‘No. I wouldn’t say that. I told you Deal had a sort of name for passing people out quiet and easy. Nothing more.’
‘Quite. Nothing definite. But it was also confirmed by the Tootle doctor. He said he’d advised Colborn that an operation would be necessary and wanted to take him to a surgeon; and Colborn went to Deal on his own, and Deal advised against the operation. All wrong, what?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes. Bad choice. Bad opinion. But fashionable. Patients will go after a doctor known to keep ’em off the operatin’-table. Not a criminal offence to do so. However convenient to impatient heirs.’
‘Exactly.’ Lomas frowned. ‘But now we add to all that the alarm of Deal and young Colborn at our interest in ’em—and the connection of Deal’s daughter with young Colborn. Very fishy, all this fresh stuff.’
‘As you say.’ Reggie spoke through a mouthful of éclair. ‘And more. Connection with hypothetical nurse.’
‘Quite. More than fishy. But I don’t see my way. Would you like to exhume old Colborn’s body and try your luck?’
‘I might, yes,’ Reggie said slowly. ‘For the good of Dr Deal—his soul, if any. And our Mr Colborn’s. But don’t expect much. Probably old Colborn had cancer. If so, probably kept under morphia at the last. I should find all that. And you’d be just where you began. Unless I got a lot of morphia. Even then!’
Lomas nodded. ‘Very difficult. Looks like a murder by calculated neglect. The worst kind to prove.’
‘Bafflin’. Yes. However. There are other possibilities.’
‘What are you thinking of?’
‘My dear chap! Two obvious possibilities. Find the nurse, Sybil Benan—the thousand-pound nurse. Look after the living Colborn. Put a man or two on his place. I could bear to know who goes there.’
Lomas nodded again. ‘I agree. We must put the nurse through it.’
‘Yes. That is indicated. But don’t forget our Mr Colborn and that gate by the defunct swimming-pool.’
When Reggie talks of the case now he is apt to speculate what would have happened if he had not given this advice. Though it determined the issue, though it was wholly sound, he insists that he gave it expecting quite different consequences. Which is one part of the proof of his incapacity to be a good policeman. The other is that he stayed by the swimming-pool.
On the evening of the next day he was warned to attend the exhumation of old Colborn’s body, and groaned into the telephone: ‘Hasty, aren’t you? What about the nurse?’
‘The nurse can’t be found,’ said Lomas. ‘Hence the haste.’
‘Well, well. You may be right. Have you told Dr Deal of your fell design?’
‘I sent Bell round to him. He didn’t give anything away. Said he must go on record as protesting we had no justification, and investigation by a competent medical man must confirm his death certificate. He asked who would do the post-mortem, and said he had complete confidence in you and did not desire to be present.’
‘Very kind; very gratifyin’,’ Reggie murmured.
‘Sure of himself, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. He knows the game. What about the nurse?’
‘Not at home. Not been at home since yesterday, as far as known. Lived in a one-room flat in Marylebone. Don’t seem to have slept there last night. Said nothing about going away.’
‘Last night!’ Reggie murmured. ‘Oh, my Lord.’ It was from this moment he became aware that he should not have stayed by the swimming-pool. ‘Find her good and quick.’
‘We try to please,’ said Lomas.
‘And the living Colborn?’
‘Out in his car. Not informed yet.’
In the dew of next morning Reggie watched the exhumation of Joseph Colborn. The day he spent working upon the corpse. That evening he came into Lomas’s room, pale and plaintive. He let himself down into the biggest chair; silently he stretched out a hand to the larger cigar box.
‘I thank you.’ He blew smoke through his nose. ‘Yes. A warm day. “What have I done for thee, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England my own?” I wonder. However. Speakin’ broadly, I’ve done this job. As stated. As expected. The late Joseph Colborn was full of cancer. Early operation might have postponed death. But he was seventy plus. Not likely he’d have lived long or happy. I shouldn’t like to swear it was wrong not to operate.’
‘Damme,’ Lomas exclaimed, ‘that lets Deal out altogether. That leaves us with no case at all. It’s natural death.’
‘Not a good case. But I should say he didn’t die natural. Sharp colour-results to the morphine tests. Must have been quite a lot of morphia in him. Too much morphia, Lomas. Only I can’t prove it. After all this time. We didn’t get goin’ soon enough. We never do.’
‘My dear fellow, we can’t detect a criminal before we know there’s been a crime.’
‘That’s what I complain of. Essential futility of police work.’
‘Not at all.’ Lomas was annoyed. ‘The effect of your work is to show that no crime has been committed.’
‘Oh, no. No. Effect is to leave us where we began. As expected. With suspicion the old man was poisoned.’
‘I don’t accept that. You show Deal was honest about the cause of death, and probably honest in his treatment. He advised against an operation because it was just a desperate chance for an old man. You admit that you daren’t say he was wrong. At the worst, then, he made a sympathetic error of judgment.’
Reggie sat up. ‘Sympathetic error? Yes. It could be. By itself. And the morphia. Lomas? Another sympathetic error. Old man in horrid, hopeless pain. An overdose of morphia. Yes. It’s done.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Lomas drily. ‘Wouldn’t you do it yourself?’
‘An overdose? Not me, no. But I’m not sympathetic.’
Lomas looked curiously at his round face, which was drawn into an expression of cold, puzzled anger. ‘I shouldn’t like to have you out for my blood, Reginald,’ he said. ‘Well, there it is. You can’t get Deal. No case.’
Reggie started. ‘What? Wasn’t trying for Deal’s blood,’ he snapped. ‘Trying for the truth. That’s my job. What about the nurse?’
‘Not come home. Not found.’
‘Oh, my hat!’ Reggie sank back and gazed at him with large reproachful eyes. ‘What are you for, Lomas?’
‘My dear fellow,’ Lomas laughed. ‘Sorry I don’t give satisfaction. There’s nothing very unusual in a young woman going off privately. And we have evidence there’s the usual man in the case. The night before last a man was seen coming out of her flat.’
‘Night before last. That’s just after we called on the livin’ Colborn.’
‘Quite so. But Colborn hasn’t gone. He’s at home still. When he isn’t buzzing about with Ann Deal. By the way, he blew up over the exhumation. Came down here and cursed at large, Bell says.’
‘And the nurse is missing,’ Reggie murmured. ‘Just after we begin to take an interest in the case. And you say it’s over. Well, well. Why are policemen?’
‘The case is over,’ said Lomas. ‘You’ve finished it. What could we ask the nurse if we found her? What could she say? If she swore Deal poisoned the old man, nobody would believe her against your evidence.’
‘No. I’m very useful. I excuse you for doing nothing.’ Reggie dragged himself up and looked down at Lomas with weary dislike. ‘My only aunt! How I hate you,’ he mumbled, and wandered out.
When he discusses his conduct of the case now, he will remark that this was the first point at which he showed some faint intelligence: inadequate, futile, but, so far as it went, sound. He did perceive that something else had happened, would happen, or ought to happen. What it should be, he had not the slightest idea: because, as he always maintains earnestly, he is without imagination.
Late that evening he rang up Lomas. ‘Fortune speaking. The mind is almost impotent. Bu
t conscience has been invigorated by beef and burgundy. Have you got into the vanished nurse’s flat?’
‘Good gad! No, of course not. We can’t break in. No sort of justification. There never was, and now less than any. What?’
‘I said the Lord have mercy on your soul. Which I don’t expect. The only evidence she’s not there is: she didn’t answer when you rang, and a man was seen coming out. Not any evidence.’
‘What’s in your mind?’
‘Nothing. Mind is vacant. Is anybody watchin’ the Colborn demesne?’
‘Damme, yes, they’re still on that,’ Lomas chuckled. ‘I forgot to cancel the orders.’
‘Well, well. Mr Lomas—his defence on the Day of Judgment: “I never did anything without justification. But, please, I did sometimes forget.”’
‘Oh, go to bed,’ said Lomas, and rang off.
Reggie was still in bed next morning, still asleep, when Superintendent Bell rang him up. Reggie squirmed and blinked, and took the receiver and complained.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said the telephone. ‘But this is big stuff, and right up your street. Can you meet me at St Alban’s mortuary in half an hour?’
‘No. I eat when I get up. I also wash. I will now do so. Go away.’
‘I can give you—’
‘You cannot,’ Reggie snapped, and rang off and rolled out of bed.
Under pressure, however, he will dress and even eat fast. In less than an hour his car slowed to stop at the squalid precincts of the mortuary.
Bell stood in the courtyard, smoking a pipe. ‘I’d better give you the outline first, Mr Fortune. There’s a dead end to the gates of a little factory just a bit beyond here. This morning, round about six o’clock, some chaps came along to open up the place, and they saw an old brown canvas trunk lying in the roadway where the dead end opens off the main street. Like as if it had fallen off a cab or a car or a van, you see. They told a constable, and it was brought along to the station as lost property. Then the sergeant noticed it was broke a bit, as might be by a fall, and he had a look through the hole and saw a foot inside—a bare foot. So they opened it, and found inside a woman’s body without a head. That’s what we’re up against. I leave it to you.’
‘Yes. You do,’ said Reggie bitterly. ‘Any news of the vanished nurse?’
‘There is not.’ Bell gave him a stolid stare.
‘No. There wouldn’t be. Ring up Mr Lomas. Give him my love, and remind him he told me to go to bed last night.’ Reggie passed into the mortuary.
The headless body was naked: a young body. Not only at the red neck had there been violence. The right knee was wounded. Elsewhere the flesh was livid white. Reggie inspected it inch by inch, and collected from it yellow flakes, fragments of green leaf… The hands interested him. The palms were dirty with brown slime in the lines, the nails too…
Late in the afternoon he entered Lomas’s room and found Bell there also, and subsided into the easiest chair and gazed at them plaintively. ‘Well, well. Concentration of the higher intelligence. On the fundamental, painful question. Why are policemen?’
‘What are you going to tell me?’ said Lomas briskly.
‘My dear chap. No answer yet discovered. Your existence seems wholly futile. However. I went to bed. As instructed. I take it you went to bed. Nothing attempted, nothing done, had earned a night’s repose. While the corpse was prepared for us. Quite a young corpse, this one. No sympathetic error of judgment. Woman was drowned. Blonde woman, under thirty. Subsequent to death, head detached by an efficient knife. Some cutting operation also performed on right knee.’
‘After death?’ Lomas asked.
‘Oh, yes. Very dead when performed. Small effusion of blood.’
‘Why should her knee be cut about?’
‘Not havin’ known the lady, I can’t say. Probably to remove something about the knee which would help us to know her. She may have had a cartilage removed in life. She has now.’
‘Quite good, Reginald. That fits very well.’
‘What with?’ Reggie opened round innocent eyes.
‘Why, with the removal of the head. That was cut off to prevent identification.’
‘Oh, my Lomas! You do think of things! What a mind! When used. Yes, I should say there was an idea of concealin’ identity. Some other little points. Petals of St John’s wort adherin’ to body. Also scraps of water-weed. And muddy slime about the hands. Suggestin’ she was drowned in stream or pond. Curious and interestin’ suggestion.’
‘It is, begad!’ Lomas exclaimed. ‘Water-weeds on her body! That suggests she was put into the water naked.’
‘Not necessarily, no. Submerged for some time in pond, she would get its odds and ends under her clothes. Common feature of drownin’ cases. You miss the point. What is particularly interestin’ is the St John’s wort. Don’t grow much round London except in gardens. The suggestion is therefore that she was drowned in a garden pond: rather dirty pond for a garden; same like our Mr Colborn’s swimming-pool.’
‘Good gad!’ said Lomas.
‘Yes. I told you to watch it. And you forgot to stop ’em watchin’. Stroke of genius by Mr Lomas. Any result?’
‘There is.’ The smile of Lomas was unamiable. ‘Not only that back door by the pond, but every gate to Colborn’s grounds has been watched. They were still watched last night—while this body was being dumped in the street. You’ll be glad to hear, Reginald, that the result is to clear Sam Colborn of suspicion.’ Bell coughed. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I wouldn’t put it so high myself,’ said Bell.
‘As regards this woman being drowned in his swimming-pool, he is cleared,’ Lomas insisted. ‘He ought to be very grateful to you, Reginald.’
‘I wonder,’ Reggie murmured.
‘Since his place has been under observation, no woman except Ann Deal and a servant or two has gone in by any gate. Last night he drove out alone, in evening dress, just after seven; no luggage on his car. Came back about one a.m., quite normal. Apart from his running round with the Deal girl, nothing particular has been noticed at all.’
‘Ah, I don’t know as I’d say that, sir,’ Bell objected again.
‘And what would you say?’ Reggie turned to him.
‘It’s like this, sir.’ Bell gave Lomas a respectful, apologetic look, and Lomas replied by an ejaculation of contempt. ‘Our man on that back gate last night saw a fellow loitering about the heath close by with a bag, pretty much like you do see men loitering with intent; might have been going to crack the house or only just rob the garden—there is a good deal o’ that round these big gardens in the suburbs. Mr Lomas thinks it was a job of that sort, nor I shouldn’t have any doubt either, in the ordinary way. Well, our man went after the fellow, lost sight of him—no wonder, dodging round on that heath in the dark—went back to the gate, nipped into the grounds, and did a bit o’ search; couldn’t see anybody, got back to the gate, and had a snap o’ the fellow cutting away.’
‘Still with bag?’ Reggie murmured.
‘That’s right. And that’s all. I’d agree with Mr Lomas, it’s the reg’lar stuff, burglar, or sneak thief scared off, only for all this business behind.’
‘As you say. Yes. Ordinary in the middle of the extraordinary compels suspicion. For the soul is dead that slumbers. And things are not what they seem. You hadn’t noticed that, Lomas. Any description of man and bag?’
‘Not much good.’ Bell shook his head. ‘Slouched hat, long, dark coat, about middle size, quick mover. Squarish, fattish sort o’ bag. We ought to have had more, but playing hide-and-seek in the dark you don’t often get much of a chance. I don’t blame our man, Mr Fortune.’
‘Oh, no. No. I think he did very well. So Mr Lomas will now give humble and hearty thanks he forgot to remove the watch on the gate by the pool. Our one bright effort, so far. Genius.’ Reggie gazed at Lom
as with eyes of dreamy wonder. ‘I wish I knew when to forget. Just genius.’
‘Always happy to amuse you, Reginald,’ said Lomas sharply. ‘Even when I don’t see the joke.’
‘My dear chap!’ Reggie was affectionate. ‘Spoke very handsome.’
‘But I happen to think this gives us nothing relevant. It’s a thousand to one the loitering fellow with the bag was a common thief. Suppose he wasn’t, the evidence about him is of no use. There’s not a hint of an identification. A middle-sized man who moved quick! Of course that would fit Colborn or Deal. And it would fit millions of other men just as well.’
‘Oh, yes. That is so. Remains the strikin’ fact that a man who might have been Colborn or Deal was pokin’ round the Colborn swimmin’-pool, privily and by stealth, with fattish bag, on the night when the body of a young woman, apparently drowned in pool, was dumped on us without a head.’
‘You think it was her head in his bag?’ Bell grunted and nodded.
‘It could be. Yes. One of the possibilities. Rather probable possibility.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Lomas demanded, with some vehemence. ‘Do you mean the woman was drowned in that swimming-pool last night, and then the head was cut off and removed by this man while the body was carted away in the trunk? Is it likely?’
‘No. It is not. And it didn’t happen. She was drowned some time ago. Day or two ago. That’s one of our few certainties.’
‘Very well.’ Lomas laughed unpleasantly. ‘You’re getting more and more muddled, Reginald. You say it’s days since she was drowned and she was drowned in that pool. But the place has been watched day and night, ever since we were at the garden-party, and no strange woman has gone in. Yet you ask me to believe that her body was taken away from it unobserved last night, while a man was observed removing her head. The whole thing is preposterous.’
Deep Waters Page 20
