Hire Me a Hearse (9 page)

‘Why, me. As I said, any old coffin. Just send a coffin with the hearse.'

‘No measurements?'

‘None at all. You don't have to mark off a single inch or whatever you do.'

‘And the wood?'

‘Any old wood. I mean of course' — she laughed, but the sound found no echo in Mr Thynne's cramped soul at that moment — ‘not any really old wood, like for instance wood that is old and rotten, but any wood you have on hand. Any coffin you've got made up. Don't you have stock sizes?'

‘No.'

He was so appalled he was unthinkingly short with her. Not that she appeared to notice.

‘Pity.' He heard a tapping sound which could have been a pencil against her teeth. ‘Well, you must have a coffin on the premises.'

‘Yes, but it is ordered, and — '

‘Let me have it and make up another. Charge me double price. How's that?'

‘But how do I know it will do? It was for a deceased gentleman who was six foot two and — '

‘That'll do. Double price, and send it with the hearse.'

He was afraid she would ring off, so he almost yelled, ‘Miss Haven, don't hang up. I must know. Who is going to be put in it.'

‘A little old man.'

Mr Thynne's head began to spin. ‘Little, did you say? How tall?'

‘Oh, about four foot six.'

She was quite offhand about it. Mr Thynne felt close to collapse. He was convinced his sanity had become impaired. A coffin for a man of six foot two for a — a dwarf. Good God, it was unthinkable. He couldn't do it.

‘Are you there?' she was asking.

‘Yes, I was thinking, Miss Haven. This small gentleman — '

At the word she burst into lovely liquid laughter that churned his stomach so that the muscles twanged like harp strings made of indiarubber, dully, with no sound to speak of, but plenty of bouncing vibration. Mr Thynne began to feel most unhappy in a rather physical way. He squirmed in his chair, until he reminded himself that wriggling buttocks were ruinous to black serge, and then he forced himself to sit still.

‘Oh, forgive me, Mr Thynne,' she said. ‘Don't trouble your head about the small gentleman.'

She burst into a fresh peal of liquid laughter. It went through Mr Thynne's being like a spear.

He strove to keep his head. ‘Miss Haven,' he said, ‘how old is the small gentleman?'

‘I don't know his age, to be truthful.'

‘How long has he been dead?' Mr Thynne continued striving for an understanding that was perversely denied him.

‘Oh, if you want to put it like that, about a hundred and twenty years or so. I can't be sure.'

There was a sound that could have been her stifling fresh laughter.

‘A hundred and twenty years. But where has he been all this time?'

‘In my garden. He weighs about — well, a couple of hundredweight and is made of lead.'

Mr Thynne could be quick on the uptake when it mattered, and it seemed to him to matter now. He said, ‘You'll have to have the coffin reinforced. Ordinary screws won't hold a weight of — '

‘Mr Thynne,' she said. ‘Do what you have to, but send the coffin and I won't haggle over the price, I promise. O.K.?'

‘O.K.,' Mr Thynne said weakly and put down the phone.

Whatever would Babs say to this?

He rose from his chair, walked out of the room and down a corridor and yelled, ‘Tom.'

A few moments later a stoop-shouldered man in shirt-sleeves and an apron tied around his thin waist came hopping along
from the workroom. He hopped because that was the only means by which he could make progress on his feet. One leg was appreciably shorter than the other. He held a smoothing plane in his right hand. There was a smudge of sawdust on one cheek, a dead cigarette in the corner of his mouth and another tucked behind his left ear. Behind the right was a very chewed yellow lead pencil. Sundry wood shavings clung to his apron and his black hand-knitted tie that was almost green with age.

‘What is it, Mr T?' he asked grumpily.

‘The six foot two is going with the hearse to Broomwood at ten tomorrow morning. Make sure it's ready, then mark up another and it'll be a rush job. A bonus, Tom.'

‘How much?'

‘A quid.'

‘Thirty bob.'

‘Done, thirty bob it is, Tom.'

Tom Chaggin took a box of matches from a waistcoat pocket, scraped one alight and held it to his cigarette butt, almost singeing his wisp of moustache in
the process. He sucked the shag smoke into his leathery lungs and grunted with harsh contentment.

‘Who's being buried?' he asked casually.

‘A dwarf.'

Mr Thynne's own nonchalance was a bit heavy, but then he meant it to be.

‘A dwarf in a six foot two?'

‘And he weighs a couple of hundredweight.'

Tom Chaggin scowled through the shag smoke.

‘You're putting me on, Mr T.'

‘I'm not, Tom.'

They looked at each other, master and man, both sad-eyed and watchful through their professional sadness.

‘Then you must be barmy.'

That was how thirty years planing and sawing and polishing allowed him to speak in moments packed with what served for emotion.

‘I agree there, Tom,' came the ready answer. ‘A quid would have been plenty. Thirty bob. I'm getting too damned soft.'

‘That'll be the day,' said Tom Chaggin and started for the door. When he reached it he said, ‘Thirty bob,' and then departed in a hurry, unwilling to risk further debate.

Bill Hazard came into Drury's office and draped himself over a chair. The big man looked tired, as he had every right to look. He was bone weary. He had snatched three hours' sleep out of the past twenty-four, and the others had not been exactly filled with encouragement.

‘You want a drink?' Drury asked.

‘I just had a coffee in the canteen. I was out of luck, too.'

‘How do you mean?' Drury asked.

‘It was worse than usual, which means it was undrinkable. But I was very thirsty and I skipped breakfast.' Hazard took out his notebook, opened it and studied a page before continuing. ‘Claude and Cedric. They used to be bouncers at a Soho club. Claude once got close to a welterweight title, Cedric just fought for the cash, a man of no ambition. He once did time for beating up a jockey at Newmarket. Suspected of working with a
horse-doping ring, but nothing could be proved against him. Flora is a relative of Claude's wife. They're being paid fifty pounds apiece for standing gate guard at Broomwood.'

‘Wilma expects trouble?'

‘I'm not sure how much of an act that gate guarding is,' Hazard said, looking up from his notebook. ‘It's impressive for the locals, and of course the Fleet Street newshounds lap it up.'

‘They've had their faces in the tabloids. It's all beginning to boil in print.'

‘I can imagine. Well, Flora Marshall is a relatively new arrival at Broomwood. In the past year. Apparently she was in trouble with the local police about being drunk and insulting. The other woman didn't want to bring a charge, but was urged to do so. Wilma Haven got into the act, and some more of the Haven publicity was threatened, so the charge was dropped. I'd say Flora was lucky.'

‘Sounds very well put together,' Drury nodded, taking out his pipe and packing it from a tin of tobacco. ‘Who was the
woman reluctant to bring the charge?'

Hazard glanced again at his pocket-book, riffled a few pages under a broad thumb, and read out a name.

‘Vicki Seeburg.'

Drury shook his head. ‘Doesn't ring any bell,' he confessed. ‘Should it?'

‘She's been around with Wilma for about three years on and off. They once spent a holiday at St Tropez together.'

‘Being girlish, artistic, or just plain lazy in the sun?'

‘I suspect the first because I'm cynical, admit it could be the second because I'm fair-minded, but am prepared to believe it was the last because I'm always ready to be disappointed.'

Drury grinned around the black stem of his pipe.

‘She sounds foreign.'

‘Speaks English without any accent you'd notice unless you were searching for one. Probably due to her father being Austrian and living in Agra, where he met and married a Eurasian whose father was a British officer who was cashiered for cheating at cards.'

‘You've been busy. Where did you dig this up?'

‘Wilma has her enemies. Some like to talk behind her back. One of them is a woman who was at school with her. She had her wedding ruined when Wilma turned up with a pig and started making comparisons about pedigrees.'

‘That woman. I remember the hooha. Think she's to be trusted?'

‘She showed me her book of press cuttings. There were bits filled in, dated, underlined, all very neat. I'd say keeping up to date on Wilma's a hobby she hopes will pay off.'

‘Like the day you blew in.'

‘Sort of. I got her talking about Jeremy Truncard.'

‘Oh,' said Drury in a flat tone that earned him a quick look from his assistant.

‘Did I touch a sensitive spot?'

‘Truncard's walked out on his job. Doubtless it's only temporary, and Wilma's the reason. But International Chemicals' security is in a flap. Word's gone back to the Home Office. The Commissioner's had
his hot line burning, so the Commander had me in. Where we were going through the motions of being on a case, now we're working full time.'

Hazard stifled a yawn in a big hand. It could have been a genuine yawn.

‘Is that what I've been doing?' he murmured.

‘You're not the only one, Bill,' Drury informed him. ‘A couple of International Chemicals' security men followed up a lead, picked up Truncard in a café, were about to close in on him when he had finished making a phone call. So far as I can make out, that could have been the call made to Broomwood when we were there.'

‘Then they've got him?'

‘No. He ran from the phone booth, jumped into a car driven by a woman.'

‘Wilma?'

‘Impossible. She was at home with us and making threats at Flora Marshall.'

‘So Truncard's got himself another woman. He's not unique, is he?'

‘I'm not sure. One of the two International Chemicals men, name of
Bateman, said his colleague jumped a bus to go after the car that picked up Truncard. He hasn't reported back and hasn't been seen since. That's a day and a half since he jumped on the bus.'

‘Maybe he's got a thing about bus travel and he ought to see someone about it.'

‘You mean someone like Jeremy Truncard?' Drury asked mildly, lifting his brows.

Bill Hazard climbed on to his feet and slipped his notebook into his pocket. He began to prowl around the office, a restless man who couldn't settle.

‘I feel I could sleep for a month if I could bring myself to lie down full length,' he said and produced a cigarette, which he took his time lighting. ‘It must be the sleep I've missed. I don't get that last bit, chief.'

‘Someone sent the girl to pick up Truncard.'

‘Why didn't Truncard do his own dirty work?'

‘According to the man Bateman, who was in the Sheffield force before he
retired and joined International Chemicals' security, Tuncard drove south. He put through no phone calls before he left except one. To the daughter of his boss. Her name's Gladys.'

‘Hell, he could be running an errand for her.'

‘No.' Drury shook his head. ‘Their security have been on to her. Wilma's name came up. Her advert started Truncard running.'

‘And on the phone he asked about the baby. Something's plain wacky,' Hazard grunted, spilling ash on to the floor.

He glanced down at it and then ran a shoe over the tiny grey mound.

‘If you ask me,' Hazard muttered as he turned away from Drury's level stare, ‘I think we're being served up on toast. This is all going to be another bit of chase me Charlie and a waste of the taxpayers' money, and we're taxpayers.'

‘You'd better try tea this time, Bill,' Drury advised.

His phone rang. He picked up the receiver and said, ‘Yes, sir, at once.' He put down the receiver and rose.

‘The Commander?' Hazard asked.

‘Get your cup of tea and come back. I may have news.'

Hazard was back after having a cup of tea and a round of toast, and was smoking a cigarette, when the door of the office opened. He expected to see Drury reappear, but it was a uniformed constable.

‘There's a Mr Bayliss waiting. Says it's important, and he has to see the superintendent.'

‘Show him in,' Hazard said.

He rubbed out his cigarette and sat recalling the last visit to Scotland Yard by the chief clerk at Abbott, Abbott, Truncard, and Porter. On that occasion Bayliss had brought the first news of Wilma Haven's intended publicity stunt, as Hazard thought of it. Bayliss had been concerned about the effect of what she planned on Jeremy Truncard.

Well, they had all gone some way from the situation as it was. It was only a matter of hours now before she put on her show, whether it included Russian Roulette or not.

There was a bang on the door, and the same constable opened it and flattened his shoulder-blades against the shiny woodwork.

‘Mr Bayliss, Inspector,' he announced.

Bayliss came in. The door closed. Hazard rose and pushed forward the same chair used by the visitor on the previous visit.

‘Superintendent Drury won't be long,' he said. ‘Anything you care to tell me meanwhile?'

The visitor shook his head. ‘Thanks. I'd better wait for Mr Drury. Better to take one bite of the cherry, don't you think?'

What Bill Hazard was thinking at that precise moment in time was barely repeatable. He said tactfully, ‘Oh, sure. Just thought if there's something I could tell him for you — '