Dark Detectives

by Stephen Jones

  “Elmore!” Calloway boomed. “Not looking a day older, I swear it.” We stepped through into a hallway which, had it been slightly less roomy, would have made a good set for The Prisoner of Zenda (probably an avant-garde nude production, for the heat in the place was like a thick blanket).

  “Professor Calloway … by, it’s been a long time. It’s grand to sithee sir.” A mouthful of overlarge dentures grinned at us. “Sir Isaac told us tha’ was comin’.”

  Calloway gestured in my direction. “I took the liberty of bringing my friend Father Shea,” he explained. “I’m sure you can fit him in somewhere. Must be a couple of hundred rooms in this place. Sir Isaac about?”

  The butler shook a bald head. “Nay, the maister were feelin’ tired like. Went to bed some time ago. Tha’sll see him in the morning. Young Mr. Richard’s here, though, along with Mr. Peter Lambourne. Last I heard, they were goin’ down to t’games room to play billiards.”

  “And who are they?”

  “Why, sir, Mr. Richard’s Sir Isaac’s nephew, Mr. Richard Theobald, that is. And Mr. Lambourne’s Sir Isaac’s solicitor, here on business I shouldn’t wonder although both he and Sir Isaac have been close mouthed about that. Anyhow, come thee along, gentlemen, and I’ll sithee to thy rooms. When tha’rt freshened up, there’ll be a hot supper and drinks waiting.”

  We met our fellow guests while we were eating the very welcome meal that Elmore had set before us. The dining-room door was thrust open and a vigorous voice preceded its owner. “Come on, Lambourne, just one more drink as a night-cap—Hello, who are you?”

  The speaker was a stocky young man, probably in his mid-twenties, casually dressed in flared corduroy trousers and flowered shirt. Dark hair tumbled to his shoulders and he wore a heavy Zapata moustache. A slightly older man with shiny black hair plastered to his skull followed him in. He wore a heavy, expensive-looking pin-striped suit. I didn’t understand how he could stand the near-tropical heat in the house. Perhaps he was just impervious to it.

  We introduced ourselves. The young man turned to Elmore, who had started to clear the supper table. “You didn’t tell me other guests were due.” While not exactly angry, there was displeasure in his tone.

  “Well, Mr. Richard, happen I reckoned it was Sir Isaac’s place to tell thee who he asks to his own house … sir.” No love lost there.

  Calloway had been staring at Richard Theobald. “Have we ever met?” he asked. “I’m sure I know you. Southdown University possibly?”

  “I don’t think so,” the younger man said, adding, “After all, I went to Cambridge.” There was arrogance in his smile and distaste for the lesser universities in his tone.

  I didn’t sleep too well that night, probably a combination of strange bed and oppressive heat. But towards morning I drifted off and as a result overslept a little by my standards. It was after nine that I went down for breakfast. I had awakened to the unnatural stillness and clarity which indicates heavy snowfall and this was confirmed when I drew back the light curtains at the bedroom window. Thick drifts piled their way up the hills and beyond, muffling all sound. Although not snowing at the moment, a louring sky threatened to send much more, and soon. I couldn’t see us going anywhere for a while. “Just a quick trip,” Calloway had promised when he had called at the presbytery. “Should be only a day or so.” A time will come when I stop listening to him.

  I mentioned the weather to Elmore while he was serving me with bacon and eggs. “Aye, sir, it can get bad up in these parts. Tha could find thisen stuck here for days now. Good job that we allus keep a well-stocked larder here. The nearest village is Felldike and that’s nigh impossible to reach when t’snow cooms down.”

  Theobald and Lambourne came in at that point and started eating with no more than a perfunctory greeting. I couldn’t help feeling that as far as these two were concerned, Calloway and I could depart and get lost in the snow-covered wilds. Then my friend drifted in, boomingly cheerful, a large bowl of steaming porridge in one hand and what looked suspiciously like a glass of brandy in the other. Throughout the oatmeal, bacon and eggs and endless toast and honey, he carried on a one-sided conversation, oblivious to the other men’s almost curmudgeonly manners.

  Spreading marmalade thickly onto a bread-roll, Theobald turned casually to the old servant and said, “Have you seen my uncle this morning, Elmore?”

  “That I haven’t, sir. But maister looked fair whacked last night as tha knows.” The butler pulled out an ancient pocket watch and consulted it with grave concentration. “Not often he’s this late, though. Maister may be in his eighties but he allus puts away a hearty breakfast. Mebbe I’d better call him.”

  Minutes later Elmore was back, puffing heavily as if he had put in an unusual effort. “I can’t get any reply from maister, gents, and his room seems to be locked from the inside.”

  “Perhaps we’d better take a look, Richard,” said the lawyer, Lambourne. They left the room and Calloway jerked his head to indicate that we should follow. As we reached the hallway we could hear the footsteps of our fellow-guests overhead. Elmore had waited for us.

  “Coom on, Professor, I’ll show thee to the maister’s bedroom.”

  He conducted us up the stairs and then along a corridor in a separate wing from the one where Calloway and I were quartered. We reached our destination to find Theobald trying to open the door, rattling the handle and pushing his weight against it, while Lambourne knocked hard against the panels with his fist. Both men were calling out to the occupant to open up.

  Without ceremony, Calloway used his great weight to thrust them aside with ease. Calloway often takes strangers by surprise that way. Most mistake his fat for flab. It isn’t. It’s more the solid weight of an old bruiser gone to seed.

  Grunting an insincere “Sorry!” Calloway squatted by the door and peered through the keyhole. “Black as night in there,” he commented, rising to his feet. “The curtains must still be closed. As far as I can make out, though, there’s no key on the inside of the door.”

  “There must be something wrong with my uncle,” said Theobald, “Lord knows we’ve been making enough noise.”

  “Perhaps we’d better break the door down,” Lambourne suggested.

  “More likely break your shoulder,” Calloway told him. “These doors are solid. Is there a spare key, Elmore?”

  “Nay, maister keeps only key. Best if someone goes in through window, sir. We’ve got ladders in the old stables. We’ll have to dig our way across, likely. We keep spades in the house for this time of year and a fair old selection of gumboots and overshoes, so I should be able to fit you all up.”

  As it turned out, it was Theobald and myself who dug out a back-breaking path through a couple of feet of snow to the stables and then, with ladders, struggled our way back to the spot below Sir Isaac’s bedroom windows. Calloway, probably far and away the strongest of us, shamelessly ignored all hints that he should help, while Lambourne smoothed down his already slick hair and muttered something about sedentary work having ill-prepared him for this.

  We raised the ladders then looked at each other. I hate ladders but I made a half-hearted gesture to mount it. Theobald stopped me. “I’m the youngest here. I’d better go,” he said. “If you could just make sure that the ladder stays firm.” At last Calloway consented to do something useful, sauntering through the narrow channel cleared in the snow and applying his weight to the ladder’s base.

  Theobald shinned up the ladder far more quickly than I could have done, or would have tried, and there was the sound of breaking glass as he smashed a pane to reach in and release the lock holding the sash window fast closed. He pushed the window up and we saw his legs disappear through the gap.

  There was the sound of curtains on ancient brass rings being ripped back and then a pause of several minutes before Theobald’s head appeared once more. “You’d better all come up,” he called. “I think that my uncle’s dead.”

  Theobald admitted us to the bedroom which was stif
lingly hot, although it would probably cool down fairly rapidly now that the window was open. “The key was on the bedside cabinet,” said the young man. “My uncle’s on the bed. It looks like he locked himself in for the night after we got him to bed and then just died.”

  “Indeed,” Lambourne added. “Now I wish that we’d taken more notice when Sir Isaac said he felt unwell. I’m afraid I just put it down to the weariness of old age.”

  I went to the bed and sought a pulse at the wrist and throat of Sir Isaac Pryce. I noticed a slight crust of dried vomit around his mouth and similar stains down the front of the dressing-gown he wore. Even as I touched him I knew it was too late. The body was cold, but I tried. Nothing. I turned to my companions and shook my head. I don’t know what religion, if any, that Sir Isaac had belonged to but I whispered the words of absolution and sketched a blessing in the air.

  Theobald and Lambourne had adopted suitable expressions of sadness but I didn’t get an impression that they were heartbroken. Calloway simply looked resigned. The only genuine grief came from poor old Elmore. He sat down on the edge of the bed and reached out one gentle hand to touch the still form. “He were a good maister,” said the old man, a tear running down his cheek.

  “You know, it’s possible we have a tragic accident here,” said Richard Theobald. “I think my uncle may have inadvertently taken an overdose—either that or it was deliberate. Look, there’s a bottle of brandy on his bedside table and his bottle of his sleeping pills is empty. I’m sure that he had quite a few left yesterday.” He made as if to pick up the objects.

  “No, don’t touch them please.” Calloway’s voice was quiet but there was unmistakable authority there. “The police could well need them later for forensic examination.”

  “The police?” Lambourne sounded scornful. “Just look out of the window, Calloway. With all that snow, we’ll be lucky if the police can make it here within the next four or five days. More, probably, seeing that Sir Isaac would not have a telephone in the house. You know, if we’re going to be isolated, it could get unpleasant in here.” Suddenly he looked queasy.

  Calloway had been gazing hard at Theobald. Without a by-your-leave he leaned over and plucked something from the younger man’s sweater sleeve. “Loose thread,” he explained, holding up a scrap of white cotton. “I can’t bear untidiness.” The others stared at him. When it comes to elegant dressing, Calloway is of the school of men who always appear to have forgotten to undress for bed on the previous night.

  Then Calloway took charge. “I think that we can move the body to the stables or an outhouse later on. It will be cold enough out there for a few days at least. We’ll handle matters as respectfully as we can.

  “In the meantime, perhaps you two will take Elmore downstairs and see that he’s all right. Roderick and I will stay here and do what needs to be done.”

  “Why you two? Why not us?” Lambourne’s voice was querulous, that of a man who knows that inside he is only small and ineffectual but who is trying to establish his authority.

  “Who better?” said Calloway soothingly. “You’re both so close to him; we’re more detached. And after all, Roderick’s a priest and I’m a professor.”

  Okay, so he told the truth, but it was an amazingly flexible truth. Calloway is a professor neither of medicine nor pathology. Not that it matters. The others accepted our credentials without further question and, I’m sure, with some relief, and they led Elmore away.

  Calloway closed the door firmly behind them. “Right, Roderick, let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  I looked around me. The chamber was a large one, dark-panelled, with a high ceiling and a deeply luxurious carpet underfoot. Over to the left as you entered was an immense, old-fashioned hearth. There were similar fireplaces in the guest-rooms and even larger ones downstairs. The remains of a fire—ashes and glowing embers of wood—still smouldered in this one. Near to the hearth was an antique captain’s chair of some dark wood with a worn, red leather seat. Directly opposite the fire was a sash window with broken glass beneath it from where Theobald had forced an entry. Crimson velvet curtains, far more thick and heavy than those in my room, had been pulled back roughly. A second set of curtains was still drawn, covering another window.

  Sir Isaac’s bed was a huge four-poster hung with crimson drapes to match the window curtains. The mattress was obviously substantial and the baronet’s body lay on top of a thick eiderdown of a type rarely seen any more. To the right of the bed was a cabinet with an electric lamp and the bottles Theobald had referred to.

  The old man himself, lying on his back, was clad—as already noted—in a long dressing-gown of royal blue, beneath which he was still wearing shirt and trousers. His feet were covered with a pair of dark blue slippers and I noted with mild amusement that he was wearing yellow socks. He looked peaceful enough. I guessed that when brought to his room, he had simply settled down to rest, perhaps vomited in his sleep and had died.

  “Looks as if we’ve had a wasted journey,” I said to my friend.

  “Not at all.” He was studying the bedside table, scratching one cheek and humming to himself. It sounded like an old Buddy Holly number. Abruptly he switched to a Beatles tune, picked up both bottles, examined them briefly and set them down again with care. “Come over here, Roderick. Tell me what you see.”

  I did as bid. “A bottle of Remy Martin, about one-third full, and an empty prescription bottle.” I peered more closely at the latter. “Phenobarbitone, I think. There was a lot of fuss about that when I was a boy in the Forties.”

  “Yes, Remy Martin and phenobarbitones. Anything else?”

  I could only guess that he meant the fine film of dust, disturbed only by the moving of the bottles, and said so.

  “Right.” The off-key humming started again as Reuben Calloway wandered around the room. Now it was Presley’s turn to be treated discordantly. Calloway halted by the captain’s chair, then stooped to fiddle with something. When he straightened he was half-smiling.

  “Another thread,” he told me. “Caught in a splinter in the arm of the chair.”

  “I know, you hate untidiness.” Not to be outdone I glanced about and spotted a tiny piece of white stuck to the cuff of the dead man’s dressing gown. “There’s another!”

  “Ah, thank you Roderick and well done. That’s where I intended to look next.” Smug glee lit his face and he said, “But you’ve missed some more.” He pointed to the door of the bedside cabinet from which another thread protruded. He tugged at it and the door came open, spilling an untidy pile of white bandages on the floor. He picked them up. There were several raggedly cut lengths of material. “There you are,” Calloway announced as if making a great revelation.

  Straightening up, he said, “Now, I want you to help me with something which may seem ghoulish. We’re going to get some of the clothes off Sir Isaac.”

  I made some sort of protest but only because I thought Calloway would expect it. I know my friend and accepted that he wouldn’t do such a thing without good reason.

  I eased off Sir Isaac’s slippers and—at Calloway’s insistence—his socks. While I was doing that, Calloway ran gentle hands over the body. “No rigor mortis yet,” he muttered. “But then the room was stinking hot, what with the fire and the central heating. I don’t know too much about it, Roderick, but I believe that rigor can be retarded or hastened depending on the ambient temperature. Right, let’s get on.”

  We started on the difficult bit. Disrobing a corpse is tiring but we managed as far as was necessary for Calloway’s purposes. We managed to lift the old man’s dressing-gown and shirt to his shoulders and trousers and shorts down to his ankles. His buttocks, the backs of his thighs and his lower legs and feet were a dull, liverish colour.

  Calloway pointed to the discoloration. “Hypostasis,” he announced.

  “Post-mortem lividity,” I agreed. Two could play at one upmanship.

  Calloway took the game a bit further. “So tell me what’s wrong,�
� he said.

  “Good grief, Calloway, I’m a priest, not a mortician!” Calloway just frowned and so I looked at the body more carefully. Then I realised what he was getting at. “There’s no lividity on his back,” I said.

  “Good, Roderick. Now doesn’t that seem strange for someone who died sleeping in that position? And look, there are some very faint marks around his forearms and chest.” Calloway pointed and I peered. There may have been something there. I wasn’t sure but my friend’s eyes are sharper than mine.

  Calloway plucked at his lower lip. “I think Sir Isaac was right all those years ago,” he mused. “He was to be murdered and the prophecy has been fulfilled.”

  Deep down I felt that Calloway might be right but I had to play the Devil’s advocate. “This just isn’t so much wishful thinking on your part?” I asked. “You’re not trying to read too much into what’s happened?” Then I had another thought. “The door was locked from the inside. Surely that casts doubt on any chance of foul play?”

  “Ah, yes, the locked room. Thank you for pointing that out to me, Roderick. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

  Why did I have the odd feeling that I was being patronised?

  We re-dressed Sir Isaac and laid him out as best we could. Then we left, locking the door behind us.

  Lambourne and Theobald were waiting in the library. “Such a sad business,” Calloway told them, “I think you were probably right, Theobald. Just another tragic misadventure. You read about it so often in the press, all too frequently with the elderly. They take one or two sleeping tablets, then wake up in the middle of the night, forget that they’ve had their dose and repeat it. Just so that we can be clear about matters, what happened last night before myself and Father Shea arrived?”

  Between them, the two men related the sequence of events. During dinner, Sir Isaac had complained of feeling tired and unwell. At last he had asked to be taken to his room. His nephew and the solicitor had helped him and once there, he had just wanted to be helped onto his bed and allowed to rest. That was the last they had seen of him.