Past Tense Read online

  ‘Now, Jan, tell me about last night. Everything, mind you,’ said her friend, Dawn. ‘I’m all ears. What’s this Joe Short really like?’

  Janet screwed up her face. ‘Difficult to say.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You can’t have spent an evening with any man without getting to know something about him. That wouldn’t be natural, not knowing you.’

  ‘He didn’t give much away, really,’ Janet protested.

  ‘Tall or short? Fat or thin?’ Fatness was forever at the forefront of Dawn’s mind. She always asked if the milk for her coffee was semi-skimmed.

  ‘Oh, quite tall. What you might call well built rather than fat – oh, and sunburnt,’ replied Janet. ‘Very pleasant, though, I must say. That’s all, Dawn, honestly.’

  It wasn’t anything like enough for Dawn, who carried on with her interrogation. ‘Married? If not, why not?’

  ‘I don’t know whether he is or not. He didn’t mention a wife or say anything at all about having any attachments…oh, except that conditions in the wilds of upcountry Lasserta were no place for anyone’s wife and family but he hoped not to be staying there for ever.’

  ‘What’s his job?’ Dawn’s husband was something unspecified in insurance.

  ‘He’s an engineer with Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons. They do something important with querremitte ore – whatever that might be – after it’s been mined.’

  ‘Bully for them.’

  ‘Sounds to me more like profits for them,’ said Janet on whom some at least of the essentials of her own husband’s work had rubbed off.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘About our age,’ said Janet. ‘Well, under thirty, anyway,’ she added delicately, since she knew Dawn was approaching that highly time-sensitive watershed. ‘About twenty-eight, I should say, now that I’ve seen him properly. What I can’t understand is that while Joe seemed to know all about us – Bill’s family, that is – we didn’t know anything about him. I’ve certainly never been told anything much at all about the history of the Shorts.’

  ‘Not even that this particular one existed,’ remarked Dawn pertinently.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Bill’s never talked about that side of the family at all. I’m not even sure that he knew a lot about it himself, although now I come to think about it I remember there were some hints about there being a black sheep in the past.’

  ‘One is always at the mercy of the older generation for that sort of information,’ said Dawn largely. ‘I mean, they only tell you what they want you to know, don’t they? Parents are the same all over.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘Me, I got an aunt to spill the beans about my grandfather. Drink,’ she said lugubriously.

  Janet, who heard about Dawn’s grandfather’s overfondness for alcohol every time her friend was offered a glass of wine, reverted to her husband’s family. ‘That was why I was so surprised, remember, when we got that call out of the blue from the nursing home.’

  ‘Perhaps the Wakefields didn’t want to tell you about someone in the family being born on the wrong side of the blanket,’ suggested Dawn. ‘Don’t they call it the bar sinister or something?’

  Janet Wakefield hesitated before she spoke. ‘I know there was some big trouble a long time ago about something called the Kemberland Trust…But what exactly it was all about I just don’t know. Money, anyway.’

  ‘Trusts always mean money,’ declared the worldly-wise Dawn. ‘And money means trouble.’

  ‘It did,’ said Janet slowly, taking a long sip of her coffee before she spoke again. ‘Not that I know any of the details except that I was told that there was a great row about it…lawyers and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Families,’ exclaimed Dawn. ‘They’re always the same. So is money,’ she added more thoughtfully.

  ‘But on the other hand I was told that Bill’s parents’ share of the money from that trust made a big difference to Bill’s mother, Eleanor, that is. Put Bill through school and that sort of thing. Gave him a good start in life, all right.’

  ‘And therefore made a difference to you and Bill, too,’ concluded Dawn ineluctably, looking round the nicely appointed kitchen at The Old Post Office.

  ‘Well, yes, in a way,’ admitted Janet honestly. Her home was her pride and joy, the furniture carefully chosen and much polished, the soft furnishings colour-coordinated in a way advocated by the best magazines. ‘I must say it gave Bill a good start in life, his having had a good education. It put him through university and that sort of thing.’

  The lacuna in the conversation which followed was due to the desire of both women to not mention that quite a lot of Bill and Janet’s present income was presently being spent by the couple on infertility treatment. That the trust money would give any child of Bill and Jan’s marriage a good start, too, should one come along, was not mentioned by either of them. So far, though, no baby had appeared and the fact, appreciated but unspoken, hung between both of them like a cloud.

  ‘Joe Short was going to look up some old boy near Kinnisport who’d been at the funeral and told him he’d known his grandmother really well a long time ago,’ volunteered Janet, breaking the silence and adding lightly, ‘just in case he was his grandfather.’

  ‘That would be a real turn-up for the books,’ said Dawn, who had never placed a bet in her life.

  ‘Wishful thinking, if you ask me,’ said Janet robustly. ‘I think the poor fellow – Joe, I mean – is a bit short of relations these days and wouldn’t mind a few more seeing as he’s lost both his parents, too.’

  ‘Well, he’s got you two now, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Janet slowly. ‘Perhaps I ought to ask him round. I’ll have to think about it. More coffee?’

  ‘Please.’ Dawn pushed her mug forward and then cocked her head to one side, listening hard. ‘Isn’t that your phone I can hear ringing somewhere?’

  Janet slid off her chair and went into another room. When she came back she was a different woman, exuding excitement and pleasure, her eyes glowing. ‘Dawn, you’ll never guess what’s happened! That was Bill,’ she announced excitedly, ‘ringing from London.’

  ‘London? But I thought he was in Brazil…’

  ‘Head Office,’ she said impressively. ‘He was called back there yesterday all in a hurry. His flight landed during the late morning our time…’

  ‘When you were over at the funeral, of course.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s what I told him. He said he’d tried to ring me later as well but it was too late to come home after he’d seen the boss man at work and he was too tired after the flight to be safe to drive anyway.’

  ‘Something wrong?’ enquired Dawn curiously. In her own husband’s world the words ‘Head Office’ usually spelt trouble.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Janet, smiling broadly. ‘He said it was good news but he wasn’t going to tell me what it was until he got down here. I explained that I was out last night too.’

  ‘At the Bellingham with Joe Short,’ supplied Dawn. ‘So what did you tell him?’

  Her lips curled mischievously. ‘That I was at a hotel with another man. All evening.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t come straight down with a horsewhip.’

  ‘But,’ went on Janet serenely, ‘I assured him he hadn’t anything to worry about.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dawn seriously. ‘Now what about that second cup of coffee?’

  Janet moved towards the stove and then turned. ‘Of course, if Bill is back at home we can ask Joe Short round, can’t we? After all, he is a sort of relative.’

  The two police photographers, Williams and Dyson, had reached Billing Bridge now and were busy setting up their equipment on the riverbank. While the pathologist was taking in as much as he could about the body from what could be determined at a suitable distance, Detective Inspector Sloan raised his head and looked at his surroundings properly for the first time.

  This was an area of the Calleshire countryside that t
he watercolourists greatly favoured – something about the rows of willows by the water always attracted painters – and it was one that the nature conservationists were wont to wax lyrical about. If the noises nearby were anything to go by, it suited the bird life, too. The thought stirred Sloan into action.

  ‘Crosby, take statements from those two fishermen, and then get onto the local twitchers and find out if any of them saw anything like a body coming downstream at any stage before it got here. I understand some of them get up quite early.’

  ‘Don’t they call it the “dawn chorus” or something?’ said the constable naively. Getting up in the morning was something he had always found difficult.

  ‘Very probably. And find out who was on duty last night in the bridge area of Berebury. They might have seen something.’ Personally, he doubted it. A constable on the beat on foot saw a lot, two policemen in a car patrolling a wide sweep of the town after dark usually saw very little. ‘You might check up on any houses by the riverside, too.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Crosby, glad to get away from the body lying on the riverbank.

  ‘And when Williams and Dyson have taken as many pictures as they need – get them to take as pretty a one as you can for identification purposes – you can let Dr Dabbe get started on his examination while I—’ He was interrupted by a ring on his earphone. It was Superintendent Leeyes at his desk in Berebury Police Station.

  ‘That you, Sloan? We’ve just had a missing person reported. Might be a help.’

  ‘Missing how long?’ asked Sloan cautiously. The body on the riverbank hadn’t been in the water more than a few hours – even he could see that.

  ‘Sounds like just since last night.’

  ‘That figures, sir.’ He reached for his notebook.

  ‘Girl of twenty-four, a nurse at Berebury Hospital, didn’t turn up for work this morning when she was meant to be on duty.’ Leeyes grunted. ‘Apparently someone from the hospital went round to her house and tried to knock her up. She didn’t answer the door but the lights are still on and the curtains are drawn. Name of Lucy Lansdown. No description available yet.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan dutifully conveyed this information to Dr Dabbe.

  ‘Any note?’ asked the pathologist.

  ‘None that’s been found so far, Doctor.’

  ‘Tell them to have a good look when you do get into the house,’ said Dr Dabbe. ‘A suicide note can help. And if she’s been reading Goethe, it might explain her going in the river.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Crosby, not yet out of earshot.

  ‘A German poet who said “Know myself? If I knew myself I’d run away.” Girls get funny ideas sometimes, you know.’ The pathologist waved a hand. ‘Not that I’m jumping to any foregone conclusions, Sloan. You know me too well for that.’

  ‘I do, Doctor.’ Getting a really firm opinion out of the pathologist until after the post-mortem was always difficult.

  ‘No handbag round her shoulder, I see,’ said Dr Dabbe. ‘Handbags are as important to women of this age, you know, as they were to Lady Bracknell.’

  ‘I know that and we’ll be examining the house of the missing woman as soon as we can, Doctor, for that or a note. And we’ll be looking at the bridge area in Berebury and any other spots where she might have gone into the river, too.’

  ‘Sometimes they take their handbags with them when they jump…’ The pathologist peered at the body’s fingertips and changed his tone suddenly. ‘That is, if they do jump, Sloan. It rather looks as if this woman tried to grab something as she went into the water. These hands have been scratched by something. I’ll need a closer look later.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan cast an eye in the direction of the hands of the body on the riverbank. Giving the deceased a name somehow made the death more poignant. A pretty girl, he thought. ‘She might have been called Lucy Lansdown. That’s the name of the only girl notified as missing in our manor last night.’

  The pathologist was not interested in names. ‘Superficial grazes on the right forearm, too,’ Dr Dabbe was already dictating to Burns, his taciturn assistant. ‘I’ll get you some samples of the grit in the abrasions as soon as I can.’

  Sloan made a mental note to get some samples of the grit from the bridge in Berebury, too.

  Dr Dabbe peered at the supine figure. ‘I can’t see from here if there are any bruises round the neck or anywhere else, but I’ll be examining the subject more carefully later.’ Then he raised his head and called across to the fishermen. ‘There’s a weir upstream from here, isn’t there?’

  ‘At Lower Malcombe,’ answered one of them.

  The pathologist nodded. ‘She might have got bumped about going over that – that’s if she went in higher up. I can’t tell you any more yet, Sloan. Not until I’ve had a better look all round back at the mortuary.’

  Chapter Seven

  Simon Puckle depressed a switch on his office desk and asked if Miss Fennel would come in, please. It was a measure of the length of time that Florence Fennel had been with the firm of Puckle, Puckle & Nunnery that Simon Puckle, now a partner, still always addressed her as Miss Fennel. Although he wasn’t frightened of her any more – as he had been when he was a small boy playing under his grandfather’s big partner’s desk – he hadn’t yet ventured to call her Flo as everyone else in the firm did, even though that same big desk was the one he was sitting at himself now.

  ‘Yes, Mr Puckle?’ She came in promptly, notebook at the ready. Florence Fennel had managed the matter of addressing her employer rather better, moving seamlessly between calling him ‘Simon’, ‘Master Simon’, ‘Mister Simon’ and – now that he was a full partner – to ‘Mr Puckle’.

  ‘In the matter of the executry of Josephine Eleanor Short,’ Simon began, ‘we shall first need to establish that there are no other claims on the estate…’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll draft the usual advertisement for The Berebury Gazette asking for anyone who thinks they have one to let us know by the end of…say…next month.’

  ‘That will do nicely. And then could you please look into confirming that the residuary legatee…let me see, now,’ he consulted his notes, ‘this young man Joseph Arden Short, is who he says he is.’

  ‘Establish his credentials…’ she said, nodding.

  ‘Exactly. I’ve seen his passport but we’ll need the marriage certificate of his parents. I’ve got a note of the names of his former employers and his present employers out in Lasserta. Perhaps you would check with them, too?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Puckle.’

  ‘But there is also the matter of the deaths of his parents. This will need proper confirmation, as well.’ Simon Puckle went back to his notes. ‘Ah, yes, I’ve got their names here – George Peter Arden Short and Helena Mary Short. They died in an aeroplane accident in Lasserta two or three years or so ago.’

  ‘The British consul should have a casualty list,’ said Flo Fennel. ‘I’ll email him.’

  The solicitor frowned. ‘I rather think it’s an embassy there, not just a consulate. There’s a lot of valuable querremitte mines out in Lasserta and our supply line needs an eye kept on it.’ He smiled and said neatly, ‘A case of the flag following trade, you might say.’

  ‘I don’t know what querremitte is but I’m glad to hear somebody is looking after our interests,’ said Miss Fennel, who did not have a high opinion of government administrators of any sort.

  ‘A hard metal of great industrial value, I think,’ murmured Simon, privately resolving to look it up to make sure and then speedily returning to the matter in hand. ‘I can give you the approximate date of the air crash anyway because the testator made a new will immediately afterwards.’

  ‘Very commendable,’ Miss Fennel nodded approvingly. ‘Great presence of mind in difficult circumstances. So many people leave it too long.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded. ‘There can be no doubt about Miss Short’s mental capacity at the time, which is a help. There would certainly be no questi
on of a successful challenge on those grounds.’

  ‘Is there any likelihood of a challenge on any grounds at all?’ enquired Miss Fennel with detached professional interest, her pencil hovering over her notebook.

  Simon Puckle paused before he spoke. ‘I hope not but I understand that some years ago there was…er…considerable family dissension over an inheritance – a very considerable inheritance – from a long-standing family trust.’ He squinted down at his notes again. ‘The Kemberland Trust, I understand it was called. I think it might be as well for us to be briefed about that as the legatee may have a legitimate interest in it now.’

  ‘Just in case,’ agreed Miss Fennel composedly. ‘I’d better send for a copy of his birth certificate, too, since I take it he didn’t bring it with him.’

  ‘No, he didn’t, so please follow that up, too.’ Simon handed over his copy of Joe Short’s passport. ‘The date of birth is here. And you might let the Berebury Nursing Home know that I’ve given him permission to collect his grandmother’s things from her room there.’

  Miss Fennel nodded. ‘They’ll be wanting the room cleared as soon as possible.’

  ‘And redecorated, I expect,’ said Simon Puckle, a veteran of many nursing home visits. ‘I gathered from Mrs Janet Wakefield – she’s a connection of the family on the distaff side – that there wasn’t a great deal there…’ He paused and raised his eyebrows. ‘I quite forgot that there isn’t another side.’

  ‘No. I’ve made a note that the father of Miss Short’s child is unknown,’ said the secretary.

  ‘Undisclosed,’ Simon Puckle corrected her mildly.

  ‘Of course, Mr Puckle.’ She paused, her pencil hovering over her notebook. ‘Failing this Joe Short or his heirs-at-law, who takes? The Crown?’

  ‘A distant cousin, William Wakefield of Staple St James.’

  ‘Who is presumably therefore also a member of the family which had some connection with the trouble over the Kemberland Trust?’ said Flo Fennel intelligently. ‘Since, as you say, there isn’t another side.’