Waiting for Orders (5 page)

Mercer had dealt with distinguished visitors to Scotland Yard before. There would be the preliminary exchange of courtesies, then a tour of the buildings, conducted by Inspector Denton, who would appear, as if by accident, a few moments after the visitor had entered Mercer’s room, and, finally, the farewell handshake and a safe conduct to the Embankment entrance and a taxi.

In spite, therefore, of his cold and his depression and his interrupted work, it was with a smile that Mercer greeted Dr Czissar’s entry into his room.

Dr Czissar was a plump, middle-aged man of rather more than medium height, with a round, pale face and a pair of sad, brown eyes, magnified to cow-like proportions by a pair of thick pebble glasses. He wore a long grey raincoat, which reached
nearly to his ankles, and carried an unfurled umbrella. As he came into the room he stopped, clicked his heels, clapped the umbrella to his side as if it were a rifle, bowed, and said loudly and distinctly: ‘Doctor Jan Czissar. Late Prague police. At your service.’

‘Delighted, Doctor. Won’t you take a seat?’

Dr Czissar took a seat. His cow-like eyes blinked round the room and came to rest once more on Mercer.

‘It is good of you,’ said the Doctor suddenly, ‘to see me so promptly. It is an honour to be received at Scotland Yard. In common with my colleagues’ – the cow-like eyes narrowed slightly – ‘my
late
colleagues of the Czech police, I have always admired your institution.’

Mercer was used to dealing with this sort of thing. He smiled deprecatingly. ‘We do our best. Ours is a law-abiding country.’ And then his ears caught the sound they had been waiting for – the sound of Inspector Denton’s footsteps approaching along the corridor. He rose to his feet. ‘Well, Doctor, now that you’re here, I expect you’d like to see something of our organization, eh?’

Time had given the question a purely rhetorical significance for Mercer. For him, Dr Czissar was already safely under the wing of the approaching Inspector Denton. The words of introduction were already rising to his lips, the Inspector was already rapping dutifully at the door, the machinery for the speedy disposal of distinguished visitors was getting smoothly under way: and then, the unbelievable happened.

Dr Czissar said: ‘Oh no, thank you. I will not trouble.’

For a moment Mercer thought that he had misunderstood.

‘It’s no trouble at all, Doctor.’

‘Some other day, perhaps.’ The cow-like eyes regarded him kindly. ‘I am rather busy, you know. A text-book of medical jurisprudence. Perhaps if we could have a little talk about an important matter in which I am interested it would be better.’

Mercer subsided slowly into his chair. He saw Denton was standing helplessly inside the door. He heard Sergeant Flecker, at his desk in the corner, say ‘Crikey!’ a little too loudly. Dr Czissar’s large, sad eyes regarded him compassionately. He strove to render his face and voice expressionless.

‘Well, Doctor. What can we do for you?’

‘Pardon, Assistant-Commissioner Mercer. It is I who can do something for you.’

‘Ah, yes?’

And then Mercer witnessed, for the first of many times, the spectacle of Dr Czissar going into action. A faint, thin smile stretched the Doctor’s full lips. He settled his glasses on his nose. Then he produced an enormous alligator-skin wallet and took from it a newspaper cutting. Finally, he performed a series of three actions which Mercer was going in time to recognize and to detest. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard, and then said sharply: ‘Attention, please!’

‘I think,’ he added slowly, ‘that I can help you to discover a crime. Clever criminals are so stupid, are they not?’

Mercer stroked his chin. A warm, comfortable feeling suffused his breast. This Czech was just another lunatic, after all. Unhinged, no doubt, by his experiences as a refugee. He thought of the memorandum he would send the ‘brass hat’ in the Home Office and smiled benignly on Dr Czissar. Once more he got to his feet.

‘Very good of you. Now, if you’ll just put the whole thing in writing and post it to me, we’ll look into it.’

Dr Czissar’s thin smile vanished. The cow-like eyes flashed. ‘It is unnecessary. The matter is in writing and here.’ He put the newspaper cutting under Mercer’s nose. ‘Please,’ he said firmly, ‘to read.’

Again Mercer sat down. His eyes met those of Dr Czissar. He read.

The cutting was from a Wessex weekly newspaper dated a fortnight previously, and was the report of an inquest. The body of a woman of sixty had been washed up in Shingles Bay and had been identified as that of Mrs Sarah Fallon, of Seahurst, a village five miles from the seaside resort of Seabourne. Her husband had died fifteen years earlier, leaving her a large fortune and Seahurst Grange, with its twenty-acre park. Soon after his death she had assumed the guardianship of his niece, Helen Fallon, who had married, eleven years later, Arthur Barrington, a Seabourne coal and builders’ merchant, and President of the Seabourne Angling Society. The Barringtons had lived since their marriage with Mrs Fallon at the Grange.

On the evening of November 4 Barrington had reported to the police that Mrs Fallon had disappeared. That afternoon Mrs Barrington had, at her aunt’s request, driven her into Seabourne to do some shopping. As Mrs Fallon had said that she might call on a friend for tea, her niece had left her at South Square at a quarter to three, put the car in the municipal car park, and spent the afternoon in a cinema. They had arranged to meet at South Square at six o’clock. Mrs Fallon had not kept the appointment, and later, when attempts to trace her movements through her friends had failed, the police had been informed.

She had not been seen again until eight days later, when her body was found by a coastguard.

Evidence of identification was given by her doctor and her dentist. The post-mortem had revealed the cause of death as being shock following a fracture of the skull. The fracture could have been caused by violent contact with any blunt, hard surface. It would have been consistent with a fall from a high cliff. She had not entered the water until several hours after death. The state of decomposition suggested that she had probably died on the date of her disappearance. Her doctor added that she had suffered from a cardiac disturbance and was liable to spells of dizziness.

A child, Annie Smith, had given evidence of the finding, on the seventh of the month, of a heart-shaped pinchbeck locket at the foot of Sea Head Cliff, a local beauty spot within a few minutes’ walk of South Square.

Mrs Barrington had identified the locket as having belonged to her aunt. Her aunt, who had attached great sentimental value to the locket, had always worn it. Her aunt had been in the habit of sitting on the seat on the cliff during the afternoon. She had not, however, done so for several days prior to her disappearance as she had had a cold.

The coroner, summing up, had said that there seemed very little doubt that the deceased had, after she had left her niece on the afternoon of the fourth, changed her mind about visiting her friends and walked up the hill to the cliff. Then, fatigued by the walk after her recent illness, she had had an attack of giddiness and fallen to her death on the beach below. High tide had been at six o’clock. Her body must have lain on the beach until ultimately it had been carried out to sea.

A verdict of ‘Accidental Death’ had been returned, the jury adding a rider to the effect that the cliff should be fenced.

Mercer looked up. ‘Well, Doctor?’

‘Mrs Fallon,’ said Dr Czissar decisively, ‘was, I think, murdered.’

Mercer sighed and leaned back in his chair.

‘Sergeant,’ he said, ‘get me the file on the Fallon case, will you?’ He smiled wearily at the Doctor. ‘You see, Doctor, we are not so stupid. A rich woman meets with an accident. Her niece, who lives in her house, inherits. The niece’s husband, who also lives in the house, happens to be in financial difficulties in his business. The Chief Constable of Wessex thought it advisable to ask us to look into the matter. Ah, thank you, Sergeant. Here we are, Doctor. All open and above board. The niece first.

‘She spent the afternoon as she says she did. Car-park and cinema attendants both confirm that she spent the afternoon at Seabourne. She arrived home at seven, having waited for half an hour in South Square and spent ten minutes or so telephoning her aunt’s friends. Barrington returned home soon afterwards. He had left at two thirty to keep a business appointment in Haywick – that’s fourteen miles farther west along the coast – at three. He kept the appointment, and several others that he had made in the Haywick district for that afternoon. Anyway, no murderer in his senses would try to push anybody off the cliff. There’s a coastguard station a quarter of a mile away. He would be too scared of being seen. Satisfied, Doctor?’

Dr Czissar’s thin smile had reappeared. He nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Quite satisfied. She was undoubtedly murdered. Were the servants at the Grange questioned?’

Mercer swallowed hard. ‘Naturally.’

‘And did any of them report any trouble with the heating arrangements on the night of Mrs Fallon’s disappearance?’

Mercer restrained himself with an effort. He turned slowly to Inspector Denton. ‘Well, Inspector? You went down to Seahurst, didn’t you? Can you answer the Doctor’s question? By the way,’ he added perfunctorily, ‘this is Inspector Denton, Doctor.’

Dr Czissar sprang up like a Jack-in-the-box, clicked his heels, and sat down again.

The Inspector shifted uneasily. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, averting his eyes from his superior, ‘there was some trouble with the heating, Sir. The housekeeper’s a spiritualist, Sir, like myself, and she said they had trouble with the furnace that night. It went out. She reckoned that it was a sort of sign that the old lady had pegged out. Died,’ he added by way of explanation, and relapsed into uncomfortable silence.

‘Ah, so!’ said Dr Czissar. His sad, brown eyes fastened again on Mercer’s. ‘Do you begin to see my argument, Assistant-Commissioner?’

Mercer stirred. ‘To be frank with you, Doctor,’ he said, ‘I think that we are both wasting time.’

Dr Czissar smiled serenely. ‘Attention, please,’ he said. ‘I will present the case to you.’

He raised one finger. ‘First,’ he said, ‘the thing that attracts my attention is this matter of the locket. So curious, I think. It is found at the bottom of the cliff. Therefore, Mrs Fallon was killed by falling from the cliff. So simple. Perhaps a little
too
simple, do you think? It is found three days after the accident. Therefore it must have fallen on a place not covered by the tide. Six tides would certainly have buried it or swept it away, don’t you think? Yesterday I went to Seabourne. I looked at the cliff. So interesting. It is quite impossible to drop an object from the top of the cliff so that it lands on the beach above the high-tide mark.’

Mercer shrugged. ‘The clasp was broken. She probably clutched at it as she fell. She had heart trouble. It would be a natural gesture. It might fall anywhere under the circumstances.’

The brown eyes remained cow-like, but the full lips curled a little. ‘Ah, so! It might. A woman of sixty in a poor state of health might also climb to the top of the cliff on a cold November day and stand near enough to the edge to fall over. But it is unlikely. And was she seen by the coastguards?’

‘No. But that proves nothing. I think I should tell you, too, that the fact that she was washed up in Shingles Bay confirms the theory that she entered the water by the cliff. The currents are very strong there. From the cliff she would be certain to find her way to the bay.’

‘Ah! She arrives in the Shingles Bay. Therefore she must have come from the cliff. Is that right?’

‘There is the evidence of the locket.’

‘Attention, please.’ The thin smile had returned once more. ‘I have made certain inquiries in Seabourne.’

‘Indeed?’

‘About the currents. You are, within limits, correct. There is a very strong current running past the cliff and across Firth Bay to the Shingles. But’ – the eyes approached Mercer’s quickly – ‘this current sweeps along near the coast for some distance. It goes in very near to the coast at Haywick Dunes. And does it not occur to you, too, that eight days is a long time for a body to take to get from the cliff to Shingles Bay? The current is, as you said, a strong one.’

Mercer looked at Denton. ‘Were we aware of these facts, Inspector?’

‘No, Sir. The local men were quite sure about the cliff. They said they’d had one or two suicides from there and that the bodies all ended up in Shingles Bay.’

‘I see. May I ask where you obtained this information, Doctor?’

‘From the Secretary of the Seabourne Angling Society.’ Dr Czissar coughed gently. ‘Mr Barrington is the President of the Society this year, according to the newspaper. He, too, would know these things.’

‘I see. Well, Doctor, this is all very interesting, but I am afraid –’

‘Mrs Fallon,’ continued Dr Czissar, ‘was murdered for her money by Arthur and Helen Barrington, who, because they did not want to be found out, arranged alibis for themselves. They were not very useful alibis, because nobody knew exactly when Mrs Fallon was killed. In my opinion, she was killed between half past two and twenty-five minutes to three on the afternoon of her disappearance. She was placed in the sea at Haywick Dunes between six and seven o’clock that evening.’

‘But–’

‘The murder,’ pursued Dr Czissar firmly, ‘was very carefully thought out. You remember the drive up to the Grange, Inspector? It is long and winding, Assistant-Commissioner
Mercer, and most of it is invisible from the house because of trees.

‘At half past two Barrington left to keep his appointment at Haywick. But instead of driving straight there, he stopped his car a little way down the road and walked back to the drive. Five minutes later his wife left to motor Mrs Fallon into Seabourne. As soon as she was out of sight of the house, but in the drive, she stopped. Her husband then killed Mrs Fallon with the weapon he had ready. A coal or mason’s hammer would have been suitable. He was a coal and builders’ merchant, I think. He then went back to his car and drove on to his appointment at Haywick. Mrs Barrington also drove on to Seabourne.’