Alan Hunter: Landed Gently

‘What the blasted hell for? Someone pinched the Crown jewels? And get inside that door, man. You can guard it quite as well in the hall.’

Up the steps strode Sir Daynes, Gently and the squashed constable in his wake. The hall, unlit today, looked shadowed and gloomy, but just as they entered there was a hissing flash, and a lurid light reached momentarily to the distant corners. At the foot of the stairs stood a group of six men in an irregular semi-circle, one of them playing with a camera and tripod. In the centre of the semi-circle lay a still, dark, sprawling starfish, near it a navy blanket, which had apparently been used as a cover. Sir Daynes stormed up to this group like a lion pouncing on its prey.

‘Dyson!’ he barked. ‘Dyson! What in the blue blazes is all this tomfoolery?’

A tall, thin-faced man with buck teeth spun round as though he had been bitten.

‘Ah — ah — I beg your pardon, sir?’ he stammered.

‘This!’ fulminated Sir Daynes, with an inclusive sweep of his arm. ‘What is it, man? What are you playing at? Why have you got these fellows here?’

Poor Dyson gaped and swallowed and ran a tongue over his divorced upper lip. ‘I–I — we were called in, sir. Matter of routine…’

‘Routine be beggared! Do you have to turn out a homicide team to take particulars of an accidental death? Why, man, a blasted constable would have done. Wasn’t I there, living right next door? Why didn’t you get in touch with me?’

‘Well, sir… Christmas Day…’

‘Don’t talk to me of Christmas Day, Dyson!’ Sir Daynes was withering in his wrath. ‘As far as the police are concerned there’s only one day — a twenty-four-hour day — and I happen to be the chief of police in these parts. Now get these men out of here. When they’re wanted, I’ll send for them. You stay here — and you, Dr Shiel. The rest of you get back to your duties or your Christmas pudding — whatever it was you were pulled away from.’

‘But, sir-’

Dyson made a desperate effort to get a word in.

‘You heard my orders, Dyson!’

‘Sir… Dr Shiel…’

‘I have already asked Dr Shiel to remain.’

‘But, sir… the circumstances…’

It looked rather as though Dyson was going to catch another blast from the Broke thunderbox. Sir Daynes’s chin came up and his eyes sparkled pure fire. But just then a slim figure detached itself from the outskirts of the group and intervened between the inspector and his fate.

‘Excuse me, Daynes, but I believe we cannot dispose of this matter quite so simply.’

It was Somerhayes, his handsome face pale, a dry flatness in his cultivated voice.

‘Eh, eh?’ Sir Daynes turned from the flinching Dyson. ‘Henry — didn’t see you there, man. Damn it, I’m sorry this place has been turned into a bear garden for you — blasted mistake, man. I’ll soon have them out.’

‘There has been no mistake, Daynes.’

‘What? Of course there’s been a mistake.’

‘No, Daynes. The inspector came at my request. You will appreciate that as a magistrate I had no option but to take what steps seemed necessary.’

Sir Daynes stared at the nobleman as though he had taken leave of his senses. Somerhayes managed to summon up a frosty smile.

‘I omitted to tell you on the phone, Daynes, that I had some doubt as to the way in which Earle came by his injuries.’

‘Doubt?’ echoed Sir Daynes.

‘Yes. I could not feel certain in my mind.’

‘But you said he’d taken a tumble, and if that’s where you found him, by George’ — Sir Daynes poked a finger at the spreadeagled body — ‘then he did take a tumble. You aren’t going to tell me that somebody pushed him?’

‘No… I don’t think he was pushed.’

‘Then what are your doubts about?’

Slowly and without emotion Somerhayes pointed to the skull. The body was lying on its face, the head twisted to one side. Clearly visible at the upper part of the back of the skull was a broad, depressed fracture running in a vertical line. Sir Daynes stared at it grimly, making sure he was missing nothing.

‘Well? What’s so mysterious about it? Didn’t he fall far enough?’

‘To fracture his skull — yes. But what caused a fracture like that?’

‘Why, man, the answer’s obvious. He struck it on a stair. With eighteen or twenty marble stairs to pick from, it’s a wonder he had any skull left.’

Somerhayes shook his head. ‘There are two things against it, Daynes. The first is the vertical line of the fracture. I cannot think how he could have fallen to have struck his skull backwards and sideways against a stair-edge. The rest of the skull, you will observe, has only abrasions.’

‘Balderdash!’ snorted Sir Daynes. ‘Why shouldn’t he have struck his head sideways? Anything’s possible when a feller comes careening down one of those things.’

‘It may be.’ Somerhayes made the ghost of a bow. ‘The second point, perhaps, will seem more convincing. It occurred to me when I first saw the body, and Dr Shiel has come to the same conclusion independently. We find it difficult to understand how this comparatively broad fracture could have been caused by impact with one of these comparatively sharp stair-edges.’

‘That is certainly so, Sir Daynes,’ put in the police-surgeon, a gaunt-featured Scot, promptly. ‘I cannot see at all how the laddie could have done it. If there had been some railings, now, or a good stout ornamental flim-flam of some sort at the foot… but as ye see, the stairs just swell out till they reach the sides of the nook. Nothing’s here at all to make a dunt like that.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion!’ Sir Daynes’s square jaw set in an obstinate line. ‘You can’t say for certain that a stair-edge wouldn’t do it. He might have had a particular type of skull. A blow with anything might have sunk it in like that.’

‘No, sir, no, sir.’ The Scot sucked in air through his lips. ‘That’s clean against all the tenets of a very exact science. I will give you my opinion now. I’ll not move from it in a court of law. It’s a blunt weapon like a club or bortle that put out the light of yon poor fellow, and no amount of chaffering will make it into a stair-edge.’

Sir Daynes blasted this rebel in silence for a moment, but the Scot, seasoned to the attacks of many a defence counsel, was no apt subject for brow-beating. The baronet turned his attack on the imbecile Somerhayes.

‘I suppose you’ve got something tangible to support this — this flimsy piece of medical evidence?’

Somerhayes silently shook his head.

‘No idea who’d want to do it — no evidence about how it was done?’

‘Nothing, Daynes, I’m afraid. Naturally I conducted a brief inquiry among the inmates of this establishment, but nothing relevant has come to light. As far as I can discover the lieutenant was very popular with my household, including the domestic staff. I, personally, found his society refreshing, and he was a great favourite with the tapissiers and our chef d’atelier. I am unable to imagine any motive whatever for his death.’

‘Hah!’ exclaimed Sir Daynes triumphantly. ‘And neither am I, Henry — neither am I. It’s the most preposterous piece of twaddle I ever heard of. A man everyone likes takes a tumble down some stairs, and because he cracks his skull one way and not another everybody starts assuming there’s been foul play. Blasted morbidity, that’s what I call it. And you heard nothing — found nothing?’

‘No, Daynes.’

‘Not even a club or bortle?’ Sir Daynes gave the Scot a leer.

‘Nothing of the sort has been discovered about the immediate scene of the tragedy. My butler-valet, Thomas, found the body when he was passing through the hall shortly after seven this morning. He immediately aroused me, and together we searched the hall and the galleries for any indication suggestive of what had occurred. We were both familiar with the precise disposition of the contents, but we could find nothing unusual or out of place.’