“Take my advice, you’ll put-up at the temperance. The pub’s too noisy. Wot with young bloods drivin’ there in fast cars and revvin’ ‘em up, it’s like bedlam at the Brown Cow till after midnight. The temperance used to be a pub, too, but the justices thought one was enough for the village. It was called the Weatherby Arms; now it’s the Weatherby Temperance. You can get a drink with your meals, but they ‘ave to bring it in, if you get wot I mean. Landlady’s a nice woman. A cheerful widow. Mrs. Groves....”
The plumber dropped Littlejohn in the centre of the village and made off to his home in Superior. It was six in the evening and all was quiet. Dinner time. Already a string of cars was festooned in front of the Brown Cow.
Littlejohn looked around. The place was trim and neat and seemed to revolve round its old-fashioned church. A large graveyard, a tall square tower, a lych-gate, and the vicarage and tithe-barn behind. Great yew-trees hung over the church wall across the gravel sidewalk. Opposite the lych-gate, a large house, standing back in a garden full of daffodils and wallflowers. Then a string of small shops, with tasteful windows, apparently constructed from a converted row of cottages. Wool, Fruit, Butcher, Grocer, a café, which sold bread and cakes, and then the Brown Cow. On the same side as the church, and to the left of it, the post-office and newsagent’s, a shop selling antiques and bric-à-brac ancient and modern. To the right of the church, a chemist’s, another café, and then the Weatherby Temperance Hotel, bearing a gilded sign to that effect and sporting the motoring clubs’ accolades. A tall, square, trim Georgian place, with a small lawn in front and a car-park behind. At an angle across the road from it, another red brick Regency house, apparently converted into flats, for the door was peppered with letter-slits, each bearing a small brass plate above it.
Mrs. Groves tallied with the plumber’s description and she blushed slightly when Littlejohn mentioned by whom she had been recommended. Whether she was one of the “bad payers” or whether she fancied the plumber as a possible successor to the late Groves, the Superintendent never knew. He was received like a brother and when he signed the register there was an even greater commotion. The affair at Rushton Inferior last night had reached the evening papers, Cromwell’s identity had been given, and it was stated that Littlejohn, of Scotland Yard, was on the case.
“You can have the best room, sir,” said Mrs. Groves, and led him to a huge bedchamber facing the road, on the first floor. It contained a four-poster bed which looked like a galleon in full sail.
The whole place was free and easy. Judging from the knots of people standing about drinking sherry and gin, in spite of the sign over the door, there were about a score of inmates, a dozen of whom seemed regulars. They wandered in and out of the kitchens behind, asking the cook what was ‘on’ for dinner and passing remarks about it and giving advice.
The whole place had been rejuvenated by fancy Regency wallpapers and in some of the rooms each wall bore a different pattern. Candlewick bedspreads, arty curtains, floors covered in springy rubber-backed carpets, the blues, pinks and yellows of which were already fading from the sun.
The mood of the whole place seemed to emanate from Mrs. Groves, who was almost infantile in her jollity. Large, fat, and with a clear pink complexion and blue eyes, she reminded you of a big china doll, except that her white hair had been a bit overdone with blue rinse.
“We’ve heard all about you, Superintendent. How is your sergeant, poor man?”
“The doctors hope he will recover, although it is going to be a long job.”
“We’re so relieved.”
She always spoke collectively for everybody there, as though the place were somehow run on co-operative lines. She might have been fifty, or a little more, judging from appearances, but she was one of those ageless types who enjoy a long maturity and then suffer a tragic rapid decay at the end of it.
Littlejohn was a bit doubtful about the plumber’s advice. The place lacked the impersonal atmosphere of the traditional licensed hotel. Here, inspired by Mrs. Groves, they were one big happy family. Littlejohn had too much work to do and didn’t want a perpetual Christmas party...however... One could only try it. In fact, one of the lodgers might easily be the one who shot Cromwell!
He ate his dinner undisturbed and it was an excellent one. Looking around him from the table-for-one at which he was sitting, the Superintendent could make out those who had merely called for a meal and those who were living-in. Some sat at table with a lack of familiarity and examined the menu as though they’d never seen such a thing before. Others were on easy terms with the two waitresses and behaved as though they owned the place. Half-way through the meal a young couple with two children arrived, somewhat dishevelled from the day’s outing they had been taking, and, judging from the faces of the boarders when the children raised shrill cries for food, the little family were lodgers as well.
Mrs. Groves tripped about here and there, greeting people as though each was the one person in all the world she was most glad to see there. She introduced Littlejohn to a tall dark young man in heavy spectacles and with a slight stammer, who sat on the next table. A man called Valentine, an engineer in charge of a new gasometer in course of construction in a town four miles away. Then she sat down and ate a meal large enough for three.
After dinner, Littlejohn quietly left and took a walk down the main road. More cars than ever in front of the cafés and the village pub. It was quiet enough out of doors and the air was full of the scent of wallflowers. Cherry and almond trees, heavily laden with blossom, hung over the garden walls and fences. An old countryman was mowing the grass verge in front of a substantial-looking villa in a neat garden almost opposite the Weatherby.
“Could you tell me, please, where I can find the police-station?”
The old man removed his pipe.
“You another of ‘em?”
“Another of whom?”
“Place ‘as bin crawlin’ with police an’ newspaper men all day. Chap was shot ‘ere last night. County police ‘ave been all over the village the whole day, interviewin’, measurin’-up, terrifyin’ everybody. There an’t been doin’ any good with Ted Bloor. Got a bit above hisself, ‘as Ted. You’d think ‘e was the on’y policeman left in the world, the high-an’-mighty ways he’s taken on.”
“Is Bloor the constable?”
“Aye. Police-house is jest along the road there. As a rule, you’ll find ‘im about, eyein’ the cars to see if they’re proper lit-up or else if anybody’s tryin’ to drive ‘em drunk. But with shootin’ on ‘is ‘ands, cars is too small fry for Ted at present. ‘E’ll come back to ‘em, be sure o’ that, when all the fuss is over.”
Littlejohn thanked him and left him, much to the old man’s regret, for he preferred earning three bob an hour gossiping, instead of shoving a mower here, there and everywhere.
Ted Bloor was sitting alone in the police-house writing laboriously on sheets of foolscap when Littlejohn disturbed him. He’d sent his wife to the pictures at Wiston Purlieu in spite of the fact that she’d seen the film the summer before at the seaside. “I want to be on my own, mother. I want to concentrate on my report,” he’d told her when her sister had turned-up to quizz him about the big case on which he was engaged.
Bloor was a middle-aged countryman with a heavy red face, bushy eyebrows, a small sandy moustache, and wondering blue eyes, which wondered more than ever when the Superintendent arrived. When he’d opened the door—a difficult feat because the police-house was new and all the wood unseasoned and swelling in its sockets—he’d almost fallen flat to discover who was calling on him.
“Come in, sir. Have you been to Chester?”
“Not yet, Bloor. I’m not on the case officially. I came north to see my colleague, Cromwell.”
“‘Ow is he? I’m sorry this has ‘appened. Disgraceful, I call it.”
He looked heart-broken that such a crime should have happened on his own beat.
“I think he’ll be all right. It was touch and go, thou
gh. I can’t understand it, Bloor. Cromwell was a stranger here. Who would want to do such a thing?”
“I’m as much in the dark as you are, sir, but I’ll find out who did it, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Bloor raised his hand as though swearing a solemn oath.
“This is just a courtesy call to let you know I’m here. I’m staying at the Weatherby.”
Bloor nodded to show that he approved of the place.
“If there’s anything I can do, let me know, Bloor.”
“Oh, but, if the Chief Constable knows you’re ‘ere, sir, he’ll put you in charge. I can assure you of that.”
Bloor hoped so. He’d taken a liking to Littlejohn right away.
“When was Mr. Richard Cromwell buried?”
“Cromwell...? Oh, I see. His name was Richard Twigg, sir. I understand he was brother to Mr. Cromwell’s mother. He was laid to rest in the churchyard the day before yesterday.”
“He’d been ill for some time?”
“Not long. He’d had ulcers for a long while. It was his hobby, sir. Always talkin’ about them. Then, as far as I can gather, one of them burst and killed ‘im. They say ‘e bled to death almost before the doctor arrived.”
“Who was the doctor?”
“Clinton, of Wiston Purlieu.... He doctors most people in the village.”
“Would you care to show me just where the shooting occurred?”
“With pleasure, sir.”
Bloor put on his flat cap and held open the door. This was going to be good, he thought to himself. On the job with Scotland Yard. He couldn’t get out and in full view of the village fast enough. On the way he told Littlejohn how the case was going.
Nobody knew when the shot was fired. Nobody seemed to have heard it. With all the cars about, it might have been mistaken for a back-fire. A passer-by, arriving home late from a masonic meeting in Wiston Purlieu, three miles away, had found Cromwell unconscious on the ground. He couldn’t have been there long, otherwise he’d have died. Of that Bloor was sure. It was moonlight, so whoever fired the shot could see his quarry. Cromwell had been taken to the Wiston Cottage Hospital right away and was so badly injured that it needed a special brain surgeon to operate. So they sent him to Manchester Royal, where there were famous men to do the job. That was all.
“Where did Mr. Twigg live?”
“Just through the village on the way to Rushton Superior. A largish house on the left. You can’t miss it, sir.”
“Has Mrs. Twigg inquired about Sergeant Cromwell’s condition?”
“When she was told about the shootin’, sir, she passed out, and she’s been in bed ever since.”
They were on the scene of the crime. It had occurred almost opposite the Weatherby, fifty yards along on the other side, right in front of a square of land turned into allotments.
“The county experts have combed the place all day. They’ve questioned everybody. I’ve been busy, I can tell you, sir. Nobody saw or heard anythin’.”
Darkness was falling and the village street had grown suddenly very quiet. Lights had gone on in houses and cottages, and blinds and curtains were drawn. Now and then, a car passed, but most of the traffic seemed immobilized for the time in the string of red rear-lights in front of the pub and a café, which was still open and through the windows of which people could be seen crowded round tables drinking wine and eating the omelettes for which the place had a local reputation. Then a bus arrived and poured out about a dozen people who’d been to the pictures at Wiston Purlieu. Among them were Mrs. Bloor and her sister.
Two large heavy women who engaged in breathless conversation until they drew abreast of Bloor. One of them half halted and looked hard at the bobby.
“I thought you were wantin’ a night in on your own,” she said, tossed her head, and drew her sister past the two men as though to avoid being contaminated by her untruthful spouse.
“The missus,” said Bloor, sighed, and then, as if to change the subject, “There should be a comet in the sky to-night, accordin’ to the wireless....” But there was no interest in his voice.
As usual, his missus had spoiled it all!
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George Bellairs was the pseudonym of Harold Blundell (1902-1985). He was, by day, a Manchester bank manager with close connections to the University of Manchester. He is often referred to as the English Simenon, as his detective stories combine wicked crimes and classic police procedurals, set in small British communities.
He was born in Lancashire and married Gladys Mabel Roberts in 1930. He was a Francophile which explains why many of his titles took place in France. Bellairs travelled there many times, and often wrote articles for English newspapers and magazines, with news and views from France.
After retiring from business, he moved with Gladys to Colby on the Isle of Man, where they had many friends and family. Some of his detective novels are set on the Isle of Man and his surviving notebooks attest to a keen interest in the history, geography and folklore of the island. In 1941 he wrote his first mystery story during spare moments at his air raid warden’s post. Throughout the 1950s he contributed a regular column to the Manchester Guardian under the pseudonym George Bellairs, and worked as a freelance writer for other newspapers both local and national.
Blundell’s first mystery, Littlejohn on Leave (1941) introduced his series detective, Detective Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. His books are strong in characters and small communities – set in the 1940s to ‘70s. The books have strong plots, and are full of scandal and intrigue. His series character started as Inspector and later became Superintendent Thomas Littlejohn. Littlejohn, reminiscent of Inspector Maigret, is injected with humour, intelligence and compassion.
He died on the Isle of Man in April 1982 just before his eightieth birthday after a protracted illness.
If you’d like to hear more from George Bellairs and other classic crime writers, follow @CrimeClassics on Twitter or connect with them on Facebook.
ALSO BY GEORGE BELLAIRS
The Case of the Famished Parson
The Case of the Demented Spiv
Corpses in Enderby
Death in High Provence
Death Sends for the Doctor
Murder Makes Mistakes
Bones in the Wilderness
Toll the Bell for Murder
Death in the Fearful Night
Death in the Wasteland
Death of a Shadow
Intruder in the Dark
Death in Desolation
The Night They Killed Joss Varran
This edition published in 2016 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © George Bellairs, 1957
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
CONTENTS
1THE PUZZLE OF ABBOT’S CALDICOTT
2THE MAN IN THE YELLOW GLOVES
3UPPER SQUARE
4THE OLD BANK HOUSE
5FRENCH PORCELAIN
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6THE LOST RIVER
7THE LAWYER’S HOUSE
8THE HOUR OF NOON
9THE SINGING MISTRESS
10THE BARBER
11QUEEN’S COUNSEL
12POCHIN CONFESSES
13JIMMY-IN-THE-WELL
14RAGS AND BONES
15GEORGE HOPE CONFESSES
16THE MOONLIT SQUARE
17THE SHOT IN THE DARK
18THE SWEAT OF FEAR
Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 24
