Chapter and Hearse

by Catherine Aird

  Simon and Charlotte hadn’t kept Mrs Ivy Middleton on to do the rough housework. As Charlotte had put it so pithily when she – they – paid for the Manor, ‘They could afford Cullingoak Manor – just – but not the extras as well.’ Ivy had rated as an extra and so Simon saw entirely to the running of the house.

  ‘There could have been some cable and a time switch,’ he said in spite of himself. It was just as well Charlotte was at work. She wouldn’t have approved of his wasting the workmen’s time – let alone his gossiping with them – like this. ‘You know, an electric wire from the nearest power socket to the ironing board timed to come live after Mrs Middleton had left.’

  ‘Now, if I may say so, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said the foreman placidly. ‘The police thought of that too.’ He took a swig from his mug. ‘It so happens that there wasn’t any such timer in the house or garden, and, believe you me, they searched for it.’

  ‘I can quite see that they would,’ murmured Simon.

  ‘And,’ the foreman added, tapping the table with his forefinger for greater emphasis, ‘they had a witness that the husband – Peter Wetherby, that is – didn’t leave the house before the police arrived, so he couldn’t have hidden a timer anywhere outside the house.’

  ‘Got it in for him, haven’t you,’ said Simon, ‘this Peter Wetherby?’ Suddenly something about the name jarred in his mind. He couldn’t quite place the memory but it was there, somewhere.

  ‘Ironing boards don’t become live on their own.’ The foreman shrugged, starting to get to his feet.

  ‘I reckon,’ said Fred, ‘it was suicide.’

  ‘Suicide?’ echoed Simon.

  Fred nodded. ‘I think she connected a wire from the socket to the ironing board herself and her husband came home and found her and removed the evidence pretty quickly. Didn’t want anyone to know she’d done it because of this other woman, see?’

  The foreman said, ‘You’re a great one for your theories, Fred, but it don’t get the work done … Come along now, let’s get started here or we’ll never be done.’

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks Simon had to agree that Fred’s suicide theory was the most tenable. Something like a kettle flex could have been plugged into the nearest power point and bare wires at the other end made to touch the metal of the ironing board. Turn the switch on, clasp the ironing board and Bob’s your uncle. A married man becomes a widower in no time at all.

  And all that the husband would have had to do before he rang the police was put the proper plug back on the appliance – the work of a moment – and no one would be any the wiser. Oh, and perhaps change the face of the plug in the wall in case there were burn marks there too.

  He gave this thought whenever Charlotte was away – she was away rather a lot these days for the bank. At least he thought it was for the bank until the bank telephoned urgently one weekend to talk to her and he referred them to their conference and they said they weren’t having one.

  That was when he remembered what it was about the use of Peter Wetherby’s Christian name that had bothered him. Charlotte had known it even though the estate agent had only given them his surname.

  Now he came to think of it, she had known too about Cullingoak Manor being for sale for a low price before it had been advertised …

  It still didn’t explain how Mrs Wetherby had died while her husband was well away from the action unless it had been by her own hand.

  Simon Cullen was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it hadn’t been.

  That was when he laid his plan.

  ‘Darling,’ he said to Charlotte the next evening, ‘I think I’m going to have to have a couple of nights away next week. Uncle George wants me to go up to Yorkshire to see him.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Remember me to the old boy. Not that I’ve seen him since the wedding.’

  ‘No more you have,’ he said, since his relations weren’t much liked by Charlotte. ‘I’ll go on Tuesday and be back Thursday evening. That all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘By the way, before I forget, I may be a bit late back on Friday – we’ve got a big meeting at the bank Friday afternoon.’ She smiled. ‘Salary review committee – mustn’t miss that.’

  ‘Not on any account,’ he agreed gravely.

  * * *

  Simon studiously avoided the utility room when he got back to the Manor on the Thursday evening – he and Charlotte had a quiet evening together.

  ‘You might switch the washing machine on first thing, Simon,’ she said as they went upstairs. ‘I went through my summer things while you were away ready for the autumn.’

  ‘They’ll be all beautifully ironed,’ he said, ‘by the time you get home.’

  ‘It’s getting too chilly to wear them now. I must say I was quite glad of the central heating when I got in yesterday.’

  ‘The afternoons are getting cooler,’ he agreed amiably.

  * * *

  As soon as Charlotte had left for work on the Friday morning – the day of her big meeting – Simon entered the utility room very carefully. He didn’t switch on the washing machine, though. Instead he examined the room with extreme caution. There was indeed a plug in the power socket and a length of flex tucked away behind the radiator and then running, almost out of sight at ground level, to the nearest leg of the ironing board. Fred had been right about that anyway.

  But he wasn’t into metals and Simon was.

  Also behind the radiator, firmly taped to it, was what he had been looking for – that which would make the whole thing live.

  But not just yet. Not until the central heating warmed the radiator.

  ‘Clever,’ he murmured to himself appreciatively. ‘Very clever.’

  It was a short metal bar which neither the police nor anyone else would have looked at twice had they noticed it lying around. It was half copper and half steel lengthways – the principle on which thermostats often work. And it was pressed firmly against the back of the radiator, the copper part set alongside – but not touching – one of the two wires in the flex.

  This had been scraped bare. He checked that the central heating was set to come on at three o’clock as usual – Simon thought it would take about an hour to warm up enough to make the copper expand and complete the electrical circuit. Then he went back to the kitchen to wait for something to happen to establish that he was alive and well before lunch.

  At twelve o’clock their next-door neighbour came to the door. ‘Your wife has just rung me, Mr Cullen, to say she thinks she can’t have put the telephone back on its hook properly because she keeps getting the engaged signal.’

  ‘I’ll check,’ he said, knowing it would be so. ‘Thanks for letting me know. Like a coffee?’

  ‘Some other time, if I may.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to that,’ he said, and meant it. His neighbours really were very agreeable people indeed. Getting to know them in future was going to be a pleasure.

  When Charlotte got back at six o’clock he was out of sight, behind the utility-room door. She went straight there, calling out his name as she did so. He did not answer, but when she was right inside the room and standing, puzzled, in front of the ironing board, he stepped out quietly from behind the door and gave her a gentle push towards it. She put out her hands to save herself, and screamed as she touched the ironing board.

  * * *

  At the trial, before pronouncing a life sentence, the judge described Peter Wetherby as a clever, calculating and callous killer of the two women in his life.

  Time, Gentlemen, Please

  ‘I don’t like it, Sloan,’ declared the Superintendent heavily.

  ‘No, sir.’ Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan hadn’t for one moment imagined that he would. Change was undeniably in the air and, just like the Victorian hymn writer, Superintendent Leeyes invariably associated change with decay.

  ‘In my young days,’ Leeyes was rumbling on, ‘the police force was the police force and MI5 and
MI6 were the secret services.’

  And, exactly as it said in the old hymn, the Superintendent always saw change and decay all around him too.

  ‘“And never the twain shall meet”,’ muttered Sloan under his breath. ‘Like East and West.’

  ‘What’s that, Sloan? I didn’t quite catch…’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’ The Inspector coughed. ‘You were saying that in your day…’

  ‘Then the police did their job and the secret services did theirs.’

  ‘I’m sure, sir.’

  The news that it had been ordained from on high that in future members of secret services MI5 and MI6 were to work hand in hand with the police in the tracking down of major criminals had been received at Berebury police station with what a professional diplomat would have called ‘some considerable reserve’.

  ‘Moreover,’ said Leeyes flatly, ‘when that lot got up to something in the course of their activities which wasn’t legal, we weren’t told.’

  ‘Quite, sir.’ Metaphorically, Sloan averted his eyes too.

  ‘Not that we wanted to know, of course,’ he added hastily. ‘At least they spared us that.’

  ‘Not our problem,’ agreed Sloan.

  ‘Now,’ he said morosely, ‘if they overstep the mark, we’ll get the blame too. Bound to.’

  ‘Clandestine operations usually make for difficulties,’ said Sloan sagely. In his opinion they were almost as risky as stings.

  ‘And why, Sloan, they should imagine for one moment that a bunch of out-of-work old cloak-and-dagger merchants should be able to nail our drug traffickers and big-time fraudsters any better or quicker than we can beats me.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Me too,’ said Sloan, noting with detached interest that the Superintendent’s famous territorial imperative extended to Calleshire criminals as well as to its good citizens.

  ‘Which is not to say,’ pronounced Leeyes trenchantly, ‘that I am suggesting for one moment that the Serious Fraud Squad couldn’t do with some proper help.’

  ‘No, sir … I mean, yes, sir, I’m sure it could.’

  He opened his hands in gesture. ‘I ask you, Sloan, what is the force coming to?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, who from bitter experience knew better than to attempt to answer his superior officer’s rhetorical questions, made no reply to this.

  ‘I suppose they haven’t got anything else better to do these days,’ carried on Leeyes ruminatively. ‘Not now, seeing that the Cold War is over.’ He sniffed. ‘I understand that today it’s not so much a case of “know thine enemy” as knowing who on earth your enemy is in the first place.’

  For one wild moment Sloan considered mentioning that in an international context this fragile state was known as ‘peace’, but he soon thought better of it.

  ‘The secret services just don’t think they’ve got any real enemies left,’ insisted Leeyes. ‘That’s their trouble.’

  ‘Well, we have.’ Detective Inspector Sloan was under no illusions about this. ‘More than enough of them.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Leeyes unhesitatingly concurred with him. ‘There are still plenty of bad boys around in Calleshire. No doubt about that.’

  ‘And so these – er – secret services want to borrow our enemies so that they can keep going, do they, sir?’ asked Sloan, aware that even in these politically correct times ‘enemy’ and ‘criminal’ were still always spoken of as male.

  ‘Right first time.’

  ‘And we,’ ventured Sloan carefully, letting several tricky revolutionary situations abroad pass unmentioned, ‘at least have the benefit of usually knowing who our enemies are.’

  ‘You name it, Sloan, and we’ve got them on the job. Fraudsters, drug dealers, confidence tricksters, car criminals – the lot.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan. Like change and decay, criminals were all around. And with them always too.

  The Superintendent pushed a directive across his desk. ‘According to this, Sloan,’ he quoted mincingly, ‘we’ve got to feel free to enlist the aid of MI5 and MI6 in our struggles with serious crime whenever we may want their assistance.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he responded neutrally. Detective Inspector Sloan was head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department at Berebury police station and such serious crime as there was in this corner of Calleshire usually landed on his desk first. He got up to go. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Leeyes stayed him with a raised hand. ‘I’m afraid the Assistant Chief Constable wants to put in his ha’p’orth too.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir. When are you going to see…’

  ‘Oh, not me, Sloan.’ The Superintendent looked out at a clear, golfing sky. ‘I’m going off duty now. You.’

  * * *

  The Assistant Chief Constable, who was both a police officer and a classicist, welcomed Sloan with a genial, ‘Ah, Inspector, come in and hear what our secret services are up to…’ He waved Sloan into a chair the other side of his desk. ‘Sit yourself down.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘I’m not sure all this isn’t in direct contravention of the Civil List and Secret Service Money Act of 1782 – as revised in 1978, of course – but ours is not to reason why.’

  ‘Probably repealed by now, sir.’ As far as Sloan was concerned, the older the statute the better. Laws that had stood the test of time were usually good ones.

  ‘I’m afraid that MI5 and MI6 are taking this business of closer cooperation with the force quite literally.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ responded Sloan. ‘I must say, myself I don’t quite see how they can help us. Not in the short term, anyway.’

  ‘Help us, Sloan?’ echoed the Assistant Chief Constable stoutly. ‘I should think not, indeed! The very idea…’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I can assure you that the boot is quite on the other foot.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, man. They want us to help them.’ The Assistant Chief Constable fingered the message sheet before him and frowned. ‘At least, I think that’s what they mean. Their prose is what you might call a trifle opaque.’

  ‘They’ve got a problem?’

  He smiled thinly. ‘Yes, I think we may say that. Of course, I’m only reading between the lines, which I understand is what you do with their messages before you swallow them.’

  ‘On our patch?’

  ‘Four times over so far.’

  ‘I see, sir.’ Sloan leaned forward. ‘They need our help, do they? Might I ask in what way?’

  ‘In the matter of establishing the assignation procedure of certain enemies of the state.’ The Assistant Chief Constable suddenly looked remarkably cunning. ‘Unless, of course, Sloan, they are just testing us out. Seeing if we are any good at playing their sort of wide games – that sort of thing…’

  ‘A dummy run?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ He tapped his desk with an elegant gold pen. ‘Except that I wouldn’t like this force to be thought of as dummies in any sense – if you take my meaning.’

  ‘No, sir. Naturally not.’

  ‘What they have said to me –’ the Assistant Chief Constable contrived to project doubt into every word – ‘is that they have two suspects – that is to say, two people with – er – different loyalties from ours…’

  ‘Spies…’ supplied Sloan, wondering if this term too had now become as politically incorrect as almost every other expression in hitherto common usage.

  ‘Shall we say “agents of another power”, then?’ suggested the Assistant Chief Constable helpfully.

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  ‘And that they, whoever they are, are meeting,’ said the Assistant Chief Constable, ‘somewhere in your manor here for the exchange of – er – of whatever it is secret agents hand over these days…’

  Sloan nodded. With Kipling it had been letters for a spy; with Sherlock Holmes it had been plans – the Bruce-Partington Plans; with John Buchan it had been something to do w
ith the Thirty-nine Steps … ‘Money?’ he hazarded, coming fully into the twenty-first century.

  ‘That’s quite possible, Inspector. As even infant criminals seem to know these days, money leaves too much of an audit trail if you transfer it by any other method than hard cash in the good old brown envelope.’

  ‘So what exactly is their problem, sir?’ Detective Inspector Sloan knew a good deal more about the importance of audit trails now than he had done before money-laundering had joined the older, simpler crimes in the Newgate Calendar.

  The Assistant Chief Constable tapped the message sheet. ‘How the two parties – whoever they are – get in touch with each other to arrange the handover.’

  ‘So that they can be stopped?’ enquired Sloan diffidently.

  ‘So that their communications can be intercepted,’ the senior officer amended, suddenly looking very cunning again. ‘And, for all we know, tampered with and sent on.’

  ‘And when they do meet,’ hazarded Sloan, ‘it will presumably then be established who they are? I take it identities are wanted…’

  ‘Got it in one, Sloan.’ He frowned. ‘No, that’s not quite right.’ He fingered the message sheet again. ‘They know who one of them is.’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘What they don’t know is who she’s meeting.’

  ‘She?’ said Sloan.

  ‘Codenamed Mata Hari,’ the Assistant Chief Constable said apologetically. ‘These people haven’t got any imagination, you know.’

  ‘And what they want to know, you say, sir, is who she’s meeting…’ It sounded all very Boy’s Own Paper stuff to Sloan.

  ‘That and how they make their – er –’

  ‘Assignations, sir?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Not by telephone?’

  ‘Tapped.’

  ‘Letters?’

  ‘Intercepted.’

  ‘E-mail?’

  ‘Don’t ask me how, Sloan, but these clever johnnies tell me that they’ve got that sussed out too.’ No one, except perhaps Superintendent Leeyes, remained more Luddite in his attitude to computer technology than the Assistant Chief Constable.

  ‘Coded advertisement?’

  ‘Apparently their code breakers can’t work out anything in the daily newspapers that could possibly mean “Meet me outside St Ninian’s Church in Berebury at eight o’clock on Friday morning”, or words to that effect.’ He twitched his lips into a grin. ‘And I’m told it wasn’t for want of trying either. For their sins, they even went through all those Baucis and Philemon advertisements.’