Past Tense (6 page)

‘But I told my wife I'd be home for breakfast,' began one of them.

His protest fell upon deaf ears. Sloan thought he himself would be lucky to get home for his supper. Making a mental note to ring Margaret, his wife, and tell her so, he pointed authoritatively to the spot where he wanted the men to stand and then got back to business – police business.

Meanwhile Detective Constable Crosby was obediently pegging out the ground. Then suddenly he raised his head, dog-like, for all the world like a pointer scenting game. ‘I can hear a car coming.'

‘Then get back up to the road, Crosby, and if it's the doctor let him know exactly where we are.' Injuries examined
in situ
after death were in the first instance a matter for Dr Dabbe, not a policeman. Police interest, if any, usually only arose after that. Natural causes let everybody off the hook – except perhaps the doctors. ‘The photographers should be on their way, too,' he reminded Crosby.

‘And the river bailiff,' said one of the fishermen. ‘He's always about.'

‘You can count on it,' added the other fisherman bitterly.

Sloan made another mental note. The river bailiff, then, might well be the man to ask about the rate of flow of the River Alm. And if the pathologist could tell him how long the body had been in the water, then working out where the girl had gone in the river shouldn't be too difficult. And if neither of them could help, the River Board should be able to provide the answer.

‘Ah, there you are, Sloan.' The pathologist advanced across the grass and stepped carefully down the slope towards them. He was followed by his perennially silent assistant, Burns, who was carrying the doctor's black bag. The doctor waved his hand airily. ‘Your photographer chaps are on their way, Inspector. They'll be here soon. I overtook them about four miles back.'

This came as no surprise to Sloan. The pathologist was one of the fastest drivers in Calleshire and that was without even having the excuse that his patients were urgent cases. ‘I expect they were obeying all the rules of the road, Doctor,' he said without inflexion. ‘It wouldn't do for them to be caught speeding, would it, now?'

‘Point taken, Sloan,' said the pathologist jovially. ‘Now then, what have you here for me?'

The detective inspector indicated the body of the girl outstretched on the riverbank.

‘She was floating in the rushes, Doctor.' One of the fishermen hurried into speech. ‘On her back.'

‘Just like Ophelia,' murmured the pathologist. ‘At least, just like Sir John Millais' portrait of Ophelia.'

‘Beg pardon, Doctor?'

‘A girl in a famous painting, Inspector, who had drowned herself for love. Amazing what some girls will do for love, isn't it?'

‘So I'm told,' said Sloan austerely, not diverted from the matter in hand. What he himself had done for love was not something he cared to reveal to anyone. His wife, Margaret, knew and that was all that mattered. All he was ever prepared to say on the matter was that faint heart had never won fair lady.

‘Ophelia but without the flowers,' said the pathologist, taking in the surroundings with a practised eye. ‘Burns, we'd better have the ambient temperature.'

‘What flowers?' asked a bewildered Crosby, looking round and seeing nothing but grass and water in the countryside.

‘In that painting,' explained the pathologist. ‘The artist, Millais, sent out for plants that grew at the water's edge while he was working on it. He had some trailing willow branches brought round, too. Mind you, I don't blame her…'

‘Who?' asked Crosby, totally lost now.

‘Ophelia. Her lover was a very funny chap with big problems.' Dr Dabbe's manner changed as he peered at the body. ‘Millais's model caught pneumonia but I think this girl might have drowned. Too soon to say, of course. Much too soon. But how and why is a different matter. Or to put it another way it's the difference between “I shall drown and no one will save me”, which is a cry of despair, and “I will drown and no one shall save me”, which is suicidal.'

‘Yes, Doctor,' Sloan said stolidly.

The pathologist was looking round now as two men, heavily burdened with equipment, started to struggle across the field. ‘Ah, here come your happy snappers. When they're done, Sloan, perhaps I could get a bit nearer and tell you whether she did an Ophelia or her Hamlet pushed her.'

At her home, The Old Post Office, in the village of Staple St James, Janet Wakefield was pushing a mug of coffee across the kitchen table to the woman sitting opposite her.

‘Now, Jan, tell me about last night. Everything, mind you,' said her friend, Dawn. ‘I'm all ears. What's this Joe Short really like?'

Janet screwed up her face. ‘Difficult to say.'

‘Oh, come on. You can't have spent an evening with any man without getting to know something about him. That wouldn't be natural, not knowing you.'

‘He didn't give much away, really,' Janet protested.

‘Tall or short? Fat or thin?' Fatness was forever at the forefront of Dawn's mind. She always asked if the milk for her coffee was semi-skimmed.

‘Oh, quite tall. What you might call well built rather than fat – oh, and sunburnt,' replied Janet. ‘Very pleasant, though, I must say. That's all, Dawn, honestly.'

It wasn't anything like enough for Dawn, who carried on with her interrogation. ‘Married? If not, why not?'

‘I don't know whether he is or not. He didn't mention a wife or say anything at all about having any attachments…oh, except that conditions in the wilds of upcountry Lasserta were no place for anyone's wife and family but he hoped not to be staying there for ever.'

‘What's his job?' Dawn's husband was something unspecified in insurance.

‘He's an engineer with Cartwright's Consolidated Carbons. They do something important with querremitte ore – whatever that might be – after it's been mined.'

‘Bully for them.'

‘Sounds to me more like profits for them,' said Janet on whom some at least of the essentials of her own husband's work had rubbed off.

‘How old?'

‘About our age,' said Janet. ‘Well, under thirty, anyway,' she added delicately, since she knew Dawn was approaching that highly time-sensitive watershed. ‘About twenty-eight, I should say, now that I've seen him properly. What I can't understand is that while Joe seemed to know all about us – Bill's family, that is – we didn't know anything about him. I've certainly never been told anything much at all about the history of the Shorts.'

‘Not even that this particular one existed,' remarked Dawn pertinently.

‘No.' She shook her head. ‘Bill's never talked about that side of the family at all. I'm not even sure that he knew a lot about it himself, although now I come to think about it I remember there were some hints about there being a black sheep in the past.'

‘One is always at the mercy of the older generation for that sort of information,' said Dawn largely. ‘I mean, they only tell you what they want you to know, don't they? Parents are the same all over.' She took a sip of her coffee. ‘Me, I got an aunt to spill the beans about my grandfather. Drink,' she said lugubriously.

Janet, who heard about Dawn's grandfather's overfondness for alcohol every time her friend was offered a glass of wine, reverted to her husband's family. ‘That was why I was so surprised, remember, when we got that call out of the blue from the nursing home.'

‘Perhaps the Wakefields didn't want to tell you about someone in the family being born on the wrong side of the blanket,' suggested Dawn. ‘Don't they call it the bar sinister or something?'

Janet Wakefield hesitated before she spoke. ‘I know there was some big trouble a long time ago about something called the Kemberland Trust…But what exactly it was all about I just don't know. Money, anyway.'

‘Trusts always mean money,' declared the worldly-wise Dawn. ‘And money means trouble.'

‘It did,' said Janet slowly, taking a long sip of her coffee before she spoke again. ‘Not that I know any of the details except that I was told that there was a great row about it…lawyers and that sort of thing.'

‘Families,' exclaimed Dawn. ‘They're always the same. So is money,' she added more thoughtfully.

‘But on the other hand I was told that Bill's parents' share of the money from that trust made a big difference to Bill's mother, Eleanor, that is. Put Bill through school and that sort of thing. Gave him a good start in life, all right.'

‘And therefore made a difference to you and Bill, too,' concluded Dawn ineluctably, looking round the nicely appointed kitchen at The Old Post Office.

‘Well, yes, in a way,' admitted Janet honestly. Her home was her pride and joy, the furniture carefully chosen and much polished, the soft furnishings colour-coordinated in a way advocated by the best magazines. ‘I must say it gave Bill a good start in life, his having had a good education. It put him through university and that sort of thing.'

The lacuna in the conversation which followed was due to the desire of both women to not mention that quite a lot of Bill and Janet's present income was presently being spent by the couple on infertility treatment. That the trust money would give any child of Bill and Jan's marriage a good start, too, should one come along, was not mentioned by either of them. So far, though, no baby had appeared and the fact, appreciated but unspoken, hung between both of them like a cloud.

‘Joe Short was going to look up some old boy near Kinnisport who'd been at the funeral and told him he'd known his grandmother really well a long time ago,' volunteered Janet, breaking the silence and adding lightly, ‘just in case he was his grandfather.'

‘That would be a real turn-up for the books,' said Dawn, who had never placed a bet in her life.

‘Wishful thinking, if you ask me,' said Janet robustly. ‘I think the poor fellow – Joe, I mean – is a bit short of relations these days and wouldn't mind a few more seeing as he's lost both his parents, too.'

‘Well, he's got you two now, hasn't he?'

‘I hadn't thought of that,' said Janet slowly. ‘Perhaps I ought to ask him round. I'll have to think about it. More coffee?'

‘Please.' Dawn pushed her mug forward and then cocked her head to one side, listening hard. ‘Isn't that your phone I can hear ringing somewhere?'

Janet slid off her chair and went into another room. When she came back she was a different woman, exuding excitement and pleasure, her eyes glowing. ‘Dawn, you'll never guess what's happened! That was Bill,' she announced excitedly, ‘ringing from London.'

‘London? But I thought he was in Brazil…'

‘Head Office,' she said impressively. ‘He was called back there yesterday all in a hurry. His flight landed during the late morning our time…'

‘When you were over at the funeral, of course.'

‘Exactly. That's what I told him. He said he'd tried to ring me later as well but it was too late to come home after he'd seen the boss man at work and he was too tired after the flight to be safe to drive anyway.'

‘Something wrong?' enquired Dawn curiously. In her own husband's world the words ‘Head Office' usually spelt trouble.

‘On the contrary,' said Janet, smiling broadly. ‘He said it was good news but he wasn't going to tell me what it was until he got down here. I explained that I was out last night too.'

‘At the Bellingham with Joe Short,' supplied Dawn. ‘So what did you tell him?'

Her lips curled mischievously. ‘That I was at a hotel with another man. All evening.'

‘You'll be lucky if he doesn't come straight down with a horsewhip.'

‘But,' went on Janet serenely, ‘I assured him he hadn't anything to worry about.'

‘Good,' said Dawn seriously. ‘Now what about that second cup of coffee?'

Janet moved towards the stove and then turned. ‘Of course, if Bill is back at home we can ask Joe Short round, can't we? After all, he is a sort of relative.'

 

The two police photographers, Williams and Dyson, had reached Billing Bridge now and were busy setting up their equipment on the riverbank. While the pathologist was taking in as much as he could about the body from what could be determined at a suitable distance, Detective Inspector Sloan raised his head and looked at his surroundings properly for the first time.

This was an area of the Calleshire countryside that the watercolourists greatly favoured – something about the rows of willows by the water always attracted painters – and it was one that the nature conservationists were wont to wax lyrical about. If the noises nearby were anything to go by, it suited the bird life, too. The thought stirred Sloan into action.

‘Crosby, take statements from those two fishermen, and then get onto the local twitchers and find out if any of them saw anything like a body coming downstream at any stage before it got here. I understand some of them get up quite early.'

‘Don't they call it the “dawn chorus” or something?' said the constable naively. Getting up in the morning was something he had always found difficult.

‘Very probably. And find out who was on duty last night in the bridge area of Berebury. They might have seen something.' Personally, he doubted it. A constable on the beat on foot saw a lot, two policemen in a car patrolling a wide sweep of the town after dark usually saw very little. ‘You might check up on any houses by the riverside, too.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Crosby, glad to get away from the body lying on the riverbank.

‘And when Williams and Dyson have taken as many pictures as they need – get them to take as pretty a one as you can for identification purposes – you can let Dr Dabbe get started on his examination while I—' He was interrupted by a ring on his earphone. It was Superintendent Leeyes at his desk in Berebury Police Station.

‘That you, Sloan? We've just had a missing person reported. Might be a help.'

‘Missing how long?' asked Sloan cautiously. The body on the riverbank hadn't been in the water more than a few hours – even he could see that.

‘Sounds like just since last night.'

‘That figures, sir.' He reached for his notebook.

‘Girl of twenty-four, a nurse at Berebury Hospital, didn't turn up for work this morning when she was meant to be on duty.' Leeyes grunted. ‘Apparently someone from the hospital went round to her house and tried to knock her up. She didn't answer the door but the lights are still on and the curtains are drawn. Name of Lucy Lansdown. No description available yet.'

Detective Inspector Sloan dutifully conveyed this information to Dr Dabbe.

‘Any note?' asked the pathologist.

‘None that's been found so far, Doctor.'

‘Tell them to have a good look when you do get into the house,' said Dr Dabbe. ‘A suicide note can help. And if she's been reading Goethe, it might explain her going in the river.'

‘Who's he?' asked Crosby, not yet out of earshot.

‘A German poet who said “Know myself? If I knew myself I'd run away.” Girls get funny ideas sometimes, you know.' The pathologist waved a hand. ‘Not that I'm jumping to any foregone conclusions, Sloan. You know me too well for that.'

‘I do, Doctor.' Getting a really firm opinion out of the pathologist until after the post-mortem was always difficult.

‘No handbag round her shoulder, I see,' said Dr Dabbe. ‘Handbags are as important to women of this age, you know, as they were to Lady Bracknell.'

‘I know that and we'll be examining the house of the missing woman as soon as we can, Doctor, for that or a note. And we'll be looking at the bridge area in Berebury and any other spots where she might have gone into the river, too.'

‘Sometimes they take their handbags with them when they jump…' The pathologist peered at the body's fingertips and changed his tone suddenly. ‘That is, if they do jump, Sloan. It rather looks as if this woman tried to grab something as she went into the water. These hands have been scratched by something. I'll need a closer look later.'

Detective Inspector Sloan cast an eye in the direction of the hands of the body on the riverbank. Giving the deceased a name somehow made the death more poignant. A pretty girl, he thought. ‘She might have been called Lucy Lansdown. That's the name of the only girl notified as missing in our manor last night.'

The pathologist was not interested in names. ‘Superficial grazes on the right forearm, too,' Dr Dabbe was already dictating to Burns, his taciturn assistant. ‘I'll get you some samples of the grit in the abrasions as soon as I can.'

Sloan made a mental note to get some samples of the grit from the bridge in Berebury, too.

Dr Dabbe peered at the supine figure. ‘I can't see from here if there are any bruises round the neck or anywhere else, but I'll be examining the subject more carefully later.' Then he raised his head and called across to the fishermen. ‘There's a weir upstream from here, isn't there?'

‘At Lower Malcombe,' answered one of them.

The pathologist nodded. ‘She might have got bumped about going over that – that's if she went in higher up. I can't tell you any more yet, Sloan. Not until I've had a better look all round back at the mortuary.'