Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic

by John Rowland

  “And that is all that you knew of John Tilsley?” I said.

  “Absolutely all.”

  “You knew nothing of any business which he might be doing outside this racket in spare parts for cars?”

  “None at all.”

  And this time again I was prepared to bet that the man was telling the truth. But it was a real staggering revelation. I wondered what Shelley would have to say about it.

  “Where did you meet Tilsley originally?” I asked.

  “In here.”

  “In this garage, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he just come and offer you the spare parts?”

  “Oh, no. He brought his car in for repair. Something quite small had gone wrong—he’d broken some little bolt somewhere. I told him that it would take a week or two, as the makers wouldn’t supply such parts under three months, and I should have to have the thing specially made.”

  “And what then?” I asked.

  “He told me that he could lay his hands on various parts, but only if they were ordered in advance, and only if I was prepared to pay a pretty high price for them. He couldn’t guarantee to supply anything and everything; but most spares for most of the more popular makes he thought he could do.”

  “And has he done so?”

  “Oh, yes. What happens, you see, a customer comes in here with or without his car. He will point out that something is broken, or will let me have a look at the car to find it out for myself. Then I have to tell him that it is out of stock, get in touch with Tilsley in London, and in a couple of days it will be delivered here. He’s let me down from time to time, but as a rule it’s perfectly reliable. The only annoying thing is that the times he’s let me down almost always turn out to be an old and valued customer.”

  I grinned. “It always turns out that way,” I said. “But you did say, Foster, that you thought the man was a crook. There may be something slightly unethical about this story that you have told me today, but there is nothing really crooked about it, is there? I mean to say, there is nothing which is a direct breaking of the law.”

  He paused and smiled sourly. “Well, no,” he said. “But, you see, I always keep asking myself: where did Tilsley get all these spares? They’re not so easy to come by in these days, you know. Especially when they come from some popular car of twelve years or so back—a car of the age which is always tending to break down in one way or another.”

  “And what is your answer to that pretty little riddle?” I asked.

  “I think the spares are stolen,” he said. “In other words, your friends at Scotland Yard might find themselves holding me as a receiver of stolen goods. Mind you, I never had any sort of definite proof that they were stolen; if I had I wouldn’t have gone on dealing with the man. That sort of game is too dangerous to keep up for long. But I think in my own mind that he has got a gang of confederates in a lot of the car factories, salting away spare parts. Then he has a store of some sort in London, and he’s probably supplying a lot of small garages like mine with the stuff their customers want.”

  “It’s possible,” I had to admit.

  “It’s only a suspicion of mine,” he said, “but I think that there’s a lot to be said in favour of it. And if he has been doing that, well, some of us might be for it. That’s why I was a bit scared, I don’t mind admitting, when you came in.”

  And that was all that I could learn from him. I was not altogether convinced by his argument. But at the same time I was pretty well as sure as I could be of anything in this case that Foster himself believed in the argument which he had been putting forward.

  Chapter XIII

  In Which We Compare Notes

  As I left Foster’s garage I suddenly found that I was hungry. This was not really surprising, as I had had little to eat all day—nothing, indeed, since a fairly inadequate lunch on the train. And it was now about the time that Mrs. Cecil in my digs would be serving dinner. Still, before I did anything to satisfy my hunger I should have to get in touch with my paper. They would expect something good and strong for the last edition, I thought. So I hunted out the nearest phone box and sent off my report. I said nothing, of course, about my latest investigations; but I gave them a good deal about Tilsley, described in discreet terms the Charrington Hotel, where he had been living at Broadgate, and provided his London address—though without giving any suggestion that I had already visited Thackeray Court. My job, after all, was to spin my material out so that I was able to give them sufficiently sensational stuff each day to ensure front-page importance.

  When I had finished my dictation over the telephone I felt fairly well satisfied with what I had done. I was sure that Mick, my editor, would not be regretting having made me his special correspondent.

  So it was with a happy mind that I went in to my dinner. It was a dull meal. Stew, made of some unidentifiable meat, with potatoes and washy cabbage, followed by a steamed pudding that originally set out to be a marmalade pudding and finished, I thought, half marmalade and half syrup. Still, I was hungry enough to enjoy anything, and I had no difficulty in disposing of the fairly liberal helpings which Mrs. Cecil dished up for me.

  “I hope that your job is going well, Mr. London,” she said, during a quiet interval.

  “Quite well, thank you,” I said politely, mentally cursing the woman for bringing the matter of my job to the attention of my fellow-guests. While I was staying at this boarding-house I had taken little notice of the other people there. To begin with I had been too intent on recovering my health, and later on I seemed to develop so many other interests in the place that my fellow-guests did not interest me at all. And now that I was in the throes of this murder investigation I was in no way inclined to spend any of my energy in making myself polite to a crowd of nit-wits.

  Fortunately, however, Mrs. Cecil’s enquiry seemed to pass unnoticed. No one made any comment on it. I finished my dinner as soon as I could, hastily drank down a cup of not very good coffee, and hurried out. I thought that it was high time that I told Shelley what I was doing. Besides, he might by this time have some information that would be of use to me.

  I washed, put on a clean collar, and then made my way round to the police station. The walk up to the station was by this time a pretty familiar route to me. A sergeant whom I had not seen before was seated at the desk in the outer office of the police station.

  “Yes?” he said in an unpleasant growl as I entered.

  “I want to see Inspector Shelley,” I announced.

  “Why?” This was another growl.

  “Because I have some information for him. Will you tell him that Mr. London is here?” I fairly snapped this out. I was annoyed to think that this jack-in-office of a sergeant was more or less keeping me away from the one man in the world who seemed likely to be of value to me—and at the time when I had some information to give him, too.

  With a grumble the sergeant climbed down from his chair and made his way into the inner office. When he came out he held open the door into the inner office, and gestured me to come in there. It was clear that he did not altogether approve of a man from outside the magic ranks of the police force being on apparently familiar terms with one of the high and mighty from Scotland Yard. Still, since I had no doubt that Shelley had dealt with him fairly sharply, there was nothing that he could do about it save take me in.

  “Good man, Jimmy!” Shelley exclaimed as I entered. “I hope that you’ve got something for me. I’ve been wondering all evening how you were getting on.”

  “Well, I’ve done a fairly useful piece of work this evening, I think,” I told him.

  “Good! And where have you been?”

  “I’ve been investigating a garage out on the North Foreland road,” I said.

  “H’m?” Shelley’s eyebrows rose alarmingly. This, it seemed, was not what he had anticipated hearing.

/>   “It is kept by a man called Foster,” I explained.

  “Foster? Foster? That name hasn’t cropped up in this case previously, has it? I can’t say that it is in any way familiar, anyhow,” said Shelley with a rather puzzled frown on his expressive face.

  “No; he’s a new one. But he’s engaged, I think, to Maya Johnson,” I said.

  Shelley pulled the little black notebook towards him. It had been lying on the desk before him. He rapidly flipped over its pages, and the frown cleared from his forehead.

  “So you made a note of these addresses, Jimmy?” he murmured. “You’re a bad lad, but I suppose that I should have expected it, after all.”

  “I didn’t think it would do any harm,” I said. I was, above all, anxious to keep well in with Shelley.

  “I don’t suppose that it has done any harm,” the detective agreed readily enough. “But anyhow, tell me, Jimmy; what have you found out about Miss Johnson and Mr. Foster?”

  I gave him a quick account of what I had discovered out by the North Foreland. Shelley listened with the closest attention, now and then nodding, as if he approved of what I had done, and now and then pursing up his lips, as if he was not at all sure that my actions had been all that they might have been.

  When I finished he grinned. “I think that you’ve done pretty well on the whole, Jimmy,” he said. “There were many things that you have found which would only have been found by our people in a day or two’s time. And time gained in a case like this is always something very well worth while. But now what I want to know is something which you have been very careful not to commit yourself about.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked, though, in actuality, I was moderately certain what he was going to say.

  “What do you really think of these people? Do you think that Maya Johnson is really as innocent of all knowledge of the affair as she makes out? Do you think that Foster was merely a dealer, buying things from Tilsley which were dearer than the price set by the manufacturers? Or was all this merely a screen behind which was hidden some darker deal? I know that what you say on those points will be only surmise, but you’re a pretty shrewd judge of character, Jimmy, and I think that you will know a lot about these people. What do you really think about them? That’s what I want to know. You will be talking off the record, as they say, and I want your really candid opinion. That is what I shan’t get from any of my people whom I might send around to interview them.”

  I paused. This was in some ways rather a tall order, though it was the sort of query that might well come from an editor if I had interviewed some people in the course of my job as a journalist.

  Then I said: “I think that Maya Johnson is genuine. I think that she is innocent of anything connected with the crime, or with any crooked business that has been going on. That is my impression anyhow. But there is one thing about her that I fail to understand.”

  “What’s that?” Shelley fairly pounced on my admission, which I think had more or less taken him by surprise.

  “That is that she is scared. She suspects someone of the murder.”

  Shelley looked interested. “Who do you think she suspects?” he asked.

  “Who but Foster?” I asked in return.

  “You think that because of her remark when you told her about Tilsley’s death,” Shelley remarked.

  “Yes. She said: ‘Oh, why did he do it?’” said I. “And who could ‘he’ be but Foster? After all, if I’m any sort of judge, that couple are deeply in love. They are, I think, planning to get married. They didn’t tell me so in so many words, but one or two remarks suggested it. And if she thinks that Foster killed Tilsley she is naturally scared stiff for him. But why? Why does she think that he is a murderer if she really knows nothing of what was going on? And yet I got the impression that when she said Tilsley was a dealer of some sort whom she had merely met in a social way, and that she knew nothing about the details of his business, she was telling the truth. That’s what rather puzzled me.”

  “I see that,” Shelley said. “And what did you make of Mr. Foster? Did you think that he was everything that he appeared to be on the surface?”

  “I’m not so sure of him,” I admitted. “I thought that his explanation of the dealings which he had had with Tilsley sounded a bit thin here and there. And if he was merely improvising, making up some sort of explanation on the spur of the moment, it would not have been easy to get hold of something which would hold water.”

  Shelley looked tolerably impressed at what I had said. “I’m not disappointed in you, Jimmy,” he said. “I thought that you would give me a pretty shrewd summary of these people—and, by Jove, you’ve done it. I seem to know those two folk as well as if I’d met ’em.”

  I smiled. “Glad to be of some use to you, Inspector,” I grinned. “And now, what sort of information have you got for me?”

  He looked thoughtful. “Well, this is definitely not for publication, Jimmy,” he said, “but I have the feeling, from the information that is slowly trickling in, that there is something behind this even bigger than the black-market petrol racket which we originally thought provided the motive for the crime. That some illegal dealings in petrol have been going on, and that this man Tilsley had something to do with it, seems to be pretty certain; but I think that there was something bigger still which he was involved in.”

  “And what is it?” I asked.

  “That I don’t know as yet,” Shelley admitted. “After all, we have only been looking into the crime for about a day or so. But we are getting reports on all the people whose names and addresses appear in these notebooks—and, taken all in all, they’re a fairly shady lot. Some of them have been involved in fencing—dealing in stolen goods—one or two have been suspected of drug-smuggling, and others have been thought to be responsible for all sorts of other troubles. Not one, I might say, has been convicted. But the suspicions of the police, in matters of that sort, are not usually without foundation, even though there is not enough evidence to get a conviction. I’m collecting the evidence now.” He indicated the mass of papers that lay on the desk before him.

  “As I’ve said before, Jimmy, my lad, Scotland Yard is really a vast machine. It is only on rare occasions that a detective can, so to speak, play a lone hand. The man like myself, in charge of the case, has to assemble information from all sorts of sources, and try to tie it together into a coherent whole. Or, if you like, he has to put together the pieces of jigsaw puzzle, and decide what the final picture is like.”

  I had previously heard Shelley philosophising in this manner, and had at first thought it interesting. Now, however, I knew that it was often his way of side-stepping a question he was rather anxious to avoid, and I wondered just what it was that he did not much want to tell me.

  “Any connexion with the people we know in Broadgate?” I asked.

  “Not with Miss Johnson and Mr. Foster,” Shelley said. “As a matter of fact, Jimmy, it never occurred to me that you might be going to see them. I was keeping Miss Johnson to myself, and I was going to go round and see her tomorrow morning. Now, I suppose, though I shall still have to do that, I shan’t get anything new from her—after all, you’ve got all the information that is available from there.”

  “And what about that mysterious figure, Dr. Cyrus Watford?” I asked.

  Shelley, for the first time during our chat, looked annoyed. “He’s the one unsatisfactory figure in the whole case,” the detective admitted.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well, he has just completely disappeared. Of course, Cyrus Watford is probably not his real name, but I’ve not been able to trace the man at all. He must be in some way tied up with this murder, and I want to know why and how.”

  “What makes you think that he must be tied up with the murder in some way?” I asked.

  “Well, if he was innocent, he would come forward. After all, he was the
first—or nearly the first—on the scene. His actions were tolerably suspicious, anyhow. And then to slip away in the way he did—well, I don’t think much of the way it worked out, anyhow. In fact, he’s the one man that I want to have a chat with. I’m pretty sure that he’d be able to tell us something worth while.”

  There was no doubt that Shelley was more than a little annoyed at the complete disappearance of Watford. But I didn’t think there was much that I could do about that, unless I so happened to time my walks that I met the man in the street or on the promenade.

  “Nothing more at the moment then, Inspector?” I said.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. There may be something more tomorrow, when I’ve had a chance to go through all this material,” he said, indicating the pile of papers on the desk in front of him. “But, meanwhile, the best thing that you can do, Jimmy, is to go to the pictures and then go home and sleep the sleep of the just for about ten hours. Then you’ll be fit for all the problems that’ll no doubt be facing you tomorrow.”

  I grinned. Then I thought that I would take his advice, but with one difference. I called at the Royal George, that fine old hostelry, and had a pint of their very delicious bitter before I went to bed.

  Chapter XIV

  In Which Everything Happens Again

  When I woke the next morning the June sunshine was flooding into my bedroom. I stretched lazily in my bed. Everything seemed to be well with my world. I thought that it was good to be alive, at the seaside, in an English June.

  Then I remembered, suddenly, that I was a newspaperman, given the job of investigating a highly unpleasant murder. Even the sunshine seemed to lose some of its tonic quality. I got up, had a hasty bath, shaved, and dressed. I wandered downstairs, glanced at the clock in the hall, and cursed as I saw it was a quarter of an hour short of nine. That meant that I shouldn’t be able to do anything in the way of breakfast for at least twenty minutes. Mrs. Cecil served breakfast officially at nine o’clock, but it was invariably five to ten minutes late.