Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  “Detective Sergeant Mackinnon. He says may he talk to you, Mummy.”

  “Me? Right-oh. Go and start your breakfast.” Back to the bathroom door. “It’s Mackinnon, darling. He’s going to tell me what’s up.”

  Alec’s roared “No!” was sufficiently muffled for Daisy to decide she hadn’t heard it. She hurried downstairs and picked up the apparatus.

  “Sergeant? This is Mrs. Fletcher. What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Major Walker, ma’am. Their cook’s just rung up to say she came down this morning and found him with his head in the gas oven.”

  19

  When Alec pulled up behind Dr. Curtis’s maroon Talbot, anger lay as heavy in his stomach as the fried-egg sandwich Daisy had handed him as he dashed out of the door. He was furious with himself.

  He ought to have foreseen that something like this might happen. Walker was obviously not the most emotionally stable of men. Whether Alec’s persistence had aroused his suspicions or he was already aware of his wife’s infidelity, he was bound to go off the deep end one way or another.

  It all seemed horribly straightforward, though a few questions remained. Had the major killed himself from sheer despair at being cuckolded, or had he killed Talmadge and committed suicide in part from guilt? With any luck he’d have written a note of explanation.

  A third uncertainty wrapped Alec in a miasma of sick dread: he prayed he wasn’t going to find Gwen Walker murdered in her bed.

  As he stepped from car to pavement, doubts began to nibble at the corners of his mind. They were driven into retreat by the arrival of the police surgeon. Ridgeway bounced out of his sporty Bugatti, black bag in hand.

  “I gather you have another one for me, Fletcher. This’ll tie up the last one, eh?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Come, come, my dear chap, isn’t it obvious? Walker discovers his Gwen is indulging in a bit of nooky with the dentist, does him in in a fit of temper, and kills himself out of remorse. I bet you a fiver he’s left a note explaining it all. They nearly always do.”

  “How do you know about Talmadge and Mrs. Walker?” Alec asked sharply. “Rumour, or of your own knowledge?”

  Ridgeway laughed, a trifle uneasily. “Why, of my own knowledge. Doctors don’t spread rumours, you know, like policemen. I saw them at an hotel in Brighton, a discreet little place, doesn’t ask awkward questions. I’m a bachelor, remember.”

  “And whom did you tell?”

  “No one.”

  Alec stared at him.

  “Well, perhaps one person. Pillow talk. You can’t expect me to give you her name.”

  No wonder Daisy hadn’t been able to trace the rumour to its source. “I hope I shan’t be called to your house next, to find out who cut your throat with your own scalpel.”

  Chastened, Ridgeway followed him to the house. Alec hoped he realized that his “pillow talk” might well be responsible for Walker’s death, possibly Talmadge’s and Mrs. Walker’s as well.

  The front door stood open, but Alec rang the bell. The daily woman came out of the front room. “Oh, it’s you, ducks, the rozzer. Come on in, do.”

  “Morning, Mrs. Davies.” Alec caught a whiff of coal-gas as he entered the hall. “Have you seen Mrs. Walker this morning?”

  “I just got ’ere meself, ducks, and I’m that flambustigated I dunno whether I’m on me ‘ead or me ’eels and that’s the truth.”

  The divisional DS came into the hall from the rear.

  “Mackinnon, have you seen Mrs. Walker?”

  “No, sir, not yet. I only just got here.” Momentarily the Scot looked as if he resented the implication of inefficiency. He caught on with admirable speed. “Och nay, ye dinna think … ?” He turned towards the stairs.

  “’Ere now, you can’t go barging in on madam,” Mrs. Davies protested. Then she looked from Mackinnon’s grim face to Alec’s, and her own paled. “Blimey.”

  “Mrs. Bates hasn’t seen her either?” Heads shook. “Ridgeway, go up with Mackinnon, please,” Alec requested. “Mrs. Davies, Dr. Curtis is in the kitchen, I take it?”

  “Yes, and a young rozzer as the sergeant brung wiv ’im.”

  “And Nora Bates?”

  “In the front parlour ‘ere. The doctor told ’er to go sit down wiv ’er feet up. Nasty shock she ’ad, and ‘er not as young as she was. I was wiv ’er when you rung the bell.”

  “Go back to her, will you? I’ll need to talk to both of you in a bit. Don’t say anything about … what may be upstairs, please.”

  “Me lips is sealed,” promised Mrs. Davies, “but let’s ’ope it’s a false alarm.”

  “Let’s hope,” Alec agreed fervently. He headed for the kitchen.

  Dr. Curtis was just coming out. For a moment Alec couldn’t work out why he looked lopsided, then he realized the old man’s shirt was buttoned wrong so that his tie was awry. He must have left home in a great hurry. Alec raised his hand to his tie to make sure he hadn’t done the same thing.

  “Morning, Fletcher. Nothing to be done for the poor chap, I’m afraid. Sergeant Mackinnon said Ridgeway is on his way and no doubt he’ll be more precise, but at a guess he’s been dead seven or eight hours. Without moving him, there’s nothing to suggest he did not die of coal-gas poisoning. I thought you’d want him left in situ.”

  “Yes, thank you, Doctor. We have to consider all the possibilities.”

  “And I dare say this may be connected to the other nasty business.” Curtis sighed. “Ah well, such is life—and death. I’d better have a word with Mrs. Walker before I go, though I’d say she’s a lot tougher than Mrs. Talmadge, less likely to be overcome by her feelings. Is she still upstairs?”

  “Yes.” Alec put a hand on his arm. “She hasn’t yet been told about her husband. Dr. Ridgeway has gone up. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind looking in on Mrs. Bates first? She’s in the sitting room at the front.”

  Alec was further delayed by the young uniformed constable Mackinnon had ordered to stop anyone entering the kitchen. By the time he had shown the embarrassed but determined lad his credentials, Mackinnon was hot on his heels.

  “She seems to be all right, sir. This was by the bed.” In his handkerchief-wrapped hand he brandished a small white cardboard box. “Sleeping powders, Veronal, to be taken as needed. But it’s almost full, and Dr. Ridgeway says she’s sleeping normally, though verra soundly. Did you want him to wake her?”

  “No, let’s leave her in happy ignorance as long as we can. Constable, go and ask him to come down to the kitchen.”

  “Softly,” cautioned Mackinnon, transferring the box to his pocket. “Dinna wake the lady.”

  “Did she and the major share a room?”

  “Aye, Chief, looks like it. Two single beds.”

  They went on to the kitchen. The door stood open. The smell of gas was strong in the passage, unpleasant but not choking. Alec stuck his head into the kitchen and sniffed cautiously.

  “Not too bad.”

  “Bearable,” Mackinnon agreed. “Mrs. Bates opened all the doors and windows before she rang up Dr. Curtis.”

  Alec stepped in and stopped to one side just inside the door, to survey the scene. To his right was an open door to the outside, the window beside it also wide open. Ahead, beyond a scrubbed wood table, was the sink, with another open window above it. Over the draining board was a gas hot-water geyser.

  Following Alec’s gaze, Mackinnon commented, “Good job the geyser isna the kind with a pilot light, or we’d be investigating a hole in the ground.”

  To their left was the stove. The oven door half concealed Major Walker, dressed in dinner jacket and black trousers, their formality in incongruous contrast to his position. His back to them, he was partly seated on a cushion, partly sprawled on the tiled floor, his head resting on another cushion inside the oven. Whatever dreadful despair drove people to gas themselves, they almost always tried to make their last moments as comfortable as possible. A cosy death.

  “It’s usually women who cho
ose a gas oven,” Alec said with a frown. “Not what I’d expect of a military man. You didn’t see a note?”

  “I would have showed you right away, Chief.”

  “Of course. Sorry.”

  “Nothing on the kitchen table. It could’ve blown off.”

  “True. Check the floor in the passage and front hall, will you, and have your constable look around the front and back gardens. We’ll hold off on a thorough search till Tring and Piper get here.”

  As the sergeant left, Alec started to circle the table, scrutinizing everything he passed. The kitchen was neat and spotless, “all shipshape and Bristol fashion,” in Mrs. Davies’s words, except for two mugs and a small saucepan in the sink. The mugs were full of brown-scummed water, a teaspoon standing in each. The inside of the pan, also filled with water, was coated with white scum.

  Bedtime cocoa, Alec thought, then he noticed the tin on the draining board. Bedtime Ovaltine, he amended. Samples of each liquid must be sent to the lab. He wished he had the “murder bag” Tom kept muttering about, with everything necessary for collecting evidence.

  Rounding the third corner of the table, he looked down on Major Francis Walker, deceased.

  “She’s perfectly all right.” Ridgeway’s arrival startled Alec, whose thoughts were presently devoted to Gwen Walker’s unfortunate husband. “Veronal she appears to have taken. The sergeant has the remaining powders, which I’d say is most of them. It’s best to let her sleep it off if you can. If you wake her, she’s liable to be dopy.”

  “No hurry.”

  Ridgeway joined him by the stove. “Poor devil. I’ll tell you this, old man, if I ever decide to get married, I shan’t choose a beauty. All right, if you’ve seen what you need to, let’s have a look at him.”

  “Don’t move him yet, please, not more than you can help. I want some photos. Does his position look natural to you?”

  “As natural as they ever do. They arrange themselves carefully, but as soon as they lose consciousness they slump all over the place. Not that I’ve seen more than two or three before, but once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.”

  Alec moved out of his way. He knelt beside the body, grasped one wrist, and started muttering about ambient temperatures and the onset of rigor.

  Mackinnon returned. “No sign of a note on the floor, sir. Constable Jenkins is still looking outside. Shall I give him a hand?”

  “No, leave him to it. It’s a long shot. You can go and tell Dr. Curtis that Mrs. Walker is sleeping and ask him if he prescribed the Veronal. If so, see if he can remember how many doses he gave her.”

  “He doesna dispense, himself, sir, but if he canna recall how many he prescribed, I’ll ring up the chemist. The name is on the box.”

  “Good.” The word was at once assent and approval. DS Mackinnon was turning out to be useful. “Dr. Curtis is free to leave when you’ve spoken to him. Tell the women I’ll be in to speak to them shortly.” Alec turned back to Ridgeway. “How long?”

  “Eight hours, or thereabouts.” As he spoke, Ridgeway’s hands roved about the body, palpating, raising an eyelid to peer into a staring eye, loosening tie and collar to examine the throat. “Unofficially, around midnight. Officially, sometime between ten and two. It’s not an exact science, you know.”

  “I’m all too aware of the fact. In this case I doubt it matters much, but how often you fellows would solve a case for us if you could say, ‘He died at precisely twelve-oh-three A.M.’”

  “I would if I could,” said Ridgeway, “but I can’t. The pathologist might be able to help, if he’d eaten recently and someone can tell you when. Are you going to get Spilsbury?”

  “I doubt it.” The brilliant Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Home Office Pathologist, was too much in demand to take on an apparently commonplace suicide. “Not unless I can prove it’s murder.”

  “I thought that was the way you were leaning.”

  “Not necessarily. He had ample reason for killing himself, perhaps more reason than the obvious.”

  “You mean he may have done for Talmadge. Well, it looks to me like suicide. I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that he was neither knocked on the head nor suffocated, strangled, or choked. Cherry red livor suggests carbon monoxide poisoning. There’s a hint of hydrogen sulphide about the eyes. He could have been sedated with Veronal and moved here. Should show up at autopsy. Did you want me to do it?”

  “Rather you than that idiot Renfrew, but you knew him, didn’t you? I’ll find someone else.”

  “Thanks.” Ridgeway stood up. “If there’s nothing else, then, I’m off.”

  “Right-oh. No, don’t wash your hands there, please. There’s a downstairs cloakroom, I believe.”

  Ridgeway looked at the mugs in the sink, nodded soberly, and followed Alec out of the kitchen.

  Mackinnon met them in the hall. “Mrs. Bates seems to have recovered from the shock,” he said with a grin. “She wants to know when she can have her kitchen back.”

  As Alec and Mackinnon entered the sitting room, Nora Bates surged to her feet. “I’ve my work to do,” she snapped, shocked, perhaps, but not notably distressed by her master’s demise. “And while Mrs. Davies lounges about, the floors aren’t getting any cleaner, and I s’pose she’ll expect to be paid, same as usual.”

  “Seeing it’s not you as pays me,” said the charwoman indulgently, “don’t you fret your kidneys to flinders for nuffink, ducks.”

  “I’m afraid there won’t be any cleaning done until the house has been searched. I have a few questions to put to you, Mrs. Bates.” Alec hid a smile as Mrs. Davies leant back in her sling chair, crossed her ankles, and prepared to enjoy her leisure and the show.

  Sitting down again, Mrs. Bates glared at him. “Well?”

  “I gather yesterday was your day off. What time did you get back?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Were the Walkers at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “In this room?”

  “It’s none of my business where they sit.”

  “Come now, Mrs. Bates, this isn’t a vast country mansion. I’m sure you knew where they were.”

  The housekeeper’s lips pursed. “She was in here. He was in his den.”

  “Thank you. Did you speak to either of them? Or see or hear them speaking to each other?”

  “No.”

  “All right, what did you do when you got home?”

  “They dined out so there wasn’t any washing up. I put out the things for the major’s Ovaltine and went to bed.”

  “The major’s Ovaltine?”

  “Had to have it, every night, like clockwork.”

  “What about Mrs. Walker?”

  “Not her. She used to tease him about it, said it was an old-maidish kind of nightcap. Brandy’s what she likes at bedtime. Not a big one, I’ll give her that, but it’s not a proper bedtime drink for a lady if you ask me.”

  So why the two mugs?

  From the corner of his eye, Alec saw PC Jenkins come in. He went to Mackinnon, who was taking notes, and whispered something, shaking his head. Alec ignored them to concentrate on Mrs. Bates, who was just beginning to warm up.

  “After you went up to your room, did you hear any unusual sounds?”

  “When you work hard like I do, you don’t lie awake listening for bumps in the night,” she said witheringly.

  Unwithered, Alec said, “So you heard nothing till your usual time of waking? You have an alarm clock, I expect. What time does it go off?”

  “Half six.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Same as what everyone does when they get up.”

  “Wash, dress, go downstairs. Did you notice anything unusual on your way down?”

  “No.”

  “No smell of gas?”

  “Not till I opened the kitchen door. It seals pretty tight to keep cooking smells out of the rest of the house.”

  “All right, let’s start there. What did you do then?”


  “Closed it quick. I’m not stupid.”

  Alec’s patience frayed. “I never thought you were, Mrs. Bates, except in your uncooperative attitude. This would waste a lot less of your precious time if you’d just answer my questions fully so that I don’t have to dig for details. Tell me now exactly what you did from the moment you realized something was amiss until you came into this room to sit down.”

  She sniffed but complied. She had opened the front door and the big window on the landing, then returned to the kitchen. Leaving the passage door open she had dashed through, holding her nose, to the back door, unbolted and flung it open, and gone out into the garden to breathe deeply. Not till her second foray to open the kitchen windows had she noticed the major.

  “He looked dead as mutton,” she said with a shudder, the first sign of any emotion other than irritation. “I had to get out and catch my breath, but I went back in and picked up his hand. Like ice it was. I knew he’d passed on, for sure, but I telephoned Dr. Curtis and he said to telephone the police. Which I did. I waited in the hall for the doctor. When he came, he told me to come in here and sit down.”

  “You kept your head admirably,” Alec said, “and acted with the greatest common sense.”

  Her snort suggested that she was not in the least gratified by his praise.

  “At what point did you turn off the gas tap?”

  She looked at him blankly. “Turn off the gas? I don’t remember doing that.”

  “You musta done, ducks. Don’t make no sense opening all them doors and winders if you di’n’t. Where’s the sense in that, I arst you?”

  Alec gave Mrs. Davies a be-quiet look.

  “I don’t remember,” the housekeeper said obstinately.

  “Think it through again, Mrs. Bates. Close your eyes and think back to opening the kitchen door. Imagine yourself going through each action. You opened the door, smelt the gas, and … ?”

  She ran through the whole sequence again, in almost exactly the same words.

  “You was flustered, Nora, stands to reason. ‘Course you don’t ’member zackly every little bitty thing you done.” Mrs. Davies turned to Alec and added confidentially, “I ’specks it’ll come to ’er in time, ducks, if you give ’er time to think about it.”