Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  The lot of them looked incongruous in the bright sunshine. Mr. Nunn was the only impeccable one among them; they were awkward and ill dressed. There was a prevailing smell of mothballs and Jerry Quill, who had already risked a few quick drinks, was chewing a clove in case his Aunt Clara got too near him.

  A few sightseers gathered round to watch and included a number of men from the mart dressed in their working clothes.

  With the exception of Tim and Jerry, Littlejohn didn’t know any of them. Big Quills and little Quills, near and distant nephews and nieces and cousins. One overblown and fertile looking woman had three children hanging round her skirts.

  ‘I hadn’t anybody to leave them with,’ she explained to her neighbours, sotto voce, which resounded round the group. They all seemed anxious to emphasise the trouble they’d taken to be there.

  Aunt Clara looked round with a sort of objective curiosity, as though mentally calling the family roll. Then she broke through the throng. The Quills fell back, greeting her shyly without receiving any replies, and she hobbled her way to the graveside followed by the nonchalant lawyer. Tim Quill edged to her side. He was dressed in a black suit, too, which he had outgrown a little, and he carried a black bowler hat, the only one there.

  ‘No scenes, please,’ said Aunt Clara to Mr. Nunn as though she expected him to translate it in legal form and convey it to the rest.

  The relatives gathered round roughly in order of blood relationship – per stirpes, as Mr. Nunn would have had it in drawing up a will.

  Whilst all this was going on, the hearses had arrived, followed by two taxis and a van. The taxis poured out Mr. Bilbow, who seemed to be the major-domo of the event, the undertaker, four mutes, and a tall, flabby man with a bilious face covered with stiff little white bristles; Pastor Mole, the minister of an obscure and declining denomination to which the Quills owed nominal allegiance. The driver of the van opened the doors and began to take out wreaths and spread them on a large grass plot nearby. Littlejohn thought it was never going to end. In the distance, under a weeping willow which almost spread its leaves down to her waist, he recognised Rose Coggins. She was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief screwed in a ball in her fist.

  It all went along smoothly. The coffins were brought along consecutively, very plain, which seemed to annoy certain of the mourners, who thought they might have been a bit more ornamental, instead of like paupers’ boxes. Mr. Mole took a long time. It wasn’t often he presided over such a large throng and he made the most of it. Finally, with a gesture, he divided the living from the dead and there was a rush to the wreaths to make sure that they’d all arrived and to compare one with another.

  Mr. Bilbow joined his master and Aunt Clara, taking care to place a considerable distance between himself and the old lady. He had been tippling a bit before the funeral and his eyes sparkled through his beard. Nunn gestured to Littlejohn and Cromwell to join them. Rose Coggins had melted away.

  Littlejohn and Cromwell were to meet Aunt Clara at the Marcroft Arms immediately after the funeral. There was to be the usual feast of mourners at an unlicensed eating-house in the town. Mr. Bilbow was in charge of that, too. He stayed behind with the rest whilst Aunt Clara and Mr. Nunn went off in her large barouche. She didn’t invite Littlejohn and Cromwell to join them in the vehicle. It was like a royal funeral where everybody is strictly kept in place.

  Littlejohn could imagine all the Quills swarming in the café, where presumably, the feast would be provided at the expense of Millicent Quill’s estate. Harry hadn’t left any money for junketing. It looked as if Millicent’s money would have to cover her husband’s funeral as well.

  He could see in his mind’s eye, too, the shabby café set out with plates of ham or beef for the meal. No alcoholic drinks, of course. In the financial circumstances they might have to be content with water. They’d all start milling about, sorting themselves out into groups of friends and near relatives, discussing Harry Quill and his wife and the mysteries of their deaths and then going on to events which had happened in the family, years, perhaps centuries ago. A teetotal feast.

  Of course, there’d be some there who would sneak off and have a little tipple on the sly after the meal. Bilbow, for example. And Tim and Jerry. They were the kind who feel the need of stimulants after the grim, mournful boring ceremonies and company of such a gathering. Some of the Quills had openly kicked over the traces. Jerry, for instance. Everybody knew he took to the bottle. He’d drunk himself into D.T.s twice according to local records and had almost lost his job. If his wife’s father hadn’t been a big shot, an alderman on the town council, Jerry would have got the sack right away.

  And Harry … The man who’d boasted of his family, and his temperance ancestors and had once owned a chapel. Something had happened to Harry which changed his life. He’d started to slip. First the farm; he’d begun to neglect that. Then he’d become a complete recluse and refused to see any of his once precious Quill relatives. He’d pulled down the chapel and patched up his house with the slates from the roof. And finally, in his late middle-age, he’d broken the pledge and started toping himself. Only a single bottle of stout, according to Rosie Coggins, but it might have been more than that. He’d gone further, too. After a life of fidelity to his wife, albeit she was a helpless invalid, he’d struck up an acquaintance with a barmaid. Rosie had said it was just a platonic affair. But was it? Harry had been steadily on the decline. Had he gone the limit there, too, and broken another pledge?

  ‘I shan’t be going to the vulgar meal at Bennings’ Café. The Quills are nothing to me. I’ve brought sandwiches which I shall eat in the car in a quiet spot on the way home. You can order coffee at the hotel and pay for it out of the funeral expenses. It will cost the estate far less than if I’d joined the rest and eaten a full meal which would certainly have made me ill afterwards …’

  Aunt Clara had worked it out to the last penny, it seemed. Mr. Nunn smiled wearily and made the arrangements. Littlejohn found them at the hotel. On second thoughts he’d sent Cromwell with the main body of mourners to join the feast. There would be talk there which might reveal some family secrets. Nunn was looking bored to death and Aunt Clara annoyed because the police had kept her waiting. She had a glass of brandy with the coffee. She’d complained of fatigue. She wasn’t one of the family who hid her tastes and, after all, it was a medicinal draught and Mrs. Harry Quill’s little nest-egg was paying the bill.

  ‘Sit down. Your coffee’s cold, but you’ll have to make do with it.’

  Nunn shrugged his shoulders gently at Littlejohn, to let him know that the reception was none of his doing. They were established in one corner of the lounge. It was lunch time and guests on their ways to the dining-room kept calling in for drinks before the meal. Some of them obviously knew Clara Quill and nodded or spoke without receiving any acknowledgement. The look she gave anyone who came within yards of their table ensured that their little conference would remain undisturbed.

  Aunt Clara came right to the point.

  ‘Where’s the other man? There were two of you at the funeral!’

  ‘He has other business in hand and asks to be excused.’

  That was a good one! Cromwell, on receiving his orders to join the funeral junketing, had grinned, saying ‘My God!’ and then, somehow, become immersed in a riot of handshaking from those who mistook him for some obscure Quill from a remote place.

  ‘You haven’t, as yet, I presume, found out who killed Harry Quill?’

  ‘Not yet, er … Mrs. Quill.’

  He almost said Aunt Clara. Littlejohn felt he’d half joined the family himself, thinking of and discussing the members by their Christian names and seeming to be taking no liberties in accepting Aunt Clara as a relative like the rest.

  ‘I hear you started on the wrong track and thought he’d been killed by the gang it took the police so long to apprehend. And now, you’ve to begin all over again.’

  She smacked her lips as though the whole unhappy exerc
ise pleased her.

  ‘Whom do you suspect now?’

  ‘We’ve no idea yet.’

  ‘Nor ever will have at the rate you’re going. You seem to be taking your time about everything. Was there any need for you to attend the funeral this morning?’

  ‘We have our own methods and routine in conducting enquiries of this kind, Mrs. Quill. We shall pursue them as we think best.’

  She actually smiled. A grim mirthless sort of affair, but a signal that when she couldn’t get her own way and bully people about, she began to appreciate them.

  ‘You are the Littlejohn, I presume?’

  ‘I’m Chief Superintendent Littlejohn, yes.’

  ‘I’ve heard of you. I don’t miss much.’

  She didn’t explain what she meant.

  ‘I’ve told Nunn there will not be any reading of the wills in front of the assembled relatives. They’ll be disappointed, but anyone concerned can call and see Nunn about it. Bilbow will tell them that and spoil their appetites for the funeral feast. I asked you to call here to see me to inform you that there won’t be anything left in Harry’s estate. Not even the farm and lands. I have a mortgage over the property.’

  Nunn shrugged his shoulders languidly at Littlejohn again, just to excuse himself for not already telling him. He’d had his orders beforehand and Mrs. Clara Quill was a very good client of Nunn and Co.

  ‘I am anxious to help the police in their efforts, although, as you say, you have your own methods and don’t need any help …’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Mrs. Quill. If you are in possession of any facts which will help us in the investigation, it is your duty to disclose them. That is the position.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that. I had an idea that you might visit Nunn and pump him about family matters. I forbade him to disclose anything until I had seen you myself. Now I will tell you about the mortgage, if you’ll listen. Get some more coffee, Nunn, and another brandy. It’s past my meal time and I’m fatigued.’

  Nunn flicked his fingers at the waitress and ordered the drinks.

  ‘I’d better get on. I want to be away before the family begin to disperse all over the town. You know Harry Quill suffered from a silly obsession of restoring to Great Lands the fields which his father sold to pay his gaming debts … Yes; he gambled on the Stock Exchange. He was a fool … You know all that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘That is our business, madam. What you tell us will be treated with similar discretion.’

  ‘Dear me! You are very secretive. However … when Harry had paid for the land he’d no money left with which to work it. He tried everywhere to raise a loan. His wife would not advance him anything, and quite right too. He was a bigger fool even than his father in financial matters. Nobody, including Nunn, would assist him. He finally came to me, expecting, I’m sure, to be shown the door. Instead, I arranged to lend him two thousand pounds against a mortgage of the entire property and land of Great Lands. He agreed. He said even if the mortgage had to be foreclosed some time, the place would still be in the family. Nunn handled it all; Harry took his cash; and that was that. I contend that the whole of the farm isn’t worth half the amount, but I propose to take it over, have it worked, repaired, and put in good heart. Then, I shall dispose of it. It will pass from the Quills for ever. They have deserved to lose it.’

  Nunn actually gave Littlejohn a sly wink and Littlejohn knew what it was all about. Farms were in big demand locally and eventually Aunt Clara would sell at a nice profit. However, Great Lands didn’t look worth much at present and she’d get the lot on her mortgage.

  ‘Now this is what I want to tell you …’

  Aunt Clara’s jaws were the only part of her face which moved. Her malicious little eyes were still and dead looking. She kept her head fixed and she faced Littlejohn rigidly as she spoke, as though she were pronouncing a death sentence on someone.

  ‘Harry didn’t use a cent of that loan on improving the farm. He either hid the money somewhere or else spent it. I believe he did the latter. He was keeping another woman!’

  She spat it out, turned to her brandy and drank it off in a quick draught.

  ‘How do you know that, Mrs. Quill?’

  ‘I know all that goes on in the Quill family. I pay for the information. They are a weak lot. I know. I was married to one of them for thirty years. Any of their antics, disgraces, unseemly doings are reported to me. I, unfortunately, bear their name, and if there’s any Quill mud flying, it finds its way in my direction. I’ve no intention that it shall stick on me. I keep abreast with what they’re all up to.’

  ‘Mr. Nunn?’

  ‘Tell him, Nunn.’

  Nunn made a half despairing gesture with a languid hand.

  ‘That is so. I seem to bear the whole Quill clan on my shoulders …’

  ‘And are well paid for it, Nunn.’

  ‘I agree. Though I can’t claim to do the detective work in this case. Bilbow is the Sherlock Holmes who produces all the unsavoury information.’

  ‘And Bilbow discovered about Harry Quill’s other woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We know about Rose Coggins, of course.’

  ‘That’s nothing to boast about. Everybody knows. Harry thought they didn’t, but even his wife knew. Now, if you knew who killed Harry and what happened to the money he borrowed from me, that would be a feather in your cap.’

  ‘That’s what we’re here to find out, Mrs. Quill.’

  ‘I hope you succeed. If it’s one of the family who did it, I want him or her plucked out and destroyed. There’s no place among the Quills for murderers. If the murderer isn’t laid by the heels, he might try to make me his next victim. And besides, I want to know what’s become of my two thousand pounds. I didn’t go to all that trouble to have my capital stolen and dissipated prodigally …’

  ‘Was it actually in cash?’

  ‘Yes. Harry had no banking account, he said. I didn’t know whether or not to believe him, but I got cash for him from the bank and gave it to him.’

  ‘Have you any ideas about what happened to the money?’

  She gave him a sly smile and closed her fingers firmly over the ivory handle of her ebony walking-stick. Her face was like a death’s head.

  ‘That is your business. But there is one thing to remember. Five people knew that Harry mortgaged his farm to me and had two thousand in cash at his disposal. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. Myself, of course; Nunn and his acolyte, Bilbow. Then, possibly the Coggins woman to whom he presumably opened his heart. And now, you. Five of us. You and I certainly didn’t kill him for his money. That leaves Nunn, Bilbow and the woman.’

  Nunn smiled wearily again. He seemed used to this sort of talk. He just tapped Aunt Clara’s empty glass with his fingernail.

  ‘More?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt! I can’t see Nunn mustering up enough energy to kill anybody. So I leave you with Bilbow and Harry’s paramour.’

  ‘Paramour, did you say? According to Rose Coggins they were merely good friends, and he used her room for a little secret drinking.’

  The red-rimmed eyes in the death’s head fixed him grimly.

  ‘Oho! And you call yourself a famous detective! You are very naïve, Chief Superintendent. Of course, the Coggins woman told you that. They all do. She’s posing as a saint. Harry’s friend and comforter.’

  She thumped her stick hard on the parquet floor and some of the topers standing round the bar jumped and cast fearful glassy eyes in her direction.

  ‘It was an adulterous association. I know. You’re not trying to tell me that a full-blooded man like Harry, domestically celibate, was visiting a barmaid in secret just to drink stout!’

  ‘So you know about the stout?’

  ‘Of course I do. I know it all. Nunn and Bilbow covered the ground that you are making such heavy weather over, long ago. You should talk more with Nunn. Exert pressure on him and make
him disclose more of what he knows …’

  She didn’t even look at Nunn. He might not have been there. And, in turn, Nunn seemed quite indifferent to what she was saying about him.

  ‘In my opinion, Harry crumbled before temptation and gave the Coggins girl the money he got from me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. When you find that out, you’ll have solved the mystery. She might have blackmailed him. Or what is more likely, he might have been so infatuated with her, so grateful that she’d even look at a tumbledown wreck like him, that he gave her all he’d got.’

  Two newcomers were entering the lounge. A woman, obviously from the country, dressed in her finery. Black hat with a ridiculous dummy veil draped round the crown, black coat, and mauve shoes with stiletto heels. She was followed diffidently by a man in an ill-fitting light grey suit, with a black mourning band stitched round his left sleeve. He seemed reluctant and out of place there and sheepishly removed his soft old black hat and revealed a shallow round head almost entirely bald.

  Judging from the expression on Aunt Clara’s face when she saw them, the hornets’ nest was stirring again.

  ‘What are Evelyn and Joe doing here …?’

  Nobody seemed disposed to answer, so she replied herself.

  ‘There’s been a family row over the funeral lunch and Evelyn’s walked out on them. He’s buying her brandy, so it must have been a real set-to. Tell them to come over here, Nunn. But don’t pay for any drinks for them. She’s inherited enough from Millie’s estate without that …’

  Nunn didn’t even draw himself up from his lolling position. He merely raised a hand and waved it at the newcomers, who pretended to be surprised at the sight of him and their aunt, picked up their drinks and made for the corner. Evelyn tottered across the polished intervening space on her spiked heels and Joe followed gingerly behind like a man on ice.