Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  ‘He’s not the only one,’ put in Crosby, kicking a nearby stone.

  ‘Is there any hard evidence that it was a one-man job?’ asked Sloan, reminding himself to have a word with Crosby later about the importance of professional solidarity.

  ‘You never can tell that for sure, Inspector,’ said the expert, pushing his glasses back again, ‘but I would have thought so myself. After all, you halve your take if there’re two of you, don’t you?’

  ‘True,’ agreed Sloan. That was an old lesson. Even the three robbers in Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ had worked that out.

  ‘To say nothing of the risk of your mate turning Queen’s evidence.’ The forensic man was clearly warming to his theme. ‘And opening the grave up wouldn’t have been all that hard work, not shifting freshly dug earth.’

  Sloan brought him back to a matter more at hand. ‘What about the coffin lid?’

  ‘He didn’t screw it back all that well, which is why your undertaker was able to slide it off again so easily. He got it back just well enough for the first thread on the screw to catch, in fact.’ The man pushed his glasses back up his nose for the umpteenth time. ‘Looked to us as if he’d brought the wrong size screwdriver with him, though. There’s a few brass filings lying about.’

  Wondering if carrying a screwdriver and spade after dark in a graveyard constituted ‘going equipped’ within the meaning of the Act, Detective Inspector Sloan said, ‘Let us know when you’ve got everything you can from the site, will you, because we’ve got a post-mortem lined up for the deceased.’

  And not before time, he added silently to himself.

  It should have been done before.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Inspector Sloan had barely got back to his office when the telephone rang. He was aware that he really needed to get going with arranging another post-mortem but ingrained discipline made him – however reluctantly – pick up the receiver and say, ‘Sloan here.’

  ‘Charlie Marsden, SOCO, here, Inspector. About our examination of the Berebury Nursing Home in St Clement’s Row after the break-in that you requested…’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course, Charlie.’ Since the finding of Lucy Lansdown’s body the breaking and entering at the nursing home had receded in his consciousness. It shouldn’t have done, he knew, because he was convinced that somehow it, too, must be a piece in the jigsaw. An important piece. ‘Well, what have our Scene of Crime officers found?’

  ‘Nothing retrievable, I’m afraid, in the way of useful marks from the carpet in the old lady’s room. Too many people have tramped all over it since.’

  ‘That figures,’ said Sloan, sitting down and pulling his notebook towards him. ‘What about the pantry window?’

  ‘The intruder wore gloves, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Who doesn’t these days?’ asked Sloan rhetorically.

  ‘So, Inspector, did whoever it was who got into that bedroom where the vase was broken. He wore gloves, too.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The china. What did you find on that?’ Sloan couldn’t decide whether the SOCO was into sex discrimination or not. ‘Anything?’

  ‘We examined the pieces of the vase for fingerprints but there weren’t any on any of them. It had been handled all right but with gloves on, too.’

  ‘Which is odd,’ said Sloan thoughtfully.

  Marsden went on conversationally, ‘Quite a nice one, it must have been. The wife’s into porcelain and paste and all that jazz so I know that’s all it was. Nice but not really valuable. Costs me a bomb, she does,’ he added.

  ‘I’m sure.’ In spite of this promising opening Christopher Dennis Sloan wasn’t going to say anything about what it was his wife, Margaret, the girl who had once worn the electric-blue dress at a dance at the Bellingham, had a penchant for. ‘What about the break-in itself? Was it an amateur or a professional job?’

  ‘Difficult to say, Inspector. A babe in arms could have got in that back window there,’ said Charlie Marsden scornfully. ‘All he needed would have been something to lever the window out. Any old pinch bar would have done the trick nicely. People put bolts and locks on their front doors and forget the back windows.’

  ‘Until the horse has bolted,’ agreed Sloan.

  ‘We fingerprinted everyone in the building just to make sure,’ said Charlie Marsden. ‘Had a bit of fun with some of the inmates, you won’t be surprised to know. That Lady Alice gave us quite a runaround. Couldn’t get away from her afterwards. Her good old days must have been something worth writing home about.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’ Detective Inspector Sloan knew quite a lot about what happened when genteel young ladies from sheltered backgrounds cut loose, whether in wartime or not. And it wasn’t always good news. ‘And?’

  ‘Ah, you’re going to like this, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Go on.’

  ‘Obviously we took the prints of all the staff as well as the patients.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘And all round the pantry and kitchen areas where whoever it was got in.’

  ‘The intruder, Charlie. Let’s settle for calling him that.’

  ‘The intruder might have worn gloves that night but I can tell you someone who didn’t at some time and whose prints shouldn’t have been there anyway.’

  ‘Who was that, then?’

  ‘The Steele boy.’

  ‘Not our Matthew?’

  ‘None other than our own favourite young lag. We got several sets of his dabs in the pantry and the kitchen. His mother’s are there, too, of course, because she works there. Not my province, of course, but she could have let him in.’

  ‘Are you sure about his prints?’ asked Sloan. He’d have Matthew Steele brought in for questioning, willy-nilly, and pronto.

  ‘Matched perfectly with the records. I promise you.’ The voice at the other end chuckled and added, ‘Trust me, I’m not a doctor.’

  ‘It’s like a plaited cord, Crosby,’ declared Sloan when he’d finally finished with Charlie Marsden. ‘We’ve got these three strands all entwined together. The break-in at Josephine Short’s nursing home is one of them for starters.’ He paused for thought and then said, almost to himself, ‘Yes, I think that did come first.’

  The two detectives were sitting in Sloan’s office at the police station. There had been a note on Sloan’s desk from Superintendent Leeyes awaiting his return to it. The note demanded his report and his presence with it as soon as possible. Sloan was now engaged with Crosby in what he would have liked to think of as a mind-clearing exercise before this.

  ‘With Matthew Steele on the premises anywhere anything could happen,’ averred Detective Constable Crosby feelingly. ‘He was the first bad ’un I ever nicked. Stole a bike down Railway Street and I got him for it.’

  ‘No, I’m wrong,’ murmured Sloan, half-aloud, following his own train of thought. ‘The break-in mightn’t have been the first thing that happened.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Josephine Short was a patient in that big hospital in Calleford, remember, when Lucy Lansdown was a nurse on the ward at the same time as she was in there.’

  ‘That was ages ago,’ said Crosby.

  ‘The seeds of crime,’ pronounced Christopher Dennis Sloan, amateur gardener, ‘can take as long to germinate as an orchid does.’ Mixing his metaphors, he added grandly, ‘It can have roots that go a very long way back, too.’

  ‘All right, then, the girl and the old lady could have got together in hospital somewhere else a few years ago,’ conceded Crosby, ‘but it’s not a lot to go on, sir, is it?’

  ‘True.’ Sloan nodded. ‘So if that’s the first thing that happens the break-in comes next.’

  ‘Like I said, sir, with Matthew Steele around…’

  ‘No, Crosby.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Matthew Steele could have got into the nursing home at any time he wanted. Easily. His mother works there, remember.’

  ‘I get it,’ Crosby said
. ‘He could have lifted a key of the place – and the room – when he was in there anytime beforehand.’

  ‘Or been let in by his mother,’ pointed out Sloan.

  ‘I’m still with you, sir. So he wouldn’t really have needed to break into the nursing home.’

  ‘Not so fast, Crosby, not so fast. Matthew might have taken the window out just to make it look as if he had.’

  Detective Constable Crosby gave a deep sigh. ‘It’s very difficult, sir, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s called considering all the possibilities,’ said Sloan tartly, a man now also soured by the thought of a bruising encounter with the gentlemen of the press, hastily arranged by the force’s despised Press and Public Relations department. A note about that had been on his desk too. It was a toss-up whether it was a marginally less welcome prospect than an interview with the superintendent.

  Crosby was clearly cogitating hard when he said, ‘So either Matthew Steele could have pretended to come in through the window or someone else—’

  ‘Person or persons unknown,’ said Sloan, trying as always to din ‘policespeak’ into the constable’s head.

  ‘Could have done it for real,’ finished Crosby.

  ‘And?’

  Crosby’s brow wrinkled. ‘And what?’

  ‘And entered Josephine Short’s room and knocked over the vase in the process.’

  ‘But we don’t know why anyone went in there. That it?’

  ‘Exactly, Crosby. I think if we did know we would be a lot further on. Then…’

  The furrows on Crosby’s brow deepened. ‘Then somehow or other the girl goes in the river but we still don’t know how or why.’

  ‘There was something before that,’ said Sloan, unsure now whether talking the case over with Crosby could really be said to constitute clearing the mind.

  ‘What was that, then, sir?’

  ‘There was the funeral.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It happened the day before the girl went into the river and she had attended it.’

  ‘How were they connected?’

  ‘If we knew that, Crosby, we’d be a lot further along with this case than we are.’ Exploring the ramifications of the break-in with Crosby was one thing. Doing it with Superintendent Leeyes later on was going to be much more difficult. He had another thought. ‘That’s assuming the whole scenario is one case. We don’t even know that.’

  ‘So then the girl goes into the river,’ persisted Crosby. ‘After being at the funeral, of course.’

  ‘No, Crosby. You’re going too fast.’ Privately deciding that going too fast must be a first for the detective constable except in the matter of his driving, Sloan went on, ‘The afternoon of the day of the funeral William Wakefield comes back from South America but does not come home that night. Instead he goes out somewhere in London…’

  ‘A night on the tiles?’ suggested the constable. He had never actually had one of these but liked the sound of it.

  ‘Possibly, Crosby, quite possibly, but nevertheless I thought a check on hire cars was indicated and the Met are going to do that for us. With a good car he could have come down here, pushed the girl into the river, and got back to the Erroll Garden Hotel in the times that they have down for his coming and going there.’

  Crosby nodded. ‘And the other man – the grandson, Joe Short – could have got out of the Bellingham via the beer cellar and got back in again without anyone knowing. That’s for sure.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ agreed Sloan. ‘And if the River Board’s calculations are correct Lucy Lansdown goes into the river – never mind how for the time being…’

  ‘Dead or alive, you mean, sir,’ put in Crosby.

  ‘Not quite either but never mind,’ said Sloan again, ‘but at a time when either man could have done it.’

  Detective Constable Crosby gave a deep sigh. ‘And that only takes us up to the night before last and doesn’t include Matthew Steele.’

  ‘Moreover, today,’ went on Sloan trenchantly, ‘Lucy Lansdown’s body is found and we learn that Josephine Short’s grave has been desecrated although this was carried out at a time as yet unknown.’

  ‘Since the funeral, though,’ said Crosby brightly.

  Detective Inspector Sloan gave his subordinate a pitying look. ‘Well done.’

  ‘And the funeral was only the day before yesterday, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Crosby, I am well aware of that.’ He was still waiting for a written report from the forensics team presently examining the grave and permission from the Home Office and the coroner to exhume the body for a post-mortem. ‘And nothing so far helps explain the break-in at the nursing home. Or its connection with the death of Lucy Lansdown, let alone the desecration of Josephine Short’s grave.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a case of multiple pathology, like the doctor said.’ The constable hitched himself forward in his chair. ‘So where do we go from here, sir?’

  ‘Literally, as far as I am concerned, to face the press.’ Detective Inspector Sloan got to his feet and said with tightened lips, ‘Metaphorically I just don’t know. And you, Crosby, you can go and bring Matthew Steele in for questioning.’

  If there was one duty Detective Inspector Sloan liked least of all it was holding a press conference. No matter how well the force’s press and public relations expert briefed him beforehand on how not to respond to snide questions, Sloan always felt his ire rise at the downright impertinent ones.

  ‘I know you do, Inspector,’ said that officer patiently. ‘It is quite obvious to everyone present that you want to punch the reporter’s nose at any such question, but if you do, I can promise you that you’ll be the one to hit the headlines. And they won’t help your career prospects.’

  Sloan muttered something unintelligible in reply to the adviser, whose position in the force in any case he held to be a waste of space and public money.

  ‘Moreover,’ went on the man with professional suavity, ‘it should be remembered that press conferences quite often have a positive outcome.’

  ‘Only when the villain’s taking part,’ retorted Sloan with some justification. ‘The camera doesn’t lie even if the suspect does.’

  ‘True,’ said the man, standing back a pace and regarding Sloan’s appearance with a critical eye. ‘Are you sure you couldn’t be persuaded to go on camera in uniform, Inspector? It comes over so much better with the general public. They expect it, you know.’

  ‘Quite sure,’ said Sloan with unaccustomed surliness.

  ‘What about wearing a raincoat, then?’

  ‘It’s not raining,’ said Sloan stubbornly.

  The man sighed. ‘All right. Now can we please consider some of the awkward questions you might be asked?’

  Sloan bristled. ‘I shall just stick to the facts.’

  The man sighed again. ‘The press won’t, of course. They’ll try and jump you into saying something you don’t want to.’

  ‘Let them try,’ he growled.

  ‘I expect they will.’ The press officer sounded resigned.

  ‘I shall tell them simply and clearly about a woman being pulled out of the river – nothing more,’ said Sloan with dignity.

  ‘And who she is, of course…’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly, shaking his head. ‘Not that yet.’

  ‘Or that she was a nurse? They may have picked that up very quickly in any case. Nurses always make a good headline.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting that they may have already talked to her next-door neighbour before coming here?’

  ‘The name is not going to be released until the relatives have been informed,’ said Sloan with dignity, ‘and I shall say so however many times they ask me.’

  ‘And what are you going to say about the men diving in the river under the bridge?’

  ‘They don’t know about that.’

  The man laughed outright. ‘Don’t you believe it, Inspector. Someone’s seen them there and told the paper ab
out it. And I’ve already been asked what they’re looking for there.’

  ‘Do I have to tell them?’

  ‘They’ll find out very quickly if you don’t. Think ferrets – a sackful of the blighters – and you’ve got a press pack. So what’s to do with the frogmen?’

  ‘The girl’s handbag. That’s what we’re looking for.’

  ‘I can’t see any harm in telling them so, then. After all,’ said the man cunningly, ‘it might lead you to it.’

  ‘That would only be if it’s not in the river.’

  ‘Precisely. Now what about the break-in at the nursing home?’

  ‘They might not have connected the two.’

  The man gave a cynical laugh. ‘Perhaps not, since I understand actually we haven’t either, but it won’t stop them asking you about it.’

  Sloan wasn’t sure whether to take the Press Relations Department man up on his use of the word ‘we’ or not but then decided it was an expression of professional solidarity and stayed silent.

  ‘They’ll say anything, Inspector, to bounce an unwary answer out of you.’ He went on earnestly, ‘They’ll deliberately put two and two together to make five so that you automatically tell ’em how it really was in self-defence. It’s human instinct.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan ground his teeth: he was, after all, supposed to be in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department. ‘How do you people get to know all these things about the case?’

  The man gave a tight little smile. ‘We consider ourselves pretty well briefed. We have to be to field some of the questions that we get asked ourselves.’

  ‘Well, I’m not happy about saying anything more than that,’ said Sloan.

  The man gave a deep sigh. ‘I can well believe it but, Inspector, you should be aware that you are probably also going to be asked about some missing rings – valuable ones.’

  Sloan started. ‘But the grave robbery has been kept under wraps. Tod Morton promised and I’m sure the vicar wouldn’t have—’

  ‘Sure. But there’s been nothing stopping any jeweller and pawnbroker in the town you care to mention having a friendly word with a reporter. You’ve circulated the details to them, remember? And those missing rings are very valuable – not paste. They’ll want to know all right if there’s any connection with the rings and the break-in at the Berebury Nursing Home, let alone what’s going on at Damory Regis.’