Stiff News

by Catherine Aird

  ‘That’s been done before, too,’ said Sloan. ‘But not often. Talking of which, Crosby, we had better get started on looking for this elusive second husband of hers.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The constable paused and then asked, ‘How?’

  ‘Ask the Registrar General’s Office to forget about its being their weekend and please to do a search for the record of a marriage probably in Egypt between the two dates we know about … and quickly.’

  Crosby’s pencil hovered above his notebook. ‘Which two dates, sir?’

  Sloan sighed. ‘The death of Donald Tulloch and the deceased’s marriage to Hubert Powell.’

  ‘When she called herself Smith?’

  ‘It’s still the commonest surname in Scotland,’ Sloan assured him. ‘Now, how did you get on with the Pragmatic Sanction?’

  The detective constable scowled. ‘Badly.’ He read aloud from his notebook. ‘The first were decrees issued by Kings of France restricting the rights of the Pope and making some of them subject to the jurisdiction of the king.’

  ‘I can’t see myself exactly what that could have to do with the Manor at Almstone.’ He frowned. ‘But go on.’

  ‘And the next one was signed in 1713 by Emperor Charles VI.’ He consulted his notes. ‘It was a sort of will leaving everything to his eldest son first, failing whom his eldest daughter, and then to his deceased brother’s daughters.’

  ‘Sounds to me,’ said Sloan, who’d attended the Family Division of the Courts in his day, ‘as if he’d wanted to cut someone out.’ He frowned. ‘That might be very relevant indeed to events at the Manor.’

  ‘The history book,’ Crosby ploughed on, ‘said he’d wanted to hand down an undivided heritage.’

  ‘So might that,’ said Sloan. It had been, after all, the late Gertrude Powell who had used the term.

  ‘But it didn’t work.’

  ‘No?’

  Crosby went back to his notebook. ‘Led to the War of the Austrian Succession. Then…’

  ‘There were more?’

  ‘Sort of. King Ferdinand of Spain revoked the Salic Law of Succession in 1830.’

  The Salic Law was something from Sloan’s own history lessons that had stuck. Or very nearly. Under Salic law, wives, he remembered, could not inherit from their husbands.

  Crosby had encountered another part of it. ‘That, sir, was permitting an unborn child to succeed even if female.’

  ‘Any minute now, Crosby, you’ll be making out a case for feminism.’

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘Nothing. Go on.’

  ‘Actually Charles IV had already decided on all this in 1789 when he restored the Act abr– abrogated in 1713.’

  ‘It means annul,’ said Sloan, wondering if there might be a connection there, too, with recent events at the Manor at Almstone.

  ‘But,’ went on Crosby, ‘Charles hadn’t told anyone he’d done it.’

  It had been another King Charles and a quite different secret treaty that Sloan had been taught about at school. That was Charles II of England and the secret treaty and the camouflage treaty he had signed at Dover in 1670. A secret arrangement of some sort might have quite a lot to do with the deceased at Almstone. And so might camouflage. But which was secret and which was camouflage was something else.

  ‘That,’ finished Crosby conscientiously, ‘led to the Wars of the Supporters of Don Carlos.’

  ‘What I want to know, Crosby,’ said Sloan, slapping his notebook shut, ‘is exactly where that leaves us at the Manor.’

  But answer came there none.

  * * *

  Ned Carruthers arrived at the Manor at half-past eleven and swept into his mother’s room armed with a large bunch of flowers.

  ‘Stella sends her love,’ he lied, presenting Maisie with a considerable bouquet of scent and colour.

  ‘How kind,’ said Maisie ambiguously.

  Ned pulled a chair up beside his mother’s bed, responded to her perfunctory enquiries about her daughter-in-law with more lies, and then asked her how she had been getting on.

  ‘The food’s not what I’m used to,’ she said. That was technically true – the tea and toast on which she had been subsisting before her accident didn’t compare with Lisa Haines’ best efforts. ‘And the bed’s too hard.’

  He bent forward to examine it. ‘I’m sure something can be done about that.’

  ‘My hip still hurts, too,’ she said, pulling the bedclothes tightly around her lest he offer to inspect that as well.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, forbearing to make any comment on her newly waved hair and remarkably alert mien. ‘Are they giving you anything for it?’

  ‘Tablets,’ she said scornfully. ‘Tablets and more tablets.’

  ‘You may feel better when you’ve settled down.’ Ned always advised his landscaping clients that plants and soil needed time to settle.

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ she responded tartly. ‘You haven’t been condemned to live here for the rest of your life like I have.’

  Her son wriggled uneasily in his chair. ‘You shouldn’t say that, Mummy. It isn’t a prison sentence.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ she shot back.

  ‘No, Mummy, it certainly is not.’

  ‘No?’ She pursed her lips and appeared to consider the matter. ‘No, perhaps not. Perhaps it’s more of a death sentence.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t a death sentence. You shouldn’t talk like that.’

  ‘For the crime of being old.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s a big change coming to a place like this. That’s all. You must expect it to take time to get used to.’ Ned’s clients were always told that they – like the plants – would need to become accustomed to the changes he had wrought on their land.

  ‘Moreover,’ she said, ignoring his platitudes with practised ease, ‘it’s no joke giving up one’s independence.’

  ‘You’ve still got an independent mind, Mummy. They can’t take that away from you.’

  Maisie Carruthers gave a satisfied nod. ‘That’s true. They can’t stop me thinking what I want to think.’

  ‘I should hope not. Have you,’ he ventured carefully, ‘happened to come across any old friends here yet?’

  A guarded look came over her face. ‘Not friends exactly. More what I’d call people I’ve known from way back.’

  ‘What about Peter Markyate?’

  ‘He hasn’t changed. Once a bumbler, always a bumbler.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d recognize him now if I saw him,’ said Ned Carruthers, drifting as usual towards the window, the better to see the Manor’s grounds. ‘I’m wondering if there’s an old ha-ha out there.’

  ‘Plenty of those in here,’ said his mother ungraciously. ‘It’s what the men actually say when they’ve forgotten what it was they were going to say in the first place. Old fools.’

  But Ned wasn’t listening. ‘Do you know, Mummy, I think the Manor could have been built on an ancient moated site. Now, that would be really interesting…’

  ‘Would it?’ she said drily.

  He turned his head in another direction. ‘I say, I think something must be happening outside here.’

  ‘What?’ She struggled up from her pillows. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the garden over to the left.’

  ‘That’s what they call the hither green,’ said Maisie. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘Then,’ said Ned abstractedly, his attention engaged by what he was looking at, ‘ten to one there’ll be a thither one beyond.’

  ‘Never mind that. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Half the staff are out there rushing about…’

  The tight bedclothes on his mother’s bed were cast aside with unexpected energy as she reached for her stick and hirpled vigorously across the bedroom floor, all pretence of immobility gone.

  ‘Here, let me see,’ she said, elbowing Ned out of the way.

  ‘And look,’ Ned pointed, ‘there’s a police car turning into the drive.’ />
  ‘What are all those people doing in the bushes?’

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Ned, ‘they’re looking for someone.’

  ‘But who?’ asked his mother urgently. ‘That’s what matters. Don’t you realize that?’

  * * *

  It wasn’t Judge Gillespie. Hazel Finch had spent half the morning attending to him. It hadn’t been easy work, either.

  ‘You’re all to pieces today, Judge,’ she complained. ‘I don’t know why you’re so shaky, I’m sure.’

  The Judge’s tremor, always present, was now very pronounced indeed.

  ‘You’d better let me shave you,’ said Hazel. ‘Next thing we know you’ll be cutting your throat.’

  ‘Or having it cut for me,’ he piped. His voice was now the childish treble of Shakespeare’s seventh age of man.

  ‘You shouldn’t talk like that,’ Hazel reproved him, shocked. ‘Who’d ever want to do such a thing?’

  The old man didn’t answer her. Instead he said, ‘Hazel, will you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course I will, Judge.’ She paused. ‘As long as it isn’t posting letters after you’ve gone. Mite of trouble that seems to have caused.’

  ‘Nothing like that, m’dear, I promise you.’ Through ancient teeth, he achieved the parody of a grimace. ‘No, all I want you to do when you go home today is to take my torch down to Mr Mason’s in the village. It needs new batteries and he’ll put them in for me. Tell him to keep the torch until I call for it – I’ll soon be out and about again. I’m much better already.’

  ‘I could bring you the batteries myself, Monday,’ offered Hazel, ‘if you like.’

  Judge Gillespie bestowed on her the kindly smile that had misled many a barrister in his time. ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, m’dear, but if there’s one thing that a long life has taught me it’s that women and electricity don’t mix.’ He essayed a wheezy chuckle. ‘My late wife was always asking where it went when you took the plug out.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ said Hazel, who wasn’t at all sure either where electricity went when you weren’t using it. ‘I expect Mrs Gillespie was good at other things.’ One of the tenets of good care that all the staff of the Manor had had instilled in them by the well-trained and conscientious Muriel Peden was the importance of encouraging the residents to talk about their deceased spouses when the opportunity arose. ‘Did she do the flowers?’ The care assistant’s idea of the leisured woman was one who always had time to spend doing the flowers.

  ‘What? Oh, yes…’ he said vaguely, submitting to a warm towel and a shaving brush. ‘She always did them very well.’

  ‘Now keep still,’ adjured Hazel. ‘After all that I don’t want to be the one who cuts you.’

  Judge Gillespie suddenly became very meek.

  Hazel was still struggling to get him dressed when she was sent for to join a search party.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Then boast no more your mighty deeds

  The message from the Manor had reached Sloan and Crosby at the police station. It had come from Matron herself by telephone.

  She had sounded concerned but not over-anxious – one professional conveying information to another professional in as neutral a way as possible. And in diminutives when she could.

  ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you at this stage in the ordinary way,’ Muriel Peden began apologetically, ‘but…’ The end of the sentence dangled, unspoken, in the air.

  ‘Quite so.’ Detective Inspector Sloan’s agreement was tacit. Whatever it was that was going on at the Manor was not ordinary, he was already convinced about that. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s Mrs McBeath.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She isn’t in her room.’

  ‘Should she be there in the middle of the morning?’ Policemen could play at this game of being laid-back as well as nurses.

  ‘Not necessarily, but…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But more importantly,’ Muriel Peden audibly drew in her breath, ‘I understand she didn’t come down to breakfast this morning.’

  ‘When do you check the rooms?’

  He got an oblique answer from the Matron. ‘Most of our residents like a cup of tea first thing.’

  ‘First thing?’ queried Sloan sharply. That timing would be too imprecise for Superintendent Leeyes for a start.

  ‘Early,’ she said defensively. ‘Old people don’t sleep well, that is unless—’

  ‘Unless?’ he interrupted her again. The word ‘early’ wasn’t exactly pinpointing the time either.

  ‘Unless they’re on sleeping tablets.’

  ‘Ah! Who doles out their tablets?’ He checked himself. He should have asked who administered them but ‘doling out’ seemed to be the order of the day in the medicated world of today.

  ‘We do. The nursing staff, that is. But Mrs McBeath…’

  Sloan made a mental note. That was definitely something he should have thought through before: that all the medicines at the Manor would be kept together in one place. Under lock and key, no doubt, but every policeman learned early that love wasn’t the only thing that laughed at locksmiths. Murderers did, too.

  ‘But Mrs McBeath…’

  ‘But Mrs McBeath doesn’t take them.’

  ‘She sleeps well?’

  ‘She sleeps badly,’ explained Muriel Peden awkwardly, ‘but she won’t take any medication for it. Got quite upset when it was suggested.’

  Sloan made another mental note. ‘So when do you check the room?’ he asked again.

  ‘We don’t.’

  Sloan ground his teeth. That was something else the Superintendent would not like.

  ‘At least,’ hurried on the Matron, ‘not Mrs McBeath’s room. Some, but not hers. She likes to be left undisturbed, so if she’s had a bad night, she may sleep on.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So when she didn’t appear by coffee-time one of the girls went up to check that she was all right.’

  ‘And she wasn’t there?’ Sloan motioned to Detective Constable Crosby to start to get ready for the road.

  ‘Her room was empty.’ The Matron swallowed. ‘And so we don’t know whether she’s all right or not.’

  ‘Bed slept in?’ If parameters of time could not be got one way, then they would have to be got another – Superintendent Leeyes would pretty soon be playing the blame game if not.

  ‘Oh, yes, but I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan had already reached the conclusion that nothing at the Manor was simple any more than it was ordinary. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Since we’ve started looking for her several residents have told us they’d seen her pacing up and down in the grounds all morning looking distinctly agitated.’

  ‘But you can’t find her there?’ Sloan was on his feet now.

  ‘Not anywhere,’ said Muriel Peden tightly.

  * * *

  ‘Well?’ demanded Mrs Carruthers, deeply regretting her earlier decision to stay in bed that morning. She had straight away despatched her son downstairs to find out what had been going on in the garden and Ned had now come back to her room. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she said as he stayed silent.

  ‘No, Mummy.’

  ‘Then tell me who it is they are all looking for out there.’

  ‘Someone called Mrs McBeath,’ Ned said unwillingly. He had positioned himself just inside the bedroom, his back to the door.

  ‘Mrs McBeath?’ His mother sat straight up in her bed. ‘Little Morag McBeath?’

  ‘You may not know her,’ murmured Ned hopefully.

  ‘Of course I know her.’

  ‘She’s gone missing.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I expect she wandered off alone.’

  Maisie glared at him. ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Probably getting a bit old and all that,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘She had all her wits yesterday. Nobody could have called her doi
ted then,’ she sniffed, ‘which is more than you can say for some folk around here.’

  Ned stiffened himself against the back of the door. ‘I’m afraid they can’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘Afraid?’ Maisie Carruthers turned her head away and looked towards the window, an unfathomable expression on her face. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That they’re very worried that something might have happened to her.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He said, ‘It’s the police who are worried.’

  Mrs Carruthers let her head sink gently downwards on to her chest. Ned couldn’t see his mother’s face at all now.

  ‘They’ve just arrived from Berebury,’ he ventured, wondering if Mrs McBeath might have collapsed in the garden. Dying in a garden when his time came was all he ever asked for himself, although he was enough of a professional to know that a garden was as much of a hell’s half-acre as anywhere else. ‘It’s a good place to go, a garden, if you have to,’ he went on lightly.

  ‘Alone?’ she said drily. ‘And afraid?’

  ‘No, perhaps it’s not good to go alone,’ he conceded, wondering if this was what she had really meant. ‘But,’ he produced his favourite quotation, always very popular with lady garden-lovers of a certain age, ‘“A garden is a lovesome thing. God wot!”’ He didn’t believe it himself, of course. Plant, insect, rodent and bird carried on their struggles for survival in a garden just as they – and everything else – did everywhere else in the world.

  Man, too, sometimes. And woman.

  ‘How long has she been missing?’ his mother asked presently.

  ‘Since she was seen in the garden this morning.’

  ‘Ah…’ Maisie’s expression was quite inscrutable. ‘It’s like that, is it?’

  ‘We’ve all got to stay in our rooms until they’ve interviewed everyone.’ Ned Carruthers was something of a garden historian as well as a landscape designer but this was not the moment for his celebrated little lecture on the wild man of the garden. The hermit had been in his grotto there to remind the visitor that evil – in the shape of a wild man – lurked at the bottom of the garden, that there was always danger there.

  ‘Even us?’

  Ned nodded. ‘Even us. We’ve got to stay here until they come.’ The lineal descendant of the hermit in his grotto was the fear of seeing something nasty in the woodshed – and quite probably the Mr McGregor who had so frightened Peter Rabbit …