“See you again, Inspector. What about tomorrow night? We’ll be here.”
“Thanks, doctor. I’ll most likely be about. Hope to see you.”
Littlejohn paused in the hall and could hear Cromwell’s quiet modest voice encouraging and making excuses for his opponent, and Fothergill saving himself from being put completely out of countenance by agreeing eagerly.
“It’s that pork you ate, I’m sure.”
“That’s it, Mr. Cromwell. It’s the pork. It must ’ave been a week old if a day and not kept in the frig. at that.”
Littlejohn let himself out by the back door, which led into a small stable yard. The Barlow Arms was built on a spit of land reaching into the estuary and twenty yards beyond the gate from the yard lay the river, just turning into the sea. The Inspector made his way to the road.
Four or five lamps illuminated the length of the jetty and there was a large bulb hanging from a post at the end where stood the ticket office and the mooring bollards for the ferryboat. There was nobody about. Across the river the lights of Falbright illuminated the sky. Houses on the waterfront with drawn curtains, the railway station, and the quayside with the Irish Mail boat tied up and lights streaming through her portholes. Littlejohn could see Falbright Belle across the river at the landing-stage, with a booking-office and the pierhead lamps nearby. As he looked, someone rang the bell warning latecomers that the ferry would leave in a minute.
The Chief Inspector strolled down to the end of the jetty. The tide was low and by the glow from the shore he could make out the mudbanks on the riverside. In midstream, a long string of buoys flashed and twinkled. Across the water, the Belle, with a hoot of her siren, detached herself from a cluster of lights and slowly began her last trip over to Elmer’s Creek for that day. Littlejohn followed her course, first in the direction of the sea, then with a sharp turn back to shore. He caught the swish of her bows in the water, he chugged nearer, and then slowly glided to the jetty.
The man from the ticket office caught the mooring-rope which Joe Webb flung to him and slipped it over a bollard; then the pair of them hauled out the gangway. A few passengers landed. Two or three men returning from a spree in town, including Leo, drunk and shambling back to his bed over the stables. A family home after a visit. Some noisy lads and girls back from the pictures in Falbright. They climbed the sloping stone causeway to the road and slowly vanished in the darkness of the village.
All went quiet again. The only sounds were those of the water lapping the pier and the ferry-boat; the voices of the skipper, Joe Webb and the ticket-man at the water-edge; the ceaseless fret of the distant sea. The rhythmic flashes of the Farne Light swung round and round, picking out buildings and landmarks on their way.
Then odd people began to appear, leisurely making their way to the last ferry. Two or three men who’d come over from Falbright for a change of beer at the Barlow Arms, a man with his wife and two children returning from seeing his parents, and an odd courting couple or two who haunted Elmer’s Creek because it was dark and secluded.
Joe Webb rang the warning bell.
Littlejohn took a ticket, boarded the ferry, and walked round the deck until he found the engine room, which combined the duties of stokehold as well and where Webb was putting coal on the fire with a large shovel. Black smoke emerged from the funnel and was blown by the stiff little breeze back into Elmer’s Creek.
“Hullo, sir.”
“Hullo, Joe.”
“Not going across, are you? How’ll you get back?”
“You come back, don’t you? I’ll come with you.”
“It’s jest a rowin’ boat, sir. I row meself over ’ere, then back in the mornin’. Sometimes think it ’ud be better to move over to Falbright, but the missus won’t, and then, if I moved, they might change the arrangements and decide to ’ave the last boat finish up at Elmer’s Creek. Then where would I be?”
“Excuzhe me, sir.”
Joe Webb, pursuing his many duties as a crew of one, rushed on deck, moving with remarkable speed for one so small and fat, hauled in the gangway, ran back to his engines, and waited obediently for the engine room telegraph to clang.
Half astern...Stop...Half ahead...Full.
Littlejohn watched the manoeuvre and then went on deck.
The lights up and down river fascinated him and he leaned over the rail watching them and quietly smoking his pipe. The knots of passengers were talking in hushed voices, except the lovers, who either sentimentally watched the water and the lights or else clung closely together in the darkest parts of the ship, kissing and caressing each other with pathetic eager ardour as though the end of the brief voyage would part them forever.
The Irish Mail towered above the little ferry-boat as she nosed her way to the Falbright pier. On this side, the ferry had its own small landing-stage above which hung the quays and the berth for the Irish steamers. Under the girders of the latter they had found John Grebe’s body in the dark water.
Half, Slow, Stop. Finished with Engines.
Joe Webb had no sooner altered speed than another order arrived on the dial, heralded by a harsh clang on the gong.
The boat slid alongside and that was all for the day. Except, of course, Joe Webb’s private trip back home, in which Littlejohn now joined him. There was a small rowing boat tied under a disused part of the pier, left there by a pal of Joe’s for this very purpose. Webb untied it, after they’d both jumped in it, fixed the oars, and with easy skilled strokes, manoeuvred into the main stream.
“Could you row a course exactly like the one you took when Captain Grebe was killed, Joe? I’ll take my turn with the oars.”
“I could row all night, sir, and feel none the worse. Do you want the exac’ way the old Jenny went when she kicked up ’er ’eels and run aground?”
“That’s it.”
Webb rowed silently and earnestly for a minute or two.
“Tide’s comin’ in, but I’ll be able to manage.”
They could feel the drag of the river on the boat and Webb strained to follow the course of the Jenny on the fatal night. They described a wide arc sweeping in the direction of the sea and Webb had to keep rowing to maintain his progress as he talked.
“If you look upstream, sir, there...in the direction of the second flashin’ light. That’s where the Jenny sort o’ took the bit between ’er teeth. Then, she off and ran to where we are now, sir. If I was to row dead straight now, we’d run on the bank on the Falbright side...See ’ow the buoys swings to the right from ’ere...That’s the channel.”
Webb struggled again to keep on his course.
“...Now, on the Elmer’s Creek side, sir, to my right, if you was to drop a lead there, you’d find that two feet from where we are now, there’s jest a foot of water. That’s where the Elmer’s Creek bank starts and it’s a marvel to me, the course she tuck, that the old Jenny didn’t pile ’erself up on both banks crossways and block the whole channel. She must jest ’ave turned in time and struck the Elmer’s Creek bank o’ the river.”
“So, after Captain Grebe was killed and thrown overboard, the Jenny turned downstream, dodged the Falbright sandbank, and slewed round and got entangled in the Elmer’s Creek one?”
“Yes, sir. You’ve got it.”
“Would such a move by a boat without a man at the helm be natural?”
A pause whilst Webb changed course and started to make for the jetty at Elmer’s Creek.
“Yes, sir, I reckon it might be. With the tide jest on the change and ready to come in. The current might have done it...All the same, I can’t quite foller it. It must ’ave been jest before Cap’n Grebe turned in mid-stream to make for the jetty. We back out at Elmer’s Creek and take a sort of half-circle ahead then. If the helm was left before the cap’n changed course...sort of left just as we’d reached the top of the half-circle...then we’d make out to sea.”
Webb was obviously still a bit flummoxed about what had actually happened and even more troubled about expre
ssing it in words. All the same, Littlejohn got a rough idea of what it was all about.
“Thanks.”
They drew alongside and climbed the stone steps high up the slope of the jetty and Littlejohn, after giving Webb a ten shilling note for his trouble, walked with him as far as the Barlow Arms and there they parted.
All the lights were on in the pub and the place seemed to be overflowing with people, mostly fishermen and natives of the village. The helmet of Dixon was bobbing about in the middle of a group of men and Cromwell, looking harassed, detached himself from the party and greeted Littlejohn as though they’d been parted for years.
“I’m glad to see you back, sir. I wondered wherever you’d got to. I’m sorry, I was a bit engrossed in a game of darts when you went out.”
Cromwell looked as if he’d thought the worst had happened to Littlejohn in the dark, and the Chief Inspector felt a guilty pang about not having warned his colleague that he was off for a stroll. The rest of the trip, the ferry, the journey down river and back with Joe Webb had all been done on the impulse of a moment.
“...I was looking for you, sir, to tell you that there’s been another murder. The chap called Jumping Joe, the one who sells rushes about the place and is always tight.”
“I know him. He was here tonight.”
“Yes. He was there, standing drinks all round as we were playing. He seemed to have come into a windfall, too. Flashing his money about. The body’s in the kitchen. The doctor’s there and we got Dixon along. It’s a nasty business.”
“How did it happen?”
“He hadn’t been robbed. The money’s still in his pocket. A party of lads from Peshall, who came over on the last ferry from the pictures at Falbright, found the body in the road just this side of the village, in a dark spot where there are no houses. They thought he’d been knocked down by a car, and stopped a passing motorist and brought him here. He was dead.”
“So, it might have been an accident?”
“No. The doctor’s had a look at him, Dr. Horrocks...He says he’s been strangled.”
8 THE END OF JUMPING JOE
POLICE routine filled Elmer’s Creek for almost a whole day after the death of Jumping Joe.
The police surgeon, who worked far into the night, said that Joe had definitely been strangled, throttled manually. He also said that if he hadn’t met a violent death he’d, probably have disintegrated physically before long. His heart, liver and stomach were almost rotted away by perpetual drunkenness, and he was undernourished through preferring liquid to solid refreshment.
Jumping Joe had died between ten and eleven in the night; probably nearer eleven.
“That leaves them nearly all without an alibi. They were all on their ways home about the time Joe was killed,” said Superintendent Lecky, who arrived on the scene with the Chief Constable and wore on his face a pained expression, as though Littlejohn might have prevented the tragedy if he’d tried.
“What was he doing rowing about on the river at that hour? You’d think he’d something better to do than that, with this Grebe case on his hands and not a bit nearer being solved,” Lecky complained bitterly to his subordinates, who, in turn, said behind his back that he was jealous.
Littlejohn took it all unperturbed, moving massively, smoking his pipe, and smiling now and then as one and another greeted him. The fingerprint men had been and gone; they’d turned up as a matter of form in case there were any prints, to be had and returned with the photographer, who’d taken a lot of pictures of the spot where Jumping Joe was found. Joe had been photographed, too, back and front, clothed and stark; an unpleasant sight indeed in his birthday suit!
“Who’d given Joe all that money?”
Everybody asked the question when they heard that the man who normally cadged drinks or sold rushes and mushrooms to get a pint, had been sporting pound notes in the bar and standing drinks all round. He’d even paid off Braid the four and fivepence he’d run up on the slate, and told him to keep the change from a pound and open a running account with it for when he fell on hard times again.
Littlejohn strolled among the regulars and hangers-on round the Barlow Arms, asking questions, listening to the excited small-talk, taking it all in and gaining a lot more background.
“He kept talking about meeting a ghost on the marsh, but he wouldn’t say whose it was.”
“Whatever he met, he got a pocketful of the ready from somebody. Perhaps it was to keep quiet about what he’d seen.”
“It wouldn’t need much in the way of blackmail money to keep Joe’s tongue quiet. He never talked sense when he was drunk. Just enough money to keep him tight and the secret was safe. That’s what I think. Somebody gave him the money to keep him drunk.”
“But what sort of a secret could Joe have found out?”
“Well, there ’as bin a murder ’ere, you know. How about if he saw who did for Captain Grebe?”
“Go on. Joe was nowhere near the Falbright Jenny when the captain was done in. Joe was bein’ chucked out of the Arms, blind-drunk and paralytic at the time...”
If you listened long enough, you got more information over a pint of ale than you’d gather all day by usual police investigation.
Superintendent Lecky, who had been directing routine operations with gestures and orders like a fire chief putting out a fire, put the direct question to Littlejohn at length.
“Who do you think might have killed Joe, sir?”
Littlejohn had just been having a long talk with Lucy, the waitress, and turned his head and smiled blandly at Lecky.
“I haven’t a clue, Superintendent. But I think if we get Grebe’s murderer, we’ll get Jumping Joe’s.”
“You think they’re connected?”
“Of course. Why two murders, one on top of the other, in a place like this, if they’re not in some way connected?”
Lecky rubbed his chin. He felt he could have done better himself. The great Chief Inspector Littlejohn might be all right in London, but here, in this queer little backwater of coast, he seemed a bit out of his depth.
“I’ve got to get back and attend to some routine things in town. You’ll keep in touch, won’t you, Chief Inspector?”
“Of course, Superintendent.”
Lecky and the Chief Constable went off in a police launch which seemed more in keeping with their dignity than the Falbright Belle, but if they could have seen themselves scrambling aboard their private craft and heard the comments of the fishermen on their bearing as they bobbed across the river, they’d probably have chosen the lowly, grubby ferry-boat after all.
Nobody knew her real name was Lily; she was just Lucy at the Barlow Arms. Littlejohn found her laying the tables in the dining room for lunch, quietly and efficiently, in spite of all the commotion going on around. The Arms had become the headquarters of the two cases and Braid and his mother hoped they’d never be solved. The amount of liquor, of one kind and another, consumed was fabulous.
“So you’ve settled down again, Lucy?”
“Yes. What else can I do? If I try to go, you’ll arrest me and Leo. Besides, I’ve my living to earn.”
“You say you were born in Gravesend, Lucy. What part?”
“Down by the riverfront. Tenterden Street.”
“What number?”
“Thirteen. Not very lucky. Why?”
Lucy searched Littlejohn’s face with a half-scared look. It was as though she vaguely sensed some frightening idea. Perhaps Leo’s past; perhaps something which would involve the pair of them further in the Grebe murder affair.
“You said you remembered your stepfather. He vanished when you were twelve...about sixteen years ago.”
“Yes...why?”
“What was his name?”
“I told you. Fowler, like me and Leo.”
“What was his Christian name?”
“What do you want to know for?”
“We want to trace what happened to him exactly. You thought he was drowned or met with an
accident?”
“Yes. He was a good father and I was fond of him, although I wasn’t his real daughter. He was very kind to my mother. You’d have thought...”
Lucy was talking thirteen to the dozen, saying anything to play for time.
“I’d better be going. Mrs. Braid will be after me. I’ve a lot of work to do yet. There’s the bedrooms still to tidy...”
“Not so fast. What was your father’s Christian name, Lucy?”
“He’d nothing to do with these murders, I swear it. Why can’t you leave me alone?”
Outside in the hall, Braid was getting annoyed at the knots of men, hanging round gossiping, hoping to get hold of the latest bit of news from the police. Even now, they were nudging one another: “The chap from Scotland Yard’s questioning Lucy.”
“Get out, the lot of you, now. It’s a fine day. Are none of you goin’ out fishin’ to-day? You can’t stay here.”
Braid flailed the air. He hadn’t shaved or washed himself; he’d started to be busy as soon as he got up at nine o’clock and had almost revelled in his unkemptness since.
“What was your father’s name? We can soon find out, but you’d better save us the trouble, Lucy.”
She threw back her head in a defiant gesture and her cheeks flushed, giving her almost a handsome look.
“It was Leo, like my brother’s. Now are you satisfied?”
“So your father isn’t dead?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know as well as I do, Lucy. He sent the postcards to John Grebe, didn’t he? You and Leo knew all the time and you kept it dark.”
“We weren’t sure.”
“You never saw him?”
“No. I swear it. He never came here.”
“But he threatened Grebe on the postcards and was gradually getting nearer Elmer’s Creek, judging from the cards. Why should he want to see Grebe and why was he so abusive?”
“I tell you, I don’t know.”
“Was he ever in gaol?”
“What, father? No. He’s not like Leo. He’s a man, dad is.”
“Can’t you think why he should come here after Grebe?”
Death Drops the Pilot Page 9
