A Dead Liberty (25 page)

“Before their very eyes,” said Detective Constable Crosby. “Clever, wasn't it?”

“Everyone seeing what was going on,” said Sloan, “but not understanding.”

“I still don't understand,” said John Allsworthy firmly. “And I should like to be told. What exactly was going on?”

“Fraud, mostly,” said Sloan, “and when Kenneth Carline—and his predecessor, poor chap—tumbled to it, murder as well.”

“With the whole office watching?”

Sloan nodded.

“How?” demanded Allsworthy.

“When Carline got to the office on the fatal Monday morning he was in pretty bad shape—bruised and battered and so forth.” Sloan began his narrative with the day of the murder.

“That was the effects of the Rugby match on the Saturday,” said John Allsworthy. “Everyone knew that.”

“What they didn't know,” said Sloan, unperturbed, “was that a man in the opposing team had undertaken to tackle Kenneth Carline at every opportunity. He thought he was doing it for a bet.”

“But he wasn't?” asked Cecelia.

“He was preparing the ground.”

“What for?”

“Murder,” said Sloan succinctly, “by a very clever man.”

“But how?” insisted Allsworthy. “With everyone looking on.”

“By the application,” said Sloan steadily, “of a piece of sticking plaster behind the deceased's ear.”

“That couldn't have killed,” said Allsworthy.

“No,” agreed Sloan, “but the hyoscine impregnated in it did. The sticking plaster had been doctored by Bolsover.” It was funny how the word “doctored” had two meanings—one good and one bad. “Quite a lot of drugs can be administered transdermally.”

“Through the skin,” translated Detective Constable Crosby, who had had to have the concept explained to him very carefully.

“Angina pectoris,” expounded Sloan, “can be treated now by sticking a specially prepared self-adhesive patch on the skin which delivers a constant dose of glyceryl trinitrate to the patient.”

“Ah …” Cecelia Allsworthy let out a long sigh.

“And American doctors quite often prescribe drugs in this way for travel sickness.”

“Bolsover went to the States sometimes on business,” said John Allsworthy.

His wife frowned. “You know, my grandmother used to talk about belladonna plasters when she was young …”

“Out of fashion,” said Sloan, “these days but Dr. Dabbe tells me that there were occasional poisonings from them too.” Actually the pathologist had used the ominous expression “recorded in the literature” and was going to send to the library.

“So,” said John Allsworthy, “Bolsover stuck it on and sent Kenneth off to have lunch with Lucy?”

“That's right,” said Sloan. “She was almost bound to invite him really in the circumstances and it was beautifully timed for the hyoscine to work after Carline's meal with someone who might be suspect. Bolsover took good care not to be there himself, and the fact that Lucy gave him chili con carne was just luck.”

“Most Monday lunches are made-up dishes,” said Cecelia sagely, “especially ones at short notice.”

“The car accident,” said Sloan resuming his saga, “helped to delay diagnosis and treatment, but the real object of the exercise was to make sure that Carline wasn't there for the final paperwork on the tunnel. And,” he added, “to retrieve William Durmast's copy of the tunnel plans from his study.”

“What has the tunnel got to do with it?” asked Cecelia.

“Everything,” said Sloan. He coughed. “Excuse me, Mrs. Allsworthy, but I think that the soup might be about to boil over.”

There was a concerted dive for the stove and the soup was rescued in the nick of time. John Allsworthy applied himself to cutting heroic-sized chunks of home-made bread and Cecelia came out of an old-fashioned larder with a whole ripe Stilton cheese and a bowl of apples.

“Will this do for everybody?” she asked anxiously. “I … we haven't felt like cooking properly since … since … since Hortense …” Her voice quavered and she fell silent.

“We don't really know where Hortense comes into all this, Inspector,” said John Allsworthy. “If she does, that is.”

“I'm afraid there's no doubt about that, sir. She comes in all right.” Allsworthy had accepted with dignity the return of his car and the news that he was no longer a suspect.

Cecelia looked up, her face still drawn and anxious. She clearly didn't trust herself to speak.

“I think we must know a little more, Inspector,” said John Allsworthy quietly. “Her parents are on their way here now …”

“One of the great difficulties that highly successful fraudsters have,” began Sloan a trifle pedantically, “is concealing the proceeds of their crime.”

“Money talks,” observed Crosby to the world at large, “in more ways than one.”

“When we looked for the signs of great wealth in the Bolsover and Durmast families we couldn't spot them,” continued Sloan. “William Durmast and his daughter were living in just the style we would have expected, and although Bolsover and his wife both have very expensive hobbies …”

Cecelia looked up. “Oh?”

“He has a large heated greenhouse with exotic plants in it and she collects Bow china.”

“I'd forgotten that.”

“They nevertheless live in a house, if anything, rather rather smaller than their visible income warranted …”

“They've got a cottage in Provence as well,” said Cecelia.

Sloan shook his head and said gently, “Not a cottage, Mrs. Allsworthy.”

“Not a cottage?” She looked up.

“More like a château,” said Crosby. “A socking big house and an estate to go with it. Vineyard and all.”

Cecelia Allsworthy stared at the two policemen.

“Where in France?” asked her husband sharply.

“That was the trouble,” said Sloan.

“St. Amand-sur-Nesque,” said Crosby who had been practising its pronounciation.

“Did Hortense know him, then?” asked Cecelia uncertainly.

“Or did he know Hortense?” put in her husband swiftly.

“We're not sure,” said Sloan, “but either way we think that Bolsover was afraid that she might recognise him and blow the gaff about his little country cottage in Provence.”

Cecelia frowned. “Lucy did once say that neither she nor her father had ever been invited there. Because it was only one up and one down, the Bolsovers said.”

“More like ‘the House That Berry Built,'” said Sloan. The French police had acted with great celerity and he had the exact details at his finger-tips.

“Poor, poor Hortense,” said Cecelia Allsworthy with a catch in her voice. “And I was the one who told him about my
au pair
girl being homesick for St. Amand-sur-Nesque.” Dismay joined grief on her face. “When I joked about her going to sit in his hot-house …”

“We think,” said Sloan gently, “that that's where the hyoscine came from—the hot-house, I mean. The conditions were just right for growing datura—one of the oldest poisons in the book.”

“I understand all about the mode of poisoning, Sloan,” said Superintendent Leeyes testily. “My next-door neighbour has one of those patches on his chest for his heart trouble. It saves him having to take his tablets all the time.”

“A dermal delivery system,” said Sloan, “is what the pharmaceutical people call it.”

“And if Bolsover grew the plant, I take it that he could get at the poison?”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan let this simplification of what must have been a very complicated chemical process pass. Its very nature, though, meant that Bolsover had had the possibility of murder in mind long enough to cultivate datura in his hot-house and make an extract from it—or would it have been a distillation? The forensic chemists would tell him all in good time.

“What I don't understand,” said Leeyes with increasing vigour, “is why Bolsover had to kill Kenneth Carline in the first place?”

“Bolsover and Carline were both due at the Palshaw Tunnel at two o'clock on the Monday afternoon, sir, remember? To agree on the final handing over of the retention sum on the contract.”

“Well?”

“On the Friday afternoon I reckon Carline comes in to see Bolsover and reveals that he had spotted a major discrepancy in the construction of the tunnel. It's the logical moment for him to have done so if you think about it.”

“What discrepancy?” growled Leeyes.

“Bolsover,” swept on Sloan, “probably says something like ‘I expect there's some mistake somewhere but we can always check when we're over there on Monday. Come and see me on Monday morning and we'll talk about it.' And sends him off for the weekend.”

“Does he indeed?” said Leeyes acidly.

“Carline goes off for the weekend and Bolsover gets to work. He arranges for Carline to get roughed up at the Rugby game …”

“Hrrrmph,” grunted Leeyes.

“Which gives him the opportunity of taking a piece of plaster out of his first-aid kit cabinet and sticking it behind Carline's ear without arousing comment.”

“Timed very nicely to work later, I suppose?”

“Oh yes. Bolsover is a very careful and clever man. He needed to be to accomplish fraud on the scale that he did.”

“What I have been asking for some time,” said Leeyes with heavy patience, “is what fraud exactly?”

“The Palshaw Tunnel,” said Sloan impressively, “is precisely one metre narrower than it should be.”

Leeyes stared at him.

“And I should have thought of it before,” said Sloan, “because of something Harry Harpe said right at the very beginning.”

“Harpe? From Traffic? What have Traffic Division got to do with it?”

“Don't you remember, sir, that Harry told us about two big lorries getting tangled together in there. We put it down to the drivers being foreign.” Sloan slid over the point as quickly as he could: the superintendent's xenophobia started at the end of Dover pier.

“There wasn't as much room in the tunnel as there should have been? Is that what you mean?”

“I reckon that that was why they bumped into each other, sir.”

“Someone must check on these things, Sloan.”

“The County Surveyor's Department, sir.” He paused. “That's where the fun begins.”

“I'm waiting.”

“There were two sets of plans for the Palshaw to Edsway Tunnel,” said Sloan. “One for the design drawn up by William Durmast, who is generally thought of as a brilliant civil engineering architect. These plans are agreed by the County Council which have been appointed agents by the Department of Transport for the construction of the tunnel and the contract is put out for tender.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing, sir. William Durmast's plans are perfectly all right, the quantity surveyors do their job, a firm called Clopton's get the contract and the department approve and agree funding.”

“Nothing wrong with that either.” Leeyes was beginning to get peppery again.

“No. But afterwards a complete set of tunnel plans—and I do mean complete—are substituted by Ronald Bolsover in his office; by the County Surveyor at Shire Hall; and by the boss of Clopton's over in their headquarters. All long after Durmast has done his side of the work and started to get caught up in the designing of Mgongwala. He takes off for Dlasa and isn't really concerned with the tunnel detail any more.”

“I have always said,” declared Leeyes didactically, “that the bigger the fraud the easier it is to get away with.”

“It was so simple that it probably didn't occur to anyone that it could have happened,” said Sloan. “And if they did happen to check, they would have found that Durmast's, the designers and structural engineers; Clopton's, the contractors; and the County Surveyor's Department of the Calleshire County Council, the commissioning authority; were all working to the same plans and so would probably have thought the mistake was theirs.”

“What about the Department of Transport?” asked Leeyes. “They're not fools.” This wasn't the superintendent's usual view of them but today was different.

Sloan nodded his head. “I agree, sir, that that was the point of greatest risk because their plans were the originals with the proper width of tunnel on them. The width, incidentally,” he added, “that they were helping to fund the County Council to build.”

“It doesn't really matter, Sloan,” grumbled Leeyes, “which way the government takes money of you. Rates and taxes all come to the same thing in the end. Don't you make any mistake about that.”

“No, sir.” Detective Inspector got back to the subject of the murder with all possible speed. Once started on the iniquities of government there would be no stopping the superintendent. “Because the department's interest was potentially dangerous, Bolsover staged a diversion on the day when there would be most officials about.”

“The anti-nuclear protesters?”

“There was something very contrived about that demo, sir. It was one of the things that put me on to the nature of the fraud. Once you accept that someone wanted the tunnel portal covering up on the big day, you know where to begin to look. And it would have been child's play for Bolsover to put the leaflets in Carline's car,” added Sloan. “He probably did that on the Monday morning before he set off for Lucy Durmast's.”

“So it wasn't a sympathetic traitor within the gates who let the mob in after all?”

“It was Ronald Bolsover,” said Sloan, “who opened the gate in the fence and left the key in the inside of the lock.”

“And told the Wainwright woman that it would be open?” The superintendent blamed almost all forms of organised protest on the suffragettes. It was they, he insisted, who had made agitation a respectable occupation for respectable women.