The Body Politic (14 page)

“Making the best of both worlds,” responded Sloan before he'd quite thought the remark through.

“That's right,” said the undertaker. “And those clients who aren't really and truly into cremation even though they have it done, they go for having the ashes chest interred in the churchyard under the east window.”

“Then what did you do?” asked Sloan valiantly. “After you'd inspected the ground.”

“Went back to the west door and kept an ear open for clues about when the service would be over. An organ is a great help at a funeral.”

“I'm sure,” said Sloan astringently.

“Mind you, Inspector, the Vicar took his time anyway, so I was all right. Sometimes you get a real speed merchant.”

“A quicker vicar,” suggested Detective Constable Crosby insouciantly, “or a faster pastor.”

“And then you can be in trouble,” finished Tod.

“Trouble?” rasped Sloan. “What sort of trouble?”

“Too early at the crem, of course,” said Tod, surprised. “That's always bad.”

“Yes, I can see that,” agreed Sloan. Every man to his own trade.

“But if the family go in for people speaking verse and suchlike, then you know they've worked the timing out properly and that it will be all right.” The undertaker warmed to his theme. “If I had a fiver for every time I've heard Tennyson's ‘Crossing the Bar'——”

“The Ottershaw funeral, Tod,” said Sloan again. As a working policeman he did not himself subscribe to the old Poet Laureate's sentiments about letting there be no moaning at the bar when he put out to sea. He, Christopher Dennis Sloan, was all in favour of decent mourning and had instructed his wife Margaret on the matter. Not
pompes funèbres
with black plumed horses but a proper send-off all the same. With roses. If in bloom.

He gave himself a metaphorical shake. This was what came of conducting interviews in an undertaker's parlour.

“The Ottershaw funeral,” he said yet again. “What happened then, Tod?”

“Oh, they had an encomiast so it was all right.”

“A what?” said Sloan.

“You know, Inspector.” Tod grinned. “Someone who has the nerve to stand up and say what a grand chap the deceased was. Same as that bit about not speaking ill of the dead but with all the trimmings and a side salad.”

“
De mortuis nil nisi bonum,
” said Sloan. It was probably the only Latin tag that nearly all Murder Squad detectives knew—and that was because the feeling so often got in the way of an investigation. Especially a murder investigation.

“Could be,” assented Tod cheerfully.

“Who spoke it?” asked Sloan. On police ceremonial occasions the Assistant Chief Constable of the County of Calleshire, who was an Old Boy of a famous school, was nearly always the one wheeled on. He had a favourite quotation from Juvenal which usually found its way into his public addresses. Except funerals, of course. Translated, it meant that no one ever reached the climax of vice at one step. He declaimed it to benches of magistrates as often as he could: judges didn't need telling.

“A guy from his firm,” responded Tod. “The head one, I should say, from the way the others treated him. Behaved as if they were a bit afraid of the boss, they did,” he added reflectively. As an employer Tod Morton was as soft as pussy's foot. “Why do you want to know about the funeral, Inspector?”

“If we'd known about the pellet, Tod, we'd have been there ourselves. Because we didn't, you will have to be our eyes and ears.”

“What else do you want to know?”

Sloan wasn't sure how to put something almost intangible. “If we'd been there ourselves, Tod, we'd have—well, caught the flavour.”

“I get you,” said Tod promptly. “Well, there was a heavy local presence—you can always tell—and, as I told you, his colleagues were there in strength.” He wrinkled his nose. “The village nobs were there, too—Mr. Rauly from Mellamby Place and Major Puiver and suchlike folk. I recognised them.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing that I noticed.” He frowned. “I gathered the deceased was known and liked but not very well known, if you get my meaning. Someone said he'd been away a lot. Plenty of sympathy for the widow and family naturally.”

“Naturally,” said Sloan. Hard evidence in this case was restricted to a small pellet made of queremitte. “Can you tell me the name of the—er—encomiast?” It was high time they established a little more about the late Alan Ottershaw.

“Hang about,” said Tod, “and I'll find out.” He grinned. “I expect you've already spoken to the offilegium, haven't you?”

“The who?”

“Offilegium.”

“And who's he?” growled Sloan. “If you're having me on, Tod Morton …”

“I'm not, Inspector. Honest. We buried the wife of the Professor of Classics up at the University not so long ago and he told me about them.”

“About who, Tod?”

“These people. They were the people in ancient history who came to gather the bones after cremation. The washers was their other name and they anointed the cremated remains and placed them in the urn. It's a fact—he said so when I took him his wife's ashes, this professor.”

“You go and find out about the encomiast, Tod,” said Sloan: he supposed he had spoken to the offilegium at the crematorium. In a manner of speaking.

“All right,” said Tod peaceably. “If you don't mind waiting for a minute.” He grinned again. “I won't lock up or anything while I'm gone. Shop-lifting's not a problem with us.”

“Gertcha,” said Detective Constable Crosby.

“My girl'll have a note of what he was called somewhere.” Tod left the room saying, “Bound to.”

Crosby said into the silence, “Funny business, isn't it, sir?”

“What is?” asked Sloan sharply.

“Undertaking.”

Sloan subsided. “It takes all sorts to make the world.” In his own way, Tod Morton was as much an expert in thanatology as Dr. Dabbe.

The young undertaker was back in a moment. “Sorry to have kept you, gentlemen, but like we say in the trade, ‘Better late than never.'”

Crosby groaned aloud.

“The head man's name was Morenci,” said Tod. “Hamer Morenci.”

ELEVEN

And the Coffin Is Waiting Beside the Bed

Preliminary enquiries by the Calleshire Constabulary about the general availability in the United Kingdom of the hard metal queremitte had brought about a nasty attack of the shakes in the Head Office of the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company in London.

“Anyone would think it was a dangerous substance within the meaning of the Act,” said Darren Greene, Vice-Chairman of the Board, waxing indignant at the police for asking about it. “The Health and Safety Executive aren't interested in queremitte at all.”

“The Ministry of Defence Procurement are,” snapped Hamer Morenci. “Very. And that's what counts.” An executive suite panelled in afromosa wood and hung about with Modigliani paintings had been no guarantee of a full night's sleep for the Board's Chairman.

“I thought that Ottershaw's death would mean that we were out of the wood in Lasserta,” ventured Darren Greene.

“Well, we're not, are we?” snarled Morenci. “Not if the police are sniffing around here asking us about queremitte.”

“It doesn't look like it now,” agreed the Vice-Chairman.

“It would seem, wouldn't it,” said Morenci waspishly, “that it got us off the hook a damn sight too easily for the liking of the local constabulary?”

“His dying from a heart attack that particular Sunday struck me as so pat that I thought somebody's secret service had had a hand in it,” said Darren Greene frankly, “but don't ask me whose.”

Morenci looked straight ahead. “Every government's got its own dirty tricks department.”

“Mind you,” said Greene, “I wouldn't put it past the Ministry myself. They're dead keen on this new toy of theirs and as we know very well it can't work without queremitte.”

Hamer Morenci said, “I don't think we can take anything for granted.”

“That's just what the Detective Inspector said,” Greene reminded him unhappily, “wasn't it? Before he asked us if we minded having our photographs taken.”

Morenci put his elbows on his Charles Rennie Mackintosh desk and sank his chin between his cupped hands. Greene couldn't see if his eyes were shut or not, but he seemed to be replaying a scenario in his mind. “Listen, Darren, I only went down to Calleshire to make sure that everything was all right with Ottershaw.”

“Sure, Hamer.”

“I spoke with him on the telephone on the Saturday morning and he was so damned cagey I thought I'd better go down myself on the Sunday to see what he was up to.”

“Good idea,” said Greene pallidly.

“Well, what would you have done?” demanded Morenci.

“You didn't take the limo?”

“Hell, no! What do you take me for?” Hamer Morenci frowned. “No, I borrowed my wife's car. When I got there I found there were so many other cars in the village that Sunday morning that nobody can have noticed one more.”

“How come?”

“A pageant,” spat Morenci. “A medieval pageant.”

“I thought maypoles had gone out when fertility drugs came in.”

The Board Chairman was brooding too much on his own troubles to smile. “And to make it worse nearly everybody was wearing fancy dress.”

“Even Ottershaw?”

“Even Ottershaw. Although I didn't know then,” Morenci said. “I haven't got X-ray eyes, have I?”

“No,” said Greene, although he—and most of the employees of Anglo-Lassertan—had often wondered.

“I never even saw him then,” said Morenci. “Not to recognise him, anyway. For all I know he was King of the Castle.”

“Not Ottershaw,” said Greene confidently. They employed industrial psychologists to assist recruitment and selection at the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company and those with designs on being King of the Castle were not taken on.

“Not that anyone's likely to believe me.”

“No,” said Greene. “They're not, are they?”

“As far as I could see everyone was up at the Big House.” Hamer Morenci had come a long, long way from the obscurest of origins and it showed when he least expected it to. “There was nobody in at Ottershaw's address.”

“You didn't leave your fingerprints on the front-door knocker, I hope?” It wasn't often that Greene ever felt he had the upper hand in exchanges with his boss and he set out to make the most of it.

“I did not,” said Morenci, suppressing any mention of having asked the way to April Cottage of a passing native of Mellamby.

“Then what did you do?”

“I went up to Mellamby Place with the crowd.” This last was quite uncharacteristic. Hamer Morenci as a rule never went along with the crowd on principle. He frowned. “I saw Hazel Ottershaw but I kept my distance. She was being Queen Somebody or Other and enjoying it.”

“What you don't know,” pointed out Darren Greene, twisting the verbal knife to the full, “is whether Ottershaw saw you. You weren't in disguise, too, were you?”

“I wore my country tweeds,” replied Morenci with dignity, “seeing as it was Sunday and I was in the country. My oldest ones.”

“And you just watched, Hamer?” This was another tweak of the knife and they both knew it. It wasn't often that the Chairman of the Board played the role of silent spectator.

“Actually it was quite interesting,” said Morenci defensively. “It turned out to be a mock battle. And not as mock as all that. Someone heaved a rock down on the crowd from the ruins of an old tower and while the fighting was going on round the castle other people were laying a feast out on great long trestle-tables on the lawn in front of the house. It looked big enough for a French wedding party and then some—although I must say the food looked a bit funny to me.”

“Ottershaw,” Greene reminded him. “You haven't said what happened to Ottershaw.”

Morenci ran his tongue round his lips. “At exactly half-past twelve the fellow who seemed to be in charge of the battle blew a whistle and the fighting stopped.”

“Just like that? I didn't think armistices were so easy to engineer.”

“Those on their feet walked off and the dead and the wounded got up and they all set off towards this great feast.” Morenci paused and ran his tongue over his lips. “Except one.”

“Alan Ottershaw?”

“I didn't know it was him to begin with, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“All I saw was a knight dressed in grey imitation armour with a red shield with a silvery-white chevron on it. A knight,” said Morenci heavily, “who didn't get up when all the others did.”

Darren Greene frowned. “So what happened?”

“When he didn't get up one of the others went back to see why. I saw him bend down over the chap lying on the ground, take one look at him, and then I heard him shout for help. They seem to have rustled up a doctor from somewhere and presently an ambulance turned up and the fellow was carted off. It wasn't until the next day that I realised that it must have been Ottershaw. I didn't know it at the time, I swear.”

“Then what?” asked Greene, keeping the initiative.

“I came back up here to the office to see if there was anything fresh in from Wadeem. Forfar's hardly been off the telex since all the trouble blew up. That's how I came to hear that telephone message from Ottershaw on the tape.”

Darren Greene nodded. Saturdays and Sundays were working days in Lasserta anyway.

“It was timed automatically,” said Morenci, going over again ground already covered with the police. “Half-past nine that Sunday morning it must have been rung in. Before their tournament thing began.”