Cold, Lone and Still mb-64

by Gladys Mitchell

  9: Bull Before the Beaks

  « ^ »

  How I detest that detective-inspector!’ said Hera, when she and Sandy were having drinks at my flat and talking things over. ‘Do you know he as good as told me that I had had an affair with Carbridge on the tour? How dare he?’

  ‘He wanted me to admit that I knew about it and that I got shirty with the man,’ I said. ‘He’s a menace with his rotten, crawling suggestions. He’s got it in for me all right.’

  ‘It’s not as though you can help falling over dead bodies wherever you go,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Look, the subject isn’t funny!’ I retorted.

  ‘I didn’t mean it to be but it is rather unnerving when you repeat your effects.’

  ‘Mind you, if Bingley had known Carbridge, he would lay off this suggestion that you could have looked twice at the bloke,’ I said. ‘Now if it had been Todd—’

  ‘What about Todd?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Well, nothing except that he’s a trier and people who try and try again do quite often succeed,’ I said. I looked at her. She was thirty-one, but she appeared to be years younger. Her hair was as silken as that of a well-cared-for young child, her features were beautifully moulded, her hazel eyes were large and romantically soulful, but her mouth and chin were firm to the point of obstinacy. I have never seen a more self-contradictory face. That, and her perfect body, fascinated me.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘are you having second thoughts about the goods in the shop window? Others may admire them more than you seem to do.’

  ‘There have been times when I’ve liked you better,’ I said, but, when I had said this, her mood changed.

  ‘We mustn’t fight at a time like this,’ she said. ‘We’re all being made to jump through hoops by that detestable detective-inspector. Take me out to dinner this evening and let’s forget all about him and that boring man Carbridge, too, although I suppose I ought not to call him boring now that he’s dead.’

  ‘So far as I’m concerned,’ I said, ‘a dead Carbridge is about the least boring object I can think of at present. He’s put us all in the cart.’

  Sandy, who had been listening to the conversation without attempting to interrupt it, said that he was very glad not to have been at the party and that he did not like parties anyhow. Now that he had included himself in the discussion, he added that it was always useful to have somebody on the sideline who could follow the game without having to join in, and that what interested him most, apart from my involvement with the affair, was when and why the electric lightbulb in that passage had been removed.

  ‘The murderer must have done that, and it was just your bad luck that you happened to be the first person to go along there,’ he said kindly.

  ‘And that only because the idiot of a caretaker or whatever he calls himself misdirected me,’ I said. ‘In any case he should have replaced that bulb. He knew that it had gone.’

  ‘I suppose he didn’t send you along the passage on purpose for you to find the body?’ said Hera. ‘I mean, when you come to think of it, he himself was by far the most likely person to have removed that electric lightbulb. He knew it had gone, as you say. If he’s an innocent man, why hadn’t he replaced it?’

  ‘People do put off doing little jobs like that,’ said Sandy. ‘I expect he thought it would be time enough when term started.’

  ‘But he knew there was a party in progress and people might need to go along that passage,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Well, I hope that beastly Bingley grilled him as well and truly as he did the rest of us,’ said Hera.

  ‘Nothing else will happen until after the inquest,’ said Sandy. ‘I suppose everybody was able to produce an alibi?’

  ‘Alibis are useless when we don’t know when the murder was committed,’ I said, ‘and Bingley has been as close as an oyster about that. Besides, you need witnesses to support an alibi.’

  ‘Well, you and I are on safe ground there,’ said Hera. ‘Carbridge must have been killed before the party was properly in progress, perhaps immediately upon his arrival. Nobody supposes you went along that passage in the dark, murdered him without Bull hearing anything, and then went straight back and reported to him as caretaker that you had found a body. Anyway, you and I were in one another’s company from about midday onwards. We shopped in Oxford Street, had lunch together, saw a film and then went on to the party. There must be plenty of people — shop girls, the waiter, the box-office girl, the cinema attendant, the taxi-driver who took us from the Haymarket to the poly hall of residence — who can swear to us.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Sandy, ‘but you know what people are like. Ten to one, none of them will have taken enough notice to be able to remember you two.’

  ‘You’re not very complimentary to us,’ said Hera. ‘All the same, I don’t trust Bingley an inch. He was perfectly beastly, in a smarmy kind of way, when he questioned me.’ Her interview with him had been shorter than mine, but it appeared to have been conducted on much the same lines and she had had difficulty, she said, in concealing from him my discovery of the other body in the ruins, let alone the episode at Crianlarich.

  ‘And I believe he knows I was fobbing him off,’ she added. ‘He may not be all that intelligent, but he’s like a terrier at a rat-hole when it knows there’s something there and is determined to get at it.’

  ‘There’s only one thing to do, if Comrie thinks he is likely to be in any kind of trouble,’ said Sandy. ‘You had better get Dame Beatrice on your side, Comrie.’ I suppose we gazed at him, for he went on: ‘Don’t you see, man? This will be right up her street. You saw a body in Scotland and thought it was a dead Carbridge. You find another body in London and, dammit, it is a dead Carbridge. You’ll be a classic case of ESP and meat and drink to a psychiatrist.’

  ‘He says she has a wonderful cook and some vintage claret,’ said Hera. ‘He also speaks highly of a very attractive secretary. I’m not sure I want him to go there again.’

  ‘The secretary is married and middle-aged,’ I said. ‘As for being a museum piece for a psychiatrist, that doesn’t appeal to me either.’

  ‘Well, there’s an obverse and a reverse to every coin. If you really think that Bingley has cast you as the number one suspect — although you’re probably quite wrong about that — why don’t you appeal to Dame Beatrice’s other great interest? She’s a noted criminologist. She’ll see you right if you are in trouble and are innocent.’

  ‘Do you doubt my innocence?’ I asked angrily. I was still raw from Bingley’s questioning and some of Hera’s criticism.

  ‘Of course not, but I think you’re mistaken about Bingley. He is bound to question everybody who was at the party. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear that he is chasing up that other fellow — you know, the students’ bear-leader you told me about, the fellow who didn’t go to the party. Now that’s what I call a very suspicious circumstance. Why was he the only one not to turn up?’

  ‘Considering that he lives in Scotland,’ said Hera, ‘I can quite understand that he wouldn’t bother to come. I expect Bingley is quite satisfied with that explanation.’

  ‘If anybody who was at the party killed Carbridge,’ went on Sandy, ‘surely it’s far more likely to have been somebody who was with Carbridge all the time on that tour, rather than you, Comrie, or, come to that, you, Hera.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Hera.

  ‘I was only using you as an instance. Now what about that chap Todd? From what you tell me, he and Carbridge teamed up right at the beginning of the tour—’

  ‘And, according to what Trickett told me, fell out later when they both took a fancy to Patsy Carlow.’

  ‘Patsy Carlow?’ said Hera, laughing. ‘What nonsense! Of course they didn’t! How could they, when —’

  ‘When you were there?’ said Sandy. ‘Yes, but, Hera dear, you were there so little of the time, and, in any case, you were bespoke. Both of them knew that.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t beh
ave at Crianlarich as though they knew it,’ she said, looking at me.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ I said. ‘Can’t we forget Crianlarich?’

  ‘No more than Mary Tudor could forget Calais,’ Hera answered.

  ‘I think Hera has made her point,’ said Sandy. ‘Neither of the men was really serious about Patsy.’

  ‘Those Turkish trousers and the two-piece gilded bra!’ said Hera. ‘Nobody could be serious about those or what was inside them. Sorry! I’m being cheap and vulgar!’

  ‘Yes, you are, rather,’ I said, ‘but, passing lightly on, suppose we let Sandy pursue his theme. Men quarrel about things other than girls.’

  ‘I don’t think I have any more to say, but I do think we ought to keep Todd in mind. Didn’t you say he was a former member of the poly hall of residence? That means he was no stranger to that passage.’

  ‘He’s also tall enough to have removed that lightbulb without using a ladder,’ I said. ‘He could have known that the students’ entrance was always kept unlocked until dark, so it was available to anybody who knew the ropes. What is more, there is a back staircase up from the students’ entrance to the passage where I found Carbridge’s body.’

  ‘So Todd could have taken Carbridge into the house that way, led him into the passage and murdered him —’ said Sandy.

  ‘And then removed the lightbulb, leaving the body in a dark passage all ready for Comrie to fall over it,’ said Hera.

  ‘It sounds the perfect solution. Oh, Sandy, do go on!’

  ‘I think not,’ said Sandy. ‘Let’s get the inquest over and then I’ll make my point. Once we are told exactly when Carbridge died, we shall know where everybody stands.’

  The inquest did not take long. As no relatives of the dead man had shown up, the body was formally identified by Todd and nothing else was taken except the medical evidence. Here the police surgeon was backed up by the pathologist who had made a more detailed examination of the body. Their conclusions did not help very much. Death could have occurred four hours or even more before the police surgeon saw the body and the time factor was complicated by the fact that — as we discovered for the first time — the murderer had attempted to strangulate Carbridge before finishing him off with a fatal stabbing. All the same, it still looked as though the attack must have been made before the party had begun and I said as much to Sandy. He agreed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Carbridge must have got there early and, if he did, so did somebody else, of course. The question is — why?’

  ‘I don’t suppose we shall ever know why.’

  The verdict at the inquest was murder by person or persons unknown. Three days later I read in the paper that Bingley had arrested Bull, the caretaker.

  ‘Bingley must be crazy,’ I said, ‘or else his superiors have been leaning on him and he felt he had to make a quick arrest. It’s true that a foolish chap such as Carbridge seems an unlikely victim, but murdered he was, so somebody must have done it. All the same, Bull seems even more unlikely as a murderer. I could understand Bingley’s action if Bull had mistaken Carbridge for an unlawful intruder and coshed him. I expect these caretaker chaps keep a bludgeon of some sort handy in these lawless times. Cold steel between the shoulders doesn’t fit the picture, somehow, and as for a chap of Bull’s age trying (and pretty near succeeding) to throttle a younger man —’

  ‘The police must have something to go on. They don’t arrest people on no grounds whatever. What was Bull doing, did you say, when you first spoke to him?’ asked Sandy.

  ‘Sitting at a little table eating fish and chips and reading a newspaper.’

  ‘I should think the magistrates would dismiss the charge when he’s brought before them.’

  ‘I doubt that very much. Murder is such a dreadful matter that they will be bound to treat it seriously. Besides, the defence will reserve their evidence and when that happens the thing is sure to go to trial. I feel as though I’m partly responsible for the poor fellow’s arrest. I wish anybody but I had found the body.’

  ‘Yes, that was your bad luck, as we’ve said before, but it doesn’t matter who found it. Bull would still have been arrested. Surely nobody else would have been on the premises four hours, or more, before the party was due to kick off.’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t they, though!’ I said. ‘We have been told that students had access all day if they wanted to get on with some work.’

  ‘It was a Saturday, remember.’

  ‘Even so, I doubt whether that would count for anything if a student had a job to finish — mounting and labelling specimens or photographs, something pleasant and interesting of that sort, perhaps. Don’t forget, either, that lots of shops close at one o’clock on Saturdays, so there could have been students coming in with provisions and drinks for the party. I don’t think Bull was the only pebble on the beach that Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘But if there was all that coming and going, how would the murderer not have been spotted?’

  ‘Because — I’ve been thinking about that while we’ve been talking — because of where the throttling was actually carried out. Remember where the dark passage led? I think the first attack was made in the Gents. Then the murderer removed the body to the passage with the intention of leaving it there for somebody else to find when he had removed the electric light-bulb. He must have had a bit of a facer when he discovered that Carbridge was not quite dead. He knew that he dared not let him recover, hence the stabbing.’

  ‘With a knife already in his possession?’

  ‘Lots of fellows carry knives quite legitimately. We don’t know what kind of knife the murder weapon was. I suppose the police have kept that a secret until it’s produced at the trial.’

  ‘I didn’t see a knife sticking out of the body, but I didn’t look very closely. His face was enough for me. Strangulation isn’t a very lovely thing to gaze upon.’

  ‘I sympathise with you. Horrible!’

  ‘Yes, it certainly was. I wonder what the police had to say to those two students?’

  ‘What two students?’

  ‘The boy and girl who were slinging the food-stuffs about. They must have gone past the entrance to the passage half a dozen times or more while the party was in progress and past Bull’s table in that corridor. According to the medical evidence, the weapon found sticking in the body was a very ordinary kitchen knife, but they don’t specify what kind of kitchen knife. I mean, they come in all sizes and have various uses. From the interest the police took in James Minch and his sgian dubh, I visualise a small vegetable knife. There must be one in every kitchen in the land and it would be very difficult to trace this one to its natural home, for I bet it didn’t come from the hall of residence kitchen.’

  ‘And even if it had,’ said Sandy, ‘the two students who were operating in that kitchen on the day of the party wouldn’t have missed it. There were no vegetables to prepare.’

  ‘Of course there were! What about peeling and chopping up the onions for the hamburgers?’

  ‘Do you put onions with ham?’

  ‘The original hamburgers were named after Hamburg, I believe, and did not contain ham. They incorporated minced steak and chopped onions. I remember eating one at, of all places, the London Zoo when England first took to them.’

  The set-up at the police court was in some respects like that at the inquest and in some ways very different. For one thing there seemed to be police everywhere. This, and the number of solicitors present, could be accounted for by the fact that Bull’s case was only one of several which were to be heard that morning, although none of the others dealt with an accusation of murder.

  In place of the coroner, his clerk and the medical witnesses, there was a bench of five magistrates, and in front of them at a lower level sat the magistrates’ clerk and a couple of typists. The press was well represented, too, and the public gallery was full. Escorted by a policeman who remained with him during the proceedings, Bull appeared in the dock from down below, where I suppose
the cells were, and in place of the coroner’s jury there were Bingley and his sergeant, and next to where they sat was the witness box.

  A selection of drunks, muggers and petty pilferers, together with a couple of motorists who had exceeded the speed limit in a built-up area, were all dealt with before it came to Bull’s turn. He had been produced in answer to a succession of what appeared to me to be totally unnecessary police calls, and the policeman acting as warrant officer gave the magistrates the case number.

  Bull was asked whether his name was Henry Thomas Bull, agreed that it was and then Bingley read out the charge. Bull pleaded Not Guilty and then the prosecuting solicitor told the story and I was called from the public gallery to bear witness to the discovery of Carbridge’s body. I took the oath, agreed to my name and to the date on which the party had been held.

  ‘What were you doing when you discovered the body?’

  ‘I was going along to have a cigarette.’

  ‘Were you acquainted with the layout of the premises?’

  ‘No, I had never been there before.’

  ‘What made you go down an unlighted passage?’

  ‘Just chance, I suppose. I was looking for a way out to the open air.’

  ‘And in the passage you stumbled over the body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I struck a match and saw that it was Carbridge.’

  ‘I will take you back to the previous answer. You say you were not familiar with the premises?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Yet you chose to go blundering down a totally unlighted passage?’