Drink To Yesterday Read online

  Drink to Yesterday

  Manning Coles

  (Cyril Henry Coles and Adelaide Frances Oke Manning)

  1940

  This book is dedicated to an old gentleman who loved his roses.

  1

  The coroner’s inquest was opened at the Dragon Inn, Lime, in Hampshire, at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1924, the first witness being Mrs. Lomas. She said that the deceased man employed her daily for domestic work in the bungalow attached to his garage. She always got there at about eight every morning, cleaned up the kitchen and sitting-room, and got his breakfast. Sometimes he was astir before she arrived, but more usually she would knock on his door at about 8.30, and he would have his breakfast a quarter of an hour later. While he had it, she would tidy up his bedroom and the bathroom, then do any work, such as washing, which required doing, and go home to her cottage to do her own work and get the children’s dinners ready by noon. She always came back to the garage soon after midday, cooked the meal which he had at one o’clock, washed up after it, and did any domestic shopping which was necessary. After that she had finished for the day, usually by about three o’clock, and did not return till eight next morning. He always got his own tea and supper.

  “Yes,” said the coroner. “So after about three o’clock every afternoon he was alone in the place?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Mrs. Lomas.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there was no one else lived there, but judging by the glasses and sometimes plates that was to be washed up, he wasn’t much alone.”

  “More glasses than plates, I imagine,” said the Lime grocer, who was on the jury.

  “Order, please,” said the coroner. “I should have expected members of the jury to know their duties better than to cause unseemly interruptions in these grave and important proceedings by irrelevant interpolations. An opportunity will be given, at the end of each witness’s evidence, for members of the jury to ask any such questions as may be proper—I said proper—to the elucidation of this unfortunate occurrence.”

  “Quite,” said the squire’s son, who was sitting in the front row. Mrs. Lomas smiled in a superior manner at the grocer, and somebody at the back of the packed room laughed.

  “Order,” said the coroner. “Will you tell us what happened on the morning of Thursday, July 17?”

  “I got there a few minutes late,” said Mrs. Lomas. “not that that made any difference to ’im, poor thing. But I knocked on the door at ’alf past eight as usual and didn’t get no answer. So I knocked again, and bein’ as I still didn’t get no answer, I thought ’e might ’ave gone out early, so I opens the door and looks in. Well, the curtings was drawn and the lamp on the table still alight, so I sees the bed hadn’t been slep’ in, an’ there was something on the floor between the windows looked like an ’eap of clothes. So I says to myself, innocent an’ unsuspicious-like: ‘Been ’avin’ a night out,’ I says, so I clicks off the light an’ pulls back the curtings at the first window I comes to, but when I sees what the ’eap on the floor reely was, oh dear, oh, I thought I should ha’ dropped. Seemed an age before I could fetch my breath, an’ then I lets out a screech you could ’a’ heard at the church, I’m sure, and bolts out of the place. Mrs. James opposite, she ’ears me and comes out, an’ one or two others, and Jimmy Jackman, he runs for the policeman, and he come, and then—”

  She stopped from emotion and lack of breath, and the coroner gave her a moment or two to recover herself.

  “Then the police took over, did they?” he prompted.

  “George Smith did,” she said. “He is the constable, of course. He locked all the doors and drew the curtings again an’ told no one to go near, not as anyone would want to, not anyone with decent feelings, but some there are as are born without any, so rightly shouldn’t be blamed, seeing as they know no better,” she added, allowing her glance to fall as if by accident on the grocer in the jury.

  “Quite, quite,” said the coroner hastily. “Is there anything more you can tell us which has a bearing upon this tragic occurrence?”

  “The police called me in again,” she said, “that would be about eleven, I suppose. There was a lot of policemen and other men about there then. They wanted to know if there was anything out of the way about the place, if you know what I mean.”

  “Anything unusual, presumably. Was there?”

  “No, sir. ’E’d fried bacon for ’is supper, an’ ’ad tea with it. The cup and plates was put out in the kitchen. Then there was two glasses on the table, a bottle of whisky with a little left in, an’ a soda siphon. The winders was all open, bedroom likewise. He didn’t generally leave the sittin’-room winders open, but it was an ’ot night. No, nothing unusual, bar the broken glass.”

  “Broken glass?”

  “There was a glass he set great store by, sort of wineglass like, with some foreign words wrote on it. It was lying at the side of the fender, all in bits. Wine-stained it were, which I’ve never known him use it before. It were kep’ in a glass cabinet, like, and many’s the time he’s said to me: ‘Have a care of that glass, Mrs. Lomas,’ he says, ’it being a memento like,’ he says.”

  “I expect he dropped it,” said the coroner, “poor man. Well, is there anything—”

  “Which it wasn’t dropped,” said Mrs. Lomas firmly, “having been throwed against the side of the fireplace as anyone could see from the splash.”

  “Dear me,” said the coroner. “Tell me, did he seem in his usual health and spirits lately, or did you—”

  “Oh yes, sir. Very merry and bright ’e was, as the savin’ is. Why, only Sunday ’e was telling me what ’e’d like to do to them as don’t pay their bills, made me laugh like anythink.”

  Mrs. Lomas’s mouth quivered; she pressed her handkerchief against it and stood silent.

  “Does any member of the jury,” said the coroner, “wish to ask this witness a question?”

  The butcher got up and asked if the deceased had ever been known to threaten to commit suicide.

  Mrs. Lomas shook her head. “Not but what he said if the Nursing Association didn’t buy nurse a new car soon he’d blow his brains out. But—but I didn’t th-think he meant it,” she said piteously, and burst into tears.

  “Thank you,” said the coroner gently. “You may go and sit down now, Mrs. Lomas. Call Dr. Gibson.”

  Dr. Gibson said he had been summoned to the garage by the police at 8.45 a.m. on the morning of Thursday the 17th. He found the body of the deceased lying in a huddled heap between the two windows in the bedroom. In his opinion life had been extinct about six hours, so that death had probably taken place at about two a.m. Say between one and three o’clock. Death was due to a bullet which entered the left temple, was slightly deflected upwards, and passed through the brain, leaving a large exit wound. Death was instantaneous.

  “Have you any further comment you wish to make?”

  “None,” said the doctor.

  The coroner looked towards the jury, and the butcher asked if the doctor had any idea how the deceased came to do it. The coroner said that that was rather a matter for the police witnesses; the doctor was merely there to certify the cause of death and to give such other medical evidence as might be required. This brought the grocer to his feet. He fixed his pale eyes on the doctor, and asked: “Was he, in your opinion, sober at the time of death?”

  “I could not possibly say,” said the doctor shortly. He had liked the garage proprietor.

  “Did you not, then, examine the contents of the stomach?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He—he might have taken poison—”

  “He was not poisoned. Nor strangled. He did not even cut his throat. He died from the effects of a bullet through the brain,” snapped the doctor, and looked at the coroner.

  The coroner stared coldly at the grocer till he sat down, then let his eyes pass along the two rows of the jury and asked: “Any more questions?”

  “Has the doctor any idea how far away the weapon was when it was fired?” asked a farmer whose name was Morpeth.

  “That again,” said Dr. Gibson, “is more a matter for an expert police witness. There was no singeing round the entry wound, and I could not say how far the pistol was from the head. But I have had little experience of this sort—happily.”

  The police witnesses followed. Police-constable George Smith gave evidence of having been fetched to the garage at 8.35 a.m. on Thursday, July 17, of finding the deceased’s body in the bedroom, of sending for the doctor and telephoning to the District Superintendent at Mark. Formal evidence merely, and he was not questioned. He was followed by District Superintendent Harlow, who said that the deceased had met his death by a bullet from an automatic pistol which was lying by his side. It was fully loaded except for the one cartridge which had been fired. There were no fingerprints on the pistol other than those of the deceased. On a small table near the body were an electric reading-lamp with a green shade, a tin box containing some empty clips and two boxes of ammunition, and on the table itself some soiled cleaning rags, a small bottle of oil, cleaning brush and rod, and two clips of ammunition. In the opinion of the police the shot was fired about fifteen inches from the head—perhaps a little more. Answering the coroner’s questions, he said there seemed no evidence to suggest foul play. In fact, there was no evidence to suggest that there was anyone in the bedroom with the deceased man that night at all, though presumably he had had a visitor in the sitting-room, since there were two used tumblers on
the table. Yes, inquiries had been made as to the identity of the visitor, but so far without result. He understood that deceased was in the habit of having visitors in the evening, people who came and went in cars and were not known, except in some cases by sight, to the village people. It did not seem worth while making an exhaustive search for the visitor, though doubtless he—or she—could be found, because to his mind the case appeared to be clearly an accident. It might, of course, be suicide, but in the absence of any evidence he saw no reason to presume that.

  The jury felt that this was all very well, but they understood that they had been summoned to inquire into the death of their neighbour and to decide how, in their opinion, it had come about; and they were perhaps a little nettled at being, as it were, told what to say by a man who, although Superintendent of Police for the whole Mark district, was yet only a policeman, and his manner was a trifle authoritative. So the questions began.

  “Does anyone know,” asked the same farmer who had put a previous question to the doctor, “if the deceased was in the habit of handling this sort of weapon—was he used to automatics?”

  “I have no means of knowing.”

  “An automatic is not a usual weapon to possess in this country, is it?”

  “No,” said the Superintendent.

  “Do the police know how long he had held a licence for this pistol?”

  “No,” said the Superintendent.

  “Did he ’old a licence for it at all?” asked the grocer.

  “No.”

  “Oh. Then what business had ’e with it at all?”

  “In view of the fact,” said the witness, “that the man is now dead and the pistol is in the hands of the police, the question hardly arises.”

  There was one woman on the jury, the widow of an auctioneer in Mark, and a kindly soul. She asked if it had not been possible to trace any of the poor man’s relations.

  “No, madam. We have found no clue among his papers to the existence of any near relatives. In fact, he had very few private letters at all, and those only of a recent date. The writers have been communicated with and can tell us nothing of his past.”

  “Then even the name he went by may not have been his own,” suggested Mrs. Carter.

  “It is possible, madam.”

  “Isn’t it possible,” said the grocer, “to find out where he got this automatic thing from?”

  “Inquiries are being made,” said the Superintendent. “Is it not a fact,” asked Morpeth, “that automatics are forbidden in this country?”

  “Except to certain members of His Majesty’s forces.”

  “Was he a member of His Majesty’s forces?”

  “It does not appear so.”

  “I don’t like this,” said the grocer. “I feel there’s something bein’ hid up.”

  “You have had all your questions answered, sir,” said the coroner in an Arctic voice.

  “Yes, but we’ve had to fish for answers, as it were.”

  “I take it,” said the butcher, “that there is definitely no question of murder in this case?”

  “In my opinion, none,” said the Superintendent. “Then it is a question of choosing between suicide and accident?”

  “I shall advise the jury that that is so when I address them before they retire,” said the coroner.

  “Was there any finger marks on the second tumbler as was used?” asked the grocer.

  “I take it you mean fingerprints,” said the police witness. “None. Only smears.”

  “Do the police,” asked the butcher, “attach any importance to the broken glass in the fireplace?”

  “None.”

  “I can’t help thinking,” said Mrs. Carter, “that that should have a meaning if only we could see it. For why should he use a glass he never did use, and then deliberately smash it, or so it seems. Why break a glass he valued when he was just about to die?”

  “If the police are correct in supposing the death to have been accidental, madam,” said the Superintendent, “he did not know he was about to die. As to why he broke the glass—if it was he who broke it and not the visitor—the police have no theory to offer.”

  “It takes the ladies,” said the grocer, “to get a real answer out of this witness.”

  “I had occasion,” said the coroner, with remarkable energy, “only a few minutes ago, to express my views on the subject of irrelevant interpolations made by a member of this jury. When these interruptions are not only irrelevant but offensive, I assure the jury that I know my duties and powers in such a case!”

  He glared at the grocer, who merely looked straight in front of him.

  “I am waiting for an apology, sir,” said the coroner.

  “Oh, are you?” asked the grocer in a surprised voice. “Sorry I spoke,” he added cheerfully.

  “Bumptious little beast,” said the squire’s son in a perfectly audible voice which the coroner pretended not to hear.

  The farmer, Morpeth, rose again. “May I ask if the police have any views as to how he came to shoot himself in the left temple? I knew the deceased quite well, but I never noticed that he was left-handed.”

  The Superintendent answered. “The police theory is that he was stooping over the table holding the pistol in his left hand with the barrel pointing upwards and was about to do something with his right hand-pick up a piece of rag, for example—when something caused him to turn his head to the right. Something slipping, perhaps, or a mouse in the wall, or some such slight interruption. Or possibly he was merely looking round for something. Anyway, we think that at that moment the pistol, being oily, turned in his hand and he inadvertently pressed the trigger.”

  “Thank you,” said Morpeth, and sat down.

  “Is it really credible, sir,” said another juryman, the schoolmaster, “that a shot could be fired in a room with open windows in the middle of the village, and not a soul hear it?”

  “Apparently, sir.”

  “Very strange.”

  The butcher asked if inquiries had been made as to whether anyone had seen a car standing at the garage that night.

  “Yes, sir, but without result,” said the Superintendent. “That is, as regards material times. There were cars in and out in the course of the evening, but none were observed at the garage after midnight.”

  “What about his financial affairs?” asked the schoolmaster. “Was he being pressed for money?”

  “Apparently not, there is no sign of it. The business, though small, was fairly prosperous, and the turnover increasing. There are some outstanding accounts, but more money was owed to him than he owed.”

  “Are there any more questions?” asked the coroner, and as no one answered, he dismissed the witness and addressed the jury.

  “You are here to inquire into the untimely death of this man,” he said, “and I ask you to dismiss from your minds matters which cannot be relevant to this inquiry. It is unfortunate that several such irrelevancies have arisen here. It cannot, for example, concern us whether the name by which he was known among you was his real name or not, since there is no question of murder here. For the same reason, the identity of his overnight visitor is not important, though, as the last person to see the deceased alive, this visitor might have been able to tell us something of his frame of mind that evening which would have been of use to us in deciding whether it were a case of suicide or of death by misadventure. For I would advise you that ‘death by misadventure’ is the proper verdict to bring in in this instance if you should decide that it is not suicide. I would further suggest, without wishing to dictate to you, that there is absolutely no evidence to support the latter hypothesis. His finances appear to have been in a satisfactory condition, so far as is known he had no pressing anxieties, nor was he at all subject to periods of mental instability. Unless, therefore, there is any further point upon which my guidance would be of service to you, will you retire and consider your verdict?” ‘“S’truth,” said the squire’s son, under his breath this time, and the jury went out of the room.

  They sat round the table in another room and the foreman spoke. “As you know, madam and gents,” he said, “I am a man from Hammead and not one of the fortunate in’abitants of your peaceful vale; consequently I ’ad not your privilege—”

  “Lumme,” said the grocer, “he’s caught it now.”