Death in the Fearful Night (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  The police were therefore fully extended and the disappearance of Uncle George, deceased, had become a side issue. He found Waldo Keelagher sitting with his wife, despondently neglected and waiting in a small room for attention. Even the good looks of Mrs. Keelagher, a straight-haired, blue-eyed blonde, with a skin the colour of honey and next to nothing on, had failed to stimulate the local officials, the bulk of whom seemed to be noisily concerned with the milkman who’d blocked the Rue d’Antibes.

  Waldo himself looked as excited as he probably did in Throgmorton Street after a substantial change in the Bank Rate or the collapse of Wall Street. He was tall, fair and slim, and his thin yellow hair was plastered across his head as carefully as if he’d just returned from the City. His features were distorted by a huge pair of sun-glasses, which he removed when Littlejohn entered to reveal his panic-stricken eyes and eyebrows so pale that he didn’t seem to have any at all. He was dressed in a sleeveless buff shirt with shorts to match and his body had the boiled look which arises from too much sun.

  The arrival of Littlejohn was like water in the desert to Waldo. He flew at the Superintendent, too full of emotion to speak, and wrung him heartily by the hand.

  ‘So good of you,’ he said in a broken voice.

  Waldo’s wife, who was very beautiful, and seemed intelligent with it, too, was taking it all very calmly. After all, it wasn’t her Great-Uncle George who’d died and been stolen. Also, she was of a different temperament from Waldo, nervously exhausted by the ups and downs of stocks and shares. She provided the morale of the partnership and Waldo the money. Besides, Great-Uncle George, now, they hoped, with God, had been reputed to be worth a quarter of a million, to say nothing of the goodwill in the stockbroking firm of which he had, until lately, been senior partner and in which Waldo carried on the family name. The thought of Uncle George’s estate gave her a comfortable, warm feeling inside.

  ‘So good of you to come, Superintendent. We do appreciate it. I’m in a real mess. I don’t know whether or not it might end-up with my being accused of murder …’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. Of course it wasn’t murder. Uncle George ate far too many mushrooms last night and his heart gave out. Now that the Superintendent is here to help us, everything’s going to be all right. Isn’t it, Superintendent?’

  It just depended on what you meant by all right. Little wonder the Cannes police had been incredulous … Here they were now, in the shape of a brigadier, who, as soon as he saw Littlejohn tactfully vanished and was replaced by an Inspector. Littlejohn had met the Inspector before. His name was Joliclerc.

  Joliclerc, who had once worked with Littlejohn in Cannes on a case of a murdered English antique dealer, was delighted to see him. So much so, that Waldo Keelagher’s dilemma seemed forgotten and the meeting took on the form of a social function. Joliclerc shook hands with Littlejohn three times before they finally got down to work.

  ‘Yes; the matter of Monsieur Valdo … Valdo …’

  Inspector Joliclerc looked at the card on his desk.

  ‘Valdo Kaylayjay …’

  It would do! Anything to get down to business and get away.

  The Inspector confessed that he didn’t understand English. And Monsieur Valdo’s French was a bit difficult. He thought that perhaps the Superintendent Littlejohn wouldn’t mind coming to interpret and help Monsieur Valdo.

  So, the three-cornered interview began. Waldo to Littlejohn in English. Littlejohn to Joliclerc in French. And then the return journey to Waldo.

  As Littlejohn expected, it took some time to convince the French police that Waldo wasn’t drunk or mad. This formality finally overcome, Joliclerc sent for a male stenographer to take down a statement. He politely allowed Littlejohn to do the questioning, only intervening now and then to elucidate a point.

  It turned out that Waldo Keelagher was a great do-it-yourself votary and over the past two years had been building a luxury caravan in his spare time. He had finished it in the Spring, tried it out at Easter to Swanage and back, and he and his wife had voted it good for a trip to the Riviera in August.

  Late in July, Waldo had committed the folly of boasting about his handiwork to his Great-Uncle George, the wealthy head of the firm in which he had made Waldo a junior partner. Anticipating the ultimate arrival of a family, Waldo had prudently planned accommodation for four in his vehicle.

  ‘The very thing!’ Uncle George said when he heard of it. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Waldo paused in his narrative at the horror of it, and Littlejohn paused for breath in his marathon translation to Joliclerc.

  ‘You see, Uncle George, who is about 65 … or was … besides being a stockbroker has for a long time very vigorously carried-on a hobby and since he went into semi-retirement, it’s become a sort of mania. He’s a naturalist and writes books about it. He’s just started another. It’s about what’s called the praying mantis …’

  Praying mantis … It stumped Littlejohn as interpreter. However, Waldo had a note of the French for it in his diary among a lot of other phrases supplied by Uncle George.

  La mante religieuse! Joliclerc and his stenographer threw up their hands in chorus, shrugged, and looked more stupefied than ever at the mad tale. Waldo continued as though it were an everyday occurrence. He seemed to be talking to himself.

  ‘… It seems that, although Uncle George had closely studied these insects in captivity … he had a sort of praying mantis zoo in a gauze cage … to study them properly he wanted to see them in their natural habitat, as he called it. He said the fully developed adult mantis made her appearance on the Riviera in August, like the rest of us. He said with a caravan, we could camp right among them, so to speak. He was bad on his feet and said the hotels were too far away …’

  ‘He was too greedy to pay his hotel bills, in spite of his money. He was a miser,’ interrupted Mrs. Waldo, whose name, by the way, was Averil.

  ‘What does madame say?’

  Littlejohn translated and Joliclerc smiled for the first time during the tale. And, seeming to notice Averil, too, for the first time, he twisted his little moustache and straightened his tie. The more acute stenographer had already done this half-dozen times.

  ‘He insisted on coming. It was difficult, in fact impossible, to say No to him. You see, I work for his firm and, well, he’s a very wealthy man.’

  He paused and coughed.

  ‘Go on, Waldo. You may as well tell them. You have expectations …’

  Waldo turned pale and then flushed and, as though dazzled by his forthcoming good fortune, put on his dark glasses again.

  Littlejohn thought it high time to control the narrative. After all, they couldn’t be at it all day. It was nearly lunch-time, too.

  ‘He came with you?’

  ‘Yes. We tried our best to persuade him out of the idea, but he was always a stubborn old man. Do you know, the praying mantis eats its mate in a most revolting manner …’

  No wonder all the hot tips Waldo gave Cromwell always ended in a washout! He simply couldn’t concentrate on the business in hand.

  ‘When did you set-out?’

  ‘Last Saturday. We stayed on Sunday outside Beauvais. On Monday …’

  ‘When did you arrive in Provence?’

  ‘Tuesday. We camped just outside Aix-en-Provence. Yesterday, we arrived very early in the Estérel, where uncle proposed to spend some time studying his damned insects. It’s wooded there, and stony, and we’d no trouble finding a spot for the night. Averil and I went down to the coast for a bathe at Théoule and left uncle hunting for mantises. We got back around six in the evening.’

  ‘You found him safe and sound.’

  ‘Yes. He said he’d had a splendid afternoon. The place, according to him, was teeming with mantis. He’d also gathered a lot of mushrooms. They looked lethal to me, but both Averil and uncle said they were all right. He ate a lot after Averil cooked them in milk and I think that’s what upset him.’

  ‘What time did yo
u retire?’

  ‘About nine o’clock. It was dark then and there was no pleasure sitting out of doors with a light. The place was infested by every kind of winged insect, especially mosquitoes.’

  ‘Your uncle slept in the caravan?’

  ‘Yes. There are two bunk-rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom and toilet.’

  At the translation of the sanitary arrangements, the two Frenchmen threw up their hands again. Joliclerc looked baffled and interjected a private question at Littlejohn in in an undertone.

  ‘Do they have water-tanks and do they carry the water to them to operate the bath and the W.C. in the wagon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Joliclerc shrugged his shoulders sadly. He was obviously dealing with madmen and told the shorthand-writer in a whisper to take account of it.

  ‘You passed a good night?’

  ‘Averil and I are good sleepers. We’d had a heavy day. We slept till eight. Then we got up and found uncle had passed away.’

  His tone suggested that if Waldo had been wearing a hat, he’d have bared his head. It seemed to rile his wife.

  ‘He was dead,’ she added.

  ‘Was he a normally healthy man?’

  ‘Generally speaking, yes. He never ailed anything for as long as I can remember. But lately, he’d been under the doctor with a weak heart. He pooh-poohed the idea, of course. He was like that. He fancied himself as a quack-doctor, as a matter of fact.’

  Littlejohn was beginning to build-up a picture of Great-Uncle George. Quite a character!

  ‘He died in bed?’

  ‘No. He was lying on his face outside the caravan, as though he’d been taken ill and gone out for fresh air.’

  ‘Fully dressed, or in his pyjamas?’

  ‘He didn’t wear pyjamas. He said they made him feel suffocated. He had a nightshirt.’

  ‘Was he wearing it?’

  ‘No. He was fully dressed. We thought he’d had a heart attack. He must have been dead for some time. He’d gone cool.’

  Gone cool! Joliclerc leapt to his feet.

  ‘Why didn’t you leave the body as it was and go to the nearest telephone and notify the police?’

  Littlejohn translated, but Averil replied.

  ‘Waldo lost his nerve and went all to pieces. I don’t blame him. You’d feel the same. Miles from anywhere in that appalling country with nobody about. I believe it was once the haunt of brigands and cut-throats.’

  ‘But that was no excuse for packing-up the body and bringing it to the police in that way. If death wasn’t natural, you’ve destroyed all the evidence.’

  Averil suddenly seemed to understand Joliclerc’s angry, authoritative French.

  ‘You can tell him he needn’t get in a tizzy about it. I offered to go for help, but Waldo wasn’t fit to leave or to drive either. We couldn’t leave the body out there. It didn’t seem decent. We seem to have done the wrong thing and got ourselves in a rare mess. I think we ought to have buried and left the body there, after all.’

  Littlejohn translated a revised version of that. No use annoying the French police. Things were bad enough as it was. Averil was thoroughly annoyed with them all.

  ‘I know it sounds silly to all of you now. Actually, it seems silly to me, too. But Waldo’s had two nervous breakdowns since the war. He’d a bad time with the Gestapo as a prisoner in Germany. I wasn’t going to have him down with a third breakdown. He’s more precious to me than all your Uncle Georges. What did Uncle George want foisting himself on us, any way? He’d no business coming.’

  ‘So, you made a parcel of him and put him in the caravan?’

  ‘No. We locked the caravan, left it where it was, and brought him here by car. We knew he’d died a natural death. We’re not medical experts, but who’d want to murder Uncle George at that time in the morning?’

  Joliclerc put his head in his hands. It was getting beyond him.

  ‘Go on … Continuez …’

  ‘Well, that’s all. We brought the body in the car, as I’ve already told you. We parked outside and came in to report it. We knew there’d have to be some sort of post-mortem but it seemed simple to us then. We explained to the sergeant here, who brought in someone who understood English. Then we took them to where we’d parked the car. It was gone!’

  Averil told it all in a very matter-of-fact way. Waldo kept trying to get a word in edgeways, but she wouldn’t stop. She seemed to have made up her mind to get it over.

  ‘And that was where you came in, Superintendent Littlejohn. Waldo had seen in a paper we bought at Aix that you were staying near Nice. We felt we needed some help.’

  That was the end. Averil had been wound-up and now she’d run down. She burst into tears.

  Waldo trembled, wrung his hands, hung over his wife and tried to comfort her. At first, Littlejohn thought he’d attack the French police. Eventually, he managed to quieten down the pair of them.

  Joliclerc sat back and sighed deeply. He was a heavy man with a small moustache and sad, pouched brown eyes. A most polite and civil officer whose patience had been badly strained. He was moved by Averil’s tears. He looked at his watch. One o’clock.

  ‘We must send someone to the caravan and the spot must be examined. Also, give me details of the stolen car, which we will circulate. Do you happen to have a portrait of the dead man, too?’

  Waldo produced various papers covering the car, as well as a photograph of it, coupled to the caravan, with Waldo proudly at the wheel and Averil with her head through the window. He also produced their joint passport and everything else he could think of. His driving-licence had been endorsed. Dangerous driving two years before! He seemed to think he owed them an explanation.

  ‘It was the night before my wedding …’

  Finally, Waldo probed in his wallet and produced a postcard photograph of Uncle George. Whether he carried it for good-luck or duty he didn’t say.

  Uncle George was dressed in academic cap, gown and hood. A small, shrivelled-looking man, with a hatchet face, Roman nose and shrewd piercing eyes. He had a tough, stubborn look about him and, on the occasion of the photograph, must have achieved some long-sought triumph, for he looked self-satisfied.

  ‘That was taken nearly ten years ago. He got an M.A. degree for a thesis on Ants when he was nearly sixty.’

  Come to think of it, Uncle George looked a bit of an ant himself! Industrious, persistent, a confounded nuisance …

  Joliclerc swept the papers in a file and gave his orders to the secretary. He was quite unimpressed by the cap and gown.

  ‘And now …’

  He looked sternly at Waldo and his missus.

  ‘If what you say is true, you are both in a delicate position. We ought to detain you until the matter has been cleared-up …’

  Littlejohn told them in English what it all meant.

  Waldo made a noise like a sob.

  ‘In gaol?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His first thoughts were of Averil.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. It was all my fault. I ought to have been firm with him.’

  Averil seemed to know how to handle him.

  ‘Of course it’s not your fault. It’s your Uncle George’s for insisting on coming and then dying on our hands. It serves him right.’

  She turned to Littlejohn.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, but it makes me so mad. Could you help us, Superintendent? You’ve been wonderful, but there’s one thing more. Could you sort of go bail for us? After all, you can trust us. Waldo’s your Inspector Cromwell’s cousin on his mother’s side. Could you?’

  Littlejohn couldn’t refuse, could he? Cromwell’s cousin! He spoke with Joliclerc, who seemed glad of a chance to do him a good turn.

  ‘I’ll have to speak with Commissaire Dorange to begin with.’

  It took a bit of ironing out. They had to go higher up the ladder than Dorange for a final decision. Littlejohn ended-up in charge of Waldo and Averil. They were in his hands, sous caution, under bail, pendi
ng the clearing-up of the affair.

  Littlejohn didn’t mind being responsible for them. They were nice young people. Cromwell’s relations. But, he had them on his hands until Great-Uncle George turned-up. And, perhaps after that, too.

  He invited them to lunch as his first duty as godfather. It was like being guardian to a couple of kids in distress.

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  George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1985). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals, set in small British communities.

  He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a Francophile which explains why many of his titles took place in France. Bellairs travelled there many times, and often wrote articles for English newspapers and magazines, with news and views from France.

  After retiring from business, he moved with Gladys to Colby on the Isle of Man, where they had many friends and family. Some of his detective novels are set on the Isle of Man and his surviving notebooks attest to a keen interest in the history, geography and folklore of the island. In 1941 he wrote his first mystery story during spare moments at his air raid warden’s post. Throughout the 1950s he contributed a regular column to the Manchester Guardian under the pseudonym George Bellairs, and worked as a freelance writer for other newspapers both local and national.

  Blundell’s first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941) introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. His books are strong in characters and small communities – set in the 1940s to ‘70s. The books have strong plots, and are full of scandal and intrigue. His series character started as Inspector and later became Superintendent Thomas Littlejohn. Littlejohn, reminiscent of Inspector Maigret, is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion.