A Late Phoenix (12 page)

In the manner of dreams the beep-beep was instantly transmogrified into the sound of a ship's siren. The dream obligingly accommodated itself to the new noise and soon he was sailing along in a cruise liner with a girl (who happened to look just like Jane Appleby) by his side.

The beep-beep persisted. Soon it had begun to intrude on his unconscious as well as his subconscious mind.

Beep-beep.

He turned over. It couldn't be morning. There was no light sneaking round the curtains.

Beep-beep.

He was awake now. The noise was coming from beside his ear. From the old-fashioned speaking tube. He pulled out the plug and put his mouth to the tube.

“Dr. Latimer here …” Sleepily.

“My wife …” began a man's voice.

“Haven't got a wife,” he said bemusedly. He would have to get one. Though a wife wasn't going to like the speaking tube. It was a real intrusion into domestic felicity. He shook himself. He wasn't married yet.

“My wife, Doctor,” the disembodied voice said again. “The nurse said would you come now.”

“Whose wife?”

“Mine.”

“No, I mean, who are you?”

“Sorry. Tony Caldwell. You know …”

“I know. What exactly did the nurse say?”

“Something about five shillings, Doctor. It didn't make any sense to me.”

It did to William.

“Right you are. I'll be round.”

“Don't you bother about getting your car out, Doctor. I've got mine here and it'll be quicker than yours.”

It was.

Much.

It was well after half-past three in the morning before the doctor turned back towards Field House and bed. He had decided to walk home.

It was a decision compounded of prudence and pleasure. Tony Caldwell had driven him to his house in a sports car of such ferocity that William had little doubt that it would have to go now that they had a baby. A young man wouldn't be able to afford both. But William had declined a lift back. It was a lovely night and it wasn't far to walk. Besides, Tony Caldwell was now in that euphoric state of first fatherhood which made his driving doubtful.

William stepped out happily, too.

This was a feeling beyond compare. A new family behind him. The pleasant, capable midwife who had been glad to meet him; the tired but happy mother; the deliriously happy father. Definitely not the chap from whom to take a lift at this moment.

He walked down past the church. Only the tower could really be said to be still standing. And a length of wall with the empty sockets of window. On the other side of the church there were only a few Saxon remains which still stood contemptuous of the Aryan blast.

The deserted bomb site looked quite sepulchral as he walked up Lamb Lane. He spared a thought for the dead girl who had lain there all those long years.

And for Dr. Tarde.

Why had he killed himself?

He was still thinking about Dr. Tarde when he came abreast of the old bomb site.

That was when he heard something.

And had a moment's atavistic—almost animal—awareness that he was not alone.

The sound had been tiny. Stone rubbing on stone perhaps. And he couldn't place its direction very easily. It was somewhere on the site. That was all he could say. He halted in his tracks and listened intently but it did not come again.

Perhaps he had only fancied it.

Alone at half-past three in the morning it was easy to fancy something.

He swung his torch round in a wide arc across the bomb site.

He never saw what it was that hit him. The last thing he remembered was a splitting pain in his head and the terrible feeling of falling forever into a bottomless well of blackness.

The appetizing smell of frying bacon drifted out of the kitchen window of Sloan's semidetached house in Berebury. It reached him halfway down the garden path. It was another lovely September morning, and if autumn was in the offing his roses gave very little sign of it. Most of them were still in their second good flowering.

His wife, Margaret, called to him.

He went indoors slowly, reluctant to exchange the ordered beauty of his garden for the disarray of a muddled murder case with its murky motives. He said as much to his wife.

“Apt alliteration's artful aid,” she retorted.

“Who said that?”

“Churchill, of course.”

“Oh. Churchill.” He looked at her. “Margaret, what exactly do you remember about the war?”

“The noise,” she said promptly. “And not having any sweets.”

With him it had been the posters.

The Ministry of Information posters. Exhorting you to do this. Or not to do that. Reducing unimaginable horrors to a series of instructions about what you should do next. Nearly all of them seemed to include reporting to the Town Hall.

That's what he was going to do today.

There had been one poster though which had shocked him. He'd seen it on a railway bridge in 1943. Colored and clever. Something about Australia or it might have been Canada. Hinting at vast reserves of manpower and munitions ready and waiting in the wings, so to speak.

“These,” had declaimed the poster, “are the sinews of war.”

And what had shaken his schoolboy mind to the core had been the thought behind the propaganda.

That we had needed cheering on to victory at all.

“The blackout,” his wife was saying through his reverie. “I remember that, too.”

He stared blankly.

He'd forgotten all about there having been a blackout. That highly convenient darkness. He squared his shoulders. What he would have to do—and that without delay—was to fill in his background knowledge about the war. Before Superintendent Leeyes caught him out on having forgotten—or not having found out about—something dead simple.

Like the blackout.

“I'll have to go to the library today,” he muttered indistinctly, speech impeded by bacon. “Do a bit of reading about the war.”

“I believe they do a gramophone record, too,” said Margaret Sloan, filling his cup. “A sort of instant memory reviver.”

“I'm going to need more than records—of either sort—to get anywhere with this case.” Sloan put down his cup and told her the whole story.

“Poor girl.” She poured a cup of tea for herself and sat down opposite him. “Lying there all those years without anyone knowing.”

“Or caring,” grunted Sloan. “That's the funny thing. She wasn't missing and I reckon she ought to have been.”

“So nobody was looking for her?”

“Not that we can see.”

“They must have thought she was somewhere else then … is that the Crosby boy at the door?”

“That's another thing that doesn't help,” said her husband bitterly.

“What, dear?”

“The Crosby boy. Boy's the word. He's so young he wasn't even born when this girl was killed.”

“Really, dear?”

“I daren't ask him if he knows what the war was about in case he doesn't.”

“No, dear.” She frowned. “But I'm not at all sure that I do either, you know. Not to put in so many words.”

“Imagines it was some glorified game of cowboys and Indians, I expect.”

“Or cops and robbers,” suggested Margaret lightly.

Sloan shook his head. “No. He'd be more interested if he thought it was them. He's got it into his head that we're investigating prehistory and that it doesn't matter anyway.”

“No, dear.”

The doorbell rang again.

“Let him wait,” growled Sloan.

“Yes, dear,” said Margaret Sloan, getting up at once and going to the door.

Detective Constable Crosby seemed to fill their dining room. He stood awkwardly to one side of Sloan's chair like a great dog waiting to be told what to do next.

“A cup of tea, William?”

“Oh, yes, thank you, Mrs. Sloan.”

“You'd better sit down while you have it,” said his host graciously. “Before you tread on the cat.”

“Yes, sir.” Crosby lowered himself gingerly onto a chair.

Margaret Sloan pushed some toast in front of him.

He did not need a second invitation.

“At the time of the death of the lady in Lamb Lane,” said Sloan heavily, “that butter and that marmalade there would have had to do you a week.”

“Would they, sir?”

“Rationing.” Sloan helped himself to a liberal dollop of butter. “Surprisingly popular, I'm told it was, too—especially with the ‘fair shares for all' brigade. Some people don't mind suffering as long as they don't have to do it alone.”

“No, sir. That's why point duty …”

“Besides,” said Sloan, ignoring this, “you could always let yourself go once in a while with luxuries like whale meat. And if there was an ‘r' in the month you sometimes got an egg.”

“More toast, William?” said Margaret. “It isn't rationed now. He didn't mean to put you off, you know.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Sloan.” Gratefully.

“And tea?”

“Please …”

“You used to get two ounces a week of tea.” Margaret Sloan poured him another cup. “I always remember that because my mother told me it came to twenty-eight teaspoonfuls and you had to make it last. Sometimes I wonder how she managed, but she did. Sugar?”

“Yes, please.”

“That's another thing …” began Sloan.

“I don't think we were any the worse for it,” went on his wife serenely, “though we went without a lot.” She smiled. “I shall never forget my first banana after the war …”

“Yes, we had no bananas,” said Sloan cryptically.

“I started to peel it with a knife,” said Margaret. “I'd never eaten one before, you see.”

Detective Constable Crosby looked up from his second breakfast, and said seriously, “But wasn't there somewhere called the Quartermaster's Stores, Mrs. Sloan, where you could get anything?”

Sloan choked on the last slice of toast.

Pick over the spinach carefully

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Detective Inspector Sloan had already telephoned Luston Police and now took the precaution of ringing Dr. Dabbe before he left his own home. And before he saw Superintendent Leeyes. He told the pathologist that the bomb had fallen in June 1941.

“Did it now?” said Dabbe pensively. “Well, well, well. June 1941. I was having a nice peaceful time in a prisoner of war camp by then.”

“Were you, Doctor?”

“St. Válery, Inspector. That's when I got popped in the bag.”

“For the whole war?”

“The whole war.” Dabbe chuckled. “Never saw a woman or a child for five years. When I came out I was as bashful as a convent schoolgirl. Far too shy to talk to any woman. You'll not believe this, Sloan, but I even proposed by post.”

“Pathology,” divined Sloan. He'd often wondered why Dr. Dabbe had become a medical investigator.

“That's right, Inspector. The only patients you don't have to talk to.” He changed his tone and went on more briskly. “Your skeleton is after the bomb. Not before. Definitely …”

Sloan cleared his throat. “How definitely?”

“Court of law definitely,” said Dabbe. “There were bomb and broken brick fragments under her. And if she'd been buried before the bomb …”

“Yes?”

“She'd not have been lying as flat as she was.”

Sloan could see that.

“Nevertheless,” went on the pathologist, “I think whoever shot her was hopeful that the poor woman would be taken as a bomb victim should she ever have been found …”

“Not,” objected Sloan, the policeman, “with a bullet in her spine surely.”

“I was coming to that,” said Dabbe unhurriedly. “You see, with a .303 rifle you don't usually get a bullet staying in a body at all. You don't often get one staying in a skeleton, come to that. I reckon the clay helped there.”

Sloan nodded. Roses weren't the only thing clay was good for then. He pulled his mind up with a jerk. He mustn't start thinking about his roses in the middle of a case. Not even his sturdy Queen Elizabeths.

“A .303 rifle's an in and out job,” said Dabbe, “and there's a very good chance that in the middle of bombing raids you'd get away with …”

“Murder,” said Sloan slowly.

“Precisely. Your .303 is a high velocity weapon and at short range …”

“What's short range for a .303?”

“Two hundred yards.”

“Two hundred yards, Doctor! You mean this woman was shot at two hundred yards?”

“At least,” said Dr. Dabbe equably. “Probably rather more.”

Sloan made a note.

Dabbe said, “I've arranged to have a word later this morning with a better ballistics man than I am but I'm moderately sure about the distance. Otherwise you wouldn't have found your bullet at all. Even so it might only be because she had some particularly thick clothing on at the time she was shot.”

“It might have been winter,” agreed Sloan. “We don't know yet.”

“Or evening.”

“A leather coat,” suggested Sloan. “She might have been wearing a leather coat. They're pretty stout things, you know.”

“Except, Inspector,” the other reminded him neatly, “that women didn't wear them at the time. Not leather coats. They weren't in fashion then. People just had utility clothes.”

As he replaced the telephone receiver Sloan decided that the public library would have to have first priority.

Before he made a really serious mistake over the differences between then and now.

In the police car he told Crosby the gist of what the pathologist had said.

“Two hundred yards!” echoed that worthy, just as Sloan himself had done. “That's not exactly ‘waiting until you can see the whites of their eyes' sort of stuff, sir, is it?”

“No.” Sloan fidgeted unhappily in the front passenger seat. “Not like you and pedestrians, Constable. Look out—you nearly had that woman there …”