Death in Dark Glasses (Inspector Littlejohn)

by George Bellairs

  It was someone else, posing as Oates. Someone else who had either frightened him away . . . or murdered him.

  Montacute was all keyed up. He nervously lit a cigarette. He needed three matches because in his excitement his hand wouldn't stay steady.

  Oates had gone and someone started to draw his money from the bank, sell his investments, forge his name, and that done, stole away by the early train. Someone who looked like Oates in the half-light. The policeman and the porter had mistaken him for Finloe Oates.

  "Are you still there?"

  Mrs. Burditt was back. She couldn't keep away in spite of her antipathy to the place.

  "I'm just going . . ."

  "You were very quiet. I wondered if you were all right."

  "Did you think I'd been murdered, too?"

  "Don't talk like that, Inspector. It's gruesome. One murder's enough."

  Someone had been hiding there and Fishlock had taken the key from its hiding-place, after knocking and getting no answer. The intruder had been waiting for him with the poker. . . .

  "Had Oates any other relatives beside his brother in London?"

  "No. I never heard of any. There was only Lysander. I believe he was some sort of a commercial artist. Mr. Oates once showed me an advert. in a paper and said his brother had done it. It was for breakfast cereal. He seemed proud of it, though, I must say, I didn't see much in it."

  "Did Lysander Oates ever come here?"

  "Not to my knowledge."

  "So you didn't know him?"

  "No. There was a photograph of him with Finloe taken when they were younger. It stood on the mantelpiece in the lounge. . . ."

  She led the way quite possessively, horror overcome by curiosity.

  "Well! It stood there. . . . But it's gone. So has the big photo they had taken on their honeymoon, Mr. and Mrs. Oates. He must have burned them. Perhaps it brought his grief home to him too much. . . . "

  "Is that an album on the whatnot there?"

  A typical family portrait gallery. An album, heavily bound and with a brass clasp, backed in threadbare red velvet. Montacute turned the pages and the woman looked over his elbow. Out-of-date pictures of extinct relatives; views of places; costumes and dresses of bygone days. Some of the photographs had faded out; others were wooden, staring, ill at ease. . . . A rare old, fair old rickety-rackety crew of relations. . . . Some of the pages were empty.

  "Someone's taken them out. There were pictures of all of them in here. . . ."

  Yes, they'd made a proper job of it. Not a single picture of Finloe Oates.

  "Did you see the photograph of Lysander Oates?"

  "Yes. He was a bit like his brother in build, but he wore glasses and a little beard. Finloe Oates was lame from the first war. He limped a bit. . . . I don't understand all this."

  The drafts on London had been paid into Lysander Oates's account there. Lysander, whose portraits had been scattered about his brother's house and had suddenly disappeared. . . . He'd taken the photographs to prevent publicity.

  "I say, I don't understand all this."

  "No. . . ."

  Finloe had vanished and Lysander had . . .

  "Have there been any signs of digging in the garden since winter, Mrs. Burditt?"

  "No. Didn't I say . . . ?"

  "All the same, were there any signs? You would notice, wouldn't you?"

  "We certainly would. We can see every foot of it from our house. The garden hasn't been disturbed since Mr. Oates buried the dog. . . ."

  "The dog?"

  "Yes. The little fox terrier they had. Very fond of it, too. It died, poor thing, the day after Mrs. Oates. Fretted to death. As if Mr. Oates hadn't enough to bear without losing the only other living thing he was fond of. . . ."

  "He buried it in the garden?"

  "I'll show you. . . ."

  They crossed the back lawn and along a path under

  The woman's eyes filled with tears and she sniffed in her handkerchief.

  "He buried it in the garden?"

  "I'll show you. . . ."

  They crossed the back lawn and along a path under the apple trees, which were already showing signs of a good crop later. At the bottom of the orchard, a clearing with a cold frame, a compost heap, some rhubarb, smashed plant pots and a broken barrow.

  "There. . . . Here; what's happened?"

  The earth had been disturbed some time in the past in a short oblong about the size of a small dog's grave.

  "There was a mound here. It's gone. I remember watching Mr. Oates finish it. Carried the dog down wrapped in a cloth and buried it with the rubber bone and ball it used to play with. Cut me to the quick, he was that upset. . . . "

  More sniffing in the handkerchief.

  "Is there a spade about?"

  "You're surely not going to . . ."

  "I'd like a spade and then you'd perhaps better go. It won't be pleasant."

  Mrs. Burditt knew all about it. There was a tool-shed among the trees. The key was hanging on a nail in the kitchen.

  "My husband sometimes borrowed his scythe and Mr. Oates used to give him the key to get it."

  "What's behind the bushes at the bottom, Mrs. Burditt?"

  "A narrow sort of spinney, and then pasture. If you go there, keep your eyes open for the dog. It's a wolfhound and Mr. Snapper, who farms the smallholding, lets it run free, especially at night. There was somebody prowling round there after dark, after his chickens, Mr. Snapper thought. It caught somebody a while ago, but they got away. I'll bet they left with its marks on them."

  "Is that a pond in the spinney?"

  "The drainage from the septic tanks runs off there. There are two little ponds. I've heard my husband say—he studies the local history—that a long time ago, more than a hundred years, there was a little tannery in the field and the ponds were the tanpits where they put the bark and tanned the leather. . . . "

  "Well . . . I'll do my digging now. I may call to see you again. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Burditt."

  There was no dog in the grave. Someone had been there before Montacute. All he found was the rubber ball marked by the dog's teeth. But someone had taken the body. . . .

  Montacute had a headache from annoyance and frustration. Somewhere behind consciousness, the solution was knocking at the door. He pushed back his hat and stood there looking in the empty hole. Then, he pocketed the ball and carried off the spade.

  Back at Silvesters' Bank, Mr. de Lacy groaned as he saw Montacute once more crossing the square to his office.

  "I wonder if they think I did it. . . ."

  "Finloe Oates has disappeared, Mr. de Lacy. They say he's gone abroad. Did he let you know?"

  "Certainly not. He couldn't have taken any money with him without our help . . . or another bank . . . Treasury Regulations . . . I'll check that."

  Mr. Killgrass confirmed it. Nobody knew about Oates's going abroad. Killgrass almost winked at Montacute. It was fun watching the boss being grilled by the police every half hour.

  "Very well. Thanks, sir. I'll probably be back again before long."

  The manager smiled a sickly smile. He was sure he'd be back. He felt, somehow, his fate was sealed, his number up. Like a rabbit with a stoat.

  "Take a gang of men with spades and grapnels," said Montacute to the huge sergeant on duty, when he got back to the police station. "Dig up the garden at the bungalow and drag the ponds at the back. Make a proper job of it. Finloe Oates has vanished. See if you can find him."

  3

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LYSANDER

  "IS Mr. Lysander Oates at home?"

  In response to the appeal for help from Rodley, Scotland Yard at first sent a constable round to Berkshire Mansions in Victoria, but he hadn't been able to make head or tail of what the woman in charge of the flats had told him. He knew that, according to what the Rodley police had said, Finloe Oates had gone abroad, and here was Mrs. Kewley saying Lysander had done the same.

  "They must have both gone together,"
he told the Chief Inspector.

  "Is Mr. Lysander Oates at home?" asked Littlejohn. If both brothers had vanished matters were serious and London looked like having on their hands a second instalment of the Rodley murder case, so it had been put in proper hands.

  "I told the other man, no. He left one morning and said he was going abroad. I haven't seen him since."

  Mrs. Kewley was a harassed little body, whose daughter, married to a van-driver in Putney, was expecting her first at any time, and she couldn't keep her mind on what she was doing.

  "Which flat did Mr. Oates live in?"

  "The studio right on top. . . ."

  "May I see it?"

  "Really! Can't you call again. I'm that busy and bothered. The phone might ring any time to say my daughter Lizzie's been took with the pains and I'll have to go to Putney to 'elp. 'You've got to be there, Mother,' she said, 'else . . .' "

  "I won't keep you above five minutes, Mrs. Kewley, but I must see the place. . . ."

  "It's been let again. You won't find anythin' there."

  "All the same . . ."

  "Oh, very well. Might as well go up as keep arguin'. This way."

  Littlejohn was sorry for the woman. A little pinched thing, gallantly battling for existence with a block of second-rate flats. She wore an elastic stocking for varicose veins and panted heavily as she led the way.

  "These stairs is killin'. . . ."

  Two flights leading to better rooms were carpeted in threadbare Wilton; then the carpet gave out and oilcloth began. It was a shame to toil the woman any higher.

  "I'll go myself. Is there anybody in the rooms?"

  "No. 'E's out from nine till six. You can take my pass-key."

  Littlejohn mounted the rest of the stairs and he could hear Mrs. Kewley puffing her way back. The top-floor landing was of bare varnished boards. Outside the door of Lysander Oates's old flat lay a decent rug to make it look cosier. Mops, brushes and buckets piled together at the far end.

  The Inspector turned the key and let himself in. He might just as well have saved his legs. After all, the new tenant would have cleared out all traces of the former occupant and put in his own stuff. . . .

  They were tolerable quarters. A bedroom, a kitchen, and a nice large living-room. In the latter a skylight had been fitted covering almost half the roof and sloping to within a yard of the floor on one side. You got a view all over Victoria Station and the roofs beyond. To anyone who liked watching trains come in and go out or philosophising over chimney-stacks it was ideal. Littlejohn walked from one room to another, touching nothing, trying to imagine what Lysander Oates was like. The only trace he found of his man was a watercolour over the fireplace in the living-room. A few washes with a brush, but very nicely done for all that. In the bottom left-hand corner the initials L.O.

  "The picture over the mantelpiece in the studio-room, Mrs. Kewley. Did Mr. Oates do it?"

  Mrs. Kewley was drinking a cup of black tea to sustain her. Her daughter's first accouchement was taking more out of her than any of her own; and she'd had five, with more than her share of subsequent complications.

  "Eh?"

  "The picture over the fireplace. . . ."

  "Oh, yes. He left it. It'd got behind the wardrobe some'ow. Mr. Brodribb, the new tenant, found it. Said he liked it. He's in that line himself, only scene-paintin' for theeayters. Keep it, I sez. No use to me. Though, I regretted it after. Mr. Oates told me at the time it was of the Isle of Man. The late Mr. Kewley came from there, though I never went myself. I'm a shocking sailor. Why, even to Margate. . . ."

  "He cleared-up completely before he left?"

  "Yes, and we 'ad his room distempered and done up. Hadn't had so much as a coat of paint since before the war and the landlord said . . . "

  "Did Mr. Oates leave any address where you could find him?"

  "No. He come over queer towards the end. It all come on of a sudden, like. Went away for a few days' holiday and come home that different you'd hardly of reckernised him. Are you not so well, Mr. Oates? I sez to him. He was quite rude. I wasn't sorry when he went in the end. Is that the telephone?"

  "No. We can hear it from here when it goes. Why do you say he was queer?"

  "It might have been his work, you know. Might have changed his job, but never told me. Once he did all his work in his room. Did pictures for advertising things and he'd work part of the day and go out the rest to sell what he'd done, I guess. But later, his 'abits changed. He'd sometimes be off at five in a mornin'. Away perhaps a day or two and then back he'd come well after dark. He'd be up in his room at night, jumpy and pacin' the floor and then out early again in the morning. I couldn't make head or tail of it all."

  "How long is it since this change came about?"

  "I'd say three months ago. February or March. . . ."

  "How long is it since he left you?"

  "Two months or thereabouts."

  Mrs. Kewley was on her feet clearing away her tea-things, fussing about, looking reproachfully in the direction of the telephone as though the instrument were holding-out on her.

  "Did Mr. Oates end by just sleeping here and nothing more? Or did you gather he was working at night as well?"

  "No, not workin'. When I used to do his room in the old days, he'd have pictures pinned on boards, half-done. After he started to go funny, I never saw any more work there. He must have got another job of some kind and perhaps he was un'appy about it."

  "Did he say where he was going abroad?"

  "Australia, he 'inted. I asked 'im. He didn't seem so sure, though."

  "Did he go in a hurry?"

  The questions and her anxiety were bewildering the poor woman. She passed her hand across her forehead and swept back her dishevelled hair.

  "What was you sayin'?"

  "Did he leave in a hurry?"

  "Not exackly. Early one mornin'."

  "Did he take all his belongings with him?"

  "He seemed to have sold a lot of his stuff. He'd just one big suitcase and one of them big knapsacks you carry on your back."

  "A rucksack?"

  "Eh? No; I think he walked to the station with his luggage."

  "I'm sorry to bother you so much, Mrs. Kewley, but this is very important. You see, Mr. Oates has vanished."

  "Surely not! 'Ow could 'e? So nice, too, in his better days."

  "And there's nothing at all he left but a picture?"

  "Nothin' else worth mentionin'. . . . "

  "What do you mean?"

  "There was a letter. Somethin' and nothin', you might say. He went without it. You see, the glass on 'is dressin'-table" got loose and he wedged it so's he could shave in it."

  Mrs. Kewley didn't need asking to get it. She crossed to an old painted sideboard with two little drawers on top of it at each end, like the hobs of a fireplace. She rummaged in one which seemed to hold her personal odds and ends and produced, at length, a battered envelope folded in a tight wedge, probably just as she had found it.

  "There it is. . . . It's from a woman called Nellie Forty. I once heard Mr. Oates mention her. A letter come and he said, 'It's from dear old Nellie Forty, bless 'er,' or somethin' like that. He told me she'd once been a family servant and she got married and her husband died and left her comfortable-like, and she kept 'ouse after for Mr. Oates's brother, Finloe, till 'e got married himself. Mr. Lysander was very fond of Nellie."

  Littlejohn was reading the letter with one ear cocked and listening to Mrs. Kewley.

  32 railway terrace,

  Norbury. Sunday.

  dear mister Lysander

  it was nice to here from you thank you for rembering my birthday and for the nice pressent you sent along. time flys dosnt it now i'm sevty five. i was turning over some things the other days wen i come acrors the broach you and mister finloe boght me when i married Forty. That some time sinse isnt it—well i hope you are in the pink as you use to say and hears hopping you will soon be round at the above adress to see me agen.

 
hopping you are well as it leaves me at present

  your loving old

  Nellie.

  "May I keep this?"

  "No use to me, sir. You might as well."

  "Have many people handled it?"

  Mrs. Kewley was annoyed.

  "No, they 'aven't. I don't pass on my gentlemen's private affairs to all an' sundry. The postman and me and Mr. Oates would be all. I read it, of course. Wondered at the time if it was important. There's nothin' in it, though."

  The telephone bell rang and Mrs. Kewley panted off to attend to it. It was for one of the tenants, and she said he wasn't in. Two floors up and you had your own instrument if you wanted it; beyond that, you used the common one in the hall. The caretaker returned crestfallen.

  "I can't think what's happened. She said she'd let me know. She's past 'er time already. I'd better go whether or not and see if she's all right."

  "Where did you say Lizzie lives?"

  "Putney."

  "Stay a bit longer and answer a few more questions and I'll see you off in a cab."

  "I can't afford sich luxuries, bless you, sir. Never took a taxi in my life. The old bus is good enough for me."

  "I'll pay. . . ."

  The woman could hardly believe it.

  "You will? What else was you wantin' to ask?"

  "First of all, you might just give me your fingerprints, Mrs. Kewley."

  "Whatever for?"

  "I want some for Mr. Lysander Oates's records."

  Littlejohn produced his shiny silver cigarette-case which his wife had given him on their silver-wedding anniversary. Solemnly Mrs. Kewley squeezed the surface with the fingers and thumb of each hand. Littlejohn gently wrapped up the case in his silk handkerchief and gingerly put it in his pocket.

  "What did Mr. Oates do in his spare time? Had he any friends or relations he visited?"

  The woman pondered.

  "His brother somewhere in Surrey. . . ."

  "Any more? Just think whilst you're getting your things on. I can wait. In fact, I'll get you a taxi."

  Mrs. Kewley started to bustle around. She already had two American leather bags bulging with stuff. What it all was, was the old mystery of what such domestic helpers find to fill their bags to overflowing. . . .

  Littlejohn telephoned to the Victoria cab-rank.