Little Knell

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Which, Sloan,’ said Dr Dabbe amiably, ‘is only because our Mr Locombe-Stableford does not as yet understand the risks involved.’

  ‘Risks?’ Detective Constable Crosby’s head came up sharply as he showed real interest for the first time. ‘Danger, you mean?’

  The pathologist smiled gently. ‘Precisely, Constable. Danger.’

  ‘Who to?’ asked Crosby immediately.

  ‘You and me,’ said the pathologist.

  Crosby clearly didn’t like the sound of that.

  ‘And, of course,’ added Dabbe largely, waving a hand around, ‘to anyone else who might happen to be around when the mummy is unwrapped.’

  Crosby liked the sound of this even less. ‘But, doctor…’

  ‘Without my taking a great many additional precautions, that is,’ carried on Dr Dabbe. ‘Such as those I’ve just had to apply to my last post-mortem examination.’

  ‘What sort of danger?’ enquired the constable curiously.

  ‘From spiders that come in with banana boxes?’ suggested Detective Inspector Sloan. A local supermarket had once seen fit to send for him urgently for one such on the pedantic grounds that it was a suspected illegal immigrant. That, in Sloan’s book, hadn’t been real police work.

  ‘Disease,’ said Dr Dabbe.

  ‘You mean disease in the dead can harm us?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘It’s called contagion and mummies can carry old diseases,’ said Dabbe. He pointed in the direction of the door of the mortuary. ‘And so, incidentally, can new bodies.’

  Detective Constable Crosby looked unhappy.

  ‘My last case, on the other hand,’ went on the pathologist, unusually expansive, ‘was a new body with a new disease and I still had to take plenty of preventative measures.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded his comprehension of this coded message. ‘Aids?’

  ‘In my opinion, yes. Mind you, one mustn’t be judgemental…’

  ‘No, doctor.’ The fine difference between crime and sin was dinned early on into every new recruit to the police force.

  ‘And I, Inspector, was taught that the true pathologist should only be concerned with white and yellow fibrous tissue not moral fibre.’

  ‘Yes, doctor.’ It was when crime and sin overlapped that the policing became really difficult.

  ‘Mind you, Sloan,’ the doctor said, tongue in cheek, ‘it’s the yellow tissue that’s elastic.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan would have been the first to agree that moral fibre was elastic too, but he held his peace. Heroin, considered purely as a substance, was morally neutral. Possessing it wasn’t legal. Supplying it to others was a crime of the first order. But that wasn’t the pathologist’s concern just now.

  ‘I think it might have been more fast living and fast dying with that poor fellow in there,’ said Dabbe. ‘He was nothing but a living skeleton.’

  ‘Not slow dying, then,’ said Sloan, who had come across other victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. ‘Rattling with pills…’

  ‘I’m told that this man chose one last fling, expense no object, instead…’ said Dr Dabbe.

  ‘And who would blame him for that?’ said Sloan.

  ‘Makes the certification a bit difficult, though,’ said Dabbe jovially. ‘A two-horse race, you might say.’

  ‘Two-horse, doctor?’ The pale horse of the Apocalypse which was Death, Sloan knew about. He searched his memory for the other three – War, Pestilence, Famine.

  ‘Aids and alcohol,’ said Dabbe neatly. ‘I think it was the strong drink that got him in the end. Not your problem, of course, Sloan, this poor fellow.’

  ‘No, doctor.’ One thing which life on the beat had taught Sloan very early on was the great importance of not taking on matters which were not his problem. ‘Now, about this mummy at the museum…’

  ‘I think,’ said the pathologist briskly, ‘that the best course of action would be for me to get our medical imaging people to take one of their portable X-ray machines over there and take some pretty pictures of your mummy for Mr Locombe-Stableford.’

  ‘That would be very helpful,’ said Sloan. It would give him breathing space to think about where that consignment of heroin would have been going, had it come ashore at Edsway in the hands for which it had been intended.

  Dr Dabbe stroked his chin. ‘A bit of non-destructive testing should get things started nicely.’

  ‘And that,’ said Sloan, ‘should keep the museum people happy, too.’

  The doctor reached for a notepad. ‘I’ll have a word with Steve Meadows and ask him to get in touch.’

  ‘Meadows … I don’t know that name.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, Inspector. He’s the slowest driver in Calleshire.’

  Sloan refused to rise to this. ‘And?’

  ‘And he’s our friendly neighbourhood radiologist, too.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. ‘An X-ray report should satisfy the coroner, all right.’

  It wasn’t one of his more accurate forecasts.

  * * *

  ‘I think,’ said Marcus Fixby-Smith to Hilary Collins after the two policemen had gone on their way from the museum, ‘that this little local difficulty over Colonel Caversham’s bequest is something our Howard ought to know about, don’t you?’

  She nodded energetically.

  ‘I’m sure, anyway,’ said Fixby-Smith, ‘that he would want to know that the police have been here.’ They were standing in the institution’s Roman Room where the curator was resting his elbows on a handy stone sarcophagus. ‘Straight away, if not actually sooner.’

  His assistant hastened to agree with him.

  ‘After all, you might even argue,’ drawled Fixby-Smith, ‘that dealing with outside trouble is what the Chairman of the Museums and Amenities Committee is for.’ Marcus Fixby-Smith could deal with inside trouble at the museum himself any day, but he was very strong on self-preservation in an outside world he perceived as naturally hostile to arts administrators.

  If Hilary Collins saw any inherent contradiction between this statement and Fixby-Smith’s frequent assertions that all the town council’s committee chairmen were useless ornaments, she did not see fit to say so at this moment. Instead she said loyally, ‘Good idea.’

  ‘And I should say that dealing with something like this would be right up Howard Air’s street, wouldn’t you?’ said Marcus.

  Howard Air, a high-profile member of Berebury Town Council, was a successful businessman and local politician. And while he did not know anything about art – and never failed to say so – even Marcus Fixby-Smith had to concede that the man did seem to know his way around.

  Hilary nodded. ‘I would.’

  ‘Moreover,’ he added cynically, ‘if there’s any public relations mileage to be had out of any of this, then he’ll want to make the most of it. After all, he wrings every drop of goodwill out of his connections with the Lake Ryrie project.’

  Howard Air was a prominent supporter of an animal rescue reserve in the Kingdom of Lasserta, as well as being associated with the local centre.

  Hilary Collins contented herself with saying, ‘Howard Air certainly wouldn’t want to hear anything about the museum at second hand.’ She personally supported a lion at the Lake Ryrie Reserve with a small monthly donation. A photograph of the magnificent beast stood on her desk where others had pictures of their spouses and children.

  Fixby-Smith grimaced. ‘My guess is that he’d reckon learning about trouble from anyone else was a networking failure.’ Howard Air, as Marcus Fixby-Smith knew only too well, was not one to go in for failure. On the complete contrary, as the museum curator for one would have been the first to admit. His committee chairman had been singularly good at attracting new funding for the Greatorex Museum’s various exhibitions, especially the experimental ones. It was this last that had really earned Howard Air the curator’s respect.

  Hilary Collins had let her gaze drift in the direction of a nearby Roman stele. ‘I dare s
ay he doesn’t have too many disappointments in that line.’

  Fixby-Smith lifted his elbows off the stone sarcophagus and straightened up. ‘No, but even Philistines can’t win them all, Hilary.’

  ‘What do you mean, Marcus?’ Her mind strayed again to the inscription on the stele: she really must find the time to take another look at it. The Romans in Calleshire would be an interesting subject for schools.

  ‘He lost that little Chardin oil which I told him he ought to bid for. It was rather nice, I thought. It went to some gallery in France.’ He grinned. ‘I had thought any painting with oranges and apples ought to go down well on his office wall.’

  Howard Air and Company Ltd were big importers of fruit and vegetables for the wholesale market which supplied the county of Calleshire.

  ‘Pity,’ said his assistant. ‘He could have used it in his advertising.’

  Fixby-Smith shot her a sharp glance. The thing about Hilary Collins was that you never knew whether she was joking or not.

  * * *

  Howard Air was actually talking about advertising at the time, but not of either his own business or the museum. He was over at the village of Edsway.

  ‘I think we’ll need some better posters soon, Alison. Got to keep a high profile for the Lake Ryrie Project. They need every penny we can send them.’

  Alison Kirk looked despairingly round the ramshackle Calleshire Animal Sanctuary which she and her sister, Jennifer, ran in spite of great financial difficulties. ‘Of course, Howard, I do understand.’ She sighed. ‘There’s so much need everywhere…’

  ‘But here in Calleshire,’ he reminded her gently, ‘there’s no danger of any of your animal species becoming extinct.’ A chorus of barking dogs in the background endorsed this. ‘Now, out in Lasserta…’

  ‘Of course.’ She turned a tired face towards him. ‘We had more trouble here last night, Howard. The police were very kind but…’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Someone called them out. Two of the mares got out on to the road. It was our fences, Howard. They’ll really have to be mended properly now if we’re going to help horses here as well.’

  Air frowned. ‘We can’t have that, can we? I’ll have to see what I can do. We might be able to spare some wood.’

  ‘Inspector Harpe told us the two of them caused havoc with the traffic on the Larking road. Jennifer went out to see if she could help and said that cars were backing right up to Billing Bridge.’

  ‘No one hurt, I hope?’ he asked throatily.

  ‘Not this time. We may not be so lucky the next time it happens.’ She turned away from him so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Have you heard about our poor nephew?’

  ‘Derek? No. What about him?’

  ‘He died,’ she said bleakly. ‘It…’ her voice faltered and then picked up again. ‘It was not unexpected.’

  * * *

  ‘Oh, thank you, officer.’ The radiographer who had arrived at the museum with Dr Steve Meadows was young and pretty. She smiled sweetly up at Detective Constable Crosby as he helped her align the portable X-ray machine with the side of the mummy case. ‘You’re very kind.’

  Crosby beamed.

  ‘Now,’ she smiled again, ‘if you would just lift that cable there for me…’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘It’s very heavy.’

  The constable squared his shoulders like a latter-day Hercules applying himself to one of his labours. ‘Where do you want it putting, miss? By the coffin?’

  ‘Cartonnage,’ said Marcus Fixby-Smith snappily, making it quite clear that radiology was not the only expertise around in the museum and that he, too, knew a pretty young girl when he saw one.

  ‘We’ll start with the cranial area, please, Ruth,’ called out Steve Meadows, the Berebury radiologist. He turned to Sloan. ‘You can’t tell how the anatomical remains are lying within the casket at this stage, Inspector. If we can establish the position of the naso-frontal suture, that should get us started.’

  Getting finished and done with rather than getting started was what interested Sloan, but he did not say so.

  ‘All the same,’ carried on the radiologist chattily, ‘I can’t think what’s got into the coroner. He’s usually pretty reasonable.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s interested in ancient Egypt,’ murmured Sloan, at the same time noting that Crosby was getting increasingly interested in the petite and present-day young radiographer, who still managed to look attractive in spite of wearing a lead apron.

  ‘Or just anything nubile,’ said Meadows, almost equally sotto voce. ‘Great place for beautiful girls, Nubia.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ contributed Marcus Fixby-Smith, who wasn’t used to being left out of any conversational exchange going, ‘the coroner thinks the ancient Egyptian practice of weighing the heart of the deceased against the Feather of Truth would be an improvement on an inquest.’

  ‘Well, there’s one good thing to be said for X-raying a mummy,’ remarked the radiologist in more everyday tones.

  ‘Really, doctor?’ In Sloan’s book there wasn’t anything at all to be said for spending a whole morning on it when he was so busy with the drugs scene.

  ‘It doesn’t have any trouble keeping still when it has its photograph taken. That makes a nice change,’ he added feelingly.

  A line of verse from a Great War poem flitted through Sloan’s mind: something about confusing stillness with death. It would come back to him presently.

  ‘Now, officer,’ Ruth, the radiographer, was saying prettily to Crosby, ‘if you wouldn’t mind just standing well back, please, while I take some pictures.’

  The constable obediently moved away and commanded the mummy to say cheese as the X-ray machine started to make clicking noises.

  Hilary Collins, the deputy curator of the museum, said tentatively to Dr Meadows, ‘I understand, doctor, that mummies usually have a gold plate over the embalmer’s point of incision of the body. It would be most interesting to see that on an X-ray. Would it show up?’

  ‘Indeed it would.’ The radiologist was all affability. ‘Metals – all dense materials, actually – look white on an X-ray film. Less dense ones go down through all the shades from grey to black.’

  As far as Sloan was concerned most of the dense subjects with whom he usually came into contact were regrettably human. Their ethics also went down through the varying shades of grey. It didn’t help that what the law itself wanted was a state where everything was either black or white.

  The radiographer turned away from her machine for a few moments as she busied herself with a cassette of film, and then she asked Steve Meadows if he could step her way for a moment.

  ‘I don’t seem able to get a good picture somehow, doctor,’ she said. ‘It’s coming up completely white.’

  Steve Meadows looked down at something she was showing him and then up at Marcus Fixby-Smith. He asked, ‘These old chaps didn’t ever line their – what did you call them – cartonnages with lead, by any chance, did they?’

  ‘No,’ said the museum curator without hesitation. ‘And, anyway, two men wouldn’t have been able to lift this little lot if they had.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ murmured the radiologist absently, still peering down. ‘The preliminary radiograph’s a bit odd, that’s all.’

  ‘Usually,’ explained Marcus Fixby-Smith, one specialist to another, ‘the body was just wrapped in a sort of cerecloth – a set of bandages made of the fibres of flax and so forth and often secured with a plant gum.’

  Steve Meadows nodded.

  ‘And sometimes, they applied resins to the outer wrappings as well. I’m not a specialist, of course. Egyptology isn’t my field, by any means.’

  ‘According to this plate,’ said Meadows slowly, ‘there’s something else in there. Something metallic.’

  ‘Gold?’ suggested Hilary Collins. ‘The Egyptians had plenty of gold.’

  The radiologist glanced at Sloan and said, ‘If Mr
Fixby-Smith wouldn’t mind indicating how to open this mummy, doing the least damage possible, then I think we may be able to tell you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sloan heartily, as the curator and the radiologist advanced on the wooden casing, apparently oblivious of any of the dangers feared by Dr Dabbe. Time, after all, was getting on and Sloan had other work to do.

  What wasn’t good, though, was the noisome smell which assailed the nostrils of everyone in the room as the lid was prised open.

  The metal inside was not gold. It was aluminium and looked suspiciously like domestic baking foil. It was wrapped carefully round something mummy-shaped. The odour got very much worse as Dr Meadows carefully unfolded a little corner and found not the naso-frontal suture of the skeleton he had been seeking but a partially decomposed body.

  Chapter Five

  Faded

  ‘Of course there’s a dead body in that mummy case,’ said Superintendent Leeyes testily. ‘You should have known that, Sloan. It’s the whole idea of mummification.’

  ‘Not an old body, sir,’ said Sloan down the curator’s telephone: he didn’t think this conversation was for the open airwaves. He was alone in the curator’s room. Marcus Fixby-Smith had turned a nasty shade of green when he had looked at the contents of the cartonnage, and had gone somewhere to be sick. Unexpectedly, Miss Collins had proved to be made of sterner stuff and was remaining with the hospital team and the opened case, holding a watching brief for the museum.

  ‘Besides,’ continued Leeyes, not listening, ‘that’s what the coroner’s been making all this silly fuss about. You know that, too, Sloan.’

  ‘A new body, sir.’ If his message was as incomprehensible as Leeyes was finding it, then it might just as well be sent en clair.

  ‘Not mummified remains?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘How new a body?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I think it could be described as nearly new, sir.’ The words conjured up in his mind the shop on the corner of Nethergate called Secondhand Rose which specialized in nearly new clothes. ‘But not very.’ The recollection of the stench that had assaulted the olfactory organs of everyone in the gallery at the museum when the aluminium foil had first been peeled back made him catch his breath all over again. What was inside certainly hadn’t smelled of roses of any sort.