After the Exhibition: A Jack Haldean 1920s Mystery (A Jack Haldean Mystery)

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘That’d be useful. How did you get on at the shipping office, by the way? Was Mrs McAllister one of the passengers on board the Concordia? I presume that’s who you were looking for.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Jack. He grinned. ‘Just bear with me for a while, will you? I’ve already made one massive gaff in this case, by being so ruddy confident the slab in the chantry was made of platinum. I don’t know if I can stand another blow to the ego like that so soon. Mind you, I’ve had an idea about that, too.’ He walked up the steps and rang the bell. ‘I’ll let you know exactly what’s what as soon as I’m sure of it myself.’

  The landlady, Mrs Kiddle, ushered them into the Resident’s Lounge, where, after a little while, Miss Sharpe joined them.

  Her face brightened as she saw Jack. ‘It’s Mr Haldean, isn’t it? Did you find your Aunt Joan?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Jack with a funereal face.

  Miss Sharpe clasped her hands together. ‘How sad! Families are so precious, aren’t they? I said to Miss Richardson – such a nice lady who’s taken your aunt’s old room – that it was so tragic to think of an entire family torn asunder over a sideboard.’

  ‘A … I beg your pardon?’ asked Bill, blinking.

  ‘The sideboard!’ said Jack hastily, a wayward memory coming to his aid. What on earth had he told the woman? ‘The sideboard my … my uncle quarrelled with my Aunt Joan about.’

  ‘You said it was your father who quarrelled,’ corrected Miss Sharpe, frowning at him.

  ‘Did I? The sideboard went to my uncle, of course. Miss Sharpe, d’you think you could help us?’ he went on quickly, before her inconveniently retentive memory could trip him up any further. ‘This is my brother, William,’ he added, indicating Bill with a wave of his hand.

  Bill looked perplexed but accepting of the relationship.

  ‘William and I thought it would be much easier to find Aunt Joan if we had a picture of her.’

  ‘There aren’t any photographs,’ began Miss Sharpe worriedly, but Jack interrupted her.

  ‘No, I realise that, so I thought I’d try the next best thing.’ He opened his briefcase and took out his sketch pad. ‘Now, I’ve drawn as good a likeness as I can of my mother, as she was supposed to favour Aunt Joan, but, as you can see, I haven’t added any hair or eyebrows or any little personal touches. I was hoping, with your help, I could make the picture a lot more life-like.’

  Miss Sharpe gave a murmur of surprise and, putting on her spectacles, which were on a chain round her neck, looked at the picture. She drew back in unspoken dissent. ‘That’s not very like her.’

  Bill saw the picture and drew his breath in with a hiss. ‘Good God! She’s not what you’d call glamorous, is she? It’s a funny thing, though,’ he added with a frown, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before, but with no hair, it’s difficult …’

  ‘William,’ said Jack solemnly, ‘of course you’ve seen her before. This is our late mother you’re talking about. Show a bit more respect, please, both to the memory of our dear departed mother and to my art.’

  ‘Art, indeed,’ muttered Bill.

  Miss Sharpe screwed up her face and tried hard. ‘I suppose it could be Mrs McAllister, but I really don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s try,’ said Jack cheerfully. ‘Now, did Aunt Joan wear glasses?’

  Details of glasses, hair, earrings and dress were added at Miss Sharpe’s direction. ‘She’s very like our mother,’ said Jack with a sentimental sigh when the picture was complete. ‘Isn’t she, William?’

  Bill blinked at the picture. ‘That’s not how I remember my – our – mother, I must say.’

  ‘Is this a good likeness of Aunt Joan, Miss Sharpe?’ asked Jack. He gazed at her with wide, hopeful eyes. ‘Please say yes.’

  Miss Sharpe studied the picture carefully. She clasped her hands together once more in an expression of sorrow. ‘Poor boys,’ she said woefully. ‘Such a sweet idea and yet … I’m sorry, Mr Haldean. I’m sorry to crush your hopes when you’ve gone to so much trouble, but I’m afraid this lady is nothing like your Aunt Joan.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bill, once they were free of Purbeck Terrace and Miss Sharpe. Miss Sharpe had been insistent they should drown their sorrows in afternoon tea with caraway seed cake, and it was only by adroit footwork and a plea of a prior engagement they had made good their escape. ‘That’s one idea come to nothing.’ He clapped Jack on the shoulder with a grin. ‘Never mind. I’m sorry Miss Sharpe didn’t recognise your – sorry, our – mother. How’s the ego bearing up?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Jack with undisguised satisfaction. ‘I gave Miss Sharpe every encouragement to identify Aunt Joan but I’d have been devastated if she had. That little experiment, Bill, old bean, was to demonstrate who Mrs McAllister isn’t.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ said Bill in exasperated disbelief. ‘Now, if you could find out a way of demonstrating who Mrs McAllister is …’

  ‘That’s part two of the experiment,’ said Jack. ‘I propose to carry out the next segment at Dorian House. Who’s the neighbour you mentioned? The one you said who’d spoken to Mrs McAllister the most?’

  ‘Do you mean Mrs Conway-Lloyd?’ asked Bill, after a few moments’ thought.

  ‘That’s the one. Now, we can’t be looking for Aunt Joan, of course, and she knows you, so I think you’d better be yourself.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ grunted Bill. ‘I’ve got quite enough relatives to be going on with without adding you to their number, brother.’

  Mrs Conway-Lloyd was at home and willing to co-operate. She remembered Bill perfectly well and Jack, introduced as ‘an artist’, produced his sketch pad in which he’d drawn a duplicate of the picture Miss Sharpe would’ve recognised as his mother.

  ‘I’ve managed to put together a basic outline of Mrs McAllister’s face from descriptions of people who met her,’ explained Jack to a fascinated Mrs Conway-Lloyd. ‘The main facial features are there, but the details of hair and eyebrows and even such seeming trivialities as jewellery and what sort of neckline she preferred on her dresses I’ve left blank to be filled in with your help. Those are the details that really make a difference to identification.’

  Mrs Conway-Lloyd nodded in vigorous agreement. ‘Yes, indeed, Mr Haldean,’ she said, without stopping to reflect those were precisely the details any witness would’ve mentioned.

  ‘Now,’ said Jack, picking up his pencil, ‘did Mrs McAllister wear spectacles?’

  The same litany of questions Miss Sharpe had answered earlier in the afternoon followed, with Mrs Conway-Lloyd’s enthusiastic help.

  ‘Don’t forget the lipstick, Mr Haldean. Mrs McAllister was always so careful about her make-up. She was very up-to-date. No, not that shade,’ as Jack reached for his vermilion coloured pencil. ‘A little darker, I think. Yes, that’s right. Quite a pale powder and rouge, of course, and her eyes rimmed with kohl – with mascara, too. Colour makes such a difference, doesn’t it?’

  Eventually the picture was completed. Mrs Conway-Lloyd surveyed it in satisfaction. ‘You’ve really captured her likeness remarkably well, Mr Haldean. That’s exactly her.’

  Bill took the sketch pad and gazed at it. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Conway-Lloyd, but are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely, my good man,’ asserted Mrs Conway-Lloyd. ‘No doubt about it whatsoever.’

  Bill did have his doubts, though. Before they left Dorian House, he showed the portrait to two more neighbours and the porter. They all identified the woman in the picture as Mrs McAllister.

  Once they got outside, Bill looked at a justifiably smug Jack in bewilderment. ‘I just don’t understand, Jack. Why this elaborate charade? I’ll grant that’s a picture of Mrs McAllister. I don’t understand it, but I believe it. All those witnesses can’t be wrong, but how, in the name of goodness, did the real Mrs McAllister end up in a trunk despatched from Manchester? What’s it all about?’

  ‘I told you the roots of this case went back a long way,’
said Jack, suddenly serious. ‘Old Mr Lythewell, John Askern, Signora Bianchi and that poor trusting beggar, Daniel Lythewell – I feel especially sorry for him – they all played their part, but as to how Mrs McAllister ended up in a trunk? Well, if you’ll be in Whimbrell Heath tonight, I hope I can show you.’

  Sixteen

  The night-watchman’s lantern flickered round the yard of Lythewell and Askern. Overhead an owl hooted and, far in the distance, came the faint noise of a car changing gear.

  Gilbert Stroud rattled the door of the despatch shed, then came a sound Jack had feared. A dog – a young, excited dog, by the sound of its bark – gave a high-pitched yip and scrabbled its paws against the door.

  The door rattled once more as Stroud tried it again.

  ‘C’mere, boy,’ Stroud said in deep disapproval. ‘Down, I say! It’s locked. There’s nothing there.’

  The puppy whined in disappointment as Stroud stumped away, the sound of his footsteps ringing on the cobbles.

  On the other side of the door, Jack flicked on his torch, shielding the light with his hand. He’d been waiting for Stroud. When he and Bill had talked to the night-watchman a few weeks ago in the bar of the Guide Post, he said he made his rounds every couple of hours. It was just on midnight now so they should have until two in the morning. The dog was a ruddy nuisance though, with far better instincts than his master gave him credit for.

  He opened the metal filing cabinet that stood against the wall and grinned as he saw the foreman’s clipboard and a pile of address and despatch labels. He shut the drawer and turned to the stack of waiting crates.

  Working as quietly as he could, he man-handled a crate about five and a half feet long by two feet deep off the stack in the middle of the shed. It was heavy but manageable. That was good. It probably contained wood of some sort, which was a relief. He didn’t want to try shifting a stone pillar, say, single-handed.

  Despite his care, it fell with a thump, end up, on the floor. Jack paused and listened.

  Silence.

  There was a sack trolley leant against the wall. Jack heaved the crate onto the trolley and, taking the weight on the handles, pushed it to the doors. Even though the crate was heavy, the trolley was surprisingly easy to control.

  He took the picklocks, which Bill had provided, and, unlocking the doors, looked out onto the silent, moonlit yard.

  This was the danger point. Leaving the crate and trolley, he slipped across the yard and unlocked the heavy gates but didn’t pull them back. In the distance, the puppy yipped again and he heard the faint sound of Gilbert Stroud’s voice.

  He had to risk it. Keeping to the shadows, he got back to the despatch shed and, checking the coast was clear, pushed the sack trolley across the yard and out of the gates.

  He pulled the gates to after himself and, again using the picklocks, locked them. The only sound was the rustle of the wind through the trees. About a hundred and fifty yards away was the black bulk of the chantry.

  With its heavy load, the trolley was more difficult to pull over the uneven, gritty ground, and it was a relief when he reached the smoother ground of the chantry path. With some effort, he heaved the trolley up the slope and to the door of the chantry.

  The door was closed but unlocked. He pushed the door open and, bringing the trolley into the chantry, closed the door behind him.

  ‘Bill?’ he called softly. ‘Bill?’

  There was the click of a torch and a light shone out. Bill got up from a pew.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Fine,’ said Jack, catching his breath. ‘The watchman’s got another dog, which is a nuisance. Fortunately it’s only a puppy and Stroud ignored it, thank God.’

  Bill struck a match and lit the oil lamp he’d brought with him. ‘That’s better. We can see what we’re doing now.’ He looked at the crate on the trolley. ‘Are you going to tackle this part of the process by yourself?’

  ‘I’d better. After all, the point of this demonstration is to show how it could be done alone, so I don’t want to cheat.’

  Jack wheeled the crate into the middle of the chantry and, taking it from the trolley, laid it on the floor.

  ‘You remember what Mr Jones, the foreman, told us about the way the crates were despatched? I haven’t got a real corpse to play with, as re-creations should only go so far, but you’ll agree that it was perfectly feasible to bring a body here from Signora Bianchi’s cottage in the gardener’s wheelbarrow?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘Okey-doke. The body was then left in the wheelbarrow inside the chantry while our bright spark went and got a crate, yes?’ Bill looked dubious. ‘It’s possible,’ said Jack impatiently. ‘As I’ve just gone and got a crate, you’ve got to agree it’s possible.’

  ‘It’s certainly possible, yes.’

  ‘What happens now is that I open up the crate.’

  He selected a claw-headed hammer from the metal toolbox they’d brought earlier and set to work. ‘A crowbar would get the lid off faster,’ he remarked, ‘but I don’t want to damage the crate. Obviously, dog or no dog, the watchman would notice if I started hammering in the despatch shed at the dead of night. It more or less has to be done up here, as there isn’t really anywhere else to work in private.’

  It took Jack a little time to work round all the nails, but, once done, he levered off the lid to reveal a mass of sawdust.

  ‘When I first looked round here with Cadwallader, I found sawdust on the chantry floor,’ he said. ‘I was puzzled at the time as to where it came from.’

  He delved into the crate and, grunting with the weight, pulled out a highly polished pew bench. He laid it on the floor and slapped his hands together to get rid of the sawdust.

  ‘Now, as I said, we haven’t got a body, but we want something to go in the crate.’ He looked round, and pointed to two brass candlesticks that stood about three foot high. ‘They should do for starters, and we can fill up with other bits and pieces so the weight is about right.’

  ‘I’m not very happy about taking the candlesticks,’ said Bill. ‘Or anything else, for that matter.’

  ‘We’re not stealing them,’ Jack reassured him. ‘They’ll be recovered. I just don’t want there to be any doubt that this will work.’ He hefted a candlestick across to the crate.

  ‘So what happens now?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it’s all quite simple,’ said Jack, casting round the chantry in search of more items. ‘I’m going to put the candlesticks and various bits and pieces into the crate and hammer it shut again. You remember Sam Catton, that chap in the Guide Post pub who believed in ghosts? He said he heard knocking from the chantry on the night of the murder. That, I imagine, was the sound of the crate being boxed up. Then, when it’s all ship-shape and Bristol fashion, I’ll take the crate on the sack trolley down to the despatch shed and put it back with the other boxes.’

  ‘What about the address label?’

  ‘It’s easy enough to write an address label. There’s a stack of blank labels in the despatch shed. All I have to do is write on any name I fancy – say, my old friend, the Reverend Father Peter Crabb, for instance – and address it to Manchester London Road Station, to be left until called for. I’ll put the pew bench back in the packaging shed, where it’ll be repacked and despatched to its proper home. Then I tootle up to Manchester, and, as Father Peter, collect the crate, take it to a convenient house or shed that I’ve previously rented and pack the body into a trunk. These crates would make good kindling and would be easy to chop up and burn, together with any clothes I saw fit to remove from the victim. I then have the trunk collected and taken to the station, where it can be sent to London to be left until called for.’

  Bill shook his head. ‘It’s all so easy and straightforward when you explain it.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Jack, ‘but only if you can plan it beforehand and know the routine of the firm inside out …’ His voice died away. ‘B
ill! There’s someone coming. Hide!’

  The door swung open with an ominous creak and a beam of light swept across the chantry. Jack tried to hide but the beam of light caught him squarely. He flung an arm over his face to protect his eyes from the dazzling glare.

  ‘Mr Haldean!’ called an astonished voice from behind the light. It was Daniel Lythewell. Lythewell shone the light from the torch downwards and walked towards Jack. He was, Jack noticed with a stab of alarm, holding an automatic pistol in his hand.

  Lythewell’s face changed as he saw the open crate on the floor. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ He snapped off the torch. The two men looked at each other in the soft glow of the oil lamp.

  Jack said nothing.

  Lythewell looked at the candlestick beside the crate. ‘I suspected robbery when I saw the light. I came armed.’ His voice was thin with anger. ‘I never suspected you of theft.’

  ‘This isn’t theft, Mr Lythewell,’ said Jack quietly. ‘This is a reconstruction of how a murderer disposed of a body.’ His hand moved to his pocket.

  ‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ snarled Lythewell, gesturing with the gun.

  ‘I’m just reaching for a cigarette,’ said Jack mildly. ‘You don’t mind if I smoke in here, I suppose?’

  Lythewell’s eyes narrowed. ‘Feel free.’ His eyes flicked to the crate. ‘You obviously don’t mind desecrating a sacred edifice.’

  Jack lit a cigarette. ‘I would, as a matter of fact. But this isn’t a sacred edifice, is it? It’s a monument to a monstrous ego, the ego of a man who, by forgery and fraud, amassed a fortune and who wanted to pass a substantial part of that fortune on to his son. You knew about that fortune, didn’t you? It was a pretty open secret, after all. I think Josiah Lythewell probably wrote to Daniel Lythewell and told him how to read the secret of the chantry, how to discover the fortune hidden in here. But you didn’t know the secret, did you?’

  Daniel Lythewell froze. ‘I beg your pardon? I am Daniel Lythewell.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, you’re not. You were Daniel Lythewell’s valet. Your name is Arthur Croft.’