“If he’s as cagey as that,” said George, “I take it he’s naming no names yet. Where did your man find him? Evidently he isn’t a Maymouth man.”
“Plymouth. Just got back with him.”
“What sort of a fellow is he? I hope he knows what he’s going to see.”
“Small, dapper and highly-strung,” said Hewitt, “according to Rackham. He’ll be all right. It’s the big, husky ones that keel over.” He turned into the square, almost deserted at this hour on a fine Sunday, the old-fashioned shop-fronts gated, shuttered and still. “Well, if we can’t do much on the Trethuan case until to-morrow, maybe we can get somewhere on this other one. Didn’t have more in his deposit account or in the house—Trethuan, I mean—than you could account for as a careful man’s savings, but I fancy he’s got a lot put away somewhere in cash from this antique traffic of his. Maybe in a safe-deposit box somewhere, maybe under the floor-boards at home. We haven’t been over the house properly yet. It’ll be somewhere. And we’ll find it. As far as we can tell, all of the stuff that he hadn’t already disposed of piecemeal, we’ve got in custody. Rose has identified what we’ve got, and furnished us with a nice little list of things he brought home earlier. We should be able to trace some of them through the trade. Here we are! Don’t come down to the mortuary with us unless you want to, George. You’ve had all that once.”
“I can stand it. I might learn something. I like to hear an expert on his own subject.”
Rackham was a deceptively simple-looking young local man, fresh-faced and bright. Beside his cheerful, extrovert bulk the dentist from Plymouth looked meagre and unreal, and as highly-strung as his companion had indicated, but a second and narrower look corrected the impression. He was wiry, durable and sharply competent, and he had come armed with all his relevant records and charts, ready to go into extreme detail. So firmly astride his hobby-horse, he was not to be thrown by any corpse, however fragmentary, provided its jaw was still intact. In the chill basement mortuary he probed, matched and demonstrated in complete absorption; and at the end of his examination he snapped the rubber band back into place round his records, and declared himself satisfied, and prepared to swear to the dead man’s identity in court as soon as it might be required of him.
“I was practically certain from the charts your man brought with him, but it was essential that I should see the work for myself. Yes, it’s mine. I can give you dates for the whole sequence of treatments. They went on for about eight weeks in the spring of 1961, and occasionally we had to adjust the appointments because of his sea trips. He should have come back to me for a check-up six months later, but he never came. That does happen, of course, it needn’t mean anything. But it could mean that by then he couldn’t come. He was a fisherman, and he gave me a Maymouth address—I’ve got it here in the records. His name,” said the little man blithely, unaware that he was springing a land-mine, “was Walter Ruiz.”
“On the face of it,” fretted Hewitt, prowling the length of his small office like a restive tiger, “it’s damned impossible. Walter Ruiz is buried in St. Mary’s churchyard, up the town, with a stone over him to prove it. There was an inquest, and he was identified.”
“He’s just been identified again,” said George dryly. “Very impressively, for my money. It seems that one or the other of two equally positive identifications must be mistaken. The question is, which?”
“You heard him. That amount of dental work in one course of treatment, fully documented as such things have never been before, coupled with the individual formation of the bones, and all the rest of it, makes this man’s jaw about as unique as a set of finger- prints. That evidence would stand up at any inquest.”
“But so did something else, presumably something that looked equally sound, at the previous inquest. According to what Rose told us last night, Ruiz and his boat failed to come home after fishing in rough weather, and his body was washed up on the Mortuary a few weeks later. A few weeks in the sea don’t make a body any easier to identify, even a landsman knows that. But somebody did identify this one. Who was it? His parents? A brother? His wife? But no, he didn’t have a wife, he came courting Rose, and her father wanted her to be nice to him. Her father found him useful, until he got a bit too demanding, and knew a bit too much.”
Hewitt came back to his desk, and stood gazing at George across its empty surface for a long, dubious minute of silence.
“If you’re trying to put ideas in my head, George, you’re too late. They’re there already.” He reached out a large hand, and picked up the telephone, and with deliberation began to dial.
“I’m trying to sort out the ones I’ve got in mine,” said George. “It looks as if we’re both being driven on the same shore. Did he have any family? It seems to me that a solitary like himself would be most likely to appeal to Trethuan as an ally, if he found it expedient to look round for one at all.”
“You’re so right, Ruiz didn’t have any family. You’re neck and neck with me, George.” His head came up alertly as the burr of the telephone was answered. “Hallo, Henry! This is Tom Hewitt. Sorry to interrupt your Sunday nap, but I need a quick reference to something about two and a half years back, and you’re the quickest and most infallible referee in town. Nip down to your files and look it up for me, will you? You probably know the answer, but look it up anyhow, I want to have it officially. An inquest on a seaman drowned and cast up on the Mortuary, I think it will be in March or April, 1962. Name of Walter Ruiz. A routine job, it seemed at the time. But now I want to know who identified him. Just that. Call me back as soon as you can. And thanks very much!”
He hung up, laying the receiver so softly in its cradle that there was no sound to break the slight tension in the room. He sat down gently and folded his hands, and looked at George.
“No family. No brothers, no sisters. There was his widowed mother, up to about seven years ago, I remember. They had a cottage down the south end of the sea front. After she died he lived alone, kept himself to himself, and bothered nobody. The excise people did have their suspicions of him, though not, I think, over the occasional drop of brandy. He was never actually caught out over anything. Just another lone wolf. If he needed hands he took on casuals, and dropped them again afterwards. Nobody ever worked with him regularly. Nobody was ever in his confidence.”
“That was your local paper?” Local papers are formidable institutions. They may ignore national events, but they must get every name right, and every date, and every detail, within their own field. “Proprietor? Editor? Or both?”
“Both. Henry still lives above his own offices, he won’t be long looking it up, his files are kept in apple-pie order. I could,” admitted Hewitt, “have got the same information at least three other ways, but not so quickly.”
It was barely a quarter of an hour before the telephone rang. Hewitt lifted it out of its cradle before it could cough out a second call. He listened for a moment with an unreadable face. “Thank you, Henry! That’s exactly what I wanted to know. I’m very grateful. Good-bye!” he replaced the instrument, and sat looking at George.
“The body that came up on the Mortuary and was buried as Walter Ruiz was identified, by the man who was considered to be his closest, maybe his only, friend. Zebedee Trethuan.”