That flows by the throne of God.”
Fenwick stopped for a minute to take it all in with the look of one who says farewell to life and laughter for the last time.
WINTER GARDENS
Westcombe.
GALA DAY.
MASKED BALL.
Sid Simmons.
The words caught his eye and he turned in at the main entrance. The masked dancing was held in the afternoons as a wartime measure, for children, in particular, and many adults would not turn out to watch the proceedings after dark. The dancers themselves, of course, would be there if the heavens were falling!
At the door of the ballroom two girls were selling card-board masks. Within, Sid Simmons and his Ten Hot-Dogs were already hard at it. Fenwick bought a disguise consisting of a grotesque painted face, with two slits for eyes, a pathetic long nose, turned up at the point, and a heavy crêpe moustache. Fixing this by elastics over his ears he entered.
The floor was packed. The dance itself consisted of a shuffling step, contrived to enable you to thrust your partner into the thin gaps between the sliding couples and repeat the performance indefinitely. The tune was a mere tattoo played by the piano, a drummer performing on what seemed to be the products of a salvage drive, and the double-bass executing what the initiated term “slapping and picking” his gut. Sid Simmons and the others were resting in preparation for the next big hit, the Slap Bang.
All round the room were seated flirting couples who preferred dalliance to dancing, and single girls waiting for partners. Nobody stood on ceremony and you just picked-up one of them if she took your fancy and agreed to dance with you. Four M.C.s in evening dress and with their own ideas concerning propriety, kept the couples moving and, now and then, admonished some libertine or other with gestures reminiscent of those used by boxing or football referees.
Under present conditions it was impossible to choose a partner by her looks, for the featureless masks of the girls reduced them all to facial uniformity. You might go for ears, hair, or as much of figure, legs or poise as you could see in that packed throng, but you must take the consequences for your behaviour when the time for un-masking arrived.
Iris Clarke, a munition worker on holiday, was sitting waiting for something to turn up in the way of partners. She had arrived at the gala with a friend, taller and better proportioned than herself, but inferior in looks, who had forthwith been whisked-off by a forward young man, who had simply said “Have a go?” and borne her away. Iris didn’t much care, for she had the consolation of having a fiancé with the Eighth Army and was conscious of her superiority when the ordeal of unmasking had to be faced. She was rather astonished, however, at the figure which now stood, bowing before her, asking for the next dance.
The man under the mask was obviously of a superior type, for he put forward his suit with a grace and consideration usually unknown on that dance floor. The disguise, too, gave him a pathetic, suppliant air, like that of a broken-hearted clown, and the sensitive tip of the monstrous nose looked like the pathetic head of some lost insect rearing itself anxiously to take its bearings. The well-kept hands, the cut of the clothes, too, told their own tale. “Evidently a gent,” thought the girl, and rose in acceptance, just as the three instrumentalists ceased their capers. This did not deter Iris and her partner, however, for, with a blast of trumpets, Sid Simmons and all ten of his men, struck up the next number.
The Slap-Bang was the hit of the season in Westcombe that year. It was reminiscent of an Apache dance, only ten times more sadistic, and to a wild cacophony of jungle music, the participants knocked each other about in good-humoured abandon.
The tune started on the drums and then the rest joined in like unleashed madmen. Sid Simmons, especially, shone in an exhibition of trumpeting which earned him fame and envy among those expert in such things, but caused the ignorant to doubt his sanity.
Slap-Bang ! They slapped hands first, then fended each other off, turned back to back and butted each other in reverse, first with the buttocks, then with the shoulder-blades. Then, face to face again, fling your partner at arm’s-length, perform a solo convulsion from head to foot, like a dog shaking himself after a swim. Next, drag your partner back to your embrace with a thud. The movements were repeated with growing frenzy, until the whole room became a surging mass of thrashing, milling, contorted humanity. Some more advanced exponents got down on their haunches, slap-banging around the knees of the rest, whilst one highly-expert couple performed complicated back-to-back assaults on each other sitting on the floor, until the M.C. admonished them. As the dance progressed and the music increased in wildness, many of the performers openly surrendered themselves to the sensual delights of knocking each other about. The drummer of the band, completely absorbed in his work, trembling with ecstasy, his hair all over his face and his eyes wild, became possessed of demoniacal energy and speed and whipped the whole room into a wild orgy, M.C.s and all.
At first, Iris and her partner sedately performed the routine movements and steps of the dance, but as the fury increased they, too, became absorbed in the ritual. They had soon reached the stage when, as their heaving, panting bodies met in a formal embrace, they longed to remain so and kiss in swooning delight. Their masks remained impassive as the faces of corpses, but they did not need looks to convey their emotions. There were many more around them who felt the same, but Sid Simmons and his Hot-Dogs gave them no respite. Like slave-drivers, they flogged their tortured victims along with relentless trumpets, saxophones and percussion.
Suddenly, Iris’s partner became like one demented. It was as though, having held himself in check for as long as flesh and blood could bear, he had kicked over the traces and surrendered himself to madness. He tore himself from the girl, sagged jerkily at the knees, groaned, sank to the floor and lay there, arching himself at full length in horrible spasms of agony, as though stimulated by a strong electric current. The most ardent slap-bangers felt prim compared with the new performance now going on, and edged away from the man. Meanwhile, Iris stood dumbfounded, looking down in horror at the exhibition. Then, the partner at her feet lay still a moment, only to resume his contortions with increasing violence. The girl sensing something wrong, screamed wildly, two M.C.s rushed to the spot, seized the frenzied performer by the scruff of his neck and bore him limply struggling from the hall. Littlejohn and Hazard who had just arrived followed them into the ante-room.
Fenwick, his mask removed and lying like a care-free part of himself, a pathetic, questioning look still on its eyeless face, was now calm and breathing his last. He raised his hand, with infinite effort showed Littlejohn a hypodermic puncture in his gum at the front and then was seized with another horrible convulsion. He died on the way to hospital, just as his father had done and from the same cause.
In the gallery of the Winter Gardens, the Chairman of the Watch Committee, an elderly man, and physically long past taking his pleasures on the floor below, albeit he would gladly have done so had his old limbs obeyed his instincts, swore horribly that he would see that no more disgusting exhibitions, such as the one on which he was now gazing with jealous and resentful fascination, were ever given in Westcombe.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - BOUMPHREY GETS BUSY
As soon as the news of Fenwick’s death was brought to him, the Chief Constable of Westcombe grew alarmingly busy. He did not wait for Littlejohn and Hazard to return in person from the hospital to which they had accompanied Fenwick, but rushed off to the dentist’s surgery right away, accompanied by two constables.
“We must get to the bottom of this at once,” he said, his eyes prominent with the lust of the chase and when he arrived at his destination, he set about frenziedly going through the papers of the dead murderer. In his eagerness, he even forced open drawers, went through wardrobes and searched articles of furniture for possible sources of information which might throw light on Fenwick’s life and guilt. He was frantically reading through a pile of diaries and private memoranda, which he had found
in the dentist’s desk, when Littlejohn arrived.
“You’ll not find it, Mr. Boumphrey,” said the Inspector without more ado.
“What do you mean, find it?” asked Boumphrey, hot and sweating from his feelings and his efforts.
“Fenwick’s diary, or autobiography, or whatever you care to call it. I’ve got it here in my pocket.”
“You’ve got it! And on whose authority have you impounded the dead man’s papers?”
“My own.”
“Well, give whatever you’ve got to me, at once.”
“No.”
“What!!”
Boumphrey’s complexion assumed a dark purple hue and splashes of livid colouring appeared on his forehead and cheeks like bloody nebulae in a night sky.
He held out his flabby hand, which trembled with his rage, like a palsied beggar asking for alms.
“Give it to me and no insubordination!”
“Send your men out of the room. I want a word with you about it,” said Littlejohn. The laughter which usually lurked somewhere in Littlejohn’s blue eyes, had vanished. Boumphrey avoided meeting his gaze.
“Get out,” said the Chief Constable to his men, who were so astonished at the turn of events, that they made their exit at the double, like bad boys fleeing from the wrath of a teacher.
“Now,” said Littlejohn, “Let’s be seated and talk this thing over. Before I hand over the evidence I’ve got, I shall need an explanation from you, Mr. Boumphrey, concerning your conduct in this case. I’ve no authority to demand one, but I must warn you, that unless one is forthcoming at once, I shall turn it over to Scotland Yard and you’ll have to answer for it to the Home Office.”
“What the hell do you mean?” thundered Boumphrey, who had made a half-hearted attempt to pull himself together and was sitting glowering in the chair at Fenwick’s desk.
“I mean this. That throughout this case you’ve been in possession of information which you have not seen fit to disclose to me. In fact, your attitude has, at times, been obstructive.”
“By God, I’ll make you sit up for this insolence, Littlejohn,” thundered Boumphrey, rising to his feet and looking like a wild bull about to take a crazy turn round a bullring.
Littlejohn cut him short.
“Perhaps you’ll explain, Mr. Boumphrey, exactly why, in the first place, you didn’t disclose that Sir Gideon Ware had been killed by a hypodermic injection of poison. Instead, you led me to believe that he’d taken it with food or something at the banquet. It was not until I heard the precise cause of death from the doctor that you corrected the impression …”
“I’ve already explained that it was an oversight!”
“I disagree. Mr. Boumphrey, you’ve a reputation for being a very efficient official. You don’t expect me to believe that by an oversight, as you call it, you would cause the considerable delay due to giving wrong information to the Scotland Yard officer you’d called in yourself?”
“Believe it or not. It’s all the same to me.”
“I don’t believe it, Mr. Boumphrey. I believe you misled me for your own ends. You wished to divert my suspicions from a certain quarter in which you were interested … No, let me finish. You had impulsively called in Scotland Yard because, in your ambition, you feared making enemies among the people you’d have to question in the case. But later, and just before my arrival, medical evidence pointed to either a doctor or a dentist having committed the crime. Your mind turned to a dentist and for a very good reason. That dentist was Alan Fenwick … Sir Gideon Ware’s illegitimate son!”
Boumphrey collapsed in a chair again. None of the fight had left him, but the shock of realising that Littlejohn had probed his motives dealt him a temporary knockout. He soon recovered.
“What’s all this nonsense?” he bluffed. “If you think you’ll discredit me by fabricating a tall tale, Littlejohn, you’re very much mistaken. I’ve thought all along you were trying to get all the kudos in this case for yourself. Let me tell you, that a full report of your conduct will go to the proper quarter. And now, get out.”
Littlejohn was calmly smoking his pipe. He was sitting in the dental chair, which he had swivelled round to face Boumphrey. He looked very comfortable, like a patient about to take gas.
“I know all about your past relations with Alan Fenwick, Boumphrey,” he said quietly, “So it’s no use your trying to bluff it out.”
“What do you know?”
“Your connection with smoothing-over Fenwick’s trouble with the Cherry women. You were a sergeant in the Follington police then. You deliberately hushed up what was a criminal offence, Boumphrey, and you did it to prevent full details of the causes of it and the parties to the case leaking-out in the press. The reason being that you didn’t want Ware to chance across the name and location of his bastard son …”
“It’s a lie … a damned lie,” roared Boumphrey, but the effort was without conviction.
“Listen. I know all about your appointment to the Inspectorship of the Battleford Police. You got in touch with Ware and secured his recommendation. Then, when your predecessor left Westcombe, you followed as Chief Constable. He was your backer throughout, Boumphrey, and I suggest the reason for that was that you’d got a hold over him. You knew about his illegitimate son and, although you took good care not to confess to knowing who or where the son was, you made the most of your knowledge of Ware’s past and blackmailed him into supporting you. Ware was in for public honours. It would never have done for it to become known that he had a son on the wrong side of the blanket. You knew all the time that Fenwick, Ware’s son, was in Westcombe and you’d a good idea that he hated Ware enough to kill him. You deliberately tried to lead me off his track, because you knew that if Fenwick was arrested, he’d probably spill the beans about you. Furthermore, you deliberately removed all information from your private file on Ware which might lead me to Fenwick. You pressed for the arrest of Preedy, prematurely, in the hope that a red herring might be dragged …”
“I wouldn’t have let him go to trial …” interjected the wretched Boumphrey. His pompous façade had crumbled under Littlejohn’s relentless battering and he now slumped, a pathetic figure, like a sack of sawdust, in his chair.
“You’d, at least, some conscience left, had you, Boumphrey? I give you the credit for that, in spite of your history in this case. Now, are you going to give me a fuller explanation, or must I make a special report for the Home Office?”
Boumphrey looked round the room helplessly. A man seeing all the fruits of his hopes fading away before his eyes and ruin staring him in the face.
“I was in love with Mrs. Fenwick when I was in Follington years ago,” he said quite simply, and immediately Littlejohn felt a deep compassion for him.
“You’ll have to tell me more than that, you know, Boumphrey.”
“There’s not much to it, Littlejohn. I might as well be candid. Like most policemen in towns, I was friendly with below-stairs folk in Follington in the old days. I used to call in the course of patrols and have a chat with butlers and cooks and such like and among others I met Mrs. Fenwick. She was a daily-help, quiet, neat, proud and reserved and she’d a son who was the apple of her eye. That was Alan.”
Boumphrey sighed and stared ahead of him like a man in a dream. It was as if the past were unfolding before him like a cinema picture.
“I took a fancy to the woman. Hard work had left its marks on her and a lot of other trouble, as I discovered later, but she was good-looking and decent and would have made anyone a good wife. She seemed a cut above the average servant. I suppose that was because she’d tried to raise herself to keep-up with her boy, who went to the local grammar school. She was a religious woman, too. Thrifty, she was, and a good housewife. What more could a man want? I was on the look-out for a wife, and Mary Fenwick seemed as good a one as I could find …”
Boumphrey glanced awkwardly at Littlejohn.
“… besides … I was in love with her. Don’t ask me why. I do
n’t know myself. Who does know why we fall in love?”
Littlejohn looked kindly at Boumphrey. He was seeing a new man, a human being beneath the veneer of officious bombast which had hitherto obscured the real Chief Constable.
“She was a bit of a mystery, though. I’d no idea who she was, really, or where she came from. I didn’t know who her husband had been. All I learned was that she’d given out she was a widow and that even the members of the same church had no information about her past. Her life and conduct were exemplary and that’s all anyone knew. I made up my mind, before making any advances, to find out what I wanted. I had to be sure there wasn’t a husband still alive, hadn’t I? You see that, don’t you?”
“Certainly, I do.”
“It was a hell of a job, I’ll tell you. Nobody seemed to know where she’d come from to Follington. However, one day, quite by accident, something was said about Mrs. Fenwick in the police station, and a remark was passed about her being a bit of a mystery woman. I wasn’t in the conversation, but I naturally pricked up my ears. And then, one of the constables quite innocently mentioned that he’d been on night duty when her belongings arrived. He merely said it, I guess, to show that she was so mysterious as to arrive there by night. I took him aside after and pretended to be jocular with him. ‘I bet your powers of observation didn’t reach to finding out who the carrier was and whence he came,’ I said, quite excited inside me. ‘You’re wrong there, sir,’ he said, sure that I was testing his powers for promotion. ‘Although it’s so long ago, I recollect the carrier’s name was Edges and he came all the way from Dimpsay, in Norfolk.’ Well, it ended by my going to Dimpsay on my next day off. There, I found that Mrs. Fenwick had been known as Mary Wilson. The rest was easy. I saw the registrar of births, who was sure that the kid was illegitimate, and he said she’d given her birthplace as Hull. I went to Hull and, with the help of the police there, soon got a tale. The kid was born out of wedlock and the father was Gideon Ware. I didn’t much care. So long as the woman hadn’t a husband and would confide her troubles truthfully to me,—and I could test her honesty there, couldn’t I?—so long as she trusted me, I didn’t mind. I determined if she’d have me, I’d take her and the boy and settle down with them as my own. Well … instead, she died.”
He'd Rather Be Dead Page 17
