Chapter and Hearse Read online

‘Only in a manner of speaking,’ said Sloan, explaining.

  ‘If you think,’ the consultant said crisply, ‘that I am going about administering a coup de grâce to every very old patient blocking one of my beds, Inspector, you are mistaken. And I have statistical records to prove it.’

  ‘It seems that someone did,’ said Sloan mildly. ‘In green ink.’

  ‘Clever,’ conceded the medical man. ‘Very clever. But not done by me.’ He took out his pen and wrote down the numbers on a sheet of paper. He handed pen and paper to the policeman. ‘Or with my Waterman pen nib. Check with your tame specialists if you like.’

  ‘I doubt if that will be necessary, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘But if I might just borrow your telephone to talk to Dr Chomel…’

  The physician pushed it towards him.

  ‘Dr Chomel? Inspector Sloan here. There’s something I want you to do for us. Now, listen very carefully…’

  * * *

  The two policemen were back at Berebury police station with a surprised Colin Galbraith under arrest on suspicion of causing unlawful death before Sloan expanded further.

  ‘What counts in police work, Crosby, is evidence – hard evidence – not just suspicion.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but…’

  ‘What we needed to do was to get the old lady’s son to write down those letters in the presence of an impeccable witness…’

  ‘Dr Chomel,’ said Crosby, faint but pursuing.

  ‘The courts trust medical doctors,’ said Sloan elliptically, ‘even if all their patients don’t.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I know that, but…’

  ‘So we had to get Colin Galbraith, who after all must have needed his share of his mother’s money after a contested divorce, a new marriage and a failed business if anybody did…’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Crosby, who had had the perils of matrimony spelled out to him in the canteen by the cohort against the sending of the famous Valentine.

  ‘… to write the letters “122” down without suspecting that we knew anything was amiss.’

  ‘But what I don’t see, sir, is why you got Dr Chomel to get Galbraith to sign a statement that he didn’t want a post-mortem performed on his mother. That’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Nothing,’ agreed Sloan cheerfully. ‘What was important was getting him to date it.’

  Crosby frowned. ‘What’s the date got to do with it?’

  ‘With today’s date, of course,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Today’s date?’ said Crosby, adding after a moment’s thought. ‘The 12th of February?’

  ‘The graphologists don’t mind if you use letters or figures,’ said Sloan. ‘Or which pen.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘Whether you write down 12 February or 12.2 and the year, you’ve got to use the figures 1 and 2.’

  ‘One, two, that’ll do…’ remarked the constable.

  ‘Exactly. Anyone can use a green pen but your handwriting characteristics can’t be disguised. Distance-killing, you could call it, writing in that death warrant. By the way, Crosby…’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘If I were you, I think I’d send that Valentine card for 14 February after all…’

  Due Diligence

  ‘I must say I don’t like the idea at all myself,’ said Simon flatly. ‘Otherwise, of course, I can see that it would be a very good place to live.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Kenneth Marsden, the estate agent, patently unperturbed. The word was one he was very fond of using with his clients. It implied agreement without actually spelling it out. ‘Quite.’

  ‘Nor me,’ chimed in Simon’s wife, Charlotte, quickly.

  Too quickly.

  ‘Quite,’ said the estate agent again. Kenneth Marsden had found that this all-purpose word equally usefully concealed disagreement without actually spelling out the fact to prospective purchasers of attractive properties newly on the market in rural Calleshire. ‘I do understand, naturally. It was all very, very unfortunate.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Simon Cullen, ‘it’s not every day that something like that happens in someone’s house.’

  ‘Quite so.’ The man from Messrs Crombie and Marsden, Estate Agents and Valuers, paused and then said judiciously, ‘On the other hand, it has at the same time to be remembered –’ Kenneth Marsden was also in the habit of making all unwelcome pronouncements in the impersonal tense – ‘that there are very few domestic properties in this country – especially genuinely old ones such as the Manor at Cullingoak – in which, over the years, somebody has not died…’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Simon, ‘but this death was really only the other day, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Which is why the present owner wishes to dispose of it so quickly,’ said the estate agent smoothly. He changed the subject with the skill born of long practice. ‘By the way, how did you happen to hear about the Manor being up for sale? We shan’t be advertising it until the end of the week.’

  It was Charlotte Cullen who answered him. ‘Somebody at work mentioned it to me, and I rang my husband and got him to collect the key when he was in Berebury so we could see over the house while I could fit it in. I’ve got to go abroad for the bank tomorrow.’

  Kenneth Marsden translated her coded message without difficulty. There would be no problems over money or mortgage with any purchase was what she was actually telling him.

  ‘But the lady of the house didn’t just die, did she?’ persisted Simon.

  ‘My husband meant houses in which there has been a fatal accident,’ spelt out Charlotte for him. ‘Didn’t you, Simon?’

  Simon Cullen did not respond to this.

  ‘I do understand,’ Kenneth Marsden hastened to say soothingly. Actually he understood a great deal more: he now knew which of this couple it was who metaphorically wore the trousers. This knowledge was something that was as important to him now as it would be to any experienced negotiator.

  ‘The publicity,’ pointed out Simon.

  ‘Unfavourable,’ conceded the estate agent immediately. He allowed a little pause to develop before he said obliquely, ‘You yourselves would, of course, be benefiting from this to the extent that the property has been placed on the market at a substantially lower price than it would have been had the – er – unfortunate accident not occurred.’

  ‘We do appreciate that,’ murmured Charlotte Cullen. ‘It is an important factor in our even considering purchasing a property such as this. I must say, though, that I agree with my husband that it is a very nice house.’

  Within the privacy of the partners’ room of Messrs Crombie and Marsden, Kenneth Marsden had described this particular instance of his lowering of his valuation of the house as ‘blood money’. To his eternal credit, the vendor had not demurred at his suggested figure. Indeed, for a money man – he was a stockbroker – Mr Wetherby had shown very little interest in the prospective sale, only in disposing of the property at the earliest possible moment.

  Needless to say, Kenneth Marsden did not say either of these things now. Instead, he nodded his agreement with Charlotte. ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Cullen,’ he said easily. ‘It’s a very fine example of its period.’

  Charlotte, who was rising rapidly through the upper-middle echelons of the Bank of Calleshire, where she worked, leaned forward and said, ‘Actually it was the price which first attracted my husband.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Kenneth warmly.

  Simon said nothing.

  ‘I hesitate to use the word “bargain” in these particular circumstances,’ went on Kenneth Marsden, matching spurious frankness with superficial – if seemingly transparent – honesty, ‘but there’s no denying that if it weren’t for the – er – tragic incident there, the Manor at Cullingoak would be much more highly priced than it is today.’

  ‘My husband,’ began Charlotte again, ‘was quite taken with the actual property too…’ She turned towards Simon and said, ‘Weren’t you, dear?’

  Simon had long ago decided that Charlotte m
ust have read in a women’s magazine that where the wife was the money earner, it was important that she deferred to her husband on each and every occasion when this was at all possible. And that her constant litany should be, “I’ll have to ask my husband.” That this should only be when his answer wasn’t important went, Simon knew, without saying.

  ‘The kitchen needs a bit of work doing on it…’ said Simon spiritedly. ‘And the larder window needs fixing.’

  He made both statements without any fear of being described as a ‘house husband’. Charlotte had never ever brought herself to tell the world that her husband had been made redundant from his job at the metal works in Berebury and therefore that he stayed at home while she made the money – and quite a lot of money it was these days too, to be sure. He wasn’t complaining about that. It was her end-of-the-year bonus, she had told him, that was going to make buying the Manor at Cullingoak possible.

  When asked what her husband did, Charlotte always replied with perfect truth that he was a bimetallist. Since she moved in the world of corporate banking, this was almost always taken by her office colleagues to mean that Simon was an economist who was concerned with the monetary system in which two metals are used in fixed relative values and not – as he actually was – someone trained in the coefficients of expansion of all metals.

  Charlotte never disabused them of this misapprehension, and when the more knowledgeable responded with remarks such as, ‘Gold and silver, I suppose,’ she would say uncertainly, ‘I think so, but I’m afraid it’s not really my field…’ That people did not talk much about their work went without saying in all banking circles, and the conversation would move on.

  ‘I dare say that the owner might agree to that sort of repair being taken into account,’ the estate agent was saying to Simon, without for one moment revealing how very useful it was in a negotiating situation to have a few small bones to chew over. The smaller the bone, the better, of course. In the world of the estate agent, work on a larder window was easily conceded, and the cost of an upgraded kitchen something to be wrested from the owner after a nominal struggle.

  ‘Who is the owner anyway?’ asked Charlotte casually. ‘He wasn’t around.’

  ‘A Mr Wetherby,’ replied Kenneth Marsden, adding, ‘He’s naturally still very shocked at losing his wife, you know, and not too keen on going back to the house.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Charlotte Cullen. ‘Poor man.’

  Simon gave Marsden a hard look. ‘And I take it that the whole place has been rewired?’

  The estate agent looked pained. ‘I can assure you that the house’s electrical system was the very first thing that was checked after the accident. It was found to be all in good order –’ he gave a slight cough – ‘in spite of everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ queried Simon.

  ‘Mrs Wetherby’s electrocution seemed quite inexplicable. Mr Wetherby was at work when it happened and so wasn’t able to help much with the coroner’s enquiries.’

  ‘Then there shouldn’t be anything for us to worry about, should there?’ said Charlotte in the same decisive tones as she had used to wind up many a meeting at the bank.

  ‘No,’ said Kenneth Marsden automatically.

  She raised an enquiring eye in her husband’s direction and went through her usual routine. ‘What do you say, Simon? It’s up to you, of course, but I must say I like it…’

  ‘Me too,’ he said meekly.

  ‘Right.’ She turned to Kenneth Marsden. ‘You can tell Peter Wetherby that we’ll take it.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll regret it,’ said the estate agent heartily, shaking hands as they left. Simon Cullen was inclined to agree with him when, six weeks later, he and Charlotte had duly moved into the Manor at Cullingoak. The larder window had been fixed and the men were due to come that Monday morning to improve the kitchen layout. Simon had no hang-ups about doing the cooking, belonging as he did to the very workman-like ‘if you can read, then you can cook’ school of haute cuisine, but equally he saw no point in ever working under less than optimum conditions. Actually he brought to the task of cooking the same attention and care that had served his previous employers very well until the advent of the world decline in the heavy metals industry.

  ‘Now, then, Mr Cullen,’ said the foreman, ‘before we get started, can you just check that this plan here is how you want it all doing? Measure twice and cut once, as my old boss used to say.’

  Simon switched the electric kettle on as a gesture of good intent before he joined the man peering over the drawings laid out on the kitchen table. ‘That’s right,’ he said after duly studying the design. He pointed to the larder door and with his hand sketched an imaginary journey round the kitchen in the direction of the stove via the work surfaces and the kitchen sink. ‘Store, wash, prepare, cook, serve … that’s how it should be.’

  The foreman scratched his head. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

  ‘Only if you’re right-handed,’ said Simon. ‘The lady who lived here before must have been a southpaw.’

  ‘Both her hands had burns on them,’ the man informed him ghoulishly.

  ‘Though they never did find out how she got them,’ chimed in his mate, Fred.

  ‘Electrocuted in the utility room, she was,’ said the foreman lugubriously. ‘But don’t you let that worry you. They went over that room with a fine-tooth comb after it had happened.’

  ‘Couldn’t find a thing amiss, though,’ said Fred in his role as Greek chorus. ‘They never did work out what went wrong.’

  ‘Really?’ said Simon, absently moving in the direction of the worktop. The kettle had come to the boil and switched itself off. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Milk but no sugar for me,’ said the foreman, undiverted. ‘Thought it must have been something to do with the ironing board, they did, because that was lying on the floor beside her when her husband found her. There was a pile of nearly dry washing in the laundry basket beside her too.’

  ‘And,’ supplemented his assistant eagerly, ‘because she always did the ironing while she watched her favourite afternoon programme on television.’

  ‘My wife too,’ said the foreman. ‘Thanks,’ he added, cradling the mug between his large, dirt-ingrained hands. ‘I don’t know which channel, though,’ he added in the interests of accuracy, ‘because I’m not there then.’

  Simon decided that this was not the moment for quoting that famous question, ‘But what was the play like, Mrs Lincoln?’

  ‘Two lumps for me,’ said his mate, stretching his hand out for his tea. ‘They thought she died just before the programme came on at four o’clock … and that’s what the man who did the post-mortem said too.’

  ‘Pathologist,’ supplied Simon.

  ‘But they never found out how she came to be electrocuted,’ repeated the foreman, addressing himself to his drink. ‘Never.’

  ‘Funny, that,’ murmured Simon Cullen.

  ‘It said in the paper that her husband was at work at the time it happened,’ expanded the foreman.

  ‘At a meeting all afternoon,’ chimed in Fred. ‘It said that too. About a dozen people there with him all the time.’

  ‘My wife spends a lot of her time at work in meetings,’ said Simon. ‘I know, because she tells me when not to ring the office.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ opined the foreman, pushing back his chair, ‘most meetings are a waste of time. Let’s get started here, Fred.’

  Simon swept up the empty mugs and drifted off to take a look at the utility room with new eyes. It was situated off the kitchen and housed the central-heating boiler and the washing machine, as well as all the impediments associated with living in a sizeable house in the country – including Simon’s new green wellies. The Wetherbys’ ironing board had gone and Simon had stood the Cullens’ one there in its place, but otherwise the room looked very much as it must have done in the days of the previous occupants.

  Propped up beside the ironing board and the radiato
r was the clothes horse which Simon and Charlotte had brought with them from their old house. In fact, the only relic of the Wetherbys’ regime was one of those old-fashioned wooden airers, which could be lowered by a thin rope, loaded with damp washing and then hoisted back up to the ceiling above the boiler to dry.

  Simon examined everything in the room with his customary care but was no wiser at the end of his survey. In fact, had he but known it, he reached the same conclusion as the investigating authorities had done – that something had electrified the metal of the ironing board.

  When he gave the men their tea in the afternoon he said, ‘You might just put a lick of paint on that small scratch on the radiator in there next time one of you has a paintbrush in his hand.’

  ‘No problem,’ said the foreman. ‘No sugar, thanks.’

  ‘Two lumps for me,’ Fred reminded him. ‘Worked out how it was done, have you?’

  ‘Done?’ said Simon.

  Fred gave him a knowing wink. ‘They said the husband had got a lady love tucked away somewhere.’

  The foreman set his mug down and said sapiently, ‘What he had got was an unbreakable alibi, so you mind what you say here, Fred.’

  Fred bridled. ‘There’s no smoke without fire. Besides, don’t forget that most murderers are widowers.’

  ‘Because they’ve killed their wives.’ Simon nodded. ‘I’ve heard that one before.’

  ‘Remember,’ pronounced the foreman magisterially, ‘it didn’t say anything about that in the newspapers – not even the Sunday ones.’

  ‘What else did it say?’ asked Simon, adding in spite of himself, ‘I suppose it is theoretically possible that the ironing board was live – electrified, that is – a long time before Mrs Wetherby touched it.’

  ‘Not before one o’clock it wasn’t, insisted Fred vigorously. ‘Ivy Middleton was here all that morning. She put the dirty washing in the machine and started it up before she went home, like she always did, dinnertime.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the foreman. ‘I was forgetting about Ivy. She touched that ironing board and she didn’t get an electric shock, did she, Fred?’