Who Saw Him Die? (Inspector Peach Series Book 1)

by Gregson, J. M.

  He should have told her about Celia. The thought drummed in his brain as he neared the golden lights of the hostelry, heard the animated noise of a score of conversations and arguments. He speeded up his steps as his agitation grew, hurrying through the car park, pushing with muttered excuses through the crowd inside the door.

  Most of his group of students were still there. He saw their white, speculative faces turning towards him. Harry looked beyond them, to the small alcove beyond the big fireplace where he was accustomed now to sit with Sarah.

  She was not there.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dick Courtney’s funeral was held fifty miles to the north of the place where he died.

  On a sodden morning in the West Midlands, the small party which attended almost disappeared within the benches of a modern crematorium which could hold two hundred mourners. The group of soberly clad people scattered themselves in ones and twos because there was not even sorrow to unite them. None of them was really mourning this passing.

  The woman who had organised the ceremony came nearest to grief. She felt sadness, regret and a little guilt. Although she was Dick’s aunt, she had not seen him since he was sixteen, and then only for a day. She had been forced to tell the authorities that she could not provide a reliable identification. It made her think she should have done more for the young man when he was alive: perhaps even taken him in when his mother died. But Dick had been only twelve, coming into the troubles of puberty and adolescence, and she was having quite enough problems with her teenage daughters. She could not have known his father would go off like that. God knew where he was now.

  She was a sentimental, well-meaning woman, much given to conventional reactions. She followed the coffin into the crematorium and listened to the clergyman’s address while she dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. His few words were of necessity designed for her rather than the man he had never seen, a short homily on the sadness and the lost potential of a life cut short so early, on the hopes of a better world beyond this one.

  He made no mention of the manner of Dick’s going. Dick’s aunt was moved to a few tears of regret, just as she would have allowed herself a few tears of conventional joy at a wedding. No one else showed any reaction beyond a solemn ennui. Most eyes were fixed upon the polished wood of the coffin as the safest place to look.

  To witness this strange little ceremony, there came two representatives from the last stage of Dick’s life. Harry Bradshaw had agreed to attend under pressure from Trevor, who could not come himself to represent the house at these last rites. Trevor felt that it was important that whatever support the house offered to its residents should be carried to a logical conclusion, even in these unique circumstances. Harry understood that, without its being openly stated. He had an admiration now for the stiff, sometimes gauche owner of Westhaven and what he was trying to achieve. And he had been able to discover no convincing reason for not supporting him in this way.

  At the last minute, when he found that Trevor was offering to lend them his car, Michael Ashby decided to come too. As he drove up the motorway in the old blue Sierra, he explained to Harry that he was never averse to having a day away from Colley’s Office Equipment. He enlarged upon the deficiencies of the firm and his own frustrated expertise. Although he understood little of all this, Harry had little doubt that Michael had a case. But it was no use expecting life to be fair to ex-fraudsters, any more than it was to people who dispatched their wives.

  The two men had a strange, stilted conversation as they bowled through the hawthorn-clad lanes to the crematorium. Although they were of the same generation, they were of very different temperaments. They had lived with each other long enough now to be aware of that.

  This journey was overlaid with the death which was the source of it. Each wondered what Peach and Collins had said to the other, and whether the Machiavellian inspector had managed to find things they hoped they had concealed in their own exchanges with him. It was not a situation calculated to encourage a free exchange of ideas.

  Ashby was the better at small talk, at the harmless exchanges which lead away from dangerous areas. But it takes two to play that game effectively, and the conversation was sporadic because Harry was not able to make the returns to keep the rallies going. Both of them were glad to find themselves cruising cautiously between the closely clipped lawns and carefully tended shrubs of the crematorium grounds.

  They were aware in the chapel of curious glances from the few other people in attendance. It was something of a relief to everyone when presently the oak coffin with its brass handles rolled between the curtains at the business end of the crematorium, while the scattered group mustered an uncertain version of “Abide with Me”.

  If Dick’s aunt wondered in that last moment about the manner of his death, she could do so only in the vaguest terms, for she had not even known where he was living until the police came with the news. For Harry Bradshaw and Michael Ashby, trying to find the right key to support the vicar with their uncertain baritones, speculation about how close the police might be to an arrest gave the moment a sharper edge.

  The rain had thinned to a drizzle when the party emerged. The planners had ensured that a glass roof covered the wide paved area where floral tributes could be inspected when cremations were over, so that there was no excuse for not giving the display due reverence. The group was so thin that Harry could hear one of the gardeners on the other side of the building telling how yesterday the Administrator had got the wrong track on a CD and played not the intended “Every Time We Say Goodbye” by Ella Fitzgerald, but “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.

  He saw young women he did not know trying to suppress smiles as the story concluded with rustic laughter from its unseen source. Lest he be overtaken by the same irreverent impulse, he bent his head hurriedly to the labels on the sprays before him.

  It was a relief when Dick’s aunt began to read them aloud. “There’s ours,” she said to the girls, who now appeared to be her daughters. “‘To Richard Courtney, with fondest memories’.” It was unusual to give the name like that on a family spray, she knew, but she wanted to give the full novelettish impact she remembered her dead sister contriving at the boy’s christening on a bright June day. Could it really be twenty-four years ago? She could not know that Dick had scarcely been accorded his full forename in all those years since his christening.

  There was only one wreath. But it was an elaborate one, with crimson roses like a gout of blood at its centre and the message, “From Denis Frankland and all at Franklands’ Autos”.

  “How nice of them,” said Dick’s aunt. “What an impact he must have made, in so short a time.” The daughters murmured assent, moving her tactfully on, preparing to synchronise their departure with the conduct of the next service: death was a flourishing industry, even in a recession. Dick’s aunt thought of the pretty, dark-haired boy who had helped her carry in the mince pies at Christmas when he was eight years old. And now it had come to this! She dabbed away tears, aware acutely of her own mortality.

  There were only six of them at the reception. Harry had not wanted to stay, but Michael said he got little enough social life nowadays and even a funeral was welcome. He was glad of a little female company, and chatted easily enough with Dick’s mother and her girls, while Harry stood awkwardly on one side, trying to make a small sherry last much longer than it was disposed to last.

  The women thought Michael excellent company, a nice friend for Dick to have had. He lied easily and kindly, assuring them of how everyone in the house had liked Dick and been shocked by his death. “He would have had a fine career, I’m sure,” he assured them, thinking that it was true, in a way. He would have wound old Frankland round his little finger, until he had taken whatever the man had to offer and more. The garage owner didn’t know it yet, but he was well rid of the dangerous little pansy.

  Michael indulged them with small fantasies about the communal life at Westhaven. “We all got to know each
other very well at the house. We had our own rooms on the same floor and helped each other. We were all in the same boat, you see.” That was a mistake. It reminded the women of that part of Richard Courtney they were trying to forget, the prison years.

  Michael was thinking while he spun his little web of fiction of what the reality had been like. He had a vivid remembrance of the incident ten days earlier, when he had arrived at Franklands’ Autos to find that their regular stationery order with Colley’s Office Equipment had been cancelled.

  Cancelled at the behest of the new junior sales representative at Franklands’, who had assured them they could do better elsewhere. He could not erase the image of Dick’s face peering like a medieval devil at him through the glass behind the receptionist’s apologetic head, surreptitiously estimating his reaction. Well, now Courtney was cinders, no more. In ashes, like his plans for doing more damage in the world.

  The sun was coming through outside; it threw pale shadows across the lawn of the hotel, picking up the colours on the small mounds of newly planted alyssum and lobelia. After the rain, the air smelt of greenery, of luxuriant new growth.

  Michael downed his sherry. “We really must be going,” he said, looking from his watch to Harry, as if Bradshaw were the source of the delay.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  In ninety dignified years, Westhaven had known nothing like it. Peach rampaged through the house like a charging rhinoceros, leaving its residents in an appropriate disorder behind him.

  Apart from Harry Bradshaw, he interviewed them all within the thick-walled rooms of the high brick house. Separately, of course: this was a full-scale murder enquiry now, and he felt no need for the caution which he had allowed to colour his investigation into the death of old Tom Harrison. The fact that he had allowed himself to be deceived about that death still rankled. A houseful of cons, a violent death, and old Percy Peach of all people had let it go. He knew what the Serious Crime Squad would be saying behind their hands.

  Peach knew now that he had gone too easy on these people then. He proposed to make up for it now. He set things up with due formality. Junior members of his murder team took initial statements in a neutral, low-key manner, asking for more information only where it was necessary to a lucid account of their movements.

  Behind them came Peach, falling like an avenging angel upon the guilty. His truculence fed upon the apprehension he met, and it was not long before he created outright fear. The residents stumbled through, trapped into contradictions, convinced by his air of triumphant disbelief that their evidence differed at key points from that of their fellows, persuaded by his truculent satisfaction that an arrest was imminent from within their numbers.

  Yet in the end, they were severely shaken, but not broken. Threatened by this hostile external force, they drew closer to each other, like blitz victims huddling in a shelter. Each time one of them survived a raid from Peach and Collins, the communal morale was raised a little, even if the individual mind had been bruised.

  Thus, when Fred Hogan sat with the Harrisons at lunch time on the day after Dick’s funeral, he felt able to talk to them more easily than ever before. And when presently Michael Ashby came into the house, glad of a break as usual from Colley’s, he did not go up to his own room but joined the others in the residents’ lounge. Each of them was anxious to know what the others in the house were saying about Peach and his investigation.

  They sat together around the big walnut table. Normally Trevor would have felt the need to respect the men’s privacy by departing to the family quarters; now all of them wanted to exchange notes, to avoid being isolated from any development in this business. Perhaps also they felt an obscure safety in numbers, a reluctance to be isolated with one’s own thoughts, which often affects those at the centre of a murder enquiry. Even Trevor, usually quite happy to be alone in the middle of the day, felt now that the others might be speculating about his movements, even about his possible guilt, if he were not with them when they came together.

  “Do you think it’s one of us?” Fred Hogan said. Though his question was tossed into the vacuum at the centre of the group, it was directed really at Ros as a disinterested party. It was unthinkable to him that this raven-haired saint could be considered as a murder suspect along with common criminals, even by Peach.

  She was smiling encouragingly at him when Trevor said quickly, “It doesn’t have to be. Peach wants us to think that, so that we might get each other into trouble.” He looked rather like an earnest schoolboy, trying to organise his peers against the dubious tactics of a master. Ros wanted to tell him that it was murder they were talking about, that the innocent should really be on the same side as Peach. But she felt the same pull towards solidarity in the face of an aggressor as the others.

  Michael Ashby said, “You’re right. It’s just normal police tactics.” He wondered if that made him sound too experienced in these matters. “It’s more likely to be an outsider, in my opinion. He wasn’t killed here, like… What I mean is, anyone abroad in the town that night could have pushed him into the canal. Peach wants us to think otherwise, but it’s true.”

  “But why? Why should anyone from outside want to kill him? He doesn’t even know many people in the town,” said Ros Harrison.

  She sounded as if she hoped someone could contradict her. Often, she mothered these men against a hostile world; now, in criminal matters, she felt like a babe-in-arms among them. She wanted reassurance from one of them. But it was her husband, as unschooled in these matters as she was, who tried ineffectively to console her.

  “You don’t know that, Ros,” said Trevor. “Dick might have had quite a circle of friends in the town. We’ve always made a point of respecting the privacy of our residents.” It was a return for a moment to his old formality as he defended his system.

  “That’s true. I get round the town more than most of you, now that Colley’s are sending me out a bit.” Ashby looked round, wondering how fiercely Peach had pressed the others on this. “You know Courtney had been taken up by his boss at Franklands’ Autos? Old Frankland himself. The two of them had a thing going, it seems. I’ve been in there myself this week, and it’s all round the staff.”

  “I knew Dick was a brown hatter,” said Fred contentedly. There had been no one more adept at gathering prison gossip; he was glad to announce that he had not lost his touch now that he had decided to go straight. Then he suddenly thought that Ros might not approve of his phrasing, and looked at her apprehensively. He could not catch her eye. Well, there were worse words for it than that, much worse. She did not look too upset.

  Fred thought of how he had been frightened to death by a brown hatter during his first spell in Borstal, when he had known so little, and discovered so many of the nastier things in life. He had never been so glad to see a screw as he had that day when one of them had peered into the dormitory. Thirty years and more ago, that must be: it didn’t seem that long, for all that he had learned since.

  Ashby said suddenly, “Dick Courtney deserved all he got.” They all looked at him, expecting him to enlarge upon this, but he did not.

  Someone should have denied the statement, accorded at least lip service to the dead, but no one felt up to doing so. Even Trevor felt this time that it would be hypocritical for him to rise to the defence of the dead man. He could see in his mind’s eye Dick’s face when he was alive, handsome, vulpine, predatory, treating with supercilious disdain all Trevor’s views about what he was trying to do at Westhaven, as if anyone naive enough to try to help people like them must have an ulterior motive of some kind. Trevor knew that he would not bring Dick back, even if it were possible.

  Ros said suddenly, “I think Peach believes it’s one of us, anyway. Whether he’s right or not may be another matter.” She was trying in her last sentence to dismiss the inspector, by putting his questioning into a proper perspective. But it did not work: she could not infuse the necessary conviction into her voice, so that the result was the opposite of w
hat she had intended. They were left with the vivid picture of that squat, bald-headed man with his fringe of jet-black hair, strutting among them like a fighting cock and daring anyone to challenge him.

  There was a pause before Ashby said, “I suppose he pushed all of you hard about Harry’s movements? He certainly did me.”

  There was a murmur of affirmation from Fred Hogan, reluctant nods of assent from Trevor and his wife. They were silent then, thinking of the only one who was not with them, of that genial, diffident man who must surely be at the centre of this enquiry, if Peach’s views about ex-convicts prevailed. Harry Bradshaw, the only one of them who had killed before.

  Michael Ashby, perhaps feeling the need to go on because he was the one who had introduced this, said eventually, “Where is Harry?”

  “He’s down at the College of Further Education. They rang through at nine o’clock this morning. They’ve a tutor off, and they were glad of Harry to go in and take a couple of classes for them.” Trevor was glad to enlarge with detail like this, as if by doing so he could take some of the pressure off them and return them to the wider world beyond their nightmare.

  But murder and the speculation it provoked would not go away as easily as that. The awful notion that one of your number is a killer is proof against the good intentions of more determined wills than Trevor’s. Fred Hogan said, “Harry killed his wife, you know. Strangled her.”

  Michael said, “I knew he’d killed her. I didn’t know how.” The two ex-criminals were taking over the conversation about their absent colleague, as if only they had the right to talk about these things.

  Fred, like many petty criminals, was fascinated by the details of violence. Since he was a boy, he had read all he could find about the most lurid cases, in places where that detail was exploited with expertise. He was something of an authority on the Rippers, both Jack and Yorkshire, being able to give abattoir descriptions of the mutilations practised upon their wretched victims. In prisons across the Midlands, it had given him a fleeting regard, as he communicated his own vicarious excitement in these awful happenings to his listeners.