“Something’s up,” observed Crosby.
“Something big,” concluded Sloan. “That’s the assistant chief constable’s car over there.”
To say that Superintendent Leeyes was glad to see the two officers was something of an understatement. “There you are at last, Sloan,” he barked. “You can forget the Carline murder for a while. We’ve got one on our own patch.”
“Sir?”
“Body found in a ditch off the Calleford road,” he said tersely. “About half an hour ago. Get out there now before anyone else mucks anything about …”
“Who?”
“All I know,” snapped Leeyes whom sudden death made especially irritable, “is that the victim is young and female.”
Sloan nodded sadly. Victims usually were young and female.
“She hasn’t been identified yet,” Leeyes surged on. “They’re waiting until Dr. Dabbe gets there before they touch anything.”
It did not occur to Sloan to admonish Crosby about his speed on the journey out of Berebury to a spot just outside the town on the Calleford road and it was in record time that they slid to a halt behind the car belonging to Dr. Dabbe, Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital.
The doctor was down in the ditch, being very careful indeed about where he put his feet. Someone had rigged up a makeshift duckboard for him, but it didn’t reach quite far enough.
The body was lying face down in a mixture of grass and water, but Detective Inspector Sloan could see all he needed to from where he stood. He needed neither to go nearer nor to see the girl’s face to make an identification: a mottled green skirt and a burgundy-coloured blouse told him all he needed to know. He’d been looking at those very same clothes only yesterday afternoon.
He felt suddenly very tired and disheartened as he called down to Dr. Dabbe, “I don’t know her surname, Doctor, but I’m very much afraid that her Christian name is Hortense. She’s French …”
FIFTEEN
Collutoria—Mouth-washes
“I don’t like it, Sloan,” snapped Superintendent Leeyes. “I don’t like it at all.”
“No, sir,” said Sloan. That reaction, at least, had been predictable.
“The Allsworthys’ au pair! You’re quite sure, aren’t you, Sloan?”
“Quite sure, sir.”
“She’s dead, of course?”
“No doubt about it, sir, I’m afraid.” Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t like the murder of Hortense either. He didn’t like murder at any time—if a policeman did he should be out of the force—but this one had implications far beyond the ordinary …
“How?” barked the superintendent.
“Probably manual strangulation, Dr. Dabbe thinks.” Of all lethal weapons two human hands left almost the least trace of all.
“When?”
“Dr. Dabbe said it was too soon for him to say.” Sloan granted that a damp ditch wasn’t the easiest setting in which a consultant pathologist could exercise his professional judgement and was personally prepared to await a calculated answer to that question.
The superintendent drummed his fingers on his desk. “If she’s from Braffle Episcopi,” he growled, “why does her body turn up beside the main road between Calleford and Berebury?”
It was Inspector Harpe who had supplied Sloan with the answer to that question. Happy Harry and the men of Traffic Division had at once sped out to the spot where the murder victim had been found, in an endeavour both to keep the traffic moving and to let those with duties at the scene have somewhere to park their vehicles. Police photographers—let alone forensic pathologists—did not take kindly to using shanks’ pony.
Sloan drew breath and tried to convey the information as cogently as he could to his superior officer. He hadn’t really got time for this sort of dialogue. “There’s a really long natural curve on the road there, sir, which has got a good enough run into it at each end for someone parked where it bends most of all to have time to punt a body into the ditch with the driver’s own car giving the maximum cover. If the road was clear both ways before you started you’d have time.”
Leeyes grunted.
“There’s even a bit of a lay-by there …”
“And had she been having a bit of a lay-by, too?” enquired Leeyes sardonically. “Or hasn’t the doctor got round to that yet?”
“Dr. Dabbe has promised us a full report as soon as possible,” responded Sloan with a certain reserve. One thing he could be sure about was that the doctor’s observations, when they did come, would be couched in medical Latin and not in either slang or euphemism.
“So,” deduced Leeyes, “it’s either a local man or someone with a good eye for the country.”
“It looks very much like it, sir.” Sloan had hardly had time to think that through properly yet either. It was much too soon for detailed conclusions of any sort.
“Why not go into a wood and put the body somewhere where it isn’t likely to be found so soon?” demanded Leeyes. “Instead of just leaving it in a ditch …”
“Everyone knows that tyres leave tracks,” responded Sloan with only half his mind. “They learn it at play school. Perhaps whoever killed her wasn’t strong enough to carry her far. Perhaps her disappearance would amount to much the same thing as her murder.” He would be going over to Braffle Episcopi just as soon as he could.
The superintendent drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. “I’m afraid there’s something going on that we don’t know about.”
“Several things,” interjected Sloan swiftly.
“What’s that? Oh yes, of course,” grunted Leeyes. “Naturally. Unless, of course, this was just an ordinary pick-up that went wrong.”
“Bit of a coincidence if it was, sir,” said Sloan. “Besides, it would be too much to hope for.” On second thoughts he wasn’t quite sure that he really meant that exactly.
It was just that that sort of coincidence—if such it were—would lift some of the burden of regret and responsibility from police shoulders—not all of it, of course—but life—alas—wasn’t like that.
Nor was death.
Superintendent Leeyes brought his eyebrows together in a fierce glare. “Puts a new light on the Carline case if it isn’t a coincidence, doesn’t it, Sloan?” he said to his subordinate across the desk.
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“Things not being quite what they seemed,” said Leeyes heavily.
Sloan had hardly begun to consider—he hadn’t had time to think about—the new vistas opened up by the murder of the Allsworthys’ French au pair girl as they related to the case of the Crown versus Lucy Mirabel Durmast. At sight they seemed almost limitless.
“Now that we know who the victim is,” went on Leeyes, “I can confirm for what it is worth that she had been reported missing to the Calleford Police.” The superintendent waved a flimsy piece of paper at Sloan. “By the Allsworthys at Braffle Episcopi, late last night when their French au pair girl, Hortense Fablon, didn’t come home on the last bus or telephone to say what had happened to her.”
“I’ll be getting over there just as soon as I leave here, sir,” Sloan responded to the sentiment rather than the song, “and then I’ve got to meet Dr. Dabbe at the mortuary.”
“Keep me in the picture.” The superintendent nodded jerkily. “I can only call this a most unexpected development.”
Detective Constable Crosby had described it as a proper turn-up for the book, but that had been in private.
“But why Hortense?” cried Mrs. Allsworthy.
“We don’t know yet, madam.”
The Cecelia Allsworthy to whom Detective Inspector Sloan was speaking was neither the serene wife of the lord of the manor nor an artist struggling for mastery over her chosen medium. She was a very deeply upset young woman trying without success to control her tears.
“And who would want to kill Hortense anyway?” she asked for the hundredth time.
“We don’t know, madam,” said Sloan s
eriously, “but someone did and we shall do our best to find out who it was.”
“There is no possibility, then, of her death being an accident?” asked John Allsworthy. He was sitting by his wife’s side, one arm round her shoulders.
“None,” said Sloan shortly. He hadn’t had Dr. Dabbe’s full report yet but with a few well-chosen observations the pathologist had excluded suicide, accident and natural causes.
Which left only murder.
“Poor, poor Hortense,” said Cecelia. “She was only having an evening out with a friend.”
John Allsworthy expanded on this for the policemen’s benefit. “Hortense always went into Calleford on Thursday evenings …”
Sloan got out his notebook with relief. It was facts that caught murderers in the long run. “How?”
“The six o’clock bus from Braffle Episcopi.” Cecelia’s husband had a pleasant, rather deep voice. “Cecelia and I coped with the twins ourselves and then had supper together.” He tightened his grip on his wife’s arm. “It’s something I rather look forward to.”
“Quite so.” Detective Inspector Sloan read the message that John Allsworthy was trying to convey loud and clear.
“Hortense had something to eat before she left,” put in Cecelia anxiously. “She didn’t go out hungry or anything.”
Sloan nodded. But, like the sun-tanned invalid whose last holiday had done him good before he died, it hadn’t saved her.
“I mean,” hastened on Cecelia Allsworthy, “she didn’t need to go out with anyone for a meal,” her voice fell away “or anything …”
“I understand, madam,” he cleared his throat. “What did she go into Calleford for?”
“The Film Society,” said Cecelia Allsworthy. “They have showings of foreign films there, and whenever there was a French one on she and her friend Clémence would go. They’re fellow exiles.”
“I see.”
“They were both thoroughly homesick,” said Cecelia. “Clémence is with some people who live in Luston and she and Hortense met up as often as they could at the Film Society.”
“And then?” enquired Sloan.
“They caught their respective buses home. The last ones, of course.”
“The last bus for Luston must leave before the last one this way,” said Sloan, “because of its being so much further away.”
“That’s right,” agreed Cecelia. “Clémence always has a scramble to catch it and Hortense a bit of a wait for hers.”
“So,” said Sloan, “if Clémence caught the Luston bus all right there should have been no possibility of Hortense having missed hers.”
“No, none, Inspector. That’s what worried us from the beginning.”
“And did—er—Clémence catch her bus?” enquired Sloan.
“Oh yes.” Mrs. Allsworthy nodded vigorously. “The first thing we did when Hortense didn’t come in off the last bus was to telephone the people Clémence is staying with.”
“And?”
“Clémence had got back there without any problems at her usual time.” Now that Cecelia had something definite to say, her voice steadied. “Clémence said she’d left Hortense at the bus station in the usual way.”
“And then?” asked Sloan.
John Allsworthy stirred and took up the tale. “We waited a little while in case she telephoned or came in. At first we thought she might have got a lift from someone coming this way or something.”
Sloan nodded. “And after that?”
“I got the car out and went into Calleford in case she was still hanging about looking for a taxi.”
“We were a bit worried in case she’d started to walk and been picked up.” Cecelia turned a distraught face towards the detective inspector and said tremulously, “That’s what must have happened, isn’t it?”
“It’s too soon to say,” said Sloan. He turned back to John Allsworthy. “What did you do after that, sir?”
“I came back home,” he said, “and telephoned the police to report her missing.”
“Did you see or talk to anyone while you were out?”
He shook his head. “Not a soul.”
“When did you get back?”
John Allsworthy shot a quick glance at his wife. “I’m not sure. I must have been gone well over an hour, mustn’t I?”
“Nearly two, darling,” said Cecelia Allsworthy in a strained voice. “It seemed ages, I know. I couldn’t sleep.”
“And you telephoned the police, sir, as soon as you got back?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “We stood in the kitchen for a minute or two talking about what to do next.”
“I had some coffee on the stove,” said Cecelia, a quaver in her voice, “for three.”
The telephone call to the Calleford Police was a fixed point in Detective Inspector Sloan’s timetable of the murder of Hortense Fablon. “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to identify her officially—in the absence of her parents.”
Allsworthy squared his shoulders. “Of course, Inspector.”
“There’s one other thing, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“Might we see your car, please?”
“Mine?” John Allsworthy looked startled and then collected himself. “Why, yes, of course.”
“John’s car?” Cecelia Allsworthy stared. “What do you want to look at John’s car for?” She looked from one policeman to the other. “My God, Inspector, you don’t think …”
“Think what?” asked Sloan mildly.
There was no answer. A sobbing Cecelia Allsworthy had buried her head in her husband’s jacket.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” said Dr. Dabbe hospitably, waving an arm round the post-mortem laboratory. “Do come in. Standing room only though, I’m afraid.”
Detective Inspector Sloan edged his way into the crowded mortuary, followed by Detective Constable Crosby. He nodded to the Scenes of Crime Officer and a new young fingerprint man as he did so. The police photographers, Williams and his assistant, Dyson, were old colleagues and greeted him as he advanced.
“We’ve done all the outdoor stuff, Inspector,” said Williams.
“We’ve been on a course,” said Dyson, patting a new and different camera with something like affection. “Ever so clever we are now with our pictures.”
“Video,” explained Williams. “All the rage at post-mortems these days.”
“The wonders of modern science,” said Sloan suitably impressed, “will never cease.”
“Worth a bit on the Saturday night market, this sort of video,” said Dyson.
Crosby was quite scornful. “Dull stuff compared with what you can hire,” he said.
“We’ll have to make sure you don’t flog ’em afterwards,” said Sloan genially, “even if it is pretty tame by Crosby’s standards.”
“Crown copyright,” said Williams without heat, “more’s the pity.”
“Doesn’t save any paperwork,” said Dr. Dabbe. “That’s one thing you can all be quite sure about. Burns, my gown please …”
The pathologist’s assistant, a perennially silent man, moved forward at once and tied the strings of the doctor’s green operating gown behind him.
“Burns,” continued Dr. Dabbe, “these officers are particularly interested in the subject’s clothes.”
“Nothing’s been touched, Doctor. Everything’s still in the bag.”
As Sloan watched, the pathologist’s assistant slide a large sealed black plastic bag onto the mortuary equivalent of an operating theatre table he wished that the same could be said for the murderer of Hortense Fablon.
And of Kenneth Carline?
If they were one and the same, then there was one person who hadn’t—who couldn’t have—killed the French girl because she was safe and sound in H. M. Prison Cottingham Grange. That had been checked. An alert Governor had treated their query very seriously indeed but had come back to them with great celerity to say that a roll call had accounted for everyone including Durmast, Lucy Mirabel.
>
“The subject,” intoned Burns lugubriously, “has been formally identified by John Allsworthy, Esquire, of the Manor House, Braffle Episcopi, as that of Hortense Marie Fablon of St. Amand-sur-Nesque, Département Congre in Provence, France.”
Allsworthy hadn’t enjoyed doing it.
Detective Inspector Sloan knew that. He had stayed with Allsworthy while he did so for reasons of his own. And had noted how shaken the man had been. But not as disturbed as he had been by the discovery by the two detectives of Hortense Fablon’s scarf in his car. Shocked to his wattles he had been by that and Sloan and Crosby had been there to witness his discomfiture and to listen to his stammered insistence that it must have been there for days.
“‘Mademoiselle from Armentières,’” hummed Dr. Dabbe irreverently, “‘hasn’t been kissed for forty years.’”
“Parlez-vous,” said Williams entering into the spirit of things.
“It’s a scarf we’re looking for,” said Sloan.
“No scarf,” said Burns briefly.
“Jacket, skirt and blouse,” agreed the pathologist, “but no scarf.”
“Ah.”
“It wasn’t lying in the field or anything,” said the Scenes of Crime Officer. “The boys did a quick search before we left and they would have noticed a scarf. They’re going over it again, of course,” he added hastily, “in case they’ve missed anything.”
“And it wasn’t used to throttle her,” said Dr. Dabbe. “There’s no sign of a ligature of any sort having been used. It’s not that sort of engorgement …”
Sloan noticed Detective Constable Crosby inch his way a little farther away from the centre of the scene. Crosby didn’t like it when the pathologist used the sort of words that conjured up the thought of greater horror to come. Sloan was prepared to bet that the constable would have his back to the wall of the post-mortem theatre—literally—in no time at all.
And his eyes closed soon after.
“The rest of the clothing does not appear to have been disturbed,” said Dr. Dabbe.
“It might have been someone she knew and trusted,” said Sloan reluctantly.
A Dead Liberty Page 16