The Lately Deceased

by Bernard Knight

  Geoff agreed and slid his hand into hers.

  ‘He’s going to get rid of it as soon as he can. Pearl’s looking for a new place as well. I wonder if they’ll ever get together and marry. They were pretty close, despite the flaming rows they had from time to time.’

  Eve snuggled closer. ‘We haven’t had one yet, have we darling?’

  ‘Not likely to either, sweet. You’re the boss already.’

  A few miles away, a still figure lay in a hospital bed, whispering to himself in another fleeting moment of lucidity.

  ‘Poor dead Margaret …’ The voice trailed off into silence and the roving eyes became fixed again on the darkened ceiling until the lids slowly drooped over them.

  A nurse came through the screens.

  ‘Mr Myers, did you call?’

  The man lay like a fallen tree in a wood, motionless and inert.

  The nurse shrugged and went back to the duty desk with its shaded light. She decided she had imagined it.

  On that Wednesday morning, Meredith was looking at his mail in the Divisional Office when Masters rang up from the station in Comber Street.

  ‘Hello, sir. I’ve got the written report from the Yard on the suicide note. They sent it here. Shall I send it over, or bring it with me later?’

  ‘Oh, bring it when you come, unless, it says something we don’t know already.’ Meredith was only half listening to the sergeant; he was thinking of the great pile of reports on his desk relating to the pay robbery of the week before.

  ‘It says that the paper was a common type of heavyweight quarto, nothing special about it. The typewriter was a two- to four-year-old Imperial office machine, in good condition, with a few minor, individual type characteristics. These matched Moore’s letter completely. The note was definitely made on that machine. They add that the unevenness of pressure on individual letters betrays an inexpert operator.’ Meredith listened absently to this catalogue.

  ‘So now we know what we knew five minutes after we’d found it! But bring it over on Friday, if you will.’

  Old Nick carried on with the mountain of paper in his ‘In’ tray until Stammers arrived.

  He hung his hat up in his own room and came through to see Meredith.

  ‘Anything new? I’ve been out looking at that van from the pay job again. They made a good job of blowing that door off!’

  After a few minutes talk about the robbery, Meredith got around to the Walker case.

  ‘We’ll have to go ahead on Friday and ignore that business at the hospital. He’s still in a coma and they think he may never wake up now.’

  ‘Have you asked Walker anything about Myers?’ queried Stammers. ‘Does he know of any connection between him and the woman? Before the night of the party, I mean.’

  ‘No, I haven’t asked him. I’ll let things rest for the time being. Masters has phoned me the report on the suicide letter and all’s clear there. I’ve been sweating a bit that they might find something we didn’t want, but it’s turned out just as we expected. Definitely typed on the Imperial machine, amateur typist apparently, nothing much else.’

  Stammers’ brow creased in puzzlement.

  ‘What do you mean, ‘amateur’ typist,’ he demanded. ‘Colin Moore was a scriptwriter. He lived by that machine.’

  Meredith looked at him long and steadily.

  ‘My God, Stammers, what sort of bloody hare do you think you’re starting up now?’

  ‘Well, sir, it occurred to me …’

  ‘Yes, Stammers, it occurred to you, and so it damn well should have done. But not to me! If you want to get anything into my head from now on, you’ve got to drive it in with a hammer. I’ve been in possession of that Yard report for over thirty minutes, without guessing it contained even the ghost of a clue. Well done, Stammers, you may have saved me making a fool of myself.’

  ‘Hell, Super,’ Stammers said, embarrassed. ‘You’d have spotted it.’

  ‘But the truth is, I didn’t,’ Old Nick replied, unwilling to have excuses made for him. ‘Tell me, do you know for a fact that Moore was an experienced typist?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but I’ll lay even money that he was. These scriptwriters are like newspapermen; they have to be able to pound a typewriter to make a living. Anyway, I can soon find out.’

  ‘If you’re right, Stammers, we’re up the bloody creek and no mistake. You see what it means, don’t you? It means that that cosy and convenient little suicide note wasn’t a suicide note after all. It means it was written after Moore was dead, typed by the man who murdered him.’

  ‘Could be, Super.’

  ‘Get the Yard on the phone right away.’

  As Stammers used the telephone, Meredith sat at his desk drumming on his blotter with his fingers.

  ‘Lab, please. Stammers, “D” Div here. Can you get me Superintendent Pepper, please?’

  A moment later he was talking to the senior liaison officer.

  ‘Super, Stammers here. Look, about that suicide note we sent you last week? Your lab’s report says it’s an amateur bit of typing. Are you a hundred per cent sure about that because if it is the work of an amateur, it’s a fake … I’ll hold on …’

  Stammers put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to Meredith. ‘He’s gone to find who did the examination.’

  After a few moments he began to speak again: ‘Yes, we’ve got the report. We wanted to get it from the horse’s mouth … a lot hangs on this; it may mean there’s been another killing. Fairbrother, you said? OK, thanks. Cheerio!’

  He put the phone down and turned to the expectant Meredith.

  ‘We’re getting bitched up all down the line. A chap named Fairbrother wrote that report – he works in the laboratory at Cardiff, you know, the forgery and documents place. He had a look at it for them as he happened to be up in London for a couple of days. He went back home yesterday!’

  Meredith breathed heavily but managed to control his feelings. ‘Well, get him on the phone now,’ he said. ‘I must sort this thing out before I spring it on the AC.’

  Stammers put a call through to the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory in Cardiff, and, after a good deal of holding on, got through to the man he wanted. He spoke to him for several minutes, then put the receiver down and turned to Old Nick.

  ‘He remembers the note and is quite confident about his report. He wants us to send him a specimen of typing known to have been done by Moore. I said I’d send down something, together with the original note, by tonight’s post. Let’s hope no bright spark robs the registered mail from Paddington!’ Meredith left his desk and paced the floor uneasily. He stopped to look out of the window into the dismal yard outside.

  ‘If Moore didn’t write that note,’ he said, speaking slowly, ‘who the hell did? It must have been suicide, he would hardly sit still while someone put a plastic bag over his head and turned on the gas.’

  ‘He would with all that barbiturate inside him,’ Stammers reminded him quietly.

  ‘I know about that, man,’ said Meredith testily. ‘But barbiturate is as bitter as blazes and he had taken a wagonload of it. You can’t sit on a bloke and stuff pills down his throat until he goes into a coma … not without some signs of a struggle, anyway.’

  ‘OK, so Moore wrote the note! How do we get around the expert’s opinion, then?’

  Stammers was being devastatingly logical, but his boss was stubborn.

  ‘We don’t yet know that Moore was, in fact, an accomplished typist. We are only assuming it. But if he was, he might still have typed that note, its irregularities being accounted for by the influence of emotion or the early effect of the drugs.’

  Stammers made a face expressing his doubts about this whole idea.

  ‘It’s your case, guvnor, but I don’t think you’d be very happy with that explanation for long! We’d better ask this forgery boffin about the effect of sleeping pills on a man’s typing.’

  Meredith began to pace the drab office, hands in pockets, his shoulde
rs even more stooped than usual.

  Stammers felt suddenly sorry for him and, afraid of showing it, said briskly, ‘What about getting this specimen of typing? Shall I ring up the studio and ask for some of his old scripts?’

  ‘No, don’t do that!’ said Meredith sharply. ‘Not yet anyway. We may have to make some direct enquiries later on, but for the time being the fewer people who are in on this, the better. If it is another murder, we don’t want to raise the hare until it suits us. The killer must be among this fancy TV mob, if it wasn’t Moore. I hope to hell it was, though. I’m sick of opening and shutting this damn case!’

  ‘Where shall I get a specimen of his typing then?’ Stammers asked.

  ‘Let’s go over to his place. There must be some of his papers there. Has that wife of his been back there?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I hear she is leaving the damage to be fixed by the insurance people, and is then selling the whole lot – understandable, I suppose.’

  ‘Huh! I thought she’d have been living with Walker by now,’ said Meredith. ‘He’s still sticking on at Great Beachy Street, I see. He must either have a clear conscience or a mighty adaptable one.’

  At the flat at Littleton Close, they found ample material to send to Cardiff. In fact, there were piles of typed scripts bundled into the cupboards of the study.

  ‘Take one that looks recent,’ Meredith instructed the inspector, who was on his knees in front of an open cupboard.

  ‘This looks all right,’ Stammers said, holding up a collection of pages tied together with tape. ‘It looks quite new. Kelly’s Nightmare, it’s called,’ he added with a grin.

  ‘OK, that’ll do. Send it off as soon as you like to Cardiff with that suicide note. Ask them if they can confirm that both specimens of typing were made on Moore’s machine, and were they made by the same hand. If Kelly’s Nightmare wasn’t done on that particular machine we’re no further forward. If it was, and done by the same hand that typed the note, you can safely say that Moore really did commit suicide. But if it was typed on that machine, but by some other hand, you and I will be back on the beat before we’re seven days older.’

  ‘Like hell we will,’ Stammers retorted stoutly. ‘Those eggheads down at Cardiff aren’t infallible, Super. I shall take a lot of convincing if they come up with the answer we don’t want. I shall want proof, not opinion.’

  ‘Good lad, but it may not come to that. By the way, that chap at Cardiff may need the machine itself. We’d better collect it from the Yard and put it on a passenger train.’ Together they returned to the car. On their way back to town Meredith broke the silence that had reigned between them.

  ‘I’ve been thinking things over, Stammers. I think maybe I’ll have a word with Mrs Moore after all. It’s important we should know at once whether Moore was accustomed to using a typewriter or not. I’ll give her a ring and ask her. If I wrap it up a bit and cook up some other questions to go with it, there’s a good chance it’ll pass unnoticed.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Later that evening, Geoffrey Tate and Eve arrived at 17a Great Beachy Street to find Pearl Moore about to open the door.

  ‘Gordon gave me the key last week so that I can get in when his “daily” isn’t here. She’s been a bit huffy since all this trouble.’

  Geoff smiled. It was unlike Pearl, he thought, to bother with explanations of that sort. As they climbed the stairs to the inner glass door leading to the hall of the flat, Pearl, looking exquisite in a dramatically full scarlet coat, asked if they had heard any more about the adjourned inquest.

  ‘Not a thing,’ Geoffrey answered. ‘I reckon the police have got something up their sleeves and are keeping mum about it.’

  Pearl pushed open the inner door and called ‘yoo-hoo’ in the direction of the lounge. At once, Gordon flung open the door and advanced on Pearl as if to take her in his arms. Then he saw the other two and checked himself, contenting himself with slipping an arm round Pearl’s waist.

  ‘Glad you two could come,’ he said to Geoff and Eve. ‘I’m in need of a bit of youthful company. Come on in, the poor relations are still battening on to me like the parasites they are.’

  He swept his arm in the direction of the Leighs, who were sitting on a settee watching television.

  ‘Hello, folks!’ said Webster, getting up. ‘Have one of Gordon’s drinks. If we’re parasites, we may as well act like them. I’ll fix them, I need an excuse to get another.’

  He went behind the bar and fiddled expertly with glasses, while the new arrivals joined Barbara around the television set.

  ‘Just watching one of Metro’s efforts,’ Gordon explained. ‘I’ll give those property people hell tomorrow! Look at the back of that set! Every time anyone moves a muscle, the whole blasted thing flaps like a sail in a strong wind!’

  ‘The only brick wall I ever saw that bulged when the hero coughs!’ Webster chimed in from the back of the room.

  ‘You can laugh,’ said Gordon. ‘If Leo Prince wasn’t in jail, I’d wrap that set around his neck tomorrow. It’s some of his junk.’

  ‘I remember seeing them rehearse this,’ Eve said. ‘It looked a mess then, and it’s a mess now. Colin scripted it, didn’t he? Oh, I suppose I’ve said something I shouldn’t have!’ She looked around at the others, wide-eyed.

  ‘Forget it, Eve,’ said Pearl easily. ‘We can’t go around avoiding the subject all the time. None of you could care two figs what happened to Colin, and quite honestly I don’t think I care much myself. The man’s dead and the sooner we all accept that fact, the better for all concerned.’

  ‘Yeah, drink up and have another,’ put in Webster, suiting his words by draining the glass he held. Most of his waking hours and all of his conversation centred on the obtaining and consumption of alcoholic liquors.

  ‘Your mention of Colin’s scripts reminds me that that head detective, Meredith, rang me up this afternoon,’ said Pearl. ‘He asked whether Colin wrote Kelly’s Nightmare, and if so, when?’

  ‘Well, at least you knew the answer to that one,’ Eve said. ‘A real soap opera if ever there was one. I played the dumb maid who found the safe broken open. I had twenty-four words to say!’

  ‘What else did Meredith want to know?’ Geoff asked Pearl.

  ‘Oh, a whole string of things – whether Colin worked from home or a London office, whether he sold his work through an agent and, if so, which one. What was the name and address of his secretary.’

  ‘Did Colin have a secretary?’ Eve interrupted, surprised.

  ‘No, of course, he didn’t. He didn’t earn enough to keep a wife, let alone pay a secretary,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘You didn’t say that to the policeman!’ said Eve, shocked.

  ‘Of course I said it to him. God knows, it was true enough. All this blab about offices, agents and secretaries makes me sick. Who the hell do they think Colin was? Noel Coward? I was the breadwinner in our household and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose poor Colin was allowed to forget it either,’ Barbara surprisingly piped up. Pearl flashed a look of venom at her and was about to make some withering retort when Gordon stepped in to save the situation.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t you two get at each other’s throats. What interests me is what lies behind all these questions. Why in the hell should the police interest themselves in a play that went on the air a couple of months ago?’

  ‘Maybe they reckon there may be something in the plot that could explain why Colin killed himself,’ said Webster, vaguely.

  ‘Damn it, man,’ Gordon snapped back, ‘They already know why Colin killed himself.’ He looked blankly at the others and then passed his fingers through his hair in a gesture of hopelessness.

  ‘I’m sick to death of this whole bloody business,’ he went on. ‘Let’s have a rubber of bridge, we’ve got a four.’

  ‘We’ve got a six,’ Geoff pointed out.

  ‘Barbara and Webster don’t play,’ Gordon replied. ‘
Webster will be happy knocking back the scotch and Barbara can watch television.’

  A couple of rubbers soon convinced the men that Eve, for all her assumed little-girl simplicity, knew more about the game than they would ever learn. Due mainly to her efforts, Geoff found himself winning by a substantial margin over Gordon and Pearl.

  ‘Come on, Pearl!’ he chaffed. ‘If this was Strip Poker, you’d be blue with cold by now. Eve and I are skinning the pair of you!’

  ‘All right, smarty pants! Let’s change partners and I’ll play with Geoff. Then we’ll see if you can hold your own against your lady-love,’ retorted Pearl.

  They shifted chairs and Gordon shouted across to Webster, who was exploring the bottles on the shelves of the bar.

  ‘Bring that lamp over here,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen a damn thing since Barbara doused the lights for her bloody television.’

  ‘Sure, Gordon, coming right over.’

  The Canadian walked over with the slender standard lamp that usually stood by the bar and dumped it heavily at the side of Gordon’s chair. As he did so a shiny piece of metal dropped to the floor beneath it.

  Eve looked idly downwards. ‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘It looks like a part of the works.’

  She bent down and reached to pick it up, but as she did so Geoff’s voice rasped out.

  ‘Don’t touch it. Eve! I think I know what that is!’

  His hand held her wrist to stop her fingers closing over the pointed steel rod that lay on the carpet, half hidden by the circular base of the lamp.

  ‘What is it, Geoff? What fell out?’ Pearl had risen from her seat to look over the table.

  ‘It’s a barbecue skewer,’ Geoff replied. ‘And it looks as if there’s a good deal of blood on it.’

  Forty minutes later, Meredith and Masters were on their knees around the base of the standard lamp. An uneasy circle of people stood silently around, watching intently.

  ‘Has the lamp been moved since the night of the party, sir?’ asked Meredith.

  ‘Yes, of course it has,’ Walker snapped. ‘Do you think we never clean the place?’