Chapter and Hearse Read online

  ‘He said, if I was told rightly,’ growled Leeyes, ‘that he didn’t approve of handouts to help the health service.’

  ‘Credit card stolen last week,’ carried on Sloan stolidly, ‘and the card company duly notified of the loss by Nigel Halesworth. Couldn’t do it quickly enough actually. Tried to blame the police for not preventing the theft, let alone for not catching whoever took it, even though he’d been the one who’d been careless. Left it in his jacket pocket somewhere.’

  ‘Wanted to know what he paid his taxes for, I dare say, as usual,’ said the Superintendent placidly.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then the same evening his card was pushed back through the Halesworths’ letter box.’

  ‘Just like with all the others?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Wiped clean of fingerprints, of course.’

  ‘It’s not the wiping that matters,’ barked Leeyes on the instant, ‘it’s the swiping that counts, let alone the skimming.’

  Sloan frowned. ‘There’s no evidence of these cards being used to make counterfeits, sir. There’s been only one withdrawal on each of them. And,’ he added, ‘you don’t even need to have the card swiped these days, sir.’

  ‘If you ask me, Sloan, there’s far, far too much of that done over the telephone now – and without any checks.’

  ‘And just as with all the others taken so far,’ carried on Sloan, ‘the credit card companies will confirm only that a large single withdrawal had been made just before the loss was notified and the account stopped.’

  Superintendent Leeyes sat back in his chair and stroked his chin in deep thought. ‘We could be looking at a rather sophisticated form of blackmail, Sloan.’

  ‘We could indeed, sir,’ agreed Sloan warmly. ‘No written demands, no muddled assignations, no handing over of actual cash – just a credit card stolen and returned to the owner’s house almost immediately the unauthorized transaction has been made.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Leeyes.

  ‘Just the one snag actually…’

  ‘An audit trail,’ said the Superintendent, simply.

  ‘In theory the credit card company should be able to tell us where the payment has gone,’ said Sloan, pausing.

  ‘They should indeed,’ Leeyes grunted. ‘Save us a lot of bother.’

  ‘And would be able to,’ pointed out Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘but they say they’ll do it only if the customer queries the charge to the account and gives them their permission. They won’t play ball otherwise. Not without a court order.’

  Leeyes muttered something distinctly subversive about the Human Rights Act and its pernicious effect on the proper pursuit of enquiries by a beleaguered and overworked police force.

  ‘And,’ hurried on Sloan, ‘I don’t see us getting access to any of their accounts if the customers don’t complain.’

  ‘And you say the card holders won’t do that?’ said Leeyes. ‘You’re quite sure about that, Sloan, are you?’

  ‘Not a single one of them,’ insisted Sloan. ‘Half a dozen of the richest businessmen in the town who have had a charge made on their account by the unauthorized use of their credit cards won’t say a dicky bird about it … That’s as far as we’ve got.’

  ‘Large amounts,’ declared Leeyes in a worldly-wise manner. ‘Must be. We wouldn’t have heard anything about it at all if it had been peanuts.’

  ‘It seems,’ said Sloan, ‘that they all just say that nothing has been wrongly charged to them and pay up as if everything was hunky-dory and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.’

  ‘Smells worse than dead fish,’ pronounced the Superintendent.

  ‘Even the chairman of the Chamber of Trade won’t say a word,’ said Sloan, ‘and he’s usually the first to make a fuss about anything.’ He sniffed. ‘Only, we are always given to understand, on behalf of one of his members, of course.’

  ‘As usual.’

  ‘Whenever he complains, he always insists it’s never him personally.’

  ‘Pompous ass,’ said Leeyes succinctly.

  ‘The head honcho at Calleshire Systems wouldn’t even speak to us after his card came back. Made a terrific fuss to begin with when it was first stolen and then afterwards got his public relations lady to sweet-talk us into thinking that nothing noteworthy had happened and that everything in the garden was lovely.’

  ‘Sounds like blackmail to me,’ said Leeyes again. ‘And now this business with the Dipper has come up.’

  ‘Our Charlie, the town’s lightest-fingered crook,’ agreed Sloan.

  ‘Now dead,’ said the Superintendent without any noticeable regret.

  ‘Totalled his car and himself on the Luston road last night,’ said Sloan. ‘Going faster than he should, of course, and then he hit a spot of black ice by the bridge and went into the river.’

  ‘It’s a tight corner at the best of times,’ said the Superintendent.

  ‘No one could’ve called last night the best of times on the road,’ said Sloan. ‘Car and Dipper both written off before any of the rescue services got there. Straightforward accident – Traffic Division are quite sure about that.’

  ‘And after the Lord Mayor’s Show, the dustcart,’ observed the Superintendent.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir … Oh, I see what you mean.’ Sloan’s face cleared. ‘The Coroner’s officer.’

  ‘Constable Stuart,’ agreed Leeyes. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He reported that a credit card was found on the Dipper’s body that isn’t – wasn’t – the Dipper’s,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Ah…’ said Leeyes.

  ‘It belongs to the chairman of the Luston Football Club.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘As well as finding the chairman’s credit card,’ he went on, ‘Constable Stuart also reported that there was a note with it with the chairman’s name and address on it and the exact time that the card had to be put through the owner’s letter box last night.’

  ‘Whose handwriting?’ pounced Leeyes.

  ‘The Dipper’s,’ replied Sloan regretfully. ‘He must have been on his way over to Luston to deliver it when he hit the ice. The timing was quite tight – he’d have had to step on it.’ He paused. ‘Probably did, which would account for the skid.’

  ‘We might get a “calls made” telephone printout,’ said Leeyes who had lost interest in the Dipper’s accident and was concentrating on the job in hand.

  ‘But not calls received,’ said Sloan pertinently. ‘I think we would find that all the relevant calls were made to the Dipper and none by him.’

  ‘Which means he might not have known who made them,’ concluded Leeyes.

  ‘I think that we’ll find that will be the case,’ said Sloan prosaically.

  ‘That is,’ growled Leeyes, ‘when we find whoever made them.’

  ‘If we ever do,’ temporized Sloan. ‘The Dipper might’ve been the best pickpocket in the business…’

  ‘No doubt about that,’ grunted Leeyes. ‘Should have been on the stage.’

  ‘But, although he certainly wasn’t the brightest of the bright, even he wouldn’t have been daft enough to ask questions when it was better not to do so.’

  ‘It’s all this new business of the “need-to-know” basis catching on,’ grimaced the Superintendent, who resented being denied any information at all by anyone at any level at any time. ‘It’s all the fashion these days, more’s the pity.’

  ‘And the Dipper always knew what constituted evidence and what didn’t,’ sighed Sloan. ‘I will say that for him.’

  Superintendent Leeyes said something unflattering under his breath about wishing that the same could always be said of the Crown Prosecution Service.

  ‘Quite so, sir,’ he murmured. This, diplomatically, Sloan affected not to have heard. ‘Petty crook the Dipper might have been, but he was no amateur at keeping out of real trouble.’

  ‘And someone else knew that too,’ said Leeyes.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Sloa
n at once. ‘The Dipper’ll have been hand-picked, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘And paid in cash presumably.’

  ‘Funny you should say that, sir…’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘PC Stuart’s had a bit of a shufti round the Dipper’s place, looking for relatives and so forth…’

  ‘Loads of cash?’

  ‘No, sir. Come to that, hardly any. All he found that could be called at all out of the ordinary was a cutting from this week’s local paper…’ He paused.

  ‘Get on with it, man,’ barked Leeyes.

  ‘It was a published list of the latest donors to the Mayoress’s appeal on behalf of the children’s hospice.’

  ‘Well, I never.’ A beatific smile overtook Superintendent Leeyes’s usually scowling features. ‘And would, by any chance, any of the people on this list of ours here feature on it?’

  ‘Prominently,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘All except the last one.’

  ‘Which, I take it, will be on next week’s list?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised, sir.’

  ‘Neither would I, Sloan.’ He slapped the file on his desk shut and handed it back to the detective inspector. ‘Neither would I.’

  Coup de Grâce

  ‘That you, Wendy? Henry here.’ Henry Tyler, civil servant extraordinaire, was sitting at his desk in the Foreign Office in London. He was presently on the telephone to his sister in the little market town of Berebury. ‘I thought you ought to know that I’m going to be coming down to Calleshire next weekend.’

  ‘Darling, how lovely!’

  ‘No, no…’

  ‘But the children will be so pleased to see their favourite uncle again.’

  ‘It’s not quite like that…’ He rattled the telephone cradle up and down. ‘Operator! Operator! Don’t cut us off, please … We haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘Henry,’ he heard his sister say amidst crackles, ‘this is a terrible line and I can’t hear you properly. I said when may we expect you?’

  ‘It’s not quite like that, Wen,’ he repeated hesitantly. ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be staying with you this time.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Only in a manner of speaking.’

  Henry was staring out of his office window while he spoke to his sister. A busy London street scene was visible below, but he wasn’t looking at the cabbies or the men and women hurrying along the pavements beneath him. It was the screaming headlines on the vendors’ boards which had caught his attention. He could read the words ‘Von Ribbentrop’ and ‘Herr Hitler’ quite clearly even at a distance. One newspaper seller had obviously abandoned an attempt to fit in the name ‘Chamberlain’ as being too long a word for his newsstand.

  Wendy Witherington said, ‘I know I shouldn’t ask…’

  ‘I’m bidden to stay at Calle Castle for the weekend,’ volunteered her brother. This statement could be fairly described as the truth but not by any means the whole truth.

  ‘At the Duke of Calleshire’s?’ exclaimed his sister. ‘How lovely for you, darling.’

  ‘There’s a hunt ball on the Saturday…’

  He forbore to explain that he was going to Calle Castle because there would be others there who had also been invited on whom his political masters in Whitehall wished an eye kept. A wary eye. And those particular others were going to be there – and not perhaps, for instance, at Cliveden that weekend instead – because an invitation to Calle Castle from Her Grace, the Duchess of Calleshire, to stay there for the hunt ball was one that very few people would refuse. Actually, he mused, as he drew little pictures on his blotting paper, these particular others wouldn’t have wanted to refuse the invitation anyway. Like himself, they would all have their own reasons for being at the castle, with European matters in the highly fragile state they were just now.

  ‘Everybody’ll be there, I suppose,’ said his sister a little wistfully.

  This, he knew, did not include Wendy and her husband, Tom Witherington, but did embrace everyone who was anyone in the mainly rural county of Calleshire and quite a number of luminaries from the outside world. The haut-monde as well as fashion and politics would be well represented there for sure and, more importantly, so would international affairs – which is where Henry Tyler’s duties came in.

  ‘Oh, how exciting for you,’ continued Wendy.

  ‘I very much hope not,’ returned Henry Tyler vigorously, although he knew very well that some of the people who would be at Calle Castle at the weekend were not without a taste for danger and might not be too averse to a little action, as well – strictly in the interests of national security, of course. ‘In my experience, my dear sister, a man can have a little too much excitement for his own good.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ said Wendy Witherington immediately. Apologetic she might be; deceived she was not. She was well aware that some of her brother’s assignments on behalf of his employers had verged on the bizarre. ‘I shouldn’t have asked, I know, but do be extra careful, won’t you?’ She gave a sigh. ‘Do you suppose it will be as splendid an occasion as the Duchess of Richmond’s great ball before Waterloo?’

  ‘I’ll tell you whether it was next week,’ Henry said lightly. The parallels were a mite too close for his liking – another war in Europe was undeniably in the offing, although with different enemies and different allies from those at Waterloo – but he did not say so. Wendy and her Tom would find that out for themselves soon enough. And be thankful that their son – his nephew – was too young for the coming conflict.

  Wendy hesitated and then said, ‘Of course you don’t want anything to go wrong naturally, but if…’

  ‘And neither does anyone else,’ he finished firmly before she could say anything more, adding under his breath, ‘especially my Minister.’

  Henry’s Minister was a man with so much on his mind at this defining moment in world history that he didn’t need anything else to worry about. Which is where Henry Tyler and his watching brief came in.

  ‘It won’t go wrong if you’ve got anything to do with it,’ Wendy said loyally, ‘but I would like to know what the ball dresses are like, Henry. Especially if light green is still in – such a very flattering colour, I always think.’

  ‘I’ll make a note,’ he promised gravely.

  * * *

  Not a hunting man himself – of foxes, that is – it was white tie and tails for him at Calle Castle, rather than hunting pink, when he ascended the magnificent staircase there on the night of the hunt ball.

  He was received by the Duchess, resplendent in the famous Calleshire diamonds. ‘I’m very glad you could come, Mr Tyler,’ she murmured so graciously that Henry was quite left in the dark as to whether she knew there was a purpose to his visit. ‘How nice to see you back in Calleshire,’ she added, before handing him over to her husband at her side.

  The Duke had probably guessed that he was here on duty.

  ‘Good to see you, m’boy,’ he boomed. ‘Do you know the Ambassador here? Ambassador, this is Henry Tyler – an old friend. Henry, let me introduce His Excellency the Polish Ambassador to the sheikhdom of Lasserta…’

  Henry bowed, concealing his inward amusement at the way in which the Duke – like everyone else – had ducked out of pronouncing the Ambassador’s name. Fortunately an extensive training at the Foreign Office had encompassed practice with saying Polish titles out loud.

  ‘Count Zeczenbroski,’ said Henry, bowing again slightly whilst resisting the temptation to click his heels together as well. ‘I don’t know how long you’ve been in post there but I’m sure you’ll know our man in Lasserta.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Count, shaking hands warmly. ‘Your Mr Heber-Hibbs and I are old friends. In fact, his boy Anthony plays with my own son. A good man.’

  ‘Who lies abroad for the good of his country,’ Henry completed the definition of an Ambassador with practised ease. The sheikhdom of Lasserta was in theory not really big enough in size or history to merit an ambass
ador-in-residence from either Great Britain or Poland, or, for that matter, few of the other European countries who saw fit to be represented there at that diplomatic level. However, since the sheikhdom was sitting on the only known supply of queremitte ore on the planet outside the Soviet Union, they were all there all the same.

  In strength.

  This was understandable, since queremitte was an element of great value in the armaments world. It was thus much sought after by those nations who were arming – or rearming – as fast as they possibly could. Countries who had already put ‘guns before butter’, so to speak, had almost exhausted their stocks, while those nations that had only just come under starter’s orders in the arms race were even more anxious to secure supplies of one of the hardest-wearing of all known metals to aid them in their hasty manufacture of new weapons.

  ‘And you left the Sheikh well, I trust?’ Henry enquired. Of one thing he could be quite sure and that was that the young son of Sheikh Ben Mugnal Mirza Ibrahim Hajal Kisra would not be mixing with the sons of any of the ambassadors at his court. The Sheikh played his cards far too close to his chest to risk anything being given away by childish babble. And there was also the very real fear of the kidnap and ransom of his heir.

  ‘In great form, I assure you,’ said the Count. He smiled politely as an overweight man with a red face overtook them on their way into the castle’s ballroom.

  ‘The Lord Lieutenant,’ murmured Henry. ‘A great man in the saddle in his day, I understand.’

  The Count, whose own sport was duck-shooting on the Pripet Marshes, acknowledged this fact with a cursory nod before passing on to Henry some information of his own. ‘I understand,’ he said in a voice rather below that used in normal conversation, ‘that your man in Lasserta has been beaten at the post by a very unfriendly power.’

  Henry bent his head towards Count Zeczenbroski. ‘Indeed?’ he said, not showing by even the flicker of an eyelid that this fact was not only not news to him but the very reason for his own presence at the castle tonight.

  ‘It is said that that young man over there –’ here the Count indicated a handsome blond man who was squiring a tall, elegant girl in a dress of deep electric blue – ‘has obtained a verbal agreement to the assigning of the queremitte mining rights to his government.’