Rather a Common Sort of Crime

by Joyce Porter

  In spite of all the frustrations, however, the Hon. Con’s zest for her new venture remained at top revs. Miss Jones had hoped that the initial enthusiasm would soon wane, but she was disappointed. There was no holding the Hon. Con now. Day after day she came bouncing in to regale her friend with the latest news of progress. Whacko – the lease was signed! Whoopee – the decorators had actually put the first lick of paint on the walls! Bully, bully – the signwriter’s piles were now better and he was going to start work tomorrow!

  ‘Signwriter, dear?’ Miss Jones was surprised. She thought she had already heard the worst. ‘You’re not going to have a sign, are you? Like a shop?’

  ‘No, not like a shop!’ retorted the Hon. Con who would rather be seen dead than connected with trade.

  ‘But you are having a sign?’

  ‘Got to, haven’t I? It’s either that or advertising in the newspaper and signs is cheaper. Here,’ – she produced a large roll of paper – ‘what do you think of this, eh? I got the signwriting Johnnie to do me a sketch.’ She swept Miss Jones’s darning off the table and spread the paper out.

  Miss Jones examined the sketch doubtfully. CONNIE’S ADVICE BUREAU, it read. ‘It’s rather similar to the one at the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, isn’t it, dear?’

  The Hon. Con guffawed and dug her friend playfully in the ribs. ‘Thought you’d spot that, old fruit! It’s not only similar, it’s damned near identical. Same size, same colours, same style of lettering.’

  ‘But, won’t it confuse people?’

  ‘It might,’ sniggered the Hon. Con, winking broadly. ‘That could be the idea, couldn’t it? Anyhow, it won’t confuse anybody who can read – or anybody who knows their ornithology.’

  ‘Ornithology, dear?’

  ‘The bird, Bones! The Citizens’ Advice Bureau’s got an owl, haven’t they? Well,’ – she thumped the bird in the sketch of her sign – ‘that’s not a bloody owl, is it?’

  Miss Jones adjusted her glasses and looked carefully. ‘Well, no, dear, it certainly doesn’t look like an owl. Er – what is it?’

  ‘A cuckoo!’ roared the Hon. Con, letting fly with an explosion of mirth that would have ruptured a lesser mortal.’ A cuckoo! Get it, Bones?’

  Three days after the opening of her bureau, however, the Hon. Con was beginning to think that she was the one who’d laid an egg. She hadn’t expected that the inhabitants of Totterbridge would actually beat a path to her door but she had thought that at least somebody would come. So far she had succeeded in attracting only one customer – and he had completely misinterpreted the nature of her establishment. The Hon. Con had had quite a job getting rid of him. He had been a large, florid gentleman who, though visibly shaken by the sight of the Hon. Con, had insisted that he’d always been a good sport and was ready to try anything once. As soon as the Hon. Con caught on to the true drift of his meaning she swallowed her pride and threw her habitual self-reliance to the winds. With a gesture that set the florid gentleman’s eyes a-sparkling she fished in the bosom of her shirt and produced the silver police whistle which Miss Jones had given her as a birthday present against just such an emergency. Even the florid gentleman couldn’t mistake this for coyness and, feeling decidedly cheated, he took his leave.

  Since then nobody had so much as crossed the threshold and the siting of her advice bureau slap bang opposite its more official rival merely added gall and wormwood to the Hon. Con’s humiliation. Hour after hour she was forced to sit at her window, watching people mount the steps across the road and pass through portals that were to her forever closed.

  Every now and again the telephone rang. It was always Miss Jones. The Hon. Con almost came to hate her. Damn it all, she’d let her know quick enough if anything happened! And, until it did, you’d think anybody with an ounce of tact in their veins would keep their lip buttoned.

  For the umpteenth time that day the Hon. Con barked out one curt monosyllable and chucked the receiver back on to its rest. Sulkily she consulted her watch. Half-past four of the clock and all was not well! She resumed her gloomy vigil. Yet another woman was going up the steps into the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. Had the Hon. Con’s thoughts been effective at a range of twenty yards, the woman would have gone up in blue smoke. But they weren’t, and now there was nothing left to watch.

  The Hon. Con turned to the consolations of literature. Stacked on her desk were Whitaker’s Almanack for 1948, Growing up in Samoa and a well-thumbed copy of All that Newly Weds Need to Know. She was just reaching for the Whitaker when a movement outside the window caught her eye. The woman who had just gone in was now coming out again.

  That hadn’t taken long.

  The Hon. Con screwed up her eyes shrewdly. There hadn’t been anything like time for the woman to have had an interview. Maybe she was collecting for something? She hadn’t got a box or a tray of flags but they were such cunning bastards these days that you didn’t always get fair warning.

  The woman paused on the top of the steps and looked round.

  Oh, help! The Hon. Con scowled fiercely. She was on the scrounge! You could spot it a mile off. And – damn it – she was reading the Hon. Con’s sign. The Hon. Con was going to be well and truly caught.

  For a brief moment she wondered if she’d time to nip across and bolt the door. No, maybe that was going a bit too far. Well, if the woman had the cheek to come in begging for money, the Hon. Con would retaliate by distributing largesse on her Number Three Scale. And that meant threepence if it was for old people, sixpence if it was for children and a bob if it was for animals. It wasn’t that the Hon. Con was mean by nature, but people just didn’t appreciate how much tax you had to pay on forty thousand pounds a year.

  The woman outside seemed to have made up her mind and she was beginning to walk down the steps. The Hon. Con eyed her with rising anxiety as she crossed the road and temporarily disappeared from sight.

  A whole minute passed – and then two. Where the dickens had she got to? The Hon. Con was just starting to relax when – not her lucky day – the shop door clattered open and the woman came in.

  ‘You the Advice Bureau?’

  In a flash the Hon. Con rearranged her features and assumed the calm, reassuring smile of welcome that she had been practising for some time. She’d been mistaken. This lady wasn’t collecting for charity. On the contrary – she was the very first client of Connie’s Advice Bureau.

  ‘That’s right.’ The Hon. Con cleared her throat and straightened her tie. ‘Won’t you come in and take a seat?’

  With some reluctance the woman closed the shop door and walked over to the Hon. Con’s desk. Graciously the Hon. Con indicated the waiting chair and the woman sat herself down on the very edge of it.

  The Hon. Con beamed encouragingly, picked up a pencil and pulled her pad of paper forward. ‘May I ask your name?’

  The woman looked at the pencil, looked at the paper and then looked at the Hon. Con. ‘I want somebody to prove my son was murdered,’ she said.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Yes,’ said the Hon. Con, dropping her pencil back on the desk and pushing the pad away again. She propped her head on her hand. ‘Well, why don’t you go to the police?’

  The woman settled herself a little more securely on her chair. ‘What good would that do?’ she asked crossly. ‘It’s them that said he killed himself. They told the coroner and he said suicide.’

  The Hon. Con continued to plug the line of common sense. ‘How about one of these private detective chappies, then?’

  The woman regarded her with a certain amount of pity. ‘And what am I going to use for money, dear? I’ve seen them private eyes on the telly. It’s all big cars and expensive girl-friends, isn’t it? I’d never be able to pay what they’re likely to charge. Besides, where would I find a private detective in Totterbridge? If there is one here, I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘No,’ agreed the Hon. Con. ‘Well, I’m sorry but I honestly don’t see how I can help you. I’m just here to give
advice on problems and things. Still, I’ll have a ponder about it and, if I come up with anything, I’ll let you know. If you could just give me your name and address …’

  The woman gathered together her handbag, shopping bag and umbrella and stood up. ‘Don’t strain yourself, dear! I only came in on the off chance. They told me over there that it’d be a waste of time asking you anything.’

  ‘Over there?’ The Hon. Con’s pale blue eyes flashed ominously. ‘Over where? The Citizens’ Advice Bureau?’

  ‘That’s right. They wouldn’t do anything, of course, but I’d seen your sign so I asked ’em about you. Rolled round on the floor with laughing, they did. Seemed to think you were some kind of crack-pot.’

  ‘Did they?’ asked the Hon. Con grimly, her colour rising. She grabbed the pencil and pad. ‘Well, we’ll see about that! What’s your name?’

  ‘Burberry. Mrs Burberry.’

  ‘Well, sit down, Mrs Burberry, and tell me all about it!’

  Mrs Burberry stared at her in astonishment. ‘You mean you’re going to do it?’

  ‘You can bet your sweet life I am!’

  Mrs Burberry lowered herself gingerly on to the edge of her chair for the second time and began wondering where the catch was. She lived on a housing estate and a wide experience of doorstep salesmen had taught her to examine life’s bumper bargain offers with the utmost care. ‘I can’t afford to pay nothing,’ she warned.

  ‘Won’t cost you a penny!’ promised the Hon. Con, temporarily determined to spit in the eye of the Citizens’ Advice Bureau if it bankrupted her. ‘ I’m here to help people and I’m going to help you. If’ – a modicum of caution seeped through – ‘ if it’s humanly possible, of course.’

  Mrs Burberry felt rather stunned. ‘Well, ta very much, I’m sure. That’s taken a great weight off my mind, I can tell you. I was at my wit’s ends where to turn.’

  ‘I’m sure you were!’ cooed the Hon. Con. She was beginning, as frequently happened, to over-do things. ‘You must have had a dreadful time, you poor, poor woman!’

  Mrs Burberry responded nobly to the rise in the emotional temperature. ‘God bless you,’ she murmured, ‘God bless you! You’re a good kind Christian woman and it’s a pity there aren’t more like you!’ She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. ‘He was my only child, you see. Tom and me, we never had but the one.’

  ‘Quite, quite,’ said the Hon. Con gruffly. She couldn’t bear to see a woman cry. ‘ Here, have mine.’

  ‘Ta.’ Mrs Burberry smiled wanly through her tears and accepted the red silk bandanna which was being offered to her. ‘It’s such a relief to find somebody as understands. They don’t, you know. Not even Tom. I suppose it’s not having been a mother as does it.’

  The Hon. Con scowled. She hadn’t been a mother herself, as it happens, but she was damned if it made her one whit the less understanding. ‘Tom’s your husband, I take it?’

  Mrs Burberry nodded.

  ‘And the father of this poor boy?’

  Mrs Burberry drew herself up. ‘He certainly is! There’s nothing like that in our family and I’d like to see anyone who’d got the cheek to say there is! We’re good Catholics, we are – on both sides. Tom and me was married at Our Lady of the Sea by the Lord Bishop himself. It was a white wedding, too – and in those days that meant something. This is what makes it so awful you see – them saying our Rodney committed suicide. The whole parish is talking about it. I know they are. Suicide’s a mortal sin, you know, and you go straight to hell for it. Well, I’ve got to do something, haven’t I? You can’t expect a loving mother like me just to sit back while her son roasts in hell fire, can you? It’s just what I said to Father Kelly only the other day – I’ve got to get that coroner’s verdict squashed, or whatever you do with it, so that our Rodney can go to heaven where his poor misjudged soul belongs.’

  ‘Er – quite,’ said the Hon. Con, getting rather embarrassed. She was C of E herself and didn’t go much on discussions of the after-life with comparative strangers. To cover her confusion she turned to a clean page on her pad and headed it with the words: Rodney Burberry – victim. ‘How old was the lad?’

  ‘Twenty,’ said Mrs Burberry with a pathetic sniff. ‘Cut down in the flower of his youth.’

  ‘Hm.’ Conscientiously the Hon. Con made another note. ‘And when did all this – er – happen?’

  ‘Three weeks ago the day after tomorrow. The fourteenth, it was. Didn’t you see it in the paper?’

  The Hon. Con didn’t like to admit that her reading was confined almost exclusively to the Financial Times. ‘ I prefer to work with first-hand evidence,’ she said smoothly. ‘You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Mrs Burberry.

  ‘So, if you could just tell me exactly what …’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure!’ Mrs Burberry deposited her shopping bag on the floor and settled well back in her chair. ‘It was a bolt out of the blue, you see. I told the coroner that. Like a bolt out of the blue – those were the very words I used. Rodney’d come home for his tea just the same as usual. Cod’s roes on toast, we had. I can remember it as though it was yesterday. I always gave him a cooked tea, you know. Well, when he’d had his tea he just pottered about a bit. He read the evening paper and then he watched the telly. It was just like any other evening. Then, round about nine o’clock, he said he thought he’d go out for a bit and not to wait up for him if he was late. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that, either. He often went out of an evening. Well, he hadn’t come home when we went to bed but, naturally, we didn’t take no notice. He’d got his own key. It wasn’t until I went in to give him a shout next morning that we found he wasn’t there.’

  ‘He’d not come back home at all that night, then?’

  ‘Well, he couldn’t could he?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They reckon he was dead by midnight. ’ Course we thought he’d just stayed out and his father started sounding off about what he’d do when he got his hands on the lad. He’s a great talker, our Tom is. Well, we didn’t think all that much about it, really. Between you and me, he’s done it before and gone straight to work without coming home first. It wasn’t until it was getting on for eleven that a police car come round and told us what had happened. Tom was having a couple of days off at the time, you see, with his stomach. And it’s a mercy he was, too, because it knocked me all of a heap when they told us. I just couldn’t take it in. Our Rodney dead – it didn’t seem possible.’

  The Hon. Con’s racing pencil paused. ‘The police had found his body, had they?’

  ‘Well, not the police exactly. This woman – the cleaner. She’d found the body and telephoned the chap what owns the place and he’d come round and he was the one what rang up the police. Then the police went round and they found out who he was and where he lived and then they came and told us. I just couldn’t believe it. ‘‘You’ve made a mistake,’’ ‘I said. ‘‘It can’t be our Rodney!’’ Then they took his father off to see and, of course,’ – she wiped her nose on the Hon. Con’s handkerchief – ‘ it was.’

  ‘Where was the body?’

  ‘Oh, still there where they’d found it You’re not allowed to move bodies, you know, not until they’ve examined everything. It’s against the law.’

  ‘I know that,’ snapped the Hon. Con impatiently. ‘But where was Rodney’s body found?’

  ‘In this club he went to, of course. You know, that sort of club place where all the teenagers go. It’s next door to the butcher’s in Blueboy Street. There’s a sort of ordinary snack bar café place on top and the club’s downstairs in the basement.’

  ‘Do you know what it’s called?’

  ‘Well, of course I do! When your only child’s found dead somewhere, you’re not likely to forget the name of the place, are you? The café’s called Fionna’s and the club’s called the Kama Sutra.’

  ‘Hm,’ mused the Hon. Con as she wrote this do
wn, ‘one of these Chinese places, eh? Well, now – how did this poor lad actually die?’

  ‘Poisoned,’ said Mrs Burberry sadly. ‘I can hardly credit it even now. Poisoned. It seems such a funny thing to have happened. In a bottle of whisky – Scotch whisky. They say he drank some whisky out of this bottle and it was poisoned and that’s what killed him.’

  ‘Sounds a bit bizarre,’ the Hon. Con commented and took a sharp look at Mrs Burberry. All this could be some kind of an elaborate leg-pull. Totterbridge was not short of people who would rejoice to see the Hon. Con make a complete fool of herself.

  Mrs Burberry clearly didn’t understand the word. ‘He swallowed enough to poison a regiment, so they said.’

  ‘And you think he was murdered?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it might have been an accident but he certainly didn’t kill himself. Why should he? He’d got a good home and a good job – he was on top of the world.’

  ‘Have you any idea who did it?’

  Mrs Burberry shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t be sitting here if I did,’ she said grimly. ‘Somebody or other at that damned club – that’s my guess. You should see some of ’em! Long hair and dirty clothes – proper young layabouts, they are, the lot of’em. I wouldn’t trust one of ’em as far as I could throw ’em! Drugs and drink and messing about with girls! I used to tell our Rodney he’d come a cropper if he kept running around with that lot. He wouldn’t listen, of course. Kids don’t these days. Talk about brick walls.’ In the distance the town hall clock boomed out. Mrs Burberry didn’t wait to count the strokes. ‘Here, that’s never five o’clock already, is it? I’ll have to go.’ She began collecting up her belongings. ‘Well, I’ll just leave it with you, shall I? Tom’ll be wanting his tea so I’ve got to be getting back now. You can let me know when you get to the bottom of it, can’t you? Twenty-seven, Sandringham Crescent, if you wouldn’t mind just popping in. It’s a bit inconvenient, me having to keep coming down here. And you will get on with it, won’t you? Some of the neighbours are getting very nasty. It’s with us always having been such good Catholics, you see. Well, ta ever so! Be seeing you!’