The Case of the Famished Parson (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

Mr. Topham ran into the box, then ran out again.

  “Greyle …” he said cryptically, for a villager had just come in for change for half-a-crown.

  Mr. Queasey had the information for Cromwell.

  The London bank had been very communicative. At first they’d sent Mr. Creer’s money out to South Africa … to one of their Rhodesian branches. But after the war he’d come back to England. His account was with them in London now. They’d supplied his address, too. He was trading as James Shearwater, Agent, Main Street, Port Mervin.

  Cromwell thanked Mr. Queasey very much and Mr. Queasey said it was a pleasure and come again if he could assist. They bowed one another off the ’phone….

  “Good-bye, Mr. Topham and thanks very much for your very timely help….”

  “Oh, it’s a pleasure. Very interesting indeed to be mixed up in a Scotland Yard investigation. I shall look out for results in the papers. Are you in charge of it?”

  “Oh, no. Littlejohn’s on the case. My chief. You’ll have heard of him, won’t you?”

  “I can’t say I have….”

  “Good Lord! Where were you brought up?” said Cromwell and the swing door closed between them, leaving Topham to think it out in his spare time.

  CHAPTER XIII

  CATHEDRAL CLOSE

  IT was a horrible journey from Medhope to Greyle. The secondary road was full of potholes and the ’Bus was driven by a madman. Passengers got on and off all the way and the driver couldn’t wait for the bell. He was away like a shot leaving everybody to scramble to their seats as best they could. Swinging like a crowd of startled monkeys on the upright stays or cakewalking along the gangway like crazy jive dancers. Cromwell mentioned the matter to the conductor.

  “Best driver in the service,” came the contemptuous reply. “Knows his onions, does Ken.”

  “God help us when the worst driver takes over then,” said Cromwell, bouncing up and down on his seat like a Jack-in-the-box.

  Cromwell reported Ken at the ’Bus station. Not that that would do any good, except to precipitate an unofficial strike, but it gave the sergeant a bit of satisfaction to voice his grievances.

  Then he made his way to Dr. Mulroy’s surgery.

  The road lay along the High Street, which sloped steeply from the level of the water-meadows which lay around Greyle, up to the cathedral, standing on its rock and seeming to sail away among the great billowing clouds like a stately ship at sea.

  The steep street ended in a flat plateau on which rose the beautiful twin-towered church surrounded by an inner ring of buildings, which formed the close.

  The afternoon was sunny and so hot that you could hardly bear to walk outside the shade of buildings. The heat had softened the macadam of the roadway and higher up where it changed to cobble-stones had raised the tar between the setts in shining black bubbles. Nevertheless the city was animated as though everyone had become full of vitality from the pleasantness of the weather and the brightness of the sun. Instead of taking siestas from the heat, people were striding along the pavements and surging in and out of shops in crowds.

  Two or three charabancs full of trippers honked their way up the High Street and discharged their cargoes outside the close. You could see the excursionists hunting for pubs and restaurants before settling down to the rounds of the cathedral and other relics.

  There was an outer ring of large houses back-to-back with the ecclesiastical buildings in the close and among these Cromwell found Mulroy’s consulting rooms. The place had at one time been a stately dwelling-house, now divided into suites, mainly let to doctors, dentists and other healers of one kind and another.

  A broad, graceful staircase rose from a wide square hall to the upper rooms. The door of one of the latter bore a small plate, “Dr. Mulroy.”

  It was outside consulting hours and the receptionist looked surprised to see a visitor. She seemed new to the job and studied Cromwell’s card a minute or two before making up her mind what to do. Then she disappeared into an inner room.

  The place had an air of overdone opulence about it, like the suite of a second-rate company promoter without much taste. A Chinese carpet which must have cost hundreds, somehow didn’t just tone with the Queen Anne dining-suite and heavy sideboard. Neither did the parchment shades of the two standard lamps. And why the dining-room furniture at all in a doctor’s waiting-room? It didn’t seem to make sense.

  The receptionist returned. She had a peculiar walk. One foot behind the other like a tightrope artiste quickly crossing the wire. In the street below you could hear the trippers wandering about, shouting at each other.

  “We’ve to meet the charabanc here at half-past five….”

  “Dr. Mulroy will see you,” said the girl, tightroped back to the inner door with Cromwell and opened it for him. Dr. Mulroy rose from a large desk to meet him, hand extended.

  Cromwell had never been in the company of a psychiatrist before. His only experience of that kind of thing had been at music halls and variety shows, where hypnotists had got to work on members of the audience, put them to sleep and then made them do all sorts of tricks. Bray like donkeys, scratch and caper like monkeys, stand on their heads and think they were Napoleon or the Prime Minister. He expected a tall, lean man with piercing eyes and a will of iron and braced himself for a mental tussle. He received a shock.

  Dr. Mulroy was small, fat, well-washed, and full of unction with a trace of furtiveness about it. Not that he was without confidence. He radiated self-assurance and prosperity. Cromwell took an instinctive dislike to him from the start and set his mind firmly against being bamboozled or mesmerised, as he called it in his own thoughts.

  The second room was like the first. Overdone. There was none of the utilitarian efficiency usually found in specialists’ consulting rooms. The desk was too large and impressive. The chairs too plump and self-satisfied looking. The armchairs too deep and comfortable. Dr. Mulroy looked too deep and comfortable too.

  The psychiatrist extended a podgy well-kept hand. Cromwell took and shook it. It was like gripping a pneumatic glove. You couldn’t feel any bones in it.

  Through the open window you could still hear the trippers bawling at one another outside. They had been drinking and their voices were fruity and confused.

  “We’ve found a good shop for tea…. Come on into th’ cathedral and we’ll …”

  “Good afternoon, sergeant. Nothing unpleasant, I hope….”

  Mulroy washed his hands in air. Optimism oozing from every pore. All the same, he looked a bit uncomfortable, as though wondering what he’d done wrong.

  “I’d just like to ask you a question or two about the late Bishop of Greyle, doctor. I believe he was a collaborator of yours in some research….”

  Collaborator. Good word, thought Cromwell. It seemed to come on his tongue from nowhere and pleased him immensely.

  Mulroy looked pleased and relieved, too.

  “Ah…. Sit down, sergeant. May I offer you a cigarette … ?”

  The doctor sat down and crossed his prosperous hands one over the other.

  “Now …”

  “I believe, sir, that the late bishop …”

  Here the corners of Dr. Mulroy’s mouth turned down and he made a little flapping gesture with his hands. The equivalent of doffing one’s hat when a corpse passes….

  “… that the late bishop was working with you on some problem or other in mental work. I’m no expert, sir, but could you tell me exactly what you were at?”

  Mulroy pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows and bounced the tips of his little fat fingers together.

  “Well … It’s rather difficult to the layman. You see, it’s a case of opening up the unconscious depths of the mind. We have achieved this by a technique we call psycho-analysis….”

  His voice grew patronising, like an adult teaching a child new truths. Cromwell couldn’t make out the half of what he was talking about, but somehow out of all the jargon managed to boil down a core of common sense. He h
ad to raise his voice to get a word in edgeways, for Mulroy, once started, was like a river in spate.

  “Excuse me, doctor. You’re just telling me that the bishop and you were trying out old methods from the East to reach the same results as new methods in the West?”

  Mulroy looked surprised and a bit annoyed. It is exasperating to spend years studying a subject and mastering its terms and then suddenly find the apparently ignorant layman intuitively knows as much as you do.

  “Yes,” he said, sharply. He couldn’t say anything else.

  “And he was starving to produce the condition in himself that the Indian fakirs, say, produce by fasting and such?”

  “Yes. But …”

  Cromwell raised his hand, like a traffic policeman holding up a stream of cars.

  “Excuse me, sir. Would that treatment of himself affect his mind at all?”

  “Well. Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  Cromwell felt he had somehow taken the upper hand in the interview. This mental chap, as he called himself, wasn’t as confident as he tried to make out. In fact, there seemed something just a bit phoney about him.

  “One cannot undertake exacting work of that kind without strain. The bishop taxed himself so much that he had to take a rest. That was the reason for his going to the seaside. To recuperate …”

  “On your advice?”

  “Yes, and on that of his own doctor….”

  “You’re not his doctor, then?”

  “No, no. I’m a specialist, not a general practitioner. As soon as the bishop showed signs of strain, I advised him to see Dr. Packard, his own man.”

  “I see. In the course of your association, did the bishop ever mention being in any danger at all … ?”

  Mulroy raised his hands in protest.

  “Never, I assure you.”

  “Have you known the bishop long, sir?”

  “About four years. Although we didn’t start our collaboration until last year.”

  “What brought you together in the matter?”

  Mulroy looked a bit indignant. He was used to asking the questions, not others, and he didn’t feel comfortable when the boot was on the other foot. The blood mounted to his forehead, but he mastered his feelings.

  “I have many patients among the cathedral set and they mentioned my work to the bishop. Really, sergeant, I don’t see where all this is getting us….”

  Cromwell rose and took up his bowler hat.

  “Neither do I, sir. But I hoped in the course of our conversation something might come out which would help us in our investigation of the murder….”

  “I’m sure the ordinary day to day work we did, searching for the truth and healing light, had nothing whatever to do with the bishop’s unhappy end in a distant place. And now, sergeant, my consulting time is approaching and I’m afraid …”

  “Sorry to have taken so much of your time, sir.”

  “Don’t mention it, sergeant. Eager to help, I’m sure. But you realise that there’s nothing here …”

  Cromwell’s hand was on the door knob.

  “No, sir. Many thanks all the same.”

  He descended the staircase slowly. ‘Healing light,’ the doctor had said. It didn’t sound professional somehow. More like New Thought and spiritual healing than medical psychology. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably so much messing and probing with queer patients had made Mulroy a bit queer, too.

  Just as Cromwell reached the ground-floor hall, a small door under the stairs opened and a man in a boiler-suit emerged. He looked to have been up the flue.

  “Dirty job?” asked Cromwell with his wintery smile.

  “Aye. Just been cleanin’ out the flues of the heatin’ stove. Plumbers is comin’ in next week to put some new plates in. Allus something wrong with that boiler. Pay ’em to get a new ’un. But they won’t be told….”

  “You caretaker here?”

  “Aye. Live in a bit of a flat on top. You cap hardly turn round in it.”

  “Bit different from some of the suites. Dr. Mulroy’s, say.”

  “Aye. Then I don’t coin money like he does. His place is always full of patients. Women mostly. Women with nothin’ much to do but think theirselves ill. An’ they come ’ere to talk to Dr. Mulroy about themselves and their troubles and pay ’im handsome for doin’ it. Wish I could come by money as easy. Nothin’ but bed and work here, and very few thankyous.”

  You couldn’t make out the varying expressions of the man’s face properly, as the grime blotted them out. All you could see were the watery pale eyes with exaggerated whites, the eyebrows and rather straggly moustache filmed with soot and ashes, and the loose red mouth relaxing and tightening, probably at the thoughts of a drink. He was wearing dirty carpet slippers.

  “Did the late bishop come here quite a lot?”

  “Oh aye. Here about twice a week to see Mulroy. What for, I don’t know. Shouldn’t think they’d much in common. Anyhow, they’d a few words the night before the bishop went off and got ’imself killed.”

  “A quarrel, you say?”

  Cromwell pricked up his ears. This was going to be good.

  “Well … Not exactly a quarrel. Not like that anyhow….”

  With a dirty paw the janitor indicated a couple slanging each other for all they were worth in the street. A pair of visitors, and the man had either been taking too much drink or making eyes at another woman.

  “Disgustin’ I call it. For two pins, I’d go ’ome. Away two hours an’ look at you!”

  Their voices rose and fell.

  “Not like them two. More controlled, if you see what I mean. But as he stood to go at the open door, the bishop didn’t half tell off old Mulroy. ‘Money under false pretences, Mulroy,’ he sez. ‘And I intend to see it doesn’t ’appen agen. Mrs. Polglaze is a poor woman. She can’t afford to be paying like that without results…’”

  “Whose Mrs. Polglaze?”

  “Widder of one of the minor canons. Lives in rooms not far from here. Has a daughter who’s not quite right in her head.”

  “I see. And did the daughter come here to Dr. Mulroy?”

  “Regular. Guess it was what he charged the old girl for it that caused the row.”

  “Where does the old lady live, did you say?”

  The man took Cromwell to the front door and showed him. Passers-by looked astonished at the strange, sooty apparition embellishing the front of such an opulent block.

  “First to the right; first to left; then ask. Everybody knows the old lady…. Thank you. I’ll get a drink with it as soon as I’ve washed off some o’ this stuff. Thirsty work up them flues….”

  Mrs. Polglaze had two rooms in a tall, narrow house converted into tenements. Impoverished gentility. Cromwell felt very sorry for her. He saw nothing of the ailing daughter, and didn’t ask where she was. The old lady was tall, angular and frail. She looked resigned to poverty and even the charity of those among whom she had once moved as an equal.

  “Yes. My daughter has not been well for some time. I’ve done my best for her….”

  “I just called to ask how she was. The late bishop, you know, was very interested in her case and I feel …”

  He didn’t know how to go on. He’d impulsively gone to see the old lady following the caretaker’s information and hoped to improvise to suit the occasion. Now he couldn’t think what to say. He felt like taking to his heels and beating a retreat. But his bowler and gloomy suit of black saved him. He was mistaken for the secretary of a discreet charity.

  “I believe she’s been under Dr. Mulroy….”

  “Yes. He was recommended by the dean’s wife, but I’m afraid didn’t do my daughter much good. I had to give it up. It cost too much. The fees were very high. Sixty guineas for a quarter’s treatment. Of course, I grant the visits took a long time. Sometimes over an hour of the doctor’s time. But I couldn’t afford. I had to sell some of my remaining funds….”

  “Dear me. I’m sorry ab
out that. Did the bishop get to know of it?”

  “Yes. He seemed annoyed. He said he’d speak to the doctor about it. I urged him not to. I didn’t wish …”

  “Quite….”

  That was all there was to it. Cromwell would have liked to leave a pound or two behind for the old lady. But she wasn’t the sort you did that to. So he shook her hand, bade her good-bye and remembered her and her plight for weeks after the visit.

  It was late afternoon when Cromwell left the building. He hadn’t had any food and he found there was no connection that night to get him back to Mervin. So he telephoned to Mrs. Littlejohn at her hotel, learned they’d got Littlejohn safely installed, and told her he would be in on the morrow. Then he took a room at a small pub near the close.

  There was a public library nearby and he turned in to find out what he could about Mulroy. He asked for the Medical Directory.

  The assistant handed him a little-used volume. Cromwell couldn’t find Mulroy in it at all. The assistant seeing his baffled face asked if he’d found what he wanted and then volunteered to help if she could.

  It ended by the Head Librarian being consulted. He soon settled the matter.

  “Oh, Mulroy. He’s not a medical man at all. An American Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy. Got all the airs and graces of a fully-fiedged medico and makes twice as much as most of ’em. Speaking between ourselves, he’s a bit of a quack … a catchpenny….”

  Cromwell slowly strolled away. The visit to Greyle hadn’t been very fruitful. A little fake of a doctor and his quarrel with the bishop for robbing widows. All the same, according to the janitor, the bishop had mentioned ‘false pretences’ …

  A bell was vigorously clanging from the cathedral as Cromwell made his way to his hotel. A loafer told him it was the curfew.

  “Good Lord! And I haven’t eaten yet,” said Cromwell.

  The loafer gazed after him and then turning to his pal, tapped his forehead with a grimy index.

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  HARRY KEAST’S body had been removed to the town morgue and Bowater’s men had minutely examined the scene of the crime and found nothing to reward their efforts.