Passing Strange Page 17

“What you might call trouble on the Home Front, Sloan, eh?”

  Sloan dutifully acknowledged this. “You could put it like that, sir.” The great thing at the Police Station was to keep the Superintendent off the subject of the last war altogether. To a man, at some time or other every officer had figuratively splashed his way ashore at Walcheren with the Superintendent in nostalgic reminiscence. The station sergeant, who had to do it the most often, said he could actually feel his own feet getting wetter each time. Sloan hurried into speech. “Maurice Esdaile can’t get very far all the while there’s an ownership dispute.”

  “He’d be a fool if he tried,” said Leeyes warmly.

  Sloan breathed again. This time he wasn’t going to be treated to a soliloquy on the shape of landing craft and what Brigade Headquarters had said to a rising young Leeyes.

  “Exactly, sir,” he responded with alacrity. “Esdaile wouldn’t even be able to begin to raise the wind on the capital side if there’s any doubt about the title.” Purity of title was civil law, not criminal, but even a policeman knew enough to know that. Anyway the girl’s trustees had indicated that they weren’t going to stand in the way of the development so he didn’t see how that came into it.

  “What about the woman?” asked Leeyes. He was even more chauvinistic driving a golf ball on Sundays than he was driving a car on weekdays.

  It took Sloan a moment or two to work out who it was he was talking about. “Oh, you mean Miss Tompkins …”

  He hadn’t even toyed with the notion of Miss Tompkins having popped out of her Society’s tent to make a quick killing for the sake of the preservation of the countryside. He was aware that ecology and its camp-followers were getting as out of hand as the Health Education branwagon – but not as out of hand as all that. Besides, he didn’t think Miss Tompkins knew anything about Richenda Mellows and her putative link with the Priory at the time.

  There was another consequence of delay in building the Esdaile Homes estate, though.

  “Sam Watkinson at Home Farm has to soldier on a little longer with more work than he wants,” said Sloan.

  “Don’t we all?” said Leeyes mordantly.

  And another consequence.

  An elderly woman of firm principle who was comfortably off would stay that way for the time being. Greater fortune might come later. In the meantime she rested – apparently content on the due and proper processes of the legal system.

  And another consequence still.

  The Priory roof wouldn’t get repaired. He said this to the Superintendent.

  “I don’t suppose,” pronounced that worthy sagely, “that the Brigadier’s widow worried very much about maintenance. Old people don’t mind a bit of rack and ruin.”

  “I expect Hebbinge did what he could,” murmured Sloan. He had considered Edward Hebbinge from time to time since yesterday afternoon. His position seemed secure enough, whosoever took over the Priory. Presumably he would continue to run the estate for either Richenda Mellows’s three Trustees or Mrs Edith Wylly in the same way as he had for old Mrs Mellows and before her, the Brigadier. It might make a difference long term – when and if Richenda Mellows came into her own, so to speak, but there were seven years to go before she would be twenty-five and could shake off her Trustees. By then Hebbinge himself would be of an age to retire out of the firing line.

  For the life of him Sloan couldn’t see any real difference from Hebbinge’s point of view between Richenda Mellows inheriting and Mrs Wylly doing so. The land agent would stay on and administer. The monks, too, thought Sloan idly, would have needed such a man in their day. He’d have had another name – steward perhaps – but he’d have done much the same sort of work.

  “It doesn’t add up to a lot, does it, Sloan?” said Leeyes helpfully. “Call me back later, will you, when you’ve found out who benefits most. That’s the thing to look for. Say three hours from now …”

  Fred Pearson tumbled out of the King’s Head public house smartly on closing time. As a rule on Sundays he had to drink alone on account of his friend Ken’s domestic duties. This Sunday he hadn’t drunk alone.

  He’d drunk with the Press.

  And that was without telling them any of the things that they wanted to hear. He knew that. This unwonted reticence stemmed not from innate discretion nor from an unwillingness to see his name in the papers – indeed, as a rule he quite enjoyed that. A photograph of Fred and his potatoes, cut from the local newspapers, lived permanently behind the old bracket clock on the mantelshelf chez Pearson. No, the reason Fred hadn’t spilled any beans was that the newspapermen were not of Almstone.

  They were outsiders.

  In an earlier rural tradition which had let down the portcullis and run up the drawbridge at the approach of strangers, so Fred Pearson had gone uncommunicative.

  Let it be said that he had not allowed this attitude of mind to come between him and accepting their hospitality. That was something quite different, but he had parried all questions about Nurse Cooper and her unfortunate demise with rustic simplicity.

  “Ah, that’s as may be,” he said with bucolic slowness to anything that looked like getting warm. And “I don’t mind if I do” to each and every invitation to further refreshment.

  Almstone could see to its own dirty washing, he thought confusedly to himself.

  “Ah,” he said again to another loaded question, “there’s some as would say ‘yes’ and there’s some as would say ‘no’.”

  “I don’t mind if I do,” he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. This at least had the merit of being the truth. “Same again, please.”

  By closing time he had been fortified by an unusual quantity of beer. He had had to concentrate quite hard when the time came to leave the King’s Arms. The little flight of steps which had presented no problem at all when he had arrived demanded careful negotiation when he left. To his surprise he found himself catching up with someone else who was descending the steps with even greater caution. That was because that someone was carrying something.

  “Vultures,” enunciated Fred Pearson distinctly. “That’s what those reporters are.”

  Detective-Constable Crosby paused and turned. “Picking over what’s left after death,” he said in melancholy agreement.

  “Did you see that one in the bomber jacket?” Fred sniffed. “I had a ferret once with the same sort of face.”

  “They always find something in the end,” said Crosby morbidly.

  Fred wasn’t quite clear whether the constable was talking about ferrets or newspaper reporters so he went off on a different tack altogether. “There’s no call to have everything that happened yesterday tit … titill …” His voice trailed away in a little hiccup. Perhaps in the circumstance ‘titillated’ wasn’t the best word after all. “Tarted up,” he said with clarity, “for people to lick their lips over.”

  “Folks only read that sort of thing anyway,” pronounced Constable Crosby with authority, “because it makes them feel superior to other folks.”

  “It’s not as if they’re really interested in Almstone,” agreed Fred. In his book that was the ultimate sin.

  Crosby nodded. “They like to think there’s others with troubles they haven’t got.”

  That reminded Fred of something: the constable’s burden.

  “Want a hand?” he offered benignly.

  “What … oh, thanks.” Crosby was trying to keep a loaded tray steady with one hand at the same time as he balanced two ice-cold cans in the other. “Seeing as I haven’t got three of my own.”

  Fred Pearson took the cans from him. A tray of food was rather more than he would have wanted to tackle just at this particular moment.

  “That’s a help,” said the constable, now able to apply both his hands to the tray.

  Each man in his own way was glad to have reached the bottom of the flight of steps. For the detective-constable it was terra firma. Fred Pearson was still finding the ground a trifle unsteady. It would, he was sure, settle dow
n presently. There was nothing like a little fresh air …

  He turned and looked Crosby’s tray over approvingly. Two very satisfactory-looking plates met his eye. “Now that’s what I call a good ploughman’s lunch, that is.”

  “It’s a long time since breakfast,” said Crosby.

  “I can’t be doing with sandwiches myself,” said Fred.

  “Nor me,” said Crosby lugubriously. “People always ask if I’ve got truncheon meat in them.”

  “Cheese and pickle,” said Fred hazily. “None of that mashed-up liver stuff. Can’t abide that.”

  “And onion,” pointed out Crosby. “Plenty of onion.”

  “All right for some,” said Fred obscurely. He fell in step beside the constable. A short walk before he went home might not be a bad thing. “What about afters?”

  Crosby wriggled the tray. Held in place by the fingers of his right hand but quite out of sight was a paper bag. “Two fruit pies. Best they could do. Look, we’d better be getting a move on or the Inspector’ll be after me.”

  Detective-Inspector Sloan saw them coming from a long way off. He was just leaving the Priory with Edward Hebbinge to walk back to the patch of ground in front of the old stables as the pair rounded the bend in the road that led to the entrance gate. Even at a distance it was possible to discern that one of the pair had drink taken.

  Sloan’s first thought was of the food the constable was carrying. He, too, had not eaten since an early breakfast. It must, he realized, be all of half past two by now.

  Food, then, had been his first thought.

  His second thought was quite different.

  As Detective-Constable Crosby and Fred Pearson progressed towards them a cold conviction descended upon Sloan.

  He knew now who the murderer of Joyce Cooper had been.

  He had seen all he needed to see.

  Not through a glass, darkly, at all.

  With his own eyes, quite clearly.

  He turned to speak to the man at his own side but Edward Hebbinge had gone.

  16

  Flute-douce

  It didn’t take Norman Burton too long to track down the little set of boys for whom he was looking because he knew where to go first. In the absence of opportunities for greater devilment the boys of the top class of the Primary School tended to drift down towards the mill pool. Sunday afternoon was traditionally a time of poor parental supervision and there, at the mill pool, they tended to hang about like so many expectant messenger-boys until other – more exciting – occupation offered.

  Sometimes, keeping a weather eye open for the water bailiff, they fished the river Alm with unlicensed rods, illegal bait and a thoroughly unsporting approach to the throwing back of undersized fish. From time to time they would clamber over the defunct mill wheel, long since rusted and stationary. This was chiefly because there was a large notice beside it warning all who approached of the danger of so doing. Had there been no such notice Norman Burton doubted if a boy in the village would have bothered.

  In the summer time if it was warm they sometimes bathed in the pool in spite of the collection of old tin cans cheerfully jettisoned into the water the rest of the year round. In fact half-a-dozen small boys – spotted as appaloosas – were splashing about at the edge of the water when he reached the mill pool. They didn’t see him at first. When they did the splashing died away even though swimming was not forbidden.

  He ran his eye over the group. The three he had had in mind as potential villains were all there.

  “I am looking,” he announced carefully, “for the boys who were at the Horticultural Society’s Show yesterday afternoon.”

  All of them put up their hands: schoolroom habits died hard.

  He looked them over with dispassion.

  “I am looking,” he said precisely, “for the boys who were in the Fruit and Vegetable tent yesterday afternoon.”

  A sense of theatre was present somewhere in every schoolmaster.

  The hands that had gradually been lowered half rose again.

  “I am looking,” said Norman Burton even more portentously, “especially for the boys who took a particular interest in the vegetable section.”

  He picked them out at once. Mark Smithson started to look furtive while Peter Pearson went pink. He really didn’t know why the police made such a fuss about crime detection. An experienced schoolmaster never had any difficulty in pinning down culprits.

  He did not, however, acknowledge that he knew he’d found them this time.

  Not yet.

  “Somewhere,” he said sardonically, “we have boys who think they know better than experienced judges.”

  Norman Burton was not prolonging the agony for fun. He was watching the youngest Carter boy out of the corner of his eye. He needed to know if he, too, had been part of the action. The Carter boy looked shifty – but then he always did look shifty. It was nothing to go by, but if he looked as if he was enjoying himself then for once he wasn’t in trouble.

  “Boys,” he continued, “who cannot cope with long division –” here he glared at Mark Smithson; mental arithmetic was a weakness in all the Smithson tribe except when it came to scoring at the game of darts, which they could do with the speed of light – “thought they knew better than a man who had spent a lifetime studying fruit and vegetables.”

  There was a snigger from another boy. Burton tightened his lips. They’d boasted of what they’d done, then. That was always a help. It also made retribution all the more imperative. It didn’t occur to him that the police view on both these points would have been exactly the same.

  “It has been brought to my notice,” he said awesomely, “that some boys actually presumed to interfere with the judgement of that judge.”

  A certain visible dejection was creeping over Peter Pearson and Mark Smithson. The Carter boy remained shifty-looking but unconcerned.

  “In the tomato class,” said the headmaster.

  Mark Smithson’s teeth started to chatter. Not from cold.

  “What they did,” swept on Burton, “was to take the label away from the First Prize and put it before an inferior entry that was not in any prizewinning category at all.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “Interfering with judgements,” he said in a tone of voice that would have gone down well at the Bloody Assize, “is a very serious matter indeed.”

  “Please, sir …” that was Smithson.

  “A very serious matter,” repeated the schoolmaster solemnly.

  “Please, sir …” An agonized look came over Mark Smithson’s face.

  Peter Pearson came from different stock. A scowl crossed his infant features making him look ridiculously like his grandfather. “But, sir,” he burst out, “he promised he wouldn’t tell.”

  “He said ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ sir,” put in Smithson urgently. “Honest.”

  “What’s that?” said Burton.

  “He said he wouldn’t tell,” said young Pearson stubbornly.

  “Who?”

  “He promised,” said Pearson flatly, “and we promised.”

  “He said he wouldn’t tell if we didn’t,” piped up Smithson, taking courage from his friend.

  “Tell what?”

  “We promised,” said Pearson with his grandfather’s obstinacy.

  “I see.” The schoolmaster was experienced enough to know when to take the heat off. “He promised not to tell about your playing about with the tomatoes. That right?”

  Both boys nodded.

  “Only if you boys didn’t tell anyone about something he was doing?”

  “That’s right, sir,” said Smithson eagerly. “We said we wouldn’t, didn’t we, Pete? It was a bargain, he said.”

  “Ah,” said Norman Burton.

  “We promised,” said Pearson implacably. “It was a bargain, like he said.”

  “He was only hiding something anyway,” squeaked Smithson ingenuously. “We only moved it for fun. Not far. Just so as he wouldn’t find
it.”

  Norman Burton was neither a fool nor a coward. He saw the need to go very carefully indeed. “Under where the tomatoes were, I suppose?” he said as casually as he could contrive to do so. He had just remembered something from the evening before – when they had been striking the marquee. He had remembered who it was who had been so keen to get his hands on what had been found.

  And worked out why it mattered that he touched it.

  Peter Pearson was not deceived by the casual approach.

  “We promised,” he repeated with dignity.

  Neither Mark Smithson nor the headmaster took any notice of this.

  “That’s all right,” said Norman Burton with every appearance of his usual omniscience. “It was a reel of green wire, wasn’t it?”

  Smithson nodded, a troubled look on his face. “We didn’t tell, though, did we, sir?”

  Peter Pearson continued to look stubborn. Perhaps, thought the schoolmaster in a moment of detachment, when the time came he’d recommend that he went into the Army. There was a lad who would always obey the last order …

  “You just guessed, sir,” piped up Smithson anxiously, “didn’t you?”

  “I did,” said Burton sternly. Smithson would have to be found a less exacting career. “And I think I can guess what you did next.”

  They didn’t answer this so Burton went on himself.

  “Then,” he said with deep foreboding, “you watched those tomatoes for the rest of the afternoon, didn’t you?”

  He knew he was right about that. It had all been part of the fun.

  “Get your clothes on,” he said with a brusqueness that could not quite mask the very great deal of anxiety that he felt, “and come with me. I’m not letting either of you out of my sight.”

  “You’d better sit down, Crosby, and take the weight off your brain.”

  Detective-Inspector Sloan had selected a spot of grass on which to settle himself. It was by the old stables and looked out at the spot where Madame Zelda’s tent had been. He was sitting on the grass with his back up against the stable wall. It was not long before he had a hunk of bread and cheese in one hand and a sheaf of written statements in the other. They were the statements made after the reel of wire had been found when the marquee was being dismantled.