Surfeit of Suspects

by George Bellairs

  ‘My name’s Wood. Augustus Wood, but they call me Joe,’ said the keeper of the gate, and he took two large mugs from a cupboard on the wall and laid them beside his own on the table. He added milk from a bottle and sugar from a blue paper packet and filled up all three with the brackish-looking liquid from the pot before he spoke again.

  ‘Tea? I’m just having mine, so you might as well have a cup with me. Sit down.’

  He indicated two tall wooden stools, presumably throw-outs from the main office, and handed over the mugs. Then he tackled his tinned pudding.

  ‘Excuse me if I get on with me tea. It’s gettin’ cold.’

  He filled his mouth with food and masticated it with vigorous relish. ‘What did you want at this time o’ day?’

  He wore an old suit a size too large for him which gave him a wilting appearance. His cloth cap might have been a part of his head for he never moved it. In place of his left hand he had a hook, with which he manipulated his tea-things with great skill. Obviously another casualty of the woodwork machinery trade who had been given a lighter job after his accident. He must have been past sixty and, in spite of his ill-lighted and confined job, had managed to keep a chubby cheerful countenance.

  ‘We were passing and thought we’d pay a call on you. You must see most that goes on around this place.’

  ‘You bet I do.’

  He thoughtfully cut a thick slice from his loaf and plastered it copiously with butter. Then he took a large bite of it. ‘I’ve been on the job for twenty years, ever since my accident, and there isn’t much happens that I don’t know of.’

  He showed them his hook, as though it were some strange appendage he’d grown himself.

  There must have been a loft above the room for they could hear scratching noises, as though it might be infested with rats. And yet rats didn’t make the sounds going on up there. Noises between a purr and a coo. Mr. Wood must have seen Littlejohn’s glance at the ceiling.

  ‘Them’s my pigeons. I’m a pigeon-flyer in my spare time. Homin’. Won a lot of prizes and cups with ’em. That’s wot’s worryin’ me. If this place shuts up, wot’s goin’ to happen to me and my birds?’

  ‘You don’t live here, do you, Mr. Wood?’

  ‘No; I’m a widower with a little house of my own, but I spend most of my time here, because of the pigeons. With them around, it feels like home.’

  ‘You don’t act as night-watchman?’

  ‘No. I generally go home around eight o’clock. Then the place is locked up. There’s not much anybody would want to steal here. Logs of wood and planks is too heavy to run off with and not be found out.’

  ‘Were you here when the explosion occurred?’

  ‘Yes. I wondered what the ’ell was up. It shook the whole neighbourhood. You could hear the stock of timber near the office tumblin’ about as if somebody was chucking it all over the place. I was near the window and the bang seemed to blow all the office windows out and the place was blazin’ before you could say knife. I rushed out to the nearest ’phone, which is in Mr. Bugler’s office in the works, the one in the main offices, of course, bein’ impossible to get at. I called up the fire brigade and then ran back to the fire. There wasn’t a thing anybody could do till the brigade got here. It was burnin’ like hell by then.’

  ‘What time did this happen?’

  ‘I’d just looked at the clock before the explosion. It was on five minutes to eight. And it’s five minutes slow.’

  ‘Did you see anybody about when you ran to the telephone?’

  ‘No. I was so put out by what had ’appened and in such a hurry to get the fire engine that I didn’t see anythin’ else. I had a key to the workshop. They gave me one years since. I come here every day to attend to me birds and when holidays are on and at week-ends, they like me to take a look over the works, like, and to see that all’s well. Lucky I had a key…’

  He contemplatively mopped up the remains of his steak pudding, drank the rest of his tea, and wiped his solitary hand down his trousers.

  ‘More tea?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  He collected the crockery and put it on a table in the corner for washing-up. Then he pulled out a short pipe and lit it.

  ‘Did you know the directors well?’

  ‘Yes. Known ’em all their lives. I was here as a woodwork machineman till my accident. Then, after I’d got over it, Mr. Jonas gave me this job. Tom Hoop, the old man, that is, was ’ere as foreman when I started. Fred Hoop was quite a nipper then and was taken on later as apprentice. Piper and Fallows were journeymen joiners, too. John Willie Dodd… I remember him comin’ as clerk in the office and then he rose to be secretary of the company, which he was when Mr. Jonas died and the firm changed hands.’

  ‘It didn’t change for the better, I hear.’

  ‘That’s right. It didn’t. It was what you’d call a matter of class. Although his grandfather, who started the place, had risen from bein’ a journeyman carpenter, Mr. Henry Jonas, his grandson, was a real gentleman. He’d been educated proper and he’d got that kindness and consideration for his workmen that you don’t often find these days. He could also talk as an equal, man to man, to merchants, the bank, the people at the town hall and such like. The directors who followed him were decent chaps, but they hadn’t got the right approach, if you get what I mean…’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘…They were either too aggressive or too shy. No ’appy medium. The ’appy medium goes a long way in business. Easy does it. Neither a bully nor a toady. Just easy’s the way.’

  Mr. Wood then knocked out the dottle of his pipe and began to cut a fresh fill from a piece of thick twist. He gently rubbed the tobacco between his one hand and the table top, skilfully inserted it in his pipe, struck a match with one hand, and lit the result.

  ‘You’re quite a psychologist, Mr. Wood.’

  ‘I’ve an idea what you mean, sir. I used to be a football referee in my younger days. Nothin’ like a bit of refereein’ to get to know yewman nature. If you can ’andle twenty-two footballers in front of a crowd of thousands, you can ’andle anybody.’

  ‘What did you think of Dodd?’

  Mr. Wood looked around the place as though expecting listeners in the shadows.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Why?’

  Another cautious look around. He puffed his pipe until his head was almost lost in a fog of smoke.

  ‘Bit of an upstart. Look ’ere. A man oughtn’t to speak ill of the dead, but this death isn’t the usual sort. If I express myself truthfully, you’ll see it doesn’t get out of these four walls?’

  ‘We’ll regard it as confidential.’

  ‘Well, I consider the way this firm’s gone downhill as due to Dodd. The other directors was putty in ’is hands. He’d got the gift of the gab. Could persuade you that black was white if you didn’t look out. The other directors was just plain workmen. What did they know about business and ’igh finance? Not a thing. Give ’em tools and some timber and they could do a first class job o’ joinery. But tell ’em to find money to run the business or get orders and sell wot they made and they were completely at sea. They left that part to Dodd, who never stopped blowin’ his own trumpet. When, at the end of the year, he told them they’d made a loss, they didn’t know why. They just left it to Dodd. Till, in the end, they couldn’t do without ’im. Even if they wanted to sack ’im, they daren’t ’ave, because it would bring down the whole firm. Get me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’d many a reason for wantin’ to get rid of him, believe me. I don’t go around with me eyes closed. I could tell you a thing or two…’

  He loosened the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with the hook on his left arm and lit up again.

  ‘Tell us a thing or two then, Mr. Wood.’

  Joe Wood evidently thought the policemen were still u
nder the oath of secrecy and he went ahead without more ado.

  ‘Dodd has risen from nothin’, as I said before. He started as a junior clerk and got on a lot by his wits. He was a good talker, too, and could talk his way in and out of anythin’…’

  In the loft above the movements continued and one of the birds would begin to make soothing noises, as though comforting the rest.

  Outside, there was dead silence. Now and then footsteps in the street or the backfiring of a passing car. Through the window they could see the glow in the sky caused by the gaudy lighting of the new town up the hill.

  ‘As Dodd got on, his ideas got bigger. He even took a fancy to Mr. Jonas’s youngest daughter, Miss Eva, but Miss Eva had her feet on the ground. Besides, she was a lot older than Dodd. She soon choked him off. Dodd was always a fancy man and one for the ladies. He was after money if he married, but ended by puttin’ a plumber’s daughter in the family way. He’d likely as not have dodged marryin’ her, but she happened to have a very determined father and two brothers, strappin’ chaps who stood no nonsense. They saw to it that he made an ’onest woman of her.’

  Joe Wood smiled maliciously to himself, enjoying the passing thought of certain incidents in the love-life and shotgun wedding of John Willie Dodd.

  ‘Dodd was a Yorkshireman and his wife’s brothers soon taught ’im that Surrey men could show their teeth just as well as he could. Since then, Dodd ’asn’t been satisfied with his own wife, although they’ve a couple of nice kids. Always some other woman in tow. Married or single, it was all the same to Dodd. His latest was Fred Hoop’s missus. What they saw in him, I don’t know, but they didn’t seem able to resist him…’

  ‘What sort of fellow was he?’

  Joe Wood opened a drawer of the table on which he ate his meals and produced some postcard photographs.

  ‘These are photos of the annual shop-trip, the outin’ to the seaside that Excelsior had every year. It was started by Mr. Henry Jonas, who used to pay all expenses. After he died, we carried on, but we paid our own.’

  Wood selected the best picture and with his hook pointed out various members of the group arranged in a semi-circle, dressed in their best and looking very merry.

  ‘That’s me…’

  He was dressed in his Sunday suit and smoking his pipe.

  ‘Them’s Fallows and Piper…’

  They were sitting on the front row with most of the rest standing behind. The directors, presumably, were allotted the places of honour, like heavenly bodies with satellites revolving round them.

  Fallows and Piper were a couple of nondescript little men, the sort you wouldn’t take a second look at if you passed them in the street. Honest to goodness workmen who’d suddenly found themselves elevated to doubtful headships in the fading Excelsior.

  In the very centre of the group sat three dominant figures. Fred Hoop they knew. There he was, self-conscious and aggressive as ever, a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, in what he thought was a nonchalant pose, his legs crossed and a portion of one bare calf showing above his sock. Very different from the man on his right.

  ‘That’s old Tom Hoop…’

  Old Tom. The name seemed to suit him. The patriarch. A stern-looking man with a large white moustache. He wore a black soft hat, a dark suit, with a watch-chain across his middle. He was glaring at the photographer as though he’d been dragged in against his will.

  ‘John Willie Dodd…’

  They might have guessed. The dandy of the lot. The masher and lady-killer. He wore a light grey suit and a soft hat at a rakish angle. He was smoking a cigar.

  ‘It’s a good one of him. Taken last summer. You wouldn’t think the business was on the rocks, would you? You’d think he’d struck oil proper, eh?’

  Which was true. Sitting at the right hand of the chairman of Excelsior in his light grey suit Dodd looked like the éminence grise of the company, the one who ran the lot, however badly. Littlejohn examined Dodd through his pocket-glass.

  Under the jaunty hat was a broad forehead tapering down to a small, firm chin. The nose was heavy and turned up a bit, like a snout, displaying the wide nostrils. In the photograph, the eyes looked dead, protruding from wrinkled baggy sockets, as though Dodd were sneering at the antics of the man with the camera.

  ‘Was he florid or pale…?’

  ‘Oh, florid, if by that you mean red. He was fond of his whisky and high life. When all the rest of us was waitin’ for our wages, which were hard to come by sometimes if the bank got sticky… I say, if we was waitin’, he always seemed to have enough. I guess he always saw that he got the first cut. Him and his family lived well, I can tell you.’

  ‘Was he tall?’

  ‘Medium… About five foot ten, I’d say. Well-built…’

  As far as possible, Littlejohn had now an idea of what the main actors, particularly Dodd, looked like. Beyond that, he knew little as yet.

  ‘You were saying he fancied Fred Hoop’s wife?’

  Wood lit his pipe again and nodded.

  ‘She’s a bit past her best now, but in her prime, she was a smasher, if you like ’em that way. A red-head and always ready for a bit o’ fun. She came from nothin’. Her father was a scrap-iron merchant who did well in the war and after, sellin’ surplus. He didn’t leave much in his will when he died, but he must have salted a lot away. At any rate, Bella and Fred Hoop have gone short o’ nothing durin’ the bad times of the Excelsior. And I hear they’ve taken care that none of Bella’s money’s been put in the company.’

  ‘And she and Dodd were having an affair?’

  Wood removed his pipe and looked a bit startled. He was a man who came gently to things in diplomatic language.

  ‘I didn’t say so. I said they was sweet on one another.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  Joe pondered on the niceties of expression.

  ‘Let’s put it this way. Between here and Brighton there’s what they call a roadhouse, the Peepin’ Tom. Why, I don’t know, but it is. Now John Willie Dodd and Bella Hoop have been seen there havin’ a meal together. That’s what I’d call bein’ sweet. If, on the other hand, somebody’d seen ’em goin’ into or comin’ out of one of the bedrooms, that would ’ave been what you call an affair. We call it carryin’ on.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Did Fred Hoop know?’

  ‘Like ’ell he did! If he hadn’t, somebody would have seen he got to know. Him and Dodd had a flamin’ row. But what was the good? If Dodd had packed up, as I said, the Excelsior would ’ave folded-up, too. He’d got Hoop and the rest of ’em where he wanted them.’

  ‘And, also, if one of the directors, including the Hoops, had blown Dodd sky-high with a stick of blasting powder, they’d still have left the firm without a pilot?’

  Joe Wood scratched his head through his cap.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. They would. But you can drive a man so far and no further. I’m not sayin’ Fred Hoop had anything to do with what happened at the office, but suppose he felt he’d been made a fool of long enough. He’s said to be fond of his missus, and I can quite believe it. They’ve got no kids and she’s the boss of the pair. Suppose he’d had enough of Dodd makin’ up to Bella. Fred Hoop’s not the sort to give anybody else a good hidin’ and be done with it. He’s a bit of a rabbit, scared to death of force. I’ve seen that a time or two when he’s had rows with the workmen about one thing or another. Any sign of fight and Fred’s caved in. No; he’s not the sort to have a scrap with Dodd about Bella. He might, in ’ot blood, let’s say, shoot him…’

  ‘Or throw a stick of dynamite at him?’

  ‘If a stick of dynamite was to ’and when he lost his temper, yes.’

  ‘But, as far as we can see, there wasn’t a stick of dynamite handy…’

  Wood looked stumped.
>
  ‘There wasn’t, was there? No, there wasn’t.’

  He seemed crestfallen that his theory had come to nothing.

  ‘Could it have been any of the workmen? One with a grudge against Dodd; someone he’d sacked or offended…?’

  ‘Not likely. I can’t think of anybody who’d do a thing like that. If there’s trouble in the shop, and they can’t settle it on the floor level, they bring in the Union. Wilfred Julier’s the local secretary. What Wilfred can’t settle, isn’t worth settlin’. No need for sticks of dynamite where he’s concerned. He’s dynamite himself.’

  Now and then, in the course of the conversation, a head would be thrust round the door, and invariably withdrawn. This place seemed like a club, a place where men gathered in the evenings and gossiped together. As each newcomer appeared, Joe Wood seemed to give a signal that something private was going on and the intruder withdrew.

  ‘What’s the general opinion about the explosion, Joe?’

  ‘The men seem as puzzled as you appear to be. It’s one thing to give an unpopular chap a punch on the jaw, and quite another to chuck a stick of explosive at him. The best idea I heard was that there was somethin’ in the coal…’

  ‘Coal?’

  ‘Yes, coal. There’s been a bit of coal stealin’ round here and a chap called Kelly had the idea of drillin’ a hole in some pieces of coal and putting gunpowder in it. Not long after, a fireplace in one of the shady quarters of the town was blown out. Of course, Kelly couldn’t prove a thing. It was a daft idea from the start. The damage was so bad, although nobody was ’urt, that Kelly daren’t speak up. He told me in confidence here, one night, what he’d done. Thought it was clever. I told ’im he’d soon see how clever it was if somebody got killed. He’d be for the ’igh jump. Somebody suggested that one of Kelly’s lumps of coal might have found its way into the office fire.’

  ‘Dodd had been pinching coal?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past ’im, though he’d never go rootin’ in the coal-sheds. Cookin’ the books, perhaps, but nothing to soil his ’ands on.’