By burning it with a match …
A match.
A perfectly ordinary match.
“Crosby!” He pushed open the door of his room.
“Sir?”
“Get me the Metropolitan Police. And quickly.”
“Yes, sir.” As the Detective Constable picked up the telephone he pushed two more message sheets in Sloan’s direction. “There’s something in from Constable Appleton, sir. George Osborne’s left the Grammar School in Berebury and he thinks he’s heading out for Cleete …”
“Is that Mets?” asked Sloan in the telephone.
“The other,” persisted Crosby, undeflected, “is from Luston Police. They haven’t turned up anything useful so far at United Mellemetics.”
“Mets?” said Sloan urgently. “Now, look here—I want you to send someone round to a museum for me. Yes, that’s right. A museum. And then I want you to put me on to someone who can explain a patent to me … an old patent …”
… I HAVE COMMITTED
SOME SECRET DEED WHICH I DESIRE THE
WORLD MAY NEVER HEAR OF.
21
Dr Dabbe was on the telephone and still concerned with the late Sir Digby Wellow.
“I can’t add a lot to what I told you in the car park, Sloan, except that his coronary arteries weren’t a lot to write home about. Good for a few more business lunches and public speeches but not all that many if that’s any consolation to Lady Wellow. As to the wound …”
“Yes?”
“It is the same in every recognisable respect,” said the pathologist in the measured terms he used in court, “as that inflicted on Richard Tindall. The only variation is in the amount of force used. Everything points to it being the same weapon. What’s that, Sloan … do I happen to know anything about what?”
“Foucault’s Pendulum,” said Sloan confidently.
The Metropolitan Police had already rung him back from London. They’d been round to the Museum for him.
“Let me see now …” The pathologist paused. “Foucault’s Pendulum … Isn’t that the one used for demonstrating the rotation of the earth on its own axis?”
“That’s the one,” said Sloan.
Explaining it to Superintendent Leeyes wasn’t going to be as easy as this.
Or to Crosby.
Perhaps he wouldn’t even try.
Perhaps he’d just put it into his report for the Superintendent and bank on Crosby not wanting to know.
“I remember.” Dr Dabbe’s interest quickened. “Actually the swing of the pendulum stays the same …”
“Galileo,” put in Sloan. The Superintendent would like that.
“… and it’s the earth which moves but, of course, it doesn’t look like that.”
“No.”
His voice changed. “I say, Sloan, are you onto something?”
“Perhaps,” responded Sloan temperately. “It would explain the spent match we found. I couldn’t fit it in with anything else.”
“How?”
“When demonstrating Foucault’s Pendulum you have to set it off very carefully indeed. That’s the whole secret. Without a jerk. You do it by mooring whatever’s on the end—say a metal ball—something heavy anyway—to something fixed.”
“Say the bars of a small window?” said Dabbe drily.
“That would do very nicely,” agreed Sloan.
There was a man from the Area Forensic Laboratory already on his way to the church at Randall’s Bridge with the sort of magnifying glass that Sherlock Holmes might have dreamt of. He was going to look at the metal bars of the embrasure window. You never knew what might have left its mark there.
Dyson, the police photographer, was on his way to the church, too.
He had been detailed by Sloan to take pictures of a length of black twine dangling from the bell beam.
“Black twine, Inspector?” he had echoed. “You must be joking. It doesn’t even smile when you say ‘cheese’ let alone watch the birdie.”
“I have reason to believe,” Sloan had told him austerely, “that it was an instrument of death.”
“There!” cried the incorrigible Dyson in tones of mock disappointment, “and I’d been putting my money on an orangoutang …”
“What you usually do to set off Foucault’s Pendulum,” Sloan said now to the pathologist, “is to burn through the string which anchors it at the start of its swing.”
“So you do,” agreed Dabbe. “I’d forgotten that bit.”
“Whoever started it off—if that is what did the trick—must have dropped the match while he was reaching through the little window.”
“Foucault’s Pendulum takes time, you know, Sloan. It doesn’t go out of line straightaway. I can’t remember the details—not my field, really. Is it something like one degree in five minutes?”
“Twelve degrees in an hour, Doctor, in London.” Sloan faithfully repeated what the man from the Museum had said to the man from Mets. “It was the question of time which put me on to it.”
“Time? What has time to do with it?”
“I think our villain wanted time. That’s the only explanation which makes sense. Otherwise why kill Tindall where he did—let alone how. And why not kill him outright when he hit him the first time?”
“Good point, Sloan. Sir Digby’s dead enough.”
“The usual reason,” said Sloan, “for wanting time is to establish an alibi.”
But the pathologist was still thinking about the pendulum. “It would be a nice calculation, Sloan. You’d take your twelve degrees an hour plus the length of your pendulum and its first swing and I daresay you’d need to know the weight of whatever you put on the end. What do you think that was, by the way?”
“Something heavy,” said Sloan. “It would need to weigh thirty pounds at least.”
The Museum had told Mets that, too.
“Then,” said Dabbe more energetically still, “you’d have to work out how far over you must tilt your statue so that the first knock from the weight of the pendulum would knock it over …”
Sloan cleared his throat. “I thought, Doctor, you said that given enough factors you could do any equation …”
“A hit,” cried the pathologist delightedly, “a palpable hit. Tell me more …”
Sloan put the telephone back and picked up something from his desk.
“Come on, Crosby. We don’t want to waste any time now.”
“To Clete, sir?”
“Certainly not,” said Sloan militantly, striding down the corridor. “Not now that we know that those emerald and diamond clips were for Mrs Osborne …”
The constable was faint but pursuing. “Where to, sir?”
“Struthers and Tindall, of course. Where did you think?”
What Sloan had picked up from his desk had been a warrant for murder.
After he had executed it he stood in front of Richard Tindall’s desk in Richard Tindall’s office. On his left were Miss Hilda Holroyd, Paul Blake, and Gordon Cranswick. On his right, hastily summoned from Cleete, were Fenella Tindall, and George and Marcia Osborne.
Sloan pointed to Richard Tindall’s desk and said, “Big desk, big man.” Then he waved his arm in the direction of the corridor leading towards Henry Pysden’s room. “Big desk, little man.”
He was speaking metaphorically.
They all knew that.
Henry Pysden had fought like a tiger when they arrested him. It had needed all of Sergeant Wharton’s massive strength as well as Crosby’s weight to take him away.
“It all began,” said Sloan, “when an old patent belonging to Struthers and Tindall became important in a new manufacturing process.”
“Better to buy the firm,” said the owner of Cranswick Processing unabashed, “than fork out a royalty every time we used Struthers and Tindall’s patent.”
“Hallworthy’s Small Motors thought so, too, sir,” said Sloan evenly, “and they went a bit further than you did. They insinuated Mr Blake here into the firm to
find out what he could to help the sale along.”
Paul Blake turned an uncomfortable red.
Fenella Tindall, who had no colour at all in her face, turned to him. “You were nothing but a spy then?”
“However,” intervened Sloan hastily, “neither Hallworthy’s nor Cranswick Processing were prepared to give unconditional guarantees about keeping staff on and that was Richard Tindall’s death warrant. He found out about Paul Blake being an agent of Hallworthy’s, didn’t like their methods, and so opted in favour of Cranswick …”
“But why?” asked Marcia Osborne. “Why did he want to sell at all …”
Sloan cleared his throat. “His wife had died and I think he guessed that he might be losing his daughter, too, soon.”
“Me?” said Fenella, two pink spots appearing on her cheeks.
“Fair stood the wind for Italy,” said George Osborne, speaking for the first time. He had a lean, intelligent face and had listened attentively so far. “That right, Inspector?”
And it was Fenella’s turn to blush.
“If you inherited the firm, miss, there was a good chance that Henry Pysden might be left to carry on or at least negotiate the new sale.”
George Osborne stirred. “Inspector, I don’t quite see where United Mellemetics comes into all this.”
“It doesn’t, sir. Not at all. I think we would find that there was nothing wrong with the United Mellemetics file …”
“But what about poor Sir Digby Wellow …” that was Marcia Osborne.
“I’m afraid, Mrs Osborne, that he died in the cause of …” Sloan searched for the right word.
George Osborne supplied it. “Verisimilitude.”
“Very probably, sir.”
“The file, though,” said Miss Holroyd, the perfect secretary. “I don’t quite understand about the file, Inspector.”
“It did disappear but that I’m afraid was only because Henry Pysden took it. I expect it’s in the river by now. You put me on to that, miss.”
“Me?” said Miss Holroyd.
“You said you weren’t present when Pysden told me he handed it over to Mr Tindall yesterday. When I went back over everything to do with that file I found that all our so-called mysterious information about it stemmed only from Henry Pysden.”
Miss Holroyd frowned. “But he said Mr Tindall said …”
“Only they weren’t quotes at all,” pointed out Sloan. “The works foreman and Mr Blake here”—he looked with disfavour at the young scientist—“both found their work on it completely routine so I checked back in case it was a red herring.”
“And it was?” Fenella was beginning to look more animated by the minute. “You mean he killed poor Sir Digby Wellow just to … to … to lend a touch of colour to the killing of my father?”
“To divert suspicion to United Mellemetics anyway, miss.”
“How could he!” she exclaimed.
“And the copy of the patent in Mr Blake’s room, Inspector?” Miss Holroyd’s tidy mind seized on a second loose end.
“Another red herring. Though at that stage, of course,” remarked Sloan pleasantly, “it still left Mr Blake here in the running for double murder.”
Paul Blake started to stutter. “H—h—hhh—how come?”
It was Gordon Cranswick, the businessman, who answered him. “Tindall could have rumbled you, boy, and you might have killed him to keep him quiet.”
Paul Blake’s handsomeness wasn’t quite so apparent now. “I wouldn’t …”
“We know you wouldn’t,” said Gordon Cranswick briskly, “but the Inspector couldn’t be sure of that then.”
“Not at that particular point,” agreed Sloan suavely.
“When then?” demanded the young scientist hotly.
Sloan cleared his throat. “When I started thinking about alibis for the killing of Richard Tindall.”
“I hadn’t got one,” retorted Blake upon the instant.
“I know.” Sloan nodded. “Nobody had an alibi except Henry Pysden and oddly enough his was cast iron. A signature tied up to a machine which was double sealed.”
“Copper-bottomed,” observed Gordon Cranswick, in the language of Lloyds.
“Too much of a good thing?” suggested George Osborne more perceptively.
“Much too much,” agreed Sloan. “Unfortunately the Cranswick takeover played into his hands.”
“Why?” demanded the Chairman and Managing Director of Cranswick Processing Limited.
“I gather that cloak and dagger meetings, exaggerated secrecy, cryptic messages and so forth are all part and parcel of these deals …”
“Practically standard practice,” the businessman assured him readily.
“I should imagine this lent a certain amount of credence to any message Henry Pysden used to lure Richard Tindall to the church tower late last night.”
“The telephone call,” breathed Marcia Osborne.
“Not about Cranswick Processing, Inspector,” said Gordon Cranswick.
“No, sir.” Sloan coughed. “Would I be very wrong though if I suggested that if Pysden had said that Sir Digby Wellow wanted to see him in that particular place and time that Richard Tindall would have believed him?”
“That clown …” began Cranswick and then remembered that he, too, was dead, and fell silent.
“The message only had to be believable when Henry Pysden gave it to him. That’s all. Nothing else. He could have dreamed up anything he liked. From then on it was all plain sailing.”
“I should like to know how,” said Fenella Tindall steadily, “and then I should like to go home.”
“You’re coming back with us,” said George Osborne in a matter-of-fact way which brooked no contradiction.
Marcia Osborne seconded this with a nod. Her diamond and emerald jewellery didn’t fit in at Struthers and Tindall either.
Sloan didn’t mind. Not now.
He took a deep breath and began, “There was one important factor which was common knowledge …”
“… that, sir, was the work being done in the church at Randall’s Bridge.” Sloan had to repeat it all to the Superintendent back at the Police Station. “They had to advertise the moving of the Fitton Bequest—the Church Secretary told us that—when they got a faculty for all the changes in the church.”
Leeyes grunted.
“And it wasn’t unreasonable for Pysden to suppose,” continued Sloan smoothly, “that a pathologist would be able to work out the time of Tindall’s death fairly accurately. They’re getting better at it all the time.”
Leeyes grunted again.
“So any time after Evensong on Sunday Pysden rigs up his pendulum, does the calculations so that it knocks the statue over at eleven-thirty, then last night—the day before Tindall is due to sign on the dotted line Pysden gets a message that Gordon Cranswick or Sir Digby Wellow or Genghis Khan wants to see him in the tower at Randall’s Bridge—or some such tale … that’s another point against him, by the way, sir …”
“What is?” growled Leeyes unhelpfully.
“That sort of message must have come from someone like Pysden whom Tindall really trusted or he wouldn’t have acted on it. Catch me going to a church tower at midnight.”
“If I asked you to,” said Leeyes pointedly, “I take it you would.”
“Naturally,” said Sloan hastily. “Of course, sir. So Pysden waits for him in the church tower, knocks him out and sets the pendulum going.”
“Nasty.”
“Pysden drives Tindall’s car back to its garage at Cleete—which is about the only place where it wouldn’t cause comment—collects his own car which he probably left somewhere in Cleete—Hepple’s checking on that now—and then hurries back to the works in Berebury to establish his alibi. He’s got half an hour and it all works out very nicely.”
“H’mmm.”
“All he had to do is come back for the lead-weight.” Sloan coughed. “And killing Sir Digby was—er—just gilding the lily.”
“Child’s play, I expect. Pysden would only have to hint at something fishy in the United Mellemetics file and Sir Digby would meet him anywhere.”
“What about the Italian?” said Leeyes gamely. “All you’ve said about gain applies to him too.”
“His visit was unexpected,” said Sloan. “Mrs Turvey, the daily woman at Cleete, told us so. And this murder was—er—calculated.”
“I always said,” trumpeted the Superintendent, “that you couldn’t play about with gravity.”
“Anyway, sir,” said Sloan hastily, “at two o’clock this morning Giuseppe Mardoni was at the Airport—not retrieving a lead weight from the pendulum in the church tower with a fishing rod.”
“The girl could have done that,” suggested Leeyes: but half-heartedly.
“She’s going to sell out to Cranswick after she’s been advised about the value of this old patent …”
It was Detective Constable Crosby who disturbed them.
“No news about those shoes on the golf course yet, sir, but there are two more anonymous letters in from Culling-oak.” He grinned. “The one about the Vicar’s wife is rather good, actually.”
The Superintendent’s face turned a choleric shade of purple.
Crosby didn’t notice. He plunged on.
“And the Town Clerk’s on the telephone. They think it was sugar in the Mayor’s petrol tank this time …”
“What’s he going to plead?” enquired Dr Dabbe with mild interest.
“I’ve heard that the Defence have got a psychiatrist lined up,” said Sloan.
“Old hat,” remarked the pathologist amiably. “Headshrinkers and trick cyclists are on their way out.”
Sloan cocked a mocking eyebrow at the pathologist. “Seeing something nasty in the woodshed isn’t why you hit old ladies over the head after all?”
“’Fraid not.”
“And what,” enquired Detective Inspector Sloan, quondam law enforcement officer, cautiously, “is on its way in?”
“A new version of original sin, old chap.”
“There isn’t one.”
“Oh, yes, there is. It’s called body chemistry.”
“What’s that?”
“Chromosomes, for a start. And a lot more.”
His Burial Too Page 18