Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  He was greeted by a scene that – had he known it – could have come straight out of a painting by Pieter Breughel the Elder. There were signs of baking everywhere, and freshly cooked loaves, crusts still crackling, were giving off a delectable aroma, whilst a tray of round teacakes sat cooling on a wire rack. A man clothed in a white apron and checked trousers, his head surmounted by a chef’s hat, soon spotted him.

  ‘You can’t come in here, mate,’ he called out. ‘Not allowed. Health and safety and all that rubbish.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Crosby untruthfully. ‘I’m lost. I’m looking for the night porter.’

  The man laughed. ‘You’ll be lucky. There isn’t one.’

  ‘What happens when people want to get in late, then?’

  ‘If it’s after midnight poor old Stanley – been here man and boy, he has; he started off as the boots – gets up and opens the door. And don’t we know it – he moans about it all the next day.’ The man rested a pair of floury arms on his hips. ‘And the resident staff here all have their own keys to the back door if they’re late back. That’s what happens, since you want to know, but I can tell you that bit doesn’t happen often, not with our working hours.’

  ‘Unsocial, are they?’ They were in the police force, too, but Crosby didn’t say so.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said the chef.

  ‘Did he moan about having to get up last night or the night before?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘Not that registered on my radar,’ said the chef, ‘but we’ve been busy in here.’

  ‘So where’ll I find Stanley?’ asked Crosby, averting his eyes from the teacakes.

  ‘The cellar, most like.’ The man suddenly started knocking up a lump of dough with notable vigour. ‘But he’ll be round here as soon as the smell of cooking gets to him. You can count on that.’

  Murmuring his thanks, Crosby found his way to the open cellar door. Going down a wooden stairway that demanded care and attention – to say nothing of the attentions of the aforementioned health and safety executive – he found himself in the murky surroundings of the Bellingham’s cellar. The smells that assailed his nostrils down here were very different from those filling the kitchen on the floor above. That coming from an open tub of stale beer predominated – although he wasn’t entirely certain that some of them didn’t emanate from the gnome-like Stanley who emerged from the shadows as he arrived.

  ‘You from the brewery?’ he asked Crosby, peering at him in the bad light.

  Crosby shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Thought not. Then you can hop it,’ he said. ‘You’re not supposed to be down here. Nobody is.’

  ‘Except you,’ pointed out Crosby, taking a quick look round. At the far end of the cellar a latticed metal grill led to the hotel’s wine store.

  ‘And it’s no use your looking at the wine, either, mate,’ said Stanley. ‘It’s locked and the manager keeps the key.’

  ‘I’ll bet he does,’ said Crosby. He pointed at the heavy beer canisters on the floor. ‘These metal kegs – how do they get down here?’

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘Not by those rotten steps that I came down, anyway,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Course not.’ Stanley jerked his shoulder towards a pair of trapdoors at one end of the cellar. A ladder with curved rungs and a hooked end stood to one side of them. ‘They’re rolled off the brewer’s dray and come down the chute that way.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Crosby. ‘And that’ll give out onto Sheep Street, won’t it?’

  ‘Clever Dick, aren’t we?’ said Stanley.

  ‘Kept locked, is it?’

  ‘Not locked,’ said Stanley. ‘Barred from the inside. Otherwise we’d have people falling through, wouldn’t we?’ He peered more closely at Crosby. ‘What do you want to know for?’

  ‘What I want to know is whether the door to the cellar is kept locked when you’re not here,’ said Crosby, not answering the question.

  ‘I leaves the key in reception then, not that I need to. You couldn’t get into one of these beer kegs if you wanted to – besides they need gas to pump them up to the bars. And, since you’re so interested, the bottled beer’s kept in with the wine and spirits.’ He screwed his face up. ‘I suppose you could draw off a cask if you put your mind to it.’ He pointed to the open tub. ‘Or drink the ullage in that firkin over there but you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Besides,’ offered Stanley, ‘seeing as how the beer has to be kept at a temperature between fifty-five and fifty-eight degrees I sometimes has to leave the cellar door open anyway to keep it cool nights.’

  ‘So,’ reasoned Crosby aloud, ‘if you wanted to get out of the hotel in the middle of the night without paying your bill, you could come down here, swing that iron bar back and climb out onto the street.’

  A look of great cunning came over Stanley’s face. ‘Not without my knowing, you couldn’t. Because you couldn’t close those doors behind you from the street, could you? And I’d know someone had been that way.’ He gave a high cackle. ‘He’d have to come back in again and close them behind him for me not to know.’

  ‘So he would,’ said Detective Constable Crosby, applauding this reasoning. ‘You’re quite right, Stanley. If he went out that way, then he’d have to come back that way.’

  Stanley gave another high cackle. ‘And make sure that nobody fell down the chute while he was out. It’d give way if it wasn’t propped up from behind.’

  ‘So it would,’ said Detective Constable Crosby, not saying that it would be easy enough to hang a warning notice over the trapdoor to keep anyone off it for a little while in the night. ‘By the way, why couldn’t someone get out of the front door and leave that open behind them?’

  ‘Because,’ said Stanley with a look of great cunning, ‘I takes that key to bed with me, that’s why.’

  ‘And has anyone got you up the last couple of nights?’

  Stanley shook his head. ‘Always quiet this time of year, but you wait until Christmas. It’s different then.’

  Crosby left by the Bellingham’s front door but he soon turned right and right again and went down a lane beside the hotel until he found himself in Sheep Street at the back of the building. Seen from above, the two stout leaves of the trapdoor looked solid enough to take the weight of any number of pedestrians. And there was no visible way of opening them from the outside that he could see – unless, that is, you knew they were unlocked when it would have been easy.

  He got out his notebook and wrote down what he had learnt before he forgot it.

  Detective Inspector Sloan was on the point of leaving his office when a member of the civilian staff came in with a sheaf of papers.

  ‘The report from the search team going over the house belonging to Lucy Lansdown, Inspector,’ she said, handing it over. ‘They’ve just done a first survey…they said to tell you that they’ve taken away all the correspondence they found for further examination but nothing interesting about her came up at first sight.’

  Sloan cast his eye quickly over the report. It appeared that what had been found in the house was singularly unrevealing of the personality of the dead girl. If Lucy Lansdown had had a love life no sign of it had been found in her home. There were photographs of a late middle-aged couple and of a man and wife with two children – parents and the brother’s family, the searchers had deduced – and a handful of what were clearly holiday snaps with mountain backgrounds. The presence of the brochures of several travel companies suggested another holiday abroad was being considered. Utility bills were neatly filed and had been paid.

  The report ran on: ‘Although the house was neat and clean, it did not show signs of being more than a place to eat and sleep. There were several nursing journals around and a study of the bookcase suggested escapist, romantic literature was favoured.’

  Inspector Sloan turned the report over to see the name of its author and promptly dismissed him as an academic snob. The description of the house as unlov
ed he could understand. People who worked for all-absorbing institutions such as hospitals and schools often had almost their whole being there, rather than in houses that weren’t exactly homes. In those cases the danger came with retirement and with it the tendency to haunt the places where that working life had been played out. Or find long, dull days totally empty.

  Mentally deciding that he wouldn’t miss a working life spent in the police force as much as that, he went back to the body of the text and read on. ‘There was no sign of a safe for valuables and nothing of really great monetary value was found. What little jewellery there was in the house was of no intrinsic value. The deceased’s wardrobe was of no particular significance, clothes being off the peg and in subdued colours.’

  Sloan grunted. Search teams weren’t supposed to be fashionistas, either, just meticulous. He turned over the page. ‘The refrigerator and freezer contained a number of ready meals for one person…’

  He got the picture. A femme sole, a singleton, a spinster, a single woman, living alone – the condition could be described in a number of ways, all of them saying the same thing. A woman on her own. And, in police terms, therefore vulnerable. He sighed. Lucy Lansdown had been vulnerable, all right. And not from within herself either – that is if the pathologist was correct in his deductions. And he usually was.

  The report had kept its bombshell until the last. Unless, it ran on in detached, professional prose, the officers who had first entered the house, whom they understood to have been Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby, had run a very comprehensive search of every single cupboard and drawer, whilst wearing gloves, then someone else had.

  Looking for what? Sloan asked himself at once but answer came there none. And when, exactly?

  He scanned the report again looking for any mention of a handbag and found none. If Lucy Lansdown had taken it with her when she had gone out, then it had either been stolen or gone into the river with her. It certainly hadn’t been found on the road anywhere near the bridge.

  Reminding himself to alert the frogmen, he pushed the report away, rang for Crosby and picked up his coat. ‘Calleford,’ he said. ‘The hospital there.’

  ‘If we can get in their car park,’ said that worthy gloomily.

  ‘Even hospitals have tradesmen’s entrances,’ said Sloan. ‘And, in a sense, Crosby, let me remind you that that’s what we are. One of our jobs is keeping the streets clean, remember.’

  The philosophy of policing did not interest Crosby. Driving fast cars fast did and they were soon speeding towards the county town and its big teaching hospital there.

  The principal nursing officer there expressed her sadness at the death of Lucy Lansdown and saw no reason why the records of the nurse’s time on the wards should not be made available in the circumstances. ‘There should, of course, be a schedule of which wards she was on during her training because it is an important part of it, Inspector. We aim to make sure that every student nurse gains proper experience in every aspect of nursing.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan explained that it would only have been any time spent in contact with female patients that were of interest to the police.

  ‘Medical or surgical?’ No one could have called the principal nursing officer slow on the uptake; indeed no one ever had.

  ‘That we don’t know,’ admitted Sloan, adding half-apologetically, ‘all we do know is the patient wasn’t happy at the time and declined to go back into hospital some years later when she was dying.’

  ‘Not uncommon,’ she said briskly. ‘Especially in the old. They don’t want to die there. Quite understandable, of course. Most people naturally would wish to be with friends and family at the end.’ She gave the policeman a very straight look. ‘Although, I’m afraid that in our experience, gentlemen, that particular wish is not always reciprocated by their families.’

  ‘Especially when the going gets hard,’ put in Crosby wittily.

  The principal nursing officer ignored this and pressed a bell on her desk. ‘I’ll get those records looked out for you now, Inspector. It shouldn’t take long. Perhaps you’d like to come back after you’ve seen the chief executive?’

  The chief executive exuded non-cooperation with anybody, but especially the police. ‘Certainly not, Inspector. I am not prepared to make them available to you. Patients’ notes are sacrosanct. We have a legal duty to them, you understand.’

  ‘This one is deceased,’ said Sloan.

  ‘And to their families,’ swept on the administrator.

  Detective Inspector Sloan had been schooled on the aphorism that you caught more bees with honey than with a stick. ‘I quite understand your position, sir, and it’s very reassuring to know how careful you have to be.’ He gave a light laugh. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want the whole world to know what I’d been treated for.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t find out from me,’ said the man, still firm.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Sloan persuasively, ‘I’m not sure that just knowing which ward a patient had been in at a particular time – we have the approximate dates from her medical practitioner’s records – is likely to be construed as your being in breach of confidence.’

  The man said nothing while he thought. Sloan said nothing either. Short pauses – pig’s whispers, they were called – could be as loud as words.

  After a moment or two Sloan went on, ‘So you will understand exactly why it is that the Calleford Police are beginning the process of getting a court order in order to resolve the situation. This, of course, will obviously absolve you and the hospital trust of any responsibility in the matter.’

  The administrator visibly relaxed. ‘That, Inspector, puts an entirely different complexion on things.’

  ‘Of course, at the moment,’ continued Sloan, ‘the death about which we are making enquiries is in the hands of the coroner.’

  ‘Of course,’ murmured the administrator. ‘Perhaps if I might just have a moment to consult with our legal people…’

  Detective Constable Crosby was back at the wheel of the police car before Sloan looked up from comparing two lists of dates and said, ‘Lucy Lansdown worked on Banting Ward for three months four years ago.’

  Crosby braked hard very suddenly indeed, causing the papers on Sloan’s lap to cascade to the floor. ‘That was a near thing, sir,’ he yelped. ‘I nearly didn’t spot that speed camera.’

  ‘You nearly killed me,’ said Sloan acidly. He retrieved his papers from the well of the car with difficulty, considerably hampered by a seat belt he had no intention whatsoever of removing until he was safely back at the police station and out of the car.

  Crosby was unrepentant. ‘Sneaky place to site it.’

  ‘And as I was about to say, Crosby, these notes handed over with great reluctance by that jobsworth at the hospital confirm that Josephine Eleanor Short was a patient on Banting Ward at the same time.’

  ‘Bingo,’ said Detective Constable Crosby, picking up speed. ‘Where to now, sir?’

  ‘The churchyard at Damory Regis.’ The forensic experts busily at work there had rigged up tenting all round the site of the disturbed grave, the canvas on one side brushing against the village war memorial.

  Sorrow in stone, thought Detective Inspector Sloan to himself as he advanced towards the specialists, idly wondering the while whether anyone read the names on it these days. An A to Z of grief, you could call it. A to W, anyway, he decided, as the names only ran from Arden to Worrow. Soon, though, all would be forgot, just as Henry the Fifth had said in that glorious Agincourt speech of Shakespeare’s that was drilled into all schoolboys. All forgot, that is, except the battle itself.

  ‘This way, Inspector,’ called out one of the white-clad figures. ‘The tent flap’s over here.’

  Obediently Sloan picked his way over the grass, Crosby stumbling after him among the tussocks. Once inside the tent, his eyes took a moment or two to adjust to the muted light.

  ‘Sorry if you two can’t see very well.
Got to have a roof over the top,’ grumbled the bespectacled forensic scientist. ‘Everyone seems to have a helicopter these days.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’ asked Sloan, not admitting to the police helicopter parked over at Calleford. Or how useful it and its infrared camera could be.

  ‘It all seems to be fairly straightforward,’ said the expert in the patronising way of all specialists. ‘I should say that he, whoever he was—’

  ‘Or she,’ muttered Crosby, sotto voce.

  The expert favoured the constable with a cold stare and repeated himself. ‘He, whoever he was, tried to get in the head end of the coffin first and then found the job couldn’t be done without clearing all the earth off.’

  ‘Earth to earth,’ said Crosby.

  The expert pushed his glasses up on his nose and carried on. ‘He piled it to one side, just as the gravedigger had done, and then when he’d got what he wanted he pushed it all back again. Well, nearly all.’

  ‘But not too carefully,’ reasoned Sloan, ‘otherwise the vicar wouldn’t have noticed that the grave had been disturbed.’

  The forensics man nodded. ‘That’s just what the archaeologist we had out here told us. Apparently it’s very difficult to restore earth exactly as was. That’s why they can find out so much about the ancient past.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I must say the fellow did go on a bit about Anglo-Saxon postholes.’

  It was the more immediate past that was engaging police attention at the moment and Sloan asked exactly what it was that the archaeologist had said.

  ‘That it was a very recent disturbance, which we knew about anyway, and a thoroughly unskilled backfilling, which anyone could have worked out.’ The forensics specialist added, ‘Whoever it was, I have presumed that he’d have been working in the dark.’