A Dead Liberty (8 page)

“Your friends been here long, then?” asked the constable, looking round at the furnishings.

She frowned. “Lucy's father bought it just after his firm got the Palshaw Tunnel contract. That's about three or four years ago now. He'd been wanting to move at the time away from Calleford and this happened to be on the market.”

“Mr. Durmast would have wanted to be near the workings anyway, I suppose,” said Sloan.

“He used to say”—she smiled gravely—“that if he lived somewhere on the far side of the river he would have a vested interest in getting the tunnel finished on time, and it was.”

Sloan reciprocated her smile with a quick one of his own and, terrierlike, came back to the point. “We're not getting a lot of cooperation from Miss Durmast,” he said.

“She's got a mind of her own,” said Cecelia Allsworthy. “I know she's been a bit—well, caught up—with looking after her father and all that, but it doesn't mean she can't think for herself.”

“We wouldn't know about that, madam, because so far she hasn't seen fit to tell us anything.”

“Nor me,” said Cecelia almost cheerfully, “but you can take it from me that she's not silly.”

“It wasn't a silly murder,” said Sloan solemnly. “Kenneth Carline might easily have hit another car and his death been taken for a road traffic accident.”

“I would have said,” responded the young woman with spirit, “that whatever action Lucy takes she knows what she's doing. You can count on that.”

“You weren't here the day Kenneth Carline came to lunch,” said Sloan.

“Oh yes, I was,” said Cecelia Allsworthy unexpectedly. “I'd come over for morning coffee after I'd got the twins ready—it was too cold for a long walk and Lucy's kitchen is—was—always lovely and warm. They've got one of those big ranges that never goes out—unless you want it to, of course. Come through and see.”

Nothing loath, the two policemen trooped after her into the kitchen.

Cecelia put her hand on the kitchen range. “It's cold now, of course.”

“Of course, madam,” said Sloan.

“I let it out when … after …” For the first time her voice faltered.

“Quite right, madam.” It was the mundane aspects of crime that were sometimes as harrowing as the violent.

A dead stove and a dead man.

Both were stone cold now.

“I used to come over most mornings then,” said Cecelia more matter-of-factly, “to see Lucy and have a chat. I didn't have an
au pair
girl in those days so I couldn't get back to work anyway. Besides, the twins were younger. If,” she said with an attempt at lightness, “you measure the time between an arrest and a trial it comes to about an inch of baby.”

“Yes, madam, I'm sure.” He cleared his throat. “That morning …”

“I told the other inspector all about that morning …”

Sloan explained what had happened to Inspector Porritt.

Mrs. Allsworthy came from a background where injuries to policemen were not considered a good thing. “I'm sorry,” she said simply. “Well, it was all quite unexpected. I swear that Lucy didn't know Kenneth was coming until he telephoned.”

“Kenneth?” interposed Sloan alertly. “You knew him, then?”

“I'd met him here and I'd heard her talk about him. Her father always had the new young men in the firm out to dinner and Lucy had got to know him quite well. He was a bit lonely, I think. This was his first big job away from home.”

“He came from the North of England,” supplied Sloan.

“And from somewhere where they played Rugby,” said Cecelia. “Lucy said that that was his big thing.”

Sloan came back to the day Kenneth Carline died.

“We'd finished our coffee,” she said, “and I was talking about getting back and feeding Timothy and Michael when the phone rang.” Celia pointed to a wall-mounted instrument. “Lucy answered it here. I heard her.”

“Go on.”

“She said ‘Hullo, Kenneth' and then ‘Of course you can. Everything you want will be in the study. As long as you know what you want you can come along and help yourself.' Then there was a bit of silence while he said something—I couldn't hear what—and then …”

“And then?”

Cecelia swallowed visibly. “And then Lucy said ‘If you're coming all this way why don't you stay for a bite of lunch?' He said something else and then she said ‘Of course, I'm sure. It's no trouble at all. I'll expect you about one o'clock, then.'”

A little silence fell in the kitchen at this point.

“That's all,” finished Cecelia lamely. “And look where it's led to.”

“She didn't press him particularly?”

“She didn't have to.”

“What time would this have been?”

“When he rang, you mean? It was just before twelve o'clock. I remember exactly because Lucy said to me ‘That's a tall order, isn't it? A hot lunch on a cold day for a hungry man and only an hour to cook it in.'”

Sloan nodded. Policemen's wives had to get used to the opposite. A hot meal for a hungry man who, irrespective of the weather, didn't come in in an hour or two or three.

Cecelia went on. “I said something silly like ‘Look on it as a challenge.'”

“It sounds as if she might have done,” commented Detective Constable Crosby mordantly. He was examining a spice rack on the wall.

“I remember her saying,” said Cecelia, ignoring this, “‘The meat'll have to come out of a tin, that's for sure. There's no time for any shopping.'”

Sloan looked round the well-appointed kitchen. Mother Hubbard's cupboard was bare, but he doubted if Lucy Durmast's had been.

“Inspector …” Cecelia Allsworthy had suddenly become quite tentative.

“Yes?”

“The police searched this house afterwards …”

“Yes.”

“Did they find … anything?”

“No.” Sloan cleared his throat and hoped he wasn't breaking the Official Secrets Acts.

“But it doesn't signify, I suppose?” Cecelia's shoulders drooped.

“Kenneth Carline didn't die straightaway,” said Sloan.

“So she would have had time …”

“All the time in the world.”

SIX

Pigmenta
—
Paints

Ronald and Phyllis Bolsover made no bones about seeing the police yet again.

“We quite understand the difficulties, Inspector,” said the deputy chairman of William Durmast Ltd., Civil Engineers. “We—my wife and I, that is—are also naturally very concerned about Lucy's position and would want to help in any way we could.”

The Bolsovers lived in a smallish detached house on the outskirts of Calleford. A large Victorian-style conservatory had been added to the sunny side of the house. As they had approached the front door, Sloan had caught sight of a promising chiaroscuro of light and shade through the glass and even at a distance the flowers of one or two exotic plants. Now that the two policemen were in the sitting room, he had a better view of it still through the glass doors which led into the conservatory. Roses were his own favourite plant but he was prepared to be broadminded about the enthusiasms of other gardeners.

“We feel so helpless,” chimed in Mrs. Bolsover. “There doesn't seem to be anything that we can do.”

Sloan agreed that inaction was always difficult.

“What with her father being abroad and everything,” said Phyllis Bolsover.

“He'd only just gone overseas,” amplified Ronald Bolsover, “before all this happened.”

“Bill had wanted to go earlier,” said the woman, “but he couldn't get away because of the tunnel opening ceremony. He left straight away afterwards.”

Sloan nodded his understanding. At the end of every civil-engineering construction someone cut a ribbon. It was no less a ritual in its way than the performing of a tribal dance. He wondered how the new town in Africa would celebrate its completion.

“The Minister of Transport himself,” explained Bolsover with modest pride, “came down to perform the ceremony. There's a plaque.”

“I think I remember some photographs in the newspaper,” began Sloan.

A shadow crossed Bolsover's face. “It was a pity about the demonstration,” he said.

“Happens all the time,” said the police inspector philosophically.

“It was the Action Against Marby Group,” said Ronald Bolsover. “They've been against the nuclear waste plant there right from the beginning and saw their chance to get some extra publicity.”

“Which they did,” said Phyllis Bolsover astringently. She was a rather faded woman with neat features and must have been quite pretty once.

“They managed to get a banner right over the tunnel mouth,” said Bolsover. “Lowered it just as the Minister arrived. Far too late for us to do anything about it.” He winced at the recollection. “It said
MARBY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH
.”

“You could hardly see the entrance,” said Mrs. Bolsover. “It was a shame.”

“I'm afraid that's true, Inspector,” agreed Ronald Bolsover. “It was most unfortunate from a publicity point of view. All that the press wanted to do was to focus on the activists.”

Sloan agreed that publicity could sometimes misfire badly.

“Misfire!” exploded the deputy chairman. “I'll say it misfired. The reporters weren't interested in either the Minister or the tunnel. They practically ignored our press handout and concentrated on the Marby lot instead.”

“Mrs. Othen,” contributed Phyllis Bolsover, “said that her husband was most upset too. I was standing next to her.”

“Eric Othen,” explained Bolsover unnecessarily, “is the County Surveyor.”

Sloan nodded. The name of Eric Othen was on all the paperwork from County Hall that concerned the constabulary and the road network of the county of Calleshire, and was thus well known to all policemen.

“And I'm not surprised that Othen was upset,” continued Bolsover. “I've never heard such a load of nonsense as the Action Group gave the reporter. Melissa Wainwright—that's their leader—went on at him for ages. What she knows about how a nuclear waste plant functions would go on a sixpence. The fool lapped it up, too, and the next day it was all in the papers. They hardly mentioned the tunnel.”

“Disappointing for you, sir,” said Sloan. The Calleshire County Constabulary didn't have an official view on Nuclear Waste Disposal Plants: only on demonstrations for or against them. It was sometimes too subtle a distinction for the policemen who lost their helmets in the mêlée.

“I know the Minister felt it badly,” said Bolsover.

“Politicians tend to take things personally.” Sloan was not unsympathetic. “They never know what's going to backfire, of course.”

Bolsover gave a thin smile. “I must say I'd rather be a civil engineer myself. You know where you are with materials and machinery. They always behave in the same way.”

“Yes, sir, that's very true.” Sloan pulled out Inspector Porritt's report. “Men aren't so consistent, are they?”

“Give me steel and concrete,” Bolsover said fervently, “and I'll make something of it for you.”

There was something less tangible that Sloan didn't quite know what to make of. “You say Mr. Durmast left the country as soon as the tunnel had been officially opened?”

The civil engineer nodded. “He'd been out in Dlasa last year seeing to the preliminaries of Mgongwala. Working on site selection and so forth. There had to be some feasibility studies on soil suitability and transport and water supplies and so forth before the actual work began.”

Sloan wondered if the Pyramids had begun that way.

Or Stonehenge.

“But,” went on Bolsover, “in January as soon as the official opening of the tunnel was over Bill went out to Dlasa again to get the job started properly.”

“Before …”

“Before Kenneth Carline died.” Bolsover frowned. “And he's not due back for quite a while. We get reports in the office, of course, and all I can say is that just now the project is at a very delicate and important stage in its development.”

“And his daughter would know this?”

“Very much so.” He was emphatic about this. “Bill was always a man who took his work home with him.”

Sloan nodded. Some policemen did and some didn't. Sometimes the human burden needed unloading onto wifely ears. Sometimes, though, it concerned matters better left unshared …

“Literally, too,” expanded Bolsover. “I mean he did a lot of design work in the Old Rectory as well. He said he could work better there than in the office.”

Detective Inspector Sloan tapped the report on his knee and came back to the subject that they'd been skirting around. “There are just one or two things I'd like to get quite straight about the day Kenneth Carline died.”

“Of course.” Bolsover turned and faced Sloan, his back to the conservatory doors. Beyond him the foliage of a giant Begonia Rex positively burgeoned. “I've been over it again and again in my mind, naturally.”

“Naturally,” said Detective Constable Crosby for no reason at all.

“Carline came to see me in my office,” said Bolsover.

“When exactly?” asked Sloan, conscious of an obscure need to resume the initiative.

“About eleven o'clock in the morning.”

“What did he come to see you about?”

“The breakdown of some figures that a firm of quantity surveyors were waiting for.” Bolsover waved a hand. “We're doing a job over at the airport at the moment.”

“The runway extension?” Sloan knew that there was work going on at Malperton—Calleshire's tiny neighbourhood airport.

“None other.” He grimaced. “It's not exactly a gripping roast compared with a tunnel and a new town but it's good bread-and-butter work all the same. We concentrated on the figures for about an hour and then I told Carline that I had another job for him.”