Last Respects Page 10

  ‘Got to catch a murderer,’ said Crosby, ‘haven’t we?’

  That, at least, decided Sloan to himself, had the merit of reducing the case to its simplest. And he had to admit that that was not unwelcome after a session with Superintendent Leeyes.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Someone did for him,’ said the constable. ‘He didn’t get the way he was and where he was on his own.’

  ‘True.’ As inductive logic went it wasn’t a very grand conclusion but it would do. ‘Can you go any further?’

  ‘We’ve got to get back to the water,’ said Crosby, crouching forward at the wheel like Toad of Toad Hall.

  Sloan nodded. In all fairness he had to admit that what Crosby had said was true. All the action so far had been in water … He said, ‘What do we know so far?’

  ‘Very little, sir.’

  It was not the right answer from pupil to mentor.

  In the Army mounting a campaign was based on the useful trio of ‘information, intention, method’. He wasn’t going to get very far discussing these with Crosby if the detective-constable balked at ‘information’.

  ‘Could you,’ said Sloan with a hortatory cough, ‘try to think of why a body killed in a fall should be found in water?’

  ‘Because it couldn’t be left where it fell,’ responded Crosby promptly.

  ‘Good. Go on.’

  ‘I don’t know why it couldn’t be left where it fell, sir,’ said the constable. ‘But if it could have been left then it would have been, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Heavy things, bodies.’

  Sloan nodded. What Crosby had just said was simple and irrefutable but it wasn’t enough. ‘Keep going,’ he said.

  Crosby’s eyebrows came together in a formidable frown. ‘Where it fell could have been too public,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a point,’ said Sloan.

  ‘And it might have been found too soon,’ suggested Crosby after further thought.

  ‘Very true,’ said Sloan. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Where it was found might give us a lead on who killed him.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Sloan encouragingly. ‘Now, why put the body in the water?’

  But Crosby’s fickle interest had evaporated.

  ‘Why,’ repeated Sloan peremptorily, ‘put the body in the water?’

  Crosby took a hand off the steering-wheel and waved it. ‘Saves digging a hole,’ he said simply.

  ‘Anything else?’ said Sloan.

  Crosby thought in silence.

  ‘Are there,’ said Sloan tenaciously, ‘any other good reasons why a body should be put in the water?’ It looked as if they were going to have to make bricks without straw in this case anyway …

  Crosby continued to frown prodigiously but to no effect.

  ‘It is virtually impossible to hide a grave,’ pronounced Detective-Inspector Sloan academically.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And,’ continued Sloan, ‘the disposal of a murdered body therefore presents a great problem to the murderer.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It often,’ declared Sloan in a textbook manner, ‘presents a greater problem than committing the actual murder.’

  ‘Murder’s easy,’ said Crosby largely.

  ‘Not of an able-bodied young man,’ Sloan reminded him. ‘Of women and children and the old, perhaps.’ He considered the tempting vista opened up by this thought—but unless you were psychotic you murdered for a reason and reason and easy victim did not always go hand in hand.

  The constable changed gear while Sloan considered the various ways in which someone could be persuaded into falling from a height. ‘He must have been taken by surprise on the edge of somewhere,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Pushed, anyway,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Sloan. ‘If he’d fallen accidentally he could have been left where he fell.’

  ‘Shoved when he wasn’t looking, then,’ concluded Crosby.

  ‘We have to look for a height with a concealed bottom …’

  ‘Pussy’s down the well,’ chanted Crosby.

  ‘And not too conspicuous a top,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Somewhere where the victim would have a reason for going with the murderer,’ suggested Crosby.

  ‘He’d have had to have been pretty near the brink of somewhere even then,’ said Sloan. ‘That’s what parapets are for.’

  ‘With someone he trusted, then,’ said Crosby.

  ‘With someone he didn’t think there was any need to be afraid of,’ said Sloan with greater precision. He reached over to the back seat for the list of riparian owners. He wasn’t expecting any trouble from them. Fishing in muddy waters was a police prerogative and he didn’t care who knew it.

  Horace Boller was as near to being contented with his day as he ever allowed himself to be. As he pushed his rowing-boat off from the shore at Edsway—Horace had never paid a mooring fee in his life—he reflected on how an ill wind always blew somebody good.

  He would have known that his two passengers were policemen even if the older one hadn’t said so straightaway. There was a certain crispness about him that augured the backing of an institution. Horace Boller was an old hand at discerning those whose brief authority was bolstered by the hidden reserves of an organization like the police force and the army—the Vicar came in a class of his own—and those who threw their weight about because they were merely rich.

  Horace had quite a lot to do with the merely rich on Saturdays and Sundays. The rich who liked sailing were very important in the economy of Edsway. From Monday to Friday they disappeared from Horace’s ken—presumably to get richer still in a mysterious place known simply as the City. Horace himself had never been there and when someone had once equated the City with London—which he had been to—Horace’s mind failed to make the connection.

  Nevertheless Sunday evenings always saw a great exodus of weekenders, albeit tired and happy and sometimes quite weatherbeaten, from Edsway back to the city. The following Friday evening—in summertime anyway—saw them return, pale and exhausted, from their labours in the town and raring for a weekend’s pleasure and sunburn in the country. Horace, whose own skin bore a close resemblance to old and rather dirty creased leather, could never decide whether sunburn was a pleasure or a pain for the weekenders.

  As a rule, therefore, Horace Boller only had Saturdays and Sundays in which to pursue the important business of getting rich himself. This accounted for his contentment this day, which was neither a Saturday nor a Sunday. Extra money for one trip on a weekday, and at the expense of Her Majesty’s Government to boot, was a good thing: extra money twice was a cause for rejoicing. Not that anyone would have guessed this from Horace Boller’s facial expression. His countenance bore its usual surly look and his mind was totally bent on the business of deriving as much financial benefit as he could from this particular expedition—as it was on every other excursion which he undertook.

  He gave his starboard oar an expert twist to get the boat properly out into the water and then set about the important business of settling the oars comfortably in the rowlocks. Some weekend sailors, rich and poor, conceded Boller to himself, also threw their weight about because they knew what they were doing in a boat—but they were few and far between.

  He didn’t know for certain yet if his two passengers were sailors or not although he already had his doubts about the younger man. Both men had distributed themselves carefully about the boat in a seaman-like manner and had actually managed not to rock the boat while clambering into it. They had even accomplished this without getting their feet wet which was something of an achievement and was connected, although his passengers did not know this, with the fact that Horace was sure of getting a handsome fee for the outing. Doubtful payers and those who were so misguided as to attempt to undertip the boatman always got their feet wet.

  The question of a fee for the journey they were about to under
take was very much in Detective-Inspector Sloan’s mind too. The payment—whatever it amounted to—would eventually have to come out of the Berebury Division Imprest Account. This was guarded by Superintendent Leeyes with a devotion to duty and tenacity of purpose that would have done credit to a Cerebus.

  ‘Take you to where I found the poor man?’ Horace nodded his comprehension. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ said Detective-Inspector Sloan, detaching his mind with an effort from an unhappy vision of Superintendent Leeyes standing like a stag at bay over the petty cash at Berebury Police Station. ‘Can you do that for us?’

  ‘Certainly, gentlemen,’ said Horace readily, even though he had already decided that they were policemen not gentlemen: Horace’s usage of modes of address was a nicely calculated affair and closely linked with the expectation of future reward. ‘No trouble at all.’

  Sloan settled himself at the bow of the boat, reminding himself that any hassle to come over payment for their trip should take second place to tangling with a murderer. He only hoped Superintendent Leeyes would feel the same.

  For the fourth time that day the boatman began to row out into the estuary of the River Calle. Detective-Inspector Sloan looked about him with interest. Seeing a map of the estuary with a cross marking the spot where the body had been found was one thing, but it was quite a different matter seeing the spot for oneself. He’d have to trust the boatman that it was the same spot, though—He’d tried to rustle up Constable Ridgeford to get him to come with them but according to Mrs Ridgeford he’d had to go off on his bicycle to see to something. And so they had had to put to sea without him. Just, thought Sloan to himself, a distant memory stirring, just like the Owl and the Pussy-cat … except that Boller’s old boat wasn’t a beautiful pea-green …

  Horace Boller had bent to the oars with practised ease and was rowing in a silence designed to save his breath. Then:

  ‘You’re going out to sea,’ observed Sloan sharply. ‘I thought you’d found him further up river.’

  ‘Got to get round Billy’s Finger, haven’t I?’ responded Boller resentfully.

  ‘I see …’ began Sloan.

  ‘And pick up the tide.’ Nobody could be surlier than Boller when he wanted to be.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m an old man now,’ said Boller, hunching his shoulders and allowing a whine to creep into his voice. ‘I can’t go up river like I used to do.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Sloan crisply, nevertheless taking a good look at his watch. ‘Let me see now—what time was it exactly when we left?’

  ‘I go by St Peter’s clock myself,’ snapped Boller. ‘Always keeps good time, does St Peter’s.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Sloan warmly. ‘That’ll make everything easier.’ He settled back on to his hard seat. A warning shot fired across the bows never came amiss …

  Presently the rowing-boat did turn up river. Rowing against the eddies was not such hard work for Horace Boller as it would have been for most other men because he came of river people and knew every stretch of quiet water that there was. This did not stop him giving an artful pant as he eventually shipped his oars and caught a patch of slack water.

  ‘’Bout here it was, gentlemen,’ he said, histrionically drooping himself over the oars as if at the end of a fast trip from Putney to Mortlake against another crew.

  Detective-Inspector Sloan was concentrating on the water. ‘How far does the tide come up the estuary?’

  The boatman wrinkled his eyes. ‘The sparling—they turn back half way between Collerton and Edsway no matter what.’

  ‘They do, do they?’ responded Sloan vigorously. The habits of sparling were no sort of an answer for a Superintendent sitting at a desk in Berebury Police Station.

  ‘Always go to the limit of the salt water, do sparling,’ said Boller.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sloan. That was better. Sparling must be biological indicators too.

  ‘Only see them in the summer, of course,’ said the boatman.

  ‘Been this year then, have they?’ asked Sloan, unconsciously lapsing into the vernacular himself.

  ‘Not yet.’ Horace Boller unshipped an oar to stop the boat drifting too far.

  ‘It’s summer now,’ remarked Detective-Constable Crosby from the stern.

  ‘Not afore Collerton Fair,’ said Horace Boller flatly. ‘Sparling come at Fair time.’

  Detective-Inspector Sloan turned his head and regarded the southern shore of the river mouth with close attention. Not far away a heron rose and with an almost contemptuous idleness put the tips of his wing feathers out as spoilers. They’d left Edsway and the open sea well behind but they could now see Collerton church clearly up-river of them. Far inland were urban Berebury and ancient Calleford and what townspeople chose to call civilization …

  ‘Do smell of cucumber,’ rasped the boatman unexpectedly.

  ‘What does?’ asked Sloan. They were a long way from land.

  ‘Sparling.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sloan again, his mind on other things. ‘Pull the boat round a bit, will you? I want to see the other way.’

  The view down river was unrevealing. Edsway itself, though, was clearly visible, as was the headland beyond. Kinnisport and the cliffs at Cranberry Point were just a smudge in the distance.

  ‘That headland behind Marby stands out, doesn’t it?’ observed Sloan, surprised. Seen from nearer to, the rise in the land wasn’t quite so apparent.

  ‘That’s the Cat’s Back,’ said Boller. ‘Proper seamark, that is.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Crosby ingenuously, ‘I never thought you had sea marks like you had land marks.’

  Somewhere not very far away a gull screamed.

  ‘Take us up-river now,’ commanded Sloan abruptly.

  Horace Boller bent to his oars once more. He rowed purposefully and without comment out of the narrowing estuary and into the river proper. Detective-Inspector Sloan, sitting at the bow, was almost as immobile as a carved figurehead at the prow. He did turn once to begin to say something to Detective-Constable Crosby but that worthy officer was settled in the stern of the boat letting his hand dangle in the water and regarding the consequent and subsequent wake with the close attention that should have been devoted to the duties of detection.

  Sloan turned back and looked ahead. Speech would have been wasted. Instead he turned his mind to studying the river banks. That was when, presently, he too saw the doors of the boathouse belonging to Collerton House. Even from midstream he could see where a crowbar had been used to prise open the lock.

  CHAPTER 11

  This is a down-right deep Tragedy.

  Frank Mundill was soon back at the riverside. This time he had Detective-Inspector Sloan and Detective-Constable Crosby with him, not Elizabeth Busby. Sloan had a distinct feeling that he had seen the man from Collerton House before but he couldn’t immediately remember where.

  Mundill indicated the boathouse doors very willingly to the two policemen and then pointed to the empty stretch of water inside the boathouse.

  ‘Our fishing-boat’s gone, Inspector,’ he said.

  ‘And this, I take it, sir, is where she was kept, is it?’ said Sloan, giving the inside of the boathouse a swift looking-over.

  ‘It was.’ Mundill tightened his lips wryly. ‘She wasn’t exactly the Queen Elizabeth, you know, but she was good enough for a day on the river with a rod.’

  Sloan examined the broken lock and loose hasp as best he could without getting his feet wet. There was a scar on the woodwork where something had rested to give leverage to a crowbar. Every picture told a story and this one seemed clear enough.

  ‘Prised open all right, sir,’ he agreed presently. ‘Have you any idea when?’

  Frank Mundill shook his head and explained that the damage would only have been visible from the path along the river bank and from the river itself. ‘I haven’t been this way much myself recently, Inspector. My wife was ill from Easter onwards and I just d
idn’t have the time.’ He gave a weary shrug of his shoulders. ‘And now that she’s gone I haven’t got the inclination.’

  Sloan pointed to the fishing rods on the boathouse wall. They looked quite valuable to him. ‘Are they all present and correct, sir?’

  Mundill’s face came up in a quick affirmative response, reinforcing Sloan’s impression that he’d seen it before somewhere. ‘Oh yes, Inspector. We think it’s just the boat that’s gone.’

  ‘We?’ queried Sloan. The list of riparian owners had dealt in surnames. It hadn’t gone into household detail.

  ‘My late wife’s niece is still with me. She came to nurse my wife and she’s staying on until her parents get back from South America next week.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘She was out here with me earlier and we both agreed it was just Tugboat Annie that’s gone.’

  Detective-Inspector Sloan reached for his notebook in much the same way as Police Constable Brian Ridgeford had reached for his. A name put a different complexion on a police search for anything. A name on the unfortunate young man at Dr Dabbe’s Forensic Laboratory would be a great step forward. ‘Tugboat Annie, did you say, sir?’

  ‘It won’t help, I’m afraid, Inspector,’ Frank Mundill was apologetic. ‘That was just what we called her in the family.’

  The dead young man would have been called something in the family too. Sloan would have dearly liked to have known what it was.

  ‘The name,’ expanded Frank Mundill, ‘wasn’t actually written on her or anything like that.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ Sloan said, disappointed.

  ‘She was only a fishing-boat, you see, Inspector.’ He added, ‘And not a very modern fishing-boat, at that. She was one of the relics of my father-in-law’s day.’

  Sloan nodded, unsurprised. His own first impression had been of how very dated everything about Collerton House was. There was something very pre-Great War about the whole set-up—house, boathouse, grounds and all.

  ‘I mustn’t say “those were the days,”’ said Mundill drily, waving an arm to encompass the boathouse and the fishing rods, ‘but I’m sure you know what I mean, Inspector.’