“You see, miss,” a voice was saying as if from afar, “this is a very serious business indeed. Something has happened which may or may not have repercussions on the case against you. I can’t say for sure, of course.”
She was aware of his persuasiveness. From where she sat the policemen appeared to be full of honest endeavour, but appearances were deceptive. There was no one better placed than Lucy herself to know this …
“Events,” he said, “have taken a very unhappy turn indeed.”
A word in the English language which used all five vowels in alphabetical order …
“I’m very much afraid that someone else has been killed,” the policeman said.
Five vowels, thought Lucy desperately.
“Someone you know, Miss Durmast.”
Fear clutched at her heart. They were wrong, those clinicians who insisted that that organ should be thought of as a pump. She distinctly felt her heart contract as he spoke. Pumps didn’t change gear when alarmed. Her eyes asked the question that her tongue could not. Literally could not, now. It clove to her palate, too dry to move.
“Someone from Braffle Episcopi,” said Sloan.
Five vowels in the right order.
The answer suddenly welled up from her memory with the same apparent illogicality as a fact summoned up by computer from the depths of an impersonal machine. She suddenly thought how equally unlikely both storage and retrieval systems looked—brain and software. Human and mechanical. There wasn’t much to choose between them as improbable sources of recorded information.
Five vowels in the right order occurred in the word “facetious.”
She had to make herself turn her head and focus on what Detective Inspector Sloan was saying.
“Hortense Fablon, Mrs. Allsworthy’s au pair, was killed last night.”
There was, the policemen discovered, yet another variation on human communication. It fell awkwardly between the verbal and the non-verbal but whose meaning was as clear as any in either category.
Lucy Durmast burst into tears.
“Where to?” asked Crosby, as the gates of H. M. Prison Cottingham Grange clanged behind them and they were back in the outside uncloistered world.
“Headquarters,” said Detective Inspector Sloan, “to collect a warrant.”
“Right, sir.”
“Then out to Braffle Episcopi again.”
Crosby put his foot down on the accelerator.
“There’s no hurry,” said Sloan. “Allsworthy won’t run away. That sort doesn’t. He’ll face the music, all right. And his wife’ll stand by him. That sort always does. Besides, I want to think …”
He shut his eyes.
That wasn’t so much as an aid to thought as an attempt as determined as that of Lucy Durmast’s to exclude the world. If he kept them open he would have to devote the journey to wishing he had led a better life and there wasn’t time for that now. With Crosby at the wheel, self-preservation demanded muscles braced for whatever was to come. He had duties that shouldn’t be subsumed by such mental and physical distraction …
He would read Dr. Dabbe’s report, of course, before he went out to Braffle Episcopi.
He’d give John Allsworthy every chance to explain why he had been so long in Calleford looking for Hortense Fablon.
And so late in reporting her missing to the police.
And being so put out by the finding of her scarf in his car.
For all he knew, droit de seigneur was something the French girl understood very well. Perhaps Dr. Dabbe would be able to give him the answer to that too. The pathologist’s phraseology would be different but his meaning undeniably clear.
He opened his eyes briefly and shut them again.
The words droit de seigneur came from the French. Hortense would have known what they mean all right. For all he knew there was a lord of the manor at St. Amand-sur-Nesque who, like John Allsworthy, owned the best house and most of the land and who was accustomed to having his way with young girls working in the house …
He opened his eyes again and this time he kept them open. “You might remember, Crosby, that overtaking leads to undertaking.”
“Well?” barked Leeyes as they walked into his office at Berebury Police Station.
“No joy from Lucy Durmast, sir.”
“She wouldn’t tell you anything about this fellow Allsworthy and the French girl then?”
“She wouldn’t tell me anything full stop, sir,” said Sloan.
“Not even,” said Leeyes richly, “that they were just good friends?”
“She cried,” reported Sloan in a constrained way, “but she didn’t say anything.”
Leeyes was professionally proof against tears. He was strong on circumstantial evidence though. “This scarf, Sloan …”
“Hortense Fablon’s,” said Sloan.
“In his car?”
“Indubitably,” affirmed Sloan. “The wife said the French girl had missed it the day before.”
“Wives,” said Leeyes darkly, “will say anything.”
“Yes, sir. He had given the girl a lift a few days earlier into Edsway. There’s a chemist’s there.”
“Two crimes of passion in one village,” mused Leeyes, “seem a bit much, all the same …” He was interrupted by the sudden shrill of the telephone on his desk. “Yes?” he said abruptly into the receiver. “I thought I said I wasn’t to be disturbed. What’s that?” His voice rose. “What did you say? Say it again!” he commanded, and then “Is he sure? What was he doing? Where? When?” There was a pause, then the Superintendent slammed the receiver down. “That was a report of a message from that man Bolsover from Calleford.”
“Yes?”
“He just went out to a Chinese takeaway …”
“And?”
“He’s quite sure he saw Prince Aturu in the High Street there a few minutes ago.”
SEVENTEEN
Spiritus—Spirits
When he reviewed the case of Regina versus Lucy Mirabel Durmast afterwards, Detective Inspector Sloan was inclined to indicate among the sympathetic privacy of his peers that the search for Prince Aturu of Dlasa was almost the most anxiety-provoking part of the whole affair.
Looking for a man for whom no really accurate description had been available was bad enough: circumventing a humourous attempt to give the exercise the code name “Liquorice Allsorts” had been blood-chilling in its public relations implications. Before Superintendent Leeyes got to hear about it, Sloan settled with a neat sense of history for “Operation Black Prince” instead.
A hastily summoned Dr. Adam Chelde came up with some academic words about Prince Aturu such as “dolicocephalic” which were no doubt accurate but scarcely helpful.
“What’s that?” was Detective Constable Crosby’s immediate reaction. “Never heard of it.”
Dr. Chelde came from a background where it was perfectly proper to proclaim one’s ignorance. “Not your field, of course, Officer,” he said generously. “It means long-headed.”
Ronald Bolsover, when consulted, had been vaguer. “Tall and black. Looked as if he would have made an athlete, I shouldn’t wonder. Very African, anyway.”
Since the number of races in Africa was legion, this was not really very constructive.
James Jeavington, the civil servant at the Ministry for Overseas Development, had spoken about the man’s hair. “Bound to have been crinkly,” he said. “All Dlasians have short crinkly hair.”
Asked about the shape of Dlasian heads, he was more graphic than the Dean of Cremond had been. “Pear-drop,” he said phytomorphologically.
Kenneth Durmast’s three flat-mates had been the least observant of all.
“Marvellous teeth,” said Alan Marshall who had suffered young at the dentist’s hands.
“A rich, plummy sort of voice,” said Colin Jervis, who was the one who worked in the bank. Sloan put the association between money and intonation (if there was one) to the back of his mind for future examination.
A general alert had accordingly gone out to all police divisions in Calleshire to seek and detain anyone answering to the composite description of Prince Aturu. The trawl netted a veritable anthropologist’s dream.
Two West Indians who worked in Calleford Hospital were positively affronted at being mistaken for Dlasian, a country for which they had no reverence at all. A merchant seaman from Mhlamaland, whose people had been hereditary enemies of the Dlasians for generations, became very combative and showed every sign of becoming a hereditary enemy of the Calleshire County Constabulary as well.
A highly civilised merchant from Bengal with commercial business to execute in Luston, asked by a police sergeant where he was going, raised his hat and replied, “Almstone, sir,” adding with Olde Worlde courtesy to the officer, “and you?”
A newly arrived visiting professor of physics from Alabama, come to take up the Ornum Fellowships at the University of Calleshire, rather sadly recast his first letter home that evening, while the deepest forebodings of a South American tourist were confirmed by a simple enquiry about where he had come from made by a police constable in Berebury.
The greatest confusion of all arose during an interview with a strapping youth of the darkest of skins, seen running towards Calleford railway station. Asked from whence he had come, he said in the broadest of accents, “Lancashire.” Asked where he had been born, he gave the same reply. Asked his nationality he said “British.” He demanded rather pugnaciously to see the enquiring officer’s credentials and started to talk about writs of habeas corpus, both of which the policeman concerned treated as evidence of long residence in the United Kingdom.
“British is best,” the young man grinned, offering to race the policeman to the railway station, “but Black British is better.”
When the nature of the enquiry was explained to him, he remarked ironically, “You have got trouble at t’mill, haven’t you, man?” and sped on his way.
Detective Inspector Sloan, whose personal view was that what really divided mankind irrespective of everything else was a preference for thick or thin gravy, eviscerated all the reports with great speed and established one essential fact.
Of Prince Aturu of Dlasa there was not a single sign anywhere in the county of Calleshire.
William Shakespeare, decided Detective Inspector Sloan, had been quite wrong about sleep knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care. The Bard might, of course, have been talking about real sleep. Fitful dozes through the night had done nothing for Sloan.
Late late night thoughts had been succeeded by early early thoughts without a conscious distinction between the two and morning had broken without enlightenment.
Whoever it had been, he thought sourly, as he plastered his face with shaving cream, who had written about bright new day had never been faced with untangling three mysteries that might or might not have been connected but that were certainly plaited together: the murder of Kenneth Carline, the disruption of the tunnel-opening ceremony by anti-nuclear protesters, and the unlawful killing of Hortense Fablon.
It was an exceedingly unholy trinity.
The three balls of the Medici didn’t have anything on it.
Perm any two, as the punters said.
Or three.
Or none.
The smell of bacon being fried drifted upstairs but did not cheer him.
Even the classic question in detection of “Who benefits?” didn’t help.
Answer came there none to that.
A diligent Inspector Porritt had researched Kenneth Carline’s background to establish beyond any doubt that no one benefited financially by his death.
It was highly unlikely that anyone gained from Hortense Fablon’s death either.
But why two murders?
Unbidden, as philosophers have found is the way while shaving, Lady Bracknell’s immortal lines came into his mind. “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
He frowned. He’d had that thought before recently but in a different connection.
The aroma of percolating coffee pursued the smell of fried bacon up the stairs while he tried to pin down in his mind when and why he’d thought it before.
Had it been yesterday or was it the day before when something else had struck him briefly in the same way?
He stared unseeingly into the mirror while he searched his memory. It had been something to do with something about Kenneth Durmast and Cecelia Allsworthy had said it … that much he did remember.
“Breakfast,” called out Margaret Sloan.
He didn’t hear her.
It had come back to him what it was that Cecelia Allsworthy had said that had provoked the quotation the first time.
Had he been a fisherman, Sloan would have placed the moment as that when the float on the surface of the water first twitched.
As any really experienced angler could have told him he was still a long way from having his fish caught, landed and safely in the keep net.
Detective Constable Crosby was waiting for him at the Police Station when Sloan arrived.
“What I’m looking for,” said the Detective Inspector trenchantly, “is a hook …”
“Yes, sir.”
“A line.”
“Yes, sir.”
“… and a sinker,” finished Sloan. He had walked to work and not wasted the time.
“What about a car, sir?” enquired Crosby seriously. He understood about cars.
“Not just yet, Crosby, thank you. Presently, perhaps. We’ve got a lot to do first. Will you ask Inspector Harpe in Traffic Division if he could spare me a minute? And get someone to bring Mrs. Melissa Wainwright in to the station.” He paused. “Tell her that she will be helping the police with their enquiries. Literally.” He halted. “No, that won’t do. We don’t want a demonstration outside the police station. Tell her we should be most obliged for her help and see if that does the trick.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll have that report about the Rugby match that you had yesterday, too.”
Crosby reached for a file. “Anything else, sir?”
“A copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare would be a help. There’s something in Hamlet I want to check.”
“Yes, sir,” said Crosby stolidly. “What about a warrant for John Allsworthy for murder?”
“Certainly not,” said Detective Inspector Sloan briskly. “He didn’t do it.”
The telephone line between Berebury Police Station and the office of the Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital crackled as the switchboard connected Dr. Dabbe.
“That you, Sloan? Good. I’ve got my report all ready for you.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” There must be a saving grace, decided Sloan, to every murder. Like a professional conjuror, a murderer had to perform as in one of those stage acts that involved keeping an ever-increasing number of oranges in the air at the same time. Sooner or later he must make a mistake.
He—the murderer, that is—had only had the one orange to begin with: a dead engineer. To that had been added another orange—poison—and then a third: an accused girl who had stayed obdurately silent. They had to be kept in the air while the conjuror picked up another orange from his stage table. All the anomalies of a nuclear demonstration joined the other oranges in the air—an unlocked gate, an unguarded key and a mysterious telephone call said to have come from Durmast’s.
And while the murderer’s prestidigitatory skill was still dazzling the audience, the Dlasian oranges had to be worked in—a dissident, disappearing Prince, the new town at Mgongwala and an absent company chairman and father.
It was a dead French girl—the last orange—that had proved too much for a performer hoping that the quickness of the hand would deceive the eye, and the whole act had tumbled to the
ground, coming to an ignominious end and scattering oranges everywhere …
“The murder of Hortense Fablon,” the doctor was saying, “was—er—quite straightforward.”
Detective Inspector Sloan pulled his notebook a little nearer. “No frills?”
“None,” said the doctor. “Beyond any doubt death was caused by manual strangulation.”
“The murderer wouldn’t have had time to plan anything too elaborate,” said Sloan. He knew that now.
“Quite so,” rejoined the pathologist. “However, in view of what you have suggested to me in connection with an earlier death, I am having various organs analysed for traces of hyoscine.”
“You never know with defence counsel,” said Sloan.
“No more you do,” said Dabbe warmly.
“And it can’t do any harm,” Sloan rationalised the matter to himself.
“Even gold has to go through the assayer’s fire,” said the pathologist obliquely.
“True,” nodded Sloan.
“As you know, there is absolutely no clinical evidence to point to the presence of any noxious substance in the body of the deceased. Qualitative assay should confirm this.”
“I’m quite sure she wasn’t poisoned,” said Sloan, “but it’s as well to—er—leave no stone unturned.” He didn’t really want to know to which of the poor girl’s internal organs that cliché referred, and he quickly got back to a matter that he really did need to know. “Doctor, tell me something …”
“À votre service,” said the pathologist with macabre appositeness.
“There is, of course, nothing to suggest that Hortense Fablon had been poisoned, but equally there is no doubt at all that Kenneth Durmast was.”
“None,” said Dr. Dabbe promptly. “My colleague Dr. Bressingham demonstrated that Durmast died from an overdose of hyoscine.”
“What Inspector Porritt, my colleague, was not able to prove,” said Sloan neatly, “was how the murderer got the poison into the victim.”
A Dead Liberty Page 18