An Empty Death

by Laura Wilson

  Mrs Ingram raised her head once more, this time in an uncomfortable-looking corkscrew motion, so that she was staring at Jenny out of one eye in a way that made her think of the hens. ‘You’re not going to tell him, are you?’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘That man.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I mean no. Of course not.’

  ‘Or the police? It’s all of them, you see. No-one believes me.’ Straightening up, she looked Jenny directly in the eye. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  ‘Well…’ Jenny, feeling hot, looked away. ‘Really…I don’t know what to think.’ At least, she thought, that was the absolute, unvarnished truth. ‘Look,’ she said, not wanting, or, in fact, able, to elaborate further, ‘why don’t you stay out here for a bit, in the fresh air? Then you’ll feel better. I’ll go and see how the tea’s doing.’

  ‘…as if she hasn’t caused enough trouble already!’ Donald’s fury was plainly audible in the hall and, fearing that Mrs Ingram might hear, Jenny closed the back door.

  ‘Still with us, is she?’ Donald asked as she returned to the kitchen. ‘Not hanging from the apple tree or anything?’

  ‘Don, stop it!’

  ‘She seems a bit better,’ said Jenny, as calmly as she could – sarcasm from Donald was never a good sign. ‘Do you think it’s safe to light the gas yet?’

  ‘Christ!’ said Donald.

  ‘Stop saying that!’

  ‘Well, it’s come to something when you can’t even have a cup of tea in your own house without blowing the place up.’

  ‘There’s others a lot worse off,’ said Doris, pacifically. ‘At least we’ve still got a house.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Donald. ‘And that’s what it’s meant to be – a house, not a loony asylum. Which is where she,’ he jerked his head towards the back garden, ‘ought to be.’

  Wincing, Jenny and Doris exchanged glances. ‘She might get better,’ said Doris, weakly.

  ‘You’ve been saying that for weeks. She’s as mad as a hatter, and the sooner you face up to it, the better. She’s got to go, Doris. I’ve had enough. She’s out of here tomorrow. Otherwise,’ he added, giving them a shrewd look, ‘I’ll tell Ted about this little escapade. I’ll bet neither of you were going to do that, were you?’

  ‘Don, you know we can’t,’ said Jenny. ‘He’d have to report it, and they’ll charge her, or they’ll take her off to—’

  ‘Exactly! To the barmy shop, where she belongs!’

  ‘Sssh, she’ll hear you.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ve had it up to here with the bloody woman!’

  ‘Please,’ said Jenny, desperately. ‘Stop shouting. Why don’t I take her home?’

  ‘Ted’s going to love that, isn’t he?’ asked Donald. ‘He’ll be tickled pink to come back after a hard day’s work and find there’s a lunatic in his house.’

  Jenny, suppressing the thought that sooner or later he’d find out that not only was there a lunatic in the house but a baby on the way as well, said, ‘I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it. And it’ll give you a break from looking after her all the time, Doris.’

  ‘But we’re still stuck with her, aren’t we?’ said Donald.

  ‘I don’t see what else we can do.’

  ‘I’ve told you what to do! She belongs in an institution. For Christ’s sake, I’ll phone Dr Makepeace myself if that’ll—’

  ‘No!’ Jenny and Doris shouted together.

  ‘What is the matter with you two? A month ago, the woman was a complete stranger, and now, she’s—’

  ‘Don.’ Doris’s voice was quiet, and Jenny knew that she’d decided to tell him about Aunt Ivy. When she looked at Jenny for confirmation, Jenny nodded.

  When Doris had finished explaining about their visits to Friern Barnet to see their mad aunt, and how her family regretted committing her, Don, who’d been listening with a grim expression, said, ‘And you never thought to tell me any of this before?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t very nice, and…There’s no-one else in the family like it, is there, Jen?’

  ‘Oh, no. Just her.’

  ‘Have you told Ted about her?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘Our mother always said it was better not to talk about it, and we just thought…well…’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Donald gave them a look of disgust and got up from the table. ‘Elsie Ingram’s not even a bloody relative. If you want to know what I think, I think you’re both mad, and I’ve had enough.’ He started towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Doris.

  ‘Out. And,’ he added, from the hallway, ‘I don’t want to find her here when I come back.’

  The front door slammed behind him and Jenny and Doris looked at each other. ‘That went well, didn’t it?’ said Doris, sarcastically. ‘I thought he might understand. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘It was worth a try.’

  ‘Now he’s angry with me for keeping something from him.’

  ‘There’s a lot worse you could be keeping from him than that. Look, why don’t I take Mrs I. with me now, and then there’ll be time to settle her into Monica’s room before Ted gets back.’

  Walking back home, trying to make small talk as Mrs Ingram trudged miserably beside her like a prisoner, Jenny found herself hoping, for the first time she could remember, that Ted would be late – preferably very late – home.

  Forty-Three

  Stratton despatched Arliss with a chair for Miss Lynn, then stood with his back to the mortuary door, listing Byrne’s garments as Higgs removed them. He tried to keep his face averted from the increasingly unclothed body and, noticing that Ferguson was doing the same, and that his hands were shaking as he arranged the instruments, decided he’d better have a word before the man got started: he didn’t want anything being missed. When Higgs had finished and Byrne lay naked under a sheet, he said to the young pathologist, ‘Perhaps a drop of brandy would help. We won’t mention it, of course.’

  Ferguson nodded mutely, and Stratton signalled to Higgs to fetch it.

  ‘Here.’ Higgs handed over a glass containing what looked like a double-measure. Ferguson put out a trembling hand and despatched it in a single gulp. ‘Sister Bateman let me have it.’

  The alcohol seemed to fortify Ferguson, at least to the extent of bringing two spots of colour to his chalk-white cheeks. ‘Thanks,’ he said, returning the glass to Higgs. Squaring his slender shoulders, he added, ‘Right, shall we begin?’

  Stratton excused himself as Higgs was drawing back the sheet. He went to peer at the gap below Byrne’s office door and, using his own keys, satisfied himself that they could be slid underneath it. Then he stood in the corridor, writing notes and wondering how soon the Fingerprint Bureau would be able to send someone. Miss Lynn stood near him, smoking. Judging by her posture and the expression on her face, Stratton was sure that she, like him, was trying not to listen to the rasp of Ferguson’s saw as it opened Byrne’s skull.

  Assuming that Higgs was right about Byrne living alone, there’d be no-one to ask about when, or whether, he’d returned home the previous evening. Unless one of the neighbours had seen him, or the local warden. Stratton made a note to ask Ballard to check up on this. And then there was the business of meeting Nurse Marchant in the corridor. If Byrne’s death was connected with Reynolds’s, perhaps she’d had something to do with it – revenge, perhaps? She’d seemed calm enough, but…Oh, well. There was no point getting ahead of himself.

  After about twenty minutes, the bulky figure of Chief Superintendent Dewhurst, carrying his case of fingerprinting equipment, appeared at the end of the corridor.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I must say, I didn’t expect to see you in person.’

  The head of the Fingerprint Bureau glowered at him from beneath a pair of bushy eyebrows. ‘DI Stratton?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I wanted to come myself. I knew Dr Byrne,’ he added, gruffly. ‘Good man. Very competent. DCI Lamb tells
me that you think this is necessary, so let’s get on with it.’

  Stratton sighed inwardly. ‘I think so, sir. If you’ll just follow me…’

  Stratton watched as Dewhurst examined the room. ‘I assume the desk and chair are the most important, and,’ he indicated the syringe, ‘this.’ Covering his hand with a handkerchief, he picked it up. ‘I’ll take it away for analysis.’

  ‘Right, sir. I think it would be a good idea if you took those as well.’ Stratton pointed to the keys, which were still lying in the corner.

  ‘Very well. And I’ll need to take Dr Byrne’s prints, of course, and – for elimination – anyone else who came into this office on a regular basis.’

  ‘That would be Higgs – he’s the mortuary assistant – and the secretary, Miss Lynn. Dr Ransome from the Casualty Department was down here this morning – Higgs fetched him when Miss Lynn found the body.’

  ‘Well, we’d better do him as well. What about you? Have you been touching things?’

  Quelling a sudden and violent desire to inform the man that not only had he fingered all the surfaces but pissed on the rug for good measure, Stratton said, ‘No, sir.’

  Dewhurst gave a disbelieving harrumphing noise. Christ, thought Stratton, the next thing I know he’ll be suggesting that I killed him myself. ‘I know better than to do that, sir. There’s also Dr Ferguson.’

  ‘Ferguson?’

  ‘The pathologist, sir. He’s come to do the post-mortem.’

  ‘Never heard of him. Does he know what he’s doing?’

  ‘He’s quite young, but he was a student of Dr Byrne’s – I’m sure he’s competent. If you don’t mind my asking, sir, did you know Dr Byrne well?’

  ‘I knew him as a professional colleague. Admired him.’

  ‘Did he strike you as the type of person who might commit suicide?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought so.’ Dewhurst made another rumbling noise, this time indicative of thought, then added, ‘Hard to tell. Never know what’s going on in a man’s head.’

  Stratton returned to the mortuary to find out how the post-mortem was going, and found Higgs swabbing the interior of Dr Byrne’s chest. ‘A fine job, Inspector,’ he said, with the air of a connoisseur. ‘Neat, quick, clean.’ He looked down at the corpse, and gave an affirmative nod. ‘Dr Byrne would have been proud of him, sir.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone to the Gents’, sir. I think he felt a bit…you know. Don’t worry, we’ve got everything we need.’

  Ferguson returned a couple of minutes later, looking pale and wiping his mouth with a handkerchief.

  ‘Well done,’ said Stratton.

  Ferguson smiled queasily. ‘Thank you, Inspector.’

  ‘Can you tell me the time of death?’

  ‘Not precisely, but I would estimate around four or five hours.’

  ‘So…’ Stratton checked his notebook. Miss Lynn had told him that she’d arrived at five-and-twenty past eight. ‘Between half past three and half past four?’

  ‘I should say that’s about right, yes.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Well, there was no smell from the stomach, the lungs were engorged, great lividity of the skin to the lower parts—’

  ‘That’s usual, isn’t it, if the body’s been lying about?’

  ‘Yes, but in this case, I can’t be entirely sure…’

  Stratton looked up from his note taking. ‘Can you give me your best guess?’

  ‘Well, given the presence of the syringe and the puncture mark on the arm…It’s certainly consistent with an overdose of morphine, but obviously we shan’t know that until the samples have been tested.’

  ‘Right. We’ll make sure they’re sent over to you as soon as possible. Did you find any other needle marks?’

  Ferguson shook his head. ‘I can see what you’re driving at, Inspector, but there’s no reason to suppose that Dr Byrne had an addiction to morphine or anything else.’

  Stratton could see, over Ferguson’s shoulder, that Higgs’s eyes had widened and he was shaking his head vigorously in confirmation of this.

  ‘Besides,’ continued Ferguson, ‘people who are addicts tend to be consistent in their method of use.’

  ‘If…’ Stratton hesitated, not at all sure that he wanted an answer to the question he was about to ask. ‘Yes?’

  Stratton plunged. ‘If what you say turns out to be the case, do you think he could have been saved?’

  ‘A stomach wash with permanganate of potash often works. Or if he’d vomited, of course…but then again, he was lying on his back.’

  ‘If it was morphine, how long would it take to work?’

  ‘It all depends on how much was taken, whether it’s an adult or a child…’

  ‘In this case.’

  ‘Quite a time…Maybe as much as six or seven hours. But that’s purely theoretical, of course.’

  ‘Of course. So it could have been administered as early as, say…’ Stratton glanced at his notebook. ‘Eight-thirty or eight o’clock?’

  ‘Possibly. But as I said, it’s only—’

  ‘I do understand, Dr Ferguson. Where,’ he asked Higgs, ‘did Dr Byrne live?’

  ‘Wimbledon, sir.’

  ‘And what time did he usually leave?’

  ‘No particular time, sir. Depended on what he was doing. Very conscientious, Dr Byrne.’

  ‘So, in all probability,’ Stratton thought aloud, ‘he didn’t go home. Which means…’

  Higgs, whose thoughts were clearly tending the same way, finished the sentence: ‘If he didn’t go home, sir, then he could have been in his office when we were outside. We might have been able to save him, sir.’

  ‘If I’d fetched a key from upstairs,’ said Stratton.

  ‘Well, we didn’t know, did we, sir?’

  ‘No.’ Stratton knew there wasn’t anything to be gained by wishful thinking, but all the same…If this were a book or a film, he thought, I’d have had one of those sudden and unexplained feelings that something was wrong, and broken the door down. He’d thought it was creepy, all right, but then it was a bloody mortuary, wasn’t it? Oh, Christ – supposing there had been someone in the office with Byrne, who’d let himself out after he, Stratton, had left?

  ‘Did you hear anyone go past before I arrived or after I left? Immediately, I mean?’

  Higgs screwed up his face in thought for a moment, and then shook his head. That, thought Stratton, meant that he hadn’t heard Fay Marchant, and he must have been awake at that point, because he’d been having his tea. So, either Higgs’s ears weren’t as sharp as he thought, or what he described as a kip was more of a deep sleep – hardly surprising, since the poor bloke must have been working virtually round the clock for a week, even if his resting place was a hard slab with only a straw-filled sack to cushion it. He only heard me, Stratton realised, because I was calling out and knocking on the office door.

  The appearance of Chief Superintendent Dewhurst interrupted his thoughts. ‘All done in there,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to take a look round the place, will you?’ This was said in a way that suggested an unwarranted degree of nosiness on Stratton’s part.

  Stratton nodded, hoping the irritation didn’t show on his face.

  ‘No prints at all on the top of the desk,’ said Dewhurst. ‘Wiped clean. I found a couple of partial prints on the underside of the front edge, but I don’t know if they’ll be any use. And,’ he added, ‘I found a couple of things tucked under the blotter. Photographs. Can’t see why they’d be of interest, but if Dr Byrne had been looking at them prior to…’ he shrugged. ‘Thought perhaps you might want to take a look.’

  Unable to think of any reply to this that wasn’t actually offensive, Stratton nodded again, and, leaving Dewhurst preparing his roller and ink pad, he went upstairs to drag a protesting Dr Ransome out of Casualty to have his fingerprints taken. This done, he retreated into Byrne’s office to examine the contents of his desk. The photographs
Dewhurst had mentioned – four in number – were arranged in a neat pile by the telephone. The first showed Dr Byrne in the act of dictating to Miss Lynn, who was sitting beside him, pencil poised. The second and third were almost identical. They had obviously been taken in the mortuary itself, and showed a group of people standing behind a sheeted body on a slab: Dr Byrne, flanked by a sombre-looking Higgs and a helmeted and caped policeman who Stratton did not recognise. The only difference between the two pictures, as far as Stratton could see, was the blurred figure on the left-hand side of the second one. Obviously male, with lightish coloured hair, and, he thought, a moustache, the figure was in profile, apparently moving out of the way of the camera.

  Unlike the others, the fourth photograph had not been posed – nobody in it was looking towards the camera, but all seemed intent on something (presumably a body) below the bottom of the picture: Higgs, Byrne, Miss Lynn (seated off to the right), and another man, seen in profile, looking quite similar to the blurred image from the third photograph. Perhaps Byrne had thrust them underneath the blotter for safekeeping, but in that case, why not put them away in a drawer? Unless he wanted to hide them from someone coming in…But why? And why wipe the desk?

  Stratton glanced at the backs of the photographs, but nothing was written there. He didn’t think that the unidentified man looked very much like Reynolds. There was the moustache, for one thing, and the hair didn’t seem dark enough. Opening the door, he went to speak to Miss Lynn, who was still sitting forlornly in the corridor, under the eye of Arliss, who was occupying himself by rotating his little fingers in his ears. When Stratton glared at him, he removed his fingers, sniffed them, and wiped them on the front of his tunic. Muttering, ‘Give me strength,’ Stratton went over to summon Miss Lynn, who reluctantly accompanied him into the office.