Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Flora among the flowers,’ murmured Charmian Lingard sweetly. ‘That sounds just right. Admiral Catterick hasn’t got any statues in the Park, has he?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Anthony Berra grinned, reading her mind without difficulty. ‘And,’ he added, prompted by an eldritch shriek from the garden wall, ‘he hasn’t got any peacocks either.’

  She screwed up her face in a child-like pout. ‘He’s got that sunken garden, though.’

  ‘I don’t think, Charmian,’ said Anthony Berra gently, ‘that the admiral feels in any way challenged by the work you’re having done here. The Park is a very old-established garden with a character all of its own.’

  ‘But ours was a monastery garden and you can’t get any older than that.’

  ‘True,’ he said diplomatically, refraining from mentioning the Hanging Gardens of Babylon besides those of Persia and China and other plantings in antiquity, ‘but I can’t imagine the admiral minding that. Besides, I’m just keeping the Park ticking over for him now. Its glory days are over – and so are his too, come to that. He’s an old man and not a well one these days.’

  ‘I want him to come to the party all the same,’ said Charmian Lingard, ‘and see what I’ve done here.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ lied Anthony Berra.

  Watched at a distance by both Anna Sutherland and Marilyn Potts, Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby returned to their car parked outside Capstan Purlieu Plants.

  ‘Now, Crosby, we need to get straight back to Pelling,’ said Sloan briskly, ‘and start enquiries about this Enid Osgathorp.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can remember the way backwards,’ said the constable moodily. He had been hoping to drive back to the police station and its canteen.

  ‘If, Crosby, baby elvers can find their way four thousand miles back to the Sargasso Sea without a route map, I think you should be able to manage it.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan toyed with the idea of saying that the elvers then grew up to be adult eels but decided against drawing the parallel. He said instead, ‘It makes sense to go back to that other nursery too while we’re about it and have a word with Jack Haines about this Norman Potts. It’ll save another journey.’ Superintendent Leeyes had left him in no doubt that economy was the watchword at the police station these days even though ‘Waste not, want not’ was not usually a police mantra. Pleasing his superior officer, though, was high on Sloan’s agenda all the while his assessment was pending. ‘You can take the foreman’s fingerprints while you’re about it.’

  ‘But there weren’t any fingerprints on the door handles,’ said Crosby, adding reproachfully, ‘I did tell you that, sir. They had been wiped clean.’

  ‘There is no need for that particular piece of information to be disclosed at this stage of the investigation,’ said Sloan, realising that he sounded stuffy even to himself. ‘It is a basic principle of policing to give nothing away. Who knows what and who doesn’t can be useful knowledge in an investigation.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ The constable sounded crestfallen. ‘But we can ask Jack Haines why he didn’t mention this character Norman Potts to us before, can’t we?’ said Crosby feelingly. ‘He ought to have done.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Sloan, who had already made a mental note of the fact. ‘So just tell Control where we’re going, will you?’

  The constable applied himself to his personal radio while Sloan strapped himself in the car with a quiet sigh. Greenhouse doors left open and elderly ladies who had gone walkabout weren’t quite the level of policing that he felt really came within the remit of the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of ‘F’ Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary, small though it was, and it rankled. On the other hand, what with his appraisal coming up so soon, this was no time to say so to anyone, least of all Superintendent Leeyes.

  It was Crosby, though, who vocalised the sentiment. ‘Who do they think we are?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘Maids of all work?’

  ‘Maids of all police work,’ rejoined the detective inspector crisply. ‘Now get going, Crosby.’

  Canonry Cottage at Pelling was in the middle of the village, the uncut grass in its front garden giving a clear sign to the world of the continued absence of its owner.

  ‘Miss Osgathorp always lets me know when she’ll be coming back,’ said her neighbour, a large woman in a flowery apron. It had been she who had rung the police. ‘Because of getting in the milk and the bread for her.’

  ‘So when …’ began Sloan.

  ‘That’s just it, Inspector,’ said the woman. ‘This time she hasn’t either done that or come back anyway.’

  ‘Ah …’ said Sloan, the thought idly running through his mind that large flowers on the apron would have suited the woman better than the tiny little ones that were there. Daisies, he thought they were. Poppies would have been better. Big, blowsy ones. ‘What about her mobile phone? Have you got the number of that?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have one of them, Inspector. Said she’d spent all her working life answering the telephone for the doctor and she wasn’t going to do any more telephoning than she had to.’

  ‘No word then?’ asked Crosby, already bored.

  The woman shook her head. ‘Not even a postcard and it’s been three weeks since she went now. It’s just not like Miss Osgathorp.’ She pointed towards her fireplace. ‘You can see that I’ve got a lovely row of postcards from her on the mantelpiece over there. Come from all over the place, they have.’

  ‘Where had she been going?’ asked Sloan.

  The woman reached into the pocket of her apron, produced an old envelope and proffered it to the two policemen. On it was a word that began with the letters ‘Carmarthen’ and then trailed off into an almost illegible scribble, finishing with the signature ‘Enid Osgathorp’. ‘Search me. Mind you,’ she added fairly, ‘she doesn’t always tell me where she’s going, me not being someone to go about much. Proper traveller she’s been since the old doctor died.’ She sniffed. ‘I daresay he left her something.’

  ‘The old doctor?’ queried Sloan.

  The woman looked surprised that he needed to ask. ‘Doctor Heddon, of course. Everyone knew him. Was our doctor out here at Pelling for years and Miss Osgathorp was his secretary and receptionist all the time he was here. Knew everyone, both of them.’

  Sloan paused for a moment, seeking a tactful way to put his next question. He decided there wasn’t one. ‘Did she leave you a key to her house?’

  The woman shook her head, unoffended. ‘No. I was glad about that. She used to say “Norah, you don’t want to be worried about my little old cottage. If it burns down, it burns down, and if burglars get in they won’t find all that much there to take and I’m not leaving a key with anyone else either”.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan forbore to say that that aspect of theft hadn’t deterred a lot of housebreakers he had known. He didn’t mention either the feeling of outrage left behind by intruders, often worse than any loss of valuables. Instead he dispatched Crosby to take a look round the outside of the cottage next door.

  The woman was still going on about her neighbour. ‘Miss Osgathorp always said what you had to concentrate on when you got to her age was not being a nuisance to anyone so she wasn’t going to be, not no-how. She was always one for spending her money on going places, not on buying trinkets that she didn’t need. And that she certainly did, officer. Travel, I mean. If it wasn’t one country, it was another. Mostly ones with flowers.’

  Sloan opened his notebook. ‘Can you remember exactly when it was she went away?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the woman called Norah very readily. ‘It was the day after poor Mrs Beddowes done herself in.’ She jerked her head in the general direction of the policeman. ‘I expect you knew all about that what with you being in the police. The rector’s wife.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t: this was partly because suicides weren’t usually wit
hin his remit – PC York, the Coroner’s Officer, usually dealt with the fall-out from those – but also because it was about three weeks ago that he, Christopher Dennis Sloan, family man, had taken some overdue annual leave. ‘And when exactly did that happen?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s just it, Inspector,’ said the woman. ‘Three weeks come last Friday. Balance of her mind disturbed, they said, though why she should do a thing like that, I can’t think. Nice husband and three lovely children. She left a note,’ Norah added lugubriously, ‘but they didn’t read it out at the inquest.’

  ‘Miss Osgathorp,’ prompted Sloan gently.

  ‘Oh, she never stays away anywhere as long as this as a rule. She’s her own woman, not like some,’ here the woman sighed and let her gaze settle momentarily on a pair of indisputably male boots in the corner of the room, ‘and so I suppose she can do just what she likes. Nothing to stop her.’

  Sloan nodded. It was a sentiment with which the Force’s Family Support Officer would have been the first to agree.

  The neighbour was still going on. ‘I wouldn’t have thought nothing of it at first only this secretary of the Horticultural Society over at Staple St James rang me up because she couldn’t get no answer from Miss Osgathorp’s telephone. Seems she’d promised to go over there tomorrow night and talk to them about the orchids of somewhere or other. Indonesia, I think it could have been. Or Crete.’

  ‘It could have been Crete,’ agreed Christopher Sloan, the gardener in him momentarily taking over from the policeman. It was one of the places he meant to visit one day. ‘I’m told the flowers there in the spring are something to write home about.’

  ‘Never mind her not writing home, officer,’ responded the woman with vigour. ‘It’s her not coming home that’s beginning to worry me. It’s just not like Miss Osgathorp to forget about giving a talk. Set a lot of store by that sort of thing, she did.’

  ‘Did you see the going of her?’ asked Sloan, hoping that Crosby would have had the sense to peer in a window or two next door while he was about it. Breaking into houses without demonstrable cause went down very badly with his superior officers and the Force’s auditors, to say nothing of the press.

  ‘Oh, yes. She went off like she always does,’ said the woman called Norah. ‘To catch a bus to Berebury and then a train to wherever she’s going.’

  ‘Did you actually see her go?’ Sloan asked, possibilities such as a decaying corpse with a broken leg in an empty house coming into his mind.

  ‘Oh, yes, I did that. I was just popping down to the butcher’s when I saw her go off towards the bus stop round the corner in time for the ten to ten bus on the Friday morning. With her suitcase. One of those with wheels that you can pull behind you. Besides,’ she said, as if this clinched the matter, ‘she waved to me as she walked down the road. And then that young Anthony Berra came by in his car. You know, the gardener man. He’s going to marry the bishop’s daughter in the summer. He pulled up when he spotted her and gave her a lift.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan snapped his notebook shut at this. ‘Then you’ll let us know when she comes back, won’t you? I expect she’s just extended her holiday. Must like it where she is but I expect she’ll be back in touch soon.’

  Looking back later, he was the first to admit that this was one of the least good predictions of his career.

  Not at the time knowing this, he set off to collect Crosby and met that worthy as he was coming back down the path of Canonry Cottage. ‘Everything all right over there, Crosby?’

  The constable shook his head and sounded puzzled. ‘I can’t quite make it out, sir. There looks to have been a bit of a break-in at the back of the cottage – there’s a broken window to the larder with quite a lot of glass about and a bit of blood. All the other doors and windows are secure but someone’s been in there through the front door as well but with a key. No doubt about it.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Sloan, suddenly alert.

  ‘Come and take a look through the letter box, sir.’ Crosby led the way back up the path to the front door of Canonry Cottage and carefully pushed open the flap of the letter box with a pencil. ‘See?’

  Sloan bent down and took a look for himself. He saw what the constable meant. Letters that had been pushed through the letter box by the postman and landed on the doormat had been swept back as the door had been opened and stayed where they had then lain when the door had been closed again.

  ‘Someone’s been in this way, sir, I’m sure, and then come back out again.’

  ‘With a key,’ agreed Sloan.

  The two detectives reached the same conclusions at the same time although they expressed them differently.

  ‘Not a professional at the front,’ decided Detective Inspector Sloan.

  ‘An amateur at the back,’ reasoned Detective Constable Crosby. ‘Glass everywhere and blood on a sharp bit.’

  There was, though, complete unison in what they said next.

  ‘This’ll need a search warrant, sir,’ said Crosby.

  ‘And Forensics,’ said Sloan.

  Superintendent Leeyes took a little persuading. ‘A search warrant?’ he barked. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘A missing person whose house has been entered in her absence, twice,’ Sloan said. ‘Once with a key,’ he added fairly. ‘And once without.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘A key which she told a neighbour she hadn’t left with anyone else.’

  Leeyes grunted. ‘That all you want?’

  ‘A check of all the hotels and boarding houses in Carmarthenshire for an Enid Osgathorp would be a help, sir. She’s retired and,’ he said as an afterthought, ‘as far as we know, travelling alone.’

  The superintendent added something else. ‘And presumably under that name.’

  It was something else, agreed Sloan, which they would have to consider.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘More coffee, Jack?’ Mandy Lamb hovered near the kettle, concerned about the unusual immobility of her employer. Jack Haines had sat, motionless, at his desk ever since the two policemen had left his office.

  ‘What’s that?’ he jerked himself out of his reverie. ‘Oh, no thanks.’

  She pointed to a stack of letters. ‘What about the post?’

  He waved a hand. ‘You see to it, Mandy.’

  ‘Two whole greenhouses gone are going to set us back quite a bit,’ she mused presently.

  ‘You can say that again,’ he said, a tiny bit more animated.

  ‘It’s bad, this loss, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very bad.’ He continued to sit quite still, shoulders hunched.

  ‘But it’s not only the money, is it?’ said Mandy perceptively, automatically herself turning to the kettle on the counter in the corner. Jack Haines was a widower and, although Mandy was years younger than he was, she often found herself in the same position of sympathetic listener and maker of comfortable responses as many a wife.

  ‘No,’ he roused himself to answer her, ‘although that’s bad enough.’

  Since he would not do so, Mandy Lamb voiced a name herself. ‘Norman Potts?’

  ‘No, not Norman,’ he said roughly. ‘Norman knows exactly where he stands with me all right. Always has ever since the beginning. Nothing’s changed there.’

  ‘You surely don’t mean that it’s Bob Steele who’s worrying you?’

  Jack Haines, impatiently pushing aside a pile of old seed catalogues, inclined his head into something approaching a nod. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘But the Berebury Garden Centre isn’t really into orchids,’ pointed out Mandy. ‘They only do common or garden stuff.’

  ‘I don’t know what they’re into,’ Haines growled. ‘Or up to. But I hope it’s not what I think.’

  ‘Sabotage?’ said Mandy Lamb and frowned. ‘You can’t mean that, Jack.’

  ‘Bob Steele came round the other day to see if we could spare him a dozen trays of Polemonium Jacob’s Ladder for a customer. Said he was clean out.’

  �
��I know. I saw him,’ she said. ‘Russ loaded them up for him. He paid for them all right – trade, of course.’

  ‘That wasn’t it.’ Jack Haines took a deep breath. ‘It’s that I happened to drive past his place myself a bit earlier on that morning and could see quite clearly that he’d got hundreds of them on sale that day so he can’t have needed any more.’

  ‘Same variety?’ Mandy Lamb might not know a great deal about plants but she did know that varieties mattered.

  ‘Same variety,’ he said. Mandy wrinkled her nose and since once again Jack Haines seemed unwilling to voice his suspicions, she said, ‘So the Berebury Garden Centre is spying on us, is it?’

  ‘I’d rather call it a fishing expedition myself,’ said Haines.

  She shook her head at him affectionately. ‘You never did like calling a spade a spade, did you, Jack?’

  ‘How do I know what to call it?’ her employer demanded. ‘Malicious damage, perhaps?’

  ‘You don’t think …’

  ‘I don’t know what to think but I do know that I saw Russ over there one day when I hadn’t sent him.’ He had begun to say something more when they were interrupted by the arrival of another visitor.

  Minutes later Jack Haines was exhibiting rather more resolve than he had been doing with his secretary, but this time it was with an automatic well-mannered response to a customer. It was Benedict Feakins who had put his head round the office door. ‘Got a minute, Jack?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Jack Haines got to his feet, now every inch the helpful nurseryman. ‘Come for your plants?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Benedict awkwardly. ‘Well, in a way …’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve had some trouble overnight. Some of your plants got damaged, but some are all right,’ began Haines then, taking a second look at the man’s bent back, he said, ‘But you’re not all right, are you? I can see that.’

  ‘Too much digging, that’s what did it,’ the other man admitted. ‘I was just getting the ground ready for all these shrubs you’ve got for me. It’s getting late in the year for them as it is.’