Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  “Brodribb lives at Four, Bishop’s Walk, Peterborough.”

  Littlejohn scribbled it on an old envelope.

  “Now, sir, may I ask you another confidential question? You are lawyer to the Beharrell estate. Who benefits from it?”

  Pochin rubbed his chin, threw out the cigarette end from his holder, inserted another, lit it, and drank from his glass.

  “I was expecting that. I oughtn’t to tell until the will’s read after the funeral. But, if you promise to keep it to yourself, I’ll give you some idea of how things stand. Agreed?”

  “Agreed, sir.”

  “Beharrell was a fairly wealthy man. There was money in the family which all came to him, and he had a very good practice here with little on which to spend his money. He left a few legacies to his staff. Mrs. Trott, £1,000 and £1,000 to Hope, his former chauffeur. In addition, he had once lent Hope money to buy and re-furnish the Red Lion. It was a dilapidated place when the Hopes took it. That debt is cancelled by the will. It amounted to £8,000. So Hope has done well out of it.”

  “Perhaps conscience money.”

  “You said that, Superintendent, not I. Beharrell also left £5,000 to Madame Alcardi, a singer he was mixed up with … a flame of his. Beharrell’s mother died a few days before he did. She was a widow and he was her only child. He had left the residue to her. I don’t think she was ever very fond of him. She moved out to Peterborough not long after her son set up in practice here. I believe she had a chance of marrying again after her husband’s death, but her son was so nasty about it and treated her would-be husband so badly, that the affair faded out. The man died and she remained a widow, half hating her son for spoiling the end of her life.”

  “So, who gets the residue now, sir?”

  “It’s divided between his wife’s brother, who sided with Beharrell when Grace ran away, and remained his friend—that is the Brodribb I mentioned—and myself. We ought to inherit perhaps £20,000 apiece. I don’t want it. Said as much to Beharrell. But he’d nobody else to leave it to. I told him that if he insisted, I would use it all for charity. I’ve enough and more of my own to see me through. I have it in mind to buy and endow an old folks’ home for the needy in Caldicott.”

  “A very good idea. What about Mr. Brodribb? Is he well-off, too?”

  “Comfortable, comfortable, I’d think. He had a good practice in law, I know. He always was a busy man when he was in harness.”

  The telephone rang at Pochin’s elbow. He raised his eyebrows and picked up the instrument.

  “It’s always switched through when the office is closed and I’m here … I’m staying over night. Got a meeting at eight. Hullo … Hullo … Yes … Yes, he’s here.”

  He handed the instrument to Littlejohn.

  “For you, Littlejohn. Sergeant Cromwell.”

  Littlejohn listened to his colleague’s story.

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

  More conversation which Pochin couldn’t hear.

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

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

  He hung up.

  “Thank you, sir. Cromwell wants permission to go and see the local cup-tie.”

  “I’d forgotten all about it. Some of the staff left early on account of it.”

  He eyed Littlejohn curiously, wondering what the message was really about.

  “By the way, sir, do you remember the trouble about the well in Beharrell’s garden?”

  Pochin’s placid manner seemed for a moment to waver. His eyes opened wider and he stared in surprise.

  “Why? Whatever has that to do with the murder of Beharrell?”

  “Do you remember it? There was a quarrel with the water board about it. Beharrell had filled it in, saying it was dangerous. The water board …”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it. I was involved in it. Beharrell consulted me as his lawyer. He wanted to contest it. The board was for forcing him to re-open it and supply water at a time of great drought … He refused and wanted me to fight them for him. A bit awkward, because my partner and brother-in-law, Shillinglaw, was the water authority’s lawyer … I advised Beharrell to give way. We even consulted his brother-in-law, as counsel. Brodribb supported me. So Beharrell caved in. He let them re-open the well and before they’d finished, the drought broke, so they didn’t need it.”

  Littlejohn paused to re-charge his pipe with his own tobacco and light it.

  “That’s not exactly the true account, is it, sir?”

  Pochin sat up straight and indignant.

  “I ought to know, Superintendent.”

  “They didn’t want to draw water from the well, but to take a boring to locate an old stream.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My colleague over the telephone just now. He’s been talking to the foreman who was in charge. In fact, they’ve become buddies and are going to the football match.”

  But Pochin didn’t see anything funny in it.

  “I can’t see that my account is faulty. All I know is that the board wanted to re-open the well. I wasn’t concerned about pipes. My business was with rights.”

  Pochin was getting hot under the collar. Somehow, Littlejohn seemed to have laid a finger on a sore spot.

  “In any case, I can’t see what the well has to do with Beharrell’s death. It seems a stupid line of enquiry to me.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you by pressing a point, sir. I apologise. But Mr. Brodribb was in the affair of the well, too?”

  “I’ve said so, haven’t I? All this seems so senseless and useless to me.”

  Pochin was growing petulant and bad tempered. The infantile manner mentioned by Gralam.

  “As I’ve said before, sir, I’m concerned in this enquiry with as many details of the late doctor’s life as I can find out. The filling-up of the well just after Mrs. Beharrell’s flight, the anger of Beharrell when it was proposed to reopen it, the threatened law case …”

  Pochin’s jaw dropped. His face turned pale under the tan.

  “Say that again, Littlejohn. The filling-up of the well just after Mrs. Beharrell’s flight? What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Beharrell must have had very strong reasons for wishing the well to remain undisturbed.”

  “Ridiculous! Why, as soon as Brodribb and I advised him not to fight it, he gave in and the well was dug up again.”

  “True. But, Beharrell had done much as a doctor for the foreman. The man thought the world of him. When they started to excavate the well again, Beharrell told the foreman he might find a skeleton at the bottom. A relic of his medical-student days which he’d found hard to dispose of and which he’d pitched down the well as a safe place.”

  Pochin sprang to his feet and stood over Littlejohn.

  “What!!”

  “The foreman found the bones, an entire skeleton. The bones of a big man. Did you say Cranage was a big man, sir?”

  “You’re not suggesting ...?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. But might it not have been that Beharrell caught his wife and Cranage in a compromising situation, killed one or both of them, and put Cranage’s body in the well? Then, he made up the tale that they’d run away together. No wonder they were never found.”

  Pochin stood like one transfixed.

  “It’s all nonsense. I won’t believe it. What about Grace? What about her? Why weren’t her bones in the well, too? It’s ridiculous.”

  “Perhaps Beharrell still loved her and couldn’t face putting her in the well with her lover …”

  “No! No!”

  “No! What do you mean, sir? Do you mean we’re thinking the same thoughts? That Beharrell locked up his wife’s body in the old strong-room, and after that he daren’t leave the house for long lest someone broke in and found out what had happened?”

  �
��No! Not that! For God’s sake, Littlejohn. No!”

  Pochin was flailing the air with his arms as though fending off an evil ghost. He rushed to the wine cupboard again and this time took out brandy, half-filled a glass, and drank it off in one.

  But the brandy didn’t seem to do him any good. He sat down in his chair, covered his face with his hands, and broke into harsh sobbing.

  Outside, in the square, dusk was casting an eerie finger over everything, shadows grew, and lights went on one by one. The two men sat together in the sumptuous room, and outside the blackbird in the trees made harsh challenging noises before it retired to rest.

  8

  THE HOUR OF NOON

  DR. BEHARRELL’S will was brief and to the point about his funeral. He wished to be cremated at a nearby crematorium and his ashes scattered. No mourning, no flowers, no rites of the church. At eleven o’clock, a hearse drew up at the door of Bank House, escorted by a taxi which was to contain all the mourning party, or, to put it in the characteristic words of Dr. Beharrell, “the few friends who might care to see me off for the last time.”

  But Beharrell wasn’t going to get away without any fuss at all. The proof of his popularity as a doctor and the esteem in which he was held locally were soon manifest. The funeral was due to leave at eleven; by a quarter to, the pavements of Upper Square were lined four-deep with people. A silent sorrowing crowd, rich and poor, workmen, women—some of them with children—shopkeepers … A host of people who owed their own or the lives of those dear to them, to the murdered physician. Everyone spoke in whispers, waiting for the simple affair already ordered by the dead man. Then, to the embarrassment of the executors, flowers began to arrive. Wreaths, sprays, bunches of home-grown and wild blooms … Dozens of them. They were laid on the pavement in front of Bank House and there they remained until a van arrived and took some to the hospitals and others, the wreaths, which could hardly be sent to the sick, to the cemetery, where they were placed on neglected and forgotten graves and cheered them up for a brief spell.

  At eleven, the coffin was carried to the hearse by the undertaker’s men. Hats were removed and all the old men sitting round the war memorial stood to attention and bared their heads. Then followed a complete silence as they all waited for the mourners to enter their carriage. And suddenly, in the midst of the hush, the blackbird in the tree in front of the police station burst into song, and a thrush, digging for worms on the vicarage lawn, not to be outdone, joined in. The birdsong continued until the small procession had left the square. The executors’ taxi had been joined by an ancient barouche containing four old ladies, the doctor’s oldest patients, who refused to respect his final wishes and saw him safely to his funeral pyre.

  Littlejohn and Cromwell watched it all from the door of the Red Lion. Gralam was at his own door, too, as were the rest of the occupants of the square. All except Hope, the hotelier, and his wife. They had both disappeared and returned only after the funeral party had gone. Hope re-appeared smelling strongly of drink and his wife had eyes red with weeping. Neither spoke to the other and they set about their daily chores as far away from each other as possible.

  All the time, the vicar stood watching the events from the door of St. Hilary’s, like a craftsman ruefully regarding the work of amateurs. When all was clear and the square had settled down again to normal routine, the men who had been repairing the clock face and who had watched the funeral from their high eyrie on the scaffolding round the tower, descended, gathered their belongings, and made their way to the lower town. Plumtree, who had been superintending the law and order of the square since early morning, spoke to them as they passed.

  “Finished?”

  “Aye. The old clock’s goin’ proper again. We’ve set it and it’ll strike at noon, wireless time. All that’s left is to take the scaffold down. The spidermen’ll do that. It costs as much and more than the job itself to erect scaffoldin’ these days.”

  “We’ll miss you. It won’t seem the same in the square without you lookin’ down on us all. So long.”

  “So long, sergeant. All the best.”

  Littlejohn overheard it all and turned to Cromwell.

  “Before they remove the scaffolding, it might be a good idea to take a look at the square from up above. We’ll climb the tower.”

  The vicar, lost in thought as usual, shambled past, on his way to the lower town. From the open windows of the parish school came the chant of shrill young voices:

  Eight twelves are ninety-six,

  Nine twelves are one hundred and eight …

  The two detectives entered the church by the main door. A small porch, a padded swing-door, and they were inside the huge building, erected regardless of cost by wealthy wool merchants of Caldicott in days gone by. Soaring pillars held the nave. A splendid clerestory, broad transpets, and the whole of the windows glazed in stained glass in memory of dead and gone local figures. White marble mural tablets set forth at considerable length and with a wealth of detail, the virtues of numerous departed citizens of Caldicott, brasses shone in remembrance of others of them, and, far away, the altar glowed under the amethyst light of the noble east window.

  As Littlejohn entered, he paused at a large notice board, on which were pinned announcements of all kinds, appeals, instructions, and the order of service for the current week. The latter was apparently made out by the vicar in his own hand and bore his signature at the foot. The Superintendent studied it for so long that Cromwell wondered what his chief was finding so interesting about it. He himself occupied his mind reading the board which enumerated a string of charities, dating from 1485, when a certain Algernon Waldron, ‘of this p’ish’ left £10 for loaves for the poor, down to 1863, when a Mrs. Ann Gradwell had bequeathed £50 per annum for the widowed and needy gentlewomen of Caldicott.

  “Let’s find the way to the tower, old chap.”

  The stairs rose from one corner at the back of the church. A circular stone staircase, so narrow and dark that the two men had to ascend it one behind the other. Slit windows lighted it here and there and they paused now and then to relieve the monotony of the corkscrew progress and take a view of the scene below by looking through them alternately over the town and over the back of the building.

  Eventually, they reached the door of the ringing-chamber, a musty square room with the ropes and sallies of the bells hanging from holes in the ceiling. Eight ropes all told, with wooden tablets on the walls commemorating feats of ringing by initiates from far and near. In a long case on the front wall swung the pendulum and hung the weights of the clock upstairs. A door at the far end gave access to a further flight of wooden steps which led to the clock-chamber and then upwards again to the bells themselves. Littlejohn and Cromwell made their way up to the clock.

  The clock had a single dial overlooking the town below and the wall facing it was broken by a window which normally gave a dim light to the room and a view over the wide country behind the church. The mechanism was not visible, but was held in a case behind the dial from which the weights and pendulum were suspended. As the two men set foot there, the steady tick gave place to a whirring of wheels and the bells above first chimed the quarters and then the tenor struck noon.

  The window of the clock chamber had been removed to give access to the scaffolding surrounding the tower for repairs to the clock face. The aperture had been left open by the workmen who had just gone and Littlejohn, scrambling through, hauled himself on a structure of steel tubing which held a cat-walk of two planks leading all round the tower. A tubular handrail had also been erected for safety.

  They found themselves on this temporary balcony, their hats in their hands because a stiff little breeze was blowing at this height. They had the dial of the clock at their backs and the whole view of the town before them. Cromwell, who hadn’t a very good head for heights, felt a slight nausea as he looked straight down at Upper Square, although they had not climbed very far. The roofs of the tall, three-storeyed old buildings seemed almo
st at eye level.

  They got a complete living relief-map of the town which, hitherto, they had found no time to explore. Upper Square at their feet, Sheep Street leaving it on the town side, and extending as a highway which narrowed off into the extreme distance and then disappeared in the morning haze far away. Near at hand, it was lined by shops and houses; farther off, it was a country highway again. In the midst of the line of shops entered the Norwich road, to vanish like a thin line in the mist. The railway crossed this road and then seemed to break briefly as the station rose and hid the line. A train was just leaving Caldicott, huffing and puffing as it struggled to gather speed, and, in the opposite direction a leisurely goods train crawled to a standstill at a loop and stood waiting, in a mass of steam, for another unseen passenger train to take precedence.

  To the right of Sheep Street, a number of by-roads all converged on the new suburbs, which stretched like a girdle round the old part of the town. Red houses, all geometrically arranged among a number of parallel intersecting streets, with small green patches for gardens, like a draughtboard with all its little pieces ready for play.

  Nearer the church, the houses grew grey and high, the streets narrowed, sometimes to the extent of not being seen at all owing to the mass of tall property which hid them. They were only distinguishable by the lines of the roofs.

  Upper Square itself was surprising from the height. Its features had completely altered. The memorial park and the foreshortened soldier set almost mathematically in its very centre formed a landmark from which the rest could be charted and recognised. Gardens and outbuildings were visible behind the tall old dwellings. Gralam, for example, had a lawn with a statue in the middle behind his own property and the Red Lion, a specious cobblestoned courtyard with stables and coach-houses surrounding it.

  The two men walked round the four sides of this rectangle of steel tubes. Looking across the great church roof they saw, as far as the eye could reach, the broad extent of fen country which Caldicott had, in its heyday, dominated. Flat stretches, divided into fields, small villages, church spires, country roads twisting and twining, woods, and nameless rivers.