The Lately Deceased (20 page)

‘Hello, folks!' said Webster, getting up. ‘Have one of Gordon's drinks. If we're parasites, we may as well act like them. I'll fix them, I need an excuse to get another.'

He went behind the bar and fiddled expertly with glasses, while the new arrivals joined Barbara around the television set.

‘Just watching one of Metro's efforts,' Gordon explained. ‘I'll give those property people hell tomorrow! Look at the back of that set! Every time anyone moves a muscle, the whole blasted thing flaps like a sail in a strong wind!'

‘The only brick wall I ever saw that bulged when the hero coughs!' Webster chimed in from the back of the room.

‘You can laugh,' said Gordon. ‘If Leo Prince wasn't in jail, I'd wrap that set around his neck tomorrow. It's some of his junk.'

‘I remember seeing them rehearse this,' Eve said. ‘It looked a mess then, and it's a mess now. Colin scripted it, didn't he? Oh, I suppose I've said something I shouldn't have!' She looked around at the others, wide-eyed.

‘Forget it, Eve,' said Pearl easily. ‘We can't go around avoiding the subject all the time. None of you could care two figs what happened to Colin, and quite honestly I don't think I care much myself. The man's dead and the sooner we all accept that fact, the better for all concerned.'

‘Yeah, drink up and have another,' put in Webster, suiting his words by draining the glass he held. Most of his waking hours and all of his conversation centred on the obtaining and consumption of alcoholic liquors.

‘Your mention of Colin's scripts reminds me that that head detective, Meredith, rang me up this afternoon,' said Pearl. ‘He asked whether Colin wrote
Kelly's Nightmare
, and if so, when?'

‘Well, at least you knew the answer to that one,' Eve said. ‘A real soap opera if ever there was one. I played the dumb maid who found the safe broken open. I had twenty-four words to say!'

‘What else did Meredith want to know?' Geoff asked Pearl.

‘Oh, a whole string of things – whether Colin worked from home or a London office, whether he sold his work through an agent and, if so, which one. What was the name and address of his secretary.'

‘Did Colin have a secretary?' Eve interrupted, surprised.

‘No, of course, he didn't. He didn't earn enough to keep a wife, let alone pay a secretary,' she said bitterly.

‘You didn't say that to the policeman!' said Eve, shocked.

‘Of course I said it to him. God knows, it was true enough. All this blab about offices, agents and secretaries makes me sick. Who the hell do they think Colin was? Noel Coward? I was the breadwinner in our household and don't you forget it.'

‘And I don't suppose poor Colin was allowed to forget it either,' Barbara surprisingly piped up. Pearl flashed a look of venom at her and was about to make some withering retort when Gordon stepped in to save the situation.

‘For God's sake, don't you two get at each other's throats. What interests me is what lies behind all these questions. Why in the hell should the police interest themselves in a play that went on the air a couple of months ago?'

‘Maybe they reckon there may be something in the plot that could explain why Colin killed himself,' said Webster, vaguely.

‘Damn it, man,' Gordon snapped back, ‘They already know why Colin killed himself.' He looked blankly at the others and then passed his fingers through his hair in a gesture of hopelessness.

‘I'm sick to death of this whole bloody business,' he went on. ‘Let's have a rubber of bridge, we've got a four.'

‘We've got a six,' Geoff pointed out.

‘Barbara and Webster don't play,' Gordon replied. ‘Webster will be happy knocking back the scotch and Barbara can watch television.'

A couple of rubbers soon convinced the men that Eve, for all her assumed little-girl simplicity, knew more about the game than they would ever learn. Due mainly to her efforts, Geoff found himself winning by a substantial margin over Gordon and Pearl.

‘Come on, Pearl!' he chaffed. ‘If this was Strip Poker, you'd be blue with cold by now. Eve and I are skinning the pair of you!'

‘All right, smarty pants! Let's change partners and I'll play with Geoff. Then we'll see if you can hold your own against your lady-love,' retorted Pearl.

They shifted chairs and Gordon shouted across to Webster, who was exploring the bottles on the shelves of the bar.

‘Bring that lamp over here,' he said. ‘I haven't seen a damn thing since Barbara doused the lights for her bloody television.'

‘Sure, Gordon, coming right over.'

The Canadian walked over with the slender standard lamp that usually stood by the bar and dumped it heavily at the side of Gordon's chair. As he did so a shiny piece of metal dropped to the floor beneath it.

Eve looked idly downwards. ‘What's that?' she asked. ‘It looks like a part of the works.'

She bent down and reached to pick it up, but as she did so Geoff's voice rasped out.

‘Don't touch it. Eve! I think I know what that is!'

His hand held her wrist to stop her fingers closing over the pointed steel rod that lay on the carpet, half hidden by the circular base of the lamp.

‘What is it, Geoff? What fell out?' Pearl had risen from her seat to look over the table.

‘It's a barbecue skewer,' Geoff replied. ‘And it looks as if there's a good deal of blood on it.'

Forty minutes later, Meredith and Masters were on their knees around the base of the standard lamp. An uneasy circle of people stood silently around, watching intently.

‘Has the lamp been moved since the night of the party, sir?' asked Meredith.

‘Yes, of course it has,' Walker snapped. ‘Do you think we never clean the place?'

‘Sorry, sir,' Meredith was all contrition. ‘What I meant was, do you normally move it about the room as you did tonight, or does it usually stand in the same place.'

‘Usually in the same place, officer.'

‘And where is its usual place?'

‘Right at the end of the bar there.'

‘Was it standing at the end of the bar on the night of the party?'

‘Yes, it was.'

‘I can confirm that, Superintendent,' Eve chimed in. ‘I know because the clasp of my necklace came undone, and I took it over to that lamp to see what was wrong with it. The lamp was standing at the end of the bar, just as Mr Walker said.'

‘Thank you, miss.'

Old Nick stood up and gently removed the shade from the lamp. Then very gingerly he laid the lamp on its side on the floor. In the centre of its base was a hole through which the electric flex passed up the hollow stem of the upright. There was room and to spare for the slender skewer to have lain concealed within this cavity.

‘Better get the lamp fingerprinted again, Masters,' Old Nick said to the sergeant. ‘Get them to come over here now. We don't want to move this thing around more than is necessary.'

He dropped on to his knees again and closely examined the skewer; its lower half was thickly coated with a shiny dark-brown crust, quite hard and dry.

‘Have you such a thing as a large envelope, Mr Walker? I'm afraid I came unprepared.'

Gordon nodded silently, and went off to his study.

‘Superintendent, is that the thing … the one he killed her with?' asked Barbara Leigh in an awed whisper. Clearly she was getting a macabre thrill out of all this. Meredith did not reply – he switched his attention from the skewer to Pearl.

‘Are you feeling all right, Mrs Moore?' he asked.

Pearl's face had gone a chalky white against the black of her dress and her hand shook as she lifted a glass that the tireless Webster had just placed in her hand.

‘Yes, thank you, I'm all right,' she replied. ‘I just feel I want to be violently sick, that's all.'

‘Who doesn't?' Eve asked in a small voice. ‘When we first found that thing,' she added, nodding towards the skewer, ‘I thought nothing of it. But now – now that we know what it was used for and whose blood that is staining it – it has suddenly become the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.'

Meredith nodded grimly. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘It's not a very nice thing to find lying about the house, but I'm very glad to have got it. We always like to get our hands on the murder weapon if we can. Of course, we have yet to establish this is the weapon, but I haven't any serious doubt. It was clever of you not to have touched it, Miss Arden.'

‘Oh, that was Geoff, Superintendent,' Eve said quickly. ‘I was just about to pick it up when he stopped me.'

‘Very good thing too, miss. Ah, here's the envelope. Thank you, Mr Walker.'

Meredith slid the open end of the foolscap envelope under the looped end of the meat skewer, manoeuvring it gently until the weapon was inside. As it vanished, the onlookers relaxed.

‘I hope that's the end of that, officer,' said Gordon. ‘The sooner I get rid of this damned flat, the better I'll be pleased. I shall go down to Oxford immediately after the inquest. This place has got thoroughly on my nerves.'

Meredith nodded and prepared to depart, leaving Masters to wait for the fingerprint men.

‘We'd better be off, too, Eve,' said Geoff. ‘That was about the most dramatic way of breaking up an evening's bridge I've yet encountered.'

He and Eve put on their coats and left with Meredith. Before they parted on the pavement, Geoff said, ‘You probably can't answer this, Superintendent, but I'm going to ask just the same. Why did you want to know about the play that Colin Moore wrote? What earthly connection could it have with his death?'

Meredith smiled in the darkness.

‘If this bit of metal comes up with the right answers. I'll lose all interest in the play. Goodnight to you both.'

Grey sat at his desk cupping his hands around his mid-morning mug of tea. Masters sat on the farther edge and together they looked down at two message forms that lay side by side. ‘He was in a right state about it, wasn't he?' said Masters.

‘And with good reason, my lad, it's a bit of a facer to be told by one lab that a suicide note is a fake, and by another that the dead man's fingerprints are spread all over the murder weapon. The one contradicts the other.'

Grey took a pull at his tea. ‘The Commissioner has started to get shirty. After nearly two weeks, we're in a bigger “pig's ear” than when we started.'

‘What's the old man going to do? He'll have to come down on one side or the other at the inquest.'

‘God knows! If you ask me, he'll have to accept the evidence of the prints rather than the typewriting. He rang Cardiff again this morning and he practically forced the chap there to admit that drugs or emotion might have been responsible for the imperfect typing.'

‘Where's Old Nick now?'

‘Over to see Alistair Chance. He wants to find out a bit more about the blood traces scraped off the skewer.'

‘What an outfit to be in!' Masters said, with disgust. ‘We spend two weeks looking for a bloody skewer and, when we find it, we don't like it. How many people are stabbed each week with a barbecue skewer? Tell me that.'

At St Jeremy's Hospital, Meredith had just been admitted to the presence of Dr Chance. The glamorous young secretary had shown him into the inner sanctum and had then retired to her own room.

Chance sat behind a polished desk, looking like a bank manager about to refuse a loan. There were no signs of his profession about the room apart from the rows of imposing medical books on shelves around the walls. The only other furniture in the room was a chair and a closed cabinet which Meredith suspected might contain liquid refreshment for more important visitors. A bowl of flowers on the window ledge betrayed the touch of femininity provided by the enchanting Miss Light.

Meredith could not help contrasting the room with those of other pathologists with whom he had dealt. Usually they were a shambles of old bones, dirty shelves covered with even dirtier bottles, strange bits of apparatus and pots of grisly organs, the whole lot leavened by a layer of cigarette ash.

Chance rose and greeted him courteously, waving him to the empty chair. ‘How can I be of assistance to you, Superintendent?'

‘I would like you to take a look at this, sir, and tell me if you think it might be the weapon that killed Margaret Walker.'

He produced the envelope Gordon had given him, and removed the skewer. The white-haired doctor took it and looked at it in silence for a long moment. He turned it over and, opening a drawer in his desk, took out a magnifying glass and peered through it intently. After scanning the whole length of the skewer again, he handed it back to Meredith.

‘The Yard laboratory scraped off some of the blood for grouping tests,' explained the detective.

‘I see that,' said the pathologist, somewhat acidly. ‘Where was this found?'

Meredith explained the circumstances and told him that Moore's were the only recognisable fingerprints on it.

‘Very convenient, I must say!' Chance said tartly.

He held out his hand again for the weapon, and once more examined it minutely. Meredith wondered if he was marking time while he formed an opinion. At last he laid the glass down and handed the skewer back to Meredith. ‘Would it do, sir?'

‘Oh, yes! It'll do fine for the killing instrument; couldn't be bettered, in fact. But I'm puzzled by the blood on it, nevertheless.'

‘In what way, Doctor?'

‘There's a well-defined layer of blood on it almost to its hilt – at least seven inches I would say. Yet the wound was only four inches deep. Perhaps if it were stood vertically on end before the blood dried, it might run down as far as that. Still, it's curious.'

‘It would have had to stand upright where it was hidden, sir, because of the nature of the hiding place. But I am afraid we have no means of knowing whether it was standing point up or point down. It was only when it fell on the floor that it was discovered.'