The time had mattered then.
In olden days men would begin their last will and testament with their name and then add the prescient words “and like to die.” The practice of medicine might not have amounted to very much in those days but at least then patients knew where they stood in relation to death, the great reaper. He wondered if Mrs. Celia Mundill had been “like to die” in April. If so she must have known it, too, and made her will.
And presumably her peace with the world.
Crosby started to fold up the paper again.
“Nothing,” enquired Sloan appositely, “about remarriage?”
Wills were funny things. They lay dormant for years—like the seeds of some plants—and then something would stir their testators into activity again. Old wills would be torn up and new wills would be written. Or the testator died.
Crosby checked the will. “Nothing about the remarriage of the widower.”
A time to get, and a time to lose, as Ecclesiastes had it.
No, not that.
A time to keep, and a time to cast away.
That was more like it.
Crosby folded the will neatly away. “Nothing for us in that.”
“It doesn’t appear to change anything,” agreed Sloan cautiously.
That was the important thing with testamentary dispositions and crime.
“The widower’s income doesn’t change anyway,” said Crosby.
“His death would matter to the girl,” said Sloan. “That’s all.”
Crosby frowned. “Then she would scoop the pool, wouldn’t she?”
“One day,” said Sloan moderately, “she’s going to be worth quite a lot of money.” It didn’t weigh against a bruised heart; he was old enough to know that.
“I wonder if that boy-friend of hers knew how rich before he ditched her,” said Crosby.
In an ordinary man it would have been an unworthy thought; it was a perfectly proper one in a police officer.
“He didn’t ditch her,” said Sloan absently. He was sure about that now. “Somebody did for him. And put him in the river.”
“Poor little rich girl,” commented Crosby. He waved the will in the air. “What’s this got to do with it all then, sir?”
“Probably nothing at all,” said Sloan. The widower’s income was assured, the niece’s long-term future secure. “Money isn’t everything, though,” Sloan reminded the constable. It had been one of his mother’s favourite sayings. It applied—with a certain irony—to some crime too.
“Comes in handy, though, doesn’t it, sir. Money…”
“It’s only one currency,” insisted Sloan. “There are others.”
There was fear—and hate.
With Horace Boiler now it looked very much as if someone had been trading in silence. From the dead man’s point of view it had been dearly bought. Sloan turned his attention back to the old fisherman. Not that looking at him was going to tell the police anything. What Sloan needed was a view into the man’s mind before he had been killed.
“He found the body,” mused Sloan aloud.
“He took us up river afterwards,” said Crosby.
“He took Ridgeford out too,” said Sloan, “to collect it.”
“And that Mr. Jensen from the museum. Don’t forget him.”
“I haven’t,” said Sloan drily. “And I haven’t forgotten The Clarembald either.”
“He could have seen the boathouse doors, too,” said Crosby. “We did.”
“He did see Elizabeth Busby by the grave,” said Sloan. “She said so.”
“But,” reiterated Crosby, “Boiler didn’t know that the man in the water…”
“Peter Hinton,” said Sloan with conviction. He was sure of that now.
“Peter Hinton then had been pushed over the edge of somewhere, did he, so what was there for him to get so excited about?”
“Your guess, Crosby,” said Sloan solemnly, “is as good as mine.”
Interviewing Mrs. Boiler had been an unrewarding business in every way, and now Sloan and Crosby were with Mrs. Veronica Feckler. It was impossible to tell whether she knew that she was being asked to provide an alibi for a man.
“Yesterday evening?” she said vaguely. “Yes, Mr. Mundill was here yesterday evening.”
Detective Constable Crosby made a note.
“He came down after tea,” she said.
“I see, madam.”
Sloan was favoured with a charming smile. She was a personable woman and she knew it. “To measure up my cottage, you know.”
“So we gather, madam.”
She sketched an outline with a graceful hand. “I need another room building on. Frank—Mr. Mundill—he’s an architect, you know…”
“Yes, madam.” That much Sloan did know by now. Of the fire station, of the junior school, of Alec Manton’s farmhouse and of a multi-storey car park.
And a multi-storey car park.
That was funny.
Frank Mundill hadn’t mentioned that to Sloan. It had been Inspector Harpe who had told him about that multistorey car park. Not Mundill. Even though he had got an award for designing it.
Mrs. Feckler said, “He’s going to do my extension for me.”
“How long was he with you, madam?” A thought was beginning to burgeon in Sloan’s mind.
“Until just before supper.” She wasn’t the sort of woman who frowned but she did allow herself a tiny pucker of the forehead. “He left about half past seven. Is it important?”
It was strange, decided Elizabeth Busby, how heavy one’s body could feel. She had almost to drag one leaden foot after the other. And yet she weighed the same—rather less, if anything—as she had done the day before.
When the inspector had left the house to go back to the shed she tidied away the cleaning things that she had brought out into the hall. There would be no more work done in Collerton House that day. She went into the kitchen and set about making coffee. That, at least, would be something useful to do and all those men out there would be glad of something to drink.
Time—even the most leaden-footed time—does eventually pass. And in the end the body of Horace Boiler was borne away, the tumult and the shouting died and the photographers and the police—the captains and the kings—departed.
Frank Mundill came back indoors looking years older. “I’ll be in my office,” he said briefly, going upstairs.
She nodded. There suddenly didn’t seem anything to say any more. She went and sat in the window-seat, her shoulders hunched up and unable to decide whether or not to take the tablets Dr. Tebot had left for her. He really did look as if a frock coat would have suited him, but he had been kind.
Even the hunching on the window-seat seemed symbolic. There was no leisurely resting in a chair for her today while she waited for Inspector Sloan to come back. The inspector had hinted—ever so delicately—but hinted all the same that he might have some more news for her later on and that he would return if he had.
“About Horace Boiler?” she had asked.
“Not about Horace,” he had replied.
Now she understood why Dante had had a place called Limbo in his portrayal of Hell…
It was quite a long time after that that she picked up the morning paper. It had been lying unregarded on the hall table since it had been delivered. It wasn’t that she wanted to read it particularly, just that after a certain length of time she needed to do something with her hands. Not her head. That didn’t take in any of what she was reading. Not at first, that is.
There is a certain state of alertness rejoicing in the grand name of thematic apperception which describes the attraction to eye and ear of items that the owner of that eye and ear is interested in. It explained how it was that Elizabeth Busby was able to read almost the whole paper without taking any of it in at all—until, that is, she turned to that page of the daily paper which dealt in—among other things—short items of news from the sale rooms.