“Ah yes. I was at Marsh Farm. Mrs. Bargery had had a bad passage with her first child the night before and I had to call again then. I was there at the time you mention. You can confirm it if you like.”
“Thanks, doctor. I think that’s all. You weren’t in when the body was found, otherwise I’d have been asking you a lot more perhaps.”
“No. Dammit, I can’t be expected to stay indoors on the strength of people being likely to need me when they get themselves done-in. Now, can I? It was my night off, too. Long past usual surgery hours when it happened. It would have been damned ironical and like my luck to be called-in to bring-round the chap who’d ruined me, wouldn’t it? However, I seem to have missed the boat this time…to my advantage, eh?”
Keating poured out more whisky and drank again.
Outside, the waiting-room seemed to be filling-up with patients.
“Sounds like surgery time, Inspector. Hear ’em? Panel patients coming for their money’s worth. Nothing wrong with them, but just want their dose of physic and the doctor’s time…Hell! Why did I ever become a doctor? Never liked it. Tied hand and foot by etiquette when I want to be free to enjoy life. Surgery hours, calls, up all times of the day and night. And old Wall never called-out in the dark, of course. Sleeping snug in his little bed while the M.B. does the rounds of the quack’s daytime following. I wish I’d joined the police myself!”
“It’s just as difficult getting the truth out of people in the police as it is dragging out information and diagnosing symptoms by the doctor,” answered Littlejohn.
“Meaning…?” said Keating, alternately maudlin and nasty under his drink. His patients were in for a good time without a doubt.
“Nothing, doctor. Good evening and thanks.”
Keating let Littlejohn depart and then emptied his glass. Before calling in his first patient, he reached for the telephone, dialled a number and began a long, detailed conversation with whoever came on at the other end.
Chapter X
Beloved
O dainty duck! O dear!
—Act V. Sc. I.
Miss Betty Cockayne herself answered the door to Littlejohn. She was a good-looking girl, with large, wide-set brown eyes, high cheek bones, small straight nose, firm pointed chin and black hair which shone with a blue sheen like gunmetal. She was wearing black-rimmed spectacles as she faced the detective. She removed these as she listened to him explaining the purpose of his visit, and her eyes looked deeper-set and misty as is often the case with those who wear glasses regularly. Littlejohn judged that she would be about thirty.
The mistress of Green Hedges waited until the Inspector had finished his introduction and then bade him enter.
The house was small, cosy and well-furnished. The room they entered had large windows overlooking a well-kept lawn and flower-garden. A pleasant place.
Miss Cockayne put on her glasses again and offered Littlejohn a seat and a cigarette. A cursory glance round the room told Littlejohn of good taste in furniture and pictures and the many books on shelves and scattered here and there suggested an owner of more than average intelligence and of catholic interests.
“So you want to hear my tale about Mr. Wall, do you, Inspector? I’m afraid I can’t help you much in your investigation. He was an old dear and a very good old friend of mine. I haven’t got over the horrible end he’s come to. Who could want to murder an inoffensive benefactor of all who came in contact with him, I can’t imagine.”
“You’ve known him since you were a child, Miss Cockayne?”
“Yes. Ever since I could toddle. But only since he cured me from a serious illness when I was in my ’teens, have we been intimate. He visited me so often then, that we became firm friends. I called him uncle, and he liked it.”
Littlejohn could well imagine the old bachelor finding joy in the company of this vivacious girl. Her manner of speech and the firmness of her chin convinced him, however, that neither Wall nor anybody else would make her do what she didn’t want to do, or turn her from doing what she wanted.
“I hear though, that Mr. Wall combined benevolence with a certain forthrightness of speech and a stubbornness—arising no doubt, from a strong and upright character—which might have caused certain people to dislike him. Was that so?”
“Oh, yes. He knew his own mind and stuck to his opinions like glue. He and I often had friendly wrangles about things he thought I ought or ought not to do. But we always ended friends.”
“Not quite such good friends, though, at the time of his death were you, Miss Cockayne?”
The woman’s mouth tightened and she looked the Inspector straight in the eye.
“What exactly do you mean by that, Inspector?” she said testily.
Littlejohn was gradually gathering the impression that Miss Cockayne had been used to getting her own way from most people with whom she came in contact. Her aunt, old Wall and the folk of the village had, no doubt, humoured her and spoiled her as a child, and she had carried her expectations of homage into later life. Probably, too, what charm and the fact that she was an orphan had won for her in childhood, had become the dues to her beauty in later life.
“I mean exactly what I say, Miss Cockayne,” replied the detective. “To tell you the truth, I learn from talk in the village that there’s been a coldness between you and your old friend of late.”
“How stupid, Inspector. Do detectives place reliance on idle chatter of gossips then? If so, it’s a poor look-out for the innocents of the world.”
“Your rebuke is quite uncalled-for, Miss Cockayne. It’s the duty of one investigating a dastardly crime of this type to search everywhere for help, rejecting nothing until it’s been proved irrelevant or untrue. This story has come to me from more than one source, reliable sources, too. Come now, Miss Cockayne, for the sake of your affection for your late friend, you owe me a straight answer, to say nothing of furthering the ends of justice.”
“I’ve nothing to say about it. I regard your question as an unwarrantable intrusion in my private affairs, Inspector.”
“Very well, then, Miss Cockayne. I must tell you then why you and Mr. Wall weren’t such good friends as formerly in the days just before his death. He objected to your marriage…or rather your engagement to Mr. Rider, didn’t he?”
The girl flushed scarlet and rose to ring the bell for the maid to show out her visitor.
“Before you ring,” said Littlejohn, “just one more word, Miss Cockayne. I’m giving you a chance to tell me informally what was the trouble between you and Mr. Wall and why he objected to your engagement. If you refuse, I shall use every official means in my power to get the information from other sources. That may result in some unpleasant publicity…in fact, you and Mr. Rider will be brought forward as witnesses at the resumed coroner’s enquiry and asked under oath the questions I’m now putting to you in private and in the quietness of your own home.”
“You cad!…No, I didn’t mean that, Inspector. I’m sorry. I suppose you’re only doing your duty, as the stock detectives always say…”
“Have it your own way, Miss Cockayne,” said Littlejohn rising. He had had quite enough of the woman’s impudence.
“Don’t go, Inspector Littlejohn. Perhaps I’d better tell you. Mr. Wall did object to our engagement.”
“Why?”
“I suppose you know that not long ago, I inherited quite a considerable fortune on the death of my aunt. I’d been friendly with Mr. Rider for long before that…In fact, I’ve known him ever since he settled here eight or more years ago.”
“Mr. Wall thought Mr. Rider was after your money, then?” continued Littlejohn relentlessly.
“Yes, he did. He was quite wrong, but he stuck to his guns, like a stubborn mule. I tried to convince him. He was just prejudiced against my fiancé. In fact, I don’t think he ever liked him. Why, I can’t imagine. They lived in sep
arate worlds, of course. Mr. Wall was an excellent practical man with little or no interest in art and letters; whereas Mr. Rider’s an artist and scholar to his fingertips.”
Littlejohn felt that he had an idea whence the taste for D. H. Lawrence, Proust, Barbellion, Joyce and others whose works were prominent on Miss Cockayne’s shelves, had been derived. He had never read any of them, but Mrs. Littlejohn had…
“Were Mr. Wall and Mr. Rider well known to each other, then?”
“Well, they did live in the same village, you know! Mr. Rider’s is the last house on the main road. They probably met almost every day, but avoided each other. To tell you the truth, Mr. Rider regarded Mr. Wall as an old fossil. Bourgeois respectability and morality, Victorian stuffiness and all that. And Mr. Wall, in turn, thought Mr. Rider an adventurer and a good-for-nothing dilettante. Funny, isn’t it? I knew them better than they knew each other and I liked them both. When we’d been married a bit and Mr. Wall had been persuaded to visit our home, I’m sure they’d have found a lot in common and grown to like each other immensely…”
Littlejohn wondered.
“…Just like men, though, Inspector. Like great boys, all of them. So anxious to be cocking it over each other, like roosters. You’re married of course? I’m sure your wife would agree with me if she were candid.”
Littlejohn wished his wife, Letty, could have heard this nonsense. She had a way of dealing with prigs like Miss Cockayne.
It was now becoming quite plain that this good-looking girl had somehow completely fallen under the spell of Rider, whoever he might be, had lapped-up a crowd of cranky notions from him and had been completely spoiled thereby. There was an air of stupid sophistication about Miss Cockayne, probably the result of Rider’s influence on her. Mr. Rider was on Littlejohn’s visiting list and the detective rather looked forward to seeing him.
“So, Mr. Wall objected strongly to Mr. Rider as your future husband?”
“Most strongly. I naturally told him one of the first, on account of our long friendship. He also regarded himself, more or less, as my unofficial guardian and I often went to him for advice and sometimes to open my heart about problems and troubles. You know how it is?”
“Quite. And he objected to his place being taken by another.”
“Not half. I’ve never seen him in such a rage. In fact, bad temper was quite alien to Mr. Wall’s nature, but when I told him of our engagement, he went right off at the deep-end. Said Mr. Rider was a good-for-nothing and after my money, and that he’d never loved anybody but himself all his life. Well, seeing that Mr. Wall had never given Mr. Rider a chance to show himself in his real colours, I thought that most unfair and prejudiced. I told him so, rather heatedly.”
“And what did he say?”
“Oh, that a girl like me was no good at reading character. As if that counts when you’re in love! He also said that I knew nothing at all about Mr. Rider and his family and antecedents.”
“Did he?”
“He hinted that he did, but I couldn’t get anything out of him on that score. I told him that I’d known my fiancé long enough to know my own mind, and that I was old enough, too. I wasn’t concerned with ancestors or family. I’d known him long enough to be quite content to marry him…”
“Yes?”
“Well, uncle, that is, Mr. Wall, said it was just a temporary infatuation and would soon pass off. Then, he went on to say that I didn’t want to throw myself away on the first man that came along with a proposal. He knew that Mr. Rider wasn’t the first, but he was just being nasty. I told him so and I went off right away and stayed away, just to show him that he couldn’t treat me like a kid in short frocks any more.”
“And that was the last of your friendship?”
“No, not really. Uncle got me on the ’phone the same night and asked if that was my last word. Begged me to be careful and all that…I told him I was old enough to look after myself and live my own life.”
“Then?”
“He called here and we quarrelled again.”
“Mr. Wall must have been terribly keen on preventing your marriage to Mr. Rider, Miss Cockayne.”
“Awfully. And just out of pure pig-headedness, I think. He’d made up his mind and nothing would budge him. I determined to be the same.”
“Did Mr. Wall tackle Rider about it, too?”
“Yes. He called on him and played hell with him. Accused him of marrying me for my money. Mr. Rider showed him the door…”
“That is Mr. Rider’s account, of course?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing.”
“And what did Mr. Rider think of Mr. Wall?”
“Oh, he was very tolerant and humoured him, but, dash it all, it did get a bit thick towards the end. Half the village had got to know about it and if it hadn’t been for the past, I’d have kicked up a frightful row about it. As it was, I said I was going to marry Mr. Rider whatever uncle said and he’d see that he’d have to eat his words when he found out how happily things went.”
Now that Miss Cockayne had started on the topic, there seemed to be no stopping her. Littlejohn decided to change the angle.
“What does Mr. Rider do, by the way?”
“He’s a publisher’s reader.”
“Very interesting. Does he do a lot of it?”
“Not a great deal. He has enough private income to live on comfortably.”
“Novels, I take it he reads, eh?”
“Yes, and poetry. It’s a bit hush-hush, you know. I never see the manuscripts about or get a chance to read them. Part of the etiquette of the profession, Mr. Rider tells me. Secrecy, you know, in case the thing is turned down. They don’t want it making public. Natural, isn’t it?”
Littlejohn knew more about publishing than Miss Cockayne thought and guessed that Rider had been stuffing her with a lot of bunkum to avoid too much investigation of his real job. Probably an arty scrounger, a good-for-nothing, as Wall had shrewdly surmised, and setting his cap at Miss Cockayne as an easy source of wealth.
“Which publishers does he read for? I know quite a lot of them in London.”
“That I can’t say, Inspector, but they think very highly of him. I’ve seen letters just gushing thanks to him for choosing best-sellers. No, the nearest I’ve been to his precious manuscripts is seeing them sent-off to London by registered post.”
“From Stalden?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing really. I wondered if there were a proper post-office here…I haven’t seen it. Bought my stamps from the landlord of The Mortal Man.”
“Oh, yes. The post-office is Miss Mullins’s, the general store just along the main road to the right from here…”
Littlejohn knew it quite well.
“Oh, thanks,” he said.
“And now I really must go, Miss Cockayne. Thank you very much for being so candid about your private affairs. I promise you to be discreet…”
“And do please find out who murdered uncle, quickly. I may have had rows with him of late and perhaps we’d both been beasts to each other, but I was fond of him and he of me. I’m so sorry we didn’t make it up…”
Then and there Miss Cockayne burst into tears. A strange mixture of Riderian nonsense superimposed on a very decent nature. Perhaps a bit spoiled before Rider took her in hand, but worthy of a good, straightforward chap for a husband instead of a half-baked adventurer. Although he had not yet come across Rider, Littlejohn felt he knew him quite well. He imagined him to be a feeble, posing noodle of an emasculated Bloomsbury type, beard, corduroy trousers, half washed, dirty-nailed, shoddy thinking…He was in for a shock.
As Littlejohn bade Miss Cockayne good-bye in the hall, the garden gate clanged and steps were heard approaching the front door. Without knocking or ringing, the newcomer turned the knob and entered the house.
M
iss Cockayne introduced the two men.
Nothing of the flabby half-washed poet here. True, the beard was vandyke and curly. The hair was thick, auburn and grey, the brow high and narrow, the lips long, thin and firm and the nose formidable. The eyes behind slightly smoked spectacles, probably Crookes’s lenses, were hooded and hard. The hands large and strong and the body sinuous and apparently in first-class trim. In the late forties probably.
The Inspector was not surprised that Rider had failed to impress Wall. How he could have captured the heart of Miss Cockayne was a puzzle! Perhaps a good talker or, in his better moments, possessed of a certain amount of virile charm. Whatever it was, Littlejohn felt sorry for Miss Cockayne, for when the bloom had worn off the fruit, there would be some bitterness to follow. No wonder old Wall objected! The fellow was a cross between Mr. Murdstone and Mr. Carker! Here he was, greeting Littlejohn pleasantly, but with a challenging look of inquiry in his eye.
“Glad to meet you I’m sure, Inspector. Hope you soon run the blighter to earth…You must pay me a call when you’re at a loose end. I spend a lot of time gardening and if you’re interested I’ve rather a nice show now.”
“Thanks, I’ll be delighted. In fact, I’d planned to call on you in connection with the death of Mr. Wall…”
Rider gave Littlejohn a quizzical look, one eyebrow cocked.
“I understand you and he have met lately under not too pleasant circumstances.”
“Ah, I see someone’s been telling tales.”
Rider glanced inquiringly in the direction of his fiancée, who did not speak, however.
“You know where to find me, then, Inspector?”
“Yes…Miss Cockayne has told me where you live.”
“Ah…She has, has she? Very informative this afternoon, Betty, aren’t we?”
Miss Cockayne smiled at her lover. Littlejohn felt like shaking her. She was completely under Rider’s domination. And with a chin like that, too! If she’d cared to assert herself…
“Well, good-bye, Inspector. Glad to have met you. Looking forward to seeing you at my place,” said the newcomer and with that Littlejohn departed.
The Dead Shall be Raised and The Murder of a Quack Page 23
