Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

Love stared apprehensively at the river wall on their right. “We can only hope for the best,” he said, adding, “whatever that may be.”

“Do you know anything about the crematorium?” Purbright asked him.

“I know what it’s for.”

“I didn’t suppose you imagined it was an ice-cream factory. I mean, do you know anything about the works—the procedure? Furnaces, and that sort of thing?”

“No, nothing.”

“Never mind.” Purbright stared out at the road ahead. Soon he steered the car into a broad avenue and drove between two small brick lodges. “Here we are,” he said. “I can get the car practically up to the door. I’ll go in. There’ll be a clergyman in charge, I suppose. He’ll know all about what happens, if it hasn’t already. You wait outside and make sure of Nab. But try not to let it look like a raid on a club—keep the gendarmerie out of sight unless there’s any chasing. Which”—he heaved on the handbrake and drew the car to a halt on the gravel—“God forbid!”

Within the small chapel that Purbright entered with an urgent and hasty tip-toeing movement—a sort of reverent prance—were four people.

A curate from the Parish Church was murmuring a prayer with bowed head. He was being watched nervously by a young woman wearing a dark coat and a black, ill-fitting hat that she fingered from time to time as if feeling a bruise. Mr Bradlaw stood just behind her, clasping and unclasping his hands upon the tail of his coat and glancing occasionally with professional concern at the apparel and bearing of his man Charlie, whose first ‘outside’ assignment this was.

As Purbright looked feverishly around and tried to judge whether he had arrived in time, there swelled from the air above his head the sounds of music of a Grand Hotel celestialism. It seemed to signal the end of whatever religious rites had been in progress, for the heads of the three people other than the curate now swivelled all in one direction. Purbright was aware of slow, smooth motion somewhere, yet could not exactly place it. He studied Charlie’s face, which happened to be presented to him in profile, and followed the line of his fixed stare. He was just in time for his eye to catch the final phase of the movement that the others had been watching. A coffin was descending with dignified gradualness through the floor, rather, Purbright afterwards found himself recalling, in the manner of a cinema organ.

He strode forward. Mr Bradlaw and his housekeeper turned and stared at him. The undertaker was very pale. The girl clutched at her hat and glanced back towards the door. But Purbright took no notice of either. He hurried up to the curate and touched his arm.

“Excuse me, sir, but I am a police officer and I have reason to...” He halted breathlessly and asked, with a note of despair: “That coffin—is it...I mean, you can’t fetch it up again, I suppose?”

The curate was a very young man, but he had acquired a sense of occasion. Reddening furiously, he retorted in a stage whisper: “Really! Your suggestion is infamous. You must leave this place immediately!”

Purbright felt completely at a loss, but he battled on. “Look, sir,” he appealed, “I quite see your point. All this must seem terribly improper, but it is most important in the interests of justice that the...the gentleman in that coffin should be held for examination.”

The curate stared. Then he acidly inquired: “And what, my man, do you propose to ask him?”

The inspector thrust his fingers through his hair. “The man’s dead, sir.”

“So I had presumed.”

“And the Coroner has authorized a post-mortem,” he lied. “But that will be out of the question if this cremation is allowed to proceed. Now do you appreciate the position, sir?”

The clergyman looked thoughtful. Then he nodded, as if to signify a sudden decision, and led Purbright to a little robing room at the side of the chapel. The inspector noticed that no one else now remained in the building.

“Bit of a stunner, this, isn’t it?” the curate pleasantly remarked as soon as the door had closed behind them. He groped beneath yards of cassock and offered Purbright a cigarette. The inspector, still looking very anxious, at first refused. “Oh, don’t panic,” said the curate. “Your fellow won’t be...these things aren’t quite so immediate as people imagine. Various preliminaries, you know. But I’ll go down in half a tick and make sure. I say,” he added, “this is all in order, I suppose?”

“Perfectly,” Purbright assured him thankfully. “Oh, yes. Absolutely.”

The curate put his cigarette, still unlit, on a shelf and opened the door. “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll just pop down for a word with Pluto.”

He returned after two or three minutes to report that the coffin and contents were intact and awaited the dispositions of Her Majesty’s Coroner. “You really must forgive my being a little gauche in these matters, but there’s something terribly Sunday paperish about all this. Of course,” he added ruefully, “I suppose you’re too fearfully secret-bound to satisfy my fiendish curiosity?”

Purbright skirted the hint by asking: “May I ask under what name the funeral was being conducted, sir?”

“The, er, deceased, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I didn’t know him personally, you know, but I believe he was the uncle of that lady you saw just now—Mr Bradlaw’s housekeeper. A Mr...” He fished a piece of paper from a remote pocket and looked at it. “A Mr Barnaby.”

Chapter Twenty

Flaxborough’s mortuary was a detached brick building, not much bigger than a garage, at the end of the yard behind the police station. It contained two slabs, a much battered corner cupboard raised a couple of feet from the terra-cotta tiled floor, and a shallow sink immediately beneath the single window. A coil of black hosepipe, slung from a staple, looked like a hastily scrawled charcoal circle on the flat whiteness of the wall.

Upon the slab farther from the door, a coffin rested. It’s lid had been removed and now stood upright, propped against the cupboard.

An ancient portable gas fire coughed blue flames from its shattered elements. The dim daylight was augmented by an electric bulb set within a mesh sphere in the centre of the ceiling.

Into this aseptic chamber, Purbright gently ushered an exceedingly apprehensive-looking Bradlaw. Love followed, and a constable, bringing up the rear, shut the door and remained standing impassively before it. Bradlaw glanced at the inspector, then regarded the coffin as if searching for constructional flaws.

“Who is it, Nab?” Purbright asked quietly.

Continuing to trace with his gaze the outlines of the box, Bradlaw avoided looking directly at the bearded face within. “A fellow called John Barnaby. No one you know. He died here while he was visiting my housekeeper. His niece. Bit of a nuisance, but there you are.” He swallowed and looked up at Purbright. “Why? What’s all this about?”

“Who gave the certificate?”

“Hillyard. He’d been attending him.”

“Referees?”

Bradlaw shrugged. “Scott, I think. And that other chap in Duke Street. Rawlings.”

“They made no formal examination, I suppose? The usual dotted line stuff?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Never mind.” Purbright’s voice was friendly. “By the way, did I tell you that Hillyard’s under arrest?”

Bradlaw stared at him, slowly drawing both hands from his overcoat pockets. “Has he...” he began, then was silent.

“I rather think,” said Purbright, “that I’d better caution you before we talk any more, Nab.”

Bradlaw looked down at his hands and began to rub the knuckles of one in the other palm. He appeared to be cold.