Sting in the Tail (Three Oaks Book 6)

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘I thought it might do the trick,’ Beth said. She then produced out of thin air what I still think of as the ultimate insult. Taking the seat just vacated by Mrs Haven she jumped to her feet again. ‘Too hot,’ she explained loudly and moved to the fourth chair. Mrs Bell was openly laughing and I heard suppressed snickers from nearby tables. Carol Haven, who had moved to a table already occupied by two interested men, looked daggers – but in silence.

  Mrs Bell seemed to have taken an instant liking to Beth. ‘It didn’t take you long to get the measure of that little madam,’ she said.

  Beth pushed away the menu that I was offering her. ‘I’ve eaten,’ she said. ‘No. John described her to me, so I knew what to expect. I didn’t really mind him talking to her but I didn’t think that she was the sort of person we’d want to discuss Charlie Hopewell’s predicament with.’

  ‘I’m glad my description was so adequate,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t adequate at all,’ Beth said sternly. ‘You missed out several important snippets of information. But it was enough. Now, please, between you, tell me everything that’s going on. It’s important.’

  ‘Did you come all this way just for that?’ I asked her. ‘And, come to think of it, how did you get here?’

  ‘I made Isobel bring me across, but she’s gone back now so I’m dependent on you for a lift home. What did you expect? I get back from the village and Isobel gives me a most peculiar message from you, saying that if Charlie phones up we’re to keep him in the dark. Does that mean that you think that he killed Mr Ricketts? And if so, why?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything of the sort,’ I said. ‘But the police are suspicious and your friend the Sergeant’s head will be on the block if Charlie’s forewarned.’

  ‘But why do the police think that Charlie would do such a thing?’

  Between us, we brought her up to date. Sometimes I found Beth’s insistence on verbatim reporting tiresome, but there was no doubt that it clarified one’s own recollections. The bar was closing by the time Beth had dragged out of us every word that everybody had said to anybody else right up to the moment of her arrival, but she made no comment except to remark that we had work to do back at the kennels. She thanked Mrs Bell. ‘You’re a real friend to Charlie,’ she said. ‘I can tell.’

  Mrs Bell actually blushed. ‘I hope so,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll make sure that Charlie knows how much he owes you,’ Beth assured her.

  Beth was very silent for most of our trip home. I knew that to interrupt her and break her intensive train of thought was the one sure way to put her at odds with me, so I waited. I had stopped at the toll-gate and was pulling onto the bridge when she stirred and looked around.

  ‘What did you mean by your last remark?’ I asked her.

  ‘What remark?’ Beth asked vaguely. ‘Oh, I remember. She’s in love with Charlie.’

  It had never occurred to me that love could come to the over-forties. ‘Surely not!’ I said.

  ‘There’s no doubt of it. You could hear her voice change every time she mentioned his name. And he’s too busy flirting with every woman he meets to notice any one of them in particular. Well, he’s getting too old for that sort of life. We’ll just have to give him a little push. They’d be very good for each other. He’ll need somebody like her when he doesn’t have Hannah any more.’

  It always amazes me how Beth can attune to the least suggestion of a romance. She is seldom wrong. ‘I didn’t notice anything,’ I said.

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘What was it that I didn’t tell you about Carol Haven?’

  ‘Several things.’

  I was stung. ‘Name one,’ I said.

  ‘The colour of her nail varnish,’ Beth said after a moment’s thought.

  ‘Very funny!’ I said cuttingly.

  *

  Beth was thoughtful and rather curt for the rest of the day, and I sensed that she was worried. I knew that she used the telephone more than once but, as she had said, we had work to do. Isobel was away, taking one of our brood bitches for the service of the chosen stud dog, and she had taken Hannah along, at the latter’s own request and for the furtherance of her education. It was only after the work was done that Beth seemed ready to talk. Sam was in his playpen in the corner of the kitchen and I was teasing him with a ball on a string while Beth prepared our dinner.

  We had only said a few words when the phone rang. Beth jumped to answer it.

  ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘if it’s Charlie, not a word.’

  The call was from a possible client. Beth made an appointment for two days ahead and went back to the stove. ‘I don’t see why I should feel bound by your promises,’ she said in a very small voice. ‘I have the right to make my own decisions.’

  ‘I always consult you if I can,’ I said. ‘In this instance, I had no alternative. I had to promise first and consult you afterwards. Was that so awful?’

  ‘Suppose I didn’t agree with you? I don’t believe in secrets.’

  That was true. Beth was the most open person that I had ever met. I sought for words to put the thing into perspective. ‘If Charlie’s innocent,’ I said, ‘as we both believe, warning him wouldn’t change anything. He’d still have to come home and face the music. All you’d do would be to worry him and maybe cause him to have a traffic accident, and also get Detective Sergeant Waller into deep trouble with his boss after he’s been open with us and we’ve pressured him into stepping over the line. If by any chance Charlie’s guilty, he can’t cut and run. The French police are probably tracking him already.’

  ‘That may be so,’ Beth said. ‘I just don’t like the feeling that somebody else, even you, can make promises for me. You feel the same. That’s why we don’t have a joint account.’

  ‘The reason that we don’t have a joint account is because we’re both nervous that we might each be writing cheques on it at the same moment. If you ever feel the need to make promises in my name, go right ahead. I’ll agree to be bound by them. I may take a whippy stick to you afterwards if I don’t agree with you, but I’ll honour your promise at the time. Shall I take Sam up and start his bath?’

  ‘Please.’

  I carried the sleepily protesting Sam upstairs, stripped him off and dunked him in warm water. I was giving him a rinse and a tickle when Beth came to join us.

  ‘Don’t wake him up too much,’ she said. She took Sam from me and wrapped him in a warm towel. ‘What’s Charlie going to think if he phones up and we don’t say a word, and he turns up at home in the middle of a huge row and a police inquisition?’

  ‘We can explain,’ I said. ‘He’ll understand.’

  ‘He’d better. I’ll leave you to do the explaining.’

  ‘You usually do,’ I said. ‘You do realize that if Charlie, innocent or guilty, goes to jail, we may be stuck with Hannah?’

  ‘It won’t happen. But would you hate it?’ Beth asked me.

  I jumped at the chance of a change of subject. ‘Not if you wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘She’s good with the dogs and a hard worker. With no O levels and a reputation for rebelliousness, it could be the only job that will be open to her.’

  ‘So if we take her on, we probably have her for good?’

  ‘Not necessarily. If we teach her the business, when Charlie pops his clogs she may set up on her own.’

  Beth nodded solemnly. ‘Long before then, we should know if she’s going to work out all right. I think she will. She’s happy here and there’s nobody she’s in the habit of resenting to order her around, so I’ve been bossing her about without even getting a dirty look. All right. We’ll speak to Charlie. It’s a joint decision.’

  ‘What about Isobel?’

  ‘She suggested it. Remember,’ Beth said, ‘it’s a joint decision. I’m not committing you without you knowing it.’

  After that, it was inevitable that the phone should be busy off and on all evening. Friends, clients, suppliers, all seemed anxio
us for a few words. At every ring, the tension struck an arc between us again. Hannah, dropped off with the bitch by Isobel, reported that the service had proceeded to the satisfaction of all parties and then, sensing stress in the air, hurried off to bed.

  The last call came just as we were preparing to go upstairs. I was already on the way up. Beth took the call in the kitchen. I heard her say Charlie’s name and I came down quickly.

  ‘Clarence is all right,’ Beth was saying. ‘His wound healed well and he’s getting his confidence back. And Hannah has been staying here.’ There was a pause while the receiver quacked into her ear. ‘No, she’s really been very good indeed. She’s a natural with the dogs. We could certainly offer her a job here on a trial basis if you thought . . . We couldn’t promise that it would lead to a career – how could we? – but at least it would be what they call Work Experience. She could stay here most of the week and go to you whenever she takes days off . . . How’s the weather wherever you are?’

  When she hung up, I was waiting in the doorway. ‘They’re nearing Boulogne,’ she said. ‘They’ll cross tomorrow and be with us, probably, early the next day. And he’s over the moon at the idea that Hannah might have a job with us. I think he’d resigned himself to having her on his hands indefinitely.’

  We climbed the stairs together. ‘It didn’t hurt all that much, now, did it?’ I asked her.

  ‘I knew all along that I’d have to honour your promise,’ she said. ‘But you may care to remember that I gave the Sergeant a promise in both our names about the photographs, when he came to see us the day before yesterday, and you don’t seem to have felt very bound by it. So I was just going after you with that whippy stick of yours.’

  I laughed but she was looking serious. She looked first to see that Sam was sleeping peacefully and then followed me into the bedroom. ‘You’d better make yourself clean and tidy in the morning. I phoned Detective Chief Inspector McStraun and we’re going to go and see him at Nearn House at midday tomorrow. That was the earliest that he could spare the time. I must see him before Charlie gets home.’

  My first thought was for DS Waller. ‘You’re not going to dump that poor young man in it, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. I . . . I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind. I’m not sure of anything and I’m scared of being wrong. Please, John?’

  A period of intricate debate would only have brought on my insomnia. ‘You can tell me whenever you feel ready.’

  ‘Thank you. I quite like you, sometimes,’ she said.

  Chapter Ten

  We never did keep our appointment with Detective Chief Inspector McStraun.

  I slept badly that night. I was aware of Beth’s restlessness and knew that, having once again assumed responsibility for everybody’s ills, she was turning things over and over in her mind, checking and re-checking in readiness for her encounter with the Detective Chief Inspector and in her very genuine fear of committing what to her was the ultimate sin – being wrong and letting Charlie and me and Hannah down. And she would not let me help. She had said once that she thought better on her own. Perhaps her thought processes were different – as if her computer program was in another language.

  Breakfast was only a memory and Sam was twanging around the kitchen in his Baby Bouncer, when a police Range Rover arrived bearing Detective Sergeant Waller. Beth and Hannah were making up the meals for the puppies, while Isobel and I attended to cleaning the runs and grass, irritably telling each other that partners shouldn’t have to do that kind of dirty work and that even if Hannah came to us on a regular basis a second kennel-maid would not be out of the question, provided that we could get one out of the Work Experience programme.

  The Sergeant seemed to be dazed. We had parted in anger but he seemed to bear me no ill will. My first thought was to put him to work on run-cleaning until he had pulled himself together, but Beth had other ideas. She handed over the feeding of the pups to Hannah, and took the Sergeant into the sitting room. As an afterthought, she invited me to follow. The runs, it seemed, could wait. I gave Isobel an apologetic shrug, trying to convey in that one movement my absolute incomprehension as to what was going on and a promise to relay the information to her, in full detail and glorious Technicolor, as soon as I had it myself.

  The room was not cold, but Beth had put a match to the fire. She had also found time to do something clever with her hair. The Sergeant, whether he knew it or not, was highly privileged. Beth joined me on the couch. The making of a fire was a reflex gesture conveying hospitality and comfort and, I thought, by satisfying Beth’s own nest-building instinct, it gave her reassurance about her place in the circle. The magical flick to the hair was a signal that work was suspended and that she wanted to please. Ritual satisfied, we were in a familiar pattern, ready to talk.

  ‘How on earth did you do it?’ the Sergeant enquired respectfully of Beth.

  ‘Do what?’ I asked, much less respectfully. Beth hates to speak out until she is quite sure of her ground. But I had had more than enough of trying to operate in the dark during my army days. And my anxiety on Charlie’s behalf was coming to a head.

  Detective Sergeant Waller turned to me as if in explanation. ‘Mrs Cunningham phoned the Detective Chief Inspector yesterday afternoon. I don’t know what she said – I was listening so intently for any sign that you’d dropped me in it that I missed half of the half I could hear. But he got onto the lab straight away and told them to make another and closer examination of the severed tail. I don’t know any more detail than that – I only caught the tail-end of the call, if you’ll forgive the pun – but I could tell that the lab put up an argument, making out that they hate to risk interfering with evidence unnecessarily, but my guess is that they don’t much like being told how to do their jobs by non-scientific officers.

  ‘We had no time for discussion, even if he’d felt like telling me more, because the pathologist’s full report came in at long last, with apologies for delays caused by a severe shortage of typists. The Chief went through it, reading out to me any bits which he deemed to be significant, until he came to a bit of the real nitty gritty. It seems that the unfortunate Mr Ricketts had been impotent from birth. There were indications that at some time in the distant past he might have accepted the role of a passive sodomite, but that would have been to suit his own interests. His heart would not have been in it.’

  Beth brushed aside the Detective Sergeant’s euphemisms. ‘You mean that he wouldn’t have got any pleasure out of it?’

  ‘Er, yes. I was still with the Detective Chief Inspector when the lab called back, sounding excited.

  ‘“By God!” says the Chief, “it all makes sense now,” and he starts shooting out orders like a Roman candle. The lab was to finish cleaning up the unburnt part of the table-top and check the kitchen floor under the bloodstains while he went for a search warrant. I nearly gave three cheers, because it meant that you’d kept your word and that I was off the hook.’

  Satisfied that he had given me all the explanation that I needed, the Sergeant turned back to Beth. ‘We went to serve the warrant just before midnight,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, something must have tipped them off and the birds had flown. Those sort of people have sensitive antennae and it’s easy for an officer to give something away. But, sure enough, we found the card-copying machine and a whole lot of blank cards identical to the one from Ricketts’s table. They must have known that once Postman Pat deserted his – er – post there would be no more cards to copy.

  ‘Information’s still coming in, but already we’ve learned a lot. His car turned up at Glasgow Airport and we’re almost sure which flight they were on but not what names and passports they’re using. Other forces have been alerted. If they ever start drawing money on those cards they’ll be nailed. Even if they’ve gone somewhere where they’re safe from extradition they will still have committed an offence, and before you know it they’ll spill the beans, each trying to put as much of the blame as
possible onto the other. It happens nine times out of ten.’

  Once her immediate worry was over, Beth’s concern was again for others. ‘You won’t have had much sleep,’ she said.

  The Sergeant, now that he had been reminded of sleep, fought back a yawn. ‘About two hours,’ he said. ‘But I’ll catch up tonight. First thing this morning, the Detective Chief Inspector sent me to convey his warmest thanks and congratulations while updating your statements. He would also be deeply grateful – we both would – if you would tell us what put you onto it in the first place.’

  ‘Did he really say all that?’ Beth asked delightedly.

  ‘In so many words?’ I added.

  ‘Well, not in those exact words, perhaps. What he actually said, as near as I can remember, was “Get over there, thank her for the helpful suggestion and ask her what tipped her off.”’

  ‘I see.’ Beth, who is not proud, flashed me a grin. Before speaking out she paused and listened, but the rhythmic sound of Sam on his Baby Bouncer was the sound of a thoroughly entranced infant. Suspended in a sort of miniature bosun’s chair by rubber shock-cord, he needed only to push himself off from the floor to rise or swing; and he had brought the art to a standard suitable for an Olympic event.

  ‘Presumably,’ I said, ‘you intend to do a little editing. To save the DCI’s face and your neck.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Waller admitted.

  ‘All right,’ Beth said. ‘So what you really need is a clue which I had and you didn’t.’

  ‘Boy, do I ever,’ said the DS. ‘Pretty please,’ he added with feeling. ‘If you can think of one.’

  Beth cast up her eyes and thought for a minute and another grin spread over her face. ‘Here you are, then,’ she said. She was watching me out of the corner of her eye. ‘The moment I saw the colour of Mrs Haven’s nail varnish I was sure that I was right. When Mr McStraun showed us the photograph of the severed tail, I noticed that the tip seemed to be much the colour of the liver part of Clarence’s coat as well as looking sort of matted.