Tomfoolery Page 9

  ‘Further enquiries,’ continued Fox relentlessly, ‘indicated that the death certificate was not signed by the doctor whose name appeared thereon and that the firm of funeral directors that you say delivered the coffin did not exist.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  ‘Exactly. Sure you won’t have a snifter?’

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ said the vicar.

  ‘Of course,’ said Fox, ‘it is possible that it’s a different Thomas Harley, I suppose. Be a bit of a coincidence, though, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘They’ve got down as far as the coffin, sir.’ Gilroy appeared from behind the screens.

  ‘Well done,’ said Fox. ‘Get them to fetch it out, then.’

  One of the local officers also appeared round the screen. ‘We’ll have to go a bit deeper, sir, so’s we can get the straps round her,’ he said in a ringing Devonshire accent.

  ‘Him,’ said Fox absently. ‘Here, have a drop of Scotch. Keep your spirits up, so to speak.’ He held out his flask.

  The constable looked shocked. ‘No thank you, sir. Not on duty,’ he said, and disappeared behind the screen again.

  ‘Jack,’ said Fox, shaking his head, ‘I do believe the police force is changing.’

  ‘Not that much,’ said Gilroy, holding out his hand. Reluctantly Fox handed over his flask.

  It took another twenty minutes of digging before a number of grunts and groans indicated that the coffin was being raised. ‘Cor,’ said a voice, ‘here be an ’eavy bugger.’ Another voice told the first to watch his language.

  Fox stepped into the canvas enclosure and gazed down at the mud-encrusted coffin that the perspiring policemen were struggling to get on to the ground beside the grave.

  ‘There’s a brass plate on it, sir,’ said one of the constables. ‘It says “Thomas Harley, 45 years”.’

  ‘Well, that’s a bit of luck,’ said Fox. ‘Probably means you’ve got the right coffin.’ He looked round at the assembled policemen. ‘Anyone got a screwdriver?’

  ‘Oh aye, sir, we’ve got all the necessary,’ said one of the officers.

  ‘Open it up, then.’ Fox turned to the incumbent of Cray Magna. ‘Here we go, Vicar,’ he said, but the vicar appeared to be praying.

  As the last screw was withdrawn, Fox stepped closer and waited expectantly as the heavy lid was removed.

  ‘Well, I be buggered,’ said one of the policemen. ‘That’s a bit unusual, sir. There b’ain’t no shroud nor nothin’.’ He looked more closely at the body and then stood up. ‘I think you’d better take a look at him, sir.’ He turned one of the arc-lights by which they had been working so that the interior of the coffin was fully illuminated.

  Fox stepped a pace nearer and gazed down at its naked occupant. Even without the benefit of a pathologist’s expert opinion, it was quite evident that the man had been shot several times in the chest. ‘Oh, Christ!’ said Fox. It was not an expression of abhorrence — he had seen many victims of violent death in his service — but the realisation that he had just been lumbered with a murder enquiry. ‘What d’you reckon, Jack?’ he said, turning to Gilroy.

  Gilroy grinned. ‘Certainly doesn’t look like a heart attack, guv,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Fox, pursing his lips. ‘A few rounds in the chest is enough to give anyone a heart attack. But more to the point, does he look anything like the photograph we’ve got of Thomas Harley, Esquire?’

  Gilroy peered closely at the face of the body and shook his head. ‘This bloke can’t be more than about thirty. He’s fatter in the face than Harley — in fact, he’s fatter altogether — and he’s got a moustache. In short, guv’nor, he doesn’t look anything like Harley.’

  Fox shook his head. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he asked and glanced at the vicar.

  ‘I could hazard a guess,’ said the vicar drily.

  ‘There’s something between his legs,’ said one of the PCs who had helped to remove the lid.

  ‘There would be,’ said Fox laconically. ‘It was his chest that got hit.’

  ‘No, sir, I meant that sack down there, see.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Fox, rubbing his hands together, more from expectation than from cold. ‘Fetch it out.’

  The policeman lifted out the small canvas sack and up-ended it on to a groundsheet. For several seconds Fox and the others gazed down at a quantity of jewellery glinting in the glare of the floodlights.

  ‘There are evil doings here,’ said the vicar in a melancholy voice.

  ‘You’re dead right there, Vicar,’ said Fox. ‘For a start it’s the wrong body, and it’s a racing certainty that that’s bent gear. Furthermore, I’ll wager seven-to-four-on where it came from.’ He looked down at the occupant of the coffin. ‘The first thing, Jack, is to discover the identity of the resident of this six-foot bungalow.’ He paused. ‘Well, not quite,’ he added. ‘Get on the blower to Pamela Hatcher and ask her how she fancies a dirty weekend.’

  *

  ‘So you’ve caught another murder, Tommy?’ said Pamela Hatcher, peeling off her rubber gloves. ‘Seem to be making a habit of it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fox disconsolately. ‘I go out looking for them. Well, what’s the verdict?’

  Pamela Hatcher was an experienced Home Office pathologist in her late forties and had worked on several previous cases with Fox. She undid her single pigtail and shook her long grey hair around her shoulders. ‘Been dead about five weeks,’ she said.

  ‘You cheated,’ said Fox. ‘You asked the vicar.’

  ‘Can’t do better than that, Tommy. Not in the circumstances. Death was caused by gunshot wounds to the chest. I gave Jack Gilroy the three rounds I took out.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Fox, ‘but it won’t be much help until we find the weapon. If we find it. Probably at the bottom of the Thames … along with all the others. There must be more weapons in that damned river than in the whole of the British Army.’

  ‘I think you’ll be able to get fingerprints all right.’ Pamela Hatcher sat down and started to take off her rubber boots. ‘If not, I’ll amputate the fingers and you can take them with you.’ She grinned. ‘Well, good luck, Tommy.’

  *

  ‘No go on the fingerprints, guv’nor,’ said Gilroy.

  ‘What?’ Fox did not sound pleased.

  ‘Fingerprint Branch have done a run through on both main collection and scenes-of-crime. Nothing.’

  ‘Terrific,’ said Fox. He leaned back in his chair and scowled at the map of the Metropolitan Police District opposite him. ‘Why do I always have to get the difficult ones? What about Photographic Branch?’

  ‘They managed to get a few decent portraits, guv. We’ve circulated them, and it might be worth showing them to Murchison …’

  Fox nodded. ‘Anything’s worth a try, Jack. We’ve got little else at the moment.’

  *

  The little else they had got amounted to the information that Lady Morton had given the police about Jeremy and Jane Benson, her former neighbours at Marble Arch. That, of course, would come to nothing if the vicar of Cray Magna had made a mistake about the telephone number he said he had been given by Thomas Harley’s ‘widow’. According to Lady Morton, Jane Meadows might be Mrs Benson, but there again, she might not, given that women have the ability to change their appearance quite easily. Nevertheless, Fox had not ruled out the possibility that the two women were one and the same. ‘Get a warrant, Jack,’ he said, ‘and take a team of fingerprint blokes up to the Bensons’ flat and get them to give it the once over.’

  *

  ‘We got a result, sir,’ said Gilroy.

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Fox.

  ‘The bloke whose body we found down a hole in Cray Magna had been in the Bensons’ flat at Marble Arch, guv,’ said Gilroy. ‘And it wasn’t portable evidence, either.’

  Fox nodded his understanding. What Gilroy meant was that the mystery man had actually been at the flat; his prints had not been found on something which could have been
taken there by someone else. For a few seconds he stared out of the window. Then he swung round. ‘How old did Lady Morton say Jeremy Benson was?’

  ‘She didn’t, sir, not in as many words.’ Gilroy consulted his pocket book. ‘She just said that his wife was much younger than he was.’

  ‘And our information is that Jane Meadows was about thirty at most. That came from Fowler, the captain of the golf club, and from the weasel we’ve got banged up in Brixton. Right?’

  ‘She’s exactly thirty, sir. We got that from the DSS at Newcastle.’

  ‘And how old did Pamela Hatcher reckon our cadaver was?’

  ‘Between thirty and forty, sir.’

  ‘It said forty-five on the brass plate.’

  Gilroy chuckled. ‘It also said “Thomas Harley” on the brass plate, guv.’

  ‘Wish I’d got enough service to retire,’ said Fox gloomily.

  *

  ‘We’ve released it to the Press, sir, as you said.’ Gilroy spread a copy of the Daily Express on Fox’s desk.

  ‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Fox. He gazed down at the picture that the Yard’s Photographic Branch had prepared. ‘Almost looks alive, doesn’t he? Anything come of it yet?’

  Gilroy grinned. ‘Only one call from some nut in Inverness who swears he had a drink with him last night guv’nor.’

  Fox scoffed. ‘That’s always the trouble with this sort of caper, Jack. Brings out all the loonies.’

  ‘What now, sir?’

  ‘I think we’ll have to pop down to Kingston and have another word with the not-so-bereaved Mrs Harley. The blonde wig we found at Sandra Nelson’s drum and a few smart clothes and there’s no telling what she might have got up to, is there? But that can wait for a while. First, I think, we’d better pay the Bensons a visit. See if Jeremy and Jane are still in the land of the living. And, more to the point, see if they can explain what our unidentified dead body’s fingerprints were doing in their elegant flat.’ Fox stood up. ‘And find out when they stopped trading as undertakers. South of France, I think you said, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Nice.’

  ‘Right, Jack, we shall go.’

  ‘Go where, sir?’ Gilroy fidgeted nervously with the corner of the file he was holding.

  ‘Nice, of course.’

  ‘What, now, sir?’ Gilroy could see his social life being disrupted yet again … and at a moment’s notice.

  Fox gave the question a little thought. ‘Well, not immediately.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But as soon as you can book a flight and talk to the French police.’

  *

  Fox marched on to the concourse of the airport, stared at a sign bearing the legend ‘Bienvenue à Nice Côte d’Azur’, and turned to the young Special Branch officer next to him. ‘What’s that mean, Les?’

  Detective Constable Leslie Reed was a fluent French speaker and had been assigned to assist Fox in any dealings he might have with the French police. ‘It means, Welcome to Nice Côte d’Azur, sir.’

  ‘Right,’ said Fox. ‘Just testing.’

  ‘You are Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox of the Flying Squad?’ The clean-cut young man spoke in flawless English.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I am Inspecteur Principal Pierre Ronsard of the Police Urbaine of Nice. I have been deputed to assist you in your enquiries.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fox. ‘How kind. This is Detective Inspector Jack Gilroy and Detective Constable Les Reed.’ He put a hand on Reed’s shoulder. ‘Les is my interpreter,’ he added.

  Ronsard smiled. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You thought that we did not speak English, perhaps?’

  ‘That was the rumour,’ said Fox, who had had dealings with the French before.

  Ronsard shook hands with the three of them. To Reed he said, ‘Perhaps your chief will give you a holiday in the circumstances, eh?’

  ‘Not bloody likely,’ said Fox. He was suspicious of any police force outside London, let alone abroad, and he was going to make sure that Reed was with him all the time. Just so that nothing would get lost in the translation.

  Chapter Nine

  The address Gilroy had obtained from the agents who managed the Bensons’ London flat was nearly two kilometres inland from the Promenade des Anglais, not far from the Place de la Liberation. It was a pleasing villa, not large but undoubtedly expensive.

  The man who answered the door was about sixty, wore an orange shirt and white trousers, and was clutching a book. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are M’sieur Benson?’ asked Ronsard in French.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said the man in the same language. ‘What d’you want?’ He looked at the four policemen on his doorstep as though suspecting them of being either salesmen or missionaries.

  ‘We are from the police, m’sieur. These gentlemen are from Scotland Yard.’ Ronsard indicated the three Englishmen.

  The expression of doubt remained on Benson’s face until Fox produced his warrant card. Then he said, in English, ‘Well, I don’t know what this is ail about but you’d better come in. There seem to be a lot of you,’ he added as he led the way into a long, cool room that ran the width of the villa and looked out on to a swimming pool. He indicated chairs with a sweep of his hand and the four officers sat down. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘We had occasion to search the flat at Marble Arch in which you lived until recently,’ said Fox.

  ‘Whatever for?’ Benson looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘I am investigating a murder,’ said Fox. ‘And the fingerprints of the dead man were found in that flat.’

  Benson’s mouth dropped open. ‘But how on earth did they …? I mean, who was this man?’

  ‘We don’t know, Mr Benson. We haven’t been able to identify him. We hoped that you might know.’

  ‘But —’ Benson stopped and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I don’t understand any of this.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Fox drily.

  ‘But why look in my flat in the first place?’ Benson frowned. ‘You’re not saying that you found this man there, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Fox. ‘Strange to relate, we found him in a coffin in a churchyard at a place called Cray Magna. Do you know the place at all? It’s in Devon.’

  ‘No.’ Benson surveyed the four detectives before centring his gaze on Fox once more. ‘Is this some sort of a joke?’ he asked.

  ‘I only wish it were,’ said Fox, and decided that, suspect or not, Benson would have to be told more. Briefly he outlined the story of the missing Harley — a name which evinced no reaction from Benson — and an account of how the vicar of Cray Magna had alerted police to the fact that Harley, the missing man, had been buried in his churchyard. Except that he wasn’t Harley. But Fox decided that he would not, at this stage, mention the jewellery theft at the hotel.

  Benson listened patiently. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I still don’t understand what caused you to examine my flat at Marble Arch.’

  Fox explained that the telephone number that the vicar had been given for the non-existent undertaker had been the telephone number of Benson’s flat.

  ‘This is really the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Benson. ‘Undertakers? I really don’t understand any of it. I mean, is it possible that your vicar got the number wrong?’

  ‘I’ll explain it again, Mr Benson,’ said Fox patiently. ‘A woman telephoned the vicar to arrange the funeral. She gave him the phone number of the firm of undertakers who were supposedly handling the arrangements. But those undertakers don’t exist. We traced the phone number to your flat, and when we searched it we found fingerprints that matched those of the body the bogus undertakers delivered. Be one hell of a coincidence if it was a mistake, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Benson sat forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

  ‘A woman turned up at the funeral claiming to be Mrs Harley, widow of the dead man. Presumably the woman who made the initial phone call. But the Mrs Harley I saw denies all
knowledge of the matter, and in any case her description is nothing like that of the woman at the funeral. That Mrs Harley was aged about thirty, blonde and good-looking.’ He watched Benson closely to see what sort of reaction that statement would produce.

  ‘Good God,’ said Benson, ‘that sounds like my wife.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Fox. He turned to Gilroy. ‘Got the photograph, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Gilroy handed Benson an enlargement of the photograph taken at the golf club.

  There was no hesitation. ‘That’s her,’ said Benson. ‘That’s Jane.’ He looked up sharply. ‘Where did you get this from? And who’s this man she’s with?’

  ‘As far as we know, Mr Benson, that’s the Thomas Harley I mentioned earlier, and we want to talk to him about a rather large jewellery theft. We would also like to have a chat with him about a certain dead body we found. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I’ve never heard it before.’

  ‘Show Mr Benson the photograph of the body, Jack,’ said Fox.

  Gilroy handed over one of the prints that Photographic Branch had prepared.

  Benson studied it for a moment or two before handing it back. ‘That’s Donald Dixon,’ he said.

  ‘And who is Donald Dixon?’ asked Fox as though the answer was not of much interest to him.

  ‘A business partner of my wife. I met him a couple of times. Once at the flat — he was there when I got home one day — and again when Jane and I were lunching at the Savoy. He was with someone else on that occasion.’

  ‘Don’t know who, I suppose?’

  Benson shook his head. ‘Sorry, no idea.’

  ‘What is your wife’s business, Mr Benson?’

  Benson looked up, a tired expression on his face. ‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ he said. ‘I know that sounds silly, but she’s always had her own life … I think it’s something to do with hotels.’

  Fox refrained from saying that that came as no surprise. ‘Perhaps we might have a word with her, Mr Benson.’

  ‘That’s not possible, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘My wife’s left me. She ran off with another man. Last month, it was. That’s why I gave up the flat in London and came out here.’