Death Before Breakfast (19 page)

‘And after he died, did you drive out the dairy runabout and take him to the canal and dispose of the body?'

‘I'd nothing to do with that. When I got to my place next mornin', they said Jourin had died in the night and the body had vanished. I knew Macready had removed it.'

‘He says he didn't. The wounded man tried to get away from Peeples' house, started a pulmonary haemorrhage, and died in July Street. Then, after an interruption by a passer-by, who went on without a word about it, the body was removed. Macready says it wasn't his doing.'

‘He's a liar, then. That's what I get for being his friend. I agreed not to speak to a soul about what had happened and so did Trodd, who was the only other one at the garage. Macready said he'd attend to the wounded Frenchie till he was fit to travel again and get away. I agreed to stay mum. This is what I get. He's trying to put the blame for the stabbing on me.'

‘You and the doctor don't seem to have synchronised
your stories properly, Mr. Barnes, although I'm sure you rehearsed them well enough the night he and his sister were here. The doctor told me that Jourin's lung was punctured and he hadn't a ghost of a chance of survival, even in hospital.'

‘He didn't tell me that. I suppose he kept quiet about it to get me to agree to his proposal. I tell you, you can't pin anything on me, except that I helped fix up the wounded man decently. No crime in that, is there?'

‘We'll attend to that later. We'll go round and visit the doctor together, Mr. Barnes, and see if we can't get a proper arrangement of the story.'

‘No need to be sarcastic about it. I did my best. If I'd known what would be the result, I'd have had the chap in hospital right away and be damned to Macready.'

‘And be damned to the diamonds, as well?'

‘I know nothing about any diamonds. I don't know why you keep harping on diamonds. You can't prove anything except the truth I've told you.'

‘We'd better confirm that with the doctor, too, when we visit him.'

‘It's Sunday and I'm not going out. I've a right to my rest and privacy, without the damned police coming in and spoilin' it.'

Sammy Barnes had already drunk three stiff whiskies and his eyes were beginning to sparkle and his cheeks grow red.

‘I really don't know why you've called, Super., if not by way of bein' sociable. Is there anythin' more you want to talk about? If not, I must be gettin' along to my meal. Then, I'm off to the garage to count and enter the day's takings. Or, perhaps you'd like to stay for a meal with us… ?'

His eyes twinkled. He thought he was in the clear and was almost exultant.

‘I suppose that, being a friend of the Macready's, you'll know that this murder in July Street has made Miss Macready a widow. …'

Barnes struggled from the depths of his armchair and sat upright.

‘Really, Super., I think the strain of the case is drivin' you up the wall. Grace isn't married.'

‘Yes, she is, Mr. Barnes. She's Mrs. Etienne Jourin. And don't tell me you don't know it. Don't tell me either that you didn't know what Jourin was doing here on the night he was stabbed, because you're up to your neck in this case, like the rest of the July Street gang. You were all in it on the night Jourin died; carrying him in the garage and concealing him in your private office; transferring him across to Peeples' place; removing the body and chucking it in the canal after Jourin died; and then getting your heads together to conceal the crime and your shares in it. I know most of what happened. Except who stabbed Jourin. Before the night's out, I'm going to know that, too.'

As if to deprive Littlejohn's statement of the dramatic element, a fire-engine passed in the street, siren wailing, moving hell for leather.

‘There must be a fire somewhere,' said Barnes. He was smiling again, now, puffing his little short-stemmed pipe with obvious satisfaction.

‘Have another drink.'

‘Not just now.'

‘I'm glad you called. Sunday's a bit of a bore. In fact, it's just hell. I don't know what to do with myself if Ada doesn't want to go out for a run.'

‘I suppose you called it off to-day because you were afraid to go far on account of the police. Isn't that it?'

Barnes shrugged.

‘You said that, not me.'

There was a malicious smile on Barnes's lips. His appearance seemed to have changed, hardened. He looked like a man who holds the best hand at cards.

‘You've had a wasted journey, Super., if you thought you were going to get anything out of me. I mind my own business. What Macready and sister do, or did, isn't of any interest. It's up to them to get out of the mess you say they're in. But I must say, they've been a bit close with me not telling me it was Grace's husband who was killed. Why isn't she in mourning?'

He laughed outright at the thought of it.

‘It would suit her, wouldn't it?'

‘I don't suppose she cares. She's probably found out the type of man Jourin was. A girl in every port. Grace is one of many, I think.'

Mrs. Barnes entered timidly.

‘Shall I keep your tea warm?'

‘Oh, for God's sake, Ada, don't bother me now! The Super's trying to prove I committed a murder, and here you are, worryin' about the stewed tripe and cowheel. Eat it all yourself.'

Mrs. Barnes looked horrified and fled.

Barnes was thoroughly down in the mouth now. His pipe had gone out and he was helping himself to another whisky.

‘You wouldn't think, would you, that I once arranged to buy a house in the Thames valley? I've done well in business. There's a few round here who think a lot of themselves that I could buy-up, lock stock and barrel. … Ada wouldn't move. She said she was used to this neighbourhood. Look at it. …'

He pointed savagely through the window, at the sad trees of the recreation ground overhanging the wall and dripping with moisture in the dusk. The teenagers were still about in little knots, the girls screaming and talking in
shrill voices, the boys strutting about and pushing them around.

‘… And my only daughter married a scrap-iron merchant and lives in Stockwell.'

He gave Littlejohn another savage look.

‘You needn't think I've always been like this; fat and hardly able to move about for weight. I was young and slim once, and ambitious. I made up my mind that nobody was goin' to push me around for need of money. And I set out and made money. What good has it done me? None. I'm here rotting within half a mile of where I was born.'

‘Why are you telling me this, Mr. Barnes?'

Littlejohn knew very well, but Barnes would never confess. It was a polite form of third-degree that was going on. Barnes, bored to death in spite of the money he didn't know how to spend, rotting on a Sunday afternoon, thinking what he might have done, and seeking a pal to tell all about it. Give him time and he'd say too much.

‘Why am I telling you? I'm telling you because you are the sort of chap I'd have talked intelligently to, the sort of man who'd have been my pal if things had gone as I intended. As it is, if I want to talk to anyone better than those I'm accustomed to mix with, the
Admiral Rodney
type, I've to call on the Macreadys for an hour. They've travelled and so have I. We can swap yarns about the places we've been to and seen, the people we've met. … Nobody around here has been farther than Margate for a trip and a meal of jellied eels. Sometimes I feel as if I'd suffocate.'

He looked it too. Thoroughly browned-off and sorry for himself.

‘So, for a bit of excitement, you teamed-up with the Macreadys and their affairs. Is Grace as soft as she pretends to be, or is she as capable as you and Macready?'

‘She's a very clever woman at painting and music. But somehow or other, she's a bit queer mentally. …'

‘What they call arrested development? The mentality of a child who's never grown-up?'

‘Who told you that? Nothing of the sort. Her brother told me that when she was in her early twenties, she had an unlucky love affair. She actually turned-up at her wedding, but the groom had run away with somebody else. She tried to drown herself. Never the same afterwards. As if the affair had done something to her brain, if you get what I mean.'

‘And then she fell for Jourin and married him.'

‘I know nothing about that. It came as quite a surprise when you told me.'

But his smile was too heavy. He'd known all the time. He took another whisky and soda. His capacity seemed to have no limit.

‘Have another. We still seem to have a bit to talk about. Play the game, Super. Tell me who you suspect of killing Jourin.'

‘I don't suspect anyone. I just don't know. It might have been any of you.'

‘Any of us? And who would
us
be, if you don't mind telling me?'

Littlejohn slowly filled his pipe and lit it.

‘The Macreadys, because Jourin might have double-crossed them. Or, it might be you, because you don't mean to tell me you didn't know that when Jourin turned-up he was heavily loaded with jewellery he'd stolen in one of his latest efforts. Or maybe it was Peeples or Trodd, out to get rich quickly at Jourin's expense. Or, perhaps, as you all seem to want me to believe, someone, an accomplice, followed and killed Jourin because he'd given him the slip and run off with the plunder. …'

‘It's all very interesting. And you've got to decide which one of us did it. Well, I can't help you.'

He gave Littlejohn a defiant look and then cast his eyes
round the room as though trying to find someone else to defy as well.

‘How long have you been blackmailing Macready?'

Barnes looked Littlejohn full in the face. He had to force himself to do it. Then he pretended to be looking for the syphon again and fiddled with his glass.

‘Come off it, Super. Why should I be blackmailing Macready? Is this a new trick to trap me?'

‘Do you remember when he was comfortable and in practice down the road, how one night he approached you to repair a damaged wing on his car. …'

Barnes's eyes kept a furtive watch on Littlejohn, now. He was wondering how much the Superintendent knew. He seemed to be seeking a weak spot in Littlejohn's armour.

‘I think you might be able to tell me the rest, Mr. Barnes.'

‘I remember repairing the wing. Yes. He'd been bumped in a car-park.'

‘That's not what he told you. He thought he'd knocked down and killed a child through speeding on a dark road. Perhaps he had been bumped in the car-park, as you say. You probably guessed that at the time. However, you put things right to prevent the police making sure it was Macready who'd done it. You also fixed him an alibi. You paid a former employee, who was sick in bed, to say the doctor was with him at the time of the accident. That put Macready in your power. You humiliated him so much that he took to drink and almost ruined himself. He'd to give up practice to avoid disgrace.'

‘You can't prove that. I admit I repaired the wing, but, as I said, it had been done in a car-park.'

‘And Peeples did the polishing. …'

‘Who said?'

‘He's an expert at it.'

‘It's so long ago that I've forgotten.'

‘Perhaps Peeples hasn't.'

‘Isn't it time you were going. My tea's spoiling.'

Barnes was frowning now, wondering where it was all leading.

‘Did you know that it wasn't the doctor who killed the boy on the bicycle?'

‘ No. I know the police thought it was. …'

‘And you helped him out.'

‘What would you have done for a friend?'

‘A friend who paid you quite a lot after it?'

Barnes started to fume with rage now. Littlejohn seemed to have run him through all the gamut of his emotions during the interview. He looked at his watch. Five-fifteen. Cromwell would be waiting for him in July Street.

‘You might well look at your watch, Super. It's time to go.'

‘I asked if you knew that it was proved later that the doctor didn't kill the boy. Someone who had it on his conscience, confessed he did it. That put the doctor in the clear.'

‘I don't know anything about that. It wasn't in the papers.'

Barnes rose and stretched himself. Littlejohn rose, too. Barnes then yawned and seemed pleased that Littlejohn was taking the hint.

‘I'll see you to the door, then, Super., and then go and see if my tea's still eatable. …'

‘I'm afraid your tea will have to wait a little longer, Mr. Barnes. You're coming with me, sir.'

‘What do you mean? You've no grounds for arrestin' me.'

‘Perhaps not, Mr. Barnes. I wasn't going to do that. We're just off to pay a social call together. … on the Macreadys.'

‘I'm not comin'. I'm staying here and havin' my tea.'

‘You either come to July Street with me, or we go to Divisional Headquarters at Willesden and thrash out matters there.'

‘What matters? I thought you'd wasted enough of my time already.'

‘We're going to see how your story agrees with that of Dr. Macready. Ready, Mr. Barnes?'

Barnes took his cap from the hallstand, slapped it on his head, and followed Littlejohn without another word.

Cromwell was waiting for them in the police car at the end of July Street. He seemed to be having trouble in keeping his passengers in order.

Trodd, his narrow eyes looking narrower than ever, had been on the rampage, threatening what he would do to the Superintendent when he met him. He was wearing grey flannels, a sports coat, and an open-necked shirt. It might have been Spring instead of a miserable November day. A bachelor, Trodd had been enjoying himself with friends at a working-men's club when Cromwell appeared on the scene. He had, at first, resisted Cromwell's polite invitation, made in the privacy of the club vestibule, and Cromwell had had to get tough. Finally, he followed the sergeant, under protest, after explaining to his pals that he was assisting the police in a case and was so important that they couldn't even leave him alone on Sunday. After they'd paid for a drink for him to celebrate this public service, Trodd
got in the car and was borne off as if he'd been the mayor of the place.