Blackstone looked up at the dangling corpse.
Fanshawe had probably hoped for a quick, painless death, he thought. That was what most people who hanged themselves anticipated – but it didn’t usually work out like that.
Hanging was both an art and a science. A good hangman would take into account the weight of the condemned man, and calculate the length of the rope – and hence the length of the drop – accordingly. He would place the noose in just the right position for the sudden impact to snap the man’s spine and send his brain into a state of unconsciousness. The amateur attempting suicide, on the other hand, knew none of this, and would invariably get it wrong.
And so it would have been with Fanshawe. When he jumped from the tree, he had probably been expecting instant oblivion.
And what had he found instead?
That he was dangling a few feet from the ground, fighting for breath!
Perhaps he had clawed up at the rope, in a desperate attempt to save himself, while, all the time, he was growing weaker and weaker through lack of oxygen.
Or perhaps he had decided simply – as many had done before him – that though he’d got it wrong, his death would still be just as inevitable, and merely take longer than he had anticipated.
‘Shall I cut him down, sir?’ the policeman in the tree called.
‘I suppose you might as well, now you’ve gone to all the trouble of climbing up there,’ Flynn replied. He turned to Blackstone. ‘They’re good boys that I’ve got working for me, Inspector. Very good boys! But they wouldn’t even think of taking a crap without asking my permission first.’
The policeman on the branch produced a knife and began to saw through the rope.
‘Hold on a second,’ Flynn said. ‘You two – Johnson and Taylor!’ he called out to a couple of young officers who were standing a few feet away from him. ‘Have you signed off duty for the night?’
The two men looked perplexed.
‘No, sir,’ one of them said.
‘Ah, so you are still on duty, but you thought you’d leave the donkey work to me and Inspector Blackstone here, did you?’
‘Is there something that you’d like us to do, sir?’ the young policeman asked.
‘Could be,’ Flynn mused. ‘You see the body hanging from that tree, Officer Johnson?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you see your man up there – Officer Polk – cutting through the rope with his knife?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So tell me, Officer Johnson, what do you think is going to happen to it when he’s finished the job?’
‘The body will fall to the ground, sir,’ Johnson said.
‘Yes, it will,’ Flynn agreed. ‘It will fall like a sack of flour. But it isn’t a sack of flour, is it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No, sir! It’s a man! And the way I see it, even if the poor bastard’s already lost most of his dignity, we should at least do all we can to try to preserve what little is left.’
‘You want us to take hold of him?’ Johnson said.
‘Now you’re getting the picture,’ Flynn agreed.
‘So there’s a soft side to your nature, after all,’ Blackstone said, as he watched Johnson and Taylor step forward, and grab hold of the swinging corpse.
Flynn’s stance stiffened slightly. ‘There’s nothing soft about maintaining a man’s dignity,’ he said. ‘The Irish have been fighting for it – and dying for it – for five hundred years.’
The rope went slack, and the two officers strained against the sudden weight. ‘Shall we put him on the stretcher, sir?’ Johnson asked.
‘Now that is a good idea you’ve just come up with,’ Flynn said. ‘You’ll go far in your chosen career, my boy.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the young policeman said, clearly confused. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘See what I mean, Inspector Blackstone?’ Flynn asked in a lower voice. ‘Without me, they’d be as lost as babes in the woods.’
Johnson and Taylor laid the body on the stretcher, and then reached for the handles.
‘One more thing, Officer Johnson,’ Flynn said softly.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I couldn’t help thinking – and I’m quite prepared to accept that I may be wrong on this – I couldn’t help thinking that Mr Fanshawe might look a little more at peace if you took the bloody noose from around his neck. What do you think, Officer Johnson?’
‘I . . . I think we should take off the bloody noose, sir.’
‘Good lad,’ Flynn said approvingly.
Johnson held the dead man’s head, while Taylor tugged at the slip knot and slackened the noose enough for it to be removed.
‘And don’t go throwing that bit of rope away,’ Flynn said. ‘The coroner will want to see it.’
Taylor placed the noose on the dead man’s chest, and then the two officers picked the stretcher up and began walking towards the edge of the woods.
‘It’s not much of a cortège, Inspector Blackstone,’ Flynn said, ‘but it is what we have, and I suppose, out of respect, that we’d better follow it.’
The horse-drawn police ambulance was parked, waiting, in front of the house.
‘Would it be all right to put the body inside, sir?’ Taylor asked.
‘It would be an excellent idea,’ Flynn told him.
Johnson and Taylor slid the stretcher into the ambulance, and once the doors were closed, the driver tugged lightly on the reins and his horse obediently clip-clopped away.
‘Are they taking him into town?’ Blackstone asked.
Flynn laughed. ‘Now why would they want to go and do that?’ he wondered. ‘Why let our local sawbones – who’s considered good enough, by the people who live around here, to cut the legs off living men – get his hands on the dead Mr Fanshawe? Far better, I would have thought, to take him to the big city, where he can be sliced open by a real expert.’
The words, if written down on paper, would seem bitter, but the way Flynn delivered them, they were not, Blackstone thought.
He had still not quite got Flynn worked out. Alex Meade had said that the man was playing a game, yet it wasn’t a game he was playing at all. It was a role – the role of aggrieved local policeman. But if that wasn’t what he really was, then who the hell was he?
‘Do you think Fanshawe was involved in the kidnapping?’ he asked – not so much because he had any doubts himself as to see what Flynn thought.
‘It does seem likely he was involved,’ Flynn said. ‘A man doesn’t top himself without a powerful motive – and the thought of going to the electric chair for his part in two murders would certainly have provided him with that. On the other hand . . .’ he paused.
‘Yes?’
‘On the other hand, it’s perfectly possible that he was totally innocent in this affair, and that what drove him to desperation was the thought of his past wrongdoings catching up with him.’
‘What past wrongdoings?’
‘Someone who closely resembles the description of Fanshawe has been wanted by the English police for a number of years.’
‘Go on,’ Blackstone encouraged.
‘It’s possible – and bear in mind it’s a hayseed policeman who’s telling you this – that Fanshawe’s real name was Ernest Hoddle, and that he used to belong to a gang which specialized in breaking into the houses of the British aristocracy. Would I be right to call those places “stately homes”?’
‘You know you would.’
‘At any rate, one of these burglaries – must have been about twelve years ago now – went wrong. The son and heir of the noble family in question heard a noise, went to investigate, and caught the burglars in the act. He’d thoughtfully taken his pistol with him, and fired at Hoddle. Fortunately for our hero, the young man wasn’t a very good shot – he was probably drunk, as, I believe, your decadent English aristocrats are most of the time. Hoddle received a wound which, though it must have been very painful at the time, wasn’t serious, and before the you
ng lord could fire again, one of the other burglars had the presence of mind to smash his skull in. It was never suggested that the robbers intended to kill this flower of English youth, but he did die, and so it was murder. Three of the gang were hanged – but the police never did get their hands on Hoddle.’
‘You said that Hoddle was slightly wounded.’
‘That’s right, I did.’
‘What was the nature of the wound?’
Flynn smiled. ‘Didn’t I say? I must be getting forgetful in my old age.’
‘You still haven’t said,’ Blackstone pointed out.
‘No more I have,’ Flynn agreed. ‘It seems that the young buck shot off the tip of Hoddle’s right index finger.’
‘Where did you get all this information from?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Why, from your very own little precinct station.’
‘From my what?’
‘From New Scotland Yard. And I must say, Mr Blackstone, that the Yard’s efficiency would put the New York Police Department to shame.’
‘You were first called to investigate this case at what time?’ Blackstone demanded.
‘Can’t remember, exactly.’
‘Eight o’clock this morning?’
‘Maybe a little later than that.’
‘And you’re seriously asking me to believe that, since then, there’s been enough time for you to cable New Scotland Yard, for New Scotland Yard to go through its records, and for another cable to be sent back to you in reply to your questions?’
‘As I said, they were very efficient.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Blackstone said.
‘Now isn’t that just the trouble with you English?’ Flynn asked. ‘You’re a nation of clerks that sees itself as a nation of heroes. You think nobody could rule the world better than you – and you couldn’t be wronger. Yet when it comes to something you are good at – the paperwork, the crossing of the “t”s and dotting of the “i”s – you won’t even take credit where credit’s due.’
‘You have a way with words – I’ll give you that,’ Blackstone conceded. ‘But however many flowers you decorate a piece of bullshit with, it is still bullshit.’
‘You’re not so bad with the words yourself – and I’m sure we could sustain this merry banter for hours if we wanted to,’ Flynn replied. ‘Unfortunately, we’re about to be denied the opportunity, because here comes your sergeant – and he looks to me like he’s got a lot on his mind.’
Blackstone turned and saw that Meade was, in fact, approaching them – and that he did look as if he had a lot on his mind.
The sergeant drew level with the other two men. ‘The family want to see us,’ he said.
‘The “family”, is it?’ Flynn said. ‘The whole clan. Now you should find that a very interesting experience.’
‘They want to see all three of us,’ Meade told him.
‘Maybe they do, Sergeant,’ Flynn replied. ‘But, you see, one of the few advantages of having my investigation snatched from under me is that I don’t have to jump whenever the “family” clicks its fingers.’ He reached up with his right hand and tipped the brim of his hat in a casual salute. ‘I’ll probably see you in the morning, gentlemen,’ he concluded
And then he turned, and followed the ambulance down the drive.
TEN
From the moment he entered the salon on the second floor of Ocean Heights, it was obvious to Blackstone that the furniture had recently been rearranged – and the way it had been rearranged said equally clearly that this was intended to be not so much a meeting as an interrogation.
George Holt was sitting with his wife, who he introduced as ‘Mrs Elizabeth Holt’, on a sofa just to the left of the main window. Harold Holt was sitting with his wife – Mrs Virginia Holt – on an identical sofa to the right of the main window. Facing the sofas – though some distance apart from them – were the two upright chairs on which Blackstone and Meade were bidden to sit.
The room itself was very much the kind of nouveau riche salon that Blackstone might have expected to find – the mirrors were in the grand and ostentatious Second Empire style, and the furniture was elaborate enough to proclaim ‘handmade by master craftsmen’ (which was just another way of screaming ‘very expensive’).
No surprises there, then, he thought.
But what did surprise him – to such an extent that he considered, for some moments, the possibility that this might all be part of some elaborate practical joke – was the complete mismatch between each of the sons and his wife.
Bumptious George’s wife, Elizabeth, was thin and pale. Her features in general were pinched and her mouth little more than a slit, but her eyes, in complete contrast, were big and wide, rather like those of a frightened deer.
Sensitive Harold’s wife, Virginia, on the other hand, had the generous bosom of a music hall singer, eyes which seemed to offer dark erotic pleasure, and the lips of a courtesan. Even though she was sitting down, it was possible to see that she was at least three inches taller than her husband, and she exuded a strength which suggested that – should she choose to – she could easily break him in two.
Once the two detectives were seated, George cleared his throat self-importantly. ‘I am rather displeased—’ he began.
‘Tell me, Sergeant Meade, are you, by any chance, one of the Connecticut Meades?’ Virginia asked, cutting in.
‘I was certainly raised in Connecticut,’ Alex Meade replied.
‘And are you any relation – however distant – to Mr Robert Meade, the brilliant attorney and ruthless politician?’
‘My father would revel in that description,’ Meade said with a smile. ‘Your opinion of him coincides perfectly with his own – though, in my view, you’re both rather far from the mark.’
Virginia Holt laughed. ‘How deliciously you phrase your thoughts,’ she said. ‘Robert Meade’s son! Well, well, well.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I must admit though, Alex . . . I may call you Alex, mayn’t I?’
‘Of course.’
‘I must admit that I find it extraordinary, given your background, that you are a policeman.’
Meade smiled again. ‘A lot of people do.’
‘Extraordinary, but not necessarily reprehensible,’ Virginia said. ‘I have the greatest respect for any man who is prepared to throw off his heritage and make his own way in the world.’
‘For goodness sake, Virginia, this isn’t one of your afternoon tea parties,’ George said exasperatedly. ‘We’re not here to make polite social chit-chat. Meade and his assistant have come to report their findings to us.’
‘I’m afraid you’re wrong on two counts,’ Alex Meade said. ‘The first is your assumption that Inspector Blackstone is my assistant. In actual fact, I am his.’
George ran his eyes up and down Blackstone’s second-hand brown suit, which had not been improved in appearance by the soaking it had received out in the woods.
‘Really!’ he said.
‘Really,’ Meade agreed. ‘I’d have thought, for most people, that the fact he’s an inspector, while I’m only a sergeant, would have given that away.’
‘I’d assumed, since Blackstone is a foreigner, that you would be in charge,’ George said huffily. ‘But that’s all by the way. As I’d started to say earlier, I’m rather displeased that—’
‘Don’t you want to know the other count on which you were wrong?’ Virginia interrupted.
George sighed. ‘Very well. On what other count do I appear to be wrong, Sergeant?’
‘You’re wrong about us being here to report to you,’ Meade said. ‘We report to the Commissioners of Police as a matter of course, and to the governor if requested to do so.’
Elizabeth Holt looked down at her hands, as if she felt the conversation was taking rather an unpleasant turn.
Virginia, in contrast, released a positive roar of laughter and said, ‘That’s put you in your place, George.’
‘I might remind you that I have some influence wit
h the government in Albany, Sergeant Meade,’ George said stiffly, reddening.
‘And so, I can well imagine, does Sergeant Meade’s father,’ Virginia countered.
What a cosy group they were, Blackstone thought – and how jolly their family meals must be.
‘Would it be all right with you if I now said what I have already attempted to say twice before?’ George asked his sister-in-law.
‘Of course, my dear George,’ Virginia said airily. ‘I wouldn’t dream of stopping you.’
‘I am rather displeased that you have allowed Fanshawe, who was clearly involved in the kidnapping of my father, to escape the consequences of his actions,’ George told the detectives.
‘Yes, I suppose you could call hanging himself “escaping the consequences of his actions”,’ Blackstone said, to Virginia’s obvious amusement. ‘Could I ask who employed him originally?’
‘He was engaged by my father, as all the servants were,’ George said. ‘He came with excellent recommendations.’
Of course he did, Blackstone thought. When a man is forging his own recommendations, he very rarely resorts to modesty.
‘Does the name Ernest Hoddle mean anything to you, Mr Holt?’ he asked.
George frowned. ‘No. Should it?’
‘Probably not,’ Blackstone said. ‘We’ll need you to give us a list of Fanshawe’s friends and acquaintances.’
‘Friends and acquaintances?’ George repeated.
Virginia laughed again. ‘It’s something of a revelation to my brother-in-law that servants have friends and acquaintances. As far as he’s concerned, they only really exist when they’re serving him.’
‘Really, Virginia, must you?’ the mouse-like Elizabeth asked, in squeaky defiance.
‘Yes, I must,’ Virginia countered. ‘Speak the truth and shame the devil. That’s my motto! Not that I’m suggesting – even for a moment – that there’s anything diabolical about my dear brother-in-law.’
‘That’s enough, Virginia,’ Harold said quietly.
‘Oh, my lord and master has spoken, and I must, perforce, fall silent,’ Virginia said.
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