Passing Strange (6 page)

“I see.” He hadn't been wrong then. Ten to one perjury would be the charge, then, if there was one.

“And while it is all being sorted out,” continued Edward Hebbinge, “the Brigadier's family solicitors advise maintaining the
status quo
.”

Sloan nodded. In his experience solicitors couldn't even hand out advice in simple English.

“That's the reason why I let the Flower Show go ahead,” said the agent.

“It's always been held at the Priory, then, has it?”

“Ever since I can remember,” said Hebbinge. “And there seemed no reason at the time why not.”

“No,” said Sloan.

“I wasn't to know …” He looked anxious. “And Mr Terlingham didn't say I shouldn't have allowed it. He came this afternoon himself anyway …”

They had neither of them forgotten the unhappy scene outside.

“If in doubt,” the agent hurried on, “Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet said I was to apply the test of reasonableness to what I did.”

“Quite so,” said the policeman. Ask the legal profession a straight question and you usually got a highly qualified answer. “What you could do with,” he said drily, “is a one-armed lawyer.”

“A what?”

“That's what our old lags say,” said Sloan. “They ask the court to give them a one-armed brief so that he can't say ‘On the other hand'.”

Hebbinge gave a rather wintry smile and they rounded a corner. They were at the back of the entrance hall of the Priory. “I gather,” said the agent with matching dryness, “it was reasonable to wind the grandfather clock but not to renew the staircarpet.”

“Winding clocks,” said Sloan realistically, “comes for free. Staircarpet doesn't. Also your heirs …”

“Heiresses, actually.”

“Heiresses,” he amended, “might not like the staircarpet.”

“Only one of them has to,” said Hebbinge wryly.

“Contestants, are they?”

“Whatever happens, it certainly doesn't go to both,” said the agent promptly. “I am told that the estate is settled on the nearest direct heir.”

“Winner takes all,” said Sloan. The behavioural scientists hadn't been able to explain why people played games – let alone the games people played. Perhaps it was because games – like art – aped life. Or was it that life – like art – aped games? Sloan turned the surface part of his mind – the part that wasn't thinking about Joyce Cooper – on to this. “And which one is going to scoop the kitty, Mr Hebbinge?”

But Edward Hebbinge said that he didn't know yet. Messrs Terlingham, Terlingham and Owlet, Solicitors, of Bishop's Yard, Calleford, had taken the matter into
avizandum
and there it rested.

“Good luck to them,” said Detective-Inspector Sloan of the Berebury Division of the Calleshire Police Force in what he believed was hearty Anglo-Saxon.

It was not to the scene of the crime that Sloan went next. Instead he made his way back to the police car parked neatly inside the Priory gates. Flipping a switch on the radio, he asked the answering Control to find Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division for him. Harry Harpe, he was pretty confident, would be on duty. Saturday was seldom a holiday for anyone in Traffic Division. If Inspector Harpe wanted a day off he'd take it on a Tuesday – unless the Magistrates' Court was sitting.

Right enough, his voice was soon crackling over the air. “That you, Sloan? What's the trouble?”

“I want to trace a car, Harry.”

“I thought Traffic Division got all the dirty work at the crossroads.”

“This was a car parked in a field entrance. A red Mini. It's not there now.”

“You don't want a lot, do you?” said Inspector Harpe.

“Try me,” said Sloan meaningfully.

“Is it a local number?”

“We haven't got the number.”

“Then,” said Harpe, heavily patient, “you'll have to wait while I go back home for my wand.”

“Don't be like that. We know it was hired.”

“That's better.”

“From Swallow and Swallow.”

“Better and better. I'll …”

“Wait for it, Harry. There's a snag.”

“There's always a snag.” Inspector Harpe was known as ‘Happy Harry' because he had never been known to smile. He on his part maintained that there had never been anything at which to smile in Traffic Division. He went on cautiously: “What sort of snag?”

“Hired from one of their London branches.”

“I see.”

“How,” asked Sloan warily, “do we stand with the Mets just now?”

“Well …”

Maintaining friendly working relations with other Forces was important. All the good books said so. The fact was stressed at Police Training Colleges and underlined at all courses and meetings when men and women from more than one Force were gathered together on police affairs. Unfortunately it was a very long time since Superintendent Leeyes had been to College.

“Official channels …” began Sloan.

“It might be better,” said Harpe, “to use the diplomatic ones.” He sounded tentative. No Elizabethan ambassador sent to lie abroad for the good of his country had to be more alert than someone speaking on behalf of the Superintendent.

“The Mets aren't a hostile power. If only …” Sloan himself was willing to talk to anyone from the Metropolitan Police District at any time. What he didn't know was whether the Mets were willing to talk to anyone from the Berebury Division of the Calleshire Force.

Ever again.

Not after last time.

Harpe said “I don't think we should expect too much.”

Sloan groaned. If any one single instinct came to the fore in Superintendent Leeyes it was the territorial imperative. And when he'd caught two detectives from the Smoke poaching villains in his Division without so much as a by-your-leave he'd behaved like a rabid gamekeeper. In the end the Superintendent had reached a complete understanding with his opposite number in the Metropolitan Police District who had been detailed to heal the subsequent breach in good relations: they didn't speak.

“Do your best, Harry,” he said persuasively. “You must have a good friend somewhere.”

He had.

Inspector Harpe came back over the air in record time. “I struck lucky,” he said. “I got on to the right man first time. We Traffic men hang together …”

“No problem?” asked Sloan. The investigation of murder was not something that should hang upon pleasantries.

“When I mentioned Berebury all he said was, ‘That's where the birds sing, isn't it? The country. Up here they cough.'”

Sloan let out a sigh of relief.

“The car hire people, Swallow and Swallow, have twenty-six red Minis out at the moment from their London branches,” crackled Harpe's voice over the radio. “They're pulling a full list for us now. Sixteen are on hire to foreign tourists through a travel agency, five are out to commercial firms – they use the bigger vehicle more – and five are being used by individuals.”

Sloan pulled his notebook out and balanced it on his knee. “Thanks, Harry.”

“The individuals are four men and a woman. Was it a woman's job?”

“It was murder,” said Sloan briefly.

“The men's names are Mortimer, Smith …”

Sloan said something unprintable about the commonness of the name Smith.

“Wilson,” continued Harpe imperturbably, “and Carson. Do you want the woman's name too?”

“Just for the record,” said Sloan.

“Mellows,” said Inspector Harpe. “Miss Richenda Mellows.”

5

Bourdon

When Detective-Constable Crosby instituted a search he made a good job of it. Granted he might not be swift but he was undoubtedly thorough. His instructions had been to search the ground round about where the victim lay and this is what he set about doing now. He brought out a length of coloured twine and some pegs from his own particular scenes-of-crime bag.

“Want a mallet?” offered Fred Pearson promptly.

Crosby took a swift look at the body and another at the hand mallet. No way had Joyce Cooper died from a blow from a blunt instrument.

“Thanks,” he said.

He proceeded to stake out an area of ground well clear of the body. Inside this he marked out a smaller rectangle where the tent had been.

Ken Walls and Fred Pearson watched him. Norman Burton was crouching down somewhere not far away, trying to sketch out from memory a plan of the layout of the tents and stalls at the Flower Show, but the other two men – Walls and Pearson – looked on, absolutely fascinated by the sight of the policeman at work.

“That last peg wants pushing out a bit more to the left,” observed Walls presently.

Crosby obediently pushed the last peg out more to the left. Then he began his examination of the ground within the area outside the smaller square.

“Nothing there, is there?” said Pearson a little later.

“Not a thing,” said Detective-Constable Crosby. He did not find it necessary to add that not only was there nothing there but that the ground within this inner patch was also quite dry. The cup of tea that Edward Hebbinge had taken Joyce Cooper at half past three had not been spilled on the grass within the tent.

“There wasn't a lot that could be there, was there?” demanded Ken Walls of his friend. “Stands to reason.”

“He might have found some tea leaves,” said Pearson, standing his ground.

Detective-Constable Crosby said nothing.

“Tea leaves?” echoed Ken Walls. “What would she have been doing with tea leaves?”

“Reading them,” said Pearson on the instant. “Isn't that what she was doing? And charging for it into the bargain.”

“She had a crystal ball,” said Ken Walls stolidly. “I saw it, remember? When I went in there for my ten pennorth.”

Detective-Constable Crosby, having completed his examination of the area where the tent had been, widened his search.

Fred Pearson and Ken Walls, nothing loath, extended their area of interest too.

They saw the constable pick up and label first a drinking straw and then a short length of binder twine.

“Do you think,” began Pearson, “that that binder twine's what –”

“No,” said Walls repressively, “I don't.”

“He's found a couple of empty cigarette packets now,” observed Pearson in the manner of a radio commentator at the races.

“I'm not surprised,” said Walls stoutly. “You know that Almstone's never going to win the Best Kept Village Competition.”

“No.” Pearson turned to the constable and asked him curiously, “Will those things be of any use to you?”

“Too soon to say,” answered Crosby importantly. He added a phrase dinned into him at the Police Training School. “But the Forensic Scientist is only as good as the material provided for him.”

Pearson nodded. Everyone knocked scientists.

“'Course,” remarked Walls conversationally, “if the police do get stuck over a search they can always call in the Potato Marketing Board.”

“Come again?” said the constable. If the police were at a loss the popular press did not as a rule call for the Potato Marketing Board to be brought in. Not that Crosby had noticed, anyway.

“Big Brother,” contributed Fred obliquely.

“The Potato Marketing Board?”

“Always watching,” said Fred.

“By aeroplane,” said Ken.

“They take photographs,” said Fred.

“What of?” asked Crosby.

“Potatoes,” said Ken simply.

“Checking,” said Fred, “that you haven't got more planted than you've said.”

“Or less,” put in Ken. “That's as bad.”

“Not too little, not too much …” began Fred.

“But just right,” said Ken, demonstrating that advertising slogans can and do enter into the language of men.

“It's one way of keeping tabs on things, I suppose,” said the detective-constable. “We usually manage to do it from the beat but it takes all sorts.” He picked up something else and regarded it curiously.

“That's a horse-shoe nail,” Walls informed him. “Don't see many of them about these days.”

Crosby labelled that too, and put it in a bag. He cast about again.

“Nothing else, is there?” said Pearson, still supervising all the constable's activities.

Crosby picked up some lengths of what looked like long dead grass that were lying on top of the ground. He held them in his hand for a long moment.

Ken Walls enlightened him. “That's funeral wheat, that is.”

“Funeral wheat?” The constable's mind spun towards wreaths.

“Funeral wheat,” said the countryman flatly, “is wheat that has died rather than ripen.”

“I don't believe it,” said Herbert Kershaw.

“At the Flower Show,” said Mrs Kershaw.

“I just don't believe it.”

“Eileen Milsom said it was true. She told me.” The Milsoms at Dorter End Farm were the Kershaws' nearest neighbours.

“How does she know?” challenged Kershaw immediately. “If it isn't a Horse Show Eileen Milsom doesn't go to it.”

“Cedric lent them his lorry for the tents.” Mrs Millicent Kershaw was accustomed to having to back up her statements with chapter and verse. “He heard when he went down to see if they were ready for the lorry.”

“That doesn't make it gospel,” said the farmer irritably. His first action after criticizing the bearer of bad news was to disbelieve it.

“It makes it likely,” said his wife without rancour. “Besides, Eileen's not one to exaggerate.”

“But who on earth –” he opened his hands wide – “would want to kill Joyce Cooper?”

Mrs Kershaw tidied away some of the accoutrements of her flower-arranging and said she didn't know.

“Joyce Cooper of all people!” exclaimed Herbert Kershaw.