Untimely Death

by Cyril Hare

  “That’s very good of you, sir, but frankly I don’t regard it as an occasion for sympathy at all. Rationally speaking, it’s a very happy release for her. My daughter, however, isn’t rational. She doesn’t see it in that light at all. She has not so much as set eyes on her husband for six months, and now she chooses to be prostrated. Women are strange creatures, if you’ll excuse the phrase, Mrs. Pettigrew.”

  From the look on his wife’s face, Francis Pettigrew realized that she was not disposed to excuse the phrase and that for two pins she would make the fact extremely clear. He interposed hastily.

  “In any case, Mr. Joliffe, I am sure that you will agree that at a moment like this your daughter won’t want any visitors in the house. We have been lucky enough to find somewhere to go, so we shall be leaving straight away.”

  “I was afraid you would say that. I told my daughter as much, but she didn’t pay any attention. I’ll get out your bill while you do your packing.” He sighed deeply. “In the ordinary way I should charge you for a week’s board in lieu of notice, but in the circumstances I can hardly do that. It’s a pity, but there it is.”

  Pettigrew contrived to keep a straight face. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “Ah well,” Mr. Joliffe went on, “there’s one good thing about it. The next lot of boarders aren’t due till Saturday week and she should be over it by then. I shouldn’t like to put them off—that sort of thing gives the house a bad name.”

  *

  “Disgusting old man!” Eleanor burst out as soon as they were back in their room. “Heartless, money-grubbing brute! And I thought he was nice!”

  “I’m disappointed in him too,” said Pettigrew. He was looking out of the window as he spoke, and his gaze rested on the roof of the outhouse beneath Mrs. Gorman’s room. Remembering what he had seen there a few nights before, he felt it unreasonable that she should be so overcome with grief at her husband’s death. To that extent at least he could sympathize with Mr. Joliffe.

  “Those poor little girls!” Eleanor went on. “He hadn’t a word of sympathy for them, of course. I really wonder whether we are doing right in leaving until we’re sure Mrs. Gorman is in a fit state to look after them. I feel quite worried about them.”

  That worry at least was dispelled when, the packing completed, Pettigrew sought out Mr. Joliffe to settle his account. He found him closeted with his granddaughters, and it was obvious at a glance that a condition of complete sympathy existed between them. Beryl was sitting in the corner absorbing a sweet of the type known to Pettigrew in his youth as a gob-stopper. Though her face bore traces of recent tears, she looked resigned, and even contented. Doreen was close to her grandfather’s side, and it was evident that Pettigrew had interrupted an intimate colloquy between them. Her expression was subdued and serious, and for the first time Pettigrew was aware of her strong resemblance to her mother. But what struck him most was the look of utter confidence on one side and deep affection on the other.

  In a gentler voice than usual, Joliffe told the two girls to “run along” while he did his business with the departing guest. “They’re all I have, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said softly as the door closed behind them. The sentimental expression vanished from his face as he went on, almost without pause, “Was it one or two early morning teas you had on Saturday?”

  Pettigrew paid his bill. Mr. Joliffe shook him warmly by the hand and expressed the hope that they would meet again another year. “The rooms will be there,” he said, “and if Mrs. Gorman is there to look after you, you’ll be welcome. It just doesn’t pay if you have to give a woman wages to attend to the summer visitors. My daughter was talking of setting up house on her own, but now this has happened I am hoping she will change her mind.”

  Pettigrew must have shown something of what he felt, for Joliffe went on, “You think I’m lacking in sympathy for my daughter, sir, but if you’d known my son-in-law you’d think different. He was a ne’er-do-well, and that’s the long and the short of it. I don’t mind telling you that first to last he cost me a lot of money. Thank Heaven, he’s left my girl well provided for!”

  After this, Pettigrew could not resist the temptation of adding to Mr. Joliffe’s financial worries by demanding a twopenny stamp on his receipt.

  *

  Mallett was out when the Pettigrews returned to Sunbeam Cottage and he did not put in an appearance until just before supper.

  “I’ve been having a chat with the Detective Inspector,” he said. “Luckily we’re on fairly good terms.” He filled three glasses with sherry and handed them round. “Inquest’s on Thursday, it seems. At Polton. Your very good healths, sir and madam.”

  The sherry was of a quality to command Pettigrew’s respect, but for the moment his mind was on lower things.

  “What else did he tell you?” he asked.

  “I didn’t like to ask any direct questions, because he’s a sensitive sort of man, and might have resented them, coming from me. But I gathered that death was due to a blow in the chest. The Inspector seems to be working on the theory that it was a motor car, but it might have been something else, so far as he can tell until he gets the report of the P.M.”

  “But he wasn’t found on the road,” Eleanor put in.

  “Quite so, ma’am. It seems the body had been moved after death.”

  “And death was—when?”

  “It was the answer to that question that I was angling for all along, of course, but it took me a long time to bring him round to it. And the answer—again without waiting for the pathologist’s report—appears to be, late last night or first thing this morning.”

  Mallett looked at Eleanor. Eleanor looked at Frank. Frank looked at his glass. Nobody said anything for a moment.

  “So that lets you out, Mr. Pettigrew,” said Mallett cheerfully.

  “Yes. That lets me out, doesn’t it? I’m simply a second-sighted, temperamental sufferer from precognition. It’s nice to know. It only remains to enjoy the rest of the holiday.” He drank off his glass with a singular absence of enjoyment.

  The appearance of supper restored Pettigrew’s spirits, and by the end of the evening he was able to discuss the case of Jack Gorman—for it was impossible to keep away from it for long—in his usual vein of cheerful detachment.

  “I must go to the inquest,” he said. “Usually they are dull affairs, though the last one I attended turned out to be unexpectedly exciting. But one wants to know something of the background to appreciate them properly. There’s an odd background to this case, obviously. I’d like to know why he wasn’t living with his wife and family, to begin with.”

  “I can answer that one,” said Mallett. “The Gorman family row made quite a noise in the neighbourhood last year. Everyone expected Joliffe to prosecute, but he was persuaded not to in the end.”

  “I have it on Mr. Joliffe’s authority that his son-in-law was a ne’er-do-well, who cost him a lot of money. Was the projected prosecution for embezzlement, by any chance?”

  “Yes. I’d better tell the story from the beginning, so far as I know it. The Gormans are a well-known family in these parts, and Jack Gorman was the best known of the lot when he was a bachelor. He was very good-looking for one thing, a first-rate horseman and a good shot—a wonderful dancer, I believe. It’s not surprising he attracted Edna Joliffe.”

  “What is surprising to me is that her father ever allowed her to marry him.”

  “She married without his consent. He wouldn’t speak to her for years. She is a very determined little woman, in her quiet way, you know. She needed a lot of determination to stick to Jack, as it turned out. He was a rolling stone, though his travels didn’t take him further south than Exeter or further east than Bristol. He tried a lot of things—a bit of farming, a good deal of horse-coping, keeping a seaside hotel. He lost money at all of them, and at his last job he lost his licence into the bargain. Finally his father-in-law took pity on him—or rather on his own daughter and grandchildren. He took him and the family into Sal
lowcombe, and found Jack a job in the butchery business at Whitsea, with the prospect of a partnership if he made the grade.”

  “What made him change his mind like that? It seems out of character.”

  “I’ve only gossip to go on for this, but I fancy it’s reliable. You may have noticed that Joliffe is not exactly uninterested in money. Well about this time the rumour began to go round that Jack had pretty substantial expectations under the will of some aged Gorman or another. I told you there was supposed to be money in the family somewhere, you may remember.”

  “I think I know where. But go on.”

  “Joliffe was prepared to forgive a good deal in a son-in-law with expectations, and it was a wonderful chance for Jack, if he could have kept straight. But you might as well have tried to straighten a corkscrew. The job lasted just a year, and at the end of that time old Joliffe had his accounts specially audited. That was the end of Master Jack’s career in the butchery trade. It was the end of his marriage too, to all intents. For when he went, Edna decided to stay with her father, and I for one don’t blame her.”

  “She didn’t mean to stay any longer than she had to,” said Pettigrew. “She was going back to her husband as soon as he came into his money.”

  “I don’t know where you got that from, sir. But even if it’s true, she might have had to wait a very long time.”

  “I got it from two unimpeachable sources—first from the two little girls and then from Mr. Joliffe himself. As for the money, that’s just the irony of it—Jack Gorman came into his inheritance last Sunday.”

  “Did he now?” said Mallett. “That seems a remarkably convenient arrangement.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Inquest

  Next day the weather broke. Pettigrew looked out of his bedroom window on to a wide, watery landscape. The moors that had bounded his view the day before had disappeared in mist, and across the middle distance the rain was being driven in almost horizontal lines by the violent west wind. It was the kind of scene that was part and parcel of his Exmoor memories. Up to that moment there had been something lacking in the evocation of the past, and now he realized what it was. The continued fine weather had been against the order of nature. This was the real thing.

  “I shall go for a walk this morning,” he announced at breakfast, and nothing that Eleanor could say could stop him. He ridiculed the idea of catching cold. The wind, though strong, was from the west, and therefore warm. The air was soft and mild. Nobody ever took harm from merely getting wet. In any case he had a perfectly good mackintosh. Exercise was an essential if he was going to have any appetite for lunch. And so on.

  What Pettigrew expected to get out of his walk he did not know. What in fact he got, as anybody could have told him he would, was a heavy cold. He disguised the fact as long as was humanly possible, but in the end it had to be accepted. For the second time in a week he was housebound, and this time it could not be suggested that it was anything but his own fault.

  What made his position particularly annoying to Pettigrew was that he was unable to fulfil the promise he had made to himself of attending the inquest on Jack Gorman. Mallett therefore went unaccompanied. Although he was far too civil a man to hint such a tiling Mallett was distinctly relieved to be alone on this occasion. Purely as an observer, he was genuinely interested in what he instinctively felt to be an unusual case. He had no theories about it, and went with an entirely open mind. The presence of a companion with an altogether fantastic theory would be merely upsetting. Reflecting on Pettigrew’s story, Mallett shook his head sadly as he went out to his garage through the still pouring rain. He had the utmost respect for his old friend, but decidedly he was not the man he once had been.

  The inquest was held in the long room behind the Staghunter’s Arms, the room in which, in default of a village hall, most of the local meetings, celebrations and functions took place. It was already nearly full when Mallett arrived. There were a great many familiar faces, including almost all of the local branches of the Gorman clan. Not quite all, however. The widow of the deceased was absent. So was her father. On the other hand, there was present in the front row a stout lady in deep mourning who was unknown to Mallett. From her complacent manner and the air of gracious condescension with which from time to time she addressed the lesser Gormans around and behind her, it was clear that she was, in her own eyes at least, an important personage.

  By the time fixed for the opening of the inquest the room was as full as it could hold. The air vibrated with the. deep bass of West Country talk. The temperature rose steadily, A quarter of an hour later in a sudden silence the coroner entered and took his seat. He was a stranger to the gathering—almost a foreigner, in fact. It was credibly reported that he lived as far away as the other side of Taunton. That was one offence in the eyes of his audience. His unpunctuality was another. His failure to apologize for it was a third. Fortunately, perhaps, for him, the coroner was unconscious of the waves of disapproval projected at him from the body of the hall. He was a small, spare man with the beak and eye of a farmyard fowl and a fowl’s trick of dipping his head from time to time as though to peck up some grain of information.

  A jury was sworn in and the coroner without further preamble observed, “I shall first call evidence of identification. Louisa Gorman, will you come into the box?”

  The stout lady in black rose with massive dignity. She contrived to give the air of walking in procession as she covered the short distance to the improvised witness box. It was clear that this was her big moment and that she meant to make the most of it. She gave her address as Tracy Grange, Minster Tracy.

  “And have you this morning seen the body of a man and do you identify that body as that of John Richard Gorman?”

  “That was him all right.”

  The coroner noted her answer, and for an instant it seemed that Louisa’s big moment was going to be over almost before it had began. But then the coroner took a peck at his desk, fixed her with his beady eye and asked,

  “Let me see, madam, what relation were you to the deceased? Were you his sister?”

  “Sister? Of course not! Do I look like his sister?” Louisa appealed with a knowing look to her audience of Gormans, and she and they joined together in open derision at the outsider’s ignorance.

  “Very well, madam. There is no occasion for incivility. What relation were you?”

  “We were cousins, if you want to know.”

  “And he lived with you at Minster Tracy?”

  “He certainly did not.” Louisa tossed her head in scorn. “I live at the big house at Minster. He lived in a caravan on our land.”

  “By himself?”

  “That’s right. He’d been on his own since his wife threw him out.”

  “You let him put his caravan there?”

  “I didn’t—’twasn’t my land. Gilbert did—my brother.”

  “And when did you last see the deceased?”

  “Who, Jack? That would be Friday afternoon.”

  “Last Friday? You have not seen him since?”

  Louisa reflected.

  “It was two days before Gilbert was took,” she said. “And that was Sunday. Yes, it was Friday I saw him.”

  “How came he to see you on that day?”

  “He came on his flat feet. He used to have a motor bike, but the hire-purchase took it back.”

  “I mean—why did he come to see you?”

  “It was my brother Gilbert he came to see, and he came to borrow money. That was all he ever came for. He had some story about being behind with his payments to the Court for that girl’s baby, but it’s my belief he wanted it for a horse to go out with the hounds from Satcherly Way on Saturday. I told him Gilbert was ill, but he would see him. After all, blood’s thicker’n water, and Jack was going to get Tracy when Gilbert died. It’s that makes everything so awkward now.”

  The coroner looked hopelessly out of his depth.

  “I don’t think I need go into all that now,” he
said. “You had no occasion to see him since?”

  “I had occasion all right, when Gilbert was took so ill on Sunday. I sent for him then, but the caravan was empty and the bed not slept in.”

  “And that surprised you?”

  Louisa shrugged her shoulders.

  A voice from the back of the hall broke in on the colloquy between coroner and witness.

  “There was lots of beds Jack liked a heap better’n his own,” it said.

  The audience roared its appreciation of the simple joke. Only Louisa and the coroner, for once united, disapproved.

  “That’s quite enough from you, Jim Cantle,” shouted Louisa. “When I get you outside, I’ll——

  The coroner rapped his desk, “If there is any further disturbance I shall clear the court,” he said. “Are there any questions you want to ask this witness, members of the jury?” Without waiting for their reply, he went on rapidly, “No? Thank you, madam, you may stand down. Call the next witness, please. John Mainprice.”

  John Mainprice proved to be an embarrassed young hiker who had stumbled on Jack Gorman’s body on Tuesday morning just off the road across Bolter’s Tussock. He was soon disposed of, and the coroner passed on to the medical evidence.

  Medicine, like law, has an esoteric vocabulary of its own, not to be comprehended by the vulgar. Medical men at least can, if they choose, put their opinions into perfectly intelligible language. This particular medical man—a cocksure young fellow with an aggravating air of omniscience—did not so choose. His evidence was couched in a technical jargon which delighted the coroner—who himself had medical qualifications—and mystified his hearers. Mallett, with the experience of countless homicidal enquiries behind him, was able to follow well enough. Jack Gorman had died from shock following multiple injuries. Of these injuries the gravest were concentrated in one area of the body. Three broken ribs—extensive bruising—gross injury to the internal organs, all described with loving anatomical particularity by the witness. The minor injuries could have been caused by falling on a hard surface, or, he added as an afterthought, being run over by the vehicle that had knocked him down. No, he did not state as a fact that the deceased had been knocked down by a motor vehicle. Any other moving object sufficiently hard and weighty could have had the same effect. Personally, he could not think of one offhand likely to be met with at this particular place. The injuries were consistent with being knocked down by a motor vehicle—perhaps that was the fairer way to put it. Death had occurred in the early hours of Tuesday morning or late on Monday night. He gathered up his papers and withdrew, exuding self-satisfaction from every pore.