Stan Meldrum, night duty sergeant at Compton Green Police Station, was not an inspired performer, but he knew the ropes. After replacing the receiver he sat for a full ten seconds. Eleven o’clock. He was balancing the possibilities that Detective Inspector Rayburn was at home in bed, or playing bridge at his club. He thought that bridge was more likely; a correct guess.
“I assume,” said Rayburn, “that you told him to touch nothing.” But for the disparity in their ranks, Meldrum would have said, “Of course I did,” but reduced it to “Yes.”
“And told him to lock the front door. Not to go into the front hall, but wait for us in the garden.”
“I don’t think he was at all keen to go into the hall,” said Meldrum. “He telephoned us from a box in the road. I gave the address to the hospital so they could get Dr. Mornington round there.”
“Right. And get hold of Hart.”
“I done that, sir. She wasn’t too pleased. She’d only just got home. Been out all evening looking for bicycles.” As Rayburn understood, it was not bicycles that Detective Sergeant Alice Hart had been looking for, but the gang of youths who’d been stealing them. A long, tiring, house-to-house enquiry. Well, that was how detective sergeants earned their keep.
He said, “Who does our photography now?”
“Boone, sir.”
“Is he any good?”
“He passed the course at Hendon.”
“Pity,” said Rayburn. He didn’t mean that it was a pity that Detective Constable Boone had passed the Hendon course, which was a very good one. He meant that it was a pity that Sergeant Owtram, who had been taking their photographs for six years, should have been promoted to a desk job at Central. He disliked changes.
When Rayburn reached the police station the runabout was ready in the forecourt. Sergeant Hart was standing beside it talking to Detective Constable Boone, who had his photographic equipment ready, stacked in the back.
“Come with me, Sergeant, and you can tell me all you know about this Lavender Box — and Mr. Goldsworthy.”
“It’s a high-class retirement home, sir. Never more than three or four residents, all good class and with money, I guess, or they wouldn’t be able to afford the prices. There’s a housekeeper — doesn’t live in — and a girl. They do the cooking and cleaning. And, of course, the matron, Nurse Minter. She was there if the residents needed help — they’re all well up in their eighties — but her main job was looking after Mrs. Goldsworthy.”
“Who is, I gather, a cripple.”
“Yes, sir. It’s that osteo-something or other. It destroys the bone tissues. She can’t get out of bed without help. It’s tragic, really, because she’s still mentally alert. I see the doctor’s just beaten us to it.”
Five men and one woman stood for a moment on the stone-flagged front path, a compact group summoned by death to this very ordinary-looking house. Leonard Goldsworthy’s face, in contrast to his black beard, was the colour of parchment. Partly the effect of shock, thought Rayburn, but the overhead street lighting didn’t help. Dr. Mornington, the county pathologist, was tubby and self-possessed. The inspector placed himself smoothly in charge.
He said, “Is there a back way in? A door at the other end of the hall? Splendid.” They trooped round to the rear of the house. Goldsworthy unlocked the back door, stepped inside, and switched on the light. The hall ran through from back door to front door. They could now see what lay on the matting-covered floor of the front hall.
Boone, less hardened than the others, found his eyes drawn unwillingly to the shattered head of Nurse Minter and the blood and brains spilled round it. Sergeant Hart, being a woman, had time to spare for the clothing on the crumpled body. The neat blouse and skirt of a middle-aged, middle-class housekeeper and the blue overall, with its white collar and cuffs, which announced that she was also a nurse.
The inspector was thinking neither of the body nor the clothing. He was thinking of the many things he had to do and the order in which they had to be done.
He said to Boone, “Photography first. Then a measured plan. It’s particularly important to note exactly — to the nearest inch — how far the body is from the front door and the foot of the stairs. And Doctor, when you’ve done what you have to here—”
“Very little.”
“So I should suppose. Then you’ll want to remove the body to the mortuary for a proper inspection. Perhaps we could use Mr. Goldsworthy’s telephone—”
“No need,” said the doctor. “I arranged for an ambulance before I came. And might I make a suggestion. As soon as we’ve lifted the body — we’ll work as far as possible from this end — cover the whole floor.”
“Right,” said Rayburn. He was prepared to accept suggestions from the doctor, who had seen many more corpses than he had. “Sergeant, blankets and mats over the whole area. Then — I’ll need a statement from you, sir—” Mr. Goldsworthy nodded. He had not opened his mouth since the police arrived. “We’ll go into Nurse Minter’s room while you are getting on with things out here.” To Alice, “Go up and have a word with Mrs. Goldsworthy. You can tell her that Nurse Minter has had an accident. She won’t be able to tell us much, but she may have heard things.” And to Boone, “When you’ve finished the photography, you can tackle the residents.”
Since they arrived they had been conscious of the sounds of a television programme coming from the room on the other side of the hall. “The window of that room overlooks the front garden. They may easily have seen something. Now Mr. Goldsworthy, if you’ll step this way—”
He had a great many questions to ask him. Not only a full account of what he had been doing that evening, up to the moment he had opened his front door and seen the body of Nurse Minter, but questions about the home, its residents, and its routine. But one thing he had to bear in mind: It was now nearly midnight and the Court of Criminal Appeal had recently criticised policemen who subjected witnesses to interrogations lasting into the small hours.
He decided to compromise. He elicited the important points. That Mr. Goldsworthy had departed after supper for the local cinema, getting there at half-past eight. The film (“Italian — interesting if you like that sort of thing.”) had finished at about a quarter to eleven. The walk home had taken a little over ten minutes. So it must have been around eleven o’clock when he opened the front door and saw what was lying there.
“A great shock,” suggested the inspector.
It had been a shock, and he was only beginning to recover from it. And it was he who raised the point that had been in the inspector’s mind. He said, “I do realise that there are other things you will have to ask me. Might I suggest that we continue tomorrow afternoon? Tomorrow morning there will be a score of urgent matters I shall have to attend to. I shall have to ask the hospital to lend me a nurse. A temporary replacement for Minter. My wife needs regular attention, to say nothing of the residents — all well over eighty. And no doubt I shall have to placate Ms. Burches and stop her from deserting us.”
The inspector said, “Very well. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
He was not displeased. By that time he would have a number of reports from the doctor and his subordinates which would sharpen his interrogation.
Alice had learned nothing useful from Mrs. Goldsworthy, drowsing among her pillows. Boone had been more fortunate. As he approached the door he heard the rat-tat-tat of a six-shooter.
Evidently the sheriff had got his man. When he got into the room he realized that little information about the happenings of the evening was to be expected. The three ladies were seated in a circle in front of the television set. For them the real world was not in the house or the garden. It was in the little box. Credits were now following each other down the small screen. The play was over. Time for a return to reality.