‘No? She was very happy with him. He restored her faith in men, she used to say, after having been so dreadfully let down.’
Jack looked a question.
‘I don’t know any details, of course,’ said Miss Sharpe, lowering her voice, ‘but your poor Aunt Joan had supped sorrow with a spoon, as she used to say. With a spoon,’ she repeated impressively. She sighed deeply. ‘Some men, Mr Haldean, see a woman’s trusting heart as a mere plaything, but your Uncle Michael was her knight in shining armour and an excellent barber as well.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Jack. There didn’t seem to be much else he could say. ‘I was hoping to mend a few bridges,’ he added. ‘We were never a close family. My father had a huge quarrel with Aunt Joan after my grandparents died, all about who should own a sideboard, I think. It seemed very trivial, I must say, but you know how families can be.’
‘Oh, I do know,’ said Miss Sharpe earnestly. ‘Why, my own mother could never abide to hear her own sister, Doris, mentioned after she’d married. She gave herself airs, my mother said. Just fancy, Mr Haldean, I never knew Mrs McAllister had any living relatives at all. She certainly never mentioned you.’
This wasn’t, perhaps, surprising.
‘I’m sure she’d like to see you, though. These quarrels in families are so silly, aren’t they?’
‘They certainly are,’ agreed Jack heartily. ‘Tell me, Miss Sharpe, what happens if any letters arrive for my Aunt Joan? Is there an address to send them on to?’
Miss Sharpe shook her head. ‘She hasn’t had any letters. It’s just as well, because she didn’t leave a forwarding address. I wish she had, because I’ve got her collecting box upstairs and I’d like to give it back to her.’
‘Her collecting box?’
‘Yes, and her tray.’
Enlightenment dawned. ‘Oh, for the Waifs and Strays Society, you mean?’
‘That’s right. I don’t know what to do with it, I’m sure.’ Miss Sharpe, it seemed, was only sure of negatives. ‘I thought she’d come back for it, as she was a very dedicated worker for the cause.’
‘That does her great credit,’ said Jack, seeing some comment was called for.
‘Oh yes, she was. She went out such a lot.’ Miss Sharpe heaved a sigh. ‘Tireless, she was. She left the box in her room, so I took care of it, but really, I’d like to see she has it safely.’ She regarded him with perplexed anxiety. ‘It’s a worry to me, having to look after it. Mrs Kiddle didn’t know what to do with it. Another lady – a Miss Richardson, a very nice lady indeed – has Mrs McAllister’s room now and she didn’t want it in the room as it takes up so much space, but we couldn’t just throw it away or use the tray for kindling. No, indeed. I mean, it’s official, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Jack, a suspicion forming in his mind, ‘you’d let me have it, Miss Sharpe. I’ll see she gets it back when I finally get in touch with her.’
‘Would you? I’d be so grateful.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll go and get it for you.’
A few minutes later he was in possession of a wooden tray containing a few flags and the tin collecting box that he’d last seen outside the art exhibition.
‘I only wish I could wrap it up for you,’ said Miss Sharpe. ‘It seems such a bulky thing to carry around.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jack cheerfully. ‘I haven’t got to carry it far.’
He carried the tray and the tin as far as Scotland Yard.
‘Hello,’ said Bill, as Jack came into his office. ‘I’m still waiting to get the go ahead on that warrant for the chantry.’ He looked at the tray suspiciously. ‘Have you taken to good works? I hope you’re not going to ask me to brass up.’
‘Not money, old thing,’ said Jack, pulling out a chair and sitting at the desk, ‘but I’d like some information about this.’ He tapped the tray. ‘This is Mrs McAllister’s and so’s the tin.’
He told Bill about his encounter with Miss Sharpe. ‘And, Bill, although I don’t want to sound snobbish, I thought the general ambiance of 46, Purbeck Terrace, made it an unlikely place to find a flag-seller.’
Bill nodded. ‘I know what you mean. Flag-sellers are usually fairly upper-class, aren’t they?’
‘Middling to upper, yes. Which doesn’t describe our Mrs McAllister. Add to which I thought she was a right old fraud when I met her outside Lowther’s Arcade, and I wondered if there might be something not quite as mother makes about this particular tray and tin.’
‘It looks authentic enough,’ said Bill, pulling the tray towards him.
‘I agree. So if the tray and tin are authentic but Mrs M. struck me as a phoney, that means what?’ asked Jack, lighting a cigarette.
‘That means …’ Bill broke off and stared at his friend. ‘Blimey, Jack, are you telling me you think it was pinched?’ Jack nodded. ‘Hell’s bells! You made me cough up a fortune to that ruddy woman. I put two ten bob notes – two, mark you! – into that tin.’
Jack laughed. ‘D’you know, I didn’t think of that.’
‘A pound,’ muttered Bill. ‘A whole quid, just thrown away on your say-so because you made me feel guilty.’
‘Get over it,’ said Jack easily. ‘I put a shilling in.’
‘Yes, and I put in a damn sight more. This needs checking right away.’ He reached out his hand to the telephone. After a conversation with the operator, he was put through to the Waifs and Strays Society. Pencil in hand, he jotted down notes as he talked.
‘Well,’ said Bill, putting the phone down, ‘I bet you’re right. They’ve got no record of a Mrs Joan McAllister as a collector, but a tray and tin has been stolen. All the other trays are accounted for, by the way, so this has to be the stolen tray. One of their collectors, a Miss Marjoriebanks-Smythe, reported the theft last year.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Miss Marjoriebanks-Smythe was caught short, poor woman, in King’s Cross Station, and needed to use the facilities. Obviously, she couldn’t take the tray into the cubicle with her, so asked the attendant to keep an eye on it for her. However, the attendant was distracted by a mother with two small children, and when Miss Marjoriebanks-Smythe came to collect her tray and tin, they were gone. There was a fair old crowd in and out of the lavatories, so the attendant couldn’t say who was the likely thief. It was reported as stolen at the time, but that was that. Incidentally, the Society didn’t have a flag day on the Saturday we got collared by the wretched woman – McAllister, I mean – so that proves it, not that we needed any proof.’
‘So she was a fraud,’ said Jack. ‘I thought so.’
‘I wish you’d thought so before I paid up,’ grumbled Bill. ‘There’s one thing, though. Now I know she obtained money under false pretences, I can circulate a description of her. We could find her like that.’
‘Not if Mrs McAllister was the body in Signora Bianchi’s cottage.’
‘No …’ Bill drummed a tattoo with his pencil on the desk, then looked at his friend hesitantly. ‘Doesn’t it seem awfully far-fetched to you, Jack? I mean, it was only yesterday we thought the dead woman was Signora Bianchi, and we know how that turned out. I’m a bit leery about giving a name to the victim until we know a damn sight more.’
‘The only reason we thought the victim was Signora Bianchi was because the body was in her cottage,’ said Jack impatiently.
‘And because Miss Wingate told us so. She seemed very certain about it.’
‘That’s because, not unnaturally, she’d been expecting to see Signora Bianchi in her own house.’
‘Yes, well, that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s one thing having Signora Bianchi murdered in her own cottage …’
‘Amidst all the comforts of home,’ murmured Jack.
‘… But it’s quite another having a complete stranger bumped off there,’ continued Bill, ignoring him. ‘Why pick on the cottage? Doesn’t it seem odd to you?’
Jack shook his head. ‘Not really. It was common knowledge that Signora Bianchi was away. It
’s isolated yet accessible, and he – the murderer – should have been uninterrupted.’
‘It’s still a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? That it could be Mrs McAllister, I mean.’
‘Is it?’ Jack put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. ‘Look at what we’ve got. Mrs McAllister, who we now know to be a right old fraud, is collecting money …’
‘Don’t I know it,’ muttered Bill.
‘… Who, by coincidence,’ continued Jack, ‘if you like, is drawn to a well-dressed and, as far as she was concerned, well-heeled crowd outside Gospel Commons. Now she might be a fraud but she wasn’t faking her faint. Something rattled her badly and I think it’s someone she saw.’
Bill pulled a face. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I’ll tell you something else, too, Doubting Thomas,’ said Jack, leaning forward. ‘When I ran into Mrs McAllister that day outside Lowther’s Arcade, I congratulated her on her recovery and said something along the lines that I hoped she was taking things easy. She reacted as if I’d said something funny, and said she certainly intended to take things very easy indeed in the near future.’ He looked at his friend expectantly. ‘Put those things together and what have you got? I think she recognised someone at the exhibition.’
Bill wriggled impatiently. ‘I know what you want me to say. You want me to slap my forehead and say blackmail!’
‘Well? Why don’t you say blackmail?’ demanded Jack. ‘You can slap your forehead into the bargain, if you like. I bring you a victim and a motive, all neatly packaged up, and all you do is sit there and look as if you’re sucking lemons. What on earth’s the matter with you?’
‘The matter is that I’ve had to explain what happened yesterday to Sir Douglas and I’m not desperately keen to go bowling in and tell him that I’m fearfully sorry, sir, wrong victim an’ all that, but here’s another that’ll do just as well. I agree there’s a connection with Lythewell and Askern. The carry-on at one o’clock on Saturday morning in the chantry proves that, unless our poacher pal, Sam Whatisname, in the pub yesterday was having us on. I also agree that all the Lythewell and Askern crowd were present when this wretched woman started frothing at the mouth and drumming her heels on the pavement.’
‘When she fainted, at any rate. Don’t get carried away.’
Bill held his hands up. ‘Okay, when she fainted. But if I even whisper the suggestion to the Chief that the victim is this Mrs McAllister and she turns out to be alive and well, then my name will be mud and no mistake.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Jack, ‘I feel downright unappreciated.’ He took a cigarette from the box on Bill’s desk and lit it. ‘If you didn’t like that suggestion, you’re going to love my next one.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Bill suspiciously.
‘Well, it struck me that as Mrs McAllister lived in New York and Mr Daniel Lythewell lived in New York, Mr Daniel Lythewell might be the man we’re looking for.’ His smile widened at Bill’s expression. ‘I can see you’re not struck by that idea.’
‘Oh, my good God! Jack! Will you stop leaping to conclusions? Since when was living in New York a criminal offence?’
‘It isn’t, of course.’
‘And how d’you know Lythewell lived in New York anyway?’
‘It said so, in that printed history of the firm I picked up yesterday. He came back home in 1898.’
‘1898?’ Bill repeated in bewilderment. ‘1898? What the devil has anything that happened in 1898 got to do with what happened a fortnight ago? For Pete’s sake, Jack, that’s twenty-odd years ago. I’ll tell you something else, too. If you think I’m going to mention that idea to Sir Douglas, you’ve got another think coming.’
Jack held his hands up. ‘All right, all right, you’ve made your point. There’s one thing you could do, though, without agitating the Chief. Miss Sharpe obviously thought Mrs McAllister was living on the money left to her by her husband, but, as we know, she was supplementing it by other means.’
‘Thieving, not to wrap it up in fancy language.’
‘As you say, thieving. Has she got a record?’ He nodded at the tin. ‘I know there’ll be other prints on it, but, with any luck, Mrs McAllister might have left a fingerprint or two on it.’
‘She might,’ agreed Bill. ‘That’s something I can find out, at any rate. I can’t see we’ll get anything from the tray, as the wood’s too rough, but the tin should be okay.’
He stood the tin on a piece of white paper and, taking an insufflator from the drawer, puffed a fine film of grey powder over the surface. A satisfying array of fingerprints was revealed. ‘Are your prints on here, Jack?’ he asked.
‘No. I was careful to pick up the tin by the string.’
‘All right, I’ll get this down to Records,’ he said, pushing his chair back. ‘You never know your luck.’
He was back within ten minutes. ‘They’ll let me know as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘I presume you’re not interested in nailing Mrs McAllister for petty fraud. What do you hope to show if it turns out she does have a record?’
‘I’m not sure at the moment,’ admitted Jack frankly. ‘It’s too much to hope she’ll have left her fingerprints at Signora Bianchi’s cottage, as we know it’s been cleaned, but we might get an idea of her associates and so on. She moved out of Purbeck Terrace about three weeks ago, according to the landlady. Where did she go? And,’ he added, ‘what was she living on? I know you scouted my idea of blackmail, but you must admit the dates tie up. If she does have a record and she’s seen any of her old associates, it could give us a way of tracking her down.’
Bill drew a couple of doodles on the corner of his blotting pad. ‘Okay.’ He clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘I wish I could hurry up the warrant for the chantry.’
‘Are you having trouble?’
‘The Surrey force are being a bit sticky. I know it’s our investigation, but we like to keep everyone as happy as we can. I gather that Commander Pattishall, the Chief Constable of the Surrey force, is reluctant to make any waves with a firm as well respected as Lythewell and Askern on the say-so of a self-confessed poacher, especially after yesterday’s fiasco. With any luck we’ll get there, but Sir Douglas is having to be diplomatic. That’s another reason I don’t want to start sounding off about your precious Mrs McAllister to him.’
He looked up as a knock sounded on the door. ‘Come in!’
A sergeant poked his head into the room. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s a lady asking for you. A Miss Elizabeth Wingate.’
Bill sighed heavily. ‘Very well. Ask her to come up, will you?’ He turned to Jack. ‘I wonder what she wants?’ He broke off, looking at his friend suspiciously. ‘What the devil’s the matter with you? You look very pleased with yourself all of a sudden.’
‘Nothing much,’ said Jack, adjusting his tie and pulling his jacket straight. ‘I just wondered if there’d been any further developments, that’s all. And I was looking forward to seeing Miss Wingate again.’
Escorted by the sergeant, Betty came into the room. She looked both surprised and pleased to see Jack. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Mr Haldean,’ she said, as he pulled out a chair for her.
‘And we’re glad too, aren’t we, Bill?’
‘It’s nice that someone’s pleased to see me,’ she said with a weary smile. ‘It’s been pretty beastly at home. I slipped away without making any fuss. Everyone blames me for what’s happened.’
‘And what has happened?’ asked Jack.
‘The most appalling row. After you left yesterday, Mrs Askern worked out that if Mr Askern was still married to Signora Bianchi – and he is, because they were never divorced – then Mr Askern’s been living with her under false pretences all these years, dragging, as she said, her good name through the mud. He told her not to be ridiculous and she …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, you can imagine.’
‘I imagine she went pop,’ said Jack.
‘More or less. Anyway, it ended with Mrs Askern saying
that she never was married to Mr Askern, she never will be married to Mr Askern and, as it’s her money he’s been living on all these years, she feels utterly betrayed and he could take himself off just as soon as he liked and never darken the door again. So, to cut a very long story short, Mr Askern’s moved into his club. Uncle Daniel said, “What about the firm?” and Mr Askern said, “Damn the firm,” and Colin told them both not to worry as Mr Askern could travel to work from London very easily, and as far as that was concerned, it shouldn’t make any difference.’
‘Gosh,’ said Jack, blinking. ‘That’s a very practical way of looking at things.’
‘Colin is practical,’ said Betty. ‘It’s one of the things I like about him. Anyway, then Signora Bianchi put her oar in, and told Mrs Askern she ought to be grateful for any husband and that she had no chance whatsoever of getting another man at her age, so she’d be better off counting her blessings and forgiving and forgetting.’
‘Gosh,’ said Jack once more. ‘I don’t suppose Mrs Askern liked that idea, did she?’
‘Mrs Askern,’ said Betty, ‘really let things rip. Apparently Mr Askern’s taken some money from the bank recently and can’t account for it, and Mrs Askern accused Signora Bianchi of having it. Signora Bianchi denied any such thing and so did Mr Askern, but she – Mrs Askern, I mean – refused to believe either of them. She called Signora Bianchi a few things I’d rather not repeat, but she was very angry.’
‘Unexplained money, eh?’ said Jack, looking at Bill quickly. ‘Have you any idea how much?’
‘I don’t know for certain. About a hundred pounds, I think.’
‘Are you sure about that, Miss Wingate?’ Bill asked sharply. ‘That Signora Bianchi denied receiving any money, I mean?’
‘She denied Mr Askern had given her that much but I don’t know if I believed her. Apparently he’d paid the rent for the cottage. When Mrs Askern found that out, she was furious. She worked out that the big attraction about the cottage was that it was an easy walk across the fields to Heath House, and accused Signora Bianchi of having assignations with Mr Askern. Anyway, Colin pitched in and told Mrs Askern not to talk to his mother in that way, Signora Bianchi said lots in Italian, and then everyone turned on me for producing the cash box.’
After the Exhibition: A Jack Haldean 1920s Mystery (A Jack Haldean Mystery) Page 14
