“Who, sir?”
“That Itie. Macaroni or whatever he’s called.”
“Giuseppe Mardoni,” sighed Sloan.
That, at least, had been bound to happen.
“Don’t like the sound of him, Sloan,” said Leeyes equally inevitably.
“No, sir.” Sloan hadn’t for one moment supposed he would.
Xenophobia, thy name is Leeyes: all the Berebury Police knew that.
And that the Superintendent belonged to the “fog in Channel, continent isolated” school of thought.
If there was a Channel Tunnel where would natives begin then?
“The airport people say they’re doing their best at this end,” said Leeyes, poking about among the paper in his IN-tray, “and we’ve been stirring up the Arrivals Department in Rome. Nothing in from them yet either.”
“So all we really know,” said Sloan fairly, “is that he didn’t catch his plane.”
The Superintendent had no time for the impartial statement of fact. “Two o’clock was it that those two women saw someone in the churchyard?”
“So they say.”
“And we’ve no witnesses as to the girl being back at the house when she says she was.”
“No, sir.”
Leeyes leaned back in his chair. “We keep on coming back to the daughter, don’t we?”
“The daughter, sir?”
“You heard, Sloan,” said the Superintendent testily. “Presumably she stands to gain more than anyone else, doesn’t she?”
“I think so, sir,” said Sloan, “but at this stage …”
“And this expensive jewellery wasn’t for her?”
“Apparently not.”
“She mightn’t have exactly taken to the idea of it being for someone else.”
“Even so, sir …”
“And then there’s this foreign gent.”
Sloan had thought that he would crop up again.
“Perhaps,” said Leeyes, “her father didn’t quite take to the idea of her marrying him. Most fathers wouldn’t …”
“A touch of the ‘O my beloved Daddy’s,’ you mean, sir?” said Sloan swiftly.
It was Margaret, his wife, who was keen on opera, who bought and played the records. But Sloan listened to them.
“What I mean,” pronounced Leeyes largely, “is that seventy percent of all murders are family affairs.”
“But not daughters, sir,” protested Sloan. “Daughters don’t usually …”
The Superintendent waved a majestic arm. “There was that one in America, Sloan. Don’t forget her. She killed her father. And her stepmother. I forget her name.”
“Lizzie Borden,” supplied Sloan weakly, though he hadn’t meant to.
It was a new idea to Fenella that she might be Struthers and Tindall now.
She stood by the telephone and consciously bent her mind to considering it. She was Struthers and Tindall. Struthers and Tindall. Anything to stop herself thinking about a pair of emerald and diamond clips and a dead father.
The more she thought about it the more she was prepared to agree that it might be so.
Struthers and Tindall.
The policeman—it must have been the quiet one who seemed to be in charge who had been on the telephone—not the young one with the gangling arms—she was quite sorry for him—he seemed to have a penchant for being underfoot without actually doing anything—that other policeman—the first one—could well be right after all. She might indeed be the owner of more shares in Struthers and Tindall than anyone else now.
If she inherited her father’s holding, that is.
Emerald and diamond clips.
They obtruded into her thoughts at last—thrusting their way into her unhappy mind like an obstreperous visitor and pushing out all the other thoughts with which she had been trying so hard to fill her mind just to keep them out.
Emerald and diamond clips.
He wasn’t even, she told herself, the sort of person who went in for buying jewellery. Even when her mother had been alive. She hadn’t known him all her life, so to speak, without knowing that. If, she decided painfully, he had bought emerald and diamond jewellery for someone else he might equally have left the Dower House and his shares of Struthers and Tindall to …
She would have to stop thinking, that was all.
She didn’t think she could take these sorts of thoughts on top of all the other news of the morning.
She wished she was back in Rome.
Everything was always on such a grand scale there—especially tragedy—that her own small problems would be bound to sink into proportion if she were able to be there. She was sure of that. Put beside the Colosseum and its horrific history surely all the Tindall family troubles would just sink into perspective as little local difficulties.
She sighed.
Fiddling little matters they might seem to be against the backcloth of Roman history but just now they still filled her horizon. What she wanted at this minute was Principessa Trallanti’s prescription—a day in the Forum. That was what the Principessa always counselled for anyone overwrought or too beset by the cares of this world.
“A day in the Forum, Miss Tindall, takes the edge off the present,” she would pronounce in her own impeccable English. “I find it never fails to restore what the French call the sang-froid. I don’t think you have a word for it?”
How very like the Principessa to use one language and then make up for its deficiencies in another—and neither of them her own …
Fenella had readily admitted to the shortcomings of English idiom. Actually the young had the phrase the Principessa was looking for. They called it “keeping your cool.” She had not told the Principessa this. Though the Trallantis were both more international than any jet set they hadn’t quite caught up with the world’s youth yet.
The Principessa was quite right.
That was what Fenella wanted.
A day in the Forum …
“Miss Tindall, I wonder if …”
She’d had one such day in the Forum with Giuseppe Mardoni.
“Call it a Roman holiday,” he’d said persuasively.
He was very persuasive.
A long cool spring day under a clear Roman sky with the flowers thrusting themselves out of the interstices of the broken stone; a day spent wandering from one inconsequential colonnade to another. That was the whole point, of course. They were utterly inconsequential those stones now—but once upon a time … Ah, once upon a time they had been important—the exact position of each of consequence to somebody.
And today … today the stones were just like any ruins anywhere and about as important …
“Miss Tindall”—the voice was much more firm this time—“I wonder if I might have a word with you?”
She turned.
Mr Gordon Cranswick was at her elbow. She had no idea how long he had been standing there.
I DO HAUNT YOU STILL.
14
The various instruction courses attended by Police Superintendent Leeyes left their scars in a way which would have astonished the highly skilled instructors who lectured at them had they known.
Like a sticky snail the Superintendent strewed a trail of imperfectly assimilated concepts behind him: not only did they show where he had been but they were a nuisance to the unwary. The latest one which he had gone to—on business management—had proved no exception to this unhappy rule.
Whether the sophisticated ideas of big business—in this case “management by objectives” (objectives: commercial)—could be related to the police force (objectives: law and order) was doubtful. Naturally the course organisers, well able to count potential police heads, did not harp on this point.
As the burden of their spiel lay in measurement they were—from time to time—in difficulties about this. Measurement of commercial success requires only the ability to count. The proof of the police pudding isn’t always in the eating. As any Home Secretary knows, measurement of successful poli
ce work takes a judicious blend of faith, hope, and charity.
There had been one other aspect of the management course dear to the hearts of the lecturers. It was called critical path analysis and it had made a deep impression on Superintendent Leeyes.
He had tried to explain it to Sloan.
“It’s a great idea. You work out the right order for everything before you start doing anything.”
Sloan had given it an ear. The Superintendent was given to instituting new ideas at the police station without much warning, and it was as well to be prepared.
“Then,” enthused Leeyes, “you don’t waste time going over the same ground twice.”
Sloan had been temperate in his response. Nothing was ever as easy as that.
“All you have to do,” the enthusiast had amplified, “is to decide what’s got to be done and then work out the best order to do it in.”
Sloan put the telephone down now after talking to Fenella Tindall and tried to do just that.
It wasn’t easy.
What might pass for good organisation in a biscuit factory might not be the best course of action in a murder hunt.
There was a pair of emerald and diamond clips unaccounted for—a pair of emerald and diamond clips which, after all, hadn’t been a birthday present for Fenella Tindall. And if the receipt in his pocket was anything to go by, last seen with Richard Mallory Tindall.
There was a secret report about United Mellemetics about which much the same could be said. Unaccounted for and last seen with Richard Mallory Tindall.
There was an unknown Italian gentleman—and you couldn’t, thought Sloan wryly, have a more sinister phrase than that. He and his wife, Margaret, were conscientious visitors of museums and art galleries. “An unknown Italian gentleman” sounded like the title of a Renaissance painting. Anyway, whoever he was he had been careless enough to miss his aeroplane last night—the night on which Richard Tindall died. Sloan wasn’t sure yet whether he ought to be worried about Giuseppe Mardoni or not.
There was—or rather, there wasn’t—Gordon Cranswick, notable for his anxiety to buy Struthers and Tindall as speedily as possible—an anxiety which seemed to have dated only from yesterday afternoon. Mr Gordon Cranswick would have to—Sloan dredged up another oft-repeated phrase from the Superintendent’s Management Course—Mr Cranswick would clearly have to be gone into in depth.
Sir Digby Wellow was another in some sort of unavailable limbo. No one at his firm knew where he was and the Luston police couldn’t find him either. Sloan wanted to talk to Sir Digby Wellow pretty badly.
There was Paul Blake, the handsome young man who hadn’t done yesterday’s work to order. He was the one, Mrs Turvey had said, with an eye to the main chance. Not, Sloan reminded himself acidly, that that should be thought a purely criminal characteristic …
There was a man called George Osborne, missing now and not at work yesterday lunchtime either …
And there was Fenella Tindall who knew who it was the emerald and diamond clips were for—or he, Sloan, Calleshire born and bred—was a Dutchman.
And over in the village of Constance Parva there was someone who was nothing at all to do with the late Richard Mallory Tindall who was dipping a pen in pure vitriol to the consternation of all and sundry, but especially the sensitive.
The Mayor—Sloan unconsciously straightened his shoulders—at least he knew where the Mayor and his little troubles came in any critical path analysis of explaining Richard Tindall’s sudden demise.
Then there was Richard Tindall himself, done to death all alone in a church tower, his solitary end engineered at dead of night …
Sloan paused in his appreciation of the situation.
Engineered.
Now he came to think of it it would take someone like an engineer to arrange for the Fitton Bequest to be poised so finely that it would fall on Richard Tindall at a given time and place—like when he was lying where he had been—at a moment when there was no one there to push it over.
He noted the thought and then put his plan of campaign into action.
Fenella started.
“If I might just have a word with you, Miss Tindall.”
“I have to go to the mortuary, Mr Cranswick.” At least he was less peremptory now.
“Oh, I see …” He paused, and then waved his hand. “I’m very sorry about—er—all this.”
She braced herself.
That was another thing she would have to endure.
Sympathy.
She wasn’t at all sure that she could take sympathy on top of everything else that had happened.
Something Shakespearean came unbidden to her mind. Something appropriate, of course. He was always appropriate. That had been his genius. What was the line?
“Of comfort, no man speak.”
She found to her surprise that she must have said it aloud.
Gordon Cranswick sounded surprised, too.
“Er—quite. Quite. I apologise. I am bound to be an intruder at a time like this …” He sounded expectant but Fenella said nothing so he hurried on: “In the ordinary way, you realise, I should not have bothered you. You must be wondering why …”
Fenella inclined her head in what she hoped was a gesture of polite interest.
“It’s your father’s firm, Miss Tindall …”
“Yes?”
“I think you should know that yesterday afternoon he said that he would sell it to me after all.”
“After all?”
He cleared his throat portentously. “Cranswick Processing have been interested in Struthers and Tindall for some time. We had been putting out feelers and so forth …”
He made it sound, thought Fenella rather wildly, like an Italian marriage.
“It was a natural move at this stage in our development,” said Gordon Cranswick, oblivious of her train of thought.
(Just like an Italian marriage, decided Fenella.)
“My Board were right behind me, of course.”
(Parents and all.)
“We took advice in the financial aspects, naturally.”
(They did that in Italian marriages, too. First. Naturally.)
“And the long-term prospects looked sound.”
(They didn’t begin negotiations in Italy unless they were happy about the future.)
“We had—on our side anyway—already gone into the ramifications of any—er—union.”
(In-laws.)
“And our solicitors were prepared at any time to meet with Struthers and Tindall …”
(The honest broker?)
“It seems,” continued Cranswick weightily, “as if the outcome would be to our mutual advantage.”
Fenella nodded.
People always said mutual when they meant that they themselves benefited and didn’t mind too much whether you did or not.
“Mind you,” added the businessman, striking a cautious note, “Cranswick Processing have some prior commitments which would have to be taken into consideration.”
(In an Italian marriage contract it would be Great Uncle Mauro’s doctor’s fees.)
“As I am sure Struthers and Tindall have, too.”
(And, in the other family, Cousin Luigi who wasn’t quite right in the head.)
“Of course”—Gordon Cranswick cocked his head inquiringly—“we may not be the only people in the field?”
(It was customary in Italy to establish first whether there were any other suitors.)
“That makes a difference, of course.”
(It made a difference in Italy, too.)
She became aware that Gordon Cranswick was looking at her this time as if he expected a positive response.
“Er—I’m sorry.” She started. “I was thinking about something else. You were saying that a marriage had been arranged …”
Gordon Cranswick stared at her. “I was talking about a takeover, Miss Tindall. Of Struthers and Tindall.”
“So you were. I’m sorry.” She pulled herself toget
her. “My father hadn’t said anything to me, Mr Cranswick, about selling Struthers and Tindall to anyone.”
Yesterday she might have had the emotional energy to have felt hurt and angry about this.
But yesterday was a long, long way from today—farther than she would have thought possible—farther than the distance from the Palazzo Trallanti in Rome to the Dower House in Cleete. Her mind could take in that difference in space easily enough. Today—the today that was so far from yesterday in time—today she found she had no more feeling to spare.
“He always said no to me,” responded the businessman frankly, “until yesterday afternoon. Then he changed his mind and said he’d sign on the dotted line today. Must have been almost the last thing he did before … before …”
“Not quite,” said Fenella astringently, a pair of emerald and diamond clips thrusting their way back into her mind.
“Oh? Anyway, that’s why I’m here. And now,” he went on, not urgently, “I need to know with whom to deal. You do see that, Miss Tindall, don’t you?”
Fenella’s hand strayed back towards her white bead necklace. How had that quotation gone on? There was a passage after those words about no comfort which she remembered having to learn too.
Long ago, it was, in another existence, when she hadn’t a care in the world. In a chalky schoolroom, it had been, from a woman teacher who—she now realised—probably wasn’t as desiccated as she seemed—when the whole class had been as detached from life and as cosseted as young queen bees in a hive.
Their Shakespeare class had been for something irrelevant called General Education.
There was a sudden crunching of car tyres on the gravel drive. Fenella looked out of the window and saw Police Constable Hepple going out to greet another policeman. There was a policewoman sitting beside the driver.
Perhaps, thought Fenella, appreciating Shakespeare—the real man—marked a stage in everyone’s development. By the time he was relevant you were no longer young and innocent.
That play—about no comfort—had been King Richard II. It was all coming back to her now. She could hear the voice of the English mistress as the words tumbled back into her mind and the rest of the quotation came to her: “Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.”
His Burial Too Page 12