Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 8: Death at the Dolphin, Hand in Glove, Dead Water

They were driving from the Little Codling constabulary to Green Lane. The time was ten o’clock. The village looked decorous and rather pretty in the spring sunshine. Miss Cartell’s Austrian maid was shaking mats in the garden. The postman was going his rounds. Mr Period’s house, as far as it could be seen from the road, showed no signs of disturbance. At first sight, the only hint of there being anything unusual toward, might have been given by a group of three labourers who stood near a crane truck at the corner, staring at their boots and talking to the driver. There was something guarded and uneasy in their manner. One of them looked angry.

A close observer might have noticed that in several houses round the green, people who stood back from their windows, were watching the car as it approached the lane. The postman checked his bicycle and with one foot on the ground, also watched. George Copper stood on the path outside his corner garage and was joined by two women, a youth and three small boys. They, too, were watching. The women’s hands moved furtively across their mouths.

‘The village has got on to it,’ Superintendent Williams observed. ‘Here we are, Alleyn.’

They turned into the lane. It had been cordoned off with a rope slung between iron stakes and a ‘Detour’ sign in front. The ditch began at some distance from the corner and was defined on its inner border by neatly heaped-up soil and on its outer by a row of heavy drain-pipes laid end to end. There was a gap in this row, opposite Mr Period’s gate, and a single drain-pipe on the far side of the ditch.

One of the workmen made an opening for the car and it pulled up beyond the truck.

Two hundred yards away, by the side gate into Mr Period’s garden, Sergeant Raikes waited self-consciously by a disorderly collection of planks, tools, a twelve-foot steel ladder, and an all too eloquent shape covered by a tarpaulin. Nearby, on the far side of the lane, was another car. Its occupant got out and advanced: a middle-aged, formally dressed man with well-kept hands.

‘Doctor Elekton, our divisional surgeon,’ Superintendent Williams said, and completed the introductions.

‘Unpleasant business, this,’ Dr Elekton said. ‘Very unpleasant. I don’t know what you’re going to think.’

‘Shall we have a look?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Bear a hand, Sergeant,’ said Williams. ‘Keep it screened from the green, we’d better.’

‘I’ll move my car across,’ Dr Elekton said.

He did so. Raikes and Williams released the tarpaulin and presently raised it. Alleyn being particular in such details, he and Fox took their hats off and so, after a surprised glance at them, did Dr Elekton.

The body of Mr Cartell lay on its back, not tidily. It was wet with mud and water, and marked about the head with blood. The face, shrouded in a dark and glistening mask, was unrecognizable, the thin hair clotted and dirty. It was clothed in a dressing-gown, shirt and trousers, all of them stained and disordered. On the feet were black socks and red leather slippers. One hand was clenched about a clod of earth. Thin trickles of muddy water had oozed between the fingers.

Alleyn knelt beside it without touching it. He looked incongruous. Not his hands, his head, nor, for that matter, his clothes, suggested his occupation. If Mr Cartell had been a rare edition of any subject other than death, his body would have seemed a more appropriate object for Alleyn’s fastidious consideration.

After a pause he replaced the tarpaulin, rose, and keeping on the hard surface of the lane, stared down into the drain.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘And he was found below, there?’ His very deep, clear voice struck loudly across the silence.

‘Straight down from where they’ve put him. On his face. With the drain-pipe on top of him.’

‘Yes. I see.’

‘They thought he might be alive. So they got him out of it. They had a job,’ said Superintendent Williams. ‘Had to use the gear on the truck.’

‘He was like this when you saw him, Doctor Elekton?’

‘Yes. There are multiple injuries to the skull. I haven’t made an extensive examination. My guess would be, it’s just about held together by the scalp.’

‘Can we have a word with the men?’

Raikes motioned them to come forward and they did so with every sign of reluctance. One, the tallest, carried a piece of rag and he wiped his hands on it continually, as if he had been doing so, unconsciously, for some time.

‘Good morning,’ Alleyn said. ‘You’ve had an unpleasant job on your hands.’

The tall man nodded. One of his mates said: ‘Terrible.’

‘I want you, if you will, to tell me exactly what happened. When did you find him?’

Fox unobtrusively took out his note-book.

‘When we come on the job. Eight o’clock or near after.’

‘You saw him at once?’

‘Not to say there and then, sir,’ the tall man said. He was evidently the foreman. ‘We had a word or two. Nutting out the day’s work, like. Took off our coats. Farther along, back there, we was. You can see where the truck’s parked. There.’

‘Ah, yes. And then?’

‘Then we moved up. And I see the planks are missing that we laid across the drain for a bridge. And one of the pipes gone. So I says: “What the hell’s all this? Who’s been mucking round with them planks and the pipe?” That’s correct, isn’t it?’ He appealed to the others.

‘That’s right,’ they said.

‘It’s like I told you, Mr Raikes. We all told you.’

‘All right, Bill,’ Williams said easily. ‘The superintendent just wants to hear for himself.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Alleyn. ‘To get a clear idea, you know. It’s better at first hand.’

The foreman said: ‘It’s not all that pleasant, though, is it? And us chaps have got our responsibility to think of. We left the job like we ought to: everything in order. Planks set. Lamps lit. Everything safe. Now look!’

‘Lamps? I saw some at the ends of the working. Was there one here?’

‘A-course there was. To show the planks. That’s the next thing we notice. It’s gone. Matter of fact they’re all laying in the drain now.’

‘So they are,’ Alleyn said. ‘It’s a thumping great drain you’re digging here, by the way. What is it, a relief outfall sewer or something?’

This evidently made an impression. The foreman said that was exactly what it was and went into a professional exposition.

‘She’s deep,’ he said, ‘she’s as deep as you’ll come across anywhere. Fourteen-be-three she lays and very nasty soil to work, being wet and heavy. One in a thou’ fall. All right. Leaving an open job you take precautions. Lamp. Planks. Notice given. The lot. Which is what we done, and done careful and according. And this is what we find. All right. We see something’s wrong. All right. So I says: “And where’s the bloody lamp?” and I walk up to the edge and look down. And then I seen.’

‘Exactly what?’

The foreman ground the rag between his hands. ‘First go off,’ he said, ‘I notice the pipe, laying down there with a lot of the soil, and then I notice an electric torch -it’s there now.’

‘It’s the deceased’s,’ Williams said. ‘His man recognized it, I thought best to leave it there.’

‘Good. And then?’ Alleyn asked the foreman.

‘Well, I noticed all this, like, and – it’s funny when you come to think of it – I’m just going to blow my top about this pipe, when I kind of realize I’ve been looking at something else. Sticking out, they was, at the end, half sunk in mud. His legs. It didn’t seem real. Like I said to the chaps: “Look, what’s that?” Daft! Because I seen clear enough what it was.’

‘I know.’

‘So we get the truck and go down and clear the pipe and planks out of it. Had to use the crane. The planks are laying there now, where we left them. We slung the pipe up and off him and across to the far bank like. Then we seen more – all there was to see. Sunk, he was. Rammed down, you might say, by the weight. I knew, first go off, he was a goner. Well – the back of his head was enough. But –’ The foreman glared resentfully at Raikes. ‘I don’t give a b– what anyone tells me, you can’t leave a thing like that. You got to see if there’s anything to be done.’