A Dead Liberty (7 page)

“That's only one of them.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Crosby, “she doesn't want to incriminate someone else—you know, shielding a man she loves and all that jazz.”

“I have news for you, Crosby,” said Sloan heavily. “There does not appear to be anyone else to incriminate.”

“No one in the running at all?”

“Not as far as Inspector Porritt could see.”

“Just Lucy Durmast?” The detective constable was already showing signs of losing interest.

“The deceased had lunch with her,” said Sloan, adding astringently, “that, at least, does not appear to be in doubt. And he died some time afterwards from poisoning by hyoscine.”

“Is that?”

“Is what?”

“Is that in doubt?” asked Crosby.

“Dr. Bressingham seemed quite sure,” said Sloan drily.

The name clearly meant nothing to the detective constable.

“He's the new pathologist over in Calleford,” said Sloan. “He's only been there about a year. He says he found hyoscine hydrobromide in Kenneth Carline's body in sufficient quantity to cause death.”

“So we've only got his word for it?”

“His sworn word, Crosby,” Sloan reminded him gently. “I believe, in fact, duplicate samples of—er—everything were also kept for any forensic pathologist retained by the Defence.”

“Only there isn't one, sir? That right?”

“That's right, Crosby. You've got the general idea.”

“And the old judge doesn't like the thought of no one going in to bat for the accused?”

“I couldn't have put it better myself,” murmured Sloan, “although I daresay His Honour could.”

The constable hitched his shoulder and said, “What are we going to do about it, then?”

“Go over the ground again,” said Sloan grimly. “And again. And again.”

Detective Constable Crosby groaned aloud.

It was as well for both police officers that Detective Inspector Sloan interpreted going over the ground literally. There was nothing Detective Constable Crosby enjoyed more than driving a fast car.

“Braffle Episcopi, please, Crosby,” commanded Sloan presently, climbing into the front passenger seat beside the constable. Just as all good fairy tales properly begin “Once upon a time,” the scene of the crime seemed the best place to start.

“Yes, sir.” He slammed the car into first gear with a flourish.

“Crosby, as you yourself remarked, the trail is already quite cold. There is therefore no immediate hurry about our getting there.”

“No, sir.” Crosby took a corner at speed.

“But in the interests of justice, it would be helpful to get there in one piece.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sloan supposed that serving justice could best describe what they were doing at the moment: he couldn't think of another way of putting it except making assurance doubly sure. It was funny how clichés came into their own at times …

“Did she have a reason, sir?” Crosby interrupted his reverie. “A motive …”

“The oldest one of them all,” said Sloan.

There was a pause while Crosby negotiated some road works at a pace not allowed for by the contractors: and thought about this. “Jealousy, sir?” he hazarded as the police vehicle finished executing a tight slalom round some “No Waiting” cones.

“The deceased had just announced his engagement to someone else,” said Sloan. “He'd fixed it up with his fiancée over the Christmas holidays. The girl next door in his home town.”

“Is that why she did for him?” asked Crosby. He hadn't travelled far in love himself and was still curious about everything to do with affairs of the heart.

“The Prosecution will say …” began Sloan.

“Given half a chance,” put in Crosby.

“Given half a chance,” agreed Sloan, “the Prosecution will say that there was some talk of Lucy Durmast having been friendly with Kenneth Carline when he first joined the firm.”

“And I suppose,” said Crosby, “we'll never know what the Defence would have said seeing as there isn't going to be any Defence.”

“Quite so,” said Sloan. “Mind you, the Prosecution agree that this talk might well only be office gossip.”

“Gossipy places, offices,” said Crosby, overlooking what went on in the canteen at the police station.

“But there is evidence that it was current earlier last year.” Inspector Porritt had been meticulous about the inclusion of this in his report.

“No smoke without fire,” said the detective constable largely.

“Smoke signals can be misread,” countered Sloan. He clutched at his safety belt. “Mind that bus!”

“Plenty of room,” said Crosby airily, adding with apparent detachment, “How long did Kenneth Carline take to get from Calleford to Palshaw that day?”

Detective Inspector Sloan was not deceived. “Nowhere long enough to satisfy a magistrate that he had kept to the speed limit,” he said evasively, “and rather more quickly than you are going to be, Crosby.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That motorway is meant as road and not as race track and mind you don't forget it.”

“No, sir.”

Calleshire was as yet not well endowed with motorways—in fact that from Luston in the northwest of the county to Calleford more or less in the centre and thence on to Kinnisport in the east constituted its longest stretch. It was just beyond Kinnisport at the wooded waterside village of Palshaw that the motorway came out of the trees and finished in a flurry of tunnel approaches and the road itself plunged under the estuary of the river Calle. South of the river mouth the road assumed a new significance and sought its way to the coast again behind the headland, past the villages of Edsway and Braffle Episcopi beyond it to the brand-new nuclear waste disposal plant at Marby juxta Mare.

It was the nuclear waste disposal plant which had constituted the raison d'être for the tunnel in the first place. Or, rather, had been the reason for the tunnel's coming when it did. The people to the south of the estuary had been trying to persuade the Calleshire County Council to build a bridge or put in a tunnel there ever since Isambard Kingdom Brunel had demonstrated the possibilities elsewhere. A bridge had certainly been on the tapis at County Hall for the best part of fifty years. What had amazed the more naïve of the local populace, though, had been the speed with which the tunnel had been built once the nuclear waste plan had been bruited, and there had been mutterings in several quarters about back-scratching in high places.

The Action Group Against Marby had been prominent among the protesters and the most scornful about the tunnel. A quid pro quo they called it and in no way abated their opposition to the nuclear waste disposal plant. Residents south of the river had been more muted in their response. They didn't want the nuclear waste plant but they did want the tunnel and access to the motorway. The only alternative route was a slow and tediously winding road to Billing Bridge which spanned the river Calle at the widest point at which it had been possible when it was built in 1484.

“And be careful on the bends,” adjured Sloan. “It was on a bend that Kenneth Carline came to grief …”

“I thought he was poisoned …”

“The theory,” said Sloan, “is that the deceased dozed off at the wheel after leaving the Old Rectory.”

“Drank too much lunch, did he?”

“Hyoscine hydrobromide,” said Sloan repressively, “causes drowsiness.”

Crosby crouched forward at the wheel to demonstrate his alertness.

Sloan said, “Carline crashed his vehicle on a bend on his way back to the tunnel at Palshaw. He was found unconscious in a hedge. The ambulance took him to Calleford Hospital where he died without coming round. That's how he fetched up on Inspector Porritt's plate.”

“Sir, this hyoscine stuff …”

“Yes?”

“It doesn't grow on trees, does it?”

“I don't know what it grows on,” said Sloan truthfully, “but if you are asking where Lucy Durmast could have got hold of some, I can tell you that.”

“Where?”

“Her old grandfather was a retired general medical practitioner. He'd practised over in Luston all his working life.”

“So?”

“He died last November. Lucy Durmast helped her father clear the house. Apparently the old chap had never thrown anything away—his dispensary was still full of drugs. According to Trevor Porritt's report, she could have helped herself to anything she liked.”

“Proper ‘Dr. Finlay's Casebook' stuff, eh?” said Crosby, whose television watching was unpredictable.

“There's another thing,” said Sloan.

“Sir?”

“Hyoscine has a bitter flavour.” Sloan unconsciously moistened his lips. “A sort of acrid taste.”

“The pill needed sugaring, did it?”

“She served him chili con carne,” said Sloan meaningfully.

“I see, sir.” The detective constable caught sight of a stretch of open road at last and put his foot down. “So she had the triple alliance all right.”

“What's that?” enquired Sloan when he could get his breath back.

“Like they taught us at the Training School.”

“What was that?” That which Detective Constable Crosby had been taught did not, in Sloan's view, amount to a hill of beans anyway.

“The three things you need for murder, sir, the Triple Alliance.”

“Tell me,” invited Sloan grittily.

“Means, motive and opportunity. She'd got the lot, hadn't she?”

Cecelia Allsworthy put the telephone receiver down and went through to the kitchen of the Manor House at Braffle Episcopi. A younger girl was there folding baby clothes and keeping her eye on twin infants in a portable play-pen.

“Hortense,” she said, “I'm just popping over to the Old Rectory to open it up for some—er—gentlemen.”

“
Mais oui, je comprends
—I mean, I understand, Cecelia.”

“I shan't be long.” Cecelia forbore to explain that it was the police who were coming. Hortense's English was improving daily but “Your policeman are wonderful” wasn't exactly one of her stock phrases yet. “I've got the key, you see. I'm looking after the house for my friend who isn't there at the moment …”

“But yes …” said the young French girl.

“Look after Gog and Magog for me while I'm gone, won't you?” Cecelia blew the twins a kiss and let herself out of the garden door of the Manor House.

Hortense flew to the children in case they cried when their mother left them, but both little boys were entirely absorbed in tumbling about in the play-pen like porpoises. “Now, Timothee, darling, Maman won't be long, and Michael …” Hortense could—just—understand Cecelia's preoccupation with pottery design and production. She would never understand how it was that she could refer to her two beautiful babies as Gog and Magog. The English were indeed a heartless race.

Cecelia Allsworthy slipped across the Manor House lawn and through their private gate into the churchyard. The Old Rectory was situated right round the other side of the church. These days Braffle Episcopi shared a rector with two neighbouring villages and the rectory had been sold off by the ecclesiastical authorities. As she crunched her way over the church path towards the closed door, Cecelia reflected sadly on how often it had been open to her. She didn't like seeing the house shut up.

She slipped her key under the guard and into the lock. She didn't enjoy going into the house any more either. It wasn't the same empty of Durmasts: without Lucy's giving a smile of welcome as she entered, Cecelia felt estranged. She gave herself a tiny shake and reminded herself that no house was the same if there weren't people living in it. She decided that what the Old Rectory needed was fresh air and went into several rooms, flinging the windows wide open.

That done, she gravitated towards the kitchen simply because this was what she had always done. Lucy was a good cook and enjoyed practising the culinary arts in the same way as Cecelia enjoyed making pottery—she stopped her train of thought. No, that wasn't strictly true. Lucy didn't feel as passionately about cooking as Cecelia did about pottery. She might do it well—she'd jolly well had to become a good cook on account of her mother dying young—but she didn't feel the same way about handling ingredients as Cecelia did about taking clay and forming it into something beautiful. Cecelia's elemental struggle with shape was something she couldn't convey in words—not even to a sympathetic husband or understanding friend. Only her artistic peers comprehended some of her feelings.

She pulled herself up short in the middle of the kitchen. She should be thinking about Lucy, not about herself, and yet she was aware that there was nothing more she could run through her mind about Lucy that hadn't already been through it a hundred times and more. She had exhausted herself over Kenneth Carline's death and Lucy's arrest long ago and knew she had nothing to add any more.

Presently she found herself saying just this to Detective Inspector Sloan.

“I quite understand,” he said, “but if we might see the house I think it would help me to—er—envisage what might have happened.”

“Then you're a better man than I am,” said Cecelia Allsworthy flatly, “because I've tried and I can't. Not Lucy of all people.”

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. It was a refrain he heard almost every time there was an arrest. No family or friend or colleague could ever imagine someone they knew doing something wrong. And the better they knew them the more difficult it became for them to understand. It was as if the fact of knowing another human being well threw a mantle of goodness over them.

Detective Constable Crosby was apparently not troubled by thoughts of any kind. “Nice place they've got here, haven't they?” he said generally.

Cecelia Allsworthy nodded. “It's early eighteenth century.” The Manor House was older by a hundred years and more. “The parson lived in style then and had a big family into the bargain.”