Death at the Jesus Hospital

by David Dickinson

  Powerscourt had timed his arrival for the gap after lunch before any children might be home from their lessons. Mrs Mitchell showed him into a small chair by the fire.

  ‘I expect you’ve come about Roddy,’ she began. ‘The vicar told me about his death yesterday. It’s terrible, just terrible, he was such a kind man.’

  ‘Please forgive me, Mrs Mitchell, if I have to ask some difficult questions. I’m afraid death and murder have no respect for people’s history or their emotional lives. Could I ask when you first became friends?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Not the particular day, just the time of year.’ Avoid the ‘l’ word at all costs, he reminded himself again. Friendship was a much duller word, but useful on occasions.

  ‘It must have been two years ago,’ she replied, ‘round about the time of the Harvest Festival. I always help out in St Peter and Paul round about then and Roddy was in the church a lot, working on the accounts. He had to present them to the parish council the week after.’

  ‘So the friendship developed in the weeks and months after that service?’ said Powerscourt, wondering what would happen if he had asked when they became close.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Mrs Mitchell said, blushing slightly. ‘It would have been about the middle of December. Jude, my husband, was away a lot around then, working at York Minster.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m not concerned with the nature of your relationship with the bursar, Mrs Mitchell, but I would like to know about Mr Gill’s state of mind in the weeks before he died.’

  ‘It’s so strange hearing you call him Mr Gill,’ she said. ‘He was always Roddy to me.’

  ‘What did the vicar say about the manner of his death, may I ask?’

  She gazed into the fire. Outside on the window sill an angry robin was staring at them, as if it blamed them for the snow. ‘He told me Roddy had been murdered,’ she said finally, ‘by a person or persons unknown, as he put it. What a terrible phrase. So impersonal.’

  Powerscourt supposed the information must have reached the vicar via the headmaster.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid he was, murdered, I mean. That’s why it’s important we know about his state of mind.’ Powerscourt was speaking as gently as he knew how. He suspected Mrs Mitchell might burst into tears at any minute and he would have to leave. ‘One of his colleagues told me he was worried about something in the last weeks,’ he went on.

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ she said ‘All the time I knew him he was a very calm person. He was like a sailing ship that never had to adjust the sails, if you know what I mean. Things might change around him but he stayed the same, calm and quiet and matter-of-fact.’

  ‘Just what you would expect from somebody who trained as an accountant,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But you didn’t notice any changes in the weeks before he died?’

  Mrs Mitchell looked into the fire once more. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘He didn’t tell me. And I hadn’t been seeing as much of Roddy as I used to, these last three or four months. He was so busy on the history of the relations between the Silkworkers and the school and trying to work out if the changes were going to help Allison’s or not. But I do remember him saying that the past never leaves you alone, never.’

  Powerscourt wondered about the missing years in the filing system on the shelves of Gill’s room. ‘Did he talk to you about his earlier life at all, about growing up, being a young man, that sort of thing?’

  ‘No, he didn’t, Lord Powerscourt. Oh dear, you must think I’m a terrible witness, unable to answer so many of your questions. He never talked to me about any previous women in his time either. It was as if,’ she paused for a moment, ‘as if I was the first woman in his life. That’s how it seemed to me at the time, anyway. Thinking about it now, I’m sure I wasn’t the first one, not by a long chalk. But I’m not complaining. I can’t make a fuss about the times when I didn’t know him.’

  ‘How very sensible,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Did he ever tell you if he had been married before? Before he knew you, I mean?’

  ‘No he didn’t, he didn’t tell me. He could have been married fifty times for all I knew about it.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mrs Mitchell, I suspect you may have had this thought yourself since you heard of his death. Do you think some relationship in his past may have had something to do with his murder?’

  ‘Some jealous husband, do you mean, who had just learnt about an earlier affair, risen out of the past like the avenging angel? I have wondered about that, Lord Powerscourt, of course I have. Yet again I don’t have an answer for you.’

  Powerscourt thought she was on the brink of tears. ‘You have been very honest with me, Mrs Mitchell, and I am grateful. I doubt if many people could have been as frank in your circumstances. One last question, if I could, and then I’ll leave you alone. How would you describe Roderick Gill, Mrs Mitchell? What was his character?’

  ‘My Roddy?’ She smiled across at him. ‘Well, he was calm. He was gentle. He was the same on a Thursday as he was on the Monday. I don’t think you could say that about many people. Like many men concerned with money, so the bank manager told me when Jude and I were in danger of falling into debt, he was very good with other people’s money and no good at all with his own. He was always complaining about being about to run out of cash, his salary for that month all gone and so forth. He was very generous to me, always buying me presents. He was always careful only to come when the children would be out or at school, in case they said something to their father.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think that’s all there was to him,’ she said sadly. ‘He wasn’t eloquent, he wasn’t funny, but he was very gentle and very kind.’

  She stopped once more and Powerscourt felt she was very close to tears now.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ he said, rising out of his chair by the other side of the fire. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time. You’ve been most helpful. Could I just ask, if you think of anything else that might help, please get in touch. The school will know where to find me.’

  Hilda Mitchell showed him to the door. ‘Even if I do,’ she said very softly, ‘think of something, I mean, it’s not going to bring him back. Nothing’s going to bring him back now, is it, Lord Powerscourt? I shall never see Roddy again.’

  4

  It was the largest force Inspector Fletcher had ever commanded. It wasn’t a regiment or a battalion or even a company. His unit this January morning, he thought, remembering the books on military history he loved as a boy, was somewhere between a squad and a platoon. Apart from himself and his sergeant, he had eighteen men on parade outside the Jesus Hospital in Marlow. Three police stations in Maidenhead had been denuded of some of their officers to provide the manpower. Manoeuvres were to start shortly after eight o’clock when the last silkman had left his quarters and reported for breakfast in the dining hall.

  As the clock above the little tower reached eight o’clock, the sergeant, on duty by the dining hall, waved an unobtrusive arm to his superior officer. The old men were all sitting down. The eighteen policemen marched into the almshouse. Each one had been assigned a particular room and the sergeant had one of his own. All had been briefed half an hour before at a specially convened assembly in the Maidenhead police station. They were searching, the Inspector informed them, for the murder weapon which had cut the dead man’s throat, and the strange instrument which might have made the marks on his chest. Inspector Fletcher had wondered long and hard about whether he should tell his little force about the stigmata, as he now referred to them. Eventually he decided that he had no choice. If his men didn’t know what they were looking for, how could they possibly find it? He swore the police constables to secrecy on this matter, assuring them that whoever mentioned a word about it, even to their own families, would have all his holiday entitlement cancelled for the foreseeable future. And they were also looking for papers, any private papers they could find. These, he told them, might be letters from family or friends, papers relating to their previous lives, wills, any mem
orabilia that might say where they had been and what they had done in earlier times. Each officer had a folder with the number of the room he was assigned to inscribed in large black letters. Inspector Fletcher had had enough of the confused memories of the over-seventies. Evidence, hard evidence was what he needed.

  The old men were having a treat this morning. Fried eggs and bacon happened to be on the menu, a rare combination. This always improved morale. As they tucked into their portions, sauce bottles at the ready, the policemen slipped into their rooms and began the search. They pulled open the drawers, they checked the small cupboards, they emptied the pockets of any jackets left on a hanger, they knocked on the walls in the quest for hidden compartments and they checked underneath the threadbare carpets for any loose floorboards that might mask a treasure trove of hidden weaponry. They shook any books they could find to see if any documents were being concealed in the pages. They inspected the pictures on the walls and any photographs they could find, just as the Inspector had told them, taking the pictures out of the frames to see what might be lurking behind. They checked the stairs that led to the upper floors. Some of the folders filled up quickly. Others were less profitable, with only a couple of items being removed.

  The Inspector reckoned that the time required to eat breakfast, even with the luxury of fried eggs and bacon, might not be enough for his purpose. The chaplain, also the curate of St Michael and All Angels in Marlow, had been pressed into the police service for the day. All the old men were to make their way to the chapel immediately after breakfast. Going back to their rooms was not allowed. They were to attend a special service for the feast day of St Thomas Aquinas which fell on the following day. The curate had preached on this subject before, having made a special study of the late St Thomas Aquinas and his theology at university. He was to preach until the sergeant opened the main door and nodded to him. At that point the silkmen were to sing a final hymn,

  ‘For all the saints who from their labours rest’. This, the chaplain assured the Inspector, had no fewer than eleven verses and if sung at a funereal pace as dictated by the organist of St Luke’s on the hospital piano, should last between five and ten minutes, ample time for his policemen to pick up their belongings and beat an orderly retreat.

  The Inspector paced anxiously round the quadrangle. His sergeant conducted spot checks on the officers, ensuring that they were obeying orders. Eventually the sergeant blew on his whistle after the third verse and the eighteen policemen from Maidenhead were marched out of the hospital to carry their booty back to the station. It was just before half past nine. The Inspector had told nobody, not Monk, not any of the old men, about this morning’s exercise. He stayed behind to reassure the silkmen that their sacrifice was only temporary and that their possessions would be returned to them in due course. He did not specify, and the men did not think to ask, how long that might be. As recompense, he assured them, the police would be buying drinks for everybody at the Rose and Crown that evening between the hours of eight and nine. By eleven that morning Inspector Fletcher was back in his office. The spoils of war were laid out on his floor in numerical order from Number One to Number Twenty. Albert Fletcher hung his jacket behind his chair and set to work.

  One hundred and fifty miles to the north-east the other Inspector in Powerscourt’s life was really rather pleased with himself. The two men were standing on the edge of the playing fields where the snowman was being erected. Grime refused to go back to the geography classroom if he could avoid it. He refused to talk anywhere in the school where small boys who ran as if in training for the next Olympic Games in Stockholm in two years’ time might appear round a corner at any minute and hear things they were not meant to know. The snowman, Powerscourt observed, was now higher than most of the junior members of the school. They had built small towers in the manner of building workers with their scaffolding and were adding to the figure with a selection of stolen shovels. The lake, one small boy had told Powerscourt solemnly, was not yet ready for skating. Pemberton Minor of the Upper Fourth had ventured across its frozen surface only for the ice to open and swallow him up. But for the timely intervention of a couple of gardeners, there would have been a great sadness in the Pemberton household. The soaked victim was now wrapped up in bed in the infirmary with a couple of hot water bottles for company.

  ‘How was your witness?’ inquired the Inspector.

  Powerscourt took some time to reply. He had been thinking about his interview with Mrs Mitchell on his way to the school that morning and was surprised at how little she had told him. He wondered why she had not mentioned Gill’s anxieties in his last days.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I rather think she had the better of the encounter.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the Inspector.

  ‘I don’t think she told me any actual lies,’ Powerscourt replied, staring out at the relays of Allison’s youth, totally focused on the task in hand, beginning to put a face on the snowman. They appeared to have laid their hands on a pipe and an ancient muffler of indeterminate colour to decorate their creation.

  ‘I think she left out quite a lot, I’m sure there are things she’s not telling me about. God knows what they are. Looking back on it, I may have been too gentle with her. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you look on the verge of tears all the time.’

  ‘Did she actually break down and cry all over you?’ asked Grime with horror.

  ‘No, she didn’t. But she did manage to convey the impression that it might happen at any time. I’d back women to be more devious than men in those circumstances any day of the week, wouldn’t you, Inspector?’

  There was a mighty wail from the snowman party. Pipe and muffler had fallen out, pulling a great deal of snow that might have been the nose, forehead and mouth behind them. The snowman looked as though he had been shot in the face, white snow falling to the ground in place of the blood that might have come from a human.

  ‘Will you go and see Mrs Mitchell again, my lord? Do you think you might do better a second time?’

  ‘I did think of writing to her, but I suspect that would meet with even less success. She’d have all the time she wanted to compose her replies. I shall think about it. Now then, how were the postmen?’

  ‘Ah, my lord, I think there is progress in that direction. Only limited progress, mind you, but it’s something. You see, it would seem that my angelic choirboy may have been telling the truth. There may have been a postman in the corridor that morning, but he wasn’t a real one. It must have been somebody dressed up as a postman, but probably a bringer of death rather than the morning mail. The real postman who comes to the school on his rounds, Matthew Cameron, did visit the school as usual that morning. But he came at half past ten and was able to observe the confusion brought by Gill’s death. He’s sure there was no proper postman up here at the earlier time. He’s busy at the moment but he’s promised to come and see us on his way home.’

  Inspector Fletcher and Sergeant Donaldson were nearly halfway through their folders with the paperwork from the Jesus Hospital. Fletcher had not been sure exactly what he would find – in some ways the early-morning raid had been a shot in the dark – but one aspect of the paperwork he found absolutely astonishing. They had looked through a lot of material they had expected to find, letters from family members in distant parts, some as far away as New Zealand and Nebraska. The old gentleman in Number Fourteen, Stephen Potter, was a great reader who seemed to belong to three public libraries. He had Conrad’s Lord Jim by his bedside, and recent volumes by Conan Doyle and Kipling on his shelf. Fletcher noted with interest that all these books were now overdue and Number Fourteen was going to have to pay a hefty fine when he returned the books to their libraries of origin. It was his sergeant, Peter Donaldson, a tall young man of about thirty with the largest moustache in the Maidenhead force, who first drew the startling fact to his attention.

  ‘Could I make a comment, sir?’ said Donaldson, whose parents had always pressed on
him from the earliest age the virtues of politeness and cleanliness. One or two of the older Inspectors had been known to complain that Donaldson always smelt like a bar of soap first thing in the morning.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Fletcher, turning an ancient bible upside down and shaking it vigorously. Three old pieces of paper fell to the floor.

  ‘Well, sir, we’ve been through eight or nine of these folders so far. And four of them have quite a lot of money tucked away in banks or building societies, nearly four thousand pounds in one case, with the account books hidden in the man’s atlas between the maps of Paraguay and Brazil. But there aren’t any wills. You’d have thought that if they were that careful with money they’d have been bound to make a will, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Ah, hm, well, you would, that’s quite right. How very odd. Maybe their last wills and testaments are with their solicitors.’ Inspector Fletcher paused again. Sergeant Donaldson had worked out long before how his superior officer’s mind worked. He knew what was coming.

  ‘When we’ve finished with this lot, Sergeant, perhaps you could call on the relevant offices, banks, solicitors and so on, and make inquiries. You’d better try Reading after you’re through with Maidenhead.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  It was dark when the real postman arrived at Allison’s School. The snowman seemed to glow slightly in the reflected light from the great windows. Pemberton Minor in the infirmary was making a quick recovery, pleading with matron for more pieces of cake after his tea. Cake in the school was a luxury only offered to recovering invalids. The postman, a cheerful Cockney called William Cameron, long exiled to East Anglia, showed them his normal rounds.

  ‘We do a rough sort out of the post beforehand, sir. Headmaster’s mail gets delivered to his secretary’s office, masters’ mail to the common room, boys’ mail to the porter’s lodge, registrar and bursar’s mail to their offices in that long corridor. Bursar Gill, sir, he always had a lot of post, parents paying their bills, that sort of thing, I suppose.’