Read Online Case for Sergeant Beef by Leo Bruce - Free Book Online Page B

Started as a chemist. Was bookie’s clerk for a time. A drunk and a sponger. He was a parents’ darling as a child and when the old people died went rotten. Ran through what they left him and did his best to get the little bit left to his sister. One report says that he’s not above blackmail. No loss, and anybody’s victim.’
    â€˜How long had he been in Barnford?’
    â€˜Arrived that morning from London on a train that gets in at two-fifty. Too late for a drink, but went to the back door of the Feathers and asked the landlord, a man named Brown, if he could have one. Brown says he refused and that Shoulter walked off at once. But of course we can’t be sure about that. He may have sat there drinking all the afternoon. We only know for certain that he came off the train at two-fifty. No one except Brown admits to having seen him alive again.’
    â€˜I see,’ said Beef. ‘That’s all very clear and interesting.’
    â€˜There’s a lot more stuff,’ said Chatto.
    â€˜Yes. I was just going to ask about the gun.’
    â€˜Your client’s again,’ smiled Chatto. ‘But she did report to the police about seven days before the crime that she had lost it. Taken from her front hall. Says she had no idea when it went. The last time she had seen it to her knowledge was when her brother had been down a month ago.He had taken it out one afternoon to try and get a rabbit. She can’t be sure that he put it back in its usual place in the hall. She only knows that about a week before Christmas she noticed that it wasn’t there. She asked young Ribbon and he said that he hadn’t seen it for some days. The last time he positively remembers seeing it was when she told him to clean it once in October. He put it back after that.’
    â€˜What about cartridges?’
    â€˜Potter’s Fesantsure were in the gun,’ said Chatto. ‘The local firm, Warlock’s of Ashley, say that they supplied these to most of the people round here who had licences. That includes Miss Shoulter, a man named Flipp who lives in the wood, a retired watchmaker named Chickle who lives at a bungalow called ‘Labour’s End’ at the Barnford end of the footpath through the wood, a solicitor named Aston with an office in Ashley and a bungalow at Copling, and your friend Joe Bridge.’
    â€˜Any interesting fingerprints?’
    â€˜None. The gun had been wiped dry and then gripped by the dead man, presumably after death by someone holding his hand round the barrel. None on anything else that we’ve found. Gloves, of course.’
    â€˜Any idea when the shots were fired?’
    â€˜Pretty contradictory. Both Flipp and a woman named Mrs Pluck who is housekeeper to Chickle, whose first name, by the way, is Wellington -’
    â€˜Wellington?’ shouted Beef.
    â€˜Wellington. After the Iron Duke.’
    â€˜Blimey, you haven’t half got some names round here.’ And he gave a rude stare at Watts-Dunton.
    â€˜I was saying that Mrs Pluck, Flipp, Chickle himself and Miss Shoulter say they heard a double shot at about twenty past three. Mrs Pluck, Miss Shoulter, and Flipp heard the same thing about an hour later, but Chickle says that was himself potting at a hare. Then Chickle and Mrs Pluck, but not Miss Shoulter or Flipp, heard another shot, which might have been two barrels fired simultaneously, at exactly six-five. They’re sure about the time as Chickle was puttingaway his gardening things just then and called Mrs Pluck’s attention to the fact that someone was poaching.’
    Mm. Now what I’d like to know is this. Suppose Shoulter was shot with the gun he was holding, is there anything to make us certain of that? Could he have been shot with one gun, then this one discharged and put by him by the murderer?’
    â€˜He could. Nothing to prevent it. But no reason to think so. Why should the murderer use two