‘So I expect he knows, all right, by now,’ said Anna.
‘Bad news travels fast,’ said Berra sententiously, getting to his feet. ‘And I’ll have to get going too. I’ve got to get back to the Lingards at the Grange and do some watering.’
Anna Sutherland gave something approaching a chortle. ‘Can’t very well ask your lady employer to do it for you, can you? Not her.’
‘Not likely,’ said Anthony Berra. ‘She might get her feet wet and I daren’t begin to think what her shoes cost. They’re Italian jobs.’
Mary Feakins took one look at her husband’s face as he hobbled out of the police station at Berebury and made for their car. She waited while he parted from Simon Puckle – apparently without saying very much – and then she hurried round to open the front passenger door and help him in. As he lowered himself with great care onto the car seat she asked breathlessly, ‘Well, how did it go?’
‘I think the police believe I’ve made away with Enid Osgathorp,’ he said hollowly.
‘Never!’
‘Apparently she’s been missing for over three weeks now. At least, that’s what they told me.’
‘Don’t be silly, Benedict. Why on earth would you want to do a thing like that?’
Her husband seemed to sink between his own shoulders. ‘They say they found some blood and hairs on
a broken window at her cottage and want to test them against mine. Simon Puckle said I should agree to samples being taken from me as it would look bad if I didn’t.’
‘But you hardly know the woman,’ she protested, the real import of what he’d said not yet registering in her mind.
‘She knows me though,’ he said elliptically. ‘Well, the family, anyway.’
‘What exactly does that mean?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said miserably.
Her eyes widened. ‘You mean you really did break into her cottage, Benedict? I don’t believe it! Are you mad? Didn’t you think that she might have been in there and that it would have frightened her?’
‘They say I knew she wasn’t there. Don’t you remember she told us she was going away? And anyway it wouldn’t have frightened her,’ he added bitterly. ‘Nothing would.’
‘But whatever for?’ she asked, still bewildered.
‘I was looking for something she said she had.’
‘Something of yours? Why should she have anything of yours?’ She swung the car out onto the road to Pelling, hardly paying any attention to other road users. ‘And why should you have gone looking for it, anyway?’
‘Not of mine. Dad’s.’ He pushed his foot down hard on the floor of the car as if braking. ‘Watch it, Mary. You’ll hit something in a minute if you’re not careful.’
‘Your father’s?’ she said, taking her eyes off the road to stare at him.
He nodded speechlessly, keeping looking straight ahead and not meeting her eye.
She tightened her hands on the steering wheel until the
knuckles whitened. ‘I don’t understand anything, Benedict. Anything at all. And whatever it is, you haven’t told me.’ Her voice sunk to a whisper. ‘Don’t you remember? We promised not to have any secrets from each other.’ Even if her husband didn’t realise it, Mary Feakins knew that they had just crossed the Rubicon in their marriage. It was borne in on her too, that she didn’t like being on the other side of that particular river.
Benedict Feakins had other things on his mind altogether. ‘Apparently they’ve got me recorded on one of those street cameras in Berebury High Street too.’
‘What about it? You often go in there.’
‘It was on the day Enid Osgathorp disappeared not far from the station. They say I was photographed coming out of the ironmongers two doors away from the station with a spade.’
‘That’s the one you bought for digging the border,’ she said promptly. ‘Oh, God … they don’t think that you …’
‘I don’t know what the police think,’ he said shakily. ‘They don’t ever say, but I know they wouldn’t stop asking me questions. Like whether I’d been a patient of Doctor Heddon’s. Well, of course I hadn’t because the old boy had died before we came to live in Pelling.’ He frowned in recollection. ‘The inspector seemed to lay off a bit after that.’
‘That’s something, anyway.’
‘But it’s not all.’
‘Go on.’
‘They asked if I’d got anything left of Dad’s. Anything at all. And I said I hadn’t. They didn’t like that for one minute, I can tell you.’
‘Benedict,’ she was the one looking straight ahead now and not meeting his eye, ‘there is one thing in the house left of his.’
‘What’s that?’ he shot at her. ‘Tell me.’
‘His photograph. The one of him in the silver frame that was in the sitting room. I put it somewhere safe before you could put it on the bonfire.’
To her surprise he greeted this with a hollow laugh and a shaking of his head. ‘You don’t understand a single thing that this is about, do you, Mary?’
‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t.’
‘That photograph’s not my father’s.’
‘Don’t be silly, Benedict. Of course, it is. I knew him, remember?’
‘It’s only a picture of him.’
‘That’s what I just said.’
‘But it’s not his in the sense I’m talking about, which is a very different thing.’
Mary Feakins sighed. ‘I still don’t understand, Benedict.’
‘And I can’t explain,’ he said unhappily.
Police Superintendent Leeyes was more sympathetic about Benedict Feakins having kept silent than Sloan had expected. ‘Happened to me once,’ he said gruffly. ‘I kicked up rough about the interviewee not speaking and got told pretty sharpish that the solicitor can tell his client to keep schtum if the interviewing officer hasn’t disclosed enough about the nature of the case against the suspect for the legal-eagle to advise him properly. Or her,’ he added belatedly. He didn’t like female solicitors or, come to that, female criminals.
‘The trouble, sir, is that we don’t know quite enough about it ourselves to disclose very much more,’ admitted Sloan. ‘Besides, I didn’t want to show my hand too soon.’
‘But you say two separate entries have been made to that property at Pelling and the old party hasn’t been seen since,’ rumbled Leeyes.
‘Yes, sir.’
The superintendent shot a suspicious look in Sloan’s direction. ‘You’re not holding off because she might have been up to no good, are you?’
‘No, sir.’ This was true. Somewhere at the back of his mind the line about ‘Theirs not to reason why …’ surfaced. He knew what his job was and he would do it; crime was a hydra-headed monster and he knew too that a policeman should not select which parts of it to tackle. A crime was – and remained – a crime.
‘The missing person must be somewhere,’ rumbled on Leeyes. ‘Dead or alive. Not that you can dig up half Calleshire to look for her.’
‘No, sir. We have good reason to believe that she was a blackmailer, though,’ said Sloan. ‘I’ve got a reliable witness whom she tried it on but who wouldn’t play ball.’
‘But presumably no actual proof,’ pointed out the superintendent, a genius for finding the weakness in a case. ‘You can’t prove a negative, you know.’
‘Yes, sir, I remember you saying,’ said Sloan. This, he knew, was a legacy from some evening class or other that the superintendent had graced. Had it been Philosophy? Or was it Logic, a class abandoned by the superintendent over a difference of opinion with the lecturer about the nature of Occam’s Razor? He couldn’t remember and
went on hurriedly, ‘I have high hopes that Admiral Catterick will be prepared to testify to this. But we still don’t know whose ashes were on that bonfire of Benedict Feakins – and as far as I can see we have no means of finding out since DNA doesn’t survive cremation.’ He put wild thoughts of Enid Osgathorp having been cremated under a false name out of his mind as being quite impractical, the clerical work involved in certifying death being what it was.
‘We may never know short of this fellow Feakins telling you,’ said Leeyes.
‘And being truthful about it,’ said Sloan, making for the sanctuary of his own office as soon as he could. There was a pile of reports waiting for him there. So was Detective Constable Crosby.
The first was a message from the forensic pathologist, Doctor Dabbe, stating that as a result of further tests he could now confirm the presence in the body said to be that of Norman Potts, deceased, of a substance consistent with its having come from a so far unidentified variety of control spray. Sloan tossed the report over to Detective Constable Crosby.
‘Bit wordy, isn’t he?’ said Crosby.
‘You may say he’s dotting the
i
’s and crossing the
t
’s, all right,’ agreed Sloan, ‘but remember what he says has got to stand up in court. Mind you,’ he added, ‘he’s quite possibly proving murder on the way but by whom and why we don’t know.’
‘Yet,’ said Crosby optimistically.
Sloan ignored this touching faith in their ability to find a murderer and picked up the next message. It was from
Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division. None of his squad had spotted a small runabout truck registered in the joint names of Anna Sutherland and Marilyn Potts of Capstan Purlieu Plants in or around Ship Street in Berebury the night before.
Or, indeed, anywhere else.
‘Not that there’s any reason why either of them would want Norman Potts knocked off,’ said Crosby when he too read this.
‘No reason that we know of,’ Sloan corrected him, ‘but it very much looks as if those orchids came from their shed.’
‘And from Jack Haines’ place before that,’ said Crosby.
‘Much, Crosby, as I dislike being manipulated,’ Sloan said acidly, ‘I can see that someone, somewhere, is behaving as if they wanted us to make the connection – and with Dracula – but exactly why escapes me for the moment. Anyone could have picked those flowers up from that shed after the two women got back from that precious lecture of theirs. It wasn’t even locked.’
‘Which lecture Marilyn Potts was delivering instead of Enid Osgathorp,’ Crosby reminded him.
‘I know, I know,’ said Sloan, picking up the third report. It was from the police constable whose beat included Pelling and several other villages out that way. As requested he had kept a watchful eye on Russ Aqueel, foreman at Jack Haines’ nursery. But at a distance.
‘A bit of a drinker,’ ran the text, ‘and not too discreet. Keeps dropping hints in the pub that he might be getting a better job soon. Visits the Berebury Garden Centre a lot, usually taking trays of plants over there. Insists to all
and sundry that he doesn’t know who left the greenhouse doors open but that it wasn’t him. His mates aren’t so sure.’
Sloan tossed the paper over to Crosby. ‘If Bob Steele at the Berebury Garden Centre is thinking of making a bid for Jack Haines’ place then lowering its value would certainly help,’ he said. ‘And a fall in its value must definitely have happened big time after he lost two greenhouses full of plants – especially at this time of the year. With or without the assistance of Russ Aqueel, who may or may not have been promised a better job by him.’
‘Steele could have been aiming at making Jack Haines bankrupt instead,’ offered Crosby. ‘Keep the price down a treat that would. He could buy at a fire sale.’
‘Or even just destroying all those baby orchids so he could sell his own instead,’ mused Sloan. ‘A shortage could then be met from the Berebury Garden Centre, not Haines’ nursery. That would explain the trouble at Capstan Purlieu as well. Even so, we’d better see this man Steele and have another word with the foreman at Pelling.’
‘Turf wars, I bet,’ pronounced Crosby. ‘Fits with garden centres, doesn’t it? They sell turves, don’t they?’
Detective Inspector Sloan ignored this and replaced the last of the message sheets on his desk. ‘That it, then?’
‘In a manner of speaking, sir.’ The constable was toying with yet another piece of paper, reading and re-reading it. ‘There’s one here that I don’t understand.’
‘From Forensics?’ Sloan hazarded a guess. They were a section that tended to speak in tongues of their own devising.
‘No, sir. It’s from Admiral Catterick’s daily woman
at the Park. She rang to say that she’s heard from the hospital that the admiral has answered Gabriel’s call. Who’s Gabriel, sir?’
‘An archangel, Crosby,’ said Sloan, well-brought up son of a churchwoman.
‘An archangel?’ Crosby sounded mystified.
‘I’m very much afraid,’ said Sloan slowly, ‘it’s her way of saying that Waldo Catterick has been transferred to Ward 13 at the hospital.’
The detective constable looked quite blank. ‘So?’
‘Ward 13 is a euphemism for the hospital’s mortuary,’ said Sloan sadly. ‘It sounds better if the patients overhear the porters being sent for.’
Crosby’s face cleared as unconsciously he used yet another euphemism. ‘Oh, he’s popped his clogs, then. Bad luck.’
‘It’s bad luck for us all. Our operation and his. His must have been too much for him.’ Sloan paused and added thoughtfully, ‘Especially in his state of health.’
‘Right, Crosby, we need to get going out to Pelling to interview Jack Haines again now we know a bit more background.’ Detective Inspector Sloan was just shovelling some papers into his briefcase when the Coroner’s Officer, PC Edward York, put his head round the office door. ‘And then get back to Norman Potts’ house,’ said Sloan.
‘Got a minute, Inspector?’ York asked.
‘Have a heart, Ted,’ pleaded Sloan. ‘I’ve only just got back from reporting to the old man on the outcome of conducting an interview under caution to do with a missing person.’ He didn’t suppose for one moment that the Coroner’s Officer was interested in missing persons. Not until they had been found dead, that is. ‘And you know that I can’t even begin to write my own report for the Coroner on the Potts’ case until the doctor’s done his. I
haven’t had a full report from Charlie Marsden yet, either. The SOCOs are still at the house.’
‘I can see you’re busy,’ said the other officer calmly.
‘Yes,’ put in Crosby importantly, ‘besides we think we’re into murder.’
The Coroner’s Officer said, ‘Oh, really? No, I don’t need anything more about Norman Potts. Not just yet, anyway. The Coroner’ll only be taking formal evidence of identification when the inquest comes up, which won’t be for a bit.’
‘And that’ll be adjourned while further enquiries are made,’ chanted Crosby in mocking tones.
‘That’s right. To give you guys time to get on with finding out who did it,’ rejoined York amiably. ‘No, it’s not him I’ve come about.’
‘Who, then?’ asked Sloan in tones that he hoped implied he didn’t have all day.
‘The rector of Pelling’s been in touch.’ As Coroner’s Officer, Edward York was quite used to being seen as the friendly face of the constabulary and approached as such.
‘Mr Beddowes?’ Sloan’s head came up and he turned to his constable. ‘That reminds me, Crosby. We need a photograph of Norman Potts so that we can see if any of the street cameras picked him up in Berebury as well as the others the day Enid Osgathorp disappeared. See to it.’ He turned back to the Coroner’s Officer and explained. ‘We caught the rector on CCTV in Berebury that day too. What does he want now?’
Edward York carried on, ‘He thought he ought to tell somebody about a letter that’s come to the rectory
and being a clergyman he wanted to do the right thing.’
Sloan forbore to remark that he had known a number of men of the cloth who had done the wrong thing, clerical errors not being unknown to the Force. ‘Tell us what exactly, Ted?’
‘He’s had a letter – or more accurately, a letter came addressed to his late wife – which naturally he opened. It was from the Calleshire Adoption Support Agency over at Calleford.’
‘Ah,’ breathed Sloan, light beginning to dawn.
‘The agency said it was providing intermediary services for an unnamed male applicant of theirs. They were asking on his behalf for Mrs Ann Beddowes’ consent to tell them her name and address and for permission for the person concerned to make contact.’
‘Bit difficult that, seeing she’s dead now,’ remarked Crosby.
‘That explains a lot,’ Sloan let out a long breath. It probably explained why the rector’s wife hadn’t been at the presentation ceremony on her retirement to Enid Osgathorp too.
‘Like what?’ asked Crosby, clearly mystified.
‘Like why she committed suicide, I expect,’ said York, adding sapiently, ‘A permanent solution to a temporary problem, that’s what suicide is.’
‘Like why she was being blackmailed,’ said Sloan grimly.
‘Apparently,’ York continued on his current theme, ‘the system is that at any time after its eighteenth birthday an adopted child can attempt to get in touch with its birth mother through the Adoption Agency. They can
only go ahead, of course, if they know who she is and has previously agreed to it.’
‘What if she hasn’t?’ asked Crosby.
‘I think,’ frowned York, ‘the applicant can be given some sort of info – whether the birth mother’s in good health …’
‘But not good wealth, I hope,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, policeman first and last and all the time.
‘News of general well-being I think is as far as it goes,’ said York. ‘But not her name or her whereabouts. They can pass on some relevant information, though, such as details about a hereditary disease or an inheritance.’
‘Circumstances alter cases,’ observed Sloan dryly.
‘Some you win, some you lose,’ said Crosby.
‘But it doesn’t work the other way round, does it?’ asked Sloan, rapidly reaching a conclusion. ‘Not vice versa?’
‘The birth mother can ask but the child doesn’t have to respond,’ said the Coroner’s Officer. ‘If the child doesn’t want it, there’s no way round. All she can do then is deposit her name and address with the adoption people, leaving the initiative to make contact entirely with the son or daughter.’
‘Fair’s fair,’ said Crosby.
‘And that’s only after they’ve been given professional assistance and counselling,’ said York, adding wisely, ‘They could be opening a can of worms all round.’
‘If you’ve made your bed, you’ve got to lie on it,’ said Crosby with all the assurance of the young and inexperienced.
Detective Inspector Sloan asked the Coroner’s Officer
what the rector had had to say about the contents of the letter, if anything.
‘Oh, yes, he said something all right,’ replied York promptly. ‘It was a quotation. He sounded very sad and said “Thy Mother’s son! Like enough, and thy Father’s shadow”. He told me it was from something Shakespeare wrote but I wouldn’t know about that myself.’
‘If we look smart about it, Crosby,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, taking a swift look at his watch, ‘we could interview Bob Steele before we go back to the crime scene.’ Clearing away the undergrowth as you go along was one of the superintendent’s great maxims. ‘It’ll give Charlie Marsden time to give the place a going-over.’
Nothing loth, Crosby turned the police car in the direction of the Berebury Garden Centre.
‘We should probably have done it before,’ said Sloan. ‘There’s something going on there but I don’t know what. Norman Potts or Russ Aqueel might have known more about it than we do and taken action accordingly.’
‘Or Jack Haines might have done,’ said Crosby. The Berebury Garden Centre was on the outskirts of the market town and there were no open roads on the way, just winding streets with Anglo-Saxon origins. He negotiated these with virtuous attention to all the road signage. It was only when Sloan spotted a Traffic patrol car hidden up behind a school that he realised why.
Bob Steele received the two detectives civilly and without any apparent anxiety. ‘Jack Haines? But I’ve already told you I know him. What’s up now?’
‘We are making enquiries into another matter that’s cropped up.’
‘Another matter …’ The man caught sight of Sloan’s face and said, ‘I see, and you aren’t going to tell me what it is. That right?’
‘If you would just answer our questions, sir, it would be very helpful.’
‘I’m sure,’ said the other man roughly. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Russ Aqueel, the foreman at Jack Haines’ nursery, would appear to be a frequent visitor here.’
Bob Steele visibly relaxed. ‘That’s no secret. If I run out of plants I buy them from old Jack. If Jack wants anything from me I do the same and Russ brings them over. Custom of the trade. We all help each other.’
If Bob Steele heard the little snort that escaped Crosby at this he gave no sign of having done so.
‘I pay him on the nail, Inspector,’ went on Steele, ‘if that’s what’s worrying you. Ask that secretary of his over there – Mandy somebody. She wouldn’t let anyone get away without.’ He sniffed. ‘Proper watchdog, she is.’
‘And when exactly,’ asked Sloan, ‘did you last see Jack himself?’
Steele’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, so this is what this is all about. Well, if you must know I spotted his car outside here pretty late last night. As you’re detectives I expect you’ll have worked out that I live on the premises.’
‘We were not unaware of the fact, sir,’ said Sloan, whose mother had taught him that politeness could be as sharp-edged a weapon as any knife. ‘What was Jack Haines doing?’
‘Besides sitting in his car,’ put in Crosby.
‘Waiting for Russ Aqueel to come out of my house I expect.’
‘And what was Russ Aqueel doing in there?’ asked Sloan patiently.
Bob Steele spread out his hands in a gesture that included two thumbs-up. ‘Promising me he was going to hand in his notice to Jack Haines next Friday and agreeing to come to work for me instead. If you must know we were having a drink on it. Or three,’ he added after a moment’s thought. ‘Russ can put them away, all right.’
‘Thus,’ said Sloan regretfully, reporting back to Superintendent Leeyes when he’d checked everything out, ‘apparently giving all three of them an alibi for Norman Potts’ death last night.’
‘That’s if the pathologist’s got the estimated time of death right,’ said Leeyes, a last ditch man by nature.
‘There’s one thing the doctors have got right, sir,’ said Sloan, a sheet of paper still in his hand. ‘Benedict Feakins’ blood group has been confirmed by the haematologist. It matches the specimen on the window at Canonry Cottage. We’ll be charging him with breaking and entering.’
Detective Inspector Sloan, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of ‘F’ Division, was at a loss to explain why he was not gripped by this information.
‘And they’re in the process of seeing if they can confirm his DNA from some hair they collected from the scene,’ he added, equally unexcited by this.
As Anthony Berra’s car disappeared down the road from Capstan Purlieu Plants nursery, Marilyn Potts took a deep
breath and announced to her friend that she was going over to Pelling to see Jack Haines. ‘I want to talk to him, Anna.’
‘He may not want to talk to you,’ responded Anna Sutherland trenchantly. ‘He never did. Well, at least not since you married Norman and then started your matrimonial causes action or whatever it is they call it these days.’
‘Divorce proceedings,’ she said pithily, adding, ‘but this is different.’
‘Of course,’ suggested Anna thoughtfully, ‘we mustn’t forget that Jack may know more than we do.’
‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’ demanded Marilyn.
‘Those orchids you used last night came from his place the other day.’
‘But, Anna, the police didn’t say anything about where the ones they had had come from.’
‘Cagey, weren’t they?’ said her friend pleasantly.
‘You don’t think that Jack had anything to do with Norman’s death, do you? Not Jack, surely.’
Anna shook her head. ‘Frankly, I wouldn’t have thought he was up to anything as strenuous as killing Norman, not with his figure. Too much tummy.’
Marilyn stared at her. ‘Who said anything about Norman being killed? The police only said that he had been found dead.’
The other woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Me, I couldn’t see Norman killing himself. Not no way. He was a man with an eye for the main chance if anyone was.’
‘He certainly looked after number one first,’ admitted Marilyn sadly. ‘Even after we were married.’
‘Well, all I can say is that if someone has killed him then he didn’t look after himself well enough, number one or not.’ She stood up. ‘Now I must get on with some potting up. Besides, I’ve got a phone call to make. I’ve got a lot to do today.’
Jack Haines barely looked up when Marilyn Potts came into his office. ‘Back again, Marilyn.’
‘Like the proverbial bad penny, I keep turning up.’ Uninvited, she pulled a chair up and sank into it.
‘What is it this time?’ he asked.
‘Call it curiosity.’
‘Dangerous thing, curiosity,’ said Haines.
Mandy Lamb slid a couple of mugs of coffee before them and remarked, ‘It killed the cat too. Sugar?’
‘What’s to do with Enid’s orchids, Jack, and come to that, what’s to do with Enid?’ Marilyn Potts waved away the sugar. ‘There’s been no sign of her for weeks. She should have been back before now.’
‘Search me. I don’t know that either.’
‘Nobody tells him anything,’ said Mandy Lamb ironically.
‘Look here, Marilyn,’ said Jack Haines, stirred by this, ‘we don’t know that there is anything to tell.’
‘Oh, yes, we do,’ she said with unusual firmness.
‘Speak for yourself, my girl.’
Marilyn Potts took a deep breath. ‘Two of Enid’s orchids were taken from our shed last night after we got back from my talk and they’ve been found by the police somewhere but they won’t say where. They had a photograph of them.’
‘Two Dracula,’ said Haines. ‘The police have been here too.’
‘Checking,’ contributed Mandy Lamb from the
side-lines
, ‘like they do.’
Marilyn Potts sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, Jack, but I know I don’t like it.’
‘Me neither,’ he said, ‘but I can’t think what either of us can do about it.’
Marilyn Potts sat in her chair, twisting her hands together. ‘Why should it be two Dracula that were taken?’
Mandy Lamb leant over the table that the other two were sitting at and remarked that Count Dracula was a vampire. ‘Vlad the Impaler, they called him.’
Jack Haines shrugged his shoulders. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mandy, it’s only the name of an orchid – that’s all.’
‘A bloodsucker,’ the secretary persisted. ‘Perhaps Norman Potts was a blackmailer and someone was trying to tell you something about him.’
‘Two orchids …’ said Marilyn, frowning suddenly.
Jack Haines stirred irritably. ‘For God’s sake, Marilyn, stop going on about them.’
She pushed her chair back and got to her feet, struggling to wrest her mobile phone from her pocket. ‘I must ring Anna. It’s important. Very important.’