Mrs. Dodd was a strong-minded woman, and the real matriarch of the family whose father had been driven out for a single silly indiscretion. She had, presumably, ordered a gathering of the whole clan and they all turned up at the cemetery. They arrived in their expensive cars to meet the hearse which was bringing the deposed head of the family from the undertaker’s.
Mrs. Dodd and Peter were in an ageing barouche. The widow was dressed in billowing black and the son in a black suit and bowler. There was a parson with them; a solemn dignitary with a large, round, flat face, Roman nose, and undershot jaw. Littlejohn was more interested in the rest of the party, for he had not met them before.
A chauffeur driving a black saloon with a crest on the door, dismounted, trotted round, and handed out a queer pair, who must have been Sir Bernard and Lady Hosea. A tall, lean, bored man, who looked as if he ought to have arrived in a horse-cab, for he was an anachronism. He was about sixty, with baggy, tired eyes, a long drooping grey moustache, and elegant but old-fashioned dress. A frock-coat, top hat, pointed boots of patent leather, and spats. He looked in the grip of a bad cold and shivered, even though the sun was shining. He glanced around at the rows of elaborate and costly marble vaults, tombstones and artificial flowers under globes, as though he had suddenly found himself in heaven and couldn’t understand why. He slowly thrust his hand in the doorway of the car and helped out a lady at least twenty years his junior. Straight as a ramrod, haughty, tall and dark, she was dressed in an expensive black fur coat, with a small hat to match it. She took his arm, and this queerly assorted pair walked straight to the open grave and stood there, greeting nobody, waiting, like two strange gothic characters, for their cues in the scene which slowly unfolded. They were followed by an even more expensive car, which slid into place, was opened by another uniformed flunkey, and which emitted a pompous younger replica of Harry Dodd himself. Winfield Dodd was a walking memorial to his father, except that he was about three inches taller and lacked his father’s humility, humour and kindliness. He blinked at the sunshine and the right side of his face twitched, for he had a perpetual tic.
Winfield Dodd helped his wife to descend. Littlejohn had a shock, for she was a blonde beauty; fair-haired, elegant, a bit flighty-looking, and evidence that her husband, at some time or other, had displayed his humanity and an eye for a good-looking woman. She had been a prominent actress in her time, and Winfield Dodd had, until he possessed her, done his share of dancing attendance and competing with younger and more eligible, if less wealthy, suitors. She looked bored and in a hurry to get things over…
And then, dead on the minute, Willie Dodd…working-class Willie, in a car more expensive than all the rest, driven by an official driver.
Littlejohn had not met the Rt. Hon. William Dodd in the flesh before. He rather took to Willie. A vigorous, bounding man, who seemed to radiate a strange magnetism, which he used to the full on political platforms. Obviously he’d no need to fear discredit from Harry’s peccadilloes or his father’s heckling. He could brush such things aside with a gesture and, with a word and a flash of wit, turn the tables on his antagonists. He joined the rest with hasty, energetic steps and greeted them all genially. He didn’t get a good reception, for the family looked like puppets miming a piece. With stilted steps they formed a little avenue, and the undertaker and his men, a leader in shabby black and a quartet of paid bearers, carried the coffin to the graveside, with shuffling, tottering feet.
Littlejohn stood some distance away, leaning his back against a large tombstone like a table on four legs. On the table top the names of one after another of a family called Cluttermule, fathers, sons, husbands, daughters, wives; dead and gone between 1823 and 1899. That was long ago, the monument was dirty and neglected, and those it attempted to keep in the memory of men, forgotten.
Harry Dodd was decently committed and the earth, automatically flung on his coffin according to ritual by those he had left behind, rattled on the hollow-sounding casket…
A taxi had drawn up outside the mortuary chapel a distance away, and three black-clad figures sneaked along, posted themselves beside a tomb like a small Albert Memorial, and stood watching the ceremony at the grave like three cockroaches. Littlejohn smiled faintly. Mrs. Nicholls, Dorothy and Uncle Fred! The women’s weeds had been burned in the fire and they’d had hastily to improvise and borrow. Pinned up and tacked, the old woman’s clothes fitted where they touched; but Dorothy managed to look fresh and chic. Both were sniffing into handkerchiefs; Uncle Fred, not yet recovered from his feats with pianos and sideboards, looked short of stuffing and sagged at the knees as he stood with his borrowed billy-cock in his hand.
‘Who’s that lot? Not…?’
Willie Dodd, his eyes everywhere, full of zest, had spotted the Nicholls family, and it tickled him. He took a malevolent relish in pointing them out to his starchy companions, and his unfinished question was eloquent and faded away in chuckles. The rest of the party walked on, sought their conveyances, and pretended not to see Harry Dodd’s companions in exile. As she turned, however, Mrs. Dodd noticed Littlejohn and spoke quickly to Peter, who, letting her arm fall from his, hurried to join the Inspector.
‘My mother thinks you might like to take this opportunity of speaking to the family, if you wish. We’re all going home. Would you care to…to join my mother and me in the car…or…?’
He didn’t quite know how to put it. He was conscious of all eyes on him, of the rest of the family anxious to get away and leave the erring member to be forgotten with his sins in the place of the dead. Lady Hosea and Winfield were whispering together.
‘Who is it…? Have you seen those women…? Of all the impertinence…’
Their black figures bristled with affronted pride.
‘I have a car here, sir. I’ll follow in a little while. Please thank your mother for her help and consideration. I appreciate it at a time like this…If you’d rather…’
‘By all means come. To the rest, this is no time for niceties. My mother forced them…Except Uncle William, who seems to think there’s something funny about it all. We’ll expect you.’
He almost ran back to his mother, and the family party scattered to their cars and drove away, stiff in mourning, like a lot of waxwork dummies.
The Nicholls family approached the open grave like a furtive crew of body-snatchers. Dorothy and her mother each carried a small wreath, and Uncle Fred had bought a kind of laurel crown which dangled from his hand. They paused a moment, looked in the grave, and softly threw handfuls of soil in it. The women blew their noses and wiped their eyes, Uncle Fred unsteadily placed the floral and laurel tributes on the heap of earth nearby, and then they slowly wound back to the waiting taxi. It was then that Littlejohn realised that Uncle Fred was half-drunk ! Probably he’d taken it as medicine…!
The undertaker’s men started to unload the wreaths from the hearse. Whether or not the family had seen them, Littlejohn did not know, but he himself was interested in them. He let the attendant mutes go their way and then emerged and looked at the flowers, reading the black-edged cards wired on them. There were about twenty all told, mainly roses, early chrysanthemums and carnations. The family wreaths were elaborate and formal, with visiting cards attached without comment from Sir Bernard Hosea and his lady, and from Winfield and his wife. ‘From Peter.’ ‘To Harry with love from Helena.’ ‘From his old colleagues of the Sedgwick Engineering Company.’ Then came the comic element, the ‘tributes’ brought by the Nicholls party. ‘With Deepest Love and Sympathy from Dot.’ And Mrs. Nicholls’ effort, with a sting of poetry in the tail.
‘With sympathy for Harry, from Emily.
His virtues were many,
His faults were few.
He never deserved
What he went through.’
Uncle Fred’s obituary outburst was attached to the laurels, which looked to have been filched from another grave. ‘In Memory of a Pal. Fred Binns.’ Then, ‘From his Friends in The Snug at The Bear, Bra
nde’, and a mysterious one from ‘Charley, Sid and Joe.’
Littlejohn wasn’t surprised at the glum looks of the family. Harry Dodd, with his pals, Fred, Sid, Joe and Charley! The homely vulgarity of his life seemed to persist in the cemetery. The Dodds had been anxious to get away, perhaps before Charley, Sid, Joe and a lot more arrived. One after another, Littlejohn looked at the cards, seeking out Harry Dodd’s friends and connections. There was a large wreath in the middle of the lot. Littlejohn had to lift it to read the card which had got underneath it. It was an ornamental, printed affair, with strange symbols on it and, in the centre at the top, a picture of an all-seeing eye.
ANCIENT ORDER OF FREE FISHERS
HELSTONBURY BRANCH
To the Memory of Brother Harry V. Dodd
with Profound Condolences
Littlejohn read it again. Harry V. Dodd? He didn’t know Harry Dodd had another name, one he kept dark from all except the secret society of which he must have been a member. No doubt they were a lot of fishermen, or maybe just a crowd of pals meeting for a night out now and then under cover of a cabbalistic name and a bit of homely mumbo-jumbo. He made a note of it.
Littlejohn drove into Cambridge and out to the Dodd home. The family seemed to expect him, and he felt himself rather at a loss about them. Peter was very helpful and led him to a small morning-room furnished with a table, two chairs, a lot of books, and a small sideboard.
‘If you’d like to talk to any of us, you’ll be able to do it in private here,’ he said.
‘I’d like a word with you, first of all. I do hope this isn’t unseemly. Your father’s only just been buried, you know.’
‘Don’t mention it. They’re glad to see the last of him. If you don’t get what you want to know from them now, you’ll have a job seeing them together like this again. This is your big chance.’
Peter seemed in no mood for sorrow, either. He looked relieved, almost jocular, at the thought of his pompous family being subject to official questioning.
‘Any need for mother? She’s lying down. But she told the rest to wait for you. You wanted to see them, she said. Winfield is blazing, Uncle Willie’s a bit amused, and Bernard and Cynthia are offended at the thought that anybody could suspect them…’
‘What were you doing on the night your father died, sir?’
Peter Dodd started as if found in guilty thoughts.
‘Why? Am I suspect, then?’
‘No. Just a formality. You seem to expect me to put the others through it. You ought to take your medicine, too, like a sport.’
Peter grinned.
‘Oh, I don’t mind. My mother was a bit off-colour that night and I went to the doctor’s for some powders. I’m afraid it was my fault. Coffee doesn’t agree with her, and she has a special sort of stuff which is all right. The maid went out after dinner and I said I’d make some coffee. I’d no more sense than to use the real stuff. It made mother very seedy. I realised what it was, when she started to be ill…She went to bed and I went for the powders. It would be ten, or thereabouts, when I got back. I’d been in to dinner. I’m sure Dr. Macfarlane, just along the road, will remember. It’ll be in his day-book, I guess…’
It was just the same all round. The family all had alibis. Willie, for example, hurried in next and told Littlejohn that he’d a train to catch to address a meeting in distant parts that night. He’d better be quick if he wanted to talk with him.
At close quarters, Willie Dodd closely resembled Harry. A rough-hewn sort. In fact, a bit more rough and ready than his brother. He had been a widower for years, there were faint rumours of his associations with dancers, wanton aristocrats, foreign princesses, and a celebrated actress. The usual legends which pursue prominent men. Black hair on the backs of his hands and sprouting from his nostrils and ears. He was full of energy and a quick and incisive thinker in matters concerning his own well-being.
‘I saw to it that you were called in on this. Whatever his blessed family thought of my brother, I was fond of him, in a way. He wasn’t like me. No fight in him and no guile. Do you think I’d have let that lot pack me off into exile like they did Harry? Not likely! What do you want to know…?’
‘Did you see much of your brother, sir?’
‘No. I’m a busy man and he never sought my company. As youngsters, we’d little in common. We drifted apart. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like him, though.’
‘What about your father, sir?’
‘What about him? He’s to be quietly cremated tomorrow, without any fuss. The coroner’s inquest was adjourned…’
‘I know that. But I understand you were mainly responsible for his being certified insane and shut up.’
Littlejohn looked Willie straight in the eyes. Willie didn’t flinch.
‘Yes, I did. He’d got persecution mania, was a nuisance to himself and everybody else and, as I knew a place where they’d look after him and he’d be happy, I took the necessary steps.’
‘Is it true he heckled you at meetings?’
‘So you’ve heard that, too. Yes, he did. It didn’t upset me, but it was a nuisance when my time was limited, getting involved in arguments and squabbles in the body of the hall, caused by my own father. You may smile, but that’s not why I had him seen to. His brain was going and that was the best thing for him.’
‘Where were you, sir, the night your brother died?’
Willie’s bushy grey eyebrows rose. There were bags under his tired eyes. He was at full stretch, almost to breaking point, from the strain of his ambitions and his tireless flogging of himself in his political duties.
‘I hope you’re not thinking I killed Harry, or my father. Why should I? Oh, I know it’d look well in the headlines. Cabinet Minister murders father and brother! If you could pin it on me, you’d make an international reputation. But you can’t this time, Littlejohn. My department was under fire in the House at the time Harry met his death. There was an all-night sitting and I was there, in my place, till seven in the morning. You can consult Hansard or, if you don’t believe that, ask the Prime Minister. He was next but one to me all the while. The night dad died, I spoke at the Economic and Political Alliance dinner…Anything else you’d like to know…?’
He smiled and bared his strong white teeth. He stood on the hearthrug, his legs apart. Just the way he stood on platforms or in the House when he was assailed. Littlejohn felt that if he pressed any point, he’d be engulfed in a spate of the eloquence for which Willie Dodd was famous. Willie consulted a large gold watch on a chain slung across his paunch.
‘Anything more?’
Willie Dodd had relaxed now. He was smiling a dangerous smile. He prodded Littlejohn familiarly on the chest.
‘If I were you, I wouldn’t waste much time on Harry’s family. Helena’s been a brick to him. The rest are milk and water. Winfield and his sister are just nonentities, however much they might try to be big shots. Winfield’s entirely dependent on his hirelings for whatever he does in business; his sister’s sold herself to old Bernard Hosea, a moneyed nitwit, for the sake of the title. Neither of them has the guts to kill a fly, let alone Harry. Especially with a bread-knife…’
‘Bread-knife? Who said it was with a bread-knife?’
‘Now don’t try to catch me out, Littlejohn. Every morning there’s placed on my desk at the Ministry a report from Scotland Yard on my brother’s affair. I asked the Home Secretary to keep me posted. I heard about the bread-knife being found…There’s not much I don’t know, you see.’
‘Yes…But the bread-knife wasn’t the fatal weapon, sir!’
Littlejohn slowly filled his pipe.
He wasn’t thinking of Willie or what a grand man he was. He was turning over the name in his mind. Harry V. Dodd…
‘Your brother had a second name, I gather, sir.’
‘Who told you that? He always kept it dark. It was Villiers. He thought it didn’t suit him at all. How mother thought of it, I can’t think. Probably the name of a hero in some novel
she read before Harry was born. Yes; Harry Villiers Dodd. That was him.’
‘And he never used his second name?’
‘Except in legal documents when he was forced into it. He was a bit sensitive about it. He’d been laughed at when he was a boy for carrying such a high-sounding name and at the same time having the seat of his pants in holes. We were poor in those days, you know. Well, I must be off. Call and see me at the House one day when all this is over. I’d like to hear how it ends. But don’t spend too much time on the family. Look into Harry’s shady friends and perhaps some of the women he was mixed up with…Good-bye…’
He bustled off and he must have sent in for Winfield on his way to the door.
Winfield’s tic was going twenty to the dozen. He was put out at the idea of being questioned by the police.
‘Look here, Inspector, I can’t see why…’
‘I just wanted a formal word with you, sir. Have you seen your father or grandfather lately?’
‘No, I haven’t, and I didn’t want to. They were impossible people. They were men who tried in every way they could think of to degrade their family and shame my mother. I don’t see how I can help at all in finding out who murdered them. I gather that’s what you’re here for.’
His poached eyes sought Littlejohn’s face anxiously. There was something funny about Winfield; something mentally unhealthy and unwholesome. He was a little sneak, a little prig, and lived in the rarefied atmosphere of his own conceit. Someone had told him that, having married him for his money and wrung a satisfactory settlement from him, his wife was carrying-on with his secretary. Winfield had cut his informer dead ever since and refused to investigate it. It couldn’t happen to him. Winfield Dodd, shortly to become Sir Winfield… he hoped.
A Knife For Harry Dodd Page 15
