Little Knell (6 page)

‘Indeed it would.' The radiologist was all affability. ‘Metals – all dense materials, actually – look white on an X-ray film. Less dense ones go down through all the shades from grey to black.'

As far as Sloan was concerned most of the dense subjects with whom he usually came into contact were regrettably human. Their ethics also went down through the varying shades of grey. It didn't help that what the law itself wanted was a state where everything was either black or white.

The radiographer turned away from her machine for a few moments as she busied herself with a cassette of film, and then she asked Steve Meadows if he could step her way for a moment.

‘I don't seem able to get a good picture somehow, doctor,' she said. ‘It's coming up completely white.'

Steve Meadows looked down at something she was showing him and then up at Marcus Fixby-Smith. He asked, ‘These old chaps didn't ever line their – what did you call them –
cartonnages
with lead, by any chance, did they?'

‘No,' said the museum curator without hesitation. ‘And, anyway, two men wouldn't have been able to lift this little lot if they had.'

‘That's what I thought,' murmured the radiologist absently, still peering down. ‘The preliminary radiograph's a bit odd, that's all.'

‘Usually,' explained Marcus Fixby-Smith, one specialist to another, ‘the body was just wrapped in a sort of cerecloth – a set of bandages made of the fibres of flax and so forth and often secured with a plant gum.'

Steve Meadows nodded.

‘And sometimes, they applied resins to the outer wrappings as well. I'm not a specialist, of course. Egyptology isn't my field, by any means.'

‘According to this plate,' said Meadows slowly, ‘there's something else in there. Something metallic.'

‘Gold?' suggested Hilary Collins. ‘The Egyptians had plenty of gold.'

The radiologist glanced at Sloan and said, ‘If Mr Fixby-Smith wouldn't mind indicating how to open this mummy, doing the least damage possible, then I think we may be able to tell you.'

‘Good,' said Sloan heartily, as the curator and the radiologist advanced on the wooden casing, apparently oblivious of any of the dangers feared by Dr Dabbe. Time, after all, was getting on and Sloan had other work to do.

What wasn't good, though, was the noisome smell which assailed the nostrils of everyone in the room as the lid was prised open.

The metal inside was not gold. It was aluminium and looked suspiciously like domestic baking foil. It was wrapped carefully round something mummy-shaped. The odour got very much worse as Dr Meadows carefully unfolded a little corner and found not the naso-frontal suture of the skeleton he had been seeking but a partially decomposed body.

Chapter Five

Faded

‘Of course there's a dead body in that mummy case,' said Superintendent Leeyes testily. ‘You should have known that, Sloan. It's the whole idea of mummification.'

‘Not an old body, sir,' said Sloan down the curator's telephone: he didn't think this conversation was for the open airwaves. He was alone in the curator's room. Marcus Fixby-Smith had turned a nasty shade of green when he had looked at the contents of the
cartonnage,
and had gone somewhere to be sick. Unexpectedly, Miss Collins had proved to be made of sterner stuff and was remaining with the hospital team and the opened case, holding a watching brief for the museum.

‘Besides,' continued Leeyes, not listening, ‘that's what the coroner's been making all this silly fuss about. You know that, too, Sloan.'

‘A new body, sir.' If his message was as incomprehensible as Leeyes was finding it, then it might just as well be sent
en clair.

‘Not mummified remains?'

‘No, sir.'

‘How new a body?' he asked suspiciously.

‘I think it could be described as nearly new, sir.' The words conjured up in his mind the shop on the corner of Nethergate called Secondhand Rose which specialized in nearly new clothes. ‘But not very.' The recollection of the stench that had assaulted the olfactory organs of everyone in the gallery at the museum when the aluminium foil had first been peeled back made him catch his breath all over again. What was inside certainly hadn't smelled of roses of any sort.

Nor in any way, either.

‘And what does that mean?' demanded Leeyes trenchantly.

‘About a week old,' said Sloan. ‘At least, that's what the radiologist – he's called Dr Meadows – puts it at, although he says the rate of decomposition of human bodies isn't his speciality. He told us,' Sloan consulted his notebook, ‘that you have to be anosmic to be a good pathologist and he isn't.'

‘Bully for him,' said Leeyes morosely.

‘Yes, sir. I think it means not having any sense of smell.'

‘Well.' He sniffed. ‘I suppose you could say decomposing bodies are our speciality, Sloan, so you'd better get your skates on and find out who he or she…'

‘She.'

‘She is.'

‘Was,' amended Sloan. ‘She's very dead.'

‘And,' continued Leeyes, undeterred, ‘work out who put her there.'

‘Yes, sir. And exactly why they put her there, too, of course.' The word that had come first to his mind about the setting was bizarre, but that didn't mean there wasn't a reason for using the mummy case.

‘If you ask me,' said the superintendent, never one to be interested in the rationale of things, ‘people always make too much fuss about the whys and wherefores of crime.' He sniffed again. ‘Especially defence counsel. They make out that motive's the be-all and end-all of felony and it isn't, Sloan. Remember that.'

‘No, sir. I mean yes, sir.'

‘They'll say anything in mitigation, some of 'em,' he grumbled. ‘Anything at all.'

‘Yes, indeed.' Sloan toyed with the idea of mentioning that sometimes, where crime was concerned, if you knew the reason why it had been perpetrated, then you knew who had done it; but he decided against doing any such thing. His superior officer would doubtless mount yet another hobby horse if he did and there just wasn't time for that now.

‘However,' continued Leeyes, ‘you'd better get on to finding out what gives pretty quickly, Sloan, because a new body in an old mummy is something that the press'll be on to before you can say Granville Locombe-Stableford.'

Sloan tightened his lips. It was Granville Locombe-Stableford whom he wanted to talk to most of all. How and why the coroner had come to take an interest in this particular Egyptian mummy was the greatest mystery of all.

‘So get moving, man.'

Sloan, who didn't need any assistance in imagining the probable headlines in the tabloid newspapers, merely said, ‘Dr Dabbe's on his way over here now, sir, to see the body
in situ
before it goes over to the mortuary.' Marcus Fixby-Smith's office and its telephone were at a safe distance from the mummy but he would have to go back to the body as soon as the pathologist arrived. He wasn't looking forward to sharing the available air of the room with the stinking corpse again. He took a deep breath and said, ‘The Scenes of Crime people'll be here soon, too, sir; although I don't think the museum was the scene of the actual crime.'

‘And then,' said Leeyes, who was at a safe distance from any unpleasant sights and smells, ‘you'd better start looking into where old Colonel Caversham came into this.'

‘If he did,' murmured Sloan.

‘Explorer, wasn't he? And Egyptologist.'

‘Yes, sir. I've made arrangements to see his executors. He died months and months ago though, and the house has been empty since.'

‘Trust the lawyers to take their time about winding up his estate.' Leeyes took off at yet another tangent. ‘Half a year or more seems par for the course.'

‘But as the mummy came from the colonel's house only yesterday,' Sloan promised hastily, before the superintendent could launch into yet another diatribe against the legal profession, ‘we're going to examine it as quickly as possible. I've put a man on guard until we can get over there.'

‘You can get up to a lot of no-good in an empty house,' rumbled on Leeyes. ‘A happy hunting ground…'

‘And as soon as we get some information about the body – teeth and so forth – we'll try to get on with a positive identification.' Sloan glanced down at his notebook again. ‘All the radiologist would say was that he thought the woman would have been in her early to middle twenties and very much on the small side.'

‘I suppose you could say that narrows the field,' observed the superintendent unfairly, ‘but not a lot.'

‘And,' went on Sloan tonelessly, ‘Dr Meadows also said that in his opinion the cause of death was not natural.'

‘Presumably,' said Leeyes silkily, ‘he has grounds for making that judgement.'

‘In spades,' murmured Sloan under his breath. Aloud he said, ‘Dr Meadows diagnosed a fractured skull.' He coughed and added, ‘And that is his speciality.'

*   *   *

‘The heirs of Colonel Caversham?' Simon Puckle sat well back in his chair in the offices of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery in Berebury. This distancing served to emphasize further still the intimidating expanse of green leather desktop which lay between himself and the two detectives sitting in front of him. The desk was absolutely bare save for one sheet of paper.

‘Or the keys of Whimbrel House,' said Sloan flatly. ‘Whichever is the quicker.'

‘The keys you may have now, Inspector,' returned the solicitor courteously. ‘I'm afraid that producing the heirs of Colonel Caversham may take a little longer.'

Sloan's head came up on the instant. ‘How come?'

‘We can't find them,' said Simon Puckle.

‘Not nowhere?' intervened Detective Constable Crosby, leaning forward.

‘Not yet,' responded the solicitor obliquely. ‘And it's not for want of trying.'

‘Where there's a will there's a way,' said the constable sententiously. ‘And a relative.'

‘You've advertised?' said Sloan.

‘Until we're blue in the face, Inspector,' said Puckle. ‘Or in the red at the Calleshire County Bank's executors' account, whichever way you care to look at it.'

‘But items have already been sent to the Greatorex Museum…' began Sloan. This was true, if unspecific.

‘That is, Inspector, we haven't yet been able to trace the immediate heirs of the colonel's settled estate – the residuary legatees. Most of that part of the inheritance goes to his male heirs-at-law under an old family trust.'

‘But not until you find them,' contributed Crosby intelligently.

‘Precisely, Constable. I may say that handing over the specified non-pecuniary legacies has posed us – that is Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery acting in their capacity as the executors – no problems as yet.'

‘I see, sir.' Detective Inspector Sloan decided, for the time being, against informing the solicitor of the problems already posed by one particular bequest. That could wait.

‘The famous Caversham collection of antiquities has gone to the Greatorex Museum in Berebury,' enumerated Puckle, ‘and the colonel's library was sent to Almstone College at the University of Calleshire last week. As you may imagine, that was extensive and specialized – and valuable, of course.'

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded.

‘And,' continued Simon Puckle, ‘the original manuscript of his noted work on Ra'fan in Upper Egypt went to the Society of Calleshire Archaeologists, of which Colonel Caversham was president for so long.'

‘So…' began Detective Inspector Sloan.

‘And then,' swept on Puckle, ‘there were a few bequests to his favourite charities: his regimental association, the Calleshire Animal Sanctuary – he'd been a cavalryman in his time and remained very attached to horses – and the parish church at Staple St James. They're having trouble with their steeple, you know.'

‘Really, sir?' Trouble with church steeples was happily outside his remit; and, he reminded himself feelingly, sometimes it seemed it was about the only trouble in ‘F' Division that was. ‘These heirs…'

‘Not heirs general of the body,' amplified Puckle. ‘Just the son or sons or grandsons of the colonel's younger brother's son.'

Crosby screwed his face up in thought. ‘His nephew's family?'

‘That's right.' Simon Puckle nodded. ‘I'm afraid that in the old colonel's eyes the nephew was the black sheep of the family.'

Crosby brightened. ‘A no-good boyo?'

‘Not really,' said the lawyer, recipient of countless family secrets. ‘Not by today's standards, anyway. The colonel belonged to an earlier age and just didn't see things the way we do now.'

‘What did the nephew do, then?' asked Crosby with interest. ‘Run off with the family silver?'

‘Ran off with someone else's treasure,' said Puckle drily. ‘Their daughter. It was a long time ago, of course.'

‘Which made it worse,' agreed Sloan, who sometimes felt he was getting behind the times himself. Marriage, it seemed to him, had come to resemble more and more a game of musical chairs: a change of place – or none – every time the music stopped.

‘My grandfather,' said the solicitor, himself the fifth generation in the legal firm, ‘told me that the girl's family had had high hopes of an alliance for their daughter with a young sprig of the Ornums at the time when she went off with the Caversham boy.'

That explained the opprobium to Sloan's mind. Marriage to the younger son of an earl carried an irreproachable cachet, whoever the Cavershams of Staple St James might have been.

‘The Dorothy Vernon touch, you might say,' murmured Puckle.

‘Sir?' said Sloan.