Bring Forth Your Dead

by Gregson, J. M.

  ‘Someone will be along to collect exhibits and reports later. Quite possibly the admirable Sergeant Hook to whom I presume you refer.’ Hook had made a good-humoured enemy of Burgess by confessing a contempt for golf, a game the doctor played erratically but enthusiastically. ‘In the meantime, I have no doubt you can tell me what poison was involved.’

  ‘Arsenic,’ said Burgess with relish. ‘None of your clever modern insecticides or ricin in this case. And in anticipation of your next question, no, there’s no possibility that it was ingested accidentally by the victim. This murder was deliberate and systematic.’

  ‘You can tell so much, even at this stage?’ Lambert was aware that a little flattery could scarcely come amiss, but his curiosity was genuine.

  ‘There is clear evidence of arsenic throughout what remains of the body.’ Burgess pursed his lips and stood up, so that for a moment Lambert thought he was to be taken after all to see the grisly evidence. He tried not to think what a stomach would look like after over a year in the grave. Instead, the pathologist took a small polythene bag from the top of the filing cabinet and placed it carefully on the desk between them. Lambert did not touch it, but he examined it as carefully as a man offered an exploding cigar. It appeared to contain rather dirty grey fibres from an old sock. He said so, and Burgess was immensely gratified.

  He picked up the polythene and looked at it fondly. It was his turn to lecture. ‘That is human hair, John. Hair from the corpse of Edmund Craven. Hair is a tough and long-lasting material, being composed of keratin, the same protein that forms human fingernails. It is also a highly identifiable and highly revealing material.’

  ‘And what does it reveal in this case?’ Lambert was aware of playing the eager student to keep this exposition running, but he was also genuinely fascinated. In a long CID career, this was only his second poisoning.

  ‘The examination of the organs of the body showed us quickly enough that death had been promoted by arsenic. It is this hair which tells us much more about how that arsenic was administered. Arsenic is excreted from the body in the usual way, but also by means of the roots of the hair. As the hair lengthens, so arsenic grows out.’ Burgess leaned back and studied the long-dead hair indulgently, like a man studying a favourite cat in repose. With his white coat cast aside, he looked in his immaculate navy suit like the consultant surgeon he might have been. ‘What is in that bag is a kind of arsenic read-out. By applying a test called a Newton activation analysis, I can tell with certainty whether the poison was administered as a single large dose or in the form of several small doses over a period.’

  ‘And what does this analysis tell you in this case?’

  ‘Arsenic was administered in systematic small doses.’

  ‘Over how long a period?’

  ‘That is impossible to define with the precision that a court of law demands. But I would be prepared to swear to not less than six weeks and not more than twelve.’

  For a few moments, Lambert found it difficult to take his eyes off the drab-looking package that had established the parameters of his murder investigation. He said slowly, ‘Then someone planned this death in advance and murdered Craven quite cold-bloodedly over a lengthy period.’

  ‘With malice aforethought,’ said Cyril Burgess. He beamed delightedly.

  3

  Even with Lambert’s extensive experience, the murder of Edmund Craven represented a first. He had never before had to begin a murder investigation over a year after the victim’s death.

  After his surge of interest in the thought, the Superintendent decided it was a first he could well have done without. A murder discovered thirteen months too late, with the scents long gone dry, was not after all a challenge to be welcomed, as the dying year struggled towards Christmas and the warehouse break-ins accumulated.

  The CID section looked to him to set up the machinery of detection, little realising that many of the problems were as new to him as to the most junior detective-constable. Did they need a murder room as usual? Should they set up a scene of crime team, when all evidence of the crime had presumably long since been removed? Should murder take precedence as usual over lesser crimes, even though in this case it was an old murder? Lambert decided eventually that the answer was yes to all these questions, but he did so with a lack of conviction which he hoped was not obvious to his colleagues.

  He spent the afternoon setting up this framework of investigation. He rang Craven’s doctor and solicitor and made arrangements to see both of them on the morrow. He called the Detective-Sergeant Bert Hook, and was cheered by the boyish eagerness for the hunt evinced so incongruously by that rubicund village-bobby figure. When he went home that evening, eleven hours after he had presided over the exhumation of Edmund Craven’s body, he had begun the process of finding out what kind of man the victim had been, the first necessity in all but the most straightforward of murder inquiries.

  *

  It was an altogether more acceptable late autumn morning when he turned the big Vauxhall into the spacious avenue where the late Edmund Craven had spent his last days. The front gardens here were long enough to have forest trees at their limits. The leaves had clung late through a mild autumn, so that even now the last ones drifted in a golden curtain against the soft morning sun, covering the unpaved road with a carpet that would be transformed to slime with the first hard frost. Lambert, easing the car reverently through the postcard scene, indulged himself with ‘Thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa’. Hook’s assumption that he was quoting an advert for condensed milk was as straight-faced as ever: Lambert felt back in a world which he could understand, however much it was one of his own creation.

  Tall Timbers, Craven’s house, was a spacious Edwardian residence at the end of this opulent cul-de-sac. The detectives studied its ivy-clad elevations for a moment before they left the car, assessing the atmosphere, trying to feel what this place had to tell them about the man who had owned and controlled it for over thirty years. Sixteen hundred weeks; eleven thousand days; surely the place could offer some clues about the occupant and the manner of his death? Except, of course, that a murderer cool and ruthless enough to carry through a poisoning stretching over many of those weeks had had over a year to remove anything which might be even mildly helpful to them.

  As if to echo that gloomy thought, there stood before them a tangible sign that the remaining connection of Edmund Craven with this place was about to be formally severed. An estate agent’s board, with its bold red and white lettering standing out starkly against the blue background, contrasted sharply with the autumn shades all around. It proclaimed that this desirable site was now for sale.

  Despite much folklore about policemen’s feet, big men tread softly as a rule. But as Lambert and Hook walked carefully up the wide drive, their feet crunched on crisp gravel beneath the leaves, recalling the days of the house’s infancy, when ponies and traps had moved briskly over this area to the stables at the rear. They pressed the ceramic bell push and heard the distant sound of the bell in the silent house.

  Lambert realised afterwards that his expectations of housekeepers derived solely from a vividly remembered Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. The woman who opened the heavy oak door was no more than forty-five. She had ash-blond hair which owed nothing to a bottle, bright blue eyes, and features whose attractiveness was clouded by caution as she sized up the two large men on the wide stone step. She said firmly, ‘I’m afraid viewing of the house is by appointment only; it says so clearly on the board.’

  ‘We’re police officers,’ said Lambert. He fumbled for his warrant, but she said with a curt nod, ‘You’d better come inside,’ and turned to lead the way. So she had been expecting them. They had made no appointment to see her; he wondered who had spoken to her.

  They passed through a high hall with a decorative plaster cornice. A blue stair-carpet ran away to the upper parts of the house beneath what looked like the original brass stair-rods. They gleamed brightly in the relative gloom of the nor
th-facing hall, setting the note of care that ran through the house. The drawing-room to which she took them looked as if it was ready to receive guests. There was not a speck to be seen on the huge Turkish carpet, and the parquet gleamed brightly at its edges from much polishing. The huge leather armchairs received them as though eager to cosset their ample frames, the long velvet curtains were neatly held in their containing ropes. The room was generously heated. Lambert half-expected a genial host to appear and offer them sherry or coffee.

  Instead, the woman who had led them here perched herself on the edge of one of the big armchairs opposite them, as if to emphasise that she was here only on sufferance. She pulled the tweed skirt demurely over her knees and checked the buttoning of the green mohair cardigan over the immaculate white blouse. It was a gesture only: she was not the kind of woman who found herself with buttons undone.

  ‘You are Mrs Margaret Lewis?’ said Lambert. He had expected this opening exchange to take place on the door-step; it was curious how its delay had thrown him momentarily out of his stride.

  She nodded, then listened carefully as he introduced himself and Sergeant Hook. She crossed slim, nylon-clad ankles; he noticed leather shoes, with a heel high enough to be elegant without sacrificing comfort. She was clothed both fashionably and expensively. He wondered if she had dressed herself specifically for this meeting. He said, ‘I see the house is for sale.’

  It was not quite the conversational small-talk it appeared: he was looking for any sign of resentment in the blue eyes. He detected none. She said, ‘Yes. It went on the market two months ago. Probate took time, but the planning permission took longer still.’ She might have been a businesswoman explaining the situation to a naïve inquirer: there was no hint of bitterness at the prospect of losing the roof which had sheltered her for the last fourteen years. Yet all around them was evidence of her pride in this place.

  He moved on with an attempt at briskness. ‘Do you know why we are here, Mrs Lewis?’

  ‘I know about the exhumation.’ There was the first hint now of a tautness disturbing her composure, the first sign that her demeanour might just have been a carefully assumed disguise. But if she had liked her employer, as it was reasonable to project from her length of time in his service, the disturbance of that quiet grave would have upset her a little anyway. And the deduction that any intelligent woman would make that his death had not been as straightforward as she had previously assumed would be more distressing still. It was time to turn the screw a little.

  ‘I have to tell you now that the examination of the remains of Edmund Craven by medical experts reveals that he quite certainly did not die from natural causes.’ The formal recitation enabled him to protract the inevitable announcement, to study his listener’s reaction as it were in slow motion. He elicited nothing more here than a slow nod and a slight lift of the chin in anticipation. With the irritating lack of timing which makes the human brain a disconcerting instrument, he noticed at this moment that Margaret Lewis had a neck that was almost unlined and which offered no sign of the incipient double chin that her pleasantly curved form might have suggested in one of her years. He went on almost hastily, ‘I have to tell you, indeed, that we are now at the beginning of a murder inquiry.’

  There was, at last, a small, involuntary gasp from the woman opposite him. Probably it was no more than the reaction which the first mention of that word always brought. Lambert said, ‘The news is a surprise to you?’

  She took her time before answering. Then she said coolly, ‘No. I don’t suppose it is.’ For a moment, he thought she was not going to elaborate without further prompting. Then she said, ‘I’d heard, you see, that there was to be an exhumation, so I presumed something serious was wrong.’

  ‘Who told you about the exhumation?’

  ‘Mr Craven’s daughter, Angela Harrison, told me. Otherwise I should not have known.’ The terse statement became an accusation.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Mrs Lewis. The regulations require that we inform only the next of kin about an exhumation when the permission comes through from the Home Secretary’s Office. You would understand, I am sure, that it is in the interests of all that these things should be kept as private as possible until we know that there is a crime involved. If the death had been after all from natural causes, the fewer people who knew about the exhumation the better. I hope you see that.’

  She nodded, almost impatiently, with the air of one who has already put these arguments to herself repeatedly. ‘Apart from two weeks holiday a year when I was away from here, I saw Edmund Craven every day during the last thirteen years of his life. No one else could claim that.’ Lambert noted that for the first time she had dropped the title; his mind speculated for the instant before he controlled it on the possibilities of a sexual relationship between the personable Margaret Lewis and her elderly employer. There would be time enough for the investigation of such possibilities later. No doubt other people would be ready enough to tell him of any such liaison—it was always easier to collect salacious detail from those who observed than from those who were involved.

  He said stiffly, ‘We have to go by the rules, Mrs Lewis, even though we may sometimes feel privately that they do not operate fairly. Blood ties may not always be close, but they are usually all that the law recognises.’

  She gave him a small, grateful smile for the fact that he had bothered to explain, and said, ‘I acknowledge that it must be so. The role of housekeeper may involve all manner of things, but it has few rights or privileges attached to it, once people have to reach for the rule books. I was—still am, I suppose—a paid employee. No doubt it is good for me to be reminded of that from time to time.’

  Lambert chose to pick up the fact she had hinted at rather than the resentment. ‘You are still paid to be here, Mrs Lewis?’

  ‘I have been paid my full salary without a break since Mr Craven’s death. I have stayed on in the house and made sure to the best of my ability that it has been kept in good order.’ She gave an involuntary glance of pride around the comfortable room, caught Bert Hook’s unblinking eye, and desisted immediately from such weakness. ‘The family have been most generous.’ It was impossible to tell from her pronunciation of the word whether any irony was intended. ‘I have tried to repay them by getting the house ready to sell.’ This time he was sure there was a little bitterness in the simple statement: he stored the thought away for future clarification.

  ‘You have lived here alone since the death of Edmund Craven?’

  ‘Quite alone, Superintendent.’ He wondered why she seemed anxious to assert this so definitely. He left a pause, hoping she would elaborate on her situation, but she said only, ‘If this is going to take a little time, perhaps you would care for a cup of tea or coffee.’

  To Hook’s consternation, Lambert refused the offer, on the grounds that it was not long since breakfast and that they had a crowded schedule to observe. He was obscurely aware that this interview was causing her more concern than she cared to reveal; he did not want to break its thread here. Margaret Lewis said abruptly, ‘How was Mr Craven killed?’

  Lambert had expected the question, but not quite so quickly. Normally he would have withheld the information. But she would know soon enough: his decision to employ a scene of crime team meant that there would be police officers swarming all over the house later in the day, looking for any evidence of arsenic and where it might have been kept over a period of months. And he wanted to study her reaction to the news—if news it was, he reminded himself automatically.

  ‘Edmund Craven was poisoned, Mrs Lewis. I’d be obliged if you’d keep that information to yourself for the time being.’

  The clear blue eyes widened, the full lips parted a little. She looked at the tall man opposite her, wondering what was going on beneath the dark hair with its flecks of grey. Perched on the very edge of the big armchair, she looked even more as if she was in the room on sufferance. But there was no revelatory outburst of the kind Lambert ha
d hoped for. Indeed, she said nothing for a long moment, during which Hook chose to heighten the tension by switching to a new page of his notebook for the information he knew from experience he would be recording in the next few minutes. Then she said, in a voice low enough for them to have to strain after it in the quiet room, ‘Why wasn’t this discovered at the time?’

  ‘That, among other things, is what we shall have to find out in the course of our inquiries,’ said Lambert, almost as quietly.

  ‘Dr Carroll certified death was due to natural causes,’ she said dully.

  ‘I know. I shall be seeing him this afternoon. In the meantime, can you suggest any reason why he should have missed the real reason for death?’

  There was a small shrug of the slim shoulders under the mohair. ‘Edmund—Mr Craven—was a sick man. He’d had heart trouble for a number of years and been treated for it.’

  ‘Did he have a pacemaker?’

  ‘No. At the time, I thought that might have cost him his life. It had been discussed, you see, but he wasn’t keen on the surgery.’

  ‘When was it discussed? Can you remember?’

  ‘I couldn’t be certain; I think about six months before his death. Dr Carroll could tell you.’

  ‘It wasn’t raised again as his condition worsened?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. He went downhill very rapidly at the end, you see.’ Then her well-groomed hands suddenly clasped each other until the fingers shone white, and she said, ‘Is that when—?’

  Lambert let the unspoken horror hang between them for a moment, assessing the genuineness of her reaction, before he said, ‘Yes. It seems that Mr Craven was poisoned systematically over a period of weeks or months, rather than with one fatal administration.’ The formal jargon of the statement, which he had intended to mitigate its harshness, seemed to accentuate it. The listener, having to work out what the words meant in plain English, became more involved. It seemed a black parody of the subtle comedian who makes his audience work for their humour. He made a mental note of the technique he had applied unwittingly, so that he might use it deliberately on other occasions. It was no sin for a man to labour at his vocation, after all.