Last Respects iscm-10
Page 16
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Sloan.
“Shocking business,” he said, pointing in the direction of the shed. “Are you going to tell the widow or am I?”
Death, remembered Sloan, was part of the doctor’s daily business too. What he had forgotten was that Dr. Tebot would know the Boilers. “Tell me about him,” he said.
“Horace? Not a lot to tell,” said the doctor. “Didn’t trouble me much.”
“A healthy type then,” said Sloan. Blackmail—if that was what he had been up to—was unhealthy in a different way.
“Spent his life messing about in boats,” Dr. Tebot said. “Out of doors most of the time.”
“Make much of a living?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Picked up a little here and a little there, I should say. Mostly at weekends but you’d never know, not with Horace.”
“Didn’t give anything away then,” said Sloan.
“He was the sort of man, Inspector,” said the old doctor drily, “who wouldn’t even tell his own mother how old he was.” He nodded towards Collerton House. “Go easy with the girl if you can. She’s had a packet lately, what with the aunt dying and everything.”
“The aunt,” said Sloan. A packet was an old army punishment. The “everything” was presumably a young man who had gone away.
“Hopeless case by the time I saw her,” said Dr. Tebot. “The other doctor said so and he was right.”
“What other doctor?”
“The one over in Calleford. I forget his name now. Mrs. Mundill was staying over there when she was first taken ill.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Nice woman,” he said. “Young to die these days. Pity. Still, it happens.”
“It happens,” agreed Sloan. Perhaps they were the saddest words in the language after all.
“Pelion upon Ossa for the girl though.”
Life was like that, thought Sloan. The agony always got piled on.
“She was very good with her aunt,” said the doctor, “but she’s nearly at the end of her tether now.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Sloan, but he made no promises. He had his duty to do.
He found Elizabeth Busby fighting to keep calm. “It was horrible, horrible.”
“Yes, miss.”
“The poor man…”
“He won’t have felt anything,” said Sloan awkwardly. “Dr. Tebot says he can’t have done.”
She twisted a handkerchief between her fingers. “Who is he? Do you know?”
“We think,” said Sloan cautiously, “that it’s someone called Horace Boiler.”
She sat up quickly. “Horace? But I saw him only yesterday.”
“You did?”
“He rowed past while I was putting flowers on my aunt’s grave. It’s by the river, you see.”
“You knew him then?”
“Oh, yes, Inspector.” Her face relaxed a little. “Everyone who lives by the river knows Horace.”
“He was,” suggested Sloan tentatively, “what you might call a real character, I suppose?”
“He was an old rogue,” she said a trifle more cheerfully.
Perhaps, thought Sloan to himself, that was the same thing…
“What did he say, miss?” he asked.
“Oh, he didn’t say anything,” she said. “He just rowed up river.”
If Elizabeth Busby had noticed the broken boathouse doors so would Horace Boiler. It was beginning to look as if he had taken the matter up with someone and that it had been a dangerous thing to do.
“You didn’t see him again after that, miss?”
She shook her head.
“Nor near anything last night?” That was a forlorn hope. The garden shed was at the back of the house.
“No.”
“Yesterday evening you and Mr. Mundill were both here?”
“I was,” she said. “Frank wasn’t. He’d gone to see someone about doing some measurements for an alteration to a house.”
Sloan wrote down Mrs. Veronica Feckler’s name and address.
“He went at tea time and stayed on a bit,” she said.
“And you, miss?”
An abyss of pain yawned before her as she thought about the slide rule. “Me? I stayed in, Inspector. I didn’t do anything very much.” An infinite weariness came over her. “I just sat.”
“And Mr. Mundill? When did he get back?”
“It must have been about eight o’clock. We had supper together.” She looked up and said uncertainly, “When… when did…”
“We don’t know for certain ourselves yet, miss,” said Sloan truthfully. It was, he knew, the refuge of the medical people too. They professed that they did not know when they did not really want to say. There was no comeback then from the patient. And it was true sometimes that they did not know, but the great thing was that the point at which they did know was not the one at which they told the patient…
“Not, I suppose,” she said dully, “that it’s all that important, is it? What’s important is that someone killed him.”
“Probably,” said Sloan with painful honesty, “what is important is why someone killed him.”
He was rewarded with a swift glance of comprehension.
“For the record, miss,” he went on, “I take it that to your knowledge Horace Boiler did not come to the house?”
She shook her head.
“And that you heard and saw nothing?”
“Not a thing, Inspector.” She lifted her face. “Not a thing.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Now, miss, there are one or two things I want to ask you about a man called Peter Hinton…”
16
Her tryal comes on in the afternoon.
« ^ »
At first it was impossible for Detective Inspector Sloan, to tell if Elizabeth Busby was understanding the import of his questions.
She answered them readily enough.
She showed him Peter Hinton’s note.
“It’s in his handwriting, miss, I take it?”
“I hadn’t thought it wasn’t,” she said uncertainly. “But I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Did he usually sign his name in full?”
“He hadn’t—that is we didn’t—write much. There was the telephone, you see.”
“I see, miss.”
“It was written with his pen,” she said quickly. “He always wrote with a proper nib.”
Later she showed him what was really troubling her. The slide rule.
Sloan regarded it in silence.
“He must have come back,” she said, “and sat here after that last time.”
“Could he be sure you wouldn’t appear?” said Sloan.
“Towards the end,” she said, a tremor creeping into her voice, “we never left Aunt Celia alone.”
“So,” said Sloan slowly, “if Mr. Mundill was down here in the hall you would be certain to be upstairs.”
“Yes, that’s right. We took it in turns.”
“I see,” said Sloan. Disquiet was the word for what he was feeling about Peter Hinton. “And you’re sure your only disagreement the last time he was here was over whether your aunt should be in hospital?”
“Disagreement is too strong a word, Inspector.” She’d recounted all the details of the last time she’d seen Peter Hinton. “Hospital was just something we talked about, that’s all. Peter kept on suggesting it and we didn’t want it. You can see that, can’t you?”
“Yes, miss.” He cleared his throat. “You don’t happen to know if he ever broke his ankle, do you?”
“When he was seven,” she said immediately. “He fell off a swing. Why do you ask?”
It is an undoubted fact that, once set in motion, routine gathers a momentum all of its own.
That was how it came about that Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby, standing by a dead Horace Boiler, were visited by a police motor-cyclist. He drew up before them, coming to a standstill with the inesca
pable flourish of all motor-cyclists, and handed over an envelope. Crosby tore it open.
“It’s a copy of Celia Mundill’s will, sir.”
Routine took more stopping than did initiative. Surely there was a moral to be drawn there…
“Well?”
Crosby scanned it quickly.
Routine, thought Sloan, took on a certain strength too. Perhaps that was because it wasn’t challenged often enough.
“It’s short and sweet,” said Crosby.
It seemed a very long time ago that Sloan had asked for it.
“She left,” read out the constable, “a life interest in all her estate to her husband.”
It occurred to Sloan that Mrs. Celia Mundill may very well have been in that delicate situation for a woman of being rather richer than the man she married. Certainly they had been living in her old family home and her husband’s profession was conducted from her father’s old studio.
“With everything,” carried on Crosby, “to go to her only niece at his death.”
“Including her share in the Camming patents,” concluded Sloan aloud. Mrs. Mundill, then, had seen her role as a fiduciary one—a trustee for the past, handing down the flame to the future.
“And if the niece dies before the husband, then,” said Crosby, “her sister collects.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else,” said Crosby.
“Date?” said Sloan peremptorily. There was a time to every purpose, the Bible said. The time for writing a will might be important.
Crosby looked at the paper. “April this year, sir.”
The time had mattered then.
In olden days men would begin their last will and testament with their name and then add the prescient words “and like to die.” The practice of medicine might not have amounted to very much in those days but at least then patients knew where they stood in relation to death, the great reaper. He wondered if Mrs. Celia Mundill had been “like to die” in April. If so she must have known it, too, and made her will.
And presumably her peace with the world.
Crosby started to fold up the paper again.
“Nothing,” enquired Sloan appositely, “about remarriage?”
Wills were funny things. They lay dormant for years—like the seeds of some plants—and then something would stir their testators into activity again. Old wills would be torn up and new wills would be written. Or the testator died.
Crosby checked the will. “Nothing about the remarriage of the widower.”
A time to get, and a time to lose, as Ecclesiastes had it.
No, not that.
A time to keep, and a time to cast away.
That was more like it.
Crosby folded the will neatly away. “Nothing for us in that.”
“It doesn’t appear to change anything,” agreed Sloan cautiously.
That was the important thing with testamentary dispositions and crime.
“The widower’s income doesn’t change anyway,” said Crosby.
“His death would matter to the girl,” said Sloan. “That’s all.”
Crosby frowned. “Then she would scoop the pool, wouldn’t she?”
“One day,” said Sloan moderately, “she’s going to be worth quite a lot of money.” It didn’t weigh against a bruised heart; he was old enough to know that.
“I wonder if that boy-friend of hers knew how rich before he ditched her,” said Crosby.
In an ordinary man it would have been an unworthy thought; it was a perfectly proper one in a police officer.
“He didn’t ditch her,” said Sloan absently. He was sure about that now. “Somebody did for him. And put him in the river.”
“Poor little rich girl,” commented Crosby. He waved the will in the air. “What’s this got to do with it all then, sir?”
“Probably nothing at all,” said Sloan. The widower’s income was assured, the niece’s long-term future secure. “Money isn’t everything, though,” Sloan reminded the constable. It had been one of his mother’s favourite sayings. It applied—with a certain irony—to some crime too.
“Comes in handy, though, doesn’t it, sir. Money…”
“It’s only one currency,” insisted Sloan. “There are others.”
There was fear—and hate.
With Horace Boiler now it looked very much as if someone had been trading in silence. From the dead man’s point of view it had been dearly bought. Sloan turned his attention back to the old fisherman. Not that looking at him was going to tell the police anything. What Sloan needed was a view into the man’s mind before he had been killed.
“He found the body,” mused Sloan aloud.
“He took us up river afterwards,” said Crosby.
“He took Ridgeford out too,” said Sloan, “to collect it.”
“And that Mr. Jensen from the museum. Don’t forget him.”
“I haven’t,” said Sloan drily. “And I haven’t forgotten The Clarembald either.”
“He could have seen the boathouse doors, too,” said Crosby. “We did.”
“He did see Elizabeth Busby by the grave,” said Sloan. “She said so.”
“But,” reiterated Crosby, “Boiler didn’t know that the man in the water…”
“Peter Hinton,” said Sloan with conviction. He was sure of that now.
“Peter Hinton then had been pushed over the edge of somewhere, did he, so what was there for him to get so excited about?”
“Your guess, Crosby,” said Sloan solemnly, “is as good as mine.”
Interviewing Mrs. Boiler had been an unrewarding business in every way, and now Sloan and Crosby were with Mrs. Veronica Feckler. It was impossible to tell whether she knew that she was being asked to provide an alibi for a man.
“Yesterday evening?” she said vaguely. “Yes, Mr. Mundill was here yesterday evening.”
Detective Constable Crosby made a note.
“He came down after tea,” she said.
“I see, madam.”
Sloan was favoured with a charming smile. She was a personable woman and she knew it. “To measure up my cottage, you know.”
“So we gather, madam.”
She sketched an outline with a graceful hand. “I need another room building on. Frank—Mr. Mundill—he’s an architect, you know…”
“Yes, madam.” That much Sloan did know by now. Of the fire station, of the junior school, of Alec Manton’s farmhouse and of a multi-storey car park.
And a multi-storey car park.
That was funny.
Frank Mundill hadn’t mentioned that to Sloan. It had been Inspector Harpe who had told him about that multistorey car park. Not Mundill. Even though he had got an award for designing it.
Mrs. Feckler said, “He’s going to do my extension for me.”
“How long was he with you, madam?” A thought was beginning to burgeon in Sloan’s mind.
“Until just before supper.” She wasn’t the sort of woman who frowned but she did allow herself a tiny pucker of the forehead. “He left about half past seven. Is it important?”
It was strange, decided Elizabeth Busby, how heavy one’s body could feel. She had almost to drag one leaden foot after the other. And yet she weighed the same—rather less, if anything—as she had done the day before.
When the inspector had left the house to go back to the shed she tidied away the cleaning things that she had brought out into the hall. There would be no more work done in Collerton House that day. She went into the kitchen and set about making coffee. That, at least, would be something useful to do and all those men out there would be glad of something to drink.
Time—even the most leaden-footed time—does eventually pass. And in the end the body of Horace Boiler was borne away, the tumult and the shouting died and the photographers and the police—the captains and the kings—departed.
Frank Mundill came back indoors looking years older. “I’ll be in my office,” he said briefly, going upstairs.
Even the hunching on the window-seat seemed symbolic. There was no leisurely resting in a chair for her today while she waited for Inspector Sloan to come back. The inspector had hinted—ever so delicately—but hinted all the same that he might have some more news for her later on and that he would return if he had.
“About Horace Boiler?” she had asked.
“Not about Horace,” he had replied.
Now she understood why Dante had had a place called Limbo in his portrayal of Hell…
It was quite a long time after that that she picked up the morning paper. It had been lying unregarded on the hall table since it had been delivered. It wasn’t that she wanted to read it particularly, just that after a certain length of time she needed to do something with her hands. Not her head. That didn’t take in any of what she was reading. Not at first, that is.
There is a certain state of alertness rejoicing in the grand name of thematic apperception which describes the attraction to eye and ear of items that the owner of that eye and ear is interested in. It explained how it was that Elizabeth Busby was able to read almost the whole paper without taking any of it in at all—until, that is, she turned to that page of the daily paper which dealt in—among other things—short items of news from the sale rooms.
“Bonington Sells Well” ran the headline.
“This previously known beach scene,” ran the text underneath it, “thought to be of the Picardy coast and authenticated as being by Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-28), fetched the top price in a sale of nineteenth-century water-colours yesterday…”
Above the report was an illustration of the painting. It was the same one that had hung over the bed in the spare bedroom of Collerton House as long as Elizabeth could remember. It was the same one that Frank Mundill had said that Peter Hinton had asked for and been given.
She heard the tiniest sound on the stair and looked up quickly. Frank Mundill was standing there.
“Frank,” she said at once, “you know that picture that Peter took…”