Past Tense (20 page)

‘We didn't, though,' said the old man stubbornly. ‘Nor anyone here, either.'

Tod's mind was still churning away. ‘Remember, Dad, whoever it was, they didn't get in.'

‘I know that,' he rasped.

‘And don't forget, Dad, those rings are worth an arm and a leg. Even I know that. They were really lovely.'

‘My reputation's more important than any number of rings,' he growled. ‘However valuable. Rings belong by nature to the past. My name's my future and yours, too. Don't you ever forget it. I shouldn't have to remind you, Tod, that reputation's what counts in our line of work. If people think you're going in for funny business they won't come to you in the first place.' He grunted. ‘That's not all. There's something else.'

‘What's that, then?'

‘I've had the chief reporter from
The Berebury Gazette
round – you remember, we buried his Aunt Mabel last year.'

‘Don't say they've found out about the exhumation already?'

‘You bet your sweet life they have but they don't know for why. Yet,' he added ominously. ‘I didn't tell 'em and I'm not going to. And neither are you.'

‘No, Dad.'

‘I told them it was being done on the instructions of the Home Office and not a thing more. Got that?'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘Sure?'

‘Yes, Dad.'

 

The message came on the internal telephone from the desk sergeant at Berebury Police Station. ‘There's a man here asking for you, Inspector Sloan.'

‘Who?' asked Sloan warily. ‘I'm very busy.' He wasn't sure if detectives were allowed to ignore any calls on their time at will. Probably not.

‘He says he's called Short, Joseph Short.'

‘I'll be right down.'

Joe Short was standing waiting by the counter when he got there. He looked older now and his lips were set in a firm line. ‘I saw you on television, Inspector. That grave at Damory Regis that's been disturbed, which the reporter was asking about, is Granny's, isn't it? What on earth's going on over there? Tell me.'

‘I am not in a position to say at this stage of our enquiries, sir.'

Joe Short's tanned complexion turned a darker hue and he growled, ‘That's not good enough, Inspector. Surely I've got every right to know? I am her grandson.'

Detective Inspector Sloan, seasoned police officer that he was, contrived to invest his reply with sincere-sounding regret. ‘I'm very sorry, sir, but further enquiries are pending and until then I can give you no further information on the matter.'

‘But I've got a flight back to Lasserta arranged for the day after tomorrow. I can't change it now and I can't just go and leave something like that hanging in the air.'

Sloan was unbending. ‘As soon as we have any more definite news, sir, we shall inform you and, of course, Mr Simon Puckle. In the meantime I'm afraid the matter is in the hands of Her Majesty's Coroner and the Home Office.'

‘What has my poor grandmother done to deserve something like this to happen to her grave?' Joseph Short leant his elbows on the counter and sank his head in his hands. ‘It's turning into an absolute nightmare.'

Detective Inspector Sloan did not attempt to disillusion him.

*   *   *

‘You can keep your five-star hotels,' said William Wakefield that evening, looking appreciatively round the comfortable lounge of the Bellingham Hotel and sinking down into a leather sofa. ‘This is more like home, Joe, and I like it.'

‘I don't know whether that's a compliment to my good taste in interior design or not,' smiled Janet Wakefield, sitting back in her chair in an unusually relaxed manner for her.

‘If you could see some of the outstations up at Mathabo where I'm living,' said Joe Short, ‘you'd take it as a compliment.'

‘Tell me, Joe,' said Janet Wakefield, raising her glass in his direction, ‘what are you going to do now?'

‘Fly back to Lasserta as soon as I can,' he said. ‘Otherwise I reckon Cartwright's Consolidated Carbons will soon be wanting to know the reason why.'

‘I meant,' she said bluntly, ‘when you come into your inheritance?'

‘Oh, that. I don't really know. I'm on a two-year contract with Cartwright's anyway and I'd want to finish that. Besides, there's the matter of my parents' affairs out there. I can't just leave Lasserta without winding them up – it's not the sort of thing you can do at a distance – and heaven alone knows when they'll be finally settled.' A shadow passed over his face. ‘It's been an absolute nightmare so far, I can tell you.'

‘No throwing your cap over the windmill, then,' said William Wakefield.

‘Or hanging your hat in somebody's hall?' suggested Janet mischievously.

‘One day perhaps, but not quite yet,' he said, flushing a little, ‘but I reckon I won't be able to come back to Calleshire for a bit.'

‘Nothing to bring you back now, anyway,' said Janet. As her friend, Dawn, was wont to say, tact had never been Janet's strong suit.

‘No.' He hesitated and then said diffidently, ‘I suppose you wouldn't mind going over and making sure that Granny's grave's all right and that sort of thing? After I've gone, I mean. Could I ask you to do that? Once in a while, I mean, that's all.'

‘Of course not,' said Janet immediately. ‘I'd be happy to. Is there anything else we can do for you when you've gone back?'

‘If anything more turns up in the local paper about that girl, Lucy, who was at the funeral, I'd obviously like to know – oh, and there'll be a gravestone put up in Damory Regis churchyard in due course, when the ground's ready, that is. The solicitor had a note of what Granny wanted put on it, all decided by her when she went into the nursing home, and he'll arrange it but I wouldn't mind a photograph of it sometime.'

‘Of course,' she said, nodding.

‘Actually,' continued Joe, ‘I'm going over there again tomorrow morning. I've heard that there's been some sort of disturbance to the grave there and I'd like to take a look at it before I go back to Lasserta.'

William Wakefield said, ‘Odd, that.'

‘Isn't it?' agreed Joe eagerly. ‘I don't quite understand what's been happening but I wouldn't want anything to have gone wrong with Granny's arrangements.'

‘No. A really remarkable woman, your grandmother,' said Janet. She looked at the two men. ‘I hope it's in the genes of both you two.'

‘I realise that we have a lot to live up to,' said Joe lightly. ‘All I can say is, for my part, that I'm doing my best.'

‘So am I,' said William fervently, adding under his breath, ‘and how!'

It was later that night that Janet Wakefield turned over in bed at The Old Post Office at Staple St James for the tenth time, punching her pillow quite strenuously as she did so.

‘A bit restless, aren't you?' complained her husband drowsily.

‘It's all right for you. I can't sleep.'

‘Well, don't forget that I've got to be up early to catch the first train tomorrow morning.'

‘I don't know why Head Office should want to talk to you again so soon,' she pouted. ‘We've got so little time together as it is.'

‘I've told you already it's for a briefing on the new job,' he said, pulling the bedclothes back into shape. ‘Where's the end of this blanket got to?'

‘Don't tell me that all those maidens you say you meet in the jungle aren't ever restless, too,' she said sweetly.

‘Models of stillness, the lot of them.' He joined his hands together behind his head and rested them against the pillow. ‘I will say one thing about the upriver maidens,' he murmured provocatively, ‘and that's that they're a jolly sight more biddable than you are.'

‘What was that you said?' She sat straight up in bed at once and glared at him.

He grinned back at her. ‘I do like it when you get uptight. Do you realise that your face turns quite pink when that happens?'

‘One day, William Wakefield, I shall hit you. I really will.'

‘Actually, though, I'm afraid it's against company policy to take the maidens to bed.'

‘I should hope so, too.'

‘Only they put it a bit more obliquely in the contract.'

‘I'll bet they do.'

‘Wives aren't allowed to hit their husbands either so for goodness' sake stop wriggling around and go back to sleep.'

‘I can't. Something's niggling me.'

‘What?'

‘If I knew that, then I could do something about it and get back to sleep, couldn't I?'

‘Yes.' He turned over and shut his eyes. ‘Go on thinking by all means but do it quietly.'

Janet was still sitting up in bed. ‘You do realise, don't you, that we've only got one more night together after this before you go back to Brazil?'

‘I do.'

‘Those are the very same words that you used at our wedding, remember?' she stifled a sentimental sigh.

‘I haven't forgotten,' he said wearily, turning his shoulder away.

‘Bill?'

‘What is it now?' he asked impatiently.

‘That doctor we saw today…'

‘What about him?'

‘Is he any good, do you think?'

‘I don't know but I can tell you he's the most pompous and mealy-mouthed man I've ever met. Anyway, time will tell, won't it?'

What Janet stifled now sounded suspiciously like a sob.

‘Now,' he said firmly, ‘if I'm not going to mess up tomorrow I must get some sleep. Goodnight!'

Janet Wakefield lay on her back, very still, for a long time, pursuing an elusive memory. It was a long time after that before she fell into an uneasy sleep.

Years of working in the law had taught Simon Puckle, country solicitor, the virtues of routine and punctuality. Thus he went through the same procedures every morning when he arrived for work. First on his agenda was what he had come to think of as a colloquy with Miss Florence Fennel. She would arrive armed with the morning post, each missive carefully annotated and awaiting his instructions. These duly given, talk would turn to ongoing matters.

‘And Joseph Short,' finished Miss Fennel, who never used the diminutives of names as a matter of principle and never omitted a surname, ‘has telephoned from the Bellingham to say that having now got his permit to travel he has fixed up a provisional return flight to Lasserta for late tomorrow afternoon. That is unless we require him to extend his stay for any reason.'

‘I don't think we do, do we?' said Simon Puckle, frowning. ‘We can send the probate papers and anything else that needs signing out to him.'

‘In due course,' supplemented Miss Fennel automatically. ‘We mustn't forget there are those letters and photographs that the nursing home sent round yesterday.'

‘Get him to call round and pick them up before he goes, then. We don't really want them here. Now, what time do I have to be at the magistrates' court?'

 

Work relating to their activities at Berebury Police Station had begun in a rather less orderly fashion, the virtues of a daily routine only kicking in when everything was quiet in the town. Early as it had been when the police had called at The Old Post Office in Staple St James it was only to find that William Wakefield had already left for his firm's head office in London.

‘His wife was still in bed, though, when we got there,' reported Detective Inspector Sloan to an acerbic Superintendent Leeyes.

‘That's not my idea of a dawn raid,' observed Leeyes irascibly.

‘We got her up,' offered Sloan, the only palliative that came to mind.

‘It isn't his wife we wanted to talk to, Sloan,' rasped Leeyes. ‘You know that. It wasn't the hen bird that had flown.'

Sloan acknowledged the witticism with a wintry smile. ‘Janet Wakefield explained to us that they had both been at the Bellingham Hotel all the evening before with Joseph Short which is why we didn't find her husband at home then.'

‘Wakefield sounds like that damned elusive pimpernel to me,' grumbled Leeyes. ‘Has he gone straight to his office this morning like she said he had or is he going walkabout in London like the last time he was there? I hope you've checked on that?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Sloan. ‘Wakefield's at his office, all right. I've just checked that with them.'

‘Well, I hope he stays there until he comes home and that you interview him as soon as he does.' Leeyes changed tack. ‘Did you get anything out of your interview with the other fellow – Joe Short?'

‘Not a lot. If he's a wrong 'un it doesn't show. And he did hire a car at the airport on the morning of the funeral, like he said, and not at any other time in his name that the Met can establish. And the photograph we've had back from his firm, Cartwright's Carbons, in Lasserta is definitely of him. He had all his answers off pat, too.'

‘I don't like the sound of that, Sloan,' pounced the superintendent immediately. ‘Not natural.'

‘You could say he ticked all the right boxes when we talked to him, sir. And he insisted that he'd handed over to us all those funeral cards from the undertaker.'

‘No way of telling, of course,' grunted Leeyes. ‘Or even whether she filled one in.'

‘No, sir, but we haven't established any connection between him and Lucy Lansdown, or come to that between the girl and William Wakefield either. Not yet, anyway. No one of his name seems to have hired a car the night that the girl went into the river. All her brother could tell us was that she'd had an unhappy love affair a few years ago but he didn't know who with and he'd definitely never met the man in question. He didn't know anything about him at all.'

‘Brothers,' pronounced the Superintendent sagely, ‘never understand their sisters' love lives and never will.'

‘Quite so, sir. I'll talk to him properly as soon as he arrives in Berebury, of course.'

‘And keep trying with both Wakefield and Short, Sloan. This is a murder case, remember, not petty theft.'

‘I haven't forgotten, sir,' promised Sloan, making for his own office with a certain relief.

Some good news awaited him there.

‘Cast your bread upon the waters, Crosby,' began Detective Inspector Sloan, a sheet of paper in his hands, as the constable entered with two steaming mugs of coffee.

‘And it will be returned to you as sandwiches,' rejoined Crosby irreverently.

‘Actually, Crosby, I had in mind a more general observation on the merits of following police procedure to the letter.'

‘Sorry, sir.'

‘And the importance of attention to detail.'

‘Naturally, sir,' he said solemnly. ‘It's worked, then, has it?'

Sloan smoothed out a message sheet lying on his desk. ‘I am happy to say that the good practice of our routine general circulation of jewellers and pawnbrokers has paid off in spades.'

‘The rings?' deduced Crosby.

Sloan read out aloud, ‘An eternity ring, answering to the description of one of the three rings as outlined in your circular of yesterday's date, was offered for sale to Tatton's, the jewellers, in Luston High Street today for cash by an unknown young man.'

‘Testing the market?' said Crosby.

‘Just so,' said Sloan.

‘A young man who happened to be too shy to leave his name and address?' enquired the detective constable.

‘You've got it in one, Crosby. Moreover – surprise, surprise – when pressed to write these details in their ledger, he took his departure with speed, and the ring, of course.'

Sloan's train of thought was interrupted by the latent memory of the unpopular pedant who had taught him English grammar at school. That he'd just committed a grammatical solecism, he knew, but what he couldn't remember was which one. There had been a phrase…recollection came flooding back after a moment: ‘The man dropped a sigh and a sixpence' – that was it. The schoolmaster had called that a condensed sentence and quoted a famous playwright: ‘Cut the second act and that child's throat.' In the playground afterwards he and his friends had dreamt up some more, schoolboy humour well to the fore, and better forgotten. He came back to the present with a jerk as Crosby spoke. ‘What was that you said, Crosby?'

‘Is there any description of the man, sir?' For once Crosby had his notebook at the ready.

‘Some,' said Sloan, reading aloud from the message sheet. ‘Medium height, brown hair and nondescript clothes. And hood, of course,' he added, since this item of apparel seemed to be de rigueur these days among the urban young of a lawbreaking disposition. ‘However, Crosby, fortunately Tatton's, who were not born yesterday in spite of the venerable age of their firm, possess a hidden camera with which they record a photographic image of all the customers who come into their shop.'

‘Matthew Steele?' hazarded Crosby. He started to get to his feet. ‘I could go over to Luston and get that picture, sir…it wouldn't take me long.'

‘I'm sure it wouldn't,' said Sloan, ‘but I'm happy to say that an image is on its way and will reach us even more quickly by computer.'

Crosby subsided back into his chair, a disappointed man. ‘There's a general call out for Matthew Steele already so…'

‘So there's nothing more to be done about him for the time being,' said Sloan.

‘Except keep an eye open,' said Crosby.

‘Except keep an eye on his home,' Sloan corrected him wearily. ‘Bad boys always come home in the end.' That was something else he had learnt long ago on the beat.

‘Those rings must be worth a real bomb or he's got a drug dealer putting on the frighteners in a big way.'

‘Both, probably,' agreed Sloan sourly.

Detective Constable Crosby leant back in his chair and started to count off his fingers. ‘So first he breaks into the nursing home and finds the body gone, and so he tries to get into the undertaker's next and can't, so then he goes for the grave.'

‘No,' said Sloan.

‘No?' Crosby looked puzzled.

‘Well, yes and no,' said Sloan since he wasn't talking to the superintendent now. ‘No, he doesn't break into the nursing home because in the first place he wouldn't need to, knowing where the keys are kept, and in the second place getting in there the night before the funeral would have been too late. The body wouldn't have been there by then.'

‘So why didn't he break in there while it was?' asked Crosby simply.

‘Probably because his mother didn't mention until after it had happened that the rings had gone with the body to the undertaker's. She knows him even better than we do, remember.'

‘So somebody else broke in there,' concluded Crosby slowly, ‘someone who wasn't looking for the rings.'

‘Exactly, Crosby.'

‘So what were they looking for?'

‘If, Crosby, we knew that I think we would know the answer to everything.' At this stage Sloan wasn't at all sure what the word ‘everything' comprised. If he knew that, too, it would help. What he seemed to be investigating at the moment was a complicated melange of things that were not quite right. First and foremost of these was the death of a young woman called Lucy Lansdown. This had been about the time, not yet determined, of the disturbing of a grave contrary to the Burial Act of 1852, which forbade any such thing, thus leading to the theft of valuable property. He reminded himself that he must not forget a successful break-in at another place – the nursing home – and an attempted break-in at a quite different place – the undertaker's – to say nothing of the search of the dead young woman's house by person or persons unknown. It was, though, quite enough to be getting on with.

‘They wouldn't have broken in to that nursing home for nothing, would they, sir? Without a reason, I mean. Whoever they are.'

‘No.' That much was certain.

His brow furrowed, Crosby thought hard. ‘If there was nothing valuable left in there…'

‘Nothing intrinsically valuable,' amended Sloan.

‘All right,' agreed Crosby, conceding this, ‘then it must have been for something that someone didn't want found there.'

‘Keep going, Crosby.'

‘Like a photograph of Lucy Lansdown?'

‘Could be. Too soon to say but that would be the sort of missing link between Josephine Short and Lucy Lansdown that we're looking for.' Detective Inspector Sloan turned his attention back to the message sheet from the jeweller's at Luston. ‘There's something else interesting, Crosby. Tatton's, the jewellers, who are very experienced in these matters, had noticed the names inside the eternity ring before they handed them back to the customer. Indeed, they say they had actually pointed out to the customer that the names lowered the resale value.'

‘Really?' The constable didn't sound too interested. ‘I didn't know that they did.'

‘Think, Crosby,' he said, exasperated now. ‘Difficult, surely, to present it to the love of your life as new if it's got someone else's names engraved in it. Even you ought to be able to work that out.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Sloan bent over the message sheet again. ‘The names inscribed inside the eternity ring were Josephine and George, entwined.'

‘Soppy,' said Crosby, unmarried and rather gauche.

‘Sentimental,' said Sloan, married long since but still able to remember the uncertain swain he had been once upon a time. That girl in the blue dress had taken quite some winning.

‘Same difference.' Crosby shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

‘Josephine Short,' said Sloan, still a policeman, ‘called her son George.'

‘After his father, then, do you think?'

‘I don't know. But George Peter Arden Short was certainly the name of Joseph Short's father,' said Sloan, stirred by a memory of something he couldn't quite place. ‘And Joe's middle name is Arden, too.' Idly, Sloan wondered if both – if all three – had the family face, whatever that might have been. He'd been made to learn a poem called ‘Heredity' by Thomas Hardy about that very thing, by that same schoolmaster. Since the penalty for failing to do so in those days involved the cane, the words easily came back to him now:

‘
I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon

And leaping from place to place Over oblivion.
'

Moreover, learning this for his English homework had not in his fourteen-year-old mind been something any self-respecting schoolboy should have had to do. He'd resented it, too, because in his opinion then Thomas Hardy was for girls. He sighed and said now, ‘One more thing, Crosby, before we get going.'

‘Sir?'

‘William Wakefield. I still want a question and answer session with that man as soon as we can catch up with him and before he hoofs it back to Brazil. He must be interviewed the minute he gets back to Berebury. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And as for Joe Short…'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘We need to make quite sure that no ill befalls him before he goes back to his benighted island.'

 

The question of whether married subjects of either sex should be interviewed separately or in the presence of each other had always been a debatable one at the police station. Had he been asked, Detective Inspector Sloan would have taken a pragmatic view. Sometimes, he would have said, it helped to note the body language of one partner while the other one was being questioned, sometimes it was valuable for the one not to know what the other had said.