Untimely Death

by Cyril Hare

  “And he has only to live till he is twelve years old——”

  “Just so. The Limitation Act, 1939——”

  “Section 11, my lord——”

  “And in that case his mother’s interest will become——”

  “Indefeasible!”

  The two men, smiling broadly, chanted the last word in perfect unison. Under a capable producer, Pettigrew thought, they could have made a reasonably good pair of cross-talk comedians. Then Mr. Justice Pomeroy abruptly recovered his dignity and said:

  “I shall not grant an adjournment.”

  “As your lordship pleases.”

  Turning to Mrs. Gorman, he said, “The answer to your question, madam, as you may have gathered, is that the sex of your child may make a considerable difference. When is it expected, by the way?”

  “The third week in June, my lord.”

  “You have not so very long to wait, then. If it is a boy, the property is yours so long as he lives, and yours for good should he survive to the age of twelve.”

  “Thank you, my lord. And now that is settled, may I go away?”

  “But nothing is settled. I still have to try this case.”

  “I don’t see what there is to try.”

  “Don’t you understand? Whether you have a son or another daughter, this property is yours already, under your husband’s will, unless the Plaintiff, Mr. Dick Gorman, can prove that your husband died on Saturday, the 9th of September and not on Tuesday, the 12th.”

  “He needn’t bother to prove that,” said Mrs. Gorman sadly. “Jack died on Saturday, the morning he left me. I’ve known it all along.”

  “The Death Certificate before me certifies that he died on Tuesday, and that remains the date of his death until the contrary is proved. I have to hear the evidence.”

  “He died on Saturday,” Mrs. Gorman repeated, and for the first time there was passion in her voice. “And how he died no one will tell me, though there’s someone here knows well enough, I think. And Gilbert, that had lain a-dying for months, lingered on till Sunday. That’s how it was. The gentleman said right when he told you the coroner and all were deceived, my lord. But I was deceived, too. My Jack was hidden away till after Gilbert was dead, and then brought out to be found again with his wounds all fresh as though he had only just died. It’s that I can’t get out of my mind—my husband’s poor body shut up in a butcher’s cold store like the carcase of a sheep or a steer, so that his daughters would get what wasn’t rightly theirs. It doesn’t seem possible, but there’s those will do anything for money. And that’s the truth, my lord. Ask my father if it’s not the truth!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  According to the Evidence

  Edna Gorman’s voice trailed away into a silence that lasted just long enough to give Pettigrew time to wonder what was the appropriate Chancery reaction to these very untypical Chancery proceedings. Then Mr. Justice Pomeroy supplied the answer. He raised his heavy-lidded eyes towards the time-piece on the wall, heaved himself out of his chair and observed to the assembled company, now respectfully upstanding, “Two o’clock.” The morning had gone; it was time to be thinking of lunch.

  In the corridor outside the court, Pettigrew felt his arm being taken in a firm but friendly grip. He looked round, and saw that it was Manktelow.

  “I’m not sure that I want to talk to you,” said Pettigrew.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course you do. You’re my witness.”

  “What you mean is, that you want to talk to me.”

  “You will find that it comes to exactly the same thing. You will be lunching in hall. So shall I. You will sit at the same table you have used since you were called. So shall I. I shall come and sit next to you and you will have no escape. You had better accept your fate quietly.”

  Pettigrew surrendered. Manktelow, after all, was a man and a brother. Chancery had long since claimed him for her own, but he was none the less a Templar of the same Inn as Pettigrew. They had lunched together, with intervals for two world wars and other interruptions, fairly regularly for over forty years. Since Pettigrew retired from practice after the second war, they had neither met nor corresponded, but this did not prevent them from taking up their acquaintance exactly where they had left it. They walked together to the robing-room, and it seemed odd and unnatural that only one of them should have a wig and gown to leave behind there. Together they strolled across the Strand, in the wake of a judge for whom a policeman was holding up the traffic. It was all deliriously like old times. Then they went into hall.

  “Hall” to Pettigrew meant a lofty stone building in Victorian Gothic, panelled with highly varnished wood, adorned with the escutcheons of by-gone celebrities and nonentities, and populated by large statues representing the nineteenth-century’s idea of medieval Knights Templar. Aesthetes had condemned it; Hitler had destroyed it; Pettigrew missed it very much. The familiar table was still in the same place, with the familiar faces around it. He noticed that one or two strangers had contrived not only to get themselves called to the Bar, but to insinuate themselves among his friends, but he was prepared for a reasonable amount of change in ten years. What he was not prepared for was the babel of sound that assailed his ears as he entered the shining, new, handsome building that was now “hall”. Everybody seemed to be shouting at the top of his voice. The clatter of knives and forks was deafening. The feet of the waiters hurrying across the floor thundered like charging cavalry.

  “What’s happened to everyone?” Pettigrew bellowed to Manktelow. “I can’t hear myself speak.”

  “Didn’t you know?” His voice came to Pettigrew with difficulty through the hubbub. “It’s something they call acoustics. Apparently this sort of floor and this kind of ceiling put together in a room this shape are guaranteed to produce this result. It’s a very interesting scientific demonstration. You’re jolly lucky to have heard it. They’ll do something to the place soon and spoil it.”

  Pettigrew shook his head mournfully.

  “I thought you wanted to talk,” he said.

  “Yes I do. Eat up quickly and we’ll have time for a stroll round the garden.”

  *

  “What exactly are you going to say?” Manktelow asked as they walked across the great lawn.

  “Hasn’t Mallett told you? Simply that I saw what appeared to be the body of a man on Bolter’s Tussock on the afternoon of Saturday the whatever-it-was, and when I came back later it wasn’t there.”

  “What appeared to be?”

  “That’s as far as I shall go.”

  “H’m. I shall be producing a photograph of the body that certainly was there on the Tuesday morning. Do you think you will be able to identify it?”

  “I might and I might not. But you’re not telling me that that’s the only evidence you’ve got to connect the two?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I thought not,” said Pettigrew.

  “Why didn’t you tell the police what you had seen?” Manktelow asked.

  “That’s cross-examination. If Twentyman asks me that, I suppose I shall have to answer, but I’m damned if I tell you.”

  They turned under the plane trees overlooking the Embankment and started to walk back over the grass.

  “You don’t seem to be interested in the case,” observed Manktelow reproachfully, after they had gone some way in silence.

  “On the contrary, I am very much interested, and I badly want to know, but I don’t suppose you can tell me. Who or what killed Jack Gorman? Have you any ideas?”

  “Good lord, no! The question never even crossed my mind.”

  “It’s an interesting question, all the same, you know.”

  “I dare say it is,” said Manktelow impatiently. “For those who care for such things. But it’s not my case. Not the case you’re giving evidence in. Aren’t you interested in that?”

  “Dash it all, I’ve already heard you open it in court at some considerable length, and you and Mrs. Gorman between you have rea
lly told me all I need to know about it. Incidentally, unless we walk up, we shan’t be there on time. It’s getting late.” They quickened their pace as they left the garden and began to thread the Temple courts.

  “But this is ridiculous,” spluttered Manktelow. He was stout and not in the best of condition, and the pace that Pettigrew had set was rather too much for him. “This is a remarkable case—a unique one, I should not be afraid to say, using the word for once in its strict and proper meaning. You could see for yourself how excited Puffkins was over it.”

  “If by Puffkins you mean the Honourable Mr. Justice Pomeroy, I can only say that his ideas of excitement are not mine. I’m too old to start getting enthusiastic about base fees.”

  They had emerged from the Temple precincts on to the pavement opposite the Royal Courts of Justice.

  “You’re damnably cold-blooded,” said Manktelow. “For six months you must have been wondering how you came to see a dead man three days before he died. Now you know the answer, you pretend not to be interested.”

  “We’ve only got three minutes,” said Pettigrew, looking up at the great clock. He plunged boldly on to the crossing, a protesting Manktelow beside him. “For six months,” he went on, “I’ve been running away from this case because it seemed to me irrational and, worse than irrational, thoroughly frightening.” He landed on the other side, sprinted with Manktelow to the robing-room door, and went on, “Never mind why I was frightened—I haven’t time to give you the history of my childhood now, and it’s none of your business. But as soon as I saw your sub poena, I realized that there must be a perfectly rational explanation to the whole thing.” He helped Manktelow on with his gown. “Now that I know what it is, I feel a fool not to have seen it before; but as I say, I wasn’t looking for it. On the contrary, I was looking away from it as hard as I could.”

  They started on the narrow stairs up to the court corridor. Manktelow had his second wind by now and trotted up first.

  “You ought to be feeling relieved, anyway,” he threw over his shoulder. “This case will have solved the problem.”

  Pettigrew caught him up in the corridor.

  “I don’t know what you call solving the problem,” he panted. “You’re going to persuade Puffkins to deliver a judgment which will disinherit Mrs. Gorman’s charming little daughters, if you’re not pipped on the post by a posthumous son. Great fun for all of you, and costs out of the estate. But it doesn’t satisfy me. Because now I have been compelled to look at this case again I feel that as sure as God made little apples there’s been murder done here, and nobody’s got within a mile of solving that problem yet.”

  They reached Chancery Court VI just as Puffkins, punctual to the second, was taking his seat. Pettigrew made his way to his inconspicuous post at the back of the court, but he never reached it.

  “My lord, I call Mr. Pettigrew,” said Manktelow with an evil grin, and thrust his hapless friend, still gasping for breath, straight into the witness-box.

  On the whole, the experience was not quite so bad a one as Pettigrew had bargained for. At least, nobody referred to the possibility of precognition. None the less, he had some awkward passages to surmount.

  “On the afternoon of Saturday the 9th of September,” Manktelow asked him, “were you at the place known as Bolter’s Tussock?”

  Pettigrew agreed that he was, and after some business with a large-scale Ordnance Survey map identified the exact spot.

  “You were on horseback, I think?”

  “Er—yes. That is …”

  “Well, were you or weren’t you?” interjected the judge. “You must know.”

  “It was a pony, my lord.”

  “Very well—on ponyback. Don’t quibble, Mr. Pettigrew. Please get on, Mr. Manktelow.”

  “I am much obliged to your lordship. And as you reached this point did you see something on the ground?”

  “I thought I did, yes.”

  “Just look at this photograph, will you, Mr. Pettigrew? Does it appear to you to resemble in any way the object which you saw on the ground?”

  “He hasn’t said he saw anything,” his lordship pointed out. “He says he thought he saw something.”

  “Your lordship is very good. Looking at the photograph, do you now say whether you saw anything, and if so what?”

  There is nothing in the world quite so definite and uncompromising as a police photograph. Jack Gorman’s face stared at Pettigrew from the print and told him very plainly that he could take it or leave it, but that there must be no shilly-shallying. He chose to take it.

  “I saw this man on the ground,” he said firmly. “But my impression is that he was not in this position, exactly.”

  “Your impression?” said the Judge.

  “My lord, I only saw him for a very short time. I—that is, I …”

  “You rode off at once to get help, did you not, Mr. Pettigrew?” said Manktelow.

  “Yes, I did,” Pettigrew hoped that his gratitude for the suggestion was not too apparent in his voice. But something apparently had put Mr. Justice Pomeroy on enquiry.

  “You didn’t get down to have a look at him first?” he asked incredulously.

  “No, my lord, I didn’t.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say frankly that he didn’t because he couldn’t, but something inhibited him. An Englishman will always prefer an imputation on his morals to one on his horsemanship. Who had said that? Dr. Johnson? Surtees? Oscar Wilde? His perplexity must have shewn itself on his face, for Manktelow hastened to come to his aid.

  “Would it be right to say that you were in a hurry to get assistance as soon as you could?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Pettigrew offered up silent thanks to counsel prepared to put such a leading question and to the judge who allowed it. But his relief was only temporary.

  “And then you returned later with help—how much later would you say, Mr. Pettigrew?”

  “I’m not sure exactly—perhaps half an hour. Perhaps a little more.”

  “Half an hour!” Pomeroy rolled round in his seat to stare at the witness. “I thought you said you were in a hurry?”

  “My lord,” said Manktelow, boldly intervening, “I am given to understand that this is a somewhat remote spot. Your lordship will see from the map that the nearest habitation is——”

  “It’s within a few yards of a busy main road,” retorted his lordship. “However, if the witness is saying that it took him half an hour to fetch help——That is what you are saying, is it, sir?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “—well, if that is what he says, Mr. Manktelow, I suppose I must accept it, for what it is worth.”

  “If your lordship pleases. And when you did return, was there anything there?”

  “There was not.”

  “The body had gone?”

  “Yes.”

  At this point, Pettigrew realized why it was that Pomeroy, J. was familiarly known to those who practised before him as Puffkins. For his lordship’s face quite suddenly altered its shape altogether. He took a deep breath and inflated his cheeks until they stood out like the two halves of a round, pink ball. He maintained this attitude for an appreciable time before expelling the air from his lungs in a long sigh that seemed to express better than any words could have done his deep distrust of everything that he had heard from the witness-box.

  “And after witnessing this disappearing trick on the part of the corpse,” he asked Pettigrew, “what did you then do?”

  It was the question that Pettigrew had been dreading ever since he had entered the witness-box. If it had not been put to him in such an offensive way, and by a man whose facial antics he thought extremely ridiculous, he might have found difficulty in answering it. Now, he felt a sudden surge of anger and contempt, and under the spur of his emotions he said the first thing that came into his head—which happened to be the exact truth.

  “I went to bed for two days with a high temperature,” he said, and he contrived to put into his tone e
xactly what he was feeling.

  Puffkins gave him a long, hard look. Then, astonishingly, he smiled.

  “I’m not altogether surprised,” he said. “And when you finally got out of bed, you decided that nobody was likely to believe you. That does not surprise me either. After all, I have had some difficulty in believing you myself. But I do believe you, Mr. Pettigrew. Thank you, Mr. Manktelow. Do you cross-examine, Mr. Twentyman?”

  Twentyman’s cross-examination was little more than a formality, and Pettigrew escaped thankfully from the box.

  “My lord,” said Manktelow, “my next witness is Detective-Inspector Parkinson.”

  The Judge looked disappointed. “I hoped it was going to be Mr. Joliffe,” he said.

  “My lord, my clients have elected not to call him. They were conscious of the probability that Mr. Joliffe might object to answering questions tending to incriminate himself——”

  Mr. Justice Pomeroy, who was something of an antiquarian, murmured something about exhibiting a pardon under the Great Seal.

  “I think that I shall be in a position to satisfy your lordship without recourse to that. The police officer in the course of his investigations has taken a statement in writing from Mr. Joliffe——”

  “I shan’t admit it. Why should I? It’s only secondary evidence at the best, and the man who made the statement is actually in court.”

  “None the less, if your lordship will be good enough to hear the officer, I think that those parts of his evidence which are plainly admissible will make it abundantly clear——”

  By this time the hapless Parkinson, waiting to take the oath, had become horribly nervous. He was used to holding his local Petty Sessions in the hollow of his hand; Recorders and even Judges of Assize he could confront with assurance; but the mysterious proceedings of the High Court of Chancery filled him with alarm. The first ten minutes of his evidence, therefore, punctuated as they were by caustic comments from the Bench and by two or three successful objections from Twentyman, were thoroughly unhappy. But after that things improved. Pomeroy began to be impressed by the story that Parkinson had to tell, and when the officer produced a highly technical report from the Forensic Science Laboratory, with accompanying exhibits, he was completely captivated. It is not every day that a Judge of the Chancery Division finds himself plunged into the hurly-burly of police work, and Puffkins forgot even the refined delights of the base fee in contemplation of detection in real life.