A Dead Liberty (26 page)

“Yes, sir,” said Sloan, hastily steering the conversation away from another hobby-horse. “Bolsover wanted them to lower their banner over the entrance and cause as much confusion as possible.”

“They did that all right,” said Leeyes warmly. “You should see Sergeant Watkinson's report.”

“With the desired effect,” said Sloan. “The press handout with all the dimensions was ignored by all the journalists and if anyone did check the photographs they would find the exact width was obscured by the banner.”

“They couldn't get the Minister away quickly enough, I do know that,” said Leeyes.

“The department had the County Council's certificate that all was well—which it was, according to the plans in Shire Hall. Besides, sir, where most frauds in tunnel building take place is in the skimping of the thickness of the tunnel walls.”

“Make them thinner by even very little and you save a lot?” suggested Leeyes.

“Precisely,” said Sloan, “but Clopton's didn't cheat there at all. The tunnel wall is as thick as the specification says it should be.” He paused. “No, the beauty of it all was that all the people below the top three were working to the same plans …”

Leeyes grunted.

“… and those plans were accurate in every respect except that the diameter of the tunnel was less than was being paid for.”

Leeyes jerked his head. “Clopton's got paid for the bigger tunnel and split the extra three ways, I take it?”

“Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “I know that's usually dangerous,” he went on, his mind going back to one of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
“but it seems to have worked this time.”

“How long is the tunnel?”

Sloan told him.

“And what does a tunnel smaller by one metre mean in money terms?”

“Ten percent of the materials element in the contract price.”

“Good God, Sloan! Are you sure?”

That same gentle mathematics master who had painfully inculcated quadratic equations into Sloan's mind had dinned something in about
pi
and circumferential areas too. Enough for him to have been able to ask the right questions of a specialist. “Quite sure, sir.”

“Even a three-way split of that is a lot of money.”

“Yes, sir.” Little wonder that Mrs. Eric Othen had worn a mink coat at the opening ceremony. The boss of Clopton's didn't need to conceal his wealth: it was expected of successful contractors.

“And where does the girl—Lucy Durmast—come into all this?”

“She doesn't, sir. Except perhaps as a suspect. Lucy Durmast only knew she hadn't killed Kenneth Carline. She didn't know who had and she didn't want to say anything until she knew who had.”

“What can't speak, can't lie,” said Leeyes Delphically.

“Nor did she want to say anything that might involve her father or compromise the building of Mgongwala.”

Leeyes grunted.

“Another thing,” said Sloan, “was that she didn't know if she was in danger, too. After all, she didn't even know why Kenneth Carline had been murdered—only that he had been.”

“And what about her father?” Leeyes wanted to know. “Was he involved?”

Sloan shook his head. “William Durmast is the archetypal design man. He did the original plans—the ones that Bolsover got Carline to retrieve when he was at the Old Rectory—and then went off to fresh fields and pastures new. He's an inspired structural engineer and a great ideas man. Not a carrying-out-of-routine-work man. That's why he needed someone like Ronald Bolsover coming along behind him. Bolsover was a careful man.”

“Esau was an hairy man,” said the superintendent trenchantly, “and look where it got him.”

“There was something I should have spotted early on,” said Sloan. “Something that Cecelia Allsworthy said about a celebration party when the two ends of the tunnel met.”

“What about it?”

“Bolsover wasn't in England at the time. He was in Provence. If anything had gone wrong at that point—and it was probably the most dangerous time—he wouldn't have been around to face the music.”

“There's something else you should have spotted as well,” said Leeyes loftily. “Something that should have immediately have aroused the deepest suspicions of any self-respecting investigating officer right from the very beginning.”

“Sir?”

“The contract was on schedule.”

His Honour Judge Eddington took his time about settling himself in his chair in the Crown Court in the county town of Calleford and consciously assumed the mien that customarily went with his mantle of office. His behaviour didn't quite fit Goethe's ideal of “without haste, without rest”: true, there was no haste about his movements but he looked rested enough for an old man. There was in any case about him, too, the rather restrictive decorum—gravitas, perhaps, would have been a better way of putting it—that habitually went with overweight.

At last he indicated that he was prepared to begin.

He had, he reminded the Court, sentenced the accused to seven days' imprisonment for contempt of court and she was being brought before him at the end of that time …

A week, he refrained from reminding the Court, was a long time in law as well as in politics.

… having now, he trusted, purged that contempt.

The Clerk read out the charge. “How say you?”

“Not guilty,” said Lucy Durmast. Her voice was low and pleasant. It was the first time that it had been heard by the Court. Her manner was commendably restrained but she looked like someone who had started to sleep again.

Cecelia and John Allsworthy were there, he in a dark suit with Regimental tie; she in grey with touches of mauve.

Prosecuting counsel rose to say that the Crown offered no evidence against the prisoner; indeed, that charges had been preferred against another person.

Judge Eddington considered the Court from his eminence and announced that he had a few words to say about
onus probandi
.

“What's that, sir?” whispered Detective Constable Crosby sotto voce into Sloan's ear.

“The burden of proof,” went on the judge before Detective Inspector Sloan could speak, “is only assumed—nay, borne—by the Crown and you will not need me to tell you that it is a very real burden.”

Lucy Durmast looked like Christian in
The Pilgrim's Progress
after his burden had slipped from his shoulders. Her hair positively shone.

“The accused,” continued the judge, “rightly or wrongly—and it is not for me to say—chose to leave that burden where it lay.” He coughed. “All I can say is that it can be a dangerous course of action which might be sound in theory but—ahem—perhaps a trifle risky in practice.”

“He's dead right there,” murmured Crosby not nearly inaudibly enough.

“Quiet,” growled Sloan.

“And not to be commended as a general rule,” said the Judge. “Over the centuries it has been established that by custom defence counsel do have a role to play even in the—er—clearest of cases.”

“Jobs for the boys,” said Crosby irreverently.

“I want,” said Judge Eddington, “also to say something about judicial discretion. I must remind you all that this includes the right to be wrong. That we are all gathered here together today in the first place …”

“Now for the sermon,” forecast Crosby.

“… implies that there were two sides to the argument. There are always two sides to every case at law and two sides necessarily implies a choice.” He paused. “A choice, I don't need to stress the Court, carries the inherent possibility of error.”

“Here we go again,” muttered Crosby.

“Were the law a certain animal,” said Judge Eddington, “there would be no need for judges or judgements.”

“Doesn't he know that it's an ass?” hissed Crosby.

Detective Inspector Sloan did not deign to reply. He merely gave thanks for the fact that they were sitting well back in the Court.

“It is also,” continued His Honour, “one of the reasons why the right of appeal is very properly built into the judicial system …”

Into Detective Inspector Sloan's mind came a Spanish proverb that he had once heard and for some reason remembered. It ran “To every good judge, let there be a good action.” The action in this case had all been elsewhere and most of it rather a long time ago now. Lucy Durmast hadn't ever really been part of it—just caught up in a nightmare. He wondered if she would be like Dreyfus and forgive if not forget.

“We must all be thankful,” droned the judge, “that no serious miscarriage of justice has occurred …”

Lucy Durmast's eyes hadn't left Judge Eddington's face but her expression became very ironic indeed.

“Amen,” said Crosby later as he and Detective Inspector Sloan left the Court.

There only remained the Epilogue.

“Where to, sir?” the constable asked as they walked towards their police car.

“Berebury,” said Sloan. “But there's no hurry, is there, Crosby?” he added drily. “After all we've already had a trial run …”

Acknowledgement

B. R. Rafferty—
notaire

About the Author

Catherine Aird is the author of more than twenty volumes of detective mysteries and three collections of short stories. Most of her fiction features Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and Detective Constable W. E. Crosby. Aird holds an honorary master's degree from the University of Kent and was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to the Girl Guide Association. She lives in a village in East Kent, England.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1987 by Catherine Aird

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1055-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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