More Deaths Than One

by Marjorie Eccles

  “I know what a business consultancy is, but what qualifies Mrs. Fleming for it?”

  “She took a degree in Business Studies and Administration, started out in a small way and worked her company up to what it is now. Like father, like daughter, seemingly. Nobody can keep up with her; they say she works twenty-five hours a day. One of those what they call hyperactive types, I reckon. No wonder she needs sleeping pills. No hobbies, except squash, which she plays to win. ”

  “She should play to lose?”

  “No joke, even the men are terrified of her. She plays like a tiger.” Mayo, who half an hour previously had been speculating on insurances in specific relation to Georgina Fleming’s late husband, said, “She’s not short of a few thousand, then?”

  “Ks. It’s Ks, not thousands, in yuppyspeak. Serious money.”

  “Oh God, come off it, Martin, give it me in basic English.”

  “The answer’s no, she isn’t short. I guess she could easily have been supporting Fleming in the life to which he was accustomed and not felt a thing. But would she? I mean, they were evidently leading very nearly separate lives, weren’t they? And don’t forget that woman in the photo. Mrs. Fleming didn’t strike me as the sort to suffer anybody being a drag on her.”

  “There’s more ways of getting rid of a husband than blowing his head off.”

  “True. But whether she did it or not, I’ll bet she feels it’s good riddance.”

  “One thing I’d never bet on, Martin, and that’s what Mrs. Fleming might or might not be thinking.”

  Grief comes in many guises. He remembered her reaction to the sight of the body. And also, that moment of softness when she’d been speaking of the Sunday evening she’d spent with her husband, and the conviction he’d had that she and Fleming had been making love. I was right about that at any rate, he thought, I was right.

  Iron gates marked the beginning of Upper Delph’s drive, a gravelled roadway which wound for nearly a quarter of a mile before it began to rise and they came in sight of the house.

  “Stone me!” said Kite.

  The ground rose even more steeply behind the house and a thick belt of trees climbed to the skyline. A hundred yards away was the old quarry, or delph, which had given the house its name, long abandoned and choked now with scrub hazel and gorse. The house had a grim and ancient appearance, a low rambling edifice with a few outbuildings straggling at the back, fronted only by a small paved garden inside a low privet hedge, with ivy scrambling to the slate roof, half-obscuring some of the windows so that it had a lowering, frowning aspect. To one side stood all that was left of a huge old conifer, its split trunk and remaining branches giving it the look of a one-armed sentinel, and at the other side a crumbling square tower, also ivy-covered, where rooks circled and cawed in the darkening afternoon.

  By the time they had climbed the short flight of steps to the front door, Mayo was half-expecting to be met by the owner, armed with a shotgun. Instead, it was opened by a middle-aged woman, smartly dressed in a cherry red jersey suit that showed off a neat, well-rounded figure and complemented her plentiful dark hair and rosy cheeks. Mrs. Culver? Somehow, Mayo hadn’t expected a wife.

  He soon found, however, that she was not Culver’s wife but his daily housekeeper, and that Culver himself was out, but expected back any minute. “He always takes a long walk this time in the afternoon, past the lake, but he’ll be back for his tea.”

  Mayo said they’d wait in the car. Her eyes were bright with speculation. He could see she guessed why they were there and, taking pity on her obvious curiosity, introduced himself and produced identification.

  “Come in out of the cold, why don’t you? Have a cup of tea yourselves while you wait. Shouldn’t be many minutes now.”

  Declining the tea – somehow Mayo thought it would hardly do for Culver to come back and find them sampling his hospitality before some rather stringent questions were put to him regarding his shotgun and his relations with the dead man – but accepting the offer to wait inside, Mayo and Kite followed Mrs. Stretton into a front room, where she poked up the coal fire to a bright blaze and switched on a lamp.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” she said, handing Kite a newspaper before closing the door behind her.

  Left to themselves, Kite looked at the paper, saw that he’d already seen it, lost interest and offered it to Mayo, but he had already begun a perambulation of the room, and declined.

  There were books everywhere, on a wall of shelves and piled up untidily elsewhere. A comfortable, slightly shabby room, a sort of study or den, the furnishings a mixture of antique and the merely old, chosen for comfort and use rather than their place in some overall scheme: a wing chair that had taken its owner’s shape, an upright piano with a silk runner across its top, a Georgian breakfront bookcase in the corner with a television set and a stack of records in front of it. Curtains of an undistinguished dark green rep and a carpet that had seen better days.

  Culver was taking his time. A Viennese wall clock ticked the minutes away slowly and the afternoon darkened a little more while they waited. The heaped-up fire made the room very warm. Kite, who hated waiting, yawned and fidgeted at the unplanned hiatus and began idly flicking through a thick sketchbook which lay open on a small table beside where he sat, with pencils, rubbers and a box of aquarelle pastels lying beside it.

  Mayo had come to a pause before a small watercolour, an amateur though not, he thought, unskilled painting of the house as it had once been, the sort of painting done by Victorian young ladies of the family. It showed the ravaged tree outside the house in all its former glory and the now ruined tower attached to a wing that had once been part of the main body of the house. He concluded there must have been a fire or some such calamity which had destroyed most of the wing, leaving only the squat remains of the tower standing. If this was the case it must have been many years since, when the Paulings owned the house perhaps, for now there was a tree growing from the centre of the tower, overtopping it by twenty feet.

  “What d’you think of this?” came Kite’s voice from behind him, as he held out the sketchbook.

  It was nearly full, every page replete with drawings of trees, in all seasons, at every stage of growth and decay, all carefully labelled with their correct botanical name as well as their common one. Each one was, as far as either man could judge, competently drawn and subtly tinted, but more than that, there was a liveliness and vigour, a feeling for life about them that sprang from the page. Some were Arthur Rackham trees, wild and witching, others mere abstracts in their spareness and quickness of line. On one page there was a plane tree with big, maple-like leaves, the light shining on its flaking, moss-encrusted bark, making on it a diamond pattern of ruby and green. Flanking it on the next page was a group of slender silver birches with daffodils blowing beneath, under the pendulous branches. The last drawing in the book was of the crippled tree by the side of the house – Cedrus Atlantica, its ribbed corky bark and its one living branch investing it with a threatening air, like some ogreish wood demon.

  “Wish I could draw like that!” Kite exclaimed, obviously impressed. Although he didn’t know anything more about art than knowing what he didn’t like, he was willing to give anyone who could hold a pencil the benefit of the doubt. “Culver, d’you think?”

  “I don’t know about that, but it looks like a man’s work, to me.”

  Mayo, not much more knowledgeable than Kite, didn’t know why he thought so, except that there was some strength of line about the drawings that suggested an indubitably masculine hand. But if they were Culver’s, they had a sensitivity that didn’t square with the hard man conjured up by that conversation with the Salisburys. Perhaps they were in for a surprise.

  At that moment, they heard the man and the dog approach the house and enter by the back door. Mayo turned the pages back to where they had been left open. Not that he had too many scruples about intruding, even into something that was obviously intensely private. Scruples were so
mething neither he nor his suspects could afford to have. But he didn’t want Culver to know they’d been looking at his work.

  The man’s voice could be heard, evidently speaking to the housekeeper. “Still here, Molly? Whose is the car? All right, leave it ready and then you must get off.” And then he was in the room with them, a tall, heavy-shouldered old man. Coarser-featured than his daughter, with a deep-clefted chin, lively dark eyes and strong bones, yet within that leathery countenance was contained a strong resemblance to Georgina Fleming. The similarity of feature was indeed quite striking, and when he spoke there was something of the same abruptness, though he was civilly polite, offering tea and, when it was refused, asking them shortly what they wanted.

  The sergeant, with whom Mayo had arranged to start the questioning, began without preamble. “Do you own a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun, Mr. Culver?”

  “I own several shotguns.”

  “Have you checked recently that they’re all there?”

  “On Sunday. Why d’you want to know?”

  Kite countered with another question. “Did you know that your son-in-law, Rupert Fleming, has been found dead?”

  “Yes. They said on the news he’d committed suicide.” Strength and power emanated from him as he stood with his back to the fire, his dog curled at his feet. He was a harshly-spoken man, economical with words and smiles, but decisive and to the point, forceful and used to the upper hand. “Doesn’t surprise me. Typical cowardly way out.”

  “I have to tell you the gun found by his side was traced to you.” The old man’s eyes flickered, the hand holding his tobacco pouch paused. “My gun? How’s that possible? I haven’t seen him for at least seven years, nor wanted to.”

  “Is that so? Would you care to tell us what exactly was the trouble between you?”

  Culver smiled grimly. “I’ve no objection. The answer is I just didn’t like him. Oil and water, probably, but I also felt he wasn’t good enough for my daughter – most fathers’ initial reaction, I suppose. Only in his case events proved me right. As I predicted, he went from bad to worse, never amounted to anything, never would have.”

  “How do you account for your shotgun being in his possession?”

  “I can’t, I’ve just told you. If you’re right and it is mine, I can only assume he must have stolen it, somehow. That would’ve appealed to his warped sense of humour, to have it traced back to me.”

  “Would it have been possible for it to have been taken, without your knowing?”

  Culver thought about it, drawing on his pipe. “Yes, I suppose it might. I don’t lock my door during the day.”

  “Rather unwise, sir, surely?”

  “When my housekeeper’s not here, I’m never far away. And anything of value I keep in the bank. If anybody wants to go to the trouble of stealing what I’ve got around here, they’re welcome to it.”

  Culver’s attitude was one of dry ironic detachment, as if he were humouring them, which Mayo guessed might be natural to him, but Kite was becoming wooden, in the way he did with people who rubbed him up the wrong way, and Mayo felt he’d better take over. “That’s an original point of view, Mr. Culver. You feel the same way about your guns?”

  “The gun room is the one place that’s always kept locked.”

  “And the key?”

  There was a short silence while Culver busied himself applying another match to his pipe, and the rich aroma of pipe tobacco was filling the room before he answered. “Ah, you can’t fault me there. I keep my key with me, always.”

  “Just remind me again, when did you last check your guns?”

  “On Sunday afternoon, like I always do.”

  “And not since then?”

  The old man lifted his shoulders. “No need.”

  “What were you doing on Monday evening, Mr. Culver?”

  “What I usually do. Having my supper, watching a bit of television, reading till late. I don’t go to bed early these days, if I do I find myself wide awake halfway through the night.”

  “What time did you lock up?”

  “When I went to bed – and before you ask me, I couldn’t say exactly what time that was. But it’s generally well after midnight when I go up.”

  “So you would have heard anyone trying to break in?”

  “I might not, if they were quiet about it. I don’t hear as well as I used to, but Minty surely would. This dog sleeps with one eye open, don’t you, girl?”

  They all looked at the dog on the hearthrug, apparently intent on demonstrating this phenomenon. The one open eye was amber-coloured. It reminded Mayo of Georgina Fleming’s tiger eyes. He stood up. “I’d like to see where you keep your guns, please.”

  “You’re welcome. The room’s at the back.”

  They followed the old man along a flagged passage which ran draughtily from front to back of the house, glimpsing gloomy rooms stuffed with ancestral furniture, presumably of Pauling inheritance, until they came to a door which Culver unlocked with a key from a small bunch taken from his trouser pocket. The room was to the right of the passage, near the back door, with a window which looked onto a small, high-walled kitchen garden, beyond which the tree-covered hill rose to the skyline.

  It’d be a doddle, Kite thought, getting over that wall, and if the back door was open ... He never ceased to be amazed at folks’ carelessness, and bent to examine the lock on the door. A Yale type which didn’t, however, show any signs of being forced.

  The room wasn’t very big, probably once a pantry of some sort, flagged with the same large stones as the passage, carpeted with a worn square in the middle. On the wall opposite the windows – two small ones, neither big enough for anyone to get through – was a battered desk with a telephone, a portable typewriter and a stone jar holding pencils. To the right of the windows stood a large old-fashioned safe and on the left were the guns, tidily racked, with a shelf beneath holding cartridges and cleaning materials. Four guns, and a space where Culver said the twelve-bore should have been.

  “It was there on Sunday, I know. I oiled and cleaned it with the rest and put it back.” No, he said, he wouldn’t necessarily have noticed if any of the guns had been missing until the next time he came to clean them. “This is the one I normally use.” He indicated another twelve-bore which hung near the door. “I just unlock the door and reach out for it, or stick it back, without giving more than a glance. So used to doing it, I could put my hand on it in the dark.”

  “What do you keep in the safe, Mr. Culver?”

  “Personal papers, a bit of loose cash.”

  “Would you mind checking to see if anything’s missing?”

  Culver raised his eyebrows but made no objection. The safe, though very large, contained nothing more than a tin cash-box and a bundle of papers which he quickly looked through and said were all present.

  “And the cash-box?”

  Culver unlocked it. The bit of loose cash would have amounted to a couple of thousand, possibly more, Mayo thought. “Habit of a lifetime,” Culver remarked. “Can’t get used to being without a bit on hand. It’s all right, it’s all here.”

  He closed and locked the box, and then the safe.

  Once a scrap metal dealer, always a scrap metal dealer, Mayo thought. A roll of notes in your pocket that changed hands, no questions asked. He made a mental note that almost certainly Culver, though nominally retired, wouldn’t be averse to doing a deal or two on the side now and then.

  “When did you last see your daughter, Mr. Culver?” he asked, as Culver was closing the door of the little room.

  The other turned to him with a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Yesterday afternoon, as a matter of fact,” he said dryly.

  “Is that so? I was given to understand there was some friction between you and Mrs. Fleming as well as with her husband?”

  “Was, yes. Happily, that’s now a thing of the past. I was seventy years old yesterday, Mr. Mayo, and Georgina came to wish me a happy birthday. We both
thought it time all that was put behind us.”

  “Because the source of the friction had been removed?”

  “Ah, but we didn’t know that then, did we?”

  “Didn’t you, Mr. Culver? I hope that’s true, for both your sakes.”

  Culver smiled. He said, as he opened the front door, “I’m not going to say I’m sorry he’s dead, because I’m not. But you’re barking up the wrong tree, if you think I’d put my own life at risk because of him.”

  He stood watching the policemen’s car disappear down the drive. It was true that he felt not the slightest pang at the death of Rupert Fleming. Georgina was free at last, after seven years, free of Rupert Fleming, and it didn’t much matter to him how this had come about.

  His daughter had been born unexpectedly after several years of marriage, when he and Evelyn had long since ceased to expect children. He had felt momentarily let down when he was told that the child was not a son, one he could have moulded to his own pattern, but the disappointment had lasted only until he held her in his arms and looked into the tiny unformed mirror-image of his own face.

  Evelyn’s life had been sacrificed to give him the child. He deeply regretted that, though they had never been passionately in love; each had initially seen the other as a convenience, but their marriage had been amicable and when she died he had felt a sense of loss and sadness that had surprised him. They had married for practical reasons, because he had been able to provide her with the money she needed for the luxuries she thought essential to her, while she had given him, through her father, the entrée he wanted into a world where business contacts could be made through knowing the right people. They had come from different points on the social scale, though her position owed itself to her father’s ability rather than his birth. He too had been a man who had made his own success, working his way diligently from counter clerk to manager of the local bank, becoming prominent in local politics and finally, for a short time before he died, at Westminster. He had always respected money and this, Culver suspected, was why there had never been any opposition to the marriage of his daughter with a man who was still, basically, a scrap metal dealer – though already, when he met Evelyn, he had been into his first half million, and the rest hadn’t been long in following.