges better than the standard ones. I seem to get fewer runners.’

  Keith suppressed a smile of his own. As he had told Detective Inspector Gowrie, his brand of cartridges was absolutely standard; but the most important factor of any load is the user’s confidence in it. ‘You must have handled that gun quite often,’ he said. ‘If you left it with the tumblers down, didn’t you wonder how on earth he’d managed to re-cock it with only one arm working?’

  Albany drew himself up to his full, modest height. It brought the top of his head level with Keith’s chin but, armed with all the arrogance of money and status, he managed to seem taller ‘Now you listen to me,’ he said. ‘I never knew which gun he’d used until that cocky young inspector came badgering me yesterday. It took me some time to wake up to the trend of his questions. He was having the bloody impertinence to suggest that I’d left the twelve-bore side-by-side ready for Sam Hendrickson to use on himself – maybe even loaded it for him.