Buried in the Past

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘Broad and long, though, the mugging fraternity doesn’t run to cars,’ Pollard observed. ‘You may be right about Lister’s being a chance victim, but all the same I’d like to get him into context, so to speak. I gather he was an orphan, brought up here by an uncle and aunt. Well-to-do local business people, weren’t they?’

  ‘That’s his background,’ Superintendent Thomas replied. ‘Plowman’s Pottery’s the family business. I daresay you noticed it down at the bottom of the town as you came in....’

  He began to talk with the countryman’s deliberation, but pithily. Pollard listened attentively, jotting down a note from time to time.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Super,’ he said, when the narrative came to an end. ‘Just the sort of thing that’s so useful at the start of a case. I’m not a man to write off coincidence,’ he went on. ‘I’ve run up against it too often. But at first sight the fact that Lister’s body has turned up in this place is suggestive to say the least of it. In your opinion can we accept the fact that he never came back here after cutting loose from the Plowmans?’

  Superintendent Thomas sat in silence for a moment or two while considering the matter.

  ‘I’ll say we can,’ he came out at last. ‘It’s this way, Mr Pollard, Corbury’s a small place. It’s grown a bit lately but there aren’t all that many incomers, even now. This part of the world’s a bit off the map, too. Why, they didn’t give us our postcode till the end of last year. It all throws people in on themselves, if you get me, and makes ’em mighty interested in each other’s business. Memories as long as your arm they’ve got for what’s happened to folk in the past, too. If Bernard Lister’d shown his nose in the place, I’d expect somebody to recognise him, even after all this time, and there’d’ve been talk. And that sort of talk nearly always comes our way in time, seeing one or two of my chaps are Corbury born and bred, and married to local girls.’

  ‘About these cousins of Lister’s,’ Pollard pursued after a short pause. ‘Mr Mark Plowman and Mrs Stanton. As far as I can make out from the file, his body was found a stone’s throw from their back doors. Do you think it’s at all likely, in spite of what they say, that Lister had recently been in touch with either or both of them and was on his way to call when he was mugged and killed? And that when they knew what had happened they decided to keep quiet to avoid being caught up in the enquiry?’ Superintendent Thomas gave him a long look.

  ‘I couldn’t say such a thing’s impossible, Mr Pollard, but it doesn’t ring true to me. The family were wild when he walked out on them. It was a sort of nine days’ wonder in the town. Most local feeling was on their side, too. Ingratitude, people said, after they’d given him a home and his schooling and let him go to Oxford instead of into a job right away. And it was thought shameful when he never even came back to the funerals when his uncle and aunt went. No, I just can’t see Mr Mark and Mrs Stanton having anything to do with him now.’

  ‘Lister had money, hadn’t he?’ Pollard queried.

  ‘That’s true. But Mrs Stanton came in for a packet from her godfather, and a nice place into the bargain. Edgehill Court, it’s called, just outside the town. She and her husband are living there now.’

  ‘But how about Mark Plowman? There’s something in the file about the Pottery not doing well at one time.’

  ‘No more it was, a few years ago. But when Mrs Stanton came into her money she gave it a shot in the arm. Put in new equipment. It’s doing all right now, from the look of things. They’ve just opened a showroom in the High Street, to catch the visitors who came for the Millenary.’

  ‘The Millenary?’

  ‘That’s right. A thousand years ago this year Corbury got its charter from King Edgar, and the land to build the parish church on. We’re having no end of a set-out in August, with Americans coming over from Corbury, U.S.A. Plowman’s are getting out souvenirs in a big way.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Pollard said. ‘Jolly interesting. Wish I could come along myself.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better go and get a bite before the inquest, Toye. See you at the pow-wow afterwards, then, Super.’

  The adjourned inquest on the body found by Horace Rudd and his son was reopened at two o’clock. After Bernard Lister’s dentist from Warhampton had given conclusive evidence of identity, it was further adjourned for a month, to enable the police to continue their enquiries. Afterwards a brief meeting took place at the police station, at which the Chief Constables of Alchester and Warhampton formally handed over the investigation to Pollard. They then departed by car, to the accompaniment of clicking Press cameras, including that of the Corbury Courier’s photographer.

  ‘Well, this is where we muscle in, I suppose,’ Pollard said. ‘First stop, the scene of the crime. Can you let us out by another door, Super, to dodge the newshounds?’

  A steep side road brought them out near the church. Pollard stopped to gaze up at St Gundryth’s great tower.

  ‘The worst of a job like ours is that even if you get a case in a decent place, there’s no time to look round,’ he grumbled as they walked on towards the excavations. ‘Look, there’s the Roman villa. Lead thou me on, or I’ll be here for hours instead of getting on with the job.’

  Inspector Toye helpfully pointed out sundry pieces of machinery for use in the extension of the car park outside the church.

  ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘If they’d got on to the job last week, I don’t suppose the body would ever have been found.’

  ‘I wonder how often it works the other way,’ Pollard speculated. ‘The luck on the murderer’s side by a hair’s breadth, I mean. Here’s the trench, optimistically roped off. I expect about a hundredweight of bits of stone has been carried off by ghouls.’

  Knowing that an exhaustive search of the area had already been made, they went on through the gate leading to the land behind the houses in Edge Crescent. Toye remarked that the lie of the land couldn’t be handier for anybody in one of these wanting to dump a stiff on the dig.

  ‘If you kept in close under the end wall of these gardens, you’d be out of sight of the windows,’ he said. ‘Number 1 is nearest the gate, but number 4 is no distance along.’

  Pollard agreed. It struck him how secluded the lane and its garages were, ending beyond the last house. Apart from the chance late return of a resident’s car, you could reasonably bank on its being deserted on a December night, for instance.

  Toye showed interest in the garages, the doors of several of which had been left open by their owners.

  ‘Nice and dry, for all that they wouldn’t have a damp course,’ he remarked. ‘Two-car family, Mr and Mrs Stanton. That’ll be the lady’s smart new runabout.’

  He stood contemplating a shining Austin Mini Clubman.

  ‘Let’s make a call at number 4,’ Pollard said. ‘Plowman was at the inquest, but went off quickly afterwards. He’ll probably be down at his Pottery now, but with any luck his wife will be in. After seeing this set-up and its obvious possibilities, I think the more we know about the Plowmans and Mrs Stanton, the better.’

  Monica Plowman came to the door herself. Pollard saw a woman approaching middle age, still pretty in a conventional way, but definitely unsmart. She looked at them enquiringly. He watched her closely as he introduced Toye and himself, but could detect no sign of disquiet.

  ‘I expect you want to see my husband,’ she said at once. ‘I’m afraid he’s at the Pottery, and I don’t expect him home before half past five. Is there a message I could give him?’

  Pollard deliberately hesitated, and got the hoped-for invitation to come in. The drawing room into which they were escorted intrigued him. Pre-war, he decided, and wondered if this was due to a shortage of money or innate conservatism.

  ‘I don’t want to take up more of your husband’s time than I must, Mrs Plowman,’ he said, ‘but as he and Mrs Stanton seem to be the late Mr Lister’s only surviving relatives, we’re hoping that they may be able to help us. Do you think it would be more convenient f
or him if we went down to the Pottery now, or called back here later?’

  This simple question seemed to cause Monica Plowman some anxiety. As he watched her deliberate, Pollard wondered if she were afraid of her husband.

  ‘I … I think, perhaps, it would be better if you went down to see him now,’ she finally decided, adding unconvincingly that she was not sure of his plans for the evening. ‘But I’m afraid he’s not likely to be of much help. I expect you’ve been told the whole story of how badly Bernard Lister behaved to Mark’s family, and that they’ve been out of touch ever since?’

  Pollard made an encouraging affirmative noise.

  ‘One doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead, of course,’ she went on rather doubtfully, ‘but the Plowmans felt it very much, after all they’d done for Bernard. He wrote a dreadful letter to Mark’s parents, and after that nothing more was ever heard from him. So you see, neither my husband nor my sister-in-law can tell you anything about him.’

  ‘It must have been very unpleasant for you all at the time,’ Pollard commented sympathetically.

  ‘Actually it was before Mark and I met,’ she told him, ‘so I wasn’t involved personally.’

  ‘You didn’t know Mr Lister, then?’

  Monica Plowman shook her head.

  ‘No, I’ve never even seen him.’

  Having learnt what he had come to find out, Pollard led the conversation on to more general topics, and rose to take his leave, after asking to be directed to the Pottery.

  ‘How did you size her up?’ he asked Toye, when they were clear of the house.

  ‘Scared of her husband, but not of us,’ Toye replied. ‘But not easy in her mind, somehow. Difficult to put your finger on.’

  ‘I think she’s puzzled, rather than anything else, and a bit browned off. An easy-going type who probably resents all this business. But if her husband killed Lister, I’m dead certain she knows nothing about it. Here’s this showroom Thomas was talking about.’

  They paused at a shop window in which pottery was displayed, including a number of jugs and beakers bearing a coat of arms, and the dates 973-1973.

  ‘I like those beakers with names on them,’ Pollard remarked. ‘Good design and a nice glaze. Let’s see if they’ve got a couple I could take back for the twins.’

  The little shop was obviously a new venture, freshly decorated and smelling strongly of paint. The saleswoman in charge was fair, fat and forty, and greeted them effusively.

  In response to Pollard’s enquiry, she darted to a shelf, and began to search among the rows of beakers. One inscribed ‘Andrew’ was triumphantly produced.

  ‘And your little girl’s name is Ro-oo-se,’ she said, dragging a chair forward, and standing on it. ‘Such a sweet old- fashioned name ... Now, let me see ... Do you know, I’m terribly afraid Rose isn’t here at the moment. Heather, yes, several Heathers, but no Rose. But I’ll ring the Pottery. Our main stock’s down there, you see. No trouble, no trouble at all....’

  She vanished into a cubicle at the back. Avoiding Toye’s eye, Pollard examined a stack of flower vases destined for American visitors to the Millenary celebrations. Under the coat of arms was an inscription ‘Corbury, England, 9731973, greets Corbury, U.S.A.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve got Rose for you,’ the saleswoman carolled, reappearing. ‘So lucky! It’s coming up specially within the hour, if you could just have a look round our dear old town. The church is very well worth a visit.’

  Pollard hurriedly explained that he was on his way to the Pottery, and would collect the second beaker there. He paid for both and managed to escape, followed by Toye. Outside they both inhaled gulps of fresh air and headed for the police station to pick up their car.

  The atmosphere at the Pottery was one of production rather than effusive salesmanship. Seeing a door marked ENQUIRIES, Pollard went in, and gave his official card to a typist.

  ‘Would you ask Mr Plowman if he could spare me a few minutes?’ he asked. ‘And I want to collect a beaker with the name “Rose” on it. Your saleswoman rang down about it just now. It’s been paid for at the shop.’

  The girl gaped at him.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said incoherently. ‘They’re packing it up. I’ll take it in.’

  A minute or so later she reappeared, and led Pollard and Toye to Mark Plowman’s office. A solidly-built fair man with a reddish face and a square jaw got up from behind a desk.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said briefly. ‘Sit down, won’t you?’ He bowed slightly in Toye’s direction as Pollard introduced him.

  Taking his cue, Pollard cut his preamble to a minimum.

  ‘I don’t want to waste your time, Mr Plowman, so may we take it as read that we’ve been briefed on the late Mr Bernard Lister’s connection with your family, and the breaking-off of relations while he was an undergraduate at Oxford?’

  Mark Plowman leant back in his chair, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned we can,’ he replied. ‘Always assuming that you realise the break was entirely his doing.’

  ‘Quite. I was about to add this. It is not in dispute. Could you take up the story from there, Mr Plowman?’

  ‘There’s no story to take up. That was the end of it. After the way he’d behaved, we naturally didn’t make any overtures, and nothing further was ever heard from him.’

  ‘A theory about Mr Lister’s death which we’re investigating,’ Pollard went on after a short pause, ‘is that he decided to revisit Corbury, and was attacked and fatally injured by muggers, who hit on the excavations as a good place to hide the body. We’re trying to find out if anything is known of such a projected visit.’

  There was a further pause, during which Pollard took stock of the man facing him. Difficult customer, he thought. No imagination. Very set in his ways for a chap of his age, and aggressive into the bargain. Or is it really defensiveness, from an unadmitted knowledge that he hasn’t made much of a go of life?

  At this point Mark Plowman gave him a hostile glance. ‘If you’re hinting that Bernard Lister contacted me and suggested a meeting, the answer is an unqualified no. I shouldn’t have agreed to it if he had. And I know I can answer for my sister, Mrs Stanton, too, although I don’t suppose you’ll accept my word for it.’

  ‘There’s an established routine in these matters,’ Pollard replied calmly. ‘Reverting to Mr Lister, can you think of anyone at all in the area whom he might have wanted to visit?’

  He thought, but was not certain, that Mark Plowman relaxed slightly.

  ‘Afraid I can’t. He wrote an abominable letter to my parents at the time, abusing the town and everybody in it, as well as ourselves. The plain fact is, Superintendent, that he was a damned unpleasant little bastard with a warped mind.’

  Pollard wondered briefly if it had ever occurred to the Plowmans that they had any responsibility for Bernard Lister’s outlook on life. He switched his mind back to his last question.

  ‘Mr Lister was a professional historian,’ he said. ‘Is there anyone of that sort living round here?’

  ‘No one I’ve ever heard of. The history master at the Grammar School in our time was pretty good at his job, but he died a few years ago.’

  ‘Just one thing more, Mr Plowman, and then we’ll be through. The difficulty in this case is that Mr Lister seems to have been such a solitary person, both in regard to relatives and friends. Because of this fact, we can only make a start by following up such contacts as he is known to have had, as a matter of routine. As far as we know at present, the last time he was seen alive, except by his murderer, of course, was on 14 December of last year. You won’t misunderstand me, I’m sure, if I ask you to make a formal statement of your movements on that date.’

  Mark Plowman looked ugly, but controlled himself.

  ‘You may say this sort of thing is routine, Superintendent, but it strikes me as personally offensive. However, I suppose you’re legally entitled to treat people like this. As it happens, I rem
ember clearly where I was on 14 December: at an important business meeting in London.’

  A series of exchanges followed, as a result of which it was established that he had gone up to London by the 9.30 a.m. train from Alchester, to a meeting of the British Ceramics Manufacturers in connection with a forthcoming exhibition. The meeting had been held at the Waterbury Hotel in Holborn, and gone on until half past three. He had then taken a taxi to the Victoria and Albert Museum, to study designs of nineteenth century pottery with a view to introducing some new lines at Corbury, leaving shortly before closing time and being much delayed in getting back to his hotel in Bloomsbury, the Hamilton, by the rush hour traffic. As a result, he had decided to eat out without first returning to the hotel, and had a meal in a steakhouse somewhere near the Oxford Street end of Tottenham Court Road. He had not noticed its name. He had then dropped into a News Theatre nearby for about a couple of hours, and then walked back to the Hamilton. Nothing much seemed to be doing in the bar, so after having a drink he had gone up to bed. On the following morning he had gone down to the City for an appointment with some export agents in Prince Consort Street, and taken a taxi from there to Paddington, for the midday train back to Corbury.

  Without comment Pollard asked Toye if he had got everything down, and on getting an affirmative answer thanked Mark Plowman for his co-operation and brought the interview to an end.

  ‘Full of holes as a sieve, between the end of the Ceramics meeting and the nightcap in the hotel bar,’ he commented as they got into the Hillman. ‘I wonder what he was really doing? He certainly couldn’t have murdered Lister and got the body down to Corbury in the time.’

  ‘Bird?’ queried Toye.

  ‘Could be. I can imagine that Mrs Plowman’s palled a bit. We’ll make a start by getting his programme checked by some poor devils back home. You know, it’s a bit late now to go on to Mrs Stanton before supper. We’ll eat first.’

  They called in at the police station, where Pollard rang the Yard at some length on the subject of Mark Plowman’s alibi, and then returned to their hotel. Towards the end of their meal a waitress brought Pollard a visiting card. He studied it, and asked her to tell the gentleman that he would be with him in ten minutes.