Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [60]
The apples and cheese went well together, and the reporter started asking casual questions about Winnie while he crunched his way through the fruit. At first Johnny kept his answers short and factual. Then he found himself talking more and more about his mother: how she had been left completely alone when his father was killed, because neither she nor Harry had had any family left by 1918. He described how she looked after the neighbours, how hard she worked, and how worried she was about the rent going up. The reporter listened, and sympathized, and gave Johnny a handful of coins when he left.
‘Be careful, Johnny,’ he said. ‘Lock the door behind me when I go. And if you think of anything else you want to tell me, just get in touch.’ He wrote his office telephone number on a piece of paper and handed it over.
As he bolted the door, Johnny felt glad to have met someone who really cared about him. He thought he might ask Hutch if he could use the phone tomorrow. Maybe he could persuade the reporter to help him track down Marie Langford in the hope that she might prove that Winnie wasn’t a killer. Perhaps it would be all right to break his promise and tell the reporter about the BCG so that he could help to find the real murderer.
But then Johnny noticed that something was missing from the mantelpiece. The reporter had taken the photograph of his father. It was the only picture of Harry Swanson that Johnny had ever seen. As far as he knew it was the only image of him anywhere. And that man had taken it. Taken it without asking. Johnny decided to have nothing more to do with him. He would search for Mrs Langford by himself.
Chapter 28
TAKING CHARGE
Johnny realized that his best bet for finding Marie Langford was to use the two tools he knew so well: the post and the newspapers. He put a new personal message in the London Times, quoting Auntie Ada’s box number, and he helped Hutch sort letters that came into the post office, looking out for anything addressed to the doctor’s house. He reckoned that since Mrs Langford was abroad, and didn’t know that her husband was dead, she was bound to write him a letter sometime – especially with Christmas coming. The police had the same idea, and an officer came in every day to check for letters from France, but nothing turned up. The policeman wasn’t at all interested in doing anything about the broken shop window. He seemed to think that bad feeling against Hutch and Johnny was only natural.
Hutch tried asking the policeman about the investigation. ‘Is there anything new? Have you found out any more about the murder?’
The officer’s response was steely: ‘We’ve got all the evidence we need. And even if there was a development, why should I tell you, in view of your relationship with the accused?’
Over the weekend, Johnny filled the long evening hours devising new money-making schemes. The rent rise was now only days away, and the savings inside his rabbit wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t afford to be high-minded about advertising. He roughed out a couple of offers: Give Your Home a Country Feel. People who sent him sixpence would be told: Walk around in muddy boots.
He even thought of putting a little free sample of dirt into the envelopes. Perhaps he’d add a few seeds too. He could easily get some from the plants in the graveyard. Maybe he could say they were magic seeds. He got that idea from the posters outside the Playhouse. They were doing Jack and the Beanstalk as the Christmas pantomime.
Johnny’s most frequent correspondent, the aspiring poet, had sent ten poems at once, asking what the Poetry Police thought of them. Johnny spent two whole evenings writing his replies, glad of the one-pound postal order that had arrived with them, and determined to give value for money so that the man would write again. He put the poems in a stack by the fire, ready to use them as fuel; but then he had another idea. He cut them up into strips, each containing one line of verse, and shuffled them up. A quick