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

by Gregson, J. M.

  For Dick Courtney, this had certainly been the most enjoyable day since he came to this house.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The inquest on Thomas Charles Harrison was a low-key event.

  Trevor gave his brief evidence of identification in a voice so subdued that the Coroner had to ask him to repeat his words at one point, even though the courtroom was quiet and thinly peopled.

  Ros’s clear contralto was both a contrast and a relief. She gave her account of the discovery of the body at the foot of the stairs in a level, unemotional voice, so that it had the ring of a prepared statement. Harry Bradshaw, who sat beside Fred Hogan in the public benches, was reminded of an oratorio singer who knows her task off by heart but holds her text in front of her to satisfy convention.

  He felt Fred’s tenseness beside him throughout her evidence and the terse, sympathetic questions which the Coroner used to fill out the sad story. How attached the little man had become to this tall, cool woman: probably she seemed little more than a girl to him. Harry like everyone else took Fred as being nearer sixty than the fifty which was his real age. This was a harmless enough affection, Harry decided; he examined other people’s close relationships with elaborate care since the disastrous culmination of his own. This doglike devotion might even keep Fred from falling back into his old ways of petty crime.

  Neither of them saw the door open quietly at the back of the court behind them to admit a single latecomer. The slight figure of Dick Courtney went unremarked by all the residents of Westhaven until the proceedings were almost complete. He sat forward on the edge of his seat, absorbing avidly all that went on. There was no knowing what might be useful to him; he was like a bright-eyed, beautifully proportioned animal, relaxed yet vigilant. But he did not see himself like that; he saw himself as a sponge, absorbing every drop of information about those around him, storing it carefully against the time when it might be useful, or amusing.

  The “Dead on Arrival” report from the hospital was noted by the clerk. The details of the post-mortem examination were read out by the Coroner’s Officer, since it seemed a straightforward case. The technical details of the injuries which had caused death passed without comment, whilst the Coroner kept an automatic eye on the next of kin for signs of distress. In this case there were none. The Coroner lifted his hand at the section which announced the alcohol level of the dead man’s blood.

  “A moment please. Mr Harrison. Was this a usual amount for your father to have consumed?”

  “No, sir. He very rarely drank to excess.”

  “You consider this excessive?”

  “My father would have done. Undoubtedly.”

  “Have you any idea, then, why he might have drunk this amount?”

  “No, sir.” Trevor had thought about it too often to pause over his reply.

  The Coroner looked at his notes. “And it seems he had been drinking alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr Harrison, I have to ask you whether your father had been depressed in the days before his death.”

  “Not noticeably, no.”

  “Can you think of any reason why he should have been upset?”

  Trevor hesitated. He wanted to say no. Beside him, Ros was willing him to do just that. He saw Fred Hogan and Harry Bradshaw waiting for him to speak. He did not see Dick Courtney sitting motionless at the back of the public section with a small, cold smile. Trevor was too honest for his own peace of mind. He said eventually, “He had been upset a little because I planned — we planned —” he gave a nervous glance at his wife — “to extend our work in the house.”

  “What work was that, Mr Harrison?”

  The Coroner’s gentle question jerked him back to the realisation that not everyone was aware of what he now thought of as his mission. With difficulty, he prevented himself from enlarging upon it here. “Oh, we try to help people coming out of prison to re-establish themselves in society. Just temporary accommodation and support, until they find their feet again.”

  “And your Father was opposed to this work?”

  “I’m afraid he was, yes. And particularly to the extension of it. He was proposing to sell the house. He and I owned it together.”

  The Coroner, grey-haired, patrician, heavy with experience, wondered how far he should take this. He said evenly, “Mr Harrison, this is a difficult thing for you to contemplate, I know, but I must ask you whether you think he was upset enough to have considered taking his own life.”

  Trevor was genuinely surprised. He was so wrapped up in his own concerns that he had never considered that other people might think this an explanation of his father’s death. He thought for a moment before he said with feeling, “No, sir. He would not have done that. It was not his style.” Ros looked up at him sharply as she heard the last phrase. It was the most spirited assertion she had heard him make about the old man since his death. The phrase might have come from old Tom himself.

  The Coroner raised an eyebrow at her and said quietly, “Mrs Harrison?”

  She said firmly, “Oh, I agree. My father-in-law was not that upset, and if he had been he would not have taken that way out.”

  The Coroner nodded. He was satisfied now that he knew which way this was going. He thanked the bereaved couple, made a note, and passed on to the police report.

  The inquest was too routine a matter, the verdict too foregone a conclusion, for Chief Inspector “Percy” Peach to feel that it warranted his attendance. But Detective Sergeant Collins, tall, large-limbed, deliberately ponderous of manner, was here to answer any questions the Coroner might wish to direct to the police. He gave a careful account of how the CID had checked the whereabouts of everyone in the house at the time of this death.

  The sparse audience listened carefully: the information that the place had been peopled by ex-convicts gave a little frisson of excitement to what might have been a dull death. Harry Bradshaw, observing the interest surreptitiously, wondered what they would have thought had they known that one of the people in the house had killed already and done time for it. The young reporter from the local Guardian, urgently in need of a haircut, yawned and looked at his watch, wondering how long it would be before he could get to the pub and a pie. He had made his notes on the old boy’s drinking; his only hope was that the Coroner would give him a headline by reprimanding the neglect of that priggish son in his final comments.

  The Coroner did no such thing. His predecessor had been a pontificater, and he had seen enough of the results to make him cautious when he came to his own summaries of human tragedy. He offered his sympathy to the Harrisons and went out of his way to exonerate them from any suggestion of carelessness about the dead man’s welfare. Thomas Harrison had been 69, not 89, and it would have been quite wrong to try to wrap a healthy man in cotton wool. It was possible that the amount of alcohol he had consumed had been a contributory factor in his death, but that would not affect the verdict.

  Dick Courtney slipped quietly out of court and back to his own concerns as soon as the verdict of “Accidental Death” had been officially recorded. Things had gone as he had anticipated.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dick got the job at Frankland Autos, of course.

  He probably deserved it. In the strange world of car sales, part fantasy and part hard facts of credit and cash, Dick had the required qualities. He was personable in appearance and manner, quick to size up customers as soft or hard sell prospects, adept at simulating a concern for their personal situations even while driving hard after his own interests. It is said that the first thing a salesman has to sell is himself. Dick was successful in that: even the people who did not buy generally thought him an agreeable young man. And he had certainly sold himself to Denis Frankland.

  Denis was 44 and lonely. Since the advent of AIDS, he had denied himself even the casual, loveless liaisons he had previously permitted himself when desperate. Dick was young, handsome and apparently genuinely attracted to him; perhaps even something long-term could b
e achieved. He closed his eyes to the idea that Dick had much to gain by an affair with the boss, whereas for him the relationship was bound to lead to trouble within the firm sooner or later.

  Within days, he was secretly infatuated with this dark-haired, mysterious young man who was so open in manner yet actually revealed so little about himself. Like all people in the grip of such emotions, he lost his judgment. Dick was the new Apollo, who was about to transform an ailing business as well as captivating its owner; his small successes were magnified far beyond their real significance in the mind of Denis Frankland.

  Dick sold two cars in his first week. He went beyond the discounts he had been told he could offer in order to do so, because he knew after only three days that he could do no wrong in the eyes of his patron. It meant he could offer results and be noticed, in a period of recession in the motor trade. He told Frankland that the sales, though there was scarcely a profit in either of them, would bring new interest to the saleroom, when the news of the deals passed around the district. Denis nodded appreciatively and congratulated Dick in front of his immediate superior, as if he had never heard of the concept of loss leaders.

  Dick made a point of staying late on the Friday night at the end of his first week. Frankland was still in his office. Each pretended to be unaware of the other; each manufactured a series of unreal tasks to simulate a pressing industry and explain his presence. Frankland eventually moved from his own room into the outer office, long deserted by his secretary/receptionist, so that he might observe his protégé.

  Dick Courtney moved around the showroom with swift, graceful movements, looking at the new cars, inspecting the bodywork and prices on the second-hand ones, making a series of notes in his leather-bound diary with a slim gold ball-pen. He was well aware of Frankland’s interest on the other side of the office window, but he gave no acknowledgment that he had seen him.

  Eventually, he moved unhurriedly into the general office and went to a filing cabinet, whence he extracted a brochure on the latest Ford Granada. He was making a series of notes on its specification when Frankland’s voice said behind him, “Still here at this time, Dick. Dedication beyond the call of duty on POETS day.”

  Dick, who knew very well what the expression meant, allowed an air of puzzlement to steal over his smiling face. Professionally sharp but personally ingenuous, that was the line to adopt with Frankland. Men of his age could be bowled over by a little innocence.

  “Piss off early, tomorrow’s Saturday,” explained Frankland. It was the first time he had used a mildly improper word with Dick, and it gave him a little surge of foolish excitement. It was a further small step towards the intimacy he now urgently desired. “The rest of the staff use it as an excuse to depart up to an hour early on Fridays.” He ignored the fact that he usually disappeared to the golf course at lunchtime on a Friday himself.

  Dick smiled. “I’m not on top of the job yet. Not to my own satisfaction, anyway.” He shrugged away the sales he had made. “I find it’s useful to have the place quiet with no one else around, so that I can make myself better informed about our products.” He gestured towards the brochure and the open cabinet. “Of course, I’d no idea you were still around.” He was gratified that the lie emerged so easily and convincingly. Four years ago, he would not have dared to be so venturesome. Prison truncated years of experience into months.

  Frankland watched him writing, seeing something attractive now in the smallest gesture. He wondered where the expensive gold pen had come from. He moved a little nearer in the deserted room. He hated these early exchanges, with their possibilities of rebuttal and searing embarrassment. But there would be no better, more private, opportunity than this.

  He put out his hand tentatively towards the back of the younger man’s neck, watching his own fingers move with agonising slowness towards their goal. He said, “It’s good to see a young employee who is so conscientious,” and ran his fingers lightly under the longer covering of black hair and up the short hairs on the back of Dick’s neck. He was so nervous that the first contact gave him no pleasure at all.

  Dick Courtney did not move for a moment. He knew that that in itself signalled the first acceptance, but he enjoyed the moment of suspense. He thought he could feel the charged emotions pulsing through the knuckles on the back of his scalp. That might be mere fancy: his brain directed him to search out more tangible manifestations of passion.

  He listened to the breathing of the man behind him as it strove for steadiness. It was the only sound, making the silence of the room around it seem still more absolute. He said, “I don’t think of you as an employer, Denis.”

  It was the first time he had used Frankland’s first name. He could do it in complete safety now that the older man had committed himself. For Frankland, it meant only a further spurt of excitement, another injection of adrenalin into his racing bloodstream. He ran his hand up through the thick dark hair, caressed for a moment the ear which it almost hid. “We could be a team,” he whispered, hoarsely, absurdly.

  The man with his back to him noted that absurdity while he calculated his next move. It was obvious enough, but he had to nerve himself to it, even now when what he had planned was coming out so perfectly. Things must move on quickly: he was a young man in a hurry, making his way in a world that had four years’ start on him. He reached up to the side of his head and took the hand, held it for a moment, then pressed his lips to the back of it. He could feel the small tremble that ran from the hand through the rest of Frankland’s body as a result of the gesture.

  He turned his dark eyes upon the moist blue ones beneath Frankland’s unruly eyebrows. From no more than eighteen inches, he saw excitement and a tender, vulnerable lust. He was in control of this: all the trappings of money and position fell away in the face of the man’s simple longing. Dick felt the power of the sexual control he was building and exulted in it. But for the moment, this had gone far enough.

  “I think we should go somewhere for a drink,” he said, without taking his eyes from the fleshy features in which he had kindled such animation.

  Denis Frankland dropped his hand reluctantly back to his side. Those awful preliminaries were over; he had been welcomed, not spurned. He could not have believed this clear-cut, infinitely exciting young man would have received him so. His life was entering a new and thrilling chapter. “I know just the place,” he said.

  Selecting the pub gave him the illusion he was controlling this.

  *

  Harry Bradshaw was pleased with his first Workers’ Education Association class. As usual, the “Workers” tag was a misnomer: his students were predominantly middle-class people who had already had a fair degree of education and were eager for more. But they were an agreeable, animated lot; he was struck once again by the contrast between schoolchildren who had to be force-fed at the table of learning and adults who came to it voluntarily and appreciated its fare so much more.

  He was diffident at first, feeling his rustiness in his first venture of this kind in five years, needing to remind himself that the people in front of him knew nothing of that. He knew his subject thoroughly, but he was going down well-trodden paths: these eager faces would surely find what he had to say about the English Civil War both obvious and boring.

  But they did not, and as always he was lifted by the interest of his students. And of course, he had Cromwell to offer them in due course, a figure who never failed to raise the tempo of a class, especially when they brought their own preconceptions with them, as a few at least always did.

  The hum of interest, the movement from lecture through question and answer to animated discussion, pleased him as he now remembered it had always done. It was a development helped along considerably by his own expertise in teaching, though he found it so agreeable and natural a progression that he would scarcely have recognised his own part in it, still less acknowledged it.

  But it was going to be all right. That knowledge coursed through his veins like a mild, agreeabl
e drug, from a point about quarter of an hour into the class. It was not until then that he could begin to acknowledge to himself how nervous he had been about the enterprise, how near he had come to rejecting the opportunity he was now so thoroughly enjoying.

  At the end of the class, six or seven of them adjourned to continue the discussion in the neighbouring pub, as was almost traditional with WEA classes. He tried to play down his role as expert and bring out the collective experience which was always present in a group of this kind, but of course they would not have it. They kept coming back to him for the expert opinion they regarded as definitive: about the Puritan ethic, about the Commonwealth attitude to different religions, about the closure of the theatres.

  He was generally able to offer facts which satisfied or stimulated them. He sipped his beer and felt himself cocooned in a most agreeable ambience of affection and respect. Perhaps he needed it, he now realised. He was not only lonely at Westhaven but lacking in confidence: the killing of a wife had all kinds of unforeseen side-effects.

  His students melted away in ones and twos as closing time approached. Before he realised it, he was left with a table full of empty glasses and one woman still discussing the obstinacy of Charles I. He carried on the conversation with his mind working on two levels. Had she been overtaken by events as the others departed, as he had, or had she deliberately contrived this small intimacy?

  She did not seem embarrassed by it, certainly. She seemed completely engrossed in their subject. She had rich brown hair with a reddish tinge; chestnut, his mother would have called it, had she not been dead ten years and more. She had a strong face, with a nose that was a fraction too long for classical beauty, and a mouth that came to life when it flashed into sudden smiles. Good teeth, and an intriguing tendency to furrow her brow when thinking of the most appropriate phrase to encapsulate her thoughts. He realised that it was a long time since he had studied a woman so closely. But then, it was a long time since he had been allowed so close to one for an extended period. Or was it that he had not allowed himself to come so close?