A Late Phoenix (19 page)

“Just like it did last time,” the man went on.

“Quite,” said Sloan. But there was a difference between now and last time. Fallout wasn't just a barrack square phrase any more. He didn't know what prophylactics there were against bombing nowadays. Perhaps there weren't any. Perhaps that was why there were those who rallied to the cry of “Make love not war.” Perhaps they weren't so far off beam after all. Odd if the Dick's Dive crew were right and everyone else was wrong …

Sloan shook himself. He must pull himself together.

He told Mallinson what he was enquiring about.

“Bombing comes under the Ministry of Housing and Local Government,” said the man from the town hall, “but don't ask me why!”

“It's the recovery of someone from a bombed building.”

“Ah, that's different. That's not the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.”

“No?”

“That's the Secretary of State and the Home Office.”

“Even if they're dead?” asked Sloan mildly.

“I expect,” sighed Mallinson, “that's the Ministry of Health though I can't be sure offhand. It's all covered by statutory instruments, you know.”

So, thought Sloan silently, was most police procedure, but that did not alter the fact that it was how the individual member of the authority behaved at the point of contact with the individual member of the public that really mattered in the long run.

He coughed. “I was wondering about your records. You must have records.”

Mallinson gave a hollow laugh. “It wouldn't be a town hall, now, would it, Inspector, without records.”

“No, but …”

“You've only got to sneeze …” Mallinson cleared his throat. “About the other …”

“Yes?”

“We confirm that no notification of the proposal to commence building work pursuant to the Town and Country Planning Acts of 1947 and various subsequent building bylaws had been received by the Building and Planning Department.”

“Ah …”

Mallinson said, “I expect we'll forgive them this time as they obviously haven't got very far.”

“What would you have done with the notification if you'd got it?” said Sloan.

“Sent a copy round to Mr. Fowkes at the museum first then one of our building inspectors would have gone along later to look at their foundations. To make sure they complied with the regulations.”

“And to see they weren't too near Vesuvius,” murmured Sloan softly.

“Vesuvius, Inspector?”

“Nothing,” said Sloan hastily, and rang off.

Constable Crosby came back just then with some notes about Dr. Tarde. Sloan had asked for those, too, in an absent moment. Eons of eons ago. He leafed through them rapidly without interest.

It had been in June that Dr. Tarde had died.

Sloan read about the inquest.

Unhappily.

There had been an open verdict.

Nothing to show why deceased had taken his own life.

If he had.

There was certainly nothing to show why he should have done.

There were no financial worries. (Confirmed by his executors.)

He wasn't ill. (Confirmed by post-mortem.)

He didn't think he was ill. (Confirmed by Miss Tyrell.)

He had been found hanging from a beam in his garage, a chair kicked to one side.

There had been no note.

The coroner didn't like suicides without notes and said so.

The last person to see him alive had been … Sloan turned over a sheet … Mark Reddley.

Mark Reddley deposed that he had called to collect a prescription for his wife and that then the doctor had been sitting at his desk, writing.

The coroner recalled the police officer who had searched for a note.

There had been no note on the desk or anywhere else.

It had been Mrs. Milligan's night off.

The body had been found by a policeman on the beat later that night.

The coroner had enquired how that had come about.

The doctor's car, it seemed, had been standing in the road without any lights on. The man on the beat had gone in to look for the doctor to tell him this, found the house unlocked but empty and flashed his torch round the garage …

Sloan put the papers down. Dr. Tarde was in the clear anyway. He hadn't been around last night to kill Harold Waite.

“The only chap,” he said, “in the ordinary course of events with a good reason for having known about the pregnancy …”

“And he goes and hangs himself,” concluded Crosby gloomily.

“Say that again …”

“He goes and hangs himself.”

“The only person,” said Sloan, bringing one hand down on top of the other with a healthy smack, “in the ordinary course of events with a good reason for knowing about the pregnancy—being a doctor—and he goes and kills himself just before the site is about to be cleared. That means …” He spun round and looked at Crosby. “Suppose that Dr. Tarde didn't commit suicide, Crosby. Just suppose that for one minute …”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

Crosby scratched his chin. “If he was killed, too, sir, I'd say that that would mean that if this body was dug up he would have guessed who …”

“Might have been able to guess,” modified Sloan automatically. Qualified statements were better in the long run than the categoric variety.

“Might have been able to guess,” said Crosby agreeably “Like Harold Waite.”

“And look what happened to him. Perhaps, Crosby, we've started from the wrong end …”

“By the way,” said Sloan hastily, “there was something else I wanted to ask you, Doctor. Tell me, suppose you wanted to fake a hanging, how would you go about it?”

“I'd garotte whoever it was,” responded Dabbe promptly. “From behind. Preferably while he's bending down to do up his shoelace …”

“Or picking up something you've just dropped accidentally on purpose,” suggested Sloan.

“That's the idea. Put your knee in the small of his back and heave. Remember to jerk your rope or what-have-you upwards as well as backwards. Then you'll get your marks in the right place. That way it's pretty difficult for the pathologist to tell … Sloan, are you trying to suggest that …”

“Thank you, Doctor, you've been a great help.”

“There's one other thing, Sloan.”

“Doctor?”

“The chair. Better men than you have forgotten the chair.”

Sloan rang off.

The chair hadn't been forgotten.

The superintendent was still at his desk staring out of his window across the Market Square. He was only half-sitting down—being poised the while to rise on the instant anything happened outside Dick's Dive opposite. It was a physical attitude which had been dubbed throughout the police station as “The Watch Committee Watching.”

“Well, Sloan?”

“Leslie Waite is living with a woman called Doreen, sir.”

“What about it?”

“We've just found out that he married a girl called Freda Cowell during the war.”

“What happened to her?” enquired the superintendent alertly. “Is she your body?”

“I don't know, sir. We're trying to find out now. I've asked the Register Office at Somerset House to do a special search for me as quickly as possible.”

“No news from Kinnisport Police?”

“Not yet, sir. They haven't had a lot of time …”

Leeyes grunted.

“This Doreen that he's living with,” ventured Sloan tentatively, “could be a second wife. Freda Cowell could have divorced him or died ordinarily.”

“And my name could be George Washington,” snapped the superintendent smartly.

“Just as likely,” agreed Sloan as gravely as he could.

Now why had the superintendent chosen George Washington for his simile? According to those lectures on Psychology Today, potted versions of which had reached Sloan each week, the choice of George Washington must mean something.

“But it isn't,” said Leeyes unnecessarily.

“No, sir.” Had it been, wondered Sloan, what was called a Freudian slip? When you unconsciously revealed that which you—consciously—wished to hide? Perhaps the superintendent had a secret yearning to be thought of as a man who could not tell a lie.

Because, if so …

“This is the one who was cut out of his father's will, isn't it, Sloan?”

“Yes, sir. Old Ernest Waite left the house—or rather what was left of it—to Harold only.”

“Have you found out why?”

“Not yet, sir.” Perhaps Freda Cowell could tell him. If she was alive. If he could find her.

“There must be a reason. It wasn't entailed, was it? It's not a stately home or anything like that.”

“No, sir. Just an ordinary house.”

“Primogeniture,” rumbled Leeyes, “doesn't usually count for much in families like the Waites.”

“No, sir.” Sloan cleared his throat. “There's just one thing that's worrying me about Leslie Waite …”

“Well?”

“He doesn't come into any of those arguments about the rebuilding. Neither does Harold Waite, come to that. He definitely sold the site in 1946—we checked with the Land Registry—and hasn't figured since.”

“Until yesterday,” said Leeyes smartly.

Sloan hadn't needed reminding. “He only had to tell me, sir … I'd have stopped him coming over if I'd known.”

“A criminologist,” pronounced Leeyes sagaciously, “is always someone who is wise after the event.”

Was that meant to be a crumb of comfort? Sloan didn't know. He pressed on: “I think, sir, we may be nearer a time for the first murder.”

“Oh?”

“Towards the end of the winter after the bombing. Say about February or March of 1942. That's when the loose rubble was cleared. It wouldn't have been before then.”

Leeyes said acidly, “Now I suppose all we want is someone who was a first-class rifle shot thirty years ago and bob's your uncle.”

“They were all good shots,” pointed out Sloan. “The Waites and Gilbert Hodge were in the Services and Reddley and Garton were in the Home Guard.”

“And it's too late to ask them what they were doing on the night in question.” The superintendent's view of detection was a very simplified one. Sloan had noticed this before.

“Even if we knew the night …”

Leeyes drummed his fingers on the desk. “This planning business then that the Waites didn't come in to …”

“A proper tangle of delay, restriction, and heaven only knows what, sir, until a couple of months ago when everything suddenly resolved itself all at once.”

It was like offering a fresh scent to a bloodhound. The superintendent's head came up with a jerk.

“Why?”

“It was the council, sir. About three years ago they said they were going to go ahead with some old slum clearance plans …”

“About time, too,” growled Leeyes.

“Well, it seems they'd just about got round to thinking about it properly last May or June when Mark Reddley and Associates slapped in some acceptable plans and got them passed pretty quickly.”

“So it was a toss-up who developed?”

“For a little while, anyway. Then Mark Reddley, acting on behalf of Hodge, got the go-ahead and Garton's men got cracking quite smartly.”

“Funny, that,” mused Leeyes.

“Yes, sir.” Sloan admitted that. It was odd that everything should suddenly fall into place after a quarter of a century of delay and debate.

But the superintendent wasn't listening any more. An abstracted look had stolen over his face. He was staring out of the window at Dick's Dive opposite. A van had just pulled up outside it, and a number of remarkably undifferentiated young men and women were tumbling out of the back and going inside the cafe.

“Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be,” muttered Leeyes sardonically. “Look at that, Sloan.”

Sloan obediently looked at the van.

There was no part of it not painted with flowers.

“Flower power,” said Leeyes scornfully. “What do you make of that? Look at them! Where shall we be, Sloan, when they're our only army?”

“I couldn't say, sir, I'm sure.” Very probably, he thought, in the same situation as they would be if they weren't. He made for the door. “I daresay we'll have to have a new Geneva Convention.” Perhaps the only real hope was that there wouldn't be an army. What was it that someone was postulating? That these unaggressive youngsters were Nature's response to the manufacture of wholesale weapons, chain reactions, total destruction nature always bent herself in the direction of the survival of the species …

Constable Crosby was in Sloan's office when he got back.

With more tea.

And some news from Somerset House.

In the circumstances, read the message sheet, they had made a priority job of Inspector Sloan's request for information.

“Nice of them,” said Sloan. With murder cases time was usually of the essence and, even if it wasn't, the press hounds baying on the police heels always made it seem as if it was.

“Item,” said Crosby, reading aloud, “there is no record in the General Register Office of any death being registered in the name of any Freda Waite nee Cowell from natural or any other causes.”

Sloan got out his notebook.

“Item,” said Crosby, still holding the paper, “there is no record of any marriage having taken place between Leslie Waite and a woman called Doreen …”

“Ah …” Sloan drank his tea and considered this.

“Item,” continued Crosby, “there was a son born to the aforementioned Leslie and Freda Waite …”

“The devil there was!” Perhaps they were getting somewhere after all.

“Name of Brian Ernest.”

“That didn't make any difference,” said Sloan elliptically.

“Er—what didn't, sir?”