Little Knell (7 page)

‘A distinguished elopement from Haddon Hall in Derbyshire in the sixteenth century,' explained Puckle. ‘Dorothy Vernon was an heiress who ran away with her lover during a ball.'

Sloan nodded. The sixteenth century might have been a world without prohibited drugs but it was before the Married Women's Property Act.

‘Made for a blot on the Caversham family escutcheon though, I'll bet,' remarked Crosby.

‘They married and disappeared abroad,' said Puckle repressively. ‘Neither was ever heard from by the colonel again.'

Crosby hummed the tune of ‘After the Ball was Over' under his breath.

Puckle coughed. ‘Gerald Caversham resigned his commission, of course.'

‘Of course,' said Sloan, although he was not quite sure why a love match – let alone marriage – should have rendered Gerald Caversham unfit for military service.

‘If alive,' rejoined Puckle, ‘he'd be in his early seventies by now but…' He paused.

‘But…' prompted Sloan gently.

‘I have to say – and I have had to say this to the ultimate heir – that we are getting increasingly doubtful that he is.'

‘So he got cut off without a shilling, did he?' asked Crosby. ‘The no-good boyo, I mean.'

‘No, he didn't. And the colonel couldn't have done that even if he'd wanted to,' said Puckle. ‘The settled estate was entailed…'

‘Come again?' said Crosby.

Detective Inspector Sloan sighed heavily and hoped that he wasn't the one who was going to have to explain to Crosby about the fruit of the loins.

Simon Puckle explained that this entail meant that the colonel's property had to go to the male heirs of the body male and to no one else, the laws of primogeniture still applying.

Detective Constable Crosby said that sounded all very unfair to him.

The solicitor, with distinct echoes of Mae West and goodness, said that fairness had got nothing to do with it. ‘But, remember, the colonel was still a reasonably wealthy bachelor. One supposes,' Puckle added mildly, ‘that this is how he was able to enjoy as many expeditions abroad as he wanted.'

‘Quite,' said Sloan. His own wistful ambition, when young, had been to explore the Matto Grosso in search of Colonel Fawcett's body. Sloan, though, had never been wealthy, and had not stayed long a bachelor. ‘And if the immediate heirs can't be found?' he asked, conscious that time was passing.

‘Should that be the case, and it can be demonstrated beyond doubt that neither Gerald Caversham nor his sons…'

‘If he had had any,' put in Crosby, who gave every appearance of still following the narrative closely.

‘If he or they had had any,' agreed Puckle, ‘and had not left male issue, then the entire Caversham inheritance reverts to the descendants of a remote collateral relative called Peter Caversham who is presently living in Luston.'

He made Luston sound like one of the Cities of the Plain rather than a prosperous industrial town at the other end of Calleshire.

‘Who you say is aware of this?' said Sloan.

‘Very well aware,' said Puckle drily, ‘even though the colonel tried to have it kept from him.'

‘So if we might have the keys of Whimbrel House from you as executors…' said Detective Inspector Sloan, conscious that he had already sent a man to guard the building.

‘Because getting a search warrant takes time,' added Detective Constable Crosby quite gratuitously.

Chapter Six

Marked

Marcus Fixby-Smith, curator, led the way into his office at the museum.

‘Sorry dragging you over here like this, Howard.'

He paused at the threshold of the room, conscious as always on these occasions of the perennial dilemma of deciding where to sit in the presence of the Chairman of the Museums and Amenities Committee. If he sat behind his desk he automatically put his chairman, older and more senior, in the supplicant's chair on the other side. If he offered his own seat to Howard Air, he himself felt displaced and ill at ease.

‘Don't worry, Marcus. I get my work done while everyone else is in bed.' Howard Air gave a deprecating cough and solved Fixby-Smith's little local difficulty over protocol by perching on the radiator under the window. Where the curator was flamboyant and given to gesture, the fruit importer was compact and controlled. ‘It's all over in the market for the day by your breakfast time.'

Fixby-Smith sank thankfully into his chair. ‘Naturally,' he said, ‘the police won't tell us anything more at this stage.'

‘Naturally.' Howard Air cocked his head forward, listening attentively to the museum curator. ‘Go on.'

‘Before they took it away, all that they would do was confirm that the
cartonnage
contained the decomposing body of an unknown female.'

‘Which you knew already,' pointed out the committee chairman.

‘Too right.' Fixby-Smith gave a convulsive shudder. ‘But only after it was opened up. I didn't know before, of course.'

‘Of course not. Pull yourself together, man. Nobody will think you did.'

Fixby-Smith gave no sign of having heard him. ‘And now,' he swallowed visibly, ‘the police want to know everything there is to know about Colonel Caversham's legacy to the Greatorex.'

‘I'm not surprised,' said Howard Air. The businessman might not have known much about art but he was a lot stronger on common sense. ‘It's only what you would expect, surely?'

‘But I can't tell them anything except that all the bequest was brought over from Staple St James by Wetherspoons yesterday.'

‘Then you'll have to tell them that, won't you?' Because the man was sitting in the window and with his back to the light, Fixby-Smith could not see his face properly. ‘It shouldn't be too difficult. The museum's legacy was quite straightforward, wasn't it? Surely it's only the residuary estate that's got 'em all tied up in knots?'

The curator jerkily pushed some learned journals about on his desk and squeaked, ‘How was I to know that Colonel Caversham'd gone and left us a dead body?'

‘He didn't,' said Howard Air reasonably. ‘He left us some mummified remains, which he'd had for years and years at Whimbrel House in a mummy case which you had seen there before. If what you say is correct, whatever's in there now was put there long after the colonel died.' He looked suddenly serious. ‘Like last week…'

‘We've had a look in the ottoman and that great Ali Baba jar he was so proud of and even in the pithoi. Silly, I know.'

‘You're not thinking straight, Marcus.'

‘It's all very well for you, Howard,' said Fixby-Smith, emboldened by the circumstances, ‘but you didn't see that body and I did. It was all wrapped up just like an oven turkey.'

Howard Air sat in silence for a moment, deep in thought. ‘It's a funny business, all the same.'

‘I just can't get it out of my mind.'

‘The other funny business is exactly how the police came into it,' said Air as if Fixby-Smith hadn't spoken. ‘Something odd must have happened to make them take an interest in the first place.'

‘We didn't send for the police, Howard.'

Howard Air looked up quickly. ‘That's what I mean.'

‘I just can't fathom it.'

‘Who else knew the museum had been left this collection of the colonel's?'

Marcus Fixby-Smith pushed his floppy hair back away from his eyes. ‘I couldn't say. His solicitors, of course, and the removal people, naturally, and I suppose the other legatees whoever they may be.'

‘And your staff here.'

‘Of course,' said the curator stiffly. ‘But we hadn't made any public announcement yet. If you remember, we planned to make a bit of a public relations splash about the colonel's entire collection coming to us, but only after it was put on display so that the public could come and see it for themselves.' He gave a hollow groan. ‘God, Howard, we'll be making a splash all right and no mistake, as soon as the newspapers get to know about this.'

‘It'll hit the headlines, I dare say.' The chairman sounded more resigned than particularly perturbed at this. ‘So, our announcement will have to be different, that's all.'

‘You must be joking.'

‘You have to ride with the punches in life, Marcus, you know.' He regarded the museum curator quizzically and decided against proceeding with this line of thought. ‘Look, we'll have to have something prepared for the sake of the museum, so we'd better get to work on it straight away.' He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘Come along.'

Marcus Fixby-Smith didn't respond to this. ‘Howard, the police asked if we knew of any missing persons.'

‘And do we?' asked Howard Air, his pen held at the ready.

‘Only Rodoheptah,' said the museum man, true to his calling. He gave a high uncertain laugh. ‘We don't know where he is, do we? Not now.'

Howard Air stopped, his pen suspended in mid-air. ‘I hadn't thought of that,' he said seriously.

*   *   *

‘You've got a problem with a fractured skull, Seedy, have you?' echoed his old friend, Inspector Harpe, from Traffic Division. ‘Well, funnily enough, we've got a problem with a fractured skull, too.'

‘Tell me,' invited Sloan. He had joined the man from traffic at his table in the police station canteen and was trying to snatch some food while the body was being brought over to the mortuary in Berebury.

‘Remember that bloke who was hit in his car over at the Larking crossroads over towards Edsway? Name of Barton, David Barton. Well, he's got one, too. A bad one.'

‘But that was weeks and weeks ago…' Sloan's problem fractured skull was much worse than bad but he let his friend have his say.

‘Six weeks,' said Inspector Harpe succinctly.

‘So?' asked Sloan cautiously. He wondered what was coming next since Inspector Harpe's pessimism was legendary. The officer was known throughout the Calleshire force as ‘Happy Harry' on account of his never having been seen to smile. Inspector Harpe, for his part, always maintained that there was never anything in Traffic Division at which to so much as twitch the corners of the lips. ‘How come he's still traffic's problem?'

‘Still unconscious, that's why.' Harpe shrugged his shoulders. ‘His wife thinks he's beginning to respond to her voice but the people at the hospital aren't as optimistic as she is.'

‘I dare say they're being pretty careful not to raise false hopes.'

‘If you ask me, the doctors there don't believe he's ever going to come round.' Harpe sank his fork into a sausage. ‘I'm coming to believe that the Larking and Edsway junction is jinxed.'

‘Bad driving,' said Sloan briskly.

‘Crossroads were sacred in pagan times,' said the traffic man. ‘Didn't you know that?'

‘Don't you start, Harry. I've had enough of the ancient past already this morning.'

Harpe ignored him. ‘And after that,' he said, ‘they hung felons there and then buried them on the spot. No wonder the place is spooked.'

‘If it isn't bad driving,' asserted Sloan firmly, ‘then it's driving under the influence of drink or drugs.' He was aware that his own anger at the invasion of the countryside, his countryside, by drug dealers was irrational, but he couldn't be doing with superstition either. Not in this day and age. ‘There isn't anything else left, Harry.'

Inspector Harpe speared another sausage.

‘Drugs cause a lot of accidents,' went on Sloan earnestly. It wasn't the only damage they caused, he reminded himself. That was the trouble. There was no end to the criminal consequences of drug dealing. And now all he could do was to sit back and wait to learn the consequences of a dearth of heroin. For all he knew, the absence of heroin could be worse than its presence.

‘You'll have to watch it, Seedy,' advised his old friend. ‘You've got drugs on the brain these days.'

‘We always knew that they were coming in through Kinnisport,' said Sloan, ‘and now we can prove it, but that's all. Customs and Excise pick up what they can but they can't stop all the traffic. No way.' He looked curiously at his old friend. ‘Harry, if you had more hard cash in small denominations than you could account for, what would you do with it?'

‘Put it in the bank,' said Inspector Harpe promptly. ‘They could count it, too.'

‘No good. The banks have a legal duty to inform the regulatory authorities.'

‘Pay off my mortgage, then,' said Inspector Harpe. ‘And buy a bigger and better house.'

Sloan shook his head.

‘No good?' said Harry.

‘No. The conveyancing solicitor could rat on you – should rat on you, come to that – if you couldn't show the dibs had been come by honestly.'

‘New car? I've always wanted a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud myself.'

‘A man can only have so many new cars without the neighbours talking.'

‘Ours even notice if we have a late night,' conceded Harpe. ‘The stock market?'

‘Your name goes on the register of shareholders.'

‘Difficult.' Harpe screwed up his face. ‘Could I take it abroad?'

‘You could try,' said Sloan. ‘A lot of drug dealers do.'

‘I'd change it into francs or guilders or something. Big notes, of course.'

‘Smurfing.'

‘Are you having me on, Seedy?'

‘No. That's called smurfing.'

‘Sounds like it's from a kid's comic.'

‘Nothing funny about it. It goes on all the time. We've been watching that Bureau de Change down by the station for yonks.'

‘No joy?'

‘Not yet.'

‘It wasn't drugs at that crossroads.' Harry came back to his own field. ‘It was drink. The blood alcohol was way over the limit in the driver who hit that poor fellow Barton, but he's the one who's in hospital still dead to the world. He was lucky not to be T-boned.'