The Black Tower (33 page)

“Then ring him. Then the police. Wrap the receiver in your handkerchief. May be prints.”

“But they won't answer! They never do when they are meditating.”

“Then for God's sake fetch him!”

“But her face! It's covered with blood!”

“Lipstick. Smudged. Phone Hewson.”

Julius stood unmoving. Then he said:

“I'll try. They will have finished meditating by now. It's just four. They may answer.”

He turned to the telephone. From the corner of his eye Dalgliesh glimpsed the lifted receiver shaking in his hands, and the flash of white handkerchief which Julius had wrapped around the instrument as awkwardly as if trying to bandage a self-inflicted wound. After two long minutes the telephone was answered. He couldn't guess by whom. Nor did he afterwards remember what Julius had said.

“I've told them. They're coming.”

“Now the police.”

“What shall I tell them?”

“The facts. They'll know what to do.”

“But oughtn't we to wait? Suppose she comes round?”

Dalgliesh straightened himself up. He knew that for the last five minutes he had been working on a dead body. He said:

“I don't think she's going to come round.”

Immediately he bent again to his task, his mouth clamped over hers, feeling with his right palm for the first pulse of life in the silent heart. The pendant lightbulb swung gently in the movement of air from the open door so that a shadow moved like a drawn curtain over the dead face. He was aware of the contrast between the inert flesh, the cool unresponsive lips bruised by his own, and her look of flushed intentness, a woman preoccupied in the act of love. The crimson stigmata of the rope was like a double-corded bracelet clasping the heavy throat. Remnants of cold mist stole in the door to twine themselves round the dust-encrusted legs of table and chairs. The mist stung his nostrils like an anaesthetic; his mouth tasted sour with the whisky-tainted breath.

Suddenly there was a rush of feet; the room was full of people and voices. Eric Hewson was edging him aside to kneel beside his wife; behind him Helen Rainer flicked open a medical bag. She handed him a stethoscope. He tore open his wife's blouse. Delicately, unemotionally, she lifted Maggie's left breast so that he could listen to the heart. He pulled off the stethoscope and threw it aside holding out his hand. This time, still without speaking, she handed him a syringe.

“What are you going to do?” It was Julius Court's hysterical voice.

Hewson looked up at Dalgliesh. His face was deathly white. The irises of his eyes were huge. He said:

“It's only digitalis.”

His voice, very low, was a plea for reassurance, for hope. But it sounded, too, like a plea for permission, a small abdication of responsibility. Dalgliesh nodded. If the stuff were digitalis it might work. And surely the man wouldn't be fool enough to inject anything lethal? To stop him now
might be to kill her. Would it have been better to carry on with the artificial respiration? Probably not; in any case that was a decision for a doctor. And a doctor was here. But in his heart Dalgliesh knew that the argument was academic. She was as beyond harm as she was beyond help.

Helen Rainer now had a torch in her hand and was shining it on Maggie's breast. The pores of the skin between the pendulous breasts looked huge, miniature craters clogged with powder and sweat. Hewson's hand began to shake. Suddenly she said:

“Here, let me do it.”

He handed over the syringe. Dalgliesh heard Julius Court's incredulous “Oh, no! No!” and then watched the needle go in as cleanly and surely as a
coup de grâce.

The slim hands didn't tremble as she withdrew the syringe, held a pad of cotton wool over the puncture mark and, without speaking, handed the syringe to Dalgliesh.

Suddenly Julius Court stumbled out of the room. He came back almost immediately holding a glass. Before anyone could stop him he had grasped the whisky bottle by the top of its neck and had poured out the last half inch. Jerking one of the chairs out from the table he sat down and slumped forward, his arms half circling the bottle.

Wilfred said:

“But Julius … nothing should be touched until the police arrive!”

Julius took out his handkerchief and wiped it over his face.

“I needed that. And what the hell! I haven't interfered with her prints. And she's had a rope round her neck, or haven't you noticed? What d'you think she died of—alcoholism?”

The rest of them stood in a tableau round the body. Hewson still knelt at his wife's side; Helen cradled her
head. Wilfred and Dennis stood one on each side, the folds of their habits hanging motionless in the still air. They looked, thought Dalgliesh, like a motley collection of actors posing for a contemporary diptych, their eyes fixed with wary anticipation on the bright body of the martyred saint.

Five minutes later Hewson stood up. He said dully:

“No response. Move her to the sofa. We can't leave her there on the floor.”

Julius Court rose from his chair and he and Dalgliesh together lifted the sagging body and placed it on the sofa. It was too short, and the scarlet-tipped feet, looking at once grotesque and pathetically vulnerable, stuck out stiffly over the end. Dalgliesh heard the company sigh gently, as if they had satisfied some obscure need to make the body comfortable. Julius looked round, apparently at a loss, searching for something with which to cover the corpse. It was Dennis Lerner who, surprisingly, produced a large white handkerchief, shook it free of its folds and placed it with ritual precision over Maggie's face. They all looked at it intently as if watching for the linen to stir with the first tentative breath.

Wilfred said:

“I find it a strange tradition that we cover the faces of the dead. Is it because we feel that they are at a disadvantage, exposed defenceless to our critical gaze? Or is it because we fear them? I think the latter.”

Ignoring him, Eric Hewson turned to Dalgliesh.

“Where …?”

“Out there in the hall.”

Hewson went to the door and stood silently surveying the dangling rope, the bright chrome and yellow kitchen stool. He turned towards the circle of watchful, compassionate faces.

“How did she get the rope?”

“It may be mine.” Wilfred's voice sounded interested, confident. He turned to Dalgliesh.

“It's newer looking than Julius's rope. I bought it shortly after the old one was found frayed. I keep it on a hook in the business room. You may have noticed it. It was certainly hanging there when we left for Grace's funeral this morning. You remember, Dot?”

Dorothy Moxon moved forward from her shadowed refuge against the far wall. She spoke for the first time. They looked round as if surprised to find her in the company. Her voice sounded unnatural, high, truculent, uncertain.

“Yes, I noticed. I mean, I'm sure I would have noticed if it hadn't been there. Yes, I remember. The rope was there.”

“And when you got back from the funeral?” asked Dalgliesh.

“I went alone into the business room to hang up my cloak. I don't think it was there then. I'm almost sure not.”

“Didn't that worry you?” asked Julius.

“No, why should it? I'm not sure that I consciously noticed that the rope was missing at the time. It's only now, looking back, that I am fairly confident that it wasn't there. Its absence wouldn't have particularly concerned me even had I registered it. I should have assumed that Albert had borrowed it for some purpose. He couldn't have done so, of course. He came with us to the funeral, and got into the bus before me.”

Lerner said suddenly:

“The police have been telephoned?”

“Of course,” said Julius, “I rang them.”

“What were you doing here?” Dorothy Moxon's didactic question sounded like an accusation, but Julius who seemed to have taken control of himself, answered calmly enough:

“She switched the light off and on three times before she died. I happened to see it through the mist from my bathroom window. I didn't come at once. I didn't think it was important or that she was really in trouble. Then I felt uneasy and decided to walk over. Dalgliesh was already here.”

Dalgliesh said:

“I saw the signal from the headland. Like Julius, I didn't feel more than slightly uneasy, but it seemed right to look in.”

Lerner had moved over to the table. He said:

“She's left a note.”

Dalgliesh said sharply:

“Don't touch it!”

Lerner withdrew his hand as if it had been stung. They moved round the table. The note was written in black biro on the top sheet of a quarto-size pad of white writing paper. They read silently:

 

“Dear Eric, I've told you often enough that I couldn't stick it out in this lousy hole any longer. You thought it was just talk. You've been so busy fussing over your precious patients I could die of boredom and you wouldn't notice. Sorry if I've mucked up your little plans. I don't kid myself you'll miss me. You can have her now and by God you're welcome to each other. We had some good times. Remember them. Try to miss me. Better dead. Sorry Wilfred. The black tower.”

 

The first eight lines were plainly and strongly written, the last five were an almost illegible scrawl.

“Her handwriting?” asked Anstey.

Eric Hewson replied in a voice so low that they could barely hear him.

“Oh, yes. Her handwriting.”

Julius turned to Eric and said with sudden energy:

“Look, it's perfectly plain how it happened. Maggie never intended to kill herself. She wouldn't. She's not the type. For God's sake, why should she? She's young enough, healthy, if she didn't like it here she could walk out. She's an SRN. She's not unemployable. This was all meant to frighten you. She tried to telephone Toynton Grange and get you over here—just in time, of course. When no one replied, she signalled with the lights. But by that time she was too drunk to know exactly what she was doing and the whole thing became horribly real. Take that note, does it read like a suicide note?”

“It does to me,” said Anstey. “And I suspect it will to the coroner.”

“Well, it doesn't to me. It could just as well be the note of a woman planning to go away.”

Helen Rainer said calmly:

“Only she wasn't. She wouldn't be leaving Toynton wearing just a shirt and slacks. And where is her case? No woman plans to leave home without taking her makeup and nightwear.”

There was a capacious black shoulder bag beside a leg of the table. Julius picked it up and began rummaging in it. He said:

“There's nothing here. No nightdress or toilet bag.”

He continued his inspection. Then he glanced suddenly from Eric to Dalgliesh. An extraordinary succession of emotions crossed his face; surprise, embarrassment, interest. He closed the bag and placed it on the table.

“Wilfred's right. Nothing should be touched until the police arrive.”

They stood in silence. Then Anstey said:

“The police will want to know where we all were this
afternoon, no doubt. Even in an obvious case of suicide these questions have to be asked. She must have died when we were nearly at the end of our meditation hour. That means, of course, that none of us has an alibi. Given the circumstances it is perhaps fortunate that Maggie chose to leave a suicide note.”

Helen Rainer said calmly:

“Eric and I were together in my room for the whole of the hour.”

Wilfred stared at her, disconcerted. For the first time since he had entered the cottage he seemed at a loss. He said:

“But we were holding a family council! The rules are that we meditate in silence and alone.”

“We didn't meditate and we weren't precisely silent. But we were alone—alone together.” She stared past him, defiant, almost triumphant, into the eyes of Eric Hewson. He gazed at her appalled.

Dennis Lerner, as if to dissociate himself from controversy, had moved over to stand by Dot Moxon by the door. Now he said quietly:

“I think I can hear cars. It must be the police.”

The mist had muffled the sound of their approach. Even as Lerner spoke Dalgliesh heard the dual slam of car doors. Eric's first reaction was to kneel by the sofa, shielding Maggie's body from the door. Then he scrambled clumsily to his feet as if afraid to be discovered in a compromising position. Dot, without looking round, moved her solid body away from the door.

The little room was suddenly as overcrowded as a bus shelter on a wet night, smelling of mist and damp raincoats. But there was no confusion. The new arrivals moved solidly and calmly in, bringing with them their equipment, moving as purposefully as encumbered members
of an orchestra taking their appointed places. The group from Toynton Grange fell back and regarded them warily. No one spoke. Then Inspector Daniel's slow voice broke the silence.

“Well, now, and who found the poor lady?”

“I did,” said Dalgliesh. “Court arrived about twelve minutes later.”

“Then I'll just have Mr. Dalgliesh, Mr. Court and Dr. Hewson. That'll do to start with.”

Wilfred said:

“I should prefer to stay, if you please.”

“Well, Sir, I daresay. Mr. Anstey isn't it? But we can't always have what we'd prefer. Now if you'll all go back to the Grange, Detective Constable Burroughs will accompany you and anything that's on your minds you can say to him. I'll be with you later.”

Without a further word, Wilfred led the way.

Inspector Daniel looked at Dalgliesh:

“Well, Sir, seemingly for you there's no convalescence from death at Toynton Head.”

When he had handed over the syringe and given his account of the finding of the body Dalgliesh didn't wait to watch the investigation. He had no wish to give the impression that he was keeping a critical eye on Inspector Daniel's handling of the case; he disliked the role of spectator, and he felt uncomfortably that he was getting in their way. None of the men present were getting in each other's. They moved confidently in the cramped space, each a specialist, yet giving the impression of a team. The photographer manoeuvred his portable lights into the narrow hall;
the plainclothes fingerprint expert, his case open to display the neatly arranged tools of his craft, settled down at the table, brush poised, to begin his methodical dusting of the whisky bottle; the police surgeon knelt, absorbed and judicial, beside the body and plucked at Maggie's mottled skin as if hoping to stimulate it into life. Inspector Daniel leaned over him and they conferred together. They looked, thought Dalgliesh, like two poulterers expertly assessing the qualities of a dead chicken. He was interested that Daniel had brought the police surgeon and not a forensic pathologist. But why not? A Home Office pathologist, given the huge areas which most of them had to cover, could seldom arrive promptly on the scene. And the initial medical examination here presented no obvious problems. There was no sense in committing more resources than were needed for the job. He wondered whether Daniel would have come himself if it hadn't been for the presence at Toynton Grange of a Metropolitan Police Commander.