Death of an Alderman Read online

  ‘Oh——that——’

  Putty dismissed with a sweep of her arm the record of breaking and entering, petty shop-lifting and larceny.

  ‘Oh——that——. He’s just plumb stupid, Chick is——just stupid.’

  The matter-of-fact emphasis which she gave to the word showed that she had settled down emotionally. She picked up her glass and sipped at her drink with rather absent-minded relish.

  ‘It was nice of you to buy me this. I suppose you’ll want me to answer a lot of questions, now.’

  ‘You can talk to me if you like. I’m not going to interrogate you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. As Chick said, nothing you say is likely to do him any harm. I don’t want to harp on the theme——but after all, I am in Fellaby for only one purpose.——Take your time with your drink, girl. We can talk on the way home.——Have you had anything to eat, Shiner?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘Order some sandwiches for the pair of us, for when I get back to the hotel. I don’t expect I shall be late.’

  Wright finished his sour beer and walked back along the High Street. His greatest fear was that Kenworthy would close the case single-handed.

  Chapter Three

  Wright bought a bottle of light ale, mainly in order to give himself something to do, and sat in the County’s select mezzanine bar, idly turning the sheets of his evening paper. Now and then, snippets of conversation drifted to him from a group who had just emerged from a meeting in a private room.

  ‘It’s all settled, then. We take them by surprise, and put Durkin into an alderman’s seat. He’ll be flattered into accepting, despite his party line.’

  The speaker was the obvious leader, a tall, well preserved, elderly man, with a flawless white carnation in his button-hole and a complexion so florid that he would have been written off as a caricature in a waxworks.

  ‘So there’ll be an unexpected vacancy in South West, and that’s where we put Loombe in.’

  This came from a smaller, rather younger man, largely bald, and of conventionally military appearance. The florid character turned suddenly, as if he had known for the last two minutes that Wright was eaves-dropping, and thrust his chin within an inch or two of the sergeant’s face.

  ‘Oh, hullo——you one of the fellows they’ve brought up from Scotland Yard? Well, get it settled for us without any messing about, there’s a good lad. Nasty business. Bloody nasty business. I liked Ted Barson. We all did. One of the best up-and-coming strengths we’ve had since the war. Damned shame about his wife and family. Lovely family. Don’t forget——anything you want to know about who’s who in Fellaby, any time, night or day——I keep open house.’

  He did not say who he was, presumably because he moved through life without ever experiencing any such necessity. When the party had broken up, Wright asked the barman.

  ‘That? Sir Howard Lesueur. Owns the Hall and about two hundred acres over on Fellaby Moor. Divisional chairman of the party. Doesn’t take part in council affairs himself, wouldn’t have time, but always busy with something or other——hospital management, old folks’ welfare, and all that. Real old-fashioned gentleman, sir.’

  ‘And his friends?’

  ‘All conservative councillors, sir——except Bill Hawley, Colonel Hawley, Sir Howard’s agent.——Well, he’s a bit of everything, really: agent for the estate, political agent for the constituency——do anything for anybody. He’s been a friend to a lot of people in Fellaby, has Bill Hawley. Wonderful war record, too. Were you wanting anything else, sir? Only I’m waiting to close. Of course, if you want anything later on, you’ve only to ask the night porter, you being a resident, see? I always leave a crate out for him, in case——’

  Wright sat alone in the deserted bar. It was a quarter to midnight when Kenworthy came in, his cheeks reddened by the chill of the evening and an impudent light in his eyes that comported paradoxically with his close-cropped grey hair and sparse, middle-aged frame.

  ‘Sorry, Shiner. Been courting——’

  ‘They come younger every year, sir——’

  ‘Fifteen and a half,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘That staggers me. I knew she was young——’

  ‘——And she’s drunk more cherry brandy in the last six months than you’ve had in your life-time.——A nice girl, other things being equal——the sort of child I wouldn’t mind having for my own daughter.——Oh, don’t get me wrong, Shiner——I’d have made something a damned sight different of her than what she is. I hope.——And she’s just taken me the length of Fellaby’s traditional courting-walk.——Did you do anything about those sandwiches?’

  Wright rang for the porter. Kenworthy grinned.

  ‘Not the ideal night for romance, Shiner——with a thin drizzle that had pretty well soaked my shirt before I remembered to turn my coat collar up. We started off by the gas-works. And here’s a bit of local knowledge, Shiner, if ever you need it——if you start a courting walk by Fellaby gas-works, you take Park Street if the wind’s in the east, and St Barnabas Road if it’s in the west. That way, you’ve always got the stink to lee-ward, see? Well, after the gas-works, we went up Coalpit Lane. Doesn’t exactly sound like a nature reserve, does it? When you see it, you’ll know what gets into poets when they talk about the last lamp, and all that twaddle. Fair pissing down by now, it was, but we were arm in arm by this time——no point in doing things by halves——so we couldn’t care less.’

  The sandwiches arrived.

  ‘I didn’t know whether you’d want white or brown, so I ordered half and half. And half chicken, half ham.’

  Kenworthy appeared to pay no attention. He picked up a segment of tomato from the garnishing and popped it in his mouth.

  ‘After that, she took me down the tow-path. No inhibitions about that lass. Showed me where it happened. And I’ll tell you what, Shiner——he couldn’t have chosen a better spot for it. Dead ground to the sky-line in every direction, and a get-away over waste land in at least three different directions, if someone had surprised him. Then she showed me the ruin, the gang’s HQ, Wardle’s, they call it. That’s where Chick found the Luger, the morning after. He often looks in at HQ on his way to work——when he goes to work. So he found the gun, and had the good sense to pick it up in his handkerchief, otherwise I don’t suppose they’d have bothered to call you and me up here. Then he hid it away again, intending to pick it up at the end of the day and hang on to it for his own purposes. That, of course, would have made him look no end of a lad in the eyes of his crew, but Putty managed to persuade him it was bloody daft. In any case, when he went again in the evening, our lot had been in and nicked it. So the question remains purely academic.’

  Kenworthy helped himself to a chicken sandwich.

  ‘Anyway, she let me take her home after that. At least, we said good-night among the dust-bins, far enough from the house for her father not to come out and give me a belting for having her out so late. Shiner——I think she has a bit of a crush on me.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Wright said.

  ‘Green eyes, Shiner?——I never knew you cared!——At any rate, I’ve heard enough about Chick to eliminate him once and for all. Odd doubts will keep cropping up from time to time, and you’ll see the local boys getting restless about him. So if ever we want them off our shoulders for a half a day or so, we can let them plod on. But Chick doesn’t worry me. He’s just dead phoney. Everything about him belongs to his brother, anyway——even the fur coat and leadership of the gang. And I gather that isn’t scheduled to last much longer. Do you know what, Shiner?’

  Kenworthy twisted a sprig of parsley with his thumb.

  ‘I don’t know what sort of damned clobber aldermen wear when they’re on duty——but that fur coat means as much to Chick as Barson’s ermine, or whatever it is, meant to him. And for precisely the same reason——a sign that you came from the wrong side of the tracks, but you’ve risen above it, you’d like to think. Now we’ve got to find ou
t how Barson hauled himself over the embankment.’

  Wright retailed the remarks he had heard from the political whisper-shapers.

  ‘The alderman is dead, long live the alderman!’ Kenworthy said. ‘I’ve been shaken two or three times tonight. Take Putty, for example. She doesn’t know the first thing about local government. Ignorant as hell. Wouldn’t know a town clerk from a newt’s bum. And, of course, she hates Barson’s side like poison. Her idea of reverence for the dead is to refer to the late lamented as a “fat, stuck-up pig”. But at the back of all that there’s a sort of faith that I couldn’t eradicate. Our darling little Putty is a materialist, an iconoclast, a dispeller of fancy dreams about Lugers and fur coats——but she still has a lingering sort of belief that aldermen mean something in this world, that they are possessed of some god-awful power, that they are in some way capable of shaping human destiny. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  He pushed the rest of the sandwiches towards Wright and stood up to go to bed.

  ‘Here. Finish these. Part of the duties of a sergeant on assignment——eating up the super’s leavings.’

  ‘There is just one small point, sir.’

  ‘I hope it is a small one.’

  ‘I went down to the museum, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Well, sir——I don’t know whether you’ve ever broken a window and pulled the remainder of the glass fragments out——’

  ‘Infrequently.’

  ‘Would you pull the bits towards you, or ease them away from you?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what an expert witness would say.’

  ‘I’ll swear that most men would pull them towards them——especially if they were trying to be as quiet as they could.’

  ‘You may be right.’

  ‘Well——nearly all the glass at the museum——and certainly all the larger pieces——were found on the outside of the window. But it was perfectly apparent that they had been pulled inwards from the inside. I examined the framework very carefully, and all the putty——’

  ‘There’s that word again!’

  Wright struggled to control himself.

  ‘It was you who sent me to the museum, sir!’

  ‘Sorry, Shiner.’

  ‘All the putty had been compressed towards the inside and splayed out on the outside.’

  ‘You’re suggesting?’

  ‘That the museum wasn’t broken into at all. That evidence suggesting a break-in was faked.’

  ‘An interesting thought, Shiner. Might be far-fetched, but you could be right. Might be worth remembering, before we’ve finished. Anyway, good-night for now.’

  He turned his back and went down the corridor towards his bedroom. He did not look as if the new theory had made any impact at all. Wright went up the few steps to his own corridor, found his own bedroom, where he lay fitfully awake throughout the smaller hours. He woke again at five, and again at six. He was already sitting at a table when Kenworthy came down to breakfast, but had forborne to order anything until the superintendent joined him.

  The morning papers had made joyful play about the man in the Robin Hood hat. Kenworthy folded his Daily Mail to the back page and propped it against the tea-pot.

  ‘I see United have dropped Forbes for Saturday.’

  ‘I see the Identikit picture’s on the front page.’

  ‘Shiner——do you know what happens to policemen who never take their minds off their work?’

  Wright breakfasted modestly, Kenworthy hugely, following up all the by-ways of the menu.

  ‘Always breakfast well in a hotel, Shiner——even if only because the taxpayer has to pay for it, whether you eat it or not. Well——I suppose we might as well get over to the Report Centre. There’s the daily conference at nine, and something fresh might have come in overnight.’

  There was a first interim report on Barson’s army service.

  ‘I see he had V. D.,’ Wright said. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t judge him too harshly for that, considering the morals of the time and place. Thousands of others did.’

  ‘And thousands didn’t. I didn’t, for one.’

  ‘And this is interesting, sir. He seems to have been under close arrest for a fortnight, pending a court martial that never materialised. Large scale black market. Flogging army stores. He and half a dozen others from his unit, including an officer. But the S.I.B. jumped the gun. So anxious to get a case that they muffed the evidence. The whole thing fell through on a technicality.’

  Kenworthy held out his hand for the typescript.

  ‘This could be it, Shiner. Blackmailed or blackmailing. We shall have to get the Yard on to this. Speak to inspector Heather——and don’t let him pull any fast ones about manpower shortage. We need to know who Barson’s associates were at the time, what’s become of them since, whether any of them have made any journeys recently——’

  ‘Such as Robin Hood?’

  Kenworthy assumed an expression calculated to damp juvenile enthusiasms.

  ‘Let’s not wear blinkers, Shiner. There remain other possibilities. Just get on to Heather, and if he tries to offer you short commons, tell him I’ll be ringing him later.’

  Then superintendent Rhys came in, uniformed men stood selfconsciously to attention at their filing trays and telephones, and in a flurry of sharpened pencils and ready note-books, the conference began.

  Wright sat in silent admiration for the way in which, without a note in front of him, Kenworthy presented a situation report and appreciation of the case. In crisp, quiet, unspeculative tones he expounded fact after fact, detail after detail, eschewing all irrelevance, listing working theories, and showing emotional preference for none of them. What a hell of a classifying brain the man had!

  ‘We must also bear in mind the possibility that the burglary at the museum may itself have been faked. The window could have been broken from the inside, and the thief might have made his entry in some much more comfortable way. This is a piece of intelligent speculation on the part of sergeant Wright, and there may be evidence to support it. We cannot speak with greater certainty at present.’

  But he said not a word about Putty.

  ‘And today’s priority, superintendent?’

  ‘The man in the green felt hat. Whatever background information London can give us, it still remains important to pick up all the gen in this locality. Further house-to-house enquiry, including districts well away from the Carlton estate, and I don’t care how many thousand more questionnaires it runs to. We want to know all we can about this man. Particularly, what sort of news about Barson interested him. What titbits about Barson’s habits made him prick up his ears? What sort of suggestions about Barson’s way of life did he use as a prompter? Even when we get hold of the man himself, it may be something in one of the questionnaires that will finally nail him. So have a second go, even, at those who’ve already come forward with something.——You’ve put on one side those questionnaires with a positive showing?’

  In a matter of seconds, a constable produced a thin wad of these.

  ‘And how many of these are in Carlton Avenue?’

  ‘More than half, sir.’

  ‘Were there any residents in Carlton Avenue who came up with nothing at all about Green Hat?’

  ‘Very few, sir.’

  ‘Let me see their questionnaires.’

  He turned to Wright.

  ‘We’ll do Carlton Avenue ourselves, this morning. We mustn’t be dilatory about calling on Barson’s widow, and we can take in other households at the same time.’

  The clerical officer came up smartly with the requested papers.

  ‘Only two, in fact, sir.’

  ‘And they do not mention Green Hat at all?’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’

  ‘Good! They’ll be a good start.’

  Chapter Four

  Carlton Avenue swept down to the canal, from which it was screened by a row of maturing poplars. It was entirely post-war in building, and w
as, one could see at first sight, an expensive estate.

  ‘If you’ll notice,’ Kenworthy said, ‘the people round here have their pelmets on the outside of their curtains. That’s because they furnish their homes for the sake of their neighbours, instead of for themselves. In most cases this is the first generation that hasn’t lived in Coronation Street.’

  They passed a garden full of little gnomes and ornamental foot-bridges.

  ‘It’s common courtesy to call on Mrs Barson first. Let’s get it over with.’

  The Barsons’ house was a detached, double fronted villa set well back behind an open forecourt garden in which every corner had been laid with geometrical precision. An imitation well, with windlass and red oaken bucket, took pride of place. Kenworthy looked down at the faultless paving-stones of the drive and side-paths.

  ‘Costs a small fortune before you even wipe your feet.’

  Inside the front door a wrought iron Mexican pushed a large barrow bearing all manner of cacti. The tendrils of a pale green climbing plant spread over the wall. A row of hanging tiles depicted a series of vintage motor cars. An indigo Tretchikoff in a contemporary frame beamed vitality over the household. They caught sight of a Colson dish-washer on the kitchen draining-board.

  Barson’s widow was a very small, trim woman in her early thirties, with immaculately set straw blonde hair and a somewhat thin-featured prettiness that showed even through her evident grief.

  ‘I’m sure that I need not say——’

  Kenworthy’s voice was no more than a whisper in his throat.

  ‘I need not say how reluctant we are to disturb you.’

  ‘I realise you have a duty to do. And if I can tell you anything that might help you——’

  She spoke in a shallow, distant voice, not unmarked by traces of the local accent, but in no way cheapened by it. She had probably played a very retiring part on the fringe of her husband’s public life.

  ‘Local officers will already have asked you whether your husband had any enemies——’