Little Knell (12 page)

And it wasn't.

‘No,' said Thornhill dully to Sloan's next question. ‘Jill hadn't mentioned this guy Nigel Worrow much. He was one of her bosses, but they were all brother and Bob and Christian names at her work. To listen to her you couldn't tell who was a partner and who was the caretaker. It didn't mean a thing. They just thought it gave a more friendly image to accounts.'

‘More trendy, too,' contributed Crosby, who had always resented paying lip-service to those higher up the police hierarchy.

Detective Inspector Sloan said nothing but he did make a note. In the police book there was being friendly and being too friendly; more especially where pretty young women were concerned.

‘Never heard of him,' said Thornhill in response to the casual trawling of Colonel Caversham's name across the conversation.

Interviewing an actor was not the easiest of undertakings. The uncontrolled, unpremeditated reaction was the one Sloan wanted, but actors were trained to tailor their physical responses and expressions exactly to the emotions they wished to exhibit. What Sloan wanted was the spontaneous and unguarded bounce back. He didn't get it.

‘Or him either,' said Thornhill, when Marcus Fixby-Smith's name was mentioned. ‘Who are these guys when they're at home, anyway?'

Sloan ignored Thornhill's riposte and carried on with his questioning.

‘No, Inspector,' said Thornhill wearily for the fourth time, ‘I do not know of any reason at all why Jill should have been murdered. And it doesn't matter how many times you ask me, I still don't know.' He then added with a complete absence of histrionics, ‘I do know that nothing matters now. Nothing at all, whatever you say. I've lost the only person who mattered.'

The only time Colin Thornhill moved from his classic mourning position was when the interview was ending. He tottered to his feet like an old man, presenting an image far, far removed from the nimble athletic stage figure of before.

‘I can tell you people one thing for free,' he said in a chillingly controlled way, ‘and that's if I find either of those two guys you mentioned – Caversham or Fixby-Smith – had anything to do with murdering my poor Jill then they'll have me to deal with, too.'

*   *   *

‘Customs and Excise, Kinnisport,' boomed the voice down the telephone. ‘Jenkins here. How can I help you, Inspector?'

‘Just checking.' Sloan began his litany: ‘There's a man called Nigel Worrow…'

‘The
Berebury Belle,
' said Jenkins promptly.

‘Pardon?'

‘The
Berebury Belle
is the name of his yacht.'

‘Oh, is it?' Sloan paused for thought.

‘Nice boat. Very trim.'

‘Yes,' he said slowly. ‘I can see that it might be.'

‘Meant to be named after his wife, or so he says when asked.'

‘You know it then?' asked Sloan. He didn't know whether Jill Carter had been pretty – a Berebury Belle too – or not. He thought she had been much loved but that was something different. Quite different. And sometimes even more dangerous.

‘We know nearly all the yacht club craft,' said Jenkins with due professional modesty.

‘Anything known about the man?' asked Sloan more specifically.

‘Not exactly known,' said the customs officer cagily. ‘But…'

‘But?'

‘But we've been keeping an eye.'

‘With good reason?'

‘He takes his vessel about quite a bit.'

‘Across the Channel?'

‘Who knows where they go, but quite often enough for pleasure.'

‘They?'

‘With his wife as crew. She's a good sailor.'

‘Pretty?'

Jenkins gave a short laugh. ‘I wouldn't say pretty, exactly. Weather-beaten, more like. Wears the trousers, too.'

Detective Inspector Sloan's thoughts went soaring off on another tack. ‘Accountants do themselves pretty well then…'

‘They say she's the one with the money.'

Detective Inspector Sloan made a note. Marrying money was exactly the sort of legend that money-launderers wanted to accrue around those who had much more of this world's goods than could be accounted for by their usual circumstances.

He amplified this fact afterwards for the benefit of Detective Constable Crosby. ‘There's plenty of ways of explaining sudden wealth away,' he said to that conscionable young officer, who never had any money whatsoever to spare at the end of the month. ‘A big win on the lottery is the most popular.'

‘Could happen to anyone,' agreed Crosby wryly.

‘Premium Bonds.' Sloan knew them all by now. ‘A bit of good fortune on the pools…'

‘Rich relations?' put in Crosby, showing interest in the theory.

‘Sometimes, but most people know that great expectations can be a snare and a delusion.' This reminded him to tell Crosby to locate one Peter Caversham in Luston.

‘Will do,' promised Crosby, brightening. The road between Berebury and Luston was the best in the county.

‘And last wills and testaments can be checked a bit too easily with the probate office for your really experienced money-launderer,' warned Sloan, returning to his theme. ‘But a lot of people are fooled by someone with a reputation for having a sharp eye for the stock market.' Any spare funds in the Sloan household economy went straight into the building society against a rainy day. At the moment they didn't amount to enough to withstand the lightest of showers.

‘You can be lucky with horses,' suggested Crosby.

‘So they say,' agreed Sloan, who knew how rare a commodity a really good eye for horseflesh was. ‘Don't forget bookies know who has big money, and they don't easily forget who's won it off them…'

‘But, sir,' said Detective Constable Crosby incontrovertibly, ‘that Derek whose wake we went to last night had got loadsamoney some other way still.'

*   *   *

Behind the scenes the Greatorex Museum presented a very different picture on committee days. Today was that of the monthly meeting of the Museums and Amenities Committee of Berebury Council, and Howard Air was in the chair, flanked by his chief officer, Marcus Fixby-Smith. Hilary Collins, the latter's deputy, was therefore holding the fort in the outside world, and it was she who took the message that the mummy had been found in Whimbrel House.

‘Undamaged, I hope?' asked Fixby-Smith anxiously as the two men came quickly out of the Committee Room. ‘No one's touched it, have they, Hilary?'

‘It had been stood on end, that's all,' Hilary Collins assured him.

‘That's all!' exploded the museum curator. ‘Why, that could have done untold damage. Don't the police know better than that?'

‘Steady on, Marcus,' said Howard Air, still a little out of breath from hurrying back to the curator's room. ‘Remember, it might not have been the police who stood it on end in the first place.'

‘It might have been the same person who killed that poor girl.' Hilary Collins was sufficiently plain, capable and conscientious to feel free to speak her mind.

‘It almost certainly was,' pointed out Howard Air realistically.

Marcus Fixby-Smith collapsed like a pricked balloon. ‘I hadn't thought of that…' His voice trailed away into silence.

‘You can't afford not to face facts in my business,' said Air. He had the lined features of a man who looked as if he had not so much faced facts in life as met them head-on. ‘And nor can you in yours, Marcus. This means more trouble.'

In contrast with the stocky businessman, Marcus Fixby-Smith looked a bundle of nervous affectations. He had been struck by yet another unattractive thought. ‘You do realize, both of you, that from now until the end of time, whatever we do, the public will be coming to see Rodoheptah for the wrong reasons.'

In a voice totally devoid of inflection, Hilary Collins said, ‘Just think, Marcus, what that will do to our visitor numbers.'

As always, unsure which way to take what she said, he ignored it. ‘What I can't understand is why the body and the mummy were switched.'

‘I can't help you there,' said Howard Air, scrubbing his brow in thought. ‘But there will have been a reason. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.'

‘And,' wailed Fixby-Smith, ‘what on earth are we going to do about the press now? They'll have a field day when they hear about Rodoheptah turning up in a broom cupboard.'

‘Oh, it was in a broom cupboard, was it?' remarked Howard Air. ‘I didn't hear you say that bit, Hilary.'

‘I didn't say it,' she murmured quietly, her eyes on Marcus Fixby-Smith.

‘It must have been in the broom cupboard,' protested the museum curator. ‘It stands to reason. There wasn't anywhere else near enough in the house to hide something like that.'

Marcus Fixby-Smith might not have known what Hilary Collins had been thinking the minute before. He had no doubts at all now what was in her mind at this minute.

Or in Howard Air's.

Chapter Ten

Creased

‘I trust Squeak is still doing well, Inspector?' Alison Kirk waved the two policemen into the kitchen at the Calleshire Animal Sanctuary ahead of her, shaking a finger at an Airedale and a West Highland terrier both of which were barking at the policemen. ‘Down, Rover, down, Rags … these are friends.'

‘Squeak's fine,' said Sloan warmly, ‘except that he scratched Crosby here the last time he was at the house.'

‘Some cats don't like the attention that visitors get,' she said seriously.

‘And the scar hasn't quite healed yet.' Detective Constable Crosby extended his wounded left wrist for her inspection. ‘Look, you can still see where he did it.'

‘Jealous,' contributed Jennifer, the younger of the Kirk sisters. ‘They like being top cat in the household.'

Alison Kirk indicated two spare chairs and sat herself down at the kitchen table. ‘Now, Inspector, don't tell me that you came over here just to talk about a black tom-cat with a white waistcoat and four white paws.'

‘No,' said Sloan. ‘We came to talk to you about your late nephew.'

‘Derek?'

‘Derek,' agreed Sloan. ‘Or, more precisely, about the rather large sum of money of which he would seem to have become possessed not long before he died.'

‘Very large sum,' Alison corrected him unexpectedly. ‘It absolutely amazed us.' She turned to her sister. ‘Didn't it, Jennifer?'

‘We didn't think it was safe for him to have all that money in cash in his house.'

‘Quite dangerous, really,' said Alison.

‘But he said he hadn't anything to lose.'

‘You see,' said Sloan, choosing his words with care, ‘it might help us over some other inquiries to know exactly where all that money came from.'

‘He didn't say,' said the elder woman.

‘Come, Miss Kirk…'

‘Come nothing,' she retorted spiritedly. ‘He told us that the money was really and truly his to do what he liked with; a proper windfall.'

‘I see.' Detective Inspector Sloan took this with the customary police pinch of salt. Even windfalls could – and sometimes did – carry a touch of skulduggery about them. Windfalls had entered the language from the medieval laws – the forest laws.

‘And only his,' put in Jennifer Kirk, reaching for the milk jug. ‘No one else's.'

‘And, moreover, he insisted he was going to do exactly what he liked with it, too, whatever anyone else said,' carried on Alison.

‘Quite so,' said Sloan. Real windfalls were trees which had fallen upon the King's highway and which the peasantry were then entitled to collect and burn for fuel – a canny self-financing medieval method of keeping the roadway clear. The skulduggery came in when the verderer – the judicial officer of the King's forest – found the roots of a tree half chopped away in the right direction to encourage it to fall on the highway.

‘Down to the very last penny before he died,' said Derek's aunt. ‘Which, poor boy, he knew wouldn't be long.'

‘Doctors are franker than they used to be,' put in Jennifer Kirk. ‘Not so mealy-mouthed.'

‘Difficult to live happily knowing you're going to die soon,' agreed Sloan.

‘You can say that again,' murmured Jennifer. ‘It didn't help him. Us, perhaps, but not him.'

‘If you're young, that is,' Sloan added by way of amendment. He'd never forgotten that poor old man in one of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
who had been wandering about seeking Death everywhere but never finding him. There were more people like that these days, too, than there used to be, modern medicine being what it had become.

‘That's where animals do better than we do, Inspector,' observed Jennifer Kirk. ‘They may live in fear of the here and now, but not of the hereafter like Derek did.'

Alison Kirk sniffed. ‘We all know Derek wasn't perfect and Aids is a terrible disease; but he wasn't either a thief or a liar and if he told us that money was his to give away then it was.'

Jennifer Kirk nodded vigorously. ‘He said he was determined to use up as much of his money as he could while he could.'

Alison Kirk raised her hand to her face to brush away a tear and said, ‘He didn't quite manage to use it all up, though, Inspector.'

‘He died first,' explained Jennifer Kirk.

‘But he had a good try at spending the lot,' said her sister. ‘A very good try.'

‘That's what we had heard,' said Sloan.

Alison Kirk looked round the untidy, old-fashioned kitchen. ‘He gave us quite a bit for our animals here. We're going to spend some of it on a set of new dog kennels.' She turned to the two dogs. ‘Did you hear that, my darlings?'

Jennifer said, ‘We've had a legacy, too…' She pushed a couple of cats off the table and belatedly covered the milk jug. ‘It never rains but it pours.'