Last Detective

by Thomas, Leslie

  The keeper pointed at once an accusing finger at the car. ‘Can’t you dump that thing somewhere else?’ he demanded. ‘It gives this place a bad name. And I can smell that dog, or whatever it is, from here.’

  ‘I suppose I’ve got used to him,’ grimaced Davies mildly. ‘I won’t take a couple of minutes of your time.’ He was tempted to add, ‘I just want to inquire about digging up a few graves.’ But tact prevented him.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded the man. He stood posed between a large laurel and a weeping elm. Davies realized how well trees and shrubs did in this particular plot and felt a distant shudder. The keeper sniffed. ‘I hope you don’t want to hang around the cemetery all night again, like last time.’ He laughed, almost a snarl. ‘Whatever heard of anybody threatening to blow up a place like this!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Davies, ‘I am glad you mentioned that, friend. I’m afraid that was an administrative error.’

  The man got half-way to putting a protective hand on the nearest bent headstone, but stopped himself. ‘What is it you want, this time?’ he asked.

  ‘I wondered if I could just have a look at the registers, the Record of Burials, or whatever they’re called in the profession,’ asked Davies. He smiled grandly as though requesting a list of prizewinners. ‘You’ve got them, I take it?’

  ‘Of course, we’ve got them,’ replied the man. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t know who was bloody who, would we?’

  ‘That’s logical,’ agreed Davies.

  ‘It’s official police business then?’

  ‘Naturally,’ lied Davies. ‘Would I do this for a pastime?’

  The keeper turned and went back to his house, leaving Davies looking around him at the memorial stones, the final imprint of men upon earth. Some of them were quite old and he had to get close to read the inscriptions. Keys sounded behind him making him start. ‘It’s around the other side,’ said the keeper. ‘The registry.’

  On the short journey to the place where the records were kept he seemed to unbend a little. Perhaps he was one of those persons who cannot bear to walk in silence with anyone, even in a cemetery. ‘It’s fucking cold this morning,’ he said.

  Davies remembered him swearing the time before and wondered whether foul language came readily to people who worked among those who cannot listen. It was the man’s only comment, however, and he unlocked the registry door with a surly twist of the keys. They walked into a long, icy room lined with racks and heavy ledgers. There was a writing desk with a green baize top, an inkstand and an ominously empty chair. Davies imagined the skeleton figure of Death crouched there at night over his ledgers. He declined the keeper’s invitation to sit down.

  ‘Who was it, or when was it?’ asked the man.

  ‘Who—I don’t know,’ said Davies awkwardly. ‘But it would be July 1951. About that.’

  ‘About that!’ retorted the keeper. ‘You don’t know who it is—and you don’t know where and you don’t know when!’

  ‘We’re struggling a bit on this one,’ admitted Davies. He pulled at his nose thoughtfully. ‘Can I ask you—how long before a burial is the grave actually dug?’ He wondered why the man showed no arousal of interest in the inquiries.

  ‘Depends,’ was the dull answer. ‘If we’re going to have a rush we might get them done a few days in advance, but normally it’s just the day before. It’s a business that just ticks over.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ decided Davies. ‘Could we check the burials for the 24th, 25th, 26th of July, 1951.’

  The man assumed his customary crumpled expression, sighed, but went along the racks until he came to the appropriate book. Davies watched him and, looking along the moribund shelves, fancifully thought that tasteful notices saying ‘Thrillers’, ‘Romances’, ‘True Life Adventure’ might cheer the place. The man came back with a thick ledger. ‘Quarter for July to September,’ he said thumping the book down. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t a winter quarter, this is bleeding heavy enough.’

  Davies took the occupational grumble with an understanding nod. He sat at the empty chair, now without thinking, and with compressed eagerness began to turn the pages. He reached July 24th, three entries, two on the 25th, three again on the 26th. He borrowed a pencil from the keeper and finding, for once, his notebook wrote down the names.

  ‘Would these graves be all in more or less the same area? he asked.

  The keeper nodded. At last a touch of interest was germinating in his face. ‘What’s it all for anyway?’

  ‘Just routine inquiries,’ replied Davies unconvincingly. ‘Which part of the place?’

  The keeper checked the book over his shoulders, looking at the serial numbers. ‘North-west corner,’ he said. ‘It’s not used now.’

  ‘By the wall?’

  ‘Yes. Well more or less. There’s a bit of green this side of the wall, then the path, then this section.’

  ‘Where are all the tools kept?’ asked Davies suddenly. ‘The spades and such like.’

  The man was beginning to look surprised. ‘Tools? This is a funny business, isn’t it? Tools? Well, they’re supposed to be kept in the central store shed, but more often than not they’re left out. The blokes you get on this job, they just leave them against the wall or even in the grave. They haven’t got a lot of interest or pride in the work, and they bugger off as soon as they can, leaving the tools until the next day. Half the gardens around here have been dug with spades nicked from this cemetery.’

  ‘It gets better,’ said Davies to himself. He looked at the man. ‘So if that area of the cemetery was being worked, as it were, eight burials in three days, then the tools might well be left there.’

  ‘They could have been.’

  ‘Right,’ said Davies rising. ‘Thanks very much. I’ll be off.’

  The man was now eager to ask about it, but Davies, wrapping his overcoat like silence about him made only noncommittal answers. As they approached the gatehouse again he noticed the yellow splash of an excavator a few hundred yards away across the petrified causeway of headstones.

  ‘What are they doing over there?’ he inquired.

  ‘Doing some business with the road,’ replied the keeper. ‘They’ve had to move the wall over. And dig up some old graves. I don’t hold with that, digging them up.’

  ‘Nasty job,’ commented Davies.

  ‘In the olden days,’ replied the keeper, apparently glad to dispense some graveyard history, ‘they had to get the labourers drunk on whisky before they’d take it on. It was very smelly and so on. But now they’ve got chemicals and suchlike. But I still don’t reckon it.’

  They had reached the gate now. ‘Ever had an exhumation order carried out here?’ Davies asked casually.

  Shock smothered the keeper’s face. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘This is a respectable cemetery. Not for donkey’s years. Long before my time.’

  ‘Be quite difficult to get eight exhumation orders, I imagine,’ said Davies, beginning to walk towards the car.

  ‘Eight!’ The keeper appeared likely to faint. ‘Eight exhumations! Over my dead body!’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Davies. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  Without answering the man turned towards his house, glancing back suspiciously towards the exiting Davies. ‘Mad,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fucking mad.’

  Davies got into the Lagonda and thoughtfully started the engine. But he did not put the car into gear. There was something wrong. Slowly he turned and, leaning over, lifted the edge of the tarpaulin and exposed the crouching Kitty underneath. Kitty was gnawing a large bone.

  ‘Listen,’ said Davies to Mod. ‘If our idea is right, if our murderer caught Celia Norris in the cemetery when she was stealing the flowers, or saw her going over the wall, or coming back, or whatever, did his nasty business, and then buried her in an already dug grave, then we’ve got to dig up eight coffins.’

  ‘A formidable task,’ agreed Mod. They were slouching along to ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens, having had to miss their evening d
rink because Mod had been kept late at the Labour Exchange. An emergency matter had arisen and there was a strong threat that he might be offered a job. He had managed to overcome it, however, before he left for home.

  Mod, who never wore an overcoat, never having owned one, was walking comfortably in a sagging purple sports jacket and an open-necked shirt. Davies was curled like a large, walking chrysalis in his brown coat. ‘The trouble is,’ said Davies. ‘No matter how far fetched it seems, the opportunity and the props were all there. That was the part of the cemetery being used at that time, there were several open graves, and the tools were most likely left lying about. He could have raped her, or whatever, killed her and then dug a foot or so deeper into an already dug grave and buried her in there. So that the next day the coffin it was intended for was put in on top of it, and the whole lot buried for good. And the whole thing could have been done in the best possible conditions—at night and in peace and quiet. There’s nowhere more private than behind a cemetery wall.’

  ‘Who, for God’s sake, is going to let you dig up eight graves?’ said Mod.

  ‘Nobody,’ admitted Davies. ‘I wouldn’t even like to inquire.’

  Mod glanced at him unhappily. ‘And don’t think I’m going to help you dig them up on the quiet,’ he said. ‘Because I’m not. I’m not allowed heavy manual work. I’d have got a job long ago if I was.’

  They reached ‘Bali-Hi’, Furtman Gardens. On the coat-rack in the hall was pinned a note, for Davies. It said: ‘Mr William Lind wishes to see you at the police station.’

  The evenings had become enclosed and dark now and on his walk to the police station Davies passed only five other people, and three of those were walking dogs. He reflected once more how, even in that tightly populated place, the streets were emptied at evenings. In some countries, it would be the time for people to be out promenading, parading themselves, but here it seemed that once the factories had stopped for the day people shot like moles into holes and vanished. Even on a hot summer evening, like the one on which Celia Norris was seen for the last time, there were few people actually out walking. There was the matter of television, of course, but also there were few outdoor places to go. A few small parks and the dead banks of the canal. People did as they did in the winter, they went into the pubs or stayed in their rooms. The only difference was that in the summer they left the windows open.

  Venus, the evening whore, waved a customary hand to him from the end of the police station street. She looked lonely, exiled, as only a whore can look. For once the police station interior looked welcoming, its official light optimistic in comparison to the overwhelming weariness of the street. The duty sergeant was leaning over the inquiry counter and, at the safe distance, attempting to comfort an elderly lady who regularly reported being followed by salacious men with long fingers. ‘My trouble, officer,’ she whinnied, ‘is that I look so young from the back. They always follow me.’

  ‘She should try walking backwards,’ muttered the sergeant when she had gone out complaining and full of anticipation into the awaiting night. ‘That would scare them off. Your bloke is in the charge room, Dangerous.’

  Davies thanked him and went into the bleak charge room. William Lind was sitting there, biting his lip. He rose as Davies walked in and knocked his wooden chair over backwards, then jumped violently as it sounded on the floor.

  Lind’s face looked shocked, as though he had committed a recent malpractice. He fumbled and righted the chair. Davies sat down at the opposite side of the wooden table, his overcoat draped around him like a wigwam. ‘Mr. Lind,’ he said steadily. ‘Now what can I do for you?’

  ‘Well Mr Davies, I heard…I understand from my wife, that is. You’re looking into the Celia Norris business.’

  Davies glanced over his shoulder to make sure he had shut the door. The Metropolitan Police did not like you doing your own work or your hobby on their premises. The door was closed. A policeman passed by and, out of habit, glanced over the frosted glass horizon into the charge room. But the semi-head floated away and Davies returned to the drawn face of Bill Lind.

  ‘What was it, Mr Lind?’ inquired Davies. ‘Bill?’

  ‘Just this,’ said Lind. He felt into his pocket and produced a plastic bag from which he took Celia Norris’s light green knickers. Davies almost fell backwards over the chair.

  ‘They’re hers, Celia’s,’ said Lind. ‘They’ve been kept in mothballs.’

  ‘That’s almost the full house,’ said Davies aloud but to himself as he reached across to take the small garment. ‘It seems like everything has been kept in mothballs.’

  ‘What…what’s that mean?’ asked Lind.

  ‘Forget it. How did you come by these?’

  ‘I found them,’ said Lind simply. ‘Straight up, Mr Davies. In the saddle bag of my bike. The day after she vanished. I opened it up. And there they were.’

  ‘How did you know they were hers?’ inquired Davies.

  ‘Ah, you can’t catch me like that,’ said Lind. The denial was made with something near waggish triumph. A finger came up but he stopped short of shaking it. ‘I’d seen her in the club, like playing table tennis and netball and that, and all the boys used to have a look. See a flash of the girl’s pants. You know, like lads do…’

  ‘Yes, yes, they do,’ agreed Davies solemnly. ‘But you were her boyfriend, weren’t you, Mr Lind? Her regular?’

  ‘Well sort of,’ said Lind doubtfully. Davies could visualize him wearing swimming-trunks in the bath. ‘But that’s not the reason I know they were Celia’s. It wasn’t like that, see. I was a bit of a little gentleman, you understand, and I liked to be decent about things. I still do. I thought of her in a…well, pure sort of way.’

  ‘Except when she was playing table tennis or netball. Then you had a look with the other lads?’

  Two small red spots, almost like those of a clown, appeared on Lind’s white cheeks.

  ‘Now, now, Mr Davies. I didn’t come here to have you accusing me,’ he said primly. ‘I came because I wanted to help.’

  ‘It must be a long walk,’ commented Davies dryly. ‘It’s taken you twenty-five years. Why didn’t you take this article to the police at the time, Mr Lind? You knew they were looking for her clothes.’

  ‘Not right away, I didn’t know. Because it was some time before they started to get really worried about her,’ said Lind, hurriedly. ‘I kept them first of all because I knew they were hers and I just…wanted them. I wanted to keep them. Can you understand that?’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the police at the time?’ insisted Davies heavily. ‘You must have known it was the proper thing to do.’

  Lind put his face against his fingers. He had strangely effeminate hands for a capstan operator. ‘I was scared to. The coppers…the police came and took statements and I was frightened out of my life. I thought if I’d shown them these they would have jumped to the conclusion that I did it. And they could hang you in those days, Mr Davies. I didn’t want to hang by mistake. So I didn’t tell them…I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t told you now.’

  Davies ignored it. ‘Where have you kept them?’ he said. ‘Hidden.’

  ‘In the loft,’ said Lind. ‘In an old suitcase, with a lot of other stuff.’

  ‘You live in a flat,’ said Davies. ‘How long have you had a loft?’

  ‘At my mother’s place,’ said Lind smartly with that little touch of triumph recurring. ‘You didn’t give me time to tell you, did you. In my mum’s loft. That’s where they’ve been. I spend quite a lot of time at my mum’s. In fact I may go there for good soon. My wife’s getting on my nerves, you see. A couple of weeks ago she was actually fighting—fighting with some man on the stairs outside the flat. None of the neighbours think she’s any good, Mr Davies.’

  Davies tried not to swallow hard but he did. He retreated into the overcoat to hide the lump as it went down. ‘How did this garment get in your saddle bag then?’ he asked.

  ‘Somebody put them there,�
� said Lind simply. ‘As a joke or something. Before they realized than something had happened to her, I thought she’d done it herself. It was the sort of teasing thing she’d do.’

  Davies said, ‘She was a bit of a… teaser, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I would never say that,’ sniffed Lind. ‘I didn’t think like that. And I still don’t. I used to think of her very purely. That was the trouble.’

  Davies nodded. ‘Very gallant I’m sure. Right, it looks as though I’m going to have to get all this down in a statement at some time. Is there anything else, Mr Lind?’

  He had asked the question with no hope, but immediately he was overjoyed he had put it. Lind half decided to say something, then thought not, then, looking up to see Davies’s eyes jutting out at him, he ventured: ‘Yes, there was, sort of.’

  ‘Well, what, sort of?’

  ‘It might be nothing, Mr Davies. But my mum reckons that about ten or twelve years ago she was sitting in one of those shelters in Glazebrook Park, you know the little round shelters, kind of divided into compartments. She was sitting there, having a rest walking back from the shops, when she heard two women talking in the next bit, the other side of the wooden dividing piece.’ He glanced up to see if Davies was interested. The policeman’s eyes were on him. ‘And my mum says she heard one woman saying to the other that her husband had seen Celia walking along the canal towpath with a man. And this bloke had his arm around her. And this woman reckons her husband told the police, when they was asking for information, but she heard nothing more about it. Don’t you think that’s funny, Mr Davies?

  Davies closed his eyes as if it might stop his heart beating so loudly. ‘This woman,’ he asked. ‘Did your mother know who she was?’

  ‘She saw the two women as they got up and walked away,’ said Lind. ‘And she knew one of them slightly. But she didn’t know which was the one who had said it. The woman she knew was called Mrs Whethers, and she lived somewhere down by the Kensal Green Empire, that was. It was years ago, mind. She might not be there now.’