Close Quarters

by Michael Gilbert

  Pollock found himself a prey to conflicting emotions. His professional instincts told him that the local authorities would have to be informed without delay; there is a form and an etiquette in these things, and he who disregards it is sowing for himself the seeds of a mighty crop of obstructiveness and local jealousy. On the other hand an opportunity of getting at a real corpse before the boots of the constabulary had trampled the ground flat was a tempting one; especially as Pollock, in common with most London men, held to the (perhaps prejudiced) view that the Yard was never called in to a provincial crime until every clue was obliterated, every suspect warned and every trail cold – until, in fact, it was too late for Scotland Yard to do anything but take the blame for another unsolved mystery.

  And besides, was it not really his case, anyway? He had been called in to deal with the persecution of Appledown, and now, if one looked at it that way, the persecution had taken an eminently practical turn. But the question was whether the Chief Constable would look at it that way. There was a telephone in the hall, and by the time Pollock reached it, professional etiquette was in the ascendancy; with a deep sigh he unhooked the receiver.

  A few minutes later, following Morgan, and closely followed by the Dean and Hubbard, he was rounding the north-east corner of the Chapter House. Here he paused.

  What he saw was immensely gratifying to him as a policeman. It was a beautiful set of footprints. They came in a straight line across the grass from the north boundary wall and joined the path at the point where they were standing. Morgan was positive that they weren’t his. His early morning weeding had taken him across the west lawn, but from that point onwards he had been on the asphalt path.

  These prints were blurred and muddy (on closer inspection Pollock inclined to the view that they had been made by someone coming away from the cathedral, and not towards it as he had thought at first), and had obviously been produced by someone passing across the turf at some time after the rain had started soaking it on the previous evening. Hubbard and Morgan were dispatched post-haste to the deanery for flower-pots to cover the precious prints, and Pollock turned his attention to the body.

  When he met his death Appledown had been wearing a blue Burberry-type mackintosh and a bowler hat, which had rolled off his head and lay on the path beside him. The cause of death was obvious. What had once been the back of Appledown’s head was now nothing but a mess. Pollock felt cautiously with his fingers. The bone yielded in all directions. A powerful blow, he thought. There had been a good deal of bleeding, and the rainwater had added to the mess.

  He raised the head gently and examined with interest a rough scrape on the cheek and chin; the eyes were closed, and Pollock, who had seen a good deal of violent dissolution, was surprised by the benignity of the verger’s expression. Replacing the head, he got both hands under the body and lifted it slightly on one side. It struck him that it was quite dry underneath, and he was about to roll the body still farther on to its side when a loud and authoritative voice announced: ‘Here, you mustn’t do that, young man.’

  The local police had arrived.

  The ‘homicide squad,’ as the Dean mentally dubbed them, consisted of a solid-looking sergeant, a solid-looking constable, a thin gentleman with a toothbrush moustache and a motor coat (police doctor, diagnosed Pollock correctly) and a photographer. Pollock introduced himself briefly. He felt that he could spare any longer explanations until the inevitable hour arrived when he had to tackle the Chief Constable.

  Sergeant Parks and Constable Potter accepted his credentials affably, but he fancied they looked relieved when he suggested that he would leave them to get on with the job whilst he “just had a poke round.” This consisted of a minute inspection of the surrounding paths and lawn. Apart from the tracks which Hubbard and Morgan were now busily covering with a selection of pots, dishes, and soap-boxes (to the amazement of MacFisheries and the Home and Colonial, who had been arrested by this unusual spectacle on their morning delivery round), the results were entirely negative.

  He went back and found the photographer concluding his task with three close-ups of the wound. Sergeant Parks was seated on an upturned section of drain-pipe complacently finishing his notes whilst Constable Potter drove in skewers to mark the positions after the body had been removed. This crucial operation was performed soon after his arrival, and the mortal remains of Appledown were laid on the Dean’s garden truck for removal to the police ambulance and thence to the station mortuary. This part of the job the sergeant handed over to Constable Potter; he himself seemed to be in no hurry to leave the scene of the crime. Reinforcements in the shape of two more uniformed policemen arrived at this juncture and were posted – one at the corner of the Chapter House and the other at the south-east corner of the cathedral, to ward off casual intruders. The sergeant reseated himself on the drain-pipe and watched Pollock, who was making a second and even more thorough search of the terrain. As he watched he sucked hard at his pencil. It seemed to afford him some comfort.

  The engine shed outside which the body had been found was the one which housed the little electric engine which supplied the power for the cathedral organ. It was an ugly plank and studding affair – plain twentieth century and contrasting oddly with the Gothic pile against which it rested – and it occupied the angle formed by the north wall of the cathedral and the east wall of the transept. The whole arrangement formed a narrow cul-de-sac to which the lower bulk of the Chapter House made a third side. It was almost entirely floored with what is commonly called asphalt but is really only tarred chips. The exception was a narrow strip along the wall – though it was not quite clear whether this had been designed as a flower-bed or was merely the result of the workmen running short of material before finishing the job.

  ‘Come and have a look at this,’ said Pollock. The two sergeants stared for some time in silence at his discovery; it was nothing very exciting – sixteen little holes had been made in this patch of hard damp earth. They were close together, almost up against the shed, about an inch deep and a third of an inch wide. They looked fresh.

  ‘Very odd,’ said Sergeant Parks who clearly made nothing of it. ‘Very odd indeed.’ He returned to his seat. ‘In fact,’ he concluded, ‘you might call the whole thing very odd.’

  ‘Quite a rum go,’ agreed Pollock. ‘Anything particular occur to you?’

  ‘Well, now,’ said Sergeant Parks, not ill-pleased at such unexpected deference: ‘The body, very wet on top, very dry underneath, in a manner of speaking. And the ground quite dry too. Which suggests to me,’ he went on kindly, in case Pollock had missed his point, ‘as if the poor gentleman was killed afore it came on to rain.’

  ‘A sound conclusion, I think,’ agreed Pollock. ‘And that, I take it, would give us some time about eight o’clock yesterday evening as the latest possible.’

  ‘A little after eight,’ amended the sergeant. ‘Say ten past.’

  ‘Another thing,’ went on Pollock. ‘Didn’t it strike you that the body was very wet? Quite uncommonly wet, I mean – especially as it was lying in such a sheltered place.’

  ‘It was a very wet night,’ said the sergeant. ‘Very wet indeed. I was out in it,’ he added.

  ‘Rotten luck,’ said Pollock absently. His gaze was fixed on the drain-pipe with its overhanging spout. ‘If you were to give me a leg-up do you think I could manage to get on to the roof of the shed?’

  The sergeant acquiesced with a dubious grunt to this proposed acrobatic feat, and a minute later Pollock was balancing on his broad shoulders; after a perilous wobble and a frantic grasp he drew himself up, and was standing on the flat roof of the engine shed. From here he was able to get a very satisfactory view of the gutter and the top of the pipe. The mystery of Appledown’s extreme dampness was a mystery no longer.

  ‘Chock full of sticks,’ he shouted down. ‘Nest of some sort, I think. The poor chap must have been lying under a regular shower bath half the night.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sergeant Parks, g
aping up at his colleague, ‘smart work that.’ Thoughtfully he spat out a twig which Pollock’s foot had dislodged into his open mouth.

  ‘It wasn’t entirely guesswork,’ explained Pollock when he had safely regained terra firma. ‘There’s a sort of damp mark on the stone which often means a blocked pipe.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sergeant Parks. He reseated himself on his favourite seat and continued to ruminate.

  Here Pollock left him. He felt that the time had come – in fact, might well be over-past – when he would have to explain himself and his doings to the Chief Constable. Of one thing he was determined; no amount of “choking off,” nothing short of a direct order from headquarters would make him leave go. The whole affair was most interesting. An assassin who walked across the grass backwards, clothes which were too wet, and a bowler hat which was much too dry. Sixteen little holes in the ground. A case after his own heart. He hoped the Chief Constable would not prove too impossible.

  ‘I must confess,’ said Colonel Brabington (late Indian Army and present Chief Constable of Melchester) in one of his less affable tones of voice, ‘I must confess that at the moment it passes the bounds of my imagination – my very limited imagination – to discover how you came into this case at all.’

  In moments of irritation he was apt to indulge in an almost Chinese form of self-depreciation.

  ‘Staying with my uncle, the Dean, you know,’ explained Pollock patiently for the third time, ‘and he asked me – quite unofficially, of course – to look into the question of these anonymous letters. Quite unofficially, of course.’

  ‘Irregularly,’ amended the Chief Constable unhelpfully.

  ‘Well,’ said Pollock mildly, ‘I don’t know that you could call it that exactly; it never was meant to be an official investigation, you know-’

  ‘My knowledge of police procedure is, of course, rusty,’ snapped the Colonel, ‘and not to be compared with yours.’ With a Serbonian glare he challenged Pollock to agree with him. ‘But I was under the impression that the correct procedure was for the Chief Constable to be consulted before our experts from London were called in.’

  ‘Unofficial investigation,’ mumbled Pollock.

  The Chief Constable proceeded to explain at some length his theories (his very ignorant and doubtless ill-founded theories) on the proper observance of police procedure and etiquette. The Dean, though a man whom Colonel Brabington personally admired and respected, had shown questionable taste (Pollock gathered) in having a nephew in the Metropolitan Police Force at all. In his young day constables were constables (correct him if he was wrong) and not public schoolboys playing at being policemen, and even worst taste in bringing the said nephew down behind the backs of the local force.

  Things seemed to have reached a deadlock, and Pollock was on the point of playing his final card and asking the Chief Constable whether he proposed to make an official application to have his offending self removed and the matter placed wholly in the hands of the local authorities; he felt convinced that the Colonel did not really want to go as far as that (he might succeed in calling his bluff), and the words were just about to be uttered which would make or mar this very promising case when he observed that the Chief Constable had fallen silent and was glaring at his tie.

  ‘What year were you up?’ he snapped.

  ‘Twenty-six to ‘thirty-one,’ mumbled Pollock.

  ‘House?’

  ‘School House.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ roared the Chief Constable unexpectedly. ‘Ha ha, that’s very good, very good indeed. Here have I been slating you like God knows what and hauling you backwards over the coals, and I never spotted you were an old boy yourself. I was there, you know. Before your time, of course. In School House myself.’

  At this moment Pollock had an inspiration born of some casual and distantly remembered research into the school archives.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ he said, with a suitable blend of deference and surprise. ‘You must be the Brabington. The one who broke the half mile record in ‘ninety-six.’

  ‘Well,’ replied the Colonel, highly gratified. ‘I must admit, since you’ve discovered the fact, that that was me. Couldn’t do it now, of course. But sports were sports in those days. None of our damned specialising; we ran every race and jumped every jump on the card. But tell me – is old Marjoribanks still going strong? Wonderful old boy – why, I remember …’

  Pollock settled himself down and prepared to swop improbable and disreputable reminiscences – an exercise so dear to the hearts of old boys the world over.

  The public school system had proved its worth once more.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, when Colonel Brabington had concluded his account of the epic steeplechase which he had won in a snowstorm in ‘ninety-five, he returned regretfully to the matter in hand. Of course in the circumstances it would be perfectly easy to have everything on a regular footing. He suggested that he (the Chief Constable) might phone Scotland Yard and invoke their assistance in the matter of the murder of Appledown, whilst Pollock could phone them simultaneously and request a recognition of his position in the affair in view of the increased seriousness of the case (Colonel Brabington would be only too pleased to send this request if Pollock thought that this would be a sound move).

  Pollock thought it would be an excellent move. He thanked the Colonel effusively and withdrew to the nearest telephone booth. He had a second, more private call, to make.

  ‘Don’t say anything to anyone under any circumstances,’ had been Pollock’s parting injunction to the Dean who had hurried off to morning service at the same time that Pollock had left to play Daniel to the Chief Constable’s lion. ‘If anyone misses Appledown, tell them that he’s ill in bed, broken his leg – anything.’

  Vain are the hopes of man.

  In his more than metropolitan ignorance he overlooked the peculiar character of a Close. As a sounding-board it is unique. It outshines even the whispering gallery at St. Paul’s. There the lightest whisper is audible to everyone. In Melchester Close they hear things before they are whispered. Thoughts are read. Gestures speak words. Looks are interpreted. The interpretation is then twisted by a dozen busy tongues, and that which no one dreamed of whispering in their inmost closets at dawn is shouted from the house-tops by midday.

  The thought, therefore, of keeping anything of a sensational nature quiet was – and the Dean must have known it – purely fantastical. Two large policemen standing at the east end of the cathedral! Stretchers! Ambulances! Flower-pots! Signs and portents. MacFisheries and the Home and Colonial had a protracted round that morning, and by the end of it every house-maid knew, with varying embellishments, that Appledown was no more.

  The rumours spread and grew.

  A well-known detective from London – something to do with the Dean – someone climbing about on the roof – someone had heard someone else say that the cathedral plate was missing. “Wilder still and wilder ran the shrill alarm.” Appledown had been caught rifling the offertory box, and after a thrilling chase had thrown himself from the roof of the cathedral, practically into the arms of one of the Big Four from Scotland Yard (or was it Big Five?). Anyway, this man had come down in response to an anonymous letter in order to arrest him. The Dean’s connection with the business, though well established, was vague. Most people held, with an approximation to truth, that the Scotland Yard detective was the handsome young man who, as everybody knew, was staying with the Dean – being in fact his illegitimate son – whilst there was a small but powerful minority who were sure that the dear Dean had been – or was about to be – arrested as Appledown’s accomplice.

  The indisputable appearance of both the Dean and the altar-plate at morning service proved rather a set-back to both schools of theorists.

  5

  FIGURES OF SPEECH

  “The one before you is a high official,” returned Wong Tsoi with appreciable coldness. “Were he a dog, doubtless he could follow a trail from this paper in his hand to the
lair of the aggressor, or were he a demon in some barbarian fable he might perchance regard a little dust beneath an enlarging glass and then stretching out his hand into the void withdraw it with the miscreant attached.”

  ERNEST BRAMAH – Kai Lung.

  ‘Deceased,’ said the doctor austerely, ‘died from the after-effects of severe cerebral injury and general shock arising directly from a concussive blow in the cranial area. In other words,’ he added, relenting a little as he noted Pollock’s puzzled expression, ‘someone hit him on the head and killed him.’

  ‘And that was the sole cause of death?’

  ‘What more do you want?’ said the doctor, becoming even more unprofessional. ‘If you’re looking for the mysterious puncture of a hypodermic syringe or the traces of that hoary old poison-unknown-to-science, you’re wasting your time. This chap wasn’t strangled, drowned, stabbed, suffocated, or frightened to death by a headless horror. He was killed by a blow on the torus – and what a blow! I don’t want to teach you your job, old man, but I should start by ruling out all women, however suspicious their actions or heavily veiled their faces.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pollock, ‘we haven’t any heavily veiled females yet, but I’ll bear your words in mind in case I meet one. Seriously, though, would you say from the nature of the blow that we might rule out any possibility of it having been struck by a woman?’

  ‘I should say so,’ said the doctor. ‘Quite definitely. It was a very hard, heavy blow – a most deliberate stroke. Apart from anything else, the direction of the splintering in the skull would indicate that the striker was as tall, or taller, than the deceased.’

  The two men were standing warming their hands in front of the charge-room fire at Melchester police station. Pollock had had a busy morning. Leaving the Chief Constable he had made two telephone calls to London. The first had been a personal one for Chief Inspector Hazlerigg. For though no mere mortal can influence the decisions of the powers that be at Scotland Yard, the probability is that, if suddenly called upon to dispatch a chief inspector into the distant provinces, they will be more likely to dispatch a chief inspector who is handy at the moment and panting with eagerness to be dispatched, than an equally worthy chief inspector who may perhaps be inspecting dog licences in Upper Tooting or even sleeping the sleep of the just in his maisonette in Lower Balham. Which is only another way of saying that it’s the dog on the spot that gets the biscuit.