Heirs and Assigns

by Marjorie Eccles

  Gilmour let his glance roam around. ‘Not exactly the Ritz, is it?’

  ‘You could say that. But maybe it didn’t matter. Do you have the same impression as me, Joe, that he didn’t intend being here for long? No photographs, personal papers, letters, anything like that. As if he was only a bird of passage?’

  ‘That is how it looks,’ Gilmour agreed. ‘Do we know just how long he’s been living here?’

  ‘Not yet, we don’t.’ Reardon looked thoughtful. ‘Was he lying, I wonder – all that guff about why he’d set up a business here?’

  ‘Why would he have done that – unless to cover up for something else? Seems a bloomin’ funny place to choose, otherwise.’

  Mooching around, Gilmour opened the door of the cupboard over the sink. It held nothing more than mismatched crockery and some essentials of food: tea, sugar in a blue bag, a crusted, half-used can of condensed milk, a few other tins. He peered at the two mugs sitting there and pulled a face. ‘What kind of slob puts used mugs back in the cupboard? Teapot as well,’ he added, using his handkerchief on the handles to lift them all down one by one and set them on the wooden draining board.

  The mugs did indeed contain dregs of what seemed to be tea and there were used tea leaves at the bottom of the brown teapot. Murfitt had lived carelessly, scruffily even – his clothes thrown on to the floor, the untidy pile of newspapers, the overflowing ash pan under the grate, the brass fire irons not cleaned for many a day, if ever. The mat that should have lain in front of the fender sat ruckled up and shoved anyhow towards the sink. It was highly unlikely the window would sparkle even when it was clear of condensation.

  Still, putting away used mugs – two, plus an unemptied teapot – back into a cupboard seemed over the top, even for him. And even odder, the hearth had been swept clean. Reardon’s glance sharpened. The white Belfast sink, too, was spotless, and so was the quarry-tiled floor. Automatically he bent to straighten the ruckles in the mat before someone tripped over it. Did he imagine a slight dampness as he lifted it? He left it positioned where it was.

  ‘So he was killed here,’ Gilmour said, when he’d explained what he was thinking.

  ‘Looks very much like it. I think it’s possible that’s why he was shoved into the cellar. To get him out of the way while whoever it was cleaned up in here … They’d need a bit of elbow room and there’s not much of that. Likewise the mugs and the teapot … lifted out of the way into the cupboard, and forgotten. There must have been a heck of a lot of blood. But look how clean the sink is, the whole floor.’

  ‘Right. But why bother cleaning up at all? It’s not as though Murfitt was likely to stay undiscovered for long.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for the dog, it could have been days, given the few customers or visitors he had.’

  ‘He was thrown down the cellar steps, hoping it would be taken for an accident? Then why not silence the dog as well?’

  ‘Maybe he hoped it would look as though Murfitt himself had put him in there before going down those dangerous steps into the cellar … Unless whoever it was knew about the ventilation grid, he probably thought the barking wouldn’t be heard – and anyway, if the room was airless, the dog would eventually shut up of his own accord.’

  The thought was nasty enough to silence them both for some time.

  Reardon was still puzzled. ‘What the hell was he doing here, this Murfitt, and who was he anyway, Joe?’

  ‘We’ll find out.’ But how? By his fingerprints? Only if he had a police record. Dental records? Only if you’d established his identity. ‘Well, I suppose if he was a conchie, there’ll be official records. Theo might give some help,’ he added hopefully, ‘or Sadie Bannerman, if she knew him well enough to exercise his dog. And he was friendly with Verity Lancaster, wasn’t he?’

  Reardon thought about it, but another question, with an equally uncomfortable conclusion, intruded. Not only who Murfitt was, or why he’d been killed, but more specifically, why just at this time? Was it possible that the visit he and Gilmour had paid on the bookseller had indicated a dangerous interest, and somehow sparked off the attack? Unwelcome as the idea, was, it remained a possibility.

  While he’d been thinking, he’d noticed a check tweed cap hanging forlornly alone from a hook fixed to the door leading into the shop and suddenly his gaze sharpened as he recollected something Flo Parslowe had said. Where was that big coat she said he wrapped himself up in when he went out? He imagined Murfitt coming downstairs in answer to the bell, wearing only his pyjamas and socks. Opening the door to someone he knew. The kitchen cold, the fire almost out. What more natural than to don the coat, conveniently hanging on the back of the door, while he made a pot of hot tea? Two mugs. For himself and the visitor he must have known and admitted. The visitor who had turned out to be his killer. Who had taken the coat away because it was blood-soaked? Or maybe … if Murfitt hadn’t worn it, to cover up his own bloodstained clothing?

  ‘It’s a possible theory,’ agreed Gilmour. But of course that was all it was, just a theory, unless the coat should turn up somewhere.

  The kitchen having revealed all it could at the moment, they went back into the shop. Nothing new there, either. Except that Reardon found he’d been doing Murfitt an injustice. In the storeroom, he found a stock list and an untidy notebook recording acquisitions and a few sales. They were, however, unaccompanied by any names and addresses, still less by a note of any monetary transactions.

  Gilmour had turned his attention to a cardboard box, half full of waste paper. Tipping it on to the floor, he began to sort out discarded bits of brown wrapping paper and several sheets containing unfinished lines of poetry. Nothing appeared to have any significance until he smoothed out the last crumpled ball of paper. ‘Hello, what have we here, then?’

  Reardon decided the business he had at Bryn Glas could wait until the crime scene had been photographed, fingerprinted and otherwise minutely examined, and the body taken away to the mortuary. He wanted to talk to the technician in charge.

  Meanwhile, what was to happen to the dog?

  There wouldn’t be any question of him staying at the Fox, not if Fred Parslowe had anything to do with it. The howling had stopped but Tolly was refusing to eat, not even a morsel from the tempting bowl of scraps provided by Flo. She’d put a blanket in the old kennel and kept talking to him, patting his head as she passed. But all her attempts resulted in nothing more than a sad, soulful look from wounded eyes, as his head rested dolefully on his paws. The only time he roused himself was to snap at the geese when they became too curious, who hissed back but waddled away. He was a miserable dog indeed, not used to being chained up and obviously confused and possibly grieving at what had happened to his best friend.

  It looked like the nearest police pound for poor Tolly, until Gilmour reminded Reardon that he did have another friend.

  TWENTY

  Half an hour later, Gilmour had left Murfitt’s shop behind and was striding off with Tolly on a lead.

  Once away from the environs of the shop the little dog trotted more or less obediently by his side, after one or two attempts to repeat the circus act he’d performed with Sadie Bannerman. ‘Stop that,’ Gilmour told him sternly, and was gratified when Tolly obeyed, evidently still somewhat subdued and perhaps remembering what they’d left behind. Poor little devil. He still looked down in the mouth and his ears appeared to droop more than was normal, but the further they went from the scene of the crime, the more he perked up. He was a dandy little feller, really, very smart in his white, black and tan fur and Gilmour liked his spirit and the random markings of his coat which had resulted in a sooty patch over one eye, giving him a jaunty, piratical air. He wondered if the dog had witnessed the murder. If so, whoever had done it would have been lucky to get away without being bitten or at the very least, a piece taken out of his trousers.

  They were on their way to Sadie’s house. ‘And a right jolly time she’s going to have with you,’ Gilmour murmured as they reached the t
erraced row on Lessings Lane. He knocked on the cheerful, pillar-box red front door and braced himself to deliver the tidings of what had happened to Murfitt, plus a request for boarding the dog that might not be too popular. Bringing news of a death to anyone, and even more especially when it had been murder, was something every policeman might have to face at some point in their career; it was part of the job, but one every man dreaded. In this case, he’d no idea what the relations between Murfitt and Sadie Bannerman had been – whether she’d been simply a friend or acquaintance who’d obliged him by exercising his dog, or whether there’d been more to it. He was also charged with finding out what information she could give on Murfitt’s background. On the face of it their association seemed unlikely, the fetching Miss Bannerman and the unprepossessing and much older Murfitt, but you never knew.

  After he’d knocked several times and received no answer, he tentatively tried the knob, but the door didn’t give and was evidently locked. He was contemplating going round to the back of the house when the next-door neighbour came out with a shopping basket over her arm. ‘If you’re looking for Miss Bannerman, she’s gone.’

  ‘Do you know when she might be back?’

  The woman was middle-aged, sharp-featured and with a nosy expression. ‘Looks like she’s left for good, to me. A motor car came for her and off she went in it with all her baggage. I couldn’t help but see, I’d just stepped out to shake my duster.’

  ‘Right.’ Gilmour wished he had a pound for every time a duster happened to be shaken by a neighbour when something interesting was going on next door. She no doubt spent all her time at the window, twitching the curtains and on the lookout, and he had no illusions that she didn’t know who he was. Word of the arrival of the police in this small place, and why they were there, would hardly be a secret. With a neighbour like this, he could understand why Sadie had said you couldn’t blow your nose in Hinton without everyone knowing.

  He didn’t feel inclined to discuss anything with her, but he’d be daft not to take advantage of her nosiness. ‘She left in a taxi?’

  ‘No. There’s only Swayne’s taxis from Wyvering round here, and it wasn’t his. The driver was wearing a uniform, though, very smart.’

  Gilmour kept his expression neutral and added a smile. ‘Right, thank you, Mrs …?’

  ‘Tansley. Martha Tansley.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Tansley. I’ll just – er – give Tolly here a run around, at the back, then.’ He nodded and she laughed as he went through the passage separating the two blocks of houses, but she had no option but to be on her way. He understood the amusement when he rounded the corner and saw the alley behind, with the hillside rising steeply at one side and a series of wooden gates on the other, leading into nothing more than the backyards of the houses. Tolly would get no run around here.

  The gate to Sadie’s house was on a latch and opened easily on to the flagged backyard, but the back door was as firmly locked as the front. He stood chewing his lip and debating what to do. Sadie had told them her job with Penrose Llewellyn had been only a temporary arrangement. Perhaps she’d felt no need to fulfil her obligations now that he was dead, even though she’d offered her further services to help him with those papers, without any indication that she might be leaving today. He was beginning to get an uneasy feeling. The day hadn’t begun well with the discovery of Adrian Murfitt’s body. He baulked at the idea of Sadie Bannerman wielding a coal hammer, or anything of the sort, on the man and then making a run for it, but reminded himself again that anything was possible, perhaps especially where she was concerned.

  She’d been seen to leave the house, and if what the neighbour had said was true, with all or most of her belongings – and there was no hope now of finding a home here, if only a temporary one, for Tolly. So all he could reasonably be expected to do was to abandon the situation. But he was intrigued, and when Gilmour was intrigued, he took action.

  There was an outhouse built against the wall and just above it a small window that had been left open. Either Sadie had left in such a hurry that she’d forgotten it, or she didn’t think securing the premises was important enough to bother about. He attached Tolly firmly to the fall pipe by his lead and then dragged the dustbin across and clambered on to it. Thinking this was a game, the dog enthusiastically tried to join in. ‘Shut up, Tolly, you’ll wake the neighbourhood.’ He didn’t want another Mrs Tansley poking her nose in. Tolly took no notice; his barking rose and the fall pipe shook. It was odds on which would give way first, the pipe or the dog, but he wouldn’t have put his shirt on the pipe. Short of gagging the dog, he would just have to hope there were no more neighbours at home.

  It was only a small window and Gilmour was a big lad, but he got through without breaking it and found himself in an empty bedroom. As soon as he disappeared, Tolly ceased barking, probably lapsing into suicidal despair at being deserted yet again, this time by his new friend. Hoping he wouldn’t start the horrible howling again, Gilmour thanked the Lord for present mercies all the same and began to look through the rest of the house. It was furnished, though minimally, and with only the bare essentials, pretty obviously second or even fourth or fifth hand. Any trace that Sadie Bannerman had ever been there (with the possible exception of the new-looking poppy-strewn curtains) had been removed. Apart, that was, from the bed, unmade and left just as she had risen from it that morning. And also a quantity of pink face powder spilled on the scratched, oak-veneered surface of the chest of drawers which served as a dressing table, full ashtrays, the remains of breakfast on the kitchen table, unwashed dishes in the sink, two extremely dirty tea towels and the grease-spattered kitchen range on which she’d cooked her meals. It would have given his Maisie a heart attack. The colourful and scented Miss Bannerman, that thoroughly modern miss, had been a slob.

  ‘So what are we going to do with you?’ he asked Tolly, who greeted him when they met again as though he’d been away six months rather than fifteen minutes, tearing round him and entangling his legs in the lead as he tried to untie it from the fall pipe, and making gymnastic leaps to reach his face for a loving lick. ‘Get down, that’ll get you nowhere, mate, if that’s what you’re hoping. You wouldn’t like Dudley, and a new baby in the house.’

  The technical squad had arrived at the shop and done their job. The photographic paraphernalia was set up and Murfitt’s body photographed in situ, then manoeuvred up from the cellar and through the shop into the waiting ambulance and driven away. While the photographer was flashing away in the kitchen, Reardon had a few words with the technician, Detective Sergeant Ledgerwood. ‘Traces of blood in the grouting between the kitchen tiles under that mat you said was damp and more between the floorboards in the shop,’ Ledgerwood said. ‘There’s no doubt somebody did make a fair attempt at cleaning up, though why he bothered … you’d think they’d know by now, we always find something.’

  But the public weren’t as savvy as the sergeant made out. Nor everybody in the Force, either, for that matter. Ledgerwood, on the other hand, was meticulous, a big man with a domed bald head, thick neck and narrow shoulders, the bottle-bottomed specs he wore adding to the impression of a fat, juicy caterpillar. Dedicated to his job, he had fingerprinted everything in sight and bagged up the mugs and the teapot.

  ‘Obviously, he meant it to look like an accident.’

  Ledgerwood was unimpressed. ‘Not very successfully, then. Bit of an amateur job all round. I suppose he very likely didn’t have much time but he took enough to burn something in the fire.’ Reardon looked hopeful. ‘Hold your horses – it’s not going to help. Only ash, not enough left to be useful. Just thought you ought to know.

  ‘Something, you said. Like towels, perhaps?’ Reardon asked, having noticed the lack of them in the kitchen.

  ‘Towels? Good grief no, nothing like that, it was just paper. Quite a bit of it, I should estimate – but there’s no chance of saving anything from it. Whoever burnt it made sure there was nothing identifiable left in the ashes.’r />
  That, then, would account for the absence of anything in the way of documents which would have been useful in identifying Murfitt.

  On this cold day the kitchen at Bryn Glas was cosily inviting: a glowing fire, reflected in the shining, blackleaded iron range; the housekeeper lifting risen bread dough from an enormous, brown earthenware mixing bowl on to the table and its yeasty smell permeating the room. She waved him to a seat and apologized for not being able to leave the dough. ‘That’s all right, Mrs Knightly. You carry on. We can talk as you work.’

  ‘Just as you like – doing two things at once is what we’re here for anyway, us women.’ She scraped the last of the sticky mixture from the bowl’s yellow-glazed interior, floured her hands from a stone jar and began to knead the heavy, doughy mass on the table, pummelling and stretching, knuckling it back into shape, a job she’d done a thousand times and more.

  ‘Tell you what, though, I could do with a cup of tea,’ Reardon said. There wasn’t really time to waste, in the middle of a new murder investigation, but the universal panacea had its uses. He sensed there might be an unwillingness to talk and sharing a cuppa could invite confidences. ‘If you don’t object to me making it.’

  ‘Help yourself, do.’ She went on with her work, telling him where to find tea, milk and sugar, and what teapot to use. He swivelled the trivet round on to the hot fire for the kettle to boil. Outside the window, the couple of lads who were working with Mrs Douglas on the garden could be seen still beavering away.