Death of a Commuter

by Bruce, Leo

  “Bit broad in the beam, isn’t she?” said Priggley in the manner of a professional critic.

  “Just what you want, my boy, that is. The very thing. What wouldn’t I give for it, eh? Exactly my handwriting…”

  “You were telling me that you worked for Mr. Parador,” said Carolus priggishly. The bar would close in ten minutes and he felt Boggett’s attention slipping.

  “Yes. Yes. I did. Look at those Bristols…”

  “Were you surprised when you heard about his death?”

  “Surprised? I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t. Not that he did for himself. There’s a lot more than meets the eye in this. I daresay if the truth were told I knew him better than anyone and I say he never done it. Never in a million years.”

  “Then what do you think happened?”

  “Ah, now you’re asking me. But I think someone who wanted him out of the way did for him somehow we can’t know about. Doctors don’t know everything, you know. Cor, look at her now. She’ll have her skirt round her waist in a minute.”

  “Did your wife work for Mr. and Mrs. Parador, too?”

  “What Ur? No thank you. Not in the same place where I worked. I told her that. It’s bad enough you spying on me at night without the daytime, too, I told her. No, she worked for Rumble. She was there when his wife died two years ago. Well, it suits her. No one behind her all day wanting to know why this wasn’t done. It’s not like the old days when there wasn’t the work. They have to take what help they can get now. And I will say this, Rumble’s one to appreciate it. He passed me the other day and remarked on it. ‘What I should do without Mrs. Boggett,’ he said, ‘I don’t know.’ Nor don’t I. A man alone in the house. Look she’s having another one. I bet that young fellow with her gets somewhere tonight. I know I would. I’d just about…”

  “But Mrs. Parador must have some help?”

  “Oh yes. She’s got a couple of women come up from the new end of town. I don’t know why they bother. Their husbands are knocking up the best part of twenty quid a week each on the building. Greedy, I suppose. They’re neighbours, see, and like going out together. She only has them for the morning, and once in a while in the afternoon, if they feel like it. But if you want to know all about that you come and see the wife about it. She can tell you, if she likes. She sees all that goes on at Rumble’s and she knows these two that work at Parador’s. Only thing is she gets tired out before she comes home and doesn’t want to talk about anything.”

  There was a pause, during which levels sank.

  “I was looking at that handbag of yours,” said Boggett “The guv’nor had one like that. I noticed it when you came in.”

  “Did he? Lot of these about now,” said Carolus vaguely. Then he turned the subject.

  “I believe Miss Thriver used to do some secretarial work for Mr. Parador?”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t fancy that,” said Boggett. “Not that, I couldn’t fancy. Too much like those that read things out on the telly. She’s as broad as she’s long, too. Maybe suit some, but I said the first time I saw her, I said, that’s not my line of country. Now if she was anything like that one over there …”

  “Where did they work?”

  “In his study as far as I know. I didn’t take much interest to tell you the truth. Must be nearly Time,” he added anxiously, with a glance at his empty mug.

  Rupert again went to the counter.

  “Tell me, Boggett,” said Carolus while he was away, and speaking in an earnest voice, “you haven’t got any suspicions about Mr. Parador’s death, have you? You told me you didn’t think it was suicide.”

  Boggett considered.

  “Well, I have and I haven’t. He had some business with those Limpoles and they’re very funny people. She’s not quite all there if you ask me …”

  “She?”

  “That’s their sister. The three of them live together. I’d never be surprised to hear they knew more than they said. And I don’t trust that vicar. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say I had any suspicions. I tell you who might be able to tell you something—that’s Bert Holey. He has the filling-station round the corner. Holey, Holey, Holey, they call him but I don’t know why because there’s nothing holy about him. He done me out of a lovely little piece of stuff once last summer and I don’t forget it. But they all go to him for petrol and I shouldn’t be surprised if he was to tell you something if you got him in the right mood.”

  “Does he come in here?”

  “Not very often. Sunday dinner-time he looks in sometimes. His son’s home from work then and can look after the pumps. But its my missus you should see. If she likes, mind you. You come in tomorrow when she’s only been out for an hour in the morning to make the bed and that. Try her round about five. She likes giving anyone a cup of tea. I can’t promise you, mind you. But you try.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  Then Boggett gave Carolus a very shrewd look.

  “You’re from the Insurance, I suppose? I thought as soon as you came in and started asking all those questions that’s what you were. Oh well, we all have to do something.”

  Rupert Priggley showing cool competency in carrying three glasses without spilling any of the contents returned to refresh them just as the barman—Mr. Gray-Somerset remained at the Saloon Bar end—started shouting time.

  “There he goes!” said Boggett. “Always the same. I’ll bet you it’s five minutes short of half past.”

  Rupert had a question to ask him.

  “Did you say Mrs. Parador had a niece staying with her?”

  Boggett began to laugh loudly.

  “Hark at that! See what I told you? Can’t think of anything else, can you? He’s a lad, if ever there was one.”

  “But has she?”

  “I told you she had.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “He’s off again! ‘What’s she like?’ You ought to be thinking about your studies. Wait till you see her. That’s all. You wait till you see her.”

  “Any good?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Boggett with mock virtue. “You just wait till you see her.”

  Priggley said no more, but no one could doubt that he had started waiting.

  Chapter Six

  IF CAROLUS HAD ONLY THE BEGINNINGS OF A MOST NEBULOUS theory about the death of Felix Parador he was beginning to know a great deal about Brenstead. He had not supposed that by creating a built-to-order background you could change the English way of life, but he had thought to find some difference between the people of Brenstead before its transformation and the people of Brenstead now. He found none except that there were more of them.

  Next morning, for instance, a Sunday, he took a walk through the denser streets of houses ‘for the workers’ and could find nothing new except the buildings. There was little movement on the pavements for the men seemed either to be enjoying their beloved ‘Sunday morning lie-in’ with tea in bed and the News of the World or working in their small oblong gardens. The church bells were audible when there was a pause in the traffic but the scattered mass of people moving in the same direction ‘going to church’ which he remembered in boyhood was no more. He found it, for all the ‘brightness’ insisted on by architects, planners and advertisers, a rather dismal place.

  At about eleven he went for his car and drove it to the filling-station. He wanted to make the acquaintance of Bert Holey in his place of business so that if he came to The Royal Oak at lunch-time conversation would be easier.

  Holey was a tall man, bald on top but with thick clumps of greying hair over his ears. He gazed at the Bentley with a rapt expression.

  “Lovely jobs, aren’t they?” he ventured.

  Carolus was not enough a car man to make one of the expected replies. He couldn’t give an off-hand, “Useful, yes,” or become enthusiastic about speed and comfort. He never knew what to say about his car and replied rather lamely, “Well, I like it.”

  “What do you reckon to do
to the gallon?”

  “I never quite know. It seems to vary.”

  Bert Holey looked at him with some disapproval, as if to say that Carolus didn’t deserve a motor car like that, but brightened up when Carolus asked him to put in all he could.

  “You don’t happen to be going up to the Oak, do you?” Carolus asked.

  “I was just going to get my boy to take over,” admitted Holey.

  “Like a lift?”

  “I’ll just change my jacket,” said Holey, cutting out any unnecessary verbal flourishes.

  He was an interested rather than a talkative passenger but over a drink he began to talk of his customers, which was just what Carolus wanted.

  “See, I’m not on the main London road and pretty well half my business is with locals,” he said. “I know them all, and they like to be known by name. It makes a lot of difference when you say ‘Morning, Mr. Brown’, specially if he’s got someone with him. Nearly all of them round here come to me. I see to that. I always know if they’ve filled up somewhere else.”

  “Really! How?”

  Bert Holey gave a sly grin.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “For instance, I don’t suppose you know what mileage you’ve done, do you? But I do.” He pulled something like a policeman’s notebook out of his pocket and showed Carolus a figure. “See?” he said triumphantly. “Now if you was to come in again I shouldn’t know whether you’d filled up or not because I don’t know your habits. But with most of them I do. They’re mostly pretty regular.”

  “You’ve been doing that for some time?”

  “Over a year now. Quite often I pull their legs about it. ‘I see you’ve been disloyal to the village pump, Mr. So-and-So’, I say. At first they wondered how I knew then most of them tumbled to it.”

  Carolus decided to appear to take Holey into his confidence, and gave him the Insurance Inspector story. Holey seemed prepared to believe anything of insurance companies and nodded understanding.

  “What I’d like to know is whether any of them broke their usual customs on the night Mr. Parador died. Can you give me any idea about that?”

  “Two of them did. I can tell you that straight away without looking at my book because I saw it for myself. Those Limpoles, for one. They never use their car except at week-ends. They walk to the station every morning—for their health they say, but I know it’s just meanness. They’re very tight, those two. I saw them that night though. ‘Bout half-past nine it must have been. They passed the pumps then looked out and saw me standing there, and stopped and backed and took a couple of gallons. First time I’d ever seen them out on a week-day evening.”

  “Who was the other?”

  “Hopelady the vicar, in that old Triumph of his. He didn’t call here but I saw him go by.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. And next morning I reckoned he’d been about twenty miles by his tank and mileage.”

  “What about Mr. Parador’s car? Did you get a chance to see that?”

  “Only after the police had brought it in. I thought they might have been running about in it, but no, it was just right to have been out to the Great Ring and back again. Who else do you want to know about?”

  “Mr. Thriver.”

  “Couldn’t have done more than a mile or two. The doctor you can’t tell with because he’s got no regular habits.”

  “What about Rumble?”

  “He doesn’t come to me any more. Must be about a month ago now we had words. I’m a man who never quarrels if he can help it, but he seemed to pick on me all about nothing. So I can’t tell you.”

  “You’ve been very helpful,” said Carolus.” You see, whatever else this affair is, it’s local. So I’m naturally interested in the movements of people here.”

  “I can quite see that,” conceded Bert Holey. “You’re welcome to anything I might be able to tell you from what I’ve got in the old notebook.”

  Carolus saw that from the other side of the room Boggett was making violent signs to him and made his way across.

  “Only, me and Bert Holey are Not Speaking,” was his greeting to Carolus. “Not since that dirty trick he done me over that one I told you about.”

  “You wanted to tell me something?”

  “Yes. It’s the missus. I think it will be All Right.”

  “What will?”

  “You coming round this afternoon. I told her there was a gentleman popping in.” “What did she say?”

  “Well, you know what she is. Began sighing and moaning and saying she supposed she’d have to give you a cup of tea and have all the washing-up to do after.”

  “It doesn’t sound very hopeful.”

  “You don’t know her,” Boggett contradicted himself. “That’s a good sign when she talks like that. If she’d said nothing I shouldn’t have liked the look of things at all. But when she has her grouse like that it may turn out for the best. You can only try.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And mind you, she can tell you things. If once she starts, that is.”

  But when Carolus reached Boggett’s cottage at five o’clock that afternoon, Boggett, who opened the door, seemed far less hopeful.

  “I’m afraid it won’t be much good,” he whispered. “She’s had a nap this afternoon and woke up in a nasty mood. She hasn’t said much but I can tell. Still, you better come in.”

  Carolus found a large woman with a fat, dough-like face sitting in an arm-chair by the fire. Boggett’s introduction was oblique.

  “Here he is,” he said to his wife. “I told him you could tell him more than what I could.”

  “Afternoon,” said Mrs. Boggett in a wheezy voice, looking at Carolus without enthusiasm.

  “He’s trying to find out all about Mr. Parador’s death for the insurance company,” Boggett went on encouragingly.

  Mrs. Boggett addressed her husband.

  “I suppose you want a cup of tea,” she said disapprovingly.

  “The gentleman would …”

  “That means I shall have to go and put the kettle on,” sighed Mrs. Boggett, and began to ease her bulk from her chair. “You always want something,” she added, rising slowly to her feet, her stertorous breathing audible across the room. “Never give me five minutes to myself.” She stumped towards the door.

  Boggett seemed delighted.

  “She’s coming round,” he said. “I told you she would.”

  In a few minutes Mrs. Boggett returned carrying a huge tray. She must have spent some time earlier in preparing this, cutting bread and butter, perhaps getting out her best china. It was a bountiful tea and there was home-made jam.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “It seems only a few minutes since you had your dinner. Talk about the day of rest. Go on—hand the gentleman the bread and butter while I’m pouring out How many spoons of sugar?” she asked Carolus. “I know he likes three. There you are, then.”

  “Tell him what you’ve heard,” said Boggett impatiently.

  His wife ignored this.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much to offer you,” she told Carolus, but it was of the tea she was speaking, not information. “Boggett thinks I’ve got all day to spend looking after things. He doesn’t know what work is.”

  Carolus decided to try his luck.

  “Mrs. Boggett, you work for Mr. Rumble, I believe?”

  “You must ask my husband about that,” said Mrs. Boggett touchily. “He knows about everything, he does. He’ll tell you.”

  “Oh, come on. Tell the man what you know,” challenged Boggett.

  “Ready for some more tea? That’s right. It’s no good asking me about anything like that. Not but what I don’t notice things.”

  “You know the two that work where I do at Parador’s, don’t you?” said Boggett provokingly.

  “I’m not saying I do and I’m not saying I don’t” Then suddenly to Carolus, “What is it you want to know?”

  “He wants to know anything you can tell him,” put in B
oggett tactlessly.

  This seemed to scotch Mrs. Boggett’s intention to confide.

  “Tell him? You know very well I haven’t the time for a lot of gossip. I’ve got too much to do. It’s as much as I can do to get round to my work every day let alone join in a lot of chit-chat.”

  “How do you get to work every day?” asked Carolus politely, trying to approach through general channels.

  “I’ve got a scooter,” said Mrs. Boggett surprisingly. “But it takes it out of you. I have to do every blessed thing at Mr. Rumble’s, too. He can’t do anything in the house and since his wife died he has no one to turn to. If it wasn’t for me I don’t know where he’d be.”

  “What about his breakfast in the morning?”

  “He can make himself a cup of tea. That much he learned in the army, I suppose. But I have to leave his Evening Meal all ready for him. Then he doesn’t eat half of it. I get him some nice cold ham or something like that and when I come in the morning I find he’s only eaten…”

  “He doesn’t want to hear about what Rumble eats,” said Boggett “Tell him about Scotter and the parcel.”

  “I’ll tell him what I think fit and he can take it or leave it,” said Mrs. Boggett. “What I was going to say was the only time I’ve known him eat all I left out was the night Mr. Parador was done for.”

  “Why do you say ‘done for’, Mrs. Boggett?”

  “So he was. I don’t believe all that about sleeping pills. Someone did for him. They’ve got so many ways now… I’ve seen it on the telly. Injections and that. Things no one knows anything about and leave no trace. All they’ve got to do is to knock them unconscious then do it with gas from the exhaust of his car. No one’s safe, really. Not with a man like Scotter there to supply everything you need.”