What Me, Mr Mosley? Read online

  ‘Ask a favour? Mosley?’

  ‘Yes. I think he’s about to ask if Beamish can be permanently seconded to him. He’s already dropped a hint or two.’

  ‘A good idea.’

  ‘It’s a terrible idea. I shall resist it with every argument I can muster. It would be the ruin of Beamish. It would simply make another Mosley of him.’

  Chapter Four

  Stately as a galleon –

  Anyone familiar with Joyce Grenfell’s song must surely have found those lines crossing his mind when he met Primrose Toplady. It was not that she was monumental in stature: she barely reached five feet. There was nothing of the Amazon in her structure: she was squat and big-busted in an essentially static way. What marked her out was the defiant dignity with which she performed her every movement, even if it was only entering a room with a tray of coffee. She was also an utterly humourless woman – something that she would have denied most vehemently.

  Mosley visited her in her upper-working-class-terraced house in that quarter of Bagshawe Broome that is made up entirely of upper-working-class terraces. It was a home of passionate cleanliness and geometrical precision, the principal furniture acquired either just before, during, or immediately after the Second World War. There was a set of Dickens sold at a concessionary price during the newspaper competition of the thirties. There was a home-pegged rug which enlivened the hearth with a prancing tiger. There was a rented colour TV. And there was one concession to casual male comfort: a pair of bedroom slippers on the inside of the brass metal fender. But they lay together with the exact alignment of a soldier’s kit laid for barrack inspection. Primrose Toplady had seen five sons and a daughter through to adulthood and there was evidence of this in the range of framed enlargements scattered over walls, shelves and cabinets, showing Topladys of all ages – black and white, hand-tinted and in colour, Topladys building sand-castles, Topladys clasping the parchment of their degree diplomas, Toplady weddings and aerial photographs of Toplady suburban semis.

  Mrs Toplady was austerely unpassionate in appearance. It was difficult to picture the sex-life of the Topladys, fruitful though it had been. Kitchener Toplady was a sixteen-stone jowly pachyderm, a wages-clerk at Fothergill’s, who towered over his wife – and was distinctly the more disturbed of the two when he saw Mosley on their doorstep.

  It was his wife who opened the door, took Mosley’s hat and showed Mosley into their tiny front room. Even hovering in the background, Kitchener Toplady looked as if he was in the way. It was to Mrs Toplady that Mosley spoke.

  ‘Henry Burgess –’

  Even the initial mention of the name momentarily extracted wind from Mrs Toplady’s taut canvas. Her sails did not exactly sag, but their fabric quivered. Mosley did not let it be seen that he had noticed. Her husband, however, was clumsy enough to try to come to her rescue.

  ‘It was too much for her, all that cycling across town in all weathers.’

  She behaved as if he had not spoken – or, if he had, as if he was not likely to have made himself understood.

  ‘It was too much for me, all that cycling across town in all weathers,’ she said.

  Then she launched into a complex account of the financial pressures that had pushed her into the indignity of going out to work: Eric still at university, Katherine at College of Music, Kevin in the sixth form, and her husband on the sick and therefore losing overtime.

  ‘The gastric,’ Kitchener said.

  ‘The gastric,’ she repeated, as if she truly believed that he needed an interpreter.

  ‘How many hours a week did you put in for Henry Burgess?’

  ‘Two every morning, one in the afternoon, but only an hour on Sundays.’

  ‘And I suppose you just did anything that needed doing?’

  ‘Laid and lit his fire. Cooked his breakfast – he always came downstairs on the stroke of nine. Hoovered and tidied him up, did any ironing or mending that was called for.’

  ‘His laundry?’

  ‘I used to bring that home with me.’

  ‘And in the afternoon?’

  ‘Made him a pot of tea. In the darker months I drew his curtains for the evening. Brought him anything he had asked me to get for him from the shops.’

  ‘You never cooked anything for him at midday?’

  ‘He always liked to go out for his lunch.’

  Did she sourly disapprove of Henry Burgess’s al fresco pies? Primrose Toplady was answering every question aseptically, as if she considered it above her station to hold a personal opinion about an employer.

  ‘And for how long did you work for him?’

  ‘Four years, three months and one week.’

  ‘You stopped about two years ago?’

  ‘Two weeks less than two years. It was in November.’

  Clearly the break stuck vividly in her memory.

  ‘You left suddenly?’

  ‘I gave notice in the proper fashion.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, Mrs Toplady. What was your immediate reason for leaving?’

  ‘I’ve told you. All that cycling across town.’

  ‘It must have left a big gap in Henry Burgess’s life, not having you arrive according to timetable.’

  ‘I thought very hard about that before I made my mind up.’

  ‘Did he to your knowledge try to get anyone in your place?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have found that easy.’

  ‘You think not?’

  ‘Women don’t want domestic work these days.’

  Mosley knew that that was certainly not true of all local women.

  ‘Perhaps no one wanted to work for Henry Burgess,’ he suggested, but she did not rise to that bait.

  ‘I’ve heard him called awkward, nasty-tempered. But you got on all right with him?’

  ‘I never had cause to complain.’

  ‘How much did you see of Henry Burgess after you stopped working for him?’

  ‘I caught sight of him in town from time to time.’

  ‘And you’d pass the time of day?’

  ‘If he saw me. He was often lost in his thoughts.’

  ‘You were still good friends, then?’

  Primrose Toplady hesitated. Perhaps it was the word friend that threw her. She clearly had her own well-defined code of truthfulness. Mosley knew that it was not by any means the whole truth that she was telling him this morning, but she was the kind of woman who was inhibited from telling the lie direct.

  ‘Mr Burgess was always the most correct of men,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure he was.’

  It was difficult to fill in mentally the details of their relationship. Had there been mornings when Burgess had been demonstratively glad to see her? Or had he taken her for granted? Had there been days when he’d barely seemed to notice that she was in his house? What had they ever talked about? Reactionary platitudes triggered off by the morning’s headlines? The weather? Or virtually nothing at all?

  And had she never been anywhere near Garth since she had left off doing for him? Never gone a hundred yards out of her way on a shopping day to see if he needed anything? Never taken him a little something at Christmas? Never wondered how he was managing, an old man over ninety, who might die in his sleep any night?

  Had he perhaps made what amounted to a pass at her – or something that she had construed as a pass? Senile sexuality was a subject in itself, something about which Mosley did not claim to know much, but he knew that it never paid to discount it. Primrose Toplady would have reacted very sharply if anything like that had happened. It was even more difficult to imagine than her and Kitchener in a bout of kittenish love-play.

  ‘Did he ever have any visitors to the house while you were working for him?’

  ‘His niece sometimes came and stayed the night – not very often. A very nice lady. Very presentable.’

  ‘And she got on well with her uncle?’

  ‘Very well indeed. She was the only person I knew who could bring him out of himself.’
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  ‘How did she manage that?’

  ‘She made jokes. Pretended to lose her patience with him.’

  For a moment it looked as if Mrs Toplady was about to loosen up and tell a human anecdote, but she retrieved her self-discipline.

  ‘Of course, she knew how far it was safe to go.’

  ‘Mrs Toplady – when the niece came, did she bring any kind of radio with her – a record-player, or a music centre?’

  Mrs Toplady seemed puzzled by the reason for the question. ‘I can’t say that I remember.’

  ‘Might she have done?’

  ‘I can’t say that I’d know the answer to that.’

  ‘What sort of music did Henry Burgess like?’

  ‘Oh, choirs – that sort of thing. Welsh male voices. His favourite was Myfanwy.’

  ‘He was very fond of music?’

  ‘Of good music.’

  She was still puzzled, was not enjoying this phase of the dialogue. She might know more than she was telling. ‘He just enjoyed something good if it came on.’

  ‘And what did he think of this modern stuff?’

  ‘He couldn’t stand it. Those groups, those jazzy guitars, young men with long hair – he’d have had the whole lot banned, if he’d had his way.’

  ‘What was his hearing like? Was he going deaf in his old age?’

  ‘Sometimes you’d think so. But he could hear what he wanted to. I had to watch it, I can tell you. If I was doing something in another room – like moving a vase to dust under it, he’d hear. He’d be round the door to make sure I wasn’t going to break something.’

  Another tiny lifting of the veil, a suggestion that life at Garth had had its exasperating, even its human moments. But still Mosley did not apply pressure. She was giving him less than a true picture – which amounted to giving him a false picture. But that did not seem to worry him. As he had expounded to Sergeant Beamish, when people wanted to paint a false picture, it paid, if one had the time, to let it develop. It could be useful to know what sort of falseness they wanted to put over.

  Mosley transferred his attention to Kitchener.

  ‘It must have been a relief to you to have your wife home again full time.’

  This was something of a facer for the dyspeptic Toplady, who was uncertain what his wife would want him to reply.

  ‘I never try to interfere,’ he said at last.

  Mosley asked one or two more questions, mostly concerned with matters of no apparent relevance, such as Mrs Toplady’s route across town on her bicycle and Kitchener’s self-medication for his ulcer. Then he seemed to be attaching more importance to the substance of the answers. Had Henry Burgess ever tried to get Primrose Toplady out of his house before the time of her daily stint was up? She shook her head and refused to be dislodged from meeting Mosley’s stare.

  ‘There’s something that surprises me, Mr and Mrs Toplady.’

  They looked at him with round eyes.

  ‘What I can’t understand is why neither of you has expressed surprise that I’ve come here to talk to you this morning.’

  Each waited for the other to find something to say.

  ‘Why do you think I have suddenly become interested in the affairs of the late Mr Burgess?’

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that ever since you rang the door-bell,’ Kitchener Toplady said.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that myself,’ his wife said in innocent support.

  ‘It’s something you might like to talk about between yourselves.’

  ‘Well, you know, Mr Mosley – now you mention it –’

  ‘It did sometimes cross my mind at the time –’

  But Mosley did not seem to be under any press of urgency.

  ‘I think perhaps I’ve taken you too much by surprise this morning,’ he said, with bumbling kindness. ‘Perhaps there are things that you’d like to tell me, when you’ve got them straight in your own minds. Come and see me when you’ve mulled it all over between yourselves.’

  He left the house and made his leisurely way towards Tim Fawcett’s office.

  Chapter Five

  Orthodox detection: Mosley established a dusty corner for himself in Bagshawe Broome police station where he asked to see the back numbers of stolen property lists. For half an hour he made notes, then rang HQ at Bradcaster and asked to be put through to Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw.

  ‘I need a sergeant,’ he said, addressing his superior by neither rank nor name. There was a rustle of paper in a wire basket, as if that was where Grimshaw kept his reserve manpower.

  ‘Where are you speaking from?’

  Mosley paused, as if reluctant to share even as slender a confidence as that.

  ‘Bagshawe Broome.’

  ‘Got something on up there, have you?’

  There was a silence at the originating end. Grimshaw wondered if he ought to have known better than to ask.

  ‘Possibly,’ Mosley said at last.

  ‘Would you like to expand on that?’

  ‘Can’t,’ Mosley said. ‘Don’t know myself yet.’

  This time it was Grimshaw who thought before committing himself to speech. A single loose syllable could be fatal.

  ‘Can’t let you have Beamish,’ he said finally. ‘Beamish is up to his neck in it.’

  This was received in a silence so long that Grimshaw wondered if Mosley had gone away.

  ‘We think we have a lead,’ Grimshaw said, ‘on the Soulgate Manor job. Beamish is working on it. I could let you have Dawson for a day or two. Or there’s Watson from B Division – a new promotion –’

  But this time Mosley really had departed. He made his way across the town to Fawcett and Foster’s Office and was observed crossing the Market Place by Miles John Morrison.

  Miles Morrison was Bagshawe Broome’s most active capitalist, a man whose funds were kept unremittingly at work – and whose portfolio contained nothing in print or writing. Miley was a big man, barrel-chested and with a close-cropped, almost totally bald head. His place of business was a spot five yards south-south-east of Bert Hardcastle’s kiosk and ten yards west of the cattle trough, on a corner of which he occasionally sat to receive intelligence or issue his orders of the day. When Miley Morrison was seen sitting with one of his henchmen on a corner of the trough, other men kept their distance, making it plain that they were not trying to eavesdrop. Sometimes Morrison was absent from the Market Place and it was guessed that the return on one of his investments had required personal collection: Morrison knew on which days his clients received their pay-packets, and at precisely what hours they left their places of employment.

  There was any amount of speculative legend about Miles Morrison – and there were two incontrovertible known facts, one of which was that he had been to prison. He had served a month for GBH to Wally Schofield, on whose dentures, upper and lower, he had performed such grievous harm that they had had to be written off. Morrison had gone to prison because he had said he would: he had told Wally Schofield to his face and in the hearing of a cuffer that he would do bird for him. It was a long time ago now, and Morrison had never expressed any desire to repeat the experience. But it was a paragraph in his existence that had stood him in good stead ever since. Men liable to offend him, accidentally or otherwise, had not forgotten contemporary accounts of the jags of pink plastic that had emerged through Wally Schofield’s cheek. Wally Schofield had owed Miles Morrison ten shillings, and Miles had happened to know that he was in temporary possession of that sum.

  The other pertinent fact about Miley Morrison was that he had a family. He had a wife, a tiny, pallid, friendless, screwed-up little woman about whose opinions on any subject nothing was known to a soul. And he had a daughter, Janet, aged thirteen in the year of Henry Burgess’s death, who was the neatest-dressed, best scrubbed and most formal-mannered child in Bagshawe Broome. He sent her to a private school in Bradburn and she was seen every morning waiting for her bus in her neat grey uniform and velvet-banded pudding-basin hat. />
  Whatever surplus was left over from Miles Morrison’s weekly profit and loss account was divided with fanatical exactitude into two halves, one of which went into savings for his Janet. The remainder, together with any residue which his wife had managed to squeeze out of their supplementary benefits – which she had to account to him for – was put to immediate work in further speculation. This included an occasional gamble on horses, dogs or forthcoming local events, but was mostly concerned with short-term usury at a monstrous rate of interest. No deal was too petty to be beneath his dignity: he would lend the price of half a pint, or even a sum as low as twenty-five pence, if, say, a man wished to join a syndicate to place an each-way bet. But Morrison had to know that repayment was within the borrower’s capacity, and settlement was strictly weekly. Miley opened his books afresh each Friday night, and business was usually languid until about Wednesday.

  Miley watched Mosley cross the cobbles towards Fawcett and Foster’s, watched him go in at the estate agent’s door. Miley was interested – he wanted to know. His prestige – his principal stock in trade – depended on his knowing, or at least appearing to know – everything that happened in Bagshawe. He had even been known to pay small sums to trusted disciples to find things out for him. The impression that he aimed at ideally was that nothing could happen in Bagshawe Broome without his express permission. He knew that Mosley had leaned on Dickie Holgate on Market Day. He knew that Mosley had been asking questions of the landlord of the Lansdowne. He knew that Mosley had been to Bowland Avenue and he knew that he had been to see the Topladys. And Miley needed to know, before somebody asked him the frontal question – what was going on?

  Mosley passed directly in front of Morrison.

  ‘Morning, Mr Mosley.’

  Mosley emitted a monosyllabic grunt without turning his head to look at the big man. He had never had anything direct to do with Morrison, had never given the impression that he took cognizance of Morrison’s existence. He opened the door of Fawcett’s office, closely watched by Morrison.

  In contrast to his behaviour on Market Day, Desmond Lummis, Tim Fawcett’s young man, almost fawned over Mosley. Mr Fawcett was away for the day, valuing stock for the take-over of an inn up one of the Lake District passes, but if there was anything he could do –