‘This is becoming a habit, Inspector.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ Detective Inspector Sloan took up his stance in the mortuary while Dr Dabbe was flanked by his taciturn assistant, Burns. Detective Constable Crosby was in his usual position, too – that is, as far away from the scene of action as he could get.
‘Have you got a crime wave starting up in your manor, then?’ enquired Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe, regarding Sloan over the top of his face mask with raised eyebrows.
‘I sincerely hope not, Doctor,’ said Sloan. ‘The doctors at Berebury Hospital told us straightaway that this man had a fractured skull, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. But as well as the deceased – name of Terry Galloway – having all the appearance of being a victim of a non-accidental injury, we also have reason to believe that his death might be connected with that of Susan Port, his godmother.’
‘Ah, the ergot lady,’ said the pathologist. ‘I remember.’
‘That’s right, Doctor. This man was found injured and unconscious on her doorstep out at Bishop’s Marbourne on Saturday morning, which had been her home. We think he’d been there all night, the house being empty at the time.’ Sloan wasn’t quite sure yet about the house being empty then, it was just something else among many others that had still to be checked.
The pathologist bent over and examined the back of the deceased’s head and then his hands. ‘He’s got a fractured skull, all right, but whether that is the cause of death I can’t tell you just yet. There’s no sign of a subdural haemorrhage, anyway, and no bleeding from his ears or mouth.’ He turned to his assistant. ‘We’ll need some photographs, please, Burns.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ Burns reached for a large camera.
‘And there’s no sign either of the deceased having tried to defend himself, which is consistent with his having been hit from behind.’
‘So he never knew what hit him,’ concluded Crosby from the sidelines.
The pathologist turned back to the detective inspector. ‘All I can say at this early stage, Sloan, is that this man’s injuries are consistent with his having received a very considerable blow to the occiput.’
Crosby translated this at a distance. ‘He was hit on the head with something heavy.’
‘Obviously I can’t tell you how it came about, Sloan, but it’s a similar sort of injury as you can get from being hit by the boom of a yacht.’
Sloan thought he heard a faint ‘Boom, boom’ from Crosby’s direction but decided to ignore it. He decided, too, against mentioning anything about yachts not being commonly found deep in the Calleshire countryside because he was aware that the pathologist’s real interests lay in a certain Albacore lying in the marina at Kinnisport.
Or perhaps with a young lady scientist at Calleford Hospital?
‘The weapon, whatever it was,’ said Sloan instead, ‘has not yet been found.’ He would deal with Crosby later. ‘Perhaps, Doctor, you could give us some indication of what it is likely to have been.’
‘Blunt, anyway. And not too big.’ The pathologist was still peering closely at the man’s skull. ‘We’re talking iron bar or something of that order – poker, perhaps.’ He motioned to his assistant. ‘Some X-rays, too, Burns, please. And then we’ll open the skull.’
Detective Inspector Sloan stood to one side as the pathologist proceeded with the rest of the post-mortem examination, motioning from time to time to Burns to take specimens of tissue and fluids from the cadaver. ‘Especially the liver. Burns. It’s enlarged and engorged and I don’t know why.’ He turned back to Sloan. ‘Was he a big drinker, Inspector?’
‘We don’t know, Doctor. He had just arrived here from Australia.’
‘There’s no immediate sign anyway of his having been into drugs to account for the state of his liver. Several puncture marks from needles in the usual places – presumably from the attempts by the medical profession to keep him alive. He’s not jaundiced, and he doesn’t look as if he’s been bleeding anywhere.’ Dr Dabbe bent over the organ again. ‘Question: what is life? Answer: it depends on the liver. And it really does, Sloan.’
‘I’m sure, Doctor.’
Eventually Dr Dabbe straightened up, pulled off his mask and pointed to the body of Terry Galloway. ‘Otherwise a relatively fit young man, quite muscular, pretty sunburnt and I would have said in very good condition before the fracture.’
‘We think he’d been backpacking from Australia to England,’ said Sloan.
The pathologist nodded. ‘That fits. Whether the fracture – more of a little crack, really – was severe enough to be the cause of death, Sloan, is a different matter altogether. It’s too soon to say at this stage. We’ll have to wait for the lab results.’
‘Actually, the doctors at the hospital saw some signs of his coming round during Saturday evening and were quite hopeful of his living, but then he seems to have taken a turn for the worse during the night.’
‘Perhaps he took a turn for the nurse instead,’ muttered Crosby, already bored.
Dr Dabbe looked up, his eyes bright. ‘Ah, Sloan,’ he said alertly. ‘Now, that improvement’s very interesting.’
‘We found that interesting, too, doctor,’ Sloan said. That was not strictly true, since Crosby did not appear to have found anything interesting about the case so far. ‘In fact, we took the precaution of having a man on bed watch on Saturday night.’
‘Anything happen?’
‘Terry Galloway died. That’s all.’
On this occasion Miss Florence Fennel allowed the visitors to bypass the waiting room at Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery’s offices and showed all the Mayton legatees straight into Simon Puckle’s room, explaining as she did so that the solicitor had been held up at the Magistrates’ Court that morning.
Martin Pickford nodded his understanding. ‘There’s no arguing with our Hettie.’
‘Who?’ asked Clive Culshaw.
‘The Chairman of the Bench, Miss Henrietta Meadows,’ said Martin, settling his bad leg into a more comfortable position. ‘Believe you me, she isn’t good news.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Clive Culshaw distantly.
‘Mr Puckle will be with you as soon as he can,’ said Miss Fennel. ‘Please make yourselves comfortable until he comes. Coffee is on its way.’
Making themselves comfortable included choosing where in the room to sit. Clive and Tom Culshaw made it quite clear that it wasn’t going to be next to each other, while it soon became obvious that Martin Pickford didn’t want any further encounter with Tom Culshaw after the job that Gordian Knots had done for him. That left Tom Culshaw pulling up a chair beside Samantha Peters. ‘Any idea what this meeting’s all about?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘None. I hope it doesn’t take too long anyway. I’m usually in bed by now. I work nights,’ she reminded him. ‘What about you? Do you work with your brother?’
‘Not on your life.’ He shuddered. ‘My mother made very sure of that.’
The nurse looked interested. ‘Tell me.’
‘We never got on.’
She looked across the room where Martin Pickford was making heavy weather of talking to Clive Culshaw. ‘Sibling rivalry?’
‘It was her. My mother. She never got on with me,’ he said dolefully. ‘I would have done with her – I always tried – but she cut me out of the family firm from day one. And made doubly sure of it when she died, too.’
‘Bad luck,’ she said sympathetically.
‘I was told that the doctors even had to take me away from her when I was born in case she harmed me. Can you believe that of a new mother and her firstborn baby?’
‘Oh, yes, I can. Quite easily, in fact,’ the nurse responded unexpectedly. ‘That means that she must have been suffering from severe post-natal depression at the time. Sometimes it can mean that the mother didn’t bond with the baby.’
‘She certainly didn’t bond with me.’ He sat up, intrigued. ‘Tell me more.’
‘I used to work in midwifery, you see, and came across a case there every now and then. It’s quite difficult to treat and the baby can be in real danger.’
‘She never even liked me,’ he said.
The nurse patted his hand. ‘That’s a symptom of the condition. You shouldn’t blame your mother.’
‘I can’t. She’s dead,’ he said bleakly.
‘Or her memory, then.’
‘I never did anything wrong and she always behaved as if I never did anything right.’
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself either,’ added Samantha Peters. ‘Not now or then. It was absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s a clinical condition.’
‘You can say that, but it always felt as if it was everything to do with me,’ he said bitterly.
‘It’s to do with her pregnancy and sometimes a difficult delivery of the baby shaking up the hormones in a big way.’
‘Someone did hint to me once that she’d had a bad time when I was on the way,’ he admitted. ‘I always assumed I got all the flack because of that.’
It was at that moment that Simon Puckle returned to his office, hot on the heels of the coffee. He got straight down to business. ‘I felt that some further clarification was needed in relation to the Mayton Trust and that you should also be apprised of some recent events.’
‘We’re all ears,’ said Martin Pickford easily, leaning back in his chair.
‘As far as the trust is concerned,’ said the solicitor, ‘all of you must have been aware that following the death of Mrs Susan Port, there would be a percentage increase in your own inheritance.’
Clive Culshaw murmured under his breath that he could do simple arithmetic.
Simon Puckle ignored him. ‘The capital sum will no longer have to be divided by six but by five.’
‘When?’ asked Clive Culshaw.
‘In due course,’ said Simon Puckle suavely, ‘which originally meant when Daniel Elland was found.’
‘You mean it doesn’t now?’ Clive Culshaw suddenly sat up very straight.
The solicitor said, ‘Theoretically – and I do stress that I mean only theoretically – should some other legatee be known to have killed Mrs Port the capital would then be divided between the remaining four.’ He coughed. ‘In law as you may know a murderer may not benefit financially from the death of his or her victim.’
‘Gets better and better, doesn’t it?’ said Martin Pickford cheerfully. ‘If we go on at this rate I’ll collar the lot.’
Tom Culshaw turned to Simon Puckle and said, ‘Something’s happened, then?’
‘Two things,’ responded the solicitor. ‘Firstly, I am informed by the police that Mrs Port’s godson turned up from Australia to see her. We think he went out to Bishop’s Marbourne to visit her early on Friday evening and was assaulted outside her cottage. He was found on Saturday morning on her doorstep with serious head injuries.’
‘How serious?’ demanded Tom Culshaw at once.
‘He died in the hospital during Saturday night,’ said Puckle succinctly.
‘That serious,’ murmured Tom Culshaw.
Samantha Peters said softly, ‘Poor man.’
‘Not unnaturally,’ went on the solicitor, ‘the police are taking into consideration the possibility that there might be some connection between the two deaths.’
‘I don’t blame them,’ shivered Samantha Peters.
‘I must say that that’s a bit worrying,’ said Tom Culshaw. ‘I don’t like to think of something like that happening round here.’
Simon Puckle, experienced solicitor, said that that was a very common feeling after an incident too close to home for comfort. Detective Inspector Sloan, veteran policeman, would have been the first to agree with him that place, however familiar, did not confer immunity from iniquity. Or reduce the liability to road traffic accidents on your own patch. Both were common misconceptions that came as a surprise to victims.
‘There is also another matter that I wish to bring to your attention,’ went on Puckle fluently. ‘As you are all aware, the sixth legatee, Daniel Elland, has not yet been traced.’ He looked across at Clive Culshaw. ‘Perhaps Mr Culshaw himself would like to tell us what happened to him?’
‘Go on,’ said Samantha Peters urgently. ‘What else has happened? Tell us.’
‘Get it out, man,’ said Martin Pickford.
Tom Culshaw stared at his brother. ‘Is someone gunning for you, too, now, Clive?’
Clive Culshaw looked round the room and began. ‘I happened to be in the parish of St Peter’s in Berebury – actually down by the Postern Gate – on Saturday evening—’
‘You did, did you?’ said his brother. ‘Well I never did.’
‘Got your sheriff’s badge, have you?’ asked Martin Pickford.
Culshaw stiffened. ‘It had occurred to me that since this Daniel Elland is presumably without visible means of support, he might have joined the down-and-outs there, as it is the place where the homeless congregate. I thought Daniel Elland might be living rough there.’
‘And?’ asked Pickford.
‘I think he might be.’
‘Why?’
‘Because someone hit me from behind when I mentioned his name.’ He put a hand to the back of his head. ‘I don’t know who he was except that he was taller than me.’
Simon Puckle raised a hand. ‘I can assure you all that our enquiry agents got no response when they asked his whereabouts among the – er – denizens of that locality.’
‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they?’ said Martin Pickford. ‘Companions in misfortune stick together.’
‘Honour among thieves, more like,’ suggested Clive Culshaw.
‘But exactly what happened?’ asked Samantha Peters insistently. ‘Did you find him? We get some very dubious characters from there at the hospital – very drunk, as a rule. But no one ever calling himself Daniel Elland. I checked our admissions register in the beginning just in case.’
The solicitor went on. ‘As a result of this, the police have suggested that for the time being you all take reasonable precautions.’
‘Against what?’ demanded Tom Culshaw. ‘Being hit on the head, too?’
‘They advise against any of you going around the Postern Gate area and the riverbank at night and alone,’ said Simon Puckle firmly. ‘There appears to be rather more at stake in the distribution of the Mayton Trust than I had first thought.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Martin Pickford.
Samantha Peters said that it did mean, though, didn’t it, that Daniel Elland must be there?
‘I understand, Miss Peters,’ said the solicitor, ‘that that is the police view, too, now. I am not, of course, privy to their plans in the matter, but I am sure they will be taking some appropriate action in due course.’