Stiff News (18 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Your heads must come
To the cold tomb

‘I know, Sloan, that criminology is not considered by some academics to be one of the exact sciences,' Superintendent Leeyes sounded at his most peppery, ‘but I should appreciate a more coherent account of precisely what is going on at the Manor at Almstone.'

Detective Inspector Sloan took a deep breath. ‘And I should like to be in a position to be able to give it to you, sir.'

‘Is it simply a case of one or more unfortunates going to their doom,' he asked nastily, ‘or are things being done wholesale out there now?'

‘That I can't say yet, sir. All I can say is that at least eight people have died at the Manor in the last three years.'

‘And we know the doctor voiced his suspicions,' Leeyes reminded him, ‘about one of those deaths.'

‘Unconfirmed, though, by the pathologist at postmortem,' countered Sloan.

‘And,' said Leeyes, undeterred, ‘another one who raised her own doubts. In writing.'

‘Confirmed as baseless at post-mortem,' said Sloan steadily.

‘And…?'

‘And this morning two men were injured and one woman is missing.'

‘That, Sloan, is precisely what I meant by wholesale.'

‘Whether those injuries were sustained by accident or intent, sir,' Sloan ploughed on, ‘we are not as yet in a position to say.'

Detective Constable Crosby wasn't actually in a position to say anything. He was in the kitchen of the Manor having his scratches attended to by the Matron. Walter Bryant and Hamish MacIver had been given tea and sympathy and now were resting in their rooms. Of Mrs Morag McBeath there was still no sign.

Walter Bryant was dazed and bruised and might or might not have sprained his right wrist. The Brigadier was both shaken and stirred but not apparently much injured. He had gone to his room under protest. What was significant was that Crosby had reported that neither man had said anything at all – to each other or to anyone else – after the accident.

‘Not natural, sir, if you ask me,' he'd said.

‘Early training,' divined Sloan.

Miss Ritchie had been – with some difficulty – dissuaded by Detective Inspector Sloan from following Walter Bryant to his room, on the grounds that she was in a position materially to assist the police with their enquiries.

That this was largely a matter of wishful thinking on Sloan's part only emerged after he had conversed with her.

Much more germane to the event had been a loose nut on the brake cable of Walter Bryant's wheelchair.

‘Loose or loosened?' The Superintendent had swooped like the raptor he was.

‘Somewhat less than finger tight,' said Sloan with impersonal accuracy. ‘The forensic vehicle examiners are on their way out here now.' It was usually his friend Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division who sought their expertise, not him.

‘I dare say, Sloan, that it's the first time they've been called out to an electric wheelchair.'

‘Very probably, sir.' He paused. ‘There are other complications, I'm afraid.'

‘Well?'

‘Just before the man in the wheelchair – Walter Bryant – set off down the path to the car park, Crosby thought he saw him talking to another man.'

‘He either did or he didn't,' said Leeyes.

‘He did,' capitulated Sloan. ‘But he wasn't sure who it was at that distance.'

The Superintendent asked with elaborate patience whom Crosby had thought it had been then.

‘Lionel Powell,' said Detective Inspector Sloan reluctantly.

‘Well, well,' said Leeyes. ‘The son of the most recently deceased of your cohort.'

‘Yes, sir.' Sloan said carefully ‘I have been told by the Matron here that he had been in touch with the Manor by telephone this morning in an attempt to recover the amulet … ornament which had belonged to his late mother.' Sloan could almost hear his superior officer rubbing his hands together at this. He forged on. ‘In the first instance, I am told, he had presented it to the Manor in her memory.'

‘The son, eh…' Leeyes always preached that murder was first and foremost a family affair.

‘Then today he discovered that his mother had indicated that she wished it given to someone else there.'

‘Ha! Who?'

‘Captain Peter Markyate.'

‘It sounds to me, Sloan,' sniffed Leeyes, ‘that what you should have had before you went out to that Manor is a thorough grounding in mid-fifteenth-century Italian politics.'

Detective Inspector Sloan had no difficulty in placing that sentiment. It came straight from an evening course that the Superintendent had once attended on ‘Machiavelli – The Man and The Prince'. The study had been memorable in that it was one of the very few where the tutor and the Superintendent had both stayed the course. At the police station they had said it just demonstrated what they'd said all along: that Leeyes had a natural affinity with old Nick – and that the tutor had been a hero.

The thought of internecine complications immediately brought Sloan to something else: ‘On the other hand, sir…'

‘Yes?'

‘One of the victims of this latest…' Sloan searched his mind for a word without overtones and, like many another public servant before him, settled on one that could mean anything at all ‘… incident … had created potential problems with his two married daughters over his own remarriage.'

Leeyes pounced. ‘Disinheritance?'

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.'

‘Then find out, man.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘That all, Sloan?'

Sloan hesitated. ‘Nearly, sir.'

‘Well?'

‘After the – er – incident, Crosby found something lying on the ground just where the wheelchair had hit the Brigadier.'

‘And did he recognize it this time?' enquired Superintendent Leeyes.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘The distance wasn't too much for him, then, I take it?' he asked sarcastically.

‘No, sir.' Detective Inspector Sloan coughed. ‘It wasn't exactly difficult to identify either. It was the missing dirk.'

*   *   *

The Matron was prepared to swear to this being the weapon taken from the library. ‘No doubt about it, Inspector.'

She had not, however, seen Lionel Powell at the Manor before or since the accident.

‘Just look at that lovely carved handle, Inspector,' she said. ‘It must be an antique.'

‘Don't touch it,' adjured Sloan quickly. He himself held out little hope that there would be any fingerprints on the dirk, but he was determined that the detective decencies should be maintained in front of strangers – especially professional ones.

The Matron, her hands full of gauze and bandages, had showed no inclination to touch anything.

‘Get a general call out for Lionel Powell, Crosby, as well as Morag McBeath,' Sloan instructed the constable wearily. ‘He won't get far. And, Matron, can we have the names and addresses of Walter Bryant's two daughters?'

‘Certainly, Inspector. I'll go and get them for you now.' She tied the last bandage neatly round Crosby's elbow, saying before she left the room, ‘You're going to have a big bruise there tomorrow, Constable, I'm afraid.'

Detective Constable Crosby pulled out his pocket radio and then rested his injured elbow gingerly on the kitchen table. ‘I'm hungry,' he said as soon as he had transmitted his message.

‘The cook seems to have gone,' said Sloan. It was only one of the many disappointments crowding in on him now. ‘She's not here, anyway.'

‘What are we going to do then, sir? Toss for it?'

‘For what?'

‘Which one of those two old boys it was who had that knife.'

‘Three.'

‘Three?'

‘You're forgetting the man on the terrace. He could have dropped it in the wheelchair.'

The constable leaned over and squinted at the dirk again. ‘It doesn't looked as if it's been used lately but you never can tell.'

‘No,' agreed Sloan. ‘Not just by looking.' He was conscious of a great wish to find out more without invoking the specialists. Detection shouldn't be just a matter of assembling reports from other professionals, each expert only in their own field, none interested in the whole picture. Detection should, instead, be a question of studying the evidence and going on from there to reach a logical conclusion – and preferably the only possible correct conclusion at that.

And then proving it.

It didn't look as if this was going to happen in this case – if there was a case. He didn't even know that for certain yet. For all he knew, Gertrude Powell might have died from natural causes, just as Maude Chalmers-Hyde had been demonstrated to have done. Just as the doctors said she had …

‘And we still don't know for sure who that dagger thing was meant for either, sir,' said Crosby insouciantly. ‘Do we?'

‘I think we might have an educated guess,' said Sloan absently, his mind elsewhere.

‘The old girl who's gone missing?'

‘I think she might have thought so,' murmured Sloan, ‘which is what matters.' Now he came to think about it, none of the textbooks on the investigation of homicide that he had studied ever mentioned lunch. He decided that it was a serious omission.

‘Presence of mind and absence of body,' said the constable. ‘Can't beat it, can you, if it's safety you're looking for?'

‘Thinking she was in danger is the best reason for her taking off,' agreed Sloan, ‘although not the only one, of course.'

Detective Constable Crosby carefully adjusted his bad elbow on the table. ‘If she is safe, that is.'

That was Detective Inspector Sloan's greatest worry. As far as he was concerned the first principle of first aid, ‘Remove the patient from danger or the danger from the patient', applied to all police work, too. There was a quite different convention – and one which didn't apply to police work. He was beginning to wish now that it did. It was known as the ‘Alan Smithie'. If a film director was given work on a second-rate production with which he did not wish his name – and therefore his loss of reputation – to be associated, he was allowed to use instead the dud name of Alan Smithie.

You couldn't do that in the Criminal Investigation Department of F Division of the Calleshire Force. There was no escape from an unlucky detective officer being associated with a dud case in the police. It hung round your neck like an albatross for ever.

‘I'm hungry, sir,' said Crosby again.

‘Then,' said Sloan crisply, ‘you can start thinking about what worried Mrs McBeath so much that she decided to leave.'

‘Probably the same thing that frightened Walter Bryant into wanting to marry and leave the Manor…' said Crosby.

They were interrupted by the return of Lisa Haines. She bustled in and went straight to one of the ovens. A tantalizing smell of chicken pie greeted the two men.

‘Oh, good,' the cook said with relief. ‘I was afraid it might have got over-cooked … feeding poor Mrs Forbes is such a slow business, but Hazel had to go down to the village for the Judge. Seeing as how she wasn't wanted any more to help look for the other poor lady…'

‘Say that again,' said Sloan urgently.

‘About poor Mrs Forbes? She's quite helpless and—'

‘About Hazel,' thundered Sloan.

‘The Judge asked her to take his torch down to the shop in the village.'

Detective Inspector Sloan was on his feet in an instant. ‘Come along, Crosby. Let's get going … quickly.'

‘But, sir,' protested the constable, ‘the chicken pie…'

He was talking to thin air. In three quick strides Detective Inspector Sloan had left the kitchen and was on his way to the front door.

They overtook the care assistant walking along the road down to Almstone.

‘Oh, Inspector, nothing else awful's happened has it?' Hazel Finch stopped in her tracks as soon as she saw the police car.

‘Not yet,' said Sloan grimly.

‘What's the matter then?'

‘Nothing,' said Sloan. ‘We'd just like a quick look at the Judge's torch.'

‘He said it wasn't working, that's all,' said the bewildered girl. ‘He wanted me to leave it at the shop to get some new batteries fitted.'

‘Not quite all, I think,' said Sloan, taking it from her and unscrewing the barrel. He knocked out two batteries. Then he slid his fingers into the empty casing and eased out a small sheet of paper. ‘I think this is what everyone's been looking for.'

Detective Constable Crosby so far forgot his bruised shoulder as to bend over to read what was written on the paper. He was patently disappointed at what he saw.

‘It's just a list of the names of the people who've died here, sir,' he protested. ‘That's all. And we've got a copy of them, anyway.'

‘A list of only some of the names, Crosby,' pointed out Sloan gently. ‘Not all of them.'

The detective constable took another look at the list and frowned. ‘All right, then, sir. Six on here, eight on our list.'

‘Can you remember who's missing?'

‘Oh, I get you, sir.' He peered at the names. ‘The two who aren't here, you mean?'

‘I do,' said Sloan warmly.

Crosby screwed up his face in recollection. ‘Mrs Kennedy and General Lionel MacFarlane,' he said eventually.

‘That's right,' nodded Hazel Finch. ‘Those two – they didn't die at the Manor. The General – he was knocked down by a van in Calleford last year, poor man. Killed outright.'

‘And Mrs Kennedy?'

The girl furrowed her brow. ‘She died in London after she had a fall up there. Ever so sad, it was. Gone up to her daughter's for Christmas, she had, and then that had to go and happen. A shame, wasn't it?'

Chapter Nineteen