Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Are we talking big money?’ asked Benedict Feakins warily. ‘About the insurance, I mean?’

  Simon Puckle glanced down at the contents of the file in front of him. ‘Nothing inordinate.’

  ‘I’m a bit strapped for cash at the moment, that’s all,’ admitted Feakins. ‘Moving expenses and all that. But I expect I could raise a loan.’

  ‘Perhaps an overdraft would be better,’ suggested the solicitor mildly.

  ‘We’ve reached our limit,’ interrupted Mary Feakins. ‘The bank won’t let us have any more,’ she explained naively. ‘We went there first this morning.’

  ‘I see.’ Simon Puckle gave the young couple a long hard look. ‘It is in my opinion a little early to be thinking of raising money against the property if that is what you had in mind and,’ here he raised his eyebrows, ‘if I may say so, a little unwise at this stage.’

  Benedict Feakins was saved from answering this by the arrival of the solicitor’s secretary with a tray of coffee. Mary Feakins gazed hungrily at a plate of digestive biscuits and half-rose in its direction.

  ‘Ah, thank you, Miss Fennel,’ said Simon Puckle pleasantly, as she poured out the coffee and handed it round. ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to stay as we shall need you as a witness to Mr Feakins putting his signature on these papers.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Puckle,’ she murmured, following the coffee with an offer of biscuits all round. Mary Feakins took two.

  ‘Now,’ said Simon Puckle to his clients, ‘do either of you have any other questions?’

  ‘How long will it be before we – that is, I – can sell any of these assets?’ said Benedict Feakins, his coffee untouched.

  ‘When you have title to them,’ said Simon Puckle crisply.

  ‘And when will that be?’ persisted Benedict.

  ‘I think the correct answer,’ said the solicitor, ‘is that it will be in the fullness of bureaucratic time.’

  Benedict Feakins groaned but whether this was from pain or disappointment at his answer Simon Puckle was unable to tell.

  After his clients had left his office the solicitor sat at his desk thinking for a minute or two then he rang for his secretary. ‘Would you please see if the manager of the Calleshire and Counties Bank is free to have lunch with me today, Miss Fennel?’

  ‘The police are back, Jack,’ announced Mandy Lamb unceremoniously as she ushered Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby into the office.

  ‘Come along in, Inspector,’ said Jack Haines heartily. He pushed his chair back and came forward to greet them with every sign of pleasure.

  It was Sloan’s experience that a visit from the police was only ever welcomed by the victims of an offence. Villains seldom greeted him with the enthusiasm that met their return to Jack Haines’ nursery at Pelling. Since the nurseryman and his other visitor were facing each other like a pair of warring dogs, it was obvious, too, that he and Crosby had arrived at a most opportune moment.

  ‘And meet Mr Anthony Berra,’ went on Haines, stepping back and ushering the two policemen into chairs. ‘He’s lost a load of plants too.’

  ‘Only in a manner of speaking,’ murmured Anthony Berra coolly. ‘It’s my clients who will be the losers in the long run. And Jack here, of course.’

  ‘So,’ hastened on the nurseryman, ‘we’re both very keen for you to find out who broke in and opened the greenhouse doors.’

  ‘And why,’ added Berra pithily. ‘That’s what I would like to know.’

  ‘Are you two the only losers here?’ asked Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘No other victims?’

  ‘I had stuff in there that I was planning to use in the gardens of Admiral Catterick but mostly it was for my clients, the Lingards,’ said Berra, giving a little cough.

  ‘And for young Benedict Feakins,’ put in Haines.

  Anthony Berra pulled a face. ‘No, not for him any longer, Jack, I’m sorry to say. He says he’s broke and can’t afford me any longer.’

  ‘It happens,’ said Haines shrugging his shoulders. ‘There are some other orchids in the packing shed awaiting collection by a Miss Osgathorp so they’re safe enough and the other greenhouses and the hardy plants are all right. I’ve just checked them myself. As far as I’m concerned the biggest loss is the young orchids.’

  ‘And as far as I’m concerned nearly half of my stuff for this season was in that one greenhouse,’ stressed Berra. ‘The remainder is in one of the other greenhouses whose doors weren’t left open …’

  ‘Now, Anthony …’ his voice died away as Jack Haines began a protest at this but thought better of it at the last minute.

  ‘There was nothing at all of mine in the orchid one,’ said Berra. He cast an enquiring glance in Jack Haines’ direction. ‘That’s so, Jack, isn’t it?’

  Haines nodded.

  Berra gave a twisted smile. ‘And so there being “No Orchids for Miss Blandish” is not my problem.’

  ‘You could say that, I suppose,’ agreed Haines sourly.

  ‘There were no orchids for our Mrs Lingard at the Grange, either,’ said Berra lightly, ‘since she wasn’t going to have any orchids anyway.’ He turned to the policemen. ‘She’s my client, you know, Inspector. The plants in number two greenhouse were mainly for her – their – garden. But not the orchids, thank goodness.’

  Detective Constable Crosby suddenly stirred himself and asked the landscape designer if he’d got any professional rivals. Anthony Berra looked startled. ‘Er … no,’ he spluttered between coughs, ‘well, none that I know of anyway.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ remarked the constable sardonically.

  ‘I suppose that for the record I should say that there was a big London firm that also put in for the contract to restore the garden at Pelling Grange,’ the landscape architect admitted, ‘but seeing as I lived in the village anyway the Lingards awarded it to me.’ He gave a boyish laugh. ‘I suppose I came a bit less expensive too.’

  ‘And lived on the spot,’ added Haines generously. ‘I’m sure that helps.’

  ‘Also the Lingards know my future in-laws,’ admitted Berra sheepishly, ‘and I daresay that helps as well.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan sedately. If there was one thing the police force did not usually suffer from it was nepotism. Most of the policemen whom he knew steered their sons and daughters away from serving in it as energetically as they could. And any such favours dispensed by the police could lead to a prison sentence.

  For the policeman.

  ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,’ chanted Crosby under his breath.

  ‘Mustn’t forget old Admiral Catterick at the Park,’ put in Jack Haines. ‘He’s one of your clients too, isn’t he, Anthony?’

  ‘He is indeed,’ agreed Anthony Berra warmly. ‘He’s a grand old boy. Been at sea all his life and doesn’t know the first thing about gardens.’

  ‘Leaves it all to you then, does he?’ asked Crosby, an innocent expression on his face.

  Berra said, ‘Not quite, but I’ve been trying to get him to go over to labour-saving plants and so I’m mostly planting low-maintenance shrubs there. Unfortunately he’s lost quite a lot of the more interesting plants that Jack here was bringing on for him too. There were some more in another greenhouse – one which doesn’t appear to have had its doors left open either,’ he added pointedly.

  ‘Number three,’ said Mandy Lamb before her employer could respond.

  ‘This Miss Osgathorp you mentioned …’ Sloan hoped he was dropping this name into their talk with the same delicacy as a fisherman landing a dry fly on a trout stream. He wasn’t sure if he had done.

  ‘Fierce old biddy who gives talks,’ responded Jack Haines immediately. ‘Quite sound on orchids, actually.’

  ‘Knows her stuff, Inspector,’ agreed Berra. ‘Bit of a battle-axe, though.’

  ‘Well, she was the Dragon at the Gate for years and years, wasn’t she?’ put in Mandy Lamb from her desk at the front of the office.
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br />   ‘Come again?’ said Crosby, looking meaningfully at a jar of coffee.

  ‘She was Doctor Heddon’s receptionist,’ explained Mandy. ‘Protecting the doctor from the patients.’

  ‘I thought these days it was the patients who had to be protected from the doctor,’ muttered Crosby, sotto voce, a few famous medical murders at the back of his mind.

  ‘Last time I saw her,’ said Berra ruefully, ‘she told me exactly what I should be doing in the garden at the Grange. Thought I ought to be having a fernery there.’

  ‘She is something of a pteridophile,’ opined Jack Haines. ‘She says ferns can manage without her while she’s on her travels.’

  ‘But I ask you, a nineteenth-century fernery in an old monastery garden!’ Berra gave a short laugh. ‘I can’t see Charmian – Mrs Lingard, that is – wanting a fernery in her garden.’

  ‘When exactly would that have been, sir?’ asked Sloan. ‘I mean, when did you last see Miss Osgathorp? Not Mrs Lingard.’

  Anthony Berra frowned. ‘It’s a while since – it must have been three or four weeks ago. Can’t remember precisely when. I gave her a lift to the railway station. She was waiting at the bus stop but I was going into Berebury anyway and I picked her up and dropped her off at the sandwich shop two or three doors away from the station so she could buy something for the journey.’

  ‘Going off on one of her famous trips, I suppose,’ grunted Jack Haines.

  ‘She did say where,’ admitted Berra, ‘but I can’t remember where it was now. Not abroad, anyway. I do remember that much.’

  With a fine show of indirection Detective Inspector Sloan took out his notebook and said, ‘If you remember, Jack, we had promised to come back to interview your foreman …’

  ‘I’ve told Russ,’ interrupted Mandy Lamb. ‘He’s on his way over from the packing shed this minute.’

  Anthony Berra stirred and said to Jack Haines that it was high time he was on his way and that he would pick up the plinth he wanted from the yard before he went over to see the admiral. He gave a valedictory wave of his hand to them all as he left whilst Detective Constable Crosby edged his way towards a corner of the office where there was a kettle and a row of mugs standing beside the coffee jar. He stood in front of these like a dog awaiting its dinner.

  Jack Haines looked up as the door opened again. ‘Ah, here’s my foreman now,’ he said. He turned to the newcomer. ‘Good, I’m glad you’ve turned up, Russ. The police want to talk to you.’

  ‘Any time,’ said the man, shrugging his shoulders. He looked across at the two policemen and jerked his head in the general direction of the greenhouses. ‘About this massacre, I suppose? Terrible, isn’t it? There was weeks of work there – we’ll never catch up, will we, boss? Not this season, anyway.’

  Jack Haines shook his head and said sadly, ‘No way, Russ. No way. Not now.’

  ‘We need to know when you left here last night,’ said Sloan to the foreman. ‘It could be important.’

  ‘Same time as usual,’ said Russ Aqueel, shrugging his shoulders again. ‘Must have been about half five. The others had knocked off prompt at five as normal but I came over to the office and signed off some timesheets for her ladysh … for Mandy here.’

  Mandy Lamb tossed her head and gave a disdainful sniff in the background but said nothing.

  ‘Then,’ went on the foreman, ‘I checked all the greenhouse doors and,’ he added belligerently, ‘I can tell you before you ask that they were all closed when I left. Every last one.’

  ‘Sure, Russ,’ put in Jack Haines uneasily.

  ‘And number one properly watered and heated,’ insisted the foreman, ‘and steamy as it should be for the orchids. I checked the humidity in there before I locked the main gate and left.’

  ‘In that case, sir,’ said Sloan to the foreman, ‘you won’t have any objection to having your fingerprints taken by my constable here.’

  The foreman thrust a grimy paw towards Crosby. ‘Be my guest, mate.’

  ‘After you’ve washed your hands if you don’t mind,’ said that worthy.

  ‘There’s a tap out the back,’ said the man, turning. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan sat back, saying casually to Jack Haines as if by way of conversation, ‘You don’t happen to know a man called Norman Potts, do you?’

  The nurseryman visibly stiffened. ‘Of course I know him, Inspector. He’s my stepson,’ he said between gritted teeth.

  ‘Coffee?’ said Mandy Lamb into the silence.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Detective Constable Crosby.

  ‘I had hoped I’d seen the last of him when his mother died,’ growled Haines. ‘But no such luck. He sued me for more of her estate than she’d left him. And lost.’ He took a deep breath and asked, ‘What’s he been up to now?’

  ‘Nothing that I know of,’ said Sloan blandly. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Harassment, for starters,’ said Haines. ‘Came here wanting me to tell him where his wife – his ex-wife, that is – was.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him to get lost.’

  ‘And did he?’ enquired Crosby with interest.

  ‘Haven’t seen him since,’ growled Haines. ‘Or wanted to, come to that. Like I said, I had hoped I’d seen the last of him. He’s nothing but trouble as far as I’m concerned. And to his ex-wife too, from all accounts.’

  ‘Tell me,’ invited Sloan.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Detective Inspector Sloan had barely settled back at his own desk at Berebury Police Station before he was summoned to Superintendent Leeyes’ office.

  ‘Have you got anything else to add to this peculiar shopping list of yours, Sloan?’ asked his superior officer testily.

  ‘Not just yet, sir, thank you.’ The reported iniquities of Norman Potts as a husband and stepson had slid easily off Jack Haines’ tongue. They comprised a catalogue of domestic violence and included a threat heard by Haines to take revenge on a woman – and the legal profession – whom Potts swore to Jack Haines had stripped him of half his worldly wealth by way of a divorce.

  Perhaps, noted Sloan, Norman Potts had already taken revenge too, on a nurseryman who had refused to play ball with a disgruntled stepson. The policeman didn’t know that.

  Not yet.

  And Jack Haines certainly wasn’t saying anything about that.

  Not yet, either.

  Sloan gave the superintendent an edited version of Norman Potts’ reputation as represented by his stepfather and his former wife.

  Leeyes grunted.

  The detective inspector glanced down at his notebook. ‘So, sir, I’ve put out a general call for this Norman Potts as a witness in connection with damage caused at the two nurseries.’

  ‘In connection with,’ Superintendent Leeyes rolled the phrase round his tongue appreciatively. ‘I like it. Non-committal, and better than that old chestnut about helping the police with their enquiries.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ In his time, Sloan been assaulted by men said to be helping the police with their enquiries and it hadn’t been of any help at all.

  ‘The press don’t like anything non-committal,’ said the superintendent with some satisfaction. ‘By the way, Sloan, did I say that I’ve put you down for your personal development discussion for Friday morning?’

  ‘Right, sir. Thank you, sir.’ He swallowed. ‘I’ll make a note of that. And in the meantime,’ Sloan plunged on, ‘Crosby is checking on the other local nurseries to see if they’ve had any trouble too. Although,’ he added realistically, ‘I would have thought we’d have heard by now if they had.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s an orchid-hater at large,’ suggested the superintendent. ‘Can’t stand ’em myself.’

  ‘And in the matter of the MISSPER …’ began Sloan. He wasn’t very fond of orchids himself either but didn’t think this was the moment to say so.

  ‘I don’t like Missing Persons cases, either,’ trumpeted Leeyes immediately. ‘Never h
ave. In my experience they’re neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. If you find them alive and kicking nobody gives you any credit for it. Worse than that, if they didn’t want to be found in the first place, you get all the blame and if you find them dead, then you get all the blame too.’

  ‘Up to a point, sir.’ He coughed. ‘There are one or two matters to be noted about Enid Osgathorp’s absence, though. I think she is unlikely to have extended her holiday voluntarily since she had arranged to collect some orchids for a demonstration she had agreed to give tomorrow evening. They’re still waiting for her to pick up at Jack Haines’ place.’

  Leeyes sniffed. ‘They weren’t caught up in the general orchid destruction then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder why not?’ he mused.

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir. Not at this stage.’

  ‘And this battered wife …’

  ‘We don’t know that she was actually battered …’ protested Sloan.

  ‘Emotionally battered, then,’ said Leeyes, who didn’t normally admit to believing in the existence of the condition.

  ‘Marilyn Potts,’ said Sloan, ‘was quite guarded about him.’ He hoped his personal development interview with the superintendent would be less challenging than this one.

  ‘Do I understand that she’s the one who is going to give this talk on orchids instead of the missing person?’

  ‘That’s what I was told, sir.’

  ‘So you’ve haven’t got very far, have you?’

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ said Sloan, biting down hard on any response at risk of jeopardising the aforementioned personal development interview.

  The superintendent reached forward into his in-tray for a piece of paper. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that you’ve got your search warrant. You’d better go and have another look at Canonry Cottage before anyone else gets in there and muddies the waters.’

  Mary Feakins reluctantly made the effort to heave herself out of her chair at the kitchen table of The Hollies where she had been taking a little rest between times. Then she walked towards the sink belatedly to begin washing up the breakfast dishes. She hadn’t been able to face doing them earlier, bending over being a sure invitation to nausea. Today her routine domestic activities had been disturbed not only by the bout of morning sickness that had come on first thing but by their visits to the plant nursery and their lawyer in Berebury.