Murder's a Swine: A Second World Way Mystery Read online

  *

  Mrs. Kinghof, who had been a mean centre-forward in the school hockey game, ran soundly and with good wind. She might have run for miles had not a car stopped at the street corner and a long gentleman, alighting, gathered her panting form to his heart.

  “Andrew!”

  “Darling! You look more beautiful than ever. I expect it’s the black-out. Lots of people don’t think you’re beautiful, but I do. Where’s the fire?”

  “There’s been a murder. I want a policeman. I love you, Andy. It’s so nice to see you. What are you doing home?”

  “Nothing doing, so I pushed off this afternoon instead of tomorrow morning. Who’s murdered?”

  “I don’t know his name. He’s in the sandbags. Clem Poplett found him. How long are you home for?”

  “For heaven’s sake, tell me a clear story! Oh, I’m due for a transfer, so I’ll be home till they fix it up. Maybe only two days, maybe a week, maybe a fortnight.” Mr. Kinghof shook his wife violently and kissed her.

  “I want a policeman,” said Agnes.

  “Come on, tell me about it.”

  Panting, she told him. Mr. Kinghof, Captain in the Royal Artillery, aged forty-three, too nice-looking, said the disappointed women, for such a wife, dragged her into the car and with commendable presence of mind drove her round the corner to the police station. They returned with the Inspector and a young constable to find Mr. Poplett holding his post with the nervous determination of Casabianca. With him was a War Reserve policeman, in private life Colonel Eckersley Plumpfield, of 17 Carlyle Street.

  The party descended into the shelter to view the body.

  “Anyone know him?” the Inspector demanded.

  No one did.

  “Dig him out,” the Inspector ordered, and the unhappy constable, aided by the even less happy Mr. Poplett, went to work. It was easy work, for the whole structure of bags was on the point of collapse. Indeed, the Kinghofs and Colonel Plumpfield managed to back up the steps only a second before it fell on them.

  The body was well nourished. It was that of a tall, plump man in the early sixties. His countenance, or such of it as could be seen through the initial blur of decomposition, was far from prepossessing, and a fish-shaped mole just below his right eye did little to improve matters. He was dressed simply in a warden’s uniform: a navy-blue boiler suit with embroidered pocket. He wore nothing beneath it; on his sockless feet were very new Wellington boots of regulation A.R.P. pattern.

  “Was this man a warden?” the Inspector asked Clem.

  “Not that I know of, sir. Not unless he’s a new man from some other part of the district. I know the personnel”—Clem put the accent on the second syllable—“pretty well, because it was me that had the giving-out of uniforms and they was all signed for by the perspective wearer.”

  “Interesting to find out if there’s a warden going around without a uniform,” said Mr. Kinghof.

  The Inspector looked at him with displeasure. “I expect we’ll be finding out everything like that, sir.”

  “There wouldn’t have to be a warden without a suit,” said Clem. “There’s a whole stock in the basement at the Town Hall. People go in and come out all day, and almost anyone could have pinched one without being seen.”

  “I see. Thanks. I know you, don’t I?”

  “Clement Poplett, sir, Post C. That’s the one in Featherstone Mews.”

  “Ah. Um. Well, Poplett, I think you might as well be getting back there. I may want you again tomorrow, and you’ll be called at the inquest.”

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut,” said Clem, staunchly, “not a word of this out of me.”

  “You can do as you please,” the unappreciative Inspector told him, and Clem went gratefully back to his duty, mentally improvising his tale as he went.

  “And I shan’t need Mrs. Kinghof any more today. Have you got the address, Frankson?”

  “8, 3 Block, Stewarts Court,” said the constable.

  Just then the doctor came, a bright little man called Patrickson, who loved a good crime and saw few of them.

  “I’d as soon stick around for a while,” said Agnes, pleasantly.

  “Not down here, madam. Good night.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Kinghof retired to the top of the steps.

  “We can’t get in,” said Agnes, “unless the porter’s home from the pictures. I’ve lost my key.”

  Mr. Kinghof swore. “And I’ve left mine in Norfolk. Curse you, girl! For that, you can just cut along and see if Blake’s home yet. I’ll wait for you here.”

  She was some time gone, for Blake had dropped into the “Green Doe” on his way home and did not arrive back on his own doorstep till nine-thirty. In the meantime the doctor made his examination and Mr. Kinghof, eavesdropping, heard him say, “Not less than fourteen days or more than twenty, but that’s only an opinion. The damp has helped him.”

  Mr. Kinghof, his curiosity satisfied, retired into the car, where he awaited his wife’s return. She came up at last, tired, cross and damp, dangling the key on her little finger.

  “He wants it back first thing tomorrow. I’ll go in and make up the fire while you park the car. Have you had any supper? There’s nothing in the house.”

  “Luckily for you,” he shouted, as he drove off, “I had a snack at Chelmsford on my way through.”

  If there was no food, at least there was whisky. Within fifteen minutes, their tempers restored, they were sitting in the lounge before a bright fire, decanter, siphon, cigarettes and potato crisps on the table before them.

  “This is a nice place,” said Andrew appreciatively, drawing his wife into the circle of his arm. “I like old-fashioned flats. What’s the use of modern ones? Never room to swing even a mouse in, and flues jutting out all over the place. What are we paying for this?”

  “Three pounds a week,” Agnes replied, with satisfaction. Both persons of substance in their own rights, they could have afforded three times the amount.

  “Wonderful. Know what it costs at Bingham Court? From five upwards, for nice, miserable little flats with the lavatory in the bathroom and the hall running through the bedrooms and the sink in the lounge. And we’re only twenty minutes from town. You’re a marvellous house-hunter, my dear.”

  They had moved five times in two years of married life. They were restless people.

  “Everything’s marvellous,” Agnes murmured, a little affected by the whisky. “I hope you get a nice long leave so we can solve the murder.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t our murder,” he answered with regret. “We don’t even know the corpse.”

  “Oh, we will,” she replied confidently.

  *

  The second shock of that night was heralded by a midnight visit from Mrs. Rowse, who was Phyllada Rounders, author of The Saddest Girl in the Sixth, and other popular stories for growing girls. Mrs. Rowse lived with her friend, Mrs. Adelaide Foster Sibley, and it was on the latter’s account that she ran down, in pigtails and flannel dressing-gown, to summon the assistance of the Kinghofs.

  It happened like this. Andrew and Agnes had been in bed for about an hour. Andrew was now asleep and Agnes, in a delightful golden drowse, was thinking how pleasant it was to have a husband. She was thinking so deeply about this that the sound of the service lift creaking up the wall and, after a few moments, creaking down again, did not strike her as a strange one. Nor was she particularly interested by a dim, catlike howl from the flat above followed by a tattoo of heels on the floor. Noisy devils, she thought mildly. Darling Andrew, how lovely it is to have him home. Damn the Army, I wish I were a vivandière, so I could watch him being a Captain. I wonder if he’ll get into trouble for taking no action about the gunner who threw butter at the bombardier? Even if Andrew didn’t like the bombardier, and said he wished it had been half a brick, he can’t behave like that… I hope he stays home long enough to catch the murderer.

  Then the door-bell rang, rang insistently through the stuffy darkness.

  Ag
nes switched on the bedside lamp and sought for her gown and slippers. Andrew grunted and slept on. She ran down the passage, lit up the hall and opened the door. Mrs. Rowse, yellow flannel girdled about her shaking fat, her yellow-white plait whipping on her shoulders, precipitated herself into Agnes’s arms.

  “Oh, Mrs. Kinghof, Mrs. Kinghof! Can you come up? It’s terrible. Poor Adelaide’s having hysterics and I can’t deal with her. She saw a pig at the window.”

  Agnes raised a hand for silence. She must, she thought, allow this information to sink in.

  “A pig, you said?”

  “Yes, shining horribly… it was bluish, she told me… just the head. You see, I hadn’t gone to bed. I was working in the study, finishing Chapter VII. I was just on the part where Fernia Prideaux is suspected of stealing Thelma Thombleson’s lacrosse shoes and she can’t clear herself so the girls send her to Coventry, and I suppose I was absorbed in my work, because Addie must have been screaming for at least a minute before I heard her…”

  “Wait here,” said Agnes sternly. “I’m going to fetch my husband.”

  In a moment or so she returned with him, sleepy-eyed, grumbling, cursing all pigs; but on seeing Mrs. Rowse’s pitiable condition he spoke kindly to her and bade her tell her story.

  “She says she was lying in bed, with the black-out curtains open—she always opens them before she goes to sleep as she must have fresh air—when she heard a tap on the window. She looked up, and there it was grinning at her—a pig’s head, all shining and blue, with the snout pressed against the pane. Then it disappeared, and there was a long creaking noise, and then she just had hysterics.”

  “Nightmare?” Andrew enquired dubiously. “What did she have for dinner?”

  “Look here,” said Agnes, “the creaking was the service lift. I heard it, only it didn’t strike me as funny that it should be working at midnight. The pig came up on that.”

  Andrew said, “You go up and try to calm Mrs. Sibley. I’m going down the well to investigate. Mrs. Sibley’s bedroom is in the same position as ours, isn’t it, with the kitchen next door? Well, if someone went up on the lift and pushed the pig’s head against the window, a second person must have been cranking the lift from below. Go on, darling, rush to Mrs. Sibley’s aid, and yell out like fun if you see any more pigs. I’ll hear you.”

  Chapter Two

  When she had gone, taking with her the weeping Mrs. Rowse, Andrew got into trousers, sweater and overcoat and went downstairs, out of the front door, through the third block area shelter into the well. His first discovery was that one person only had been concerned in the terrifying jest played upon Mrs. Sibley. On the lift stood an old paint-bucket, and wedged through the side of this, at an angle of forty-five degrees, was a long cane.

  When the lift was hauled up to the level of Mrs. Sibley’s kitchen sill, the top of the stick would have reached the middle of her bedroom window. Therefore the pig’s head, if pig’s head it was, had been fixed on the stick, and the joker himself had cranked the lift. A risky joke, surely? But there were few people in Block 3 who would have been likely to hear the midnight creaking save Mrs. Sibley, who had been meant to hear it, and Mrs. Kinghof, who had, in fact, actually heard it. Suppose the latter had looked out of her window. But she was notoriously a heavy sleeper. Her heavy sleeping was one of her favourite topics. Who else? Five of the flats had been evacuated at the start of war.† To the third block of Stewarts Court there were the flats. Numbers 1, 2, 6, 7 and 9 were vacant. The Kinghofs lived in Number 8, with Mesdames Sibley and Rowse immediately above in Number 10. Mr. Warrender, who was seldom seen by the tenants as he worked late nights at a Government office, lived in Number 4. Opposite him, to the left of the staircase, was Felix Lang, the medical student, who lived in Number 3. Above Mr. Lang was the Frenchwoman, Madame Charnet, who was a comparative newcomer. Well, Madame Charnet was deaf. Mr. Warrender slept at home only at week-ends. Mr. Lang—

  † See plan in front of book.

  Andrew heard a pleasant voice in his ear. “That you, Mr. Kinghof?”

  By torchlight, he saw the young man, far from sober, far from dry, and far from dismal.

  “Lang?”

  “That’s me. I say, I’ve locked myself out. Just come home, put my key in the door, opened it, took key out, dropped it in the hall, then found I’d dropped my wallet on the outside mat, stepped out to get it and the door swung to. Been to a party.”

  “So I see,” said Andrew suspiciously.

  “I was going to try and climb up the pipe. My window’s open. Bit of a job, though, climbing, I mean. Been to a party. I suppose you couldn’t crank me up on the lift?”

  Andrew said sharply, “Was it you playing a fool joke with a pig’s head?”

  “Pig? What are you talking about, pig? Just got home, I tell you. Been to a party. Oh, ‘This little piggy went to party, And this little piggy stopped a tome—’”

  “Shut up! Do you want to wake the dead?” Andrew’s words echoed disagreeably in his own mind. “Lang, where was this party?”

  “Party? How’sh’d I know? Been to lots. Don’t know which one was the last.”

  “You may have to remember.”

  “Don’ wanna remember. Wanna go home.”

  Mr. Lang sounded tearful. Andrew said suddenly: “Right! I’ll shove you up on my shoulders and you can grab the pipe where it bends round.”

  “Wanna go up on the lift,” said Mr. Lang fretfully. “Poor Felix wansh go on lift.”

  “Well, you can’t! Get along now!” Andrew used his parade-ground voice. “I haven’t got all night.”

  Bundling up the round young man, he assisted him on his way. Throwing, against all regulation, the light of his torch upwards, he saw Mr. Lang shin pretty featly up the pipe and disappear through his window.

  If his story’s true, thought Andrew, he was out… And Madame Charnet’s deaf, and Warrender’s at work, and Agnes is a sound sleeper… so whoever did this knew a great deal about the flats. “An inside job,” he murmured importantly. Then he had an idea.

  Leaving the well, he went up to a policeman who was guarding the entrance of Number 2 shelter, where a dead man had been unearthed earlier that evening.

  “I say, officer!”

  The constable did not respond very readily to this flattering form of address. He was feeling his position acutely. “Yes, sir?”

  “Did you see anyone go into Number 3 shelter about twenty minutes ago?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes. What’s up?”

  “Nothing much. Perhaps you just weren’t looking that way.”

  “Nobody’s been near there. Nor near any of the shelters. Nobody.”

  “You didn’t hear a service lift going up and down?” Andrew asked this rather hopelessly, hardly expecting that the noise could have been heard so far away.

  “No, sir. Look here, what’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m Captain Kinghof, Number 8, Block 3. I just thought I heard someone mucking about the lift in our well. Must have been mistaken.”

  “Must’ve,” said the constable. “No one’s even been along the street.”

  “Sorry to have bothered you. Good night. Oh, I say, you guarding the scene of the crime?”

  “Look here, who told you—”

  “Oh that’s all right. You ask the Inspector. My wife was with young Poplett when he was found. Good night.”

  The constable glared, but did not answer.

  Andrew went home, where he found his wife before the lounge fire finishing the whisky. After reproving her for her greed, he told her of his deductions, and of the odd behaviour of Mr. Lang.

  “So you see, if no one went into the well from the street, someone got in there from inside the block. It’s easy enough. Flat 2’s vacant, and it was open tonight, because someone’s been altering the lock—Blake, I suppose. I had a look at it as I came in. Anyone in this building could have gone into Number 2 and out of the window. And who
ever played the pig-trick knew the habits of the residents pretty well.”

  “But, Andy—”

  “I hate being called Andy.”

  “But, Andy, who could have done it? Only Madame Charnet or Mr. Warrender, if Felix Lang was really out, as he says.”

  “Only Charnet—but that’s ridiculous—or Lang. Warrender’s at work.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. On my way down from drenching Mrs. Sibley with sal volatile I saw a light under his door, so I knocked, and asked him if he’d heard the lift. He said no, he’d had his gramophone on. He’d come back from work with a cold and was making a holiday of it. He’s got a cold all right. Sneezed all over me, disgusting man.”

  “Did anyone hear his gramophone?”

  “Don’t be silly. The flats above and below his are empty.”

  “Then it must have been Lang! I mean, you can’t imagine poor doddering Charnet climbing out of windows.”

  “But suppose Lang has an alibi?”

  “If he had, the thing would become plain impossible; only I don’t suppose we’ll be able to investigate him. You can’t badger the police about a silly thing like this.”

  “It’s rather beastly, isn’t it? Thank God we keep our blinds drawn. I’d be sick with fright if a pig looked in at me. Andy, I’m going round the local butchers tomorrow to see if they’ve sold a pig’s head to anyone.”

  He took the glass fondly from her and ruffled her pretty blonde hair. “This isn’t the way to spend my first night’s leave. Come on, you.”

  They returned to bed. As Agnes clambered back into the mussed sheets her husband said, “What lovely legs you’ve got! I do love you. What fun we do have, don’t we?”

  “Fun!” Agnes agreed sleepily, turning upon him an angel’s smile that gave her a charm which might have startled the disappointed women, had they been fortunate enough to see it.

  *

  Mr. Kinghof, who was accustomed to wearing battle-dress around the place, put on his dress uniform the next morning to accompany his wife on a round of the butchers’ shops. He fancied it would be as well to look as impressive as possible. They drew a blank. At shop after shop they met with uncomprehending stares, and at several of the multiple stores with that frozen variation of the horse-laugh that was, in later stages of the war, to become so familiar to customers who were not Our Registered. They returned disconsolately, wandering along from saloon bar to saloon, and filled in the rest of the time before lunch by looking at the bookstall in James Crescent, at the cinema posters, and into the window of the theatrical costumiers who had been exhibiting a cavalier’s suit for so long that the moths had founded a colony in the feathers around the black hat. When they got back to Number 8, they met Mrs. Sibley on the stairs.