Death Sends for the Doctor (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  “You seem to have made a conquest, old man.”

  The life of the hotel seemed to be flowing more slowly. They had to wait for their main course. The maid apologised to Cromwell.

  “There’s been a bit of trouble this afternoon, sir. The boss isn’t himself and it’s put things a bit askew. I’m doin’ my best.”

  Littlejohn lit his pipe over coffee.

  “I’d better get across and see Macfarlane. I’ll leave you to write to your family while I’m away. I’ll have to telephone to my wife. Can’t seem to find time for a letter.”

  At home at Hampstead, Mrs. Littlejohn would probably have the windows of the flat wide open enjoying the cool air. The dog would be following her around as she made an evening meal for herself. In her slippers and housecoat, with perhaps a tasty omelette frying in the pan …

  The telephone rang. It was Dorange. The gendarmerie post at Cagnes confirmed the visits of Dr. Beharrell to the Auberge du Bon Pasteur nine years ago. A bit of a task, but the police records of hotel visitors showed it all. It had been common gossip that Claudine Liautaud had been Beharrell’s mistress. He had promised her rather straight-laced uncle, who kept the hotel, that he would marry her. However, he’d returned next year accompanied by a chauffeur, and Claudine had preferred the chauffeur to his master and left for England to be married to him. Her aunt and uncle had quarrelled with her about it, and she had not visited them since. That was all …

  The square was still quiet and deserted. Plumtree tramped past on his final patrol. A woman with a large bunch of lilac made her way towards the town. A few stars were showing overhead, lights appeared here and there in the upper rooms where the caretakers lived, and in Beharrell’s old home. Someone was playing the organ in St. Hilary’s. Littlejohn crossed and knocked on the door of Bank House.

  Mrs. Trott led Littlejohn into the room he had seen before, which stood behind the dead doctor’s drawing-room and had been made into Macfarlane’s den. The doctor was sitting in a comfortable chair in front of the gas fire. He rose to greet the Superintendent.

  Littlejohn had not seen Macfarlane at such close quarters before. A tall, well-built, athletic man in his early forties. A long, craggy, clean-shaven face, square features, a large straight nose, and a heavy fleshy mouth. The eyes were greenish grey and a little too close set. But the thing you saw first was the shock of stiff red hair cut en brosse.

  Macfarlane shook hands and waved Littlejohn into a chair on the other side of the fire. He took glasses and a whisky bottle from a corner cupboard.

  “You’ll have to take it with water, Superintendent. Things are in a muddle here and we’ve run out of accessories, except tonic water, which is an abomination with whisky.”

  No trace of Scottish accent; no trace of any accent at all. Just a vigorous, monotonous voice, with a slight lisp.

  “With the old doctor dead, I suppose you’re very busy now, Dr. Macfarlane … Good health …”

  “Good health, Superintendent … Yes, I’m busy. It’s the largest practice in Caldicott and subject to the formal approval of the National Health people, the doctor left it to me. I reckon I’ll have to get some help to see me through. An assistant or else one of these new apprentices.”

  “How long have you been with Dr. Beharrell?”

  “Thirteen years. I ought to have been a partner by now. However, he paid me very well.”

  “You got on well together, doctor?”

  “Very well indeed. He was a good scout. I hope you soon catch his murderer. It was a foul trick to kill him in his own house.”

  The curtains were drawn and the gas fire hummed quietly. Outside, the sounds of caterwauling in the back garden.

  “You like Caldicott, sir?”

  The doctor took another good drink of his whisky.

  “Yes. I’ve been here a long time and I’ve never had any inclination to move. I guess I’ll have to settle for the rest of my life, now. Have you seen much of the place since you’ve been here, sir?”

  “Funnily enough, no. We’ve been so occupied in Upper Square that we haven’t had time to go down town at all. My colleague went to a football match the other evening, but I’ve not stirred away from the square since I got here.”

  “Interesting place, Upper Square. Quite cut off from the lower town. There’s a sharp rift between the two, as well. Although the old aristocrats who used to occupy it have been replaced by monied people of a different sort, this square is still a bit select. Expensive hats, tailors, medical and surgical consultants, the best hotel, the lawyers. The kind of things the working-classes in the town below profess to despise, but secretly admire a little. Dr. Beharrell, of course, had a large working-class practice. He understood the humbler folk; he came from their class himself. That’s why they’re all interested in this murder case. Had it been one of the Pochins or Gralam who’d been killed, the people in the lower town couldn’t care less.”

  Macfarlane filled up the glasses again and Littlejohn began to smoke his pipe.

  “It’s a small town, doctor?”

  “Yes. A little more than three thousand people. Our practice extends into the farms and houses of the countryside, too. Yes, it’s a small place. It’s so limited that it seems silly to take a car out of a garage to get from one side of it to the other. But that’s what people do in Upper Square. Just as, in the old days, the patricians of Caldicott drove to church in their carriages from one side of the square to St. Hilary’s on the other. There are little snobbish coteries here, too. The survival of traditions seems strange in these days, but it goes on.”

  “Everybody knows everybody else and all their business?”

  “That’s true, Superintendent. You’ll doubtless have found yourself how much people here know of the private life of the late Dr. Beharrell, for instance?”

  He looked with a trace of cunning in his eyes at Littlejohn.

  “Yes, that’s right. May I ask if you have any idea who killed Dr. Beharrell, sir?”

  “None whatever. Have you, sir?”

  Macfarlane lolled back in his chair and took another good swig of his whisky and water.

  “Not exactly. We’ve discovered that the doctor and Mr. Vincent Pochin had a fight in the doctor’s bedroom just before the doctor died.”

  “Did they, now? And them old friends. It must have been something very serious to cause them to come to blows.”

  “It was. I’ll tell you in a minute. Meanwhile, are you the Pochins’ doctor?”

  “No. They have a fellow from Peterborough. One of their own class. The Pochins regard themselves as the old aristocracy. They came of a family of bankers who once lived in this very house. A queer lot. In my comings and goings in Caldicott all the years I’ve been here, I’ve heard a bit about them. There are, in the lower town, you know, quite a number of working-class folk who can trace their ancestry much farther back than Pochin. They know all about the Pochins.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well … There’s said to be a trace of madness in the family. Pochin’s father committed suicide. And then there’s Uncle Willie. Uncle Willie went round the bend years ago and was put away in a home. Vincent is a queer neurotic stick, too. A bit of an old roué, dissolute, although to see him in his smart suit and his shiny shoes, you’d think he was just a nice old gentleman. He’s a dandy—a poseur. He’s haunted by the thought of madness in the family. Some people say that’s why he never married. That, of course, isn’t true. He’d have married Mrs. Beharrell if he’d had the chance. The old doctor once told me that in a burst of confidence.”

  “Did Dr. Beharrell take you into his confidence much?”

  “Quite a lot. He was a lonely sort of man and sometimes, on the odd occasions when we weren’t too busy and got together over a glass of whisky, he’d expand.”

  “Did he ever mention his wife and what happened about her?”

  “No. I got the tale from the usual sources, down town. They supply all the information I need there.”

&
nbsp; “I’ve heard that Dr. Beharrell had affairs with other women after his wife’s disappearance. Do you know anything of that, doctor?”

  “Yes. He was friendly with Madame Alcardi, the singing mistress across the square. I wouldn’t say she was his mistress, though. Then, there was Mrs. Hope, at the Red Lion. There’s no doubt they were more than friends. They knew one another before she came to live here after she married Hope, who used to be the doctor’s chauffeur. People say the doctor did poor Hope a shabby trick there. No wonder Hope took to the bottle.”

  “Was it going on when Beharrell died?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “In front of everybody? I mean, did Mrs. Hope visit this house in full view of the Red Lion?”

  “Not in full view. After dark. Always after dark.”

  “But what about Hope? He’d surely have found out.”

  “Have you seen Hope after ten at night, sir?”

  “Yes. He was drunk.”

  “He’s drunk nearly every night.”

  “But it didn’t start that way, did it, when Hope and his wife first settled in the Red Lion, surely?”

  “She used to pretend to go to Peterborough once or twice a week, but she came here after dark. Then she went home about the time the last train was due in … just around midnight.”

  “It’s incredible!”

  “No, it isn’t. They had it worked out to a fine art. I know, because I lived in the house and saw it going on. They didn’t know I was aware of it. Mrs. Hope had a key to the basement door, let herself in, and went right up to Beharrell’s bedroom by the secret stairs and in at the door behind the wardrobe.”

  “You know of that, then?”

  “Of course. I’ve been in the cellar and seen the way the old bankers used to get down to their money-chest privately. I’m interested in old houses and their history.”

  “And Hope never …”

  “Of course Hope knew. He owed the doctor a lot of money, though. Beharrell financed the setting-up in the Red Lion. And it cost a packet, I can tell you. It wasn’t brewery property but I have some of the brewery executives as my patients and they’ve carefully assessed the value of the renovations. I know where the money came from. About £8,000 pounds all told. The Hopes bought and gutted the place and made it up-to-date.”

  “And all that, I presume, to get Mrs. Hope here from France to be at the beck and call of Beharrell. He must surely have loved the woman. Why didn’t he marry her himself?”

  “He once told me he’d never marry again. In the first place, he didn’t know his first wife was dead; and in the second, he really hated women at the bottom. The doctor also told me that Hope paid 5% on the mortgage and it was a good investment. Besides, it wouldn’t have done for a man in Beharrell’s position to have married a comparatively young woman like Mrs. Hope. A French girl, too, it would have ruined him locally. She’d never have made a doctor’s wife.”

  “Not his class … The old story of Upper Square. And yet, he was prepared to betray his old servant, Hope.”

  “It was like Beharrell. A perfect cynic, although as far as I am concerned, he was the best friend I ever had.”

  “Speaking of his wife … Have you any views about what happened to her when she disappeared?”

  “Not really. There is a tale in town that she and the fellow she ran away with were killed in a London air-raid. On the other hand, people hint that the doctor found them together and murdered them. The latter tale, of course, is the gruesome thing that strikes the fertile imagination.”

  “That was before you came here, doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you here when the burglaries occurred?”

  “Yes. I remember them. I wish I could have got hold of the persistent devil who kept breaking-in. I’d have given him something to remember. As it was, it was always the doctor who got there first and missed the man.”

  “I can tell you who it was, doctor.”

  Macfarlane sat up straight.

  “You can?”

  “Yes. Vincent Pochin.”

  Macfarlane roared with laughter.

  “You can’t be serious! Well, well. So he had to turn burglar to make up his income. What was he after? The silver? But it’s preposterous! Pochin? Why? Who told you?”

  “Pochin did. This afternoon at the police station, when I questioned him about his fight with Beharrell. But you mention making up his income … He’s a wealthy man, isn’t he?”

  “Not to my reckoning. He seems to have spent most of his fortune in buying up old property in this square. He might have thought it a good spec. But it wasn’t. The rents are mainly controlled and it’s old buildings that need a lot of upkeep. I’ll bet if he gets one per cent on his money, he’s lucky. And then, look at the rate he lives.”

  “But aren’t they a wealthy family?”

  “They were reputed to be, but a lot of once wealthy families are poor nowadays. Death duties, cost of living. And Pochin has always lived very expensively. Look at his flat … It must have cost a packet. I’ve been there a time or two. He used to meet his lady-loves there … The caretaker on the top floor is a patient of mine. She’s shown me the place. Then there’s the big old house he and his mother run in the country.”

  “But you can’t be sure, doctor. This is all surmise.”

  “It is, of course. But it isn’t surmise that, at times, he’s been so hard-up that he couldn’t pay his housekeeper her money on the nail and she had to wait till he could raise it. Of course, he didn’t tell her he was broke. He said he hadn’t been to the bank, which meant, he was waiting to raise the wind from Sam or from Shillinglaw. You ought to call and see Mrs. O’Brien. That’s the housekeeper. She married two years ago and left the Pochins. Another of my clients. Lives in Horsefair Street, in the lower town. Number fifteen.”

  “Thanks. One of us will call and see her …”

  “You said you’d tell me what it was that caused the fight in the doctor’s bedroom between him and Pochin, Superintendent …”

  “Yes. It looks as though the doctor did kill his wife and her lover, after all, doctor. Do you remember the trouble about the well in the garden?”

  “Of course. Beharrell didn’t want it disturbed. I didn’t blame him. After all the trouble he’d taken filling it in. It looked very nice. And then to have a lot of local jacks-in-office digging it up to get a few gallons of water. It was a scandal.”

  “Did you know that when they opened it up again, the excavators found a man’s skeleton at the bottom, which, it is presumed, was that of Mrs. Beharrell’s lover?”

  Macfarlane burst into roars of laughter and rolled about in his chair.

  “Excuse me, Superintendent, but that’s just too funny for words. Mrs. Beharrell’s lover! That’s a good one! That skeleton was known as Jimmy, was stored in the loft for years, and was one Beharrell had when he was in medical school. I threw it down the well myself.”

  “You …”

  “Beharrell wanted to get rid of it and couldn’t be bothered to sell it. He couldn’t very well put it in the dust-bin, so I chucked it down the well for him one night.”

  Littlejohn was stunned. This surely put his theories of the crime completely out of joint! But there was worse to follow.

  Macfarlane filled up their glasses, still chuckling.

  “They didn’t find Mrs. Beharrell’s body along with Jimmy, did they, sir?”

  “No. But Pochin found it.”

  It was Macfarlane’s turn to goggle in astonishment now.

  “Pochin’s purpose in breaking in was to find the body, he told me. You see, he was in love with Mrs. Beharrell before she married the doctor, and having an idea that Beharrell had murdered her, he was anxious to avenge her. He was trying to get in the old strong-room in the cellar. Finally, he managed it and found her remains. He was emerging with them, it seems, when Beharrell arrived on the scene. That was the cause of the fight.”

  Macfarlane beat the arms of his chair in
impatience.

  “But that’s simply ridiculous … I’ve been in the strong-room myself. Beharrell took me down. He had a key, the only one there seemed to be, and he used to keep it in his pocket.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Last autumn, I think. There was nothing there except a tin box full of old banknotes which Beharrell said were those of a local firm which went bust. Pochin’s Bank must have got them some way … Let me see, Beharrell knew the history of it. If you wanted to break a rival bank, you collected all the notes you could and presented over their counter more than they had money to cash. They couldn’t pay them, and had to suspend payment, which meant liquidation or bankruptcy officially and …”

  Littlejohn wasn’t listening to banking history. He was thinking of Pochin’s tale about finding the bones of Mrs. Beharrell and burying them in the family vault.

  “And there was nothing else there, you say, doctor.”

  “No. If Pochin says there was a body or something, he’s a liar. Another of his mad fits, I suppose. You don’t mean to tell me Beharrell would have risked taking me there if there’d been a murdered body in the strong-room … It’s ridiculous.”

  Littlejohn was saved from an awkward situation by the telephone ringing. Macfarlane rose wearily to go to the hall.

  “I suppose it’s for me. No peace for the wicked.”

  But it was for Littlejohn. Cromwell wanted him.

  “Could you come over to the Red Lion right away, sir? Mr. Sam Pochin’s rung up to say his brother’s just tried to commit suicide. Went in the bathroom and opened a vein in his arm. Only, just like him, he didn’t make a proper job of it. He’s in the local hospital having a transfusion and he’s in no danger.”

  “All right old man. I’ll come right away …”

  He felt cheered up at the very sound of Cromwell’s voice, which however, continued with another tale.

  “The Coroner rang up, too. They found the bones where Pochin said he’d put them. In an empty casket in the family vault. It seems it’s in the churchyard at St. Hilary’s, a very old place like a chapel where you get in with a key. All the Pochins from the time of Adam are buried there.”