The Body Politic Page 6

  “What makes it worse, Inspector,” she continued, her tightly controlled speech beginning to relax a little, “is that Julian at least had got quite used to Alan coming and going.”

  “Quite so, madam,” he said. Hazel Ottershaw was not to know that Detective Inspector Sloan welcomed her use of her husband’s name as a good sign. Death, like birth, came to half a million homes a year in the United Kingdom. It was a statistic which often got forgotten, even by policemen, but reaction to the event did tend to follow a pattern and the ability of those to whom the deceased had been near and dear to refer to him or her by name was an important milestone in bereavement.

  They were too late, all the same, noted the policeman in Sloan automatically, to observe a physical manifestation—the rocking motion of profound grief—which crossed every cultural barrier the world over.

  Hazel Ottershaw visibly braced herself to look him full in the face and said starkly, “Only there isn’t going to be any more coming ever again after this going, is there?”

  “No, madam, I’m afraid not.”

  “And the children aren’t going to understand.”

  “No.” Sloan’s own responses were equally stark. It was part of his own personal credo that widows should be steered away from fools’ paradises. “I trust, madam, that you won’t have to move house or anything like that, will you?” If there was one thing in his experience that compounded the grief of the recently widowed it was moving house while still in a state of shock.

  “No,” she shook her head quickly. “That’s one great blessing, I can see that, and I’m very thankful. April Cottage is ours—I mean, mine. It was a wedding present from my father. His assistant vets always used to live here until Alan and I got married. Now, they have to find lodgings——” She turned her head sharply as an older woman came through the door. “Ah, Inspector, this is my mother.”

  Mrs. Rebble was a plump, comfortable-looking woman. She was carrying one child in her arms as she came into the room and had another clutching at her skirt. She also appeared to be accomplishing the difficult double-act required of those close to the recently bereaved of both sharing their distress and being practical too. She pointed to the half-drawn curtains. “Darling, do you think we could have just a little more light? The poor gentlemen won’t be able to see what they’re writing.”

  “Thank you,” said Sloan politely.

  Detective Constable Crosby, whose big toe was still hurting after its encounter with the table, regrettably saw fit to say under his breath, “She should have the light so she can see to tell the truth.”

  Sloan, promising himself that he would deal with Crosby later, hoped that neither Hazel Ottershaw nor her mother had heard him.

  “Stay with Mummy, darlings,” Mrs. Rebble said to the children, “while Granny brings in some tea.”

  Detective Constable Crosby almost fell over himself in being helpful with the tea-tray. Whatever strange ambition had drawn him into the police force, it wasn’t to run the risk of being a child-minder.

  “Julian has been as good as gold in the kitchen,” remarked Mrs. Rebble, returning with a large pot of tea. Crosby followed with a jug of hot water like a vice-regal train bearer. “He’s been playing with some Plasticine.”

  Sloan, who would never be able to equate goodness with Plasticine, accepted a cup of tea and came back to the matter in hand. “As I explained on the telephone, madam,” he said to Hazel Ottershaw, “we’re just checking up on your husband’s sudden death.”

  “Because he’d been abroad such a lot?” she asked.

  “In a way,” said Sloan evasively. “Can you tell me anything about his last visit home?”

  “I wasn’t expecting him,” said Hazel Ottershaw, releasing her hold on her small son. “He arrived home quite out of the blue late on the Friday night by the last train. He told me he’d only just caught that by the skin of his teeth and hadn’t had time to ring me or anything like that.”

  “He wasn’t due back?”

  She shook her head. “Not for ages.”

  “It wasn’t so long since we’d all said goodbye to him,” contributed Mrs. Rebble, proffering a bowl of sugar to the two policemen. “That was when he went back to Lasserta after his last leave. I was so surprised to see him myself in the village on the Saturday morning.”

  “The first thing I knew about Alan being back in England at all,” said Hazel Ottershaw dully, “was when I heard his latch-key in the door. It was very late and I was in bed.”

  “He’d never come home like that before? Without warning, I mean.”

  “Never.” She ran a hand over her face as if to brush away a memory. “I’ve always known when to expect him in the past. He’s either written or cabled without fail.”

  “But not this time?” said Sloan. Changes in a pattern were always interesting to a detective.

  “Not this time, Inspector.” Mrs. Hazel Ottershaw’s teacup rattled ever so slightly in its saucer. “It wasn’t ordinary leave, you see. Something had gone wrong at work, he said. Very wrong.”

  “Ah,” said Sloan encouragingly. He couldn’t think for the moment of what the Middle Eastern equivalent of “trouble at t’mill” was likely to be: but there would be one.

  “He hadn’t got the sack or anything like that,” she added swiftly.

  Alan Ottershaw’s mother-in-law said in stout tones, “Of course not, darling.”

  “But he didn’t want to tell me what the trouble was,” said Hazel Ottershaw.

  “He didn’t want to worry you,” said Mrs. Rebble.

  “All he wanted to do,” said Alan Ottershaw’s widow evenly, “was to get on to his Member of Parliament as fast as possible.”

  “I see.” Detective Inspector Sloan made a note. In his experience, people usually only wanted to get on to their Members of Parliament when they wished to complain about their alleged ill-usage at the hands of civil servants, local government officers, and other unfortunate administrators.

  “Luckily he managed to arrange to talk to Peter Corbishley after the Garden Meeting at Mellamby Place on the Saturday afternoon,” said Hazel Ottershaw. “He told me after that he felt a whole lot happier.”

  “Happier?” In Sloan’s book Members of Parliament were seldom renowned as bringers of joy.

  “He knew then what his rights were.”

  Sloan nodded at that. Knowing where one stood was always important. He said, “Do you know in what connection he was reassured, madam?”

  “Extradition back to Lasserta from the United Kingdom,” replied Hazel Ottershaw, adding bleakly, “although as it happened he needn’t have worried, need he?”

  So, thought Sloan to himself, it had been a case of being “not in England” after all. He did not say so though, but asked instead, “Was your husband at all unwell when he came home?”

  She hesitated. “The doctors kept asking me that. He was very, very tired when he got back and a bit jet-lagged, but he said his main trouble was that he couldn’t sleep in spite of being flaked out.”

  “He was all right on the Sunday morning first thing,” said Mrs. Rebble, “because he stood in for poor Mr. Rauly and got killed instead of him.”

  “Really, madam?” said Sloan politely. They’d stopped teaching the story of Damon and Phythias in schools these days, but it had featured in the curriculum when Sloan had been a lad.

  “Mr. Rauly had sprained his ankle on the Saturday evening after the Garden Meeting,” explained Hazel Ottershaw, “and so he couldn’t take part in the Battle of Lewes that was staged here on the Sunday.”

  “Ah, I see.” He now realised that distant rumblings of the reenactment of the battle had been audible in the Police Station canteen at Berebury. They had emanated from Inspector Harpe of the Traffic Division. Inspector Harpe—known as Happy Harry because he had never been known to smile—had had a great deal to say on the subjects of medieval conflicts, narrow country lanes, and modern motorists.

  “Alan happened to be there on the spot at Me
llamby Place on the Sunday morning,” said Hazel Ottershaw, “with me——”

  “Hazel was a beautiful Queen Eleanor,” put in Hazel’s mother. “She looked lovely in a kirtle.”

  “—and without a role,” said Hazel, “because, of course, nobody knew he was going to be back here in Mellamby at the time of the reenactment.”

  “Of course,” murmured Sloan.

  “Green has always suited Hazel,” said Mrs. Rebble fondly, “and those old-fashioned head-dresses are very stylish.”

  “So,” said Hazel Ottershaw rather desperately, “Alan played the part which Mr. Rauly had been going to take.”

  “And he wasn’t ill on the Sunday morning, I can assure you,” said Mrs. Rebble warmly. “He fought like a Trojan all morning. I saw him myself. I shall never forget the great fight he had with the King—that was Adrian Dungey really. And Adrian was good, too. He’s one of my husband’s junior partners, you know. Their fight was marvellous to watch.”

  Detective Constable Crosby brightened visibly at the mention of fighting, his wandering attention engaged at last. “Who was he being?”

  “William de Wilton,” said Mrs. Rebble, the light of battle clearly still in her eye. “He had to be killed before luncheon, you know.”

  This last was too much for Hazel Ottershaw.

  Her self-control snapped suddenly. She burst into tears and fled from the room.

  “You want me to examine what, Inspector?” asked Dr. Dabbe. The consultant pathologist was sitting at his desk in his office attached to the mortuary at Berebury District General Hospital.

  “Some human ashes, Doctor,” said Sloan. He and young Detective Constable Crosby were sitting opposite the pathologist, who seemed to be in one of his merrier moods.

  “That’s what I thought you said,” replied Dr. Dabbe. “Well, if it’s those pesky archaeologists excavating outside the old Roman wall down by the river again, I should tell them to——”

  “It isn’t, Doctor.”

  “They’re always coming up with cinerary urns full of ashes.”

  “Are they?” Detective Inspector Sloan seized on this as a beginning. “And what exactly can you tell from them, Doctor?”

  “That there’s been a cremation burial,” said the pathologist jovially.

  “And anything else?”

  Dr. Dabbe hitched a shoulder. “Precious little.”

  “Pity, that.”

  “Not nothing at all, of course. I’m not saying that, Sloan. There’s always something to be got even from, as the poet put it so well ‘A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest.’”

  “Good.” It would be going against the grain for the doctor, anyway, to admit defeat: Sloan knew that. Sooner or later professional pride would rear its ugly head and an opinion would be offered.

  “Well, if there’s a fragment of femur shaft you can sometimes have a view of the sex of the deceased.” He grinned. “Although, unless it’s in the region of the linea aspera, I must say it’s pretty nearly as difficult as doing day-old chicks.”

  Sloan said austerely, “The sex does not present any difficulty.”

  “And,” continued the doctor, “if there are clear remains of two bones of which homo sapiens has only one—the sacrum of the Atlas vertebra, for instance—then the presence in the ashes of at least two individuals will have been demonstrated.” He paused and added gravely, “I think, Sloan, even a jury would agree with that—if you’re going in for juries, that is.”

  “I’m sure they would, Doctor,” responded Sloan with matching solemnity, although you never knew with juries. “Actually, in this case——”

  “Stands to reason,” contributed Detective Constable Crosby. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said the pathologist hastily. “The same applies if they weigh more than—say—nine hundred grammes. Of course, the archaeologists can also deduce a good deal from what was buried with the body.”

  “So, I hope,” said Sloan piously, “can detectives.”

  “And grave goods,” continued Dr. Dabbe, “often make it possible to distinguish between the centuries.”

  “I think you might say,” murmured Sloan, “that, in a manner of speaking, it is the grave goods which are our problem.”

  The pathologist leaned forward. “Tell me, Sloan, do they need to know if it was the noblest Roman of them all, then?”

  “Not exactly, Doctor.”

  Dr. Dabbe cocked his head alertly. “Say on, Inspector. This sounds interesting.”

  “We were hoping,” said Sloan, “that something more than—er—just the fact of cremation might perhaps be determinable.”

  “Teeth can tell you a lot,” offered Dabbe, “if you’re lucky.”

  “It’s not the teeth we’re interested in,” said Sloan. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “The provenance can be helpful,” said Dr. Dabbe briskly. “Archaeology and forensic medicine have a lot in common, you know.”

  Sloan cleared his throat. “Not in this case, Doctor. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “The urn and strata can often yield valuable information, too.”

  “They aren’t really relevant——”

  “And,” said the doctor, warming to his theme, “you can sometimes calculate the length of time that they have been buried by——”

  “These haven’t been buried, Doctor,” said Sloan gently.

  “Yet,” added Detective Constable Crosby, who had had the full history of the ashes explained to him in the car on the way from the Police Station to Mrs. Ottershaw’s house at Mellamby.

  The pathologist began to look very attentive. “So, Sloan, if I were to tell you that sometimes the charcoal fragments can be a source of radio-carbon dating, you wouldn’t be too excited?”

  “No, Doctor.”

  “But if I were to tell you that there were some poisons, especially the heavy metals—thallium, for instance—which did survive the cremation process, you would be interested?”

  “Very.”

  “Intriguing.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Detective Inspector Sloan launched into an explanation of the metal pellet found in the ashes that the crematorium had handed to Tod Morton, and which the young undertaker had accidentally spilt.

  “It’s not made of the alloy Vitallium, then,” said the doctor. “The orthopods use that a lot but it’s non-magnetic.”

  “No, not that.”

  “And it’s not from a pace-maker.”

  “Oh?” Sloan looked up.

  “They explode in the cremator,” said Dr. Dabbe matter-of-factly, “if you leave ’em in. So you don’t.”

  “The metallurgists,” said Sloan, “report that the pellet found in Alan Ottershaw’s ashes is modern, made of queremitte, and started life hollow—don’t ask me how they know.”

  “They do it with mirrors,” said Dabbe drily.

  “It’s a little misshapen now but they think it could have contained something.”

  “Go on, Sloan.” The attention of the pathologist was fully engaged now. “I’m all ears.”

  “The ballistics people can’t say whether it’s been fired from a weapon but don’t ask me how they know that either.”

  “And you, Sloan—stop me if I’m wrong—want me to say if it—or what might have been in it—could have been or contributed towards the cause of death? Right?”

  “Right,” said Sloan gratefully.

  “And you want me to perform this feat from the ashes?”

  “And the medical history.”

  Detective Constable Crosby leaned forward and contributed his mite. “It’s not a lot, is it, doctor?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said the pathologist equably. “There might have been less.”

  Crosby looked distinctly doubtful.

  “Most men leave something behind them when they go,” said the doctor.

  Sloan said he was sure he hoped so, although to live in the minds of those they left behind was the most that some could manage
.

  “Even,” said Dr. Dabbe, “if it’s only what the poet called ‘a richer earth.’ Do you know your Rupert Brooke, gentlemen? We might only have had back, as he put it so well, the thoughts by England given.”

  “Can’t have much less than that, can you?” agreed Crosby.

  “Instead of a whole urnful of ashes,” finished Dabbe.

  “What we need to know, Doctor——” began Sloan, handing over a plastic exhibit bag.

  “Among other things,” interjected Detective Constable Crosby unnecessarily.

  “—is whether a man would have felt something of the size of this little pellet going through his skin.

  The pathologist frowned at the piece of metal. “It depends on what he was doing at the time and where it hit him.”

  “He might, he just might,” advanced Sloan with caution, “have been taking part in a mock fight.”

  “Then,” said the doctor immediately, “he may never have felt a thing.”

  Detective Inspector Sloan explained about the re-enactment.

  “The Battle of Lewes?” echoed Dr. Dabbe. “That was good old Simon de Montfort and that tiresome King Henry III with the ptosis, wasn’t it?”

  “Ptosis, Doctor?”

  “King Henry III had a droopy eyelid, Sloan.” The doctor grimaced. “He was a real menace. In The Divine Comedy, Dante put him in the Third Circle of Hell for negligence, and quite right, too.”

  It was a new view of history to Sloan.

  “Pity de Montfort didn’t kill him, then and there,” said the doctor, “except that I suppose we wouldn’t have had the Westminster Abbey we have now and that would have been a pity, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” said Sloan, adding manfully, “About these ashes …”

  “Send them round, Sloan, send them round.” The pathologist rubbed his hands. “I haven’t had anything more interesting than an afternoon death for days now.”

  The policeman jerked his head interrogatively. Sloan had come across a lot of deaths in his time, but afternoon ones were new to him and he said so now to the pathologist.