The Lately Deceased

by Bernard Knight

  Geoff stood up and faced Gordon, who had been standing at the door, his face tense, the muscles at the sides of his jaw clenching irregularly.

  ‘I’ll phone for a doctor at once,’ Geoff said. ‘But I’m afraid he can only confirm what Lena said. She’s dead, Gordon. Come on back to the lounge.’

  But Gordon began trembling violently, then rushed out to the nearby bathroom, where he could be heard being sick. The other members of the party began talking in low voices; the sombre cloud of death had suddenly appeared in the house and they made unobtrusive haste to get out of the room.

  Geoff Tate was left alone with Lena, the only one of the guests to show any practical sense. She bent over the body and cleaned the mouth with a handkerchief. Then she clasped the cold hands together in front.

  ‘Now for the telephone,’ said Geoff. ‘I wonder who their doctor is?’

  Gordon was still in the bathroom, though the sounds of sickness had stopped. Geoff hesitated outside, then decided that the doctor was the more urgent need and hurried down to the lounge. All the guests were standing, waiting expectantly.

  ‘A bad business, folks,’ he explained briefly. ‘I’m going to get a doctor, but I’m afraid it’s no use. Will you go up and see if Gordon is better now, Pearl? You go with her, Barbara. Does anyone know of a doctor in the neighbourhood?’ Nobody did and, as there seemed to be no immediate hope of finding the name of the Walkers’ own practitioner, he rang the night operator at the telephone exchange.

  ‘There’s a dozen within walking distance of you,’ came the helpful reply. ‘Got any preference?’

  ‘No, any qualified man will do?’

  ‘Well, how about this chap … Weinkaatz? Covent 0213.’

  ‘Weinkaatz will do fine. Many thanks.’

  He rang off and then dialled the Covent number. After some minutes the phone was answered by an impatient voice speaking with a heavy accent.

  After a few words of explanation from Geoff, the voice said, ‘Very well. I come. Ten minutes, maybe.’

  Geoff replaced the receiver and turned to the other guests.

  ‘He’s coming right away,’ he said. ‘You’d better stick around for a bit.’

  While they waited, everybody seemed to voice what was uppermost in their minds.

  ‘What happened to her? I didn’t see her after the first game?’

  ‘Poor old Gordon took it very badly. I wouldn’t have thought that he cared about her all that much.’

  ‘Well, he’s lived with her for ten years – officially, anyway. And it’s his house and his party; that’s enough to turn up anybody.’

  ‘Felt pretty queer myself, looking at her lying there like that. Wonder what she died of? She was just drunk according to Gordon.’

  Lena, by virtue of her two years as a probationer nurse, now became a medical authority in the eyes of the others.

  ‘I think she may have choked,’ she said quietly. ‘I remember seeing a drunk in casualty once who choked because he couldn’t clear his throat when he was sick. Either that or she had a heart attack.’

  At this moment, a pale and shaky Gordon came back into the room, followed by Pearl and Barbara. He was quite in control of himself now and went over to ask Geoff about the doctor. His presence seemed to embarrass the majority of the guests, who didn’t seem to know what to say to him. One by one, or in couples, they muttered excuses, found their coats, and left. By the time the doctor had come, considerably later than his ten-minute promise, only Geoff, Lena and the Leighs were left with Gordon. The barman, Edwards, was also there and had quietly begun to tidy up the mess left after the party.

  The doctor turned out to be a middle-aged Austrian with a brusque manner. He was short, wore a long dark overcoat with an immense thick grey scarf, and had a wide-brimmed black hat pulled down over his eyes. He could have stepped straight from the pages of a secret service thriller.

  Taking his hat off to reveal a large nose and gimlet-bright eyes, he strode into the flat, speaking as he came.

  ‘Ver iss ze body, pliss?’

  Geoff aimed him in the direction of the stairs and walked alongside as the little man rapidly pattered along. He explained the circumstances as they went. Reaching the bedroom, the doctor entered and made a circuit of the bed without stopping, conducting his examination en route. He flashed a hand onto the forehead and felt the pulse briefly; so briefly that, if there had been any pulse, he would have had time to detect about half a throb at the most. Finally he prodded the chest with his stethoscope for what seemed little more than a second.

  ‘Much drink, you say? How old? Forty-five, hah! Any pains in chest, no? Pity! Yes, vomitus on ze face, much to drink, aaaah … well, well!’

  With that soliloquy, he left the room and set off down the stairs again. Reaching the lounge, he struck a professional pose and addressed Geoff, who once more took the burden of responsibility.

  ‘Must be heart attack … very sorry. I will have to inform ze coroner. Who iss zair own doctor?’

  Geoff turned to the silent Gordon.

  ‘Uh, we haven’t got one, not in town. Margaret goes … or went … to one in Oxford. I go to a fellow in Harley Street, but he doesn’t live on the premises and won’t be there at this time of day.’

  ‘I will inform coroner,’ repeated the doctor, moving to the door which he had entered not more than four minutes earlier.

  Gordon suddenly came to life.

  ‘What about the body? I mean, I have to stay here all night … or what’s left of it. I couldn’t stand the thought of having her here all the time like that! I can’t help it,’ he ended lamely.

  ‘Must have autopsy … coroner.’ The little doctor repeated ‘coroner’ as if it were a magic spell.

  ‘You can get it moved to ze mortuary when you like. Some undertakers have all-night service.’

  With these parting words of sympathy, he left at high speed. Gordon turned to Geoff.

  ‘Sorry to be so useless, Geoff, but this has knocked me up more than a little. Not only because it’s Margaret, but, well, it’s just the idea of death, you know.’

  ‘OK, old chap, don’t worry. I’ll handle everything. Go and get some more coffee, while I fix the undertaker people on the phone.’

  An hour later, a plain blue van took away the remains of Margaret Walker and the rest of the household made ready for the day that was just dawning.

  Chapter Four

  Edgar Sidgwick mopped up the last of his baked bean juice with a chunk of bread and swallowed his third cup of tea. Settling his muffler more tightly around his neck, he picked up his old brown cap and made for the door.

  ‘Ta-ta, Lizzie,’ he called in the direction of the kitchen door, where a clatter of dishes was his only reply. The old man clumped down the stairs to the ground floor, past the old coroner’s court and the office. Through an outside door, he went into the cold gloom of a late November morning and crossed the paved yard to the mortuary building.

  This particular mortuary was one of the oldest remaining in London, a relic of Victorian architecture, encrusted with grime and battered by Hitler’s bombs. The days in which the coroner had held court there had gone and now, like Edgar himself, the mortuary was just waiting for retirement and eventual demolition.

  Sidgwick had been there for forty-two years and death in any form had long since lost any novelty for him. This morning, he had been more disgruntled than usual as, at six thirty, he had been roused to accommodate a body which could just as well have waited until normal ‘business’ hours. Not only that, but the delivery was quite unauthorized, and Edgar, a stickler for properly filled-in forms, was half inclined to tell the undertakers to take it back. Eventually, with the help of an extra tip, they managed to overcome his outraged feelings, especially as he knew full well that he would have to accept it later on in the morning, even if he turned it back now.

  After sliding the body, still fully clothed, into its tray in the huge refrigerator and slipping the label ‘Margaret Walker’
into the appropriate clip on the door, he went back upstairs to his flat and made Lizzie a cup of tea.

  Now, just after nine o’clock, and after a sustaining breakfast, he went out to get the day’s collection of bodies ready for post-mortem examination.

  The routine was for a forensic pathologist from one of the big London medical schools to come sometime during the day and carry out examinations on whatever had been brought in during the previous twenty-four hours. On this cold Friday morning, Edgar had four corpses to lay out on the white porcelain tables: one was a coal gas suicide; two were sudden collapses in the street; and the last was Margaret Walker, who, according to one of the undertaker’s men, was a ‘sudden’ at a party. His actual words were ‘Too much gin on a dicky heart, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Edgar, adhering to the ‘first come, first served’ principle, rolled the bodies out one by one and undressed them, which needed some experience to do easily on the half-frozen limbs stiff with rigor mortis. The first three were laid out in a neat, bare row before he went back to deal with the last woman.

  He rolled the galvanised tray right out on to the wheeled trolley that had a screw-jack adjustment to reach the different shelves and pushed it across to a wall where, on a broad shelf, each person’s clothing was tied in a neat, labelled bundle.

  Taking a fresh label, he dug in his pocket for the stub of a pencil and, after much licking and laborious writing, he copied the particulars from the identifying label attached to the wrist, which would later be tied to the big toe.

  He then prepared to strip the body. Moving slowly and deliberately, he raised the left arm to pull the top layer of clothing off the shoulders. This was a short jacket of a dark red material which matched the dress beneath. When just about to pull the sleeve, Edgar stopped, stared and then slowly lowered the arm again.

  Moving around to the side of the trolley, he bent close to the body and then touched the chest with a finger. Looking at the tip thoughtfully for a moment, he began to whistle tonelessly, then gently undid the top button of the dress and peered down as deeply as he could. He did up the cloth-covered button again, straightened his old back and left the mortuary building. Crossing the yard to his dark little office, he picked up the phone and began to dial.

  Chapter Five

  Wally Morris, the coroner’s officer for the borough, parked his Ford in the police station yard and climbed the stairs to his bare room on the first floor.

  Slightly out of breath – he had put a lot of flesh onto his six-foot frame since leaving the beat ten years before – he fell into his chair and looked through the mail. Finding the usual collection of queries from the Registrar-General, a few post-mortem reports from the Forensic Medicine department and a solicitor’s request for information, he turned to his ancient typewriter and began hammering out statements for the next week’s inquests.

  In spite of his smart grey suit, he looked every inch a policeman. A big body, heavy features and calm eyes were more the stamp of the older police officer than the traditional big feet. Morris, now forty-two, had spent years on general duties in this division, much of it at the same station.

  He had given up the prospect of promotion to become a coroner’s officer, a job needing considerable intelligence, sympathy and a great deal of patience. His days were spent in interviewing bereaved relatives, visiting witnesses, organising the post-mortems and running the court on the days that the coroner held inquests.

  Wally hoped that this Friday would be quiet and peaceful as he had a lot of paperwork to catch up on and to be called out because ‘Grandpa had fallen downstairs a month ago and broken his thigh before passing away’ would be an annoying waste of half a day.

  He rattled away at his machine until a freckled police cadet came in with a thick mug of tea. As he stopped typing to pick it up, the phone shrilled in front of him.

  ‘Here we go,’ he sighed under his breath.

  ‘Hello … yes. Coroner’s officer … oh, Dr Weinkaatz … yes … yes … 17a Great Beachy Street … yes … I’m listening, Doctor.’

  He reached for his mug and took a long drink while the voluble doctor gabbled away at the other end.

  ‘Sudden death after drinking, you say? At a party? Sounds a bit odd to me.’

  He frowned, took up his pen and drew a message pad towards him. ‘Margaret Walker … aged forty-five … you don’t know? Why didn’t you call one of us out or ship her off to hospital? Well, if you were satisfied, that’s OK, but … what? All right, if you say so, sir. But sending her straight to the mortuary was quite irregular, you know. Yes … yes … I’ll go around there this morning. I may need a statement from you sometime … yes … goodbye, sir.’ Wally finished his tea at a gulp and covered up his typewriter.

  ‘Bloody nit!’ he grumbled to himself. ‘Hasn’t a clue about correct procedure in the disposal of dead bodies and, if you ask me, he’s got as much idea of the real cause of death as I have!’

  Taking his overcoat off the back of his door and putting on his trilby, Morris turned to leave for the address the doctor had given him. Again the telephone rang, and he sat on the edge of his desk while he answered it.

  ‘Coroner’s officer here.’

  ‘Edgar here, Wally,’ came the slow morose voice from the other end. ‘Looks like I got a piece o’ dirt over here.’

  Wally felt that this was going to be ‘one of those days’.

  ‘What d’you mean, Ed? I thought you only had a gas job and a couple of naturals there?’

  ‘This party what came in this morning, early. What do you reckon on ’er?’

  Old Sidgwick was relishing his bit of news and was stretching his enjoyment to the full.

  ‘Come on, Edgar, blast you! What have you got over there? Let’s have it, because I’m just on my way to see the damn relatives!’

  The mortuary keeper could hold his bombshell no longer.

  ‘Better take the CID with you, then, ‘cause this party’s got a stab wound in the chest right over the ’eart!’

  Wally heard this quite clearly, but the sickening consequences made his mind reject it at first. Ever since the doctor had phoned, he’d had an uneasy feeling about the case, which was the reason for his prompt visit to Great Beachy Street.

  ‘Are you mucking me about, Edgar?’ he said fiercely.

  ‘Did you ever know me pull your leg about a client?’ answered Sidgwick stolidly.

  Wally hadn’t, and he made up his mind quickly.

  ‘OK, chum. I’m on my way over there now.’

  He hurried downstairs and out to his car. As he drove the few hundred yards to the mortuary, he cursed Weinkaatz for being so ignorant of police procedure. He pulled up outside the big wooden doors of the mortuary and went through a side gate into the viewing room, used mainly, it seemed, for the storage of firewood and bicycles. He crossed to a door in the farther wall and entered the post-mortem room, where Edgar, standing with hands on hips, was contemplating the body of Margaret Walker.

  ‘What the hell’s up, Edgar?’ demanded Morris.

  ‘Look here, on the chest. I haven’t done anything more than lift up that coat to have a dekko, so don’t look at me like that.’

  As he held aside the thin jacket, Wally, peering closer, could see a darker red stain, the size of half a crown, on the dress beneath. In the centre was a vague ragged area, a fraction of an inch across, with clotted blood on the edges.

  ‘Now ’ave a butcher’s down ’ere,’ invited the mortuary keeper with mournful glee. He gingerly held open the neck of the dress and pointed down with a finger. Deep in the depths of the clothing, below the brassiere and to the left side, was a small puncture wound, directly under the circle of blood on the dress.

  Wally had seen enough.

  ‘Well, chum, here we go,’ he said resignedly to Edgar, ‘let’s get the cloak-and-dagger boys in on it!’

  The next few minutes were spent in telephoning.

  First, he rang the police station and spoke to the local detecti
ve inspector. Then he informed the coroner and got permission to ask Dr Alistair Chance, the head of the Forensic Medicine Department at St Jeremy’s Hospital Medical School, to perform the autopsy. He rang next Dr Chance’s secretary and fixed the time for the post-mortem for noon.

  By this time, the detective inspector, Sydney Grey, had arrived and duly ‘gone up the wall’, as Edgar put it. After learning the meagre facts and looking at the body, he grabbed the telephone and spread alarm and despondency in the heart of the divisional detective superintendent, who promised to come post-haste from the divisional office two miles away.

  Once this panic was under way, the DI faced Wally Morris across the mortuary:

  ‘Well, this is going to be the mother and father of all muck-ups, Wally boy!’

  Syd Grey was a red-faced, bulbous-nosed man, with sparse hair plastered over a high dome of a head. He always wore a camel-hair coat, except in the hottest weather, and the general effect was that of a small time ‘bookie’ with a liking for the bottle. Nothing could be farther from the truth and he was, in fact, a very astute detective, due to be promoted before long.

  Not that this sort of a case helps that cause, he thought, ruefully.

  ‘A right pig of a case, this is!’ agreed Wally, rubbing his chin. ‘All because the damn doctor didn’t take a proper look at her. And then sending her in here off his own bat was just plain ruddy ignorant.’

  Edgar looked up from cleaning his fingernails with a post-mortem needle. ‘Wotcher goin’ to do first, mate?’ he inquired of Morris. ‘Wait for old Grizzle-Guts to do the PM or get ’old of the relatives?’

  ‘Grizzle-Guts’ was the accepted local nickname for Alistair Chance, whose humour and temper were by no means the equal of his professional skill.

  Wally looked at the detective inspector. ‘What’s it going to be, Syd? We’ll look a right pair of idiots if there was nothing in it after we’ve raised the alarm!’

  Grey strongly disapproved of this remark.

  ‘Leave the “we” out of it, Wally; this is your baby, not mine. Still, you’re right, we don’t know the score yet, but every minute lost now is going to mean a bigger kick in the pants for us eventually if it does turn out to be a dirty job.’