Sloan hurried on. The wider question of the competence of Detective Constable Crosby would have to wait for another day. ‘We already have the man’s name and photograph and his last known whereabouts,’ he said, although Sloan would have been the first to admit that this last was stretching it a bit, since the man had disappeared back into the crowd. He added that it should only be a matter of time now before they picked him up.

  ‘For murder?’ asked Leeyes hopefully.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘but to claim a healthy inheritance.’

  ‘That, may I remind you, Sloan,’ said Leeyes at his most crusty, ‘in case you should have forgotten, is not the object of the police investigation. We have two unsolved murders on our hands and I want to know what you propose doing about it.’

  ‘I’m going to go to Kew, sir.’

  ‘What? Kew, at this time of the year? And what on earth for? I know you fancy yourself as a gardener, Sloan, but you especially should know that there won’t be any flowers left there by now.’

  ‘Not to the gardens, sir, to the National Archive, which is at Kew.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To look for something that I think isn’t there.’

  ‘Even you, Sloan,’ the superintendent said testily, ‘should know that you can’t prove a negative.’

  Sloan hastily amended this. ‘I need to go there to confirm that something that should be there isn’t there, sir.’

  ‘And might I ask why I have not been privy to the outcome of these investigations so far?’

  ‘That’s because, sir, I haven’t had any real information to give you to date.’

  ‘The absence of war isn’t peace, Sloan,’ pronounced Leeyes enigmatically.

  As far as Sloan was concerned the absence of war was usually armed neutrality but he held his own peace. ‘As far as I could see, sir, until very recently no one had told me anything that appeared on the surface to be untrue or at least not verifiable.’ This not so subtle distinction was lost on the superintendent. ‘What I am hoping to do next is to confirm the absence of certain information, not its presence.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles, Sloan.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘But perhaps, Inspector,’ Leeyes said, heavily sarcastic now, ‘when you do reach any conclusions you would see fit to apprise me of them.’

  Sloan’s promise to this effect was delivered in a studiously neutral tone as he made his escape.

  In the event he didn’t go to Kew but rang the National Archives instead. The official there took his time to carry out Sloan’s request but when he got back to him he was quite definite. ‘No, Inspector,’ he said, ‘we can’t trace anything to that effect for the years you mention or, indeed, for five years on either side of the date you gave us, which we have also checked to be on the safe side.’ He gave a little hortatory cough. ‘You will understand that we can’t be too careful in our line of work.’

  You couldn’t be too careful in the police force either, thought Sloan to himself. He didn’t like to say to the man at Kew that it had been that sort of detailed checking by a retired civil servant that had led to all the trouble with the Mayton legatees – let him keep his ideals.

  ‘And the death certificate?’ Sloan asked.

  ‘To all outward appearances it is quite unexceptional, Inspector. It was all in order except, of course, for what you are suggesting. That is,’ he added meticulously, ‘if what you are postulating is actually the case.’

  ‘And the birth certificate?’

  ‘Similarly apparently quite straightforward. At first sight, that is.’ He coughed again. ‘Obviously some amendments might be called for in both instances in future. Naturally, I would have to look up the proper procedure for that.’

  Revised birth and death certificates did not figure in Sloan’s priorities.

  ‘I take it, Inspector,’ the official was going on, ‘that you will want certified copies for whatever legal action you will be taking?’

  ‘In due course,’ replied Sloan. The law could afford to take its time.

  The police couldn’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said Simon Puckle with every appearance of genuine regret. He sounded every bit as professional as a doctor did when delivering bad news to a patient. Sympathetic and concerned but at the same time detached. ‘The terms of the Mayton Trust are quite specific in the matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said a dejected Clive Culshaw, his shoulders sagging perceptively.

  The solicitor did, however, contrive to still sound sympathetic towards the worried businessman sitting across his desk, clutching an untidy file of papers. Not that that helped the man opposite. ‘I fear, Mr Culshaw, that the inheritance is only to be distributed – and I may say accounted for, too – when all the legatees are in a position to receive it at the same time.’

  ‘So you can’t help me at all, then? I was wondering if you would just consent to my having a loan from the money coming to me. Short term, of course.’

  ‘I’m sorry but any premature distribution of the capital might make for uncertainty. And it could also perhaps complicate the furtherance of a theoretical claim against the trust by or on behalf of some or of all the other legatees, you understand.’

  Clive Culshaw’s shoulders sagged even further. ‘I can’t say that I do understand, Mr Puckle,’ he said. ‘After all, my having an advance on what is coming to me anyway can’t possibly make any difference to any of the other legatees.’

  ‘There could be a challenge to the whole estate from others who might even at this late stage consider themselves interested parties,’ said Simon Puckle, before quickly adding, ‘although we have naturally taken every precaution we can against such a contingency.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Culshaw, struggling to keep a note of sarcasm out of his voice. The last person he wanted to upset at this particular time was the solicitor.

  ‘We could postulate other difficult circumstances too but the main fact to bear in mind is the provision against what you are proposing contained in the terms of the trust in relation to anticipating any capital from it before its distribution.’

  The solicitor had never – could not ever have – met the long-deceased Algernon Mayton but having had the trust under his care for so many years he felt he knew the old man’s mind by now. Anticipating money would, he was sure, have been anathema to a man who had made so much of it in his time. It would have been a dangerous practice in Mayton’s day and it was a dangerous thing to do today.

  ‘Surely it couldn’t do any harm …’ Clive Culshaw began in a persuasive, salesman’s voice.

  The solicitor hadn’t finished. ‘There is the added complication of our inability to find Daniel Elland. You do realise that if he cannot be found it could conceivably be seven years before we could make a claim for presumption of death?’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ howled Clive Culshaw. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Every possible contingency has to be taken into consideration.’

  ‘Except my urgent need for money,’ said Culshaw bitterly.

  ‘There is also,’ continued the solicitor, sounding sterner now, ‘the added consideration of the … er … unexplained – the unresolved – death of one of the other legatees as well as the aforementioned unavailability of another, both of which understandably preclude a speedy settlement.’

  ‘The law doesn’t make anything easy,’ muttered Clive Culshaw sourly, ‘although you’d think it should.’ He shifted tack a little. ‘If it isn’t legally possible for me to have an advance on my share of the Mayton money, then would there be any objection to my using the fact of my eventual inheritance as collateral for a loan?’

  He pointed to the file in his hand. ‘As you can see from these papers, Culshaw’s Bakery …’

  ‘Your firm,’ Puckle reminded him gently, ‘of which you are the sole owner.’

  ‘My firm which is in financial straits.’

  ‘Dire financial straits,’ said the solicitor, who had been shown the papers.

  ‘And is in great danger of going under,’ conceded Culshaw. ‘Some of my creditors are getting very pressing.’

  ‘Word does tend to get around,’ murmured Puckle.

  ‘Vultures looking for pickings,’ said Culshaw, ‘that’s what they are. Well, at this rate they won’t be fat ones.’

  ‘Smaller firms are always at risk from bigger ones,’ observed Puckle in a detached way, forbearing to say it was how the world of business worked or that this factor applied in the animal kingdom as well.

  ‘It’s all very well for you to say that, Mr Puckle, but it’s not only my livelihood that’s at risk but that of my workers, to say nothing of my family’s well-being as well,’ responded Culshaw haughtily. The fact that the game of bridge cost almost nothing to play wasn’t likely to compensate his wife for losing a standard of living that she had got used to.

  ‘True,’ nodded Simon Puckle, refraining from passing any opinion on the matter. ‘Very true.’

  Clive Culshaw got straight back to the matter in hand. ‘So, then,’ he asked directly, ‘can I borrow what I need to keep going on the strength of this inheritance, using the promise of the Mayton money to come? That’s what I need to know now if you won’t advance me any of it.’

  Simon Puckle, senior partner in the long-established firm of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, Solicitors and Notaries Public, and an experienced operator, said, ‘That, Mr Culshaw, is entirely a matter for whomsoever you are able to secure a loan from.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ‘Are you quite sure, Sloan?’ Superintendent Leeyes had started to pace up and down his office, never a good sign.

  ‘Quite sure, sir.’

  ‘Both deaths?’

  ‘Both murders, sir,’ said Sloan, greatly daring. He didn’t often correct anything his superior officer said.

  ‘Beyond doubt?’ asked Leeyes. ‘You know what the press are always like if we drop a clanger.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, answering both questions at the same time.

  ‘Even Terry Galloway being killed? Don’t forget the newspapers always come down on us like a ton of bricks before they ask for our side of the story.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sloan, searching his memory for the military term that covered the unintentional killing of the innocent. ‘I’m afraid that was collateral damage.’

  ‘In the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said Leeyes, putting it in his own way.

  ‘It was purely fortuitous, sir, that he should have been there and then. Terry Galloway shouldn’t have been in the picture at all. He couldn’t possibly have known that the murderer was in the house when he arrived on the cottage doorstep at Bishop’s Marbourne.’

  ‘But the murderer could have recognised him all right,’ concluded Leeyes. ‘You said there was a large photograph of him on Susan Port’s sideboard.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. So far, we only know that the deceased was his godmother and, having no children of her own, fond enough of him to leave him all her worldly wealth.’ Christopher Dennis Sloan, husband and father, was content to know that he himself had a proper heir of the body male, not a contrived one. He hastened on. ‘What we don’t know yet, sir, is whether the deceased’s own solicitors – PC York found out that they were in south London somewhere – had got round to letting Galloway know that he’d come into all Susan Port’s worldly wealth before he set out for England or not. We’re trying to find that out at this end.’

  ‘Then you’d better get on with it, Sloan.’

  ‘It’s already in hand, sir. We’ve also asked the Australian police to try to establish at their end whether or not Terry Galloway knew about Sue Port’s death before he set off for England. It’s quite important for us to know. If her solicitors had advised him of the fact, then he would have known that there shouldn’t by rights have been anyone in her cottage when he went there.’

  ‘As by rights it would have been his own cottage by then,’ reasoned Leeyes.

  ‘Exactly, sir. Presumably, if so, it would explain why he went out to Bishop’s Marbourne to take a look at it – I mean, that he didn’t actually hurry over there to see her as soon as he got to Berebury.’

  ‘And what was anyone doing in her cottage anyway, might I ask?’ asked Superintendent Leeyes heavily.

  ‘Trying to remove incriminating evidence, at a guess,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘A computer full to the gunnels with Mayton family history for starters.’ Sloan didn’t know if that was the right way to describe all the information contained in that small machine, but it would have to do since nobody could know, except in a month of Sundays, how much was actually in one. If he hadn’t known exactly where to check, then he wouldn’t have done either.

  ‘But why the long delay in trying to get hold of it?’

  ‘Friday night was the only night of the week that the murderer could be sure the Dysons would be out. They played cribbage at the local hostelry every week.’

  ‘It was the computer, not the ergot, then?’

  ‘The ergot had only been there from time to time when she was visited by the murderer. I daresay a few tablets would have been handed over each time in the guise of painkillers.’

  ‘Tablets?’

  ‘Something called ergotamine tartrate.’

  ‘I suppose it makes a change from arsenic, whatever it is.’ There was only one thing worse in Sloan’s book than Leeyes being sarcastic and that was Leeyes being facetious. ‘They say that’s usually a woman’s favourite weapon – there was that well-known Scottish woman …’

  ‘Madeleine Smith, sir.’ There were some names that stood out in the memory.

  ‘And do we happen to know what this stuff ergotamine tartrate is?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir.’ Sloan had already had a rapid lesson in pharmacology from Dr Brooke Helston over at Calleford. That slip of a girl had told him all about ergotamine tartrate, and when he had asked why it was given to patients if it could be poisonous, had quoted some ancient called Paracelsus at him: ‘It’s the dose that makes the poison.’

  ‘Well?’ asked Leeyes impatiently.

  ‘It’s a tablet used routinely in hospitals in obstetric departments – I am told that forty milligrams given over a five-day period has been known to cause impending gangrene in all four extremities. We don’t know yet how much was given to Susan Port, but if you remember, sir, Dr Dabbe reported on the gangrene in his post-mortem report on the deceased.’

  ‘A hospital drug, then.’ Difficult he might be, but nobody had ever called Superintendent Leeyes slow on the uptake.

  ‘Usually, sir. It’s obviously one containing ergot from its name and it’s prescribed as part of the childbirth process,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, carefully avoiding the medical specifics. The doctors would have to do that later. It was just the maladministration of ergot that came into the police orbit.

  ‘So …’

  ‘That’s what clinched it, sir. At one time she’d worked in midwifery. She’d even told Tom Culshaw so but I’m afraid I didn’t take the fact on board soon enough when he told me. I’m sorry about that. I should’ve done because the drugs expert at the hospital in Calleford did mention at the time that there were therapeutic uses of ergot, too,’ Sloan said, standing by for a reprimand.

  ‘Information overload can hamper an investigation,’ quoted Leeyes unexpectedly. It was a sentiment that he usually expressed when being requested to spend more from his budget than he was prepared to do on something he didn’t approve of.

  Sloan breathed again. His mea culpa had done the trick. This time but not always.

  ‘So what put you on to her, Sloan?’

  ‘Something that Detective Constable Crosby said.’

  ‘Crosby?’ harrumphed Leeyes sceptically.

  ‘After the break-in at the hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department, most of the drugs taken needed putting somewhere in order to make everyone think that they’d been taken by an outsider who had smashed the drug cabinet to get at them.’

  ‘So where does Crosby come in?’ asked Leeyes.

  ‘I’m coming to that, sir,’ said Sloan. ‘She very cleverly slipped them into the pockets of all the men from the Postern Gate area who came into her department that Saturday night.’

  ‘Why on earth …’

  ‘She only needed the Ameliorite from the drug cabinet herself – by the way, she’d done the smashing as she went to the handover in the sister’s office – to kill Terry Galloway. That was after that young African doctor examined him in the Accident and Emergency ward and said that she was sure he was going to come round in time and live.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So she decided she had to make sure he didn’t because he might have seen her.’ Sloan hesitated. ‘I suppose that she’d worked out that if he did happen to come round on her ward, he’d recognise her.’

  ‘I can see that, Sloan,’ Leeyes waved an arm dismissively. ‘What I still don’t see is exactly where young Crosby comes into all this.’

  ‘When the men told John Holness from Latchless that they had found clinical drugs – and only clinical drugs – in their pockets but didn’t know how they got there, Crosby didn’t believe that that was a credible story. He was scornful, saying that was a likely tale – he actually meant it was an unlikely tale – and I suddenly realised it wasn’t and went looking for evidence to prove it.’

  ‘And found it, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir, once I knew where to look.’

  ‘Kew?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t approve of toadying to the superintendent but there were times when he could do it with a clear conscience and he decided this was one of them. He mustn’t give Crosby too much of the credit: Leeyes wouldn’t like that either. ‘But, sir, it was something that you yourself said that helped clinch the matter.’

  Leeyes looked up, visibly pleased. ‘Really? What was that?’

  ‘It was when you said that whoever had hit Galloway on the head hadn’t hit him hard enough to kill him.’

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23