20.
LAPAROTOMY
“And the Lorde was With Joseph, and he was a luckie fellowe.”
GENESIS XXXIX. 2 (Tyndale translation)
THEY performed two similar operations about midnight at Melchester general hospital, but the results were different.
Both patients had gaping wounds in their stomachs but, as the surgeon later told Littlejohn, in these cases a lot depends on what you’ve eaten for your last meal.
Poor Costain hadn’t had a bite since lunch-time, whereas Hunter had insisted on Cromwell’s stopping just outside Melchester for a meal and had eaten a lot of bread and cheese and drunk several pints of beer.
“There’s a chance the policeman will pull through,” said the doctors. “The youngster’s very bad, though … It’s touch and go. In his case, the intestine’s blown to bits in places.”
Hunter died. But before that he managed to whisper a confession. He’d always hated Free. Always a jump ahead of him was Free. Beat him in scholarship exams at the elementary school, did him out of exhibitions at the university, spoiled him for a place in the football team, and finally stole his girl. So pleased with himself about it all, too. Made Hunter see red.
Costain came through it, but it took a long time and he was an invalid for months. So much so, that they pensioned him off and he left the force. Mrs. Costain was in such distress that she hadn’t any resistance left when old man Costain came over from Ballaugh and offered them his little farm to retire on.
“Always was a lucky ’un,” grumbled P.C. Butt to his wife when the news came through. “Wot did I get for my turn in ’ospital? Not even a thank-yew. While Costain gets a pension an’ a farm.”
So now Joe Costain milks his few cows, leans over his gate and chats to his cronies when he feels like it, and watches the trains go by, and waves his hand to those he knows in the carriages. So peaceful … Time enough.
Laura Cruft wasn’t long in getting married. She did not press the matter of the defalcations in the trust and her husband regarded them with lofty contempt. He was worth half a million, made in the rag trade somewhere up North. He has a bald head, but they say he isn’t as old as he looks.
George Shortt is still wooing Jessie Fairfield. Things look more hopeful there.
Superintendent Glaisher was not in town to see Littlejohn off. There had been another murder in the county, but this time they didn’t call in Scotland Yard. It was so obvious who had done it that Glaisher solved it without removing his feet from the window-sill. All he needed to do was to go and arrest the criminal, a man who had crowned his mother-in-law with a beer-bottle under extreme provocation. The verdict was manslaughter.
So Inspector Stanley called for Littlejohn in the police car. He looked very hurt when he found the Inspector at The Bird in Hand instead of at the Golf Hotel.
“I thought you’d have been more at home among the golfers,” he said, hitching up his polka dots.
Littlejohn paid for Stanley a drink at the Golf, however, just to show there was no ill-feeling. It was raining and the golfers were out of temper. They had exhausted all their jokes and post-mortemed all their games, so were getting ready for a school of poker.
As the car passed through Melchester, it was held up by a procession. They were beating the bounds and the bishop, surrounded by a crowd of little boys, was on his way, under an umbrella, to castigate them at the various city gates.
“You ought to see this, sir. Only place in England where they do it this way.”
“My train leaves in ten minutes, thanks all the same,” grunted Littlejohn.
It was a slow train, too, which left Melchester half an hour before the express and arrived in London an hour after it.
But Littlejohn preferred it that way.
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Copyright © 1949 by George Bellairs
Cover design by Elizabeth Connor
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9075-2
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Outrage on Gallows Hill Page 18