Last Respects iscm-10 Page 17

  “What about it?” he said.

  “It wasn’t by Grandfather at all. Look!” She pointed to the newspaper. “It’s here in the paper.”

  He strode over. “Let me see.”

  “There’s a picture of it. It was worth a lot of money.”

  He said, “Well, it stands to reason that your grandfather had some good paintings, doesn’t it? To copy.”

  That wasn’t what was bothering Elizabeth. “Peter asked for it, you said.”

  Mundill frowned. “He did. It’s the same one all right. Look, Elizabeth, I think there’s an explanation for all this but there’s something I would have to show you first.”

  “He hasn’t been seen,” she said dully. “The police said so. And they’ve asked me for a photograph.”

  “Come along with me,” said Mundill. “I want you to see something. Something to do with Peter.”

  “There’s no one here,” said Detective Constable Crosby. “Nonsense, man. Try again.”

  “I’ve tried,” insisted Crosby. “The front door and the back. There’s no answer.”

  “Mundill’s car…”

  “Not in the garage,” said Crosby.

  Detective Inspector Sloan took a swift look round the outside of Collerton House. There was no sign of life there at all.

  “They’ve gone,” said Crosby superfluously.

  “Where?” barked Sloan.

  “And why?” added Crosby. “I thought they knew we were coming back.”

  “They did,” said Sloan gravely.

  “Something’s happened then.”

  “But what?” Sloan scanned the blank windows of Collerton House as if they could provide him with an answer. “And where the devil have they gone?”

  “The river?”

  “Not by car,” said Sloan, adding under his breath a brief orison about that. The River Calle was too near for comfort. He would rather conduct searches on dry ground… “No, they’ve gone somewhere by car. Get on to Control, Crosby, and get that car stopped.”

  Crosby picked up the hand microphone in the police car and gave his message. Seconds later it came back to him and to every other police car in the county. “Calling all cars, calling all cars… Attention to be given to a dark blue Ford Zephyr, registration number…”

  “It may be too late,” said Sloan, although he didn’t know for what.

  “If seen,” chattered the speaker, “stop and detain for questioning.”

  Frank Mundill drove over Billing Bridge and then gently along the Berebury road. He was quite quiet and Elizabeth didn’t press him into speech. He drove carefully, glancing now and then into his rear-view mirror. What he did—or did not—see there evidently caused him a certain amount of satisfaction because he went on driving with unimpaired concentration.

  She tried once to draw him out about the picture.

  “Wait and see,” he said.

  “Where are we going?” she asked presently. .

  “Berebury,” was all he said to that.

  She tried once more to draw him out about the picture. “All in good time, my dear.”

  Thus they came to Berebury. Reassured by yet another glance in his rear-view mirror, Frank Mundill steered the car towards the centre of the town.

  “Frank, I don’t understand…”

  “You will. I’ve just got to park the car. It won’t be difficult. It’s early closing day.”

  He made for the multi-storey car park. Entrance was by ticket from a machine. He took the ticket and the entrance barrier automatically rose to let them through. He placed the ticket on the dashboard and nosed the car up to the first level. There were plenty of parking spaces there but he did not stop. Nor at the second level. It being a quiet afternoon there were no cars at all above the third level. The fourth level was empty too.

  “Frank, where are we going? Why are we going right to the top? You must tell me.”

  “Upward and ever onward,” he said, a smile playing on his lips now.

  The car swept round the elliptical corner at the end of the building and up onto the highest level of all.

  “Frank…”

  “Soon be there,” he said, accelerating. There were no other cars in sight now—just the bare ramps and parking places. He gave a swift tug at the steering wheel and soon they were in the open air again on the very top of the car park. He pulled the car neatly into a parking bay and got out.

  Elizabeth followed him.

  “This way,” he said. “Do you know that on a clear day you can see Calleford?”

  “I don’t want to see Calleford,” she said. “I want to know why the picture you said Peter wanted has been sold.”

  “You shall,” he said softly. “You shall know everything soon. But first come this way…”

  He walked away from the edge of the car park to the very centre.

  “Follow me, Elizabeth. I designed this place, remember. I know what to show you…”

  “Faster,” said Sloan between gritted teeth.

  Crosby changed up through the gears with demonic speed. “Which way?”

  “Berebury,” said Sloan. There was just the one hope that he was right about that.

  The constable raced the car through the gates of Collerton House. With dressage and horses it was walk, trot, canter. With a souped-up police car it was a straightforward gallop from a standing start.

  “Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall,” said Crosby. “Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.”

  “Let’s hope that we find the right wall,” said Sloan tersely.

  Crosby concentrated on keeping one very fast car on the road. He took Billing Bridge faster than it had ever been taken before, narrowly avoiding caroming off the upper reaches of one of its stanchions.

  “The car park in Berebury,” said Sloan in a sort of incantation. “The multi-storey car park. It must be.”

  “What about it?” asked Crosby, cutting round a milk-float. The milkman was used to imprecations from faster drivers but not to being overtaken at that speed.

  “It’s the right height,” said Sloan.

  “So are a lot of things,” said Crosby, crouching over the wheel as if he were a racing driver but in fact looking more like Jehu than any denizen of the race-track.

  “Mundill designed it,” said Sloan. “Two spirals round a central well. Come on, man, get a move on.”

  Crosby put his foot down still farther and the car ate up the miles into Berebury. They shot through the main street and swung round into the entrance of the car park. It did nothing for Sloan’s blood pressure that they had to pause at the entrance like any shopping housewife to collect a ticket and allow the automatic barrier to rise.

  “Hurry, man,” urged Sloan. “Hurry!”

  Crosby raced through the gears as fast as he could; the slope of the ramp needed plenty of power. The corner at the end, though, was tighter than any at Silverstone. He took it on two wheels.

  “And again,” commanded Sloan at the next level.

  But they had lost speed on the way up. Crosby took the next bend more easily but at a slower rate.

  “Keep going,” adjured Sloan. He had his hand on the door catch.

  They reached the top floor and came out into the sunshine. The sudden glare momentarily distracted both men but there was no disguising the dark blue Ford Zephyr standing in solitary state on the top platform or the two figures standing by the parapet of the central well. One of them had his arm round the other who appeared to be resisting.

  “Stop!” shouted Sloan as he ran.

  The man took a quick look over his shoulder and standing away from the other—a girl—vaulted lightly over the parapet.

  17

  Here ends all dispute.

  « ^

  I suppose,” snorted Superintendent Leeyes, who was a sound-and-fury man if ever there was one, “that you’re going to tell me that everything makes sense now.”

  “The picture is a little clearer, sir,” said Detective Inspector Sloan. He was reportin
g back to Superintendent Leeyes the next morning, the morning after Frank Mundill’s spectacular suicide over the edge of the parapet at the top of the multi-storey car park.

  “Perhaps, then, Sloan, you will have the goodness to explain what has been going on.”

  “Murder, sir.”

  “I know that.”

  “More murder than we knew about, sir.”

  “Sloan, I will not sit here and have you being enigmatic.”

  “No, sir,” said Sloan hastily. “The first murder wasn’t of Peter Hinton at all. It was of Celia Mundill.”

  “The wife?” said Leeyes.

  “The wife,” said Sloan succinctly. “Frank Mundill wanted to marry Mrs. Veronica Feckler.”

  “Ha!” said Leeyes.

  “So,” said Sloan, “he set about disposing of his wife.”

  “He made a very good job of it,” commented Leeyes.

  “He nearly got away with it,” said Sloan warmly. “He would have done but for Peter Hinton putting two and two together.”

  “So that’s what happened, is it?”

  “Elizabeth Busby tells me that Hinton was something of a student of criminology, sir. His favourite reading was the Notable British Trials series.”

  “He suspected something?”

  “We think so. Hinton wanted Mrs. Mundill in hospital.”

  “That wouldn’t have done for a murderer,” said Leeyes.

  “No.”

  “So Peter Hinton had to go?” grunted Leeyes.

  “Exactly.” Sloan cleared his throat. “I—that is, we—think that he came back one day and challenged Mundill.”

  “And that was his undoing?”

  “It was. He was a threat, you see, to the successful murder of Mrs. Mundill.”

  Talk of successful murders always upset the superintendent. “Do you mean that, Sloan?”

  “I do, sir,” said Detective Inspector Sloan seriously. “It was as near perfect as they come. We would never have known about the murder of Mrs. Mundill if he hadn’t killed the young man too.”

  Leeyes didn’t like the sound of that. “How perfect?”

  “Arsenic, at a guess.”

  “You can’t have a perfect murder with arsenic.”

  “You can if it’s diagnosed and treated as cancer of the stomach,” said Sloan.

  “But what doctor would…”

  “An old doctor who has had a letter from another doctor saying that that was what was wrong.”

  Leeyes whistled. “Clever.”

  “Very clever,” said Sloan. “Each year the Mundills went at Easter to housekeep for a locum tenens. Mundill’s sister is married to a single-handed general practitioner in Calleford. While Mrs. Mundill was there she had her first attack of sickness. The locum—a Dr. Penthwin—arranged for her to have an X-ray at Calleford Hospital.”

  “But it would be normal,” objected Leeyes at once.

  “Of course it would, sir,” said Sloan, “but that doesn’t matter.”

  “No?”

  “All that matters is the letter that the Mundills bring back from Dr. Penthwin to their own doctor at Collerton, Dr. Gregory Tebot.”

  “A forgery?” said Leeyes.

  “From start to finish,” said Sloan who had seen it now.

  “Mundill writes it himself in the locum’s name on professional writing paper. His brother-in-law knows nothing about it—neither does the locum, for that matter. Anyway Dr. Penthwin’s soon gone. Dr. Tebot gets the letter which he thinks is from Dr. Penthwin and starts treating Mrs. Mundill for an unoperable cancer of the stomach.”

  “Most doctors would,” agreed Leeyes reluctantly.

  “Mundill sees that the doses of arsenic follow the course of the disease,” said Sloan. “Peter Hinton spotted it was arsenic, I’m sure about that. He’d asked if her eyes kept on watering. That’s what put us onto it too.”

  Leeyes grunted. “Mundill had long enough to look it all up in the books while he was over there.”

  “He’d even,” said Sloan, “had long enough to go through the patients’ medical records until he finds a letter with the wording pretty nearly the same as he wants.”

  “Clever,” said Leeyes again. A whole new vista of medical murder opened up before him. “Has it been done before, do you think?”

  “Who can say?” said Sloan chillingly. “Anyway, Dr. Tebot isn’t going to start on fresh X-rays or anything like that, is he? He wouldn’t see any need for them.”

  “The nearly perfect murder,” said Leeyes.

  “There was something else going for him, too, sir.”

  “What was that?”

  “Celia Mundill didn’t want to be cremated.”

  “And that suited the husband, I’m sure,” said Leeyes.

  “Cremation requires two medical certificates,” said Sloan. “Burial only one.” He’d leetured Crosby on the burial of victims of murder. A grave was the best place of all.

  “The nearly perfect murder,” said Leeyes again.

  “He almost spoilt it, sir.”

  “How come?”

  “Gilding the lily.” It was surprising how often that happened with murderers. They wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave well alone.

  “What lily?”

  “The grave, sir. Mundill insisted on his wife being buried by the water’s edge where the river floods.”

  “To help wash the arsenic away,” said Leeyes. He cast his mind back. “That’s been done before, hasn’t it?”

  “And to aid decomposition,” completed Sloan. “I don’t know how much it would have helped but I daresay he thought that if anyone got any bright ideas after he married Mrs. Feckler…”

  Leeyes grunted. “He was going to marry her, was he?”

  “He was,” said Sloan. “On his wife’s money. Financially he had nothing to lose by her death and a lot to gain.”

  “That’s always dangerous,” said the voice of experience.

  “Mundill had a life interest in his wife’s estate,” said Sloan, “but he wanted a little capital too.”

  “Don’t we all,” said Leeyes.

  “That,” said Sloan manfully, “is why he sold a picture that wasn’t his to sell.”

  “Ha.”

  “And blamed its disappearance on Peter Hinton.”

  “An opportunist if ever there was one,” commented Leeyes.

  “What put the girl’s life in danger,” said Sloan, “was her spotting the report of the sale in the daily paper.”

  It had been a close thing yesterday.

  “If it hadn’t been for that, eh, Sloan, Mundill might have got away with murder.”

  “I’m sure I hope not, sir,” said Sloan.

  “And the fisherman,” said Leeyes. “Why did he have to go?”

  “We think,” said Sloan slowly, “that Boiler must have been trying to apply a little pressure to Mundill.”

  “Why?”

  “He wasn’t a nice man,” said Sloan obliquely. “He could easily have known all about Mundill’s visits to Mrs. Feckler’s cottage. He was about at all hours remember and not very scrupulous.”

  “He could have spotted that sand-hopper creature.” Leeyes had seen the report on gammarus pulex.

  “That was probably what took him up river the first time,” said Sloan, “but I think it may have been his cousin Ted who gave him the real clue.”

  “Cousin Ted? You’ll have to do better than that for the coroner, Sloan.”

  “Ted Boiler is the village undertaker.”

  “What about it?”

  “Mundill wouldn’t have the coffin screwed down.” The exhumation of Celia Mundill had begun that morning. A loose coffin lid had been the first thing that they had found.

  “Ted Boiler didn’t give it much thought but he did happen to mention it to his cousin.”

  “Horace Boiler.”

  “Precisely, sir. It probably didn’t mean anything to Horace either until he saw the girl beside her aunt’s grave on Tuesday afternoon and realised ho
w near the water it was.”

  “And so he put two and two together?”

  “He probably just thought he would tackle Mundill about it.”

  Leeyes nodded. “By then, of course, Mundill will have got an appetite for murder.”

  “It grows,” said Sloan. That was one area where policemen and psychologists were at one. An appetite for murder grew on itself. “Besides, sir, he couldn’t risk Boiler raising any doubts about Celia Mundill just when he was concentrating on keeping suspicion away from the body in the water.”

  “Talking of the body in the water, Sloan, what I can’t understand is why Mundill broke the boathouse doors open. That just drew attention to the place.”

  “If,” said Sloan, “anyone had found that body in there at any time without the outer boathouse doors having been prised open, they would know that Mundill had put the body there.”

  “And why not leave it there, Sloan, safely in the boat-house? Tell me that.”

  “Because, sir,” said Sloan, “the girl’s father was expected back from South America and he liked his little bit of fishing. The boathouse would be the first place he’d make for. We were told that right at the beginning.”

  They’d been told almost everything; it was just a matter of sorting it all out. That was all…

  “There’s another thing, Sloan.”

  “Sir?”

  “Those copper things that were found in their pockets…”

  Brenda Ridgeford said, “I still don’t understand about those copper things in their pockets, Brian.”

  “They were meant to put us off the scent,” said her husband in a lordly fashion, “but they didn’t.”

  “You mean The Clarembald wasn’t anything to do with the murders?”

  “Nothing,” said Brian Ridgeford.

  “But…”

  “Mundill”—yesterday Brian Ridgeford wouldn’t have dreamed of calling the architect anything except Mr. Mundill, but today the man was reduced to the ranks of common criminals—“simply took them from Mr. Manton’s farm when he was over there.”

  Alec Manton was still entitled to be called “Mr.”

  Alec Manton and his amateur underwater research group had been investigating the trailings caught up by a trawler. That was how, explained Ridgeford, they had come on The Clarembald. They had proceeded to excavate the wreck.