“Roughly. Was it murder?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Who’d do that, for God’s sake?”
“That’s not going to be easy. It’s going to keep some of us busy for quite a time. It isn’t knowing that’s going to be the trouble—it’s getting enough to bring a man to court. And there are a couple of things I think you can help us with.”
Susan Bexwell was now sitting at the table, casting her eye down at her mathematical scrawl without seeing it.
“I can’t think what they might be. But I’ll try.”
“There was a midnight party at the Old Tollhouse last night. Four people. Coffee and green chartreuse.”
“I wonder who that can have been?”
“Susan, the pressure’s going to be on. The facts are going to come out. Nobody can move about in Marldale by day or night without somebody knowing: even witches. You’re going to have to admit it sooner or later. And if you deny it now and have to admit it later, you’re going to be in an unenviable position. People like Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw are going to get uptight. He could hold you for questioning for quite a long time.”
“We were there,” she said.
“What time?”
“We arrived about eleven, left at a quarter to midnight.”
“And if Beatrice Cater brought the chartreuse out, I can only think that things must have taken an up-turn between your lot and her.”
“She invited us. She’d spotted common interest at last. But it shocks me that—”
“Now you know how right Priscilla Bladon has been all along. One more question. Somebody shared Beatrice Cater’s bed last night—or for part of the night. Who?”
“There are limits to my clairvoyance, Mr. Mosley—”
“Bill Hindle?”
“Probably. He’s been in the habit for some time. Yes—that would figure. That poor little wife of his thinks that he drinks late at the Crook. Well, he does. So he probably wouldn’t have got to the Tollhouse till after twelve. And he daren’t stay out all night. I believe he normally gets home about two. I think I might be able to check that for you—or have it checked.”
Mosley finished his coffee, collected up their cups and carried them out into the kitchen, where they heard him running water.
“There’s no need for you to do that, Mr. Mosley.”
“The least I can do. And I shall have to be off. I have other calls to make, as you can imagine.”
As soon as they were outside the house, Grimshaw stood and looked at Mosley. He looked at him as a sea-angler might look at some emaciated, spiny and unidentified fish that he has brought up when he thought he was into a codling. Mosley looked back at him utterly unmoved, totally without feeling—and, an uninformed observer might have said, absolutely devoid of intelligence.
“Get into my car, Mosley!”
Mosley did that, sliding the passenger-seat forward to accommodate his short little legs with the maximum comfort. Grimshaw drove them about fifty yards along the road then stopped and switched off the engine.
“Mosley—why aren’t you in Bradburn?”
“There’s been a murder in Marldale,” Mosley said with childlike simplicity.
“Mosley, please don’t add insolence to insubordination. My orders were plain. There was a sizeable squad put at your disposal to handle all those questionnaires. I took men off their rest days to help you. There is a situation in Bradburn that has people afraid to go out of their own front doors at night. And here you are, fifteen miles away, in Marldale.”
“Things are going to be tricky up here,” Mosley said.
“I’m not interested in what’s going on up here,” Grimshaw said, then realized that this was the last thing on earth that he wanted to say.
“You know what I mean, Mosley.”
“No, sir.”
A shadow appeared to have fallen across the driver’s side-window.
“Mosley—I’m not going to overlook this. This time you’ve gone too far. You’re on a fizzer, Mosley. I’m hauling you up before the Chief. I’m going to say that I cannot continue to be responsible for a Department that has you in it.”
The shadow outside the window deepened. A man’s figure bent down. Grimshaw saw that he was looking up into Beamish’s face.
“Ah. Beamish!”
“Morning, sir. Morning, Mr. Mosley.”
Grimshaw looked at him as if he were committing an offence by taking cognisance of Mosley.
“Sir, I have an urgent message for you from the Assistant Chief Constable. He wants you to go back to Bradburn and report to him.”
“Yes, well, I’ll give him a ring. It’s quite obvious that I’m needed here. I’ll see him as soon as I get back—whenever that is.”
“He told me to emphasize, sir, that he considers this interview of over-riding importance.”
Beamish was looking at Grimshaw rather as Jeeves used to look at his master’s erring taste in socks.
“But good God, doesn’t he know what I’m up here for?”
“I gathered, sir, that what he wants to see you about has an important connection with what you are up here for.”
“But good heavens, Beamish—I’ve only just got here. I can’t start a murder enquiry and then leave it within the first hour.”
“I think that thought occurred to the Assistant Chief, sir. He did remark that he had every confidence as long as Mr. Mosley was on the ground.”
Something odd seemed to be happening to the landscape. Trees and houses appeared to be about to dissolve like the end of a cinematographic sequence.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant Beamish. I don’t think I can have heard you aright. The Assistant—Chief—Constable expressed confidence in Mosley?”
Never mind that Mosley was sitting there, and that Beamish was a junior.
“There hasn’t been a change of Assistant Chief Constable since I was last in the office, has there?”
“No, sir.”
Beamish’s tone could be devastatingly ingenuous when he was delivering a broadside.
“No, sir. But I think he was impressed by Mr. Mosley’s performance in Bradburn last night, sir.”
“Maybe he was impressed by the very fact that Mosley was in Bradburn at all last night,” Grimshaw said. “Go on, Beamish. I’ll buy it.”
“Well, it seems, sir, that Mr. Mosley took over the file of old questionnaires at half past five yesterday afternoon, spotted something anomalous and by seven o’clock had been out to their homes and come in with the three Bradburn muggers.”
“Three Bradburn muggers?”
“Yes. But they only had one mask between them, sir. That’s one of the things that has been complicating matters.”
“Mosley—why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“We seem to have had other things on our plate,” Mosley said.
“Mosley, if I were to say to you, I am going to leave you in charge of the Upper Marldale end until I come back, don’t do anything controversial and for goodness’ sake don’t make any statements to the media or the public: what would you do next?”
“I would go down to the former military detention centre, still vulgarly known as the Glasshouse.”
“And what would you do there?”
“Among other things I would be looking for some appropriate article of wood carving to give as a coming-of-age present to a niece of mine. There is some very fine workmanship going on down in Lower Marldale—in not the most salubrious of conditions.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Your fine piece of workmanship would also be a latch-lifter, I take it—a way in: an opportunity to find things out while talking about something quite different.”
“I do sometimes find that that works.”
“You had better go to it, I suppose. Sergeant Beamish, go with him, and remind him occasionally of standard procedures. And Mosley: I don’t care if you picked up thirty Bradburn muggers: I still hate the bloody sight of you.”
Chapter Eight
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��Just fill me in briefly before we go up to see the Chief.” The Chief. Down among the lower reaches of the force, cynics were sometimes heard to remark that it required an act of faith to believe that there was a Chief Constable. But those who said this knew that they were being less than just. There was indeed a Chief, and those who pretended to deny his existence knew very well that they caught sight of him at regular and predictable if long-drawn-out intervals. The Chief was benign: his leonine sweep of hair helped him to be. And he could afford to be, since he had a Deputy who, like Jimmy the One on a ship, was responsible to him that the System worked. And he had Assistant Chief Constables, five of them, designated Admin, Uniformed Branch, Crime, Recruitment, Training and Intelligence and Supply, who did everything for him that was difficult, nasty, diplomatically dangerous, unkind—or that might in any other way jeopardize the omni-benevolent image.
“The object of my life is to have nothing to do.” This was one of the Chiefs most frequent and credible pronouncements, meaning that having decreed that the System should function, all he had to do was to sit back and let it do so, every cog sweetly lubricated and content to be playing its perhaps insignificant part.
“Though in point of fact we are all human. An occastonal minor intervention is not to be avoided, and oddly I do seem to find myself working an eighteen-hour day, seven days a week.”
“By which,” ACC (A) was once reported to have said to ACC (R, T & I), “one is led to believe that he considers himself to be working as long as he is making the effort to remain clinically awake.”
But an intervention by the Chief on a case in progress was momentous. Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw could not remember when it had last happened to him. He believed that it had been back in the Crippsian austerity of 1949, when a County Council clerk had had to be charged with taking home paper-clips and a rubber eraser from Office Services. One of the reasons for Grimshaw’s prolonged good standing had been his bright suggestion in committee that the said clerk be persuaded to say that he had taken the materials in order to do unpaid overtime in his own sitting-room.
And Just fill me in briefly—that was the other thing that the ACC (Crime) had said. Grimshaw had expected that and had applied some mental activity to it during his drive back to Bradburn.
A contrary cat called Boudicca who declined to the point of an arched back to enter her home; a graduate sexagenarian who had managed to go to bed with a man, as yet unknown, between a dormitory feast and getting herself strung up to a beam; a plot of dead cabbages that had seemed so sinister that Mosley—Mosley—had referred them to Forensic; a farmer who had made a slough of a public footpath; Squid Nibbles; Passion Fruit Suckers; a forthcoming threat—nay, a promise—to nobble a sheepdog called Sal’s Lad at a trial; an operation, incidentally, that was to be given the maximum publicity, and to which a Detective-Inspector of this force was lending spontaneous encouragement.
“I’m not quite in a position to pull all the threads together yet.”
“But you do have clues?”
“Any amount of them.”
“The Chief is bound to want a rapid tour d’horizon.”
It was a prospect that would have worried Grimshaw more if he had had more time to think about it. As it was he was not able to speak again before the ACC had whisked him up the sanctified stairs, had muttered the password-of-the-day to the undoubtedly armed stenographer on duty and had opened the door for him to walk into the Chief’s most radiant smile.
“Ah. Detective-Superintendent Grimshaw!” The Chief seemed to regard this as a very satisfying feat of memory.
“All well with you I hope, Grimshaw? That lad of yours get his O Levels?”
“He completed his Ph.D last summer,” Grimshaw said. “Just been interviewed by Tesco’s—job sticking price-labels on tins.”
“Well, there’s nothing like practical experience. And how are the Lutinos?”
“Lutinos, sir?”
“You’re thinking of Chief Inspector Walsh, sir,” the ACC said. “He’s the one who breeds the budgerigars.”
“Ah. Well, you seem to be having an exciting time up in Marldale, Grimshaw.”
“Fairly eventful, sir.”
“If you could just give me a quick tour d’horizon.”
To his surprise, Grimshaw heard himself supplying a reasonable summary.
“A woman’s been murdered. We’re waiting for the path lab to confirm that it is murder, and perhaps to supply helpful details that aren’t in our capacity to detect. The issue is complicated, and yet may ultimately be explained, by a wave of the sort of silliness that affects these rural communities from time to time.”
“You mean witchcraft?”
“Of a kind.”
“And Mosley has everything firmly within his grasp?”
“He appears to have.”
He wasn’t going to fall out over an adverb like firmly, and it would not have been appropriate at this stage to mention the consolation of having Beamish on the ball.
“Marvellous job Mosley did over those Bradburn yobbos.”
“I haven’t had time to read the detailed case-report yet, sir.”
“Mosley went through the questionnaires like a wire through cheese. Spotted triangular movements, reported by neighbours: A to B’s house, B to C’s, then C back to A’s. Mosley happened to know the laddies concerned. Realized that this was how they were passing the mask on, one to the other. Went out singly and walked them back one at a time to the station.”
“Well, it’s easy for Mosley. He knows an awful lot of people,” the ACC said.
“Well, now—the reason I’m making such inroads into your time, Grimshaw, is to show you this—”
He opened a drawer, brought out a file, examined it briefly to see that it was the right one, and passed it over the desk. Not sure whether he was meant to read it all through on the spot, Grimshaw glanced at the top sheet. It was addressed to Dick, signed Tod, and appeared to mean nothing at all.
“I’ll cut the corners for you, Grimshaw. A little over a year ago the Chief Executive Officer of the County Council referred papers to the Director of Public Prosecutions: well, not to the DPP himself. He has a friend in the Director’s office who was prepared to give a non-committal unofficial opinion. What one has to call the unacceptable face of privatization. I fear that in any organization, however righteously administered, there are always some who seek to operate their responsibilities to their private advantage. Otherwise we three also, of course, might be earning our bread sticking on price-tags in supermarkets.”
Witticism of the morning—duly appreciated by a discreet chuckle. The Chief continued.
“Three County Councillors—at least three, cutting across party lines—are believed to be involved—and, I regret to say, more than one permanent servant of the Council that we ourselves serve.”
He allowed this outrageous proposition time to take root.
“Unfortunately the man in the Prosecutor’s has said that there is insufficient evidence on which he can take action. You will understand, of course, that the DPP is not guided by his private opinions about anyone’s guilt, but solely by the probability of success in the courts. The official line would have to be that with the case as it stands, the culprits would come away laughing, the name of this authority would have been dragged through the mud over a period of months, and the helpless British tax-payer would have to foot the bill for the legal costs of both sides.”
Deja vu—
“The CEO of the CC has however been to London to talk to the DPP’s assistant. ‘Those men are villains,’ that’s what his friend said to him. And he went on to suggest the nature of additional evidence which, if forthcoming, would go a long way towards clinching the case. That’s where you come in, Grimshaw. Or, rather, that’s where you don’t come in.”
Thanks for the clarity—
“You see, one of the leading lights, perhaps the leading light, in this private cornering of what were previously public assets, is
undoubtedly County Councillor Whitcombe.”
Harry Whitcombe—a genial type. He had tried to ply Grimshaw with pints, once when the D-S was talking to Rotary.
“Now Councillor Whitcombe came to see me last week, telling me alarming stories of things that are alleged to be going on in Marldale, and pleading with me to find a way through the law to suppress the activities of these self-styled witches. The reason he gave for his concern was the unrest that they are causing throughout the length of the valley.”
Harry Whitcombe had been in to see the Chief? But Grimshaw thought that it had been Beatrice Cater who had laid a complaint. Ah, no: he saw now how it must have been. Beatrice Cater had been fobbed off with the ACC, but it was impossible to fob Councillor Whitcombe off with anyone.
“The lady who died last night, Mrs. Cater, also came to these offices recently. She told a story so obscure, so confused and so intricate—”
“And repetitive,” the ACC inserted.
“—that one can only admire the dedication of the man who had to listen to it.”
Pause for the ACC and the Chief to smile endearingly at each other.
“The point I am coming to is that Mrs. Cater seemed to think that in some manner about which she found it difficult to be explicit, the caperings of these witches have to do with the sale of a field belonging to the Pringle and Marldale District Council, for which various bodies have suggested uses. Councillor Whitcombe is also a member of the Pringle Council, but we have so far been unable to see how he could be a beneficiary from the sale of the field. So what we are proposing to do now is this, Grimshaw—”
The Chief looked all round himself, to ensure that there were no spies in the room.
“Leave the solution of the murder entirely to Mosley: though I suggest that you give him some reinforcement. Why not bring up that sergeant, what was his name, Beamish, from one of your divisions? They’ve worked very well together before. And do not, under any circumstances, say anything to either of them about our broader suspicions. We do not want Mosley going anywhere near Councillor Whitcombe. One of the reasons I am suggesting Mosley for the job is that he is painstaking—and slow. With Mosley taking his time over every clod of earth in Marldale, and Beamish rooting up ingenious cross-trails all over the place, it will give us time, you see—time for you, Superintendent Grimshaw, to get to work, in close collaboration with our colleague here, to see what you can dig out at the Bradburn end. It will probably mean close scrutiny of several years of Council and Committee minutes. And I need hardly say that you have a direct line to me while this investigation lasts. In fact, I would be obliged, Superintendent, if you would regard me as personally directing this enquiry. It would be better if you did not take any positive step without consulting me first.”
Mists Over Mosley Page 5