The Lately Deceased (6 page)

‘Did you see any sign of injury or bloodstaining when you examined the heart?' demanded Old Nick.

‘Nothing, nothing at all was there. I cannot see how you can say this thing!'

‘Can you tell us, Doctor,' said Meredith, ‘which part of the chest you listened to? Did you lift the clothing at all?'

‘No, she wore a long dress, with a top jacket. I put my stethoscope in the aortic area at the top. Zat is sufficient to hear the heartbeats if they are there.'

Meredith's medical knowledge did not run this far and he was unable to make any comment.

‘So there could have been a mark lower down without you noticing it?'

Weinkaatz, grasping eagerly at any concession, agreed profusely.

‘Yes, yes that is so … but there was no blood at all'

‘Mmmm … now, lastly, you are ready to swear that she was dead at the time you saw her. Not in a coma or anything like that?'

‘She was dead, officer, even a little cold.'

Meredith had one last question: ‘How long would you say she had been dead, Doctor?'

The Austrian shied away from this like a frightened horse.

‘Oh, how can I say? Not long; no stiffness in the eyes, just a little bit cold … very hard to say … hot room, too. I can only say less than six hours.'

Meredith finished with a reprimand on the evils of not reporting such deaths to the authorities straight away, and the now crestfallen doctor went off promising to go to the police station at two o'clock to sign his typed statement.

Grey was scornful at the doctor's estimation of the time of death.

‘Six hours, my Aunt Fanny!' he sneered. ‘A likely story, if you ask me!'

‘Where's Walker now?' asked Old Nick.

‘Waiting in the dining room,' said the constable.

‘Hmm! It's difficult to know quite what to do with him, until we're ready to drag the story from everybody else at this blasted party. We can't do that until after lunch now.'

‘What about moving him over to the station, sir?' Grey suggested. ‘They can fix him something to eat while he waits. There should be quite a few other witnesses there by now, if Masters has been able to round them up.'

‘Does it matter if they talk together beforehand?' asked Stammers.

‘Can't do any harm. No one knows why they've been sent for yet, except possibly one of them and there's no fear of him blabbing,' answered Meredith.

‘Hadn't we better make a start with these people that Masters has collected, sir?

‘They're entitled to be a bit shirty if they're dragged away from their work and then held for hours doing nothing.' Sydney Grey had a streak of sympathy where witnesses were concerned and didn't agree with Meredith's idea of letting them sweat.

‘Well, we'll look in at the station and see who Masters has managed to scrape together,' conceded Old Nick. ‘Meanwhile, Williams, find Mr Walker and that pair living with him and ask them to come on over.'

When they arrived in the dismal waiting room of Comber Street Police Station, Geoffrey Tate and Abe Franklin were at once joined by five others from the party of the night before. Four were young fellows from the studios; Geoff knew them by name but had no idea what they did there. The fourth was Leo Prince, looking mystified and worried, and as happy in a police station as a Moslem in a pork butcher's shop.

On the heels of the detectives came Gordon, who had driven Barbara and Webster in his own car.

Meredith addressed the subdued crowd, standing in the entrance of the CID office.

‘Tm sorry to have had to bring you here at this time of day and leave you so much in the dark as to what's going on, but you must have realised by now that we have reason to be disturbed by the circumstances of Mrs Walker's death. We will have to question each one of you individually about happenings at the party last night. Until we get the doctor's report on the examination of the body we shall not know for certain, but I'm afraid it looks as if a serious state of affairs exists.'

Old Nick paused for this to sink in.

‘Detective Inspector Grey here will ask you some preliminary questions to try to establish from you a list of all the people present last night. Meanwhile we must wait until after the post-mortem. I will then be in a position to tell you something more definite.'

With a curt nod, he left the room with Stammers and Grey took over where he had left off.

‘If you'll come into the adjoining office as the sergeant asks for you, we'll get through it more quickly. I'll arrange for some tea and sandwiches to be sent up while you wait for the superintendent to come back. Mr Tate, will you come in first, please?'

Chapter Seven

So began a tedious listing of names and times, each guest being asked questions almost impossible to answer accurately, even with the best will in the world.

‘What happened between so-and-so time and midnight?'

‘Whom did you see with Mrs Walker last?'

‘Which rooms did you go to during the games?'

‘With whom did you go?'

‘What time did you return to the lounge?'

Grey asked the questions and Masters took down the meagre information gleaned from the replies. About fifteen people had arrived by the time the post-mortem was due to start and, eventually, Grey left Masters to finish off the statements and went over to the mortuary to join Meredith.

As Old Nick had forecast, Dr Chance failed to arrive on time. He was apt to be anything up to two hours late, but this day they were in luck, as at only twenty past twelve, his Jaguar arrived at the gates.

He was a lean, almost spidery Scot in his early sixties, with a mass of white hair and enormous eyebrows overhanging sharp blue eyes. A long, deeply lined face, set in perpetual bad temper, was pink with a freshly scrubbed look that fitted the profusion of silvery hair. He was dressed in his usual immaculate light-grey pinstripe, with a black Homburg poised correctly on his head.

Taking a large case of instruments from the boot, he came around his gleaming car just as his secretary got out from the nearside, carrying a small typewriter in a zip-up case.

Miss Susan Light was a very attractive brunette, petite and perfectly groomed, dressed in a shapely black business suit with a coat thrown loosely over her shoulders. She was a typical part of the Chance empire. Though he always had an exceptionally attractive secretary, it was never the same one for more than a couple of years, as they all had a habit of getting married off to eligible barristers or doctors who came into contact with the Chance
ménage
.

A procession formed up in strict order of precedence to march into the mortuary. The lady went first, after Edgar, who opened the doors. Alistair went next, wearing a particularly ferocious frown for the occasion; then the detectives in order of seniority. The photographers, with Wally Morris, brought up the rear.

Already inside were two officers from the laboratory at Scotland Yard, one of them a senior liaison officer whose function it was to advise on and retain any material for scientific examination.

Edgar busied himself with arranging the tools, whilst Dr Chance gowned himself with the solemnity of a high priest about to perform the ultimate sacrifice. As he did so, he asked Meredith the facts of the case.

‘Our knowledge so far is pitifully poor, sir,' admitted Old Nick. ‘It's a queer job; the emergency doctor was called to the tail end of a pretty hot party in a smart flat, and finds her dead on the bed with a story of her being found drunk in a wardrobe some time before. He leaves her there and gets the undertakers to collect, then reports it to us at nine o'clock!'

‘Dear, dear, Superintendent! Whatever will these young doctors do next? I hope he wasn't a St Jeremy's man.'

Dr Chance's expression changed from severity to anguish for a few seconds.

‘No, no, sir, he was a continental doctor, and middle-aged. Anyway, he was going to call it a heart attack or an acute alcoholic death, but Mr Sidgwick here beat him to it by finding that hole in the chest.'

Grizzle-Guts drew in his breath through pursed lips with a faint whistle.

‘A most invidious position for you, Superintendent, if I may say so,' he said in his sonorous Scots voice. ‘I presume the witnesses are scattered far and wide by now?'

‘They are indeed, sir – a most awkward situation. A lot depends on your findings, if I may say so. We can't very well go ahead until we are quite clear what's happened.'

‘Quite so, we shall see, we shall see. Miss Light, shall we begin?'

The eye-catching secretary, looking quite out of place in the bleak and bloody mortuary, sat quite nonchalantly at a side table where she had set up her typewriter. The younger policemen were more interested in throwing furtive glances in her direction than in the post-mortem, until Alistair called for photographs of the body as each layer of clothing was removed from the wound and its true extent could be seen.

He called abrupt descriptions to Miss Light, who briskly clattered them onto a printed form. The appearance, height and clothing of the deceased were minutely recorded and the names of the CID officers typed as proof of identification. Then the appearances of the wound, externally and internally, were described and the next forty minutes were taken up by examining all the other organs and completing the report. Finally, Alistair Chance pulled off his rubber gloves and went to the washbasin to clean up.

‘There you are, gentlemen, as nice a case of murder as you are ever likely to see. This will make a nice addition to my lecture slides. You will remember to send a set of the photographs to the hospital, won't you, Mr Meredith?'

He brushed away almost happily for a moment and went on.

‘A neat stab through the lower ribs into the chest cavity and through into the tip of the heart. Unless the murderer was a doctor or anatomist, it was a lucky jab. Still, if it had been pushed far enough whatever weapon it was, it would have been bound to hit something vital higher up, even if it had missed the heart, as long as it was of sufficient length.'

He dried his hands, seeming almost cheerful for once at this perfect example of violent death.

‘No chance at all of this being accident or even suicide?' asked Meredith.

‘Always possible, but so unlikely as to be discounted, I feel sure. Suicide would be physically possible, but I can visualise no accident that could cause this. No, it's murder, no doubt at all, especially as I presume no weapon was present at the scene.'

‘Why no bleeding outside, Doctor?' asked Pepper.

‘It's like that Reading case. Pepper; you came with me to that, didn't you? The blood has escaped from the heart into the chest, but death occurred too quickly for it to reach the hole in the chest wall – the little drop of blood on the dress is just a local ooze from the skin itself.'

‘An important point now, sir,' said Meredith slowly and thoughtfully; ‘What sort of weapon do we have to look for?'

Dr Chance, rolling down his shirtsleeves, considered this. ‘Very difficult to be specific, but it will be narrow, very narrow. The wound size is deceptive, but I would think less than a quarter of an inch in width. As to length, well, at least four inches, to have reached the heart from that point on the skin.'

‘Would it be very sharp, do you think?'

‘Only the tip, not necessarily along the edges. Two hundred years ago, or today for that matter in Italy, it would be a commonplace injury from a stiletto; but, in these circumstances, something like a large knitting needle comes to my mind, Superintendent.'

Grey ventured to butt in on the conversation. ‘What about a screwdriver, sir, would that do?'

Alistair looked at him severely as if he had said something outrageous. ‘Hardly, hardly! That would tend to leave a split at each side of the wound, but this is quite regular as far as I can see with the naked eye. I'll have a look at it under the Ultrapak when I get back to the hospital.'

He was in his coat by now and ready to go. Susan Light had closed up her machine and was handing him the report for his signature. He signed a copy each for the CID and for the coroner and put the spare into his case.

‘When will Dr Hope open the inquest, Morris?' he asked, referring to the coroner.

‘He suggested Tuesday morning, if that suits you, sir,' replied Wally.

‘Very well. Then, I'm away. Come, Miss Light.'

With a flourish of cases and nylon-clad legs, they were in the Jaguar and were off, leaving a bunch of raincoated detectives standing in the dismal yard.

Chapter Eight

The inquisition at the police station had begun when Eve Arden arrived soon after lunch. She had been in Surrey all the morning doing location shots for a serial play in which she had a small part, and had not had the police message until she returned to Metropolitan House at the end of the morning. Coming straight over to Comber Street by taxi, she found that the crowd in the small waiting room had overflowed into an adjacent office, almost all the people from the party having now been collected.

The two Moores and Martin Myers were among the few absentees. Eve nodded to those near the door when she arrived but, seeing Geoff Tate leaning against the window sill, she hurried over to him.

‘Hello, Geoff. Please tell me what's going on!'

Geoff turned quickly and greeted her. In spite of the circumstances, he could not hide his approval of her trim figure beneath the open coat. Her blonde hair was clustered around her face and her blue eyes were shadowed with anxiety, adding a touch of concern to her usually cheerful expression. He had always liked her company for its happily irresponsible gaiety, but now he found a new and heightened interest in her.

‘Eve, at last! The coppers have been searching high and low for you all day. Tell Uncle where you've been.'

‘I've been working. What a ghastly hole this is. Do they let you smoke in here, Geoff?'