In the Morning I'll Be Gone

by Adrian McKinty

  “Even with MS he did the court stuff?”

  Wright nodded slowly and looked at me as if I were a simpleton.

  “Oh, I get it. And I’ll bet he hardly ever lost.”

  “Hardly ever,” Wright agreed.

  “All right, if I can switch gears for a minute . . . The burglary that took place here on 23 December 1980. Do you have any idea what was taken?”

  “I know exactly what was taken. Brenda and I made a full inventory and called the police immediately.”

  I flipped open my notebook. “The Antrim robbery squad said it was an ashtray, speakers, and a cashbox. How much was in the cashbox?”

  “About fifteen pounds.”

  “And the ashtray was worth how much?”

  “I don’t know. A quid?”

  “And the speakers?”

  “A fiver?”

  “How did they break in?”

  He hesitated.

  “Go on, tell me!”

  “Through the window in the bathroom at the back. There were so many layers of paint on it we were . . . we were never able to properly close it.”

  “So they didn’t even have to smash the window?”

  “No. They didn’t, they just had to push it up and climb through.”

  “Don’t you have a duty of care to protect your clients’ documents?”

  “James didn’t— It had been like that for years . . . a decade . . .”

  I read through my notes. “As well as the thefts, apparently there was some vandalism in the office?”

  “Well, we thought it was vandalism.”

  “What else would you call it?”

  “You could also call it the actus reus of a deliberate criminal act.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Because they did it on purpose.”

  “Am I to understand that something else was taken from your office that night. Something that you didn’t tell the police about?”

  “We didn’t think anything else had been taken at the time,” he said shiftily.

  “At the time?”

  He nodded.

  And I knew that this was it.

  This was bloody it.

  This was the case.

  I stopped doodling the picture of him in my notebook and put my pencil down.

  I looked at Mr. Wright and smiled.

  He didn’t smile back. His eyes were black, beady, suspicious.

  Behind him on Antrim High Street a green Saracen armored personnel carrier crawled past the window like a creature from the Jurassic.

  “But you subsequently found out . . .” I began for him.

  “The filing cabinet had been smashed and toppled over but in it we discovered that one of the, er, files was missing.”

  “Which file?”

  “A folder that contained wills.”

  “Which wills, Mr. Wright?”

  “The folder containing the ‘M’ wills had been taken.”

  “Wills beginning with the surname ‘M’?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you find this out?”

  “After the Christmas holidays in January.”

  “And you never thought to tell the police?”

  “We considered it a confidential matter between our clients and us. We didn’t want it generally known. And by that time the police had caught the burglars and taken them into custody. I, uh, I made a few discreet enquiries but the missing wills had not shown up in the tinkers’ caravan. Maybe they’d hoped there would be money in there or . . . I don’t know. Tinkers are illiterate so they probably just burned them or something. That, at any rate, was our thought.”

  “You told the clients that their wills had gone missing?”

  “Of course! We called them all immediately when we discovered what had happened.”

  “Were there copies of these wills?”

  Wright looked shamefaced. “Yes, but the notarized copies were in the same file.”

  “You stored the copies in the same place as the originals?” I asked with a tone of amazement.

  “I’m afraid so. We have rectified that policy since then.”

  “How many wills are we talking about here?”

  “Twenty-one wills and four codicils.”

  “If the wills were gone and the copies were gone how did you know what was missing?”

  “From our accounts. We cross-checked with our account books. Fortunately every will had to be paid for. And the account book had the fee that was paid to the solicitor and the fee to the official witness.”

  “What’s an official witness?”

  “Under Northern Irish common law neither the person who draws up the will nor the witness can be a beneficiary to that will. You need a solicitor and a witness to make every will legally binding.”

  “And the witness and the solicitor are both paid a fee?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is this witness?”

  “When I’m drawing up a will here in the office I generally use Brenda. She’s a notary public.”

  “So when you found out that someone had stolen the twenty-one wills and the four codicils, what did you do?” I asked.

  “We called up each of the clients, told them the situation, and offered to make them a new will for free. It was the least we could do to make restitution,” he said with some complacency returning to his voice now.

  “Did anyone not take you up on your offer to make a new will?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Do you want a minute to look up your files?”

  “No. I remember who it was. Only one client didn’t take us up on our offer.”

  “Who was that?”

  “I’m not sure that I’m at liberty to—”

  “I’m conducting a murder investigation here, Mr. Wright.”

  “I appreciate that, but there is also the issue of attorney–client priv—”

  “Is there? If he didn’t employ you to make this will for him you didn’t have a privileged relationship. You can’t protect a negative, can you? A judge will probably see it my way, and of course on learning about this sorry affair he’ll have to refer your lack of candor in the reporting of this missing file to the Law Society. Won’t he? What do you think?”

  “No, I—”

  “Who didn’t want you to make them another will, Mr. Wright?”

  He sighed. “Harper McCullough.”

  The tips of my fingers felt cold. “Why did he turn you down?” I asked.

  “His father had made the will but his father had had a stroke and was not expected to survive. He couldn’t put him through the process of making another will. I understood completely and I refunded him the money that his father had paid for the will and testament.”

  “Do you happen to know what was in that will, Mr. Wright?”

  “No, I do not, and even if I did, I certainly would not be obliged to tell you that.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “No.”

  “Because you didn’t make the will.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Could he feel it?

  The electricity?

  Could he see my hands shaking. The fire in my eyes?

  “Can I hazard a guess here, Mr. Wright, that the will was made by your partner James Mulvenna and the official witness to the will was the late Lizzie Fitzpatrick,” I said slowly and deliberately.

  “I believe that’s right.”

  “Would you mind checking for me in your account book?”

  He left the office and came back with a wide black leather double-entry ledger.

  “There is it is. The third row down. August 1979. A fee of 130 pounds for Mr. Mulvenna and 20 pounds for Miss Fitzpatrick.”

  I looked where he was pointing. The will had been made on August 4, 1979, drawn up at the home of Tommy McCullough, 2 Loughshore Road, Ballykeel Village, County Antrim, by James Mulvenna, solicitor-at-law, and witnessed by Lizzie Fitzpatrick, clerk and notary.

 
“I’d like to get a photocopy of that, if I may,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking.

  It was difficult getting the wide account book on to the Xerox machine but we managed it.

  I took the photocopy and thanked Mr. Wright for his time.

  “Is that it?” he said.

  “That’s it for now,” I told him.

  I ran, sprinted, to Antrim Town Hall and found the Births and Deaths office.

  I looked up the death certificates for James Mulvenna and Tommy McCullough.

  Mulvenna had died on November 1, 1980, from “natural causes, due to complications related to multiple sclerosis.” The notes on the certificate referred to a hospital stay of sixteen days prior to his death. To my line of thinking James Mulvenna’s death was almost certainly not murder.

  The death certificate for Tommy McCullough was equally innocuous. He had died at home on January 8, 1981. Only thirteen days after Lizzie’s “accident.” Tommy McCullough’s death had officially been recorded as occurring from “post-stroke bronchopneumonia.”

  I photocopied both death certificates and drove to Antrim Hospital. I flashed my warrant card and asked whether Dr. Kent was in.

  He was.

  “502,” the nurse said.

  I legged it up five flights.

  Caught my breath.

  I found him in a dingy fifth-floor office with a compensatory view over Antrim, Lough Neagh, and most of western Ulster.

  “Inspector Duffy, what can I do for—” he began, and stopped when he saw my face.

  I handed him the death certificates. “I need you to pull some records for me. I need to know if either of these deaths was in any way suspicious.”

  Dr. Kent read the death certificates and shook his head. “They were both signed by Dr. Moran. He’s a competent physician.”

  “I want you to pull the files, Dr. Kent.”

  “The files won’t help that much. Without an autopsy it will be impossible—”

  “I’m sure you’ll do your best, Doctor. I’ll wait here for you.”

  He came back an hour later.

  He had put on a white coat and had brushed his wild hair, presumably to impress the people in charge of the records.

  I vacated his chair and let him sit back down.

  “Well?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I have nothing conclusive.”

  “What have you got?”

  “I think it’s fair to say that James Mulvenna died from advanced multiple sclerosis and not from any outside agency. This was his sixth hospital visit in three years. He was a very sick man.”

  “And Tommy McCullough?”

  “That death is a little more puzzling. Certainly many stroke patients do die from bronchopneumonia . . .”

  “But . . .”

  He began reading from the file. “Mr. McCullough had his first stroke all the way back in 1974 and had almost completely recovered. His second stroke occurred on 1 October 1980. He was admitted to the casualty ward of Antrim Hospital at eleven a.m. on 1 October and transferred four days later to a general ward. He was eventually released into his son’s care on 30 November. He had lost most of his vocalization and many of his motor skills, which is common in stroke patients, but when he was released he was able to sit up without difficulty, he was not on a ventilator, and he could eat solid food.”

  “In other words he was out of danger?”

  “It seemed that way . . . Shall I continue?”

  “Please do.”

  “He had regular physical therapy and outpatient visits, including one on 7 January 1981, just a day before his death” Dr. Kent said, and looked at me for emphasis.

  “Is that significant?”

  “Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. Very significant. The nurse was Aileen Laverty. I know Aileen a wee bit. A very competent sort. According to the file on Mr. McCullough, Nurse Laverty took a sample of Mr. McCullough’s blood on 7 January during that visit. The blood was tested and the blood work showed no signs of pneumonia.”

  “Would it be possible that he could have developed a fatal strain of pneumonia in the next twenty-four hours after the blood work?”

  “Entirely possible.”

  “But unlikely?”

  “I’d rather say not very probable.”

  “You think we could talk to Nurse Laverty?” I said.

  “I’ll see if she’s on call. This might not be one of her days.”

  He paged Nurse Laverty and when she came up to the fifth floor I found that she was a staff nurse in her forties, thin, dark haired, serious.

  I told her who I was and showed her the file and, yes, she remembered Mr. Tommy McCullough.

  “Really? You must have had hundreds of patients since then,” I said with devil’s advocate skepticism.

  “Even so, I remember him,” she said with an attractive West Cork accent. “I had visited him several times in an outpatient capacity. He was making good progress. His death surprised me.”

  “Did you think it was suspicious?” I asked.

  “No. Not suspicious, but surprising. He had seemed in very good spirits and when we left he said ‘goodbye,’ which was the first word I’d heard him say.”

  “And in the blood sample you didn’t find pneumonia?”

  “To be honest I wasn’t even going to test his blood. When a patient is under watch for pneumonia normally you would take a sputum sample. But Mr. McCullough wasn’t coughing or having difficulty breathing. I only took a test as an extra precaution. Sometimes you do that with elderly patients. Patients who are between sixty and ninety.”

  “What if they’re over ninety?”

  Nurse Laverty looked at Dr. Kent. He cleared his throat and didn’t say anything. But I could see what they were getting at. If they were over ninety they let the pneumonia take them.

  “So you sent his blood test off and it came back negative and then he died?” I asked.

  “No, it takes a week to get the tests back from Belfast. He was dead and buried by then.”

  “And when you did get the test back? Did you tell anyone of your suspicions?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have any suspicions. His white count was low. He showed no evidence of pneumonia but the test is not foolproof. And he was an elderly man who’d had a stroke. Pneumonia can come on a patient very suddenly, and in this case it must have done so.”

  I asked her a few questions about Harper McCullough, his demeanor, his behavior, but she had seen nothing but good things.

  I excused her and let her go back to her shift.

  “How many elderly patients die of bronchopneumonia in this hospital, Dr. Kent?”

  “I don’t know, quite a few I suppose.”

  “Would you say that the majority of elderly patients die of pneumonia?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if Dr. Moran found a stroke patient dead at home in his bed, he probably would have written bronchopneumonia as a useful catch-all on the death certificate, especially if the distraught son of that stroke patient didn’t authorize an autopsy.”

  “He could have written bronchopneumonia or cardiac arrest or just death from natural causes, something like that,” Dr. Kent concurred.

  “If Mr. McCullough had been suffocated, would it have been obvious?”

  “Deliberately murdered?” he said, taken aback.

  “Yes. With a pillow or a blanket or a plastic bag over the head. Something like that.”

  “A plastic bag would have left ligature marks perhaps but a pillow . . . aye, you could easily mistake suffocation for death by bronchopneumonia. Of course, an autopsy would have told you the truth.”

  It was getting late now and the sun had carved up the sky between Lough Neagh and the Bluestack Mountains in Donegal. “You think there’s been a murder, Duffy? What’s this all about?” Dr. Kent asked me.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s about. It’s about three deaths in three months and two of them more than a little suspect.”

  “Which three deaths?�
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  “James Mulvenna, Lizzie Fitzpatrick, and Tommy McCullough.”

  “But what’s the connection?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out, Doctor,” I said.

  “I knew I was right! I can help you,” he said.

  “No. This is a police matter. There’s no proof of wrongdoing here. And you won’t be saying or doing anything. If I need your help I’ll bring you in.”

  He nodded.

  “I have to go,” I said. “Thank you, Doctor, you’ve been of great assistance.”

  I went down to reception, called directory assistance, and got the home address for Dr. Moran. Another enquiry and I got the phone number for Antrim Rugby Club. Two more calls got me the rugby club chairman, Andrew Platt, who happened to be at the club right now.

  I asked him whether he could wait there for me for an hour or so. He said it was no problem.

  I went outside, checked under the Beemer for bombs, and drove to Dr. Moran’s house, reaching 80 mph in a 30 zone. Mock-Tudor four-bedroom on a cul de sac. Moran a married man, three kids, all of whom were under five. Grey hair, thin, cheerful. A damn sight less cheerful when I hit him with the possibility that Tommy McCullough had been murdered. No, he didn’t recall the details of the case. I showed him the file. Was there evidence of pneumonia? Not as such. As such? Well, how else could you explain the poor man’s sudden demise? How else? Read the News of the World any given Sunday.

  I drove to the rugby club.

  I met Andrew Platt in the rugby club’s oak bar, which was a long, elegant affair decorated with club ties, trophies, and rugby shirts from touring parties. Platt was quite the Colonel Blimp character. Handlebar moustache, puffy face, chrome dome, black blazer, trousers too high and too tight. He was about sixty years old, which would have put him slap bang in WWII.

  He shook my hand and offered me a drink.

  “Whatever you’re having,” I said, and the barkeep made us two double gin and tonics.

  I thanked the barman for the drink and told him to scram while I asked Platt some questions.

  When he was gone I went straight to the rugby club dinner of Christmas 1980: what time had Harper McCullough got there, what time had he left?