To Die but Once

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “What is it, Inspector Caldwell?”

  “Your boy—one Joseph Coombes? Fits the description of a body found yesterday at—” Maisie heard Caldwell pause and the sound of a sheet of paper being turned. “Basingstoke railway station. Some trauma to the noddle, but according to Inspector Murphy, it could have happened when he fell. Sounds nasty though.”

  “But—”

  “Haven’t finished yet,” said Caldwell. “We need an identification, and of course there’s notification of the deceased’s nearest and dearest. You know the boy, so you could identify the body—in the circumstances, it might be best to save the mum and dad the grief, if you know what I mean. It’s not a very pretty sight, and the better part of me—you’ll be pleased to know I have one—would like to save them that last memory of their son. How do you want to proceed?”

  Maisie had come to her feet as Caldwell was speaking, and pulled a dressing gown around her shoulders. “How do I want to proceed? I thought you’d just told me how I was proceeding. I’ll go back to Hampshire and then up to London.”

  “I’ve already sent a motor car to take you down there. Save your coupons—we’ve got plenty. For now, anyway. By the time you’ve had your toast and marmalade, the motor will be outside your door. Murphy is waiting for you in Basingstoke. All right?”

  “Yes. Of course,” said Maisie, rubbing the scar on her neck. “Poor Joe.”

  “Poor Joe? He’s out of it now. It’s his poor mum and dad, that’s what’s poor. And you and I should have a chin-wag—the Yard’s involved, which means me—and we both know I don’t exactly have a lot of minutes in the day to spare, not with being short on staff. Never thought I’d see the day when I missed Able—but my able assistant Able is now Able Seaman Able—left just after that business with the Belgian refugees last year. Apparently he’s been posted to HMS Keith. Name like his, I bet he takes a lot of ribbing.”

  Maisie sighed, remembering the polite detective constable and the stoic manner with which he tolerated Caldwell’s insistent jokes about his name—and not very funny jokes, in her estimation. “You didn’t exactly give him an easy time. I would bet he wins the respect of his fellow men—you wait and see.”

  “And I am sure I will—wait, that is. Right—when you’re finished in Basingstoke, the motor car will bring you back to London and we can go together to see the parents. No good me bothering them before that, just in case it’s not him. I’ll get you a travel warrant to come back to Kent, so you don’t have to pay.”

  “Thank you, Inspector.”

  “Oh, and Your Ladyship—I take it your little investigation will be coming to an end now.”

  “I’m sorry, Inspector, there’s some interference on the line—I can’t hear you very well. Hello? Hello? I’ll expect the motor car in a short while then. Goodbye.” She heard Caldwell offer a muffled expletive as she returned the receiver to its cradle.

  The journey to Basingstoke offered an opportunity to think about Joe Coombes—and more importantly, the precious little she had uncovered thus far. She knew that in such circumstances it was all too easy to assign importance to discoveries that were insignificant. But at the same time, every stone was worthy of a turn. And if there was nothing untoward in Joe’s death—if indeed she was able to make a positive identification—why had she been followed from Whitchurch to Tunbridge Wells? For there was no doubt in her mind that the black motor car had been on her tail since she left Hampshire and might well have followed her from London. But was the driver interested due to her questioning of Joe’s whereabouts? Or was it in connection with Billy’s visit to Yates’ yard? Then another thought came back to her—might the man following her have been a spy?

  The police driver said little to Maisie, apart from the occasional inquiry as to whether she might require a break, a “refreshment stop” perhaps. But there was something about the journey that reminded her of her flight from Gibraltar into Spain, when she traveled alone with the driver who ferried her to the makeshift field hospital where she became a nurse once again. She felt the weight of remembrance bear down upon her as she recalled the young men—and sometimes women—who were brought to the former convent, often under cover of darkness, to have their injuries tended. In those days she became both doctor and nurse, and she saw, again, the wounds of battle. Joe with his headaches was now a victim of a new war. And who would be the other new victims? Yet still there would be the Tims of the world—aching to get to where the action might be, desperate to prove themselves.

  She remembered, then, a saying that someone had quoted to her once. Was it her father? It certainly wasn’t Maurice, because she had heard it spoken by a Yorkshireman, someone from northern England, of that she was sure. Where there’s muck, there’s brass. That was it. Was it Joseph Waite, the self-made man who had hired her to find his daughter, years ago? It had been one of her first cases after Maurice retired. Yes, perhaps it was him. Where there’s muck, there’s brass. A simple line, an aphorism that seemed to suggest the selling of manure. But it had a meaning that went so much deeper, alluding to the fact that where you find filth—where you find dirt; where you find the detritus of life—you’ll also discover someone making a profit. Much money can be made from the most dirty jobs. Muck and money go together. That was another one. And it occurred to her that in her lifetime she had seen nothing more filthy than war itself.

  “Oh, you’re in the money then!” Lord Julian had said during their telephone conversation. It was a quip, a joke. But two things now came to mind. One, Joe Coombes was working in close proximity to the country’s source of wealth, and secondly, that Yates had accepted a lucrative contract that was potentially harmful to his workers. It wouldn’t be the first time she had seen the hardest working people become enmeshed in a web not of their making.

  There’s a reason they call it filthy lucre, Maisie. Maurice’s words, spoken in the early days of her own apprenticeship, echoed in her mind. It was almost as if he were by her side, pushing, testing, guiding her.

  Detective Chief Inspector “Spud” Murphy was a jovial man, and—Maisie thought—seemed as if he would be more suited to life as a village butcher. She could imagine him wearing a white cotton coat, a blue-striped apron and a straw boater, his drooping jowls held in place by a starched white collar and blue bow tie. Yet at the same time, it was clear, once he had introduced himself, that Murphy was efficient and businesslike—and she could not envision him wielding a cleaver.

  “Caldwell said you were held in high regard by his department, Miss Dobbs,” said Murphy, opening a folder presented to him by the driver who had brought Maisie to Basingstoke.

  “He did?” said Maisie, her brow furrowed, though she smiled—after all, she and Caldwell were not what Lady Rowan would have called “pally.”

  Murphy grinned in return. “Mind you, he also said not to tell you—but I thought I would. Not a nice business, this—helps to have something positive in your back pocket to fall back on if your day includes identification of the dead.”

  “May I see the postmortem report first?” asked Maisie.

  Murphy had placed a pair of half-moon glasses on his nose to review the contents of the folder he had just opened, and now studied her over the rims. “You can because Inspector Caldwell obviously trusts you. But do you understand medical notes?”

  “I was a nurse, in the last war, and I’ve studied legal medicine—in Edinburgh.”

  Murphy looked down at his notes. “Oh yes—and you were once assistant to Dr. Maurice Blanche. I remember now.” He closed the folder and put it to one side, picking up another that was already on his desk. He looked up at Maisie. “Met the man a couple of times when I was at the Yard, before I came down here for a quieter life. Impressive. Very impressive.” He held out the folder to Maisie, and consulted his watch. “Here, have a quick gander at that—it’ll prepare you.”

  Maisie opened the folder and began to read. “I don’t think this type of injury is sustained falling off a wall, do you?”<
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  Murphy turned away from his desk to look out of the window. Expanding his view, thought Maisie. It had always interested her, that physically gazing out at a landscape, even if that landscape offered a cluster of town buildings, could provide a broader view of the possibilities inspired by a question. She did the same thing herself, when something troubled her.

  “On the face of it—yes. He fell straight down onto a railway line—fortunately, it was not a main line, but an old shunting line, not used in donkey’s years. If it had been on another line, the skull would have been smashed beyond all recognition by a loco. So you can see, where his noddle hit the cast iron, he sustained a very, very nasty wound.”

  “There’s something you’re not happy about, Inspector.”

  Murphy sighed, but remained silent against sunlight emerging from behind a cloud, the beam slanting through the window.

  Maisie continued. “I think you might be in two minds. On the one hand, yes, it seems from this report the victim—on account of his own stupidity or a crime—fell from a high wall and straight down onto the line, however . . . however, at the same time we could speculate that he was running from someone and stumbled from the wall in a panic. Or he could have been pushed. Or—”

  “Or someone could have clobbered him on the head with a very—very—heavy object, and then the body was moved from somewhere else.” Murphy turned as he finished the sentence for her and moved away from the window.

  “Have you had soil particles tested? Was there any residue of decomposed vegetation on his clothing?” Maisie ran her finger down the report.

  “It’s right there.” Murphy stood beside her and pointed to a paragraph near the foot of the fourth page. “The railway line had to some extent returned to nature—there were weeds growing between the sleepers and among the rocks underneath—and apart from some gravel in the wound, there wasn’t anything to prove movement of the body, such as mineral or plant matter from another location. I think that’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?” He consulted his watch. “I won’t rule it out though, but there are those who would. Come on, better get going.”

  Maisie could bear the smell of a pathologist’s domain far better than most. She had known grown men—policemen with broad shoulders and a constitution that allowed them to face criminals armed with deadly weapons—fall to the ground upon entering a laboratory where postmortems were conducted. Seeing a murder victim in the place where the body was found was one thing—they could steel themselves for the discovery. But there was something about the vulnerable nakedness of a corpse having endured the attentions of a man with a scalpel, a doctor who had used sharp instruments to cut into flesh, bone and sinew, that could take that same policeman down in seconds. For Maisie there was something else that kept her standing—the fact that this moment, this very personal procedure of discovery, afforded her a chance to show compassion for the dead. Maurice had taught her that in the laboratory it was all too easy to forget respect, when there was nothing but the shell of a human being before you. “Think of a dead body as if you are viewing a set of clothing, Maisie—but consider it as the attire the soul has worn for many a year. And it is clothing that has something to teach us about the man or woman under the knife.”

  Without doubt, she was looking at the body of Joe Coombes. Murphy stood to one side, as an assistant informed them that “Dr. Clark” would be with them shortly.

  “It’s Joe,” said Maisie, looking down at the body.

  She glanced only briefly at the incisions where the pathologist had cut the flesh, and brought her full attention to the deep open wound on the skull—so invasive, it had allowed Dr. Clark to remove tissue from the brain. She looked closer, and frowned.

  “What is it?” Murphy was standing well back, halfway to the door, yet he had been watching her every move.

  “She’s seen what I saw—isn’t that so, Miss Dobbs?”

  Maisie looked up to see a woman entering via the double doors leading into the mortuary. She stopped alongside Murphy and held out her hand. “Spud—I take it you’re well?”

  Murphy opened his mouth to respond, but already the woman had moved to stand alongside Maisie. She extended her hand. “Clarissa Clark—pathologist around here.” The two women shook hands and Clark pulled a pair of clean rubber gloves from her pocket before reaching toward a trolley set up with an array of surgical instruments. She snapped on the gloves, picked up a scalpel and leaned back toward the corpse, using the instrument to indicate a small area in Joe Coombes’ brain. “That’s what you’re looking at, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Maisie, taking a step to the side to provide more space for Clark to move. “It looks like some sort of tumor—yet it’s not, and there is no identifiable outline or margin. And the color—though admittedly we are looking at a young man deceased for some days, but still . . .” She looked at Clark. “What do you think?”

  Clark sighed. “For the purposes of this investigation, I am obviously looking at immediate cause of death. Given where he was found, I would say that, yes, it’s of course possible that this injury here, on the other side, was caused by falling from a height and hitting a cast iron railway line at just the right angle.” Again using the scalpel, she pointed to a deep wound—a smashed orbital bone and torn flesh above the ear revealing a skull crushed into livid brain matter. “Very bad luck indeed. Could it have been made worse by being pushed, therefore increasing velocity? Yes, I would say so. But at the same time, the injury that killed Joe could well have been done by something heavy—a crowbar, for example, especially if it came down from a height.” She lifted her hand above her head and simulated bringing it down, stopping the trajectory of her hand just an inch from the open skull of Joe Coombes.

  “But you’ve obviously thought about that too.” Maisie gestured toward the naked brain matter that had first attracted her attention.

  “I have, and I have never seen anything like it.” Clark corrected herself. “No, I tell a lie—I’ve seen something like it. In Serbia, in the last war. I was working at a field hospital, and I saw something similar to this discoloration in soldiers subject to attack by poison gases.”

  “It’s caused by exposure to toxins, isn’t it?”

  Clark looked at Maisie. “Yes, I would say you’re right—in my humble opinion.”

  Maisie nodded, now pointing to the wound. “Where this young man is concerned, if you had to make a choice between falling from a height and being attacked with a crowbar, which side would you come down on.”

  Clark sighed. “I think you probably have an opinion, Miss Dobbs—if you are half the woman that Dr. Blanche would have taken on as his assistant.”

  “You knew him?” Maisie turned to look at Clark.

  “He was my favorite professor, when he came to lecture during my student years.”

  Maisie looked down at Joe Coombes, at rest, free of pain. She closed her eyes for several seconds, and then opened them again. She looked across toward Murphy, and then at Dr. Clark. “I would say he was the victim of a vicious attack, and with a heavy cast iron object. But of course I could be wrong.”

  As they left the mortuary together, Murphy leaned toward Maisie, as if to share a confidence. “She lied about one thing in there.”

  “Yes, I know,” replied Maisie.

  “That woman has never had a humble opinion in her life.”

  Maisie laughed. And for a moment she thought poor young Joe Coombes would have laughed at that one too, for she had felt his presence so keenly.

  Chapter 6

  Maisie and Detective Inspector Caldwell had, for the most part, a professional association that was respectful, though at times tense. During the occasions when they worked together, she felt it was as if they were two hot electrical wires running side by side—if they came too close, there would be sparks. But over the years they had reached a point where they could avoid a fire, and had come to hold a grudging respect for one another. And on this evening, as they departed the pub wh
ere they had just broken the news of Joe’s death to Phil and Sally Coombes, Maisie knew that Caldwell had been glad to have her at his side, and appreciated her company.

  “That—that in there—is the very worst part of this job. It’s like being in a mortuary, but instead of watching someone else take the insides out of a person, you’re the one doing it to the living. I feel as if I’ve just ripped three people apart. And there’ll be one more when their other son gets home.”

  “You did very well, Inspector Caldwell—it’s not easy, to tell people that someone they love has died, especially in these circumstances,” said Maisie.

  “You did most of the telling—I just filled in the police details,” said Caldwell.

  “But you gave them hope that you would find out what happened. I know your hands were tied, that you could not come out and admit it was murder, when there is still a question mark over the cause of death. They believe that Joe will not be forgotten, that his screams will not have fallen into a silent void—and there’s a bitter comfort in that knowing.”

  Caldwell nodded, sighing. “Offer you a lift, Miss Dobbs?”

  “I think I’ll go to my office, and then get a taxicab home. I have some work to do.”

  Caldwell stopped alongside the dark blue motor car parked next to the pub, where the doors were still locked and a Closed sign remained in place. A police driver held the vehicle’s door open, ready for his superior to step inside. The detective inspector turned to Maisie.

  “I won’t stop you, you know—investigating the death of Joe Coombes. Just keep in touch and I’ll do the same for you. I reckon you might have more luck than me—I’ve a lot on my plate, and the results of the postmortem are what they call ‘inconclusive,’ so I daresay the coroner will report this one as ‘death by misadventure’ because murder can’t be proven and for all the world it looks like a risky jump on the part of the deceased, who launched himself off a wall the height of a building just for the sheer thrill and high jinks of it.”