“Except that the car is in exactly the right place now for that chip to have happened last time the car door was opened.”
“You can tell if you didn’t put your own car away yourself,” declared the Superintendent didactically. “Like you can tell if someone else has used your best fountain pen.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Sloan, “but whether the daughter or the daily woman could tell that for us …”
Leeyes grunted.
“… that’s another matter,” pointed out Sloan. “It isn’t as if it was—er—their fountain pen, so to speak.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Crosby’s doing them now, sir, and then we’re going round to Struthers and Tindall’s works and to see these people Osborne who he spent the evening with.” Sloan coughed, “Any sign of Mr Cranswick at your end, sir?”
“Not yet.”
“Or the other shoe?”
“All that’s comes in so far, Sloan, is another of those anonymous letters from Constance Parva. Someone’s just brought it in. Between a pair of tongs …”
THIS FOUL MELANCHOLY.
10
Detective Constable Crosby had just finished going over Richard Tindall’s car by the time Sloan got back to the Dower House garage.
“Well, what did you find?”
Crosby was good on cars, that was one good thing.
“Mr Tindall’s prints all over the place, sir. Same as on that hairbrush Miss Tindall gave us for a sample. But …” he drew breath impressively.
“But what?”
“But on top of them there’s a whole set of glove smudges. Sir, whoever drove this little outfit last wore gloves—that’s for sure.”
Sloan grunted.
“I’ve been over the lot,” said Crosby. “Steering wheel, gear lever, keys, door handle, roof …”
“Roof?”
“You can’t get out of a little number like this without putting your hand on the roof—just over the driver’s door.” Crosby moved forward eagerly. “Shall I show you, sir?”
“No,” said Sloan sourly.
The exchange principle already invoked by the Superintendent applied to the driver and the car in the same way as to the car and the garage wall. Fourteen stone of detective constable must also make their mark and ruin any traces there might still be of the last occupant.
“You can’t get any purchase unless you do, sir,” persisted Crosby, “because of its being so low slung.”
“I am not so old, Crosby,” retorted Sloan, considerably nettled, “that I have forgotten how to get out of a car like this.”
“No, sir. Of course not, sir. Sorry, sir.” He began to fumble for his main theme. “Otherwise, sir, there’s just this scrape of paint. It looks quite freshly damaged. I’ve got a sample from the car and another from the edge of the agricultural implement on the wall …”
“The what, Crosby?” Sloan mustered a little patience from somewhere.
“Spade, sir.”
“I should think so, indeed.” The Superintendent could call it what he liked but as far as constables were concerned spades were spades. If not shovels.
“I’ve got a couple of samples ready for the laboratory people, sir.” Crosby indicated two sealed packets. “They can tell us for certain if they are one and the same paint.”
Sloan nodded.
He wasn’t worried about the forensic chemist. The evidence was either for sure or so highly technical that the jury believed it anyway. What he had to worry about was police evidence—the evidence that juries did make up their minds about—if they made their minds up on evidence at all, that is—and there didn’t seem to be a lot of that about so far.
Just a dead man. Richard Mallory Tindall.
If he was Richard Tindall.
Even that wasn’t absolutely certain yet.
He stood for a moment looking down at the long low blue car. The position of the car might just be evidence. He wasn’t sure. His experience was that cars like this were cherished by their owners—not carelessly chipped against the wall. But a stranger not used to driving it who was bringing it in to an unfamiliar garage on a dark night might not have noticed that the spade was hanging there: or misjudged the swinging arc of the really wide driver’s door of a two seater car.
It wasn’t much to go on.
And he didn’t like it particularly.
It smacked of a great deal too much forethought for his liking. Quick crime was one thing: this sort of calculation quite another.
He went back indoors and sought out Fenella Tindall.
“Now, miss, if you can spare me a minute …”
“Yes, Inspector?”
“Did your father drive in gloves?”
“Gloves? In all that heat?”
“Yes, gloves.” Sloan knew some of these late-middle-aged fast car drivers. They wore special leather and string driving gloves and pretended all the time that they were young men at Le Mans.
The girl in the brown dress shook her head in a numbed way. “No, Inspector. Only in the winter. When it was very cold.”
“Thank you, miss. That’s what I thought.”
“And not always then. He thought it was affected.”
So did Sloan.
“There’s something else we could do with, miss. The name and address of your Italian friend in Rome.”
He shut his notebook after he’d written it down. “Now, I’m going over to your father’s works, but I’ll be back. Constable Hepple will stay here with you in the meantime. Is that all right?”
Fenella nodded dumbly.
The police car got them to the offices of Messrs Struthers and Tindall in Berebury at a more decorous speed than hithertofore. Detective Constable Crosby was still at the wheel but he was thinking.
“It’s a funny business, sir, isn’t it?”
“You can say that again.”
“It looks as if he just stood there while someone hit him and then that ruddy great thing fell on him while he was lying there.”
“There were no signs of a struggle,” said Sloan, who had looked. “And no rope marks on his wrists or ankles. It looks as if he went there on his own accord, though we don’t know why yet …”
“A bit of slap and tickle? ‘Stop it, I like it’ stuff …” suggested the Constable.
“In a church tower?” The Superintendent had said cherchez la femme, too, hadn’t he?
“Nice and quiet,” said Crosby defensively.
Too quiet, thought Sloan. That was the whole trouble with the church tower at Randall’s Bridge. Even Vespers Cottage was out of earshot.
“Perhaps,” continued the Constable helpfully, “someone sent him a note.”
“I daresay they did.”
“You know the sort of thing, sir,” he elaborated. “‘Meet me in the church tower at midnight.’ Something like that.”
“Written in blood?” enquired Sloan genially. “And finishing with Fail at your peril’?”
“That’s right, sir.” Crosby waved his hand in an eager gesture.
“You’ll have to stop watching all those bad films,” pronounced his superior officer severely, though they had funnier letters than that at the police station every morning. “This isn’t a Victorian melodrama.”
“He was lured to his doom, all right, though, sir, wasn’t he?” intoned Crosby mournfully.
“Yes, but there’s no need for keening,” said Sloan briskly. Perhaps it was more melodramatic than he thought. “I should say he went to the church with somebody and what you’ve got to do is to check at …”
It was too late. Crosby was already following yet another train of thought.
“‘There was I,’” he mimicked in a pseudo-falsetto, very high-pitched, “‘Waiting at the church …’”
“Watch it,” advised Sloan, “or they’ll be having you for the church choir. In with the boys.”
Crosby went very quiet.
“There’s another thing we don’t know for sure,”—Sloan went back
to his brief—“and that’s how the deceased got to the church tower.”
“Car,” said Crosby, who could never envisage any other form of locomotion anyway.
“It was gone by eleven if it was. That schoolmaster fellow—the one who knows all about everything …”
“Mr Knight,” supplied Crosby.
“Him. He didn’t say anything about a car being parked by the church last night when he took his dog for a walk, did he? And he would have done, surely, if he’d seen it. A strange car would ring a bell. Especially a slap-up job like Tindall’s …”
“Another car, then?”
“Or the deceased’s car parked somewhere else. And gone by eleven. Before Knight came back that way with his dog.”
Their own car was very nearly at Berebury’s Wellgate now. Sloan could see Struthers and Tindall’s works looming up.
“That’s your next line of enquiry, Crosby. Was there any other car which could have been involved parked in Randall’s Bridge last night. Or the deceased’s. And while you’re about it find out what time Tindall’s car really left the Osbornes, and where it went after that if you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what time it got back to Cleete.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The girl said some time after eleven but she may be wrong.” That was something else he would have to go into presently: if Fenella Tindall was speaking the truth. “And time the distance from the Osbornes to Randall’s Bridge.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Crosby …”
“Sir?”
“Police time, not Crosby time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hepple will tell you who to talk to. He’ll know who is likely to have been out and about in Cleete that late.”
“Late, sir? Half-past ten?”
“That,” rejoined Sloan neatly, “is why the country is called the hush. Didn’t you know?”
As he stepped over the threshold of Messrs Struthers and Tindall’s works Sloan decided one thing promptly enough. That if Superintendent Leeyes was right in saying cherchez la femme one thing was pretty certain: that Mr Tindall’s personal secretary wasn’t the femme. Like most ugly women she didn’t show her age. She had, however, a pleasant, rather deep voice.
She stood up as they introduced themselves.
“It’s usually Inspector Tetley who comes over when we want anything. We just ring …”
“He’s Crime Prevention,” said Sloan, also a servant of the public. Fred Tetley dealt with Crime Prevention in Berebury Division and he was the only optimist on the entire strength. He was the officer who went round recommending bars here, bolts there, and alarm bells with everything.
And not one of these estimable precautions had stopped Richard Tindall from dying.
“Inspector, what news …” she broke off as a dark-haired good-looking young man in a white coat put his head round her office door. He was waving a sheaf of papers in his hand.
“Excuse me, Miss Holroyd, but I can’t find Mr Tindall anywhere and I’ve got those heat storage results for him down from Testing now. I’ve just finished checking them through.”
“They were wanted yesterday, Mr Blake,” said the secretary reprovingly. “Mr Tindall was waiting for them.”
“Sorry.” Mr Blake looked contrite—but not very.
A really handsome young man, decided Sloan, doesn’t get much practice in looking abashed.
“And,” added Miss Holroyd, “Mr Pysden wants the Patent Register.”
“Everyone always wants the Patent Register.”
“What everyone wants,” remarked Miss Holroyd astringently, “is the United Mellemetics file.”
“Not guilty,” the handsome young man waved an arm airily as he backed out of the door. “I did my bit on that days ago.”
Miss Holroyd turned back to Sloan. “I’m sorry, Inspector. You were saying …”
That she took the bad news about Richard Tindall with no more than a catch of breath and sudden paling did not weigh too heavily with Sloan. Outward calm was deceptive. He’d learned that much long ago. She was probably one of those people who always took all news with outward calm as a matter of policy. Good secretaries were like that. She could have taught the Superintendent a thing or two. He always hit the roof …
Five hundred years ago and he’d have been one of those who hanged the messenger who brought the bad news as an automatic preliminary to getting down to business.
“I’d better take you straight to Mr Pysden,” she said gravely as soon as Sloan had explained. “Poor Fenella. I—we were afraid that something must be wrong when he didn’t come in as usual this morning—but not as wrong as this …”
Perhaps, decided Sloan with approval, she was one of those people who believed that the manner in which news was received made a difference to the quality of the news.
Perhaps it did.
Sloan didn’t know.
He only knew that what had happened to Richard Tindall wasn’t something which could very well be relegated to the Fourth Division in the news class, however carefully invested with the commonplace.
And that it wasn’t exactly Ghent to Aix stuff either.
At least, he corrected himself, it was only good news for one person. If it was murder, that was.
“We’ll need to know about Mr Tindall’s yesterday, miss.”
“Of course.” She was the efficient secretary at once. “Let me see now …”
Richard Mallory Tindall’s yesterday seen from his secretary’s viewpoint emerged as apparently uneventful. He had come in a little late because of the road works, and stayed in his office until about half-past eleven doing his letters. And beginning to write a report.
“The United Mellemetics report?” Sloan wanted to know.
Miss Holroyd shook her head. “The one which Mr Pysden is working on. The Marling Contract.”
“Then what?”
The rest of the morning he had spent seeing people.
“Seeing who, miss?” he asked patiently.
Miss Holroyd frowned. “Mr Pysden, of course. He had his daily conference with him over coffee as usual. That’s when Mr Pysden gave him the United Mellemetics report. The one we can’t find.”
“You didn’t see what he did with it?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Go on. Who else did Mr Tindall see?”
“Mr Blake. You’ve just seen him, Inspector. And then the Works Foreman. Someone from Testing … oh, and Mr Hardy. He looks after the Patents and the legal side. I think that was all. The rest of the time he was talking on the telephone. Then he went round the works.”
Sloan jerked his head. “Anything else?”
This was any businessman’s any morning of any working day.
“Not that I know of, Inspector.”
“Then what?”
“At twelve he went out to lunch.”
“Where?” asked Sloan, dead on cue. It had the quality of a catechism did this going through the meaning of everything with this quiet responsive woman.
“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “He didn’t say.”
“Does … did he usually?”
She looked disconcerted. “As a rule.”
“I expect we can find out easily enough, miss, if it turns out to be important. Anyone would remember that car of his …”
“He didn’t take his car,” she said flatly. “It stood out under my window all day.”
“Someone called for him?” suggested Sloan.
“He took one of the firm’s vans. The old runabout.”
Sloan made a note of the number. Tracing it would give Crosby something useful to do when he had finished with the Osbornes: well, stop him from being underfoot for a bit anyway. “When did he get back?”
“He was here when I got back from lunch myself. Before two fifteen, anyway.”
Sloan wrote that down, too. A man could go a fair way and back in a van in over two hours.
“And
after lunch, miss?”
“More telephone calls.”
“Including Mr Cranswick?”
Again a cloud passed over her face. “Not to my knowledge. Though,”—she pursed her lips—“he said he spoke to Mr Tindall yesterday. And that, Inspector, was about all he would tell me before he shot over to Cleete.”
“We’d like to talk to him ourselves,” said Sloan mildly. “We’re looking for him now.”
That was when the telephone rang.
It was Superintendent Leeyes to speak to Sloan.
“I’ve got something for you,” said Leeyes. “You know this Italian chap who was with the daughter all yesterday evening …”
“Giuseppe Mardoni?”
“Him.”
“What about him, sir?”
“He didn’t catch his plane. We checked at the airport.”
SCATTER THE TEMPEST.
11
“This way, Inspector …” Miss Holroyd led the way down a corridor towards another office. “Mr Pysden’s in here …”
Sloan was conscious of the steady hum of power-driven machinery as soon as they stepped out of Miss Holroyd’s office.
It was Henry Pysden to whom Sloan had spoken on the telephone from Cleete all right. His voice was still unaccented and reedy. He merged as a shortish middle-aged man with thick glasses.
“Poor Richard.” He heard Sloan out and then took his glasses off and gave them a vigorous polish. “And poor Fenella. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be glad Maisie was dead.”
“Maisie?”
“His wife. In the church, did you say? What on earth was he doing there?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.” It was one of the many things Sloan would have to find out: and soon. He hadn’t gone there to read the Lesson, that was one thing for sure. “Not at this stage,” he finished formally aloud.
“Poor Richard,” again. Pysden had obviously settled for the Book of Lamentations. “But Randall’s Bridge wasn’t even his church. Cleete was his parish, though I don’t know that he was much of a churchman. Not,” added Pysden hastily, “that he wasn’t a good man. You wouldn’t find a better, Inspector. And I should know. I’ve been with him a good many years. Longer than most people.”
“No, sir, I’m sure.” Sloan cleared his throat purposefully: the verbal obsequies would just have to wait. “You’ll understand that we shall have to make extensive enquiries.”
His Burial Too Page 9
