Learning Curve Read online

  She lifted her head at that. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘Any last wishes, fond farewells – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes, since you ask. But unexpected.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something very odd.’

  Paul clenched his fists until the knuckles were quite white. ‘Tell me.’

  Jane spoke slowly and carefully. ‘Just before he died, Dad announced quite loudly and clearly, “He killed him, you know.”’

  ‘His exact words?’

  She nodded, filling the teapot from the steaming kettle and putting it on a tray already laid with cups and saucers.

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘And then he died.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  She nodded again. ‘So we told the police.’

  ‘You did what!’ he exploded, suddenly white-faced.

  ‘Told the police,’ she repeated. ‘Look out, Paul, you’re spilling the milk.’

  ‘Why on earth did you want to go and do that for?’

  ‘Mum and I thought about it for a bit and we decided we should. And,’ she added in a tone entirely devoid of inflexion, ‘you weren’t here to ask.’

  ‘No need to remind me.’

  ‘After all,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t as if Dad himself had said that he’d killed anyone.’

  ‘But you thought the police ought to know that he had said somebody did,’ he echoed in a bitter voice.

  ‘That’s right, Paul,’ she said flatly, ‘Mum and I thought they ought to know and they’ve told us they’re on their way over here now. Like it or not,’ she added.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Where to, sir?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby. He had brought the police car round to the door and was waiting there as Sloan stepped out of the police station. The constable was standing poised alongside the car rather in the manner of a Grand Prix driver ready for the off.

  Detective Inspector Sloan pulled out his notebook and read out the address, ‘Legate Lodge, High Street, Friar’s Flensant.’ Friar’s Flensant was just one of the many small villages in the hinterland of the market town of Berebury, home of ‘F’ Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary.

  ‘Not far, then,’ said Crosby, slipping the car into gear. ‘And it won’t take long to get out there seeing as it’s not market day.’ Market day meant a square full of stalls and people, not roads and cars.

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Crosby,’ said Sloan, ‘but I’m afraid that time is not of the essence in this instance. At least,’ he added fairly, ‘not in the usual sense.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  The inspector strapped himself into the passenger seat and sat back. ‘We are going to visit what I assume to be a house of mourning.’

  ‘So there’s been a death, sir,’ concluded Crosby.

  ‘True but that is not the point. The question is whether there have been two deaths.’

  ‘A double murder?’ The constable brightened and unconsciously put his foot down.

  ‘No, Crosby. There has been one death that we do know about and wasn’t murder and one that we know nothing whatsoever about but might have been. That is, if it happened at all. All we have to go on is just something that the late Derek Tridgell is said to have uttered just before he died.’

  ‘A swansong?’

  ‘You could call it that, Crosby.’

  ‘Canaries sing, too, sir, don’t they?’ said Crosby, who was still learning the criminal argot.

  ‘Only if they’re ready to watch their backs for the rest of what’s left of their lives,’ said Sloan, older and wiser.

  ‘A deathbed confession, then?’ suggested Crosby.

  ‘On the contrary, Crosby.’ That was one thing that he thought he could be sure about. ‘It seems it’s more of a deathbed accusation.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he tell us before?’ asked Crosby indignantly, ‘then we could have asked him all about it.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s exactly why,’ murmured Sloan. ‘It could also have been something that was weighing on his mind which he had been concentrating on keeping back until he couldn’t restrain himself any longer.’

  ‘More canary than swan, though,’ said the constable, pleased with the thought.

  ‘Could be. Or it might just have been that he couldn’t control his own mind any more, the effect of drugs being what they are. He was very near death indeed when he spoke. They were his last words, in fact.’

  ‘Nice timing, then,’ observed the constable, slowing down as the car trickled into the village high street at Friar’s Flensant. ‘Ruled himself out of play.’

  ‘Beyond our reach, anyway,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan, looking around. ‘There’s the house – over there, beyond the post office.’

  The constable drew the police car up in front of a neat square dwelling, its red brick set off well by white-painted windows and a front door with old-fashioned brass fittings. ‘Nice,’ he observed approvingly. ‘Garden in quite good nick, too.’

  ‘And designed to be labour-saving,’ noted Sloan, a gardener himself whenever he got the time, ‘although the lawn could do with a trim. You can hardly see the Wembley lines any longer but they’ve been there all right.’

  ‘Come again, sir?’

  ‘Grass properly mown in straight lines,’ said Sloan briefly. What he was trying to decide was whether or not to prime the young constable on their forthcoming interview strategy. He decided against it. Letting nature take its course sometimes worked out better.

  Jane Tridgell admitted the two policemen to Legate Lodge and led the way to a room where her mother was sitting, silent and still. She stirred as the officers came in, moving slowly, though, and as if movement was a great effort. She indicated a young man lounging on a sofa. ‘And this is my son, Paul.’

  Paul Tridgell nodded at the policemen but did not get to his feet.

  ‘We weren’t sure if we should have bothered the police at all,’ Mrs Tridgell began apologetically, ‘but it seemed such a strange thing for my husband to have said and we thought we would have only worried afterwards if we hadn’t told you.’

  ‘Waste of police time, if you ask me,’ yawned the young man on the sofa.

  ‘There’s a lot of that about,’ contributed Detective Constable Crosby. ‘Mostly old ladies who’ve lost their cats. Or their marbles.’

  ‘So we thought you ought to know,’ put in Jane Tridgell, who had come in quietly behind them and taken a seat next to her mother. She ignored what her brother had said. ‘Of course, it might just have been something and nothing. We know that.’

  ‘But it might not,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ said Paul.

  ‘We take everything seriously, sir,’ said Sloan.

  ‘But it could mean nothing at all,’ he persisted.

  ‘Very true, sir. Equally it might mean something,’ said Sloan mildly. ‘And we need to know which, so please do go on, Miss Tridgell.’

  Jane dutifully told him exactly what her father had said. The detective inspector listened carefully to all that she told him.

  ‘And you have no idea who he meant when he talked about the remainderman?’ he said. ‘“The wrong remainderman”, I think you said.’

  ‘None,’ she replied.

  ‘Or why he should say “dammit” so often and so forcefully?’

  She shook her head. ‘Neither of us have.’

  ‘Was this a normal expletive of his?’

  ‘No, Inspector.’ A little smile played around her lips. ‘His were usually a bit stronger.’

  ‘Much stronger,’ said the young man on the sofa. ‘Dad had a good command of language.’

  ‘But he said nothing more?’ Sloan asked when he had finished writing his notes.

  ‘Then he just died,’ she said lamely.

  ‘Confession is good for the soul,’ remarked Paul from the sofa. ‘But not a lot else.’

  ‘
Paul,’ his mother corrected him sharply, ‘your father didn’t say he’d killed someone but that someone else had.’

  ‘Sounds to me as if it was something he wanted to get off his chest anyway,’ said Paul, ‘and if that’s not a confession then I don’t know what is.’

  Sloan turned to him. ‘Did you hear any of this, too, sir?’

  ‘Me? No, I was in the air on the way home from Rio de Janeiro. Red eye isn’t in it. I came straight here but I was too late.’ He hitched himself up on a shoulder. ‘And I’ve got my airline ticket stub to prove it.’

  ‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary, sir, thank you.’ He turned back to Marion Tridgell and her daughter and said, ‘So may I take it that neither of you has any idea what he was talking about?’

  Both women shook their heads.

  Sloan turned to Paul. ‘Or you, sir?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Paul. ‘No skeletons in the family cupboard that I know about – or at least,’ he looked across at his mother, ‘that anyone has told me about.’

  ‘Or outside the family?’ asked Sloan, unamused.

  They all shook their heads. Then, after a moment, Paul frowned and said, ‘There was someone who was killed in a firm Dad knew about, wasn’t there? He always said that it was an industrial accident but you never know.’

  ‘Where was that?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Luston Chemicals,’ said Marion. ‘They make the same sort of things that my husband’s – my late husband’s – employer produced.’

  ‘Only they’re bigger,’ put in Paul. ‘Much bigger.’

  ‘A man did die over there,’ said his mother. ‘It was all very unfortunate.’

  ‘When exactly?’ asked Sloan.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I can’t remember when exactly – a year or so ago, perhaps. I’ve found time a bit telescoped since my husband became ill – but I do remember him talking about it.’

  ‘He talked about it quite a lot,’ put in Paul vigorously. ‘To me, anyway. He said it was a nasty business. Dad was over there on his firm’s business with his chairman the day that it happened, that’s how he came to know so much about it.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan got out his notebook, conscious that the connection between time and crime was a strange one. Hot pursuit always had popular support – everyone, but especially the press was usually willing to join a hue and cry. But they were less interested when this had died down. And not interested at all as the years went by – unless it was the identity of Jack the Ripper or who it was who had really killed the little princes in the Tower. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know all the details,’ said Marion Tridgell. ‘My husband didn’t like talking about it to me.’

  ‘He did to me,’ put in Paul again. ‘A lot.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan, who had been taught that the exoneration of a crime didn’t just come with the passage of time, old crimes being just as heinous as new ones – if not, should they have been concealed – more so. Unfortunately in the ordinary way the resolving of really old cases didn’t have much support from Superintendent Leeyes, his superior officer. He didn’t know yet if any of what had been said at Legate Lodge was in the ordinary way. It didn’t sound like it to him. He turned to Paul Tridgell. ‘This works accident in Luston, sir, what happened?’

  ‘I can’t tell you exactly,’ he said, ‘but someone ended up dead in a vat of chemicals or something pretty awful like that, anyway.’

  ‘Although my husband always said it shouldn’t have happened,’ Marion was saying almost before her son had finished speaking.

  As far as Detective Inspector Sloan was concerned that went for all accidents.

  ‘Perhaps it was that that played on Dad’s mind,’ suggested Jane. ‘You never know.’

  ‘The mind’s a funny thing,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan as he and Crosby took their leave.

  ‘Where to now, sir?’ asked Crosby, clambering back into the driving seat.

  ‘The offices of the Luston News, Crosby, where we are going to trace any account of an accident at the works of Luston Chemicals at an unknown date, which Derek Tridgell’s son conveniently thought fit to remember to tell us about at just the right moment.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And then, Crosby, in spite of your well-known dislike of paperwork, we are going back to the police station where you are going to check on the reports of all the accidents and suicides in “F” Division.’

  ‘How far back, sir?’ He sounded glum.

  ‘How long is a piece of string, Crosby?’ He sat back in the car. ‘And, Crosby …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Check if young Master Tridgell has a record of any sort. His attitude towards the police leaves a lot to be desired.’

  It wasn’t until supper time at Legate Lodge that the subject of Derek Tridgell’s last words came up again. Marion had spent the meal practically silent and eating very little, toying with her food all the while. Supper over, the family were all sitting round the table drinking coffee when Marion at last stirred out of the lethargy of grief and said, ‘We must talk about the funeral service, Paul, now that you’re back home.’

  Paul Tridgell stiffened. He had made everyone in his family well aware of his disbelief in all things religious throughout his adolescence. ‘Right,’ he said uneasily, shooting a glance at his sister.

  ‘The vicar’s coming round in the morning to talk about the service,’ his mother went on.

  Paul hunched his shoulders. ‘I’ve never understood why Dad believed in church and all that. After all, he was a scientist.’

  ‘He was a research chemist,’ explained his mother patiently, ‘and he always said that all the while he was doing inorganic chemistry he didn’t believe in anything spiritual at all.’

  He challenged her. ‘So what made him change his mind, then?’

  ‘When he started learning about organic chemistry,’ said Marion simply. ‘He said that once he got his mind round all that, his view of the world changed. Now, I’ve been thinking and decided that your father would have liked Simon Thornycroft to give the address.’

  Paul visibly relaxed. ‘Good idea, Mum. After all, he’s a potholer, too.’

  ‘He’s more than that now. He’s the president of the club,’ said Marion, ‘and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of their members there.’

  ‘Bound to be,’ agreed Paul.

  ‘All the cavers knew Dad,’ said Jane, adding shakily, ‘and liked him.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Paul, always faintly surprised that so many people liked the father with whom he had done nothing but argue for years.

  ‘I’ll ring Simon tomorrow and ask him if he’ll do it,’ said Marion, then, turning to her daughter, she asked Jane if she wanted to read something at the service.

  Jane blinked. ‘I don’t know if I could manage it, Mum, but I think I’d like to try. There’s a poem I’ve been wondering about.’

  ‘And you, Paul?’ Marion looked quizzically at her son. ‘Are you up for it?’

  ‘I couldn’t speak about Dad, if that’s what you mean,’ he said. ‘Not in a church.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. Since it was his frequent rows with his father that had led to Paul’s nomadic existence, this did not surprise Marion. ‘But you could do one of the readings if you want.’

  ‘All right, I’ll think about it,’ he conceded gruffly. ‘Something short, though.’

  Marion sat back again and lapsed into silence.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ cajoled Paul, newly bathed and shaved, ‘cheer up. At least Dad’s pain is all over now. You don’t have to worry about him any more, whatever it was he said.’

  His sister shivered. ‘And we couldn’t have told the police anything more than we did.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Paul lightly, ‘because if you hadn’t I’m sure they have ways of making you talk.’

  ‘You shouldn’t joke like that, Paul,’ Jane protested. ‘Not at a time like this. It’s not nice.’ />
  Marion set her cup back on the table. ‘Paul, I can assure you Jane and I have only told the police exactly what Daddy said that day and nothing more.’

  ‘And how and when he said it,’ added Jane, the memory of that moment still very much with her.

  ‘Well, then what are you two worrying about?’ asked Paul nonchalantly.

  ‘It’s what he said that I’m worrying about,’ said Jane, exasperated. ‘And why he did. Can’t you understand that I’m frightened by it all?’

  ‘That he said someone had killed a man?’ Paul tilted his chair back. ‘So what? They do it all the time where I’ve just come from. With knives, mostly.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Paul,’ said Marion calmly. ‘And don’t break that chair either.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ he said, landing the front legs of the wooden chair back on the floor with a crash. He put his coffee cup back on the table and said, ‘I must say I’ve had better coffee than this in Columbia.’

  ‘Must you?’ said Jane more sharply than she had intended. ‘I think we should be talking about what Daddy said instead of about the quality of coffee.’

  ‘And I think Paul is tired and jet-lagged,’ said Marion with finality, ‘and should go to bed now.’

  Paul shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right, all right, I’m just going up. But what Dad said doesn’t really matter very much anyway since we don’t know the identity of either the man he said who did the killing or who the unknown victim was.’ He looked at his mother and sister and then asked softly, ‘Or do we?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The decor of the premises of Morton and Son, funeral directors, was suitably muted when compared with that of most of the other establishments in the high street in Berebury. Even that of the frontage of the betting shop further down the road – devoted as it was to sheltering its patrons from public gaze at all costs – could not have been more discreet.

  ‘Nothing showy at the front,’ Tod Morton’s great-grandfather had decreed over a century earlier and so its aspect had remained for the next fifty years. ‘Put a brass plate there with the name of the firm on it and have some curtains at the back of the window,’ was what he had ordained. ‘And keep it private.’