Fear of Drowning

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, for one thing he didn’t take baths. He had a fear of drowning, he had the lake in the grounds filled in for that reason, pretty well the first thing he did was to fill in the lake.’

  ‘Sam Sprie has just told me, he let the angling club fish it out, and then filled it in.’

  ‘Yes … that’s right … the village liked him after that … but those people that have got the house now … but anyway, he always took showers, had a platform built to stand on … he had the shower put up for him, bit of a contraption but it worked. Then he had some steps built up to get from the floor onto the platform. The bath was a bit big for him to get into … you imagine a bath…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The rim of which is just below shoulder height as you stand against it, if you’re in it and outstretch your arms, you can touch either side, just, and if you stand at the opposite end of the bath to the taps, it takes you half a dozen full-length strides, at least, to reach the taps … well, that was the size of the bath for Mr Williams. I can see why he was frightened of drowning.’

  ‘So can I, since you put it like that.’

  ‘And when I found him, the steps and the platform were up against the wall, well away from the bath … he couldn’t have got into the bath without the steps…’

  ‘Are you suggesting someone else was involved?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, but … well, this is going back ten years now … but the bath was filled with tap water.’

  Yellich raised his eyebrows as if to say, What other sort of water is there?

  ‘I mean,’ said Mrs O’Shea. ‘I mean as opposed to water from the shower. The taps on the bath were never used, they hadn’t been used at all during the time that Mr Williams was the owner. The house was empty for a while before Mr Williams moved in … they’d rusted shut … I couldn’t turn them on, I used the water from the shower when I cleaned the bath. I don’t say they were rusted solid, a strong man could have turned them on, but I couldn’t, and Mr Williams didn’t. But when I found him, the shower was dry, not dripping, because Mr Williams never turned it off properly, but the taps were dripping. And I turned them on and then off again, easily, they’d been freed off.’

  ‘Hence the open verdict,’ Yellich said more to himself than Mrs O’Shea.

  ‘Probably. There was something deliberate about the death, but I don’t think anybody wanted to say suicide … no note or anything … Mr Williams wasn’t depressed … he was just trotting along with life and had a good sense of humour … I mean, he didn’t like being a cretin, he told me once that that was his medical condition … I’ve heard the word being used as an insult, I never knew it was a real medical condition until I met Mr Williams, but he just accepted it … his dogs didn’t see him as a dwarf. The gardener never saw him from one week to the next, he had few visitors … there was just me … and after a while, after a short while, I didn’t see him as different at all. I got to like doing for him, as I said. Used to talk to me, tell me how he’d done on the stock market … “Did well today, Mrs Q’Shea,” he’d say or, “Didn’t do too well, but I’ll make it up tomorrow.” Then he’d spend time with his dogs, he loved them and they loved him … didn’t take them walks but they had the run of the grounds. He just wasn’t a suicide type person. There was nothing to do with the dogs after he died but have them put down. They pined for him … they wouldn’t be taken from the house … I know what they felt … I gave up my work after that and settled for my pension and my savings. I just couldn’t do for anybody after Mr Williams.’

  ‘Did you ever meet his relatives?’

  ‘His brother once or twice, Mr Max Williams, smooth type, gold fillings … all smiles and daggers … he visited once and left his wife and children in the car outside the house on a hot day … after that he just visited alone. One day … well, see, if you “do” for a man or a family long enough you get to know what’s going on and once Mr Williams told me that his brother was getting expensive, then he said, “but what can I do? Blood is blood.” That’s what he said. “Blood is blood.”’

  ‘Did you meet his nephew or niece?’

  ‘The nephew. The navy man. Arrogant giant of a man. The way he looked at me … like dirt. He called me “O’Shea” and he called the gardener “Sprie”, just surnames … but never in Mr Williams’s hearing. He was handsome in his uniform and he knew it, very full of himself. I suppose the girls would go for him. Visited Mr Williams a few times in the last eighteen months … spent time with the dogs … bought them liquorice … dogs are fond of liquorice … walking the grounds with them. They got to wagging their tails when he came.’

  ‘One last question, Mrs O’Shea, the day you found Mr Williams’s body. What day of the week was it, can you recall?’

  ‘It was a Monday. Definitely a Monday. It’ll be written up, you’ll be able to check it, but I can tell you it was a Monday. First day of the week, last day of my working life.’

  * * *

  Yellich walked the short, but not unpleasant, walk to the vicarage which was not, to his surprise, a stone-built, ivy-covered house, but a newly built semi-detached house set in a neat garden and a gravel drive. He thought himself fortunate to find the Reverend Eaves at home. He revealed himself to be a tall, kindly seeming, silver-haired man and was pleased to direct Yellich to the home of Sydney Tamm who had been churchwarden at the time of Marcus Williams’s death.

  Sydney Tamm was by contrast a short man with a furrowed brow. He drove the garden fork into the ground between the row of potato plants in his front garden and looked at Yellich. ‘Police?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Marcus Williams.’

  ‘Aye. Sitting up and taking notice at last, are you?’

  ‘Should we?’

  ‘Aye. Mind, I can’t tell you anything that’s not known, isn’t known … well, you’d better come into the house.’

  The closest description that Yellich could find to describe Sydney Tamm’s house was ‘refuse tip’. It even smelled like one. The accumulated tabloids revealed that it probably hadn’t been cleaned for the last five years. The house was probably difficult to live in in the winter but the summer heat made the smell near unbearable to Yellich. Many flies buzzed in the window or flew in figure-of-eight patterns in the air above the table on which remnants of food remained on dirty plates, themselves on newspaper which served as a tablecloth.

  ‘I’m not proud of my house. I’m not ashamed of it.’ Tamm sat in an armchair. ‘You can sit in that chair there, if you want, but most of my visitors choose to stand.’

  ‘I’ll stand.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Tamm reached for a packet of cigarettes, and taking one, lit it with a match, putting the spent match back in the box. ‘She’d turn in her grave if she could see her house.’ He nodded to a photograph of a bonny-looking woman which stood, in a frame, on the mantelpiece.

  ‘You were the churchwarden of St Mark’s?’

  ‘Was. Don’t qualify … not a Christian any more, am I? Can you imagine a Christian living in a house like this? Cleanliness is next to godliness. I had religion all my days, and then my Myrtle took cancer … if there was a God, He wouldn’t have let a good woman like her suffer like she did. I buried her decent like, but then I told the vicar I wanted no more of his cant. I spend my days down the Dunn Cow now with the rest of the old lads of the village … it’s the only pub around here for the fogies, all the rest is for the young ’un’s, all that music, them machines with their weird sound and the flashing lights. But the Cow, it’s still as a pub should be.’

  ‘You don’t use the Sun with the angling club?’

  Tamm looked at Yellich, as if surprised at his knowledge of Little Asham. ‘No … no, I don’t use the Sun.’ Said as if there was a story … a fall-out with the publican, a row with the anglers. Something had happened. ‘The Cow’s all right and all those boys who have never had religion have all been right all along, and
the vicar and me have been wrong all along. The vicar, he calls from time to time, but less so now, he’s giving up on me … his lost sheep is gone … devoured by the wolf at the Dunn Cow.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘The smell is terrible.’

  ‘It’s not so bad, a good clean, plenty of disinfectant, you could get on top of your house again in no time.’

  ‘Cancer. The smell of cancer. It’s a terrible smell. It’s one of those smells … smell it once and you’ll never forget it … it stays in your nose. Myrtle … she had it on her skin … started out as a mole … then it was all over in the end, all over her. Her skin looked like … poor Myrtle … even now, five years this November, I can still smell the smell. I sleep downstairs, the smell hasn’t left the room where she died. Not properly … I won’t open a window, nor the door. Do you want to go up and smell it?’

  ‘No … I don’t think so.’

  ‘If you did, you’ll never go near those canting priests and their steeple houses again.’

  ‘Again, all I can say is I’m sorry.’

  ‘Aye … look, I don’t get my pension for a day or two, I don’t suppose you could let me have the money for a beer, only there’s a darts match at the Cow?’

  Yellich took his wallet out and laid a ten-pound note on the sideboard. ‘Tenner OK?’

  ‘Thanks … I can go out tonight.’

  ‘So, Mr Williams?’

  ‘Aye, there’s still rumours about yon. I saw a young man driving through the village on the day he died, the Sunday. I’d locked up the church after Evensong, that would be at seven-thirty. I was walking home when the car passed me, going quite fast for the narrow road. Saw the driver, young man…’

  ‘He was driving away from Oakfield House?’

  ‘Yes. He came to the village and took the York road. It goes through Malton, but if he was going to the coast, there’s another road he’d take which would avoid Malton. It’s a fair bet he was heading to York, in that direction, anyway. I didn’t recognize him, he was a stranger. But I saw him just once again … he was a mourner at Mr Williams’s funeral; being a churchwarden, I was at the funeral … making sure everything was where it ought to be, and he was there, same young man, then he was in a naval officer’s uniform.’

  * * *

  Yellich returned to Malton, and parking his car in front of the police station, ensuring that the ‘police’ sign was in the windscreen, he set off on foot, seeking the firm of Ibbotson, Utley and Swales. He amused himself by looking for it, rather than enquiring as to its location. Exercising logic, and the benefit of previous observation, he confined his search to the older part of Malton where he found one solicitors’ office, then another, then an estate agent’s, then beyond that, the building occupied by the firm of Ibbotson, Utley and Swales.

  ‘Our juniors never let up, not allowed to.’ Julian Ibbotson reclined in his chair in an oak-panelled room which reminded Yellich of Ffoulkes’s office in the Yorkshire and Lancashire Bank in York, the same solid, timeless quality. ‘Every ten minutes has to be accounted for. Not like that when I started, I doubt I could stand the pace. I belong to a different era, thank goodness. Too fast-paced for me, even in sleepy Malton. Retirement beckons, oh my, how it beckons.’

  ‘You have plans for your retirement, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes … plans, plans and yet more plans. But enough, I understand that you wish to see me about a client of ours?’

  ‘Ex-client. Marcus Williams.’

  ‘Oh yes … Oakfield House, open verdict … eight, ten years ago?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘If you want to access the documents you’ll need a warrant, but I wish to help and so I’ll answer any questions as accurately as I can.’

  ‘Why do you wish to help?’

  ‘The open verdict. I’m a lawyer, you are a police officer, we both know what an open verdict means.’ Ibbotson smiled, a thin smile from a long face.

  ‘A piece of the puzzle is missing?’

  ‘Yes … his death was no accident, he wasn’t the suicidal type … he had a physical condition which may, nay, certainly would have taken some coming to terms with, but once he’d made the adjustment he had a lot to live for. Foul pay cannot be ruled out.’

  ‘It can’t?’

  ‘And a police officer from York, not our local branch of the North Yorkshire Constabulary, what, I ask myself is this to do with the double murder of Mr and Mrs Williams of which I read all agog in the Yorkshire Post a day or two ago?’

  ‘Much,’ said Yellich. ‘Possibly. We are pursuing a line of enquiry, more than one, in fact. Can I ask you who benefited from Mr Marcus Williams’s estate?’

  ‘His brother. The now also deceased Mr Max Williams.’

  ‘Quite a sum was involved?’

  ‘About six million pounds. And that was after death duties. Later he came into another half-million pounds when Oakfield House was sold to those who have come to save us. They and their oxen.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Confess I’m more than a little surprised that Mr Max Williams should be living in such a modest bungalow when he died. I saw the photograph in the Post and I nearly fell off my chair. Can you tell me if it was by choice or necessity that he lived in such a small house?’

  ‘Necessity.’

  ‘That takes skill.’ Ibbotson fixed Yellich with steely eyes. ‘Getting rid of six million pounds in ten years is an act of consummate skill.’

  ‘Any other beneficiaries?’

  ‘Scanner appeal at the hospital in York, plus a charity for disabled persons, quite generous, I suppose, in comparison to the usual donations they receive, but neither sum made a dent in his estate.’

  ‘What about his niece and nephew?’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a niece and nephew and thereby I answer your question. All went to his brother, save a hundred thousand to the scanner appeal and a similar amount to the disabled persons charity.’

  As he drove back to York, Louise D’Acre entered Yellich’s mind. He had always seen the Home Office pathologist as being headmistressy in a prim and stuffy sort of way, driving the old Riley as if fashion and modernity didn’t reach her, yet all the time she had been cherishing her father’s memory by nurturing his one and only motor car so that it still gave sterling service long after its design life had expired. Frightening, he thought, frightening how you can be wrong about people.

  8

  Friday

  … In which Chief Inspector Hennessey lunches with the Senior Service and afterwards pays a house call.

  ‘I’m only prepared to speak off the record.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ grunted Hennessey.

  ‘Good.’ The man paused. ‘Well, there’s a pub in the village near the base, the Dog and Duck, they do a passable ploughman’s lunch. Shall we say between twelve and twelve-thirty?’

  ‘Excellent, thank you, sir. I’ll be there.’ Hennessey replaced the receiver gently. Suddenly Patrick Wood came to mind … Patrick, of course … a good bloke, a very good bloke. One more name for the list. He spent the remainder of the morning addressing administrative matters and at eleven-thirty, signed out and drove out towards Knaresborough where he located HMS Halley and the village, and finally the Dog and Duck.

  ‘Mr Hennessey?’ Commander Timmins revealed himself to be a short man, bespectacled, with a grey suit and white shirt with blue stripes and a dark-blue tie, black shoes. He approached Hennessey confidently as Hennessey entered the pub, lowering his head against the low beams.

  ‘That’s me.’ The two men shook hands. Each ordered a ham ploughman’s and each a pint of Black Sheep Best. They carried their beer to a table in a bay window composed of many small panes of glass. ‘Nice pub.’

  ‘Don’t use it often.’ Timmins sipped his beer. ‘It’s the policy of all military bases not to use pubs in the immediate location of the base. It means we don’t dominate the local area in the way that university students dominate their local area, keeps the relation
ship within the local community more positive than would otherwise be the case. We don’t allow our boys or girls to drink in groups of four or more less than four miles from the base. We call it the “fours rule”. It means that our impact is dissolved over a wider area. But a one-off in mufti, as you see, that’s not against the rules.’

  ‘Well, thanks for seeing me. It may or may not come to nothing, but it concerns Lieutenant Williams.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘His parents have been murdered.’

  ‘I know. He’s told me. He hasn’t given much away, he hasn’t requested compassionate leave, says he doesn’t want it. He says the job keeps his mind occupied and by fortunate coincidence he was based close to home when tragedy struck. Even in today’s shrinking navy, he could still have been anywhere in the world, even as a shore-based officer, yet when tragedy strikes his family, he is based within three hours’ walk of his parents’ house.’

  ‘Coincidence, as you say.’

  ‘He’s not a suspect, I hope?’

  ‘He has no motivation, he won’t benefit from their deaths. They were broke, even their home was about to be repossessed, so we think.’

  ‘Really? I wonder where he got it from?’

  ‘It?’

  ‘The money. He has only a modest salary, but has a sports car and rents accommodation off the base.’

  ‘He’s allowed to do that?’

  ‘Oh yes, only the most junior personnel, both officers and other ranks, are kept inside the fence. But once someone has got some time in they can live off the base. So long as they report when they’re expected to report, there isn’t a problem. The real obstacle of living off the base is the cost of accommodation, even with the rent allowance. But money never seemed to be an obstacle to Lieutenant Williams.’ Timmins ceased speaking and both men leaned backwards as a generous ploughman’s lunch was laid before each of them. Timmins smiled at the young waitress and Hennessey said, ‘Thank you.