The Body Politic (16 page)

The Major frowned. “You're postulating a sort of
der Freischütz,
are you?”

“Pardon, sir?”

“A free shooter, Inspector. A marksman.”

“In a way,” said Sloan cautiously.

“It wouldn't have been too difficult. Everyone taking part in the fighting was in their authentic heraldic colours.” He coughed. “You may have heard that in the Camulos Society we pride ourselves on accuracy in all things.”

“I had,” agreed Sloan. They had standards in the police force, too, but he wasn't going to explain them now. Especially to a soldier.

“The whole idea of heraldry,” said Puiver in a schoolmasterish way, “was that everyone should know who a knight was under his armour.”

“So picking out William de Wilton wouldn't have been difficult?”

“I can't remember myself now exactly what his arms were—gules on a chevron three crosses crosslet fitchee of the field, I think—but Miss Finch will know. She's very sound on heraldic colours, too.”

“But,” persisted Sloan, anxious to get at least one thing in a very confused situation absolutely clear, “am I right in thinking that there would have been no way in which anyone who didn't already know about the changeover could tell that it was Alan Ottershaw inside that battledress and not Mr. Rauly?”

“You are, Inspector. Quite right. They were much the same height, you see. All anyone would have been able to tell was that there was someone there being William de Wilton.” He gave a quick little cough. “Actually, as it happens, Inspector, we did have an—er—even more unknown quantity with us at the time.”

“Sir?”

“Death.” Major Puiver cleared his throat self-consciously. “I mean, of course, someone dressed as the Figure of Death.”

“So we had heard.” Sloan turned over a fresh page in his notebook. “And would you be able to tell me who that would have been, sir, might I ask? I daresay it's not everyone's part.”

“You don't follow me, Inspector. By unknown quantity I meant that I didn't have anyone on my muster roll as playing Death.”

“I see, sir,” said Sloan impassively. “Death was an interloper, was he?”

“I certainly hadn't had anything to do with his being there,” said the Major energetically, “although the Figure of Death crops up a good deal in a lot of early-medieval literature—
Piers Plowman
and so forth. Sometimes, of course, he's disguised as Winter.”

“But you hadn't expected to see him that day at the re-enactment?” said Sloan with exemplary patience.

A moralist would have had a ready answer to that, but all the good Major said was, “Certainly not. I tried to question him myself but he only laughed at me and moved away.”

Detective Constable Crosby stirred. “Wrong way round, that, isn't it?”

The Major swung round. “I beg your pardon, Officer?”

“I thought soldiers were meant to laugh at Death, weren't they?” said Crosby. “Not Death at them.”

The detective instinct in Sloan asserted itself before Crosby got an answer to that. “I take it, Major, that Death didn't speak in case you recognised his voice?”

“Hadn't thought of that,” admitted Puiver. “I just thought the fellow was being impertinent.”

“Was it a male laugh?” asked Sloan curiously. Thanks to his mother, St. Francis of Assisi's Sister Death had figured prominently in his bedtime stories as a child.

“Yes,” responded Puiver instantly. “No doubt about that but it's funny you should say something about my recognising him, Inspector.”

“Sir?” Sloan searched about in his own memory: surely it had been in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
that Death had stalked about in disguise.

The Major frowned. “I did have a feeling that I'd seen him before but I couldn't for the life of me remember where or when. I couldn't place him but I felt all along that I ought to have been able to, if you know what I mean. I told our debriefing committee so.”

“And whose side was Death on?” enquired Crosby with genuine interest.

He got a totally unexpected answer from Major Puiver, who said grimly, “Not poor old Peter Corbishley's anyway.”

“The Member?” said Sloan alertly.

“None other,” said the old soldier. “Death kept on leaping up and down in front of him wherever he went and doing a sort of war-dance.” Puiver looked quite worried, and added seriously, “When he wasn't doing that he was stalking the Member round the tiltyard. And that was all before the Member had a narrow escape at the foot of the tower.”

“Tell me,” said Sloan.

“A stone fell from the parapet. Missed him by a whisker.”

“The time has come, Crosby——” Detective Inspector Sloan stopped and immediately corrected himself. “No, the time is long overdue, Crosby, for a visit to Miss Mildred Finch.”

“Yes, sir.”

He led the way back to their police car, glancing at a piece of paper. “She lives at Capgrave Cottage, Church Street, Mellamby. Come along.”

“Does that mean we're late, sir?” asked Crosby, taking this literally, and hoping to seize on a good reason for a nice turn of speed at the wheel. Driving fast cars fast was his principal joy in life.

“It does not.” Sloan laid a wallet of papers on the back seat of the police car. “Nor does it mean, Crosby, that the rate of the journey calls for white knuckles on the part of the driver.”

“No, sir.”

“Or the passenger.”

“No, sir.”

“Just pretend your name is Tod Morton, that's all.”

“Sir?”

“Drive me to Capgrave Cottage as if you were an undertaker behind the wheel of a hearse.”

Even so it was not long before Crosby was asking where in Church Street, Mellamby, to look for Miss Finch's cottage. “There's the church, sir, but I can't see any names on the gates.”

“Seeing that we call ourselves detectives, Crosby,” said Sloan, peering out of the car window, “we might just be able to tell which one is occupied by—what did that chap Rauly call her? A retired schoolteacher of an interfering disposition.”

“Yes, sir,” said Crosby, adding insouciantly a moment later, “How?”

“From the front garden,” said the rose-grower. “Gives a lot away, does a front garden.”

“Yes, sir.” Crosby slowed the police car down in front of a garden that was a model of neatness.

“No,” said Sloan at once. “Not serried ranks of lobelia and salvia with alyssum in between. Patriotic, of course, and a very popular layout in the last war, but not sufficiently imaginative, I think, for Miss Finch.

The constable re-engaged first gear and drove the car forward.

“Nor the London Pride and day lilies next door, either,” pronounced Sloan. “Ground cover, that's all they are. Lazy beds.”

“Why they don't have numbers on their houses beats me,” said Crosby, driving past a dwelling whose front garden appeared to comprise only an out-of-hand buddleia without even slowing down.

“A butterfly fancier,” diagnosed Sloan. “Drive on—ah, try the one with the delphiniums and the lupins over there,” commanded Sloan, his eye caught by a blaze of colour that would have done credit to Gertrude Jekyll. “Oh, and there's a really good eremurus in the border with some Blue Butterfly scabious—this looks a lot more promising, Crosby. Let's ask at this one.”

A noisily defensive stance taken by a Bedlington terrier at the garden gate delayed the two policemen but brought a tall, gaunt-faced woman to the front door. As they advanced the policemen could see the words “Capgrave Cottage” carved on an oak board beside the door.

Sloan introduced himself.

“Police?” she said. “Ah, Constable Turton has been in touch with you then, has he? I hoped he might.”

“Well …” prevaricated Sloan.

“It's disgraceful,” said Miss Finch. “I don't know what this generation is coming to, I really don't.”

“No, Miss.” Sloan coughed and asked cautiously, “What have they been up to now?”

“Didn't Colin Turton tell you? It's the churchyard over there.”

The two policemen pivoted on their heels and obediently looked in the direction of the churchyard. As far as Sloan could tell at a quick glance all the rude forefathers of the village of Mellamby were sleeping peacefully in their appointed places. “Something wrong, is there, Miss?”

Miss Finch sniffed. “Not now but there was until I put it right.”

“Ah.” Some citizens were better than others at the watch-keeping role.

She pointed. “You see that notice on the churchyard wall?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“And what it says?”

“No dogs,” said Sloan, feeling himself back in the classroom in an instant.

“It does now.”

“So?” If the police were at Mellamby for anything, it was to try to establish whether or not a serious crime had been committed: not to examine notices on walls.

“Last night,” said Miss Finch censoriously, “it was changed.”

“Really, Miss.”

“Last night,” she paused impressively, “it read ‘Do snog.'”

Detective Inspector Sloan's mind sought swiftly through a range of possible responses with the speed of a computer and settled for “That won't do at all, Miss. Can't have that on the churchyard wall, can we?”

“Certainly not,” said Miss Finch.

“As it so happens, Miss, we hadn't come about—er—that.” Sloan wasn't sure off the cuff what degree of misdemeanour could be committed by perpetrating an anagram. Would the legal eagles down at the Police Station construe “Do snog” as an incitement to violence? Or as coming within that archaic catch-all a breach of the peace? He said, “Actually, Miss Finch, we've come about William de Wilton.” Which sounded just as arcane.

“Have you?” Miss Finch looked the two policemen up and down. “You'd better come indoors then. Come along, Bebida.”

The Bedlington terrier gave a joyous yelp and made straight for Detective Constable Crosby's ankles.

“Bebida! Come here at once.” Miss Finch smiled perfunctorily at the constable. “It's the trousers, you know.”

“Quite so, Miss,” said Sloan before Crosby could speak.

“I'm sorry,” said Miss Finch, “but she just doesn't like men.”

Like mistress, like maid, was what Sloan's grandmother would have said to that, but Sloan himself, wise in his own generation, kept silent.

A faint smile played along Miss Finch's thin lips. “She goes for Bertram Rauly practically every time she sees him.”

“Indeed, Miss?” Sloan and Crosby followed Miss Finch inside the cottage and into a small sitting room to the left of the front door. “Doesn't she like Mr. Rauly, then?”

“She does not.” Mildred Finch waved the two men into chintz-covered chairs. “No sense of history, that's his trouble, Camulos Society or not.”

“You would have thought,” murmured Sloan, “that living in a house like Mellamby Place …”

“That's the whole trouble,” said Miss Finch warmly. “You would have thought so, wouldn't you, but Mr. Bertram Millington Hervé Rauly sees the most beautiful house in Calleshire as nothing but a millstone round his neck. Not as living history, which it is, isn't it?”

“Yes, Miss.” On the shelf beside Miss Finch's fireplace Sloan could see a fine example of barbola work. That was living history, too, but at a different level.

“How he can bear even to talk of burning it down,” spluttered Miss Finch, “totally defeats me.”

“Quite so, Miss.” Over Miss Finch's shoulder Sloan could see a wooden board with a motto and border design tastefully etched out in poker-work. Perhaps it was Miss Finch who had fire on the brain. “He's set on fire-raising, is he?”

If Bertram Rauly did set fire to Mellamby Place, that would certainly give the barrack-room lawyers in the Police Station charge room further food for thought. After all it was presumably his own property, but as it would undoubtedly also be a listed building within the meaning of the Act perhaps they would get him for wilfully damaging an ancient monument or something. Although if Bertram Rauly were dead or dying at the time that wouldn't do the Law a lot of good.

“So he says.” Miss Finch pursed her lips. “He declares that he's going to burn the whole house down before he dies.” She gulped. “And everything in it.”

“I see,” said Sloan. Happy the man, someone had said once, who didn't have any hostages to fortune in the way of a family. And yet without them fortune in its other sense didn't seem to have much meaning in the long run.

Miss Finch's voice trembled with emotion as she said, “And he keeps on saying he's getting old.”

“He did fall, didn't he?” said Crosby pointedly, diverted by neither barbola work nor pyrogravure motto.

“Caught his foot in a hole in a carpet,” said Miss Finch. “Or so he says.” She paused impressively. “But I don't suppose he told you that it was a Savonnerie carpet.”

“No, Miss,” said Sloan. “He didn't.” Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell would have said that the make of the carpet was immaterial: Miss Finch evidently didn't think so.

“He's got three Savonnerie carpets,” said Miss Finch, whose own sitting room was covered in a good Axminster. She very nearly wrung her hands in anguish. “And he says he's going to burn the contents of the house with it rather than have any dealers pawing over his things.”

“Does he, Miss?” replied Sloan thoughtfully. An unknown number of those present at Mellamby Place at the ill-fated re-enactment of the Battle of Lewes had had grounds for believing that Bertram Rauly had been playing William de Wilton. And the man who had actually been playing William de Wilton that day had died—with the medieval equivalent of an arrow in him.

“And the pictures,” moaned Miss Finch. “All those beautiful pictures.”