Death Drops the Pilot

by George Bellairs

  On this occasion, Fothergill honoured Cromwell by halting and bidding him good afternoon. Since the game of darts in which Cromwell had licked him, Fothergill had developed a morbid interest in the sergeant. He was like a dog, sizing up and sniffing round a rival who had caught him unawares and beaten him. Fothergill was preparing for round number two, by which he hoped to restore his lost prestige.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Cromwell. A bit blustery.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Fothergill. Feeling better?”

  “Yes. More meself again. It was that pork upset me. And did I give Porter, the butcher, the rounds of the kitching about it! I told ’im he was lucky I didn’t take ’im to court and sue him for damages. He gave me two pounds of sausages as a peace offerin’.”

  Fothergill had a dishevelled look. He was never elegant at the best of times, with his overgrowth of eyebrows and his heavy moustache, but the last delivery always saw him at his worst. He washed himself once a day after breakfast and slowly deteriorated as the sweat of toil and the dust of his rounds accumulated. He removed them in the evening with a damp towel before leaving to play darts.

  “I’ve got a letter for you, Mr. Cromwell.”

  Fothergill fished in his hag and handed over an envelope addressed in childish handwriting. Passers-by and those peeping round curtains in nearby cottages felt their blood boil at this deviation from routine, this currying of official favour.

  “Looks as if it might be from your best girl.”

  Cromwell stared right into the cunning eyes regarding him from under their ambush of eyebrows, and put the letter in his pocket. It was from his best girl; his eldest daughter, aged six, who always kept up a regular and loving correspondence with him when he was away from home. Cromwell looked at Fothergill’s dirty tobacco-stained fingers with their cruel nails, and felt like socking the postman on the jaw for daring to handle the precious letter at all.

  “Any news?”

  “About the murder, you mean?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll have heard about Fowler, the man we took across to Falbright gaol?”

  “Yes. ’As he confessed?”

  “No. They never do. The magistrates remanded him in custody till Monday. They’ll have to decide then whether or not to commit him for trial, I suppose.”

  Fothergill leered.

  “That will, o’ course, depend on what you and your boss find out in the meantime, eh?”

  He took the remnants of a fag from between his cap and his ear, lit it, and puffed the smoke through his moustache which made it look like a miniature moorland fire.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Fothergill gave Cromwell another crafty look. This was developing into a battle of wits. One trying to find out something new and perhaps confidential, the other wondering how much his antagonist really knew.

  “You’re a native of these parts, Mr. Fothergill?”

  “Yes. Born in Peshall, on the Moss. My family’s one of the oldest hereabouts, if not the oldest.”

  “You must know a lot about what goes on in the locality. Do you know Mrs. Liddell at the Saracen’s Head?”

  Fothergill’s grin was almost malevolent. Cromwell could have sworn that the very name he’d just uttered was like a breath on the grey embers of a fire. A flame of either hatred or desire was kindled in the eyes intently regarding him from under the heavy unkempt brows.

  “Hu...Yes, I know her. You arrested Fowler there, I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  “In her bedroom.”

  “Yes.”

  Cromwell felt like someone blowing on the ashes from which sparks would soon appear.

  “She’s a bad lot. A bad lot. I could tell you a thing or two about Esther Liddell.”

  “Could you now, Mr. Fothergill. What is it?”

  “Not just about the Saracen’s being a disorderly house. . . . You and your boss aren’t interested in such things. Wot you might call chicken-feed for big chaps from Scotland Yard like you two. But more serious things...Yes. It’s all dead and done with now, I suppose. But when her husband was alive, I did hear they was mixed up in smugglin’.”

  Fothergill closed one eye and nodded.

  “I was told that in confidence, but as there’s murder about now, I wouldn’t be doin’ my duty as a public servant if I didn’t inform you, Mr. Cromwell.”

  Cromwell didn’t press for the source of Fothergill’s information. Already, in his pocket, his fingers, lovingly caressing the letter from his daughter, had found the answer. The flap of the envelope was almost loose. His little girl always relished sticking down the flap, licking the gum, rubbing it in, putting all her weight on it to keep the messages she sent secret. And now, the letter had obviously been steamed. Cromwell could hardly keep his fist from Fothergill’s stubbly chin. The postman had apparently not thought a thorough resealing of such childish messages important. But he oughtn’t to have fancied he could deceive Cromwell.

  Fothergill’s little eyes were fixed on Cromwell’s face as he tried to find out the impression he was making.

  “It’s so long since. Before the last war, in fact. You couldn’t pin it on ’em now, if you tried, Mr. Cromwell. But I tell you just to show you the type of woman she is. All that lazy, couldn’t-care-less attitude of hers. It’s all put on. Still waters run deep, Mr. Cromwell.”

  “This is serious, Mr. Fothergill. We’d better have another talk, in private.”

  “Yes. I’ve me deliveries to make. You’ll be at the Arms tonight, won’t you? We’ll have a drink together, shall we?”

  “Right.”

  “So long, then, Mr. Cromwell.”

  Fothergill wiped the back of his neck by passing his grubby hand to and fro across it and then he raised his peaked cap and mopped his brow.

  “Hot, isn’t it?”

  Cromwell didn’t find it so, but then, Fothergill had obviously been labouring under some emotion. Cromwell noticed that. And it must have been deep emotion, too, for the marshland folk, as far as Cromwell could see, weren’t the kind who wore their feelings on their sleeves. It needed a lot to make them show them.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Fothergill. I’ll be seeing you.”

  The postman pulled himself together and resumed his jaunty, self-opinionated strutting to the point where he began to deliver his letters. He turned round once to see what Cromwell was doing and they waved to one another.

  Frank Trott ran the newsagent’s shop in Peshall and his premises also housed the post office, where a paid girl clerk did the official work. Trott did a good business with his papers, journals, stationery, lending library, and tobacco licence. But that wasn’t enough. Frank was a marshlander, too, and thrifty at that. So he added to his other duties the one of village barber. Two nights a week and Saturday afternoons until six was long enough in which to serve the farmers and fishermen who couldn’t come in the day, and Frank made two or three extra pounds a week thereby. His little saloon was at the back of the newspaper shop and when it was not in use professionally, he and his wife made it into a small dining room.

  Cromwell turned in there. Two yokels and a man who looked like a sailor of some kind were sitting in the shop itself waiting their turns, and in the little room behind, Mr. Trott was just wiping off a farmer he’d been shaving.

  “Come in, Mr. Cromwell.”

  Everybody in the village knew Cromwell as the man who’d beaten Fothergill at darts. He was almost a freeman of Adder’s Moss.

  Mr. Trott came into the shop to greet his distinguished new client. He was a little, bald, lightly-built man, with a smooth clean-shaven face and very white, small hands. His pale blue eyes missed nothing. He was in his shirt sleeves and he wore a large white apron.

  The barber turned to the waiting clients and addressed them. “I’ll take this gentleman next, if you don’t mind. You’ve plenty of time, it being your afternoon off.”

  The customers looked daggers, but didn’t say anything. They just sat and listened.
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  “Mr. Cromwell is of the London police and his time is, in consequence, very valuable. You see that, don’t you?”

  The customers nodded or grunted a reluctant assent. But they had to agree. Otherwise, it meant the return fare across the ferry added to their bills and the fag of finding a barber in Falbright.

  “So come right in, Mr. Cromwell.”

  Reluctantly, for he liked fair play, Cromwell allowed himself to be led to the inner room, like a patient entering for a major operation. Mr. Trott respectfully pressed him into a chair.

  “Haircut and shave, please.”

  Mr. Trott eased the chair into a semi-reclining posture, covered Cromwell with a cloth, and started to strop a razor with deft strokes.

  “I hear you beat Mr. Fothergill at darts the other night, sir.”

  There was triumph in the barber’s voice.

  “Yes. I think I caught him on one foot, though. He wasn’t very well at the time.”

  “Rubbish, if I might say so, sir. He’s a bad loser. A lot of us are very gratified at the beating you gave ’im. He wants taking down a peg. He’s far too uppish.”

  Mr. Trott tested the razor, took up a brush, poured powder on it, passed his fingers over Cromwell’s cheeks, and began to lather them.

  Cromwell shuddered. The barber’s fingers were like those of a corpse. Cold, soft, clinging. They had a pneumatic feel about them.

  “You a native of these parts?” said Cromwell from the side of his mouth, for Mr. Trott had just laid the other side free from lather in a long surgical sweep.

  “Yes. Born here. Fothergill, you know, has a natural dislike for all new-comers. He thinks he owns the village and you ought to ask his permission before you settle.”

  Another sweep and the other cheek was bare of soap.

  “Do you know Fowler, the man we arrested?”

  “No. But I know the woman who keeps the place where you found him. The Saracen’s Head. Her husband, Liddell, was a regular customer of mine before he died.”

  A pause, for Mr. Trott with a series of short, chopping shots, was now on Cromwell’s long upper lip.

  “Yes. I knew Liddell. Pity he died so young. His wife’s a beauty, although from what I hear, her morals aren’t too good. Between you and me, sir, Fothergill’s always been a bit sweet on her. He was after her before she married. Not that she’d look at a freak like him. He still hangs around the Saracen from time to time. He married a relative older than himself for money; so I guess he still fancies the old love.”

  Mr. Trott wiped Cromwell’s face with an old sponge and dried it.

  “There! I think that’ll suit you, sir. How do you like the ’air?”

  “Trim back and sides and not too much off the top.”

  Mr. Trott felt Cromwell’s cranium like a phrenologist, stood back a few feet to examine it in perspective, and then started to snip round it.

  “Did you ever hear anything about Liddell and his missus being engaged in smuggling?”

  “Not exactly, sir. But before the last war, they’d go off for days, sometimes weeks at a time. They didn’t keep the pub then; he was a clerk on the railway—a local man. What they did, nobody seemed to know. Did Fothergill tell you that?”

  “Confidentially, yes.”

  Mr. Trott eased the clippers round Cromwell’s ears and neck.

  “Well, Fothergill ought to know. Everybody knows that he reads letters before delivering ’em. He’s never been caught, mind you. Too clever for that. But he can’t stop talking and showing off and he lets something out of the bag now and then that he couldn’t possibly know if he hadn’t steamed a letter open and read it.”

  Cromwell looked anxiously at his reflection and the course of the operation through the mirror before him. Trott seemed to be shearing off a lot of hair!

  “I wonder how he got hold of that smuggling tale.”

  “You can bet, being keen on Mrs. Liddell, he’d open all her letters.”

  “Is Pullar’s Sands on his round?”

  “No. But we get the mail here with ours, sort it, and the postman from there bikes over for it and delivers it. Fothergill handles it all.”

  “Are you postmaster here?”

  “Sub-postmaster. Been twenty years at it. I’ve been at it longer than Fothergill. He only took over in 1939. He was at sea before then; a deck-hand on a cargo boat. Then he got scared or fed up with the sea when war broke out. If you ask me, he did it to keep out of the war. He said he’d only one lung. Funny, he only found it out when war came.”

  “So, he was a sailor. That’s interesting...very interesting. And do you mean to tell me that he can open letters and you can’t catch him at it?”

  “He’s too cunnin’.”

  “You’re a bit slow, aren’t you?”

  Mr. Trott looked pained and bit his lip as though holding back his tears.

  “We aren’t all detectives, Mr. Cromwell.”

  “And his mention of the Liddells’ smuggling might be another of Fothergill’s indiscretions, the ones you mentioned he commits for swank?”

  “Yes. Anythin’ on the ’air, sir?”

  “There’s enough on it as it is, I think.”

  Cromwell’s hair was put in ship-shape with the greasy communal hairbrush before he could prevent it. He put on his hat, which fell over his ears, and he had to pack it with bus tickets to make it fit. Outside, he met Fothergill just back from his rounds.

  “Been havin’ an ’aircut, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not much of a barber and too much of a gasbag, is Trott. All the same, he’s the on’y one, so beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Mr. Fothergill leaned against the pillar box in front of the post office, took another fag from between his ear and his cap, and lit it.

  “How did you know about the Liddells’ trafficking in drugs, if I might ask, Mr. Fothergill?”

  Fothergill took out his cigarette and regarded the lighted end for a second. Then he raised his cunning eyes.

  “I tramp this village more than anybody else. More than Dixon...more than anybody. And I hear a bit ’ere and a bit there in the course of my rounds. Putting two and two together, I offen get a full tale. Let’s just walk down the road a bit. I’m off juty now and I see Trott keep lookin’ through the window at us.”

  They set off slowly strolling in the direction of Solitude.

  “’Ow is the case going, if I might be so bold, Mr. Cromwell?”

  “Not at all. We’re still quite in the dark.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cromwell. I’d like to ’elp if I can.”

  Fothergill wore a bothered look as though his own reputation were somehow at stake.

  “Isn’t the man Fowler you’ve laid hands on, the guilty party, then?”

  “It doesn’t seem so. The Chief Inspector doesn’t think he’s our man.”

  Mr. Fothergill paused in his walk and faced Cromwell.

  “Why? I don’t know much about these things, but I’d say Mister Leo Fowler was as likely a culprit as most. And for why? ’E sent those postcards threatenin’ the life of Captain Grebe, didn’t ’e? And ’e was hidin’ out at the Saracen out of the way of you fellows, wasn’t ’e?”

  “Yes. That’s true. But what motive could he have?”

  “Lucy, the girl at the Arms. Grebe took ’er away from London, and Leo Fowler was ’er stepfather. She’s told me so this very day. Fowler came ’ere to settle accounts with Grebe about ’er. Take my word. There’s more there than meets the eye.”

  “But how did Grebe, after being stabbed, take the ferry halfway over?”

  “He didn’t. Fowler did that after he’d killed Grebe and shoved him in the water from behind the Arms. Then he took the ferry half-over, ditched her, jumped off because the bank was near, and beat it over the sands to Pullar’s Sands where you picked him up, hiding at the Saracen, where he’d slept with the landlady meanwhile.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  Fothergill tapped his foreh
ead.

  “Thought it out. No other way. Grebe was dead. ’Ow could ’e ferry the boat over? And another thing...What about Jumpin’ Joe? Tell me that.”

  “What about him?”

  “Right from the time Grebe was killed, Joe had money and to spare. He was drunk all the time. And talkin’ about seein’ ghosts. Why did he do that?”

  “You tell me.”

  “He saw somebody ’e thought was Grebe walkin’ across the marsh and after, when he ’eard Grebe was dead all the time, ’e thought ’e’d seen a ghost. But somebody who didn’t want Joe to talk kept him drunk by givin’ him cash for booze, till they realized they couldn’t keep Joe drunk forever. Then they killed ’im before ’e sobered up and put two and two together and guessed who it was an’ started talkin’ sense round the village. Joe knew too much. That’s why he died. Poor Joe...”

  “And you think it was Leo he saw going to the Saracen after he’d killed Grebe and escaped from the ferry after beaching her?”

  “Exactly. And you try any other theory and you won’t find it better than mine.”

  “It sounds to hold water.”

  “Of course, it does. Don’t let that chap Fowler fox you. He’s a cunnin’ chap, is Fowler. Don’t let ’im get away with it. Well, our ways part ’ere, Mr. Cromwell. That’s my place.”

  Fothergill pointed across the fields to the right, where stood a large whitewashed cottage in a garden, surrounded by fields. “It used to be a farm, but we let off the fields. See you tonight at the Arms, I ’ope. S’long.”

  Cromwell bade him good-bye and slowly made his way back to Elmer’s Creek. He was lost in thought and his pipe was cold. He was at the door of the Barlow Arms before he came to himself and looked surprised to find himself there.

  15 EARLY IN THE MORNING

  THERE was a sharp knock on the bedroom door.

  “Seven o’clock, sir.”

  “Right, thanks.”