Arthurs' Night (Detective Johnny Inch series Book 6)

by J F Straker

  Connor bought whiskies. ‘What are your memories of that night, Mr. Draper?’ he asked.

  He had heard and seen nothing of the actual murder, Draper said. That evening his wife had gone to a theatre in Leeds with a party of friends, and he was in bed when she returned. She had started to undress when there was a hammering on the front door, and she had gone downstairs to be confronted by a distraught Mrs. McGuppy, who had also been in the party, with the news that her husband was dead. Draper had rung the police, and the three of them had then gone across to Number 38, to find Mr. McGuppy lying on the sitting-room floor. The Drapers had stayed until the police and Mrs. McGuppy’s brother had arrived, and had then gone home to bed. It was not until the following day that they learned McGuppy had been murdered.

  ‘And no one was ever charged with the crime,’ Connor said. ‘That’s so, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘According to the report the police thought the killer was probably known to McGuppy. Any ideas on that? I mean, you’d know most of his visitors by sight, wouldn’t you?’

  Draper shook his head. ‘I gave the police descriptions of those I could remember. I imagine they checked them out. But I wasn’t pointing any fingers. I couldn’t. I’d no reason to.’

  He did not protest when Connor ordered another round of drinks.

  ‘Odd,’ Connor said. ‘When one tries to picture it one automatically assumes that the murder occurred almost immediately after the killer arrived. But it didn’t have to be like that, did it? I mean, they could have spent the evening together.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘What was McGuppy like? Physically, I mean.’

  ‘Frail,’ Draper said. ‘Thin as a hair. I think that’s why he retired early. That and the money, of course. Did you know he came good on the Stock Market? Made quite a killing, I believe.’

  ‘I read it in the Gazette,’ Connor said. ‘Did he own a car?’

  ‘No. When he retired he sometimes talked of buying one. But he never did.’ Draper looked puzzled. ‘Why this interest in the McGuppy murder? I thought you said it was Becky Main’s death you were investigating.’

  ‘It’s just possible there’s a link,’ Connor said. ‘Anyway, I take it you saw no one call at Number 38 that evening — early or late.’

  ‘No. But then I was here until close on ten.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘I went home. To bed.’

  ‘Early bedder, are you?’

  ‘No. But I was tired.’ Draper looked flushed. Two whiskies couldn’t have achieved that, Connor thought. How many before? ‘I hope you’re not suggesting —’

  ‘Good Heavens, no! Just trying to get the picture. Incidentally, I’m told Becky Main was also in the bar that evening.’

  ‘Was she?’ The flush deepened. ‘I don’t remember. What of it, anyway?’

  Connor explained. According to Harry, Becky used to hire a taxi from Godman’s Garage when there was no one to give her a lift home. She had hired a taxi that particular night, but not until well after midnight. Harry couldn’t remember when she had left the bar; but even if she had stayed until closing time, how had she filled the remaining hour and a half? ‘Isn’t it possible she was with McGuppy?’ Connor said. ‘I’m told he wasn’t a customer here, but they could have arranged to meet. And if he wanted her — well, with his wife away until after midnight, what better opportunity? So suppose they quarrelled and she killed him?’ Behind the spectacles Draper’s eyes were wide in astonishment. His mouth was agape. ‘Yes, I know she was a small woman. But that doesn’t mean she was frail. McGuppy was, you say. It’s possible, isn’t it?’

  ‘No!’ The denial was instant and vehement. ‘Quite impossible!’

  ‘Why?’

  Draper was not prepared to say why. When Connor tried to press him he became agitated and refused to discuss it further; she couldn’t have done it, he said, and that was that. It seemed that the introduction of Becky’s name had embarrassed him, and Connor dropped the subject and bought another round; but once a new topic was properly under way he left the talking to the now garrulous Draper and let his thoughts roam. Maybe the suggestion that Becky might have killed McGuppy was too far-fetched; apart from anything else, strangulation wasn’t a woman’s crime. But why should Draper be so vehement in his denial? Because he resented the slur on Becky’s memory? Hardly. That would suggest affection and respect, and what Draper had felt for Becky was unlikely to have had a connection with either. So what? The alternative that occurred to Connor was perhaps prompted more by the possibilities it promised than by reasoned thought. But it was there and he had to explore it — a manoeuvre that, as Connor saw it, would require considerable tact.

  Draper was paying for drinks now and was well on the way to being drunk. Connor kept him talking, skipping a round when he thought Draper wouldn’t notice. They had discussed the Test matches, inflation, and the Middle East situation, and were embarking on Watergate when Harry once more leaned across the bar.

  ‘It’s close on ten, Mr. Draper,’ Harry said. ‘Just in case you’re interested.’

  ‘Is it?’ Draper’s eyes searched for the clock and tried to focus. ‘Better be off then, eh? Mustn’t be late.’

  ‘You driving?’ Connor asked.

  ‘Never drink and drive, Mallorie. Not me. I’m walking. Always do when I come here. Eh, Harry?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr. Draper.’

  ‘I’ll walk with you if I may,’ Connor said. ‘I could do with some fresh air.’

  ‘Sure,’ Draper said. ‘Be my guest.’

  His speech was slurred and he looked dazed, but his steps were reasonably steady. They walked back along the main road, with Draper still doing most of the talking and Connor searching for a suitable opening. None seemed to offer, and as they turned into Charles Street he decided to dispense with it.

  ‘You were right about Becky, of course,’ he said.

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t thinking straight. She couldn’t have killed your friend McGuppy.’

  ‘Not my friend, really,’ Draper said. ‘Just a neighbour.’

  ‘It wasn’t a woman’s crime,’ Connor said. ‘Stabbing or poison, yes. Strangling, no. Definitely not.’

  ‘I said so, didn’t I?’ Draper’s right hand weaved a vague pattern in the night air. ‘She didn’t kill him, I said. I told you, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did,’ Connor said. ‘All the same, she could have been with him. She spent those ninety-odd minutes somewhere, and almost certainly with a man. A man without a car, too, or he’d have driven her home. That fits McGuppy, doesn’t it?’ He did not think it necessary to point out that it could also fit hundreds of other men. ‘If she was in this area, as I believe she was — well, look about. They’ve all got cars.’ Connor waited while Draper obediently looked about. ‘So what’s wrong with McGuppy?’

  ‘It wasn’t him,’ Draper said. ‘I should know, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘You mean — because she was with you? Really?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ Draper sounded alarmed. ‘You’re putting words into my mouth. I didn’t say that, did I?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. You’re the quiet sort, I could tell that. Not given to boasting. But you don’t have to be modest with me, old man. I mean — well, by all accounts she was quite something. And she wouldn’t go with just anyone; that was brought out at the trial.’ Admiration was thick in Connor’s voice. ‘You must have magicked her somehow. What was it, eh? What made her fall for you?’

  The flattery destroyed Draper’s caution. He said weakly, ‘I suppose she took a fancy to me.’

  Or your money, Connor thought. ‘Obviously,’ he said. They had reached the junction with Manor Road. ‘You brought her back here, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Draper gazed across at the house. No lights showed. He turned to Connor and gripped his arm. ‘You won’t mention this to my wife, will you?’ he said anxiously.

  ‘Good Lord, no!�
�

  ‘She’s a very moral person, you see. Even disapproves of my visiting the pub. If she were to discover I’d been with Becky — well, it’s all in the past, of course, but even so —’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Connor said. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Draper hesitated. ‘Would you care to come in? It looks like the wife isn’t home yet.’

  ‘I’d prefer another turn round the block,’ Connor said.

  Draper told him about Becky as they walked. He had fancied her for months, he said, but the opportunity had eluded him; wrestling on the back seat of a car was not his line of country and he could not risk taking her to a hotel. His wife’s announcement that she would be going with a party to Leeds that Saturday night gave him the opportunity he needed. He had fixed the date with Becky in advance, and when the evening came he had left the Malt House at about a quarter to ten and had waited in the car for her to join him. That had been one of the few occasions on which he had broken his rule never to drink and drive; in the car they would be less conspicuous than on foot. Besides, he had drunk only sparingly in order not to weaken his sexual prowess.

  They were still in bed when he looked at his watch and discovered that it was close on midnight. It was too late to drive out to Becky’s home and return before his wife, and he had given Becky money and told her to take a taxi. ‘She wasn’t too pleased,’ Draper said. ‘I had to ring Godman’s to ensure she wouldn’t be stranded.’

  ‘What time did she leave?’ Connor asked.

  ‘A few minutes after twelve, I suppose it’d be. She just dressed and went.’

  ‘Did you see her out?’

  No, Draper said. He had rung for the taxi from the bedroom, and he was still there when she left.

  So Draper was ‘S’, Connor reflected, as he stood on the corner looking across at Number 38. ‘Went with S’ Becky had written in her diary on the night McGuppy had died. What did S stand for? Sheep? Seal? Squirrel? Not that it mattered. B was the man who mattered. Some time between leaving Draper and boarding Lofthouse’s taxi Becky had seen B. ‘Saw B and an 8 later’, she had written. The next day, Sunday the 25th, and on each of the three following Sundays, she had met B and, as Connor saw it, had collected her blackmail money. The inference was plain. On leaving Draper’s house she had seen B coming away from Number 38 (‘seen B’, she had written, not ‘met B’) and had recognised him; there was no reference to B in the diary previous to that entry on the 24th, but the fact that she already had a nickname for him indicated, if the zoo keeper were right, that she had known him in the past. At the time, of course, B’s visit to Number 38 would have had no sinister connotation for her. That came the following day, when she learned of the murder. It would be then that she had added ‘could be my lucky day’ to her previous entry. Blackmail, she had decided, would be more profitable than informing on B to the police.

  One minor detail puzzled Connor. The ‘lucky 8’ Becky had referred to would be the 8 in Number 38, but from where he stood the number was not visible; no doubt it was in the porch, in darkness now as it would have been on the night McGuppy was murdered. So how had Becky managed to see it? Had she gone over to the house after B had left? That would explain the ‘later’. But what could have prompted her to do so? Had something in B’s manner — a furtiveness, perhaps — aroused her curiosity? Or did she possess knowledge of a connection between the two men that gave B’s visit to the house a dramatic or at least an unusual flavour? Whatever the reason, there was now no doubt in Connor’s mind that B had murdered McGuppy, that he had been blackmailed by Becky, and that when her demands had become obsessive, or his nature had rebelled at the prospect of a future dominated by her greed, he had been waiting for her that Wednesday night and had caught and strangled her as she ran home through the wood; having killed once he would have less compunction about killing a second time. But to Connor the certain knowledge that this was how it had happened did not seem to ease his task appreciably. B was merely a symbol; what he needed was a name. So where did he look for it? Among McGuppy’s former friends and acquaintances? The police, with all their resources, had failed to find it there; after six years and with Mrs. McGuppy dead, how could he hope to fare better? Yet the alternative — to track down as many as he could of Becky’s lovers in the hope that one of them might resemble an animal with B as its initial — seemed equally devoid of promise. If there were crazier ways to solve a murder, Connor reflected glumly, he had yet to hear of them.

  He was preparing for bed when he discovered that maybe he was not as far adrift as he had supposed. Seeking a clean handkerchief, he found that the contents of the drawer had been disturbed; further inspection revealed that other drawers had received similar treatment. Someone had searched his room, and Connor had no doubt that Becky’s diary had been the object of the search. The knowledge cheered him. It implied that one person at least was fearful of the outcome of his investigation.

  Chapter 5

  He decided not to complain to the manager. Nor would he inform the police. To Connor the police meant Brummit, and Brummit was someone whose help he could do without. Not that help was likely to be forthcoming. The lock had not been forced and nothing had been stolen — he had had the diary with him — and the accusation that someone had entered his room illegally would be difficult to prove. Brummit would tell him to get lost and not to waste police time on an imaginary crime. But who was the intruder? The fact that he had used a key suggested that he had lifted it from the office or had bribed a hotel employee to do so. One of the customers from the cellar bar? Not necessarily Becky’s killer, but an old flame who was scared of what indiscretions she might have recorded? By now they must all know of the diary’s existence; if they had not had it from Grant or Sellers they would have had it from Harry. Ron Main, who had threatened him with friends? To Ron Main’s friends, Connor suspected, burglary would be all in the line of business, they wouldn’t bother with hotel keys; and Ron Main would certainly like to get possession of the diary. For that matter, so would Brummit. But Brummit could not have risked a burglary, he would have had to make the search official — in which case someone would surely have mentioned it to Connor on his return to the hotel. No one had.

  He spoke to the manager the following morning; had anyone inquired for him, he asked, while he was out the previous evening? Not so far as he knew, the manager said, but he would make inquiries. Connor told him not to bother and handed him an envelope containing the diary, to be kept in the hotel safe. The staff might be suspect, but surely not the manager.

  He spent the early part of the morning in the Public Library, making notes on the descriptions, habits and characteristics of those animals listed under B in the Larousse Encyclopaedia of Animal Life — and was thankful that Becky had shown no interest in reptiles or birds or fish. As he had expected, none of the descriptions reminded him strongly of anyone in particular, and he turned to the Hs. These were surprisingly few in number, and he looked up page 590. It puzzled him why Becky should have chosen H for ‘hog’ rather than P for ‘pig’ to represent Brummit. ‘Pig’ had become an accepted form of abuse for a policeman, ‘hog’ had not. When he came to the Wart Hog he thought he had the answer; it seemed that everything about it was ugly, from the grey, practically naked skin to the misshapen head with the enormous sickle-like canines and the grotesque warts on its cheeks. Brummit was ugly and there was a greyish tinge to his skin. But these could apply equally to a pig and the rest of the description was off the mark. So maybe Becky hadn’t seen him as a hog. He looked up the rest of the Hs, and when he came to the hyena he knew that this was it. Mean and vicious, crooked legs and a brutal face, reddish grey coat and a raucous bark — and an offensive odour. That was as definitely Brummit as the giraffe was Lofthouse.

  Pleased with this small success — it led nowhere, but if Becky had chosen B as aptly as she had chosen the other two he might yet recognise the man if and when he met him — he strolled back towards the Malt House. It wa
s a warm day and the sun was shining and he felt good. When he came to the police station he crossed the road to the opposite pavement and stood on the kerb to stare at the windows of Brummit’s office. He wanted Brummit to see him, to know that he was still around, to sharpen his enemy’s fear. Once he thought to see Brummit’s face at the window; but he could not be sure, and when the face moved away Connor moved too. Some might call it a wasted ten minutes, he supposed, but it had helped to vent his spleen.

  He spent some time before lunch studying the notes he had made at the library. Then he went down to the bar and studied the customers. It was an unrewarding exercise; rather like reading a medical dictionary and thinking to recognise in oneself the symptoms of practically every disease mentioned. To Connor it seemed that every man present had something in his appearance that could fit at least one of the animals on his list. Some could fit more than one. In none, however, were all the characteristics so obvious that he could say with assurance, that is B. He experienced no sense of disappointment; it merely confirmed that B was not among them. He was beginning to have faith in the aptness of Becky’s animal analogies.

  After lunch he drove to the Gazette’s offices again. McGuppy’s murderer could have picked that particular night to kill because he had known that Mrs. McGuppy would be away in Leeds. So who would have known? The number could be large, although perhaps limited to some extent by the size of the theatre party. He found a report on the outing tucked away at the foot of a column in the same edition as the account of McGuppy’s murder. It was only a short paragraph, but it gave him what he wanted. The party, seven in number, had been organised by a Mrs. Charlotte Evans, chairwoman of the Friends of Variety.

  Before leaving, he read for the first time the report on the discovery of Becky Main’s body. Because the paper was published on a Friday the report was necessarily brief and gave him nothing new. It concluded by stating that Detective Superintendent George Brummit had taken charge of the investigation and was hopeful of an early arrest. Well, he made it, the mean devil, Connor thought, anger rising as it always did when he reflected on how he had been wronged. He was closing the file when his attention was caught by a headline on an inside page. ‘Arthurs’ Night Dinner’, the headline ran. It took him back to that Wednesday night in the bar with Northropp and Fitt, and from curiosity he read on. Forty-six couples had attended the dinner at the Royal, after which there was dancing until two a.m. As was customary, the report said, no one had left before midnight, at which hour a Mr. and Mrs. Haddon-Smith, the longest-married couple present, had auctioned various articles presented by generous donors, the proceeds of the auction to go to the Royal National Institute for the Blind. The report concluded by listing those present, and Connor realised that this gave him forty-six men who could not have killed Becky Main. Becky had been killed before midnight, at which hour all forty-six were still at the hotel. Most of the names were unknown to him, but among them were the Northropps and the Sellers; not, he noted, the Lofthouses or the Drapers. And not the Fitts. Why? Fitt had left the bar that night with the expressed intention of taking his wife to the dinner. What had happened to prevent them attending? A couple named Grant had also been present — Adam Grant’s parents, perhaps, since Adam had been single at the time — and it occurred to Connor that Adam could be a more likely suspect than he had hitherto supposed. Despite Northropp’s assertion to the contrary, he could have resented Becky’s curt dismissal. ‘He’s timid’, Becky had said. ‘No spunk. Like a bloody —’ She had not completed the analogy but, except that Becky’s analogies were based on animals, it could have been ‘worm’. And perhaps that night the worm had turned. Adam Grant could have taken Northropp home and then, secure in the knowledge that his parents were at the dinner and would not return until after midnight, had driven out to Woodside Cottage and waited for Connor to bring Becky home. He would know the routine. On his own admission he had taken Becky home on more than one occasion.