Rather a Common Sort of Crime

by Joyce Porter

  ‘But just talking’s no good,’ continued the Hon. Con,’ specially to a lot of empty-headed young girls. That’s why I decided to give ’em a practical demonstration. Had to cook it a bit, of course, but it was none the worse for that.’

  Sergeant Fenner tried to speed things up. ‘You got your companion, Miss Jones – wasn’t it? – to set light to a barrelful of oily rags …’

  ‘Which had been carefully concealed behind a screen at the back of the hall and …’

  ‘And when they were blazing away merrily and the smoke pouring out, she started screaming ‘‘ fire’’ …’

  ‘Whereupon I was going to take charge of the situation and extinguish the blaze while the rest of ’em were running around screaming in panic.’

  Sergeant Fenner blinked wearily. ‘Only it didn’t quite work out like that.’

  ‘Tripped over my own feet!’ chuckled the Hon. Con. ‘Came a real cropper! Pulled the trestle table and the water jug and God knows what on top of me.’

  ‘By the time the fire engine arrived, the whole place was burnt to a cinder. You were damned lucky no one was killed.’

  ‘I proved my point!’ snorted the Hon. Con, taking umbrage. ‘You should have seen ’em! Flapping about like a pack of hysterical hens, screeching their silly heads off. Soon as I picked myself up, of course, I assumed command. Organized the bucket chain and all that sort of thing. Mind you,’ she admitted with a rueful grin, ‘it was a bit too late then actually to save the building.’

  Sergeant Fenner removed his wristlet watch and held it up to his ear.

  The Hon. Con eyed him sternly. ‘’Spect you’re wondering what all this is leading up to, eh?’

  Sergeant Fenner smiled an awkward smile.

  ‘Simple,’ said the Hon. Con. ‘Blackmail.’

  ‘Blackmail?’ Sergeant Fenner dragged his voice down from the heights of a shrill scream and forced himself to speak more calmly. ‘What do you mean – blackmail?’

  ‘I’m blackmailing you,’ the Hon. Con told him impatiently. ‘Come on, laddie, stop wool gathering and concentrate! I always thought you were quite an intelligent chap,’ she grumbled.

  ‘I used to think so, too,’ said Sergeant Fenner grimly, ‘but you lost me some way back, I’m afraid.’

  The Hon. Con sighed. ‘I’ll spell it out for you. If you don’t give me a hand with my Burberry investigation, I’m going to spread the word around that I bribed you to let me off that St Cuthbert’s business. That won’t do your career much good, will it?’

  Sergeant Fenner ought, he knew, to reply with an outburst of scornful laughter but the sight of the Hon. Con on the war-path was not one to arouse much merriment in the eye of the beholder. ‘Nobody would believe you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t they? Mud sticks. Believe anything about the police, people would. And about me, if it comes to that. If you want to be the subject of a jolly unsavoury whispering campaign, that’s your funeral. Where are you going now?’

  Sergeant Fenner clutched the top of his desk for support. ‘ Straight to see my Chief Constable!’

  ‘He’ll think you’ve gone clean off your rocker, specially when I deny the whole thing. You’ve no witnesses, you know. Your word against mine.’

  ‘At least it will put a stop to your scheme for spreading tales about me taking bribes, won’t it?’

  ‘One move and I’ll tear all my clothes and shout rape,’ the Hon. Con informed him cheerfully. ‘Saw a girl do that the other night on the telly. In a play. Jolly effective it was, too.’

  Sergeant Fenner sat down quickly. She wouldn’t, of course. Or would she? Having once set her hand to the plough, the Hon. Con was not the woman to turn back. Of course nobody would believe her for one moment – not on the bribery count and even less on the attempted rape. On the other hand …

  Sergeant Fenner checked this sign of weakness abruptly. Hell’s teeth, he was a police officer of some standing and seniority! His duty was clear. Publish and be damned – that was the only line to take.

  On the other hand, though, he would be made to look a complete fool. His colleagues would laugh themselves sick and he’d never be allowed to hear the last of it. He’d go down in police mythology as the man who tried to seduce the Hon. Con.

  Sergeant Fenner shuddered.

  And never mind his colleagues – what about his superiors? They wouldn’t laugh, by God they wouldn’t! There’d have to be an enquiry and what about his long anticipated promotion to inspector then? With the Hon. Con spreading slander by the muck-forkful, he could kiss that good-bye. Oh, damn and blast the woman!

  The Hon. Con spotted that she had won this little battle and sportingly tried to soften the blow. ‘Shan’t breathe a word to a living soul,’ she promised. ‘You just give me all the inside dope on the Burberry boy’s case and I’ll never darken your door again. Cross my heart and hope to die!’

  Sergeant Fenner hunched his shoulders miserably. ‘It’s very unethical,’ he complained. ‘And the files are all closed. It’ll take me a couple of days at least to get hold of them.’

  ‘Stuff!’ snorted the Hon, Con. ‘Can’t believe even the Totterbridge police are that lethargic. I’ll give you a couple of hours.’

  With an unmuffled curse Sergeant Fenner reached for his telephone.

  ‘And while we’re waiting,’ said the Hon. Con, ‘ you can fill me in on the details.’

  Sergeant Fenner would have dearly loved to fill her in in some other, more brutal way but – as he told himself – if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. He made his telephone call and got a reluctant promise from somewhere in the basement of the police station that all the papers in the Burberry suicide case would be delivered to his desk within the hour.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he snarled.

  The Hon. Con indicated that she was. And dashed obliged, too.

  ‘What exactly did Mack the Fork’s mother tell you?’ Having accepted his fate, Sergeant Fenner’s only aim now was to get rid of his unwelcome visitor as soon as possible.

  ‘Mack the Fork?’

  ‘That’s the soubriquet your precious Rodney was known by. Burberry – mac. Mack the Knife – Mack the Fork.’

  ‘Jolly ingenious!’ The Hon. Con was full of admiration, ‘I’d have never thought of that in a month of Sundays.’

  ‘Little Rodney and his chums regularly thought up things no decent person would ever dream of,’ said Sergeant Fenner sourly. ‘I suppose you realize that he was a lousy young punk of the first water? Or didn’t his mother bother telling you minor details like that? He’d got a criminal record as long as your arm, young as he was. And not for boyish pranks, either. He was a cruel, sadistic, razor-happy little bastard and, if anybody did kill him, they deserve a medal.’

  ‘Oh, so you do admit there’s a possibility that it was murder?’

  ‘No, I don’t! Look, Miss Morrison-Burke, give us coppers a bit of credit for knowing our job. Rodney Burberry arrived at the Kama Sutra Club round about ten o’clock that night. Apparently there was a certain amount of horse-play and rowdiness going on and some of his pals began taking the micky out of him, saying he’d turned soft after corning out of Borstal. He kept insisting that he hadn’t and that he was just as big a tear-away as ever. You get the picture, do you? Well, in the end – to prove that his three years in Borstal hadn’t broken his spirit – he produced this bottle of whisky and tells everybody that he’s nicked it. No one’s the least bit impressed and they go on jeering at him. So, in some sort of gesture of defiance, he pulls the cork out and pours about half the contents straight down his throat. Well, as you can imagine, the effect was pretty well instantaneous. He starts spluttering and retching – much to the amusement of his pals – and staggers off into a corner.’ Sergeant Fenner scratched his head. ‘You’ll hardly believe this, Miss Morrison-Burke, but that’s precisely where he was found the next morning – dead as a door nail. Nobody’d taken one blind bit of notice of him. Nobody’d gone over to see if he was all right or any
thing. They’d just carried on with their usual fun and games while he died in a corner of the same room – and he didn’t die prettily, either. You don’t get a peaceful end with acute arsenical poisoning, believe you me.’

  ‘Does sound a bit off,’ agreed the Hon. Con, somewhat shaken by Sergeant Fenner’s story.

  ‘Off?’ he repeated in disgust. ‘Kids these days – God, they’re worse than animals! What a scene – that damned cellar full of smoke, the juke box blaring away, everybody dancing or snogging, half of ’em doped up to the gills and one of their mates throwing his guts up … It makes you wonder what the world’s coming to, it does really! We questioned about forty of ’em, you know. Not one of ’ em remembered even seeing him after he’d downed the whisky.’

  ‘Interesting,’ mused the Hon. Con. ‘Arsenical poisoning, you say?’

  ‘That’s right. A weed killer called Kil’mkwik. Crude but effective.’

  ‘Odd,’ said the Hon. Con. ‘I didn’t know they still used arsenic for killing weeds these days.’

  ‘People with any sense don’t. This brand must be one of the last on the market. Young Burberry bought the tin himself, you know, three days before he died There’s no garden at his house so your guess is as good as mine as to what he wanted weed killer for. He also’ – he went on quickly before the Hon. Con could interrupt him – ‘ bought the whisky. Somebody – and who else but Rodney himself? – put the weed killer in the whisky. There was enough liquid left in the bottle for our lab. chaps to establish that. So, there you are. Rodney bought the weed killer and he bought the whisky. He drank the mixture off out of the bottle in front of about forty witnesses. If that isn’t suicide, I damned well don’t know what is.’

  ‘This whisky bottle,’ said the Hon. Con, ‘when he took the cork out, had the bottle already been opened?’

  Sergeant Fenner looked at her with some respect. Sheer luck, of course, but the question was a shrewd one. ‘Well,’ he hedged, ‘ when I said ‘‘cork’’ I really meant one of those screw top things.’

  ‘But what about the tin foil cap that they put on? Did he have to take that off first?’

  ‘That,’ admitted Sergeant Fenner reluctantly, ‘is one of those little things we weren’t actually able to clarify. Nobody who saw Burberry drink down the whisky seems to have noticed. They weren’t paying much attention to him, you know.’

  ‘Still, you searched the club premises when you were called in, didn’t you? If there’d been any tin foil cap you would have found it, wouldn’t you?’

  Sergeant Fenner frowned. ‘Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. In the first place, the woman who found the body had already done a bit of cleaning up. She’d swept up several panfuls of rubbish from off the floor and tipped it into the dustbins outside in the area. They hadn’t been emptied for three or four days and the chap who runs the Kama Sutra drinks the same brand of whisky. We found three foil caps all squashed up, but we couldn’t tie any one of them in with Rodney’s bottle. Either way, I can’t see that it matters much. The lad bought the poison and he bought the whisky. There’s no suggestion of anybody else being involved and I’m damned if I can see how it could possibly have been an accident.’

  ‘Motive?’

  Sergeant Fenner shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? He was pretty unstable emotionally – you’ll see that when you go through his list of previous convictions. His gang were ragging him. Maybe it had been going on for some time and he’d got into one of those they’ll-be-sorry-when-I’m-dead moods. He just took it one step further than most adolescents do, that’s all. We didn’t unearth any particular worries or difficulties that he’d got. Oh, he had just lost his job, I think, but I can’t see that bothering him much,’

  ‘Sounds a bit feeble,’ said the Hon. Con.

  ‘There was even less motive for anybody else killing him,’ Sergeant Fenner pointed out. ‘He was an obnoxious little squirt but, then, he had been all his life. Nobody profited by his death – unless his loving mother really had got him insured for a small fortune.’

  ‘Hm,’ said the Hon. Con. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound quite as cut and dried as you led me to believe.’

  ‘I’m sorry you think that,’ sighed Sergeant Fenner. ‘ Just exactly what are you proposing to do now?’

  ‘Oh, I shall have to go over the whole ground again,’ said the Hon. Con grandly. ‘Check and re-check. I can’t help feeling that you people were a bit too inclined to take things at their face value. There’s obviously more to the mysterious death of Rodney Burberry than meets the eye.’

  ‘Honestly,’ said Sergeant Fenner, knowing from the expression on the Hon. Con’s face that he was wasting his breath,’ there isn’t. Look – the police are investigating this sort of thing all day and every day. If we say Burberry committed suicide, that’s what he did. What can you hope to do?’

  ‘Approach the problem with an open mind,’ said the Hon. Con firmly. ‘ Soon as you let me have this file we’re still waiting for, I shall tootle off home and study it. Then, when I’ve digested the facts, I shall start on the old foot-slogging routine. Interviewing people and what not. Tonight I shall visit the scene of the crime. No good going there during the day, I suppose?’

  ‘The club doesn’t open till about nine,’ admitted Sergeant Fenner unhappily. ‘But surely you’re not going to go there by yourself?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Miss Morrison-Burke, won’t you please take my advice? The Kama Sutra isn’t a vicarage tea-party. It’s the haunt of all the teenage thugs in Totterbridge!’

  ‘Pooh! I’m not scared of a handful of pimply adolescents!’

  ‘There’s nothing pimply about this lot, believe you me! They’re tough and they’re nasty and they’re mean. You go barging into their territory and you’re likely to finish up with your throat cut!’

  ‘I can look after myself!’ boasted the Hon. Con, flexing her biceps for Sergeant Fenner’s benefit.

  He threw his hands up in despair. ‘Well, just don’t say I didn’t warn you!’

  Chapter Four

  When a short time later the Hon. Con swaggered out of Totterbridge police station, she gave every appearance of bursting with self confidence. The police files, concealed in newspaper, were tucked under her arm and she’d got her next couple of moves mapped out. But, all is not gold – and behind her bluff and breezy exterior, the Hon. Con was feeling far from happy. Doubts were beginning to creep through the usually impenetrable barrier of her determination.

  She squeezed herself behind the wheel of the Mini and thoughtfully shoved the ignition key in the dashboard. Had she, perhaps, gone just a little too far this time? What Sergeant Fenner had told her about Rodney Burberry had disturbed her. She thoroughly disapproved of juvenile delinquents and had once all but headed a local campaign for bringing back the cat. No, there was no doubt about it – she would have been much happier if Rodney had been one of those nice, clean-living young men. And what about Mrs Burberry? The Hon. Con felt very cross with Mrs Burberry for not telling her the truth about her son’s character. It was extremely humiliating to find that one had been clutching a wolf in sheep’s clothing to one’s bosom. All that guff about heaven and going to church regularly! The woman was probably as big a crook as her disgusting brat.

  The Hon. Con fetched up a deep sigh and switched on the engine. She was reluctant to chuck her hand in – the loss of face alone would be excruciating – but she couldn’t help feeling that this business was not quite her cup of tea. Had she bitten off something that was going to leave a nasty taste in her mouth? The Hon. Con scowled miserably at nothing in particular. And look at what Sergeant Fenner had said – if the police thought it was suicide, how could she expect to prove it was murder? She wasn’t even really convinced herself now.

  She thrashed the gear lever into reverse and backed out, still somewhat preoccupied with her doubts, on to the main road. A spirited exchange of abuse with a passing cyclist (who couldn’t possibly have hurt himself all tha
t much) restored her nagging spirits a little and she set off for Upper Waxwing Drive with her usual élan and total disregard for all the other users of the public highway.

  Her route took her past the offices of the Citizens’Advice Bureau. That did it! The Hon. Con might conceivably have chucked the towel in before Miss Jones, and even Sergeant Fenner, but – before that blasted Citizens’ Advice Bureau? Never! She was damned if she would give them the satisfaction of crowing over her! And crow they would, given half the chance. She could just imagine them sitting in there, smacking their lips and waiting for her to come a cropper. Well, she’d show ’ em! They’d be sniggering on the other side of their stupid faces when, single-handed, she frog-marched the murderer of Rodney Burberry into the nick. The Hon. Con went glassy-eyed as she pictured the scene – the banners, the cheering crowds, the Mayor of Totterbridge shaking her warmly by the hand as he bestowed the freedom of the city on her, the respectful interviews on both TV channels, the pictures in the newspapers …

  The Hon. Con let go with a terrific yelp of laughter and, turning her head, stuck her tongue out in the direction of the unfortunate Citizens’ Advice Bureau. She jumped a red light at the same time but, then, she’d always thought it was a damned silly place to have traffic lights anyhow.

  She got back to Shangrila and ran the car into the garage. Miss Jones, hearing the warning blast on the horn, began to dish up lunch.

  ‘Whacko!’ beamed the Hon. Con, striding into the dinette and rubbing her hands in anticipation. ‘Could eat a horse!’

  ‘How did you get on with the police, dear?’

  ‘Like a house on fire!’ sniggered the Hon. Con and picked up her knife and fork. ‘Sergeant Fenner was most helpful. Let me have all their files on the case and everything.’

  Miss Jones was surprised. ‘Did he really?’ She placed a massive helping of cottage pie in front of the Hon. Con.

  ‘Wouldn’t do it for just anybody, mind you.’ The Hon. Con reached across the table for the tomato sauce. ‘He made that very clear. If I’d been just an ordinary person he wouldn’t have touched me with a barge pole.’