Give a Corpse a Bad Name (2 page)

‘No,' said the doctor, ‘of course not.'

‘Never seen'n myself that I know of,' said Eggbear. ‘ 'Tis nobody local. D'you know'n, Cecil?'

‘Not by them clothes,' said Leat.

‘And there ain't much else to go on, eh?'

There was not. The man had evidently been lying face downwards on the road when the wheels of the car went over him. His face had been scraped and pulped against the gritty surface.

‘Oldish man,' said Eggbear. ‘His hair's turnin' grey.'

‘There's a good whiff of whisky about him still,' said Dr Sanders. ‘He can't have had it long ago. If you start inquiries in the pubs around you ought to be able to get a line on him.'

‘I'd thought of that all on my lonesome,' answered Eggbear.

He put a hand into one pocket of the dead man's jacket and pulled out a half-empty packet of Woodbines, a match-box with only two matches left, a sixpenny piece and a halfpenny. He looked them over and returned them to the pocket. ‘No one very
à la
,' he observed, straightening.

‘The clothes tell you that.'

Eggbear nodded. The man's suit was of cheap brown tweed and fitted his long and bony figure awkwardly, his shirt was soiled and frayed, and his shoes, as Mrs Milne had said, were in bad need of soling.

‘We'd better get'n back to the station,' Eggbear said, ‘then go through his belongings proper, and see what they've got to tell us.'

‘Right,' said the doctor, and turning to the two men who were with him, said: ‘You can get him on board.'

‘And Cecil, after you've driven us back you can drive Mrs Milne home again. She'd better not handle a car, the state she's in tonight.' He stepped aside so that the two men with the stretcher could get at the body.

The doctor thrust out a cigarette-case. ‘Was Mrs Anna Milne of The Laurels in a state?'

‘A bit of a state like—not near so bad as some'd be.'

‘I suppose she wasn't drunk herself, by any chance?'

‘No, sir,' said Leat positively, ‘she was not. I can bear witness.'

‘Doctor,' said the sergeant, ‘I'll lay you half a crown it don't work the first time.'

‘What, this lighter? I'll take you on. It's unusual, I know, but this happens to be an entirely satisfac—Tt, tt!' The doctor sighed and handed over two shillings. ‘I'll owe you the sixpence. Come on, men, get going.'

At about nine o'clock the next morning Cecil Leat dismounted from his bicycle outside the white-painted gate of The Laurels and wheeled his bicycle up the drive.

The morning was sharp and pleasant. On either side of him the dark leaves of the laurels gleamed with hoar-frost; the sky was a faint blue. The house ahead of him was of quiet grey stone, with long sash windows, its roof of slate, high-pitched. Ivy covered one side of it. Built too late in the last century to have much beauty, its solidity and lack of ostentation gave it dignity. Cecil Leat—he was twenty-three years old, big, sandy-haired and plump in the face—propped his bicycle against the porch, mounted two smartly whitened steps, and gave a sharp ring at the bell.

His cousin, Ruby Leat, opened it.

‘Why, Cecil!' she said.

He stamped a little on the mat, rubbed his cold hands together, and asked if Mrs Milne were in.

‘Aye,' said Ruby. She was tall, fair and round-faced like her cousin. ‘She's in; I've just taken her breakfast up to her.'

‘I've a question or two to ask,' said the constable, ‘about the accident last night. So if you'll just ask her, Rube, if 'twill be convenient for she to see me …'

‘ 'Twon't be,' said Ruby. ‘What accident?'

‘Accident up over,' said Leat.

‘But her's still in bed,' said Ruby. ‘I told you, I just took her breakfast up to her. And you can't see Miss Daphne either; she's up to London.'

‘Then please inquire when Mrs Milne will be good enough to see me.'

Ruby went upstairs. Soon she was down again and telling her cousin to come inside and wait. ‘Mrs Milne will be down as soon as she can manage.' She took him into the drawing-room.

Cecil Leat walked to one of the windows and stood with his hands behind him, his back to the room. The windows reached from floor to ceiling, framed in curtains of a soft, fresh green; the carpet under his feet was grey, the walls were a colour between the green and the grey and quite without pictures; only above the fireplace there hung a gold-framed convex mirror. Looking over his shoulder to see why Ruby should have so much to do with the fire-irons, Leat caught sight of himself in this; it gave him a shock, it turned him to so strangely diminished a figure.

Ruby put more coal on the fire and went on fussing with the tongs and the poker until she had the whole story of the accident out of her cousin.

‘D'you know what cook'll say?' she said. ‘ “I told 'e so'—that's what her'll say. Her's leavin' this day fortnight.'

‘What, cook is?'

‘Yes, given in her notice a couple of weeks back. And her'll say: “I told 'e so”—you take it from me. 'Er says that Mrs Milne is that reckless in all her habits that somethin's bound to happen—and now it has!'

‘But 'twasn't Mrs Milne's fault, seemingly.'

‘Well, cook'll say as 'twas. She says that Sir Joseph Maxwell was quite right to report Mrs Milne for dangerous driving.'

‘Well, he wasn't, then,' said Leat. ‘Us kept an eye on her, and her broke none of the regulations no more than most people. What's chasing cook away?'

‘Because she says Mrs Milne is a—'

But at that moment Ruby sprang quickly to her feet and left the room. As she did so Mrs Milne came in.

She looked fresh enough this morning. In her brisk movements and pleasant smile she revealed no signs of strain. For all the marks her adventure had left upon her she might have been in bed by ten o'clock the previous evening and slept soundly all night. She wore a dark-red tailored suit; her dark hair was brushed smoothly back from her face and rolled up low on her neck. It all looked quiet, severe even, except for the flash of the rings on her fingers. Diamonds—a whole splash of them. Leat found himself staring at them before he looked at her face.

‘I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,' she said. ‘Do please sit down. Policemen standing about always make one's furniture look out of proportion.' She sat down herself and offered him a cigarette from an enamelled box. ‘It's more questions, I suppose. We're some way, aren't we, from the end of the unpleasant business? There'll be an inquest?'

‘Yes, ma'am. But at present 'tis this question of identification. You told us last night you didn't know the corpse.'

‘Never been introduced to it in my life, that I can remember.'

‘Well, ma'am,' said the constable, ‘it seems as he knew you. He'd got your name and address on a piece of paper in his pocket.'

‘Mine?'

‘Yes, ma'am. “Mrs Anna Milne, The Laurels, Chovey.” We found it in his inside pocket when we made a search of his clothing.' He extracted a piece of paper from between the leaves of his note-book and held it out. ‘You weren't expectin' anyone to visit you maybe—anyone you didn't know by sight?'

She shook her head as she took the paper. She looked at it on both sides.

‘This is a shop receipt,' she said, ‘the sort of thing you stick in your pocket and forget about.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘A shop somewhere in Cape Town'. She turned it over again and looked at her own name and address written on the back in pencilled capitals. ‘I come from South Africa,' she said. ‘You probably know that.'

‘So the sergeant heard tell.'

She looked at him, and Constable Leat, who found her eyes disturbing, looked back at her flashing rings. Mrs Milne fluttered the paper between her fingers.

‘But this man—this man I killed. I suppose there's no doubt that I did kill him? He wasn't dead already, by any chance?'

‘We'll get the doctor's report later in the day, ma'am.'

She seemed to feel his gaze upon her jewels, for she started twisting them round. She said with increased harshness: ‘So he's South African.'

‘Well, ma'am, all his clothes come from there, and what with this receipt and your name on it …'

‘Yes, yes, my name. But it's a very long time since I left South Africa—fifteen years or so.'

‘You've no friends who might maybe have sent him along to you?'

‘I don't think so. I've lost touch with them all. There isn't one I still correspond with. Of course, I can't be sure. But really—' her voice was staccato—‘I can't think of anyone there to whom I've given my present address.'

‘And you're quite, quite sure, ma'am, that the man himself was unknown to you?'

‘As sure as the darkness and my own nerves would let me be.'

‘Then if you wouldn't mind …'

‘No, I don't mind taking a good look at him by daylight. Straight after breakfast, though! Still, I'll do as you wish. But I can't think of anyone—
anyone
—who fits the part. He was a biggish man, wasn't he? I realized that when I pulled him to the side. And thinnish. And middle-aged.'

‘Yes, and pretty down and out by the look of him. His clothes wouldn't have done him much longer, supposin' he'd lived, and he'd only sixpence-ha'penny on him. Sergeant wondered whether maybe 'twas a man been sent to you to ask for work or a helpin' hand like.'

‘Perhaps,' she said, ‘perhaps.' And she stood up, repeating in a tone that had a flatly deliberate sound: ‘But I can't think of anyone who could have sent him.'

That was what she stuck to when, soon after, she found herself looking at the body. No, she had never seen the man before, and though it was not impossible that some old acquaintance had given the man her name and address so that she might help him, she could think of no one who was in fact likely to have done so.

Going very white when she saw the body, she said: ‘You realize, Sergeant, I'm not exactly practised at recognizing people in this sort of condition.' Then, after a long and almost fascinated look at the mutilated face: ‘No, I'm sorry, but I can't help you.'

Afterwards, as Sergeant Eggbear was accompanying her to the street, she asked a number of questions about how the police were setting about the identifying of the dead man. He told her: ‘Well, we'm makin' the usual inquiries round about, and a description of him is bein' broadcast. Also we'm askin' the driver of the other car, the low sports car you mentioned, to come forward. It shouldn't be difficult to pick up some kind of lead. You see, he was drunk, so he must have been seen in a pub not far away like as not.'

She nodded, looking down at the ground. Suddenly she shivered as if the frost had just penetrated the defences of her fur coat.

‘And while I think of it,' said the sergeant, ‘there's somethin' else I been wonderin' about, and maybe you could tell me. You dropped Major Maxwell at the crossroads, didn't you?'

‘Yes,' she replied.

‘Then maybe Major Maxwell saw the man come by.'

‘What if he did?'

‘Only that he'd have seen the face in its normal condition, and could give us a description. We reckon the man must've come down the road from Purbrook; no one in the pubs here saw'n, no more did the man on the railway crossing on the Plymouth road, no more did the AA man at the crossroads lower down. He must've come from Purbrook. So if the major chanced to look up and down when you dropped him, maybe he saw him.'

‘I see,' she said. ‘But I shouldn't think he did. I saw Major Maxwell climb over the stile and go off towards his cottage. It was a cold night, you know, not the sort of night for loitering about, particularly after a hot evening's badminton.'

‘No, ma'am. Still, there'd be no harm in askin'.'

‘Oh, no,' she said, ‘no harm.'

She gave him a smile and went a few steps across the pavement towards her car. But she paused once more.

‘When's the inquest?' she asked.

‘Thursday afternoon.'

‘Thursday.' She climbed into the car. ‘And if you haven't got your identification by then?'

‘We may have to ask for an adjournment.'

Again the constable and his bicycle approached the house of Mrs Milne. But this time, instead of stopping there, they continued straight on.

It was two o'clock and by now the wintry sunshine had infused some warmth into the day; the morning's white crust of frost had disappeared, and in the hedges the twigs were shining with a coating of damp.

The face of Cecil Leat reddened and his pedalling lost some of its fierceness; he answered good day to the people who passed him, and, meeting the vicar, he dismounted and had a chat with him. A cawing of rooks, a dripping of water from the tips of branches, the occasional noise of a shotgun or a passing car made up the texture of the afternoon's sounds. Five or six miles off the hills of Dartmoor, edging the sky with their smooth curves, had a look of gaiety, the pattern of meadow and ploughland, copse and winding road, showing up with a pale, bright clarity.

Presently Cecil Leat and his bicycle turned off to the left. A winding road brought him, after about ten minutes, to some gates, tall gates of wrought iron. Beyond them stretched an avenue of beeches. Leat edged his bicycle through the gates, remounted and resumed his placid pedalling. This was the drive of Chovey Place where Sir Joseph and Lady Maxwell lived with what was considered in Chovey a rather penurious number of servants. Major Maxwell, Sir Joseph's brother, lived in a cottage on the estate.

A lane, branching out of the avenue and dipping past a farm, then twisting and climbing again, brought Leat to the cottage. He arrived just as the major was starting out across the fields towards the manor. A dog noticed the arrival of the constable first and proclaimed it with the noisiness of one who takes an indiscriminate pleasure in strangers. It was a young and whimsical-eyed Aberdeen. The major turned, saw the constable, and came and leant on his garden gate.