Phyllis Bolsover sniffed. “Well, I’m sure if I were Lucy just at this particular time I’d want someone around taking a proper interest.”
“She wouldn’t see old Puckle, the solicitor, she wouldn’t see Cecelia Allsworthy, who’s her best friend, and she wouldn’t see me,” he said again for the hundredth time. “And when she was asked if there was anyone else she did want to see she wouldn’t answer. You can make what you like of that.”
“She knows what she’s doing,” said Mrs. Bolsover consideringly. “I’m quite sure about that.”
“Yes,” agreed Bolsover. “And that’s what I’m counting on, because one thing is quite certain and that is that one of the Durmasts—père ou fille—is going to hold me wrong. As I see it, I’m on a hiding to nothing for not cabling Bill and worse from Lucy if I do.”
“You’d have thought the newspapers …”
Her husband snorted gently. “A runner with a cleft stick would have his work cut out to get to Mgongwala.”
“Dlasa’s got an airport—all right, all right—a landing strip, then.”
“I daresay that the British envoy there gets the English Top Newspaper by air in due course but Lucy’s case hasn’t hit the headlines yet, has it? Besides …” he hesitated.
“Besides?”
“Our envoy wants Mgongwala finished as quickly as possible, too.”
“Why?”
“There were a couple of Iron Curtain country tenders for building it. Bill only got the contract for Britain by the skin of his teeth.”
Phyllis Bolsover came back to Lucy Durmast. “She’s of age,” she said, again not for the first time. “I suppose that means she can do as she wants.”
“What you really mean, my dear,” he said drily, “is that she’s an Englishwoman born in wedlock with her feet on dry land and therefore has nothing to fear.”
It was no accident that Bill Durmast was representing the firm in Dlasa. Ronald Bolsover would never have been able to establish a rapport with King Thabile’s Chancellor as Bill Durmast had done, let alone with King Thabile. His wasn’t that sort of a personality. He was the firm’s technical expert.
“And this isn’t Africa.” His wife was incurably European. The epitome of English civilisation to Phyllis Bolsover was a fine piece of porcelain from Stratford-le-Bow.
“I know,” he said wearily. This ground, too, had been gone over time and again by the pair of them. “This is twentieth-century England.”
Phyllis Bolsover voiced the thought that had worried her most. “The police seem so very sure about everything.”
Bolsover shrugged his shoulders. “They’ve got a long stop, which makes it easier for them.”
“I know that the last analysis comes in Court,” she said almost crossly, “but all the same …”
“And that’s where Lucy won’t have any help.” His worry surfaced too.
Perversely Mrs. Bolsover said she could understand that. “Lawyers always make such a meal of the simplest little thing.”
“Murder,” he responded colourlessly, “may be simple but it’s not little.”
She made a gesture of impatience. “You know what I mean, Ronald.”
Bolsover shifted the conversational ground slightly. “Why she had to give Kenneth Carline the sort of food she did beats me all the same,” he said. “Asking for trouble.”
“Oh, I don’t know …”
“Hang it all, he only rang the girl at practically the last minute.”
“So she didn’t have a lot of time,” said his wife.
“Time or not, I don’t call chili con carne a scratch meal.”
“It is,” she said absently.
“Unfortunately,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “nobody can deny it has a flavour to cover a multitude of sins.”
“I don’t suppose at the best of times the meat comes particularly fresh down Mexico way,” said Phyllis Bolsover. “The worst of times doesn’t bear thinking about.” She shuddered. “The great thing about France is that they understand about food.” The Bolsovers had a holiday home in Provence.
“And why serve him that damn silly vegetable into the bargain?” he demanded. “You know, the one that sounds like a piece of jewellery.”
“Samphire.”
“I ask you! Samphire on a Monday morning in winter.”
“Lucy told you herself before she turned into a clam,” his wife reminded him patiently, “that she’d been experimenting with freezing it and thought she knew Kenneth well enough to try it out on him.”
“Poor man’s asparagus,” he said scornfully. “What’s that to give a man?”
“I believe it’s quite nice,” said his wife calmly. “It would go well with a powerful flavour like chili con carne. So would the beer she gave him.”
“And so would hyoscine,” said Ronald Bolsover soberly. “At least, that’s what the police say.”
FIVE
Applicationes—Applications
As it happened the police were saying something even more to the point.
At least, one member of the force was.
“What, sir?” echoed Detective Constable Crosby to Detective Inspector Sloan, to whose room he had been summoned. “Check out a murder case against the clock?”
“Lucy Durmast’s got seven days,” said Sloan succinctly, “and so have we.”
“Somebody else’s case, too.”
“Could happen to anyone.”
“And in somebody else’s division,” said the constable, in whom the territorial imperative was as strong as in any man.
“Calleford,” said Sloan briskly, “is less than half the County away.” Constable Crosby was very nearly as insular in outlook as the superintendent.
“Mission impossible,” declared the detective constable to Sloan.
“It better hadn’t be,” responded that worthy vigorously. “Or Superintendent Leeyes will want to know the reason why.”
“The trail’s cold, for one thing,” complained the constable. “All this happened last January.”
“Time and crime,” said Sloan neatly, “can’t always be separated.”
“But it’s not like detecting something that has just happened,” insisted Crosby, aggrieved.
“More of a challenge, that’s all.”
“And the accused’s not giving us any help, is she?”
“She doesn’t have to,” said Sloan. “It is a cardinal principle of English law that the accused doesn’t have to defend him or herself against a charge.”
“All the same …”
“The burden of proof rests entirely on the Prosecution.”
“Well, then …”
“It just so happens,” said Sloan, “that Judge Eddington is treating her refusal to plead as putting her in contempt of Court.”
“If she won’t play ball, then,” enquired Crosby more colloquially, “how do we know where to begin?”
“At the beginning,” snapped Sloan.
“If,” said Crosby mutinously, “Detective Inspector Porritt couldn’t spot anything wrong how are we going to?”
“I’m not sure,” said Sloan with perfect truth. “Moreover,” he added hastily, “there may not be anything wrong with the police case anyway. It’s quite on the cards that Lucy Durmast may have perfectly good reasons of her own for keeping silent.”
“Least said, soonest mended, sir,” said the constable sententiously.
“That’s only one of them.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Crosby, “she doesn’t want to incriminate someone else—you know, shielding a man she loves and all that jazz.”
“I have news for you, Crosby,” said Sloan heavily. “There does not appear to be anyone else to incriminate.”
“No one in the running at all?”
“Not as far as Inspector Porritt could see.”
“Just Lucy Durmast?” The detective constable was already showing signs of losing interest.
“The deceased had lunch with her,” said Sloan,
adding astringently, “that, at least, does not appear to be in doubt. And he died some time afterwards from poisoning by hyoscine.”
“Is that?”
“Is what?”
“Is that in doubt?” asked Crosby.
“Dr. Bressingham seemed quite sure,” said Sloan drily.
The name clearly meant nothing to the detective constable.
“He’s the new pathologist over in Calleford,” said Sloan. “He’s only been there about a year. He says he found hyoscine hydrobromide in Kenneth Carline’s body in sufficient quantity to cause death.”
“So we’ve only got his word for it?”
“His sworn word, Crosby,” Sloan reminded him gently. “I believe, in fact, duplicate samples of—er—everything were also kept for any forensic pathologist retained by the Defence.”
“Only there isn’t one, sir? That right?”
“That’s right, Crosby. You’ve got the general idea.”
“And the old judge doesn’t like the thought of no one going in to bat for the accused?”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” murmured Sloan, “although I daresay His Honour could.”
The constable hitched his shoulder and said, “What are we going to do about it, then?”
“Go over the ground again,” said Sloan grimly. “And again. And again.”
Detective Constable Crosby groaned aloud.
It was as well for both police officers that Detective Inspector Sloan interpreted going over the ground literally. There was nothing Detective Constable Crosby enjoyed more than driving a fast car.
“Braffle Episcopi, please, Crosby,” commanded Sloan presently, climbing into the front passenger seat beside the constable. Just as all good fairy tales properly begin “Once upon a time,” the scene of the crime seemed the best place to start.
“Yes, sir.” He slammed the car into first gear with a flourish.
“Crosby, as you yourself remarked, the trail is already quite cold. There is therefore no immediate hurry about our getting there.”
“No, sir.” Crosby took a corner at speed.
“But in the interests of justice, it would be helpful to get there in one piece.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sloan supposed that serving justice could best describe what they were doing at the moment: he couldn’t think of another way of putting it except making assurance doubly sure. It was funny how clichés came into their own at times …
“Did she have a reason, sir?” Crosby interrupted his reverie. “A motive …”
“The oldest one of them all,” said Sloan.
There was a pause while Crosby negotiated some road works at a pace not allowed for by the contractors: and thought about this. “Jealousy, sir?” he hazarded as the police vehicle finished executing a tight slalom round some “No Waiting” cones.
“The deceased had just announced his engagement to someone else,” said Sloan. “He’d fixed it up with his fiancée over the Christmas holidays. The girl next door in his home town.”
“Is that why she did for him?” asked Crosby. He hadn’t travelled far in love himself and was still curious about everything to do with affairs of the heart.
“The Prosecution will say …” began Sloan.
“Given half a chance,” put in Crosby.
“Given half a chance,” agreed Sloan, “the Prosecution will say that there was some talk of Lucy Durmast having been friendly with Kenneth Carline when he first joined the firm.”
“And I suppose,” said Crosby, “we’ll never know what the Defence would have said seeing as there isn’t going to be any Defence.”
“Quite so,” said Sloan. “Mind you, the Prosecution agree that this talk might well only be office gossip.”
“Gossipy places, offices,” said Crosby, overlooking what went on in the canteen at the police station.
“But there is evidence that it was current earlier last year.” Inspector Porritt had been meticulous about the inclusion of this in his report.
“No smoke without fire,” said the detective constable largely.
“Smoke signals can be misread,” countered Sloan. He clutched at his safety belt. “Mind that bus!”
“Plenty of room,” said Crosby airily, adding with apparent detachment, “How long did Kenneth Carline take to get from Calleford to Palshaw that day?”
Detective Inspector Sloan was not deceived. “Nowhere long enough to satisfy a magistrate that he had kept to the speed limit,” he said evasively, “and rather more quickly than you are going to be, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That motorway is meant as road and not as race track and mind you don’t forget it.”
“No, sir.”
Calleshire was as yet not well endowed with motorways—in fact that from Luston in the northwest of the county to Calleford more or less in the centre and thence on to Kinnisport in the east constituted its longest stretch. It was just beyond Kinnisport at the wooded waterside village of Palshaw that the motorway came out of the trees and finished in a flurry of tunnel approaches and the road itself plunged under the estuary of the river Calle. South of the river mouth the road assumed a new significance and sought its way to the coast again behind the headland, past the villages of Edsway and Braffle Episcopi beyond it to the brand-new nuclear waste disposal plant at Marby juxta Mare.
It was the nuclear waste disposal plant which had constituted the raison d’être for the tunnel in the first place. Or, rather, had been the reason for the tunnel’s coming when it did. The people to the south of the estuary had been trying to persuade the Calleshire County Council to build a bridge or put in a tunnel there ever since Isambard Kingdom Brunel had demonstrated the possibilities elsewhere. A bridge had certainly been on the tapis at County Hall for the best part of fifty years. What had amazed the more naïve of the local populace, though, had been the speed with which the tunnel had been built once the nuclear waste plan had been bruited, and there had been mutterings in several quarters about back-scratching in high places.
The Action Group Against Marby had been prominent among the protesters and the most scornful about the tunnel. A quid pro quo they called it and in no way abated their opposition to the nuclear waste disposal plant. Residents south of the river had been more muted in their response. They didn’t want the nuclear waste plant but they did want the tunnel and access to the motorway. The only alternative route was a slow and tediously winding road to Billing Bridge which spanned the river Calle at the widest point at which it had been possible when it was built in 1484.
“And be careful on the bends,” adjured Sloan. “It was on a bend that Kenneth Carline came to grief …”
“I thought he was poisoned …”
“The theory,” said Sloan, “is that the deceased dozed off at the wheel after leaving the Old Rectory.”
“Drank too much lunch, did he?”
“Hyoscine hydrobromide,” said Sloan repressively, “causes drowsiness.”
Crosby crouched forward at the wheel to demonstrate his alertness.
Sloan said, “Carline crashed his vehicle on a bend on his way back to the tunnel at Palshaw. He was found unconscious in a hedge. The ambulance took him to Calleford Hospital where he died without coming round. That’s how he fetched up on Inspector Porritt’s plate.”
“Sir, this hyoscine stuff …”
“Yes?”
“It doesn’t grow on trees, does it?”
“I don’t know what it grows on,” said Sloan truthfully, “but if you are asking where Lucy Durmast could have got hold of some, I can tell you that.”
“Where?”
“Her old grandfather was a retired general medical practitioner. He’d practised over in Luston all his working life.”
“So?”
“He died last November. Lucy Durmast helped her father clear the house. Apparently the old chap had never thrown anything away—his dispensary was still full of drugs. According to Trevor Porritt’s repo
rt, she could have helped herself to anything she liked.”
“Proper ‘Dr. Finlay’s Casebook’ stuff, eh?” said Crosby, whose television watching was unpredictable.
“There’s another thing,” said Sloan.
“Sir?”
“Hyoscine has a bitter flavour.” Sloan unconsciously moistened his lips. “A sort of acrid taste.”
“The pill needed sugaring, did it?”
“She served him chili con carne,” said Sloan meaningfully.
“I see, sir.” The detective constable caught sight of a stretch of open road at last and put his foot down. “So she had the triple alliance all right.”
“What’s that?” enquired Sloan when he could get his breath back.
“Like they taught us at the Training School.”
“What was that?” That which Detective Constable Crosby had been taught did not, in Sloan’s view, amount to a hill of beans anyway.
“The three things you need for murder, sir, the Triple Alliance.”
“Tell me,” invited Sloan grittily.
“Means, motive and opportunity. She’d got the lot, hadn’t she?”
Cecelia Allsworthy put the telephone receiver down and went through to the kitchen of the Manor House at Braffle Episcopi. A younger girl was there folding baby clothes and keeping her eye on twin infants in a portable play-pen.
“Hortense,” she said, “I’m just popping over to the Old Rectory to open it up for some—er—gentlemen.”
“Mais oui, je comprends—I mean, I understand, Cecelia.”
“I shan’t be long.” Cecelia forbore to explain that it was the police who were coming. Hortense’s English was improving daily but “Your policeman are wonderful” wasn’t exactly one of her stock phrases yet. “I’ve got the key, you see. I’m looking after the house for my friend who isn’t there at the moment …”
A Dead Liberty Page 5
