Death Before Breakfast

by George Bellairs

  He knocked again. And then again. His face grew longer. This looked like being another blank.

  Then, suddenly a cascade of angry footsteps running down uncarpeted stairs came from behind the door and it was flung open by a pale man, almost jaundiced, with pale hair, too, brushed back and tousled. He was no larger than three-pennyworth of copper and was in his shirt and trousers. And he was hopping mad.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? Trying to break the door down. I heard you first time, but I was in bed, tryin’ to snatch a few hours sleep …’

  He eyed Cromwell up and down. The dark suit and overcoat, the bowler hat, the benign, serious face. The lot. He decided at once that Cromwell was either delivering tracts or selling religious books. They got quite a lot of that sort in July Street, where every type of earnest well-wisher seemed to think everybody wanted to be Saved.

  ‘Go away! I don’t want anything.’

  Cromwell smiled.

  ‘But I do. I want a word with you. Police.’

  Instead of showing fear or hesitation, the little man grew angrier than ever.

  ‘Has somebody reported a disturbance in the night? Because, if they have, I’ll get a doctor’s certificate about it. I didn’t give my kids the whooping-cough. I can’t help it. Like as not, they caught it from the kids of those who’re complainin’ – the people next door. They’ve knocked on the wall three times in the night. As if that would do any good.’

  Cromwell couldn’t get a word in edgeways. It was like an infuriated tape-recorder gone mad. He raised his hand.

  ‘Will you kindly shut-up a minute, sir? It’s nothing to do with whooping-cough and if you’ll let me inside and allow me to ask you a few questions, I’ll get along and let you get back to bed.’

  Then, from an upper room in the house a child began to cough, was joined by another, and a duet commenced. It was painful to hear. The barking rose in a terrifying crescendo and seemed to end by both the sufferers being sick.

  The little man tore his hair.

  ‘It’s been like that for three nights. I’ve had to get off my work. If I can’t sleep, I can’t work, and I’ve been up all and every night since Monday. Some people say it goes on for weeks. If it does, I’m going to put my head in the gas oven. I’m getting. …’

  He’d started again, hysterical with distress and sleeplessness.

  Cromwell pushed him inside and closed the door behind them.

  ‘Hush! Let me speak. I’ve children of my own and I’ve been through it. Perhaps I can help you.’

  The little man showed sense for the first time. He almost smiled.

  ‘I’ll do anything. Anything.’

  ‘Well, listen. Have you had the doctor?’

  ‘Of course we’ve had the doctor. You don’t think with them so bad we’d. …’

  ‘All right. All right. So you’ve had the doctor. …’

  ‘Yes. He gave them a bottle and some pills. At first little Rufus started. He’s five. Then he passed it on to Amy, she’s seven. When one leaves off, the other starts and, as likely as not, they’re both at it together. The medicine’s only to make them sleep. But they cough in their sleep and it wakens them. Then, he gave us some tablets. They’re just as useless.’

  ‘Have you a herbalist round here?’

  ‘Yes; just along the main road. Why?’

  ‘I’ve three girls. They’re grown-up now almost, but the elder two got whooping-cough and were just like yours. It lasted almost a fortnight and I was just as bad as you are now. A wreck. Then the third got it. Somebody recommended my wife to get some mouse-ear. Got that? Mouse-ear. It’s a herb from the herbalist and it did the trick. Cured her in two days. My wife’s recommended it to other people and it’s done the same. You ought to try it.’

  The man was without collar and in battered carpet slippers, but he hastily grabbed a raincoat and cap from a bamboo hat-stand in the narrow lobby and started to put them on. He couldn’t wait.

  ‘Mouse-ear,’ he muttered, savouring a magic word.

  ‘Here. Wait a minute. I want to ask you a question or two. Then, you can go and get it. I won’t keep you long.’

  The man paused and listened. Silence upstairs. He kept his cap and coat on, but seemed agreeable.

  ‘All right then, come in here.’

  The hall was lighted only by the fanlight and was dim and depressing. There was a smell of washing-up water on the air and the place seemed damp and fireless.

  The man said his name was Peeples and led the way into a room on the left. There was no carpet on the floor, which was spread with old newspapers, and very little furniture. A lot of old boxes and junk and two large old armchairs upholstered in faded moquette.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse the state of this place. Up to last weekend, we let it to my brother and sister-in-law who’ve not long been married, but they’ve moved out. She’s ex-pectin’, see, and he thought she ought to have a better place. Not that we didn’t make them comfortable, but you know what women are when they’re that way. Want the moon … They’d furnished it themselves and took the lot. We live on the first floor. I can’t ask you up. The wife’s in bed, absolutely tired out with all this whooping and coughing, and the place isn’t tidy. She’s expectin’ her third, too.’

  The man never stopped talking once he’d got started. Cromwell interrupted him loudly.

  ‘I won’t keep you. You’re wanting to get your medicine, I know. …’

  The man remembered it.

  ‘Yes. I’d better be off. …’

  ‘It’s been reported to us that a woman saw a body lying opposite number twenty, across the way, early yesterday morning. Nobody else seems to have seen it and she was so scared, that she didn’t raise the alarm. When she came back, it was gone. She saw it just before seven in the morning and returned less than half-an-hour later. We’re asking down the street if anybody else saw the body. So far, nobody has. We think it might have been her imagination.’

  Mr. Peeples suddenly awoke from his lethargy. He thrust his face close to Cromwell’s.

  ‘She was right. There was somebody lying there at that time.’

  Cromwell must have registered great astonishment. He’d expected the usual answer. Nothing doing. Or else the disgusted reply that they’d something better to do than peeping round the blind at that early and busy hour.

  Mr. Peeples was sure.

  ‘It was like this. … Sit down if you like. …’

  The poor fellow was so glad of someone sympathetic to talk to that he forgot his troubles in his anxiety to please.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette, Inspector … ?’

  ‘I’m a detective-sergeant. … Of course. …’

  He produced his packet and they took one apiece and lit up.

  ‘I’ve smoked all mine and haven’t had the chance to get any more yet. I’ve had to go in the yard behind when I’ve wanted a smoke. Daren’t light-up in the house because of the kids’ coughs. Mind if we open the window?’

  He wrestled feebly with the sash window and Cromwell finally had to open it for him, letting in a gust of foul November damp. The man started to cough so much that Cromwell thought he’d caught whooping-cough, too. Finally silence, as Mr. Peeples recovered and began to inhale copiously and with obvious enjoyment.

  ‘You say you saw the body. …’

  It was Mr. Peeples’ turn now to silence Cromwell. He raised a thin hand with bitten nails and tobacco stained fingers.

  ‘I saw a body. I thought it was some drunk or other who’d spent the night in the gutter.’

  ‘You did nothing about it? You didn’t go to see if he needed help?’

  Mr. Peeples looked embarrassed, but he had his answer ready.

  ‘I was too busy. The children hadn’t stopped coughing all night. You say your own children have had it. You should know. It’s a terrible thing and the sight of them suffering and you able to do nothing makes you forget anything else.’

  ‘I quite agree.’

  ‘Is
it all right, then, if I go now and call at the herbalists?’

  ‘Just another couple of questions. How did you come to look out of the window and see all this going on, if, as you say, you were so distracted by your children’s distress?’

  ‘I was looking out for the milkman. We’d been giving them hot milk all night. It seemed to ease things a bit. We put honey in it. It helped them to cough instead of choke and turn blue.’

  ‘What time does the milk arrive?’

  ‘Around seven o’clock. That’s why I looked round the blind. I was listening for the van. It’s one of those electric runabouts. It has a noise all of its own. You can’t mistake it. Or, I thought I couldn’t. It seems I was wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I was waiting for the sound of the milk-van. I was standing by the window in the front room upstairs. That’s where the children are. I looked round the blind and it was then I saw the man lying just across the way, about where the empty house is. There was nobody in the street. The woman you mention must have gone past and round the corner. I crossed the room to get the empty bottles ready, and then I heard the van. I ran downstairs and into the street, after I’d called in the kitchen at the back to rinse the bottles. The milkman gets mad if you give them back dirty. When I got to the door and looked out, the van wasn’t there at all. Neither was the body lying where I said. There was nobody and nothing. I thought at first I’d missed the milk, but that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have got through his round in the time it took me to wash the bottles. I was wondering what to do, when he suddenly turned the corner of the street and started delivering.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I was in a hurry for the milk. I didn’t wait for him to reach our house. I ran to meet him and got four bottles. I also asked him what he’d been up to, running up and down the street and doing his vanishing tricks. He said he’d done no such thing. He’d come straight here from June Street and if I didn’t believe him, I could ask the policeman. He’d just been exchanging the time of day with him.’

  ‘Did you get a close look at the body?’

  ‘No. It was just a huddled mass at the edge of the kerb. I couldn’t recognise who it was, man or woman, from where I was in that light. And when I saw it had gone, I thought it was perhaps a drunk and he’d got up and made his way home. I forgot about it all after that. I was too bothered about the kids.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were. Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Peeples. I may call again if I need your help. Meanwhile, I hope the mouse-ear does the children good and I’ll not detain you.’

  Mr. Peeples shook Cromwell by the hand, like a long-lost friend.

  ‘Only too glad to help and thanks for your advice. I’ll just tell the wife where I’m going and then I’ll run along to Tommy Shanks’s herb-shop and get me some what you say. Write it down, will you? With not having slept, my memory’s like a sieve. I’ll let you out. The door sticks a bit.’

  ‘… .The man who let me out looked round the blind at just before seven and saw the body,’ Cromwell told Littlejohn when he joined him.

  ‘He said he thought it was a drunk, because by the time he’d reached the door for the milk, the body had vanished.’

  It might have been a drunk, too. Mrs. Jump had no qualifications to certify death, especially without even touching the body.

  ‘What puzzled Peeples most seems to have been a sort of phantom milk-cart that arrived before the real one. He says he distinctly heard it and when he got to the door, it had gone. Then, the real milkman came trundling along and hotly denied he’d been in the street before. He even had an alibi from the constable on the beat who’d been talking to him before he turned the corner into July Street.’

  Mann nodded.

  ‘That fact was reported by our man on duty here, who also said there was no body either.’

  Vanishing bodies and spectral milk-carts! It was becoming ridiculous.

  Littlejohn puffed his pipe thoughtfully.

  ‘Where is the milk depôt?’

  ‘Between here and the police station.’

  ‘We’ll call then. Perhaps the milkman will be there.’

  They climbed in the police car and about half a mile along the Willesden Road, the driver turned down a side-street and pulled up in front of the dairy. A huge, cold-looking place, clanking with milk churns and rattling with bottles. It was half-past twelve. A hooter sounded and everybody stopped and started off for the canteen. Mann asked for the manager.

  ‘Yes; Johnny Hibbs does the July Street section. Well be lucky if we catch him. Just wait a minute.’

  Johnny was there. He had his cap and coat on ready for off. He’d been on duty since half-past five and was going home. A decent stocky little fellow, a friend of everybody.

  ‘After all that milk, I’m just off for a pint of the best and then, home,’ he told Littlejohn.

  ‘You were delivering in July Street yesterday morning, Johnny?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘As near seven o’clock as dammit. St. Hilary’s struck as I turned the corner. I always try to make a point of being there when the clock chimes. Sort of fad of mine. You know how you get these little habits and fancies.’

  ‘Of course. You spoke to the constable going off duty.’

  ‘That’s right. Kenny. We look out for one another. Sort of comforting to say how-do to a pal on a morning like yesterday, all dark and gloomy.’

  ‘You served a man called Peeples with some milk.’

  ‘Yes. Funny little fellow, whose kids ’ave the ’ooping-cough. I’m sorry for him. He’s a French-polisher who doesn’t enjoy good health himself. Chest’s weak. He’d got some bee in his bonnet about I’d been down the street before and missed leaving him the usual. I told him he’d dreamt it. No wonder. He’d been up all night with his kids. He asked me if I thought there was any chance of gettin’ them in ’ospital. Not a ghost, I tells him. You’d ’ave the whole place whoopin’. No, I told him, you’ll ’ave to grin and bear it while it lasts, like we all ’ave to do.’

  ‘There isn’t any other milk roundsman goes down July Street, Johnny?’

  ‘No. I’m the only one and I’d take it bad if any of the people in the street took their custom from me. We’re all the best of friends.’

  ‘What might Peeples have heard then, that sounded like your electric milk-van. It’s not a common noise, is it? These electric runabouts have an engine sound quite of their own.’

  Johnny scratched his head under his cap and stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Can’t think what it could be. As I said, he either imagined it, him bein’ a bit beside himself with worry and no sleep for nights. Or else, he heard a van passin’ the end of the street.’

  ‘But he said he heard it stop opposite … or thought he did.’

  ‘It beats me. … Wait a minute. One of our vans gave up the ghost Tuesday night on its way back from taking milk to a canteen down there. He shoved it in Sammy Barnes’s garage just round the corner of July Street. You know where it is, Inspector Mann. Facing the gable-end of July Street houses on the Willesden Road. The manager there’s a young chap called Jim Trodd. He used to be on the service staff here till he started-up for Barnes. He said he’d re-charge the battery and have it all ready for Wednesday morning. Which he did. One of our drivers picked it up and brought it back here. I saw him there as I was turning out of July Street after my deliveries.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘Half past seven, or thereabouts. I had a little chat with one or two, you know. Keepin’ up the good will. Will that be all? I’ll get it from the missus if I’m not home in time for my meal.’

  Back to Sammy Barnes’s.

  It was a second-rate garage, built on a spare plot of land among a lot of tumbledown property, with two or three pumps in front and a large shed behind. Jim Trodd was there himself; a tall, dark, shifty man of around forty, obv
iously one who knew his business.

  ‘Yes. We had the runabout here and I re-charged the battery. Used to be my job when I worked for the dairy. It had shorted and ran-out nearly opposite here. We shoved it for the rest of the way.’

  ‘Where did you leave it overnight.’

  ‘In the garage. I told Fred, the man on early duty, who arrives just before seven o’clock, to drive it out and park it near the pumps. Stirrup, the driver, said he’d come down for it between seven and eight, which he did. I thought he could get at it and away in time for the morning milk. Besides, it was in the way inside the garage. We haven’t much room, as you can see.’

  ‘Did anybody move the van between Fred driving it out and Stirrup calling for it?’

  Trodd looked at the police in amazement.

  ‘I’ve got to hand it to you fellows for getting information. How did you know that? Or is it confidential? Fred did mention it. He drove the runabout out and left it facing the road so that Stirrup could drive it off right away. Then, Fred went in the back of the garage, where there’s an electric fire and a cooking stove, and made his tea and ate his breakfast. Stirrup arrived and called Fred’s attention to the fact that the runabout was facing the garage. Fred told him he was dreaming at first. Look for yourself, said Stirrup. And there it was just as Stirrup said.’

  It looked as if someone in a desperate hurry and unable to carry the body himself, had seized the first vehicle handy and driven off the dead man in a milk-cart.

  Chapter 4

  A Body Arrives

  Fred Privett was the man on early duty at Barnes’s garage and returned from his lunch as the police were talking with Trodd.

  ‘What time did you put out the dairy van, Fred?’ Littlejohn asked him.

  ‘As soon as I got here and put on the lights. It was in the way inside the garage. It was before seven when I drove it out.’

  A tall, thin man, in a loose suit of soiled overalls, and with a comedian’s face, buck-teeth and all.

  ‘And then you went in the rear of the garage to warm-up your breakfast?’