Learning Curve

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Which is what made your gardening leave only theoretical,’ concluded Sloan, shutting his notebook. ‘I understand now, sir. Thank you.’

  That there was a lot more that he didn’t understand, he left unsaid.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Of the three people standing in the hall of Legate Lodge awaiting the arrival of Derek Tridgell’s cortège, his widow, Marion, was by far the most composed. She had done her grieving in private – some of it before her husband had died and some afterwards. Now she was fully in charge of her emotions and ready to deal with the demands of the funeral with dignity.

  The same could not be said for her two children. Her daughter, Jane, was still visibly upset and even now unsure whether or not she could go through with the reading she had chosen. Paul Tridgell, her son, suitably dressed for a wonder, was trying to come to terms with having to play in public a role quite unfamiliar to him – that of the conventional offspring of a recently deceased parent. And in a church, at that, and in spite of proclaiming to all and sundry – including the vicar – that he didn’t believe in God.

  His conversion in the matter of doing a reading had come when, after thumbing through the Bible in the privacy of his bedroom, he suddenly announced that he would be doing it after all. It would be, he had said firmly, some well-known verses from the Old Testament.

  By some miracle of tact the vicar had agreed, on being told this, that doing so ought not to offend Paul’s principles as a non-believer. Conceding this with a gracious nod, the enfant terrible, who had now at last reached theoretical adolescence if not yet adulthood, assured the cleric that anyway today nobody would be in the least bit interested in what he said or did. To this the vicar had wisely made no reply.

  As the hearse pulled up outside the door, Marion took a deep breath and reminded herself of one of her grandmother’s aphorisms. It was important, the old lady had insisted, to be ‘mistress of oneself though china fall’. As a child, Marion had never been able to decide whether she had meant china or China until it had been too late to ask her.

  Both, perhaps.

  Preceded by the Reverend Mr Tompkinson, Tod Morton, black top hat tucked under his arm, led the bearers and their burden up the aisle of St Michael’s and All Angels at Friar’s Flensant at the exact moment that the peal of muffled church bells died away. Following the coffin and rigidly looking neither to the right nor the left, it is doubtful whether Marion Tridgell registered the presence of Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby in the back pew or, indeed, of anyone else at all.

  Dressed as soberly as the rest of the congregation, the two policemen had stepped into the church as late as they felt they could. Not, though, as late as a very young girl who slipped into the pew beside Sloan at the very last minute. She was only seconds ahead of the arrival of the cortège and just at the moment the congregation were rising to their feet.

  She whispered into Sloan’s ear, ‘I’m not supposed to be here. I was told not to come.’

  ‘But you did,’ he said.

  ‘Rather. I’m not too young to come to a funeral, am I?’

  The detective inspector looked down at her and said as softly as he could, ‘Someone thought you were.’

  ‘My faux pas.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s what I call my stepfather. False Pa – it’s rather clever, don’t you think? He’s not my real father, you see. I’m Lucy Leaton.’

  Sloan put his finger to his lips and motioned her to be quiet as Tod Morton ushered the family to their seats and the vicar began the burial service by saying, ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we carry nothing out …’

  In the rustle that followed as the congregation sat down after his opening words, the girl asked Sloan how they knew if Mr Tridgell was really in the coffin.

  ‘We do,’ he said. Surely the girl was too young to be versed in crime stories – or was it history? – where bricks had been substituted for the deceased?

  ‘What if he’s not really dead?’ she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘He is,’ said Sloan firmly. That was a matter for the thriller-writers whom she was much too young to have read.

  ‘What if he knocks and wants to come out?’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Sloan, this being neither the time nor the place to explain death and decay to someone who looked scarcely out of infant school. Or where the word ‘wake’ came from.

  ‘Dearly beloved,’ went on the vicar, ‘we are gathered together today to bid our farewells to a man known and loved by us all.’

  ‘Not everyone loved him,’ hissed the small figure beside Sloan. ‘They pretended to but I know they didn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Sloan as quietly as he could, and wondering if this could be important. That grist to the detective mill took many different forms was something every policeman learnt in time.

  ‘They smiled at him too much,’ she said, ‘but only with their faces. Not with their eyes. He shouted at his son, too. Faux pas said so.’

  As soon as the vicar finished his introduction the organist started to play the hymn ‘The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended’. When they reached the last verse Paul Tridgell stepped out of the family pew and went to stand at the lectern. ‘The reading,’ he announced, ‘is from Ecclesiastes, chapter three.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, well-brought-up son of a churchgoing mother, knew what was coming next and sat back.

  Paul straightened the Bible in front of him and began reading.

  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven;

  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted

  ‘Why doesn’t he say “harvest”?’ asked the girl at Sloan’s side, ‘if that’s what he means. Or “reap”. That’s what they do on farms, isn’t it?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Sloan commanded her.

  Paul paused and then went on very slowly and deliberately, staring as he did so at someone unknown in the congregation, ‘“A time to kill …”’ He looked down at the Bible and repeated, ‘“A time to kill, and a time to heal”.’

  Try as he might, Sloan couldn’t make out who Paul Tridgell had been looking at so pointedly, seeing only their backs. He shot a sideways glance at Crosby sitting on his other side but that worthy, head well down, had been contemplating his shoes, clearly polished for the occasion.

  Paul resumed the reading, and finished it in a level voice before making his way back to sit next to his mother in their pew. His sister, Jane, then got to her feet and, in turn, made her way to the lectern. Taking a deep breath, she began to read Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Remember’ that began, ‘“Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land”.’

  Swallowing visibly she fought back tears as she continued in a tremulous voice to read the poem to its end: ‘“Better by far you should forget and smile, Than that you should remember and be sad”.’ She walked back to the pew, eyes cast down, still patently distressed.

  Towards the end of another hymn, the vicar ascended the pulpit and began his own address. He hadn’t got very far into his homily before the little figure at Sloan’s side bounced up and down and said, ‘Boring, boring.’

  ‘Enough,’ snapped Sloan. He wanted to hear what the clergyman had to say but in the end it was nothing that told him anything more about the late Derek Tridgell than he knew already. ‘People don’t talk at funerals,’ he whispered back, feeling a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever it was that had the misfortune of having to teach this age group. ‘If you can’t keep quiet you’d better go home.’

  That silenced her until the vicar reached the end of his peroration with a firm assertion that ‘Where there is death, there is hope’ and the next speaker rose to deliver the customary tribute. Sloan glanced at the service sheet and saw that it was Simon Thornycroft, President of the Berebury Caving Club. The man was clearly a practised speaker, beginning, ‘
I count it a great honour and privilege to have been invited by Derek’s family to pay this tribute to a very old friend, a fine man, a distinguished pharmaceutical scientist and a great caver.’

  Lucy Leaton tugged at his sleeve. ‘That’s my faux pas.’

  The man was still speaking. ‘Jonathon Sharp, the head of Berebury Pharmaceuticals, who is present today,’ here he nodded in the direction of a man sitting near the pulpit, ‘has particularly asked me to tell you that without Derek’s meticulous groundwork the company’s important product Ameliorite would never have reached the manufacturing stage. Now it can be said that it is one of the foremost treatments in the world for damaged nerves – particularly post-herpetic neuralgia – a most painful and intractable condition. But if anyone ever doubted how meticulous Derek was they had only to look at his perfect lawn.’

  This raised a few gentle smiles all round.

  The speaker changed his tone and went on more soberly, ‘Nor must any of us ever forget Derek’s heroic efforts to save Edmund Leaton when we were trying to explore the Baggles Bite, after that terrible accident when the roof of the cave in the Hoath Hole at Chislet Crags collapsed and the cave flooded. Derek’s actions on behalf of a fellow spelunker that day went far, far beyond the call of duty.’

  As Sloan made a mental note to look a new word up in his dictionary, the little figure at his side looked up at him. ‘Edmund Leaton was my dad,’ she said.

  Detective Inspector Sloan stared down gravely at the girl, who nodded. ‘Faux pas married my mother afterwards,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember my dad. I was very little at the time.’

  ‘Is your mother here today?’

  She pointed to the back of a woman sitting near the front of the church beside the seat left empty by the speaker, auburn hair spilling out from under a little black hat. ‘That’s my mum.’

  Detective Constable Crosby leant in front of Sloan and muttered to her in a low voice, ‘And does she know you’re out?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘Someone was looking after me but I ran away.’

  ‘Then,’ advised Crosby in a tone that Sloan hadn’t heard him use before, ‘if you ask me, young miss, as soon as your stepdad sits down again I think you’d better scarper. They mightn’t have spotted you here.’

  Perhaps, thought Sloan, Crosby was learning to be a policeman after all.

  ‘Now hop it,’ went on the constable grandly, confirming that was indeed the case.

  By the time the congregation stood to sing the hymn ‘Abide with Me’, she had gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  With all heads respectfully bowed as the coffin and the family left the church, it was doubtful if either Marion Tridgell or a still tearful Jane spotted Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby there, both also with their heads well down. Paul Tridgell, though, did, giving them an enigmatic stare as he walked back up the aisle. Tod Morton saw them, too, but that experienced young undertaker diplomatically gave no sign of having done so.

  Marion managed to maintain her poise as she shook hands with each of the mourners as they left the church and then made their way to the wake in the ancient village pub. ‘How kind of you to come,’ she repeated time after time, agreeing sadly with all those who said how much Derek would be missed.

  ‘Simon,’ she said, taking both of Simon Thornycroft’s hands in hers as he approached. ‘What you said was lovely and just right. Thank you so much.’

  ‘It was the least I could do,’ he murmured gruffly, squeezing her hands in return. ‘Derek was one of the best. I thought you’d like to know that on Sunday we’re going to have another go at cracking that new ghyll we’ve found – the one we’re going to name after Derek as soon as we crack it.’

  ‘Oh, Simon, do take care, all of you.’ She shivered.

  ‘Don’t worry, Marion. Caving’s a great adventure and great fun, too.’

  ‘I was never really happy when Derek was down there.’ That she wasn’t ever going to have to worry about Derek ever again had not yet really dawned on Derek’s widow. She looked anxiously into Simon’s face. ‘It’s nowhere near where Edmund died, I hope.’

  ‘No, no.’ Simon Thornycroft shook his head. ‘No one’s been anywhere near there since the tragedy. No one at all. The farmer – old Bartlett – won’t let them anyway, if he can help it, and besides you couldn’t get beyond the roof fall. The Baggles Bite is underwater now anyway and the stream must have found another way out. They said all that at the inquest, remember?’

  Marion nodded, becoming sadder still.

  ‘Caving’s a great adventure, Marion,’ he said, ‘and Derek always enjoyed it, even when …’ he stopped, his voice trailing away.

  ‘Even when things went wrong?’ she said wryly.

  ‘No, of course, not then but Ed’s death was a one-off,’ said Simon. ‘You’ve got to remember that.’

  ‘You all did what you could,’ she murmured, looking towards his wife, Amelia Thornycroft. ‘For Amelia and little Lucy, I mean.’

  ‘Ed was a great friend, Marion, and I still miss him,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘It’s funny how having one sadness makes you think of another one,’ she said, her eyes still on Simon Thornycroft’s auburn-haired wife. ‘At least Derek has had a proper funeral and I will have a grave to visit. It must have been an extra sadness that poor Amelia hasn’t.’

  Simon nodded in sympathy.

  She brightened. ‘But at least Amelia and Lucy have you.’

  ‘I couldn’t wish for more, even though,’ he said, giving her a small smile, ‘young Lucy’s beginning to get a bit of a handful these days.’

  She released her hands from his and shook those of Jonathon Sharp, the next in line.

  ‘Such a great pity, Marion,’ said the chairman of Berebury Pharmaceuticals. ‘Derek was at the very peak of his career. We’d never ever have got Ameliorite off the drawing board without him.’

  ‘Then let it be his memorial,’ said Derek’s widow. She paused and then said, ‘Jonathon, Derek was very worried – until he got really ill – about what was going to happen to Ameliorite after Luston Chemicals turned so nasty.’

  ‘He’s not the only one, Marion,’ he said seriously. ‘We’re all very worried but all we can do at this stage is wait and see.’

  ‘That poor man who died over there …’

  ‘Michael Linane? What about him?’

  ‘This business of – what do you call it?’

  ‘Predatory pricing.’

  ‘It was all his idea, wasn’t it? Derek had told me what they were going to do.’

  ‘Undercut us by selling their Mendaner under cost until it kills off Ameliorite,’ he replied, leaving unsaid the inevitable corollary, ‘and us too probably.’

  ‘How could they do something like that?’

  ‘Easily, my dear. It’s quite often done in the business world and as the health service people have to buy as cheaply as they can we don’t stand a chance. Nobody’s going to buy our Ameliorite now.’

  ‘But I thought it was every bit as good as their Mendaner,’ she said, patently puzzled.

  ‘It is – it’s a bit better actually, I think – but business is business,’ said the chairman. ‘There is one thing, though,’ here Jonathon Sharp bent his head towards her and said in a low voice, ‘Michael Linane was their head of sales. Now he’s gone we’re just waiting to see what happens next. That’s all we can do.’ He laid a hand on her arm. ‘I’m afraid they could just be limbering up over there for an advertising campaign for their own product but don’t you worry. Derek’s pension’s quite safe.’

  Marion said perceptively, ‘But you’re still worried, Jonathon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Michael Linane’s death might just have made them think twice,’ he said, adding to himself that he didn’t suppose it would.

  Marion Tridgell was nobody’s fool. ‘Your firm’s in danger, isn’t it?’

  She got an oblique answer. ‘What we think, Marion, is that though what they’r
e planning to do over in Luston isn’t legal, there’s actually not a lot we can do about it except either watch Berebury Pharmaceuticals go down the drain or come up with something as good as Ameliorite pretty quickly.’

  ‘But if it’s not legal …’

  ‘I’m afraid that by the time we could’ve taken them to court the damage would have been done anyway.’

  ‘Business is like war, isn’t it?’ she said, getting ready to shake the next hand in the queue in front of her.

  ‘Just the same,’ agreed the Chairman of Berebury Pharmaceuticals, ‘but without the Geneva Convention.’

  ‘I think, Crosby,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan thoughtfully, as from a safe distance they watched the last of the mourners make their way from the churchyard to the Lamb and Flag Inn opposite, ‘that we may now safely assume that there’s been a killing.’

  ‘And that whoever did it was in the church today,’ said Crosby, cheering up.

  ‘Probably,’ said Sloan, more cautious. ‘On the other hand it might just only have been Paul Tridgell’s way of letting someone know that he knew something. We don’t know what, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But that’s downright dangerous,’ protested the constable. ‘Can’t he work that out?’

  ‘I think he’s probably playing with fire,’ said Sloan in tacit agreement. ‘You know how young men are.’ He wasn’t sure if Crosby actually did, he not having been a policeman all that long, so he hurried on. ‘And what we need to know next is who Paul Tridgell was looking at when he repeated that bit about “a time to kill”.’

  ‘“You pays your money and you takes your choice”,’ quoted Crosby casually. ‘Someone was at the wheel of the car that crashed. And if there was ever a really suspicious death, it was that one over at Luston.’

  ‘Someone killed someone,’ agreed Sloan, getting into the passenger seat of the police car and strapping himself in. ‘We just don’t know who, when and where.’

  ‘And why,’ said Crosby, starting the engine.