He—Sloan—had once even gone as far as mentioning the dilemma he felt himself to be in to his friend Happy Harry, Berebury Division’s Traffic Inspector.
There had been no comfort to be had in that quarter.
“Policemen don’t have friends,” Inspector Harpe had sniffed.
“I suppose not,” Sloan had responded with a certain melancholy.
“And,” the traffic man had added pertinently, “neither, come to that, do gardeners who grow for show. You ought to know that by now, Seedy.”
Detective Inspector Sloan braced his shoulders this evening and went indoors prepared to try to put the cares and burdens of the day and of his garden behind him.
He couldn’t, of course.
By the time he was outside a good helping of beef stew and well into an excellent plum tart—nobody he knew had a lighter hand with pastry than Margaret—he was telling her about the strange message—if that was what it was—that Lucy Durmast had been sent at the prison.
“I thought,” said Margaret Sloan, “that Trevor Porritt had said that the murder was all about a love affair that had gone wrong. Not about Africa.”
“He did,” said Sloan, “and there’s nothing to prove it wasn’t.” He paused and thought awhile. “Nothing at all. That’s the funny thing. Except that she’s still not saying anything.”
“Perhaps she hasn’t anything to say,” suggested Margaret Sloan placidly.
“She could at least say she isn’t guilty,” said Sloan with the sort of irritability that can only be given free expression in the home, “if she isn’t.”
“I don’t see why she should,” responded his wife with feminine logic, “since she knows perfectly well that you’re not going to believe her anyway.”
“She could still tell us why she …”
“And there’s another thing to consider.” Margaret edged a dish of homemade custard in his direction. “If she knows she didn’t do it, she might not care all that much whether anyone else knows or not.”
“She doesn’t look a ‘damn your eyes’ sort of girl.”
“It’s what you think of yourself that matters, you know, in the long run.” She frowned. “That’s why it’s the things that injure your image of yourself—scars and that sort of thing—count so much.”
Sloan addressed himself to the plum tart and custard while he considered this.
“Moreover,” continued his wife, warming to her theme, “she also may know that anything she does say may only make matters worse.”
He nodded. He knew what she was thinking. Once, quite early in their married life, Sloan had taken her to the old Calleford Assizes to see a famous Queen’s Counsel in action. Unfortunately the experience had only strengthened her convictions that the Law was an ass. The Q.C.’s interrogation of a hostile but perfectly truthful witness had only impressed her by its apparent total unfairness.
“This African message,” she said. “What is it exactly?”
“Nobody knows,” said her husband. “It’s being copied and sent over from Cottingham Grange for me to see. It doesn’t,” he added fairly, “mean that Lucy Durmast didn’t kill Kenneth Carline. In fact, if Prince Aturu sent it, whatever it is, it could be because Lucy had killed his friend Kenneth. After all, for all I know they may think differently about justice and revenge in Dlasa.”
“I daresay they do,” rejoined his wife drily. “And who’s to say who’s right?”
“We don’t even know what it means,” he said, ducking that issue. “Drawings like hieroglyphics the governor said, only she didn’t have a Rosetta Stone handy at the prison.” The governor of Cottingham Grange was a woman with a finely attuned sense of humour, which was just as well, since it wasn’t everyone’s choice of career. “All we know is that Lucy Durmast fainted when she saw it.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Margaret Sloan warmly.
“Or pretended to faint,” added Sloan from a long habit of caution.
“The governor would know which,” said Margaret Sloan, undeterred. “At least Lucy Durmast was entitled to think she would be safe from that sort of thing in prison.”
“Well …” A place of safety was the term used for the building or institution where those in need of care and attention were taken by order of a benevolent government, but Detective Inspector Sloan wasn’t so naïve as to think that prisons came into that category. The Act of Parliament in question was referring to hospitals. People were sent to prison on an order for the governor to have and to hold … That reminded him of something else. He looked his wife straight in the eye and said, “Would you have killed me if I’d got engaged to someone else?”
“No,” she said without hesitation.
“Well, then …”
“But I might have killed myself.” She held a dish out. “More tart?”
“We’ve come about the Kingdom of Dlasa,” said Detective Inspector Sloan the next morning to the smooth young man sitting behind his desk in his office on the fourth floor of the Ministry for Overseas Development.
It was quite a nice desk in its way but nothing like as elegant a one as that in the government department that the two policemen had just left. That had been the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The men from Calleshire had been treated there with great courtesy and attention and, with a skill born of long practice, immediately passed on to another department. It was not for nothing that the first Secretary of State at the Foreign Office had been the wily Charles James Fox. Sloan, who had noticed a bust of the famous politician in the entrance hall, knew gamekeepers living deep in the heart of rural Calleshire who still called foxes “Mister Charles” in tribute to the great cunning of both animals—Fox, the man, and fox—Vulpes vulpes—the creature of the wild.
“It’s in Africa,” added Detective Constable Crosby helpfully.
Sloan didn’t enjoy coming up to London but he had felt that his mission of enquiry about Dlasa could not be accomplished on his behalf by a friendly officer from the Metropolitan Police, however well briefed. For one thing, that officer might legitimately feel that the Calleshire Force was a little short of hard evidence on which to base their enquiries. There was another reason, too, for Berebury Division to make its own mistakes. Sloan didn’t want any laughs by the Met at the expense of bucolic bumpkins up from the country with straws showing in their hair: the superintendent was very sensitive about that sort of thing.
Or, if it came to that, any amusement exhibited by high-flying young civil servants confronted by a constable of the calibre of Dogberry and Virges either.
“Indeed yes,” diplomatically responded James Jeavington, the civil servant, to Detective Constable Crosby. He was, in fact, the Ministry’s Dlasian specialist. “In Africa. Precisely. The Dark Continent.”
“We need a little background to the present situation in Dlasa,” explained Sloan hastily, “and we understand that you would be the best people to help us.”
“Naturally,” said Jeavington fluently, “my Ministry would wish to be as constructive as possible.”
Sloan let that pass.
“In what way, though, can Overseas Development be of assistance to the Calleshire Constabulary?” asked the civil servant.
“We would like to know something about the contract for the building of Mgongwala.”
James Jeavington at once projected extreme caution. “What about it exactly, Inspector?”
“For instance,” said Sloan, “how it was awarded.”
“It went to Durmast’s, the civil-engineering people from …” His voice changed suddenly and he added in quite a different tone “… from Calleford.” He paused. “I see.”
Detective Inspector Sloan hunched his shoulders. “A junior member of the firm of Durmast’s was friendly with one of the sons of the King of Dlasa—Prince Aturu—who has been a dedicated opponent of the building of the new town at Mgongwala.”
Jeavington looked extremely alert but not surprised.
“The member of the firm,” said Sloan succ
inctly, “with whom Prince Aturu was friendly has been murdered and we understand that the Prince has been recalled to Dlasa. We need to know if there is any connection at all between these two events.”
“I see,” said Jeavington slowly.
“How did Durmast’s get the contract in the first instance?” Sloan came back to his original question.
James Jeavington paused for so long before he answered him that Sloan began to wonder if the Ministry was a punishment station for failed Treasury men. “I think,” he said at last, “that it would be fair to say that they had won it.”
“In fair combat?”
“Everything is fair in international dealing, Inspector.”
“Like love and war,” said Crosby brightly.
“By sealed tender, for example?” persisted Sloan.
Jeavington shook his head. “Seals can be opened and resealed.” That much every administrator knew.
“By open tender, then?” suggested Sloan.
The civil servant avoided his gaze. “I think it would be—er—unwise of you to assume that that was the method by which Durmast’s got the job.”
“And naïve?”
“Durmast’s is a firm with a very good reputation.”
“There are a great many civil-engineering firms with good reputations,” rejoined Sloan.
“Her Majesty’s Government was anxious that the work should be done by a firm from the United Kingdom.”
“I’ll bet,” said Detective Constable Crosby inelegantly.
“Besides which, Inspector …” added Jeavington.
“Yes?”
“In some respects the African mind works rather differently from the occidental one.”
“Cricket,” said Sloan, “doesn’t come into it, is that what you mean?”
“I do not think,” said Jeavington, “that Hamish Mgambo was ever a man to be influenced by breathless hushes in the close tonight or any night.”
“And King Thabile?”
“The only things,” pronounced Jeavington a little acidly, “that would appear to influence King Thabile III of Dlasa are the aforementioned Hamish Mgambo and a certain well-known provision store in Piccadilly.”
Sloan lifted an enquiring eyebrow.
“The King,” explained Jeavington, “has a great partiality for a special variety of chocolate biscuit.”
“It’s like the Criminal Record Office, isn’t it?” broke in Detective Constable Crosby chattily. “Your knowing everyone’s weaknesses and writing it all down.”
“And strengths.” Jeavington didn’t contest the point, only amplified it. “They’re just as important.”
Detective Inspector Sloan had once been to a lecture on man management. All that he remembered about it now had been the aphorism “Build on strength: don’t undermine weakness.” It would be difficult to apply to Crosby.
“We make a note of strengths too,” the constable was saying now quite eagerly to the civil servant. “Know your enemy and all that.”
“Dlasa’s a friendly state,” said Jeavington mildly. “Queen Victoria sent the Prince of Wales there on a state visit and King Thabile’s grandfather came over for King Edward’s Coronation in 1902.”
“And what are Dlasa’s strengths?” asked Sloan with genuine curiosity.
“A rather Edwardian attitude to Europe, a self-sufficient food supply …”
“Except for chocolate biscuits,” put in Crosby.
“Our envoy always takes a case of them when he presents his credentials.”
“Envoy?” Sloan picked up a word he wasn’t absolutely sure about.
“A minister plenipotentiary,” explained Jeavington fluently.
“What’s that?”
“A public minister sent by one sovereign to another for the transaction of diplomatic business.”
“Not an ambassador?” queried Sloan.
“Ranking below an ambassador …”
“I see.”
“… but above a chargé d’affaires.”
“Either way,” Sloan summed up neatly, an old saying coming back to him, “he’s a man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”
The civil servant bowed his head in agreement.
“There was something else we hoped you would be able to tell us about,” said Sloan.
“What’s that, Inspector?”
Sloan produced a sketch of the missive that had been sent to Lucy Durmast in H. M. Prison Cottingham Grange. “It came under plain cover so to speak.” He didn’t go into detail about the exhaustive examination of one ordinary envelope, postmarked Calleford, that had yielded no other clues at all about its source.
“That,” declared Jeavington without hesitation, “is a Dlasian revenge token.”
“We wondered,” said Sloan.
“There’s the Bird of Disaster—Ahianmworo—in the right-hand corner. Do you see?”
Sloan nodded.
“Highly representational, of course, but no doubt about it. And”—Jeavington pointed to the dangling teeth—“in the Dlasian ethos those represent punishment. The Jaws of Death so to speak.”
Crosby stirred uneasily. “Not like that here, is it?”
“You will also have observed the sword of life and death in the other corner.”
Crosby said, “There’s one of those at the Old Bailey.”
“Recipients,” remarked James Jeavington with a scholar’s detachment, “are meant to turn their faces to the wall and die when they see one of those.”
Crosby suddenly became the very embodiment of John Bull. “What? Without a proper trial?”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord Chancellor,” murmured Sloan with irony.
“They usually do die, of course,” continued Jeavington dispassionately, “and quite quickly too.”
“No appeal either,” said Crosby who usually thought appeals a waste of valuable police time.
“A sort of fatal inanition sets in.” Jeavington looked up. “Did you know that they don’t have any prisons in Dlasa?”
“No,” said Sloan, suddenly very anxious that Lucy Durmast didn’t turn her face to the wall while they were making their enquiries. That wouldn’t do at all.
“This hex …” began Crosby.
“Yes?” said Jeavington.
“Does it last forever?”
Jeavington shook his head. “Only until the next Festival of Commenda.”
“We’ve heard about that,” said Sloan.
“The great Dlasian ceremony of dismissing the Unfriendly Spirits acts as a sort of slate-wiping exercise all round.” The civil servant waved a hand. “We could do with one in the Ministry from time to time.”
“So,” said Crosby seriously, “if the accused can keep going until then she might be all right?”
Jeavington gave a faint smile. “That rather depends on what she has been accused of, doesn’t it?”
“And by whom,” added Sloan. A Dlasian revenge token was one thing, a warrant issued by an English Court was quite another. Even so, to Sloan, the two together somehow smacked of double jeopardy.
“There’s one thing you can be quite sure about the celebration of Commenda,” said Jeavington, “and that is that King Thabile won’t cut the first turf, so to speak, for Mgongwala until the festival is over and the Unfriendly Spirits dismissed for the year …”
Crosby interrupted him. “Have you heard the one about the surgeon doing the first operation in a new hospital theatre?”
“No,” said a fascinated Jeavington. “Tell me …”
Nothing loath, the constable carried on. “Well, the surgeon handed the scalpel to his assistant and said, ‘Here, you cut the first …”
“Crosby!” thundered Sloan.
“Sorry, sir.”
“They still go in for apotrophism in Dlasa, of course,” James Jeavington picked up the conversation again with practised smoothness. A minister could be even more jejune any day than a police constable.
“What’s that when it’s at
home?” asked Crosby, trying to write the word down.
“The burying of bones under the threshold of a new building to ward off bad luck would be a good example of apotrophism. It is usually,” the civil servant added astringently, “at home but not in this instance.”
“Bit primitive, isn’t it?” said Crosby.
“Practised very widely in England until the seventeenth century,” said Jeavington. “Mind you, it’s not all that long ago that they used to leave the north door of a church open during a baptism so that evil spirits could leave. That’s why it’s called the Devil’s Door …”
“What sort of bones exactly?” asked Sloan carefully, anxious to get something clear. “You’re not talking about human sacrifice, are you?” A dissident son was almost too tailor-made for that part: there had never been any suggestion that Abraham hadn’t loved Isaac.
“No,” said Jeavington. “They gave that up in a sort of Diamond Jubilee tribute to Queen Victoria.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Sloan earnestly. Propitiating ancient gods, getting auguries right and casting entrails—even consulting astrologers—were all in their way perfectly proper activities for those who believed in them, but the ritual sacrifice of human beings was murder in Sloan’s book if not in everyone else’s.
“Talking of Queens …” Jeavington cleared his throat.
“Yes?” Sloan was all attention.
The civil servant became suddenly circumlocutory. “I think it might not be—er—out of order for me to give you some indication that …”
“Yes?” Sloan was even more encouraging.
“My Ministry have it in mind—provided, of course, that all goes well with the building of Mgongwala …”
“Of course.”
“To recommend the chairman of William Durmast for inclusion in the New Year Honours.”
“That’ll be a real feather in his cap,” responded Sloan without thinking from where that particular expression had come.
“I wonder,” said Crosby idly, “what King Thabile will give him if it doesn’t go well. The Order of the Boot, I expect.”
A Dead Liberty Page 14
