He'd Rather Be Dead

by George Bellairs

“Yes.”

  “Was your door-key on the same ring?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Please answer the questions, doctor. They’re most important. Who let you in when Fenwick brought you home, can you recollect?”

  “No … Or … wait a minute. I don’t remember getting in at all, but I call to mind a remark of Grace’s the day after. She told me off for getting in such a state. Not for drinking, but for giving her a scare. We were in love, you see, and said what we liked to each other.”

  The doctor’s voice trailed off despairingly again.

  “Go on, sir. What did she say?”

  “Oh, only that when Fenwick called her into the room and she saw me lying on the couch looking such a mess, she thought I’d had an accident and her heart almost stopped … Now her heart has stopped, hasn’t it? Oh, my God!”

  Littlejohn crossed to the sideboard, mixed a stiff peg of whisky for the doctor, and passed him the glass. Preedy looked up gratefully and drank.

  “Nay, dammit man, mix yourself one, too. I’m not so inhospitable, even if I am at my wits’ end.”

  “Just once again, sir,” continued the detective as he sipped his drink. “Were your keys by your bedside when you wakened on the morning after the … ahem … the night before?”

  “No. You see, they undressed me … or somebody did, and just left the stuff as it was in the pockets of my dinner-suit. I found the keys where I’d left them, on the chain I wear fastened to the button of the trousers.”

  “Right. Lastly, when did you last check your poison register with stock?”

  “I can’t remember when I did it. Grace looked after that. But she was as methodical as clockwork. On the first of every month, at least, she did it herself.”

  “Borrowing your key, of course?”

  “Yes. Now, blast it, you’re not trying to implicate her, are you? I won’t stand for it, I tell you, I won’t stand for it!”

  “Calm yourself, please, doctor. I wouldn’t be drinking your whisky, I assure you, if I were on the track of you … or yours.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s damned decent of you to put it that way. I’ve nothing more to say, except that whenever she dispensed medicines and wanted anything from the cabinet, she came to me for the key. I gave it her, and she always locked up and gave it back to me at once.”

  “Well, that’s all for the present again, sir,” said Littlejohn, rising and extending his hand, which the doctor took gratefully and shook heartily. “Will you show me where you were when you passed-out, as you called it?”

  Preedy opened a door out of the hall and showed the Inspector a large, well-furnished lounge.

  “In here. There’s the couch.”

  “And where was Miss Latrobe doing the accounts?”

  “In the dining-room. Across here.”

  He opened the door facing the lounge across the hall, revealing a small, snug room with formal dining furniture.

  “It was cosier and homelier for her than in the dispensary.”

  “Where’s that, doctor?”

  “Here.”

  Preedy showed the way through the lounge again and to a small door leading thence to a well-ordered little place, with a plain desk, shelves of bottles, a sink, draining-board and a white, locked poison-cabinet.

  “You’ll think it’s funny having a door leading from the lounge, but it isn’t really. You see, I’m beginning to specialise in cardiac trouble and some of the local men are starting to send cases to me for second opinion. Then, I don’t use the rank-and-file, panel-patients’ waiting-room, but put on a bit of extra show. The consultant’s cases wait in here. I had that door put in so that Miss Latrobe could slip in, take particulars, and bring them to my room, without going all the way round through the hall.”

  “Thank you, doctor. And now, I’m really going. By the way, did Miss Latrobe ever suffer from toothache?”

  “What a funny question! No. Why? She’d very good teeth and looked well after them, too.”

  “Who was her dentist?”

  “Bonamy, just down the Crescent.”

  “Not Fenwick, then?”

  “Come to think of it, he did do a small filling for her a couple of months ago, when Bonamy was down with flu. I didn’t encourage her … Fenwick’s a decent chap, but he’s not qualified. But she insisted, with his being a friend of ours and it being just for once.”

  “She’s not had any recent dental trouble?”

  “No. I’d have known, because I usually took a look round her mouth before she went to the dentist. Never touched her teeth otherwise, of course. But she seemed to like my doing a preliminary, well … you see how it was …”

  “Quite, doctor. And now I’ll go. Goodbye.”

  Littlejohn descended the steps of the doctor’s house with the exhilarating feeling of having accomplished something worthwhile. He even whistled, unconsciously a hit “plugged” by Sid Simmons on the one and only occasion on which the Inspector had heard him, “You’re the Cause of my Nightmare, Baby!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - CROMWELL’S PERFECT DAY

  It started to rain when Detective-Sergeant Cromwell left Scotland Yard, and it kept it up all day.

  “There’s a fellow here, Alan Fenwick. No. F-E-N-W-I-C-K. “F” for Fanny. Got it? You might ring-up the passport people and ask where he was born. He’s been abroad, so he’ll have a passport. Then, go down to wherever is his birthplace and find out as much as you can about him, his parents and his family history. Keep it up till you reach the time when he removed to Westcombe. All right? Go to it, old son!”

  That’s what Littlejohn had said over the long-distance telephone the night before.

  The result of the passport enquiry was promising. Fenwick had given Dimpsay, Norfolk, as his birthplace. That sounded good to Cromwell. He liked Norfolk. The place abounded in wild fowl of all kinds and Cromwell’s major hobby was bird-watching. He carried his field-glasses over his raincoat when he turned up for duty the next morning.

  “Grand weather for ducks this yer be,” said the bus conductor as the detective descended into the town-hall square at Dimpsay. Soon his trouser-bottoms were soaking, the rain shot from his umbrella in torrents and even curved under it to patter on his bowler hat and drip from the end of his large nose.

  The sky was like lead, everyone seemed to have taken cover, for there was not a soul about, and the only moving thing to be seen was a baker’s van which passed perilously close to the melancholy Cromwell and covered him down the length of one side with a backwash of thin mud.

  Cromwell was a very clean-mouthed officer, but in his present plight his past repressions caught him off his guard. Almost before he knew what he was saying he emitted a string of blistering oaths.

  “… and it’s just my blasted luck to land in a hell-hole like this on a wild-goose chase on the only bloody wet day in a fortnight …” he ended up, and then seemed to realise what he had said. He stopped suddenly, looked over his shoulder as though seeking whoever had poured out such a stream of profanity and, realising that he himself had done it, blushed to the bottom of his back. His eye caught a sign facing him.

  If the Est. 1852 was intended to imply that Jeremiah had set up business in Dimpsay ninety years ago, thought Cromwell, his was evidently the place at which to call for local history. He hurriedly crossed the square and entered the dim, old-fashioned shop. There was apparently no one about, although a bell jangled to announce the intruder. Cromwell beat the counter with his clenched fist to attract attention.

  “What is it?” said a voice and, turning, Cromwell saw the saddler sitting silent, a half-finished leather dog-muzzle in his hand.

  “I didn’t see you,” said the detective, for the man was squatting in the very window of his shop, which the rain had rendered opaque.

  “It’s too dark to see in the shop, so I moved my bench here,” chirped the saddler, “and I was just sittin’ quiet-like a-sizin’ you up. What do you want?”

  Cromwell’s appearance must have b
elied any connection with horses, cats, dogs or budgerigars which, judging from the contents of the shop, were the four sources of Mr. Jeremiah Shadlow’s livelihood.

  “My name’s not Shadlow, nor Jeremiah either,” said the workman in reply to Cromwell’s specific enquiry. “He was my father-in-law, and he’s been dead and gone these thirty years. Gabriel Baynes is my name, and I’m nearer eighty than seventy. Been here forty years …”

  “The very man,” replied Cromwell. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Baynes.”

  “Same to you. Are you a Plymouth Brother?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Wondered if you were. Thought you were civil enough to be one of them. I’m one myself.”

  “Good for you,” said Cromwell. It was all he could think of to say, for he didn’t know the difference between a Plymouth Brother and a Plymouth Rock. He thought Baynes was naming his birthplace.

  “Nice place Plymouth,” added the Sergeant.

  “Never bin there myself,” came the reply.

  Cromwell gave it up.

  “And give me that umbrella,” said Gabriel irritably. “I’ll have to bale-out with a bucket if you stand drippin’ there much longer. And take off that wet raincoat, too, if you figure on stoppin’ long.”

  Cromwell handed over the offending articles and Baynes removed them to the darkness behind.

  The saddler was a tall, wiry fellow, with a shock of iron-grey hair, a long wrinkled face, a bulbous nose and a heavy, grey moustache. His pale-blue eyes peered shrewdly through old-fashioned, steel-framed spectacles.

  “You’ve come to talk and quiz, I can see it from your manner. Not interested in the contents o’ the shop, but in me and what I’ve got to say about somethin’, I’ll be bound,” he said.

  “Right first time, sir,” replied Cromwell. Whereat the saddler drew together two stools, offered one to his visitor and, taking up his knife, awl and thread, set to work.

  “Well,” he said. “What is it about?”

  “Mr. Baynes, I’m a detective, seeking information about people who left here years ago …”

  “I knew it!” chuckled the saddler gleefully.

  “How?”

  “Served my time in London. At a place in Bond Street … Yes, Bond Street. And stayed there more than thirty years. And do you know how I got here? Answered a matrimonial advert, that’s what I did. Daughter of saddler running own prosperous business in country town … that’s what it said. And that’s how I met and married Minnie Shadlow, best wife a man ever had. Lost her five years since and I’ll soon be followin’ her. Fed-up with being on my own. Now, if you was unwed and tuck my advice, you’d try your luck in the matrimonial adverts …”

  “How did you know I was a detective?” interposed Cromwell, for he saw that unless he steered the conversation into his own channels, he’d be in for a whole day’s, session of Shadlow-Baynes memoirs.

  “Got to know the type in London. It’s written all over you.”

  And as if to lighten the blow before which poor Cromwell wilted visibly, he got up and brewed tea from a kettle, which was boiling somewhere in the background.

  “Now, let’s get down to it,” said the saddler, when at length they had settled to two large mugs of scalding liquor.

  “Have you ever heard of anybody called Fenwick in these parts, Mr. Baynes?” asked Cromwell, wondering if his tea would cool before he rose to go.

  Baynes literally pounced on the theme, for he was one of those old men to whom the present is of little importance and who, as days pass, enjoy with increasing clarity the remembrance of times long gone.

  “Fenwick? Yes. I remember a woman called Wilson, who changed her name to Fenwick. Must a’ been almost forty years since. Just after I settled here. The reason I recollect her so well, was that she disappeared mysteriously. Did a moonlight flit with all her belongings.”

  “Is that all you know, Mr. Baynes?”

  “Give me a chance. I’m coming to it. She always was a bit of a mystery. Had a youngster and although she gave out she was married, a lot of the women said she wasn’t. How they knew, is more than I can tell, but some women seem to have a nose for such things.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “It was quite a nine-days’ wonder in the town when she vanished. But it got round that somebody’d been enquiring too much into her affairs; a solicitor chap had been here and she must have taken fright and bolted. The women weren’t half pleased with themselves. They said as it just proved what they’d said. Anyhow, it was all straight and above board. No murdering or kidnapping, I mean. Because Sam Edges, the removal man, dead and gone these twenty years, poor chap, took her stuff for her.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Ah! That would be tellin’, mister. Anyhow, as it’s all so long ago no harm’ll be done. By the way, what are you wantin’ all this for?”

  “Private business. I don’t even know myself, Mr. Baynes. I was just told to get to know all I could about the Fenwicks,” answered Cromwell truthfully.

  “Well, I don’t like workin’ in the dark, mister. But I’ve taken a fancy to you and, if it’ll do you a good turn, I’ll tell you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Baynes. I’m more than grateful.”

  “Sam Edges, before he got the job, had to promise to tell nobody where Mrs. Wilson, or Fenwick, was going, and Sam was a man of his word. Didn’t tell a soul till his dying day. But on the day that he moved her goods at night, Sam called here for a new harness we’d made for him and opening his wallet to put in the receipt, dropped a paper, which was a sort of account made out in advance so he could give it to Mrs. Fenwick, or Wilson, when the job was done. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Cromwell remained outwardly calm, but excitedly bent and unbent his toes in his large boots.

  “On the bill it said somethin’ like this: To moving household furniture, etc., from Dimpsay to Follington, and then the price, like. I remember the place, because it’s in Essex, and I once went there. In fact, it was answering another matrimonial advert, which didn’t suit me, but was a narrow and lucky escape, praise be. However, that’s as may be. The paper wasn’t in an envelope and Sam’s writing being so big that it hit you right in the eye, I’d took it in before I realised I was readin’ it. The name Mrs. Wilson had been crossed out and Fenwick put instead. I asked Sam what it meant and he said Mrs. Wilson had changed her name for use in Follington. He didn’t know why. Promised Sam on the spot, I did, to say nothing about it and till now, I’ve kept my word.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Baynes. I’ll respect the confidence. The information won’t be broadcast, I can assure you. Follington, eh?”

  “Yes. Fair stretch from here, as I guess you’ll be off there now, if I know detectives.”

  “Do you know where the Fenwicks, or Wilsons, came from when they arrived here?”

  “I wasn’t here then myself. But my dear wife was. A native of the place, she was. I once heard her say that she believed Mrs. Wilson—I call her that, as it was her name when here, though I’ve remembered them both on account of the circumstances being unusual—Mrs. Wilson came from Hull. The baby was born here, you see, and her having to register the birth, gave the place she was born in as Hull. In those days, the registrar lived next door to this shop. It was a house then. The grocer who’s there now, put a shop-front in it thirty or more years since, when he started business.”

  Cromwell wondered if everyone in Dimpsay was as aged, long-established and reminiscent as Mr. Baynes.

  “My dear wife, then a maid, of course, and the registrar’s spinster daughter used to gossip a bit over the back fence, and that’s where, if you ask me, the real facts about the illegitimacy of the child leaked out. Miss Parrott, the registrar’s daughter, told my wife that Mrs. Wilson, as she then called herself, was really Miss Wilson, and came from Hull. Mr. Parrott’s bin dead these twenty-five years, so it can’t do harm to tell, although he might have lost his job through giving away private information if he’d bee
n alive and registraring now, mightn’t he?”

  “Yes, he might, Mr. Baynes.”

  “I don’t want to hurry you off, mister, but there’s the 146 bus to Grantford Junction, and it goes in five minutes. You’ll need to catch it for the train if you’re going to Follington today. I don’t know how you’ll get there, but there’s not another bus from here for two hours if you miss that one. It’s still raining, so you’d better wrap up.”

  After heartily thanking Mr. Baynes for his help and donning his mackintosh and bowler again, Cromwell raised his umbrella and hurried through the downpour to the ramshackle vehicle standing in the market square. He had an awful journey to Follington, arriving there at six in the evening with the rain still falling in torrents.

  Follington was a fairly large market town, but the deluge of the day had swept the population indoors and washed the streets clean. The town centre was deserted, save for one country bumpkin, who was either keeping a tryst or thoroughly enjoying the rain, for he was wet through and grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  Cromwell made for the nearest cafe, which was just on the point of closing, for its daily dose of rations was exhausted, but the two maiden ladies who kept the place were so filled with compassion at the sight of the traveller, soaked, melancholy and with the nasal thickness and rheumy eyes of one about to start a cold, that they lit the gas-fire again and charitably served him from their own personal larder.

  When the more business-like and talkative of these two good women had laid a repast consisting of Spam, pickles, prunes and cheese, before their guest, he invited her to take a cup of tea with him and explained the purpose of his visit, albeit he felt more like asking for a bed, a toddy and a hot-water bottle.

  “Of course, I knew Mrs. Fenwick,” replied the elderly lady, the Miss Sophia Speakman of the firm of S. & S. Speakman, Pastrycooks, Estab. 1898, announced on the windows in letters of gold. “She attended our chapel and a good, hard-working woman she was, too. She died more than twenty years ago.”

  “She had a son, too, I understand.”

  “Yes, and a good mother she was. Worked her fingers to the bone for that lad. And a miserable end he came to in this town, I must say, although it was generally agreed that he was the injured party. He had to pack-up and go, to avoid the scandal.”