Josephine Bell
Josephine Bell was the pen-name of Doris Bell Collier Ball (1897–1987). Born in Manchester, she studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a doctor, marrying a fellow physician in 1923. Following her husband’s death, she started to publish detective stories. Murder in Hospital, her first book, made use of her medical knowledge, as did many of its successors. Death on the Borough Council introduced David Wintringham, who appeared in a dozen novels between 1937 and 1958.
Her non-series books included the atmospheric The Port of London Murders (1938). Freeman Wills Crofts, a prominent detective novelist of the Golden Age, and fellow resident of Guildford, gave her encouragement, and in 1954 she was elected to membership of the Detection Club, of which Crofts was a founder member. In the previous year, she had supported John Creasey in founding the Crime Writers’ Association, which she chaired in 1959–60. Together with Julian Symons and Michael Gilbert, she edited the CWA’s first anthology, Butcher’s Dozen. Her interest in contemporary social issues is evident in much of her work, not least in this story.
***
Old Mrs. Fairlands stepped carefully off the low chair she had pulled close to the fireplace. She was very conscious of her eighty-one years every time she performed these mild acrobatics. Conscious of them and determined to have no humiliating, potentially dangerous mishap. But obstinate, in her persistent routine of dusting her own mantelpiece, where a great many, too many photographs and small ornaments daily gathered a film of greasy London dust.
Mrs. Fairlands lived in the ground floor flat of a converted house in a once fashionable row of early Victorian family homes. The house had been in her family for three generations before her, and she herself had been born and brought up there. In those faroff days of her childhood, the whole house was filled with a busy throng of people, from the top floor where the nurseries housed the noisiest and liveliest group, through the dignified, low-voiced activities of her parents and resident aunt on the first and ground floors, to the basement haunts of the domestic staff, the kitchens and the cellars.
Too many young men of the family had died in two world wars and too many young women had married and left the house to make its original use in the late 1940’s any longer possible. Mrs. Fairlands, long a widow, had inherited the property when the last of her brothers died. She had let it for a while, but even that failed. A conversion was the obvious answer. She was a vigorous seventy at the time, fully determined, since her only child, a married daughter, lived in the to her barbarous wastes of the Devon moors, to continue to live alone with her much-loved familiar possessions about her.
The conversion was a great success and was made without very much structural alteration to the house. The basement, which had an entrance by the former back door, was shut off and was let to a businessman who spent only three days a week in London and preferred not to use an hotel. The original hall remained as a common entrance to the other three flats. The ground floor provided Mrs. Fairlands with three large rooms, one of which was divided into a kitchen and bathroom. Her own front door was the original dining room door from the hall. It led now into a narrow passage, also chopped off from the room that made the bathroom and kitchen. At the end of the passage two new doors led into the former morning room, her drawing room as she liked to call it, and her bedroom, which had been the study.
This drawing room of hers was at the front of the house, overlooking the road. It had a square bay window that gave her a good view of the main front door and the steps leading up to it, the narrow front garden, now a paved forecourt, and from the opposite window of the bay, the front door and steps of the house next door, divided from her by a low wall.
Mrs. Fairlands, with characteristic obstinacy, strength of character, integrity, or whatever other description her forceful personality drew from those about her, had lived in her flat for eleven years, telling everyone that it suited her perfectly and feeling, as the years went by, progressively more lonely, more deeply bored, and more consciously apprehensive. Her daily came for four hours three times a week. It was enough to keep the place in good order. On those days the admirable woman cooked Mrs. Fairlands a good solid English dinner, which she shared, and also constructed several more main meals that could be eaten cold or warmed up. But three half days of cleaning and cooking left four whole days in each week when Mrs. Fairlands must provide for herself or go out to the High Street to a restaurant. After her eightieth birthday she became more and more reluctant to make the effort. But every week she wrote to her daughter Dorothy to say how well she felt and how much she would detest leaving London, where she had lived all her life except when she was evacuated to Wiltshire in the second war.
She was sincere in writing thus. The letters were true as far as they went, but they did not go the whole distance. They did not say that it took Mrs. Fairlands nearly an hour to wash and dress in the morning. They did not say she was sometimes too tired to bother with supper and then had to get up in the night, feeling faint and thirsty, to heat herself some milk. They did not say that although she stuck to her routine of dusting the whole flat every morning, she never mounted her low chair without a secret terror that she might fall and break her hip and perhaps be unable to reach the heavy stick she kept beside her armchair to use as a signal to the flat above.
On this particular occasion, soon after her eighty-first birthday, she had deferred the dusting until late in the day, because it was Christmas Eve and in addition to cleaning the mantelpiece she had arranged on it a pile of Christmas cards from her few remaining friends and her many younger relations.
This year, she thought sadly, there was not really much point in making the display. Dorothy and Hugh and the children could not come to her as usual, nor could she go to them. The tiresome creatures had chicken pox, in their late teens, too, except for Bobbie, the afterthought, who was only ten. They should all have had it years ago, when they first went to school. So the visit was cancelled, and though she offered to go to Devon instead, they told her she might get shingles from the same infection and refused to expose her to the risk. Apart altogether from the danger to her of travelling at that particular time of the year, the weather and the holiday crowds combined, Dorothy had written.
Mrs. Fairlands turned sadly from the fireplace and walked slowly to the window. A black Christmas this year, the wireless report had promised. As black as the prospect of two whole days of isolation at a time when the whole western world was celebrating its midwinter festival and Christians were remembering the birth of their faith.
She turned from the bleak prospect outside her window, a little chilled by the downdraught seeping through its closed edges. Near the fire she had felt almost too hot, but then she needed to keep it well stocked up for such a large room. In the old days there had been logs, but she could no longer lift or carry logs. Everyone told her she ought to have a cosy stove or even do away with solid fuel altogether, install central heating and perhaps an electric fire to make a pleasant glow. But Mrs. Fairlands considered these suggestions defeatist, an almost insulting reference to her age. Secretly she now thought of her life as a gamble with time. She was prepared to take risks for the sake of defeating them. There were few pleasures left to her. Defiance was one of them.
When she left the window, she moved to the far corner of the room, near the fireplace. Here a small table, usually covered, like the mantelpiece, with a multitude of objects, had been cleared to make room for a Christmas tree. It was mounted in a large bowl reserved for this annual purpose. The daily had set it up for her and wrapped the bowl round with crinkly red paper, fastened with safety pins. But the tree was not yet decorated.
Mrs. Fairlands got to work upon it. She knew that it would be more difficult by artificial light to tie the knots in the black cotton she used for the dangling glass balls. Dorothy had provided her with some newfangled strips of pliable metal that needed only to be threaded through the rings on the glass balls and wrapped round the branches of the tree. But she had tried these strips only once. The metal had slipped from her hands and the ball had fallen and shattered. She went back to her long practised method with black cotton, leaving the strips in the box for her grandchildren to use, which they always did with ferocious speed and efficiency.
She sighed as she worked. It was not much fun decorating the tree by herself. No one would see it until the day after Boxing Day when the daily would be back. If only her tenants had not gone away she could have invited them in for some small celebration. But the basement man was in his own home in Essex, and the first floor couple always went to an hotel for Christmas, allowing her to use their flat for Dorothy and Hugh and the children. And this year the top floor, three girl students, had joined a college group to go skiing. So the house was quite empty. There was no one left to invite, except perhaps her next-door neighbours. But that would be impossible. They had detestable children, rude, destructive, uncontrolled brats. She had already complained about broken glass and dirty sweet papers thrown into her forecourt. She could not possibly ask them to enjoy her Christmas tree with her. They might damage it. Perhaps she ought to have agreed to go to May, or let her come to her. She was one of the last of her friends, but never an intimate one. And such a chatterer. Nonstop, as Hugh would say.
By the time Mrs. Fairlands had fastened the last golden ball and draped the last glittering piece of tinsel and tied the crowning piece, the six-pronged shining silver star, to the topmost twig and fixed the candles upright in their socket clips, dusk had fallen. She had been obliged to turn on all her lights some time before she had done. Now she moved again to her windows, drew the curtains, turned off all the wall lights, and with one reading lamp beside her chair sat down near the glowing fire.
It was nearly an hour after her usual teatime, she noticed. But she was tired. Pleasantly tired, satisfied with her work, shining quietly in its dark corner, bringing back so many memories of her childhood in this house, of her brief marriage, cut off by the battle of the Marne, of Dorothy, her only child, brought up here, too, since there was nowhere for them to live except with the parents she had so recently left. Mrs. Fairlands decided to skip tea and have an early supper with a boiled egg and cake.
She dozed, snoring gently, her ancient, wrinkled hand twitching from time to time as her head lolled on and off the cushion behind it.
She woke with a start, confused, trembling. There was a ringing in her head that resolved, as full consciousness returned to her, into a ringing of bells, not only her own, just inside her front door, but those of the other two flats, shrilling and buzzing in the background.
Still trembling, her mouth dry with fright and open-mouthed sleep, she sat up, trying to think. What time was it? The clock on the mantelpiece told her it was nearly seven. Could she really have slept for two whole hours? There was silence now. Could it really have been the bell, all the bells, that had woken her? If so, it was a very good thing. She had no business to be asleep in the afternoon, in a chair of all places.
Mrs. Fairlands got to her feet, shakily. Whoever it was at the door must have given up and gone away. Standing still, she began to tremble again. For she remembered things Dorothy and Hugh and her very few remaining friends said to her from time to time. ‘Aren’t you afraid of burglars?’ ‘I wouldn’t have the nerve to live alone!’ ‘They ring you up, and if there is no answer, they know you’re out, so they come and break in.’
Well, there had been no answer to this bell ringing, so whoever it was, if ill-intentioned, might even now be forcing the door or prowling round the house, looking for an open window.
While she stood there in the middle of her drawing room, trying to build up enough courage to go round her flat pulling the rest of the curtains, fastening the other windows, Mrs. Fairlands heard sounds that instantly explained the situation. She heard, raggedly begun, out of tune, but reassuringly familiar, the strains of ‘Once in Royal David’s City.’
Carol singers! Of course. Why had she not thought of them instead of frightening herself to death with gruesome suspicions?
Mrs. Fairlands, always remembering her age, her gamble, went to the side window of the bay and, pulling back the edge of the curtain, looked out. A dark-clad group stood there, six young people, four girls with scarves on their heads, two boys with woolly caps. They had a single electric torch directed onto a sheet of paper held by the central figure of the group.
Mrs. Fairlands watched them for a few seconds. Of course they had seen the light in her room, so they knew someone was in. How stupid of her to think of burglars. The light would have driven a burglar away if he was out looking for an empty house to break into. All her fears about the unanswered bell were nonsense.
In her immense relief, and seeing the group straighten up as they finished the hymn, she tapped at the glass. They turned quickly, shining the torch in her face. Though she was a little startled by this, she smiled and nodded, trying to convey the fact that she enjoyed their performance.
‘Want another, missis?’ one boy shouted.
She nodded again, let the curtain slip into place, and made her way to her bureau, where she kept her handbag. Her purse in the handbag held very little silver, but she found the half crown she was looking for and took it in her hand. ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ was in full swing outside. Mrs. Fairlands decided that these children must have been well taught in school. It was not usual for small parties to sing real carols. Two lines of ‘Come, All Ye Faithful,’ followed by loud knocking, was much more likely.
As she moved to the door with the half crown in one hand, Mrs. Fairlands put the other to her throat to pull together the folds of her cardigan before leaving her warm room for the cold passage and the outer hall door. She felt her brooch, and instantly misgiving struck her. It was a diamond brooch, a very valuable article, left to her by her mother. It would perhaps be a mistake to appear at the door offering half a crown and flaunting several hundred pounds. They might have seen it already, in the light of the torch they had shone on her.
Mrs. Fairlands slipped the half crown into her cardigan pocket, unfastened the brooch, and, moving quickly to the little Christmas tree on its table, reached up to the top and pinned the brooch to the very centre of the silver tinsel star. Then, chuckling at her own cleverness, her quick wit, she went out to the front door just as the bell rang again in her flat. She opened it on a group of fresh young faces and sturdy young bodies standing on her steps.
‘I’m sorry I was so slow,’ she said. ‘You must forgive me, but I am not very young.’
‘I’ll say,’ remarked the younger boy, staring. He thought he had never seen anything as old as this old geyser.
‘You shut up,’ said the girl next to him, and the tallest one said, ‘Don’t be rude.’
‘You sing very nicely,’ said Mrs. Fairlands. ‘Very well indeed. Did you learn at school?’
‘Mostly at the club,’ said the older boy, whose voice went up and down, on the verge of breaking, Mrs. Fairlands thought, remembering her brothers.
She held out the half crown. The tallest of the four girls, the one who had the piece of paper with the words of the carols on it, took the coin and smiled.
‘I hope I haven’t kept you too long,’ Mrs. Fairlands said. ‘You can’t stay long at each house, can you, or you would never get any money worth having.’
‘They mostly don’t give anything,’ one of the other girls said.
‘Tell us to get the ’ell out,’ said the irrepressible younger boy.
‘We don’t do it mostly for the money,’ said the tallest girl. ‘Not for ourselves, I mean.’
‘Give it to the club. Oxfam collection and that,’ said the tall boy.
‘Don’t you want it for yourselves?’ Mrs. Fairlands was astonished. ‘Do you have enough pocket money without?’
They nodded gravely.
‘I got a paper round,’ said the older boy.
‘I do babysitting now and then,’ the tallest girl added.
‘Well, thank you for coming,’ Mrs. Fairlands said. She was beginning to feel cold, standing there at the open door. ‘I must go back into my warm room. And you must keep moving, too, or you might catch colds.’
‘Thank you,’ they said in chorus. ‘Thanks a lot. Bye!’
She shut and locked the door as they turned, clattered down the steps, slammed the gate of the forecourt behind them. She went back to her drawing room. She watched from the window as they piled up the steps of the next house. And again she heard, more faintly because they were farther away, ‘Once in Royal David’s City.’ There were tears in her old eyes as she left the window and stood for a few minutes staring down at the dull coals of her diminishing fire.
But very soon she rallied, took up the poker, mended her fire, went to her kitchen, and put on the kettle. Coming back to wait for it to boil, she looked again at her Christmas tree. The diamond brooch certainly gave an added distinction to the star, she thought. Amused once more by her originality, she went into her bedroom and from her jewel box on the dressing table took her two other valuable pieces, a pearl necklace and a diamond bracelet. The latter she had not worn for years. She wound each with a tinsel string and hung them among the branches of the tree.
She had just finished preparing her combined tea and supper when the front doorbell rang again. Leaving the tray in the kitchen, she went to her own front door and opened it. Once again a carol floated to her, ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ this time. There seemed to be only one voice singing. A lone child, she wondered, making the rounds by himself.
She hurried to the window of her drawing room, drew back the curtain, peeped out. No, not alone, but singing a solo. The pure, high boy’s voice was louder here. The child, muffled up to the ears, had his head turned away from her towards three companions, whose small figures and pale faces were intent upon the door. They did not seem to notice her at the window as the other group had done, for they did not turn in her direction. They were smaller, evidently younger, very serious. Mrs. Fairlands, touched, willing again to defeat her loneliness in a few minutes’ talk, took another half crown from her purse and went out to the main hall and the big door.
‘Thank you, children,’ she said as she opened it. ‘That was very—’
Her intended praise died in her throat. She gasped, tried to back away. The children now wore black stockings over their faces. Their eyes glittered through slits; there were holes for their noses and mouths.
‘That’s a very silly joke,’ said Mrs. Fairlands in a high voice. ‘I shall not give you the money I brought for you. Go home. Go away.’
She backed inside the door, catching at the knob to close it. But the small figures advanced upon her. One of them held the door while two others pushed her away from it. She saw the fourth, the singer, hesitate, then turn and run out into the street.
‘Stop this!’ Mrs. Fairlands said in a voice that had once been commanding but now broke as she repeated the order. Silently, remorselessly, the three figures forced her back; they shut and locked the main door, they pushed her, stumbling now, terrified, bewildered, through her own front door and into her drawing room.
It was an outrage, an appalling, unheard-of challenge. Mrs. Fairlands had always met a challenge with vigour. She did so now. She tore herself from the grasp of one pair of small hands to box the ears of another short figure. She swept round at the third, pulling the stocking halfway up his face, pushing him violently against the wall so his face met it with a satisfactory smack.
‘Stop it!’ she panted. ‘Stop it or I’ll call the police!’
At that they all leaped at her, pushing, punching, dragging her to an upright chair. She struggled for a few seconds, but her breath was going. When they had her sitting down, she was incapable of movement. They tied her hands and ankles to the chair and stood back. They began to talk, all at once to start with, but at a gesture from one, the other two became silent.
When Mrs. Fairlands heard the voices, she became rigid with shock and horror. Such words, such phrases, such tones, such evil loose in the world, in her house, in her quiet room. Her face grew cold, she thought she would faint. And still the persistent demand went on.
‘We want the money. Where d’you keep it? Come on. Give. Where d’you keep it?’
‘At my bank,’ she gasped.
‘That’s no answer. Where?’
She directed them to the bureau, where they found and rifled her handbag, taking the three pound notes and five shillings’ worth of small change that was all the currency she had in the flat.
Clearly they were astonished at the small amount. They threatened, standing round her, muttering threats and curses.
‘I’m not rich,’ she kept repeating. ‘I live chiefly on the rents of the flats and a very small private income. It’s all paid into my bank. I cash a cheque each week, a small cheque to cover my food and the wages of my daily help.’
‘Jewellery,’ one of them said. ‘You got jewellery. Rich old cows dolled up—we seen ’em. That’s why we come. You got it. Give.’
She rallied a little, told them where to find her poor trinkets. Across the room her diamond brooch winked discreetly in the firelight. They were too stupid, too savage, too—horrible to think of searching the room carefully. Let them take the beads, the dress jewellery, the amber pendant. She leaned her aching head against the hard back of the chair and closed her eyes.
After what seemed a long time they came back. Their tempers were not improved. They grumbled among themselves—almost quarrelling—in loud harsh tones.
‘Radio’s worth nil. Prehistoric. No transistor. No record player. Might lift that old clock.’
‘Money stashed away. Mean old bitch.’
‘Best get going.’
Mrs. Fairlands, eyes still closed, heard a faint sound outside the window. Her doorbell rang once. More carol singers? If they knew, they could save her. If they knew—
She began to scream. She meant to scream loudly, but the noise that came from her was a feeble croak. In her own head it was a scream. To her tormentors it was derisory, but still a challenge. They refused to be challenged.
They gagged her with a strip of sticking plaster, they pulled out the flex of her telephone. They bundled the few valuables they had collected into the large pockets of their overcoats and left the flat, pulling shut the two front doors as they went. Mrs. Fairlands was alone again, but gagged and bound and quite unable to free herself.
At first she felt a profound relief in the silence, the emptiness of the room. The horror had gone, and though she was uncomfortable, she was not yet in pain. They had left the light on—all the lights, she decided. She could see through the open door of the room the lighted passage and, beyond, a streak of light from her bedroom. Had they been in the kitchen? Taken her Christmas dinner, perhaps, the chicken her daily had cooked for her? She remembered her supper and realized fully, for the first time, that she could not open her mouth and that she could not free her hands.
Even now she refused to give way to panic. She decided to rest until her strength came back and she could, by exercising it, loosen her bonds. But her strength did not come back. It ebbed as the night advanced and the fire died and the room grew cold and colder. For the first time she regretted not accepting May’s suggestion that she should spend Christmas with her, occupying the flat above in place of Dorothy. Between them they could have defeated those little monsters. Or she could herself have gone to Leatherhead. She was insured for burglary.
She regretted those things that might have saved her, but she did not regret the gamble of refusing them. She recognized now that the gamble was lost. It had to be lost in the end, but she would have chosen a more dignified finish than this would be.
She cried a little in her weakness and the pain she now suffered in her wrists and ankles and back. But the tears ran down her nose and blocked it, which stopped her breathing and made her choke. She stopped crying, resigned herself, prayed a little, considered one or two sins she had never forgotten but on whose account she had never felt remorse until now. Later on she lapsed into semiconsciousness, a half-dream world of past scenes and present cares, of her mother, resplendent in low-cut green chiffon and diamonds, the diamond brooch and bracelet now decorating the tree across the room. Of Bobbie, in a fever, plagued by itching spots, of Dorothy as a little girl, blotched with measles.
Towards morning, unable any longer to breathe properly, exhausted by pain, hunger, and cold, Mrs. Fairlands died.
***
The milkman came along the road early on Christmas morning, anxious to finish his round and get back to his family. At Mrs. Fairlands’s door he stopped. There were no milk bottles standing outside and no notice. He had seen her in person the day before when she had explained that her daughter and family were not coming this year so she would only need her usual pint that day.
‘But I’ll put out the bottles and the ticket for tomorrow as usual,’ she had said.
‘You wouldn’t like to order now, madam?’ he had asked, thinking it would save her trouble.
‘No, thank you,’ she had answered. ‘I prefer to decide in the evening, when I see what milk I have left.’
But there were no bottles and no ticket and she was a very, very old lady and had had this disappointment over her family not coming.
The milkman looked at the door and then at the windows. It was still dark, and the light shone clearly behind the closed curtains. He had seen it when he went in through the gate but had thought nothing of it, being intent on his job. Besides, there were lights on in a good many houses and the squeals of delighted children finding Christmas stockings bulging on the posts of their beds. But here, he reminded himself, there were no children.
He tapped on the window and listened. There was no movement in the house. Perhaps she’d forgotten, being practically senile. He left a pint bottle on the doorstep. But passing a constable on a scooter at the end of the road, he stopped to signal to him and told him about Mrs. Fairlands. ‘Know ’oo I mean?’ he asked.
The constable nodded and thanked the milkman. No harm in making sure. He was pretty well browned off—nothing doing—empty streets—not a hooligan in sight—layabouts mostly drunk in the cells after last night’s parties—villains all at the holiday resorts, casing jobs.
He left the scooter at the kerb and tried to rouse Mrs. Fairlands. He did not succeed, so his anxiety grew. All the lights were on in the flat, front and back as far as he could make out. All her lights. The other flats were in total darkness. People away. She must have had a stroke or actually croaked, he thought. He rode on to the nearest telephone box.
The local police station sent a sergeant and another constable to join the man on the beat. Together they managed to open the kitchen window at the back, and when they saw the tray with a meal prepared but untouched, one of them climbed in. He found Mrs. Fairlands as the thieves had left her. There was no doubt at all what had happened.
‘Ambulance,’ said the sergeant briefly. ‘Get the super first, though. We’ll be wanting the whole works.’
‘The phone’s gone,’ the constable said. ‘Pulled out.’
‘Bastard! Leave her like this when she couldn’t phone anyway and wouldn’t be up to leaving the house till he’d had plenty time to make six getaways. Bloody bastard!’
‘Wonder how much he got?’
‘Damn all, I should think. They don’t keep their savings in the mattress up this way.’
The constable on the scooter rode off to report, and before long, routine investigations were well under way. The doctor discovered no outward injuries and decided that death was probably due to shock, cold, and exhaustion, taking into account the victim’s obviously advanced age. Detective-Inspector Brooks of the divisional CID found plenty of papers in the bureau to give him all the information he needed about Mrs. Fairlands’s financial position, her recent activities, and her nearest relations. Leaving the sergeant in charge at the flat while the experts in the various branches were at work, he went back to the local station to get in touch with Mrs. Fairlands’s daughter, Dorothy Evans.
In Devonshire the news was received with horror, indignation, and remorse. In trying to do the best for her mother by not exposing her to possible infection, Mrs. Evans felt she had brought about her death.
‘You can’t think of it like that,’ her husband Hugh protested, trying to stem the bitter tears. ‘If she’d come down, she might have had an accident on the way or got pneumonia or something. Quite apart from shingles.’
‘But she was all alone! That’s what’s so frightful!’
‘And it wasn’t your fault. She could have had what’s-her-name—Miss Bolton, the old girl who lives at Leatherhead.’
‘I thought May Bolton was going to have her. But you couldn’t make Mother do a thing she hadn’t thought of herself.’
‘Again, that wasn’t your fault, was it?’
It occurred to him that his wife had inherited to some extent this characteristic of his mother-in-law, but this was no time to remind her of it.
‘You’ll go up at once, I suppose?’ he said when she was a little calmer.
‘How can I?’ The tears began to fall again. ‘Christmas Day and Bobbie’s temperature still up and his spots itching like mad. Could you cope with all that?’
‘I’d try,’ he said. ‘You know I’d do anything.’
‘Of course you would, darling.’ She was genuinely grateful for the happiness of her married life and at this moment of self-reproach prepared to give him most of the credit for it. ‘Honestly, I don’t think I could face it. There’d be identification, wouldn’t there? And hearing detail—’ She shuddered, covering her face.
‘Okay. I’ll go up,’ Hugh told her. He really preferred this arrangement. ‘I’ll take the car in to Exeter and get the first through train there is. It’s very early. Apparently her milkman made the discovery.’
So Hugh Evans reached the flat in the early afternoon to find a constable on duty at the door and the house locked up. He was directed to the police station, where Inspector Brooks was waiting for him.
‘My wife was too upset to come alone,’ he explained, ‘and we couldn’t leave the family on their own. They’ve all got chicken pox; the youngest’s quite bad with it today.’
He went on to explain all the reasons why Mrs. Fairlands had been alone in the flat.
‘Quite,’ said Brooks, who had a difficult mother-in-law himself and was inclined to be sympathetic. ‘Quite. Nothing to stop her going to an hotel here in London over the holiday, was there?’
‘Nothing at all. She could easily afford it. She isn’t—wasn’t—what you call rich, but she’d reached the age when she really couldn’t spend much.’
This led to a full description of Mrs. Fairlands’s circumstances, which finished with Hugh pulling out a list, hastily written by Dorothy before he left home, of all the valuables she could remember that were still in Mrs. Fairlands’s possession.
‘Jewellery,’ said the inspector thoughtfully. ‘Now where would she keep that?’
‘Doesn’t it say? In her bedroom, I believe.’
‘Oh, yes. A jewel box, containing—yes. Well, Mr. Evans, there was no jewel box in the flat when we searched it.’
‘Obviously the thief took it, then. About the only thing worth taking. She wouldn’t have much cash there. She took it from the bank in weekly amounts. I know that.’
There was very little more help he could give, so Inspector Brooks took him to the mortuary where Mrs. Fairlands now lay. And after the identification, which Hugh found pitiable but not otherwise distressing, they went together to the flat.
‘In case you can help us to note any more objects of value you find are missing,’ Brooks explained.
The rooms were in the same state in which they had been found. Hugh found this more shocking, more disturbing, than the colourless, peaceful face of the very old woman who had never been close to him, who had never shown a warm affection for any of them, though with her unusual vitality she must in her youth have been capable of passion.
He went from room to room and back again. He stopped beside the bureau. ‘I was thinking, on the way up,’ he said diffidently. ‘Her solicitor—that sort of thing. Insurances. I ought—can I have a look through this lot?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Inspector Brooks answered politely. ‘I’ve had a look myself. You see, we aren’t quite clear about motive.’
‘Not—But wasn’t it a burglar? A brutal, thieving thug?’
‘There is no sign whatever of breaking and entering. It appears that Mrs. Fairlands let the murderer in herself.’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘Is it? An old lady, feeling lonely perhaps. The doorbell rings. She thinks a friend has called to visit her. She goes and opens it. It’s always happening.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. It could have happened that way. Or a tramp asking for money—Christmas—’
‘Tramps don’t usually leave it as late as Christmas Eve. Generally smash a window and get put inside a day or two earlier.’
‘What worries you, then?’
‘Just in case she had someone after her. Poor relation. Anyone who had it in for her, if she knew something damaging about him. Faked the burglary.’
‘But he seems to have taken her jewel box, and according to my wife, it was worth taking.’
‘Quite. We shall want a full description of the pieces, sir.’
‘She’ll make it out for you. Or it may have been insured separately.’
‘I’m afraid not. Go ahead, though, Mr. Evans. I’ll send my sergeant in, and he’ll bring you back to the station with any essential papers you need for Mrs. Fairlands’s solicitor.’
Hugh worked at the papers for half an hour and then decided he had all the information he wanted. No steps of any kind need, or indeed could, be taken until the day after tomorrow, he knew. The solicitor could not begin to wind up Mrs. Fairlands’s affairs for some time. Even the date of the inquest had not been fixed and would probably have to be adjourned.
Before leaving the flat, Hugh looked round the rooms once more, taking the sergeant with him. They paused before the mantelpiece, untouched by the thieves, a poignant reminder of the life so abruptly ended. Hugh looked at the cards and then glanced at the Christmas tree.
‘Poor old thing!’ he said. ‘We never thought she’d go like this. We ought all to have been here today. She always decorated a tree for us—’ He broke off, genuinely moved for the first time.
‘So I understand,’ the sergeant said gruffly, sharing the wave of sentiment.
‘My wife—I wonder—D’you think it’d be in order to get rid of it?’
‘The tree, sir?’
‘Yes. Put it out at the back somewhere. Less upsetting—Mrs. Evans will be coming up the day after tomorrow. By that time the dustmen may have called.’
‘I understand. I don’t see any harm—’
‘Right.’
Hurrying, in case the sergeant should change his mind, Hugh took up the bowl, and turning his face away to spare it from being pricked by the pine needles, he carried it out to the back of the house where he stood it beside the row of three dustbins. At any rate, he thought, going back to join the sergeant, Dorothy would be spared the feelings that overcame him so unexpectedly.
He was not altogether right in this. Mrs. Evans travelled to London on the day after Boxing Day. The inquest opened on this day, with a jury. Evidence was given of the finding of the body. Medical evidence gave the cause of death as cold and exhaustion and bronchial edema from partial suffocation by a plaster gag. The verdict was murder by a person or persons unknown.
After the inquest, Mrs. Fairlands’s solicitor, who had supported Mrs. Evans during the ordeal in court, went with her to the flat. They arrived just as the municipal dust cart was beginning to move away. One of the older dustmen came up to them.
‘You for the old lady they did Christmas Eve?’ he asked, with some hesitation.
‘I’m her daughter,’ Dorothy said, her eyes filling again, as they still did all too readily.
‘What d’you want?’ asked the solicitor, who was anxious to get back to his office.
‘No offence,’ said the man, ignoring him and keeping his eyes on Dorothy’s face. ‘It’s like this ’ere, see. They put a Christmas tree outside, by the bins, see. Decorated. We didn’t like to take it, seeing it’s not exactly rubbish and her gone and that. Nobody about we could ask—’
Dorothy understood. The Christmas tree. Hugh’s doing, obviously. Sweet of him.
‘Of course you must have it, if it’s any use to you now, so late. Have you got children?’
‘Three, ma’am. Two young ’uns. I arsked the other chaps. They don’t want it. They said to leave it.’
‘No, you take it,’ Dorothy told him. ‘I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to be reminded—’
‘Thanks a lot, dear,’ the dustman said, gravely sympathetic, walking back round the house.
The solicitor took the door key from Dorothy and let her in, so she did not see the tree as the dustman emerged with it held carefully before him.
***
In his home that evening the tree was greeted with a mixture of joy and derision.
‘As if I ’adn’t enough to clear up yesterday and the day before,’ his wife complained, half angry, half laughing. ‘Where’d you get it, anyway?’
When he had finished telling her, the two children, who had listened, crept away to play with the new glittering toy. And before long Mavis, the youngest, found the brooch pinned to the star. She unfastened it carefully and held it in her hand, turning it this way and that to catch the light.
But not for long. Her brother Ernie, two years older, soon snatched it. Mavis went for him, and he ran, making for the front door to escape into the street where Mavis was forbidden to play. Though she seldom obeyed the rule, on this occasion she used it to make loud protest, setting up a howl that brought her mother to the door of the kitchen.
But Ernie had not escaped with his prize. His elder brother Ron was on the point of entering, and when Ernie flung wide the door, Ron pushed in, shoving his little brother back.
‘’E’s nicked my star,’ Mavis wailed. ‘Make ’im give me back, Ron. It’s mine. Off the tree.’
Ron took Ernie by the back of his collar and swung him round.
‘Give!’ he said firmly. Ernie clenched his right fist, betraying himself. Ron took his arm, bent his hand over forwards, and, as the brooch fell to the floor, stooped to pick it up. Ernie was now in tears.
‘Where’d ’e get it?’ Ron asked over the child’s doubled-up, weeping form.
‘The tree,’ Mavis repeated, ‘I found it. On the star—on the tree.’
‘Wot the ’ell d’she mean?’ Ron asked, exasperated.
‘Shut up, the lot of you!’ their mother cried fiercely from the kitchen where she had retreated. ‘Ron, come on in to your tea. Late as usual. Why you never—’
‘Okay, Mum,’ the boy said, unrepentant. ‘I never—’
He sat down, looking at the sparkling object in his hand.
‘What’d Mavis mean about a tree?’
‘Christmas tree. Dad brought it in. I’ve a good mind to put it on the fire. Nothing but argument since ’e fetched it.’
‘It’s pretty,’ Ron said, meaning the brooch in his hand. ‘Dress jewellery, they calls it.’ He slipped it into his pocket.
‘That’s mine,’ Mavis insisted. ‘I found it pinned on that star on the tree. You give it back, Ron.’
‘Leave ’im alone,’ their mother said, smacking away the reaching hands. ‘Go and play with your blasted tree. Dad didn’t ought t’ave brought it. Ought t’ave ’ad more sense—’
Ron sat quietly, eating his kipper and drinking his tea. When he had finished, he stacked his crockery in the sink, went upstairs, changed his shirt, put a pair of shiny dancing shoes in the pockets of his mackintosh, and went off to the club where his current girlfriend, Sally, fifteen like himself, attending the same comprehensive school, was waiting for him.
‘You’re late,’ she said over her shoulder, not leaving the group of her girlfriends.
‘I’ve ’eard that before tonight. Mum was creating. Not my fault if Mr. Pope wants to see me about exam papers.’
‘You’re never taking G.C.E.?’
‘Why not?’
‘Coo! ’Oo started that lark?’
‘Mr. Pope. I just told you. D’you want to dance or don’t you?’
She did and she knew Ron was not one to wait indefinitely. So she joined him, and together they went to the main hall where dancing was in progress, with a band formed by club members.
‘’Alf a mo!’ Ron said as they reached the door. ‘I got something you’ll like.’
He produced the brooch.
Sally was delighted. This was no cheap store piece. It was slap-up dress jewellery, like the things you saw in the West End, in Bond Street, in the Burlington Arcade, even. She told him she’d wear it just below her left shoulder near the neck edge of her dress. When they moved on to the dance floor she was holding her head higher and swinging her hips more than ever before. She and Ron danced well together. That night many couples stood still to watch them.
About an hour later the dancing came to a sudden end with a sound of breaking glass and shouting that grew in volume and ferocity.
‘Raid!’ yelled the boys on the dance floor, deserting their partners and crowding to the door. ‘Those bloody Wingers again.’
The sounds of battle led them, running swiftly, to the table tennis and billiards room, where a shambles confronted them. Overturned tables, ripped cloth, broken glass were everywhere. Tall youths and younger lads were fighting indiscriminately. Above the din the club warden and the three voluntary workers, two of them women, raised their voices in appeal and admonishment, equally ignored. The young barrister who attended once a week to give legal advice free, as a form of social service, to those who asked for it plunged into the battle, only to be flung out again nursing a twisted arm. It was the club caretaker, old and experienced in gang warfare, who summoned the police. They arrived silently, snatched ringleaders with expert knowledge or recognition, hemmed in their captives while the battle melted, and waited while their colleagues, posted at the doors of the club, turned back all would-be escapers.
Before long, complete order was restored. In the dance hall the line of prisoners stood below the platform where the band had played. They included club members as well as strangers. The rest, cowed, bunched together near the door, also included a few strangers. Murmurings against these soon added them to the row of captives.
‘Now,’ said the sergeant, who had arrived in answer to the call, ‘Mr. Smith will tell me who belongs here and who doesn’t.’
The goats were quickly separated from the rather black sheep.
‘Next, who was playing table tennis when the raid commenced?’
Six hands shot up from the line. Some dishevelled girls near the door also held up their hands.
‘The rest were in here dancing,’ the warden said. ‘The boys left the girls when they heard the row, I think.’
‘That’s right,’ Ron said boldly. ‘We ’eard glass going, and we guessed it was them buggers. They been ’ere before.’
‘They don’t learn,’ said the sergeant with a baleful glance at the goats, who shuffled their feet and looked sulky.
‘You’ll be charged at the station,’ the sergeant went on, ‘and I’ll want statements from some of your lads,’ he told the warden. ‘Also from you and your assistants. These other kids can all go home. Quietly, mind,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Show us there’s some of you can behave like reasonable adults and not childish savages.’
Sally ran forward to Ron as he left the row under the platform. He took her hand as they walked towards the door. But the sergeant had seen something that surprised him. He made a signal over their heads. At the door they were stopped.
‘I think you’re wanted. Stand aside for a minute,’ the constable told them.
The sergeant was the one who had been at the flat in the first part of the Fairlands case. He had been there when a second detailed examination of the flat was made in case the missing jewellery had been hidden away and had therefore escaped the thief. He had formed a very clear picture in his mind of what he was looking for from Mrs. Evans’s description. As Sally passed him on her way to the door with Ron, part of the picture presented itself to his astonished eyes.
He turned to the warden.
‘That pair. Can I have a word with them somewhere private?’
‘Who? Ron Sharp and Sally Biggs? Two of our very nicest—’
The two were within earshot. They exchanged a look of amusement instantly damped by the sergeant, who ordered them briefly to follow him. In the warden’s office, with the door shut, he said to Sally, ‘Where did you get that brooch you’re wearing?’
The girl flushed. Ron said angrily, ‘I give it ’er. So what?’
‘So where did you come by it?’
Ron hesitated. He didn’t want to let himself down in Sally’s eyes. He wanted her to think he’d bought it specially for her. He said, aggressively, ‘That’s my business.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Turning to Sally, the sergeant said, ‘Would you mind letting me have a look at it, miss?’
The girl was becoming frightened. Surely Ron hadn’t done anything silly? He was looking upset. Perhaps—
‘All right,’ she said, undoing the brooch and handing it over. ‘Poor eyesight, I suppose.’
It was feeble defiance, and the sergeant ignored it. He said, ‘I’ll have to ask you two to come down to the station. I’m not an expert, but we shall have to know a great deal more about this article, and Inspector Brooks will be particularly interested to know where it came from.’
Ron remaining obstinately silent in spite of Sally’s entreaty, the two found themselves presently sitting opposite Inspector Brooks, with the brooch lying on a piece of white paper before them.
‘This brooch,’ said the inspector sternly, ‘is one piece of jewellery listed as missing from the flat of a Mrs. Fairlands, who was robbed and murdered on Christmas Eve or early Christmas Day.’
‘Never!’ whispered Sally, aghast.
Ron said nothing. He was not a stupid boy, and he realized at once that he must now speak, whatever Sally thought of him. Also that he had a good case if he didn’t say too much. So, after careful thought, he told Brooks exactly how and when he had come by the brooch and advised him to check this with his father and mother. The old lady’s son had stuck the tree out by the dustbins, his mother had said, and her daughter had told his father he could have it to take home.
Inspector Brooks found the tale too fantastic to be untrue. Taking the brooch and the two subdued youngsters with him, he went to Ron’s home, where more surprises awaited him. After listening to Mr. Sharp’s account of the Christmas tree, which exactly tallied with Ron’s, he went into the next room where the younger children were playing and Mrs. Sharp was placidly watching television.
‘Which of you two found the brooch?’ Brooks asked. The little girl was persuaded to agree that she had done so.
‘But I got these,’ the boy said. He dived into his pocket and dragged out the pearl necklace and the diamond bracelet.
‘’Struth!’ said the inspector, overcome. ‘She must’ve been balmy.’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ Sally broke in. ‘She was nice. She give us two and a tanner.’
‘She what?’
Sally explained the carol singing expedition. They had been up four roads in that part, she said, and only two nicker the lot.
‘Mostly it was nil,’ she said. ‘Then there was some give a bob and this old gentleman and the woman with ’im ten bob each. We packed it in after that.’
‘This means you actually went to Mrs. Fairlands’s house?’ Brooks said sternly to Ron.
‘With the others—yes.’
‘Did you go inside?’
‘No.’
‘No.’ Sally supported him. ‘She come out.’
‘Was she wearing the brooch?’
‘No,’ said Ron.
‘Not when she come out, she wasn’t,’ Sally corrected him.
Ron kicked her ankle gently. The inspector noticed this.
‘When did you see it?’ he asked Sally.
‘When she looked through the window at us. We shone the torch on ’er. It didn’t ’alf shine.’
‘But you didn’t recognize it when Ron gave it to you?’
‘Why should I? I never saw it close. It was pinned on ’er dress at the neck. I didn’t think of it till you said.’
Brooks nodded. This seemed fair enough. He turned to face Ron.
‘So you went back alone later to get it? Right?’
‘I never! It’s a damned lie!’ the boy cried fiercely.
Mr. Sharp took a step forward. His wife bundled the younger children out of the room. Sally began to cry.
‘’Oo are you accusing?’ Mr. Sharp said heavily. ‘You ’eard ’ow I come by the tree. My mates was there. The things was on it. I got witnesses. If Ron did that job, would ’e leave the only things worth ’aving? It says in the paper nothing of value, don’t it?’
Brooks realized the force of this argument, however badly put. He’d been carried away a little. Unusual for him; he was surprised at himself. But the murder had been a particularly revolting one, and until these jewels turned up, he’d had no idea where to look. Carol singers. It might be a line and then again it mightn’t.
He took careful statements from Ron, Sally, Ron’s father, and the two younger children. He took the other pieces of jewellery and the Christmas tree. Carol singers. Mrs. Fairlands had opened the door to Ron’s lot, having taken off her brooch if the story was true. Having hidden it very cleverly. He and his men had missed it completely. A Christmas tree decorated with flashy bits and pieces as usual. Standing back against a wall. They’d ignored it. Seen nothing but tinsel and glitter for weeks past. Of course they hadn’t noticed it. The real thief or thieves hadn’t noticed it, either.
Back at the station he locked away the jewels, labelled, in the safe and rang up Hugh Evans. He did not tell him where the pieces had been found.
Afterwards he had to deal with some of the hooligans who had now been charged with breaking, entering, wilful damage, and making an affray. He wished he could pin Mrs. Fairlands’s murder on their ringleader, a most degenerate and evil youth. Unfortunately, the whole gang had been in trouble in the West End that night; most of them had spent what remained of it in Bow Street police station. So they were out. But routine investigations now had a definite aim. To collect a list of all those who had sung carols at the houses on Mrs. Fairlands’s road on Christmas Eve, to question the singers about the times they had appeared there and about the houses they had visited.
It was not easy. Carol singers came from many social groups and often travelled far from their own homes. The youth clubs in the district were helpful; so were the various student bodies and hostels in the neighbourhood. Brooks’s manor was wide and very variously populated. In four days he had made no headway at all.
A radio message went out, appealing to carol singers to report at the police station if they were near Mrs. Fairlands’s house at any time on Christmas Eve. The press took up the quest, dwelling on the pathetic aspects of the old woman’s tragic death at a time of traditional peace on earth and goodwill towards men. All right-minded citizens must want to help the law over this revolting crime.
But the citizens maintained their attitude of apathy or caution.
Except for one, a freelance journalist, Tom Meadows, who had an easy manner with young people because he liked them. He became interested because the case seemed to involve young people. It was just up his street. So he went first to the Sharp family, gained their complete confidence, and had a long talk with Ron.
The boy was willing to help. After he had got over his indignation with the law for daring to suspect him, he had had sense enough to see how this had been inevitable. His anger was directed more truly at the unknown thugs responsible. He remembered Mrs. Fairlands with respect and pity. He was ready to do anything Tom Meadows suggested.
The journalist was convinced that the criminal or criminals must be local, with local knowledge. It was unlikely they would wander from house to house, taking a chance on finding one that might be profitable. It was far more likely that they knew already that Mrs. Fairlands lived alone, would be quite alone over Christmas and therefore defenceless. But their information had been incomplete. They had not known how little money she kept at the flat. No one had known this except her family. Or had they?
Meadows, patient and amiable, worked his way from the Sharps to the postman, the milkman, and through the latter to the daily.
‘Well, of course I mentioned ’er being alone for the ’oliday. I told that detective so. In the way of conversation, I told ’im. Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Why indeed? But who did you tell, exactly?’
‘I disremember. Anyone, I suppose. If we was comparing. I’m on me own now meself, but I go up to me brother’s at the ’olidays.’
‘Where would that be?’
‘Notting ’Ill way. ’E’s on the railway. Paddington.’
Bit by bit Meadows extracted a list of her friends and relations, those with whom she had talked most often during the week before Christmas. Among her various nephews and nieces was a girl who went to the same comprehensive school as Ron and his girlfriend Sally.
Ron listened to the assignment Meadows gave him.
‘Sally won’t like it,’ he said candidly.
‘Bring her into it, then. Pretend it’s all your own idea.’
Ron grinned.
‘Shirl won’t like that,’ he said.
Tom Meadows laughed.
‘Fix it any way you like,’ he said. ‘But I think this girl Shirley was with a group and did go to sing carols for Mrs. Fairlands. I know she isn’t on the official list, so she hasn’t reported it. I want to know why.’
‘I’m not shopping anymore,’ Ron said warily.
‘I’m not asking you to. I don’t imagine Shirley or her friends did Mrs. Fairlands. But it’s just possible she knows or saw something and is afraid to speak up for fear of reprisals.’
‘Cor!’ said Ron. It was like a page of his favourite magazine working out in real life. He confided in Sally, and they went to work.
The upshot was interesting. Shirley did have something to say, and she said it to Tom Meadows in her own home with her disapproving mother sitting beside her.
‘I never did like the idea of Shirl going out after dark, begging at house doors. That’s all it really is, isn’t it? My children have very good pocket money. They’ve nothing to complain of.’
‘I’m sure they haven’t,’ Meadows said mildly. ‘But there’s a lot more to carol singing than asking for money. Isn’t there, Shirley?’
‘I’ll say,’ the girl answered. ‘Mum don’t understand.’
‘You can’t stop her,’ the mother complained. ‘Self-willed. Stubborn. I don’t know, I’m sure. Out after dark. My dad’d’ve taken his belt to me for less.’
‘There were four of us,’ Shirley protested. ‘It wasn’t late. Not above seven or eight.’
The time was right, Meadows noted, if she was speaking of her visit to Mrs. Fairlands’s road. She was. Encouraged to describe everything, she agreed that her group was working towards the house especially to entertain the old lady who was going to be alone for Christmas. She’d got that from her aunt, who worked for Mrs. Fairlands. They began at the far end of the road on the same side as the old lady. When they were about six houses away, they saw another group go up to it or to one near it. Then they were singing themselves. The next time she looked round, she saw one child running away up the road. She did not know where he had come from. She did not see the others.
‘You did not see them go on?’
‘No. They weren’t in the road then, but they might have gone right on while we were singing. There’s a turning off, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘Well, we went up to Mrs. Fairlands’s and rang the bell. I thought I’d tell her she knew my aunt and we’d come special.’
‘Yes. What happened?’
‘Nothing. At least—’
‘Go on. Don’t be frightened.’
Shirley’s face had gone very pale.
‘There were men’s voices inside. Arguing like. Nasty. We scarpered.’
Tom Meadows nodded gravely.
‘That would be upsetting. Men’s voices? Or big boys?’
‘Could be either, couldn’t it? Well, perhaps more like sixth form boys, at that.’
‘You thought it was boys, didn’t you? Boys from your school.’
Shirley was silent.
‘You thought they’d know and have it in for you if you told. Didn’t you? I won’t let you down, Shirley. Didn’t you?’
She whispered, ‘Yes,’ and added, ‘Some of our boys got knives. I seen them.’
Meadows went to Inspector Brooks. He explained how Ron had helped him to get in touch with Shirley and the result of that interview. The inspector, who had worked as a routine matter on all Mrs. Fairlands’s contacts with the outer world, was too interested to feel annoyed at the other’s success.
‘Men’s voices?’ Brooks said incredulously.
‘Most probably older lads,’ Meadows answered. ‘She agreed that was what frightened her group. They might have looked out and recognized them as they ran away.’
‘There’d been no attempt at intimidations?’
‘They’re not all that stupid.’
‘No.’
Brooks considered.
‘This mustn’t break in the papers yet, you understand?’
‘Perfectly. But I shall stay around.’
Inspector Brooks nodded, and Tom went away. Brooks took his sergeant and drove to Mrs. Fairlands’s house. They still had the key of the flat, and they still had the house under observation.
The new information was disturbing, Brooks felt. Men’s voices, raised in anger. Against poor Mrs. Fairlands, of course. But there were no adult fingerprints in the flat except those of the old lady herself and of her daily. Gloves had been worn, then. A professional job. But no signs whatever of breaking and entering. Therefore, Mrs. Fairlands had let them in. Why? She had peeped out at Ron’s lot, to check who they were, obviously. She had not done so for Shirley’s. Because she was in the power of the ‘men’ whose voices had driven this other group away in terror.
But there had been two distinct small footprints in the dust of the outer hall and a palmprint on the outer door had been small, childsize.
Perhaps the child that Shirley had seen running down the road had been a decoy. The whole group she had noticed at Mrs. Fairlands’s door might have been employed for that purpose and the men or older boys were lurking at the corner of the house, to pounce when the door opened. Possible, but not very likely. Far too risky, even on a dark evening. Shirley could not have seen distinctly. The streetlamps were at longish intervals in that road. But there were always a few passersby. Even on Christmas Eve no professional group of villains would take such a risk.
Standing in the cold drawing room, now covered with a grey film of dust, Inspector Brooks decided to make another careful search for clues. He had missed the jewels. Though he felt justified in making it, his mistake was a distinct blot on his copybook. It was up to him now to retrieve his reputation. He sent the sergeant to take another look at the bedroom, with particular attention to the dressing table. He himself began to go over the drawing room with the greatest possible care.
Shirley’s evidence suggested there had been more than one thief. The girl had said ‘voices.’ That meant at least two, which probably accounted for the fact, apart from her age, that neither Mrs. Fairlands nor her clothes gave any indication of a struggle. She had been overpowered immediately, it seemed. She had not been strong enough or agile enough to tear, scratch, pull off any fragment from her attackers’ clothes or persons. There had been no trace of any useful material under her fingernails or elsewhere.
Brooks began methodically with the chair to which Mrs. Fairlands had been bound and worked his way outwards from that centre. After the furniture, the carpet and curtains. After that the walls.
Near the door, opposite the fireplace, he found on the wall—two feet, three inches up from the floor—a small, round, brownish, greasy smear. He had not seen it before. In artificial light, he checked, it was nearly invisible. On this morning, with the first sunshine of the New Year coming into the room, the little patch was entirely obvious, slightly shiny where the light from the window caught it.
Inspector Brooks took a wooden spatula from his case of aids and carefully scraped off the substance into a small plastic box, sniffing at it as he did so.
‘May I, too?’ asked Tom Meadows behind him.
The inspector wheeled round with an angry exclamation.
‘How did you get in?’ he asked.
‘Told the copper in your car I wanted to speak to you.’
‘What about?’
‘Well, about how you were getting on, really,’ Tom said disarmingly. ‘I see you are. Please let me have one sniff.’
Inspector Brooks was annoyed, both by the intrusion and the fact that he had not heard it, being so concentrated on his work. So he closed his box, shut it into his black bag, and called to the sergeant in the next room.
Meadows got down on his knees, leaned towards the wall, and sniffed. It was faint, since most of it had been scraped off, but he knew the smell. His freelancing had not been confined to journalism.
He was getting to his feet as the sergeant joined Inspector Brooks. The sergeant raised his eyebrows at the interloper.
‘You can’t keep the press’s noses out of anything,’ said Brooks morosely.
The other two grinned. It was very apt.
‘I’m just off,’ Tom said. ‘Good luck with your specimen, Inspector. I know where to go now. So will you.’
‘Come back!’ called Brooks. The young man was a menace. He would have to be controlled.
But Meadows was away, striding down the road until he was out of sight of the police car, then running to the nearest tube station, where he knew he would find the latest newspaper editions. He bought one, opened it at the entertainments column, and read down the list.
He was a certain six hours ahead of Brooks, he felt sure, possibly more. Probably he had until tomorrow morning. He skipped his lunch and set to work.
Inspector Brooks got the report from the lab that evening, and the answer to his problem came to him as completely as it had done to Tom Meadows in Mrs. Fairlands’s drawing room. His first action was to ring up Olympia. This proving fruitless, he sighed. Too late now to contact the big stores; they would all be closed and the employees of every kind gone home.
But in the morning some very extensive telephone calls to managers told him where he must go. He organized his forces to cover all the exits of a big store not very far from Mrs. Fairlands’s house. With his sergeant he entered modestly by way of the men’s department.
They took a lift from there to the third floor, emerging among the toys. It was the tenth day of Christmas, with the school holidays in full swing and eager children, flush with Christmas money, choosing long-coveted treasures. A Father Christmas, white-bearded, in the usual red, hooded gown, rather too short for him, was moving about trying to promote a visit to the first of that day’s performances of ‘Snowdrop and the Seven Dwarfs.’ As his insistence seeped into the minds of the abstracted young, they turned their heads to look at the attractive cardboard entrance of the little ‘theatre’ at the far end of the department. A gentle flow towards it began and gathered momentum. Inspector Brooks and the sergeant joined the stream.
Inside the theatre there were small chairs in rows for the children. The grownups stood at the back. A gramophone played the Disney film music.
The early scenes were brief, mere tableaux with a line thrown in here and there for Snowdrop. The queen spoke the famous doggerel to her mirror.
The curtain fell and rose again on Snowdrop, surrounded by the Seven Dwarfs. Two of them had beards, real beards. Dopey rose to his feet and began to sing.
‘Okay,’ whispered Brooks to the sergeant. ‘The child who sang and ran away.’
The sergeant nodded. Brooks whispered again. ‘I’m going round the back. Get the audience here out quietly if the balloon goes up before they finish.’
He tiptoed quietly away. He intended to catch the dwarfs in their dressing room immediately after the show, arrest the lot, and sort them out at the police station.
But the guilty ones had seen him move. Or rather Dopey, more guilt-laden and fearful than the rest, had noticed the two men who seemed to have no children with them, had seen their heads close together, had seen one move silently away. As Brooks disappeared, the midget’s nerve broke. His song ended in a scream; he fled from the stage.
In the uproar that followed, the dwarf’s scream was echoed by the frightened children. The lights went up in the theatre, the shop assistants and the sergeant went into action to subdue their panic and get them out.
Inspector Brooks found himself in a maze of lathe and plaster backstage arrangements. He found three bewildered small figures, with anxious, wizened faces, trying to restrain Dopey, who was still in the grip of his hysteria. A few sharp questions proved that the three had no idea what was happening.
The queen and Snowdrop appeared, highly indignant. Brooks, now holding Dopey firmly by the collar, demanded the other three dwarfs. The two girls, subdued and totally bewildered, pointed to their dressing room. It was empty, but a tumbled heap of costumes on the floor showed what they had done. The sergeant appeared, breathless.
‘Take this chap,’ Brooks said, thrusting the now fainting Dopey at him. ‘Take him down. I’m shopping him. Get on to the management to warn all departments for the others.’
He was gone, darting into the crowded toy department, where children and parents stood amazed or hurried towards the lifts, where a dense crowd stood huddled, anxious to leave the frightening trouble spot.
Brooks bawled an order.
The crowd at the lift melted away from it, leaving three small figures in overcoats and felt hats, trying in vain to push once more under cover.
They bolted, bunched together, but they did not get far. Round the corner of a piled table of soft toys Father Christmas was waiting. He leaped forward, tripped up one, snatched another, hit the third as he passed and grabbed him, too, as he fell.
The tripped one struggled up and on as Brooks appeared.
‘I’ll hold these two,’ panted Tom Meadows through his white beard, which had fallen sideways.
The chase was brief. Brooks gained on the dwarf. The latter knew it was hopeless. He snatched up a mallet lying beside a display of camping equipment and, rushing to the side of the store, leaped on a counter, from there clambered up a tier of shelves, beat a hole in the window behind them, and dived through. Horrified people and police on the pavement below saw the small body turning over and over like a leaf as it fell.
‘All yours,’ said Tom Meadows, handing his captives, too limp now to struggle, to Inspector Brooks and tearing off his Father Christmas costume. ‘See you later.’
He was gone, to shut himself in a telephone booth on the ground floor of the store and hand his favourite editor the scoop. It had paid off, taking over from the old boy, an ex-actor like himself, who was quite willing for a fiver to write a note pleading illness and sending a substitute. ‘Your reporter, Tom Meadows, dressed as Father Christmas, today captured and handed over to the police two of the three murderers of Mrs. Fairlands—’
Inspector Brooks, with three frantic midgets demanding legal aid, scrabbling at the doors of their cells, took a lengthy statement from the fourth, the one with the treble voice whose nerve had broken on the fatal night, as it had again that day. Greasepaint had betrayed the little fiends, Brooks told him, privately regretting that Meadows had been a jump ahead of him there. Greasepaint left on in the rush to get at their prey. One of the brutes must have fallen against the wall, pushed by the old woman herself perhaps. He hoped so. He hoped it was her own action that had brought these squalid killers to justice.