Chapter and Hearse Page 20

  ‘Be careful, Crosby,’ Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan had adjured, seeing him with the cat. ‘It might turn nasty.’ It was he who, for his sins, was in charge of the murder inquiry.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the young Constable had said, promising to take every precaution, while remarking inconsequentially that Captain Hook had killed himself by scratching behind his ear with the wrong hand.

  ‘Nature red in tooth and claw,’ was what the clever great-nephew had said when he heard about it.

  His mother hadn’t liked that remark either.

  ‘And when you’ve finished with the animal welfare side,’ the senior policeman had said to Detective Constable Crosby with some asperity, ‘you can come and give me a hand over here while we establish a common entrance.’

  Common entrance, Detective Constable Crosby had learned early on, was not only an entrance examination for children going to public schools but a safe route established by the police at a murder scene for all those professionals in homicide who have to approach the body, and, having their lawful business there, mustn’t accidentally destroy important evidence in the process.

  ‘And you’d better look sharp, Crosby,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘The photograph boys’ll be here any minute now and Dr Dabbe doesn’t hang about when he’s at the wheel either.’

  * * *

  Dr Dabbe, the Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury Hospitals Trust, readily gave it as his considered opinion that the cause of Mrs Doughty’s death was a fracture of the base of the skull brought about by the application of a blunt instrument from above and behind.

  ‘A heavy blunt instrument,’ he added after a closer examination of Mrs Doughty’s head.

  ‘Anything you can tell us about the person who used it, doctor?’ asked Detective Inspector Sloan carefully. When he was a lad, the use of heavy blunt instruments as murder weapons had been thought to be an exclusively male province, but you could never tell these days.

  ‘Anyone with the ability to lift a club hammer,’ said the pathologist briefly.

  Sloan just managed not to remark that that narrowed the field nicely and asked the doctor a few questions on haematology instead.

  But, as Detective Inspector Sloan presently explained to the family, who, though they might have been a bit slow to visit while the old lady was alive, had assembled quickly enough when they heard that she was dead, what help was a cat’s scratch on a man unless it happened to be on his face and needed explaining away?

  The blood sample, the Inspector explained to them and to a slightly crestfallen Detective Constable Crosby, would become important only if they were able to catch the man from whom it had come – and that, he had to remind them, was not necessarily going to be easy. Blood there was, and that in plenty; other clues there were not. Someone had come and robbed and killed and gone, and that was all anyone in authority could tell them at this stage.

  As well as the relatives, there had also been the next-door neighbour, Mr Mackenzie, to question, comfort, inform, pacify … and take a statement from. Detective Inspector Sloan was never entirely clear about the actual role of a police officer in these circumstances. He knew the theoretical one backwards. Members of the Criminal Investigation Department of every constabulary were there to investigate criminal occurrences, but, like a lot of life, it seldom worked out quite as simply as that. He’d long ago come to terms with the fact that a policeman had nearly as many parts to play in life as the seven ages of Shakespeare’s man.

  And some of them were not so easy.

  What did you say to an apparently rational neighbour at a murder scene whose main concern was an archaic, not to say primitive, belief that it portended misfortune if a cat were permitted to leap over a corpse?

  ‘I think, sir,’ he said to Mr Mackenzie as kindly as he could, ‘that these days that is just felt to be superstition. I can’t see what further injury a cat could possibly do to a dead body already damaged almost beyond recognition.’

  Sloan knew, of course, as well as everyone else, of the hundred and one uses of a dead cat, but that was something quite different.

  Mr Mackenzie insisted that this fear was a real one and not just what he had the honesty to call a ‘fret’ on his part. ‘Why, man, do ye no’ realize that a watch was kept over a corp’ in Scotland in the old days expressly to stop something like that happening?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Funny things, cats,’ mused Mr Mackenzie. ‘You never know what they’re thinking.’

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Sloan, meticulously making another point, ‘but we don’t know for certain whether – er – the animal in question did actually jump over the late Mrs Doughty, do we, sir?’

  All Sloan hoped was that this subject never ever came up in Superintendent Leeyes’s presence. Ever since the Superintendent had attended an evening class on ‘Physics for Everyman’ he had been trying to explain something called ‘Dead Cat Bounce’ to the entire constabulary.

  Without success.

  Pusskins, his paws now decently clean, was present at this family and friends conference. In fact, he stared at Mr Mackenzie as balefully as Detective Inspector Sloan would have liked to have done, but the latter had his pension to think of.

  It soon emerged that Pusskins might have his pension to think of too.

  Therefore the cat was also present at the subsequent meeting at which his own immediate future was decided. There was a surprising amount of competition to give him a new home. This had more to do with having an eye to the future than any concern for animal rights – it not yet being known how the old lady might have provided for him. There was a very real fear in the family that Pusskins might be the residuary legatee …

  Something else that was troubling to the – by now very – extended family was whether Mrs Doughty had had money or not. (The bracket clock had been stolen but no one knew exactly what else.) Nobody else really knew what she had had in the way of assets, except perhaps now the burglar. The family, though, to be on the safe side, was taking a distinctly Morton’s Fork view of her finances – she must have had money because she hadn’t spent it – and, at least until the will was read, Pusskins was safe, not to say to be pampered.

  In the end the old lady’s niece took Pusskins home with her, her claim – as a blood relation – over that of a nephew on Mrs Doughty’s late husband’s side of the family being considered superior. This delicate matter was clinched by the said nephew’s wife having in the past always used an allergy to cats as an excuse for not visiting the cottage at Almstone.

  Once in the niece’s home, Pusskins retreated to a south-facing windowsill, where he devoted his days to lying in the sun and attending to his personal hygiene in full view of the neighbours, which the old lady’s niece didn’t think was very nice.

  The cat alternated his pose effortlessly between couchant and rampant as the fancy took him and, to the niece’s despair, ate this but not that – and then that but not this. Moral ascendancy over the niece having thus been achieved, he just waited.

  And waited.

  He waited for exactly seventeen days.

  Even when Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby – and a veterinary surgeon – came to the niece’s house, Pusskins only evinced a rather languid interest in their tale of a man with some rather nasty scratches on his arms and legs who had had to consult his doctor because he had an indolent ulcer on his right leg and some very enlarged and suppurating lymph nodes.

  ‘The doctor,’ reported the police inspector with a pardonable touch of drama, it being something of a professional coup, ‘diagnosed that the man was suffering from Pasturella multicida.’

  The niece exclaimed, ‘Lord, bless us, and whatever is that when it’s at home?’ having not yet caught up with the precise dangers of salmonella poisoning as presented by the popular press and vaguely associating the two.

  ‘Moreover,’ added Crosby, the detective constable accompanying Detective Inspector Sloan, who was determined to have
his say too, ‘the man had the same blood profile as the blood which the cat had on its claws.’

  Even then Pusskins didn’t stir. But when he heard the veterinary surgeon explain that a diagnosis of Pasturella multicida in the man meant that the old lady’s murderer must have caught ‘cat-scratch fever’ from this particular member of the family felix domesticus, Pusskins twitched his whiskers in a very satisfied way indeed.

  Exit Strategy

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her heart,’ said the doctor, folding his stethoscope and stuffing it back into his black bag. ‘Sound as a bell.’

  ‘Only her mind,’ said Mrs Barker’s daughter tightly.

  ‘That means she could go on like this for a long time,’ the doctor said. He paused. ‘A very long time, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m not so sure that I can,’ said Mrs Barker’s daughter, near to tears.

  The doctor shot her a quick professional glance, taking in her slight tremor and quavering voice, as well as the imminence of a loss of self-control she might not welcome.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind so much, doctor,’ she said with deep feeling, ‘if it was her heart that was bad and her mind was all right.’

  ‘The elderly mentally infirm are very difficult to deal with,’ he said to her as he had said to so many adult sons and daughters in this painful situation in his time in general practice. ‘There’s no getting away from it. Very difficult indeed.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ she said, adding on a rising note of despair, ‘Mother doesn’t even know who I am any more. She doesn’t recognize me, her own daughter!’

  ‘It’s not at all uncommon.’ He nodded, and waved to Mrs Barker’s medical record on the table. ‘We agreed, didn’t we, that she’s been suffering from senile dementia for quite a while.’ In the doctor’s book this was preferable to hiding the patient away from society, concealing incontinence and pretending to the neighbours that there was nothing wrong, but not everyone, he knew, would agree with this. ‘What is sadder,’ he went on, ‘is that your mother doesn’t know who she is either.’

  ‘And I shall be going the same way quite soon, I’m sure.’ She managed a little laugh. ‘The other day I caught myself putting the cat’s dry food in my own cereal bowl. I’d even poured milk over it before I realized what I’d done.’

  He smiled. ‘Happens easily enough. We all do that sort of thing.’ He was a busy man and went straight back to the point of the consultation. ‘I’m only sorry that I can’t promise you an early place in the right sort of nursing home for her. There are very long waiting lists for the good ones and –’ he hesitated – ‘they are rather expensive.’ Mrs Barker, he knew, had sold her bungalow when she came to live with her daughter, and so there would then be nursing home fees to be clawed back from her assets to pay for her long-term care. But her exhausted daughter was his patient too and so he asked, ‘Is there any chance of your sharing the care or are you the only one?’

  ‘I’ve got a sister over Calleford way,’ said Mrs Barker’s daughter slowly. ‘I might ask her if she’d do her stint for a while to give me a bit of a rest.’

  ‘A little respite care can be a great help,’ said the doctor, going on his way. ‘Try her.’

  * * *

  Mrs Barker’s daughter didn’t allow herself the merest smirk of self-congratulation after she’d shown the doctor out of the house. Instead, she picked up the telephone and dialled her son in Luston. ‘No problem, Martin,’ she said. ‘I think the doctor imagines I might be going to lose my Elgins soon too.’

  ‘Good. Now when?’

  ‘I thought you said Sunday morning’s the busiest time over there.’

  ‘I did. That’ll do fine.’

  ‘I’ve got her a costume.’

  ‘No labels?’

  ‘I’m not the one who’s demented,’ said his mother sharply.

  ‘Only teasing,’ chuckled the voice at the other end of the line. ‘There’s no inscription inside her wedding ring, is there, by any chance? You know, her and grandad’s name or anything like that?’

  ‘I got the nurse to take it off her finger months ago,’ said his mother, ‘because of granny’s arthritis.’

  ‘Ah, I thought you might have done,’ said Martin drily. ‘What about her dentures?’

  ‘I thought we’d leave those behind here just in case,’ said Mrs Barker’s daughter. ‘You never know…’

  ‘What about her teeth? Dentists are very good at keeping records these days.’

  ‘She hadn’t been near one in years – besides, she’s only got a couple left now.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘And no distinguishing scars, you said?’

  ‘None,’ said Mrs Barker’s daughter, adding almost absently, ‘In her way she’s always been very healthy.’

  ‘Good,’ said the voice in matter-of fact tones. ‘I think that’s everything, then.’

  ‘I’ll put the costume on under her ordinary clothes before we leave the house and I’ll meet you in the car park there. When do you suggest?’

  ‘Half past ten,’ said her son briskly. ‘Don’t be late.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Mrs Barker’s daughter, putting down the telephone and heading to the kitchen to make some lunch. Nobody was going to be able to say that Mrs Barker wasn’t well nourished or hadn’t been properly looked after. She had. That was part of the trouble.

  * * *

  If old Mrs Barker thought there was anything out of the ordinary in being dressed in a swimming costume before putting on her outdoor clothes she did not say so. Indeed, she did no more than give her customary grunt and start to dribble. She trotted out to the car happily enough though – she liked being driven around. She even got out of the car when it stopped – which was something that did not always happen without a struggle.

  Her daughter wiped Mrs Barker’s face clean and took her by the arm. Her grandson sauntered across the swimming pool’s car park and joined them. With the old lady between them, daughter and grandson strolled casually up to the entrance.

  ‘You get the tickets, dear,’ called out Mrs Barker’s daughter cheerfully, ‘and we’ll see you in the water.’

  ‘Righteo,’ said Martin, approaching the booth, cash in hand.

  He collected three tickets and handed two of them over to his mother. Much to her annoyance, the changing area at the swimming pool had recently become unisex. She had vociferously disapproved of this at the time but now she was grateful. It gave Martin a chance to be at his grandmother’s other side, after she had been undressed, as they assisted her towards the swimming bath.

  * * *

  Martin had been right. On a Sunday morning the pool was indeed crowded. They helped Mrs Barker down the little flight of steps at the shallow end and stood with her there for a while. Then Martin swam away, while Mrs Barker’s daughter gently folded her mother’s stiff fingers round the safety bar. ‘Stay there, Mother,’ she said, ‘and hold on until I come back. I’m just going for a swim.’

  There was no change in Mrs Barker’s customary expression of total bewilderment. It didn’t noticeably alter when time went by; nor when one of the attendants came up to her to ask her if she was all right – or how long she had been there – or who she was – or where she lived – and, most importantly, who it was who had brought her there.

  There was only one thing that was really certain and that was that by nightfall Social Services had got her safely installed in a specialist care home in a strange town.

  There, as a temporary measure, they named her Mary Celeste, because, as the care worker on duty that day said, ‘She had been found adrift in the water and no one knew why.’

  But they guessed.

  The Wild Card

  ‘Not another?’

  ‘Two more actually, sir.’

  ‘How many is that altogether now?’

  ‘Six, sir.’ Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan enjoyed practising what has come to be known as ‘the discipline of curi
osity’ in its own right, but looking into this particular matter had been work: police work.

  Superintendent Leeyes grunted. ‘Doesn’t make sense, Sloan, does it?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Who was it this time?’

  ‘Gerald Ardingly…’

  ‘Not the Chairman of our sainted bus outfit?’ snorted the Superintendent.

  ‘Him,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan inelegantly.

  ‘Can’t be too sorry for either him or his Calleshire buses. Must be making a mint. And who else?’

  ‘The editor of the Luston News.’

  ‘Not he who will use his columns campaigning for a better police presence in the city?’ said Leeyes sardonically.

  ‘There’s a mention of how ineffective we are most weeks,’ agreed Sloan uneasily, ‘although I must say I didn’t notice anything this week.’

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ said the Superintendent, ‘he’s always writing that we’re wasting too much time these days on rural policing.’

  ‘Crime does seem to have shifted out to the country and away from the city lately,’ ventured Sloan tentatively. It was ironic that fictional crime seemed to have moved in the opposite direction at the same time. Country house robberies were for real these days.

  ‘He will go on about what we haven’t done rather than what we have,’ persisted Leeyes.

  Detective Inspector Sloan decided against saying anything about good news not selling newspapers.

  ‘Who else?’ asked Leeyes, coming back to the notes on his desk.

  ‘Nigel Halesworth,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Huh.’ Leeyes’s snort was even more pronounced this time. ‘He’s the top bean counter over at United Mellemetics, isn’t he?’

  ‘Finance director,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Same thing,’ said Leeyes robustly. ‘He’s a skinflint anyway. I heard that he wouldn’t give the Mayoress anything at all for the charity of her choice for her year in office.’

  ‘The children’s hospice,’ supplied Sloan, who had already made his own contribution. ‘They need all the money that they can get.’