He lumbered to his feet and went to the window. ‘I don’t believe it. Not her. I thought we’d seen the last of her.’
‘Well, you haven’t,’ said Mandy Lamb, not without a certain relish.
‘What does she want, do you suppose?’
‘Half your worldly wealth, I expect,’ she said pertly. ‘That was what Norman wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ he said, turning back to his chair. ‘And it’s not quite true anyway – what he wanted was all of his mother’s worldly wealth, not half of mine.’
‘Hello, Jack,’ Marilyn Potts said cautiously, putting her head half way round the office door.
‘Long time, no see,’ said Jack Haines.
‘I suppose I’d better throw my hat in first,’ she grimaced, ‘and see what happens to it.’
‘No need for that,’ he said gruffly. ‘That’s unless you’ve brought that no-good ex-husband of yours with you.’
‘God forbid,’ responded Marilyn Potts explosively. ‘I’ve had enough trouble with Norman to last me a lifetime, thank you.’
‘Me too,’ grunted Jack.
‘No, I’ve come to pick up Enid Osgathorp’s orchids – I’m standing in for her at a talk she was supposed to be giving over at Staple St James tomorrow night because she seems to have gone walkabout.’
‘So what’s happened to our Miss Osgathorp, then?’ asked Jack.
‘No one knows. She’ll turn up sooner or later I expect like the proverbial bad penny. She won’t be happy when she hears what’s happened to all my infant orchids, that’s for sure … they’re all dead and she reckons she’s a bit of an orchid fancier.’
‘Yours too?’ Jack Haines’ eyebrows shot up. ‘God Almighty.’
Marilyn Potts launched into a histrionic account of the devastation at the nursery at Capstan Purlieu.
‘Every last orchid,’ declared Marilyn bitterly. ‘There was the devil of a frost last night.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Haines savagely. He peered at her closely. ‘But let me ask you something else, Marilyn. Do you know Bob Steele at the Berebury Garden Centre?’
‘Don’t be silly, Jack. Of course, I do.’
‘Has he been over to your place recently?’
She frowned. ‘I think Anna said that he’d called round to pick up some Aeschymanthus a couple of weeks back. Said he’d run out of Mona Lisa.’ She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Nothing. I just wondered.’
‘You lie, Jack.’
‘I suppose I do,’ he admitted. ‘You see rumour has it that Bob Steele has plans to go in for orchids himself.’
‘Rumours aren’t everything.’
‘He made an excuse to come over here to pick up some stock he didn’t need.’
‘He might have really wanted the Aeschymanthus from us,’ she said doubtfully.
‘He might,’ agreed Haines, ‘but I wondered if he was really casing the joints – yours and mine.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Seeing how he could undermine the opposition, perhaps.’
Her voice rose to a high doh. ‘Are you suggesting Bob Steele targeted our orchids?’
‘He could have done …’
Marilyn Potts took a deep breath and drew herself up to her full height. ‘I know you won’t want to do anything of the sort but let’s face it, Jack, the only person we know who hates both of us enough to wreak real damage on the pair of us is Norman Potts.’ She swallowed. ‘And you know that as well as I do so don’t pretend that you don’t because it won’t wash.’
‘If we look sharp,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, clambering into the police car, ‘we might just be able to see those other two customers of Jack Haines who’ve lost their plants before we get back to the station.’ He latched his seat belt into place, adding ‘And that, I must remind you, Crosby, doesn’t amount to a licence to kill.’
‘No, sir. Of course not, sir.’ The constable sounded injured.
‘The Park at Pelling first,’ decided Sloan. ‘We’ll see what the Navy has to say.’
The Navy in the person of Rear Admiral Waldo Catterick, R.N., retired, and as bald as a billiard ball, thought that there was altogether too much vandalism about everywhere these days and had the policemen seen the graffiti on the cricket pavilion?
‘Not yet,’ said Sloan ambiguously.
‘Deplorable. Don’t know what the world is coming to. Come along in anyway.’
‘We’re checking up on some unexplained losses at Jack Haines’ nursery, including yours,’ explained Sloan as they followed him down a corridor, the old gentleman’s right leg giving an odd involuntary little kick forward as he walked. ‘And out at Capstan Purlieu too.’
Sitting the two policemen down in a small morning room overlooking a lawn, the admiral leant forward and asked what exactly he could do for them.
Detective Inspector Sloan regarded the wizened face opposite him, made to seem smaller and older somehow by a nose so depressed as not to have a bridge. ‘We’re trying to make sure, sir, that there isn’t anyone out there with a grudge against gardeners in general or any of Jack Haines’ or Capstan Purlieu’s customers in particular and I have been given to understand you are one of them.’
The admiral took the question seriously and said in a curiously high-pitched voice, ‘None that I am aware of but as you will know yourself, Inspector, if you’ve ever been in command, you’re bound to have upset somebody at some time or other. You can’t run a tight ship without doing that.’
‘Put him in the scuppers until he’s sober,’ chanted Crosby under his breath.
‘Comes with the job,’ said the admiral, who did not appear to have heard this.
It came with the police job too. Detective Inspector Sloan had upset a good many bad men in his time and said so.
‘You’re not in the Service to make friends,’ barked Waldo Catterick in his best quarter-deck manner, ‘although of course you do. Old shipmates and all that.’ He looked up with a distinctly rheumy eye at the photographs of ships’ companies that adorned the walls of the room. ‘Most of them are dead now.’
You weren’t in the police force to make friends either, thought Sloan to himself. On the contrary, often enough, it was in the nature of police work that enemies always outnumbered friends. ‘We’re also,’ the detective inspector went on almost conversationally, ‘looking into the disappearance of an old lady from the village. A Miss Enid Osgathorp. Do you know her?’
The admiral stiffened perceptibly, his back suddenly becoming ramrod straight. ‘She used to work at the doctor’s,’ he said frostily, in tones that would have paralysed the lower deck, ‘and that’s all I can tell you about the woman.’
His body language, though, was saying something quite different to the police inspector, a man perforce experienced in these matters. Whether it was all he could say or not, the admiral refused to be drawn any further on Enid Maude Osgathorp. Perhaps, thought Sloan, a boyhood reader of Bulldog Drummond and similar clubland heroes, it wasn’t done then to mention a lady’s name in the Wardroom any more than it was in an Army Mess. He couldn’t begin to think what today’s young women would make of that.
Detective Inspector Sloan came away from Pelling Park with the uneasy feeling that he had missed something. Oddly enough he was sure it was nothing to do with the missing person but try as he might he couldn’t put his finger on what it was that was eluding him.
‘I expect he got them to walk the plank as well,’ said Crosby as they left the Park.
‘There’s one thing for sure,’ said Sloan, ‘and that’s that our missing person is not the flavour of the month. I think, Crosby, this is something we should be looking into. I wonder why the admiral didn’t like her.’ He tucked the fact away in the back of his mind for further consideration.
It was Mary Feakins who answered the doorbell at The Hollies, more puzzled than alarmed by a visit from the police. ‘Benedict? Yes, he’s here. He’s off work with a bad
back just now.’ She led the way through to the kitchen where her husband was sitting uncomfortably wedged in a Windsor chair, his back cushioned against a hot-water bottle.
If his wife had been calm enough as Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby arrived, Benedict Feakins certainly wasn’t. He started to struggle to his feet. ‘Police?’ he echoed. ‘What? Why?’
‘Routine enquiry, sir,’ said Sloan comfortably.
Feakins subsided back into his chair. ‘What about?’
‘I understand you had some plants being grown for you by Jack Haines,’ said Sloan.
‘Yes,’ he agreed warily. ‘But I changed my mind about them and I told Jack I didn’t want them any more. To be quite honest …’
‘Always a good idea,’ said Crosby under his breath.
‘I didn’t think I – that is, we – could afford them after all.’
‘Mortgage trouble, sir?’ said Detective Inspector Sloan sympathetically. The state of their mortgage was a monthly topic with his wife in his own home.
Benedict Feakins shook his head. ‘No, not that. I inherited this house when my father died but even so we’re finding the upkeep’s quite a struggle. I did tell Jack Haines that I’d still have the shrubs I’d ordered, though, and he seemed to be all right with that.’
‘For the border in the front garden,’ explained Mary Feakins. ‘It was digging that up to get ready for them that did for Benedict’s back.’
‘We saw he’d been at it in the way in,’ remarked Crosby conversationally. ‘Didn’t get very far, did you, sir?’
‘I had to give after a bit,’ admitted Benedict Feakins. ‘I did too much at one go. I’ve been bent like a hoop ever since.’
‘Easily done,’ said Sloan, who grew roses because a policeman could tend them in small pockets of time and leave them at short notice when summoned to attend to malfeasance anywhere in ‘F’ Division. ‘I see you’ve just had a bonfire too,’ he remarked, looking out of the kitchen window and observing wisps of smoke rising at the bottom of garden. ‘Back not too bad for that, then, sir?’
Feakins flushed and mumbled something about having some things to burn.
Mary Feakins cast her husband a sympathetic wifely look and then said, ‘Inspector, I must explain that my husband was getting rid of some personal things of his late father’s. He’s only just lost him and he was finding it very distressing to have them still around and reminding him of his recent loss so he decided to get rid of them.’
‘Quite so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. He rose as if to leave, something every policeman knew caused the person being interviewed to lower their guard. ‘Well, since we don’t at this time know why Jack Haines’ greenhouses were damaged, we’re just checking that none of his customers with plants in them had any personal enemies.’
The expression on Benedict Feakins’ face was one of comic relief. ‘Inspector,’ he said solemnly, ‘you can put me down as a latter-day Kim.’
‘Sir?’
‘Kipling’s Little Friend of All the World.’
‘Really, sir?’ said Sloan. He’d always found that author’s poem ‘If’ set an impossible standard of male behaviour and – worse – made a man feel a failure if he didn’t measure up to it.
Crosby merely looked sceptical.
Benedict Feakins turned to his wife. ‘That’s right, darling, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think we’re very popular with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker just now,’ she said obliquely.
Benedict turned back to the two policemen. ‘As I said, we’re finding living here a bit expensive, Inspector, that’s all.’
Sloan nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. We’ll be on our way, then. Come along, Crosby.’ He made another move to leave, paused and then he said casually, ‘By the way, we’re also quite concerned about someone who’s gone missing from Pelling. An Enid Osgathorp. Did you know her?’
There was another change in the man’s demeanour. He sank back in his chair and seemed somehow diminished. ‘Oh, yes, Inspector,’ Benedict replied in a hollow voice. ‘I knew her all right. She’s been around in Pelling a long time. She worked at the doctor’s.’
‘Miss Osgathorp?’ said Mary Feakins, coming to life suddenly. ‘Wasn’t she that odd old woman who came to see you one evening a while ago, Benedict?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I didn’t really like her.’
Her husband moistened his lips and essayed a weak smile. ‘Yes, that’s her.’
‘When would that have been exactly, sir?’ asked Sloan.
‘Oh, weeks ago now, Inspector,’ he said.
‘Don’t you remember, darling?’ interjected Mary Feakins eagerly. ‘It was just before she went away.’ She turned to the two policemen. ‘She said she was going off on holiday somewhere the next morning and needed to see Benedict before she left. Quite insistent, she was.’
Her husband gave her a look of such great malevolence that she had never seen on his face before. It quite frightened her and she recoiled as if she had been stung.
‘Really, sir?’ said Sloan, seeing this look too, and turning back. ‘Can you tell us anything more?’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Like why she came to see you, sir.’
He flushed. ‘She came to remind me of something, that’s all. And I hadn’t forgotten anyway.’
A rapid change of subject was just another of the techniques that his old Station Sergeant had taught Sloan about questioning. He said now, ‘Would you happen to know a Norman Potts by any chance, sir?’
Feakins looked blank. ‘No. Why?’
‘Another routine enquiry, sir,’ said that officer blandly. ‘That’s all. Thank you, sir. We’ll be off now.’
Crosby paused on their way out of the garden at The Hollies and looked at the newly dug earth. ‘Long enough for a grave,’ he observed, ‘but not wide enough or deep enough.’
Detective Inspector Sloan was concentrating on something quite different. ‘When we get back, Crosby, remind me to think of a legal way we could get a good look at what’s in that bonfire. Remember, Benedict Feakins is someone else who knew that Enid Osgathorp was going to be away.’
‘Someone else?’ asked Crosby who hadn’t been paying attention. ‘Oh, yes. That gardener fellow who took her to the station – Anthony Berra.’
‘And we really need to find out what it was that young man Feakins was burning on that bonfire, the one he got so agitated about and wasn’t in too much pain to build.’
‘He wasn’t all that happy when his wife started talking about Enid Osgathorp either,’ contributed Crosby. ‘I could see that.’
‘So,’ said Sloan, ‘we’re just going to seem to drive away and lie up out of sight of the house and keep an eye on what our Benedict Feakins does next.’
What Benedict Feakins did next was to hobble out of his house at speed into the back garden and rake over the embers of the bonfire very vigorously indeed.
CHAPTER TEN
The Reverend Tobias Beddowes, rector of Pelling, received the two policemen in his study at the rectory there with nothing beyond a courteous greeting and a hasty warning not to fall over a bicycle aslant in the hall. The room was untidy to the point of disorder, the clergyman having to remove piles of books and papers from both chairs before the others could sit down.
‘I apologise for the muddle,’ he said, looking helplessly round the room, ‘but I’m on my own with the two younger children now and things aren’t getting done.’
‘We were sorry to hear about the loss of your wife,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan formally, grasping a conversational nettle ducked by most of his parishioners.
The rector shook his head. ‘A very sad business. My elder daughter will be back soon, though, and that will help. She’s very good. She’ll see to things.’
‘Been away, has she?’ asked Crosby insouciantly.
‘Honeymoon,’ explained Tobias Beddowes briefly. ‘Naturally, she and her husband couldn’t get away s
traightaway after the wedding ceremony.’
‘Naturally?’ echoed Crosby as his superior officer stirred uneasily.
‘Naturally there had to be an inquest,’ sighed Beddowes. ‘My dear wife … she died just before the wedding, you see. It was all too much for her, you know. The arrangements and the expense and all that just got on top of her.’ He took a deep breath and said, ‘Now, what was it you wanted to see me about, gentlemen?’
‘It’s a photograph,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, handing over the one he had abstracted from Canonry Cottage. ‘I hope it won’t distress you if your wife is on it too.’
The rector scanned the photograph of the presentation to Enid Osgathorp proffered by Detective Inspector Sloan and shook his head. ‘No, my wife isn’t on this. She didn’t come with me that evening.’ He lifted his head as if doing so was an effort and asked what it was they wanted him to tell them about the photograph.
‘Miss Enid Osgathorp – is that her, shaking your hand?’ asked Sloan.
‘Yes indeed, Inspector, I can confirm that that is a picture of Enid Osgathorp taken in the village hall when she retired two or three years ago. She gave up work a little early because old Doctor Heddon had died and she didn’t want to start afresh with anyone else, which is quite understandable. She had been with him for a very long time.’ He went on looking at the photograph. ‘Might I ask why you want to know?’
‘Enid Osgathorp would appear to be missing from her home,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan.
‘Really? She does go away a lot of course, you know,’ said the clergyman. ‘She’s become quite a traveller since she retired. I expect she’ll be back soon.’
‘She hasn’t arrived at her destination,’ said Sloan.
‘Or left word,’ added Crosby unnecessarily.
The rector raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think she would have left word anyway. She never said much about where she was going. She was always someone who kept herself to herself. A very private person, you might say.’
Detective Inspector Sloan, experienced policeman that he was, much preferred people who did not keep themselves to themselves. It could make detection more difficult.
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