Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  The SOCO considered this. ‘I think it was lived in by one not-so-young but not-really-old party – I mean the place hadn’t been grannified, if you know what I mean – no handles in the bath, no walking sticks, no special aids – none of that sort of thing but there was nothing very new there either and hadn’t been for years, I should say. A bit on the shabby side but not so you’d notice. Lots of books about foreign parts and gardens. I’d say the owner was into travel – not one of those who devoted themselves to housework or collecting things.’ Charlie Marsden knew about the downside of that way of life. His wife collected fine china and the big man was nervous about moving about in his own sitting room.

  ‘There must have been something very valuable to the two people who went in there,’ mused Sloan. ‘Or that they had reason to believe was valuable, of course.’

  ‘I can tell you a little about both of them,’ said Marsden. ‘Whoever came in through the pantry window was a bit careless …’

  ‘We spotted the blood.’

  ‘Better than that. A few hairs on the broken window. Useful stuff, hair.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ he said, metaphorically rubbing his hands. The hair of the dog that bit you had nothing on a single strand of human hair with its follicle still attached for the assistance it could sometimes provide in an investigation.

  ‘His head must have touched the broken glass as he came in.’ Charlie Marsden looked justifiably pleased. ‘And, of course, we’ve taken the missing party’s DNA from a hairbrush in her bedroom. Routine, these days.’

  Sloan nodded. ‘Good going, Charlie.’

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased.’ Charlie Marsden grinned.

  ‘And I’ve got some DNA said to be hers from a car in which she was given a lift.’ He corrected himself. ‘In which she was said to have been given a lift.’

  ‘And that’s not all,’ went on the Scenes of Crime man.

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘He who came through the front door with a key …’ He paused and shot Sloan a quick glance. ‘The male embraces the female and all that guff, you understand.’

  ‘He or she is implied,’ agreed Sloan solemnly. The feminists at the police station were not women to be trifled with.

  ‘He was very careful indeed. Not a single fingerprint or anything else anywhere but he carried out a very thorough search of the place all the same. We couldn’t find a safe and presumably neither could either of them. If there had been any locked box then one or other of them took it away with them.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. ‘That figures.’

  Charlie Marsden said, ‘I guess that whoever the intruders were, they both had the same idea about where ladies keep their treasures. Well, their gin, anyway.’

  ‘Back of the wardrobe,’ said Sloan promptly.

  ‘Too right. Both had had a rummage round there. No gin, though, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘What looked like a very valuable book indeed on orchids. That had been thumbed through too, but with gloves on, of course.’ He looked up. ‘I think that’s about all. It’s a missing person case, I think you said?’

  ‘With knobs on, Charlie. So did you find what I asked you to look for?’

  ‘A spare key?’ Charlie Marsden shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what’s worrying,’ said Sloan. ‘The neighbour is adamant that she didn’t ever leave one with anyone …’

  ‘Which could mean,’ the Scenes of Crime man finished the sentence for him, ‘that whoever went in there with one took it off her.’

  ‘I’m very much afraid so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan soberly. He swept his papers into a drawer and locked it. ‘Not that I can do anything more about that tonight but I’ve got another job for you, Charlie. Just as interesting but different.’

  ‘Surprise me again.’

  ‘I want to know what was in a bonfire lit this morning in the garden of a house in Pelling called The Hollies. The name’s Feakins.’

  ‘We’ll be round there first thing,’ promised Charlie Marsden, making a note.

  ‘Just give me time to get you a search warrant before you go,’ said Sloan, ‘and for heaven’s sake keep a low profile. Make sure that the only pictures that get taken are yours – the last thing we want is the press publishing photographs of an old bonfire. Not at this stage, anyway. I want them to have one of the missing person first.’

  ‘Another search warrant, Sloan?’ barked Superintendent Leeyes the next morning. ‘Whose house is it for this time?’

  ‘It’s not for a house, sir,’ Sloan said quickly, the superintendent never being at his best first thing in the morning. ‘It’s for a bonfire – or rather the remains of one – in a garden belonging to one of the customers of Jack Haines at Pelling. He’s one of those who have lost plants at Haines’ nursery, which is interesting.’

  ‘Don’t say that they’ve started burning people at the stake out there,’ Leeyes said, heavily sarcastic. ‘Or that your missing person’s gone up in smoke.’

  ‘I don’t know what has been burnt,’ replied Sloan seriously, ‘but there is a man there who was prepared to have a bonfire in spite of being bent double and in great pain from backache. He can hardly stand and yet he got himself out into the garden somehow yesterday afternoon to light it and scuttled back out there again pretty smartly after he thought we’d left.’

  ‘And burn what exactly?’

  ‘That is what we don’t know yet, sir. Not until we’ve got a warrant and had a good look. All we do know is that it was not long after he and his wife got back from seeing their solicitor.’

  Superintendent Leeyes, no fan of the Defence Counsel branch of the legal profession, gave a snort. ‘You take their advice and they take your money.’

  ‘There is something else,’ ploughed on Sloan gamely. ‘This man Benedict Feakins also got quite agitated when the name of the missing person was mentioned and as soon as we were out of his sight …’

  ‘But not out of yours, I take it, Sloan?’

  ‘No, sir. Crosby drove the car away while I kept watch.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And Feakins staggered back out into the garden straightway,’ said Sloan, ‘and started raking about in the remains of the bonfire like a madman.’

  ‘Hm.’ Leeyes drummed his fingers on his desktop. ‘Anything else to report?’

  ‘We’ve been checking on other leads, sir.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Crosby has confirmed Anthony Berra’s story – he’s the last person known to have seen Enid Osgathorp alive. He did visit the Berebury branch of the Calleshire and Counties Bank and he did have lunch at the Bellingham, just as he said he did. We’re checking the street CCTV cameras now. No joy from the railway people though – they can’t help us at all. No sighting of the missing person on their cameras at all and though she had a pre-booked ticket there is no trace of it having been checked or handed in.’

  ‘And what now?’ grunted Leeyes.

  ‘Now, sir, I’m going to check on the recent death of Benedict Feakins’ father,’ said Sloan, ‘just to be on the safe side, and then have another word with the old admiral. He made no secret of not liking the missing person but he wouldn’t say why.’

  PC Edward York, the Coroner’s Officer, was very much a family man. Grey-haired and distinctly on the elderly side for a police constable, he had the bedside manner of an old-fashioned family doctor. Exuding muted sympathy, he attended to the bereaved with a skill honed over the years on the losses suffered by other people.

  He was rather more forthright in the presence of Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby. ‘Feakins, did you say? Oh, yes, he came my way all right. An old boy who was found dead in his greenhouse out at Pelling not all that long ago?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Usual thing – milk not taken in, newspapers piled up,’ said York. ‘Always a great help. I think it was the postman who went looking around the place for hi
m the next morning and found him on the greenhouse floor.’

  ‘Nice way to go,’ remarked Crosby, who was only now getting used to seeing the bodies of people who hadn’t gone in a nice way.

  ‘Natural causes?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the Coroner’s Officer immediately. ‘Post-mortem but no inquest. Heart packed up, if I remember rightly. All quite straightforward – from my point of view, anyway. Family very upset, naturally, but they lived away. The usual story – the parent didn’t want to be a nuisance and the younger generation didn’t want to seem overly concerned because the old man was so keen on keeping his independence for as long as he could.’

  ‘A common problem,’ nodded Sloan. His own mother wasn’t frail yet but would be one day and perhaps would be like that too.

  PC York said, ‘The son told us that a regular telephone call every Sunday evening was about all that his father would agree to.’

  ‘Solomon Grundy died on Saturday, buried on Sunday,’ remarked Crosby inconsequentially.

  Detective Inspector Sloan scribbled a note to himself. ‘No sign of the son being overcome by remorse or anything like that?’

  The Coroner’s Officer, a man experienced in these matters, shook his head. ‘His reaction seemed perfectly normal to me or I would have remembered. He was shaken, naturally, but he identified him in the ordinary way.’

  ‘Thanks, Ted,’ said Sloan. ‘That’s been a help.’ He shuffled some papers about on his desk until a copy of the photograph of Enid Osgathorp at her retirement presentation surfaced. ‘By the way, should this old lady ever come into your view …’

  ‘Dead or alive,’ interposed Crosby.

  Sloan decided to rise above this and carried on. ‘Let me know pronto, will you, Ted? She’s gone missing.’

  PC York regarded the picture with interest. ‘Will do. Haven’t seen her yet.’ He tapped the photograph with his finger. ‘I can tell you, though, who the clergyman in this snap is. I saw quite a lot of him not all that long ago. That was at Pelling too. Name of Beddowes.’

  ‘The one whose wife committed suicide,’ nodded Sloan. ‘Yes, that’s him at her retirement presentation handing over something to Enid Osgathorp. We’ve already seen him.’

  ‘Very unfortunate, that suicide was, what with the daughter’s wedding pending at the time.’ He frowned. ‘I think I heard that they went ahead with the ceremony after the inquest but that it was a very quiet do in the end.’

  ‘Understandable,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Lot of gossip out there at the time, of course,’ said York, a man used to working with gossip. ‘It goes with the territory.’

  ‘Small villages are like that,’ opined Sloan.

  ‘It didn’t amount to anything,’ said York, ‘because of course I looked into it. The gossip, I mean.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Detective Inspector Sloan, mentor, made a mental note to talk to Crosby sometime about the importance of policemen properly evaluating gossip without spreading it – but not here and not now.

  ‘The daughter blamed herself for wanting a proper wedding reception and honeymoon and all the works but I must say there didn’t seem anything very out of the ordinary about their plans to me.’ PC York had three married daughters and knew the scenario well. ‘Quite the opposite, actually.’

  ‘Didn’t want anyone complaining that the Easter offering was being misspent, I expect,’ said Sloan knowledgeably. His mother was a great churchwoman and he knew exactly what was expected of a clergy family: a more stringent economy than that which was practised by the congregation.

  ‘Reception in the church hall, with the parish ladies doing the refreshments,’ recounted York. ‘And the church flowers rota ladies doing the decorations. Lavender and peonies, I expect.’

  Detective Constable Crosby’s head came up. ‘Not roses all the way?’ he said, bachelor that he was.

  ‘Lavender for devotion and peonies for joy and prosperity,’ said the Coroner’s Officer promptly. ‘The language of flowers.’

  ‘Girls come expensive,’ said Sloan, who only had a son and was sometimes grateful for this. His wife, Margaret, insisted that this sentiment would only last until the said son was old enough to buy his first motorbike.

  PC York was still thinking about the rector’s daughter. ‘And she could hardly not get married in church anyway, could she? Not with having a clergyman for a father and all that.’ The man grinned and said, ‘After all, the rector couldn’t very well offer the bridegroom a ladder and fifty quid to elope with his daughter, now could he?’

  ‘No,’ agreed Sloan. That presumably went for the father of the girl that Anthony Berra was marrying too, especially since her father was a bishop. ‘The family insisted to me that she’d been very worried about the cost of the wedding,’ he said, casting his mind back to his visit to the Rectory.

  PC York stroked his chin. ‘She could have been worried about the expense although I can’t imagine why. They’d even got a friend taking the wedding photographs, although I wouldn’t advise that myself.’

  ‘Headless bridesmaids,’ grinned Crosby.

  York pressed on with his narrative. ‘You see, the mother had been saving up for it for ages. They showed me her cheque-book. Lots of withdrawals in cash with “Wedding Fund” written on the counterfoil. The only thing is that nobody could find any money stashed away anywhere when she died. Looked everywhere, they did.’

  ‘Perhaps she put it all on a horse,’ suggested Crosby jovially. ‘Double your money and all that.’

  ‘Were they regular withdrawals?’ asked Sloan more pertinently.

  ‘First of the month,’ said York. ‘Without fail. As the daughter told me afterwards, there should have been enough money there to have had a proper photographer, which, I may tell you from bitter experience, is saying something.’

  Sloan tried to remember some of the details of Mrs Beddowes’ suicide. ‘We were told that there were letters …’

  PC York nodded. ‘There were. I handed them over to old double-barrelled.’

  ‘Mr Locombe-Stableford,’ interpreted Sloan, who felt that the decencies should be preserved in the presence of the young.

  ‘Him,’ said the Coroner’s officer, referring to Her Majesty’s Coroner for East Calleshire. ‘He didn’t read them out at the inquest which is his prerogative. He just said that he was satisfied that the deceased had taken her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed and gave that as his verdict. That was when the press lost interest.’

  ‘So you don’t know what was in the letters then,’ ventured Crosby.

  The Coroner’s Officer cast him a pitying look. ‘’Course I do, sonny. It was me that unpinned them from her pillow, wasn’t it?’

  ‘So what was in them, Ted?’ asked Sloan swiftly.

  ‘Said no one was to blame for what she had done then and now but herself and to remember her with compassion no matter what.’

  ‘And what do you suppose she meant by that?’ mused Sloan. ‘Then and now.’

  York shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘And what had she done?’ asked Crosby curiously.

  ‘Committed suicide,’ said York. ‘You’re not supposed to do it.’

  ‘No,’ persisted Crosby, ‘I mean what had she done that made her commit suicide?’

  The Coroner’s Officer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Disturbed minds aren’t easy to read in spite of what the shrinks would have you believe. She’d meant to do it all right, though. She’d travelled over half the county for weeks buying small lots of tablets here, there and everywhere.’

  ‘Determined then,’ concluded Crosby.

  ‘The family were still insisting that she’d been worried about the cost of the wedding,’ said Sloan, turning his mind back to their own visit to the rectory. Perhaps he should go back and ask if the deceased had known Enid Osgathorp too. He immediately answered his own thought. Of course, she would have done. The rector’s wife would have known a lo
t of people but the doctor’s receptionist must have known everyone. And all about them too, probably. Well, everything on their medical records anyway.

  ‘I think,’ declared Detective Inspector Sloan obscurely, ‘what we are dealing with now are live doubts rather than dead certainties – but this may change.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mandy Lamb was usually able to cajole Jack Haines back into his usual good humour but not this morning. Even a continuous infusion of coffee did nothing to raise his spirits. Her employer still sat, listless and preoccupied, at his desk.

  ‘Russ came in earlier looking for you,’ reported Mandy.

  Jack Haines sighed. ‘I’d better see him then.’ He pushed a desk diary aside. ‘Mandy, you haven’t seen Norman about lately, have you?’

  ‘Not for yonks, Jack, thank goodness.’ She pulled a face. ‘He’s not your most lovable character.’

  ‘Margot was fond of him,’ said the nurseryman.

  ‘She was his mother,’ pointed out Mandy Lamb.

  ‘He couldn’t do anything wrong as far as she was concerned,’ sighed Jack Haines. ‘Everything was all right until she died.’

  ‘That’s mothers for you,’ said Mandy Lamb who was still single and childless.

  ‘And I reckon I treated him well enough until he got greedy,’ murmured Haines, almost to himself. ‘Really greedy.’

  ‘You treated him very well,’ she said emphatically. She paused and then added, ‘Better than he treated you.’

  ‘Stepchildren usually have chips on their shoulders,’ he said. ‘Goes with the territory, I suppose.’ He sipped at the latest mug of coffee, braced his shoulders and said, ‘I suppose I’d better get back to business. What does Anthony Berra want now?’

  Mandy scrabbled about among the papers on her desk. ‘I’ve got his list somewhere here. Ah, got it!’ She handed over the sheet of paper to him. ‘He’s on his way over now.’