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

  If she were fatter than Mrs. Rowse, she was far more delicate. Her face was yellowish under her dyed black hair, and her cheeks trembled with every step she took. Obviously she was badly shaken. It would be a comfort to her if Mrs. Kinghof would climb the remaining flight to take a glass of sherry with her.

  They assented, writing off as a bad debt the headache that would follow Mrs. Sibley’s Sunnymaloo sherry imposed on Dunhill’s whisky, and went in her wake up into her cluttered flat, where stuffed birds and fish, Chinese fern-pots, whatnots, gold pier glasses and walnut chiffoniers jostled one another like creatures in a bad dream. Mrs. Rowse was not to be seen.

  “She’s working,” Mrs. Sibley whispered reverently. “She’s got to the part where Fernia Prideaux hoists the Union Jack on the refugee girls’ bicycle shed. We mustn’t disturb her.”

  They spoke in hushed voices.

  “Tell me, Mr. Kinghof, have you come to any conclusion about the… animal?” Mrs. Sibley swallowed, and became a shade whiter.

  “We have thought the matter over,” said Andrew portentously, “and come to the conclusion that you must have had a very distressing nightmare. No—don’t say anything. If it should recur, then I think you should see your medical man; but for the moment I should wipe the whole affair out of your mind.”

  Mrs. Sibley’s face crumpled with such an expression of affront that Agnes hastily interposed a subject that she felt might divert her hostess.

  “Yes, do try, because horrible as your experience has been, something much more horrible happened last night! They found a man, a dead man—”

  “… very dead,” said Andrew.

  “… walled up in the sandbags, in No. 2 Block shelter! In fact, I and an air-raid warden found him.”

  Mrs. Sibley’s eyes bulged and a trickle of sherry ran down her chin. “A murder?”

  “Well, we’re not sure yet. But I should think so, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who was he?”

  “No one knows. The police are trying to find out.”

  “I must get Mrs. Rowse. She always says to me, ‘Addie, never fail to bring to my notice anything that may be copy, anything that may prove valuable to my work.’” Mrs. Sibley rose, took from the mantelpiece a toy shillelagh tied with emerald ribbon and beat a tattoo on the wall.

  “I shouldn’t have thought murders were in her line,” Agnes murmured. “There weren’t any in the school stories I used to read.”

  “Mrs. Rowse never knows what she may wish to write. ‘One day,’ she says, ‘I hope to write an English epic.’ Ah, there you are, dear!”

  The author wandered in, pen in hand, ink on the lace vest tucked down the vee of her purple marocain morning gown, and her lips were moving over fair words. “‘Fernia tossed her mane of auburn hair. “You may think I’m a common thief,” she said, “but I’ll show you, I’m British!” Thelma Thombleson sneered vindictively…’ Yes, dear, what is it?”

  “There’s been a murder in No. 2 shelter!” Mrs. Sibley cried.

  “‘—sneered vindictively, fingering her prefect’s medal.’ A murder? Goodness, what next?”

  “I should think that would be enough,” said Andrew, “for the time being. We don’t know it’s murder, Mrs. Rowse.” He sketched the story for her benefit.

  “Now tell me,” she said, squatting on a fat pouffe at his feet and patting his knee in intimate fashion, “because all this is grist to my mill. What did he look like? Omit nothing. You are observant, I know it. Omit no tiny detail. What may seem insignificant to you may not seem so to me.”

  “Well,” said Andrew briskly, with the air of one who is pleased to oblige, “he was tall, fat, sixtyish and had no clothes on—”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Rowse commented faintly.

  “Except for an A.R.P. overall and Wellington boots. He had just begun to decompose and he was smothered in wet earth and sand.”

  “He had a long, thin nose,” Agnes continued, “slightly hooked, and a very small mouth. His eyebrows were tufty and thick and under his left eye he had a reddish birthmark rather like a fish—”

  There came an unnerving thump. Mrs. Sibley had fainted.

  For the second time in twenty-four hours she was restored with sal volatile. When she opened her eyes she said, “That’s my brother, Reg. Reg Coppenstall. I haven’t seen him for thirty years.”

  *

  This was shock number three; but before lunch Andrew and Agnes were to receive shock number four. They left Mrs. Sibley in the care of her friend, telling her that they would immediately convey her statement to the police. They had just left the flat when Andrew, who had held the door open to permit his wife’s egress, gave an exclamation of disgust and turned to inspect the Sibley portal.

  It was an ordinary sort of door, coated with rather dingy white paint, the handle and letter-box polished by a careless daily help (Mrs. Sibley kept no maid) who had left smears of Bluebell in the mouldings. Today, however, it presented an extraordinary appearance, having upon it a sort of grey shine. Andrew touched the surface gingerly, withdrew his fingers, which were now sticky and glistening, held them out for his wife’s inspection and then, making a grimace of repulsion, put them to his lips.

  He said, “Lard!”

  Agnes said quickly, “Or pig. Andrew, this is getting nasty. I don’t like it one little bit. What on earth shall we do?”

  “Well, don’t tell the old ladies yet. They’re unlikely to leave the flat before the police get here, so they won’t discover it. This is a police matter. For all we know it may have some connection with the late Coppenstall, if she’s right in her identification. Pah! The funny man’s smeared every inch of the door.”

  “I’m going round the flats to see who’s in.”

  “You’re not. You’re coming to the police station.”

  “You go. Good heavens, Andrew, every minute counts!”

  He said drily, “Does it?” but was content to follow at a more leisurely pace as she tore off down the two flights to the flat of Madame Charnet.

  Agnes called up the staircase, “She’s out.” By the time Andrew, too interested to mend his pace, had drawn level with her black tricorne hat, she had found nobody at all at home. As they went through the main door, they met Madame Charnet coming in with a basket of shopping. She was a dried woman of middling height and indeterminate age. She wore rather thick glasses and, surprisingly, a lot of lipstick. Her coat had a paisley pattern, and frizzed brown hair of an indefinite shade showed beneath her brown and orange turban.

  “Bonjour, madame,” Agnes said.

  Madame nodded, smiled in the vague fashion of the very deaf, and said loudly in English: “Vairy cold!”

  “Very. Been shopping?”

  “Eh?”

  “Shopping?”

  “Ah, oui! Oui. It takes so long. The shops are so full. What do you say, so crowded?”

  She passed on, nodding and smiling, dropped a lemon halfway up the first flight and thanked Andrew elaborately when he caught it on its third bounce and ran after her with it. “Merci, monsieur, merci beaucoup!”

  He and Agnes bowed acknowledgment and set off for the police station at a good pace. “Counts her out, Andy. Why isn’t Warrender in, or wouldn’t he answer the door? He shouldn’t be out, with a cold like that. Lang would be out anyway.”

  “Wrong on three points. Madame isn’t counted out, because she could quite well have come in during her shopping, smeared the door with some nice new lard and made off again. I don’t think she did, though. There’s no need to make a mystery of Warrender, because he’s probably gone to the early show at the Odeon. He’s mad about the pictures, he told me once, and I suppose if he does get time off he likes to amuse himself, cold or no cold. Point three, you don’t know Lang’s out. He may not have gone to the hospital.”

  “I am outwitted,” said Agnes, generously.

  They went into the dingy police station and enquired of the sergeant if the Inspector was about.

  They were asked to state their business.

  “Well,” Andrew said, “we think we’ve identified the corpse in the shelter.”

  The sergeant stared at him. “You Mr. Kinghof, sir?”

  “I remember you. You ought to remember me.”

  “You came in last night. Your lady found the body.”

  “Helped by Clem Poplett. Clem did the real finding.”

  The sergeant turned abruptly to the constable, who during this exchange had been sitting as reservedly by the desk as the wax policeman in Madame Tussaud’s. “Get the Inspector, Harris.”

  The Inspector appeared like the demon king before the constable was halfway across the room. “’Morning, madam, ’morning, sir. I was sending round to you this afternoon.”

  “They say they can identify the corpse, sir.”

  The Inspector, whose name, surprisingly, was Eggshell, glanced at them sharply and his eye brightened. “You can? Who is he?”

  “Well, we can’t actually identify him, because we don’t know him, but we know someone who can. Mrs. Sibley of Flat 10, our block—that’s the flat above us—says it may be her brother, Reginald Coppenstall. Oh, yes, and the most extraordinary things have been happening round there! Pigs’ heads and lard on the front door.”

  “Get me Frankson!” snapped Eggshell.

  Frankson was got.

  “We’ll go round to Number 10 now, sir, if you please,” Eggshell said, and they all set off.

  The door was opened, after the Inspector had duly inspected it, by the unsuspecting Mrs. Rowse.

  “I should like to see Mrs. Sibley, please.”

  Vaguely she picked up an envelope from the mat.

  “Inspector—er—Eggshell,” he said diffidently. He had never become accustomed to the sound of his own name.

>   Mrs. Rowse, however, did not move. She was turning over the envelope, which was a hideous shade of pink, addressed in huge block letters to ma sibley. It was not stuck down. “I’d better see this before I give it her,” she said doubtfully, and her voice trembled. “If it’s something nasty… especially coming after the pig…” She took out the folded sheet, of the same obstreperous pink, and as she read it she flushed.

  “Give that to me,” Eggshell said sharply.

  Andrew and Agnes managed to read it over his shoulder. It contained only seven words, printed in staggering capitals, “greasy fellow aren’t i? the pig-sticker.”

  “Yes,” said Eggshell. “Very well, madam, I’ll take care of this.”

  Followed by the Kinghofs, the constable and Mrs. Rowse, he intruded himself upon Mrs. Sibley.

  Chapter Three

  Mrs. Sibley, brought back half-fainting in a police-car from her very positive identification of the corpse, was, after ministrations by Mrs. Rowse and Mrs. Kinghof lasting three-quarters of an hour, in a position to answer questions. First of all, however, she had her own question to ask. “How did he die?”

  “Not to bother you with technicalities, madam, he was shot through the back,” said Eggshell, “at close range.” He gulped. “Death, I’m glad to say, must have been instantaneous. Now, madam, if it won’t distress you too much—”

  “She’ll answer,” said Mrs. Rowse defiantly, “she’ll answer anything you have to put to her. She’ll answer up like an Englishwoman, won’t you, Addie dear? Courage. Courage.”

  Eggshell said drily, “If you’ll please leave us, Mrs. Rowse—”

  “No! No! Phyllada mustn’t leave me. I only feel strong when she’s here.”

  Andrew and Agnes, who, by virtue of their good offices, had been permitted to stay for the interrogation on condition they held their tongues, waited eagerly for a rebuke; but Eggshell merely said, “Very well, then, Mrs. Rowse. But you mustn’t interrupt. Now then, Mrs. Sibley: When did you last see your brother?”

  Agnes drew a delighted breath, visualizing Mrs. Sibley in a blue cavalier’s suit.

  “It must have been thirty years ago… Let me see… in 1912, when we were in Tunis.”

  “That would be twenty-nine years. Why Tunis?”

  “My brother was an importer. Dates, it was. Desert Dates, Limited. I went abroad with him that year, the year before I married. He was lonely, because his wife had left him. She ran away with an actor called Steer.”

  “And how was it you lost touch with your brother after that?”

  Mrs. Sibley appeared to hesitate. “After my marriage… there was trouble about money. We had an aunt who had always been fonder of me than of Reginald. When I returned to England I found her in very poor health, so it was natural for me to spend a great deal of time with her. Anyway, when she died, a year later, it was to me she left the greater part of her money.”

  “It was a large legacy?” Eggshell asked diffidently. “You must pardon me, madam.”

  “Seventy thousand pounds.”

  “And she left your brother—?”

  Mrs. Sibley coloured faintly. “Seven hundred.”

  Andrew whistled. Agnes, anticipating Eggshell, shushed him.

  “A great difference. And he resented this?”

  “I’m afraid so. He wrote me a very cruel letter.”

  “You didn’t offer to share your good fortune with him?”

  Mrs. Sibley said sharply, “Certainly not, not after that letter. Besides, he was in an excellent way of business. He didn’t need it, and I did. My husband had suffered considerable financial losses and I wanted to help him rebuild his business… He had become bankrupt. He had lost everything.”

  “His business was—?”

  “Antiques.”

  “I see.”

  Eggshell, no less than Andrew and Agnes, thought that if the bric-a-brac in Mrs. Sibley’s room were a fair sample of Mr. Sibley’s stock, it was no wonder the man failed.

  “What happened to your brother in those intervening years?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know whether he lived here or abroad. He never communicated with me, nor attempted to see me.”

  “You’d never set eyes on him from that day to—to this?”

  “No.” Mrs. Sibley dabbed her eyes and rolled up the wet handkerchief into a ball.

  “Despite the separation, you were fond of your brother?”

  “Of course she was!” Mrs. Rowse interposed excitably. “Isn’t blood thicker than water? Isn’t it natural that with all his faults, she—”

  It was Mrs. Sibley who stopped her. Staring from Eggshell to her friend with an odd and rather touching dignity, she said, “No, Phyllada. I’m going to tell them the truth. Inspector, I was so disgusted with my brother’s reception of my good fortune that the affection I had for him died… I never cared to hear his name after that. What is affecting me now is shock, not grief.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I take it—I take it that your brother suspected you of undue influence with your aunt?”

  “I am not interested in what he may or may not have suspected. I only know how cruel he was.”

  “Yes. Thank you. Well, madam, I’m not going to trouble you further today, though I’m afraid I must call you at the inquest, but you’ll be spared as much as possible. Oh, one minute. This practical joking. Have you any suggestions to make? Any suspicions?”

  She coloured; opened her mouth, shut it tightly.

  “No? Well, we’ll keep an eye on the flats here, and I hope you won’t be troubled again. I’ll bid you good day. Mr. Kinghof, I’d like a further word with you and your wife. Will you come along, please?”

  “Come to our flat,” said Andrew, “we can talk there.”

  Mrs. Rowse saw them to the door. To Andrew and Agnes she said, “You’ve been so kind, so thoughtful! I hope, when my book is published, to be able to make a small return, if you’ll honour me by accepting an autographed copy. Oh, I know my little effort may seem rather juvenile to you, but I flatter myself that it is written in good, pure English, and after all, I often have letters from quite elderly people… A bishop wrote to me once, saying how much pleasure and profit he had had from Cuckoo Delahaye: Mischief of the Fifth. And the year before that, when I wrote—”

  Tactfully they managed to clip the flow, and in a moment or so were in the blissful quiet of Number 8.

  Eggshell refused a drink, but accepted a cigar. “Now, Mr. Kinghof. About this pig business.”

  “Will you let me tell it in my own way? I’ve got ideas on the subject.”

  The Inspector slowly nodded. “Fire away.”

  So Andrew and Agnes, in chiming duologue, related the grotesque tale, and told him the results of their minor investigations. “So you see,” Agnes finished, “it must have been someone in the flats! It couldn’t have been an outsider.”

  Eggshell shook his head. “Not certain. The constable said no one went into the shelter, but he may have been mistaken. It’s not easy to see in the black-out, and that’s a dark street anyway.”

  Agnes looked her disappointment.

  “Oh, come, madam,” he said kindly, “we can’t be sure one way or the other. On the face of it, though, I don’t fancy your suspects unless young Lang is playing games.”

  Andrew plunged boldly. “Look here, Eggshell, there’s a link to this business—the pig and the body.”

  “You think so, sir? And what’s your idea?”

  “You’ve got an idea yourself?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Let’s hear yours.”

  “Well, suppose Coppenstall thought her a pig for taking the money—which obviously he did. Don’t you think someone connected with him might be impressing the fact on her?”