Bring Forth Your Dead

by Gregson, J. M.

  Margaret Lewis’s face had turned quite grey. As usual in those with fair colouring, swiftly changing emotions were plainly revealed in the face. When she managed to speak, at the second attempt, it was only to say unhelpfully, ‘It’s a shock, you see.’

  Lambert said with a sympathetic smile, ‘It must be, of course.’ Secretly, he wondered as he studied her reaction whether the shock was in the discovery that Craven had died like this or in the realisation that the police now knew so much about a death that had almost escaped them. ‘No doubt it helps to explain why the death was recorded as being a natural one at the time. That, of course, is exactly what the killer planned when he or she operated in this way.’

  There was the kind of reaction he was expecting on his slightly stressed ‘or she’: a sudden flash of those wary blue eyes as they were raised to his, a shaft of something that might have been fear in them before they fell again. But that would be as natural in the innocent as the guilty. Or those who shared guilt: it occurred to him suddenly that if there were an accessory involved in this crime, as seemed more than usually likely, the housekeeper would be the most useful one to have.

  He decided to press on towards the others who must have surrounded Edmund Craven in his last days, while this woman who must have known them all was still shaken. ‘What Sergeant Hook and I are anxious to do at this stage, Mrs Lewis, is to compile a list of the people who were in regular contact with Mr Craven over the last months of his life.’

  ‘A list of suspects, you mean?’ It came from her like an accusation, but he had no intention of defending himself.

  ‘If you like, yes. If you look at it another way, it is the first step in protecting the innocent. We often find ourselves proceeding by eliminating innocent people from the suspicion of a crime. I don’t think I need to remind you that it is your duty to give us all the help you can in this respect: it would be most unwise to withhold information which we shall extract from other people in due course.’

  Bert Hook, eyes committed firmly to the blank sheet in front of him, thought his chief was being unusually hard and formal with a woman who had given no sign of resisting their inquiries. Perhaps it was the perverse reaction to an attractive woman he thought to have seen in him before.

  The housekeeper said dully, ‘All of us had a motive, I suppose. You’ll no doubt be interested in those.’

  Lambert was suddenly at his most urbane and reassuring. ‘They will perhaps emerge in due course. For the moment, I am more concerned with the simple facts of who had access to the deceased in the period before his death. It’s no use pinning a huge motive on a person who had no opportunity to commit a crime. Now, what we need to know is exactly who was in regular contact with Mr Craven in the three months before his death.’ Privately, he was already speculating about what she considered to be her own motive, but he preferred to delay such consideration until after his visits to doctor and solicitor later in the day.

  She said bleakly, ‘I’ve already told you that I was the only one who saw him every day.’

  ‘And we’ve already recorded your name and your function, Mrs Lewis. We shall return to you in due course, I assure you. But unless you are going to offer us a confession to homicide, we had better begin a list of other possibilities. Perhaps I should tell you that our information is that a killer would not have needed to be in daily contact with the victim in this case. Once a week, perhaps even a little less than that, would have sufficed.’

  She took a deep, contemplative breath and said reluctantly, ‘There’s the family, of course.’ She spoke like one who assumed they were already intimately acquainted with the details of Craven’s relatives. It was a reaction they were used to meeting; perhaps in this case it owed something to shock.

  Hook, who was anxious to continue the list he had already surreptitiously begun with the housekeeper, said, ‘Are we right in assuming that there is no Mrs Craven?’

  ‘She has been dead for many years.’ Was the obvious surprise which infused the statement that of an outraged mistress? Edmund Craven had been a quarter of a century older than this attractive woman, but policemen see too much of the world to be other than cynical about the attractions of money to those without easy access to it.

  ‘But there are children?’ This much Lambert already knew: the next of kin have to be informed when an exhumation is to be conducted. But he knew none of the detail of their access to the dead man. It would be interesting to learn how the housekeeper assessed their comings and goings. In due course he would ask the children themselves, probing for the divergences which were often the avenues to the truth in a murder inquiry.

  ‘There are two children. Both married; both still living in the area.’

  ‘And both on good terms with their father in his last days?’

  Although Lambert prompted gently, they were all aware of the implications of the question in this context.

  ‘Both of them loved their father.’ It came so quickly that it was obvious she had already been asking herself these questions.

  ‘And did both of them show this by visiting him regularly?’

  ‘Yes. Angela came in every couple of days—probably almost every day as he weakened towards the end.’ She stopped abruptly as she realised the possibilities she was opening up. Until this business was cleared up, every affectionate visit from family or friend would be clouded like this.

  Lambert watched Hook compiling his record in his round, slow hand, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth like that of a diligent small child. Then he said quietly, ‘And Mr Craven’s son?’

  ‘David. He came in once a week. Still does. He pays me my wages, though he does that by cheque at the end of each month.’

  Lambert thought he caught the faintest edge of hostility beneath the neutral statements, but he could not be sure. When she did not enlarge upon them, he said, ‘Was this on the same day each week?’

  ‘No. His business means that he travels about the country quite a lot.’

  ‘That business being—?’

  ‘David Craven runs what I believe is called a property company.’ This time her distaste came out clearly in the phrase. He looked at her interrogatively, but she was too shrewd to be drawn further.

  ‘But he managed to come to this house at least once a week.’

  She nodded. ‘Probably a little more frequently than that as his father’s condition worsened over the last few months.’ It was said a little defiantly, as if she was pleased to be able to balance what she had said about Craven’s daughter a moment earlier. But he had little doubt that her recollection was accurate.

  Lambert said, ‘Think carefully about this, Mrs Lewis, and if you can’t be certain don’t be afraid to say so. Was there any longer period—say, two or three weeks—when David Craven was not able to visit his father in those last months?’

  It was an opportunity to give the son an alibi of sorts, and he thought she was intelligent enough to realise it. She thought carefully before she replied, as he had directed, but there was an air of satisfaction as her brow cleared and she said, ‘No, I’m sure that there was nothing that kept him away for that length of time. In fact, I’m sure that in those last months a week would be the longest interval between any two of David’s visits.’

  Again the effect of murder was to invert the normal moral canons, so that what should have been a proper filial concern now laid a suspicion of the worst of evils upon the bereaved. Lambert saw Margaret Lewis’s blue eyes watching as if hypnotised Hook’s deliberate recording of these facts. To break the spell he said, ‘And who else came regularly into the house in the months before Mr Craven died?’

  She paused to think again. He thought what a good witness she would make in court: calm, intelligent, giving a proper attention to counsel’s questions, not straying into irrelevancies in her replies. And it never came amiss in a good-looking woman to arrive smartly but not gaudily dressed. Eventually she said, ‘Edmund did not have a hectic social life in the last years.
Various friends came in to see him from time to time, but not as frequently as you are suggesting is significant.’

  She stopped for a moment at the end of what sounded like a formal introduction to something of importance; probably that was what made both policemen aware that the real matter was yet to come. ‘There was one visitor you will wish to add to your list, though I am quite sure he had nothing to do with the death. Walter Miller visited Edmund each week to play chess with him. They had known each other for almost fifty years, I think.’

  ‘Mr Miller was a contemporary of Mr Craven’s?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. Sometimes I thought that was the chief thing they had in common. But you must understand that they had been friends for many years before I came on the scene.’

  Her manner had become suddenly stiff and formal again, as it had been at the start of the interview. Her words about the mysterious Mr Miller had the ring of a prepared statement. He decided not to press her: this was the beginning of an investigation and it might be better to probe specific areas after he had seen Miller himself. Hook took details of the elderly man’s full name and address, which she was able to give them from memory.

  She gave them details of the medical visitors who come to the chronically sick: doctor, chiropodist and district nurse. It was the last of these who had set running the hare which had led them to the exhumation, when she had eventually reported to the pathology people at the hospital the suspicions of a poisoning that had nagged at her insomniac mind for months. Lambert had interviewed the district nurse before the exhumation. He had cleared her as a suspect: though she had had ample opportunity, it was obviously highly unlikely that she would wish to draw attention to a crime successfully completed had she been involved herself. She was an intelligent woman; it was a conversation with the pathology staff about another poisoning which had set her mind racing about the death of Edmund Craven. There was no sign that Margaret Lewis was aware of this as she watched Hook dutifully lengthening his list of those with access to the deceased.

  Lambert said, ‘Was there anyone else, Mrs Lewis, who came regularly into the house in the period which concerns us?’

  ‘No. Not that I can remember. It’s over a year ago now, you know.’ She was suddenly defensive. They waited for her to elaborate, but she looked resolutely down at those elegant shoes and said nothing. This time Lambert was sure that she was concealing something, but equally sure that she would not be drawn into admissions at this moment if he pressed her.

  ‘All right, Mrs Lewis.’ She looked up at him quickly, and gave herself away in the relief which flashed briefly across her face. She had expected to be questioned harder; that only convinced him that she had been determined to reveal nothing more. ‘Thank you for helping us to begin compiling our list of facts. We shall be back, of course, as the investigation develops and we become more interested in certain areas.’ It sounded like the threat he realised he had half-intended. ‘In the meantime, if you remember anything else that you think might be of interest to us, please contact us immediately.’

  She stood up quickly then, and saw them to the door, as no doubt she had seen thousands of other visitors over fourteen years. She was polite but relaxed; they wondered how far her relief was a perfectly normal reaction to the end of an interview with a Superintendent pursuing a homicide inquiry.

  Margaret Lewis watched the big Vauxhall all the way to the end of the avenue before she shut the heavy oak door and went back into the big, silent house. She looked at the telephone for a full minute before she picked it up. When the young man’s voice answered her, she did not trouble to introduce herself.

  She took a long breath and said only, ‘The police have just left here. They know now that Edmund was murdered. You’d better keep away.’

  4

  There are not many deaths like that of Edmund Craven, where a poisoner so nearly gets away with murder. When they do occur, the first person to fall under suspicion is the patient’s doctor. In a few cases, he may be the deliberate agent of death: he is the person in the best position to administer poison without detection. In other, fortunately even fewer, cases, he may be an accessory after the fact, deliberately concealing evidence to protect someone, usually a lover. The law has dealt harshly with the small number of medical men known to have gone astray in this way—there are few women doctors who have been detected in such actions. Equality will no doubt in time bring its inevitable side-effects, here as elsewhere.

  In a much larger proportion of these cases, it is possible to detect a degree of negligence in medical practice, where the doctor in question has failed to spot that death did not occur from the natural causes he specified and signed for on the death certificate. Such omissions are not always publicised, medical men being more than usually charitable towards their fellow practitioners. All professions are conspiracies against the laity, Lambert reminded Hook, as the big car moved smoothly towards the house of Dr Carroll; he was sure Bert would have been a wholehearted supporter of Shaw’s Fabianism had he been given the opportunity.

  Carroll lived in a box-like modern house with a trim front garden, modest and characterless after the Edwardian confidence of Craven’s house, but no doubt much more convenient to live in and to run. Mrs Carroll, who was at the door before they had time to ring, was as trim and well-organised as her house. It was still quite early in the afternoon, but she brought in the tea-tray without asking if they required it, to Bert Hook’s undisguised approval. Then, having poured the tea, she left them alone with her husband.

  Dr James Carroll was scarcely the best advert for the efficacy of his own profession. He was probably not more than two years older than his wife, but he looked ten and behaved more. His hand shook as he offered them the cups and saucers, so that Hook sprang forward to take over the duty. His wife had fussed over him maternally in arranging the seating arrangements; where her movements had been those of an alert and active senior citizen, her husband’s had the careful but uncontrolled energy of the aging arthritic. Having manoeuvred himself carefully into position over his armchair, he began a slow descent, which was transformed into a collapse in its latter stages. Despite the sun outside and the central heating within, his voice had the wheezing hint of bronchitis when he spoke, and his breathing was shallow and quick.

  He said, ‘I believe you told my wife when you made the appointment that you were inquiring into the death of my old friend Edmund Craven.’ His fingers twisted nervously in and out of the bottom buttonhole of his cardigan. Lambert was reminded of those occasions long ago when he had sat as a young constable at the bedside of hospital patients, with only a brief period allowed to him to extract statements from them. It was perhaps that image that made him determined to be brisk here.

  ‘It is now established that Mr Craven was murdered, Dr Carroll.’

  ‘And I signed a death certificate to say that death was from natural causes. That is, of course, the purpose of your visit here.’ He gave them a small, grim smile over his rimless spectacles, as if to remind them that the brain could remain sharp when the body declined. ‘May I ask what is the cause of death you have now established?’

  ‘He was poisoned with arsenic. Systematically, by small but regular doses over a period.’

  Carroll’s rheumy, old man’s eyes widened; Lambert thought it was with surprise rather than horror at the thought: medical men, like policemen, saw plenty of the viler things of which humanity is capable. ‘So your murderer is someone who had regular access to the deceased. It seems scarcely credible, but of course I have to accept what you now tell me.’

  Lambert was irritated by Carroll’s refusal to confirm his own deficiencies in the business. He said, ‘Can you tell me what medical condition you were treating in Edmund Craven?’

  ‘Have I any excuse for slipping up as I did, you mean?’ Carroll had the air of childish irresponsibility Lambert had met before only in the very old, who seem to become aware in their last days that life and its rule-makers have very few sanctions
left with which to punish their transgressions. Carroll was not much over seventy, but perhaps he did not have much longer to live. ‘Edmund had had a serious heart attack ten years before he died. He had two more minor flutters about three years before the end. He had quite a bit of pain with angina pectoris and took tablets for that. I attended him regularly, about once a month in the year before he died. It wasn’t really necessary, but he was a rich man and seemed to enjoy the sense of being pampered that he got from my visits. And I had the time to indulge him: I’ve been retired, apart from a few private patients, for the last six years.’

  ‘Did you notice any marked deterioration in the last few months of this patient’s life?’ It sounded like a criticism of his carelessness, but Lambert saw no point in treading carefully with a man who seemed to be almost enjoying the examination, as if it were a puzzle worthy of his professional attention.

  ‘Yes. Over about the last three months. I can be so precise since I have naturally given the matter some thought since I heard about the exhumation.’ The damp grey eyes pleaded their case to be taken seriously. ‘I imagine you are going to tell me that it was during that time that Craven was being poisoned.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘So Dr Burgess informs us. Apparently he could tell this from an examination of the corpse’s hair.’

  ‘Good man, Burgess. That would be the Newton activation analysis.’ With this unexpected piece of technical knowledge, the old doctor’s face twinkled like that of a mischievous schoolboy giving hitherto unsuspected evidence of preparation. ‘Well, Inspector, I suppose I should apologise for my shortcomings.’ He seemed to be so evidently enjoying himself that Lambert wondered if his own demotion was deliberate rather than the accidental slip he was used to. ‘But really, unless one was suspicious of what I believe you call foul play, there was honestly not much reason to apply other tests. The pattern of decline accelerated rapidly, but that is not so unusual when a man with a medical history like his gets over seventy.’