The Body Politic Page 11

  “The Ottershaw funeral,” he said yet again. “What happened then, Tod?”

  “Oh, they had an encomiast so it was all right.”

  “A what?” said Sloan.

  “You know, Inspector.” Tod grinned. “Someone who has the nerve to stand up and say what a grand chap the deceased was. Same as that bit about not speaking ill of the dead but with all the trimmings and a side salad.”

  “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” said Sloan. It was probably the only Latin tag that nearly all Murder Squad detectives knew—and that was because the feeling so often got in the way of an investigation. Especially a murder investigation.

  “Could be,” assented Tod cheerfully.

  “Who spoke it?” asked Sloan. On police ceremonial occasions the Assistant Chief Constable of the County of Calleshire, who was an Old Boy of a famous school, was nearly always the one wheeled on. He had a favourite quotation from Juvenal which usually found its way into his public addresses. Except funerals, of course. Translated, it meant that no one ever reached the climax of vice at one step. He declaimed it to benches of magistrates as often as he could: judges didn’t need telling.

  “A guy from his firm,” responded Tod. “The head one, I should say, from the way the others treated him. Behaved as if they were a bit afraid of the boss, they did,” he added reflectively. As an employer Tod Morton was as soft as pussy’s foot. “Why do you want to know about the funeral, Inspector?”

  “If we’d known about the pellet, Tod, we’d have been there ourselves. Because we didn’t, you will have to be our eyes and ears.”

  “What else do you want to know?”

  Sloan wasn’t sure how to put something almost intangible. “If we’d been there ourselves, Tod, we’d have—well, caught the flavour.”

  “I get you,” said Tod promptly. “Well, there was a heavy local presence—you can always tell—and, as I told you, his colleagues were there in strength.” He wrinkled his nose. “The village nobs were there, too—Mr. Rauly from Mellamby Place and Major Puiver and suchlike folk. I recognised them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing that I noticed.” He frowned. “I gathered the deceased was known and liked but not very well known, if you get my meaning. Someone said he’d been away a lot. Plenty of sympathy for the widow and family naturally.”

  “Naturally,” said Sloan. Hard evidence in this case was restricted to a small pellet made of queremitte. “Can you tell me the name of the—er—encomiast?” It was high time they established a little more about the late Alan Ottershaw.

  “Hang about,” said Tod, “and I’ll find out.” He grinned. “I expect you’ve already spoken to the offilegium, haven’t you?”

  “The who?”

  “Offilegium.”

  “And who’s he?” growled Sloan. “If you’re having me on, Tod Morton …”

  “I’m not, Inspector. Honest. We buried the wife of the Professor of Classics up at the University not so long ago and he told me about them.”

  “About who, Tod?”

  “These people. They were the people in ancient history who came to gather the bones after cremation. The washers was their other name and they anointed the cremated remains and placed them in the urn. It’s a fact—he said so when I took him his wife’s ashes, this professor.”

  “You go and find out about the encomiast, Tod,” said Sloan: he supposed he had spoken to the offilegium at the crematorium. In a manner of speaking.

  “All right,” said Tod peaceably. “If you don’t mind waiting for a minute.” He grinned again. “I won’t lock up or anything while I’m gone. Shop-lifting’s not a problem with us.”

  “Gertcha,” said Detective Constable Crosby.

  “My girl’ll have a note of what he was called somewhere.” Tod left the room saying, “Bound to.”

  Crosby said into the silence, “Funny business, isn’t it, sir?”

  “What is?” asked Sloan sharply.

  “Undertaking.”

  Sloan subsided. “It takes all sorts to make the world.” In his own way, Tod Morton was as much an expert in thanatology as Dr. Dabbe.

  The young undertaker was back in a moment. “Sorry to have kept you, gentlemen, but like we say in the trade, ‘Better late than never.’”

  Crosby groaned aloud.

  “The head man’s name was Morenci,” said Tod. “Hamer Morenci.”

  ELEVEN

  And the Coffin Is Waiting Beside the Bed

  Preliminary enquiries by the Calleshire Constabulary about the general availability in the United Kingdom of the hard metal queremitte had brought about a nasty attack of the shakes in the Head Office of the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company in London.

  “Anyone would think it was a dangerous substance within the meaning of the Act,” said Darren Greene, Vice-Chairman of the Board, waxing indignant at the police for asking about it. “The Health and Safety Executive aren’t interested in queremitte at all.”

  “The Ministry of Defence Procurement are,” snapped Hamer Morenci. “Very. And that’s what counts.” An executive suite panelled in afromosa wood and hung about with Modigliani paintings had been no guarantee of a full night’s sleep for the Board’s Chairman.

  “I thought that Ottershaw’s death would mean that we were out of the wood in Lasserta,” ventured Darren Greene.

  “Well, we’re not, are we?” snarled Morenci. “Not if the police are sniffing around here asking us about queremitte.”

  “It doesn’t look like it now,” agreed the Vice-Chairman.

  “It would seem, wouldn’t it,” said Morenci waspishly, “that it got us off the hook a damn sight too easily for the liking of the local constabulary?”

  “His dying from a heart attack that particular Sunday struck me as so pat that I thought somebody’s secret service had had a hand in it,” said Darren Greene frankly, “but don’t ask me whose.”

  Morenci looked straight ahead. “Every government’s got its own dirty tricks department.”

  “Mind you,” said Greene, “I wouldn’t put it past the Ministry myself. They’re dead keen on this new toy of theirs and as we know very well it can’t work without queremitte.”

  Hamer Morenci said, “I don’t think we can take anything for granted.”

  “That’s just what the Detective Inspector said,” Greene reminded him unhappily, “wasn’t it? Before he asked us if we minded having our photographs taken.”

  Morenci put his elbows on his Charles Rennie Mackintosh desk and sank his chin between his cupped hands. Greene couldn’t see if his eyes were shut or not, but he seemed to be replaying a scenario in his mind. “Listen, Darren, I only went down to Calleshire to make sure that everything was all right with Ottershaw.”

  “Sure, Hamer.”

  “I spoke with him on the telephone on the Saturday morning and he was so damned cagey I thought I’d better go down myself on the Sunday to see what he was up to.”

  “Good idea,” said Greene pallidly.

  “Well, what would you have done?” demanded Morenci.

  “You didn’t take the limo?”

  “Hell, no! What do you take me for?” Hamer Morenci frowned. “No, I borrowed my wife’s car. When I got there I found there were so many other cars in the village that Sunday morning that nobody can have noticed one more.”

  “How come?”

  “A pageant,” spat Morenci. “A medieval pageant.”

  “I thought maypoles had gone out when fertility drugs came in.”

  The Board Chairman was brooding too much on his own troubles to smile. “And to make it worse nearly everybody was wearing fancy dress.”

  “Even Ottershaw?”

  “Even Ottershaw. Although I didn’t know then,” Morenci said. “I haven’t got X-ray eyes, have I?”

  “No,” said Greene, although he—and most of the employees of Anglo-Lassertan—had often wondered.

  “I never even saw him then,” said Morenci. “Not to recognise him, anyway. For
all I know he was King of the Castle.”

  “Not Ottershaw,” said Greene confidently. They employed industrial psychologists to assist recruitment and selection at the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company and those with designs on being King of the Castle were not taken on.

  “Not that anyone’s likely to believe me.”

  “No,” said Greene. “They’re not, are they?”

  “As far as I could see everyone was up at the Big House.” Hamer Morenci had come a long, long way from the obscurest of origins and it showed when he least expected it to. “There was nobody in at Ottershaw’s address.”

  “You didn’t leave your fingerprints on the front-door knocker, I hope?” It wasn’t often that Greene ever felt he had the upper hand in exchanges with his boss and he set out to make the most of it.

  “I did not,” said Morenci, suppressing any mention of having asked the way to April Cottage of a passing native of Mellamby.

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I went up to Mellamby Place with the crowd.” This last was quite uncharacteristic. Hamer Morenci as a rule never went along with the crowd on principle. He frowned. “I saw Hazel Ottershaw but I kept my distance. She was being Queen Somebody or Other and enjoying it.”

  “What you don’t know,” pointed out Darren Greene, twisting the verbal knife to the full, “is whether Ottershaw saw you. You weren’t in disguise, too, were you?”

  “I wore my country tweeds,” replied Morenci with dignity, “seeing as it was Sunday and I was in the country. My oldest ones.”

  “And you just watched, Hamer?” This was another tweak of the knife and they both knew it. It wasn’t often that the Chairman of the Board played the role of silent spectator.

  “Actually it was quite interesting,” said Morenci defensively. “It turned out to be a mock battle. And not as mock as all that. Someone heaved a rock down on the crowd from the ruins of an old tower and while the fighting was going on round the castle other people were laying a feast out on great long trestle-tables on the lawn in front of the house. It looked big enough for a French wedding party and then some—although I must say the food looked a bit funny to me.”

  “Ottershaw,” Greene reminded him. “You haven’t said what happened to Ottershaw.”

  Morenci ran his tongue round his lips. “At exactly half-past twelve the fellow who seemed to be in charge of the battle blew a whistle and the fighting stopped.”

  “Just like that? I didn’t think armistices were so easy to engineer.”

  “Those on their feet walked off and the dead and the wounded got up and they all set off towards this great feast.” Morenci paused and ran his tongue over his lips. “Except one.”

  “Alan Ottershaw?”

  “I didn’t know it was him to begin with, naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  “All I saw was a knight dressed in grey imitation armour with a red shield with a silvery-white chevron on it. A knight,” said Morenci heavily, “who didn’t get up when all the others did.”

  Darren Greene frowned. “So what happened?”

  “When he didn’t get up one of the others went back to see why. I saw him bend down over the chap lying on the ground, take one look at him, and then I heard him shout for help. They seem to have rustled up a doctor from somewhere and presently an ambulance turned up and the fellow was carted off. It wasn’t until the next day that I realised that it must have been Ottershaw. I didn’t know it at the time, I swear.”

  “Then what?” asked Greene, keeping the initiative.

  “I came back up here to the office to see if there was anything fresh in from Wadeem. Forfar’s hardly been off the telex since all the trouble blew up. That’s how I came to hear that telephone message from Ottershaw on the tape.”

  Darren Greene nodded. Saturdays and Sundays were working days in Lasserta anyway.

  “It was timed automatically,” said Morenci, going over again ground already covered with the police. “Half-past nine that Sunday morning it must have been rung in. Before their tournament thing began.”

  “Are we quite sure it was Ottershaw?” asked Greene, although both men had listened to the recorded message time and time again. “Oh, I know the voice said it was, but he’s not exactly a familiar face at Head Office and the line wasn’t all that clear, was it?”

  “And it came from a public payphone, not a private line,” pointed out Morenci. He smiled thinly. “Well, we’ll soon know for certain if it was Ottershaw’s voice, won’t we, seeing that the police have got a recording too. They can check that with his wife.”

  “Widow,” said Greene.

  “Well, Ottershaw did say on the recording that he was willing to go back to Lasserta first thing on the Monday morning and that we could tell Malcolm Forfar so. And Sheikh Ben Hajal Kisra.”

  “Who’s going to believe that?”

  “No one,” said Morenci. “Especially those two policemen—well, the senior one, anyway. I’m not so sure the younger one was listening.”

  “I certainly hadn’t expected Ottershaw to ring up like that and say all of a sudden that he was willing to go back to Lasserta and face the music. Had you?”

  Morenci’s head sank even lower between his hands. “It was the last thing I expected. After all, he knows the Lassertans even better than we do.” The Chairman’s voice dropped to something only just above a whisper. “But I didn’t kill him, Darren.”

  “No,” said Greene dispassionately. “I don’t suppose you did, but you must agree that it looks bad, doesn’t it?”

  Major Derrick Puiver, unhappy while taking the chair at the Summer Garden Meeting of the Mellamby Branch of the Conservative Association, was unhappier still when talking to the police.

  He had, however, it presently emerged, thoroughly enjoyed being the Commander at the re-enactment of the Battle of Lewes by the Camulos Society.

  “The Sunday was much better than the Saturday, Inspector. Much. There was a heckler on the Saturday being very difficult at the meeting, to say nothing of having a false alarm for an ambulance and to cap everything else Mr. Rauly found a bone on the grass behind his chair. Most unpleasant.”

  “What sort of bone?” enquired Sloan steadily.

  “He thought it was from a chicken’s leg and I certainly hadn’t noticed it before we all sat down. I must say I didn’t like it myself. I’ve served overseas, you know, so I know a bit about bone-pointing. Never expected anyone to go in for it in Calleshire.”

  “I can see that the Sunday might have been an improvement,” said Sloan, making a note.

  The Major puffed out his cheeks. “I think I can truthfully say, Inspector, on behalf of the Camulos Society that the day went well. Very well. Except, of course,” he added hastily, “for poor Ottershaw.”

  He had met Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby by arrangement at Mellamby Motte in the grounds of Mellamby Place. They were all standing together at the foot of the sole remaining tower of the old motte-and-bailey castle and were presently looking northwards. The Major pointed across the little dip in the land that contained the freshet that was the infant River Pletch and over towards the rise beyond and said, “If that had been Offham Hill at Lewes over there, Inspector, where the woodland begins—that’s the old Mellamby Chase, by the way—then Prince Edward, the Lord Edward they called him, would have had his first view of the Baronial Army from this point here where we are standing.”

  “Quite so, sir,” said Sloan, resisting the temptation to say anything about another possible theoretical and historical supposition: that if the wood were Birnam, then where they were standing was Dunsinane. “As it so happens, sir, we are—er—making enquiries about the re-enactment here at Mellamby rather than about the—er—original battle at Lewes.”

  “So I had heard,” said Major Puiver. “Bad luck about poor Ottershaw,” he added gruffly. “He was being William de Wilton, you know, and had to die early on. None of the King’s party ended the day very well, of course
.”

  Only Alan Ottershaw had actually died, Sloan reminded himself, but that had not been what the Major had meant.

  “Except that the King fought like a Trojan,” went on Puiver in his clipped military tones. “Lost his liberty but not his reputation, if you know what I mean. Difficult fellow to understand, King Henry III. Must have driven everyone to distraction.” The old soldier’s eyes took on a distant look. “Now, if it had been Henry V everything would have been different. He was a brilliant general and a real leader of men.”

  Detective Inspector Sloan put Agincourt out of his mind and looked across in the direction the Major had pointed. “So the enemy …” No, that couldn’t be right: surely this had been civil war? He started again. “So the opposition attacked from over there by the wood?”

  “That is correct, Inspector. For our purposes you may ignore the wood.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Sloan with deceptive mildness.

  “Can’t see it for the trees anyway,” murmured Crosby under his breath.

  “It was very important, though, to the original builders of Mellamby—the de Caquevilles—Inspector, because they held their land by right of cornage.”

  “Sir?”

  “The de Caquevilles held their estate here by cornage,” repeated the Major.

  “That’s what I thought you said, sir.”

  “That is, by the service of blowing the horn when required by the King,” said the Major, “either to marshal his troops or to give warning of the approach of an enemy.”

  “I see, sir.” Detective Inspector Sloan had had an uncle who had been a member of the Royal Observer Corps on the east coast during the last war. He supposed that was a lineal descendant of cornage in a way. It came to much the same thing, anyway. So did radar.

  “It was also a means of measuring the ownership of land in times gone by,” said the Major. “Instead of it being all yours as far as the eye could see, you owned all that where the horn could be heard.”

  “About the battle, sir.” Sloan corrected himself as quickly as he could: “I mean the re-enactment.”

  The Major pointed towards Mellamby Chase again. “The Baronial Army took up its station over there on the rise and the King’s party used this motte as their rallying ground. We didn’t stick to the actual timing, of course, Inspector. Real battles tend to start very early in the morning, which doesn’t suit amateurs. No, I didn’t wave the starter’s flag until half-past ten on the Sunday morning.”