The Lately Deceased Page 16

  ‘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 d
ried, 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.’

  ‘Well, there is a fifty-fifty chance that it was standing point upwards. If it was, it would account for the observation I made a moment ago.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t think I have anything further to add. The Yard will doubtless check the blood groups for you. I handed Mr Pepper a sample of the woman’s blood at the time of the post-mortem, so they can easily check on her group.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Dr Chance.’

  Meredith hesitated momentarily before going on. ‘There is another point on which I’d value your opinion, sir. It concerns the suicide of the man Moore.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘We have some evidence which, if accepted, would change the whole nature of the case. Just for the record, sir, would it be possible to give enough barbiturate drug to an uncooperative person to send him into a coma?’

  Alistair looked suspiciously at the superintendent. ‘This is a queer tale you’re telling me, Mr Meredith.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It relates to the genuineness or otherwise of the note he left behind.’

  ‘Dr Kenny did the autopsy, I believe?’ Chance leant across the desk and pressed a button set in the top. Within seconds, the door opened and Susan Light stood poised in the entrance.

  ‘Yes, Doctor?’

  ‘Is Dr Kenny in the department at the moment?’

  ‘I believe so. Shall I find him for you?’

  ‘If you please.’

  She glided away and returned in a few moments with the younger pathologist. He wore a stained white coat and smelled of embalming fluid. Peeling off a pair of rubber gloves, he greeted the superintendent cheerfully.

  ‘What can we do for you, today?’ he asked. ‘Another stabbing or just a minor explosion?’

  His breezy nonchalance sounded irreverent in the presence of the austere Dr Chance.

  ‘You did the PM on that man Moore, did you not, Steven?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Coal gas and “barbs”.’

  ‘How much barbiturate was there?’

  ‘Oh, a hell of a lot. Eight point five in the blood – and pentobarbitone at that. He must have taken about fifty grains, at least.’

  Chance raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  ‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘And how much carbon monoxide was there?’

  ‘Only fifty-two per cent saturation, quite low considering. The “barbs” helped him to die at a lower level of gas.’

  Meredith broke into this technical duet.

  ‘Could that quantity of drug have been given by force,’ he asked. ‘Or could it have been taken unknowingly in any way?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been given him against his will – that is, not without a struggle and there were no such signs. It could, of course, have been concealed in some sort of medicine, where a bad taste might have been expected by the patient. Does that answer your question, Superintendent?’

  Meredith left with Kenny. As the secretary held the door open for them, he saw the doctor give her a long slow wink. She held her aloof poise until she had closed the door on Alistair, then she rudely put out an extraordinary length of pink tongue at Kenny.

  ‘She’s human, in spite of her looks,’ laughed Kenny. ‘Cheerio, Mr Meredith. I should use the knocker next time you call uninvited at a house.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Friday morning arrived and the number of reporters attending the double inquest had fallen off, due to competition from a more spectacular drama being enacted at the Old Bailey.

  Pearl sat at the end of the first bench, a very smart widow in black. Gordon, the Leighs and Abe Franklin sat with her. Leo Prince was still languishing in Brixton, and Myers still inert in his hospital bed. After a few cases had been ‘opened’, the inquest on Margaret Walker was resumed. Gordon gave evidence of identity and testified to his wife’s previous good health. Dr Chance gave a short simple account of the cause of death, and Meredith took the stand. He stated that he was satisfied that Margaret Walker had been murdered and that the person responsible for her death was now deceased. In support of these conclusions he described how he had come to find the body of Colin Arthur Moore in circumstances indicating that he had killed himself by an overdose of sleeping drugs and coal gas poisoning. He told of the finding of the suicide note (which he handed to the coroner) and described the subsequent police investigations establishing that Moore had killed himself some twenty-four hours after killing Margaret Elizabeth Walker.

  ‘The evidence certainly seems to be conclusive and complete,’ Dr Hope said, when Meredith had finished.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do I understand then that your enquiries are now officially concluded?’

  ‘That is so, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Superintendent.’

  The coroner then addressed himself to the jury, repeating his opinion that the evidence given by the officer left little room for doubt, and expressing himself confident that they would have little difficulty in finding that Margaret Elizabeth Walker had been murdered and in returning a verdict of murder against Colin Arthur Moore, now deceased.

  After a few moments of leaning over one another and whispering with their heads together, the jury sat back in satisfaction and their foreman, a large man with a walrus moustache, rose to his feet. He looked like, and indeed was, a coal-heaver.

  ‘We find her murdered, your Honour, and it was Moore what done it.’

  He sat down again, heavily.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Foreman,’ the coroner said, his eyes twinkling at being addressed as ‘Your Honour’.

  ‘Then I’ll put your verdict formally that Margaret Elizabeth Walker, aged forty-five years, of 17a Great Beachy Street, London W1, died on the night of the twenty-third of November as a result of a stab wound of the chest, and that the jury find the death to be homicide, due to the actions of one Colin Arthur Moore, now lying dead.’

  The jury were dismissed and Wally Morris moved towards the bench and said loudly, ‘The next case, sir, is that of Colin Arthur Moore.’

  The witnesses in the suicide case were called to give their evidence. Firstly, Geoffrey Tate gave proof of identification, as Pearl had point-blank refused to see the body of her husband after death. When she was called to the witness stand, her evidence was confined to the facts of his previous health and habits. Even in these austere surroundings, she looked quite lovely, and the reporters, finding little to work on from her evidence, spread themselves on their descriptions of her appearance.

  Masters gave evidence of the explosion, and Dr Kenny told of his post-mortem findings.

  Meredith ended the enquiry by largely repeating the evidence he had already given in the previous case.

  ‘Were any of Moore’s prints found on the lamp?’ asked Dr Hope, more out of curiosity than from any need for strengthening the evidence.

  ‘There were many smudged prints, sir, but none could be identified. It is probable that the lamp was cleaned several times since the party.’

  ‘Are you satisfied now with the validity of the note, Superintendent?’

  ‘It was definitely typed on that machine, sir.’ Old Nick managed to get away with this bit of equivocation, which salved his conscience a little.

  ‘And the matter of which you informed me earlier in the week has proved to have no bearing on the case?’

  He was referring to the Myers incident, and Meredith trod warily here.

  ‘No further evidence had arisen, sir, and a strong presumption exists that the original information was not to be trusted owing to the witness’s mental condition. In view of the stronger positive evidence that has arisen since then, I’m satisfied that no further inquiries are needed, sir.’


  After a very brief summing-up, the coroner brought in a straight verdict of suicide and all the interested parties left the court.

  Stammers waited outside, while Meredith fought his way through a clinging bunch of pressmen who were trying to get him to explain the nature of his cryptic reference to earlier evidence. He refused to say a word and eventually they gave him up for the more certain delights of the Central Criminal Court and the London Sessions.

  ‘Let’s hope we’ve heard the last of this lot!’ prayed Stammers, as they made their way back to their office.

  Geoffrey Tate was taking things easy in his flat when the phone rang. He was lying in vest and pants on the settee, smoking, and reading the evening paper while waiting for the unreliable geyser downstairs to provide him with enough water for a bath, when the telephone rang. Flinging the paper to the floor, he went over to the wall table and picked up the instrument.

  ‘That you, Geoff?’ came Gordon’s voice.

  ‘Yes, Gordon, what’s up?’

  ‘I’m going down to Oxford. Quite frankly I don’t much relish going on my own; I thought we might go down together – just you and me, and Pearl and Eve, perhaps a couple of others. Not a party, of course, but just a little gathering, to help break the ice. You know what I mean – an honest-to-God attempt to get back to normal. I suggest we drive tomorrow morning, stay the night and come back to town on Sunday evening.’

  ‘Sounds fine, Gordon. I’m sure Eve will jump at the chance.’

  ‘Good! I feel the need of a little convivial company. Webster and Barbara went down there this afternoon, but they’re a dead loss unless you’re looking for drinking companions. I’m afraid I don’t warm to that pair.’

  ‘OK, I’ll deliver Eve according to plan.’

  ‘How many can you get in your car?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, five. Six at a pinch.’

  ‘Well, make it a pinch, will you? I want to invite Lena Wright and that girl, Sandra. And we ought to have a couple of males just to even things up. That chap Morton-Smith will do for one; he’s a bit of a nitwit but he’s good value at a party. The other one had better be Abe Freeman. Can you pack that lot in?’