Chapter and Hearse

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Huh…’ Police Superintendent Leeyes, Berebury’s thief taker-in-chief, gave it as his considered opinion that Matthew Steele shouldn’t be allowed to get away with a child’s lolly, let alone a king’s ransom.

  ‘If it’s not bats in the belfry, sir,’ asked Sloan suddenly, ‘what exactly is the trouble up there?’

  ‘Search me, Sloan.’

  ‘I was wondering, sir,’ said Sloan slowly, ‘whether we should search the church tower instead…’

  Leeyes shot him a look.

  ‘Anyone could bang about up there opening safe-deposit boxes without being heard.’ Sloan got out his own notebook. ‘I bet you he’s been hauling bucket-loads of cement and anything else you care to name up there too.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Leeyes, ‘that Vicar is daft enough to have given him a key to the tower.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised, sir. Ingenuous is the word that comes to mind as far as Mr Carstairs is concerned.’

  ‘The Vicar did say something about original sin and the Age of Enlightenment and as well,’ began the Superintendent, but Sloan was already on his feet.

  ‘I’ve gone in for a bit of enlightenment on my own, sir,’ he said. ‘If what’s in the church tower is what I think might be hidden up there, then you may just be off the hook in Lent.’ He got to the door and turned. ‘Keep your fingers crossed.’

  A Different Cast of Mind

  The moment he stepped inside the door of the inn, Christopher Helmsdale knew for certain that he was wrongly dressed for the place. In spite of conscientiously wearing his usual weekend clothes, he stood out like a sore thumb among the men there. His trousers and roll-neck jersey were neither old enough nor shabby enough to melt into the background at the Fisherman’s Arms at Almstone. And his shoes were a mite too clean.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t suspected this before leaving London for rural Calleshire; he had recollected the ambience of the place well enough. The trouble was that any clothes he might once have had that would have been halfway suitable had been thrown away by his wife long ago. Strolling in Richmond Park on Sundays made different – though no less exacting – sartorial demands on a man.

  He laid his overcoat on a dark wooden settle situated under an oil painting of dead fur and feather – a still life of the chase – and beside an ancient metal spring balance that measured weight only in pounds and ounces. He’d almost forgotten that, but he remembered the stuffed champion trout in its glass case fixed to the opposite wall well enough. As far as Christopher was concerned, it had been there for ever. Caught by Sir Coningsby Falconer in 1865, it was still the heaviest trout to come out of the River Alm to date – and that in spite of the best efforts of the present baronet (another Sir Coningsby Falconer), Christopher Helmsdale’s own father and all his cronies to do better.

  Under the trout was the hotel’s game book, in which the day’s catches were duly recorded before being hastened – the way of all flesh – to the kitchen.

  Christopher made a move to open the game book, but suddenly changed his mind and made for the bar instead. Although the bar was crowded, he was instantly recognized by an elderly man and offered a drink.

  ‘Come away in, man,’ said Peter Heath hospitably. ‘Good to see you. Now, what’ll you have?’

  Sitting comfortably in a corner of the bar, Christopher searched his memory for the right questions to ask an old angler. ‘The Alm running well?’

  ‘Not too badly,’ said Peter Heath, sipping slowly. ‘Not too badly at all, all things considered.’

  ‘And are the fish taking just now?’

  ‘Aye, sometimes.’ The fisherman gave a small smile. ‘Not often enough, of course.’

  ‘They never do,’ agreed Christopher.

  The two men drank companionably in silence for a while and then the older man asked which part of the river he proposed to visit the next morning.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ said Christopher. ‘I came here straight from the office and Fridays are always too busy to think of anything else, more’s the pity.’

  ‘Of course.’ The countryman nodded. ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘London’s like that,’ said the man from the City, sounding apologetic.

  ‘Not to worry. Plenty of good places to choose from,’ observed Peter Heath, who had been retired long enough for all the days of the week to feel the same. ‘And there’ll be no problem with the light at this time of year.’

  Christopher took another taste of his whisky. ‘I plan to have a look at one or two possible spots before I really make up my mind.’

  ‘Good idea,’ nodded the old fisherman, adding, ‘we’ll make a fisherman of you yet.’

  * * *

  In the event Christopher Helmsdale realized it hadn’t been such a good idea after all. The trouble was that he wasn’t nearly as skilled a fisherman as his father. And having a case of hand-tied dry flies in one pocket and a small screw-topped flask in the other wasn’t going to turn him into one overnight either.

  He paused first by the humpbacked bridge near the hotel, because, although his father had specified the River Alm, he hadn’t said exactly which pool he was supposed to be heading for now. As he rested his elbows on the parapet, he considered three distinct possibilities, just as at his work he would have carefully listed all the possible alternatives before taking any action.

  The first of these was the deep pool just below the bridge. This was the spot where, years and years ago, his father had caught his best-ever brown trout. That trout, whose exact weight was lost in the mists of time – his mother had always declared it gained an ounce a year – had entered into family legend. In the way of fishermen, all his father’s subsequent catches had been measured against ‘the trout from the pool below the bridge’.

  He dallied there for a few more minutes, though, before he turned and walked along the south bank, heading downstream. He was making for that stretch of the River Alm which had always been his father’s favourite place for the dry fly – the hand-tied dry fly. This was known as the Ornum Stretch and it was here, before his arthritic hip had started to give trouble, that his father had spent most of his fishing time.

  Christopher grinned to himself and decided that this was probably the place on the Alm that his father had had in mind when he had written his instructions out for him.

  It was therefore only an innate conscientiousness that made Christopher turn his steps still further downstream. He tramped along the river bank until he got to that stretch of water known as Almstone Reach. It was a goodish walk but one that Helmsdale père had taken often enough until his health had begun to fail.

  The Almstone Reach had never been his father’s favourite place for fishing – on the contrary, he was wont to refer to it as ‘The Challenge of the Alm’. The challenge arose because his father had never ever succeeded in landing a trout from this stretch of the river – and that certainly wasn’t for want of trying either.

  Christopher Helmsdale stood now beside the Alm and tried to decide which of the three places on the river would be the best: the Bridge Pool, the Ornum Stretch or the Almstone Reach … He could have tossed a coin to decide if there had been only two alternatives. Having three put that out of court. He would just have to make up his own mind …

  He put his hand into his pocket, took out the flask and grinned to himself.

  The Almstone Reach – challenge and all – it would be. He’d see that his father got to the fish there in the end.

  He unscrewed the top of the flask and slowly tipped his father’s cremated ashes into the water. Out of his other pocket he took his father’s little case of home-tied flies that he had intended to cast into the river after the ashes – but something stayed his hand.

  Perhaps he’d just see what he could do with them there himself one day …

  Examination Results

  ‘What you need to do, Sloan,’ said Superintendent Leeyes testily, ‘is to teach that young Constable of yours exactly what constitu
tes evidence and what doesn’t.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ responded Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan in as neutral tones as he could manage.

  ‘Hard evidence,’ emphasized the Superintendent. He was still smarting from having the police case against one of their most persistent offenders dismissed at the Berebury magistrates’ court for lack of evidence. ‘Your Detective Constable Crosby needs to get into that thick head of his the difference between hearsay and a signed witness statement.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, heroically resisting the temptation to disclaim Crosby as his Detective Constable. Had he, Sloan, been given the slightest choice in the matter – which he hadn’t – Detective Constable William Edward Crosby would not have been the man by his side in any police investigation whatsoever, let alone one brought against the most plausible rogue in the whole county of Calleshire.

  ‘Telling the Bench what someone else had said about the accused as if that would do instead of finding out for himself,’ snorted Leeyes. ‘The very idea … quite apart from the fact that it showed to all and sundry that he didn’t know the first thing about what constituted inadmissible evidence.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Come to that, thought Sloan to himself, Crosby wasn’t someone you’d want with you in an open boat after a shipwreck either …

  ‘The magistrates aren’t all that bright,’ grumbled Leeyes, ‘but even they can tell the difference between reported speech and recorded speech. First thing they were taught, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sloan wouldn’t have wanted Superintendent Leeyes with him in an open boat instead of Crosby, but for quite different reasons. Ten to one, if shipwrecked, the Superintendent would be following his usual practice of making waves rather than calming the waters – and as for going with the flow, well, that had never ever been his way.

  Quite the contrary, in fact.

  ‘If there’s one thing I don’t ever like to see,’ rumbled on his superior officer, still disgruntled, ‘it’s a real villain getting off a charge on a mere technicality.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Sloan was with him there.

  ‘Doesn’t do the force any good at all, that.’ Leeyes sniffed. ‘The only people who enjoy it are those who read certain newspapers.’

  ‘I take your point, sir,’ said Sloan, even though the Superintendent’s description of what had constituted a mere technicality enshrined one of the most fundamental principles of English criminal law. From where he stood, that meant that neither the Superintendent nor the errant Crosby had understood the enormity, and that the Bench did, but he wasn’t going to say this. He, Sloan, had his pension to think of.

  Superintendent Leeyes was still worrying at the same bone. ‘Next time, Sloan, I want nothing but hard evidence presented in court. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He suppressed a sigh. ‘I’ll have a word…’

  ‘Do that,’ said Leeyes. ‘And you can start over at the Ornum Arms at Almstone.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Thief in the place,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Or so the landlord says.’

  ‘Johnny Hedger,’ supplied Sloan.

  ‘Oh, you know him, do you?’

  ‘Been there since Nelson lost his eye,’ said Sloan.

  ‘But nothing known?’

  ‘No, sir.’ This was police-speak for having a criminal record and Sloan knew that Johnny Hedger didn’t have one. ‘Clean as a whistle. He doesn’t stand any nonsense from anyone in his house either.’

  ‘If what the landlord is saying is true,’ prophesied Leeyes, ‘someone at the Ornum Arms is going to have a police record sooner or later. Sooner, I hope,’ he added meaningfully.

  Detective Inspector Sloan took out his notebook.

  ‘And the sooner or later bit,’ added Leeyes waspishly, ‘depends on whether your Detective Constable can make a better fist of producing his evidence next time than he did yesterday.’

  Sloan suppressed a strong temptation to say something about Crosby first having to find the aforementioned evidence before he could present it, like that famous lady cook saying ‘First catch your hare’ when advising on the making of hare pie. Instead, he murmured that he and the Detective Constable would start their investigation out at Almstone first thing Monday morning.

  * * *

  The Ornum Arms in the village of Almstone was an old public house that had begun life as a coaching inn – a hostelry in the true meaning of the term. The old courtyard into which the daily stagecoach from Calleford used to be driven had been glassed over now and the ostlers’ quarters turned into residents’ bedrooms, but there was still that about the place redolent of journey’s end after a hard ride.

  The two detectives found Johnny Hedger behind his bar but far from his usual self. There was no trace in his manner today of the customary professional bonhomie for which the landlord was celebrated along the whole Alm valley. Instead, the normally jovial man looked pale and shaken, and when he moved, he did so with exquisite care. He seemed too to be needing the public bar for physical support – something quite at odds with his large frame and renowned vigour.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come, gentlemen,’ he said, waving them to a table, ‘though I’m afraid, as you can see, you’ve caught us at rather a bad moment.’ He grimaced as he pointed at a white-coated woman who was striding purposefully about the public bar with some glass specimen bottles and a clinical-looking case.

  ‘Don’t say that forensics have beaten us to it, Johnny,’ said Sloan, puzzled. ‘Or has something else happened that we haven’t been told about?’

  ‘We’ve got the food police here,’ sighed the publican. ‘They’re swarming all over the place…’

  Detective Constable Crosby said, ‘Are they looking for a thief too?’

  The burly landlord shook his head. ‘Nay, lad. I only wish they were. They’re here because we had a right disaster at the place on Saturday afternoon.’ He straightened up painfully. ‘That is, it must have happened on Saturday afternoon but we didn’t know it was a disaster until early Sunday morning.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘Or how big a one…’

  Detective Inspector Sloan murmured something anodyne but sympathetic about troubles never coming singly.

  ‘Singly!’ echoed Johnny Hedger bitterly. ‘If only they’d come singly it would have been all right.’

  ‘Battalions?’ suggested Sloan, a latent memory of his schoolday Shakespeare lessons coming back to him.

  Johnny Hedger looked puzzled. ‘No. It was a cricket club party that we had in the functions room.’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘We catered for a hundred and fifty – popular local team, you know. Valuable booking too, but I wish now we’d never taken it. So does the wife…’ He glanced in the direction of the stairs. ‘I had to get the doctor to her in the night. It didn’t surprise him, because he’d been called out a dozen times already by other people who’d eaten here. And he said he was sorry but that he would have to tell the authorities about it because food poisoning is a notifiable medical condition under some Public Health Act or other.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Sloan sympathetically.

  ‘She’s still proper poorly. Says she doesn’t want to face food or drink ever again.’

  ‘Food poisoning,’ opined Sloan, ‘leaves you like that.’

  ‘Too right, Inspector.’ Hedger acknowledged this with a jerk of his head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘They say it was the Queen of Puddings that did it.’ He passed a hand over his damp brow. ‘Don’t ask me to tell you how they found that out, but everyone who chose it was ill.’

  ‘They have their methods,’ said Sloan. He very nearly brought in a neat reference to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson but thought better of it. Johnny Hedger was in no mood today for light relief.

  The landlord glanced down at something written on the back of an envelope and frowned. ‘The pathologist called it Typhimurium, if that makes any sense to you.’

  ‘No,’ said Sloan comfortably, ‘but doc
tors like to use words that no one else understands. Makes them feel more in control.’

  ‘One of our lecturers,’ offered Detective Constable Crosby, not long out of the police training college, ‘called the using of words that only an in-group could understand “Badges of Belonging”.’

  Johnny Hedger was not interested in either psychology or semantics. ‘These people say they think whatever it was that did it was in the duck eggs used in the pudding topping. We get the eggs from the farm up the road, you know…’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘They gave the soup and the turkey salad a clean bill of health – which is more,’ added Hedger spiritedly, ‘than the Health and Safety people will give the Ornum Arms until we’ve been practically taken to pieces and fumigated.’

  ‘Dangerous things, duck eggs,’ observed Sloan sapiently. ‘Salmonella bacilli like living in them.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ said Johnny Hedger.

  ‘Especially when they’re not hard-boiled…’ The working knowledge required by a Detective Inspector had always bordered on the arcane, but there was one thing he did remember about Queen of Puddings from his childhood that might be relevant. ‘Meringue, made from white of egg, whipped on top?’

  ‘And raspberry jam,’ put in Detective Constable Crosby, anxious to help.

  ‘But not in the oven for very long?’ There was the rub, Sloan thought.

  ‘That’s the one,’ sighed the landlord heavily. ‘Not that we can do anything about it now. The Health and Safety people have closed us down until further notice.’

  ‘There’s no arguing with that lot,’ said Crosby, still a little unsure of his own authority as an officer of the law but aware of others in the wider world who had even greater powers – powers against which there was no appeal.

  Hedger winced as he shifted his bulk in response to a twinge of pain. ‘I’ve had to send all the domestic staff home this morning.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had many customers anyway,’ said Sloan, ‘not with Environmental Health around.’