Untimely Death

CHAPTER XV. Post-mortem in Fleet Street

Pettigrew did not wait to talk to Manktelow or to Mallett, or to anyone else. He felt suddenly in urgent need of fresh air, and made his way straight out of the building. Once beyond the doors, he halted, irresolute. Eleanor, he suddenly remembered, had decided to come to London to join Hester Greenway, who was making one of her very rare descents on the metropolis on some obscure expedition. Had he arranged to meet Eleanor, and if so, where and when? Feeling thoroughly stupid, he dawdled there, his mind a complete blank, while homing barristers, witnesses and solicitors’ clerks, swirled past him.

“Well, Frank! Thank goodness you waited for us- I thought we were never going to get out of that place.”

Pettigrew turned to see his wife coming towards him, accompanied by a weatherbeaten woman who could only be Hester Greenway.

“Where do you come from?” he asked in surprise.

“From the public gallery in the Court, of course. Do you mean to say you never saw us?”

“No,” said Pettigrew rather shaken. “I didn’t.” As a good witness should, he had turned towards the bench to give his evidence. The public gallery, in any event, was the last place to which a man of his training would think of giving his attention. “You never told me you were coming,” he added reproachfully.

“I didn’t know I was. It was Hester’s idea. Oh, that reminds me-”

She introduced her husband to Hester in due form.

“I thought you put up a jolly good show,” said Hester, shaking Pettigrew’s hand warmly. “I wanted to clap, but Ellie said I’d only put you off. Do tell me one thing, though. Did the pony bolt with you?”

“It did,” said Pettigrew. “How did you know?” To his great surprise, he found himself thinking that he was going to like Miss Greenway very much.

“Well, for one thing, those Gorman ponies always will if you give them half a chance. Mind you, I don’t blame you for not telling the judge, when he was asking all those silly questions, but I think he ought to have guessed that was why you didn’t stop to look at the body.”

“It’s not the only thing he ought to have guessed,” remarked Eleanor.

Hester smiled at Eleanor, and Eleanor smiled at Hester. It was the kind of smile that passes between people of superior intelligence in the presence of a deplorably ignorant third party.

“Well?” said Pettigrew. “What ought he to have guessed?”

“That Mrs. Gorman was going to have a baby, of course. It was obvious. We spotted it the moment we saw her.”

“It wasn’t only the judge, it was the whole lot of you,” observed Hester. “ ‘My lord, this has taken me entirely by surprise’.” She gave a very passable imitation of Manktelow’s manner. “I never saw a crowd of men look so silly. Two of them detectives, too! Mr. Parkinson!” she called out, suddenly. “Don’t go, Mr. Parkinson. I’ve something I wanted to ask you.”

Inspector Parkinson, with Mallett by his side, was just leaving the Law Courts. He stopped and took off his hat to Hester.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Miss Greenway,” he said.

“Never mind what you were expecting. It’s what Edna Gorman’s expecting that we were talking about. Didn’t either you or Mr. Mallett guess?”

“To tell you the truth, ma’am, we hadn’t given it a thought. And now, if you’ll excuse us-”

“Of course I won’t excuse you. There are dozens of things I want to hear about, and so does Mrs. Pettigrew. Mr. Pettigrew, isn’t there somewhere near here where we can get some tea? I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m simply dying for a cup.”

“It’s very kind of you, Miss Greenway, but I really ought to be getting along.”

“Well, if you must, Inspector, I suppose you must. But I thought you told me the other day that you wanted one of Jeannie’s puppies…?”

So it was that to his great surprise Pettigrew found himself playing host to a party of five in a Fleet Street teashop. It was a somewhat constrained party at first, but once he had persuaded Mallett that he bore him no malice the atmosphere became friendly enough.

“The first thing I want to know is,” said Hester Greenway, as soon as the cups had been poured out, “When are you prosecuting that odious creature Joliffe?”

“What do you suggest he should be prosecuted for, ma’am?” asked the Inspector cautiously.

“Good gracious, I don’t know. That’s your business, not mine. Making a fool of the coroner, I suppose.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an offence known to the law, ma’am.”

“But he must have done something!”

“I can’t help thinking Miss Greenway is right,” Pettigrew put in. “I’m deplorably rusty in these matters, but might I suggest that our old friend, a Common Law Misdemeanour-”

“Against the Peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her Crown and Dignity.” Mallett rolled the phrase lovingly round his tongue.

“Exactly. There must have been something like this before at some time.”

“Rather over a hundred years ago, sir,” said Parkinson. “You’ll have heard of the Resurrection men, no doubt.”

“Then you have considered a prosecution?” said Pettigrew.

“It was not a matter for me to consider, sir. I reported the matter to the Chief Constable and he took the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions. And the decision was-not to prosecute.”

“Why on earth not?” asked Hester.

“I rather think that some doubt was felt as to whether a conviction would be secured in such an unusual class of case.”

Something in the Inspector’s tone put Eleanor on enquiry. “Was that the only reason for not prosecuting him?” she asked. “Or was there something else?”

“Well, madam, now that you have raised the subject -this is in strict confidence, of course-there was at one time the possibility that Joliffe might be prosecuted on a graver charge.”

Inspector Parkinson’s face was brick red from the strain of endeavouring to combine civility with his sense of police propriety.

“You thought he’d murdered Jack?”

“Really, madam, I haven’t said that. It would be most improper of me-”

“He could have done it easily in a fit of temper, and then remembered that it wouldn’t pay him,” Eleanor went on, sublimely regardless of the Inspector’s embarrassment. “Or not murdered him-just manslaughtered him in his car by accident.”

“Jack Gorman wasn’t killed by Mr. Joliffe’s car,” Parkinson volunteered. “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a car at all.”

“Steady on!” said Hester. “We all read what the doctor said at the inquest.”

“That doctor was a-” Parkinson hesitated, turned a darker shade of red and shut his mouth firmly. He opened it again to swallow down the last of his tea, and then with a mumbled apology left the teashop.

“Well! If he thinks he’s going to get a pup from me after that…” was Hester’s disgusted comment.

Pettigrew’s reaction to the Inspector’s disappearance was different. “Mr. Mallett,” he said, “when you were a Detective-Inspector did you discuss cases with members of the public?”

“I did not, sir.”

“Now that you are no longer in the force, do you feel at liberty to discuss this case with us?”

“I think so, sir, yes.”

“Then in that case, I think we should be grateful to Parkinson for taking himself off. I take it that everything he knows about this case, you know?”

Mallett hesitated. He was a modest man, but he had a high regard for truth.

“I think that would be an under-statement, sir,” he said.

“Excellent! That is all I need to know about Parkinson. Will you therefore please take another of those sugar cakes and give your mind to the following questions: When, where, why, how and by whom was Jack Gorman killed?”

Mallett demolished the cake in astonishingly quick time, brushed the crumbs out of his moustache and said, “When? Within fairly narrow limits, that presents no particular difficulty now. On this Saturday morning Jack Gorman must have left his wife early-”

“I can help you there. I saw him. It was just daybreak.”

“That means that he was alive about half past five Greenwich mean time, or half past six by the clock. If Mr. Joliffe is telling the truth, and I think he is in this matter, he was dead by half past seven, which was when he found him while on his way to work that morning.”

“Very well. That brings us logically to Where?”

“Assuming that he was killed where Joliffe says that he found him-two assumptions this time, sir, but they seem to be reasonable ones-we can determine that exactly. I don’t know whether you know Satcherley Copse, sir?”

Pettigrew closed his eyes and delved back into his distant memories once more. There came to him a recollection of waiting in a chilling wind and icy rain while hounds were hopelessly at fault in a tangle of neglected woodland. The pony coughed twice on the way home, and he was sick with fear that it would be unfit to ride the next hunting day. Yes he knew Satcherley Copse.

“It’s a hanging wood above Stinchcombe Water,” he said.

“Quite right, sir. And you get to it from the road by a gate near the top of Gallows Hill. That’s the direct road from Sallowcombe to Whitsea, of course. Joliffe found his son-in-law by that gate, his head and shoulders in the road, his feet towards the gate-which was open, incidentally, he says. I’ve been over the ground since, both with and without Mr. Parkinson, and, as you know, we did find Jack’s button. Apart from that, by the time we got there, there were no traces left. In any case, I should think that by midday on that same Saturday anything in the road or near it had been hopelessly obscured. Besides cars on the road, there must have been a couple of hundred horses at least through that gate within a few hours of Joliffe finding him.”

“Of course. The meet was at Satcherley Way that morning.”

“Yes, sir. And Mr. Olding tells me that the stag was roused in Satcherley Copse.”

“In that case, the ground must have been a mass of hoofprints. So far so good. We’ve dealt with When and Where, but now I want to go to Why? And Why isn’t single here, but double or triple. First Why: Why was Jack Gorman on Gallows Hill at all?”

“It’s within easy walking distance of Sallowcombe, sir, and he had to go somewhere when he left. Other than that, I can’t suggest why he should have gone in that particular direction.”

Hester Greenway chuckled.

“I can,” she said. “He was within a mile of Highbarn Farm.”

“Highbarn Farm?” said Mallett in surprise. “Tom Gorman’s place, do you mean?”

“Certainly that’s what I mean.”

“But what should he be going there for?”

“What should anybody be going anywhere for at that hour of the morning? For breakfast, of course.”

“You think that Jack Gorman expected Tom to give him breakfast?”

Miss Greenway clicked her tongue in impatience at the denseness of the man.

“Not Tom, of course. Everybody on the moor knows he couldn’t stand the sight of him. He wouldn’t have given him a crust of bread. But Ethel would.”

“Who is Ethel?” asked Eleanor.

“Tom’s wife, Dick’s sister, Jack’s cousin-she’d give him breakfast or-or-anything else he cared to ask for. So would nine women out of ten in a twenty mile radius. Surely you knew that, Mr. Mallett?”

“I knew Jack Gorman had a certain reputation as a lady’s man, miss, but I’m bound to say it never occurred to me. You may be right, of course, but if he went to Highbarn, how was he to avoid meeting Tom?”

“It was a hunting day, wasn’t it? And Tom was acting as harbourer while the regular man was ill. That meant he’d be up and out of the place hours before. No-Jack’s only trouble would be to finish his breakfast before Tom came back for his. But he was pretty expert at dodging husbands, was Jack. He was a character and no mistake!”

Hester concluded her obituary of Jack Gorman with an indulgent laugh, in which Pettigrew joined and Eleanor rather pointedly did not.

“Well,” said Pettigrew, “we’ve got a fairly plausible answer to that question, at all events. My next one comes back to Joliffe. According to his story, having found the body, he immediately decides to conceal it. Why?”

“Because he knows that Gilbert is dying, sir, and he’s thinking of this base fee business if it is known that Jack has died first.”

“Is he, by Jove? Then he’s a very learned butcher. I’m a lawyer, or used to be, and I shouldn’t know the first thing about it if Puffkins hadn’t expounded it in words of one syllable.”

“I can explain that quite easily, sir. When he made Jack bar the entail, he was warned by the lawyer that advised him, of the importance of Jack surviving Gilbert. But of course nobody then ever imagined that he wouldn’t.”

“So much for that. Now for the next question. Having found Jack, he apparently just dumped him off the road at Bolter’s Tussock, where he wouldn’t be seen. Why didn’t he take him down and pop him into the deep freeze at once?”

“He couldn’t do that. He’s only got a little two-seater car. How would he have looked arriving at his business with a corpse on the passenger seat?”

“Granted. But at least I should have expected him to come back in double quick time with the van. Instead, he waited till late in the afternoon, which couldn’t have done Jack much good, considering the weather.”

“There’s good reason for that. It wasn’t until the afternoon that he could get his shop and cold store to himself. I got some very interesting information from Joliffe’s shop assistant about what happened on Saturday. Joliffe had to choose his time carefully, so that he would be back in the place after the staff had gone. I don’t know what excuse he intended to give for taking the van out after the normal delivery times, but he had a bit of luck in the shape of a last-minute S.O.S. for meat from a local hotel. He told his driver that rather than keep him working late on overtime rates he’d do the job himself. So he left the assistant in charge of the shop, took the meat to the hotel, collected poor Jack, and timed himself to get back to the shop after everyone had gone.”

Hester clapped her hands suddenly.

“Of course!” she exclaimed. “And he told us just the opposite!”

“Told you what, miss?”

“Don’t you remember, Ellie? That afternoon when you came to see me and your car broke down, Mr. Joliffe said he couldn’t give you a lift home because he had to be back in the shop before closing time. The sly old sinner, that was exactly what he didn’t want to be!”

“He did give us a lift, as a matter of fact,” said Eleanor, “though it was only a couple of hundred yards or so.” She shuddered. “And Jack must have been in the back of the van then.”

Hester gave a hoot of laughter.

“And I offered to get into the back and sit with the meat, because we were so squashed in front!” she exclaimed. “That must have given him a turn. No wonder he didn’t take to the suggestion!”

“This is all news to me,” said Mallett. “I had no idea that you had met Joliffe that afternoon. What happened, exactly?”

Hester told him briefly what had occurred.

“I thought he had just looked in at Minster to make passes at Louisa as usual,” she concluded. “But obviously he was killing time as well. To think I had only to open the back of the van and show the old villain up-it makes me mad!”

“Making passes at Louisa?” asked Pettigrew. “Is that one of our friend’s weaknesses?”

“It certainly used to be. He was always dropping in at the Grange-tempting her with choice steaks and slabs of liver, I shouldn’t wonder-but he must have cooled off lately. I haven’t seen him about since Ellie and I had our ride with the corpse.”

“This is an interesting digression,” said Pettigrew, “but I want to get back to my questions. We still have to tackle the ones that really matter-How? and By Whom?”

Mallett shook his head. “I wish I could answer those ones, sir,” he said.

“But this is absurd. There must be an answer. After all, there’s plenty of evidence available, one way and another. Let’s go over it together once more…”

For some time, Pettigrew had been vaguely aware that the tea-shop, which had been crowded when they entered, was emptying rapidly. He had also known that his wife was making signs to him indicating that he should either do something or refrain from whatever it was that he happened to be doing. He had disregarded both phenomena, the one because it did not concern him, the other from established habit. Now he met with an interruption which he could not disregard.

“Excuse me, sir, but will you be requiring anything else, because we are closing now?”

The waitress was kind but firm. Rather sheepishly, he took the bill that she gave him and made his way to the cash desk through a forest of empty tables and upturned chairs. He turned to find his party in a state of dissolution. Hester was bidding an affectionate farewell of Eleanor and explaining that she had an engagement to spend the evening with the Old Cocky-olly-bird-a name which elicited from Eleanor glad cries of loving recognition. Mallett was extending his hand to say Goodbye. A moment later they were swept out into the street.

Pettigrew saw Miss Greenway into a cruising taxi and turned to Mallett. For the first time he realized that his old friend was now well advanced in years. He looked not only old, but rather tired.

“What are your plans for this evening?” he asked him.

“Mr. Parkinson has asked me to have supper with him and some friends at the Yard,” said Mallett. He seemed unenthusiastic at the prospect. “I’ve left my bag at a hotel near Paddington.”

Husband and wife exchanged quick glances.

“Why don’t you change your mind and come home with us?” asked Pettigrew.

Mallett’s face lit up. He turned to Eleanor.

“May I, ma’am?” he asked.

“I wish you would.”

“I ought to warn you-if I do, Mr. Pettigrew and I will be talking about this case half the night.”

“You can talk as much as you like, Mr. Mallett, so long as you arrive at some conclusion, if it’s only that there’s nothing to be done. I want a little peace and quiet, and I know I shan’t have any until this ghost is laid once and for all!”