Cyril Hare - Untimely Death aka He Should Have Died Hereafter

“Edna, my dear, forgive me,” said Joliffe. “But I had to come. These-these are for you, my dear.”

With a clumsy gesture he thrust the flowers at his daughter. She stood motionless, looking at him as though at a stranger, making no move to take them.

“Take them, please!” he pleaded. “I meant all for the best, I did indeed.”

With a sudden movement she snatched them from him. “Thank you, father,” she said, in a small hard voice. “I wanted some flowers for Jack’s grave. These will do very well.”

She turned abruptly and walked down the side of the church towards the further end of the churchyard. Mallett, who had been in the background, a silent spectator, came suddenly to life. “Not that way, Mrs. Gorman!” he called. “Not that way! Stop her, someone!” But it was too late. She had gone, and her father, still pleading and protesting, with her.

An ancient yew tree, marking no doubt what had formerly been the boundary of the graveyard, stood on the south side of the little church, level with its east end. Its branches now extended almost to the church walls, and tree and church between them effectively screened from sight the end of the churchyard where the most recent graves had been dug. Edna Gorman and her father came down the path between tree and church and stopped aghast. Between them and their objective a rough canvas barrier had been erected. A group of men, some in police uniform, were standing talking beside it. A little to one side, two others were leaning on spades, awaiting orders. As the purport of what she saw dawned upon her, Mrs. Gorman opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. The flowers dropped from her hand, and Mallett was just in time to catch her as she fell.

Pettigrew was close behind Mallett. As he went forward to help he saw Joliffe coming back towards him, his face distorted with fear. He dodged past Pettigrew, and shambled rather than ran back along the way he had come to the west end of the church, into and through the group of men and women assembled there and on towards the lych gate. It was Tom Gorman who started the chase. “Tally-ho, boys! After him!” he cried, and Joliffe dashed into the lane with half the Gorman family in pursuit, hallooing and shouting, running after him because he was running away, they knew not why. Joliffe took a despairing look over his shoulder. They were gaining on him, and there was no escape. Then, as he ran alongside the churchyard wall, he came abreast of Tom’s horse, standing where it had been told to stand, its ears cocked, its nostrils quivering with excitement. In desperation he reached up for the reins and tried to put his foot in the stirrup. Tom shouted a warning, but it was unheard. In an instant the dun horse whipped round, tore the reins from Joliffe’s grasp with a toss of its head, and, rearing on its hind legs, struck him two appalling blows full upon the chest with its new-shod fore-feet.

“Silver Blaze,” said Mallett to Pettigrew some time later. “As you said, the answer was in my library all the time. It’s one of my favourite Holmes stories, too. I should have guessed it.”

“You hadn’t my advantages,” said Pettigrew. “I had seen this horse in action at Bolter’s Tussock and knew what he was capable of. I suppose Jack tried to sneak off on him while his master was harbouring a stag in Satcherley Copse, and paid the penalty.”

“Yes. Tom tells me that he found the body when he came back to where he had left his horse and decided that the easiest course was to say nothing about it. I have told him how foolish he has been-”

“Say no more, I beg. I have a strong fellow feeling for Tom in that respect. And after all, he was not to know that the animal was going to give a public demonstration of its lethal properties.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Eleanor. “Why was Mr. Joliffe running away?”

“If you have murdered a man and seen him comfortably buried, it’s only natural to run away when you find the police are digging him up again.”

“But Jack wasn’t murdered.”

“No. But Gilbert was.”

“Gilbert?”

“It’s obvious when you come to think about it, isn’t it? Only nobody ever did think about it. Joliffe had to ensure that Jack’s death should seem to occur after Gilbert’s. So he postponed the apparent date of Jack’s decease, but he could only do that up to Tuesday morning, when his butcher’s shop would reopen for business. There was a fair chance that Gilbert would be dead by then, but he couldn’t be sure-so he made sure.”

Hester could not contain her excitement.

“Ellie!” she exclaimed. “When we met him on that famous Saturday he had come straight from seeing Gilbert at the Grange. He said so himself.”

“Exactly,” said Pettigrew. “He was quite open about it-he could afford to be. He was paying a charitable call on his kinsman by marriage whom everybody knew to be dying of an incurable disease. What more natural than that in the course of his call he should give the sufferer a glass of water-and who was to know that there was anything in it besides water?”

“What was in it?” Hester asked.

Mallett supplied the answer. “So far as my enquiries go,” he said, “Joliffe on Saturday morning went to the chemist and bought a bottle of calomel-perfectly harmless to the ordinary man, but fatal to a patient in the last stages of kidney disease-or so the doctor tells me. Calomel, of course, contains mercury, and if that is what he used, the mercury could be traced in Gilbert’s body easily enough. Parkinson will tell me when the pathologist makes his report, but I think that explains why Joliffe ran away.”

“And he had only to leave things alone for nine months for everything to turn out as he desired,” said Eleanor. “What was his expression? ‘The irony of the situation’!”

At the end of their stay at Sunbeam Cottage, Eleanor and Frank made an early start on their way home. As they drove across Bolter’s Tussock the morning mists were just clearing in prospect of a fine day. Opposite the place where Jack Gorman’s body had lain Eleanor stopped the car and they walked out together on to the moor. A tall stag, his antlers still in velvet, rose from his couch in the heather and trotted quietly away. A curlew called unseen from the clouds close above their heads. The Ling Water babbled its quiet song from the valley below. It was entirely peaceful. The ghosts were gone from Bolter’s Tussock.