“We have it on tape. I watched it five times before I saw you behind your desk. We were all so gobsmacked at seeing him alive that we didn’t give anyone else a look.”
“He wasn’t there for an interview. He just came in to check on me.
“To let you know he was out.”
“Yes, I’ve lived in terror of him for four years. I put him away, you know. My evidence did it.”
“And you’re all alone in the world?”
“Yes.”
“No, you’re not, love. You’ve got a big brother. And you called him and poured out your troubles.”
At the mortuary, I asked to see the body of the post office robber.
“I had the impression you’d seen enough of him already,” said Dr Leggatt, smiling.
“Would you get him out, please?”
The pathologist sighed and called to his assistant. “Norman, fetch out number seven, the late Mr Soames, would you?”
I said mildly, “Jack Soames isn’t the post office robber.”
The doctor hesitated. “How do you work that out?”
“But I’d like to see his body, just the same.”
Leggatt exchanged a world-weary look with Norman, who went to one of the chilled cabinets and pulled out the drawer.
It was empty.
Leggatt snapped his fingers. “Of course. He’s gone.”
“Not here?”
“Storage problems. I asked the undertaker to collect him.”
“Along with the real post office robber, I suppose?”
Leggatt said, “You’re way ahead of me.”
“I don’t think so, doctor. The man who held up the post office probably died of a heart attack triggered by stress, just as you suggested.”
“What a relief!” Leggatt said with irony. But he wasn’t looking as comfortable as he intended.
“You came out to Five Lanes and collected him. On the same day, Jack Soames, recently released from prison, decided to let his wife know he was at liberty. After a passionate lie-in with his girlfriend, he made his way to the Benefits Office where Felicity worked. She was terrified, just as he wished her to be. He had a four-year score to settle. When he’d gone, she phoned you.”
“Me? Why me?” said Leggatt in high-pitched surprise that didn’t throw me in the least.
“Because she’s your sister, doctor. She’s really suffered for blowing the whistle on her husband. Waking up screaming, night after night, all because she stood up to him. You told us about that after DI Horgan made his insensitive remark about the sub-postmistress.”
“Idiot,” said Leggatt, but he was talking about himself. “Yes, that comment angered me at the time. I’d forgotten. So much has happened since. And you made the connection?”
He’d virtually put up his hand to the crime. Elated, I held myself in check. “I think you saw an opportunity and seized it. You’d already taken in the body of the post office robber, a middle-aged man with greying hair, not totally unlike your brother-in-law. No one seemed to know who he was, so he was heaven- sent. You had a marvellous chance to kill Soames and end your sister’s suffering without anyone knowing. You’re a pathologist. You know enough to kill a man swiftly and without any obvious signs. An injection, perhaps? I think you believed your sister was in real danger.”
“She was.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Leggatt shook his head. “There was no ‘maybe’ about it. He was waiting outside the Benefits Office for her. He wasn’t there to make a scene. He intended violence.”
“And you approached him, invited him into your car, killed him and drove him here. You chose a time when Norman was out of the mortuary – possibly at night – to unload the body into a drawer, the drawer supposedly holding the bank robber. You changed the tag on the toe.”
“You watch too much television,” Leggatt commented.
“When I came here with Zara, you wheeled Soames out. You knew I wasn’t likely to take a close look at the face, seeing that I’d been so troubled by the sight of death. Anyway, I hadn’t taken a proper look at the real robber.”
“Your inspector did.”
“Yes, but he delegated everything to me. He’s new to our patch. He didn’t know Soames, except from mugshots, so when he saw the security video from the Benefits Office he had Soames imprinted on his memory.”
“You’ve got Soames on video? Thank God for that.”
I nodded. “I expect your defence will make good use of it. Extenuating circumstances – is that the phrase?”
“Professional misconduct is another,” said Leggatt. “Doctors who kill don’t get much leniency from the courts.”
“You carried out the autopsy on Soames, deciding, of course, that he died of a coronary, and it wouldn’t be necessary to send any of the organs for forensic examination. But what did you plan to do with the other body – the poor old codger who dropped dead when the sub-postmistress looked him in the eye?”
“Not a serious problem,” said Leggatt. “This is a teaching hospital and bodies are donated for medical research. We keep them here in the mortuary. It could all be fixed with paperwork.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever discover who he was,” I said, little realizing that it would become my job for the next six weeks. A DC who solves an impossible crime doesn’t get much thanks from his superior. The reverse, I discovered. I’m still looking for promotion.
AFTERWORD
The impossible crime story has been around as long as the mystery story has existed. The gothic mystery, so popular in the late eighteenth century, abounded in stories of purportedly haunted rooms, though the solution usually related to a secret passage. Such was the case in Ann Radcliffe’s
The first real locked-room mystery that did not rely on a secret passage – despite its title – was “A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published in
