Jam and Jeopardy (22 page)

‘Talcum powder?’

‘That’s the stuff. She’s got a sensitive skin, so she says, and she buys the kind that’s nae scented, in a thing like a bowl. Well, I mixed the powder four tablespoons
wi’ one tablespoon o’ arsenic in a polythene bag, afore I took it up to Janet Souter. So you see, Sergeant, unless somebody shovelled the whole bloomin’ lot doon her throat, that
stuff couldna’ve killed her. Mind you, if she’d forgot to wash her hands, or let some on her food by mistake, she’d have got a real bad bellyache.’

Davie stopped, then said, ‘What was it you wanted to see me about, though?’

Moore couldn’t tell him that Janet Souter hadn’t been poisoned at all, so he did some quick thinking. ‘We just wanted to confirm that it was you who gave her the arsenic. Thank
you for telling me about the talcum powder, and we’ll bear it in mind.’

‘You dae that, and I hope you discover what poison did kill her, for it wasna the arsenic I gave her.’

There was one thing more that Moore felt obliged to say. ‘Mr Livingstone, you know, of course, that it’s against the law to keep . . .’

‘I ken that fine, laddie, but there’s nae much left now, and it’s well locked awa’. You’ll nae report me?’

‘I should, but . . . just be careful. And don’t give any more of it away.’

‘There’s nae enough left to be dishin’ it out, in ony case.’

Moore returned to the station to make up his report of their activities since the funeral.

As Callum McGillivray locked the car door, the window of Mrs Gray’s house opened and the old lady shouted, ‘Can you come in a minute, Inspector? There’s
something I want to tell you.’

By the time he sat down in her living room, she’d forgotten that she’d asked him in, and started reminiscing about the old days again. He quite enjoyed her anecdotes about her own
past, and the pasts of several others in the village, because her dry wit appealed to his sense of humour, but time was passing.

He jumped in when she stopped for breath at the end of a long and involved story. ‘You said you’d something to tell me?’

She found it difficult to drag her mind back. ‘Did I? Oh, aye, of course.’ She launched into another long, involved account which boiled down to the fact that she’d seen a man
she thought she should know leaving May White’s house late on the night of the murder.

McGillivray had had experience of very old ladies before, and knew the lies they could concoct if they took an ill-will against someone. ‘Why do you think this man you can’t identify
had anything to do with the murder? We’ve no reason to suspect him of anything other than seeing Mrs White. We can’t go accusing any Tom, Dick or Harry, you know.’

‘I know that, but the more I think about it, the surer I am. He came out of her back door and over the paling into my garden, then over the other paling into the field. Then he went out of
my sight.’

‘You’d say he didn’t want to be seen?’

‘Oh, he did not want to be seen, skulking about like a thief, he was. I just about broke my neck trying to watch him, and it was near midnight and me in my nightie.’

McGillivray stifled a laugh at the picture of this arthritic old woman in her nightdress craning her neck to watch the man who’d been visiting May White so late at night.

She caught the amusement in his eyes and gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Aye, it’s a good thing nobody could see me.’

‘But it was dark?’ Her thick glasses meant that her eyesight must be pretty poor.

‘There was a full moon, Inspector. I couldn’t see his face but there was a kind of swagger about the way he walked that reminded me of somebody, but I’m dashed if I can
remember who.’ She shook her head in anger at her shortcomings. ‘I was making a cup of tea before I went to my bed, or I wouldn’t have seen him at all.’

‘I really can’t do anything, Mrs Gray, until you can give me a name.’

‘As soon as it comes to me, I’ll get somebody to tell you.’

‘Good, I’d be really grateful. It could be our first real lead. Now, I’ll go next door and see what Mrs White has to say about it.’

‘She’d swear black was white and have you believing it, but she likes to blaw about her conquests so you’ll maybe be lucky. She’s not that bad as a neighbour, mind, for
she often does errands for me, but I’m warning you, watch yourself or you’ll be a goner.’

McGillivray laughed uproariously. ‘I can look after myself. I’ve met her kind before, and I’ve never been lost yet.’

A few minutes elapsed after he rang the bell on the next door before it was opened, fractionally. May White held it wider when she saw who it was, and he was shocked to see her enveloped only in
a large bath towel.

‘Come in, Inspector. I was just having a bath.’

It crossed his mind that she’d seen him going into Mrs Gray’s, and had done this on purpose in case he called on her, too, but he sat down on an upright chair. His eyes were drawn to
her long, slender legs, on show for as far as was possible, and the deep cleavage which stopped short of revealing her breasts completely, but he averted them hastily.

Her light, musical laugh emphasised her femininity, if anything more was needed to do so. ‘Does this bother you, Inspector?’ She indicated the towel. ‘Would you prefer me to
put something on?’

She grinned at his nod. ‘Shan’t be a tick. Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you.’

The long sheer negligee she was wearing when she returned showed every part of her as though she were naked, and she lay back provocatively on the settee.

McGillivray’s temperature rose by several degrees. This was even worse than the towel. If this was how she received her gentlemen callers, no wonder they fell.

The femme fatale swivelled round to lift a packet of cigarettes from the cocktail cabinet behind her, then stood up and came towards him. ‘Will you do the needful and kindle me,
Inspector?’ It was said with stressed double entendre as she pointed to the lighter lying on the coffee table at his other side.

When he held the flame up for her, she bent over with her breasts brushing his hand, rousing him in spite of himself, so he quickly crossed his legs on the pretext of replacing the lighter.
‘You have quite a number of male visitors, I believe, Mrs White?’

She laughed again, knowing how she’d affected him. ‘I have to pass the long winter evenings somehow. You wouldn’t like to think of poor little me being lonely, would
you?’ She fluttered her long eyelashes.

‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ he said as coldly as he could with the blood pounding in his ears. ‘If you give me names, in confidence, we’ll try to eliminate
each one.’ He actually hoped she could deny the stories he’d heard about her.

But her eyes were dancing with . . . pride? ‘God knows what any of them have to do with Janet Souter’s murder, but I don’t mind telling you. I’ve had most of the men
around here, and quite a lot of the boys. It’s great fun teaching a young lad all the intricacies, you know.’ She stroked her thigh lazily.

A strong revulsion swept over him. She was anybody’s, after all. Just a whore. Calming, he listened to her rattling off a list of names, most of which he hadn’t heard before,
although a few caused him to raise a mental eyebrow. It suddenly occurred to him that she could be shielding someone, so he quietly mentioned two reputable men that she had missed.

Her eyes held his for an instant, then she laughed. ‘Of course, them, too. You men are all the same, aren’t you?’ She rose and moved towards him, but he jumped up and
sidestepped away from her.

‘Thank you very much, Mrs White. That’s all I wanted to know.’ He strode to the door.

‘Inspector,’ she called after him, and he turned to see the folds of chiffony nylon lying at her feet.

Looking at the typewritten sheets he’d just completed, David Moore reflected that, although he and the inspector had solved some of the problems with which the case was
riddled, the original murder, and its perpetrator, was still a mystery, as was the whereabouts of the last jar of jam.

A whodunnit writer would probably call this story ‘The Case of the Missing Raspberry Jam’, he thought, and realised that it would pass the time to think up more titles. He took out
another sheet of paper and began to write.

No.l. The Case of the Missing Raspberry Jam.

No.2. The Mystery of the Diluted Arsenic.

No.3. The Revenge of the Dog Lovers.

No.4. The Bashful Bastard.

He chuckled. Alliteration was more clever, and more fun. He was finding this quite enjoyable.

No.5. The Paperboy’s Puzzle.

No.6. The Milkman Misses the Murder.

No.7.

He stopped in the middle of working out one for the postman. How could he have forgotten? There were three other people who had called regularly at Janet Souter’s cottage. She could have
given one of them the third jar.

He ran through to the front office excitedly. ‘Can you give me the addresses for the postman, the milkman and young Willie Arthur?’

PC Paul, although surprised by the sudden order, looked up the telephone directory and read them out while Moore scribbled them down then ran out without a word of thanks.

The sergeant’s first call was on the milkman.

‘Jam?’ Bill Smith looked puzzled. ‘Janet Souter never gave me nothing, nae even at Christmas. No, that’s nae true. She once presented me wi’ a Christmas pud one of
her nephews’ wives had given her. She said it was an insult, for she aye made her own. My family enjoyed it, though.’ He let out a loud laugh. ‘Why were you asking about
jam?’

‘It’s a long story, and probably nothing to do with the murder. Thanks just the same.’ Moore ran off again.

The postman, Ned French, was just as unhelpful. ‘No, I never got anything from her. She never gave anything away, as far as I know. Tight as a duck’s arse, she was. But she did used
to give me the edge of her tongue if I was late with the post.’ He laughed hilariously at the old chestnut.

‘Thanks.’ David Moore hurried to the last address in Garden Street, which went off the High Street halfway between the police station and the garage.

‘Willie’s not home from school yet,’ Mrs Arthur informed him. ‘He shouldn’t be long, they get out at ten past twelve.’

Moore looked at his watch. Going off twenty past. ‘How long does he take to walk home?’

‘It should only be five minutes, but you know boys. He’ll be kicking a ball round the playground, I suppose, or making up to the girls. Can I help at all?’

‘Did Miss Souter give Willie a jar of jam recently?’

‘Old Miss Souter? Her that’s been poisoned? You’ll be one of the detectives from Edinburgh?’

He smiled. ‘That’s right.’

‘Willie never took home any jam, nor never mentioned any. I don’t think she ever gave him anything. Not that he told me.’

‘Thanks, Mrs Arthur.’ The young sergeant turned sadly away from the door, his bright idea having come to nothing, and was about to go back on to the High Street when he saw young
Willie coming from the bottom of the hill. He was kicking a stone in front of him, and Moore went to meet him, in the faint hope that he might have passed the jam to someone other than his mother
if he had received it.

‘Hello, Willie. Can I have a word with you?’

‘Hi, Sarge. Sure, fire ahead.’ Willie’s final kick sent the stone soaring into a nearby garden.

‘Did old Miss Souter give you a jar of jam a week or so back?’

‘Huh! Not her! Not a blooming thing. She wouldn’t have given you the dirt from under her fingernails.’

Moore laughed. ‘So I believe.’

‘Why are you asking about jam, Sarge? That’s a funny kind of question, isn’t it? Was that where the poison was?’

‘It’s just that there’s a jar of jam we can’t account for,’ Moore said, cagily. ‘Miss Souter had laid them out to give to the minister’s wife for the
Sale of Work, but she didn’t give them to her after all. They weren’t in her house when it was searched, and we’ve managed to trace two, but there’s one still
missing.’

‘Who’d pinch a measly jar of jam?’ Willie looked sceptical. ‘Hey! Wait a minute. You reminded me, speaking about the minister’s wife, I did see Mr Valentine up at
that end of the High Street one day, carrying a jar of red jam. That’s right. It wasn’t in a bag or anything. He maybe got it from Miss Souter.’

‘Willie, I think you might have hit the jackpot.’

‘Huh?’

‘I mean, thank you very much. I don’t suppose you noticed anything about the jar?’

‘Are there different kinds of jars? I never knew that. It was just an ordinary glass jar with a lid on it. No, it wasn’t a lid. It was something red and white checked, with a
frill.’

‘Yes!’ David Moore executed a little dance, much to the boy’s amazement, then dug into his pocket and extracted a two-pound coin from the handful of loose change. ‘Here
you are, Willie, and don’t spend it all in one shop.’ He hurried away, leaving the boy looking at the coin in his hand.

‘Blimey, I’m a ruddy copper’s nark.’ Willie had picked up quite a lot from reading Sexton Blake since Sergeant Black had taken him into his confidence.

David Moore ran up on to the High Street and along to the manse. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Valentine,’ he said, breathlessly, when she answered the door. ‘Did your husband get the gift
of a jar of jam from Janet Souter a few days before she died?’

‘Why, yes, Sergeant. At least, he didn’t tell me it was from her. He just laid it down in the kitchen one morning, the same as he does with all the other little things his
parishioners sometimes give him. I knew it was from her, because of the red gingham cover. It was probably one of the things she’d meant to give me for the Sale of Work, and that had been her
way of rubbing in the fact that I didn’t go back to collect them.’

‘That’s right. It was originally intended for the Sale. Have you used it yet?’

‘Not yet. Why? Do you want to see it?’ She took him into the kitchen and lifted it off a shelf where it was sitting in the midst of several other jars of different kinds of
preserves.

‘I’ll have to take this with me, I’m afraid.’

‘A vital clue? How exciting.’ Mrs Valentine laughed, not taking her own words seriously.