Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  Charity Ends At Home

  ( Flaxborough - 5 )

  Colin Watson

  My Dear Friend . . . I am in great danger. The person whose loyal and faithful companion I have been . . . intends to have me done away with . . . When this unsigned letter is sent to three people in town none of them take it seriously. However, as with most events Inspector Purbright and the residents of Flaxborough realise that hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when a woman is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Charity Ends at Home is the fifth novel in the Flaxborough series and was first published in 1968. Faber Finds will be reissuing all the Flaxborough novels in sequence.

  ‘Arguably the best of comic crime writers.’ Time Out

  Charity Ends At Home

  Colin Watson

  Chapter One

  One of the most notable examples of what a former mayor of Flaxborough described, with unconscious felicity, as “the venereal institutions of this ancient town” was its coroner, Mr Albert Amblesby.

  He had endured in his office through four reigns. Only the oldest citizens could recall his appointment. It had been canvassed as a political favour by a group of local dignitaries whose affairs during the first world war had prospered through the shrewd advice of the junior partner in the firm of Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby, solicitors. What the advice had been, there was now no means of learning. The beneficiaries had long since departed, as had murmurous, lugubrious lawyer Sparrow and his dim brother. Even rumour, once pungent with questions about fraudulent cattlecake contracts, selection board bribes and a military highway that got no further than the staithes of the Flaxborough Docking Company, had thinned and dissipated on the wind of time. As for Albert Amblesby himself, he had forgotten the circumstances of his preferment together with many, many other things. His only certain knowledge was that he was clever enough to have awakened that morning to the lovely discovery that one person on whom no inquest could yet be called was Her Majesty’s Coroner for Flaxborough and District.

  Survival was the central fact and chief joy in the life of Mr Amblesby. It was a triumph of which he was perpetually conscious. The deaths, one by one, of his partners, his wife, his old political cronies and, best of all, his enemies, had been as gratifying as the salutes of guns in the ears of a tenacious old fortress commander.

  Those who interpreted this attitude as callousness and affected to be sickened by his eager and almost gay perusal of the obituary columns of the Flaxborough Citizen did Mr Amblesby less than justice. He grudged life to no one. He certainly had never wished anybody dead. But his firm and uncomplicated belief was that survival, like success in business, was purely a matter of personal acumen. If one caught pneumonia or stepped under a bus—well, it was a bit of bad management that carried its penalty as surely as did a faulty contract or a carelessly framed conveyance. And every failure, whether of a firm or of a heart, made a little more room in that field of personal advancement that Mr Amblesby saw as the ordained tilthyard of mankind.

  It was natural, then, that the Flaxborough coroner should conduct the functions of his office with neither sentimentality nor gloom. He presided over an inquest with a certain sardonic sharpness, admirably calculated to save the bereaved relatives from the embarrassment of that public display of emotion which a kind word can so easily unloose. It was rather as if the affairs of the deceased had come under the scrutiny of an official receiver, prepared at the slightest sign of careless book-keeping to order the corpse alive again to show cause why it should not be committed for contempt.

  Sergeant Malley, the Coroner’s Officer, would always privately warn witnesses that they might find Mr Amblesby’s bearing somewhat lacking in sympathy. “He doesn’t mean any harm, really,” he would tell them. “It’s just that he’s getting on a bit. You mustn’t take notice of everything he says—he’s a wonderful old gentleman for his age.”

  The sergeant’s personal, and carefully guarded, opinion that the coroner was “a wicked old sod and a damned disgrace”, was thus transmuted into terms that he hoped would soften the shock of the coming encounter without altogether frightening the witnesses out of offering their depositions.

  Such thoughtfulness was characteristic of Malley. He was a heavy, contemplative, wry-humoured, patient man. His authority, such as it was, troubled and even shamed him. Who was he—who was anybody—to order other human beings around? They had grief enough without being bullied and badgered by senile inquisitors and their jacks-in-office.

  One day in late summer, the sergeant called for Mr Amblesby a little before ten o’clock. There had been a road accident the previous afternoon and an inquest on the young motorcyclist who had died during the night in Flaxborough General Hospital was to be opened at eleven. An hour was not an over-generous allowance for the collection of Mr Amblesby, his rousing into awareness of what had happened and what he was supposed to do about it, and the arrangement of the old man in some semblance of official dignity at the coroner’s table in Fen Street. He would also have to view the body in the hospital mortuary on the way.

  Malley parked his car on the weed-dappled gravel outside Mr Amblesby’s front door. The hand-brake ratchet made a noise like a splintering plank. As the sergeant climbed out, the chassis rose four inches. It was an old car, nearly as big as a hearse, but very tolerant. It was Malley’s own. If policemen below the rank of inspector wished to get anywhere in Flaxborough otherwise than on foot, that was their business.

  The sergeant rang the bell and without waiting for an answer pushed open the front door and entered the dim, damp hall. He walked confidently over ten yards of bare, echoing tile, and stood at the foot of a staircase. Peering up into the gloom, he called loudly but without urgency: “Are you there, sir?” It was a deep, amiable voice, fattened upon oratorio.

  In the upper distance, a door clicked. Slippered feet rustled to the stair head.

  “Eh?” Sharp, querulous, hostile by habit.

  “I’ve come to take you to the office, sir.”

  In Malley’s unhurried hands was a tin of tobacco. He levered off the lid and nudged the dark, aromatic flakes with his thumb. He looked at the tobacco carefully while he spoke, as if his errand were an irrelevant favour.

  “There’s another inquest for you to open. At eleven o’clock.”

  Mr Amblesby was descending the stairs. He came slowly into what light filtered into the hall from the stained glass panels in the front door. His black solicitor’s clothes, half as old as himself and limp with wear, were too big for him. The jacket swung like a cloak.

  The old man was holding something up to his face with both hands. Malley had the ridiculous fancy that it was a mouth-organ. Then he saw that it was a kipper. The old man was nibbling at it with quick, determined little pecks.

  “I thought you’d like a lift, sir,” Malley said. “It’s at eleven, the inquest. Just an opening.”

  “Eh?”

  On reaching the foot of the staircase, Mr Amblesby looked round for somewhere to put the kipper skeleton. It looked now like a comb. Malley took it from him and carried it to the front door, where he threw it into some shrubs.

  Mr Amblesby wiped his fingers on a big white handkerchief which he then stuffed into his jacket pocket.

  “You’ll not want a top coat,” the sergeant told him.

  Mr Amblesby gazed sourly out past the door that Malley had left open. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s warm, sir. A lovely warm day. And you’re coming in the car.”

  Malley always nursed the old man along with this half comforting, half chiding manner of a mental hospital attendant. It was part of his revenge for the coroner’s cruelty to others.

  “That makes two,” Malley remarked. “One stil
l to come.”

  “Eh?”

  “Inquests. We know that perfectly well, sir, don’t we? That inquests always come in threes. There’ll be another before the end of the week.”

  He closed the door of the house behind them after dropping the latch. He hoped the old man had forgotten his key. He grasped his elbow and led him towards the rear door of the car.

  Mr Amblesby tugged away his arm. “Front. I like the front.”

  The sergeant shrugged. “Just as you like, sir. You know that seat’s tilted, though, don’t you? And slippery. You’ll fall forward if you’re not careful.”

  “It’s the way you drive, sergeant. If you drove properly, I’d not be thrown forward.”

  “All right, sir. I’ll be very careful. Mind now, these doors don’t shut very well.” He slammed the passenger door as if trying to stun a rogue elephant. The old man jumped and sat holding his ears.

  “Sorry about that.” Malley squeezed his bulk behind the wheel and drew his own door closed. It made no more noise than the click of a barrister’s brief case.

  Mr Amblesby crouched staring straight ahead. After a while, he began raising his lower denture with his tongue and making it impinge against the thin, tightly drawn top lip. A faint rattling sound resulted, like pieces of broken porcelain jostled together in a bag.

  Malley drove first to the hospital. He parked beside a low concrete building with a corrugated asbestos roof and four narrow windows covered with wire netting.

  Inside, the coroner glanced indifferently at the face of the dead motorcyclist. The boy seemed very young, a child almost. A tousle of black hair was bunched high on the yellowish grey, translucent flesh of the forehead. The hair, crisp and greasy, looked alive. But the face, unmarked except for the lightest of blue bruises over one cheekbone, was merely substance, inert and finished with.

  The old man’s wintry gaze passed on at once. He walked to the far end of the low, white-tiled room. Malley gently re-arranged the sheet over the dead boy’s face and followed the coroner.

  Mr Amblesby, suddenly interested now, clambered up on a platform. It was the balance on which corpses were weighed. A pointer swung a little part of the way round a big clock-like scale at the side of the machine. The scale was not visible to Mr Amblesby. It was calibrated in kilograms. Malley looked at the pointer and took a diary from his pocket. He opened it at a folded back page of metric conversion tables.

  Mr Amblesby waited. “Well?”

  The sergeant, frowning dubiously at the columns of figures, ignored him for another half minute.

  The old man got off the platform and peered round the sergeant’s arm. “Haven’t you worked it out yet?”

  Malley took some more time. At last he snapped the diary shut. “Eight stone three, sir. You’ve lost just over two pounds. Since last Thursday.”

  “Rubbish!” said Mr Amblesby.

  “Eight stone three,” the sergeant repeated patiently. “Hundred and fifteen pounds. That’s it.” The diary went back into his pocket. “Sure you’ve not been overdoing things a bit, sir?” There was kindly anxiety on his pink face. “We mustn’t have you knocked up, must we?”

  “Eh?” said the coroner.

  Malley took the lead as they walked back to the mortuary door. There were four deep concrete steps to be climbed to ground level. On the top step, Malley switched off the light before opening the door. Even then, he lingered. His large body kept the daylight off the steps behind him. He waited, listening. The old man’s feet scraped uncertainly on the second step for a moment, but they gained the third safely. Malley felt a spiky finger impatiently jab his back. He turned.

  “Mind you don’t slip, sir.” Malley held out a hand. The old man pushed past him and got in the car.

  Twice on their journey to the police station the sergeant braked violently and without warning.

  On the first occasion, he told Mr Amblesby that a dog had run into their path. The coroner said that he had seen no dog. Malley’s “You didn’t, sir?” was sympathy itself.

  The second emergency slid the coroner completely off his seat, hands flailing against the dashboard. He was unhurt but very angry. Malley invited him to share his own relief that a child’s life had been spared. Mr Amblesby stared at him as if at a madman.

  “You mustn’t worry, sir,” Malley soothed. “We didn’t even graze him.”

  Two witnesses were waiting in the small annexe to the room on the first floor of the police headquarters where inquests that required no jury were generally held. Mr Amblesby paused on his way through and nodded to one of these people, a tall man with pure white hair carefully groomed back from a face tanned by holidays abroad.

  The man was seated as far apart as was possible in the ten-feet-by-six lobby from a dumpy, middle-aged woman in dark clothes. He gave a return nod but remained seated.

  The woman got up the moment Mr Amblesby entered. Her chair tilted and knocked against the wall. She half turned and grasped it nervously, as if quieting a child in church. Then Malley was there, attentive to her first, screening her from the others and giving her as much as he could from his own store of fat, good-natured calm.

  In the further room, under Mr Amblesby’s baleful eye, the doctor and the mother gave their evidence.

  To the doctor, it was a familiar formality. His concise, velvet-voiced account of cranial fracture and laceration of the brain consistent with the deceased’s having been involved in a collision between two road vehicles, made the boy’s death sound a proper and even laudable consummation. Mr Amblesby, at any rate, was content. He delved noisily into a leather pouch and counted out the doctor’s fee in silver. The doctor picked up the coins and slipped them into a fob pocket: he would be on the lookout, the action seemed to say, for blind beggars as soon as he reached the street. Then, with a small bow to the coroner and a murmured good morning to Malley, he glided from the court.

  The mother’s testimony—a matter of formal identification—was compressed into a single sentence. The body now lying at Flaxborough General Hospital had been viewed by her and was that of her son, Percy Thomas Hallam, aged eighteen years, an assistant storekeeper, who resided with her at five, George Street, Flaxborough.

  And that, for the moment, should have been that. An adjournment for seven days. Malley waited for the old man to mutter his formula.

  But Mr Amblesby remained staring at the woman crossly. His mouth fell open a little in preparation for the dance of the dentures. Malley saw and was alarmed. He reached over to touch the woman’s shoulder and said: “That’s all for just now, Mrs Hallam.”

  The dentures came forward and rose, then rattled back. “Have you been writing letters to me?” Mr Amblesby asked.

  Utterly confused, the woman looked at Malley and wonderingly shook her head.

  “I’m asking you, not the sergeant,” said the coroner.

  Malley bent low to speak in Mr Amblesby’s ear. “There hasn’t been any letter, sir. You mustn’t question the lady like that.”

  The coroner flapped a dismissive hand. He did not take his eyes off Mrs Hallam.

  “I asked you whether you had written to me. You must know, woman.”

  “I haven’t written to anybody, sir.” The tips of gloved fingers moved back and forth, just touching her mouth. The glove was of black cotton and quite new.

  “Eh?” said Mr Amblesby.

  Malley again intervened, his words loud and measured, as to someone deaf or feeble-minded.

  “She says she hasn’t written to anybody, sir. Not to anybody. There hasn’t been a letter, sir.”

  Mr Amblesby sat quite still, hunched in the centre of the big, claw-footed chair. He went on looking at Mrs Hallam. She began to weep quietly.

  Suddenly the coroner flapped at her a dry, brown-mottled hand and thrust the other into the side pocket of his coat. He hauled out his handkerchief and draped it over his knees. A faint whiff of kipper reached Malley. After more groping, the old man held aloft a grey envelope. It had been slit open
neatly, in lawyer’s style.

  “Now tell me the truth. Did you send me this?”

  “No, sir. I don’t know anything about it.”

  Malley sighed, shaking his head. He firmly took the letter out of the old man’s hand. He turned the envelope about, examining it, then withdrew and unfolded a sheet of grey notepaper. He stepped out of Mr Amblesby’s reach and began to read.

  The coroner watched. He looked pleased, as though relishing the effect of a prepared surprise. The tip of his tongue, very wet and of the same colour as a sheep’s, curled over his upper lip.

  Malley read the letter through twice. It was typed and unsigned. The type was of the slightly florid kind, italic characters matching up to form script, peculiar to certain portable machines.

  My Dear Friend:

  This is an urgent appeal. I am in great danger. The person whose loyal and faithful companion I have been—and to whom even now my life is dedicated—intends to have me done away with. I can scarcely believe his change of heart, but I have heard the plan discussed and must believe it, however unwillingly. They think I do not understand. Of course I understand! I can sense when I am in the way. And I know that murder is going to be the reward for my uncomplaining loyalty. A poison pellet in my food...a quick injection...perhaps to be held helpless under water by a loved hand until I drown...one or other of these dreadful fates will overtake me if you, dear friend, do not bring aid. Soon I shall send you details of how you can help. I cannot—for reasons you will understand—sign this letter, but I enclose my photograph in the hope that your heart may be touched.