Little Knell

by Catherine Aird

  ‘He didn’t say,’ said the elder woman.

  ‘Come, Miss Kirk…’

  ‘Come nothing,’ she retorted spiritedly. ‘He told us that the money was really and truly his to do what he liked with; a proper windfall.’

  ‘I see.’ Detective Inspector Sloan took this with the customary police pinch of salt. Even windfalls could – and sometimes did – carry a touch of skulduggery about them. Windfalls had entered the language from the medieval laws – the forest laws.

  ‘And only his,’ put in Jennifer Kirk, reaching for the milk jug. ‘No one else’s.’

  ‘And, moreover, he insisted he was going to do exactly what he liked with it, too, whatever anyone else said,’ carried on Alison.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan. Real windfalls were trees which had fallen upon the King’s highway and which the peasantry were then entitled to collect and burn for fuel – a canny self-financing medieval method of keeping the roadway clear. The skulduggery came in when the verderer – the judicial officer of the King’s forest – found the roots of a tree half chopped away in the right direction to encourage it to fall on the highway.

  ‘Down to the very last penny before he died,’ said Derek’s aunt. ‘Which, poor boy, he knew wouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Doctors are franker than they used to be,’ put in Jennifer Kirk. ‘Not so mealy-mouthed.’

  ‘Difficult to live happily knowing you’re going to die soon,’ agreed Sloan.

  ‘You can say that again,’ murmured Jennifer. ‘It didn’t help him. Us, perhaps, but not him.’

  ‘If you’re young, that is,’ Sloan added by way of amendment. He’d never forgotten that poor old man in one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales who had been wandering about seeking Death everywhere but never finding him. There were more people like that these days, too, than there used to be, modern medicine being what it had become.

  ‘That’s where animals do better than we do, Inspector,’ observed Jennifer Kirk. ‘They may live in fear of the here and now, but not of the hereafter like Derek did.’

  Alison Kirk sniffed. ‘We all know Derek wasn’t perfect and Aids is a terrible disease; but he wasn’t either a thief or a liar and if he told us that money was his to give away then it was.’

  Jennifer Kirk nodded vigorously. ‘He said he was determined to use up as much of his money as he could while he could.’

  Alison Kirk raised her hand to her face to brush away a tear and said, ‘He didn’t quite manage to use it all up, though, Inspector.’

  ‘He died first,’ explained Jennifer Kirk.

  ‘But he had a good try at spending the lot,’ said her sister. ‘A very good try.’

  ‘That’s what we had heard,’ said Sloan.

  Alison Kirk looked round the untidy, old-fashioned kitchen. ‘He gave us quite a bit for our animals here. We’re going to spend some of it on a set of new dog kennels.’ She turned to the two dogs. ‘Did you hear that, my darlings?’

  Jennifer said, ‘We’ve had a legacy, too…’ She pushed a couple of cats off the table and belatedly covered the milk jug. ‘It never rains but it pours.’

  ‘From an old soldier in Berebury called Caversham.’ Alison got to her feet as a kettle came to the boil on the top of an iron stove. ‘Very welcome, I must say.’

  ‘We’d also heard about that,’ said Sloan truthfully, deciding not to mention the rather different inheritance that the police had had from the same old soldier in Berebury.

  ‘Which we’re going to spend on fencing the paddock for the horses,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘And Dunce,’ said Alison.

  ‘Dunce?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘The donkey.’

  Jennifer Kirk gave both men a surprisingly sweet smile. ‘That’ll please your Inspector Harpe after the shenanigans the other night, won’t it?’

  Alison plonked a sturdy teapot down on the wooden table and set four mugs beside it. ‘Now, then, Inspector, are you going to tell us what all this is about or not?’

  One of the characteristics which policemen have in common with members of the medical profession is that they customarily respond to questions with another question; not an answer. Detective Inspector Sloan was no exception to this rule. ‘When Derek spoke about this money, how did he himself refer to it – apart from as a windfall, that is?’

  ‘As his own, his very own,’ said Alison Kirk, pouring the tea.

  ‘He gave us some money for the Lake Ryrie Project in Lasserta, as well,’ chimed in Jennifer. ‘They’re going to enclose some of the land there to protect some very rare monkeys and call it after Derek. He would have liked that.’

  ‘He knew how strongly we felt about the Lake Ryrie Reserve, too,’ Alison said earnestly. ‘It’s no good our just caring for the species in this country, you know. That would be selfish.’

  ‘The welfare of animals everywhere should be everyone’s concern,’ said Jennifer Kirk sternly, ‘but especially of endangered species such as those monkeys there.’

  ‘I’m afraid Lasserta doesn’t have a very good track record of kindness to animals,’ said her sister.

  ‘So how do you go about supporting the Lake Ryrie Project in the ordinary way?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘In the ordinary way?’ echoed Alison, pushing a bowl towards them. ‘Help yourselves to sugar.’

  ‘Without Derek.’

  ‘Just like we raise funds for our animal sanctuary here.’ The elder Miss Kirk waved an arm to encompass the range of sundry kennels, cattery, stables and outbuildings which comprised the outfit. ‘It’s the usual: sales of work, coffee mornings, flag days…’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, conscientious police officer that he was, made a note to check on the funding of both the Calleshire Animal Sanctuary and the Lake Ryrie Project in Lasserta. Money-launderers could work in some very strange places – the stranger, the better, from their point of view. And if it involved a change of country and currency, so much the better. The audit trail, enemy of the drug dealer and friend of the fiscal authorities, didn’t cross national borders very well: it regularly lost its way at the point where jurisdictions transferred from one sovereign state to another, and drug dealers knew it. And it often proved quite difficult to pick up again on the other side of the sea. Like Tam O’Shanter pursued, safety lay in crossing the water.

  Sloan brought his mind back to the matter in hand with a jerk and asked the two women if they knew a girl called Jill Carter.

  They shook their heads in unison while Alison Kirk turned to Detective Constable Crosby and said, ‘You wouldn’t like a kitten, too, would you, Constable? We’ve got plenty more where Squeak came from and two queens in kindle…’

  * * *

  Detective Constable Crosby looked up as Sloan came in. ‘Mrs Sloan rang, sir, but she said it wasn’t urgent.’

  ‘Right.’ It wasn’t like Margaret to telephone him at the police station in the middle of the day. Later on, perhaps, if he was worryingly late in coming off duty, but not otherwise. ‘I’ll ring her when I’m free.’

  ‘She sounded a bit cross,’ volunteered Crosby.

  Detective Inspector Sloan, no fool, picked up the telephone at once. The chill factor was immediately apparent when he got through to his home number. ‘A problem?’ he asked uneasily.

  ‘There’s been something arrive for you,’ his wife said distantly.

  ‘For me?’ He ran his mind swiftly over his personal purchases for the last couple of weeks but nothing in his memory surfaced.

  ‘By carrier.’

  He was more puzzled still.

  ‘It’s marked “Next Day Delivery”.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘And “Open Immediately”.’

  ‘But does it say who it’s from?’

  ‘Lingard and Lingard.’

  ‘The rose people?’

  A mild snort travelled down the line. ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Roses?’

  ‘What else?’ she enquired ironically.

  �
�I didn’t order any roses.’

  ‘I thought,’ she said elliptically, ‘that we’d already agreed about that.’

  ‘We had.’

  ‘It looks,’ she said coldly, ‘very like the special collection of patio standards that we decided we couldn’t afford.’

  ‘We did decide.’ Sloan hadn’t had the slightest difficulty in hearing the stress on the word ‘we’ twice in that sentence.

  ‘And we still can’t afford them,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘So I don’t know anything about them.’

  ‘They’re marked “Urgent and Perishable” too…’

  ‘So they may be,’ said Sloan, pulling his notebook nearer.

  ‘Do I put them in water then?’ she asked acidly.

  ‘You don’t put them anywhere,’ ordered Margaret’s husband, thinking fast and suddenly galvanized into action. ‘You leave them strictly alone!’

  ‘But…’ she protested.

  ‘Don’t touch them!’ He was almost shouting now.

  ‘All right. If you say so.’

  ‘Keep away from them, understand? As far away as you can. Do nothing at all until I get there.’ He slammed the phone down. ‘Come on, Crosby. Don’t just stand there! Let’s get moving, and fast.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Torn

  There was only one room in the overcrowded offices of Pearson, Worrow and Gisby, Chartered Accountants, which was sacrosanct to the persons of Nigel Worrow and Jim Pearson and in which they were never to be interrupted. Kenneth Gisby was deemed still too young to be privy to it. Although it rejoiced in the name of the Partners’ Room, it was rarely used as such, being both small and inconvenient. It did, however, have a locked cupboard to which only the two men enjoyed the keys.

  Inside the cupboard was a bottle of very good single malt whisky. This was usually opened to mark the minor ups and downs in the usually humdrum world of auditing other people’s figures.

  Today was not humdrum, but Worrow waved away Pearson’s sketched offer of a dram without hesitation. ‘No, thanks, Jim. Not now. I need to think.’

  ‘We both do,’ said Pearson. He sank into the chair opposite and added significantly, ‘And about rather a lot of things.’

  ‘Starting with poor Jill…’ said his partner, still visibly shaken by the news.

  ‘It’s almost always the boyfriend, remember,’ said Pearson, in an unconscious echo of the opinion of Superintendent Leeyes.

  ‘Then we don’t have anything to worry about,’ concluded Worrow, nevertheless looking a very worried man.

  Pearson shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure about that, Nigel. I think we do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nigel Worrow looked searchingly at his partner. ‘I would have thought that it’s only if it wasn’t the boyfriend that we needed to worry. Anyway it’ll take the police quite a time to be sure that it’s him. Thornhill was the name, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Colin,’ said Pearson, who was the one who was keenest on using Christian names.

  ‘And,’ said Nigel Worrow, ‘while they’re making sure it’s – er – Colin, you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll sift through everything else here they can lay their hands on.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Pearson, ‘I’ll have a whisky myself anyway.’

  ‘You do realize, don’t you, that the police can probably go on a fishing expedition here now even without a court order…’

  ‘I suppose anything’s possible in the sacred name of justice,’ agreed Pearson gloomily.

  ‘And there might be some small matters that take a bit of explaining…’

  ‘Every firm in existence must have some, files they wouldn’t want the police asking questions about.’ Jim Pearson took a sip of his whisky. ‘Especially in our line of business.’

  ‘It’s our line of business that I have in mind,’ said Nigel Worrow.

  ‘And would you happen to have anything particular in mind?’ enquired Jim Pearson delicately.

  ‘There’s a client to whom I gave a good deal of advice about the possibilities of a viatical settlement not long ago,’ said Worrow.

  ‘So? Granted, viatical settlements don’t crop up all that often,’ said Pearson. ‘And we aren’t all experts. I haven’t had one in ages.’

  ‘It’s not everyone,’ agreed Worrow, ‘who’s been told they’re going to die long before they can get their hands on the proceeds of an endowment insurance policy that’s a good deal more healthy than they are.’

  ‘True. It’s when the medicos say it’ll be within two years, isn’t it?’

  ‘They’re not so fussy about the predicted time of death as they used to be,’ said Worrow. ‘Anyway, I gave this man – he was the nephew of those two Kirk sisters who have been clients of ours for years – my advice. I said he ought to go to one of the viatical settlement companies who would take a second medical opinion and then consider buying his endowment policy on the strength of it or, of course, alternatively, he could just put the policy up for auction and get what he could for it.’

  ‘You do have to spell out all the options these days,’ nodded Pearson sagely. ‘So what’s wrong with his cutting and running like that? I’d have given the man exactly the same advice if he’d consulted me.’

  ‘He didn’t do either of those two things,’ said Worrow sombrely.

  ‘So what’s the problem, Nigel? Clients don’t have to do everything we tell ’em to.’ He essayed a grin. ‘They only have to pay us for advising them on their best course of action.’

  His partner did not return his smile. ‘The problem is that he still raised a hell of a lot of money on it somehow, and then went and died.’

  Jim Pearson took considerably more than a sip of his whisky. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said slowly. ‘And you’re saying that we should have told the proper authorities that it must have been a suspicious transaction, even though we’ve no idea who was party to it.’

  ‘I think that’s the theory, Jim; although you know as well as I do that the legislation on this sort of thing is changing all the time.’

  ‘And now we don’t know where your client got the money.’

  ‘Not a clue,’ said Nigel Worrow. He braced himself. ‘All I know is that he died early yesterday morning.’

  * * *

  ‘Sir,’ began Sloan stiltedly, ‘I have to report an attempt at bribery.’

  Superintendent Leeyes grunted. ‘It wasn’t a bomb, then.’

  ‘A dozen rose bushes were delivered to my home address…’ As far as Sloan was concerned the rose bushes had come with the same intention as high explosive.

  ‘Rose bushes?’ The superintendent’s bushy eyebrows almost disappeared up his forehead. ‘You’re not trying to wind me up about all this, I hope, Sloan, because if so…’

  ‘Special ones for the patio: a particular collection, very expensive, that I had wanted especially, but I – we – decided we couldn’t afford.’

  Superintendent Leeyes grunted again.

  ‘Dispatched sir, by carrier last night from Nottinghamshire to my home address, by the firm I usually deal with.’

  ‘Sloan, are you quite sure that these roses weren’t a surprise present from your wife?’

  ‘Absolutely sure, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘I can assure you that possibility doesn’t arise. Apart from anything else, sir, Margaret doesn’t particularly care for rose bushes.’

  ‘But the order should be able to be traced easily enough,’ commented Leeyes. ‘The firm…’

  ‘The special collection was paid for in cash yesterday,’ said Sloan, who had just done some urgent telephoning to Lingard and Lingard. ‘By a London courier. For immediate dispatch.’

  ‘Expense no object, then,’ commented Leeyes.

  ‘Exactly, sir.’

  ‘The courier?’

  ‘The rose people didn’t notice anything particular about him. All they can say is that he was dressed up to the eyebrows in black motorcycle le
athers and didn’t take his helmet off.’

  ‘Any message with the roses?’

  ‘“A foretaste of summer”, written on the card at the dictation of the courier,’ said Sloan. He himself didn’t have any particular difficulty in interpreting this as: plenty more of everything from where these came from.

  Neither did Superintendent Leeyes.

  ‘I have started, of course, sir, to go into the question of exactly who knew that these particular roses were just what I wanted, but had already decided I – we – couldn’t afford.’ This was a sore point. In his opinion secrets of the family purse should be kept as private as those of the bedroom and they hadn’t been.

  What had emerged – until, that is, his wife had heatedly declined to be cross-questioned like a common police suspect another single minute – was the fact that Margaret had just happened to mention the patio collection of rose bushes to a very pleasant woman who had just happened to have been sitting next to her at her ladies afternoon meeting the day before.

  No, she hadn’t known her.

  No, she had never seen her before.

  No, she didn’t know her name. She had simply assumed she was a new member.

  No, Margaret had not brought the subject of patio roses up. They had begun by talking about winning the lottery and what they would do with the money if they did.

  There was no harm in dreaming. Everyone was allowed to dream.

  Yes, from there they had gone on to discussing more affordable pleasures. That was what everybody always did. Didn’t he know that?

  Oh, she’d forgotten. Policemen only ever asked questions. They didn’t answer them.

  Third degree, more like.

  No, she hadn’t forgotten that was American.

  Oh, all right then, if it was so important.

  Then this woman had said that she didn’t mind about not winning the lottery but what she really wanted was a new garden gate.

  Yes, naturally then Margaret had mentioned the rose bush collection and if there had been anything wrong in doing that she would very much like to know what it was because she hadn’t signed the Official Secrets Act even if he had …