‘I expect she’s gone down to seek out her department head. Dennis something, was it? He’d seem like a pillar of stability just now, I imagine.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Nesbitt, sir. If I might have a word?’
It was one of the firemen, and he drew Alan away, but not so far that I couldn’t hear what he was saying in the stage whisper that is so much more carrying than a low murmur.
‘It’s looking as though this is a matter for the police, sir. I sent one of my men down there to take a look at the chap, and it may be that the poor soul was dead before he went down the shaft. You being the chief constable, sir, I thought I’d let you know.’
‘I appreciate that, Griggs,’ said Alan, looking at the man’s identity badge, ‘but I’ve been retired for quite some time, you know.’
‘Yes, sir, but we all still know you. And I’d take it very kindly if you’d just take a glance at the body while we’re waiting for the investigators to come through.’
Well, of course that sent cold shivers running through me. Alan in that awful shaft, with that awful elevator looming above him? Alan jeopardizing his life, when he wasn’t even officially a policeman anymore?
My first instinct, when he looked over at me, was to put my foot down and demand that he not do this insanely foolish thing. But as I opened my mouth I remembered all the times Alan had protested vehemently about some risky action I was about to take, and how much I resented being told what to do. We’d worked that out, but now the shoe was on the other foot.
I closed my mouth, opened it again, and said mildly, ‘Be careful.’
For the rest of my life I’ll remember and treasure the look on his face, compounded of gratitude, love and understanding.
Even that look did not, however, keep me from lurking, terrified, as near to the elevator shaft as I dared go. I could not look down and watch Alan’s progress down the ladder. I must have asked six times, of various people, if they were sure that the cage was out of service and wouldn’t go grinding down to destroy my husband.
After an eternity or two, he climbed back up and was helped out of the shaft by one of those delightful firemen. (I know, I know, firefighters, but as they were all men I couldn’t force my mind to embrace political correctness.)
‘All done, then?’ I said with a cheery brightness that didn’t deceive Alan for a moment.
‘You’re a pearl of great price,’ he said, with that look again. ‘All done, and not a scratch. The SOCOs will take over now that I’ve made our friend Griggs happy.’
‘He was right then?’
‘I’m no doctor,’ he said very quietly, ‘but it doesn’t take much medical knowledge to work out that a man might have been dead before he fell, when there’s a chisel buried in his back. And that information is in strict confidence.’
I was very glad Gillian wasn’t around at the moment. I wouldn’t have been able to look her in the face. ‘A chisel,’ I murmured. ‘Such as might be used by a sculptor.’
‘I think it’s a chisel. A bit hard to tell when only the handle is visible. Don’t go imagining things, Dorothy. Ah, here come the chaps. I’d best go and tell them what I did in the shaft.’
I was delighted to see that our old friend, Detective Chief Inspector Derek Morrison, was heading the team. Derek is everything a policeman should be, the sort Americans picture when they think of ‘the wonderful English police’. Courteous, intelligent, and very, very thorough, he helped Alan solve many a crime way back when, and had co-opted both of us unofficially several times since Alan’s retirement.
Alan walked over to have a word with him, and I went back to my chair and pondered.
Plainly the man had been murdered. One doesn’t get a chisel in one’s back accidentally, and it would be an impossible way for anyone but a contortionist to commit suicide. But why, then, if the man was already dead, why tumble him down the elevator shaft?
Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe the murderer wanted to make assurance doubly sure. I shuddered at the thought.
No, the more likely reason was to hide the body, at least for a while. A body is actually a very awkward thing to dispose of, especially from the top story of a building. There aren’t too many options. Get him up to the roof (with difficulty, given the stairs involved) and throw him off? Then he’d be discovered almost instantly.
All right, take him down in the elevator and out of the building and into a vehicle and across town to the river and throw him in. But the chance of being seen during one of these operations was frightful. The nearest place to the Fine Arts building where one might legally park a car was much too far away to drag a body, no matter what it weighed, and a man can be pretty hefty.
Given time and the right chemicals, you could presumably dissolve a body. Would an art school have the sort of acids, and the sort of large tanks, necessary for such an operation? And then I’d read a story once involving an artist who silver-plated his wife, or mistress, or somebody, which involved dumping her in a vat of something rather nasty. But either of these disposal methods seemed pretty far-fetched and expensive and would require a lot of specialized equipment.
There was always refrigeration. A body could be stashed in a large freezer for quite a long time, if the freezer wasn’t much used. One could tuck it away until nightfall, at least, when other methods of disposal wouldn’t be as noticeable. But why? Why not choose the quickest, easiest method at hand, one that might lead the police to conclude the death was accidental?
With a chisel protruding from the victim’s back?
I shook away the fantasy ideas. No, whoever disposed of this body must have needed to do it in a hurry, and so chose the most expeditious method that came to hand. The chisel was perhaps forgotten in the stress of the moment, and once the murderer remembered, he could hardly go back and remove it.
He, or she. Could a woman have struck that blow? Could she have forced open the elevator doors to expose the shaft, and shoved the body over? I wondered how long ago it had been done. There had been that unpleasant odour in the elevator … No. I definitely did not want to think about that.
In fact, I didn’t want to think about the murder at all, not by myself. Where was Alan, anyway?
‘All right, love?’
It was amazing how often he knew what I was thinking.
‘Fine,’ I said, and it wasn’t a lie, now that he was back at my side. He is a very comforting man. ‘Have Derek and co. discovered anything interesting?’
‘Nothing startling, except that at a quick glance, there seems to be remarkably little blood, given the man’s injuries.’ He was still speaking in an undertone, and I followed suit.
‘Well, of course. If he was dead when he fell, or rather when he was pushed—’
‘But there wasn’t even much bleeding from the stab wound, though it was in a position where there should have been a lot. I won’t go into detail, but even without the medical examiner’s report, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.’
‘Maybe he died in the fall, after all, and was stabbed – no, that won’t work, will it?’
‘We’ll know more when they get him out of there and on to an autopsy table.’
‘Meanwhile, do they even know who he was?’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t get us much further. One of the teachers had a look at one of the photos the SOCOs took and identified him immediately. He was the head of the art school, and apparently one of the best-hated men in Sherebury.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Oh, dear. Poor man. No shortage of possible suspects, then, I take it.’
‘Perhaps. But do remember, my darling Miss Marple, that of all the considerations in a murder investigation, motive comes dead last.’
‘As often as you’ve reminded me, I’m not likely to forget. But you might want to rephrase that sentence, dear.’
He grinned and gave me a peck on the cheek as Derek came over.
‘Derek, it’s always good to see you, though I could wish it were under different circumstances.’
‘—is not an ’appy one,’ Alan and I chorused. ‘Yes, well, we’re going to have to have you and Beth over for dinner sometime and talk about something non-criminal,’ I went on. ‘But at the moment, I’ve been trying to work out what all this might mean, and I can’t make any sense of it.’
‘Nor can we, at the moment,’ said Derek. ‘We’re hoping the autopsy may give us a definitive cause of death, which certainly seems obscure just now.’
‘And how about time of death? Any notions about that?’
‘For reasons which you’d probably prefer me not to go into, we’re certain the man’s been dead quite some time. That, of course, makes pinning anything down quite difficult.’
‘Anything like who was where at the relevant time. Indeed.’ I exchanged glances with Alan. ‘So,’ I went on with lamentable smugness, ‘with “means” anybody’s guess at this point and “opportunity” perhaps forever unknowable, that leaves motive, doesn’t it?’
Alan rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I should never have let you get involved in murder cases.’
‘It’s a natural phenomenon,’ I said, still smugly. ‘Nothing to be done about it.’
‘And jolly helpful at times, Dorothy,’ said Derek, with a warm smile. ‘Your insight into the people involved has often pointed us in the right direction. Admit it, chief.’
Alan held up his hands. ‘It’s a conspiracy. Very well. But I would remind you that in this particular case, my wife doesn’t know any of the people who even might be involved.’
‘But,’ said Derek with a grin, ‘I’ll bet you five pounds she will do as soon as she possibly can.’
FOUR
‘The thing I can’t understand,’ I said as we were on the way home, ‘is the elevator. Or the chisel. One or the other, but not both.’
‘Expound.’
‘Someone socks the guy in the jaw, he falls, hits his head, dies. The socker panics. Say he’s on the third floor – second, to you. He sends the elevator up to the top floor, forces the doors open on his floor, and tumbles the guy down the shaft so he won’t be found for a while and when he is found, it will look like an accident. But then what’s with the chisel? Or, alternatively, someone stabs the guy in the back. Why then does he shove him down the shaft, without removing the chisel? Yes, the body will be hidden for a while, especially if it’s during the summer break when no one much is here and he’s put an “out of order” sign on the elevator, but when it’s found the chisel will make it plain at once that it’s murder.’
‘Except that he doesn’t seem to have been murdered by the chisel.’
‘Too little blood.’ I nodded. ‘Then what’s the chisel doing there? And you think there’s also too little blood for him to have been killed by the fall. So what in the world did happen? The man is genuinely dead. Somebody killed him, somehow.’
‘Not necessarily. He could have died of natural causes.’
‘Of course. But then why all the elaborate obfuscation?’
‘Well. I can see you’ve worked out that the lift shaft is the best way to hide the body for a while.’
‘Yes, just about the only way, if he was killed on any except the ground floor. Pardon me, if he died. And even if he died on the ground floor, anyone would be taking one unholy risk of being seen if they tried to take the body outside. And why hide the body at all if he died of natural causes?’
Alan took both his hands off the wheel and raised them in the classic gesture of frustration. ‘Dorothy, I don’t know! I don’t know anything until the ME has done his job. We’re doing what Sherlock Holmes always warned against.’
‘Speculating ahead of our data. I know. I suppose I’ll just have to be patient and wait until the reports come in. But it’s driving me crazy. And speaking of driving …’
Alan grinned and concentrated on steering.
Friday, September 5
The Sherebury constabulary were dealing with no other major cases, so the autopsy was performed promptly. Derek phoned Alan two days after the grisly discovery, and I listened in on the speaker phone.
He sounded depressed. ‘No joy. In fact, we’re back to somewhere before square one. As we thought, the man died around six weeks ago, with a two-week fudge factor, so far as the forensic evidence is concerned. He was definitely alive at the end of last term – he held a meeting – but no one will admit to having seen him since.’
‘Derek, sorry to interrupt, but did anyone tell you he was planning a holiday in Greece? I just remembered Gillian said that.’
‘No. That’s very useful, Dorothy. We’ll look into that. If he did go, we’ll need to find out when he came back. If not, then we probably know why, and that gives us a much shorter window for the time of death. It’s still going to be the devil’s own job to establish anyone’s whereabouts, with any accuracy. We’ll try, of course, but …’ I could almost hear the shrug over the phone lines.
‘We found nothing of interest in his pockets. The usual money, handkerchief, a couple of flyers for art exhibits, a small picture of a tabby cat. No dabs but his own on anything. As for cause of death, it was neither the stab wound – the instrument was a chisel, by the way – nor the fall. We were right about that. He was dead before either injury. The ME is checking for signs of heart attack, stroke, things of that sort. But he’s inclined to believe it was some sort of poison.’
‘Poison! Good grief, how many times does one need to kill a man?’
‘Exactly. And you know as well as I do, after all this time there’s precious little chance of detecting the agent. Oh, he’ll run all the tests he can think of, and some poisons hang about in the body for quite a time, but so many don’t. I tell you, this thing is haunting me. We may just be facing the perfect crime.’
Alan made the appropriate sympathetic noises and hung up, and we settled back to consider the problem.
‘Overkill,’ I said. ‘In the most literal sense of the word.’
‘Why?’ asked Alan.
‘That’s the question, isn’t it? I had thought maybe the chisel pointed to a sculptor, but if it didn’t kill him … Why stab a dead man? Unless we’re dealing with a maniac who thought the … what was the man’s title? Dean?’
‘Head of the Fine Arts Department.’
‘Oh, right. The head, then, was some sort of vampire or zombie or whatever who needed to be killed several times. Good grief, reminds me of Rasputin! How many ways did they try to kill him?’
‘I don’t recall, but he took a lot of killing, I agree. But I don’t agree that we’re dealing with a maniac here. I think our murderer is a very cool customer who knew exactly what he was about.’
‘He? You think a man did it, for sure?’
Alan shrugged. ‘He or she. The language needs a neutral pronoun. As a matter of fact, though, the man – his name was Chandler, John Chandler – was no lightweight. Just getting him to the lift, forcing the doors, and pushing him in would have taken considerable strength. Not to mention the fact that a chisel is a rather unhandy weapon. Blunt, though with rather sharp edges. It wouldn’t be easy to force it through skin and muscle, even if one’s victim were past resisting. So provisionally, yes, a man.’
‘That chisel keeps bothering me. I wonder if they actually use them in the sculpture studios. If most of the sculpture uses odd bits of junk, what would they want with a chisel? Isn’t that for sculpting marble?’
‘Probably wood, I believe. Perhaps marble. I know very little about it. Gillian did say that the students get a grounding in the traditional methods.’
‘Mmm. And there did seem to be a lot of miscellaneous junk lying around in various studios. But she also said that they had very little budget for materials, which would certainly seem to rule out marble, at least. I think I need to go talk to her about what does go on in the studios there.’
‘Perhaps, but do walk warily, my dear. Don’t forget that the chisel, whatever role
it played in this crime, points directly to a sculptor. And the most prominent one at the school is her boss.’
It wasn’t easy to find out when Gillian might be at her job. The departmental phone number was answered by voicemail, and I wasted most of the day waiting for someone to phone back. I finally clipped a leash on our dog, Watson, and together we strolled across the Cathedral Close to the Rose and Crown, the pub and inn owned by Inga’s parents, where she still sometimes worked in the bar.
I was in luck. Inga was there, just getting ready to leave for home.
‘Hi, Dorothy,’ she said with a brilliant smile. ‘Hello, Watson.’ She fondled his silky ears. ‘You’ll both excuse me for a moment?’
She headed at almost a run for the loo, and I nodded in understanding. I never had any babies myself, but I remembered the problem from the stories of friends.
She came back looking much refreshed. ‘I was just on my way, Dorothy, but can I get you something before I go? A nice G&T sounds good in this weather, doesn’t it?’
It was still hot, with a thundery feeling in the air. ‘Sounds wonderful, but not just now, thanks, and I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you need to get home and put your feet up. I just stopped by to ask if you had Gillian’s phone number or address.’
‘Small chance of putting my feet up with the Nipper on the march! Mum’s looking after him right now, but she needs to get back here. They’ve a full house tonight. I do have Gillian’s number and address, though.’ She pulled out the phone that seemed also to serve as computer, address book, appointment book, picture gallery and probably a hundred other functions I couldn’t even imagine. My own cell phone had one function: phone calls. ‘Here we are. Want to copy this down?’
She smiled when I took a notebook and pen out of my purse. ‘Don’t sneer, child. When your battery goes dead or your server goes down or whatever can happen to that thing, I’ve still got my trusty little notebook. Tell me.’
I wrote down the information, gave her a quick hug, and stepped out into the increasingly muggy afternoon. The sky over the Cathedral had changed, in the few minutes we’d been inside, from a deep blue to a slate grey, and the green of grass and trees had taken on that livid colour that so often presages a storm. As Watson and I hurried across the close, the faint rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and Watson pulled me along at nearly a run. He doesn’t like storms.
The Gentle Art of Murder Page 3
