His Burial Too

by Catherine Aird

  Hepple looked down at his notebook. “You said something else to me about it, miss, before …”

  “There was a button missing.”

  “Where from?”

  “The sleeve.”

  “Which sleeve?”

  “The left one.”

  Hepple kept his eyes on his notebook. “You wouldn’t by any chance happen to have that button, miss, would you? You know, ready for sewing back on again after the suit came from the cleaners …”

  Something of the colour went out of Fenella’s face but she kept her voice steady with an effort. “The button?”

  “It would be a great help, miss, if we might have it …”

  “I should like now,” announced Detective Inspector Sloan to Mr Knight, “to take a look at the outside of the tower.”

  “But what about this poor bloke?” interjected Bert Booth, the foreman. “Aren’t we going to try to get him out then?”

  “How?” enquired Sloan.

  “I’ve got plenty of men outside. You know that. They’d …”

  “If they all heaved together,” said Sloan, “we’d never get this door open. There must be all of half a ton of marble up against the back of it.”

  Bert Booth scratched his head. “That’s a thought, guv’nor. But what about the other door? The churchyard one …”

  The man called Knight shook his head at this. “You wouldn’t be able to shift that one, Bert. No matter how hard you pushed. You can see what’s up against the inside of it from here.”

  “Crikey,” exclaimed Bert Booth, “then how on earth …”

  “Quite so,” said Sloan sedately.

  Mr Knight stared at Sloan. “But that means, surely, Inspector, that no one can have left the tower after this happened—that he was alone in here when …” He fell silent.

  “It does,” agreed Sloan. “That’s why I want to look round outside now.”

  The heat of the day struck him in full force again as he followed Mr Knight and Bert Booth out through the church door.

  Billy, the apprentice, was looking slightly less green.

  “Want to tell me about it now?” asked Sloan gently.

  The boy gulped. “I was just looking, mister. That’s all. And then I saw this arm sticking out. I didn’t mean any harm, going in there.”

  “No.”

  “Honest, I didn’t,” he insisted earnestly. “When the door wouldn’t open above an inch or two I looked to see what was keeping it. I didn’t sort of take in the arm at first if you know what I mean.”

  “Then what did you do?” Sloan wasn’t worried too much about the boy. His tale would lose nothing in the telling. By evening it would be as remembered with advantages as any Agincourt story—his genuine squeamishness talked out of him and forgotten. By tomorrow he would be a hero in his own small circle.

  “I didn’t touch anything.”

  “Except the door handle.”

  Billy looked crestfallen. “I’d forgotten about that.”

  “You weren’t to know,” said Sloan. “Then what?”

  “I ran and told Mr Booth and he sent someone for Mr Knight.”

  It was Mr Knight who now led the way through the churchyard and round the outside of the church. It emerged that he was a retired schoolmaster and also secretary of the Parochial Church Council.

  “That’s why they sent for me,” he explained. “I only live down the road. Here we are …”

  Sloan stopped and took his first good look at the church tower. It was square and had just the one pair of double doors opening onto the churchyard. Set above the rounded arch of the doorway was a small window.

  Bert Booth, the foreman, looked up at it and shook his head.

  “That’s not big enough to get anyone through to let us in from the other side. We couldn’t even push Billy through that. He’s not that little.”

  “No,” conceded Sloan. The window was scarcely more than a slit to give light but not access: not even to the apprentice in his traditional role of being squeezed through narrow places.

  “Typical Saxon,” Mr Knight, the schoolmaster, informed him. “The whole tower is Saxon except the battlements at the top.”

  “Really, sir?” said Sloan courteously.

  If there was one thing which Superintendent Leeyes would not want to know it was the age of the tower.

  “We might get a better view with a ladder,” said Bert Booth, the foreman, more practically. He disappeared round the other side of the tower.

  “Saxon,” said Mr Knight again. “Built about the time of the first bridge here.” He indicated the river flowing beyond the church.

  “Randall’s Bridge?” said Sloan.

  “Randalla the Saxon’s Bridge, actually.”

  Sloan nodded. Pedantry will out.

  “Before that there was a ford. The Romans used the ford.”

  “Did they, sir?” murmured Sloan absently.

  So the Romans got their feet wet and the Saxons didn’t.

  That was progress, wasn’t it?

  Or just history?

  “We don’t know the exact place of the ford, Inspector. The river bed’s shifted a bit since then.” Knight inclined his head in the direction of the river Calle which ran along below them. One of the churchyard paths led down towards it. “Two thousand years is a long time.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sloan. So was twelve hours in a case like this. He peered up at the tower.

  Knight pointed. “You can see the long and the short Saxon stonework at the corners, can’t you, Inspector?”

  “So you can, sir.”

  As it happened Sloan hadn’t been considering the Saxon stonework, but long ago he had discovered that the one thing to do with antiquarians was to let them say their piece while he thought about something else. He was thinking now about the gravel outside the tower doorway. There was a certain amount of scuffing there—about six feet in front of the doors and below the window.

  “It’s a common Saxon feature,” went on the schoolmaster happily, “to have the cornerstones alternately horizontal and vertical.”

  “Don’t step on the gravel just here, sir, will you? I shall want some pictures taken of the gravel.”

  “You only get stonework like that in the Saxon period.”

  “Can you get out on the roof, sir?”

  “From inside? Oh, yes, Inspector. Certainly you can. It’s quite a climb up there round the bells but it can be done by anyone who is—er—reasonably agile. Haven’t been up there for some time myself but there’s a very good view from the top. On a clear day you can see Calleford.”

  Sloan stared up at the battlemented top of the tower.

  From a view to a death in the morning?

  Was that what it was going to be?

  He didn’t even know whether the death had been in the morning yet …

  “When would the church have been locked?” he asked abruptly.

  “Eleven o’clock, Inspector. I locked it myself just after eleven. I do it every night. When I take the dog for a walk.”

  “Dog?” sharply.

  “Spaniel. Tessa.”

  Sloan expired. “Pity it wasn’t a bloodhound.”

  “She’s pretty good,” protested the dog owner in injured tones.

  “Did she know that he was in there?”

  Knight frowned. “Now that you come to mention it, Inspector …”

  Sloan sighed. That was never as good as the spontaneous remark. Unprompted, that was how statements should be.

  “… she did sniff round here. I didn’t take a lot of notice at the time.”

  “Here? You came this way?”

  “Yes. Up from the village street by the river path.”

  Sloan pointed to a cottage on the edge of the churchyard. “Is that your house, sir?”

  “What? Oh, no. That’s Vespers Cottage. The two Misses Metford live there. I’m over on the other side. That house opposite lych gate …”

  “Then why did you come this way at all
?”

  For the first time the schoolmaster seemed to be at a loss for a phrase. He cleared his throat several times. “I—er—dropped in to The Coach and Horses actually to have a pint and a chat …”

  “And you opened up this morning—when?”

  “Just after eight. For the workmen.”

  There was a heavy scrunching sound round the far side of the tower and Bert Booth reappeared. He was carrying a ladder.

  “That’s funny,” exclaimed Mr Knight suddenly. “Where did you find that ladder, Bert?”

  “Lying along the wall. Reckon we can get up to that window with it, Inspector?”

  “But,” insisted the schoolmaster, “that ladder shouldn’t have been left lying about outside like that.”

  “No, sir, it shouldn’t.” Sloan couldn’t have agreed with him more. Ladders left lying around were always an anathema to the police.

  “It’s always kept in the tower,” insisted Mr Knight. “Always.”

  Bert Booth shrugged his broad shoulders. “Well, it isn’t there now and it wasn’t one of my chaps who took it out. We’ve no need of ladders, Mr Knight, you know that. Not on this job.”

  The ladder wasn’t long enough to reach the top of the tower. There was no question of that. No one could have come down from the tower by it. But it was tall enough to have reached the aperture above the door.

  Bert Booth turned to Sloan. “Do you want to have a shufti through that window up there, Inspector, or not?”

  “Later,” said Sloan. “When we’ve taken a cast of the gravel.”

  “Like that, is it?” said the foreman.

  Sloan nodded.

  I KNOW DEATH HATH TEN THOUSAND SEVERAL DOORS.

  6

  “I think sir,” began Inspector Sloan cautiously, “that we may have found Mr Tindall.”

  As soon as Constable Crosby had returned to the church Sloan had gone to report back to Superintendent Leeyes at Berebury Police Station.

  He’d got his police priorities right long ago.

  He was using Mr Knight’s telephone. Crosby’s police car radio wasn’t quite private enough for this sort of conversation. As he dialled Sloan could hear the schoolmaster pacing up and down in the other room, together with Bert Booth, the foreman.

  Booth was waiting his turn to use the telephone to tell his employers—a firm of central heating engineers in Berebury—that there had been what he called “a bit of a hold-up.” It didn’t seem to have bothered the workmen. They were settling down to another tea break—this time in the churchyard. Sloan could see them and their mugs from the window of Mr Knight’s sitting room.

  Crosby he’d left behind inside the church.

  Not that you could very well call him a “scene-of-crime officer.”

  Not Crosby.

  A familiar grunt at the other end of the line indicated that the Superintendent was listening.

  “We can’t be sure, sir, of course, yet, but …”

  “Too much of a good thing if not,” responded Leeyes robustly. “A missing man and a dead one in one day in one Division. This isn’t Chicago.”

  “No, sir …” he hesitated.

  “Well, Sloan,” barked the Superintendent, “are you going to tell me what happened or aren’t you?”

  “It’s not all that easy to say, sir.”

  “I may not be ‘Listening With Mother,’” said Leeyes heavily, “but I am ‘Sitting Comfortably.’”

  Sloan took a deep breath. “It’s like this, sir. They’re putting central heating in the church at Randall’s Bridge …”

  “What for?” The Superintendent was nothing if not a realist.

  “Someone left them the money to do it. Just the heating. For that and nothing else. A specific legacy in a will …”

  Sloan could hear the Superintendent muttering something cynical under his breath about fire insurance but he took no notice.

  “… a local boy who made good,” he said, pressing on, “in Australia.”

  “Funny place to think about heating.”

  “He never forgot how cold it used to be in the church when he was a lad,” said Sloan, repeating what the church secretary had told him. “He made a small fortune out of sheep, and he remembered Randall’s Bridge in his will.”

  Leeyes grunted. “Go on.”

  “To get the pipes in properly the central heating people had to move a whacking great sculpture in the church—in the south aisle. A sort of monument, it was …”

  “Was?”

  “Was,” affirmed Sloan remembering the arm underneath.

  There was something terrible about that arm sticking out like that.

  “Well?”

  “It was a weeping widow and ten children all mourning the father. You know the sort of thing, sir.”

  “I do. Very upsetting they are, too,” said Leeyes. “They don’t allow them any more. And quite right.”

  “This one’s called the Fitton Bequest. A memorial to remember Mr Fitton by …”

  “I should have thought myself,” remarked Leeyes, “that ten children were …”

  “The workmen moved it into the church tower last week,” went on Sloan hastily, “so that they could get on with laying the pipes and so forth. On its plinth. That’s a good few feet high for a start. This sculpture stood on top of that.”

  “Hefty.”

  “I’ll say, sir. It only just went through the door.” Sloan paused. “I’m very much afraid that Mr Tindall is under what’s left of it. And if it’s not him, then it’s somebody else …”

  “Who’s equally dead,” grunted Leeyes, “which from our point of view …”

  “Just so, sir.” The police point of view wasn’t everything but it was the one which they both had to worry about.

  “This sculpture, Sloan …”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What was keeping it on its plinth?”

  “Gravity, sir. As far as I could see, that is.”

  “Gravity.” He grunted again. “You can’t play about with that, can you?”

  “No, sir.” That was true. Not even the Superintendent could play about with gravity.

  “Well, then, did this Fitton thing …”

  “Bequest.”

  “Bequest. Did it fall or was it pushed?”

  Sloan took a deep breath. “I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that, sir.”

  “It isn’t,” demanded Leeyes suspiciously, “going to turn out to be one of these fancy suicides, Sloan, is it? I can’t stand them.”

  “I don’t somehow think so, sir.” It didn’t look like suicide—however fancy—to Sloan. Not with the river and the railway line so hard by, so to speak.

  “Firm not going to pot or anything like that?”

  “Quite the reverse, sir, from all accounts. I’m told there’s a character who came to Cleete this morning who swears he was told that he could buy it outright yesterday. He’s still as keen as mustard from what I hear.”

  “Is he now?”

  Sloan heard that register at the Police Station all right, and added, “Cranswick’s his name. Gordon Cranswick.”

  “Gordon Cranswick.”

  “We’ll have to check, sir, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t think, sir,” went on Sloan more slowly, “that whoever is under this marble could very well have pulled the thing down on top of himself at the same time as ending up face downwards underneath it. Not easily.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And we can tell he’s lying prone because of the hand.” Sloan was still amazed at what you could tell from a solitary hand.

  “Well, then …”

  “But if it was pushed, sir …”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a snag.”

  “I’ll buy it, Sloan.”

  “If it was pushed …”

  “Get on with it, man.”

  “Whoever did the pushing must still be in the church tower.”

  “Say that again,
Sloan.”

  “No one’s come out of that tower since the sculpture came down on that chap.” Sloan spelled it out for him. “They can’t have done.”

  “What!”

  “There’s half a ton of marble up against the far door—the one that leads to the churchyard.”

  “The west door,” said Leeyes surprisingly.

  Sloan blinked. “That’s right, sir.”

  “Civic services,” explained the Superintendent elliptically. “Have to go to a lot of them.”

  “Quite, sir. Well, there’s nearly as much marble behind the pair of doors which give to the church itself from the tower. No one,” he added carefully, “can have opened either set of doors from the inside after the sculpture came down.”

  “The roof?” Leeyes seized on the only alternative to the doors. “What about the roof?”

  “There is a hatch leading out onto the roof,” reported Sloan, “but the door up there is always kept locked—anyway, it’s a long way up from the outside. Too far for ladders. And the church secretary has just shown me the key of the hatch—here in his house …”

  He had also introduced his wife to Sloan. She was a drab, complaining woman, who immediately explained the need for voluntary jobs, a dog which required a lot of exercise, and any number of trips to The Coach and Horses.

  Last night she had had one of her bad heads and had retired to bed early. She had seen nothing and nobody. When she had one of her bad heads she always went straight to bed …

  Sloan wasn’t worried.

  When he had been over by the church tower he’d seen a curtain twitch in the window of the cottage there. Vespers Cottage, Knight had called it. Curtain-twitchers usually had something to report. He would go back there as soon as he could …

  “I can’t check the roof, yet, sir,” he said into the telephone, “because I can’t get in myself, but there’s no doubt that it’s too high for ordinary ladders and there’s no rope hanging down there or anything like that.”

  The Superintendent groaned irritably. “Not another of those locked room mysteries, Sloan, I hope. I can’t stand them either.”

  Fenella Tindall found it more difficult to sit still when Police Constable Hepple came back from the telephone a second time.

  He had taken the button from her, measured it carefully, and then gone through to ring a number in Randall’s Bridge.