Dead Heading (12 page)

‘Didn’t want anyone complaining that the Easter
offering was being misspent, I expect,’ said Sloan knowledgeably. His mother was a great churchwoman and he knew exactly what was expected of a clergy family: a more stringent economy than that which was practised by the congregation.

‘Reception in the church hall, with the parish ladies doing the refreshments,’ recounted York. ‘And the church flowers rota ladies doing the decorations. Lavender and peonies, I expect.’

Detective Constable Crosby’s head came up. ‘Not roses all the way?’ he said, bachelor that he was.

‘Lavender for devotion and peonies for joy and prosperity,’ said the Coroner’s Officer promptly. ‘The language of flowers.’

‘Girls come expensive,’ said Sloan, who only had a son and was sometimes grateful for this. His wife, Margaret, insisted that this sentiment would only last until the said son was old enough to buy his first motorbike.

PC York was still thinking about the rector’s daughter. ‘And she could hardly not get married in church anyway, could she? Not with having a clergyman for a father and all that.’ The man grinned and said, ‘After all, the rector couldn’t very well offer the bridegroom a ladder and fifty quid to elope with his daughter, now could he?’

‘No,’ agreed Sloan. That presumably went for the father of the girl that Anthony Berra was marrying too, especially since her father was a bishop. ‘The family insisted to me that she’d been very worried about the cost of the wedding,’ he said, casting his mind back to his visit to the Rectory.

PC York stroked his chin. ‘She could have been
worried about the expense although I can’t imagine why. They’d even got a friend taking the wedding photographs, although I wouldn’t advise that myself.’

‘Headless bridesmaids,’ grinned Crosby.

York pressed on with his narrative. ‘You see, the mother had been saving up for it for ages. They showed me her cheque-book. Lots of withdrawals in cash with “Wedding Fund” written on the counterfoil. The only thing is that nobody could find any money stashed away anywhere when she died. Looked everywhere, they did.’

‘Perhaps she put it all on a horse,’ suggested Crosby jovially. ‘Double your money and all that.’

‘Were they regular withdrawals?’ asked Sloan more pertinently.

‘First of the month,’ said York. ‘Without fail. As the daughter told me afterwards, there should have been enough money there to have had a proper photographer, which, I may tell you from bitter experience, is saying something.’

Sloan tried to remember some of the details of Mrs Beddowes’ suicide. ‘We were told that there were letters …’

PC York nodded. ‘There were. I handed them over to old double-barrelled.’

‘Mr Locombe-Stableford,’ interpreted Sloan, who felt that the decencies should be preserved in the presence of the young.

‘Him,’ said the Coroner’s officer, referring to Her Majesty’s Coroner for East Calleshire. ‘He didn’t read them out at the inquest which is his prerogative. He just said that he was satisfied that the deceased had taken her
own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed and gave that as his verdict. That was when the press lost interest.’

‘So you don’t know what was in the letters then,’ ventured Crosby.

The Coroner’s Officer cast him a pitying look. ‘’Course I do, sonny. It was me that unpinned them from her pillow, wasn’t it?’

‘So what was in them, Ted?’ asked Sloan swiftly.

‘Said no one was to blame for what she had done then and now but herself and to remember her with compassion no matter what.’

‘And what do you suppose she meant by that?’ mused Sloan. ‘Then and now.’

York shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘And what had she done?’ asked Crosby curiously.

‘Committed suicide,’ said York. ‘You’re not supposed to do it.’

‘No,’ persisted Crosby, ‘I mean what had she done that made her commit suicide?’

The Coroner’s Officer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Disturbed minds aren’t easy to read in spite of what the shrinks would have you believe. She’d meant to do it all right, though. She’d travelled over half the county for weeks buying small lots of tablets here, there and everywhere.’

‘Determined then,’ concluded Crosby.

‘The family were still insisting that she’d been worried about the cost of the wedding,’ said Sloan, turning his mind back to their own visit to the rectory. Perhaps
he should go back and ask if the deceased had known Enid Osgathorp too. He immediately answered his own thought. Of course, she would have done. The rector’s wife would have known a lot of people but the doctor’s receptionist must have known everyone. And all about them too, probably. Well, everything on their medical records anyway.

‘I think,’ declared Detective Inspector Sloan obscurely, ‘what we are dealing with now are live doubts rather than dead certainties – but this may change.’

Mandy Lamb was usually able to cajole Jack Haines back into his usual good humour but not this morning. Even a continuous infusion of coffee did nothing to raise his spirits. Her employer still sat, listless and preoccupied, at his desk.

‘Russ came in earlier looking for you,’ reported Mandy.

Jack Haines sighed. ‘I’d better see him then.’ He pushed a desk diary aside. ‘Mandy, you haven’t seen Norman about lately, have you?’

‘Not for yonks, Jack, thank goodness.’ She pulled a face. ‘He’s not your most lovable character.’

‘Margot was fond of him,’ said the nurseryman.

‘She was his mother,’ pointed out Mandy Lamb.

‘He couldn’t do anything wrong as far as she was concerned,’ sighed Jack Haines. ‘Everything was all right until she died.’

‘That’s mothers for you,’ said Mandy Lamb who was still single and childless.

‘And I reckon I treated him well enough until he got greedy,’ murmured Haines, almost to himself. ‘Really greedy.’

‘You treated him very well,’ she said emphatically. She paused and then added, ‘Better than he treated you.’

‘Stepchildren usually have chips on their shoulders,’ he said. ‘Goes with the territory, I suppose.’ He sipped at the latest mug of coffee, braced his shoulders and said, ‘I suppose I’d better get back to business. What does Anthony Berra want now?’

Mandy scrabbled about among the papers on her desk. ‘I’ve got his list somewhere here. Ah, got it!’ She handed over the sheet of paper to him. ‘He’s on his way over now.’

‘I suppose in view of what’s happened we’d better pull out all the stops for him.’ Jack Haines scrutinised the paper she had given him.

Mandy said, ‘He’s still got that hacking cough. He doesn’t look all that well. I hope he’s looking after himself.’

‘I think we can do most of these,’ said Jack, still looking at the list.

‘If not,’ she said mischievously, ‘we could always ask Bob Steele if he could send us some of them.’

‘Over my dead body,’ he growled, his face turning an apoplectic shade of crimson. ‘I’m not going down on my bended knee to that man for anything. Anything at all. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, Jack,’ she said sedulously, turning back to her own desk. ‘But according to Russ the man’s happy enough to come to you for almost anything.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ he said enigmatically. ‘And mind
what you say about Bob Steele in front of Russ. I’m not happy about him either.’

They were interrupted by the arrival of Anthony Berra. ‘I hear the admiral’s ordered just what he wants as usual,’ he said ruefully.

‘He has,’ said Haines, adding peaceably, ‘He’s old, of course.’

‘And difficult,’ sighed Berra.

‘Handling him must be good practice for your dealing with the Bishop, Anthony,’ said Mandy Lamb briskly. ‘I hear your future father-in-law is no pushover.’

‘That’s nothing – you haven’t met his wife,’ groaned Berra. ‘I call her Mrs Proudie behind her back. Terror of the diocese from all accounts. By the way, Jack, I’ve just come from the Berebury Garden Centre and Bob Steele said again he was sorry to hear about your troubles and if there was anything he could do, to let him know.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ muttered Haines, half to himself, his complexion again turning an unhappy shade of red.

‘Upset you, has he?’ concluded Berra. ‘No sentiment in business and all that?’

‘You could say something of the sort,’ Haines managed through clenched teeth. He waved a list in his hand. ‘I’ll get Russ to look out these plants you want.’

‘Thanks. I’ll have them as soon as you can get them – our Charmian will have my guts for garters if anything more goes wrong with her precious Mediterranean garden. I must have been mad to agree to do it for her.’ He broke off to cough.

‘I hope that’s not catching,’ said Mandy Lamb pointedly, edging away. 

He stared at her and said stiffly, ‘Certainly not.’ Just as quickly his mood changed and he said, ‘I’ve just thought of a good quote for my new business card that I’d like to run past you.’

‘What’s that, then?’ asked Jack Haines, who didn’t believe in advertising.

Anthony Berra said ‘“A good garden is a painting come to life”. What do you think of that, Jack?’

‘I think,’ said the nurseryman firmly, ‘that you should tell them the truth – which is that a garden is hell’s half acre with everything in it fighting for survival night and day.’

‘Not “A lovesome thing, God wot” then?’ put in Mandy Lamb.

‘Certainly not,’ said Haines.

‘A man doesn’t bite the hand that feeds him,’ said Berra obscurely.

‘Coffee, Anthony?’ As always when dissention threatened, Mandy Lamb took refuge in her universal remedy.

Jack Haines said, ‘A cobbler should stick to his last and you should stick to yours, Anthony. Garden design, not playing with words.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ said the other man slowly, turning to go. ‘By the way, Jack,’ he asked, ‘had you thought of your stepson as a possible orchid killer?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack Haines shortly. ‘I had.’

Detective Constable Crosby stood up when Sloan got back to his office. ‘Where to now, sir?’

‘Where indeed?’ murmured Detective Inspector Sloan.
Nothing with its roots in Pelling seemed to fit: in his book, events so far seemed more Rubik’s Cube than jigsaw.

‘The canteen?’ suggested Crosby hopefully.

‘Why not? At this stage, Crosby, it’s as good as anywhere else.’

The canteen at the police station served an all-day breakfast. The meal could not be further from the ‘
five-a-day
’ mantra of the healthy eating brigade. Sloan regarded the bacon, eggs, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans and fried potatoes with enthusiasm, only wondering in passing whether the fried mushrooms, tomatoes and beans could be deemed as three of his ‘five-a-day’ allotment of healthy fruit and vegetables. He decided not.

‘I brought some toast as well,’ said Crosby. ‘I hope that’s all right.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Sloan. When later in the day his wife Margaret enquired whether he had eaten at work, he could admit with some truth that he’d had some toast. It was not the whole truth, of course, which was important. He reminded himself that not saying anything was a form of lying. But the whole truth at Pelling was something that was beginning to bother him because he seemed to be no nearer to it today. Or to establishing whether the absence of the missing Enid Maude Osgathorp, whose home had been broken into twice, had any connection with
frost-damaged
plants at Pelling and Capstan Purlieu.

‘There’s only one thing we really know about Enid Osgathorp,’ he mused aloud, ‘apart from the two
break-ins
at her house and that we know she’s been missing for over three weeks.’

Detective Constable Crosby, having been brought up
not talk when his mouth was full, for a wonder remained silent.

‘That’s that she wasn’t the flavour of the month,’ carried on Sloan, demolishing a sausage. ‘There is a certain absence of warmth whenever her name is mentioned although Anthony Berra sounded quite neutral when he told us he had given her a lift into Berebury.’

‘That reminds me, sir,’ said Crosby, when he had swallowed and regained the power of speech. He parked a piece of toast on his plate while he reached for his notebook. ‘I checked on that. I found two old ladies who had also been waiting at the bus stop that day. They remembered him stopping and picking her up.’

‘But not them?’ said Sloan. ‘He didn’t give them a lift too?’

‘Just her.’

‘Perhaps they didn’t like her either,’ said Sloan idly.

‘That man Benedict Feakins sure didn’t have any nice feelings about her,’ Crosby said. ‘He looked like a frightened rabbit when her name cropped up.’

‘And the admiral actually admitted he didn’t like her,’ said Sloan. There was something at the back of his mind niggling him about the admiral – something from way back that he felt he was missing but he couldn’t think what it was.

‘So that lets him out of anything that’s been going on,’ decided Crosby, attacking a rasher of bacon.

There would be a moment, resolved Sloan, when he would have to explain the concept of double bluff to the constable but, the man’s attention now being centred on the bacon, this didn’t seem to be it. Instead he said, ‘All
the same, Crosby, I think we’ll have another word with him later.’

‘Don’t forget, sir, we haven’t traced the husband of one of those women at Capstan Purlieu yet,’ said Crosby. ‘Norman Potts.’

‘That’s true, although we don’t know where he fits in the picture – or even if he does. Perhaps we’d better get on with that too.’

‘Nobody liked him either – at least, not his stepfather or his ex-wife,’ said Crosby.

Someone had once listed the reasons for murdering people: gain, conviction, elimination, the lust of killing, revenge, jealousy … Not being liked didn’t seem to be one of them. The absence of war from the list had struck Sloan as strange at the time he first read it but that was presumably different. Those intent on making war had always said so throughout history, hadn’t they?

‘More toast, sir?’ Crosby, hovering, interrupted his train of thought.

Without thinking, Sloan’s hand stretched out for it. He said absently, ‘There’s really only one thing about Enid Osgathorp that we do know for certain and that’s that she knew everyone in Pelling by virtue of her occupation as keeper of their medical records.’

‘And those two women out at Capstan Purlieu as well,’ pointed out Crosby. ‘She knew them too, because one of them is standing in for her at that talk she was supposed to be giving tonight.’

‘She must have known the rector’s wife, anyway,’ concluded Sloan, ‘talking of whom it would be interesting to know where she had stashed her wedding
fund money. Not in the bank, anyway, because she’d taken the money out of the bank each month, not put it in there.’

‘And she couldn’t have put it anywhere in the house,’ concluded Crosby, ‘because the husband and children would have found it by now if she had.’

‘True.’

‘Perhaps it got stolen?’ suggested the constable.

‘Then we would have heard about it,’ said Sloan, qualifying this immediately by adding, ‘unless someone in the family had nicked it. We mightn’t have been told in that case, families being what they are. Unlikely, though, I admit.’ Struck by a sudden thought, he said, ‘If the question of probate has come up, we could always check with the family’s solicitor to see if he’s found it. Otherwise, Crosby, we might have to consider that Mrs Beddowes had been giving the money to someone else …’

‘What on earth for?’ asked the constable, who was now tackling the bacon.

‘What, indeed?’ said Detective Inspector Sloan rhetorically, ‘but in my book, regular cash payments out of someone’s bank account over a long period about which nobody else knows anything spells only one thing.’

‘What’s that, then?’ asked Crosby.

‘Blackmail,’ pronounced Sloan succinctly, ‘especially if it’s followed by suicide, so I think we’ll see if we can track down all that money of Mrs Ann Beddowes’ next. Whether we are dealing with a suicide followed by a murder is something else that has to be considered.’

Crosby chewed his toast for a moment and then
said, ‘Ann Beddowes couldn’t have murdered Enid Osgathorp …’

‘No, Crosby,’ he agreed, letting out an exasperated sigh. ‘She couldn’t because she was already dead before Enid Osgathorp went walkabout. What I’m pretty sure about now is that someone else has done, though, and that one of the break-ins to her house was carried out by that someone else looking for the evidence that led to the blackmail.’