Death in the Night Watches

by George Bellairs

  “What do you want again?”

  Nostrils dilated and almost emitting flames, biceps rippling beneath his sleeves, chest thrown out aggressively, chin in, on guard.

  “Another talk. This time with you, Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Veronica … go in and get tea. There’s watercress in the sink. I’ve grated the carrots and …”

  With a toss of her head the girl passed indoors. She evidently knew when and when not to heed parental orders. Somewhere the red light must have shown.…

  “… and as for you, we’ll say what we have to say right here,” continued Bartlett, barring the doorway with his rigid body.

  “All the same to me, sir,” replied Littlejohn, good-humouredly puffing at his pipe. “I’ve only one question to ask you. Where were you at midnight on the night of Mr. Henry Worth’s death?”

  “What the hell’s that to do with you … you … you … meddling bobby.…”

  Littlejohn stared him straight in the eyes.

  “I wouldn’t be silly if I were you, Mr. Bartlett. We know more of your movements than you think.…”

  Then he drew a bow at a venture.

  “… You saw Mr. Henry Worth that night, didn’t you? In fact, you’d learned that he’d been taking your daughter out for the evening and went to tell him what you’d do to him if …”

  “That’ll do … that’ll do.”

  Bartlett clenched his fists and contorted his rugged face as though praying the gods to give him patience. His nose looked more than ever like a little snout.

  “Why I’m telling you, I don’t know. You nor anybody else can’t force me. But I’ll tell you because let it be a lesson to you that nobody can trifle with my daughter without answering to me for it. Not even Mr. Henry Worth with his capitalist privileges … not even King Dick.…”

  “All right, Mr. Bartlett. Let’s get on with it.”

  “I went to see Mr. Henry Worth at the Hall. He’d gone firewatching, so I went to the works where I knocked on the private door of his office. He let me in and out that way. There was nobody else there. He was good and scared when he saw me.…”

  Bartlett postured like Discobolus in position number one.

  “… I told him where he got off. Not that anything wrong had been done. But I knew his reputation … and I wasn’t havin’ my Veronica mixed up with him. I told him that any more of it, and I’d take her away from the works and give him a damn good hidin’ in the bargain.”

  Littlejohn got the impression that perhaps Veronica’s virtue was not the only matter at stake. Maybe Henry had been seducing her from her father’s iron regime and feeding her on roast beef and pork chops!

  “What did he say?”

  “He laughed. Said he’d just taken her out for a little meal in appreciation of her hard work … encouragement like. If I took it that way, he’d see that I’d no reason for complaint again.…”

  “What time was that?”

  “I got there just about half-past ten. Veronica came in about nine. I’d a job gettin’ out of her where she’d been. When she told me, I put on my things and off after Mr. Henry Worth, if you please. I’d a lost journey to the Hall. It was striking ten-thirty by St. Chad’s as I got to the works. What I had to say was short and to the point. I left about eleven.”

  “Where were you until twelve-thirty, then, Mr. Bartlett?”

  “Who told you I was out till then?”

  “We have our sources of information.…”

  “I went for a walk. I was so furious that I knew I’d not be able to sleep unless I got some good fresh air and flushed my rage out of my blood.”

  “H’m. Did anybody see you coming and going at the works?”

  “No … there was nobody about … except a woman who seemed to be leading home a drunken husband.… They were too occupied with their own quarrelling and the like to see me.”

  “That’ll be all then, thank you, Mr. Bartlett. I’ll leave you to get your tea.…”

  “I’ve had my tea, thank you for nothing. And I’ve only told you what I have to show I’ve nothing to hide and that if anybody tries to do any tricks on me, I’ll know the reason, or my name’s not Bartlett. I don’t care who it is … monied or privileged classes, it’s all the same to me. King Dick himself …”

  Littlejohn left him standing rebelliously on his own threshold and wondered to himself on the way who King Dick might be.

  He had not much time to spend at the “Rod and Line” but called in to arrange about his dinner and the room in which he and Kane would meet Vera Worth.

  Cairns looked conspiratorial.

  “Funny thing ’appened, this afternoon, sir,” said the landlord when they had arranged their bit of business. “Ted Griffiths, the steward of the Gentlemen’s Club ’ere—and an ex-member of the force, by the way—called in to ask me to change him a ten pound note. I gave him pounders for it. I was just twittin’ him, like. ‘Oho, Ted,’ I sez, ‘been backin’ the hosses?’ ‘No,’ sez ’e. ‘Jest bin doin’ one of my gentlemen a service, like.’ ‘Must a bin somethin’ worth while …’ I goes on, fishin’-like. We police are always curious, aren’t we, sir? ‘Got it fer keepin’ a still tongue in me head,’ is all Ted’ll say and off he goes. Generally free and easy, too. Now, sir, I wonder if that ten quid is part of the jiggery-pokery that’s goin’ on in this town.…”

  “You know, Cairns, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Got the note with you?”

  The landlord hurried to the bar and brought the bank note from the till. It was a new one, with a single series of number in the top left hand corner.

  “Marks of the Home Counties Bank … I keep my account there, so I oughter know,” whispered Cairns hoarsely and pointed to the hieroglyphics with a fat forefinger.

  “Lend me this, will you, Cairns? I’ll see you get it back, or another like it.”

  “Sure, sir. Take it and welcome.”

  The Home Counties Bank had long been closed, but there were lights burning in the office. Littlejohn rang the bell and was admitted by a clerk who looked annoyed at the intrusion and astonished at the impudence of anyone calling so late. When he explained the reason of his visit and produced the note, he was cordially received.

  It was a matter of minutes turning up the records.

  The elderly first cashier, a grey headed, military man, near retiring age, consulted the manager. The manager, small, portly, well groomed, bald headed, beamed through his gold framed spectacles like a jovial monk.

  “That’s easy, Inspector,” he said, returning the note between two fingers. “It was issued yesterday to Mr. Gerald Worth … from the foundry, you know.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  SNAKES AND LADDERS

  “WE’VE had our ups and downs in this case, but I’m beginning to see light at last,” said Littlejohn to Kane as they sat in the Inspector’s office again.

  “Well, I wish you’d throw some in my direction,” mourned the local man. “I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

  “It’s been like a game of snakes and ladders, Kane. You know, you get along like a house on fire, slowly travelling towards your goal. Then suddenly, you make a throw, and down the ladder you go, back a dozen squares and you have to pick yourself up and start again.…”

  Kane made throaty noises and looked as if he wondered whatever in the world the Scotland Yard officer was talking about. His eyes protruded questioningly reminding Littlejohn of an engraving of a man suffering from ophthalmic goitre in his medical dictionary at home.

  Littlejohn sighed and felt he would be glad to get back to Hampstead and have a good laugh over his day’s adventures with his wife again. Kane was a decent fellow, but as heavy and unresponsive as a boiled pudding. An honest-to-goodness officer, serious and conscientious, but finding no humour or cause for lightheartedness in his labours.

  Without the influence of Letty, thought Littlejohn, I might have been just such another.…

  “… You were saying that we were going to meet Mrs. Worth late
r in the evenin’. What’s it all about, Littlejohn, and what’s the state of the poll up-to-date?”

  Littlejohn filled and lit his pipe, but let it go out.

  “I’ll give you my own idea of how the thing happened.…”

  “What I want to know is …” began Kane.

  “I’ll try to keep events in order of time … a sort of sequence and if you don’t follow anything, just butt in and ask about it.”

  Littlejohn lit his pipe again and, to his surprise, Kane unbent to the extent of taking a huge curved briar from his drawer, filling it laboriously from a tin and then lighting it with such fervour that he filled the whole room with a fog of coarse tobacco smoke.

  “The whole thing begins with the second marriage of William Worth. He’s a headstrong old man who hasn’t been treated as he thinks he ought to have been by the county folk of Trentshire. He’s wealthy and thinks his money ought to buy everything.…”

  “He’s grown tired of his family. His two sons are bachelors and his only daughter’s married a penniless and brainless French count, who’s neither use nor ornament.”

  For the first time since the two officers had met, Kane burst into hoarse laughter, neighing like a horse and swallowing smoke which terminated his mirth in fits of convulsive coughing.

  “At last the old man finds a way of getting his own back on both the gentry and his family. He’s put the Underhills under an obligation to him by lending them money to pay off mortgages. Then he proposes to one of the daughters, Vera. She is suffering from the effects of being recently crossed in love. To spite her face, she cuts off her nose.… She marries William Worth and comes to live at Trentvale Hall.”

  Kane removed his pipe and Littlejohn re-lit his own.

  “I know all that, an’ a lot more besides,” said the Trentbridge Inspector.

  “I’m just sketching in the background.… Vera Worth is a very handsome woman. Furthermore, she’s younger than the three Worth children to whom she’s become stepmother! The two sons find her very attractive at first. She’s a novelty in the home, a charming woman. The only snag is she’s married to the old man, and his eyes are on them all the time. Gerald behaves himself, but soon, Henry and Vera are the best of friends. In fact, they get knocking around together. Some people even say they’re lovers.…”

  “Probably they were right at that.…”

  “Be that as it may.… Old William knows what’s going on. He taunts his wife and soon begins to ill-treat her. She’s got to the far end and is ready to leave him, when, unexpectedly, he gets a chill, pneumonia, and dies.

  “But that’s not the end of William by any means. He’s made arrangements for a pretty revenge to begin with his death. By his Will he leaves all his large fortune to his wife, Vera, in trust. She’s to have the income and when she dies the money goes to his family. Think of it! Vera in the prime of life and each member of the family older than she is! Could anything be more diabolical?”

  “The old swine.…”

  “Especially when you remember that with the exception of Henry, who has a flair for invention and makes a good income from it, the Worths have little of their own except shares in the foundry and those only in very limited numbers. Alice and her Count just manage to get along by living with first the father, then Vera at the Hall. Gerald’s not much better off, for he has big ideas about his style of living and hates the work he’s compelled to do at the foundry through force of circumstances.”

  “Vera immediately becomes unpopular with the family, of course. Who wouldn’t when she stands between them and about two hundred thousand pounds? The Will has provided for residence at the Hall of the Worth survivors, so she can’t turn them out.…”

  “Henry, from being fond of Vera, begins to avoid her. Gerald is icily polite. Alice and the Count have as little to do with her as they can. Then, things begin to happen.

  “First of all, Vera has a gun accident. She’s a girl who’s been brought up to use a gun from childhood and has a respect for her twelve-bore. I’ve seen a pair of guns she owns. They were in beautiful condition. But the barrels of one had been shattered by the accident; the other was perfectly kept—as clean as a new pin. The accident was due to one of the barrels being choked with what looked like grey clay. You might expect a greenhorn to ill-treat a weapon, but never to stick it, barrels downwards, in the earth and let the wad dry like a brick.…

  “Somebody stopped up the barrel with moulder’s sand from the foundry, hoping that when she fired the gun, the explosion would fatally injure her.…”

  “Ah! Mr. Henry took moulder’s sand from the works, Littlejohn! But what the … He was the one who was murdered.…”

  Kane halted in confusion.

  “Henry took sand to compare it with samples he’d taken from the damaged gun, like I did. And he reached the same conclusion. Somebody was trying to get Vera out of the way of that two hundred thousand pounds.

  “But Henry didn’t do that until after another event which aroused his suspicions. Vera started with stomach trouble, which in my view wasn’t gastritis at all. It was slow arsenic poisoning!”

  Kane’s pipe had gone out. His mouth opened like that of a fish gaping through the glass of its bowl.

  “One morning, things came to a head. Vera’s dog died from drinking tea from a pot that had been brought to her bedroom. Whilst in bed, she was surprised to see through the open door, reflected in a mirror, a hand—she couldn’t see anything else—change her teapot, which the maid had left standing on a table in the corridor whilst she got some biscuits. As a precaution, she tried it on the dog. The dog died.

  “But somebody else had seen the incident. Whether or not Henry heard something going on outside his room, where the table stood, or was coming from the bathroom and spotted what was happening, we don’t know. But the death of the dog scared him so much that, after it had been buried, he went and dug it up by night, took samples of arsenic from the stocks of weed killer, and had an expert examine them. It was confirmed that the dog had died from the same brand of arsenic as was contained in the weed killer.

  “Meanwhile, Vera had also been to the experts, who had analysed some of the contents of the teapot and told her the same story. She was terrified and prepared to pack up and leave for her father’s home at once. This, however, was prevented by the death of Henry.

  “Now, Vera believed Henry was the one who was trying to kill her. She felt safe in staying on, therefore, until matters arising from his death had been squared up. Then she was off. But the truth was, Henry was protecting her. It was for doing this that he met his own death. The real culprit was Gerald.”

  “But … but … he’s got an alibi.…”

  “Wait a bit, Kane. Let’s see what happened after Henry confirmed what he suspected. Alice and the Count lived on the other side of the corridor from the rest of the family. He must have heard Gerald’s door close or something.… At any rate, he was fond of his sister and probably couldn’t bring himself to believe she’d stoop to murder. Gerald was different, however.

  “Mr. Gerald had big ideas and not enough money to carry them out. His means were very limited. He was accustomed to living well at the Hall and seeing his father squander money as he liked. He was educated at Oxford and got the taste for good things there, as well as a distaste for the foundry and all that it stood for. He was like a bird in a cage. All he wanted was for the door to open and to take wing and clear off.…

  “For years Gerald overspent his income from the foundry. He incurred overdrafts at the bank in antici pation of his salary and dividends. He backed horses and played the Stock Exchange in the hope of making a rapid fortune. Probably, he borrowed from friends, too. He ran a flat in London and there was a girl with it. He went down there from time to time and cut a dash among friends who, I suppose, sponged on him and quickly stripped him of all he’d got until next pay day. It’s a wonder he didn’t do something rash before.”

  “You’ve picked up a lot of stuff that I didn�
�t know. Who’s told you all that?”

  “Friends of Gerald, rather talkative in their cups. Then, after he’d expected and perhaps even borrowed on his expectations from father, the old man gets married, and, to crown all, ties up his money and makes Master Gerald have to wait for the death of a girl younger than himself!

  “Can you imagine what he felt like? As soon as he could do so without arousing suspicion, Gerald set about getting Vera out of the way. She’s always out shooting. He’s not much in that line himself but he’s heard of guns bursting through obstructions in the barrels. He’s seen the peculiar qualities of moulding sand and tries that as his means. The attempt fails because the stuff isn’t hard enough and breaks up.… Vera, however, gets a bad shaking. Gerald has to look elsewhere.

  “His mind turns to poisoning. He steals some of the gardener’s weed killer and somehow manages to feed it to Vera in small doses. She goes to the doctor who diagnoses gastritis. Finally, he increases the dose. He puts it in her morning tea, but it doesn’t come off, as we know. Instead, it puts Henry on his track. It takes Henry’s mind back to the gun accident and there, if you ask me, Henry’s suspicions turn to Gerald, for Alice and the Count would never have thought of using moulding sand. Henry was seen with a sample in his office and was comparing it with some he’d taken from the moulding shop.

  “When the ghastly truth dawned on Henry, he went for Gerald like a madman. They had some fearful rows which were overheard by Clara, the maid at the Hall, Miss Rickson, the secretary at the works and Miss Bartlett, Henry’s so-called secretary.

  “Miss Bartlett heard Henry say there was to be no more of it; it had got to stop. He faced Gerald with the reports on the dog and the arsenic.… The girl thought they were quarrelling about some defalcations in the books, but I’ve the word of Waghorn that Gerald couldn’t have done it. He just didn’t know how. Waghorn also told me they weren’t speaking for days before Henry died.

  “Clara, the maid at the Hall, overheard quarrelling, too. Henry was telling his brother that if he was hard up there was no excuse for that. That, according to my reckoning, was poisoning Vera.