A Going Concern (19 page)

‘It's an uncommon name.'

‘She may have changed it, of course.'

‘She may be dead.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Leeyes said: ‘And she may not know anything useful.'

‘True, sir.' He coughed. ‘Or she may have been murdered, too, but somehow I don't think so.'

‘All right, all right, Sloan. I'll buy it. Why don't you think she's been murdered like Mrs Garamond?'

‘Because,' said Sloan soberly, ‘she can't be found.'

‘And can we find her?'

‘We're trying very hard, sir. We're pulling out all the stops but we may not be the only people looking. That's the trouble.'

‘Come home and be killed?'

‘Something like that, sir.' He added slowly: ‘I wouldn't like us to have done the finding and then have someone else do the killing.'

‘So?'

‘So I'm – er – holding my horses until the funeral.'

Claude Miller was not so much holding his horses for the funeral as limbering up. He soon sent for his information officer and librarian.

‘Greg, I think I told you I'd offered to say a few words at Mrs Garamond's funeral.'

‘You did,' said Rosart, without any noticeable enthusiasm.

‘I'll need some background material.'

‘Yes, Mr Miller. I'll dig out some facts for you. Dates and so forth.'

‘I hear that Michael Harris is going to be there.' The girl on their switchboard and her cousin at Harris and Marsh's had proved invaluable sources of information when the two principals were officially only communicating through their solicitors.

‘Our Michael wouldn't want to miss an occasion like that,' agreed Rosart, ‘to say nothing of getting his name in the papers.'

‘After all,' said Miller, already straightening his tie, ‘the old lady was one of the jewels in Chernwoods' crown in the old days …'

‘I think something a little more factual would be more in order, Mr Miller, when you actually speak.'

‘Right,' said the chairman in what he liked to think were tones of command. ‘You go ahead and put something on paper for me and I'll get in touch with the family …'

‘Family?' Greg Rosart started. ‘There's just the great-niece that I know about.'

‘That's right. I say, Greg, what about a shot of us all going into the church? Or coming out? Do you think you could lay it on? Just for the record, of course …'

NINETEEN

Bury him comrades, in pitiful duty
.

The men carrying the coffin on the Friday – Tod Morton's men – paused as in days of yore at the lich-gate of St Hilary's church at Great Primer while two large wreaths were placed on it. One was of red roses and the other of white and Amelia had chosen the colours.

The lich-gate where the cortège had halted had provided shelter and somewhere to sit in olden times when the cortège – without benefit of clock or writing – had had to wait upon the arrival of the cleric to take the burial service.

It wasn't like that any more.

The Reverend Edwin Fournier was already present, robed and cloaked, awaiting the coffin and ready to greet the mourners with what Amelia always thought of as ‘comfortable words'.

What was not so comfortable was the knowledge that behind the immemorial churchyard yews there lurked men who were not mourners but policemen. Before Christianity the yew, then almost the only evergreen tree in England, had been a symbol of everlasting life in its own account. Today those yews in this country churchyard were providing cover for plain-clothes detectives on watch.

‘Right, miss,' said Tod Morton, touching Amelia's shoulder. ‘We're ready now.'

The crunch of feet in unison on gravel was all that Amelia actually heard but her head was full of sounds and images and she felt a good deal more shakiness about the legs than she would have admitted to – even to Phoebe.

As the cortège entered the church the well-built lady from the newspaper finished her taking of names in the church porch – an old-fashioned custom of which no doubt Great-Aunt Octavia would have approved – and found herself a seat at the back of the church.

Detective Inspector Sloan had heeded the superintendent's advice and was somewhere near the back at the other side of the church. For reasons known only to the constabulary, Detective Constable Crosby was seated very near the front at the end of the side pew nearest to the vestry door.

It took Amelia a moment or two to adjust her eyes to the relative dimness inside the church after the bright sunlight of the churchyard. She blinked and then followed the little procession up the aisle. Tod Morton ushered her to the front pew and the Reverend Edwin Fournier began the Order of Service for the Burial of the Dead.

Before very long Amelia Kennerley found what countless others before her had done, that the front pew was not a good vantage point from which to study the congregation. She did, however, have from where she sat a very good view of the Lady Chapel. The names on the war memorial there – bitter bone of contention that it had been between priest and parishioner – were of men of the East Calleshire Regiment but there was no doubt in Amelia's mind now that it was a certain Second Lieutenant E. H. Goudy of the ill-fated Fearnshires whom Great-Aunt Octavia had had in mind when she knelt there. Not, from all accounts, that her marriage to her own mother's uncle William Garamond had been unhappy.

Just different, probably.

‘We bring nothing into this world,' declared the Reverend Edwin Fournier to the assembled congregation, ‘and it is certain that we carry nothing out …'

But, thought Amelia to herself, though Great-Aunt Octavia might have known that there are no pockets in a shroud, she had left her instructions for those who came after in no uncertain manner.

Detective Inspector Sloan swept the congregation with his gaze. He'd only met the eye of Woman Police Sergeant Perkins once but it had been enough. She had indicated a little old lady, grey-haired and nondescript, who had made her own way to a seat half-way down the centre aisle, and who sat now, alert and attentive to the reading.

It was from Ecclesiastes. ‘“To everything”,' read the rector, ‘“there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven …”'

Amelia sat upright, letting the words flow over her like balm.

‘“A time to be born and a time to die”,' read on the rector. ‘“A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill …”'

Detective Inspector Sloan was sitting stiffly upright in his pew, too, and wondering why there had been an exact time for someone to kill Mrs Garamond, giving thanks the while that the eyelids of an unconscious girl in the Berebury Hospital had begun to flicker. There was always a time to hope, too.

‘“And a time to heal”,' continued the rector, ‘“a time to break down …”'

Octavia Harquil-Grasset hadn't broken down, thought Amelia in the front pew. She'd had her baby, mourned its father, handed her little daughter over for adoption, and gone to play her own part in the war effort.

‘“A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love … and a time to hate …”'

Amelia wished she'd known her great-aunt, really known her, that is. Not just as a Sunday afternoon visitor but known her well enough to know what she had really thought about things …

Edwin Fournier's voice went on above her thoughts. ‘“A time of war …”'

That applied to Octavia Garamond, all right, decided Amelia.

‘“And a time of peace”,' concluded the rector firmly, closing the Bible and making his way back to his stall.

That, too, thought Amelia, as Claude Miller said his lapidary piece and the burial service wound its way to a conclusion.

Detective Inspector Sloan had had a longer time to look around the church and had a better vantage point from the back pew anyway. His role now he felt was the triple one, shared with a sheepdog, of at the one and the same time protecting the strays in his flock from danger, steering them in the direction in which he wanted them to go, and marking the goats in their midst.

Still inside the body of the church was Woman Police Sergeant Perkins, whose sole duty today was shadowing the little old lady who had given her name at the door as Miss Catherine Camus. Detective Constable Crosby had mysteriously slipped out of the vestry door and was standing in the churchyard right behind Mrs Shirley Doves, care assistant.

‘Oh, yes,' she said, pointing. ‘That's him, all right. He was the one in the Dog and Duck that night. Know him anywhere, I would.'

TWENTY

Muffle the dinner-bell, mournfully ring
.

It was not the first time in the long history of that legal establishment that the offices of Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery down by the bridge in Berebury had been the venue for explanation. It even occurred to Amelia Kennerley that her Great-Aunt Octavia would have felt the mahogany and the old worn leather to have made the setting even more appropriate.

The person who fitted into the old-fashioned surroundings best of all was Miss Kate Camus. She was a neat, rather prim-looking old lady who settled herself into one of James Puckle's chairs with complete composure.

‘I can quite see your difficulty, Inspector,' she said to Sloan. ‘The murderer must have come from either Chernwoods' Dyestuffs or Harris and Marsh's Chemicals …'

‘I don't see why,' said Amelia, who had almost – but not quite – recovered from seeing the arrest of Gregory Rosart minutes after the committal of her great-aunt's body to the grave three days before.

‘They were the only people who could have known about OZ,' said Miss Camus calmly. ‘Chernwoods' from finding traces in their records – although we were very careful – and Harris and Marsh's from things that Albert Harris had said after he lost his wits.' She said: ‘I went to see him yesterday and he's completely cuckoo, you know.'

‘Yes,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘but his son isn't.' He'd just given Michael Harris the roughest hour of that opportunist's life before telling him that the police wouldn't be bringing charges for what the man in the street would have called insider trading even if the law didn't.

‘What I don't quite see,' put in James Puckle, ‘is why Rosart told you as much as he did …'

Surprisingly it was Detective Constable Crosby who answered him. ‘He was trying to make patsies of us.' He was still smarting from the thought. ‘Rosart couldn't find this lady here and he thought we could find her for him.'

‘And,' added Kate Camus, ‘he also made the mistake of thinking that if he found me, he'd get hold of OZ.'

‘The secret of Hut Eleven?' said Amelia, wishing it didn't sound like the title of a bad children's book.

‘One of them, anyway,' said Miss Camus.

James Puckle picked up the earlier point. ‘It wouldn't have helped him, then, if Rosart had got to you first?'

‘It might have stopped him hitting Jane Baskerville …' said Miss Camus with vigour.

‘In mistake for me,' said Amelia. Rosart had vouchsafed that much. ‘She happened on him leaving after the burglary.' The girl in Berebury Hospital had recovered consciousness long enough to tell them that. And more.

‘This discovery,' said Sloan tenaciously keeping to the point, ‘was it valuable?'

‘It was a very important finding, Inspector,' said Miss Camus. ‘Undoubtedly Operation Zenith was a real milestone in the biological sciences by any of the standards prevailing at the time.'

‘Made by …'

‘Oh, by Octavia Harquil-Grasset.' She shook her head. ‘Not me.'

‘What became of it?' he asked, although he was begining to think he knew.

‘We destroyed it,' she said serenely.

‘Who did?'

‘Tavi, Bill Garamond, and I.'

Detective Inspector Sloan said quietly: ‘Would you tell us why?'

‘Tavi didn't think the world was ready for it yet.'

‘Miss Camus.' James Puckle spoke as a man of law should, slowly and carefully. ‘Are you telling me that you and Mr and Mrs Garamond deliberately disposed of all the records of Hut Eleven?'

‘Only of this one discovery, Mr Puckle,' she said, equally precisely. ‘Not of any of our other work.'

‘But,' put in Detective Inspector Sloan, policeman, ‘every record of the discovery that was codenamed Operation Zenith?'

‘Every single one, Inspector.' Miss Camus sounded completely matter of fact.

‘Oh,' burst out Amelia, ‘please tell us why …'

‘Tavi was worried that if anyone else ever knew about it, it would eventually get into the wrong hands.' She surveyed her audience from the distance of old age and said: ‘There was a very real danger then, you know, that England might still have been invaded.'

‘But you knew what it was?' persisted Amelia. ‘This discovery …'

Miss Camus adjusted her glasses and said precisely: ‘I knew exactly what it was that Tavi had stumbled on – the nature of her discovery, so to speak. I did not know how she had done so and she did not tell me – in fact, I asked her not to do so in the interests of greater security.'

‘But,' said Sloan, still sticking to the main issue, ‘you agreed with her about its total destruction.'

‘Oh, yes, indeed, I did. Who knows what dreadful misuse would have been made of it?' She regarded her audience and said: ‘Don't forget that there was a war on then in which the sciences were being put to purposes over which scientists had no control. Irreparable damage might have been done before anyone could stop it.' She looked unseeingly into the distance as she said: ‘You're all too young to remember and being told isn't the same thing, I know, but there was an organized wickedness abroad in those days …'

‘But tell us what it was,' pleaded Amelia. ‘All I know is that my great-aunt had been working before on the way in which cells divide in plants …'