A BREATH OF DEATH

An old woman drops dead on her doorstep...

Some said that there was a whiff of poison in the air, and maybe there was if retired history teacher Doris Underwood was anywhere near.

The milkman had just called and asked Doris Underwood, rather more politely than he felt like asking, for payment for the last month’s milk before he went bankrupt, and she looked him straight in the eyes where he stood next to her doorstep and told him the milk had all been badly off, she didn’t know how he dared sell it like that, and she’d washed every bottle of it down the drain before it did for her, so he could go and fish for his money.

He turned ready to stomp off and Doris Underwood smiled a secretive smile to herself and wiped her nose on a crumpled handkerchief before falling unartistically to the ground, because suddenly something had killed her.

The milkman was at a loss. He needed the money because there weren’t so many customers that expected a daily delivery these days and she was one of the last. But she lay there, suddenly draped over two steps and part of a concrete path, and he shrugged his troubled shoulders and went back to his van, ignoring her rather unskilled dramatics because that’s what he thought they were.

So Doris Underwood lay where she’ fallen, her already cold heart going colder by the minute.

Her grandson Billy chose that morning to call on her and it was he who found her where the whiff of poison had left her, and the first thing he did was wipe the tears that started trickling down his face and the second thing he did was smile. The milkman sitting in his van saw the reactions, both of them, and smiled to himself.

And Billy had good reason to smile.

Doris Underwood had been around for a smidgen under ninety years and he knew she hardly ever spent anything, so his conclusion was that granny Doris must have accumulated a great deal of wealth over the huge number of years she’d been walking the Earth, and to his certain knowledge she hardly ever spent anything. Even at Christmas when everyone else was celebrating a biblical birth she only had one of what she called her naughty drinks, poured into a small glass from the same bottle of cooking sherry that had been round since, he thought, the year dot. And that, he suspected was her annual luxury.

Though he knew that several years ago she had gone on holiday and he remembered the fuss she’d made of packing for a week at Skegness where she actually stayed in a hotel where she had enjoyed half board! That, he thought, must have upset her, thinking about the money she was spending! Bed and breakfast when she hardly ever had any breakfast. And for a whole week at that!

And now there she was, lying on the concrete path not far from her own front door, and dead as a very dead dodo, and here he was needing to borrow a fiver. But dead women can’t open purses and he wasn’t any kind of thief.

He telephoned for an ambulance, just in case there was something still glimmering with life inside her, and waited.

Then, as an afterthought and because it was only the right thing to do he telephoned his mother Audrey because Doris was, after all, her mother and it was best she heard what might seem like bad news from him.

“At last,” whooped his mother, “I thought we’d be stuck wih the old dragon for ever!”

“Mum! What are you saying?” he gasped, shocked.

“Well, you wait there,” Audrey said, “And I’ll be round straight away. You are at her place, I suppose?”

“Where else would she be?” he asked, and his mother laughed and said she wouldn’t be longer than a tick. Or something like that.

It was then that an ambulance, blue lights flashing and sirens howling, screeched to a standstill outside Doris’s house and two paramedics, both female and both sombre-looking, leapt out.

“Doris Underwood?” asked Jean, the first paramedic, a young woman with care and kindness written large all over her face

Billy pointed to the crumpled and very still old lady who was exactly where she had dropped.

Jean tried not to smile warmly as she made her way to where the motionless Doris lay because she knew that even a warm and sympathetic smile can be misinterpreted, and her fellow paramedic’ Mavis, joined her as they made their way to where Doris lay.

“Bloomin’ heck! It’s her!” hissed Mavis when they gently turned the body over so that they could see the pale face of the dead woman.

“What do you mean?” whispered Jean, who thought her fellow medical colleague sounded inappropriately far from sympathetic.

“It’s the Underwood woman,” replied Mavis, “and never was there a more evil creature anywhere under the sun! She taught me history and scared the whole class to death with that cane of hers!”

“Hey! That’s my granny!” almost exploded Billy, “So be careful what you say about her! She’s dead and can’t defend herself if you’re going to insult her memory!”

“Well, I know her as the Underwood witch and she’s done some mighty unkind things in her life, and to just about everyone who knew her,” replied Mavis. “Why, young fellow, she telephoned the police and reported us for speeding because, she said, we were on our way to a tea break and didn’t want to be late. Yes she did, even though our blues and twos were going wild because in reality we were racing to help a heart attack victim, and the police actually stopped us because of what she said!. The woman with the heart attack actually died because we had been held up by your grandma who I’m sorry to tell the truth, but she is a witch!”

Billy nodded. “Yes, that sounds like her,” he admitted, “I’ve heard loads of stories like that. They say she’s spiteful, but she is my granny so I suppose I love her.”

A sudden and unexpected death brought the police around, especially when the fact that it was Doris Underwood who had lost the ability to breathe. Inspector Grey in the company of Sergeant Boswell arrived just as the body of Billy’s granny was being trundled onto the ambulance.

“Anything suspicious I might be interested in?” asked Inspector Grey, hoping there wasn’t.

“Well, muttered Mavis, “seeing as it’s who she is, there just might be cause for half the townsfolk to want her dead. A harridan, that’s what she was, and the world’s better off seeing the back of her.”

“But she’s passed on and the grandson’s upset,” added Jean, indicating Billy.

“Is that right, sir?” asked Sergeant Boswell, “the paramedic here says you’re upset on account of your granny being sort of dead? You loved her?”

“Loved is a strong word,” he replied, “I knew she could be a battleaxe, but she was sometimes alright with me.”

“Do we have a clue as to the cause of death?” asked Inspector Grey of the paramedics, “I mean, the coroner will want an exact cause, but what would your experience suggest? Off the record, of course.”

“I’d say poison,” replied Mavis after thinking for some time. “The thing is, it could be her heart, she was knocking on a bit, but there’s something about the look of her, the flushing on her face, you know what I mean? A bit like cyanide…”

“Better let the pathologist have a look then,” muttered Grey, “and that’s all I want: the murder of an old bird hated by everyone when there’s serious stuff to occupy me.”

Billy’s mother chose that moment to arrive. Her face with wreathed with smiles when she caught sight of Billy.

“What happened, son?” she asked.

“Granny’s dead. At last,” he told her.

“I can’t say that I’m sorry, then,” his mother told him, “but I was expecting her to pop off any moment. She’d been given only a few weeks, and that was soon after Christmas. The big C, you know,” she added, turning to the Inspector.

“That’s as maybe, but there’s a suggestion there might have been poison involved,” muttered Inspector Grey, “and what with some of her less pleasant antics we were beginning to compile a list of everyone who might want to see her dead.”

Audrey sniffed. “Then you can add me to your list, young man.” she said. “She was like an albatross round my neck, she was. And when people found out who my mum was they made my life hard too, especially when I was a kid!”

“Mum…” protested Billy, “I mean, she was your mother.”

“And I never asked her to be that!” retorted Audrey, “are you on your way home, because if you are you can give me a lift!”

“That’s why I came to see her. I ran out of petrol two streets back and I thought she might lend me a fiver for a couple of days.”

“I suppose her cash might come my way,” muttered Audrey, and then “so I’ll lend you that fiver and you can give me a lift home!”

****

Inspector Grey was in his office, feet up on the chair he kept allegedly for visitors when Sergeant Boswell walked in (without knocking, which was normal).

“Well, sergeant, have you got anything for me?” he asked, removing his feet and dusting the spare chair with a rag before inviting his sergeant to sit in it with a casual wave of one hand.

Sergeant Boswell sighed as he lowerd himself onto a dustless chair.

“Too much, sir,” he replied, “Look as I might I can’t find anything but bile when I’m checking on old Mrs Underwood. If there’s anyone in this town who wouldn’t want her dead I’ve yet to find them.”

“I thought you might find someone, but you mean the whole town?” asked Grey.

“Take this a for instance,” grunted his sergeant, “an elderly getleman with a walking frame, you know, a sort of zimmer frame on wheels, was out collecting for a charity…”

“Do we know which charity?” interrupted Grey.

“Not that it’s important, but war pensioners he said, and when she answered the door and asked him what he wanted he told her, just collecting coppers, he said, and she slung a handful of pennies at him so that they mostly went on the ground and insisted that he picked the up if he wanted them, and of course, the old gentleman couldn’t bend down to pick even one of them up, so he left her door to the sound of her cackling her pleasure, and he said he felt like a fool and never went out again, at least not for charity collections.”

“Makes her sound mean,” grunted the Inspector.

“There are so many stories like that. I’m glad I never knew her,” sighed Sergeant Boswell.

“Well, I’ve been doing a little researching of my own,” Grey told him, “and what do you make of this? I don’t lnow how she can have done it, but she’s got a five figure sum in the bank, and we hear of how people in her age bracket and short of a bob or two. And what’s more she’s left it in her will to her grandson. You know, Billy Spencer. We met him at the scene.”

“Ah,” muttered the sergeant, “so he might have kown all about that, and I guess it’s a motive for poisoning her.”

“Except she was dead before he got there,” pointed out Inspector Grey.

“What about the milkman? The bloke she refused to pay?” suggested Sergeant Boswell.

“He was furious at the old biddy, but missing out on a month’s milk money doesn’t sound much like a motive to me,” sighed his Inspector.

“They say that most murders are within the family, you know, quarrels that go out of control. What about his daughter? Billy Spencer’s mother? Audrey Spencer? Might they have had a set to?” asked Boswell thoughtfully.

“Could be, especially with her lad inheriting.” agreed Grey “but I get the feeling that we’re missing something important,” groaned Grey.

“Reminds me of something a neighbour of hers said,” said Boswell thoughtfully. “It was Miss Graham two doors down. She said it wouldn’t surprise her if Doris Underwood didn’t do herself in just so that her grandson, who she hated, would get the blame and end up in jail for doing his granny in.”

“And he’s to inherit everything,” nodded Inspector Grey, “when you might have expected a bitter creature like that to leave her wealth to a cats home or something like that.”

“Why, sir, that’s exactly what Miss Graham thought,” said Sergeant Boswell, and he clapped his hands, “which reminds me of what the younger woman, Audrey Spencer, had to say. She said her mother had a terminal cancer and had already lived longer than she was supposed to. Maybe she knew that she had just about reached the end and used her own death to taunt a grandson, who she wasn’t so fond of?”

“And make it seem that he actually did her in? Good thinking, sergeant! Good thinking indeed.”

“By killing herself, sir, expecting him to call round on the cadge, because he was in between jobs and may have needed a small loan, and he knew she could afford it…”

“We’ll send forensics around, sergeant. Turn the old lady’s place over and see what evidence there might be.”

****

The coroner smiled at Inspector Grey.

“You’re right,” he said, “all the evidence points to it. And there was enough cyanide powder still in its jar to kill a dozen strong men, according to the pathologist. It must have been self-administered so the only conclusion I can come to is that she took her own life.

“While the balance of her mind was disturbed, sir?” asked Inspector Grey.

“No, man. From what I’ve seen in your report her mind was always unbalanced, so there was no disturbance there!”

“That’s exactly how we saw it, the sergeant and I, sir.”

“I had dealings with her when I was a nipper. She was the only teacher to cane me and I never forgave her,” growled the coroner. “See yourself out, Inspector.”

XXX