Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  Until she reached the kitchen sink the only thoughts in her mind had been an imaginary confrontation with her doctor in which she was challenging him in the matter of morning sickness and his promises that hyperemesis gravida would not in the nature of things last for much longer.

  She stood at the sink for a moment or two, hesitating while wondering whether bending over it now would still bring about another wave of sickness. There was a window above the sink and she allowed her glance to stray outside and into the back garden while she steadied herself against the working surface and tried to suppress the rising feeling of sickness. What she could see there was an unexpected pyramid of white smoke that suddenly billowed out into a cloud that obscured her view from the window. Just as quickly the smoke dispersed and she was able to take a second look and saw that it was rising from a burning pile of rubbish. Beside it was the figure of her husband who appeared to be furiously piling more and more things on the bonfire.

  The washing up abandoned, she opened the back door and sailed across the garden towards the bonfire. ‘Benedict Feakins, what on earth do you think you’re doing out here?’

  ‘Just having a simple bonfire,’ he said, poking something under a pile of leaves. ‘Nothing more, nothing less.’

  ‘But look at what you’re putting on it.’ She frowned. ‘That looks like a hairbrush to me.’

  ‘It is,’ he said, his back still bent almost double.

  ‘And surely that’s a toothbrush, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s only some of Dad’s old things, that’s all.’ Benedict kept his head down and muttered, ‘I cleared out his bedroom this morning. Everything there reminded me of him too much.’

  She stared at him and then said in a softer tone, ‘I didn’t think you minded losing him so much as that.’

  ‘Well, I did,’ he mumbled, trying to straighten up, ‘and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Mary Feakins stepped back a pace.

  ‘I’m getting rid of all Dad’s clothes too,’ he said, a rising note in his voice. ‘I just can’t stand seeing all his things everywhere. They’re going to the charity shop first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said, all womanly sympathy now.

  ‘I can’t explain the feeling,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘It came over me like a tidal wave yesterday and made me feel quite wretched.’

  ‘There’s lots of things that can’t be explained,’ said his wife cheerfully. ‘Like my pica gravidarum.’ From quite early on in her pregnancy, Mary Feakins had developed a marked predilection for cold herring. ‘The doctor tells me that it’s quite common.’

  ‘Your craving fetishes are quite different, Mary,’ he said seriously. ‘This isn’t like eating coal. It’s more like … oh, I don’t know that I can put it into words.’

  ‘Don’t even try,’ she said kindly. ‘Look here, I’ll go back indoors and let you get on with it.’

  ‘Bless you,’ he said and obviously meant it.

  Mary was bent over the sink again and was lowering some dirty plates into it when she was struck by a sudden thought. Wiping her soapy hands on a towel, she left the sink and went into their sitting room. Standing on the sofa table there was a studio photograph of her late father-in-law set in a silver frame. Lifting it carefully, she carried it out of the room and upstairs. Then she laid it safely under some spare sheets inside the linen cupboard. Benedict Feakins never opened the doors of the linen cupboard.

  She was back at the kitchen sink in no time at all. Minutes later, a new and different thought in her mind now, she went back to the sitting room. The first time she had been concentrating on the photograph of her father-in-law but now she was looking for something that wasn’t there but had been yesterday.

  The urn containing Benedict’s father’s cremated ashes which were awaiting burial in Pelling churchyard was missing.

  Detective Constable Crosby came into Detective Inspector Sloan’s office and laid his notebook down on the desk. ‘I’ve done the rounds of the other nurseries, sir, like you said. Seen the lot of them and none of them have had their greenhouse doors left open last night or at any other time. Joe Girdler hasn’t got any greenhouses, anyway. Only roses. Rows and rows of them. Out of doors.’

  ‘Him, I know,’ said Sloan, quondam rosarian.

  ‘The Leanaig brothers have got lots of greenhouses but no orchids and nothing at all happened at their place last night,’ said Crosby. He suddenly realised that he needed to consult his notebook again and reached across Sloan’s desk to retrieve it. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He flicked over a page or two. ‘Staple St James Nurseries only do hardy plants and the Berebury Garden Centre has greenhouses galore although only one with orchids in. They say they had no trouble last night but …’ He fell silent.

  ‘But?’ prompted Sloan. In the last analysis a policeman relied on his sense of smell – that indefinable feeling that things weren’t what they should be – a feeling that couldn’t be put into words and some held couldn’t be taught. It was something he was waiting to see if Detective Constable Crosby had.

  ‘But their head honcho, Bob Steele, wasn’t happy with the police coming there.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I could tell. He was edgy. Demanded to know why we’d come to see him before I could get a word in. Not a happy bunny.’

  ‘Did you ask him if he knew Norman Potts?’ Perhaps, after all, Crosby was developing that sense of smell. Aggressive interviewees always had an agenda of their own. Idly, Sloan wondered what it could be with Bob Steele.

  The constable nodded. ‘I did, like you said, sir. He told me he’d heard the name, that’s all. He was quite cagey about it.’

  ‘Or Capstan Purlieu Plants?’

  ‘He knew them all right. Real specialists, he called the two women. Didn’t sound as if he particularly liked them, though, or was bothered about them as competitors.’ Crosby scratched his head. ‘Called ’em small fry.’

  ‘And Jack Haines and his nursery at Pelling?’ said Sloan, deciding that it didn’t sound as if the great gardening Goliath that was the Berebury Garden Centre was all that worried about the little David of the gardening world that was Capstan Purlieu Plants either. ‘What did he say about him?’

  ‘Bob Steele said he knew him too. He went a bit quiet when I started asking him a bit more about Jack Haines and he clammed up straightaway. He said he didn’t know all that much more about either Haines or his nursery except in the way of trade.’

  ‘And Enid Osgathorp?’

  ‘Said he’d never heard of her but that there were a lot of old lady gardeners about, gardening being the new sex, and he couldn’t be expected to know them all or t’other from which, could he?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan lifted a sheet of paper off his desk. ‘I can tell you that there is someone who has heard of her, Crosby. The receptionist at a hotel in the wilds of Carmarthenshire. She got in touch with us after getting our general request. She says they had been expecting a Miss Enid Osgathorp of Pelling to arrive there three weeks ago. She’d made the booking about a couple of months ago for a fortnight’s stay, full board, earlier this month. She never showed up at their hotel, though.’ Sloan read out from the piece of paper. ‘The Meadgrove Park Country House Hotel.’

  ‘Sounds posh, sir.’

  ‘It’s not bad,’ said Sloan warmly, quoting from the paper in front of him. ‘Five star, set in ten acres of landscape, extensive gardens, notable cuisine, fine wines and good fishing. You name it and it seems the Meadgrove Park Country House Hotel would appear to have it.’

  ‘Does herself well, then, this Miss Osgathorp, when she’s not at home,’ concluded Crosby, whose landlady was notable for her cheese-paring.

  ‘It would have set her back a good bit more than your average bed and breakfast,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan. Holidays in the Sloan household usually had to be traded against the redecoration of the sitting room or saving for the long overdue replacement of the family car.

  Crosby frowne
d. ‘There was nothing very grand about that bungalow of hers in Pelling, though, was there, sir? Looked very ordinary from the outside to me.’ He sniffed. ‘And on the small side too.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sloan, rising to his feet, ‘we shall find it very different from the inside. Let’s go and see for ourselves now we’ve got the search warrant.’

  Canonry Cottage, though, was as ordinary on the inside as it had been on the outside. It was furnished in the simple, spare style that had been popular forty years before and was – save for a light scattering of dust on the flat surfaces equating to three weeks without dusting – very neat and clean. Such ornaments as there were could only be described as tourist trophies – and that kindly.

  The two policemen had entered with care aided by a set of keys only allowed out of the police station on a very secure basis, the distinction between master keys and skeleton ones being only a semantic one. They noted again the postal delivery that had been pushed back over the hall carpet when the door had been opened before. Sloan peered down at a postmark. ‘Someone didn’t come in here until almost a week after the missing person is said to have left,’ he said, straightening up again, frowning. ‘That’s very odd.’

  Detective Constable Crosby screwed up his face in thought. ‘Then whoever came in had plenty of time, didn’t they, sir, if they thought they had another week before she was due back home?’

  ‘Or if they knew she wasn’t ever coming back,’ said Sloan softly. ‘Had you thought about that, Crosby?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘That is, if she ever went away and they knew that too,’ said Sloan soberly. ‘Remember Crosby, in police work all eventualities always have to be considered.’

  ‘But two people saw her leave,’ objected the constable. ‘The woman next door and that gardener guy.’

  ‘Two people said they saw her leave,’ Sloan reminded him, ‘which is something quite different. Better make quite sure she’s not upstairs, Crosby.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Crosby stolidly, dutifully peeling off and doing as he was bid.

  ‘And watch where you’re standing when you come back,’ called Sloan after him. ‘We know someone’s been in and out of here through that back window as well as the front door and we need to take some carpet prints.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ repeated Crosby. After a moment he said ‘Why didn’t that one go out of the front door instead?’

  ‘Because, Crosby, the front door has a mortice lock. Presumably the missing person locked it behind her when she left and took the key with her.’

  ‘But someone else came in and out with it,’ said the constable, ‘didn’t they, sir?’

  ‘It looks very much like it,’ said Sloan, liking the situation less and less. ‘Now, get upstairs, Crosby.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, himself sticking to the outer edges of the carpet, made first for a little bureau in the corner of the sitting room. It was unlocked. Donning rubber gloves and prising its lid open without leaving his own fingerprints on the wooden flap, he examined its contents carefully. Inside were a series of pigeon-holes and a little drawer. This drawer, too, was unlocked. It contained a few photographs of a child – one of which had ‘Me at four’ written on the back – and a locket. This had a lock of hair in it. The words ‘Little Lucy Locket’ welled into Sloan’s mind from his sister’s infancy – before he started to make notes.

  ‘Anything there, sir?’ asked Crosby, bringing Sloan’s attention back to the matter in hand. ‘Nothing to speak of upstairs except that I would say someone’s had a good rummage through the wardrobe, everything else being neat and that a bit topsy-turvy. If that’s where she kept her gin, it’s gone.’

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary here, either,’ said Sloan, replacing bundles of carefully tied domestic accounts in their pigeon holes one by one, ‘except that I think someone’s been looking for a secret drawer in here. Someone who didn’t know about secret drawers in desks.’

  Detective Constable Crosby, who obviously didn’t know anything about them either, leant over Sloan’s shoulder for a better look. ‘Made a bit of a mess of the wood, didn’t he, sir?’ he observed. ‘All those scratches …’

  ‘Whoever it was brought a screwdriver with him – I expect he thought the bureau might be locked – but it didn’t get him anywhere because I should say this bit of modern furniture hasn’t got a secret compartment of any sort. They don’t make ’em liked they used to,’ said Sloan and stopped. He would have to be more careful about expressing that sort of sentiment, afraid that he was beginning to sound like the superintendent.

  ‘So, sir,’ said Crosby, screwing up his forehead into a prodigious frown, ‘that means that someone’s been in here just looking for something not someone.’ His expression brightened. ‘Unless the old lady’s been abducted.’

  ‘And perhaps not finding anything,’ announced Sloan presently, after leafing through the last of the contents of the pigeonholes, ‘although I should say that they – whoever they are – have probably been all through this bureau. There’s nothing but receipted household bills and plant stuff in here, though some of the bundles have been put back upside down. Oh, and there are a couple of receipts for deposits for two pricey foreign holidays this summer. Very pricey indeed.’

  ‘Some people have all the luck,’ said the constable, who was saving up to go to the motor-racing at Spa-Francorchamps.

  ‘We don’t know, though, whether the intruders had any luck or not,’ mused Detective Inspector Sloan, moving away from the bureau. ‘They might well have found what they were looking for and taken it away. Either of them.’

  ‘Or both,’ said Crosby.

  Sloan nodded absently as he paused at a framed photograph on the mantelshelf. It was of a group on a platform where a clergyman was presenting a bouquet and an envelope to a dumpy late middle-aged woman who was holding out one hand to receive them and shaking the clergyman’s hand with the other. The words ‘Happy Retirement, Miss Osgathorp’ could be picked out on a banner at the back of the platform.

  ‘Get on with circulating copies of the picture of this woman getting the presentation, Crosby,’ commanded Sloan, picking up the photograph, ‘and chase the railway people for a sight of their CCTV record of people entering Berebury station the day she was meant to be catching a train there now we’ve got a picture to go on.’

  ‘When exactly would that have been, sir?’ the constable asked, searching for a pen. ‘Do we know?’

  ‘We do. Norah, the woman next door, told us, remember? It was the day after Mrs Beddowes, the rector’s wife, committed suicide. You can find that out quite easily.’ Sloan paused and took another look at the man in the clerical collar in the photograph making the presentation. ‘And that presumably is Mr Beddowes, the rector, widower of the deceased. We might have a word with him in due course. And with that landscape designer fellow – Anthony Berra – again. He seems to have been the last person to see Enid Osgathorp alive.’

  ‘So far,’ said Crosby lugubriously.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Not much luck with those replacements, boss,’ said Russ Aqueel, his foreman, leading Jack Haines out to the truck standing in the yard. ‘A bit of this and that, that’s all. Nothing like enough to replace what’s been lost, though.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘As for keeping it all quiet, it’s a laugh. The Leanaig boys guessed something was up straightaway when they saw what it was we were looking for and the people at Staple St James had heard already over the grapevine …’

  ‘Some grapevine,’ commented Haines richly.

  ‘So I told Bob Steele at the Berebury Garden Centre anyway.’ He studied his employer’s face. ‘I hope that’s OK?’

  ‘It’s OK, Russ,’ said Jack Haines quietly. ‘I reckoned word would get around pretty quickly.’

  ‘Bound to,’ said the foreman, pausing.

  ‘It’s not every day that someone sabotages a firm’s working stock, is it, Russ?’ said Haines, giving the man a very straight look.
r />   ‘Definitely not,’ said Russ.

  ‘The plants we were wanting …’ prompted Haines.

  ‘Bob Steele at the Berebury Garden Centre didn’t have anything we wanted.’

  ‘I didn’t think he would have,’ said Haines almost to himself. ‘Not him.’

  ‘But he did say that he had run out of Erysimum Bowles Mauve and if we had any to spare could I drop them over to him,’ said the foreman.

  ‘Sure,’ said Haines dully.

  Russ shot him a quizzical glance before going on. ‘The Leanaig boys had quite a bit that would do for us and so did Staple St James Nurseries but both of them only had some of the things we lost – not all of them.’

  Haines sighed. ‘That figures. Anthony Berra was very precise. That’s part of the problem.’

  ‘I’d call him a right fusspot myself,’ muttered the foreman.

  ‘But none of them has had any trouble themselves, have they?’ asked Haines quickly.

  ‘Not that they said or I saw,’ replied the foreman. ‘I guess that it’s just us.’

  That it wasn’t just Jack Haines who had had trouble overnight was not borne in upon him until Marilyn Potts arrived at his nursery.

  Jack Haines had made his way back to his office deep in thought. He had only just sat down and Mandy Lamb had only just automatically put the kettle on when she looked out of the window and suddenly said, ‘Here comes trouble …’

  ‘There can’t be any more trouble,’ said Jack Haines, staying where he was.

  ‘Have a look for yourself,’ said his secretary.