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

by Gregson, J. M.

  Frankland said, “There are advantages in that. I’m on my own too. Marriage didn’t work out for me.” He rose, came a little too eagerly round his desk to the man who made no move towards him, shook hands again lengthily, placing his left hand now on top of the two clasped hands to show the warmth he dare not put into words. “We’ll be in touch. Quite soon.”

  He went with Dick into the outer office. The receptionist rose hastily to show out the young man she had decided was “darkly mysterious”, producing what she thought was her most seductive expression as he got to the door. He ignored her completely, directing his reserved, half-secret smile instead over her head at the man who owned this place.

  Frankland stood beaming in the doorway of his office, watching the departure of the man he had already determined to employ.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Throughout the day following old Tom’s death, Ros Harrison kept herself busy with physical work It seemed the easiest way to keep at bay the feelings which seethed alarmingly within her. She had not expected to be so affected by this death.

  She worked outside with Fred Hogan throughout the morning, cleaning and refurbishing the gravel paths which ran round the house and divided the various areas of garden. They had sandwiches as usual at lunchtime, so that she could make the major meal for the whole household in the evening, when they could all be there. She could sit with her snack for no longer than ten minutes before she felt the need to be on the move again. Fred normally helped her with the vegetables, but today she prepared the casserole entirely herself. Then she made a batch of scones, trying not to think how her father-in-law had loved them fresh and warm, with what he had always called “best butter”.

  At three o’clock, she went into Trevor’s study to tell him she would shortly be going for the children. There was no real need to tell him: he would have assumed she would do this, in the absence of any other information. But she had scarcely seen him since that disturbing interview with the policemen in the morning.

  He was immersed in the plans for the new extension. “They can go to the Planning Committee on Thursday, now,” he said, face aglow with exhilaration. “I didn’t withdraw the application when Dad said he was selling. Perhaps something told me everything would be all right in the end.”

  She was appalled, not by the facts he related but that he should see nothing distasteful in his excitement. “This is hardly the day for this, surely,” she said.

  He looked from the plans to her face and back again in surprise; it took him a moment to realise what she meant. “I suppose not. But it’s important, you see. It could bring the building work forward a couple of months if things go through smoothly at this meeting. And there seems no reason why they shouldn’t, now. There surely won’t be any objections from neighbours; they will scarcely even see the new rooms. Dad was the only one who would have made a fuss…”

  For the first time, he seemed embarrassed by his enthusiasm. He said clumsily, “I’m sorry the old chap’s dead, of course I am. That goes without saying. But life goes on, and at least now we won’t have to fight him over this.” He gestured with his hand at the drawings. For a moment, as he looked into her face, Ros thought they might establish the contact they needed.

  But then he glanced down at the plans and was overcome again by his enthusiasm. “I’ve been wondering if we couldn’t take in Dad’s quarters in some way. Not directly, because we want the men’s living accommodation completely separate from ours. But if we moved the children into Dad’s area, it might be possible to use their rooms and get two more ex-prisoners in, with a little extra building work. We’d need a new dividing wall to keep the family quarters separate, but —”

  “This is not the moment to be thinking about that.” Her voice was flat, expressionless. She did not trust herself to say more. Could he not even consider the effect on the children of hustling them into the dead Tom’s quarters?

  He looked surprised. She was as keen as he was to develop their work, and he could see no further than that. “It doesn’t concern the planning permission, no. This would be a purely internal rearrangement of the house to make optimum use of the new situation.”

  “Is that all the death of your father means to you? A ‘new situation’?”

  At last her outrage got through to him and he looked abashed. “You mustn’t think I didn’t feel for Dad. He was good to me, in his own way, and I shall grieve for him.” He said it as though he were planning where best to fit it into his timetable. “But you can’t get away from the fact that there are new possibilities now, which we have to think about. It would mean more work for you, of course. We’d have to get some help in the house. We might keep Fred on permanently, if you’d like that. And get a girl in to help with cleaning perhaps; there’d be no need for her to be resident —”

  “I’m going to collect the children. I can’t talk about this now. Not until some time after the funeral.” She left the room, tight-lipped.

  He seemed to be positively exulting in the old man’s removal. Or was it her own guilt that made her sensitive? Was it her own relief in this death that was making her react with such abhorrence to his honesty?

  *

  Detective Inspector Peach and Sergeant Collins returned at 6.30. It was Trevor who admitted them to the house. At their request, he called Ros into the same room where they had talked in the morning.

  Peach had had a long day. He went straight to the point. “Had you had any kind of celebration on the night of your father’s death, Mr Harrison?”

  Trevor looked blankly at his wife. He had no idea what this might be about. “No. The rest of us had our usual Sunday evening conference. It’s one of our —”

  Ros cut across him before he could enlarge. “Tom wasn’t there. He didn’t usually attend.”

  “I see. Did this meeting go on for very long?”

  Trevor said, “Longer than usual. Dad had decided to sell the house, and I felt it was my duty to tell the men who depend on us for support and a roof over their heads what he planned.” In his enthusiasm for the way they did things, he volunteered more information than he would have done otherwise.

  Peach said nothing for a moment. He was wondering why Mrs Harrison should register such annoyance at her husband’s revelation. His small, porcine eyes flashed between the pair, watching for the revelations which might follow a dispute. Eventually he said, “So the sale of this house would have affected all of you.”

  “If he had gone ahead with it, yes. I still hoped to persuade him to change his mind. Of course, we could operate in other premises, if necessary.” Trevor’s voice carried no conviction; Peach thought with satisfaction that he would not make a very good liar.

  “So your father spent his last evening alone?”

  Husband and wife looked at each other again; put like that, it made him sound sad and neglected. Ros said, “As far as we know, yes. He was planning to watch the Masters golf tournament. He had a television set in his own quarters — in what we called his den.”

  “I see. Would you say your father was a heavy drinking man, Mr Harrison?” Peach enjoyed these sudden switches.

  Trevor said, “No. Certainly not. He wasn’t teetotal, indeed he liked a drink at the golf club and so on, but I don’t think I ever saw him drunk.” And now I never will, he thought with a sudden bleakness. His gaunt face gave no sign of the flush of sadness he felt at the thought.

  “He was not given to drinking alone?” said Peach.

  “You had better tell us where this line of questioning is leading,” said Ros, taut with strain.

  “Certainly. The post mortem has revealed that Mr Harrison died instantly as a result of his fall, as I think we all anticipated it would.” Peach looked carefully at the two expectant faces, searching as his training made him do for any sign of revelation from them at this moment of drama. He found none. “It also showed that the deceased had consumed large quantities of alcohol in the hours before his death.”

  “How much?”
Trevor was assailed at last by a picture of the old man’s loneliness.

  “Half a bottle of whisky. Perhaps a little more.”

  Ros said dully, “You could smell it on him when I found him in the hall. I wondered about it, but it didn’t seem important.”

  Trevor said to no one in particular, “He must have drunk it on his own in his den. He didn’t go out that night.”

  “Thank you. That is what we needed to establish. You’re quite sure that he was on his own throughout the evening?”

  Trevor looked at Peach now. “Quite sure. The rest of us were together for a large part of the evening. Is it important?”

  Peach shrugged his heavy shoulders, submerging for that moment what little neck he had. “Only in a negative sort of way. As I told you this morning, in the case of a sudden death like this, we have to submit a report to the Coroner’s Office. In effect, we have to satisfy ourselves that the death was indeed the accident it appears. In this case, we have to face the fact that if the deceased had been drinking quite heavily, that might well have been a contributory factor in his fall, especially now that we know that he was not habitually a heavy drinker. Had someone been with him while he was drinking, there would have been a possibility — no more — that that person was deliberately engineering a situation where a fall might more easily occur.”

  Peach breathed heavily: it was a long speech for him, and the circumlocutions had not come easily. He was much better with four-letter words and hard men than the general public, and he realised it.

  Trevor said sullenly, “Well, no one in this house was trying to get him drunk.”

  Peach was happier with this resentment than he would have been with friendliness. “Quite. You will see, though, that it was necessary for us to establish that. Now, there are I think two adults in the house whom I have still to see. You may attend our discussions if you wish to; they shouldn’t take very long.”

  Trevor hesitated; he had not enjoyed the exchanges in the morning, and he felt rightly that Dick Courtney and Michael Ashby were better able to look after themselves than Fred Hogan had been. “I’ve got quite enough things of my own to get on with,” he said pettishly, as if his attendance had been requested rather than conceded.

  Peach nodded, concealing his irritability with the pretensions of this obstructive do-gooder. “Shall we see the men in their own quarters, then? We shan’t need to see the two we saw this morning.” In his book, ex-convicts didn’t rate individual names.

  It was Ros who took the initiative and said, “No. See them here. That will cause least disruption to the household in general.” She resented these strangers prying into their affairs, necessary though it might be. She did not want them penetrating further into her house than they had been already.

  Peach looked at the flush of colour round her neck with interest as he nodded. Her irritation gratified him. He wondered if she was bedding one of the men in the house. His experience told him that all things are possible. And he found middle-class women more difficult to read than the rest of humanity put together.

  Michael Ashby and Dick Courtney came warily into the Harrisons’ living room; both of them were experts at simulating relaxation they did not feel, but caution about the police was deeply inbred in them by now.

  Moreover, Peach saw their watchfulness as no more than an appropriate deference to the powers he carried. He waited unhurriedly for the door to close upon the departing Harrisons before he even troubled to acknowledge the arrival of the final two actors in this negative little charade. He was already certain he would be indicating to the Coroner’s Office that there was no suggestion of foul play here. A little innocent pleasure might be contrived from the apprehensions of these ex-cons perhaps, and then home to a pint and a rest. He belched with silent relish at the thought.

  “Death of Thomas Harrison,” he intoned. “That’s why we’re here, gents. To find out what you know about it.”

  Dick looked steadily back at him, refusing to rise to the bait until he was offered a direct question. It was Ashby who felt compelled to fill the silence which ensued. “Actually, very little, as far as I’m concerned,” he said apologetically. “I was asleep at the time.”

  “Like everyone else,” said Peach equably. “But I understood that the noise woke everyone. That is what I was told this morning by your fellow-inmates.” He congratulated himself on the term, just as he enjoyed planting the suggestion that there was discrepancy in their stories.

  “I didn’t hear the noise. I’m a heavy sleeper. I didn’t wake up until Dick here came into my room.” Ashby added a smile to his words which was like an external gloss; it sat on his face with no relation to his feelings, like an insect waiting to be swatted away. His explanation had tumbled out too quickly, piling fact on fact as though there were something guilty in the exposition. He looked to Courtney for support and corroboration.

  “He gave every appearance of being only half-awake when I went into his room,” Dick said carelessly. “Though how anyone could sleep through that crash and the shouting which followed I can’t imagine.” Ashby flashed him a look full of surprise and resentment, which he affected not to register.

  Peach was delighted to see his subjects abrasive with each other: Courtney was making the kind of aspersions he usually had to contrive for himself. “Make a note of that, Bert. One of the inmates, Michael Ashby, contends that he did not hear the sound of Mr Harrison’s fall, though Frederick Hogan told us this morning that everyone in the house heard it.” Sergeant Collins wrote diligently as he was bidden.

  Peach was enjoying himself. “A violent death. Four ex-convicts and two members of the deceased’s family in the house. All with something to gain from this death, since the victim had planned to remove the roof from over their heads.” He had decided there was nothing here that was criminal: paradoxically, he now felt more able to indulge in a little stirring of this particular section of the human septic tank before he left.

  Ashby rose unerringly to the fly Dick Courtney ignored. “Old Mr Harrison was hardly a victim, Inspector. Surely there is no suspicion of —”

  “Victim of an accident, Mr Ashby. That’s all. At present.” Peach took out a packet of cigarettes, selected one, regarded its filter tip with disfavour, but did not yet light it. “It seems to me that a man who claims to have slept through the death and its aftermath is not the best qualified person to pronounce on the circumstances of it.” He smiled, as though this idea was new to him and gave him considerable satisfaction. He nodded at DS Collins and began the process of discovering his matches.

  Collins looked up from his notes, knowing they were almost at the end of this now, but aware that he must play his boss’s game. He said, “Have either of you seen anything in your time here which would indicate a resentment or tension between the deceased and anyone in the house?”

  Ashby had been disturbed by Peach’s tactics, or he would have had the sense to keep quiet. Instead, he said, “Fred Hogan had a nasty little tangle with old Tom last week, didn’t he, Dick?” Old habits die hard, and Ashby’s were those of the fraudster; the man he had scarcely acknowledged in life, who had treated him with frosty hostility, had become “Old Tom” now that he was not here to object to the familiarity.

  Dick Courtney gave only the slightest nod of confirmation, so that Ashby, rather to his surprise, found himself having to go on with the story alone. “Mr Harrison accused Fred of taking his watch while he was dozing in the old conservatory. Got quite worked up about it.”

  Peach had his cigarette going now; he watched the smoke rising from it with interest as he said, “And had that pillar of rectitude indeed removed the watch in question?”

  “No. That was the funny thing.” Ashby seemed not to realise the imputations of this phrase for Hogan’s reputation. “Fred hadn’t taken the watch at all. It turned up eventually at the old man’s golf club. But there was a hell of a row before that. Not that this had anything to do with old Harrison’s death, I’m sure,” he
added, almost as an afterthought.

  Peach let that thought hang in the air, as though he weighed it and found it suspect. Collins finished writing the incident up in his swift, deft hand and said briskly, “Anything else?” It was time to wrap this up and be off home.

  Dick Courtney watched the ash lengthening on the end of Peach’s cigarette, timing the contribution he intended, continuing because it suited him to act as the inspector’s ally in this dubious game. He said, “Well, there was that little spat you had with Tom, wasn’t there, Michael? Not that it would be of any relevance to the CID, of course.”

  “What spat?” said Ashby, a little too quickly on the end of Courtney’s casually delivered poison. Even as his heart cried Judas, he was wondering how the younger man had got wind of this.

  “That time last week when Tom caught you with Ros and — er, misinterpreted your intentions.” Dick smiled. He rather liked that phrase and the way he had produced it.

  Ashby, who had flushed bright red, began to stutter a denial, then thought better of it. Dick looked at him blandly, apologetically, knowing now that he would need to say no more: the matter could not be left there.

  Peach was enjoying himself too much to question Courtney’s motives, though he was enough of a policeman to wonder about them later. He relished Ashby’s discomfort for a moment before he rapped out, “Well?”

  Michael Ashby said sullenly, “It was nothing really. I made a bit of a pass at Mrs Harrison. She wasn’t having it and that was that: no damage done. Except that old man Harrison came in at the wrong moment and made far more of it than was necessary.”

  “Naughty!” Peach savoured the picture of the incident and found it wholly delightful. He turned his whole trunk to watch Collins’s dutiful recording of the matter, making that account seem more significant by his action. Then he said, “That will be all. For the moment. If either of you think of anything else which might be significant, it is of course your duty to let us know about it.” He led out Sergeant Collins without a farewell, without a backward glance at the men he left behind him.