His Burial Too Page 4

  “No?”

  “If the family have had a note asking them to leave ten thousand pounds under the blasted oak at the crossroads at dead of night they aren’t necessarily going to tell us.”

  “Aren’t they, indeed?” said Sloan grimly. “Well, let me tell you they aren’t going to get very far if they don’t.”

  “Perhaps it’s suicide then.”

  “No note has been mentioned to me,” said Sloan austerely, “yet.”

  As far as he was concerned suicides and notes went together as inevitably as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

  “There was the river at Randall’s Bridge,” Crosby reminded him. “That was only three miles back.”

  “And a railway line,” commented Sloan, who hadn’t been thinking about roses all of the journey.

  “Almost spoilt by choice, sir, isn’t he?”

  “Suicides always are,” said Sloan mordantly.

  Crosby tried again. “This chap, sir, is he a bad ’un, then?”

  “I don’t know that either yet.” Sloan stirred irritably: Crosby watched too many Westerns and it showed. “I did a person check with Records before I left the Station …”

  What was it fashionable in the business world to call bad records these days?

  There was a phrase for it.

  Derogatory data.

  That was it.

  “No joy, sir?”

  “Criminal Records Office have no knowledge of him under the name of Tindall, if that’s what you mean by joy, Crosby.”

  The Constable deigned to brake for a road junction. “Which way now, sir?”

  “We want the Dower House,” said Sloan. “Hepple says it’s quite conspicuous. It’s in the middle of the village High Street and almost next door to the church.”

  It didn’t take long to find.

  Cleete was a small village—a jumble of cottages, a shop or two, a bit of green, a public house, a garage—all set round a church. They could see the thin spire of the church as they drove into the village. After that the Dower House was easy enough to locate.

  Beyond both the Dower House and the church was a rather splendid avenue of oak trees but Inspector Sloan didn’t turn to see where it led to. His attention had been caught by something parked at the front gate of the Dower House.

  A police bicycle.

  Detective Constable Crosby brought the police car to a stop beside it with a wholly unnecessary screech of brakes, and said, “Looks as if the Flying Squad’s beaten us to it, sir, after all.”

  “Constable Hepple,” deduced Detective Inspector Sloan. “He must have come back for something.”

  Police Constable Hepple had indeed come back to the Dower House for something. He advanced towards the police car in evident relief.

  “It’s Mr Tindall’s car, sir. Miss Tindall’s just found it in the garage. She rang me up about it. Said she thought we ought to know it was there.”

  “It’s a point,” agreed Sloan.

  A man and his car weren’t quite as indivisible as a man and his horse but at this rate they soon would be.

  “Blessed if I know what to make of it myself, sir.” Constable Hepple tilted his helmet back. “Doesn’t make sense to me. Still,” he added fairly, “I reckon I should have gone straight out and looked in that garage for myself, sir, first thing, but when Ada Turvey said the key wasn’t in its usual place …”

  “I take it,” said Sloan, cutting in, “that you can’t see the garage door from the house?”

  He had never been one for relishing recriminations and found he less and less inclined to it as he got older. It never did any good. That was one thing which life had taught him—but not, alas, Superintendent Leeyes—by now. His only regret was that it was one of life’s later lessons.

  “No, sir,” replied Hepple, mopping his brow. “Not from the house. The garage is part of the stables now, converted-like, and of course they were always well to one side of the house because of the smell of the horses.”

  Sloan nodded.

  There was no doubt that they were out in the country now …

  “I’ve seen the car, sir,” continued Hepple. “The keys are still in the ignition and the garage key that Ada Turvey was on about—the one that’s always hung on the hook by the garden door—that’s still in the lock on the garage door.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “A gent turned up asking for him. A business gent by the sound of him. Name of Gordon Cranswick. Properly put out he was, from all accounts. Wanted to talk to Mr Tindall sooner than now and didn’t see why he couldn’t. Went off somewhere in his car as quickly as he’d come, Miss Tindall said.”

  “But there’s still no sign of her father?”

  “Not a sausage, sir.” Hepple shook his head. “Seems as if he just vanished into thin air after he came home and before he went to bed last night.”

  “‘Twixt the stirrup and the ground,’ too,” murmured Sloan for good measure.

  “Beg pardon, sir?” said Hepple.

  Sloan cleared his throat. “Between the garage and the house.”

  “That’s right, sir,” said Hepple, scratching his chin. “Leastways, that’s what it looks like.”

  “Quite so,” agreed Sloan. “We must remember that things may not be what they seem.”

  This was a principle he was always trying his best to instil into Detective Constable Crosby.

  He hoped he was listening.

  “I can’t find him in the garden, though,” went on Hepple doggedly, “and Miss Fenella and Ada Turvey they say they can’t find him in the house.” He jerked his shoulder towards the building behind him. “Mind you, sir, it’s not all that small a house …”

  No, it was not a small house. Sloan could see that himself. It was a very finely proportioned one, though. In fact, he had to take a second look at it before he realised quite how perfect it was.

  “What they call Georgian, sir, I’m told,” said Hepple, “on account of all the straight lines.”

  Sloan nodded. There wasn’t a Victorian twiddle or bump in sight. And all—as the estate agents’ optimistic advertisements said—well-maintained in excellent condition.

  Hepple’s arm described a circle. “And definitely a big garden.”

  Sloan grunted. There was no doubt about the size of the garden. You could have lost a platoon in it—easily—let alone one man.

  “Best part of a couple of acres, sir, I’d say. At least.” Hepple ran an experienced eye over the grass. “And he could be anywhere in that orchard at the back—anywhere at all. Especially if he’d been taken ill after he got back home last night.”

  Detective Inspector Sloan had no time for euphemisms so early in the morning.

  He looked at his watch and said briskly: “If he’s been on a real bender he could still be sleeping it off somewhere. It’s not very late in the day yet.”

  “No, sir,” said Police Constable Hepple, equally firm. “He wasn’t that sort of a drinker.”

  Sloan looked up quickly, realising that he’d come within an inch of underestimating a village constable; and that would never do.

  “If he had been like that, sir,” Hepple went on seriously, “I wouldn’t have reported him as missing at all to Berebury. Not until much later on, sir, anyway, when I could have been quite sure.”

  “I understand,” said Sloan.

  And he did.

  With the warble fly and the church porch and the bicycle there went a finer discrimination—and a greater freedom—than you were able to have in the town.

  It was at that moment that the front door of the Dower House opened. Inspector Sloan turned his head and saw a girl—a young woman, rather—standing there. She was framed by the classical lines of the Georgian doorway. She stood quite still as she regarded the three policemen. There was something a little unexpected about her appearance—almost foreign. It took Sloan a moment or two to pin down what it was—and then it came to him.

  It was her clothes.

  It was high summ
er in England and this girl was wearing dark brown. Not a floral silk pattern, not a cheerful cotton, nor even a pastel linen such as his own wife, Margaret, was wearing today. But dark brown. It was a simple, utterly plain dress, unadorned save for a solitary string of white beads.

  He was surprised to note that the whole effect was strangely cool-looking on such a hot day. There was the faintest touch of auburn in the colouring of her hair which was replicated in the brown of the dress. A purist might have said that her mouth was rather too big to be perfect but …

  Sloan wasn’t a purist.

  He was a policeman.

  On duty.

  He took a step forward.

  “Have you found my father?” she asked him directly.

  They were barely inside the Dower House when Mrs Turvey came hurrying along the hall, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “There’s a gentleman on the telephone,” she said, “asking for a Detective Inspector Sloan. Said there was no answer from the car radio or something. Sounds in a terrible rush, ’e does …”

  It wasn’t a gentleman. It was Police Superintendent Leeyes.

  “That you, Sloan? Look here, we’ve just had a message from Randall’s Bridge …”

  “The river?”

  “The river?”

  “Or the railway line, sir?”

  “What are you talking about, Sloan?”

  “This message, sir.”

  “I’m trying to tell you it’s from the church.”

  “The church?”

  “That’s what I said, man. There’s a whole lot of men working in there. They’re putting in heating or something. One of them’s just looked into the church tower and found a man.”

  “Our man?” asked Sloan, trying to keep a grasp of essentials.

  “I don’t know. You’d better get over there and find out.”

  “Dead or alive, sir?” It was as well to know …

  “Dead.” The telephone line crackled and went faint. “Definitely dead.”

  “What was that, sir?” asked Sloan. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch …”

  He recoiled as a great bellow came down the line. The interference on the telephone had cleared as suddenly as it had started.

  “Crushed to pieces,” boomed Superintendent Leeyes.

  THAT CURIOUS ENGINE, YOUR WHITE HAND.

  5

  Whatever time and distance record Detective Constable Crosby had set up on his way from Randall’s Bridge to Cleete he broke on the return trip from the Dower House at Cleete to the church at Randall’s Bridge.

  Sloan hung on to the side of his seat for dear life as Crosby cornered. Police Constable Hepple they had left behind at Cleete with Fenella Tindall and Mrs Turvey.

  Sloan spotted the church at Randall’s Bridge easily enough. It was sited on a small prominence beside the river, its tall tower standing four square to the world for all to see.

  Crosby swept the police car round the last corner and brought it to a shuddering stop behind a lorry loaded with pipes which was parked near the lych gate. Sloan tumbled out and set off through the churchyard. There was a small knot of men clustered round the church doorway. He noticed that they were dressed in working overalls and some still had tools in their hands. Two of the men were bending over a youth who was sitting on the grass of the churchyard looking more than a little green.

  “Police,” said Sloan.

  One of the men jerked his thumb. “The gaffer’s still inside. We brought Billy here out for a bit of air.”

  “It was Billy what found him,” said another.

  Sloan didn’t need telling. He’d seen that shocked, incredulous look before. When someone had seen something not very nice, and didn’t really want to take it in.

  “Didn’t believe him at first,” said an older man. “Thought he was having us on. You know what apprentices are.”

  Sloan nodded. He knew all right.

  There wasn’t a policeman alive who didn’t know what apprentices were.

  He made his way past them to the church door, Crosby at his heels. It was unlatched but nearly closed. He put his shoulder to it and the great oak door swung open. He stepped down into the church. At least it was cool enough in here.

  The first sight which met him was of apparent disorder everywhere. It needed a second glance to see that this was organised chaos—the work of the workmen. There were pipes and boards everywhere. Some of the pews were awry and there were dust sheets over the rest.

  There were two more men standing by the door which led to the foot of the church tower.

  “Police,” said Sloan again. “Detective Inspector Sloan.”

  “This way,” said one of them thickly. “Over here.”

  “There’s been a nasty accident,” said the other.

  Sloan advanced across the nave towards them, Crosby clattering along behind him like some ghastly material Doppelgänger.

  “The door won’t open above an inch or two, Inspector, but you can just see inside.” The shorter of the two men stepped back from the doorway. “You look …”

  Sloan looked.

  Crosby, who was taller, looked too, over Sloan’s shoulder—and let out a long low whistle entirely contrary to his police training in professional impassivity.

  The sight which had turned Billy, the apprentice, green was a curious one.

  The entire base of the church tower seemed to be full of a vast quantity of smashed marble. There was one great melange of broken white sculpture—here a foot—there a head—all heaped on the floor. This was what was preventing the door from opening more than an inch or two.

  There was also an arm which wasn’t made of white marble.

  It was clothed in men’s suiting and was protruding from under all the heaped stone. The skin of the hand was pale and bloodless and though the light was poor Sloan was in no doubt at all that its owner was dead.

  Like the Superintendent had said.

  Definitely.

  It was not all that easy to see anything else. There was a sort of ecclesiastical dimness about the inside of the tower.

  “The light switch is inside, I suppose,” he said.

  “It is,” said one of the men. “Not that it would be much of a help if we got to it, would it? Look.”

  Sloan’s gaze travelled upwards. An empty light socket dangled under a Victorian fluted glass shade.

  “No bulb.”

  “Poor devil,” said the shorter of the two. He had a foot rule sticking out of his jacket pocket.

  “At least,” said the other man, “he never knew what hit him. Can’t have done.” This man was older and was neatly dressed in country-style tweeds.

  Sloan cleared his throat. “Er—do either of you happen to know exactly what it was that did hit him?”

  “The Fitton Bequest,” responded both men in unison.

  “Quite so,” said Sloan.

  It wouldn’t do for the Superintendent; not an answer like that. He’d have to think of something better than that for his report.

  “We put it in here last week, didn’t we, Mr Knight?”

  “That’s right, Bert,” the elderly man nodded. “You did. Bert Booth here is the foreman, Inspector.”

  “Took twelve men to move it,” confirmed Bert, “and then we had a proper job.”

  “We went through all the necessary formalities first, Inspector,” the man called Knight hastened to assure him, “before we touched it. Got a proper faculty for moving it, advertised, and so forth. I’m glad we did now. The Archdeacon would have been down on us like a ton of bricks if …”

  Mr Knight suddenly realised that perhaps this wasn’t the happiest of similes and his voice trailed away to silence.

  Inspector Sloan turned to Constable Crosby. “Get Dr Dabbe from Berebury out here as quickly as possible—and Dyson and the photographic people.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And on your way out tell that gang by the church door that if they move so much as an inch from where they a
re now then I’ll run the lot of them in.”

  “Yes, sir.” Crosby clattered away again.

  Sloan turned back to the narrow slit which constituted their only view into the base of the tower. It was a bit limiting. All they would be able to do was what the archeologists called a pre-disturbance survey. They couldn’t get near enough to disturb anything. He took another look at the arm. There wasn’t a lot of it to see but it told him all he wanted to know.

  It was a left arm.

  It was contained in a length of men’s suiting—grey suiting—and from where Sloan was standing it was possible to see that there was a button missing from the sleeve.

  Fenella Tindall sat straight up in her chair as Police Constable Hepple came back from the telephone, her back every bit as stiff as the Principessa’s.

  In a way, the ringing of the telephone bell had come as something of a relief.

  She had tried sitting in the garden while Constable Hepple had plunged about the orchard and found she couldn’t do it. The house itself had been hardly more restful. True, there was no one in it but herself and Mrs Turvey but the impulse to go through all the rooms all over again was very strong.

  So was the desire to shout aloud for her father—to call out and to listen for an answer.

  She turned her head as Hepple came into the room. “Was that …”

  Hepple said, “The Inspector, miss. It was a message from the Inspector.”

  “Any news?” She looked at him eagerly. “Is there any news?”

  “Nothing definite, miss,” temporised the policeman. “We’ll let you know as soon as we have anything definite.”

  Fenella relaxed fractionally. “Then what …”

  “It was about your father’s clothes, miss.”

  “But I told you before.”

  “Just checking, miss, that’s all.”

  “He was wearing a grey suit, like I said.”

  “A grey suit …”

  “Not his best one,” she pointed out quickly. “Mrs Turvey says there was a patch of grease on the right trouser leg. Is that any help?”

  “Not exactly, miss.” Hepple coughed.

  It wasn’t, either.

  “Not at this stage,” he added truthfully.

  “That’s why it was going to the cleaners, you see.”