The Benefits of Death Read online

  The Benefits of Death

  Roderic Jeffries

  © Roderic Jeffries 1963

  Roderic Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1963 by William Collins, Sons & Co.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter I

  Charles Leithan awoke and stared into the darkness. He wondered with irritation what the time was as the radiator to the right of the bed sounded a deep “clugg.”

  There was a wavering yowl from the far side of the garden and immediately the cry was repeated in a slightly higher key. The Cuencas were either panicking, swearing, or declaring inflamed passions: to Cuencas, all sounds were the same in the dark.

  He climbed out of his bed and walked round the foot of the second, empty, bed to the south-facing window, the curtains of which he parted.

  The night was heavily overcast so that he could see nothing outside but a small circle of light which moved slowly along the top of the slope. His first thoughts suggested poachers, but he discarded the idea. Poachers would be in the woods, and in any case, his land did not hold enough pheasants to attract anyone. With a sense of despair, he guessed that behind the torch was a policeman.

  He went back to his bed, switched on the Italian-built, Empire style lamp whose wiring was always giving trouble, and dressed over his pyjamas.

  He left the house by the back door, crossed the lawn and entered the field through the gateway beyond the western belt of ornamental trees. The Cuencas in the kennels heard him and yowled more loudly than ever.

  As he shone the torch he carried, he was met by the beam of another torch and his head and shoulders were picked out in light.

  “I’m sorry if we woke you,” said a polite voice.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Just looking around, sir.”

  “Where’s your search warrant?”

  “My what?”

  “Search warrant.”

  The detective’s voice suggested only slight amusement. “We didn’t bother because we knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  “It so happens I mind very much.”

  “You don’t think that things are much better handled quietly?”

  “You’re not tramping all over my land in the middle of the night.”

  “Oh.” The voice sounded vaguely disappointed. “We’ll have to do the thing officially, then.”

  There was a silence. Leithan’s mind became filled with a question that eventually he had to put. “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything that’ll help.”

  “And so you trespass? What would the chief constable say?”

  “I’ve no idea, sir.”

  “He’d blast you to hell and back. The police haven’t the powers.”

  “No.”

  “You woke me.”

  “Were you really sleeping?” The detective was surprised. “I suppose the dogs woke you? I’ve never heard a row quite like the one they make. Have you had their vocal chords doctored?”

  “They’re supposed to sound like that.”

  “Then I don’t think I’d ever keep them.”

  “I’m very interested to hear it.”

  The detective ignored such elementary sarcasm. “I suppose we ought to be moving back to our beds. If the just don’t get their sleep, they don’t remain just.”

  “Why we?”

  “My sergeant’s down at the bottom of the slope. Probably gazing into the stream to see what’s crawling about in it. Although you’d never guess it to look at him, he’s nuts about bugs. Etymologist, isn’t it?”

  Leithan allowed that to go uncorrected.

  “Good night,” said the detective, as he turned. He made it sound as if he had been paying a welcome courtesy call.

  Leithan watched the light retreat until the rise of the ground abruptly hid it. He could, and should, have said so much, yet he had said so little.

  He walked back towards the house and as he came abreast of the kennels the warbling yowls rose in volume. Suddenly, there were three sharp and piercing cries that suggested hysteria. That was Erymanthian who was on heat. Cuencas took nothing lightly, especially their sex life.

  He shouted at the dogs to shut up and after a few muted protests they quieted. He went into the house and up to the bedroom. He stripped off the clothes over his pyjamas and thought about the letter of protest he’d write to the chief constable. As he climbed into bed, he knew no letter would ever be sent.

  *

  Seventy-four hours later, he was again awakened in the middle of the night by the dogs. He lay in his bed and listened to the noise as it grew in volume, suggesting that the cause of their alarm was closing on the kennels.

  He tried to force his mind to consider his new book. Normally, once he had the plot, he found the actual writing easy, but for some time his mind had refused to act normally. Words would not form.

  It was no good and at last he admitted it. He switched on the bedside light and at first it refused to work, but after a sharp struggle with the bar it did so.

  He dressed and went downstairs into the garden and across the lawn. There was a light frost and the grass crackled under his feet. The gate, behind the red-leaved hedge of Berberis Erecta Purpurea, squeaked as he pushed it open: the dog-chorus increased. He looked round for the detectives and could not see them, so that when someone spoke close to him, he started.

  “I’m sorry, we seem to have woken you again. Or perhaps you’ve been unable to sleep?”

  “Why the bloody hell can’t you do your searching in the day-time?” he demanded.

  “We’ve so much work on our plates there just isn’t time: I only wish we could spend our nights in bed.”

  “You’re trying to panic me.”

  “Panic you, Mr. Leithan? Surely there’s nothing we could panic you over?”

  Leithan mentally cursed himself for his unhappy choice of words.

  “By the way, did you write?” asked the detective.

  “Write? Write to whom?”

  “The chief constable. I’m rather interested to hear the answer.”

  Leithan suddenly flashed his torch upwards until its beam captured the other’s face, but, almost inevitably, Jaeger merely looked interested.

  Another man came up and spoke to the detective-inspector in a very low voice so that the words were no more than a mumble to Leithan. Jaeger nodded and then said: “It’s cold enough to-night to freeze the brass monkey as well. D’you suppose there’s any chance of a quick cup of something hot to keep the blood moving?”

  If only to God, thought Leithan, he could refuse them, but they knew he would not because they might tell him a little of what he so desperately wanted to know…

  “I can manage something,” he said angrily. He led the way to the house.

  They went in by the second back door and along the short stretch of passage to the kitchen. Both Jaeger and the other man studied the fully equipped kitchen with open interest.

  “You haven’t met Detective-Sergeant Watters, have you, Mr. Leit
han? My right-hand man.”

  Leithan nodded formally. Watters, in direct contrast to Jaeger, was large and rather shambling, and he looked as if his clothes were a little too big for his body and his skin was a little too big for his skeleton.

  “It’s a nice place you’ve got here,” said Watters.

  “We like it,” replied Leithan, with emphasis on the “we.” He plugged in the electric kettle.

  “Not like the kitchen the force has landed me and the wife with. The only equipment’s a gas stove that works when it feels like it and doesn’t often feel like it.”

  “You’re lucky to have that much,” said Jaeger. “When I started, four bare walls were a luxury.”

  Leithan opened the sliding door of the cupboard above the double sink and brought down a tin of Nescafé, then went to the large refrigerator for a pint of milk — milk from his own herd of Jerseys with the cream thick on top and with plenty of taste because it was neither pasteurised nor homogenised.

  “Have you lived here for very long?” asked Jaeger.

  Leithan lined up three Cumbrian mugs. He tried to make out where the trap lay in the question. “Since we were married,” he said finally.

  “And when was that?”

  “Thirteen years ago.”

  “Thirteen?”

  For one wild moment, Leithan thought the other was going to refer to the unlucky number.

  “Did you have to do much to the place?” Watters said. He leaned against one of the fitted cupboards with an easy casualness that suggested he always made himself completely at home.

  “We carried out some alterations,” replied Leithan. Why bother to tell them that the builders had worked for nine months to remove the results of the previous owners’ bad taste and to repair and renew where necessary.

  The kettle boiled and the lid rattled up and down. Leithan mixed the coffee and then put sugar and milk, still in the bottle, on the table. His refusal to decant the milk was a mute gesture of antagonism.

  Jaeger helped himself to sugar and milk. “You’ve no idea how good this is,” he said, after the first two sips. “Very kind of you to ask us in.”

  “I took it to be a royal command.”

  Jaeger smiled and the expression removed the years from his face that his premature baldness added. “It’s still good, whatever. You can’t think how miserable the world becomes at three o’clock in the morning.”

  “The solution’s simple. Stay in bed.”

  “D’you know, ever since I was a kid nothing has meant so much to me as my bed. When I retire, I’ll make certain I never again spend a night away from it.”

  “You’ll probably sign on somewhere as a night watchman, sir,” said Watters cheerfully.

  “Why d’you keep coming here in the middle of the night?” demanded Leithan. As soon as he had spoken, he wondered how he could have been so naïve.

  Jaeger finished the coffee in his mug.

  “At least you could carry on without stirring up the dogs,” persisted Leithan clumsily.

  “We don’t do it deliberately,” said Jaeger, in an injured tone of voice that was patently false.

  Leithan noticed his right hand was shaking and he hastily put his mug down. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that a shaking hand and sweating brow were the silent wraiths of guilt? He wanted a cigarette desperately and went to search in his coat pockets, only to find he was wearing a polo-neck sweater.

  “Have one of these?” said Jaeger, as he took a packet of Oliviers from his mackintosh pocket.

  Leithan picked out a cigarette with his left hand and was thankful that the hand was steady. One wraith that had been laid? He was about to search for a box of matches when Watters produced a gas lighter.

  “What’s the acreage of the place?” asked Jaeger.

  “Eighty-three of arable and twenty-five of woods.”

  “Over a hundred, eh?”

  “You’ve been over them all — you ought to know.”

  Jaeger gestured with his right hand and the cigarette smoke rose in a crested spiral.

  “What are you searching for?” Despite all his efforts to do otherwise, Leithan still baldly blurted out the question.

  “One never knows.”

  “You won’t find anything.”

  “I hope not, sir.”

  “There’s nothing to find.”

  “Then we’ll certainly draw a blank, won’t we?” Jaeger looked across at the kettle, from the spout of which steam was still rising. “Would it be straining hospitality too far, Mr. Leithan, to ask if there was another in the pot?”

  Leithan waited while Watters finished his coffee, then he took their two mugs, washed them, and put in each a heaped teaspoonful of Nescafé. Faintly, from across the garden, he heard the yowling of the dogs.

  Chapter II

  It had been a warm summer which lingered on through September, so that even by the 1st of October the sky was almost cloudless and the heat was such that light cotton frocks could still be worn. Only the leaves of the trees, turning into an exploding variety of browns, suggested autumn.

  The Cuenca club meeting was held on the lawns of Lower Brakebourne Farm. Chairs and garden seats had been set in a half circle, but none of these was occupied. The guests had split into two groups, one of which stayed behind the chairs and the other remained close to the trestle table and the drinks. This latter group was constantly filled with movement as hands reached out and scooped up fresh glasses or refilled those they already held.

  The noise was considerable. There was the constant rising and falling sound of human voices, but, far louder, were the snuffles, growls, yowls, and hysterical shrieks, of the dozen or so Cuencas.

  Two men went round to the back of the trestle table and met as each tried to pick up an unopened bottle of whisky. “Sorry,” said the first, but did not withdraw his hand.

  “Go ahead,” said Leithan.

  “Thanks, I will. Thirsty work, this, listening to so much yapping. It’s the first meeting I’ve been to and it’s a real eye-opener — or should I say ear-stopper? D’you know something? If I thought anyone here had a sense of humour, I’d explain to them why it’s so difficult to distinguish at first glance the humans from the dogs. Look at the woman over there in the far group. Bulging eyes, pushed-in nose, and perpetually sniffing. Perfect example of the brachycephalic skull. And that one there, the fat one in the ghastly red dress…”

  “My wife,” said Leithan.

  “Oh!” The man hesitated and desperately tried to find words to mend his gaffe. He looked quickly at Leithan’s face, but the enigmatic expression he saw there failed to help him. Eventually, he decided to forgo his fourth whisky and returned to his wife who, lead in one hand and gin and bitters in the other, was describing in detail the sexual deficiencies of a bitch she had just bought.

  Leithan gave himself another drink and wondered how Evadne would have been described, but for his interruption? Overshot? Apple headed? Not crypt-orchidian, however. He found it very difficult to be able to picture her as she had been thirteen years ago when he had married her: perhaps the difficulty lay in his absolute belief that she must have been different.

  A dog came round the back of the table. It sniffed his trousers and in its bulging eyes he seemed to detect the glimmering of a wish. He kicked it gently in the ribs to dissuade it. The dog left, bow-legs working furiously, shrill voice crying out.

  He stared at the assembly. Short men and women, thin men and women, tall men and women, fat men and women. Some had dressed as though attending a garden party, others as if it had been only at the last moment that someone had told them that ties would be worn. In only one thing were they united. To drink as much of the free drink, and to smoke as many of the free cigarettes, as they possibly could.

  He saw Alan Marsh approach and he tried to avoid the meeting, but was too late.

  “Nice do,” said Marsh. “Very nice do. Much appreciated by one and all.” His voice was heavy with the accents of his northern
birthplace.

  “Good,” said Leithan.

  “Proper decent of your wife, and no mistake.”

  “Don’t forget, when you’re handing out the bouquets, that I also, in my own small way, have contributed.”

  Marsh, who very seldom understood Leithan, fingered his lower lip with a gesture that he frequently used. “I was talking to Mrs. Cromby just now. Had a couple of gins, she had, and showing ’em.” Marsh lowered his voice although there was no need to do this since the air was alive with the shrill cries of two bitches who were asking their owners to keep them apart in case they fought. “She says her and her husband’ll come to the meeting providing their expenses are met.”

  “Expenses?”

  “Aye. Evadne’s idea, that was.”

  Leithan mentally recoiled from the use of his wife’s Christian name by the other. It was said with such unctuous self-satisfaction.

  “That’s good news, eh?” demanded Marsh, eager for praise. He swept the palm of his right hand over his heavily greased hair. “What Mrs. Cromby says goes with her hubby, so that’s two more in the kitty. You can tell Evadne, you can, there’s no need to worry. Been a good fight, it has, but t’other side’s lost. Couldn’t match our strength, they couldn’t. Take this party. Liquor ’em up and pretty soon they begin to feel they owe a debt for such friendliness. As I’ve always said in my business, put the other man under an obligation and you can’t go wrong.”

  “D’you imagine Georgina is beginning to suffer a sense of obligation?”

  “Our president?” Marsh guffawed shortly, as he looked quickly across the lawn at the far group of people and at the thin angular woman in the centre of it. “She knows she’s losing right enough. Mrs. Cromby told me that she came up to her and said that self-interests must be forgotten and that the only thing that mattered was the good of the breed, which was why tri-colours mustn’t be allowed. Still — she wasn’t to be persuaded, wasn’t our Mrs. Cromby.”

  “Perhaps Georgina Yerby forgot to offer expenses?”

  “Hasn’t enough brass to keep herself going proper, she hasn’t. No need to worry on that account.”