Such Is Death (12 page)

“I don't know what you want to ask,” he said, and sat down opposite Carolus with a table between them.

“Nor do I, quite,” admitted Carolus. “I'm foxed by this case. A man has the top of his head smashed in by a coal-hammer in a lonely shelter on a windswept promenade at ten or ten-thirty at night. I know the place, the time and the weapon. I know a few people in the vicinity at the time. Beyond that I know very little. The murder was pre-planned yet I know no one who could have foreseen that the victim would be there.”

Bodger nodded.

“You come to me because I was one of those down there that night?”

“Yes. And because I have been told how you would feel about a collaborator of the Japanese.”

“I see. Well, I was down there that night and I do feel like that about any bastard who collaborated. What's more, I've got what's called a bad name in this town. So perhaps you'd better start by supposing I did it. How's that?”

“Suits me,” said Carolus. “Do you often go down to the promenade?”

“Never, if I can help it. Only to get down to my boat in the summer. Do I look the sort that would go walking up and down there?”

“Frankly, no.”

“I don't know why I did that night. I'd had a bit of a row with the landlord of the Chequers.”

“What about?”

“Something he said I didn't like. I told him what I thought of him, drank up and walked out. You can find plenty to tell you of similar things I've done in the town if you like to look for them. I don't get on much with people.”

“Nor do I. So vou came out of the Chequers?”

“I don't know what made me go across towards the sea. I'd had one or two but I wasn't drunk by a long way. I wanted to hear the sea, I think.”

“To hear it?”

“Yes. I like the sound of the sea, especially on a rough night. It's a sound I'm used to. I don't have any flaming radio or television or that. Don't like ‘em. Lot of talk and I don't go much on music either. But I can listen to the sea for hours. It's never twice the same, you see. I can think, when I hear the sea. Seems to set my mind at rest. Rough and blustering or quiet and gentle, it's all the same to me. I just listen for a bit and I'm right as rain. I don't suppose there are many feel like that, but there it is. That's why I went across that night, I daresay, though I wasn't to know it at the time. I just thought I'd take a walk before coming home for a bit of a read.”

Carolus glanced at a couple of shelves of well-used books.

“You read a lot?”

“Not extra. I like a read now and again. War books and that.”

“Did you notice anyone else on the promenade?”

“Flaming copper.”

“You knew him?”

“Me know a copper? I wouldn't demean myself. I wouldn't know one from another though there isn't one of them that wouldn't swear they knew anyone if it suited them. I saw this bastard's uniform, that's all.”

“Anyone else?”

“I didn't take note of anyone. I daresay there were others about. I was thinking.”

“What time did you come home?”

“It was late,” said Bodger sourly. “I sat in a shelter for a time. Not that last one. Right up the other end, away from that, as it happened. Must have been getting on for eleven when I came back here.”

“You don't remember seeing a short stout man well wrapped up?”

“No. I don't. I don't remember seeing anyone except one couple I know. They come from Australia.”

“Like the murdered man,” reflected Carolus.

“Is that where the bastard had been since the war? I didn't know.”

“What is the name of the couple you met?”

“Oh, they had nothing to do with it. Don't start thinking that. They're harmless as they can be.”

“Still just for the record I'd like their name.”

“Bullamy, it is. They're staying at Pier View, a bit of a boarding house on the front by the jetty.”

“Yes, I've heard about them and seen them. Did you stop to talk with them that evening?”

“No. To tell you the truth I'm not one for talking much. I don't know what's made me tell you as much as I have.”

“You haven't explained what you said when I first came to the door. ‘If I had known who he was I'd have done it myself.'”

“So I would have. I think you know why.”

“I've got an idea.”

“What would you feel about a collaborator if you'd lost your son on the Burma Road? Twenty-one he was when he died. Just had time to do his training and out there to be taken prisoner in his first few weeks. He was my crew on the old boat before the war. Just him and me ran it together. Decent living it gave us then. Good life it was, until the war came along. I always knew there
were
people who worked with those flaming Japs, getting a bit of extra food for giving their mates away, but I'd never met one. If I had, there's no telling what I'd have done.”

“This man Rafter was a notorious collaborator. It was known in the town that the Rafter family had a brother with that reputation.”

“I heard that,” said Bodger. “I'd have told them what I thought about it if it would have done any good. But it wasn't their fault, I suppose.”

“So you knew about Ernest Rafter?”

“I knew there had been such a person though I didn't know his name. He was supposed to be dead, I thought.”

“You had no reason to think he was still alive?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Still less that he had been in London for a fortnight?”

“How should I have known that?”

“I don't know. But you can see that it looks somewhat odd that on the one night when you decide to take a walk on the promenade a man of whose treason you had heard, a man you had particular reason to hate, was murdered in a lonely shelter there.”

“Yes. I see what you mean. I told you you'd better start by suspecting me. But I don't see how you're ever going to get further than suspicion.”

“I may not, but the police may. They have expert means of turning a suspect into a certainty, from fingerprints to a thread of cloth.”

Bodger's face changed not at all.

“I'm not worried,” he said somewhat enigmatically and Carolus rose to go.

He walked back to the car, which was some distance away, for in the maze of narrow streets, some of them cobbled, among which was Bodger's cottage, there was no room for him to drive.

Back at his hotel he went to the bar. The clock above the heads of Doris and Vivienne showed twelve-thirty and Carolus enquired about lunch.

“It's a nice piece of silverside today,” said Doris, “with dumplings and carrots. Jam roll to follow. Cook told me as I came in. But you don't want to go to the dining-room before one o'clock, because they're having
their
lunch then and don't like it if they have to hurry. Well, no one does, do they? We have ours when we close. How are you getting on with your detection?”

“Nicely, thank you,” said Carolus, amused.

“I tell you who's coming in this morning, or at least so they said last night, that's Mistr' an Mrs Bullamy. You know, those two who you saw. Yes, they said they'd
be in this morning. ‘We've got to do a bit of shopping', they said, ‘so we'll just pop in for one before lunch'. To tell you the truth it's Not Much where they're staying. They like to get out when they can. Don't they, Vivienne?”

“Mmmm,” said Vivienne, effectively expressing her entire indifference to the question.

“You can't blame them, really,” went on Doris, who was not easily damped. “Specially when they're on holiday. I think it's upset them being mixed up in this murder, too. Well, it would anyone, wouldn't it? The police questioning them and that. They don't say a lot about it but you can tell. Anyway, I should have a talk to them if I was you. You never know what they may be able to tell you.”

When Mr and Mrs Bullamy came in Carolus found that it was easy enough to get into conversation with them, and that they were quite willing to talk about the murder, alternating chattily.

“I'd like to know what they think we can have had to do with it,” said Mr Bullamy with a suggestion of aggrieve-ment.

“We're just staying here for a holiday,” chimed in his wife. “We'd never heard of the man in our lives. I can't think what they want to ask us about it for.”

“I expect they just wanted to know whether you had seen anything that would help them,” said Carolus.

“We told them we hadn't. I wish now we'd never come to the place.”

“I certainly wish we hadn't decided to go for a walk along the front that night. That's what did it, you see, us being down there not far from the shelter. Silly, though, isn't it, when they must know very well we had nothing to do with it?”

“Do you think we shall be called up as witnesses?”

“It depends on what you saw,” said Carolus.

“There was nothing, really. Only this little fat man all wrapped up in scarves.”

“You didn't see Lobbin while you were down there?”

“No. We didn't see Mr Lobbin. And if we had we shouldn't have thought anything about it. He's a very nice fellow, Mr Lobbin, and no more to do with any murder than the man in the moon.”

“You saw no one in fact but the policeman and the small man with the scarves?”

“Well …” said one.

“Not on the parade we didn't,” said the other.

Carolus waited.

“There was this man crossing the road,” said Mr Bullamy.

“I shouldn't think he was anything to do with it,” said his wife.

“I never mentioned it to the police because, to tell the truth, it slipped my memory and I don't suppose it's so important I need go running round there taking up their time and mine with something that may have been nothing at all.”

“Crossing the road?” said Carolus.

“Yes. We thought of it next day when we heard what had happened. Otherwise it would never have occurred to us to think twice about it.”

“It was only by chance we remembered it then, really. I said to my husband, do you remember seeing that man crossing just by the Gents' convenience, I said, and he remembered it, too. Only we never would have otherwise.”

“Yes that's how we came to remember it.”

“What?” pressed Carolus patiently.

“This man. You see there weren't many about that night….”

Carolus sighed. Not many? ‘That time of darkness was as bright and busy as the day.' And now here was another, apparently, to increase the roll of promenaders.

“More than seems quite natural on such a dirty night,” said Carolus, but this was not answered.

“As I say, we'd just got as far as the Gents, and were thinking of turning back when we saw this man crossing the road.”

“Near you?”

“No. A little way ahead. It must have been just about by the last shelter.”

“But there is no road there. A garden begins before that and the road curves away from the sea.”

This seemed to baffle Mr Bullamy a moment but he soon recovered.

“I know,” he said. “This was
before
the road curved. Must have been, mustn't it? You couldn't judge just where anything was in that light. Anyhow, we saw him.”

“Crossing towards the sea?”

“No. No, no. Away from it,” said Mr Bullamy impatiently, implying that any fool would know that.

“You mean, you had the impression that he had come from that shelter and was returning to the town?”

“I suppose that was it, though of course there's no telling.”

“But, Mr Bullamy, as you state the matter you must have been quite near this man. From the urinal to the point where the road curves away from the promenade is only a few yards. Can you tell me what he looked like?”

“Oh just an ordinary man. Medium height I should say….”

“A little more than medium,” suggested his wife.

“What was he wearing?”

“A grey overcoat. That's all I saw.”

“More browny-grey,” said Mrs Bullamy.

“Light-coloured, anyway. What about his face?”

“It was an ordinary sort of face. Nothing out of the way.”

“Age?”

“You couldn't tell. Forty perhaps….”

“More like fifty,” said Mrs Bullamy.

“Clean-shaven?”

“I think so.”

“Hadn't he got a little moustache? “wondered Mrs Bullamy.

“I should have said clean-shaven.”

“Did he give the impression of being smart or shabby?”

“I'd have said fairly smart,” said Mr Bullamy.

“I thought rather on the shabby side,” his wife argued.

Carolus took a deep breath.

“Would you know him again?”

“Oh yes!” said Mr Bullamy.

“I'm quite sure I should!” agreed Mrs Bullamy.

“You had never seen him before?”

They agreed that they hadn't.

“Or since?”

“No,” they chorused.

“But you would know him if you saw him?”

They were certain of this. After a small inward struggle Carolus asked them if they were sure they had not told the police of this and when they said ‘no' lectured them on the unwisdom and even danger of holding back information. He then resumed his own questioning.

“You're sure it was a man, not a woman?”

“Oh yes. I saw him clearly enough for that.”

“Hurrying?”

“Yes. He was stepping out pretty smartly.”

“You didn't notice what he did when he had crossed the road?”

“No. I can't say I did. You seem very interested.”

“I am. I'm trying to find out the truth about this murder.”

“Sort of detective, as you might say?”

“Sort of.”

“So that's it. Well, we don't want to get mixed up in it more than we can help. But we don't mind telling you anything we noticed if it would help.”