Passing Strange (14 page)

The land agent did not speak until he had marshalled his facts. “As you may imagine, Inspector, the Priory estate is now somewhat undercapitalized.”

Sloan, in fact, could not imagine anything of the sort but he did not say so.

“None of the farms is in hand,” went on Hebbinge.

That meant even less to Sloan.

“So,” said Hebbinge, “for many years now there has only been the rent from them to keep the estate going.”

“Er – yes,” said Sloan. He should be following this closely. He realized that.

“That means,” explained Hebbinge, “that there hasn't been any real capital to speak of available for improvements and modernization.”

Sloan nodded, glad that the other man had kept those two concepts separate. He had already reached an age when he did not automatically think of improvements and modernization as synonymous.

“Sam Watkinson,” said the agent. “You've met him, Inspector, haven't you?”

Sloan nodded. “It was his field where the red Mini was parked.”

“That's him. He'll be retiring in a year or so and then the Home Farm can be run by the estate. That will help a lot.”

“How will it help?” Sloan didn't hesitate to ask. It was no part of a detective-inspector's duties to know how farm-land was managed.

“If it's rented, then the income from it is treated by the Inland Revenue as unearned,” explained Edward Hebbinge, “and taxed at a higher rate. If we farm it, then it's dealt with as earned income.”

“I see,” said Sloan. The policemen he knew earned their income. All of it. All of them. “Go on.”

“Even so, the Home Farm is more than big enough – Sam Watkinson hasn't any sons to help him you know – and the estate could do with the extra money now.”

“Stair carpet?” said Sloan.

“The roof, I think, first,” said the agent wryly. “There's a stretch of land on the wrong side of the road that we want to hive off for development. It's really quite separate from the farm and not good land. Too wet. It should bring in a good ground rent.”

Sloan nodded. Developing was a word that detective-inspectors did not understand. The modern alchemy was to take land and bricks and mortar and turn them into gold. The equivalent Philosopher's Stone was something typed on a piece of paper called Planning Permission.

“Sam Watkinson says he'll be quite glad for it to go.”

“Will he?” Developing was the post-war South Sea Bubble. Men made money out of bubbles. Even bubbles that burst.

Edward Hebbinge wasn't theorizing. He was talking about brass tacks. “There's quite a lot of money riding on this, Inspector. And for once everyone stands to gain.”

“Everyone?” Sloan had Joyce Cooper in mind. If it had anything to do with her, she hadn't gained. She had ‘looked her last on all things lovely' without being asked. He felt a sudden surge of resolution. He would track down whoever had brought that about. “Are you sure?” he asked Hebbinge with unexpected ferocity.

“The Priory estate will get some extra income which it needs, Sam Watkinson will have less rent to pay, and Esdaile Homes …” The land agent gave a wry smile. “I don't think, Inspector, somehow that Maurice Esdaile is going to lose.”

Twenty minutes later Sloan was in the sitting-room of the man he reckoned stood to gain the most. He had a detective-constable by his side distinctly gratified at having covered the distance in the time. The detective-inspector did not know if property developers were often disturbed late on Saturday evenings and Mr Maurice Esdaile was far too urbane to reveal the fact. He'd certainly made no bones about seeing him, late as it was.

One thing was immediately obvious. The man wasn't living in one of his own houses. Not even the style that most customers favoured, known to every reader of advertisements as ‘the John Citizen' (everything that an Englishman needs built-in). Nor yet ‘the Mary Smith' (for the woman on her own). Or even ‘the Wayne Harvey' (the first home for the man in a hurry). Maurice Esdaile himself was ensconced in something a good deal better than all three put together.

He'd found an unexpectedly well-built early nineteenth-century house in the rural hinterland south of Calleford. Even lit only by the headlights of the police car, Sloan could see that it had been the work of craftsmen. If – as they say – every man wanted to live in the sort of house his father admired then Esdaile
père
must have had a good eye for a nice piece of brickwork.

Izaak Walton had noted that different varieties of fish rose to different sorts of bait. So it was with men. The lure that persuaded a wily pike to stir from the safety of the shadows of deep, nearly still water was of quite a different order from the mayfly that tempted the lively trout to flash above the surface of the river in its pursuit.

Detective-Inspector Sloan landed the verbal equivalent of a wriggling worm right in front of Maurice Esdaile. He was, he announced, engaged upon a murder enquiry and had some questions for him.

There was wariness in Esdaile's manner but nothing more that Sloan could put his finger on. He admitted he'd heard about the murder of the District Nurse. No, he hadn't known her personally. She might have been at the meeting about the new houses …

“The protest meeting,” interrupted Sloan bluntly.

Esdaile gave a tiny shrug. “My public relations people don't like the phrase.”

An astute observer might have seen from the downturn of Sloan's own shoulders what the policeman thought about public relations people. They never did like spades being called spades. And, now he came to think of it, calling spades, spades – not even bloody shovels – was usually what upset public relations people. The truth, in fact. Calling spades agricultural implements was what constituted public relations: the building of an image that wasn't an outright lie. Just slightly off centre in the right direction.

“As I say, Nurse Cooper might have been there.” Maurice Esdaile looked calmly at Sloan. “From where I sat it seemed as if every man jack in Almstone was in that hall.”

“All against you?”

“Those in favour,” said Esdaile drily, “usually stay at home.”

Sloan motioned to Crosby to take notes and looked at Esdaile. He had the appearance of a man who could roll with the punches. “I understand,” said Sloan, “that it was a noisy meeting.”

“Those against came,” said Esdaile.

“Where,” asked Sloan straightly, “does Richenda Mellows come into all this?”

Some of the businessman's composure slipped. “You may well ask, Inspector.”

Sloan waited.

“Things had been going quite well.” Maurice Esdaile opened his hands in an age-old commercial gesture.

Sloan went on waiting. Sometimes murder was done to preserve the
status quo:
sometimes to change the situation.

“We'd got outline planning permission,” said Esdaile. “That was the most important thing.”

“I can see that,” said Sloan. “Then what?”

“There was a willing tenant and a willing owner,” Esdaile added ironically. “That's the ideal situation, Inspector.”

“I can see that.” Sloan jerked his head. Situations, of course, altered cases. And not only in grammar. Situations altered murder cases too.

“And then …” Esdaile paused.

“Then?” prompted Sloan. He was interested in the way things had changed.

“Then old Mrs Agatha Mellows ups and dies.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It could have happened at any time. We all knew that. She was quite an age.”

Sloan nodded silently. Late or soon death comes to Everyman. But from time to time people forgot.

“It just had to happen before she could put her name on the dotted line.”

“These things take time,” said Sloan profoundly.

Esdaile frowned. “I think Terlingham did the legal work as quickly as he could.”

“Did he?” murmured Sloan. There was another professional man with whom he would have to have a word besides the solicitor. That was the doctor. Nature might have caught up with Mrs Agatha Mellows but he would have to check that Art hadn't overtaken Nature. The Art of Homicide. He made an unobtrusive note.

Maurice Esdaile didn't appear to notice. “Another couple of weeks and we would probably have been all right,” he said.

“So then what happened?” enquired Sloan, though he thought he could guess.

“Delay.” The property developer summed everything up in one bitter word.

“Time is money,” observed Sloan.

“In my business more than most,” said Esdaile trenchantly. He waved a hand. “Oh, I know Stephen Terlingham's done his best.”

“The law's delays,” offered Sloan by way of encouragement.

Esdaile didn't need encouragement. “Terlingham got probate all right. No problem there. And my people got on with planning the Almstone houses.” He brightened. “We're doing an estate of our ‘Harold and Hilda' houses there, you know.”

Sloan didn't know and said so.

“‘Harold and Hilda – Room for retirement',” said the developer with modest pride. “We've got a waiting list.”

“And then?” said Sloan gently. He didn't know yet if he was playing a big fish or not.

“And then,” said Esdaile, “Terlingham goes and gets cold feet over being the executor.”

Sloan murmured something trite about its being quite a responsibility.

“He doesn't know,” said Esdaile, “whether to hand over to the girl's trustees or not.”

“Tricky,” said Sloan, trying not to let his interest show. Detective-Constable Crosby did not seem to be having any problems in that direction at all. He sat, stolid and unmoving, his notebook on his knee, not looking up.

Esdaile nodded briskly. “So the whole thing gets put on ice.”

“Not helpful?” ventured Sloan cautiously.

“It doesn't do a housing scheme any good to go into cold storage, Inspector. It's bad business.”

“I can see that.” Sloan cleared his throat. “The girl's trustees, I take it, would also be in favour of this new development?” Nobody at the Preservation Society's indignation meeting had been but Sloan presumed that in Maurice Esdaile's world they did not count.

“Good Lord, yes,” said the man opposite him unhesitatingly. “It's the right thing to do, Inspector. For everybody. No question of that at all.”

Sloan thought about Miss Tompkins sitting in Blenheim Cottage at Almstone thinking up ways to thwart the development. But it was another woman whose name he mentioned. “What does Richenda Mellows herself think about it?”

“I have no idea,” said Esdaile.

“Pardon?”

“I couldn't say, Inspector.” Esdaile dismissed the thought impatiently. “I haven't asked her. Her Trustees are willing, naturally.”

“But …”

Maurice Esdaile looked Sloan straight in the eye. “In fact I've never even set eyes on her.”

11

Ophicleide

There were undoubtedly regimes in other parts of the world where the police had ways of making people talk. And had men on their staff who specialized in doing so. They existed in those countries where the police could treat suspects just as they liked: without awkward questions being asked in the Houses of Parliament. Where, in fact, it was pretty much routine also to lock up those who even asked those awkward questions.

There were techniques – highly sophisticated techniques – for getting useful information out of people when they were being interviewed. These owed almost everything to art and almost nothing to intimidation. They were used by every law enforcement agency there was.

And in England there was no way short of torture –
peine forte et dure
had been tried on Guy Fawkes – of compelling anyone to tell the truth. A man could be sent to prison for seven years for not telling it – but that was something different.

None of these facts was of the slightest use to Detective-Inspector Sloan now. Truth didn't even enter into the matter at this stage because there was no way at all of questioning someone who was not prepared to speak. Non-verbal communication had its limitations.

Superintendent Leeyes wasn't at the Police Station any more. He'd gone home but at least Sloan was able to be sitting at his own desk again when Crosby reported to him.

Having declared that she had nothing to say, Richenda Hilary Pemberton Mellows proceeded – with notable strongmindedness – to say nothing.

“Not even name and number,” said Crosby, who was an avid cinema-goer. In all the best war films soldiers who were taken prisoner always gave their name and number before refusing to answer the enemy's questions. Richenda Mellows did not seem to have heard of the Geneva Convention.

And if – in an earlier tradition – like Greta Garbo she only wanted to be alone she did not say so.

“She said nothing at all,” repeated Crosby.

It was all very well for police in other countries to say that they had ways of making people talk. That was no help to Sloan now. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Neither he nor anyone else was able to raise a peep out of Richenda Mellows. Questioning was essentially a two-way business. Without a response it became suspiciously like a harangue. And after a little while a man began to feel a trifle foolish talking to a girl who would not answer back.

Sloan discarded the idea of one ploy straightaway.

Sometimes back-chat between police officers succeeded where straightforward questioning of suspects failed. Lesser criminal fry could occasionally be drawn into giving themselves away by the badinage of a couple of alert policemen. Unless well done it tended to sound perilously like the act of a stage comedian and his feedman.

First policeman: Hullo, hullo, who have we here?

Second policeman: Little Bill Sikes.

And what has little Bill Sikes done this time?