Unnatural Causes

16

The light was on over the cottage porch but the sitting room was almost in darkness. Inspector Reckless was sitting alone in front of the dying fire rather like a guest who, unsure of his welcome, is making a propitiatory gesture of economising on the lights. He rose as Dalgliesh entered and switched on a small table lamp. The two men faced each other in its soft but inadequate glow.

“Alone, Mr. Dalgliesh? You had some trouble perhaps in getting away?”

The Inspector’s voice was expressionless. It was impossible to detect either criticism or enquiry in the flat statement.

“I got away all right. I decided to walk back along the cliff. How did you know where to find me?”

“When I found the cottage empty I supposed you and Miss Dalgliesh would be dining somewhere in the district. I tried the most likely house first. There are developments which I wanted to discuss with you tonight and I didn’t want to talk on the phone.”

“Well, talk away. But what about something to drink?”

Dalgliesh found it almost impossible to keep the note of cheerful encouragement from his voice. He felt uncomfortably like a housemaster jollying along a promising but nervous examination candidate. And yet Reckless was entirely at ease. The sombre eyes gazed at him with no trace of embarrassment or servility. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with me?” thought Dalgliesh. “Why can’t I feel at ease with the man?”

“I won’t have anything now, thank you Mr. Dalgliesh. I thought you’d be interested in the pathologist’s report. I got it early this evening. Dr. Sydenham must have been up all last night with him. Would you like to take a guess at the cause of death?”

“No,” thought Dalgliesh, “I wouldn’t. This is your case and I wish to God you’d get on with solving it. I’m not in the mood for guessing games.” He said: “Asphyxia?”

“It was natural causes, Mr. Dalgliesh. He died of a heart attack.”

“What?”

“There’s no doubt of it. He had a mild angina complicated by a defect of the left atrium. That adds up to a pretty poor heart and it gave out on him. No asphyxia, no poisoning, no marks of violence apart from the severed hands. He didn’t bleed to death, and he didn’t drown. He died three hours after his last meal. And he died of a heart attack.”

“And the meal was? As if I need to ask!”

“Fried scampi with sauce tartare. Green salad with French dressing. Brown bread and butter, Danish blue cheese and biscuits, washed down with Chianti.”

“I shall be surprised if he ate that at Monksmere,” said Dalgliesh. “It’s a typical London restaurant meal. What about the hands, by the way?”

“Chopped off some hours after death. Dr. Sydenham thinks they may have been taken off on Wednesday night, and that would be logical enough, Mr. Dalgliesh. The seat of the dinghy was used as a chopping block. There wouldn’t be much bleeding but if the man did get blood on him there was plenty of sea to wash it away. It’s a nasty business, a spiteful business, and I shall find the man who did it, but that’s not to say it was murder. He died naturally.”

“A really bad shock would have killed him, I suppose?”

“But how bad? You know how it is with these heart cases. One of my boys has seen this Dr. Forbes-Denby and he says that Seton could have gone on for years with care. Well, he was careful. No undue strain, no air travel, a moderate diet, plenty of comfort. People with worse hearts than his go on to make old bones. I had an aunt with that trouble. She survived two bombing-outs. You could never count on killing a man by shocking him to death. Heart cases survive the most extraordinary shocks.”

“And succumb to a mild attack of indigestion. I know. That last meal was hardly the most appropriate eating for a heart case, but we can’t seriously suppose that someone took him out to dinner with the intention of provoking a fatal attack of indigestion.”

“Nobody took him out to dinner, Mr. Dalgliesh. He dined where you thought he might have done. At the Cortez Club in Soho, Luker’s place. He went there straight from the Cadaver Club and arrived alone.”

“And left alone?”

“No. There’s a hostess there, a blonde called Lily Coombs. A kind of right-hand woman to Luker. Keeps an eye on the girls and the booze and jollies along the nervous customers. You know her, I daresay, if she was with Luker in fifty-nine when he shot Martin. Her story is that Seton called her to his table and said that a friend had given him her name. He was looking for information about the drug racket and had been told that she could help.”

“Lil isn’t exactly a Sunday-school teacher but, as far as I know, she’s never been mixed up in the dope business. Nor has Luker-yet. Seton didn’t tell her the name of his friend, I suppose?”

“She says that she asked but he wouldn’t tell. Anyway, she saw the chance of making a few quid and they left the club together at nine-thirty. Seton told her that they couldn’t go back to his club to talk because women weren’t admitted. That’s true; they aren’t. So they drove around Hyde Park and the West End in a taxi for about forty minutes, he paid her five quid for her information-I don’t know what sort of a yarn she pitched him-and he got out at Paddington Underground Station leaving her to take the cab back to the Cortez. She arrived back at ten-thirty and remained there in view of about thirty customers until one in the morning.”

“But why leave in the first place? Couldn’t she have spun him the yarn at his table?”

“She said he seemed anxious to get out of the place. The waiter confirmed that he looked nervy and on edge. And Luker doesn’t like her to spend too much time with one customer.”

“If I know Luker he’d take an even poorer view of her leaving the club for forty minutes to take a trip round Hyde Park. But it all sounds very respectable. Lil must have changed since the old days. Did you think it a likely story?”

Reckless said: “I’m a provincial police officer, Mr. Dalgliesh. I don’t take the view that every Soho tart is necessarily a liar. I thought she was telling the truth, although not necessarily the whole truth. And then you see, we’ve traced the cab driver. He confirmed that he picked them up outside the club at nine-thirty and dropped Seton outside the District Line entrance at Paddington about forty minutes later. He said they seemed to be talking together very seriously for the whole of the journey and that the gentleman made notes in a pocket book from time to time. If he did I should like to know what happened to it. There was no pocket book on him when I saw the body.”

Dalgliesh said: “You’ve worked quickly. So the time he was last seen alive is pushed forward to about ten-ten. And he died less than two hours later.”

“Of natural causes, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

“I think he was intended to die.”

“Maybe. But I’m not arguing with facts. Seton died at midnight last Tuesday and he died because he had a weak heart and it stopped beating. That’s what Dr. Sydenham tells me and I’m not going to waste public money trying to prove that he’s wrong. Now you’re telling me that someone induced that heart attack. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I am saying that there’s no evidence yet to support it. I’m keeping an open mind on this case. There’s a lot we don’t know yet.”

That remark struck Dalgliesh as a considerable understatement. Most of the facts Reckless didn’t yet know were surely almost as crucial as the cause of death. He could have catalogued the unanswered questions. Why had Seton asked to be dropped at Paddington? Who, if anyone, was he on the way to meet? Where had he died? Where was his body from midnight on Tuesday onwards? Who moved it to Monksmere and why? If the death had indeed been premeditated how did the murderer contrive so successfully to make it look like natural death? And this led on to a question which Dalgliesh found the most intriguing of all. Having done so, why didn’t he leave the body in London, dumped perhaps at the side of the road to be later identified as that of a middle-aged, unimportant detective novelist, who had been walking in London on his own mysterious business and had been overcome by a heart attack? Why bring the body back to Monksmere and stage an elaborate charade which couldn’t fail to arouse suspicion of foul play and which would inevitably bring the whole Suffolk CID buzzing around his ears?

As if he could read Dalgliesh’s thoughts Reckless said: “We’ve no evidence that Seton’s death and the mutilation of his body are directly related. He died of natural causes. Sooner or later we shall find out where. Then we shall get a lead on the person responsible for all the subsequent nonsense; the mutilation; the false telephone call to Digby Seton-if it were made; the two manuscripts sent to Miss Kedge-if they were sent. There’s a joker in this pack and I don’t like his sense of humour; but I don’t think he’s a killer.”

“So you think that it’s all an elaborate hoax? With what purpose?”

“Malice, Mr. Dalgliesh. Malice against the dead, or the living. The hope of throwing suspicion on other people. The need to make trouble. For Miss Calthrop, maybe. She doesn’t deny that the handless corpse in a dinghy was her idea. For Digby Seton. He stands to gain most by his half-brother’s death. For Miss Dalgliesh, even. After all, it was her chopper.”

Dalgliesh said: “That’s pure conjecture. The chopper’s missing, that’s all we know. There’s no evidence whatsoever that it was the weapon.”

“There’s evidence now. You see, it’s been returned. Switch on the lights, Mr. Dalgliesh, and you’ll see.”

The chopper had, indeed, been returned. At the far end of the room stood a small eighteenth-century sofa table, a delicate and charming thing which Dalgliesh remembered from his childhood as part of the furniture of his grandmother’s sitting room. The chopper had been driven into the centre, the blade splitting the polished wood almost in two, the shaft curving upward. In the bright centre light which now flooded the room Dalgliesh could see clearly the brown stains of blood on the blade. It would be sent for analysis, of course. Nothing would be left to chance. But he had no doubt that it was Maurice Seton’s blood.

Reckless said: “I came to let you know the PM report. I thought you might be interested. The door was half open when I arrived so I came in, calling for you. I saw the chopper almost at once. In the circumstances I thought I’d take the liberty of staying around until you arrived.”

If he were gratified by the success of his little charade, he made no sign. Dalgliesh hadn’t credited him with a dramatic instinct. It had been quite cleverly stage managed; the soft conversation in the gloaming, the sudden blaze of light, the shock of seeing something beautiful and irreplaceable wantonly and maliciously destroyed. He would have liked to have asked whether Reckless would have broken his news with such spectacular éclat if Miss Dalgliesh had been present. Well, why not? Reckless knew perfectly well that Jane Dalgliesh could have driven that chopper into the table before she and Dalgliesh left for Priory House. A woman who could cleave off a dead man’s hands to provide herself with a little private entertainment was hardly likely to jib at the sacrifice of a sofa table in the same cause. There had been method in the Inspector’s excursion into drama. He had been hoping to watch his suspect’s eyes for the absence of that first unmistakable flicker of surprise and shock. Well, he hadn’t got much out of Dalgliesh’s reaction. Suddenly, cold with anger, he made up his mind. As soon as he could control his voice he said: “I shall be going to London tomorrow. I would be grateful if you would keep an eye on this place. I don’t expect to be any longer than one night.”

Reckless said: “I shall be keeping an eye on everyone at Monksmere, Mr. Dalgliesh. I shall have some questions for them. What time did you and your aunt leave the cottage?”

“At about six-forty-five.”

“And you left together?”

“Yes. If you’re asking whether my aunt popped back on her own to fetch a clean hankie the answer is no. And, just to set the record straight, the chopper was not where it is now when we left.”

Unprovoked, Reckless said calmly: “And I arrive here just before nine. He had nearly two hours. Did you tell anyone about the dinner engagement, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

“No. I didn’t, and I’m sure my aunt wouldn’t have talked about it. But that’s not really significant. We can always tell at Monksmere whether people are at home by the absence of lights.”

“And you always leave your doors conveniently unlocked. It’s all made very easy. And if things run true to form on this case, either all of them will be able to produce alibis, or none of them will.” He walked over to the sofa table, and pulling an immense white handkerchief from his pocket he wrapped it round the shaft of the chopper and jerked the blade out of the table. He carried it to the door, then turned to face Dalgliesh: “He died at midnight, Mr. Dalgliesh. Midnight. When Digby Seton had been in police custody for over an hour; when Oliver Latham was enjoying himself at the theatrical party in full view of two Knights, three Dames of the British Empire and half the culture hangers-on in London; when Miss Marley was safely tucked up in her hotel bed as far as I or anyone else knows; and when Justin Bryce was battling with his first attack of asthma. At least two of them have fool-proof alibis and the other two don’t seem particularly worried… I forgot to tell you, by the way. There was a telephone call for you while I was waiting. A Mr. Max Gurney. He wants you to ring back as soon as possible. He said that you knew the number.”

Dalgliesh was surprised. Max Gurney was the last of his friends to ring him when he was on holiday. More to the point, Gurney was a senior partner in the firm which published Maurice Seton. He wondered whether Reckless knew this. Apparently not, since he made no comment. The Inspector had been working at tremendous pace and there were few people connected with Seton who hadn’t been interviewed. But either he hadn’t yet got round to seeing Seton’s publisher, or he had decided that there was nothing to be gained.

Reckless finally turned to go: “Goodnight, Mr. Dalgliesh… Please tell your aunt that I’m sorry about the table… If you’re right about this being murder we know one thing about our killer, don’t we? He reads too many detective stories.”

He was gone. As soon as the departing roar of his car had died away, Dalgliesh telephoned Max Gurney. Max must have been waiting for he answered immediately.

“Adam? Good of you to telephone so promptly. The Yard were very naughty about letting me know where you were but I guessed it might be Suffolk. When are you coming back to town? Could I see you as soon as you do?”

Dalgliesh said that he would be in London next day. He could hear Max’s voice lighten with relief.

“Then could we lunch together? Oh, lovely. At one o’clock say? Have you any preference about the place?”

“Max, weren’t you once a member of the Cadaver Club?”

“I still am; would you like to lunch there? The Plants really do one very well. Shall we say one o’clock then at the Cadaver? Are you sure that’s all right?”

Dalgliesh said that nothing would suit him better.