Harm’s Way

by Catherine Aird

  Mrs. Bailey’s questioning subsided.

  “A finger, did you say?” The portly old farmer nodded almost to himself. “I remember the days when there were always unknown men at the gate asking for work. Any work. None of this picking and choosing.”

  “Hirelings,” said Mrs. Bailey, bustling about in spite of her grey hair. “You sit over here, Constable. The kettle won’t take a minute.”

  “Any of them could have gone missing,” said Bailey, his mind still on the past, “and nobody been any the wiser.”

  “I hope it’s not going to be like that, sir,” said Sloan.

  Sam Bailey pointed to a stick in the corner of the room. “Mind you, I don’t get about like I used to or I could have told you people whether or not there was a body at Lowercombe. Time was when I went over every yard myself. The best fertiliser there ever was was the farmer’s own two feet. That right, Mother?”

  Mrs. Bailey nodded. “That’s right, Sam,” she murmured. “You used to go over every yard yourself,” adding almost to herself, “but not any more.”

  “Times change,” said the farmer, “and not for the better, I might say.”

  Sloan was too wise to disagree with that sentiment.

  “And as for young people today—” began the farmer. “Or that one.”

  “Now, Sam,” said his wife, “don’t you start—”

  “Well, we don’t get men asking for work like we used to do,” said Bailey, momentarily side-tracked.

  “No,” agreed Sloan.

  “More’s the pity.”

  Sloan wasn’t so sure about that.

  “Likely then,” deduced Bailey shrewdly, “that this finger isn’t from someone casual.”

  “Naturally,” replied Sloan smoothly, “we should be very interested in hearing about anyone who was missing.”

  “No one that I know about,” said the older man. “The milkman’s your best bet for that these days.”

  “True,” said Sloan. Milk not taken in was the loudest signal of the twentieth century. There would, though, have been a lot of milk bottles outside the house of a person whose body had been reduced to a skeleton.

  “I don’t get about like I did,” the farmer reminded him, “but I think we’d have heard if it had been anyone local, wouldn’t we, Mother?”

  “We hear most things,” said Mrs. Bailey comfortably. “Good and bad.”

  “We should like to search Lowercombe tomorrow, all the same,” said Sloan formally.

  The farmer nodded. “We’re not all that far from Pencombe—”

  “As the crow flies,” said Detective Constable Crosby.

  “Come along in, Sloan,” said Dr. Dabbe warmly, “and—let me see now—it’s Detective Constable Crosby, isn’t it?”

  The two policemen advanced into the office of the consultant pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital. Crosby was bearing a small cardboard box. He was carrying it before him like an undertaker with the ashes.

  “I hear,” began the doctor, “that you’ve got something really interesting for me.”

  “That depends,” temporised Sloan.

  “Come, come,” said the pathologist with unabated geniality, “you wouldn’t be disturbing my Saturday afternoon for nothing, would you?”

  “No, Doctor,” agreed Sloan.

  Crosby laid the cardboard box on the pathologist’s desk. Dr. Dabbe gently raised the lid.

  “It’s not a lot to go on, Doctor, a finger,” began Sloan cautiously. “We realise that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Dr. Dabbe easily. “Think about Pandora.”

  “Just a finger,” repeated Sloan. Opening Pandora’s box had led to a lot of trouble, hadn’t it?

  “Better men than I have made do with less, Sloan.”

  “Have they, Doctor?”

  “There was a piece of a pelvic girdle once from a well in Egypt.” The pathologist stroked his chin. “That was all there was to go on but it turned out to be a classic case of its kind.”

  “It looks a perfectly ordinary finger to me,” said Sloan doggedly. He didn’t like classic cases. They were for the historians and the textbooks.

  “Phalanges digitorum manus,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  “Really, Doctor?” Sloan refused to think of it as anything except a finger.

  Dr. Dabbe picked up a probe and pointed in turn to each bone. “We’ve got phalanx prima, phalanx secunda and phalanx tertia.”

  Detective Constable Crosby got out his notebook. “Sounds like the Three Bears to me.” He sniffed. “All we need is Goldilocks.”

  The pathologist peered at the contents of the cardboard box for a long moment and then said, “I can tell you one thing, Sloan, and that is that these metacarpals are male.”

  “That’s a great help, Doctor,” said Sloan sincerely.

  And so it was. Women’s lib notwithstanding, if there was crime involved then usually a dead man meant a different crime from a dead woman. It was not so much the separation of the sheep from the goats and the disappearance of the sacrificial lamb.…

  “There is still a little hair present on the proximal phalanx,” amplified Dr. Dabbe, “with masculine distribution.”

  “Ah.”

  “Dark hair,” said Dr. Dabbe. “That means that unless it was dyed or he was totally bald, the owner of this finger will have had dark hair on his head too.”

  “That might help, Doctor.”

  The pathologist bent a little farther over the box. “Dead,” he said presently, “something under a month.”

  Sloan motioned to Crosby to take a note.

  “Give or take a week or two,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  Sloan nodded.

  “And depending on the conditions in which it has been lying,” continued the pathologist.

  “Quite so,” said Sloan. He was used to medical qualifications.

  “I can’t tell you if it has come from the south-west corner of the vineyard, Sloan,” went on Dr. Dabbe, “but I can tell you that it has been in the open air.”

  “Not buried,” said Sloan.

  “And not somewhere dry enough to mummify it,” said the doctor, touching the flesh with the edge of his probe. He had all the delicacy of the artist. “In fact,” he said, “I should say that the damp had got at it quite a bit, too.”

  In its way, thought the detective inspector to himself, it was quite a virtuoso performance.…

  “That any help, Sloan?”

  “Anything,” said Sloan fervently, “might help at this stage. Anything at all.”

  Thus encouraged the pathologist reached for a magnifying glass. He peered at the end of the fingernail. “If this is anything to go by, Sloan, you’ve got someone here who took normal care of his appearance.”

  “The trouble,” said Sloan flatly, “is that we haven’t got anyone here.”

  “Just the finger,” put in Constable Crosby helpfully.

  “The rest of him will be around,” said the pathologist.

  “Unless someone has discovered the perfect way of disposing of a body,” said Sloan pessimistically.

  “No,” said Dr. Dabbe.

  “No?” Sloan raised his eyebrows.

  “The rest of him will be around,” said Dr. Dabbe, switching his attention to the other end of the finger, “because this member has been disarticulated naturally.”

  “Naturally?” echoed Sloan. It didn’t seem the right word somehow.

  “Not by an instrument,” said the doctor.

  “Ah.”

  “By time and weather perhaps,” qualified Dr. Dabbe, “but it hasn’t been hacked off.”

  “We think it was picked off by a crow,” said Sloan. Perhaps he should have said that earlier but the pathologist had got there on his own. “The girl who spotted it said that she was aware of them flying about overhead on the farm.”

  “Always plenty of crows on farms,” pronounced the pathologist largely. “Nature’s dustbinmen, you could call them.”

  “Nature’s detective, i
n this case,” remarked Crosby.

  The pathologist pointed to the finger. “I shall be very surprised if the rest of this chap here isn’t around somewhere.”

  Sloan took another, longer look in the box. In a matter of moments the pathologist had translated three small bones and a little skin from “Remains thought to be human” into “This chap here.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” he said sincerely.

  Dr. Dabbe wasn’t listening. With infinite gentleness and care he lifted the bones from their cotton-wool bed and laid them on his desk. He peered attentively at one of the joints. “He—whoever he was—had the very early beginnings of osteoarthritis, Sloan. Mind you, we nearly all have.…”

  Sloan had momentarily forgotten that the pathologist dealt in disease as well as death.

  “Feel these chalky deposits, Sloan? That’s what you would call rheumatism.”

  Sloan’s gaze followed the pathologist’s own finger. “Well, I never …”

  “I’ll be doing a routine test for foreign bodies and fingernail scrapings, of course,” went on Dr. Dabbe briskly. “Macroscopically there aren’t any but you never can tell.”

  “No.” What the medical eye did not see the medical microscope did.

  “Find the rest of him, Sloan,” said the pathologist cheerfully, “and I might be able to tell you what he died from.”

  Detective Inspector Sloan took his reply straight from the pages of an early cookery book at the point where the author was advising on the making of hare pie. “First, catch your hare.…”

  FOUR

  Steadfast in the faith

  Police Constable Edward Mason might be slow. He was also sure. As soon as Detective Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby had departed back to Berebury with the cardboard box containing the finger Mason told his wife that he was going out.

  “On duty,” he added as an afterthought.

  Mrs. Mason nodded calmly. A pearl among women, she did not ask awkward questions about when he would be back or even mention supper-time.

  “I’m just popping down to the Lamb and Flag,” he said, reaching for his bicycle clips.

  Even then she did not comment as many a wife would have done.

  “To see a man about a man,” added Mason ambiguously.

  The Lamb and Flag was the only public house in Great Rooden and as such was in many respects the centre of village life—the church being open only on Sundays, so to speak. As a place where information was exchanged it came second only to the village general store and post office—but then that was presided over by a woman.

  The Lamb and Flag was a long, low-jettied timber-and-brick building put up in the days of Good Queen Bess and good for a few hundred years more. Constable Mason dismounted from his bicycle and propped it against the gable wall. The inn sign swung from the overhanging gable above his head. Gaily painted, the red cross of the flag carried by the lamb went back beyond Queen Elizabeth to St. George and a medieval England of pilgrim routes for the faithful.

  Mason did not spare the inn sign so much as a glance as he made his way inside. The interior of the pub was dark compared to the bright sunshine outside and he had to pause when he first entered to get his bearings. Usually Saturday evening was the busiest of the week but Constable Mason, who had arrived just after opening-time, found the landlord on his own.

  “Evening, Vic,” said Mason.

  “Evening, Mr. Mason,” said the landlord, Vic Higgins.

  “Nice evening,” observed the policeman, looking round. A dragon beam bisected the corner of the bar ceiling and added to the darkness of the room.

  “A good time of the year is June,” concurred Higgins, cautiously. He was a newcomer to Great Rooden and was still feeling his way.

  Mason looked round the empty bar. “Quiet tonight, isn’t it?”

  “It’s an away match.”

  “Ah, cricket …”

  “They’re playing over at Almstone today,” said Vic Higgins. “That’s why it’s so quiet here.”

  “Can’t have everything, I suppose.”

  “And what are you going to have?” asked the landlord pertinently.

  “Nothing,” said Mason, looking pious.

  “That means you’re on duty.”

  “It does,” agreed Mason.

  “If it’s about after-hours drinking,” began the landlord, “I can explain—”

  “It’s not,” said Mason.

  “What is it, then?” enquired the landlord warily.

  “You had a bit of fighting in here, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, you heard about that, did you?”

  “I hear most things,” said Constable Mason placidly.

  The landlord said, “It wasn’t actually in here.”

  “Outside, then.”

  “Outside,” conceded Victor Higgins unwillingly.

  “What was it all about?”

  “Can’t say that I ever knew rightly.” He started to polish a glass. “You know what pub fights are like.”

  “Tell me about this one,” invited Mason.

  “Not a lot to tell,” said Vic Higgins. “I heard it start, of course—”

  “Where?”

  “In the spit and sawdust.”

  “The public bar,” said the policeman. He was standing in the private one. On the wall someone had put up another sign altogether. It said “Whine Bar.”

  “I sent them outside straightaway,” said the publican. “I wasn’t having no fighting in my bar.”

  “Them?”

  “There were just the two of them.”

  “Not exactly an affray, then.”

  “Nothing like that,” Higgins assured him. “Or I would have sent for you, Mr. Mason. You know I would,” he added virtuously.

  “Course you would, Vic,” agreed Mason. He paused and then said, “There were just the two of them, I think you said.”

  “I did,” said the landlord uneasily. “I didn’t think anything more about it.” He looked across the bar counter at the police constable. “Should I have done?”

  “No reason why you should have,” said Mason judicially. “At the time …,” he added.

  “Something happened then?”

  “It might have done,” said the policeman. “On the other hand it might not.”

  “Ah,” said the publican wisely.

  “What were they fighting about?” pursued Mason.

  “I never did get to the bottom of the trouble,” said the landlord. “None of my business, of course,” he added self-righteously.

  “Of course,” nodded Mason.

  “Anyway,” said Higgins, warming to his theme, “I got them both out of my bar and as far as I know they finished it off outside.”

  “Did they come back?”

  “They did not,” said the landlord firmly.

  “Neither of them?”

  “Not one ever and not the other that night.”

  “And that means …”

  “I didn’t,” expanded Victor Higgins, “see the one of them again at all and the other didn’t show up here for about a week afterwards. And then he kept pretty quiet about it. Sort of crept back, if you know what I mean.” He gave a reminiscent chuckle. “He still had a bruise.”

  “’Bout when would all this have been, Vic?” asked Mason casually.

  The landlord frowned. “Round about the beginning of the month, I should say.”

  “And the day of the week? Can you remember?”

  “A Saturday,” responded the other man promptly. “It was a Saturday, all right, and a home match.” He wrinkled his brow still further. “I think it was the day they played Little Rooden.”

  “A needle match,” agreed Mason, adding profoundly, “The nearer the opponent, the greater the rivalry.” A grin spread over his face. “That must be somebody’s law, mustn’t it?”

  “It’s probably,” opined the landlord, “why we went to war with France as often as we did.”

  “A Saturday, anyway, I think you said,” com
mented Mason.

  “I know it was a Saturday,” said Higgins, “because this character always comes in Saturdays.”

  “That’s the one who’s been back?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Sort of,” said the landlord. “Trouble is I’m so new here that—”

  “Tell me about him,” invited Mason.

  “Big chap,” said Higgins readily. “Works up the road.”

  “At Pencombe?”

  “I couldn’t say about that but I know it’s near because he’s a fireman too.” Great Rooden boasted a retained fire brigade whose members responded to a siren call-out. “He comes in with the rest of the crew on Tuesdays after practice as well.”

  Mason was too skilled to put a name in someone’s mouth but he wanted to hear it spoken all the same. “Big chap,” he recapitulated slowly, “probably works at Pencombe, is a retained fireman. That should be enough to—”

  “Len!” exclaimed Higgins suddenly. “Len Hodge. That’s his name. But who the other fellow was I couldn’t begin to say. I’ve never set eyes on him afore or since.”

  “What was he like?” asked Mason curiously. “Can you remember?”

  “A real wildwose,” said Higgins. “Properly on the tatty side. Hadn’t shaved and all that.”

  “Thanks, Vic, anyway. All that might be a help. You never can tell in this game.”

  “They had a real rough house in the yard, I can tell you,” volunteered Higgins, more relaxed now.

  “Oh?”

  “We could hear them,” said the landlord simply. “Hammer and tongs it was for a while and then it stopped.”

  “I see.”

  “We sort of waited for them to come back in.”

  “Like they do in westerns,” said the policeman.

  “For a drink,” said Higgins, “and a tidy-up.”

  “But it didn’t happen?” said Mason.

  “No. They must have gone off.”

  “Len Hodge has got a car, hasn’t he?”

  “If you can call it a car,” said Higgins. “It’s a broken-down old thing.”

  “Didn’t you even hear a car door slam, then?” asked Mason.

  “Can’t say that I rightly remember,” said Higgins frankly. “Not after all this time.”

  “Can you remember who else was here that evening?”