The Case of the Seven Whistlers

by George Bellairs

  “You’re going to talk right now, unless you want to let yourself in for a peck of trouble. I’m not leaving without the information,” said Cromwell in his best official tones. He thrust his craggy jaw close to that of the lackey, who burst into a cold sweat as he wrestled with his problems.

  “I’ll ’ave to speak to the management …”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ve handled the woman’s baggage and know where she came from. Now come on. I’ve not got all day.”

  The golfer’s voice still rang round the place:

  “At number five I drove with my iron …”

  Had his small son discussed his games of marbles with half the ferocity and detail, he would have been smacked and put to bed.

  “Who was she, and where did she come from?”

  “She came from Fetling, same as Mr. Grossman.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Smith …”

  “Go on! You don’t expect me to fall for that.”

  “It’s true. S’welp me, it is.”

  “Didn’t you check identity cards as visitors registered?”

  The flunkey raised his eyebrows in horror. They were long and straggling, like the antennae of a strange insect.

  “Wot! ’ere? Good Lord, no! As much as our reputation’s worth. We know all our clients. Come year after year, they do. Smith it was, before ever identity cards came out.”

  “Well, well. What was she like?”

  “Tall. Smartly turned-out. Haughty piece o’ work, too.”

  “A very illuminating description.”

  “Gimme a chance. Well-built—nice, oval face—and hair … Lemme see …?”

  The porter raised his eyes and eyebrows heavenwards as though praying the gods for inspiration, and again grated his chin.

  “… Hair … raven black, as you might say, with a sort of blue sheen when the light caught it. Good complexion. That’s about all.”

  “Very helpful—very helpful indeed. Probably hundreds like her walking down the Haymarket at this very minute.”

  “Well, I’ve done my best.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me that she registered here under a false name and got away with it?”

  “It mightn’t have been false. People are called Smith. Lots of ’em. They …”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes. Bags of ’em. But this one sounds fishy to me. Is the chambermaid still here?”

  “Yes. But …”

  “No buts. Get her.”

  Cromwell was fed-up with trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.

  “Hi!”

  The gold-braided majordomo called a passing page-boy.

  “Go up the back stairs and bring Martha down off the second floor. Tell her to come here to me.”

  “O.K.”

  “And don’t say ‘O.K.’ to me. Get a move on.”

  “O.K.”

  Outside, the pike had reached the tenth hole.

  “A sitter … and I missed the damn’ thing by a whisker …”

  “Oh, damn’ bad luck, ole man …”

  Martha, the chambermaid, was a dumpy, middle-aged, bothered-looking girl, with grey, wispy hair and a patient, faithful air of resignation.

  “Martha, this is a man from Scotland Yard. Wants to ask you a question or two. Confidential, it is, and not to be repeated out of this ’ere room …”.

  “I wouldn’t think of it, Mr. Haythornthwaite.”

  So that was the name of the braided pundit. Well, well. Too nice a name by far.

  The maid stood humbly before Cromwell, her fingers pleating her apron, her cap a little awry, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

  “Tell her who we’re talking about.”

  “The Sergeant’s asking about Mr. Grossman’s lady friend. You know the one, Martha, Miss Smith.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The girl blushed at the thought of goings-on under her very eye. Experience in hotel bedrooms did not seem to have given her any veneer of sophistication.

  “Was her name Smith?” asked Cromwell.

  “That’s what she registered as.”

  “I know all about that. But did you come across any evidence that she had another name?”

  “I don’t think that was ’er name, sir, but she was that careful. Never left anything about with her real name on. Locked ’er bags and ’er dressing-case and never left any letters or nothin’ lyin’ about. Even her hair brushes and things that might ’ave had initials on was locked away.”

  “I see. And that was why you thought her name wasn’t Smith. But that might have been ordinary precaution. Some people are that way, you know.”

  “Yes. But she forgot one thing. She left a handkerchief under her pillow one time with initials on. The initial wasn’t Smith … I mean, not an S.”

  “What was it?”

  Martha hesitated.

  Cromwell guessed what had happened.

  “Right, you can get back to your job,” he said to the hall-porter. Probably the girl would talk better without him.

  The flunkey looked glad to get away, and made a hasty exit. He could be heard making up for lost time by ordering around the page-boys and window-cleaners who, in his absence, had been gossiping in mid-air from the tops of their ladders.

  “At number thirteen I muffed my drive. Bloody awful stroke. Must have taken my eye off the ball, Dunno …”

  “You can’t be too careful, ole man. Even the best of us …”

  “Now, Martha, did you keep the handkerchief?”

  The girl looked ready to weep. Already she saw herself in a prison cell.

  “I—I—She was goin’ away that day, and I forgot …”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not blaming you. I guess those sort of things come to you as perquisites. All I want to know is, what were the initials? Come along. This is wasting my time.”

  “I ’ave the handky in my room. It was such a good one, I kept it for one of me best. Thought when I’d time I’d take off the initials and put on me own. But I don’t seem to get the time.”

  “Bring it here, then.”

  Relieved, the girl scuttered away, and soon was back with the piece of embroidered lawn.

  “Here it is.”

  The initials were B.C.

  “Thank you, Martha. Sorry. I’ll have to take this. But here’s half-a-crown to buy yourself another. Sorry I can’t give you any coupons!”

  “That’s all right, sir. I didn’t want anything.”

  The girl was almost crying with relief.

  “And you won’t tell Mr. Haythornthwaite about the handky—they’re most particular here. Much as my job’s worth …”

  “Don’t worry, Martha, I won’t. Thank you. That’s all.”

  It was lunch time. The guests were making their way to food, like members of a religious procession, hesitating at the door of the dining-room, anxious to show that they were too polite to be eager to be getting at the eatables. The head waiter was bowing them in, like a burgomaster surrendering his city to the conquerors. The hall-porter, too, was civilly trying to catch the eye and greet those who tipped well when they left.

  “O.K?” he managed to say to Cromwell out of the corner of his mouth.

  “O.K.” answered Cromwell, and remembering the reprimanded page-boy, grinned to the discomfiture of the gold braid.

  The golfing pike was not going to eat until he had finished his round.

  “At the seventeenth, I got a lovely one …”

  His mandibles snapped and he rolled his protruding eyes in ecstasy. His companion looked anxiously at the dining-room door.

  The doorman spun the revolving door for Cromwell and even saluted …

  Cromwell was disappointed with his efforts. He had hoped to wring a tale of intrigue, jealousy, threats and even a scuffle or two out of the hotel staff. Instead, he’d got a tale of an almost comic, furtive little affair, probably of no consequence whatever.

  But when he telephoned the results to Littlejohn, the Inspector cou
ld not restrain a shout of enthusiasm, which brought to Cromwell’s mournful face the wintry smile which always shows he is pleased with himself.

  So, leaving the telephone, he went and stood himself a drink.

  9

  THE SECOND KEY

  LITTLEJOHN turned in at the police-station for an early word with Superintendent Gillespie, whom he found engaged. The sergeant in the charge-room, however, told Littlejohn to walk right in, as Gillespie was anxious to see him.

  Gillespie was wearing his hat, from which Littlejohn judged that his gall-bladder, or whatever it was which accounted for his strange moods, had turned upon the Fetling man again.

  “Come in, Inspector,” said Gillespie, without so much as a good-morning. “These people really want to see you.”

  He said it with great asperity, as though he thought Littlejohn ought to have been there earlier to relieve him of an unpleasant interview.

  The visitors consisted of a small, militant woman, and a huge, meek man.

  “This is Mrs. Hollis …”

  The little woman cast a malevolent glance at Littlejohn, who wondered what he’d done wrong. She was dressed in her best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes; a black costume with a skirt too long, a black blouse with the photograph of a lad in R.A.F. uniform in a brooch pinned on her breast, and a hideous black hat which fitted like a mishaped bell over her ears.

  “I brought Mr. ’ollis with me. He’ll see that I’m treated proper …”

  “Yuss,” rumbled Mr. ’ollis.

  He, too, was dressed in his best black, carried a bowler hat shaped like a melon, wore large, squeaking boots, and stood like a criminal expecting a long sentence. He had a fresh, ruddy face, a large, dark moustache, “bristly hair with a calf-lick drooping over his narrow forehead, and sad, brown eyes, like those of a spaniel, in loose sockets.

  “Yuss,” said Mr. Hollis, and cleared his throat the better to articulate. Then he seemed to forget what he had to say and closed his mouth again.

  “I’ll leave ’em to you,” said Gillespie biliously, and with a brief nod, rose, left the room and started to chase around his subordinates.

  Littlejohn sat down in the vacant chair.

  “Now, Mrs. Hollis, what can I do for you?”

  Mrs. Hollis rose like a furious bantam cock.

  “Miss Adlestrop, who I saw last night when I got ’ome, told me the police was comin’ to see me to-morrer. That was last night. To-morrer now meaning to-day …”

  She gave a twitch of her head to show that she knew all about it.

  “Yuss,” endorsed Mr. Hollis.

  “Well?”

  “Well, I don’t want no police hangin’ round my house. I’ve allus been respectable and well thought of, paying me way and doin’ me duty accordin’ to me lights, and I don’t want me good name in the village spoilin’ by police being seen callin’ at my place …”

  She came up for air and took a huge gulp.

  Mr. Hollis thumped the table limply with a huge fist as though to confirm forcibly what his good woman was saying, but did not speak.

  “But, my dear Mrs. Hollis, nobody would have known it was the police. I was going to call on you myself to ask a question or two about what happened on the day the body of Mr. Grossman turned up at Miss Adlestrop’s … That’s all.”

  “And quite enough, I says. And don’t you think as all the village doesn’t know who you are, with Mister Councillor Blanket talkin’ all over the place about him helpin’ you to solve the crime. Don’t you think you ain’t known, because you are. All the village’ll be at their doors next time you call, just to have a good look. An’ I’m not havin’ ’em seein’ you enterin’ my place. They’ll think I’m mixed up in this murder, which I’m not.”

  “Yuss,” intoned Mr. ’ollis, and then realising that he was wrong he changed it to “No.”

  Lattlejohn decided he’d had quite enough of arguing the point, so changed his tack.

  “Well, and now that you’re here, we might as well have a little talk, Mrs. Hollis.”

  “That’s what I come for. Here’s the place for police business, not the ’omes of respectable, hard-workin’ people.”

  “Yuss,” emphatically stated Mr. Hollis. He was very respectable, but not hard-working. He was described as a jobbing-gardener at the Labour Exchange, but most of his jobbing consisted in dodging the gardening. He contrived to make a rather satisfactory living out of mowing the lawns of local residents who possessed petrol-driven mowers. When the back-bending work was suggested, he was always called away to another client on his rota, or else to the ‘local’ which bore the ambiguous name of The Wanderer’s Home.

  “Yuss,” said Mr. Hollis, and again “Yuss.”

  “Well then, I hear that you cleaned the oak chest after P.C. Puddiphatt had removed the body …”

  “I did. And it needed it if it was to stop in that house, which it didn’t, Miss Adlestop ’avin’ kindly given it to me not bein’ able to bear it after wot was in it, and me bein’ used to that sort o’ thing havin’ laid-out corpses for thirty years and more …”

  “Yuss,” said Mr. Hollis, with great admiration and satisfaction.

  “You cleaned out the box. Now, Mrs. Hollis, was there anything in the box after Mr. Grossman’s body was removed?”

  “No. Only dust as them lazy ones at the Whistler’s Rest, or whatever they call their silly place, had left in it. Some people’s born dirty. Once dirty, always dirty, I sez …”

  Mr. Hollis nodded his calf-lick profoundly.

  “Yuss,” he groaned.

  “Are you sure there was nothing else, Mrs. Hollis? Think carefully.”

  Mrs. Hollis seemed to ponder deeply and so did her husband.

  “No …”

  “Not a little flag from the Fetling Children’s flag-day?”

  “Why … yes …”

  “Yuss,” shouted Mr. Hollis with gusto and looked delighted with his wife’s feat of recollection. He even rose and took a pace or two about the room, preening himself.

  “The flag was in the box when you started to clean it up?”

  “No. It fell on the floor as Puddiphatt lifted the body out. You know, I went an’ forgot all about it from that day to this …”

  Mr. Hollis sat down and looked heartbroken at his wife’s lapse of memory.

  “You’re sure it was with the body in the box?”

  “I’ve said so, haven’t I? When I say a thing I mean it.”

  Her husband raised himself and looked round as though ready to take on anybody who dared to doubt his wife’s veracity.

  “Very well, Mrs. Hollis. Thank you for calling.”

  “I called because I ’ad to. I won’t ’ave no police round my place makin’ people talk …”

  “And you’ve nothing else to say which might interest us? Anything unusual about the body or the behaviour of anyone present?”

  “No. A pore little body, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Hollis with the wisdom of an expert layer-out. “And as fer the behaviour of those present. Disgustin’ I calls it. Faintin’ and throwin’ fits all over the place at the sight of one little corp. Where would folks be if everybody did that …?”

  She looked challengingly at Littlejohn. “Yuss,” said Mr. Hollis with great indignation.

  “Where would everybody be? A dead body’s a dead body and faintin’ and hysterickin’ all over the place won’t make it any other … But I slapped their faces for ’em, I did that.”

  She smacked her thin lips with satisfaction and Mr. Hollis joined her in making clicking noises against the vulcanite plate which held his false teeth.

  Mrs. Hollis rose, pulled on her string gloves, took up her umbrella and gave her black hat a twitch.

  “Come on, Lambert,” she said. And then, turning belligerently on Littlejohn, “And don’t you come callin’ at my place, see? I took the trouble to come all this way and I don’t want any journey in vain or any of my good name spoilin’.”

  “Thank you for the journ
ey, both of you. I’ll see that you’re not troubled.”

  “See you don’t,” said Mr. Hollis with a vigorous and threatening nod of the head. And as though surprised to find that he had more words than bare affirmative and negative in his vocabulary, he repeated them. “See you don’t …”

  He looked ready to say it a third time, when Gillespie entered. He had on his face a feline expression, that of a cantankerous cat which sees a dog.

  “And next time you’re mixed up with a murdered body, Mrs. Hollis, don’t wipe out all the fingerprints,” he said, apparently unable to let bygones be bygones.

  “Well … I like that! After me comin’ all the way to Fetling and leavin’ me work …”

  The mention of leaving work seemed to stimulate Mr. Hollis. After all, he didn’t earn enough with his jobbing to keep them both, and his wife made up the bulk of the budget by ‘obliging’.

  “Hey!” he said, his voice becoming shrill with emotion. He prodded Gillespie’s tunic with a large, dirty-nailed index. “Hey! Don’t you insult my missus …”

  Again surprised at his new access of words, he paused and repeated himself.

  “Don’t you insult my missus, see?”

  “Come on, Lambert. We don’t want no bother. You can see he’s no gentleman …”

  And with this parting shot, Mrs. Hollis drew her partner from the room, but not before Mr. ’ollis had delivered his final threat.

  “Don’t you insult my missus, see …?”

  They heard him say it for a fourth time to the man in the charge-room and presumably he uttered it all the way home.

  Left to himself, Gillespie thawed to the extent of telling Littlejohn he didn’t feel so well that morning.

  “I’m sorry to hear that … What’s the matter?”

  “Liverish … Had some fish and chips for supper and they laid heavily on me all night …”

  Littlejohn almost told him he ought to have had more sense with a liver and gall-bladder like his, but thought the time hardly suitable.

  Outside a barrel organ was playing:

  Am I wasting my time,

  By thinking you’re mine,

  And dreaming the way that I do …

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” yelled the liverish Superintendent. “Groves! Groves!! Clear that damn’ musical merchant off or I’ll go mad …”