Last Respects (23 page)

‘A piece of paper isn't going to save anything,' said Mrs Ridgeford.

Constable Ridgeford wasn't so sure about that. ‘With the strong arm of the law behind it …'

‘There's ways round the strong arm of the law, Brian Ridgeford,' she said provocatively, ‘I can tell you.'

‘That's as may be, my girl,' he said with dignity, ‘but only when the law allows it.'

‘I suppose, Inspector,' said Elizabeth Busby shakily, ‘that I have to thank you for saving my life.'

‘No, miss, you don't.' Sloan was sitting on the window-seat in the hall of Collerton House again.

‘He was going to kill me,' she said, ‘because I knew about the picture.'

‘Murder's a dangerous game,' said Sloan sententiously, ‘especially once the novelty's worn off.'

‘Poor, poor Aunt Celia.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan bowed his head in a tribute to a woman he had never seen alive. Dr Dabbe was doing another post-mortem now—to make assurance doubly sure. Inquest-sure, too.

‘The old, old story,' she said bitterly.

‘The eternal triangle,' agreed Sloan. He'd read something once that put it very well: ‘The actors are, it seems, the usual three. Husband, wife and lover.' It practically amounted to a prescription for murder. Aloud he went on, ‘And then murder once done …'

‘Peter … poor Peter, too.'

‘He'd stumbled on your aunt's murder,' said Sloan.

‘He'd always been fascinated by crime,' she said. ‘He read a lot about it.'

‘It was very clever of him.'

‘So he had to go, too,' she said tightly.

‘He had to be silenced,' said Sloan. He coughed, ‘I take it that he'd have gone easily enough to have a look at the multi-storey car park if invited?'

‘I did, didn't I?' She shuddered. ‘Frank sounded so reasonable and I really did think he had something there to show me. And there's no one up there on early closing day.'

Sloan nodded. He could imagine Frank Mundill being plausible. ‘It was a perfect place,' he said. ‘A double helix round a central light well, with a parapet at the top and a door at the bottom.'

‘A door with a key,' she said.

‘Mundill had a key, all right,' he said. ‘And to the car park exit gate. He had done the original specification, remember. He had no problems in that direction. He had access to everything he wanted. He could come back at night for the body.'

‘It all fits, doesn't it?' she said.

All the pieces of the jigsaw were there now. Sloan would have to lock them together for his report but they were there. Elizabeth Busby didn't have to know about all of them. There was no point, for instance, in her being told about the blood that they'd found inside the light well of the car park, blood that wasn't Frank Mundill's. He did need to tell her about a photograph of Peter Hinton that had been superimposed on a photograph of a dead young man in Dr Dabbe's mortuary.

And about a sure and certain dentist.

Sloan said nothing into the silence that followed his telling her.

Presently she said, ‘And Horace Boller?'

‘He put two and two together about your aunt.' Perhaps it hadn't been such a perfect murder after all. ‘He couldn't have known what really happened. Just that there was something wrong.'

‘And he paid the price.'

‘He knew what he was doing, miss.' For Horace Boller anyway Sloan didn't feel too much pity.

Detective-Constable Crosby was waiting in the car for him outside Collerton House. Sloan climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door with quite unnecessary vigour.

‘A nasty case,' he said.

Crosby started up the engine.

‘Three deaths,' said Sloan. The only saving grace had been that a wicked man's cupidity had not succeeded.

‘Mr Basil Jensen,' said Detective-Constable Crosby, ‘wants us to meet him over at Marby.'

Detection demanded many things of a man. A working knowledge of eighteenth-century ships was obviously going to be called for.

‘All right,' growled Sloan. ‘Get going, then.'

Crosby pulled the car away from the front door of Collerton House and settled himself at the wheel. He put a respectable distance behind him before he spoke.

‘Sir …'

‘What is it now?'

‘What sits at the bottom of the sea and shivers?'

In the grip of powerful emotion and with an awful fascination Sloan heard himself saying, ‘I don't know what sits at the bottom of the sea and shivers.'

‘A nervous wreck.'

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 © 1982 by Catherine Aird

Cover design by Tracey Dunham

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1063-4

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

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New York, NY 10014

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