The Benefits of Death

by Roderic Jeffries

  “What’s Mrs. Leithan like?”

  “Ain’t so different to most women.”

  “Would you call her friendly to her husband?”

  “Why don’t you ask ’im?” Deakin consulted his watch again. “I’ve a bus to catch.”

  “You can hang on.”

  “It goes soon and I goes with it. And I’ve me best suit to put on yet.”

  “If you miss it, I’ll run you into Ashford by car.”

  “Why?”

  The interview had not gone as Herald had planned it. His voice became rougher. “You’ll wait until I’ve finished asking you questions. I want to know if you’ve come across any disturbed earth?”

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s it sound like? Where someone’s been digging.”

  “Folks is always digging.” It was obvious that Deakin thought he was dealing with a fool.

  “Have you come across any digging recently in any of the fields of this farm?”

  “Why should I? I ain’t been doin’ it and no more’s Alf.”

  “Someone else might have been.”

  “You’d better ask ’em, then.”

  “Look, Pop, let’s get things clear. You’ll give me a straight answer. Have you come across anywhere where there’s been fresh digging?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “My kitchen garden. Been preparing the clads for the frosties.”

  “I’m not asking you to be funny,” shouted Herald.

  Deakin looked at his watch again.

  “Suppose I tell you, Pop, that if you don’t answer me straight I’ll run you into the police station and see what you’ve got to say for yourself there?”

  “Then I’ll tell you to booger off.” Deakin replaced his watch. He looked at Josey who had calved a week before and he was glad to see that there were no signs of a return of the milk fever from which she had suffered. Then, he left.

  *

  Pamela drove to Lower Brakebourne Farm in the very ancient Morris that belonged to the two brothers who farmed the land beyond the woods in which her house was set. They lent it to her at threepence a mile. They were the kind of farmers who only barely made a living because they were so certain everything had to earn the greatest possible profit.

  The Morris shuddered to a halt and Pamela climbed out. As she stared at the house, she remembered the last time she had been inside, and how she had felt so furious when Evadne had boasted that the old bricks, tiles, and wooden beams, meant absolutely nothing to her.

  She drew the duffle coat more tightly about her, crossed to the front door and rang the bell. She heard the bubbling yowls of the Cuencas.

  Mrs. Andrews opened the door and, with a warm smile, said that Mr. Leithan was working in the study. Pamela went through to that room. When she saw him, she was shocked by the lines in his face and the expression in his eyes. He put aside a book he had been reading and stood up. “Pamela…”

  She closed the door. “If Charles Leithan won’t go to Pamela, she must come to him. Where were you last night?” She tried to speak in a matter-of-fact voice. As she began to take off her duffle coat, he hurried forward to help her.

  He put the coat down on the chair which stood immediately below the shelf in which were his ten published books. “I wasn’t very well.”

  “You’re a poor liar, Charles. I suppose it doesn’t matter to you that I kept on expecting you right up until midnight? I was terrified something terrible had happened to you and I tried to phone, but they kept telling me your line was out of order.”

  He said nothing.

  “Why didn’t you come?”

  “I…I’ve told you, I wasn’t feeling very well. My head was giving me hell.”

  “And I’ve already told you that you make a damn’ poor liar.” She moved closer to him. “What were you doing?”

  “Drinking,” he muttered.

  “You got so tight you couldn’t drive?”

  “No.”

  “Then why didn’t you come?” She took hold of his right hand. “I was truly terrified something had happened to you.”

  He jerked his hand free and walked across to the window, then returned past her and went to the door that led directly into the sitting-room. He asked her to follow him and when they were in the other room he pointed at the window on the left-hand side of the far wall. “Have a look out there.” She did so. There was the garden as immaculate as ever, the far edge of the kennels that could just be seen beyond the evergreens which marked the end of the ornamental trees, the field, and the woods on the far side of the slope. A scene of quiet and peace and, to a country lover, a scene of beauty even in the middle of the death of winter. “Well?”

  “Look at Coles Wood.”

  “I am.”

  “Can you see anyone in or around it?”

  “No. But there are all those pigeons which are chasing around as if they’re being disturbed.”

  “Ten policemen started searching in there yesterday afternoon. They were very polite about it, quite in the traditions of our wonderful British force. Would I mind very much if they just had a quick look…” He turned away from the window, crossed to the corner cupboard and brought out a half-full bottle of whisky. He looked at her, but she shook her head. Sadly, she watched him pour himself a large whisky to which he added little soda. He drank eagerly. “I hope to God those brambles are ripping their legs to shreds.”

  “What if they are searching the woods?” she demanded.

  “They’re looking for her body.”

  “Obviously.”

  “They think I killed her.”

  “Equally obvious.”

  “Then what does that make me?”

  “A possible murderer.”

  “You don’t shrink from putting a name to it, do you?”

  “I learned to be practical when Bernard died. Since then, I’ve never forgotten the lesson. If you call a spade a spade, Charles, no one can try to tell you it’s a bloody shovel. We’ve both known what the police are thinking, but you’ve made the mistake of trying to ignore the fact.”

  “Have you come to sermonise?”

  “Only to tell you that you won’t change anything by drinking yourself silly.”

  “What’s it matter? Why couldn’t you stay at home?” Leithan, with the perverse anger that so often dogged him, finished his drink with ostentatious speed and helped himself to another.

  She came across to him. “Are you going to do your very best to get rid of me? Has your very complicated mind decided that, as you’re suspected of having murdered your wife, you mustn’t remain friendly with me?”

  He stared at her, unknowingly showing how much he needed her.

  “You fool,” she said softly. “Did you really think, in that confused mind of yours, that I’d remain at home and let you sweat it out all on your own?”

  He wished he could explain, without any suggestion of heroics, that although her support was all that stood between him and a form of madness, when he had realised what such support could mean he had determined to do without it. There had, somehow, even been some satisfaction to be gained in the loneliness of that decision.

  He put down his glass. “Pam… Suppose they find her?”

  “You’ll need someone to hold your hand.”

  “But you…”

  “I’m very good at holding hands — when they’re yours.”

  He stared out of the window once more. This time, a figure was visible on the edge of Coles Wood.

  Chapter X

  Wednesday, 12th December. It had been raining during most of the past two days and there seemed to be nothing dry left in the world.

  Detective-Superintendent Murch looked almost as cheerless and washed out as the road outside the superintendent’s room. “We say she’s dead.”

  Jaeger looked at the uniformed superintendent and for a brief moment he thought he saw a quick wink. But the unlikelihood of the event convinced him he had been mista
ken.

  “She must be dead,” continued Murch. “The evidence says so. I’ve checked it.”

  That’s that, then, thought Jaeger.

  “But what about proving it? Suppose we went to a court of law? What then? Shall I tell you? We’d be laughed out. When a man’s tried for murder, you need a body. You, Jaeger, keep telling me it’s murder. So where’s the bloody body, eh?”

  “Not on his farm, sir. I’ll go nap on that.”

  “That’s helpful. We now know the one place in the British Isles where it isn’t. That takes us a long way, that does.” He belched. “I said those potatoes would do me.”

  “Of course,” remarked the divisional superintendent, “legally, there doesn’t have to be a body.”

  “And we have enough evidence to present a case without one?” asked Murch belligerently.

  “Not yet.”

  “Yet? That’s a good word. Look, Bill, at the rate the thing’s going, there never will be enough. Yet my D.I. doesn’t seem to give a damn.”

  That was nonsense, as they all knew. The detective-inspector had left a number of jobs to Watters, jobs he should have been handling directly, in order to give as much time as possible to the Leithan case.

  “The assistant chief constable was on to me about it.”

  “Did you ask him for more men?”

  “No.” Murch belched again. “Jesus, those potatoes!”

  Jaeger knew what had to be done. It was a move no policeman willingly took, just in case the victim was an innocent party. But no one seriously considered Leithan to be innocent and he would have cracked before then, but for the woman. The D.I. had a genuine regard for Pamela Breslow. Underneath that charming exterior, she was as tough as they came: she had held Leithan upright when police pressure was threatening to knock him down. She disregarded everyone but the man she loved, and if her presence at Lower Brakebourne Farm made the neighbours talk more than ever, she did not give one solitary damn.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Jaeger finally.

  “Nothing stupid,” warned Murch.

  “Of course not, sir.” The D.I. ironically thought that Murch was very quick to try to cover himself.

  “Play it easily,” said the divisional superintendent. He looked worried.

  *

  Just before midnight on the same day, Detective-Sergeant Watters entered the D.I.’s office and found the latter sprawled across his desk, asleep. “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.”

  The D.I. raised his head and looked blearily at his sergeant. “Would you like to go and drown yourself?”

  “No, sir, not until I’ve had my fill of my pension.”

  “What’s the time?”

  “Time to move.”

  Jaeger yawned and stood up. He had the beginnings of a headache, no doubt caused by the dryness of air heated by an electric stove. “Who’d be a ruddy split?” He yawned again. “Any char going?”

  “There’s a cup on brew, sir.”

  “What’s the night like?”

  “As black as a buck nigger’s belly and the wind’s just called at the North Pole.”

  “Let’s get something warm under our belts and then move. This time to-morrow, you and I may be able to spend all night in bed through being suspended from the force. Silly what we do sometimes, isn’t it? Why do we?”

  “Are you asking?”

  “No. You’d only give me a bloody silly answer. But it’s a question I’ve often pondered. Why do we make this more than a mere job? Suppose Leithan gets away with it — will you feel a terrible injustice has been done?”

  “Not really.”

  “His wife was a bitch, from all accounts. If I had a bitch of a wife, I’d want to plant her out. Especially if Mrs. Breslow was waiting for me. He’d be a thousand times better off with her, but what happens? We’re off to try and stop him getting away with something that ought to be his by right. Why?”

  Watters was silent. He had lost interest both in the questions and the answers.

  They went down to the ground floor and out of the station by the side door which brought them into the courtyard where the car was parked. They drove on to the road and at the end turned into Station Road. The wet, deserted streets lit from above had a kind of smeary impressionistic air about them.

  They approached Lower Brakebourne Farm from the north and Jaeger parked the car at the edge of the orchard. He switched off the lights and the darkness covered them. “We’ll go close to the dogs,” he said. “Unless they’re even more stupid than they look, they’ll kick up hell.”

  “What are they?”

  “Look as if the cat’s brought them in after a wet night, but they tell me they’re very valuable.”

  They left the car and went along the road until they could climb a gate which brought them to the cinder path that led to the kennels. Soon, the bubbling yowling of the Cuencas began.

  They reached the field below the garden. “You go down the slope,” said the D.I., “and flash your torch around like mad.”

  Watters disappeared into the darkness and his progress was marked by the moving circle of light. Jaeger stared in the direction of the house.

  A light went on in one of the upstairs rooms and the curtain seemed to move. Very soon Leithan would be out, demanding to know what was going on, burdened by a compulsive need to find out how much the police had discovered.

  Leithan must break. He must say where he had buried the body of his wife. Guilt did very strange things. It turned strong men into weak ones, it made men talk when they knew their lives or their freedom depended on silence, it forced them into action when they were certain safety lay in inaction.

  Leithan must break. Jaeger flashed his torch so that the beam was clearly visible from the house.

  Chapter XI

  Within easy reach of the Ashford-Canterbury road were a number of woods of varying sizes. Many of them provided playgrounds of irresistible charm to the local children. Cowboys and Indians was a very exciting game when played in woods that were keepered, since all keepers were known to be cannibals.

  Patrick, by two years the junior, followed where Raymond led — even when this meant going into Frog Wood. Ostensibly, they were looking for dead pheasants which might have been shot and not picked up on the previous Saturday. Pheasants were said to be worth ten shillings each.

  Slowly, carefully, and frightened, they made their way into Frog Wood — it formed the first part of Roman Woods — and soon came to a small, shallow pond on which they saw two moorhens. They were uncertain whether these were worth ten shillings each. Raymond recalled a television programme in which natives put earthenware jars over their heads and drifted down on to ducks which were pulled under water by their feet, but rather to the relief of the boys it was obvious that the pond was far too shallow for any such operation.

  They continued on their way and came to a ride which led back to the road. They turned down it and were hurrying towards the road, satisfied they had been in the enemy’s territory long enough to prove their courage, when Raymond saw a bundle of he knew not quite what. He went up to it. There was hair, bones, and what looked like an eye. He told Patrick to come closer. Patrick reluctantly did so. He found a leather collar with a metal plate on it on which was written Stymphalian of Saavedra, and a telephone number. There was also a metal disc with an address on one side and a promise on the other to pay live shillings to the finder.

  *

  Jaeger stood in the main ride of Frog Wood and stared down at what remained of the dog’s head and neck. Strangely, he found himself pitying the poor beast.

  He spoke to Yelt, the keeper, a tall and gangling man with a floppy moustache. “Does it say anything to you?”

  The keeper shook his head.

  Jaeger spoke in a friendly voice. “Look, it’s important. So if you killed it because it was worrying your pheasants, tell me, and I promise it won’t go any further. But I must know’.”

  Yelt spoke scornfully. “If I found a dog w
hat was up with the birds, you wouldn’t see it again and no more would anyone else.”

  Jaeger smiled. “All right. Any idea, then, where it’s come from?”

  “None.”

  “I take it you know these woods pretty well?”

  “I reckon.” Yelt opened his gun and checked that it was empty. He laid the gun on the ground and rolled himself a cigarette. “Better’n anyone else, but that don’t mean I guarantee every inch. There’s two hundred acres back in Roman Woods and some of ’em is proper jungle.”

  “Keeping all that in mind, where d’you suggest we start searching for the rest of the dog?”

  Yelt pushed his cap to the back of his head. He stared with hate up through the trees at a passing crow. “You know what I reckon?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’d say the old vixen knows the answer. I say the dog was shot and left lying round, and that the old vixen what I’ve been layin’ for for the last month had a good eat.”

  Jaeger tapped the bowl of his pipe on the heel of his right shoe. “You’ve just said you didn’t shoot it.”

  “No more I did. But if it ain’t been shot, I’ll quit keeperin’. Seen the skull?”

  “Not close to.”

  “I always looks at the deads to see what killed ’em. If it’s a fox, stoat, weasel, cat, owl, or crow, I wants to know. That dog’s skull’s smashed, and I don’t reckon nothing but a gun did it.”

  Jaegar separated the stem of his pipe from the bowl and blew it clear. He rejoined the two, filled the bowl with tobacco. “Thanks.” He turned and walked back twenty feet to where Watters and Herald were waiting. “The dog was probably shot.”

  “What kind of gun, sir?”

  Jaeger shrugged his shoulders. “What guns has Leithan?”

  They looked blankly at him. He swore. “Haven’t any of you checked?”

  Secure in the knowledge that in the final analysis the blame for not having checked was his, they remained silent.

  “Herald, go and find out. Watters, phone the superintendent and warn him we may have to search the woods.” He lit his pipe with the first match. Because Pamela Breslow stood squarely behind Leithan, Leithan hadn’t cracked. But maybe it would no longer be necessary to try to wear him down, to crowd suspicion on top of fear until the load became too heavy. Maybe they had found the burial ground.