Slight Mourning

by Catherine Aird

  “Tom and Jerry,” offered Crosby. He was back to his normal colour again now.

  “One of the free barbiturates,” said Writtle. “That is to say, not a sodium derivative.”

  Sloan waited for enlightenment.

  The analyst pointed to the two bottles. “Those crystals have been extracted by ether and chloroform. If we make an aqueous solution of the residue of one of them …”

  “Gog,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  “And,” went on Writtle, “then add one drop of Millon’s reagent we get a white gelatinous precipitate which is proof of the presence of a barbiturate.”

  “Proof positive?” inquired Sloan. There was no word more loosely used than “proof”…

  “It’ll stand up in court,” said Writtle, “if that’s what you mean. Especially with the other one.”

  “Magog,” said Dr. Dabbe helpfully.

  “When a trace of that one is dissolved in chloroform,” said the analyst, “and a one per cent solution of cobalt acetate added, you get a strong violet colour.”

  “‘The dew that on the violet lies,’” murmured Dr. Dabbe poetically, “‘mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes.’ Sir Walter Scott. A neglected poet.”

  Crosby perked up upon the instant. “‘Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and.…’”

  Then he caught Sloan’s eye and his voice died away.

  “How,” inquired Sloan gamely of Dr. Writtle, “was the barbiturate administered?”

  Crosby he could and would deal with later but there was absolutely nothing a mere detective inspector could do about a forensic pathologist with a bizarre sense of humour.

  “In what chemical form, do you mean, Inspector? Probably in solution.” The Home Office analyst, at least, Sloan was glad to see, was still on the job. “It might just have been in a highly soluble uncoated tablet but we doubt it. The main thing is that it wasn’t in a capsule.”

  “We looked for one,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  “There was no sign of there having been a capsule,” said Dr. Writtle. “There was no gelatine present anywhere in the alimentary canal.”

  “And it couldn’t have gone far anyway,” added Dabbe cheerfully. “Not in the time.”

  “Ah, yes, gentlemen,” said Sloan. “The time. When …”

  Writtle riffled through some papers. “It’s not all that easy to say, Inspector, especially if the substance was administered in solution …”

  “And perhaps in something he only sipped slowly,” interjected Dr. Dabbe, “from time to time—say a liqueur—over half an hour or more.”

  “But we should be prepared to go so far as to say, Inspector,” said Dr. Writtle, “that it wasn’t—er—taken much before eight o’clock or much later than eleven.”

  Sloan wrote that down and noted the laboratory numbers from the bottles, and then turned over another page in his notebook. “The barbiturate—how much was there of it?”

  “Good question,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  “Enough,” replied Writtle, “to make sure that he didn’t see morning. I’ll let you have the full quantitative analysis on paper.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Sloan looked from one to the other. “I think you’ve told me everything I need to know to begin with except one thing …”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whether he took it himself or had it given to him.”

  “Another good question,” observed Dabbe.

  Writtle stroked his chin. “That’s more difficult to say, Inspector.”

  “Your department, anyway, Sloan,” said Dabbe mischievously. “Not ours. We’re only the humble legmen, aren’t we, Writtle? Hewers of detective wood and drawers of forensic water.”

  “And,” went on Sloan crisply, refusing to be drawn, “whether, if he did take it himself, it was on purpose or by mistake.”

  “Ah,” said Writtle thoughtfully.

  “Or, come to that, gentlemen, if someone else gave it to him by mistake.”

  “We don’t know that either, Dabbe, do we?” said Writtle.

  The pathologist turned a look of bland innocence in Sloan’s direction. “We know hardly anything about anything.”

  “I have heard,” said Sloan firmly, “of cases where a person having taken a sleeping tablet is a bit confused by its effect. Then he can’t remember if he’s had his tablet or not and so he takes another.”

  “Automatism,” said Writtle. “That’s the name for that.”

  “And then he takes another tablet after that one,” agreed Dabbe, “to be quite sure he’s had his dose. It happens.”

  “Not as a rule until the patient is either in or near to going to bed,” pointed out Writtle. “And not before setting out on a drive.”

  “He didn’t know he was going to have to go out in the car,” Sloan informed him absently. “Do I take these bottles away with me now, Doctor?”

  “These? Oh, no, Inspector. These are only half our workings. We’re keeping the other half with these meantime.”

  “For the Defence,” added Writtle.

  Dr. Dabbe waved a hand at the collection of specimen jars on the laboratory bench. He was quite serious now. “But that barbiturate, Sloan …”

  “Yes?”

  “I should say that it could constitute ‘a destructive thing’ within the meaning of the Act.” The doctor looked at him. “What you need now for a watertight case is the ‘malice aforethought’ bit.”

  It was half an hour after they left the church before the chief mourners got back to Strontfield Park. Half an hour in which the coffin had been lowered into the grave, the rector had spoken the words of the Committal, and the funeral cars had driven back through the village. As they passed, Herbert Kelway lifted the blinds of his shop-window and then got back to work.

  Back at the house duty called, too.

  If Mrs. Helen Fent wanted nothing more than to shut herself away in her room she did not say so. Instead she moved slowly around among those present, politely responding to well-meant condolences. Always pale-faced, she was now almost without colour at all. She had chosen to wear a loose-fitting linen dress in a shade of charcoal grey which went well with her raven hair but which also served to heighten her pallor. She wasn’t tall but even so she stood out in the present company because people fell back a little as she moved. In deference to grief, no one’s back was turned to her.

  Like stage royalty, thought Annabel Pollock involuntarily, making her own escape to the dining-room. Cold luncheon had been set out there by Milly Pennyfeather for those who wanted it. Annabel busied herself twitching table napkins into shape, adjusting a fork here and there, and feverishly counting plates, even though there was really nothing more to be done.

  After a while, though, duty called her, too, back to the drawing-room. There were relatives to be attended to, and Nanny Vickers to be comforted. Nanny Vickers did not like to see any of her charges—grown men or not—slipping through her fingers.

  “Thought I’d lost him once with the croup,” she sniffed, “but I pulled him through. Then there was mumps and whooping cough. You were always a sickly one, too, Miss Annabel. Came of being born and brought up in India, I suppose.”

  “I know.” Annabel was apologetic. “All those years in the heat.”

  “He was a fine boy by the time I left.” In Nanny Vickers’ view life’s hazards were mostly over by the age of twelve. “I never thought to see him go like this.”

  “No,” Annabel Pollock agreed. “We none of us did.”

  “Cars!” snorted Nanny Vickers. “I wish they’d never been invented.”

  “Amen to that,” said Annabel, passing on to speak to Great-Uncle George, a sprightly octogenarian, who’d left the sheltered comfort of the private hotel where he lived to come to Constance Parva for the funeral. Both Annabel’s and Bill’s mothers had been his nieces.

  “Annabel, my dear, why did it have to be Bill of all people? A mere boy with everything ahead of him.”

  Annabel Pollock nodded miserably.
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  “And here’s me,” went on Great-Uncle George, “eating m’head off and no mortal use to man nor beast at eighty-five—I don’t look it, do I?—and as fit as a flea. M’doctor says,” he added with every evidence of satisfaction, “that they’ll have to shoot me in the end.”

  Annabel smiled wanly, and patted his arm. She’d noticed before now that the very old took death better than you might think—better than the young, anyway. Other people’s deaths, of course, not the prospect of their own.

  She passed politely on to Cousin Hettie, a more distant connection still, who had travelled to the funeral by bus and taxi from some ridiculously remote corner of the county—Almstone or somewhere like that—and who would presently have to be got back there. She’d been jilted, Annabel knew, long before Bill or she had been born and she’d promptly retreated to the backwoods and devoted herself to animals. They never rejected a human hand—particularly if it was the one which fed them.

  She was regrettably inclined to sentiment.

  “Such a nice boy,” she lamented. “I thought he and Helen would have so many happy years together, didn’t you?”

  Annabel assented bleakly.

  “I remember their wedding so well. They seemed the perfect couple—and now this. And no children either. Such a pity.”

  “Yes,” said Annabel stoically. Perhaps if she listened to Cousin Hettie poor Helen would be spared the ordeal.

  “You were a bridesmaid, dear, weren’t you? So pretty in blue, you were. I’ve never forgotten. I see Helen’s only in grey today. I know I’m old-fashioned but I do like to see the widow at least in black. Things aren’t what they used to be, you know, dear. In my young day a widow was expected to …”

  Annabel steered the conversation firmly toward Cousin Hettie’s animal kingdom. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Helen talking to Mr. Puckle, the solicitor, and Quentin having his share of Great-Uncle George.

  “Holiday,” Quentin was saying firmly to Great-Uncle George, and he could be heard clearly across the room. Fit as a flea Great-Uncle George might be, but only if fleas were more than a little deaf.

  “What’s that?”

  “I came down for a holiday,” repeated Quentin, adding in an undertone, “and found myself ‘super visum corporis.’”

  Annabel Pollock heard him, even if Great-Uncle George didn’t: Quentin Fent being clever at everybody else’s expense as usual.

  “What’s that, my boy?” asked the octogenarian again.

  “I always come down in August, Uncle. Nobody buys pictures in August.” Quentin Fent worked for a West End firm of art dealers. He was some years younger than his cousin Bill, and rather precious.

  “Should have thought you’d prefer the continent at your age,” said Great-Uncle George.

  “Can’t afford it.” Quentin gave the sort of winning smile that had sold many a picture to a hesitant client. It cut no ice at all with Great-Uncle George.

  “Not married yet, are you?” commented the octogenarian with all the candour of the old.

  “Not yet. The lady’s father—er—won’t have me.”

  “I didn’t think anyone asked him any more,” grunted the old man.

  “He’s Battersby’s Bearings,” murmured Quentin as if this explained everything. “Jacqueline’s his only daughter.”

  Great-Uncle George heard that. “Ah, he thinks Botticelli’s a cheese and that you don’t know ‘A’ from a bull’s foot.”

  “Er—exactly,” agreed Quentin ruefully. “There’s another thing too. He started out without two pennies to rub together. Now he thinks anyone who needs more than two pennies to get started is a bit of a failure.”

  The old man grunted unsympathetically. “In my young day you’d have …”

  “I might have stood more of a chance,” went on Quentin, “if I hadn’t tried to change a wheel when Jacqueline and I had a puncture last month …”

  “Made a mess of it, did you?” he remarked, unsurprised.

  “The jack slipped.” The corners of Quentin’s mouth curved downward dolefully. “Had to call out the heavy recovery people. That set me back a bit, too. The worst of it was that we’d borrowed the old man’s car without asking.”

  Great-Uncle George snorted. “So it was Strontfield Park for you, was it? Instead of Florence …”

  “I like to keep in touch with the family,” said Quentin a trifle defensively, “and believe you me, I’d rather do it in the summer.” He looked round the large cool drawing-room. “You can keep your Christmas in the country. You’d never believe how cold this room can get in the winter.”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” snapped the old man crisply. “I knew this room a long time before you did, don’t forget. Came here first when my niece Mary married Bill’s father. Before the war. Only coal fires in those days, too.”

  Quentin ducked. “Sorry. Of course you did. Must have been worse then.” He steered the conversation hastily in another direction. “Rotten thing to happen on holiday—Bill being killed, I mean. Hell of a nice fellow.”

  “Steady as a rock,” said Great-Uncle George, a quavering note creeping into his old voice.

  “Straight as a die,” supplemented Quentin, adding sotto voce, “and he died.” He moved away from the old man toward Helen Fent. “Hey, Helen, just a minute! There’s something I wanted to ask you. Something important.”

  “What is it?” Helen had completed her progress round the drawing-room. She was standing now in front of the Quare clock that had been her husband’s pride and joy, still talking to Mr. Puckle, the family solicitor. In spite of the heat of the day she looked cold and remote. She passed her tongue over dry lips and spoke without interest as though to a child. “Did you want something, Quentin?”

  “Yes. I want to know why there were policemen at the funeral.”

  “Policemen at the funeral?” echoed Helen, sitting down rather suddenly on the sofa. “Were there?”

  Everyone in the drawing-room at Strontfield Park stopped talking.

  “Two,” said Quentin.

  “Bill was on the Bench, remember,” said Annabel Pollock quickly. “They must have known him quite well.”

  Helen’s face cleared. “Oh, that would be Superintendent Bream from Calleford.”

  “Not him.” Quentin shook his head. “I meant policemen in plain clothes from Berebury. Sitting at the back of the church.”

  The silence in the room became more noticeable now.

  “How do you know?” asked Helen between dry lips.

  “They were at the inquest. The same two. They sat at the back there, too. I asked Mr. Puckle who they were then.”

  “And who were they?” asked Annabel Pollock breathlessly into the silence.

  Mr. Puckle cleared his throat. “Detective Inspector Sloan and a young detective constable, Miss Pollock. I don’t know his name. I—ahem—leave most of the Court work to my junior partners these days. I’m a little out of touch with the—er—Force in consequence.”

  “Not from Calleford at all then?”

  “Oh, no,” said the solicitor. “Inspector Sloan is head of Berebury’s Criminal Investigation Department. Granted, it’s not a big one. Anything of—er—great criminal moment is referred to the County Constabulary Headquarters at Calleford.” He turned as a small sound came from Helen Fent’s direction. “But I don’t think that …”

  She didn’t hear him.

  She had fainted.

  SIX

  Cynthia Paterson had been persuaded to go back to luncheon with the Renvilles after the funeral.

  “It’s very light.” Ursula Renville sketched a gesture in the air with her long delicate fingers. “Just some soup and cold meat—I left it all ready before I came out. I didn’t think we’d be hungry after all this …”

  “Well …”

  “There’s plenty, though, Cynthia. Do come.” She shivered slightly in spite of the heat. “Richard’s got to go back to his office afterwards. Come back and stay with me for a while.”


  “What about Professor Berry? Hadn’t I better see if …”

  “The Washbys are looking after him.” Ursula Renville peered round vaguely. “Veronica told me. And taking him back to Cleete afterwards.”

  “Good,” said Cynthia, making up her mind. “Then I’d be delighted. I’ll just let the dog out for a run and then I’ll be round. By the way, Ursula, was that call of Paul Washby’s on Saturday night anything important? I haven’t heard of anyone being really ill.”

  Ursula Renville gave her friend an indulgent smile. “Cynthia Paterson, when will you stop being the rector’s daughter? Whatever it was that was wrong there’s no need for you to rush round with calves’ foot jelly any more.”

  “I just thought you might know,” said Cynthia mildly. “That’s all.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” Ursula Renville could no more resist the challenge of implied ignorance than the next woman. “Veronica Washby mentioned it because it was all so odd. I wonder,” added Ursula inconsequentially, “why calves’ foot jelly was supposed to be so good for you.”

  “What was odd about the call?”

  “The whole thing.” Ursula was unenlightening. “Perhaps they’re full of vitamins.”

  “What are?”

  “Calves’ feet.”

  Cynthia demanded detail about Paul Washby’s call.

  “Well, in the first place it wasn’t a proper message, you know.”

  Cynthia said she didn’t know.

  “Not a person-to-person message and not a written message,” elaborated Ursula. Theories of communication by other media—non-verbal or otherwise—had not yet reached Constance Parva. This was not to say that news did not travel throughout the village with the speed of light.

  “What then?” asked Cynthia patiently.

  “Just something on that funny answering machine the Washbys have got now. You know, it’s never been the same since Marjorie left.” Before the advent of Daniel Marchmont four years ago Marjorie had been secretary and dispenser to old Dr. Whittaker.

  “Ah.” Cynthia Paterson had not herself tried conclusions with the surgery answering machine, but she’d heard of plenty of people who had. “You won’t catch that girl they’ve got there now—Jean Whatsername—sitting in by the telephone on a Saturday evening.”