Death Knocks Three Times

by Anthony Gilbert

  “If I was dealin’ with reasonable chaps it ‘ud be enough for me to put in a statement,” grumbled Crook. “I can’t tell ‘em anything.

  I knew it was too good to be true getting a bed and breakfast (and, ye gods, what a bed and what a breakfast!) without havin’ a bill for it next morning; but I tell you this. Inspector, I could stay at the best hotel in London for what that bed’s goin’ to cost me, and nothing in it anywhere for Arthur Crook so far as I can see.”

  The inquest was being held in the billiard room of the dead man’s house. Bligh had removed the covers and dusted off a few chairs, and the police had moved the body and were in attendance. The coroner, who clearly thought there was something fishy about the affair, elected to sit with a jury. When Crook arrived he found the nephew, John Sherren, already on the premises, having been recalled immediately by a telegram from Bligh, who had had to tramp down to the village post office to send it off. The whole village was set by the ears by the news. The old man had been a mystery in life and now was providing an additional mystery in death. It’s against convention for old soldiers to die in such undignified circumstances. They should either succumb to an aneurism or high blood pressure in bed or be found in the gun room with a bullet through the brain and a revolver firmly clasped in a dead hand. Baths are out, decided Crook, giving the nephew the once-over and not thinking much of what he saw.

  John Sherren was a man of about forty, slightly below medium height, with a round rosy face, brown eyes that stuck out a bit, a neat small mustache, hair growing rather thin on top but still a long way from baldness, very tidy, very precise, obviously concerned about the present position. Crook thought him smug in the ordinary way, and the dead man’s phrase “landlady’s pet” came back to him very forcibly. A babe in arms could have told you he was a bachelor and likely to remain one.

  The coroner was in no mood to make things easy for anyone. He made it clear from the start that he didn’t like the case, he didn’t like John Sherren, and he didn’t like Arthur Crook. Crook reciprocated at first glance, and thought John did the same.

  He had a word with the novelist before the court opened.

  “What on earth does he want a jury for?” the younger man inquired. “It’s a clear case of accident.”

  “Clear to you, perhaps,” agreed Crook, “but then you’re on the inside, as it were.”

  “What else could it be?” continued John Sherren peevishly.

  For a novelist, thought Crook, he seemed to be on the unimaginative side.

  “There are always three horses runnin’. Accident, murder or suicide.”

  “That’s absurd. Why should Uncle James want to take his own life? And if he did he wouldn’t choose this way.”

  “You should know. But he was an original old cuss—no disrespect intended—and he might like the idea of bothering his survivors.” But he didn’t really believe that was the solution. You’d want an iron nerve to take a chance like that. It wasn’t even certain you’d be killed.

  “As for murder—again-—why? At this particular juncture, I mean. Why not last year or the year before?”

  “That’s what the coroner’s here to find out. Hold your horses. They’re goin’ to begin.”

  The coroner outlined the situation. Cause of death was not in debate, but the manner in which that death had come about was open to question. They had to decide if it was accident, and if so, whose carelessness was responsible. If it was not an accident there were two alternatives. Either the Colonel had deliberately set free the lid himself or someone had laid a trap for him. The jury would hear the evidence and must give a true verdict in accordance with the facts. There seemed no doubt that the lid had actually been pulled down by the dead man himself; indeed, the loofah, attached by its thick cable, was still in his hand. The head had taken the full force of the blow, and there were injuries to the skull, as well as dislocation of the cerebral vertebrae.

  “Means ‘e broke ‘is bloomin’ neck,” muttered one juryman to his neighbor.

  “Why don’t he say it plain, then?” said the neighbor in carrying tones.

  The coroner then proceeded to call his witnesses. It was going to be a job to show it was suicide, reflected Crook. The old man had no troubles, financial or domestic, and, for his age, he was in excellent health. He hadn’t a morbid temperament, and only a day or two earlier he had remarked to Bligh he saw no reason why he shouldn’t live to a hundred.

  John Sherren, in the witness-box, said unhesitatingly that there

  was nothing to support a suggestion of suicide. “In fact,” he averred, “he seemed in better spirits than I had seen him for some time. Quarrelsome, too, and that was always a good sign. He spoke of coming to London, getting about before he got into a rut, he called it, or became too old and set to travel. When I reminded him that London would have changed a good deal in the past thirty years, he retorted that he came of a tough generation, not like some of the milk-and-water youngsters of today. He said he hadn’t seen a doctor professionally for twenty-five years, and he hoped it would be another twenty-five before he did.”

  That part of his evidence was plain sailing, but he got into a little trouble when he was asked to tell in detail about the quarrel of which he had spoken, and to which Bligh was prepared to give testimony.

  “It was quite insignificant,” he said, trying to pass the whole affair off airily. “Violent? No, I should hardly call it that. It was simply that when I warned my uncle he’d find London greatly changed and perhaps hardly the place for an old man he, as it were, blew up. Took offense. Asked me if I thought he was a nincompoop. Or perhaps I was afraid he was coming south to consult his lawyer, but I needn’t worry about that. I should be no worse off, that much he could promise me.”

  “And what did you deduce from that?”

  “I really didn’t give the matter much consideration. I’d never discussed finance widi my uncle, and fortunately I had a competence”—yes he actually said competence—“of my own, and then there are the royalties from my books.”

  The coroner made it perfectly obvious that he had no knowledge of John Sherren as a writer and had no intention of correcting his ignorance.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “I told him I was quite uninterested in his reasons for coming to town, and he said, ‘You’re even more of a fool than I imagined. What’s more, you’re a liar. Why else do you come up here without an invitation if you don’t hope to draw dividends?’ “

  The fellow was either incredibly naive or intelligent above the average. Crook decided, spilling the beans like that. He seemed, however, to have taken the wind out of the coroner’s sails.

  All he could think of to say next was: “So there was no foundation whatever for your uncle’s suggestion? Is that what you wish the jury to understand?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “And naturally you resented it?”

  The pink face assumed a yet more cherubic expression. “Why, no, hardly that. I knew the poor old boy was eccentric—who wouldn’t be, living in such conditions?—it would have been absurd to take offense.”

  “And he didn’t reveal the nature of his intentions as regards the will?”

  “We didn’t discuss the matter further.”

  Even the coroner didn’t like to press him on that point. He passed on to ask a question or two about the bath, but here, too, John proved unhelpful. He hadn’t taken a bath, he never had taken a bath at Chipping Magna, he hadn’t examined the fittings and certainly he hadn’t tampered with them. By this time half the jury thought he’d done the old fellow in (and you couldn’t blame him) and the other half thought what a nice chap he was, taking so much trouble for that old curmudgeon. On the whole, if murder had been done, they would all prefer to suspect Bligh, who had been rude to every one for twenty-five years and bullied the shopkeepers about the Colonel’s rations in a way that didn’t bear remembering. Any one, said the butcher, who was acting as foreman, would know he’d been a
sergeant-major.

  Which was flattering but incorrect.

  Bligh’s manner was the antithesis of John’s blandness. He seemed resentful at being questioned at all, and said if he’d wanted to kill the old gentleman he’d had thirty years to do it in. No, he hadn’t known he was the Colonel’s heir, not till the lawyer told him, after the old gentleman was dead, and he didn’t want the money special anyhow. Yes, he’d heard Mr. Sherren say the Colonel might be visiting his lawyer, but where did that get them? The old man had been in a rare mood, but then it was always the same when Mr. Sherren came up. He (the Colonel) had said he wasn’t going to be talked down to by a lah-di-dah from London, speaking as if a fellow had one foot in the grave just because he didn’t write novels nobody wanted to read anyway. He said he’d be surprised if his nephew lasted as long as he did. Deflected from that line of talk by the indefatigable coroner, he said he hadn’t tampered with the bath, not likely. If he

  did let the lid down it ‘ud need two men to hook it up again (this; was not strictly speaking accurate, but Bligh, like John Sherren, sometimes allowed himself a little poetic license). He admitted thav the lid was unhooked, but added in pointed tones he wasn’t the only person in the house who might have monkeyed with the bath, and it seemed queer to him that a thing like this had to happen directly the Colonel started acting the Good Samaritan. The coroner pulled him up again there, and soon afterwards he left the witness stand.

  Then it was Crook’s turn. Even in this remote district his name was not entirely unknown, and a number of locals had turned up to see him in die flesh. One thing. Crook told Bill on his return, they saw plenty of that. For he was getting heavier as he got older, though he could still move like a flash, or so it seemed to younger, lighter men trying to keep up with him, and no advancing years dimmed his sensibilities. He repeated his story about the lid of the bath being securely hooked into place on Monday night. If he had any suspicions he didn’t mention them, not then.

  When his evidence was finished the jury had to come to a decision. It was obvious to all of them that one of the four men who had been in the house during the three days preceding the death of the oldest of them had tampered with the hooks, but when it came to fixing the responsibility on one particular pair of shoulders they found the problem beyond them. John Sherren certainly had had words with the old man. They debated how much weight you could attach to that. Every one, said the foreman, knew the old man was a tartar, a bit daft, come to that. There was a tale of a girl who had at one time been employed in the house who had lighted the dining-room fire so that it smoked. The Colonel had marched in, wrapped in a terrifying dressing-gown and waving a walking-stick, shouting: “In India a man has been hanged for less than that.” It wasn’t likely, therefore, that John would take his rage very seriously, and you are very serious indeed before you bash a man’s head in. On the other hand, hadn’t the young chap expected to inherit? He said not, but there was no need to believe him. The case against Bligh was founded on the fact that he did, in fact, come into everything the old boy left, and if the Colonel was coming to London it might have altered his whole way of life, including the way in which he meant to dispose of his money. Once away from the remote homestead, as one of the Sunday

  papers pathetically and inaccurately described it, he might strike fresh roots and it ‘ud be the poorhouse for Bligh. There was that to be considered. Most of the evidence depended on his word, and who was to say he hadn’t smashed the lid down on the old martinet’s skull and made sure of his own future?

  As for Crook, they wasted no time on him. There was no motive there, and they dismissed him summarily from the case.

  The verdict was what Crook had anticipated—death by misadventure—with insufficient evidence to throw responsibility on any one.

  Before he left for London—still at the expense of the unfortunate rogue responsible for his original journey north—Crook was approached by both his fellow witnesses.

  First came Bligh, more pasty-faced than ever and adopting a threatening attitude.

  “Now don’t you try and come the Mr. Clever over me,” he said in loud tones. “Oh, I know what every one’s saying, if they ain’t allowed to say it in court. Nice for Jimmy Bligh coming into all that cash—though most of the old man’s leavings are in land, and what’s land worth these days? Can’t even build on it if you want to. Can’t sow what you like, can’t let it go to pasture, can’t lease it. Sign on the dotted line all along. A perishing nuisance, if you ask me. And even if it was all cash, that wouldn’t help much. What’s a chap of my age want with a lot of money?”

  “Plenty of chaps ‘ull help you spend it,” Crook suggested.

  “Lots of wimmen, too, but I’ve done without ‘em for thirty years, and I’m not going to get tangled up with them now. I tell you, I was all set for the duration. ‘Ome, a boss I understood, as much time off as I wanted, and as much money as I could spend. Come to that, I was a lot better off last week than I’ll ever be again till I lie where the Colonel’s gone.”

  He stalked off without giving Crook a chance to reply, and his place was almost instantly taken by John Sherren.

  “That old chap’s nearly as crazy as my poor uncle,” he confided, falling into step. “D’you suppose any one’s satisfied with the verdict, bar Bligh, of course?”

  “You should have heard him five seconds ago,” said Crook, grimly. “You’d think he’d got twenty years hard labor instead of everydiing the Colonel’s left.”

  “He won’t be able to stay in these parts, of course,” acknowledged John Sherren. “Too many people thinking him just the man who was lucky enough to get away with murder, but with all that money he can settle nicely enough elsewhere. But nobody’s deceived. Nobody believes this just happened. You don’t yourself, do you?”

  “Not exactly,” agreed Crook, “but naturally it was impossible to bring in a charge of murder.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Mind you, I keep an open mind.”

  “Sure,” agreed Crook amiably. “Maybe the old man unhooked the lid himself and forgot about it. How long had you known the cash wouldn’t come to you?”

  “I gave my evidence in court,” said John in polite tones. “He did mention, though, that he wouldn’t care to put temptation in my landlady’s way, whatever you like to make of that.”

  Crook looked at him thoughtfully, as if making up his mind what he really thought about his companion, but whatever it was he kept it under his own hat.

  “Of course,” continued John in the same precise tones, “it was consistent of him, having lived a mysterious life, to die a mysterious death. I wonder if the truth will ever come out.”

  “Any time I like to open my mouth,” said Crook, pleasantly. “But that doesn’t happen to be just now. Be seeing you—perhaps.”

  Nobody knew then how soon that occasion was going to occur.

  4

  JOHN SHERREN returned to London in a very thoughtful frame of mind. Six months ago, he was reflecting, he had possessed three relatives, all a generation ahead of him, all in reasonably sound health, all, he believed, with a little money, or even quite a lot of money, and all incurably unmarried. And during the past six months two of these relatives had died suddenly and inquests had been held. Now only Aunt Clara was left.

  Clara Bond was his mother’s elder sister, and after the erstwhile Jessica Bond’s death, when her son, John, was four years old, Clara and her younger sister, Isabel, had taken the little boy into their home and brought him up. John’s father, the Rev. Clement Sher-ren, had discovered a missionary vocation immediately after his wife’s death and went out to preach the gospel to the natives. Less than a year after his mother’s death John became an orphan and his Aunt Clara took over his life. She was a born manager. She had managed her mother very capably into her grave after a short mortal illness when she herself was only twenty-six. Thereafter she prevented her father from contracting “a deplorable second marriage,” according to her self, and after
he had, not unthankfully, followed his wife to the cemetery, she closed the huge, inconvenient house in which she had been born and removed herself and Isabel to Seaview House, a delightful modern residence set right on the cliff. Isabel liked the situation less than her sister. Heights made her giddy, and nothing would induce her to sit on the balcony that seemed built right over the sea. Down, far down, were rocks, mostly hidden by the tide, but showing like black shadows when the water became shallow, a persistent reminder of their existence.

  “I didn’t suggest you should fall off the balcony,” snapped Clara. ‘But the sea air is very beneficial.”

  When he was a small boy there was no question which of his two aunts had John Sherren’s confidence. Clara was tall, pointed and shining, with the remnants of great handsomeness; she made people think of a darning needle and, like a darning needle, she could draw blood. Isabel, on the other hand, was one of those soft dumpy little people who make you think of a baby owl grown up without altogether losing its engaging youthfulness. Isabel used to say that if Clara remained unmarried it was by her own wish; she had had a number of most eligible offers, but she had a great sense of duty. John was surprised to know that any one had dared propose marriage to so alarming a woman; it proved that civilians also earned the Victoria Cross on occasions, not for momentary bravery but for sustained courage. Isabel was different, very gentle and warm-hearted, with a tendency to tears, to little rushes of affection, to small hands laid for an instant coaxingly on a coat sleeve. She didn’t want to manage, she only wanted to mother. Unlike Clara, she had never wanted votes for women, she wanted to be told not to bother her pretty little head over things she couldn’t understand.

  With Isabel, then, John established a secret relationship in his youth. She used to cover up for him when there was likely to be trouble with Clara, and she tried to get him the particular toys or books he wanted. Clara was Spartan with money.