Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  Cromwell put on his hat to show he was ready for off and to hide his excitement.

  “And you found the skeleton?”

  “Yes. It was at the bottom of the well, as the doctor had said. One of the men found the first bone, a femur, it was. I know such things, you see, Mr. Cromwell. I did me first-aid course for am’blance work in the war. It was about dinner-time when the first bone came up. So I sent the men off for their grub while I dug up the rest myself. A whole skeleton, except for the small bones of the hands and feet and one or two of the little vertebræ of the spine. It was a bit of a job, I’ll tell you. As a rule, skeletons like that are wired together. We used one at our first-aid course. This one wasn’t. It came up bone by bone. I got ’em all in the surgery on the q.t. The doctor was in alone, so I left ’em with ’im. Skeleton of rather a biggish man, I’d guess.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “As I said, I was trained in physiology for me first-aid. I got used to the size of skeletons. We’d four of ’em at the hospital. This was a biggish man’s, or I’m a Dutchman.”

  “That was all you found?”

  “Yes. We emptied the old well and found nothin’ more of any importance. It’s time we was off …”

  Cromwell telephoned to Littlejohn at the office of Pochin, Shillinglaw and Pochin, where he knew his chief had gone. He found the Superintendent still there and told him the true story of Beharrell’s well and the contents dug up from it.

  “Good!” came the reply. “I’ll see you later. Don’t wait for me if I’m not back when dinner’s ready.”

  “I wondered if you’d mind my taking an hour or two off. Baldry, who gave me all the information about the well, is a supporter of the local football eleven, and it’s a cup-tie replay. He wants me to go with him as a sort of quid pro quo for what he’s told me.”

  “Of course. Go and enjoy yourself. By the way, where are you speaking from?”

  “The Merry Waggoners, just behind the Guildhall, sir.”

  “I thought so! Well, thanks again, old chap, and enjoy your football match.”

  Caldicott Central won 4-3, by a last minute goal, and Cromwell, somehow mixed up with Mr. Baldry, Percy, Alt, Edgar, Len and Ted in a celebration, arrived home in a taxi at ten o’clock, and went straight up to bed.

  7

  THE LAWYER’S HOUSE

  IT was after five and late for a visit to a professional man’s office when Littlejohn crossed the square to the house bearing the brass plate of Pochin, Shillinglaw and Pochin.

  Empty of all its idlers and the children of the nearby school, Upper Square was strangely quiet. The sun was sinking behind the tall houses and a wind had started to shake the trees. Mrs. Hope had taken in the striped parasols and check tablecloths of the terrace of the inn, and the only cheerful thing about the square was the cries of the blackbirds and thrushes, digging for worms in the memorial garden or shouting belligerently from the branches which they claimed for their own.

  The vicar was standing on the scaffolding which surrounded the church clock, holding onto his hat, examining the progress of the work on the dial.

  Littlejohn entered the general office of the lawyer’s house. It was the first room on the right and the place was much shabbier and smaller than the doctor’s. Worn linoleum on the floor, soiled walls painted in dismal dark green, three old desks, and a lot of cheap bare chairs scattered about. Most of the staff had gone home. A small junior clerk with his hair plastered down with brilliantine, was busy with the post, putting on stamps, sealing letters, and dropping blobs of sealing wax on the registered mail. He seemed surprised to see the late caller.

  “Is Mr. Vincent Pochin in?”

  The boy breathed on a brass seal, impressed it on the wax of an envelope, whipped it away again, and seemed very satisfied with his handiwork.

  “You’re lucky. He’s in the flat. The others have gone.”

  “Will you tell him I’m here, please?”

  “O.K. What name?”

  “Superintendent Littlejohn.”

  The boy dropped the seal on the floor, retrieved it in confusion, backed away a pace, and then scurried through the door.

  “Certainly, sir. Will you just wait a minute, please?”

  There was a smell of old parchment, hot sealing wax and floor polish about the room. The windows needed cleaning and the view of the square through the glass was misty and distorted.

  The junior clerk was back.

  “He’s upstairs, sir. The room at the front at the top of the stairs.”

  The boy was eager to get to the football match and returned to his job. Littlejohn went to find Pochin himself.

  The hall was a large one, like Beharrell’s, with the same arrangement of doors and stairs. The broad, shallow steps, graceful handrail, high ornamental ceiling, but ill-kept and shabby. On the first landing, however, the scene changed. A carpet on the floor, red and with deep pile, the heavy old mahogany doors polished and shining; even the glass door-knobs were elegant.

  Pochin was standing waiting for Littlejohn at the door of the front room. He held out his hand.

  “Glad you’ve called, Superintendent. Come in.”

  The lawyer was wearing the tweed suit in which Littlejohn had first seen him. Highly-polished brown shoes, spotless linen with an easy-fitting soft collar, and a canary-coloured foulard tie. The same long cigarette-holder in the corner of his mouth.

  The room was large and occupied the whole front of the house. A fire of logs was burning on the hearth. A tall ornamental ceiling from which swung a big gilt chandelier.

  The sudden change from the shabby decrepitude of the room below surprised Littlejohn. Instead of the musty damp of the office, here was a soft warmth, luxury, and good taste. The floor was of polished oak parquet, with expensive squares of Persian carpet flung about it, and the tall white walls were covered half way in books. The space above the books held a number of modern pictures. Harsh landscapes, fantastic still lifes, and some geometrical daubs which looked like exhibits from an infants’ school. Everything in perfect harmony, nevertheless.

  “Sit down, Superintendent. Whisky? Cigar?”

  They were all there on a lovely mahogany sofa-table. Drinks, cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco in a blue Delft jar. New books in publishers’ jackets … Difficult to think of the seedy quarters below existing under the same roof. Pochin was obviously a connoisseur with money to spare for his fancies.

  “Or perhaps you prefer your pipe?”

  Pochin pushed across the tobacco jar and Littlejohn began to fill his pipe with the mixture, which was obviously an expensive and special one. Probably sent from a London tobacconist labelled ‘Mr. Pochin’s Mixture.’ The lawyer crossed to a Regency cabinet and took out a silver tray, a cut-glass bottle of whisky, and crystal goblets, all of which sumptuously reflected the firelight. He sat down in an armchair on the opposite side from Littlejohn, mixed two drinks and passed one over. He pushed forward a little mahogany wine-table to hold the glass. Everything there, expensive and to hand. There seemed some kind of pose in it all, as though Pochin had in his mind a prototype whom he imitated to the letter. Littlejohn noticed now the flabby softness of Pochin’s physique. In this self-indulgent atmosphere, he wasn’t a bit surprised at it.

  “We are very fortunate in having you on the case. The ordinary police would soon have been out of their depth, you know.”

  “We are the ordinary police, sir.”

  Pochin didn’t seem to mind the correction. He shrugged his shoulders. “You know what I mean, Littlejohn. This isn’t an ordinary case.”

  “I appreciate that. The very fact that we were warned that the crime had been committed before anybody found the body …”

  “You were warned that it had occurred?”

  “Yes.”

  Littlejohn took out the three untidy bits of paper from his wallet and passed them across to Pochin, who fingered them gingerly.

  “Any idea who sent them?”

  “No
.”

  “No fingerprints or anything? Nothing your scientific experts could fasten on to?”

  “No.”

  In the deep armchair, with the costly tobacco smoking in rich blue curls, the superb whisky, the atmosphere of comfort and refinement, it was difficult to set about dragging out family secrets, those of the town and square, the foibles and peccadillos of the dead man, the life he lived.

  “I see you like this room, Superintendent. My brother and I use it when we stay in town. Our place is five miles out. It is convenient to have a little pied-à-terre. We spend the night here now and then. There are bedrooms at the back and the housekeeper attends to us.”

  Pochin, too, seemed unwilling to talk about the local tragedy. As though something might come to light which would disturb his peace, his finicky self-indulgence, this little sybarite’s retreat overlooking the quiet square where his whole life and history seemed to lie.

  The lawyer handed back the scraps of paper.

  “They convey nothing to me, either.”

  He looked hard at Littlejohn, who didn’t reply, but carefully returned them to his pocket-book.

  “This is, I presume, a professional call? I wish it weren’t. You and I could enjoy an evening together, I’m sure, Superintendent. We seem to have tastes in common. Comfort and good things, for example.”

  The blue eyes searched Littlejohn’s face as though Pochin were eager for his companion to start a conversation on any tack other than that of Beharrell’s murder.

  “Tell me something about Beharrell, sir. You were his lawyer and have grown up in the town with him.”

  Pochin stretched out his long legs to the fire. Outside, the wind was increasing and shaking the trees, a breeze sweeping the vast plain which surrounded this dying little town.

  “You’re right. I’ve known Beharrell since we were boys. There were long gaps in our association. I went to public school, he to the local grammar school and then to medical school in London.”

  “He was a normal type of fellow in those days?”

  “Yes … A bit of a recluse, a bookworm, who didn’t go much in company …”

  “Until he married?”

  A pause. The logs crackled in the grate and Pochin ejected the spent cigarette from his holder, replaced it by another, and lit it.

  “That’s right. He became much more sociable then.”

  “You knew his wife very well, sir?”

  “Grace Brodribb? Yes, I did.”

  “May I ask a very personal question without running the risk of being impertinent? Were you very fond of her before she married?”

  Pochin remained perfectly calm; too calm. His voice was icy as he replied.

  “Is such a question necessary in the course of your enquiry, Littlejohn? I would have thought …”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if it hadn’t been necessary, sir. I want to know all about Beharrell, his wife, his friends, everything. This isn’t a normal case of clues, fingerprints, chemical tests, or alibis. The solution lies, I believe, in this square, where Beharrell’s life was spent and where all his friends, and perhaps his enemies, lived most of their time.”

  “Very ominous and dramatic, I must say. May I ask if you suspect me … or anyone else, yet, Littlejohn?”

  “No.”

  Another pause.

  “I’m not afraid to confess that I asked Grace Brodribb to marry me. So did a few other men of our little circle. She seemed to prefer Beharrell from the very first. She told me at the time, they were soon to announce their engagement.”

  “What kind of a husband was Beharrell? Jealous, kindly, complacent, neglectful …?”

  Pochin smiled to himself.

  “Kindly, yes. Jealous, yes. Neglectful, no. Complacent … that suggests that his wife wasn’t to be trusted?”

  “Well, sir, was she? She ran away with another man.”

  “It was Beharrell’s fault. Grace was twenty years younger than he was. At first, they got about a lot in their own circle …”

  Their own circle. It kept cropping up. First from Gralam, now from Pochin. The little circle of Upper Square.

  “Grace was charming and lovely. It was natural that the men should be gallant and attentive. Not that she encouraged them unduly. But a charming woman needs admiration. You’ll agree, I’m sure. Beharrell resented it. He even took her home early on one pretext or another. He grew so jealous that he began to keep Grace like a bird in a cage. She must have been stifled in that great house with her husband and his books and his patients. When Cranage came along …”

  “Cranage?”

  Pochin brushed the question away with an impatient gesture, as though it were interrupting his pleasant thoughts.

  “Cranage was an air-force officer the Beharrells befriended. There were a lot of them in the Caldicott neighbourhood in the war and we did our best to entertain them. Cranage was a tall, well set-up, handsome fellow. In his uniform he must have made us middle-aged old buffers look poor … She fell under his spell …”

  “And they ran away and were never seen again.”

  No reply. The whole thing was a repetition of Gralam’s story. The two men might have compared notes and hatched out their account of the love affair and elopement of Grace Beharrell. And neither of them seemed to blame her. Beharrell was at fault.

  “Did anyone try to trace the pair of them, sir? It couldn’t have been all that difficult. The war restricted people. They couldn’t have got out of the country.”

  “They either did, or hid themselves very well. Or, if they fled to London, they might have been killed together in an air-raid. Beharrell tried to trace them. I did myself. He asked my help.”

  “Did you get a full account of what occurred?”

  “You mean when they ran away?”

  “Yes.”

  “It happened one night after dark. Beharrell was out on a case. He got in about nine, and his wife just wasn’t there.”

  “No letter, or anything?”

  “A letter to her husband asking him to forgive her. Little else.”

  “Did you see it, sir?”

  “No. Beharrell apparently sat up all night nursing his wounds. Then he rang me up. Just said his wife had run away with Cranage. She mentioned his name in the letter and said she loved him. Beharrell in a rage burned the letter. I asked for it, and he told me what he’d done with it.”

  “How did they leave town?”

  “It must have been by train. There were no cars missing and although we enquired from the taxi and other carhirers, we got nowhere. The station staff, too, didn’t see them, but that was easy in the blackout, and Cranage was able to help himself to railway passes in the R.A.F. office. He was in charge of transport of that kind.”

  “Were the police informed?”

  “Yes, but they had enough to do and Beharrell didn’t press it. He must have felt humiliated enough. It was dropped.”

  “What about the R.A.F.? Cranage was a deserter, technically.”

  “Yes. They worked hard, but, of course, Cranage anticipated all that, I’m sure. Beharrell finally came round to the idea of their being killed in London. After all, there were hundreds lost their lives that way and their fate was never known.”

  “That’s true, sir.”

  “Your glass is empty. Let me refill it. You may as well relax, Littlejohn. You’ve another hour before dinner at the hotel and I can’t think you’ve much work to do at this time of night.”

  “Very well, sir. Could you tell me if Beharrell had any enemies who might want to go as far as killing him?”

  “I can’t go so far …”

  “Not even Hope of the Red Lion?”

  “What do you know about Hope?”

  There was a rasp in Pochin’s voice this time.

  “Beharrell and Mrs. Hope were talked about, sir.”

  “Someone has talked fast, then. It is quite true. They were friendly. Beharrell used to stay at the inn, somewhere in France, where Mrs. Hope came from.
He went one year alone; the next year he took his car with Hope, who was his chauffeur, driving it. Hope married the girl. Some people say it was a put-up job between Beharrell and Mrs. Hope.”

  “Did Hope know that?”

  “Hope is not very bright, but he might have found out. They might have been indiscreet. But Hope’s no murderer. He’s a little rabbit of a fellow without any spirit. He might try to beat his wife, if roused, but murder Dr. Beharrell … The thing’s fantastic!”

  “You think so? I’ve had the unhappy duty, in my time, sir, of bringing quite a lot of little rabbits to justice. It’s surprising what a rabbit can do when it’s roused … The human variety, I mean.”

  “You suspect Hope?”

  “I suspect nobody, sir. But I mustn’t miss the culprit just because he’s a rabbit.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic about it, Superintendent. I only tried to give you an idea of what he’s like.”

  “And I’m grateful for it, sir. What kind of a man’s Gralam, the antique dealer?”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “I was in his shop just before I came here.”

  “Gralam’s late wife was a relative of Grace Brodribb and she introduced her here. Gralam tried to father Grace in rather an unpleasant way, I thought. He was terribly put out when she married Beharrell. He tried to get it broken off. Said Beharrell was too old. Even brought Grace’s brother here to try to persuade him to intervene. Giles cut little ice with Grace and Beharrell.”

  “Was Giles Miss Brodribb’s brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes. He’s in Peterborough. He’s a retired barrister, living in the old Brodribb home near the cathedral close. He’s a widower, too, who lives alone.”

  “May I have his address?”

  “Yes. I have it somewhere. He’ll probably be here for Beharrell’s funeral tomorrow. I’ll introduce you if you’re there.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Pochin rose, opened a Sheraton bureau, and took out a book, which he consulted.