Troubled Waters

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  Pollard studied the remains of the bridge. The arch had a low stone balustrade on each side. The collapse had taken place just south of the crown of the arch, and it was not immediately obvious from where he stood. It was easy to understand how an active young man, sprinting down the wooded hillside, could have dashed on to the bridge in the gathering twilight without taking in what lay ahead, and been unable to stop himself in time. There was a drop of about twelve feet on to quite large pieces of masonry which were still lying on the stream bed, and it was on one of these that Edward Tuke had apparently landed head first and fatally concussed himself. And it was a secluded spot, almost hidden by trees and bushes from the village houses. Pollard glanced along the fishermen’s paths on both sides of the river. According to Deeds they were little used. Most Woodcombe people would have been at their evening meal between six-thirty and seven o’clock, and members of the fishing syndicate unlikely to have arrived, even if they had decided to exercise their now undisputed rights that evening. He noticed how narrow concrete paths had been built up round the bases of the piers to facilitate their movements. He looked questioningly at Toye.

  ‘You couldn’t bank on the chap going headlong,’ the latter asserted, habitually cautious.

  ‘What’s your opinion, Deeds?’ Pollard asked.

  ‘Well, sir,’ the young inspector replied, ‘to my mind it’s a matter of what you said just now, up top. If you’d taken up the notice, and advised Mr Tuke to use the bridge knowing he was in a tearing hurry and the light was going, I’d say the chances of him coming to grief were pretty high. And it’s not as though anybody else was likely to be about. Well worth a try if you’d got it in for him.’

  ‘I agree with you both,’ Pollard said thoughtfully. ‘Dicey, isn’t it? Very difficult to prove criminal intent.’

  ‘Meaning criminal intent on the part of somebody who wasn’t one of the fans?’ Toye asked.

  ‘Yes. Even if they — the fans — did chuck the warning notice into the river there’s ample evidence that they were stoned, so they couldn’t be charged with intent to murder. But I’m inclined to agree with you, Inspector, that they didn’t do it. The evidence brought against them is purely circumstantial, and you might even say that on balance it’s slightly in their favour.’

  Inspector Deeds was gratified.

  ‘You know,’ Pollard pursued, ‘if they didn’t, in theory it should be possible to clear them. If they were cleared beyond any doubt the coroner would probably want to reopen the inquest, and the anonymous letters might turn out to be a really important lead. I expect you people down here had arrived at this point before we turned up?’

  ‘Yes, we had, sir, but we were still at the stage of considering priorities when the Home Office called the C.C., about you coming down and taking over. The problem was where to begin. Any able-bodied person could have pulled up the notice and you’ll have seen that the hedges on the south bank give plenty of cover. There are people living right on the spot like Mr and Mrs Kenway-Potter and Mr Bolling. Mr Fordyce made no bones about having walked along the north bank on the Wednesday afternoon, and he met Bill Morris who was putting up the “Private Fishing” notices again, and collecting the bottles and whatever that the fans had chucked around at Upper Bridge.’

  ‘One thing about this alleged case,’ Pollard commented, ‘is that there’s no shortage of potential suspects. From geography to history, I think. In other words we now start tackling that massive casefile with a weather eye for anything that would eliminate the ruddy fans.’

  As they drank refreshing cups of tea in the small private office provided for them at Littlechester police headquarters, Pollard and Toye took stock of its facilities. There was a good solid table, three upright chairs, a telephone, a typewriter, and a generous supply of writing materials. A window, open at the bottom, overlooked the car park. Having drained his third cup, Toye thrust out his head and shoulders to study the parked vehicles to better advantage.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I’m knocking off for supper,’ Pollard remarked caustically, pushing the tea tray to one side and drawing the file towards him.

  Toye’s torso and head re-entered the room. There was the vestige of a grin on his pale solemn face as he sat down on the opposite side of the table.

  ‘What do we start on?’ he asked, contemplating through his large horn-rimmed spectacles, the mass of papers in front of Pollard.

  ‘With the anonymous letters, I think. At least they’re out of the ordinary.’

  The Littlechester police technicians had sandwiched the three letters and the envelopes in which they had arrived between thin sheets of glass secured by Sellotape. The letters were on greaseproof paper. Their contents had been inscribed in uniform featureless block capitals with a sharp, but fairly soft pencil. A report from the forensic laboratory stated that the perfect regularity of the lettering could only be accounted for by the use of a stencil. It added that stencilled alphabets not infrequently formed part of children’s educational toys. The addresses on the manila business envelopes were in the same block lettering. The only recognisable fingerprints on these were those of the police constable who had sorted the mail on its arrival. The greaseproof paper had only been handled by someone wearing thin rubber gloves of a type in common use.

  The postmarks were also disappointingly unhelpful. All three missives had been posted in Littlechester and sent by second-class mail. They had been franked by machine and merely gave the date but not the time of posting.

  ‘Beyond the fact that it points to a local, there’s not much help here,’ Pollard said. ‘We’d better get down to the bookwork proper. Here goes: the initial 999 call from Mr R. Kenway-Potter of Woodcombe Manor at 20.37 hours on Wednesday, April the twenty-third, reporting a drowning fatality in the River Honey on his property... There’s the hell of a lot of it.’

  A quick glance through the contents of the file showed that everything was there, meticulously recorded in chronological order: the immediate steps taken by the police on their arrival at Woodcombe, the preliminary statements made by Rodney Kenway-Potter, James Fordyce and Tom Wonnacott, and the opening and adjournment of the inquest on Edward Tuke. There followed detailed accounts of the questioning of the eleven football fans, the information on the deceased’s antecedents obtained from Integrated Oils, and from the U.S.A. by way of the F.B.I., and reports of interviews with everyone known to have had any contact with Edward Tuke, both in Woodcombe and on his brief visit to Littlechester. In addition there were brief biographies of the Kenway-Potters, the Fordyces, the Wonnacotts, Mrs Rawlings and Canon Hugh Allbright of Littlechester Cathedral. None of these had a police record. Finally there was a report on the resumed inquest and its verdict of Death by Misadventure.

  Details of the arrival and contents of the anonymous letters followed, and of the publicity sparked off by the third. In conclusion there was a brief statement about the takeover by Scotland Yard.

  As an appendage there was an account of the dispute between Rodney Kenway-Potter and Leonard Bolling over the formation of the fishing syndicate, and a verbatim report of the proceedings in the County Court. The fact that Ford and Co., estate agents of Littlechester, had been instructed to put Bridge Cottage on the market on the day before the case was heard was duly noted.

  They got down to the job, working along their usual line, both reading each set of documents independently, and making a note of anything that struck them as significant. By half-past seven they had finished with the interrogations of the fans. Pollard threw down his biro and stretched.

  ‘My brain’s flagging,’ he said, ‘I must refuel. Let’s knock off for grub and a breather.’

  Rooms had been booked for them at the Three Crowns, a nearby hotel. They ate in the grill room with the local evening paper for company. It had contrived to fill out its front page with the bare fact of their arrival and a photograph of Pollard. There were surreptitious glances from other tables. When they had finished their meal Pollard went to ring
his wife at their home in Wimbledon. As always when he was working on a case they used a motoring code, and he told her that he did not yet know if there was going to be a car for him to try out. Jane’s reply was interrupted by scuffling sounds and small voices, his nine-year-old twin son and daughter having heard the bleep of the telephone and emerged from their beds for their rations of thirty seconds’ conversation with him. They were then shooed away for Jane to have a final word and a promise of another call as soon as the situation clarified.

  Putting down the receiver, Pollard looked at his watch and decided that he could afford to have a stroll around for quarter of an hour. Toye, who believed in reading newspapers thoroughly, had installed himself on a bench in the forecourt of the hotel with the Littlechester Evening News, and agreed that he, too, felt like a bit longer break.

  A narrow passage flanked by small expensive-looking shops brought Pollard out into the Cathedral Green. He walked across it for a closer inspection of a magnificent rose window in the west front. It was now nearly nine o’clock and he was surprised to see a couple who were obvious tourists emerge from the building. He tried the door through which they had appeared. It swung open to his touch, and he stepped inside.

  As he stood at the end of the nave looking eastward the vista before him was of such beauty that he momentarily lost all his sense of time and place. A soft blue-grey dusk had invaded the chancel and the superb vaulted roof far above him, but the screen and the great pillars of the crossing were red-gold in the sunset glow.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid we close the cathedral at nine.’

  The voice coming from somewhere near his right shoulder brought him abruptly to earth.

  ‘Of course,’ Pollard replied. ‘I’m surprised that it’s kept open so late. I happened to be passing when two people were coming out, so I thought I’d just look inside.’

  The speaker proved to be a middle-aged cleric in a cassock, with gold-rimmed spectacles and a pleasant friendly face.

  ‘We only do it in summer for the visitors,’ he said, eyeing Pollard keenly. ‘Forgive me, but I recognise you, of course. Detective Chief Superintendent Pollard, isn’t it? I wish you were down here on happier business. I saw your photograph in the Evening News tonight. I can’t help being interested because I had quite a long talk with that poor young American on the afternoon before he died ... yes, Chivers, we’re on the way out,’ he added, as a second cassocked figure came up with the jingle of a bunch of keys. ‘Everything all right? Fine. Goodnight.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  The next minute Pollard and his new acquaintance were outside, a key was turning in a lock and bolts were being shot home.

  ‘I expect the local C.I.D. got on to the fact that you had this conversation with Mr Tuke?’ Pollard enquired tactfully.

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed. They were anxious to trace his movements in Littlechester that afternoon and came to make enquiries at the Cathedral as it’s one of the places that Americans make for. They showed Chivers his passport photograph. Chivers is a very observant chap and had noticed him talking to me at some length by the War Memorial Chapel. They asked me if he had mentioned any acquaintances in Littlechester or round about, or said anything about his plans for the rest of day, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to give them any helpful information.’

  ‘If you were talking at some length, might I ask you what the conversation was about? One simply never knows in an enquiry like this what may turn out to be relevant.’

  ‘Of course you may, but I can hardly believe that it will in this case. We chatted a bit about the job he’d come over to do, and what it was like to work for a gigantic set-up like Integrated Oils. He said that both his parents had been immigrant stock from Britain to the States, and that he’d always had an idea that he’d like to come back permanently. I asked him what particularly attracted him in the country now that he’d got here, and rather surprisingly, he said the sense of the past which you didn’t feel in the U.S.’

  ‘Did he say anything about the Woodcombe longstone?’

  ‘Nothing. The police asked me that. For a young American he seemed rather movingly interested in our War Memorial Chapel. It’s rather fine, commemorating the local fallen in both the wars. I remember his saying what a splendid thing it was to have died for your country, and how proud your family would feel.’

  There seemed nothing further to be gained by prolonging the conversation with the cleric, who was, Pollard learnt with interest, Canon Hugh Allbright, so after a few comments on the architecture of the Cathedral they parted. Pollard returned to the Three Crowns, collected Toye, and within ten minutes they were getting down to Edward Tuke’s family background and past history.

  It was past midnight when they arrived at the stage of comparing notes. They found themselves in complete agreement that the top priority was to see if the football fans could be cleared beyond any doubt of having removed the warning notice on the collapsed bridge.

  ‘It’s no good our tackling the chaps themselves,’ Pollard said. ‘If Deeds and Super Newman who understand the local mentality couldn’t get anywhere with them, we certainly shouldn’t. They’d only clam up all the more. My great thought is that we concentrate on the notice. Did anyone see it after the fans’ razzmatazz just before midnight on Tuesday, April 22nd?’

  Toye replied that the same idea had struck him. ‘Can you swallow Mr Fordyce’s story of how he walked along the north bank on the Wednesday afternoon without noticing whether the thing was there or not?’

  Pollard rubbed his eyes and sat staring at the opposite wall. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I can. I remember the state of mind I was in when Jane and I were deciding whether to plunge and buy the Wimbledon house. Whether it really was the right house in the right place, and the mortgage problem and so on. But there is a small point about that walk of Fordyce’s that may have struck you. You’ve seen the lie of the land. How long would it take you, personally, to saunter in an abstracted way from Bridge Cottage to Upper Bridge?’

  Toye considered the matter. ‘Five to seven minutes,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I’d give it. Well, as you’ve seen, the local chaps made exhaustive enquiries about possible contacts of Tuke’s in Woodcombe and the neighbourhood. The woman at the shop-cum-post office whom Deeds called a clacker, assured him that nobody had been in early on Wednesday afternoon except Mr Fordyce, just on three, and she’d watched him go over to have a look at Bridge Cottage. Bill Morris, who was clearing up after the fans at Upper Bridge said he hadn’t seen Mr Tuke except in the pub that morning. Nobody had come along the path that afternoon except Mr Fordyce at about ten to four. Forty-five minutes seems a long time for looking at a cottage you can’t get into, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Toye agreed. ‘What could he have been up to, though? At that stage he hadn’t met Tuke and couldn’t have known his plans for the evening.’

  ‘We’ve only his word for it that it was Tuke himself who suggested going up to see the longstone. Fordyce could have talked him into it and advised the shortcut over the bridge... Pure unsupported theorising, I know. But it’s possible that Fordyce didn’t hand over all the correspondence between Tuke and himself, or give Deeds all the facts about what passed between them on Wednesday evening. He’s on our list for a nice long talk, anyway.’

  ‘So’s Bolling. If I was a betting man,’ Toye said in tones which utterly repudiated this possibility, ‘I’d put my money on Bolling. He’d got across Woodcombe and everybody in it, and his lawyer must’ve managed to put it over to him that he hadn’t a hope of getting that injunction. Otherwise he wouldn’t have decided to sell his house and quit before the county court hearing. Knocking down that stone and throwing a notice, put up by Mr Kenway-Potter, into the river might have seemed to him a final kick in the pants for the whole lot of ’em. I’m not suggesting any criminal intent over the notice. And as Inspector Deeds said, he lives right on the spot, and would have seen the Kenway Potters drive off
, and realise by the small hours that they’d gone for the night and that the coast was clear.

  ‘I’ll grant you all that,’ Pollard said. ‘Whether he’d have the physical strength and know-how to bring down that dirty great longstone on his own and yank up the notice as well is another matter. Put him on the list, anyway... Look here, I feel I’ve about had it for tonight. We’ve got enough jobs lined up already to keep us going for days.’

  Toye, a careful planner, asked exactly what they would be starting off with on the following morning.

  ‘Tell you at breakfast,’ Pollard replied, gathering papers together. ‘Inspiration may float up from my subconscious while I’m asleep. At the moment my mind’s blank.’

  Chapter Three

  Pollard and Toye were both believers in a good stout breakfast as an insurance against the possibility of getting nothing more to eat until the evening. It was not until heaped plates of bacon and eggs and various accompaniments had been disposed of that Pollard began to outline a provisional programme for the day.

  ‘If we’re going to tackle the warning notice problem by concentrating on who last saw the damn thing in situ rather than who it was that yanked it up,’ he said, spreading marmalade thickly on buttered toast, ‘it’s a case of going over to Woodcombe again. To the village itself this time. We know you can’t see the board from the hill because of the trees and the slightly convex slope, or from Upper Bridge. The trees and bushes on the south bank would hide it from anybody at ground level in the village, but what about the view from the upper windows of houses?’

  ‘But if anybody saw it still there after the fans’ rampage and all the talk when Tuke was killed, why didn’t they come forward?’ Toye asked.

  ‘Either because they’d removed it themselves during the Wednesday morning or afternoon, or because it hadn’t registered with them, because when they did see it they were consciously looking at something else.’