Past Tense (10 page)

‘Any idea who?'

Both women shook their heads, the older one quite forgetting that she had denied all knowledge of any love affair minutes before.

By the time the paperwork had been accomplished the body was back in the mortuary and Dr Dabbe was waiting for the two policemen, gowned and masked, and quite serious now. The pathologist pulled the microphone dangling above his head down to the right level and started dictating. ‘Body of a well-nourished female, said to be aged about twenty-four, recovered from the riverside three hours ago by Billing Bridge…identification confirmed…'

Crosby started unobtrusively to inch his way back from the post-mortem table and towards the edge of the room. He didn't like watching autopsies.

‘On macroscopic examination,' continued the pathologist, utterly absorbed in his work now, ‘there are grazes on the palmar aspect of both hands – no sign of any rings having been on either hand – but several broken fingernails.' He turned in the direction of the policeman. ‘I daresay you'll be wanting samples of the grit in the grazes, won't you, Sloan?'

‘Please, Doctor,' he said, for all the world as if they were something being handed to him over a shop counter.

Dr Dabbe continued to stare down at the hands. ‘From the direction of the minor lacerations in the skin I think she might have been trying to clutch at something as she fell…and there are some bruises on the hands, too.'

Detective Inspector Sloan, experienced police officer that he was, didn't like what he was hearing. The pathologist's words conjured up a picture of a young woman desperately struggling in the dark for a handhold as she fell into the river.

‘Hullo, hullo…' said Dr Dabbe, ‘what have we here?'

‘What, Doctor?' Sloan leant forward.

‘More bruises round her throat.' The pathologist adjusted an overhead lamp, the better to see what he was doing. ‘Someone or something has grasped her round the neck. There are bruises on both sides of her throat.'

Sloan made another note, thankful that the doctor didn't call them ecchymoses, something that always annoyed Superintendent Leeyes.

‘I'll be examining the hyoid bone in a minute, Sloan,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘but I'm beginning to think that we may be looking at the mark of Cain here.'

There was an unexpected little knock on the door to Simon Puckle's room. The solicitor looked up from studying a complicated lease to one of the Earl of Ornum's outlying farms. He was doing this with a view to making absolutely sure that as usual all reversionary rights fell back into the estate at its termination. Since his grandfather had done much the same for the earl's grandfather he knew what to look for. The trouble was that the earl's current land agent liked to think of himself as a new broom, sweeping clean. New brooms, though, did not go down well with either Simon or the earl…or, now he came to think of it, the earl's equally long-standing tenants.

‘Come in,' he said.

The office junior entered and said nervously, ‘I'm ever so sorry bothering you, Mr Puckle, but Miss Fennel hasn't come back after the lunch hour and we're a bit worried. It's over an hour now and it's just not like her…'

‘No,' agreed Simon at once. ‘It's not.'

‘And we wondered if you happened to know why,' she went on timorously.

‘No.' He frowned. ‘She might have just gone into the library, of course.'

‘So she might. I'm sorry, Mr Puckle, we never thought of that.'

Since both of them knew what he suggested to be untrue – Miss Fennel invariably let the office know if she wasn't coming straight back – there was nothing more to be said and the girl withdrew.

Simon pushed the lease away and was just toying with the idea of telephoning her home – Florence Fennel lived at the other side of the town – when the door opened and she came in and in something of a fluster.

‘I'm very sorry, Mr Puckle, to be late back but I couldn't get back over the river. The police have closed the bridge off at both ends and—'

‘There isn't any other way round, of course,' he said before she could. Berebury only had the one bridge.

‘And the place was swarming with people in those white suits.'

‘Scene of Crime officers,' he said. No solicitor was unfamiliar with photographs of them.

‘And I particularly wanted to be back on time to get to work on the Josephine Short executry.'

Since this was a fiction, too – Miss Fennel was never late back whatever she wanted to do – Simon nodded sagely.

She hurried on. ‘I've already had an email back from the embassy in Lasserta giving me the date of the plane crash out there – it was just under three years ago – and confirming that the names of George Peter Arden Short and Helena Mary Short were on the casualty list and that there were no survivors.'

Simon winced. Dry as dust the law might be but its practitioners weren't entirely without human sympathy.

Miss Fennell carried on. ‘I have also been in touch with the United Mellemetics office in Lasserta – that is the firm that the client's grandson was working for at the time of the accident. They confirm that their employee Joseph Arden Short left them soon after that to go to work for Cartwright's Consolidated Carbons at the other side of the island.'

‘Whatever Consolidated Carbons might be,' said Simon Puckle, an unworthy vision of charcoal biscuits rising in his mind.

‘That I could not say, Mr Puckle. It wasn't long after the plane crash, anyway. United Mellemetics say they did their best to get him to stay but they understood his need for a change at the time and sent him off with their blessing. A good worker, they said, and they had been happy to give him a reference stating that he had left the firm entirely at his own wish for personal reasons.'

Simon made a note.

‘The firm of Cartwrights say much the same thing and confirm that he is presently employed by them as an engineer on their mining side and that they are looking forward to his return.'

‘Good. Winding up his grandmother's estate will take some time, being quite substantial.'

‘And,' she went on, knowing, good secretary that she was, that all estates took their time to be wound up, ‘I haven't got anywhere yet with the Kemberland Trust but I'm working on it. Since I understand that it came to court there will naturally be some record. If we knew where the appellants lived that would help.'

‘Josephine Short worked at Rowletts Prep School over Kinnisport way, that I do know,' he said, ‘but as to where the rest of the family were at the time of the dispute over the trust funds I can't tell you. I'm not sure that her grandson knows either. He doesn't seem to know too much about it.'

‘I might try the newspapers if we can work out an approximate date.'

‘Good thinking. With that amount of money involved I should imagine the case will have hit the headlines,' said Simon, ‘to say nothing of its having an unmarried mother as the plaintiff.'

‘I'm sorry to say,' said Miss Fennell, pursing her lips, ‘but that sort of case invariably attracts the less attractive elements of the press.'

‘I'm afraid that some newspapers nearly always consider family disputes to be cases of human interest,' said Simon Puckle as Miss Fennell left his office, ‘which, of course, they are,' he added when she had gone. ‘It's what sells.'

He picked up the Ornum lease again when she had withdrawn but his concentration had gone.

 

‘Now,' said Bill Wakefield, pulling up his chair to the kitchen table in his own home and cradling a mug of coffee, ‘sit down and tell me about this Joe Short. I'd never heard of him myself.'

‘Well, I can tell you he knows all about you – us, I mean,' said his wife. ‘That's what's so funny.'

‘Not half as funny as his being here at all,' declared Bill. ‘That's what I can't understand. I never knew Great-Aunt Josephine had had any children. Or even been married.'

‘She hadn't.'

He grinned. ‘That explains why I hadn't heard of her, then. Where did you say he'd come from?'

‘Lasserta – wherever in the world that might be. I meant to look it up.'

‘Querremitte,' said Bill Wakefield, sitting up suddenly and looking every bit the alert businessman. ‘They mine it there. Hardest element known to mankind and pretty valuable, I can tell you.' He paused. ‘Are you sure, Jan, that he's not pulling a fast one on us all? I mean to say, why should this fellow have only just come out of the woodwork and at this particular point?'

‘Because of his grandmother dying, I suppose.' Janet Wakefield wrinkled her nose, a characteristic, had she known it, that had always enchanted her spouse. ‘He seems all right,' she said slowly, ‘and he certainly knows his family onions, although I agree it's all a bit odd.'

‘Anyone could mug those up,' pointed out Bill Wakefield.

‘That's true, but he's pretty clued up all the same.'

‘That doesn't mean he's pukka.' In the course of his business career Bill Wakefield had had a spell in India.

‘No, but,' she brightened, ‘his photograph's still in his granny's drawer at the nursing home. I've seen it there myself.'

Bill Wakefield laughed and relaxed. ‘That clinches it, I suppose. Well, in that case, we'd better invite him to supper tonight, hadn't we?'

‘I'll ring him at the Bellingham if he's still there…' She turned, cocking an ear. ‘Isn't that the front doorbell?'

‘I'll go,' he said, pushing his chair away from the table. ‘It may be this Short fellow.'

It wasn't Joe Short on the Wakefield doorstep but Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby. Sloan introduced himself and asked if they might come in.

‘Certainly,' said Bill Wakefield immediately. In some of the far-flung places in the world where he had worked the police didn't ask if they could come in – they came in. ‘Come through this way and tell us what brings you.'

‘The death of your great-aunt,' said Sloan truthfully.

‘What about it?' he asked. ‘From what the nursing home told my wife I thought it was all pretty straightforward.' He looked across at Jan. ‘That's so, darling, isn't it?'

She nodded. ‘Heart failure was what they told me, Inspector, and that was what was on the death certificate that Dr Browne gave us.'

‘We'll be talking to him presently,' said Sloan.

‘When he gets back to his surgery,' added Detective Constable Crosby by way of adding a touch of verisimilitude.

‘I don't know that I can give you any help at all, whatever it is you want to know,' said Bill Wakefield, frowning. ‘As my wife will tell you, I was rather out of touch when the old lady died – in one of the remoter areas of the hinterland of Brazil.'

‘So I understand, sir,' said Sloan. He reached into his case and produced a photograph of the face of the girl who had been found in the river, suitably touched up by Dyson, one of the police photographers. He handed it to Bill Wakefield. ‘Now, what we want to know, sir, is whether you have ever seen this woman before at any time?'

Bill Wakefield took the photograph in both hands and regarded it for a full moment before handing it back to the detective inspector with a shake of his head. ‘No, never.'

Sloan handed it to Janet Wakefield. ‘What about you, Mrs Wakefield? Have you ever seen her before?'

Janet scanned the photograph and said readily, ‘Oh, yes, I have, Inspector. It's the girl with the auburn hair. She was at Bill's great-aunt's funeral yesterday over at Damory Regis. That's where I saw her.'

‘Did you speak to her?'

‘No, I didn't. I didn't know her, you see.' Janet caught her breath. ‘Actually I didn't know anyone there at all, Inspector, except the people from the nursing home and Mr Puckle. Truly. But I do remember the girl's hair. It was quite striking.'

‘Was she there with anyone else? Can you remember that?'

‘Not that I noticed.' Janet frowned. ‘I'm almost sure she was alone.'

‘Did you see her talk to anyone else?'

Janet shook her head. ‘Not that I remember but then almost everyone else there were strangers anyway. Should I have known her? Who is she?'

‘That,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, responding to Janet's first question but not her second one, ‘is one of the things we are trying to establish.'

Janet gave a sudden start and said, ‘Inspector, I've just had a thought. After the funeral, Morton's, the undertaker's, gave me a pile of those little attendance cards that people sometimes are asked to fill in at funerals. I passed them on to Joe Short, that's Josephine's grandson who came over for the funeral. Perhaps you could find out from those who she was. He's staying at the Bellingham.'

Sloan took the photograph back and stowed it carefully away in his case. ‘Thank you.' He turned back to Bill Wakefield. ‘Right. Now, sir, if we might just have a note of your firm's address in London.'

‘Inspector, what is all this about?' Bill demanded, patently puzzled. ‘What's gone wrong?'

Janet protested, ‘We hadn't even known about Josephine Short's existence here before her death anyway, had we, Bill?'

‘Not even that she was still alive,' insisted Bill, ‘let alone the fact that she was holed up in a nursing home in Berebury so near us.'

‘I'm sure that we'd have gone to see her if we'd known about her,' said Janet.

‘In any case,' went on Bill Wakefield firmly, ‘I only got back to this country yesterday.'

‘When yesterday?' asked Sloan.

‘If you must know I flew in and got to Head Office just before six o'clock in the evening. They wanted to see me straightaway, you see.'

‘If I might have the name of the person there whom you saw,' said Sloan, pen poised.

‘If that's what you want,' said Bill Wakefield in a voice that was now distinctly surly.

‘And after that, sir? What did you do after you left the office?'

An angry flush rose steadily up Bill Wakefield's cheeks. ‘Look here, officer, what is this all about?'

‘The police ask the questions,' put in Detective Constable Crosby.

Bill Wakefield gave him a baleful look. ‘If you must know…'

‘Yes,' said Crosby sotto voce.

‘It would be very helpful, sir,' said Sloan smoothly, reminding himself to tell Crosby sometime that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

‘As soon as I got away from Head Office,' said Bill Wakefield, ‘I naturally tried to ring my wife but there was no answer.'

‘I was having supper at the Bellingham with Josephine Short's grandson then,' put in Janet Wakefield quickly. ‘I'd met him at the funeral, you see, and it seems he's part of the family.'

‘So,' went on Bill with considerable determination, ‘I thought if there was no one at home here in Berebury for whatever reason there wasn't much point in my coming down that night. I don't take my house keys out to Brazil with me, you know.'

‘No spare under a flowerpot, then?' said Crosby chattily.

‘No,' said Bill Wakefield coldly. ‘And I must remind you that the last train from London leaves pretty early.'

‘Yes, sir, I do know that,' said Sloan patiently. ‘So what did you do next?'

‘I booked myself in at the Erroll Garden Hotel. At the firm's expense, of course,' he added, catching sight of his wife's expression.

‘And then, sir?' persisted Sloan.

‘Had a good meal and went to bed early. I was pretty short of sleep by then, I can tell you. Brazil's a long way away.'

One of Detective Inspector Sloan's early mentors had been the sergeant with whom he had first walked the beat. That wise old policeman had a theory that a person being questioned turned their head to the left when spontaneously speaking the truth and to the right when thinking up a good lie. He had held that it had to do with the functioning of the left and right parts of the brain, the right side being used for memory and the left for the creative thinking necessary for telling a good lie – not forgetting that the two pathways crossed over in the brain.