Dead Man's Bluff

by Roderic Jeffries

  She spoke seriously. ‘Jim, you’ve always disliked people who are very self-satisfied — are you absolutely sure you aren’t banging your head against a brick wall just to try and prove the superintendent wrong?’

  ‘That would be damned childish,’ he said, almost petulantly.

  ‘And you can be quite childish at times. Jim, if the three of them can’t have had anything to do with the deaths, that’s an end of it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why are you going on and on?’

  ‘Margery, can you remember what Monday was like?’ She thought back. ‘Wasn’t it gloriously hot?’

  ‘It was, yet Alexander had a lunch of meat, dumplings, and greens. Can you imagine eating that in such a temperature?’

  ‘I can’t, but people have the oddest habits.’

  He shook his head, a puzzled expression on his face.

  *

  At ten-fifteen the next morning, Clayton telephoned Louthy Products’ head office and spoke to the manager. ‘D’you remember that the last time I rang you, you told me Alexander was a good salesman and had put up sales in all areas except one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me which area was the exception?’

  Til have to check the records.’

  Clayton waited.

  ‘Hullo, Inspector. The area he failed in was the Gert-finden one — it extends roughly down to the coast and halfway to Abbotsbridge. Instead of sales going up ten per cent, they went down considerably.’

  ‘Were the orders he did obtain in the Gertfinden area mainly for magnesium-enriched cow cake?’

  ‘That’s odd, they were. But how did you come to guess that?’

  ‘It was just a thought,’ replied Clayton. ‘Can you let me have a look at his National Insurance card and PAYE records?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ replied the manager shortly.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘As I mentioned to you before, he was paid solely on commission and was therefore self-employed so he looked after his own stamps and income tax.’

  ‘Self employed even though he worked for you?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘It’s the SET tax,’ said the manager, his tone of voice defensive.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You’ve never met such bureaucratic stupidity … Look, Inspector, it’s like this. If one of our salesmen sells food made up by us, we get the SET tax repaid: if he sells food made up by one of the other firms whose products we handle, we don’t. Can you imagine the book-keeping and the time we could waste sorting that lot out? In any case, profit margins are much too low now, with farmers doing so badly, for us to be able to afford SET on all our salesmen. So we make ’em self-employed and don’t pay a wage, but give very good commission. Like that, there’s no bother about SET. I assure you we talked it over with our lawyers’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ cut in Clayton. ‘If anyone can kick SET in the teeth, I’m for him.’ He began to tap on the desk with his fingers. Unless he was as stupid as Akers believed him to be, Alexander had never existed.

  Chapter 12

  Clayton walked into Morris’s room. The detective-sergeant was typing out a report. ‘Leave that and find the folder of missing persons for me.’

  ‘It should be in the filing cabinet in your room, sir.’

  ‘I know where it should be. I also know where it isn’t.’

  ‘Mr Akers told me that when I’d finished this … ’

  ‘Mr Akers will have to wait.’

  Morris’s expression became sullen.

  Clayton returned to his room and sat down. Would the missing persons list answer his questions? He picked up the latest crime sheet, read it quickly, remembered little of what he’d read and replaced it. He lit a cigarette. He began to doodle on a sheet of scrap paper. The telephone rang and he received a report on a newly discovered breaking and entering in south-west Gertfinden. He detailed Burrows to go out to the warehouse, then resumed his doodling.

  Even Margery, who usually believed in him quite blindly, had wondered whether he were being pig-headed simply because he didn’t like Akers. There were times, he knew, when an odd and unwelcome quirk in his character made him defend an untenable position, even while knowing it was untenable, but this was not one of those times. Experience had taught him that crime and criminals worked with a rhythm and when something turned up to upset that rhythm, something was wrong.

  Morris came into his room and handed him a thick loose-leaf folder in which were the lists of missing persons over the last twelve months. Reading this was, for him, always very depressing. How much tragedy, how many heartaches, were hidden in the names and addresses? What did a family do when one of them vanished without trace? How did one live with a situation in which confirmation of death might in the end almost be called a relief?

  His stubby forefinger came to a halt. Corporal White, aged 45, six feet tall, fair hair, blue eyes, no special distinguishing features. An army cook, he had left Tintham Barracks, Relstone, on March 3 for weekend leave and had disappeared. The civil authorities had been asked on April 14 to try to trace him, but without result. He was married, but separated from his wife.

  Clayton resumed reading through the list until he reached the previous July, which was the last month. Only twice did he stop further to consider other disappearances. He closed the folder with a snap. This looked promising, but sometimes people reappeared and no one bothered to inform the police, sometimes the police were informed but procedure went askew and the records weren’t altered.

  He telephoned Tintham Barracks and spoke to the duty officer.

  ‘Corporal White? Yes, I remember him. He’s the chap who left on weekend leave and has never been heard of since.’

  ‘Can you give me any idea of the circumstances of his disappearance?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘If I drive up right away can I see someone who can give me the details?’

  ‘That can certainly be arranged. D’you think you know something about him, then?’

  ‘Maybe. That’s what I want to check.’

  *

  Clayton braked to a halt at the sentry-post and spoke through the opened window. The sentry jerked his thumb to his right and said the orderly room was the second shed along, then resumed his former slumped and bored stance. The army, thought Clayton, was certainly not what it had been. He drove along the road and parked by a long wooden shed around which ran a well-cut lawn and perfectly weeded flower-bed.

  Lieutenant Masters was young, energetic, and friendly. He called for coffee, offered cigarettes, and promised all the help he could give.

  ‘Can you tell me how much you’ve been able to find out about Corporal White?’ asked Clayton.

  ‘Sure.’ The lieutenant picked up a sheet of paper. ‘He was a busted sergeant who’d climbed back up to corporal — the records say he was a damned good cook, but liked the bottle. He was married, but separated from his wife: there don’t seem to have been any divorce proceedings and he made a full marriage allotment. He was granted weekend leave from sixteen hundred hours on the third of March to eight hundred on the sixth. He signed out at sixteen twenty-eight. I’ve got the leave book for you …’ The lieutenant pushed across a thick, solidly bound book.

  Clayton looked briefly at the relevant entry. A private came in with the coffee, put the two cups on the desk, and left.

  The lieutenant pushed a cup across. ‘That’s the end of the story as far as we’re concerned. He didn’t come back Monday morning and at first he was just regarded as AWOL. Later, full inquiries were put in hand and you blokes were asked for help.’

  ‘Any chance you can tell me what was served here for lunch that Friday?’

  ‘What?’ said the lieutenant, in astonishment.

  ‘If you can find out what he ate for lunch it will help a lot since we know from the contents of the stomach what our dead man ate a short time before he died.’

  ‘Are you sayin
g you’ve just discovered that now, in August?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re welcome to your job!’ The lieutenant picked up the nearer of the telephones on his desk, asked for the catering department, and told the man at the other end what he wanted.

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Clayton, ‘could you get hold of one of his pals, someone who’d have known quite a bit about him?’

  ‘Sure.’ The lieutenant made a second call.

  Clayton stubbed out his cigarette and drank the last of the institutional-tasting coffee. He heard the measured stamp of feet and, looking out through the window, saw a squad of men marching along. The army would never have suited him as a career — to him, one of life’s most precious gifts was not to be one of the herd.

  The lieutenant asked him questions about his work and showed a macabre interest in certain features of it — an interest that Clayton was not fully able to satisfy. How long was it before a corpse stank, did a drowned man sink to the bottom, could arsenic be traced in the nails of a poisoned person … Who, wondered Clayton, was he hoping to bludgeon, drown, or poison?

  There was a sharp knock on the door. A sergeant came in, marched to the front of the desk, stamped his feet, handed over a plastic-bound book, then left, with crashing movements.

  The lieutenant leafed through the pages of the book. ‘Here we are … Breakfast: porridge and eggs and bacon. That porridge sets just like concrete. Luncheon: Windsor soup, boiled beef, dumplings, cabbage, jam tart and custard.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Clayton.

  The lieutenant looked up. ‘You sound as if you’ve found out something really important?’

  ‘I think I probably have.’

  ‘Does it mean you’ve discovered what happened to the corporal?’

  ‘Almost certainly, yes.’

  ‘And he’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The lieutenant closed the book. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever known that what I’ve eaten could be important. Bit off-putting to think of someone poking through my stomach.’

  There was a telephone call and in the middle of this a private reported. Studying the private, Clayton quickly came to the conclusion that he was the epitome of the old sweat: his whole expression and the way he held himself made it clear that he knew the exact limits to which he could take insolence and disobedience before he was in trouble.

  The lieutenant finished his telephone call. He spoke to the private. ‘The detective-inspector wants to ask you a few questions, Eastling.’

  Eastling looked quickly at Clayton, then away, and his expression became quite blank. He was, thought Clayton, trying hard not to think of all the fiddles that he’d been engaged on which could be of interest to the civil police. ‘I gather you knew Corporal White?’ said Clayton.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Reasonably well, sir.’

  ‘Then I’d like your help in tracing out a few facts about him.’

  Satisfied he was in no personal danger, Eastling relaxed. He spoke to Clayton in a ‘matey’ voice and no longer bothered to add ‘sir’. ‘I’ll tell you what I can, but Steve was a bit of a loner, ’cept when he was on the booze. He was a proper lad then, and no mistake.’

  ‘Can you remember if you’d any idea where he was going on the Friday he disappeared?’

  Eastling scratched his neck as he thought back. ‘As far as I can remember, he was going up to the smoke. He’d a Judy what he used to stay with. He showed me her photo and she wasn’t no oil painting, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How was he intending to travel up to London?’

  ‘Hitch-hike, same as always. Never took him longer than three hours.’

  ‘Did White wear false teeth?’

  ‘Did he wear false choppers?’ Eastling scratched his head. ‘I can’t rightly remember … Now that makes me a liar. It was him what had his last eight teeth out in one day and wangled … and was granted a week’s sick leave.’

  ‘D’you know where he’d have had his teeth extracted?’

  ‘Here, in camp.’

  ‘Is the dentist in camp today?’

  ‘Hard to say, today being Sunday. Some blokes gets Sundays off,’ he said mournfully.

  Clayton asked the lieutenant to find out whether the dentist was in camp. After several calls, the latter contacted a sergeant who said he was the only one from that department in the camp. The sergeant was ordered to the office with the necessary records.

  Clayton questioned Eastling about whether he had ever hitchhiked to London, but Eastling denied he had. Clayton then tried to discover whether other men who had hitchhiked had ever commented on being picked up by a Bentley, but Eastling was unable to help.

  The sergeant, in civilian clothes, reported to the office. Clayton handed him the false teeth which had come from

  ‘Alexander’s body. ‘Is there any chance you could identify these?’

  The sergeant examined the dentures, then opened the file he had brought with him. After a short while, he said: ‘These are Corporal White’s, sir.’

  Clayton leaned back in the chair. Detective-Superintendent Akers was not, he thought with satisfaction, going to be amused.

  Chapter 13

  Akers and Bodmin were having lunch at the Three Bells. Since the county had to pay his living expenses, Akers had chosen a very good meal: prawn cocktail, fillet steak, and sherry trifle with cream (1/6 extra). To drink, he had a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin and he had forgotten to refill Bodmin’s glass.

  ‘Afternoon, Clayton,’ said Akers, with unaccustomed warmth. He spooned up the last of the trifle from the glass dish. ‘We’re having coffee soon, so sit down and join us in a cup.’

  Clayton sat down.

  ‘You know, for a town like Gertfinden, this isn’t a bad little hotel,’ said Akers patronizingly. ‘The beds are comfortable and the food’s not bad.’

  The menu was in front of Clayton. He started to read through it and immediately felt twice as hungry.

  ‘Being on call to the whole of the country,’ went on Akers, ‘we’re always travelling and spending time in hotels and some of them are hotels only in name. Still, that’s one of the penalties of being an expert who’s needed here, there, and the other place.’

  What a pity he hadn’t been needed there or the other place, thought Clayton.

  ‘But this is the age of the expert, the man who specializes and deals with the problems the ordinary person is unable to cope with.’ Akers smiled. ‘I know you blokes in the local forces don’t like our doing the work, out of some sort of mistaken sense of county loyalty, but the hard fact is, you just can’t cope on your own.’

  ‘You’re probably right, sir,’ said Clayton, ‘yet in our own muddled way we do pick up the odd scrap of information on such things as cow cake.’

  Much of Akers’s geniality disappeared and the hard, scornful expression returned to his face. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry to say it seems you’re quite incapable of appreciating which are the important points of a case and which are the totally unimportant ones.’

  ‘Possibly. But once in a blue moon we manage to get an idea that’s good.’

  Akers began to finger a piece of the inside of his roll. His expression became wary. ‘Just what have you come here to say?’

  ‘I had a word with the manager of Louthy Products to find out in which area it was that Alexander failed to increase sales.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That area was the Gertfinden one.’

  Akers beckoned to a waiter. He ordered coffee and three cognacs, not bothering to ask whether Clayton and Bodmin liked cognac. ‘Has anything else turned up?’ He dropped the pellet of bread and began to roll another.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I got to wondering about missing persons and checked through the lists. I came across a Corporal
White who disappeared in March. He left the army camp in Relstone for weekend leave on March the third and almost certainly set out to hitchhike to London.’

  The waiter brought them coffee and the wine waiter came across with three very large balloon glasses in each of which was a very small measure of cognac. The waiter left.

  Akers helped himself to cream and sugar. ‘What do we know about this Corporal White?’ he asked casually. He passed the cream and sugar to Clayton.

  Clayton gave himself two spoonfuls of sugar and then rather guiltily added a third one. He was also generous with the cream. ‘Do you remember, sir, my saying that it seemed very odd that Alexander had eaten a meal of meat, dumplings, and greens, on one of the hottest days in August?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Clayton spoke triumphantly. ‘Corporal White ate a meal of Windsor soup, boiled beef, dumplings, and greens, on the third of March.’

  ‘I see,’ said Akers, as if he’d been told nothing of significance.

  ‘I showed a member of the dental staff at the camp the plates we found by Alexander’s body. They’ve been identified as Corporal White’s.’

  Akers dropped the second bread pellet on to the plate. A waiter came to clear the table, but was waved away. ‘You’ve been very busy, Inspector,’ he said.

  Clayton felt bitterly disappointed. Akers showed no discernible emotion of anger or annoyance.

  Akers picked up his balloon glass and cradled it in his right hand, holding it near his nose the better to enjoy the bouquet. ‘We may now assume that the second body in the fire was Corporal White’s,’ he said, as if he had been considering the matter for a long time and had at last been able to come to a judicial conclusion.

  ‘Which means …’ began Clayton, speaking rather more loudly than he usually did.

  ‘Which means,’ interrupted Akers smoothly, ‘that either he lived until Monday and had a lunch on that day which was by coincidence the same as he ate in March, or he’s been dead for six months and both his body and his stomach contents escaped decay. The first explanation calls for a very great coincidence, the second, an apparent impossibility.’

  ‘Not if you remember …’ began Clayton.