Passing Strange

by Catherine Aird

  “Will he?” Developing was the post-war South Sea Bubble. Men made money out of bubbles. Even bubbles that burst.

  Edward Hebbinge wasn’t theorizing. He was talking about brass tacks. “There’s quite a lot of money riding on this, Inspector. And for once everyone stands to gain.”

  “Everyone?” Sloan had Joyce Cooper in mind. If it had anything to do with her, she hadn’t gained. She had ‘looked her last on all things lovely’ without being asked. He felt a sudden surge of resolution. He would track down whoever had brought that about. “Are you sure?” he asked Hebbinge with unexpected ferocity.

  “The Priory estate will get some extra income which it needs, Sam Watkinson will have less rent to pay, and Esdaile Homes …” The land agent gave a wry smile. “I don’t think, Inspector, somehow that Maurice Esdaile is going to lose.”

  Twenty minutes later Sloan was in the sitting-room of the man he reckoned stood to gain the most. He had a detective-constable by his side distinctly gratified at having covered the distance in the time. The detective-inspector did not know if property developers were often disturbed late on Saturday evenings and Mr Maurice Esdaile was far too urbane to reveal the fact. He’d certainly made no bones about seeing him, late as it was.

  One thing was immediately obvious. The man wasn’t living in one of his own houses. Not even the style that most customers favoured, known to every reader of advertisements as ‘the John Citizen’ (everything that an Englishman needs built-in). Nor yet ‘the Mary Smith’ (for the woman on her own). Or even ‘the Wayne Harvey’ (the first home for the man in a hurry). Maurice Esdaile himself was ensconced in something a good deal better than all three put together.

  He’d found an unexpectedly well-built early nineteenth-century house in the rural hinterland south of Calleford. Even lit only by the headlights of the police car, Sloan could see that it had been the work of craftsmen. If – as they say – every man wanted to live in the sort of house his father admired then Esdaile père must have had a good eye for a nice piece of brickwork.

  Izaak Walton had noted that different varieties of fish rose to different sorts of bait. So it was with men. The lure that persuaded a wily pike to stir from the safety of the shadows of deep, nearly still water was of quite a different order from the mayfly that tempted the lively trout to flash above the surface of the river in its pursuit.

  Detective-Inspector Sloan landed the verbal equivalent of a wriggling worm right in front of Maurice Esdaile. He was, he announced, engaged upon a murder enquiry and had some questions for him.

  There was wariness in Esdaile’s manner but nothing more that Sloan could put his finger on. He admitted he’d heard about the murder of the District Nurse. No, he hadn’t known her personally. She might have been at the meeting about the new houses …

  “The protest meeting,” interrupted Sloan bluntly.

  Esdaile gave a tiny shrug. “My public relations people don’t like the phrase.”

  An astute observer might have seen from the downturn of Sloan’s own shoulders what the policeman thought about public relations people. They never did like spades being called spades. And, now he came to think of it, calling spades, spades – not even bloody shovels – was usually what upset public relations people. The truth, in fact. Calling spades agricultural implements was what constituted public relations: the building of an image that wasn’t an outright lie. Just slightly off centre in the right direction.

  “As I say, Nurse Cooper might have been there.” Maurice Esdaile looked calmly at Sloan. “From where I sat it seemed as if every man jack in Almstone was in that hall.”

  “All against you?”

  “Those in favour,” said Esdaile drily, “usually stay at home.”

  Sloan motioned to Crosby to take notes and looked at Esdaile. He had the appearance of a man who could roll with the punches. “I understand,” said Sloan, “that it was a noisy meeting.”

  “Those against came,” said Esdaile.

  “Where,” asked Sloan straightly, “does Richenda Mellows come into all this?”

  Some of the businessman’s composure slipped. “You may well ask, Inspector.”

  Sloan waited.

  “Things had been going quite well.” Maurice Esdaile opened his hands in an age-old commercial gesture.

  Sloan went on waiting. Sometimes murder was done to preserve the status quo: sometimes to change the situation.

  “We’d got outline planning permission,” said Esdaile. “That was the most important thing.”

  “I can see that,” said Sloan. “Then what?”

  “There was a willing tenant and a willing owner,” Esdaile added ironically. “That’s the ideal situation, Inspector.”

  “I can see that.” Sloan jerked his head. Situations, of course, altered cases. And not only in grammar. Situations altered murder cases too.

  “And then …” Esdaile paused.

  “Then?” prompted Sloan. He was interested in the way things had changed.

  “Then old Mrs Agatha Mellows ups and dies.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It could have happened at any time. We all knew that. She was quite an age.”

  Sloan nodded silently. Late or soon death comes to Everyman. But from time to time people forgot.

  “It just had to happen before she could put her name on the dotted line.”

  “These things take time,” said Sloan profoundly.

  Esdaile frowned. “I think Terlingham did the legal work as quickly as he could.”

  “Did he?” murmured Sloan. There was another professional man with whom he would have to have a word besides the solicitor. That was the doctor. Nature might have caught up with Mrs Agatha Mellows but he would have to check that Art hadn’t overtaken Nature. The Art of Homicide. He made an unobtrusive note.

  Maurice Esdaile didn’t appear to notice. “Another couple of weeks and we would probably have been all right,” he said.

  “So then what happened?” enquired Sloan, though he thought he could guess.

  “Delay.” The property developer summed everything up in one bitter word.

  “Time is money,” observed Sloan.

  “In my business more than most,” said Esdaile trenchantly. He waved a hand. “Oh, I know Stephen Terlingham’s done his best.”

  “The law’s delays,” offered Sloan by way of encouragement.

  Esdaile didn’t need encouragement. “Terlingham got probate all right. No problem there. And my people got on with planning the Almstone houses.” He brightened. “We’re doing an estate of our ‘Harold and Hilda’ houses there, you know.”

  Sloan didn’t know and said so.

  “‘Harold and Hilda – Room for retirement’,” said the developer with modest pride. “We’ve got a waiting list.”

  “And then?” said Sloan gently. He didn’t know yet if he was playing a big fish or not.

  “And then,” said Esdaile, “Terlingham goes and gets cold feet over being the executor.”

  Sloan murmured something trite about its being quite a responsibility.

  “He doesn’t know,” said Esdaile, “whether to hand over to the girl’s trustees or not.”

  “Tricky,” said Sloan, trying not to let his interest show. Detective-Constable Crosby did not seem to be having any problems in that direction at all. He sat, stolid and unmoving, his notebook on his knee, not looking up.

  Esdaile nodded briskly. “So the whole thing gets put on ice.”

  “Not helpful?” ventured Sloan cautiously.

  “It doesn’t do a housing scheme any good to go into cold storage, Inspector. It’s bad business.”

  “I can see that.” Sloan cleared his throat. “The girl’s trustees, I take it, would also be in favour of this new development?” Nobody at the Preservation Society’s indignation meeting had been but Sloan presumed that in Maurice Esdaile’s world they did not count.

  “Good Lord, yes,” said the man opposite him unhesitatingly. “It’s the right thing to do, Inspector. For everybo
dy. No question of that at all.”

  Sloan thought about Miss Tompkins sitting in Blenheim Cottage at Almstone thinking up ways to thwart the development. But it was another woman whose name he mentioned. “What does Richenda Mellows herself think about it?”

  “I have no idea,” said Esdaile.

  “Pardon?”

  “I couldn’t say, Inspector.” Esdaile dismissed the thought impatiently. “I haven’t asked her. Her Trustees are willing, naturally.”

  “But …”

  Maurice Esdaile looked Sloan straight in the eye. “In fact I’ve never even set eyes on her.”

  11

  Ophicleide

  There were undoubtedly regimes in other parts of the world where the police had ways of making people talk. And had men on their staff who specialized in doing so. They existed in those countries where the police could treat suspects just as they liked: without awkward questions being asked in the Houses of Parliament. Where, in fact, it was pretty much routine also to lock up those who even asked those awkward questions.

  There were techniques – highly sophisticated techniques – for getting useful information out of people when they were being interviewed. These owed almost everything to art and almost nothing to intimidation. They were used by every law enforcement agency there was.

  And in England there was no way short of torture – peine forte et dure had been tried on Guy Fawkes – of compelling anyone to tell the truth. A man could be sent to prison for seven years for not telling it – but that was something different.

  None of these facts was of the slightest use to Detective-Inspector Sloan now. Truth didn’t even enter into the matter at this stage because there was no way at all of questioning someone who was not prepared to speak. Non-verbal communication had its limitations.

  Superintendent Leeyes wasn’t at the Police Station any more. He’d gone home but at least Sloan was able to be sitting at his own desk again when Crosby reported to him.

  Having declared that she had nothing to say, Richenda Hilary Pemberton Mellows proceeded – with notable strongmindedness – to say nothing.

  “Not even name and number,” said Crosby, who was an avid cinema-goer. In all the best war films soldiers who were taken prisoner always gave their name and number before refusing to answer the enemy’s questions. Richenda Mellows did not seem to have heard of the Geneva Convention.

  And if – in an earlier tradition – like Greta Garbo she only wanted to be alone she did not say so.

  “She said nothing at all,” repeated Crosby.

  It was all very well for police in other countries to say that they had ways of making people talk. That was no help to Sloan now. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

  Neither he nor anyone else was able to raise a peep out of Richenda Mellows. Questioning was essentially a two-way business. Without a response it became suspiciously like a harangue. And after a little while a man began to feel a trifle foolish talking to a girl who would not answer back.

  Sloan discarded the idea of one ploy straightaway.

  Sometimes back-chat between police officers succeeded where straightforward questioning of suspects failed. Lesser criminal fry could occasionally be drawn into giving themselves away by the badinage of a couple of alert policemen. Unless well done it tended to sound perilously like the act of a stage comedian and his feedman.

  First policeman: Hullo, hullo, who have we here?

  Second policeman: Little Bill Sikes.

  And what has little Bill Sikes done this time?

  Stolen the lead from the church roof.

  What, him steal the lead from the church roof? (Pause for rich chuckle). He couldn’t nick a lead soldier from the playgroup.

  Bill Sikes, provoked: Yes, I could.

  First policeman: Get away with you, Sikes. You’re too old for all that ladder work.

  Bill Sikes, insistent: No, I’m not. It wasn’t difficult.

  Detective-Inspector Sloan did not lend himself to that sort of performance very often.

  And it wouldn’t do for Richenda Mellows.

  It wouldn’t do for a murder enquiry either. Never for one moment had Sloan forgotten the object of the exercise. The memory of Joyce Cooper mustn’t get submerged in a welter of interviews and statements. There was a certain decorum called for in dealing with the Last Enemy.

  Sloan therefore kept his approaches to Richenda Mellows deliberately low-key. And even while he was talking to the figure in blue jeans and woolly jacket he was aware of a quality of strange detachment about the girl’s unresponsiveness that did not accord with the interview room. She was utterly calm and relaxed. He wasn’t at all sure that she was even listening to him. In some mysterious way she seemed to have withdrawn inside herself.

  “You’re quite sure you’ve nothing to say, miss?” he asked for the umpteenth time. Sloan felt a momentary flash of curiosity about the primitive tribe of people among whom she had grown up. If they, too, had this serenity then he could see why Richard Charles Mellows, anthropologist, had gone to live with them. There were, Sloan was willing to be the first to admit, more things in Heaven and earth than were dreamed of in Horatio’s philosophy.

  And not all of them in Denmark either.

  For the umpteenth time she made no reply. Richenda Mellows stayed quite unassailable in her turret of silence.

  Already someone would be checking on the address she had given the car hire company in London. Crosby had arranged for it to be done. But Sloan did not mention that. Instead he asked her if anyone needed to know where she was tonight.

  And when she didn’t even answer that he said provocatively, “So you’re a free agent, are you?”

  Even that remark, said in the drear surroundings of the police station interview room, where she was patently anything but a free agent, failed to draw her.

  She stayed silent and immutable.

  Sloan looked at his watch and got up to go. She followed his actions with her eyes. He would have needed to have been a social anthropologist himself – or perhaps a behavioural scientist – to explain why it was that he still felt impelled to take proper leave of her in spite of her mutism.

  “Good night, Miss Mellows,” he heard himself saying with quaint formality.

  Her lips twitched.

  “Good night, Inspector,” she said unexpectedly.

  Out of the corner of his eye Sloan saw Crosby writing that down. He didn’t know if that came from his police training or from reading Alice in Wonderland at a formative age.

  Detective-Inspector Sloan’s instructions to the Station staff on his way out were quite unequivocable.

  “See that she gets everything the book says she can have,” he said gruffly. “And a good night’s rest. I don’t want a single thing that Defence Counsel can get his teeth into. Not a toehold. That clearly understood?”

  “Anatomy coming to the aid of detection, eh, Sloan?” The voice of Dr Dabbe boomed cheerfully down the telephone the next morning. “Science coming into its own at last?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, Doctor,” said Sloan steadily. “Can you help us?”

  He did not like to enquire how the Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital usually spent his Sunday mornings. Sloan had rung him at his home fairly early in the day. The doctor’s attitude over the telephone demonstrated his usual lively interest in a case but gave nothing away. He could still have been in bed with his wife. She had answered the telephone first.

  “What we’d really like to know,” said Sloan, immediately getting down to essentials, “is what sort of thing the mid-wife might have known that no one else did.”

  “Where the baby’s dimple was,” said Dr Dabbe promptly.

  “I don’t think,” responded Sloan austerely, “that that knowledge would be material in the case of an eighteen-year-old girl.”

  “Naevi, then,” said the pathologist, no whit put out.

  “Beg pardon, Doctor?” That was
the trouble with the medical profession. They could always have the last word. One that you couldn’t understand. And they knew it.

  “Birthmarks, Sloan.”

  “Yes,” said Sloan. “We’d thought of them. That’s the obvious thing, isn’t it?”

  “Or no birthmarks,” Dr Dabbe said.

  “If she had one and the midwife knew the Mellows baby hadn’t,” spelled out Sloan.

  “Or the other way round,” pointed out Dabbe helpfully.

  “Is there anything else?” asked Sloan. Detaining someone for questioning did not usually include going over them for birthmarks.

  The pathologist thought for a moment. “Teeth wouldn’t be any help with an infant.”

  “Dental decay is unknown in the tribes of the region,” Sloan informed him sourly. He was old enough to have gone to a dentist when it hurt. “If you ask me, Richenda Mellows hasn’t a filling in her head.”

  “They do sound a backward lot out there, don’t they?” said Dabbe breezily. “I don’t suppose they’ve got a lot of use for doctors either. And before you say you haven’t too, Sloan, had you thought about age?”

  “Age?”

  The pathologist said, “You can’t deceive an experienced medical practitioner about age. She would have to be the right age to get away with anything.”

  “And eyes?”

  “Almost everything about a woman’s appearance can be changed by art or science,” pronounced Dabbe, “except the colour of her eyes.”

  Sloan decided that Mrs Dabbe was definitely not in the room. “Of course, Doctor, we don’t know yet if the question of the Mellows inheritance has anything at all to do with the murder of Joyce Cooper.”

  The pathologist said, “It’s early days yet, Sloan.”

  “We’ve been over her cottage,” said Sloan.

  Early that morning he and Crosby had examined the murder victim’s house from top to bottom. There had been nothing to help them there. If Joyce Cooper had a private life it had left few traces in her home. The dwelling was cared for – but only up to a point. The point came when work took over.

  There had been a little framed text, neatly worked in cross-stitch hanging near the telephone. It ran