Murder in Montparnasse by Kerry Greenwood Read Free Book Online

wheel. He could have been interested in the suspension, of course, or the axle, but that would not entail him reposing under a wheel. Someone should have noticed this. But the coroner took only formal evidence of identity from the prostrate widow, clearly not wanting to upset her further. Mr Eeles had left her a small sum in insurance, and the house. From the comments in the ‘remarks’ section of the badly typed form, Phryne read that the police had no doubt that this was an accident. The coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of death by misadventure and they had added a rider expressing their sympathy for the widow and suggesting that all buyers of jacks should be instructed as to their use. Oh, very helpful. Date of death—three weeks ago, almost to the day.
    Mr MacKenzie got even shorter shrift from the Crown’s judicial officer. Cause of death: drowning. Alcohol content of blood .38. Very drunk, Phryne thought. Evidence given: identity Thomas MacKenzie, aged twenty-nine, farmer, unmarried. Had attended a birthday party at the pub that evening for his employee Richard Trewes. Ordinarily abstemious, he had drunk two beers and eaten a meat pie. He had left the pub at ten p.m., saying that he had a lot of work to do on the morrow. No one had seen him again until his employee had found him, face down in the water-filled ditch, at nine in the morning of the next day. By then he had been dead for about eight hours.
    Two beers would not produce a blood alcohol content of damn near dead, said Phryne to herself. How had he got that load on between the pub and home? Someone must have either spiked his two abstemious beers or met him outside and filled him as full as a boot with something like whisky. What did the autopsy say about that? Stomach almost empty except for a yeasty fluid—that was the beer—and acidic fluid—apparently he was a confirmed orange juice drinker—and some pastry and meat—that was the pie he ate at the pub. Therefore he was killed shortly after someone had filled him full of the old familiar juice and laid him gently in a ditch to drown. Hadn’t Bert said something about marks on the body? She flicked over the page. Aha! Yes. Rounded bruises on the shoulder blades of unknown but unconnected origin. How did the medical officer know that? What sort of marks would be produced by someone standing on—no, rounded edges—kneeling on a prostrate victim to hold him down in the water until he stopped struggling? How much struggling would he be able to do anyway, when even a vampire feasting on the deceased would be locked up for drunk and disorderly? Also bruises to the back of the head. Did someone tip his head back and make him drink? Coroner’s jury verdict—accident. The fatheads. The jury added a rider that people coming home drunk should be careful where they walk. Helpful.
    And the murderer had got away with it, if murderer there was. A clever person, to use two different methods. How would you get someone to lie down under a wheel? Simple. Feed them a Micky Finn—chloral hydrate was not hard to obtain— and arrange them suitably, then kick the jack away and let yourself out the back, unobtrusively. So the murderer was physically strong. There were no drag marks on poor Conger’s back, nor were his clothes disarranged. He must have been carried, not hauled. No one would check for fingerprints or bother too much about why a respectable tradesman in possession of his senses lays himself out on the cold ground in the middle of the night under a wheel. Voilà! No more Mr Eeles, and whatever inconvenient knowledge he had had died with him. The chloral scent would escape through the destroyed organs—and in any case they hadn’t even tested for it.
    Or, if that was too difficult, he could be belted over the head with a handy spanner and laid out for execution. The same for the farmer. Someone lurks in the pub as the birthday party goes on and slips some high proof spirit into the beer or walks