Coffin Scarcely Used f-1

by Colin Watson

  “Quite so. It came as a surprise to me, I admit. I had expected Carobleat to be found to have died intestate, as a matter of fact. It was only a short time before his illness that the question of wills cropped up in conversation between us. He gave me to understand that he had taken no steps in that direction. Naturally, I urged upon him the desirability of making proper provision, but he gave no sign of taking me seriously. Yet the will must already have been in existence at that very time, although it didn’t actually come to light for some little while after his death.”

  “And how was that?”

  “I’m not sure that I ought to tell you, inspector.” Mr Smith regarded his finger-ends as though his professional conscience pulsed there, just below the skin that had flicked back without temptation the corners of untold thousands of banknotes. “You might think that someone had been a little remiss, although I’m sure it was simply a matter of a slight lapse in office routine. Not all firms are run as punctilliously as banks, you know.”

  “The will was mislaid?”

  Mr Smith leaned forward. “Strictly between ourselves,” he said, “it was. Gloss explained afterwards how it had happened. Well, of course, he had to be absolutely frank about it, because of the possibility of its being challenged by the widow. She didn’t, as it happens, but never mind.”

  He remained silent for some time.

  “Well?” Purbright prompted.

  “Well what?” countered Mr Smith.

  “The will,” said Purbright. “You were saying how it came to be mislaid.”

  “Ah...I can’t say that I remember precisely. It was quite a silly, simple sort of reason—put in the wrong deed box, or something like that. But it came to light eventually. The money hasn’t been turned over yet, by the way. Executing a will takes quite a while. But it was definitely on the turn, if you follow me. How galling it must be to die just too soon to enjoy a legacy that you know is practically in your hand—in your account, rather.” Mr Smith shook his head and closed his eyes in brief mourning for Mr Gwill’s ravished opportunities.

  “Gwill’s account was separate, I suppose, from the finances of his newspaper company?”

  “Oh, yes, naturally.”

  “And would you say that his income as shown by the private account was consistent with the earnings he received from the company?”

  Mr Smith looked sharply at the inspector. “No,” he replied simply, “I should not.”

  “He was receiving money from another source?”

  “Almost certainly he was. Not that it was any concern of mine, of course, but these little impressions register, you know, in spite of ourselves.”

  “Yes, don’t they. Incidentally, have you retained any impression of what that source was, sir?”

  “None whatever.”

  “Because the money was deposited in cash?”

  Mr Smith flexed his facial muscles in a smile. “There are, as they say, no flies on you, inspector.”

  Purbright acknowledged the compliment with a grunt. He had concluded by now that Mr Smith was not merely fly-proof but probably impervious to attack and courtship alike by all creatures whatsoever.

  “You have been most helpful, sir,” he said, rising.

  The manager, though not appearing to move, was suddenly transposed to the door of his office, which he flung open while extending his free hand in an ushering gesture of brotherly dismissal. “Not at all, inspector. Delighted.” In the instant before turning back to his desk, he darted a glance at the three counter clerks and gave an inward click of satisfaction on noting that the entire trio was immersed in work.

  Chapter Twelve

  If Alderman Leadbitter had been less preoccupied with wholesale meat deals, bottles of pale ale, and a certain matter that had filled him with secret excitement since his rising that morning shortly before eight o’clock, he could not have failed to be conscious of a radiant pink orb that had hung in the background all that day. As it was, Sergeant Love’s face had been a mere blurred iridescence amongst the other unnoticed details of his surroundings.

  Which was fortunate, for the sergeant was no adept at self-effacing observation. When he wished to see without being seen, he adopted an air of nonchalance so extravagant that people followed him in expectation of his throwing handfuls of pound notes in the air.

  He had got up much earlier than his quarry, and by six o’clock was posted, already shaved, washed and hastily fed, behind his sister’s lace curtains, staring at the dark shape opposite, within which still slumbered the alderman and his family. It was not until nearly four hours later that signs of activity prompted him to go out into the cold and pretend to tinker under the bonnet of the police car, which he had left ready to drive out of the gate.

  Alderman Leadbitter’s car appeared at half-past ten and was driven slowly by its owner to his office in Pipeclay Lane, near the slaughterhouses. After some twenty minutes, he walked out of the office and passed Love, seated in his car which he had parked very wrongfully opposite a cattle unloading bay.

  The sergeant followed him on foot and was led to the Golden Keys Hotel. There, he drank slowly and without much enjoyment two half pints of mild while the alderman swallowed six glasses of bottled beer at the opposite end of the long saloon bar in the company of several other civic luminaries before returning to his counting house at nearly one o’clock.

  Leadbitter went home for his lunch, so Love’s sister served her brother with a meal on the bamboo table in the front room. He ate speedily and with a constant eye on the opposite door, so that when he resumed the trail he was suffering the handicap of hic-cups.

  The afternoon proved no more eventful than the morning. By the time the alderman’s car drew up at his home for the second time that day, Love was wondering why he had wasted so many hours in dull and fruitless surveillance instead of relying on Leadbitter being a man of regular and proper habits that included taking five-o’clock tea in the bosom of his family.

  Later still, when it was quite dark and he sat in the cold car, drawing what comfort he could from a cigarette, he was gradually overtaken by a sense of anticlimax.

  Suppose the alderman and the other people who had replied to the advertisements really were buyers of old odds and ends? The things might be genuine and a seemingly eccentric way of disposing of them might be the method of doing business chosen by some exclusive private dealer. Yet surely that standardized eight pounds deposit was too fantastic a condition of sale to be acceptable even to someone mad enough to want a—what was it again?—a Japanese newel post.

  A tankard it was for Leadbitter. A pewter antique tankard, he’d said.

  Love repeated the phrase to himself several times. Then he realized why it had struck him as odd from the first. The order of words was queer.

  Any normal person surely would have written antique pewter tankard. Or, in catalogue and army style, Tankard, antique pewter. But never pewter antique tankard. Why had the words been put in that sequence?”

  Again Love allowed his fancy to stray outside the local probabilities. He considered codes. Pewter...Antique...Tankard... It couldn’t be a letter by letter code. That kind did not form actual words. In any case, it would be expecting far too much of people like Flaxborough’s successful business men to grasp anything so complicated.

  Could each word have some prearranged significance, then? That was more probably the explanation. If it were, there was no hope of finding the meaning of the advertisements by ordinary systems of de-coding—even if he knew what these were, which he didn’t, except for a vague idea that the most frequently recurring symbol would represent E, and what was the use of a string of E’s, anyway?

  Right, then, ruminated Love, each of the three words meant something quite different. Pewter?—cocaine, perhaps. Antique? The quantity, say. And tankard? There was only one factor left for that to represent—the price asked. “Please have ready for me at 8.15 p.m. two pounds of your best cocaine at...at...fifteen and six an ounce.” How cold and cra
mped he was growing. Damn Purbright and Leadbitter and tankards and codes and...He sat up and peered through the windscreen. At last, the alderman’s door was opening.

  Five minutes later, Love drew up at a discreet distance from Leadbitter’s car in the forecourt of the Golden Keys. Leadbitter was not in search of the saloon company this time. He hurried into a small room on the other side of the corridor.

  Love lingered near the entrance. It was not yet eight o’clock, and although he felt confident that Leadbitter had not noticed his pursuit up to now, he did not want to commit himself to an encounter at close quarters until the last possible moment. Regretfully he watched a waitress carry what appeared to be a whisky into the room Leadbitter had entered, then he retraced his steps to the car.

  To the policeman’s considerable relief, Leadbitter soon reappeared. Instead of getting into the car again, however, he set off along Hooper Rise and turned right into Spoongate. Love followed, keeping to the opposite pavement. For the first time that day, the alderman appeared slightly apprehensive. He even glanced back on several occasions, but saw nothing to make him reduce his pace.

  Suddenly, Love realized that the other was no longer in front. He halted, momentarily panic-stricken, and stared over the road at the point where Leadbitter had vanished.

  Dark, pillared doorways faced him, all much alike in the gloom. There was no sound but that of a wireless on one of the upper floors. He remained motionless, straining eye and ear.

  Then from one of the porches came a shaft of yellow light. Love mentally fixed its position and was already walking diagonally across the road towards it when it narrowed to a slit and was eclipsed altogether. A gentle thud and the reappearance of the light, widening and narrowing by turn, told Love that the door which almost certainly had admitted Leadbitter had been left on the latch and was swinging in the light wind.

  Love walked cautiously up the four steps that led to the doorway. On one side he saw the gleam of metal. It was a name plate. He stooped and tried to read it, but the nearest street lamp was thirty yards away. Just as he was fumbling for matches, the door swung back and a woman stepped out into the porch. Love straightened up guiltily and looked at her. “It’s all right,” she said. “They’ve started.” “Oh,” said Love, “thank you.” The woman wished him good night and descended the steps. Now that the door was wide open, the name on the plate was perfectly clear. It was R. Hillyard, M.D.

  The panelled hallway into which Love stepped, closing the door gently behind him, had once been warmly luxurious, but the constant passage of patients had given it a shabby, polish-starved look. The elegance of its proportions still made immediate impression, however, and Love glanced admiringly at the slim-bannistered staircase and the lofty window at its head. The house was a much larger one than the narrow façade suggested.

  The nearest door on the right was ajar. Love heard from the room beyond an occasional sniff, a cough or two and an assortment of shuffles and creaks. It was without doubt the doctor’s waiting-room. He entered, sat down as near the door as he could manage, and after the preliminary devotions usual in such places—brief contemplation of his knees and a slow search round the walls for a non-existent clock—he surreptitiously looked over the eight or nine people present.

  They were a typical surgery selection. A young woman who met his glance with a resentful stare, signifying that she held the male species malignantly responsible for all abdominal irregularities whatsoever. A sunken-cheeked man with scrubby grey hair and an internal whistle. A middle-aged matron with Bad Leg. A nervous young man who had been reading too many truss advertisements.

  But of Alderman Leadbitter there was no sign. Wherever pewter antique tankards were being displayed that evening, it was not in the company of these unexceptional specimens of ailing humanity.

  Love pondered what he should do next. Obviously he would be wasting his time and ruining a whole day’s tedious work by staying where he was.

  He got up and went out into the hallway, watched with mournful contempt by the waiting patients. The rest of the house was silent. It might, he guessed, be largely unoccupied. There were five other doors on this floor and he walked quickly from one to another. At each he listened briefly. Behind only one was there a sound. It was a mumbled conversation between a woman and a man with a Scots accent. Love decided that this must be Hillyard’s consulting room. He heard nothing of the boomingly hearty voice of Alderman Leadbitter, with which he was by now only too familiar.

  On tiptoe he climbed rapidly to the first turn of the staircase, paused to listen again, then ascended more slowly to the floor above.

  Fixed to the wall opposite the head of the stairs was a small green baize notice board, to which a typed sheet was pinned.

  The paper bore the day’s date and was marked off into three columns.

  In the first was what seemed to be a series of times, varying between 7.30 and 8.30. The second column contained numbers—either 1, 2, 3 or 4. In the third were sets of initials.

  At the head of the sheet were the words ‘Treatment Schedule’.

  Love, wary by now of code theories, contented himself with rapidly jotting a copy of the table into his notebook. He had barely finished when a door shut loudly somewhere on his left. He darted instinctively in the opposite direction and drew himself into the deeply shadowed corner of the landing farthest from the staircase wall.

  A man emerged from an opening in the wall about ten feet beyond the notice board. He was wearing an overcoat and carried a hat. At the top of the stairs he halted and stood looking down into the hall for several seconds. Then he began to descend. A minute later Love heard the gentle thud of the front door.

  This was interesting. The man was Herbert Stamper, who farmed on the west side of Flaxborough Fen: a prosperous and venal gentleman, much troubled by the stubborn survival of an ailing and intolerant wife. Love recalled that his name had appeared on Purbright’s list of antique fanciers.

  From below came the noise of voices. Love peered cautiously over the rail and saw a woman coming out of what he had assumed to be the surgery door. Some sort of cheery farewell was being wished her from within the room. As finally she turned and crossed the hall, a buzzer sounded and the chesty man, with wheeze at full cock, slouched from the waiting-room to the doctor’s door.

  Love turned back and sought the point at which Mr Stamper had made his appearance. It proved to be the entrance to a corridor that ran at right angles to the landing wall. An arrowed card, bearing the direction ‘Treatment cubicles (Male Patients)’, hung from a nail. Four doors, at intervals of several feet, were set along the left wall of this passage. The end appeared to be blank.

  Exploring further along the landing, Love discovered another corridor, running parallel to the first. In this case, however, its four doors were on the right. The card at the corner announced ‘Treatment cubicles (Female Patients)’. Love turned back and re-entered the male corridor, feeling that at this stage the proprieties ought to be observed.

  He put his ear to the door marked ‘1’. There was silence inside. Slowly he turned the handle and pressed against the panels. The door would not move. Then he pulled and found the door had been made to open outwards. The space within was little bigger than a cupboard. It was fitted with a mirror and clothing hooks and seemed intended to serve as a small dressing-room. There was another door immediately opposite. Love tried it, but it had been locked or bolted from the other side. No sound came from whatever lay beyond.

  Love stood wondering how much longer he would be able to poke his way around the private house of a doctor against whom he had no evidence or even what a magistrate would deem reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and how he would explain his presence there if challenged. Both questions defeated him, so he put them resolutely from his mind and puzzled instead over a noise that reached him faintly from a direction he could not fix.

  He went back into the corridor and tried the door numbered ‘2’. As he opened it, the sound he
wanted to identify grew louder. He listened. There was no doubt about it. Leadbitter had been run to earth.

  The noises that came through the inner door of the closet were those of the alderman repressing his normal boom to a confidential growl, interspersed with asinine chuckles. The general effect was curious. Love thought it suggested mild delirium under anaesthetic.

  Was Leadbitter undergoing a minor operation of some kind? It was possible. The clothing he had been wearing during the day was hung untidily on the hooks at the side of the cupboard-like compartment and tossed on the narrow bench below them. Love checked them over. Only socks and shirt appeared to be missing.

  He pressed his ear to the inner door. The alderman’s noises were now faint and intermittent. A sigh...a groan...a contented gasp...The anesthetic must have taken effect. Very gently, Love tried the door. It would not yield.

  As he stood looking at it, he heard footsteps approaching fairly rapidly along the corridor. He turned to close the cubicle door but realized that this would entail reaching out of his present comparatively secure shelter.