Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  ‘It’s new, I will say that,’ commented Leeyes. ‘And what, might I ask,’ he went on, rolling his eyes, ‘did his wife have to say about that?’

  ‘She wasn’t there.’ Sloan didn’t suppose they would have heard about the matter at all – or was it an alibi? – if she had been. That she hadn’t been present in the house was something he was beginning to find a little disturbing.

  ‘It takes two to tango,’ remarked Leeyes obscurely.

  ‘Her husband told us that he didn’t know where she was, either,’ Sloan reported to the superintendent. The policeman in him wondered whether this, too, was something else he should worry about.

  ‘Wakefield’s London story isn’t provable, of course,’ Leeyes went on, pursuing his own train of thought. ‘That he was with a lady of the night when he says he was, I mean, or exactly where.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Those of the red-light district never gave their names and address to the gentlemen from the blue-lamp police station if they could avoid it. Or to anyone else, come to that. He coughed. ‘If he wasn’t with anyone like her, of course, he would have had time to come down to Berebury. All he had to do was arrange to meet Lucy Lansdown on the bridge or anywhere else and he could still get back to his hotel in the early hours. ‘Joseph Short,’ he added fairly, ‘would have had even more time because he was on the spot here in the town and he could have got in and out of the Bellingham very easily.’

  ‘Out and back in, you mean, Sloan.’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘And I take it we still don’t know who gains from Lucy Lansdown’s death?’

  ‘Not yet. We’re working on it.’ Other minions were indeed going through every piece of paper that had been found in Lucy Lansdown’s house – so far without finding anything that might lead anywhere at all.

  ‘Or what Matthew Steele was really up to?’

  ‘We’re working on that, too, sir.’ Even to Sloan’s own ears that sounded lame. Nobody knew what Matthew Steele might have been up to: a man who could rob a grave – if he had – was doubtless capable of anything at all. ‘He hasn’t been near his home yet. We do know that.’ That it was all they knew, Sloan decided it was prudent not to add.

  Leeyes drummed his fingers on the table in a peremptory way. ‘How long have we got, Sloan?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Before two of the three men connected with Josephine Short and thus presumably with Lucy Lansdown leave the country,’ Leeyes said impatiently. ‘She didn’t go to that funeral for fun, you know.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ said Sloan bleakly. He was tempted to add One Fine Day but thought better of it just in time. ‘I’m told Joseph Short has a flight back to Lasserta booked for late this afternoon and William Wakefield one first thing tomorrow morning.’ He didn’t hazard a guess as to what Matthew Steele’s intentions might be or where he might have got to; perhaps he ought to be as concerned about his being missing as he was about Janet Wakefield not being around but he wasn’t. The devil usually looked after his own.

  The superintendent leant back in his chair. ‘Have we got any grounds for detaining either of them? Or, better still, both?’ Leeyes, too, seemed to have forgotten about Matthew Steele for the time being.

  ‘None whatsoever, sir. Any half-awake solicitor would get them released in minutes.’ Habeas corpus might be one of the oldest statutes in the book but it could still be invoked.

  Leeyes sighed but said nothing.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sloan, responding to the sigh not the silence. Having egg on his face was something that never had appealed to the police superintendent.

  ‘And you’re quite sure, Sloan, there’s nothing we can get either of them on as of the present?’ Leeyes sounded quite wistful now. ‘Or Matthew Steele for anything at all yet?’

  ‘Not unless Wakefield attempts to kill Short,’ said Sloan succintly. ‘Joseph Short dead would be worth a great deal to William Wakefield and his family and old Josephine Short was worth a lot to Matthew Steele dead – at least her rings were. We know that now but as to who benefits from Lucy Lansdown being dead, we still don’t know.’

  ‘And what has the man Short got to do wrong to give us some leverage? He seems to me to be sitting pretty if he does nothing at all.’

  ‘Attempt to kill somebody,’ said Sloan uneasily, ‘although I can’t for the life of me see why he should. The same goes for Matthew Steele. He’s connected with Josephine Short, too, even if it’s only after death.’

  ‘Well, Sloan,’ commanded Superintendent Leeyes at his most authoritative, ‘just you make sure that nobody kills anybody else. And report back to me soonest.’

  Suppressing any retort that included references to Merlin and sundry other wizards, Sloan made for the door. As he neared it Leeyes called out to his departing back, ‘Think off-piste, Inspector.’

  There was nothing for it, decided Detective Inspector Sloan, but to start at the very beginning of the case all over again – and not a lot of time left now in which to do it. ‘It’s back to the drawing board, I’m afraid, Crosby,’ he said as the constable entered his office with two steaming mugs of tea. This wasn’t the place for exotic skiing parallels.

  ‘Calleford Hospital, you mean?’ said that worthy readily. ‘When Josephine Short was an inpatient and Lucy Lansdown was a nurse over there on the same ward and where Joe Short last saw his grandmother alive…’

  Sloan stared at him. ‘Say that again, Crosby.’

  Obedient as ever, Crosby repeated the sentence.

  ‘That’s what I thought you said.’ Sloan hunched his shoulders forward. ‘Joe Short told us that he visited his grandmother there when she was ill there, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Something like three or four years ago. Before she went into the nursing home and before her son and daughter-in-law were killed in that accident. She was living over in Calleford then. I’ve got the dates in my notebook.’

  Sloan wasn’t listening. ‘The stars in their courses…’ he murmured softly.

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  Sloan hit his palm hard with his other fist. ‘What fools we’ve been, Crosby. Utter fools.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, did I give you the one with sugar in?’

  ‘In that hospital and then was one time that those three people could possibly all have met, although we don’t know for sure that they did and might not be able to prove it.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. When the old lady was a patient there and the grandson was visiting her the last time he was back in England and Lucy Lansdown was nursing at the hospital,’ repeated the detective constable. He took a sip of his own tea and screwed up his face. ‘Ugh. No sugar.’

  ‘But don’t you see, Crosby?’ Sloan said urgently, ‘Lucy Lansdown was at that funeral at Damory Regis and as far as we know didn’t recognise Joe Short then. At least, she didn’t attempt to speak to him there. Janet Wakefield told us that and so did Joe Short himself and nobody else saw her approach Joe Short either. It was the first thing we checked. Short said that he picked up her handbag when she dropped it and handed it back to her but that was all. Or so he told us,’ added Sloan, a new thought to do with fingerprints on the handbag retrieved from the river coming to him. He stored it away at the back of his mind for further consideration.

  ‘And,’ said the detective constable, suddenly tumbling to the meaning of what Sloan had said, ‘that Mrs Wakefield confirmed that Joe Short didn’t appear to recognise Lucy Lansdown either.’ He screwed up his face in a prodigious frown and then went on, ‘Or if he did, he didn’t let it show.’

  ‘But he might just have guessed who she was,’ reasoned Sloan slowly. ‘And why she’d come to the funeral. She seems to have been the only young woman there, anyway.’

  ‘To meet Joe Short again?’ hazarded Crosby.

  ‘If so, then perhaps he isn’t Joe Short,’ concluded Sloan, starting to get to his feet. ‘And that might be why she had to be killed. If she knew he wasn’t who everyone else though
t he was, then she would have been undoubtedly in danger.’

  ‘Was in danger,’ pointed out Crosby.

  ‘From someone,’ said Sloan, the image of the dead girl on the riverbank rising unbidden in his mind.

  ‘Everyone else does say he is Joe Short, sir,’ pointed out Crosby, pushing his mug in Sloan’s direction and taking the other one for himself. ‘His firm emailed us his photograph, remember, and that was definitely of him.’

  Sloan sat down again. ‘True.’

  ‘And his photograph was in the old lady’s drawer with the other ones. That was of him, too.’

  ‘So it was,’ conceded Sloan. ‘And since he handled it there, his fingerprints will be all over it. His photo’ll have been in his passport, of course. Simon Puckle said he had looked at that before it was stolen.’

  ‘It mightn’t have been stolen, sir,’ offered Crosby. ‘He could have lost it on purpose.’

  ‘No point doing that, though, if the photograph had already passed muster, was there?’ said Sloan. He frowned. ‘Handwriting?’

  ‘There weren’t any letters from him at the nursing home, remember.’ Crosby stirred his tea with vigour and took a sip, smacking his lips with relish. ‘That’s better. I like it sweet.’

  ‘He said that the old lady was practically blind, of course, and so he’d given up writing,’ said Sloan automatically. ‘They said that at the nursing home, too.’

  ‘And deaf.’

  ‘Suppose,’ said Sloan, thinking aloud, ‘that the nursing home was broken into not to take something away but to put something there…’

  ‘Like a photograph?’ suggested Crosby.

  ‘Exactly…but it doesn’t get round the fact that his firm sent us one of him which matched.’

  ‘Perhaps he isn’t Joseph Short there,’ said Crosby idly. ‘More tea, sir?’

  Sloan reached for the telephone. ‘I think, Crosby, we’ll check with the nursing home all the same.’

  ‘The room’s occupied again,’ the matron answered his call crisply. ‘And all the contents have gone to the solicitors.’

  When applied to, Simon Puckle said that they were indeed holding the contents of the drawers in Josephine Short’s room. And that Joseph Short had arranged to call in to collect them before he went back to Lasserta since there seemed to be nothing of relevance in them to the winding up of their client’s estate. ‘That will be in due course,’ added the solicitor automatically.

  ‘Don’t give them to him,’ ordered Sloan. ‘Stall.’ He replaced the telephone and turned to Crosby. ‘Simon Puckle shouldn’t find that too difficult. Solicitors do it all the time.’

  ‘Surely if Joe Short was the one who broke into the nursing home he could have taken away any picture he wanted so those can’t matter all that much,’ reasoned Crosby.

  ‘That’s true,’ admitted Sloan. ‘But we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.’ That might not have been the equivalent of thinking off-piste but it was what he had been taught.

  ‘More tea, sir?’

  ‘Certainly not. Let’s go.’

  ‘Damory Regis?’ suggested Crosby hopefully.

  ‘Puckle, Puckle & Nunnery,’ countered Sloan.

  Miss Florence Fennel handed over a packet of old photographs without hesitation. ‘Would one of our interview rooms be a help, Inspector?’

  Seated and gloved, Detective Inspector Sloan went through a little pile of photographs one by one for the second time. He put aside the up-to-date one of Joseph Short and then turned his attention to the others. They were black and white and obviously older and much handled. Some even had the deckled edge of an earlier photographic era. They included several of a young couple outside a little house labelled on the back ‘Us at Number 29’. Then one of the same young couple with a small baby on a rug in front of them in the garden of the house, ‘Us with Joe at six months’, then that baby, a small child now, standing uncertainly beside a dining room table set for a meal, his head exactly level with the tabletop. Written on the back was ‘Joe at 2 years, six months’. The rest of the pile comprised a series of pictures of foreign parts – Africa, the Middle East and presumably Lasserta.

  ‘We’ve seen them all before,’ complained Crosby, looking over Sloan’s shoulder.

  ‘They haven’t changed,’ said Sloan quietly, ‘but we have.’

  Crosby straightened up. ‘I don’t get it, sir.’

  ‘To put it the modern way, Crosby, our knowledge base has been increased.’

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  ‘By Tod Morton.’

  ‘Tod? The undertaker? What’s he got to do with—?’

  ‘Something he told us.’

  ‘Not that bit about a man’s height being seven times the length of his foot?’

  ‘You’re getting warm, Crosby. Try again.’

  ‘A piece of string is twice as long as half its length?’

  ‘Not that. Got a measure on you?’

  Crosby wriggled his hand through several pockets before producing one. ‘Here, sir.’

  ‘No, you do it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Measure the height of this table.’

  ‘This one here?’

  ‘Go on. They’re pretty standard.’

  Detective Constable Crosby pushed his chair back and measured the height of the table from the floor. ‘I’ve done that, sir. Now what?’

  ‘Double it.’

  ‘What, like doubling the number you first thought of?’ asked the constable.

  ‘No…yes.’ Sloan stood up. ‘Hold the measure up to twice the height of the table.’

  Crosby stood up, too, and raised the measure in his hand. ‘Like this, sir.’

  ‘Just like that, Crosby.’ Sloan stood back. ‘Would you say that Joe Short was taller than where the end of your measure is now?’

  ‘A lot taller. He’s a big man.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, too,’ said Sloan softly.

  ‘Taller than you, sir, anyway.’ Crosby drew himself up to his full height and said, ‘But not as tall as I am.’

  ‘All right, Crosby. I get the message.’ There was no use telling the constable that shorter policemen reflected full employment and taller ones unemployment and thus more tall candidates to choose from. ‘You can put that measure away now, thank you.’

  They were interrupted by a call on Crosby’s mobile telephone. ‘For you, sir,’ said Crosby, handing it over. ‘William Wakefield’s getting worried about his wife. She hasn’t come home yet.’

  ‘She’s not with her friend, Dawn, Inspector,’ said Wakefield down the telephone, and sounding quite agitated. ‘I’ve just checked and Dawn hasn’t heard from her at all today.’

  ‘What about her mobile phone?’

  ‘Not switched on and she hasn’t responded to my voicemail message to ring me back.’

  ‘Have another look around for any written message she might have left you saying where she might have gone,’ ordered Sloan.

  ‘There’s nothing here, Inspector, I’m sure,’ said Wakefield. ‘She must have gone out earlier thinking she’d be back before I got home.’

  ‘Keep looking,’ said Sloan. He was beginning to agree with William Wakefield that his wife might very well have expected to be back before her husband returned from Head Office. ‘And we’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘I know she had something on her mind,’ went on William Wakefield, ‘because she slept so badly last night. She was worried, I could tell, but she couldn’t remember exactly what about – just that something didn’t quite add up – and anyway I had an early train to catch.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan had never been a believer in false reassurance and he didn’t offer any now. Instead he told Crosby to get an unmarked car ready and put out a general call for Joseph Short’s hire car.

  ‘Quietly does it, Crosby,’ said Sloan not very long afterwards. ‘No blues and twos. I may be wrong but the grave at Damory Regis is the only place that I can think of that Janet Wakefield woul
d willingly have agreed to go to at short notice with Joseph Short. She’d have been suspicious of any other destination being mentioned but visiting the graveyard there would be logical enough after they’d heard what had happened to the coffin. They’d naturally both want to take a look at the ground again – and Short would have the excuse that he’s going back home soon.’

  ‘He only thinks he’s going back, sir.’ Crosby dropped the car to the speed he considered proper for the reeling, rolling roads of rural England. The poet might have loved them but he didn’t. ‘He isn’t.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan spotted the couple walking away from Josephine Short’s grave as the police car slid to a quiet stop alongside the churchyard wall at Damory Regis. As the two policemen advanced towards them over the uneven ground the pair paused just short of the war memorial and awaited their approach. A name on the memorial caught Sloan’s eye as he stepped past it: Arden, GP. He’d seen it before but it hadn’t made sense then. It did now.

  Janet Wakefield was the first to speak. ‘Oh, Inspector, there’s nothing wrong, is there? Joe saw you talking on television about the grave and he’s just brought me over here for a last look at it before he went back to Lasserta. Isn’t it all a mess now?’

  Joe Short nodded composedly. ‘I could have wished that there hadn’t been those tarpaulins everywhere, that’s all, Inspector. I’d have liked to take a better memory back overseas and all that.’

  ‘It’s not quite all,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan at his most professional. ‘Joseph Short, I am arresting you for the murder of Lucy Eileen Lansdown. You don’t have to—’

  The man, still quite composed, interrupted Sloan with a smile. ‘You haven’t turned over two pages or something, have you, Inspector?’

  The memory that was to stay with the police inspector, though, was quite a different one. It was of blood draining rapidly from the face of Janet Wakefield. She pointed a finger at Joe Short and said in a trembling voice, ‘You told me you knew that poor dead girl was called Lucy, although nobody else did, because the dim constable had let it out by accident.’

  ‘I never,’ began a highly indignant Crosby.