Last Respects Part 19

"The inquest will be on Friday," Sloan informed him. "We may know a little more by then."

Once over at Marby the architect confirmed that the boat beached beside the lifeboat had come from Collerton House.

"No doubt about that at all, Inspector," he said readily. "It's been in that boathouse ever since I was married and for many a long year before that, I daresay."

Crosby made a note in the background.

Mundill gave the bow a light tap. "She's good enough for a few more fis.h.i.+ng trips, I should say. She's hardly damaged at all, is she?"

It was true. The boat had dried out quite a lot overnight and in spite of its obvious age looked quite serviceable now.

"I suppose," said Mundill, "that I can see about getting it back to Collerton now?"

"Not just yet, sir," said Sloan. "Our scientific laboratory people will have to go over it first."

Mundill nodded intelligently. "I understand. For clues."

"For evidence," said Sloan sternly.

There was a world of difference between the two.

"Then I can collect it after that?"

"Oh," said Sloan easily, "I daresay they'll drop it back to the boathouse for you."

"When?"

"Is it important?"

"No, no, Inspector, not at all. I just wondered, that's all. It doesn't matter a bit..."

Elizabeth Busby had hardly slept at all that night. And when she had at last drifted off, sleep had not been a refreshment from the cares of the day but an uneasy business of inconclusive dreams.

Waking had been no better.

She came back to consciousness with her mind a blank and then suddenly full recollection came flooding back and with it the now familiar sensation that she was physically shouldering a heavy burden. The strange thing was that this burden seemed not only to extend to an area just above her eyes but to weigh her down from all angles. At least, she thought, Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress only had a burden on his back-not everywhere.

Propped beside her bedside lamp was Peter Hinton's slide rule. She had considered this again in the cold light of day. And got no further forward than she had done the evening before. It really was very odd that Peter should have taken a water-colour painting of a beach and left his slide rule behind him.

As she had got dressed she viewed the prospect of another day ahead of her without relish. It wasn't that she wanted to spend her whole life wandering in the delicate plain called Ease, just that she could have done without its being spent so much in the Slough of Despond. She had eventually got the day started to a kind of mantra of her own. It was based on Rudyard Kipling's poem If and concentrated on filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run...

The whole day stretched before her like a clean page.

True, there were the finis.h.i.+ng touches to be put to the spring-cleaning of the spare room and today was the day that the dustbin had to be put out, but otherwise there were no landmarks in the day to distinguish it from any others in an endless succession of unmemorable days.

By the time Frank Mundill had gone off in the police car to Marby she found herself with the spare room finished and the dustbin duly put out. That still left a great deal of the day to be got through and she turned over in her mind a list of other things that might be done.

For some reason-perhaps subconsciously to do with the finding of the slide rule-she was drawn back to the hall. Perhaps she would tackle that next in her vigorous spring-cleaning campaign. She stood in the middle of the s.p.a.ce a.s.sessing what needed to be done. Quite a lot, she decided. This year's regular cleaning had completely gone by the board because of Celia Mundill's illness.

She stiffened.

She had resolved not to think about that...

Mop, duster, vacuum cleaner, step-ladder, polish... a list of her requirements ran through her mind before she went back to the kitchen to a.s.semble them. All she needed was there save the big step-ladder. That lived in the shed and she would need it to reach the picture rail that ran round high up on the hall wall.

She dumped all her equipment in the middle of the floor and went off to the shed to get the step-ladder. It was leaning up against the wall in its accustomed place, standing amongst a conglomeration of gardening tools and old apple boxes. She moved the lawn-mower first and then a wheelbarrow. That left her nearer the steps but not quite near enough. She bent down to s.h.i.+ft a pile of empty apple boxes...

It was curious that when she first caught sight of the shoe it didn't occur to her that there would be a foot in it. It was an old shoe and a dirty one at that and her first thought was that it was one of a pair kept there for gardening. That had been before she saw a piece of dishevelled sock protruding from it.

With dreadful deliberation she bent down and moved another layer of apple boxes.

A second shoe came into view.

It, too, had a foot in it.

Unwillingly her eyes travelled beyond the shoes to the grubby trousers above them. She could see no more than that because of the apple boxes. Driven by some nameless conception of duty to the injured, she lifted another round of apple boxes. The full figure of a man came into view then. He was lying p.r.o.ne on the floor. And she needn't have worried about her duties to the injured.

This man was dead.

15.

This is death without reprieve.

Unlike the sundial, Superintendent Leeyes did not only record the sunny hours. There were some stormy ones to be noted too.

"Dead, did you say, Sloan?"

"I did, sir."

"That means," he gobbled down the telephone, "that we've got two dead men on our hands now."

"It does, sir," admitted Sloan heavily. "There's no doubt about it either, sir. The local general pract.i.tioner confirms death."

After death, the doctor.

That was part of police routine too.

"One, two, that'll do," growled Leeyes.

"Sir?" Sloan had only heard of "One, two, buckle my shoe" and even that had been a long time ago now.

"It's a saying in the game of bridge," explained Leeyes loftily. "You wouldn't understand, Sloan."

"No, sir." Sloan kept his tone even but with an effort. There was so much to do and so little time... and something so very nasty in the woodshed.

"What happened this time?" barked Leeyes. "Not, I may say, Sloan, that we really know yet what happened last time."

"I should say that he was killed on the spot. In an unlocked garden shed, that is." It was Sloan's turn now to sit in the window-seat in the hall of Collerton House and use the telephone. A white and shaken Elizabeth Busby had led him there while Frank Mundill stayed with Crosby and Dr. Tebot. "Hit on the head," said Sloan succinctly. "Hard."

Leeyes pounced. "That means you've got a weapon."

"There's a spade there with blood on it," agreed Sloan.

"But not fingerprints, I suppose," said Leeyes.

"I doubt it, sir," said Sloan, "though the dabs boys are on their way over now."

"Fingerprints would be too much to ask for these days."

Sloan was inclined to agree with him. Besides there was a pair of gardening gloves sitting handy on the shelf beside the spade. Sloan thought that the gloves had a mocking touch about them-as if the murderer had just tossed them back onto the shelf where he had found them.

"When did it happen?" snapped Leeyes.

"He's quite cold," said Sloan obliquely, "and the blood has dried..."

Congealed was the right word for the b.l.o.o.d.y mess that had been the back of the man's head but he did not use it.

A red little, dead little head...

"Yesterday, then," concluded Leeyes.

"That's what Dr. Tebot says," said Sloan, "and Dr. Dabbe's on his way." Too many things had happened yesterday for Sloan's liking.

"Yes, yes," said Leeyes testily. "I know he'll tell us for sure but you must make up your own mind about some things, Sloan."

He had.

"And don't forget to get on to the photographers, Sloan, will you?"

"I won't forget," said Sloan astringently.

"Who is he?" asked the superintendent. "Or don't you know that either?"

But Sloan did know that. "He's lying on his face, sir, and we haven't moved him, of course."

"Of course."

"But I think I know."

Leeyes grunted. "You'll have to do better than that before you've done, Sloan."

"Yes, sir." Truth's ox team had been Do Well, Do Better and Do Best. Sloan decided that he hadn't even Done Well let alone Better or Best.

"I think I've seen those clothes before, sir." And the body did look just like a bundle of old clothes. You wouldn't have thought that there was a man inside them at first at all...

"Ha!"

"Yesterday afternoon." said Sloan.

"That's something, I suppose."

"I think it's the man who found the body." Strictly speaking he supposed he should have said "the first body" now.

"The fisherman?"

"Horace Boiler," said Sloan.

"The man in the boat," said Leeyes.

"The doctor here thinks it's him too, sir." Last seen, Sloan reminded himself, with Basil Jensen on board.

"So there's a link," said Leeyes.

"There's a link all right," responded Sloan vigorously. "He's got a barbary head in his pocket too."

"What!" bellowed Leeyes.

Sloan winced. They said even a rose recoiled when shouted at let alone a full-blown detective inspector.

"At least," declared Leeyes, "that means we're not looking at a psychological case."

"I suppose it does, sir." There was nothing the police feared so much as a pathological killer. When there was neither rhyme nor reason to murder, then logic didn't help find the murderer. You needed luck then. Sloan felt he could have done with some luck now.

"Have you," growled Leeyes, "missed something that he found, Sloan?"

"I hope not," said Sloan. But he had to admit that it had been his own first thought too.

"If he was killed because he knew something, Sloan," persisted Leeyes, "then you can find out what it was too."

"I'm sure I hope so, sir."

"He'd have known about The Clarembald being found," said Leeyes. "A fisherman like him..."

"He'd have known all the village gossip for sure, too, sir, a man like that."

"Dirty work at the crossroads there," said Leeyes, even though he meant the sea.