SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (13 page)

'He might, Mr Verity, if he could hold it far enough along his arm to turn the muzzle on himself and still press the trigger. However, a poor wretch that's determined on self-destruction is likely to find fifty easier ways of doing it.'

'But for a man that wanted to destroy 'isself, while making it look accidental, it might be the very thing.'

'It might,' said Somerville, 'and there again it mightn't. But I ain't going to go so far as supposing that self-destruction ever crossed poor Lord Henry's mind.'

'Nor am I, Mr Somerville, no more am I. But us detective police has the habit of looking at a thing all sides up.'

'Generally,' said Somerville coolly, 'it's what's most likely that's true.'

'Generally it is, Mr Somerville. Generally it do turn out that way.'

If Dr Jamieson had been a fat man, he might have been spectacularly jowl'd. As it was, his slack red face hung in creased meagre folds, his eyes watered easily and his general disposition seemed that of profound melancholy.

'It is not my custom to discuss such matters with hired policemen,' he said glumly. 'I set no precedents. What I had to say was said to the coroner's jury.'

He looked up from the broad partners' desk at which he sat. Behind him on the marble mantelshelf a fine Orleans clock with nymphs in bronze ticked sedately and, despite the June warmth, a fire burned crisply in the grate.

'I was
given to understand, sir,'said Verity respectfully, 'as you mightn't object to setting Mr Richard Jervis'
mind at rest.'

'I do not object,' said Dr Jamieson tetchily. 'I will set his mind and yours at rest. But I will be no party to calumny and family quarrels.'

'Family quarrels, sir?'

Jamieson ignored the question.

'The matter is quite simple, sergeant. Lord Henry Jervis was walking on the sunken fence dividing the woodland from the grass terrace. That fence is four and a half feet high. In the sight of the keepers he stumbled, the loaded rifle which he was carrying hit the ground and jarred, that jarring fired a bullet at an upward angle, entering the skull behind the right ear, being diverted by the bone mass towards the back of the skull and becoming impacted there. The gun never left his hand. Indeed, when he was picked up it was hard to prise his fingers free. He had clutched it in the final instinctive spasm, clutched it in the so-called death-grip.'

'The wound, sir,' said Ver
ity appreciatively, 'just the entry of a rifle bullet?'

Jamieson opened a drawer and took out a sheet of blue notepaper. He unfolded it and took out a small piece of card with an engraving upon it. Verity recognized it. When a photograph was taken of a body, for the benefit of a coroner's jury, it was customary to present it in the clearer and more easily available form of a steel engraving, taken from the print itself. The card showed a tiny puckered hole, impersonal and dehumanized.

'Was he washed before the examination, sir?'

'Washed?' said Jamieson suspiciously.

'Washed for his grave-clothes, sir, when they laid him out. Only there ain't no blackening round the wound, sir.'

'Schultze powder, sergeant. He was using Schultze powder. Smokeless. Whether or not they washed the wound makes no odds; you can't have blackening with smokeless powder.'

'Quite so, sir,' said Verity, handing back the card. 'One other thing, sir.' 'Yes?'

'Might it happen, in any way you know of, sir, that Lord

Henry could either have took his own life or been cruelly murdered?'

Dr Jamieson gave a faint snort of derision.

'Who tells such tales?'

'No one, sir. Only if they're tales then the truth is the best way to stop 'em being told.'

'Lord Henry killed himself,' said Jamieson, 'of that there is no doubt. His gun was in perfect order, there was no sign of anything to trip him up, even supposing a murderer had fancied the remote possibility of staging such a thing. He fell over his own feet. As to self-destruction, it would be cumbersome in the extreme to do it in such a manner, pointing a rifle at his head and then jarring it on the ground until it went off. No, sergeant. There were half a dozen of us close by him, the keepers were looking at him. They saw no such thing. Lord Henry killed himself by pure accident. Dammit,
man, he had every reason in the
world for wanting to live. He was young, healthy, rich. Tell me that Richard Jervis wants to do away with himself and I might understand why. Tell me that some injured husband has taken a shotgun to Lord William and I might believe you. But not Lord Henry.'

'Yessir. Much obliged, sir. Been a great assistance, sir.'

Jamieson stood up and came round the desk, laying a hand on Verity's arm, man to man.

'Take some advice,' he said in a rich, affable voice. 'Do what you must do and then, soon as you decently can, go back to your proper duties. There's nothing for you here.'

'Yessir,' said Verity stiffly. 'Most 'elpful, sir.'

He backed awkwardly towards the door, bowed clumsily, and withdrew.

The chatelaine at Mrs Butcher's waist rattled its cluster of keys, her starched skirts rustling on the narrow wooden steps of the servants' stairway as she climbed. Once or twice she put a hand to her lace cap, as though fearing that the exertion of the ascent might have dislodged it from its place, crowning her white hair. Verity followed behind her, puffing a little. The arrangement of the Jervis town house reminded him of a visit with Bella to the Old Vic to see the Indian Jugglers. Then, as now, the way had lain up bare precipitous steps to the gallery, a staircase divided from the more expensive part of the building which led to boarded and roughly furnished apartments.

'That's a nasty wretch, Rumer,' said Mrs Butcher, 'a cold cruel man, to be sure. Dr Jamieson I only saw, never heard speak above a few words.'

'Friend of Lord Henry's, was he?' gasped Verity. 'Friend and medical man altogether?'

Mrs Butcher paused on a step, drew breath and thought. She shook her head and began to climb again.

'More Lord William's friend, though he cared for the whole family o' course. He was more of Lord William's liking, if you take the meaning, more of a sporting gentleman and ladies' man.'

Verity puffed a little more.

'I don't see 'ow I should be a sporting gentleman and ladies' man, Mrs Butcher, not if I was obliged to spend half the year at sea and most of the rest caring for a great house like this and the lands at Bole Warren.'

Mrs Butcher chuckled and climbed faster.

'Bless you, Mr Verity! Lord William don't spend more than two months a year at sea. 'e's in town all the rest. Only, o' course, he prefers to live where he's accustomed rather than in Portman Square.'

'Not live 'ome, Mrs Butcher? Not in a fine 'ouse like this? Now, why might that be?'

Mrs Butcher turned on a tiny half-landing and faced him.

'There's gentlemen,' she said, 'that likes their game with other gentlemen, wagering sovereign for sovereign with the 'ighest in the land. There's gentlemen that likes ladies who ain't quite what they should be. In course, they can't bring 'em in a carriage to Portman Square, nor they can't send 'em through the kitchen way neither. Such gentlemen is very often found to have apartments in the White Bear and such places. And that's all about that, Mr Verity.'

'And such goings-on might l
ead to family quarrels, as Dr.
Jamieson said?' Verity asked innocently.

'I don't undertake to know what 'e may a-said,' Mrs Butcher announced firmly. 'However, I do know what my place is worth and when I've said enough, even to oblige a sad young fellow what Mr Stringfellow was prevailed upon to take as son-in-law.'

She turned her amply-skirted back upon him and opened a small door on the half-landing. Stepping through it, Verity found himself on a sumptuous landing, carpeted in blue and gold, ending in a fine rounded Georgian window before which the sculpted head of a girl in corkscrew ringlets reflected on its pedestal the afternoon sun with brilliant marble whiteness.

Mrs Butcher bustled along before him, drawing up her chatelaine and selecting a key. They stopped before a massively carved door.

'Never a soul crossed the threshold since the poor young gentleman went to his tomb,' she said, lowering her voice dramatically. 'And you wouldn't be now unless Lord William was with the fleet and Mr Richard had give such express instructions.'

The key turned in the lock and she opened the polished door.

'I'm to stay here, like a sentry at St James' Palace,' she said, 'till you do come out again.'

Verity bowed slightly, in his lumbering awkward manner, and entered the apartments of the late Lord Henry Jervis. The door closed behind him.

His first impression was of a heavy and dusty silence. Even the view of Portman Square from the windows, the cypress grove and beech trees railed in on the broad lawn, surrounded by the cobbled thoroughfare and the houses on the four sides, seemed mute and remote, as though he had indeed passed from the world of the living to the mansions of the dead. A warm stillness, the faint sickliness of dead flowers not cleared from their vases, gave strength to the impression. The apartment consisted of a large drawing-room in front divided from a smaller back room by folding doors. It was furnished in the style of twenty years earlier, the furniture and decorations of Louis Philippe.

Ormolu tables and boule cabinets were ranged about the rooms, each bearing its small bronze statuette or ornament. Above the gilded tables, the walls were hung with brackets and watercolour drawings. Over the cabinets, glass-shades and picture-frames there hung an oppressive sense of gloomy richness.

Looking about him, Verity could scarcely decide what it was that he was expected to do. If these rooms represented Lord Henry's collection of worldly goods, then he could have owned little which bore his personal mark upon it more specifically than a stick of furniture. Nowhere was there any sign of family or personal correspondence, the accounts of Portman Square or Bole Warren. Walking ponderously about the rooms, Verity examined the little tables. Two of them had drawers which opened and revealed no more than notes of the most cursory kind written to Lord Henry by men who could or could not attend his party and would or would not make up a group for a battue at Bole Warren. In the rear drawing-room, where the furniture was more varied, a Chippendale bureau stood, immaculate and inviting. Verity went through it, drawer by drawer, sifting the trivia of the dead man's life. Little bills and receipts, hastily-scrawled notes with half incomprehensible jokes and exclamations intended only for the eyes of a near friend who understood them, a tiny miniature of a girl's face, and lockets bearing the likenesses of Lord Samuel Jervis and his wife. There was a locket of female hair, which might have belonged to a young beauty of the past century as easily as the present. Verity felt a great sadness overcoming him at this glimpse of the loved and loving details of the Jervis family. And it was all for nothing.

On such occasions, there was no cure for melancholy but in work. "The square of four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever proportionate to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy,' someone had once said to him. It rang true to Verity that work gave a man a sure hold of something outside his own uncertain emotions. When the drawers of the bureau yielded nothing further, he turned his professional suspicion upon the structure of the polished furniture. With half his mind dwelling on other things, he tapped and felt, sliding a hand under a ledge of a drawer-opening or running his fingers along an elegant piece of beading in search of some concealed lever.

Such pieces as the bureau were mere toys. No self-respecting criminal would have entrusted his treasure or his confidences to their so-called 'secret drawers'. Why, thought Verity, anyone with an eye for it soon got to seeing where the places were which no other drawer or cubby-hole occupied. Then it was only a matter of tapping to find the hollow sound. And when that happened, a thief would carve his way with a chisel, never stopping to try the genteel method of searching for a hidden spring. It was at that moment that his own finger-tips struck a hollowness beneath the polished surface. He had the flap of the bureau down and was facing the little drawers and pigeon-holes inside. Between two sets of drawers there was a narrow, inlaid panel, four inches across and about eight inches tall. He tapped it again and heard the hollowness once more.

'Ah!' he said with faint satisfaction, 'so that's it!'

There was no sign of a catch, no place where a catch might be concealed nor a knife blade could enter. Verity patiently opened the drawers on either side of the panel, drew them from their recesses and searched methodically in the wooden frame. At last he found the thin strip of springy metal and thumbed it back. Suddenly the entire section behind the panel came free so that he drew it out like an open box, four inches by eight and about a foot long.

At first he expected it to be empty but there were several items in it. He drew out a book, printed in some foreign language which he assumed to be French. The paper was thick and greyish, the cover no more than marbled paper pasted on cheap board. There was another volume, bound in stained and rubbed grey boards with a dingy white spine whose lettering had faded to invisibility. Two more small and recently-printed volumes accompanied these. Verity opened the first at random.