Murder Must Wait b-17 Page 5

“Over to you. We left her flat on the settee: she watched us walk to the gate, from behind the window curtain. They will touch the curtains when they’re watching. I could never understand why.”

  Alice sat bolt upright when it was easy to relax, and the straw hat angled severely over her brow as if to emphasise her mood.

  “Where are we going now?” she asked, hopefully.

  “To interview the nurse girl.”

  “Good! We’ll get something out of her.”

  “You will soft-pedal,” Bony said quietly.

  She looked at him, then her anger subsided and she said, as soft as a whisper:

  “I’m sorry, Bony. I… that woman infuriated me. I’ll play poker.”

  “Good girl.”

  After that neither spoke till the taxi stopped outside a small house in a sun-heated street appearing to have no beginning and no end.

  “I will enquire if the nursemaid is home,” Bony said. “Should I beckon, please come to my aid.”

  The door was opened to him by a matronly woman who said her daughter was working at the cannery, and so followed a further journey of fifteen minutes to reach the huge iron structure which swallowed fruit by the truck-load. The manager conducted them through the maze within.

  Here a hundred people were working. From a distant point gleaming tins were conveyed by belt and wire guides to the benches where girls were de-stoning peaches and other fruit. Seven semi-nude men tended the fires beneath the vats cooking jam. Above the rattle of machinery was the hammering of the ‘casers’, and case after filled case was being added to the mountain along one wall.

  Amid this ordered chaos, they were presented to Miss Betty Morse.

  Chapter Six

  Peaches and Bullion

  BETTYMORSEquickened a man’s eyes, which is different from stirring his pulses. She was wearing a light-blue smock, and her hair had caught the bronze of the sky and held it fast. Her arms were bare, and the knife she put down was the wickedest-looking weapon Bony had seen outside the police museum. The manager having left them, he said in his easy manner:

  “I understand, MissMorse, that you work here on contract rates, so perhaps you could talk as you work. Think you could? I don’t want to hinder you.”

  “You won’t, Inspector,” she told him, and, selecting a peach, sliced it once, plucked out the stone and dropped the halved peach into a tin. The knife was razor-sharp, the operation complete in two seconds.

  “You are sure you won’t be distracted and cut yourself?”persisted the doubtful Bony, and turning to him she laughed, and the horrible knife appeared to do its work of its own volition. Beyond her, other girls were displaying equal dexterity; some were gossiping to their neighbours, their hands working automatically, their minds busy with boy friends.

  “I’ve told over and over again all about Mrs Delph’s baby,” asserted Betty Morse a trifle edgily. “The baby simply vanished from the pram outside the shop when I was inside getting a parcel.”

  “You must be bored, Miss Morse,” Bony soothed. “Personally I’d rather talk about peaches, and how many tins you fill in a day, and what is the highest money you’ve earned in a week. My cousin here, who wants to be a detective, is more interested in babies than I am at the moment, but, like you, I have to work for my living. When you took Mrs Delph’s baby out in the pram did anyone stop and show interest in it?”

  “No. It was just an ordinary kid. It wasn’t really my fault it was stolen. Plenty of women leave a baby in a pram outside a shop. Mrs Delph had no cause to yell and scream for the police, and tell them to arrest me.”

  “Bit of an old bitch,” remarked Alice, and the indignation on Betty’s face gave way to astonishment, followed by obvious gratitude that here at last was someone who sympathised.

  “You’re telling me,” she vowed warmly.“Screamed the place down. Said rotten things about me. Yelled for cook to ring for the police, and told the policeman that I’d sold the baby and he was to search me for the money.”

  “Excitable woman,” observed Bony, but Betty Morse was no longer interested in him. The knife flashed, the peaches fell apart and their stones dropped into a pail at her feet. For only a tenth of every second did she look at what her hands were doing as she poured out her story of martyrdom to Alice, who energetically nodded and oh-edand ah-ed, occasionally inserting a diversionary question and revealing to Bony that she had mastered the art of arriving via the roundabout.

  Thenceforth he was kept in his box to listen and watch with prolonged aversion the gleaming knife attacking the fruit with seemingly ever-increasing speed as Betty Morse became really warmed up. A boy came to empty peaches into her tray. A man came to remove the filled tins and make a note on her pad, and when there should have been a gallon of spilt blood there wasn’t a speck. Bony was forgotten, but was entranced.

  It came out that Mrs Delph’s cook knew more about theDelphs than they could possibly know about each other. The husband managed a very extensive practice. He was working himself to death, and only kept on his feet with the aid of whisky ‘planted’ in the garage. There was no reason to hide booze in the garage as there was plenty of it in the house. He was ‘a nice old thing’, although Bony was aware that Dr Delph was not turned forty. His wife was the daughter of a parson, had married ‘somewhat late in life’. Bony knew she wasn’t more than thirty-five. She was ‘stuck up’, a delicate type, was given to ‘turns’ to get her way with her husband. And, they didn’t sleep together. When she found she was going to have a baby, she sacked the cook four times in the one day, screamed at her husband, and moaned for a week.

  After that, Mrs Delph went on as before, going to cocktail parties and giving them, and to musical do’s where morons played five-fingered exercises on the piano. Although perfectly well, she insisted that Dr Nott call at the house once a week, and when he missed on two occasions she threatened her husband that she would drown herself, as no one cared what became of her.

  In view of the fact that Betty Morse had been employed by Mrs Delph for only ten days, the amount of background information she poured into Alice’s receptive ears was remarkable. Only once did she pause, when Alice adroitly spurred her to renewed efforts. Once Bony interjected, but wasn’t heard.

  Did Mrs Delph really love the baby? Of course she didn’t. She could only love Mrs Delph. Yes, cook fed the baby. Poor little devil! More nights than not cook had the baby’s cot in her own room. But didn’t Mrs Delph have anything to do with the child? Damn little. Only when there were visitors, then she’d wheel the cot into the lounge and ooze the loving mother stuff all over it. And the guests, too.

  And so it went on and on.

  Bony wanted to smoke and was defeated by the large and numerous notices ordering him to forget it. Looking at his watch, he saw it was afternoon tea time, and then felt on the verge of collapse from thirst. He learned that Mrs Delph’s eldest brother was the organist at a city church, that her second brother was being groomed to take over their father’s church when the ‘old bloke’ retired. The third brother was a doctor specialising in ‘psycho something’ down in Melbourne, and the only sister had married a jeweller and at the moment was in a home for inebriates. He learned, too, that Betty Morse had several boy friends, but wasn’t going to marry one of them. Men were essential in any girl’s life. He was hearing about the virtues and vices of these boy friends when he surrendered and retired to the taxi.

  “Are you married?” he asked the driver.

  “No ruddy fear,” replied the man, as though the very idea was an insult.

  Time was slain.

  “Shall I go in and break it up?” suggested the clairvoyant driver.

  “Better give her five minutes. My cousin may be difficult.”

  The driver sighed. Bony smoked. Ten minutes drifted before Alice appeared at the gate in the tall iron fence. She was looking cool, energised, and when she settled herself on the seat beside Bony she sighed with enormous satisfaction.

  “As a mark of my comm
endation, Alice, you shall have cream cakes with your tea this afternoon,” Bony told her, and she glanced swiftly at him, to confirm the pleasure she detected in his voice.

  Again in the car after refreshment, Bony said zestfully:

  “We shall now delve into the abduction of the next baby, which took place on November 29th, five weeks after the Delph baby vanished. The name of the parents is Bulford. He is the manager of a bank and they live over the bank chamber. They have been there six years.”

  “How long married?”

  “I don’t know yet. As they have two sons at boarding-school we will assume that the period covers several years.”

  “I was only wondering,” Alice claimed, a little abashed.

  “As I mentioned,”went on Bony, “theBulfords live over the bank. They have a private entrance to a ground-floor hall. On November 29th the bank closed as usual at three-thirty, and, as often he did, the manager worked in the office until five-thirty.

  “At five-forty-five he had an appointment in the town, and, having locked the rear door to the bank, he went upstairs to wash. He knew his wife had left the building some time previously as he had heard the door of the private entrance being opened and closed, and on reaching the first-floor landing, where stood the baby’s cot, he assumed that his wife had taken the child with her. She had not. Between thetime she left the building and he went upstairs to wash, the baby was stolen from its cot on the landing.”

  “No leads?” Alice asked.

  “None. Here we are to see the place for ourselves and to draw our own inferences and conclusions.”

  To reach the bank’s private entrance meant following a lane between the building and a high board fence, and whilst Alice pressed the doorbell, Bony needed to jump to see over the fence the rear part of unoccupied business premises. The doorbell could be heard ringing somewhere on the first floor. Alice, becoming impatient of delay because the lane was a sun trap, was about to ring again when from closer at hand a telephone shrilled.

  A full minute lapsed, when the door was opened by a man in his shirtsleeves, rimless glasses aiding tired hazel eyes having soft brown flecks, and a toothbrush moustache suiting his square face. On Bony announcing their names and business, he explained that his wife was dressing to go out, and that the telephone had delayed him in answering the bell.

  They were invited inside, passing the door to the rear of the bank chamber, and mounting carpeted stairs to be shown into a sitting-room. The manager withdrew to fetch his wife, and Alice began pricing the furniture, beginning with the carpet.

  Mrs Bulford was Alice McGorr’s opposite number: the brow high and narrow, the eyes small and dark, the chin a warning to any man having an ounce of experience. She greeted the callers frostily and, when seated, posed like Queen Victoria giving Gladstone a piece of her mind.

  “It was the most mystifying thing that ever happened, Inspector,” said precise Mr Bulford.

  “Allow me to deal with the matter, John,” objected his wife. “My husband, Inspector, was working in the parlour, the bank being closed for the day. After I left to keep an engagement, there was no one in the building except my husband, and had the child wakened and cried he couldn’t help but hear it.”

  “I heard nothing, not a sound.”

  “Please, John.”

  “Very well.”

  Bony cut in:

  “The private entrance was locked after you left that afternoon, and the rear door to a small yard at the back was also locked. The only windows left open were those fronting thestreet, and only by using a ladder could anyone have entered through one of them. The ladder isn’t feasible, and we are left with two theories. Either the kidnapper was concealed inside the building, or he was in possession of a duplicate key of the side door, the back door being secured by a bolt in addition to the ordinary lock. The side door would automatically lock when you pulled it shut on leaving. You are sure you did that, Mrs Bulford?”

  “Quite, Inspector.”

  “I heard my wife close the door and the lock snap,” added Mr Bulford.

  “What would be the odds favouring anyone hiding in the building before the bank was closed to the public?”

  “Odds in favour! A million to one against. There is nowhere to hide. You shall see for yourself.”

  “I was hoping to. When is the bank chamber cleaned?”

  “Every morning. A man comes at seven-forty-five. I let him in, and he leaves when the bank is opened for business.”

  “Does he ever use the back door?”

  “Yes. The kitchen, you see, is on the ground floor. There’s a door from the kitchen to the back yard, but it is fitted with a Yale lock and never left open. The kitchen window is protected with iron bars. The cleaner couldn’t have had anything to do with it. He’s been engaged here for over twenty years.”

  “You have other children?”

  “Two boys,” replied Mrs Bulford. “They are at boarding-school in Melbourne.”

  “Mrs Bulford. The baby was born at the local hospital?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Your doctor?”

  “Dr Nott. Whatever…”

  “Pardon me, was the infant bottle-fed?”

  “It was,” answered Mrs Bulford, frowning.

  “Healthy?”

  “Naturally,”came the echo of Mrs Delph’s reply.

  “Do you entertain much?”

  “No. We give a sherry party on the third Tuesday in every month.”

  “Er, the bank pays,” interrupted the manager. “Usual thing, you know. Important clients and others who cannot be overlooked. And, of course, our personal friends.”

  “These parties… the usual time?”

  “From four-thirty to six.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Mrs Bulford, and Bony presented the next question as though he hadn’t heard her.

  “Do the same people come to your house every month?”

  “The majority, yes. All known very well to us, of course.”

  “Mrs Delph… is she one of your guests?”

  “Yes. So is her husband when he can get away from his practice.”

  “Does Mrs Rockcliff have an account here?”

  The question probed. The eyes behind the rimless glasses flickered, and the shutters fell.

  “No, Inspector. We never heard the name before we read about it in the paper, and the staff couldn’t recognise a client from the picture brought by a constable.”

  “Is it true that the woman’s baby has vanished?” asked Mrs Bulford.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Forgive me if thought impertinent. On that afternoon your baby was stolen, what was the nature of your engagement?”

  “Oh! A cocktail party given by Mr and Mrs Reynolds.”

  “Our best clients, Inspector,” interposed the manager. “I was supposed to be at their house before six that day. I left the chamber at five-thirty to brush up before leaving. It was then I found the cot empty. It was on the landing outside this room.”

  “What time did you leave?” Alice asked, and Bony frowned, for he had already told her this detail, and it was the question he was about to put. Mrs Bulford glared at Alice.

  “At about half past four,” she snapped.

  “Then it was intended that the baby be left alone for something like an hour and a half?” persisted Alice.

  “The child was quite all right, and, we thought, quite safe,” replied Mrs Bulford firmly and frigidly.

  “When investigating these cases,” Bony said, suavely, “it’s necessary to explore every avenue to ascertain whether the thief’s success was due to chance circumstances or to close knowledge of the parents’ habits. And so these questions which may seem too personal. How often prior to the date the child was stolen was it left alone in the building?”

  Mr Bulford’s face slowly reddened, but no change came to the face of his wife, who replied with some asperity:

  “That I cannot recall, Inspector. Several times, probably. It has happened
when my husband and I have visited together, or he had to go out on business or play tennis when I, too, had an engagement.”

  “You said that you give a sherry party every third Tuesday in the month. Do Mr and Mrs Reynolds also have a set day every month?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s always on the second Wednesday.”

  “You meet there the same people who come to your parties?”

  “Yes, everyone in our social circle, you know.”

  “Of course. Do you employ a domestic?”

  “That’s impossible,” replied Mrs Bulford, indicating that lack of domestic assistance was her major cross.

  Bony stood, bowed his leave to Mrs Bulford and followed Alice and the manager down the stairs to the hall, where he said he would like to glance into the banking chamber.

  It was quite small, the wide counter crossing the width of the partitioned offices behind it. They were shown the strongroom, and finally the manager’s office ornately furnished with a large table desk commanded by a swivel chair, and several well-upholstered chairs for the clients.

  “Very snug,” Bony observed. “A client should find it a pleasure to ask for an overdraft, and you, Mr Bulford, to grant it.”

  Mr Bulford chuckled… suddenly a different man.

  “As a matter of fact, Inspector, every bank likes to accommodate a client, and always finds refusal distasteful.”

  “Ah! I shall remember that when next I interview my bank,” Bony vowed. “I’ve always thought my bank manager to be an ogre.”

  When Mr Bulford had opened the side door and Bony was about to leave, the manager said, hesitantly:

  “That poor woman, Mrs Rockcliff… did it happen that she disturbed the baby-thief, d’you think?”

  “It could have been like that, Mr Bulford. She had habitually left the baby alone in the house. Indicates a pattern, doesn’t it?”

  The telephone in the parlour called the manager, who closed the door after them with a slight show of haste. Alice walked on to the street. Bony leaned against the door with an ear to the keyhole, where he could hear the manager’s voice, but could not distinguish the words.