Crime In Leper's Hollow

by George Bellairs

  “That suits me,” chuckled Cromwell. “I wonder if you’d let me ask them some questions about a certain telephone call I’m interested in.”

  “By all means. Confidential, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  They smiled at one another like old friends. The official was a sandy little man with a bald head, a pink, clean-shaven face, false teeth which glistened as he spoke, and as he worked he wore very large horn-rimmed glasses with deep black rims which almost totally overwhelmed him. You remembered his spectacles long after you’d forgotten everything else about him. His name was Flowerdew and he was due to retire on pension in eleven months. He was ticking off the days to his release on a calendar and, in the little songs with which his staff had merrily and cryptically ticketed the presents on the post office Christmas tree, he had been identified by:

  In eleven more months and ten more days,

  I’ll be out of the calaboose...

  “Perhaps I needn’t talk to all of them, if you could let me know which girls were on duty on the date I’m interested in...”

  “Of course,” beamed Mr. Flowerdew. “When was it?”

  Cromwell told him the time and date of Mr. Trumper’s call after the episode of the cocktails. Mr. Flowerdew consulted a file which he pulled from a drawer.

  “Miss Mills and Miss Bligh.”

  He rang a bell and a smart middle-aged woman entered.

  “This is Miss Shepherd, the Supervisor. Detective-Sergeant Cromwell, Miss Shepherd.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meet you, too, Miss Shepherd.”

  Mr. Flowerdew explained what he wanted and Miss Shepherd indicated that she could probably help. She left them and soon a young lady with hair of a glorious copper colour, very serious, very self-possessed, wearing a solitaire diamond engagement ring and spectacles with pale green frames of a curious shape which gave her eyes a Chinese slant, appeared.

  Mr. Flowerdew again explained why Cromwell was there. “Miss Bligh, Mr. Cromwell.”

  Cromwell smiled.

  “Not Nelly Bligh?”

  “No. Penelope; but my friends call me Penny,” said the girl, allowing Cromwell’s joke to pass over her shapely head.

  “Could you help at all, Penny?”

  “Bit difficult, actually.”

  She spoke affectedly. Subscribers locally, even though they only knew her by her voice, called her The Duchess.

  “Bit difficult, actually...We get so many calls, from boxes especially. Still it’s registered in my handwriting, so actually...”

  She thought hard.

  “It was to Trotman & Co., remember, Penny?”

  Light began to dawn on Miss Bligh’s unusually pretty but solemn face. She resembled a Rossetti model and her lover had told her she was a second Elizabeth Siddal. This honour accounted for her grave bearing.

  “I do remember, actually...There was some trouble on the line. The caller hadn’t twopence to pay for his call, but was so eager that he offered to put in sixpence. I agreed, actually.”

  “What was it all about, Penny?”

  “We aren’t supposed to listen to calls, sir.”

  Penny looked very virtuous and her Rossetti mouth and nose added to her angelic efforts.

  Mr. Flowerdew tactfully rose and left the room with a smile. They could see him through the glass partition helping his staff with the Christmas salvage.

  “Now, Penny,” smiled Cromwell.” This is strictly between you and me. If you did hear anything, say so. It’s very important. May help us catch a murderer before he can kill anybody else.”

  Miss Bligh did not change her angelic look, but you knew that she was coming out on the side of law and right.

  “Actually, I did hear. I didn’t listen-in, not deliberately, actually. But the man making the call kept flashing...I mean, he couldn’t get through at first. There was a private switchboard at the place he was calling. Trotman & Co., actually.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wanted Mr...Mr...The man who was killed...Mr. Kent.”

  Red spots of excitement at the thought of murder flared up on the graceful curves of Miss Bligh’s cheeks.

  “Yes, Mr. Kent. The switch at Trotman’s seemed to be trying to get Mr. Kent and couldn’t. Of course, the caller couldn’t hear, actually. I had him on the ‘hold line’ key. I remember they seemed to be ringing Mr. Kent and he wasn’t in and then Mr. Trotman — I know his voice — Mr. Trotman answered. I put them through and I just listened to see if all was right.”

  “What did they say, Penny?”

  “As far as I remember, it was Mr. Trumper, the grocer, and he wanted Mr. Kent. Actually, Mr. Trotman said he was Mr. Kent. Now why should he do that?”

  The innocent eyes behind the butterfly spectacles searched Cromwell’s own for an answer. They were steady, eloquent eyes, and Cromwell felt they were quietly challenging him to be gallant and even suggest a rendezvous sometime, somewhere. He grew a bit hot under the collar.

  “I really can’t say, Penny. What happened?”

  “All Mr. Trumper said was, that a detective had called to question him about what happened at the Kents’ window when they sang carols. He said he hadn’t told anything, but he was a bit scared about it. Mr. Trotman said there was nothing in it. The police were just making random guesses, actually, and if Trumper kept cool and stuck to his tale, he’d be all right. Mr. Trumper then said that if there was any trouble he’d expect to be supported...stood by...I think the word he used was, actually...”

  “And that was all, Penny?”

  “Yes. Should there have been more?”

  She stared Cromwell out of countenance again.

  “No. That’s all, thanks. I’m much obliged for your help, Penny.”

  Miss Bligh pursed her Rossetti mouth.

  “You’ll not tell anybody?” she whispered conspiratorially. “It’s our secret...actually...”

  “Yes, actually, Penny.”

  She turned on her heel and left him, made stately progress through the office, and vanished without looking back.

  “Phew! That’s a tasty dish,” said Cromwell to himself.

  “Isn’t she?” said Flowerdew, who had quietly returned. “A kind of deep ocean in which men drown themselves.”

  Mr. Flowerdew wrote poetry under a pseudonym from time to time for the local paper and Penny had figured occasionally in outpourings about Circe and La Belle Dame sans Merci...

  It was half-closing day when Cromwell arrived at Trumper’s shop and the shutters were up and the place deserted. Mr. Trumper, a widower, lived, however, in rooms over the premises and Cromwell, by pressing a button labelled “House” on the jamb of the shop-door, brought down Mr. Trumper looking very suspicious and bothered.

  “Good afternoon,” said Mr. Trumper coldly. It was hardly afternoon, but Mr. Trumper always called it that to justify early closing. “Wot can I do for you? The shop’s shut.”

  Cromwell smiled benevolently.

  “I’d like a chat with you, Mr. Trumper. I’m afraid I was a bit irritable with you last time we met. I quite appreciate it was a joke you played and I ought to have been more sporty. I’d been up late the night before, so I must ask you to excuse me.”

  Mr. Trumper beamed all over his face and his precariously balanced pince-nez twitched on their perch as he smiled.

  “No h’ill feelin’s, I’m sure. Come h’up...”

  He indicated a flight of stairs leading to his upper quarters and they ascended together. Mr. Trumper even placed his arm protectively round Cromwell’s shoulders to intimate that they were pals again.

  They entered a cosy room, full of sofas and armchairs, as though Mr. Trumper sought extreme comfort wherever he might wish to sit. There were knicknacks; presents from Brighton, Southport, Cleethorpes, John o’ Groats and Margate, boldly endorsed to that effect in gilt script; family groups and framed reproductions from Christmas almanacs all over the walls. The sideboard and mantelpiece
were filled with recent Christmas greeting-cards. In the middle of the room stood a dining-table decked in a red plush tablecloth. This cloth held a pot of paste, a huge scrap-book—formerly a greeting-card sample book with the samples removed — scissors, pens and ink.

  Mr. Trumper beamed and indicated the tackle on the table.

  “My ’obby,” he said.

  “Scrap-book?”

  “Not h’exackly...Poetry.”

  “You collect poetry cuttings?”

  Mr. Trumper tried to look austere.

  “Yes; of a certing sort. In Memoriums...”

  “Funeral rhymes, you mean?”

  “Well...yes...you might call them such. There’s a lot of good poetry h’inspired by death, Mr. Cromwell. F’r instance, I wrote quite a lot myself under the h’inspiration of sorrow when my wife passed over.”

  Mr. Trumper sniffed to indicate he still sorrowed. His moustache drooped.

  “Best poetry comes from a sorrowful ‘eart, Mr. Cromwell. Look at this one out of last week’s Tilsey Trumpet...It’s beeootiful...”

  He wrung his hands in an ecstasy of appreciation.

  He took the clipping between his large finger and thumb, cleared his voice and intoned:

  “When Willie breathed his last farewell,

  It shocked me more than words can tell.

  This world seems quite a different place,

  Without the smile on Willie’s face.”

  “Lovely, ain’t it?”

  “Very touching.”

  Cromwell sniffed to hide the twitch of his upper lip.

  “Or this, Mr. Cromwell, cut out jest before you rang the bell:

  “We think of you, dear Rupert,

  We call you by your name,

  But there’s nothin’ left to answer,

  But your photo in the frame...”

  Mr. Trumper looked at all the photos in the frames on the walls and sighed. One of them showed Mr. Trumper himself in his Volunteers’ uniform, fifty years ago. He paused as his eye caught it. It seemed to make him think.

  “Let’s ’ave a drink to cheer us h’up,” he shouted. “An’ this tune it’ll be a proper one, Mr. Cromwell. No joke, I assure you. Proper ole meller whisky. Wot say?”

  He produced the bottle and they had a tot together.

  “Yore werry good health, Mr. Cromwell.”

  “Here’s to you.”

  Mr. Trumper had already had one or two beforehand. He always warmed himself up to his poetical horrors with his best whisky.

  “Like to see a few more?”

  “Not just now, if you don’t mind. They upset me, Mr. Trumper, I must confess. Life’s full of sorrow, isn’t it?”

  “You never said a more truer word, sir. Let’s have another...Jest a little one to drown our sorrow and celebrate our new friendship. Say when...”

  “When...Your very good health, sir...”

  “And yore’s, Mr. Cromwell, I’m sure. Any relation of Oliver Cromwell, Mr. Cromwell?

  “I believe I am. A long way back, but all the same...”

  “Yes...Yes...”

  Mr. Trumper brooded as he refilled the glasses.

  “I always envied people like you, as has ’igh-soundin’ and Honourable names...names that rings with ’istory, sir. Names like Cromwell and Montmorency and Plantagenut...My own name makes me shame...I blush to h’utter it, sir...I blush...”

  He blew out his moustache and beat the table top.

  “It’s short for Trumpeter...and ’oo wants to be a trumpeter? I ask you, ’oo wants to be...? Have another drink, sir, to drown my sorrow at me name...”

  They drank each other’s health again.

  “Why fret about a name, Mr. Trumper? Besides, what would all the pomp of great names be without a herald to announce them on ceremonial occasions? The herald or trumpeter’s just as important as the Cromwells and the Montmorencies, if you look at it in the right way...”

  Mr. Trumper raised his sad eyes to Cromwell’s. They were, by now, so watery that they looked ready at any moment to float out of their sockets and glide down his cheeks.

  “That’s right. You’ve give me a lot of comfort puttin’ it that way, Mr. Cromwell. Necessary part of regal ceremonial is the Trumper. I’ll remember that...”

  The whisky was certainly potent and pre-war. Cromwell knew that unless he transacted the business he’d come for and in aid of which he’d broken his rule of never drinking on duty, not only would he, but Trumper also, be incapable of dealing with it. In fact, Mr. Trumper was rapidly growing incoherent, and that wouldn’t do. Cromwell eyed him critically and decided the time was ripe.

  “You’ve got your own sorrows and problems, I know, Mr. Trumper. You must be terribly worried in your mind about the lie Mr. Kent told you to tell the police and set around the town...”

  Mr. Trumper’s caution had gone under the whisky. He again turned his swimming eyes on Cromwell.

  “It’s nearly more than I can bear, Mr. Cromwell. I’ve kep’ it locked up in me breast till I can’t sleep o’ nights nor do me work proper by day...”

  Two large tears detached themselves from the copious reservoir surrounding his eyes, ran down his cheeks, and vanished in his moustache. His pince-nez trembled precariously on the end of his nose as his mouth trembled.

  “Suppose you tell me. It’ll relieve you, my friend.” Mr. Trumper revealed his last vestige of caution.

  “Promise it won’t be used against me. Then I’ll confess. I ’aven’t done anythin’ wrong really, but I never was good as a liar, and God ’elp me, that’s wot I am now.”

  “I’ll see you right.”

  “That’s a pal...”

  He solemnly wobbled to his feet and wrung Cromwell’s hand heartily.

  “It was this way. On the night Mr. Crake tuck ill, me and my men, eight of us all told, went round carollin’ in the cause o’ charity, like we always did for last thirty years. We called at the Kents’ pretty near the end...must a’ been about three.”

  A marble clock on the mantelpiece struck one, and Mr. Trumper looked at it bewildered, as though it were contradicting him.

  “Three !” he said. “We’d just started to sing when the curtain of the window above where we was, moved aside, an’ there stood a man in dressin’ gown and pyjamas. He looked down at us, sort of surprised, and then a woman, Mrs. Crake, come beside ’im, pulled him away, and closed the curtings...”

  Cromwell’s head was beginning to swim and he fought down the feeling of drunkenness which he marvelled, in view of the whisky, wasn’t even more overwhelming.

  “Who was the man, Mr. Trumper?”

  “Not oo’ you think. It was Mr. Arthur Kent. Of course, you might ’ave expected to see ’im looking down from ’is own house, but with Mrs. Crake, in what you might call her dishevell, her negligy, her dressin’ gown and nightie, so to speak, it struck me as proper improper...”

  “Quite right.”

  “Glad you agree, Mr. Cromwell. No sooner ’ad the curtings closed, than out comes Mrs. Kent all upset. Her brother’s in the room above where we was singin’, and he’s werry ill. She’s sorry not to give us the usual ’ospitality, but could we go away? That seemed to explain the seein’ of Mrs. Crake and Mr. Kent in the room. Quite nacherall if they was sick-watching’. But...But...”

  Mr. Trumper paused for effect and drank the remnants of his glass.

  “But...As we left the grounds of St. Mark’s and was passin’ the tradesmen’s entrance down a little lane aside the ’ouse, out comes Mr. Kent and takes me by the arm. He draws me away from the rest an’ says, ‘Tom, I want a word with you’. He then says he don’t want it known that he was in that room when he was. ‘I know you saw me, Tom, because you reckenized me, didn’t you?’ I said I did. ‘Did anybody else see me?’ he asks. Now Mr. Cromwell, we was all standin’ in a ring, some with their backs to the ’ouse. On’y me and Willie Kneeshaw was facin’ full on and, as like as not, didn’t see plain ’oo opened the curtings...”

 
; “I see. And he asked you...?”

  “He asked me to see that it didn’t get any further. But, I told ’im, there was certainly some who knew the curtings parted, whoever there might be behind ’em...’In that case, Tom,’ he sez, ‘In that case, say Mr. Crake was tryin’ to get out and Mrs. Crake was a-restrainin’ of him.’ I was sort of surprised. Mr. Kent to want such a thing! Askin’ me to tell a deliberate untruth about his sick brother-in-law. It looked to me as if Kent ’ad even been carryin’ on with Mrs. Crake in the werry sick-room itself...”

  Mr. Trumper paused and snorted. He looked ready to doze off and Cromwell gave him a good shake to keep him going. He mistook the gesture for one of reassurance and resumed confidently.

  “I told ’im I didn’t like it. Not only that. I was surprised at Mr. Kent askin’ such a thing. And him bein’ proposed as next Member of Parliament for Tilsey. If it ’ad got out, his chances would ’ave been poor. They’re particular in Tilsey, you know.”

  “Member of Parliament...Well, well...”

  “Yes. I told ’im so. Then he got nasty. He threatened me, Mr. Cromwell. He threatened me with ruin, if I didn’t do wot he wanted.”

  Mr. Trumper started to sob in self-pity.

  “Never mind. He’s dead now and past harming you, Mr. Trumper.”

  “Yes...Makes it easy now to tell you. You see, Kent holds, or rather he held while livin’, a large mortgage over my shop. Things ’aven’t been so good since my daughter got married and left me alone...”

  Cromwell eyed the whisky and the state of his new friend and understood.

  “So Kent lent me three thousand on the property. He said if I didn’t oblige ’im, he’d call in the loan an’ sell me up. What could I do, Mr. Cromwell? I jest ’ad to do as he said.”

  “What about the rest of the singers?”

  “Only Kneeshaw and one other saw Mr. Kent plain. And Willie’s not right in his head...sort of soft. All the same, I ’ad a proper job with ’im, makin’ him see his mistake and agree that it was Mr. Crake, not Mr. Kent, at the winder. I offered ’im money, but he said it was no use to ’im. Do you know what he wanted, to agree with me? Two Christmas puddin’s and a bottle of Cocky Dick, free! I gave ’em to him with pleasure. As for the other who thought he saw Mr. Crake...well...I sort of overwhelmed ’im with argument. I talked ’im out of it. In the end, Docker...that was his name...Docker was spreadin’ the news about Crake and his missus strugglin’ at the winder, jest as Mr. Kent had said. Docker did more than me in spreadin’ the scandal.”