Bismarck Herrings (Timothy Herring) Page 22

  “I thought she’d moved from there before she was killed. Didn’t they tell you they had more or less turned her out because she was such a nuisance?”

  “Yes, that’s true enough. The police went to them because it was the only address they found in Mrs. Plumb’s handbag, but, of course, it wasn’t where she happened to be living at the time. Still, I know where they hang out. I’ve only got to contact them and ask for the address of the other relatives, the family she had gone to live with when she left them. I gather it’s also in Ipswich, as she was killed in an Ipswich cinema.”

  “Perhaps they won’t be very pleased to see you again.”

  “Don’t worry. Before I left, I salted that particular mine with a pretended bonus. I shall be quite politely received.”

  “Well, really!” said Alison.

  “It wasn’t meant in the way you think. I promised it, hoping to induce Mrs. Plumb herself to come across with her information, but, of course, the poor woman was probably dead by the time I got to the house, and, having mentioned the cash, I couldn’t in decency withhold it. That’s how it all came about.”

  “Oh, I see. Bribery by any other name . . .”

  “Come, come! If it’s done a bit of softening up, it’s done its job, hasn’t it? Poor old Plumb! She seems to have been a bit of a daisy. Must have been, because the people I interviewed were quite decent sorts, I would say, and probably prepared to put up with quite a bit of old buck from the aged relative, but apparently Mrs. P. was a shade over the odds. Judging from her remarks in court, I can well imagine it. Let’s turn about and go back to Ipswich and seek whom we may devour.”

  As Timothy had foreseen, there was no difficulty in obtaining Mrs. Plumb’s last address. The shop was in a back street, but was well-stocked and the man behind the cash desk—for the small place went in for wire baskets and self-service and called itself a supermarket—turned out to be the proprietor. In the flat above the shop they found Mrs. Plumb’s other niece.

  “Oh, dear!” she said. “Walter ought to have showed you up, but I suppose he couldn’t leave the shop. Are you the police again? There’s nothing else I can tell you about poor Auntie.”

  “No, we’re not the police,” said Timothy.

  “I just thought you had a little bit of the look of that gentlemanly inspector in the Z Cars. I hope you’re not offended, sir, me saying that?”

  “Not if I remind you of Detective-Inspector Goss,” said Timothy. “It’s a very nice compliment. All the same, I rather hope my wife doesn’t look like some of the policewomen on the B.B.C. programmes.”

  “Oh, no, not at all, sir. Won’t you sit down? Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea. No? Well, what can I do for you, then?”

  Timothy produced the official card he had already shown to her husband.

  “Society for the Preservation of Buildings of Historic Interest,” she read aloud.

  “Yes,” said Timothy. “My society was called in to advise upon the possibility of saving Lady Matilda’s Rest—the cottages, that is.”

  “Poor Auntie wouldn’t have wanted that. She fairly hated that old place, sir. ‘Pull it down and welcome,’ she said, when she came to us. But perhaps if she’d stayed there she never would have got herself killed in that dreadful way.”

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t have made any difference, Mrs. . . .”

  “Davis, sir. How do you mean? It was in the cinema here as she met her death.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m afraid she had made an implacable enemy and was followed here from the almshouses.”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear! To think of that, now! I always did say that spiteful tongue of hers would get her into trouble. Do you mean they know who did it, then?”

  “We think so, but we need some help from you.”

  “Oh, goodness me! I don’t know anything about it, I do assure you. Maybe my sister, who she lived with for a bit when first she was turned away from Lady Matilda’s, could help you.”

  “I have spoken to your relatives and I’m sure none of you know anything whatever about the killing, but I’m hoping that you can tell us a little bit more about your aunt than the others were able to.”

  “If it helps to get that wicked man arrested—pity they don’t hang ’em any more!—I’ll answer anything you like to ask me. I don’t say I wanted Auntie here, or my husband neither, because we certainly did not, but blood is thicker than water, so what can you do when the call comes? The others had turned her out, you see, and wouldn’t do no more for her.”

  “I know. Now, look, Mrs. Davis, what did Mrs. Plumb tell you about her last few weeks at Lady Matilda’s Rest?”

  “Only how glad she was to leave it, sir.”

  “Yes, I know. What I meant was whether she particularly mentioned any of the other old ladies.”

  “All of them, sir, and no love lost, I’m sorry to say. As to any one in particular, I don’t know as I took all that much notice. You know what old people are. They maunder on, and you find, half the time, you’re not listening. Was there anyone in particular you had in mind?”

  “Well, I didn’t really want to prompt you with what the lawyers call a leading question.”

  “I know what you mean. Well, now, let me think . . . No, I’ll tell you what! Suppose I go down and mind the shop, and ask my husband to come up here. Poor Auntie used to aggravate him so much that he might remember something that I’ve forgot.” She left them, and in a few moments her husband came into the well-furnished little parlour.

  “Auntie? A fair caution she was. Not a good word to say about anybody,” he said, “poor old soul. I recollect her speaking very rough about somebody at the Rest she called ‘a dirty nigger.’ ”

  “You can’t remember the woman’s name?”

  “Wait a minute. Near enough I can. I recollect Auntie saying, ‘Dusty by name, and dirty by nature. Fancy her marrying a black man!’ Them were Auntie’s words. Very prejudiced she was.”

  “Oh, I think I know which woman she meant. Did she say anything more about her, do you remember?”

  “Nothing that comes to my mind. Yap, yap, yap, she went on, all the time. I used to be glad of the shop, to get away from her tongue. Not as she wasn’t grateful to us for having her. We never got the rough edge. Mind you, I reckon she knew I wouldn’t put up with it, for one thing, and my brother-in-law, he’d turned her out, for another. Well, we’d give her a home, and she knew we didn’t have to. The council what ran the cottages, and the warden and that, they’d have had to find her somewhere to go, if we hadn’t tooken her in. I didn’t want her, that’s a sure thing, but there you are! She was the wife’s auntie, when all’s said and done, and we’d always promised she could come here if things didn’t go right for her with the other family, them having a daughter as would be wanting to get married and needing the room.”

  “Apart from remarking that Mrs. Dasti was married—had been married—to a coloured man, did she say anything else about her?” asked Timothy.

  “Oh, yes. Very spiteful she was about the poor soul. ‘Well, there’s one thing she didn’t have to sell in Horsebridge market, and that’s herself, the old cow,’ she used to say. ‘I could tell the tale about her, not as it’s much good now, ’cos she be dead. But if she wasn’t dead, she’d likely be in gaol by now, the mean old skinflint, if I had let out everything as I’d got to know about her since I follered her to market.’ They was Auntie’s words, as near as I can recollect of ’em.”

  “Do you think it’s enough to go on?” asked Alison, when they had returned to the car and were on their way home.

  “I think it’s enough to justify our repeating it to Dunne. His investigations in Ipswich will have been quite different from ours. He’ll have turned the cinema upside down, of course, and he’ll have asked Mrs. Davis and the other sister whether their aunt had any enemies, but he won’t have got any helpful answer to that. They probably said that she didn’t get on with the other old ladies, but then nobody imagines that one of them could have
stabbed her in a cinema in Ipswich, or anywhere else, for that matter. I wonder what Dunne made of that other property? I’d still like to go and take a look at it, you know, in spite of your awful warning.”

  “Suppose we try to forget all about the whole thing for tonight? I think I’d like a rest from it.

  “Well, of course, so would I.”

  But, as it turned out, a rest from it was the last thing they seemed likely to get. There was a message on the telephone pad when they got back to their Cotswold home, asking them to ring Miss Pomfret-Brown as soon as they could.

  “Grete, I’ll bet a pound,” said Timothy, as he dialled the school number.

  “I wouldn’t even bother to take you up on that,” said Alison. This turned out to be a wise decision, as Miss Pomfret-Brown’s first words proved.

  “It’s that pestilential German gal you stuck me with,” she said.

  “What about her, my priceless Sabrina?” asked Timothy. “Has she bitten the hound Bismarck, or has he bitten her?”

  “Don’t be an impudent jackanapes, young Herring. She’s skipped, that’s what about her.”

  “Broken ranks and deserted? Oh, dear me!”

  “Never mind you. What do I do about it? Inform the police? Must track her down somehow. Bismarck, you know, is inconsolable. No accountin’ for the strength of national feelin’, I suppose. Off his food and howls outside the gal’s door like a demon lover.”

  “There is no need to ring the police. I know where to find Grete.”

  “You do? Well, get on with it, then. I don’t want to get into trouble with the police for harbourin’ the wretched gal, let alone havin’ me dog pinin’ away.”

  “When did she turn up missing?”

  “This morning. Didn’t appear at breakfast and her bed hadn’t been slept in.”

  “Perhaps she’s eloped. Have you counted your gardeners and groundsmen?”

  “Get off the line and put Alison on. I want to speak to someone who’ll talk sense.”

  Timothy handed over the receiver, muttering as he did so, “Keep it as short as you can. I think I ought to ring Dunne. If Grete has teamed up again with Lorrimere and Colquhoun, we may have the lot of them in the bag.”

  “There’s something else we have to do, it seems to me,” said Alison, when she had put down the receiver.

  “What’s that?”

  “We ought to tell the superintendent to find a way of getting the matron who saw those men on Mrs. Dasti’s roof to have a look at Lorrimere, Colquhoun, and Gee. If she recognises any of them, I think we’re home and dry.”

  “And to think that Mrs. Davis didn’t think you looked like a policewoman! The trouble, as you have foreseen, is how we’re going to bring all four together. It would be different if the police would organise an identity parade for the matron, but I’m damn sure Dunne won’t, especially as Lorrimere is sure to be a J.P., among other things.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Herrings at Leisure

  “No boysterous winds, or stormes, come hither,

  To starve, or wither

  Thy soft sweet Earth! but (like a spring)

  Love keep it ever flourishing.”

  Sung by the Virgins

  “Well, sir,” said Detective-Superintendent Dunne, “the matron who used to be at Lady Matilda’s Rest has identified Gee as one of the men whom she spotted on the roof that Saturday afternoon, but, of course, he denies it. Still, I think we shall get him in the end. Of course, it was a good time to choose, because most of the old ladies had gone out shopping, but we can round up one or two, I’m quite sure, who were staying at home that day.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if, when you prove it was Gee they saw, he’ll rat on his partner.”

  “More than likely, sir. Murder is a much more serious offence than smuggling.”

  “Of course, they soon moved those palliasses I saw at my place. I suppose the idea was that when the police investigated and couldn’t find any trace of illegal immigrants, there would be nothing with which the Gees could be charged.”

  “Ah, but illegal immigrants had been involved, sir. We were told about them by Mr. Lorrimere. He confessed that, to make enough money to pay his gambling debts, he had helped to get them over here and hide them away, but that he had no idea about the cannabis. We’ll have to check, of course, but I’m inclined to believe him. Incidentally, we’ve found the dope. There was a big cache of it in the palliasses which had been taken to Pollingford Manor. What’s more, we rounded up Mrs. Gee. She was in charge there, just as she was at your place, sir, until you made the Hall a bit too hot to hold her and her son, especially after you bought a boat and went cruising.”

  “I suppose Lorrimere heard about my uncle’s death and that Herrings was standing idle.”

  “That’s the size of it, sir.”

  “Why did they use Mrs. Dasti? Was it really because her husband had introduced her to the drug-smuggling business?”

  “Well, we shall never be sure about that, sir, shall we? I can tell you one thing about criminals, though. They don’t like to trust anybody all the way, and with good reason, of course. ‘Honour among thieves’ is a contradiction in terms, because naturally they’re all out for what they can get, every man Jack of them. That’s why the police have a long, long trail of informers. Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. We wouldn’t get a tenth of our convictions if somebody didn’t rat. I fancy Gee will come across all right.”

  “Yes, hoping to get off lighter for his part in Mrs. Dasti’s murder. But I wonder who the other chap was? A man named Jankers had been mentioned, you know. I’m sure I caught the name correctly.”

  “Well, we’ve found no trace of him yet, sir, but we shall.”

  “But why did they have to murder Mrs. Dasti?”

  “Must have thought she’d become unreliable, sir. That’s another of the trials and troubles criminals have to put up with. They feel they’ve got to guard against every contingency, so they imagine dangers which simply don’t exist. They needn’t really have used Mrs. Dasti at all, because either Gee or Colquhoun could have gone to the market and excited no comment when they picked up their contacts there, and that wouldn’t have involved Mrs. Gee, either. Lorrimere, being a local public figure, couldn’t have appeared in the market without being noticed, but, as I say, I think he’s in the clear there.”

  “So you found the stuff at Pollingford Manor?”

  “That we did, sir, and Mrs. Gee, too, as I said. She never went to London at all.”

  “I’m not surprised. We parted from her at Horsebridge market. She said she wanted to take some shopping with her to her relatives, but we spotted her meeting with a woman I recognised as one of the old women from Lady Matilda’s Rest. Of course, by that time, Mrs. Gee had an idea that we had some connection with the almshouses. I suppose the woman she met was Mrs. Dasti. She couldn’t have been anybody else. My wife and I worked that out, you know.”

  “Without a doubt, sir, and I’ve no doubt that Mrs. Dasti spotted you the day you dropped Mrs. Gee at the market and recognised you as the lady and gentleman who had been to the charity homes, you yourself more than once, maybe, which proved you weren’t just a chance visitor. We think she told Mrs. Gee this, and by so doing sealed her own death warrant.”

  “And you think the murderer was Gee.”

  “Egged on by his mother, who got wind up, and assisted by this Dutchman, Jankers, yes, sir.”

  “Well, possibly Gee and this chap Jankers killed Mrs. Dasti, but you’re as far away as ever from finding out who killed the other old woman, Mrs. Plumb.”

  “We can’t prove anything there, sir. I doubt if we ever will, although, of course, we never close the files. But the time and place were well chosen, and the means, too. Knives don’t talk, and the seat where Mrs. Plumb sat was in the back row downstairs. We have the usherette’s evidence for that. The murder happened, too, (so far as our theories go) while the girl was showing people to se
ats near the front of the auditorium, or else when she slipped out five minutes before the interval to get her tray of ice-cream and stuff. Of course, there’s no doubt somebody followed Mrs. Plumb to the cinema and knew exactly where she was sitting, but Gee claims he was working on the South Coast at the time, and can bring witnesses.”

  “And her relatives are completely in the clear?”

  “Oh, completely, sir, yes. One couple were in their shop, and the other family are sworn to by half-a-dozen witnesses.”

  “I’m glad of that. They seemed a decent lot. You know, Superintendent, it’s a pity you don’t seem able to pin that particular murder on the third member of the gang, our friend Macbeth.”

  “Macbeth, sir?”

  “Oh, sorry! I mean Kilbride Colquhoun. I fancy he’d squeal on the others fast enough if you put him on a serious charge.”

  “Such as?”

  “Stabbing Mrs. Plumb, of course.”

  “Good heavens, we couldn’t do that, sir! We don’t believe in framing people in this country. You ought to know better than to suggest such a thing!”

  “Sorry! It was just a passing thought.”

  “I suppose, sir, he couldn’t be this mysterious Jankers?”

  “I’d thought of that myself, but I’m afraid it’s no go. The first conversation I overheard at Warlock Hall settles it, I’m afraid. They said distinctly that they would have to let Jankers know, and Colquhoun was one of the party when it was said, so I’m afraid that cock won’t fight.”

  “A pity, sir. It would have rounded off part of our case very nicely.”

  “I suppose,” said Alison, when Timothy reported the conversation, “they couldn’t get a line on Colquhoun’s movements and so forth, from those shady friends of his at Peterminster?”

  “What shady friends?”

  “Don’t you remember that P.-B. mentioned them? She told us that she was able to get him to do Macbeth because he was staying with shady friends in the neighbourhood of the school.”

  “Why did she think they were shady?”