Past Tense (8 page)

‘And you have Miss Lansdown's spare key,' Sloan prompted her gently.

‘That's right,' she said, handing over the key with alacrity. ‘I usually keep an eye on her house for her when she's away – she's got a married brother in the North – and I always take any parcels in for her if she's out when the delivery people come. That sort of thing.'

‘So she lived alone,' concluded Sloan. Whether the girl was in a relationship or not was something that could await what were euphemistically known as ‘further enquiries'.

Mrs Marshall nodded. ‘That's right. She did. At least I've never seen anyone else around. Otherwise I didn't see a lot of her. Mind you, she does the same for me on the looking-out side for deliveries and she feeds my cat when I go over to my daughter's in Calleford.'

‘Very neighbourly,' said Sloan absently. ‘It must have been a great help.'

‘It's not like Lucy to go away without saying anything,' she persisted.

‘No,' said Sloan. ‘Nurses are usually very responsible people.'

‘That's what the hospital said – and that it was not like her not to come in to work when she was on duty. Mind you, she had some time off yesterday but they said they knew all about that at the hospital.'

‘What was that for?' asked Sloan casually. ‘Did she mention it?'

Mrs Marshall shook her head. ‘No, but I just happened to notice her coming home yesterday afternoon, that's all.' The woman was clearly working out how much noticing was a neighbour taking a kindly interest and how much was an old woman spying on someone else.

‘Dressed for work?' asked Sloan, determinedly low-key.

‘Oh, no,' said Mrs Marshall instantly. ‘She wasn't in uniform then. Very neat and tidy, she was. Best grey coat and all that.'

‘And so she came home later or earlier than usual?'

‘Oh, earlier. I just happened to look out of my window as she came up the road. About half past four that would have been.'

‘That's very helpful,' said Sloan gravely, turning towards the door of the house.

Mrs Marshall did not leave her position on the pavement.

‘I'll just have to get my constable to check the lock to make sure that there hasn't been any forced entry,' said Sloan, jerking his head in Crosby's direction.

That worthy suddenly became alert and approached the door. He examined it closely for scratches. ‘Seems OK, sir,' he said presently.

‘That's good, it looks as if she went out voluntarily, if she did,' said Sloan, addressing the neighbour. ‘Thank you for your help, madam, we'll be in touch again if necessary.'

He entered the house first, as always feeling an intruder himself. A police visit even to an empty house was never a welcome incursion. The light in the front hall was indeed still on but the rest of the house was in darkness, all the curtains drawn against the daylight. He switched on the light in the sitting room with a gloved hand and looked first towards the mantelshelf, taking in the fact that there was no note propped against the clock on there nor, indeed, lying prominently on the table.

The deaths of suicides who didn't leave notes behind – preferably addressed to the coroner, who could decide for himself whether to read them aloud at an inquest – could remain inconclusive and everyone unhappy. Sometimes hurting the living was only what the dead had in mind.

There was no sign of disturbance in the sitting room, he noted methodically, or in any of the other rooms on the ground floor. The spare, simple furnishings and their surroundings had the unpolished look of belonging to someone who had their real being somewhere else. Although there was a pot plant on the table there was a shower of pollen under it that had not been dusted off.

Still wearing the rubber gloves that were mandatory these days, Sloan picked up the telephone and dialled the code designed to record the number of the last incoming call. Someone unknown had telephoned Lucy Lansdown just before ten-fifteen the night before, leaving no number.

‘Crosby,' he said, ‘you go and check upstairs. See if the bed has been slept in for starters…'

Sloan made his way into the kitchen. It was neat and clean, with what looked like yesterday's supper dishes washed and stacked in a drying rack beside the sink. He pulled open the odd cupboard and saw nothing out of the way. Standing on the work surface was a tin of cocoa, a mug ready beside it. He went back to the sitting room as a clattering on the stairs heralded the return of Crosby.

‘Bed not slept in, sir,' he reported. ‘Everything seems OK up there otherwise.'

‘It looks as if she went out of her own volition, at a guess sometime after a telephone call a little after ten o'clock last night,' murmured Sloan, ‘but whether that was in response to that particular call or not remains to be seen.' He looked round the room again. ‘Can you see a handbag anywhere?'

Crosby took a good look round and then shook his head. ‘No, sir.'

Sloan said, ‘Then I don't think there's anything more here for us just now…Wait a minute, though, Crosby, wait a minute…'

‘Sir?'

There was a little stool beside a fireside chair with a pile of magazines on it, topped by a copy of the local paper. Sloan had stooped and looked at it more closely.

The Berebury Gazette
was opened at the page carrying the notices of deaths and the announcements of funerals. The time of that of Josephine Eleanor Short at the church at Damory Regis the day before was ringed in black ink.

‘Come in, sit down and say that again, Sloan,' barked Superintendent Leeyes. He was sitting in his office behind his desk on which lay only a flimsy message sheet. His pencil hovered over this but he wasn't actually writing anything on it. Two telephones sat at his elbow, both silent for a wonder.

‘After your message, sir,' repeated Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘we visited the house in Berebury of the missing person whose name you gave us, that is a young woman called Lucy Lansdown.' Sloan took a chair and got out his notebook. ‘Formal identification has not yet been carried out but the visible characteristics of the deceased match the description we have been given of this Lucy Lansdown.' Checking the DNA and tracing dental records was all very well, thought Sloan, but they took time. Those could and would come later. After Dr Dabbe had done his work.

Leeyes grunted. ‘Go on.'

‘We're keeping the probable identity under wraps, sir, for the time being and at least until we've traced any relatives.'

Leeyes grunted again. ‘House keys?'

‘There were none with the body and no handbag has been found yet. It was a neighbour, who did have a spare key, who let us into the house.' Mrs Marshall, the neighbour, had called it a ‘crisis key', which in the circumstances perhaps it was, although Sloan hadn't said this to her.

‘And?' grunted Leeyes.

Sloan plodded on. ‘There was no note immediately visible in the house…'

‘Nothing propped up in front of the clock, then,' said Leeyes.

Sloan shook his head and took a deep breath before saying, ‘No, sir, but we did find something else…'

The superintendent tapped his desk with a pencil. ‘Go on, man.'

‘A copy of last week's local newspaper—'

‘That's no surprise, surely…'

‘With a notice about a death and funeral highlighted in ink.'

‘Ah…' Leeyes sat up.

‘It announced the date and time of the funeral yesterday, at Damory Regis, of an old lady called Josephine Eleanor Short.'

Leeyes bristled. ‘Sloan, are you trying to tell me that this girl chucked herself in the river from grief?'

‘No, sir,' said Sloan stolidly, resisting the temptation to say that he had been trying to tell his superior officer something quite different; after all, he had his pension to think of.

Leeyes drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Then what are you trying to say, Sloan?'

‘That it was also the same Josephine Eleanor Short's – the late Josephine Eleanor Short's – room that would appear to have been broken into at the Berebury Nursing Home.'

‘What!'

Since there could have been no doubt that Superintendent Leeyes had heard perfectly clearly what he had had to say, Sloan said nothing in response to this.

‘Why?' demanded the superintendent.

‘I couldn't say, I'm sure, sir. Not at this stage.'

‘Stop talking like a civil service spokesman, Sloan, and give me a proper opinion.'

‘Quite difficult, sir. There would appear to have been nothing missing from the room at the nursing home when we examined it.'

‘Forget the words “would appear”, too, Sloan,' snapped Leeyes, ‘and tell me whether there was or there wasn't.'

‘Impossible to say, sir, not without further investigation.' Standing one's ground with the superintendent was easier said than done. ‘It seemed pretty bare there when we made our examination and the only known damage was to a Chinese vase, which would appear to…that is to say…which had been knocked over and broken. I've telephoned the home and requested that the room in question be locked and kept locked until we get there. I'm going straight over there again now.'

‘I should hope so, too,' snapped Leeyes.

Sloan paused and then said, ‘I'm afraid I was informed by the nursing home staff that the relatives of the deceased were actually there in the room when I rang.'

‘Pity, that,' said the superintendent at once. ‘They'll want watching.'

‘Yes, sir.' This sentiment he understood. The superintendent was a firm believer in the fact that a death brought out the worst in everyone but in relatives in particular.

‘What did the old lady die from?'

‘I don't know that yet,' said Sloan, making a note. ‘I have been told that Dr Angus Browne was in attendance and signed the death certificate, and he's usually reliable.' Christopher Dennis Sloan might have been a policeman but he was also a husband and father, and as such did not subscribe to the myth that all qualified doctors were as good as each other.

The superintendent grunted in agreement. ‘Pigs might be equal, but doctors aren't.'

‘No, sir.' It was the evening class lecturer who had decided that the superintendent and he were never going to see eye to eye on the works of George Orwell.

‘This girl in the river, Sloan, you will remember is said to have been a nurse at the Berebury District General Hospital…'

‘So I understand, sir.' That nothing should ever be taken on trust was a lesson learnt early on in every police career, but since Lucy Lansdown worked at the hospital, this seemed to be taking the precept to extremes, especially since it was the hospital that had declared her missing. But, as always, he would check.

Leeyes tapped his pencil on his desk again. ‘The girl could have gone in for mercy killing and then been overcome by remorse, couldn't she?'

‘Yes, indeed, sir. Theoretically, that is. We don't know yet whether the deceased had been a patient in the hospital at all during her last illness. I'll look into it. There is one thing, though…'

The superintendent sighed heavily. ‘There always is, isn't there? Go on, tell me.'

‘Dr Dabbe says he found some grazes on her hands as if she had clutched at some stonework as she fell.'

‘The Amy Robsart question,' mused Leeyes.

‘Sir?'

‘Did she fall or was she pushed?' It wasn't for a disagreement over literary fiction that the superintendent had been asked to leave his evening class on Tudor history. It had been for letting his heavy endorsement of capital punishment get in the way of proper historical assessment. ‘Is that what you're trying to say, Sloan?'

‘It's whether she jumped or not that we have to worry about, sir.'

‘Well, you'll have to find that out, won't you? And soon. It won't be long before we have the coroner on our backs.'

Mr Locombe-Stapleford, Her Majesty's Coroner for East Calleshire, was an old sparring partner of the superintendent's and not given to allowing the police as much leeway as Leeyes would have liked.

‘The body is on the way to Dr Dabbe at the mortuary now,' promised Sloan, ‘and I'm on my way to the Berebury Nursing Home.'

‘Take Crosby, will you?' said Leeyes. ‘Anything to get him out from under my feet would be a good thing as far as I'm concerned. He's nothing but a nuisance here.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Sloan stiffly. No one could call the detective constable an asset to any investigative team. He gritted his teeth and said, ingrained discipline overcoming any other response, ‘Certainly, sir.'

‘But,' added Leeyes, a specialist in the unanswerable Parthian shot, ‘don't let him hold you up.'

*   *   *

‘Walk?' echoed Crosby in tones of disbelief. Walking had never appealed to the detective constable. It was driving fast cars very fast indeed which was his greatest delight.

‘You heard,' said Sloan briskly. ‘Walk. It's what bipeds do. They put one foot in front of the other. And we're going to do it, too. Now. The Berebury Nursing Home is only in St Clement's Row. Not at the North Pole. Come along.'

The detective constable looked dubious. ‘We went by car last time.'

‘Well, we're walking this time.'

‘Yes, sir.' He sounded mulish.

‘All we have to do is cross over Division Street and we're there,' said Sloan.

‘Never 'eard of it,' muttered Crosby under his breath.

This was not surprising since there was no road called this in the market town of Berebury. The name had come from an evening class on sociology attended by Superintendent Leeyes; attended, that is, until he had parted brass rags with the lecturer over the little matter of the causes of youth crime. To say that the two men had not seen eye to eye on this was a considerable understatement.

‘Division Road,' explained Sloan patiently, ‘is where the better houses are on one side and the less good on the other, divided by the road running between them.'

‘I get you, sir. And one's the wrong side of the tracks.' Crosby nodded his understanding. ‘And we're heading for Nobs Row now. That's it, isn't it?'

‘I couldn't have put it better myself,' murmured Sloan as they turned into St Clement's Row. The houses there had once been the biggest and best in the town. The Berebury Nursing Home building, formerly a large family house, was no exception. Its elegant brickwork exuded Edwardian skill and confidence.

The two detectives crunched up the gravel drive, Sloan automatically taking a look at the cars parked outside. Since none of them was a high-powered sports car Crosby's interest was more cursory. The matron herself met them at the door.

‘The family were here earlier, Inspector,' she said. ‘I take it you will wish to talk to them, too?'

‘Presently,' said Sloan easily. He could recognise an attempt to shift the police emphasis from the nursing home to the relatives of the deceased as well as the next man. ‘But first we should like to re-examine the room in question.'

‘As I said before, as far as we are aware there is nothing missing,' said Mrs Luxton tautly.

‘Good,' said Sloan.

‘So why—?' she began.

‘There has been an unexpected development.'

That silenced Mrs Luxton. She led the two policemen to Josephine Short's room without further demur, drew the key from her pocket and opened the door. As far as Sloan could see at first glance everything was just as it had been before. All that was different was that the pieces of china from the broken vase had gone.

‘Tell me, madam, had the late Josephine Short been in hospital lately?'

Mrs Luxton shook her head. ‘Not for some years. We would have liked her to have gone there when she got so ill last month but she declined.' Her lips twisted. ‘Very vigorously.'

‘Dangerous places, hospitals,' remarked Crosby. ‘You can catch things there.'

Mrs Luxton turned her basilisk gaze on him. ‘Although we know the Berebury Hospital is a good one, Josephine very much wanted to die here and not there. She made that abundantly clear on several occasions.'

‘She knew she was dying, then, did she?' hazarded Sloan.

‘Oh, yes, Inspector. Moreover, she wanted to die. She had also made that quite clear to us all. Many times.' She gave him a meaningful look. ‘And to Dr Browne. I'm sure he would confirm that. And, of course, he would also confirm the fact that Josephine declined to go to hospital. I may say she did so with more animation than either the doctor or I had thought possible in her state of health at the time.' She waved a hand. ‘It will all be in our records as well as his.'

‘I'm sure,' murmured Sloan. ‘So, in that case, did you have any outside nursing help for her while she was so ill?'

Mrs Linda Luxton drew herself up to her full height and said impressively, ‘Here at the Berebury Nursing Home, Inspector, we pride ourselves in being able to look after all our residents ourselves until the end.'

‘What about visitors?' asked Sloan, ignoring this shameless promotion of the nursing home. ‘Do you have a record of who came to see her?'

‘We have a record that she had no visitors,' responded the matron promptly. ‘In fact, she instructed us that were any to come here they were to be told that she didn't wish to receive anyone.'

‘And did anyone come?' enquired Crosby, showing interest for the first time.

‘Only once. When she was first here. An old gentleman. I must say he seemed not to be at all surprised when we told him what Josephine had said and he went away again. In fact,' the matron unbent a little and said, ‘it was when we happened to have a girl working here – a student, who wanted a bit of pin money…'

Detective Inspector Sloan forbore to say that the only students he knew wanted money for items quite different – needles rather than pins, often enough.

Mrs Linda Luxton went on, ‘This girl said that it reminded her of a poem where a traveller knocked in vain on a moonlit door.'

‘Really?' said Sloan, his mind elsewhere.

‘She quoted it to us. She was reading English, you see. “Tell them I came, and no one answered, that I kept my word”,' said Mrs Luxton, who had always been privately intrigued by the late Josephine Short and was even more so now. ‘Walter de la Mare, she said wrote it.'

‘Really?' said Sloan politely. ‘And now can you tell me the names of the people who have been – who are known to have been, that is – in her room since she died?'

Mrs Luxton frowned. ‘Apart from the staff here, the doctor, of course, he came first and then Morton's, the undertaker's. Then Mrs Wakefield – she's the wife of William Wakefield, who is the next of kin whom Josephine had named for us in our records. I understand that he – that is her husband – was in South America at the time of Josephine's death so she came instead.'

Detective Inspector Sloan was conscious of somehow being made aware that Mrs Janet Wakefield was not Mrs Linda Luxton's favourite person. He said, ‘I'd like her address, please.'

‘She insisted,' the matron informed him in the same flat tone, ‘that neither she nor her husband had been aware of the existence, let alone the proximity of his great-aunt.'

‘Funny, that,' interjected Crosby.

‘Indeed.' Mrs Luxton clearly thought so too. ‘The funeral was yesterday as you already know and then today…'