“You honour me, Inspector. She’s a fine woman.”
“How do you know I’m an Inspector, Leo?”
“Well, there’s the bobby there, isn’t there? He’s police. As for you, I’ve seen your picture in the paper a time or two.”
“You seem to have found your tongue, Leo. Will you answer a few questions now?”
“No.”
Just that. It was very awkward. The Chief Constable of Falbright had been on the phone several times already asking Littlejohn how he was getting along with the case. He was one of the aggressive type, one who worked by the book, rule of thumb. He just couldn’t understand Littlejohn’s methods. If the Chief Inspector took in Leo Fowler, produced the postcards and the ferry ticket, told him that Leo had been hiding out at the Saracen’s Head since the night Grebe was killed, the Chief Constable would charge Leo and start building up a case of murder against him, in spite of the fact that Leo wouldn’t talk. In fact, Leo’s silence would be construed as guilt.
And Littlejohn didn’t believe Leo was guilty at all. He was either shielding someone, or...
“You want us to lock you up, don’t you, Leo?”
The smile was getting on Littlejohn’s nerves and yet, he liked Leo. He was a better type than all the rest in the case. Horrocks, Bacon, Chickabiddy, Brett, young Leo, and Tom Grebe. A poor lot...There was something manly and serene about Leo Fowler, Senior. He’d been through the mill somewhere and had come out of it with dignity.
Fowler was gathering his belongings from the bed and putting them in the pocket of his jacket which he then put on.
“I’m ready.”
“It’s very silly of you, Leo. If you’d answer our questions satisfactorily, you could stay on here, you know, till we need you.”
“And if I don’t answer them satisfactorily. What then?”
“Come on, then.”
“No handcuffs?”
“Not unless you insist.”
Dixon began to look awkward. He’d no handcuffs with. him. How could anybody expect him to carry all his paraphernalia? He’d only been asked to come out for a bit of a stroll with the Inspector. Now, they’d arrested a man! He wondered if Littlejohn had a pair of handcuffs in his pocket. If Leo insisted, what then?
They went downstairs single file. Littlejohn even let Leo lead the way. And they strolled through the kitchen and bar as though they were pals off for a day’s fishing. Esther Liddell was serving beer to some customers who’d arrived in a jeep. Three men with guns, off to shoot duck in the reeds along the bay.
“I’d like a word with you, Mrs. Liddell.”
She slowly approached Littlejohn again, not even looking curious, and there was no sign between her and Fowler that this was an emotional moment for them. Littlejohn nodded towards the kitchen door and she went in, followed by Leo and the police. All eyes in the bar followed them.
“We’re taking Leo with us to Falbright police station. Have you anything to say, Mrs. Liddell?”
She looked him full in the face.
“What should I say?”
“He’s nothing to you, then?”
She didn’t answer. It might not have been worth an answer, or, on the other hand, she was afraid to betray her feelings for him.
“How long has he been here?”
“You should ask him. It’s his business and it’s him you’re arresting.”
“Let’s change the tack, then. You knew the tramp called Jumping Joe?”
“Yes. He came here now and then.”
“He lived here sometimes, didn’t he?”
“When the weather was bad, he’d sleep in the barn.”
“Has he been here lately?”
“He was always in and out. He spent his time between us and the Barlow Arms getting drunk.”
“He was flush with money just before he met his death. Have you any idea where he got it from?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
Still the same languid way, the same lack of interest, as though nothing in life was new and nothing important any more.
“He didn’t happen to discover that Leo was staying here?”
Leo smiled again.
“And that I gave him the money to keep quiet? Try again, Inspector. Nobody but Esther knew I was here. Hadn’t we better be going to the lock-up? I’m hungry and I want my regulation tea.”
Esther looked at him with the same kind of smile. They both seemed to be enjoying events immensely.
“I’ll get you some bread and cheese.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Esther. From now on, I’m Her Majesty’s guest and the police can find the bread and cheese.”
There was nothing more to be said. The whole thing was ridiculous. Leo and Esther obviously acting a part, refusing to speak about anything affecting the Grebe case, behaving as if they’d already spent a long time rehearsing what they would say and do when the police called.
“Come along then, Leo.”
Fowler didn’t say goodbye to Esther. He just put on his peaked cap and made for the door. The tide was in and Leo even rowed the party over the little estuary in a small boat, moored to the Saracen’s side of the water by a long rope which they paid out as they went and which someone on the other side then seized and hauled back the boat.
The three men walked back to Elmer’s Creek across the bank on the tideline again. The return journey wasn’t as happy. Leo was lost in his own thoughts, smoked his pipe happily, and smiled his aggravating smile now and then. Dixon and Littlejohn didn’t seem able to carry on a satisfactory conversation without Leo’s joining-in, so there were long painful pauses, which Leo seemed to enjoy. In fact, he seemed elated by the discomfiture of the police and kept talking about the tea they were going to give him when they got him there and how long he was going to be with them at the government’s expense.
It was a relief to find Cromwell waiting at the police station at Elmer’s Creek.
“This is Leo Fowler, Cromwell. The father of Lily and Leo, Junior.”
“Excuse me, Inspector. The stepfather of Lily.”
And again the smile.
“Do I put ’im in the cell, sir?”
Dixon was bewildered by the unorthodox turn of events. He didn’t know whether Leo had been arrested or simply come with them of his own free will. He wished he could get away for a minute to consult the Policeman’s Vade Mecum about procedure, but too much was happening all at once. His wife was blazing at him for being away so long and leaving his lunch to spoil. And to add to the confusion, the eldest offspring had been fishing in the river, had accidentally hooked a conger, and been pulled in the water. They’d brought him home wet through.
“Has he to go in the cell, sir?”
Leo seemed more delighted than ever.
“Lead on, Macduff.”
“No. We’re going over to Falbright. The beds are more comfortable there, Dixon.”
Dixon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In his own cell they gave them a block of wood for a pillow and a rough blanket for comfort. What was there wrong about that, eh?
Cromwell took Littlejohn aside.
“We got through to the Yard and Gravesend, sir. Fowler, Senior, did vanish at the time stated and was presumed dead, later. In 1938, that was. No trace was ever found of him that was recorded. It’s quite right about Leo, Junior, and Lily, too. They did live at 13 Tenterden Street, Gravesend. There are people there who still remember them. Nobody seems to know about John Grebe in the old days. Scotland Yard got his picture from Fleet Street. It’s been in the papers in connection with the murder and they got a good likeness from the press. Nobody like Grebe was ever connected with Lily’s mother. In fact, one old woman who’s lived in Tenterden Street for fifty years, and refused even to move when four bombs fell round it, said she’d a good idea who Lily’s father was, and it wasn’t Grebe.”
“So perhaps Grebe wasn’t her father and he befriended her for some other reason, either conscience or an old man’s fancy.�
��
“That’s right, sir.”
“Very well. We’ll take Leo, senior, over to Falbright and hold him on suspicion. We’d better get moving. Let Dixon stay here now. He’s completely bewildered and a few hours on the beat will help him get his thoughts in order.”
They took Leo across on the ferry. They might have been returning from a jaunt. Leo seemed to enjoy every minute of it, smoked Littlejohn’s tobacco, passed the Chief Inspector his own pouch of shag, and offered to pay for his companions a drink at the Barlow Arms as they passed. Littlejohn refused on the strength of their not wanting to encounter Leo’s children in the pub.
“Why, Littlejohn? Will it embarrass you?”
The more they were together, the better Leo and Littlejohn got on.
The Chief Constable was annoyed when they arrived.
“Highly irregular, Chief Inspector. You ought to have sent for a police launch. What would you have done if Fowler had tried to bolt? Damned embarrassin’ it would have been.”
“I knew he wouldn’t, though.”
“How did you know?”
How very trying! How could Colonel Cram, the Chief Constable, understand Littlejohn’s ways of working and his dependence on intuition as much as on routine?
Luckily Cram didn’t wait for an answer. He was in his element. He almost called a press conference of the two local reporters and told them they’d got their man.
“I wouldn’t do that yet, sir.”
“Why? The postcards with the threats; the fellah hidin’ on the marsh till things blew over; the fact that he’s the father, or as good as the father, of the girl at the Barlow Arms that old John Grebe was carryin’ on with…”
Littlejohn sighed.
“We’ve no cast-iron proof yet, sir.”
Cromwell was meanwhile obeying his chief’s instructions. They took a quick photograph of Fowler, who seemed to know what it was all about and smiled so much that they had to tell him to take the smile off his face or they’d knock it off for him. He gave them a good set of fingerprints, too.
“Anything to oblige.”
Then the photograph and the prints went off by special messenger to Scotland Yard; fast car to the nearby airport and thence by plane.
The Chief Constable tried his own hand with Leo Fowler, and Superintendent Lecky was as bewildered as Dixon about the whole affair.
“Littlejohn’s made the whole ruddy business into a sort of pantomime. We can’t do any good with the prisoner. He won’t answer questions and seems as pleased as Punch about being arrested at all. It’s Littlejohn who’s put him up to it.”
His staff said he was jealous, of course!
Colonel Cram exhausted himself and his temper on Fowler.
“Anything you say may be used in evidence, of course, but I’d advise you to tell us the truth, my man. It’ll be best for you.”
“I know it will...But I’m not saying anything to be used in evidence just at present, sir. I’d like to think it over. I’ll be quiet in my cell and decide there what to do.”
Cram suddenly realized that Leo was laughing at him! “Charge him and put him in the cells.”
“What with, sir?”
Littlejohn intervened.
“We’ll just hold him on suspicion for the time being. We can’t do that for long, though. We’ll have to work fast.”
“But I’m sure the man did it, Littlejohn. There’s guilt, truculent guilt, written all over him. You must get at him, question him severely, press your points. You’ll get a confession, I’m sure. I rely on you, Littlejohn.”
Colonel Cram placed a confident hand on Littlejohn’s shoulder. He did it with difficulty for he was a small man.
“Even if I think he didn’t do it, sir?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure Fowler didn’t murder Grebe.”
“Then why the hell did you pull him in?”
“I didn’t pull him in, sir. He came in. For some reason, Fowler wants to be arrested. He’s either shielding someone or...”
“Or what? This is beyond me, Littlejohn.”
“Or else he’s afraid lie’s marked for the same fate as Grebe and he’d feel safer in a cell.”
11 THE HAPPY PRISONER
IT was six o’clock in the evening and Littlejohn was waiting for dinner. Cromwell, who had ingratiated himself with a fisherman, had been given a large lobster fresh from the pots and Mrs. Braid was cooking it for them. More as an excuse than anything else, Littlejohn put on his raincoat and said he was going out for some tobacco.
The weather had changed. Late in the afternoon a wind had sprung up, it had started to rain, and by nightfall it was blowing a gale. The Irish boat had had a rough passage and when she docked, a passenger who’d fallen from one deck to another, was removed in an ambulance. None of the fishing boats due out that night was putting to sea.
As Littlejohn left the Barlow Arms, his hat pulled down and his raincoat collar turned up, he met a small party who had crossed on the ferry. One or two of them had been sick.
The Chief Inspector was a bit fed up. The second murder at Elmer’s Creek had raised the case to front-page news and the press had arrived in full force on the afternoon train from London. They were greeted by the excitement of Leo Fowler’s arrest and when Littlejohn and Cromwell got back to the Barlow Arms from Falbright, they were almost torn to pieces by anxious reporters.
“Is it true the case is over and you’ve got your man again?”
Then Leo, Junior, drunk as usual, had taken exception to the remarks of a beefy sailor about his father, and there was a lull in the Grebe Case as they made way for a stretcher bearing Leo to hospital where he remained two days.
All Braid’s remaining rooms at the Barlow Arms were booked and some of the press had to find accommodation in the village cottages.
Braid complained bitterly to Littlejohn.
“It should be my holidays, now that the tourist season’s over. Now I can’t go, and I’ve booked my rooms in London. It’s not good enough.”
“You’re wanted on the telephone.”
Lucy approached Littlejohn and said it in a dry disinterested voice. She had a crushed, beaten look. Now and then she glanced apprehensively over her shoulder, as though expecting fresh disasters at any minute. First her father’s arrest; then her brother making another fool of himself.
The Chief Constable was on the phone, speaking from home in a pained, officious voice.
“I’ve been thinking about this case. I can’t understand you at all, Littlejohn. I suppose you know what you’re doing. Here you’ve arrested a man you say didn’t commit the crimes. You must know the risk you’re taking and I hold you responsible. I left him in his cell, as happy as a king, shouting for his food. He wanted kippers and some cheese.”
Not a sign of humour in the Chief Constable’s voice. Just anxiety and peevishness. Littlejohn almost laughed aloud. Kippers and cheese!
“Are you listening? I was saying, I’ve rung you up to tell you that I expect a satisfactory explanation before the magistrates sit in the morning.”
“Remand him in custody for threatening the life of John Grebe, sir. Anything you like, so long as we keep him in gaol.”
“But...”
“I’ll be responsible. Good night, sir.”
“I warn you, Littlejohn...”
It was a relief to get in the open air, even if it was pouring with rain.
One of the reporters hastily took Littlejohn’s place in the telephone box.
“Is that the desk? Take this down, will you? Relief reigned in the quiet little Homeshire fishing village of Elmer’s Creek when I arrived here this afternoon, for Chief Inspector Littlejohn, the famous Scotland Yard detective, had just laid his hand on the shoulder of the murderer who has been terrorizing the neighbourhood...”
The little village stores was closed when Littlejohn reached it, but there was a light in the back room, so he knocked on the door.
“Who is it?”
By the tone of the woman’s voice, it didn’t sound as though relief reigned in Elmer’s Creek! She was terrified.
“It’s Inspector Littlejohn. Can you let me have some tobacco?”
Bolts, locks and chains, and the woman’s frightened face appeared. She didn’t invite him in, but took his order, passed out the packets, returned with the change, and then locked up again.
It was the same on the way back. Night had fallen, doors were closed, lamps lit. Now and then, a hurried step from someone anxious to be indoors again. A shadow crossing a blind. A window where they hadn’t drawn the curtains revealed a family sitting at an evening meal, a woman suckling a baby, a man changing his shirt.
The Farne Light was lit and the beam flashed steadily, every five seconds, across the untidy little promenade.
Then, suddenly, a loud scream, followed by another, and the village seemed to wake up. A woman rushed into the road, her arms waving, her voice shrill.
“Help! Help! He’s hung himself.”
It took Littlejohn a second or two to make the woman out, and then he recognized Mrs. Tom Grebe. She had come from the side door of the converted chapel, from which a flood of light shone into the alley leading to the house behind.
The promenade became alive with people. It was a wonder where they all came from. Almost like spirits materializing. A ragged knot of men and women followed Littlejohn. There were even children hanging on to their mothers.
“Keep the women and children away. Send them home.”
Tom Grebe was hanging from a beam in the wooden shed where they stored the empty bottles and where he kept his battery of hens. He’d even decently covered the batteries with sacks to prevent the hens seeing what he was going to do.
They cut down the body and somebody started to practise artificial respiration, but it was no use. He’d been dead too long.
Mrs. Grebe was shouting and wailing all over the place. They could hear her lamentations down at the jetty and more people hurried to join the crowd. Press photographers got busy with their flashlights and reporters started to question the spectators.
Death Drops the Pilot Page 13
