The Lake District Murder (British Library Crime Classics) (14 page)

“That’s it. Remember it’s Prince speaking to Wick. Now I tried filling in the gaps and the result I got went something like this—‘
We thought we might have something to take in since you’ve been working overtime. Mark’s naturally out of the running until affairs over at the Derwent have settled down
.’ Does that let the light in at all, sir?”

“By Jove, it does!” exclaimed the Superintendent, suddenly sitting upright in his chair. “It means that since Clayton’s death Higgins has had to lie doggo. He can’t carry on with the illicit job until police interest in the garage has calmed down a bit. In consequence, Wick, at the Lothwaite, has had to work overtime. And further it looks as if the lorry acts as a sort of collecting van for the ‘racket.’ You agree, Meredith?”

“In detail, sir,” said Meredith warmly. “Now take the next bit.” He held out his hand for the proffered notebook. “...
all very well ... boss can’t expect ... up the output ... impossible
,” read the Inspector. “Which I read something like this—‘
That’s all very well, but the boss can’t expect me to keep up the output. It’s impossible!
’ Which suggests that Wick was finding himself hard put to it, to do the Derwent work as well as his own.”

“But what? What?” demanded the Superintendent with a comical note of despair. “What work?”

Meredith shook his head.

“That
is
problem number two,” he pointed out. “Find out what they’re up to and I reckon we should be able to get ‘em inside the net. Do you know anything about this Mr. Ormsby-Wright, sir?”

“Little enough, I’m afraid. He’s got a big house up on the Carlisle road near Penrith Beacon. ‘Brackenside’, I think it’s called. But beyond the fact that he’s a member of the local Conservative Club, a churchgoer and a sound business man, I know nothing. I’ve heard he’s worth a bit, of course. It’s common property that he’s got a finger in a good many industrial pies. But although the Nonock’s his chief concern, he takes no active interest now in the running of the company. More or less leaves it to his two branch managers, I understand.”

“He’s not married, sir?”

“No.”

“What do you suggest as my next move, sir?” asked Meredith with his customary tact.

“Follow up the murder,” replied the Superintendent as he got up from his chair and buckled on his cape. “If your investigations take you into localities where you might pick up information about the ‘racket’, then keep your eye skinned. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t let them get wind of our suspicions, Meredith. Play the murder for all you’re worth but not a hint about the second problem. Understand?”

Meredith understood only too well, and when the Superintendent had departed for Carlisle, he swore softly under his breath at the cussedness of the double-barrelled case. It was all very well for the Superintendent to talk glibly about solving the murder first, but suppose it proved impossible to do so without further investigation of the other crime? These sort of official limitations were annoying. At any rate he had discovered a means of keeping an eye on the Lothwaite, which would not result in any of the suspects being put on their guard. Tony’s information, too, had provided him with a heaven-sent opportunity to find out a bit more about the Nonock depot and its personnel. With Rose away for the afternoon he could question the yard-man and perhaps get a glimpse of the manager’s books. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to three. If he drove over straight away he would have plenty of time to interview the man before the manager returned at five.

Before he departed, however, he left instructions with the Sergeant to find out who had driven over to the football match at Cockermouth on Saturday afternoon.

“Get all the information you can about a parked petrol lorry at a point near Jenkin Hill. Find out if they appeared to be in trouble—bonnet up or anything like that. There must have been plenty of people on the road at the time.”

“Very good, sir.”

Meredith was soon speeding over the all-too-familiar Keswick–Penrith road through a dull and muggy afternoon. The higher mountain peaks were swathed in blankets of white mist. Although it was March there was an almost autumnal feeling in the air. Meredith half expected to see patches of decayed heather and the sere and golden bracken on the fell-sides. The melting drifts of snow still clinging to the windward sides of the higher gullies, the bare, black trees and the general desolation of the wintry landscape seemed strangely out of place.

As an imaginative man, fond of the open air, Meredith had grown to love the sweep and the grandeur of the valleys and the hills. Even the realistic and often sordid nature of his job had failed to take the keen edge off a naturally poetic appreciation of his surroundings. Often he would tramp for miles over the fells with no other companions than his pipe and his thoughts. He was thinking then, as he sped between the age-old, grey, stone walls—not of the patch of watery sunlight on the distant slope of Clough Head, nor the blue shadow caught in the trough of a far-off valley, but as to why a certain Nonock lorry had parked up a side-turning on the night of Clayton’s murder.

Try as he would he could not see how Prince or Bettle could have found time to do their dastardly work and arrive back at the depot before nine o’clock. If only he could lay his finger on the weak spot of his reconstruction of the crime! Was it, he wondered suddenly, that Bettle had returned alone to the depot? Had he left Prince to do the job and return to Penrith by train or bus? If so, what was the point of Bettle waiting up the side-turning? It would have been far better for him to have dropped Prince a little way up the road from the Derwent and driven directly back to Penrith.

Still turning these problems over in his mind, Meredith drew up in front of the corrugated-iron gates and dismounted. As on his previous visit he found the gates ajar. Ignoring the apparently closed office, he crossed the yard to the big garage in which a light was burning. Inside he found a man in blue overalls, engaged in swilling down the cement floor with a length of hose.

Meredith’s first impression was of a quiet, respectable individual, who would probably prove to be a conscientious and efficient employee. In age he looked to be fifty or a little over.

At the Inspector’s unheralded appearance the man looked up quickly.

“Hullo, sir! And what may you be wanting?”

“Manager about?”

“No, sir. He won’t be back till five. Anything I can do?”

“Yes,” replied Meredith brusquely. “I’m Inspector Meredith—county police. You can probably help me. Won’t keep you a minute.”

The man laid the bubbling hose on the floor, and, walking over to the tap, turned off the water.

“Now, sir?” he said, turning to the Inspector.

“What’s your position here?” asked Meredith.

“Yard-man. Odd-job man if you like—it more or less amounts to that. If there’s anything extra to be done they drops on me to do it.”

“Name?”

“Dancy—Robert Dancy.”

“What time did you leave here last Saturday night?”

“Darn late,” answered the man promptly. “I should have got away by seven, but No. 4 had trouble on the road and didn’t get in until near on nine.”

“No. 4?”

“That’s the Keswick–Cockermouth lorry, sir.”

“I see. Was the lorry checked in?”

“Yes, sir. By Mr. Rose. He’s the manager.”

“Could I see the book?”

The man hesitated, obviously reluctant to interfere with something that was strictly outside his province.

“Well?” demanded Meredith. “Yes or no?” Then realizing the man was still undecided he determined to try a bluff. “You realize that I could get a search warrant anyway, don’t you? But I don’t want to waste time on that. There’s no need for your boss to know that you’ve let me have a look at the book, if it’s that what’s troubling you.”

“All right,” agreed Dancy. “Since you put it like that, Inspector.”

The yard-man pulled a bunch of keys out of his pocket and Meredith followed him over to the little, brick-built office. Unlocking the door Dancy preceded the Inspector to a knee-hole desk near the window and picked up a black-bound book.

“Here you are, sir. This is what you’re after.”

Meredith took the book and soon found the page in which he was interested. He noted that each page was ruled into several columns, headed respectively—Date. Lorry No. Time Outgoing. Load. Deliveries At. Time Incoming. On Saturday, March 23rd, Lorry No. 4 had apparently left the depot at 9.10 with a load of 1,000 gallons. Deliveries were to be made at five various garages
en route
, including the Derwent. There was, however, no mention of the Lothwaite. The lorry had arrived back at the depot at 8.35. Five minutes earlier, in fact, than his own estimate for a direct run, allowing that the lorry had left the Derwent at 7.30. So unless Rose had cooked his books Prince and Bettle
had
told the truth.

“I see that No. 4 got in at 8.35 on Saturday,” observed Meredith to the yard-man. “Does that strike you about right?”

“Within a minute or so, I reckon. Since I was kept hanging about I looked at the yard clock pretty frequently, and that check-in just about fits in with my idea of the time, sir.”

“Who regulates the yard clock?”

“I do.”

“Tell me, Mr. Dancy—when a lorry goes out with a load does it only deliver to order? Or do the men carry enough surplus to deliver an order on request?”

“Well, sir, for the most part they only deliver to orders received in advance. The garage writes in to Mr. Rose, stating the number of gallons required, and the load is usually made up so as to cover these advance orders. On the other hand when there’s only half a load, we usually shove in another three or four gallons in case it may be wanted. On a round of that sort it’s usual for our chaps to visit all our customers on their route.”

“I see. What about Saturday’s load on No. 4?”

“I can tell you about that all right, sir, because I helped to run it in. It was made up exact to advance orders. No surplus, see? Thousand gallons, I think it was.”

Meredith’s interest quickened. Something was wrong there! Wick had spoken that morning about wanting four hundred gallons on Saturday for delivery at the Lothwaite. But according to him there was only a surplus of 200 gallons in the tank and so he had asked for the full load to be delivered that morning. But how could there have been a surplus of 200 gallons if Saturday’s load was made up exact to orders? When the lorry reached the Lothwaite there should have been just enough petrol left in the tank for the advance order at the Derwent.

Another point flashed through Meredith’s mind. He hastily turned the pages of the black-bound book. Yes—there was to-day’s entry. He went through the list of garages under the heading of “Deliveries At”. The Lothwaite was not there! But it should have been there! Wick had given an order on Saturday night for 400 gallons. Why hadn’t the order been entered in the book? Hadn’t he himself seen the lorry making the delivery that morning?

“Is there an order book, Mr. Dancy?”

“There,” said Dancy, pointing to a foolscap-size ledger lying in a wire tray. “All the advance orders are posted up in that book by Mr. Rose.”

The Inspector examined the more recent entries with the closest attention. Saturday’s order from the Derwent was there all right, but there was no record of Wick’s order for the 400-gallon delivery to be made that morning.

“Tell me this, Mr. Dancy—if one of your lorry-men gets a verbal order
en route
, does he have to report it to Mr. Rose?”

“Of course. Otherwise the office wouldn’t be able to keep a proper check on the outgoing loads.
Every
advance order received, sir, is shown in that ledger.”

“Thanks. Now do you think I could just take a look round the premises?”

Dancy, although obviously puzzled by the Inspector’s interest in the depot, readily assented. The two men set off on a brief tour of the place, the yard-man explaining things as they went along. But Meredith found nothing out of the ordinary to interest him. The place was well kept, roomy and so constructed as to minimize any risk of fire or explosion.

“Tell me, Mr. Dancy—what’s the procedure from the moment a petrol consignment arrives at the port of entry until it reaches here?”

“It’s like this, sir,” explained the yard-man. “We’ve got our own store down at the dock-side. The petrol’s discharged from an oil-tanker alongside the storage tanks in our own wharf-depot, see? As it’s run in from the ship the Excise people check up on the amount and levy the necessary duty. When we find ourselves getting low here we let ‘em know down at the dock-side store. We then get an advice note to say that a tank-car has been despatched to us containing so-and-so gallons of petrol. When the tank-car arrives here, the railway people shunt it off on to our own siding round the back of this place. From there, by means of that pump I showed you just now, we empty the tank-car into our own storage tanks. There’s an underground pipe from the siding which runs into the tanks via the pump.”

“I see. Very interesting,” commented Meredith. “Can you tell me the capacity load of one of your lorries?”

“Thousand gallons, sir. Same in each case. All our bulk-wagons—that’s the trade name for the lorries—are built to the same pattern. They’re three-compartment jobs. Two compartments holding four hundred gallons each and the remaining one two hundred gallons.”

Satisfied that he now had a fairly extensive idea as to the
modus operandi
of the petrol company, Meredith accompanied Dancy back to the garage, where he thanked the yard-man for his attention and cautioned him to keep quiet about the visit.

“I’m afraid I’ve kept you from your job,” he concluded, with his usual politeness.

“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” Dancy assured him. “With this new, high-pressure nozzle I can wash down the yards in half the time. Ever seen the gadget? Neat, isn’t it?”

The Inspector, after a quick examination of the patent, agreed that it was—very neat. He noticed, too, that the length of hose to which the nozzle was attached was also brand new. It started a sudden train of thought coursing through his mind.