An Empty Death (38 page)
Authors: Laura Wilson
So much for clearing the air, he thought. They’d had a row, Jenny had cried, and he had a horrible feeling that he still hadn’t got to the bottom of things.
Forty-Six
T
he following morning nothing looked any better, and Jenny, tight-lipped, was preoccupied with Mrs Ingram. He arrived at work in a bad mood which was made worse by having to deal with an elderly, blue-nosed ruffian, who kept raving that his wife was trying to poison him, when Arliss put his head round the door to announce that Chief Superintendent Dewhurst had telephoned and wished to speak to him. Stratton, who had decided that the old man’s symptoms were more likely to be due to delirium tremens than foul play, told Arliss to escort him to the hospital, then went to place a call to the Fingerprint Bureau.
he following morning nothing looked any better, and Jenny, tight-lipped, was preoccupied with Mrs Ingram. He arrived at work in a bad mood which was made worse by having to deal with an elderly, blue-nosed ruffian, who kept raving that his wife was trying to poison him, when Arliss put his head round the door to announce that Chief Superintendent Dewhurst had telephoned and wished to speak to him. Stratton, who had decided that the old man’s symptoms were more likely to be due to delirium tremens than foul play, told Arliss to escort him to the hospital, then went to place a call to the Fingerprint Bureau.
‘I’ve looked at those items,’ said Dewhurst. ‘The prints on the syringe are right-handed, but they’re pretty well smudged . . . Not good enough for a match, I’m afraid. And nothing on the keys.’
‘No prints from Dr Byrne?’ asked Stratton.
‘No. Perhaps you were right after all,’ said Dewhurst, grudgingly. ‘We couldn’t match the prints on the edges of the desk - not enough to go on. We’ve eliminated most of the prints from the room - Dr Byrne, Higgs, and the secretary - but there’s one set unaccounted for. Only one example - fingertips and partial palm, right hand.’
‘Where did you find that?’
‘The bookshelf. I’ll let you know if we find a match.’ With that, he terminated the conversation, and Stratton was left wondering whether he should be glad or sorry about this news. It was strange about the keys - Byrne hadn’t been wearing gloves when he was discovered, and none had been found on his person . . . In any case, why should he wear gloves in his office?
Stratton, because he’d tried it, knew that the keys could have been slid under the door - but if someone had done that, they must have wiped them first. He’d just have to hope that Dewhurst could find a match for the unidentified prints. If not, they might have to start looking at the hospital staff. Supposing they turned out to belong to Fay Marchant? Although why she, or anyone else, who was intent on killing Byrne should need to touch the bookshelf, he couldn’t imagine. He’d go and have a look at it later. Perhaps he’d missed something.
He was turning this over in his mind when Ballard appeared, notebook at the ready. ‘Anything from Wimbledon?’ asked Stratton, without much hope.
‘The warden didn’t see him, sir, and neither did any of the neighbours. We’ve got a key to his house, though - the woman who does for him . . .’ Ballard leafed through the pages of his notebook. ‘A Mrs Evans. Three times a week. I had a word with her, sir, and she said she’d not seen him since last Saturday, but she’d been in to do some cleaning yesterday morning and the place looked exactly the same as usual.’
‘What about the bed? Had he slept there?’
‘She said it was made up, but then she told me that Dr Byrne often does it himself.’
‘Heavens.’
‘She did say he was very tidy in his habits, sir. She’s a nice old thing - pretty upset when I told her about Dr Byrne. Kept saying how he was one of her favourite gentlemen and she couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t at all happy about handing this’ - Ballard produced a key with a luggage label attached to it - ‘over to me.’
‘We’d better go and have a look round,’ said Stratton. ‘According to Fingerprints - in the person of none other than Chief Superintendent Dewhurst himself—’
‘Blimey!’
‘You can say that again. He says they can’t get anything from the syringe and the office keys seem to have been wiped.’
‘Blimey,’ repeated Ballard, unconsciously taking Stratton at his word. ‘Have you told DCI Lamb, sir?’
‘No. And I’m not going to, either, until we’ve done a bit more poking about.’
The thing was, thought Stratton, as they crunched up the gravel driveway to Byrne’s large and well-appointed residence overlooking Wimbledon Common, being wrong wasn’t so bad when people reacted with incredulity and compassion - what was galling was when they took it for granted that you’d cock things up, as Lamb undoubtedly would if Stratton couldn’t provide him with a bit more evidence.
‘I’ll go upstairs,’ said Stratton, when they got into the hall. ‘You have a look round down here. Anything you think may be relevant, give me a shout.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Stratton ascended the stairs and began opening doors - bathroom, three bedrooms, and a room with a large desk and an articulated skeleton, hanging from a stand and wearing a schoolboy’s cap, which was obviously Dr Byrne’s study. Although tidy and well polished - Mrs Evans was clearly worth her weight in shillings - the house seemed to have an echoey, tomb-like air, and the skeleton didn’t help. There were no photographs, no pictures on the wall, no flowers, and no sign anywhere that Byrne had had any interests other than his work. Opening a wardrobe in one of the spare bedrooms, Stratton saw a rail of women’s clothing - presumably the late Mrs Byrne’s. Had Byrne kept it deliberately, he wondered, or simply forgotten about it? He inclined to the latter view until, examining Byrne’s bed, he came upon a framed photograph of a good-looking woman and a boy tucked under the pillow. Wife and son, presumably, thought Stratton, wondering if Byrne looked at the picture before going to sleep, or even kissed it goodnight. Poor chap, thought Stratton. Cancer, Higgs had said, which probably meant she’d been ill for some time. Poor bloke. He couldn’t even bear to imagine life without Jenny, let alone having to witness her suffering like that.
Stratton replaced the photograph carefully and returned to Byrne’s office, where he began opening drawers. Everything was neat: the pencils in the brass tray well sharpened, the few piles of papers with their edges squared off, index cards filed in alphabetical order. Stratton stared at the skeleton and wondered how Mrs Evans had felt about it.
His reverie was interrupted by the sound of voices from the hall, and, on going downstairs, he found Ballard talking to a man who looked like a junior edition of Dr Byrne.
‘Detective Inspector Stratton,’ he said.
‘Frank Byrne.’ The young man put out his hand. ‘I understand you’re investigating my father’s death.’
‘I’m very sorry about it, sir,’ said Stratton, adding cautiously, ‘I’m afraid there are one or two things that need clarifying.’
‘Anything I can help with?’ asked Frank Byrne. ‘Because,’ he added, vehemently, ‘I can tell you, my father would not have taken his own life.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Stratton.
‘He thought suicide was a selfish act. Wrong. Unlawful.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘On several occasions. He was very firm about it. My father was a principled man, Inspector Stratton.’
Stratton nodded. ‘I had the good fortune to work with him on many occasions.’ God, he thought, I sound as pompous as he does. Still, judging from the young man’s pleased expression, it seemed to be doing the trick.
‘Then I’m sure your thoughts will be tending the same way,’ said Byrne’s son.
‘I certainly thought it was worth a second look,’ said Stratton.
‘That’s why we’re here. To make sure that there was nothing that indicated any kind of mental fatigue.’
‘You won’t find anything like that,’ Frank Byrne said firmly.
‘Had your father written to you recently?’ Stratton asked.
‘Not for a couple of weeks. He’d certainly never written anything that caused me to suspect he was unhappy. Even after my mother died, he . . . Well, he never said much about feelings and so forth. He just got on with things - it was his way. He was always . . .’ Frank Byrne screwed up his face in an effort to complete the sentence, then gave up and tried a different tack. ‘When he was at home - even before, I mean - he always spent a lot of time in his study. Most of his spare time, in fact.’
Stratton nodded. ‘He was certainly dedicated to his work. That skeleton upstairs . . .’ out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ballard raise an eyebrow, ‘is that your school cap?’
‘That’s right. Dad called him Alfie.’
‘Alfie?’
‘I don’t think it was really his name - just what we called him. There’s a photograph, somewhere, of Dad sitting at the desk, pretending to dictate notes to him. Mum took it.’
As glimpses of the lighter moments of domestic life went, Stratton thought, that one was definitely bizarre. Ignoring Ballard’s quizzical expression, he said, ‘We haven’t turned that up yet.’
‘It shouldn’t be hard to find. It’s in there.’ Frank Byrne indicated the sitting room.
‘Perhaps you’d care to show us, Mr Byrne.’ Stratton opened the sitting room door.
‘Of course. There’s a little gadget here . . .’ Frank Byrne crossed the room and poked a little panel of wood inset in the brick chimney piece, which swung outwards, revealing a small space. ‘Hidden, you see. He wanted to keep them safe in case there was an air raid - if the house was destroyed.’
‘Very neat.’ Stratton peered inside. No needles or phials or any of the paraphernalia of the habitual drug-taker, just a single brown envelope. Stratton opened it and took out a number of unframed photographs, lining them up on the mantelpiece. They were family pictures, except for one, which, like the others he’d seen previously, had been taken in the mortuary, and showed Dr Byrne and the man Stratton now knew to be his erstwhile assistant, Todd, in the act of examining some ancient-looking bones.
‘It’s that man again,’ said Ballard.
‘I don’t know what that one’s doing here,’ said Frank Byrne. ‘Dad must have got it muddled up.’
Stratton, remembering how the photographs in the mortuary office were tucked out of sight beneath the blotter, wondered whether this was the case, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, see why the picture was significant. A man as dedicated to his work as Dr Byrne was might well treasure photographs of himself on the job, but why that particular one and not the others?
‘That’s me, sitting on Dad’s knee,’ said Frank Byrne, pointing at a picture of a younger but only slightly more hirsute Dr Byrne in the company of a chubby toddler, ‘and that’s my mother.’ He indicated a snap of the attractive fair-haired woman Stratton had seen in the photograph upstairs. ‘And, look, there’s the one where Dad’s pretending to dictate to Alfie.’
‘Mr Byrne, this may seem a strange question, but did your father ever take drugs?’
Frank Byrne looked puzzled. ‘He never took anything. To be honest . . .’ Byrne hesitated and cleared his throat before continuing, ‘he didn’t really trust doctors. He never said as much, but I think he’d seen the results of their mistakes too many times to have much faith in the medical profession.’
‘I meant,’ said Stratton, ‘in the sense of an addiction.’
‘My father?’ Frank Byrne sounded incredulous. ‘You must be joking. Has someone suggested it?’
‘No. But we think his death might have been due to an overdose of some sort.’
‘So I gathered,’ said Frank Byrne, ‘but if that does prove to be the case I find it very hard to believe it was self-administered.’
‘I see. But, as I’m sure you’ll understand, we need to be certain.’
After receiving permission to take away the photographs, Stratton and Ballard walked back to Wimbledon station to catch the train back to the West End. After several minutes’ tramping along in silence, Ballard said, ‘Sir, you don’t think . . . that photograph of Dr Byrne with Todd . . . he might have kept it at home because . . . well, because of some attachment between them?’
This was something that had not occurred to Stratton. ‘You mean . . . ?’
‘Yes, sir. Stranger things have happened.’
‘I suppose so. It’s one explanation, certainly. People have committed suicide for less. And of course being married doesn’t preclude that sort of thing, but I shouldn’t have thought . . .’
‘One never knows, sir.’
‘That’s true. Perhaps we ought to speak to this Todd. Still, let’s wait for the results of the PM, shall we?’ He grimaced. ‘I really don’t want to go down that particular route unless it’s absolutely necessary. The son might be right - Byrne might have got the photographs muddled up, although . . .’ Although, said a voice in his head, that would be uncharacteristic of such a meticulous man. ‘Besides, there’s that business of there being no fingerprints on the keys.’
‘That does seem odd, sir.’
‘Bloody odd, if you ask me.’
Returning to his desk, Stratton found a message to telephone Dr Ferguson at Guy’s Hospital. ‘It’s as we thought,’ said the young pathologist. ‘Morphine, by injection, and a hell of a lot of it.’
‘Can you be any more definite about the time of death?’ asked Stratton, scribbling notes.
‘I’d be guessing,’ said Ferguson. ‘As I said, it all depends on how long it took to work. I think it would be safest to stay with my original estimate.’
‘Which was . . .’ Hunching up his shoulder to keep the telephone receiver in place, Stratton flicked through his notebook, ‘between half past three and half past four in the morning, and the injection could have been given as early as eight or eight-thirty in the evening?’
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