Too Soon to Die

Book 794: Murder Room

by Henry Wade

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Colonel Jerrod has just six months to live, but he needs a year if he is to save Brackton, the family estate, from crippling death duties. Then his ambitious son, Grant, has an idea, one that involves Colonel Jerrod's carefree brother, Philip, and which develops into a complicated fraud that, he hopes, will safeguard Brackton for future generations. But there is a boating accident, in which Colonel Jerrod is believed drowned, and a visit at Brackton from the Inland Revenue to clear up some routine questions . . . Before long, Chief Inspector Poole finds himself drawn into the investigation with questions of his own.

Release date: July 28, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 277

Sample

“WELL, WHAT’S the result? No hedging. I want to know the truth.”

Colonel Jerrod sat erect in his chair, facing Dr. Dallas across the wide desk. There was no tremor in his voice; only a nervous tug at his old-fashioned moustache hinted at what lay behind that
question. Life . . . or death?

For a second the physician hesitated, although he had already made up his mind. A discreet, comforting answer and perhaps the end would come to his old friend quietly, almost without warning,
even without much pain, certainly without those agonising hours of waiting. . . . But no, not to this man. A soldier—that meant little enough; soldiers are no braver than other men. But John
Jerrod had always trusted him to tell the truth, and after thirty years of happy relationship as doctor and patient, friend and friend, Dallas was not going to start lying now.

“It’s bad, I’m afraid, John—what I feared; cancer of the liver.”

Colonel Jerrod heard the words and, opening his mouth to ask a question, was conscious of a sudden feeling of cold spreading through his body; the familiar consulting-room was wavering before
his eyes. . . .

“Put your head down—between your knees!”

The sharp words penetrated through his flickering consciousness and he began to obey, felt a firm hand on the nape of his neck, pressing his head down. For a moment or two everything was black,
swinging; then gradually warmth crept back, his vision cleared and the hand lifted from his head.

“Just drink that down.”

Jerrod did as he was told, shuddered slightly and returned the glass.

“Damn fool of myself,” he muttered.

“Shows you’re human, anyway,” said Dr. Dallas, his fingers on a pulse. He put the hand back in his patient’s lap, his own hand gently squeezed a shoulder, and he returned
to his chair.

Better to go quietly on and get it over.

“Keld has had the X-rays; he confirms the diagnosis. There wasn’t really much doubt, but one had to make sure.”

“Keld. That surgeon fellow. I didn’t take to him. Damp hands; pudgy, too.”

Dallas smiled. It was an unkind but not unreasonable description of a great surgeon.

“One of the best men in his line that we’ve got. Certainly the best in London.”

“Cold fish, I thought. Not very . . . human.”

Dallas shrugged his shoulders.

“Difficult for a surgeon to wear his heart near the surface. Doesn’t matter, either. It’s the physician who’s got to be human.”

Colonel Jerrod gave a wry smile.

“Well, you’ve always been that, my dear fellow. Now tell me a bit more about this. What does it mean, exactly? Lot o’ pain? Operations? What are the chances? What’s that
word you’re so fond of . . . prog something?”

“Prognosis. I’ll be quite frank with you, John. This thing’s incurable . . . and inoperable. There probably won’t be much pain; discomfort, yes—rather like
indigestion. You’ll lose weight and strength. It won’t . . . go on very long.”

“Eh? What do you mean by that? How long?”

The colour had come back into Jerrod’s cheeks. He was sitting upright again.

Again the doctor hesitated. One could not be too dogmatic about such things; there were freak cases that did not follow the normal course of nature. Why not push death a little farther away,
postpone the agony of expectation? But a man under sentence had the right to know what to expect; he had to put his affairs in order. For some people it meant an opportunity to ‘make their
peace with God’—whatever exactly that might mean.

“Six months, I think. Not much more. Might be less.”

“Six months?” The blue eyes flashed; there was anger in them, rather than fear.

“That won’t do, Dallas. Must be a year. I can’t . . . I must live another year.”

Surely it could not matter all that much? What did an extra six months mean to a man of sixty? No wife. A grown-up, married son. Living alone, John Jerrod had been, for years now, ever since his
wife was killed by a flying bomb. A lonely life, from all one heard. What was the attraction—the urge to live an extra six months? Was it just ‘love of life’—a natural
clinging to the vital spark? What was that song of Gilbert’s?

“Is life a boon?

If so, it must befall

That death whene’er he call

Must call too soon.”

Dr. Dallas gently shook his head.

“I’m afraid not, John,” he said. “You wanted the plain truth, and I’m taking you at your word. Of course, there are always exceptional cases that don’t go
according to the book, but I’d be misleading you if I let you think it might last much more than six months.”

The Colonel’s frown deepened.

“But surely there’s some kind of treatment?” he said. “I don’t care how painful or unpleasant. I’ve got to . . . well, I don’t know the exact date, but
I think it’s best part of a year. Can’t you cut the damn thing out?”

Dallas smiled.

“One can live without a lot of what one’s got inside one, but not without a liver. When I said ‘incurable and inoperable’ I meant just that. I’m not just giving you
my opinion; I particularly asked Keld, and those are his words. Of course, you can take another opinion—I’d be only too glad.”

Colonel Jerrod shook his head impatiently.

“I don’t want anyone else’s,” he said. “If you tell me it is so, it is so. I must accept it. But . . . well, it’s a bit of a blow. You see . . . no, I
needn’t bother you with all that. Just tell me: what shall I be able to do? Shall I be able to carry on as I am now? Shall I, f’r instance, be able to sail when summer comes
round?”

Small-boat sailing was, Dr. Dallas knew, the one remaining passion of John Jerrod’s life. He spent most of his summers on Drenmouth Water or at one of the small south-coast villages,
sailing his little dinghy; generally alone. It seemed an odd form of amusement for an elderly soldier, but men’s hobbies were often inexplicable. Fortunate was the man who had one; such men
were never bored.

“I ought to tell you to take it easy, lead a quiet life, but what’s the good? You’d be miserable and it wouldn’t make a lot of difference; certainly wouldn’t
stretch the chances to a year. If I were you I would do what you feel like doing, within reason. Better, really; take your mind off things.”

Colonel Jerrod’s mind seemed to be far away now, his eyes fixed upon the flickering fire. Presently he pulled himself together.

“Six months,” he said; “that takes me to June. Might get in three months if the spring’s a fine one. Wish it had been July, though; warmer. Cornish coast’s at its
best in July. P’raps we can stretch a point, eh, Dallas, and keep going till July?”

Colonel Jerrod rose to his feet and tugged down his waistcoat, then straightened his tie and re-settled the handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket. He was a fine-looking man, not tall, but
erect and slim. His fair hair was turning grey, as was the rather heavy, drooping moustache. His most striking feature was his nose, which was markedly aquiline, a handsome affair of the type much
mocked by left-wing cartoonists, with its suggestion of effete aristocracy. His blue eyes were rather prominent, and these gave a definite impression of stupidity combined with obstinacy—an
impression not wholly unwarranted.

“Taken up too much of your time, I’m afraid,” he said. “Probably shan’t have to bother you much more.”

“My dear fellow.” Dallas slipped his hand through his patient’s arm as he walked to the door. “I’ll see you down.”

“Nonsense. I’m right as rain. You ring for the ‘next gentleman’. So long and . . . er . . . thank you for not trying to hoodwink me.”

Dr. Dallas watched the erect figure go steadily down the stairs, then with a sigh he turned back to his desk. For a moment his hand hovered over the bell-push, but he did not at once press it.
He was a bit worried. His old friend had taken the blow bravely enough, but . . . what was all that about having to live a year? It didn’t make sense. Was his mind getting a bit shaky? Not
that it mattered now, but still . . . John Jerrod’s brain had never been his strong point, but he was level-headed and cool. So why all this fuss? All that about living till July.

Again the words of Gilbert’s song, set to Sullivan’s most entrancing refrain, recurred to Dallas.

“What kind of plaint have I,

Who perish in July?

I might have had to die,

Perchance, in June.”

Oh well, what did it matter? Six months, seven perhaps, or eight, and another old friend would have passed on ahead of him. Dr. James Dallas’s thumb pressed firmly twice
upon the bell-button.

In the meantime, Colonel Jerrod was making his way slowly down Harley Street, in the pale wintry sunlight. As an old cavalryman it was not his habit to walk; normally he would,
as a matter of course, have taken a taxi, so as to get to his destination in the shortest possible time with the least possible trouble. But now he was walking, not by intention, but simply because
he wasn’t thinking what he was doing. He walked automatically, guiding himself towards Piccadilly by instinct rather than by conscious design. His thoughts were concentrated wholly upon the
shattering news that he had just heard.

It was not unexpected, this sentence of death. Jim Dallas had not concealed from him that there might be a serious interpretation of the discomfort from which he had recently been suffering, the
steady loss of weight, the flagging strength. Of course, a man never believes that he is going to be struck down by one of the dreadful accidents or diseases that occurred so commonly to
other people. Still, it was no good pretending that he hadn’t been warned. In any case, it wasn’t the news itself—the ‘incurable, inoperable cancer’—that had hit
him so hard; presumably he could face death as well as the next man; it was the shortness of the time that was so infernally serious. Unless he was much mistaken, it upset the whole apple-cart;
upset all his carefully laid plans. He must go and see Mewn at once, find out all about the actual facts, confirm dates, and so on. Too late to do that to-day; he must telephone to Brackton and let
them know he’d be staying up another day or so. Grant would have to be told, of course. It would be a blow to him. . . .

By this time Colonel Jerrod had threaded his way down Bond Street, without noticing any of the ‘good-looking gals’ upon whom, even in these days of his virtual retirement from life,
he would normally have turned his protruding and appreciative eye. He had no interest in women nowadays, no personal interest, but by sheer force of long habit he was accustomed to notice the
‘good-lookers’, to appreciate trim ankles and well-placed curves. To-day he noticed nothing and was rather surprised to find himself walking up the shallow steps of his Club.

In front of the hall porter’s lodge he halted, lifting his hand slightly in acknowledgment of the man’s smile of welcome.

“Ring up Brackton, will you, Haines? Tell my man, Heaton, that I shan’t be coming down to-night. Tomorrow, probably, but I’ll let him know. And tell the office I’ll want
to keep on my bedroom. Any letters for me?”

“Very well, sir. No, no letters.”

Jerrod walked through into the big reading-room. Though it was still comparatively early afternoon, the curtains were being drawn, the big chandeliers switched on. There was even a tray of
tea-things being carried to one member sitting by the big open fire. It looked comforting, and Jerrod, though not normally a tea-drinker, thought it would be warming to have some himself. He was
conscious of a feeling of chill that had not been dispelled by his unaccustomed walk.

“Bring me some tea, waiter, please,” he said. “Indian.”

“Yes, sir. Anything to eat, sir?”

“Oh, I dunno. Yes, I suppose so. A bun—toasted bun.”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

Colonel Jerrod sank into the arm-chair on the opposite side of the fire. The tea-drinker looked up.

“Jack! By all that’s lucky. Haven’t seen you for God knows how long. Thinking of you only the other day. Very fellow I wanted to find.”

Jerrod smiled at this characteristically flamboyant welcome. Rags Bettlington always went about with his arms wide open—always had, since he’d known him as a subaltern in India.

“Hullo, Rags. No, we haven’t met for some time, have we? Don’t often come to London these days. What are you doing now?”

The lanky man in the opposite chair heaved himself forward to its edge.

“Making a plan, as usual, as dear old Hatter used to teach us. Look here, this is where you come in—a spot of shikar. You used to be a deer-stalker; d’you still do it? I want
to take a forest next year; must have another crack before I’m too old to get up the hill. But I can’t manage it by myself; too darned expensive. I want a partner—alternate days;
that sort of thing; couldn’t manage every day of the week, anyhow. What about it, old boy?”

Jerrod felt a stir of the old fever in his blood. He had not been on the hill for—what was it? Twenty years? It would be grand to see a stag again. And Scotland in September. . . . He
pulled himself up with a jerk.

“Thanks, old fellow,” he said. “Good of you to think of me. I should have enjoyed it, but I don’t think I shall be able to get to Scotland next year.”

THE JERRODS were one of the oldest families in the county of Chassex, but not one of the most noble or distinguished. Nobility in the form of title had never come their way,
and distinction had stopped short at honourable and useful mediocrity.

The family fortunes, such as they were, had been founded by a merchant Jerrod in the days of Elizabeth. He, prospering exceedingly in those early days of trade expansion, had built Brackton
Manor and settled down to founding family as well as fortune. The latter did not last long; Jerrods backed the losing side in the Civil War, the Manor house itself was gutted by fire and, for a
while, the family was dispossessed. The greater part of the property came back into Jerrod hands after the Restoration, but most of the money was irretrievably lost and it took many generations to
rebuild the fortune so rapidly accumulated by Elizabethan Josiah.

The Manor house itself was restored in the reign of Queen Anne, and though the blend of styles was not altogether happy, the house was distinguished in appearance and reasonably comfortable.
Fortunately, the restoring Jerrod had eliminated the protruding Elizabethan wings and concentrated everything in the central block, so that, in days of increasing twentieth-century austerity, it
was still possible for the present head of the family, with an almost literally skeleton staff, to occupy his family home.

Pride in that home, as well as in the family itself, was the most notable feature of successive Jerrods. However little they might catch the public eye in the matter of brains or distinction,
nobody could deny them reasonable antiquity and stability. Few families in Chassex could declare, and prove, that they had occupied the same land and, save for a period, the same house for four
hundred years. Others might govern the country, command armies, judge the people, establish great industries; Jerrods had done none of these things, but they were Jerrods and, whatever extortions
might be devised by successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, they would hold on to Brackton while life remained in their bodies.

Such was the creed of Colonel John Jerrod, present head of the family. Stubbornly he had adhered to the motto: ‘What a Jerrod has a Jerrod holds’. Truth to tell, ‘What a Jerrod
has’ had by no means been ‘held’; impossible, in these days, that it should be so. Outlying farms had been sold, timber felled—with no adequate replanting—investments
realised. Inexorably the tide of disaster was creeping in, flowing over the once fair lands and rich investment lists, seeping up towards Brackton itself, with its last carefully guarded family
possessions. The portraits still remained, the furniture—never outstandingly good—remained, the plate was going and the jewellery had gone. But Brackton remained and should remain . . .
unless . . . unless . . .

It was the cruel Death Duties that had done the damage. High taxation—Income tax, Surtax—was inevitable after two great wars, and could be borne; no Jerrod would shy at stinting
himself to pay for the defence of his country. But Death Duties—or, more accurately, Estate Duty—these were robbery and murder combined. Even so, if they had been treated as capital, to
reduce debt, they might have been endured, but to use them as revenue was to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. So at least thought John Jerrod, and he had planned to circumvent the
murderous imposte.

Towards the end of the Second World War, after his wife had been killed by a flying bomb and when it had become clear, even to his slow-moving brain, that no return of prosperity to the country
could be expected for many years, Colonel Jerrod had decided to make over his property to his son, retaining for his own use only enough capital to provide a very modest income. By this means, when
he died, Grant would have to pay no Death Duties and Brackton would be saved. It meant an end of any kind of luxury or enjoyment for himself, an end of hunting and shooting, an end of trips abroad,
of entertaining his friends, whether at Brackton or in London. But John Jerrod was prepared to pay that price to save Brackton. In any case, since Julia’s death he had not wanted to go about
the world, to meet people, to dress up and talk. He had been content to stay, almost alone, at Brackton, work in the garden, look after what remained of the estate. All that he asked by way of
pleasure was to sail his small boat, ‘Tern’, during the summer months. It was one of the few sports that remained reasonably cheap; a modest club subscription plus the occasional cost
of staying for a few weeks at an inn in one of the fishing villages along the coasts of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall.

At first, John Jerrod had expected to give up Brackton itself, give it up to his son Grant and retire himself, either to a cottage on the estate or, if Grant did not like that, to one of those
fishing villages. But Grant, while deeply appreciating his father’s self-denying action in making over the property, had not wanted to live at Brackton—not, at any rate, at the Manor.
After the war he had decided to take up farming and had gone into partnership with a friend near Wells in Somerset, leaving ‘the old man’ to act, contentedly, as caretaker at Brackton;
caretaker, with a man and wife to take care of him.

That was the plan, slowly formed in John Jerrod’s mind and slowly put into action by John Jerrod’s lawyers. It had been months, almost years, before all was signed, sealed and
delivered. Colonel Jerrod’s solicitor, Mr. Wilberforce Mewn, had explained to him at the time that he would have to live three years if the estate were to escape duty, but to a healthy man of
fifty-six three years do not present much potential peril; he would have to keep an eye on the weather—avoid unnecessary shipwreck and drowning—but surely the odds were heavily in
favour of a successful outcome to the plan. Even when a subsequent, grabbing Chancellor unexpectedly and unreasonably extended the period of necessary survival to five years, Jerrod had not
worried; five years would only take him to sixty-one, and that was little more than middle age in these days.

He had not worried until . . . a slow realisation of discomfort, of lassitude, of lessened energy, had induced him to visit his old friend and ‘family’ doctor, James Dallas.
Unexpectedly, Dallas had looked grave, had been unusually silent, had poked and pummelled, taken samples, told him to come back again, sent him to a surgeon, to a radiologist. And now . . . six
months to live.

It was not enough. Unless he was much mistaken, his five years of ‘necessary survival’ would not be up until the autumn of next year—1950. That, at any rate, had been the
approximate date that had lain dormant, not very critically, at the back of his mind. Had he got it right? Could he be mistaken? It had not appeared to matter much; the idea of death in the near
future had not seriously crossed his mind . . . until a few weeks ago. Even then it had only been as a background threat, a shadow, a more or less remote possibility. He had not thought of going to
Mewn to check up on the exact date.

But he must go now, without any delay at all. He must make sure of that date. If his idea of it was right, then something must be done. Somehow he must live out those five years. Jim Dallas had
said that this damn thing—what had he called it? a carcinoma?—would kill him within six months, that it could not be cured, could not be cut out. Well, he had got to remain alive. If he
died before the end of those five years his plan to save Brackton would have failed. Death Duties, on the murderous scale at which they now stood, would ruin Grant. He would be forced to sell, not
only the pictures, but most of the remaining land, possibly even the house itself; though who could be found to buy a big house nowadays it was difficult to say. In any case, Grant would not be
able to afford to live there himself; Brackton would become either a ruin or—perhaps worse still—a girls’ school or a ‘looney bin’.

It must not be. Somehow those grasping sharks of the Treasury, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, or whatever they were called, must be defeated. He must either live out h. . .