Stiff News (11 page)

‘All the men, anyway,' he responded absently.

*   *   *

The coming of Saturday morning had created something of a dilemma for Mrs Maisie Carruthers. On the one hand she itched to appear at breakfast and glean the very latest news. On the other hand her son, Ned, didn't work on Saturdays and he had promised to come to see her as soon as he could. And on one thing she was quite determined and that was to receive him whilst she was still in her bed. He need never know about her debut in the dining room the day before.

Oblique questioning of Hazel Finch when she brought up her breakfast tray had got Maisie little further than learning that the police had finally left the Manor after talking to the Judge and just before the evening meal.

‘I thought we'd never get him undressed,' lamented Hazel, ‘he was so all to pieces. I don't know what those two policemen had said to him, I'm sure. Not that you'll know the Judge, Mrs Carruthers, being as how you only arrived here yesterday.'

‘Known him for years,' said Mrs Carruthers laconically.

‘Well, I never,' said Hazel.

‘Fine figure of a man he was, too, then.' She gave a reminiscent smile. ‘In the war.'

‘Uniform always does something for a man, doesn't it?' said Hazel wistfully. ‘Now, that young policeman who came here yesterday. He'd have been the better for being in uniform.'

‘I dare say,' said Maisie, ‘though I'm not sure how he would have looked in a kilt.'

‘You don't think of policemen having knees, somehow,' said Hazel, ‘do you?'

‘Some of them wore shorts. That was when they were in North Africa,' said Mrs Carruthers, looking back in her mind's eye over half a century. She sighed. ‘A handsome lot they all were, too. The Judge, the Brigadier, Mr Bryant, even,' she added thoughtfully, ‘Captain Markyate and look at them now…'

‘Poor Captain Markyate. He was in ever such a state last night, too,' volunteered Hazel.

Maisie Carruthers sat up suddenly. ‘Had the police…'

‘It was Friday, you see.'

‘Friday?'

‘The grace,' said the care assistant. ‘We – they – always have the regimental grace said at dinner on Friday evenings.'

‘I think I remember it from the old days…' began Maisie. In fact the only grace she actually remembered had been the rude soldiery chanting ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, thank God for our grub' outside the cookhouse door.

‘The Judge usually says it but he wasn't up to it last night and so Captain Markyate had to step in.'

‘Why not the Brigadier?' she asked curiously. ‘Surely he's more senior?'

But this Hazel did not know.

‘And what,' Maisie led her on cunningly, ‘is going to happen now about Mrs Powell's funeral?'

‘Don't know,' confessed Hazel. ‘The undertaker – young Mr Morton – ever such a polite man he is, Mrs Carruthers, he was on the phone to Matron first thing saying it's never happened to his firm before and how sorry he is about it all.'

‘I'm sure he is,' said Maisie Carruthers astringently.

‘But he doesn't seem to know anything more than anyone else. I reckon,' she added with unconsciously cold-blooded realism, ‘he'll soon be out here anyway for Mrs Forbes.'

Mrs Carruthers sat up alertly. ‘Is she a member of the Escape Committee then?'

‘I wouldn't know about that,' said the care assistant incuriously, ‘but she's going downhill fast and you can't be sorry … especially when she's got nobody.'

‘Her husband went into the bag at Tobruk,' said Mrs Carruthers. ‘He was a prisoner of war for years.'

‘What about your husband?' asked Hazel tentatively.

‘He was lucky,' said the old lady. ‘He got out of the Tinchel at Wadi el Gebra with only a wounded knee. He limped for ever afterwards.'

The care assistant seized on something she understood. ‘That was a pity for him, wasn't it? Having to choose between shorts and a kilt with a bad knee. Now, don't you go and let your toast get cold…'

*   *   *

‘How can I help you?' Hilary Collins was the Deputy Curator of the Greatorex Museum, which was the reason why she and not the Curator himself was on duty in the museum on Saturday mornings.

Detective Inspector Sloan laid an object in a polythene bag on the desk before her.

The young woman regarded it with academic detachment and repeated her question.

Detective Constable Crosby stirred. ‘Well, for starters, miss, is it animal, vegetable or mineral?'

‘Mineral,' she said, shooting an odd look in his direction.

She, thought Sloan, would have been a good person to have had with them at the Manor the previous evening when they had tracked the green ornament down in the library there. This was not so much a room of books as a regimental museum. Mrs Powell's ornamental piece had joined a bizarre collection of trophies of war and blood sports.

‘Glazed composition, actually,' said Hilary Collins, taking off her glasses for a closer look.

‘I see,' said Sloan. This was why it hadn't really fitted in among the other memorabilia – which were chiefly fur and feather – of the Fearnshires. It had certainly looked out of place where it was – sitting between some ancient and very tattered bagpipes and a Scottish wild cat, itself a triumph of the art of taxidermy, which was stretched out along the top of a bookcase.

‘It's an amulet,' said Hilary Collins.

‘And what might an amulet be, miss?' he asked. His question owed nothing to his police training and everything to his childhood. The precept ‘If you don't ask, you'll never know' had been ground into him early on. The extra adjuration ‘Don't guess because that shows two things you don't know' had come at school later.

‘An ancient good-luck charm,' the Deputy Curator informed him.

Crosby uttered a sound that might have been a snort.

‘What else can you tell us about it, miss?' said Sloan before the constable could say anything about the quality of luck that had attended Gertie Powell. He himself would have liked to have known a little more about some of the other artefacts in the Manor library. Claymores, dirks and skean-dhus adorned the wall alongside the antlers of long-deceased stags and vulpine heads. After ten minutes in the room he had not been at all sure that former members of the Fearnshires had distinguished between war and blood sports. Under one pointed vulpine mask were the words ‘Foxhole – Wadi el Gebra, 1942'.

‘Anything that you can tell us, miss, would be helpful.'

‘It's not my field, I'm afraid,' warned the young woman, ‘so I can only give you very rough details…'

‘If you would,' said Sloan courteously. That it wasn't your province was something you weren't allowed to say in the Force. Even the War Duties Officer had to be able to direct traffic, arrest a burglar and hold a shield in a Riot Squad. So, in theory, did the Chief Constable, but he was less likely to be put to the test on account of usually being away sitting on a committee somewhere.

‘I would say the provenance was almost certainly Egyptian,' she began cautiously.

There had been no doubt about where the stuffed capercaillie standing in the library fireplace had come from. Even Sloan knew that such birds were peculiarly Scottish. Haughty even in death, its beady eyes had – like those of the subject of a portrait whose sitter had looked at the painter while he was working – seemed to follow the two policemen round the room.

‘And that it's meant to be symbolic of life,' continued Miss Collins studiously.

This time Crosby's snort was unmistakable.

‘Ah…' Sloan hadn't needed anyone to explain to him the symbolism of the old sporrans on display in the library. You didn't need to be an anthropologist to know what they and their fine tassels represented. What he'd have liked was a quick refreshing look at Sir James Frazer's book
The Golden Bough.
When he had been a young constable his old Station Sergeant had always kept a copy by him to remind him that quirks of human behaviour were not confined to the Charge Room of one police station in the county of Calleshire. ‘The expurgated version, lad,' he would say to a callow and uncomprehending Sloan. ‘Can't go too far. Not in here.'

‘It is also meant to stand for dominion,' expounded Hilary Collins, ‘although in precisely what way it achieves this, I cannot say.'

Detective Inspector Sloan made a careful note, while uttering a silent prayer that no one would want to take up with him the deep philosophical question of whether there was a link between luck and dominion. Psychiatrists could make something of anything. Or something of nothing. Or even everything of anything.

‘The ankh part there,' the Deputy Curator pointed to the outer part, ‘that's the loop above the horizontal bar – is an ansate cross…'

‘The bit like a lacrosse stick with knobs on, you mean?' said Crosby more colloquially.

‘… and is the symbol of life,' she said hortatively, ‘whilst this straight length up the middle here,' she indicated the inside of the loop, ‘is the sceptre set in it, which, as you will know, represents power and authority.'

Detective Constable Crosby, who had to make do with a rather grubby warrant card as the symbol of his power and authority, leaned over and took a better look.

‘And the date, miss?' asked Sloan. ‘How old is it?'

‘I'm no expert,' she said self-deprecatingly, ‘but I should say something in the region of three thousand years.'

Sloan stared at a piece of work crafted by the hand of man that had lasted longer than anything else he had ever known, his imagination soaring far away beyond the present and mundane. It was his detective constable who brought him back to earth.

‘What's it worth?' asked Crosby.

‘We're not allowed to give valuations,' said Miss Collins a little primly. ‘I think I might say, though, that it would be considered eminently collectable.'

Sloan gave an untroubled nod. For his money, Lionel Powell wouldn't have given it away if he had known it was valuable. Unless, of course, it had held unhappy associations. He'd seen that happen to plenty of things after a death.

The Deputy Curator pointed to the polythene bag. ‘If I might be allowed to feel the object, Inspector, I might just be able to tell you some more about it. It's clearly a very interesting piece…'

‘You've told us all we need to know, miss. Thank you,' said Sloan untruthfully.

As far as Detective Inspector Sloan was concerned, the one interesting thing about the artefact was something that they hadn't mentioned at the museum at all and on which the Deputy Curator was unlikely to be able to give an opinion, this being most definitely not her field. That was that the only fingerprints on it were those of the Matron and of Hazel Finch, who had borne it from the bedroom down to the library at the Manor after Mrs Powell had died.

Before that it had been wiped absolutely clean.

Chapter Twelve

And must give up their murmuring breath

Unlike Maisie Carruthers but with equally careful forethought, Walter Bryant had chosen not to receive his two daughters in the privacy of his own room at the Manor. Instead, he had elected the relatively public setting of the library. Picking your ground was an important military maxim.

Agnes, the elder, kissed him dutifully on the forehead.

He wriggled uncomfortably, mentally chalking up yet another shortcoming to life in a wheelchair. Most – but not all – kisses landed, perforce, on his balding pate.

‘Nice to see you, Da,' she said. ‘Mike's sorry he couldn't come.'

‘Didn't ask him,' growled her father.

‘Because it's a Saturday,' she said, ignoring, like her mother before her, what she didn't like, ‘he's taken the children to watch the Probables play the Possibles.'

Helen, the younger, sat down opposite him, and decided not to mention her husband. Her father had never liked him.

‘You're not ill, are you, Da, sending for us both like this?' she asked.

‘On the contrary,' he said, sitting up very straight. ‘I'm feeling fitter than I've done for a long time.'

His daughters exchanged glances.

‘Good,' said Helen nervously.

‘Much fitter,' he said.

‘Splendid,' said Agnes insincerely.

‘In fact that's got a lot to do with my news … my good news.'

‘Good news?' Helen fought to keep the quaver out of her voice. One of the reasons why her father had never liked her husband was his charming – but total – improvidence.

‘I've asked Miss Ritchie – Margot – to marry me,' he said. He paused for effect. ‘And she said she would.'

‘I'll bet she did,' exploded Agnes.

‘Oh, dear,' moaned Helen quietly. The only thing that had made her husband's charming improvidence bearable was the thought that one day – in due course, naturally – her half-share – she didn't grudge the other half-share to her sister – of her father's money would come to her. She did grudge it to Miss Margot Ritchie.

‘That woman –' began Agnes. But, catching sight of her father's expression, she thought better of carrying on.

‘But what can she offer you?' asked Helen.

‘A home,' said Walter Bryant simply.

‘But you like it here, Da,' wailed Agnes. Her Mike was a better provider than Helen's husband but there were the boys to be settled and – one day in the future – she was sure she didn't wish her father ill in any way – a few luxuries wouldn't have come amiss. ‘You've always said how you've liked the Manor.'

‘It's not the same as a home of one's own,' he said.

That silenced both women. Neither had ever offered him a home with them when their mother had died.

‘Besides, I think I'll be better off in Miss Ritchie's bungalow,' he said complacently.