The Lately Deceased (25 page)

‘Did you know all along that Colin Moore didn't kill Margaret?' demanded Barbara Leigh.

‘No, ma'am, I did not. Up to the time of the inquest, I believed he had killed her, though I must confess I was not entirely happy about it. I didn't like our reports on the suicide note, though the suicide set-up itself was most convincingly staged. Even now I've no proof of how it was contrived.'

‘Well, I can confirm that Gordon did kill Colin,' Eve interrupted, ‘because he told Pearl and me so, in that dreadful bedroom.'

‘Yes, by then I was sure of it,' said Meredith. ‘He must have done it within twenty-four hours of killing his wife. He was supposed to have spent that Friday night with you, was he not, Mr Tate?'

‘Yes, he did.'

‘Were you with him all the time? I mean, could he have slipped out without your knowing?'

‘I wasn't with him
any
of the time,' Geoff replied. ‘After you turned us loose on the Friday afternoon, I spent the rest of the day with Miss Arden. Both of us went back to my place at about eleven o'clock with the idea of cheering Gordon up. As a matter of fact, I had a bit of a conscience for having left him on his own for so long – but when we got there, he wasn't around. He had left a note saying he had gone out and that I was not to wait up for him.'

‘And did you wait up for him?'

‘No, I didn't. I drove Miss Arden home and, as he still wasn't back when I got in, I went to bed.'

‘Did you hear him come in later?'

‘No, I heard nothing at all. But he was there all right the next morning.'

‘Did you ask him where he had been?'

‘Yes. He said he had been tramping the streets. He was clearly pretty het up, and I can't say I was altogether surprised.'

‘He told Pearl and me that he spent that night at Hampstead in the garden of the Moores' flat,' Eve chimed in. ‘Colin hadn't then been traced and Gordon wanted to get at him before the police did. He was hiding close by when the constable accosted Colin, and he was still there when Colin was driven off in the police car. He was still there much later when Colin came home in a taxi.'

‘This is most interesting, Miss Arden,' Meredith said, turning on the charm. ‘It fills the gaps in my investigation, so please go on.'

‘Well, when Colin came back, Gordon was waiting for him. I don't know what sort of story Gordon pitched him but they entered the flat together, and were sufficiently pally to start drinking together when they got inside. Gordon said he got Colin very drunk – I shouldn't think that was very difficult as I gather Colin bad been drinking all day. Then Gordon sold Colin the idea that he needed a pick-me-up and produced some doped concoction that soon put him out cold.'

‘Walker drugged Moore good and hard,' Meredith confirmed ‘The pathologist found massive quantities of a barbiturate drug inside him. Its purpose, of course, was to keep him quiet while Walker rigged up his gas chamber and typed the note.'

He shook his head regretfully. ‘I accepted that note against my better judgment; but I was influenced by the fact that it was the only loose stone in an otherwise stable structure.'

‘What made you change your mind, then?' Geoff asked. ‘What made you decide today that Gordon was your man?'

‘It was due in part to Martin Myers, who has been lying unconscious in Whittington Hospital since the night Mrs Walker was murdered. Just over a week ago, he made a fleeting return to consciousness – or partial consciousness – during which time he repeated a few words which might have had some bearing on Mrs Walker's death. Or they may just have been the ramblings of a sick mind. We couldn't tell for sure and neither could the doctors who were attending him. Either explanation was equally likely. Well, I could afford to take no chances; I had to play it safe and so I asked for an adjournment of the inquest in the hope that Myers would make a fuller recovery in the interval, or that the line of investigation suggested by his mumbling might bring something new to light.'

‘Do tell us what his mumbling suggested to you,' Eve begged.

‘Well, his words were “poor Margaret – I must tell them”. Now what, if anything, did he mean by that? As I said just now, it could have had no deeper significance than the shock of Mrs Walker's sudden death coming to the surface of his subconscious mind. But it could have had a direct bearing on the circumstances of her murder. It was the word “them” that worried me; who did he
mean
by “them”. If he meant us, the police, the inference was that he was in possession of information that ought to be made known to the coroner. But what that information was, we could only guess.'

Meredith stopped to collect his thoughts.

‘What then?' asked Geoff Tate.

‘During the next few days we set aside our earlier conclusions and worked on the assumption that someone other than Colin Moore was the killer, and that Martin Myers knew who that someone was. We re-examined all the evidence, rechecked all the witness statements, and got precisely nowhere. The only thing in Moore's favour was the amateurish typing of the suicide note, and even that could be explained by the effect of the alcohol and drugs that he had taken. Moore just had to be the killer – everything pointed to it.'

‘So what changed your mind?' asked the indefatigable Barbara.

‘This morning, two things happened which changed the whole picture. The first of these was that we got the laboratory reports on the skewer believed to be the murder weapon, and the second was that Martin Myers recovered consciousness again, and this time there could be no doubt as to his lucidity.'

‘What did he say this time?' Geoff asked.

‘He told us a great deal, the gist of which was that he had spent most of the early part of the party with Margaret Walker, during which time she became a little tipsy and had made him the unwilling recipient of her confidences. Near to tears one minute and giggling foolishly the next, she told him of her life with Walker and of her detestation of Mrs Moore. She said she wanted to hurt Walker as he had hurt her and generally carried on in the way one expects of a woman scorned. She talked about the early days of their marriage, about how she had ridden Walker on a tight rein when she had held the purse strings and he was nearly broke – and how he had later escaped her restraining hand when he became financially independent of her. Her only hold on him now was her capital. He wanted that, she said – he'd always wanted it, but from now on she was going to make damned certain he never got it. Tomorrow she would make a new will. That would finish him for good. And so she went on, at great length. Poor Myers, not knowing how to escape, was forced to listen to these revelations and was further embarrassed by her attitude of extravagant affection towards him every time she thought Walker was looking in their direction. Spite, jealousy and disappointed womanhood, doubtless inflamed by unaccustomed alcohol, aroused the instincts of the vixen in this normally mild-natured woman.'

Stammers thought that he had never before heard Old Nick being so loquacious.

‘More than anything now, she wanted to hurt Walker, and she wanted Myers to see her do it. To this end, she got unsteadily to her feet, and invited Myers to enjoy the dismay on Walker's face when she told him what she proposed to do. But, in the event, Walker showed none of the dejection that his wife had forecast. Apparently, he listened patiently to what she had to say, nodding his head once or twice, as though in agreement, and then quietly sent her back to where Myers was waiting. Of drama there had been none.'

The audience was now hanging on to the superintendent's every word.

‘Of course, while Margaret was alive all this meant very little to Myers; as far as he was concerned Margaret was just a disappointed woman whose tongue had been loosened by drink. But once Margaret was dead it took on a new significance. Just
how
significant Myers didn't know, because, by the time he left the party, there was no suggestion of foul play. Nevertheless on his way home that night, it occurred to him how very timely Mrs Walker's death was from Walker's point of view. He was so impressed by the coincidence that, instead of retiring to his bed, he took a walk round the neighbourhood to think things out. And, perhaps because he was so engrossed in his thoughts, when he did return to his basement flat, he fell down the stairs leading to it.'

‘There's no suggestion that he was pushed, I suppose, Superintendent?' Geoff said. ‘Because he wasn't drunk – or not so that you'd notice it.'

‘None at all, nor has Mr Myers any recollection of coming over dizzy, or of being pushed or anything happening to him to cause him to fall. I think we must accept his falling as “one of those things”. What is more to the point is that he didn't die as the result of the fall.'

‘If he had, Gordon would have got away with it, would he?' Geoff asked, reflectively.

‘No, sir, he wouldn't. Mr Myers' statement was the supporting evidence we needed; but the damning evidence was the skewer that fell from Walker's standard lamp. It was you who found it, wasn't it, miss?' he asked, turning to Eve.

‘Yes, it was, Superintendent. What did you find out from it?'

‘Quite a lot, as it turned out. The brown stains on it were, of course, blood – human blood – and it was not a very difficult matter to establish the particular sub-group to which it belonged. It was not the same group as Mrs Walker's!'

‘Then it couldn't have been the weapon that killed her, said Eve. ‘So who did it kill?'

‘Nobody.'

‘Then whose blood was it?'

‘We now know that it was Gordon Walker's.'

‘But I don't understand. How did his blood come to be on it?'

‘Because he put it there.'

‘Why, for heaven's sake?'

‘Because he had the little learning which so often proves to be a dangerous thing. He knew that his blood group was O Rhesus Negative, a fairly uncommon but by no means rare group – and that his wife shared the same group. Where he slipped was in believing that because his blood and hers were of the same general classification, the one would be indistinguishable from the other. But that, as the doctor here will no doubt tell you,' he said, nodding towards the local GP, ‘is far from being the case. Am I right, sir?'

‘Perfectly right,' the doctor replied. ‘For transfusion purposes, only the ABO and Rhesus groups are important, but there are a couple of dozen other groups – either quite separate ones or subdivisions of the Rhesus system which would be very significant from the point of view of a police investigation.'

‘Precisely that,' said Meredith quietly.

‘But why should Gordon know that his blood and Margaret's were of the same group?' asked Eve doubtfully ‘I've no idea what mine is.'

‘Mrs Walker was a regular blood donor,' Meredith told her. ‘The probability is that Walker saw it on the official card that is issued to all donors. We don't know for certain that he did, of course, but we do know that he knew that she was O Rhesus Negative, because he told me so in the course of an early interview. That he knew his own group is easier to explain. Those of you who were his friends will know that he suffered from stomach ulcers; and twice, following internal haemorrhage from them, he had to have transfusions of blood. On the first of these occasions, a sample of his blood was taken by the hospital to find out his group. It turned out to be O Rhesus Negative. Now, there is a standard procedure followed by hospital laboratories whenever a Rhesus Negative sample passes through their hands. The practice is to forward the blood to the Regional Transfusion Centre for more elaborate tests to determine the gene classification. In due course the Transfusion Centre sends a card to the patient with all the relevant details set out on it, and instructions to retain the card against the possible need of another transfusion in the future. This, procedure was followed in Walker's case. So you see, there was every reason why he should know more about his blood than you know about yours, Miss Arden.'

‘I see,' said Eve thoughtfully. ‘So though Gordon's and Margaret's bloods were basically the same, they weren't identical?'

‘That's it. Mrs Walker's blood was O Rhesus Negative but, genetically speaking, I understand, there is a world of difference between these two. The effect of this information, of course, was to disprove conclusively what until then we had believed to be the case; that the blood on the skewer was Margaret Walker's.'

‘That must have brought you up short!' commented Geoff.

Meredith nodded sadly.

‘As you can imagine this development brought the whole case tumbling about our ears and it was while we were still trying to pick up the pieces that Myers surfaced from his coma and told us what he knew.'

‘But because two specimens of blood match, it's no proof that they come from the same source,' Geoff objected ‘A dozen other people at that party might have had the same gene coding as the blood on the skewer.'

‘It would be surprising if they had, Mr Tate,' Meredith commented dryly, ‘Fewer than one person in every hundred has that particular genotype.'

‘Nevertheless, you can't hang a man because his blood matches the blood on Exhibit A,' Geoff persisted doggedly. ‘It's not proof.'

‘Not proof, I agree, but strong corroborative evidence when taken in conjunction with the weight of other evidence we had against him.'

‘So you think he cut himself and drenched the skewer in his own blood,' Eve persisted, revelling in the gory details.

‘I think so,' agreed the detective.'

‘I never saw any sign of a wound on him,' she said doubtfully.'

‘I think you are hardly likely to, young lady. A jab on the fingertip with a needle will allow a whole lot of blood to be squeezed out by somebody persistent enough.'