Death Before Breakfast Read Free

mask.
    â€˜Police.’
    â€˜You’ve nothin’ on us. This is a well-run ’ouse.’
    â€˜I’m sure it is. May I use your telephone, please?’
    Littlejohn rang up the police at Willesden and told them Mrs. Jump’s tale briefly. They promised to send a man to look over the empty house in July Street. Mr. Hollows, the agent, lived in Willesden and would probably have the key. The sergeant sounded surprised at the request, but put on his best posh voice and good manners for the occasion. He ended up by talking to Littlejohn as though he were somebody they had to humour, just to ease his mind.
    â€˜Leave it to us, sir. We’ll do the necessary. You may rely on us. …’
    â€˜I’ve no doubt at all about that. Good night, sergeant.’
    The potman was still leering when Littlejohn returned from the telephone.
    â€˜You’ll pay for the call, I ’ope?’
    â€˜Send me a bill to Scotland Yard.’
    The man looked so surprised and hurt that Littlejohn laughed and slipped a shilling in his waistcoat pocket. He left the potman searching the lining of the garment; there was a hole in it.
    Littlejohn felt tired. The dismal scene, the damp persistent drizzle, the amber, etiolating glow of the street lights. Passers-by looking like yellow corpses walking in some strange hell. And over all, the squalor and fetid air of a neighbourhood over-crowded with sleepers and overhung by property in various stages of decay. He always felt jaded when his spirits were damped. He wished he’d asked the barman for a double whisky. He could guess the answer.

Chapter 2
Morning in July Street
    The rain had passed with the night and the morning was fine. That was the best that could be said of it. Now that the drizzle had gone, it looked ready to turn foggy any minute.
    Littlejohn was on the job at about eleven. He knew he might be making a fool of himself if Mrs. Jump had imagined it all. But Mrs. Jump wasn’t the imaginative sort and he felt he wanted to get at the truth, whether she’d dreamed it or not.
    He had called at The Yard, examined his post, found nothing much to worry him, and arranged with the Willesden police to join them at the station. Cromwell was with him. In a region like July Street on a dirty November morning he felt the need of some cheerful moral support.
    The Willesden police seemed to wonder what Littlejohn was bothering about. A constable had called at what turned out to be 20, July Street, the empty house with the
For Sale
bill in the window. The place was locked and the bobby had used the key supplied by Mr. Hollows, the agent. He had found a few handbills and a circular or two, undisturbed behind the door. He had searched the house from top to bottom by the light of his torch. There were no cellars and no attics. Intent on his work, he had even peered through a manhole at the top of the stairs and looked among the rafters. Quite a feat, fifteen stone balancing on two packing-cases, one on top of the other, and holding a torch. Nothing. Not a sign of a break-in. When he’d finished among the accumulation of dust, the constable looked like a coon.
    Added to which, Mrs. Jump had said she was going tofirst Mass, which was said at seven o’clock on Wednesdays, the day of her adventure. She was just in time for the start of the office. That meant she was passing along July Street at about 6.55.
    At seven o’clock, a policeman on the beat, making his way back to the station, had passed the end of July Street. The lamps were still burning and he had glanced down the street to see that all was in order. He’d seen no body then, and he was sure that if there’d been one on the spot described by Mrs. Jump, he’d couldn’t have missed it. He remembered the time well, because as he was at the end of July Street, the milk-van, a type of electric runabout, had just turned down there. He’d spoken to the milkman.
    The milkman had just