In good faith and secrecy.
It had been the secrecy which had baffled Basil Jensen. When news of the great discovery was brought to the notice of an excited archeological world the name of the curator would be nowhere to be found.
“The biggest ever find on his patch,” said Ridgeford, “and he wasn’t being allowed a hand in it.” He searched about in his mind for a parallel. “It would be like not letting me in on an armed raid in Edsway, Brenda.”
“I don’t want you in on any armed raids anywhere,” said his wife. “Professional death comes in two ways, you know.”
“They’d got a load of those copper ingots ashore,” said the constable, “and we reckon Mundill spotted them one day at the farm. They didn’t need keeping underwater, you see.”
The sheep-dipping tank at Lea Farm had yielded a bizarre collection of wooden objects—a sea chest, a fid bound with lead, a table and something called a dead-eye.
“Used for extending the shrouds,” Alec Manton had explained helpfully.
Brian Ridgeford had been no wiser.
“Poor Mr. Jensen,” said Brenda Ridgeford. “Left out in the cold like that.”
“Yes,” said Brian Ridgeford uneasily. Far from leaving the museum curator out in the cold, he’d very nearly taken him into custody yesterday. “He’s waving a protection order at Mr. Manton now.”
“A piece of paper isn’t going to save anything,” said Mrs. Ridgeford.
Constable Ridgeford wasn’t so sure about that. “With the strong arm of the law behind it…”
“There’s ways round the strong arm of the law, Brian Ridgeford,” she said provocatively, “I can tell you.”
“That’s as may be, my girl,” he said with dignity, “but only when the law allows it.”
“I suppose, Inspector,” said Elizabeth Busby shakily, “that I have to thank you for saving my life.”
“No, miss, you don’t.” Sloan was sitting on the window-seat in the hall of Collerton House again.
“He was going to kill me,” she said, “because I knew about the picture.”
“Murder’s a dangerous game,” said Sloan sententiously, “especially once the novelty’s worn off.”
“Poor, poor Aunt Celia.”
Detective Inspector Sloan bowed his head in a tribute to a woman he had never seen alive. Dr. Dabbe was doing another post-mortem now—to make assurance doubly sure. Inquest-sure, too.
“The old, old story,” she said bitterly.
“The eternal triangle,” agreed Sloan. He’d read something once that put it very well… “The actors are, it seems, the usual three. Husband, wife and lover.” It practically amounted to a prescription for murder. Aloud he went on, “And then murder once done…”
“Peter… poor Peter, too.”
“He’d stumbled on your aunt’s murder,” said Sloan.
“He’d always been fascinated by crime,” she said. “He read a lot about it.”
“It was very clever of him.”
“So he had to go, too,” she said tightly.
“He had to be silenced,” said Sloan. He coughed. “I take it that he’d have gone easily enough to have a look at the multi-storey car park if invited?”
“I did, didn’t I?” She shuddered. “Frank sounded so reasonable and I really did think he had something there to show me. And there’s no one up there on early closing day.”
Sloan nodded. He could imagine Frank Mundill being plausible. “It was a perfect place,” he said. “A double helix round a central light well, with a parapet at the top and a door at the bottom.”
“A door with a key,” she said.
“Mundill had a key, all right,” he said. “And to the car park exit gate. He had done the original specification, remember. He had no problems in that direction. He had access to everything he wanted. He could come back at night for the body.”
“It all fits, doesn’t it?” she said.
All the pieces of the jigsaw were there now. Sloan would have to lock them together for his report but they were there. Elizabeth Busby didn’t have to know about all of them. There was no point, for instance, in her being told about the blood that they’d found inside the light well of the car park, blood that wasn’t Frank Mundill’s. He did need to tell her about a photograph of Peter Hinton that had been superimposed on a photograph of a dead young man in Dr. Dabbe’s mortuary.
And about a sure and certain dentist.
Sloan said nothing into the silence that followed his telling her.
Presently she said, “And Horace Boiler?”
“He put two and two together about your aunt.” Perhaps it hadn’t been such a perfect murder after all. “He couldn’t have known what really happened. Just that there was something wrong.”
“And he paid the price.”
“He knew what he was doing, miss.” For Horace Boiler anyway Sloan didn’t feel too much pity…
Detective Constable Crosby was waiting in the car for him outside Collerton House. Sloan climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door with quite unnecessary vigour.
“A nasty case,” he said.
Crosby started up the engine.
“Three murders,‘ said Sloan. The only saving grace had been that a wicked man’s cupidity had not succeeded…
“Mr. Basil Jensen,” said Detective Constable Crosby, “wants us to meet him over at Marby.”
Detection demanded many things of a man. A working knowledge of eighteenth-century ships was obviously going to be called for.
“All right,” growled Sloan. “Get going then.”
Crosby pulled the car away from the front door of Collerton House and settled himself at the wheel. He put a respectable distance behind him before he spoke.
“Sir…”
“What is it now?”
“What sits at the bottom of the sea and shivers?”
In the grip of powerful emotion and with an awful fascination Sloan heard himself saying, “I don’t know what sits at the bottom of the sea and shivers.”
“A nervous wreck.”
—«»—«»—«»—
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publishing The Religious Body—a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre’s most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who?, A Most Contagious Game, Parting Breath and Last Respects have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury.
—«»—«»—«»—
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