His Burial Too Page 2

  “What’s that? What did you say?”

  “Can we be sure that he wants to be found?” That might make a difference. Sloan himself wouldn’t have wanted to have been restored to the bosoms of some of the families he had known people have.

  “Why not?” demanded the Superintendent, who was not given to finer family feelings.

  “Like I said, sir, it’s not a crime not to go home for the night.”

  Superintendent Leeyes looked quite blank.

  “I mean, sir,” amplified the Inspector patiently, “perhaps he’s left his wife on purpose and doesn’t want her to know where he is …”

  “No,” declared Leeyes triumphantly, “it isn’t like that at all because he hasn’t got a wife.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “Constable Hepple said so. And he knows everything about them all out that way.”

  Sloan nodded his understanding. This was what made Hepple a good man all right. They said that knowledge was strength. That would be how the singlehanded Hepple was able to keep everything nice and quiet in his own little territory to the south of Berebury.

  “She died a few months ago,” went on Leeyes. “Hepple says he’s only got a daughter. Fenella. Miss Fenella Tindall.”

  “Tindall?” exclaimed Sloan suddenly, hearing the surname for the first time. “That rings a bell. Sir, would that by any chance be anything to do with that rather odd firm, Struthers and Tindall?”

  It was the Superintendent’s turn to nod.

  “You know,” went on Sloan hurriedly, “the people who have that works down near the Wellgate here in Berebury who call themselves something funny …”

  “Precision, Investigation, and Development Engineers,” supplied Leeyes.

  “And who are always asking Inspector Tetley for extra security without wanting to tell us why.”

  “Everything to do with them,” said Leeyes neatly. “That Tindall.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Exactly.”

  UNEQUAL NATURE, TO PLACE WOMEN’S HEARTS SO FAR UPON THE LEFT SIDE!

  2

  Busier by far than the Dower House at Cleete and a good deal noisier than the Police Station at Berebury were the works of Messrs Struthers and Tindall near the Wellgate in Berebury. It was a long low building, all on one floor and as orderly as a beehive. The perpetual hum which could be heard even from the outside carried the similarity still further. The resemblance, though, ended at the laboratory door. Bees lived by instinct. They didn’t do experiments.

  Miss Hilda Holroyd, private secretary to Mr Richard Tindall, replaced the telephone receiver on her desk in the office with a visible frown.

  She thought for a moment and then went and tapped on the door of the combined office and laboratory of Mr Tindall’s second-in-command. That was Mr Henry Pysden, who was the deputy general manager and also head of the scientific side of the firm.

  Reluctantly.

  Mr Pysden made no secret of the fact that he hated being disturbed when he was working on an experiment himself and she had been in to him twice this morning already. The first time had been to enquire if he had had any message from Mr Tindall to say he wasn’t coming in which hadn’t reached her.

  He said he hadn’t.

  The second time had been to ask him if he would see an importunate visitor, Mr Gordon Cranswick, who had arrived on the doorstep and who was showing signs of not wanting to be fobbed off by her.

  He said he wouldn’t.

  And had added: “If it’s about the last batch of tests we did for him, tell him to see Paul Blake or one of the metallurgists. If it’s anything else he’ll have to wait and see Mr Tindall when he does get here. Or make another appointment.”

  “I’ve just rung Mrs Turvey at Cleete,” she began this time.

  “Turvey?” Henry Pysden’s voice sounded quite blank. He lifted his head—it was dome-shaped and almost bald—and peered at her through his thick-lensed glasses. “Turvey? I don’t know anyone called Turvey.”

  “Mrs Turvey is Mr Tindall’s daily woman at the Dower House,” explained Miss Holroyd patiently. “She says he’s not there either and she’s told the police that Mr Tindall’s missing.”

  “Good idea,” said the deputy general manager warmly.

  Miss Holroyd looked distressed. “But something quite ordinary might have happened to him.”

  “And it might not.” Henry Pysden tapped his pen on the desk. “I can’t go looking for him, Miss Holroyd.”

  “No, Mr Pysden, of course not.”

  “Besides”—the man essayed a faint smile—“it’s much more in their line than in mine.”

  She smiled back. “Yes, Mr Pysden.”

  That was very true. There was never any point in getting the shortsighted Mr Pysden to help to look for anything.

  “If there is an expert,” pronounced Mr Pysden, “I say get him. I always tell people that, Miss Holroyd.”

  “Yes, Mr Pysden.” Miss Holroyd nodded. That was true. She had often heard him say exactly that to clients.

  Just as often, in fact, as she had heard Mr Tindall say the exact opposite to the same clients.

  With him it was definitely the other way round. He positively favoured the amateur approach. “Your amateur’s not cluttered up with academic prejudice, Miss Holroyd,” Richard Tindall was fond of saying. “He hasn’t read every single thing that has ever been written on the subject. The amateur sees a problem in its simplest form and it doesn’t occur to him that it’s insoluble.”

  “He’ll turn up, I expect, soon enough,” Henry Pysden was saying easily. “I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you, Miss Holroyd. It’s quite early still, you know.”

  “But it’s not like Mr Tindall,” she persisted.

  “He was late yesterday morning,” pointed out Pysden.

  “That was the road works.”

  “Well, then …”

  Miss Holroyd shook her head. “No. They’re all finished now. I checked.”

  “The devil you did!” exclaimed Pysden. “Do you ever overlook anything, Miss Holroyd?”

  Her expression was austere. “Not if I can help it, Mr Pysden.”

  “No, of course not,” he said hastily, seeming somehow to retreat behind his glasses. “I am sure you don’t. By the way, Miss Holroyd, now that you are here I wonder if you would let me have the office patent register? I need it for the Galloway contract.”

  “Certainly, Mr Pysden. I think Mr Blake is working on it this morning. I’ll get him to send it along to you.”

  “Blake?” said the deputy general manager sharply. “What’s he doing with the patent register?”

  Miss Holroyd frowned. “I rather think he’s working on the Harbleton Engineering problem.”

  “Not United Mellemetics?”

  “United Mellemetics?” Miss Holroyd looked up. “He can’t be working on that. Don’t you remember? You’ve still got the United Mellemetics file, Mr Pysden.”

  Henry Pysden shook his head. “No, I haven’t, Miss Holroyd. I gave the file and the report back to Mr Tindall yesterday morning. When we had our coffee together. I’d finished with it by then.”

  “That’s funny.” Miss Holroyd looked puzzled. “I’m sure it’s not in the safe …”

  Mr Pysden stared at her.

  There was a tiny tinkle as Mrs Turvey replaced the telephone receiver in the hall at the Dower House at Cleete. Then she hurried back to the kitchen.

  As she bustled along she called out urgently, “The milk, Miss Fenella. Do catch it before it boils over.”

  “I did,” said Fenella Tindall.

  She was sitting now at the kitchen table, both hands clasped round a cup of coffee, still in her dressing gown. It was an Italian dressing gown, rich in all the colours of the Renaissance. Her mind, though, was not on clothes. She looked up anxiously as the daily woman came back into the kitchen.

  “That wasn’t my father on the telephone, was it, Mrs Turvey?”

  “No, miss, I’m afraid it wasn’t.�
�

  “Oh …”

  “It was Miss Holroyd from your father’s works. She was wondering why he wasn’t in this morning yet.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “He didn’t go off early after all, then,” said Mrs Turvey, “that’s one thing for sure.”

  “No.”

  “Not that I thought that he had done, I must say. He’s not an early bird, your father. Never ’as been, not since I’ve known him.”

  “No,” absently. Fenella frowned. “And that means he didn’t stay the night there either.”

  Mrs Turvey’s square kindly face registered concern. “Doesn’t look like it, miss, though I’m sure there’s no call to get that worried …”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “That he wasn’t here and that it didn’t look to us as if he’d been home at all last night. Do drink up some of that coffee, miss. There’s never any good worrying on an empty stomach, that I do know.”

  Fenella obediently took a sip of coffee. And then another. She was surprised to find how thirsty she was.

  And puzzled.

  She had been back home long enough to know her father didn’t make a habit of staying out all night without saying anything to anyone. Besides, he was very much a man who liked routine; everything at its proper time and in its proper place. This behaviour just wasn’t like him.

  “Poor Miss Holroyd,” continued Mrs Turvey. “She said he’s got someone there now who says she’s got an appointment to see your father and she was beginning to get worried, too.”

  “She’ll cope,” said Fenella decidedly. “My father always says Miss Holroyd can cope with anything.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Mrs Turvey engimatically.

  Fenella, undeceived by this, grinned. She knew all about the perpetual state of rivalry that existed between Mrs Turvey and Miss Holroyd, both as jealous as Malbecco. Fortunately each felt superior to the other—Mrs Turvey because she had been married; Miss Holroyd because she had been educated.

  “Anyway,” said Mrs Turvey, “it’s a Mr Gordon Cranswick who’s there. She said to ask if you knew anything about him, miss …”

  Fenella shook her head.

  “She was wondering if she’d made a mistake,” said Mrs Turvey, “and Mr Tindall meant this Mr Cranswick to have come out here to Cleete to see him at home and that was why he hadn’t gone in to the office this morning.”

  “Miss Holroyd doesn’t make mistakes,” chanted Fenella. It was a sort of litany she had learnt from her father.

  “I’m sure I hope not,” responded Mrs Turvey repressively. “Anyhow, she says Mr Pysden is all tied up with one of his timed experiments and so he couldn’t see him instead of your father.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “He’s someone important, she said.”

  Fenella put down her coffee cup and said energetically, “I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

  “There now, miss, don’t say that. Your father’ll turn up presently or give us a ring.”

  “Did you tell her,” asked Fenella more diffidently, her head studiously bent over her coffee cup, “that we’d told the police?”

  Mrs Turvey busied herself over the stove. “Well, I sort of hinted that I’d happened to mention it to Mr Hepple on account of me just happening to see him in the road beyond the drive when I answered the door to the postman.”

  “Was she cross?”

  “Not so much cross,” said Mrs Turvey consideringly, “as a bit surprised.” She straightened herself up. “Still, what’s done is done and can’t be undone.”

  “No. I mean, yes. You don’t think he’s just gone to London or anything like that, do you?” Fenella pushed the empty coffee cup away and answered her own question. “No, he’d have rung first thing to tell us, wouldn’t he?”

  She jerked her shoulder in a compound of anxiety and irritation. It was absurd to know so little about the habits of one’s own parent but when you have been away from home so much and have not been back again very long …

  “He’d have telephoned Miss Holroyd anyway,” declared Mrs Turvey sensibly, “because of this Mr Cranswick coming to see him ’specially. He wouldn’t have forgotten him, not your father. Not unless he’s gone and lost his memory or anything like that.”

  Fenella sighed. “I can’t understand it at all. It’s just not like him to go off like this without saying anything to anyone.”

  Mrs Turvey’s mind was going off on quite a different tack. “I do wish he’d put on that clean shirt I left out for him yesterday morning, miss. I laid it out for him special.”

  “Yes, of course …” The laundry was one of the threads of life at the Dower House which Fenella hadn’t yet gathered up into her own hands.

  “I don’t like to think of him in the one he had on, miss, whatever he’s doing,” she said, turning her attention to the kitchen sink. “And it wasn’t for want of reminding, Miss Fenella. If I said to him once I said it a dozen times …”

  “I know,” Fenella assured her hastily.

  Mrs Turvey sniffed. “Seemed to me that he didn’t want to look smart on purpose yesterday. He put his old suit on, too.”

  “The grey.” Fenella remembered that much.

  “The grey with the button off the left sleeve,” retorted Mrs Turvey, “which I left out to take to the cleaners come Friday. Not for him to put on yesterday morning. It wasn’t even in his bedroom, miss. I’d put it out on that chest on the landing that your poor mother called something funny …”

  “Ottoman …”

  “Ottoman,” repeated Mrs Turvey doubtfully, “so as it shouldn’t be forgotten-like and before you could say Jack Robinson he goes and puts it on.”

  “I know.”

  “And when I said about it he said he was sorry and he’d put the other one on today.” She splashed hot water into the washing-up bowl.

  “I heard him.” Fenella pushed back her chair and took her coffee cup over to the sink. “I don’t think I can manage any toast this morning, Mrs Turvey. I’m not really very hungry.”

  The daily woman swept the coffee cup and saucer into the bowl of hot soapy water with a practised hand, and Fenella looked at her watch.

  “Mr Osborne couldn’t tell you anything, miss?”

  “Not a lot,” replied Fenella.

  Her father had spent the evening before with George and Marcia Osborne in Berebury because she was going out with Giuseppe Mardoni on his last evening before he went back to Italy. He’d wanted her to go out. Urged her, in fact. He couldn’t have her burying herself in the country forever. That’s what he’d said. He would be quite happy, he had insisted, calling in on the Osbornes. He might even go round and keep old Walter Berry company for an hour or two afterwards.

  Fenella had rung George Osborne at Berebury Grammar School where he taught physics as the boys were beginning to file into morning assembly.

  “Just,” said Fenella to Mrs Turvey, “that he told them he had someone to see on the way home.”

  “Not old Professor Berry, miss, do you think?”

  That was just what Fenella had asked George Osborne.

  “He didn’t say who it was,” the Physics Master had replied. “He left us about half-past ten and he was all right then. I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you. He’ll turn up. And Fenella …”

  “Yes?”

  “When he does will you give him a message for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell him that Marcia found her earring, will you?”

  “George! She didn’t lose Great-Aunt Hilda’s earrings, surely, did she? Not the emerald and diamond ones?”

  “The Osborne heirloom,” he agreed solemnly. “At least, half the heirloom. One earring to be exact. Anyway, it wasn’t lost after all. She’s found it again, thank goodness. Last night. After he’d gone. Tell him, will you …” She had heard the school bell clanging in the background. “I must go now. Ring Marcia if you want.”

  Fenella hadn’t rung Marcia. It
was too early. The day didn’t begin for the well-dressed Marcia Osborne until at least eleven o’clock.

  Nor for old Professor Berry for that matter. Between his library and his chess set he never went to bed until the early hours of the morning and he rose equally late. His housekeeper bemoaned the fact up and down the village. It was no use ringing him either yet.

  Fenella took another look at her watch and said instead: “That policeman should have had time to have rung the hospitals by now.”

  “Bless you, miss, you don’t want to worry about him being in hospital. If your father had had an accident in that car of his—which I wouldn’t suppose for one minute that he had had, a more careful driver not being on the road—we’d have heard by now for sure. There’s not two cars like that one of his this side of Calleford.”

  Fenella managed a rueful smile, appreciating that Mrs Turvey was trying so very hard to be helpful. “That’s true.”

  “And another thing—everyone knows that it’s his.” The daily woman swilled the water round the sink with vigour. “Cars like Mr Tindall’s don’t grow on trees.”

  Fenella started to toy with the tassel on the end of the cord on her dressing gown. “It’s a funny thing, you know, Mrs Turvey, but I could have sworn I heard him come in last night as usual …”

  Mrs Turvey shook her head.

  “… I was in bed,” persisted Fenella. “I’d been home for about an hour and I was just in that dreamy stage. You know—half asleep and half awake—when you’re certain you’re going to fall asleep in a minute but you haven’t quite got there …”

  “I know, miss.” Mrs Turvey had finished the washing up now and had begun to polish the taps over the sink.

  “Well, I thought I heard his car last night, like I usually do. You know how he always changes down a gear for that sharp bend just before the garage—you can’t get round without, not in that car …”

  “It wasn’t built for cars, that road.”

  “No,” agreed Fenella, deciding that Mrs Turvey, at least, would have thoroughly approved of the horse-drawn carrozzas in Rome. “Well, with my bedroom being on that side of the house anyway …”

  “No, miss.” Mrs Turvey shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been him. Not last night. First thing I looked for when you told me he wasn’t in his room was the garage key. Your father always puts it on the hook by the garden door as soon as he comes in. Always. I’ve never known him not …”