A Dead Liberty (19 page)

“We wondered,” said Sloan.

“There's the Bird of Disaster—Ahianmworo—in the right-hand corner. Do you see?”

Sloan nodded.

“Highly representational, of course, but no doubt about it. And”—Jeavington pointed to the dangling teeth—“in the Dlasian ethos those represent punishment. The Jaws of Death so to speak.”

Crosby stirred uneasily. “Not like that here, is it?”

“You will also have observed the sword of life and death in the other corner.”

Crosby said, “There's one of those at the Old Bailey.”

“Recipients,” remarked James Jeavington with a scholar's detachment, “are meant to turn their faces to the wall and die when they see one of those.”

Crosby suddenly became the very embodiment of John Bull. “What? Without a proper trial?”

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord Chancellor,” murmured Sloan with irony.

“They usually do die, of course,” continued Jeavington dispassionately, “and quite quickly too.”

“No appeal either,” said Crosby who usually thought appeals a waste of valuable police time.

“A sort of fatal inanition sets in.” Jeavington looked up. “Did you know that they don't have any prisons in Dlasa?”

“No,” said Sloan, suddenly very anxious that Lucy Durmast didn't turn her face to the wall while they were making their enquiries. That wouldn't do at all.

“This hex …” began Crosby.

“Yes?” said Jeavington.

“Does it last forever?”

Jeavington shook his head. “Only until the next Festival of Commenda.”

“We've heard about that,” said Sloan.

“The great Dlasian ceremony of dismissing the Unfriendly Spirits acts as a sort of slate-wiping exercise all round.” The civil servant waved a hand. “We could do with one in the Ministry from time to time.”

“So,” said Crosby seriously, “if the accused can keep going until then she might be all right?”

Jeavington gave a faint smile. “That rather depends on what she has been accused of, doesn't it?”

“And by whom,” added Sloan. A Dlasian revenge token was one thing, a warrant issued by an English Court was quite another. Even so, to Sloan, the two together somehow smacked of double jeopardy.

“There's one thing you can be quite sure about the celebration of Commenda,” said Jeavington, “and that is that King Thabile won't cut the first turf, so to speak, for Mgongwala until the festival is over and the Unfriendly Spirits dismissed for the year …”

Crosby interrupted him. “Have you heard the one about the surgeon doing the first operation in a new hospital theatre?”

“No,” said a fascinated Jeavington. “Tell me …”

Nothing loath, the constable carried on. “Well, the surgeon handed the scalpel to his assistant and said, ‘Here, you cut the first …”

“Crosby!” thundered Sloan.

“Sorry, sir.”

“They still go in for apotrophism in Dlasa, of course,” James Jeavington picked up the conversation again with practised smoothness. A minister could be even more jejune any day than a police constable.

“What's that when it's at home?” asked Crosby, trying to write the word down.

“The burying of bones under the threshold of a new building to ward off bad luck would be a good example of apotrophism. It is usually,” the civil servant added astringently, “at home but not in this instance.”

“Bit primitive, isn't it?” said Crosby.

“Practised very widely in England until the seventeenth century,” said Jeavington. “Mind you, it's not all that long ago that they used to leave the north door of a church open during a baptism so that evil spirits could leave. That's why it's called the Devil's Door …”

“What sort of bones exactly?” asked Sloan carefully, anxious to get something clear. “You're not talking about human sacrifice, are you?” A dissident son was almost too tailor-made for that part: there had never been any suggestion that Abraham hadn't loved Isaac.

“No,” said Jeavington. “They gave that up in a sort of Diamond Jubilee tribute to Queen Victoria.”

“I'm very glad to hear it,” said Sloan earnestly. Propitiating ancient gods, getting auguries right and casting entrails—even consulting astrologers—were all in their way perfectly proper activities for those who believed in them, but the ritual sacrifice of human beings was murder in Sloan's book if not in everyone else's.

“Talking of Queens …” Jeavington cleared his throat.

“Yes?” Sloan was all attention.

The civil servant became suddenly circumlocutory. “I think it might not be—er—out of order for me to give you some indication that …”

“Yes?” Sloan was even more encouraging.

“My Ministry have it in mind—provided, of course, that all goes well with the building of Mgongwala …”

“Of course.”

“To recommend the chairman of William Durmast for inclusion in the New Year Honours.”

“That'll be a real feather in his cap,” responded Sloan without thinking from where that particular expression had come.

“I wonder,” said Crosby idly, “what King Thabile will give him if it doesn't go well. The Order of the Boot, I expect.”

“Kingship in Dlasa is Divine,” said Jeavington seriously, “so it's difficult to say.”

Not for the first time Sloan anathematised himself for not paying more attention at school. Wasn't that what all the fuss about King Charles I had been?

“But,” swept on Jeavington, “in case you're thinking that Dlasa's backward, let me tell you about the other strength that it has got.”

“What's that?” In Detective Inspector Sloan's line of country it was usually weaknesses that were talked about.

“A refreshing absence of civil insurrection.” James Jeavington straightened a blotter that ornamented his desk as if ink—real ink—were still in daily use at the Ministry for Overseas Development. “Even though there is a subject race there—the Thecats.” He brightened. “Perhaps that explains it. Makes for better behaviour all round, I mean.
Pas devant les domestiques
and all that. I hadn't thought of it in that way.” He cocked his head alertly. “Make an interesting study, that, wouldn't it?” The hidden academic in him surfaced briefly.

“Have you any reason to suppose,” put in Sloan before the man opposite could expand his hypothesis any further, “that Prince Aturu—er—had it in mind”—two could use the language of diplomacy—“to upset the status quo?”

“Our man in Dlasa,” advanced Jeavington obliquely, “has reported that the preparations for the building of Mgongwala appear to be going well, and that there are no signs of imminent destabilisation.” He waved a hand. “And he would know. He's worked all over Africa.”

“And Prince Aturu?” enquired Sloan. “Has he any news of the Prince since his return from England?”

“It is not, of course, Her Majesty's Envoy's province to monitor the movement of members of the Dlasian Royal family …”

“Naturally,” agreed Sloan, “but …”

“But he can report that nothing whatsoever has been seen of Prince Aturu since he returned to Dlasa …”

“Ah.”

“If he ever did,” said James Jeavington.

FOURTEEN

Collyria
—
The eye lotions

“Home, James,” said Detective Inspector Sloan thankfully as they came out of the Ministry for Overseas Development, “and don't spare the horses.” Whitehall was no place for a pair of investigating officers.

He had strapped himself into the passenger seat of the police car before he realised he didn't really mean what he had said. Getting home quickly was the instinctive reaction of the countryman visiting London, that was all: a sentiment as old as Aesop. He turned to Detective Constable Crosby, who was already in the driving seat and added, “Mind you, that's not a licence to kill.”

“With this sort of traffic,” retorted Crosby morosely, “blood pressure'll be the only thing that kills anyone. Not speed.”

“A little time to think won't hurt us.” Sloan was at his most bracing.

“Won't do us any good,” said Crosby, insinuating the police car into a moving stream of traffic with a truly urban disregard for other drivers. “That pinstripe wonder didn't tell us a lot, did he?”

“Not really.” Police Superintendent Leeyes, who didn't have a high opinion of either the city or the civil service, would be sitting at his rather more functional desk in Berebury police station waiting to hear how his two minions had got on. Sloan was only too well aware without Crosby's rubbing it in that there was precious little to tell him.

“Getting nowhere fast,” pronounced Crosby, “that's what we're doing.”

“It's not for want of trying, is it?” said Sloan drily. “The fast bit, I mean.”

Where Crosby appeared to be going fast was an Accident and Emergency Unit. He was engaged in the simultaneous circumnavigation of a London bus and the thwarting of the energetic efforts of a hackney carriage to overtake their car.

“He's probably got a fare with a train to catch,” said Sloan absently. They had only got a murderer to catch—no, that had been a Freudian slip. They had caught their murderer, hadn't they? And Detective Inspector Porritt had arrested her. What they were trying to do was collect evidence—no, that was wrong, too. They had got their evidence, hadn't they? He took hold of his thoughts. What was it that everyone was shouting about then?

First, identify the problem: that was what all the good books said.

Detective Inspector Sloan shrank back in the front passenger seat and tried to put the Law's problem into words.

A girl who had chosen to stay silent in Court.

A rational Sloan reminded himself that a great many accused persons chose not to give evidence at their own trials and that did not seem in any way seriously to upset the balance of the Scales of Justice: it wasn't all that long ago that they hadn't even been allowed to—whether or not they wished to.

“That sword at the Old Bailey,” he said suddenly to an uninterested detective constable at the driving wheel, “isn't like the Dlasian one.” They'd had a talk once on the history of the Law at one of the courses that Sloan had been sent on. It was funny which bits surfaced from time to time. “It isn't called the Sword of Life or Death like theirs.”

Crosby changed the gears down suddenly for a quick spurt of speed.

“It's called the Sword of Mercy or Curtana.”

“Chap I knew,” remarked Crosby laconically, “told me it was pointless.”

“Hasn't got a point.” Sloan rephrased the description.
Double entendre
was all very well in its place but not with Crosby. “It's blunt.” Perhaps, now he came to think about it, that was better in every way than its being two-edged, like the Dlasian one.

Life or death, Jeavington had said, hadn't he?

And infinitely more merciful for it to be blunt than sharp.

What he really needed to know was exactly where the Kingdom of Dlasa—whatever sort of sword it used in its symbolism—came into the murder of Kenneth Carline.

If it did.

Sloan tried to relax. “There's probably quite a simple explanation for everything if we did but know,” he said aloud.

“I don't know where that truck thinks it's going,” said Crosby, “but …”

“Lucy Durmast,” Sloan pressed on sturdily, “might only have wanted to delay her trial until after the Festival of the Departure of the Unfriendly Spirits was safely over.”

“Shouldn't be on the road,” said Crosby indignantly as the driver of the truck executed a neat
pas de deux
with a sports car. The owner of the sports car had youth as well as speed on his side and was soon almost out of sight. “I'd book him if we were in Calleshire …”

“That,” said Sloan with commendable pertinacity, “would have at least have got her father and Mgongwala off to a good start.”

“And got William Durmast his gong,” said Crosby, losing interest in the truck.

“It would be salvaging something,” said Sloan moderately.

Crosby screwed his neck round, craning to see behind him. They were still leading the taxi by a short head.

“And account for Lucy Durmast's silence,” said Sloan.

Crosby sniffed. “It could be that she isn't saying anything because she hasn't anything to say.”

That had been what Margaret Sloan had said too. Sloan advanced another stray thought that he had had. “I think we can presume,” he said, “that Lucy Durmast isn't likely to take any action that would injure the firm of Durmast. Quite apart from anything else, she's got a sizeable stake in it, remember? Her late mother's holding as well as her own, Inspector Porritt put in his report.”

“Sacrificing her chances with a jury in a good cause?” Crosby frowned. “Doesn't make sense to me.”

“Some women,” said Sloan wisely, “will always go in for self-sacrifice. It's in the nature of the beast or something. You've got to watch them.”

Crosby increased his lead on the taxi before he spoke. “All that about the firm doesn't go for Kenneth Carline though, does it?”

“We don't know,” said Sloan. In his book Lucy Durmast's considerable holding in the firm was a powerful reason for courting the boss's daughter, not for getting engaged to someone else. It wasn't that he was naturally cynical. Once Margaret had dragged him to a performance by the Berebury Amateur Dramatic Society of the play
The Heiress
by Henry James. The society was affectionately known in the town of Berebury as the BADS and the acting had been far from memorable, but Sloan had never forgotten the message in the play.

Crosby sniffed. “You'll always find somebody ready to bite the hand that feeds them.”