What Me, Mr Mosley? Read online

  It was perhaps a pity that some impresario had not talent-spotted the landlord as an international mime artiste. The face he was now wearing must be draining him of nervous energy.

  ‘Old Henry said he didn’t want the parcel, but they left it with him. They could see it was Scrooge all over again. He didn’t want reminding it was Christmas.’

  Mosley came to the end of his modest half-pint of mild and made it clear that he wanted no more.

  ‘Old Henry didn’t exactly kick them out. He didn’t have to – they were glad enough to go. The place got on a man’s wheel. But then a funny thing happened. They hadn’t got halfway across the front garden, when the racket in the house started up again: progressive rock, the volume turned up so high that the radio must have been dancing on the table.’

  ‘Happen he’d got the same wavelength as before.’

  ‘If he had, it was what he wanted. He didn’t turn it off this time. They could hear the bloody noise behind them until they were well out in Dickinson Road.’

  The landlord was called elsewhere and Mosley left the pub. He made his way to Bowland Avenue, not approaching from the Dickinson Road angle, but going round through Westwood Park, where he was seen by quite a number of people who would have liked to pass the time of day with him. But Mosley did not see any of them. He seemed entirely wrapped up in himself, totally oblivious of those about him. He struck out diagonally across the grass to the hedge at the bottom of Henry Burgess’s garden – an enormous growth, now at least eight feet high, that had not been trimmed for years, and would have to be tackled by its new owner from a plank between tall ladders. Two senior citizens, sitting on a bench some fifty yards from him, both saw him there, gazing into its depths, as if there was some secret that he was willing the vegetation to give up. Then he walked the length of that hedge, once in either direction. Seconds later, he was no longer there, and his disappearance became that evening’s main talking point in Bagshawe. The legend went the rounds that he had plunged through the privet like a Churchill tank through a bed of nettles.

  Chapter Three

  Desmond Lummis (A Levels: Grade C Eng Lit, Grade D Economics, Failed History) was one of Bagshawe Broome’s generation of rising strengths who did not know Mosley. In sole charge of Fawcett and Foster’s estate agency on the key afternoon of the week, Lummis was supercilious with the confidence of his two years’ experience.

  ‘Really, Inspector – I would have expected an officer of your standing to know better than to ask that sort of question. I cannot discuss a client’s confidential business.’

  Mosley’s response was a deflating show of patience.

  ‘You are quite right to take that attitude.’

  But the young man, if deflatable, was not deflated. He obviously regarded Mosley’s soft tongue as a smoke signal of defeat, whereas in the eyes of the initiated it was a warning sign. But at that moment Tim Fawcett came in.

  Timothy John Fawcett was a sleepy man whose eyelids drooped over dark pupils that did not by the remotest glint promise hidden life within. Young people of the executive class, when putting their houses on Bagshawe Broome’s speculative estates on the market, tended to avoid Fawcett and Foster, and in this they were mistaken, for without ever appearing to exert himself, Tim Fawcett was always magically half a length ahead of his competitors. Marginal loss of business through a fallacious reputation did not worry him. The bulk of his income came from the valuation and transfer of licensed premises and he had sleepily cornered sixty per cent of the business in this field over four northern counties.

  ‘Your young man was just about to tell me about Henry Burgess,’ Mosley said with gentle malevolence.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Fawcett closed his eyes for so long that some would-be conversationalists would have resigned. But Mosley waited some fifteen respectful seconds, then spoke again.

  ‘Not a big spender, old Henry. Quite a lot of nice pieces in the house, I should imagine, especially from his wife’s side. And there are hardly likely to be any charges on the property. Who gets the lion’s share? The Midland Bank Down-and-out Staff Association?’

  ‘A niece. Nancy Batham. Married to a quantity surveyor in South Staffs. Nice girl. Well, not far off the forty mark.’

  ‘No other beneficiaries?’

  ‘Two younger brothers, who don’t feature in the will.’

  ‘Perhaps she had cultivated the old man?’

  ‘She came over every two or three years.’

  ‘And there’s stuff worth having – apart from a hundred thousand quids’ worth of house and grounds?’

  ‘There’s a dressing-table that’s undoubtedly Sheraton, a cabinet of Derby porcelain that’s going to be called important, probably pre-Duesbury, any number of collectable bits and pieces. Bedroom furniture that will appeal to some: wardrobes and chests of drawers modelled on St Pancras Station.’

  ‘And obviously any amount of smaller stuff?’

  ‘That doesn’t bother me. I run an auction room, not a sweet-shop. Mrs Batham has earmarked what she wants, and she’s no magpie. I’ve sold the trivia as a job lot to a house clearance man.’

  ‘Dickie Holgate.’

  Fawcett went into one of his longer blinks.

  ‘Has he had enough experience?’ Mosley asked.

  ‘He’s getting it.’

  ‘You deal with him a lot?’

  ‘More and more. He’s good. Gets on with it. Leaves the place clean. Burns the rubbish. Can be trusted alone in a room. Doesn’t argue over a fair offer.’

  ‘And doubtless lives in hope of finding a fortune in the false bottom of a drawer?’

  ‘A reliable dealer is worth keeping sweet. I make a point of leaving him a few bits and bobs that are worth having.’

  ‘Like bits and bobs with the initials WFH on them?’

  ‘I noticed a few of those about the house. I don’t know who WFH was.’

  ‘I do.’

  Fawcett’s eyelids fell. He did not ask. Mosley did not tell him.

  ‘Is there an inventory?’

  ‘Of the small stuff? We would be at it for ever. All I want is to get it out of the way.’

  ‘So you’ve given Dickie Holgate a deadline?’

  ‘End of the month.’

  Mosley took his leave. In the outer office Desmond Lummis wished him good afternoon as if he were a valued old friend.

  Mosley went back to the market, approaching the stalls from behind. There was now a bleak wooden emptiness about most of them. Yellowing cabbage leaves clung obstinately to the cobbles, defying the assault of bass brooms. There was a suggestion in the air that at least one consignment of fish was nearing the end of its commercial viability. Dickie Holgate had by now packed most of his remnants into tea-chests and cardboard cartons. He waved cheerily to Mosley. Mosley stood impassively to one side, saying and doing nothing to hurry him. A young woman came up breathlessly, hugging a stack of tattered Mills and Boon paperbacks.

  ‘Am I too late?’

  Holgate showed her in which box he had stowed away his secondhand romances. She began to lift handfuls of them out.

  Holgate took her money, tidied up after her.

  ‘She reads ten a week,’ he told Mosley. ‘They get them for half price if they bring their old ones back.’

  Mosley did not appear interested.

  ‘I want us to go together to Garth.’

  Holgate drove them there in his van, working hard to get Mosley to talk about something, anything. Mosley looked out of the window, apparently hell-bent on not committing himself to the frailest thread of amiability.

  ‘You’re treating me as if I were a criminal,’ Holgate said.

  ‘I shall if you are one.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Holgate parked in Bowland Avenue, held open the garden gate for Mosley to precede him. It hung on one hinge that was not going to last much longer. The garden had not been managed for years. Burgess had even given up having the lawn cut, and an autumn that had so far
been slow to bite had encouraged this year’s grass to go on growing. Here and there one could trace a history of beds and herbaceous borders. A few blue bells of campanula peeped in spidery fashion from behind straggling greenery. Marigolds had spread. Golden rod had proliferated like a nodding forest. Nettles stood seven feet high.

  Holgate had a key and let them in. There were a few items of junk mail underfoot: American Express were still trying to sell Henry Burgess a charge card.

  ‘I didn’t know they were valid where he’s gone,’ Holgate said.

  Mosley did not pick up the pleasantry. They went together into the large room to the left of the entrance hall. It must once have been the dining-room – in Henry Burgess’s wife’s day – though it was an inconsiderately long way from the kitchen. There was a sweet fungoid smell in the air.

  ‘Whoever buys this is going to keep Rentokil in business,’ Dickie Holgate said.

  Mosley did not answer, but stood looking suggestively at the array of objects on the central table: a cased, silver-backed brush and comb set, an Edwardian chain purse, a patent oil-fuelled reading lamp, a hip flask, a lady’s umbrella with a tortoiseshell handle, two napkin rings in a case.

  ‘You’re using this as a store room, are you?’ Mosley asked.

  ‘I’ve not really started systematically on the place. Next week. I just took one or two things to fill gaps on this morning’s stall.’

  Holgate looked at the collection on the table with sudden concentration.

  ‘Mr Mosley – some things are missing.’

  Mosley waited unexcitedly to be told. There were, in fact, empty spaces on the table.

  ‘Things have gone since I was last here, last night. There was a massive antique boxed set of geometrical instruments. A buff would pay no end for that. There was a cut glass celery holder, set in silver. There was a carriage clock. Somebody has been here, Mr Mosley.’

  ‘I know. I have.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘Isn’t that pushing your rights a bit, Mr Mosley?’

  ‘I dare say. I don’t expect anything much to come of it.’

  ‘So where are those things – the carriage clock, the celery jar –?’

  ‘Safe. You shall have all the proper documentation. But let’s not do it in penny numbers. Let’s make one job of it when we’re through with the lot, shall we?’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what this is about, Mr Mosley?’

  ‘Don’t you ever read the stolen property lists that we send out?’

  ‘There’s such a lot of stuff. I get behind.’

  ‘You shouldn’t. We don’t put them out for fun. Did you notice any common feature about those articles that I’ve impounded?’

  Dickie Holgate thought.

  ‘Weren’t there initials on them – the writing-case, the clock, even the celery glass?’

  ‘What initials?’

  Holgate did not remember at once, but they came to him.

  ‘WFH?’

  ‘Who’s WFH?’

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  ‘Stolen property, Mr Holgate. All those things were missing after a break-in at Lytham St Anne’s two years ago – a summer residence shut up for the winter.’

  ‘So how can they have got into Henry Burgess’s hands?’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to read into that.’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t get here until after Mr Burgess’s sad demise.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘If a man had dubious property to dispose of, house clearance would be a very handy way to claim he had come by it.’

  Holgate digested this.

  ‘Meaning me, Mr Mosley?’

  Mosley looked wildly behind himself and under the table. He opened a corner cupboard and stuck his head into it.

  I don’t think we have company, have we?’

  ‘Mr Mosley –’

  ‘Dickie – I had a quiet little word with you when you were first setting up in business. Do you remember what I said?’

  ‘A little fireside chat about honesty.’

  ‘I told you, Dickie, that in the walk of life that you’ve elected for, it’s not easy to be honest. You’ve got to be so honest that it’s your honesty men talk about. You’ve got to start that way – and stay so. You’ve got to wear your honesty on both sleeves. Once you lose your name for honesty, you’ll never get it back.’

  ‘I do my little best, Mr Mosley.’

  Then suddenly he came near to losing his temper.

  ‘Mr Mosley, I find it offensive that you should be treating me as some sort of suspect.’

  And he remembered something else.

  ‘And if it’s proof you want, when Tim Fawcett first brought me here to show me round, I picked up that carriage clock, and I said to him, “I wonder who WFH was.” And he said, “Oh, some dim and distant heirloom-dispenser on one side or other of the Burgess marriage.” I bet he’ll remember saying that.’

  ‘Or he’ll have inconveniently forgotten. I’ll ask him next time I see him. Let’s take a little walk round the house.’

  There was discoloration of the walls. Cables of cobweb hung where Tim Fawcett had had some of the more massive pieces removed to his saleroom. Like so many houses of this period, this one had been designed as a public proclamation of prosperity, rather than for the convenience of any of those who had to live or work in it. The great rooms must have been mercilessly cold, and even before the trees outside had matured, they must have been dark. Now that the foliage had luxuriated at random, there was a gloom about the place that seemed to reflect Henry Burgess’s inconsolable and peevish misery. And, of course, many of the rooms had not been entered for years.

  ‘Which was old Henry’s bedroom, do you know?’

  ‘This one,’ Dickie Holgate said.

  It was one of the smaller ones, as if the old man had moved into it as a monastic penance. It was probably as a young man that he had made that choice. The bed was a single one of vintage hospital ward pattern. The mattress was one of the things that Dickie Holgate would be throwing on to his terminal bonfire. There were medicines on the stained cane table beside the bed: nothing extraordinary – prescriptions against the coughs and discomforts of old age. The room seemed still to smell of Henry Burgess: of his urine, his old man’s breath, his dandruff and his desquamating armpits. Mosley did not spend long in there, but for some reason not obvious to Holgate he seemed to want to linger in one of the other rooms. It was a spacious double room at the back of the house – what must surely have been the matrimonial bedroom was at the front, and had presumably been derelict since Burgess’s wife’s death. In this guestroom, Mosley looked long and thoughtfully out of the window.

  The back garden was even more a wilderness than the front one. The remains of a row of rotting canes were still stuck in the ground, as if someone had grown runner beans here fifteen years ago. The handles of a very old, very rusty and very basic mower were just about visible in a tangle of woody nightshade and fat hen. Honeysuckle had overreached the summit of a dying apple tree and bindweed had taken possession of the pole that brought in the overhead electricity mains.

  Mosley turned and gave his attention to the interior of the room. He ran a finger along the dust on the window-ledge and cursorily examined what he retrieved. Then he stooped, picked up something tiny, dropped it into the palm of his hand and examined it close to the light from the window. Then he brought it over, and showed it to Holgate.

  ‘What do you reckon this is?’

  Holgate looked.

  ‘Easy. It’s the stylus from a stereogram.’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why Henry Burgess should be changing the stylus of a stereogram in a bedroom that he never used?’

  ‘Bit of a facer, that one.’

  ‘Perhaps his niece brought one with her when she stayed here?’

  Mosley put the s
tylus away in his wallet and let Dickie Holgate drive away alone. He spent a little more time looking up and down inside the house, then walked back along Dickinson Road, stopping at the first telephone kiosk he encountered. From here he rang Tim Fawcett at his number.

  ‘Tim – has Dickie Holgate been in touch with you since I was talking to you in your office?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He will be. He’ll be asking if you remember him asking you about the initials WFH. And you’re supposed to have said something about an ancestor of Henry Burgess or his wife.’

  ‘I did say something along those lines.’

  ‘I want you to deny it – or at least to make out that you don’t remember the question coming up.’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘This is important, Tim.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  Mosley hung up. Fawcett had not asked him why. He had sounded lethargic and uninterested as if he were about to drop off with the receiver at his ear.

  ‘What,’ the assistant chief constable asked Detective-Superintendent Tom Grimshaw, ‘is Mosley up to nowadays? We seem to hear nothing of him.’

  ‘And are we complaining on that score?’

  ‘No – but it is the same syndrome as a quiet child.’

  ‘I know what you mean. In fact, only yesterday I was reflecting that about the only serious detection I do these days is trying to interpret the visible and outward signs of Mosley’s activities. He seems at the moment to be conducting himself as an orthodox detective.’

  ‘I find that worrying. Do you think he is sickening for something?’

  ‘I think he’s behaving himself for a purpose. My belief is that he’s about to ask a favour.’