‘Did Mrs. Dodd make up her husband’s income, then?’
‘Not exactly. He wanted capital and she lent him some. It was this way…’
The talk was interrupted by the entry of a dark girl, with a good figure and a most attractive face. She wore heavy-black-framed spectacles, as though trying to hide her good looks.
‘It’s six o’clock, Mr. Pharaoh. Have you, ahem, decided…?’
‘Yes, Joan…I’m finishing tonight. This is Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard. He says I can go…’
Littlejohn smiled at the girl, and she smiled back at him. There flashed between them a glance of understanding for Mr. Pharaoh, who cared not about his law practice, Harry Dodd, his murder, or Joan’s sparkling beauty. His heart was set on the Betsy Jane, his true love, waiting for him at Lowestoft.
‘So you can go, Joan, and look after things while I’m away. Open my letters and read ‘em, and don’t bother me about anything. You know where you can find me, but don’t for heaven’s sake, do. And as for the law, if anythin’ crops up, take it over to Corncrake, and get him to help. That’s all, Joan. Good-bye…’
Mr. Pharaoh shook hands with Joan, as though they were parting for ever, and she cast upon him a look of the utmost maternal affection, the kind which many of the young men of Helstonbury would have given all they’d got to receive.
‘Nice girl, Joan. Knows more about the law than I do. Got her LL.B…Where were we…? Yes, Harry needed capital. You see, he was an engineer when he married Helena. It was in his blood. Do you know what his company do?’
‘No, sir.’
‘They make machine tools. I went through the place once, before Harry’s troubles started. You know the cutting-tools they use on lathes, jigs and the like. Well, it’s only the edge of ‘em that’s really hard, what they call, I think, high-power steel. The rest is cheap, soft stuff…a sort of handle to hold the really hard face of the tool. Well, Dodd’s firm makes tools, the principal process being the fixing the hard steel to the soft shaft or handle. Harry Dodd was the patentee of that process. Damn’ good at processes, but no good at selling either himself or his products. That’s where his elder son shone…’
‘And after he left his wife and home, did Dodd keep on with his experiments?’
‘That’s it. He spent two or three days a week at a little workshop he’d fixed up at a place called Cold Kirby, not very far from here. He took me once. A little asbestos garage arrangement, with a furnace and a few machines running electrically. He played about there. It was in a field at the back of the village pub, and the landlord, a chap called Comfort, himself an engineer until his health broke and he turned to the village inn life, gave him a hand. Well…his wife found the money for the little set-up, and financed some of Harry’s experiments.’
‘Did he have any success…?’
‘Yes. That’s just it. He told me he was in the act of perfecting a formula for the welding of tools. You know, joining the hard to the soft steel—which would cut overheads, at the present rate, in two.’
‘And he died before he could perfect it?’
‘Yes. See what that meant? Harry Dodd would have been back in circulation again with a fortune in his pocket. If his children didn’t behave, he’d just to sell his formula, or whatever it was, to a rival, and put ‘em out of business.’
‘That’s motive, good and proper, sir.’
‘Yes, but I don’t fancy the idea of his own flesh and blood stabbing him in the back because they were ashamed of him…’
‘They did worse than that in the divorce matter.’
‘Yes. But they aren’t the sort who’d stab anybody in the back with a knife…’
‘Might they try engineering a motor accident?’
‘So you’ve heard of that, have you? This isn’t the movies, though. However, that’s up to you. Is there anything else I can tell you?’
‘Nothing that won’t wait, Mr. Pharaoh. Shall we go and look over the bungalow at Brande?’
‘Yes. I’ll run you over there. By the way, where are you staying whilst you’re here?’
‘The inn in Brande.’
‘That’s all right. Plain but very comfortable. It’s usually known as The Bear, though its full name’s The Bear with the Ragged Staff. You’ll be all right…’
Mr. Pharaoh brought out a nice little fast coupé and they were drawing up at Mon Abri very soon afterwards. There was a bicycle standing at the gate, a lady’s model, with high handlebars and a huge oil-lamp on the front.
Mrs. Nicholls opened the door in answer to their ring. She flushed with pleasure at the sight of Mr. Pharaoh, presumably thinking he’d called already to put everything right for them.
‘Dorothy, my dear, it’s Mr. Pharaoh…’
She evidently didn’t think Littlejohn of enough consequence to merit formal announcement. She preened herself, talking in a high-pitched, affected, nasal voice, and throwing aitches about in her emotion.
All the blinds had been drawn and Mrs. Nicholls was in deep black.
‘You’ll have to h’excuse us, Mr. Pharaoh…The dressmaker has just called from the village to measure us for mourning. Poor ‘Arry. This is a terrible shock, Mr. Pharaoh…terrible…’
She sniffed in a handkerchief, and led them to the living-room, after a lot of scuttering had indicated that the dressmaking session had moved itself from thence to one of the bedrooms.
‘No need to disturb yourself, Mrs. Nicholls. We’ve just called to look over Mr. Dodd’s things…’
He was quite tetchy about it.
‘Harry’s things? But surely they aren’t going to be moved away ! They were h’all ‘is. That is, unless he’s left them to us in his Will.’
‘Miss Nicholls is provided for…But you’ll have to wait for that. Where is Miss Nicholls?’
‘I’ll get her…’
The old woman scampered off, tottering on her high heels, her overly tight skirt emphasising her heavy rear. They got a sight of a thin, anxious woman, with a mouthful of pins, and a tape-measure round her neck, rushing from room to room, as Mrs. Nicholls sought a few private words with her daughter before letting her loose on the visitors.
‘Don’t sign anything…Better ‘ave your Uncle Fred here if anything wants signin’…’
Dorothy entered, doing her best to look stricken and bereaved. Mr. Pharaoh expressed no sympathy.
‘You needn’t worry about this place. My client left it to you and all that’s in it. And now, may we look at his private things?’
‘You mean… You mean the loft…’
‘Did he keep his personal things in the loft?’
‘It was his bedroom. We weren’t allowed up there.’
‘What did he keep there?’
‘His bed, his clothes and things, and his private papers locked up in a big tin box.’
‘I thought you weren’t allowed up…’
Dorothy made no reply. She was putting on airs like her mother. Trying to impress them that she was as good as Dodd and his family.
‘We got a notice to go to the inquest. Will we need a lawyer?’
Mrs. Nicholls, who had been listening, thought it well to intervene and marched in the room, apparently looking for something.
‘Dorothy’s Uncle Fred, who’s a lawyer himself, is coming to look h’after our affairs. He’ll be with us at the h’inquest.’
‘We’d like to look in the loft, please…’
The two women pulled down the disappearing metal ladder, and the trapdoor of the room opened automatically at the same time. The aperture appeared too small to admit Littlejohn’s shoulders or Mr. Pharaoh’s paunch, but they managed it. It was a larger hole than it looked.
There was nothing much in any of the furniture. The latter had evidently, at some time, been hoisted in through the roof light, a large window, hinged outwards, and consisted of a simple iron bed, a chest of drawers, a table with a mirror on it, and a single wardrobe. They came at length to the trunk.
Mr.
Pharaoh looked at it and then shouted down the hole in the floor.
‘Who’s been at this tin box?’
He showed Littlejohn, who’d already seen them, fresh marks which glinted against the background of black enamel.
‘Eh?’
‘Have you been trying to open this box?’
‘No…’
‘Who’s been at it, then?’
‘Must ‘ave been Uncle Fred. He was up. Said he was looking for the Will.’
‘Well, tell him to keep his hands off in future. I’m executor, and I won’t have…’
Mr. Pharaoh left it unfinished, for Littlejohn, who had brought along Harry’s keys from the Helstonbury police station, had flung back the lid of the box.
It was empty.
6—The Bell at Cold Kirby
‘Who’s been at this box?’
Mr. Pharaoh bawled down the trap in a voice which brought both women to the foot of the ladder.
‘Eh?’
‘You heard me. Who’s been at this box?’
The protagonists were in the most impossible positions for carrying on a battle of words for long; Mr. Pharaoh’s round livid face, set in the frame of the hole in the ceiling, glaring down at Mrs. Nicholls, and the old woman twisting her head and body in horrible contortions, the better to face him and argue.
‘You needn’t look at me as if I’d emptied it…’
‘How did you know it was empty?’
‘I lifted it and shook it…I ‘ad to dust the place, didn’t I?’
‘Have you tried the keys in it?’
Dorothy’s face and the gasp she gave were enough to give her mother away.
‘No…’
‘Don’t tell me that tale. I’m coining down. I can’t stand here shouting and arguing…’
Mr. Pharaoh began to descend the narrow ladder, missed his footing, hung on the framework of the trapdoor for a second to recover his balance, and then made an undignified finish of the journey. Littlejohn followed, after locking the box, an old tin trunk, with H.D. on the lid in white paint.
‘I understood from you earlier in the day, that you hadn’t used the keys…’
Littlejohn looked Dorothy in the eyes, and she lowered them.
‘We…we…we thought he kept brandy in it and we wanted some for him…’
Mr. Pharaoh stamped his feet and waved his hands.
‘Pah! I never heard such a tale! Well; it’s a criminal offence, that’s all. It’s theft…’
Mrs. Nicholls’ hands flew to her hips and she leaned towards Mr. Pharaoh, thrusting her face close to his own.
‘And what do you mean by that? Haven’t we said there was nothin’ in it. That’s how we found it when we h’opened it. There was nothin’ in it. Last time I was up there, a fortnight ago, it was heavy and there was things in it. I couldn’t open it because Dodd had the key. When we did open it, as my daughter h’observed, to get the brandy, which he always locked up, it was empty. That’s the truth and before I say another word, I want my lawyer ‘ere…my brother Fred.’
‘Damn your brother Fred! Don’t you realise there may have been valuable papers, a Will or something, in it? What did you do with them?’
Mrs. Nicholls closed her eyes and screwed up her mouth, intent on keeping the vow of silence which only Uncle Fred could cause her to break.
‘It was empty…’
It came from Dorothy in such a thin, frightened voice that both men believed it. Littlejohn was a bit sorry for Dorothy. She seemed an honest enough girl, a bit stupid, but quite without guile. Without her hag of a mother perpetually prodding her and nagging her, she’d probably have parted company with Dodd long ago.
‘Has anyone been up there lately…? Anyone who could have stolen the contents…?’
Mrs. Nicholls stood there with her eyes shut and her lips tight, like somebody asking the gods for strength.
‘No, sir. Till Harry died, nobody went up there, except him or one of us. You can see, sir, it would have been a bit difficult for anybody to get the ladder down without us knowing.’
‘All the same, the contents of the box have gone!’ shouted Mr. Pharaoh, interrupting Dorothy and laying emphasis on each word. ‘You! What do you know about it?’
The old woman shook her head but did not speak.
‘You old fool!’
Mrs. Nicholls squeaked, but still didn’t break the vow of silence.
‘I think Harry took his things away, bit by bit…’
Dorothy began to gulp and sniff.
‘I think he was getting ready to leave us.’
Tears came and she started to howl.
Mr. Pharaoh made gestures of despair.
‘One struck dumb and the other…well…’
Littlejohn passed his handkerchief to Dorothy. She took it with a grateful, swimming look, and started to mop up.
‘Now, Miss Nicholls, what made you think that?’
‘I just felt it. I think Harry had got tired of this life. Something certainly had happened to change him. He was away more and, well…instead of bein’ bored, he seemed interested and excited about something…’
She was handing back Littlejohn’s handkerchief. This was too much for Mrs. Nicholls’ respectability.
‘Give that ‘ere,’ she said, snatching it from her daughter. ‘One would think you’d been brought up in the gutter. That’ll want washin’ before you give it back to the Inspector…’
‘That’s all right, Mrs. Nicholls. I’ve another here…’
‘I h’insist! Such manners! And as for Dodd bein’ bored, excited, interested in somethin’, it’s all her imagination. She reads too many novels…Imagination, miss.’
Having broken silence, Mrs. Nicholls was getting ready for a full spate again. Mr. Pharaoh wasn’t having any more of it.
‘We’ll be going now, but you’ll hear from me again. I’m not satisfied…’
He hustled Littlejohn out of the place before Mrs. Nicholls could recover her breath.
‘Did you say you wanted to go to The Bell, at Cold Kirby? Because, if you do, I’ll run you there before I go to dinner…’
Mr. Pharaoh had recovered his good spirits very quickly with the thought that, on the morrow, he would be with the Betsy Jane, thanks to Littlejohn.
‘…You can order dinner at The Bear and we’ll be back before half-past seven…’
Mr. Pharaoh pursued a breathless career to Cold Kirby, and they were there in less than half an hour. Mrs. Comfort, a buxom, bonny woman of middle-age, was busy in the bar, but turned over the work to the casual waiter when the two visitors arrived.
The Bell was merely an ale-house.
‘We only sell draught beer here,’ said the landlady.
It was a very old-fashioned house, lying in a hollow just off the main road, with creeper and roses climbing over its white-washed walls. The rooms were low and the windows narrow. Outside, there was a gravel square for cars to draw up in, and a pond with white ducks swimming here and there and larking in the mud. Behind, a large vegetable garden, with a white sectional shed of concrete rising incongruously in the middle of it. The evening was still, and smoke from the chimneys rose straight upwards and vanished in the blue.
Inside, there was only one public room of the typical country-inn variety. There weren’t even beer-pumps, and the barrels, with wooden taps, stood on trestles just inside a little alcove which served as a bar. The noise of a crowd of jolly country voices rose from the taproom, where things were moderately busy.
Mr. Pharaoh told Mrs. Comfort they wanted a word with her about Harry Dodd and her late husband. She led them into a quiet little living-room which was her private quarters, bade them be seated, and burst into tears.
‘I can’t get used to being without Comfort. I keep thinkin’ he’ll come back one day…and then I remember he won’t…ever…’
It was one of those situations which made Littlejohn’s blood boil. A wanton murder by a callous killer, with no thought of what it might imply to
anybody but himself.
‘Had your husband any enemies, Mrs. Comfort?’
‘What… Arnold…? No…He was everybody’s friend. Too much so sometimes…’
Her voice grew resentful.
‘Why?’
‘I think I’ll just go and get me a drink,’ interrupted Mr. Pharaoh. He was being tactful. And, besides, tomorrow… He’d got the holiday mood.
‘Why, did you say, sir? Well, look at Mr. Dodd. He got to know that Arnold had been an engineer before we took this place. So nothing would do but that they should start tinkering in the shed they put up in the back there. He was always here and Arnold got properly took-up with it, too. The reason we took this public was that my husband’s health wasn’t too good and the doctor said…Oh, what does it matter now…?’
She began to sob bitterly again.
Littlejohn went to the window and looked out until she grew calm. A pretty garden, a few hens and ducks, a little pub with a nice little lot of friendly customers who caused no trouble. A good wife and peaceful existence, with no man his enemy. That was Arnold Comfort. Then along came Harry Dodd…
‘Did you like Dodd?’
‘No. I told Arnold so, too. But Arnold laughed. He was that way. Trusted everybody…’
‘Why didn’t you take to Dodd, Mrs. Comfort?’
‘Instinct, more than anythin’ else. There was somethin’ about him…You never got to know him or what he was after. Why come here with his experimentin’ and his workshop? Disturbed the whole happy atmosphere and upset my husband, too.’
‘Upset?’
‘Yes. Arnold was on good pay when we left Sheffield. The doctors said, if he didn’t give up engineering and the worry of management, he wouldn’t last long. He’d to take things easy and quietly. We had a little bit saved… just enough to make ends meet with the little we take here. I do a bit of catering as well. We screwed down our expenditure to rock-bottom and we found we could do nicely…Then, along comes Dodd and persuades Arnold that with the new process or something he’s got in mind, they can make their fortunes. What do they do, but put up that white concrete place in the garden, there, fit in machines and lathes and such, and start a sort of engineering laboratory of their own. Arnold got so completely wrapped up in it that his health began to give again. I carried on at him, but he just laughed. “We’re going to be rich soon, old gal, and then no more working your fingers to the bone. We’ll get a nice little house by the sea, and end our days in peace with all we want…”’
A Knife For Harry Dodd Page 7
