Last Respects (15 page)

‘We'll pick up Ridgeford over there,' predicted Sloan, ‘and he can take us to have a look at this dinghy he's reported.'

They'd left Basil Jensen still making his way upstream.

‘To see if it's
Tugboat Annie
,' completed Crosby, engaging gear.

‘It would figure if it were.' He paused and then said quietly, ‘I think something else figures, too, Crosby.'

‘Sir?'

‘I think—only think, mind you—that we just may have an explanation for a body decomposed but not damaged.'

‘Sir?'

‘You think too,' adjured Sloan. The road between Collerton and Marby was so rural that not even Crosby could speed on it. He could use his mind instead.

‘The boathouse?' offered the detective-constable uncertainly.

‘The boathouse,' said Sloan with satisfaction. ‘It's early days yet, Crosby, but I think that we shall find that our chap—whoever he is—was parked in the water in the boathouse after he was killed.'

‘Why in the water, though, sir?'

‘The answer to that,' said Sloan briskly, ‘is something called mephitis.'

Crosby's answer to this was utterly predictable.

‘And I hope you never do meet it either,' said Sloan warmly, ‘because you won't like it when you do.'

‘Sir?'

‘Mephitis,' spelled out Sloan for him, ‘is the smell of the dead.'

Crosby assimilated this and then said, ‘So he was killed by a fall from a height first somewhere else …'

‘Somewhere else,' agreed Sloan at once.

‘But …'

‘But left in the water afterwards, Crosby.'

‘Why?'

Sloan waved a hand. ‘As I said before, graves for murder victims don't come easy.'

‘Yes, sir.' Crosby nodded. ‘Besides, he might have been killed on the spur of the moment and whoever did it needed time to think what to do with the body.'

It was surprising how the word ‘murderer' hung outside speech.

‘He might,' agreed Sloan. He hoped that it had been a hot-blooded affair. Murder had nothing to be said for it at any time but heat-of-the-moment murder was always less sinister than murder plotted and planned. ‘He would need time and opportunity to work out what to do.'

‘And then,' postulated Crosby, ‘the body was just pushed out into the water?'

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on … No, that wouldn't do. It wouldn't have been like that at all. It would have been the furtive opening of the boathouse doors during the hours of darkness, and after the furtive opening the silent shove of a dead body with a boat-hook while the River Calle searched out every cranny of the river bank and picked up its latest burden and bore it off towards the sea.

‘Unless I'm very much mistaken,' said Sloan austerely, ‘the body left the boathouse at night.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Probably,' he added, ‘in time to catch an ebb tide.' He would have to look at a tide table as soon as he got back to the police station but darkness and an ebb tide made sense.

‘Do we know when, sir?' asked Crosby, who was perforce driving at a speed to satisfy his passenger.

‘Some time before he was found,' said Sloan dourly, ‘but not too long before.'

That was a lay interpretation of what Dr Dabbe had said in longer words.

Long enough to pick up
Gammarus pulex
.

Long enough to become unrecognizable.

Long enough to be taken by the river to the sea.

Not so long as to be taken by that same sea and laid on Billy's Finger.

Not so long as to disintegrate completely.

That would have been something that an assassin might have hoped for: that the body would fall to pieces.

Or that it would reach the open sea and be seen no more.

‘Why did the boat go too?' Crosby was enquiring.

‘I think,' reasoned Sloan aloud, ‘that if a boat is found adrift and a body is found in the water simple policemen are meant to put two and two together and make five.'

That was something else a murderer might have hoped for.

‘It might have happened too,' said Crosby, ‘mightn't it? He'd only got to get a bit further out to sea and he wouldn't have been spotted at all.'

Sloan stared unseeingly out of the car window. ‘I wonder why he was put into the river exactly when he was.'

On such a full sea are we now afloat …

‘Well, you wouldn't choose a weekend, would you, sir?' said Crosby.

Never on Sundays?

‘The whole estuary's stuffed with sailing boats at the weekend,' continued the constable. ‘You should see it, sir.'

‘I probably will,' said Sloan pessimistically, ‘unless we've got all this cleared up by then.'

The detective-constable slowed down for a signpost. ‘This must be the Edsway to Marby road we're joining.'

‘Something,' said Sloan resolutely, ‘must have made it important for that body to be got out of that boathouse when it was.'

The car radio began to chatter while he was speaking. ‘The gentlemen from the press,' reported the girl at the microphone, ‘would like to know when Detective-Inspector Sloan will see them.'

‘Ten o'clock tomorrow morning,' responded Sloan with spirit, ‘and not a minute before.' He switched off at his end and turned to his companion. ‘And Crosby …'

‘Sir?'

‘While you're about it,' said Sloan, ‘you'd better find out about the niece. And what Mrs Mundill died from too. We can't be too careful.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Now, where did Ridgeford say this boat was?'

‘According to his report,' said Crosby, ‘it's beyond the Marby lifeboat station. To be exact, to the north of it. We're to ask for a man called Farebrother.'

CHAPTER 12

But hark! I hear the toll of a bell
.

Farebrother was quite happy to indicate the stray boat to the two policemen. And to tell them that Ridgeford was down on the harbour wall.

‘Fetch him,' said Sloan briefly to Crosby. He turned to Farebrother and showed him the copper barbary head. ‘Ever seen one of these before?'

‘Might have,' said the lifeboatman. ‘Might not.'

‘Lately?'

‘Might have,' said the lifeboatman again.

‘How lately?'

‘I don't hold with such things,' he said flatly.

‘No,' said Sloan.

‘'Tisn't right to disturb places where men lie.' Fare-brother stared out to sea.

Sloan said nothing.

‘Mark my words,' said Farebrother, ‘no good comes of it.'

Sloan nodded.

‘'Tisn't lucky either.'

‘Unlucky for some, anyway,' said Sloan obliquely, Bingo-style.

‘Didn't ought to be allowed, that's what I say.'

‘Quite so,' said Sloan.

‘They say there was the bones of a man's hand still clutching a candlestick down there.'

‘Down where?' said Sloan softly.

Farebrother's mouth set in an obstinate line. ‘I don't know where. No matter who asks me, be they as clever as you like.'

‘Who asked you?'

‘Never you mind that. I tell you I don't know anything …'

‘Neither do I,' said Sloan seriously, ‘but I intend to find out.'

‘That's your business,' said Farebrother ungraciously, ‘but I say things should be let alone with, that's what I say.' He turned on his heel and crunched off over the shingle.

Crosby came back with Ridgeford while Sloan was still examining the old fishing-boat. Sloan pointed to Farebrother's retreating back. ‘The Old Man and the Sea,' he said neatly to the two constables. They both looked blank. He changed his tone. ‘This bell, Ridgeford …'

‘Taken, sir, from a farm up on the Cat's Back,' said Ridgeford. ‘Or so the two boys who took it into Mother Hopton's say. I don't think they were having me on but you never can tell.' Ridgeford had learned some things already. ‘Not with boys.'

‘Not with boys,' agreed Sloan.

‘The farmer's called Manton,' said Ridgeford. ‘Alec Manton of Lea Farm.'

‘Do you know him?'

Ridgeford shook his head. ‘Not to say know. I've heard of him, that's all, sir.'

‘Heard what?'

‘Nothing against.'

Sloan nodded. ‘Right, then you can stay in the background. Crosby, you're coming with me to Manton's farm. Now, Ridgeford, whereabouts exactly did you say this sheep fank was that the boys told you about?'

Few farmers can have been fortunate enough to see as much of their farm laid out in front of them as did Alec Manton. The rising headland was almost entirely given over to sheep and the fields were patterned with the casual regularity of patchwork. Because of the rise in the land the farmland and its stock were both easily visible. The farmhouse, though, was nestled into the low ground before the headland proper began, sheltered alike from sea and wind. It was in the process of being restored and extended. Sloan noticed a discreet grey and white board proclaiming that Frank Mundill was the architect: and made a note.

Alec Manton was out, his wife told them. She was a plump, calm woman, undismayed by the presence of two police officers at the farm. Was it about warble fly?

‘Not exactly,' temporized Sloan, explaining that he would nevertheless like to look at the sheepfold on the hill.

‘Where they dip?' said Mrs Manton intelligently. ‘Of course. You go on up and I'll tell my husband to come along when he comes home. He shouldn't be long.'

In the event they didn't get as far as the sheep fank before the farmer himself caught up with them.

‘Routine investigations,' said Sloan mendaciously.

‘Oh?' said Manton warily. He was tallish with brown hair.

‘We've had a report that something might have been stolen from the farm.'

‘Have you?' said Alec Manton. He was a man who looked as if he packed a lot of energy. He looked Sloan up and down. ‘Can't say that we've missed anything.'

‘No?' said Sloan.

‘What sort of thing?'

‘A ship's bell.'

‘From my farm?' Alec Manton's face was quite expressionless.

‘Boys,' said Sloan sedulously. ‘They said it came from where you keep your sheep.'

‘Did they?' said Manton tightly. ‘Then we'd better go and see, hadn't we? This way.'

Their goal was several fields away, set in a faint hollow in the land, and built against the wind. In front of the little bothy was a sheep-dipping tank. Set between crush pen and drafting pen, it was full of murky water. Alec Manton led the way into the windowless building and looked round in the semi-darkness. Sloan and Crosby followed on his heels. There was nothing to see save bare walls and even barer earth. The place, though, did show every sign of having been occupied by sheep at some time. Sloan looked carefully at the floor. It had been pounded by countless hooves to the consistency of concrete.

‘This bell,' began Sloan.

‘That you say was found …' said Manton.

‘In police possession,' said Sloan mildly.

‘Ah.'

‘Pending enquiries.'

‘I see.'

‘Of course,' said Sloan largely, ‘the boys may have been having us on.'

‘Of course.'

‘You know what boys are.'

‘Only too well,' said Manton heartily.

‘We'll have to get on to them again,' said Sloan, ‘and see if we can get any nearer the truth, whatever that may be.'

‘Of course,' said the farmer quickly. ‘Did they—er—take anything else, do you know?'

‘Not that we know about,' said Sloan blandly. ‘Would there have been anything else in there for them to steal?'

Alec Manton waved an arm. ‘You've seen it for yourself, haven't you? Give or take a sheep or two from time to time, it looks pretty empty to me.'

‘Of course,' said Sloan casually, ‘the owner of this bell may turn up to claim it.'

‘That would certainly simplify matters,' agreed the farmer. ‘But in the meantime …'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘It's quite safe in police custody?'

‘Quite safe,' Sloan assured him.

‘Crosby!' barked Sloan.

‘Sir?'

‘What was odd about all that?'

‘Don't know, sir.'

‘Think, man. Think.'

‘The place was empty.'

‘Of course it was empty,' said Sloan with asperity. ‘The bell must have been tucked away in the corner when those two boys found it. Only boys would have looked there …'

Murderers who thought that they had hidden their victims well reckoned without the natural curiosity of the average boy at their peril. Many a well-covered thicket had been penetrated by a boy for no good reason.

‘Yes, sir,' said Crosby.

‘What wasn't empty, Crosby?'

Crosby thought for a long moment. ‘Sir?'

‘What was full, Crosby?'

‘Only the sheep-dipping thing.'

‘Exactly,' breathed Sloan. ‘Do you know what month it is, Crosby?'

‘June, sir,' said Crosby stolidly.

‘You don't, said Sloan softly, ‘dip sheep in Calleshire in June.'

‘Left over from when you did, then,' suggested Crosby.

‘No,' said Sloan.

‘No?'

‘You dip sheep a month after shearing. Manton's sheep weren't shorn,' said Sloan. Policemen, even town police-men, knew all about the dipping of sheep and its regulations. ‘Besides, you wouldn't leave your sheep dip full without a good reason. It's dangerous stuff.'

‘What sort of reason?' said Crosby.

‘If,' said Sloan, ‘you have been conducting a secret rescue of the parts of an old East Indiaman you acquire items which have been under water for years.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Taking them out of the water causes them to dry up and disintegrate. Mr Jensen at the Museum said so.'