Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Was she there with anyone else? Can you remember that?’

  ‘Not that I noticed.’ Janet frowned. ‘I’m almost sure she was alone.’

  ‘Did you see her talk to anyone else?’

  Janet shook her head. ‘Not that I remember but then almost everyone else there were strangers anyway. Should I have known her? Who is she?’

  ‘That,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, responding to Janet’s first question but not her second one, ‘is one of the things we are trying to establish.’

  Janet gave a sudden start and said, ‘Inspector, I’ve just had a thought. After the funeral, Morton’s, the undertaker’s, gave me a pile of those little attendance cards that people sometimes are asked to fill in at funerals. I passed them on to Joe Short, that’s Josephine’s grandson who came over for the funeral. Perhaps you could find out from those who she was. He’s staying at the Bellingham.’

  Sloan took the photograph back and stowed it carefully away in his case. ‘Thank you.’ He turned back to Bill Wakefield. ‘Right. Now, sir, if we might just have a note of your firm’s address in London.’

  ‘Inspector, what is all this about?’ Bill demanded, patently puzzled. ‘What’s gone wrong?’

  Janet protested, ‘We hadn’t even known about Josephine Short’s existence here before her death anyway, had we, Bill?’

  ‘Not even that she was still alive,’ insisted Bill, ‘let alone the fact that she was holed up in a nursing home in Berebury so near us.’

  ‘I’m sure that we’d have gone to see her if we’d known about her,’ said Janet.

  ‘In any case,’ went on Bill Wakefield firmly, ‘I only got back to this country yesterday.’

  ‘When yesterday?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘If you must know I flew in and got to Head Office just before six o’clock in the evening. They wanted to see me straightaway, you see.’

  ‘If I might have the name of the person there whom you saw,’ said Sloan, pen poised.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ said Bill Wakefield in a voice that was now distinctly surly.

  ‘And after that, sir? What did you do after you left the office?’

  An angry flush rose steadily up Bill Wakefield’s cheeks. ‘Look here, officer, what is this all about?’

  ‘The police ask the questions,’ put in Detective Constable Crosby.

  Bill Wakefield gave him a baleful look. ‘If you must know…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crosby sotto voce.

  ‘It would be very helpful, sir,’ said Sloan smoothly, reminding himself to tell Crosby sometime that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

  ‘As soon as I got away from Head Office,’ said Bill Wakefield, ‘I naturally tried to ring my wife but there was no answer.’

  ‘I was having supper at the Bellingham with Josephine Short’s grandson then,’ put in Janet Wakefield quickly. ‘I’d met him at the funeral, you see, and it seems he’s part of the family.’

  ‘So,’ went on Bill with considerable determination, ‘I thought if there was no one at home here in Berebury for whatever reason there wasn’t much point in my coming down that night. I don’t take my house keys out to Brazil with me, you know.’

  ‘No spare under a flowerpot, then?’ said Crosby chattily.

  ‘No,’ said Bill Wakefield coldly. ‘And I must remind you that the last train from London leaves pretty early.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do know that,’ said Sloan patiently. ‘So what did you do next?’

  ‘I booked myself in at the Erroll Garden Hotel. At the firm’s expense, of course,’ he added, catching sight of his wife’s expression.

  ‘And then, sir?’ persisted Sloan.

  ‘Had a good meal and went to bed early. I was pretty short of sleep by then, I can tell you. Brazil’s a long way away.’

  One of Detective Inspector Sloan’s early mentors had been the sergeant with whom he had first walked the beat. That wise old policeman had a theory that a person being questioned turned their head to the left when spontaneously speaking the truth and to the right when thinking up a good lie. He had held that it had to do with the functioning of the left and right parts of the brain, the right side being used for memory and the left for the creative thinking necessary for telling a good lie – not forgetting that the two pathways crossed over in the brain.

  As a very young police constable Sloan had thought instead that it was just policeman’s instinct and experience on his sergeant’s part. Whatever it was – instinct or simple observation – there was no doubt in his own mind now that Bill Wakefield was lying. A slight trembling in that young man’s left hand confirmed this view.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Where are we now, Sloan?’ asked the superintendent. The question was purely rhetorical in that Detective Inspector Sloan was standing in front of him in his superior officer’s room.

  ‘Dr Dabbe is of the opinion that the body pulled out of the river, now identified as far as we are concerned as a young woman called Lucy Lansdown, was the victim of an attack.’

  The superintendent grunted. ‘Sit down and go on.’

  ‘This is on the basis of some bruises to her neck, perhaps designed to stop her crying out for help.’

  ‘It has been known,’ said Leeyes heavily.

  ‘There were also grazes on both her hands…’

  ‘From clutching at the quoins of the bridge on the way down?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re checking on that,’ said Sloan.

  ‘But she wasn’t dead when she hit the water?’

  ‘Dr Dabbe thinks not. He is of the opinion that she probably died from drowning. She had inhaled some river water and there were diatoms in the lungs. He also found a bruise on her head so it is possible that she could have been stunned before she went into the river.’

  The superintendent stirred uneasily. ‘There’s doesn’t sound to me anything at all accidental about all this, Sloan.’

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not.’ He coughed. ‘Dr Dabbe is working on his report now but he states quite categorically that the deceased was not pregnant.’

  Leeyes grunted again. ‘Or drunk?’

  ‘No, sir. Her blood alcoholic levels showed that she had drunk nothing last evening.’

  ‘And no note, you said?’

  ‘No note that has been found so far,’ stated Sloan precisely. ‘All we discovered in the house in the first instance was the piece in the local paper announcing the funeral of Josephine Eleanor Short over at Damory Regis marked in black ink.’

  The superintendent gave a prodigious frown. ‘And what, pray, is the connection between the – I mean, both – deceased?’

  ‘That, sir, is what we are seeking to establish now.’

  ‘You aren’t issuing a carefully prepared statement to the press now, Sloan. You’re talking to me in my office.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And so what’s holding you up, then?’

  ‘We have examined the late Josephine Short’s room at the Berebury Nursing Home,’ Sloan replied obliquely. ‘The contents appear to have been undisturbed save for a vase whose breakage cannot be accounted for and an unconfirmed feeling the matron has that someone has riffled through her office records. Nothing missing there, though, that she can think of.’

  ‘Now you’re talking like an accountant, Sloan.’

  ‘There is no doubt, though,’ Sloan ploughed on steadily, ‘that there had been an intruder on the premises the night before the funeral, although there is no evidence so far that he was in Josephine Short’s room, save only for the fact that it was in her room that the vase was broken and none of the staff admit to knocking it off the shelf.’

  Leeyes grunted. ‘So what’s new?’

  ‘Matthew Steele’s mother works there, by the way, as a care assistant.’

  ‘Heaven help the inmates, then.’

  Sloan coughed and said delicately, mindful of both political correctness and the matron, ‘I understand, sir, it is more usual to re
fer to them as residents.’

  Leeyes drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Mark my words, Sloan, that’s what they’ll be calling prisoners any minute now, too.’

  ‘Very possibly, sir. And Ellen Steele is, as I said, the mother of the troublesome Matthew.’

  ‘Nobody in that tribe would ever have broken anything that they could sell for ready money. Ever,’ pronounced Leeyes. ‘Any of them. Certainly not her Matthew.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Sloan carried on, ‘The Scene of Crime people have now taken all the information they can from the nursing home and we have confirmed that the girl in question—’

  ‘The girl in the river,’ said the Superintendent.

  ‘Her,’ agreed Sloan, since there was never a lot of point in disagreeing with his superior officer anyway. ‘She was seen at the funeral by Mrs Janet Wakefield who has since been shown the photograph. Although she states she doesn’t know her name, she did identify the woman in the photograph as being among those attending the ceremony.’

  ‘Mourners, Sloan, that’s what they’re called.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but what we don’t know as yet is why she should have been mourning the old lady.’ He paused and then went on, ‘Or what the connection between the two could be. There must have been one or she wouldn’t have been at the funeral.’ He wondered briefly if he should mention that sometimes people represented other people at funerals but decided against it. Instead he said, ‘We propose checking next with the deceased’s grandson if he knew her.’

  ‘Who benefits from her death?’ asked Leeyes simply.

  ‘The girl’s? We don’t know yet, sir. We’ve been told that there’s a brother living in the North of England and that’s all I can tell you so far. In the meantime we’re keeping the victim’s name under wraps.’

  ‘Never does any harm,’ opined Leeyes, constitutionally opposed to giving information of any sort away. ‘And the old lady’s heir?’

  ‘This grandson I mentioned. He’s called Joe Short.’ Simon Puckle, the solicitor, had been guarded in his talk with the police but helpful. He hadn’t known the girl with the auburn hair either, although he, too, had seen her at the funeral.

  ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a relative,’ observed Leeyes largely.

  ‘Just so, sir,’ said Sloan. ‘We are also carrying out a routine check on this William Wakefield – it was his wife, Janet, who organised the funeral. He says he only arrived in England yesterday evening.’

  ‘Good thinking. The checking I mean.’

  ‘And it would seem, sir, that he – this William Wakefield – inherits should…er…anything happen to the deceased’s grandson, Joe Short.’

  ‘I take it, Sloan,’ said the superintendent loftily, ‘that you will see that nothing does happen to him.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Sloan warily. He coughed. ‘I have also instituted enquiries in the town about whether anyone saw anything untoward on the bridge last night, although I’m afraid it’s rather unlikely if it was after dark.’

  ‘There’s not a lot of traffic at that hour of the night,’ agreed Leeyes, adding mournfully, ‘and it’s about the only time when there isn’t.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan snapped his notebook shut and got to his feet. In ‘F’ Division of the County of Calleshire Constabulary, cars, unless used in the deliberate killing of someone, were not his problem. Anyway, he had a feeling that he’d got quite enough on his plate already. ‘There’s one other thing, sir…’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Lucy Lansdown’s handbag.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘We can’t find it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I’m having the river just below the bridge dragged. Just in case.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan was not unknown at the Bellingham Hotel. Old-fashioned and comfortable, he had rarely been called there in the line of duty but he had from time to time looked in when not working. Once upon a time, though, he had frequented dances in their ballroom hoping that a certain young girl would be there in an electric-blue dress…a girl called Margaret. He had it in mind to take her back there on their next wedding anniversary.

  Pulling himself together he asked at the desk if a Mr Short was in his room. The receptionist pointed across the hall. ‘I think you’ll find him in the lounge, Inspector. He’s just asked for a pot of tea.’

  ‘Make it for two. No,’ Sloan corrected himself, now conscious of a figure at his side stirring. ‘For three, please.’

  ‘A cake would be nice,’ said Crosby plaintively, ‘seeing as how we didn’t get any lunch.’

  ‘With cakes,’ sighed Sloan.

  ‘We do toasted teacakes,’ said the receptionist, obviously a born saleswoman.

  Crosby brightened. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘This way, Crosby,’ said Sloan, making his way across the Bellingham’s hall. The lounge was comfortable, furnished with sensible leather-covered chairs into which a guest could sink. He picked out Joe Short without difficulty since he was the only solitary male in a room otherwise mainly full of women, who judging by their parcels, were resting after heroic shopping. True, two other men were huddled over a table in the far corner of the room. They were mulling over papers, their briefcases spilling out over the floor, but they were older and patently busy.

  Sloan advanced towards the young man. ‘Mr Short, I’m Detective Inspector Sloan.’

  Joe Short got to his feet. ‘My goodness, Inspector, that was quick…where I come from you practically have to bribe the police to take an interest in a murder let alone a stolen passport.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’ve only just been into your police station to report that my passport has been stolen.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ Sloan sat down across the table from the young man. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It was my own fault,’ he admitted. ‘At least, I think it was.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Sloan. If Crosby said anything at this moment about a dead girl he’d have his guts for garters.

  ‘I’ve been staying here in Calleshire for my grandmother’s funeral,’ explained Joe Short, ‘and I went over to see an old boy – a friend of hers, who’d been at the funeral, called Sebastian Worthington. I got his name and address from some cards Mrs Wakefield brought round after the funeral…’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Sloan with apparent indifference. ‘Perhaps we could take a look at those sometime.’

  ‘Sure. Well, this guy lives out in the country, inland from Kinnisport, and by the time I left him I was a bit hungry and so I cast about a bit for a good pub…’

  ‘And found one?’

  ‘The Shipwright’s Arms. I guess that figures since they’re near enough to the sea there.’

  ‘Ah, food,’ said Constable Crosby to the waitress as she approached their table. ‘Put it here, please.’

  ‘You know the pub?’ said Joe Short to Sloan.

  ‘I know of it, sir,’ said Sloan. And he did. A big old country pub with a large clientele, some of them sailors ashore.

  ‘It was pretty crowded at lunchtime, I can tell you. I suppose that should have made me more careful…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Detective Constable Crosby indistinctly, wiping some butter that had dripped from the toasted teacake off his fingers.

  ‘Yes, well I will be in future I promise you,’ grimaced Joe Short.

  ‘Did you lose anything else besides your passport?’ asked Sloan. ‘Your wallet, for instance…’

  ‘No,’ Joe Short patted his trouser pocket. ‘That’s safe enough.’

  ‘Not now you’ve shown everyone in the room where it is, it isn’t,’ remarked Crosby insouciantly.

  ‘Where was your passport, then, sir?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Ah, that was in my jacket pocket and like a fool I took that off after I’d had a beer and began to feel warmer.’

  ‘And you hung it on the back of your chair, I suppose,’ said Crosby censoriously. He reached for another teacake, then withdrew his hand. ‘Do you want the
last one, sir?’

  ‘I think, Crosby,’ said Sloan acidly, ‘that your need is greater than mine.’

  ‘As Sir Philip Sidney said at the Battle of Zutphen,’ remarked Joe Short. He grinned apologetically. ‘Schoolteachers were hot on the history of England if they were abroad.’

  ‘I can see that they might be, sir,’ said Sloan. Distance might well have lent enchantment to some of the more inexcusable incidents in British history. ‘Now, this passport that you have reported missing…’

  ‘I shall have to apply for a replacement one pretty pronto or I shan’t be able to get back to Lasserta.’

  ‘Lasserta?’

  Joe Short sketched a circle in the air. ‘Large island, sandy desert in the north and tropical jungle in the south – with the odd hill in both.’

  ‘Ours?’ enquired Crosby. He’d once been given an old atlas, its maps mostly in pink.

  ‘Sort of,’ replied Joe. ‘That is, it was once. A British protectorate or something like that. It isn’t now but I think we have some kind of presence there.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Crosby, never a child of Empire.

  The young man relaxed in his chair. ‘That’s easy. They mine querremitte ore there. Hardest metal known to man.’

  ‘Very valuable, I’m sure,’ said Sloan.

  ‘It sure is.’ Joe Short picked up his cup. ‘And I won’t be able to get back there without a new passport. I’ve just booked a slot on your library computer here in the town so that I can get cracking today. Before I lost the thing I was all ready to start booking a return flight home now that the funeral’s over.’

  Sloan nodded. ‘Now, sir,’ he went on, opening his notebook, ‘as it happens we came to see you about something quite different.’

  Joe Short started. ‘Not about Granny surely? The matron at the nursing home said that everything was hunky-dory…sorry, I mean that there was nothing to worry about with her death. Expected and all that. Oh,’ he subsided, ‘I suppose you mean about that break-in there that I was told about. Very odd.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, reaching into the folder he had brought with him.

  ‘I don’t get it, Inspector,’ said Joe. ‘What exactly do you mean?’