“As I said before,” repeated the doctor gravely, “there are more ways than one of killing a canary.”
“What I want to know,” said Sloan, “if one particular way would do the trick.”
“I’m all ears,” said the pathologist.
“Just so,” said Sloan, embarking on a theory that might have held water for the murder of Gonzago too.
“Are you quite sure, Sloan?” growled Superintendent Leeyes.
“Not yet, sir, but I’ve asked Inspector Harpe to do some checking for me and we’re trying to find a man called Hirst who lives in Luston.”
“And who’s he?” Leeyes wanted to know.
“A member of the Luston Rugby Club.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Sloan,” Leeyes said irritably.
“I think,” replied Detective Inspector Sloan, “that we’re very near to uncovering the biggest fraud Calleshire has ever known.”
Leeyes grunted. He had always insisted that the chairman of the Watch Committee deserved that particular designation. “You haven’t been putting two and two together and making five, have you?”
“I’ve just been looking at the facts, sir,” Sloan said. People used the word “kaleidoscope” so often and so loosely that its real meaning got forgotten. Sloan could still remember the wonder of first looking down the dark tube to the mirror at the other end with the fragments of coloured silver paper lying in one pattern—and giving the whole thing a jerk that produced a completely different pattern. The constituents were exactly the same—the tube was sealed, which proved it—but the total picture changed in an instant. The facts of the murder of Kenneth Carline had been there all the time. It had taken a tug at a mental kaleidoscope though to rearrange them in a formation that now made sense.
“It’s evidence you’ll need,” said Leeyes unhelpfully.
“It was something that Crosby said about the sort of evidence we needed that helped to put me on the right lines,” said Sloan.
“Crosby?” echoed Leeyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“He said what we needed was concrete evidence, sir, and I think that’s what we’ll be getting.” Sloan tapped his notebook. “We’re also turning up a report on a fatal road traffic accident in South Humberside something like eighteen months ago.”
“Why?” grunted Leeyes.
“Kenneth Carline’s predecessor died there in one.” Sloan coughed. “We now have reason to believe that the death might not have been an accident.” Messrs. William Durmast had lost not one young structural engineer but two. And in spite of what Lady Bracknell had said it wasn’t due to carelessness but murder.
“What about this fellow that you can’t find?” asked Leeyes. “Prince Monalulu.”
“Aturu,” Sloan corrected him. He had never met Prince Aturu but he was quite sure that the son of King Thabile III would never don feathers and go round a race course shouting “I gotta horse.”
“Him,” said Leeyes.
“I don’t think he comes into the picture,” said Sloan.
“What!”
“Oh, he was a friend of Kenneth Carline’s all right and very caught up in Dlasian politics.”
“And so …”
“And so,” said Sloan, “he’s gone to New York to see the United Nations.”
Leeyes rolled his eyes wordlessly. “And the revenge token?”
“An artifact copied from something in the Greatorex Museum. We’ve checked with the curator. Apparently William Durmast presented them with the original the last time he was home.”
“Do you mean to stand there and tell me that Dlasa doesn’t come into this at all?”
Sloan frowned. “It’s not as simple as that, sir. Perhaps I’d better explain.”
“I think you had,” said Superintendent Leeyes heavily. “Tell me …”
He sat back in his chair and listened with close attention to what Sloan said.
Presently he grunted “You’re taking a warrant, aren’t you, Sloan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We don’t want any slip-ups at this stage.”
“No, sir.” Sloan was cheered by the superintendent’s use of the plural of majesty. It was always a good sign.
“At home?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so.” Sloan coughed. “I had the scene of the crime in mind.”
EIGHTEEN
Solvellae—Solution-tablets
“How could Kenneth Carline possibly have been murdered at work, Inspector?” stammered Cecelia Allsworthy.
If by any stretch of the imagination the arrest of the murderer of Kenneth Carline and Hortense Fablon had been the subject of a stage play, the time of this, the Third Act so to speak, could have been accurately described as “Later the same day.” Only it seemed infinitely longer ago than this morning since Sloan had shaved, applying not only a simple blade but Occam’s Razor as well.
“I just don’t understand,” said Cecelia. She was still shaken and unsure of herself.
The action that had begun that morning with a train of thought in front of a bathroom mirror had reached its apotheosis in the hand-cuffing of Ronald Bolsover in the offices of William Durmast in the Rushmarket in Calleford. The tragedy wasn’t going to be quite over within the Aristotelian unity of one revolution of the sun, although evening had found Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby sitting round the kitchen table at the Manor House at Braffle Episcopi talking to both Allsworthys.
“And why was Kenneth murdered?” Cecelia Allsworthy asked.
“It was when we started to wonder why that we found out how,” said Sloan enigmatically. He was keeping one eye on the kitchen range. Cecelia Allsworthy had stood a vast saucepan of home-made soup on the hottest part and in his view wasn’t giving it the attention it needed. Both policemen were hungry and Sloan didn’t want the soup to boil over.
“But you’ve already said that everyone could see everything that Ronald Bolsover did in his office.” John Allsworthy leaned forward, his eye bright with interest. “The walls are glass, aren’t they?”
“That was the beauty of it,” said Sloan, “and that was what gave us the clue in the end.”
“What was?”
“The dumb show,” said Sloan. “Like in Hamlet.”
Cecelia Allsworthy raised a wan face, light dawning. “Ah, I think I know now … the play within the play.”
“Before their very eyes,” said Detective Constable Crosby. “Clever, wasn’t it?”
“Everyone seeing what was going on,” said Sloan, “but not understanding.”
“I still don’t understand,” said John Allsworthy firmly. “And I should like to be told. What exactly was going on?”
“Fraud, mostly,” said Sloan, “and when Kenneth Carline—and his predecessor, poor chap—tumbled to it, murder as well.”
“With the whole office watching?”
Sloan nodded.
“How?” demanded Allsworthy.
“When Carline got to the office on the fatal Monday morning he was in pretty bad shape—bruised and battered and so forth.” Sloan began his narrative with the day of the murder.
“That was the effects of the Rugby match on the Saturday,” said John Allsworthy. “Everyone knew that.”
“What they didn’t know,” said Sloan, unperturbed, “was that a man in the opposing team had undertaken to tackle Kenneth Carline at every opportunity. He thought he was doing it for a bet.”
“But he wasn’t?” asked Cecelia.
“He was preparing the ground.”
“What for?”
“Murder,” said Sloan succinctly, “by a very clever man.”
“But how?” insisted Allsworthy. “With everyone looking on.”
“By the application,” said Sloan steadily, “of a piece of sticking plaster behind the deceased’s ear.”
“That couldn’t have killed,” said Allsworthy.
“No,” agreed Sloan, “but the hyoscine impregnated in it did. The sticking pla
ster had been doctored by Bolsover.” It was funny how the word “doctored” had two meanings—one good and one bad. “Quite a lot of drugs can be administered transdermally.”
“Through the skin,” translated Detective Constable Crosby, who had had to have the concept explained to him very carefully.
“Angina pectoris,” expounded Sloan, “can be treated now by sticking a specially prepared self-adhesive patch on the skin which delivers a constant dose of glyceryl trinitrate to the patient.”
“Ah …” Cecelia Allsworthy let out a long sigh.
“And American doctors quite often prescribe drugs in this way for travel sickness.”
“Bolsover went to the States sometimes on business,” said John Allsworthy.
His wife frowned. “You know, my grandmother used to talk about belladonna plasters when she was young …”
“Out of fashion,” said Sloan, “these days but Dr. Dabbe tells me that there were occasional poisonings from them too.” Actually the pathologist had used the ominous expression “recorded in the literature” and was going to send to the library.
“So,” said John Allsworthy, “Bolsover stuck it on and sent Kenneth off to have lunch with Lucy?”
“That’s right,” said Sloan. “She was almost bound to invite him really in the circumstances and it was beautifully timed for the hyoscine to work after Carline’s meal with someone who might be suspect. Bolsover took good care not to be there himself, and the fact that Lucy gave him chili con carne was just luck.”
“Most Monday lunches are made-up dishes,” said Cecelia sagely, “especially ones at short notice.”
“The car accident,” said Sloan resuming his saga, “helped to delay diagnosis and treatment, but the real object of the exercise was to make sure that Carline wasn’t there for the final paperwork on the tunnel. And,” he added, “to retrieve William Durmast’s copy of the tunnel plans from his study.”
“What has the tunnel got to do with it?” asked Cecelia.
“Everything,” said Sloan. He coughed. “Excuse me, Mrs. Allsworthy, but I think that the soup might be about to boil over.”
There was a concerted dive for the stove and the soup was rescued in the nick of time. John Allsworthy applied himself to cutting heroic-sized chunks of home-made bread and Cecelia came out of an old-fashioned larder with a whole ripe Stilton cheese and a bowl of apples.
“Will this do for everybody?” she asked anxiously. “I … we haven’t felt like cooking properly since … since … since Hortense …” Her voice quavered and she fell silent.
“We don’t really know where Hortense comes into all this, Inspector,” said John Allsworthy. “If she does, that is.”
“I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that, sir. She comes in all right.” Allsworthy had accepted with dignity the return of his car and the news that he was no longer a suspect.
Cecelia looked up, her face still drawn and anxious. She clearly didn’t trust herself to speak.
“I think we must know a little more, Inspector,” said John Allsworthy quietly. “Her parents are on their way here now …”
“One of the great difficulties that highly successful fraudsters have,” began Sloan a trifle pedantically, “is concealing the proceeds of their crime.”
“Money talks,” observed Crosby to the world at large, “in more ways than one.”
“When we looked for the signs of great wealth in the Bolsover and Durmast families we couldn’t spot them,” continued Sloan. “William Durmast and his daughter were living in just the style we would have expected, and although Bolsover and his wife both have very expensive hobbies …”
Cecelia looked up. “Oh?”
“He has a large heated greenhouse with exotic plants in it and she collects Bow china.”
“I’d forgotten that.”
“They nevertheless live in a house, if anything, rather rather smaller than their visible income warranted …”
“They’ve got a cottage in Provence as well,” said Cecelia.
Sloan shook his head and said gently, “Not a cottage, Mrs. Allsworthy.”
“Not a cottage?” She looked up.
“More like a château,” said Crosby. “A socking big house and an estate to go with it. Vineyard and all.”
Cecelia Allsworthy stared at the two policemen.
“Where in France?” asked her husband sharply.
“That was the trouble,” said Sloan.
“St. Amand-sur-Nesque,” said Crosby who had been practising its pronounciation.
“Did Hortense know him, then?” asked Cecelia uncertainly.
“Or did he know Hortense?” put in her husband swiftly.
“We’re not sure,” said Sloan, “but either way we think that Bolsover was afraid that she might recognise him and blow the gaff about his little country cottage in Provence.”
Cecelia frowned. “Lucy did once say that neither she nor her father had ever been invited there. Because it was only one up and one down, the Bolsovers said.”
“More like ‘the House That Berry Built,’” said Sloan. The French police had acted with great celerity and he had the exact details at his finger-tips.
“Poor, poor Hortense,” said Cecelia Allsworthy with a catch in her voice. “And I was the one who told him about my au pair girl being homesick for St. Amand-sur-Nesque.” Dismay joined grief on her face. “When I joked about her going to sit in his hot-house …”
“We think,” said Sloan gently, “that that’s where the hyoscine came from—the hot-house, I mean. The conditions were just right for growing datura—one of the oldest poisons in the book.”
“I understand all about the mode of poisoning, Sloan,” said Superintendent Leeyes testily. “My next-door neighbour has one of those patches on his chest for his heart trouble. It saves him having to take his tablets all the time.”
“A dermal delivery system,” said Sloan, “is what the pharmaceutical people call it.”
“And if Bolsover grew the plant, I take it that he could get at the poison?”
“Yes, sir.” Sloan let this simplification of what must have been a very complicated chemical process pass. Its very nature, though, meant that Bolsover had had the possibility of murder in mind long enough to cultivate datura in his hot-house and make an extract from it—or would it have been a distillation? The forensic chemists would tell him all in good time.
“What I don’t understand,” said Leeyes with increasing vigour, “is why Bolsover had to kill Kenneth Carline in the first place?”
“Bolsover and Carline were both due at the Palshaw Tunnel at two o’clock on the Monday afternoon, sir, remember? To agree on the final handing over of the retention sum on the contract.”
“Well?”
“On the Friday afternoon I reckon Carline comes in to see Bolsover and reveals that he had spotted a major discrepancy in the construction of the tunnel. It’s the logical moment for him to have done so if you think about it.”
“What discrepancy?” growled Leeyes.
“Bolsover,” swept on Sloan, “probably says something like ‘I expect there’s some mistake somewhere but we can always check when we’re over there on Monday. Come and see me on Monday morning and we’ll talk about it.’ And sends him off for the weekend.”
“Does he indeed?” said Leeyes acidly.
“Carline goes off for the weekend and Bolsover gets to work. He arranges for Carline to get roughed up at the Rugby game …”
“Hrrrmph,” grunted Leeyes.
“Which gives him the opportunity of taking a piece of plaster out of his first-aid kit cabinet and sticking it behind Carline’s ear without arousing comment.”
“Timed very nicely to work later, I suppose?”
“Oh yes. Bolsover is a very careful and clever man. He needed to be to accomplish fraud on the scale that he did.”
“What I have been asking for some time,” said Leeyes with heavy patience, “is what fraud exactly?”
“The
Palshaw Tunnel,” said Sloan impressively, “is precisely one metre narrower than it should be.”
Leeyes stared at him.
“And I should have thought of it before,” said Sloan, “because of something Harry Harpe said right at the very beginning.”
“Harpe? From Traffic? What have Traffic Division got to do with it?”
“Don’t you remember, sir, that Harry told us about two big lorries getting tangled together in there. We put it down to the drivers being foreign.” Sloan slid over the point as quickly as he could: the superintendent’s xenophobia started at the end of Dover pier.
“There wasn’t as much room in the tunnel as there should have been? Is that what you mean?”
“I reckon that that was why they bumped into each other, sir.”
“Someone must check on these things, Sloan.”
“The County Surveyor’s Department, sir.” He paused. “That’s where the fun begins.”
“I’m waiting.”
“There were two sets of plans for the Palshaw to Edsway Tunnel,” said Sloan. “One for the design drawn up by William Durmast, who is generally thought of as a brilliant civil engineering architect. These plans are agreed by the County Council which have been appointed agents by the Department of Transport for the construction of the tunnel and the contract is put out for tender.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Nothing, sir. William Durmast’s plans are perfectly all right, the quantity surveyors do their job, a firm called Clopton’s get the contract and the department approve and agree funding.”
“Nothing wrong with that either.” Leeyes was beginning to get peppery again.
“No. But afterwards a complete set of tunnel plans—and I do mean complete—are substituted by Ronald Bolsover in his office; by the County Surveyor at Shire Hall; and by the boss of Clopton’s over in their headquarters. All long after Durmast has done his side of the work and started to get caught up in the designing of Mgongwala. He takes off for Dlasa and isn’t really concerned with the tunnel detail any more.”
“I have always said,” declared Leeyes didactically, “that the bigger the fraud the easier it is to get away with.”
A Dead Liberty Page 19