Festival, page 16
‘Dreadful business, anyway. I hope the kid’s all right, though it’s getting a dangerously long time without any news of her. Seems to have knocked out the chief constable, too. Looks like he’s finished now, and from what I’ve heard he was a good policeman.’ Piet said nothing, and the superintendent went on, ‘I’m old-fashioned, I know, but if anything’s happened to that kid, and if they ever find who did it, then hanging’s too good for them . . . But you don’t want my views on punishment, young man. What’s the next thing you do want?’
‘I may need some help at Port Gaverne tonight. The trouble is I don’t know yet whether or not to do anything about the schooner – I’m hoping that what your man can find out at Padstow about her movements, and whatever I can pick up when I talk to Harriet Partridge, will give me a clearer idea of things. I may need to board the schooner, perhaps even to detain her. If so, I shall need help – at least four men, I’m afraid.’
‘At least. I’d be happier to feel that you had six. But you don’t know yet if you will want them?’
‘No. If I may, I’ll give you a ring around six tonight. I’m sorry to make such a big request, but at any rate it may help you to have a bit of notice.’
‘Of course it helps. I’ll have some men standing by for a possible job tonight, but I won’t say what it is until I hear from you – and even then I won’t go into any detail. You’d better have my home number, in case you want to get in touch with me after I leave the office. I’ll make sure to be at home this evening. In fact, if you do want a boarding party, I’ve a good mind to come with you.’ He wrote down his home address and phone number, and handed the slip of paper to Piet. ‘Anything else?’
‘I should think you’ve had about enough.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Give me about an hour to do some telephoning, and with luck I’ll have everything laid on for you by this afternoon. Would you care for a bite of lunch with me? It will be just about time for lunch when I’ve done my telephoning.’
‘Thank you. I’d like that very much.’
*
It was tiresome to have another hour to kill, but Piet understood well enough that a man can get on with things in his own office much better if he doesn’t have a visitor sitting round. Wadebridge wasn’t a bad place in which to kill time, though it wasn’t much of a day, still overcast and windy. There wasn’t time to do more than wander around –and he didn’t want any more drink. He walked across the magnificent fifteenth-century bridge that crosses the estuary of the River Camel – the river seemed docile enough, but the massive arches of the bridge suggested that it could be a formidable force in flood. He didn’t take the superintendent’s hour too literally, and after walking about for just over three-quarters of an hour he returned to the police station. The constable at the desk recognised him, and rang through to the superintendent without waiting to be asked. ‘He says he’s got everything ready for you, sir, and will you please come up?’ the constable said.
IX
A Call on Harriet
PIET’S FIRST CALL after lunch was at Camelford police station, where he was instructed to ask for Sergeant Trevithick. The sergeant, an elderly, grey-haired man with a weather-beaten face, was waiting for him. ‘The inspector would like a word with you, sir,’ he said.
The inspector was a much younger man, about Piet’s own age. ‘The superintendent at Wadebridge has been on to us about you,’ he said. ‘I understand that you belong to the Metropolitan Police, and we’ve been asked to give you any help we can. I also understand that you want a uniformed man to go with you to Pendenna House. As a boy before he joined the police, Sergeant Trevithick worked for old Major Partridge actually at Pendenna House – he knows the family and they know him. He’s ready to go with you now. Do you want to telephone Pendenna House first?’
Piet could see that the inspector was itching to know more about things and was restraining himself by being rather stiff and formal. ‘That’s very good of you, particularly at such short notice,’ he said. ‘I’m engaged on inquiries into the possible export of drugs, and it is just possible that a yacht belonging to Miss Harriet Partridge – at least, as far as I know at present it belongs to her – is involved in some way. Of course, it may not be so at all, but we’ve obviously got to find out. I have also to break the sad news to Miss Partridge that a young woman who may be her sister Jane has died from an overdose of heroin – she died in hospital at Swindon apparently after attending a session of the Earl’s Down pop festival that’s been on this week. The young woman hasn’t yet been positively identified, and pending identification the local police have made no announcement about her death. I only know bits and pieces of this part of the story – as you’ll know yourself, when you’re working on a case something that may concern your case crops up somewhere else, and you’ve got to see how it fits in – if it fits in. I’ve been working on the export of stolen drugs, and I understand from my bosses that it was a notebook found in the possession of the dead woman who may be Jane Partridge that put the yacht under suspicion. To be honest, and speaking as one policeman to another, I’m pretty much fogged about the whole business, and that’s why I need the help of somebody who knows the Partridge family.’
The inspector thawed considerably under Piet’s open manner and confession of his own difficulties. ‘Yes, I know how it is,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to tell me as much as you have, but I’m glad you did because unless you know just what help is wanted for you can’t be sure you’re giving the right sort of help. I think Ian Trevithick is just the man for you, but I shall be surprised if the Partridges are mixed up in anything like you say. They’re well respected hereabouts. If your dead girl is in fact Jane Partridge I’m sorry to hear about it. She’s often down here, though, come to think of it, perhaps not quite so much in the last year or so. Keen on riding horses, and I’ve seen her jump really well at our local gymkhana. Miss Harriet is a good rider, too, but not so keen as Jane – I think she goes in more for sailing, nowadays. But they’re both fine figures on a horse. Will you be wanting to take Miss Harriet to Swindon to see if she can identify the dead girl?’
‘That may not be necessary. I understand that there’s a brother who lives in London, and if we can get hold of him we can spare Harriet a distressing experience.’
‘Yes, there is a brother, but I don’t know much about him. The old Partridge business – they were builders’ merchants specialising in supplying slate in a big way – was wound up some time before old Major Partridge died, so there wasn’t any family business left for the boy to go into. What happened to him I’m afraid I don’t know. About telephoning Pendenna House – would you like me to do it, to make sure that Miss Partridge is in?’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t. I know that she’s here, because I saw her last night, and I’ll take a chance on finding her at home. I don’t want her to have any forewarning of a police call.’
‘Right. In that case I’ll just leave things to you and Sergeant Trevithick. Will you go in your own car?’
‘I think so. It’s not far, and I can easily bring the sergeant back.’
*
A little way out of Camelford Piet drew up on a patch of hard turf that got the car off the road and said, ‘There are several things that we ought to discuss before we see Miss Partridge. You’ll have to break the news to her about the possible death of her sister, and I’d be glad of your advice on how best to explain what I’m doing in coming along with you.’
‘I don’t know anything about the death of her sister, sir. I was simply instructed to accompany you to Pendenna House and to take orders from you about whatever we have to do there.’
Piet realised that the sergeant had not been present at his interview with the inspector. ‘I really am sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit hard to be sent off with a strange Yard man without any idea of what and why. I’m so close to this case that sometimes it’s hard to understand that everybody else isn’t. Please try to forgive me.’ He ran over the facts – such facts as he was prepared to reveal – about the death of the young woman from the Earl’s Down festival, and explained that a credit card found in her purse suggested that she might be Jane Partridge. ‘Of course that’s not good enough evidence of identification – the card might belong to a friend, or be stolen, or anything. That’s why the local police have made no statement about her death – they’ve got to try to identify her for the inquest. I come into it because my department at the Yard has been investigating possible methods of disposal of large quantities of drugs stolen over the past few months from pharmaceutical factories. We’re working on the theory that the heroin from which this girl died may have come from one of these hauls. In looking into her background – assuming that she was Jane Partridge – we discovered that her sister has a big yacht which is chartered quite frequently for cruises, and of course that would be quite a good way of getting drugs out of the country – they don’t take up much room, they can go ashore in a kitbag. We don’t know if any of this is actually happening – Miss Partridge and her schooner – she’s called Morning Star, by the way, and you may perhaps know her – may be completely innocent. We’ve just got to try to find out.’
Sergeant Trevithick brushed his hand across his eyes; he was near to tears. ‘If it is Miss Jane it will be a sad day for Miss Harriet,’ he said. ‘They were always close, and a nicer pair you couldn’t wish to meet. I’ve known them since they were born – I used to be a garden boy up at Pendenna House. As for the other things you mention, sir, I wouldn’t know anything about that, of course, but I’d be really and truly shaken if Miss Harriet and Miss Jane were mixed up in it. Would you have a description of the young lady who died?’
‘Yes, and I’ve got a photograph, too, though it was taken after death, and may not be much of a likeness of the living girl. Anyway, here is the photograph, and I’ll read out the description as given to me by the local police.’ Piet took the photograph out of a brown envelope and opened his notebook.
‘You needn’t bother, sir – this is Miss Jane all right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Poor kid – it would have broken her father’s heart, but he’s not here for his heart to break, thank God. It will near break Miss Harriet, though. What are we to tell her, sir?’
‘What we always have to tell people after road accidents or any other of the sudden tragedies of life – almost the worst part of a policeman’s job, though in my own uniformed days I used to think that while you can’t do anything to lessen the shock of dreadful news you can, perhaps, help a little by being gentle and showing that you care. In this case I think you must say that the North Wessex police have sent a photograph and a description of a dead girl who may be Jane Partridge, and have asked the West Cornwall police to try to confirm – or rule out – the identification. From what you say there doesn’t seem to be much doubt, and I, too, for other reasons think that the girl was almost certainly Jane Partridge. There are the formal matters of identification for the inquest. Isn’t there a brother somewhere who might be got to Swindon more easily than Harriet Partridge from here?’
‘Yes, there is a brother, Stephen. He comes between Harriet and Jane in age – Miss Harriet will be about twenty-six, Mr Stephen around twenty-four, and Miss Jane not much over twenty-one. I don’t think I’ve seen Stephen since his father’s funeral – he’d have been about eighteen then. He was a clever boy, and went from school to Cambridge, but there seems to have been some sort of trouble there, with a lot of debts and things. What happened I don’t know – Miss Harriet never talked about it. I don’t know where Mr Stephen is now.’
‘Would you say that the family is still well off?’
‘No, sir, and I think that was Mr Stephen’s trouble. He’d always had what he wanted from his father, and young people don’t always think about things as they should. The old Major went on living more or less as he always had, and there seemed to be plenty of money. But when he died there was nothing like as much as people thought. A lot of the land was mortgaged and had to be sold, and I’d say there was little enough left after the mortgages had been paid off. They kept Pendenna House, some of the cliff land – I suppose it wasn’t worth anything to sell – and a few cottages, but the farms that had once been part of the Pendenna estate all went.’
‘And they kept the old schooner. If they were really hard up you’d have thought that a boat like that would have been among the first things to go.’
‘The old Major had loved her, and Miss Harriet loves her, too. There’s money to be made out of chartering, but I couldn’t say how much. Miss Harriet always treats me as a faithful old servant and she always seems glad to talk to me when we come across each other, but I’m not part of the family, you understand, sir. She wouldn’t want to talk about her financial position with me.’
‘Jane Partridge seems to have had a bank account in Camelford. Maybe we could find out more about money from the bank.’
‘Maybe, sir. I’m sure the family has banked at Camelford for a long number of years, but you’ll know as well as I do that bank managers won’t go into details about their customers without an order.’
‘Very properly. But such orders can be obtained. We haven’t got there yet, though – we’ve got to get through the interview with Harriet Partridge. Sad as it is, breaking the news about her sister will be straightforward – what is much more complicated is to try to discover if she knows anything about the drug business. You’re a policeman of long experience, Sergeant. What do you feel my part should be?’
‘I understand, sir, that we are not to say you come from the Yard.’
‘No, I don’t want the Yard brought into it at this stage. In case Miss Partridge wants to check on me, Superintendent Evans at Wadebridge was good enough to fix me up with an identity card as an inspector of the West Cornwall police. So it can be assumed that I come from your headquarters at Newquay.’
‘Miss Harriet won’t want to check on you, sir. She knows me, and she’ll not doubt anything I say. I don’t like doing any of it, but I can see that it’s a job that has to be done. You say that Miss Jane died of an overdose of drugs – obviously it’s a CID matter to try to learn where she got the drugs from. That makes it reasonable enough for you to be with me. I’m afraid you will find that Miss Harriet won’t be in any state to answer anything.’
*
In this Sergeant Trevithick turned out to be wrong. Harriet opened the door to them at Pendenna House herself, greeted the sergeant in the most friendly fashion, and invited them in. ‘I expect you could do with a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Just wait in the sitting room for a minute while I get it. Do you both take sugar? I know that Sergeant Trevithick does, but I don’t know about you – I’m afraid I haven’t got your name.’
‘I doubt it’s a time for tea, Miss Harriet,’ the sergeant said. ‘We bring sad news, and I’ll be glad to get it over with. There is reason to believe that Miss Jane has died in a hospital in Swindon.’
‘Jane dead? I can’t believe it. Was it a road accident?’
‘No, Miss Harriet. My friend here, Mr Johnson, is an inspector from the CID, and he’ll explain things better than I can.’
Harriet sat down on the arm of a big armchair. She did not invite her visitors to sit, and they remained standing. Piet took up the story. ‘We are here simply as agents for the North Wessex police,’ he said. ‘They telephoned this morning with a description of a young woman who died in hospital from an overdose of some powerful drug, possibly heroin, and they told us that they’d sent us a photograph of her by express train parcel. From documents found with the young woman it seemed that she might be a Miss Jane Partridge of Pendenna House. We waited to collect the photograph before calling to see you. Sergeant Trevithick will show it to you. I must warn you that it is a photograph taken after death, and may be distressing to you. But you will understand how important it is to obtain identification of the deceased, and we must ask you to look at the photograph and say if you can recognise it as Miss Jane Partridge.’
Harriet remained collected, and in complete control of herself. ‘Let me see the photograph,’ she said. Sergeant Trevithick handed it to her.
Piet watched her closely. The hand that took the photograph did not tremble, and instead of showing any obvious sign of emotion her face remained expressionless. Of the two, Piet thought, Sergeant Trevithick was much nearer to tears than was Harriet. She studied the photograph for what seemed a long time. Then she said, ‘Yes, I think this is my sister Jane. Can you please tell me how she came to die?’
‘There will have to be an inquest, and as things are we have no more than brief details of the circumstances of her death,’ Piet said. ‘There is a festival of pop music at a place called Earl’s Down near Marlborough, and your sister was apparently attending this festival. She was found lying on the ground in a state of collapse, and rushed to hospital. She died without recovering consciousness. The only evidence of her identity was a credit card in her bag. This gave her name but not her address. The address was traced through the bank issuing the credit card, and the North Wessex police then asked us to make inquiries here.’
‘How did she get to the festival? Where did she stay, and where are the rest of her things?’
‘I am afraid I don’t know. The North Wessex police may have that information, but if so it has not been conveyed to us. We were told that she appears to have attended the festival unaccompanied, for no one has come forward to inquire about her. The question of formal identification has still to be determined. For the purposes of the inquest mere identification of a photograph is not enough. It will be necessary for some relative or close friend to go to Swindon to identify her.’
‘I knew Miss Jane well enough. Do you think I could spare Miss Harriet the journey?’ the sergeant asked.
‘That is a kindly thought, Sergeant, but as a policeman you will know that if there are near relatives of a deceased the coroner prefers evidence of identification from them. From what you yourself have told me of Miss Partridge’s family, though, there may be no need for Miss Partridge to go to Swindon. I understand that there is a brother – his evidence would do equally well. Can you let us know the address of your brother, Miss Partridge?’
