Amendment of Life Read online

  ‘With the intention that we look for it, do you suppose?’ growled Leeyes.

  ‘Could be,’ Sloan said again. ‘We’re still searching the maze and I’ve got more men going over the house now. And a woman.’

  ‘Women sometimes notice things a man wouldn’t,’ conceded the Superintendent unexpectedly. It was rumoured at the police station that the Superintendent’s wife noticed everything. And forgave nothing.

  ‘And’, plodded on his subordinate, ‘forensic are taking a very good look at the soles of the deceased’s sandals…’

  ‘For signs of gravel from the maze, I take it?’ grunted Leeyes. ‘And from anywhere else, of course. The hospital car park, for instance…’

  ‘For any indication that any gravel in the sandals was pressed into the soles other than by someone of the weight of the deceased, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t like having the wool pulled over his eyes any more than did the next man – the next policeman, anyway – and he wasn’t going to let it happen now if he could help it.

  ‘I think I get your drift,’ grunted Leeyes, scribbling something on a piece of paper on his desk. He gave a cynical chuckle. ‘Did she walk or was she pushed? That’s it, isn’t it? Anything else?’

  ‘Forensic are examining both the big industrial dustbins on site, too—’

  ‘Inside and out, I hope, Sloan.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he sighed, ‘although probably any deeper marks than usual made by their wheels have been lost by now.’

  ‘On the supposition that that was how the body reached the centre of the maze?’

  ‘It’s one option we’re exploring.’ He hesitated. ‘There are a number of others.’

  The Superintendent said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s the time-frame that’s so interesting.’ Sloan squinted down at his notebook. ‘Miss Pedlinge checked as usual—’

  ‘That’s the old bird with everything still on a war footing, isn’t it?’ interrupted Leeyes.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He began again. ‘Miss Pedlinge checked,’ he stopped at once and corrected himself. He couldn’t – shouldn’t take anything about that old lady for granted – especially if her great-nephew could be in the frame. ‘Or, rather, Miss Pedlinge says that she checked as usual that there was no one in the maze and gave the signal to the gate at half-past five so that they could lock up and go. That gate had been closed to all newcomers at half-past four as usual.’

  ‘And the back gate?’ pounced Leeyes.

  ‘Closed to vehicles at five o’clock and to pedestrians just before half-past nine by the carer, Milly Smithers, as she always did.’

  ‘And it was dark when?’

  ‘Just after seven, sir.’

  The Superintendent leaned back in his chair. ‘So either this Margaret Collins walked in after dark and found her way to the bull in the middle…’ He stopped. ‘Do you suppose, Sloan, that’s why the centre of a target is called the bull’s eye?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan’s personal interaction with Greek myths and legends had been limited to removing young men and maidens from Berebury’s own statue of Eros every May Day.

  ‘Either, then, Sloan,’ he pronounced hortatively, ‘the deceased got there under her own steam without being spotted or somebody got to the same place with her body in a bin.’

  ‘But both in the dark.’ As far as Sloan was concerned that went for him, too. ‘And, according to Dr Dabbe, her face was slightly injured after death, probably when her head fell forward on the stone.’

  ‘Which it wouldn’t have done,’ pronounced the Superintendent ineluctably, ‘if she had lain down carefully herself.’

  ‘That, sir,’ sighed Sloan, ‘is exactly how far we’ve got at the moment.’

  Waving him away with a hand, the Superintendent said loftily, ‘Then, Sloan, it’s what the psychologists describe as “a problem in resolution”. Let me know how you get on.’

  * * *

  Mrs Amanda Pedlinge waved Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby into a pair of chairs which both looked uncomfortable and were. The address of the family – the Old Rectory at Nether Hoystings – was about the only thing in the room that could be described as other than very up to date. Everything else in sight about the place was ultramodern and minimalist. Unfortunately, decided Sloan, lowering himself carefully on to one, that included the chairs.

  And, to a policeman, it all spelled money.

  ‘Well, and what’s my husband been up to now?’ she asked the policemen.

  ‘Nothing, madam, as far as we know,’ said Sloan. Mrs Pedlinge certainly fitted the decor well: tall, thin and dressed with a classic plainness that betokened a good eye for clothes – and how to wear them. He didn’t mind about her being so stick thin, but he would have preferred the chairs to have been more substantial. ‘We just need a little assistance with our enquiries, that’s all.’

  Amanda Pedlinge pushed some strands of ash-blonde hair away from her eyes and arranged herself carefully on another chair, crossing one elegant leg over the other. ‘That’s what they always say, isn’t it, Inspector?’

  ‘Only in bad films,’ said Detective Constable Crosby before Sloan could speak.

  ‘What we would like to know is where Mr Pedlinge was yesterday evening,’ said Sloan, deciding circumlocution would not be the right approach with this manifestly disgruntled young woman, ‘after he left Aumerle Court.’

  ‘So would I,’ Mrs Pedlinge said with some vigour.

  ‘Ah.’ Sloan began to wonder if she might be as uncomfortable to live with as one of her chairs.

  ‘Dinner was quite spoilt by the time he came home,’ she said petulantly. ‘And I’d put the children to bed early so that we could have a good long talk.’

  ‘So he wasn’t here?’ said Sloan, leaving aside for the time being the question of what the talk might have been going to be about.

  ‘He most certainly was not,’ said Mrs Pedlinge. ‘And if he says he was, then he’s lying.’

  ‘That means you were here yourself, then, I take it,’ said Sloan smoothly.

  The ash-blonde hair shook with indignation. ‘I’m here all the time,’ she said. ‘That’s the trouble. It’s London and work all week and Aumerle Court with that old armchair warrior every Sunday for him and nothing for me any of the time except small children and you know what that’s like.’

  ‘There’s Satur—’ began Crosby, who hadn’t taken his eyes off the pair of long legs waving ever so gently in front of him and who had no concept of the trials and tribulations of being corralled with small children.

  ‘And where do you suppose he was yesterday evening then, madam?’ asked Sloan quickly, trying hard to project sympathy with matrimonial absences. Crosby was so mesmerized by a foot from which a fashionable shoe was now dangling that – unlike Bevis Pedlinge – he would probably have to be prised away from the house.

  ‘Don’t ask me, Inspector,’ she snapped, the movement of the loose shoe taking on a new rhythm. ‘Ask him.’

  ‘I will, madam, I will.’ Perhaps ‘shoe’ was too strong a word for the stylish leather contrivance that was swinging from Amanda Pedlinge’s shapely ankle: he decided that ‘foot ornament’ described it better.

  ‘And when you get an answer from him – if you do – tell me and I’ll tell my solicitors.’

  ‘You have reason to suppose that this would be of interest to them?’ Detective Inspector Sloan automatically registered the fact that she spoke of her solicitors in the plural. People who did that usually referred to their bankers in the plural, too, and that meant money.

  ‘Oh, yes, Inspector,’ she said with a shrill laugh, ‘they’ll be interested all right and so will I.’

  ‘But you yourself have no suggestions to make as to his whereabouts?’ he asked patiently. ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Me?’ she laughed again. ‘He doesn’t tell me anything, Inspector. It’s always the same story – that it’s just business that�
��s keeping him wherever he is and when – and if it’s not that, then it’s this wretched production that they’re putting on at Aumerle Court.’

  ‘Tell me more…’

  She needed no encouragement. ‘The history of the Pedlinge family in sound and light. You know, they throw pictures all over the place with laser beams and record the dialogue to go with it. We’ve got a neighbour who’s into that sort of thing professionally – David Collins of Double Felix. Jeremy Prosser put Bevis on to him.’ She sighed. ‘He’s very good at his job and he knows what he’s doing, but the others are nothing more than schoolboys playing at amateur dramatics, really. The lot of them…’

  The implication that Amanda Pedlinge was rather more than a schoolgirl was not lost upon Detective Inspector Sloan, married man. He couldn’t answer for the goggle-eyed Detective Constable Crosby.

  ‘Bevis has written the script and it’s about the only thing he talks about these days.’ She waved a hand. ‘I expect he’ll say he was doing something with the sound or the light.’

  Somewhere from the back of Sloan’s mind something about ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’ surfaced, but he didn’t immediately track it down.

  ‘We got Collins to do this room,’ she said, looking round at a room seemingly without electrical fitments of any sort.

  ‘Very clever, madam. I can’t see where any of it is coming from.’

  Amanda Pedlinge looked pleased for the first time. ‘There’s not meant to be anything in sight at all with this sort of interior design. David Collins made an excellent job of that. Even Bevis was satisfied.’ At this point her shoe fell off her right foot and on to the floor in front of Detective Constable Crosby. ‘For once.’

  * * *

  ‘Where to now, sir?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby as they crunched across the drive of the Old Rectory and into their police car.

  ‘Another word with the husband wouldn’t come amiss,’ said Sloan, reaching for the car radio. ‘He only lives round the corner and anyway our other two runners aren’t around to interview yet.’

  ‘But he told us he was over at the Minster yesterday evening,’ said Crosby. ‘Working.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was the favourite,’ said Sloan mildly. ‘Just a runner. All three of ‘em had been in the maze yesterday afternoon, remember.’

  ‘The deceased must have reached the centre of the maze after dark,’ objected Crosby, ‘if the old lady says so.’

  ‘And in the dark, too,’ murmured Sloan. Authoritative old ladies had to be checked out, too. All in good time, of course.

  ‘That old bird at the window could have spotted her, sir, at any time in daylight,’ said the Constable, not paying attention.

  ‘True, and their being there might have nothing to do with the death,’ allowed Sloan. He wasn’t here to teach Crosby logic; he was on duty trying to establish whether an unhappy woman had died at the hand of herself or another.

  ‘Also-rans?’ The Constable had just had to effect the arrest of a bookie and it had opened his eyes to the Turf and its lingo.

  ‘Perhaps. Don’t forget, too, Crosby, that the deceased must have been in there, or at least in the grounds, before our Milly locked the postern gate for the night.’

  ‘Anyway,’ nodded Crosby, ‘the doctor said she would have been dead by then.’

  ‘The place is pretty secure otherwise,’ said Sloan, pursuing another line of thought which had just struck him. ‘The people who built Aumerle Court didn’t want to be taken by surprise by their enemies and they made sure that they weren’t.’ He was old enough to know that all God’s children had enemies: what he didn’t know yet was who had been Margaret Collins’s enemy … Or even for sure if it had been herself. A lot of people were their own worst enemies …

  ‘All the same, sir,’ insisted the Constable obstinately, ‘Calleford’s quite a way away.’

  ‘Dangerous things, amateur dramatics,’ said Sloan elliptically, as he raised an answer on the radio from headquarters. ‘DI Sloan here,’ he announced. ‘I would like a thorough search made of the area round the hospital car park for an empty tablet bottle – and if there’s no joy from that, then impound the hospital bins and get someone to start going through them … yes, thank you, I do know all about needles in haystacks. Over and out and get on with it.’

  The Constable looked quite mystified. ‘Amateur dramatics, sir?’

  ‘It’s just possible that in the course of setting up this entertainment Master Bevis Pedlinge might have been seeing a bit too much of Margaret Collins for her own good. Or his, come to that.’

  ‘Enough to kill her?’

  ‘Enough for someone to arrange for her to be killed,’ said Sloan. ‘What do you suppose it would do to the Aumerle estate if that blonde bombshell we’ve just left had to be paid off?’ He supposed that there had been men thoroughly upset by the Married Women’s Property Act: what they would have thought of today’s divorce settlements didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of divorce, sir,’ said the Detective Constable.

  ‘Neither had I until just now,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan honestly, ‘but some people think about it all the time.’

  ‘She’s quite a girl…’

  ‘Remember, in this job, Crosby,’ he said severely, ‘nothing should be taken for granted. Nothing at all.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nor forgotten. Such as the fact that Jeremy Prosser is a neighbour, too. If I were to draw a Venn diagram’ – the Superintendent had explained to all of ‘F’ Division exactly how to draw overlapping circles demonstrating who is known to whom one morning after he had attended an evening class on ‘Mathematics for the Barely Numerate’ – ‘then Jeremy Prosser, Bevis and Amanda Pedlinge and David and Margaret Collins would all show as knowing each other.’ He paused. ‘No, we don’t know yet that Amanda Pedlinge and Margaret Collins had met. It’s probable, though.’

  ‘Miss Daphne Pedlinge knows ‘em all, too, sir,’ volunteered Crosby.

  ‘No,’ Sloan corrected him. ‘She didn’t recognize the deceased – not from what she could see, anyway.’

  ‘But they all knew the maze,’ said Detective Constable Crosby, engaging gear. ‘Didn’t they?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  David Collins treated the second visit to his house by the police that day with a tired disinterest. A half-drunk mug of coffee stood, cold now, on the table in front of him. The man might not have moved since they had come to the house earlier, so still was he sitting when they came again. All that was different was that now his shirt was open and his sleeves were hanging loose and dishevelled.

  ‘Margaret’s mother should be here soon,’ he said, pushing the mug away as if the action took all his strength. ‘Then we’ll have to go to the hospital and collect poor James and—’. For a moment he seemed to be having trouble finishing the sentence. ‘And’, he resumed, collecting himself with a visible effort, ‘she’s going to tell him that his mummy’s … I’m sorry.’ His voice quavered and his narrative came to a shaky halt. ‘It’s no good.’ He sank his head back between his hands. ‘I can’t quite take it in yet that Margaret’s gone.’

  ‘It’s very difficult, I know,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan with a brisk sympathy, ‘but you’ll understand that we need to know everything that happened yesterday for the Coroner.’ Over the years Sloan had found that mention of this august official usually evoked a more ready compliance with questioning than did any amount of talk of police interviews.

  Collins raised his head. ‘Go on,’ he said bleakly.

  ‘Just for the record, sir, can we take it that as far as you know your wife had no enemies?’

  ‘None. Not Margaret.’

  ‘Then could we just go over again what happened from when you left your wife at the hospital?’

  He didn’t seem to mind. ‘I went over to Aumerle Court, like I said, to meet Mr Bevis Pedlinge and Captain Prosser over this great sound and light production they’ve got planne
d.’

  ‘You knew them before yesterday?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They both live out here in this village. I’ve done quite a lot of work for the Pedlinges one way and another and Jeremy Prosser’s quite a family friend these days…’ he stopped suddenly, a stricken look coming over his face. ‘Only we’re not going to be a family any more, are we?’

  ‘Tell me about Captain Prosser,’ said Sloan, interested. If David Collins liked him, he would seem to be the only person he’d met so far who did.

  The man smiled faintly. ‘I can tell you that he’s not quite the stuffy bachelor he’d like you to think. In fact, I’m told in the village that he’s something of a ladies’ man.’

  ‘Ah.’ So someone liked Jeremy Prosser after all. And if Bevis Pedlinge wasn’t the happily married man he’d presumably like everyone, but especially his Great-aunt Daphne, to think, then interviewing the pair of them might be a rewarding business. ‘And then?’ he asked Collins.

  ‘We all went into the maze and I took some measurements away with me – I told them that we’ll have to do quite a lot of calculations back at the office before we can start over there with the actual equipment. Throwing light up from the maze and then playing about with it is going to be quite a tricky job – we’ll need plenty of thyristors for a start.’

  ‘And after that?’ said Sloan. Learning what thyristors were would have to wait.

  ‘I left just before they shut up shop at the Court and took myself over to the Minster at Calleford.’

  ‘Straight there?’

  He shook his head. ‘I stopped the van in a layby outside Petering for a cuppa.’ He essayed a tired smile. ‘I suppose I could have waited until I got to the Minster, but I didn’t like to have a drink there. The place is plastered with notices about the ungodly not eating and drinking in the Close.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And then I went on to Calleford and started work there.’ He said diffidently, ‘You – the police, I mean – may not have heard about it over in Berebury, but they’ve been having trouble with intruders in the Minster Close and Double Felix – that’s our firm – has been asked to put in extra security lighting in some dark corners as quickly as poss.’