Stiff News (7 page)

‘It's all your father's fault anyway,' said Julia obscurely.

Lionel made no attempt to deny this or to try to explain all over again that his father had left his entire personal estate to his widow for sound fiscal reasons.

‘Well then, who did she marry and why is it so important now?'

‘As to who it was, we don't know. All she would ever say is that he was called Tommy Atkins.'

‘A euphemism for a soldier…'

‘Exactly. Although,' he added, ‘for what it's worth, when she married my father she was calling herself Smith, because that's what's on their marriage certificate and we've got a copy of that.'

‘So,' persisted Julia for the umpteenth time, ‘why is it so important?'

‘Because in her will everything is to be divided equally between all her heirs of the body female whether legitimate or not and then their heirs.'

‘That's you.'

‘And any other children she may have had.'

Julia sat up very straight. ‘You mean we – you – won't get everything?'

‘Not if she had other children.'

‘Children?'

‘The more the less merry,' said Lionel neatly. The memoranda which emanated from his desk at work were renowned throughout the department for their pithiness.

‘But we don't know…'

‘No.'

‘So, Lionel,' her voice had sunk to almost a whisper now, ‘as things stand we may never know.'

‘That, my dear, is precisely what I am afraid of.'

‘But that means…'

‘It means,' he interrupted her harshly, ‘that it'll take years and years to prove one way or the other and that in the meantime we'll be at the mercy of every Tom, Dick and Harry of a claimant.'

She gave a bibulous half-laugh. ‘Tommy, anyway.'

Chapter Seven

Some men with swords may reap the field

‘What I want to know, Sloan,' said Superintendent Leeyes grumpily, ‘is who precisely is having who on?'

‘That, sir,' murmured Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘is something I can't begin to say.' He was telephoning back to Berebury Police Station from the pathologist's office at the hospital mortuary, a draft copy of the post-mortem examination report in his hand.

‘Don't trust me, I'm a doctor,' misquoted Leeyes with relish.

‘Not,' Sloan qualified his own last remark, ‘at this stage, anyway.'

‘And I suppose,' said Leeyes, ‘that our friendly neighbourhood pathologist is hedging his bets as usual?'

Sloan addressed himself to the telephone; he found for some reason that he was doing this standing to attention. ‘All I can say, sir, is that Dr Dabbe has reported that the cause of death as certified by the deceased's general practitioner would appear to be correct.'

‘That,' remarked Leeyes trenchantly, ‘wasn't what the deceased said in her letter. She said she was going to be murdered.'

Sloan forged on. ‘The pathologist confirms that the late Gertrude Powell had at the time of her demise been suffering from chronic renal failure and hypertension as stated.'

‘Suffering from,' said Leeyes gnomically, ‘is not the same thing as dying from.'

‘Indeed not,' agreed Sloan, continuing his reading aloud. ‘In addition to the foregoing he states that the deceased also had had some osteoarthritis and arteriosclerosis which, however, were not contributory factors to her death.'

‘Bandying words, as usual,' pronounced the Superintendent, ‘that's what he's doing.'

‘Furthermore, Dr Dabbe says he has removed organs and tissue for analysis.'

‘Buying time,' said Leeyes uncharitably.

‘But until the histology is known,' quoted Sloan, ‘the report cannot be completed.'

‘Will not be completed,' said the Superintendent, ‘is what he means.'

Sloan said nothing. For one brief inglorious academic term the Superintendent had attended an evening Adult Education course entitled ‘English as She is Spoke'. His premature departure from the class had come, after a preliminary skirmish over the gerund, as a direct result of a total inability to see eye to eye with the course tutor on the proper use of (to say nothing of the difference between) the words ‘will' and ‘shall'.

The sentence which the unlucky teacher had chosen to illustrate the correct usage was ‘I shall drown and no one will save me.' He had unfortunately contrasted this with the less grammatically correct ‘I will drown and no one shall save me.'

It was at this point that the dominie had parted company for ever with Superintendent Leeyes. That worthy had insisted that since this latter sentiment perfectly expressed the real intention of all the suicides in the River Calle whom he had ever known, the meaning was quite clear and thus could not possibly be bad English whatever the teacher said …

‘So where do we go from here, Sloan?' his superior officer was asking now.

‘Back to the Manor at Almstone, sir, for a word with the Matron there,' said Sloan. ‘After, that is, I've seen Dr Angus Browne over at Larking.'

‘There's a sight too many medics about for my liking,' Leeyes sniffed. ‘They always agree with each other too much and if they don't, they don't ever say.'

‘There is just one other thing, sir…'

‘Yes?'

‘I'd like some background on one of the other residents there. A Judge Calum Gillespie.'

‘Never heard of him.'

‘Nor me, sir.'

Leeyes brightened. ‘An impostor?'

‘Seeing as he's now ninety I expect it's only a case of his having been before our time, sir.'

‘I collect senile judges, Sloan, and blind and deaf ones.'

‘I suspect that this one's just plain old,' said Sloan, touched by a certain melancholy.

*   *   *

Judge Calum Gillespie was indeed old, and the blue veins on the backs of his hands stood out rather like the blue veins do in ripe cheese and certainly those hands were very unsteady, but he was not blind, deaf or senile. Nor had he forgotten the interrogation skills he had learned long ago.

First, looking rather like an elderly tortoise, he thrust his neck out of his collar and let his gaze travel slowly round his sitting room, resting in turn on each of the three other men there. Then he regarded the little gathering for a long moment before speaking.

‘And why, pray,' he asked at last, ‘was Mrs Powell's funeral stopped?'

Hamish MacIver shook his head. ‘Blessed if I know, Calum.'

Walter Bryant inched his electric wheelchair backwards. ‘Nor me.' He frowned. ‘Funny business, altogether.'

‘Don't understand it at all,' murmured the Brigadier.

Captain Peter Markyate sounded peevish. ‘Gertie always was totally unpredictable. Always.'

‘I don't see what that's got to do with it,' objected Walter Bryant. ‘It's not her fault that she died.'

‘I take it, gentlemen, that it's not anyone's fault that she died.' The Judge continued his scrutiny of the faces of the other three men. ‘Is it?'

‘No, no,' they chorused.

‘Am I to understand then,' said the Judge, ‘that the doctor issued the death certificate in the ordinary way?'

‘Oh, yes,' nodded the Brigadier, easing his gammy leg from one position to another. ‘At least, we didn't hear that he didn't.'

‘Not like with Maude Chalmers-Hyde,' said Captain Markyate.

Walter Bryant nodded. ‘You know, don't you, Calum, that Dr Browne didn't write one when she died?'

‘Wouldn't do it,' chimed in MacIver. ‘Not even when the family pressed him.'

‘They couldn't have found anything wrong with Maude's death, though, at the post-mortem,' said Walter Bryant, looking round at the others, ‘could they? I mean anything wrong, apart from what she had been suffering from.'

The Judge turned his basilisk stare on the man in the wheelchair. ‘Was there anything else wrong to find?'

‘No, no,' said Walter Bryant hastily. ‘I'm sure there wasn't.'

‘Dr Browne wasn't sure,' said Judge Gillespie ineluctably, ‘so why should you have been?'

Bryant looked flustered and covered his confusion by fiddling with the controls on his wheelchair. ‘Because she'd been ill for ages and ages.'

‘Elizabeth Forbes has been more ill for much longer and hasn't died,' pointed out the Judge.

‘Gertie was different,' blurted out Markyate. ‘Always.'

The Judge turned in his direction. ‘In what way precisely?'

Markyate was saved from replying to this by the entrance of Hazel Finch pushing a tea trolley. She said, ‘I'm surprised that any of you can eat anything at all after that lovely lunch.'

‘Taste is one of the last faculties to go, m'dear,' said the Judge, leaning forward to lift the lid off a chafing dish. ‘Ah, hot anchovy toast.' He let the lid fall back out of his tremulous grasp with a clatter. ‘Good.'

Walter Bryant said piously, ‘Miss Ritchie doesn't think I should have too much butter. Bad for the heart.'

‘Bah!' exploded the Brigadier vigorously. ‘The only thing wrong with your heart, Bryant, is that it's in the wrong place. You should know better at your age.'

‘Now, then, no fighting,' said Hazel. ‘Let's see … who's going to be mother and pour the tea?' She ran a swift assessing eye over the group. ‘I think it had better be you, Captain Markyate, if you don't mind.'

*   *   *

‘The late Gertrude Powell, officer?' Dr Angus Browne's bushy eyebrows lifted enquiringly. ‘What about her?'

‘Did you,' asked Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘have any reservations about certifying the cause of her death?'

‘None.'

Sloan waited; so did Dr Browne, a downy bird if ever there was one.

‘Mrs Powell did,' said Detective Constable Crosby into the silence.

Sloan groaned inwardly. All the good books on how to question a suspect or a witness suggested that one of the two police officers – and there should always be two – should adopt an aggressive approach and the other one a more softly-softly manner. In practice in almost all cases the person being questioned turned away from the ‘nasty' policeman and spoke more openly to the ‘nice' one – who would then give every indication that they understood and sympathized. None – but none – of the good books advocated having a half-witted investigating officer with two left feet as the second man.

‘If I may say so,' pointed out the doctor, ‘the patient is not always in the best position to judge, but…'

‘But?' Sloan seized on the word. He really would have to have another go at Inspector Harpe about letting Crosby transfer to Traffic Division after all.

‘But,' said Browne realistically, ‘they usually make a better fist of it than the relatives do.' He regarded the two policemen straightly. ‘Now then, gentlemen, what is all this about?'

Detective Inspector Sloan gave the general practitioner a carefully edited résumé of Mrs Powell's allegations.

‘She died after a long illness,' said Dr Browne, touching a button on an intercom and asking a receptionist to bring him the late Gertrude Powell's notes, ‘but ye'll know that already.'

‘Yes, doctor,' said Sloan. Another factor the good books on questioning always stressed was the importance of the interview taking place in surroundings unfamiliar to the subject being questioned. Not, of course, that this implied approval of police-state tactics – such as first leading a bewildered captive up and down through labyrinthine corridors finally to settle in the cellars of the building and thus patently out of earshot of everyone else. Unfortunately, interviewing the doctor in his own consulting room gave him – not the police – the edge.

‘And the family had been told,' said Angus Browne. ‘I made a point of doing that early on.'

Sloan made a note. Something else the good books stressed as important was the positioning of the interviewee. It wasn't like that here. Crosby had been relegated to the chair reserved for the patient's friend or chaperon – well away from whatever action there was. And he, Sloan, was sitting on the patient's chair, where the full light from the window fell upon his face.

‘At least two months ago,' said Browne calmly. It was the doctor's face that was in shadow.

‘I see.' Nor was Sloan sitting across a desk but at right angles to the medical man. It was hard to be confrontational – let alone bring pressure to bear – while sitting sideways on. As it happened, he wanted to do neither of these things: but he did very badly want to know everything he could about the life and death of Gertrude Powell.

‘Moreover, she was in a uraemic coma at the end,' said Angus Browne briskly, ‘and there's no two ways about that.'

‘Ah, the end…' Sloan began carefully. These days witnesses as well as suspects had to be handled with kid gloves. Not, naturally, that he had ever thought that it was fair to sit a man on a chair in the middle of a room and then circle round him, throwing questions at the man from behind his back so that he was forever spinning round, off-base, to face his interlocutor. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the end, doctor.'

‘Not unexpected,' said Browne immediately. ‘As it happened, I saw her the day she died.'

‘You were sent for?'

‘I was sent for to see someone else at the Manor and naturally I looked in on her, too.'

‘May we ask who it…'

‘Judge Gillespie,' said Browne. ‘He's always been a bit of an old woman about his health. Ye'll notice his Hippocratic facies if you see him.'

‘Beg pardon, doctor?'

‘Lower jaw hanging open as if he was dead.' He shrugged. ‘It's not to be wondered at. He's been very, very shaky since he hit ninety.'

‘Like that clock,' said Crosby.

‘What clock?' asked the doctor.