Stiff News (3 page)

‘He signed my mother's death certificate the day she died,' continued Lionel Powell. ‘I went over and collected it myself.'

‘And the cause of death given on it?' asked Sloan, noting that the doctor, then, had been happy enough about the old lady's death to certify it as being from natural causes.

‘Chronic renal failure.'

Sloan looked sharply at Lionel Powell and then glanced again at the clock. ‘Is it a burial or cremation?'

‘Burial.'

‘I see.' Detective Inspector Sloan took a deep breath and uttered the very words he had never thought he would ever hear himself use to the Superintendent. ‘I think, sir, this is a job where I am going to need Detective Constable Crosby…'

‘Need Crosby?' echoed his superior officer in disbelief. It was a truth universally acknowledged at Berebury Police Station that young Constable Crosby was an incubus in any investigation: more defective than detective. ‘Are you quite sure?'

‘That's if I'm going to get to Almstone Church in time,' said Detective Inspector Sloan.

*   *   *

The Reverend Adrian Brailsford had mounted the pulpit at St Clement's Church at Almstone with a certain lack of enthusiasm for the job in hand. In the ordinary way he found delivering
oraisons funèbres
no problem, they being as it were part and parcel of his own daily round as the curé of souls in the parish of Almstone in the diocese of Calleford. In fact, sometimes he even quite enjoyed pronouncing them, conscious that not only was he carrying out a last duty towards one of his flock but supporting the mourners, too – and all at the same time as giving full rein to his views on the importance of the Christian message of peace and forgiveness.

But not this morning.

‘Dearly beloved brethren,' he enjoined them formally, ‘we are gathered here together today to give thanks for the life of Gertrude Eleanor Murton Powell…'

Adrian Brailsford had hoped at first that the Regimental Chaplain would have come to Almstone to take this service himself, but that khaki cleric was away on active duty with the Fearnshires somewhere in Europe. All he, Adrian Brailsford, Rector of this parish, had been told about that clergyman's absence was that the Regiment was busy trying to sort out the human cockpit that the Balkans had again become.

‘A life,' he went on, picking his words about Gertrude Powell with minefield care, ‘which we all know was one lived to the full.' The Rector was well aware that a funeral was usually one of the services at which it was more likely that he had the complete attention of all of his congregation. He could almost feel it from the pulpit now.

‘You might say she lived it to the utmost,' he added.

The same interest, alas, could not always be felt from those attending some of the other offices of the church. Sometimes, indeed, at children's services and Harvest Festival time, he wasn't sure that he had their attention at all. Often enough, too, he felt he was a mere figurehead at such occasions as the Christmas Carol Service.

Not today.

Today he had no need to make a conscious effort to stifle any negative thoughts of his own or try to engage the wandering minds of his flock. Today he knew he had the complete attention of everyone present. He laid out his notes on the pulpit rail and turned to address the assembled company on the subject of the life of the deceased.

‘It was, of course, only the last few years of that crowded life which she had spent amongst us here in Almstone…'

It hadn't been easy for him to find the right words for his encomium. Adrian's usual wont was to talk first to the relatives about their favourite memory of the deceased and then weave what they had said seamlessly into the fabric of his address, augmenting the tribute as necessary with passing references to the bread of affliction and the waters of sorrow (there being very few people who escaped these two sad experiences in life). However, he had found Lionel Powell notably reticent on the subject of his late mother's past life.

‘Varied,' he'd said tersely.

‘Ah!'

‘Especially in the war.'

‘I see. Perhaps, then, you could tell me…'

‘She did a lot of driving of officers on Salisbury Plain before going out to Egypt with her first husband,' Lionel had volunteered unhelpfully.

With which Adrian Brailsford had had to be content.

Matron, that usually excellent woman, when appealed to in turn, had said judiciously that she had been given to understand that Mrs Gertrude Powell had always lived life to the utmost and had no regrets but more than that she really could not say. Brailsford had seized on the phrase, inviting her to elaborate on it. This, though, Mrs Muriel Peden had signally failed to do.

Instead she had suggested that some of Mrs Powell's old friends at the Manor – Captain Markyate, for instance – might like to talk to him about the old days. The residents, she had added drily, usually preferred talking about the old days to any other days.

This hadn't been as much help to Adrian Brailsford as it might have been because of the unease he always felt when talking to any of the residents of the Manor. It wasn't that they ever made him feel actually unwelcome. Merely not one of them. This dated, he was sure, from a sermon one Sunday in which he had preached on pacifism and the importance of turning the other cheek. On his next visit to the Manor a doughty, bedridden old warrior had invited him to inspect a quite different cheek once penetrated by an enemy bayonet.

When asked by Brailsford about the late Mrs Gertrude Powell, Captain Peter Markyate had hummed and hawed and fussed about with the silver-framed photographs on the mantelshelf of his room while managing to tell the Rector absolutely nothing about the deceased except that she'd been ‘a bit of a goer' in her day. ‘She used to talk a good deal about a poem she liked called “The Road Not Taken”,' he said at last.

‘By Robert Frost,' the Rector had helpfully identified it. ‘What about it?'

‘Gertie used to say she'd taken both roads.' He stirred uncomfortably. ‘Well, all roads, actually.' He paused. ‘And she had.'

‘I see,' said Brailsford, mentally assessing the worth of this as eulogy material.

‘Of course, she was good-looking, too,' Markyate had added warmly. ‘She was very good-looking, then.'

‘A widow, I understand,' said Brailsford.

Markyate coughed and murmured something very indistinct about Gertie's first husband, Donald Tulloch, having bought it at Tobruk.

‘Ah,' said the Rector, mentally beginning to compose something sonorous but suitable about sacrifice and death in battle. ‘And her second husband?'

Peter Markyate stared at his shoes and muttered vaguely that as far as he himself knew no one was absolutely sure exactly what had happened to Gertie's second husband. He didn't think there was anyone who could tell the Rector anything about him now. Anyone at all. Gertie herself never spoke of her second husband.

‘Mr Powell, you mean?' said Brailsford.

Captain Markyate shook his head. ‘No, no, Rector, Hubert Powell was her third husband,' he said, adding with a sudden burst of energy, ‘Thank goodness.'

‘Thank goodness?' echoed Brailsford.

‘He was the one with the money.'

Chapter Three

There is no armour against Fate

‘Where to, sir?' enquired Detective Constable Crosby from the driving seat. He was already revving up the engine of the police car in the yard.

‘Almstone,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, adding grudgingly, ‘And you can put a shift on if you like.'

‘Thank you, sir.' Crosby slammed the engine into gear and the car roared joyously out of the police compound. Driving fast cars fast was his greatest joy in life. ‘Trouble, sir?'

‘Maybe. Can't say yet,' said Sloan. ‘As far as I can see the choice lies between its being all about an old lady with an overdeveloped taste for high drama or real mischief.'

‘So where's the fire then?' asked Crosby, heading the car out of the car park at a speed satisfactory to him if to no one else.

‘We are going,' said Sloan precisely, ‘to St Clement's Church to stop a funeral.'

‘That's new, sir,' said the detective constable appreciatively. ‘Haven't done that before.' He crouched over the wheel, leaving the streets of Berebury behind with speed. He started to hum the tune of ‘Get Me to the Church on Time' under his breath.

‘Because Morton's, the undertakers,' remarked Sloan bitterly, ‘are probably the only firm in Calleshire not to have a mobile telephone in their business vehicle.'

‘Their hearse, you mean?' said Crosby, treating some new traffic-calming installations rather as a champion skier would deal with a tight slalom in a speed race.

‘I do.'

‘Tod Morton wouldn't risk anything that might wake the dead,' said Crosby, executing a stately pas de deux on the narrow country road with a double-decker bus bound for Calleford. ‘Not good for business.'

‘And there's no one in at the rectory to step across to the church with a message,' said Sloan, explaining to himself as much as Crosby why they had to rush out in this unseemly way to Almstone. ‘By the way, Crosby, in the unlikely event of there being a car following us to the church, it belongs to the son of the deceased.'

‘There was one to start with, sir,' admitted Crosby, ‘but it's not there any more.'

‘I didn't think … Look out, man!' Sloan's shutting of his eyes was quite involuntary as a milk float pulled out of a side turning ahead of them.

‘There are some drivers who shouldn't be allowed on the road, sir, aren't there?' Crosby was saying equably when he opened them again.

‘There are,' gritted Sloan, ‘and I am not at all sure, Crosby, that you aren't one of them.' His friend Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division was even more sure on this point. He routinely resisted all of the constable's earnest efforts to transfer from the Criminal Investigation Department to Traffic Division.

‘So what's the hurry then, sir?' asked Crosby. ‘I mean, Tod's not going to run off with the coffin, is he?'

‘The hurry, Crosby, is to get to Almstone churchyard before the deceased is interred.'

‘Couldn't we dig the coffin up again if we're too late?' asked Crosby. ‘It couldn't harm for a day or so, could it, sir?'

‘Not without an exhumation order from the Home Office, we couldn't,' said Sloan.

Detective Constable Crosby, who had been in the Force for quite long enough to equate the Home Office with excessive paperwork, nodded his complete comprehension.

‘And when we get back to the station, Crosby,' continued Sloan, ‘you can prepare me a report on something called the Pragmatic Sanction. It might improve your driving.' This, he knew, was unfair, but then he had just been badly frightened by a milk float.

‘Yes, sir.' He changed gear. ‘I know a bit already.'

‘You do?' said Sloan, surprised.

‘It's what Sergeant Gelven says was taken away from the police by the Crown Prosecution Service. He didn't like that.'

They had rounded the corner into Almstone before Sloan could do more than tuck the fact away in his mind. ‘There, Crosby,' he said, leaning forward, ‘that's St Clement's Church over there. I can see the tower. Keep going.'

*   *   *

So it fell out that Mrs Maisie Carruthers, still too frail to attend the funeral, but not too immobile to get to the window of her room at the Manor, became the onlooker who saw most of the game. From her first-floor vantage point she was in the best position of all to see the cortège leave the church and start out very slowly towards the newly dug grave space in the south-west corner of the churchyard.

It was led by the Reverend Adrian Brailsford in full canonicals, followed by Tod Morton, young sprig of the firm of Morton and Sons, Funeral Furnishers, complete with silk top hat, black jacket and striped trousers. After them came the first of the mourners, Brigadier Hamish MacIver and Captain Peter Markyate to the fore.

Maisie Carruthers watched, fascinated, as this procession was met on the church path at full trot by two men. Though they were in plain clothes they had nevertheless stepped smartly out of the police car she could see parked by the lich-gate.

What might at first have seemed a classic case of irresistible force meeting immovable object dissolved before Maisie Carruthers' spellbound gaze into what, at that distance, looked for all the world like a discussion group. In the further distance she caught sight of another car with a man at the wheel and a woman beside him approaching the church gate at speed.

After only a moment or two of colloquy Tod Morton, who had recognized Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby, turned on his heel, took off his top hat and, without more ado, ordered the bearer-party back into the church.

The Rector, on the other hand, who had never seen either policeman before, took refuge in canon law.

‘I quite understand, gentlemen,' he said, yielding to the two policemen with quiet dignity. ‘Fortunately the Order of Service for the Burial of the Dead provides for a natural interval between the church and the grave.'

*   *   *

‘A natural interval, eh, Sloan?' Superintendent Leeyes gave the short bark that did duty with him for a laugh. ‘I like the sound of that.'

‘Yes, sir.' Duty bound, Detective Inspector Sloan's first action had been to radio back to his superior officer at Berebury Police Station. ‘I'm arranging for the church to be locked while the coffin is there.'

‘And I, Sloan, have had a word with old Locombe-Stableford…'

Mr Locombe-Stableford was Her Majesty's Coroner for East Calleshire and a long-time sparring partner of Superintendent Leeyes.

‘… and he's cancelled the burial order for the deceased.'