Inheritance Tracks, page 9
‘I thought all refs were blind,’ remarked Detective Constable Crosby to nobody in particular.
Pickford turned his head towards him, found that that hurt too and turned it back again. ‘Not quite all of them, mate. But, in my experience, some of them do practise what you might call selective blindness.’
‘Well I never …’ began Crosby sarcastically.
‘They’re like you lot,’ insisted Pickford. ‘They catch some lawbreakers and not others. They only book the ones they have a mind to – those whose faces don’t fit.’
Detective Inspector Sloan firmly wrested the transactional initiative away from this heresy. ‘Have you seen any of the others who were at that meeting since then?’
‘Only Samantha Peters. Put her in uniform and she’s a real tartar, I can tell you. What is it that writer fellow said about being dressed in brief authority?’
‘That I couldn’t say, I’m sure, sir,’ said Sloan. He himself was of a generation that considered a policeman’s helmet an inviolable symbol of the law rather than the rest of his uniform. Attacks on it represented to him attacks on authority and were not to be tolerated. ‘But you’ve seen none of the others since?’
‘Nope.’
‘And I take it that the name Daniel Elland means nothing to you?’
‘Never heard of him, Inspector.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sloan, rising to leave. ‘But should you ever come across him, we’d like to know.’
‘Believe you me, Inspector, so would everyone else who was at the solicitors that day,’ Pickford said heartily. ‘We can’t get our hands on the dibs until we do.’
Back in the police station yard, Sloan unhitched his seat belt and pushed the car door open. Writing up his notes and visiting the canteen both seemed entirely proper procedures at this stage of the day. As he began to clamber out of the vehicle, he became aware that on the other hand Detective Constable Crosby was making no move at all.
On the contrary, in fact.
The constable remained in his seat showing no signs of getting out of the car for so long that Sloan himself paused and looked back at him. ‘Coming?’ he asked.
The constable unhitched his own seat belt with conspicuous slowness. ‘The custody sergeant said I had to report to him as soon as I got back, sir.’
‘And what have you done now, Crosby?’
‘Mucked up an arrest good and proper,’ said Crosby gloomily. ‘And what makes it worse was that they said it would be an easy one for a beginner.’
‘How come?’ Personally, Christopher Dennis Sloan, a detective inspector now but once a rookie constable himself, hadn’t found making an arrest too difficult even then – once the suspect was handcuffed, that is. Until that moment, of course, all the options were open. ‘Up for grabs’ might be a better way of putting it, since not everyone went quietly.
‘You know Larky Nolson’s eldest lad, sir? The one they call the Varmint?’
‘Who doesn’t?’ asked Sloan rhetorically. ‘He couldn’t lie straight in bed.’
‘His boy’s a right chip off the old block if ever there was one, sir.’
‘I can well believe it.’ Larky Nolson might only be a petty thief but his list of convictions was of epic length. ‘What’s he been up to now?’
‘He nicked a couple of frozen chickens from the superstore down by the railway.’
‘Following in his father’s footsteps, then.’
‘Not half – I mean, in a way, half is part of the trouble.’
‘Explain yourself, Crosby.’
‘Well, sir, it was like this. Larky’s boy took these two chickens – caught red-handed, he was. There was no doubt about it. In fact, he admitted it straightaway.’
‘So what was the problem?’ asked Sloan, intrigued.
‘The chickens were on sale, two for the price of one, and so I booked him for nicking two.’
‘Which he had done,’ said Sloan.
‘But Larky’s son argued that as what he’d stolen was only worth half of two, he should only be booked for nicking one.’
‘And the value of the stolen goods comes into the charge, of course,’ said Sloan thoughtfully. ‘So?’
‘So I said I thought he had a point and only booked him for stealing one.’
‘And the custody sergeant blew his top?’
‘How did you guess, sir?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Any progress to report, Sloan?’ asked Superintendent Leeyes, guaranteed to wrong-foot any subordinate with ease.
‘Not yet, sir.’ This, Sloan would have been the first to admit, was a tendentious reply, implying as it did that there would in fact be some progress to report at some stage. He wasn’t even sure if there ever would be anything to report in this case – it was all a bit too nebulous for him, save only for the presumption of ergot poisoning. There had still been nothing back from forensics.
‘Seen everybody in the loop now, have you?’ Leeyes growled.
‘Except the nurse – Samantha Peters. She’s been on night duty this week and we’ve got to be a bit careful exactly when we get to talk to her and Tom Culshaw.’
‘In my experience,’ pronounced the superintendent loftily, ‘you always have to be careful talking to anyone on night duty. It upsets their equilibrium.’
‘And then there’s the missing man, sir. Obviously I haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘There’s a flying formation called that,’ remarked Leeyes inconsequently. ‘When the squadron’s lost someone – like you appear to have done, Sloan.’
In the interests of his pension, Detective Inspector Sloan, married man and father, forbore to retort that he hadn’t lost Daniel Elland. He just hadn’t found him, which was quite different. All he knew about the man so far was that his descent from Algernon Mayton was through his father and had passed Simon Puckle’s scrutiny. Instead he said that he was planning to get out to Ornum, the village where Samantha Peters lived, by six o’clock that evening.
When apprised of this, Detective Constable Crosby sounded aggrieved. ‘Six o’clock, sir. That’s a funny old time.’
‘It was the one that her ward manager at the hospital suggested would be best,’ said Sloan. ‘She says Samantha Peters will have just got up about then.’
‘Funny old time for toast and marmalade, too,’ sniffed Crosby.
‘Let me tell you, Crosby,’ said Sloan feelingly, ‘that there’s nothing at all funny about night duty. It plays hell with your sleep pattern and upsets your digestion for days.’
Samantha Peters, though, when the police arrived at her cottage in the village of Ornum, exhibited no sign of disturbed sleep.
Or surprise at their visit.
‘Police?’ she said, ushering them into chairs. ‘Who about this time?’
‘Mrs Susan Port.’
‘She’s not a patient. At least, not now. She was at one time, I know.’ She stared at them blankly. ‘If you mean that Susan Port.’
‘I do,’ said Sloan soberly.
‘What about her?’
‘She’s died,’ said Sloan.
‘Good Lord, Inspector! What on earth happened? She was all right when I last saw her.’
‘Would that have been that day at the solicitors, Miss Peters?’
‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’ve seen her several times since then, usually in Berebury. We’ve met up for a cup of coffee at the Bellingham when she’s been in town and I’ve been off duty, and I’ve been out to Bishop’s Marbourne for a cup of tea two or three times. As she said after that meeting at the solicitors, it was rather silly our not getting to know each other better since we must be related, however distantly. And, like me, she didn’t have any really near relatives, either. So, please tell me, what happened?’
‘We’re not exactly sure, Miss Peters,’ replied Sloan, choosing his words with care.
‘We don’t know,’ interrupted Crosby before he could go on. When Sloan glared at him he muttered, ‘Same thing,’ under his breath.
‘And was she pleased at the prospect of a large inheritance?’ asked Sloan.
Samantha Peters considered this. ‘I should say quietly pleased but not excited,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘She told me that whatever it amounted to, she wouldn’t want to change her lifestyle all that much at her age. She liked the way she was living – she said it suited her.’
‘And you, miss?’
Samantha Peters gave a light laugh. ‘I think we all liked the idea of a legacy at first, but when I thought about it later on, I realised that I quite enjoyed my job at the hospital. Besides, I’ve found over the years that working with the badly injured and dying gives you a different perspective on life. Money isn’t as important in the long run as you might think then.’
Detective Inspector Sloan had established his own priorities while first married and still a constable. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘So, Inspector, I decided that what I would do when – if, that is – I came into that sort of money was to travel, big time. Mind you, that solicitor was so cagey none of us had any idea at all how much money was involved.’
‘You can’t usually get any info out of doctors either,’ contributed Crosby feelingly. ‘You can never tell whether they’re not saying something because they don’t know or because they know but they don’t want you to.’
‘There are tricks in every trade,’ she responded lightly. ‘Doctors don’t know everything, anyway, even if they want you to think that they do. The young ones, especially.’
Detective Inspector Sloan, older and wiser, had long ago decided that policemen didn’t have to explain anything at all – until they got to court, that is. What information they had gathered they were entitled to keep to themselves.
And usually did.
It was different when cases came to trial, when everything had to – should, in theory – come out. He said now, ‘These meetings at the Bellingham, miss – what did Mrs Port talk about then?’
Samantha Peters frowned. ‘Her new lifestyle, mostly – she hadn’t ever lived out in the country before and she was still finding out about it.’ She waved a hand to encompass her own cottage and its rural surroundings. ‘The country isn’t anything new in my case, of course. Me, I’ve lived in this village all my life and my mother and grandparents before me, but Susan’d been a townee, long-time. Had had to be because of her work, of course.’
‘But she had no family, you said?’
‘She’d got a godson somewhere she was very fond of, but no one closer than that.’
‘Did he visit her?’
‘Oh, no. He lived a long way away – Australia or New Zealand, I think. I don’t remember which. She did spend a fair bit of time in her kitchen, I do know that – she was very proud of her bread-making, you see. She said she’d never had time to cook properly before when she was working – she’d been a civil servant in one of the departments. And gardening, she liked that, too.’ She looked across at Sloan and said, ‘I’m sorry she’s died, even though I didn’t know her really well. I shall miss our little chats.’
‘Yes, miss, I’m sure.’
Samantha Peters hesitated. ‘You didn’t say what it was that had happened, Inspector.’
‘We don’t exactly know, miss. Not yet.’
‘I see.’ She obviously did see because she nodded and then sat up very straight and said, ‘I should like to go to the funeral.’
‘All in good time,’ said Crosby quite unnecessarily.
Unlike that of his brother, Tom, Clive Culshaw’s return to his own home the next evening had not occasioned any mirth whatsoever. And even if he should have happened to feel mirthful there was no one there with whom to share the feeling.
Or share anything else. This was evidenced by a note on the kitchen table in his wife’s handwriting, which read: Supper in the oven. Back by 11 p.m.
Even though bakers are in the nature of things usually early to bed, as perforce they are also early to rise, Clive Culshaw did not head for his bedroom after he had eaten his solitary reheated supper. And it wasn’t because he was waiting for his wife to return from her bridge club. It was because he was still poring over the last week’s sales figures at the bakery. There was no occasion for mirth lurking in them – quite the contrary, in fact.
There was nothing amusing either in the long list of the moneys owing to his suppliers, some payments already considerably overdue. Or in the latest letter from the bank, which hovered somewhere about the middle of a scale that stretched from the unhelpful to the downright threatening. He brushed aside with his customary impatience a sales brochure from one trade supplier suggesting he sold artisanal bread as well as the famous Culshaw loaf.
‘Baked only with their expensive new equipment, no doubt,’ he muttered aloud to the empty kitchen.
His staff wouldn’t have credited the change from Clive Culshaw’s customary public persona as a busy captain of industry to a worried and rather subdued businessman. Gone was the impatient, testy owner chasing every minute, instead there was only a very worried man. Pushing aside the remains of the fish pie, he picked up a pencil and did a few calculations and then sat silent and still.
But not for too long.
Always given automatically to converting worry into action, he turned his mind somewhere where he thought salvation might lie. Actually, now he came to think it through, he realised that it was the only place from whence any help could come.
Finding Daniel Elland would be the answer to all his problems.
Just as Simon Puckle had said: ‘Dead or alive.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Detective Inspector Sloan was at his desk promptly the next morning, but it wasn’t long before Crosby put his head round the door.
‘About the case of Susan Mary Port, deceased, sir,’ the constable began, entering the room waving a sheaf of papers in his hand.
Sloan looked up. ‘I must remind you, Crosby, that so far we do not appear to have any case at all.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.’
‘What we have at this stage is only a professional opinion by a consultant pathologist and no more than that.’ Sloan sat back in his chair. ‘Indeed, she may well have been killed by – what was it Dr Dabbe told us? – by the ingestion of a noxious substance …’
‘Ergot,’ supplied Crosby.
‘Ergot or one of its derivatives, but I must also remind you that she might have taken—’
‘Or been given,’ persisted Crosby gamely.
‘Or she might have taken – that is, swallowed – the aforementioned noxious substance by accident or ignorance.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Sloan, mellowing slightly, ‘we must certainly take note of the fact that Culshaw’s Bakery not only bakes loaves of rye bread, said to be one of the sources of the mould that produces ergot, but also sells rye flour for customers’ home baking in its shops. And that baking bread was something the deceased used to do at home.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Crosby. ‘I remembered that that’s what did for all those people in France.’
‘But,’ admitted Detective Inspector Sloan honestly, ‘I’m hanged if I can think of any reason why killing Susan Port would help any of the other legatees in any significant manner. The godson’s a different kettle of fish. That is, if he knows about the legacy, and we don’t even know that.’
‘Yet,’ said Crosby optimistically.
‘And all the rest of them at that meeting insisted that they hadn’t known each other before they met that day at Puckle’s office either. Except for the two brothers, of course. They knew each other with a vengeance.’
‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’
‘More like Cain and Abel, if you ask me,’ said Sloan. ‘Anyway, the other four of them …’
‘Five,’ said Crosby.
‘True. I was forgetting the missing man for the moment.’ He straightened up. ‘In fact, that reminds me, I think we might pay a visit to the last known address of Daniel Elland sometime soon. It won’t do any harm and might even do some good.’ This was a precept learnt at his churchgoing mother’s knee and related in her case to the value of prayer. Privately, Sloan thought it could also be applied to a number of actions, mostly by the medical profession.
Detective Constable Crosby plonked the handful of papers that he had brought with him on Sloan’s desk. ‘There hasn’t been a squeak from anywhere about the deceased’s godson, Terry Galloway, arriving, sir.’ He tapped one of the reports. ‘The immigration people said something unnecessary about looking for needles in haystacks when I asked if there was any record of anyone of that name coming into the country from Australia via India or anywhere nearer and was I having a laugh? And when I couldn’t begin to tell them exactly when in the last month we thought he might have arrived, the bloke I was talking to got quite ratty.’
‘Something every investigating officer has to get used to,’ said Sloan bracingly. ‘Nobody likes unanswerable questions.’
‘And when I told them we didn’t know his last known address or even if he was here already, let alone where exactly he might be staying in this country, they more or less told me to get lost.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘They did say that if it would be any help and if we were to follow their proper procedures – to the letter, they said – they could put him on their watch list.’
‘They did, did they?’ said Sloan, unimpressed.
The constable said that he thought that what they were implying was that the police ought to be able to do their own donkey work.
‘Searching for a loose cannon before it’s done any damage, Crosby,’ said Sloan, ‘is never easy. All the same, we should ask the next-door neighbour – Mrs Dyson, wasn’t it? – to let us know if anyone at all appears asking for the deceased. She didn’t mention anyone coming to see his godmother before the woman died, remember. And I think the deceased would have told her if he had, as they seemed very friendly.’
‘He – her godson – could easily have turned up at her cottage, though, without anyone knowing. It’s not that overlooked,’ pointed out the constable.
