Who Saw Him Die? (Inspector Peach Series Book 1)

by Gregson, J. M.

  Bradshaw heard the sound of letters dropping heavily into the hall and went to pick up the post, not because he expected anything for himself but because he wanted to finish his exchange with Ashby. He did not know how to react to an attitude he found disturbing.

  But there was a letter for him, with his address neatly typed and a first class stamp. It was an offer of a full-time post in adult education, beginning in September. It was almost five months ahead, but it offered the fresh start he had scarcely dared to hope for.

  For all of them, last night’s death seemed to be opening up new possibilities.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dick Courtney followed Ros Harrison down the long path from the door of Westhaven. She had a child’s hand in each of hers, a blue beret perched hastily and precariously on top of her dark, wiry hair.

  “So the world goes on,” he said, nodding at the heads of the children as they turned through the gate and began to walk towards the school. He smiled at her, the corners of his thin mouth turning fractionally upwards. Romantic novels speak of smiles which do not extend to the eyes. Dick’s eyes were far too dark for her to see whether they smiled; they sparkled briefly at her with what she thought was malicious satisfaction. There was nothing sexual in the look with which he assessed her, yet she felt threatened by it. It was as if he were challenging her mores, as if he looked into her head and saw the confusion of emotions there.

  “Where are you off to so bright and early?” she said cheerfully. Too cheerfully: she heard her voice falsely high in the clear morning air. As if this were an ordinary morning, unweighted by death.

  She was conscious of Lisa looking up curiously at Dick’s sharp, unlined profile. Tim’s eyes were still upon the ground before him; his five-year-old legs were almost running to keep up with them. She felt a new rush of tenderness for the small, infinitely vulnerable figures on each side of her, wondering again whether she should have taken them to school today. Theirs had been the only grief in the house that had been straightforward, unmitigated by any measure of relief. At the moment, she did not much like adult humanity, nor herself as a representative of it.

  Dick took his time about answering her question, as if he realised it was no more than a polite diversion; as if, indeed, he were wondering whether to play her game and indulge her with an answer. He watched the two small heads which bobbed beside them as carefully as she did, but without emotion. Perhaps he could turn them too to his advantage, like other things. Eventually he said, “I’m going for an interview for a job.”

  “Of course. I’d forgotten, with — with everything else this morning. Car sales, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, looking for a moment at the watch on his wrist, wondering why he had bothered to catch up with this domestic group, conscious of the nervous way Ros watched him and pleased by it. The black fingers on the clear white dial told him that it was twenty to nine; he had plenty of time. He fell into step beside Ros.

  His dark suit was a little loose upon him after the months in prison, but it fitted him well enough. He was five feet nine, slim and trim-waisted. Clothes fitted him well: he had the quality of making them seem newer and more expensive than they were. Thus his shoes, neat and highly polished, would have been taken at first glance by many as expensive Italian leather rather than the cheaper mass-produced imitation they were. He wore no coat, though the pale sunshine was tempered by a wind cool enough to be a reminder that it was still April. He did not yet have a coat which he cared to wear.

  They reached the corner and he said, “I have to go down here. See you later, kids!” and waved a farewell as he turned at right angles away from the road to the school. The children looked after him for a moment without much curiosity: he was the person in the house who was nearest to their own age.

  Ros felt herself dismissed with them, for he had given no acknowledgement of her separate existence. He treated her as if he had knowledge which she was still fumbling after. She was relieved to continue her journey alone, for reasons she could not have defined.

  There was not much time for her to analyse them, for she was soon passing through the school gates. Tim looked up at her for the first time since they had left home, wondering why she had not left them as usual at the entrance. “I need to see Mrs Davies,” she told them. She must explain what had happened during the night, ask that their teachers be made aware that they had lost the grandfather they loved. She wondered for the first time what kind of a reception she would get. Would she be considered heartless, depositing her children here scarcely seven hours after that sudden death?

  She had told them only that Grandad was dead: probably they thought he had died peacefully in his bed. The details of the awful scene in the hall, of the body lying with its neck twisted at that grotesque angle on the hall floor, sprang unbidden and vivid into her mind. Sooner or later, they would need to know of that fall. They said children were remarkably resilient, that the drive of young life thrust them towards recovery while adults still reeled.

  As if to echo that thought, Lisa looked up at her and said, “Will we be staying in the house now?”

  It was a ruthless childish reminder that, for her, life centred around her own concerns. Ros wished now that she had not started to tell them the news of their grandfather’s resolution to sell Westhaven; it seemed now that there had been no reason to disturb them. She said, “I expect so, darling.”

  “Goody! I like it there,” said Tim, without looking up. They were the first words he had spoken since the tears had gushed at the news of old Tom’s death. She had washed his face carefully five minutes before they left home. It had remained bright, clear-eyed, ready for the day’s experiences. As though its grief had been wiped clear and the future was all that mattered. Almost, she thought unexpectedly, like Dick Courtney’s face.

  The headmistress was sympathetic, understanding, supportive. She had met the situation often enough before. Her matter-of-factness was a comfort, her reassurance that Ros had done the right thing in bringing the children to school was a positive relief. “They’ll be much better here than moping about in the house where their Grandad died,” she said. “Will they be going to the funeral?”

  “I — I’m afraid I don’t know yet. We haven’t even thought about it.”

  “That must be your decision, of course. For what it’s worth, we find that it often disturbs young children like yours. You should think of them, you know, rather than whether anyone else might be offended if they’re not there.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. And in this case, there’s no one who will be offended. Unless you hear anything else, take it that they’ll be in school on the day of the funeral.” The grey-haired figure on the other side of the desk nodded, adding the information to the details of the bereavement she had already recorded on the pad in front of her.

  She saw the children on her way out, through the window of the school hall. They were in assembly, giving rapt attention to the teacher at the front of the room, plunging enthusiastically into song as they were bidden. She hurried through the gates before they could see her, envying their capacity to give their full attention to whatever was set before them as the matter of the moment. The visit to the school, which she had anticipated with such apprehension, had cheered her more than she could have believed.

  Her spirits drooped a little as she neared the house. She wondered how soon the funeral could be arranged; the sooner the better, she was sure, and she longed to get on with the arrangements. Trevor would leave it all to her, then be appropriately grateful when he was given the details. She wondered whether the post-mortem examination would delay things, trying not to think of what was being done to Tom’s remains. She would have the coffin lid screwed down; looking at corpses prepared for inspection was morbid and distasteful. Much better to remember people as they were when they were alive.

  No one would argue about that. For a moment, she wished there were people around who might do so. Poor old Tom! For the first time, she realised
how lonely he must have been beneath his crustiness. And she wished she had been closer to him, had made more of an effort during his life, so that she might feel more grief now.

  Sometimes she had grumbled about the rambling old house and the work it gave her. Now she was glad of its size, for it gave the people within it the opportunity to avoid each other. She could tell from the sounds and their direction who was around. Trevor, of course, in his office, studiously avoiding contact with her, confused as a child, unable to articulate either the grief he felt or his relief that this death had safeguarded the work which was the nearest thing to a passion he allowed himself.

  And outside, sweeping the yard behind the house, Fred Hogan. Poor old Fred, who seemed to her the most vulnerable of their charges, perhaps because as the criminal of longest standing he was going to be the most difficult to redeem. He whistled automatically, almost tunelessly: then abruptly he stopped, as if he had realised the sound was inappropriate this morning. She could hear the faint, methodical strokes of the stiff brush. Presently, the whistling began again, more softly.

  Fred had been unable to suppress it for more than a couple of minutes. Ros smiled, visualising his narrow, furtive face, concentrating hard on the job in hand, earnest with care and the desire to please. She had not yet appreciated that it was her that Fred tried so hard to satisfy with his work about the house, that his many small labours had a personal centre.

  Above her head, she heard muted sounds of movement. Harry Bradshaw, she thought: he had the soft, careful tread common in large men. He was a private man: at least he seemed so to her, but she was not a natural inquisitor. Keeping most people at arm’s length even when she did not wish to do so, she did not easily probe the backgrounds or feelings of others. It was amazing to her that a man who seemed so naturally gentle and diffident should have killed his wife, even under extreme provocation. Perhaps he would talk about it to her some time. It was unlikely, for she could never take the lead in initiating such exchanges.

  Was it possible that someone who was naturally gentle could turn violent in an instant, surprising himself as well as others under the stress of rage? She thought of her moment of fury with Trevor as she had knelt beside his father’s body last night. That anger had certainly caught her unprepared. Trevor had been afraid to come down to her as she touched the blood on the face of old Tom, and she had been enraged because he was so infirm of purpose. Whose phrase was that? Lady Macbeth’s, she rather thought. Not an agreeable comparison.

  She was about to ring the funeral director when she heard the front door bell ring. A short man, bald and unprepossessing, on the top step; a larger one behind him, awkward but observant.

  It was the bald one who said, “Mrs Harrison? May we come in for a few minutes? We’re CID officers.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ros took them inside to the family’s quarters and called up the stairs for Trevor. He came quickly. He must have heard the bell and been listening to the exchanges at the front door.

  In the house, the bald man who now took the initiative seemed even shorter beside his tall colleague. “I am Detective Inspector Peach,” he said. It was an inappropriate name, and he eyed them suspiciously as he said it, as if waiting to squash any tendency towards levity in his hearers. He looked for a moment like the belligerent small boy he must once have been, watching pugnaciously in the playground for anyone who dared to make a schoolboy jibe at his name. Then, when no one reacted, he said, “And this is Sergeant Collins.”

  The big man nodded a half-smile, then continued with his examination of the room, as if that were his function in the partnership. He made no attempt to disguise his interest in their surroundings; Ros wondered if he would turn his attention to people when his inventory of the inanimate contents of the room was complete. Thankfully, there was no sign yet of notebook or pencil.

  Trevor asked them stiffly to sit down. Sergeant Collins sat rather gingerly on the edge of a stand chair, but Peach spread himself unhurriedly, with the air of a man who had all day at his disposal. “This is just routine, Mr and Mrs Harrison,” he said as though the thought gave him some satisfaction. “Tedious for all of us, but a necessary part of our system.”

  Trevor was annoyed by his smugness. “It is scarcely the most convenient of moments. My father was not expected to die like this, and there is a lot for us to do this morning.” Ros wished he would make some reference to his distress about his father’s death, and give way for a moment to the anguish that she was sure worked somewhere beneath his calm exterior.

  Peach studied him carefully for a moment before he said, “It is precisely because your father died in an unexpected manner that we are here, Mr Harrison. You have our sympathy, of course, and we regret having to intrude at such a time.” His whole bearing gave no sign of that regret. He sat back comfortably. The fringe of hair around his bald pate was uniformly black, so that Ros found herself wondering if it was dyed. He had an old-fashioned toothbrush moustache, which made him look like a smaller Oliver Hardy: it was strange that anyone should deliberately cultivate such an appearance.

  He took a single sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. It had a succession of widely spaced phrases in blue ball-pen writing. They were his own notes, though he seemed scarcely to glance at the sheet in the exchanges which followed. “But in cases of sudden, violent death, the law requires that we make some investigation.”

  “Violent?” For Trevor, the word carried criminal overtones.

  “I understand that Mr Harrison senior died by a fall.”

  “An accidental fall down a full flight of stairs, yes.”

  “That is violent, surely?” Peach afforded him a smile of bland enquiry. Both of them noticed how very white his teeth were. “Our task is merely to confirm that the violence was, as you say, accidental. We have no reason to suppose that this death was anything other than an accident, but there must be some investigation before we can say that we are satisfied that that is the case.”

  Trevor looked at them sullenly for a moment before he said heavily, “How much investigation?”

  Peach did not answer him directly. He looked around the room, as though registering the shabby three-piece suite, the shelf of well-worn children’s books, the desk with Trevor’s correspondence covering most of its surface. Ros noticed for the first time the perfection of his small white ears, slightly ridiculous against the jet-black fringe of hair. He said, like one reluctant to dispense the information, “The Coroner’s Office will have to determine whether an inquest is necessary in the case of Thomas Harrison. That will not be my decision. But they will need a report from me to assist them. If there is indeed an inquest, I shall probably be required to give evidence. And you would normally attend to give evidence of identification, Sir. Now, I understand that although Mr Harrison was certified as dead on arrival at hospital, the probability is that he died instantly. Who discovered the body?”

  “I did.” Ros felt suddenly, irrationally tense.

  “In that case, it is probable that you would be required to give an account of that discovery in court.” The Harrisons looked at each other and nodded bleakly together. They knew enough of the law to follow the logic of all this; it was just that they had never expected to be personally involved in anything like it.

  “But we anticipate. We must get on with our routine enquiries. I need details of everyone in the house at the time of this death.” Peach nodded at Sergeant Collins, who now did produce a notebook. It looked very small in his large hands.

  Trevor Harrison bridled immediately and unexpectedly. “So that’s what’s behind all this. You know we have a house full of — of ex-convicts and —”

  “People who have been inside, yes.” Peach rapped out the words, but his voice had not risen. “It is part of our job to keep tabs on ex-cons, Mr Harrison. Most of them offend again, as you are aware. As our job is to protect the public, it is useful to know the whereabouts of people with records of offences in particular categor
ies.”

  “So that they never get a real —”

  “It doesn’t mean that we don’t have the highest regard for what you are doing in places like this. Anyone who helps to reduce crime figures has our support and encouragement.”

  Trevor looked at him suspiciously. They were the sort of bromide phrases he had met too often for him to put much faith in them any more. Peach’s squat features gave little away. He said, “We need a list of all the people in the house. The adults, that is.” He permitted himself a half-smile at Ros, who had leaned forward instinctively at the thought of her children being drawn into this.

  Trevor gave the names of his four lame ducks; Collins wrote them in his notebook with a deft swiftness which was incongruous from his heavy-limbed bulk. Trevor said firmly, “If you’re going to question them, I want to be present.”

  Peach sighed. “If you wish that, there can be no objection. These are only general enquiries, hopefully to satisfy ourselves that there was no suggestion of — well, that this was the straightforward accidental death we all think it was.” As a senior CID officer, he dealt mostly with criminals or suspects these days; the diplomacy which had to be exercised on the public at large was a rusty skill for him.

  “There are only two of them here at present.”

  “Then I shall see them now and come back to question the others when they return. There is no problem over that.” They were fencing with each other now, each unwilling to make a concession which might seem like weakness. Ros thought how tiresome men could be, then wondered if she might have been driven into the same pettiness in Trevor’s position.

  Her husband went and called Fred Hogan and Harry Bradshaw. He insisted they sat on the sofa when they came back, thinking to put them physically at an advantage against Peach by ensuring they were relaxed. It was not a successful ploy.

  Neither of the entrants to the room would ever again be at ease with policemen. Bradshaw could perhaps have disguised the nervousness, had he had more time to prepare himself. Fred Hogan had seen the plain-clothes men arrive and had known immediately what they were. But foreknowledge made him only more nervous. He sat on the edge of the sofa, unable to keep his hands still, looking intensely guilty, prepared to deny anything almost before he was accused. He had snatched up his reading glasses in an attempt to appear respectable, which meant he had now to peer anxiously over the top of them.