A Late Phoenix

by Catherine Aird

  “Handy that, sir, isn’t it?” observed Crosby.

  “Handy?”

  “If anyone should be thinking of swearing to anything.”

  Sloan regarded him for a long moment. “We, Crosby, are a very long way from the swearing stage. And we may never get to it.”

  “Never mind, sir,” said Crosby cheerfully, “at least we’re not married to that. Talk about home comforts for the troops …”

  “Good morning,” said Sloan swiftly as Mrs. Waite returned with a middle-aged man in tow. “Mr. Harold Waite?”

  “Aye.” If Harold Waite was surprised to have a visit from two detectives he did not show it. He was of medium build with a close-cropped Army hairstyle. A small hedge-tear scar ran down the corner of his left forehead. In spite of the middle age, he still had the muscular ready look of a man who worked on his feet as opposed to at a desk.

  “We need your help.”

  “You’re welcome. Though I don’t know how I can help you …” He looked at Sloan enquiringly. “Clara and I lead pretty quiet lives, don’t we?”

  Mrs. Waite wiped her hands on her apron and said in a flat voice, “We try to keep all Ten Commandments, Inspector.”

  “Er—good.” Sloan hadn’t time to work out if they covered all crime. He doubted it. “I’m very glad to hear it,” he said to her warmly, “but it’s not about that sort of—er—transgression that I’ve come about …”

  “Good.”

  “A skeleton of a young woman has been unearthed on the site of your old family home, Mr. Waite.”

  “In Lamb Lane?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I never,” said Harold Waite, manifestly surprised. “Fancy that.”

  “A skeleton?” echoed Clara Waite. “The ways of the Lord are truly mysterious.”

  “Quite so, madam.” Mick the Irishman, Sloan felt, would be the first to agree with her. “It was—er—accidentally revealed by some redevelopment work.”

  “It was meant,” declared Clara Waite in her curious flat monotone.

  “Redevelopment?” said Harold Waite promptly. “You mean they’ve got started at last?”

  “They tried,” qualified Sloan. “Mark Reddley and Associates …”

  “Associates? Huh,” said Waite. “Bet they’re not the same associates as he used to have. He’s done well for himself, he has.”

  “And Garton and Garton, Builders.”

  “Still trying to please everybody, I suppose.”

  “Well …” Now he came to think of it there had been something placating about Garton.

  “You’re forgetting Gilbert Hodge,” said Waite. “He’ll be behind it. He bought the site.” Husband and wife exchanged glances. “He’s had to wait a long time, hasn’t he, Clara, to collect his money?”

  “He has,” said Clara Waite, not without a certain satisfaction. “Just after the war it was when he put down good money for that old site.”

  “Did he?” murmured Sloan, making a note.

  Waite stirred. “We got married on the strength of it, Inspector. Clara and me. I’d come out of the Army by then.”

  “And then you left Berebury,” pointed out Sloan mildly.

  “I did. And I’ve never regretted it. I’ve got a good job here at the factory down the road.”

  “I think I can hear it.” Sloan had been conscious of a monotonous low-pitched whine in the background ever since they had got out of the car.

  “Hear it?” said Waite blankly. “I can’t hear anything No,” he said, reverting to Berebury, “I shook it off once and for all in 1946.”

  “Why?”

  Harold Waite looked at him consideringly. “It was never the same place for me after the house was bombed.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Then the old folks went.”

  “They were taken,” interposed Clara Waite in sepulchral tones.

  “Quite so,” said Sloan.

  “This skeleton,” said Waite. “Could it have been anything to do with the war?”

  “It could,” admitted Sloan cautiously. “The—er—vintage is right.”

  Mrs. Waite smoothed her apron down over her knees. “You weren’t there when the house was bombed, were you, Harry?”

  “Square-bashing,” said Waite feelingly. “That’s what I was doing at the time. And a fat lot of good that did to anybody.”

  “That’s right,” said Harry’s wife. “He wasn’t there.”

  “This woman, Inspector,” said Waite. “Was it someone taking shelter? My parents said it was a bad night, the Wednesday.”

  “Very bad,” chimed in Clara Waite. “I remember it well. But, Inspector, if there had been anyone missing we’d have heard surely, wouldn’t we?”

  It was at that moment that Sloan caught a glimpse of Harold Waite’s expression.

  Clara Waite might not have heard of anyone missing. Harold Waite most certainly had.

  Let the neck remain attached to the shoulder until required for use

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dr. Latimer came back to Field House for his morning coffee at much the same time as he had done the day before.

  Miss Tyrell was sitting in her own little cubbyhole when he went in. He wondered briefly if she had any sort of separate existence apart from the practice. Now he came to think of it, he didn’t even know where she lived—except that it was somewhere near.

  “The police have been,” she greeted him, “making enquiries about the deceased.”

  Latimer blinked.

  So the bundle of bones, being not archaeological, had therefore in police parlance become “someone.”

  The deceased.

  As if they had died yesterday.

  “Probably a neighbor or just a passerby …”

  “Not a neighbor,” said Miss Tyrell definitely.

  “I didn’t mean old Jackson. I know he’s alive and kicking—but what about the other way?”

  “Masters and Draycott?”

  “That’s right. What sort of family did they have?”

  “Masters were a young couple with small children at the time and the Draycotts had a daughter who would have been in her twenties then.”

  “I was wondering if the cellars had been common to both houses.”

  “Marjorie.” Miss Tyrell smiled faintly. “Marjorie Draycott. She isn’t your skeleton, Doctor. Far from it. You’ve met her already.”

  “I have? When?”

  “She’s Marjorie Simmonds now.”

  “Mrs. Simmonds! Well, I never. Not the one who’s so overweight and worried about it?” There had been positively nothing skeletal about the woman he had in mind. “Yesterday morning’s surgery …”

  “That’s right.” Miss Tyrell’s thin face twitched a trifle acidly. “Fair, fifteen stone, forty-five, five children …”

  “The classic gallbladder picture,” murmured William academically. It had been really rather interesting to see a textbook case come alive so vividly.

  “You gave her a lot of advice …”

  “I did.”

  “She won’t take it.”

  “No,” agreed William. He sounded apologetic. “I have a duty to give it nevertheless. The choice about taking it is hers. The patients’ freehold, you might call it.”

  Miss Tyrell looked blank.

  William hastily went back to the visiting list in front of him. “I’ve seen Gilbert Hodge. He’s agreed to see a surgeon about his ulcer. Will you fix him up with an appointment at the hospital?”

  Miss Tyrell snorted. “I didn’t think he’d want Vittoria Street even though he’s one of the richest men in Berebury. And definitely the meanest,” she added. “Long pockets and short arms, that’s his trouble.”

  “He doesn’t look well off …”

  “Don’t let that fool you, Doctor. He owns a string of shops, no end of other property and a couple of small businesses and that’s all without counting his builders’ merchant’s yard.” She sniffed. “That’s not small either. Two ac
res at least.”

  “Really?”

  “And he started from nothing at all after the war. With his gratuity. First these building things and then property speculation. He gets Mark Reddley to do the developing side and Garton to build.” Miss Tyrell’s lips tightened. “Before the war, Doctor, all he was was a storeman at Corton’s.”

  “I saw Jane Appleby, too …”

  Miss Tyrell’s face softened momentarily. “A nice girl. Always was. Many’s the time I’ve had her on my knee as a baby.”

  William took a second look at Miss Tyrell and tried to imagine her in this maternal role.

  He failed.

  “What about Mrs. Caldwell?” she asked.

  “Nothing doing,” said William. “Not today, anyway. I might just look round there after supper …” Mentioning supper brought Mrs. Milligan—that execrable cook—to his mind. He didn’t know how long he could put up with her. He asked how long she’d been with Dr. Tarde before he died.

  “Only a month.”

  “And before that?”

  Miss Tyrell’s expression eased. “He had Mrs. Cardington. She died in May. She’d been here for years and years. She had a heart attack and went quite suddenly. Of course, she wasn’t young any more …”

  “What about Dr. Tarde’s wife?” enquired William. He’d done his business with an executor, a second cousin who was a solicitor somewhere in the North of England. “And children?”

  She shook her head. “His wife died soon after they were married. Before my time. They didn’t have any children. There was just his niece Margaret.” Miss Tyrell pursed her lips. “She liked to be called Margot. She was his wife’s sister’s girl. She used to spend a fair bit of time here in the old days but she went off one night and didn’t come back.” The receptionist was still keeping an eye on her notes. “You haven’t forgotten that the Caduceus Club meets tonight, Doctor, have you?”

  William clapped his hand to his forehead. “I had. Tell me about them again …”

  “It’s a club for all the general practitioners in Berebury,” explained Miss Tyrell patiently, “and they’ve invited you to go along tonight. Caduceus …”

  “Yes?” said William humbly. It was when classical and historical allusions flew about that he was most conscious of the terrace house from whence he had sprung.

  “Caduceus was the name of Mercury’s wand. You know, Doctor, the one which has the two snakes twined round it …”

  The only Mercury William Latimer knew to be associated with healing was the small quantity in the bulb of a clinical thermometer but he did not say so.

  “The Caduceus Club meets once a month at the Feathers Hotel at 8:30 P.M. That’s so that everyone’s had a chance to finish their evening surgeries, Doctor.”

  “I see.” William resolved to start his own very sharply indeed. It would take him a little while to find the Feathers for the first time.

  When he went out on his visiting round again he noticed that the monster yellow digger was still parked in Lamb Lane. He looked across at the almost deserted site and reflected that the only thing he—and perhaps anyone else—knew for certain about the identity of the skeleton so far was that it wasn’t called Marjorie Simmonds née Draycott.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.” Dr. Dabbe greeted Sloan and Crosby in the post-mortem room of the hospital. “And how have you been getting on?”

  “Slowly,” said Sloan. “We’ve seen one of the Waite sons but not the other. And we’ve had a look at the local paper.”

  The issue of the Berebury paper for the Friday after the Wednesday could only be described as coyly reticent on the subject of the bombing of Berebury.

  “Somewhere in England” had been about as far as the paper had been prepared to go at the time by way of location.

  “The community suffered severely” was their spare comment on casualties: “A number of houses were completely demolished” the taut observation by the reporter on damage.

  Sloan cleared his throat. “It wasn’t a great deal of help to us, Doctor. I should think there was pretty stringent censorship on newspapers at the time.”

  “Walls have ears,” murmured Dr. Dabbe, getting into his surgical gown.

  “Be like Dad, keep Mum,” Sloan was surprised to hear himself responding.

  How from whereabouts in the dim recesses of his own mind had that phrase been dredged up? It must have been lurking there dormant all the long years since the war. He hadn’t even known that he knew it, still less remembered it.

  Sloan had fingered the fragile wartime paper stacked away in the basement of the newspaper office, read its faded yellow columns and replaced it on the shelf. Probably the next time someone got it out would be for one of those reminiscent newspaper features “Forty-Four Years Ago”…

  Dr. Dabbe pulled on his rubber gloves, glanced at his assistant, caught his secretary’s eye and began dictating …

  “To Her Majesty’s Coroner for West Calleshire, with copies to the Chief Constable and Dr. William Latimer. Head it ‘Report on unknown human remains found under the site of 1, Lamb Lane, St. Luke’s …’”

  “Does that mean, Doctor,” interrupted Sloan, “that—for the record—the coroner’s bound to ask—there was no identity disc on or near the body?”

  “It does, Inspector.”

  “In spite of its being wartime?”

  The pathologist grunted. “I assure you that there was no such disc near the neck or either arm nor in the surrounding earth. Burns here checked.”

  Sloan nodded. There was, apparently, to be no easy way out.

  Dabbe waved an arm. “We’ll take the little one first, shall we, Inspector?”

  Sloan started. “The little one, Doctor?”

  “Over here.” The pathologist pointed to a separate little pile of bones on another bench. They were gray and discolored. “There is no doubt, Inspector, about the pregnancy though much of the cartilaginous content has gone, and by Hasse’s rule …”

  “Hasse’s rule?”

  “That’s right. The age of a fetus may be estimated approximately by Hasse’s rule.”

  “Can it?” said Sloan cautiously.

  “Up to the fifth month the length in centimeters, the lower limbs being included, equals the square of the age in months, and after the fifth month the length in centimeters equals the age multiplied by five.”

  “I see, sir,” said Sloan impassively. It was all right for the doctor. He could blind the coroner with science as much as he liked. He didn’t have a superintendent breathing down his neck who always wanted to know the reason why. He could see Detective Constable Crosby still struggling to write it all down. He only hoped he got it right. He knew for a fact that Crosby was only up to the sort of mental arithmetic where you took away the number you first thought of.

  “I,” went on Dr. Dabbe cheerfully, “aided by Hasse’s rule, calculate that the fetus was between five and six months advanced at the time of death.”

  “Quite so.” Sloan coughed. “That might very well be a help in identification in the end.”

  “And it very well might not,” retorted the pathologist promptly.

  “Oh?”

  Dr. Dabbe turned and pointed to the adult skeleton on the other dissection table. “There was something missing from the proximal phalanx of her fourth left metacarpal.”

  “Her what?”

  “Her ring finger,” translated Dr. Dabbe.

  “No ring?” said Sloan swiftly.

  “No. If you ask me, Sloan,” said Dr. Dabbe solemnly, “I’d say the baby was on time but the wedding was late. There was no ring in the ground anyway—at least, not when the left arm was unearthed—but as to before …”

  “I shouldn’t have said the body was accessible enough to have been robbed earlier,” said Sloan slowly. “If it had been, then I think it would have been found before now.”

  “A good point,” conceded the pathologist. “Quite apart from anything else, of course, Inspector, I must remind you that t
here would also have been considerable mephitis.”

  “Mephitis, Doctor?” That was a new one on Sloan. He kept his tone deliberately neutral—in spite of the fact that he always supposed doctors used words such as this on purpose to cut lay people—like patients and policemen—down to size.

  The pathologist’s eyebrows rippled. He intoned in a parsonic manner, “A pestilential emanation from the earth, Sloan.” The phrase certainly did have a biblical ring about it. “More shortly, stench.”

  Sloan breathed more easily.

  That was a word Constable Crosby could both spell and understand. He heard his sigh of relief.

  “Now to the mother …” said Dr. Dabbe.

  It was Sloan’s turn to sigh.

  There was the doctor using an ordinary human expression in the medical sense. It was all very confusing and not really very fair. Anything looking less like a mother than the skeleton would have been difficult to imagine …

  “In my opinion,” dictated the pathologist, moving across to the postmortem table, “the bones are those of a woman aged between twenty-two and twenty-five at the time of death. She was of medium height—five foot five. As you see, Sloan, we have the complete skeleton here so that figure is reached by direct measurement …”

  That was a relief, thought Sloan. One formula—if it was as complicated as Hasse’s—was quite enough to be going on with.

  “I can’t tell you anything about her build or coloring. The earth in which she was buried was evidently not damp enough for adipocere …”

  Sloan could see Crosby having a lot of difficulty in spelling that one.

  “The teeth are consistent with the age suggested by the state of development of the iliac crest,” went on the pathologist. “They were well-looked after and had been treated for caries at early stages.”

  “That suggests a certain level of income and intelligence,” said Sloan, “in those days.”

  Detective Constable Crosby, who had a small hole in his left eyetooth, closed his mouth and kept it closed.

  “And an interest in her appearance,” agreed Dabbe. “Dentists were more … aggressive then than now.” He peered inside the jaw and called out the state of each tooth. “My secretary will give you the dental picture, Inspector, before you go.”