A Late Phoenix Read online

  “Natural?”

  “Natural. But I think it was trigger to everything that’s happened since. It was only when Mrs. Cardington died that someone began to feel safe enough to make a move. She remembered Margot Poulton very well, you see.”

  Dr. Latimer kept his visits brief that afternoon. He’d already seen the really ill patients in the morning and his head was hurting again. He was also getting distinctly irritated by the continuing kind enquiries about the bandage. He drove back to Field House therefore as quickly as he decently could.

  Miss Tyrell was still there at her desk though she should normally have gone home ages ago.

  She greeted him with shining eyes.

  “Dr. Latimer—about Dr. Tarde—such good news. That police inspector—you know the one I mean—so nice and respectful—quite respectable too, really, when you come to think about it—he’s been back again and do you know—he says he thinks Dr. Tarde didn’t commit suicide after all. Isn’t that a comfort?”

  “Was it an accident then?” suggested Latimer, bewildered as much by Miss Tyrell’s sudden talkativeness as by what she said. “Surely the question of accident was sorted out a long time ago?”

  “No. Not accident. He thinks he was murdered.”

  “By whom?”

  Her hands fell helplessly into her lap. “There now. I quite forgot to ask him.”

  Superintendent Leeyes jerked his shoulder in the general direction of the telephone on his desk. “There’s a message in for you, Sloan, from Kinnisport Police. They’ve located Leslie Waite in The Saucy Nancy. They say they’ve taken him in tow and they’re heading back to harbor now.”

  “It isn’t Leslie Waite, sir.”

  “They say he didn’t seem too put out. Not a worrier, I suppose. That’s what I said, Sloan, remember. It’ll be someone who could live with himself and his memories.”

  “It isn’t Leslie Waite, sir.”

  “What do you mean, man?” barked Leeyes. “What about this Freda Cowell he married?”

  “Alive and well and living in Park Street, St. Luke’s.”

  “What’s that?” The superintendent swivelled round in his chair and glared at Sloan.

  “Crosby’s just been talking to her, sir. And Leslie Waite still sees her each month.”

  “Maintenance?” divined Leeyes swiftly.

  “I expect so, sir.”

  “So that’s why his father cut him out of his will. I thought there’d be a reason for that. For playing about with this Doreen woman …”

  “Or someone similar.” There would always be women willing to play Leslie Waite’s sort of games.

  “But she doesn’t know about Freda?”

  “Probably not,” conceded Sloan. “I expect that’s why he lied about his having come over here on Friday evening.”

  “Well, Sloan …” Leeyes looked him up and down and then said balefully, “are you going to tell me what you propose to do or are you just going to do it?”

  In the event Dr. William Latimer didn’t get his longed-for peace and quiet that afternoon after all. He had barely had his first cup of tea when Mrs. Milligan came rushing through with the news that there had been a bad accident outside Mr. Reddley’s office and would he go at once.

  He did.

  He could tell that something serious had happened from the way in which people were crowded round in the street—but crowded at a distance from something that was lying on the pavement. It was as if they were equally reluctant to move either nearer or farther away.

  Somewhere he could hear a girl crying.

  “It was the drawing office window,” she said between sobs. “He said the sash was stuck. He got up on the sill and said he’d fix it and then …” She started crying again.

  Someone led her away.

  Dr. Latimer took a quick look at what was lying on the pavement and saw for himself why it was everyone else was keeping their distance. It wasn’t pretty. It was Mark Reddley.

  On the fringe of the crowd he recognized Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby but they made no move to speak to him. In the distance he could hear the clangor of the approaching ambulance siren.

  He straightened up, his own headache forgotten. He supposed the only useful thing he could do now would be to go round and see Mrs. Reddley.

  The superintendent didn’t seem to have moved since Sloan last spoke to him. He was still sitting at his desk overlooking the Market Square.

  “I suppose Reddley saw you coming?”

  “Yes, sir. I think so. From his window.”

  “You weren’t actually waving the warrant, I hope.”

  “No, sir.” They hadn’t flaunted it from the street but then they hadn’t attempted to hide their purpose either.

  “I think he knew we were coming for him.”

  Leeyes grunted. “And now you’re going to tell me you knew it was him all along?”

  “No, sir. But I did know roughly when and how and why the girl was killed and so when …”

  “‘I keep six honest serving men,’” quoted the superintendent jovially. “Do you know that one, Sloan?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan sighed. He knew it all too well. Someone had once—in a misguided moment—taught Superintendent Leeyes what they had called the policemen’s poem. Rudyard Kipling’s The Serving Men. Sloan hoped they had lived to regret it.

  “‘They taught me all I knew,’” sang on Leeyes.

  “Yes, sir,” responded Sloan politely. It was not for him to say that the policeman’s lot was not a happy one.

  “‘Their names are What and Why and When …’”

  “Quite so, sir.” Sloan himself preferred a more neutral police approach: like “And what appears to be the trouble, madam?” or even—at a pinch—Constable Crosby’s “Now then, now then, you can’t do that there here.”

  “‘And How and Where and Who,’” finished the superintendent triumphantly.

  “As far as the Who is concerned, sir …” There was only ever one way to take the superintendent and that was literally.

  “Well?”

  “There was only one person who fitted in every particular and that was Mark Reddley. He married an architect’s daughter for a start. That must have given his career a leg up. And he did all the different designs for the various development projects on the Lamb Lane site over the years. Garton and Hodge didn’t do that. I checked. And their marriages weren’t important to their careers either.”

  “Marriage is always important to a career, Sloan. You should know that.”

  “Reddley,” said Sloan, ignoring this cynical aphorism, “must have been able to tell in advance that his designs would be rejected when he wanted them to be and also accepted when he thought the danger was past.”

  “Last June …”

  “One danger was past, sir. Mrs. Cardington had died. But a fresh danger had arisen. That was that official planning had reached such a pitch that the council were going to develop if Reddley didn’t.”

  “So the old doctor had to die, too.”

  “I’m afraid it looks like it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “It was Mark Reddley and Associates who should have given proper notification of intended digging for foundations to the council so that Mr. Fowkes at the museum—among other people—should know about it. And he didn’t.”

  “Didn’t want the archaeologist grubbing about,” agreed Leeyes sagely.

  “Certainly not, sir. And he didn’t want the council doing the designs either. He wanted to do the layout himself.”

  “I can quite see that. To reduce the chances of the skeleton being found in the first place.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan frowned. “I should have guessed earlier about that. Gilbert Hodge kept saying he couldn’t understand why Reddley designed the new building like he had done. He also told me Reddley wanted some symbolic statuary there …”

  “Ha! Now at those psychology classes I went to, Sloan …”

  “Reddl
ey was too clever to buy the land himself,” went on Sloan hastily, “but he took steps to keep in with Hodge. If anything did happen to be found suspicion was bound to fall on the Waite brothers first and then Gilbert Hodge.”

  “Only Harold Waite thought he was cleverer.”

  “Or, perhaps, he just wanted to do a little checking on the quiet first.”

  “He was unlucky,” said Leeyes.

  “So was Reddley,” said Sloan. “I reckon he had two bits of bad luck actually. The man putting the marker in just happened to strike that spot. That was something he couldn’t foresee.”

  “And the other?”

  “The bullet staying in the body, sir. Its lodging in the spine like that was pure chance. And without the bullet we’d never have known it was murder …”

  The superintendent wasn’t listening any more. He was staring out of his window as if mesmerized.

  “Look, Sloan. At Dick’s Dive. Over there. That hair. It’s halfway down the chap’s back. And waved …”

  Sloan gathered up his notes and made for the door. Mark Reddley’s hair had been cut to regulation length, his appearance routinely masculine and his clothing rigidly conventional. And he had killed—quite ruthlessly—the three people who stood between him and his personal ambition. Perhaps the hair didn’t matter after all …

  Detective Inspector Sloan hadn’t been back in his own room very long before Detective Constable Crosby came in.

  “Message just through from Mr. Esmond Fowkes, sir. The museum man.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s been working on the Lamb Lane site, sir. Looking for those Saxon remains.”

  “Has he indeed?”

  “Seems as if he’s found them, sir. Some bones. Late Saxon. Wants to know what to do with them …”

  Sloan told him exactly what he could do with them.

  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 © 1971 by Catherine Aird

  Cover design by Tracey Dunham

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1068-9

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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