Murder in Oils 21

 

 

Chapter 21

 

Harris had not been roused by Gladys, as Alexander had forgotten he had gone to Dover to meet Keller.

“I telephoned that nice inspector we met at the party,” said Gladys. “He’s got bobbies out watching the place.”

“Oh, well done, thank you,” said Alexander. “I feel such a fool forgetting I had sent Harris on.”

The landlord had turned out, a little grumpy, but thawing over the news that the family had been burned out.

“You’ll only have Miss Galbraith and me extra,” said Alexander. “She’s got another job to go on to, so I don’t know how long she’ll be here. I’m hoping only to be here a couple of nights, and I’ll do well enough in Harris’s room. I can bunk down on his floor if he gets back before I leave.”

“Oh, sir, I can do you better than that!” said the innkeeper. “I’ve a couple of rooms spare, no worries. But you can’t leave your car out front.”

“I don’t have a choice, and we’re lucky to be alive,” said Alexander. “Some joker cut my brake leads, and we came along the lane from Foursquares like a helter-skelter and feeling like the mat was going on ahead on its own.”

“I’ll put a notice on it,” said the landlord. “Tim Mapp, the bobby will stop and ask then, and not just write you a ticket.”

“I’m obliged,” said Alexander. “I couldn’t do a thing more to save my life after fighting that fire.”

“You’re bleeding, too, sir,” said the innkeeper.

“Eh? Oh, that’ll be when that window exploded from the heat,” said Alexander. “It snowed broken glass for a while.”

“I’ll clean him up,” said Anna. “He does look a mess.”

Alexander put up with it as she cleaned him up, and he found himself falling into a deep goose-down bed, and thinking briefly that it was too soft for comfort before he fell asleep before even pulling up the covers.

 

 

Alexander emerged from deep sleep as the maid opened the curtains.

“Morning,” he said.

“Good morning, sir, there’s a cuppa for you, and breakfast ready downstairs,” said the maid.

Alexander blinked, orientating himself.

“Good grief! I didn’t dream Foursquares burning down,” he said. “I... no, there’s no real hurry. Is there a bathroom?”

“Turn right out of your room and at the end, and please to have no more than three inches hot water,” said the maid.

“Any hot water will be gratefully accepted,” said Alexander. “I’ve stunk up the sheets with soot.”

“That’s all right, sir, I’ll change them while you bath, and if you leave your pyjamas, I’ll have them in the wash in a brace of shakes.”

“Thanks,” said Alexander, fishing for his wallet to thank her materially. She giggled and made eyes at him. Alexander wondered why as he was doubtless a disreputable object.  He did not see himself as the maid did as a heroic figure, wounded in the course of duty, and with such a nice muscular body, apparent where his pyjama jacket had come undone. He dragged his less-than-heroic-feeling body to the bathroom, where he ran the permitted three inches of piping hot water, decided he needed a little more and be damned to anyone else for another inch, added cold, and sank into the water with a sigh of happiness. Half an hour later when the water was too cold for pleasure, he washed his hair quickly, and emerged to dress.  He wandered downstairs and satisfied his raging hunger with scrambled eggs on toast, sausage, bacon, devilled kidneys, mushrooms, and fried bread with more scrambled eggs.

Then he sought the telephone, dropped in a tuppenny piece, and put through a call to Lt. Col. Poulton.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there have been unexpected developments, and I cannot be reached at Foursquares,” he said.

“Oh, why not?” asked Poulton. “That idiot Henderson threw a paddy at you?”

“Nossir, I can handle David,” said Alexander. “But chummy burnt us out; and I’d sent David to bed with sleeping pills, it got a bit dramatic, and then the laboratory blew up. I assume she left a chemical bomb to destroy evidence, though I suppose with volatile chemicals it might have been spontaneous. But I’d like some men as soon as you can spare them to go through the rubble, and see if anything remains.”

“Yes, quite, can’t let her get away with it. Did you pinch her?”

“No, she vanished; I assumed she lit out as soon as she’d lit up as you might say. Inspector Cartreff was very co-operative, he put a watch on the other chummy’s place. He and his men are very good, a pleasure to work with.”

“You don’t have to lay it on with a trowel.”

“It happens to be true,” said Alexander. “Mind, I probably could lay it on with a trowel convincingly if I had to.”

Poulton laughed.

“I like you the better for admitting it,” he said. “I’ll get you a dozen CID officers to give you a hand.”

“Thanks, sir,” said Alexander. “Now I need to see about having my sabotaged car fixed.”

“She’s a slippery character, isn’t she?”

“And more dangerous than a box full of ferrets down the trousers,” said Alexander, with feeling. “When ladies turn to crime, our lives are harder.”

“And isn’t that the solid truth,” sighed Poulton. “I might drop in; pretend I’m not there, I don’t want a fanfare, but I am interested in catching all these damned fiends.”

“Me too,” said Alexander. “More than most; my betrothed is one of their victims, she got off the poison the way I believe is now being called ‘cold turkey’ and it almost killed her.”

“I hope her health will recover fully,” said Poulton. “And Basil Henderson, I believe, was a friend of yours?”

“Yes, and if there is a hereafter, at least I can fulfil his desire that I should marry his sister. This Gloria Wandsworth is evil, and though I can’t prove it, I believe she murdered her own parents when their own dodgy schemes, close to bunco, fell through.”

“Well, well, I suppose the upbringing shapes the adult.  Thank you for keeping me in the loop; I will love you and leave you, I’ve a lot to do even if you have to drag your heels whilst the place cools down.”

He rang off, and Alexander reflected that having bobbies available earlier wouldn’t be much good as the chief constable was quite right, it would take a while to cool down.

He sighed, and made his way to the railway station to seek out Chaffinch, and beguile an hour or two singing Gilbert and Sullivan between trains. Chaffinch, nothing loth, demonstrated his versatility by singing the Birdcatcher’s song from Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ to his own, somewhat scatological free translation.

“If you think I’m putting a twist in my trousers to do ‘The Queen of the Night’ you can think again,” said Alexander, sending Chaffinch into another of his paroxysms of silent laughter.

“You’re all right,” said Chaffinch. “Not toffee-nosed like Mr. Henderson.”

“It’s as much that he’s painfully shy and hides behind toffee-nosed,” said Alexander, feeling he should show some loyalty to his brother-in-law elect. “Now, that’s a female role a man can do, in the spirit of a pantomime dame; Katisha.”

“I am the emperor of Japan...” began Chaffinch

“Bow, bow, to his daughter-in-law elect!” warbled Alexander in the appropriate places. They fell about laughing before they could complete the song.

“You do it even better than that Brian Keller,” said Chaffinch. “He’s not a half bad dame!”

Alexander nipped down to the bakery and brought back a couple of Cornish pasties, and Chaffinch shared his cheese sandwiches with him for lunch. Alexander took the opportunity, whilst in the bakery, to send a wire to Harris in Dover.

 “That makes a right nice change to cheese every other day,” said Chaffinch, happily. “I might nip into the bakery from time to time.”

“They do a nice little beef patty, I’m told, if you don’t have someone to help with your sandwiches if Mrs. Chaffinch is likely to get stroppy if they aren’t all eaten.”

“My Polly does her best, but she ain’t what you call imaginative,” sighed Chaffinch. “She’s a lovely alto, but she was raised in a convent orphanage, and it’s fish paste on Friday and Saturday, and the remains o’ the beef from Sunday on a Monday if I’m lucky. But she’s a good wife and a good manager, and she feeds me proper when I get home, so I can’t complain.”

A train came in at this moment, disgorging a knot of police constables.

“Well, that’s my clutch of bobbies I ordered,” said Alexander. “See you around.” He moved forward. “I’m Inspector Armitage,” he said. “You came prepared, with entrenching tools? Good.”

“Sergeant Barnes, CID,” said one. “Davis, Burrows, Farley, Hockney, Hawtin, and Gamp.”

“Excellent,” said Alexander. “It’s about a half mile walk, uphill, of course.” He led them out of the station. “The job is digging into a burned-out house with intent to uncover a narcotics laboratory; if anyone smells anything funny, step away, and call me. There’s some powerfully nasty stuff down there, if it didn’t go up in the explosion, and we don’t want secondary explosions.”

“Do narcotics explode?” asked one of the constables.

“Not as such, Davis, but some of the chemicals used to make heroin from opium do explode,” explained Alexander. “I expect they went up in the explosion, but I don’t know what they made, and if the room is still sealed, I don’t guarantee that it didn’t combine in some unholy concatenation to make a new type of mustard gas. I don’t know enough chemistry to predict it.”

“Gawd!” said another constable.

“I won’t turn down serious prayers, Hawtin” said Alexander. “If we do have some evil gas underground, we may need it. I have a gas mask, so I’ll go ahead.” He had forgotten that Basil’s gas mask was in his bag when he had thrown it out, and kicked himself afterwards for not using it to brave the smoke. But then, it might be more useful for this.

 

In the cold light of day, the house had burned out to a shell of reinforced concrete pillars and some mangled metal beams.

“That must have been one ugly place,” said the irrepressible Davis.

“It is prettier now,” said Alexander, with a straight face. “We aren’t interested in what’s above the surface, though, unless we have to go through the half-basement.  I want to see if we can get in through the access panel, and if so, it’s a lazy afternoon, and I’ll buy you all fish and chips as soon as the chippy opens, and a pint of the local each.”

“I’m teetotal,” said Davis.

“Always one awkward bugger,” said Alexander. “Well, you’ll have to put up with the choice of the ghastly cherry-flavoured soda pop the pub sells, or a pint of milk.”

“I’ll go with the milk, thanks,” said Davis.

“He’s a Methodist,” said the Sergeant. “But he’s a good copper when he gets going, if people don’t indulge his desire to be a lay-preacher-cum-vaudeville clown.”

“Better that than a gloomy bugger,” said Alexander, cheerfully. “Right! Round here is an access panel; jammed to stop chumette, or rather her friends from murdering us in our beds.  It’s a bit of a mess, having been on top of the laboratory, but if we can get the panel shifted, even if the ladder’s gone, we might be able to put the orchard ladder down and see how much rubble is there.”

There was rubble to dig away from around the wall; broken glass and mangled metal had fallen from the roof, and been blown out of the sitting room and dining-room windows, which were above the illicit laboratory. Incongruously, the coffee percolator had been blown out, more or less intact and sat mournfully on the equally intact day bed.

“It’s like the war,” said Davis. “You’d get some poor devil blown to pieces, but his sweetheart’s letter lay beside him, intact.  So help me, I seen a plane come down, shot to pieces, but made a perfect landing on the road of all places, and the pilot within had no head.”

“Yes, some strange things happen,” said Alexander. “Let’s not dwell on it, old son; we all saw some horrors.”

Davis subsided to nod soberly, and turn back to shovelling. It took a good hour to reach the access panel, but Alexander had a hunch that they would be able to reach the laboratory faster than trying to go through the servants’ quarters, and through the kitchen. And if he was wrong, the men would curse him, but that was life.  If he had saved them three or four hours heavy digging, so much the better.

 

The wedge had burned away just from the heat, and the panel leaned drunkenly.

The rubber around the edge of the panel had melted to the outer edge, and it took the combined efforts of four constables with pick axes and entrenching tools to heave it off.

“Look out for any out-gassing,” said Alexander. “Here, cut through this melted rubber; if we can get all round, I’ll prise it off, wearing my mask.”

“Reckon it will go now, with a good thump,” said the sergeant, cheerfully, after some determined work on the resistant rubber.

Alexander put on the mask, thrust his own entrenching tool into the frame of the panel, and levered it.

It fell off its hinges onto the ground, with a dull ‘thump!’ Smoke, black and oily, wafted out. Alexander waited for the smoke to clear.

“Sir,” said Davis, “Is that what I think it is?”

Alexander peered through the smoke at a shape on the ladder.

“Oh, dear God,” he said. “It’s a body.”