Some Die Eloquent (25 page)

‘That's what Wansdyke thought,' reported Sloan. The greatest good of the greatest number hadn't suited George Wansdyke at all. ‘He lost out in the argument with Darnley but he did manage to get him to agree to defer a public announcement until Darnley got back from the States.'

‘His death warrant.'

‘Everything was to stay under wraps until then.'

Leeyes grunted. ‘Breathing space.'

‘He managed that side of things quite well.'

‘Businesses,' said Leeyes largely, ‘are used to trade secrets.'

‘Wansdyke apparently made quite a thing of insisting that Malcolm Darnley himself should be the one to do the announcing because of his connections with the conservation lobby.'

‘Conservation lobby!' Leeyes ground his teeth. ‘The man won't even let us cut off a branch, let alone a tree.'

‘Wansdyke made out that Darnley would make the better splash in the press and so forth.' Sloan was on sure ground here. Twice he'd seen Bill Benfleet, the firm's Public Relations man, closeted with a strangely reluctant Wansdyke, trying to get him to pass a press release for publication. ‘No wonder Wansdyke hadn't wanted to say too much.'

‘Knowing all the time,' said the Superintendent intelligently, ‘that there wasn't going to be any disclosing of trade secrets by anybody.'

‘Not if George Wansdyke could help it,' said Sloan, ‘because he'd gone and sold the process to a big manufacturer while Darnley was away.'

Leeyes whistled. ‘He had, had he?'

‘He was in sole charge while Darnley was abroad,' said Sloan. ‘There was no problem.'

‘Don't tell me,' said Leeyes acidly, ‘that he didn't know what to do with the money.'

‘In a way,' replied Sloan.
Embarras de richesse
was quite often a problem in the criminal world.

‘If Darnley was abroad why couldn't Wansdyke have just paid it into the firm's account – he couldn't very well pretend it wasn't the firm's secret, could he?'

‘No, it was the firm's secret all right. The people who bought it would have checked on that. Wansdyke couldn't pay it into the firm's account straightaway because Darnley got weekly sales figures while he was abroad and anyway anyone in the firm might have mentioned it to him in a letter …' That he also got a cash-flow chart Sloan did not mention. He was a policeman, not an accountant.

‘What was wrong with using his own account in the meantime, then?'

‘He shares it with his wife.'

Leeyes rolled his eyes at man's monumental folly.

‘He could have opened a special account,' said Sloan, who had been thinking about this, ‘but that has the definite look of misappropriation. He needed this transaction to seem quite above board.'

‘Clean hands.'

‘Exactly.'

‘With Darnley dead, though,' Leeyes reminded him.

‘And Beatrice too,' said Sloan. ‘She knew about the discovery, you see. She spent her weekends in the lab by courtesy of Darnley and she knew enough chemistry to understand what had been discovered.' He'd told her about their success.'

‘So with Darnley and Beatrice both dead …'

‘And the money back in the firm's account as soon as possible after that,' said Sloan.

‘Everything neat and tidy for the auditors – that's always important in fraud.' The Superintendent leaned back. ‘Do you know, Sloan, that you can nearly always put people who commit fraud into open prisons? Funny that they should be that sort of trustworthy, isn't it?'

Sloan kept a grip on his theme. ‘Wansdyke had already begun to write to the firm he'd sold it to enquiring why he hadn't had their cheque.'

‘Window-dressing,' said Leeyes succinctly.

‘They would say that they'd sent it to the bank as instructed, and the bank would say they'd been given the right name and account number for Miss B.G. Wansdyke.'

‘And?'

‘George Wansdyke would say right name – B.G. Wansdyke – he's Bertram George himself, remember – but wrong account number. The money belongs to Wansdyke and Darnley and he can prove quite easily that it does. It was safe enough, of course, in Beatrice's account while he was sole executor.'

‘Everyone,' said Leeyes drily, ‘says “Oops, sorry” and blames the typist. And everything in the garden's lovely again.'

‘Beatrice had to die too because of what she knew. He was just taking advantage of the fact.' Sloan coughed. ‘We haven't heard George Wansdyke's side of things yet, sir.'

‘He's not only not speaking to the police –' Leeyes poked at a message sheet on his desk – ‘he won't see his wife either.'

Sloan clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Wife! Good Lord, where's the nearest florist?'

‘Ah, yes,' said Superintendent Leeyes pompously, ‘I hear that Wansdyke and Darnley aren't the only ones with a new product announcement, are they?'

‘No, sir.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan had someone else to appease besides Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division.

He said it with flowers at the bedside each day.

Margaret Sloan had a lot of visitors. ‘They're going to get married after Briony's taken her Final State,' she informed him one day.

‘Who is … are?'

‘Dr Elspin and Briony Petforth.' She smiled dreamily. ‘He's really very nice.'

‘For a doctor,' Sloan reminded her.

‘That will give them a little time to save up.' Margaret Sloan paused. ‘She still gets her aunt's house, doesn't she?'

‘Oh yes,' said Sloan drily. ‘Everything except the quarter of a million pounds goes just where Miss Wansdyke willed it. She only lost out on one thing she wanted.'

‘What was that?'

‘Her wish to be cremated.' Sloan shifted uncomfortably. Visitors' chairs in hospitals were not designed for long use. ‘Cremation means two doctors and a lot more questions all round. Wansdyke didn't want that. He wanted a nice quick death certificate.'

‘He did it, then? Changed the insulin for water?'

‘Oh yes,' said Sloan. ‘As nice a way to murder as you can find.'

‘Nice?' she shuddered.

‘Nice legally,' he said. That meant the police didn't like it but the lawyers did. ‘The Superintendent thinks they'll have to go for malice aforethought in a big way.'

Margaret Sloan smoothed the edge of the sheet. ‘And the dog?'

‘He killed that too. He had a key, remember. He didn't want an Airedale barking when Beatrice drifted off into her coma and it couldn't get out. Or if anyone called. Wansdyke had invited Briony to his house on Sunday, by the way.'

‘To make sure she didn't call on her aunt?'

‘That's right. They could have saved her, you know, almost up until the end.'

Margaret Sloan shuddered again.

Detective-Inspector Sloan recalled himself away from one sort of duty and back to another. ‘How's my son and heir?'

On his next visit she asked him about Mrs Pauline Wansdyke.

‘Gone back to mother.'

‘Poor woman.'

‘She always thought she'd married beneath her,' said Sloan, who had had to endure quite a lot of Mrs Pauline Wansdyke lately.

‘It never does to think that,' said Margaret Sloan sagaciously.

‘All the other Hartley-Powells said so too.'

‘That only makes it worse.'

‘They've traced the explosive that was under the car,' he said soberly.

She shivered. ‘To George Wansdyke?'

‘Without a shadow of doubt.'

Another day she had news of Nicholas Petforth for him gleaned from his sister, Briony.

‘He's very sorry about it all,' Margaret Sloan began.

Sloan grunted. He hadn't a lot of time for young men who hit policemen and said so now with some vigour. ‘And without a reason,' he added pointedly.

‘When he heard the police were asking after him,' Margaret Sloan repeated what an anxious Briony had told her, ‘he lost his nerve and left the squat and his job.'

‘Actions speak louder than words,' observed Sloan.

‘And of course as soon as George Wansdyke knew that somebody was suspicious about something he stirred things up as much as he could in that quarter.'

‘He certainly got Briony worried,' conceded Sloan.

‘And Nicholas through her,' said his wife. She paused and adjusted a flower in the vase on her locker. ‘He realizes now,' said Margaret Sloan, surrogate apologetic for Briony Petforth, ‘that he was only running away.'

‘Why?'

She embarked on a delicate second-hand explanation. ‘There were – er – things going on at the squat that he – er – knew about.'

‘But didn't want to be asked about.'

‘They were his friends.' She sketched a gesture in the air. ‘They have their loyalties in those places too.'

‘Luston Division raided it last night,' said Sloan complacently.

‘Briony will be pleased,' beamed Mrs Sloan. ‘That means Nicholas is in the clear, doesn't it? He wasn't really part of …' She stopped.

‘What was going on?' Sloan finished for her kindly.

‘Malcolm Darnley's taking him into the firm.'

‘There's more than one sort of sentence in this world,' he said, amused.

‘He says if they send Nicholas to prison he can use his time learning about plastics.'

‘Condemned to conformity at last.' Sloan grinned. ‘Prison for assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty would rate more highly at the Luston squat than a job as an executive.'

‘Malcolm Darnley says,' she repeated with a matching twinkle in her eye, ‘that with so much extra capital in the firm they can afford a few mistakes by a new boy.'

‘Crosby's head's healing nicely,' he said not entirely inconsequentially. ‘He'll make the christening without a bandage.'

To no one's surprise Inspector Harpe was not as sanguine as everyone else.

‘Dr Peter McCavity's inheritance,' he announced in his usual melancholy way, ‘is going to go the same way as his income.'

‘Down his throat?' supplied Sloan obligingly. ‘The way of all flesh was to the kitchen.'

‘And paying for the damage.'

‘It will have been George Wansdyke who rang in and reported that McCavity hit that bollard in Ridley Road,' said Sloan. Even the outer pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were fitting in now. ‘On the Friday afternoon.'

‘Bit of an opportunist, your chap, wasn't he?' said Harpe.

‘Murderers usually are,' said Sloan. ‘He must have seen McCavity's car around when he was at the house killing the dog.'

‘There's never any knowing what a drunken doctor will get up to,' said Happy Harry censoriously. The Traffic man had always been convinced that alcohol was the devil in solution. ‘If Wansdyke was looking around for someone to take the blame if there was trouble …'

‘No wonder old Dr Paston had his worries,' mused Sloan. ‘Got a lot on his mind, I dare say.'

‘McCavity went the wrong way round the station roundabout last night,' said Harpe, who was nothing if not single-minded. ‘Mark my words, Sloan, that young man's next traffic violation will be his last as a licensed driver …'

‘Sloan …' Superintendent Leeyes pushed the case papers back across the desk.

‘Sir?'

‘I don't like loose ends.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Untidy.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘There's something we haven't done.'

‘Is there, sir?' Sloan allowed himself the luxury of a yawn. He felt as if he hadn't stopped doing things for days and nights. ‘What's that?'

‘Put the coroner right.'

Sloan stiffened.

‘You might just step round,' said Leeyes civilly, ‘and tell him we were right and he was wrong. With my compliments, of course.'

About the Author

Catherine Aird is the author of more than twenty volumes of detective mysteries and three collections of short stories. Most of her fiction features Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and Detective Constable W. E. Crosby. Aird holds an honorary master's degree from the University of Kent and was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to the Girl Guide Association. She lives in a village in East Kent, England.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1979 by Catherine Aird

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1067-2

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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