Murder Comes Calling

by C. S. Challinor

  “In other words, she looked through the window,” Rex inserted.

  “Well, yes. Lottie is a bit nosy. But she means well,” Malcolm hastened to add. “She cleans for me on occasion and is perfectly reliable. Anyway, thinking he’d had a heart attack, she ran back to her house and called me, because I’m a medical practitioner.” He gave a modest cough.

  He had not practiced medicine in three years, Rex refrained from pointing out, and instead asked the obvious question: Why hadn’t she called for an ambulance?

  “Ernest had a fear of hospitals. Everyone knew that. And I was on hand.”

  “So, what happened next?” Rex asked with mounting curiosity. Hitherto, Malcolm had only supplied him with the briefest of details concerning the case. The rest he had gleaned from the papers. “Were you the first person to see the entire body and what really happened to him?”

  “Yes, and just as well. It was a gory scene, I can tell you. His head had all but been severed from his body. If Lottie had found him in that state, she would have been the one to go into cardiac arrest, I’m sure.”

  “Ernest Blackwell was the victim garrotted with piano wire,” Rex confirmed, recalling what he had read in the papers.

  “Right, almost to his spine.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were first on the scene,” Rex said.

  “Ah, well, here comes the difficult part. First I should explain that I came in the front door, which wasn’t locked, as I informed the police when they arrived. Naturally, I called nine-nine-nine when I found Mr. Blackwell in that state, which is to say obviously murdered.”

  “Obviously?”

  “If you slit your own throat to that extent, you are in no fit state to chuck the piano wire across the room, believe me. And there was no blood between that and the body, so he couldn’t have stumbled to the piano.”

  “Hm,” Rex said. “No attempt to conceal the weapon or that it was, apparently, a murder.”

  “Indeed. Quite brazen. And there’s more.”

  Rex waited while Malcolm made a visible effort to prepare himself for what he had to say. He straightened in his recliner, looked at Rex, and sighed. Exercising the utmost patience, Rex gazed back and waited. “Och, spit it oot, man,” he finally spluttered in exasperation.

  “Right, then. Well, nor do decapitated persons smear letters on their forehead in their own blood. Not to my knowledge, anyway. Unless Ernest drew blood first, wrote the letters, and then made the final cut and somehow landed on the other side of the room.”

  “I don’t remember reading anything concerning letters written in blood on the victim’s forehead.”

  Malcolm scratched behind his ear. “Well, you wouldn’t. I wiped them off before anyone could see them.

  “You did what?” Rex exploded. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking if I didn’t get rid of those letters, I would be incriminated.”

  “How do you mean? What did the letters say?”

  “M-N-P In capitals.”

  “Those are your initials!”

  “Don’t I know it. Now can you see my predicament?”

  Rex stared in shock at his friend. “Notwithstanding, you of all people should know better. You’ve worked with detectives, examining bodies to determine cause of death and whether foul play was involved.”

  “That’s true. And I also know how detectives operate. If I’d left my initials on the body, it would only have been a matter of time before I turned from witness to suspect. And it would have been a waste of police time since I didn’t do it!”

  “Malcolm.” Rex took a deep breath. “It’s a vital piece of evidence. Once the police cleared you—if you had come under suspicion—they could have followed other leads. Such a big potential clue could serve to nail the house agent or else exonerate him. You must tell the police immediately before the wrong individual is put behind bars. The longer you wait, the worse it will be for you.”

  “I’d get prison time for tampering with evidence. I could even lose my medical license.”

  “Pity you didn’t think of that before. And while I sit here doing nothing aboot it, I’m aiding and abetting. Did you consider how your ill-conceived action might affect me, and what an awkward position you might be placing me in?” Rex could feel his face turning beetroot. His fiancée said when he got really angry, his face turned redder than his hair. He took a large gulp of Guinness.

  “I know, Rex. It was stupid. I panicked.”

  “But if you had nothing to hide, why risk it?”

  “It’s a small community. I couldn’t bear the thought of everyone viewing me with suspicion even if the murderer was caught. You have no idea what people are like around here. Everybody knows everybody’s business. They have nothing better to do than gossip and perpetuate feuds.”

  Rex pushed his TV table away and let his head drop into his hands. “Oh, Malcolm,” he said in a muffled voice. After a moment’s thought, he pulled himself together. “Let’s drive down to the station this minute, get it all sorted. I’ll explain you were under severe stress and made a mistake on the spur of the moment.”

  “That might fly if it was just the one instance,” Malcolm mumbled, gazing at his hands in his lap. “But, you see, the same letters were scrawled over the other victims’ foreheads as well.”

  “And you …”

  “Yes, I wiped all of them clean.”

  When Rex had recovered sufficiently from the extent of Malcolm’s confession, several questions came flooding into his mind. “And Lottie didn’t see what was written on Ernest Blackwell’s forehead?”

  “No. She followed me into his house through the front door, but when I saw the pool of blood by the piano I told her to stay outside the room and call the police. And then I closed the door.”

  “Did you touch anything else?”

  “No, I didn’t even need to check for a pulse. I mean, his throat … well, it was split in two.”

  Rex shivered even though Malcolm’s living room was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm. He divested himself of his tweed jacket. “And the others?”

  “After seeing there was nothing to be done for the old man, I left the room and went to find Lottie. She wasn’t in the house, but I noticed the table in the kitchen was set for two. Ernest lived on his own. Worried there might be another victim, I ended up searching the garage. And that’s where I found Valerie Trotter, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning inside Ernest’s old Daimler. I pulled her out and opened the garage door to let in fresh air, but she was past reviving. I left the engine running with the hose in the exhaust for the police to deal with.”

  Well, that’s something, Rex thought with irony. “And at some point you wiped off the letters on her forehead.”

  “Yes,” Malcolm admitted. “But I tried to resuscitate her first.”

  “Were the letters written in blood?”

  “Presumably Ernest’s blood. There was no other blood on her.”

  “But we’ll never know for certain that it was Ernest’s blood, will we? Because now it can never be tested.”

  “I know, Rex. Please don’t rub it in. But don’t you see? Having got rid of the letters on Ernest, I had to do the same with Valerie.”

  Rex merely raised an eyebrow in response. “The papers said the bodies had not been dead long?”

  “No, they were not yet in rigor. The blood on the sitting room carpet wasn’t even fully dry.”

  “So Valerie was found at Ernie’s house,” Rex ruminated aloud. “She could have been collateral damage. What was the connection between her and Ernest?”

  “No idea. But, as I said, the table was set for two, the plates clean. I got there about three. She might have been the lunch guest.”

  “She was forty-seven, correct? And Ernest was in his early eighties. Unlikely there was anything romantic going on between them.”

  “Granted, Valerie was no spring chicken, but she was still a looker in a tarty sort of way. And Ernest had a way with him that seem
ed to appeal to the ladies. He was still spry, was old Ernie, though he complained of arthritis.”

  “He went by Ernie?” Rex enquired, so caught up in the case by now that he managed to relegate his friend’s unconscionable acts to the back of his mind while he processed the new information.

  “I shouldn’t have said Ernie,” Malcolm corrected himself. “He couldn’t abide being called that. But he was more of an Ernie than an Ernest, if you know what I mean. He was very gabby, although sometimes he would just clam up,” his friend added in a reflective tone. “Onset of Alzheimer’s, perhaps. It could be he just forgot things. At his age, that’s entirely possible.”

  “Well, you had better tell me aboot the other two,” Rex said in a resigned tone. Intentionally and systematically destroying evidence could never be construed as being other than premeditated. How Malcolm expected him to get him out of this predicament was yet another mystery.

  “Barry Burns and Vic Chandler,” Malcolm began after a hasty sip of water. “They lived here on Badger Court almost opposite each other. Their properties were up for sale, too. Well, after I located Lottie and told her that Valerie Trotter was also dead, I asked her to stay outside Ernest’s house and wait for the police. I needed to dispose of my handkerchief.”

  “Because it had blood on it,” Rex remarked dryly.

  “Correct. So I went home and soaked it in bleach and cold water.”

  This only gets worse, Rex thought, his stomach tightening in anguish as he waited to hear what else his friend had to say.

  FOUR

  “WOULD YOU CARE FOR some coffee?” Malcolm asked Rex. “I know I could do with some.”

  “Aye, it looks like it’s going to be a long night.” They were only halfway through the confession.

  Presumably, Malcolm would justify his cover-up on the other two bodies in the same way, by saying he was only trying to protect himself. But how had he discovered them before anyone else did? Rex began to feel rather uneasy as he helped Malcolm clear their tables. He followed his friend into the kitchen—better to keep an eye on him. A whole new dimension to Malcolm’s character was beginning to emerge. Rex had always known him to be a careful and steady sort of soul, certainly not one to give into criminal impulses, even when his freedom might be in jeopardy.

  Surely no one would believe the mild-mannered doctor to be a murderer, in spite of his initials being coincidentally or deliberately emblazoned on the victims’ bodies. And yet who could have thought him capable of tampering with evidence, especially in a murder case? And not just once, but four times? Rex had an especially hard time getting his head around that. He would hear his friend out and then insist they go to the police. After all, an innocent man could be going to prison for life based on incomplete facts. Oh, what a mess, he lamented.

  Malcolm loaded the few plates and utensils into the dishwasher and then busied himself with the coffee maker while Rex rinsed out the glasses. The appliances had obviously not been updated since the nineties when the development had been built.

  When the coffee was ready, they moved back to the living room. Rex adjusted his recliner so he could converse more easily with Malcolm and hear the rest of his astounding account. “So, I’m assuming you must have found the other two bodies before the police arrived. How did that happen?”

  “Lottie had tried to call Barry, Ernest’s golfing friend, to give him the sad news, but he wasn’t answering his phone. So I said I would swing by, since he lived close to me and, anyway, I needed an excuse to hurry off and do something about the handkerchief.”

  Rex gave an eloquently disapproving cough, but said nothing.

  Malcolm quickly continued his story. “I rang and knocked at Barry’s door, but there was no answer. I found the door unlocked, like at Ernest’s, and walked right in. Well, I didn’t have to go far. Barry was curled up in his study, his head mashed to a pulp. He’d been bludgeoned to death. A golf iron lay nearby, dripping with blood and brain matter. I must’ve just missed the killer.”

  “You went home to wash the handkerchief before going to Barry Burns’ place?”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said, hanging his head. “If I’d gone straight there I might have been in time to prevent his death.”

  “Or you might have become victim number five.”

  “True. That’s what might have happened to Valerie. You know, wrong place, wrong time sort of thing. Well, I went into the bathroom, wet a tissue, and wiped off the letters on Barry’s forehead, but these weren’t so legible because there wasn’t much left of his face. I flushed the tissue down the loo and called the police from the phone on his desk.”

  Rex grunted his disapproval. “And then?” he asked with increasing dread.

  “I went outside to wait for the police. That’s when I noticed that Vic Chandler’s door was open across the street. I sort of had a hunch, so I went over and entered his house. I felt as though I were living some awful nightmare. You have no idea … This time I had to go all the way upstairs. I didn’t get a whiff of chloroform this time—”

  “Chloroform?” Rex asked in surprise.

  “I forgot to mention … In the first two houses, Ernest’s and Barry’s, I was aware of the smell of chloroform in the air. Faint, but unmistakable. You know, that sweet, sickly odour.”

  Rex didn’t really know. But then, he wasn’t a doctor. “What else might you have you forgotten to mention?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing else seemed unusual at the crime scenes other than the nature of the murders?” Rex prodded.

  “Not really. Everything appeared to have been left in good order—except for the bodies, I mean. No signs of ransacking or anything like that. Now that you mention it, though, I did notice a brochure tucked into Ernest’s waistband. I thought it an odd place to put it, but old people do odd things, don’t they? I only noticed it because he was lying on the floor and his cardigan had fallen open.”

  “What was on the brochure?” Rex asked.

  “From what I could see, it was advertising a timeshare in Marbella.”

  “Spain. Very nice. Anything else oot of place in the room or in the garage, or at Barry’s house before we go on?”

  “Nothing that sticks out,” Malcolm replied, shaking his head with conviction.

  “So, after you arrived at Vic Chandler’s house, you went upstairs …”

  “I did, and there was Vic Chandler in the bath.”

  “Dead, I take it.”

  “Indeed. In his birthday suit, the tub full of water.”

  “Drowned?”

  Malcolm shook his head again. “According to Dr. Hewitt, the pathologist who performed the autopsy and an erstwhile colleague of mine, drowning was not the cause of death. There was no water in the victim’s lungs and no asphyxia from a dry drowning. He was electrocuted.”

  “What with?”

  “An electric razor was found in the bath. These are older homes; well, over a quarter of a century old. Some of the wall sockets are not earthed. Two hundred and forty volts of electricity combined with water is a lethal combination. I’ve seen several deaths in my day caused by people dropping a radio in the bath or else standing up in one and switching on a light.”

  “I don’t suppose Vic Chandler could have electrocuted himself accidentally while shaving in the bath?”

  Malcolm shook his head with regret. “The letters …”

  “Written in blood on his forehead?”

  His friend nodded. “But his head was partially submerged and they were all but washed away. So I left well alone.”

  “Thank heaven for small mercies,” Rex said dryly.

  Malcolm responded with a wan smile. “Yes, that was a relief.”

  “But the police will never know what was written there if they don’t know what to look for.” Rex paused while he thought about the scene in the bathroom. “Is there enough current in an electric razor to electrocute someone?” he asked.

  “Apparently.”

  “Did you menti
on the chloroform to the police?”

  “Of course I did.”

  Of course, Rex said to himself. “Safe, maybe, to assume the killer overcame his victims with chloroform before he guillotined, battered, and asphyxiated them to death in the first three instances,” he told Malcolm. “But he or she had to gain entry first. The two older victims likely looked though their peepholes. Elderly people tend to be more careful aboot that sort of thing. I read in one of the papers that their exterior doors had deadbolts on them and they’d taken extra precautions to secure the windows.”

  “Sounds like they were a bit paranoid,” Malcolm remarked.

  “And rightly so, as it transpires. Now, Vic Chandler was already in his bath, so he was a captive audience, so to speak. The killer may have got in through an unlocked door or window, or else picked a lock, and left afterwards through the front door. Perhaps Vic wasn’t as careful as the older men.” Rex took a sip of coffee from his mug, a souvenir from Tenerife festooned with palm trees, and as incongruous to the cold, wet weather outside as were the exotic destinations of Helen’s ocean cruise. He hoped his fiancée was enjoying her time off from her sometimes-stressful job as a school counsellor. He shook himself free of these distractions and reverted his attention to Malcolm and the mess he had put himself in.

  “As for Valerie Trotter …,” Rex mused aloud, “was she already at Ernest’s house or did she arrive after his murder? Did the killer answer the door to her? That’s a chilling thought. And was it just the one killer, I wonder? One killer, two victims would be a feat, even if one of them was an octogenarian. And what is the significance of those letters?” So many questions.

  Malcolm looked uncomfortable again at the mention of this evidence, as well he might, Rex thought, before saying, “In view of the fact all four victims had the same letters written on their foreheads, we can safely conclude this was murder in each case and not suicide. Not to mention the nature of the deaths. After all, beating oneself to a pulp is not the easiest way to go.”