These twin labours had reduced Mr. Godwin to a wreck. His nerves were in rags. He could hardly speak without getting cross and shrieking like mad. Even to the benign Cromwell it took him all his time to be civil.
“Bothering me on my afternoon off. I was just having a snooze.”
His wife had gone to the pictures, leaving Humphrey to do double shift.
Cromwell knew nothing of Mr. Godwin’s domestic problems and finding the door-knocker muffled with an old sock to prevent noise reaching the baby’s cot, he thought there had been a breakage and beat a merry tattoo on the panels with his umbrella.
From inside arose a dismal wailing.
Mr. Godwin eventually arrived at the door, agitating the baby to pacify it, and mistaking Cromwell for an itinerant seller of religious tracts, turned upon him.
“What the hell do you think I’ve got the knocker tied up for?” he shouted in a voice that reverberated round the block and caused a horse to bolt and several women to appear at their doors. “I don’t want any religious literature … Take a dose of your own medicine and be more considerate …”
He looked like an angry gorilla, bespectacled and togged up for a party.
Cromwell was taken aback and could only murmur that he was a police officer.
“Why didn’t you say so, then? Standing there wasting my time. What do you want?”
“May I come indoors a minute? . .”
Cromwell was anxious to get inside, for a small crowd had gathered and, apparently inspired by Humphrey’s bellicose shouting, some dogs had started a fight at the very garden gate.
“The place is all untidy but you can come in … .”
Godwin thereupon led the way through a room containing a camp bed, two perambulators, a cot and a playpen into a living-room-cum-kitchen, before the fire of which hung lines of drying child’s clothing with a clothes horse filled to capacity with baby’s napkins. They might have had ten kids instead of one.
The child in Mr. Godwin’s arms eyed Cromwell balefully, not quite knowing whether to laugh or cry. The detective felt that upon the ultimate decision would depend the success of his visit. Suddenly the infant’s face lit up and with a crow of delight it stretched out hands to Cromwell.
Mr. Godwin thawed at once and his face contorted into a laugh like an extended concertina. He threw back his head and opened his mouth, like a patient at the dentist’s, and neighed shrilly.
“He wants your hat …”
Cromwell had, after hunting far and near, been able to secure the right headgear at last from a small shop in Mereton. His face fell and the child started to howl.
“Give it to him,” yelled Humphrey. “He won’t harm it. And he’ll fall asleep. It’s the least you can do after waking him up.”
The child after sucking both hands, fastened them on the brim of Cromwell’s bowler and wouldn’t let go. The sergeant gave way, whereupon, after eructating what looked like milk curds over the crown, the child was put in yet another cot, where he fell asleep at once closely hugging his new treasure.
Cromwell thrust his hand in the pocket of his showerproof and fingered his cap …
“What do you want?” said Godwin, now suddenly pianissimo. “Don’t speak loud. …” He poked a long finger in the direction of the child.
“I understand you were the one who opened the window and called out a complaint to the driver of the train which was halted in the cutting on the night of the murder,” mumbled Cromwell hoarsely.
“That’s no cause for police action,” yelled Godwin, forgetting himself. The child half awoke, beat upon the crown of the hat until large dents appeared in it and then, apparently satisfied, lapsed once more into sleep. “That’s no cause for police action,” whispered the parent, putting on the soft pedal.
“No, no. I’m not complaining …”
“Better not …”
“I want to know if, when you leaned from the window, you saw anything going on in or near the train.”
“I’d something better to do than that. The bloomin’ driver stopped right in front of the bedroom window, blew loud blasts on his whistle and wakened baby. So terrified the kid was that he didn’t sleep again for over three hours.”
Godwin’s face grew mottled with repressed temper which he could not liberate vocally, and the dark bags under his eyes seemed to take on a separate existence, palpitating and distending like the chest of a frog.
“Well, it seemed a moderately clear night and I wondered if you spotted anything going on.”
“Saw the guard walking down the train looking in the carriages and then he climbed into one. I shut the window after that, for not content with his blasted whistling, the driver started to blow off steam as well. I’ve written to the company about it but so far haven’t had an answer. If I don’t get one to-morrow I’m going to see one of the directors, a friend of my boss …”
“You see, somebody must have climbed in the train and committed the crime right under your window,” whispered Cromwell conspiratorially. “Besides, the guard was out on the other side, near the signal. You must have seen the murderer himself!”
In his stupor from lack of sleep, Humphrey had difficulty in taking it all in.
“Say that again,” he hissed.
Cromwell repeated the tale, punctuating each word by nodding his head.
“Oh! Ah!”
“Did you make out what the figure looked like?”
“No. I tell you I’d my work cut out with other things. Can’t you understand plain English?”
“Well, this is important. It might mean the difference between getting the murderer and missing him.”
“Say that again!”
Da Capo!
Cromwell patiently went through it all a second time.
“Now was it a man or a woman, Mr. Godwin?”
“A man. I saw that. Unless, of course, it was a woman wearin’ trousers. I deliberately saw trousers as he hoisted himself up.”
“Didn’t you see him come out again?”
“No. I said so before.”
“Could you see what was going on in the compartment, then?”
“No …” shouted Mr. Godwin, his jangled nerves again getting the better of him. Thereupon the child awoke, flung the hat into the middle of the room and began to howl his head off.
“Look what you’ve done, now,” snarled Godwin.
Cromwell’s babies never cried, or so he said to his colleagues. He rose in dudgeon, seized the child in his arms and swayed him to and fro. The youngster gurgled, grew quiet, bathed the front of the detective’s showerproof with a copious gobbet of curds and fell peacefully asleep.
“There you are,” said Cromwell, mopping himself up and renovating his ill-used hat with great composure. “You don’t know how to do it.”
Humphrey Godwin looked at Cromwell as though he were a tin god.
“Marvellous!” he whispered. “Marvellous!!”
He wrung the sergeant by the hand as he left and Cromwell made off as fast as his legs would carry him before he was called upon to perform the miracle again.
Godwin followed with his eyes the retreating figure. His face was calm and puzzled like that of a baffled chimpanzee.
Later, at the police station, Cromwell was so indignant at Humphrey’s methods of handling the baby that it took Littlejohn quite a time to get him back on the rails.
“The child’s not being fed right,” he said. “I’ve a good mind to go back and tell him so. A course of Green-goose’s ‘Milko’ would soon put things right.”
“Well, let’s leave the baby food and get on with the washing,” said Littlejohn.
The Inspector had had a bad quarter of an hour with Bessie Emmott after her fainting fit. Fortunately, the little girl had arrived to mind the shop just as the catastrophe occurred, so the detective was able to send her for help, which soon arrived in the shape of the youngster’s mother. This huge woman, who had difficulty in getting in through the door and who, unable to bend o
ver Bessie and see her at the same time on account of her copious bosom, had to kneel to do the job, a feat which she accomplished by slow degrees like a diver descending into the deep.
“What ’ave you been doin’ at her?” asked Mrs. Bindfast, for that was her name, after she had completed the process of genuflection. And she threw at him an accusing glance which made him hot under the collar.
“I’m a police officer and I’ve been questioning her concerning the death of Mr. Bellis.”
“Oh, you ’ave, ’ave yer?”
Bessie opened her eyes just in time.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Bindfast,” she muttered. “I’m sorry. Don’t know what come over me.”
“There, there, lovey. You come an’ lie on the sofa, an’ I’ll make you a nice cup o’ tea …”
Thereupon the huge mountain of flesh slowly rose like a balloon in process of inflation and floated off into the scullery where pots began to rattle and cupboard doors to bang and clatter.
Bessie Emmott hadn’t much more to say.
“I didn’t do it, Mr. Littlejohn. I swear I didn’t.”
“Nobody’s accusing you, Miss Emmott. But you see there’s a flight of platelayers’ steps on each side of that bridge down which they can climb to the line.”
“I didn’t know that … And besides, why should I kill ’im? I loved him, an’ I forgive him, and I still love ’im.”
Thereupon she burst once more into noisy weeping.
“Hey! What you at?” yelled Mrs. Bindfast emerging from the kitchen like a battleship in full sail. “Can’t you leave ’er alone. You done enough already without …”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Bindfast. He’s bin most kind to me in my trouble. Let him alone, he’s only doin’ his duty.”
“Funny way o’ doin’ duty, making pore ’elpless women faint and cry theys eyes out …”
“Now, Mrs. Bindfast. Please get on with your making tea and leave me and Miss Emmott to our business,” said Littlejohn firmly.
“Please,” whimpered Bessie.
So Mrs. B., who had been girding up her loins for a further tilt at the Inspector, snorted heavily, raised her bulging eyes, as though imploring the good God to give her patience, and vanished once more.
“Shop!!”
The late customers were starting to arrive for their beer.
Mrs. Bindfast, rushing to the shop door, assured them all of almost immediate attention to their wants and yelled down the street.
“Florrieeee …. Florrieeeee …”
Whereupon the young girl left the mashers at the corner with whom she had been enjoying ten minutes’ dalliance and took over the beer pumps.
“Dear me!” said her mother, angry at her neglect of duty. “Anythin’ in trousers ’ll do. Anythin’ in trousers.”
And she swept upon Littlejohn a glassy eye which included him in the reproach.
For the rest, Bessie Emmott remembered nothing after getting off the bus at the bridge. She noticed nobody particular about and was in such a daze that she was surprised when she found herself on her own doorstep.
So much for that, thought Littlejohn as he made his way back to Salton at last. It might easily have been that Bessie had seen the train, gone down the steps, confronted her lover with his perfidy and shot him. On the other hand, her tale might be true.
When he later met his colleague, Cromwell, the latter, after clearing his mind of his annoyance at Godwin’s methods of dealing with infants, was able to add evidence to that of Miss Emmott. If trousers had been seen entering the fatal compartment, then Bessie Emmott was clear. Or again, Godwin might have been so bemused by nursing, sleeplessness and indignation, that he couldn’t tell the difference between one and the other.
Chapter XII
The Old Man’s Darling
Alice Bryan sought refuge from the wrath of Aunt Bessie at the home of her aunt and uncle in Ellinborne. This pair kept a furniture emporium labelled Ellinborne Repositories, Solomon Binns, Prop.
Mr. Solomon Binns received the police without turning a hair. He had been SAVED, hence his confidence. If you got Mr. Binns talking about his evil youth and how he had been snatched like a brand from the burning at a Band of Hope meeting one Saturday night, you were in for a long session. He had been grabbed from the ditch of drink and profanity only just in time. Hallelujah!
One felt that somewhere in a strong box or, maybe, sewn up in a mattress he held a number of shares entitling him to vote at meetings and draw dividends in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Mr. Binns was enjoying himself in his rocking chair when Littlejohn called upon him. There never was such a man for rocking. At eight in the morning he opened the shop, rocked until noon, had a meal, rocked until tea and continued rocking until he decided to close.
The Repository was full of the oldest of junk. Such good stuff as it once possessed had been sold at rollicking prices since war broke out and Mr. Binns was able to go on rocking and contemplating what was left with equanimity.
Solomon was a little fat man with a walrus moustache, sublime blue eyes, a bald head and a small red nose. He always wore blue dungarees in the shop and when he went out covered his baldness with a peaked cap like those American leather affairs worn by engine drivers. Meeting him in the street you would have been stumped to guess his trade.
Mrs. Binns, a wiry, cheerful Welsh woman much younger than Solomon, had been brought to the Light by her husband without much difficulty. She was always singing about it in a shrill treble voice, which provided the accompaniment and tempo for her husband’s to-ing and fro-ing in the rocking chair.
Will you go, oh, will you go,
Go to that beautiful land with me?
Will you go, oh …
Littlejohn walked right into it. And Mr. Binns rocking to and fro hugging himself in ecstacy. Bump, bump, bumpity-bump, went the rockers, making the vast floor of the emporium resound like a drum.
Binns’ chair slowed down and came to a standstill. He raised his clear blue eyes to Littlejohn and smiled.
“Police?” he said.
Littlejohn nodded.
“We’ve been expectin’ you. Come to see Alice haven’t you? We’ve bin prayin’ for Alice … We’ve ’ad her before the Throne of Grace. Our lamb’s come home.”
Littlejohn couldn’t quite gather what it was all about, for he didn’t know all the family background. There had been a tussle between Bessie, representing the sinners’ side of the family, and the Binnses, the righteous, and after a temporary setback Solomon and Priscilla had won.
Will you go, oh, will you go …?
“Priscilla!”
The singing ceased at Solomon’s shout and the little woman popped into the shop from the back room, which constituted the living quarters of the couple.
“You said that Bessie would set the police on Alice, Priscilla. Here they are …”
Mrs. Binns’ face, high cheek-boned, pointed chinned, with steel-grey eyes, lit up.
“That’s what we wanted. She’s told me everything. Indeed she has. Very wrong she’s been, but not past redemption. She must confess to the proper quarter, take her punishment and then start with a clean slate.”
“I hope it’s not as bad as that, Mrs. Binns … Where is she?”
“In the back place. Sorry she is, and ready to tell you all.”
Littlejohn got the feeling that this pair had been putting Alice through some sort of religious third-degree. He would have liked to interview her alone, but that didn’t seem possible.
Binns had been quietly rocking again, but now rose to his feet.
“Come along, Inspector …”
They made their way through stacks of old furniture, bedding and upholsterer’s tackle, like the stragglers of the Children of Israel breasting the Red Sea.
The room behind was surprising. In the course of his lifetime as a furniture dealer, Binns had collected a number of very fine pieces and had them arrayed and well cared for in their own quarters. Corner cupboards,
case clocks, an antique chest and a very fine mahogany mule-chest used as a sideboard. There was some valuable china in a display cabinet and a number of figures, Dresden, Bow, and Staffordshire, scattered about. All shining with good care and polishing, probably the work of Mrs. Binns to the accompaniment of inspiring hymns.
Alice was sitting before the fire. She had lost all her spirit and sparkle. Her eyebrows were as astonished as ever, but her colour had gone. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles.
“Hullo, Miss Bryan …”
“Good evening, Mr. Littlejohn. Uncle said you’d be comin’.”
“Yes. Your aunt Bessie didn’t send me, of course. I’m here following information that you were friendly with the dead man in his last days and want you to tell me as much as you can about it.”
Solomon Binns regarded them benignly from the doorway. Then he rolled to another rocking chair and got busy again. Bumpity-bump. Retired Professor Rain-rider, that great scholar whose discovery that Shakespeare spelled his name Shagsper shook academic circles forty years ago, and who used to call at the repository hunting for bargains, never called Binns anything but Jérôme Coignard. He had even gone so far as to show Solomon a woodcut of the Abbé in a fine-art edition of the works of Anatole France. Mr. Binns, thinking that profligate priest was a French saint, regarded this as a compliment. He would have preferred him to belong to his own sect, the Pentecostal Wrestlers, instead of Rome, but one couldn’t have it every way …
“Open your heart to the gentleman, Alice bach,” said her aunt, and Mr. Binns nodded his head in benediction.
“I wonder if I could have a word with her alone,” said Littlejohn, taking the bull by the horns.
He had no wish to make the event into an Inquisition.
Mr. and Mrs. Binns seemed quite at a loss. They had looked forward to giving Alice a sort of moral dry-cleaning with the police there to support them. Solomon stopped his rocking halfway with such a start that he only recovered his balance with difficulty. His wife’s face set like granite.
“But …but …”
“Please, Aunt Priscilla … Please, Uncle Solomon …”
“I must ask you to do this, if you will. I think she’ll feel freer to talk if we’re alone. If you like, we’ll take a turn down the road …”
Death on the Last Train Page 11
