“If I might just have a word with Mr. Gralam?”
“Of course … SWITHIN!”
Mr. Percival’s loud unctuous voice caressed the square like a solemn fog-horn and Gralam and all the people sitting round looked up.
Mr. Percival indicated with a benign wave of a fat hand that the antique dealer was wanted. At the same time, the municipal motor-car, driven by the beadle, drew up to take the Mayor away.
“Swithin, this is Superintendent Littlejohn and he wants to have a word with you. I’ll leave you together.”
To tell the truth, Gralam and the Mayor were only on speaking terms on municipal matters. They were distant relatives and had quarrelled about the will of a maiden aunt. The Mayor was glad to enter his car and be removed from the scene. He bade Littlejohn good afternoon and ignored Cromwell.
“What’s the matter with Mister Mayor?”
Gralam was little and slightly built, with small hands and feet and a pale face with high cheek bones and a pointed chin. The finicky, fastidious type who might have been attracted to his trade out of artistic inclination rather than for profit, and who might find it difficult to part with any real masterpieces which came his way in the course of business. He had a good head of white hair and shrewd grey eyes which had the faintly sly look of one accustomed to summing up clients and assessing exactly how much they could pay for anything.
“You wanted me, Superintendent? I’m at your service. Like to come over to the shop?”
Under the watching eye of all the occupants of the square, the three men crossed to the antique shop and Gralam let them in.
A large light place in very good order. No junk littered about; it was, perhaps, kept in the store-rooms. Here there was carpet on the floor; tables, chairs, chests and commodes tastefully set out to show them at their best; cabinets of costly china along the walls. In the large windows a mahogany Sheraton writing-desk, four chairs of the same period, a wall-mirror to match. Gralam’s name was well-known in collectors’ circles, he did a large export trade with the U.S.A., and he was a skilled and business-like buyer. Looking round his shop, you got the impression that he had no time for vulgar human beings and their money, but was accumulating lovely things for their intrinsic beauty. All this got him good prices for whatever he sold.
“Sit down, please.”
Gralam indicated a set of Queen Anne chairs upholstered in exquisite tapestry. Cromwell settled himself and looked nervously upwards at the massive lustre chandelier hanging over his head and hoped it wouldn’t fall down upon him like the one in the Phantom of the Opera.
“These municipal meetings are a terrible bore. I only remain on the council to prevent them tearing down such beauty as remains in the town. This square, the old gas lamps, the frontages of the houses … They’d pull them all down and build a lot of flats and offices if there wasn’t somebody in authority to plead for them …”
He opened a Regency secretaire cabinet in plum-pudding mahogany and took out a whisky bottle and glasses.
“You’ll join me?”
As he poured out the drinks, he talked. His voice was dry, and crackled as though the dust of his trade had dried him up.
“I suppose you wished to talk to me about my late neighbour, Dr. Beharrell?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good health … He had a house of priceless antiques. Family stuff mostly. His father and grandfather, although you might have called them quack doctors, married into good local families. I could never persuade Beharrell to sell a single piece of furniture. He’d rather have lit the fire with it than part with it. He was a natural hoarder. He knew the value of everything and clung to it. In a sense, it was the same with his wife. She was very beautiful. A collector’s piece, in fact. My own late wife introduced her to Beharrell years ago. She was a local girl, much sought after by men of her own age, to say nothing of a number of elderly bachelors. Beharrell went mad about her and, having acquired her, proceeded to treat her like a precious jewel. He adored her, but kept her almost a prisoner in the house.”
“Until in the end …”
Gralam closed one eye and admired the glint of the whisky in the cut glass of the tumbler.
“Until in the end, she could stand it no more. She wanted to be treated as flesh and blood, as a woman, not as a porcelain shepherdess.”
He stabbed with his forefinger in the direction of a pair of brightly-coloured French vases round which were twined voluptuous figures, standing in a Chippendale cabinet.
“She ran away with a man of flesh and blood of her own age.”
“And was never seen again.”
“As you say, Superintendent, and was never seen again.
Nobody knows what became of them. Perhaps they are happy together somewhere … Perhaps they are in paradise together.”
Littlejohn looked up sharply. “Meaning?”
“They may be dead. If they fled to London, they must have arrived there at the worst time of the bombing.”
Gralam’s eyes grew dreamy. He seemed to be far away.
“Can you tell us anything of Beharrell as a neighbour? Did you see much of him?”
“Before his wife ran away, we saw a lot of them both. My own wife was alive then. We belonged to the same set and gathered in someone or other’s house every week. The black-out didn’t break us up. For some time after Mrs. Beharrell went, her husband kept away; but he started turning up again. Naturally, we were all sorry for him and encouraged him. He seemed to be getting over it. Then, he suddenly changed and became a recluse. He shut himself up in that big house and didn’t stir out except to attend to his practice.”
“What was the cause, in your opinion, sir?”
Gralam stroked his chin and, crossing his legs, squinted at the shiny tips of his patent-leather shoes.
“It did seem to coincide with a burglar he had, but that is a stupid suggestion. After all, the place was insured. He wouldn’t tell the police, either. He told nobody. Mrs. Trott let me know about it all. There were three attempts at robbery, all told. Surely, rather than keep house perpetually and become a prisoner of his own fears, a man would tell the police and relieve his feelings. It was his own business, but it seemed to me very idiotic at the time.”
“Had he something very precious about the place that he didn’t want disturbing or anyone to know about?”
Gralam gave Littlejohn a sly glance from the corner of his eye.
“I don’t know.”
“But you have your own ideas, sir?”
Another sidelong look.
“What makes you ask that?”
“Because you might be hiding something, too, like Beharrell did.”
“I don’t like that suggestion, Superintendent. I only have my own vague opinions. I think there was something, but I haven’t a clue about it.”
“The doctor owned his house and the one next door?”
“Yes. That’s a bit unusual, but his grandfather bought both of them. The one next door was, I believe, a kind of hospital where patients were lodged by the bonesetters.”
“May I ask if you own your own property, too, sir?”
Gralam smiled.
“No. This and all the other houses in the square, with the exception of Beharrell’s two, belong to Vincent Pochin, the lawyer. He developed a mania for the antiquities of Caldicott and bought up all the properties here he could.”
“That’s a strange kind of hobby, isn’t it?”
“His family were, in days past, prominent people in the town. They lived and kept a bank in the very house Beharrell owned. Funny, Vincent could buy every one of them except the family town-house.”
“How long has he owned them?”
“He acquired them during the war … About 1943 or 1944. I was away at the time. The bottom fell out of the antique business and I closed down and got a job looking after the evacuated pictures and antiques of several of the London galleries and museums. I’d been here for twenty-five years before war broke out, but had
always been the tenant of some old ladies who let the place to me. It had been the family residence of their ancestors, too. When I came back to Caldicott after the war, I found I’d a new landlord. The old ladies had died and Pochin had bought the property cheaply.”
“And also the rest of the let property in the square?”
“Yes. Some of the owners died, others left the place, and in other cases, Pochin bought out mortgages and when the debtors couldn’t keep up the payments owing to the war, he foreclosed and came into possession. Not a bad idea, because had some property developer or other got them, they might easily have been pulled down or mauled badly in the making of flats or offices.”
Littlejohn lit his pipe and puffed it slowly and thoughtfully.
“Was your shop empty during the war, sir?”
“To all intents and purposes, yes. The W.V.S. ran a sort of depot here but very little went on. It was closed most of the time.”
“When did Pochin acquire it?”
“In 1942, I think. Why?”
“I like to be precise about these matters. You were here in 1947, sir?”
“Yes.”
Gralam raised his eyebrows, wondering what was coming next.
“Do you remember the drought and the bother about Beharrell’s well?”
Cromwell found himself glowing with interest. The well, the strong-room, the ownership of all the houses in the square. What was the Superintendent up to, now?
“Yes, I remember it all. I was on the council and we had a devil of a job with Beharrell. He got so mad, that I imagined at one time he’d be prepared to stick to his guns and defend his property, even if he had to take a shotgun to anyone who intruded.”
“And then he gave in.”
“Yes. His resistance collapsed.”
Again the sly sidelong look.
“But what has that to do with his death … his murder?”
“Nothing, really, sir. I’m just interested in the history of Dr. Beharrell, of Bank House, and this square. What exactly happened about the well?”
“There was a great water shortage and the water board bethought themselves of Beharrell’s well, which, in the town archives, has always had the reputation of never drying up in any drought in memory. The board made an offer to buy and pipe water from the well. Beharrell had filled it in. Said it wasn’t safe and too deep for a man’s garden. The board pressed the matter, Beharrell refused, there was talk of a case at law and both sides had actually instructed solicitors.”
“Who was pressing the matter from the board’s point of view?”
“Several of us. I for one, thought it damn selfish of Beharrell when the whole town looked like being without water. It was like him, as I said. What he had, he kept.”
“But who would you say, sir, was the driving force in the matter of the well?”
“Shillinglaw, the lawyer. He’s Coroner, now, but in those days, he was solicitor to the council and water-board.”
“He is also a member of the Pochin firm of lawyers and brother-in-law of the two Pochins?”
“You seem to know quite a lot for such a short stay, Superintendent. Yes, you’re right.”
“And then, you say, the doctor suddenly caved in.”
“Yes; when he knew he was likely to lose the case. The board would have applied for, and got, a compulsory purchase order.”
“And Beharrell made no more trouble?”
“He was a bit of a nuisance to the workmen when they opened up the well again. I was chairman of the surveyor’s committee of the town council and water board at the time. I got reports on the jobs and among them was the well project.
“The foreman of the digging party was quite mad about it. Beharrell stopped them working a time or two. Said it wasn’t convenient. He’d either patients about or guests, or something. I forget the details. But three times, he drove them off. However, that was a small matter considering he’d agreed to our using the well. We didn’t need it, after all. It rained like hell as soon as we started to dig, and kept it up for four months. We were afraid in the end we’d be flooded out. I remember the foreman saying the well had brought us all nothing but a lot of trouble, humbug, and bad luck.”
A bracket clock chimed half-past four and from the school behind the church, emerged a swarm of eager, running children on their ways home. The inmates of the memorial gardens had gone off for their teas and, on the terrace of the Red Lion, Mrs. Hope was serving afternoon tea to a commercial traveller, who was sitting entering up his sales on a table shaded from the sun by a striped parasol. He raised his head from his labours, started at the sight of the landlady, smiled at her, and gobbled her up with his eyes.
Long shadows were beginning to fall across Upper Square, and the brightness of the early day, which had livened up the old buildings, was now replaced by an evening melancholy which brought with it a sinister chill, as though the evil spirits of the place were eagerly waiting to take possession after dark.
“You mentioned earlier, Mr. Gralam, some other bachelors who might gladly have married Mrs. Beharrell, had the doctor not won her for himself. Who were they?”
A pause, as though the antique dealer were making up his mind whether or not to disclose the information and deciding what its implications might be.
“They’ve all gone now. Some have died; others left the town. The Pochin brothers are all that remain. They were rivals. Vincent never married. He’s really not the marrying sort. His wooing could hardly be described as masculine. It had an old-world grace about it. He just hung around, adoring her, and now and then he’d show off like a small boy. His brother, Sam, was even worse. But Sam got over it. He’s quite a clever man, is Sam. He’s a great collector of old firearms. The attic above their offices is full of a collection of all kinds. Old pistols, blunderbusses, flintlocks … I’d say it’s as valuable and comprehensive as any private collection in the country. He’s even got some kegs of old black gunpowder there and tries them out now and again to see how they work. He’s written a book on old firearms … But there I go … Riding my antique hobbyhorse again … Sam’s a bachelor, too.”
“Do he and Vincent live together?”
“Yes. They have a flat over the office in the square and a rambling old house a few miles out on the Staunton Road, where they live with their old mother. She’s eighty or more.”
“What type of men are they?”
“Vincent’s a bit of a spoiled child, even if he is nearly sixty. I believe he was a weakly youngster and they did everything for him. A sheltered type, who’s never been good for much work. A dilettante … a poser … Sam, who’s about two years older than him, carries on the family law practice with Shillinglaw, their brother-in-law. Sam’s a good lawyer. Not much in court, of course … Too retiring and modest. But a good adviser, if you understand what I mean. There is a legend, however, about a time or two when Sam appeared in court when Shillinglaw had an operation and Sam took his place. He was brilliant and took the court’s breath away. So, it appears that it’s indolence, not lack of skill, that keeps him from pleading.”
“What does Vincent do with all his time, then?”
“Goes to the office and pretends to work, I suppose. It’s a good practice and he probably gets a good share of the takings. Sam will see to that. He’s always looked after Vincent like a father. Vincent must arouse his protective instinct.”
“What was Mrs. Beharrell’s maiden name?”
“Grace Brodribb. She came from Peterborough, and was a relative of my late wife’s. Did I tell you before? H’m … She came to stay with us for a while after her father died. She caused quite a sensation locally, I can assure you. That’s a long time ago.”
He rose.
“I close at five and it’s getting time to lock up the valuable pieces. I have a safe in which I put the silver and precious china. One never knows. One day some burglar who’s also a connoisseur might break in.”
“Did you know about the ancient safe in Beharrell’s cell
ar?”
“Yes. I think it must have been Pochin once told me. It was there in the days of Pochin’s Bank. I hear it had been broken into when Beharrell died. That wouldn’t be a difficult job, if what I hear is the truth. Pochin once described it to me. In the old days I guess it kept valuables safe. Nowadays …”
Gralam tended to ramble on in his talk, especially when it came to discussing anything antique.
“Whoever broke in the safe didn’t get much, sir. It only contained a lot of old notes issued by a bank which suspended payment more than a century ago. That is, unless the intruder took away something else with him. The notes were in an inner coffer which hadn’t been opened, apparently. There was nothing else there.”
“It was a funny business …”
Gralam began to gather together the silver and placed it on a table ready for stowing away. Then, the small china figures. He handled them all delicately as though he loved them, stroking them almost voluptuously and fingering their delicate glaze and modelling like an expert savours fine wines.
“What was Mrs. Beharrell like, sir? Was she a bit flighty?”
Gralam stood like someone transfixed for a minute.
“Not flighty. I wouldn’t say that. But, I told you, he kept her pent up. A bird is bound to beat the bars of its cage and long for the fresh air. However loving and tame, it’s bound to do that, isn’t it?”
“And you would, in a way, agree that she was right in taking to her wings and flying off with the first man who offered her freedom.”
Gralam’s skin was like parchment, but slowly the colour of blood suffused it and he gradually grew hot and flushed.
“You’ll bear in mind, Superintendent, that Grace was, in a sense, a member of my family … or, at least, my wife’s. I would be the last to condone such an irregularity. Even after she married, men flattered her and paid court to her. It used to madden Beharrell. I’ve seen him hurry her off home early in quite a tantrum because some man or other who’s happened to be at a house party, has been smitten by Grace’s beauty, and couldn’t leave her alone. It tended to make Beharrell take her out less and keep her more to himself.”
“In his later days, were there any other women in Beharrell’s life, sir?”
Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 6
