A Going Concern Read online

  Just different, probably.

  ‘We bring nothing into this world,’ declared the Reverend Edwin Fournier to the assembled congregation, ‘and it is certain that we carry nothing out …’

  But, thought Amelia to herself, though Great-Aunt Octavia might have known that there are no pockets in a shroud, she had left her instructions for those who came after in no uncertain manner.

  Detective Inspector Sloan swept the congregation with his gaze. He’d only met the eye of Woman Police Sergeant Perkins once but it had been enough. She had indicated a little old lady, grey-haired and nondescript, who had made her own way to a seat half-way down the centre aisle, and who sat now, alert and attentive to the reading.

  It was from Ecclesiastes. ‘“To everything”,’ read the rector, ‘“there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven …”’

  Amelia sat upright, letting the words flow over her like balm.

  ‘“A time to be born and a time to die”,’ read on the rector. ‘“A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill …”’

  Detective Inspector Sloan was sitting stiffly upright in his pew, too, and wondering why there had been an exact time for someone to kill Mrs Garamond, giving thanks the while that the eyelids of an unconscious girl in the Berebury Hospital had begun to flicker. There was always a time to hope, too.

  ‘“And a time to heal”,’ continued the rector, ‘“a time to break down …”’

  Octavia Harquil-Grasset hadn’t broken down, thought Amelia in the front pew. She’d had her baby, mourned its father, handed her little daughter over for adoption, and gone to play her own part in the war effort.

  ‘“A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love … and a time to hate …”’

  Amelia wished she’d known her great-aunt, really known her, that is. Not just as a Sunday afternoon visitor but known her well enough to know what she had really thought about things …

  Edwin Fournier’s voice went on above her thoughts. ‘“A time of war …”’

  That applied to Octavia Garamond, all right, decided Amelia.

  ‘“And a time of peace”,’ concluded the rector firmly, closing the Bible and making his way back to his stall.

  That, too, thought Amelia, as Claude Miller said his lapidary piece and the burial service wound its way to a conclusion.

  Detective Inspector Sloan had had a longer time to look around the church and had a better vantage point from the back pew anyway. His role now he felt was the triple one, shared with a sheepdog, of at the one and the same time protecting the strays in his flock from danger, steering them in the direction in which he wanted them to go, and marking the goats in their midst.

  Still inside the body of the church was Woman Police Sergeant Perkins, whose sole duty today was shadowing the little old lady who had given her name at the door as Miss Catherine Camus. Detective Constable Crosby had mysteriously slipped out of the vestry door and was standing in the churchyard right behind Mrs Shirley Doves, care assistant.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, pointing. ‘That’s him, all right. He was the one in the Dog and Duck that night. Know him anywhere, I would.’

  TWENTY

  Muffle the dinner-bell, mournfully ring.

  It was not the first time in the long history of that legal establishment that the offices of Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery down by the bridge in Berebury had been the venue for explanation. It even occurred to Amelia Kennerley that her Great-Aunt Octavia would have felt the mahogany and the old worn leather to have made the setting even more appropriate.

  The person who fitted into the old-fashioned surroundings best of all was Miss Kate Camus. She was a neat, rather prim-looking old lady who settled herself into one of James Puckle’s chairs with complete composure.

  ‘I can quite see your difficulty, Inspector,’ she said to Sloan. ‘The murderer must have come from either Chernwoods’ Dyestuffs or Harris and Marsh’s Chemicals …’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Amelia, who had almost – but not quite – recovered from seeing the arrest of Gregory Rosart minutes after the committal of her great-aunt’s body to the grave three days before.

  ‘They were the only people who could have known about OZ,’ said Miss Camus calmly. ‘Chernwoods’ from finding traces in their records – although we were very careful – and Harris and Marsh’s from things that Albert Harris had said after he lost his wits.’ She said: ‘I went to see him yesterday and he’s completely cuckoo, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘but his son isn’t.’ He’d just given Michael Harris the roughest hour of that opportunist’s life before telling him that the police wouldn’t be bringing charges for what the man in the street would have called insider trading even if the law didn’t.

  ‘What I don’t quite see,’ put in James Puckle, ‘is why Rosart told you as much as he did …’

  Surprisingly it was Detective Constable Crosby who answered him. ‘He was trying to make patsies of us.’ He was still smarting from the thought. ‘Rosart couldn’t find this lady here and he thought we could find her for him.’

  ‘And,’ added Kate Camus, ‘he also made the mistake of thinking that if he found me, he’d get hold of OZ.’

  ‘The secret of Hut Eleven?’ said Amelia, wishing it didn’t sound like the title of a bad children’s book.

  ‘One of them, anyway,’ said Miss Camus.

  James Puckle picked up the earlier point. ‘It wouldn’t have helped him, then, if Rosart had got to you first?’

  ‘It might have stopped him hitting Jane Baskerville …’ said Miss Camus with vigour.

  ‘In mistake for me,’ said Amelia. Rosart had vouchsafed that much. ‘She happened on him leaving after the burglary.’ The girl in Berebury Hospital had recovered consciousness long enough to tell them that. And more.

  ‘This discovery,’ said Sloan tenaciously keeping to the point, ‘was it valuable?’

  ‘It was a very important finding, Inspector,’ said Miss Camus. ‘Undoubtedly Operation Zenith was a real milestone in the biological sciences by any of the standards prevailing at the time.’

  ‘Made by …’

  ‘Oh, by Octavia Harquil-Grasset.’ She shook her head. ‘Not me.’

  ‘What became of it?’ he asked, although he was begining to think he knew.

  ‘We destroyed it,’ she said serenely.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Tavi, Bill Garamond, and I.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan said quietly: ‘Would you tell us why?’

  ‘Tavi didn’t think the world was ready for it yet.’

  ‘Miss Camus.’ James Puckle spoke as a man of law should, slowly and carefully. ‘Are you telling me that you and Mr and Mrs Garamond deliberately disposed of all the records of Hut Eleven?’

  ‘Only of this one discovery, Mr Puckle,’ she said, equally precisely. ‘Not of any of our other work.’

  ‘But,’ put in Detective Inspector Sloan, policeman, ‘every record of the discovery that was codenamed Operation Zenith?’

  ‘Every single one, Inspector.’ Miss Camus sounded completely matter of fact.

  ‘Oh,’ burst out Amelia, ‘please tell us why …’

  ‘Tavi was worried that if anyone else ever knew about it, it would eventually get into the wrong hands.’ She surveyed her audience from the distance of old age and said: ‘There was a very real danger then, you know, that England might still have been invaded.’

  ‘But you knew what it was?’ persisted Amelia. ‘This discovery …’

  Miss Camus adjusted her glasses and said precisely: ‘I knew exactly what it was that Tavi had stumbled on – the nature of her discovery, so to speak. I did not know how she had done so and she did not tell me – in fact, I asked her not to do so in the interests of greater security.’

  ‘But,’ said Sloan, still sticking to the main issue, ‘you agreed with her about its total destruction.’

  ‘Oh, y
es, indeed, I did. Who knows what dreadful misuse would have been made of it?’ She regarded her audience and said: ‘Don’t forget that there was a war on then in which the sciences were being put to purposes over which scientists had no control. Irreparable damage might have been done before anyone could stop it.’ She looked unseeingly into the distance as she said: ‘You’re all too young to remember and being told isn’t the same thing, I know, but there was an organized wickedness abroad in those days …’

  ‘But tell us what it was,’ pleaded Amelia. ‘All I know is that my great-aunt had been working before on the way in which cells divide in plants …’

  ‘What we at Chernwoods’ were doing rather followed on from that,’ said Kate Camus. ‘We’d been looking at the possible uses in wartime of chemical dyes in and on human beings …’

  ‘Operation Tell-tale …’ said Sloan.

  Miss Camus said with apparent irrelevance: ‘Tavi had a very good brain, you know, and a lot of other interests besides the biological sciences. Psychology was one of her pet hobbies. She was a great reader of Sigmund Freud …’

  ‘And?’ said Sloan.

  ‘And she thought she had come across under her microscope something that he had written about but not known how to identify.’

  ‘She did, did she?’ said Sloan. The name of Sigmund Freud was altogether too well known to them down at the police station. Especially his pleasure principle.

  ‘But what was it?’ cried Amelia.

  ‘What Freud had called “the secret hour of life’s midday”,’ said Miss Camus. ‘That is barring accidents, naturally.’

  The Detective Inspector heard himself echoing the old lady. ‘Naturally.’

  Miss Camus said hortatively: ‘Tavi found a set of cells in some plants she had been working on which started to decline exactly half-way through the plant’s life-cycle so she reasoned that animals might have a similar marker in their make-up.’

  ‘And they did?’ Sloan grasped the idea. Like all good ones, it was breathtakingly simple.

  Miss Camus nodded. ‘She went on to mice and … er … herself. The human body does replicate some animal species, you know.’

  They knew that to their cost down at the police station, too. Bulls and boars, mostly.

  It was the solicitor who spoke next. ‘It would never have done,’ said James Puckle, ‘not for people to have known exactly when they were half-way through their lives.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s what we thought, too.’

  ‘It would have been a secret worth having, though,’ murmured Sloan.

  ‘Miss Camus,’ said Amelia Kennerley impulsively, ‘my great-aunt’s Will said she “left a candle for Kate”. Do you know why?’

  ‘Ah.’ A flush of real pleasure suffused the old lady’s face, and for the first time Miss Kate Camus was apparently at a loss for words. When at last she found her voice she said with a catch in it: ‘Now, that’s a secret of Hut Eleven that I’m not going to tell you about … let’s just say it’s to do with an old flame.’

  ‘You haven’t left any loose ends, have you, Sloan?’ said Superintendent Leeyes, who could probably have taught Sigmund Freud a thing or two about keeping the upper hand.

  ‘No, sir. Mrs Garamond’s discovery would have been a secret worth having, though,’ said Sloan, conscious that it was only true sportsmen who thought it improper to bet on certainties, never actuaries or insurance companies.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Leeyes acidly, ‘considering how reluctant the medical profession has always been to venture an opinion on when someone is going to die even when they do know.’

  ‘The potential implications of her findings would have been very considerable,’ agreed Sloan, adding ‘to mankind in general and Chernwoods’ Dyestuffs in particular.’

  ‘What had Rosart in mind, then?’

  ‘He wanted to be an important part of a management buy-out being led by Chernwoods’ chief chemist.’ Sloan opened his notebook. ‘We realized that all the misfortunes which had beset the firm could have been engineered from within to keep the shares down. What spoilt that little plan was Harris and Marsh’s Chemicals trying a take-over on their own account and bumping the share prices up again.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘They thought Chernwoods’ held the secret of Hut Eleven without knowing they’d got it.’

  ‘And that, I suppose, came of listening to old boy Harris’s wanderings?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There’re no holds barred in business, are there?’ marvelled Leeyes.

  ‘Red in tooth and claw, sir.’ He said: ‘I think we’ll find Rosart got his ethylene chlorhydrin from somewhere in Chernwoods’ but not from Keen.’

  ‘And Harris and Marsh’s … they just catch a cold, do they?’ said Leeyes, whose own grasp of business finance was tenuous.

  ‘Well, yes and no, sir.’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Our man in the City, sir,’ quoted Sloan, ‘says that they’ll probably have to merge with Chernwoods’ Dye-stuffs or go under.’ It had sounded like a punishment worse than death to Sloan. ‘And have their chief chemist on the board.’

  ‘And the girl with the head injuries?’

  ‘Jane Baskerville’s holding her own very well, sir,’ said Sloan, adding a garden aphorism: ‘It’s the rootstock that controls the vigour of the growth and we know that’s all right.’

  ‘And,’ said the superintendent, undiverted, ‘where does she come in, then?’

  ‘Jane Baskerville is Mrs Garamond’s granddaughter, sir.’

  ‘So she says,’ said Leeyes derisively.

  ‘No, sir. She hasn’t said anything like that.’

  ‘After the money I suppose,’ sniffed Leeyes.

  ‘She’s the daughter of a Mrs Erica Baskerville who herself is the daughter of Octavia Harquil-Grasset and Eric Hector Goudy of the Fearnshire Regiment …’

  ‘She’ll have to prove it, Sloan, that’s all and …’

  ‘It isn’t she who’s saying it, sir.’

  ‘What? What …?’

  ‘That’s what Dr Dabbe says.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with him?’ demanded Leeyes truculently.

  ‘Some new test he’s done, sir. It’s in his report and it demonstrates the maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA through three generations. Jane Baskerville is Octavia Garamond’s daughter’s daughter …’

  It had been Dr Dabbe who had first caught – and compared – his hairs, after all.

  ‘These tests for DNA Mitochondrial Typing are becoming very common in the legal field, Miss Kennerley,’ said James Puckle when they were next alone. ‘It would have been a great help to have had them around at the time of the Tichborne claimant.’

  ‘Jane Baskerville isn’t claiming anything,’ said Amelia. ‘She said that she’s getting married and only wanted to check on her mother’s family’s heredity first.’

  ‘Very wise,’ nodded James Puckle. ‘I wish that more …’

  ‘And that’s when they found the letter in the Adoptions Register file from Great-Aunt Octavia giving her name and address in case her daughter ever consulted it.’

  ‘I think we shall be able to tell Mrs Erica Baskerville quite a lot about her father, too,’ said James Puckle, who had found out a good deal of the family history of a young Scottish officer in the Fearnshires killed in May 1940 at a place called Hautchamps.

  ‘And about precatory settlements,’ said Amelia, who also knew where her duty rested.

  ‘And about precatory settlements,’ assented the solicitor. ‘When Jane’s a bit stronger, though. In the mean time …’

  ‘Yes?’ Something in his voice made Amelia look up.

  ‘I’ve booked a table for two at the White Hart … that is,’ he said archaically, ‘if you will do me the honour of joining me.’

  ‘I can’t see why all that business about cells was so important,’ grumbled Crosby, always more difficult to handle when hungry.

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nbsp; ‘It’s called scientific progress,’ said Sloan, adding hastily, ‘or would have been if the deceased hadn’t decided otherwise.’

  ‘And I still don’t see how Dr Dabbe can have known about that other girl being the deceased’s granddaughter without even seeing her,’ persisted Crosby resentfully. ‘It doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘That’s called scientific progress too, Crosby.’

  ‘It’s all very well, sir, but how can he be so certain?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, Crosby. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Dr Dabbe yourself.’

  ‘I did, sir.’ The constable still sounded aggrieved.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That he was as sure as eggs is eggs.’

  About the Author

  Catherine Aird is the author of more than twenty volumes of detective mysteries and three collections of short stories. Most of her fiction features Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and Detective Constable W. E. Crosby. Aird holds an honorary master’s degree from the University of Kent and was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to the Girl Guide Association. She lives in a village in East Kent, England.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1993 by Catherine Aird