Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  They were back at The Drovers at five minutes past two and Rosie let them in. Over the glass screen at the window of The Millstone Littlejohn saw the crafty eyes of Mrs. Beecham watching their every move.

  Inside there seemed to be nobody about.

  ‘Are you here on your own?’ asked Cromwell.

  ‘Not as a rule. But the landlord, Mr. Criggan, and his wife have gone to Rugby to see their son off. He’s in the army and going out to the East. They’ll be back before opening time.’

  ‘Mind if we sit down?’

  Cromwell took a seat on a tall stool at the counter and Littlejohn did the same. They were more comfortable than the chairs at the scattered tables, which were growing old and creaked as you sat on them. Rosie stood all the time.

  ‘I’m used to being on my feet and once I sit down, my feet start to swell a bit and I don’t want to get up.’

  ‘How long have you been barmaid here?’

  ‘Six years. I was married to one of the corporation cattle-market attendants. Everybody knew Jack. He was very popular. He was killed by a bull that went mad in the mart. Mr. Criggan gave me this job. It was good for trade because it attracted Jack’s friends from among the cattle dealers and farmers … That’s how I came to know Harry Quill. He was friendly with Jack through coming regular to the mart. One day, Harry Quill called here and asked for a soft drink and sort of introduced himself. After that he came often.’

  ‘You became good friends.’

  ‘Yes. That’s all. I can’t make you believe me, but that’s all.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Would you like some coffee? I’ve got some on the stove in the kitchen. It makes a change to have coffee after so much of the rest.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer but went off in the place behind. They could hear her opening and closing cupboard doors and rattling cups. Hardly a sound came from the market or the square outside. The clock was electric, out of keeping with the age of the place, and the whirring of its mechanism sounded above everything else.

  Rose was back with three cups of coffee on a tin tray.

  ‘Excuse the tray. We don’t go in for fancy things here. Our customers aren’t that type.’

  She set out the cups on one of the tables and passed one each to Littlejohn and Cromwell. Then she sat down herself on one of the chairs, sipped her coffee and seemed to approve of it.

  They lolled there at their ease as if they’d all been friends for years. Rosie kicked off her shoes and rubbed her feet.

  ‘What a relief to get my shoes off. Standing about is a bit tiring …’

  She didn’t replace her shoes, but sat wriggling her toes voluptuously as though it gave her great pleasure.

  ‘This isn’t getting us far, is it? Did you want to know anything more about Harry Quill?’

  3

  The Confidences of Harry Quill

  ‘HAVE YOU known Harry Quill long?’

  ‘As I told you, about six years. That was just after Jack, my husband, was killed. Harry had been in the habit of calling here whenever he was in Marcroft and eating a pie and having a drink. We met on the first mart day I was here. It was months before he even said a word to me other than just to order what he wanted. Then one day he came in and I noticed that he was eating and drinking at the counter with one hand kept in his pocket. I asked him what was the matter. At first, he tried to pass it off, but I could see he was in some pain, so I persuaded him to show me his hand. The thumb was an awful sight; twice its usual size, purple and inflamed and full of pus. I told him he ought to see a doctor right away …’

  She seemed a very intelligent girl and spoke nicely and politely. Circumstances which had forced her to earn her own living must have brought her down to a barmaid’s job from something better in the past.

  ‘You see, I’d been a kitchen maid in a cottage hospital before I married. There was an influenza epidemic and half the staff were off. I was sent to help in the out-patients, bringing and carrying for the doctors, and I saw quite a lot. When it was all over, they let me stay in the out-patients as a sort of orderly, as I’d done very well there and staff was hard to get. I learned things. Enough to know that Harry Quill’s thumb had better not be neglected. More coffee?’

  She filled up the cups and looked at the clock.

  ‘Time’s getting on and I’d better hurry. I asked Harry what he’d been doing to get such a bad hand. He said he’d had a splinter in it and had cut it out with his knife. The place was busy with men from the market and I’d no more time to discuss or persuade him. I don’t know why I did it – I suppose I was sorry for him – but I told him how to find my room and said if he’d meet me there after closing time, I’d dress his hand. I’d some iodine and bandages. At first, he tried to pass it off again and I got a bit mad with him. “All right,” I said. “Don’t bother, then. Go home and leave it to get worse, and die.” He went out without another word, but when I arrived home, he was there, standing at the door of my room, waiting. I’d seen the doctors lancing wounds and I opened his thumb with a safety-razor blade. Then I dressed it. He was a bit groggy after that, so I gave him a glass of stout …

  ‘That needed some doing, I can tell you. The stout, I mean. He said he’d never taken alcohol before in his life. It seems his family, for generations, had belonged to a temperance society who never touched strong drink, as he called it, under any circumstances. Harry wasn’t what you’d call a religious man, but he was very proud of his family and its traditions. He told me they’d been at a farm called Great Lands for generations and been much respected. You wouldn’t have thought it, seeing him there in his old suit and cloth cap riding into town on his old tractor. But when you got to know him, you’d know he had his own ideas of right and wrong, mostly according to what his family had done in the past. He talked of his father as though he’d been God.’

  ‘And you persuaded him to take to drink?’

  ‘Well, hardly that. I told him he’d got run-down and stout would do him good. At the end, he said he’d have one glass, as medicine. After that, whenever he called here he’d drink one bottle and always say, “I’m taking my medicine,” as though he was satisfying his conscience.’

  ‘And that started his calling on you at your room?’

  ‘Yes. Every mart day after that, he called. Of course, for weeks, his hand needed dressing. He wouldn’t go to a doctor or have anybody but me do anything for it. He wore his bandage for a fortnight. It’s a wonder he didn’t get blood poisoning or lockjaw, because with his farming all the week, the dressing got in an awful state. In the end, it healed and he kept calling at my place every time he was in Marcroft and after he’d eaten his pie and drunk his sarsaparilla, as the drovers called it when they tried to pull his leg.’

  ‘And this continued right until he died?’

  Her lip quivered. She sat with her chin in her hands and her elbows on the table. She never took her eyes off Littlejohn.

  ‘Yes. It seemed as if we’d known each other always, in the end. At first, he didn’t talk much. Then, he broke the ice. He seemed to want somebody to confide in …’

  Littlejohn could quite see it. Rosie was a sympathetic, comfortable sort. She just talked and asked no questions. Not the inquisitive or possessive type. She was clean and attractive, and self-possessed enough to deal with any customers who tried to take liberties.

  ‘And anybody who says there was anything more between us than just friendship, is a liar …’

  She flared up, as though they might be doubting the relationship.

  ‘He used to stay till I’d to go back for opening time. Then we shook hands and he went.’

  Littlejohn could well imagine that Quill had to make an effort of will to get up and take himself off after he’d opened his heart, drunk his bottle of stout and enjoyed the sympathy of Rosie. She seemed to have been his only friend, his only real contact with humanity.

  ‘What did you talk about when he called on you?’

  She gave
him an astonished look.

  ‘That’s rather a tall order, isn’t it? We met once or twice a week for an hour or so for more than five years! You can’t expect me to tell you all that went on. I can’t even remember myself.’

  ‘Did he tell you about his past?’

  ‘Now and then. I never pressed or questioned him about it. We sort of just took one another for granted. If he’d anything on his mind when he called, he told me about it. He didn’t seem to be one who worried much. He was what some would call a queer sort. With his red face and old clothes, you might have taken him for a hill-billy farmer, but he wasn’t. He’d been educated at Marcroft Grammar School when he was a boy. He told me that once when I asked him how he came to speak so nicely and use just the right word. His father had insisted on his boys having a proper education.’

  ‘Did Mr. Quill talk a lot about his family?’

  ‘Yes, a lot. He was proud of his family. I never knew what his farm was like; I didn’t take the liberty of spying on him or prying into his affairs. But he once told me that his farm was called Great Lands and was at Sprawle and that when he was a boy, it had been a very big one with servants and farm-hands about the place and how they came to Marcroft on market days in a pony-trap. They must have been rich. In fact, Harry might still have been rich. I never asked him. He offered to pay for what he called my attentions, when I’d looked after his infected hand. I lost my temper a bit and told him never to offer me money again. He never did. At Christmas and my birthday, he’d bring along a big box of chocolates or a large iced cake with my name on it. That was all I’d ever take from him. I enjoyed his company and I said so. My father was a chemist; owned his own shop. He went bankrupt and committed suicide and it killed my mother. I was educated at a convent school and at fourteen found myself in an orphanage. I ran away. Harry Quill and I both seemed to have come down in the world. Harry said the farm wasn’t what it was. He’d had bad luck with it. That’s perhaps what attracted us to one another.’

  The clock on the wall whirred away the time and still they hadn’t got anywhere. It was quiet and comfortable in the old pub and with no business going on in the cattle market, the square was peaceful and deserted. Littlejohn seemed to have captured the mood of Quill, sitting there, talking about nothing much, just waiting until opening-time when Rosie would have to get about her business again.

  ‘Did Harry Quill ever mention what had put an end to the prosperity of Great Lands?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I do remember one day when he came to see me, he was late and said he’d been at a solicitor’s office …’

  ‘He had a lawyer then. Do you know his name?’

  ‘I remembered it. Harry complained that his fees were high. It was Mr. Nunn. His office is in the Market Square up in the town.’

  Littlejohn nodded to Cromwell who made a note of it in his big black notebook.

  ‘Go on, Mrs. Coggins. You were telling us about the decline of Great Lands.’

  ‘Call me Rosie. It sounds less official. He’d been at the solicitor’s office and he said that he’d bought back the last of the old place. He said it as if he was quite proud of it. I didn’t ask about it. I never tried to pry in his private affairs, but he told me. It seems his father had inherited the farm from his father and it was a fine one of more than five hundred acres. Then, he’d started speculating and lost money. He’d sold off a hundred acres to somebody who’d got a cottage near Great Lands and the man who bought the land made another small farm of it. That wasn’t enough to pay the debts, however, and he sold another hundred to a buyer who made another small farm by rebuilding another old cottage nearby. It broke his father’s heart, he said, because he loved his land. He actually left instructions that soil from the farm had to be laid under his coffin when he was buried. Harry said he swore when he inherited the three hundred acres from his father that, come what may, he’d get back the land his father had sold and restore Great Lands to its former prosperity. He bought the land when he got the chance and ended with the five hundred acres again.’

  ‘Have you seen Great Lands recently?’

  ‘No. As I told you, I never went there. I was afraid I might meet Harry and he’d be annoyed at me spying on him. Why?’

  ‘It is a wilderness. He got back his lost acres, but he either hadn’t the money to develop them or else something occurred which made him lose all interest in farming. Much of the land has gone back to the wild now. The place, house and land, is desolate.’

  Her mouth opened slightly and her eyes widened.

  ‘I don’t understand …’

  ‘How long ago was it that he bought the last of the land his father had sold?’

  ‘I’d say two years ago, at a guess.’

  ‘And after that, did he change in any way? Did he seem to have lost interest or to deteriorate?’

  ‘No. Not that I’d know.’

  ‘Did he ever seem short of money?’

  ‘No. He always had plenty of money in cash in his pockets. You see, he’d call here after he’d been in the mart and sold whatever he had brought in with him or sent down in the cattle van that picked up the livestock from the farms around.’

  ‘What did he sell?’

  ‘Cattle and sheep. He told me he reared cattle for beef …’

  ‘There was no stock on the farm when he died. Could he have sold out when he lost interest?’

  ‘He might have done. Just for something to say when he arrived, I’d ask if he’d had a good morning in the mart. He’d either shrug his shoulders or else pass it off with a laugh.’

  ‘So, it might be that eventually, he simply came to town to see you, not to visit the mart?’

  ‘If he did, he never hinted at it.’

  ‘He was secretive about some things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About his wife, for example?’

  ‘Not exactly. He told me about her. She was an invalid. He said she was his cousin and had lived at Great Lands with his father and mother, helping in the house, when they were alive. He’d always liked her and they’d married when the old people had turned over the farm to Harry. There had been one child, but something went wrong at his birth and he died and Mrs. Quill nearly died as well. Soon after that, she got polio and lost the use of one side; her arm and leg were paralysed. That’s all I know, except that Harry had a lot to do for her and I know from what he said that he treated her well and thought well of her.’

  ‘But that tragedy all happened long before Harry met you and bought back the land his father had lost?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Years before.’

  ‘So it can’t be that he lost heart because he’d never have a son to leave Great Lands to when he died.’

  ‘No, never. He never hinted at such a thing. He was loyal to Mrs. Quill. As I said, he never made a pass at me. He wasn’t that sort. In his young days he might have had a good time. I don’t know. He never talked about his past in that way. He was turned fifty when I got to know him. He was a man who, somehow, didn’t seem to want to be involved. He never made friends with any of the other farmers or dealers in the mart. He just did his business, ate his snack at the bar here, and then came for a talk with me and went back home. I’m surprised he had time for me, but he had. Even then, he was reserved. The furthest he ever went with me was to say if ever I needed a friend, to think of him first and he’d see me through any trouble I had, money or anything else.’

  ‘Did you ever need his help?’

  ‘No. I’m an independent sort. I managed.’

  ‘You must have had your admirers. Did Harry Quill resent that? Was he a jealous sort?’

  She took it quite as a matter of course. She didn’t even blush or preen herself.

  ‘In a job like mine, I have my ups and downs. Some of the men who come here are the rough sort. They get fresh sometimes. But I know how to take care of myself. I didn’t need any help from Harry on that score. He never had any cause for complaint.’

  ‘Harry Quill was murder
ed …’

  ‘I saw it in the paper. I’ve not known whether I was on my head or my heels since. Do you think they’ll catch the men who did it? I read about them in the paper, too. I just can’t believe it. To choose Harry Quill of all people and to kill him like that …’

  Tears began to run down her cheeks, but she created no fuss. Littlejohn waited.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have held a grudge against Harry Quill? Who might want to murder him?’

  She gave him a blank look.

  ‘I thought you knew who’d done it!’

  ‘We can’t be sure.’

  ‘I thought you might call. I’m glad you came. Whoever it was killed Harry was a swine. Harry wouldn’t harm anybody. He was a good sort. You don’t meet many of his kind nowadays.’

  ‘Mrs. Quill has just died, too.’

  ‘They surely didn’t …’

  ‘No. She was alone with her husband when it happened and had no way of summoning help. She had to set fire to a haystack to attract attention and the effort was too much. She had a stroke and died after it.’

  ‘How awful! I’m glad you came, but I can’t help you much. I’ll do all I can. I’ve nothing to hide. I’m glad it’s you, though, and not the local police. They might have made trouble for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This place hasn’t too good a reputation. None of the public houses round the market have. A lot of the market men come here and drink a lot. They get unruly now and then and Mr. Criggan has to call in the police sometimes. They might have misunderstood my relations with Harry … You know what I mean.’

  It was four o’clock. The time seemed to have slipped quickly away and still they were no nearer.

  ‘Mr. and Mrs. Criggan will be back any time …’

  ‘And you wouldn’t like them to find us here?’

  ‘It might lead to complications. They’re all right, but they’ll naturally jump to conclusions if they find me with the police. They knew about Harry and me being friends. Who doesn’t, in these parts? They’ve hinted that we were more than friends and tried to pull my leg about it. I had a row with them and told them I’d leave if there was any more of it and they’ve been quiet about it since. I do most of the work here and they’ll not get another to do as much. They know it. But if they found the police here … Well, it’s only natural, isn’t it? They wouldn’t want to be mixed up in a murder case, would they?’