Hire Me a Hearse (22 page)

Drury stared at the thin line of blood running across the dust of the shadowy pavement. In the poor light it looked as though the car itself was bleeding.

‘Why?' he asked.

The short question was not specially addressed to the shaken inspector, who was mopping his face again.

‘Oh, no,' Drury said as he was about to hang up his coat and hat. The note by the telephone was too much like a growing habit.

He read the number. So far as he knew he had never seen it before, and he certainly knew no one who had given him that number in the past. But there was no mistaking the urgency. His wife had timed the message twenty minutes before, and had underlined the words ‘ring back immediately you come in'.

He heard a stair creak. His wife was peeking over the landing.

‘Everything all right, Frank?' she said in a low voice, so as not to wake their son.

‘Yes. Go back to bed, love.'

‘Only that man who rang — well, he sounded as though something might have happened.'

‘It has. The case is closed. Now go
back to bed and stop worrying.'

‘Don't be long, Frank. You've still some sleep to catch up.'

She retreated and Drury began dialling. A few seconds later he heard the familiar voice of Sir Benedict himself.

‘I'm phoning to say how sorry I am for what happened on the Embankment a short while back, Superintendent, and to congratulate you on escaping. I expect you're wondering why.'

‘It had crossed my mind, sir.'

‘Well, look at the foreign news page in
The Times
in the morning, and remember that these people take setbacks personally. They can't afford to lose face. By the way the car was Vicki Seeburg's, with altered number-plates. So I rather fear they caught up with her.'

‘Oh.'

It was all Drury could say with safety.

The man at the other end of the line said, ‘Perhaps you'd like to know that the Minister is very grateful to you, Superintendent. He has told the Commissioner so personally. Give my apologies to your wife for disturbing
her so late, but I had hoped to find you already home. Good night — and again thank you.'

‘Good night, Sir Benedict.'

Drury hung up his coat and hat and went into the kitchen where he poured some milk into a saucepan, put it on the stove, and began searching for a tin that would provide him with a few spoonfuls of a vitaminised compound that promised a good night's sleep. But he couldn't find it, and he forgot the milk, which boiled over, and the stench of the burning milk on the stove's saucepan ring soon pervaded the whole house, and brought his wife downstairs. Her pyjama jacket was unbuttoned, and her hair was tousled, and when she saw the direction in which he was looking she grew very flushed.

‘I wondered what you wanted.'

It was the truth, but a poor choice of words, and she realized that too late. For he suddenly grinned and reached for her, and she started back, saying, ‘Now it's much too late for that sort of nonsense, Frank, and you're too tired.'

‘You want to bet?' he asked her.

But of course he knew she wasn't a betting woman. Which made it a certainty for him.

The report on the foreign page of
The Times
that interested Frank Drury was on a Skoplje dateline and dated the previous Saturday.

It read:

‘An unconfirmed report from a normally reliable source in Tirana announces that a violent explosion occurred yesterday at a Government armaments factory believed to be working on contracts for the Chinese People's Republic. There are unconfirmed rumours of many casualties among key personnel and great material damage. The loss may be vital to the programme recently announced by the Defence Ministry in Tirana. There has been no official announcement by the Albanian radio.'

Drury put down the newspaper and felt for his pipe and filled it slowly. Some minutes passed before he lit it.
He was not a man normally stirred to any great personal depths, but this time he was surprised by his own sense of unease.

He could see again the figure behind the crumpled steering-wheel, the glittering piece of glass where an eye had glinted with hate for him, Frank Drury.

He heard again the drip, drip and felt slightly nauseated.

His wife had seen the bruises on his left thigh and asked him what had happened. He had told her he had fallen over, which was near enough to the truth for a woman to whom he had never lied since their wedding day.

She had merely said, ‘Well, your feet should be big enough to stand on.'

She usually liked, woman fashion, having the last words, and those he had been glad to let her have. But she hadn't forgotten. She had produced a bottle of liniment before he left for the Yard.

At the front door she had had the last words again.

‘Feel rested?' And when he had grinned without saying anything she had added,
‘I don't think you should. But try falling the other way next time.'

He struck a match and lit his pipe. He smoked for maybe ten minutes, thinking about the paperwork the case would still demand. His thoughts were back on the Embankment when Bill Hazard came in. He carried an afternoon edition, which he dropped on the desk in front of Drury. He had ringed a piece in the third column of the opened page he had folded back.

‘That was a good tip you had, chief.'

Drury picked up the paper and looked at the marked passage which was headed ‘Body Found in New Forest'. The paragraphs below the heading ran:

‘Early this morning a New Forest ranger came upon the body of a young woman lying among bushes in the New Forest a few miles from Lyndhurst. She had been strangled and it is believed the body had been removed from a car.

‘A thin silk cord was found by Hampshire police almost embedded in the creamy flesh of the good-looking victim's neck. A handbag recovered from
the bushes contained papers identifying the woman as a Mrs V. Singh. It is understood the police are seeking a man who can help in their inquiries. An arrest is expected shortly. Mrs Singh came to this country some years ago from Bombay. It is not known whether she has relatives in London, where she lived.'

Drury took a pair of scissors from a drawer. He cut out both pieces, wrote the date on them, and dropped them in the drawer with the scissors. The newspapers were tossed in the waste-basket, which was empty except for an open packet that had held cigarettes of the brand Bill Hazard usually smoked.

‘I don't suppose either of us will have much difficulty in writing the next piece about the New Forest crime, Bill.'

‘Depends how they want to play it,' Hazard said. He had been forced to change his ideas so many times in the past week that he preferred to remain non-committal.

‘They want it over, done with, and swept under the plush sort of carpet they favour in Whitehall, Bill. Tomorrow
morning should see the finishing touch, about in time to stop awkward questions as to why we weren't being called in on a murder case.'

Drury wasn't mistaken.

Hazard was first in the next morning, and he had another column ringed for the Yard superintendent's attention. It was on the back page and headed ‘Murder Case Closed'.

The report read:

‘Hampshire police late last night confirmed that they are satisfied that the man who strangled the woman whose body was found yesterday morning in the New Forest not far from Lyndhurst has been identified.

‘He was the driver of a car which crashed on the Thames Embankment on Sunday night, narrowly missing two pedestrians.

‘He was dead when his body was recovered from the wreckage. Fingerprints have established that the dead woman, Mrs V. Singh, had been a passenger in the wrecked car. There was no other occupant of the car at the time of the crash.

‘It is understood that the dead man was not the murdered woman's husband.

‘Hampshire police now consider this inquiry closed.'

Hazard lit a cigarette and blew smoke down the length of his tie. He walked round Drury's desk like a stalking hunter closing in on unsuspecting game.

‘You hadn't seen it?'

‘The paper boy didn't turn up this morning.'

‘Then you won't have seen page one. Better take a look,' he suggested.

Drury was just in time to see the near-grin Hazard was struggling to lose. He turned the paper over to find another ringed report, in the last column under a bold headline proclaiming ‘Wilma Haven's Amazing Recovery'. The lead-in paragraphs were in black type.

The superintendent read:

‘A special bulletin from the hospital where doctors have been working day and night to save the life of Wilma Haven, following the disastrous events at her home Broomwood last week, announces that their patient has suddenly and quite
unexpectedly responded to their hours-long fight to save her.

‘ ‘A miracle,' was how one doctor, who was visibly impressed, described the dramatic change. ‘There now seems every chance of a complete recovery. But it will take a long time.'

‘Miss Haven's legal adviser, Mr Peregrine Porter of Lincoln's Inn Fields, told reporters that plans are already being made for Miss Haven to convalesce abroad.

‘ ‘I feel sure she will wish to forget the recent past,' he said. ‘She has suffered considerable shock.'

‘This was confirmed by the hospital doctors.

‘It is understood she may receive fresh psychiatric treatment by Professor Warrender who, it will be recalled, was present at the time of the incident which the police are still inquiring into. The professor would make no comment other than to say, ‘If my services are required I am sure they will be available.'

‘Mr Jeremy Truncard, the research chemist injured at the same time, is
still recovering in another hospital. He is a friend of Miss Haven's of long standing.'

Drury gave the paper back to his assistant, but Hazard was now grinning broadly as he pushed it back.

Drury scowled.

‘More?' he asked almost bitterly.

‘Turn to the column of engagements. It's the first under the A's. Then have a good laugh.'

Drury turned over some pages, found the personal columns, and stared at the following:

‘Mr L. .J. Frant and Miss G. K. Albirt.

‘The engagement is announced between Leslie, son of Mr and Mrs M. Frant of Birchington, Kent, and Gladys, only daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Albirt of Nuneaton, Warwickshire.'

Drury grinned, then caught Hazard's mocking eye and broke into a laugh that grew richer in tone as it became more prolonged, echoing his genuine amusement.

‘I'd like to see friend Jeremy's face when he reads it, Bill. But our friends
up the street haven't even let me know where he is. How smart can you get?'

The phone rang.

It was the Commander, ready to ask, ‘Is Hazard with you?'

‘Yes, sir,' Drury told him.

‘Right, tell him to stay there and come in yourself. We've an urgent call from the Chief Constable of Carmarthenshire. Sounds like a straightforward murder.'

The Commander rang off.

An hour and a half later Superintendent Frank Drury and Inspector William Hazard were on a train heading for Wales. The straightforward murder turned out to be a case that took them to Scotland and across to Dublin, back to Wales, and then to a small village in Somerset — all to find a man who had killed his aunt because she had called him ‘foxy-faced, like your father, and your mother should never have married him'. For that he had broken her head with the back of an axe and buried her body in a quarry, where it might have remained if heavy rains had not started a miniature landslide.

Two days after Drury and Hazard
were back in London, with the man they had sought languishing in a Welsh jail and awaiting an appearance before the local magistrates, Hazard again was in early and had put a newspaper on Drury's desk.

It was another day when the newsboy had not turned up with the morning's paper, and Drury hadn't seen any of the day's crop of headlines.

The one Hazard had ringed read: ‘Echo of the Haven Bang.'

‘Don't tell me somebody's opening that one again,' Drury said sourly.

‘More like somebody's shutting it for keeps.'

Drury started to read:

‘Mr Jeremy Truncard, who will be remembered as the research scientist whose top-secret assignment with International Chemicals was completed about the time of the much-publicized Russian Roulette fiasco at Broomwood, has accepted a new research post.

‘He will head a fresh team of researchers to be organized at a factory now nearing completion in the new Scottish
Redevelopment Area under the Board of Trade's revised Industrial Expansion Scheme.

‘Board of Trade regulations for this Government-sponsored research centre require the team chief to be a married man. Mr Truncard is listed as unmarried, but it is learned that he will be marrying a Miss Winifred Hill after a short engagement just prior to taking up his new post.