Dying to Know (10 page)

They assembled in small groups and couples, some just outside their front doors, some by their front gates, and boy did they gawp. Just looking around as I walked along the road from where I had parked the car, just behind a baker's van (there were so many police cars I could barely get within a hundred yards of the house), I saw so much prurience, so much naked nosiness, so much desire for scandal, I could smell it in the air, as if the drains had overflowed.

I made my presence known to a policewoman who was standing at the garden gate next to Dad's looking bored. She wasn't about to let me in, but she signalled to a colleague who, in turn, went through the open door of the house. Masson appeared shortly afterwards to beckon me in. As I walked along the path, I waved and tried an unconvincing smile at Leslie and Jasmine who were standing, hand in hand, peering over the decrepit wooden fence that separated their property from Dad's.

In the hallway, Masson asked, ‘How's your father?'

‘Not good. He's being transferred to Atkinson-Morley; they may operate.'

Masson nodded and actually looked genuinely sad.

Like my father's house, the hallway we were in was large but, unlike his, this one was crowded. It was also dark and therefore not unlike Lightoller's retail establishment. Also like that, there were a lot of old things; most of these looked to me like junk, but I know nothing of antiques. We were standing just inside the door and from there I could see that over by the foot of the stairs there had been some sort of struggle, for several items of chinaware lay smashed on the carpet, amongst which were some brass ornaments and the remains of a carriage clock.

I asked, ‘What's going on, inspector?'

The sadness was switched off, the tartness returned. ‘Mrs Lightoller has gone the same way as her husband. She's been murdered.'

‘With a sword?' It was a genuine question but perhaps Masson thought it sounded facetious; certainly he glowered a lot.

‘No. With a hammer.'

I could not stop myself wincing slightly. ‘I heard some ludicrous story that you thought my father might be involved.' I tried proffering this in a light tone, a sort of ‘you'll agree that this is absolute tripe, I'm sure' voice. Masson was having none of this.

‘I do.'

The same photographer I had seen at Lightoller's shop came heavily down the stairs. ‘All done. The prof's just finishing up.'

Masson grunted by way of affirmation and then turned back to me as the photographer squeezed past us and nearly knocked a strangely hideous porcelain shepherdess to the floorboards. ‘Preliminary enquiries from the neighbours have identified your father calling at this house at approximately twelve noon today; we have two independent sightings.'

It was yet more evidence that, as far as his neighbours were concerned, my father starred in a sort of real-time soap opera, that he made not a movement without at least one pair of rheumy eyes observing his every move. Masson continued, ‘He banged on the door, apparently in a very agitated state. He was shouting something, although we have yet to ascertain precisely what, but received no response from the house. After a couple of minutes of this, he then made his way back to his own house.' At this point, he paused, perhaps to let me make comments as I wished, but I could think of nothing that would help Dad's case so he continued. ‘What he did then, we have no direct knowledge of at present – as you will be aware, the back of these properties is not overlooked – but at twenty-five past twelve, the Lightollers' cleaner arrived. She has a key to let herself in should the house be empty. She rang the doorbell and, receiving no reply, entered.'

We were at the crux of matters. Masson was a good storyteller, instinctively building the tension at the right rate and at the back of my mind I wondered if this came through telling his story in court on many previous occasions.

‘She discovered a man lying at the bottom of the stairs, unconscious; that man we now know to be your father. Not surprisingly, she became extremely emotional and started to scream. This attracted the baker who was delivering from his van just up the road. He checked to make sure that your father was still alive, then instructed the cleaner, Mrs Madigan, to phone for an ambulance while he investigated further. He made his way up the stairs where he found Mrs Lightoller.'

Professor Cavendish came down the staircase, his tread considerably lighter than the photographer's had been; he still carried with him the same air of unconquerable superiority. ‘You can have the body removed, inspector. I have completed my preliminary enquiries.'

Masson's face told me that he did not appreciate the game that the pathologist was forcing him to play as he asked, ‘What have you found?'

Cavendish paused but did so in a manner that suggested he was impatient to be elsewhere, that almost anything else he could be doing would be more useful, more enjoyable and less tedious. ‘Multiple blows with a heavy blunt instrument, I would say at this stage. Quite a frenzied attack, I'm afraid. I found her false teeth some distance away. Very bloody; very nasty.'

Quite a frenzied attack
. The good professor pronounced this well-worn phrase with enough academic haughtiness and patrician condescension to make it sound an objective assessment rather than a tabloid headline. It angered me and I like to think I would have said something rather cutting had Masson not then asked, ‘The hammer we found . . .?'

‘That is most likely to be the weapon, I would say. Of course, I will know more when I have performed a detailed autopsy. That I plan to do this evening.'

Masson managed a smile, and bowed his head. ‘Thanks.'

Cavendish walked off, his eyes merely raking me without interest. I could see which way this was going and didn't like it.

Masson said, ‘The hammer was found by the unconscious form of your father. There is only one set of fingerprints on it.' He paused and before I could ask the obvious question, he went on, ‘I don't know yet whose they are.'

‘Are you insane?'

Masson looked at me coolly, ‘No,' he said, although it is difficult to envisage circumstances in which that question ever receives a positive answer.

‘You know my father. He's a retired GP. Slightly off-the-wall, I'll admit, but not crazy, and certainly a long way from the crazed killer type. In fact, I don't think he's capable of “crazed”; he'd do his back in if he tried to raise a hammer above his head too quickly. He's gentle, rather considerate and rather nice to everyone he meets.'

Masson observed dryly, ‘Except, by his own admission, the Lightollers.'

Constable Smith came in. ‘Can they pick up the body, sir?'

‘Another ten minutes.' To me he said, ‘Would you like to see what was done to her?'

‘Not particularly.'

‘It's not very nice.' he said.

‘You're saying nothing to make me change my mind.'

He might just have been disappointed as he suggested, ‘Come with me.'

We walked through to the back of the house. Being the mirror image of Dad's, it was familiar and yet strange, a looking-glass world, a fancy that was strengthened by the bizarre miscellany of antiques that filled every available space. In the back room where there was only a small, foldaway dining table and even more pieces of bric-a-brac, mostly still in cardboard boxes, he indicated the French windows. ‘The rest of the house is secure, but these were unlocked. The same fingerprints as were on the hammer are on the handles.'

‘But not necessarily my father's.'

‘The house has been searched,' he said. ‘There's nothing to suggest that anyone else was there. No witnesses saw anyone else enter it or approach it, and there is no physical evidence that anyone other than the deceased and your father has been here.'

‘That doesn't mean anything. A clever criminal could have easily obliterated any sign that he'd been here.'

He exuded quiet and extremely distressing confidence as he said quietly, ‘We'll see, shall we?'

I had to pick up a few things for Dad from his house, a task that ought to have been relatively quick and easy, but for the fact that I was trying to gather my father's belongings and not those of a rational human being. It took me twenty minutes to locate his pyjamas because he chose to store the ironing on the top shelf of the larder in the kitchen, above tins of fruit and Ambrosia custard. I had previously been somewhat surprised to discover that the airing cupboard, where I had first gone in search of said articles, was given over to the production of mushrooms on what appeared to be an industrial scale. I wondered what he did with them all, for he could surely not be eating all of his produce; to do so would surely have produced torrential and ultimately fatal looseness. Feeling fairly confident, however, that he would want to know that I had watered them, I emptied several gallons of water over the mushrooms before leaving.

And then I saw, over the low garden wall that separated Dad's house from the Lightollers', two men in dark suits carrying between them Doris Lightoller covered in a pale-red blanket on a stretcher. Behind them came her son, Tom, head bowed. In the background, I vaguely registered that there was a black Bedford van, completely unmarked, parked in the road. Tom spotted me immediately, became fixated on me, his face stony and his blue eyes suffused with emotion. I didn't know what to say, but thought that I ought to say
something
. Accordingly, I stopped and said, ‘My commiserations.'

The effect was dramatic. He stopped at once, and the stretcher-bearers did likewise; for a moment there was what felt very like a face-off. He stepped towards me as the stretcher-bearers looked on closely, the one closest to him having to crane his head around. I was suddenly very glad that there was something between us, even if it was only a rather insignificant and decidedly frost-affected brick wall. He asked in a low and venomous voice, ‘What did you say?'

‘I offered my condolences . . .'

‘Are you kidding?'

‘No.' I said this because I wasn't.

The two men with the stretcher put it down slowly and with reverence, then came to stand behind him. Because I'm stupid I had not until that moment appreciated that, since Tom Lightoller was an undertaker, he would of course be taking care of the arrangements himself.

‘Your old man did this.'

‘No . . .'

‘Yes, he did. The police said so. They also said that he might also have killed my old man.'

His companions were not handsome. One was well over sixty but clearly still muscular and wiry; he had white stubble around his chin and a nasty looking sty in his left eye. The other was younger and taller and fatter, but equally mean of face and I didn't particularly care for the way that he kept rubbing the knuckles of his left hand in the palm of his right. Either of them could probably have punched me into oblivion and both of them together could almost certainly have dismembered me within a couple of minutes, so the fact that they were both making heavy breathing noises and glaring at me caused not inconsiderable alarm in the Elliot bosom.

‘That's rubbish. It's just an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances.'

‘My mother told me that he tried to burn them to death a few days ago.'

As if they were pantomime extras in some provincial repertory company, his companions – now completely transmogrified from respectful attendants of the dead to goon squad – reacted with expressions of surprise and outrage.

‘That was a misunderstanding.'

‘Oh, yeah?' He moved forward and, presumably to make sure that they did not lose contact, so did Bill and Ben, or whatever their names were. Tom looked down, perhaps to judge how easy it would be step over the wall, which was only two feet high; I looked down too and saw that it was unlikely to keep the Barbarian hordes at bay.

‘Look, Mr Lightoller . . . Tom . . .'

‘Can I help you gentlemen?' Masson's voice had never sounded so sweet to my ears. Tom Lightoller looked around, and softened his face a little as he moved back an almost imperceptible fraction.

‘Dr Elliot was just offering his condolences.' This was accompanied by a lot of nodding from the decidedly un-Greek chorus.

‘And you were accepting them in the spirit in which they were offered? That's nice. Very heartening.'

Tom looked back at me and, with just a brief pause to give me the once over, presumably by way of compensation for not giving me a going over, said sweetly, ‘Thank you so much.'

With which the three of them turned and walked back to the blanket-covered figure on the ground, picked up the stretcher and continued conveying it to the van. Masson watched them and then turned back to me. ‘Everything all right?'

‘He was threatening me.'

‘He was upset.'

‘No. He was menacing, especially when he was backed by a couple of Neanderthals.'

He glanced back at them. They were climbing into the front seats of the van without a glance in my direction. He sighed and then said to me, ‘Perhaps it wasn't the wisest thing to engage him in conversation. He has just lost both parents to a murderer.'

He didn't need to add that all the evidence suggested that the murderer was Dr Launceston Elliot, MBBch, retired.

FOURTEEN

D
ad was finally transferred across to the considerably greener and more refined surroundings of Atkinson-Morley Hospital – known to all and sundry as AMH – at about six that evening. He still had a police escort, just in case he made a miraculous recovery en route and jumped out at the traffic lights, never to be seen again. By that time Max had finished work and, after I had told her what had happened, we followed the ambulance through the rush-hour traffic north-westwards to Wimbledon. It was inevitable that we would lose the ambulance and we arrived nearly half an hour after it; by that time Dad was already being assessed by the on-call senior registrar. We waited in a slightly shabby but nevertheless not squalid waiting room, talking nervously.