Last Respects iscm-10

by Catherine Aird

  “Do we know when, sir?” asked Crosby, who was perforce driving at a speed to satisfy his passenger.

  “Some time before he was found,” said Sloan dourly, “but not too long before.”

  That was a lay interpretation of what Dr. Dabbe had said in longer words.

  Long enough to pick up gammarus pulex.

  Long enough to become unrecognisable.

  Long enough to be taken by the river to the sea.

  Not so long as to be taken by that same sea and laid on Billy’s Finger.

  Not so long as to disintegrate completely.

  That would have been something that an assassin might have hoped for, that the body would fall to pieces.

  Or that it would reach the open sea and be seen no more…

  “Why did the boat go too?” Crosby was enquiring.

  “I think,” reasoned Sloan aloud, “that if a boat is found adrift and a body is found in the water simple policemen are meant to put two and two together and make five.”

  That was something else a murderer might have hoped for.

  “It might have happened too,” said Crosby, “mightn’t it? He’d only got to get a bit farther out to sea and he wouldn’t have been spotted at all.”

  Sloan stared unseeingly out of the car window. “I wonder why he was put into the river exactly when he was.”

  On such a full sea are we now afloat…

  “Well, you wouldn’t choose a weekend, would you, sir?” said Crosby.

  Never on Sunday?

  “The whole estuary’s stuffed with sailing boats at the weekend,” continued the constable. “You should see it, sir.”

  “I probably will,” said Sloan pessimistically, “unless we’ve got all this cleared up by then.”

  The detective constable slowed down for a signpost. “This must be the Edsway to Marby road we’re joining.”

  “Something,” said Sloan resolutely, “must have made it important for that body to be got out of that boathouse when it was.”

  The car radio began to chatter while he was speaking. “The gentlemen from the press,” reported the girl at the microphone, “would like to know when Detective Inspector Sloan will see them.”

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” responded Sloan with spirit, “and not a minute before.” He switched off at his end and turned to his companion. “And Crosby…”

  “Sir?”

  “While you’re about it,” said Sloan, “you’d better find out about the niece. And what Mrs. Mundill died from too. We can’t be too careful.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, where did Ridgeford say this dinghy was?”

  “According to his report,” said Crosby, “it’s beyond the Marby lifeboat station. To be exact, to the north of it. We’re to ask for a man called Farebrother.”

  12

  But hark! I hear the toll of a bell.

  « ^ »

  Farebrother was quite happy to indicate the stray dinghy to the two policemen. And to tell them that Ridgeford was down on the harbour wall.

  “Fetch him,” said Sloan briefly to Crosby. He turned to Farebrother and showed him the copper barbary head. “Ever seen one of these before?”

  “Might have,” said the lifeboatman. “Might not.”

  “Lately?”

  “Might have,” said the lifeboatman again.

  “How lately?”

  “I don’t hold with such things,” he said flatly.

  “No,” said Sloan.

  “ ’Tisn’t right to disturb places where men lie.” Farebrother stared out to sea.

  Sloan said nothing.

  “Mark my words,” said Farebrother, “no good comes of it.”

  Sloan nodded.

  “ ’Tisn’t lucky either.”

  “Unlucky for some, anyway,” said Sloan obliquely, bingo-style.

  “Didn’t ought to be allowed, that’s what I say.”

  “Quite so,” said Sloan.

  “They say there was the bones of a man’s hand still clutching a candlestick down there.”

  “Down where?” said Sloan softly.

  Farebrother’s mouth set in an obstinate line. “I don’t know where. No matter who asks me, be they as clever as you like.”

  “Who asked you?”

  “Never you mind that. I tell you I don’t know anything…”

  “Neither do I,” said Sloan seriously, “but I intend to find out.”

  “That’s your business,” said Farebrother ungraciously, “but I say things should be let alone with, that’s what I say.” He turned on his heel and crunched off over the shingle.

  Crosby came back with Ridgeford while Sloan was still examining the old fishing boat. Sloan pointed to Farebrother’s retreating back. “The Old Man and the Sea,” he said neatly to the two constables. They both looked blank. He changed his tone. “This bell, Ridgeford…”

  “Taken, sir, from a farm up on the Cat’s Back,” said Hidgeford. “Or so the two boys who took it into Mother Hopton’s say. I don’t think they were having me on but you never can tell.” Ridgeford had learned some things already. “Not with boys.”

  “Not with boys,” agreed Sloan.

  “The farmer’s called Manton,” said Ridgeford. “Alec Manton of Lea Farm.”

  “Do you know him?”

  Ridgeford shook his head. “Not to say know. I’ve heard of him, that’s all, sir.”

  “Heard what?”

  “Nothing against.”

  Sloan nodded. “Right, then you can stay in the background. Crosby, you’re coming with me to Manton’s farm. Now, Ridgeford, whereabouts exactly did you say this sheep tank was that the boys told you about?”

  Few farmers can have been fortunate enough to see as much of their farm laid out in front of them as did Alec Manton. The rising headland was almost entirely given over to sheep and the fields were patterned with the casual regularity of patchwork. Because of the rise in the land the farmland and its stock were both easily visible. The farmhouse, though, was nestled into the low ground before the headland proper began, sheltered alike from sea and wind. It was in the process of being restored and extended. Sloan noticed a discreet grey and white board proclaiming that Frank Mundill was the architect, and made a note.

  Alec Manton was out, his wife told them. She was a plump, calm woman, undismayed by the presence of two police officers at the form. Was it about warble fly?

  “Not exactly,” temporised Sloan, explaining that he would nevertheless like to look at the sheep-fold on the hill.

  “Where they dip?” said Mrs. Manton intelligently. “Of course. You go on up and I’ll tell my husband to come along when he comes home. He shouldn’t be long.”

  In the event they didn’t get as far as the sheep tank before the farmer himself caught up with them.

  “Routine investigations,” said Sloan mendaciously.

  “Oh?” said Manton warily. He was tallish with brown hair.

  “We’ve had a report that something might have been stolen from the farm.”

  “Have you?” said Alec Manton. He was a man who looked as if he packed a lot of energy. He looked Sloan up and down. “Can’t say that we’ve missed anything.”

  “No?” said Sloan.

  “What sort of thing?”

  “A ship’s bell.”

  “From my farm?” Alec Manton’s face was quite expressionless.

  “Boys,” said Sloan sedulously. “They said it came from where you keep your sheep.”

  “Did they?” said Manton tightly. “Then we’d better go and see, hadn’t we? This way…”

  Their goal was several fields away, set in a faint hollow in the land, and built against the wind. In front of the little bothy was a sheep-dipping tank. Set between crush pen and drafting pen, it was full of murky water. Alec Manton led the way into the windowless building and looked round in the semidarkness. Sloan and Crosby followed on his heels. There was nothing to see save bare walls and even barer earth. The place, though,
did show every sign of having been occupied by sheep at some time. Sloan looked carefully at the floor. It had been pounded by countless hooves to the consistency of concrete.

  “This bell,” began Sloan.

  “That you say was found…” said Manton.

  “In police possession,” said Sloan mildly.

  “Ah.”

  “Pending enquiries.”

  “I see.”

  “Of course,” said Sloan largely, “the boys may have been having us on.”

  “Of course.”

  “You know what boys are.”

  “Only too well,” said Manton heartily.

  “We’ll have to get on to them again,” said Sloan, “and see if we can get any nearer the truth, whatever that may be.”

  “Of course,” said the farmer quickly. “Did they—er—take anything else, do you know?”

  “Not that we know about,” said Sloan blandly. “Would there have been anything else in there for them to steal?”

  Alec Manton waved an arm. “You’ve seen it for yourself, haven’t you? Give or take a sheep or two from time to time it looks pretty empty to me.”

  “Of course,” said Sloan casually, “the owner of this bell may turn up to claim it.”

  “That would certainly simplify matters,” agreed the farmer. “But in the meantime…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “It’s quite safe in police custody?”

  “Quite safe,” Sloan assured him.

  “Crosby!” barked Sloan.

  “Sir?”

  “What was odd about all that?”

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  “Think, man. Think.”

  “The place was empty.”

  “Of course it was empty,” said Sloan with asperity. “The bell must have been tucked away in the corner when those two boys found it. Only boys would have looked there…”

  Murderers who thought that they had hidden their victims well reckoned without the natural curiosity of the average boy at their peril. Many a well-covered thicket had been penetrated by a boy for no good reason…

  “Yes, sir,” said Crosby.

  “What wasn’t empty, Crosby?”

  Crosby thought for a long moment. “Sir?”

  “What was full, Crosby?”

  “Only the sheep-dipping thing.”

  “Exactly,” breathed Sloan. “Do you know what month it is, Crosby?

  “June, sir,” said Crosby stolidly.

  “You don’t,” said Sloan softly, “dip sheep in Calleshire in June.”

  “Left over from when you did, then,” suggested Crosby.

  “No,” said Sloan.

  “No?”

  “You dip sheep a month after shearing. Manton’s sheep weren’t shorn,” said Sloan. Policemen, even town policemen, knew all about the dipping of sheep and its regulations. “Besides, you wouldn’t leave your sheep-dip full without a good reason. It’s dangerous stuff.”

  “What sort of reason?” said Crosby.

  “If,” said Sloan, “you have been conducting a secret rescue of the parts of an old East Indiaman you acquire items which have been underwater for years.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Taking them out of the water causes them to dry up and disintegrate. Mr. Jensen at the museum said so.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure.”

  “So you have to store them underwater or else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wooden things, that is.”

  Crosby nodded, not very interested. “Wooden things.”

  “Metal ones,” said Sloan, “aren’t so important.”

  “What about rust?”

  “Bronze doesn’t rust,” said Sloan.

  “The Clarembald’s bell?”

  “Bronze,” said Sloan. “Or so Ridgeford said.”

  “It didn’t need to stay underwater?”

  “No,” said Sloan. “It could stand in the corner of the sheep building quite safely.” He amended this. “Safe from everything except boys.” He drew breath and carried on. “There was another thing about what was in that sheep-dipping tank.”

  “Sir?”

  “Think, Crosby.”

  “It was dirty, sir. You couldn’t see if there was anything in there or not.”

  “That and something else,” said Sloan, and waited.

  Dull, a constable.

  That had been in Shakespeare.

  He’d thought of everything, had the bard.

  The detective inspector cleared his throat and said didactically, “A good policeman uses all his senses.”

  Crosby lifted his nose like a pointer. “But it didn’t smell, sir.”

  “Precisely,” said Sloan grimly. “Like the dog that didn’t bark in the night, it didn’t smell. Believe you me, lad, sheep-dip isn’t by any manner of means the most fragrant of fluids.”

  “No, sir.”

  “But I’m prepared to bet that there was something in that tank besides dirty water.”

  Crosby scuffed his toe at a pebble. “I still don’t see what it’s got to do with the body in the water.”

  “Neither do I, Crosby, neither do I. What I wonder is if Mr. Basil Jensen does.”

  Elizabeth Busby just couldn’t settle. She was like a bee working over a flower-bed already sucked dry of all its nectar. She couldn’t settle to anything at all, not to finishing off spring-cleaning the spare bedroom and not to any other household chores either.

  She met Frank Mundill in the hall as he came back from the boathouse. He dropped the key back into the drawer in the hall table.

  “I don’t know why I bothered to lock it, I’m sure,” he said. “Anyone who wanted to could get into the boathouse as easy as wink.”

  “Tea?” she suggested.

  “That would be nice.” He looked unenthusiastically at the flight of stairs that led up to his studio. “I don’t think I’ll go back to the drawing board this minute.”

  “No,” she agreed with the sentiment as well as the statement. Getting on with anything just now was difficult enough. Going back to something was quite impossible.

  Presently Mundill said, “I’ll have to go along and have a word with Ted Boiler about getting the river doors fixed up.”

  She nodded.

  “It’ll have to be something temporary.” He grimaced. “The police want the damage left.”

  “Evidence, I suppose,” she said without interest.

  “They’re sending a photographer.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” she promised. She would hear the bell all right when they came. She had always heard her aunt’s bell and her ear was still subconsciously attuned to listening for it. At the first tinkle she’d been awake and on her way to the bedroom…

  “I may be a little while,” said Mundill, elaborately casual.

  She looked up, her train of thought broken.

  “While I’m about it,” he said, “I might as well go on down to Veronica Feckler’s cottage and see exactly what it is that she wants doing there.”

  “Might as well,” agreed Elizabeth in a desultory fashion.

  “You might keep your ear open for the telephone…”

  She nodded. His secretary was going to be away all the week. “I will. There might be a call for me too.”

  “Of course,” he agreed quickly.

  Too quickly.

  She’d practically lived on the telephone while Peter Hinton was around. When he wasn’t at Collerton House he was at the College of Technology at Luston. His landlady—well versed in student ways—had a pay telephone in the hall. Peter Hinton had spent a great deal of time on it. Elizabeth’s eyes drifted involuntarily to the instrument in the hall of Collerton House. It was by a window-seat and Elizabeth had spent a similar amount of time curled up on that window-seat enjoying those endless chats. Politicians and business negotiators had a phrase which covered young lovers as well. They often began either their alliances or their confrontations with what they called “exploratory tal
ks.”

  So it had been with Elizabeth Busby and Peter Hinton. Their talks had been exploratory too, as they each searched out the recesses of mind and memory of the other, revealing—as the politicians and businessmen found to their cost—a little of themselves too in the process. In some ways these preliminaries of a courtship had been like playing that old pencil-and-paper parlour game of Battleships. Sometimes a tentative salvo fell in a square that represented the empty sea. Sometimes it fell where the opponent’s battleship was placed and then there was a hit—a palpable hit. After that it was an easy matter to find and sink the paper battleship and win the game.

  So it was with young people getting to know each other.

  One thing they found they had in common was parents abroad. His were tea planters in Assam.

  What they didn’t share was an interest in crime. Peter Hinton knew most of the Notable British Trials series of books by heart and took an interest in villainy. Elizabeth shied away from the unpleasant like a nervous horse.

  And then suddenly she’d found she hadn’t known Peter Hinton at all…

  Exploratory talks didn’t always lead on to treaties and alliances. Sometimes—the news bulletins said so—they broke down, foundering upon this or that rock uncovered in the course of those very talks. So it must have been with Peter Hinton. Only she didn’t know what it was that had been laid bare that had been such a stumbling block between the two of them that they couldn’t even discuss it. He’d come into her life out of the blue and as precipitately he’d gone out of it again.

  She brought the tea tray back into the hall for them both. There was a little occasional table there and Frank Mundill pulled it over to the window-seat. The only trouble with being in the window-seat was that whoever was sitting there could not avoid the full impact of the picture hanging on the wall opposite. It had been quite one of Richard Camming’s most ambitious paintings.

  “We think,” Celia Mundill used to say to visitors to the house seeing it for the first time, “that it’s meant to be Diana the Huntress.”

  “But we never liked to ask,” Marion Busby would add tremulously if she were there.

  “Up to something, of course.”

  “But we don’t quite know what.”