A Going Concern (10 page)

‘Sir?'

‘Everything. A wife, a son, a pension, and now Madame Caroline Testout.'

‘Sir?'

‘An old Hybrid Tea rose. She's at her best just now.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And furthermore I would like you to know that I do not share your rooted objection to looking at the back view of the vehicle ahead.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Especially when I'm thinking about a very odd case where the pathologist and his cronies can't even be sure what the deceased died from.'

Detective Constable Crosby pulled the police car into the slow lane of the motorway just behind a heavily laden articulated lorry and trailer and said, ‘This thing that someone was looking for at the Grange …'

‘I agree it would help if we knew what it was …' Sloan responded to Crosby's thought processes rather than his words.

‘Do you think, sir, that the old lady had it there? Whatever it was.'

‘If she did,' said Sloan, ‘then what I think is that she either knew it was there …'

‘And that no one could find it?' said Crosby, edging the police car nearer still to the lorry's exhaust pipe.

‘That,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘or, whether it was there or not, that she wanted them to come and show their hand.'

‘Whoever they are?' said Crosby.

Sloan wound up the car window to keep the fumes out. ‘Exactly. There was something else …'

‘Sir?' Crosby peered through the cloud of smoke rather ostentatiously.

‘Those notices about her death sent to all those different newspapers that Tod Morton told us about …'

‘What about them, then?'

‘I think that she was making absolutely sure that someone …'

‘Person or persons unknown?' contributed Crosby, who was now rubbing the inside of the car's windscreen as if to disperse the lorry's effulgence.

‘Knew that she'd died when she did.'

‘So that they'd come and search her house?'

‘Not exactly. They could have done that any time. From what Dr Aldus said Mrs Garamond would have been too frail to stop them.'

‘So, what then, sir?'

‘So that they'd come and search her house after she was dead. There is quite a difference.'

It was too fine a point for Crosby. He concentrated on pulling the police car out into the fast lane instead.

They were very nearly into Luston before he spoke again. ‘Sir, how are we ever going to know if they –'

‘Person or persons unknown?'

‘Them,' said the constable, ‘got what it was they wanted or not?'

‘Ah! Now you're asking,' said Sloan.

TEN

Fetch the old banner, and wave it about;

Exactly the same problem was worrying Michael Harris of Messrs Harris and Marsh's Chemicals, also of Luston. He found it as difficult a question to answer as Detective Inspector Sloan had done.

Unlike Sloan and Gregory Rosart, though, Michael Harris had no one with whom he could talk completely freely on that particular matter. He was, however, able to discuss his predatory stalking of Chernwoods' Dye-stuffs with his finance director – indeed, he had to talk to David Gillsans because some of the fine print of the rules and regulations appertaining to take-over deals of limited companies still evaded him. Like his father before him, Michael Harris was primarily a chemist and not either a legal eagle or a money man. He looked to his finance director, David Gillsans, to be both.

‘So what do we hold of Chernwoods' now, David?' Harris asked him first thing Monday morning.

‘As of stock-market closing time last Friday afternoon, just one per cent under the percentage when we would have to go public on the bid.'

‘That's not including my father's own holding, is it?'

‘No,' said the finance director patiently. This was old ground and they'd been over it before.

‘Or Octavia Garamond's?'

‘Naturally not.'

‘She died on Friday.'

‘So I saw in the newspaper.'

‘What happens to her holding now?'

‘That depends on how she willed it. If she didn't specify the shares in her Will as a bequest then her executors may choose to sell to raise funds for capital transfer and inheritance tax …'

‘I wish you'd call it by its proper name, David,' said Harris snappily, ‘then at least I would know what you were talking about …'

‘Death duties,' said David Gillsans smoothly. He toyed momentarily with the idea of telling his employer that the tax had its early origins as a fine on a subject for dying and thus depriving the Crown of the services of the deceased – but decided against it. Harris was all on edge enough this morning as it was. He said instead, ‘There'll be a bit of a delay of course before they can be sold – probate and so forth. Solicitors never hurry.'

‘She'll have had a big holding,' Harris mused, ‘because there were two of them, then. Her and her husband.'

‘It's difficult to remember that Chernwoods' Dyestuffs must have been in quite a bad way after the war,' said David Gillsans peaceably, ‘and needing capital.' This was much safer ground. Michael Harris was always ready to recount how his own father and Freddie Marsh had walked away from Chernwoods' after the last war and set up their own firm on the other side of town: and how Albert Harris had kept his Chernwoods' shares, too, so that he could keep an eye on how their nearest rival was doing. Not that balance sheets said everything. Old Albert Harris'd known that much before he and Freddie Marsh had branched out on their own.

‘Must have been hard going for all of them then,' said Michael Harris. ‘Mind you, I was no'but a boy myself at the time but Dad talked about it a lot at home.'

‘Did they part brass rags?' asked David Gillsans curiously. ‘I mean, did your father and Freddie have a row or just walk out on them?'

‘Oh, no, nothing like that,' responded Harris, sensing criticism. ‘The Garamonds were able to put real money into Chernwoods', you see, and Dad and Freddie couldn't. Not at the time. Dad just had a few shares for old times' sake and to see how they were doing.'

‘And how is your father?' enquired David Gillsans politely. Freddie Marsh had died long ago.

‘Much as usual,' shrugged Harris. ‘Rambling, like he always does these days. I'm not even sure that he knows me now.'

‘Pity, when you think of what he did in the past.' David Gillsans would not have dreamed of saying that he thought it just as well that Harris's father didn't know what was going on. The old man would never have agreed to this ill-advised take-over battle that his son was bent on.

Hell-bent, amended Gillsans silently.

Fortunately Harris was no mind-reader. He went on: ‘I sat by his bed most of Sunday afternoon – not that it does any good. Still it's just as well to take an interest or the nursing home gets slack.'

‘Very true,' nodded Gillsans.

‘Sad when you think of him as he was.'

‘Indeed.' As it happened, the finance director knew a great deal about the early struggles of Harris and Marsh's Chemicals Ltd., since he not only had access to the old company reports and balance sheets but could understand them as well. Old Albert Harris had done well in his day – and had a bit of luck, too, when he had needed it.

As always, Michael Harris came back to his own consuming passion to take over Chernwoods' Dyestuffs.

‘He'd be very pleased, David, if he knew what we were doing now. It was his dream, too, you know, to end up owning the firm where he first worked.'

The finance director remained unmoved by his employer's dreams: in his view personalities shouldn't be allowed to affect financial decisions. ‘There's no sentiment in business,' he warned.

‘You tell that to Chernwoods' when we get 'em in our net.'

‘If we get them,' Gillsans reminded his boss, not for the first time. In the accountant's book, schoolboy rivalries should not outlive the playground. ‘It's not in the bag yet, remember.'

‘If the law doesn't say you can't,' said Michael Harris gnomically, ‘then you can.' Just then the door of his office was opened after a perfunctory tap and his secretary came in. He looked round. ‘Yes, Deanne, what is it?'

‘It's my cousin Doreen on the switchboard down at Chernwoods', Mr Harris …'

‘Yes?' Michael Harris sprang to attention much as those at Ghent might have done when the messenger arrived from Aix.

‘She says they've got the police round there,' reported Deanne, wide eyed.

ELEVEN

Bury him deeply – think of the monkey
,

Luston was Calleshire's principal industrial town. As English settlements went it was old enough in its history to match Berebury itself – even Calleford – but it hadn't burgeoned into a real town until the middle of the nineteenth century, when, with the advent of the railway, it had suddenly started to grow.

Claude Miller, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive of Chernwoods' Dyestuffs, received Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby with a judiciously balanced blend of courtesy and curiosity. Gregory Rosart, information officer and librarian, was at his side. Miller, noted Sloan, was a tall, rangy figure, thin as a yard of rainwater, and given to unnecessary jerky movements, while Rosart was short and thick-set, with fat, puffy hands.

Miller said: ‘I've had Greg here dig out the records you asked for, Inspector.'

‘Mrs Garamond came to the firm early in 1941, Inspector,' contributed Rosart fluently. ‘She was just Miss O. L. A. Harquil-Grasset, B.Sc., in those days, by the way. She didn't marry until later.'

‘I understand,' supplemented Claude Miller, ‘that she was one of our best people at the time …'

‘The notes I've turned up,' chimed in the information officer, ‘describe her as a very promising young scientist …'

‘And,' enquired Sloan pertinently, ‘was that early promise fulfilled?' There were men who had been at the Police Training College with him who were rising chief constables now … and other men who had been there then who were still constables acting as human traffic lights in the constabulary equivalent of a punishment station.

‘Oh, yes, indeed.' It was Claude Miller who responded this time. ‘What work she did in the war is mostly still covered by the Official Secrets Act and we don't have complete records, naturally …'

‘Naturally,' concurred the detective inspector, who had taken – and kept – his own Oath of Loyalty.

‘But afterwards she and her husband – as you know she later married William Garamond, who also worked here – he was a pure chemist …'

Detective Inspector Sloan made an
aide memoire
in his notebook. He saw no point in trying to guess what a pure chemist was. Or in trying to tell the superintendent until he knew for certain.

‘Well,' said Claude Miller impressively, sounding like the decisive chairman of the board that he would like to have been, ‘they were among those whose work made Chernwoods' Dyestuffs what it is today.'

‘And what is it today?' enquired Detective Inspector Sloan. He saw no reason to mention that he had already dispatched an urgent request to Companies' House for the fullest of details of not only Chernwoods Dyestuffs but of Harris and Marsh's Chemicals as well.

Oddly enough the chairman of the board of Chernwoods' left the answering of this question to his information officer. ‘One of the more important smaller companies in the bio-chemical medical-research sector, gentlemen,' recited Gregory Rosart unhesitatingly.

‘Where do the dyestuffs come in then?'

‘Ah, Inspector,' continued Rosart, after a quick glance at his chairman, ‘that has its origins in our early history. Chernwoods' Dyestuffs first began about a hundred and fifty years ago as a processor of natural dyes – both
Isatis tinctoria
and
Reseda luteola
grew naturally in these parts …'

‘And are you going to tell me what they are?' asked Detective Inspector Sloan, who didn't like being talked down to any more than did the next man.

‘Waxen woad and dyer's weld,' said Rosart. Claude Miller's attention seemed to be elsewhere.

‘I see,' said Sloan, nodding. He thought about the photograph on the bedroom mantelpiece at the Grange and said: ‘And in the war?'

He was immediately aware of a stiffening on Miller's part, while there was a barely perceptible tenseness in Gregory Rosart's posture, too subtle to be described as a bracing but a change in manner for all that.

‘According to my research, Inspector,' said Rosart, ‘Chernwoods' went over to war-work in September 1939.'

‘Before my time,' said Claude Miller lightly. ‘I've only been with the firm since my father died about ten years ago. He and my grandfather would have been able to help you more.'

‘And did what,' persisted Sloan, keeping his eye on the ball, ‘in the war?'

‘A great many things,' said Rosart.

‘Chemical warfare work?'

‘I believe that they did do some testing but not the actual manufacturing,' said Rosart unwillingly. ‘The records aren't very explicit.'

‘Anything else?' It was interesting, noted Sloan, how the information officer had immediately distanced himself from the unpalatable. The royal ‘we' had suddenly become the impersonal ‘they' when he spoke about the firm.

‘A great deal else, naturally.'

‘To do with dyes?'

‘Mostly.'

‘The Garamonds,' Sloan said. ‘What did they do? Do you know?'

‘Not exactly, Inspector, but I understand from such records as there are that to start with their work was to do with the staining of human cells.'

Sloan said that he couldn't quite see where that could have come into the war effort.