Dying to Know (6 page)

At this point a woman, dressed in a sort of housecoat of fine, light-blue check over which was a cream-coloured apron, came out of the grocer's and stood looking around, presumably for customers. I thought at the time that she was quite attractive in an exhausted sort of a way, that with time and care and a bit of money she could make something of herself. She was blonde with a small nose and pale lips that supported a lit cigarette. She caught sight of me and stared for a while, as if affronted that I should be showing interest in Lightoller's retail establishment and not hers. I glanced across at her and smiled, but received nothing similar by way of response and looked away, back through the shop window. I would have left then, but for the fact that I then caught sight of the brooch.

It was near the front but to the extreme left, displayed on a felt board with other items of jewellery. It had a central emerald cluster with two surrounding rows of diamonds, all in an ornate silver setting and, although it was difficult to see from a distance of about eight feet, it looked old.

It also looked like one that had belonged to my mother.

One that had been stolen from my house six months before.

I think Lightoller's a fence.
Dad's words came back to mock me. Could he be right?

I wondered what to do. Presumably the premises were empty and Lightoller was back in his house, in which case I might have been best served by going to the police. Except that I wasn't completely sure if I was correct, if that really was my mother's brooch. If I waited, though, it might go, never to be seen again.

Perhaps Lightoller was in . . .

I knocked on the glass of the door, peering in, looking for a response.

Nothing. I knocked again, peered in some more, still saw nothing; so, before leaving, I tried the door handle.

Which turned and opened the door.

Surprised, for a moment I just stood there. Perhaps he had left the premises and forgotten to lock up behind him. Perhaps, though, he was asleep in the back room, spread out upon an ancient ottoman, handkerchief covering his face, as dust-covered as his wares. I called out, listened, then stepped inside.

A musty smell smote my nostrils, as if these were more than mere antiques, these were artefacts from the other side; moreover it struck me as cold, giving the whole place a Dickensian air, with Little Nell waiting in the back to make an entrance. I nearly knocked over an ugly, cumbersome-looking vase merely by opening the door, and was almost stabbed by an African tribal spear that was lying against the back of a winged armchair.

I did not call out again, because I thought then to get a closer look at the brooch without hindrance. It was difficult to get at, as it lay behind an Ottoman and a large box of metal toy cars, but by putting one knee on the Ottoman and stretching over the box, I could look at it more closely.

It was, without doubt, my mother's brooch.

I stood up, and looked around.

‘Mr Lightoller?'

When there was still no reply, I began to make my way to the back of the shop, taking great care not to knock anything over, gaining the impression that it had all been laid out as a series of booby-traps to catch the unwary. ‘Mr Lightoller?'

At the back of the shop there was a door with frosted glass in its top half, and beside this there was a rather striking stuffed grizzly bear on its hind legs. There was no writing on the glass but it was obviously an office door and behind it the light was on. I knocked on it and called out his name again.

No response.

I grasped the handle, twisted and walked in.

You'll already have guessed, of course, what I found.

EIGHT

M
asson ignored me for the first hour that he was present at the murder scene. He arrived about thirty minutes after my 999 call and about ten minutes after the first, uniformed officers. I had gone at once to the grocer's shop and asked the woman if I could use their phone; she had looked doubtful until I explained why; then she looked nothing less than prurient. Then I hung around outside while the grocer and his wife kept peering into Lightoller's shop, perhaps afraid that he might come back to life, or that his murderer might still be lurking, possibly in the suit of armour.

For Oliver Lightoller had been murdered and, when I say ‘murdered', I mean well and truly done in. Somebody had run him through with a sword; they had done this so enthusiastically that it turned out that he was pinned to the chair. Mr Lightoller bore a surprised expression on his rather corpulent features, his eyes wide (and not clouded), his mouth open to reveal teeth distinguished by nicotine staining and a dental bridge that had become slightly dislodged in his death throes. His arms were flopped over the sides of the office chair, but I could imagine that he had perhaps had them raised just before he died.

Masson spent a long time in the office, looking around, directing men taking photographs, dusting for fingerprints, and picking up things that might be of interest to put in thick plastic bags. I sat in the shop with my back to the office door, aware of the intermittent light-bulb flashes coming through the frosted glass and accompanied by the same plain-clothes police constable whom I had seen at the station last night. It turned out that his name was Smith and he was afflicted with a seemingly permanent and indelible frown. He was quite big and muscular and, had his face not been forever creased by worry, I think that he would have been handsome.

He took my details and asked me questions and did so competently, although I had the feeling that he found the whole process rather perfunctory. About halfway through this, a small man, immaculately dressed in a blue three-piece pinstripe, came into the room. He had on his face a look of superiority mixed with distaste and was treated with due deference by the police who were showing him the way to the back of the shop. Constable Smith barely noticed him, however, as he was wrestling with his next enquiry, chewing the end of his pencil while staring at his notes that, I could see, were rather untidy and poorly spelled.

‘Who's that who just came in?' I asked.

He looked over at the retreating figure, the stern, cropped grey hair. ‘The prof,' he explained. ‘Prof. Tyrell Cavendish. The pathologist.'

I had often wondered what use a pathologist was in such cases. They seemed to be there merely to confirm the bleeding obvious and, in my experience, refused point blank to cede any useful information, like precisely when the death occurred, or who actually did it.

Smith and I continued the tedious process of taking the statement for half an hour, at which point Professor Cavendish emerged from the room, his manner as imperious as before, followed this time by Masson, whose expression suggested that I was right in my suspicions and the good professor had not solved the case for him.

Masson stopped before us. Had he been chewing on a hornet, he couldn't have been in a meaner mood, nor had an uglier look on his face. ‘Right,' he said nastily, ignoring Smith and talking only at me. ‘I'd like a word with you.'

I knew the answer I was going to get, but tried anyway. ‘How long is this going to take, inspector? I've got evening surgery . . .'

‘And I've got a dead body, doctor, which trumps everything.'

‘I don't think my patients are going to agree with you.'

He didn't warrant that with a reply. ‘Come with me to the office.' He turned away, turned back and added in a sarcastic tone, ‘I assume you're not squeamish?'

‘It's just the sight of my own blood that makes me faint.'

The only differences that I could see were that Lightoller's chair had been turned so that he now faced to his left, and that various surfaces were covered in dark-grey powder where they had been dusted for fingerprints; indeed, two gentlemen were still hard at work looking for them. A photographer was packing his equipment away in a heavy-looking metal case.

‘Another dead body,' Masson said, rather unnecessarily.

‘Yes.'

‘It's been hardly any time at all since we had all that malarkey on the allotments.'

My first encounter with the good inspector had been during some unpleasantness at the local Horticultural Society. ‘No.'

‘And do you know how much time and effort I've expended, how many sleepless nights I've had because of the deaths on Greyhound Lane?'

I didn't connect what he was talking about with what Jessie Trout had told me. ‘A lot?'

He scowled. ‘And now this.'

I said nothing.

‘And you're in the thick of it, again.'

I definitely wasn't going to say anything to
that.
My silence seemed to make his mood worse. He worked himself up a bit and then began to bark out the questions as if practising for a role in the Spanish Inquisition. I should imagine that it was the kind of voice heard by those confined in deep dungeons while Torquemada warmed up the coals a bit in the background.

‘What time did you arrive at the shop?'

I had previously gone through all this with Smith but kept my counsel on that one and confessed that I couldn't remember precisely. ‘I suppose about three in the afternoon.'

‘About three? Can't you be more exact?'

I tried to concentrate but I was tired and his manner was, as usual, getting to me a tad. ‘I remember leaving my last patient, Mr MacNamee, at about two fifty. He lives in Strathyre Avenue, so I would say that it was just before three.'

‘How much before three?' he insisted.

‘I don't know. Why don't you ask at the grocer's? The woman there saw me.'

He glared at me. ‘I provide the questions, you provide the answers.'

I shrugged. ‘I'm telling it as exactly as I can. I think it was just before three, but can't be certain. You'll have to corroborate it.'

He admitted sourly, ‘She says she first saw you a couple of minutes before three.'

I said nothing, but I did smile faintly and for just a second. He was wearing a crumpled, tired suit of dark-grey worsted, a dark-blue tie and a light-grey shirt; the suit was misshapen, as if the pockets held all sorts of bulky items. I speculated what they might be – perhaps handcuffs, perhaps a notebook, perhaps even a firearm.

He moved on to another tack. ‘Why did you stop?'

‘Out of curiosity, I suppose. I just wondered what the shop looked like.'

Masson frowned. ‘Curiosity? Nothing more?'

‘It's a fault of mine.'

With a shake of his head, he asked, ‘You expect me to believe that? You're a busy man, doctor. Do you really have time to wander around peering into antiques shops when the fancy takes?'

‘It was on my way.'

His hand went to the pocket of his jacket and he pointed out, ‘But you came inside.'

I hesitated. ‘Yes . . .'

The hand stayed there and I could see his fingers playing with something. ‘Why?'

‘I wasn't planning to come in at all, the “closed” sign was up.'

I could see that he didn't believe me from his facial expressions, his sighs and his generally dissatisfied demeanour. ‘In which case, why did you?'

‘I saw something when I was looking through the window. Something I thought I recognized.'

At last he produced what was in his pocket; a packet of cigarettes. As he set fire to one, he asked, ‘What?'

‘An emerald and diamond brooch; the diamonds are fake, of course, but it looked like one that I used to own; one that was stolen from my house at the start of the year.'

The inhalation of cigarette smoke seemed to change him, make him more suspicious, more intense. ‘And was it?'

‘I think so. I tried the door and was surprised when it opened. I came in and called out, but got no reply, so I thought I might as well check the brooch out. I couldn't get at it easily, but by leaning over a few things, I managed to see it up close.'

‘You said the “closed” sign was up, but you still came in?'

‘When I discovered that the shop wasn't locked, yes.'

He was staring at me and I could see things going on in his mind as he did so; I wondered rather uneasily what they might be. ‘What did you do then?'

‘I called out once or twice. When that produced no result, I made my way to the back of the shop, still calling out his name.'

‘During all this time, did you see anything untoward?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘You never thought that someone else might be about?'

‘No.'

‘What then?'

It struck me as a stupid question. ‘Then I came in here and found Lightoller.' This reply brought forth that stare again; it was most disconcerting. So much so, in fact, that I asked, ‘What's wrong?'

Masson shook his head. ‘I really can't decide if you're very bright or very stupid, or both.'

Unsurprisingly, I was a trifle affronted, but tried not to show it. ‘What do you mean?'

‘You really didn't see anything wrong in the shop?'

‘No.'

He sighed. ‘Wouldn't you say that it's rather untidy?'

I considered. ‘Well, yes. I remember thinking that it could do with a bit of a clean . . .' I stopped, because I saw what he was driving at. ‘It's been searched.'

While examining me intently, he muttered sarcastically, ‘Bravo.'

I rushed to defend myself. ‘I just thought it was always like this. Dad said that it was a bit of a junk shop, so I assumed that this was normal.'

‘It isn't.'

‘How do you know?'