Death in the Fearful Night (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  “Marcia Fitzpayne had come by the remaining ones?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “We found her in Freake’s Folly one day. She said she had been reclaiming a book and burning some of her own letters. Whether or not she was searching for your letters, or only wanted her own, I don’t know. But she found yours, probably hidden with hers. She was a feminine counterpart of Bracknell. Hard as nails, unscrupulous, merciless … Did she call on you, too?”

  “No. You see, between my paying another instalment to Bracknell and the Fitzpayne girl getting the letters, Walter Mason came. He said he could not remain in Australia any longer. It was like prison to him and he’d rather Mr. Checkland had him arrested and let him serve his term in gaol here than go on. He came to see me, secretly, as soon as he arrived here …”

  She paused and sighed.

  “Why, Superintendent, why do men who lose their first loves in their youth, always imagine them just as they were when they left them years ago? Walter said he’d never had me out of his thoughts all the time he’d been away. But his declarations lacked enthusiasm. It was obvious that he found me much changed. My hair is grey and my face is lined. I am twenty years older. He ended by professing eternal friendship and devotion.”

  She smiled wrily.

  “I asked him about the letters. He said that Bracknell and he had been great friends in Australia. Bracknell had even stayed with him on his farm. But he’d no idea that Bracknell had stolen the letters. He admitted that, in conversation, he had spoken of me and told Bracknell how he had lost me to Mr. Checkland …”

  She always spoke of her husband as Mr. Checkland. It was as though their conjugal familiarity did not extend beyond themselves.

  “… It seems that shortly after one of Bracknell’s visits, Walter’s farmhouse—it was a wooden one—was burned to the ground and all in it. Walter thought the letters had gone with it … When I told him, he urged me to tell my husband. He even said that if I wouldn’t, he, Walter, would. I was afraid Mr. Checkland would be so furious at Walter’s return, that he would call-in the police right away and have him arrested. So, I promised I would tell Mr. Checkland right away. I ought to have done it at the start, but I needed someone like Walter to persuade me.”

  “And you told your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean that, having resisted the idea of telling Mr. Checkland about Bracknell’s blackmail for so long, you immediately allowed Mason to convince you to confess at last?”

  “Yes. There was another reason. I had used up all my ready cash by these payments. It would have necessitated selling investments. My share certificates are all in the company’s safe and it would have meant asking my husband for them. He would certainly have insisted on knowing why I wanted them. I have always dreaded his finding out in some way the state of my balance at the bank. There is not much left there, I can assure you.”

  “And what happened when you informed Mr. Checkland?”

  “There was a scene, of course. Strangely enough, he didn’t seem particularly angry with me. In fact, he said the letters, after all that time, were of no interest to him. He was annoyed because he said he could hardly take it to the police. A man in his position being blackmailed on account of his wife’s old love-letters would become the laughing-stock of the town if it got abroad. And, in any case, he wasn’t going to wash his dirty linen in front of Herle and his men.”

  “So …?”

  “He said he would see Bracknell.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes …”

  She paused almost fearfully, as though afraid to go on. Then, she braced herself.

  “He went to Freake’s Folly on the night Bracknell was killed!”

  Littlejohn sat upright in his chair.

  “Why are you telling me this, Mrs. Checkland, when all the time it is seriously incriminating your husband?”

  She smiled confidently.

  “There are no witnesses. I could deny I ever said it. Also, I cannot give evidence against my husband. That’s the law, isn’t it? But neither of these is the reason. When my husband returned, he was completely stupefied. He came into the room and asked if I’d been to Freake’s Folly myself. I said certainly not; I’d been indoors embroidering a chair cover all evening. Then, he told me when he arrived at the Folly, he’d found Bracknell dead—murdered. He was in no position to call in the police. Such a step would involve him in suspicions and not only that, the reason for his visit would come out and would ruin his position in Carleton. He comforted himself by saying the maniac who’d murdered the two girls must have been about. All the same, he was gradually losing control of himself, almost going insane, lest he’d left some trace there or been seen on his way to Freake’s. He expected the blow to fall any day. I begged him to tell you, but he refused. Then came Marcia Fitzpayne’s death …”

  “What had that to do with it?”

  “She sent me a note asking me to call on her at eight o’clock on the evening she was murdered. She said she had found some papers which would interest me, among Bracknell’s effects, of which she was the owner now under his will. I knew that it was beginning all over again. I told my husband. He left to keep the appointment for me. He found her stabbed too. That was the second time. I urged him to see the police and he promised to send for you and talk with you. It seems he couldn’t muster the courage, and he let you go without speaking of the affair. Nobody seems to have seen him there, however. I know he would probably enter the flats by the fire escape of which, as owner of the property, he had a key. Again, he’s been expecting someone to tell you they’d seen him entering. It has been another nightmare on his mind …”

  She rang the bell, but before the maid could answer had left the room and was calling downstairs.

  “Have they not telephoned from the hospital, yet, Maudie?”

  “No, madam …”

  “They’re taking a long time …”

  She returned, her face convulsed now with anxiety.

  “I do hope everything is all right with my husband, Superintendent. You must think me callous talking so much when all the time he is hovering between life and death. But there is a good chance he will recover, Doctor Harriman said. He did say it, didn’t he? I’m not imagining it?”

  “No, you’re not imagining it. He said there was a good chance.”

  “To talk fully and freely to one so sympathetic as you, Mr. Littlejohn, has helped to stifle my own fears and anguish. But much more important, I must settle this matter right away now. It has preyed so much on Mr. Checkland’s mind, that he has tried, in his fumbling way—and thank God it was fumbling—to take his own life. I know he did not commit the murders. He would never do such a thing. He is a kindly man beneath his veneer of … of bravado … If he lives, and his apprehension cannot be cleared away, what is to guarantee that he will not try it again, successfully perhaps? I wish you to know, Superintendent, and I would be so grateful if you could keep my confidences to yourself until you have discovered who really committed the crimes. Mr. Checkland will be in hospital for some time. He will be helpless and, if you would have had to arrest him on suspicion through what I’ve told you, you can surely regard him as being as good as under arrest now. I beg you, please help me …”

  “Your husband told you after he’d discovered the body of Miss Fitzpayne?”

  “Yes. And for the same reasons as before, he said he could not bring in the police, but had to leave the crime for someone else to discover.”

  Telephone.

  Mrs. Checkland ran from the room and down the stairs. There was a brief conversation and she was back.

  “Mr. Lapage was at the hospital, it seems, when my husband was taken in. He is operating now and it is almost certain that Mr. Checkland will recover. I must go to the infirmary right away …”

  “I will come with you, if I may. I’ll see to a car whilst you are getting ready. But, just one thing before we go, Mrs. Checkland. I will, for the time
being, keep to myself the matter of the letters and your husband’s discoveries of the bodies. But, as soon as he is fit to be moved or to make a statement, I shall have to tell my colleagues. I shall continue the investigations and I hope some useful lead will come to light.”

  She turned to go to her room to get her outdoor clothes.

  “Just one more word, madam …”

  Littlejohn spoke seriously and with great emphasis.

  “Perhaps, after all, Mr. Checkland was cleaning his gun when it went off. For his sake and for your own, you must ask him if that is so before the police get his statement. You understand?”

  She paused, with a puzzled expression on her fine face, and then she smiled and gave him a look of gratitude which answered his question.

  13

  TWO CALLERS

  IT WAS turned nine o’clock when things simmered down and then Littlejohn and Cromwell remembered they hadn’t had a meal since noon. They could only give them cold food at the Huncote Arms, but they had the comfort of the salle à manger to themselves. All the crowds prophesied by the waiter had gone, leaving the place deserted.

  “It’s been quite a busy day, sir,” said Cromwell, adding pickles to his cold beef.

  And there the commentary ended, for Bertha appeared and apologetically announced that Littlejohn was wanted.

  “I don’t know why they should disturb you, sir. They look like a courting-couple in from the country. Shall I tell them you’re busy?”

  “No. We’d better see them, Bertha. Any name?”

  “They wouldn’t give one. They’re not the kind who usually come here.”

  She was right, for she returned followed by Lucy Jolland, the girl who had combined delivering the milk and mild flirtation with Sam Bracknell.

  “Come in, Lucy.”

  It was like a breath of fresh air after the ragtag-and-bobtail work of the past day.

  Lucy had a frightened look. It wasn’t that she was scared of Littlejohn and Cromwell, whom she had placed in her category of ’ever so nice’, but the Huncote Arms was, according to her father, the abode of the devil. She hoped that nobody would see her there and tell her dad about it. Otherwise … As usual, he would first pray over her and then … She was too buxom to chastise now. So it would mean locked in her room until she expressed contrition.

  She was not as pretty as when they’d first met her. Her brown tweed ill-fitting coat didn’t become her like her clean white overall. She wore a touch of lipstick and powder, which she would need to wipe off before entering Pinder’s Close, otherwise her dad would call her Jezebel. Now, she hovered round the door, smiling nervously.

  “Come in, Lucy …”

  “Can Charlie come in, too? We called before on our way to the pictures, but you’d gone out. So, we said we’d be back when it was over. Dad doesn’t let us go to the pictures as a rule, but it was ‘The Ten Commandments’ tonight, so … We can’t stay long. Dad said we’d to come straight back.”

  “Where is Charlie?”

  “He’s waiting in the passage. I wanted to come before, but he couldn’t make up his mind. Now he’s decided.”

  “Bring him in, then.”

  She left them and returned followed by a huge, shy, awkward young man with a bullet head of stiff fair hair, a calflick, and a stubborn expression.

  “Come and sit down, both of you. Will you have some food …?”

  Charlie looked hungrily at the beef, pickles and beer, but in spite of his size, Lucy was evidently the boss.

  “No, thank you. We might take a cup of coffee, though.”

  Charlie looked at her dumbfounded. At Pinder’s, it was always tea or non-alcoholic hop-ale. Dad regarded coffee as a drug, and, since someone told him it was extensively consumed in Turkish harems, sinful as well.

  The drinks arrived, Charlie allowed himself to be relieved of his cap and raincoat, and Lucy took off her coat, revealing an emerald green frock, firm flesh and brawny arms.

  “And now …?”

  They didn’t know where to begin. Charlie started to stare furiously ahead.

  “We said you’d tell him.”

  “Well, let me think what to say … It’s about the night Mr. Bracknell died. I’d left my gloves there that morning. We called back on our way home, but the place was locked up. I said I’d go for them at night when he was sure to be in.”

  Charlie started to mutter. He had drunk half his coffee and was expecting the stimulation foretold by dad. Instead, nothing had happened. He looked angrily at the waiter who was clearing away the first course.

  “There’s ice cream to follow, sir.”

  Lucy and Charlie began to take interest. Soon all four of them were eating peach melbas.

  “Tell him about me, like you said you would.”

  Lucy sighed. Was there ever such a stubborn man! Charlie’s mind ran on tramlines, each idea slowly emerging and expressed without deviation, according to plan.

  “Charlie told me last night after he’d spoken to dad … Not about Mr. Bracknell, but about us getting married …”

  She paused as though she’d remembered something joyful. Meanwhile, Littlejohn was imagining Charlie putting into words a request to the unctuous dad for his daughter’s hand!

  “I forgot. We’re engaged to be married! Charlie said I wanted someone to look after me after Mr. Bracknell … Well, you know what I mean.”

  Congratulations all round. Even Charlie smiled a slow, self-congratulatory smirk in between hissing with pain as the ice-cream punished his hollow tooth. They ought to have had champagne but, out of deference to dad, they had another course of ice-cream.

  The interlude delighted the happy pair, if Charlie’s grimaces and doleful lapses could be interpreted as signs of felicity.

  “Charlie told me last night, that since the two girls were murdered, he’d never let me out of his sight. I didn’t know he was there, but he was.”

  “I was that,” echoed Charlie with emphasis.

  “Every time I went to Mr. Bracknell’s with the milk, he followed me down and peeked in at the window, protecting me, even when I didn’t know it.”

  She was proud of him.

  “Tell ’em what I said, Lucy. Tell ’em. And I meant it every bit.”

  “He said he didn’t mind me talking to Mr. Bracknell. I’d a right to talk to intelligent people, a girl with my education.”

  “That’s right. A clever girl like you, you’ve the right. But what else did I say …?”

  Charlie leaned back ready to contemplate his own words again.

  “He said it was only to be talk. If Sam Bracknell had so much as laid a hand on me, or tried to … tried to kiss me …”

  “Tell ’em …”

  “He’d have come in the house, torn the arms and legs off Sam Bracknell, and thrown them over the fields like manure.”

  Charlie nodded, smiling proudly at his metaphor, as though he’d composed a verse from the Song of Songs. And then his stubborn face softened as he looked at Lucy and he gently touched her arm.

  “I meant it, too. A chap like Bracknell to try to handle a fine girl like you. I meant it.”

  Cromwell cut a cigar he’d had in his pocket for weeks and lit it. Then he offered his packet of cigarettes to Charlie.

  “No, thanks.”

  Only last night dad had made him promise not to smoke, drink, utter foul language, or indulge in other sins with names he’d never heard before.

  Littlejohn lit his pipe.

  “But that isn’t what you called to tell me, is it, Lucy? Was there something important about the murder?”

  She gave Charlie a hasty look. He nodded consent.

  “I went for my gloves the night Sam Bracknell was killed. There was somebody there with him. The lamp was on and the curtains weren’t drawn. I peeped in. Then, I went away. Charlie had followed me, as he’d said he would. We went back to the farm, then. I only hoped dad wouldn’t ask where was my gloves. He didn’t.”

  “What time would that
be?”

  “About half-past seven when we got to Freake’s. Dad goes to chapel at seven and we went out soon after …”

  “What did the man you saw with Bracknell look like? Did you know him, either of you?”

  “No. We’d neither of us seen him before. Had we Charlie?”

  Charlie, whose surname was Space, shook his head decidedly.

  “Never seen him in my life before. He wasn’t a local chap.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  Then began a duet between the lovers.

  “He’d be middle-aged …”

  “That’s right. Fifty or a bit more.”

  “Was he grey-haired, Lucy, or black, or fair …?”

  “Grey, I’d say, and rather plenty of it.”

  “I never noticed his hair. I on’y took a bit of a peek after Lucy had come away from the window, like. He was thinner than you are. Not quite as tall as you, either. He was standin’ up when I see him.”

  “What kind of a suit?”

  Charlie Space was stumped. Dress wasn’t much in his line.

  “Grey, it looked like … Lighter than Charlie’s suit …”

  Which made it light grey.

  “Did you get a full-face look at him, either of you?”

  “I didn’t, sir. He was standing side-faced. I could see he’d thick dark eyebrows, that’s all.”

  Charlie said the same.

  “And that’s all you can both remember?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “You wouldn’t be able to recognise him again, then?”

  Lucy didn’t answer and the obstinate look returned to Charlie’s face.

  “We aren’t going to have to go to the police-station, are we? I don’t think either of us would recognise him. I don’t know what Lucy’s dad would say to our going to the police. A lot would come out he doesn’t know. It ’ud be awkward. In any case, we’d better be goin’ home. It’s nearly ten …”

  “Is that all you have to tell me?”

  “No. There’s more. Charlie, you ought to tell it. It wasn’t me.”

  “But you said you’d do the talkin’, Lucy. You know I’m no good at words.”