Last Respects Part 13

School was over for the day but the head teacher was still there. "Have you got any boys called Terry?"

"The trouble," said Miss Blandford, "is that we've got more than one."

"Tell me," invited Ridgefbrd, undaunted.

She opened the school register. "There's Terry Waters..."

"And what sort of a lad is Terry Waters?"

"Choirboy type," she said succinctly.

Ridgeford frowned.

"The 'b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth' sort of boy," amplified the teacher.

Ridgeford's frown cleared.

She waved a hand. "If you know what I mean?"

Ridgeford knew what she meant. The manner of boy to whom benches of magistrates in juvenile courts-who should know better-almost automatically gave the benefit of the doubt...

"You probably pa.s.sed him on your way here," said Miss Blandford. "He only lives down the road."

Ridgeford shook his head. "Not Terry Waters then."

He wasn't expecting Terry or his friend to be Edsway boys. Mrs. Boiler would have recognised Edsway boys when they had brought the s.h.i.+p's bell into her shop. Children from all the other villages roundabout, though, came into Edsway school every day by bus. "What about the others?" he asked.

"There's Terry Wilkins."

Ridgeford got out his notebook. "Where does he hail from?"

"Collerton." She hesitated. "He's not a bad boy but easily led."

Ridgeford knew that sort. A boy who wouldn't take to crime unless the opportunity presented itself. There was a whole school of academic thought that saw crime as opportunity. Remove the opportunity, they said, and you removed the crime. If that didn't work you removed the criminal and called it preventive detention.

Miss Blandford said, "With Terry Wilkins it would depend on the temptation."

Constable Ridgeford nodded sagely. Who said Adam and Eve was nonsense? Temptation had had to begin somewhere. It didn't matter that it had only been an apple to begin with. It was the principle of the thing. "Go on," he said.

"There's Terry G.o.ddard." The head teacher's face became as near to benign-looking as Ridgeford had seen it. "He's a worker."

"Ah."

"Not clever, mind you, but a worker."

Everyone liked a worker. Being a worker evidently exonerated Terry G.o.ddard in Miss Blandford's eyes from any activity the police were likely to be mixed up in. Perhaps being a worker meant you weren't idle and that removed you a stage farther from temptation. Ridgeford tried to think of some industrious criminals.

Henri Landru must have been quite busy.

In the nature of things eleven murders took time.

Dr. Marcel Petiot couldn't have been much of a layabout either. He hadn't kept a stroke record of the murders he had committed but the French police thought sixty-five-give or take a few.

"That the lot, miss?" he said aloud. "I'd been hoping for someone from Marby."

"There's Terry d.y.k.es." She looked Brian Ridgeford straight in the eye and said, "I don't know what you want your Terry for, Constable, but I wouldn't put anything past this one."

Ridgeford put the name down in his notebook. There was no point in asking expert opinion if you didn't take account of it. He took down a Marby address with a certain amount of satisfaction, then he asked Miss Blandford if Terry d.y.k.es had got a sidekick.

"I beg your pardon, Constable?"

Ridgeford searched in his mind for the right expression. "A best friend, miss." Bosom chum sounded distinctly old-fas.h.i.+oned but that was what he meant.

"Oh, yes." Her brow cleared. "Melvin Bates."

Ridgeford wrote that name down too.

"Melvin Bates hangs on Terry d.y.k.es's every word, so," she gave a quick nod and said realistically, "I daresay that's two of them up to no good."

Police Constable Brian Ridgeford took his leave of the head teacher and applied himself to his bicycle and another journey to the fis.h.i.+ng village beside the open sea. Judicious questioning of Marby natives led the policeman to the harbour. He'd find his quarry there for sure, he was told. They were always there, messing about in boats. Or just messing about. But as sure as eggs they'd be there.

So they were.

Two boys.

There had been something that Brian Ridgeford dimly remembered in his training that advised against the questioning of juveniles by a police officer in uniform. Because of the neighbours. Brian Ridgeford squared his shoulders. There weren't any neighbours on the eastern arm of the harbour wall.

Just two boys.

They saw him coming and at the same time saw that there was no point in retreating. They stood their ground as he approached, one standing against a capstan and the other with one foot on a coil of rope.

"About that s.h.i.+p's bell," began Ridgeford generally.

"Wasn't worth nothing," said the boy by the capstan.

"The old woman said so," chimed in the other.

"Load of old iron," said the first boy, kicking the capstan with his foot.

"Waste of time going over there," said his friend.

"She wouldn't give us nothing for it," said the boy who was kicking the capstan. "You ask her."

"Where did you get it?" asked Ridgeford.

"Up on the Cat's Back," replied the first boy glibly. "Didn't we, Mel?"

"Up on the Cat's Back," agreed Melvin. "Like Terry said."

"Did you now?" said Ridgeford evenly. "Suppose you tell me exactly where."

"By an old tree," said Terry.

"Near the hut," said Melvin at the same time.

"By an old tree near the hut," said Terry promptly.

Constable Ridgeford decided that Terry d.y.k.es already had the makings of a criminal mentality.

"I suppose," said the policeman heavily, "that it fell off the back of a lorry up there."

"No," began Melvin, "it was in..."

"There's only a footpath," Terry d.y.k.es cut in quickly.

Any resemblance to the tableau formed by the three of them to Sir John Millais's famous painting "The Boyhood of Raleigh" was purely coincidental. True, there was more than one beached rowing boat on the sh.o.r.e in the background and there were certainly two boys and an adult in the composition but there any likeness ended. In Millais's picture the two boys had been hanging, rapt, on the words of the ancient mariner as he pointed out to sea and described the wonders he had seen. In the present instance the tales were being told by the boys and Brian Ridgeford wasn't pointing anywhere. He was, however, projecting extreme scepticism at what he heard.

"So it didn't fall off the back of a lorry then," he said.

"No," said Terry d.y.k.es defensively, "it didn't."

"Just lying there then, was it?"

"Yes... No... I don't know."

"You must know."

Terry d.y.k.es shut his lips together.

"Make up your mind, boy," said Ridgeford not unkindly. "Was it or wasn't it?"

"No," said Terry sullenly, "it wasn't just lying there."

"Well, then, where was it?" demanded Ridgeford. When there was no reply from d.y.k.es he suddenly swung round on Melvin Bates. "All right, you tell me."

Melvin Bates started to stutter. "I... I... it was in..."

"Shut up," said d.y.k.es, unceremoniously cutting off his henchman.

"All right," said Ridgeford flatly, "I've got the message. The bell was inside somewhere, wasn't it?" He drew breath. "Now then, let me see if I can work out where. Over here in Marby?" They were known as "constraint questions"; those whose answers limited the area of doubt. The best-known constraint question was "Can you eat it?" Ridgeford allowed his voice to grow a harder note. "And you found it inside somewhere, didn't you?"

It took him another ten minutes to find out exactly where.

Constable Ridgeford was not the only policeman whose immediate quarry lay in Marby. As soon as Sloan and Crosby left Collerton House they too made for the fis.h.i.+ng village by the sea.

"We'll pick up Ridgeford over there," predicted Sloan, "and he can take us to have a look at this dinghy he's reported."

They'd left Basil Jensen still making his way upstream.

"To see if it's Tugboat Annie," completed Crosby, engaging gear.

"It would figure if it were." He paused and then said quietly, "I think something else figures, too, Crosby."

"Sir?"

"I think-only think, mind you-that we just may have an explanation for a body decomposed but not damaged."

"Sir?"

"You think, too," adjured Sloan. The road between Collerton and Marby was so rural that not even Crosby could speed on it. He could use his mind instead.

"The boathouse?" offered the detective constable uncertainly.

"The boathouse," said Sloan with satisfaction. "It's early days yet, Crosby, but I think that we shall find that our chap-whoever he is-was parked in the water in the boat-house after he was killed."

"Why in the water, though, sir?"

"The answer to that," said Sloan briskly, "is something called mephitis."

"Sir?"

"Mephitis," spelled out Sloan for him, "is the smell of the dead."

Crosby a.s.similated this and then said, "So he was killed by a fall from a height first somewhere else..."

"Somewhere else," agreed Sloan at once.

"But..."

"But left in the water afterwards, Crosby."

"Why?"

Sloan waved a hand. "As I said before graves for murder victims don't come easy."

"Yes, sir," Crosby nodded. "Besides, he might have been killed on the spur of the moment and whoever did it needed time to think what to do with the body."

It was surprising how the word "murderer" hung outside speech.

"He might," agreed Sloan. He hoped that it had been a hotblooded affair. Murder had nothing to be said for it at any time but heat-of-the-moment murder was always less sinister than murder plotted and planned. "He would need time and opportunity to work out what to do."

"And then," postulated Crosby, "the body was just pushed out into the water?"

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on... No, that wouldn't do. It wouldn't have been like that at all. It would have been the furtive opening of the boathouse doors during the hours of darkness, and after the furtive opening the silent shove of a dead body with a boat-hook while the River Calle searched out every cranny of the river bank and picked up its latest burden and bore it off towards the sea.

"Unless I'm very much mistaken," said Sloan austerely, "the body left the boathouse at night."

"Yes, sir."