Last Respects Part 7

"An accident at sea, Sloan," boomed Superintendent Leeyes into his mouthpiece at the police station in Berebury.

Sloan cleared his throat and carried on manfully. "He was killed in a fall from a height first and..."

"Washed overboard from an old dinghy," swept on Leeyes.

"And then," continued Sloan with deliberation, "put into the water."

"The dinghy's been found over at Marby juxta Mare," said the superintendent.

"With a copper weight of sorts in his pocket," said Sloan doggedly.

"On the foresh.o.r.e at Marby," said Leeyes. "Constable Ridgeford has just rung in from Edsway."

There was a flourishing school of thought at the police station which held that the superintendent was deaf. Older hands-more perceptive, perhaps-did not subscribe to this theory. They insisted that the superintendent always heard the things that he wanted to hear all right.

"Why was it murder?" Leeyes asked Sloan suddenly.

"The fall killed him," explained Sloan, "and he certainly wouldn't have got into the water on his own afterwards. Dr. Dabbe's done some X-rays to prove it..."

Leeyes grunted. "That's something to be thankful for anyway, Sloan. The last time Dyson and Williams went anywhere near his precious X-ray machine with their cameras I thought we'd never hear the last of it."

Dyson and Williams were the police photographers and there had been a memorable occasion when the pathologist's X-ray equipment had silently ruined all the film in their cameras and about their persons; something they hadn't discovered until after they had shot it...

"The fall killed him," repeated Sloan. "I don't know how he fell-I don't know yet who was there when it happened"-his lips tightened as he thought about the young man in the mortuary-"but before I'm done I intend to find out."

"Person or persons unknown," supplied the superintendent, falling back upon an ancient formula. "That'll do for the time being anyway."

"They," continued Sloan with a fine disregard for number and gender, "put his body into the water after that."

"Hrrrrumph."

"Yes, sir," Sloan responded to the sentiment as much as to the sound. "Exactly."

"Don't say it, Sloan."

"No, sir."

"I know the dead can't walk."

"Yes, sir."

"What was that about a copper weight?" The superintendent never forgot anything he wanted to remember either.

"It was a small round lump," said Sloan. "In his pocket."

Leeyes grunted. "Clothes?"

"He didn't have a lot on, sir," replied Sloan. "Shirt and trousers, socks and underclothes..."

"Seaboots?" queried Leeyes sharply. "Was he wearing seaboots?"

"No, sir," said Sloan. It had been one of the first things he had looked for. Pincher Martin had had seaboots on. A young Christopher Dennis Sloan had been brought up on the story of Pincher Martin, and when in later life an adult Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan came across a body in the water in the way of business, the poor drowned seaman who had been Pincher Martin came to the front of his mind. Pincher Martin's seaboots hadn't saved him from drowning. "This chap didn't have any seaboots on, sir. Only what I said. Shirt, trousers, socks and underclothes."

"Traceable?" queried Leeyes, who had not been thinking about Pincher Martin.

"Easily," said Sloan.

"Ah!"

"In the first instance, that is," said Sloan.

"Oh?"

"To a well-known store that clothes half the nation."

"But after that?"

"Who's to say?" said Sloan wearily, consciously suppressing an unhappy vision of the routine work it would take to find out.

"Labels not cut out then?" concluded Leeyes briskly.

"Oh, no, sir. We were meant to think that this was a simple case of drowning-if we found the body, that is."

"Oh, we were, were we?" responded Superintendent Leeyes energetically, forgetting for a moment that it had been Dr. Dabbe who had told them it wasn't.

"This dinghy, sir..." It was Sloan's turn to do the remembering.

"Old," quoted Leeyes, "but not truly waterlogged. Ridgeford's no seaman but he did notice that much."

"Over at Marby, you said, sir..."

"Yes, Sloan." The superintendent's voice faded as he spun round in his swivel chair and consulted the map that hung on the wall. "The tide would have had to take your man round the headland-what's it called?"

"The Cat's Back."

"The Cat's Back and into the estuary of the Calle."

"That," began Sloan carefully, "would mean that he would have had to have been swept out to sea first and then brought in by the tide against the river current."

He heard the swivel chair creak as Leeyes turned back to face the telephone again. "Naturally, Sloan."

"Sir, Dr. Dabbe says that this fellow-whoever he is-hadn't been knocked about by the tide and the river current all that much." Sloan had meant to lead into the point he had to make with the delicacy of a diplomat but in the event he didn't bother. "Not anything like as much as he would have expected."

"But you said he'd been in the water quite a long while," Leeyes pounced.

"Dr. Dabbe said that, sir. Not me," responded Sloan. The superintendent had a tendency which he shared with the ancient Greeks to confuse the messenger with the source of the news. Harbingers had a notoriously bad time with him.

"What you're trying to tell me, Sloan, and I must say you've taken your time about it, is that things aren't quite what they seem."

"That's right, sir."

"There's still this empty dinghy over at Marby," said Superintendent Leeyes down the telephone to the head of his Criminal Investigation Department. "No doubt about that."

"Yes, sir." Sloan got the message. "I'll get over there as soon as I can and have a look at it."

"Doesn't add up, Sloan, does it?"

"No, sir."

"I don't like coincidences," growled Leeyes.

"No, sir," agreed Sloan. No policeman did. Sorting them out from circ.u.mstantial evidence in court could get very tricky indeed. Sloan knew-sight unseen-that the superintendent's bushy eyebrows would have come together in a formidable frown as he said that.

"Now what, Sloan?"

"I'm following up the piece of copper, sir, and Dr. Dabbe's lining someone up for me to see, too, who may be able to help with something else... a Miss Hilda Collins."

He did not add that that someone was a schoolmistress. Some of Superintendent Leeyes's responses were altogether too predictable.

Police Constable Brian Ridgeford was addressing himself to a mug of steaming hot tea. One thing Mrs. Ridgeford-good police wife that she was trying too hard to be-had learnt well. That was to put the kettle on the hob and leave it on.

He had dutifully made his report to his Headquarters at Berebury about the beached dinghy and was sitting back considering what to do next. He hadn't forgotten that before he had been diverted over to Marby juxta Mare he had been going to walk up the river bank from the Edsway to Collerton, but before that there was his report to be written. One of the tenets at the Police Training School was that-as far as records went-the telephone was no subst.i.tute for pen and paper.

"Anything come in while I was out, love?" he asked, conscientiously pulling his report book towards him.

"Hopton's rang," said Mrs. Ridgeford, sitting back and joining him in some tea. She was still at that early stage in their police married life when handing over the message was synonymous with handing over the responsibility. Her sleepless nights would come later.

Brian Ridgeford said, "What's up with Hopton's?" As a rule his wife gave him any messages that had come in almost before he'd got his foot over the threshold, so this one couldn't be too important.

"They want you down there."

Ridgeford frowned. Hopton's was always wanting him down there at the store. Every time a bunch of schoolchildren had been in Mrs. Hopton was convinced that they had stolen things. As far as the weekend sailors and fishermen were concerned-Hopton's prices being distinctly on the high side-all the robbery was on the other side of the counter. And in daylight, too.

"Profits down or something?" he said.

"Boys," said Mrs. Ridgeford succinctly.

So it was to the ship's chandler by the sh.o.r.e in Edsway that Ridgeford made his way-not too quickly-after he'd had his tea and filled in his report about the dinghy.

Mrs. Hopton was vocal. "There were two of them," she said. "And I had to deal with them myself on account of Hopton being the way he is."

"What did they do?" enquired Ridgeford patiently. Mr. Hopton spent his life lurking in the little parlour at the back of the shop. He was a little man and his wife was a large woman. No doubt he was the way he was by virtue of being locked in holy wedlock to Mrs. Hopton. It wasn't a fate that he, Brian Ridgeford, would have chosen either.

"Do?" she said, surprised. "They didn't do anything."

"Well, then..." Somebody had once tried to explain to his cla.s.s of new constables the difference between crimes of commission and the sins of omission-the latter mostly, it seemed, to do with their notebooks-but Ridgeford hadn't listened too hard.

"Unless," carried on Mrs. Hopton, "you count trying to make me buy something that wasn't theirs to sell."

"Ah." Ridgeford thought he was beginning to understand. The far end of the ship's-chandler store was devoted to the sale of second-hand equipment.

"At my time of life!" said Mrs. Hopton with every appearance of remorse. "Well, they say there's no fool like an old fool. I should have known better, shouldn't I?"

"Well..." temporised the policeman. The theory that all were responsible for their own actions was highly important in law. It was apt to be overlooked in real life.

"Smelt a rat, I should have done, shouldn't I," she sniffed, "as soon as they said where they'd found it."

"But you didn't?" suggested Ridgeford for appearance' sake.

"Not then," said Mrs. Hopton.

"When?" prompted Ridgeford.

"Afterwards," said Mrs. Hopton, challenging him to make something of that. "When they'd gone."

"What made you wonder?"

"When I began to think about it." She shifted her shoulders uneasily. "I wasn't happy."

"About what?"

"Them saying they found it up on the Cat's Back."

"The headland?"

She nodded. "Whoever heard of anyone finding a ship's bell up there?"

"It is a funny place to find anything from a ship," agreed Ridgeford, professionally interested. Common things took place most commonly-he knew that-but it was the uncommon that attracted most police attention. "A bell, did you say?" He imagined that-like policemen's helmets-ships' bells had a symbolic importance all of their own.

"It's a bell all right," said Mrs. Hopton heavily.

Police Constable Ridgeford shifted his gaze in the direction of the jumble of second-hand nautical gear at the end of the store. "Had I better have a look at it, then?"

"Wait a minute," she said. "I've got it safe in the parlour. My husband's keeping an eye on it for me."

Ridgeford was a puzzled man as she turned away.

When she came back it was with a very shabby and encrusted piece of metal and he was more puzzled still.

"It's a bell all right," he agreed after a moment or two, "but you couldn't use it, could you? Not with that crack in its side." There was evidence of some sc.r.a.ping too, from a penknife, he guessed.

"That's what I told the boys," said Mrs. Hopton. "No use to anyone, I said, it being the way it was."

"So," said Ridgeford a trifle impatiently, "what did you want me down here for then?"

"Ships' bells," she said impressively, "have the names of ships on them."

"What about it?"