It wasn’t Dr Roger Elspin at the front door. It was Detective-Inspector Sloan and Detective-Constable Crosby.
The Superintendent never gave up. Bulldogs as a breed had nothing on Superintendent Leeyes when his jaws were locked firmly on to a problem. Nor was he one to accept a dead end. Immediately after writing off the post mortem he had proceeded to turn his mind to other aspects of the death of Miss Beatrice Wansdyke.
It was therefore not very long before he came up with the question which came – like Death – late or soon to Everyman. Or at any rate to every policeman.
‘Who benefits, Sloan?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me that.’
Which was how it was that Detective-Inspector Sloan and Detective-Constable Crosby came to be ringing the doorbell of a house called ‘The Laurels’ in Cullum Crescent, Berebury, at this particular moment. George Wansdyke admitted them.
‘Of course. Come in,’ he said, when Sloan had explained who they were. ‘We were expecting someone to come along to tell us what all the fuss was about.’
Sloan decided that that line would serve as as good an introduction as he was ever likely to get.
‘We’re sorry to have bothered you, sir,’ he said, slipping easily into a semideferential manner which, had they been privileged to witness it, would have at the same time both considerably startled Larky Nolson and vastly amused Mrs Margaret Sloan. It was nicely done. The tone implied apology without actually meaning it. ‘Some sort of mix-up somewhere along the line …’
‘No trouble,’ said Wansdyke, equally magnanimous. ‘Briony … Inspector, this is my cousin, Miss Petforth.’
‘We have met,’ said Sloan. ‘At the hospital.’
‘Oh, really?’ He looked up as his wife came back into the room. ‘Pauline, dear, these are police officers who have come to tell us about poor Aunt Beatrice.’
‘Poor Aunt Beatrice,’ echoed Pauline Wansdyke without noticeable conviction.
‘Briony – Miss Petforth, here – stood in for me at the identification,’ said George to Sloan.
‘You’re her executor, though, sir, aren’t you?’
‘I am indeed.’ He shrugged his shoulders ruefully. ‘Not that I imagine that the duties are likely to be – er – exactly onerous.’
‘Oh?’ said Sloan, utterly deadpan.
‘Her pension rights die with her, of course, as she didn’t reach sixty …’
Like the mustard left on the plate, that was where the pension fund money was, thought Sloan to himself.
‘… and the house goes outright to Briony here,’ continued George.
Briony flushed but said nothing.
‘I see,’ said Sloan mendaciously. ‘And the residue?’
‘She wasn’t a rich woman,’ said George Wansdyke.
‘No?’
‘My grandparents left her a little, naturally, including a small stake in the firm.’
Sloan looked expectant. ‘She wasn’t their only child, though?’
‘Of course not.’ George Wansdyke looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Otherwise she wouldn’t have a niece, would she? But she had nursed them both, and my father – her brother – had built up the firm into something by then.’
Sloan, who could count as well as the next man, said: ‘And Miss Petforth’s mother?’
‘Cut off with a shilling,’ said Briony, flushing again.
‘She was not mentioned in the wills of either of my grandparents,’ said Wansdyke.
‘I see.’
‘My mother, you might as well know, ran off with a no-good-boyo,’ said Briony Petforth, showing a working acquaintance with the works of the late Dylan Thomas as well as a sense of humour.
‘My grandparents were very old-fashioned,’ said Wansdyke stiffly.
‘When my great-aunt married the coachman,’ said Pauline Wansdyke, ‘her parents went into black and never mentioned her name again. They were Hartley-Powells, of course.’
‘They turned my Auntie Nellie’s picture to the wall,’ contributed Detective-Constable Crosby chattily.
Everyone looked in his direction.
‘She didn’t marry anyone,’ said Crosby. ‘That was the trouble.’
Pauline Wansdyke wasn’t used to being upstaged.
‘They drew the window blinds, too, on the day she married,’ she said firmly, ‘as if she’d died, and then they rubbed her name out of the family Bible.’
‘My parents did die, Inspector,’ said Briony softly. ‘In a car accident when we were little.’
‘We?’ queried Sloan.
The interrogative hung unacknowledged for a moment.
‘My brother and I,’ said Briony after a pause.
‘Winding up Beatrice’s estate,’ interposed George Wansdyke fussily, ‘won’t be a difficult matter.’
‘Good,’ said Sloan warmly. If George Wansdyke believed that, then like somebody else, he could believe anything.
‘She had a friend called Hilda Collins,’ said Wansdyke obliquely. ‘She gets a little. An eighth, actually. So does Dr Paston.’
‘Her general practitioner?’
‘He was an old friend as well as her doctor, Inspector. He’d been very good to her over the years over this chronic complaint of hers.’
‘Diabetes,’ said Briony Petforth rather crossly. ‘Why doesn’t everyone say so and call it what it was?’
‘Quite so,’ said Sloan. ‘And?’
‘My children get a small sum between them,’ continued Wansdyke. ‘In trust, naturally, seeing that they’re under age.’
‘Naturally,’ concurred Sloan. Trust Laws might seem a contradiction in terms but they knew all about untrustworthy trustees down at the police station. The medievalists had done better still. They used to put the just judges on one side of a painting and the unjust ones on the other.
‘It won’t amount to much, of course,’ said Wansdyke. ‘Another eighth.’
‘Of course,’ echoed Sloan, reserving judgement on this.
‘Briony gets the same as well as the house.’
Detective-Inspector Sloan did some mental arithmetic out loud. ‘Four eighths make a half, sir, don’t they?’
‘They do,’ said George Wansdyke reluctantly.
‘That leaves a half,’ said Sloan.
Wansdyke coughed. ‘That goes to Briony’s brother, Nicholas.’ He spread his hands open and apart in an age-old gesture. ‘If we can find him, that is.’
Briony Petforth looked up. ‘The dog’s missing too.’
However Dickensian an impression the coroner’s office gave to the casual visitor it still sported a telephone. Mr Chestley’s personal secretary was middle-aged and competent. The calls she allowed to be put through to her employer were only those she knew he would want to take. To all other callers he was either ‘engaged with a client’ or ‘in Court.’
‘Mr Chestley,’ she said now, ‘I have Dr John Paston on the line.’
‘Put him through,’ he said immediately – as she had known he would. There was a pause. Then: ‘John …’
‘That you, Chestley? Paston here. What’s all this about my death certificate for Beatrice Wansdyke?’
‘No problem,’ said the coroner.
‘I’ve had the relatives round my neck and I can’t get hold of Dabbe.’
‘No problem,’ repeated the coroner. ‘Your friend and medical colleague, the pathologist, says she died of diabetes, too.’
‘That’s a relief,’ said Paston frankly. ‘For a moment I thought …’
‘Doctors have been known to differ,’ said the solicitor mildly. ‘Especially after death.’
‘I was afraid I might have missed something,’ said the general practitioner. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be and I’ve got a lot on my mind.’
‘If you have missed anything,’ the coroner said drily, ‘it wasn’t anything that the pathologist could find.’
‘Shouldn’t have wanted to slip up with her. The nephew’s wife is a first-class menace. Besides, Beatrice was a decent sort.’
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Both men, professional realists, knew that the latter was very much a secondary consideration compared with the former.
‘Of course,’ said Chestley, ‘Dabbe did a lot of hedging about in case anything shows up in his tissue testing.’
‘Pathologists,’ said the general practitioner, ‘are getting as bad as solicitors at that these days.’
‘Nothing’s as certain as it used to be,’ countered Robert Chestley profoundly. ‘The law has always known it. Medicine’s just catching on.’
‘The patient doesn’t like his physician to share his uncertainty with him,’ responded Paston. ‘I’ve tried it and I know.’
‘Dabbe does let you have a copy of his report, doesn’t he?’
‘He does but I dare say it won’t surprise me now. She was getting all sorts of signs and symptoms that indicated she needed more insulin. I saw her twice last week and told her to step up her dose each time.’
‘Ah.’
‘I should have thought it would have done the trick myself – surprising it didn’t, really – but you never can tell.’
‘No.’
‘And of course she lived alone. Then if you do go over the edge of safety there’s no one there to haul you back.’
‘She might not have acted upon your advice,’ pointed out the coroner, always able to find something to cavil at, and well-used to doctors who wondered if they should have done more.
‘I’ll have you know, Chestley, that patients are usually more obedient than clients.’
‘Just as well,’ riposted the man of law neatly. ‘Clients who don’t take our advice bring in a lot of work. Yours only die.’
This response set up quite a different train of thought in the general practitioner. His tone changed completely. ‘Bob, I’m sending my junior partner round to see you.’
‘Peter McCavity?’
‘I’ve persuaded him to consult you at last. Took a bit of doing.’
‘I can believe that.’
‘He’s – er – got himself into a – er – little difficulty.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes.’ The doctor sighed. ‘Yes. Again.’
‘The old problem?’
There was a pause. ‘I’m very much afraid so.’
‘The dog it was that died, eh, Sloan?’ said the Superintendent thoughtfully when the detective-inspector got back to the police station.
‘So Constable Crosby says, sir.’ Sloan toyed with the note he had made.
‘And how did he find out?’
‘Poking about in Ridley Road,’ said Sloan, looking out of the window.
‘Poking about?’
‘Digging,’ supplied Sloan uncomfortably.
‘Where?’
‘Miss Wansdyke’s garden.’
‘He’ll be the death of me, that boy, one day,’ breathed Leeyes.
‘Of us all,’ said Sloan feelingly.
‘Not so much as “by your leave”?’
‘No.’
‘Anyone’s permission?’
‘No.’
‘Search warrant?’
‘Wouldn’t know what that looked like, I dare say.’
‘Just went along with his spade?’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘And his bucket,’ said Leeyes, ‘like he was at the seaside?’
‘Probably.’
‘What will the neighbours say?’
Taking this literally, Sloan flipped his notes over. ‘One of them gave him a cup of tea – a Mrs Stroude. She confirms that Miss Wansdyke spent the whole of Friday evening looking for the dog. She heard her whistling and calling until quite late. And she saw her out and about early Saturday morning ditto.’
‘By which time the dog was dead and buried?’
‘Presumably.’
‘Where?’
‘Not far from a small compost heap at the bottom of the garden.’
‘Crosby knew where to look?’ Leeyes sounded disbelieving.
Sloan cleared his throat and said carefully, ‘He tells me that on one of his training courses they had a lesson on how to identify disturbed ground.’
‘With pictures, I suppose,’ grunted Leeyes. ‘When I was a constable we were supposed to work that sort of thing out for ourselves.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Disturbed ground always meant something, all the same. The archaeologists knew that.
‘Julius Cæsar was here,’ said the Superintendent, ‘and all that.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So he knew what to look for?’
‘He found the dog,’ said Sloan elliptically.
‘The dead don’t bury the dead,’ said the Superintendent.
‘No.’ Sloan acknowledged this immediately. ‘From what he says there seems little doubt that someone …’
‘Person or persons unknown,’ intervened Leeyes.
‘Er – quite, sir – buried the dog just after dark on Friday evening.’
‘How do we know that?’
‘I gather Mrs Stroude is the sort of neighbour who would have noticed – er – unusual activity in the next-door garden in daylight.’
‘I don’t know where we’d get without inquisitive neighbours,’ said Leeyes frankly. ‘I reckon that’s what keeps people on the straight and narrow – not morality at all.’
‘This one is positive nothing sinister went on in the garden in the early afternoon,’ said Sloan. He paused. ‘She went out a little later on, though. That’s when she noticed the car.’
‘What car?’
‘A blue Allegro,’ said Sloan carefully. He paused. ‘A very battered one.’
‘Did she know it?’ He grunted. ‘Women don’t usually.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Do we know it?’ enquired Leeyes heavily.
‘Yes.’
‘Not the battered blue Allegro that we all know?’
‘Dr McCavity’s,’ said Sloan, ‘from the sound of it.’
‘Hrrrrrmph,’ said Leeyes.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sloan. ‘Quite.’
‘How,’ enquired Leeyes pertinently, ‘did the dog get from house to garden?’
‘How it got out of the house is what bothered Miss Wansdyke. She didn’t know about it being dead in the garden, of course. She’d left it locked indoors when she went to school as usual. She was so upset about that fact that she told Mrs Stroude she was putting the chain on her door that night.’
‘So someone opens the door with a key …’ he paused. ‘Or do you think our promising young Sherlock Holmes was so busy digging up the dog that he wouldn’t have noticed a break-in?’
‘Miss Wansdyke would have done,’ said Sloan realistically.
Leeyes nodded. ‘Right. Then the door gets opened with a key, and someone kills Fido.’
‘Isolde,’ said Sloan distantly.
‘You having me on, Sloan?’ growled Leeyes.
‘No, sir.’
There was a pause, then: ‘I had forgotten we were in a superior part of the town.’
‘Quite, sir.’
‘Sloan …’
‘Sir?’
‘There’s an old saying about dogs.’
‘Letting sleeping ones lie?’ ventured Sloan.
‘No,’ roared Leeyes. ‘Certainly not. We’re police officers, man, not politicians.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ He coughed. ‘Another old saying, I think you said …’
‘Love me, love my dog,’ said Leeyes.
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir, but …’
‘Have we got a case of “Hate me, hate my dog” on our hands, Sloan? Tell me that.’
‘I hope not, sir.’
‘Sloan –’ Leeyes had a second thought – ‘how do we know that Miss Wansdyke didn’t find the dog dead herself later on the Saturday or Sunday and see that it was decently buried in her garden?’
‘Because it had had its throat cut,’ said Sloan chillingly.
CHAPTER VII
Ah, no, let be! For the Philosopher’s Stone,
Just as, in the immortal words of the poet, even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea, so eventually every tired policeman finds his way at last to his own fireside. Lightly brushing a kiss on to his wife’s cheek, Detective-Inspector Sloan dropped thankfully into an armchair.
‘You’ll miss me when I’m in the hospital,’ said Margaret Sloan. ‘When I’m not here to come home to …’
He did not attempt to answer this. ‘I’ll know all about it, though, when you get back, won’t I?’ he insisted in mock despair. ‘A baby crying … nappies everywhere … another mouth to feed …’
‘Talking of food …’ she said, disappearing hastily in the direction of the kitchen.
When she came back he told her about the dog.
‘Poor thing,’ she said, distressed. ‘Whoever would want to do a thing like that?’
‘I don’t know.’ He stuffed a cushion behind his head and said what was uppermost in his mind. ‘It’s not a lot to go on – a dead dog.’
‘And a quarter of a million pounds,’ she reminded him.
‘The family are all carrying on as if she’s only left twopence ha’penny,’ said Sloan.
‘Perhaps they really don’t know.’
‘For my money,’ said Sloan with a fine disregard for metaphor, ‘someone somewhere does.’
‘And she did die naturally,’ said Margaret Sloan.
‘The dog didn’t,’ said her husband obliquely.
She shuddered a little. ‘Whose money will it be, then?’
‘You’re as bad as the Superintendent.’ Sloan stretched his legs out in front of the fire. ‘He keeps on asking that, too, only he doesn’t put it quite so nicely.’
‘Gain usually comes into evil somewhere, doesn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yes, my love.’ He was quite willing to go along with that: in fact he didn’t know of any policeman who wouldn’t be. If gain didn’t come into evil, then what you had instead wasn’t crime at all but a suitable case for treatment – medical treatment.
‘Immediate gain, that is,’ she said seriously, sitting down, too, by the fire. She stared into the flames for a moment and then said, ‘There’s something sinister in one of the nursery rhymes about growing rich, isn’t there?’
‘Been doing your homework, have you?’ he teased her, casting about in his mind for the allusion. ‘Ready for you-know-who?’
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