Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  ‘I myself was quite anxious that she went into the Berebury Hospital when she really started to go downhill,’ went on the doctor, ignoring this, ‘but every time I suggested it she got very worked up, not to say quite agitated. In fact, she made me promise that she could die in the nursing home where she was, as she felt she was being very well looked after in there and didn’t want the disturbance of being moved.’

  ‘Very understandable,’ said Sloan and he meant it. Hospitals frightened him, too. ‘Tell me, had she ever been in hospital here at Berebury?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ said the doctor immediately, ‘but she did tell me that she had had some treatment at the hospital at Calleford before she came into the nursing home and hadn’t liked it. She only became my patient here when she came to Berebury but I can tell you that she was very anxious indeed not to go back into that hospital over there.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Where to now, sir?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘Anywhere where we can sit down and compile a list,’ said Sloan, aware of a tiredness already seeping into his body. Sleep had come late and lightly to him the night before. ‘Back to the station, I think.’

  Crosby brightened. ‘The canteen might be open now.’

  It was.

  Cradling his hands round a large mug of coffee, Sloan started to think aloud. ‘We need to take a look at the hospital records at Calleford, Crosby, and see if one Josephine Eleanor Short was ever nursed by the dead girl when she was a patient there. That, if you can remember, was where Lucy Lansdown trained.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Crosby had opted for tea. He kept one hand on the handle of the mug and with the other pulled out his notebook. Swopping the mug into his other hand, he retrieved a pencil from a pocket and made a note. ‘And whose say-so are they going to do that on, might I ask?’ He sniffed. ‘Not mine, I’ll bet.’

  ‘A court order, I expect, or a dispensation from God which comes to much the same thing. We might be able to suborn their director of nursing, Crosby, but I doubt it. We might try the chief executive man to man before we try her. Or we might not. And don’t forget we want to know whether Josephine Short was being nursed at a time when Lucy Lansdown was around there. I’ll remind them all that we could be talking murder here. That usually loosens tongues.’

  ‘Righteo.’

  Sloan sighed deeply and then stretched his arms up behind his head and locked his fingers together to make a headrest. ‘And we’d better run a check on exactly when William Wakefield landed in the UK and what he did afterwards. You can talk to the airline he flew in on. Oh, and with the Met about the hotel where he spent the night. Sounds a very posh one to me. Theoretically I suppose he could have come down to Berebury, pushed the girl into the river and got back to London again in the time.’

  ‘Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy,’ said the constable.

  ‘Even by driving safely,’ said Sloan with a perfectly straight face. Crosby’s fast driving was a byword in the force. ‘But why on earth he should have done so beats me.’

  ‘Another mug, sir?’

  Sloan handed over his empty mug and went on thinking aloud. ‘And I suppose we’d better check up on this grandson of the old lady’s, Joe Short, too, although he says he didn’t know the girl from Adam.’

  ‘Eve,’ said Crosby.

  ‘And get me something about this island he’s supposed to have come from,’ continued Sloan, rising above this.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Another thing – get in touch with his firm over there to make sure he’s all he says he is. Get them to send us an email photograph of him. His employers are bound to have one of him on file – that’s if they’re into keeping proper records out there, which if it’s as benighted as some places they might not be.’ He regarded the constable without enthusiasm and said, ‘Oh, and make absolutely certain that Joe Short was safely tucked up at the Bellingham last night, too.’

  Detective Constable Crosby made another note.

  Sloan went on thinking aloud. ‘There must be some connection between the girl in the river and the Wakefields because of her going to their great-aunt’s funeral but as to what it is…’

  ‘Or with the Short fellow…’

  ‘True. Mustn’t forget that.’

  He was talking to the empty air.

  ‘And,’ resumed Sloan, three minutes later, when Crosby came back with two brimming mugs and a couple of Chelsea buns, ‘get a trained search team to go through Lucy Lansdown’s house. Tell them to come back to me with a report on anything and everything they find…and don’t find – especially her handbag. We need a clear steer on the girl.’ He took a sip of his fresh coffee. ‘She’s a bit shadowy at the moment.’

  ‘Nothing known against,’ contributed Crosby. ‘I did the check.’

  ‘Oh, and you can set up a press conference. Her picture in the papers might just help to bring something up but don’t give them her name. You never know…’

  That you never knew with press conferences was very true. What came out of the woodwork after the press got hold of a story was an unknown factor. They could spin a tale better than any spider and they could dig deeper and less scrupulously than any police force in this country, too.

  ‘Okey doke…’ began Crosby, amending this when he caught Sloan’s eye to, ‘Yes, sir. I’ve got all that.’

  ‘While I have a word with the coroner’s officer,’ finished Detective Inspector Sloan.

  ‘A court order!’ expostulated Superintendent Leeyes instantly the words were mentioned.

  ‘For access to the medical records of the late Josephine Eleanor Short,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan.

  ‘You’ll be lucky to get those out of anybody,’ pronounced Leeyes.

  ‘Because I don’t suppose the hospital will give them to us without a court order,’ finished Sloan.

  ‘I don’t suppose they will either,’ snapped Leeyes. ‘They’ll go on and on about medical confidentiality and then they’ll misplace a computer disc and lose all their data to the stolen identity specialists.’

  ‘Records dating back at least three years,’ persisted Sloan steadily.

  ‘They can lose them quicker than that,’ pointed out Leeyes. ‘Whether they can find them again after so long is another matter altogether.’ He shot Sloan a severe look. ‘More than three years ago is a long time. What do you want them for, anyway? You said you were satisfied that the old woman died of natural causes and you’ve got a death certificate to prove it.’ He hesitated and sniffed. ‘Well, not prove it exactly.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan agreed that a death certificate per se only proved the willingness of a registered medical practitioner to write one, not that it was correct. The police held what was known in diplomatic circles as ‘a settled view’ on this subject. Even if they did not publicise it.

  ‘And yet the hospital’s always creating about our not having someone in their Accident & Emergency Unit at the drop of a hat, Friday and Saturday nights, for the drunk and disorderly,’ grumbled Leeyes resentfully. ‘That sister there is a holy terror.’

  ‘It isn’t the old lady’s death I’m worried about,’ said Sloan, sticking to the point. ‘It’s the girl in the river we’re really concentrating on.’

  ‘Well it certainly doesn’t sound like it to me,’ rejoined the superintendent unsympathetically.

  ‘What we need to know, sir,’ persisted Sloan, ‘is whether when Josephine Short was a patient in the hospital this girl taken out of the river—’

  ‘Who you tell me has now been identified as Lucy Lansdown,’ said Leeyes.

  ‘Lucy Lansdown,’ agreed Sloan, ‘who you will remember was a nurse—’

  ‘You’ve said that already, Sloan.’

  ‘What we need to know,’ repeated Sloan, clamping down hard on rising exasperation, ‘is whether she treated Josephine Short or even visited her when she was a patient there.’

  ‘Do I take it, Sloan, that you’re hoping that there will be records of which wards
she worked on while she was there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They shouldn’t be too difficult for the hospital to find because she was a student nurse in training at the time. I don’t think that those sort of nursing records would be construed as confidential. Not in the circumstances.’

  ‘Murder,’ said the superintendent trenchantly.

  ‘Those records might just help,’ admitted Sloan. ‘Although it may not take us any nearer knowing what the connection between the two women is.’ He paused and added. ‘If any.’

  ‘And they’re both dead now.’

  ‘Exactly, sir.’ A lesser man might have verbally patted the superintendent on the head for getting there at last. Instead, Sloan said, ‘This court order to serve on the Calleford hospital, sir. Can I go ahead and apply for it?’

  A beatific smile suddenly appeared on the superintendent’s face. ‘You did say Calleford Hospital, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Apparently Josephine Short lived over that way before she went into the Berebury Nursing Home and it’s where Lucy Lansdown did her nursing training.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before, Sloan?’ said Leeyes, sitting up alertly. ‘That’s quite different. If it’s an enquiry called for over in “A” Division, then I think that Calleford can do the applying for us. After all,’ he said virtuously, ‘it wouldn’t do for us to be seen trespassing in another manor, would it, now?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan was unsurprised. No anthropologist was keener on the territorial imperative than Superintendent Leeyes.

  The smile was still creasing across the superintendent’s face. ‘Give them over there something to do instead.’

  The old-established – and rather old-fashioned – firm of Messrs Morton & Son Ltd, Funeral Directors, was well known in the market town of Berebury for the understanding and sympathetic service it rendered to the bereaved. As was proclaimed in letters of gold on the office door, these were available ‘Night and Day’. The firm was also well known to the police force for its equally ready response when required by Her Majesty’s Coroner to remove a body forthwith to the mortuary for further examination. That was a night-and-day service, too.

  There was thus no delay in young Tod Morton’s having speedy access to Detective Inspector Sloan when he called at the police station that morning, even though that officer was very busy indeed. The delay came later – while he got to the point.

  ‘Sorry being a bother, Inspector,’ began the young undertaker in the low-key manner that went with his calling.

  Since all of Sloan’s work involved a bother somewhere to someone – usually Sloan himself – all he said was, ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve just come from Damory Regis,’ went on Tod. ‘You know, over Almstone way.’

  ‘I do know, Tod,’ he said, reaching for his notebook. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘From the church – St Nicholas’s – well, from the churchyard there, actually…’

  Detective Inspector Sloan remained alert. Anything about Damory Regis was of interest to him now. ‘And?’

  ‘We did a burial there a couple of days ago,’ said the young undertaker, in the same serious way.

  ‘Go on,’ said Sloan, suppressing an urge to shake him.

  ‘Well, the vicar there, quite a decent fellow actually—’

  ‘Do get on with it, Tod…’

  ‘Well, he – Reverend Tompkinson, that is – rang and complained to Dad about the condition of a new grave there. Didn’t like his churchyard looking untidy, he said.’

  Sloan ground his teeth. ‘Complain about what about the grave, Tod?’

  ‘That’s just it, Inspector. We didn’t know ourselves at first.’

  ‘I’m never going to know at this rate,’ said Sloan, resisting a strong impulse to grab him by the lapels of his neat black coat and give him a good shake.

  ‘So Dad said to pop along this morning just to check on what the vicar was on about. Didn’t want to blame the sexton, you see. Can’t be doing without the sexton’s help, can we? I did say that Reverend Tompkinson’s usually all right, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sloan shortly. ‘You did.’

  ‘Dad’s always quite keen on checking anyway, gravediggers being what they are. “Alas, poor Yorick” and all that.’ He looked anxiously at Sloan. ‘Hamlet, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sloan, suppressing further comment with difficulty.

  ‘And you never can tell with chalk.’

  ‘Nor bees, Tod.’

  ‘Doesn’t settle well, chalk.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan decided that silence might be a quicker way to the point.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t all right. The grave, I mean.’

  ‘Not all right?’

  ‘No.’ Tod shook his head. ‘Disturbed. We’ve never had that happen before. Not at Morton’s. The grave not being all right afterwards, I mean. Never. I told Dad and he said to come straight round here and tell you.’

  ‘In what way not all right?’ asked Sloan carefully.

  Tod still didn’t relax. ‘Well, if you were to ask me I should say that it had been disturbed overnight. A bit more than just disturbed, actually. And it must have been overnight. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Foxes, little foxes?’ suggested Sloan, well grounded in the Song of Solomon by a churchgoing mother, quoting with more than a touch of irony ‘“The little foxes that spoil the vine”?’ A keen gardener himself, he knew only too well what damage foxes – little and large – could do. ‘They like churchyards, Tod. Nice and quiet. Or badgers? Badgers can do a lot of damage overnight.’

  ‘Neither foxes nor badgers,’ said Tod Morton flatly, getting to the point at last. ‘Not unless they brought a screwdriver with them. The coffin lid had been lifted.’

  ‘What!’ Sloan exploded.

  ‘When I said the grave had been disturbed,’ said Tod, professionally given to understatement, ‘I meant it was the coffin that had been.’

  ‘Opened, you mean?’ said Sloan, abruptly bringing all equivocation to an end.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tod uneasily. ‘The screws had been undone. We put six screw caps on coffins but only use four screws. It looks better, you know. Besides, nobody’s going to know.’

  ‘These small economies…’ began Sloan. What he should have been saying was that exhumations were a matter for the Home Office and a lot of palaver.

  ‘We always put on six handles, though,’ responded the undertaker immediately. ‘Most firms only use four.’

  ‘The coffin, Tod…’

  ‘But he – whoever got in there, that is – didn’t know about the dummy screws and he must have tried to unscrew one of the screw caps that didn’t lead anywhere and knocked it off trying.’

  ‘That all, Tod?’ He needed to get going on this as quickly as he could.

  ‘Well, no, Inspector. Actually, it’s even worse than that.’

  ‘In what way worse?’ asked Sloan, visions of black masses being celebrated in rural Calleshire churchyards with stakes driven through the heart and suchlike arcane practices rising before him. ‘Surely the body…’

  ‘Oh, the body was all right,’ said Tod, a man accustomed to bodies. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking…’

  ‘What manner of speaking?’ asked Sloan peremptorily. ‘Come along, Tod…tell me in what way the body was or was not all right?’

  Tod said awkwardly, ‘It’s like this, Inspector, the deceased had requested that she be buried still wearing her rings…nice rings, they were…very nice, actually…happens quite often, you know, in our way of business. Naturally we complied with her request. Sentimental, of course, but it sometimes stops the family fighting over them. We notice it particularly when there’s more than one daughter or daughter-in-law—’

  Detective Inspector Sloan looked quite dangerous. ‘Tod, will you get to the point.’

  ‘The rings had gone, Inspector. All three of them.’ He pulled a notebook out of his pocket. ‘Two on the ring finger and an eternity ring on the little finger.
A diamond solitaire, a pale blue Sri Lankan sapphire and an eternity ring set with small stones – Victorian at a guess.’

  ‘Whose grave was it, Tod? That’s what I need to know. Now.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I say? Sorry, Inspector, I thought I had. It was Josephine Eleanor Short’s.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  William Wakefield stretched out on the double bed at The Old Post Office at Staple St James, consciously relishing a long liein. ‘I don’t know about the rough male kiss of blankets that that poet was always on about,’ he said to Janet as she came into the bedroom. ‘Give me the smooth female embrace of clean cotton sheets any day.’

  ‘Nylon, actually,’ she corrected him. She was standing by his bed, fully dressed, and bearing a cup of tea. ‘Colour coordinated, you may have noticed, with the curtains.’

  ‘Don’t spoil the illusion,’ he said, suddenly realising that it was the bright colours of both that were what he disliked about the bedroom. ‘Or do I mean the allusion?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  He reached out an arm and pulled her towards him. ‘Come here, my uxor…’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘Wife. And don’t distract me. Come here while I give you a kiss.’

  ‘Bill,’ she protested, wriggling free of his grasp, ‘it’s practically the middle of the morning.’

  ‘What’s the time of day got to do with it?’ He gave a luxurious yawn. ‘You know what that doctor said about a man’s doing what a man’s got to do when he felt like it, time being of the essence.’

  ‘There’s the washing-up from last night…’

  He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards him more roughly than before. ‘I’ll tell you what you can do about the washing-up.’

  ‘Don’t do that, Bill,’ she gasped. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you when,’ he said in a tone she had never heard before. ‘Listen, sweetie, we’re not talking about a bed of roses any more.’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Bill?’ she said, trying to shake him off. ‘Let me go.’