A Late Phoenix Page 12

  “At long last …”

  “Planning’s like that,” said the planner apologetically.

  As Sloan made his way back to the police station it came to him.

  It was the old doctor in the house opposite the bomb site who had died a couple of months ago.

  Ten hectic minutes later Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby joined the small crowd which was clustered round Harold Waite’s dead body.

  The crowd was of an entirely different composition from the crowd of workmen who had clustered—full of awe—round the other body two days before.

  These were police technicians and they were not awed. Cameramen, men with measuring tapes, men with notebooks, police this and police that—the full panoply of unnatural death was being extended to Harold Waite of Bean Street, Luston, number two workshop foreman, sometime sergeant in the West Calleshire Regiment, and late of Lamb Lane, Berebury.

  It was the last which had been of deadly significance.

  Sloan wasn’t in any doubt about that.

  “He came over to Berebury to see someone,” he said to Detective Constable Crosby.

  “We did try to see him first, sir.”

  “He thought he could do better than we could …”

  “Twice,” said Crosby. “We went back.”

  “He should have told me,” said Sloan bleakly. “He’d have been all right then.”

  He wasn’t all right now.

  Sloan waved an arm towards the body. “When did it happen?”

  Crosby jerked his shoulder towards Field House. “Dr. Latimer thought something under twelve hours ago but he couldn’t swear to it. Said he wasn’t an expert on dead bodies.”

  “He soon will be at this rate,” commented Sloan bitterly. He moved over towards the cellar. The police photographer was standing surveying the scene. “Morning, Dyson …”

  “I must say you don’t half have ’em, Inspector,” responded the photographer. “Talk about the old and the new …”

  He nodded briefly, his mind still on Harold Waite. He hadn’t been spared after all.

  “Ancient and Modern, you could call it,” said Dyson, “should you be looking for a caption.” Captions weren’t a problem for Dyson. His pictures had simple titles like: View of Deceased as Seen Through Bushes From Roadside and Frontal Aspect of Car Taken Following Collision.

  “I’ll remember that,” promised Sloan.

  “Otherwise we’re finished here.” The photographer slung some of his camera equipment over his shoulder and beckoned to his assistant. “Unless there’s anything else you want taking, Inspector? We’ve got the usual X-marks-the-spot and wish-you-were-here ones.”

  “Thank you.” Dyson hadn’t known the man, of course; hadn’t spoken to him as a living human being only yesterday. Sloan shook himself. It couldn’t have been only yesterday that he had sat in Harold Waite’s front parlor …

  Dyson waved an arm. “And general-view-of-the-resort. We’ve done some of them, too. Do I send them to you again?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He nodded to his assistant. “Make a note of that, Williams. All Lamb Lane bodies to the Inspector.”

  Perhaps Dyson was right to take refuge in flippancy.

  Sloan didn’t blame him.

  There was nothing pretty about Dyson’s job.

  Photographing the aftermath of human folly.

  He went a little nearer himself and took a long look at Harold Waite’s body. There were two lots of human folly involved here.

  Harold Waite’s own in playing a lone hand and coming here and the folly of whoever had killed him …

  Two lots of human folly?

  That wasn’t right.

  There had been three.

  Waite’s, Waite’s killer’s, and Sloan’s.

  Sloan’s for being beguiled into thinking that the first murder was an historic affair; not of the present. That there need be no haste about investigating it.

  He peered down into the narrow grave space which contained Harold Waite and winced. It was of the present all right. He should have … he nipped his own train of thought in the bud. A guilt complex wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere.

  He turned his head abruptly as Dr. Dabbe arrived and stumped onto the site. The pathologist nodded all round—he knew all the police team—and clambered down beside the body.

  “This place is turning into a veritable Aceldama, Sloan.”

  “Beg pardon, Doctor?”

  “Don’t you know your Bible?” He grunted. “Aceldama. The field of blood, Sloan, to bury strangers in.”

  “He’s not a stranger,” said Sloan tonelessly. “He used to live here. The site owner—Gilbert Hodge—identified him. He’s gone over to the doctor’s house to have a bit of a sitdown. Says all this has brought on his ulcer pain.”

  “Has it?” Dabbe grunted again. Pain was never material to his evidence and he didn’t have a lot to do with living patients. “Well, someone hit this chap on the back of the head. Hard.”

  “We’re looking for a weapon now, Doctor.”

  “And not so long ago as the other one.”

  “Would about the middle of last night be all right for timing?” The only thing Sloan had paused to do when he got the news about the dead man had been to grab the report on the attack on Dr. Latimer.

  The pathologist stared down at the prone figure. “I can’t be definite. Not outside like this—but you could be right. Got a witness?”

  “I think we could have someone who nearly saw.”

  Dr. Dabbe snorted. “If you ask me that’s all any of them ever do. What you want, I suppose, is dumb evidence. That’s what you’re after now, isn’t it?”

  “It’s better than the other sort,” offered Sloan.

  He’d had his fill of spoken evidence in his time.

  Eyewitnesses who hadn’t actually seen; who had thought they saw; who had jumped (with both eyes closed) to the nearest conclusion; who had unconsciously shut their eyes at the vital moment; who had had their stories rehearsed for them in the nearest public house bar; who saw themselves with a bit part to play and who played it—tripping over themselves to get into the witness box and tripped over as soon as they were in it—be they coached ne’er so well …

  “Did you get any further with the first body?” The pathologist started on his own routine.

  “We haven’t made a great deal of progress yet. The most that Miss Tyrell remembered about the night in question,” said Sloan, “was that the nightingales wouldn’t stop singing.”

  “Callimachus,” said Dr. Dabbe unexpectedly.

  Sloan took another look at Harold Waite.

  “Not him,” said the pathologist impatiently. “Callimachus. That’s what he said. A Greek.”

  “You don’t say sir?” Surely they’d had the Greek crack about obols already this week …

  “Callimachus noticed them too. ‘The nightingales sing on—death spares them that spares not anything.’”

  “Quite.” Sloan cleared his throat. “A sort of epitaph for a raid that, sir, wouldn’t you say?”

  He stood by while the pathologist went about his work. The scene in Lamb Lane was almost exactly the same as it had been on the Monday. The only real sign of change and progress—the great yellow articulated digger—had gone.

  “Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new,” murmured Sloan ironically to himself. He’d liked learning poetry at school. English poetry.

  Otherwise what he saw at the site was the same save for the swarming police. The timbers still shored up the adjacent house. The narrow, neglected gardens still ran away from the ruins. Desolation was still the order of the day. What difference there was between then and now lay in the minds of the policemen who were there. Before, their view of the site had merely been the beginning of a new job. Now, they were investigating an old death and a new one.

  With undertones of war.

  And overtones of murder.

  Gilbert Hodge was half-sitting
, half-lying on Dr. Latimer’s surgery couch. He was holding a measuring glass containing a chalky-looking mixture in one hand. His other hand was covering part of his tummy. His face was about as pallid as the medicine he was taking.

  A white-coated Miss Tyrell was standing by. Dr. Latimer was washing his hands. He waved Sloan in with a towel and said, “Would I be right in thinking, Inspector, that I lost my watch in the cause of verisimilitude?”

  “I think so,” said Sloan cautiously. “Local color.”

  “It was a good watch.”

  Sloan cleared his throat. “You could consider yourself lucky you—er—didn’t see what hit you.”

  “Point taken,” said Latimer thoughtfully. “It was dirty work at the crossroads all right. I was luckier than that poor devil.”

  Gilbert Hodge stirred. “You’d called your dogs off, Inspector …”

  “P.C. Cresswell has other duties today, sir.” Actually he’d gone—protesting—to be a traffic light at the Market Place crossroads. Wednesday, the station sergeant had underlined the word heavily, being Market Day. Not so much, he had added gloomily, that they kept the traffic moving, but they did manage to stop it rusting out where it stood. “Not that having the site guarded would have made a lot of difference.”

  “No.” Hodge shrugged. “Someone had it in for old Harold. You don’t get hit like that for nothing.”

  “No, sir.” Sloan could guess easily enough why Waite had been killed. “Are you feeling well enough to make a statement about finding him?”

  He was but it didn’t tell Sloan anything new.

  “And you knew him well enough in the old days?”

  “We were all part of the same bunch. You think you know people well when you play around with them but you don’t.”

  Sloan agreed with him there. It wasn’t play which revealed people.

  “And we were all young at the time,” said Hodge.

  “Yes.” The lady in Lamb Lane had been young, too.

  “And there was a war on.”

  “Yes.”

  “You took your fun where you could get it.”

  “Yes.” That certainly applied to the lady in Lamb Lane. Unless he was a Dutchman.

  “The old doctor might have been able to help you,” said Latimer.

  “But he’s dead, sir.”

  Harold Waite would have been able to help too. But he was dead.

  Too.

  “What about records?” suggested William helpfully, waving his hand towards the banked rows of patients’ medical cards. “You must have records, Inspector, just like I’ve got.”

  Upon the instant Miss Tyrell surged across the consulting room towards the records, putting herself between them and everyone else. “But these are confidential …”

  “We’ve got some records,” admitted Sloan, “but not cradle to grave stuff. We haven’t got everyone taped.”

  “Just the sinners,” said William. His head was beginning to ache again?

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan coughed. “I understand it serves us very well.”

  “If you wait a year or two,” said William, “you’ll be having my records and I’ll be having yours.”

  “Really?” Sloan got ready to go. Gilbert Hodge hadn’t anything useful to tell him. Or if he had, he wasn’t going to.

  “Someone once said we’ll end up by putting ill people in prison and criminals in hospitals.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me, sir,” said Sloan stolidly.

  “Not nowadays, it wouldn’t.” He turned to Hodge.

  “We’ll be seeing you again later today, sir, if you don’t mind but just for the record you hadn’t seen Harold Waite in years …”

  Hodge nodded. His color was a little better now but not much. “That’s right. Not Harold.”

  “Not Harold?” quickly.

  “Leslie,” said Hodge. “I saw him only the other day.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime last week, it would have been.” Hodge scratched his head. “Thursday. No, not Thursday. Friday, it was. In the evening.”

  Boil all the ingredients together for five minutes

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Say that again, Sloan,” commanded the superintendent crossly. “Someone has done what?”

  “Killed Harold Waite.” Sloan had borrowed Dr. Latimer’s telephone in Field House to ring in to the police station. “I want his brother brought over from Kinnisport, please.”

  “That’s bad, Sloan. The chief constable isn’t going to like it when he hears.”

  “No, sir.” Neither, of course, would Clara Waite when she did. He’d given the zealous Sergeant Pritchard of Luston that job. Praise be.

  “Then there had been some monkeying about on that site,” snapped Leeyes. No one could have called him slow.

  “Someone,” said Sloan more succinctly, “altered Mr. Fowkes’s pegged out site lines on Friday night so that Rigden and his friends shouldn’t dig just where the skeleton was.”

  He grunted. “Trying to make sure she was never found.”

  “Yes, sir. And now they’ve made sure Harold Waite can’t tell us who she was either.”

  “He knew, of course.”

  “It definitely rang a bell with him,” admitted Sloan, “I saw it …”

  “The Bells, The Bells,” chanted Leeyes down the telephone.

  “Beg pardon, sir?”

  “A case where the chap let the murder prey on his mind.”

  “I don’t remember that one, sir.”

  “I told you about it at the time. Quite a good tale, really.”

  Then it came back to Sloan.

  It had been in what had gone down in history at Berebury Police Station as the winter of French Literature.

  Each week the morning after the superintendent’s Adult Education Class, Sloan had been subjected to a rehash of the lecture. Even now he could remember them. Balzac, Racine, Molière, Maupassant, Lamartine, Proust … especially Proust.

  Proust was the one the superintendent was said to brood about nowadays when he sat and watched Dick’s Dive across the Market Square.

  “The murderer there,” went on Leeyes, “escaped the gallows but was destroyed by his own conscience.”

  “I haven’t seen any signs of that anywhere yet, sir.” Not in those poor gray bones: certainly not in Harold Waite’s crushed skull.

  Leeyes grunted. “That’s the trouble with this case, Sloan. You don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “Not yet, sir.” Sloan started to marshall what he did know about who he was looking for.

  Or could guess.

  Someone who wasn’t free to marry at the time of the first murder. Or who didn’t want to. A man, of course. Shooting was a man’s crime. So was killing mothers-to-be.

  Someone who had been around at the time, obviously. And that wasn’t the easiest of things to establish after so long. Someone who had been around on Friday night. And last night.

  “He’ll be middle-aged by now,” said Leeyes.

  “I suppose he will.” And just what did that signify? Hot blood grown cool, perhaps … cool and calculating: because if one thing was certain it was that most men became more calculating with the passing years. Sad but true. And there had been plenty of passing years in which to calculate the risks inherent in that buried body. He hesitated. “It’s a long time to live with a thing like that, sir. It might have made its mark—like in that chap you’ve just told me about.”

  “Good for him,” declared Leeyes, performing a neat verbal volte face.

  “I beg your pardon sir?”

  “Good for him,” repeated the superintendent robustly. “Nietzsche said so.”

  “Did he, sir?”

  Nietzsche.

  Sloan recognized that straightaway.

  From the winter after French Literature.

  Psychology Today.

  When the superintendent had upset all the lady cleaners at the police station by following them around and asking them what they did
with the contents of their dustbins. It had been by far the most disruptive of all the Adult Education classes that the superintendent had been to.

  “‘Build your houses by Vesuvius,’ Sloan,” said Leeyes. “That’s what he used to say to people.”

  “Really, sir? He didn’t mean the volcano, did he?” Sloan was wondering now if Gilbert Hodge’s ulcer had a place in this sorry story.

  “Of course he did. That’s the whole point.”

  “Why, sir?” Detective Inspector Sloan, that prudent husband, householder, and rose-grower, would have as soon as dreamt of building his house upon sand.

  The superintendent said, “He thought people should lead exposed and therefore heightened lives.”

  “Was he alive in the last war, sir?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I just wondered if he’d ever been bombed.”

  “No, of course not,” snapped Leeyes. “He was dead by then.”

  “I see, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Well, whoever—er—did for this young woman had plenty of this sort of life you were talking about. And he’s going to have a bit more now. I hope he enjoys it.”

  “I expect he’s got used to it, Sloan. Even that fellow who hung about under that sword hanging by a hair …”

  “Damocles, sir?”

  “Him,” said Leeyes grandly. “I expect he learned to live with it after a bit.”

  Sloan gathered up Crosby and left Field House.

  Neither French Literature nor international psychology was going to solve this case.

  Just routine. Like talking to the man who lived next door to the bomb site, who might have heard something in the night.

  They found him leaning over his garden fence watching the police activity with interest.

  “Lived here long?” began Sloan generally. It didn’t do to rush the old and retired. They liked to take their time.

  “All me life,” wheezed the old chap. “Bert Jackson’s the name. Anyone’ll tell you. Born, bred, and wed here, if that’s what you mean by long.” He spat expertly over the fence. “And all but dead here too more than once.”