Trouble in the Town Hall

by Jeanne M. Dams

  THE NEXT MORNING the world was soft and foggy, with sounds and sights muffled and misty, a perfect day to roll over and go back to sleep. I wasn’t allowed to, of course. Last night I’d heartlessly closed the bedroom door against my four-legged alarm clocks, but the instant they heard me move they’d bounded up the stairs to my door and stayed, creating various sound effects designed to speed up breakfast. Esmeralda has perfected a door-pounding method, standing on her hind legs and battering very quickly with alternate front paws. It’s similar to a scratching-post routine except with retracted claws, and with her considerable weight behind those powerful legs, it’s extremely effective on the loose-fitting old door. Bam bam bam bam bam . . . endlessly.

  Samantha, of course, has her Siamese wail.

  I endured half an hour of it before dragging myself out of bed in martyrly fashion, afflicted with a headache and what my grandmother used to call “the rheumatics,” my reward for getting soaked to the skin the day before.

  My brain wasn’t working very well either, I realized as I brooded over a cup of coffee. A confused mass of ideas thrashed about, refusing to form a coherent whole or even settle down long enough to be looked at intelligently. Sheffield, Barbara Dean, William Farrell, Archie Pettifer, the Town Hall, Clarice, Benson’s nasty hints—I reached for a pad and put it down again drearily. I didn’t have the energy to make a list.

  What I needed was to talk to someone who knew all the details of the murder and could help me sort it out, see if some pattern would emerge.

  What I needed was Alan.

  I looked at the phone, and then looked away. I’d gotten over my temper, but common sense told me there was no point in trying to reach the chief constable three days before a royal visit. Even if he was in, he was likely to be barricaded behind a wall of secretaries, and in no mood to talk. I might be able to reach him this evening, talk him into a late dessert, but that was hours from now.

  So, failing Alan, I was on my own. Even Jane hadn’t been all that sympathetic; she clearly thought I should mind my own business.

  Three aspirin and two cups of coffee later I reached for the phone. As my headache faded (replaced by heartburn), I’d remembered I wanted to talk to Barbara Dean. This time I intended to be direct. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in terrified awe of the woman, and I needed some answers. Why did she think Sheffield was at the heart of a Sherebury murder? Did it have anything to do with the Sheffield building scandal? I was sorry if she didn’t want to talk about it, but I was tired of playing games by other people’s rules. I intended to ask about Pettifer’s past, too. Much as I hated to put any stock in Benson’s hints, they might be relevant.

  I punched in the number briskly and let the phone ring at least twenty times before I dropped the receiver back on the cradle.

  So that, too, would have to wait. Frustrated, but doggedly stubborn, I reached again for the pad and pencil.

  A half hour of intense concentration produced only a brief list of not very brilliant questions in no particular order.

  THINGS I WANT TO FIND OUT

  1. What, if anything, does Sheffield have to do with our murder?

  2. Who were the preservationists in that battle?

  3. Why doesn’t Barbara want to talk about it?

  4. What on earth is the matter with Clarice?

  5. Is there anything to Benson’s hint about Jack Jenkins being Archie’s son?

  6. Was Benson really with Archie the night of the murder?

  And I couldn’t think of a single answer.

  After trying Barbara again, I gave it up and headed next door, praying Jane would be home. If she didn’t want to talk, she might at least have some idea where I could find Barbara. (I was beginning to be able to think of her by her first name, I congratulated myself. Another year or two and I might get comfortable with it.)

  I negotiated Jane’s slippery back path, but before I could knock, a confusion of dogs leapt out the door, whining and barking and turning themselves inside out in their eagerness for a walk. They approached me for a ritual snuffle, but immediately turned their attention back to Jane, following with three leashes in hand.

  “Uh-oh!” I shouted over the commotion. “Bad timing! I was coming to see you, but I don’t dare delay the troops, do I?”

  “Come along with us,” Jane roared. “QUIET, dogs!” The clamor decreased by a decibel or two and she shrugged. “They’ll shut up once we’re on our way.”

  We made for a vacant lot a few streets away, covered with rank grass and weeds, and much favored by dog owners. There Jane turned the dogs loose to run as they wished, and we sank onto a wooden bench whose surface was beaded with water.

  “Jane, I must confess I have an agenda. Do you have any idea where I might reach Barbara Dean? I really need to talk to her, and she doesn’t seem to be home.”

  She sat up a little straighter and looked at me. “Second person today to ask me that. Don’t know why everyone thinks I’m the information bureau.” But it was said without rancor. She knew perfectly well why, really; she almost always had the answers.

  “Mayor rang up this morning,” she went on. “Or his secretary did. Dean missed a meeting last night. Preservation Society. Didn’t send word. Mayor was speaking, everyone upset she wasn’t there.”

  My eyes widened. “But, Jane, she’s chairman of the Preservation Society!”

  “Mmm.” Her eyes turned back to the dogs.

  “And she wasn’t home yesterday, either, at least early in the evening, because I knocked on her door about—oh, six, probably. I thought she’d gone out to dinner. I could have been mistaken about the house, but I don’t think I was. And I’ve been calling all morning, on the phone, I mean, and there’s been no answer. Do you think we should check on her? She—I suppose she could have fallen . . . or something . . .” My voice trailed away doubtfully. Somehow, the vision of Barbara Dean as the helpless victim of an accident wasn’t easy to conjure up; she was so totally competent, so utterly in control.

  But Jane was frowning. “Not like her to be irresponsible. Never missed a meeting that I know of.”

  And Jane would know.

  I looked at Jane, unease beginning to stir, and Jane looked at me and came to a decision. She stood and whistled for the dogs.

  “Probably nothing wrong, but can’t hurt to find out. Come along, dogs, better walkies later.” They came, slowly, and allowed their leashes to be clipped on, voicing their disappointment and bewilderment all the way home.

  Jane made one more attempt on the phone, letting it ring until it disconnected itself, and we sat there looking at each other.

  “Jane, do you think . . .?”

  “Yes. I’ll drive.”

  “Thank God,” I said fervently.

  I had driven around, lost, for at least half an hour last night; Jane found the house in five minutes. It was the right house, the house I’d tried, but there was still no sign of life. No lights were on, though the day was dull enough to need them. No one answered the door.

  “Do you suppose the neighbors—?” I asked very tentatively. If Barbara had simply gone away on short notice, she would not appreciate our making a fuss about it.

  Jane was made of sterner stuff, and had the bit between her teeth. “Not like her at all,” she said stubbornly. “Something wrong. You take that side.”

  She set out for the houses to the right while I went to the left. Some of the neighbors weren’t home, but the ones immediately to either side, interrupted in the middle of their lunches, had no knowledge of Dean’s being away, and expressed astonishment that she had failed to show up for a scheduled appointment. “But she’d never do such a thing!” was the universal opinion.

  It was the man who lived directly across the street who was helpful. “You could check her car,” he suggested. “She garages it just round the corner, where I put mine, as well.” Certainly he would show us the way. He’d just tell his wife he’d be a moment—

  “Each door has its own padl
ock, you see,” he explained as we walked to the corner. “But it’s one big building, and the individual bays are divided only by partitions, half height, rather like horse stalls, eh? Mrs. Dean keeps her car just next to mine, so we can easily see—ah, here we are.”

  The building was little more than a shed, flimsily built of wood, probably designed for some other purpose originally. But the enterprising owner, seeing profit in the ever-growing, desperate need for a place to park, had turned it into a five-bay garage with just enough space for the owner of each car to park it and squeeze out. The obliging neighbor pulled open the double doors of his bay and stepped inside. We didn’t have to follow him; from the doorway we could see the car in the next bay.

  Spotless, smug, uncommunicative, it sat there. Jane did manage to slide her bulk between the neighbor’s car and the partition wall long enough to peer into Dean’s car and then slide out again.

  “Nothing,” she said briefly.

  There, behind firmly padlocked doors, was Barbara Dean’s car, cold and empty. Where, then, was Barbara Dean?

  16

  “ALAN, I HAVE to see you.”

  I’d been doing a lot of serious worrying. It was clear that Barbara knew a lot more about the Sheffield end of this story than she had told anyone. What if she knew too much—knew for certain that the builder of those council flats was responsible for the fire? If the preservation people in Sheffield were her friends, as seemed likely, she’d be bitter about the deaths, particularly of the “old auntie.”

  Or, the thought had suddenly hit me, what if she’d been involved herself, and it was her aunt who had been killed? She’d said something about painful memories. And suppose, just suppose, that the builder in question, George Crenshawe, was in Sherebury?

  It had taken me ages to reach Alan. His regular secretary wasn’t in, and the substitute answering his calls was new and extremely protective. When she finally gave him my message and he finally called me back, I’d been pacing the floor for nearly an hour.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice sharp. “Sergeant Rogers didn’t say your message was urgent—are you in trouble? Why didn’t you ring my private number?”

  “Samantha ate it,” I said sourly. “She chewed off the whole bottom corner of my little address book. Look, there are a lot of things I don’t want to discuss on the phone. Barbara Dean, and Clarice Pettifer, and the murder. And I do realize you’re frantically busy, but this is important, Alan. Can’t you take a break for tea?”

  “Impossible. I’m off to London in an hour, with two hours’ work to do before I go. If this is about the murder, I’ll put you through to Morrison.” Without giving me a chance to reply, he put the phone down. There was a series of clicks and buzzes and then the officious secretary came on the line.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Martin, Inspector Morrison is not in the office. He’ll ring you as soon as we can reach him.”

  “Oh, no, that’s too much trouble, I don’t want—”

  “No trouble at all, Mrs. Martin.” She hung up.

  The tears in my eyes were due entirely to frustration. I was still trying to convince myself of that when the phone rang. Well, apologies weren’t going to get him anywhere this time. I’d teach him to toy with my affections, I’d—I picked up the phone.

  “Yes?” I hissed, trying to sound like Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers.

  “Mrs. Martin? This is Inspector Morrison. The chief constable just rang me up, said you had some important information for me. He’s frightfully sorry he can’t deal with it himself, of course, but he asked if I’d pop round to see you. Would now be convenient?”

  “Oh.” I sounded as deflated as I felt. “Oh—uh—yes, that’s fine. I live right next to the Cathedral Close, you know, at the end of Monkswell Street, you have to go up the High Street and turn left, and then—”

  “I think I can find it, Mrs. Martin.” His tone was carefully not amused. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, then.”

  The interval was exactly long enough for me to set out tea, while feeling fifteen kinds of a fool. For calling a busy policeman out on what might well be a wild-goose chase, for venturing to give him directions, I, an American who had lived here for less than a year . . .

  He was very nice about it.

  “I hope you really don’t mind my coming round on such short notice,” he began when I had established him in a comfortable chair, “but the chief was quite insistent. He said if you thought something was important, it was, and we must sort it out immediately. He did ask me to send his apologies, by the way.” He grinned in a friendly sort of way, becoming instantly much more human. “I was to tell you he’s ready to do murder himself, either to a certain royal personage or to his staff—I quote verbatim—and he hopes you’ll forgive him for being a trifle—er—preoccupied.”

  Preoccupied wasn’t quite the way I would have put it, but I wasn’t going to carry on my quarrel with Alan through an intermediary. “It just means you’ll get his tea, though perhaps he isn’t missing much; it’s all out of tins. I haven’t had much time to bake.”

  “I’m quite fond of chocolate biscuits, actually,” said the inspector, helping himself to four. “However, I mustn’t waste your time. The chief said you mentioned Barbara Dean and Pettifer. Is there a connection there we’ve missed?”

  “I don’t know.” I poured him a cup of tea and adjusted my mind back to business, and suddenly felt much less apologetic. There really was something odd going on. “What I do know is this: There was a very messy affair in Sheffield some years ago.” I told him the story I had pieced together from what the Davises had told me and my own researches, including my suppositions about Barbara Dean.

  “Now, obviously, there’s no proven connection with Sherebury there, but I’m convinced Mrs. Dean knows quite a lot about it. She’s been saying the oddest things. In fact, she said something to Clarice Pettifer on Monday that upset her almost to the point of a nervous breakdown. She—Mrs. Dean, I mean—said she told Clarice the key to the murder must lie in Sheffield. And that brings me to the real point. I’m sure you wondered if I was eventually going to have one.”

  Morrison merely smiled.

  “I’ve been trying for the best part of twenty-four hours now to reach Barbara Dean and ask her about all this. And—this is going to sound melodramatic, but I can’t help it—she seems to be missing.”

  The inspector put down his teacup and gave me his full attention. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘missing’?”

  “Oh, not what the police mean officially, I suppose,” I said a little impatiently. “I know there’s something about forty-eight hours before they—you—will do anything.”

  “It depends upon the circumstances,” Morrison said grimly. “Please go on.”

  “Well, she hasn’t been seen, apparently, since yesterday around noon. There was a meeting of the Preservation Society—the Preservation Society, Inspector, she’s the chairman, for heaven’s sake—last night, and she neither showed up nor canceled. And she wasn’t home sick, either, at least not around six, because I was at her house trying to find her. Anyway she was perfectly well when she left the bookshop just before lunch. A bit strange in manner, but in good health. And today she doesn’t answer her phone, or her doorbell, but—and this is the worst part—her car is in the garage. Jane Langland and I checked. Now, doesn’t that all sound to you like she’s missing?”

  “It warrants following up.” Morrison swallowed the last bite of biscuit and and took out his notebook. “Now, what do you mean exactly by saying Dean was ‘strange in manner’ yesterday?”

  “Well—preoccupied. She got that look on her face, as if she’d suddenly seen something in her mind. In cartoons they put a lightbulb over the head. You know, ‘Eureka’?”

  He nodded, with a small grin.

  “Only this didn’t seem to be a very pleasant thing, because I remember thinking she looked for a moment as if she’d been turned to stone. And then she put the book back on the shelf and just
left, without a word of explanation or good-bye or anything.”

  “What book?”

  “Oh, sorry. Just a book of poems. By George Herbert. I remember that because it seemed so dull and harmless.”

  The inspector stood up. “I’m very much obliged to you, Mrs. Martin, for letting us know about this right away. I’ll set the machinery in motion, and let you know what progress we make in locating Mrs. Dean.”

  “Wait, there’s more! I’ll try not to take any more time than I have to, but you should know what Mr. Benson said to me last night about Mr. Pettifer.”

  “Ah, yes, Pettifer.” The inspector sat down again.

  “I had dinner with Benson last night, you see. Quite by accident; the King’s Head was crowded and we had to share a table. I was tired, so he did most of the talking—and he said a lot, one way and another.

  “I wish I could remember his exact words, because none of this was what you could call a definite statement; it was all in the way he looked and sounded. Innuendo, you know, nudges and winks and knowing looks. I hate that sort of thing, and I may have inferred all the wrong meanings. And to be honest, he’d had quite a lot too much to drink, so none of it may be very reliable. But what it boiled down to, if not in so many words, was a strong hint that Jack Jenkins was Mr. Pettifer’s illegitimate son. He as much as said that the two of them looked alike, and that Mr. Pettifer had some dire secrets in his past.”

  “Really.” The inspector tilted his head to one side and pursed his lips.

  “I thought that might interest you. And what may be of even more interest, although this was when he was really under the weather, was that he almost admitted he was lying about Pettifer being with him the night of the murder.”

  The inspector whistled softly.

  “Now I could be all wet, as I said. And you won’t forget he was drunk, will you? I don’t pretend I have any fondness for Benson, but I’d hate for a man’s ramblings to be held against him. I just thought you might want to talk to Benson yourself. You see, I can’t help wondering if Pettifer might have had something to do with the fire in the Sheffield council flats.”