Passing Strange Page 6

  “Don’t worry, Sloan,” added Dr Dabbe, deadly serious now. “A length of thin wire isn’t going to take up a lot of room.”

  6

  Cor anglais choir

  “Just a few questions, sir,” began Sloan with disarming diffidence, “if you have a moment.”

  The gentle art of questioning did not have its Izaak Walton putting pen to paper and advising from a wealth of experience on how it should be done. There were in fact very few guide books for the enquiring policeman which laid down the best way to interrogate either potential witness or actual suspect. The successful examination of the one and the cross-examination of the other were both skills that the budding police officer had to learn for himself the hard way. By trial and error. Trial and success didn’t seem to make the same mark. Trial and error were what a man learned from.

  “I won’t keep you a minute,” said Sloan persuasively.

  Edward Hebbinge nodded.

  “Perhaps, sir, if we could just get out of the way while they move the body …”

  “A very good idea,” said Hebbinge quickly.

  The two men walked away from where the Fortune Teller’s tent had been.

  It was no accident that Sloan kept the land agent by his side for their chat. The last thing he wanted at this stage was an eyeball to eyeball interview with anyone. What he wanted was information. Fast.

  “I think,” said Sloan truthfully, “it would help if I got the Priory ownership sorted out for my report.”

  The land agent gave a short humourless laugh. “I must say you’ll be a better man than Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet, Inspector, if you can do that. As I told you before, they’re having trouble enough sorting it out themselves.”

  “Trouble?” said Sloan innocently.

  Superintendent Leeyes insisted that successful questioning was a subject that couldn’t be taught. In the Superintendent’s book a man could either do it or he couldn’t. The Assistant Chief Constable, who was a man of a wider world, often said it was a good thing if what the officer had really wanted to do was to go on the stage.

  This was not a lot of help.

  The Church and the Law were the professions actors manqué entered.

  “Trouble?” he said again. “Not Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet, surely, sir …”

  The long-established legal firm of Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet of Bishop’s Yard, Calleford, were of the utmost respectability and seldom dealt with what the police called trouble. They ‘looked after’ families and their affairs, giving litigation and criminal law a wide berth. Conveyancing and probate were what they liked doing. Divorce and motoring cases were what they had to deal with as well because ‘their’ families married and drove. As a rule the nearest they got to Criminal Law was the reaping and binding of the wild oats sown by the sons of the landed gentry. An irresponsible eldest son was their greatest anxiety. Irresponsible younger sons could be encouraged to make their own way in the world out of Calleshire.

  “Let’s say they’ve got a problem, then,” conceded Hebbinge.

  “Tell me,” invited the detective-inspector. It was the memory of an earlier trial and error that made Sloan keep his notebook well out of sight in his pocket now. Be they ever so ignorant, most men chose words that were going to be written down with greater care than those that were not. And the man he wanted to talk to wasn’t ignorant at all.

  On the contrary.

  “The Brigadier and his wife had no children,” said Edward Hebbinge. “I think,” he added fairly, “you could say that that was the real trouble.”

  “This happens,” said Sloan. “It doesn’t usually make for trouble on its own.”

  “The estate is settled on the next direct heir.”

  “Even then.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “Though,” observed Sloan profoundly, “where there’s a will there’s usually a relative.”

  “Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet aren’t short of relatives.”

  “Ah.”

  “The Brigadier had a nephew. He was even called Richard Charles after the Brigadier.”

  “It helps,” said Sloan drily.

  “The estate is entailed,” repeated Hebbinge, “so it didn’t help all that much.”

  “Didn’t?” queried Sloan sharply.

  “The nephew died – was killed, that is – earlier this year.”

  “Killed?” said Sloan, instantly alert. “How?”

  “The complete facts haven’t been established,” responded Hebbinge carefully, “but it is believed that he was shot with a poisoned dart or arrow –”

  “Just a minute.” Sloan held up a hand. “That rings a bell.”

  “You may have read about it, Inspector. There was a good deal reported in the newspapers at the time.”

  “Richard Mellows,” murmured Sloan slowly, light dawning. “You’re not by any chance talking about Mellows the anthropologist, are you?”

  “Ah, you know of him, do you, Inspector?”

  Sloan nodded. There could be very few people in the country who didn’t know that Richard Mellows had been an anthropologist – an anthropologist who had been shot with a poisoned dart somewhere in South America. While only the famous newspaper whose name and funds were attached to the Mellows Expedition had published exclusive dispatches from Richard Mellows covering every inch of his journey into the interior, every single newspaper in Great Britain had printed the news of his being killed. There is no copyright in death.

  And none in speculation, either, if Sloan remembered the newspaper reports properly. On the surface Richard Mellows’s journeyings had had an old-fashioned – almost nineteenth-century – ring about them. He had been living en famille so to speak with a primitive but not unfriendly grub-eating tribe and collecting data for all the learned anthropological and sociological societies you could think of. He was assembling botanical specimens for all the botanical institutions that came to mind. He was on the look-out for inaccuracies in the maps of the region. He had been retained by at least three zoos.

  All this naturally led the gossip columnists to the inevitable conclusion that he was working for the British Secret Service – or worse.

  Worse in this case meant the CIA.

  “Richard Mellows,” said the land agent, “was the Brigadier’s nephew. There had been a quarrel, you know.” He winced. “A bad one, I’m afraid. That was why the connection wasn’t ever mentioned here in the village.”

  Detective-Inspector Sloan let his eye run over the Priory and the land in which it was set. “And all this would have been his if he’d lived?”

  “Indeed, yes.” The agent followed his gaze and said, “It’s a far cry from the middle of South America, isn’t it?”

  Sloan thought about Messrs Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet, Solicitors and Notaries Public. Those orderly men of the law liked to have a piece of stiff paper, duly signed and sealed, certifying every rite of passage from birth through vaccination and marriage to death. Hostile tribes didn’t go in for such documentary refinement.

  “Was there,” he asked carefully, “any doubt about Mellows being dead?”

  “I am told,” said Edward Hebbinge soberly, “that his body was returned to the tribe with whom he had been living by the tribe which had killed him.” He paused and added distantly “I understand that that is a custom of the country.”

  Messrs Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet predictably hadn’t liked that. Richard Mellows had, it appeared, been buried without benefit of either clergy or documentation. Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador had made due enquiries through such diplomatic channels as were open to him. Though these all stopped far short of the hinterland, they all confirmed that an Englishman had indeed been killed beyond the Upper Reaches of the river Tishra. It was not confirmation on a par with a certificate from Somerset House but in the end it had been good enough for Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet.

  “His death has been established, then,” concluded Sloan when he heard this.
He thought of the broad Almstone acres awaiting care and attention. “And after – er – him, the deluge of heirs?”

  “Not quite a deluge.” The agent permitted himself a small smile. “Only two. Richard Mellows had a daughter called Richenda.”

  “But no sons?” said Sloan quickly. Even tribes that weren’t primitive put a higher premium on sons than on daughters.

  “No sons,” said Hebbinge, “but that isn’t the stumbling-block. The inheritance isn’t specifically entailed on male heirs. In fact the other – er – contender is also female. She’s the daughter of a cousin of the Brigadier’s. The widow of a clergyman: a Mrs Edith Wylly. She is next in line, so to speak, after Richard Mellows’s daughter.”

  “There is a stumbling-block though,” said Sloan patiently. “Otherwise …”

  “Oh yes,” said the agent wryly, “there is indeed. The daughter –”

  “Miss Mellows.” Sloan did not let his interest in Miss Mellows show.

  “– Miss Mellows,” said Hebbinge, “may not – ah – be – er – Miss Mellows. That is the stumbling-block.”

  The atmosphere in the place where the Fortune Teller’s tent had been was noticeably relaxed now that the body of the late Joyce Cooper was no longer there. Norman Burton, the Show Secretary, had returned with his sketch of where all the tents and stalls had been. Ken Walls and Fred Pearson had never left. In the ordinary way – in the middle of a town, say – Detective-Inspector Sloan of the Berebury Criminal Investigation Department would have had them moved on, but somehow they fitted the rural setting and might perhaps be useful. He saw no point, either, in putting a foot wrong with the locals at the very outset of a murder case.

  Burton handed over his instant map of the camp.

  “The Fortune Teller was in between the tent with the water otter in,” said the Show Secretary, “and …”

  “Charlie Smithson was in charge of that,” volunteered Fred Pearson.

  “Noisy,” said Ken Walls.

  Sloan didn’t know if he meant Charlie Smithson or the water otter.

  “… and the Almstone Preservation Society tent,” continued Norman Burton. “That was on the other side with Miss Tompkins in charge.”

  “Toffee-nosed,” said Fred Pearson.

  Sloan was in no doubt who he was talking about this time.

  “Miss Tompkins,” said the schoolmaster sternly, “is always anxious for support for the Preservation Society, but especially now.”

  “Why now?” queried Sloan. He thought the countryside was always under threat.

  “Now that Esdaile Homes want to build here. Didn’t you know, Inspector?” Norman Burton pointed over his shoulder. “The Priory are leasing off a chunk of Home Farm.”

  “Are they?” said Sloan. That was something that Edward Hebbinge had not mentioned. He wondered why.

  “Only the field on the church side of the road,” said Fred Pearson. He wrinkled his nose. “It’s a bit wet for cows anyway. It’s always been swampy down there by the river …”

  “Peter the Great built Leningrad on a marsh,” said Burton the pedagogue.

  “… and it’s cut off from the farm,” said Pearson, who wasn’t interested in Peter the Great.

  “It’s land within the Village Envelope,” said Norman Burton with all the schoolmaster’s desire to impart accurate information. “The Parish Council has gone into it most carefully.”

  “I’m sure,” murmured Sloan. He hoped Esdaile Homes, Ltd, had, too. And that they were prepared to lay out money on good damp courses. People who built near rivers needed to look to their foundations.

  “He was here this afternoon,” said Ken Walls.

  “Who was?” said Sloan. He’d already canvassed the idea of finding out the names of everyone who had been at the Flower Show, of drafting in men from all over the county to knock on every door, to sit and make lists, to crosscheck statement against statement: but he didn’t want to do it. It went down very well with the press and the public – and very badly indeed with the policemen and women who were required to do it.

  It was easier to find out this way.

  “The Esdaile Homes man,” said Walls. “We saw him, didn’t we, Fred?”

  “Did you know him, then?” enquired Sloan. Businessmen didn’t usually like to show themselves when there was opposition to their plans and projects. They sent their Public Relations men into the field instead as a rule. To bat for them, you might say.

  “Miss Tompkins held a meeting in the school,” explained Fred Pearson. “Her and her precious Society.”

  “Mr Esdaile came to that,” said Ken Walls.

  “So did about three hundred other people,” said Burton crossly.

  “A bit of fun, that was,” remarked Ken Walls reflectively. “I enjoyed it.”

  “An indignation meeting,” said Burton severely. “That’s what it was. Neither more nor less. And not properly convened either.”

  “The fur did fly a bit,” admitted Pearson.

  “I thought it might,” said Ken Walls simply. “That’s why I went.”

  Sloan let the chat ripple round him while he studied Norman Burton’s sketch-plan. Something about it teased his mind … there was something there he should take note of somewhere … Try as he might, though, he couldn’t pin it down. Perhaps it would come if he didn’t think about it too much.

  He turned back to the police side of things.

  Detective-Constable Crosby, Acting Temporary Scene of Crime Officer, was ready and waiting for him with some neatly labelled plastic bags.

  “Find anything, Crosby?”

  “Yes, sir. A drinking straw, some binder twine, two empty cigarette packets …” Crosby turned the plastic bags over one by one.

  “No empty can?” said Sloan. One thing was certain. They weren’t going to need an Exhibits Officer on this case. Not for that lot and a length of thin wire – deodand or not.

  “Empty can, sir?” Crosby looked blank.

  “To go with the drinking straw.” Even Crosby wouldn’t have overlooked a can.

  His face cleared. “No, sir. No empty can.” He resumed his inventory. “And an old horse-shoe nail.”

  “A battle was lost for the want of one of them,” remarked Sloan absently. He’d just noticed a thick-set man who had walked self-confidently through the Priory gates and was beckoning to Norman Burton.

  “Yes, sir,” said Crosby phlegmatically.

  “Anything else unusual?” Now Norman Burton was walking across to the newcomer.

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ve got company,” announced Ken Walls as Burton turned and brought the man back with him.

  “The lad himself,” observed Fred Pearson enigmatically.

  “This is Mr Cedric Milsom of Dorter End Farm, Almstone, Inspector,” said Norman Burton punctiliously. “He’s come to find out what’s happening about his lorry.”

  Sloan acknowledged the introduction with interest. He was glad to meet any tenant of the Priory estate just now, though meeting the rightful owner would suit him even better.

  The farmer said, “The tents are due back with the hire firm tonight, Inspector. That’s why I came down.”

  “They can all go back except the one,” said Sloan.

  “You can tell them there’s one missing,” intervened Burton fussily, the schoolmaster in him coming to the fore again, “but that it’s safe enough.” He frowned. “I’ll give the driver a note for them. Yes, I think that that would be the right thing to do.”

  Sloan let him get on with that. There were always those people – usually the efficient, painstaking ones – who felt that they could contain any situation by taking the appropriate action. This was all very fine and large until one entered a No-man’s-land – a No-man’s-land like murder or severe illness – where the appropriate action was not clear and often did no good at all.

  “There’s still the marquee to strike,” Fred Pearson reminded them.

  “We’ll have to start it soon,” chimed in Ken
Walls, “if we want it down by closing time.”

  They did.

  That left Sloan alone with Crosby. “Without a crystal ball,” said the Detective-Inspector crisply, “I can’t say anything about your long-term future, Crosby, but in the short term you’re staying here while I go and do some telephoning.”

  “Richenda, did you say, Sloan?” Superintendent Leeyes was always at his most peppery while unwelcome information was being relayed to him. “What sort of a name is that to give a girl?”

  “They had their reasons, sir.”

  He grunted. “I should hope so.”

  “I expect,” Sloan hazarded a guess, “it was the nearest they could get to her father’s name of Richard.”

  “They’d need to be good reasons.”

  “It was her great-uncle’s name, too.”

  “Keeping everything in the family,” observed Leeyes.

  “Trying to.” Sloan wasn’t sure yet if they’d succeeded. It was something he would have to look into.

  “And this Richenda –” he drew out the name scornfully – “isn’t who she says she is?”

  “There is some doubt,” said Sloan cautiously.

  “Personation, eh? Haven’t had a case of personation at Berebury in years.”

  “Only if she isn’t, sir.”

  “Isn’t what?”

  “Isn’t who she says she is.”

  Leeyes drew an impatient breath. “Sloan, what has all this got to do with Joyce Cooper?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Sloan.

  “Well, then …”

  “Or,” he added sedately, “everything.”

  Leeyes began to sound quite dangerous. “Sloan …”

  “Ten to one Richenda Mellows was at the Flower Show this afternoon, sir,” Sloan said. “That’s the reason why we’re interested. Richenda Mellows and,” he added grimly, “at least five hundred other people.”

  “The victim …” began Leeyes.

  “Not an enemy in the world,” said Sloan bitterly.

  Leeyes then said something distinctly unparliamentary.

  “According to the Rector, that is,” Sloan added immediately. He sighed. It was on occasions such as these that the Superintendent became a trifle less than objective.