The Dreaming Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harriet woke up. Her first thought was, muzzily, Where am I? A moment later she almost laughed aloud. Where else should I be, but here in bed at home? And John has, in his usual way, quietly slipped out so as not to disturb me. And he’s off to engulfing Majestic House to get his undisturbed hour or so to deal with the paperwork. Or some of it.

  Only then did she realize that she had been dreaming. Deeply. Hard. And bits of the dream began coming back to her. That cow — how odd, a cow — there in a field somewhere, with, yes, the barred fence it was stretching over. There it was, neck taut, head raised to the unhearing skies. And moo-moo-mooing. In high distress.

  And, yes again, in the dream I knew why. The pink udder, I can see it now. Milk-full, stretched, smarting for relief.

  Was it me who ought to have milked the wretched beast? No, don’t think so. The farmer? Don’t remember dreaming there was a farm — No. No, it was a calf. Or even calves. The desperate cow was mooing and shrieking for her calves.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Harriet realized she had spoken the two words, the acknowledgment of a revelation, out aloud into the empty room, dawn-lit through the not quite closed curtains.

  She sat up with a jerk, stretching her arms down behind her for support.

  Revelation. By God, yes, I have had a revelation.

  Then she remembered almost the last words John had said to her when they had had their — what? — their bit of a spat last thing last night. Or last thing for me anyhow. Because I did then do just what John had said I ought to. I went straight up to bed, hardly knew I’d undressed — she glanced at the chair in the corner, and yes, clothes on it, if only just — and I fell straight asleep. And slept and slept and slept. And dreamt. And my dream produced, in dream fashion, this revelation.

  La nuit porte conseil, John told me. And counsel, wisdom even, the night did carry to me. It told me what had motivated Bubsy Willson suddenly to strangle the Boy Preacher whose fervent disciple she had been.

  It told me that Bubsy, the Bubsy whom street-sharp Syd Aslough had called ‘tarty’ while almost in the same breath dismissing the notion that she was a prostitute, had answered to both his contradictory views of her. Yes, she had walked the streets of the city’s rougher areas looking for sex. But, yes again, she had never been thinking of inducing anyone to pay for it. Because it had not been to gather money that, appallingly ugly as she was, she had sought sex. It had been to gather, yes, a calf, calves.

  But then she had been caught up by the Boy’s almost hypnotic preaching, no doubt in much the way Sydney Bigod, as he was in those days, had been. And, in thrall to the Boy, she would have heard time and again his injunction Do not bring into world one child without Ma-Bap. Mother plus father. And, yes, surely, surely, it had been the intolerable strain of that ...

  But can this be so?

  I wish John ... Wait. He could still be here.

  Head-to-foot naked — only now did she realize her nightie must still be under her pillow — she flung herself out of the bedroom, down the stairs, tumble, tumble, tumble, and into the kitchen.

  John was there. Placidly flipping through the pink sheets of the FT.

  She stood in the doorway and poured it all out to him. Desperate cow, taut udder; parading the streets, never a prostitute, the scene in the garden below that perched-up greenhouse, the Boy’s commandment Do not bring into world one child without Ma-Bap:

  ‘It was — It was because of her overwhelming desire to have a child,’ she announced at last. ‘To have a child. Maybe no man will understand, can fully understand, but that was it, that was it. I swear it was.’

  John, who had listened with complete patience throughout, looked up now.

  ‘The word you’re wanting,’ he said, ‘is philoprogenitiveness. I think the dictionary says it means characterized by love of offspring.’

  ‘So if the dictionary okays it, you agree? Bubsy strangled the Boy out of thwarted philo-whatsit?’

  ‘Yes, I agree.’

  *

  An hour later, no longer stark naked, with a quick breakfast eaten, with Pip Steadman collected from Headquarters and abreast of the situation, Harriet was pressing the white plastic button in the centre of the door of the narrow terraced house where there was to be found Bubsy Brownlow, with her husband Ted — E. Brownlow, building repairs promptly executed — and probably a handful of grandchildren as well.

  Once again there was a long delay in answering. But Harriet did not feel the need now for a second imperative buzz.

  And, eventually, the door in front of her was opened. But it was not, as it had been the last time, swept wide by cheerfully grinning Ted Brownlow. Instead it was slowly pulled a little back and a pallid face peered round it at about the level of the keyhole.

  Harriet was checked for a moment, while she worked out that, despite the too-big, drooping Up the Rovers T-shirt and the crumpled orange shorts, this was one of the girl grandchildren. But then she asked, ‘Is your granny at home, love? Can we come in and see her?’

  ‘Nah. She’s been took to ‘ospital.’

  ‘Hospital? She’s worse then?’ Darts of remorse. ‘When did she get worse? Was it after we’d been talking to her?’

  ‘Yeh. Think so.’

  ‘But your grandad, is he in?’

  ‘Nah. Went with ‘er to the ‘ospital, did’n he? Middle o’ the ni’.’

  In the middle of the night. Ted going with her, and still there. She must be ... Oh yes, Bubsy must be at death’s door. Now. This very moment.

  ‘Which hospital? Which hospital did she go to, love? Do you know?’

  ‘Ozzies, o’ course.’

  Pip Steadman was quick to translate.

  ‘It’s St Oswald’s, ma’am. It serves the whole of this area.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Right, let’s go.’

  But it was Pip who asked the raggedy girl clutching the edge of the door what her name was.

  ‘‘s Maggie.’

  ‘Maggie,’ Harriet put in then. ‘I’ll give your Gran your love, shall I?’

  ‘Tell ‘er get-better-soon.’

  *

  In the St Oswald’s reception area, they unexpectedly encountered Ted Brownlow.

  ‘Mr Brownlow,’ Harriet called out, suppressing her fear that the big genial man might accuse her there and then of having caused his wife’s sudden deterioration. ‘We’ve just been at the house,’ she said, ‘and your little Maggie told us you were here. I hope you’ve got some better news.’

  Ted Brownlow’s large face was no longer the glowing, cheerfulness-radiating one that had greeted them on his doorstep on Saturday before leading them up to the greenhouse looking down over the patch of garden. Behind his big, awkward spectacles, he still retained his bright colour, solidly red from hairline to throat. But it might now have been made of some bright plastic, entirely unanimated.

  No,’ he said, dully. ‘No, no better news. She’s dying, that what it is. My Bubsy’s dying.’

  Harriet fought for something to say.

  ‘Mr Brownlow, I — I’m so sorry. When — When on Saturday she seemed so happy, with her grandchildren all round her, I hoped — ’

  No, she thought, not the way to put it. If he doesn’t seem to have connected this deterioration with our visit, then just keep quiet.

  ‘It had to come,’ Ted Brownlow said, voice still flattened to exhaustion point. ‘We knew it. We all knew it. But — But somehow we sort of hoped ... ’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I understand. Of course, you would.’

  Then a new thought struck her.

  Oh God, is he going to ask if we’re on our way to see her? And will that mean he guesses what we have in mind? To try, at this last hour, to get a confession? And what shall I say if he does ask?

  But she was spared that.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Ted said. ‘Got to get on. Fetching some things she’d like from home. Photos and that. Mustn’t be too long.’

  ‘No, no, of c
ourse not.’

  And he left them, at a sort of half-shambling run.

  When he had barged his way out through the glass doors, Harriet turned to Pip.

  ‘Do you know anything about dying declarations?’ she said.

  *

  Frustrating dealings with hospital bureaucracy over at last, they made their way to the ward to which Bubsy had been admitted. It was, Harriet had gathered, one assigned to the dying, female and male. Before they reached it, Harriet halted and gave Pip his short course in dying declarations, or at least as much as she could remember about those unusual circumstances.

  ‘Right, a dying declaration is admissible as evidence if, a) it is made, as they say, in extremity, and b) the party is at the point of death when, I quote, correctly I think, every hope of this world has gone, when every motive to falsehood is silenced and the mind is induced by — By something. Yes, got it, the most powerful considerations to speak the truth. That may be a bit outdated, I don’t know. Have to look it up. Later. But you can see why those particular words have stuck in my mind.’

  ‘I certainly can, ma’am. But — But — Well, but are they all you need? Now. When we get to see Bubsy?’

  ‘Oh, I think so, yes. The principle is bound to hold still. So I haven’t any doubts. It’s a genuine dying declaration we’re going to hear, if we do. If we do. And you’ll need your notebook at the ready.’

  They advanced into the ward, with the long lines of curtain-separated beds to either side, a life-washed face in each one of them, the shapes under the sheets lying in perfect stillness or feebly twisting to and fro. Here and there one of the beds had the curtains drawn right round it. In extremity.

  Outside the last of them at the very far end of the long ward, a nurse was standing. As they approached he gave them a distinctly surly look. People coming to interfere; the police coming to cause complications.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Martens, Detective Constable Steadman,’ Harriet said. ‘You’ve been told we have permission to speak to Mrs Brownlow?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  With bad grace he drew back the curtain enough for them, each in turn, to slip inside.

  And there could be no doubt about it: Bubsy Brownlow, too, was in extremity.

  Harriet wondered for an instant if they were, in fact, too late. But Bubsy’s hollow-sunk eyes plainly registered that someone had come in, and that it was not her Ted returning with the photos she wanted to be able to look at till the end.

  Harriet sighed.

  ‘Mrs Brownlow,’ she said, bending over the bed, seemingly absurdly wide for the body that, only a few days before, had appeared to be so substantial slumped into that old cane-work garden chair. ‘Mrs Brownlow, do you know who we are?’

  ‘That lady. Police. Up in the greenhouse.’

  ‘Yes. I am Detective Superintendent Martens, and here beside me is Detective Constable Steadman.’

  ‘Yes.’ A long pause. ‘You come to ask, ain’t you?’

  ‘Yes, we have come to ask. You know, don’t you, that you are — That — That you have not very long to live?’

  A tiny spark of spirit.

  ‘Yeh. Know that. Obvious, ain’t it?’

  Harriet glanced quickly back at Pip to make sure he had registered that every hope of this world had gone.

  ‘I am afraid it is obvious, Mrs Brownlow,’ she said, making the words as clear as she could without banging them out. ‘So, I am going to ask you just one question. Are you ready for it?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Mrs Brownlow, did you on the evening of May the twenty-second, 1969, murder, by strangling, Krishna Kumaramangalam, known as the Boy Preacher?’

  A silence.

  And then the words.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s what I did. I strangled him, the poor kid. Had to. He went on and on about not having babies unless you was wed. And who’d wed me? I used to think. Ugly cow that I was. That’s what I thought then. Then I didn’t know there was anybody in the whole wide world like my Ted. An’ I wanted ... I wanted an’ ... wanted a baby. I had to have one. I had to have lots.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Mr Newbroom was sitting, Harriet realized, in precisely the same attitude he had adopted when she had last been up in his airy Chief Constable’s suite, facing him. Two hands flat on the gleaming surface of the wide desk, fingers pointing towards her in the way that had made her think of two flights of attacking aircraft. But there was one difference in the desk layout. Beside those two forward-pointing hands there lay the garishly covered copy of Who Killed the Preacher? which she had duly returned to Pansy Balfour.

  ‘I asked to see you, sir,’ she said, ‘to report that I now know who it was who killed the Boy Preacher.’

  ‘I hardly expected you to come to me with anything else, Superintendent. After all, finding that out was the task I gave you. And, let me say, I expected I would have been asked for an interview a good deal earlier than this.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Harriet bit back all the legitimate reasons she had had for the delay, especially the failure of the Newbroom plan for rapid DNA recognition.

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll enlighten me about this discovery of yours?’

  ‘Not discovery, sir. Proof.’

  ‘Proof? Well, I trust it’s proof that will stand up in court.’

  ‘A confession, sir. Mrs Barbara Brownlow, Barbara Willson at the time of the Boy’s death, has confessed to killing him.’

  ‘Willson? Well, let me show you something, Superintendent. Something I took care that you should see at the very start of your investigation. Something that might have led another officer to bring the inquiry to a rather more rapid conclusion.’

  ‘Sir?’

  But Harriet knew very well what she was going to be shown, that masterwork Who Killed the Preacher?

  She watched now as Mr Newbroom busily riffled through its pages.

  ‘Ah, yes. Here she is. Barbara Willson, known to one and all by the sobriquet, Bubsy. And this is what this fellow Meadowcraft says about her, in so many words, charged with indecent behaviour in a public place. You can tell at a glance what sort of a criminal type she was. And then a bit later — this is the really significant passage — Meadowcroft describes her tramping up and down the foyer. Why do you think she was doing that, Superintendent? I’ll tell you. She was looking for her moment to go into the ballroom there and kill the Boy.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I dare say she was, though of course Mr Meadowcraft was rather relying on hearsay for that description. He had no idea he was going to write his book at that time, and wasn’t, of course, actually present.’

  A chance thought flicked into her mind. Damn it, yes. Meadowcraft, despite his horrendous way with the facts, had got it right after all. What were those words of his? There can be no possible doubt that vindictiveness lies at the heart of this atrocious crime. Something like that. And, true enough, poor wretched Bubsy had developed a vindictive hatred for the Boy Preacher.

  ‘I dare say, I dare say,’ Mr Newbroom snapped out. ‘But none of that alters the fact that the woman Bubsy Whatever-she-is-now murdered that Boy. You’ve arrested her, I take it?’

  Harriet resisted the temptation to say something like, ‘That arrest has been made, sir, by a higher authority than the Greater Birchester Police.’

  ‘She died in hospital yesterday, sir.’

  ‘Died? Died? So she’s escaped justice that way?’

  He thought for a brief moment.

  ‘However, Superintendent, this does not mean that her crime should go unnoticed. Greater Birchester Police have secured an extraordinary result, a confession to murder more than thirty years after the commission of the crime. It is right that the public should know of it. It is our duty, at the very least, to show that such a notorious murder, committed within the bounds of our city, has been detected. So you had better get in touch, at once, with our media people. But make sure I am informed of what they propose to say before anything goes
out.’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  Harriet might have announced the imminent end of the world, so shattering was the effect of her few quiet words.

  Mr Newcomen’s hands, until that moment flatly laid on the surface of his desk, as they had been ever since Harriet had taken her seat in front of him, contracted now into two spasms of pure shock. His brilliantly well-shaved shining cheeks turned first white, then a deep dusky red.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean, sir, that I do not think that we in the Greater Birchester Police should go out of our way to claim immense credit for what I have learnt about Bubsy Brownlow.’

  Mr Newbroom still looked as shocked as any Chief Constable could be.

  ‘Are you deliberately defying my order, Superintendent?’

  Then Harriet saw, dawning behind his eyes, the realization that perhaps now there was in front of him the chance of getting rid, once and for all, of a media-loved officer who could not but be a challenge to the image he hoped to project of the force’s new dynamic Chief.

  That was not going to happen.

  ‘I am afraid, sir,’ she said quickly, ‘that any emphasized release of this result would lead the media to discover that news of the inquiry had, first, been deliberately withheld under your orders, and then, rather worse, had accidentally leaked out.’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense. I don’t think news of it really did leak out, as you put it.’

  ‘No, sir? But it did. And the leak occurred, I have to tell you, because you yourself let your secretary, Mrs Balfour, learn all about it. And she, put under no obligation to secrecy, mentioned what you had told her to a certain Ezra Yates, the man who wrote anonymously to you, sir.’

  ‘But — But — How did you discover all this?’

  ‘I discovered it, sir. And I must tell you that, if you persist in doing anything more than quietly stating in, say, your first annual report that the investigation into the Boy Preacher’s death has now been closed, then I will feel free to let my concerns about what happened be made known in the appropriate quarters.’

  It took Mr Newbroom nearly two minutes of silent thought to come to a conclusion.