Last Respects Page 2

  Both oarsmen bent to their task, while Constable Ridgeford scanned the water ahead.

  Presently Horace turned his head again, this time to take in the state of the tide by looking across at the saltings. They were invisible at high water. Birds on them betokened low tide. ‘Turn her up river a bit more,’ he commanded.

  Once they reached what Horace Boller thought was the right place the drowned man took surprisingly little time to locate. Brian Ridgeford spotted him first and the three men got him aboard without too much of a struggle. The victim of the water wasn’t a big man. He had had dark hair and might have been any age at all. That was really all that Brian Ridgeford noted before he helped Horace cover him first with a black plastic bag and then with the tarpaulin that was doing duty as a temporary winding sheet.

  Once on dry land and safely in the official care of the Calleshire Constabulary—although still with a member of the Boller family ready to put his thumb on a fee—the body made greater speed. Ted Boller and his undertaker’s van soon set off towards Billing Bridge and Berebury. Strictly speaking, it was Billing Bridge that marked the end of the estuary. Some medieval men had earned merit by building churches: if you couldn’t build a church, then you built a bridge. Cornelius Billing had bought his way into the history and topography of the County of Calleshire in 1484 by building a bridge over the River Calle at the furthest point down river that it had been possible to build a bridge in 1484.

  Ted Boller slowed his vehicle down as he bumped his way over it in a primitive tribute to his passenger, who was far beyond feeling anything at all, while Constable Ridgeford walked back to his own house, beginning to draft in his mind the details of his report. He wondered idly which day the Coroner would nominate for the inquest …

  Just as some men liked to toy with a chess problem, so Police Constable Brian Ridgeford passed his walk considering whether he could summon a jury in Edsway—should the Coroner want to sit with one, that is—without calling upon a single member of the vast Boller family to serve on it. Like countering one of the rarer chess gambits, it would be difficult but he reckoned that it could be done.

  Ted Boller’s hearse duly delivered the unknown man to the mortuary presided over by Dr Dabbe, Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital. Such minimal paperwork that the body had so far acquired on its short journey from sea to land and from coast to town accompanied it and said briefly: ‘Found drowned.’

  ‘Found drowned, my foot,’ said the pathologist two minutes after looking at the body.

  CHAPTER 2

  The company are met.

  ‘Found drowned, his foot,’ repeated Police Superintendent Leeyes not very long afterwards.

  As soon as the pathologist’s message had come through to Berebury Police Station he had summoned Detective-Inspector C. D. Sloan to his office. Inspector Sloan—known as Christopher Dennis to his nearest and dearest—was for obvious reasons called ‘Seedy’ by his friends. He was the head of Berebury’s Criminal Investigation Department. It was a tiny Department but such crime as there was in that corner of Calleshire usually landed up in Detective-Inspector Sloan’s lap.

  In any case—in every case, you might say—Superintendent Leeyes always saw to it that nothing stayed on his own desk that could be delegated to someone else’s. That desk was usually Sloan’s.

  ‘Found in water, though?’ advanced Sloan, who was well-versed in his superior officer’s little ways. He was a great one for passing the buck, was the Superintendent.

  Downwards.

  Detective-Inspector Sloan could never remember a problem being referred to a higher level—in their case the Headquarters of the County Constabulary at Calleford—if Superintendent Leeyes could possibly help it. Sloan was, though, well aware of—indeed, would never forget—some of those problems that the Superintendent had in the past directed downwards to his own desk. A body found in water but not drowned sounded as if it might very well be another of the unforgettables.

  ‘Brought in from the estuary,’ expanded Leeyes. ‘Someone reported it to Constable Ridgeford.’

  Sloan nodded. ‘Our man in Edsway.’

  ‘He’s young,’ added the Superintendent by way of extra identification.

  Sloan nodded again. He wasn’t talking about the body. Sloan knew that. The Superintendent had meant the constable.

  ‘Very young.’ The Superintendent at the same time contrived to make youth sound like an indictment.

  Sloan nodded his head in acknowledgement of this observation too. He even toyed with the idea of saying that they had all been young once—including the Chief Constable—but he decided against it. Medical students, he knew, when certain specific diseases were being taught, were always reminded that the admiral had once been a midshipman; the bishop, a curate … Anyway it was quite true that constables did seem to come in two sizes. Young and untried was one of them. Old and cunning was another. The trouble was that the first group had seen nothing and the second lot—the oldies—had seen it all. The latter tended to be world-weary about everything except their own lack of promotion. On this subject, though, they were apt to wax very eloquent indeed …

  ‘And,’ carried on Leeyes, ‘I don’t know how much of a greenhorn Ridgeford is.’

  The only exception to the rule about old and disgruntled constables that Sloan knew was Constable Mason. He must be about due for retirement now—he’d been stationed over at Great Rooden for as long as anyone could remember. The trouble with Constable Mason from the hierarchy’s point of view was that he had steadily declined promotion over the years. More heretical still, he had continually declared himself very well content with his lot.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Leeyes grumpily, ‘want to find out the hard way about Ridgeford.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Sloan, his mind still on Mason. The bizarre attitude of that constable to his career prospects had greatly troubled Superintendent Leeyes. If the donkey does not want the carrot there is only the stick left—and there has to be a good reason for using that. Consequently a puzzled Police Superintendent Leeyes had always watched the crime rate out at Great Rooden with exceedingly close attention. Mason, however, was as good as any Mountie in getting his man. This, he said modestly, was because he had a head start when there was villainy about. He not only usually knew who had committed the crime but where to lay his hands on the culprit as well.

  ‘Besides,’ complained Leeyes, ‘you’ve got to put the young men somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sloan heartily agreed with that. ‘And some of them have got to go out into the country.’

  ‘As long as they don’t take to growing cabbages,’ said Leeyes. Constable Mason—old Constable Mason—insisted that he liked living in the country. That was another of the things that had bothered the urban Superintendent Leeyes. Another was that there really seemed to be no crime to speak of in Great Rooden anyway. The Superintendent had put the most sinister construction possible on the situation but three anti-corruption specialists—heavily disguised as government auditors—had failed to find Mason collaborating improperly with anyone.

  ‘We can’t,’ growled Superintendent Leeyes, his mind on Constable Ridgeford of Edsway, ‘keep them all here in Berebury tied to our apron strings, can we?’

  ‘We can’t keep an eye on them all the time even if we do,’ said Detective-Inspector Sloan, who had ideas of his own about the ‘being thrown in the deep end’ approach. ‘Besides, we’re not wet nurses.’

  That had been a Freudian slip on Sloan’s part and he regretted it at once.

  ‘This body,’ said Leeyes on the instant, ‘was picked up in the water between Collerton and Edsway.’ He moved over from his desk to a vast map of the county of Calleshire which was fixed to the wall of his office. It clearly showed the estuary of the River Calle from Billing Bridge westwards down to the sea with Kinnisport standing sentinel on the north shore and Edsway sheltering under the headland on the southern edge, with the village of Marby-juxta-Mare over on the s
ea coast to the south-west. It was a contour map and the headland between Edsway and Marby called the Cat’s Back showed up well.

  The limits of F Division were heavily outlined in thick black pencil. Each time that he saw it Detective-Inspector Sloan was reminded of the ground plan of a medieval fortress. Superintendent Leeyes added to the illusion by presiding over his territory with much the same outlook as a feudal baron.

  He put his thumb on the map now. ‘They found it about here. Upstream from Edsway.’

  ‘And downstream from Collerton.’ Detective-Inspector Sloan made a note. ‘Is there anyone missing from hereabouts? I haven’t heard of …’

  ‘I’ve got someone pulling a list now,’ said Leeyes briskly, ‘and I’ve been on to the coastguards.’

  Sloan lifted his eyes towards the point on the map where the stretch of cliff beyond Kinnisport showed. ‘Ah yes,’ he murmured, ‘they might know something, mightn’t they?’

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  ‘It all depends on how wide awake they are,’ sniffed Leeyes.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan.

  ‘I don’t see myself,’ said the Superintendent heavily, ‘how anyone can keep an eye on them out on the cliffs like that.’

  ‘Still, they might have seen something.’

  ‘It’s too quiet by half up there,’ pronounced Leeyes.

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Sloan. Mercifully Cranberry Point did not have the attractions of Beachy Head. He was profoundly thankful that those who wished to end it all did not often buy single tickets to Kinnisport and walk out to the cliffs. The rocks at the bottom were singularly uninviting. Today’s victim wasn’t likely to be a suicide: not if he was found in the water but not drowned …

  ‘The trouble,’ declared Leeyes, still harping on the coastguards, ‘is that nothing ever happens up there on the cliff to keep them on their toes.’

  ‘No, sir,’ agreed Sloan. The Superintendent was a great believer in a constant state of alert. In an earlier age he would have been a notable success as a performer with a dancing bear. It would have been on its toes, all right. ‘This chap could have been a seaman, I suppose.’

  ‘Eight bells,’ said Leeyes suddenly.

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘Sunset and Rise and Shine,’ said Leeyes.

  ‘Er—quite so, sir.’

  ‘The Old Watch stands down, duty done,’ intoned Leeyes sonorously. ‘The New Watch takes over.’

  ‘The coastguards’ll know about shipping, surely though, sir?’ Sloan ventured back on to firmer ground.

  ‘Ah,’ said Leeyes, unwilling to impute any merit at all to a distinguished service, ‘that depends if their records are any good or not, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it does.’ Sloan wasn’t going to argue: with anyone else, perhaps, but not with Superintendent Leeyes and not at the very beginning of a case.

  ‘Remember,’ said Leeyes darkly, ‘that not everything gets reported. Especially at sea.’

  There was no thick black line extending F Division out into the sea to the territorial limit but in Leeyes’s view there should have been. From time to time he hankered after the autocratic authority of the captain of a ship at sea as well.

  ‘They’ll listen in all the time to radio messages at sea, though,’ pointed out Sloan. ‘Bound to.’

  He didn’t know about nothing being sacred any longer but he did know that between radio and computer nothing much remained secret for very long.

  ‘All right, all right,’ conceded Leeyes. ‘They may have picked something up. We’ll have to wait and see what they say.’

  Detective-Inspector Sloan kept his mind on essentials. ‘But it isn’t a case of drowning, you say, sir?’

  ‘Not me, Sloan,’ countered Leeyes robustly. ‘I didn’t say any such thing. It’s the pathologist who says that.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose he’ll change his mind either. You know what Dr Dabbe’s like when he gets a bee in his bonnet.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sloan. The proper name for that was ‘professional opinion’ but he didn’t say so.

  ‘It doesn’t sound too important anyway,’ said Leeyes. He tore off the top sheet of a message pad and added gratuitously ‘And if it’s not too important you might as well take Constable Crosby with you. I can’t spare anyone better today.’

  If she had happened to have looked out of one of the front windows of Collerton House at the right time that afternoon Elizabeth Busby might actually have seen Constable Brian Ridgeford and the Boller père et fils shipping the body of the dead man aboard the rowing-boat. The uninterrupted view of the estuary was one of the many attractions of Collerton House. The trees planted by the first owner, which were mature now, had been carefully set back behind the building line so that the sight of the gradually broadening river was not impaired and yet the house itself was still sheltered by them.

  If Elizabeth Busby had been really interested in what had been going on in the water during the afternoon she could have done more than just glance out of the window. She could have stepped out on to the stone terrace in front of the house and taken a closer look at the River Calle through the telescope that was permanently mounted there.

  This telescope was currently kept trained on a pair of great crested grebes which had built their nest at the edge of a large clump of reeds but it was so mounted that it could be swung easily from side to side and up and down to take in the entire estuary from Kinnisport and the sea to the west right up the river to Billing Bridge in the east.

  The reason why Elizabeth Busby did not happen to look out of the window that afternoon was that she had so many other things to do. Collerton House had been built in more spacious times: times when servants were, if not two a penny, at least around for £10 a year all found. Now it was a case of first find someone willing to work at all in the house. That couldn’t be done very easily any more—quite apart from the consideration of the expense.

  Notwithstanding this, there were very few rooms in Collerton House that did not boast a bell-push or a bell-pull of some description—some of them of a very ornate description—as a reminder of a more comfortable past. The only one of them that Elizabeth Busby knew for certain was in good working order was the one that had been in her aunt’s bedroom. Aunt Celia had rung it when she was ill and Elizabeth had answered it—and had gone on answering its each and every summons right up until the day when Celia Mundill had died in that very bedroom.

  Another reason why Elizabeth Busby was too busy to look out of the window was that she was deliberately undertaking as much hard work in the day as she possibly could. If there was a job that looked as if it could be packed into her waking hours then she put her hand to it and carried on until it was done. Even Frank Mundill, himself sunk in gloom since his wife’s death, had advised her to let up a little.

  ‘Take it easy, Elizabeth,’ he’d mumbled at breakfast-time only that morning. ‘We don’t want you cracking up as well.’

  ‘I’ve got to keep busy,’ she’d said fiercely. ‘Just got to! Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Sorry. Of course.’ He’d retreated behind the newspaper after that and said no more about it and Elizabeth Busby had gone on to devote the day to turning out the main guest-room. It was too soon to be making up the bed but there was no harm in getting the room ready. Besides, giving the bedroom a thorough spring-clean somehow contrived to bring those who were going to occupy it next a little nearer.

  There was some real comfort to be had in that because it was her own father and mother who were due to come to stay and who would be moving into the room. Each and every touch that she put into the spring-cleaning of the bedroom brought its own reminder of them. Quite early on she had gone off through the house in search of a bigger bedside table for her father. He always liked a decent-sized table beside his bed, not one of those tiny shelves that could take no more than book and reading glasses. He’d lived abroad for so long—usually in strange and far away p
laces—that he was accustomed to having everything he might need in the night right beside him.

  She’d never forgotten his telling her that when he was a young man he used to sleep with a gun under his pillow, but she had never known whether that had been true or not. It had been the same night that she had lost a milk tooth. She had been inconsolable to start with about the tooth—or perhaps it had been about the gap that it had left.

  ‘Put it where I put my pistol, Twiz,’ he’d said, ‘and the Tooth Fairy will find it and leave you a silver sixpence.’

  ‘Did the Tooth Fairy find your pistol?’ she had wanted to know, forgetting all about her tooth. ‘What did she leave you for your pistol?’

  That had been on one of her parents’ rare and glorious leaves when for once they had all been together as a family. Then, all too soon, it had been over and her mother and father had gone again. By the time they came back on their next furlough Elizabeth had all her second teeth and had grown out of believing in fairies of any ethereal description. Even sixpences had been practically no more.

  So today she’d humped an occasional table along to the guest bedroom to put beside the bed. She even knew which side of the bed her father would choose to sleep on. The side nearer the door. That was another legacy from years of living in foreign and sometimes dangerous places …

  The table had been heavier than she had expected but when she came to move it she realized that Frank Mundill must have gone back to work—his office was in the converted studio right at the top of the house—and so wasn’t around to give her a hand. That was after they’d had a scratch luncheon together in the kitchen—Mundill had heated up some soup and rummaged about in the refrigerator until he’d found a wedge of pâté for them both. He’d hovered over the electric toaster for a while and promised to rustle up something more substantial that evening.

  ‘Don’t worry, Frank—’ she’d brushed her hair back from her face as she spoke—‘I’m not hungry.’