Past Tense (14 page)

‘In what way worse?' asked Sloan, visions of black masses being celebrated in rural Calleshire churchyards with stakes driven through the heart and suchlike arcane practices rising before him. ‘Surely the body…'

‘Oh, the body was all right,' said Tod, a man accustomed to bodies. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking…'

‘What manner of speaking?' asked Sloan peremptorily. ‘Come along, Tod…tell me in what way the body was or was not all right?'

Tod said awkwardly, ‘It's like this, Inspector, the deceased had requested that she be buried still wearing her rings…nice rings, they were…very nice, actually…happens quite often, you know, in our way of business. Naturally we complied with her request. Sentimental, of course, but it sometimes stops the family fighting over them. We notice it particularly when there's more than one daughter or daughter-in-law—'

Detective Inspector Sloan looked quite dangerous. ‘Tod, will you get to the point.'

‘The rings had gone, Inspector. All three of them.' He pulled a notebook out of his pocket. ‘Two on the ring finger and an eternity ring on the little finger. A diamond solitaire, a pale blue Sri Lankan sapphire and an eternity ring set with small stones – Victorian at a guess.'

‘Whose grave was it, Tod? That's what I need to know. Now.'

‘Oh, didn't I say? Sorry, Inspector, I thought I had. It was Josephine Eleanor Short's.'

William Wakefield stretched out on the double bed at The Old Post Office at Staple St James, consciously relishing a long liein. ‘I don't know about the rough male kiss of blankets that that poet was always on about,' he said to Janet as she came into the bedroom. ‘Give me the smooth female embrace of clean cotton sheets any day.'

‘Nylon, actually,' she corrected him. She was standing by his bed, fully dressed, and bearing a cup of tea. ‘Colour coordinated, you may have noticed, with the curtains.'

‘Don't spoil the illusion,' he said, suddenly realising that it was the bright colours of both that were what he disliked about the bedroom. ‘Or do I mean the allusion?'

‘Don't ask me.'

He reached out an arm and pulled her towards him. ‘Come here, my uxor…'

‘What did you call me?'

‘Wife. And don't distract me. Come here while I give you a kiss.'

‘Bill,' she protested, wriggling free of his grasp, ‘it's practically the middle of the morning.'

‘What's the time of day got to do with it?' He gave a luxurious yawn. ‘You know what that doctor said about a man's doing what a man's got to do when he felt like it, time being of the essence.'

‘There's the washing-up from last night…'

He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards him more roughly than before. ‘I'll tell you what you can do about the washing-up.'

‘Don't do that, Bill,' she gasped. ‘You're hurting me.'

‘And I'll tell you when,' he said in a tone she had never heard before. ‘Listen, sweetie, we're not talking about a bed of roses any more.'

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, Bill?' she said, trying to shake him off. ‘Let me go.'

‘No,' he said swiftly. ‘I've come to my senses at last. Now, you'll do what I say, Mrs Janet Wakefield, whether you like it or not. And me, I like it. Do you understand?'

‘B-but…' she stammered.

‘But nothing,' he said thickly. ‘Now, get that frilly apron off pronto or I'll do it for you.'

‘Bill, don't you remember that the doctor said—'

‘Doctors don't know everything,' he interrupted her. ‘They think they know all the answers. Well, they don't. I've found that out for myself. The hard way.'

‘And what exactly do you mean by that?'

‘Never you mind, my lady. Now get that blasted apron off this minute. It's putting me off.'

*   *   *

Detective Inspector Sloan hiked Crosby out of the police canteen without a moment's compunction.

‘We need to get going, Crosby,' he said, jerking a finger in the direction of the door. ‘Now.'

The constable pushed a plate to one side and scrambled hastily to his feet, always on the alert for a fast drive. ‘Where to, sir?'

‘Damory Regis,' said Sloan, adding neatly, ‘And for your information Alice in Wonderland isn't the only one who found things getting curiouser and curiouser.'

The Reverend Derek Tompkinson was the first to agree with him. ‘It's usually dead flowers that are the problem after an interment, Inspector. We leave them for a week or so and then the sexton clears them away, but I understand from Morton's that the deceased had particularly requested that there should be no flowers at her funeral.' He turned to the undertaker who was shadowing Sloan like a dog. ‘That right, Tod?'

Tod Morton, standing one pace behind the police inspector, hastened to agree. ‘That's right, Vicar.'

The clergyman nodded. ‘It's quite common these days. It did, however, mean that the bare earth was more easily visible and that's what drew my attention to the grave in the first place. I wouldn't have noticed it at all if there wasn't going to be another funeral here next week and I walked over that way to check out where.'

Tod Morton nodded. ‘That's right, Reverend Tompkinson. We've got the work.'

‘It's an ill wind…' began Crosby.

Detective Inspector Sloan's only thought centred round the cliché about ‘every man to his trade' or, in the case of the clergyman, his profession, but he did not voice it.

The vicar was going on, quite unperturbed. ‘It looked remarkably untidy at a distance and so naturally I walked over to take a closer look. The undertakers usually make a better job of tidying things up and that's why I got in touch with them.'

‘We like to leave things as we found them or even better,' put in Tod piously. ‘Leave nothing behind but your thanks, as my dad always says.'

‘Which I hope you have done,' said Sloan dryly, trusting that Tod on the other hand hadn't destroyed any evidence on his earlier visit. ‘Now, which way is the grave?'

‘Follow me,' said the undertaker, starting to lead the way across the grass. ‘It's by the war memorial over there. The deceased had picked out the spot when she paid for her funeral plan.'

‘But we still don't know why she had wanted to be buried here in this village, do we?' said Sloan.

Both the vicar and the undertaker shook their heads. ‘No idea at all,' said Tod, ‘and she didn't say. She just put her finger on the map of the churchyard and said that, when the day came, to put her in that particular spot. Quite cool and collected she was at the time, if I remember rightly.'

‘We don't know either why she wanted to be buried in this exact plot,' said Derek Tompkinson, casting his eye round the rural scene that included his beautiful little Norman church.

‘Who wouldn't?' said Sloan involuntarily, taking his mind off his work for a moment. ‘It's a lovely spot.'

The vicar nodded and smiled. ‘Isn't it? I did ask around, Inspector, but nobody in the parish knew Josephine Short's name or any reason why she should have wanted to come here.'

‘Except for the view,' remarked Crosby, taking a passing interest in a table tomb with a dangerous list. He grinned. ‘A tomb with a view.'

‘Views are for the living, Crosby,' said Sloan austerely, ‘and from the sound of it there aren't going to be many relatives visiting this one. Not if the grandson is going straight back to where he came from.' He reached the new grave and regarded the disturbed ground with misgiving.

‘You can see what I meant, Inspector, can't you?' said Tod anxiously. ‘And why I did what I did.'

Sloan nodded and said, ‘You can tape all this off, Crosby. It's a crime scene now. I've alerted Forensics but you'd better whistle up the photographers first.'

Tod Morton, still in need of reassurance, said, ‘I hope I did right but I just put the top board of the coffin back again, Inspector. That's all. Well, that and a bit of earth. I couldn't very well have left her lying in here with it open, could I?'

‘No,' said Sloan. ‘But what I want to know is, having spotted the loose coffin lid, what it was that then made you undo the shroud?'

‘I didn't need to. Somebody else had done it first,' responded Tod with vigour. ‘And then he'd just slid the coffin lid back afterwards and heaped some of the earth back on top of the grave. But not a lot.'

‘And not very tidily,' observed the vicar, looking round.

‘And not all the earth,' chimed in Crosby, waving a hand. ‘It's all over the place.'

Detective Inspector Sloan cast his eye over the scene. Whoever had embarked on the grave-robbing certainly hadn't been too careful about covering up the intrusion.

Or, perhaps, had done it in the dark.

Or possibly had been disturbed in the act.

On the other hand, decided Sloan to himself, if the disturbance hadn't been spotted the ground would probably have settled back and levelled out, in time, of its own accord – certainly by the time a stone monument had been put in place. He was visited by another thought and turned to the undertaker. ‘Tod, had the deceased arranged to have a memorial put here?'

‘Oh, yes, Inspector. In due time, of course. We usually like to wait for six months or so for the ground to settle before we put any permanent marble down.'

‘What sort of a memorial? I mean, what was to be put on it?' One thing that Sloan had learnt in the course of a working life in the police force was that the most arcane piece of information could constitute a valuable clue.

Tod Morton frowned. ‘I'd have to go back to the office to be certain, Inspector, but I think Mr Puckle told us it was just her full name and dates – oh, and those of her son and daughter-in-law who had predeceased her.'

‘No frills, then,' said Crosby, kicking at a loose stone.

 

‘It's the Met,' said Detective Constable Crosby, hastily handing over the telephone to Sloan. They had only just got back to the police station at Berebury from Damory Regis. ‘Coming back to us after my call.'

‘That was quick,' said Sloan, putting the receiver to his ear. ‘Good afternoon. DI Sloan, “F” Division, Calleshire, here.'

‘In reply to your enquiry about a resident at the Erroll Garden Hotel, Inspector…' The voice sounded very young for his rank. A bright boy, decided Sloan automatically. Unless promotion came early in the Smoke. Or, an even unhappier thought, that they had no old men there.

‘Yes?' he said.

‘A male answering to the description you gave us booked in there last evening using what appeared to be his own name of William Wakefield, charging the account to his firm. Apparently this is quite usual as the firm in question use the hotel on a regular basis for their staff and business guests and raised no problems.'

‘That helps,' said Sloan. In his view routine had a merit all of its own. Deviation from a known routine on the part of a suspect was from a police aspect often the icing on the cake.

‘I can tell you one thing, Inspector, and that's that they don't stint themselves there. It's very plush.'

‘Don't worry. I reckon it won't be long before we shake him out of his comfort zone,' said Sloan. Doing just that usually went with the territory, so to speak. Police territory, that is.

The man from the Met carried on. ‘The subject of your enquiry registered on arrival at about seven o'clock and soon after that went down to dinner in the hotel dining room. He then went back to his room…'

‘How on earth do you…or, rather they…know that?' asked Sloan spontaneously. Closed-circuit television was all very well in known trouble spots but not, surely, in the dining room of an upmarket London hotel.

The voice at the other end of the line chuckled. ‘Ah, they've got some very sophisticated system attached to those computer cards they use to open the bedroom doors. Keeps a record.'

‘I'm impressed,' said Sloan, and he was. Such supervisory instruments hadn't yet reached rural Calleshire. He for one didn't imagine any such system being obtained at the Bellingham Hotel in Berebury. ‘Tell me, do the guests know about it?'

‘Couldn't say,' responded the other man airily. ‘And I didn't ask.'

Detective Inspector Sloan could think of other places where such a system might come in handy: the homes of some of their own local troublemakers, for instance.

‘Keeps a record of the cleaning staff, too, of course, remember,' observed the other man dryly. ‘And room service.'

‘Quite so,' said Sloan, wondering how soon a similar degree of surveillance would be in place to monitor police work. Perhaps things had gone too far, too soon. Why, his old sergeant used to reminisce about when he had to call in from a blue Dr Who-style police box on his beat at a certain time to prove he was where he should be at the right time. And safe. And if he didn't, then his pals would start looking for him, fearing that he had been attacked in a dark alley. Which he sometimes had been. Sloan brought his mind back to the present with a jerk. ‘What was that you just said?'

‘You're going to like this.'

‘I am liking it,' said Sloan. ‘Carry on.'

‘That the man in question went back to his room just after nine o'clock…'

‘Got that. Go on.'

‘But at ten o'clock or thereabouts he went out again.'

‘He did, did he?' Sloan pulled his notebook a little nearer and said, sounding, had he known it, remarkably like his own father years earlier when he, Christopher Dennis Sloan, had stayed out too late, ‘And at what time exactly, may I ask, did he come in again?'

‘He is recorded as re-entering his room just after half past three in the morning,' said the Metropolitan policeman, adding sedulously, ‘that of interest to you people?'

‘It is indeed. Tell me, did anyone in the hotel lobby see him come in?'

‘Oh, yes. A place like that always has a night porter or two around then. Besides, they have cameras there, too.'

That was something else Sloan didn't suppose they would have at the Bellingham in Berebury. ‘And did any of them notice anything about him at the time?'

The other policeman paused, torn between conveying an air of urban sophistication and accurate reportage. ‘Oh, yes, Inspector. The porter said he looked like he'd had a real night out on the tiles. Knackered, in fact.' The voice added, man of the world, ‘We do find this quite often, you know, in fellows who don't know their London nightlife.'

‘Up from the country and let off the leash,' agreed Detective Inspector Sloan, a family man himself.

‘The night porter said that he did wonder for a moment if the man had been mugged and he asked him if he was all right seeing as his clothes seemed all over the place and he had a bit of a bruise coming up on his right cheek. Apparently this William Wakefield said he was on top of the world, thank you, and staggered to the lift. Very much the worse for wear, was how the porter put it.'

‘Thank you…'

‘There's something else.'

‘Yes?'

‘When he had first checked in he had asked for an early call the next morning. When the automated one went off he didn't answer it so a chambermaid was sent up. Apparently he said something quite unprintable to her and then made an improper suggestion, which she reported to the housekeeper. It would seem that he then went back to sleep again. He didn't check out until nearly noon and that was after he'd been woken again and reminded that he had to vacate the room unless he was going to stay another night.'