Past Tense (4 page)

Sloan nodded.

‘Then there's the broken vase,' said Mrs Luxton. ‘In room 18, that is. No one on the staff admits to having knocked it over, and there certainly wasn't any reason for anyone to enter that room until Ellen went in this morning to give it a tidy before the family came back again, the resident there having died last week. When we realised that there had been a break-in, though, we left it as it was.'

Sloan stood in the doorway of room 18 and considered the pieces of the smashed vase on the floor. ‘Quite right. There may be footprints on the carpet…' Crosby, he decided, could summon up the Scene of Crime people to examine the room after they looked at the back of the building and the missing window.

‘She – that's the late Josephine Short, the resident whose room this was until she died – always had that vase on the edge of her shelf,' said the matron.

Sloan nodded. An intruder working in the dark – or at least, in very little light – could have easily knocked it over when feeling along the shelf. It would have been where most residents would have kept their ornamental bits and pieces. He stepped across to a little chest of drawers and opened each in turn.

‘As far as we know, Inspector,' said the matron, ‘the resident here had no real valuables save the rings that she always wore. They were very nice, though, I must say.'

He nodded and carried on with his examination. The top drawers were full of toiletries and suchlike but the bottom one yielded a tattered brown envelope. He lifted this out and spilt the contents onto the bedside table. They were mostly old black and white photographs. He riffled through them, noting only one newish one. It was of a tall, cheerful, young man, presumably the grown-up version of several ones of a child, including a faded one of a little boy steadying himself beside a table labelled ‘Joe aged two and a half'. There were several of a young couple standing under the canopy of a variety of tree he didn't recognise and more of the same couple a little older with a small boy standing between them but with a totally different background.

‘Did anyone hear anything?' he asked.

‘The night staff made a note that Lady Alice in the room above complained of a bump in the night, but,' she sighed, ‘Lady Alice complains about everything and I'm afraid they didn't take too much notice of her at the time.'

‘I'd better talk to all the residents presently,' said the detective inspector conscientiously.

Mrs Luxton hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘Don't ask the one called Mavis how she is, though, will you, Inspector?' she said anxiously. ‘You'll never get her to stop if you do.'

‘Gives you a full organ recital, does she?' asked Detective Constable Crosby chattily.

‘What about the key to this room?' Sloan asked, ignoring this.

‘On a hook on a board in the office,' she said.

‘A numbered hook?'

‘Oh, yes, naturally.' She gave him a rueful look. ‘We'd never keep track of anything here otherwise.'

‘And where would the night staff have been during the night?'

‘They would have been doing the ironing, preparing the breakfast trays, answering any bells,' said the matron piously, although she personally suspected that that wasn't always the case. ‘That sort of thing. There would have been two of them on and, of course, they have a break.'

‘A woman's work is never done,' muttered Crosby under his breath.

‘So the intruder might have knocked over the vase and got out before he could take anything,' reasoned Sloan aloud.

‘I'm sure I hope so,' said Mrs Luxton warmly, ‘but if he was in room 18 then he – or she – remembered to lock the door again on his – or her – way out and put the key back on its hook before he left.'

‘Funny that,' observed Detective Constable Crosby.

‘But nothing has been taken, which is so odd,' said the matron.

‘Alternatively the intruder might have been disturbed anyway,' pointed out Sloan. ‘He could have heard the staff moving about and so forth.'

‘He—' began Mrs Luxton.

‘Or she,' put in Detective Constable Crosby once again, the lesson on sexual discrimination having been well learnt.

She looked at him and said deliberately, ‘Come this way, gentlemen. To my office. He or she,' she invested the words with ironic significance, ‘had enough time to go through my bureau over there.'

The policemen regarded the matron's burr walnut desk with interest. ‘How do you know?' asked Sloan.

‘The papers have been put back in the wrong pigeonholes,' she said. ‘I always keep current bills in the left-hand slot. Always. That way I know when they're due, and when they've been paid I put them somewhere else.'

‘Just so,' murmured the detective inspector. In the Sloan household unpaid bills hung around like a miasma until the end of the month. ‘Crosby, whistle up that SOCO, pronto, will you?' He turned to Mrs Luxton. ‘I think I'd better just have a word with the woman who first went into the room. Ellen, did you say her name was?'

‘Ellen Steele,' said Mrs Luxton, putting her finger on a bell.

The name rang a different sort of bell with Detective Inspector Sloan who had spent all his working life in and about the market town of Berebury and thus knew all the malefactors. The entire Steele clan were known to the police in every sense of the phrase. ‘Matthew's mother,' he said immediately when she entered the room, recognising her at once from numerous court appearances involving her son.

‘That's right, Mr Sloan,' she said anxiously. ‘He hasn't been and done anything, has he?'

‘Not that I know about,' said Sloan dryly. Matthew Steele came into the category of persistent offender, in and out of trouble all his life, lacking in both brains and morality.

‘He hasn't been in trouble for quite a bit now,' she advanced tentatively.

‘I'm very glad to hear it,' said Sloan. ‘Now, tell me all about this broken vase.'

Janet Wakefield had put the telephone down after talking to Joe Short with something bordering on relief that he hadn't offered to come and collect her. Having her own car gave a girl a certain independence.

Deliberately making herself just a little late, she duly made her way to the Bellingham Hotel as evening fell. An old coaching inn, it sat in the middle of the market town of Berebury, the stable yard now its car park. It was a little bit on the shabby side these days and distinctly old-fashioned, but unpretentious and comfortable. Joe Short was waiting for her in the entrance hall and led her to the lounge. He was still in the same rather crumpled darkish suit, but very welcoming.

‘Now, what will you have to drink?' he asked.

Janet settled herself into a chair while he busied himself at the bar. Looking over at him while he did so, Janet decided he must be about thirty years old, perhaps a little less. He was tall and well built, with short brown hair surmounting a considerable suntan, and broad workmanlike hands.

‘There we are,' he said, soon returning with a glass in each hand. He set them down and waved a hand round the hotel's lounge. ‘I'm sorry it's not the Almstone Towers but Granny did recommend the Bellingham Hotel for good value. And until the insurance people settle up for Mum and Dad's accident, the Bellingham it will have to be. There's nothing wrong with it anyway. It's a lot more comfortable than Mathabo – that's where I live in Lasserta.'

‘I expect that sort of thing takes time,' said Janet vaguely. ‘Insurance claims, I mean.'

‘It's going to take a lot more than time,' he said bitterly. ‘They were on a Lasserta Airlines plane…'

‘So surely the insurance—'

‘But unfortunately the accident happened on a Lassertan runway…'

‘And each is blaming the other?' divined Janet without difficulty.

‘Too right, they are. It'll take years before they finish arguing. And Lassertans love arguing. They're famous for it. And insurance companies never hurry themselves either.'

‘What I want to know,' said Janet, never a time-waster and conscious of a need to change the subject, ‘is how you heard about the funeral.'

‘Easy,' he relaxed. ‘We may live on a benighted island but we can go online and therefore read the papers even out in the wilds of Lasserta.'

‘But why weren't you told properly?' she asked. ‘By the nursing home or the undertaker's, I mean?'

‘Granny said I wasn't to come,' he said simply.

‘What?' exclaimed Janet. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude.'

‘Don't worry. I know it sounds odd but it isn't really. First of all, Granny was the most unsentimental person I've ever known. She said she'd had all that knocked out of her when her family kicked her out of the house because she was pregnant.'

‘That must have been quite awful,' said Janet.

‘And anyway I'd had to come home and sort things out when…after the plane accident.' He raised his glass to her and went on, ‘Then, you see, I'd changed jobs after that and so I hadn't really clocked up enough leave to come back again in the ordinary way.'

‘But you came all the same,' she said, taking a sip of her drink.

‘Cartwright's – that's Cartwright's Consolidated Carbons who I work for these days – were really decent about it and said I ought to go.'

‘I should hope so, too,' said Janet, whose knowledge of overseas employment practices began and ended with those of her husband's firm.

‘Actually,' Joe looked down and seemed a bit confused, saying in a muffled voice, ‘I'd lost a mate – he went off trekking in the jungle and couldn't be found – just as I went to work for them and I think they were a bit sorry for me.'

‘Bad luck,' Jan said gently. She stayed quiet for a moment and then, ‘There's something else. Something I'd really like to know,' she said.

‘Fire away,' said Joe Short, his poise recovered, ‘and then, when you're ready, we'll go in to supper.'

‘What made your grandmother choose to be buried in the churchyard over at Damory Regis? Nobody in the village there had ever heard of her.'

He shook his head. ‘I have absolutely no idea and she'd never said anything to me. I didn't even know that was what she'd arranged.'

‘And what on earth is the Rowlettian Society?'

He laughed. ‘That one's not so difficult. It's the Old Boys' Association of the school where Granny used to work. Rowletts.'

‘The prep school? I've heard of that, of course. It's over Calleford way, isn't it? I should have put two and two together and realised the Rowlettian Society was to do with it, shouldn't I? Silly of me.' She gave a shy little laugh. ‘It's where Bill says any children we ever have should go. It's out in the country between Calleford and Kinnisport, isn't it?'

‘That's right. In the real Calleshire hinterland,' he said, his lips tightening again. ‘The Calleshire hinterland isn't as dangerous as the Lassertan one, though. That's where Brian got lost – he was my best mate.' He pushed his chair back and stood up abruptly before she could say anything and said, ‘Let's go and eat and I'll tell you all about Lasserta.' He waited until she'd finished her drink and then led the way into the hotel's dining room. ‘Now, what are you going to have?' he asked, picking up the menu as soon as they were settled at the table. ‘It all looks good to me – where I live you don't get as much choice as this.'

Janet chose the roast beef. ‘It's not something a grass widow ever cooks for herself.'

‘The beef'll do me, too,' he said. ‘It doesn't often come my way in Lasserta. No cattle there to speak of.' He didn't resume the subject of the Rowlettian Society until their first course arrived.

Then he said, ‘When Granny's family showed her the door she had literally nowhere to go—'

‘And was having a baby,' put in Janet. Pregnancy was a subject never far from her own mind.

‘Exactly. So she had to find somewhere to live for starters and then get a job to keep herself and the baby when it came.'

‘Tough,' said Janet.

‘I'll say. It doesn't really bear thinking about. Well, to begin with, I was always told that she farmed the baby out.'

‘I think you mean fostered,' said Janet dryly.

‘Do I?' He grinned. ‘It can't have been much fun, all the same, whichever it was.'

‘No,' agreed Janet soberly.

‘So, being Granny, she soon found a job where she could be resident. She was quite clever really, because always having had a proper nanny herself—'

‘I guessed she was from that sort of a family because of things Bill had heard about her parents from his mother,' nodded Janet. ‘Toffee-nosed and in the money.'

‘From that sort of a family,' agreed Joe Short. ‘Very well off and well up the totem pole. So because of knowing the nanny business from the receiving end she thought she could look after small children herself. She'd had the benefit of having seen it done the right way and on the strength of that she got a position as junior matron at a preparatory school – Rowletts.'

Janet's face cleared. ‘Ah, I understand now.'

‘Anyway, I'm told she proceeded to make herself quite indispensable there and first of all she was allowed to stay at the school in the holidays and then in the fullness of time to have Dad – her baby, that is – there as well. Later on they let him be educated there, too, and at very reduced rates.'

‘Good for her, and them, of course,' Janet added hastily.

‘I'll say. She was soon babysitting for everyone and was promoted to senior matron before very long and became a bit of a personal assistant to the headmaster into the bargain, when necessary.'

‘It was a bargain,' said Janet thoughtfully. ‘I don't know what I would have done if I had been her…' Because babies were yet to arrive in the Wakefield household Janet spent quite a lot of time wondering how she would cope when – if – they did.

‘As far as Dad was concerned Granny was always a bit of a legend and it sort of rubbed off on me.' He looked into the distance. ‘She was great.'

‘I'm sure,' said Janet warmly. ‘I'm beginning to wish I'd known her myself.'

‘That reminds me. You did bring those names and addresses that the undertaker gave you, didn't you? I might find some people who did. Especially that old gentleman who was so keen to have a chat with me. He was a bit tottery – and quite as old as Granny, I would have said.'

Janet handed over the little pile of cards that Tod Morton had given her and Joe Short gave them a quick flick through. He stopped at one and looked it over carefully. ‘There's a Sebastian Worthington here with an address over Calleford way. I wonder if it was he who spoke to me – it could well have been. The handwriting's a bit spidery – it looks like an old man's.'

Janet said mischievously ‘Did he look like you?'

‘I never thought of that.' He frowned and then said seriously, ‘I should have looked at him more carefully.'

‘Only joking,' said Janet swiftly. She wasn't sure, though, that Joe Short had been joking.

He went on flicking through the undertaker's cards. ‘None of these other names mean anything to me.'

‘You don't have any cousins or anything?'

‘No first cousins,' he said seriously. ‘Mum's only brother was killed by a mine when he was yomping towards Port Stanley in the Falklands, but I've probably got loads of remoter ones from Granny's side of the family who I don't know about because of her being ostracised by them in the past.'

‘Such as my late mother-in-law,' said Janet.

‘Wasn't she called Eleanor, too? That was Granny's middle name, you know,' he said.

‘Yes, she was Eleanor Wakefield after she married, so her parents must have stayed friendly with your grandmother or they wouldn't have called their daughter after her, would they?' Janet gave a little laugh. ‘I'm not a blood relation, of course, because I wasn't descended from the Shorts. I'm only married to the son of one of them.' She frowned. ‘I'm not even a cousin german.'

‘What's that?'

‘First cousin. I'm only related by marriage. Affine, I think it's called, but my late mother-in-law – she would have been a blood relative, all right, because Josephine was her aunt. Her father would have been Josephine's brother. I know he was called William because my husband Bill was called after him.'

‘So your mother-in-law would have been a first cousin to my father, wouldn't she?' he said, frowning.

‘That's right and that means my Bill is a connection of yours, too,' said Janet.

‘First cousin, once removed or something,' said Joe, adding, ‘him and an unknown number of others.'

‘Kissing cousins,' said Janet lightly, ‘that's what they all are.'

‘I haven't kissed any of them,' he protested, laughing for the first time and going a little pink.

‘I wonder if any of them came to the funeral,' said Janet, pointing to the little cards, still on the table.

Joe Short scooped them up and put them into his pocket. ‘I'll go through them in the morning. I haven't got to have an early start. I don't have to be at the solicitor's until eleven. Now, what are you going to have after the beef?'

 

Someone who did have an early start the next day was Superintendent Leeyes. He was never at his best first thing in the morning and wise subordinates usually took good care to see to it that they were engaged elsewhere until their superior officer had mulled over his in-tray and had the first of many mugs of tea brought to him at his desk.

Detective Inspector Sloan had no such option to hand when summoned to his presence. The request that he appear at once in his superior's office had been rather more than peremptory.

‘Come in, Sloan, come in and don't waste time. I don't know what you were planning to do this morning but—'

‘Look into that rather odd break-in reported at the Berebury Nursing Home yesterday, sir. There's something there that doesn't quite add up.'

‘Well, it'll have to wait, that's all. This is more important.'

Detective Inspector Sloan tugged his notebook out of his pocket and opened it at a fresh page.

‘Never mind the paperwork now, Sloan,' snapped Leeyes. ‘I want you to get over to Billing Bridge pretty pronto. There's a dead girl there. On the north bank.'

‘Right, sir,' promised Sloan, snapping his notebook shut, getting to his feet and starting to edge towards the door.

‘She was pulled out of the water first thing this morning,' said Leeyes, consulting a message sheet. ‘Two men out fishing saw the body and grabbed it.'

Detective Inspector Sloan noted that between sentences, so to speak, the dead body of the girl – whoever she was – had gone from being referred to as ‘she' to the more depersonalised ‘it'. It wasn't a good sign.

‘Any name known?' he asked. The girl would have been a person still to somebody.

‘There's been nobody reported missing so far today,' said the superintendent elliptically, starting to scrabble about amongst the papers on his desk again, ‘but it's early days yet.'

Rightly taking this to mean that decomposition had not yet set in, Sloan said he would go straight to the riverside. And he would take Crosby, he added to himself, even though it would be puppy-walking again; the dead were beyond harm.