The Crime at Halfpenny Bridge

by George Bellairs

  “Sharrup!” said her husband, who had hitherto continued to prop-up his own door-frame without taking any interest in events. His wife must have been the one stimulus which stung him to coherent speech.

  “I won’t shut-up. Can’t a woman see what’s goin’-on at her own door without bein’ swore at by a idle, ole, scroungin’…?”

  “Sharrup, I said, didn’t I? Or I’ll slap yer on the kisser.…”

  Hoggatt and Littlejohn withdrew and left them to it.

  Other neighbours were approaching and a meeting of the whole street seemed imminent.

  “Nothing more we can do here,” said Littlejohn. “What about a look at the house in Pleasant Street where the old lady died, and then we’d better get back to the police station. My sergeant, Cromwell, is due just before one and I must be there to meet him. Incidentally, who’s Rosie Lee?”

  As he spoke, the train from London was just arriving at Werrymouth Central, with Detective-Sergeant Cromwell aboard.

  Cromwell was as usual, dressed in sober, dark raiment with a white wing collar showing over the top of his overcoat. He wore a bowler hat and looked like an itinerant preacher arriving to deputise in somebody’s pulpit. As the train stopped, he lugged out of the compartment a large and heavy suitcase, for, no matter how long his stay, he always came well prepared. He sniffed the air for sea-breezes, like a tea-taster sampling a brew, and, apparently finding it satisfactory, albeit his lugubrious face remained inscrutable, he picked-up his bag and made for the barrier.

  “Carry yer bag, sir?”

  A pale-faced, underfed whipper-snapper of a fellow eagerly pointed to the suitcase and touched his greasy cap. Cromwell passed the luggage to him and then grimly took it from him again as he saw how the man gave at the knees under the load.

  “Shouldn’t try too much on an empty stomach.… It’s time you had your lunch,” said the detective and handing the casual half-a-crown, he picked up his bag with ease and hurried off, somewhat embarrassed by his own generosity.

  “Godblessyer, sir, thankee, sir,” whined the little man and, as soon as his benefactor had vanished through the station exit, tore hell-for-leather to the nearest bar.

  V

  RETURN TO PLEASANT STREET

  LIKE their neighbours in the adjacent Gas Street, many of the householders of Pleasant Street were taking the Sunday morning air propped against their door-frames, hanging over their garden gates or even seated on chairs on the pavement. As the detectives turned the corner and made for No. 27, a hush descended. Chatter died away and all eyes were turned on the officers like those of the chorus of a pantomime or opera eagerly focused on the conductor and waiting for the beat of his baton to set them going.

  “Simon Lee, known locally as Rosie Lee, runs a mixed news agency and tobacco shop on the quayside. In view of what Mrs. Govannah said, we’d better call on him sometime to-day and hear what he’s got to say about Sam Prank’s visit last night. Lee’s a dark horse.…” Hoggatt was saying as they reached their destination.

  “I thought so,” he added, when, after he had knocked at the door of the murdered woman’s home, Jane Prank’s face was thrust enquiringly round the curtains. “I guessed she’d soon be back. Probably hunting among the old lady’s things seeing what she can spirit away before the executors get at ’em.”

  He was wrong, however, for one of the executors was already there. James Sprankling had established himself on the hearthrug and was occupying the dead woman’s armchair. A small, portly man, with short fat legs, a red face and the fresh complexion of one who spends plenty of time in the open air, and sea air at that. He was the owner of two small fishing-vessels and made a comfortable living from them. He had a round head covered in short, silky hair, variegated by some strange disease and reminding one of a tabby cat.

  Among his friends of the docks and Oddfishers, Sprankling was regarded as somewhat of an oracle and granted the honorary degree of “Captain.” He spoke very little and what was in truth the silence of ignorance, was mistaken as often as not, owing to the air with which it was maintained, for great profundity.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” said Jane Prank, letting-in the detectives and introducing Mr. Sprankling as her cousin James with an ill-grace, for she resented his squatting before she had found time to pry into the secrets of the dead. “I’ve been robbed!”

  On the opposite side of the fireplace from Sprankling and almost invisible in the semi-darkness—for the blinds of the room were drawn in accordance with Pleasant Street funeral convention—sat another figure, that of a tall, angular woman. Jane Prank introduced her as Miss Toke, the friend from the chapel with whom she had spent the last night. As she rose from her perch and came into the lighter part of the room, Miss Toke revealed a spiteful, dark, foreboding face, heavy like a man’s, twitching nervously, and with an unsightly purple blemish down one cheek. With a squeak at the mention of police, Miss Toke fled upstairs and was not seen again.

  Mr. Sprankling was less timid. He sat firm, enjoying his pipe, which he removed to greet the newcomers.

  “Mornin’. Mornin’,” he said turning first to Hoggatt and then to Littlejohn. “The early bird catches the worm!”

  With which cryptic utterance, he resumed his meditating and puffing in a cataleptic fashion. Whether he was calculating the wealth he would acquire, thanks to the efforts of the criminal the detectives were after, or whether his mind was just a blank, nobody could tell.

  “Yes,” Jane Prank was saying. “Yesterday Cousin Harriet gave me ten pounds she owed me for wages … and a job I’d had to get it, her bein’ so tight-fisted.… An’ I put it in my purse in that drawer. With last night’s carryings-on, I forgot about it until it was too late. When I came in this mornin’, I looked for it in me purse and it’d gone.”

  “Gone, ’ad it? Fancy that,” rumbled Sprankling, popping out of his coma into the conversation and then back again.

  “Sam Prank had ten one-pound notes in a bundle in his trousers’ pocket when his body was recovered. That’s probably where your money went, Miss Prank.…”

  “Can I ’ave it back?”

  “In due course,” snapped Hoggatt impatiently. “I just want a word or two with you, Miss Prank, concerning the habits of Miss Harriet. Now, it looks very much as though Sam called here for money. Was your cousin in the habit of lending him sums?”

  “Yes. Whenever ‘is ship docked, he was ’ere, cadgin’ and soft-soapin’ the old lady. Often enough I’ve told ’er that all he wanted was ’er money, but she usedter lose her temper at me.…”

  Sprankling awoke from his torper again and reared himself in the chair.

  “’ow much did ’e ged oud of ’er?” he rumbled, mangling his words in a strange fashion of his own, due, apparently to a reluctance to open his mouth properly.

  “’ow should I know? She never told me wot she give ’em. Kep’ her own counsel.… A deep ’un was cousin ’arriet.”

  “Ztrange goin’s-on there’ve bin ’ere. Me, ’er eggzecutor, knowed nothin’. An’ now she’s dead, gan’t gedter know nothin now, eether. Lawyer sez he ain’t goin’ ter disguss business on Zundays. Bud I’ll see me own lawyer termorrer.… I’ll zhow ’im as I got me rights. Eggzecutor, ain’t I?”

  “Captain” Sprankling had evidently been trying to rush his co-executor, the dead woman’s lawyer, and had suffered a rebuff which made him unusually talkative.

  “How was the money left, Mr. Sprankling?” asked Littlejohn, for, though he knew perfectly well what the Will contained, did not care to disclose the fact to the injured trustee.

  “Ah.… Thad ’ud be tellin’…!” rumbled Sprankling enigmatically and subsiding in his chair again as though to take counsel with himself.

  “Might as well tell yer,” he said at length. “Zeein’ you bolice are on the side o’ the fambly, like. Legacies left to me and Jane there. Not statin’ no figgers as they ain’t nezessary. But the rest, avter that, is left to the church … the catherlic church.…”
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br />   The “Captain” opened his mouth like a landed fish gasping for air, and emitted a cloud of smoke.

  “A sgandal.… That’s wot it is. A sgandal! Us a protestant fambly for ’undreds and ’undreds o’ years, and then all our money left to gatherlic church.…”

  It was taking the slow-witted “skipper” so long to get his tale and his grievances off his chest that Littlejohn turned to Jane Prank for speedier results.

  “What’s all this about, Miss Prank?”

  “It’s as ’e sez. Cousin ’arriet’s father ’ad a long illness and the pastor of the church our family belonged to … the Congregation of Burnin’ Bushers … never called. Felt ’e wasn’t welcome, ’e said. Well, one of the priests from the ’oly Name Church as usedter call next door, ’eard about Uncle Ezra, like, and started comin’ to sit and talk with ’im. A nose for money, ’ad that priest, I allus sez …”

  “Never sboke a truer word, Jane.…” thundered Sprankling, emitting smoke like a naval gun firing a broadside.

  “… An’ cousin ’arriet’ took a fancy to that priest. Let ’im bury uncle Ezra, she did. An’ us a big dissentin’ family! Scandalous, we all called it. But she was that stupid.…”

  “Sgandalous is the word, Jane.… Sgandalous it was.”

  “Then, spite of what we all said, cousin ’arriet started to go to the ’oly Name reglar.… Nothin’ we could do or say would change ’er mind.…”

  “Sgandalous it was and sgandalous is!”

  “So now, the church gets the money instead of the family,” hissed Jane through her closed teeth.

  “You’ve nod done so badly, Jane. Nod so badly.…” grunted Sprankling.

  “Wot you talkin’ abaht, you old …?”

  “Now, now, Jane. Not in front of strangers.… No dizhgracin’ the fambly beefore outsiders.…”

  “Well, shut-up then.…”

  “Me last word to you police is, if you wants to know all about the brivate life of Harriet Prank, ask the priest. Ask the priest, I says. She never told the fambly nothin’. Thas all I got to say to yer.…”

  And with that “Captain” Sprankling withdrew into himself like a tortoise in its shell and commenced afresh his smoking and private ruminating.

  Jane Prank was manifestly uncomfortable in the presence of the police. Littlejohn decided to try one more shot before they left.

  “I understand that Miss Harriet took her own medicine.… I mean, you didn’t give her the pills to take.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where did she keep them?”

  “In the sideboard drawer there.”

  “According to medical findings, she took three pills instead of the usual one. Have you anything to say to that, Miss Prank?”

  “No. Why should I? What you gettin’ at? I said she took her own medicine and I meant she took it.…”

  The woman was getting hot and excited.

  “Could Miss Harriet see very well?”

  “No. She ’ad cataracts comin’ over her eyes.”

  “Funny she didn’t let you give her the pill then.”

  “She was stupid. Wouldn’t admit when she was beat. She was that sort.”

  “Did you get on well with your cousin?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “She seems to have got on your nerves a bit.”

  “You oughter try livin’ with an old woman with one foot in the grave and allus complainin’ and never grateful for all you done for ’er. And that unconsiderate as to want to keep me indoors all the time in case she wanted anythin’. Money or no money, I told ’er, I’m ’avin’ my time off and out with me friends, so put that in yer pipe and smoke it. I told ’er that straight, I did. She ’adn’t bought me body and soul for a measly pound a week and I let ’er know it, too.”

  “Well, we’ll be going now, Miss Prank, and leave you to your business. You’ll be at the inquest, to-morrow.…”

  “Yes. I’ve ’ad a paper to attend. Though what good I’ll be …”

  “Good morning.”

  Hoggatt and Littlejohn were glad to get in the open air again after the gloom and fug of the darkened house.

  The inhabitants of Pleasant Street had gravitated towards the door of No. 27 and stood in a ragged semicircle round it, as though hoping to hear through the timber all that was going on inside. At the sight of the officers, they began to disperse languidly, like a Verdi chorus making a nonchalant processional entrance preceeding the arrival of the principal singers.

  “Time for some lunch,” said Hoggatt. “We’d better get back to the station.”

  “In the heat of the chase, I’d forgotten my faithful Cromwell, too,” added Littlejohn. “He’ll wonder where I’ve got to. I think a visit to Mr. Rosie Lee won’t come amiss this afternoon. And I guess I’ll take the oracular Sprankling’s advice, as well, at an early opportunity. Ask the priests, he said, didn’t he?”

  They got little farther that day, however, for Rosie Lee had packed-up and gone off somewhere. His shop was closed and shuttered when Littlejohn and Cromwell called after lunch. The priests of the Holy Name, too, were too occupied with their Sunday duties to be approached about crime. It seemed indecent to tear them from their sacred offices and bring them back to earth and a sordid murder case.

  So, the two Scotland Yard men returned to Inspector Playfair’s cottage, where a bed was arranged for Cromwell in an attic room into which, in spite of its low ceiling, the lugubrious sergeant managed to fold himself without too much strain. Having made arrangements for the new arrival’s bed and board, the party adjourned to the sea in Playfair’s boat. They caught enough fish for the morrow’s breakfast and Cromwell, who hooked twice as many as his two friends together, was seen to smile one of his rare smiles as they brought their catch ashore.

  Four days later, Mrs. Cromwell evacuated from their home in Shepherd Market to her old place near Truro, for a young Cromwell was expected in course of time, received a parcel of stinking fish, with her husband’s love. She did not tell him when next she wrote, that the results of his labours had decomposed en route, thanks to a delay in the post. He had enough on his mind without that!

  VI

  INQUEST

  WHEN the Werrymouth lodge of the Order of Ancient Mariners amalgamated with their rivals, the Eccentric Order of Oddfishers and moved into the Oddfishers’ Hall, their imposing and vacant headquarters were purchased by the County Council which was hunting around for a Coroner’s Courthouse.

  In this building, therefore, Mr. Titus Jackson, County Coroner, held the inquests on Sam and Harriet Prank.

  Mr. Jackson was a small man with a smooth, pink face, a bald head shaped like a melon and large, even false teeth which made him resemble a ventriloquist’s dummy. On the rostrum on which he was perched on that eventful Monday morning, the Coroner’s chair was elevated by a small hidden platform to make him look taller and to raise him to a respectable level above his desk. Otherwise, he would have looked to be hanging on to it by his chin. As it was, his short legs dangled a good six inches from the floor.

  Above the Coroner’s dais, a single eye, wide-open and all-seeing, cunningly carved in wood, glared down on the body of the court. One of the insignia of the departed Ancient Mariners which had not been removed. It served to remind those present that from Mr. Titus Jackson nothing could be hid, as from God, whose eye the Ancient Mariners used in their ritual to terrify new members as they were sworn-in.

  Mr. Jackson was very excited at the prospect of two murder enquiries. Here was a chance to rehabilitate himself on the upper rungs of the ladder of social life in Werrymouth, in which, since his second marriage a year or so ago, to a lady of inferior rank, Mr. Jackson and his partner had been mere also-rans. Knowing the craven nature of the female Judases who fluttered round Lady Bromiloe, the leader of the town’s high society, the new Mrs. Jackson realised that masterly handling of the enquiry would put Titus in the headlines side by side with Hitler—locally at least—and prove to the meet-you-with-a-smile,
stab-you-in-the-back women whose community Mrs. Jackson was, for some strange reason, itching to join, that her husband was no nonentity, but a power to be reckoned with.

  This tortuous piece of diplomacy having been tearfully but carefully put to Titus on the way home from church the previous evening after Mrs. Jackson had discovered that her name had been omitted from Lady Bromiloe’s “Bring-and-Buy” Committee, whatever that might be, he realised that it was up to him. He and his wife must be elevated at once from the social limbo of Werrymouth, where they reposed at present like anonymous players in a cricket match found at the tail of the team and listed “A. N. Other.”

  The Coroner thrashed his desk with his wooden mallet and cast a perforating stare round the hall.

  The courthouse was crowded, for nothing like this had occurred in Werrymouth before. Work on the docks had almost been suspended, a few late holidaymakers had rolled up for a free show, housewives had postponed washing-day until Tuesday and the crews of several ships then in port had arrived to see their mates, O’Brien and Creer, top of the bill, put on their act.

  Mr. Jackson surveyed his motley audience over pince-nez which bit so viciously into the bridge of his nose, shaped like an old-fashioned milestone, that the red weals were visible from the very back of the room.

  The atmosphere was stifling and smelled of disinfectant, moth-balls, stale tobacco and escaping gas.

  The building was filled to capacity. Seating consisted of long, hard benches, unmercifully punishing to the anatomy. These were all jammed with a sweating throng, but now and then another optimist would halt at one of them, murmur “room for one more,” and insinuate himself on the end. Whereat, the whole content of the bench would move along, forcing-off the unfortunate at the other end and driving him to a seat in the damp window-sills. This sort of pushing and pulling went on until Mr. Jackson ordered the closing of the doors. It only needed a House Full sign to complete the illusion.