A Detective at Death's Door

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘You’re right, Harriet. I’ll tell you what it is. Here at last we’ve sorted it all out. We’ve got rid once and for all of that stupid Grant’s old witch. And what’s it my duty to do? To tell Commander Rance.’

  ‘Who will have to admit that he was wrong and you were right.’

  But Pat’s big round face was still fixed in gloom.

  ‘Pat, why not? Why not? You know that’s the truth of the matter.’

  ‘I do so. But I’m after working under that bugger ... ‘

  ‘And ... ?’

  ‘And he’ll wriggle out of it. I know that. He’ll somehow back himself still. He’ll accuse me of insubordination for following a line he’s said was not to be pursued. Anything.’

  Harriet thought.

  I must keep Pat alongside. I must. All right, I can see why he feels unhappy. A long-serving police officer, and he thinks he’s about to be asked to blatantly disobey an order. But if that’s what he’ll have to do to stay with me till I see this through to the end, then I’ll have to put him in a position where that will be the lesser of two evils, at least.

  ‘Rance has treated you like shit,’ she said at last.

  ‘He has that.’

  Now Harriet hardly needed to think.

  ‘Listen, Pat,’ she said. ‘How did you come to learn about that chap digging, out at Halsell Common, in the grey three-piece suit? All right, we’ve not got a name for him or much of a description. But isn’t he very likely, very likely indeed, to be none other than the Poisoner? And you learnt about him through me. And what am I? I’m the woman Commander Rance expelled from the incident room. “I trust I will not see you anywhere near here again,” he said. I remember. All too well. So, think about it. Is it really your duty to pass on to him now anything you learnt from me?’

  Pat thought. Visibly.

  ‘Ach, you make out a good case, Harriet, so you do.’ He twisted his great bulk about uneasily. ‘It’s not the truth of the matter, not at all. But, all right, it’ll do. It’ll have to do. After all, Rance is a hundred per cent persuaded Grant’s witch is the Poisoner, sitting there waiting for her million pounds. And she’s not. And we know it.’

  Harriet found a big grin had appeared on her face.

  ‘You’re right, Pat,’ she said. ‘In a way it’s our duty, your duty and perhaps mine, if Rance is determined to stick to the line we’ve finally managed to discredit, to pursue our own.’

  ‘Then lead the way.’

  ‘No, but listen. While I was waiting for Grant to be taken away, I gave a little thought, in the light of what we’d just made sure of, to that letter in the Star, signed Mentor. I have a notion that, if more attention was given to that, it might well pay off. I think, in fact, that’s our first step. At the worst it’ll be something extra to confront Rance with if it comes to a showdown.’

  ‘I’m listening, Harriet. But I ought to tell you that Rance has taken some action there. He had the letter itself sent to Fingerprints, though with no result after all those grubby hands at the Star had been pawing at it. But he had it sent, too, to some handwriting expert or other. To be told just what you yourself could have told him. Written in what they call an educated hand?’

  ‘And that was all? Just an educated hand?’

  ‘It was, so far as I’m told anything. Rance let the letter go back to the Star?’

  ‘Then I’d like to go there and talk to them about it. I’ve ... right, I’ve a feeling, no more than a feeling, that they didn’t print every word of the letter. There were oddities of phrasing, I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay. There’s no reason at all why a lady who was almost killed by your Mentor’s activities shouldn’t go and ask the Star about that letter. Damn it, you’ve every right.’

  ‘If you say so, Detective Superintendent.’

  The smile abruptly left her face. An awkwardness lay ahead.

  ‘Listen, Pat, there’s another thing. There’s a man I once worked with, an expert ... well, in point of fact he’s a well-known profiler. Now, I know your views on profilers in general, but this man, Professor Scholl from the University of North Essex, known to most police officers, to you too I dare say, as Dr Smellyfeet, is different. And he could tell me a good deal that I’d be — ’

  ‘No, Harriet, no. I see what you’re after. You want to get him up here, either by me suggesting it to Rance, who’ll take no notice at all, or by going behind Rance’s back, one way or another. And I’m not going to do that. I’m just not. If I did, and it came out, I’d be in bad trouble, dismissal time very like, whatever the rights and wrongs of it.’

  So Harriet parted from Pat on worse terms than they had been only a few minutes earlier. She felt a sharp disappointment. Never in all her time as a police officer had she felt so much in need of friendly and knowledgeable support. And now Pat, who had seemed to be providing that, had blocked her access to the man she had once learned to trust, the man who might be able to tell her things about the Poisoner’s mentality that would lead eventually to his arrest.

  But at least, she thought, it’s been agreed I can talk to the editor of the Star. So will I at least learn from him something about Mentor — I suspect it’s there — that will strengthen our case?

  *

  She got to see Jonathan Whitaker, the paper’s young editor, that very afternoon. A certain amount of negotiation over the telephone had been needed. But, newly energized, she found she was able to conduct it with all the necessary uncompromising directness, while even managing to suppress her long-held dislike of the Star and all it stood for. So she entered his office secure in an agreement that the paper could have a first-person account of her poisoning from Mrs Harriet Piddock, otherwise Detective Superintendent Martens, but would not get it while the Poisoner was still at large.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Jonathan Whitaker, young as a student in Harriet’s eyes, said breezily when straight away she had asked him if Mentor’s letter had actually been printed in full. ‘Owner’s privilege to censor things, you know. Still applied, we felt, even if old Sir Billy was dead. And the letter had some nasty cracks about the paper itself. Those got cut. I mean, we couldn’t have the readers getting the wrong ideas, could we? No, our Mr Mentor, or Mrs Mentor, if you’re going to go by all that stuff Bruce Grant told us — ’

  ‘Stuff?’ Harriet interrupted sharply. ‘Are you telling me that you printed that witch picture when all the while you didn’t believe what Grant was telling you?’

  Whitaker smiled, a little slyly.

  ‘Well, let’s say we reserved our opinion about the extent of his truthfulness. But with material for a really scary-wary pic like that, we couldn’t let it go, could we?’

  Harriet bit back the reply she would have liked to make.

  From a safe in the wall behind his desk Whitaker now produced, in accordance with the terms of their agreement, the original of the letter.

  ‘Back from the police scientists,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t going to let them keep their dirty hands on it, bet your life.’

  Harriet, looking at the sheets as they lay on the desk, noted at once that her guess about the writer seemed entirely correct. The handwriting appeared to be, as the expert had said, very much that of an educated and even elderly man.

  A man, she thought, of her father’s generation, though the sentiments were hardly his. But, true enough, he might well have used the occasional Latin phrase in anything he wrote.

  She looked up at Whitaker.

  ‘I find the Latin bits interesting.’

  ‘Oh, the Latin. There’s a lot of that we had to forget about. Or translate, if we could. We did that with — what’s it there? — mens sana in corpore sano. One of the dreariest of our sub-editors said he knew what that meant. So we changed it to healthy minds in healthy bodies. Did we get it right? Do you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet said, ‘you got it right. I learnt Latin at school.’

  ‘Sorry you’re not sitting at our subs’ table then. And how about alter ego, where
old Mentor talks here about Sir Billy owning porn cinemas, like the Roxy, under another name. We cut it, of course. But what’s it actually mean? No one here was sure.’

  ‘Another self,’ Harriet said, not without a sigh.

  ‘Then, look, what’s this bit we had to leave out?’ Whitaker went blithely on. ‘Panem et — Something about circuses, it seems to be, can’t think why.’

  ‘Panem et circenses. Bread and circuses. What the Roman mob was always thought of as wanting.’

  ‘I get it.’ He looked up. ‘Come to think of it, it’s what our readers want, if you substitute takeaways and sex videos. I suppose that’s what old Mentor got himself in such a twist about.’

  ‘It is. And the way he put it confirms my feeling, even when I first read the letter, that the writer is — ’

  ‘A teacher,’ Whitaker bounced in. ‘What we thought too. Silly old moo.’

  ‘No,’ Harriet said, ‘not quite a teacher, if I’m right. More a schoolmaster. One of the old breed, and, I’d say almost certainly, now retired.’

  ‘Yeah, see what you mean. Dead old-fashioned. Aren’t schoolmasters what they used to have in the classy public schools?’

  ‘And still do.’

  Harriet, happy with what she had learnt, was gathering her things together to leave when a thought occurred to her.

  ‘One other thing, Mr Whitaker.’

  ‘Just this. I don’t want to see in the Star tomorrow a big story headlined. The Poisoner. Is he a Schoolmaster?’

  ‘But-’

  ‘No, not a word. If you print that, you’ll get no firsthand account from me. On the other hand, if you cooperate, then I’ll see what I can do to keep you in the game. That suit you?’

  ‘Suppose it’ll have to.’

  But when she had reached the door he called back.

  ‘Wait, here’s another thing that puzzled us. It’s right at the end of the letter, one of the Latin bits we cut out altogether. Et in Arcadia ego. Well, even I know ego means I. But what’s this Arcadia stuff? Some sort of an arcade?’

  ‘No, not that. The phrase is actually a famous saying, or it used to be. It translates as And I too am in Arcadia. Or paradise, as you might say, a nice rural paradise. The only thing is, everybody disputes what it’s actually trying to say. Does it mean the person who said it, the I, is having a good time in his paradise? Or does it mean, as a lot of people believe, I, too, Death, am in the good place?’

  And no sooner were the words out of her mouth than a wave of almost paralysing coldness swept through her. Death in the paradise of Birchester. Death for anyone, however little a paradise they really were in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Harriet had intended to spend much of the next day phoning all the public schools in the area round Birchester to ask about retired staff. But when she woke she found, as had happened to her before, that a burst of energy, successful energy, seemed to have brought about an equivalent draining away of willpower.

  Three months, she thought, as she lay there. Three months before I’m free of this repeated cycle of ups and downs. Bloody Dr Dalrymple may yet prove to be right. No, worse, if I find that after any intensive spell of work I have to take time off, even go back to bed for a while, I’d have to resign. Leave the Job. Be finished.

  A thicker fog-cloud of lethargy coiled round her.

  For minutes, for a full half-hour, she lay where she was. In a pool of misery.

  But, once more, the shrilling of the phone brought her back to the world. By the fourth or fifth ring she had gathered enough energy, or enough curiosity, to heave herself up and answer.

  It was, of course, Pat Murphy.

  ‘How d’you get on at the Star?’ he asked at once.

  ‘Oh, Pat, all right. Yes, all right. I got something. But ... but I don’t want to go into it just now. To tell you the truth, I’m pretty well exhausted again.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Pat’s disappointment came down the line as clearly as if he had been standing beside her, hangdog.

  ‘No. — I’m sorry, Pat. I’m not really as bad as I sound. Were you calling about something?’

  ‘I was. I am. While there’s no one here. Listen, one of the things I had in mind to do, before Rance came along and gave me tasks fit for the youngest DC in the force, was to go and see Sir Billy Bell’s widow. Condolences, of course, but I wanted, too, to find out about Sir Billy’s state of health before he set off to give out the prizes at the Majestic Club that night. Something in what your John told me about the circumstances made me somehow wonder a bit if everything was just as it seemed.’

  ‘John? John told you something about that evening that he didn’t tell me?’

  ‘Ach, don’t let me come between husband and wife now. Not at all, not at all. It was just a passing thought of his, that Sir Billy’s death looked to him more like some sort of heart attack.’

  ‘Well, yes, I think he did say something of the sort to me. My memory’s still not back to where it was, you know. I get patches of complete white-out.’

  ‘Right then. So what I was going to ask was: could you go and see Lady Bell for me? A visit of condolence would come well from you, a fellow victim. But if you’re not fit ... ’

  And, not for the first time, the scent of battle was enough to send the ears of the stabled war-horse pricking.

  ‘Pat, I’ll do it, if I can possibly make myself.’

  *

  Sir Billy Bell’s sprawling house, half Spanishy, half white-walls modernist, was, Harriet thought as her taxi drew up outside, wholly a mess. And suddenly the idea of meeting Sir Billy’s widow seemed, despite having had a friendly response when she had phoned, to be more than she would be able to manage. She sat there in the taxi, paralysed in inaction.

  At last the driver turned round to her.

  ‘We’re here, lady. This is the house Billy Bell had built. Where you wanted, yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. I’m sorry.’

  She began to scramble out.

  ‘That’s eight-pound fifty,’ the driver said, with an audible sigh of stupid woman.

  Harriet looked into her shoulder bag.

  What is it I want? Oh God, I’ve no idea. No, wait. He asked me something. Wait. Yes, money. The fare. How much did he say? Can’t remember. He told me only half a minute ago, and now I can’t remember. Oh, Christ, I should never have set out on this ...

  In its proper compartment in the bag she saw her wallet, pulled it out, opened it. There were notes in their place. She extracted one with fingers that seemed suddenly thick as sausages.

  She thrust it at the man, turned away.

  ‘Don’t you want your change, lady? That’s a twenty you’ve given me.’

  ‘Oh, was it? I’m sorry, I thought ... I’ll just take the ten. Thank you again.’

  The taxi zoomed off, with the driver shaking his head in disbelief.

  Jesus, Harriet thought, and I’m meant to be talking to Lady Bell, one-time dancer in musicals, to find out under the pretence of offering her my condolences just what was her dead husband’s state of health before he set out for the Majestic Club prize-giving.

  Right, I’ve got to pull myself together. Now.

  She marched up to the big, panelled front door, put a finger firmly on the bell-push beside it.

  A maid in uniform, black dress, white cap, opened the door.

  Harriet, looking at her, again found a flick of a vision of something black and white dazzling across her mind.

  No, she thought fiercely, I am about to meet Lady Bell. That is what I am doing. I’m not standing here having visions. I’m here to discover what it may have been that made John suspect Sir Billy might have died, not directly from poison, but from a heart attack. If that’s what he did suspect, half-suspect. And the answer may get us nearer the Poisoner. It may, or it may not. But the question, under whatever disguise, must be asked.

  ‘Lady Bell is expecting me. Mrs Harriet Piddock.’

  She realized her voice had sounded p
erfectly strong, even a little too forceful.

  The girl gave her a little bob of acknowledgement.

  ‘This way, madam.’

  The full business, Harriet thought, looking at the prim figure trotting along ahead of her. I can see Sir Billy wanting something like this, the touch of class. So what about his widow? Much the same?

  The moment she stepped into the big room the maid had led her to she began to think Lady Bell was going to be different. She was, in fact, hard even to find amongst a mass of armchairs, large as small boats, and sofa, large as a punt. But at last Harriet spotted her, sitting perched on the stool in front of the grand piano in a far comer, a tiny figure, silver-haired, face a network of wrinkles, dressed in a dark frock that might have been prescribed as mourning for a schoolgirl whose father had just died.

  ‘Come in, dear,’ she called across. ‘Come and sit near me, if you won’t get lost in the huge chair there.’

  Harriet went over and sat on the edge of the white silk-covered, gold-trimmed boat.

  ‘Lady Bell,’ she began.

  ‘No, for God’s sake, call me Kitty.’ Raucous tang contrasting startlingly with the minuscule frame. ‘Everybody calls me that. Well, bar my poor old Billy. When he got to be a Sir he kept trying to say Katherine. But he almost always forgot.’

  ‘Kitty, yes. I’ll try. And let me say at once that I’ve felt for days that I wanted to offer you — ’

  She jibbed at the awful formal word condolences.

  ‘No need for that,’ Kitty Bell put in quickly. ‘I knew when you said you wanted to come and see me you had to be feeling sorry for me. But you needn’t try to say it now. Whatever anybody says in these circs somehow sounds all wrong.’

  Then a little smile flicked over her pale, thin lips.

  ‘And that’s not what a detective superintendent’s really come about, is it? You want to know more about what I think happened at that old St Aldred’s School, don’t you? St Aldred’s, that’s how I always think of the Majestic Social and Whatsit Club. I used to walk past it every day when I was a kid. On the way to the elementary. Posh old St Aldred’s.’

  It took Harriet a long moment to adjust to this new, sharper version of the woman she had come to see. What price my careful description of myself as Mrs Piddock, she thought. She was on to that in an instant. No, Kitty Bell, getting on in years though she may be, is a very acute lady.