“Naturally.”
“About him. And about your work here.”
Pysden frowned. “I don’t know that I’m in a position to tell you much about our work. Struthers and Tindall guarantee security, you know. And absolute secrecy. All part of our service. If anything at all leaks out we stand to cover the loss. I’m afraid,” he added apologetically, “that we may have been somewhat of a burden to Inspector Tetley since we came here.”
“All part of our service,” murmured Sloan ironically.
“That’s why people come to us who feel—who fear—who may have reason to fear—that their own security isn’t too good.”
“Like United Mellemetics?”
“Sir Digby Wellow is—er—most unhappy,” said Pysden. “So are we. We’ve never had a—er—misplaced report before, have we, Miss Holroyd? Never.”
“Never, Mr Pysden. Until now,” she added conscientiously.
“I don’t know what Richard will … oh, dear.” Pysden took a deep breath. “Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it? That he’s not going to be here to say it to …”
“Death’s like that, sir. Now about this United Mellemetics report …”
“It was an important one.” Pysden looked worried. “There was no doubt about that.”
“Industrial espionage?” hazarded Sloan intelligently.
“It happens all the time.” Pysden tacitly implied agreement and then turned to look at a large clock on the wall before peering myopically across at both police officers again. The thick lenses of his glasses somehow served to veil any expression on his face. If, thought Sloan obscurely, the eye was the window of the soul, like they said, then Henry Pysden’s spectacles were a most effective curtain. “Bound to, really, Inspector, when you consider the sort of money involved these days in that size of firm.”
“It makes a difference, sir.” Sloan would like to see the situation in which money did not make a difference.
He hadn’t yet.
“It was going to make a lot of difference at United Mellemetics anyway,” said Pysden. “That’s why Sir Digby came to us.”
“He wasn’t happy about something?”
“You could say that again.” Pysden took a second look at the clock. “Either someone’s judgement had gone haywire or there was some funny business going on over there. At least, that’s what Richard told me yesterday. I don’t know all the details myself. Mind you, it’s not always as easy as you’d think to choose between the two. It’s difficult to be entirely independent in your conclusions when the success or failure of your department in the firm rests on them. It could,” he finished moderately, “be that.”
It was a point of view, thought Sloan, which Inspector Harpe in Traffic Division would have appreciated. You never won in Traffic. And nobody ever had an independent view. Not if they drove a car, they didn’t.
“Or,” Pysden was going on, “it would be a case of every now and then a chap going to the opposite extreme and forgetting that commercial firms are not university research faculties. We get a bit of that.”
So they did in the police force, too.
It drove them up the wall every three months or so.
Theorists, statisticians, psychologists, criminologists, penologists—they descended on the Berebury Police Station with monsoon regularity.
And were about as helpful.
“What firms usually want from us,” said Pysden ponderously, “is the advance judgement of the marketplace. That comes into our work, of course. It must.”
Sloan nodded. As far as he was concerned the judgement of the marketplace should come into a lot more things than it did.
Like a value-for-money prison system.
And traffic departments costed to within a life or two.
“But what Sir Digby wanted,” said the deputy manager, “was an opinion on the work of an employee.”
“Whether it was bad judgement or bad faith?”
“Precisely.” Pysden let out his breath in a long sigh. “Precisely. It’s always a bit tricky, you know, when it’s someone in your own outfit who could be the—er—maverick. You’ve got to be really careful then.”
They knew that in the Force without being told.
A rogue custodian was the biggest headache of all.
They said that the Chief Constable had something in Latin about that pinned over his shaving mirror. Someone who had stayed in his house had copied it out and the tag had gradually filtered down through the Force.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, it said.
One of the police cadets, fresh from school and a cocky little beast to boot, had translated it as “Who guards the guards.”
“And which,” Sloan asked the general manager, “was it, sir?”
“Bad faith, I’m afraid. At least,” he qualified, “that’s what Richard told me yesterday.” There was no doubt that Pysden was watching the clock now. The hands were creeping round to half-past eleven. “I don’t know all the details.”
“You do work for other firms, too …”
“We do indeed.”
“I shall need to know which ones, sir.”
“And I shall need to have some authority before I give you their names, Inspector. It’s all secret work, you know. Sometimes only the chairman of a particular firm knows that we’re doing some work for them.”
“Like United Mellemetics?”
“I very much doubt,” said Pysden drily, “if Sir Digby has voiced his suspicions to anyone else …”
They were interrupted by a bell in the far corner of the laboratory. It rang from beside a complicated structure of wires, valves, glass, and metal. Henry Psyden immediately went straight across to it and took some readings from a thermometer and two little dials. He put these onto a graph and then punched a time recorder. A cylinder not unlike a barograph moved forward with a tiny jerk and Sloan could see that this was but the latest of a long series of recordings, all neatly time-punched.
“Sorry about this, Inspector,” said Pysden over his shoulder, busy now with the apparatus, “but it won’t wait. It’s a time-linked experiment. I have to do this every six hours for a week …”
“Bad luck, sir.”
Pysden grimaced. “All in a day’s work, I suppose, except that the day starts on the early side. Half-past five.”
“You have to get here by then?”
“No, no. I sleep here. There’s a camp bed. What with the eleven thirty-one and the five thirty-one there’d be no night left if I didn’t.”
Pysden had his back to them now and was bending, totally absorbed, over something which looked to Sloan like a glass lathe.
“It looks very important, sir.”
“It is, Inspector, believe me. I should say it’s about the most important piece of work that Struthers and Tindall have ever done. It takes about twenty minutes each time and I can’t delay it without ruining the whole experiment …”
“Of course, sir.” Sloan got up to go.
“You’d better ask Fenella about the other business, Inspector. I daresay she comes into a controlling interest in Struthers and Tindall now …”
Detective Constable Crosby’s lot had been to interview the Osbornes.
It had not been a happy one.
Bad news—a far fleeter traveller even than Crosby himself—had already reached chez Osborne. It was a neat and tidy dwelling, modestly prosperous, and set in a good residential area of Berebury near the park. Had Crosby been older and wiser he would have recognised one of those childless marriages where one partner doubles as a child. In this case it was the wife. A tearful Mrs Marcia Osborne was prostrate on a sofa. A kindly woman neighbour was in attendance trying to comfort her.
In vain.
“Poor Richard,” Mrs Osborne kept on saying over and over again.
“There, there,” adjured the neighbour ineffectually.
“Poor Richard,” moaned Mrs Osborne.
Crosby stood well back from the sofa. Very well-dressed women fri
ghtened him enough even when they weren’t crying: middle-aged women got up to look like girls terrified him at any time.
He wished there wasn’t quite so much of Mrs Osborne’s leg showing.
He wished he was back on the beat.
At least with a razor gang you did know where you were.
“I want George,” cried Marcia Osborne.
Detective Constable Crosby, whose Christian name was William, felt quite relieved.
“Where’s George?” she demanded.
The neighbour said, “I don’t know, dear. It’s the school dinner hour and they don’t think he’s in school.”
“Why isn’t he there?”
“I don’t know, dear. The school secretary didn’t say.”
“He wasn’t there at dinnertime yesterday either,” said Marcia Osborne petulantly. “I want him. Now.”
“Yes, dear.” The neighbour—a resolute woman—having failed to administer psychological comfort or produce George Osborne in person conjured up something in a glass and commanded: “Drink this.”
“Poor Richard,” said Marcia Osborne mechanically, knocking back whatever it was in the glass with surprising swiftness. “He was here only last night. In that very chair.”
Mesmerically all three of them stared at an empty chair next to the sofa.
“Last night …” began Crosby, knowing that he should be taking a proper interest in last night.
“Only last night,” she echoed sorrowfully, turning to Crosby. “It doesn’t seem possible, does it?”
“No, madam,” said Crosby woodenly. “What time did he leave?”
Richard Tindall, it transpired damply, had left the Osbornes’ house at some point before half-past ten. Marcia Osborne was as vague about this as she was about the time he had arrived. About seven, she thought. At ten o’clock someone had rung for Tindall, and had asked to speak to him on the telephone. He had left shortly after that. No, she hadn’t recognised the voice except that it was a man’s. Business, was all Richard had said about it. Nothing more.
“He only had the tiniest drink before supper, too.” She regarded Crosby between her tears. It was a predatory look.
Whatever the neighbour had given Marcia Osborne to drink it hadn’t been tiny. She hiccuped slightly. Crosby noticed that the crow’s-feet round her eyes gave a sympathetic ripple at the same time. It was as far as they could go considering the amount of make-up encasing them.
“And afterwards, madam?” He cleared his throat. “We are enquiring where everyone was last night.”
She lowered her eyelashes. “In bed.”
It shouldn’t have been Crosby who blushed: but it was.
“Mr Tindall’s visit was a social one, I take it, madam?”
Marcia Osborne turned her great limpid eyes towards him and opened them wide. “Why, no, officer. He came about George’s invention. It’s going to be a great success. Richard brought the good news last night.” She gulped and started again “Poor Richard …”
Crosby fled.
Sloan had a list in his hand—prised out of the cautious Henry Pysden on Fenella’s new-born authority—a list of Struthers and Tindall’s customers.
What he hadn’t got was any details of the United Mellemetics experiments.
Back in her office Miss Holroyd was explaining this.
“It’s part of our system here, Inspector. We always gather up every single piece of paper to do with a client’s experiments or project and return it to the customer with our report. That way we don’t have any security problems with our old files. It’s bad enough with the ones we’re actually working on.”
“Even scrap paper?” asked Sloan hopefully.
“Every last calculation—right or wrong—has to go back to them.”
“What about the United Mellemetics report,” Sloan enquired, clutching at a straw. “Who wrote that?”
“Nobody. At least,” Miss Holroyd frowned, “I didn’t and I usually type all the very confidential reports. Mr Tindall might have decided against a written report. He does sometimes.”
“Why?”
Miss Holroyd sketched a gesture in the air. “Extra security, perhaps. We don’t always give written reports anyway. They can be quite tricky, you know, in this line.”
Sloan nodded gravely.
All policemen knew.
And they learnt it early.
In their line.
The hard way.
“Sometimes,” explained the secretary, “Mr Tindall just talks to the people concerned. That way …” She hesitated.
“Yes?”
“A chairman can choose to use only what he wants of a particular verbal report. Bits here and there.”
“No hard feelings, eh?”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “And that way he can’t be pressed for action either. Then or later.”
“Clever.”
“Chairmen of Companies,” observed Miss Holroyd in a detached way, “usually are.”
Sloan was with her there. Anyone could be a specialist. It was controlling the experts which ran you into trouble.
Miss Holroyd coughed. “There’s another advantage, too, Inspector.”
“Go on.”
“Sometimes, when there’s nothing in writing …”
“Yes?”
“The ideas and opinions we put forward can be made to seem to come from the Chairman himself.”
“Not from Struthers and Tindall?”
“It has been known.”
“The United Mellemetics Chairman—Sir Digby Wellow—is he one of those?”
“I should imagine,” said Miss Hilda Holroyd delicately, “that a verbal report would have suited Sir Digby very well.”
“But as far as you know he didn’t have one?”
“No.” She hesitated again. “He would be able to tell you that himself.”
“He’s not at United Mellemetics.” Sloan pointed to the telephone on her desk. “I’ve just rung there myself.”
A chat with Sir Digby Wellow of United Mellemetics had been high on Sloan’s list of priorities, and Sir Digby Wellow had left the United Mellemetics factory at Luston for an unknown destination exactly half an hour ago.
THE FRIENDLESS BODIES OF UNBURIED MEN.
12
Constable Crosby plodded across the churchyard at Randall’s Bridge. The workmen had gone back to Berebury. They had been exchanged for a posse of uniformed policemen under Sergeant Wharton. They were searching the churchyard for clues. And the inside of the church: but not the tower. The tower, Inspector Sloan had decreed, was to be left severely alone until he came back.
Crosby had dutifully timed the journey from the Osbornes to Randall’s Bridge and now he was making for Vespers Cottage and the two Misses Metford.
He hadn’t knocked before the door flew open. He followed Miss Mabel inside, brushing against the fronds of a fern in the tiny entrance.
“Mind that,” said Miss Ivy sharply.
“It belonged to Mother,” said Miss Mabel.
“Forty years we’ve kept that going,” added Miss Ivy.
Crosby shrank to one side—and came up against a bamboo table bearing an aspidistra.
“The sitting room,” decreed Miss Mabel quickly.
“This way,” said Miss Ivy.
“Last night …” said Crosby.
“The poor man in the tower …”
“They’ve just taken him away …”
“In a black van.”
“We saw him go.”
“All covered over.”
“We see everything from here.”
“Did you see anything last night?” said Crosby, greatly cunning. “Cars, for instance …”
Miss Ivy cocked her head to one side. “Not see.”
“Hear?”
“We heard one, sister, didn’t we?”
Miss Mabel nodded. “We did.”
“When?”
“About half-past ten,” said Miss Ivy.
“Twenty to eleven,�
�� said Miss Mabel.
“It came up by the church gate and stopped there for a bit,” said Miss Ivy.
“How long?”
“’Bout ten minutes,” said Miss Mabel.
“Fifteen,” said Miss Ivy.
“Did you see anyone?”
Two heads shook as one.
“Too dark,” said Miss Ivy.
“Too far away,” said Miss Mabel.
“But you heard it,” persisted Crosby, looking from one sister to the other. This was worse than Wimbledon.
“We did,” they chimed.
“’Specially when it went,” said Miss Ivy.
“It made a funny noise then,” said Miss Mabel.
“Funny?” Crosby’s head felt like a shuttlecock. He was sitting in a wing chair which had an antimacassar bounded by torchon lace which tickled every time he moved his head. Taking statements wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Louder,” said Miss Ivy.
“We don’t usually hear cars go,” explained Miss Mabel.
“Go?”
“Come,” added Miss Ivy. “We hear them come because of the hill up to the church gate.”
“It’s steep,” amplified Miss Mabel.
“When they go …” said Miss Ivy.
“Yes?” said Crosby reeling.
“They usually go quietly,” said Miss Ivy out of turn.
“Downhill,” said Miss Mabel.
“Home,” commanded Detective Inspector Sloan as they left the works of Struthers and Tindall at long last.
Detective Constable Crosby slipped the police car into gear and turned out of the gates and into the main traffic stream.
“And slowly,” added Sloan, settling himself down in the front passenger seat and opening his notebook.
“Slowly, sir?”
“That’s what I said, Crosby. It means,” he added trenchantly, “the opposite of fast.”
A cone of injured silence encompassed the area of the driving seat. It was practically visible.
“More people,” Sloan reminded him presently, “are killed by motorists than by murderers.”
“Yes, sir.” Crosby slid the car at high speed round a traffic island installed not very long before at the instigation of Inspector Harpe for the sole purpose of slowing down all traffic.
His Burial Too Page 10