Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  Then there was the question of motive. Nobody had come up with one for the killing of Lucy Lansdown yet, and the only motive he could attribute to William Wakefield was gain – and that was only if he were to kill Joe Short, which he didn’t seem to have attempted to do. Joe Short didn’t seem to have any motive for murdering anyone and Matthew Steele’s motive led directly to pound signs.

  It was all too difficult and Crosby gave up and went in search of a cup of tea.

  * * *

  There were parts of the police station in Berebury that the public saw and there were parts that they didn’t. There were parts that the civilian staff worked in and never went beyond. There were, too, parts in the custody suite that those apprehended did see, albeit unwillingly. The part to which Detective Inspector Sloan had just been summoned was one not usually seen by anyone save those working from it. Lined with wet suits, it was the quarters of the underwater men.

  ‘We got it, Inspector,’ said one of them as Sloan entered. Even now he was unpeeling himself from his black rubber casing. ‘It was a bit downstream of the bridge. Stuck in the mud. The bridge makes for little eddies there and it hadn’t been carried far.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sloan, adding swiftly, ‘was it open or closed?’

  The frogman pointed to a bench on which lay a very wet black handbag. ‘Closed.’

  Feeling slightly foolish as he always did when he put them on, Sloan eased his hands into a pair of rubber gloves before he touched the handbag. It was still closed, a zip running all along the top.

  ‘I reckon nothing can have spilt out,’ said the frogman, peering over Sloan’s shoulder at it.

  ‘So do I,’ said Sloan, ‘which is quite important.’

  The frogman moved away a little to give himself a shake very reminiscent of that of a long-haired dog coming in out of the rain. Meanwhile Sloan gently drew the zip back and opened up the handbag. Water had scarcely penetrated the leather and the contents were dry enough for him to make a careful examination of them. He methodically extracted all the items one by one and laid them out in a line along the bench.

  ‘Pen, mobile phone, petty cash, handkerchief, pair of scissors,’ enumerated the frogman, coming back to the bench a little drier. ‘What did she want scissors for?’

  ‘She was a nurse,’ said Sloan as if that explained it.

  The frogman shrugged and went back to listing everything aloud. ‘Four ten-pound notes and one twenty. They’re not well paid, are they? Hand mirror, comb, safety pin…I thought they’d gone out with the ark.’

  ‘It’s called being prepared,’ said Sloan absently. ‘But it’s what isn’t there that matters.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ The frogman was standing beside Sloan in his underclothes and socks now.

  ‘The key of her front door,’ said Sloan. ‘It wasn’t in her pocket.’

  The frogman grimaced. ‘No chance of our finding that, Inspector. Not in all that mud. Not if it went in separately.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan straightened up from the bench on which the wet handbag lay. ‘The key won’t have gone in there. Not then and not there, anyway. He wouldn’t have gone back to the river.’ The question of gender didn’t arise in his mind at all now. ‘Too dangerous.’

  Sloan headed for the nearest telephone and rang the SOCO in charge of the team who had searched Lucy Lansdown’s house. ‘I want you to go back there again,’ he said, ‘and look for any further evidence that someone else has been in there.’ He looked down at his own hands. ‘Especially someone wearing gloves,’ he sighed and added under his breath, ‘just like we did.’

  ‘This other entry, Inspector, we’re talking about,’ the SOCO said, ‘would that have been before or after you went over the house?’

  ‘Before,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. That was something he was sure about now. In his book someone had removed Lucy Lansdown’s key from her handbag before casting it in the river. And used it in all probability to get inside her house that same night.

  ‘Though what he was looking for,’ he said to Crosby as he arrived in his office a little later, ‘I do not know. What everyone is looking for is a complete mystery to me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested the constable indifferently, ‘they’re all looking for different things.’ He looked out through the window towards the police car park. ‘Are you ready to go home now, sir? It’s getting late.’

  ‘Not while there’s work to be done, Crosby, and there is.’

  Sudden summonses – day and night – were part and parcel of the daily workings of funeral directors and usually gave rise to no surprises beyond what was expected in the everyday undertaking line of business. In the ordinary way this occasioned no more than a funeral conducted with decent expedition and the sympathetic handling of all concerned. More often than not, even warring, highly dysfunctional families succumbed to a skilled and orderly decision-making process that resolved such important matters as where and when the ceremony would be held and by whom conducted. The more delicate decisions such as who should pay tribute and whether children should be brought to the service were wisely left to the relatives to fight about.

  Today was different.

  ‘You there, Tod?’ Charlie Morton was sitting in his office when Tod got back from burying a nonagenarian over at the village of Larking. He sounded disgruntled.

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘I want a word.’ In his own domain Charlie Morton could be as autocratic as Superintendent Leeyes.

  ‘Won’t be a tick. I’m just changing.’

  ‘Now!’ The paterfamilias touch was well to the fore. ‘This minute.’

  Tod stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, his black frock coat dangling over his arm. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Those rings that have gone missing from Damory Regis…’

  ‘I know, Dad. Awful, isn’t it? I still can’t—’

  ‘It’s more than awful,’ interrupted the old man sternly.

  Tod advanced into the office. ‘It can’t be—’

  Charlie Morton said soberly, ‘Oh, yes it is. I’ve had the police round here again.’

  Tod said, ‘About someone trying to break in here?’

  ‘Not about someone trying to break in here,’ thundered the old man. ‘About us.’

  ‘Us?’ Tod sounded bewildered. ‘What about us?’

  ‘Those three rings,’ he glowered at his son, ‘they think we took them.’

  ‘What!’ Tod flushed a bright red.

  ‘The police think we had them away on our toes.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Well, what else are they to think?’ the old man demanded grumpily. ‘It has been known in the trade. You can’t say it hasn’t.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Tod slowly, ‘you can’t blame them for checking. It’s their job to check everything out.’

  ‘And I’ve had Chris Sloan, who I’ve known, man and boy, all his life, coming round here questioning me. Me, an honest businessman with a good name for over forty years!’ Charlie Morton thumped the table. ‘It’s an outrage, that’s what it is. And to make matters worse he had that daft boy he calls his assistant with him.’

  ‘Crosby,’ said Tod dully.

  ‘He was supposed to be writing down my answers. Did we keep the rings in the safe?’ He sniffed. ‘What do we need a safe for here? Do they think somebody’s going to steal the stock? And what about our burglar alarm, they wanted to know. Our burglar alarm,’ he repeated richly. ‘What good do they think that would do? Wake the dead?’

  Tod stood stock-still and silent in the middle of the room while his father continued his diatribe. ‘Then they asked how could we be sure somebody else in the firm didn’t pull them off the poor old lady’s fingers just before we screwed the coffin down? And how could we be absolutely certain no one here unscrewed it again after that? Asking us that. Us. Morton’s. The very idea!’

  ‘But, Dad—’

  ‘Especially when Bert and Fred and all the others have worked here since
they were lads and I had to stop them waving at their friends from the hearse first time out.’

  ‘Calm down, Dad. Calm down and take it easy.’

  ‘Someone did try to get in,’ insisted Morton père, unappeased. ‘The police saw those marks outside. You showed them to them, didn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose anyone could have made them,’ said Tod unhappily, realising now where the police were coming from on this.

  ‘We didn’t, though,’ said the old man stubbornly. ‘Nor anyone here, either.’

  Tod’s mind was still churning away. ‘Remember, Dad, whoever it was, they didn’t get in.’

  ‘I know that,’ he rasped.

  ‘And don’t forget, Dad, those rings are worth an arm and a leg. Even I know that. They were really lovely.’

  ‘My reputation’s more important than any number of rings,’ he growled. ‘However valuable. Rings belong by nature to the past. My name’s my future and yours, too. Don’t you ever forget it. I shouldn’t have to remind you, Tod, that reputation’s what counts in our line of work. If people think you’re going in for funny business they won’t come to you in the first place.’ He grunted. ‘That’s not all. There’s something else.’

  ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘I’ve had the chief reporter from The Berebury Gazette round – you remember, we buried his Aunt Mabel last year.’

  ‘Don’t say they’ve found out about the exhumation already?’

  ‘You bet your sweet life they have but they don’t know for why. Yet,’ he added ominously. ‘I didn’t tell ’em and I’m not going to. And neither are you.’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘I told them it was being done on the instructions of the Home Office and not a thing more. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  The message came on the internal telephone from the desk sergeant at Berebury Police Station. ‘There’s a man here asking for you, Inspector Sloan.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Sloan warily. ‘I’m very busy.’ He wasn’t sure if detectives were allowed to ignore any calls on their time at will. Probably not.

  ‘He says he’s called Short, Joseph Short.’

  ‘I’ll be right down.’

  Joe Short was standing waiting by the counter when he got there. He looked older now and his lips were set in a firm line. ‘I saw you on television, Inspector. That grave at Damory Regis that’s been disturbed, which the reporter was asking about, is Granny’s, isn’t it? What on earth’s going on over there? Tell me.’

  ‘I am not in a position to say at this stage of our enquiries, sir.’

  Joe Short’s tanned complexion turned a darker hue and he growled, ‘That’s not good enough, Inspector. Surely I’ve got every right to know? I am her grandson.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, seasoned police officer that he was, contrived to invest his reply with sincere-sounding regret. ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but further enquiries are pending and until then I can give you no further information on the matter.’

  ‘But I’ve got a flight back to Lasserta arranged for the day after tomorrow. I can’t change it now and I can’t just go and leave something like that hanging in the air.’

  Sloan was unbending. ‘As soon as we have any more definite news, sir, we shall inform you and, of course, Mr Simon Puckle. In the meantime I’m afraid the matter is in the hands of Her Majesty’s Coroner and the Home Office.’

  ‘What has my poor grandmother done to deserve something like this to happen to her grave?’ Joseph Short leant his elbows on the counter and sank his head in his hands. ‘It’s turning into an absolute nightmare.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan did not attempt to disillusion him.

  * * *

  ‘You can keep your five-star hotels,’ said William Wakefield that evening, looking appreciatively round the comfortable lounge of the Bellingham Hotel and sinking down into a leather sofa. ‘This is more like home, Joe, and I like it.’

  ‘I don’t know whether that’s a compliment to my good taste in interior design or not,’ smiled Janet Wakefield, sitting back in her chair in an unusually relaxed manner for her.

  ‘If you could see some of the outstations up at Mathabo where I’m living,’ said Joe Short, ‘you’d take it as a compliment.’

  ‘Tell me, Joe,’ said Janet Wakefield, raising her glass in his direction, ‘what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Fly back to Lasserta as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I reckon Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons will soon be wanting to know the reason why.’

  ‘I meant,’ she said bluntly, ‘when you come into your inheritance?’

  ‘Oh, that. I don’t really know. I’m on a two-year contract with Cartwright’s anyway and I’d want to finish that. Besides, there’s the matter of my parents’ affairs out there. I can’t just leave Lasserta without winding them up – it’s not the sort of thing you can do at a distance – and heaven alone knows when they’ll be finally settled.’ A shadow passed over his face. ‘It’s been an absolute nightmare so far, I can tell you.’

  ‘No throwing your cap over the windmill, then,’ said William Wakefield.

  ‘Or hanging your hat in somebody’s hall?’ suggested Janet mischievously.

  ‘One day perhaps, but not quite yet,’ he said, flushing a little, ‘but I reckon I won’t be able to come back to Calleshire for a bit.’

  ‘Nothing to bring you back now, anyway,’ said Janet. As her friend, Dawn, was wont to say, tact had never been Janet’s strong suit.

  ‘No.’ He hesitated and then said diffidently, ‘I suppose you wouldn’t mind going over and making sure that Granny’s grave’s all right and that sort of thing? After I’ve gone, I mean. Could I ask you to do that? Once in a while, I mean, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Janet immediately. ‘I’d be happy to. Is there anything else we can do for you when you’ve gone back?’

  ‘If anything more turns up in the local paper about that girl, Lucy, who was at the funeral, I’d obviously like to know – oh, and there’ll be a gravestone put up in Damory Regis churchyard in due course, when the ground’s ready, that is. The solicitor had a note of what Granny wanted put on it, all decided by her when she went into the nursing home, and he’ll arrange it but I wouldn’t mind a photograph of it sometime.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, nodding.

  ‘Actually,’ continued Joe, ‘I’m going over there again tomorrow morning. I’ve heard that there’s been some sort of disturbance to the grave there and I’d like to take a look at it before I go back to Lasserta.’

  William Wakefield said, ‘Odd, that.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ agreed Joe eagerly. ‘I don’t quite understand what’s been happening but I wouldn’t want anything to have gone wrong with Granny’s arrangements.’

  ‘No. A really remarkable woman, your grandmother,’ said Janet. She looked at the two men. ‘I hope it’s in the genes of both you two.’

  ‘I realise that we have a lot to live up to,’ said Joe lightly. ‘All I can say is, for my part, that I’m doing my best.’

  ‘So am I,’ said William fervently, adding under his breath, ‘and how!’

  It was later that night that Janet Wakefield turned over in bed at The Old Post Office at Staple St James for the tenth time, punching her pillow quite strenuously as she did so.

  ‘A bit restless, aren’t you?’ complained her husband drowsily.

  ‘It’s all right for you. I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget that I’ve got to be up early to catch the first train tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I don’t know why Head Office should want to talk to you again so soon,’ she pouted. ‘We’ve got so little time together as it is.’

  ‘I’ve told you already it’s for a briefing on the new job,’ he said, pulling the bedclothes back into shape. ‘Where’s the end of this blanket got to?’

  ‘Don’t tell me that all those mai
dens you say you meet in the jungle aren’t ever restless, too,’ she said sweetly.

  ‘Models of stillness, the lot of them.’ He joined his hands together behind his head and rested them against the pillow. ‘I will say one thing about the upriver maidens,’ he murmured provocatively, ‘and that’s that they’re a jolly sight more biddable than you are.’

  ‘What was that you said?’ She sat straight up in bed at once and glared at him.

  He grinned back at her. ‘I do like it when you get uptight. Do you realise that your face turns quite pink when that happens?’

  ‘One day, William Wakefield, I shall hit you. I really will.’

  ‘Actually, though, I’m afraid it’s against company policy to take the maidens to bed.’

  ‘I should hope so, too.’

  ‘Only they put it a bit more obliquely in the contract.’

  ‘I’ll bet they do.’

  ‘Wives aren’t allowed to hit their husbands either so for goodness’ sake stop wriggling around and go back to sleep.’

  ‘I can’t. Something’s niggling me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I knew that, then I could do something about it and get back to sleep, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned over and shut his eyes. ‘Go on thinking by all means but do it quietly.’

  Janet was still sitting up in bed. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that we’ve only got one more night together after this before you go back to Brazil?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Those are the very same words that you used at our wedding, remember?’ she stifled a sentimental sigh.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said wearily, turning his shoulder away.

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘What is it now?’ he asked impatiently.

  ‘That doctor we saw today…’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he any good, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know but I can tell you he’s the most pompous and mealy-mouthed man I’ve ever met. Anyway, time will tell, won’t it?’