Chief Inspector Nigel Cockett saw himself as a happy and cheerful man, mostly. He liked to think that he had every reason to be so. For starters, the Great War had come just too late to maul him the way it had mauled most men of his generation. Born at the start of the century, he had been called up at the age of eighteen, gone through military training, and just when the fourteen weeks of training were done and he was ready to be sent over to be slaughtered in France or in Flanders, the Boche had surrendered with impeccable timing, and the armistice had been signed.
Then, when it had all started again the second time around, he was a policeman. So, luckily, he had been in a "reserved occupation". Very soon the younger colleagues were enlisted in their turn, but he himself had kept just ahead of the age for conscription for senior police officers.
And there you had the third thing the Chief Inspector could gloat over every morning, while he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and shaved. He had made a stellar career in the police force, not because he was well educated, nor was he especially clever. Nigel Cockett would be the first one to admit with a derogatory chuckle that he was neither. No, again it had simply been a matter of impeccable timing. Starting on the beat just after the Great War, when police recruits had been scarce and hard to find, then climbing up the ladder steadily and fast, owing mostly to the fact that Great Dunmow, Essex, was the ideal place to achieve this. A small town, few candidates for promotion, but still enough senior posts to be filled. And of course, once the younger colleagues had been called up, this climb up the ladder had led straight to the post of Chief Inspector.
The salary was good; the post came with a car. What more could you ask? Oh yes: and as Chief Inspector, you command authority. Nigel Cockett could afford to be cheeky, stubborn and obnoxious, even towards quite posh people. Him, with his humble origins; nowadays no one dared to tell him off for his total disregard for manners or breeding, that's for sure. Just the other day, there had been this girl, lovely little piece of fluff, though totally blind, banging on with her posh little accent about her dead RAF husband, whining about poor hubby being murdered. What utter rot! He had given her short thrift, that one. He had almost gone too far, he had to admit it. But she had slammed the door on him. What a lark!
Then she had sent on a letter, from a London pharmacist no less, claiming that arsenic had been found in hubby's Thermos. Well-well-well! But still, a Chief Inspector didn't have to act on the whims of a bloody pharmacist... And now, not even a fortnight later, real orders had come down the chain of command to the effect that he, Nigel Cockett, had to pick up the case and get results. It was not only the local coroner's office, it went all the way up to Scotland Yard in bloody London! A post-mortem by one Doctor Westmore had "brought to light" the presence of arsenic in the RAF chappy's corpse. Fancy that! It was one of the few things the Inspector really hated about his otherwise charmed life: you sometimes got orders from above; impossible demands were made by people you could not afford to be rude to... "I've never had to solve a murder case in my whole career," the man grumbled, throwing down on his desk the message that had just arrived. "Wouldn't even know where to begin. Not happy at all about this!"
Nigel Cockett sighed deeply, then he took his keys and retrieved his briefcase from under his desk. He put on his coat and hat and went down to the front office. "I'm going for a drive," he told old Constable Kidley. Starting the engine of his police-issue Morris, he mumbled "Let's go down to the RAF station. I'm pretty sure the CO will feel just as miserable to see me, as I will be to see him!"
And indeed, the dead man's Commanding Officer found it "a damn unsettling business." The Chief Inspector did not inspire much sympathy by demanding an office space from the outset, "Otherwise I will have to take people to the police station in town. Your choice, Major..." Reluctantly, the CO took him to a small cubicle that happened to be unoccupied, reflecting that this obnoxious policeman apparently intended to hang around for a while. So, looking sharply at the unkempt civilian who was emptying his briefcase at his new desk, the station commander intoned, "I hope you understand, Chief Inspector, how awkward all this is for me. We have a vital bombing operation against Berlin going on at the moment. It would simply not do to go around the station accusing people of murder..."
YOU ARE READING
D for Daisy (The Blind Sleuth Mysteries 1)
Mystery / ThrillerWorld War II. A Lancaster lands at its base in England after bombing Berlin, and a member of the crew is found dead. However, his young wife Daisy finds out that he has been murdered. But she is only a woman, blonde and pretty, and blind since birth...
