Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

I’d been in CID six months when the case of the amorous corpse came up. What a break for a young detective constable: the “impossible” evidence of a near-perfect murder. You’ve probably heard of that Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time. Well, this was the corpse that made love in the morning, and I was the super sleuth on the case. I don’t have a Dr Watson to tell it for me, so excuse me for blowing my own trumpet. There’s no other way I can do it.

It began with a 999 call switched through to Salisbury nick at 9.25 one Monday morning. I was in the office waking myself up with a large espresso. My boss, a deadbeat DI called Johnny Horgan, never appeared before 10, so it was up to me to take some action. An incident had just occurred at a sub-post office in a village called Five Lanes, a short drive out of the city. The call from the sub-postmistress was taped, and is quite a classic in its way:

“Police, please… Hello, this is Miss Marshall, the sub-postmistress at Five Lanes. Can you kindly send someone over?”

“What’s the emergency, Miss Marshall?”

“Well, I’ve got a gentleman with a gun here. He asked me to hand over all the money, and I refused. I don’t care for that sort of behaviour.”

“He’s with you now?”

“Yes.”

“Threatening you with a gun?”

“At this minute? Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t be phoning you, would I?”

“He’s gone, then?”

“No. He’s still here as far as I know.”

“In the post office?”

“On the floor, I believe. I can’t see him from where I’m speaking.”

“Are you injured, Miss Marshall?”

“No. I’m perfectly all right, but you’d better send an ambulance for the man.”

I decided CID should be involved from the beginning. Having told the switchboard to inform DI Horgan, I jumped into my Escort and burned rubber all the way to Five Lanes. I’m proud to say I got there two minutes before uniform showed up.

The crime scene was bizarre. The post office door was open. A man lay on the floor in front of the counter with a gun beside him. He was ominously still. And two old women were buying stamps. They must have walked around the body to reach the counter. The doughty Miss Marshall was serving them. Crazy, but I suppose they remembered doing things like that in the war. Business as usual.

We put tapes across the entrance to stop a queue forming for stamps and I took a deep breath and had a closer look at the git-em-up-guy. He was wearing a mask – not one of those Lone Ranger jobs, but a plastic President Nixon. I eased it away from his face and didn’t care much for what I saw. I can’t handle death scenes. I felt for a pulse. Nothing.

My boss, Johnny Horgan, arrived soon after and took over. He was supposed to be the rising star of Salisbury CID, an inspector at thirty-one, one of those fast-track clever dicks, only two years older than me. “Did you call the hospital?”

“I just got here, guv.”

“The man is obviously dead. What’s the ambulance outside for?”

The sub-postmistress spoke up. “I sent for that.”

DI Horgan phoned for the meat wagon and a pathologist. Meanwhile, we got the full version of the hold-up from Miss Marshall:

“No one was here at the time. The man walked in wearing some kind of mask that made him look very peculiar.”

“Nixon.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Nixon, the ex-President of America.”

“He didn’t sound like an American. Whoever he is, we don’t walk about wearing masks in Five Lanes, so I was suspicious. He pointed a gun and said, ‘This is a gun.’ I said, ‘I can see that.’ He said, ‘Give us it, then.’”

“How did you respond?”

“I told him not to be ridiculous, to which he replied, ‘Hey, come on. I’ll blow your frigging head off.’”

“He actually said ‘frigging’?”

“I may be unmarried, but I’m not mealy-mouthed, inspector. If he’d said something stronger, I’d tell you.”

“So what did you say to that?”

“I said, ‘Go on. Pull the trigger. You won’t get the money if you do. I’m all locked in. And don’t even think of trying to smash the glass.’ He said, ‘Lady, who do you think you are? It’s not your dosh.’ I said, ‘It’s not yours, either. You’re not having it.’ To which he replied, ‘Jesus, are you simple? This is a stick-up.’”

“What happened then?”

“I led him to believe that I’d pressed an emergency button and the police were already on their way. He said, ‘Frigging hell.’ He took a step back from the counter and I thought for a moment he was about to give up and go away. Then he said, ‘I’m not quitting. I’m not a quitter.’”

“Just like Nixon,” I remarked.

My boss glared at me.

Miss Marshall continued, “He lurched forward again, and I wondered if he was the worse for drink, because he reached for the glass wall of my serving area, as if for support. Then he lowered the gun, I think, and said, ‘Oh, shit.’” She gave Johnny Horgan a look that said how about that for a maiden lady.

“You hadn’t touched him?”

“What are you suggesting? That I assaulted him? I was shut in here.”

“And nobody else was in the shop?”

“Nobody except him and me. To my amazement, he swayed a little and started to sink down, as if his knees had given way. It was like watching a lift go down. He disappeared from view. The last thing I saw was the hand pressed against the glass. I expect there are fingerprints if you look.”

“And then?”

“I looked at the clock. It was twenty past nine. Sitting on my stool here I had the same view I always do, of those notices about ParcelForce and the postage rates. The man had disappeared from sight. To tell you the truth, I half believed I’d imagined it all. It’s a fear you live with when you run a post office, having to deal with an armed robber. I was tempted to unlock my door and have a look, but what if he was bluffing? So I stayed here and called 999.”

“Good move.”

The local pathologist, Dr Leggatt, arrived and didn’t take long with the stethoscope. “Calling the ambulance was optimistic,” he told us.

“Wasn’t me,” said Johnny Horgan. “I knew he’d croaked as soon as I saw him.”

“You can’t tell by looking.”

I said, “I checked for a pulse.”

“We all agree, then,” said the pathologist with just a hint of sarcasm. “This is a dead man.”

“But what of?” said Johnny Horgan.

Dr Leggatt answered curtly, “I’m a pathologist, inspector, not a psychic.”

“Heart?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“He’s not a young man.”

“Do you know him, then?”

Fat chance. Johnny didn’t know anyone in the county. He was fresh from Sussex, or Suffolk, or somewhere. He turned to me. I’m the local guy. But I was trying not to look at the body. Green in more senses than one, I was.

I saw my boss wink at the pathologist as he said, “His first one.” His eyes returned to the corpse. “Fancy dropping dead in the middle of a hold-up.”

“It could happen to anyone.” Like most people in his line of work, Dr Leggatt had a fatalistic streak.

“Anyone stupid enough to hold up a post office.”

“Anyone under stress,” said Leggatt – and then asked Johnny with a deadpan look, “Do you sleep well?”

The DI didn’t respond.

The doctor must have felt he had the high ground now, because he put some sharp questions to us about the conduct of the case. “Have the scene of crime lads finished?”

“All done,” said Johnny.

“Pockets?”

“He wasn’t carrying his calling card, if that’s what you mean.”