Murder in oils 18 cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 18

 

“I believe I may owe you my life, Gladys,” said Alexander shakily.

“I wasn’t going to let ‘im shoot you, Mr. Armitage: Miss Ida would of been that displeased,” said Gladys, her h’s slipping in agitation. It was enough of an understatement that Alexander wanted to laugh hysterically.

“Right, sunshine, keep yer ‘ands where I can see them,” said a large bobby.

“If you will reach into my breast pocket, you will find my credentials,” said Alexander. “And if you have an evidence bag, I have a couple of cigarettes from ‘Pills’ Rickman, otherwise known as the trombone player. He has them in fake packets to look like regular brands. I suspect there’s some kind of false lining to his trombone case. I don’t know how deep the rest of the band is in it.”

“Yessir, sorry, sir,” said the embarrassed bobby, handing back Alexander’s ID and cuffing Jonathon.

“Officer, you did exactly the right thing; identify the most dangerous looking customer and get yourself all over him,” said Alexander.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a stentorian voice.

“Gawd ‘elp us, it’s the old colonel,” said the bobby.

“God helps those who help themselves, or in other words, this is my show,” said Alexander. He got up and sauntered over to the dapper little man, and proffered his credentials.

“Sorry about the noise and mess, sir,” said Alexander. “My lads will be all cleared up in a brace of shakes, and your daughters should be no more the worse, if, as I surmise, this was their first, involuntary foray into the world of drugs.”

“Drugs? Drugs? How dare you, young man! My daughters know better than to take drugs!” blared the older man.

“Knowingly, yes, sir,” said Alexander. “We’ve been after this character for a while; his modus operandi is to prey on young girls who know little of the wickedness of the world, and offer them a cigarette in such a way that it would be rude to refuse.  And then, when they are in the throes of withdrawal from one, to offer another; for a price. They need understanding, love, and help to come to terms with the enormity of being used by a very smooth operator. Now we have the whole ring under our eye and can move in on them, and their courier bringing drugs from the continent, and can raid the cookhouse, we can stop this.  My apologies for using your house, sir, but with young girls at risk, it seemed wisest to tip Porkins the wink, and be in place.”

“Porkins? My butler? He said nothing to me.”

“Of course not; I told him to keep it quiet,” said Alexander.

“From me? His employer?”

“You weren’t his major during the war,” said Alexander. “I was.”

“Oh. Very well, that does make all the difference,” said the colonel.

“I knew you’d understand that, sir,” said Alexander. “Thank you for your co-operation.”

“I’d never have allowed my girls to have a party if I’d know drugs were to be a part of it,” grumbled the colonel.

“And I am sure they feel the same way, and will be glad that you are there for them, and not brought to the  point of having a heart-attack and being seriously ill like the young girl who alerted me and gave enough evidence for this raid to be possible,” said Alexander.

The older man was shocked.

“Heart attack! I... well, I will tell them about that,” he said. “Filthy stuff.”

“Exactly,” said Alexander.

 

The bobbies were under a local uniformed inspector.

“Robert Cartreff, sir,” the man introduced himself.

“Thank you so much for your help,” said Alexander. “I had bitten off more than I could chew. Do you mind if I send the young lady who loaned me the semblance of respectability off with my man to get a bite to eat, and a rest in a pub somewhere? I doubt the paperwork will be done in a hurry.”

“Oh, not a regular guest? Yes of course,” said Cartreff.

“Run along, Gladys, and find Campbell, and ask him to drive you to a respectable inn, and have something to eat, before you fall over your feet with exhaustion,” said Alexander.

“Yes, Mr. Armitage; thank you,” said Gladys. “I’m not sure I like the high life.”

“This isn’t, so don’t judge more regular shindigs on this nonsense,” said Alexander. He grinned to himself as Gladys surreptitiously slipped her shoes off to walk through the house.

“Note to self; buy Ida carpet slippers to change into, for when we go dancing,” he muttered to himself.

Questioning the guests took two more hours, and most were able to be released with a flea in their ear for being stupid enough to put themselves at such risk. Most were over twenty-one, so must be released on their own recognisances. The few minors would be taken home in a police car for a parental homily.

Alexander staggered outside to find that Campbell had returned, and Gladys was asleep in the back seat, wrapped in a voluminous rug.

“’Ome, major?” asked Campbell.

“No, we’d better go back to Foursquares,” said Alexander with a yawn.

“’Swotimeant,” said Campbell.

“Fine,” said Alexander, shuffling down in the seat for a doze.

The cold air of travelling woke him somewhat, but he managed to resist it, and came to as Campbell pulled up outside the ugly modern house.

“Gladys, you’d better change in my room and then Campbell can help you get back to your own room,” said Alexander. “The family are still up, so I shall put in an appearance.” He strolled out of the studio, once they had re-entered via the French windows, and into the living space.

“Where have you been?” demanded Gloria.

“Was it your business, Wandsworth?” asked Alexander. “My host knew I was to be out this evening, and that’s all that matters.”

“I need to know for how many I have to cater,” said Gloria.

“Well, I ate here,” said Alexander. “I just ate in my room, and sent Campbell to fetch me a tray. Then, I was busy. You don’t think that a police inspector has only one case at a time, do you?  I have to put in time on other cases occasionally, whilst I await results from Scotland Yard. I’m awaiting a phone call, David; it should come tomorrow, sometime.”

Alexander had phoned Harris after the finds in Gloria’s diary, to release Keller, who was to be under police surveillance, and to be picked up as soon as he returned from France, and had been searched very thoroughly. Keller would cough to his associates if under enough pressure; and then the discreet police cordon to stop Gloria from fleeing would move in and seize her, and secure her laboratory. Alexander hated the delay, but they must allow Keller to go to, and return from France as he was scheduled to do, one last big consignment before Christmas, to be available for seasonal parties.

Two more nights in this wretched house, and it should be all over.

 

Alexander slept the sleep of the exhausted, but was up betimes, and strolled into the village to breakfast at the bakery on hot sausage rolls and fresh coffee. He went to see Harris.

“He took off like he was under pursuit, like you said,” said Harris.

“He’s afraid of Gloria, and I’m not surprised,” said Alexander. “Anything in his rooms?”

“No, if I’d found any geegaws he nicked, I couldn’t really of let ‘im go,” said Harris. “The place stinks, though; and the fool woman who runs it says that it’s made up for by the profits from the perfumes.”

“He probably gets them on the cheap, but has the sense to pay customs duty,” said Alexander. “Still, it has to be more palatable than strong cheeses crawling with maggots. French  maggots in berets, striped shirts and with onions round their necks.”

“You need onions round your neck to ward off the smell o’ some o’ them cheeses,” said Harris, who was not a Francophile. “Cheer up, boss, soon be over.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself,” said Alexander. “I’m going to try to get rid of David up to town today, to avoid too bad a quarrel with Gloria; but the storm is brewing. I can’t lose her now, but if I tell David that she’s chummy, I’m afraid he would try to strangle her.”

“Can’t have that,” agreed Harris. “Shall I take a train to Dover so I can finger Keller coming off the boat train?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d be no end grateful,” said Alexander. “I want to go myself, but I know it’s inappropriate.”

“You’re in charge of watching chummy,” said Harris. “Right, I’ll get some sandwiches made up and be off.”

 

 

Alexander carried in the canvases Ida had sorted out, and managed to time it so he walked in the door as David came down the stairs.

“Oh, David!  I’ve got those pictures,” he said.

“Bring them through,” said David. Alexander smiled to himself; he had the knack, now, of handling David.

He laid out the paintings on the dining table. David brushed his fingers over the face of Helen as Sif.

“It is a good likeness,” he said. “At least, of Helen; she would not have liked me to grow facial hair beyond a neat moustache.”

“It’s a good likeness of you, despite the hair,” said Alexander. “There’s this one with Gloria, but as a maid; and a couple of Helen alone, here as by Alma-Tadema, and this one, more after the fashion of Gainsborough.”

“Do you think Ida would mind if I had all of them?” asked David. “Then, I could have an image of Helen, wherever I was.”

“I am sure she’d be delighted,” said Alexander. “She told me to remind you to have them remounted properly and appropriately framed.”

“By George!” said David. “I think I’ll go up to town right away to have them framed.  Am I in time for the train?”

“If you can get ready in five minutes and I drive you to the station,” said Alexander, consulting his watch. “I left the car out front.”

“What are we waiting for, then!” said David. “I’ve got money, I just need my hat and overcoat.”

Alexander re-wrapped the paintings in brown paper and placed the parcel on David’s lap as David got in the car.  He got him to the station as the down train pulled in, and saw him tenderly onto the train, ticket held between his teeth.  Then he stood back and watched the train pull away, and its smoke recede into the distance.

“Mr. Henderson’s in a powerful hurry,” said the Station Master.

“Yes, Miss Ida uncovered some paintings Mr. Basil had done of Helen Henderson, and Mr. Henderson wants to have them framed properly,” said Alexander. “He may not be good at showing his emotions, but he adored his wife.”

“Well, you’d know,” said the Station Master. “That Keller would have it that he was next door to a wife-beater.”

“Keller is a man with too many things on his own conscience to have any right to cast any stones at all,” said Alexander.

“Your sergeant let him go, and he went haring off  on the boat train to buy perfume,” said the Station Master.

“Ever heard the phrase, ‘give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself?’” said Alexander.

“Oho! Going to catch him in the act?”

“That’s the general idea,” said Alexander. “Leaving him to mature his felonious little plans.”

“Ar, Gilbert and Sullivan, that is,” said the Station Master. “We done ‘Pirates o’ Penzance’ with the village amateur dramatics group, and I was the Pirate King.” He hitched his thumbs into his braces, rocked back onto his heels, and let blast with, “‘Oh, better for to live and die, under the brave black flag I fly....’”

Alexander listened to him sing the song through with some admiration. It required a bass voice of considerable power; and presumably calling off train destinations had helped. He obligingly added the lines of the chorus for the Pirate King, and an elderly lady from the Ayelsbury train was startled to be informed by the Station Master that ‘It is, it is a glorious thing to be a pirate king,’ with Alexander sycophantically adding ‘It is, hurrah for our pirate king, hurrah for our pirate king.’

“Pity you don’t live around here, sir, we could do with a nice light baritone,” said the Station Master.

“Well, as Miss Ida has agreed to be Mrs. Armitage, I might just be moving into the area,” said Alexander.

“I’m sure we’d be very pleased,” said the Station Master. “Name’s Fred Chaffinch.”

“Well met, Mr. Chaffinch,” said Alexander.

“But not by moonlight,” said Mr. Chaffinch, going into a paroxysm of mirth over his own Shakespearian sally.

 

oOoOo

 

“Where’s David?” demanded Gloria, when Alexander returned.

“He’s away from home,” said Alexander.

“But where?” persisted Gloria.

“You know, you’d better curb that nosy nature of yours, and rude way of asking the whereabouts of other folks,” said Alexander. “It’s what I am paid for to ask questions of that nature, in the solving of crimes, but not yours.  Mind you, I never did ask you where you were, on the afternoon that Helen Henderson and Basil Henderson were killed; do you mind telling me?”

“What if I do mind?”

“I start getting official and officious, because the ‘do you mind’ is polite flim-flam for ‘I am demanding an answer but with a veneer of civility to put the witness at ease,” said Alexander. “I never did get more than the official statement for the inquest.”

“Well, that will tell me where I was.”

“No, it tells me where you told Craiggie where you were. I suspect most people lied quite egregiously, or were at least a little bit free with the actuality. David changed his mind three times because he genuinely could not remember, which made a poor impression on the locals. I think some of them still think he did it. Ida was out with Miss Truckle but Miss Truckle managed to make it sound as if they were doing something illicit as she could not bring herself to admit that they were buying knicker elastic in the haberdashery. Campbell was up in town, Gregson declared he was doing winter chores in the garden, but I know for a fact from my sergeant that he was shagging a lady of less than perfect virtue. Foster was able to account for David’s movements having been helping him draw up plans and driving him to look at the site for which he was designing. Gladys had her day off, and also fibbed about where she was, as she was supposed to be undertaking some commission for you, but was too late out of the cinema to do so, so she said she missed the bus. So, you were out for a country walk, supposedly; want to tell me anything else?”

“I was out for a walk as I said.”

“In November?”

“Why not? A good walk is healthful, even in inclement weather, and the fresh air is good for the lungs.”

“Funny, you never strike me as a fresh air addict,” said Alexander, noting that she jumped slightly at the word, ‘addict.’ “I hope you have better shoes for country walking than those high-heeled mary-janes you habitually wear.”

“Yes, of course,” said Gloria.

“But you had come in the back door and changed back into house shoes, and went up by the back stair so you had not seen that Helen had fallen, and so it fell to Ida to find her.”

“Yes,” said Gloria.

“How good of you to clean them yourself, since Gladys said she had no shoes to clean.”

“I like to look after my own shoes; Gladys is lazy and feckless, and she went out last night.”

“Yes, I borrowed her services to see how Helen’s shoes behaved under various circumstances,” said Alexander. “Out of deference to David, she wasn’t wearing them in the house, of course.”

“You mean, it could have been an accident, if Helen’s heels slipped?”

“Oh! No, Helen was murdered. But David told me to do any tests I wanted,” said Alexander, which was true enough. He did not think it would have made any difference to Helen what shoes she was wearing when hit over the head so hard, but he was not about to tell Gloria what he had really been doing, and that Gladys was along to ‘add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.’

Mr. Chaffinch had infected him with Gilbert and Sullivan.

“I don’t think I can help you,” said Gloria, tonelessly. “May I go, sir?”

“Much better,” said Alexander. “Yes, Wandsworth, you may go.”