Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

“This sounds a bit complicated, Miss Frayle.” Barnaby looked at his watch. “And I’m extremely busy. But if you go along with Sergeant Troy—”

“ Please hear me out,” cried Benny. “I know it was wrong to get in here under false pretences but this is very, very urgent. No one will listen, you see.”

The chief inspector tried not to let his impatience show, for she was plainly extremely distressed. Out of Benny’s sightline Troy was screwing his index finger into the side of his forehead and winking.

This contemptuous display prompted the DCI to say: “Tell me about it then, Miss Frayle. But be brief, if you would.”

So Benny told him about it and tried to be brief, although it wasn’t easy. Mainly she looked into her lap but whenever she did glance up Barnaby appeared to be attending closely. Troy had also tuned in but almost immediately tuned out again, recognising the inquest story that Gresham had been circulating round the canteen. He was also somewhat distracted by Benny’s belt, which was more and more reminding him of a length of human intestine.

“And he knew something bad was going on,” concluded Benny. “A day or so before he died I found him in the war room in front of that dreadful trebbyshay thing. He looked so worried. I asked what was wrong and then…the most frightening thing. ‘Benny,’ he said, ‘there’s a ghost in the machine.’”

“I can’t make out why you’re doing this, Chief.” Sergeant Troy returned from his errand and laid the Dennis Brinkley file on Barnaby’s desk.

Barnaby was not sure why either except that she had been quite despairing and on the verge of tears and had begged him to look into it, and he had said that he would. If her description of the incident was correct the whole business sounded fairly uncomplicated and shouldn’t take more than half an hour, if that.

And so it proved. Sergeant Gresham had been scrupulous as to procedure. The correct forms dealing with continuity of the body’s state and position and circumstances of death had been written up. Several photographs had been taken from all angles, showing details of the machinery’s disfunction as well as different aspects of the corpse’s sorry state. No evidence could be found that any other person had been present in the room during or immediately prior to the incident and a thorough search revealed no suicide note. The death certificate was as straightforward as the paramedics’ statement. The last person to see Brinkley alive had reported his state of mind as calm and quiet. He was looking forward to a dinner that evening with friends.

And so Barnaby dictated a brief note to Benny Frayle stating that the inquest verdict seemed to him perfectly correct and he saw no reason for further investigation into the matter or manner of Dennis Brinkley’s death.

On the Monday following her visit to the police, Benny was watching eagerly for the postman. Not only for their response – though this, of course, was paramount—but also from the editors of the various newspapers to which she had written. None of her earlier correspondence describing a grave miscarriage of justice had been printed and Benny wanted to know why. The reason was simple. Kate, offering to post the letters, had disposed of them. She had not done this without considerable soul searching and consultation with Mallory. At first thought it had seemed an outrageous, shameful thing to do. Benny had handed the letters over so trustingly. And surely, as a capable adult, it was her own business who she chose to write to. But Kate feared not that the letters would be ignored but that they might be printed. She saw Benny encouraged in her hopeless quest, perhaps even interviewed by some local hack anxious to get his or her byline noticed. A feature that could be discreetly slanted to make the journalist look clever and Benny a fool. Even so, the words “it’s for her own good” sat uncomfortably at the back of Kate’s mind and she had already decided that, were more letters to be written, she would not interfere.

Neither of the Lawsons knew about Benny’s visit to Causton CID. Aware that she had cheated her way in, Benny felt it better to keep quiet. When the admirable chief inspector, in whom she had the greatest confidence, vindicated her visit by ordering a new inquiry, then everyone could be told. Not boastfully, of course. That would be extremely ill-mannered.

When the post came, Benny was in the kitchen having tea with Doris. As the letter box flapped she rushed out and rushed straight back, dropping everything on the hall table but for one letter.

“You’re in a bit of a state, Ben.” Doris spoke with genuine concern. Benny’s cheeks glowed a hectic crimson and her gaze was wild as she ripped at the envelope. It didn’t open easily and she tore it practically in half to get the single sheet of paper out. Her face changed as she read it. So quickly it was almost comic, thought Doris. Like when children wipe an expression off their face with their hand. Benny’s mouth was a round O and her eyes bolted from her head.

“What on earth’s the matter?” asked Doris. “Benny?”

“They’re not going to do anything.”

“Who aren’t?” Passionately interested, Doris reached out and picked up the letter. “You’ve been to the police?”

“I haven’t told the others,” said Benny. “It was going to be a surprise.”

“Well, they won’t hear it from me,” said Doris.

“This is devastating news. He seemed such a nice man. And so intelligent.”

“Then perhaps, now’s the time—”

“A chief inspector in the CID.” Benny, profoundly sick at heart, could hardly take in the written words. She read them again. “How could he possibly not have understood?”

This level of wilful battling against the tide of truth was hard to handle. At a loss as to what to say, Doris decided to have one last attempt at getting through to what she wistfully thought of as the old Benny.

“Would you consider, love, him being so high up and all, that this inspector might actually have got it right?”

“Now I don’t know where to turn,” replied Benny.

“It’s a problem,” agreed Doris, jumping with one bound into the opposite camp and feeling, what the hell, if you can’t beat ’em…“Let’s have a think, shall we?”

They stirred their tea and thought. After a little while Doris suggested, eyes cast down and cautiously, for she knew her friend’s opinion on such matters, a second visit to the Church of the Near at Hand. She was thinking how wonderful it would be if Dennis came through. If he described what actually happened on the day he died and so laid to rest Benny’s terrible obsession.

Benny was silent for a moment, then lifted her head and smiled at Doris. Her expression showed an awesome awareness as if she had just received news of great significance. She reached out and seized both of Doris’s hands.

“Yes – you’ve got it! Oh, Doris, why didn’t I think of that?”

Doris felt uneasy at this sudden burst of confidence. Benny seemed to think all she had to do was go along and a hot line to Dennis was a certainty. It seemed wise to point out this might not be so. The poor soul had had more than enough to cope with already. Doris tried to put it gently.

“Spirits don’t always turn up just when you want, Ben.”

“No, no,” cried Benny. “You mustn’t worry about that. In fact, Doris, you mustn’t worry about anything. I’m on the right lines now, thanks to you. From now on, everything is going to be just fine.”

There was a depressing little queue outside the Church of the Near at Hand. The building itself was hardly less depressing. About the size of a village hall, it was made of overlapping clapboard shingles once coloured a rather sickly clover. Now little of the paint remained. Just a few loosely attached shavings curled up in the August sun. The corrugated iron roof, heavily stained, was scabbed with moss. Its rusty extremities had crumbled away leaving a rather pretty scalloped edge, like a lace doily. One of the rear windows was cracked.