Rack, Ruin and Murder Read online

  He returned to the kitchen, pushed the pile of unanswered mail surrounding the mobile phone on to the floor, and called 999. He asked for the police.

  ‘Send a couple of your chaps over, would you?’ he requested politely. ‘I’ve got a dead man on my sofa.’

  They asked his name and his address and, after a pause during which he heard some voices in the background, the woman asked him if he was sure.

  ‘Pretty sure,’ said Monty as politely as he could, considering it was a damn stupid question. ‘He’s not breathing.’

  ‘Has someone there had a heart attack? Perhaps you want the ambulance service…’ began the woman.

  ‘No, I don’t!’ Monty was starting to have had enough of her. Officials were all the same. They never listened to anything you said. ‘Send a couple of your men or send an undertaker with his wagon. Take your pick.’

  She said someone would call by as soon as possible but it was a busy day.

  ‘I’m having a busy day,’ snapped Monty. ‘And a dashed unpleasant one. Look here, I don’t particularly like having him in my house, so get a move on, will you?’

  He dropped the mobile into his pocket and, after a moment’s hesitation, took a swig from the glass of whisky in his hand and sidled back into the drawing room to check on his uninvited guest.

  ‘They’ll be coming for you soon,’ he informed whoever it was.

  He didn’t, of course, expect any response. He just wanted to hear a human voice, if only his own. But he got an answer because it was at that moment that the dead man yawned and opened his eyes.

  Chapter 2

  It gave Monty such a shock that he dropped his whisky glass. The air was filled with the peaty scent as the contents drained away into the stained carpet. The man’s yawn was accompanied by a clicking noise from his jaw and at the furthest extent of it, when it seemed his mouth could open no wider, the yawn froze. The eyes bulged unseeingly, glazed in death.

  ‘Now what am I supposed to do?’ Monty muttered. ‘Chap’s stiffening, rigor mortis must be setting in. Where are those blasted coppers?’

  He must have persuaded the woman on the phone that he was in earnest because before long there came the sound of a car drawing up at the gate. Footsteps crunched on the weed-strewn gravel of his drive.

  ‘Front door’s open,’ commented a male voice in the hall, presumably to a companion. Then it called out, ‘Anyone at home?’

  ‘In here,’ called back Monty.

  They came into the room – two of them in uniform.

  ‘Were you the gentleman who phoned?’ asked one of them.

  The other one had gone to the sofa and was bending over Monty’s visitor. Before Monty could reply, this one said sharply, ‘No kidding, Trev, this chap is a goner.’

  After that, things happened at bewildering speed. Monty sat and watched them come and go. Another police officer, apparently slightly more senior, arrived and then a doctor. ‘I told them it was too late for that,’ muttered Monty, remembering his emergency call. But he supposed they had to have official confirmation that the fellow had croaked.

  Eventually, when the more senior officer and the doctor had departed, one of the remaining coppers remembered him and came across to where he sat. He asked again if Monty was the householder and if he was the person who’d called to report a death. Irritably Monty replied ‘yes’ to both questions. ‘I told you I was!’

  ‘Just checking, sir. Is there perhaps another room where we can have a chat?’

  ‘A chat?’ asked Monty. ‘What the hell do you want to chat about?’

  ‘We’d like you to tell us just what happened, sir,’ said the constable. ‘Was the gentleman taken ill? Did he live here with you?’ The young man gave a doubtful glance at the surrounding jumble of dusty old furniture and worn carpets that filled Monty’s drawing room.

  ‘No, of course he didn’t,’ said Monty.

  ‘Then we’d like to know his name and address. His next of kin will have to be informed and the coroner’s office. Have you rung anyone besides us?’

  ‘No use asking me any of that,’ Monty told him. ‘I haven’t a clue. I don’t know who he is or how he got here. I came home and there he was. I thought he was asleep at first. It goes without saying I haven’t rung anyone else. Who the devil would I ring?’

  But he led the man into his kitchen where they sat at the table and the constable got him to repeat what he’d just said so that he could write it down. Monty watched him in resignation. This was officialdom all over: ask you the same thing twenty times and then write it down.

  ‘Now, sir,’ asked the constable at last, ‘did you touch the body?’

  Monty stared at him. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘To try and find out his identity, sir. Looked for his driving licence, perhaps? You say he’s a stranger to you. You must have wondered who he was, when you saw him lying there.’

  Monty frowned and gave his answer some thought. ‘I didn’t worry who he was,’ he said at last. ‘I was more worried where he’d come from and how I was going to get rid of him. It didn’t matter to me who he was – is. I don’t know him. If I’d found someone I knew dead on my sofa, of course I’d have rung his home and told someone there to come and get him. I didn’t know him, so I rang you.’

  The constable sighed. But in the distance there was sound of other vehicles pulling up before the gates. New voices sounded in the drawing room. The kitchen door opened and, to Monty’s horror, his late wife walked in.

  If finding the dead man had been a shock, this was worse. Monty’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped open like the fellow’s on the sofa. He felt the blood draining from his face and his head swam briefly. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered. Were there dead people everywhere today? First one stiff in the drawing room and now a ghost strolling into the kitchen . . .

  ‘Sir?’ asked the constable in concern. He reached out and touched Monty’s arm.

  ‘No,’ said Monty aloud firmly. ‘This isn’t possible and you’re imagining it.’

  ‘I’m afraid there is a corpse in the other room, sir. You haven’t imagined it.’

  Monty waved his words away irritably. He hoped the wave would also dispel the figure that had just come through the door. Penny had been gone from his life this past ten years; and quitted life altogether some four years ago. Bridget had driven over to tell him of her death and ask him if he wanted to attend the funeral. Of course he hadn’t, he’d replied. Bridget had thought that churlish of him, suggesting, with some asperity, that even an ex-wife deserves last respects. But Penny had walked out of his life because he had been selfish and foolish and too obstinate to make things up, and, in any case, he had left it too late to change anything. Gazing at her coffin would have done nothing but remind him of his own shortcomings. So he had simply told Bridget it was out of the question for him to attend the funeral. His knees wouldn’t allow it. They had parted, as the old saying went, ‘brass rags’, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. But you could be as direct as you liked with Bridget; it didn’t put her off. He knew; he’d tried. She always popped up again ready to interfere if he’d let her.

  Now common sense told him this new arrival was not a spectre, but a young woman who bore a remarkable resemblance to his late wife. There had been a wedding photo that showed Penny looking just like the newcomer. (He’d hidden all the photos after Penny left; and burned them after she died.) Penny had worn a wedding gown, of course, in the picture he had in mind, and this woman wore what, on a man, Monty would have called a business suit – striped trousers and matching jacket. But, oh boy, she was a double for Penny when younger: just above middle height, slightly built but wiry, a terrier of a girl, with short dark-red hair, a pointed chin and widely spaced grey eyes that sparkled with intelligence.

  Under the severe mannish jacket she wore a flamboyant ochre shirt with a wide collar. That, with her red hair and elfin haircut, turned her into the spirit of autumn. He wished he had pencil and paper to ha
nd and could sketch her. It had been years since he’d drawn or painted. Time after time he’d painted or sketched Penny in the old days, when they were young, so long ago. Now he was giving way to a stupid fancy.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Monty humbly.

  ‘Inspector Jessica Campbell,’ the young woman replied. To the constable she added, ‘All right, I’ll take over now.’

  The constable got up, not hiding his relief, and left them alone together.

  ‘Do you feel unwell?’ Penny’s look-alike was bending over him in concern. Could she really have said she was a police inspector?

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she went on.

  Monty rallied and made a great effort to pull himself together. ‘I’m as well as I can be in the circumstances, thank you,’ he told her. ‘I don’t want tea. I want another whisky.’

  ‘How many have you had already?’ she asked. (Now she also sounded like his late wife.)

  ‘Only the one,’ he replied, as he’d replied to Penny so many times in the past. ‘And I spilled most of it when that dratted thing in there yawned.’ He pointed at the kitchen door and the distant sofa with its occupant.

  ‘Nasty shock,’ said Inspector Campbell. ‘But I think tea might be better.’

  It was not only shock; it was the accumulation of unforeseen and inexplicable events that led Monty to explode. ‘I don’t want tea! Drat it, why have I been surrounded my entire life by women who know better than I do what I need? I need a whisky!’ He glared at her.

  She looked back good-humouredly. ‘I think you’re coping with this all right,’ she said.

  Monty’s anger drained away. ‘Sorry for the outburst,’ he apologised. ‘But a small whisky wouldn’t hurt, would it?’

  ‘No, Mr Bickerstaffe, I don’t suppose it would.’

  A few minutes later when the whisky had been brought to him, she began to ask questions. That’s what coppers did. He prepared himself for going through it all yet again.

  ‘Live here all on your own, Mr Bickerstaffe?’

  ‘Yes, and you might as well call me Monty,’ he told her. ‘Everyone does.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Have you got somewhere you can go and stay tonight, Monty? A relative living nearby, perhaps?’

  ‘Why can’t I stay here, in my own home?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, you surely don’t want to stay here alone tonight after – this?’ She nodded towards the drawing room.

  It occurred to Monty that his chaise-longue bed was in there and she was quite right. He didn’t fancy sleeping there tonight.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve got some friends nearby?’ Inspector Campbell was saying.

  ‘No,’ said Monty grumpily. ‘I haven’t got friends anywhere.’

  ‘We can put you in a hotel for tonight, then,’ she said.

  Monty gave a snort. ‘If you can find one that’ll take me.’

  Her face showed that she appreciated that objection, but she made no comment on it.

  Instead, she said, ‘I understand that the deceased is a stranger to you. That’s what you told the constables when they got here.’

  ‘Never seen him before,’ Monty confirmed.

  ‘You weren’t in the house when he came?’

  ‘No, I was out – in town. I go every day, more or less.’

  ‘So how long were you away?’ she asked.

  Time meant little to Monty. He looked vague. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Three, four hours? I had a bite to eat in a pub – sausage and mash – and sat there for a while reading the paper. The pub was the Rose and Crown. They always put a couple of daily rags in the bar for anyone to read. Nothing of substance, mind you. No Telegraph or Times. Usually it’s something with more pictures than text, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s free. Then I went shopping. You can ask them at the supermarket. They know me. They’ll tell you I was there. Same with the Rose and Crown.’ He frowned. ‘I hadn’t long got home, only a few minutes, before I found him.’

  ‘When you left to go shopping, you left the house empty? How did he get in?’

  ‘Through the front door, I suppose,’ Monty said.

  ‘How did he open it?’

  ‘It sticks,’ explained Monty. ‘The wood’s swollen. It’s a job to open it and to close it. I close it at night, before I go to bed. But during the day I just sort of wedge it shut. It opens if you give it a good shove.’

  ‘That isn’t a very good idea, is it?’ She gave a reproving shake of the head. ‘Leaving your house unlocked like that?’

  ‘Nothing here anybody would want,’ said Monty. ‘Nobody comes to see me, well, hardly ever. Who’s going to walk in?’ Then the irony of his question struck him and he gave another snort. ‘Well, that fellow did, I suppose you’d say.’

  ‘It’s a large house for one person,’ she said.

  ‘Always lived here, most of my life at any rate,’ Monty explained. ‘Family home, you know. I only use the downstairs now. My knees don’t like the stairs – arthritis.’

  ‘Is there a bathroom down here?’

  Monty thought this rather an impertinent question, but perhaps she was a lady in distress.

  ‘By the front door, on the left as you go out,’ he said. ‘Cloakroom. It’s got the usual offices. No lock on the door, by the way. You’ll have to sing or something.’

  Her cheeks reddened. ‘I don’t need it, I just wondered how you managed for baths.’

  ‘You mean,’ he said, with a sudden gleam in his eyes, ‘do I bath? Answer, no, I don’t. There isn’t a bath down here. I wash down in here, in the kitchen.’ He nodded towards the huge old stone sink.

  ‘You have plenty of room to have a bath or shower room installed,’ the inspector suggested. ‘What about that cloakroom, could it be converted? You might be able to get a grant from social services.’

  ‘Meddling women!’ said Monty, remembering his last encounter with a social worker. ‘No, my dear, not you, social service people. Nearly all meddling women. Besides, I couldn’t have workmen here. They’d be marching all over the place, whistling and making tea and getting under my feet. Couldn’t be doing with it. Anyway, I like it as it is. What’s all this got to do with the dead fellow on my sofa? Precious little, as far as I can see.’

  He was growing combative. He hadn’t asked the chap to walk in and die in his drawing room, for crying out loud! Anyone would think he was responsible. He was a man who’d spent his life avoiding responsibilities. Penny, were she still alive and here, would have confirmed this.

  ‘True,’ the red-haired inspector admitted. ‘Well, Monty, we don’t know what your visitor died of. But it’s a puzzle to know how he got here, isn’t it? There’s no car outside except police vehicles. It doesn’t look as if he walked from anywhere. His shoes are very clean.’

  ‘Are they?’ Monty was startled.

  ‘Yes, I looked.’

  At this Monty grew thoughtful. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said at last. ‘You’re a cool one, aren’t you? But you’re right. There was no car outside when I got here.’

  She smiled again. ‘I need to be observant. His clothes are also clean for the most part.’ She paused fractionally to glance over Monty’s scruffy jacket and shirt, both with frayed sleeves. ‘He’s quite well turned out, isn’t he? That’s a real suede jacket he’s wearing and they’re expensive.’

  ‘Looked to me like the sort of fellow who hangs around racecourses,’ mumbled Monty.

  The look in the grey eyes sharpened. ‘Are you a racing man?’

  ‘No, it was just an observation.’ Damn, he thought, you had to be so careful what you said to the police. They jumped on every word and twisted the meaning out of all recognition. Penny had been the same, reading a subtext he’d not intended into every blessed sentence. Name, rank and number, Monty! Just answer the lady’s questions.

  ‘The thing is, Mr Bickerstaffe – sorry, Monty – it does seem incredible that you should walk in and find someone you’d never set eyes on before, lying on your sofa, dead.’
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  ‘Thought he was asleep,’ Monty said. ‘Until I realised he wasn’t. I couldn’t wake him up.’ Hastily he added, ‘I did give his jacket a bit of a twitch. I wouldn’t say I shook him. I shouted at him. I thought he’d got drunk and come in to sleep it off. He’d wet his pants. I smelled it. I suppose you noticed that, too?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Sorry to keep asking, but are you absolutely certain you haven’t seen him anywhere?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Were you expecting anyone to call today?’

  Monty was about to reply in the negative when they were both startled by tinny notes playing the opening bars of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca. The tune appeared to be issuing from the pocket of Monty’s jacket.

  He stared at her wildly.

  She said, ‘I think it’s your mobile phone.’

  ‘What, oh, dratted thing…’ He fumbled in his pocket and took it out, pressing it to his ear.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Monty!’ said a cheery voice. ‘It’s Bridget here. I thought I’d give you a call to see how you’re getting on. Tansy told me she insisted you got a mobile but you’ve never called us on it.’

  Monty gazed at the phone in dismay and then held it out to the policewoman. ‘It’s my – a family member,’ he said. ‘She insists on calling me “Uncle”. I’m not her ruddy uncle. She’s my cousin Harry’s daughter, Bridget. You seem a capable sort. You’d better talk to her.’

  ‘What’s her surname?’ she asked, reaching out with her hand.

  Monty scowled. ‘Last time I knew of it, it was Harwell. It’s constantly changing. She keeps getting married and is just about to have a shot at it for the fourth time. Try Harwell. That was the last one. She probably answers to it.’