Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

“A bit of a nuisance, but there it is,” he said comfortingly as he turned a sheet of fresh paper into the typewriter before him. “Now, sir, this is what the Coroner will have to refer to when you give your evidence tomorrow. What he’ll do is just to ask the questions to guide you into saying the same as you’re going to say now. Compree?”

Lintz replied somewhat coolly that he knew the procedure at inquests and was ready to help the sergeant prepare his deposition.

Malley began to type the formal introduction to the statement, muttering as he jabbed the keys and backspacing now and then to correct an error with vicious superimposition. The machine seemed to have the durability of a pile-driver.

“First he’ll want you to say when you last saw your uncle alive. When will that have been, sir?”

“About six o’clock yesterday evening. I drove him back from the office in my car and left him at his home soon afterwards.”

Malley attacked the typewriter again. “I drove...deceased...”

Lintz gazed round the tiny office and nibbled, quite fastidiously, the corner of a finger nail.

“And how did Mr Gwill strike you then, sir? In what sort of health, would you say?”

“The same as usual. I didn’t notice anything wrong with him.”

Malley thought about this and fed his own version into the machine. “...usual good health...” he murmured. Then: “I suppose he’d never given you cause to expect he might do anything a bit rash?”

“That he might commit suicide, you mean?”

“Well, you could put it that way. Had he been depressed? Worried?”

“If he had, he didn’t confide in me.”

“Perhaps not, sir. But you could have formed an opinion of your own about his general mood.”

Malley, Lintz realized, was neither as simple as he looked nor likely to leave questions half answered for the sake of peace. “My uncle was never particularly cheerful,” he conceded. “He was an easily irritated man.”

“And had he been more touchy in recent weeks, or months?”

“For the last half year or so, yes, I think he had.”

“But you know of no special reason for that?”

“None. I didn’t share his life at all outside the office and things have run perfectly smoothly there.”

“No bereavements of any kind, sir? Relatives? Friends?”

Lintz shook his head.

“Neighbours?” the sergeant persisted.

Lintz frowned, then gave one of his lop-sided smiles. “Certainly a neighbour of his died a few months ago. It would be remarkable if one hadn’t. They’re nearly all over seventy round there.”

“Mr Carobleat wasn’t very old, sir?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Were they friendly, he and your uncle?”

“They were next-door neighbours.”

“Nothing beyond that?”

“I don’t know.” Lintz knew the effectiveness of an unqualified negative.

“What it all amounts to, then, is that Mr Gwill appeared rather moodier than usual over the past six months but that he didn’t tell you what was on his mind. Can I put it like that, sir?”

“For what it’s worth, yes.”

Malley nodded and began to type again. At the end of a few more lines he read back to himself all he had put down so far. He looked up at Lintz. “I’m not sure there’s much more you can say that would help.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Of course, there’s the identification. We might as well add that now.” The onslaught on the typewriter was resumed. “...a body...been shown...now identify...”

Lintz felt he might be permitted a question for a change. “What sort of a verdict is possible in a case like this?”

Malley shrugged. “I can’t say what view the Coroner will take, of course, sir,” he replied guardedly. “He’ll sit without a jury, otherwise heaven knows what the verdict would be. Last week, a bunch wanted to return ‘found drowned’ on a bloke who propped himself up against the harbour wall with half a pint of disinfectant inside him.”

“And the Coroner?”

“Oh, Mr Amblesby, you know, sir. Quite a character.” Malley left Lintz to interpret that for himself.

“The inspector came round to see me this morning. That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?”

“Bless you, no, sir.” Malley seemed amused. “Mr Purbright’s a conscientious gentleman. But you mustn’t go thinking he’s Scotland Yard or something. It’s just that we have to look into these things, that’s all.”

Lintz did not pursue the point. “Anything more you want to ask me, sergeant?” He offered a cigarette.

“I don’t think so, sir.” Malley accepted a light and pushed across the paper he had pulled from the typewriter. “Read it over and see if you can think of anything we ought to add.”

Both men smoked in silence a while. Then Lintz drew out a fountain pen and signed the statement without further comment.

“Oh, there’s one other thing while you’re here, sir.” Malley was heaving himself from his chair. “You’d better take these now and sign for them.”

He groped along a shelf high on the wall and reached down a canvas bag. Carefully he shook its contents on to the desk. “We took these from his pockets,” he explained.

Lintz saw two or three envelopes, a little money, keys and a few other oddments. The sergeant gave the canvas a final shake. Unexpectedly, a paper bag hit the desk and burst, scattering several white, round objects soundlessly over its surface. Lintz picked one up, felt and sniffed at it. “Marshmallow,” he said, lamely.

“Oh, that’s what they are.” Malley peered at the sweets and took an envelope from a drawer. “I’d better put them in this.” He sat down and gathered the marshmallows into a pile.

When Lintz had pushed the filled envelope with the other things into his overcoat pocket he wrote his name quickly on the slip the sergeant had handed him and stood up.

“Half-past ten in the morning, sir,” said Malley. “And don’t worry. It’ll all be very straightforward, I’m sure.”

Inspector Purbright stood at the entrance to The Aspens and looked with distaste at the large, naked house. Its brick face was a raw red, as if it blushed still for the intrusion into a secluded outskirt by its first owner, a successful bootlace manufacturer. Behind the tall, symmetrical windows, green curtains had been drawn. The semicircular lawn, lightly frosted now, its flanking gravel drive and the laurel-planted beds beyond, all looked sour and sullen. They wore the depressing neatness of ground laid out expressly to save the bother of gardening.

Purbright entered the drive past a high, wrought iron gate that had been swung back against the hedge and latched to a concrete stop. He walked up to the porched, dun-coloured front door and knocked. Almost immediately, he was looking into the red-rimmed, frightened eyes of a woman of about fifty, whose face hung in grey folds around an incongruously full-blooded and pert little mouth.

Mrs Poole led him through a lofty corridor to her own sitting room at the back of the house. It smelled of damp laundry and biscuits. Purbright accepted a seat and watched the late owner’s housekeeper subside nervously into an armchair that looked more like a pile of old covers. She took the cigarette he offered, lit it with a paper spill and drew in the smoke like religion.

“An unpleasant experience for you, ma’am,” said the inspector.

“Shocking. Oh, shocking!” rustled the voice of Mrs Poole. She looked straight at him and twitched her sagging cheeks. “I shouldn’t have left him, you know.”

“You think not?”

“Oh, no. He should never have been on his own. I know that now. But I wasn’t to be sure before. Mind you, he didn’t ask me to stay. He’d never have done that. But now...” She went on staring at the mild, benign, yellow-haired man, apparently content that he had taken her meaning.