Inheritance Tracks, page 10
‘And then what?’ asked Sloan.
‘Put ergot into the flour.’ Crosby frowned. ‘Into anything, come to that.’
‘Remember her next-door neighbour did tell us that she baked her own bread,’ mused Sloan, making a note. ‘Perhaps it would be just as well to see her again.’
‘Suppose he’s already been and gone, sir?’
‘Then we shall be locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, won’t we?’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, ever the realist.
‘Job done.’ Tom Culshaw had walked in through his own front door early that morning, visibly tired and unshaven.
‘So you’re back at last, thank goodness,’ said his wife, giving him a quick peck on the cheek and then making for the kitchen. ‘You must be starving.’
‘I am. We got there in good time, though, which was the main thing,’ he said, slipping off his coat and following her into the kitchen.
‘Thank goodness for that, too.’ Sophie Culshaw had reached for the frying pan and was swiftly layering it with rashers of bacon.
He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. ‘The nurses had already begun stripping him down ready for the operation before I’d even got out of his room.’
‘I believe every minute counts with kidney transplants,’ she said, pricking some sausages before adding them to the frying pan.
‘Another good job for Gordian Knots,’ he said, yawning prodigiously. ‘The poor fellow had tried everywhere to get someone to drive him to London the minute the call came. It was just his bad luck that it came at four o’clock in the morning and he couldn’t get anyone else.’
‘His good luck,’ she pointed out.
‘What? Oh, yes, of course.’ He gave another yawn. ‘He was frantic. He’d even thought of driving himself there and abandoning his car at the hospital, he was so desperate.’
Sophie paused from chopping up some tomatoes. ‘I hear you did a good job over at Childe Benstead, too.’
‘Oh, that was weeks ago.’ He reached up for the mug of coffee she handed to him. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Well, apparently whatever it was you did over there worked a treat, and the mother rang up this morning to say so. What was the problem?’
He grinned. ‘It was the worst case of sibling rivalry that I’ve ever come across.’
‘How come?’ she asked, shovelling the tomatoes into the frying pan and deciding against mentioning anything about the fraught relationship between her husband and his brother. ‘I thought it was just two young sisters not getting on.’
‘It was. They had to share a bedroom, you see.’
‘Tough.’
‘That wasn’t it. What they were doing was fighting a turf war.’
‘Ah, the good old territorial imperative.’
‘Apparently they spent all their time arguing about the other one straying into their half and borrowing their lipstick or whatever it is that matters to young girls these days. Their rows were driving their poor mother crazy.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Sophie reached for some eggs and then asked, ‘So what did you do?’
He grinned. ‘Set up an invisible beam down the middle of the room, which rang out like the clappers if either of the little perishers strayed out of their own half. And I put some special tape down on the carpet like they do on the line on tennis courts and electrified it in case they tried to get under the ray. That’s what did it, all right.’
‘They’ll laugh about it later on in life.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Tom Culshaw seriously. ‘Sibling rivalry is a terrible thing.’
‘You don’t have to remind me,’ said his wife tartly.
He sniffed. ‘That bacon smells good.’
‘It won’t be long,’ she said, answering the thought behind the statement. ‘Well done, anyway. That’s two good jobs for Gordian Knots.’
‘I’ve got another one for Thursday,’ he said slowly.
‘That’s good, too,’ she said, deftly turning over the bacon and breaking two eggs into the sizzling frying pan. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’
‘I’m not too sure that it is good,’ he said.
‘How come?’
‘Getting a guy to hospital in a hurry in the middle of the night for emergency surgery and stopping two youngsters fighting was easy. I have a feeling that the next job isn’t going to be. In fact, I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t taken it on. I don’t think I would have done if he hadn’t been one of us.’
‘What does that mean, may I ask?’
‘If he wasn’t one of the descendants of my sainted ancestor.’
‘Sainted? Algernon Mayton?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You can’t be serious. The man who made his fortune selling a fake remedy?’
‘Him,’ said Tom Culshaw. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if bad genes can be inherited.’
She paused, the kitchen spatula in her hand poised over the sizzling frying pan. ‘Even if it does,’ she said loyally, ‘it doesn’t mean that everyone in the family inherits the bad ones.’
Only some of them, she added to herself, her hated brother-in-law in mind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Ah, Sloan, come in and tell me how you’re getting on with that ergot business.’
‘Not a lot to report as yet, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘In fact, so far you might say we’ve only accomplished a fact-finding exercise. We’ve got two more potential legatees to interview, not counting the missing man, but Tom Culshaw’s wife insists he’s sound asleep just now, having been up all night.’
‘In my experience, Sloan,’ said the superintendent lugubriously, ‘wives will usually say anything to protect their man. And if they won’t, you need to know why. They’re always notoriously unreliable in the matter of alibis and you should remember it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And in spite, Sloan, of the prominence of that famous saying “Well begun is half done”, you must also remember that it does not apply to a police investigation.’
‘No, sir.’
‘An investigation once begun should be completed.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sloan, forbearing to mention the unclosed files that were the bane of every Criminal Investigation Department. ‘Talking of wives, sir, I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to interview the wife of Daniel Elland, the missing man. He’s what you might call an “unknown factor”.’
‘And could be up to anything,’ said Leeyes morosely.
Detective Constable Crosby was only too happy to drive Sloan to an expensive address on the outskirts of the town. ‘The Lodge, Acacia Road, please, Crosby, and there is no need to floor it.’
‘Of course not, sir.’ The constable looked as injured as if he had never ever done any such thing in his life before.
‘The lady concerned might not even be at home.’
‘The lady, sir?’
‘The former Mrs Daniel Elland, now Mrs Jaqueline Prothero.’
The lady was in but not particularly pleased to see two plain-clothes policemen at her door asking about her first husband. She was dressed in skinny trousers of a distinctive pied-de-poule patterned fabric complemented by a shirt of such simple cut that it must have been very expensive. Sloan caught a glimpse of flawless manicuring as she gestured to the two policemen to enter.
‘So what’s Daniel been up to now?’ she asked.
‘You don’t see him, then, madam?’ said Sloan.
‘Not on your life, Inspector,’ she responded immediately. ‘We had a clean settlement, drawn up by my solicitors. Daniel didn’t have a solicitor then, being bankrupt. Whatever he’s done, I can assure you that he’s got no call on me and I’ve never seen him from that day to this.’
‘He lived here, too?’ enquired Detective Constable Crosby, staring round the remarkably well-appointed sitting room with interest.
‘Oh, yes. We were together, once upon a time,’ she said, adding complacently, ‘but I got to keep the house. He’d put it in my name anyway when things started to go pear-shaped with his business. To be on the safe side, he said.’ She gave an unpleasant little laugh. ‘I’m told it’s often done when a business is at risk.’
‘So I understand, madam. It’s usually considered very prudent in those circumstances,’ observed Sloan, drawing a veil over the fact that it hadn’t been in this case – for her husband, that is.
‘It meant that there was no room for argument when Berebury Sound Ltd went broke, possession being nine-tenths of the law.’ She curled her lip. ‘Sound it wasn’t. Not no way.’
‘Quite so,’ murmured Sloan, that sort of law being a civil matter. ‘Tell me, what made your husband go bankrupt?’
She waved an arm dismissively. ‘One of his customers – an important one – owed him a lot of money and couldn’t pay his bill. Some other quite big people were very late settling theirs and then one of his creditors turned nasty.’
‘As they do,’ contributed Crosby, who had once been chased for the late payment of his rent by a strong-minded landlady.
Jaqueline Prothero’s lip curled. ‘It was after that when Daniel told me that we’d have to downsize big time until he got back on his feet. That was when his firm – I told you that it was called Berebury Sound, didn’t I? – folded. I told him no way, José. Catch me living in some nasty little two-up two-down place down by the river.’
‘Then what?’ enquired Crosby with genuine interest.
‘That’s when I threw him out,’ she replied with chilling simplicity. ‘And that’s when he started really drinking.’
‘Took to the bottle, did he?’ said Crosby.
‘I’ll say,’ she said. ‘And his mother having died not long before, he’d got nowhere to go, either.’
Somewhere at the back of his mind Sloan remembered something Shakespeare had written about troubles coming not in single spies but in battalions. Daniel Elland would seem to have had them in spades.
‘The Aston Martin having to be sold was the last straw,’ she said, a look of pure malice coming into her face. ‘They didn’t want him as captain of the golf club after that, either.’
Sloan remembered reading somewhere, too, that it only took three things to go wrong to lead to any man’s downfall. Daniel Elland would seem to have had plenty to choose from.
‘So, is Daniel still being a drunken no-good boyo?’ she asked.
‘I couldn’t say, madam,’ he said.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘We’re interested in the present whereabouts of your former husband. And,’ he gave a little cough, ‘if we may, we would like to have something with his fingerprints on …’
‘He’s not dead, is he?’ she said swiftly.
‘Not as far as we are aware, madam.’
‘I suppose there’ll be something around with them on. Try the tools in the garden shed. He liked doing the garden. We have someone to do it now, of course.’
‘So, if we might examine them to see if Mr Elland’s prints are still extant …’
‘My ex is how I think of him, which I may say is not often now.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘The night I threw him out onto the doorstep I locked the door behind him and said I never wanted to see him again.’ She smiled thinly. ‘It was raining, if I remember rightly.’
Detective Constable Crosby stared at her, about to burst into outraged speech. Sloan beat him to it – but with greater subtlety. ‘You’re quite sure, madam, that he has no further financial call upon you?’
‘Quite sure, Inspector,’ she said firmly. ‘Or me on him, not that that’s likely. Jake – that’s the man I married afterwards – made certain of that. And so did my solicitor.’ She let her gaze drift round the well-appointed room. ‘Jake’s got money, you see, serious money and he didn’t want Daniel or his creditors getting their thieving hands on it.’
‘In that case, madam,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan with the utmost civility, ‘we won’t be troubling you any further.’ He rose to leave. ‘We were hoping to find Daniel Elland because it would seem that he has come into money. Rather a lot of it.’
In spite of his reservations about the assignment, Tom Culshaw did not delay in setting out for the home of Jim Stopford in the far-off village of Capstan Purlieu. Even though it was broad daylight when he explored the terrain, it hadn’t been easy to spot the farmhouse where the man lived. It was deep in the remote countryside, houses few and far between. Much too few, anyway, to make any sort of surveillance simple, each passing car all too noticeable by anyone peering out at the road.
Spurred on in his mind by the motto of his firm Gordian Knots, Tom drove past Stopford’s farmhouse without slowing down, as if he was going somewhere else. Nevertheless, he took note of any number of farm buildings and the three vehicles standing in the yard. He decided without difficulty that the mud-spattered Audi 6 belonged to Jim Stopford. At a guess it was about five years old, while the Land Rover beside it was younger. At the back of the yard was a little runabout truck loaded with sacks of feed, clear evidence of its role on the farm.
He soon realised that it had been a mistake to carry on up the valley. The road got narrower and narrower, a signpost pointing over the hill ahead to a little settlement several miles away.
The only place he could turn his car was outside the last house on the road, where he caught sight of someone staring out of a window at him as he did so. He sped back the way he had come, taking care again not to slow down in front of Jim Stopford’s farm as he passed it.
All that the reconnaissance had convinced him of was that there was nothing to be gained by attempting to disable the man’s car at his home. Not with two other vehicles within easy reach in an emergency.
His preliminary survey of the car park of the Bellingham Hotel was equally unpromising. It was well lit, much overlooked and had a steady stream of traffic coming and going in and out of it. He toyed briefly with the idea of casing the joint from the inside by having a drink at the bar but decided against being seen and perhaps recognised there, either before or after Thursday.
Something, he reluctantly realised, would have to be done to delay Jim Stopford after he left the farm at Capstan Purlieu but, if at all possible, before he reached the Bellingham. Answer, for the time being anyway, came there none.
Tom Culshaw turned and drove home thinking deeply.
He didn’t have long in which to cogitate on the problem. Waiting in his sitting room was his wife, Sophie, clearly on tenterhooks, and with her two policemen.
‘Oh, Tom, there you are at last,’ she burst out as he came in. ‘I’ve been so worried in case anything had happened to you. These gentlemen won’t say why they’ve come, you see. Only that they’re here on police business.’
Tom Culshaw, not particularly fazed by this, turned apologetically to Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘I’m afraid I did push it a bit the other night, Inspector, but there was nothing on the road and it was very urgent. The man was frantic to get to the hospital.’
‘It’s not about that, sir,’ said Sloan, sighing inwardly. Surely infringers of the speed limits were not what the great upholders of the law Henry Fielding and Sir Robert Peel had had in mind when they created their police force. Even the Bow Street Runners had only run.
‘No?’ Tom Culshaw remained polite and attentive.
‘We’re making enquiries into the recent sudden death of Mrs Susan Mary Port,’ said Sloan.
‘You remember, darling, you told me she was one of the other legatees,’ supplied Sophie quickly.
His brow cleared. ‘So she was. Sorry, she’s died, though. What happened?’
Sloan said that they were not at liberty to say but enquiries were proceeding.
‘Where do I come in, then?’ asked Culshaw.
‘You probably don’t,’ said Sloan. ‘On the other hand, we do need to know if you’ve seen her since that meeting at the solicitors.’
He shook his head. ‘Not that I know of.’
‘Or before?’
Culshaw shook his head again, waving a hand round his house and garden. ‘As you can see, we live a good way from Berebury – nearer Calleford, actually – so I’m not likely to have bumped into her, anyway.’
Crosby sat up. ‘And she’d never been a client of Gordian Knots?’
Sloan gave another sigh. This time it was at Crosby’s naivety in revealing that the police had already checked the man out. He would have to have a word with him later, when he would try to explain to the rookie constable that the role of the police was to acquire information, not dispense it, although he doubted whether Crosby would take the fact on board.
Crosby, for a wonder, still looked interested in the man. ‘So what exactly does this outfit of yours do, then?’
‘Jobs that other people can’t,’ Culshaw said briefly.
‘Or won’t,’ added Sophie loyally.
‘Thinking outside the box?’ said Crosby.
‘You could call it that,’ said Culshaw. ‘I prefer to describe it as thinking laterally.’ He sat back and relaxed. He’d just had a great idea for keeping Jim Stopford away from the Bellingham on Thursday evening. He only hoped that Martin Pickford was being truthful when he said that there was no funny business involved. There would sure be trouble if there was.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The station sergeant looked up as Detective Sloan and Constable Crosby came back through the door of the police station. ‘Ah, Inspector,’ he said. ‘The SOCO is waiting to see you. I suggested he went to the canteen, seeing as I didn’t know how long you’d be.’
‘Thanks, Bill, good idea,’ said Sloan. ‘I could do with a bite myself, anyway.’
Crosby started to follow the inspector.
‘Not you, young man,’ said the station sergeant sternly. ‘I want a word with you. Now.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Crosby halted, downcast.
Detective Inspector Sloan left him to his fate and made for the canteen. The SOCO was already well into a plate of the canteen’s renowned all-day breakfast.
