Death on Doomsday

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  “Here, buzz off and get dressed,” he adjured his offspring. “Come in, Inspector, and tell me the worst. F*re, or a break-in? It would happen when the boss is away living it up in Brussels.”

  Explaining once again that no disaster of any kind had befallen Blennerhasset’s, Inspector Diplock briefly outlined the object of his visit.

  “If that’s all you want, I can tell you here and now,” Mr. Treadgold replied. “A chap called Syd Bradford took out that coach. During the season we have a stand-by rota for extra tours, and I briefed him myself on Tuesday morning, when I saw we’d need to put another coach on. He’s one of our older drivers. Reliable chap.”

  “I suppose you don’t know his address offhand?”

  “Afraid not. Tell you what, though. Let me get a shirt and some trousers on, and we’ll run down to the office for it.”

  Within a few minutes the two cars were making for the centre of Crockmouth. On arriving at the office on the Esplanade, they found the doors open, and a cleaner mopping the floor. She stared at them, open-mouthed.

  “OK, love,” Mr. Treadgold assured her, with a grin and a wave of his hand. “The Inspector hasn’t come for you this time.”

  In the manager’s office he quickly thumbed through a card-index.

  “Adams… Best… Bradford, S. H. Here we are. 17, Summerlawn Road. You know it, I expect?”

  “I do,” replied Inspector Diplock grimly. “It’s right out on the Fulminster road. Council estate. Thanks for your help over this, Mr. Treadgold. As I said, I’ll have to bother you again, I’m afraid, over the booking of the chap’s seat on the coach.”

  “OK by me, Inspector. Glad to be on the right side of the law. I hope you find Syd Bradford at his place, by the way. It’s his day off, and he likes to go off early in his boat. Keen fisherman, our Syd.”

  Feeling that this eventuality would really be the last straw, Inspector Diplock took to the road once again, mentally reviewing the possibility of pursuing his quarry out to sea in a commandeered motorboat. On reaching the estate he heartily cursed the Council for their idiocy in giving all the roads virtually identical names, such as Summerhay, Summerlea and Summerdown. At last he arrived at 17, Summerlawn Road.

  The door was opened in answer to his knock by a large stolid man with grizzled hair and an impassive face. He took in his caller, and proceeded to block the entrance to his home by leaning against one door jamb, and propping a massive arm against the other.

  “Mr. Sydney Bradford?” enquired Inspector Diplock.

  The man admitted cautiously that this was his name.

  “You’re a driver for Blennerhasset’s, aren’t you? I understand from Mr. Treadgold that you took out a late coach to Brent last Tuesday. Correct?”

  “Correct. And no incidents nor complaints, what’s more.”

  “No one said there were. All I want to know is whether you brought back the same number of passengers that you took out?”

  A flicker of interest manifested itself in Syd Bradford’s eyes.

  “One less on the inward journey. Gent sent a message to say he’d met friends an’ was going back in their car, see?”

  A thrill of triumph went through Inspector Diplock.

  “Thanks, Mr. Bradford,” he said. “You’ve heard what happened at Brent on Tuesday night, I expect. You may be an important witness. The Scotland Yard Superintendent’ll want to see you. Come along to the station by half-past eight, will you?”

  “OK,” replied Syd Bradford, almost with alacrity.

  Inspector Diplock turned his car, and headed for the police station and a telephone.

  Although his night’s sleep had been even shorter than Inspector Diplock’s, Pollard woke at an early hour on Thursday morning. Simultaneously with the return of consciousness came a pang at the realisation of Jane’s absence. Then the case crowded into his mind to the exclusion of all else.

  His thoughts moved in a dissatisfied way from Lord Seton’s puzzling reactions, to Emmett, as yet only a name, but certainly a potential suspect as far as collaboration with Peplow went. Then they moved on to Peplow’s hypothetical accomplice, that convenient but unconvincing figure with a decided touch of burlesque about him. What the hell did Peplow want with an accomplice, anyway? He’d got all the necessary gear on him for opening showcases. He must have been after the miniatures, because the rope ladder showed that he had expected to be locked inside the room. The whole collection could have been carried off in his rucksack and pockets. No need for a helper on that score.

  Then there was the golden hair caught on the rough stone wall of the hole. Pollard tried to square the athleticism needed for the descent into the latter with the impression of Lady Seton he had formed from her portrait. Could there have been a variation on the Macbeth theme, he wondered? Suppose Lord Seton had heard a suspicious noise in the miniatures room, gone to investigate, been threatened by the emergent Peplow with a gun, and in trying to kick the weapon from his hand, had sent him over backwards down the steps. Enter Lady Seton, transformed by the crisis into a woman of steel. She climbs down into the priest’s hole to make sure that the man is dead, catching her flowing hair on the wall. Returning to her husband, she insists on concealment…

  Pollard rolled over with an impatient snort, and realised that he was extremely hungry. A glance at his watch showed him that it was still only half-past six. Why on earth couldn’t English hotels start serving breakfast a bit earlier? They managed a damn sight better… He was coming downstairs before it was fully light in a small hotel in the Bernese Oberland, and picking his way through the rucksacks, ice axes and coils of rope which littered the hall. In the dining room, which smelt gorgeously of coffee, the usual types were knocking back hunks of bread and cherry jam. No one spoke. They’d all … got … their … minds … on … getting … off…

  He jerked back into consciousness once more to find that it was twenty minutes to eight, and leapt hastily out of bed. As he went automatically through the routine of shaving, bathing and dressing, his thoughts oscillated unproductively as before. Completing his toilet in record time he hurried down to the hotel dining room. Toye was already installed, and studying the menu. Pollard learnt that Boyce and Strickland had breakfasted, and gone on ahead to the police station to do their stuff with last night’s dabs.

  “What’s your morning-after reaction to Lord Seton?” he asked, when they had given their orders.

  “He’s mixed up in it all right,” replied Toye decisively. “Rattled good and proper last night, wasn’t he?”

  “You can be rattled because you’ve got the wind up, or because you’re worried. He struck me as worried rather than windy.”

  Toye looked puzzled. “I’m not with you, sir. Surely a chap who’s scared is worried?”

  “Let’s put it another way. Can you see Lord Seton doing Peplow, probably accidentally or in self-defence, and then being such a fool as to try and cover it up?”

  Toye contemplated the plate of porridge which had been put in front of him. “No, I can’t, and that’s a fact,” he said at last. “I can see him going for an intruder, and lamming him too hard by mistake, but not being so daft as not to report it. Knows his way round too well, I’d say.”

  “My opinion exactly. What’s he worried about, then? Loss of takings while the place is closed? Not him. He knows well enough that the publicity will bring people swarming like ants when he opens again. Yes?” he added, turning to a waiter.

  “You’re wanted on the telephone, sir. First right, and first left. Incoming calls box.”

  Thrusting back his chair, Pollard departed. A few minutes later he returned with the vestiges of a grin on his face. “Diplock,” he said, sitting down again. “Elaborately casual, to hide the fact that he’s bursting with pride at the local boys getting a beat ahead. He’s found the driver of the last coach party at Brent on Tuesday afternoon, and the chap says one of the passengers sent a message at the last minute to say he was going back in a friend’s car.”

&
nbsp; “Mayn’t be anything to do with Peplow,” Toye commented cautiously.

  “Of course it mayn’t. On the other hand it may. Cheery chap this morning, aren’t you? If we don’t get a bit of luck in this case, the outlook’s anything but hopeful. It was a damn good effort on Diplock’s part. I hope I sounded impressed enough. He’s gone off to the coach people’s office now, to see if he can pick up anything about the booking of Peplow’s seat.”

  There was a brief interval during which both men concentrated on their bacon and eggs.

  “That hair,” Pollard said presently. “I don’t believe it’s one of Lady Seton’s. I saw her portrait last night. She’s definitely not the type to climb in and out of hiding holes.”

  Toye looked scandalised. “Can’t tell from a picture, surely, can you? The chaps that paint ’em have to pretty you up, or they’d be out of a job.”

  “Good portrait painters can’t help telling the truth about their sitters. Sometimes it’s very awkward, I can tell you. You ought to hear my wife on the subject. However, we’ll be seeing her ladyship for ourselves this morning. More coffee?”

  Toye accepted a second cup, and carefully spread marmalade on another piece of toast. “I’ve been through the notes,” he said. “What I can’t make out is what Peplow wanted with an accomplice. It seems the most likely explanation that he’d brought somebody along, and it ended up in a row and him getting kicked down the steps, but what was the point of having a second chap there? Double risk, and nothing gained that I can figure out.”

  “There I’m absolutely with you,” Pollard replied. “In fact, the sheer improbability of its being the explanation is on my mind. I don’t like the implications one bit. Finished eating? We’d better push along.”

  A quarter of an hour later, as Pollard and Toye walked into the police station they found that the case had suddenly gathered momentum. Pollard was hurriedly summoned to the telephone to take a call from the Yard which was just coming through.

  “Get everything you can out of the driver,” he said to Toye over his shoulder. “I may be tied up for some time.”

  Syd Bradford had already arrived, and was waiting with an expression of patient cynicism designed to cover a pleasurable sense of importance. After providing the usual particulars about himself, he stated that Tuesday’s Panoramic Extra had gone much as usual until passengers began boarding the coach in the car park at Brent, about ten to six. A chap had come up to him, and brought a message to say that another gent had met up with a friend who’d come by car, and was going back with him.

  “Considerate,” Syd Bradford allowed. “A lot of ’em wouldn’t trouble themselves.”

  “So you were one down on the run home?” asked Toye.

  “Ain’t that what I’m saying? We went out thirty-nine, an’ came back thirty-eight. Forty-two seater, it was.”

  “Can you remember what the chap who brought the message was like?”

  “Smallish bloke, going bald on top. Excitable type, sayin’ the same thing ten times over. Visitor, for sure. He’d got a whackin’ great camera and what-have-you slung round him. I didn’t take much notice. Too busy countin’ ’eads.”

  “Can you remember anything about the passenger who dropped out?”

  Syd Bradford made it clear that he considered the question unreasonable. He drove hundreds every week in the holiday season. His job was taking ’em places, and bringin’ ’em back in one piece, and it took some doing, the way some of ’em went on.

  Inspector Diplock arrived with the light of triumph in his eye.

  “Nobody at Blennerhasset’s can remember Peplow coming in to book,” he said, “or any single booking, for that matter. You’d hardly expect it at this time of year, with so many visitors around. But we’ve got the chap who says he was asked to give the driver the message. One of the clerks remembered a party of six or seven coming in to book for the trip, and one of them saying they were from the Cliffside Hotel. We struck lucky there right away. It’s a Mr. Leonard Cudwinkle. He’s outside in the office. Will you have him in?”

  “You Crockmouth chaps cover the ground,” replied Toye. “Yeah, let’s have him meet up with Mr. Bradford here.”

  Inspector Diplock went out looking gratified, and a couple of moments later ushered in the smallish balding holidaymaker of Syd Bradford’s description, who was accorded a grudging recognition by the latter. He was carrying a large camera and other photographic impedimenta, and at once embarked on an unsolicited statement.

  Cutting him short, Toye politely thanked Syd Bradford for his assistance, and escorted him out.

  “Now, Mr. Cudwinkle,” he said briskly as he returned, “we needn’t keep you long. You won’t want to waste your holiday in here. Just a few facts about yourself first, please. Your full name and address?”

  Looking as crestfallen as a disappointed child, Mr. Cudwinkle provided these and other particulars.

  “That’s fine,” said Toye, noting them down. “Now, we understand that a fellow passenger on the coach tour to Brent last Tuesday asked you to tell the driver that he was returning with friends. Correct?”

  Mr. Cudwinkle agreed that this had been the case, and began to enlarge on the circumstances under which the request had been made. In his opinion the tour of the house had been a bit of a washout. For all that it was her own home, the lady who took them round hadn’t seemed sure of herself. Not what you’d call convincing. Why, when she was talking about the pictures some of the party got bored, and went back the way they’d come, to take a look at the courtyard, someone in the coach told him on the way home.

  Pressed on this point he was emphatic that he had seen a few people going back into the screens passage, but was unable to say if the man who spoke to him about not returning with the party was one of them.

  “When exactly did this chap come up and speak to you?” Toye asked.

  “While we were waiting to go up the stairs. The crush was terrible, simply terrible,” Mr. Cudwinkle assured him volubly. “We’d joined on to the first half of our lot, and we’re all waiting together, and at the same time a crowd of Boy Scouts were making their way down. Not at all well managed. In the coach going back —”

  “Where were you standing when the man spoke to you?” persisted Toye.

  “Right at the back. I’d stayed behind to photograph an Adam fireplace. I needn’t have hurried, either. There everybody was, stuck at the bottom of the stairs —”

  “Had you ever seen the man before?”

  “Not that I remember, and I’ve got an eye for a face, Sergeant. If I ever had —”

  “Can you describe him?”

  Mr. Cudwinkle took a deep breath, and was away. Photography was the big thing in his life, he explained. Actually, he was the secretary of the Central Counties Camera Club, the largest of its kind in the country. Every man, woman and child he met was a possible portrait study to him. He had noticed at once that the gentleman who asked him to give the message had a well-shaped head.

  “From what I saw of the house last night, the light wasn’t any too good,” Toye interrupted. “I don’t suppose you saw him very clearly, did you?”

  Nettled, Mr. Cudwinkle gave a surprisingly accurate description of Raymond Peplow, going on from his features, colouring and build to his clothes, and finally to his camera.

  “That’s when I realised there was something odd about him,” he concluded breathlessly.

  Toye, looked up sharply.

  “Odd?”

  “Well, look at his clothes. Cost a packet. Casuals, if you like, but that little lot never came off a Marks and Sparks peg. Expensive foreign cut — you can’t mistake it, not if you’ve got an eye for a picture. Now, I ask you, would a chap who was keen enough on photography to tote a camera around, and could afford clothes like that, have been content with a ropey old discontinued Kodak model? Course he wouldn’t. Must have been a blind.”

  Pollard allowed that Mr. Cudwinkle had a point there. He felt disposed to take him rather more se
riously.

  “Did you see this chap again after he asked you to take the message?”

  “No, I didn’t. Just then we started moving at last, and I was dead keen on getting upstairs. They’ve got some wonderful ceilings — work of local craftsmen — I wanted to —”

  “I must ask you to come with me to the mortuary now,” Toye broke in, “and see if you can identify the body as that of the man we’ve been talking about. It will only take a few minutes.”

  To Toye’s disgust, eager gratification spread over Mr. Cudwinkle’s face, and he leapt to his feet. Reflecting distastefully on human nature, Toye led the way in silence.

  “That’s him,” Mr. Cudwinkle said categorically, after a prolonged scrutiny of Raymond Peplow’s remains. “I’ll swear to it.”

  “Right,” replied Toye, replacing the sheet. “Now, if you’ll come back to the station —”

  Darting over to the pile of the deceased’s clothing and other belongings, Mr. Cudwinkle had seized the Kodak, and, holding it up, launched out a string of technicalities. On being firmly interrupted by Toye, he suddenly became a pleading small boy, his eyes alight with enthusiasm.

  “No objection, is there?” he asked anxiously, now grabbing his own camera. He jerked his head in the direction of the sheeted figure. “Just a coupla flash shots. It’s the Club’s summer competition, y’know. One of the set subjects is ‘The End of the Road.’ You just couldn’t beat this for an original interpretation. There’s a special class for originality.”

  Outraged, Toye curtly informed him that unauthorised photography in the mortuary would be a breach of regulations, and hustled him out. Shortly afterwards, having secured his signature to a cut-and-dried statement, he saw him off the premises and went in search of Pollard, whom he found writing up his notes.

  “Peplow went out on that Blennerhasset coach trip all right,” Toye told him, and elaborated.

  Pollard threw down his pen and clasped his hands behind his head.