A Late Phoenix (7 page)

“In their shelters at the bottom of the garden.”

“And they were all right?”

“Oh, yes. Those houses have long narrow gardens, Inspector. There's more land to the site than you'd think at first. And the shelters were at the far end.”

“And they all got there in time?”

What in a mellower person might have passed for a smile flitted across Miss Tyrell's face. “Certainly, Inspector. Even Mrs. Crowther.”

“Mrs. Crowther?”

“It was a standing joke. Mrs. Crowther was never out of Dr. Tarde's surgery. If it wasn't her rheumatism it was her heart and if it wasn't her heart it was her weight. If you'd listened to all her ailments you'd have thought she couldn't walk a step.”

“And?”

“And none of them ever stopped her getting to the shelter first.”

“You didn't shelter?”

“Not that night. Sometimes, you know, they were only on their way to Luston. We lie between Luston and France, you see, so you could waste a lot of time in the shelter if you weren't careful.”

Sloan regarded the gaunt, rather uncompromising woman in front of him and wondered how the crowd from Dick's Dive would get on under fire; whether they would feel they couldn't spare the time to shelter …

“Sometimes, of course, Inspector, they couldn't find Luston.”

“The bombs on the moor,” he said suddenly.

“That's right. I believe they're still finding them. Sometimes, of course, they just didn't want to go on—there were guns and searchlights on the moor—so they bombed us instead, and sometimes,” she finished simply, “they just bombed Berebury because they wanted to. Corton's was doing war work, of course. They may have known about that.”

Sloan turned the conversation back to the houses opposite. He did it carefully. No one except the police as yet knew that the skeleton had been female.

“You're sure no one was killed or missing over there?”

“Oh, yes, Inspector. I should have known, you see. They were all patients here.”

Sloan's spirits sank. If the dead woman had been just a passerby taking shelter in the nearest house in a bad raid their task might well be a hopeless one …

“The Waites, Miss Tyrell. Do you remember them?”

“Certainly, Inspector. They were a nice old couple.”

“Family?”

“Two sons.”

“No daughters?”

“No.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Waite—are they still alive?”

She shook her head. “No. They were getting on in the war, you know. Losing their house didn't help either. The man went first—heart failure”—Miss Tyrell obviously had a card-index brain—“and then his wife. Chronic nephritis, I think she died from. They were pleasant people. You know—decent and undemanding.”

Sloan nodded. From a doctor's receptionist the word “undemanding” was high compliment.

“The Waites' sons,” he said. “What sort of age would they have been in the war?”

“Army age,” responded Miss Tyrell promptly. “Harold—that was the elder one—did well. He ended up as a sergeant in the West Calleshires. The younger boy—Leslie—went off into the Navy if I remember rightly, though I can't imagine why. They weren't seafaring people at all.”

“Didn't want to be pushed about by his elder brother in the West Calleshires, I expect.” Sloan grinned. “I guess, miss, he made the mistake of thinking they didn't have sergeants in the Navy.”

“Perhaps, Inspector.”

“What happened to them?”

“They both came back but after that I'm not very sure. I don't think Berebury was ever the same for them, you know, after the family house went. They both moved away when the old people died, what with there being no real home here any more to speak of …”

Sloan turned and looked out the window at the empty space that had been number one, Lamb Lane. “I can quite understand that, miss. Where did they go to?”

“Harold went to Luston, I think, to work there. He'd been with Corton's before the war but he was one of those who couldn't settle afterwards. There were quite a few of them, you know.”

“I can believe that, miss.” Sloan himself wasn't at all sure that he would have settled down to a dull routine job in Berebury after five years in the Army in wartime. “Did he have an exciting war, then?”

“Dunkirk, Tobruk, and then the Second Front,” said Miss Tyrell astringently. “Corton's seemed too big a change for him after that. He came to see Dr. Tarde quite often about then and I think he advised him to move.”

“Did he now?” murmured Sloan absently. “That's interesting.”

“Thought perhaps he should get away. A complete change, you know, instead of trying to pick up the broken threads.”

“Did that do the trick?”

“I never heard, Inspector. He certainly didn't come back to Berebury, that's all I know.”

“And the younger son? Leslie, did you say his name was?”

“Leslie Waite.” Miss Tyrell sniffed. “When he came out of the Navy the only thing he couldn't settle to was work. Work in any shape or form. Never had. Never could.”

“And what became of him?” enquired Sloan with genuine interest. He himself had been sternly brought up to “Go to the ant, thou sluggard: consider her ways and be wise” and occasionally—when sorely overworked—wondered what would have happened to him if he hadn't. It was an eternally tantalizing line of thought and he wasn't entirely convinced that the ants had it.

“I have an idea that he settled Kinnisport way. Something,” Miss Tyrell said vaguely, “to do with boats, but I'm not sure what. He wasn't cut out for success anyway.”

Sloan glanced out of the window again. The driver of the articulated machine in the road was still sitting in his cab, reading his paper, totally undisturbed by the delay. Mark Reddley and the man Garton didn't seem quite so calm. Even at this distance it was possible to see that they were not entirely happy. While he watched them they parted abruptly and drove off in their respective cars. Mr. Esmond Fowkes on the other hand looked quite absorbed. Sloan could see him pottering happily about the site.

“Was either son married, Miss Tyrell, at the time of the bombing?” He'd been lucky to find this woman. She was a great time saver.

“No,” she said decisively. “I'm sure they weren't. Harold married afterwards. When he came home. I remember the wedding quite well. He married the daughter of the draper in Shepherd Street. Well set up girl. Used to teach in the Sunday school.”

“And Leslie?”

“Leslie wasn't married at all while he was here in Berebury that I know of.”

“Oh?” Sloan caught her tone, not her choice of words.

“That is not to say,” went on Miss Tyrell censoriously, “that it was for lack of interest in the subject.”

“One for the girls?” suggested Sloan lightly.

“Always. From about the age of fourteen he always had one or two of them in tow.”

“Every nice girl,” observed Sloan, “loves a sailor …”

Miss Tyrell looked disapproving. “If you ask me, Inspector, being in the Navy got him out of a lot of difficulties. Those leaves of his …”

“Like that, was he?”

“Then he'd go back to his ship and next time it would be someone quite different.”

“Inconstant,” agreed Sloan, making a note.

Their own next port of call was the police station.

“After the post-mortem,” said Sloan to Crosby, as they passed the site, “I reckon we should be able to give the builders the go-ahead.”

Which was where he was wrong.

Detective Constable Crosby did, in fact, succeed in getting Harold Waite's address from the Luston Police quite quickly.

“Dead easy, sir. They found him and his wife on the electoral register straight off.”

“And his wife?” repeated Sloan. In his experience of all categories of human relationship wives were the most at risk.

“That's what they said, sir. Man and woman, both of the name of Waite living at 24, Bean Street, Luston.” Crosby shut his notebook with an audible snap.

“We'll get there now,” decided Sloan.

Before the superintendent had time to ask him why he hadn't been.

The kindest thing that could be said about the suburb of Luston where Harold Waite lived was that it was probably awaiting redevelopment. It had not been made more salubrious by the fact that the adjacent suburb had already been razed to the ground and looked as if some particularly vicious war of attrition had been fought to the finish there. The only positive sign of regrowth was a block of flats tottering towards the sky.

That was when they stopped to ask a point duty policeman the way.

“Keep your backs to Babel and you'll soon find it.”

“Babel?”

“You strangers here in Luston?”

Sloan nodded.

“I thought so,” said the man. “Everyone in Luston knows Babel's what those flats are called. Not really. They're named after the mayor. But everyone calls them Babel. You keep the car so you can't see them and you'll soon be in Bean Street.”

“That's something, I suppose,” said Sloan unenthusiastically as Crosby turned the car away from the flats and plunged it into a maze of crisscrossed streets of terraced houses.

He was devoutly thankful that he did not live here.

It was all too apparent that Luston—like Topsy—had just growed. He could see how the houses—barracks of industry—had erupted in response to the quick pressures of the Industrial Revolution. There was no method about the layout of the huddled streets, and Bean Street—when they found it—was no different from all the others.

As the police car slowed down outside number twenty-four lace curtains twitched all the way down the street.

A thin, spare woman, her hair scraped well back from a bony forehead, answered their knock. She grudgingly admitted to being Mrs. Waite and that her husband was at home.

“He's just got up, if you must know. Ready for his dinner. He's on the twilight shift this month—he's going to work at five. If he's spared …”

She showed them into a front parlor of depressing respectability. It was so clean as to be almost sterile. The dustless grate had been covered with a paper fan of red crepe, pleated to fit the space. It didn't even give a successful illusion of warmth and the whole room had the chill of disuse about it.

“Sit down,” she said. It was more of a command than an invitation. “And I'll fetch him through.”

“Proper home from home, sir, isn't it?” said Crosby chattily as soon as she was gone.

Sloan looked at the uncreased cushions and decided against disturbing them. He wandered instead towards the bay window. There was a large Bible on a lace-covered table there.

“Handy that, sir, isn't it?” observed Crosby.

“Handy?”

“If anyone should be thinking of swearing to anything.”

Sloan regarded him for a long moment. “We, Crosby, are a very long way from the swearing stage. And we may never get to it.”

“Never mind, sir,” said Crosby cheerfully, “at least we're not married to that. Talk about home comforts for the troops …”

“Good morning,” said Sloan swiftly as Mrs. Waite returned with a middle-aged man in tow. “Mr. Harold Waite?”

“Aye.” If Harold Waite was surprised to have a visit from two detectives he did not show it. He was of medium build with a close-cropped Army hairstyle. A small hedge-tear scar ran down the corner of his left forehead. In spite of the middle age, he still had the muscular ready look of a man who worked on his feet as opposed to at a desk.

“We need your help.”

“You're welcome. Though I don't know how I can help you …” He looked at Sloan enquiringly. “Clara and I lead pretty quiet lives, don't we?”

Mrs. Waite wiped her hands on her apron and said in a flat voice, “We try to keep all Ten Commandments, Inspector.”

“Er—good.” Sloan hadn't time to work out if they covered all crime. He doubted it. “I'm very glad to hear it,” he said to her warmly, “but it's not about that sort of—er—transgression that I've come about …”

“Good.”

“A skeleton of a young woman has been unearthed on the site of your old family home, Mr. Waite.”

“In Lamb Lane?”

“That's right.”

“Well, I never,” said Harold Waite, manifestly surprised. “Fancy that.”

“A skeleton?” echoed Clara Waite. “The ways of the Lord are truly mysterious.”

“Quite so, madam.” Mick the Irishman, Sloan felt, would be the first to agree with her. “It was—er—accidentally revealed by some redevelopment work.”

“It was meant,” declared Clara Waite in her curious flat monotone.

“Redevelopment?” said Harold Waite promptly. “You mean they've got started at last?”

“They tried,” qualified Sloan. “Mark Reddley and Associates …”

“Associates? Huh,” said Waite. “Bet they're not the same associates as he used to have. He's done well for himself, he has.”

“And Garton and Garton, Builders.”

“Still trying to please everybody, I suppose.”

“Well …” Now he came to think of it there had been something placating about Garton.

“You're forgetting Gilbert Hodge,” said Waite. “He'll be behind it. He bought the site.” Husband and wife exchanged glances. “He's had to wait a long time, hasn't he, Clara, to collect his money?”

“He has,” said Clara Waite, not without a certain satisfaction. “Just after the war it was when he put down good money for that old site.”

“Did he?” murmured Sloan, making a note.

Waite stirred. “We got married on the strength of it, Inspector. Clara and me. I'd come out of the Army by then.”

“And then you left Berebury,” pointed out Sloan mildly.