Jam and Jeopardy Read online

  ‘No, why should I? It was just a case of waiting. Flora and I were on edge from the Saturday until the Thursday evening when the local police notified us that she’d been found dead.’

  ‘And you thought you were responsible for her death?’

  ‘Naturally. I was responsible.’

  ‘As I said already, no traces of arsenic were found in her system.’

  ‘I can’t understand it. Didn’t she have any arsenic, then? Was it all a lie? I knew she took Stephen and me for fools, but, God Almighty, that’s really wicked.’

  ‘Yes, she was given arsenic, but, for some reason, she meant to get you to try to poison her, so she hid it away. There was only flour in the bag you used, Mr Baker.’

  Ronald opened his desk drawer and took out a half bottle of whisky. ‘Do you mind, Inspector? This has all come as a terrible shock.’

  He took a good swig from the bottle, and sat thinking, while McGillivray turned and shrugged his shoulders at his sergeant.

  ‘You are quite innocent of murder, if what you say is true,’ he said quietly.

  Ronald placed both his elbows on the desk and dropped his head on his hands. He stayed like that for some time before he lifted his face to look at the detectives again. ‘Oh, God, it’s like a last minute reprieve from the death chamber, I can tell you. I thought I was a goner when you came in first.’

  ‘Just answer me one question, please. Can you account for your movements on the Wednesday night?’

  ‘The night before she was found? The night she was murdered, you mean? Let me see. That was the night we had the Cruickshanks in. I remember, because Flora and I were both so tensed up it was a relief to have somebody else there. We had quite a drinking session. They did not go until after one in the morning and they’d to take a taxi because neither of them was fit to drive. They left their car here and came back for it the next day. You can check with Tom Cruickshank, if you like.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I’ll have to. Would you mind giving me his address?’

  ‘Phone him from here, Inspector. It’s 546621.’

  The man who answered McGillivray’s call laughed at the memory of their convivial evening, but confirmed that he and his wife hadn’t left the Bakers’ house until after one.

  ‘And Ronald was absolutely pissed by that time, too,’ he added. ‘We left Flora about to put him to bed, though she was almost as bad herself.’

  McGillivray laid down the phone. ‘Oh well, that seems to be that. He corroborated everything you said.’ He thought it unlikely that Ronald Baker had forewarned his friend.

  ‘Before you go, Inspector, would you mind telling me how my aunt died if it wasn’t the arsenic?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I can’t divulge that information.’

  ‘Have you any idea as to who did it?’

  ‘We are whittling down the suspects.’

  ‘You mean . . . there’s more than one? Who on earth could have . . . ?’

  McGillivray glanced at his sergeant, who sprang up to open the door. Ronald was unscrewing the cap of his bottle again when they went out.

  Both Stephen Drummond and his young assistant were serving when they entered his shop, and he gave a start when he saw them.

  When Stephen’s customer went out, the inspector said, ‘May we have a private word with you, Mr Drummond?’

  In the back shop, McGillivray took the direct attack again. ‘We have reason to believe that you planned to murder your aunt.’

  The reaction this time was different. Stephen looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘I don’t know who told you that.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Is it a crime to think about murder?’

  ‘Not unless you actually do something about it.’

  Stephen smiled. ‘Then I can tell you the truth, Inspector. I’d often wished that my aunt was dead, then that day, when she told us about the arsenic, I thought it was a heaven-sent opportunity to dispose of her. I came home and decided to put some in her flour bin the following Sunday, that being where it would be least likely to be noticed.

  ‘When I got the chance, the next week, I lifted the lid, but the flour was almost at the top, so I looked in the sugar bin. That looked just as powdery as the flour – Barbara said she always used caster – and I thought it would do as well in there.’

  ‘So you put it in the sugar instead of the flour?’

  Slowly, Stephen shook his head. ‘As my wife keeps telling me, I’m useless. When it came to the crunch, I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘So you didn’t really attempt to poison her, after all?’ McGillivray believed the man’s story. It was too ridiculous to be fiction.

  ‘No, I didn’t, so I was very surprised when the two policemen came on the Thursday night to tell us Aunt Janet had been found dead. I thought it must have been from natural causes till you came asking questions.’

  ‘Unfortunately, it wasn’t from natural causes, Mr Drummond. She was murdered.’

  ‘But who?’ The man was clearly at a loss, and stood with his brow furrowed. ‘Would it have been Ronald? She’d likely told him about the arsenic as well, and he was trying to get money from her, I know.’

  ‘Your aunt didn’t die of arsenic poisoning.’

  Stephen’s face reflected the turmoil in his brain. ‘Well, I can’t think of a soul other than Ronald and myself who’d have benefited from her death. Er . . . Excuse me, Inspector, can you tell me how she was killed?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say anything more, I’m afraid.’

  Stephen sat down weakly. ‘I honestly thought she’d had a well-timed heart attack. I won’t pretend to be sorry she’s dead, as I was never very fond of her, but . . . murder!’

  ‘You planned to murder her yourself,’ McGillivray reminded him.

  ‘It didn’t feel like murder, you know. More like doing a service to mankind in general, and myself in particular. But I didn’t do it.’ He looked rather regretful.

  Making one last token gesture, McGillivray said, ‘What were your movements on the night she was murdered?’

  ‘Thursday? No, that was the day she was found. Did she die the previous night? Well, last Wednesday, Barbara and I had a very quiet evening at home. To be frank, she was giving me hell because there was no word of Janet’s death, and I was terrified she’d find out I’d funked it. We passed a very unpleasant evening, and we couldn’t even afford any whisky to cheer us up.’

  His woebegone expression made McGillivray smile. ‘You were together the whole evening?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes, and the whole night.’ He pulled a wry face.

  ‘That’s all, then, Mr Drummond. We’ll let you get back to your customers.’

  The inspector sighed when they went back to the car. ‘That was another wild goose chase.’

  Moore revved up the engine and let out the clutch. ‘It explains why Mr and Mrs Drummond were both so nervous last time we spoke to them. She thought he’d done it, and he was scared she’d find out he hadn’t.’ He blew the horn as a little Datsun overtook and drew close in front of them. ‘Look at that stupid blighter. That kind of thing makes me mad.’ He shot a quick look at his superior. ‘It’s back to Tollerton now, is it?’

  ‘Aye, nothing else for it. But we’ve written off our two main suspects. Or, at least, who everybody thinks were the two main suspects.’ McGillivray’s voice was gloomy. ‘As Gilbert and Sullivan said, “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” Ha, bloody ha! We’ll have to start on Mrs White’s conquests, after all, my last hope.’

  ‘Oh, she did give you something, did she? I forgot to ask about that.’

  ‘She named some of her regular callers.’

  ‘I bet you were surprised at some of them, eh, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, I was, and not much surprises me these days. But Douglas Pettigrew’s father was one. No wonder he was so upset when he learned his son was another of her customers. Oh, what a tangled web some men weave.’

  ‘Do you suspect the chem
ist now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted McGillivray. ‘He might have been scared in case May spilled the beans about him to his son, but I can’t see why that would make him bump off Janet Souter.’

  ‘He could have been worried in case she’d tell his wife if she’d seen him coming from May’s house, too.’ Moore sounded eager.

  ‘You’ve got something there, lad, and the needle and insulin would have been at his hand. Speaking of that, the other name I dragged out of Mrs White was the doctor, would you believe, and he’s another one with the means to kill her at hand and the know-how to use them. It was the blasted arsenic that set me off on the wrong track, and it looks like it had nothing to do with the case at all. He should have been one of the first suspects. Funny how your brain gets fogged up and just works in one direction.’

  ‘You solved all the problems about the arsenic, though,’ the young man consoled. ‘That took a bit of doing, sir.’

  ‘Aye.’ McGillivray put his hands behind his head and stared at the roof. ‘I’ve got the feeling Mrs White’s definitely connected somewhere, and somebody silenced the old woman because they were scared they’d be found out taking up with her.’

  David Moore was agog to know which of the other men in the village had been in the habit of going to May White’s, and, after a minute, his curiosity got the better of him. ‘Um . . . who else was involved with her, sir?’

  ‘The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker – that sort of thing. Most of the tradesmen and anybody of any consequence, even some of no consequence at all except to themselves, though she likely magnified their involvement.’

  ‘So we’ve got a whole new list of suspects?’ There was a downhearted tone in Moore’s voice.

  ‘I think not: I can’t face that right now. I’ve just the two medically inclined gentlemen in mind at present, but if they prove false leads, I’ll have to spread the net wider.’

  When they arrived back in Tollerton, the inspector went into the police station in case there were any messages, while Moore parked the Vauxhall then sat in the Starline lounge to wait for him.

  Excitement shone from McGillivray’s eyes when he appeared ten minutes later, but he merely said, ‘Upstairs.’

  In his room, he kicked off his shoes and sat down on the bed. ‘I’ve just found out something – the identity of Mrs Wakeford’s child, at long last.’

  His sergeant, who was in the middle of loosening his lie, halted with his hand at his neck. ‘How? Who?’

  ‘Your command of the English language amazes me at times, Moore. ‘The “how” came about because Martin Spencer had left a message for me to phone him. One of his clerks had been trawling through the archives to find the name of the adoptive parents. They were a Mr and Mrs Patton of Thornkirk, both now deceased.’

  ‘Don’t tell me the trail ends there?’ Moore looked very crestfallen. ‘This person could be the murderer, if it’s somebody with a position to keep up, and it wasn’t one of the men who’s been associating with May White.’ He hesitated, then said, accusingly, ‘But you said you’d found out the identity, so you haven’t told me everything. Come on, out with it.’

  The inspector smiled enigmatically. ‘You’re right, my young friend. The trail didn’t end there, fortunately, or unfortunately, whichever way you look at it. It seems old Matthew Dean had written the child’s baptismal name on the back of the adoption document, in pencil. Felicity.’

  Moore’s brow wrinkled. ‘Felicity Patton? But there isn’t a Felicity anything connected with our case, is there?’

  McGillivray was enjoying keeping him on tenterhooks. It made up for being kept waiting to hear who had the last jar of jam. He put his fingertips together and gripped his mouth for a moment. ‘Have patience, lad. There’s more. Also on the back of the document, Matthew Dean had pencilled, at a later date, “Felicity Muriel Patton, married Adam Valentine, 23.7.86.” Now do you understand my reluctance to involve her?’

  The sergeant gave a low whistle. ‘The minister’s wife! Wow! He calls her Muriel, her middle name. I wonder why?’

  The inspector took out his cigarettes and tried his lighter hopefully. ‘Blast! I should have bought some stuff to fill this.’ He dug in his pocket for matches. ‘There could be any number of reasons why she uses her middle name. Her adoptive parents might have started it; she might hate the name Felicity; she could have feared it was her natural mother who’d called her that and avoided using it.’

  ‘In case the mother recognised it,’ Moore put in, full of excitement. ‘It’s an unusual name.’

  ‘Exactly, but none of these reasons are criminal. She’s at liberty to call herself by her middle name if she wants to. The thing is, had Janet Souter found out the truth somehow, and . . . ?’

  ‘Oh, sir, Mrs Valentine would never have killed her.’

  ‘Probably not, so we’re no further forward, after all.’

  Moore, however, was thinking of something else. ‘Mrs Wakeford and Mrs Valentine might be delighted to be brought together, sir. They’re ideally suited as mother and daughter. Couldn’t we . . . ?’

  ‘No, no,’ McGillivray said hastily. ‘We can’t interfere in that kind of thing. Mrs Wakeford would possibly be delighted, but Mrs Valentine mightn’t even know she was an adopted child. We can’t muck up her life.’

  He drew on his cigarette. ‘Two things have begun to bother me, Moore. The chemist never mentioned to you that Miss Souter had spilt the beans to him about Douglas, did he?’

  ‘That’s right. We’ll have to look into that. But what’s the other thing that’s bothering you, sir?’

  The inspector dropped his ash into the glass ashtray. ‘The other thing is – why didn’t Adam Valentine tell us he’d seen the murdered woman that week?’

  ‘You mean the day she gave him the jam? She could have called him in, or gone out herself, and just given it to him.’

  ‘I’d like to jog his memory, just the same. She might’ve said something about somebody that would help us.’

  ‘But he said he didn’t know anything.’ Moore went no further.

  ‘I think we’ll pay the chemist a visit after dinner, now we’ve discovered he’s got a motive, and then put the frighteners on Randall. If we’ve no luck with either of them, we’ll give the Reverend a quick call. We might just manage to squeeze some relevant information out of him, though he probably doesn’t realise he knows anything.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tuesday 29th November, evening

  At seven twenty, Douglas Pettigrew called for his reinstated sweetheart, Phyllis Barclay, and they stood outside her house for a few moments, discussing where to go.

  Tollerton boasted no cinema, disco or any other place of entertainment, just a slightly grotty pub at one end of the High Street and the Starline Hotel in the middle, plus the Youth Club, which met only on Wednesdays in the Church Hall.

  The lack of facilities was no hardship to young courting couples in the summer, as they usually took a walk beyond the village into the countryside, though the more passionate of them often ended up by going down Ashgrove Lane, and climbing the wall at the foot to cross the railway line. At the other side of the tracks, a fairly dense wood provided many exciting secluded spots where inhibitions could be overcome – or forgotten altogether.

  But lying under the trees on a bed of dead leaves was not a pleasant prospect on this bitterly cold night, the second last in November, so Douglas and his girlfriend plumped for the Starline, which was warm and clean, if not very private.

  Having bought a tomato juice for Phyllis and a half pint of lager for himself, he carried them across to the table in the corner and sat down very close to her. ‘I’m glad we’re back together again,’ he murmured, taking her hand and squeezing it.

  ‘So’m I.’ Phyllis snuggled against him on the padded seat. ‘I really missed you when you were . . .’

  ‘Making a fool of myself,’ he finished for her. ‘I don’t know what the hell got into me. It all, sort
of, happened.’

  A glutton for punishment, Phyllis wanted to hear how a – to her – middle-aged, married woman could have lured Douglas away from a girl his own age. ‘How did it happen? What did she do?’

  He took a sip of his lager. ‘The first time, she stood watching me till I put a new fuse in one of her plugs, then she offered me a drink. I didn’t want to let her know I’d never drunk spirits, so I took this large glass of whisky.’

  ‘Did you get drunk?’ That might excuse his behaviour.

  ‘I don’t think so. A bit happy, maybe, but I was scared out of my wits when she sat down beside me on the settee, so I moved away a bit. She laughed at that and I just stood up went home.’

  ‘But you must have kept on going back?’ she persisted.

  He looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Oh, you don’t want to hear any more, Phyllis. I was just plain daft.’

  Realising at last that it would probably be too painful to hear all the sordid details of his affair, Phyllis changed the subject. ‘I wonder if the detectives have got any further with their investigiation? The sergeant came into the shop, you know, asking what Miss Wheeler knew about Janet Souter.’

  ‘They suspected me of doing her in.’ He could laugh about it now, but he’d had the wind up at all the questioning. Innocent men had been arrested before.

  ‘You did threaten her on the street,’ she reminded him. ‘And a lot of people heard you.’

  Phyllis wasn’t actually one hundred per cent sure if she really believed he was innocent. That’s what gave a touch of mystery and fascination to their dates now. ‘Yes, I was the murderer’s girlfriend,’ she could say to the reporters after he was found guilty. She pulled herself up with a jerk when she realised what she was thinking – Douglas could never have done it.

  ‘I know I said I’d sort her out,’ he was saying, ‘but I never really meant to do anything, especially not murder. But I’d a good alibi, so it’s all over now, and that’s enough about it. Did you see that new pop programme last night?’

  The current favourite groups, their albums and singles, held their attention for the next hour, until Phyllis said, ‘I told Mum I’d be home early tonight. I want to wash my hair, and I promised I’d give her a hand with the ironing – my own things, anyway. Don’t bother coming home with me.’