A Going Concern (16 page)

‘Whatever that might have been,' agreed Sloan, ‘when they did over the Grange at Great Primer.' He went on more slowly: ‘As they presumably didn't find what they wanted there, they may have therefore concluded that Mrs Garamond's solicitors might have had it …'

‘Whatever it was …'

‘Whatever it is,' said Sloan more hopefully, ‘and decided that it wasn't likely to be easily accessible when locked in the solicitors' office safe but might be so if it had later been handed to Amelia Kennerley. As sole executrix, presumably she would have been entitled to have it, whatever it might be.'

‘So,' suggested Leeyes, ‘you think they turned her house over instead?'

‘It would seem so.' Detective Inspector Sloan drew breath.

‘But you still don't know what for, do you?' said Leeyes, putting an unerring finger on the weakness.

‘No, we don't. As it happens, sir, the only item which James Puckle, the solicitor, had actually handed over to Amelia Kennerley was a rather blurred photograph of a wayside memorial.'

‘Ah!'

Sloan couldn't remember the name of the man who had said ‘But me no buts' but he felt a considerable fellow-feeling towards him, and would have liked himself to have said ‘Ah me no ahs' to the superintendent but didn't think he should. There was, after all, his pension to think of …

Instead he said that as it happened Dr Phoebe had had the photograph safely in her handbag all afternoon and evening and if that was what the unknown intruder had been seeking then he hadn't got it because Dyson was working on the photograph in his darkroom at this very moment and had promised his report soonest.

He might have known that that wouldn't have been quick enough for the superintendent who said: ‘How, Sloan, can a photograph be as important as that?'

‘I couldn't say, sir, I'm sure,' replied Sloan, who certainly wasn't going to attempt to explain anything about the possible significance of a regimental motto to a man who had once been heard to dismiss William Shakespeare's
Othello
as a lot of fuss over a handkerchief.

‘I'll expect a situation report by noon then,' said the superintendent briskly. ‘Well, man, what are you waiting for? Don't just stand there …'

Sloan coughed. ‘I'm afraid, sir, that it appears that there is a slight complication in our listing of those who might have known about Miss Kennerley's having been appointed sole executrix.'

Beetle-browed, the superintendent said: ‘Oh, there is, is there?'

‘Apparently Mortons, the undertakers, have been giving it to anyone who asked.'

‘No reason for them not to, I suppose,' said Leeyes grudgingly. ‘It can't be kept secret for ever … so what, then, do you propose doing next, Sloan?'

A stranger listening to Superintendent Leeyes might have been misguided enough to think that he had performed a complete volte-face and was suddenly favouring the non-directive approach. Detective Inspector Sloan, who knew better, said: ‘I'm going back to the hospital …'

Leeyes grunted.

‘After which, sir, I'm going out to Great Primer to see Mr Fournier, which I think I should have done earlier. And then I shall try to see two old fellows called Nicholas Cochin and Martin Didot and look for an ancient lady by the name of Miss Catherine Camus.'

‘Phoebe, when are you going to ring the hospital again?'

‘I'm not,' responded Phoebe Plantin equably. ‘They won't tell anyone anything worthwhile over the telephone anyway. Besides, I must be off now.'

That poor girl.' Amelia still looked stricken. ‘It might have been me.'

Phoebe said soberly: ‘It might have been meant to be you.'

They were standing together in the hallway of a house which had been searched at speed and left in disorder. ‘The police say we can tidy up,' said Amelia. ‘I'll get started on all this.'

‘Better to have something to do,' agreed Phoebe, ‘but I'd think twice about answering the door, all the same.'

Amelia started to restore order in the kitchen first – someone had even seen fit to examine the tea caddy – but she couldn't keep her mind on it. Impulsively she rang James Puckle and told him what had happened.

‘Mr Puckle, I need to start looking for someone from the Fearnshires who was killed after Great-Aunt knew she was pregnant but before she could get married …'

‘That will only give you the name of the child's father,' said Puckle, ‘and then it would only be supposition …'

‘It would be something.'

‘It would help more if we knew the adoptive name given to their daughter,' countered Puckle, ‘and, moreover, it is unlikely to explain the great interest that your great-aunt's former firm appear now to be taking in her effects, to say nothing of those who have broken and entered.'

‘And injured,' she said, telling him of the unknown girl lying nigh unto death.

‘Miss Kennerley,' he counselled earnestly, ‘you must take care, great care. And I think you must also tell the police the terms of the precatory trust. You may be in great danger and that would have been the last thing Mrs Garamond wanted.'

‘No,' she said harshly. ‘The last thing she wanted was the police at her funeral. Remember?'

Her next telephone call was to a secondhand bookseller called Henryson.

The rector of Great Primer was in his garden trying to start his grass mower. He gave a final despairing pull at a recalcitrant two-stroke engine. It did not respond. Regarding the machine with savagery, the rector slowly straightened his back and asked the two policemen their business.

‘Old Mrs Garamond?' he said, frowning. ‘I took my letter round to the Grange about half-past four on Friday afternoon. After all, if they want a funeral service taken next Friday afternoon, and I am given to understand by the undertakers that they do, then I need to know the details, don't I?'

‘Yes, rector. Naturally.'

‘To say nothing of alerting the choristers and the bell-ringers … if they're going to be wanted, that is …'

‘I couldn't say about that, sir,' began Sloan, saying nothing at all either about the very real possibility of his having to stop the funeral altogether for further enquiries to be made, ‘but …'

‘I dare say they will be,' said Mr Fournier grudgingly. He produced a large handkerchief and wiped his hands on it. He seemed slightly surprised when streaks of black oil appeared on the white linen and quickly stuffed it back into his pocket. ‘That sort of person always likes to go out in style.'

‘I can't say about that either,' said Sloan, ‘but we would like to know a little more about who you saw when you delivered your letter to the Grange.'

‘A girl walking back down the drive,' said Mr Fournier immediately. ‘Away from the house. She was carrying a bunch of flowers.'

‘Age?' The hospital had estimated their grey-faced, bandaged patient as twenty-four.

‘Youngish.'

‘Did you happen to notice what she was wearing?' Detective Inspector Sloan did not entirely subscribe to the view that clothes made the man, but they certainly helped in putting together a police description.

‘A perfectly ordinary summer dress …'

An ordinary dress had been removed from the girl in hospital, only it wasn't perfect any longer.

‘What did she say?' After all, thought Sloan, they weren't talking about a ghostly visitation but a live girl. The be-tubed girl in the hospital was alive so far … but the hospital had been very guarded.

‘She told me that she had been very much hoping to see Mrs Garamond but there had been no reply at the Grange.'

‘She wasn't carrying anything else …?' The hospital patient had had no means of identification about her person.

‘Not that I noticed, Inspector.' The rector explained that he had told her about Mrs Garamond's death.

‘And how did she take the news?'

‘She appeared to be most upset. She asked about relatives and I referred her to Mortons, the undertakers, since someone must have instructed them.'

‘The last time, rector, that you saw Mrs Garamond, she didn't happen to mention that she was expecting visitors?'

‘The last time I saw Mrs Garamond,' said the clergyman, who appeared to be nursing some kind of a grievance, ‘all she would talk to me about were hatchments.'

Detective Inspector Sloan opened his mouth to speak but was thwarted.

‘Hatchments, I ask you!' uttered the rector with unexpected violence. ‘In this day and age with half the children in the world starving, the wealthiest woman in my parish insists on talking to me about a medieval anachronism like hatchments.'

‘Quite so,' murmured Sloan, although from what he remembered from his history lessons, surely it had been medieval people who had taken Christianity most seriously of all? ‘Perhaps you would remind me about hatchments, rector?'

Mr Fournier sniffed. ‘A custom, affected by those who think themselves a cut above their neighbours, of having a lozenge-shaped painted wooden tablet exhibiting the armorial bearings of the deceased affixed to the front of their last dwelling-place …'

‘I see,' said Sloan. ‘A sort of “Keeping up with the Joneses”.'

‘For a year after death,' continued the rector, ‘after which it was customary for it to be received into the church, where it hangs for ever afterwards.'

‘Or until Kingdom Come,' amplified Crosby, who had suddenly started to take an interest in the proceedings.

The rector was undeflected by this helpful theological comment and surged on indignantly: ‘Not only couldn't I get her interested in aiding the starving children of the underdeveloped world, Inspector, but to my mind she didn't seem to care that the other half of the world – funnily enough – seems to be determined to destroy themselves and everyone else on this planet while they're about it.'

‘Quarrelled with her about it, did you, sir?' asked the detective inspector. Doctrine wasn't his province: disagreement might be. Wealth was his concern more often than he liked.

‘I suppose you could say that I took issue with her,' admitted the clergyman. He paused and then added significantly: ‘Or she with me.'

‘On the starving children of the underdeveloped world,' enquired Sloan gravely, ‘or the hatchment?'

‘Neither, Inspector.' The rector began to look even more heated. ‘It was a matter of principle with me, Inspector, and thus no light matter.'

‘What was?' asked Sloan at his most avuncular.

‘Didn't you know, Inspector?' Mr Fournier stood erect beside the lawn mower and declared: ‘The first point on which Mrs Garamond and I fundamentally disagreed was the keeping of Remembrance Sunday each November at the time nearest to the anniversary of Armistice Day.'

‘Ah …'

‘You see, Inspector, when I first came to this living two years ago I insisted on stopping the annual church parade and the two minutes' silence at eleven o'clock.'

‘On principle?'

‘Exactly. You know the sort of thing I mean, I'm sure. Martial music from old wars guaranteed to get people emotionally stirred up and a congregation who never sets foot in the church on any other Sunday in the year …'

There, divined Sloan silently, was the rub.

‘Old men wearing old medals and carrying tattered flags … and children admiring them. That was what I didn't like. Glorifying war, that's all it was.'

Shakespeare – Sergeant Shakespeare, perhaps? – hadn't thought so, Sloan reminded himself, and old men certainly didn't forget.

The rector was still speaking. ‘And I won, Inspector, even though Mrs Garamond went over my head to the Bishop of Calleford.' Ironically he squared his shoulders as he said: ‘I may as well tell you that I'm an active pacifist and proud of it.'

‘And the late Mrs Garamond wasn't?' ventured Sloan mildly.

‘Certainly not. Do you know what she had the gall to quote to me once?'

‘No,' said Sloan with genuine interest. He was beginning to feel even more curious about the late Octavia Garamond himself. In his experience middle-aged and overweight clergy seldom got excited about anything at all, but never about wilful old women.

‘“
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
.”' The rector pushed the lawnmower out of the way and stood facing the two policemen and said: ‘Which, being translated' – Detective Constable Crosby's head came up at the mention of the word ‘translated' – ‘means,' carried on Mr Fournier, ‘that “It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one's country.”'

‘Very probably, sir,' said Sloan, in as neutral a tone as he could manage. Plenty of policemen died, too, in much the same cause – keeping the Queen's peace.

‘Did you know,' remarked Detective Constable Crosby to no one in particular, ‘that only a bishop gains by translation?'

‘I must tell you,' said Mr Fournier, ignoring Crosby and pointing in the direction of a Georgian rectory which was large enough for a cleric with a quiverful of children, ‘that I am a devoted supporter of any movement which leads to peace.'

Even at this distance Sloan could make out a symbol borrowed from the semaphore code above the door. ‘And the late Mrs Garamond wasn't?' he deduced aloud, forbearing to draw any parallel with a hatchment on another dwelling-place.

‘She was a very militant woman.' Edwin Fournier pressed his lips together into a thin, unamused line. ‘Do you know what she once said to me?'

‘No.' Sloan waited.

‘That she thought a small war every now and then was a good thing for a nation. Kept the race on its toes, she said.'

Sloan coughed. ‘I think you mentioned, rector, that your discontinuing the Remembrance Sunday service was only the first matter on which you had a disagreement with the dec – with the late Mrs Garamond?'