“Really?” Jenny said, adjusting the fit of her skirt in the wardrobe mirror. “How awful.”
“Shot himself. Or so they tell me.”
“That’s awful,” Jenny said again, in so abstracted a tone that Dobie wasn’t sure if she were alluding to the fatality or to her hemline. “Did I know him?”
“I don’t think so. Name of Cantwell. He graduated last year.”
“Don’t remember.”
“To be honest,” Dobie said, “nor do I.”
He placed his coffee mug on the side table where Jenny did a very occasional spot of typing and sat down alongside. The bed would have been more comfortable but was now monopolised by Jenny’s discarded clothing. “He’d have been quite young, I suppose,” Jenny said. “Terrible for his parents. But there’s not much you can do about it, is there?”
“No. There isn’t.”
“Well, I won’t be late. Eight o’clockish.”
She threw her jacket over one shoulder, picked up her bag and went out. Dobie heard the click of the front door closing and drank more coffee. The view from where he sat presently included the side elevation of her lemon-yellow Mini parked in the carport beside the rather dustier Fiesta; Dobie watched her enter it, slamming the door behind her, fuss for a moment or two with the driving mirror and then start the motor, reversing the Mini neatly round the corner and out of sight. It looked like a fine summer evening out there. Dobie debated with himself whether or not to go out for a short stroll round the park, deciding in the end against it.
He had papers to mark.
“Who’s Mr Marryat?”
“Oh him, then,” said Mrs Hart. She hit the shift key a spiteful wallop and typed another line all in capitals.
“New, isn’t he?”
“That depends on what you mean by new.”
“I don’t think I know him,” Dobie said patiently. Mrs Hart was herself an old stager by any manner of reckoning, having been secretary to the Head of Electrical for the past fifteen years or more. That gave her an unofficial ranking of somewhere round Senior Lecturer status; diplomacy, therefore, paid or was anyway prudent.
“Ooooooo,” Mrs Hart said. “Not everyone does.”
“But you do, don’t you?”
“He’ll have been here now for a couple of years, all told. He’s one of those, you know.”
This expression, so fraught with significance in non-collegiate circles, had other connotations in its present context and Dobie was able to decipher its meaning, though only just. “…industrial?”
“Davies, Parry and Kendrick. Over to Bristol.”
“Arrr.”
“Very up-and-coming firm they are. And we have their Mr Marryat with us on a research readership, that’s how it is.”
“So how would I be able to get hold of him?”
“He shares a room with Dr Mankowitz in the Tower Block. Number 22. Would you care for me to call on the telephone and see if he’s there?”
“No, no,” Dobie said. “Don’t bother. I have to go round there anyway.”
This last was not strictly true, but Dobie was thoroughly familiar with that Law of Premeditated Motion whereby a college lecturer whose whereabouts have been established by telephone will be deemed to have taken the necessary steps to establish himself elsewhere by the time one has arrived at the place where he was before, the application of this law being facilitated by the fact that it is impossible to move from one point to another in a modern college building without surmounting at least three flights of stairs. Dobie arrived outside room 22 in his usual state of mild breathlessness and knocked at the door. “Come in,” somebody said.
The room was full, like all the others in the block, of desks and filing cabinets composed of a shiny plastic material. These had been introduced into staff quarters the previous year to give the correct impression of modern design and hi-tech executive efficiency; since then, however, they – like all the others in the block – had been totally buried under piles of mouldering papers, exam scripts, folders, ashtrays, matchboxes, envelopes, biscuit tins and daily newspapers left open at the racing results and there forgotten. There remained just sufficient space for two metal-backed chairs into which their respective owners might ease themselves, the heaps of decaying matter behind which they then virtually disappeared being thus, so to speak, held at bay and forced to mould themselves around the seated person’s outline. Marryat’s outline was an exceptionally long and thin one – one that gave the accumulated junk a good deal of encouragement. The encroaching jungle seemed to be about to strike, to wipe him out entirely; at any moment he might disappear and civilisation be routed. “Come in,” he said again, this time with a touch of irritation.
“I am in,” Dobie said.
Marryat’s visage thereupon came briefly into view, like Paul Gauguin peering out from between the palm leaves. “So you are. So you are. Mr Forbes, I think?”
“No, my name’s Dobie. Mathematics.”
“Ah yes. Professor Dobie. I knew the face was familiar but—” Marryat took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“I wondered,” Dobie said, “if you could spare me a moment. About a student. An ex-student, rather.”
“Oh yes. Of course. Do make yourself at home.”
Dobie cleared a space on the edge of the desk with the casual expertise of long practice, his own overcrowded rabbit-hutch being almost identical to this one, and perched his behind precariously upon it. “Cantwell.”
“Ah, Cantwell.” Marryat put his glasses back on. “Sad business, that.”
“I understand you were his supervisor when he was up.”
“So I was, so I was. A very sad business indeed.”
“And since then he’s been working for Corder Acoustics.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Did you visit him there? I mean, in the normal run of events —”
“Oh yes. Through the settling-in period. Just checking up on how things were going. The usual thing.”
“And how were they going?”
“No complaints. In fact, very much the contrary. He seemed to be enjoying his work. And giving every satisfaction, they told me.”
“Doing what?”
“D and R. Design and Research Section.”
“And he liked the job?”
“He certainly seemed to.”
“So what was his problem?”
“Problem?” Marryat scratched the tip of his nose. “Ah. I see what you mean. I haven’t a clue. He may have left a note or something, I understand that’s what they often… Anyway, they’re holding the inquest this afternoon and I expect the facts will come out, it’s to be supposed they will. After all, that’s what inquests are for.”
“Are you attending?”
“Not officially,” Marryat said. “No, I shan’t go. I can’t get away and in any case—”
“Why should you?”
“Exactly. You haven’t any… special interest in him, have you?”
“You might say a personal interest.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Say that.”
“Say what?”
“That you had a personal interest.”
“I would have done if you’d asked me but you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Ask me if I had a personal interest.”
Marryat, who was not so used to this kind of a conversation as were Dobie’s more immediate colleagues, took off his glasses once again and began to rub them very hard with a very clean handkerchief. “I didn’t mean if you’d said it to me,” he said, knocking over a box file with his elbow. Spilled papers added themselves to the variegated debris on the floor. “It doesn’t really matter what I meant, anyhow. I think I’ve forgotten. Dickie Bird is the chap you ought to see. That’s if you want to see anyone.”
“About what?”
Marryat rubbed harder than ever. “About Cantwell’s work. He’s the Head of Section.”
�
��He’ll be at the inquest, then?”
“I should think it probable.”
“And there’ll be medical evidence and so forth.”
“I believe that’s customary.”
The medical evidence was given by an outwardly rather formidable dark-haired young lady called Dr Coyle and Dobie didn’t understand very much of it. He hadn’t expected to. However, the coroner, a not at all formidable man with a red nose and matching moustache, seemed to be in no way fazed and made copious notes.
Dobie had never attended an inquest before and wasn’t very impressed. The room was small and poorly lit and remarkably sparsely populated. Only eight other persons, including the coroner, appeared to be present and Dobie didn’t recognise any of them. It all compared very unfavourably with the ones he’d seen on the telly, with Lord Peter Wimsey in the box or whatever it was called. It didn’t much matter what it was called because there wasn’t one. Dr Coyle had given her evidence sitting on a hard wooden chair at the table opposite the coroner and having given it was still sitting there, hands folded patiently in her lap. While the coroner went on scribbling away. The whole show was decidedly lacking in zip.
“Dr Coyle,” the coroner said, eventually. “Besides having performed the pathological examination, and I thank you for reporting upon it so cogently… you in fact discovered the body?”
“I did,” Dr Coyle said. In a high, clear and perhaps excessively ladylike voice, suggestive of Meryl Streep in one of her Mayfair-scrubber routines.
“You were in fact personally acquainted with the deceased? And you indeed carried out the formal identification of the body at Detective-Inspector Jackson’s request?”
“Yes, I was. And yes, I did.”
“So what was your exact relationship with Mr Cantwell?”
“I was his landlady.”
Somebody at the back sniffed penetratingly. The coroner put down his pencil. “Would you amplify on that?”
“Certainly. He rented a first-floor bedsitter and kitchenette. He’d lived there these past three years. The other first-floor rooms I use myself. The ground floor is where I have my clinic.”
“This is at 12 Ludlow Road?”
“Yes.”
The coroner drew a sheet of paper from under his notebook and studied it cautiously. “Yes. I have a sketch-map here which makes the layout of the premises fairly clear. Now, as to your discovery of the body… ?”
“I conducted my morning clinic just as usual, finished just after twelve thirty and went upstairs to make some coffee. About ten minutes later I went into Sammy’s, that’s Mr Cantwell’s room—”
“For what purpose?”
“I wanted to steal some sugar.”
“Ah. On nefarious intent.”
“Yes,” Dr Coyle said. She didn’t smile. “I assumed he was out at work, which would normally have been the case. But on entering the room I immediately saw the body lying on the floor, face downwards, close to the work desk. He had a gun in his right hand – an automatic pistol, I believe. There was blood on the rug under his head and clearly visible trauma to the right side of his skull. I made sure that he was dead and then returned to my flat to phone the police. When they arrived, Inspector Jackson asked me to make a fuller examination of the body in my capacity as police pathologist and I did so. I didn’t go back to the room until then.”
“But you had previously been there for a space of…?”
“Not more than three minutes.”
Dr Coyle, in point of fact, was not unattractive. Irish-blue eyes, shiny black hair and a high, rounded forehead. She wore, probably for the occasion, what Dobie imagined to be an executive costume, tailor-made and navy blue in colour. The general severity of her appearance didn’t suggest, as is sometimes the case, that her air of professional competence was a mere facade; no indeed. This chick was on the ball. The coroner seemed to be well aware of this and to be, if anything, faintly on the defensive. “And during this time you made a preliminary examination of the body?”
“I also looked quickly around the room to see if there was any kind of letter or suicide note. But there wasn’t. Not that I could see.”
“I understand the police haven’t found one so I think we can assume that nothing of that nature… But obviously, then, your first impression was that Mr Cantwell had shot himself?”
“Yes. That’s still my opinion.”
“Quite so.”
“I should add that at that time I didn’t touch or disturb anything in the room in any way.”
“I’d rather taken that for granted, Dr Coyle, in view of your experience in these matters. Nothing else struck your notice as being at all unusual?”
“Nothing.”
“The door of the room was unlocked?”
“Yes. It was normally kept locked when Mr Cantwell was out. But on this occasion, of course, he wasn’t.”
“As his landlady, you would have had a spare key?”
“That’s right. I expected to have to use it.”
“But in the event you didn’t have to. Yes. Just to make this point completely clear, you found the door unlocked but closed? Not open or ajar?”
“The door was unlocked but closed.”
“Thank you,” the coroner said. He started writing once again in his notebook. Dobie wondered what all that had been about. Throughout the interchange his attention had drifted slightly towards the other occupants of the courtroom; he rather thought he had successfully identified the Corder Acoustics rep as a tall technical gent in rimless glasses and the stocky curly-haired bloke in the regrettable suit would almost certainly be here on behalf of the local fuzz. “… You’ve said that you estimate death to have occurred an hour or so previously? At approximately eleven thirty?”
“That’s correct.”
“At which time you were of course conducting your clinic downstairs. We have to take it that you didn’t hear the shot? Or any kind of movement or disturbance?”
“Plenty of movement and disturbance. As in any other clinic. But I didn’t hear the shot, no. Nor did my receptionist or any of the patients in the waiting-room. If I’d heard anything like that, naturally I’d have investigated.”
The coroner seemed to be examining his sketch-map again. “I see that Mr Cantwell’s room is at the opposite end of the house to your consulting room. That may in part account for it.”
“Yes, and it’s a very solid building. With thick walls.”
“Now I’m going to forestall Detective-Inspector Jackson’s evidence, Dr Coyle, and ask you if you were able to recognise the gun?”
“I recognised it as being identical or very similar to one that belonged to Mr Cantwell, yes.”
“So you knew that he possessed a gun?”
“He showed it to me once. Also where he kept it. In the chest of drawers, under his shirts.”
Somebody else at the back of the room was also making notes assiduously. An earnest-looking lad in his early twenties, wearing a crumpled sports jacket and a worried expression; a cub reporter from the Echo, likely as not. Not much for him here, surely? Or for anyone else. Dobie sighed windily. It wasn’t as though he had nothing better to do, what with papers to mark, calculations to be checked, Jenny to worry about… That peculiar business of the blonde wig, for instance. There was a mystery for you. What the hell would she be doing with a blonde wig?…
“Can you say why he kept a gun?”
“He bought it some six months ago with the idea of protecting the premises. You see, the clinic downstairs has been broken into on three separate occasions lately, presumably by people who hoped to find drugs there. I do keep drugs there, of course. Mr Cantwell was worried about my safety because these can be very nasty people. So he got this gun though I think his intention was to threaten these people with it, should the need arise, rather than to use it. I didn’t think it was a good idea and I told him so very emphatically.”
“You knew that the gun was unlicensed?”
“I didn’t know th
at because I never asked him. But I certainly assumed that he didn’t have a licence for it. I asked him to get rid of it and he later told me that he had. Obviously, that couldn’t have been true.”
Lots of women wore wigs. For all Dobie knew, blonde wigs might be trendy. But why be so secretive about it? Why would she think that he cared, one way or another? It was all so… Yes. Well. Dobie wiggled his behind against his uncomfortable seat and tried to concentrate on the court proceedings. It wasn’t easy.
“I understand,” the coroner was saying, “that the police haven’t been able to trace his relatives.”
“No, I couldn’t help them there very much. His parents died some years back, or so he told me, in a car accident. In Australia. There was an uncle in London he used to visit occasionally but I don’t know the address.”
“Did Mr Cantwell receive many letters? To your knowledge?”
“Very few letters. He didn’t write many, either. He didn’t like writing letters. He always said he was numerate, not literate.”
“I’m not sure what that means but we’ll let it pass. Would you say he was a lonely man?”
“Yes, I think I would.”
“Not many visitors?”
“Again, hardly any. To my knowledge. Though I mightn’t know if he had. I have so many professional engagements —”
“Yes, I understand that. Did you think of him as a friend, Dr Coyle?”
“Our relationship was perfectly friendly, but I wouldn’t say that I thought of him as a friend. If I were a more maternal person I’d say my attitude was… Well…”
“In loco parentis?”
“Not exactly. I suppose I felt sorry for him.”
“Why?”
“I think I’ve explained why. He didn’t have many friends. Nor do I, if it comes to that.”
“Did he have any friends of the opposite sex?”
“None that I know of.”
The coroner gazed upwards at the ceiling. “I suppose I’m really asking you if you can shed any light on what motives he may have had for taking his own life. Because they’re not very evident, on the face of it.”
“I know he had money problems. But I didn’t think they were all that serious.”
The Strange Attractor Page 2