‘Is it unusual for Ernest not to be about on a Sunday?’
‘Put it this way, I’ve lived next to him for years and I’ve never known it before.’
‘You think he’s gone away?’
‘Not without leaving word with me. I always keep an eye on the place for him when he’s gone on holiday and such-like.’ She had the simple confidence of the indispensable. ‘Besides, he was there yesterday. I heard him.’
‘Could he have been taken ill?’
Her expression blended concern, curiosity and excitement at the prospect of drama. ‘That’s what I’m wondering.’
Harry lifted the lid of the letter box. The hall inside was dark and yielded no sign of life. ‘Mr Miller,’ he called, ‘it’s Harry Devlin here.’
‘You’re a friend of Ernie’s, then?’ asked the woman.
‘I’m a solicitor,’ he said firmly, relying on her membership of a generation which retained a residual respect for the mystique of the law.
‘Ah, legal business,’ she breathed.
‘I don’t suppose you have a spare key so that we can go in and check to see that he hasn’t had an accident?’
She shook her head in regret. ‘Oh, Ernie would never let me have a key. He’s always been very close, always kept himself to himself.’
Without much hope, Harry gripped the door handle and gave it a twist. Unexpectedly, the door swung open.
The woman’s eyes opened very wide. ‘Yet he hasn’t been out for the last twenty-four hours. I would have known.’
Harry did not doubt it. Living next door to GCHQ would have carried less risk of surveillance. ‘I think we ought to go inside, don’t you?’
Thrilled, she said, ‘And you don’t reckon we should call the police, Mr…?’
‘Devlin. Harry Devlin.’
She stretched out a hand gnarled with arthritis. ‘Gloria Hegg. Pleased to meet you.’
Harry stepped over the threshold. The hall carpet was patterned with hideous red and yellow flowers; it seemed not to have been swept for weeks. The paper on the walls was peeling at the edges and spiders had traced cobweb patterns down from the picture rail. There were two doors on the right, a third under the staircase and a fourth, in glass, at the end of the corridor. As he took a pace forward, a musty odour made him wrinkle his nose.
Behind him, Gloria Hegg said in a whisper, ‘Something’s not right, Mr Devlin. I can feel it.’
Harry could feel it too. The stillness of the hallway troubled him, but more than that, he felt a chill down his back which he had experienced before. Gritting his teeth as he strove to summon up the courage to go on, he gestured towards the first two doors.
‘Sitting room and dining room?’
She had turned pale. ‘And that one leads down to the cellar. The one at the end takes you into the kitchen and scullery.’
Harry felt her hand grip his shoulder as he opened the sitting-room door. Even before he looked inside, he knew what he would find. When his companion screamed and pitched forward at the sight of the shrivelled body stretched across the floor, he was ready to break her fall.
Chapter Twelve
After he had helped Gloria Hegg into the dining room, found a bottle of brandy in a wall unit and poured her a generous measure, he dialled 999 and summoned the police. His immediate duty done, he felt the numbing shock he had experienced at the discovery of Miller’s corpse begin to give way to a dull ache of despair. Although he had not cared for Miller, the ending of a human life always left him with a feeling of emptiness. Whoever it was who died, how could anyone not mourn the extinction of a fellow human being? And more than that, in the presence of death, how could anyone fail to be reminded of their own mortality?
He decided to pour another brandy for himself. The sight of those sallow features, twisted in an agonised parody of the habitual crooked smile, had filled him with nausea. And yet, for all his anguish, his mind had not seized up. Miller’s death was more than a mere source of misery. It presented him with a new puzzle to solve.
How had the old man died? There was a gash on his head and there were stains of blood on the corner of the stone hearth in the sitting room as well as the carpet. The position of the body seemed consistent with Miller’s having fallen, possibly as a result of a dizzy spell, cracked his head open and died from the combined effects of shock and the injury. He had been in poor health and there were no signs of a break-in or of a struggle.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Gloria Hegg indistinctly. Her head was in her hands and she was sobbing softly. ‘I simply can’t take it in that we’ve found him dead.’
Harry knelt beside her chair and put an arm around her. ‘Have a good cry,’ he said softly, ‘you’ll feel better for it.’
He did not find it quite so difficult to believe that Miller was dead. Even before his arrival in Everton he had become apprehensive for the safety of the old man who was now lying next door, waiting for the officials of the state to take him on his final journey. His manner in Sefton Park had suggested that he had learned something new from his meeting with Ray Brill. Perhaps he had enjoyed the hoarding of information too much for his own good. Harry could not help wondering if Miller had at last come into possession of dangerous knowledge and if it was possible that the old man might have been given a helping hand into the next world.
Two and a half hours later, he was sitting in Gloria Hegg’s own front room, drinking her tea and dispensing more sympathy.
‘It’s a dreadful, dreadful thing,’ Gloria said, for perhaps the twentieth time. She cradled her chin in her right palm and stared at the flying ducks on the opposite wall, as if hoping they might offer a solution to the mysteries of life and death.
‘Were you close to him?’ he asked gently.
She looked up and gave him a sharp glance. ‘As close as anyone, I suppose, though that’s not saying much. Like I said, he kept himself to himself, did Ernie. He was a very private man.’
But there was no privacy in death. The police officers and medics had been brisk and efficient, neither callous nor pretending false concern. To them, the discovery of an old man’s body was all part of a day’s work. Even a constable who did not look old enough to shave was experienced enough already to have learned detachment; without it, his job would have been unbearable. Gloria and Harry had given brief statements explaining how they had come to find the corpse. The constable’s questioning had not been rigorous; from the outset, he gave no hint of suspecting foul play. Gloria mentioned early on that Miller was often severely affected by asthma attacks and all the preliminary indications were that he had fallen and cut his head while overcome by such an attack. The time of death was unclear and the precise cause of death would need to be ascertained at the post mortem, but at present everything seemed straightforward.
Harry had said nothing about the Carole Jeffries case; he had shown the constable the will and the young man had been naive enough not to express surprise that a solicitor should call on a Sunday to discuss a routine matter. He had treated Gloria with barely concealed condescension and she had responded to each patronising question with monosyllables. Yet Harry sensed that something was on her mind. Once or twice she had started to speak, but each time the constable interrupted with another question and the moment passed.
With little fuss and even less ceremony, the body had been taken off to the mortuary. Naturally, the police wanted to know about Ernest Miller’s family, but Gloria was adamant that he had none. His wife had died a decade ago, so she understood, and he had spoken of being alone in the world. When popping in over the Christmas period, she had never noticed any cards that might have come from relatives. When Harry confirmed that was also his understanding, the young constable frowned and remarked that the house needed to be made safe. Gloria had been quick to take her cue and offer to look after the key, which she knew Miller kept in a pewter mug above the fireplace.