A Late Phoenix (20 page)

“Calling him after his grandfather. Everything still went to brother Harold.” Sloan put down his cup. “Get out an all stations message about Freda and Brian Waite. Anyone knowing their whereabouts …”

“Will do …”

“If they don't find Freda Waite,” Sloan said, thinking ahead, “it still doesn't account for the fact that she wasn't recorded anywhere as missing.”

“No, sir,” Crosby nodded. “Then it'll be like Mrs. Sloan said at breakfast this morning, won't it?”

“What do you mean?” growled Sloan. He wasn't having his wife's name bandied about at the police station by young detective constables.

“Everyone must have thought she was somewhere else. Like Mrs. Sloan said,” he went on awkwardly, “they didn't think she was missing because they thought they knew where she was. Only …” his voice trailed off lamely, “she wasn't.”

Take this advice when buying a bed: lie on it

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

“I just don't understand,” said a bewildered Miss Tyrell. “Are you trying to tell me that Dr. Tarde shot that girl?”

“No, miss. He didn't shoot her. Or kill Harold Waite either, come to that.” Sloan had found Miss Tyrell still at Field House, still in her official-looking white coat. He had sent Crosby out into the back streets of Berebury to see what he could find out about a woman called Freda Waite, née Cowell. Dr. William Latimer had gone out again on his afternoon round.

“Well, then, what …”

“Miss, if there were any young lady hereabouts who was having a baby, who would be most likely to know about it?”

She smiled a little. “I think I would, Inspector.”

“And who else?”

“The doctor, of course, but he's new still. It'll take a little time before …”

“Naturally. But before. When the old doctor was alive?”

“Ah, that was different.” Her brow cleared. “He'd have known …”

“Yes, miss. I think he would. It's something I should have thought about before.”

Her head came up sharply. “He wouldn't have killed that girl.”

“No.”

“He was a doctor, Inspector. He was dedicated to saving life, not wasting it.”

“Yes, miss, of course.” Sloan didn't argue: though a first-class medical training hadn't stopped those well-remembered doctors Harley Crippen, Buck Ruxton, William Palmer—Palmer, the poisoner—Lamson, Cream, Smethurst, and Petiot from doing murder in their day. It would seem the medical training had, if anything, helped. “But would he have known about the baby?”

Miss Tyrell adjusted her glasses and favored him with a thoroughly intelligent stare. “I see what you're getting at, Inspector.”

He thought she would. Why did people decry sensible women so? They were certainly a pleasure for a police officer to deal with.

“What,” said Miss Tyrell slowly, picking her words with obvious care, “you are inferring, I take it, is that if Dr. Tarde had known about the pregnancy then, he might have been able—had he been alive now—to have put a name to that unfortunate girl whom they found opposite?”

“Just so, miss.” He was in no doubt about in which sense Miss Tyrell was using the word “unfortunate.”

In the same sense as his mother would have used it.

“Then,” she said flatly, “it's lucky for someone that he's not.”

“Very lucky,” agreed Sloan at once.

Her head came up with a jerk at that. “I never believed myself that it was suicide.”

“I am beginning to feel,” said Sloan cautiously, “that I could make out a case for its not having been. There was no note, for instance.”

There was in this case, he had already noted, a distinct absence of the written word altogether. It would seem that there was someone abroad too clever to play about with forgery.

“You mean,” said Miss Tyrell, “if it wasn't suicide it was someone actually wanting him out of the way?”

“It's a possibility that we're bound to consider.”

“That would mean, Inspector”—Miss Tyrell took out a spotless white handkerchief and began to polish the lens of her glasses—“that Dr. Tarde would have known who she was.”

“Yes.”

“And that very few other people did.”

“You're very quick.”

She acknowledged this with a faint bow of her head.

“One of them being Harold Waite?”

“I'm very much afraid so.”

Miss Tyrell put away her handkerchief and replaced her glasses firmly on the center of her nose. “It may be a strange thing to say, Inspector, but it would be a great comfort to me to know that it wasn't suicide.”

“Yes, miss, I can understand that. It was in June, wasn't it?” It had been about then, too, that the plans for the redevelopment of the Lamb Lane site, which had been on the files for upwards of twenty-five years, had suddenly taken a great leap forward.

“That's right.” She sighed. “The house seemed full of death then. Mrs. Cardington—she was the doctor's old housekeeper—she had only just died.”

“What about relatives, miss?” The old doctor's connection with the case was still obscure but it was there. He was beginning to be sure about that. Sloan wanted to know all he could now about Dr. Tarde. “His wife died years ago, I believe.”

She nodded matter-of-factly. “Before the war, even. There was no family—just a second cousin of his and a niece on his wife's side—and she lost touch during the war …” Her voice trailed away as she caught sight of the expression on Sloan's face.

“Do you mind saying that again, miss, please …”

“She lost touch with the doctor during the war,” faltered Miss Tyrell. “His wife's sister's girl. Margot. She left here one night and didn't come back. The doctor never heard from her again.”

“Didn't he?” and Sloan quietly. “Didn't he indeed?”

“For my money,” Sloan informed Crosby, “she's Margot Elinor Poulton, Dr. Tarde's wife's niece.”

“She's not Freda Waite, anyway, sir,” returned Crosby briskly, slapping his notebook down on Sloan's desk. “I've just been talking to her. She's living in Park Street calling herself a widow. Under the name of Cowell.”

“Margot Poulton was last seen alive,” said Sloan meaningly, “early in April 1942.” Miss Tyrell hadn't been sure about the date, hadn't remembered the girl particularly well. Margot Poulton had only been in the habit of visiting her uncle at Field House. She didn't live there. Miss Tyrell hadn't seen her at all on her last visit of all to Dr. Tarde. “You can guess why that was, Crosby, can't you?”

“Yes, sir. Didn't want Miss Tyrell to know about the baby.”

“I'll bet that's why she came back to Berebury, though,” said Sloan.

“To have a word with the boyfriend,” suggested Crosby brightly, “and to ask him what he was going to do about it.”

“I expect,” said Sloan with heavy irony, “That she was all for a shotgun marriage.”

“And someone didn't like the idea of marrying her?”

“Or by then they liked the idea of marrying someone else better.” Sloan hesitated. “She doesn't seem to have been everyone's cup of tea.”

It had been marvelous the way in which the genteel Miss Tyrell had conveyed this information to him. A couple of nice nuances and a few unspoken sentences had told Sloan that on the whole the doctor must have been quite relieved when she had apparently taken herself off and not come back.

“So,” said Crosby intelligently, “whoever killed her guessed Uncle Henry wasn't going to be too keen on finding her. Especially as he thinks she'll have an illegitimate baby in tow.”

“She doesn't sound as if she would have added to his professional standing locally,” agreed Sloan. “I don't think he would have looked too hard for her.”

“It was like Mrs. Sloan said then,” persisted Crosby with unusual doggedness. “Everyone thought she was somewhere else.”

“London,” said Sloan. “That's where she'd come from. That's where they thought she'd gone to. They certainly didn't think for one moment that she was only across the road.”

“No.”

“That doesn't mean to say, of course,” said Sloan, developing his argument as he went along, “that if a pregnant young woman of the right age and the right vintage had happened to have been disinterred there that they wouldn't have put two and two together and made four.”

“That's what Harold Waite did, I suppose, sir.”

“Harold Waite knew her, too. Miss Tyrell said she had an idea he was something of an old flame.”

“Neat to bury her under his house then,” said Crosby.

“Very. If she's found he's the first person who is going to be asked about her.”

“And the old doctor would have put two and two together like you said, sir.”

“Bound to. If he'd been alive to do it.” Sloan coughed. “There was someone else who would have done, too. If she'd been alive.”

Crosby's head came up enquiringly.

“A Mrs. Cardington. The old doctor's housekeeper. She died of a heart attack in May.”

“Natural?”

“Natural. But I think it was trigger to everything that's happened since. It was only when Mrs. Cardington died that someone began to feel safe enough to make a move. She remembered Margot Poulton very well, you see.”

Dr. Latimer kept his visits brief that afternoon. He'd already seen the really ill patients in the morning and his head was hurting again. He was also getting distinctly irritated by the continuing kind enquiries about the bandage. He drove back to Field House therefore as quickly as he decently could.

Miss Tyrell was still there at her desk though she should normally have gone home ages ago.

She greeted him with shining eyes.

“Dr. Latimer—about Dr. Tarde—such good news. That police inspector—you know the one I mean—so nice and respectful—quite respectable too, really, when you come to think about it—he's been back again and do you know—he says he thinks Dr. Tarde didn't commit suicide after all. Isn't that a comfort?”

“Was it an accident then?” suggested Latimer, bewildered as much by Miss Tyrell's sudden talkativeness as by what she said. “Surely the question of accident was sorted out a long time ago?”

“No. Not accident. He thinks he was murdered.”

“By whom?”

Her hands fell helplessly into her lap. “There now. I quite forgot to ask him.”

Superintendent Leeyes jerked his shoulder in the general direction of the telephone on his desk. “There's a message in for you, Sloan, from Kinnisport Police. They've located Leslie Waite in
The Saucy Nancy
. They say they've taken him in tow and they're heading back to harbor now.”

“It isn't Leslie Waite, sir.”

“They say he didn't seem too put out. Not a worrier, I suppose. That's what I said, Sloan, remember. It'll be someone who could live with himself and his memories.”

“It isn't Leslie Waite, sir.”

“What do you mean, man?” barked Leeyes. “What about this Freda Cowell he married?”

“Alive and well and living in Park Street, St. Luke's.”

“What's that?” The superintendent swivelled round in his chair and glared at Sloan.

“Crosby's just been talking to her, sir. And Leslie Waite still sees her each month.”

“Maintenance?” divined Leeyes swiftly.

“I expect so, sir.”

“So that's why his father cut him out of his will. I thought there'd be a reason for that. For playing about with this Doreen woman …”

“Or someone similar.” There would always be women willing to play Leslie Waite's sort of games.

“But she doesn't know about Freda?”

“Probably not,” conceded Sloan. “I expect that's why he lied about his having come over here on Friday evening.”

“Well, Sloan …” Leeyes looked him up and down and then said balefully, “are you going to tell me what you propose to do or are you just going to do it?”

In the event Dr. William Latimer didn't get his longed-for peace and quiet that afternoon after all. He had barely had his first cup of tea when Mrs. Milligan came rushing through with the news that there had been a bad accident outside Mr. Reddley's office and would he go at once.

He did.

He could tell that something serious had happened from the way in which people were crowded round in the street—but crowded at a distance from something that was lying on the pavement. It was as if they were equally reluctant to move either nearer or farther away.

Somewhere he could hear a girl crying.

“It was the drawing office window,” she said between sobs. “He said the sash was stuck. He got up on the sill and said he'd fix it and then …” She started crying again.

Someone led her away.

Dr. Latimer took a quick look at what was lying on the pavement and saw for himself why it was everyone else was keeping their distance. It wasn't pretty. It was Mark Reddley.

On the fringe of the crowd he recognized Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby but they made no move to speak to him. In the distance he could hear the clangor of the approaching ambulance siren.

He straightened up, his own headache forgotten. He supposed the only useful thing he could do now would be to go round and see Mrs. Reddley.

The superintendent didn't seem to have moved since Sloan last spoke to him. He was still sitting at his desk overlooking the Market Square.

“I suppose Reddley saw you coming?”

“Yes, sir. I think so. From his window.”

“You weren't actually waving the warrant, I hope.”

“No, sir.” They hadn't flaunted it from the street but then they hadn't attempted to hide their purpose either.

“I think he knew we were coming for him.”