A Shocking Affair

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘How did you manage that?’ Fellowes asked curiously. ‘The fiscal usually hugs these things close to his manly bosom until he’s good and ready.’

  ‘The fiscal,’ Enterkin said, ‘was once my apprentice. Old loyalties die hard.’

  We came to a junction with a road which looked familiar. A little further on we turned through the archway and trundled up the drive to the house. A Range Rover in police livery was parked near the front door.

  ‘When do you expect the Professor?’ Fellowes asked as we emerged.

  Enterkin carefully locked his car. ‘He said late afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll be with you four-ish.’

  As Fellowes’s vehicle departed along the drive – at several times the speed at which Mr Enterkin’s had arrived – I said, ‘What’s Calder’s interest in this? Don’t you find it curious, if not downright suspicious?’

  Enterkin led the way into the house. ‘I find it neither,’ he said severely. ‘Apart from the fact that he was a very close and long-standing friend of Sir Peter and knew him better than anyone else, Keith is very knowledgeable about matters rural. Detective Inspector Fellowes, who is, after all, his son-in-law, often depends on Keith to keep him straight. In addition to which, Keith’s a remarkable investigator in his own right. He has a nose for anything not quite as it should be, the curiosity to follow it up, a logical and deductive brain and the tenacity of a bulldog. Ian Fellowes would be mad not to make the fullest use of him as an unpaid consultant.’

  I apologized. Enterkin, on behalf of the absent Keith Calder, accepted the apology with grace.

  Enterkin had already been through my list of messages and had added a note of those which had arrived subsequently. We soon dealt with any business in them, at least to the extent of deciding what action would be taken and which of us would take it. Calder had been right – the tenant farmers were beginning to hear the knocking of opportunity. If Sir Peter had really promised all the improvements which were now being claimed in his name, there would have been little cash in hand left for his granddaughter to inherit. We lunched as before off two trays.

  I mentioned the proposed film.

  ‘Sir Peter made some provision in the Trust Disposition and Settlement for its production. When I asked for details, he said that I wouldn’t understand but to put it in anyway,’ Enterkin said indignantly, spreading pâté on his toast. ‘Do you know what it is that I wouldn’t understand?’ He added thinly sliced tomato.

  ‘In general, yes. I had the explanation given to me only an hour ago.’ I explained the bequest, much as Calder had explained it to me.

  ‘He was right,’ the solicitor said. ‘I don’t understand. But then, the uses of propaganda have always been a source of puzzlement to me. Truth is truth.’

  ‘How can you possibly say that?’ I asked him. ‘You, a lawyer! To you, truth has no relationship to hard facts, it is whatever a court decides to be the facts, on the basis of the evidence put before it and ignoring all else.’

  ‘And what is your point?’ the solicitor asked with dignity.

  ‘My point is that truth, to you, is therefore whatever you can persuade a court to accept as truth.’

  ‘And many generations of lawyers have fought and bled to ensure that it is so. Returning to the res gestae, however, the wishes of the deceased are sacrosanct – barring insanity, illegality and impracticability. You will have to deal with the film. All the same,’ he added musingly, ‘if I understand you aright, it is to be a documentary about real people, and Sir Peter is no longer with us to play himself. I always felt that as an actor I might well have shone. I have often been complimented on my bearing and enunciation in court. Do you think . . .?’

  The idea of the fat little solicitor playing the part of the lanky baronet was unthinkable. For a start, he could never have carried a gun in a manner suggesting that he was anything other than totally unfamiliar with it. Besides, I had earmarked the part for myself. I made an evasive answer and then hastened to change the subject. ‘I shall have to be taking a day or two at home soon,’ I told him. ‘When would be suitable?’

  ‘When would suit you?’

  ‘Any time. One day is much the same as another at home.’

  He made an extraordinary face. It looked for all the world as though he was about to kiss an unloved and insanitary female relative, but it was, I had learned, his habitual grimace when deep in thought. ‘There may be urgent estate or business matters to be dealt with,’ he said at last. ‘Either, and in particular the first, might see me out of my depth although I would never allow a client to suspect it. But the weekend should be relatively safe. If you could stay on tonight and part of tomorrow – Friday – and go home later in the day . . .?’

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I could come back early next week.’

  ‘That seems very suitable.’

  We settled to work, apportioning the various tasks between us. Broadly, the nuts and bolts of Confirmation were his while, as we already knew, the matters of property and of investments were to be my portion; but I had a feeling that parts of the no-man’s land between were being passed to me rather as a magician forces a card on his dupe.

  Several more messages had arrived on the answering machine. We dealt with them together. Most required no more than an acknowledgement, but there was one call from a former acquaintance, one of those who I had told of Peter Hay’s death. It requested an early call back. I made the call. The outcome made me sit up although Enterkin seemed to take it as a matter of course. The death had left a vacancy on the board of a company. Would I consent to be appointed in his place, at least until the next AGM? I said that I would consider and phone again.

  ‘I’ve retired,’ I said. ‘I retired so that I wouldn’t have to go to meetings any more.’

  He looked reprovingly at me. ‘It concerns Sir Peter’s investments. It’s your duty to go. Besides –’ he twinkled for a moment ‘– you will be admirably remunerated for nodding wisely and voting with the Chair.’

  ‘You could do that as well as I could,’ I told him.

  ‘Better,’ he corrected. ‘Much better. In the course of a long career in law I have perfected the art of looking wise while sound asleep but waking instantly when addressed. But they have their own lawyers who will not wish their opinions to be questioned. What they’re after is big business know-how. I wouldn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.’ I rather suspected that his reluctance stemmed from neither ignorance nor modesty but from sheer laziness. I was beginning to see through Mr Enterkin.

  *

  We were still hard at it, two hours later, when a large Japanese four-wheel drive vehicle pulled up near the front door. It bore several dents and scratches and carried traces of dried-on mud or possibly dung. In rural Scotland, most vehicles soon get into that sort of condition and it occurred to me for the first time that a pathologist must sometimes be called out in any sort of weather to visit bodies in some very difficult terrain. Calder and Fellowes arrived so close behind the Professor that I was sure that they had followed him from the public mortuary.

  I had expected a gaunt and morbid figure straight from the pages of a Gothic novel, but Professor Mannatoy turned out to be a rotund and cheerful man, not unlike Mr Enterkin, with whom he seemed to have a nodding acquaintance, but with an even greater capacity for sudden irascibility.

  Enterkin, assuming the mantle of host, seated us in a group with the Professor as focus and introduced me as his fellow executor.

  ‘Detective Inspector Fellowes,’ said the policeman, nodding.

  The Professor looked at Keith Calder. Enterkin hesitated. ‘I shall tell the deceased’s granddaughter as much as she should know,’ Calder said loftily. I had to admire the man’s gall. His statement might be literally true, but it was a prime example of what Mr Enterkin would doubtless have categorized as either suppressio veri or suggestio falsi, or possibly both, glossing cleverly as it did over the fact that he had not the faintest shadow of a right to be p
resent.

  Professor Mannatoy nodded a general greeting. ‘If I were to ask what idiot allowed the body to be removed before a pathologist had seen it in situ, it would not be with the intention of embarrassing anybody,’ he said, ‘but purely to satisfy my curiosity.’

  The others looked at me with a faint air of withdrawal of the hems of garments. ‘There was no one person to blame,’ I said. ‘I found Sir Peter and called his gamekeeper, who was the only person within earshot. Between us we attempted resuscitation and phoned for an ambulance. A doctor arrived on the heels of the paramedics and they carried him off, either because they thought that he was dead of natural causes or because they still hoped to revive him, I wouldn’t know.’

  The Professor nodded forgiveness. ‘Well, it’s a pity. Sometimes a cause of death may be obvious, but more often the only obvious fact is that the body has ceased to function. In such circumstances, such factors as the position of the body or the condition of its surroundings may furnish a valuable or even the only clue. In this instance, there were no significant wounds, none of the usual symptoms of toxic poisoning, nor any signs of organic failure other than death itself. The heart was diseased but could have supported life for several years yet. I have sent samples to the laboratory with a request that they be examined for toxic substances, but I do not expect any to be found.’

  ‘No sign of a heart attack?’ Calder suggested.

  ‘A heart attack,’ the Professor snapped, ‘is an event, not a condition. An infarct might be seen in autopsy, if the patient had managed to live for another forty-eight hours or so. Otherwise not. The heart had ceased to beat. Full stop.’

  ‘In the local surgery,’ Fellowes said diffidently, ‘there’s a sign which says “Nobody with a pacemaker to enter this room”, or words to that effect. We wondered whether he hadn’t received an electric shock which stopped his pacemaker.’

  ‘I was just approaching that subject,’ said the Professor in tones of great patience. ‘If you will allow me to speak . . .’ (Fellowes muttered a quick apology.) ‘Very well. Sir Peter’s pacemaker was of the “demand” type, which is only triggered when the heart stops beating. In this instance, the pacemaker was functioning perfectly and still attempting to restart the heart. So,’ he added in my direction, ‘any attempt which you may have made in the direction of heart massage was wasted effort.

  ‘However, I have seen photographs which confirm that, as I had been advised, the deceased was found near an electric fence and, moreover, that it was his left hand which had been towards the fence. Also, he was wearing leather boots with metal studs or tackets, on damp ground – every one of those factors mitigating in favour of electrocution and against the victim’s chance of survival. But electrocution may be very difficult to prove, if it stops short of incinerating the body. Like a heart attack, it is an event.’ The Professor was looking past or through us. He had slipped into the mode of the habitual lecturer. The audience had vanished and all that mattered was the orderly presentation of the facts.

  ‘Electrocution kills, occasionally, by paralyzing the breathing centres, so any attempts at artificial respiration might not have been wasted. More frequently, it kills by stopping the heart’s rhythm and the only symptom of that, again, is death itself. But there must always be places of exit and entry of the current. Whether these are detectable depends on the area over which the current was diffused, but the signs usually take the form of white spots, often with a pale ring around them. These may be very tiny and difficult to detect.

  ‘I examined the deceased’s hands and other exposed skin carefully but his hands in particular were roughened, apparently by gardening, and if signs there were I was unable to find them. However, when I came to the sole of the right foot I found four very faint marks, falling within the definition I have given you and corresponding roughly with the position of the tackets in that boot. I therefore concluded that the deceased had indeed suffered an electric shock and had most probably died from it. That will be the burden of my report to the procurator fiscal and, if called to an inquiry, I shall testify to that effect.’ The Professor came back to earth and looked from one to the other of us, apparently surprised to find that he still had a living audience.

  ‘Would Sir Peter’s heart condition have made him particularly susceptible to death by electrocution?’ Enterkin asked at last.

  ‘In my opinion, no.’

  Fellowes stirred again. ‘Were your findings compatible with a shock at the voltage of an electric cattle fence?’

  For the first time, the Professor hesitated. ‘That is getting outside my field,’ he said at last. ‘Death by electrocution is unusual at less than around a hundred volts. At domestic mains voltage, it is quite common.’

  ‘I have the specification here,’ Fellowes said. He opened a brightly coloured leaflet. ‘I see that the mains unit can put out up to seven thousand volts.’ (The Professor’s eyebrows shot up.) ‘But that is in a very short pulse about once a second. The overall consumption is only three watts and it stores just over one joule of energy to produce that pulse.’

  The Professor shrugged. ‘I have forgotten such elementary physics as I ever learned. And, of course, there are far too many unknowns in the equation. If you knew the electrical resistance between the power unit and the gate and how good were the contacts between the deceased and the wire and the earth, somebody might be able to do a calculation, but I would hesitate to count on its accuracy. It is certainly completely beyond me. I will, however, offer you one further fragment of information. The deceased’s pockets contained several scraps of newspaper, a toffee paper and a screwed-up yoghurt carton.’

  ‘He hated to see litter,’ Calder said.

  ‘Quite so. I inferred as much. It seems that he had just picked up a piece of foil in his left hand, the sort of foil sometimes used to cover over a snack bought for the oven. His fist had clenched tightly around it. That may explain why the current was so broadly diffused that his hand showed no marks. But on the basis of the figures just quoted I would suggest that the pulse of energy would last for far less than the duration of a heartbeat and therefore would be unlikely to interfere seriously with the heart. Moreover, I would suggest that no farmer is going to electrocute his stock.’

  ‘But if the unit developed a fault?’ Fellowes said. ‘The electrician that we called in found the secondary winding burned out.’

  Professor Mannatoy nodded slowly. ‘In that eventuality, anything could happen. One of the few facts about electricity that I do remember is that an arc in the system can intensify the current. And in the process of failure the electronic timer or the capacitor, or both, may have failed while current was still passing. The manufacturers may be able to help.’

  Enterkin looked from one to the other of us, soliciting questions. ‘If that is the full summary of your findings,’ he said at last, ‘we can only thank you for taking the trouble to come and tell us. No doubt we can call on you again if further questions arise. Perhaps you’d care for a drink before you leave?’

  ‘I rarely drink,’ the Professor said, ‘and never before driving. I see too many of the consequences on the post mortem table.’

  ‘Very wise,’ said Enterkin who, I learned later, rarely refused the offer of a drink after mid-afternoon, although to do him justice he usually preferred to leave his car and go home by a lift or a taxi if the offer had been overgenerous.

  Chapter Eight

  We all escorted the Professor to his four-by-four. So much authority seemed to be vested in the pompous little man that we felt we could hardly do less. Or perhaps it was the thought that some day any one of us might finish up under his knife and perhaps, if we treated him with the greatest courtesy, he would be gentle with our poor remains . . .

  As the vehicle vanished through the archway, Enterkin said to me, ‘I find that my wife will be away this evening. So I’m unable to confirm my tentative invitation. It seems that we shall have to have you for dinner some other evening. I trust that you c
an face another evening here?’

  ‘Was that why you deferred answering my invitation?’ Calder asked me.

  ‘It was. Is it still open?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly. You too, Ralph, unless you’d rather frequent the hotel?’

  ‘And miss Molly’s cooking? Never!’ the solicitor cried gaily, clearly in a good mood now that he had been relieved of embarrassment.

  ‘What about you and Deborah?’ Calder asked Fellowes.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be delighted,’ Fellowes said. ‘But hadn’t we better see what my mother-in-law says first?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Calder seemed surprised that anyone could doubt Molly Calder’s ability to cope with sudden guests, but he took the hint. ‘If I may, I’ll go in and phone both Molly and Deborah.’

  He vanished into the house.

  ‘Now perhaps might be the time for that drink?’ Enterkin suggested.

  ‘We have things to do,’ Fellowes said. ‘Another time. If both ladies agree, we’ll pick you both up, shall we, at around seven-thirty?’

  ‘But I have a perfectly good car of my own,’ I protested.

  ‘Which you would be ill-advised to drive after enjoying Calder hospitality. I speak from experience. Fortunately, while she has a two-year-old to manage, my wife is almost teetotal. I would hate it if duty obliged me to breathalyse myself. I just hope that Deborah can get hold of a sitter at such short notice. Otherwise we may have a fractious infant in the car with us.’

  Calder came out of the house. ‘Molly says that she’ll be delighted to see all of you.’