Stone Cold Dead

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Anybody in the bar, d’you think?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be—at this time.’

  ‘There, then. And you can tell me all about it,’ I said comfortingly.

  He looked at me doubtfully, but nevertheless led the way through the swing doors, which went wump behind us. There, I sat him down at one of the tables. He sagged loosely.

  ‘A drink?’ I asked, but he shook his head.

  ‘No. It’s too early.’

  But it did seem to me that he needed one. Slowly, I filled my pipe. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ I suggested, while my eyes were concentrated on my hands.

  ‘The canal—’

  ‘No,’ I said. Not that. Tell me why you’re all of a fidget and upset, I meant. And don’t tell me it’s because of your blasted winding handle.’

  He had his hands clenched together on the table surface, but he couldn’t control his fingers. They locked, they unclenched, they writhed. He stared down at them, frowning as though he commanded them to be still, and they would not.

  ‘You can’t know about this canal,’ he said stubbornly, refusing to face a different concern that I felt was haunting him. ‘It’s one of the few privately owned canals in the country. It could be the only one, now, for all I know. Thirty-three miles, that’s all it is, from end to end. In the old days, it used to link a colliery with a clay pit and pottery place, then later on with a power station, but now there’s no colliery, and the power station runs on gas. But it’s always belonged to that one family. They’re the ones who financed Brindley to do his early experiments with canals and locks. There’s a thirty-foot rise here, and that would normally need five locks—a staircase. So he thought up this arrangement with the pounds in between. It only uses three locks. Getting his eye in for the Bratch Flight, he was, on the Staffs and Worcestershire canal. But this one came first. And the canal’s been owned by that same family who originally owned the colliery. In those days, it would’ve brought them in a good income.’

  ‘Sounds as though it did.’

  ‘Plenty of traffic, then, but at that time it was all commercial. Now it’s entirely holiday boats. They pay a fee for the use of the canal and its locks. There’re nineteen, as well as this flight. But it couldn’t be very profitable, ’cause there’s always maintenance of the waterway and locks to be done. That’s why I don’t get paid, except for the tenancy of the house. This house. The lodge.’

  ‘So how do you make any money out of it? You’d need money. Some money. Even if your father pays you a nominal rent.’

  He managed a distorted grin. ‘It’s a tradition, you see. That toll booth used to be just that. Each boat paid a toll, which went to the owners. Now...well, it’s the same tradition, but twisted around a bit. The boat-hire people tell them all—the people who hire their boats—what is expected of them. So it’s generally known that the lock-keeper at Flight House should be tipped, for his help in getting them through. Because—and you can believe me—they’d get themselves in a hell of a mess if they tried to do it themselves. Probably flood the lot. So they tip me. Usually a quid. A quid out and a quid back. And that’s my source of income. Though why I’m telling you all this I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s something you’re getting round to.’ I made this a bland suggestion.

  He tried to smile, but it didn’t work very well. ‘It’s the family that still owns it, the ones that’re left. Two sisters and an elder brother. Add up their ages and they could easily match the age of the canal. And old-fashioned! You’d never believe it.’

  ‘Oh...I think I would.’ I smiled at him encouragingly. There had been a warmth in his voice when he’d spoken of the present family.

  ‘They visit us once a year,’ he went on. ‘Friends of this family, you see. They come to see how things are going along, even though I keep ’em in touch. They still use the Rolls they bought in the thirties, and driven by the old chap who drove it home for them from the suppliers. He’s been with them for ever. And...strict! Oh dear me! They belong to some obscure religious group—and I’m dreading it.’

  ‘Dreading what? Are they due for another visit?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. But I have to send them reports on what’s happening, if there’s anything at all out of the ordinary. So...I’ll have to send a report on this. A fatal accident...’

  ‘Not an accident,’ I put in quietly.

  ‘Whatever you like to call it, to them it’ll be shocking. I suppose...to anybody, really. But you know what I mean. And they’ll be distressed. It’d be like defiling the place—an insult to dear James. That’s James Brindley. Heavens, he died over 200 years ago, but they look on me now as the guardian of his blessed memory. Dear James would be upset, they’ll say, wherever he is now, and I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. Oh...they’ll be along, you can bet. Probably erect a memorial stone to...to...Clare, right by the pound.’

  His voice had fallen so low that I had to lean forward, closer to him.

  ‘I like them, you know,’ he said softly, after clearing his throat. ‘And I think they like me. But everything does have to be right and correct. And murder isn’t. If it is murder. They won’t like the fact that I failed to prevent it. Everything that happens, there has to be a report. If I wanted...wanted to get married, they would have to know. They’d be here, to meet the young lady. We’d have tea and toasted pikelets.’

  ‘Pikelets?’

  ‘Crumpets to you. And they would have to approve of my choice.’

  I cocked my head at him, trying to suppress a smile. ‘And d’you think they would?’

  ‘What?’ He looked up, directly into my face, the first time for some minutes.

  ‘Approve of your choice—if you wanted to get married.’ I tilted my head at him. ‘And do you want to?’

  ‘Well...yes.’ But he didn’t smile as he said it, not offering me a share in the pleasure of it. His hands were kneading away at each other on the table surface.

  ‘And have you consulted the ruling family about it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘And—why not, then?’

  ‘There’ll be trouble. I’m trying to think of a way round it.’

  ‘Trouble...’ I was finding it difficult to get anything in the nature of personal information out of him. ‘In what way—trouble?’

  ‘She...’

  ‘This is the young woman you have in mind?’

  ‘Will you let me say it!’ he complained, as though I hadn’t been struggling to tear it from him. I simply nodded.

  ‘It’s more than likely they would disapprove,’ he told me miserably. ‘I told you. They’re old-fashioned.’

  ‘I did get that point.’

  He still seemed hesitant, and I had to prompt him yet again. ‘Why might they disapprove?’

  ‘Because she’s already married.’

  ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Yes. That would certainly be a problem.’

  ‘With a youngster,’ he added.

  ‘Ummh! A child complicates things, I can quite see that.’

  ‘So you see—’

  ‘I can understand now that you’ll have to consult them. Oh yes. But Colin—didn’t you say that you’d have to report on that fatality we’ve got here?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll have to do that.’

  ‘And that will probably bring them sailing along?’

  ‘Sure to.’

  ‘There you are, then. Pick the right moment...and your personal problem will prove to be very minor—’

  ‘Minor!’

  ‘In comparison with a dead woman in your precious flight.’

  He thrust his locked hands on to his lap, beneath the table, as though restraining himself from assaulting me, then looked up with dark eyes beneath his bushy eyebrows and asked, ‘Are you trying to be funny, Mr Patton?’

  ‘Richard, please. And I’m on your side, Colin, I assure you. Put in your report to this ruling family of yours, and tackle them on the other subject when they turn up here. You’re sure they will?�
�

  Then he managed at last to smile. ‘Oh yes. I’m certain they’ll be along.’

  ‘Then I’ll wish you the best of luck,’ I told him, and with complete sincerity. Colin, I had decided, was a solid rock on which his employers had come to realize they could rely. I could see no problem facing him.

  It occurred to me that the younger members of the Fulton family did seem to be having trouble with their chosen mates. Mellie had her Ray—but did she even imagine that he had been indulging his sexual inclinations with Clare on the night before their engagement? To Mellie, with her quiet and placidly contented mother, and her father so rigidly strictured to the path of probity, such activities would be unthinkable, and completely unacceptable.

  And Colin—well, his was not quite the same problem. Men did fall in love with other men’s wives, and vice versa. You see it going on all the while. But, to the ruling family—as I was now thinking of them—such deviations from an accepted moral code would seem to be sinful. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. Had dear James done it? Almost certainly not, they would chorus. In any event, he’d been too busy digging canals, and all he’d have seen about him would have been men. Irishmen. Tough Irishmen, digging miles of canals without the aid of any tool but a shovel. The Irish Navigationals—later to be called Navvies. Dear James’s horizon would not have included an acceptable female.

  Considering the background, I had to accept that Colin seemed to have a serious problem on his hands. When I looked up from these contemplations, he was eyeing me with concern.

  ‘We’re kind of engaged to be married,’ he said softly, awed by this fact, as soon as he was certain he had my attention.

  ‘Are you?’ I tilted my head at him. ‘Engaged to a married woman? That’s novel.’

  ‘I gave her a ring.’

  ‘Kind of plighting your troth?’

  ‘All right.’ He was mildly irritated. ‘Put it like that. It was—how can I explain it? something she could have with her for reassurance. While we waited.’

  ‘Waited?’ I thought about that. ‘Waited for what, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘For the right time. I mean...there’s been Mellie’s engagement. I couldn’t do anything till that was out of the way. Now could I? And breaking the news to mother and father. That’ll be tricky. Dad would have to think around all the ways it might affect his...his...’ He bit his lip, shaking his head.

  ‘His standing in the community,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes. That.’

  ‘But he’s in the position to put you in touch with a good solicitor, one who’s an expert on matrimonial affairs. You’d need a good one. I mean, you and the young lady you have in mind, you and she would be the guilty parties, if she simply walked away from her husband, and though it’s reasonably easy, these days, to get a divorce, there’ll be the custody of the child. Boy or girl?’

  ‘It’s a boy. Dennis.’

  ‘Right. Custody. It usually goes to the woman, though. Still...you must bear in mind...’

  ‘Why the hell’re you going on like this?’ he demanded impatiently.

  ‘I was simply giving you an idea of the problems you might have to think about.’

  ‘Oh...thank you! Thank you very much. As though I don’t bloody-well know!’

  ‘And you’ve told nobody but me?’

  ‘Not yet. I couldn’t risk it. You’re the first.’

  ‘Risk what?’

  ‘Bringing her here, to the house.’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’ I was unable to get much life into my voice.

  ‘No. I wanted her here. With me and the family.’

  ‘But the other family, the three old dears who own the canal, wouldn’t they have to be told? You did say that.’

  A cloud brushed across his eyes. That jaw, square beneath the fuzz of beard, seemed to harden.

  ‘They’d have to accept it.’ There was defiance in his voice.

  ‘To approve...’

  ‘Yes. And they’d have to.’

  ‘Or search for another lock-keeper?’ I said this lightly, gently ribbing him, and was therefore jolted by his positive reaction.

  ‘Let ’em search,’ he claimed with a hint of pride, a challenge. ‘They’re thin on the ground, the ones who’ve worked a Brindley flight.’

  ‘You mean—thin on the water.’

  ‘Hah! Bloody amusing.’

  ‘And if they failed to approve?’ I asked, very gently indeed, stroking his ego, as he seemed very touchy this morning. ‘They could surely ask you to leave? You’ve got no right of retention...In fact, I suppose they could give you immediate notice to quit. What then?’

  His beloved flight of locks, or his beloved whoever she was?

  ‘I’d give...I’d...I’d. Oh, damn it, I don’t know.’

  ‘But so far it hasn’t arisen, has it? The choice, I mean.’

  ‘No. You know that damn well. What is this?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing. Just vague thoughts.’

  ‘No. Not vague. Come on—out with it,’ he demanded. I seemed to have got him in a fighting mood.

  ‘I was just wondering whether your young lady knows all about the conditions attached to this arrangement with you.’

  ‘Arrangement? Damn it, we’re engaged. I told you that.’

  ‘Engaged,’ I said emptily.

  ‘Properly. I gave her a ring.’

  ‘Yes. You said that.’

  ‘One like Mellie’s. That was what she fancied.’

  I didn’t like the sound of this at all. ‘How did she know, this young lady of yours...what Mellie’s ring was like?’

  ‘Well...Ray showed it to Clare, and Clare told Helen all about it. Described it. They’re sisters, you know. Clare and Helen.’

  ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Yes. Helen being this married woman fiancée of yours?’

  ‘That’s the way it is. But of course, I couldn’t afford anything so grand. A pretty poor thing, really. But it’s not the value, is it? It’s what it stands for.’

  Naïve Colin! ‘No, it’s not the value,’ I assured him stolidly. ‘But it looked like it?’

  ‘Sort of. Cheaper, of course. But they did say they were sapphires, in a circle outside. Not a real ruby in the middle, though. A garnet, I think they called it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And she didn’t wear it on her finger, of course. He’d have noticed.’

  ‘Her husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Quite frankly, I’m not sure a husband notices such things.’ I said this in reassurance, and hoping that I would, should the circumstances arise. ‘Where did she keep it, then?’

  He smiled bleakly. His eyes were hunting the room, as though looking for some work he ought to be tackling. ‘In her bra, or something—I think.’

  ‘Hmm! Next to her heart,’ I said brightly.

  He gave me a sickly smile. ‘Keeping it kind of a secret. Only Clare knew, apart from Helen and me, of course.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. A secret.’

  ‘Had to be. You can see that.’

  I stared at him, confused and angry, not knowing what to say. Colin was completely honest and reliable, and he deserved better than all this deceit and emotional upset, into which he had plunged.

  ‘A secret,’ I said in disgust. ‘Until you’ve cleared it with the three old dears, and their chauffeur, and the bloody Rolls Royce, I suppose?’

  ‘What’re you talking like that for?’ He was frowning heavily, tilting his head and considering me as though he doubted my sanity.

  Because I wanted to bounce to my feet and stalk around smashing things, and raving against the unfairness of life, that was why.

  Sighing, I put my hand in my jacket pocket, then held out my palm. ‘Is this your ring, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he gabbled. ‘But...but...how’d you get hold of it?’

  ‘It slipped off Clare’s finger into my hand, when I tried to pull her out,’ I explained to his blank, bleak face. ‘Because it wasn�
��t a correct fit for her finger, which it wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been bought for her. Do you understand what I’m saying, Colin?’

  ‘Well...yes.’ He stared at me from beneath his eyebrows. ‘Of course. Thank you.’

  Yet he had not understood, not fully considered it, hadn’t even asked me to explain how it’d come into Clare’s possession. I didn’t know that, unless Helen had asked her to keep it safe for her. They had been sisters, after all, and perhaps Helen had realized it was not safe to have it in her own possession, with a husband around.

  I was pleased to get rid of it. No longer would it haunt me as possible evidence in a murder investigation. It was Colin’s ring, and there was no necessity to tell him that the odds were that Clare had intended to flaunt it at the engagement party, and use it to claim her own engagement to Ray. If that was what her intention had been, though I couldn’t imagine it would have done her any good. It would so clearly have been seen as a pitiful attempt at disruption.

  But I was no longer certain about any aspect in the set-up.

  Then, ‘Ah...’ said a voice behind me. ‘Here you are.’

  I twisted round in my seat. Ted Slater was standing behind me, smiling a very cool smile. He had the drawn and bloodshot look of a man who hadn’t come in contact with his bed during the preceding night.

  He stared past me at Colin, and made a dismissive gesture. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Yes, I do bloody mind,’ said Colin, whose nerves were drawn tight, and who didn’t intend to be ordered around. ‘This is my property. I haven’t even invited you past that door.’

  ‘I just want a few words with Mr Patton.’ Slater was heavily patient.

  ‘Then do it elsewhere.’

  ‘Now you just listen here...’

  ‘No. You’ve got no legal right to walk in here and take over.’ Clearly, Colin was in no mood to be pushed around. His temper was on a short rein.

  ‘Unless you’ve got something in your pocket that gives you legal right of entry, Inspector,’ I said. ‘Which I’m sure you haven’t.’

  ‘Aw...for Chrissake!’

  I laughed. ‘We’ll go outside, Ted, if you want to talk.’

  But Colin gestured wearily. ‘Oh...never mind. What does it matter? What does anything matter?’ He turned to me. ‘I want to make a phone call, Richard. I think that report had better be treated as urgent. Can’t wait for the post...I’ll phone the old dears, and...’ He returned his attention to Slater. ‘And if they decide to take a little trip here, you’d better watch your step, Inspector. Oh yes.’