James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

Her face crumpled, leaving him questioning his motive — wasn’t that a bit spiteful? … just because you’re having a bad day. Maybe — But she’ll thank me in the long run; so would her mother; so would Dowding’s wife.

“Jonathon was spoiling for a fight,” he carried on, sensing Samantha’s growing agitation, “and I thought I’d teach him a lesson for getting that old witch of a magistrate to give him bail. “I’m here to visit your mother,” I told him, seeing him and the matron come out of her office all buddy-buddy. “She asked to see me,” I said, pushing my way past the nurse, but Jonathon, the supercilious little snot, stuck his nose in the air and put on a poofy voice.” Bliss paused, furnishing himself with a passably supercilious impersonation. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Inspector,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. I fear my mother has changed her mind.’ ‘I fear you’ve changed her mind for her, sunshine,’ I said, and told him straight, to get out of my way, that I had every intention of speaking to her myself.”

“What happened?” asked Samantha snuggling up to him encouragingly.

“The bloody matron ordered me out,” he said, clearly chagrined. “She rustled her apron at me like it was concealing some sort of secret weapon and waded in to protect the old lady. ‘Mrs. Dauntsey has given strict instructions she’s not to be disturbed again, I’m afraid.’

“‘Well, I’m afraid that her wishes are no longer material,’ I said. ‘Either I see her now or I shall be back in an hour with an arrest warrant.’ Jonathon laughed in my face. ‘On what grounds, Inspector?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t got a shred of evidence against my mother and you know it.’ He was right of course — unless she comes clean we haven’t a hope in hell of proving it. Anyway, I thought a bit of bluff wouldn’t go amiss.”

“We may have considerably more evidence than you realise, Mr. Dauntsey,” he had said, before trying unsuccessfully to menace the matron with hints of prosecution for hindering the investigation of a serious crime. But Jonathon quickly stepped in to defend the matron, insisting she was merely protecting his mother’s right to privacy.

“‘Now, if you’ve quite finished …’ Jonathon said, waving me away like an annoying kid,” continued Bliss as Samantha lay on an elbow studying his moonlit face. “But I wasn’t leaving that easily. I told him I wanted to know how he came to be in possession of the lead soldier from his father’s collection.”

“But didn’t you say the Major couldn’t have been Jonathon’s father?” queried Samantha. “I thought Daphne had worked that out from the birth certificate.”

“She did,” he replied, thinking — clever of you to remember. “And I was tempted to pass the information onto him, but I thought he already had enough on his plate. In any case, the man’s no idiot. I assume he’s worked that out for himself and has kept quiet for his mother’s sake. I get the impression he’d do just about anything for her.”

“Touching,” said Samantha, laying back and squinting at the moon. “But what did he say about the flattened toy?”

“Not a toy,” Bliss retorted, mimicking the clipped military accent of the dealer, “It’s a fine miniature replica, Miss … Anyway, Jonathon was vague …” Then he paused in thought. “It’s just struck me — Jonathon’s good at vague — he does vague very professionally. In fact that’s a very good description of him: white male, 5’ 10”, and in all other respects — vague. He’s speaks vaguely — rambles on about inconsequential things that only he understands, and he’s wandered idly through life living off his mother and dead father — step-father I suppose more accurately. He never seems to have achieved anything from what I can tell. In fact, up to now he’s gone through fifty odd years without a scratch — then he cold-bloodedly murders someone.”

“I guess he’s not so vague now,” chipped in Samantha.

“You’re right. Anyway, not wanting to make him too happy, I told him that if he hadn’t smashed up the toy … replica … whatever, the set his mother is now sitting on would be worth a cool twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“How bloody ironic,” Jonathon had laughed uproariously. “Do you read Shakespeare, Inspector — Julius Caesar ?”

“I have … some … a little.”

“No matter — even you would know Mark Anthony’s speech — ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen,’ etcetera.”

Bliss nodded, thinking — I’m going to enjoy bringing you down to earth one of these days, as Jonathon threw an imaginary mantel over his shoulder and posed dramatically. “‘I came to bury Caesar, not to praise him,’” he began. “‘The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.’”

Then he laughed again.

“So what evil did your father do?” asked Bliss, straight-faced.

“Oh, that’s very astute of you, Inspector — very astute indeed. I must say I’m really rather impressed with your comprehension.”

“I’m flattered, but I’d still like to know the nature of the evil.”

“But what makes you think there was evil?”

“Everything else in your little speech seems to fit — you certainly put on a convincing show of burying your father, and you’ve just discovered he took something good, and valuable, to his grave with him. That only leaves the evil.”

Jonathon looked into the distance and spoke vaguely. “Yes. I suppose it does really.”

“I never did get to see Doreen,” Bliss said, concluding his account to Samantha. “The matron dug in her heels and refused point blank to let me past the front hallway.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Unfortunately, Jonathon’s right. I’ve got no evidence — not enough to get a warrant anyway. Legally, of course, I could just force my way in and drag her out on suspicion, but can you imagine what the press would do with that? ‘Police today sledge hammered their way into an old people’s home to arrest an octogenarian on her death bed,’ he chuckled, and Samantha giggled uncontrollably as he added, “‘Several of the pensioners put up a valiant fight — hurling bed-pans and dentures …’”

“Stop, Dave,” she cried through the laughter, “I’m going to wet myself in a minute.”

“‘Incontinent grannies manned the barricades..’” he continued.

“I’m not a granny,” she protested, thumping him playfully. “By the way, talking of grannies, how was Daphne this morning — was she still jealous of me?”

Bliss chortled, “Did you catch her face when she saw you standing at the door with me last night?”

“She looked at me as if her cat had dragged me out of the sewer.”

“It was my fault really,” he laughed. “I got wind of the problem when I phoned to ask if I could bring a friend to dinner. She was a bit huffy, ‘Well, it’s your beef, Chief Inspector,’ she said, but when I said my friend was called Sam she changed her tune.”

“On no,” Samantha laughed. “She probably thought you were lining her up with a blind date — then I showed up.”

“Poor Daphne, but I didn’t do it on purpose — it only occurred to me afterwards. Anyway, it serves her right after what she did with that goat.”

“Dave!” she cried. “That’s sounds positively pornographic.”

“Hardly,” he said, then amused her with the saga of the goat; what it had cost and the trouble it had caused. And they ended up laughing together.

“You’re beginning to sound more cheerful,” she said as the laughing died down. “But you still haven’t told me the real reason you called this morning. You had something serious weighing on your mind — I could feel it and I was miles away.”