‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He was already regretting the impulse that had induced him to take Tubbs home. What was the point of it? The man was on his uppers and there was not a chance in a thousand that he would recover any of the money. Why had he exposed himself to this wretched little crook? What did it matter? His spirits sank steadily on the way back while those of Tubbs appeared to rise. When they got out of the car he looked round inquisitively. ‘Marvellous. You know you’re in the country all right. Lead the way, squire.’
Would it be a good thing to drive him to the nearest station and give him his fare to London? Instead he opened the front door. Tubbs dropped his old suitcase in the hall, went into the sitting-room, sat down and looked round again.
‘Very nice, very cosy. Been here long, have you?’
‘Not long.’
‘Moved after the tragedy from – where was it? – Fraycut, yes. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I read about it, saw your picture in the paper. I know that face, I told myself, then it clicked. It’s Brownjohn, my partner. Thought of writing, never got round to it somehow.’ He glanced continually at his host and away, his eyes clicking like a camera shutter. There could be no doubt that he was in a bad way. There were grease spots on his trousers, his jacket cuffs were slightly frayed, his shoes dirty. ‘So you came down here. On your tod, are you?’
‘I live alone, yes.’
‘Live alone and like it, eh? I’m on my own too, told you that, but don’t know that I should want to stay here, I have to keep moving.’
‘You owe me an explanation.’ He felt the absurdity of the words as he said them.
‘Too right. And you owe me a drink.’ He amended this hastily. ‘Promised me one.’
While he opened the sangrosan cupboard and poured two whiskies the nervous yet predatory gaze of the pop eyes followed him. Tubbs talked in jerks with pauses between them. ‘Had a run of bad luck since I saw you last. Left London in a hurry, put some money in a business, went phut. Went up to Manchester, lost three hundred quid in a poker game. Played against Steady Jack Malory, know him? Course, you wouldn’t. Cheers.’ He drank greedily.
‘You swindled me.’ It was difficult to feel anger. ‘Wypitklere was no good.’
‘No good? Oh, come on now, old man.’ He hardly even pretended surprise. ‘If there are any kinks in it we can straighten them out. What about putting me up for the night?’
‘Certainly not.’ He could not feel anger even at this suggestion.
‘Really get down to details then. Still, if you won’t, you won’t.’
‘What would be the point? I shan’t see my money again, shall I? I’ll write it off to experience.’
‘I’ll be off then.’ He got up, walked over to the window, turned. ‘Fact is, I’m in a temporary difficulty. Couldn’t arrange a small loan, I suppose, a fiver say? Had a win this evening, you said so yourself.’ A temporary difficulty. It was really too much. He began to laugh, then took a five-pound note from his wallet, put it on the table.
‘Thanks. You’ll get it back, don’t worry.’ Tubbs picked up the note, slipped it into his pocket, looked at his empty glass. ‘Don’t mind if I have a nightcap.’ He calmly opened the cupboard, took the whisky bottle, poured from it. There was a faint click. ‘Hallo, hallo, what have we here?’ The compartment door had opened. Tubbs held the wig in his hand.
‘What have we here?’ Tubbs repeated. He looked at the wig, smelt it, then pointed like a terrier, staring at the bald head opposite him. He came towards Arthur, shuffling his feet a little, the wig hanging from his hand. Arthur stayed still as Tubbs deftly placed the wig on his head, then chuckled and stepped back. His eyes stood out, the balls of them a dirty white. The tip of his tongue came out, washed round his mouth, went back.
Arthur snatched off the wig, threw it on to the table. Tubbs stared at him, raised the glass to his lips, sipped, put it down. ‘I think I’ll stay the night.’
‘You will not.’ He was surprised to hear his own voice so mild.
‘We’ve got things to talk about. Explanations. You said so yourself.’
‘I’ll drive you to the station. Now.’
‘I like it here. Country air. Good for the old ticker.’ He placed his hand on his heart.
Arthur ran into the hall, picked up a loaded walking stick he kept there, came back. ‘Get out. At once.’
Tubbs did not look alarmed. ‘You don’t mean that, you don’t want me to go.’
‘I do, I do.’ He was not sure of the truth of his words. He advanced, holding the stick threateningly, loaded end pointed at Tubbs.
‘You’re being silly, old man. And you look silly too.’
Arthur struck at him across the table, a wild blow that missed completely, hit the table and chipped off a large splinter of wood.
‘Steady on.’ Tubbs snatched up the wig and moved round the table with it. Another blow struck his arm and caused a yelp of pain, but he did not drop the wig. Arthur suddenly reversed – it was like a sinister game of musical chairs – and stretched out a hand. Tubbs wriggled away from him, laughed, skidded round the end of the table, slipped and fell to the floor. Arthur pounced, grabbed the wig, stood over the prostrate man holding the stick menacingly, told him to get up. Tubbs did not move. Arthur prodded him with the stick, half-rolled him over. There was blood on his forehead. Where had it come from? Arthur knelt down and with a feeling of repugnance lifted the inert head. The blood came from the back of it. ‘Tubbs,’ he cried out. ‘Stop play acting, Tubbs.’ He let go of the head and it dropped to the floor. Obviously Tubbs had been taught a lesson. There was blood on the wood block floor which annoyed him. He brought in a damp cloth from the kitchen, wiped it up, gave the inert figure another prod. Two or three minutes passed before it occurred to him that Tubbs might be dead, and another two or three before he confirmed this with a small mirror put to the lips. Even then he did not truly believe it, searching desperately for a heart-beat and putting the glass again to the mauvish lips before acknowledging the truth. Among all the lies that Tubbs had told him there must have been one decisive fragment of truth. He really did have a weak heart. He had slipped, caught his head against the corner of the table, and been killed by the shock. Or perhaps he had a very thin skull, the exact cause of death did not seem important. What was he going to do about it?
In extreme situations action is for many people a kind of solace, and the logical reasoning that prompts it may be deliberately avoided. He could not have given reasons for his actions in the next hour, but if he could have formulated them they would have been that somebody in his position did not call the police. For such a tragedy to occur in the house of a man whose wife had so recently been murdered must arouse comment and investigation. And then think of the questions, who was Tubbs, why was he in the house, what was the connection between them? Once admit to knowledge of Tubbs and the police might go on to discover the swindle practised on him, find the solicitor who drew up the agreement, ask where the money had come from – there would be no end to it. The police had believed in Easonby Mellon because Arthur Brownjohn remained untouched by suspicion. Once cast a doubt upon him, and investigations would be made. But nobody knew that Tubbs had been in his house, and by his own account he had no dependants and no permanent lodging. If Clennery Tubbs disappeared there was nothing to connect him with Arthur Brownjohn.
He did not think like this, he did not think consecutively at all, while he acted. He opened the fibre suitcase and found in it a change of clothing, shaving things, a set of rigged cards for playing ‘Find the Lady,’ and some pornographic postcards. He put a couple of brown sacks that had been in the garage when he bought the house into the boot of the car, picked up the thing that had been Clennery Tubbs, half-dragged and half-carried it to the car and put it on top of the sacks. There passed through his mind the recollection of an American case in which a woman, after killing her husband, had disposed of him over a bridge by tying heavy weights to his feet and hands and t
hen tipping him over. It had been important to her that the body should not be discovered, but for him this did not matter because nothing connected him with it. He put the fibre suitcase into the boot and drove out into the night. The time was half past ten.
His road lay through small villages lying under the downs, Westmeston and Plumpton. He turned on to the main Lewes road at Offham, skirted the town, and drove down through Ilford and the tiny hamlet of Rodmell which is strung out along the main road. The night was fine and there was little traffic. He had just passed Rodmell when a vehicle behind him flashed its light on and off and then sounded a single sharp toot on the horn. In a momentary panic he accelerated and took a bend on the wrong side of the road. The toot was repeated. A motorcycle passed, and cut in front of him. A hand waved. He stopped the car, wound down his window. The night was black and still.
The head that appeared was large. A policeman’s helmet topped it. ‘Take a bit o’ stopping, don’t you? Good job there wasn’t a car coming round that corner. Bad bit of driving.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought –’ What could he say?
‘Thought I was one o’ those young tearaways, did you?’ A flashlight appeared. ‘Could I see your driving licence?’ The light played on the licence, then on his face. ‘Thank you, sir. Did you know you were driving with only one rear light?’
So that was all! Gratefully, almost eagerly, he got out of the car, walked round to the back and tut-tutted. ‘I’ll have it seen to. Thank you very much.’
‘Can be deceptive. Might think you’re a motorbike.’
‘Of course, yes. I assure you it was perfectly all right yesterday.’
‘Faulty connection maybe. Or the lamp gone.’ The policeman put his hand down to the boot and before Arthur could complete his agonised restraining gesture gave it a sharp blow with his clenched fist. The rear light came on. ‘There you are, faulty connection. Bit of brute force, that’s all you needed. Want to get it looked at, though.’
‘Thank you very much. I will.’ He began to move towards the driver’s seat. The policeman, large and black in the black night, blocked his way.
‘Tell you something else. I believe you’ve got a puncture. Back tyre, nearside.’
‘Oh, I don’t think –’ But the policeman was already there, flashlight in one hand, tyre gauge in the other. Arthur took the flashlight and aimed it down at the stooped figure while the gauge was inserted. The policeman straightened up. His face was round and young.
‘Down to twelve pounds. Slow puncture. Better change that tyre.’
‘Yes.’ The spare tyre in the Triumph is kept in the boot, beneath the luggage, together with the jack.
‘I’ll give you a hand.’ The policeman repossessed himself of the flashlight.
He took a deep breath. ‘Look, officer, I’m in a desperate hurry, my wife’s ill, and I’ve only got a mile or two to go. This should last out till I get home and I’ll change it then.’
The light moved from the boot to his face, back again, was switched off. ‘Reckon so. Sure I can’t help?’
‘It’s very kind of you, but I can get home.’
‘Right then. Get that rear light seen to, sir, won’t you?’ He moved away, kicked the motorcycle into action and was gone along the Newhaven road, leaving the night still again. Arthur leaned against the car. A spasm of nausea bent him double, then passed. When he began to drive again he felt as if he had suffered some physical attack. At the sign that said Southease he turned left past the church, down a narrow road. In less than five minutes he was at Southease Bridge.
There were other bridges in the district, but most of those that crossed fast-flowing rivers, like the bridge at Exceat, were on main roads. Southease Bridge, however, was on a tiny side road joining the main Lewes-Newhaven road from which he had come and a minor road winding from the coast up to the downs through the villages of South Heighton and Tarring Neville, to pass a cement works and rejoin another main road out of Lewes at the hamlet of Beddingham. The side road is little used even in the daytime and the wooden bridge is not constructed for heavy traffic. Beneath it the Ouse flows swiftly down to Newhaven and the sea. He tucked the car in off the road beside the bridge and turned off the lights. A sign beside the point at which he had stopped said: ‘Southease Bridge. Maximum Safe 2 tons, including weight of vehicle.’ There were chalk deposits opposite. He had no flashlight, but he did not need one. He took the suitcase from the boot, walked to the middle of the bridge, dropped it over and heard a splash. Then he put his arm round the body, lifted. It did not move. He pulled at it in panic, felt resistance, pulled again. The strength to lift seemed to have gone out of his arms. He dragged the thing along the road up to the bridge and along its planks. A last effort was needed, and he made it. He lifted, levered. Another splash and it was gone.
With a sensation of total disbelief he heard a vehicle coming towards him from the Tarring Neville road.
He had no time to think, no time even to get back into the car. He ran off the bridge and stood with his back to the road in the attitude of a man relieving himself, as a lorry moved on to the bridge and clattered slowly across. Headlights blazed, he seemed to feel the heat of them on his back. The bridge was so narrow that the lorry almost touched him, and for a moment he feared that it would stop. Then it moved on up to Rodmell, leaving only a tail light which vanished as it turned a curve. He was safe. He got back into the car and drove home by way of Beddingham. He did not change the tyre, and by the time he limped back into the garage it was almost flat.
On the following morning he put the sacks, which were spotted with blood, together with the wig, into the garden incinerator. In the afternoon he had the puncture mended at his local garage. There was no trace left that Clennery Tubbs had paid him a visit.
The disastrous excursion to Brighton had cured him of the desire to discover his true nature by contact with other people. One fine October morning he looked up at the green slope behind the house, seemed to see himself rolling down it as a child and his mother in her floppy hat above, and realised that he wished to paint. Why had he not thought of it before? At school he had painted with enjoyment. Perhaps he had always wished to paint, perhaps Clare’s visits to her art class had involved an unconscious rivalry with him instead of with his mother. He bought an easel and paints and in the mild October days went out and painted the countryside round Plumpton and Ditchling. At first he put awkward blurs on to the paper, but within a week he was producing recognisable shapes, and as he compared his work with his mother’s it seemed to him that he had a delicacy and exactness of touch which she had lacked. He felt also that he was truly emancipating himself for the first time from the feminine influences that had pressed on him throughout his life – his mother, Clare, Joan. He lived frugally, taking date and banana sandwiches on these expeditions and cooking omelettes at night. The sensation of peace was strong. When he met the Brodzkys one day he greeted them smilingly, but they ignored him. This might have upset him in the past, but it did so no longer. He had been living in this way contentedly for two weeks when he returned from a day’s painting to find Inspector Coverdale’s black Humber in front of his gate.
Chapter Eight
Last Conversation with Coverdale
It was Sergeant Amies, as Coverdale generously admitted, who made the vital discovery in the case, although neither man fully realised its significance at the time. Amies had become really rather obsessed by the affair, and had taken to brooding over the files of statements and documents when he had a spare half-hour. One day he came in with one of the documents and said: ‘Just take a look at that, sir. What do you make of it?’
Coverdale looked and made nothing of what Amies showed him, except that it was certainly odd. ‘There must be some simple explanation.’
‘Nice to know what it was though, eh, sir?’
Coverdale sighed. The case had hardly been a triumph, although he was not inclined to attribute the negative result to his own handling of the investigation.
With retirement looming ahead his chief desire was to forget about it. ‘A minor point. It’s difficult to see what bearing it can have.’
‘It may be a minor point, but it’s a discrepancy.’
‘Yes. Well. I don’t feel we should use a day of our time to clear up a discrepancy of that sort.’
Amies’ silence showed disagreement, and indeed Coverdale had the prickly feeling in his fingers that he associated with something left undone. He was not sorry when Amies reopened the matter by coming to him one day and saying: ‘What do you think of that, sir?’
That was a report from the Sussex police that a body, so far unidentified, had been found by some boys in the River Ouse near to its mouth at Newhaven. The body was that of a man about five feet seven inches in height, and he was already dead when he entered the water. Death appeared to have been caused by a blow on the head delivered with some severity, which had caused a skull fracture. He had been in the water for about a week and would not be easily recognisable. He was fully dressed in cheap clothing, with the exception of the fact that he was wearing only one shoe. There was no clue to his identity in his pockets. A cheap suitcase which had been found a couple of miles farther up the river might possibly be connected with him, but in any case its contents were of no help in tracing him. He was fairly well nourished, about forty years of age, with brownish sandy hair and beard, no distinguishing marks. A shoe which appeared to be the fellow to the one he was wearing had been found on the ground just beside a place called Southease Bridge, so there was a strong presumption that he had been thrown into the river at that point.
Coverdale read it and said: ‘Well?’
‘I’ve been in touch with Sussex and made a few inquiries. There’s another little report here.’
The little report was from PC Robertson of the Sussex constabulary, to the effect that on the 30 September he had stopped a Triumph car number 663 ABC near Rodmell on the Lewes-Newhaven road, because it lacked a rear light. The car also had a slow puncture. The driver had seemed agitated and had refused PC Robertson’s offer to help him change the tyre, saying that he only had a mile or so to go to see his wife, who was ill. His driving licence bore the name of Arthur Brownjohn. PC Robertson had returned to Newhaven and had seen no more of the car.
The Man Who Killed Himself Page 16
