Past Tense (15 page)

Detective Inspector Sloan put on his provincial policeman hat and asked if the great expertise of the Met meant that it would be possible for the hire car companies to be checked for bookings by the man that night from London to Berebury.

‘No problem,' he said cheerfully.

Chancing his luck, Sloan said, ‘And for a man called Joseph Arden Short the night before?'

‘Buy one, get one free,' said the man as he rang off.

‘I don't like it, Sloan,' said Leeyes flatly. ‘Any of it. Not one little bit.'

Detective Inspector Sloan hadn't supposed for one moment that he would. Come to that, he himself didn't like it either. A young woman had died in circumstances unhappy by any measure and now a grave had been opened. The case – or cases – were getting murkier and murkier.

‘No, sir.' Altogether too much had been happening under cover of darkness for his peace of mind. ‘And if someone could kill Lucy Lansdown at night without being missed, then they could desecrate a grave, too. Alibi or not.'

The superintendent sniffed. ‘Grave robbery's not your usual sort of crime.'

‘No,' agreed Sloan. ‘I can't say it's exactly run-of-the-mill.' Actually, it was Sloan's first experience of…of what? He would have to look it up. Theft from the dead? From their heirs? Breaking and entering a coffin? Trespassing in a graveyard? Robbery with violence? Robbery with violation, more like, he decided. Or would it be considered by the Criminal Prosecution Service as something totally mundane such as being contrary to the provisions of the Burial Act of 1852 or the 1897 one? As far as he was concerned it was good old-fashioned larceny; a policeman had known where he was with larceny, petty or otherwise.

Leeyes waved a hand. ‘Not in Calleshire, anyway, Sloan. Ancient Eygpt, maybe. The Pyramids and that sort of thing, perhaps. Not here.'

‘The churchyard at Damory Regis,' said Sloan, and not for the first time. ‘St Nicholas's.'

‘When?'

‘The funeral was the day before yesterday so, assuming the deed was done in the hours of darkness, it would have been either last night or the night before.'

‘And what have you done about it?'

‘Alerted all local jewellers and pawnbrokers for starters,' said Sloan.

‘Why not the London ones as well?' pounced Leeyes instantly. ‘Didn't you tell me that the deceased's grandson was going to London today?'

Detective Inspector Sloan almost hung his head. ‘Sorry, sir,' he said abjectly. The superintendent's capacity for wrong-footing his subordinates was legendary. ‘That's right, so he was. To get a replacement passport for the stolen one so that he could go back to Lasserta as soon as possible.'

‘Well, see that he doesn't go back anywhere until this case is cleared up,' commanded Leeyes.

Resisting a desire to say that might be mission impossible, since Sloan couldn't think of any statute under which he could do it, he forged on, ‘We got a good description of the rings from the undertaker's. The nursing home knew all about them, too, of course, having seen them on the deceased for the last three years.'

‘Then make sure that the grandson's not been in London trying to flog them off as well as pick up a new passport,' said Leeyes. ‘Might as well give them a description of the man as well. And his name. Not that he'd use that if he was up to no good.'

‘Yes, sir.' Circulating the jewellery trade was not difficult. Or an uncommon event.

‘So we're back to Josephine Short again without knowing how or why Lucy Lansdown ended up in the river,' said Leeyes, drumming his fingers on his desk. ‘All roads leading to Rome, you might say.'

‘Quite so,' said Sloan. He, on his part, would be happy to settle for any of the roads he was working on leading somewhere. Anywhere. The connection between Lucy Lansdown and Josephine Short was one link he, too, would like to establish as soon as he could. Perhaps the hospital visit should come next, after all, court order or no.

‘At least,' said the superintendent obscurely, ‘we shouldn't ever have to worry about any roads not taken. Not in a criminal investigation department, anyway.'

‘No, sir,' said Sloan, mystified. He took a deep breath and said, ‘There is something else important, sir.'

‘Go on.'

‘The old lady's stated next of kin, William Wakefield, who was supposed to have spent the night of the funeral at the Erroll Garden Hotel in London on his return from South America, didn't spend all of it there and came home with a bruise on his face.'

‘Ha! That's interesting. Are you trying to tell me, Sloan, that the man had time to hire a car, come down to Berebury, meet and half-strangle a girl on the bridge, chuck her in the river, drive back to London and go back again to the hotel?'

‘It would seem so, sir.'

‘Is that a yes or a no?'

‘An affirmative, sir. At least, we're looking into it now but it's a distinct possibility.' He corrected himself. ‘Well, feasible, anyway, so the Met are checking with the car hire people in case he did and on the grandson, too, in case he came down any time he hasn't told us about.'

‘That's Joseph Short?'

‘Yes, sir. Crosby's round at the Bellingham now seeing if any resident could come and go without being seen either night.'

‘Or both,' said Superintendent Leeyes.

 

Detective Constable Crosby decided that in the circumstances the Bellingham Hotel was best approached by what he thought of as its soft underbelly – the kitchen door. He gave it a cautious push and found himself in a scullery stacked with crates of raw vegetables. He could hear the clatter of metal trays and the splashing of water beyond and advanced with considerable circumspection through another door.

He was greeted by a scene that – had he known it – could have come straight out of a painting by Pieter Breughel the Elder. There were signs of baking everywhere, and freshly cooked loaves, crusts still crackling, were giving off a delectable aroma, whilst a tray of round teacakes sat cooling on a wire rack. A man clothed in a white apron and checked trousers, his head surmounted by a chef's hat, soon spotted him.

‘You can't come in here, mate,' he called out. ‘Not allowed. Health and safety and all that rubbish.'

‘Sorry,' said Crosby untruthfully. ‘I'm lost. I'm looking for the night porter.'

The man laughed. ‘You'll be lucky. There isn't one.'

‘What happens when people want to get in late, then?'

‘If it's after midnight poor old Stanley – been here man and boy, he has; he started off as the boots – gets up and opens the door. And don't we know it – he moans about it all the next day.' The man rested a pair of floury arms on his hips. ‘And the resident staff here all have their own keys to the back door if they're late back. That's what happens, since you want to know, but I can tell you that bit doesn't happen often, not with our working hours.'

‘Unsocial, are they?' They were in the police force, too, but Crosby didn't say so.

‘Tell me about it,' said the chef.

‘Did he moan about having to get up last night or the night before?' asked Crosby.

‘Not that registered on my radar,' said the chef, ‘but we've been busy in here.'

‘So where'll I find Stanley?' asked Crosby, averting his eyes from the teacakes.

‘The cellar, most like.' The man suddenly started knocking up a lump of dough with notable vigour. ‘But he'll be round here as soon as the smell of cooking gets to him. You can count on that.'

Murmuring his thanks, Crosby found his way to the open cellar door. Going down a wooden stairway that demanded care and attention – to say nothing of the attentions of the aforementioned health and safety executive – he found himself in the murky surroundings of the Bellingham's cellar. The smells that assailed his nostrils down here were very different from those filling the kitchen on the floor above. That coming from an open tub of stale beer predominated – although he wasn't entirely certain that some of them didn't emanate from the gnome-like Stanley who emerged from the shadows as he arrived.

‘You from the brewery?' he asked Crosby, peering at him in the bad light.

Crosby shook his head. ‘No.'

‘Thought not. Then you can hop it,' he said. ‘You're not supposed to be down here. Nobody is.'

‘Except you,' pointed out Crosby, taking a quick look round. At the far end of the cellar a latticed metal grill led to the hotel's wine store.

‘And it's no use your looking at the wine, either, mate,' said Stanley. ‘It's locked and the manager keeps the key.'

‘I'll bet he does,' said Crosby. He pointed at the heavy beer canisters on the floor. ‘These metal kegs – how do they get down here?'

‘How do you think?'

‘Not by those rotten steps that I came down, anyway,' said Crosby.

‘Course not.' Stanley jerked his shoulder towards a pair of trapdoors at one end of the cellar. A ladder with curved rungs and a hooked end stood to one side of them. ‘They're rolled off the brewer's dray and come down the chute that way.'

‘Ah,' said Crosby. ‘And that'll give out onto Sheep Street, won't it?'

‘Clever Dick, aren't we?' said Stanley.

‘Kept locked, is it?'

‘Not locked,' said Stanley. ‘Barred from the inside. Otherwise we'd have people falling through, wouldn't we?' He peered more closely at Crosby. ‘What do you want to know for?'

‘What I want to know is whether the door to the cellar is kept locked when you're not here,' said Crosby, not answering the question.

‘I leaves the key in reception then, not that I need to. You couldn't get into one of these beer kegs if you wanted to – besides they need gas to pump them up to the bars. And, since you're so interested, the bottled beer's kept in with the wine and spirits.' He screwed his face up. ‘I suppose you could draw off a cask if you put your mind to it.' He pointed to the open tub. ‘Or drink the ullage in that firkin over there but you wouldn't like it.'

‘Right.'

‘Besides,' offered Stanley, ‘seeing as how the beer has to be kept at a temperature between fifty-five and fifty-eight degrees I sometimes has to leave the cellar door open anyway to keep it cool nights.'

‘So,' reasoned Crosby aloud, ‘if you wanted to get out of the hotel in the middle of the night without paying your bill, you could come down here, swing that iron bar back and climb out onto the street.'

A look of great cunning came over Stanley's face. ‘Not without my knowing, you couldn't. Because you couldn't close those doors behind you from the street, could you? And I'd know someone had been that way.' He gave a high cackle. ‘He'd have to come back in again and close them behind him for me not to know.'

‘So he would,' said Detective Constable Crosby, applauding this reasoning. ‘You're quite right, Stanley. If he went out that way, then he'd have to come back that way.'

Stanley gave another high cackle. ‘And make sure that nobody fell down the chute while he was out. It'd give way if it wasn't propped up from behind.'

‘So it would,' said Detective Constable Crosby, not saying that it would be easy enough to hang a warning notice over the trapdoor to keep anyone off it for a little while in the night. ‘By the way, why couldn't someone get out of the front door and leave that open behind them?'

‘Because,' said Stanley with a look of great cunning, ‘I takes that key to bed with me, that's why.'

‘And has anyone got you up the last couple of nights?'

Stanley shook his head. ‘Always quiet this time of year, but you wait until Christmas. It's different then.'

Crosby left by the Bellingham's front door but he soon turned right and right again and went down a lane beside the hotel until he found himself in Sheep Street at the back of the building. Seen from above, the two stout leaves of the trapdoor looked solid enough to take the weight of any number of pedestrians. And there was no visible way of opening them from the outside that he could see – unless, that is, you knew they were unlocked when it would have been easy.

He got out his notebook and wrote down what he had learnt before he forgot it.

 

Detective Inspector Sloan was on the point of leaving his office when a member of the civilian staff came in with a sheaf of papers.

‘The report from the search team going over the house belonging to Lucy Lansdown, Inspector,' she said, handing it over. ‘They've just done a first survey…they said to tell you that they've taken away all the correspondence they found for further examination but nothing interesting about her came up at first sight.'

Sloan cast his eye quickly over the report. It appeared that what had been found in the house was singularly unrevealing of the personality of the dead girl. If Lucy Lansdown had had a love life no sign of it had been found in her home. There were photographs of a late middle-aged couple and of a man and wife with two children – parents and the brother's family, the searchers had deduced – and a handful of what were clearly holiday snaps with mountain backgrounds. The presence of the brochures of several travel companies suggested another holiday abroad was being considered. Utility bills were neatly filed and had been paid.

The report ran on: ‘Although the house was neat and clean, it did not show signs of being more than a place to eat and sleep. There were several nursing journals around and a study of the bookcase suggested escapist, romantic literature was favoured.'

Inspector Sloan turned the report over to see the name of its author and promptly dismissed him as an academic snob. The description of the house as unloved he could understand. People who worked for all-absorbing institutions such as hospitals and schools often had almost their whole being there, rather than in houses that weren't exactly homes. In those cases the danger came with retirement and with it the tendency to haunt the places where that working life had been played out. Or find long, dull days totally empty.

Mentally deciding that he wouldn't miss a working life spent in the police force as much as that, he went back to the body of the text and read on. ‘There was no sign of a safe for valuables and nothing of really great monetary value was found. What little jewellery there was in the house was of no intrinsic value. The deceased's wardrobe was of no particular significance, clothes being off the peg and in subdued colours.'