Slight Mourning Read online

  Crosby took a breath.

  Mrs. MacArthur didn’t. “And they say that as fast as they put telephones in, the vandals rip them out, and do you ever catch ’em? Never! Now, you mark my words, young man …”

  There was nothing in the world that annoyed Crosby more than to be called a young man, because he was and it showed. Walter Mitty hadn’t been young, either.

  “… one of these days someone is going to want you people in a hurry”—even in full verbal flood Mrs. MacArthur contrived to sound as if she found this hard to believe—“and then what’ll happen? You won’t come and we’ll all be murdered in our beds, that’s what.”

  It was Crosby’s private opinion that whoever murdered Mrs. MacArthur would be doing humanity—if not Her Majesty’s Mails—a service, but all he said was “I’m making inquiries, madam, that’s all.”

  Mrs. MacArthur hit another parcel with quick ferocity. “If it’s about the license for the dog that bit the vicar, they’ve got one. Seventh-day Adventists, they are, too, though they got the vet for the dog quick enough.”

  “It’s about last Saturday night,” said Crosby with dignity, giving religious dogma a wide berth.

  “Saturday nights there’s always trouble.” Mrs. MacArthur peered out of the Post Office window. In fact the village of Cullingoak presented an idyllic view to the world, from the church right down to the regulation patch of green, duck-pond and ducks, but Mrs. MacArthur was not deceived. “If it’s not the pub it’s the village hall. It’s my belief that men only play cricket for the beer …”

  “Not that sort of trouble.”

  “There was a dance at the Youth Club.” She gave a merry cackle. “There’s a different sort of trouble for you, if you like.”

  “Someone taken ill,” said Crosby.

  “Ah.”

  “The doctor knocked you up.”

  “What if he did?”

  “Why?”

  “Looking for someone ill in Copway Street, he said he was, and couldn’t find them.” She cocked her head to one side and said shrewishly, “Doctor in trouble then?”

  Crosby shook his head. “Just a routine inquiry, madam.”

  “I know your sort of inquiries,” she snorted. “Like the Spanish Inquisition. Someone always ends up in trouble.”

  “What time was this?”

  “’Bout half past eleven. Party taken ill by the name of Waters, he said, but he couldn’t place them. And he couldn’t find them either. Not in Copway Street.”

  “And you?”

  “I couldn’t call the name to mind myself,” she admitted. “Not then. ’Course we don’t sort the letters here any more. Then I would have known. And the telephone exchange has gone automatic, too.”

  Crosby shuddered gently at the thought of Mrs. MacArthur monitoring either, let alone both. “So you never did find …”

  “Not then,” she repeated. “Afterwards I remembered the people in Rose Cottage. Waters is their name.”

  “Waters, Rose Cottage, Copway Street.” He wrote it down.

  “Artists,” she said succinctly. “Only here at the weekends. That’s why the doctor didn’t know the name. Seems as if the husband had an attack of asthma earlyish in the evening, then he got worse suddenly and as the doctor hadn’t come she popped him in the car and drove him straight to the hospital in Berebury.”

  “So when the doctor did come the house was all locked up and empty,” Crosby finished for her.

  “That’s right. He said he tried Rose Cottage and there was no one there.” Mrs. MacArthur looked at him sideways. “The doctor had a woman in his car with him.”

  “His wife,” said Crosby.

  Mrs. MacArthur sniffed and changed her tune smartly. “I’m glad to hear it, I’m sure. A doctor should be married, shouldn’t he?”

  “We all need wives,” said Crosby, wondering about Mr. MacArthur.

  She leered at him. “That wasn’t what I meant at all, young man, and well you know it.”

  There couldn’t really have ever been any connection between Crosby and the Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada would never have blushed.

  It was Police Inspector Harpe who gave Sloan the news about Tom Exley’s death when he got to Berebury. He seemed to Sloan to be taking a regrettably parochial view of it, too. Perhaps you could get too specialized, even in the police force.

  “You must admit, Sloan, that it makes a nice point.”

  “What does?” asked Sloan, who could think of nothing nice about it at all.

  “Whether I count him or you do.”

  Sloan looked blank. “Come off it, Harry …”

  “What I mean is,” said the Traffic man, “is he mine or is he yours?”

  “He’s dead,” responded Sloan with vigour. “That’s all anyone’s told me so far.”

  “Statistically,” explained Harpe, “I mean is he one of yours or one of mine. That’s what I want to know.”

  “Oh, I see …” Sloan opened his mouth and shut it again. He might as well save his breath. It was no use telling Happy Harry that statistics had never made any difference to anything he’d ever met so far. The good ones just told you what you should have known anyway: stating the obvious with figures to prove it. As for the bad ones …

  “Is this man Exley a Road Traffic Accident death,” elaborated Happy Harry still further, “or …”

  “Ah, yes, I see …” Sloan should have remembered that Harpe was a born hair-splitter.

  “Or is he a murder victim?” finished Happy Harry.

  “He died from injuries received out of the use of a motor vehicle on a public road,” said Sloan solemnly. Two could play at this game. “On the other hand …”

  “Yes?”

  “So did the other chap.”

  “No, no,” said Harpe immediately. “You can have Fent. He’s yours. All yours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not at all,” said Harpe, upon whom sarcasm in any shape or form was completely wasted. “Someone tried to murder Fent and he died. But Exley’s different.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Insurance,” said Harpe. “Nobody had given him any poison that we know of, but the insurance companies are bound to argue that …”

  “Watch them try to eel out of both,” said Sloan brutally, “and don’t you go and make it any easier for them.”

  “The small print,” began Harpe gloomily, “I expect that …”

  Sloan sighed. He wasn’t a small print man himself. Never had been. Nor if it came to that was he very interested in things which were legal without being honest. His mother—that was where you learned these things, at your mother’s knee—had brought him up on a much stricter criterion than mere legality.

  “Exley,” he said categorically, “is as clear a case of misadventure as I’ve ever come across whatever anyone says.”

  “It’s not really a verdict any longer”—Harpe always took the niggardly view—“not if the Crown can help it.”

  “Then it should be,” said Sloan. “And, Harry …”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t forget, will you, that statistically most male murderers are widowers.”

  “Bah!” said the Traffic man.

  Crosby met Sloan in the corridor outside the Traffic Department’s room, a flimsy message sheet in his hand.

  “News, Crosby,”

  “From Australia. A proper turn up for the book, sir, if you ask me,” said the constable handing the paper over. “Quick, too.”

  “They do it with boomerangs.” Sloan took it and began to read. Swifter than Ariel the police telex system had encircled the earth and come back with that most precious police commodity—information. Somewhere in an antipodean land—Cunningham’s Gap, Queensland, to be exact—a fellow copper had plodded about making an inquiry for another policeman whom he had never seen and whose name he would never even know.

  Standing in the corridor in Berebury, Calleshire, England—oh, ever so England—Sloan tried to visualize the m
an making his way through a dry and dusty township, though for all he knew Cunningham’s Gap could be in the middle of tropical rain forest and his fellow copper a lady policewoman. He looked at the message again.

  An Englishman called Hector Fent, subject of inquiry, had died of natural causes at an address in Cunningham’s Gap nearly five years ago …

  This was news to Sloan. That didn’t matter. What mattered was if it was news to a certain murderer. Or did he know?

  Said to be a widower, ran on the message cautiously.

  That could mean anything or nothing.

  One son, continued the telex.

  Which could mean a lot.

  Name of Peter Miller Fent spelled out the capitals.

  Which did mean a lot.

  Quite a lot.

  ELEVEN

  All inquiries set in train—especially of Government departments—tend to produce results.

  In time.

  Unfortunately Sloan was not in the Police Station at Berebury when Dr. Writtle rang, and the analyst, mistaking rank for knowledge, had misguidedly spoken with Superintendent Leeyes instead.

  “This query of yours to the Home Office, Sloan,” said Leeyes, when the detective inspector did appear in his office, “about the manufacture of soluble barbiturates …”

  “Sir?”

  “Barbiturates,” Leeyes informed him, “are derived from barbituric acid or malonyl urea.”

  Sloan got out his notebook.

  “And malonyl urea”—the superintendent spoke as one to whom organic chemistry was an open book—“is prepared by the condensation of di … di … diethyl”—the impression of expertise faded at the third attempt—“that’s it … diethyl’ ester of malonic acid with urea.”

  “Really, sir? Thank you, sir.”

  “The barbiturates are prepared by the addition to the parent compound of various chemical groups,” growled Leeyes. “Blinding us with science, Sloan, that’s what they’re trying to do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This technical stuff,” carried on Leeyes, cutting one of the country’s most highly qualified analytical chemists down to size in passing, “is all very well in its way, but it doesn’t help to solve the case, does it?”

  “Too soon to say, sir. Did he mention the taste?”

  Leeyes pushed some papers about. “I’ve got that here somewhere. The taste … oh, yes. Not nice.”

  “How noticeable?”

  “It would need to be disguised a bit. Or so he said.” The superintendent discounted all expert opinion on principle.

  “And the—er—natural sources of this barbiturate?”

  “Malonyl urea?” said Leeyes airily. “Writtle went on a bit about that. Malic acid—that’s where you start from—comes in three optically isometric forms.”

  “Does it?” responded Sloan sourly. “Any of them homegrown?”

  “Yes.”

  Sloan looked up sharply.

  “Apples,” said Leeyes, “grapes, beet-root—oh, and rhubarb.”

  “Rhubarb?”

  “That’s what he said. I suppose he knows.”

  “What about this business of making it at home?”

  “He wouldn’t say yes and he wouldn’t say no.”

  Sloan said something very decisive indeed.

  “He did say you’d need to have the know-how and the equipment,” said Leeyes, “and something called ethylene dichloride. He’s putting it all in writing for you.”

  For once Sloan didn’t think this would help. “I think we’ll have to go back to square one, sir,” he sighed, “and find out who gains.”

  “Or even who doesn’t lose,” said Leeyes pessimistically.

  “Exley’s lost for a start,” said Sloan, and told him about the other driver. “Poor chap.”

  Leeyes drummed his fingers on his desk. “And we’re no further forward, are we, Sloan?”

  “We know someone gave Fent poison …”

  “We knew that on Monday,” said Leeyes.

  “And which poison,” said Sloan, tapping his notebook.

  “Academic,” said Leeyes inexorably.

  “And who had the opportunity.”

  “Too many.” The superintendent’s response was prompt and gloomy. “Much too many. Eleven, at least.”

  Sloan cleared his throat. “Thirteen, actually …”

  “Unlucky for some.” Leeyes’s reaction to the number thirteen was culled from the Bingo hall.

  “… if we include Peter Miller from the farm next door to Strontfield,” Sloan told him why, “and that girl Milly Pennyfeather slaving over a hot stove in the kitchen.”

  “Let’s,” said Leeyes dourly. “The more the merrier.”

  “As I see it,” Sloan pressed on regardless, “any of them could have nipped into the dining-room with the goods and done their damnedest.”

  “There’s no need to be melodramatic about it,” said the superintendent tetchily.

  “No, sir.” Sloan took a breath, thought about his pension, and let it out again. “What I meant is that Milly just showed them the room for their coats and then dashed back to the kitchen. She left them to find their own way to the drawing-room.”

  “And you think one of them went via the dining-room?”

  “Could be, sir. They all knew the house well. Except for Mrs. Washby.”

  Leeyes started tapping his fingers on the desk again. “What else do we know? Apart from this chap next door having a finger in the pie.”

  Sloan coughed. “I hear the widow’s behaving a bit oddly.”

  “Widows do,” said Leeyes with deep feeling.

  “She didn’t like us being at the funeral. And now she’s shut herself up in her room and won’t see anyone at all—let alone us.”

  Leeyes sighed. “Sloan, you’ve been in the Force long enough to know that nobody likes us being anywhere. Unless somebody goes for them, of course. Then it’s different.”

  “Yes, sir.” It was easiest to agree with him. Always.

  “Anything else?”

  “Who know who gains,” advanced Sloan cautiously. “Some of them, anyway.”

  “Who?”

  “Quentin Fent for one. A lot. And through him, his fiancée. Jacqueline Battersby.”

  “Not…”

  “Yes. None other. Old Battersby’s daughter. From Luston.”

  “There are no better bearings than Battersby’s,” said Leeyes, proving that at least one advertising copy writer earned his daily bread. “She won’t want for a penny or two. Anyone else?”

  “Annabel Pollock. That’s the other cousin. She only gains a little. Probably not enough to count, saving Eliza Doolittle.”

  “Saving who, Sloan?”

  “‘My Fair Lady,’ sir.” Now his wife had really enjoyed that. He quoted: “‘Them as she lives with would have done her in for a hat pin let alone a hat.”’

  “And who else,” growled Leeyes, pointedly ignoring this, “gains?”

  “The widow gets a life interest in not very much,” replied Sloan.

  Leeyes sniffed.

  “And,” went on Sloan carefully, “Peter Miller Fent—that is Hector Fent’s branch of the family—stands a bit nearer than he did to whatever’s going. Next in line after our Quentin, in fact.”

  “To the left, one pace, quick marrrrrrrrch,” drawled Leeyes sardonically. “That the lot?”

  “We don’t know about those who had something to lose,” went on Sloan methodically, “but I should say that somebody somewhere still stands to make something out of planning permission in a big way.”

  The superintendent gave another elaborate sigh. “It isn’t even as if we hadn’t got anything else to do.” He waved an arm toward the map on the wall behind him. It was a pointillist affair showing crime in Calleshire. “There’s been another raid on the Hollandbury quarries.”

  “Again, sir? That’s the third this year.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Leeyes. “Three months’ supply for every safe-breaker in t
he county and then some. By my reaching their last lot’ll be just about used up by now.”

  “I’m afraid Bertie’s on the go again, too, sir,” said Sloan, falling in with the change of subject. That would be another pin for the map. Or two, perhaps.

  Leeyes grunted. “I thought he said he was going straight.”

  “That man,” said Sloan, “would say anything except his prayers. They’ll have to screw him into his grave when the time comes.”

  “It can’t come soon enough for me, but there’s worse trouble than Bertie about.” Leeyes pointed to a cluster of pins on the outskirts of Berebury. “We’ve got a child molester on the new estate.”

  Sloan winced.

  “I know, I know,” said Leeyes. “It’s their clothes, you know.”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “The kids. So nicely got up these days it’s just putting them in temptation’s way. We never had this trouble in the old days. Who’d want to entice a scruffy urchin with a runny nose and dirty old clothes and fleas …”

  Only Superintendent Leeyes could have conjured up a picture of Dickensian squalor and presented it as a good.

  “No one,” finished Leeyes, thus writing off the efforts of several generations of social reformers as a bad thing.

  “Go tell that to the sociologists,” sang Sloan, but under his breath.

  Dr. Harriet Baird stomped up the stairs to Helen Fent’s bedroom in Strontfield Park. “Morning, m’dear,” she said. “And what sort of a night have you had?”

  “Not too bad,” lied Helen.

  The doctor felt her pulse. “That’s more like it.”

  “I want to get up,” said Helen.

  “I daresay you do,” said Dr. Baird calmly, noting the dark rings of sleeplessness under her patient’s eyes, “but you aren’t going to. Not today. Tomorrow, perhaps, if you’re sensible. We’ll see. Things sort themselves out all right downstairs yesterday?”

  “I think so.”

  “Takes time,” said the doctor wisely. “I should let it all flow over you for a bit. No hurry about anything, is there?”

  “Not really, I suppose,” admitted Helen in lifeless tones. “Not now. Not any more.”