‘No?’ Crosby struggled to sit up in bed.
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘It was all planned most beautifully, Crosby.’ Light was dawning fast. Someone had wanted burial not cremation. Cremation called for two medical certificates, not one.
‘What was?’
‘Oh yes,’ continued Sloan to himself, ‘in due course George Wansdyke would have indeed discovered the money and been able to prove that it wasn’t Beatrice’s …’
‘Would he?’
‘But by then,’ said Sloan grimly, ‘it would have been too late.’
‘Too late for what?’ insisted Crosby, pushing the bedclothes aside.
Sloan wasn’t listening.
‘Too late for what?’ repeated Crosby.
Sloan’s mind was racing ahead now with a speed that would have shamed a computer.
‘I’m beginning to see it all now.’
‘I’m not, sir.’
‘Wansdyke and Darnley couldn’t have their new product launching until Friday for a reason.’
Crosby merely looked bewildered.
‘Because of something that was going to happen today, Crosby.’
‘Nothing was due to happen today,’ protested the detective-constable.
‘Oh yes there was.’
‘Thursday?’
‘Today’s Thursday,’ said Sloan authoritatively, ‘and something’s due to happen. Something we’d forgotten about.’
‘We knew?’
‘Everyone knew,’ said Sloan. ‘That was the beauty of it.’
‘What?’
‘Something the murderer was waiting for.’ He shot a look at his watch and snapped, ‘Where’s the nearest telephone? Quickly …’ Over his shoulder he said ‘Malcolm Darnley’s due to come home today, that’s what. Due to come home and be killed.’
Several things happened at once.
Detective-Constable Crosby flung back the bedclothes. Detective-Inspector Sloan raced across the ward. A ward maid called Nellie began a stately progression down between the row of beds with a bucket and mop. Sloan side-stepped Nellie but Crosby cannoned into her. Sloan reached Sister’s office and the telephone at much the same time as Sister Fleming emerged to enquire into the noise and confusion.
Sloan pushed straight past her and grabbed the telephone directory. With savagely controlled speed he started hunting through its flimsy pages, muttering under his breath the while. ‘Darnley … where are the D’s?… Don’t anyone tell me that they’re after the C’s …’
Nobody tried to do that.
‘Mr Crosby,’ an outraged Sister was saying, ‘get back to bed at once.’
‘Darnley,’ said Sloan again, rapidly running his finger down a column. ‘Darnley … What’s his first name?… I remember,’ he said before Crosby had time to speak, ‘it’s Malcolm, isn’t it?… George Wansdyke told us that … Here we are.’
Sister Fleming drew herself up to her full height.
Nobody took any notice.
‘Darnley, M.C.P.,’ shouted Sloan, ‘Selborne – why can’t people use street numbers instead of house names? – Acacia Avenue, Berebury.’ He was already dialling as he spoke. ‘Acacia Avenue isn’t as good an address as the one the Wansdykes live at,’ he remarked as his fingers went round the dialling digits. He heard the bell ring at the other end and answered his own observation with, ‘But then, Malcolm Darnley didn’t marry a Hartley-Powell.’
‘Mr Crosby,’ thundered Sister Fleming, ‘what are you doing out of bed?’
The telephone bell rang three times at the house called Selborne in Acacia Avenue before it was answered.
‘Mrs Darnley?’ said Sloan with suppressed urgency.
‘Speaking.’ She had a pleasant light voice.
‘Do you happen to know which flight your husband is travelling back from the United States on?’
‘Who is that?’ she asked more sharply. ‘Do you know what the time is?’
‘Police,’ jerked out Sloan. ‘Not about an accident or anything.’ If he believed in crossing fingers he would have crossed them now. ‘Just a few enquiries.’
‘At this hour?’
‘His flight number,’ said Sloan martially. ‘Do you know that?’
‘No.’
‘The time, then,’ said Sloan quickly.
‘I do know he’s due to land at about seven o’clock this morning.’
‘Our time?’ In his youth Sloan had read Around the World in Eighty Days. The last chapter had made a lasting impression on him.
‘Our time,’ said Mrs Darnley calmly. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘How is he planning to get home?’
‘From the airport, you mean?’
‘Yes. Are you meeting him, for instance?’
‘Oh no. He’ll have landed by now, won’t he?’
Sloan shot a quick look at his watch and groaned inwardly.
‘He’s coming home by car,’ she volunteered.
‘Whose car?’ Sloan fought to keep the rising anxiety out of his voice.
‘His own. Ours, that is. I don’t drive, you see.’ She coughed. ‘Malcolm thinks the fewer people who drive the better, especially wives.’
‘Where did he leave it?’ Sloan heroically refrained from other comment.
‘In the airport car park. We don’t mind it being out in the open.’ She laughed. ‘It’s so old that no one would steal it now.’
Sloan interrupted her without ceremony. ‘What’s the registration number?’
‘Let me see … I should know, shouldn’t I, after all these years.’
Sloan waited. The seconds seemed like minutes.
‘But I’m not very good at remembering numbers,’ she said apologetically. ‘Is it important?’
‘Yes,’ said Sloan between clenched teeth, adding under his breath, ‘Madam, you don’t know how important.’
‘You’ll be able to find it easily enough in a crowd,’ she said brightly, ‘if that’s what you want.’
‘How?’
‘It’ll be the oldest one there.’
‘Mrs Darnley …’
‘Bound to be,’ she said confidently. ‘We don’t believe in planned obsolescence, you see, so we never change cars until we have to.’
Sloan rigorously suppressed something about not believing in fairies himself and said instead with rigid formality ‘Thank you, madam. You’ve been a great help.’
‘Are you sure, Officer, that there’s nothing wrong?’ asked Mrs Darnley.
But by then Sloan had rung off.
Malcolm Darnley, partner in Messrs Wansdyke and Darnley, did not look like an agitator. Therein, as all experienced bureaucrats and administrators knew, lay half his strength. His essentially mild manner and conventional dress invariably strengthened his case at public enquiries.
At the moment the arch-conservationist looked just what he was – a tired businessman. With jet-lag weariness he walked across the airport car park, humping his luggage with him. A waste land, he thought to himself, as he regarded row upon row of parked cars. Being a methodical soul, he had made a mental note of exactly where he’d left his own before leaving on his trip.
Not that he couldn’t pick out his own vehicle easily enough anyway. It was the oldest car in sight. And the best maintained. He spotted it without delay and walked towards it with affection. If every owner cherished their mechanical appliances in the way the Darnleys did there would be fewer municipal dumps. He looked at more modern products of the assembly line with complacency. They didn’t make cars like his any more.
It was parked some little distance from the entrance and he picked his way round the rows, wishing his luggage wasn’t quite so heavy. He turned his head for a moment when he heard a distant shout but then carried on. He had almost reached the row where his own car was waiting when the shout came again. It was nearer now.
Malcolm Darnley continued walking. After all, no one knew him here. He did just check over his belongings to make sure he hadn’t dropped his wallet or anything
. All seemed well and he strode onwards.
Next time the shout was clearly audible.
Darnley turned and saw a running policeman. It was, he conceded to himself, an unusual sight. Policemen didn’t usually run: something important must be happening. A quick scanning of the horizon did not reveal to Malcolm Darnley what that could be. Shaking his head to himself, he forged on.
The shout came again.
This time there was no doubt to whom it was addressed.
Himself.
The policeman was running in his direction and shouting at him at the same time.
Darnley had reached his own car now. He dumped his travelling bag down and turned, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. He would just park his luggage in the car …
This time he heard what it was that the policeman was shouting. It was for him to keep still.
Essentially co-operative except in the matter of the conservation of the countryside and the preservation of England’s architectural heritage, Malcolm Darnley, thorn in much bureaucratic executive flesh, stood still.
As well as the running policeman other figures were now appearing at the gallop from other corners of the airport car park.
Malcolm Darnley was quite bewildered. He looked round at the car park. It seemed normal enough to him. He cast an eye over his own car. That, too, looked just as he had left it … he stiffened … well, no, not quite.
He, Malcolm Darnley, had not left a newspaper draped carelessly over the back seat before flying to the United States. Certainly not an Irish newspaper.
The running policeman skidded to a halt beside him and put out his hand for Darnley’s car keys. ‘If you don’t mind, sir …’
Darnley surrendered them without demur.
He was no fool. This was no time for protest. Instead he stood back and waited for an explanation. It came from an unexpected quarter. One of the other figures who had converged on his car turned out to be an expert in his own particular rarefied field. Civilized life is under threat in more ways than by the simple despoliation of the countryside. Malcolm Darnley learned that today’s airport carries its own bomb disposal expert on the staff.
The specialist’s first requirement was that everyone move well back before he commenced operations.
Obediently Malcolm Darnley – no nonconformist in essentials – joined in the general retreat. They all watched the explosives man working at his lonely job from a safe distance.
It was not long before he reported back.
‘If,’ he said to a bemused Malcolm Darnley, ‘you had touched your ignition switch you’d have been blown to Kingdom Come.’
‘Why?’ asked Malcolm Darnley.
CHAPTER XVIII
Sometimes their goods are swallowed by the sea,
And sometimes they come safely back to port.
Police Superintendent Leeyes was never at his best first thing in the morning. Somewhere about the time when the lark took over from the nightingale his natural acerbity rose. And continued to rise.
This morning was no exception.
‘Will someone kindly tell me,’ he said with icy impatience, ‘exactly what has been going on?’
He was sitting squarely behind his desk glaring at Sloan.
Sloan immediately made to speak.
Leeyes forestalled him. ‘I come in to find a man – Nicholas Petforth no less – in the cells who you –’ he flashed an aggressive look at the detective-inspector – ‘keep telling me isn’t guilty.’
‘Isn’t guilty of murdering Beatrice Wansdyke,’ reiterated Sloan: not for the first time.
‘And,’ carried on Leeyes imperviously, ‘to be given a message over the telephone.’
‘A message, sir?’ Sloan started forward eagerly.
‘I pick up that –’ Here he directed a malevolent stare in the direction of the telephone receiver on his desk which he had just replaced with altogether unnecessary vigour. Telephone cradles did not last long in his office.
‘Yes?’ Sloan was right on the edge of his chair now.
‘To be told, Sloan, something that doesn’t make sense.’
‘What?’ asked Sloan urgently. It was all very well for people to say that a man shouldn’t get too involved with his work, but …
‘Why,’ Leeyes demanded grandly, ‘should I have a message for you, Sloan, from a bomb disposal expert?’
Sloan began to speak. ‘Sir …’
‘And tell me,’ carried on the Superintendent, ‘why he should wish you to be told that there was a quantity of explosive packed under the bonnet of a car with the registration number of …’ He glanced down at the message sheet.
‘I know the car,’ said Sloan weakly.
‘And that,’ said Leeyes, ‘there was enough of it to be sure of killing the driver.’
Sloan relaxed. ‘We were in time, then …’
‘In time for what?’
‘To save a life.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Superintendent Leeyes had all the irascible man’s maddening imperturbability about the big things of this world. ‘He said something else too.’ The Superintendent frowned at his own handwriting. ‘I know what it was.’
‘Sir?’
‘That if the balloon had gone up …’
‘Yes?’
‘They would have been lucky to have found so much as his collar stud.’
‘Ah …’ Sloan let out a sigh of pure relief.
‘Sloan,’ he said with mock gentleness: menacingly.
‘Sir?’
‘Whose collar stud?’
‘Malcolm Darnley’s,’ said Sloan happily.
‘Malcolm Darnley of Wansdyke and Darnley?’
Sloan nodded. ‘You see, sir, when I came to think of it, it was the only thing that hadn’t happened yet.’
‘What was?’
‘His coming home tomorrow … today, I mean.’ That reminded Sloan of something. ‘Sir, I must be getting back to the hospital as quickly as I can.’
‘What had his coming home got to do with Beatrice Wansdyke?’ insisted Leeyes. You didn’t get to be superintendent without being able to override the wishes of other people when it suited you.
‘I’m not quite sure … yet … it was something Crosby said.’
‘Crosby?’ echoed Leeyes in tones of pure disbelief.
‘About the source of the money.’
‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ conceded Leeyes.
‘If it wasn’t inheritance or the proceeds of a tidy-sized job …’ Babes. Sloan kept still with difficulty. He shouldn’t be here at all, really. Not now.
‘We know it wasn’t any of them,’ said Leeyes impatiently. ‘We checked on all those early on.’ That ‘early on’ was Tuesday and today was Thursday surprised neither of them. Each criminal investigation had its own timetable: Sloan would not be surprised to know that someone was still looking for Jack the Ripper. There might even be a warrant out for Cain …
‘So,’ went on Sloan, ‘when Crosby said what about it being big business money …’
‘I suppose,’ mused the Superintendent, ‘when you think of some payroll snatches …’
‘Big business wouldn’t think that sort of money so very out of the way,’ pursued Sloan. ‘At least, I don’t think it would.’ He had himself been schooled on the principle that murder most foul could be done for a hat-pin let alone a hat but it didn’t mean that there wasn’t an opposite end to the same scale.
‘So?’ Orders of magnitude didn’t interest the Superintendent.
‘The only business round here that had anything to do with the case is –’
‘I know,’ growled Leeyes. ‘Don’t tell me.’
‘Wansdyke and Darnley.’
Leeyes grunted. ‘That well-known Berebury firm.’
‘Well-known in the plastics field, anyway,’ said Sloan. He’d been doing what research he could in the last half-hour.
‘I don’t see the connection,’ objected Leeyes.
‘Neither do I, sir, yet.’
‘And I thought –’ Leeyes was adept at shifting responsibility whenever he could – ‘from what you said that George Wansdyke was about the only one who didn’t stand to benefit from what his aunt left in her will.’
‘That was the beauty of the whole thing, sir,’ breathed Sloan, spoiling the effect by adding in a cautionary way, ‘I think.’
Leeyes started to raise an objection.
‘I’m hoping,’ interposed Sloan swiftly, ‘that a chat with Malcolm Darnley will put us in the picture.’
‘And in the meantime?’
Sloan told him exactly what he proposed doing in the meantime.
Margaret Sloan wasn’t asleep any longer.
Far from it.
Sloan had begun to frame uncertain sentences as he hurried along the corridor to the maternity unit. They faded from his lips as he entered the delivery room.
‘Margaret …’
She put out her hand.
‘You got my message,’ he began as he stepped swiftly to her side.
He had sent Crosby down from Fleming Ward with it, reckoning that, next to a white coat, the wearing of pyjamas, dressing-gown and bandage gave one the easiest entree to almost everywhere in the hospital. Almost everywhere. Not to this ward, of course. He’d have got as far as the door, though. Even Crosby.
His wife looked at him almost without recognition, her mind elsewhere.
‘A job,’ he said uneasily. ‘I was on a job.’
Wordlessly she tightened her grip on his hand.
Someone masked and gowned told him where to stand. He looked up. The voice behind the mask was familiar. He’d heard it before.
‘Inspector Sloan, I presume,’ said the man.
He nodded. It was like studying an Identikit picture without hair, nose, and chin: and as tantalizing.
Margaret Sloan was trying to say something.
He immediately turned back to her.
At first no sound came.
He put his head near her lips.
‘Never off-duty,’ she whispered, ‘are you?’
‘My dearest love …’
He started to perspire.
Some Die Eloquent Page 18
