A Going Concern

by Catherine Aird

  ‘I’m pursuing police enquiries, that’s what I’m doing, Tod Morton, and I’d be obliged for your assistance.’

  ‘Pursue away,’ invited Tod amiably.

  ‘We’re just checking on the particulars of that girl, name of Baskerville, who was seen at the Grange at Great Primer by the rector last Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Well, we haven’t found her yet,’ said Crosby naïvely, ‘and we’d rather like to talk to her.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘There’s no call for you to take that line with me, Tod Morton,’ said Crosby, stung. ‘She may have no connection at all with our enquiries.’

  ‘What enquiries?’ said Tod blandly.

  ‘Never you mind,’ retorted Crosby importantly. ‘What I want to know is can you add anything to what you told us Saturday?’

  Tod screwed up his face in recollection. ‘No, ’fraid not.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘’Bout twenty-five, give or take a year or two.’

  ‘Height?’ asked Crosby, taking out his notebook. ‘What would you say?’

  ‘Five foot six inches.’

  ‘Sure?’

  The undertaker grinned. ‘Height’s the one thing I’m always sure about.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Dead sure. Get it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, well, you can take it from me that the girl was five six.’

  ‘How do you kn –’

  ‘And,’ said Tod, eyeing the young detective constable appraisingly, ‘you’re five foot eleven and a half, aren’t you?’

  Crosby’s head came up with a jerk. ‘I’m regulation police height …’

  ‘In your stockinged feet,’ added Tod.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed …’

  ‘Practice makes perfect,’ said Tod modestly, adding, ‘I could do you a coffin straight off the shelf, too, if you wanted one, but I’ll give you a cup of tea instead. Come along indoors with me.’ He led the way towards the building. Over his shoulder he said: ‘Have you heard about the seven-foot man in Calleford that they can’t bury?’

  ‘No,’ said Crosby. ‘Why can’t they bury him, then?’

  ‘Because he’s not dead.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan hunched his shoulders forward in the passenger seat of the police car – always a sign that he was thinking hard – as Crosby slipped the vehicle through the late afternoon town traffic and headed for Great Primer.

  ‘Dr Aldus is meeting us out there, Crosby,’ Sloan said.

  ‘Why he?’ responded Crosby demotically.

  ‘Inspector Harpe tells me he’s heard that the good doctor could do with his legacy.’

  ‘Wine, women, or song?’ asked the detective constable.

  ‘None of those,’ said Sloan. ‘We get the doctors who drink, remember, the General Medical Council gets those that go in for women, and there can’t be a lot of song in a place like Great Primer, can there?’

  ‘Gee-gees, then?’ said Crosby. ‘Slow horses instead of fast ladies?’

  ‘That’s what I’m told,’ said Sloan.

  ‘It’s not a crime.’

  ‘Much more expensive though.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d like us to be there first.’

  He needn’t have worried – and he knew he needn’t have worried – about that. Whilst Crosby took the little country lanes as fast as he dared Sloan gave his mind to what he now knew to be a case of murder. Murder cleverly executed by some person or persons unknown using unusual expertise, which, had the victim not been on the alert, would have stood a very good chance of going undetected.

  ‘We’d just like to run over one or two points again in connection with Mrs Octavia Garamond’s murder,’ Sloan said to Dr Aldus without preamble, ‘with you here on the spot.’

  He’d had the general practitioner summoned out to the Grange at Great Primer for several reasons, not the least of which was that in his own consulting room it was the doctor who was behind the desk. All three were now standing in the deceased’s bedroom.

  ‘Murder?’ Aldus certainly looked startled enough. ‘How was she murdered?’

  ‘Now, I was rather hoping that you’d be able to help us over that, Doctor.’

  ‘Me?’ The general practitioner looked alarmed, the more especially perhaps because Detective Constable Crosby had his notebook very much at the ready.

  ‘You saw her after she’d died,’ said Sloan, suddenly a model of sweet reason. ‘And you examined her body. At least,’ he added, ‘you said you had done.’

  Aldus nodded vigorously. ‘Certainly, I did. And, as I told you, I found nothing inconsistent with death from congestive heart failure.’

  ‘The forensic specialists have,’ said Sloan.

  Aldus stared. ‘I can assure you that there was no visible evidence of there having been anything at all – er – untoward about the death when I last saw my patient.’

  ‘Maybe there wasn’t any evidence to be seen,’ posited Sloan.

  ‘Or,’ insisted John Aldus, ruffled, ‘any single indication of foul play in the bedroom when I was sent for that I could see.’

  ‘So you said, doctor, so you said.’ For a wonder, thought Sloan, Crosby wasn’t saying anything at all. It wasn’t like him.

  ‘I meant it.’ Aldus looked across at the two policemen. ‘Are you going to tell me how this murder was accomplished?’

  ‘Probably while she was asleep,’ said Sloan elliptically. ‘Mrs Garamond was on sleeping tablets, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A small dose or a big one?’

  ‘The right dose of any medication, Inspector, is enough for it to do what you want it to do and not to do what you don’t.’

  ‘So?’ Sloan dismissed this offering of medical philosophy with a wave of the hand without drawing any parallels with the good night’s sleep apparently enjoyed at the Grange that night by Mrs Shirley Doves.

  ‘So,’ the doctor came back promptly, ‘Mrs Garamond was on the right amount of a narcotic preparation to ensure her a good night’s sleep without depressing her already compromised respiratory function.’

  Sloan pointed to the double bed. ‘Tell me, doctor, which side of the bed did the old lady sleep on?’

  ‘This side,’ said Aldus unhesitatingly. ‘The one nearer the door.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Quite sure because I’m right-handed and therefore I examined her from this side.’

  ‘Then why was her bed-light on the far side of the bed-head?’ Sloan had remembered what it was that had teased his mind on his first visit here. ‘She couldn’t have reached the switch from this side of the bed.’

  ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t usually there.’

  ‘The oxygen cylinder was … where?’

  ‘Where it is now – the further side. As you can see the tubing was long enough for the mask to reach the patient on this side of the bed.’

  Sloan had already studied the mask which might or might not have left the ring-mark that the pathologist had noted on Mrs Garamond’s face.

  ‘Where was her bell?’

  Dr Aldus frowned. ‘I didn’t notice. It was usually pinned to the top of her sheet.’

  Sloan felt a sudden unprofessional wave of pity for a helpless old lady, dying alone, beyond aid and in the dark, help – the comfort of light, even – deliberately placed out of her reach. For her own sake he hoped that she had died unaware of her murderer and for the sake of justice he intended to arraign that same person.

  It was a way of thinking that made the policeman out of the man.

  FIFTEEN

  Tell his poor widow kind friends have found him.

  Gregory Rosart received his summons to the chairman’s room just before the end of the afternoon. Joe Keen was already there, white-coated and outwardly impassive.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Greg,’ said Claude Miller fussily. ‘Come in. We want your advice about a press release.’

  Rosart looked swiftly
from Claude Miller to Joe Keen and back again. ‘A press release about what? We haven’t made a breakthrough, have we?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Keen. ‘Just what I wanted to know, too.’ He stared insultingly at a point somewhere over Claude Miller’s shoulder. ‘And, no, we haven’t made a breakthrough.’

  ‘I’ve just been on to our brokers again,’ announced the chairman of Chernwoods’, ‘and they say Harris and Marsh have stopped buying all of a sudden.’

  ‘Don’t blame them,’ said Joe Keen morosely. ‘More fool them, I say, that they started to do it in the first place.’ He exchanged another quick glance with Rosart. ‘If they want to stop sending good money after bad now, then let ’em, but it’s not news by a long chalk.’

  The chairman of Chernwoods’ winced but his chief chemist hadn’t finished. ‘I don’t see how anyone can make the press interested in an attempt at a take-over …’

  ‘But, Joe, if we were to tie it in with a product announcement …’

  ‘Even though,’ said Keen, ‘I should say it’s still going to turn into a hostile bid any minute now.’

  Claude Miller opened his mouth to speak but Keen was unstoppable.

  ‘Sorry to do you out of one of your famous photo-opportunities, Greg,’ Keen said with patent insincerity, ‘but if ever there was a time for a low profile, it’s now.’

  ‘I should have thought,’ offered Greg Rosart carefully, ‘that at this moment the fewer people who knew about what was going on between us the better.’

  ‘So should I,’ said Joe Keen at once.

  ‘Honestly, Claude,’ said the press officer before Miller could say anything, ‘what Harris and Marsh are trying to –’

  ‘Have been trying to do,’ interposed Claude Miller. ‘I tell you they’ve stopped.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Rosart. ‘It’s not news either way. Take it from me, two lines at the bottom of the column in the financial papers is about all that Chernwoods’ would get these days. And it wouldn’t do us any good, Mr Miller, either.’

  ‘We could tell them,’ persisted Claude Miller, ‘that the board of Chernwoods’ is going to fight Harris and Marsh to the last ditch …’ Miller was like many indecisive people in that when he did make up his mind to take action he did so obstinately and irrationally.

  The silence of his two employees was as eloquent as any argument.

  Eventually Greg Rosart said gently, ‘I do think, Mr Miller, that we ought to go slowly on this. We could easily overdo the publicity side if we aren’t careful …’

  ‘What you really mean, Greg,’ interrupted Joe Keen harshly, ‘is that Chernwoods’ has been in the papers quite enough already this year.’

  Claude Miller opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

  ‘First of all,’ enumerated Keen, ‘we have a fire that can’t be accounted for, then a prosecution by the Health and Safety people for which we get a whopping fine and all the unfavourable publicity in the world’ – he started to get to his feet as he spoke – ‘and if that wasn’t enough we have a successful claim against us for wrongful dismissal which shook the work force to its wattles.’ He began to make for the door. ‘No, thank you, Claude, if you’re talking about last ditches, I vote that we keep our heads below the parapet from now on.’

  Miller flushed and retorted angrily: ‘You’ll be glad enough, Joe, to have publicity when – if, that is – you ever come up with the compound that’s going to make all our fortunes.’

  ‘Then I’ll arrange it myself,’ snapped Keen, half-way through the door. ‘Glad to.’

  Amelia glanced at her watch as she hurried along through Berebury’s streets to a shop opposite the market-place. She wanted to catch it before closing time. In the event she needn’t have worried. Mr Henryson was still there, surrounded as always by piles of books, badges, old uniforms, and other relicts of the battlefield, loosely called militaria.

  She squeezed inside the door between a giant shell-case, which now did duty as an umbrella stand, and a rack of steel helmets from every war and country and period imaginable. The shop door of Undertones of War still had a bell that jangled as the customer went in and Mr Henryson looked up with the mild uninterest of the secondhand bookseller as Amelia entered. He had been deep in a book and certainly wouldn’t have noticed her or anyone else but for the bell.

  He nodded, keeping a finger at his place in the book. ‘Want any help?’

  ‘Please,’ said Amelia. ‘I’m not really sure myself what I’m looking for.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Henryson gently.

  ‘But I thought that you might be able to tell me.’

  ‘I may,’ he said, a soldier manqué, a fireside fusilier who had never been to war himself but who had made a long and diligent study of the god Mars and his descendants.

  ‘I think I want a book about regimental mottos,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know for sure. It’s what you might call rather a long shot.’ Now that she came to think of it, that expression had probably begun life as a military term.

  ‘Tell me …’ said Mr Henryson with mild interest.

  ‘I want to know if “Nec Temere, Nec Timide” is a regimental motto.’

  Mr Henryson stroked his chin in thought for a moment. ‘Fortescue would know,’ he said, ‘Sir John is always very good. I haven’t got a Swinson but we could see if F. Tytler Fraser …’

  ‘Where would I find them?’ she asked anxiously. ‘It’s rather important …’

  ‘On the shelves over here, my dear.’ Mr Henryson led the way towards the back of the shop. Stepping aside to avoid a stack of second-hand armour, Amelia followed him, negotiating her way round some Sam Brownes and what appeared to be inert limpet mines.

  ‘This is even better,’ he said reaching for a dust-covered volume. ‘I think you’ll find them all in here somewhere, if you don’t mind doing a bit of research.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ she said eagerly. ‘I’ve got to find it.’

  ‘It’ll take time,’ he warned her. ‘Especially if, like me, you tend to get carried away.’ He smiled absently. ‘I was just crossing the Somme when you came in.’

  Amelia searched her memory. ‘1916?’

  He shook his head. ‘1346. Crécy. I just can’t see how our army got across it where we did. It would have been far too wide there and then for our people …’

  ‘When are you due to close?’ she asked him rather too directly.

  ‘About half an hour ago,’ he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. ‘My wife doesn’t like it if I’m too late because of keeping the supper hot. I have been known to forget supper altogether if I’m enthralled. Battlefields can be enthralling, you know. It’s like dice and gambling. So much hangs on so little – the outcome, I mean.’

  Amelia eyed the book he had found for her. It wasn’t a very thick one and Phoebe wasn’t going to be home until late. She said: ‘If I was to go and have some supper in the White Hart …’

  ‘I’m afraid Richard II was no soldier,’ said the bookseller, ‘white hart or not, but Edward III’ – his eye gleamed – ‘now he was different …’

  ‘In the White Hart,’ said Amelia, ignoring this tempting diversion, ‘over the other side of the market, and slip this back through your letter-box when I’ve done with it, would that be all right?’

  The book, propped up on the inn table, all about regiments, might not have been large but it was certainly densely printed. Amelia had both eaten and then had her coffee in the lounge before she was half-way through. She ordered more coffee and reapplied herself to studying the crests and badges of all the regiments, her eye inevitably straying to their battle honours too.

  She was almost through the book – and very nearly asleep, too – when she came across the crest of the Fearnshires, the words Nec temere, nec timide suddenly staring out of the page at her. The Fearnshires, were, it seemed, a Highland Regiment of ancient origin, having their beginnings as ‘men-at-arms’ to the chief of their clan and only regularized and broug
ht into line as members of the British Army after 1745 and the Battle of Culloden Moor (‘otherwise known’, ran the text, as impartially as it could, ‘as Drumossie’).

  Amelia spotted a writing table in the corner of the inn’s lounge and went across to pen Mr Henryson a note of thanks, adding a postscript asking him if he had by any chance got a copy of the regimental history of the Fearnshires for sale in his shop. She tucked this missive into the book, pushed both through the letter-box of Undertones of War, and set off through the streets of Berebury for home, quite surprised to find how late it now was.

  Someone else late home that evening was Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan: so late that even Madame Caroline Testout did not get her customary evening visit, whilst ‘the son who should have lisped his sire’s return’ had been long in bed and asleep.

  At some time in every policeman’s life he himself has to decide how much of his work he could or should talk to his wife about. The ideal was somewhere between the ‘nothing’ advised by those who trained him and the ‘everything’ advocated by those whose professional concern was with marriages lasting. How soon after marriage that a man took the decision was important, too …

  The old sergeant who had taught him a lot in his early days in the Force had always counselled him along the lines of the old advertisement for shaving soap – ‘not too little, not too much, but just right’, adding: ‘But whatever you do, lad, never tell her when to expect you home. The night you’re late back she’ll have you dead and buried within the hour and you’ll never hear the last of it.’

  In the event Sloan had done what most men did. He brought home palatable titbits from the day’s work and hid the dreariness and the danger under the cloak of the pedestrian and routine.

  Tonight was slightly different. Pushing his now empty plate to one side, he asked his wife, Margaret, how many words she knew beginning with the letter ‘Z’.

  ‘Zigzag,’ said Margaret, frowning. ‘Zircon …’

  ‘Zebra …’ said the policeman.

  ‘Zero,’ said his wife.

  Sloan capped that with: ‘Zenith … oh, and Zenana.’ His grandmother had always been a great supporter of Zenana missions.

  ‘Zeus,’ contributed Margaret Sloan, ‘or aren’t real names allowed?’