‘I can’t think…’
‘You never could. I’d better ring them, and we’ll say we didn’t know he was dead or the formalities in cases like this. We’ll just act dumb. And that won’t be difficult for you, my girl. You’re never any help…’
But Dorothy didn’t seem to hear. She was actually smiling a kind of smug, feline smile at her own thoughts. Freedom and adventure again…
‘Well…? What are you smilin’ at? Go and phone Buckley at the police station. Just tell him Mr. Dodd died suddenly and will he come up. Don’t say any more. You hear me? Not another word. Now get goin’…’
Dorothy undulated to the hall. There was a new provocative swing of her hips and her lethargy was gone. Mrs. Nicholls suddenly changed her mind and took up the phone before her daughter could get to it. She never knew what Dorothy would say with a man at the other end! She dialled a number, after looking it up in the book. At the police house in Brande the bell began to ring, the dog barked, P.C. Buckley turned and grunted, and Charles Buckley, aged ten months, awoke and started to howl.
2—Big Guns
Littlejohn wouldn’t have been in the case at all but for Willie Dodd. The Midshire County Police, under whose jurisdiction the village of Brande fell, had a C.I.D. of their own and up-to-date forensic laboratories which they boasted were as good as those of the Metropolitan Police, any day. But that wasn’t good enough for William Dodd, M.P., who had his eyes set on the premiership and was now a prominent member of the cabinet.
And just as the Prime Minister was hinting about a dissolution and a general election, the black sheep of the family, Harry, Willie’s younger brother, got himself murdered. A loafer, living with a woman not his wife, Harry looked like becoming the centre of a lot of dirty linen and unsavoury publicity. Willie Dodd wanted a quick solution and an end to his brother’s publicity, before the political news broke. Harry’s name must not only be out of the headlines, but chased right out of print before the party manifestos appeared. Willie depended for his large majority on Methodist and Catholic votes, in an industrial constituency. Loafing and living in sin wouldn’t go down well with them at all…
The news of Dodd’s death broke early. The police informed his family in Cambridge before nine o’clock, and Harry’s son, Peter, at once let Uncle Willie know. Before ten-thirty Willie Dodd had spoken to the Home Office, the Midshire Police, and the Commissioner at Scotland Yard. Littlejohn and Cromwell arrived at Brande by police car at just after two.
‘It’s a top level job. The big guns are going off…’
There was a wry smile on the Deputy Commissioner’s face as he sent his men about their business.
It looked like an auction sale or a car rally outside Mon Abri when the detectives got there.
‘What are all this lot?’ said Cromwell, picking a spot in which to park the car. At the end of the row of cars stood Uncle Fred’s bicycle.
Uncle Fred was Mrs. Nicholls’ brother, and she had sent for him at once to represent her and her daughter against the power of the Dodds. He was a retired lawyer’s clerk and thought no end of himself. When Littlejohn entered the house, the county police were working silently, but Uncle Fred, whose surname was Binns, was arguing with Peter Dodd, who had also turned up to represent the family.
‘Pending a proper settlement, you ought to make it a thousand, without prejudice…’
Peter Dodd had offered the Nicholls women five hundred pounds to clear out and leave the bungalow and the dead man to the Dodd family for attention. When they were trying to settle matters as decently and quickly as possible, it was a humbug having father’s mistress and her mother hanging round.
‘Make it seven-fifty then…’
The photographers had done their work, the finger-print men had given it up as a bad job, the body was in the morgue at Helstonbury, and Superintendent Judkin was waiting to talk the matter over with Littlejohn as soon as he arrived.
Uncle Fred mistook Littlejohn for the family lawyer, and wrung him by the hand.
‘I’ve just been suggestin’ that we fix a sum of seven hundred and fifty for the expenses of my sister and niece, pendente lite…’
He was a little man with a boozy face and watery eyes, the sort you fear might have a stroke any minute. His nose glowed and he smelled of whisky already.
The attendant constable was getting rattled.
‘We can’t do with either of you about here now. You’ll have to settle your private matters elsewhere…’
And he manoeuvred Peter Dodd and Uncle Fred out of the room, like two wandering geese, one to his opulent car and the other to his bicycle.
Superintendent Judkin was in plain clothes. Thanks to the pressure of William Dodd and the Home Office, he’d been hastily recalled from holidays at the seaside. He welcomed Littlejohn cordially, and started to grumble right away.
‘I’m glad you’ve come, though I don’t know what for, really. It looks like an ordinary sordid little murder to me, and one we needn’t have troubled you with. But the heat’s on because Dodd happens to be well-connected…’
Judkin was a small, hatchet-faced officer, with a tanned skin and clear blue eyes. He seemed amused at something.
‘I can’t help laughing. The black sheep of the family gets himself murdered and all the respectable ones start to shiver in their shoes because there looks like being a scandal. They’ve been at it since ten o’clock trying to hush it all up. They stand a poor chance. The Coroner in charge is a mustard-pot. The very fact that they want it kept dark is enough to make him pull out all the stops…’
And he briefly outlined the case as far as it went.
‘I’ve got the two women here in the lounge in case you’d like a first-hand account of what happened, or what they say happened. When I got here, there was a relative of theirs who says he’s a lawyer, insisted on advising them, but I soon told him where he got off. That’s the fellow in the road there arguing with young Dodd…’
Uncle Fred, in his tweeds and shoes with crêpe soles an inch thick, and young Dodd in his business suit with a pearl grey tie, were arguing still, and Uncle Fred was thumping the bonnet of young Dodd’s car.
Littlejohn looked round the room in which they were waiting. It was furnished in cheap oak; a dining suite and table and a sideboard, and a lot of silly little pink table lamps, cushions, and modern porcelain figures. There was a smell of stale, greasy cooking about the place, with a trace of face powder and cats.
‘Perhaps you don’t mind if we have a word with Mrs. Nicholls and her daughter. By the way, what do you call the daughter…?’
‘She poses as Mrs. Dodd, but she isn’t, you know. I call her Miss Nicholls…’
Judkin went to muster the women from the sitting-room, where they appeared to be waiting in state for official business.
Littlejohn stood on the hearthrug trying to absorb the atmosphere of the place. It was sordid, without a doubt. Dodd, in a fit of middle-aged foolishness, had gone off the rails with his typist. Left to his own devices, he’d soon have found out on which side his bread was buttered, and returned to his wife like a naughty boy. And doubtless she’d have forgiven him. But his family intervened, pushed their mother out of the way, and engineered a divorce. From what must have been a comfortable, middle-class home, Dodd had been driven to this…
Littlejohn looked around again. The stuffy atmosphere, the little pink-shaded lamps, the dreadful water-colours on the walls, which looked as if Mrs. Nicholls, Dorothy or Uncle Fred had copied them from picture post-cards…No wonder Dodd went to the village inn and drank with the local ne’er-do-wells and cadgers. He’d lost his job and become a remittance-man, too. All day with nothing to do! Nothing, except listen to Mrs. Nicholls and Dorothy…
So much Littlejohn had gathered from the files. Now here were Mrs. Nicholls and Dorothy, Dodd’s two women, to put their point of view.
‘May I offer you anything?’
Mrs. Nicholls addressed the three police officers and indicated a dec
anter and a lot of little pink cocktail glasses. The kind of thing you won at hoop-la or on shooting-ranges at a fair. The bottle was half-full of what looked like sherry.
‘May I offer you anything?’
They didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so explained that it was against the regulations to drink on duty.
Dorothy was quite in the background. Her mother and Uncle Fred had told her they knew best what was good for her.
‘Could you tell me what happened last night…? What time did Mr. Dodd leave?’
‘Won’t you sit down?’
Mrs. Nicholls indicated the chairs and they all settled in them.
‘Mr. Dodd left about seven, didn’t he, Dorothy?’
‘Yes…The news was just starting on the wireless. He usually went out about that time.’
‘Where did he go? Right to the village inn?’
Mrs. Nicholls nodded without answering.
‘Are you sure, Mrs. Nicholls? How do you know?’
‘Well…’
The old woman looked a bit bewildered. She’d never followed Dodd out on his nightly jaunts. She’d taken his word that he was going to the village for a drink and left it at that. He might have gone anywhere for all she knew.
‘He always said he was going for his drink. I never followed him. We’d no reason to doubt him.’
Hadn’t they? Littlejohn was surprised, and wondered if Mrs. Dodd had ever said the same thing before he ran off with Dorothy!
‘Did he never take you or Miss Nicholls out with him in the evenings?’
Mrs. Nicholls straightened herself up.
‘We aren’t in the habit of frequenting public houses, Inspector. We stayed in most nights. One night a week, usually on Wednesday, we went to the pictures in Helstonbury, together, and now and then Mr. Dodd took Dorothy when there was something good. He wasn’t very fond of pictures…’
‘What did he do with his time?’
‘He did a bit in the garden…went off fishing now and then…took us for a ride in the car about once a week, and then we’d end up in Helstonbury for shopping or the pictures…’
Littlejohn waited, but there was no more.
What a life! One slip, and Dodd was condemned to boredom for the rest of his existence. Unless he found diversions unknown to the two women.
‘Did he ever stay away from home?’
‘Now and then. He’d go away on fishing trips, or perhaps a weekend with an old friend. He always told us and we always knew it would be all right.’
‘He didn’t carry on any business?’
‘No. He had money of his own. But for his family takin’ advantage of him, he’d have had a lot more.’
‘Did he make a Will, do you know?’
The effect on the two women was the same. Tension, anxiety, and a bit of resentment.
‘He never told us. He never mentioned his private money affairs and, of course, we didn’t pump him…’
I’ll bet you didn’t, thought Littlejohn.
‘Coming to the night he died…last night. You say he rang up on the telephone and asked you to come to the village to pick him up.’
Dorothy now took the stage. She shouted her mother down. Littlejohn felt a bit relieved. Mrs. Nicholls, with her chatter, was a prize bore, and her affected voice and efforts to make a ladylike impression were pathetic.
‘Mother answered the phone. I can’t drive properly. I can’t pass the driving test and I suppose I did wrong to take out the car, but I didn’t know what to do. We met him on the road, trying to get home.’
She blubbered a minute and then burst into tears and howled.
‘It’s not good enough, a good man like Harry to get that done to him. He never did anybody any wrong…’
She sniffed and dried her tears on a handkerchief which was damp already. Presumably she’d been having a private weep now and then whenever she could shake off her mother.
‘I must confess that when I answered the phone, I thought Harry was drunk…’
‘Mother! You never said a word…’
‘No, but I had my own thoughts.’
‘Did he often come home drunk, Mrs. Nicholls?’ asked Littlejohn.
‘Now and then, if he met one of his pals at The Bear…that’s the village inn. Sometimes he’d have a bout. We didn’t say anything to him about it. After all, Inspector, one has to be broad-minded…’
Yes, one had. Especially when Dodd held the purse-strings.
‘…He was always a gentleman, even when he’d taken too much.’
‘How did his money come?’
‘I believe it was paid to the bank regularly, every quarter. He always gave Dorothy her allowance when it came. Always a quarter’s housekeeping, etcetera, in cash, when his remittance came…I don’t know what we’re going to do now. There’s this house and a lot of bills…’
‘Could you tell me if he seemed worried or content of late?’
The two women looked at one another rather surprised. The elder one, as usual, spoke first.
‘He seemed comfortable enough. We looked well after him and he never complained.’
‘Did he read much?’
Littlejohn had been looking round. There were plenty of paper-backed novelettes scattered about, but nothing a man might read.
‘Oh, yes. He read quite a lot. He was a member of a library in Helstonbury, and he got books from a book club as well. He always had his breakfast in bed. We took it up with the morning paper, and then after he’d read the paper, he’d read his book a bit…’
Judkin and Cromwell exchanged glances and smiled at one another. Cromwell’s smile was a bit self-satisfied. Littlejohn was teaching Judkin a thing or two. All about Dodd…
‘What time did he get up as a rule?’
‘About eleven…’
‘Tell me this, Mrs. Nicholls…Did Mr. Dodd shave every day…or had his existence as a retired man made him a bit free and easy…? Did he miss a day or two shaving…?’
‘Oh, dear, no…He shaved every day. As soon as he got up, we’d hear his electric shaver going. He might have looked a bit free and easy in his dress, but that was always his way. His things were good and he was clean and neat. He never went to seed, as they say.’
Littlejohn turned to the Inspector.
‘We’ll be going down the village to The Bear later…’
‘Yes…I fixed dinner there for you, and if you want rooms, they’ll manage that too.’
‘Thanks. Did they say, Superintendent, whether or not Mr. Dodd left in his usual health and spirits last night…?’
‘Yes. He had a few drinks with his pals and then said good night about ten o’clock and went off. Whether or not somebody attacked him for his money and then got fright…His wallet and cash and his watch were all on his person. His keys, too…’
The women exchanged covert glances.
‘And instead of going back to the inn for help, he telephoned home and wanted to get back there. So much so that he started to walk…It might be that he hoped to hush up the attack, or that he didn’t want a fuss…’
‘Could we look over the house before we go? I’m sorry to trouble you, but you quite understand…’
‘Of course. The police have been over it already. They’ve disturbed things a bit. We’re house-proud, Dorothy and me, and we always made Dodd comfortable, though I say it myself…Come this way…’
The little procession started.
The place hadn’t been built for Dodd, and he didn’t seem to have effected many improvements when he took over. There was a line of clothes pegs attached to a bracket in the hall, which made the place look a bit like a waiting-room. Raincoats, overcoats, and two women’s fur coats hung on the pegs. A chair, a bamboo table and a chest on which stood a cheap chromium salver made up the rest.
To the right, a door into the dining-room in which they had just been sitting and, beyond that, a scullery with a bright new electric stove, a porcelain sink and a little pantry and china-cupboard.
‘I did all the cooking and Dorothy kept the house straight. We had a woman from the village once a week…’
‘Who was she?’
Mrs. Nicholls raised her thick eyebrows. She looked ready to tell Littlejohn to mind his own business, and then recovered. ‘Mrs. Mattock. She lives in the cottages by the bridge.’
‘Thank you…’
Cromwell made a note and they passed on.
They went to the sitting-room, a stuffy little place, with a fireplace of hideous dark-green tiles. A cheap suite in moquette, a lot of little tables, and more table lamps…Little else. Littlejohn bet to himself that Dodd didn’t sit in state there very often. Instead he preferred The Bear and his disreputable pals…
‘These are our rooms… Dorothy’s and mine…’
Mrs. Nicholls said it with an effort to be casual, but it was obvious that showing their bedrooms to a trio of men was making her a bit self-conscious. Dorothy was more than that. She looked positively coy, as if inviting them to sinful thoughts at least.
The police officers just peeped in and out, to get the lie of the land. Both rooms smelled stuffy; Dorothy’s heavily laden with cheap scents, her mother’s with a herbal smell, as though she applied potions or drank decoctions. The windows were closed…
That was all except for the bathroom.
‘Where did Mr. Dodd sleep?’
‘Up there…We had to put him in my room after he died…’
‘Up there’ was a trapdoor in the ceiling of the passage, with a ring protruding. Mrs. Nicholls took a long pole with a hook on one end and slipped it through the ring in the trapdoor, which gave way and let down a metal ladder.
Littlejohn and Cromwell climbed up.
‘I’ve been up there already,’ said Judkin, but the old woman followed. She wasn’t going to miss anything.
It was a room made under the tiles…a kind of box of plaster-boarding. A camp-bed, a chest of drawers, a reading-lamp, a large tin box with a lock, a bedside table. All as neat, simple, and clean as a sailor’s cabin. There were bookshelves along one side. Plenty of fiction, a lot of travel books, and some sea stories…Voyages round the world, across the Pacific, the Atlantic in a fishing smack…Dodd making voyages round the world from his camp-bed…
A Knife For Harry Dodd Page 2
