“Didn’t the others get suspicious about your long talk in the dark with Kent?”
“No. I told ’em he was apologizin’ for not askin’ them in, and I also said he’d give me a pound to stand ’em some drinks, which I then ’ad to pay for, at me own expense...”
“And that’s all there is to it?”
“Yes. It’s a great relief to get it off my conscience. You’ll stand by me, now?”
His swimming eyes were a bit doubtful.
“Of course...”
“Let’s ‘ave a drink on it, then.”
“I think I’ve had enough, Mr. Trumper. That’s strong stuff. I’ll bet it’s pre-war...”
Mr. Trumper touched the side of his nose and his glasses fell off. He started to fumble about for them.
“I must be going. It’s Mr. Kent’s inquest this afternoon and I’ve got to be there, you know.”
“I’m sorry ’e got himself killed, but he shouldn’t have done it to me. I suppose Mrs. Kent’ll come into my mortgage now. She’ll deal better by me. She’s a good sort...”
They parted like old friends, Mr. Trumper sentimentally pumping Cromwell’s arm up and down until it ached.
After the door of the flat had closed, Cromwell paused to gather himself together. The keen air increased his sense of bad balance. Also, he felt full of mirth. He remembered the man with his photo in the frame and wanted to recite the poem to someone and laugh about it. Suddenly, he saw Littlejohn across the way and, walking unsteadily, hailed him and clung to him like a drowning man to a spar.
“You’re drunk!” said Littlejohn.
Fourteen – Beatrice
THE inquest on Arthur Kent was adjourned. Mr. Gladstone simply took the testimonies of those who had discovered the body and of the doctor who examined it. Death had been due to a violent blow on the back of the head by a heavy instrument. A certificate of interment was granted and the funeral, fixed for the following day, was thus confirmed.
Mr. Gladstone then went on to inquire into the death of Superintendent Simpole. Ample evidence of a discreet nature was produced to prove that his behaviour previous to his suicide had been eccentric and depressed. He had something on his mind. His landlady, a pathetic, hungry-looking woman with a goitre, who had once been financially comfortable on what her father left her and had since, through increased living costs and the political fury of those who had no mercy on her class, had to scratch around taking lodgers and sewing to make ends meet, testified that for nights on end, she had heard the Superintendent pacing the floor almost till dawn.
“If he’d only told somebody his troubles, Mr. Coroner, or even got drunk for a change, it might have done him good.”
Both inquests were crowded. The townsfolk were out to enjoy a perfect orgy of crime and sordid testimony. But they were disappointed. The official damper had fallen upon the Coroner and his court. The police would be much obliged by a mere formal taking of evidence, and an adjournment pending further inquiries. Mr. Gladstone’s reputation suffered in clubs and in the local library, where a forum gathered on cold days instead of in the small rectangle of seats around the flowerbeds in the town square.
“He’s keeping something up his sleeve the public ought to know. One law for the rich and another for the poor. It’s not good enough hushing things up like this.”
Littlejohn called at St. Mark’s to see Mrs. Kent after the inquest at which she had given evidence of identification and an account of Kent’s movements leading up to his disappearance into Beyle House just before he died.
She received the Inspector in a calm and collected manner. She had testified in court in the same way. She was widely respected locally, but everybody was surprised at her lack of emotion.
“She mustn’t have loved him...and no wonder!” someone said.
Beatrice Kent ordered tea and took a long tune pouring it out and settling down.
“I shall not be at the funeral to-morrow. Our family don’t believe in women going to funerals. It will be all men.”
She reminded Littlejohn of a card-player, shuffling and sorting ready for the fray. She seemed to sense that his visit was ominous, perhaps fatal for her and persisted in performing trifling courtesies and keeping conversation trivial whilst she prepared for the first onset.
Littlejohn took his first sip of tea and carefully put down his cup on the table by his chair.
“Did you know, Mrs. Kent, that your husband killed Mrs. Crake?” he asked quietly.
Beatrice did not turn a hair. She had her cup to her lips when he said it, and many in such circumstances would have spluttered and choked. She finished her drink and nodded.
“Yes.”
“You approved, I suppose, seeing you didn’t inform the police or alter your way of life together.”
“The way I felt when she died, I would have killed her myself had Arthur not done so. Now, I have my doubts.”
“Because you discovered that Mrs. Crake did not cause her husband’s death, as rumour had it? Because the man at the window was your husband, not your brother?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know?”
“Arthur told me.”
There was silence, broken only by the roaring of the gale. Outside, the snow had turned to rain and the water lashed and splattered the windows, driven almost horizontal by the cutting wind.
“Did he tell you everything?”
“I think so.”
“He and Mrs. Crake had been in love and carried on a clandestine affair together. Then your husband cooled off. He was, I suppose, normally a conventional type, bothered by his conscience, which gave him no peace during the infatuation he couldn’t throw off.”
“He was a victim of Dulcie, just like the rest. On some men, she seemed to exert a peculiar magnetism. They could not resist; particularly if she singled them out. She had no morals and no scruples, Inspector.”
“She had lost them through addiction to drugs, fostered by her brother.”
“I know. I’ve known it for years. Nick used to tell me most of his troubles. I knew about Alec’s parentage. But the last straw was Arthur falling for her. Not that I was jealous. Such feelings had been frozen out of me years ago. But Nick’s wife...and my husband...It was unthinkable.”
“Mr. Kent cooled off. His conscience got the better of the struggle, assisted by the fact that his fellow townsmen wanted him to stand as their candidate for Parliament at the next election. He had managed to keep the liaison secret except from his intimates, but with political honours, and all they might lead to, in sight, he realized he couldn’t afford to risk his reputation any longer. He told her so, and she refused to give him up.”
“You have learned quite a lot in a few days, Inspector!”
“It is my business, Mrs. Kent. Your brother had made provision for his only child in the shape of a trust. Trotman and your husband were trustees. There is a gap in my knowledge of what happened, but I make a guess...I guess that Mrs. Crake found out the existence of this trust, resented it and, being short of money, coveted the funds. Your husband, involved right to the hilt in his affair with Mrs. Crake and fascinated by her and by a situation which he had never before experienced, ultimately weakened to the extent of realizing the assets of the trust, forging documents, and appropriating the funds. She must have had a firm grip on him and his emotions at one tune.”
“She had. He was like one possessed. He even wrote poetry! It was quite good poetry such as I had never inspired in him.”
She laughed harshly at the thought of such a cold fish suddenly thawing and bursting into amorous rhymes.
“What you guessed is quite true. She wormed the money out of him and then, when he had given it to her, he realized what he had done and set out to put it right. He even tried to borrow five thousand pounds from me. Said it was to buy a larger share in the partnership. I discreetly sounded Trotman and found he was deceiving me. I suspected it was for Dulcie, and I refused. He thereupon started to save furiously. P
oor Arthur, he’d accumulated seven of the ten thousand when Nick died.”
“Your brother died too soon; another year or two, and your husband would have been safe. As it was, Mr. Crake’s death brought matters to a head. Your husband had to have the money at once.”
“Yes.”
“On the night your brother was brought here to die, your husband feared he wouldn’t survive and, in the small hours, went to the bedroom where Mrs. Crake was alone and sick-watching, to plead with her to find the balance of the trust. Or, at least, to help him, by her influence over his co-trustee, Trotman, to hush the matter up till he could straighten it out. As they were arguing, Trumper and his troupe started to sing carols under the window. Impulsively, your husband went to close the window, which had been opened...”
“That’s it! It had been opened...!”
“He was afraid the noise would awake Crake. As it was, he revealed himself to Trumper and others. Not only that, Mrs. Crake, in deshabille, appeared behind him, pulling him away. What a tasty bit for the gossips! It seems that only Trumper, a half-wit, and one other saw your husband well enough to identify him. Mr. Kent used blackmail and money on Trumper and silenced him. To satisfy the third looker-on, a tale was told about Mrs. Crake exposing her husband to the wind.”
“I know...Arthur told me everything. I hated him for it, but somehow I pitied him. He was like a small boy in trouble. I told him I would lend him the money to put the trust right. After all, he had killed Dulcie; I had done the same thing in my heart many and many a time for what she’d done to Nick. And when Nick died I blamed her, even after Arthur had explained away the gossip about the open window.”
She automatically poured out two more cups of cold tea, meticulously adding sugar and milk and passing biscuits. She was like one in a dream.
“He went to Beyle for Mrs. Crake’s things on the night she stayed watching her husband, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
“What else did he bring back? Letters? Papers?”
“He tried to find out from her papers in the desk how much of the trust money was intact and where it was. He didn’t find what he wanted, but he took other things.”
“Letters from Trotman and Simpole to Mrs. Crake?”
“Yes. Terrible, damning letters for both of them. They would have ruined both or either of them if they’d been made public.”
“When did he tell you all this; after he’d killed Mrs. Crake?”
“Yes. He came home like a naughty boy...terrified. ‘I’ve just killed Dulcie,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’”
“He went to Beyle after Mr. Crake’s death to resume the argument interrupted in the sick-room. He wanted the trust matter putting right. Mrs. Crake refused. Or what is more likely, offered to do it at a price, the resumption of the old affair. They quarrelled. She, in fury, attacked him with a knife. In defending himself, he killed her, Mrs. Kent.”
“That’s just what he said. She flew at him like a wild cat; he merely tried to twist the knife out of her hand, and she seemed to thrust herself on it. He left by the back stairs after wiping away his prints. In any case, he could have explained being in the room. He’d been there the night before, getting her things. Nobody knew...”
“You’re wrong there. One person saw him leave; another was on his track like a hound. Uncle Bernard saw him go, but he didn’t tell anyone. Now that Crake and his wife were dead, Uncle Bernard was without means of support. He didn’t want to leave Beyle a beggar. He chose your husband as his victim for more money. But his luck was out. Before he could apply the screw, someone killed Mr. Kent.”
“Was it Doane?”
“No. I was with Uncle Bernard when it happened.”
Funny how Littlejohn kept calling the old reprobate Uncle Bernard in a semi-affectionate way! It seemed somehow to fit him.
“Who did it then?”
“It might have been Alec, or Nita...or you, yourself, Mrs. Kent...”
“I swear I had nothing to do with it.”
“Uncle Bernard did, I fancy, try to pin his sister’s death on someone else. He tried to implicate Simpole, who had been madly in love with Mrs. Crake and had been repulsed. She had his letters, remember, and Simpole wanted them back. Uncle Bernard knew that. He tried to protect Mr. Kent from any suspicion by saying his sister said ‘Police’ as she died. Uncle Bernard dearly wants me to ask him what ‘Police’ meant. He will then say, ‘Perhaps she wanted to tell me the police had done it; in other words, Simpole.’ But I won’t ask him. I prefer to wait for him to tell me. Then, I shall know what he’s at. Mrs. Crake could never have spoken after that vicious blow. She died even before it ended.”
Beatrice winced and covered her face with her hands.
“The other person who knew, was Simpole. He was clever, very clever. We asked him to trace a call from Trumper to some third party about the rumour of the open window. He did that successfully, but didn’t tell us his own theory. He simply laughed and said Trumper had been scared into taking legal advice, because the call was to Trotman. But Simpole didn’t let it rest at that. He got on the trail of Trotman and your husband, found out about the defalcations, and was on the verge of solving the case. Then his suspect was killed. So, you see, he’d to start all over again.”
“He was behind us in a police car the day I took my husband to Beyle for the last time. I saw him through the driving-mirror. He must have been shadowing Arthur!”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure. I’d know Simpole anywhere. His wasn’t what you would call an ordinary face.”
“But when you stopped at Beyle and dropped your husband, Simpole wasn’t there then?”
“No. He seemed to vanish at some distance away...Let me think! Yes, he might have taken the old road. It passes the other side of Beyle and you get to Beyle from it by crossing a paddock in a ring of trees.”
“So, Simpole might actually have turned up on the scene of the crime and spotted the murderer leaving, or hanging about?”
“It takes just as long on the old road as by the new, so Simpole was probably crossing the paddock as Arthur was going up the drive. He was perhaps keeping an eye on Arthur, if what you say is true.”
“The letters you say your husband took from Mrs. Crake’s desk. They involved Trotman and Simpole?”
“Yes.”
“Not your husband, then?”
“I don’t know. It’s very likely. As I said, he took to writing poems in the heat of his infatuation for Dulcie. He might have sent some, and even incriminating letters. Perhaps that’s what he was after in the desk.”
“Very likely. Did he bring all the letters home?”
“Yes. He had them in the pocket of his overcoat. He put them in the little wall-safe in his room. I saw him do it. He alone had the key. I guess if Trotman’s letters were in among them, Arthur wouldn’t take them to the office safe. At any rate, they aren’t there now. I got the key and looked after Arthur died.”
“Did your husband show you the letters then?”
“Yes. He told me everything. He was begging me on his knees to find the money to put the trust right. He was terribly afraid of being found out as a murderer and embezzler. In spite of his cold surface and apparent phlegmatic way, he was highly strung...”
“I know that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have attracted Dulcie Crake. She must have brought out the nervous and emotional side of him.”
“And when he was scared, he came to me! Do you know, he had one funny failing. He was afraid of the dark. He always had an electric night-light on in the room where he slept.”
“The letters; did he say anything?”
“He didn’t mention Trotman’s, but he gloated over Simpole’s. He said if Simpole got on his track, he had a lever in them to silence him.”
“He’d blackmail Simpole?”
“That, at least, provides one solution, Inspector. Simpole killed him for the letters, destroyed them, and then killed himself.”
“Bu
t why kill himself, if he was safe from the letters being made public? Remorse, maybe. We know he was behaving strangely. He must have loved Mrs. Crake in spite of everything and her death unhinged him. He couldn’t conscientiously continue, a murderer, in his position with the police...”
“But was he conscientious. Remember, for Dulcie’s sake he hushed up Uncle Bernard’s cruelty to animals affair.”
“Are you sure it was cruelty to animals, Mrs. Kent? It seems such a silly petty affair to cause so much fuss about. Are you sure it wasn’t more serious than that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Uncle Bernard is bogus, you know. He’s not a qualified doctor. He’s just a fake. He provided Dulcie with drugs. Why couldn’t he do it for others, too? Dope peddling. Simpole got on his track and his infatuation for Mrs. Crake sealed his lips.”
“I don’t know...The whole affair is bewildering...”
Quite right, thought Littlejohn. Here he was discussing the case with the wife of one of the murdered victims. He was theorizing with her like a colleague and she was as calm about it as if no dead husband or family scandals concerned her at all. A very cool, clever and charming woman. Far more clever than Kent, Dulcie Crake...yes, and maybe than Simpole.
“There is another theory, you know, Mrs. Kent.”
“What is it?
She raised her head and looked him in the eyes steadily.
“Let’s assume that after he stopped trailing you on the main road. Simpole turned off to go the other way to Beyle. Why? There were there, Uncle Bernard and Nita. Alec was drinking at the airport and has an alibi. Did he wish to see one of them? We don’t know. Probably we never will. He may just have been revisiting the scene of the crime. But when he got there, something happened. Your husband was murdered and perhaps Simpole saw the murderer. And then...what followed? Simpole committed suicide. Why?”
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 18
