The Body Politic

by Catherine Aird

  Leeyes grunted. “He can’t do a lot of harm doing that, I suppose.”

  “What is happening to those two Members of Parliament in the way of threats and so forth can’t be coincidence. I’m sure of that.”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence in police work,” pronounced Leeyes didactically. “I’ve told you that before, Sloan.”

  “So you have, sir.” He hoped that the Superintendent would treat the remark as fact and not insubordination: he, Christopher Dennis Sloan, had his pension and a wife and son to think about. He hurried on. “They do, of course, belong to two different—two opposing—parties.”

  “That could be a blind, Sloan.” Someone had once tried to explain the work of a true agent provocateur to the Superintendent and the concept had left its mark. “Just you watch it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Grimly, he stuck to the point. “Neither Member of Parliament would appear to have felt really threatened or,” he added fairly, “at least, if they have, they haven’t acted running scared.”

  Leeyes sniffed. “Wouldn’t do anything for their precious public images if they did, would it? Mind you, Sloan, if you ask me, half the electorate would vote for a dead ferret if it was wearing the right party colours.”

  “Quite so, sir.” The History Man at Sloan’s school had spent an unconscionable amount of teaching time on the passing of Lord Grey’s Reform Bill of 1832. Even at this distance in time Sloan could see that the Bill couldn’t have had an easy passage. Nothing, for instance, would have made a reformer out of Police Superintendent Leeyes.

  “No representation without taxation, that’s what I say, Sloan.”

  “Yes, sir.” With the Boston Tea Party it had been the other way round, hadn’t it?

  “Mob rule,” said Leeyes flatly. “That’s what democracy is.”

  “I agree, sir, that it’s what the word means,” conceded Sloan. The Superintendent’s brief attendance at an evening class on Parliamentary Government had ended abruptly with a “him or me” ultimatum from the tutor. Sloan swept on as quickly as he could: “Talking of political parties, sir, we’ve also checked out the neighbouring constituencies to East and West Calleshire in case they were having problems.”

  “Well?”

  “Nobody threatened by anything worse than bad weather for their summer fêtes.”

  “So it’s just our problem?” It didn’t take too much to make the Superintendent feel hard done by.

  “I’m afraid so, sir.” Sloan glanced down at his notebook and said briskly, “I’ve also instituted a check of Calleshire and London theatrical costumiers.”

  “Death for hire?” intoned Leeyes morbidly.

  “In a manner of speaking, sir. He must have got his clothes from somewhere. From Major Puiver’s description, and Bertram Rauly’s too, it sounded more of a professional job than the fancy dress that Miss Finch—she’s the Wardrobe Mistress of Camulos Society, sir, if you remember—had cobbled together for everyone else.”

  “Wardrobe Mistress!” exclaimed Superintendent Leeyes. “Pah!”

  “And I’m awaiting the Forensic Science Laboratory’s report on the last threatening letter sent to Ted Sheard.”

  “At least they had the sense to keep that one.”

  Sloan coughed. “I understand, sir, that—er—stylistically all the letters would seem to have come from the same stable.”

  “Forensic over-reaching themselves as usual, I expect,” said Leeyes uncharitably. “They never know when to stop.”

  “The report,” ventured Sloan, “that all the letters were signed by drawings of the signs of the Zodiac may have influenced them.”

  “Kids’ stuff,” commented Leeyes richly.

  “Those to Corbishley were addressed to Capricorn and signed Sagittarius and Sheard’s to Taurus and signed Scorpio.”

  “Someone,” said Leeyes, his head coming up like a foxhound scenting quarry, “has been reading their Rudyard Kipling.”

  “Sir?” Sloan suppressed a sigh. They had all hoped that the Superintendent had got his course on “Kipling—The Man and the Writer” out of his system by now.

  “One of his strangest stories, Sloan, in which the Archer Kills the Goat and the Scorpion the Bull, is called ‘The Children of the Zodiac.’ Very difficult to understand, it was, although I told the lecturer——”

  “I’m afraid,” said Sloan, “the fact that this last letter was received after Alan Ottershaw died may indicate that the whole business of the attempted intimidation of the two Members of Parliament is unconnected with his death.”

  “Or it may not,” retorted Leeyes unhelpfully. “Especially if this chap Sheard’s being on the Parliamentary Select Committee looking into the purchasing arrangements for queremitte comes into it.”

  “I was coming to that, sir.” Sloan looked up. “Is there any chance of our finding out?”

  Leeyes’ hollow laughter echoed round his office. “You’ll be a better man than most, Gunga Din, if you can do that while they’re still sitting. Unless you go and listen to the evidence yourself. You should know by now, Sloan, that Select Committees are creatures of procedure.”

  “But——”

  “—and power.” Leeyes grimaced. “Power to send for persons, papers and records if they want ’em. You thought only the courts could do that, Sloan, didn’t you?”

  Sloan hadn’t thought about that at all.

  “Well, Parliament’s the highest court of all the land and don’t you forget it.”

  “No, sir.”

  Leeyes grunted. “And a Parliamentary Select Committee’s got the right—right, mind you, Sloan—to summon any British subject and make him cease his proper employment and come posting up to Westminster to give evidence before them.”

  “So …”

  “All that matters to the House of Commons,” said Leeyes, who had always taken the view that Guy Fawkes was a much maligned man, “is what the Select Committee says in their Report and if you can get a squeak out of anyone before it’s published I’d be very surprised.” He sniffed. “No precedent for it or something. But,” he added graciously, “don’t let me stop you trying.”

  “No, sir,” said Sloan stolidly.

  “What about the other Member? Peter Corbishley. Is there any connection between him and this precious metal?”

  “It’s not a prec——” began Sloan, and stopped. He thought precious metals were something else but couldn’t be sure.

  Not now.

  Not here.

  For all he knew, queremitte was something to be valued above rubies.

  Like a virtuous woman.

  “The Government’s carrying on as if it is,” said Leeyes unanswerably. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be wanting to know why the Ministry of Defence Procurement is spending so much money on the stuff, would they?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And what about a link with queremitte and Corbishley?”

  “None that we have been able to establish,” said Sloan, adding for safety’s sake, “at this stage.”

  “If there’s one profession worse than the Law for hedging its bets, Sloan, it’s politics. Don’t talk like either.”

  “No, sir.” Sloan looked down at his notebook again. “I’ve also arranged for Constable Turton at Mellamby to start checking out whether anyone in the village there recognises the photograph of Hamer Morenci. If he was really there on the day of the re-enactment as well as at the funeral, then it may be relevant.”

  Leeyes asked, “Did they sound the Last Post?”

  “Not that I heard,” responded Sloan repressively. The funeral service at Mellamby Church had been for Alan John Ottershaw, who had died in the Berebury and District General Hospital, and not for William de Wilton, Knight of the Shire, who had been slain on the battlefield of Lewes in 1264: but he did not say so. Thus reminded of something else, he said, “I have at last been able to make an appointment with the young doctor who treated Ottershaw in the Berebury Hospital. He’s moved on to another area.” />
  “Hoping he’ll have something useful for you, are you, Sloan?” Like the late George Bernard Shaw, the Superintendent considered all professions a conspiracy against the laity.

  Sloan took the question seriously. “Not really, sir. He thought Ottershaw had had a heart attack, treated him for one, and then certified that he’d died from one.”

  “Three bags full, eh?” Superintendent Leeyes scowled.

  “And so did the Mellamby general practitioner, Dr. Lyulph.”

  “Game, set, and match,” said Leeyes, “if you’d rather put it that way.”

  “I’ve also arranged to see the Dapifer——” Not liking his superior officer’s expression, Sloan hurried on. “He was acting as a sort of steward the day Ottershaw died. Someone—but he can’t remember who—was very anxious to know exactly whereabouts at the feast after the battle Bertram Rauly would be sitting. Kept on asking, he did. The Dapifer’s trying hard to remember who it was.”

  Superintendent Leeyes sniffed.

  “And,” Detective Inspector Sloan produced a paper that had been lying on his desk when he got back to the Police Station, “we’ve had the report from the Scientific Laboratory on Ottershaw’s clothing.”

  The Superintendent jerked his head up. “His costume, you mean.”

  “The material,” said Sloan steadily, “had numerous superficial slashes visible to the naked eye.”

  “The sword-fight.”

  “But the fibres of the garment show clear evidence of having been penetrated with some force by something small in the region of the left chest.”

  “Makes a change, doesn’t it, Sloan,” said the Superintendent gratuitously, “getting something useful out of the scientists?”

  A telephone on the Superintendent’s desk rang before Sloan could reply to this. The senior policeman snatched at it and snapped down the line, “I thought I said I wasn’t to be disturbed … What? What? What!” His normally ruddy complexion turned slowly to the choleric. “What’s that?”

  Someone on the other end of the line must have spoken in reply.

  “What did you say?” The Superintendent’s voice developed into a rising crescendo of disbelief.

  The other person must have repeated the message.

  That it was unwelcome was obvious even to a bystander like Sloan. An undefinable emotion suffused Superintendent Leeyes’ face. Sloan thought it might be incredulity. Or anger.

  “Say that again!” commanded Leeyes.

  Something elusive in Shakespeare about news being thrice unwelcome hovered about at the back of Sloan’s mind. But not for long.

  The Superintendent slammed the telephone back into its cradle. “That was Turton.”

  “From Mellamby?” Sloan was already on his feet.

  “There’s been another fall of stone from the tower of the old Motte.”

  “And?” Sloan had his hand on the door-knob now. The Superintendent would never have been as excited as this just about medieval stonework. He knew that.

  “And there’s a body underneath it.”

  SEVENTEEN

  And the Love of Dearest Friends Grows Small

  If Detective Constable Crosby could have been said to have made good speed the last time he had driven from Mellamby to Berebury, it would have been grammatically correct to say that he made excellent speed back there. But the statement would not have done justice to the manner in which he accomplished the return journey to the village.

  The Constable gave a virtuoso performance at the wheel, elevating the taking of a left-hand turning without losing speed to something approaching an art form. Any professional driver seeing Crosby’s car going into a right-hand bend without either cutting the corner or losing momentum would have unhesitatingly awarded him an alpha plus.

  Detective Inspector Sloan paid the Constable the supreme compliment of not giving his driving any attention at all.

  True, he was hunched forward in the passenger seat and his eyes were apparently staring at the road ahead: but this was a case of appearances being deceptive. Detective Inspector Sloan’s mind was fixed elsewhere.

  On the fact, principally, that Constable Turton’s message to the Berebury Police Station hadn’t included a name.

  To his alarm it soon became apparent that Detective Constable Crosby’s mind wasn’t entirely on the road either.

  “Just as well I’d got back to the station, sir, wasn’t it, before Colin Turton rang in,” he said, sailing the car effortlessly past a juggernaut lorry. “Wouldn’t have wanted you to have had to have another driver. Not when you needed a fast run.”

  Sloan hastily expressed his appreciation of the fact that Crosby had been available and immediately resumed his private contemplation of Constable Turton’s message. Not only had it not included a name but it hadn’t mentioned a gender either.

  “There was plenty of everything at that funny farm place, sir,” said Crosby, sending the police car skimming over a hump-back bridge at a speed that did its suspension no good.

  “What funny farm?” asked Sloan absently, his mind still dwelling on what they might find at Mellamby Motte.

  “Toad Hall, sir. That reptile aquarium over at Almstone. You name it and, if it’s got scales, then they’ve got it. Starting with snakes and dangerous fish.”

  Sloan had almost forgotten Crosby’s foray in search of sources of venomous substances that could bring about heart failure in human beings. With a real effort he wrenched his mind away from what might await them at Mellamby and back to sting-rays and suchlike creatures.

  “With the research institute over at Pletchford, sir, it’s frogs,” said Crosby, starting to overtake a parked delivery van while not giving an oncoming double-decker bus the benefit of doubt. “They’re into them in a big way.”

  Detective Inspector Sloan shut his eyes and for one blessed moment took his mind off murder, Mellamby, and marine animals and thought instead about his wife and son. If Crosby went on at this rate he might never see either of them again …

  “But the Biology Laboratory at the University beats both of them hollow,” said Crosby succinctly. “It’s got everything including the poisonous hawksbill turtle.”

  “Scorpions?” said Sloan in what he hoped were his usual level tones. When he had opened his eyes again the bus was nowhere to be seen.

  “Them, too,” said Crosby, deftly skirting a group of bicyclists. “And mice. Thousands and thousands of them. For their experiments, they said.”

  Just at this moment Sloan found it difficult to consider an ordered world in which calm experiment was possible.

  “Nearly there, sir,” said Crosby equably. A model of co-ordination, he was a man in his element now, handling the supercharged police car with all the tenderness and intimate understanding of a lover. Man and machine became one as he slid the vehicle round the last bend into the village: to the marriage of such true minds Sloan was all in favour of the non-admission of impediments and he kept silent for the rest of the journey.

  That there had been a fatality at the foot of the Mellamby Motte was obvious to Detective Inspector Sloan even from a distance. A quick tour d’horizon with his eye told him so. There was that about the grouping of the figures in the scene that could only betoken a death.

  There were well-established laws of bystander activity in the case of assault—the more people there were about the less likely it was that any of them would come to the aid of the victim. There was, as usual, a converse to this law, too. A law of bystander inactivity which could almost always be invoked when someone had died and which bore no relation at all to the number of spectators. It related to an unnatural stillness—a sort of involuntary inanition—which always seemed to set in.

  In fact the scene which greeted the two policemen as they approached the foot of the ruined tower could have been a tableau vivant but for one thing. A foot. There was nothing vivant about the foot.

  It was sticking out from under some stones at a wholly unnatural angle, and Sloan, for one, was
in no doubt at all that it belonged to a dead man. Nor was Dr. Brian Lyulph.

  As if responding to an unseen theatrical direction the figures in the tableau vivant all moved a little when the two police newcomers reached the foot of the tower.

  The doctor spoke. “There is no tibial or dorsal pedal pulse palpable, Inspector,” he said. “I don’t think even a Doppler monitor would elicit one either, and I have told Constable Turton so.”

  Sloan jerked his head, unsurprised.

  “And from what we can make out there’s no doubt that he’s dead.”

  It wasn’t, Sloan was sure, so much the Royal “we” that Dr. Lyulph was using; it was more a token acknowledgement of the presence at the scene of two veterinary surgeons and a one-time soldier.

  Old Andrew Rebble pointed to the fallen masonry. “One of those lumps of stone would have been enough to kill a man, let alone the load that’s come down on him.”

  Detective Inspector Sloan’s gaze travelled from the dead man’s foot to what he could see of the rest of him. He was quite sure that Sherlock Holmes could have deduced all he needed to know from a solitary shoe, but he, Sloan, didn’t have time for that. All he could tell was that the shoe was laced and had once been highly polished.

  Adrian Dungey said, “I started to try to lift some of the stuff off him but I stopped when I saw his fingers. They were dead white.” The younger vet’s hands were indeed scratched and dusty.

  Police Constable Turton put in a comment that might have been a criticism too. “Very dangerous, that was, sir, until we know the tower is safe. For all you knew there might have been more wall to come down.”

  “The first rule of first aid,” quoted Detective Constable Crosby with apparent consequence, “is to remove the patient from danger or danger from the patient.”

  As if with one accord every man there looked upwards at the ancient tower.

  “I daresay he never knew what hit him,” said Bertram Rauly gruffly. “A man wouldn’t have stood a chance under all that.”

  “Not if he didn’t see it coming,” qualified Rebble.

  “He wouldn’t have done—not with this rough ground,” said Dungey. “His head would have been down.”