A Dead Liberty

by Catherine Aird

  “Kingship in Dlasa is Divine,” said Jeavington seriously, “so it’s difficult to say.”

  Not for the first time Sloan anathematised himself for not paying more attention at school. Wasn’t that what all the fuss about King Charles I had been?

  “But,” swept on Jeavington, “in case you’re thinking that Dlasa’s backward, let me tell you about the other strength that it has got.”

  “What’s that?” In Detective Inspector Sloan’s line of country it was usually weaknesses that were talked about.

  “A refreshing absence of civil insurrection.” James Jeavington straightened a blotter that ornamented his desk as if ink—real ink—were still in daily use at the Ministry for Overseas Development. “Even though there is a subject race there—the Thecats.” He brightened. “Perhaps that explains it. Makes for better behaviour all round, I mean. Pas devant les domestiques and all that. I hadn’t thought of it in that way.” He cocked his head alertly. “Make an interesting study, that, wouldn’t it?” The hidden academic in him surfaced briefly.

  “Have you any reason to suppose,” put in Sloan before the man opposite could expand his hypothesis any further, “that Prince Aturu—er—had it in mind”—two could use the language of diplomacy—“to upset the status quo?”

  “Our man in Dlasa,” advanced Jeavington obliquely, “has reported that the preparations for the building of Mgongwala appear to be going well, and that there are no signs of imminent destabilisation.” He waved a hand. “And he would know. He’s worked all over Africa.”

  “And Prince Aturu?” enquired Sloan. “Has he any news of the Prince since his return from England?”

  “It is not, of course, Her Majesty’s Envoy’s province to monitor the movement of members of the Dlasian Royal family …”

  “Naturally,” agreed Sloan, “but …”

  “But he can report that nothing whatsoever has been seen of Prince Aturu since he returned to Dlasa …”

  “Ah.”

  “If he ever did,” said James Jeavington.

  FOURTEEN

  Collyria—The eye lotions

  “Home, James,” said Detective Inspector Sloan thankfully as they came out of the Ministry for Overseas Development, “and don’t spare the horses.” Whitehall was no place for a pair of investigating officers.

  He had strapped himself into the passenger seat of the police car before he realised he didn’t really mean what he had said. Getting home quickly was the instinctive reaction of the countryman visiting London, that was all: a sentiment as old as Aesop. He turned to Detective Constable Crosby, who was already in the driving seat and added, “Mind you, that’s not a licence to kill.”

  “With this sort of traffic,” retorted Crosby morosely, “blood pressure’ll be the only thing that kills anyone. Not speed.”

  “A little time to think won’t hurt us.” Sloan was at his most bracing.

  “Won’t do us any good,” said Crosby, insinuating the police car into a moving stream of traffic with a truly urban disregard for other drivers. “That pinstripe wonder didn’t tell us a lot, did he?”

  “Not really.” Police Superintendent Leeyes, who didn’t have a high opinion of either the city or the civil service, would be sitting at his rather more functional desk in Berebury police station waiting to hear how his two minions had got on. Sloan was only too well aware without Crosby’s rubbing it in that there was precious little to tell him.

  “Getting nowhere fast,” pronounced Crosby, “that’s what we’re doing.”

  “It’s not for want of trying, is it?” said Sloan drily. “The fast bit, I mean.”

  Where Crosby appeared to be going fast was an Accident and Emergency Unit. He was engaged in the simultaneous circumnavigation of a London bus and the thwarting of the energetic efforts of a hackney carriage to overtake their car.

  “He’s probably got a fare with a train to catch,” said Sloan absently. They had only got a murderer to catch—no, that had been a Freudian slip. They had caught their murderer, hadn’t they? And Detective Inspector Porritt had arrested her. What they were trying to do was collect evidence—no, that was wrong, too. They had got their evidence, hadn’t they? He took hold of his thoughts. What was it that everyone was shouting about then?

  First, identify the problem: that was what all the good books said.

  Detective Inspector Sloan shrank back in the front passenger seat and tried to put the Law’s problem into words.

  A girl who had chosen to stay silent in Court.

  A rational Sloan reminded himself that a great many accused persons chose not to give evidence at their own trials and that did not seem in any way seriously to upset the balance of the Scales of Justice: it wasn’t all that long ago that they hadn’t even been allowed to—whether or not they wished to.

  “That sword at the Old Bailey,” he said suddenly to an uninterested detective constable at the driving wheel, “isn’t like the Dlasian one.” They’d had a talk once on the history of the Law at one of the courses that Sloan had been sent on. It was funny which bits surfaced from time to time. “It isn’t called the Sword of Life or Death like theirs.”

  Crosby changed the gears down suddenly for a quick spurt of speed.

  “It’s called the Sword of Mercy or Curtana.”

  “Chap I knew,” remarked Crosby laconically, “told me it was pointless.”

  “Hasn’t got a point.” Sloan rephrased the description. Double entendre was all very well in its place but not with Crosby. “It’s blunt.” Perhaps, now he came to think about it, that was better in every way than its being two-edged, like the Dlasian one.

  Life or death, Jeavington had said, hadn’t he?

  And infinitely more merciful for it to be blunt than sharp.

  What he really needed to know was exactly where the Kingdom of Dlasa—whatever sort of sword it used in its symbolism—came into the murder of Kenneth Carline.

  If it did.

  Sloan tried to relax. “There’s probably quite a simple explanation for everything if we did but know,” he said aloud.

  “I don’t know where that truck thinks it’s going,” said Crosby, “but …”

  “Lucy Durmast,” Sloan pressed on sturdily, “might only have wanted to delay her trial until after the Festival of the Departure of the Unfriendly Spirits was safely over.”

  “Shouldn’t be on the road,” said Crosby indignantly as the driver of the truck executed a neat pas de deux with a sports car. The owner of the sports car had youth as well as speed on his side and was soon almost out of sight. “I’d book him if we were in Calleshire …”

  “That,” said Sloan with commendable pertinacity, “would have at least have got her father and Mgongwala off to a good start.”

  “And got William Durmast his gong,” said Crosby, losing interest in the truck.

  “It would be salvaging something,” said Sloan moderately.

  Crosby screwed his neck round, craning to see behind him. They were still leading the taxi by a short head.

  “And account for Lucy Durmast’s silence,” said Sloan.

  Crosby sniffed. “It could be that she isn’t saying anything because she hasn’t anything to say.”

  That had been what Margaret Sloan had said too. Sloan advanced another stray thought that he had had. “I think we can presume,” he said, “that Lucy Durmast isn’t likely to take any action that would injure the firm of Durmast. Quite apart from anything else, she’s got a sizeable stake in it, remember? Her late mother’s holding as well as her own, Inspector Porritt put in his report.”

  “Sacrificing her chances with a jury in a good cause?” Crosby frowned. “Doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Some women,” said Sloan wisely, “will always go in for self-sacrifice. It’s in the nature of the beast or something. You’ve got to watch them.”

  Crosby increased his lead on the taxi before he spoke. “All that about the firm doesn’t go for Kenneth Carline though, does it?”


  “We don’t know,” said Sloan. In his book Lucy Durmast’s considerable holding in the firm was a powerful reason for courting the boss’s daughter, not for getting engaged to someone else. It wasn’t that he was naturally cynical. Once Margaret had dragged him to a performance by the Berebury Amateur Dramatic Society of the play The Heiress by Henry James. The society was affectionately known in the town of Berebury as the BADS and the acting had been far from memorable, but Sloan had never forgotten the message in the play.

  Crosby sniffed. “You’ll always find somebody ready to bite the hand that feeds them.”

  “Industrial espionage is on the increase,” said Sloan less demotically.

  “Someone with a key,” said Crosby, “opened the gate that let the demonstrators in to where the tunnel is.” The taxi-cab had dropped so far behind as not to be a challenge to his thinking.

  “And telephoned to say that the gate would be open …”

  “With the key in the lock on the inside,” Crosby reminded him, “to keep us out.”

  “Quite so,” said Sloan, intrigued by the detective constable’s use of the word “us.” He didn’t usually identify himself with the force at all.

  “But mucking up an opening ceremony in Calleshire is hardly likely to damage a contract in Dlasa, is it, sir?”

  “It might only have been …” began Sloan and then changed his tone as a lightning flash of adrenalin coursed through his system. “Mind that lorry!”

  “Plenty of room,” said Crosby airily.

  Sloan hung on to the shreds of his temper with an almost palpable effort. “Just you remember, Crosby,” he said between gritted teeth, “that it’s not only a car that can be recalled by its maker.”

  “Think they own the road,” said Crosby. “That’s their trouble.”

  “Our trouble,” said Sloan pertinently, “is that we’re not getting anywhere with an investigation that should have been over and done with days ago.”

  “Concrete evidence,” said Crosby, “that’s what we haven’t got, isn’t it?”

  “Yet,” said Sloan.

  “Back to the drawing board?” suggested Crosby. “Do you know, sir, I’d never seen a real drawing board until we went to see that fellow Bolsover. He’s got proper stand-up jobs there in his office.”

  “I daresay he needs them,” said Sloan absently. It was always interesting to trace figures of speech back to their origins. Architects drew standing, didn’t they? Like, according to Vespasian, emperors should die.

  “Don’t know where we’d begin,” said Crosby. “It’s not like a tunnel, is it, where you’ve got two ends.”

  Sloan suspected that even starting a tunnel on paper wasn’t as simple as all that. “Myself,” he said, “in a murder case I like to begin with the body.”

  “It’s all we’ve got anyway, sir, isn’t it?” said Crosby realistically.

  “Very true.” There hadn’t even been an empty bottle of hyoscine around. Inspector Porritt had searched the Old Rectory at Brattle Episcopi for evidence in vain. “Just a body.”

  “Rather a bashed one,” said Crosby, “what with the car accident and all that.”

  “Rugby’s a rough game at the best of times,” murmured Sloan.

  “Yes, sir.” The games of Detective Constable Crosby’s childhood had all been with a round ball. That didn’t mean that they had been any the gentler for it, just different.

  “I suppose, though,” said Sloan, “that what we know about Carline’s last weekend begins there. We’d better check on the match in the local paper …”

  “We know something earlier than that,” said Crosby intelligently. The road fore and aft was momentarily clear and he had nothing else to interest him. “On the Friday afternoon the deceased saw Mr. Bolsover and made another appointment with him for the Monday morning.”

  “So we do.” Sloan hitched his shoulders. “We have a timetable, then. That’ll give us somewhere to start on a new drawing board.” He wondered how many times Trevor Porritt had done this in preparing the case of the Crown v. Lucy Mirabel Durmast.

  “Friday Carline sees the deputy chairman of the firm.”

  “Saturday he plays Rugby,” said Sloan.

  “Sunday he licks his wounds.”

  “Monday he sees Mr. Bolsover again,” said Sloan.

  “Has lunch with the accused …”

  “Crashes his car.”

  “Taken to hospital.”

  “Dies,” said Sloan succinctly.

  “This is the end of Solomon Grundy,” chanted Crosby. “Ah, here’s our road …”

  Detective Inspector Sloan decided to try to exercise mind over matter. He deliberately averted his gaze from the way ahead and considered the alleged murder of Kenneth Carline by Lucy Durmast, it was said for reasons of the heart. He had been taught at the Police Training College that there were five natural emotions: fear, grief, anger, jealousy and love. The man who had done the teaching had appeared to be without any of them—dispassionate, colourless, academic. Most of those who had instructed police officers at their training colleges had seemed like that man and yet he had finished his spiel quite unselfconsciously with something very near to parody. “And the greatest of these,” he had said, “is love.”

  If the murder was for any other reason than love there was a conspicuous absence of visible ill-gotten gains. The balance sheet of William Durmast’s firm had contained nothing exceptional. A careful Trevor Porritt had checked that early on in his investigation. Inspector Porritt had been a thorough, painstaking officer who hadn’t, as far as he could see, overlooked anything that he, Sloan, could think of. And much good being a thorough, painstaking officer had done the poor chap. Sloan bet that Porritt had never dreamt when he went on duty the day of his accident that it was going to be his last in the Force. What was it that the cynics said—the worst case is never envisaged and always encountered.

  He tightened his lips subconsciously. Now he was beginning to think like Superintendent Leeyes. That would never do. And yet it was perhaps just this very capacity for looking on the black side that separated the men from the boys. He pulled his thoughts together with a jerk, determined not to let a natural pessimism triumph.

  All that was wrong, he told himself firmly, was that there were too many unknown factors in this particular equation which equalled murder. His old maths master would have said “Let x equal the number you don’t know” and gone on in his gentle, persuasive way to reason how letting that x equal the unknown factor and y and z represent what you did know, you could work out the value of x in a trice.

  Only this time he didn’t know what y and z were equal to either, and since they, too, were unknown he couldn’t even begin on his equation. Not that he was a mathematician anyway—innumerate, the maths master had called him on his school report. Gentle the teacher might have been, but there were no untruths in mathematics and he saw no reason for equivocation in his comments to Sloan’s father. He’d been right, of course. Even now only Imperial measures really meant anything to Sloan in his mind’s eye. It would be all right for those youngsters who had been brought up on the metric system alone—a sort of reverse of “those who only England know …”

  Perhaps they should be going back to an abacus rather than a drawing board, and yet if money had come into murder, he, Sloan, professional policeman, was blessed if he could see where. True, Ronald Bolsover and Kenneth Carline had been on their way to the Palgrave Tunnel to discuss the handing over of the last of their retention fee to the contractors—Clopton’s—for the construction of the tunnel when Carline had come to grief, but a meticulous Trevor Porritt had even checked that out. All the fees had been paid and the completed works duly handed over to the County Surveyor on schedule and the Department of Transport so informed so that it could do its share of the funding.

  “It’s a pity there’s so little in the way of circumstantial evidence,” he heard himself saying aloud to the detective constable at his side.

  “For or again
st?”

  “That’s an interesting point,” he said gravely.

  “There’s that powerfully flavoured stuff Lucy Durmast served him up with,” said Crosby, blissfully untroubled by the pedantic positioning of prepositions. “Why did she bother if she hadn’t got something to hide?”

  “Alimentary, my dear Watson …” Sloan allowed himself a measure of unaccustomed latitude.

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Nothing.”

  Crosby swung the steering wheel over and took the fork in the road that would lead them back in due course to the County of Calleshire, and said “Lucy is short for Lucretia.”

  “I am well aware of that, thank you, Crosby.” He turned his attention back to the road ahead. “But if I may say so, it is not a particularly helpful remark at this juncture.”

  “Sorry, sir.” The constable straightened up the wheel.

  Detective Inspector Sloan, too, sensed that the city was behind them. He put his notebook into his brief-case. Country mice they might be, but there was no doubt that the city didn’t have the solution to their problem.

  Whether the African continent did was another matter entirely.

  Crosby shared the sentiment. “Funny, sir, though all the same, that fellow Prince Aturu disappearing just when he did.”

  Sloan couldn’t see where Prince Aturu or his departure fitted into the picture at all and said so.

  “Perhaps he was afraid he would be the next to die,” rejoined the constable, his foot resuming the accelerator.

  In spite of their fears, in the event it wasn’t Prince Aturu, son of King Thabile the Third of Dlasa, who was the next to die, nor even Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Berebury Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary, unhappy passenger in a fast car.

  The first inkling that Sloan had that somebody else might have done so though was when Detective Constable Crosby swung their car into the car park behind the Police Station at Berebury. It was unusually crowded, and standing in the middle of the yard, causing even greater congestion, was the caravan that served variously as an information office, mobile rest room and murder van.