Give a Corpse a Bad Name (7 page)

Eggbear sat on the edge of one of the easy chairs, his knees together, his feet side by side. ‘This morning, ma'am,' he said, ‘my friend, Mr Dyke, received a letter. As he had not given his address to anyone he was naturally surprised. As it concerns you …' He reached out his hand for the letter which Toby had taken from his pocket. ‘Here it is, ma'am. We thought you belonged to take a look at it.'

She took the letter. There was no change on her face as she read it, but from the length of time she looked at it she must have read it over several times before she spoke.

‘Am I right,' she said then, looking at Toby, ‘that the implication of this letter is that I murdered Shelley Maxwell?'

‘I shouldn't be surprised,' said Toby.

‘He was dead drunk, wasn't he? His stomach was swimming in whisky. That meant that he must have drunk it a very few minutes before he was killed. But you searched, didn't you—' she still had her steady gaze on Toby—‘and couldn't find anything that might have contained the whisky?'

‘Inference,' said Toby, ‘someone removed it.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘and suppose it was I who removed it. And not only removed it, but gave it to him in the first place. The inference then is that he was not lying in the road when I first encountered him. Probably he was standing up. Probably I talked to him. So when I drove my car over his head I must have known that he was there …'

Toby was staring fascinated at the stillness of her ringed hands. ‘D'you know,' he remarked, ‘you're about the most controlled woman I've ever run into.'

She started then, and her hands came quickly together. Toby smiled at her with irony.

‘Do you,' he said, ‘happen to keep a flask in your car?'

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Could you say off-hand whether it's full or empty at the moment?'

‘No, I haven't the slightest idea. I—' She hesitated and her eyes suddenly looked unguarded and afraid. ‘It must be full, I think. There was that big accident last December at the railway crossing on the Plymouth road. You remember—' she turned for a moment to the sergeant—‘I came up just after it happened. I had my flask out then, giving some whisky to the man who wasn't killed. I
think
I filled it up again afterwards—yes, I did, I know I did—the same evening. But I haven't thought about it since.'

‘You're sure about that?' said Toby.

‘Y-yes, sure.'

‘Then wouldn't it be a good idea,' said Toby, ‘to show it to the sergeant now?'

She got to her feet. ‘Come along.'

As they came out into the hall there was the sound of footsteps on the landing overhead and then on the stairs, and Daphne Milne appeared round the bend in the staircase. She stood still as soon as she saw them, looking first at her mother, but then, as if she could not help herself, let her big eyes gaze into Toby's. For a moment he paused before her, but a pressure in the small of his back from George sent him on after Mrs Milne. He followed her down a short passage and out through glass doors at the end of it on to the gravel drive, which, sweeping round the house, came to an end at a large, stone garage.

The garage doors were open. As they approached a man came out and went down a path towards the kitchen garden.

‘Chauffeur?' said Toby.

‘Well, gardener really,' said Mrs Milne, ‘but he does drive me sometimes and he looks after the car. Now that—' and she pointed—‘is where the flask is. Look for yourselves.'

Toby took a step forward. But with his hand on the door of the car he stopped. ‘I've a feeling,' he said, ‘that you think we may be backing this anonymous letter.'

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘No, I don't know that I do. I appreciate your bringing it to me. Please go on.'

Toby leant in through the door of the saloon and felt round in the pigeon-hole on the dashboard. Behind some fur gloves, some maps and sun-glasses, he found a flask. It was a glass flask, its base fitting into a silver cup. He held it up. It was full within about an inch of the stopper.

Mrs Milne saw it with a crooked smile. As Toby handed it to the sergeant she said: ‘I think it would have to be emptier than that to meet the case, wouldn't it?'

‘Yes, that it would,' he said. ‘'Tis the way with these sorts o' letters, you don't expect to find anythin' behind'n.” He held the flask out for Toby to replace, but it was George who took it from him, replacing it himself. ‘Can you give us any pointer at who might have written the letter?' Eggbear went on.

‘No, nothing with any foundation. There's nothing to go on, is there? And one may know that a person has a grudge against one—' She stopped. Then she smiled oddly and went on: ‘One may know that a person has a grudge against one without believing for a moment that it'd come to anonymous letter-writing. I should think this probably comes from some malicious person I've never even heard of. After all, the inquest made quite public the importance of a bottle or flask. And now'—they had arrived once more at the glass doors that led into the house—‘I was in the middle of some work when you arrived. If you don't mind …' And the glass doors closed behind her.

They stood there for a moment, looking at the closed doors. Toby cocked an eyebrow at the sergeant.

‘Work?' he said. ‘What sort of work'd that be?'

Eggbear shook his head.

‘Washing stockings, maybe,' George suggested.

‘Don't be a damn fool,' said Toby, and spinning suddenly on his heel, set off down the drive.

He walked in frowning silence. Eggbear and George walked a little way behind him, the space between Toby and the two of them steadily lengthening as Toby's impatient strides outdistanced theirs. Near the gate he halted abruptly and waited for them to catch up.

‘Anyway,' he said, ‘where does her money come from?'

‘Why, from her husband, I reckon,' said Eggbear.

‘What was he?'

‘Couldn't say. Couldn't so much as say when he died. She was a widow when she come to live here.'

Toby nodded and pushed open the gate.

It was George who, as they arrived beside the sergeant's car, said that he wanted to go for a walk to get up his appetite for dinner. He looked down at the ground as he said it and drew circles on the gravel with the point of his shoe. Toby, still frowning, gave him a stare. George did not look up, but carefully divided one of the circles he had drawn into segments.

Toby let his hand drop from the door of the car. ‘All right,' he said, ‘I'll come too. See you later, Sam.'

Looking Napoleonic in his Austin Seven, Eggbear drove off alone.

They strolled a little way down the road. George was quietly whistling.

‘Well, George, what's on your mind?'

George pulled a piece of grass out of the hedge and stuck it between his teeth. ‘That flask.'

‘What about it?'

‘I gave it a smell as I was putting it back.'

‘And—'

‘It smelt of whisky.'

Toby gave a bark of laughter. But it broke off in the middle. ‘Did it, by God?' His face looked suddenly eager. ‘You're sure of it? No imagination? Whisky was probably the uppermost thought in your mind. It was in mine.'

George shook his head. ‘Smelt quite strong,' he said, tugging at the piece of grass in his mouth.

Toby laughed again with a sharp ring of pleasure. ‘And it's how long ago she said she had it filled last? After the big accident she talked about. Last December. Come on, George, we're going back.'

But George shook his head again, his jaws working slowly as he munched at the grass. ‘Don't necessarily mean a thing, Tobe. You've got to remember the gardener.'

‘It's the gardener I want.'

‘Oh!' George threw the grass into the ditch, picked another piece and started towards The Laurels.

This time they did not go immediately to the front gate, but skirting along the laurel hedge, the garden's high, dark rampart, searched for some other entrance, which, if it existed, might let them into the kitchen garden without their being forced to pass under the windows of the house.

Luckily it was there, a narrow, wooden gate. It was high; Toby could only just see over it; also it turned out to be padlocked. But Toby could see the gardener, not twenty yards away, forking a patch of soil, his back to the gate.

Toby called.

He called three times before the man took any notice. Then all he did was to pause in his digging and cock his head slightly as if he thought he had heard an unaccustomed noise.

‘Over here,' called Toby.

The man looked round then, saw him at last and came towards him. He walked with the slow steps of one who is used to a load of soil on his boots. He was a square, stolid man with a brown face and very little hair; there were deep wrinkles round his eyes and line after line of them scored across his high bald forehead. His lips had the fallen-in look of too few teeth, and indeed, as they parted, they revealed only three or four whitish spikes sticking down from his gum.

‘Mornin',' he said, ‘'tis a fine day. Better'n yesterday. Better'n this time last year.'

Toby addressed him in the loud voice one uses to the deaf. ‘Good morning. Do you happen to remember seeing us a short while ago with Sergeant Eggbear?'

The man looked at him in a puzzled way. Toby repeated it in a louder voice. The man shook his head.

‘'E don't require to talk so loud,' he said. ‘I ain't deaf. I was thinkin'.'

‘Sorry,' said Toby. ‘Well, do you remember—?'

‘Ah, I remembers. But 'twas my teeth I was a-thinkin' about. There's a hole in this one up here that hurts terrible the moment I stop workin'. 'Tis the circulation, I reckon. Minute ago I wasn't givin' it a thought, but then you calls me and I stops and stands up and looks around, and the old devil starts up as if he was diggin' in my head with a red-hot pitchfork.'

‘Why don't you get it seen to?' said Toby.

‘Ah,' said the man, ‘that's what the lady says. Mrs Milne, her says: “Albert,” her says, “you belong to go and have it seen to, that tooth o' yours.” “Ma'am,” I says, “when I had more teeth in my head than I have, I was always a-goin' to the dentist. Went to him for a pastime, I did. And what did he do? Stopped up the holes in'n, and when the stoppin' come out he stopped'n up again. Well,” I says, “I reckon that ain't good enough. Now I keeps my teeth the way they are until I can't stand'n no more, and then I has'n out. No, ma'am,” I says, “I don't hold with dentists.” '

‘Well, I was just going to ask you—'

But sticking his fork into the ground and leaning upon it, Albert went on: ‘Mrs Milne, her says: “But I'll pay for it myself, Albert,” her says. “For the sake of your health, that's why. And you belong to have some false teeth in, you can't be chewin' your food proper.” “Thankin' you, ma'am,” I says, “but—” '

In a clear voice, which he had slightly raised again, Toby struck in: ‘Ever tried whisky for your toothache, Albert?'

Staring at the two heads that looked at him over the top of the gate, Albert fell silent. He pulled his fork out of the ground, looked down for a moment at the worn prongs, then, as he thrust it into the earth once more, looked back at his questioner.

‘Well,' he said, ‘I have.'

‘Ah,' said Toby, ‘when?'

‘I thought,' said Albert, ‘you and Eggbear was up here because of the accident.'

‘That's right,' said Toby.

‘Then—'

‘Just you tell me,' said Toby, ‘when you had a swig at that whisky in the car. Mrs Milne won't hear of it.'

Albert eyed him speculatively, then answered in a fatalistic voice: ‘All right, then. This mornin'.'

Toby looked startled. ‘But look here,' he said, ‘this morning that flask ought to have been empty.'

Albert nodded. ‘I had'n filled. Took it round and got Ruby to fill'n.'

Toby gave a bark of triumph. ‘It
was
empty!'

‘Aye,' said Albert, ‘and how it come to be I couldn't say. 'Twas more'n half full Tuesday.'

‘Oh, you had a spot on Tuesday too?'

‘Aye, 'twas Tuesday I come over queer—a touch o' the influenza, I reckon—I come over queer with pains in my body and a kind o' faintness, and I thinks to myself: ‘There's whisky in that car, and the lady'd be the last to begrudge it you.' So I take a drop, and that leaves the flask a bit over half full, like I was sayin'. Then I go home to bed, and stay in bed all Wednesday. Yesterday I get up for my dinner, but I stay in by the fire and listen to the wireless, and then today I'm back at work. I've a very sound constitution; illness don't keep me down long. But as I was tellin' you—'

‘Hi, hi!' said George suddenly, his blue eyes excited. ‘You weren't at work yesterday?'

Albert shook his head.

‘Mrs Milne,' said George, ‘is she much of a gardener?'

Albert laughed derisively, and George subsided out of sight behind the gate.

‘And you say,' said Toby, ‘that the flask was empty this morning?'

‘That's right,' said Albert. ‘Half full Tuesday, and empty this mornin'. I was surprised, but when I heard o' the accident I allowed as 'twas somethin' to do with that.'

‘It was,' said Toby. ‘Thank you.'

Albert replied that he was welcome, and, pulling up his fork once more, returned with those weighted steps of his to the patch of soil he had been digging.

Toby looked down at George, who now was squatting at the foot of the hedge. He had his elbows on his knees, his plump face held in his hands.

‘George,' he said, ‘what made you ask if Mrs Milne was a gardener?'

George went on staring straight ahead of him. ‘When you were taking a sleep after your dinner yesterday afternoon,' he said, ‘before the inquest, I went for a walk.'