In At The Death

by Francis Duncan

  ‘It’s in my area,’ he went on. ‘The super’s away—broke his arm last week when we were out on a job. In the ordinary way I’d have been handling it. Sir Robert—that’s the Chief, of course, Sir Robert Dennell—instrcted me to tell you that he was putting me entirely at your disposal. I don’t suppose you’ll be familiar with the district, so if there’s anything local you want followed up—well, you can rely on me, sir.’

  Boyce turned, studying him shrewdly for a moment or two. And then he grinned.

  ‘It looks as though I’ve fallen on my feet,’ he said. ‘I never did like the idea of a cat-and-dog life, anyway. Fire ahead with your side of it. And don’t be too liberal with the sirs,’ he added. ‘Keep ’em for public occasions.’

  Tremaine was silent during the journey. He had indeed no time for speech, for he was busy with the double task of listening intently to all that Inspector Parkin had to say and of studying the route they were taking as well as the darkness would allow him to do so.

  At that early hour the streets were almost empty. There was only the occasional patrolling policeman to be seen. They swept along the broad street lined with gloomy-looking wholesale warehouses and offices that led from the station, over the bridge that gave the city its name, catching a tantalizing glimpse of spidery cranes and the masts and smoke-stacks of shipping at anchor; and then they were leaping at the imposing hill, flanked by luxury shops but devoid now of hurrying life, at the head of which stood the University.

  Bridgton was a fascinating mixture of the old and the new, of the romantic and the practical: it possessed the sober dignity and the mellowness that go with historical traditions, and the bustling activity of a thriving industrial town. Narrow cobbled streets, in which houses of the Tudor and the Elizabethan periods still stood and were inhabited, wound deviously at the rear of broad thoroughfares whose shops, splendid with glass and chrominum, were filled with the myriad products of the twentieth century.

  Inspector Parkin’s level, efficient voice, just sufficiently tinctured with the accents of the West Country to be in character, came to Tremaine’s ears with the effect of a synchronized sound track. The streets through which they were passing were streets along which the dead man must also have passed many times; the irregular façades and the angular buildings etched against the still darkened sky must have been familiar to his eyes.

  Tremaine stared out at them as the inspector’s voice went steadily on.

  A constable on patrol in the suburb of Druidleigh, the outskirts of which they had now reached, had made a routine excursion up the drive of one of the houses on his beat which he had known to be empty to make sure that no tramp or other unauthorized person had been taking liberties with the premises. He had found that the front door had been opened and had made a prompt investigation in case whoever had been responsible for such an act of illegality was still in the vicinity.

  Entering the hall he had stumbled over the body of a man. By the light of his torch he had discovered it to be Doctor Hardene. He knew the doctor by sight; he had, in fact, passed him outside his surgery earlier in the evening.

  Also on the floor of the hall the constable had observed a fragment of stone, about as long as a man’s forearm and much thicker at one end than at the other. It had evidently been applied with considerable force to the side of the doctor’s head.

  ‘Anybody else about?’ Boyce queried.

  Not, Inspector Parkin said, as far as the constable had been able to tell. He had listened for any sound from inside the house and had made a quick search with the aid of his torch, without result. He had then contacted the divisional station from the nearest call-box.

  ‘What kind of chap was this Hardene?’ Boyce asked. ‘Was he the sort likely to have had any enemies?’

  Was there the slightest of hesitancies before Parkin replied? Tremaine half-turned his head, trying to discern the expression on the inspector’s face, but the interior of the car was too dim.

  ‘At the moment,’ Parkin said, slowly and as though he found it necessary to pick his words, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  They had left the main road and were traversing the streets of the suburb. They were wide streets, some of them quite imposing avenues lined with trees. Here the houses were big detached stone edifices, obviously erected during the spacious days of Victorian commercial prosperity.

  In the gloom they possessed an imposing air of solidity, but Tremaine caught an occasional glimpse of crumbling stone pillars and ragged shrubberies. He saw, too, the scattered notice boards, discreet enough but plainly revealing that what had once been a family residence was now reduced to acting as an office block. Druidleigh, it seemed, was no longer the place it had once been.

  ‘This where the money lives?’ Boyce enquired, turning his head momentarily to glance from the car.

  ‘Where it used to live,’ Parkin told him. ‘Most of the old families have been moving out during the last twenty or thirty years. Flats, offices, and nursing homes—that’s what most of these places are now, although you’ll still find a house here and there that’s kept in the old style.’

  They were running now along a pleasant road that was flanked on one side by the open spaces of Druidleigh downs. Bridgton was fortunate in the possession of these downs, many acres in extent and well within the city’s boundaries. The police car turned between the stone pillars at the entrance to a rather unkempt drive and stopped outside a large house, typical of this particular road and about which there hung the almost perceptible atmosphere of a place which has not been lived in for some time.

  It was growing light now. Tremaine climbed from the car and shivered a little in the sharp morning air.

  There was a constable on the steps leading to the main door. His hand went up in a salute as he recognized Inspector Parkin.

  ‘Sir Robert’s car’s still here,’ Parkin said, indicating a smart grey saloon drawn up a little way beyond them in the drive. ‘So we ought to find him inside.’

  The Chief Constable was standing in the hall, a tall, spare and grizzled man who eyed Jonathan Boyce keenly in the moment before he held out his hand.

  ‘Glad to have you with us, Chief Inspector. You haven’t lost any time getting down here.’

  ‘Caught the first available train after your message came through, sir,’ Boyce said.

  He saw the enquiry in Sir Robert Dennell’s eyes and included Mordecai Tremaine in a comprehensive introduction that took it for granted that there would be no question raised as to his right to be present.

  ‘Naturally you’ve heard of Mr. Tremaine, sir,’ he added swiftly, as the Chief Constable stirred as though in doubt. ‘It was the Commissioner’s idea that he should come along on this occasion.’

  Tremaine’s conscience gave him a sharp reminder of its existence, but it must be confessed that he did nothing to remove the impression created by Boyce’s shameless perversion of the truth.

  ‘The Commissioner’s?’ said the Chief Constable. ‘I see. Quite so. Heard of you, of course, Tremaine. Come to see things from the beginning, eh?’

  ‘Subject to your approval, Sir Robert,’ Tremaine put in. ‘If you feel that I’ll be in the way—–’

  ‘In the way? Nonsense, nonsense. May be able to teach us regulars a thing or two!’

  There was a note of forced joviality in the Chief Constable’s voice but it was not, Tremaine divined, because he was trying to make the best of a bad job. It was because his mind was preoccupied, not because he was resentful of the unexpected appearance of an amateur detective.

  As the Chief Constable turned away, obviously having dismissed him from his immediate thoughts, Tremaine was conscious of a sense of surprised relief. He was in! The final hurdle had been taken, and from now on he could go his way without the feeling that someone might suddenly awaken to the fact that he had no business to be on the scene at all.

  The grey light of morning was creeping into the house, rendering no longer necessary the emergency lamps by the light of wh
ich the police had been working. Tremaine glanced about him. Two men in plain clothes were busy with a measuring tape; another was seated on the lowest stair making pencilled notes in a pad on his knees. The whole scene was drably prosaic; the three of them might have been concerned with nothing more abnormal than the fitting of linoleum.

  Even while Tremaine was telling himself that he should have known better he could not keep back a sense of disappointment. This unhurried, dispassionate routine was not the atmosphere one expected to find at the end of a night journey into a murder case. Where was the drama? Where the excitement of the chase and the sense of the law’s inevitability?

  And then he saw the huddled shape lying to one side of the hall and his heart gave an odd and painful jerk. Here was reality. This silent thing had once been a living man, breathing, loving—and hating. Whose hand had been raised against him in the darkness, striking him down into an oblivion from which there could be no return?

  He glanced at Jonathan Boyce, intent on his task and missing nothing, apparently untroubled by thoughts of the solemnity of the moment, talking now to Inspector Parkin. On the floor, just beyond the dead man, was a black leather bag of the Gladstone type. Boyce said:

  ‘Hardene’s?’

  Parkin nodded, and as Boyce took a step forward in the direction of the bag, Tremaine instinctively followed him. The bag was open, so that it was possible to see something of its contents. Boyce took a torch from his pocket and shone it into the interior. Tremaine caught a glimpse of a stethoscope, a packet of gauze, and of a black case that looked as though it might contain surgical instruments. And then, as the torchlight probed, he saw something else—the unmistakable outline of an automatic pistol.

  ‘I’ve often wondered,’ Boyce said drily, ‘just what a doctor carried in his little black bag. I didn’t know it ran to guns.’ He looked at Parkin. ‘Did Hardene’s practice lie in this area?’

  ‘Yes. I imagine he covered a fairly wide district—although we haven’t checked up on that so far. As you saw for yourself on the way most of the houses here in Druidleigh are big, detached places standing some distance apart, and a lot of them have been turned over to offices and suchlike, so that his patients must have been pretty scattered. Although his own house and surgery would be about half a mile away I’d say that the houses round here would be well within his hunting ground. Besides, he was fairly well known and had a lot of patients among the people who matter in Bridgton, so that he’d probably travel farther afield than the average doctor.’

  ‘But although he was familiar with the neighbourhood he might not necessarily have been aware that this particular house was empty—or he might not have remembered it. Is that reasonable?’

  ‘I see what you mean, sir,’ Parkin said. ‘He might have been brought out here by an emergency call without realizing that there was no one living here. And by the time he did realize it he’d run into trouble. Judging by the bag he certainly came out on duty.’

  Something made Tremaine look in the Chief Constable’s direction. Sir Robert Dennell was regarding Boyce with a peculiar intentness. There was a taut expression on his grizzled countenance. He had the air of a man who had a problem on his mind but who was loath to allow it utterance.

  Boyce made a significant gesture towards the bag.

  ‘If he came out as a doctor attending a patient,’ he observed, ‘he seems to have made an odd choice of instruments.’

  ‘There may be a simple explanation for that pistol,’ the Chief Constable said, and Tremaine noted the fact that he had been in no doubt as to Boyce’s meaning. ‘These roads bordering the downs are pretty lonely after dark, especially at this time of the year, and there’ve been a number of complaints about tramps. It’s possible that Hardene may have brought the gun along as a precaution.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ Boyce returned. ‘Did he ever make any personal complaint of having been molested or approached by tramps?’

  Sir Robert Dennell looked at Parkin. The inspector said:

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’

  Boyce stooped over the dead man. Gently he drew back the edge of the covering blanket and shone his torch. Although the daylight was much stronger now it was still gloomy at this end of the hall. Tremaine swallowed hard and looked in his turn.

  It was not quite as bad as he had expected. The weight of the stone that had been used in such a murderous attack had been sufficient to kill without leaving as much visible evidence as he had thought, and that part of Hardene’s skull which had received the fatal blows was turned away from him.

  He saw a man of middle age, with hair that was still thick although heavily grey. The lips were drawn back slightly over the teeth, but the grimace did not detract greatly from the undoubted personality of the face with its strong features and firm jaw. There was something a little ruthless to be seen, even in death, but it was clear that Doctor Graham Hardene had been a fine figure of a man who had carried his years well.

  Maybe, Tremaine reflected, therein had lain the secret of his successful practice in this once exclusive and still reasonably well-to-do neighbourhood.

  The same thought had evidently occurred to Boyce.

  ‘What was his reputation with the ladies?’ he asked, as he replaced the blanket.

  ‘He knew how to handle them,’ Parkin returned. ‘But I’ve never heard anything against him in that connection. Being a medical man, of course, he had to avoid any scandal.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘No. At least,’ Parkin added, ‘not visibly.’

  ‘How long had he been in practice here?’

  ‘About four or five years.’

  Tremaine noted that Parkin’s replies came without hesitation. It was obvious that as yet he could have had little time in which to check back on Doctor Hardene’s antecedents, but he had already made himself acquainted with at least the basic facts. And he was quite prepared to pass on his knowledge to the Scotland Yard man. He did not intend to hold back with the double object of making Boyce’s task more difficult and of gaining kudos for himself.

  ‘Any line yet on the time of death?’ Boyce asked.

  ‘Not before nine and he was found at ten-thirty. It probably happened not long before the constable discovered him.’

  Tremaine said:

  ‘What happened to his car?’

  It was the first time he had made a direct comment and it brought the eyes of the Chief Constable and Inspector Parkin upon him. Tremaine felt embarrassment creeping over him. But he knew that this was the testing time; that upon the impression he made now would depend whether or not Sir Robert Dennell would accept him completely. He added:

  ‘I didn’t see it in the drive, and I imagine he didn’t usually make his rounds on foot.’

  ‘It was parked on the other side of the road,’ Parkin said. ‘We found it, as a matter of fact, a few yards off the road in the shelter of the bushes on the edge of the downs.’

  ‘With its lights on or off?’

  ‘Off.’

  The Chief Constable stirred, like a man who wanted to make an important comment before the moment for it had passed.

  ‘It doesn’t follow, of course, that it was Hardene himself who parked it there. He may have stopped outside the house in the ordinary way and it may have been the murderer who ran it into the bushes and switched off the lights in order to avoid attracting attention and give himself a chance to get away.’

  ‘Was the car locked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the ignition key?’

  ‘In Hardene’s pocket,’ the Chief Constable said.

  He was looking at Tremaine with respect. The indifference with which he had greeted his arrival had given way to a subtle appraisement. Tremaine had the feeling that Sir Robert Dennell was telling himself that here, after all, was someone whom he would have to take into account in his calculations.

  But the Chief Constable did not make any further comments on the subject of the car. He said, after a moment or two:<
br />
  ‘If there’s anything you want to know, Chief Inspector, don’t hesitate to contact me. In any case I’ll be glad of a word with you this afternoon after you’ve had a chance to look around. Say three o’clock at my office. Parkin here will show you how to get there. I’d like you to come along as well, Parkin.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Boyce said.

  His voice was quite level, but there was significance in the eyebrow he raised in Mordecai Tremaine’s direction.

  Tremaine returned a brief but meaning glance. He watched the Chief Constable’s stiffly erect figure go out of the hall with a sense of inner excitement that was steadily replacing the chill of this early morning arrival.

  A doctor who carried an automatic pistol when he went to meet his patients, and who had made what was apparently an emergency call at a deserted house; a car parked in the bushes with its lights out—and a Chief Constable who quite evidently had something on his mind and who seemed to have spent a great deal of time at the spot marked ‘X’ despite the inconvenience of the hour. These, he felt, were highly satisfactory ingredients. It was going to prove an interesting murder.

  3

  THE LADY IS TROUBLED

  SERGEANT WITHAM WAS left behind to watch developments at the scene of the crime. With Inspector Parkin and Jonathan Boyce, Tremaine set off for the house where Doctor Hardene had lived.

  A few hundred yards beyond the site of the murder the road bore sharply to the left, away from the downs and towards the more thickly populated part of Druidleigh. As the car took the corner Tremaine caught a glimpse of the bridge spanning the deep, rocky cleft through which the river ran.

  The house they were seeking proved to be situated in a quiet avenue leading back from what seemed to be a major road skirting the downs. Hardene had evidently enjoyed the benefits of a secluded residence together with the professional advantage of being near enough to the beaten track to include within his practice the fairly closely packed population of the neighbouring more compact part of Druidleigh.