Death at the Jesus Hospital

6

All was not well in the Jesus Hospital in Marlow. The old gentlemen were restless and unsettled. The funeral of Abel Meredith had been delayed for some unaccountable reason. The residents of the almshouse liked funerals. Funerals reminded them that they at any rate were still alive. They liked singing the hymns like ‘Rock of Ages’ and ‘The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended’. They weren’t quite so sure about the dead man being lowered into the ground but by that stage many of them were already thinking of the wake in the dining hall that the hospital organized for its own after a funeral, with special cakes and scones and homemade raspberry jam.

But what unsettled the old gentlemen even more, though they never mentioned it to anyone, not even their closest friends, was that they might be living with a murderer. And none of their rooms had locks. The authorities had decided long before that the ability to rush in and take a sick man to hospital without breaking doors down was essential. But here was the disadvantage of that policy. Number Nine or Number Fourteen or Number Eleven might rise in the night and kill once again, and nobody could stop them rushing in, knife or gun in hand. Freddie Butcher, Number Two, whose life had been spent on the railways rather than selling meat, had done considerable damage to his back trying to pull a sofa across his living room to a position right by the front door so that any intruder would have to push past it to get to him. The general amount of conversation, usually gossip of one sort of another, had dropped. The only bright spot on the silkmen’s horizon was the arrival of a new regular at the Rose and Crown. This Johnny chap, they said to one another, had a fund of good stories and an inexhaustible supply of money for buying rounds of drinks. He didn’t seem very interested in the hospital, not even in the murder. He was one of those people who give the impression of always being cheerful. And once you were sitting in the corner table of the Rose and Crown, with a pint of the landlord’s best in your fist, you felt safe. Nobody was going to come and murder you there. So it was not surprising that some of the old gentlemen had taken to staying longer and longer in the pub, nor that they were so cheerful on their return that they might not have noticed whether they were being murdered or not.

Warden Monk was aware of these undercurrents swirling round his kingdom. He tried to reassure the old men that nobody was coming to kill them. In old days he might have asked Sir Peregrine to come down if he had a moment and give the old boys a pep talk. In these homilies Sir Peregrine always sounded like a house prefect instructing his charges to play up in the house football competition and get fit for the cross-country running championship. But Sir Peregrine did not have a moment and did not come. Those who did, and who came far too often for Monk’s liking, were the officers of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary who always lowered morale. Why do they keep coming, the old gentlemen would mutter to each other, unless they know that the murderer is here, is one of us, within these walls? One down, the old men muttered to themselves, nineteen to go.

Monk himself had other things on his mind. It was not surprising that Sergeant Peter Donaldson had been unable to find Abel Meredith’s will in the lawyers’ offices in Maidenhead or anywhere else. Monk had not one last will and testament of the late Abel Meredith, Number Twenty, but two. The Authorized Version, as Monk referred to it, was in a secret place inside a floorboard in Monk’s bedroom. One of the many occupations he had had to leave in a hurry in an earlier life was that of carpenter, but his departure had not come before he had learnt a lot about the trade. People, especially the police, were great believers in the fact that criminals liked hiding things under the floorboards. Monk was a great believer in hiding things inside floorboards. His secret place could only be unlocked by pressing a whorl on the lower side of the board. Nobody looking at it, not even the most suspicious policeman, would have imagined that there was anything concealed inside. Like the wooden horse of Troy, Monk would say to himself, the most important parts are on the inside.

The other version of the will, the Revised Version, as Monk put it, was in the file marked Wills on a shelf on his office. This was one of those unusual wills, two pages long, where the second page only required a signature. Monk may have been a thief. But he was not greedy. He was, he would remind himself from time to time, a reasonable man. When engaged on will work he always took care to keep to the original intentions. Abel Meredith had left a large amount of money, well over two thousand pounds, a figure that would have sent Inspector Fletcher’s instincts into overtime. All of that been left to a brother in Saskatchewan in the original. In the new will Monk split the figure, half to the brother in Canada, half to ‘my good friend and counsellor, Thomas Monk, with thanks for all the help and advice rendered to me’. This was not the most valuable will created in Monk’s office. It was, in fact, the third most valuable. Once the funeral was over, he would take it to a rather grand solicitor in the West End who would launch it into the legal system.

‘Don’t think very much of this lot, actually,’ said Powerscourt’s third police officer. Detective Inspector Miles Devereux was wearing a cream shirt and a very old-fashioned suit that might have belonged to his father. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he told Powerscourt, ‘but I am the tenth of eleven sons. No jokes about cricket or football teams, please, absolutely not. Family may be numerous, family funds are not. By the time they got round to deciding what to do with me, I had, I still have, now I think of it, brothers in almost every conceivable occupation. I have brothers who can sell you a house, look after your money, train your racehorse, christen, marry and bury you though not all at the same time. There’s one who farms in Argentina and one who runs enormous ranches in Canada. There’s one who will buy your antique books and sell them on at an enormous profit, and another who claims to be opening the wines of Italy up to new markets in Britain, though the family say he merely opens the bottles. There are, I fear, even more of them. So I decided to do something different and join the police force. It’s quite fun, really, especially when you get a tasty one like this case here. But all this stuff here,’ he waved a languid hand at the strange collection of objects on the table, ‘contents of Sir Rufus’s pockets, pretty dull, I’d say, wouldn’t you? Why are we always so keen to have a look at these things? I’ve never known. It’s not as though the murderer is going to pop his calling card into a waistcoat pocket, is it?’

Powerscourt smiled. Behind the slightly dreamy exterior he suspected Devereux had a sharp brain. He looked young to have risen to Detective Inspector. In one pile on the table in Cannon Row police station were the items he dismissed, a collection of keys, coins, currency notes, a wallet, a letter from his bank telling him he had two hundred and sixty-three pounds in his account, two tickets for the opera from three days before, a large unopened white handkerchief and a receipt from Simpsons in the Strand.

‘Do you know, Powerscourt, they always put me on to these kinds of cases now. Rich people’s murders, all that sort of stuff. Here am I, longing for some tasty gang violence in the East End and I end up yet again with death from Debrett’s. It’s really not fair. What do you think of this other lot?’ He pointed to a rather larger heap of miscellaneous rubbish. ‘This lot is the stuff found all over the Silkworkers Hall that day by the good Mrs Robinson, cleaning lady and occasional waitress. She kept it especially for us.’ A long pianist’s finger stirred up the random bits of paper. Powerscourt thought cigarette packets or cigarette stubs, tickets or parts of tickets seemed to be the most frequent objects in this display, bus tickets, underground tickets, train tickets.

‘One section about football results from last week’s Times,’ said Devereux, stirring the mixture slowly, as if it were a sauce. ‘Our man may have been a Tottenham fan as they won five nil. Two empty beer bottles from Messrs Young’s and Company of Wandsworth, a couple of unpaid bills, one return ticket from Hastings and one from somewhere ending in “be”, two brown leaves and a menu from last night’s dinner. They seem to have done themselves pretty well, don’t you think, Lord Powerscourt? Any of these bits and pieces ring a bell with you?’

‘Nothing unusual that I can see, nothing unusual at all.’

‘Well, we’ll keep them safe for now. Let me tell you what I have set in train so far,’ said the Inspector. ‘My men are calling on all those who attended the dinner last night. By this evening we should have a reasonable picture of what went on. The chef and the waiters should be here in an hour or so. I have an appointment this afternoon with a senior doctor at Barts round the corner. I am going to ask him about the strange marks on the body, or bodies I should say after what you told me earlier. I do have a theory about the marks though I’m sure it’s probably wrong.’

‘What is that?’

‘I just wonder if they weren’t all suffering from some strange disease that produces that pattern. A number of those tropical diseases can bring on some very unusual symptoms, people changing colour, or marks appearing all over their skin, that sort of thing.’

‘It’s certainly possible,’ said Powerscourt tactfully. ‘Perhaps the medical gentlemen will be able to help.’ Privately he was less certain. The only thing all three corpses had in common, as far as he knew, apart from the strange marks, was membership or connection with the Silkworkers Company.

‘I should like to be present when you talk to the chef and the waiters, if I may,’ he continued, ‘and I, too, have an appointment this afternoon, though with a man of finance rather than medicine.’

Powerscourt told the Inspector about his inquiries with William Burke about the livery company and the suspicion that something untoward might be going on.

Inspector Grime of the Norfolk Constabulary was not, by nature, a cheerful man. That was not his way. On this day he was, once more, not cheerful. But he would have said that affairs were moving in a not wholly unsatisfactory fashion in the case of the bursar. Grime had now finished his interviews with the pupils of Allison’s School. No more would he have to stare at those maps in the geography classroom and the countries of the world ready to spin for him in their globes at the touch of a finger. He suspected that the headmaster would have some other form of torture ready for him to do with the boys. No woman had fallen for Inspector Grime’s particular temperament since the death of his wife some years before. There was no Mrs Grime at home waiting for him at the end of the day with pots of tea and warm scones. There had been no little Grimes to delight a parent’s life. As a result he eyed small boys, even larger boys, with the same suspicion he brought to the rest of the human race, the same lack of charity. It was, he had said to himself often enough, precisely that lack of charity that had brought him success in the business of detection and solving crimes. If you thought all the witnesses were lying and potential criminals, you were bound to be proved right some of the time.

The particular development that was lightening his burdens this afternoon was to do with the postman, or rather the one who had pretended to be a postman. He had arranged with the postal authorities and the headmaster for a real postman, dressed in the proper uniform, to visit the school the following morning at exactly the same time as the visit on the day of the murder. This mailman would retrace the steps of his criminal predecessor in every particular, ending up with a phoney delivery in the bursar’s room. Only the headmaster knew about the plan. If word got out, Grime believed, the fevered imaginations of the younger children might get the better of them. Morning prayers would start the day’s work at Allison’s School shortly after the visit. The headmaster would ask if anybody remembered anything about the day of the murder and the visit of the postman. He, Inspector Grime, would have to attend the assembly, which he would have avoided at all costs under normal circumstances. The combination of boys and prayers and singing would have been too much for him. But on this occasion the prize might be great, another opening into the strange death of Roderick Gill.

There was another reason for the Inspector’s mood. He had never been as excited as Powerscourt about the strange marks on the dead man’s chest. Fancy stuff, he thought, but it might have nothing to do with the murder. Gill’s affair with Mrs Hilda Mitchell, the Inspector felt sure, was a more promising field of inquiry than livery companies and unusual anatomical details. And that very morning he had received intelligence from York where Mr Mitchell was believed to be carrying out restoration work on the minster, as he had on an earlier occasion two years before. A local sergeant had called on the dean for confirmation of his presence. Jude Mitchell, master stonemason, the policeman was told, had indeed been employed at the minster for work on the statues in the crossing. But he had completed his part of the restoration a week ago and left. He was due to return in a week’s time to begin a programme of repair in the chapter house. The landlady in his rooms confirmed his departure and his date of return. Nobody knew where Jude Mitchell, cuckolded husband of Roderick Gill’s mistress, Hilda, had gone. But he had left the place where he was supposed to be three days before the murder.

Warden Monk had made a mistake. He knew it the minute he stopped talking. He did not know how damaging it might be. The old men were still restless, suspicious that one of their number might be a murderer, upset over the delay in the funeral arrangements, troubled by the visits of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary. Monk, resplendent today in a brand-new green cravat, had been having a conversation after lunch in the hall with Henry Wood, Number Twelve, about the dead man before the silkmen went off for their afternoon rest.

‘I don’t suppose, Warden, that we know if Number Twenty had any money to leave?’

Monk knew from long experience that wills, along with the weather and the looks and other physical attributes of the barmaid in the Rose and Crown were among the most popular subjects of conversation in the Jesus Hospital.

‘He left a lot more than you might think,’ Monk replied.

‘How much?’ said Number Twelve.

‘Well, if you thought of a figure round about two thousand pounds, you wouldn’t be far out.’ Monk always liked showing off about his knowledge of the hospital and its inmates.

‘And where did the money go?’

‘Half went to a brother to Canada.’

‘And the rest?’

‘Let me just say that the rest ended up nearer to home.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t feel I can reveal any more at this stage,’ said Monk, turning a pale shade of pink in the face. ‘Poor man’s not even in his grave yet.’

Henry Wood, Number Twelve, popular with his colleagues in the Jesus Hospital, had worked for most of his life in the fish business. He had long ago decided that human beings were much more slippery than the fish he traded in. A private game of his was to decide what kinds of fish other inmates resembled. Bill Smith, Number Four, known as Smithy, was a trout, John Watkins, Number Fifteen, was a lemon sole, Josiah Collins, Number Seventeen, was a perch. From the very first day he had met Monk, Number Twelve had him down as an eel.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said suddenly, staring at the changing colours in Monk’s face. ‘He’s left the money to you. Or so you say.’

‘I have no further comment to make,’ said Monk stiffly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a report to prepare for the Prime Warden of the Silkworkers Company.’

Monk strode off, cursing himself for his folly. But worse was to come. Henry Wood, Number Twelve, missed the evening meal in the dining hall because of a doctor’s appointment in the village. He took a pie supper in the Rose and Crown and began telling everyone about his conversation, just as Johnny Fitzgerald arrived, full of cash and curiosity. Johnny let the conversation take its course at first.

‘You can’t be serious, Number Twelve,’ said Freddie Butcher, Number Two. ‘You’re not suggesting that the Warden has been playing tricks with our wills?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said Number Twelve, taking a long draught of his beer, ‘but if you had a couple of thousand, or even a couple of pounds, would you leave half of it to Monk?’

There was a pause while the old gentlemen thought about this. Most drank deeply to aid the thought processes. So rapid was the decline in the level of the glasses that Johnny felt obliged to order another round. The barmaid, unaware of the passions she roused in the old men, smiled sweetly at him as she pulled the final pint. Christy Butler, Number Thirteen, a printer in his previous existence, could not take his eyes off her, especially when she leant forward over her work.

‘It’s a mistake, surely,’ said Peter Baker, Number Ten, his hand on top of his head, searching for the few remaining hairs. ‘Warden Monk must be remembering things wrong.’

Number Ten was widely believed to be the most stupid person in the almshouse. There was no reply. Then Andrew Snow, Number Eighteen, whose sight had nearly gone, tapped the table with his fist.

‘My friends,’ he said, with the air of one making a great announcement of state like the Speech from the Throne or the Budget, ‘I have an important statement to make.’ Everybody turned to look at Number Eighteen, the wisps of white hair left on his forehead, the deep lines like a map around his mouth and his forehead, the white shirt he always wore under the silkmen’s coat. Then he looked confused. ‘The only thing is,’ he looked around suddenly, ‘I’m not sure I can tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Of course you can tell us.’

‘Don’t be so silly.’

‘You can’t lead us all up the garden path and then not tell, it’s not fair.’

Johnny Fitzgerald wondered how it was going to end. He felt he might be on the verge of discovering something at last. Andrew Snow, Number Eighteen, looked more confused than ever. When he turned to Johnny, an answer to his dilemma seemed to come to him.

‘Mr Fitzgerald,’ he said, ‘you’re a man of the world, I should say. Could you advise me on what I should do?’

‘I can’t really, unless I know exactly what it is you might be going to say. Why don’t we hop outside for a moment and you can tell me all about it, if the company have no objection?’

Hop would not be the first word to spring to mind about the progress of Number Eighteen from the back bar of the Rose and Crown to the road outside. He walked very slowly, holding on to the backs of the chairs as he went.

‘It’s like this, Mr Fitzgerald,’ he began, after Johnny had steered him a few paces away from the pub. He paused briefly. ‘I had a conversation with Abel Meredith, Number Twenty, a couple of months ago. It’s not often I remember conversations these days but I can remember this one very clearly. We were talking about our wills and I said my money, not that there’s much of it, was going to my nephews and nieces. He said — I’m certain of this — that all his money was going to his brother who lived in Canada, Saskatchewan or Alberta, one of those places. What do you think of that, Mr Fitzgerald? Should I tell the colleagues about it?’

‘Of course you should,’ said Johnny cheerfully, sensing that a profitable hornet’s nest was about to open up. ‘They have a right to know, those men. Who knows how many other wills have been changed, if that is what is going on?’

There was an expectant air as the two of them returned to the Rose and Crown. Number Twelve was trying to start a flirtatious conversation with the barmaid, whose blonde hair and pale brown eyes looked particularly fine this evening. Jack Miller, Number Three, who had spent his life working in a bank, was staring expectantly at his empty glass as if it might be refilled by the workings of divine providence. Number Eight’s head was beginning to slip forward as if an evening nap might be about to start only a couple of hours after the afternoon one had ended.

‘Well?’ said Freddie Butcher, Number Two.

‘What’s the news?’ asked John Watkins, Number Fifteen.

They all stared at Andrew Snow, Number Eighteen, as he repeated his moves on the way out, holding on to the chairs as he made his way back to his seat. He took his place with a great sigh and took a long pull at the remains of his pint. Johnny Fitzgerald, always quick to detect the advent of thirst in himself and his drinking companions, offered to buy another round before the news broke. He was duly despatched to the bar, where the barmaid showed off her wares once more to the great delight of the old gentlemen.

‘I was just saying to Mr Fitzgerald here,’ said Number Eighteen, ‘that I remember a conversation I had with Number Twenty a couple of months ago. I’d be the first to admit that I don’t remember all my conversations that well these days’ — there was a general nod of agreement at this point from the company — ‘but I do remember this one. I remember it very clearly. We were talking about wills. I said that I was going to leave all my money to my nephews and nieces, not that there was very much of it. Abel Meredith told me he was going to leave all his money to a brother in Canada, Saskatchewan I think he said, wherever that is. They always told us at school that Canada was a very big country so this Saskatchewan place could be anywhere. He didn’t say anything about leaving money to Monk, not a word.’

The old men stared at him for a moment as if they had been hypnotized. Then, virtually in unison, as if obeying a hidden conductor, they raised their glasses to their lips and drank deeply. Johnny Johnston, Number Nine, beginning a fresh pint from his refill, had a ring of creamy foam round his mouth. Stephen Potter, Number Fourteen, was wiping beer off his moustache with a bright red handkerchief.

‘God bless my soul!’ said Number Twelve, the man from the fish trade. ‘He didn’t mention Monk at all, Meredith, I mean?’

‘He did not,’ said Number Eighteen.

‘Man’s a bounder,’ said Jack Miller, Number Three. ‘Always thought so.’

‘Do you think he robs us every time somebody dies? This has got to be stopped.’ Josiah Collins, Number Seventeen, the man who read his bible every morning, made his first contribution of the evening.

‘What are we going to do?’ said Andrew Snow, Number Eighteen. ‘We can’t let it lie. Mr Fitzgerald, can you give us some advice?’

Johnny had been tying to make a link between forged wills and murder and found the connection difficult. He established, to his great surprise, that some of the old men delivered their wills into Monk’s keeping when they arrived at the hospital. The Warden told them, he was assured, that this way was preferable to the quarters of the recently dead being searched in the quest for a last will and testament.

‘Well,’ Johnny began, ‘the first thing to do, I would suggest, is that all those who have entrusted their wills to his care should ask for them back. Then I think you should take them all to a reputable solicitor close by. That way everybody will know at once where to look for anybody else’s will. More important, I think, is that you need to ask Monk for his version of events. So far we only have a guess, a very intelligent guess, mind you, from Henry Wood, Number Twelve, about what has been going on. I think it might be premature to condemn the Warden as a blackguard without any hard evidence.’

‘How do we do ask him what’s been going on?’

‘I’m sure he’s a blackguard!’

‘The devil! I shan’t speak to him ever again!’

‘What a thing to do!’

The old men were all talking at once. The barmaid popped her head round the corner to see if anything strange was going on. Johnny suddenly felt very sorry for the inhabitants of the Jesus Hospital. Here they were, away from their families, if they had any left, in a strange place, with decay and death waiting for them. That was all that was left. They were like children, he said to himself, too innocent to know what to do in difficult circumstances. But children grow up, they grow wiser, they put away childish things. They grow into maturity, secure in the knowledge that their powers should increase over time and that their future is in front of them. The future had shrunk to a seventeenth-century quadrangle and evenings in the Rose and Crown for the men of the Jesus Hospital. Even the young knew that death would come in the end, but for them death was so far away they never thought of it. Here it could come tomorrow, a stroke in the night, a failing heart, a murderer’s knife.

‘Did I give my will to the Warden when I arrived?’ asked Christy Butler, Number Thirteen, with a spill from his glass spreading slowly down his shirt. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘Neither can I,’ added Colin Baker, Number Six, his wooden leg tucked under the table, staring into his beer.

The old men of the Jesus Hospital fell silent. Memory, as so often, was failing them. They were losing touch with their own past. Johnny Fitzgerald thought the evening might degenerate into melancholy and a pitiful series of complaints about time.

‘I don’t think you should worry about that,’ said Johnny cheerfully. ‘I forget my own door keys about once a month. And that’s when I’m stone cold sober. Don’t worry about not being able to remember, don’t worry at all. It happens to us all. I don’t think it makes any difference if you left your will with the Warden or not. You can still go and ask if you can have it back. If he hasn’t got it, he’ll tell you. This is what I think you should do.’ Johnny, who had followed Powerscourt’s instructions not to mention affairs at the hospital to the letter up till now, felt he had to take command of this strange company of veterans. ‘Just go in one at a time after breakfast or whenever you know he’s going to be in his office, and ask the Warden if you can have your wills back. When you’ve got them, take the wills round to the nearest solicitor’s office, every single one of them. We can meet here again tomorrow evening and decide how to proceed.’

The old men stared at Johnny as if he were some Old Testament prophet leading them out of the wilderness. They nodded and drank deeply of their beer. The barmaid popped her head round the corner.

‘Nearly closing time, gentlemen. It’ll be last orders in a minute. Is there anything I can get you?’

Johnny raised his hand. Thirteen old men stared greedily at Barbara Wilson as she pulled another round. Johnny reflected sadly that for most of these inhabitants of the Jesus Hospital last orders were not very far away.