“But—” Crosby started to say something.
“It all began at least a month before that,” said Sloan firmly.
“But what did it begin with?” asked the constable.
Sloan shrugged his shoulders. Where did murder begin? Some would say with Cain and Abel. Some—the Freudians—would say with Adam and Eve. And as for what with—that was anybody’s guess in this particular case. Greed, jealousy, revenge, lust … A judge would instruct a jury that the motive was irrelevant—the crime was what counted and the crime was what should be punished—but motive mattered to an investigating officer all right. It usually mattered to a jury as well despite what the judge said.
“I reckon George Mellot thinks it was Tom Mellot, too,” offered Crosby after a moment. “If it wasn’t himself, that is.”
“Not so much brother against brother as brother protecting brother,” agreed Sloan tacitly.
“With George giving Tom a helping hand,” added Crosby for good measure, “if he needed it.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Sloan wasn’t sure.
“And Len Hodge pitching in too, for that matter.”
“That would figure, all right.”
“And Tom decamps when he gets the word from brother George that all is up.”
“That fits too.” Sloan nodded. “So does Mrs. Meg Mellot fainting at the mention of Ivor Harbeton’s name.”
“The body was got up there without being noticed, remember,” said Crosby, “or the dog barking. The Mellots could have put it up there any time they liked.”
“Either of them.”
“Both of them.”
“There was just one other time when someone else could have done that, too,” said Sloan fairly. There was a word space navigators and oil-rig engineers used for a short period of time when circumstances were favourable to an enterprise. They got it from the weathermen. “There was a window—”
“Pardon, sir?”
“Market-day,” said Sloan without explanation. “George and Meg Mellot always went into Calleford on market-day. Everyone knew that.”
“Hodge would have been there, though,” objected Crosby.
“Hodge might have been got out of the way.”
“How?”
Sloan looked along the High Street and pointed in the direction of the fire-engine. The idea had just come to him. “False alarm, malicious intent,” he said. “He’d have answered a fire-alarm.”
Superintendent Leeyes was at his most peppery. He regarded his opposite number in the Calleshire Fire Brigade as a necessary evil and didn’t want to be beholden to him for anything. Firemen were useful for extinguishing fires and their heavy lifting gear certainly came in handy on occasion, but in his view they ranked well below the constabulary as a public service. From time to time at the golf-club he played a needle match with the chief fire officer at Berebury which was very trying for all concerned as the fireman was the better player. Superintendent Leeyes attributed this to the more flexible shift system enjoyed by the fire service. The feeling at the police station was that he would have shot at a sitting bird, too, if he could.
“It would have been theoretically possible for that body to have been hauled up onto that roof in broad daylight on market-day if Len Hodge wasn’t there, Sloan,” he barked. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Yes, sir.” He coughed. “We know—and so presumably do a great many people—that George and Meg Mellot go into Calleford together every Thursday.”
“Leaving Len Hodge at Pencombe?”
“And the dog,” said Sloan down the telephone.
“Well?”
“Len Hodge is a leading fireman with the Great Rooden retained brigade.”
“I get you.” He grunted. “And you want to know if they had a call-out on the first Thursday in June?”
“Any Thursday,” replied Sloan. “The body could have been hidden until the Thursday of the week after.” The forensic scientists were not prepared to be definite to within days about how long it had been on the roof.
“The head,” said Leeyes pointedly, “has been hidden without being found.”
“We’ve got the instrument that took it off,” said Sloan. His superior officer had a positive gift for putting a man on the defensive.
“No fingerprints on it, though,” he said.
“No,” said Sloan. That would have been too much to hope for. Besides, they were not dealing with a fool. Or fools.
“What was it?”
“A tool for topping sugar-beet.”
“Did you know, Sloan, that stage beheading is done with a cabbage?”
“No, sir.” There were a lot of things he did not know. He cleared his throat. “We’re on the track of the man in the wood.” He explained about Luke Bailey.
“Proper biblical touch, eh, Sloan?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, his memory teasing him. Somewhere in the Bible there had been something closer to the case than the parable of the Prodigal Son but he couldn’t for the life of him bring it to mind.
“That’s who Hodge will have been fighting with in the pub, I suppose?”
“So it will.” Sloan hadn’t got round to thinking about that.
“Didn’t want him showing up there, of course. Give the game away.”
“Not when he was supposed to be lying low in the wood,” he agreed.
“Where does all this leave you, Sloan?”
“Not very much further forward, sir, I’m afraid.”
“Find out who it was up there on the roof,” adjured Leeyes for the second time, “and you’ll be nearer to knowing who did it.”
“Chance would be a fine thing,” rejoined Sloan.
“What was that?” the line crackled.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Where do you go from here?”
“I don’t know,” said Sloan truthfully.
Detective Inspector Sloan walked back from the telephone-box to the police car. Some calls were too private for the police radio. People talked about the freedom of the air. That meant that the air was free to everybody and there were those who could pick up the waveband that the constabulary used.
Crosby looked up as he approached.
“The Great Rooden retained fire brigade,” announced Sloan, not without a little pardonable portentousness, “answered a three-nines call on Thursday, June first, at ten hundred hours to the village of Cullingoak.”
“Did they, sir?”
“Which is at the absolute edge of the area they cover.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“To a fictitious address,” added Sloan, although the lily didn’t need gilding.
“False alarm, malicious intent,” spelled out Crosby, “to get Hodge out of the way.”
“They did not report back to their home station until nearly eleven o’clock that morning.”
“It wouldn’t take long to start up that fork-lift tractor, run it up to gutter level and tip the body out,” said Crosby helpfully.
“And the dog could bark as much as it liked,” said Sloan. It wasn’t going to be like a certain Sherlock Holmes story after all. That was a relief. Art imitating life was one thing. Life imitating literature was quite another.
“With only the murderer to hear,” said Crosby.
“Or murderers.” They still didn’t even know yet how many persons there were with blood on their hands. There was altogether too much that they did not know in this case. “We may not know who,” added Sloan grimly, “but at least we are beginning to know how and when.”
Crosby scratched his head. “I suppose Len Hodge might have only been got out of the way to give him an alibi.”
“We might make a detective out of you yet, Crosby,” said Sloan warmly. Being a good investigating officer called for a certain quality of mind which took nothing for granted.
Crosby squinted modestly at his toes and said, “Hodge could have put the body up there then answered a fire call and then damaged the tractor afterward
s on purpose.”
“Nothing to stop him,” agreed Sloan. Len Hodge couldn’t be said to be in the clear yet by any manner of means: but nevertheless there had been a time when the farmyard at Pencombe had been deserted for long enough for a body to be hidden.…
“Doesn’t get us very far, sir, does it?” said Crosby gloomily.
“No,” said Sloan. Blind alleys were something a police officer had to get used to. Unsolved cases, too, had to be lived with as well as lived down. He sighed. “We’d better get going, I suppose.”
Crosby leaned forward to switch on the engine once more. “Where to, sir?”
“Back to base,” he said unwillingly. There would be no comfort to be had at the police station. Worse, there might be a message from the hospital about Wendy Lamport. “There’s something else we haven’t thought about, Crosby.”
“Sir?”
“If Luke Bailey isn’t involved with the body,” said Sloan, “why did Wendy Lamport get clobbered last night just because she talked about the wood?”
“Search me,” said Crosby, engaging gear.
“What happened to her wasn’t an accident,” said Sloan with asperity. That at least was a certain thing in an uncertain world.
The detective constable steered the police car away from the kerb. “No.”
“The murderer must have been around, mustn’t he? To have hit her, I mean.” Anything else would smack too much of coincidence.
“Yes, sir.” They were level with the Great Rooden Fire Station now.
“He did that all right, sir.” Their vehicle drew level with the Lamb and Flag car-park next. Wendy Lamport’s little car was still standing there. Orange ribbons marked out the area the forensic people had gone over.
Sloan stared into the pub car-park as they went by. It was funny how they all automatically fell into the way of thinking of all murderers as men, but as the lawyers said the make embraced the female. He had an idea that the one he had been thinking about in the Bible had been female. There was a parallel somewhere that he couldn’t pin down. Perhaps it would come to him if he thought about something else.
“Remind me of all who were there last night,” he said.
“Len Hodge,” said Crosby.
They had exhausted the subject of Len Hodge.
“Paul Hucham.”
“All we know about him,” said Sloan realistically, “is that he can lift a sheep. I saw him doing it.”
“So, presumably, can George Mellot,” said Crosby.
“To say nothing of his brother Tom,” said Sloan. “He’s younger, too.”
“And Luke Bailey,” added Crosby. “He could have been in the car-park without anyone being the wiser. Drunks have a lot of strength.” This was something else he’d learnt early on the beat.
“Spoilt for choice,” said Sloan sourly. “That’s our trouble. At least I don’t see Mrs. Ritchie lifting a sheep. Or anything else for that matter.”
Crosby nodded. “Nor driving a fork-lift tractor. She doesn’t even look the part.”
“All the same, I must say it would have been a help to have had that note she threw on the fire.” People like Martin Ritchie could always disappear if they put their minds to it. The insurance companies knew that.
“What fire?”
“The kitchen fire,” said Sloan absently. There had been several famous cases of disappearance. Usually there was a seven-year wait for inheritance, but at least Andrina Ritchie could carry on as a full partner with the farm.
“There wasn’t a fire in the kitchen,” said Crosby.
Sloan stiffened. “Say that again.”
“There wasn’t a fire in the kitchen,” repeated the constable obediently.
Sloan stared at him. “Are you sure?”
“Dead certain,” insisted the constable, aggrieved. “It was all electric. Everything. Not like Pencombe. There wasn’t a real fire anywhere.”
“Of course! I remember now,” said Sloan softly. “The stream gives them all the power they need for free at Stanestede.” Paul Hucham had told him that, hadn’t he?
When they had been up on the hill near the path from Uppercombe down to Stanestede.
“They have their own generator or something,” said Crosby. “She said so.”
“I do believe,” breathed Sloan, thinking furiously, “that that might be the lie circumstantial.”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Something Touchstone said,” replied Sloan. William Shakespeare had struck the right note as usual.
“Who’s Touchstone?” asked Crosby.
“A clown,” said Sloan crisply. “Crosby, your notebook.”
“Here, sir.”
“Let me see exactly what Andrina Ritchie said to you when you went to Stanestede.”
“Nothing very important, sir. I told you at the time.”
Sloan turned the pages back until he found the transcript. He studied it for a full minute and then said, “You were wrong about that, Crosby.”
“Me, sir?”
“You, Crosby.” There was an old tune that went, “It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.” That went for what Andrina Ritchie had said to Crosby, too. “Read it again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re not going back to Berebury.”
“No, sir?”
“Take the next right turn,” he commanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you can put your foot down.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Crosby joyously.
“I’ve got one or two questions to ask Mrs. Andrina Ritchie.”
“Stone the crows,” said Detective Constable Crosby as he accelerated.
“Let’s look to the lady,” said Sloan more aptly still.
“Sloan,” thundered Superintendent Leeyes down the telephone, “are you out of your mind?”
“No, sir.”
“What has someone in the Bible called Judith got to do with your arresting Andrina Ritchie?”
“Not the Bible exactly, sir. The Apocrypha.”
It was immediately apparent that to the superintendent they were one and the same. He growled dangerously.
“Judith,” explained Sloan hastily, “cut off Holofernes’ head while he was in bed beside her. For the good of her country.”
“Thinking of England, was she?”
“Israel, actually.” He coughed. “I suppose you might call her an early female activist.”
“Sloan, do I have to come to Great Rooden myself to get any sense out of you?”
“No, sir,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll explain. We hadn’t thought a lot about Andrina Ritchie because we didn’t see her humping a headless body down to Pencombe.” In the Apocrypha Judith had carried off Holofernes’ head in a basket and left the body behind.
“Somebody did.”
“Paul Hucham,” said Sloan. “He put it on the roof.”
“Ah …” Leeyes let out a sigh. “An eternal triangle.”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” agreed Sloan. “No one suspected anything because they weren’t seen together. There was no need for anyone to see them because there was a path between the two farms and anyway it’s all very remote up there on the hill.”
Leeyes grunted. “The old, old story …”
“They were very clever.”
“Nearly pulled it off, did they?” That was the police yardstick of a villain’s cunning.
“They were very unlucky,” said Sloan temperately. “The body might not have been found up on that roof for years. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find the head. And without a head and therefore without teeth, when it was found it might not have ever been identified.”
“Especially with a cold trail,” said Leeyes realistically.
“Exactly, sir.” He cleared his throat. “But for that crow dropping the finger and Wendy Lamport finding it they would have got away with murder.”
“She’s come round, by the way,” said Leeyes. “Doesn’t remember a thing after bendin
g down to put the car key in the lock.”
“That will have been Hucham,” said Sloan. “He was in the Lamb and Flag, too. I reckon he saw an opportunity to confuse the issue and took it. In every respect this murder was a very carefully planned affair.” He paused to marshal his own thoughts. “I think it may well have been the decamping of Ivor Harbeton that gave them the idea.”
“Everyone knew about that,” said Leeyes.
“And Paul Hucham and Andrina Ritchie also knew of the link between George Mellot and Mellot’s Furnishings,” said Sloan. “I reckon they decided to take advantage of it.”
“So that if there were any suspicion it fell on the Mellots?”
“Yes, sir. They had to take a chance on the heights being similar, of course, but they didn’t reckon on the body being found anyway.”
“Clever,” mused Leeyes.
“Cold-blooded,” said Sloan. “I reckon they left Martin Ritchie’s car at the market during the night. I don’t know where Harbeton decamped to or where Tom Mellot and his wife have gone, but—”
“Neither do I,” interrupted Leeyes, “but there’s a white Sealyham answering to our description in a kennel at Dover.”
“A few days in France,” concluded Sloan. He wasn’t interested in Tom Mellot any more. He went back to Mrs. Ritchie. “There wasn’t any real reason for the woman to report her husband as missing either,” said Sloan.
“Hucham rang the solicitor for her, I suppose?”
“He only spoke to the secretary,” Sloan reminded him. “He rang at a time when he knew Mr. Puckle would be in court.”
Leeyes said, “Husbands do take off.”
“We ran the usual checks for him,” said Sloan, “but I must say a girl called Beverley had a convincing ring to it. So,” he added ruefully, “did Andrina Ritchie’s attitude.”
“Nearly fooled you, did she, Sloan?”
“Truth will out,” said Sloan sedately. “It emerged when she was talking to Crosby. I’ve just checked.”
“To Crosby?” echoed Leeyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“She consistently referred to her husband in the past tense all the way through the interview. It’s very difficult not to, sir, if you know that someone is dead. Your subconscious takes over.”
“The court doesn’t like psychological stuff,” said Leeyes.
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