Last Respects (7 page)

He nodded. ‘He asked for it, though.'

‘That sloppy painting?' She would have said that detective stories were more Peter's line than paintings.

‘Let's say “sentimental”,' he murmured.

‘That's what I meant,' she said savagely. ‘And you're sitting there and telling me that Peter wanted it?'

‘So he said.' Frank Mundill was fiddling with a protractor lying on his desk now. He gazed longingly at the drawing-board over in the window.

‘It wasn't something to remember me by, I hope?' All the pent-up bitterness of the last few weeks exploded in excoriating sarcasm.

‘He didn't say.'

‘St Bernard dogs aren't a breed that are faithful unto death, are they?' she said, starting to laugh on a high, eerie note. ‘If so, he should have taken the imitation Landseer.'

‘Not that I know of,' said the architect coldly.

‘That would be too funny for words,' she said in tones utterly devoid of humour.

‘I'm sorry if you think I shouldn't have given it to him …'

‘Why shouldn't he have a picture?' she said wildly. ‘Why shouldn't he have all the pictures if he wanted them? Why shouldn't everybody have all the pictures?'

‘Elizabeth, my dear girl …'

‘Well? Why not? Answer me that!'

‘If you remember,' Frank Mundill said stiffly, ‘I wasn't aware of the provisions of your aunt's will at the time he asked me for it.' He gave his polo-necked white sweater a little tug and said, ‘Strictly speaking, I suppose the picture wasn't mine to give to him.'

That stopped her all right.

‘I didn't mean it that way, Frank,' she said hastily. ‘You know that. That side of things isn't important.' She essayed a slight smile. ‘Besides there are plenty more pictures where that one came from.'

‘You can say that again,' said Frank Mundill ruefully.

‘Sorry, Frank,' she said. ‘It's just that I'm still a bit upset …' Her voice trailed away in confusion. Collerton House and all its pictures—in fact the entire Camming inheritance—had come from Richard Camming equally to his two daughters—his only children—Celia Mundill and Elizabeth's mother, Marion Busby. Celia and Frank Mundill had had no children and Marion and William Busby only one, Elizabeth.

When she had died earlier in the year Celia Mundill had left her husband, Frank, a life interest in her share of her own father's estate. At his death it was to pass to her niece, Elizabeth …

‘There's no reason why Peter shouldn't have had a painting if he wanted one,' she said, embarrassed. ‘It isn't even as if they're worth anything.'

Mr Hubert Cresswick of Cresswick Antiques (Calleford) Ltd had confirmed that when he had done the valuation after her aunt's death. Very tactfully, of course. It was when he praised the frames that she'd known for certain.

‘It's just,' she went on awkwardly, ‘that I never thought that his having that particular one would be the reason why it wasn't there on the wall, like it always was.'

‘I should have mentioned it before,' he mumbled. ‘Sorry.'

‘No reason why you should have done,' she said more calmly.

What she really meant was that there were a lot of reasons why he shouldn't have done. Peter Hinton's name hadn't been mentioned in Collerton House since he'd left a note on the hall table—and with it the signet ring she'd given him. ‘Keep off the grass' ring was what he'd said as he slipped it on his finger.

It didn't matter any longer, of course, what it was called. Elizabeth had returned the ring he'd given her—in the springtime, ‘the only pretty ring time'—the one with ‘I do rejoyce in thee my choyce' inscribed inside it, to Peter's lodgings in Luston.

That devotion hadn't lasted very long either.

Frank Mundill picked up the sketch Mrs Veronica Feckler had left on his desk and appeared to give it his full attention. He said ‘I suppose I'll have to go down and look at her timbers …'

‘You will,' she agreed, her mind in complete turmoil.

Elizabeth Busby hadn't known whether to laugh or to cry. On impulse she had gone out into the garden, swept up a bunch of her aunt's favourite roses—Fantin-Latour—and walked down to the churchyard by the river's edge.

She cried a little then.

CHAPTER 6

How can I support this sight!

The pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital Management Committee was a fast worker. Nobody could complain about that. He was also a compulsive talker—out of the witness-box, that is. His subjects were in no position to complain about this or, indeed, anything else. His assistant, Burns, was not able either—but for different, hierarchical, reasons—to voice any complaints about the pathologist's loquacity. Should he have been able to get a word in edgeways, that is.

In fact, Burns, worn down by listening, had retreated into a Trappist-like silence years ago. Detective-Constable Crosby, normally a talker, didn't like attending postmortems. He had somehow contrived to drift to a point in the room where, though technically present, he wasn't part of the action. It fell, therefore, to Detective-Inspector Sloan to maintain some sort of dialogue with Dr Dabbe.

‘You'll be wanting to know a lot of awkward things, Sloan,' said the pathologist, adjusting an overhead shadowless lamp.

‘We'll settle for a few facts to begin with, Doctor,' said the detective-inspector equably.

‘Like how long he'd been in the water, I suppose?'

‘That would be useful to know.'

‘And damned difficult to say.'

‘Ah …'

‘For sure, that is.'

Sloan nodded. In this context ‘For sure' meant remaining sure and certain under determined and sustained cross-examination by a hostile Queen's Counsel.

And under oath.

The pathologist ran his eyes over the body of the unknown man. ‘He's been there—in the water, I mean—longer than you might think, though,' he said.

‘I don't know that I'd thought about that at all,' said Sloan truthfully.

‘I have,' responded Dr Dabbe, ‘and I must say again that I would have expected rather more damage to the body. Something doesn't tie up.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan brought his gaze to bear on the post-mortem subject because it was his duty to do so but without enthusiasm. The body looked damaged enough to him. Detective-Constable Crosby was concentrating his gaze on the ceiling.

‘The degree of damage,' pronounced the pathologist, ‘is not consistent with the degree of decomposition.'

‘We'll make a note of that,' promised Sloan, pigeonholing the information in his mind. By right, Crosby should have been regarding his notebook: not the ceiling.

‘There's plenty of current in the estuary, you see, Sloan,' said the doctor. ‘That's what makes the sailing so challenging. But current damages.'

‘Quite so,' said Sloan, noting that fact—perhaps it was a factor, too—in his mind as well.

‘To say nothing of there being a good tide,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘day in, day out.'

‘I dare say, Doctor,' said Sloan diffidently, ‘that the tide'll still be pretty strong opposite Edsway, won't it?'

‘If you'd tacked against it as often as I have,' replied the pathologist grandly, ‘you wouldn't be asking that.'

‘No, Doctor, of course not.' Sloan wasn't a frustrated single-handed Atlantic-crossing yachtsman himself. Growing roses was his hobby. It was one of the few relaxing pursuits that were compatible with the uncertain hours and demands of detection. Owning a sailing boat, as the doctor did, wasn't compatible with police pay either—but that was something different.

‘The wind doesn't help,' said Dabbe, stroking an imaginary beard in the manner of Joshua Slocum. ‘You get a real funnel effect out there in mid-channel.'

‘I can see that you might,' agreed Sloan. ‘What with the cliffs to the north …'

‘And the headland above Marby to the south,' completed the doctor. ‘That's the real villain of the piece.'

Sloan was thinking about something else that wasn't going to help either and that was the official report. It would have to note that the subject was relatively undamaged but not well-preserved. It was the sort of incongruity that didn't go down well with the Superintendent. Worse: it would undoubtedly have to be explained to him.

By Sloan.

‘There's the shingle bank, too,' said the doctor.

‘Billy's Finger.' Sloan had looked at the map. ‘I'm going out there presently to have a look at the lie of the land …'

‘And the water,' interjected Detective-Constable Crosby.

Everyone else ignored this.

‘There's always a fair bit of turbulence, too,' remarked the pathologist sagely, ‘where the river meets the tide.' It was Joshua Slocum who had sailed alone around the world but Dr Dabbe contrived to sound every bit as experienced.

Immutable was the word that always came into Sloan's mind when people started to talk about tides. He might have been talking about tides at that moment, but it was the face of the Superintendent which swam into his mental vision. He would be waiting for news.

‘Let's get this straight, Doctor,' he said more brusquely than he meant. ‘This man—whoever he is—has been in the water for a fair time.'

‘That is so,' the pathologist agreed. ‘There is some evidence of adipocere being present,' he supplemented, ‘but not to any great degree.'

‘But,' said Sloan, ‘he hasn't been out where the tides and currents and fish could get hold of him for all that long?'

‘That puts it very well,' said Dr Dabbe.

‘And he didn't meet his death in the water?'

‘I shall be conducting the customary routine test for the widespread distribution of diatoms found in true drowning in sea or river water,' said the pathologist obliquely, ‘but I shall be very surprised if I find any.'

‘Yes, Doctor,' said Sloan. He wasn't absolutely sure what a diatom was—and now that the atom wasn't the indivisible building block of nature any longer he was even less sure.

Something in what the doctor had said must have caught the wayward attention of Detective-Constable Crosby. He stirred and said, ‘You mean that that test wouldn't have done for the Brides-in-the-Bath?'

‘I do,' said Dr Dabbe. ‘There aren't any planktons in bath water.'

‘And,' said Sloan, gamely keeping to the business in hand, ‘we don't know who he is either.' He had just the one conviction about all things atomic—that the only really safe fast breeder was a rabbit.

‘No,' agreed Dabbe.

‘We don't even know,' carried on Sloan bitterly, ‘if he went into the river or the sea.'

Unperturbed, the doctor said, ‘I think we may be able to help you there, Sloan. Or, rather, Charley will.'

‘Or,' continued Sloan grandly, ‘whether it was an accident or murder.' He didn't know who Charley was.

‘He didn't walk after he fell,' said Dabbe. ‘I can tell you that for certain.'

Sloan made a note. Facts were always welcome.

‘And, Sloan, my man Burns has something to say to you, too.' Dr Dabbe waved an arm. ‘Haven't you, Burns?'

‘Aye, Doctor.'

‘His clothes,' divined Sloan quickly. ‘Do they tell us anything about him?'

‘Mebbe, Inspector,' replied Burns. ‘Mebbe.'

‘That's Gaelic for “Yes and No”,' said Dr Dabbe.

‘Well?'

Burns didn't answer and it was Dr Dabbe who spoke. ‘There was something strange in one of his trouser pockets, wasn't there, Burns?'

‘Yes, Doctor,' said Burns.

‘Something strange?' said Sloan alertly.

‘Show the Inspector what you found, man.'

His assistant reached for a tray. Placed on it was a lump of metal almost the size and shape of a bun. It was a faded green in colour.

Detective-Constable Crosby leaned over. ‘If that was “Lost Property” we'd call it a clock pendulum.'

‘I'm not a metallurgist,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘but I should say it's solid copper.'

‘What is it, though?' asked Sloan, peering at it. There was a lip on one side of the bun shape.

‘I can't tell you that, Sloan.'

‘It's not heavy enough to have been to weight him down,' said Sloan, thinking aloud.

‘Agreed,' said Dr Dabbe. He scratched the metal object with the edge of a surgical probe. ‘It's old, Sloan. And if you ask me …'

‘Yes?'

‘I should say it's been in the water a fair old time, too.'

Police Constable Ridgeford of Edsway might have been green. He was also keen. He had noticed Horace Boller take out his rowing-boat on the River Calle for the third time that afternoon and kept a wary but unobtrusive eye open for his return. If it had been a fishing trip that Horace Boller had been on then he had been unlucky, because he had come back empty-handed for the second time.

Brian Ridgeford did not have a boat. He didn't own a boat himself because he couldn't afford one: and as his beat did not extend out into the sea a grateful country did not feel called upon to supply him with one in the way in which it issued him with a regulation bicycle. What he did have—as his sergeant never failed to remind him—was a perfectly good pair of legs. He decided to use them to walk upstream along the river bank to Collerton.

As he remarked to his wife as he left the house, ‘You never know what's there until you've been to see.'

‘Curiosity killed the cat' was what she said to that: but then she hadn't been married very long and hadn't quite mastered the role of perfect police wife yet. She was trying hard to do so though because she added, ‘It's a casserole tonight, darling.'

The only piece of good advice that the sergeant's wife had given her was to cook everything in a pot that could stand on the stove or in the oven without spoiling.