Chapter and Hearse Read online

  ‘It’s a white crystalline substance.’

  ‘Easily confused with sugar?’

  ‘It would seem easily enough,’ said the policeman drily.

  ‘And what you don’t know, Inspector,’ deduced Henry intelligently, ‘is whether it was scattered on the mince pies … I take it was on the mince pies?’

  ‘They were the most likely vehicle,’ conceded the policeman.

  ‘By accident or whether it was meant to make a number of people slightly ill or…’

  ‘Or,’ put in Constable Bewman keenly, ‘one person very ill indeed?’

  ‘Or,’ persisted Henry quietly, ‘both.’

  ‘That is so.’ He gave a dry cough. ‘As it happens, it did both make several people ill and one fatally so.’

  ‘Which also might have been intended?’ Nobody had ever called Henry slow.

  ‘From all accounts,’ said Milson obliquely, ‘Mr Steele had a weak tummy before he ingested the corrosive sublimate of mercury.’

  ‘Uncle George wasn’t ill, was he?’

  ‘No, sir, nor Dr Friar.’ He gave his dry cough. ‘I am told that Dr Friar never partakes of pastry.’

  ‘Mrs Steele?’

  ‘Slightly ill. She says she just had one mince pie. Mrs Watkins didn’t have any. Nor did the professor.’

  ‘“The one without the parsley,”’ quoted Henry, ‘“is the one without the poison.”’

  ‘Just so, sir. It would appear at first sight from our immediate calculations quite possible that—’

  ‘Inspector, if you can hedge your bets as well as that before you say anything, we could find you a job in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. As I was saying, sir, it is possible that the poison was only in the mince pies furthest from the staircase. Bewman here has done a chart of where the victims took their pies from.’

  ‘Which would explain why some people were unaffected,’ said Henry.

  ‘Which might explain it, sir.’ The Inspector clearly rivalled Henry in his precision. ‘The Professor just wasn’t there to take one at all. He says he went to his room to finish a present for his wife. He was carving something for her out of a piece of old wood.’

  ‘Needs must when the Devil drives,’ responded Henry absently. He was still thinking. ‘It’s a pretty little problem, as they say.’

  ‘Means and opportunity would seem to be present,’ murmured Milsom.

  ‘That leaves motive, doesn’t it?’ said Henry.

  ‘The old gentleman mightn’t have had one, seeing he’s as he is, sir, if you take my meaning, and of course we don’t know anything about the professor and his wife, do we sir? Not yet.’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘That leaves the doctor…’

  ‘I’d’ve murdered Mrs Friar years ago,’ announced Henry cheerfully, ‘if she had been my wife.’

  ‘And Mrs Steele.’ There was a little pause and then Inspector Milsom said, ‘I understand the new young assistant at the pharmacy is more what you might call a contemporary of Mrs Steele.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s the way the wind’s blowing, is it?’

  ‘And then, sir,’ said the policeman, ‘after motive there’s still what we always call down at the station the fourth dimension of crime…’

  ‘And what might that be, Inspector?’

  ‘Proof.’ He got up to go. ‘Thank you for your help, sir.’

  Henry sat quite still after the two policemen had gone, his memory teasing him. Someone he knew had been poisoned with corrosive sublimate of mercury, served to him in tarts. By a tart too, if history was to be believed.

  No, not someone he knew.

  Someone he knew of.

  Someone they knew about at the Foreign Office because it had been a political murder, a famous political murder set round an eternal triangle …

  Henry Tyler sought out Professor Godiesky and explained.

  ‘It was recorded by contemporary authors,’ Henry said, ‘that when the tarts poisoned with mercury were delivered to the Tower of London for Sir Thomas Over-bury, the fingernail of the woman delivering them had accidentally been poked through the pastry…’

  The Professor nodded sapiently. ‘And it was stained black?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Henry. History did have some lessons to teach, in spite of what Henry Ford had said. ‘But it would wash off?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hans Godiesky simply.

  ‘So I’m afraid that doesn’t get us anywhere, does it?’

  The academic leaned forward slightly, as if addressing a tutorial. ‘There is, however, one substance on which mercury always leaves its mark.’

  ‘There is?’ said Henry.

  ‘Its – how do you say it in English? – its ineradicable mark.’

  ‘That’s how we say it,’ said Henry slowly. ‘And which substance, sir, would that be?’

  ‘Gold, Mr Tyler. Mercury stains gold.’

  ‘For ever?’

  ‘For ever.’ He waved a hand. ‘An amalgam is created.’

  ‘And I,’ Henry gave a faint smile, ‘I was foolish enough to think it was diamonds that were for ever.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Nothing, Professor. Nothing at all. Forgive me, but I think I may be able to catch the Inspector and tell him to look to the lady. And her gold wedding ring.’

  ‘Look to the lady?’ The refugee was now totally bewildered. ‘I do not understand…’

  ‘It’s a quotation.’

  ‘Ach, sir, I fear I am only a scientist.’

  ‘There’s a better quotation,’ said Henry, ‘about looking to science for the righting of wrongs. I rather think Mrs Steele may have looked to science too, to – er – improve her lot. And if she carefully scattered the corrosive sublimate over some mince pies and not others, it would have been with her left hand…’

  ‘Because she was left-handed,’ said the Professor immediately. ‘That I remember. And you think one mince pie would have had – I know the English think this important – more than its fair share?’

  ‘I do. Then all she had to do was to give her husband that one and Bob’s your uncle. Clever of her to do it in someone else’s house.’

  Hans Godiesky looked totally mystified. ‘And who was Bob?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Bob,’ said Henry from the door. ‘Think about Melchior and his gold instead.’

  The Trouble and Strife

  Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan sighed deeply and started to explain all over again to the woman sitting in front of him that people may go missing of their own accord at any time if they so wished. What they called it these days was ‘dropping out’, but he didn’t suppose that the aggressive woman before him would want him to use the term about her daughter.

  ‘Not my Susan,’ declared Mrs Briggs firmly, ‘whatever you’re going to try to tell me about it being a free country.’

  ‘Anyone,’ stated the policeman, who hadn’t been going to say anything about it being a free country. He also forbore to explain that Susan Cavendish wasn’t ‘her’ Susan any more but had apparently been a married woman in her own right for nearly three years now. She should have been her own woman long ago.

  ‘She’s not been in touch for a full month,’ said Mrs Briggs, ignoring this, ‘and that’s not right, is it?’

  ‘She doesn’t have to be in touch if she doesn’t want to be,’ repeated Sloan patiently. ‘She is, after all, of full age.’

  ‘And I may say, officer, she is also an Englishwoman born in wedlock and had her feet on dry land when I last saw her,’ Mrs Briggs completed the adage tartly, ‘but she’s still missing.’

  ‘Which she has every right to be if she so wishes,’ pointed out the Detective Inspector. With a mother like Mrs Briggs, he might very well have opted to go missing himself.

  ‘And that’s never happened before,’ insisted Susan’s mother, ignoring this last remark of his too. ‘They used to come in to see me every weekend without fail. Susan did my shopping while that no good h
usband of hers did any odd jobs about the house I needed doing.’

  ‘I see.’ Sloan had known a good few sons-in-law who never did a hand’s turn in their wife’s mother’s house but this didn’t seem the moment to say so.

  ‘And I’m just not satisfied that she’s all right,’ said Mrs Briggs belligerently. ‘So I’m reporting her missing here and now whatever you say.’

  ‘Was your daughter all right when you last saw her?’ parried Sloan.

  ‘It depends what you mean by all right,’ responded Mrs Briggs. ‘Physically she was as fit as the butcher’s dog…’

  ‘That’s something,’ put in Detective Constable Crosby from the sidelines.

  Mrs Briggs favoured him with a baleful stare and turned back to Sloan. ‘But she wasn’t happy in herself, even though she said the divorce was working its way through – and not before time too, if you ask me.’

  ‘Divorce?’ said Sloan, the policeman in him automatically pricking up his ears.

  ‘She’d decided to leave him at last,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘Nasty piece of work, I always said, that Christopher Cavendish, for all that he’s done well at his job.’

  ‘And what was that?’ enquired Sloan, pulling a piece of paper towards him.

  ‘He was one of those computer people,’ she said, sniffing. ‘You know – the sort who sit at home all day in front of a screen and call it working. How does anyone know whether you’re working or not, that’s what I want to know?’

  ‘I dare say the usual yardsticks apply,’ murmured Sloan.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘The making of money,’ said Sloan smoothly.

  ‘He did that,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘They had a lovely old house, though a bit on the small side if they’d wanted to start a family…’

  ‘Ah, I was going to ask about—’

  ‘Which mercifully, the way things have turned out, they hadn’t done.’ She sniffed. ‘Susan wanted a baby – don’t ask me why. Nothing but trouble, children. I was always telling her that.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan made a note.

  ‘Of course, half of the house will be my Susan’s when they settle up – half of everything, come to that – so she won’t come out of it too badly.’ She glared at Sloan. ‘If she’s all right, that is.’

  ‘Tell me, have you approached the husband…’ Sloan paused and looked down at his notes. ‘Yes, he is the husband still, isn’t he, if the divorce hasn’t come through yet? Have you asked him where she might be? He at least might have some idea, even if they have parted, as you say they have.’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ Mrs Briggs said instantly. ‘I don’t know where he is either.’

  ‘So the husband is missing too, is he?’ asked Sloan with interest.

  ‘Well, I never,’ remarked Detective Constable Crosby.

  Mrs Briggs bridled. ‘I wouldn’t know about him being missing, but the house has been sold – I do know that – and he’s gone too, but where I don’t know. Good riddance for Susan, if you ask me.’ She gave a self-satisfied smirk. ‘I always said she should never have married him in the first place. If I told her that once, I told her so a dozen times.’

  ‘Not good enough?’ put in Detective Constable Crosby helpfully. He was still a bachelor himself.

  ‘Not by a long chalk,’ said Mrs Briggs, taking a deep breath preparatory to enlarging on this at length.

  Detective Inspector Sloan forestalled her. ‘And have you made enquiries at her place of work?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ conceded Mrs Briggs. ‘Not that I got very far.’

  ‘How come?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby, in whom his superiors had so far failed to instil any proper sense of formality when dealing with members of the public.

  ‘Susan worked for a temping agency in Berebury and they say that someone just rang in one day to say she wouldn’t be available for work any more.’

  ‘Someone?’ pounced Sloan.

  ‘They couldn’t swear it was her,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘In fact, they couldn’t even be sure that it was a woman who had rung.’ She suddenly became a little more human and admitted, ‘That’s when I began to get really worried.’

  ‘I see, madam.’ He did too. ‘You say their marital home has been sold?’

  ‘The house agents’ sale board has come down and Wetherspoons cleared the furniture at the end of last week.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Sid Wetherspoon wouldn’t tell me where they were taking it. Commercially sensitive information, he called it.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan made a note. He’d have a word with the house agents and the removal people himself.

  ‘And their solicitors won’t tell me either,’ she went on in aggrieved tones. ‘Client confidentiality was what they said.’

  ‘Quite so,’ murmured Sloan.

  ‘There was something else.’

  ‘What was that, madam?’

  ‘All Susan’s stuff was in that van that went along with Christopher’s.’

  ‘Not just his?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby, patently puzzled.

  ‘No, and I do know that because I watched it go.’ She snorted gently. ‘It was just as well she wasn’t pregnant after all…’

  ‘After all?’ prompted Sloan, leaving aside for the time being the more germane matter of all the furniture going from the house together.

  ‘She’d wanted a baby at first but one didn’t come along,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘And before you ask, the doctor wouldn’t tell me anything either. Said he’d be struck off the register or something like that. Excuses,’ she said richly, ‘all of them.’

  ‘That’d be because of that chap Hippocrates,’ put in Crosby. ‘He’s the one the doctors swear by.’ He frowned. ‘Funny that, since he wasn’t a Christian.’

  ‘At least,’ said Mrs Briggs, ignoring this, ‘there being no baby on the way will have made the divorce simpler, which is something to be thankful for.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, rising to his feet. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Briggs. We’ll be looking into the matter for you.’

  ‘Then there’s the question of her car,’ said the woman, not making a move. ‘That’s worrying, too.’

  Detective Constable Crosby’s face brightened. ‘Do you know the number?’

  ‘Course, I do,’ she came back at him on the instant. ‘And the make.’

  ‘What’s so worrying about her car?’ asked Detective Inspector Sloan quickly.

  ‘She sold it before she disappeared. At least,’ she said meaningfully, ‘someone did. Took it into that big dealers down by the river and sold it.’

  ‘For cash or a trade-in?’ asked Crosby.

  ‘Cash,’ said Mrs Briggs promptly.

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Sloan.

  ‘I saw it in their showroom.’ She twisted her lips. ‘Besides, car dealers don’t have funny ideas about what’s commercially sensitive information.’

  ‘Except the real second-hand value,’ muttered Crosby. ‘They’ll never tell you that about any car you’re trading in.’

  ‘That I wouldn’t know, never having been a driver myself,’ she said, reminded of another grievance. ‘At least their old house was on an easy bus route for me. It suited me nicely being where it was – I could get there whenever I wanted.’

  ‘And what car does your son-in-law drive, madam?’ enquired Sloan as casually as he could. These days owners of cars and their addresses could be traced by police authorities with the speed of light.

  ‘Christopher?’ she said scornfully. ‘Oh, he didn’t have a car. Only Susan did. Said he didn’t need one, working from home like he did.’ She screwed up her face. ‘And anyway he’d got some potty idea about not adding to the world’s pollution problems. What he thinks he could do about global warming beats me.’

  ‘I think,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan a trifle portentously, ‘you’d better leave things as they are at present, madam. We’ll be in touch in – er – in due course.’

  ‘I’m
sure I hope so,’ said Mrs Briggs, ‘but if you ask me, he’s made away with her and made off with all the money.’

  ‘Have you any particular basis for making these allegations, madam?’ asked Sloan wearily. He was beginning to feel quite sorry for both her daughter and her son-in-law.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ she said acidly.

  ‘Well?’

  Mrs Briggs dived into her handbag, retrieved a glossy sheet of paper and waved it before his eyes. ‘This.’

  ‘The estate agents’ sale particulars of their house?’ said Sloan.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Read it,’ she commanded. ‘Especially the bit about the garage.’

  ‘“Detached garage, brick with slate roof,”’ he quoted, ‘“well equipped with workbench, tool cupboard and two electrical points.”’ He lifted his gaze. ‘Sounds very nice. What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘There’s something missing from the description,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘What?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Inspection pit,’ she said. ‘There always used to be one there and it isn’t mentioned in this.’

  ‘And you think,’ began Crosby incautiously.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan got rid of Mrs Briggs by falling back on an age-old police formula that comprised thanking her for coming in and promising to keep in touch with her to let her know how their enquiries were progressing.

  * * *

  He was nothing like as circumspect when talking to his Superintendent.

  ‘I don’t like it, sir. I’ve had a look at it and the inspection pit in the garage at the Cavendishs’ old home has obviously been filled in very recently.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Superintendent Leeyes gruffly.

  ‘The house agents say that they paid the cheque from the sale of the house direct to the bank as agreed. It was made out to both Christopher and Susan Cavendish and their instructions were that it was to go into the couple’s joint account there.’

  ‘Which said joint account could still be functioning,’ said the superintendent heavily, ‘if either had power to draw on it.’

  ‘Exactly, sir.’ He cleared his throat. ‘In fact, since then all the withdrawals have been made by Christopher Cavendish.’