by A. B. King
He pulled out his wallet as he was speaking, making sure that the man could easily see that there could be no doubt it was well packed with bank notes as he extracted a twenty, and pushed it into the pocket of the man’s boiler suit.
“I know how busy you must be,” Martin continued. “If you would just do a bit of checking for me, even if you’re unlucky I will still make it worth your while. How about fifty pounds if you draw a complete blank, or a hundred, plus the price of the car if you do?”
Martin had seen the look of cupidity in the fellow’s eyes, and shrewdly guessed that he certainly knew at least something.
“How long ago was this?” the man queried.
“Oh, about twenty five years.”
“Twenty five!” the dealer exclaimed. “You’re asking a lot aren’t you?”
“I said I’m willing to pay?”
“What was the registration?”
“RJT 260 R.”
Watching the man covertly Martin immediately saw a tightening of the muscles around the eyes that denoted that the registration number had immediately struck a chord, and that was all he really needed to know. June’s suspicion that Castleman was involved in some way was undoubtedly right! Without a shadow of a doubt he knew something about the vehicle, and quite possibly he was involved in the same shady business as June’s father had been. What was patently obvious was that he would never admit to personally knowing anything about the vehicle if there was something about its background that was crooked because he would naturally have a vested interest in keeping the whole business secret. Martin was hoping that the offer of ready cash with ‘no questions asked might be enough to encourage him to part with the number plates if he knew where to lay hands on them, and though he would undoubtedly blame everything on an unspecified contact, it would confirm his suspicion that something unpleasant had happened to June’s father.
“OK,” he said with a show of doubtful reluctance. “I’ll ask around. Frankly, I don’t hold out a lot of hope. Twenty-five years you say; that’s a helluva long time ago. How can I reach you?”
“Oh, I’m flitting from place to place,” Martin said airily. “I’ll look in some time tomorrow or the day after to see if you have had any luck. Many thanks for your time.”
With that he sauntered out of the yard and back towards the main road. He was conscious that the man was staring after him, probably trying to make up his mind if it had been a genuine enquiry, or something a bit more suspicious. It also belatedly occurred to him that if Castleman was personally involved in some way with the double murder, then simply by prodding the man about the Cortina might provoke more of a reaction than he had bargained for! He glanced at his watch and decided that as it was approaching midday, it was as good a time as any for catching Dr Rawlinson. He walked briskly back to the surgery, and as luck would have it, he went in as the last patient was called through.
He settled down in the waiting room after announcing himself to the rather bored sounding receptionist, whiling away the time browsing through a well used periodical of no particular interest. About ten minutes later he saw the patient emerging, and a few minutes after that the receptionist leaned over her counter and asked him to go along to the doctor’s consulting room.
“Ah, Mr Isherwood,” Dr Rawlinson exclaimed as Martin entered the room. “Strange that you should choose to look in this morning; I was going to phone you after lunch. I suppose you must have been reading my mind!”
“’Morning Doctor,” Martin responded. “Although technically it is now afternoon I suppose! I’m afraid I cannot lay claim to possessing latent telepathic abilities; I just happened to be in town again today and thought I would drop in on the off-chance that you might be able to help me with a few matters?”
“Have a seat,” the doctor said, gesturing. “Not feeling unwell I hope?”
Martin noticed that his manner was less formal than it had been on his first visit.
“I’m fine thanks,” he responded as he accepted the seat by the side of the doctor’s desk. “I have been going through my late uncle’s personal papers and trying to make sense of matters. I confess that I am making little progress. No doubt I am imagining things, yet I get the feeling that there is some sort of mystery attached to the last years of his life. Many people have indicated that he seemed pre-occupied yet no one I have spoken to has been able to tell me exactly what may have been worrying him.”
“Indeed?”
“Amongst others, I have spoken with Mrs Jefferson who used to be his housekeeper, and she also appears to think that there was an undercurrent of something going on that she knew nothing about.”
“I shouldn’t read too much into that if I were you,” the doctor remarked, pushing some cards aside on his desk. “People are always sensing mysterious goings on where there aren’t any; your uncle was a doctor, remember? Quite properly there was a lot that he would never discuss with anyone outside of his practise, and some of his cases were naturally quite serious.”
“Quite, I fully understand that, and if it was purely her story alone that didn’t add up I would be inclined to dismiss it. However, without going into detail, I now find that quite a lot of things don’t add up, and I would like to be clear about certain matters in my own mind before I make any decisions regarding the future of Springwater House.”
“Well, I don’t know as I will be able you help you very much,” the doctor said. “After your last visit I became curious myself, and eventually I had a look through the old files that your uncle left. I confess it is something I was always going to do but hadn’t got around to. All the records of patients that were still coming to the practice I was of course familiar with. I was more interested in those cases that came up before my time. Perhaps you will understand my interest if I mention that I am trying to write a book on the subject of a country GP’s work, and how things have changed over the years. Old records like these are invaluable with such a project.”
“I should imagine they would prove fascinating,” Martin agreed. “I shall look forward to reading a copy of your book once it is published.”
“Thank you,” Dr Rawlinson responded. “I shall be delighted to provide you with a complimentary copy. However, what I thought it may be of interest to you is this. Tucked away in an old file with no name on it at all I came across something that has to stand out as being unusual in a quiet practise. It was because of this and the earlier questions you had posed that I thought I should contact you, but of course you have saved me the effort.”
“I’m happy to be of service,” Martin said lightly, wondering what the doctor was leading up to.
“What I came across was a copy of a report that Dr Marston had written in his capacity as police surgeon, a position he held long before I joined the practise. Frankly, until I came across this I never realised that he had ever held the post. In a quiet little backwater like this place the services of a police surgeon are hardly ever required; we have no real crime problem here as you have probably seen for yourself, we don’t get many traffic of industrial accidents requiring police attendance, so the position was very nearly an honorary one. I believe the position is currently held by Dr Barnes of Hartington. Anyway, this report, which was a copy of one that had obviously been submitted to the police, related to the only major crime that has ever happened here; you may perhaps have heard of the double fatality about twenty five years ago?”
“Yes, I’ve heard mention of it,” Martin acknowledged. His interest was naturally quickening, wondering what it was that the doctor had discovered.
“It was quite a detailed report, and written in Dr Marston’s own handwriting. It describes in technical detail how two adult males were found in the front seat of a wrecked car on the outskirts of town. His preliminary examination concluded that both men had died of gunshot wounds to the head with a provisional estimate that death had occurred some four to six hours prior to his examination which took place at oh seven hundred hours.”
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��I should think that having to conduct such an examination must have been a most unpleasant experience for him?”
“I’m sure it was. However, what I found really interesting was the fact that he indicated in the report that the fatal injuries were produced by a heavy calibre automatic hand gun, fired at close range.”
“Why is that particularly interesting?”
“Does it not strike you as curious that following what can only have been a cursory examination to establish that life was extinct, a country doctor who has been in practice in this god-forsaken backwater of a place for all of his professional life would immediately recognise those injuries for what they were? Faced with much the same sort of situation, even in this more violent age, I doubt that I could be that confident without the benefit of attending a post mortem.”
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
“I read that report through several times. It was as meticulously done as everything else that Dr Marston did, yet there was something in the way that it was worded that didn’t seem quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Later, when I compared it with many other reports penned by the doctor it eventually dawned on me what it was; the construction of sentences, the choice of adjectives were all different.”
“I’m not sure I follow your meaning?”
“For my money, that report was never composed by him at all.”
“You mean, somebody else carried out the examination, and he just signed the report?”
“Possibly, although I very much doubt it. What I noticed was that whereas in places the sentence constriction was markedly different, with the meticulous attention to some aspects of the case, and the glossing over of other parts were alien to everything else in his work that I have been able to check through, other parts were similar to what he would normally have written. You need to understand that I have no proof and certainly I am not making any accusations, yet I am starting to suspect that the report was actually dictated at least in part by the police.”
“Why on earth would they wish to do that?”
Dr Rawlinson shrugged eloquently. “Your guess is as good as mine, and although we can never prove it one way or the other, I’ll wager that although the report is undoubtedly in his handwriting, it was partially or wholly dictated to him. For reason’s I cannot even start to guess at the police wanted certain facts suppressed about this crime. I understand that the two men killed were known criminals; maybe the police connived at their murder? It is all sheer speculation of course, but I certainly found it curious. Now, if I am right, Dr Marston being the sort of man he was, he must have been put under terrible pressure to go along with it. The police must have threatened him with something pretty horrendous, because for my money there can be no other explanation. Not only that, I have discovered that he resigned his position as police surgeon a matter of a couple of weeks after that report. Co-incidence? Possibly, only knowing your uncle, if he felt that he was being compromised in some way it would be about the only thing he could do. Perhaps this is what Mrs Jefferson noticed? If my unsupported speculations are correct, then I have no doubt that matter was on his conscience from that day onwards. Still, like I said; all supposition.”
Chapter Twenty-Two. Friday Afternoon.
It was coming up towards one o’clock when Martin left the surgery and headed towards the ‘Rose and Crown’. Although there were many blanks yet to be filled in, he had the feeling that at last he was getting an idea of what had happened all those years ago, and in a way it was a relief to know that it was not all his imagination. He could still construct several scenarios that would fit what little he now had in the way of facts, and all of them had serious connotations. It now seemed more than possible that June’s father had been involved in the crime resulting in the sensational double murder. It was possible that the murders had not been intended, and because Charles Carpenter had perhaps been an unintentional witness to what had happened, the killer or killers had decided to eliminate him as a means of ensuring his continued silence. However, if that was true, why was his body not found along with the other two? As a man already known to the police, one more body would probably have made little difference as far as the criminals were concerned.
It was all too easy to make assumptions and theorise; how could he be sure that the crime was only intended to be a car-jacking, or whatever term the criminal fraternity used for this type of felony? If straightforward robbery wasn’t the motive, was it possible that the double murder had been planned right from the beginning? Was murder purely a case of villains falling out, or was there police involvement? If Dr Rawlinson’s suspicions were justified, it threw a completely different light on matters from what he had previously theorised, and he couldn’t ignore the fact that the officer who discovered the killings was well known to his uncle. Was that just a coincidence, or was it as he now suspected more strongly than ever, linked in some way?
Mrs Jefferson had been convinced that the doctor had killed somebody, using the evidence of the spent bullet to support that belief. She was equally convinced as to the identity of the victim, and he wished now that he had asked her for the date of the holiday during which this alleged killing was supposed to have taken place. If in fact Sergeant Burton had retired from the force subsequent to the date she was away, then obviously he couldn’t be the victim. He also needed to acknowledge that perhaps there had been no ‘victim’ anyway; it was not impossible that that bullet had been introduced by some agency other than as a result of the known brutal double slaying.
On the other hand, just supposing that Mrs Jefferson’s suspicions were only too well founded, where did that leave him? It suddenly struck him that he had already theorised that a killer who had just disposed of two victims and left them in situ to be discovered wouldn’t bother about concealing the body of a third. What if the killer or killers hadn’t made the decision to kill Carpenter at that point? Just theorising for a moment that Sergeant Burton was in it up to his neck in the car-jacking, perhaps actually present at the crime, even being the actual killer; might he not have needed the help of June’s father Charles Carpenter to transport whatever it was had been taken from the car to a safe place? Once in that safe place, perhaps the need both for the car and its driver was over. If that was so, then Carpenter would have been disposed of elsewhere once his usefulness was over. Was it possible that by using some sort of hold over Dr Marston, Springwater House had been that safe place? If that scenario was substantially correct, then it was equally possible that Charles Carpenter had been the victim, and not Sergeant Burton, and that his body was buried somewhere in the grounds of the house.
It dawned on him that if his theorising was broadly accurate, then it was quite possible that Sergeant Burton was by no means dead. If he was still alive, and if connected with the crime in the way he theorised, then it was more than likely he knew that Dr Marston had died and had been watching the house. Rather than run the risk of the body being discovered he would need to take steps to prevent it happening. If he was involved, then it was not inconceivable he was wealthy enough to buy the place for himself. Who, in that scenario, was better fitted the bill as the mysterious would be purchaser, Carl Bremner? Likely or otherwise it was all theory and supposition, with not a single shred of irrefutable evidence to support any of it, yet instinctively he felt that there was a kernel of truth in what he was thinking.
The two questions that now loomed large in his mind were, (a) presuming most of his assumptions were more or less accurate, how far would Bremner, or Burton or whoever it really was, go in protecting themselves? And, (b) what should he do about it? He toyed briefly with the idea of going directly to the police, but quite aside from being naturally concerned how June would react to such an arbitrary unilateral action on his part, what did he actually have in the way of even tenuous evidence to support any of his ideas? Not only that, if, as had been suggested to him, Phillip Burton was a popular local police officer in his time, maybe even some sort of local
hero because of his part in the sensational crime that had more or less put Wellworthy on the map, his ex-colleagues would probably not take too kindly to the idea that one of their own was involved in a crime that had undoubtedly been shelved a good many years since. He could not forget that the report uncovered by Dr Rawlinson appeared to suggest it had been at least in part dictated by police, ergo, it was not impossible that the whole business went a whole lot deeper than he imagined.
He was still turning this over in his mind when he suddenly spotted June and the girls heading towards him. He waved to let them know that they had been seen, and automatically quickened his pace. He saw that both the girls were carrying bulging bags, and judging from their excited expressions, they had been having a most enjoyable morning. After a brief exchange of greetings they went into the Rose and Crown where, at Martin’s suggestion, they took a table in the rear garden. It was quiet in the bar, and Syd came out in person and took their orders, jovially pulling the girl’s legs as he did so, and probably secretly amazed at how much they thought they could eat. June and Martin ordered somewhat more moderately, and Syd eventually went off to execute their order. Whilst they were awaiting the arrival of food and the drinks, the girl’s decided that they would have to go off and explore the whole garden.
Taking advantage of the few moments of relative privacy their absence provided, June asked Martin how he had fared.
“It looks pretty certain that your tip about Cattleman’s was right,” he responded. “I saw the old man’s son, and a pretty unsavoury looking character he is, too. I’ll go into more details later if you like, but for my money he knows something.”
“He knows about the car?”
“Naturally he didn’t admit anything; I didn’t expect him to; I’m a pretty good judge of when someone is lying to me, and I’m certain he knows something.”
“Maybe he knows where my father went?”
Martin shrugged eloquently. “Like I said; I’m not sure what he knows, yet judging by what he did say, and by the way he reacted to some of my questions he almost knows certainly knows something about the car at least. No vehicle was ever found that could be connected with the double murder, so maybe it was intended all along that the car would be taken there so that it could be quickly disposed of?”