Little Knell (3 page)

‘And Boller was innocence personified when we interviewed him. Couldn't have been more virtuous.'

‘Naturally,' murmured Sloan. ‘It's not as if he could very well be anything else if he was caught in the act.'

‘Does a good job, does our revenue cutter,' said Jenkins with satisfaction. ‘Smugglers don't like it at all.'

‘And Boller?'

‘Don't worry, Inspector. We kept a bit of an eye on him afterwards. He parked the lobsters he had caught…'

‘The real ones?'

‘The decapod crustaceans themselves,' Jenkins assured him solemnly. ‘He put them in a tank of water and then he took a basket of bits of fish over to that animal rescue place behind Edsway. You know where I mean – the one those two women run.'

‘Alison and Jennifer Kirk.' What with their fundraising and their good works all Calleshire knew about the animal sanctuary at Edsway. The two sisters took in the stray dogs and cats that were brought into the police station, too.

‘The spare fish is for the cats there. One of my men says Boller always does that whenever he's got anything unsaleable in his catch.'

‘And there was I,' said Detective Inspector Sloan sourly, ‘thinking that Horace Boller was the exception that proves the rule about there being some good in every man.'

But the Customs and Excise officer was following quite a different train of thought.

‘Our picking up this consignment will make a big hole in some dealer's distribution system,' he forecast. ‘I don't know how many weeks' supply it constituted for your patch, Inspector Sloan, but I dare say you're going to feel the shortage over at Berebury quite soon. That can be quite tricky.'

‘Yes,' said Sloan, bleakly.

‘Anyway,' Jenkins finished breezily before he rang off, ‘now we've let you know all about it.'

The civilities had been duly observed.

*   *   *

It wasn't the diplomatic niceties of inter-regulatory authority communication which were troubling Superintendent Leeyes. It was a matter of protocol. He barely listened to Sloan's report about Horace Boller before unburdening himself about another, more pressing, problem.

‘It's the coroner,' Leeyes rasped.

‘The coroner, sir?' said Sloan.

‘Making work.'

‘Really, sir?' Sloan didn't know what to think about this. The trouble was that the superintendent – an absolutist if ever there was one – only ever saw difficulties from his own point of view, which made even a well-educated guess impossible.

‘The man can't have enough to do,' grumbled Leeyes. ‘That's his trouble.'

Detective Inspector Sloan contented himself with leaning forward attentively. There was absolutely nothing in his expression to indicate that he was taking this last assertion with the proverbial pinch of salt. He did not himself suppose for one moment that Her Majesty's Coroner for East Calleshire, Mr Granville Locombe-Stableford, had nothing better to do than upset the police superintendent, whatever that worthy might think. He did know, though, that the coroner and Superintendent Leeyes were sparring partners of old. And he knew, too, that in the way of ancient enemies, the two of them picked a quarrel whenever they could find a bone even half worth the contention.

All Sloan said aloud though was, ‘I'm not aware, sir, of there having been any reportable deaths in the division today…'

‘There haven't,' snapped Leeyes.

‘But…'

‘Don't you understand, Sloan? That's just what I'm telling you. The man hasn't got better things to do and all this does is prove it.'

‘This?' Sloan picked on the word, feeling as if he was grasping at a straw in the verbal – and proverbial – wind. ‘What…'

But Leeyes had already taken off at a tangent. ‘Poking his nose into matters that have nothing whatsoever to do with him; that's what he's doing.'

‘You mean, sir,' advanced Sloan cautiously, trying again, ‘that there's been a fatality in East Calleshire but that it's outside Mr Locombe-Stableford's jurisdiction?' This at least, decided Sloan, would make sense. A deep preoccupation with the territorial imperative was one of the many characteristics which the superintendent and the coroner had in common.

‘Well, no,' hedged Leeyes. ‘Not exactly.'

‘Or outside ours?' suggested Sloan even more cautiously. The superintendent knew to an inch where his own writ ran and defended all his boundaries with a vigour that some of his staff thought might well have been better devoted to more important police matters.

‘No,' admitted Leeyes grudgingly. ‘This body's on our patch all right. No doubt about that.'

‘And on the coroner's, too?' asked Sloan, puzzled. He ran his mind's eye down the list that reposed on his desk, new every morning, of missing persons in Calleshire. As he remembered it, the names comprised those of a confused elderly gentleman who had gone absent from an old people's home in Kinnisport – and without his false teeth, too, which his carers considered significant; a young woman who hadn't been seen since a tiff with her boyfriend – the boyfriend had been interviewed and would be interviewed again if she didn't turn up soon; and a now-not-so-young woman who hadn't been observed by the constabulary on her usual beat on the streets of Luston for the last six nights.

‘That's the trouble,' said Leeyes.

‘I don't quite follow, sir.'

‘The coroner says,' the superintendent mimicked the carefully modulated tones of that august official, ‘that acting on information received…'

‘What!' Sloan exclaimed. ‘Sorry, sir, but…'

‘I thought you wouldn't like that, Sloan,' observed the superintendent with a certain melancholy satisfaction.

He didn't. That phrase, ‘acting on information received', was one of the police's best lines; not usually one of the coroner's.

‘Mr Locombe-Stableford says,' went on the superintendent, ‘he's been informed that a body has been moved within his jurisdiction in East Calleshire, but without his knowledge or consent.'

‘And the name of the deceased?' asked Detective Inspector Sloan, getting out his notebook. As far as he was concerned, any of the three souls on this morning's list of local missing could have turned up anywhere in Calleshire as dead bodies rather than as living persons.

Or none of them.

‘Nobody knows the name for certain,' said the superintendent enigmatically.

‘An unidentified body…' began Sloan.

‘But I am told,' continued Leeyes, ‘that ever since anyone can remember he has been known as Rodoheptah.'

‘Would you happen to know how that was spelt, sir?' Sloan metaphorically licked the tip of his pencil and waited.

‘No,' said Leeyes.

‘Is it known, then, where the deceased was removed from, sir?'

Leeyes squinted down at a piece of paper on his desk. ‘Whimbrel House, Edgewood Hill, Staple St James.'

‘Colonel Caversham's?' Sloan looked up, surprised. ‘But it's weeks and weeks since he died. Quite a famous old boy in his time…'

‘Not as long ago as this body,' said Leeyes grimly. ‘It's an Egyptian mummy.'

‘But…'

‘But our Mr Granville Locombe-Stableford insists that as far as he is concerned a mummy is nevertheless still a body.'

‘Within the meaning of the Act, I suppose,' supplemented Detective Inspector Sloan, not sure exactly where this got them. He, himself, was still trying to concentrate all his working hours on the sudden and worrying upsurge in drug dealing in rural Calleshire. Knowing that the stuff was coming in by sea hadn't really got them much further.

‘Precisely,' agreed Leeyes eagerly. ‘That is until the remains have been duly certified by a registered medical practitioner as being only of archaeological interest.' Leeyes completed the coroner's grounds for jurisdiction in a manner that left no room for doubt about his opinion of them.

With an effort, Sloan wrenched his mind off the drug scene. ‘So…'

‘So, Sloan, as far as the coroner is concerned, technically, an offence was committed when the body was moved from where it last was.'

‘I see.' Sloan cast about in the back of his mind for the exact nature of this offence. If anyone was going to be charged with it, he, Sloan, would first have to find out under which particular ancient statute that would be; and that would certainly have to be done before he even got as far as cautioning anyone. He had an uneasy feeling that the office of coroner went back to William the Conqueror, at least. ‘Do we know who committed this alleged offence, sir?'

‘Wetherspoon and Wetherspoon.'

‘The removal people?'

‘Them,' said Leeyes. ‘Or, more precisely, Sidney Wetherspoon himself and one Wayne Goddard.'

‘Wayne Goddard?' Sloan frowned. ‘That name rings a bell. Sid Wetherspoon, I've known since I was a lad.' Detective Inspector Christopher Dennis Sloan was Calleshire born and bred and thus knew his patch better than most. ‘I wouldn't have thought he'd do the wrong thing. Not Sid.'

The superintendent picked up the message sheet and continued, quoting from the coroner's statement, ‘… “in that they did move or cause to be moved a body without either first obtaining my written permission or acting on the duly authorized instructions of my officer”.'

‘So,' concluded Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘he's not blaming PC Stuart, then?' Police Constable Douglas Stuart had acted as the coroner's officer, his right-hand man, at Berebury for years and years.

‘Not likely,' snorted Leeyes. ‘Well, he wouldn't, would he, seeing he needs him like he does? Locombe-Stableford hasn't done a hand's turn himself since Nelson lost his eye.'

‘Doug Stuart does save him a lot of work,' observed Sloan moderately.

‘Difficult man to pin anything on, is Stuart,' said Leeyes, sounding aggrieved. As far as the superintendent was concerned this was the rub.

‘Where was this body going?' asked Sloan, since there was no point in getting embroiled in differing views of Douglas Stuart. As Sloan had confirmed for himself a long time ago, one man looked up and saw stars and another looked down and saw mud. Stars or mud, he would talk to Stuart first.

‘Not going,' said Leeyes gloomily. ‘Gone. And that's only half the trouble.'

Sloan raised an eyebrow interrogatively.

The trouble with the drug dealing that was so much on his mind was that it had suddenly burgeoned out over Calleshire from the urban area around the industrial town of Luston. And that was what he should be working on now. He hadn't time to be playing about with arcane old statutes for sake of an outworn argument.

‘It's already been taken over to the Greatorex Museum,' said Leeyes. ‘And Marcus Fixby-Smith – apparently he's the head honcho over there – won't play ball.'

Detective Inspector Sloan said he could see that there might be difficulties.

‘Difficulties!' trumpeted Leeyes. ‘You haven't started to appreciate quite how many difficulties there are yet, Sloan.'

‘Sorry, sir.'

‘Apparently, the curator doesn't want to part with the mummy because exactly how you first begin to go about examining these old things is very important.'

Sloan said that he could see that it might be.

‘And he doesn't want anyone else messing about with it until he and his archaeological pals have had a go.'

Sloan said he could see that, too.

‘You may be able to, Sloan,' said Leeyes with heat. ‘All I can say is that the coroner can't.' He sniffed. ‘Or won't.'

‘Do we know what it is exactly Mr Locombe-Stableford wants?' asked Sloan. Something – he didn't know quite what yet – didn't add up here. Especially that business about acting on information received. That sort of information usually reached the police long before it got to the coroner.

‘Trouble, that's what he wants,' muttered Leeyes, tersely. ‘If you ask me, he's out for blood. Preferably mine. And, as he never fails to remind me, he has the last word.'

That was the other rub.

‘So, Sloan,' carried on Leeyes, ‘you'd better get over to the museum and sort things out as quickly as possible.' He paused and added with a fine show of magnanimity, ‘You can take Constable Crosby with you. We don't need him here today.'

Chapter Three

Defective

‘Hullo, there!' hollered Horace Boller, as he pushed open the dilapidated wicker gate at the Calleshire Animal Sanctuary at Edsway.

He was greeted by a cacophony of barks from the assorted dogs in residence.

‘Quiet!' he bellowed.

This made the dogs bark even more loudly.

Usually, by this time, a woman's head would have come round the back door with the offer of a mug of tea and a shouted command to the dogs to surcease. Horace suspected that his usual welcome at the animal rescue place owed more to the fish he brought with him than to himself, but he did not very much care. A mug of tea was, after all, a mug of tea. And, anyway, stinking fish would have been a nuisance to him in his cottage, let alone to his neighbours.

He advanced on the back door, calling out, ‘Anyone at home?' There was still no response but the door was ajar so he let himself in. Unexpectedly, he found the two sisters who ran the sanctuary sitting at the kitchen table doing nothing. This was so uncharacteristic of them in the middle of the day that he looked from one to the other and asked, ‘What's up?'

Alison Kirk, the elder of the two, answered him. ‘We've had a bit of bad news, Horace.'

Boller set his creel down in the kitchen sink and accepted the proffered mug of tea. ‘Your nephew?' he said.

She nodded, brushing a solitary tear from her cheek. ‘Derek, our sister's son.'

‘He died yesterday,' said Jennifer Kirk, harder-hearted and dry-eyed.