Anything For a Quiet Life (24 page)

For the moment, however, they would have to wait. There was a more important job in hand. There was a south-facing bed under the brick wall at the foot of the garden. He had promised the doctor that he would try to grow tomato plants there, but the earth would need careful cleaning first.

He took down the spade and fork that were hanging in the shed among the rows of flower pots, trays of dried bulbs, sacks of compost and silver sand, tins of weedkiller and twists of bast. He rubbed them over with a piece of sacking. This was a ritual gesture. Like all his tools they were spotless. Then he attacked the new bed, trenching it deeply and methodically, depositing the roots and other growths which he extracted on the bonfire he had lit the day before and which was still smouldering nicely.

At eleven o’clock he suspended work, left fork and spade sticking in the earth and made his way up to the back of the house. This was the accepted first break. The procedure varied. Mrs McClachan would make him a cup of tea. Sabrina Mountjoy left the back door open and a tin of instant coffee with milk and sugar on the table. Dr Rainey, if he was in the house, would make the coffee for both of them, using real beans. He was finicky about the kitchen, did a lot of his own cooking and, by all accounts, did it very well.

The kitchen door was locked. Fred rapped once or twice on the kitchen window, without producing any reaction, then made his way round to the front of the house. The front door was fast, too. Fred stood for a few seconds, scratching his head. Then he touched the button of the bell and heard it sounding inside the house. He had never used the front door. Previously his entry had always been through the kitchen.

After waiting for a long minute he pressed the button again, keeping it pressed. When this produced no result he went back, down the path and out into the road. There was a telephone booth at the corner.

The Sergeant on duty at Shackleton police station listened impatiently to Fred’s rambling comments and put the call through to Superintendent Queen. Fred then had to say it all over again, but here he found a more attentive listener.

Queen remembered that there was something in Station Orders about Dr Rainey. There had been instructions that the man whose beat passed the doctor’s house should keep an eye open for possible intruders. This particular item dated from before Queen’s arrival. No reason was given for it. He told Fred to get back to work and went along the passage to the office of Chief Superintendent Whaley, head of the Shackleton force.

Whaley said, “Yes. I remember that going into orders. In fact, I fancy I put it in myself. It was about four years ago when we heard about the precautions the doctor was taking. He’d had a very sophisticated alarm system put into his house. We knew about it, because it was linked to this station.”

“The normal sort of system?”

“No. This was security
and
alarm. A firm in Brighton did the job. Lockfast, or some such name. If the doctor’s died in the house, you’ll need their help to get inside.”

Nearly an hour later, after doing some telephoning, Queen was standing outside Dr Rainey’s front door. There were two men with him. Mr Cowdray from Lockfast Home Protection Services and Mr Terriss from the Shackleton office of the SE Electricity Board.

“It was a lovely job,” said Mr Cowdray, “if I say it myself. Builder’s work and all. First we had to replace most of the windows.”

Queen had noticed this. It was a low, two-storey house and the windows on both floors were the same. Steel frames with small square openings.

“They’re all locked, on the same circuit as the doors. You could break a pane of glass and put your hand through, but that wouldn’t get you much further, as you couldn’t open the window. If you tried to force the window lock you’d get a nasty electric shock and nothing much else.”

“So how do we get in?” said Mr Terriss.

“You let us in. By turning off the electricity. There’s a control box in the road outside that services this house, along with the other three houses on that side of the road. We won’t need it off for more than a minute.”

Mr Terriss agreed that this was feasible. He had brought the necessary equipment in his car. Having opened the control box he worked for some time inside it. When he stood up and raised one hand Mr Cowdray, who had a key ready, slid it into the lock and opened the door. They stepped into the hall, which was dimly lit and silent as a church on a weekday.

“Dr Rainey!” said Queen. He had intended to shout, but the atmosphere was so oppressive that it came out as a strangled croak. He called again, louder, but without any real expectation now of being answered.

On the left of the hall was the sitting room. Queen opened the door and looked in. It was empty. Behind that and opening out of it, the doctor’s study. Also empty. On the other side of the passage the dining room. Here they found Dr Rainey, sitting in the chair at the head of the table. His head had fallen forward on to his hands.

Queen raised the head gently. It was clear that Dr Rainey was dead. Queen, who had seen many dead men, was startled by the look on his face. It was as though he had seen death coming and had hated it more than he had feared it.

Whilst the police surgeon and the photographers and fingerprint men were doing their work (“Treat it as a murder until we’re sure it wasn’t,” said Whaley) Queen was talking to Mr Cowdray. He said, “I understand this was a security and an alarm system. How does it work?”

“Very simple. Very effective. That’s the control.” He pointed to a small box of grey painted steel in the cupboard under the stairs. There was a single keyhole in the front of it. “If you’re going out, turn the key once. That sets a normal alarm, which rings in your police station if anyone tampers with the doors or windows whilst you’re away. Okay?”

Queen nodded. Several of the larger houses had that arrangement. It was a standing source of irritation, as careless householders forgot that the alarm had been activated and set it off by mistake; but he could never remember an alarm from Dr Rainey.

“Last thing at night, you turn the key twice, which is what’s been done here. That locks the doors and all the windows electrically. Then you can go to bed and sleep sound. Only drawback, you can’t have your bedroom window open. The doctor had an air conditioner he used in summer.”

Queen thought about it. He said, “I take it the electrical locking only operates if all the windows and doors are shut. Suppose you’d left one open, by mistake?”

“The machine would tell you. It’d go on bleeping until you shut it.”

“Then what you’re saying,” said Queen thoughtfully, “is that once this thing was functioning, no one could get in from outside.”

“Only by cutting off the electricity and, as you saw, that needed special equipment.”

Queen put all this in his report, which Chief Superintendent Whaley read, together with Dr Smallhorn’s conclusions which were that Dr Rainey had died of renal failure. “That’s not uncommon with an elderly person,” the report said. “The liver and kidneys get tired and stop functioning. As a matter of fact, I suspected that something like that might happen when he came to see me last month.”

“That’s that, then,” said Whaley.

So the death of Dr Rainey was certified as being due to natural causes, the coroner was not troubled and the funeral was conducted a week later in St Michael’s Church by the new young incumbent.

It was a quiet affair. Many of Dr Rainey’s patients had predeceased him. Some of the town notables thought it respectful to attend. Amongst them were Jock Lovibond, the chairman of the Borough Council, and Jonas Pickett, who had a special reason for being there. After the interment he had a word with Lovibond.

“I’m having a copy of his will made for you,” he said. “In a sense, you’re his residuary legatee.”

“How could I be? I hardly knew the man.”

“It comes to you
ex officio
. Having no near relatives he decided to leave his whole estate to the chairman of the Borough Council to be expended on such charitable and useful objects for the locality as he might select. When I’ve paid the debts – there weren’t many – and the funeral expenses and duties, there should be around fifty thousand pounds left.”

“Which I can spend on anything for the borough that I like?”

“You’ll have to be careful that it’s charitable. However, charity covers quite a wide field. Education, religion, the relief of poverty.”

“I call it very handsome. I think we ought to put up some sort of memorial tablet in the church, don’t you?”

“I think that would be most appropriate,” said Jonas.

Every police station keeps, among its many other records, a book known as the Occurrences Book. Into it go reports of anything out of the way which a policeman may have observed on his patrol. It is not an exciting work. Flights of fancy are discouraged. It deals with facts. “At 3 a.m. this morning Major X left his house driving his Ford Corsair.” No doubt there were half a dozen good reasons for Major X’s early departure. A long journey to the Midlands? Sensible to use the roads when they were empty. An early plane to catch at Heathrow? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the entry led to nothing. On the hundredth occasion it proved to be the one essential item of information needed to tie up a case.

All senior officers studied the book from time to time. Superintendent Queen was doing so about a fortnight after Dr Rainey’s funeral. He was looking for scraps of information which might enable them to identify a persistent peeping Tom who had been upsetting the local people. Such people might not be breaking the law, but their activities, as he knew, could lead to all sorts of trouble. It was whilst he was turning the pages that he came across the entry. “July 14th, 6 a.m. PC Trotter, returning past the front of No 8 Princes Road, had observed a man moving off down the little lane at the side of the house.” Since the man did not appear to be doing anything illegal, PC Trotter had not pursued him. He had simply made a note in the Occurrences Book. Princes Road was a high-cost development of eight well-spaced houses, four on each side of the road. No 8 was the end house on the north side. It was Dr Rainey’s house.

Queen noted the significance of the date and place and sent for PC Trotter. It was clear that the constable had attached very little importance to the incident. As soon as he had come off duty he had gone to bed and by the time he had returned to the station in the afternoon the unexciting death of Dr Rainey was already fading into past history. Now it seemed that the top brass was interested and he had to prod his memory.

He said, “He was too far away to pick up any detail. I’m sure it was a man, not a woman. Chances are I wouldn’t have noticed anything at all if it hadn’t been for the bird.”

“Bird?” Mysterious female? Sex angle?

No. Trotter was not using the word to describe an attractive young lady. He meant the feathered sort.

“At least, I thought it might be a bird. Then I thought, no, it couldn’t be. It was what you might call mechanical.”

“Like a cuckoo clock?”

“That sort of thing. Except it wasn’t going ‘cuckoo’. It was more sort of chirruping. High-pitched chirruping.”

“And it seemed to come from No 8?”

“Thereabouts. It didn’t go on all that long. It had stopped by the time I got up there, see.”

“How far away were you when you first heard it?”

“I was almost at the corner.”

“Then it can’t have gone on for more than a few seconds.”

“That’s right.” Trotter was beginning to be sorry he’d ever mentioned it. If the bird story got out he was going to have his leg pulled, that was for sure.

“You did know, I take it, that there was a standing instruction to patrolling officers to keep an eye on that particular house?”

Trotter had to admit that he had not known this, or if he had known it he’d forgotten it. Since that particular entry was four years old, Queen found it difficult to blame him much. He dismissed him with a stern admonition to re-read and memorise
all
standing orders.

When Trotter had departed, he sat for some time thinking about his subordinate. If he had been writing a confidential report on Trotter he would have described him as sound. Not clever, not imaginative, but totally reliable. And there was a possible explanation of what he had heard: a high-pitched mechanical chirrup. If the explanation was true it led to consequences so dark and difficult that he hesitated to think them through. He decided that the first thing was to have a word with the Chief Superintendent.

Whaley heard him out, grunted and said, “What do you propose to do about it?”

“I think, sir, the best way to settle it would be to carry out an experiment.”

He explained what he had in mind. “The house has just been put up for sale. We could get the keys from the agents and station a reliable man – Sergeant Fox, I suggest – inside the house to do what was necessary.”

“It will have to be done when there’s a minimum of noise outside.”

“I thought 6 a.m. would be the logical time. Then we should get an exact repeat.”

“Would you like me to be there too?”

“Very much,” said Queen, slightly surprised.

“I only hope it isn’t pouring with rain.”

Happily it was a fine, still August morning when Whaley, Queen and Constable Trotter met at the corner of Princes Road. Trotter seemed a little overawed by the company. He had no idea what was expected of him.

Queen, who had his eye on his watch, said, “Place yourself at the end of the road and when I tell you to start, walk at your normal pace down the road.”

A reconstruction of the crime, wondered Trotter. It seemed a bit pointless.

“Start,” said Queen.

Trotter said, “Christ!” and turned pale. He knew that the house was empty. And now he heard, coming from it, exactly the sound he had heard before. Was the spirit of Dr Rainey haunting his old residence?

The noise stopped.

“Keep going,” shouted Queen urgently.

Trotter paced forward, hardly daring to contemplate what was going to happen next. He reached the end of the little lane that ran between the doctor’s house and the next one. His astonishment escalated when he observed a figure disappearing down the path. He was about to pursue it when Queen stopped him.