Passing Strange (24 page)

“Naturally.”

“So he set off looking for a weapon.”

Hebbinge said, “I understand from your constable here that it was a length of wire all right.”

“Oh, it was,” said Sloan gravely. “From the reel left by Mrs Kershaw in her basket. No problem there.”

“That should be a help, Inspector.”

“A great help,” said Sloan.

“You can prove that, I take it?” said the agent. “Even without the reel?”

“Oh yes, sir. No problem there. The piece that killed Joyce Cooper had two ends. One end fits exactly with the wire still in the flower arrangement that Mrs Kershaw did. There's a tradition in the village, I understand, that the winning arrangement is taken to the church.”

“The Flower rota causes a lot of trouble,” said Hebbinge obliquely.

Sloan hadn't ever met a rota that didn't. “The flower arrangement was locked in the church overnight,” he said steadily, “ready for this morning's service.”

The agent bowed his head. “That, too, should be a help.”

“A great help,” said Sloan again. “Our murderer finds the reel of wire and then tries to think of a good way of getting back into Madame Zelda's tent with it. Without it being noticed, of course. He finds one.”

“Does he?” said Hebbinge. He moistened his lips.

“And he goes back there,” said Sloan.

“With the reel of wire,” supplied Crosby, licking his fingers. “Mustn't forget that.”

“No,” said Hebbinge austerely.

“He didn't forget it,” said Sloan. “He took it with him, broke off as much as he needed and proceeded to kill Joyce Cooper. Then he walks back to the Flower tent only to find Mrs Kershaw's trug has gone. He can't drop it safely back in there so he has to find somewhere else to park it until he can retrieve it without being seen.” He turned so suddenly towards Hebbinge that the agent gave a startled jump. “Am I boring you?”

Hebbinge essayed a polite smile. “Of course not, Inspector. I find your exposition fascinating – quite fascinating.”

“Then I'll carry on,” said Sloan with a quick gesture.

“Our murderer – let's not give him a name for the time being.”

“Just as you say,” said Hebbinge politely.

“Our murderer looks for somewhere else to leave the reel against the time when he can come back and collect it unseen. He chooses the Fruit and Vegetable marquee.”

“Why the marquee?” enquired Hebbinge.

“Traditionally it was always the last tent to come down,” said Sloan promptly. “That meant that he had the longest possible time in which to retrieve it.”

This raised an objection from Crosby. “Why didn't he,” he said, waving an arm, “just go off somewhere in the grounds and park it under a plant. You can't say there aren't enough plants.”

“Perhaps Mr Hebbinge can tell us that,” suggested Sloan.

Mr Hebbinge appeared to be having some difficulty in concentrating. He shook his head.

“No?” said Sloan. “Well, the answer to that is that he could walk about the Show quite easily without the reel being seen. If he set off across the garden with it someone might have noticed and remembered.”

“I don't get it,” said Crosby plaintively.

“Think about fruit pies,” advised Sloan helpfully, “and how you carried them.”

“He didn't retrieve it, though, did he?” pointed out the land agent. “It was still there when we struck the marquee.”

“Something prevented him getting it back,” said Sloan.

“Another little point to be left?” suggested Hebbinge with a hint of sarcasm.

“Detail,” said Sloan. “Mere detail.”

“Forgive me,” said the agent, “but I can't quite understand why the reel of wire should be so important. No doubt you have your reasons.”

“Oh yes, sir,” said Sloan tonelessly. “I have. My guess is that the reel had fingerprints on it – the murderer's fingerprints.”

“Ah, I see.” Hebbinge nodded. “You have the advantage of me, Inspector. I didn't think in this enlightened day and age criminals left fingerprints on anything.”

“They do when they can't wear gloves,” said Sloan solemnly. “A man couldn't wear gloves on a hot day like yesterday. They would be more noticeable than what he did carry. Don't forget that this crime was completely unpremeditated, will you? Our villain had to think very quickly.”

Hebbinge ran the tip of his tongue round his lips. “So this reel of wire – that you haven't got, by the way – had the murderer's fingerprints on the outside?”

“Oh no, sir. Not on the outside. On the inside of one end. Where he held it to carry it.”

“Without the reel, Inspector, I take it that this is, of course, pure supposition.”

Sloan looked hurt. “We were only reconstructing the crime, sir. We weren't talking about evidence.”

“Of course,” Hebbinge gave him a quick, jerky smile. “I was forgetting. I'm not a policeman, of course, but I should say that there were one or two – er – gaps.”

“Indeed there are,” said Sloan swiftly. “I can't very well charge a man on the strength of having seen a couple of fruit pies dangling beneath a tray, can I?”

“Not very well,” said Edward Hebbinge uneasily.

“But that's how he carried the reel of wire around without anyone seeing it. Flat under a tray.”

The land agent had gone a rather nasty colour.

“Nor yet,” said Sloan, “on the strength of his having gone out of his way to take the victim a cup of tea.”

“All the Show helpers got their tea,” countered Hebbinge swiftly. “Hers was the last, that's all.”

“That's all, was it, sir?”

Hebbinge looked wildly from one policeman to the other. “But she'd drunk her tea. Her cup was empty when Norman Burton found her. It all happened after I'd been in with her tea.”

“It did indeed,” said Sloan with vigour, “but not long after. You – sorry, sir – slip of the tongue, I got carried away – the murderer killed her first and then – er – drank her tea.”

“With a straw,” said Crosby, looking up in sudden wonderment. “I found the straw.”

“A nice touch, that,” said Sloan. “Made everyone think that she was killed later than she was.”

“You've got this pretty well worked out, Inspector, haven't you?” said Hebbinge thickly. His colour was now a rather ghastly white but he was still in control of what he was saying.

“Pretty well, sir. Mind you, I'm only thinking aloud what might have happened.”

“All this then,” said the agent hoarsely, “is mere postulation?”

“You could call it that, sir.”

“Why tell me?”

“Well, sir,” responded Sloan vaguely, “it seemed to work very well in
Hamlet
, didn't it?”

“Without the reel –” Hebbinge chose his words with great care – “you can't actually prove anything about anybody, can you?”

“I wouldn't go so far as to say that, sir.” Sloan still hadn't drunk his tea. “Crosby, give our friends a shout, will you?”

Crosby lifted his voice. “You can come out now, boys.”

Round the corner of the stable wall appeared Norman Burton, the schoolmaster, with young Mark Smithson and Peter Pearson in tow.

“I understand,” said Sloan to Hebbinge in a voice of steel, “that these two boys saw you place a reel of wire behind the cloth covering the table on which the tomatoes were displayed.”

“You promised not to tell,” stammered Mark Smithson tremulously.

Peter Pearson scowled at the agent. “We didn't tell on you.”

Edward Hebbinge started to struggle to his feet.

“Watch him,” called out Crosby. With prestidigitatory skill something steel appeared in his hand.

“He's going to run for it,” shouted Norman Burton.

“No, he isn't,” said Detective-Inspector Sloan. An arm like an iron band descended on the land agent's shoulder. “Edward Hebbinge, I am arresting you for the murder of Joyce Mary Cooper. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence …”

Two small boys looked on pop-eyed in wonder and excitement as Detective-Constable Crosby slipped a pair of handcuffs on the struggling man.

What Edward Hebbinge said was not fit to record.

“Come along, boys,” said the schoolmaster primly. “It's time you went home.”

17

Piccola choir

The steward at the Berebury Golf Club was highly skilled at fending off enquiries about gentlemen members who were playing out on the course. He was even more adept at dealing with enquiries about those who were actually in the bar.

“If you'll hang on, madam,” his usual patter ran, I'll just go through to the changing rooms. I rather think I saw him come off the course a moment ago.” He got this sort of call every day but particularly on Sundays from wives with joints of meat spoiling in the oven.

“I'm not quite sure,” he said diplomatically now to Sloan's request, “exactly how far round Mr Leeyes has been able to get. The course is very crowded today. Can I take a message?”

“I'll ring later,” said Sloan. He toyed for a moment with the notion of leaving some triumphant but ambiguous message for Superintendent Leeyes along the lines of – say – ‘the rabbit being in the bag' or ‘having the bracelets on chummie'. Someone had once explained to him about the British commander who had reported the victory at Sind in India with the single word
Peccavi
– Latin for ‘I have sinned'; but enigmatic messages, however punny, wouldn't do for the Superintendent.

“Very well, sir. Who shall I say called?”

“It doesn't matter.” Sloan resisted that temptation, too. Some humorist who had once said ‘007' had had a real earful when the Superintendent had got hold of him.

He replaced the receiver and sat back, thinking.

He was back in Hebbinge's office at the Priory, sitting at Hebbinge's desk, surrounded by Hebbinge's files. Somewhere here, he supposed, would be clues to Hebbinge's motive. Not that he was going to be able to find it as easily as all that. Edward Hebbinge hadn't struck him as the sort of man to leave traces of perfidy in the files.

Watergate had taught everyone the danger of keeping records. Besides, Stephen Terlingham hadn't said he'd suspected anything: not even a kickback from Maurice Esdaile. And the solicitor would automatically have been on the lookout for that.

So it must be something more subtle than palm oil.

He swung one leg over the other. It wasn't Richenda Mellows whom the agent was frightened of. It was her Trustees. The Bank, the Solicitor and the Rector. Not people at all. Institutions. Money, law and … and what? Sloan considered what the Church stood for in the administration of the affairs of a minor.

Fair play, he decided after a bit.

And local knowledge, he added a moment later.

He pulled open the drawers of the desk – in spite of Watergate. Some luckless police officer – he hoped his name wasn't C. D. Sloan – was going to have to spend a lot of time opening and shutting desk drawers until the police found out exactly what Edward Hebbinge had been up to that wouldn't stand the searching light of three Trustees – the Bank, who would know all about money; the Law, who would know all about land and property; and the Church, who would know all about – what?

Almstone, anyway.

And wickedness.

Sloan paused while he revised this. No. All three institutions met and matched cupidity in their daily work. It wasn't the prerogative of any one of them any more than it was of the police. The police just had the eventual clearing up to do.

He thought about Edward Hebbinge with distaste. It had been a mockery of a man whom Crosby had led away to the waiting police car. He sighed. The Mellows family wouldn't be the first to find that honest stewards were hard to come by. Rich men had been having trouble with cheating stewards from time immemorial. Calling them to account was a notoriously disappointing business …

He stopped in the act of getting out of his chair.

Old Mrs Wylly wouldn't have called on Edward Hebbinge to give an account of his stewardship. Things would have been allowed to go on as before with minimal disturbance. Richenda Mellows's trustees on the other hand undoubtedly would have looked at the present and the future – if not the past.

He sat back in his chair.

He lifted his eyes and met for the umpteenth time the map on the wall.

Only this time he looked at it in a different way.

Fool that he was.

He looked at one large farm and two smaller ones. He remembered two highly prosperous farmers at the two smaller farms and one unprosperous farmer, struggling along with a large farm, glad at the prospect of paying less rent.

“Thou fool,” said Sloan to himself.

He thought of Herbert Kershaw and Cedric Milsom, oozing evidence of the good life, and Sam Watkinson doing his own milking on a Saturday afternoon. Sam Watkinson, churchwarden and Chairman of the Bench, wasn't likely to have come to a shady agreement with anyone. Cedric Milsom, philanderer, and Herbert Kershaw, not very efficient sheep farmer, might very easily have done.

“No man can serve two masters,” he murmured to the empty office. “I reckon Edward Hebbinge had been serving Mammon all right.” He looked at the estate map again.

The answer had been staring him in the face all the time, after all. It was set out in the Gospel according to St Luke, too.

“Richenda Mellows's three Trustees would have spotted the discrepancy straightaway, sir,” he reported to Superintendent Leeyes, when that worthy police officer had reached the Club-house again. “The Rector alone would have wanted to know why old Sam Watkinson was paying so much more rent per acre for Home Farm than Milsom and Kershaw were for Dorter End and Abbot's Hall.”