Death in the Night Watches

by George Bellairs

  Littlejohn introduced himself and stated the purpose of his visit.

  Vera Worth received him calmly enough, but with a trace of irritation.

  “Can’t the local police handle this affair without bringing in help from all over the country! And why select the family for questioning? Surely, they’re the last people who’d want Henry dead! The works are dependent—or were dependent—on him and therefore the family income.”

  Littlejohn had heard that the fortune which Wiliam Worth left in trust for his wife was in good securities outside the Company, but he couldn’t very well tell Vera so.

  “You must allow me to conduct this inquiry in my own way, Mrs. Worth,” he said politely. “We have our own methods.”

  “So I understand, Inspector, although I’d have thought the works would have been your first port of call. I’m sure it’s there, among the dissatisfied hands, that you’ll find your man.”

  “You haven’t any useful information to give me concerning Mr. Henry’s affairs immediately before the crime, madam?”

  “Why, no. Am I Henry’s keeper? Even if I am—or was—his stepmother, he was older than I, remember. We got on exceptionally well, but beyond that, he wasn’t in the habit of confiding his troubles in me.…”

  “Yes, but other people might have done. It is usually from third parties that one gathers history of the kind in which I’m interested.”

  “Gossip, you mean. That doesn’t interest me. As I’ve said before, the works is your hunting ground if it’s scandal you’re after.”

  Littlejohn saw that he was not going to get much help from this forthright, self-possessed woman, although he was sure that she knew more than she pretended.

  “Were you at home when the crime occurred, madam?” he asked preparing to make his way back to the town.

  “I see. You want an alibi. Do you suspect me?”

  “No, Mrs. Worth. Merely a matter of routine.”

  “Because what earthly good would my killing Henry have done? However, if you want to know my movements on the night of the crime, I was playing bridge with Dr. and Mrs. Watterson until nearly midnight and I left there about one o’clock. I’d been out riding and called on my way back. About nine o’clock that would be. They persuaded me to stay and make up a four.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Worth. That’s quite satisfactory.…”

  “In that case, I’ll say good night, Inspector. I want to see my horse comfortably settled.”

  Littlejohn made off the way he had come. He walked back almost automatically, for his mind was full of the impressions he had gathered at the Hall. He strolled slowly along, his pipe firmly gripped and sticking out aggressively. The air of the woods smelt stale. The breeze feebly wafted through the thick foliage and was laden with the scent of leaf mould and fungus. He felt that from the house behind him eyes were following his progress.

  So the Worth family weren’t going to help. Every one of them he had interviewed so far had either a guilty conscience or else was shielding someone else. Even Miss Rickson, the old nanny, got scared when she saw which way the wind was blowing.

  No wonder Trentvale Hall was an uneasy place. Old William had certainly put the cat among the pigeons when he made his Will. Silly old fool! Dead and past punishment, he had, during the latter days of his life, sowed the seeds of passion and murder in his own family just like the evil one sowing his tares. It’s a bad bird that fouls its own nest.…

  First, there was Henry, apparently in love with his stepmother during the lifetime of his father. When the Will is read he drops her like a red hot coal. A passionate, headstrong woman, Vera Worth. Scorned, she might have turned on Henry in wrath.

  Then, there was Gerald, whom Littlejohn hadn’t yet met. He was always hard up and eternally quarrelling with Henry about running the works. He, too, might have found his stepmother very desirable and made a kind of three-cornered contest between himself, Henry and old William. What a house! Three purposeful men and an attractive woman. Hate and malice by the bucketful and any amount of intrigue.

  And there were the two Châteaulœufs.… Two more dark horses. Penniless, if what he heard was true, and more or less dependent on old William’s bounty during his lifetime. Presumably sponging on the widow and the rest of the family after his death.

  As for real honest-to-goodness motives for killing Henry, it would be necessary to know how much private fortune the victim possessed, quite apart from his reversion if and when Vera Worth died. If it were considerable and left to the impecunious Châteaulœufs or to Gerald, there might be something to follow there.

  There was the death of the dog, as well. And maybe the gun accident had some connection with the crime. But those involved Vera Worth, not Henry.

  The whole affair was a beastly mix-up. Indeed, the murder might not have emanated from the Hall at all, but from the works. Some quarrel with a workman, some trouble with one of the women.…

  Littlejohn had reached the fringe of the wood and his way now lay straight to the town, which stretched like a dark blot down in the valley. Night was falling and one or two lights glowed already from houses in the distance. The air was keener now that the trees had been left behind. Billowy clouds scuttered across the sky, and between them and the valley hung a pall of smoke, product of the mills and furnaces.

  The country gradually merged into the town and then came paved streets. Some of the operatives lolled about street corners and in the town centre, smoking and spitting about the place and discussing the war and local news. They eyed Littlejohn as he passed by. Some of them even nodded to him with bold familiarity. The fact of his arrival had been noised abroad. Scotland Yard was on the job! Had they dared, the Inspector felt that some of the idlers would have stopped him and given him some advice and perhaps information with which to be going on.

  Littlejohn wondered to himself what would happen if he approached some outstanding member of one of the knots and questioned him in friendly fashion.

  “Excuse me, you work at Worth’s—I presume. How do you like it there? What do you think of the bosses? Mr. Henry, for example? Is it true that he was a bit of a tartar and resented trade union interference? Well, somebody’s got their own back on him at last. Wonder who it could be?”

  No. That wouldn’t do at all. Littlejohn was a foreign body among these workpeople and as such must be ejected as soon as possible. They might even take the past of the unpopular Worths against him, just because he was an outsider and the Worths were locals.

  It was going to be a much harder job than that. Tomorrow, he would go to the works and see what the principal witnesses had to say about it all. Catch them when alone at their benches and interview them without spectators.… That would be it. Meanwhile, sufficient for the day … There was the “Rod and Line,” with supper and beer to cheer him up.

  The Inspector made for his hotel and, dismissing the case from his mind, settled down to enjoy peace and quiet for what remained of the evening.

  CHAPTER V

  THE LANDLORD OF THE “ROD AND LINE”

  THE “Rod and Line” is not the best hotel in Trentbridge, but it is the most homely. It had been recommended to Littlejohn by Inspector Kane, not only as a comfortable lodging, but because its landlord was an ex-policeman, Constable Cairns, who, when he received his pension from the County Constabulary, settled down as a licenced victualler intent on keeping his place on model lines. And he made a success of it.

  After closing time and after Littlejohn had had a word with Inspector Kane over the telephone about certain routine matters to which he wanted him to attend, landlord and guest settled down for a private nightcap before retiring.

  Cairns was a bit overawed at first by the presence of a Scotland Yard detective of the first water under his roof. It was only with difficulty that he could be induced to be natural. He continued to revert to his old stilted official manner and routine type of address until Littlejohn had to tell him about it and point out to him that they met as equals and as l
andlord and lodger.

  The ex-policeman was heavily built with a large, round, red and shiny face. He would have been dubbed a bad life by insurance companies, for he had lost his police force fitness and was putting on too much flesh. Nevertheless, he was shrewd and observant. A mine of local information.

  “Mr. Henry spent more money than folks thought,” he said as they discussed the crime over glasses of beer. “Keepin’ a place like this, you overhear lots of things when drink’s loosed the tongue. When wine’s in, wit’s out, they say. I hear a thing or two, sir.”

  Cairns winked and tapped the side of his nose with a fat forefinger.

  “I’m off to bed, Bill,” said Mrs. Cairns, putting her head in the room. “Come up quietly, because I’m sure to be asleep. It’s generally the small hours when you get to bed once you start talkin’ police stuff.”

  “I’ll not be so long, love,” replied the ex-policeman and the comfortable-looking woman, who was almost as big as her husband smiled incredulously at Littlejohn.

  “I’ll see he comes, Mrs. Cairns,” said the Inspector.

  “Mr. Henry was a bachelor, as you no doubt know by this, sir,” continued Cairns when his wife had departed, after telling them that she’d locked the front door, put out the cat and left the takings in the safe. “But that didn’t make him any less fond of the women. He was fond of them, that’s true. And he spent his money on them. He must have cursed his father often enough for leaving the Will as he did. Mr. Henry liked putting on a show for the ladies of his fancy and I bet he wished Mrs. William would come a cropper when out riding and break her neck, so’s he could get his share.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do indeed. He was very friendly—too friendly, if you ask me—with his step-ma until the old man died and he found out how the Will was made. Then they wasn’t seen about any more. No wonder. I bet Mr. Henry’s stomach turned over when he heard that Will read out. Not that Mr. Gerald and Miss Alice and that fancy Count of hers didn’t feel as bad.…”

  “You know them all well?”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “And you seem to know all the family business about the Will.”

  “Everybody did. You see, the local paper publishes details of most local Wills. Mr. William Worth’s affairs caused a nine days’ wonder in Trentbridge, I can tell you. The talk of the town. Understandable, too, for it was a dirty trick and had in it the seeds of future trouble, as we can see by the present crime.”

  Cairns went on to tell how his hotel was the Count’s favourite haunt. There he met his cronies at all times of the day and evening. These included several other local drones and spongers, among them a bank manager who had recently been sacked for drinking during business hours and for allowing the Count and his associates overdrafts of a type deprecated by his head office and being unable to get them repaid, for he had sacrificed his authority and their respect through excess of bibulous bonhomie.

  “I know the new manager’s been pressing the Count for repayment. Now, if Mr. Henry had left Miss Alice well provided for in his Will—and I know the two of ’em were good pals—what about the Count having bumped off Mr. Henry to save himself …?”

  “Yes. That is one theory. I must look into it. Meanwhile, did Mr. Henry ever land himself in trouble with his philandering?”

  “Not that I heard of. Customers would joke about his carryings-on when they got talkative.… He was too crafty to get himself in hot water with married women, of course. But there’s been some complaints among the hands at the works since they took on girls there. Mr. Henry was too much in the shops where the girls were working. Pawing ’em, you know. Couldn’t keep his hands off the pretty ones, I hear.”

  “So he’d be getting the young chaps with sweethearts there a bit mad, eh?”

  “More than that. You see, the attentions of the boss is bound to turn the heads of some girls. Gets ’em a bit above themselves, like. They begin to look down their noses at honest, hardworking chaps, that type, don’t they?”

  “Yes, I quite see that.”

  “One case in particular caused a row. Mr. Henry’d been taking Blodwen Evans, a pretty little lass of about twenty, home in his car. Said her home was on his way, which was all a lot of tommyrot. The girl’s head was quite turned about it. Her father got mad. He’s a Welshman with a hot temper, is Llewellyn Evans and doesn’t wrap things up when he’s roused. He works at Worth’s, too, but that doesn’t make any difference. He’s a very religious man. Always at the chapel, a deacon and such like. He’s been heard to say that rather than have his daughter corrupted and sent to the devil by Mr. Henry, he’d kill him.”

  “Is that so. Sounds interesting. What does Pa Evans do at the works?”

  Cairns buried his nose in his glass of beer, as though keeping his guest in suspense.

  “He’s engineer there,” he said at length. “He’s in charge of the electric motive plant.”

  “And the gas engine that killed Henry?”

  “And the gas engine.”

  “We’re getting on, aren’t we, Cairns? I must pay a visit to Mr. Llewellyn Evans and his engines to-morrow.”

  “You’re going to have your hands full if you try to follow up Mr. Henry’s affairs with women and what they’ve led up to and how they’ve ended, sir. But I think I would say that Blodwen Evans and Mrs. William Worth were the two who caused the most tongue-wagging in the town. The one because her father kicked up such a fuss about it behind Henry’s back; the other because it was rather a novel experience seeing a chap knocking around the place with his stepmother. And not in what you might call a filial way, either.…”

  “What kind of a man was old William Worth, Cairns?”

  “He used to come in here quite a lot in his time. He was always a bit of a tartar, with a streak of a self made man in him, although, mind you, he inherited his fortune from his forebears. The Worths have been established in this valley for … well … I’d say nearly a couple of hundred years. When his first wife was alive, he was steady. She kept him straight. A real lady she was and they do say it was a runaway match. But after her death, he seemed to go to pieces. Drink got him … and then, of course, there was the depression. The hands at the foundry got a grudge against old William. Said he’d made a big private fortune out of the works in good times and hadn’t stood by them when bad days came. Which I guess was true, come to look at it that way.”

  “And how did he get on with his family?”

  “As far as I know, there was nothing much wrong. Henry was the bright boy, of course. Worked hard at the foundry. Gerald was a bit of a flop, it seems. Preferred art to industry and his father had to force him home by stopping supplies. A bit spineless, is Gerald, in my opinion. As for Alice. Well, she always was a harum-scarum. Good hearted, mind you, but a bit wild. Who but a madcap would ’ave married a penniless Count the way she’s done? They do say there’s a bit of madness in the family. William’s mother went off her head, I believe … and his father died with the D.T.’s. So this generation haven’t had a good start.”

  “And old William’s second marriage? That would give everyone a shock, I’m thinking.”

  “You’re right. The second Mrs. William Worth was out of the top drawer, right enough. Real, blue blooded county, she is, but her family are as poor as church mice. They say William lent her father a fortune and then asked for Vera to meet the debt. I’ve heard William Worth boasting here when he was drunk that he’d show his two sons who was the better man by having children by his second marriage. He was bitter about the two of ’em being bachelors and having no children to inherit the works. They got very quarrelsome of late among themselves and very likely the whole family’d have broke up if William hadn’t died when he did.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last winter. Although he was turned seventy-five, the old man wouldn’t stay away from the foundry and caught a chill through running from the hot rooms out into the yard and back. Turned to pneumonia and althou
gh you’d have sworn he’d pull through, judging from the look of him, he must have really undermined his strength with his drinking and he went out like a snuffed candle.”

  “So, his young wife hadn’t long to wait for her dues?”

  “No. She really put her money on the right horse, didn’t she?”

  “Do you know Miss Rickson; former children’s nurse at the Hall, I think she was?”

  “Sure. Everybody knows Miss Rickson. She’s been in the town for getting on forty years. A smart woman in her prime.…”

  “So I would imagine. I met her this evening. She’s now a pensioner I see.”

  “The family have always been devoted to her.… In fact, she’s one of ’em in all but name. The only one of them who dared to stand up to old William and tell him where he got off. I do believe the old man was a bit scared of her. Made provision for her in his Will, I heard.”

  “She still looks upon the present generation of Worths as her children and fortunately seems to get on well with the late William’s widow, too.”

  “She gave the old chap the length of her tongue, I believe, when he told her he was going to marry a youngster, but she seems to have got over it. At any rate, it didn’t make her pack up and leave the Hall. She stuck it out there. I’ll bet she could tell a tale or two about the carryings-on there’ve been at that house.…”

  “Very likely. But she won’t talk. She’s the faithful old retainer type and the rack wouldn’t make her divulge the secrets of the family.…”

  The clock in the bar struck twelve rapidly and with apparent excitement.

  “Well, Cairns. I think that’s enough crime for one sitting. Mrs. Cairns’ll be after my blood to-morrow if I keep you up longer.… Hullo … late customer.”