Last Respects Part 16

She sat in the window-seat now, taking her tea in thoughtful sips. She sat there so long that the cushion became less comfortable. She shifted her position slightly, almost without thinking. To her surprise this made for less comfort rather than more. Something was sticking into her. The fact took a moment or two to penetrate her consciousness. When it did she put her hand down between the cushions. It encountered something oblong and unyielding. She stood up abruptly and s.n.a.t.c.hed the cushions away. All doubt ended when she set eyes on the object.

It was Peter Hinton's slide rule and she knew it well.

13.

'Tis what we must all come to.

Some savage b.r.e.a.s.t.s cannot be soothed. That of Superintendent Leeyes came into this category.

"What I want, Sloan," he snapped, "are results."

Detective Inspector Sloan was reporting to him in the superintendent's office at Berebury. "Yes, sir, but..."

"Not theories."

"No, sir." Actually Sloan didn't have any theories either but this seemed to have escaped the superintendent's notice.

"Have you any idea at all what's going on over there?"

"Finding The Clarembald comes into it," said Sloan slowly, "though where the dead man fits in with that I really don't know."

"Don't forget that he had that copper thing..."

"Barbary head."

"In his pocket."

"Yes, sir, so he did." Sloan cleared his throat. "But there are a lot of other things we don't know."

"Who he is," trumpeted Leeyes. "You haven't got very far with that, have you, Sloan?"

"We have one lead, sir. The girl at Collerton House had a boy-friend who's not around any more. Crosby's chasing him up now just to be on the safe side."

"There's another thing we don't know besides who the body is."

"Why he was set out into the mainstream when he was," said Sloan before the superintendent could say it for him.

"Exactly," growled Leeyes.

This was one of the things that was puzzling Sloan too. "There must have been a reason," he agreed. "After all he'd been dead for quite a while and in the water too. Dr. Dabbe said so."

"And then suddenly someone..."

"The murderer," said Sloan. That was something he felt sure about.

"The murderer decides to punt him into the river."

"There'll be a reason," said Sloan confidently. "We're dealing with someone with brains."

Leeyes grunted again.

"Anyone," said Sloan feelingly, "who can kill someone without them being reported missing has got brains."

"It doesn't happen often," conceded Leeyes.

"And anyone who can find somewhere as clever as a boathouse to park a body until it's unrecognisable knows what they're doing. Do you realise, sir," he added energetically, "that if that man Horace Boiler hadn't been out there fishing that body might well have just drifted out to sea and never been seen again?"

"A perfect murder," commented Leeyes.

"Exactly, sir." Though for the life of him Sloan didn't know why murder done and not known about should be called perfect...

"The dinghy," said Leeyes. "What about the dinghy?"

"I think that went just in case the body was picked up," said Sloan.

"A touch of local colour, eh?" said Leeyes grimly.

"We've examined it," said Sloan, "and it answers to Mr. Mundill's description. I don't think there's any doubt that it's the one from his boathouse but we'll get him over in the morning to identify it properly."

"That's all very well, Sloan, but where does The Clarembald come in?"

"I don't know, sir. The things from the ship," he couldn't bring himself to use the word "artefacts" to the superintendent, "that have been coming ash.o.r.e..."

"Treasure trove," said Leeyes, never one to split hairs on precise meanings.

"Perhaps, sir. I don't know about that yet."

"These things then..." said Leeyes impatiently.

"Indicate that someone has found the East Indiaman."

"Don't forget the diver, eh, Sloan, don't forget the diver."

"No, sir, I haven't. This farmer-Alec Manton-has been hiring a local trawler. Ridgeford saw it going out at low tide."

"Did he indeed?" There was a pause while Superintendent Leeyes considered this and then he abruptly started on quite a different tack. "This height that Dr. Dabbe says he fell from..."

"I've been thinking about that, sir," said Sloan. Every case was like solving a jigsaw and some pieces of that jigsaw had straight edges. A piece of jigsaw puzzle that had a straight edge helped to define the puzzle. So it was in a murder case. He always thought of the forensic pathologist's report as so many pieces of straight edge of a jigsaw puzzle. And the pathologist had said that the man had fallen to his death. That became fact...

"Well?"

"Apart from the cliffs..."

"Which are too high."

"There isn't very much in the way of a drop round Collerton and Edsway." Inland from the cliffs the rest of the Calleshire littoral was-like Norfolk-very flat.

"He fell from somewhere," said Leeyes, who had taken Dr. Dabbe's report for gospel too.

"A dying fall," said Sloan, conscious that it had been said before.

"But where from?" asked Leeyes irritably. "Would a church tower have done?"

"It's the right sort of height," agreed Sloan, "but it's not exactly what you could call private, is it, sir? I mean, would you climb a church tower after dark with a murderer?"

"No," said Leeyes robustly. "And I wouldn't buy a secondhand car from one either."

"I'll get Crosby to check at Collerton Church anyway," said Sloan, "but what I think we're looking for is a sort of hidden drop. Remember he would have had to have been pushed from the top and then stayed at the bottom..."

"Dead or dying."

"Until whoever pushed him came down and picked up the body."

"Darkness or privacy," agreed Leeyes.

What was it that Crosby had said?

p.u.s.s.y's down the well.

It would have had to have been somewhere where murderer and victim could have gone together without comment.

Then the lonely push...

"And," said Leeyes, "then the body had to be got from wherever it fell to the boathouse. Have you gone into the logistics, Sloan?"

"The boot of a car would have done."

"And then?"

"For the last part? A wheelbarrow," said Sloan. "That would have done too. It's the easiest way to carry a body that I know. And there are several around the house."

"Not one of these plastic affairs, Sloan. You mean a good old-fashioned metal one."

"Yes, sir." When a man came automatically to put the word "good" together with the word "old-fashioned," it was time for him to retire. He coughed. "The trouble, sir, is that there is a perfectly good asphalt path to the boathouse that doesn't show any extra marks. We've looked."

Leeyes grunted. "So what you're saying is that he could have been killed anywhere and brought to Collerton."

"By land or water," said Sloan flatly. "With a barbary head in his pocket." That barbary head was a puzzle. Was it a pointer to The Clarembald or was it to point them away from someone else?

"It's what you might call wide open still, isn't it, Sloan," said Leeyes unencouragingly. "You'll have to look on it as a challenge," he added.

"I'm starting with a search warrant for Lea Farm at Marby," said Sloan flatly. "There's something funny going on there."

Landladies didn't always come up middle-aged and inquisitive. Sometimes they were young and indifferent.

"Pete?" said Ms. Cheryl Watson, shrugging her shoulders. "He was around."

"When?" asked Detective Constable Crosby.

She opened her hands expressively. "Don't ask me. He'll be back."

"When?" asked Crosby.

"When he feels like it. He'll settle up for his room all right, don't worry."

Crosby did not say that that was not what was worrying the county constabulary.

"What about his gear?" he said instead.

"Still around," she said largely. "And his mail. He'll be back for them."

"Why did he go?"

Her eyes opened wide. "He had exams, didn't he?"

"You think he chickened out?"

"A man has to be himself," said the self-appointed representative of a different way of life, "hasn't he?"

"I wouldn't know about that," said Crosby.

"Examinations are the sign of a decadent culture," p.r.o.nounced the young woman. 'Always making you prove yourself."

"A sort of initiation rite, you mean?" suggested Crosby.

"That's right," she said eagerly.

The course at the Police Training College made a man prove himself. Or leave. It was a sort of initiation rite too. A police constable was let into the mysteries of the service at the same time as he was being sorely tried by his instructors.

Ms. Watson looked Detective Constable Crosby up and down with unattractive shrewdness. "Is Pete in trouble then?"

"Not that we know about," said Crosby truthfully.

"There was something else besides examinations."

"Was there?" he murmured.