Case for Sergeant Beef (13 page)

‘Twelve years. He was only there for a year or so, then he sold the business and went in for professional punting. He was always fond of the horses.'

‘So a friendship which started just by you being neighbours in business has lasted all these years?'

‘Well, I was sorry for Shoulter. And for his sister. I've tried to help him on and off. But he was a fellow who would not help himself.'

‘So I've gathered. You also knew Mr Chickle, I think?'

‘Not very well. He's been here once or twice and I've met him at Edith Shoulter's. Seems a harmless little chap.'

‘Met him anywhere else, sir?'

‘Not that I can remember.'

‘I believe you mentioned to Miss Shoulter that he had been hanging about at a certain spot in the wood.'

‘Oh, that. You shouldn't take me too seriously, you know. I believe I met him once by that fallen tree and mentioned it to Edith Shoulter. Quite a casual meeting.'

‘Ah. What was he doing there?'

‘Doing? Nothing. He was just there.'

‘I see. You have a gun, Mr Flipp?'

‘I have.'

‘What kind is it?'

‘A twelve-bore.'

‘When did you use it last?'

‘About three years ago. I used to do a bit of duck shooting on some marshy land in Sussex, but I've had to give it up since nineteen-forty.'

‘Would you have any objection to my seeing your gun?'

‘Not the slightest. I'll bring it along.'

Beef examined the gun carefully, squinting down the barrel like an officer on an arms inspection in the army.

‘Been cleaned recently,' he remarked.

For the first time Flipp showed irritation.

‘Of course it has. I know how to look after a gun.'

‘Yes. I see you do.'

Beef put the gun down and stood up.

‘I've nothing more to ask you at present,' he said, and rather rudely made his way into the hall before our host could accompany us.

There was a queer little scene by the front door. When Flipp arrived Beef was already wearing a light-coloured raincoat which I am sure he had not had on when we arrived. Flipp stared at him for a moment.

‘Isn't that my raincoat?' he said.

Beef examined it and then appeared abashed.

‘Why, so it is!' he said. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Flipp. I've got one just like it at home and took it without thinking.'

He replaced it on the peg and we took our leave

‘Whatever did you do that for?' I asked.

Beef's voice became conspiratorial.

‘Just as I hoped,' he said. ‘One of the pocket linings Is adrift.' And he chuckled to himself.

That afternoon we had a conference with Inspector Chatto in the small private room at the Crown, which chatty little Bristling arranged for us with a good deal of talkative pleasure.

‘You sleuths want somewhere you can be quiet in, I know,'
he said. ‘Well, when you want your tea, shout out. I suppose you'll be deciding who's guilty this afternoon?”

‘That's most unlikely,' I told him. ‘The investigation is still in its initial stages.'

‘Oh, I see. Well, good hunting to you,' he smirked and scurried out to leave the three of us in conclave round the table.

‘I've done my interrogation,' announced Beef. ‘And I think there may be a few bits that are new to you. They've all been willing enough to talk, anyway.'

Referring to his note-book he went painstakingly over the information he had gathered from each of the persons he had seen. I watched Inspector Chatto, who made a few notes, and I gathered that the points which interested him chiefly, either because they were new to him or perhaps because they fitted a theory he had already formed, were these:

(1)
Miss Shoulter's shoes.
He went so far as to admit that the footprints found in the wood
could
have been caused by someone wearing these, though he would not commit himself to more than that. When he heard about the old pair sold to Wellington Chickle at the Jumble Sale he agreed again that this might be the pair. It would be necessary to find out what Chickle had done with them. Beef asked him if he would leave that to him for the moment as he had a theory about those shoes and did not want Chickle questioned just now. Chatto agreed, but warned Beef that it might be necessary in a few days to take it up. Beef would be given warning, though.

(2)
Miss Shoulter's story
of visiting Flipp's house and finding him out that afternoon interested Chatto profoundly and he thanked Beef for bringing it to light. He said it was very important for a reason he would explain later.

(3)
Ribbon's account
of how Flipp sent his servants away was also of paramount interest to Chatto. ‘Of course,' he said, ‘we should have got it in time as I'm going to see the two girls, but it's handy to have it from you first.'

(4)
The postman's story
of Flipp leaving the house that
afternoon Chatto characterized as second-hand, but took a note of it all the same. I could see that his interest was centred on Flipp, especially when he said that since Flipp went into the mixing shed that might well be where he kept his gun.

(5)
Mrs Pluck's ability to shoot
caused Inspector Chatto to smile in a slightly superior way, but he agreed that she ‘needed looking into' and made a note that her alibi for Christmas Eve should be checked as far as possible.

(6) It seemed difficult to interest him in anything connected with Chickle. When Beef told him about Chickle's lie to Miss Shoulter about shooting he said it was ‘natural enough in the circumstances'. After a wordy story by Beef about Chickle's garden measurements he merely asked what about it, and he seemed nearly as amused as the Packhams had been at the curate's story of Chickle crouching behind the fallen tree. Beef did not try to persuade him.

(7) When it came to Mrs Pluck's statement that she had seen Joe Bridge going down the footpath that afternoon, Chatto said he could soon get the truth of that from Bridge. Again Beef begged him to ‘lay off' for as long as he could. Beef still seemed certain that if nobody questioned Bridge he would become so steamed up at being left alone that he would come and volunteer a statement. And one volunteer, proclaimed Beef, was worth six conscripts. If he had heard nothing from Bridge after five days, or if Chatto found it essential before that, he would be questioned.

Finally, when Beef began to touch on Flipp's account of his old acquaintance with Shoulter, Chatto stopped him.

‘I know all about that,' he said. ‘And a lot more. We've not been twiddling our thumbs, you know. I've got a bit of a story for
you
now!'

That's good,' said Beef, and we both adopted attitudes of close attention.

‘W
E
haven't been idle,' said Chatto. ‘But as I told you, we've been working from another angle. Motive is what we looked for, and we've found it. Or more precisely, we've found someone here in the district who seems to have had a very strong motive for killing Shoulter. And that's something to start on.

‘I need not go into all the inquiries we've made, or tell you how we've made them. The picture is fairly complete now, and what you've told me this afternoon goes a long way towards finishing it. A long way, but not right to the end. We've still got to get more direct evidence. But I don't think that will be difficult. My experience is that once you know your man the evidence piles up pretty quickly. All right. Here's the story.

‘Shoulter, as you already know, has never been much good. As a boy at school the only subject in which he showed any interest was chemistry, and his parents, who seem to have indulged him in anything he took a fancy to, encouraged him to make a career of analytical chemistry. He played about with it for a bit, but never took his degree. Then he seems to have been at a loose end for a few years with an allowance from his father and mother. We've got a list of his associates at this time, and although none of them seem to have any connexion with Barnford, they were a pretty bad lot. Several of them have done terms of imprisonment since then.

‘Shoulter gave himself out to be a bachelor. But one man who knew him at this time maintains that he had been married and had left his wife. We haven't any evidence of that yet, though I dare say it will be forthcoming in time. It's surprising how much you can find out of a man's life when you begin to dig into it.

‘What we do know is that not long before the death of Shoulter's father the old man, in an effort to make Shoulter settle down, bought him a small chemist's shop in Gordon Street, Paddington. It wasn't much of a business and Shoulter did not improve the status of it, though he increased the takings. He added rather dubious books and goods to his stock and kept open at night. But he had not a good name in the neighbourhood. From the study of analytical chemistry to keeping a retail shop in Paddington was a bit of a drop, of course, but he had been right down in the meantime, and was lucky to get that chance, and he did not make much of it, as you shall hear.

‘Next door to his shop was a bookmaker's called Mone-quick, Ltd. And here, I hope, is a surprise for you. The managing director's name was Philipson, and we have established that he was none other than our Mr Flipp of “Woodlands”, Barnford. But it's more interesting than that.

‘Philipson lived in Maida Vale and was unhappily married to an invalid wife. He was also known to be associating with a Miss Murdoch. This latter, we learned, had been the only daughter of a florist who had made a fortune and died leaving her three shops and a considerable sum of money, well invested. I say “considerable” since, although we have no exact figures, it is a fairly safe bet that Philipson would not have been interested in her unless her fortune was worth while. She was a pale mousy creature with little character and no personal attraction. Philipson seems to have dominated her without difficulty until she was prepared to follow him without question. But one thing she could not do – that was hand over her money to him in a lump. Her father had been a shrewd old man who had tied it up about as securely as money could be tied, and all she could lay hands on was the income. So
if
Philipson was to enjoy the florist's careful savings and investments he could only do so by marrying her.

‘The set-up is clear, I hope, and not unfamiliar. And the story proceeds according to precedent. Mrs Philipson died suddenly from an overdose of morphine.

‘Yes, there was an inquest, and quite a deal of scandal in the newspapers. It was never of course suggested that Philipson had murdered his wife – the law of libel is still an almighty thing. But newspapers went as near the mark as they dared and people who knew the couple did not hesitate to say it outright.

‘I have read the whole inquest proceedings, and found them most interesting. The post-mortem had revealed the poison all right – the quantity in about five doses. But the doctor who had been attending Mrs Philipson was quite positive about the number of tablets he had prescribed for her, the number he had given Philipson to give her, and the number remaining. It was impossible, he said, for her to have had more than the normal dose from the quantity held by her husband. He had given her
one
tablet on the evening before she died and three remained. This was as it should be.

‘Philipson, too, was positive. The doctor had told him when and how to give his wife the morphine, and he had carried out these instructions to the letter. On the night of her death he had given her one tablet and that was all. He seemed very distressed by her sudden death, but he was able to tell the coroner quite a lot about Mrs Philipson's state of mind which was more or less corroborated by servants and relatives. It appeared that for many years the lady had been suffering from fits of melancholia and it was suggested that she had been in the habit of taking drugs before her illness. A servant spoke of some “tablets” she had seen in her possession, and although there was nothing to show that they had been anything more noxious than aspirin the impression was given that she might have kept concealed her own supply of morphine. At any rate there was an open verdict and Philipson found himself a widower and free to marry the pale and uninteresting Miss Murdoch. This he did about six months later, and has lived comfortably since then on her adequate income. She is, you will have realized, the present Mrs Flipp.

‘Meanwhile Shoulter, who had been a keen if not a very
regular client of Monequick's, the bookmaking business of which Philipson had been managing director, spent more and more time racing and less in his shop until the chemist's business was in a bad way, and he began to look round for a purchaser. He never found one. He had probably allowed it to sink so far that it was worth no one's while to start building it up again. Eventually he sold the remnants of his stock and left the premises, which were taken over by a tobacconist-newsagent who is still there.

‘Now that's the story as we've put it together from a number of reports, and there is only one thing to add to it – the most significant thing of all, perhaps, though it is still not conclusive. We find that Philipson, who by the way changed his name to Flipp when he came to live at “Woodlands”, has been drawing from his bank over the last few years a series of those sums in small denominations which nearly always mean blackmail. You know-fifty or a hundred pounds at a time in one-pound notes every few months. They cannot very well mean anything else.

‘But during the war years, since Flipp came to live at “Woodlands”, these have increased alarmingly, on one occasion being as much as five hundred pounds. And as far as we can check up we find that these withdrawals coincided with the visits of Shoulter to his sister, during which visits, you will remember, he called on Flipp.

‘The analogy is only too plain, and the instrument ot blackmail is almost certainly the poison book which Shoulter must have kept when he had his little pharmacy. If we could lay hands on that I feel sure we should find an entry dated not long before the death of the first Mrs Philipson, which showed that Philipson had purchased and signed for a quantity of morphine. That, of course, is a broad outline. We have yet to interview the doctor who attended Mrs Philipson, since unfortunately he sold his practice and became a doctor on a big liner, then during the war joined the I.A.M.C., and is at present in India. We don't even know whether, if Philipson did sign for morphine, he did so in his own name, or whether Shoulter managed to sell it to him
without a signature. But all this we shall clear up in time. So far as this end of the case is concerned, we've found a man with a motive, which is more than we had before, in spite of all your eccentric old watchmakers and quarrelsome farmers.