“If he’d stayed at home,” said the Law flatly, “he’d have been all right.”
“The deceased,” pronounced Dr. Dabbe, “was attacked from behind and died very quickly.”
(“The Doctor said that Death was but A Scientific Fact.”)
“He struggled,” observed Medicine, “but it didn’t do him any good.”
“God rest his soul,” murmured the Reverend Walter Ames.
(“And twice a day the Chaplain called, And left a little tract.”)
“Perhaps,” suggested the Church gently, “in the fullness of time we shall be better able to see his life in true perspective.”
Was this man of God comforting him, too, wondered Sloan? P.C. Bloggs couldn’t properly be blamed for this death, but could he, Sloan? The Superintendent would blame everybody, he always did, so that, working for him, you had yourself to work out where real responsibility lay.
As for perspective it was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. Far away lay a greatly diminished figure…
Dr. Dabbe was going now. “I’ve seen all I need here, Inspector. Send him back to Berebury and I’ll be getting on with the post-mortem for you.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The pathologist poked a bony finger towards the oubliette.
“Forgotten,” he said pungently, “but not gone.”
He should have worked all this out before now.
Before William Murton died.
Sloan took Crosby with him to see their Ladyships upstairs. Now that the House was really full of police he thought he could leave the oubliette for a while.
Lady Maude answered his knock and the two policemen trooped in. It was quite impossible to tell if any hasty harbinger of bad tidings had told the two old ladies about their great-nephew William. Sloan himself had broken the news to the Earl and Countess first, and then to the rest of the family. As he had expected, Lord Henry and Lady Eleanor had been most upset.
With the two old ladies, though, it was as if a lifetime of keeping the upper lip stiff meant that it could no longer bend.
“William…” he began tentatively.
Lady Alice inclined her head. “Millicent has told us. We expected something, you know. The Judge was about.”
The chair Sloan had been given was hard and straight-backed. He twisted on it uncomfortably, unsure of what to say next. “He shouldn’t have died…”
The old, old face was inscrutable. “We’ve all got to die, Mr. Sloan—some of us sooner than others.”
“Yes, your Ladyship,” he agreed readily, “but he was young.”
Sloan was struck by a sadder thought still. Perhaps, seen from Lady Alice’s vantage point, a lost middle age was not something to mourn and that, as for old age—you could keep it.
“Poor boy,” said Lady Maude. She, Sloan was sure, would have a lace-edged handkerchief somewhere and would shed a private tear for the dead William.
Lady Alice was made of sterner stuff.
She leaned forward. “Tell me, Mr. Sloan, do you read Boccaccio?”
“No, your Ladyship.” He had a vague recollection that was the name of one of the authors that some public libraries did not stock, but he was probably mistaken.
“He put it very well for us all.”
Sloan waited.
“ ‘Many valiant men and many fine ladies,’ ” she rumbled, “ ‘breakfasted with their kinsfolk and that same night supped with their ancestors in the other world.’ ”
Sloan cleared his throat. In a way, that wasn’t so very far removed from what he had come about.
“Your Ladyship, can you remember Friday afternoon?”
“Of course.”
“Teatime?”
“Yes?”
“How many cups were there on the tea tray?”
But in the end it was Lady Maude who remembered, not Lady Alice at all.
“Only two, Mr. Sloan, because we hadn’t invited Mr. Meredith, you see.”
Sloan and Crosby were walking down the great staircase together.
“We know when, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We know where, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now we know who, Crosby.”
“Yes, sir.”
The dialogue was as rhythmical as their steps down the stair treads.
“We still don’t know why.”
“No, sir. Murton…”
“William Murton had to die.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He came up to the House on Friday evening though he told us he didn’t…”
“Yes, sir.”
“And saw something.”
“It didn’t do him any good.”
“Ah, but he thought it was going to, though,” said Sloan sadly. “He made the mistake of thinking he was on to a good thing.”
“And so he came up to the House today…”
“Tricky business, blackmail,” murmured Sloan ruminatively. ‘I don’t think our William can have been quite up to it. He should have stuck to the Earl. He would have seen him through.”
There was somebody coming along the upper landing behind them and hurrying down the stairs after them. A man’s voice called out, “Inspector!”
Sloan turned.
Charles Purvis was descending on them as quickly as he could. “Inspector!”
“Yes?”
“I’ve just been taking the Young Masters Art Society round. They’d arranged to come and I forgot to cancel them what with one thing and another…”
“Yes?” prompted Sloan.
“So when they came just now rather than send them away I took them round myself.”
Quite obviously Charles Purvis hadn’t heard about the dead William Murton yet.
“They’d come all the way from London and anyway they didn’t know about Mr. Meredith…”
“Well?”—expectantly.
“They’ve just got to the Holbein—the picture called The Black Death.”
“Of Judge Cremond?”
“That’s right.”
“Well?”
“They say it’s not a Holbein at all.”
17
« ^ »
Sloan would have given a great deal not to have been interrupted at that precise moment.
The very last thing he wanted to do at this minute was to talk to his colleague Inspector Harpe of Berebury’s Traffic Division.
Inspector Harpe, who was known throughout the Calleshire Constabulary as Happy Harry because he had never been seen to smile—he maintained that there had so far never been in anything to smile at in Traffic Division—had actually telephoned him at Ornum House and was asking for him urgently.
One of Sloan’s own constables brought him the message. One of the first acts of the police posse from Berebury had been to take over the telephone. Another had been to encircle the House. Lady Alice Cremond would have had a phrase for that.
Stoppin’ the earths.
That was what he was trying to do now. Now he had got onto the right scent at last.
Inspector Harpe soon drove all huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’ analogies out of his mind.
“That you, Sloan?” he asked guardedly. “About this other business—you know…”
“I know.”
“There was an accident just before dinnertime today at the foot of Lockett Hill—near the bottom by the bend—you know…”
“It’s a bad corner.”
“You’re telling me. We’ve been trying to get the County Council to put a better camber on it for years, but you know what they’re like.”
“I do.”
“They say it’s the Ministry, but then they always do.”
“And the Ministry say it’s the County,” condoled Sloan.
“That’s right—how did you know? And everyone blames the police. It was a fatal, by the way.”
So someone had died while “they” were fighting about improving the road.