The Body Politic (25 page)

“We know that,” said Leeyes impatiently.

“We knew it later, sir. The trouble was that they didn't tell anyone at the time.”

“Why should they have done?” asked Leeyes.

“It might have helped, sir, if he'd telephoned home before turning up there.”

Leeyes grunted. “Like that, was it?”

“I'm very much afraid so,” he said. “And I should have spotted it earlier.”

Leeyes said nothing.

“When I interviewed Mrs. Ottershaw,” said Sloan, “she told me that the first thing she knew of her husband's being back in the United Kingdom was when she heard his key in the latch.”

“And that was true?”

“As far as it went,” said Sloan. “It would have been better if someone had got up to bolt the door.” Perhaps the old ballad had had more meaning than he'd realised.

“
Flagranti delectissimo,
” pronounced Leeyes with all the vigour of a man who had some Latin and no Greek. A little bit of bread and no cheese was what Sloan's mother had called that.

“Precisely, sir. Poor Ottershaw now had two things to worry about. My guess is that he put the domestic difficulties on ice during the day on the Saturday and got on with seeing about the Lassertan end of things. After all that was literally a matter of life and death or, if not that, at any rate his job.”

Leeyes grunted. “And he wasn't to know that the Mellamby end of things was going to be a matter of life and death too.”

“No.” Sloan frowned. “I don't think that ever occurred to him. By the end of the Saturday afternoon he'd seen Peter Corbishley and felt that he'd got somebody really rooting for him.”

“Marvellous, isn't it,” said Leeyes, “how these politicians always manage to give that impression? And what had been going on with the two Members, might I ask?”

“Oh, that was something quite different.” Sloan turned back the pages of his notebook. “I'm afraid, sir, that comes under the heading of experimental psychology.”

“So does sparing the rod and spoiling the child.”

“This purported to be a study of the effects of autosuggestion on two local public figures by an undergraduate called Richard Godstone for his dissertation. Unauthorised, of course,” added Sloan hastily. “His tutor was apologetic but not unbearably surprised.”

“Death and his brother, Fear.”

“Er—quite so, sir.” St. Francis of Assisi wouldn't have liked that: nor would Sloan's mother. “Anyway, it didn't work. Neither Member was deflected from his duty.”

“Or scared to death?”

“No, sir. I gather the students were very disappointed that Ted Sheard didn't even mention the harassment when he addressed the Social Psychology group at Almstone College. Peter Corbishley didn't propose to, either.”

“I suppose they didn't think windbags could be tough,” said Leeyes uncharitably. “They'll learn. But it was nothing to do with the Ottershaw affair?”

“My theory—it's only a theory, mind you, sir, because Hazel Ottershaw isn't saying anything to anyone—is that Alan Ottershaw devoted the Saturday evening to seeing what could be done on the domestic side. The trouble is that Adrian Dungey did the same thing with a very different end in view.”

“Murder?”

“Very clever murder.”

“Well, he is a professional man.”

Sloan let this calumny on education pass. “He went out to Toad Hall—he is their vet, anyway—and collected some venom from the kokoi frogs there. Colombian Indians use it as an arrow poison.”

“So he's spilled the beans,” concluded Leeyes.

“Yes, sir.” The attractive boyishness of Dungey was a thing of the past now but he was willing—anxious, even—to tell the police how clever he had been. “This venom has an effect on the heart similar to that produced by a heart attack and is known as batrachotoxin.”

“And is what went into the pellet?” said Leeyes.

“Yes, sir. It was then lightly sealed in with a wax that has a low melting-point.”

“Thought of everything, hadn't he?” sniffed Leeyes.

“Nearly,” said Sloan. “If the queremitte was found, someone from the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company was bound to be suspected first.”

“Supplied by Hazel Ottershaw?”

“She's not saying.”

“And if the ashes were interred as planned nobody would have been any the wiser.”

“Yes, sir. The beauty of the scheme was that the pellet would have been delivered back to the undertaker.”

“So it was curtains for Ottershaw all right.”

“Yes, sir.” The swishing together of the curtains was what Sloan didn't like about cremation. “After seeing the Member I think he must have gone into the question of reconciliation with his wife.”

“It never works,” commented Leeyes, not one of nature's optimists.

“It didn't—at least as Hazel Ottershaw declines to comment, we can only conclude that by early on the Sunday morning Alan Ottershaw—rightly or wrongly—had decided that the situation would be best resolved by his going back to Lasserta.”

“Next best thing to being a
mari complaisant
if you ask me,” said Leeyes trenchantly.

“I don't think so,” said Sloan. “You see, sir, he'd got something else to do first.”

“What was that?”

“Beat the living daylights out of Dungey.”

“Good idea,” said Leeyes warmly, “but——”

“That's what put me on to him in the end,” said Sloan, “but I should have got there sooner.” He supposed that was the lament of all detectives.

“Are you going to tell me, Sloan, or shall we go on playing guessing games?”

“Adrian Dungey was playing King Henry III at the re-enactment and Ottershaw stood in as William de Wilton.”

“Well?”

“At the real Battle of Lewes, sir, they were both on the same side. King Henry and William de Wilton should never have been fighting each other like that, should they?”

“Didn't give the sword-fight a second thought myself,” admitted Bertram Rauly, “although it did cross my mind that I couldn't have given the King the pasting that William de Wilton did.” He looked squarely at Sloan and Crosby. “It was a sort of play within the play, wasn't it?”

“Like
Hamlet,
” agreed Sloan.

The landowner stroked his chin. “And the falling stone from the tower?”

“The first time,” said Sloan, “the students who were harassing the Members of Parliament pushed one block over just to shake Peter Corbishley. He was in no real danger. In fact, when we came to look closely at all the incidents relating to the Members of Parliament, one of the things that stood out was that nothing really happened to either of them. As my constable pointed out, if injury had been intended they'd have been sent letter bombs, not anonymous letters.”

Crosby squinted modestly down his nose.

“The second stone fall, of course,” said Sloan, “was quite a different matter.”

“But why kill poor Puiver? He didn't have anything to do with Ottershaw or Dungey,” said Rauly.

“No, sir,” said Sloan, “but Major Puiver had said publicly that he had recognised Death's walk—which indeed he had. I fear Dungey took advantage of that. What the Major couldn't remember was where he had seen that walk before—but, of course, it had been the previous day when the same man had been heckling Peter Corbishley.”

“So that's what it was.” Rauly's brow cleared. “And it would have been him who did that funny bit of bone-pointing under the platform party.”

“Most probably, sir.”

“But why kill poor Puiver? He had nothing to do with Ottershaw.”

“To put us off the scent.”

“A diversion?” Former tank commanders understood about diversions.

“I think so, sir. It must have been obvious that the police were on to something or we wouldn't have been round asking questions. He probably thought he ought to widen the field for us.”

Bertram Rauly stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Dungey was the Camulos Society's armourer, so the technicalities wouldn't have been difficult for him. He had the expertise.”

“He had access to the poison, too,” said Sloan.

“I didn't know there were so many frogs in Calleshire,” said Crosby feelingly. “Or mice.”

“The other matter which doubtless concerned him no end was how much Alan Ottershaw had committed to tape when he rang his firm.”

“Worrying for him,” agreed Bertram Rauly in a voice devoid of sympathy.

“I think Dungey just kept the queremitte pellet in his pocket until the right moment presented itself,” said Sloan.

“And then,” supplemented Crosby, “popped it into his crossbow instead of a plastic dye one.”

“Nobody would have noticed in that melee,” commented Rauly. He raised an eyebrow. “Very nearly the perfect murder, eh, Inspector? Oh, by the way …”

“Yes?”

“I think I've settled Miss Finch's hash.”

“You have, sir?” Sloan looked up with real interest. “How?”

A wicked look came over Bertram Rauly's face. “I offered to leave Mellamby Place to her. Haven't had a squeak out of her since.”

“Not …?” Mrs. Heber Hibbs' eyes widened in spite of the everpresent Middle Eastern sunshine.

“Yes!”

“But he didn't just swallow it, did he?” Like the admirable wife that she was, Mollie Heber Hibbs was listening with flattering attention to her husband's account of the Sheikh's banquet the night before for the Chairman of the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company. Women played no part in Lassertan hospitality.

“He did,” said the Ambassador.

“Perhaps,” shrugged Mollie Heber Hibbs kindly, “he thought he should because he was the guest of honour.”

Anthony Mainwaring Heber Hibbs was not prepared to ascribe any such sense of duty to Hamer Morenci. “All he did,” he reported accurately, “was to pretend to chew it.”

“That's no good, is it?” responded his wife loyally.

“None.”

“But you had told him, darling, hadn't you?”

“Several times,” said Mr. Heber Hibbs. “I told him that I would indicate if the dish were to be served. And I stressed the importance of chewing that particular course very, very thoroughly, giving signs that he was enjoying it. If he could.”

Mollie Heber Hibbs stared at him, still wide-eyed. “Didn't he listen, then?”

“He listened,” said her husband judicially, “but I don't think he heard.”

“What about the nice young aide he had with him?”

“The PR man? Oh, he was all right.”

“He chewed it, you mean?”

“No. When he heard what it was he fainted.”

Mollie Heber Hibbs instantly became all concern.

“Someone had told him,” said her husband, “that they were to be served a great delicacy.”

“That shouldn't have——”

The Ambassador said solemnly, “The PR man asked what it was—in the line of duty, I suspect, as much as anything. Probably thought it would look good in the company's Annual Report or something.”

“But that——”

“Someone translated it as the liver of freshly killed kid.”

The laughter lines on Mollie Heber Hibbs' face crinkled. “And he thought——”

The Ambassador carried on with equal merriment. “He asked if the Lassertans were cannibals and they didn't understand the question. They thought he was asking them how the young goat had been killed. And when they told him,” finished Heber Hibbs, “he fainted.”

“Poor fellow.”

“You'd better keep your sympathy for Hamer Morenci,” said the Ambassador. “He's feeling very sorry for himself. And only after eating raw goat's liver, too.”

“I'm not surprised. His throat all swollen and his ears so painful.”

“He can't speak yet,” said Heber Hibbs, adding judiciously, “Perhaps it's just as well. At first if he could have done he would have been spitting fire. At the moment,” he added brutally, “all he's spitting is blood.”

“And tongue-worms by the hundred.” Mollie Heber Hibbs shivered. “It's funny how they thrive in the human mouth.”

“The doctor says they're
Linguatula serrata
from the goat's liver all right, and that he'll be as right as rain in a few days. On the other hand Morenci says—or, rather,” the Ambassador amended this in the interests of accuracy, “Morenci writes that he'll never be the same again. The chap even manages to write angrily. Interesting, that. He wanted to ask the Sheikh to give him his present back, too.”

“Not that lovely Audubon painting?”

“The gyr-falcon,” said the Ambassador dreamily. “The one I advised. Much as I should like the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company to have a watercolour of
Fallo gyrfalco
on their hands surplus to requirements, I told him that, if he did, that would be the end of the company's mining concession in Lasserta.”

“I thought he was very subdued when I called at the hospital this evening.”

“Chastened is the word,” said Heber Hibbs. “He'd heard from London by then of course about the murders in Calleshire. Our precious Chairman is so glad to be off the hook over them that he's going back as soon as he can to act on the Select Committee's recommendations.” The Ambassador stretched out easily in his own armchair. “Ah, well, everything is relative, I suppose.” He cocked an enquiring eye at his wife. “Did I say that or was it Mahomet?”

“Confucious, probably,” said Mollie Heber Hibbs comfortably. “It almost always is.”

“Give me the China Station any day,” said Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the Sheikhdom of Lasserta. “By the way, I've asked that young PR man round to luncheon tomorrow.”

“I expect he's at a bit of a loose end with his boss in hospital and speechless.”