Death in Desolation (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Bilbow looked surprised.

  ‘You’ve met his wife?’

  ‘Yes, briefly in the course of duty.’

  ‘I’m sure you liked her. A lady. A bit different from Tim. He’s always been a woman chaser. He was bailiff for a wealthy man out Branscombe way and the daughter fell for him. She wanted him and got him. It was father’s fortune that did it. The old man settled them in the finest set-up in the county.’

  ‘It was dark when we called there.’

  ‘A magnificent farm. Mind you, Tim’s a good farmer. None better. But his wife must have regretted the day she ever set eyes on him. He settled down for a while and then broke out again. Drink, fast cars and fast women, like those two sisters he’s ogling now. They’re the Penderell girls from Bradfield, second cousins of Millie. They’re not here for funerals, but for a good time. I bet Tim arranged for them to come. He’ll give them high jinks on his wife’s money, I’ll say. He’s left her at home, you’ll notice.’

  Bilbow contemplated his peaches and ice-cream and pushed them aside. Then he laughed at his thoughts.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about Tim. You’ll laugh.’

  He seemed to think that Cromwell hadn’t shown enough interest in Tim and his adventures and was going to go one better now.

  ‘It was Tim who introduced Harry to Rosie! You wouldn’t believe it, but Tim was a good friend of Rosie for a time. His uncle had cut his hand, or something, and Tim noticed it one day at the mart. He told Harry he’d better do something about it. See a doctor. Harry said he’d no faith in doctors, so Tim persuaded him to let Rosie dress it. She’d been a sort of unqualified nurse, an orderly at a local hospital once and was quite good. Harry went in the end. And that started it. It’s quite a good joke to think that tumbledown old Harry finally cut out the experienced Tim with Rosie. As I said, there’s no accounting for feminine behaviour, is there?’

  ‘And Tim resented it?’

  Bilbow who was just wryly drinking his coffee, choked and spat.

  ‘Here, here. That doesn’t mean that you put Tim on the lists of suspects, you know. As you can see, he’s one for taking his consolations elsewhere. Although from what I gathered, he thought a lot of Rosie and resented her relations with his uncle …’

  The mourners had, even here, established themselves at the small tables according to seniority, like fowls ranged in pecking order. At the next table to their own, near the buffet, a quarrel had broken out. Two women and their husbands were occupying it; the former obviously the dominant partners, for they were now shouting and flinging their arms about to the obvious discomfiture of the men.

  ‘I won’t stay in her company a minute longer. We’re going. Come, Joe, we’ll finish our meal somewhere else.’

  Bilbow rose and hurried across to restore order after excusing himself to Cromwell.

  ‘Got to keep the peace. That’s Evelyn, Millie’s niece and legatee, who’s doing all the shouting. Whenever she goes to a family party, there’s a row.’

  Evelyn clutched at Bilbow like somebody drowning scrambling aboard a life-raft. Both women were on their feet. The other one, a thin, stringy, bilious-complexioned peasant type, with a goitre, wore an awful black straw hat which had obviously seen half a century of funerals.

  ‘Florence has accused me of being at Great Lands when Harry died! Which is as good as saying that I’m the murderer or I know who did it. Tell her, tell her, Mr. Bilbow, that I was there till two o’clock on that day and that you arrived there, too, and gave me a lift back in your taxi to Marcroft for my bus. I wasn’t within ten miles of Great Lands that night … And Harry was killed in the night …’

  She paused and put on an act of gasping for breath, to which her husband and most of the rest of the audience had grown accustomed years ago and paid no attention at all.

  Bilbow was taken aback. So was Cromwell. Here was something the police didn’t know.

  ‘Harry wasn’t there when we were there, was he, Mr. Bilbow? We couldn’t have seen him murdered.’

  Bilbow tapped her comfortably on the shoulder.

  ‘Of course we were there together, Mrs. Bradley, and I did give you a lift. Harry wasn’t at home. Neither of us saw him. Besides, the doctors say he died during the night. You’ve nothing to worry about.’

  He stood there, swaying gently, waiting for the uproar to subside. But it didn’t. Evelyn had the centre of the stage and all eyes were on her. She wasn’t giving up. Without another word to the lawyer, she gathered up her large handbag and her embarrassed husband and made a spectacular exit, in the course of which she knocked over the water jug on their table and flooded her antagonist’s lap with its contents.

  At the door she turned back and denounced the whole family.

  ‘I won’t stay another minute with such a lot of troublemakers. It’s always the same.’

  Joe shambled after her, red and out of countenance, yet smiling at friends here and there in his own shy way, assuring them that it was none of his doing and would soon blow over. As he passed the last table near the door, he paused and shook hands all round with the occupants.

  A silence and then the meal went on. The conversation, stimulated by Evelyn’s contretemps, grew much more animated. Some of it was spiteful, but among the more cheerful and charitable members of the family, reminiscences of happy days with those they remembered with affection, were exchanged. And then the victuals ran out and the diluted coffee all vanished and one by one, the mourners left in little knots either for home or to adjourn elsewhere for fuller more secret conferences. Tim and his boon companion left in roaring spirits with their fast young women, presumably for a spree in Tim’s fast car.

  Cromwell and Bilbow were left alone with the four bedraggled waitresses, whom Bilbow tipped and who then left them. The remnants of the feast littered the shabby tables over which hung the decorations and loud-speakers which enlivened the place every Saturday night. Someone had left a pair of black gloves behind and there was a woman’s umbrella looped over the back of a chair.

  Cromwell gave Bilbow a cigarette.

  ‘So you were the last at Great Lands before the crime?’

  ‘I suppose so. I’d been taking Mrs. Quill’s monthly money to her. Evelyn was there with her when I got there. I gave her a lift back to town as she said.’

  ‘Was it market day in Marcroft?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why was Harry in town?’

  ‘I don’t know. His wife said she didn’t know either, but he’d told her he’d business there. That’s all.’

  ‘Any idea of the nature of the business?’

  ‘Mrs. Quill added she expected he’d gone to visit Rose.’

  ‘You told us before that she knew all about her …’

  ‘That’s right. She took it all very calmly, as a matter of course. She’d been through so much in her lifetime that I guess she was resigned to whatever came along.’

  Bilbow looked as if he felt the same. He was exhausted and dishevelled with his day’s efforts.

  ‘Have you asked Rose if Harry visited her that day?’

  Bilbow blinked and coughed as he swallowed the smoke of the fag-end which he seemed determined to consume to the bitter last half-inch.

  ‘Yes. He went there to her room.’

  ‘How long was he with her?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I wasn’t a spectator at their horrid amours. I suppose he stayed the usual time. Until the Drovers opened for the final session. I didn’t press the point.’

  ‘When did you ask her?’

  ‘The day after the crime.’

  ‘You haven’t been very forthcoming, have you? You should have told us the first time we questioned you.’

  ‘I didn’t remember it till Evelyn started her hullaballoo. He was killed in the night. I assumed he’d gone home after seeing Rosie and it all happened long after we left.’

  ‘We’ll discuss that later, then, when the Chief Superintendent returns
. Shall we go? The staff are anxious to clear up.’

  Cromwell was bored with it all. The seedy party, the sordid room, Bilbow half-drunk and longing for more. It was depressing.

  They left the place together, Bilbow descending the stairs unsteadily, one at a time. They parted at the street door, the lawyer to return to his office after a call or two to wash away the traces of the awful meal and Cromwell to the hotel to await Littlejohn.

  * * *

  ‘What do you think of it all?’

  They were in a corner of the lounge again in the stupid hotel, once a gracious Georgian building, now a modern upstart of a place with bars everywhere and affluent customers tippling at them. They didn’t want to go to the police station, where the old routine would go on and Superintendent Taylor would ask a lot of questions which couldn’t be answered and then he’d think the men from London had been wasting their time.

  Taylor! They’d forgotten him in their preoccupation with Harry Quill and his motley crew of relations. Littlejohn would have to apologise when the case was finished. Would it ever finish?

  The two detectives had exchanged information and now they sat side by side drinking whisky and planning the next moves.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ said Littlejohn.

  Cromwell sat with his eyes half closed. At the back of his mind, superimposed, it seemed, on events going on around him, he could still see the Quills with whom he had spent the exhausting day. A shadowy lot in black, mostly of country stock. Some of them were mere peasants with crafty secretive ways, who lived lives quite alien and apart from their relatives from the towns. Even those who had left the land for easier better paid jobs in the towns still bore traces in appearance, dress and behaviour of the life they had left behind.

  Cromwell only returned to the matter in hand after Littlejohn had repeated his question.

  ‘It’s a funny affair altogether. One thing I’m sure of: that we’ll get no help from the Quill family. They hang together and they understand one another, in spite of the fact that they quarrel like a lot of Kilkenny cats. They’re like the occupants of a foreign country, who don’t grasp what we’re after. Harry Quill was murdered. They’ll soon forget that. They’ve their own affairs to attend to. The crime causes no passion for revenge among them, no eagerness to find the culprit. There’s little or no money at stake to quarrel about, and money seems to be all they care about where the family’s concerned. The funeral party today was just a normal gathering for an ordinary occasion. Harry might have died in his bed full of years …’

  Littlejohn looked hard at Cromwell. His report on his day’s work was discouraging and unusual for one of Cromwell’s exuberant and humorous temperament. The family seemed to have convinced him that outside interference wasn’t welcomed.

  ‘Let’s talk it over …’

  Littlejohn began to outline the affair as though thinking aloud.

  Harry Quill died in the night. The autopsy estimated between eight and midnight. There was no food in his stomach, which was strange, because, as a farmer he enjoyed his meals and was always ready for them. Presumably, he hadn’t eaten since lunch time. There was, however, one strange detail. There was a fair amount of alcohol in his stomach; brandy, in fact.

  Death had been due to a blow on the back of the head which, although it had not caused brain laceration, had resulted in arterial rupture which had brought on massive and fatal cerebral haemorrhage. No other traces of violence, except a minor bruise (of little consequence) on the forehead.

  The initial stages of the case had been confused by erroneously associating it with the black gang farm robbers. The death blow had not been given the importance it deserved.

  From information received, it appeared that Quill had left home in the morning of the day of the crime and presumably visited his mistress in Marcroft. He had travelled, as usual, on his tractor, which was found in a shed in the farmyard.

  ‘We don’t know how long he stayed with Rose Coggins or where he went after he left her, until his body was found by his wife who raised the alarm and then had a stroke from which she never recovered nor even spoke.

  ‘Who could have been interested in Harry’s death?’

  Littlejohn lit his pipe and looked around him.

  The place was full and both bars were working at top speed. An animated crowd of visitors occupied the lounge, laughing, talking, arguing, showing-off. A coloured man in a turban was carrying on a lively discussion with a group of young men who looked like students. As Cromwell had said, quite another world from that of the Quills.

  ‘Who could have been interested in Harry’s death?’

  His wife? She had suffered extremely from his way of life, his shiftless ways and lack of responsibility. He was living on her money and she knew he was keeping a mistress. As long as he lived, she was immobilised in their tumbledown farm, whereas, if he were out of the way, she might settle for the rest of her life in some home suitable for invalids such as she was. But, it seemed, she was far too weak to take heroic measures to rid herself of the man, too feeble to despatch him with a single blow.

  Rosie? And kill the goose that laid the golden eggs? Harry, in spite of his apparent poverty, had raised money on mortgage on his ruined property. Enough to keep Rosie in comfort for a while. According to Bilbow, however, she loved Harry, strange as it seemed. Had he threatened to break it off? Had he tired of it all, as he’d tired of his farm, his existence, his family? He’d left Rosie all he had. Did she know he’d nothing to leave?

  The family? Jerry and Tim? They’d both alibis, for what they were worth. Their statements had been checked and their friends had confirmed that they were both far away from Great Lands between eight and midnight on the night of the murder. In any event, the drunken shambling Jerry was no murderer. Tim, however, might have had a motive. He’d been Rosie’s lover before Harry. He’d actually introduced Harry to her and Harry had ousted him from her affections. However, from all accounts, Tim found it easy to seek consolation elsewhere …

  Littlejohn paused and they both sat back and ordered some more drinks. They sat there, not thinking deeply, watching the panorama of the hotel lounge unfolding itself. There was a poster on the wall opposite.

  Farmers’ Ball Town Hall. Grand Tombola. Dancing to the Roosters

  Two men on the next seat discussing working conditions at a local factory.

  ‘We’ll tell him what we want and if he turns it down we’ll bring the whole bloody lot out …’

  And a man who appeared to be waiting nervously for someone. He kept crossing and uncrossing his legs and was drinking double brandies. He pretended now and then to be reading the evening paper, the banner headlines of which could be seen all over the room.

  Mayor of Marcroft says to Hell with the Ministry

  Suddenly Littlejohn awoke from his torpor and looked at his watch.

  ‘Seven o’clock. We’ve still time for another talk with Rose Coggins.’

  ‘Is it urgent?’

  ‘Yes. We want to know what Harry was doing during his visit to Marcroft on the day he died. Has it struck you that he might not have been murdered at Great Lands at all? He might have been killed elsewhere and his body brought and dumped on his own doorstep later. He died after eight o’clock, but the blow which caused the fatal brain haemorrhage might have been delivered hours before. Let’s go.’

  On the way out they passed Tim Quill. He didn’t see them. He was too occupied with the two flashy girls he’d picked up at the Good Companions. They might have been guests at a wedding instead of the funeral of a murdered man.

  9

  Quill’s Last Day

  ‘WHAT DO you want?’

  The Drovers Inn wasn’t very active. It had been market day in the town, they had been busy in the morning and afternoon, but now there was a lull.

  Rose Coggins was drying glasses and keeping an eye on her clients at the bar and seated at the tables scattered around. Four men were playing darts and another was lying as
leep with his head on his arms. Rose was surprised and upset when she saw Littlejohn and Cromwell.

  Criggan, the landlord, was behind the bar as well, a middle-aged, slim, hollow-cheeked man with dark roving eyes and a small moustache smeared across his upper lip. He eyed the newcomers unpleasantly. He didn’t give them a chance to cause any fuss; he recognised them right away as police and hurried to meet them almost before they were through the door. He spoke quietly out of one corner of his mouth.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To speak to Mrs. Coggins.’

  ‘Come in here.’

  He led them in a small room on the right, a cubbyhole partly used as an office and partly as a snug to be turned to public use when they were busy and overcrowded. There was an old desk there and a stock of full bottles of whisky and gin in one corner. Some small steel-framed chairs were stacked against one wall.

  There was nobody there, except an elderly grey-moustached little man with a bald head. He was drinking beer and looking blankly ahead, lost in thought.

  ‘Could you take your beer to the bar, dad?’ The old man took up his glass and tottered out, still looking blankly about.

  ‘That’s my father. He’s very old and he’s losing his memory …’

  Left to themselves, they found Mr. Criggan inclined to be a bit awkward.

  ‘You might have chosen a better time. It’s gettin’ late and we’ll soon be full of customers again. Rose is busy till closing time. Won’t it do in the morning?’

  ‘This is important. We must speak with her. It won’t take long.’

  ‘It all depends on what you mean by “long”. I know what the police are once they get their teeth in anything. Is it about Harry Quill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose it’s no use asking what it’s all about. I’ll be glad when it’s all settled. It’s upsettin’ Rose. Makin’ her a nervous wreck. She’s not the same girl. Her work’s sufferin’. In a job like hers, you’ve got to be bright and cheerful and please the customers. They don’t want a long face behind the bar, though many of them sympathise with her, you know. You’d be surprised.’