Stiff News (8 page)

‘You know,' said Crosby, beginning to chant, ‘the one in the song that stood ninety years on the wall, tick tock, and stopped, never to go again, the day the old man died.'

‘The Judge hasn't died,' said Dr Browne, regarding the constable in a distinctly clinical way. ‘Although I agree some people do die when they've hit a new decade. Dangerous things, birthdays. Make you think. Especially when you're suffering from too many of 'em.'

‘So, doctor…' resumed Sloan tenaciously.

‘The birthday,' carried on the doctor, ‘that really worries a lot of men…'

‘Forty?' suggested Crosby.

‘No,' said Dr Browne, recognizing a Freudian slip when he heard one. ‘It's the one at the age at which their own fathers died.' The general practitioner pulled open the late Mrs Powell's medical record envelope. ‘I get a lot of nervous men in then.'

Detective Inspector Sloan leaned forward, undeterred. ‘Mrs Powell…'

‘It so happens, Inspector,' said the doctor, neatly playing a trump card, ‘that I had asked one of the hospital consultants to take a look at her a week or so before she died.'

‘You did?' Sloan tried not to sound too interested. He was aiming for what was known as an open-ended interview. In theory, the semi-structured format allowed respondents to talk at length about any matter that concerned them yet still left the interviewer scope to explore difficult issues. In reality it seemed the doctor was making all the running. ‘Do you always do that?'

‘No.'

‘So why would that have been in this case then?'

‘Can't be too careful these days, Inspector.' Browne shrugged. ‘It makes for defensive medicine, of course, and that's bad, but it's better than afterwards having people think you could have done more for their nearest and dearest.'

‘Would it have been true to say that you wished you had done so in the case of the late Mrs Maude Chalmers-Hyde?'

‘It would have been true to say that in the event, it would have saved there having to be a postmortem in her case,' conceded Angus Browne, in no whit put out. ‘And spared the Matron out there a little concern which ultimately turned out not to have been justified. That's all.'

‘Better safe than sorry,' put in Crosby.

‘In this case, yes.'

‘This other doctor who saw Mrs Powell…' persisted Sloan.

‘Dr Edwin Beaumont, one of the physicians from the Berebury Hospital Trust,' said Browne, shaking a letter out of the patient's medical record envelope and onto his desk. ‘He examined her at my request and confirmed that there was nothing more to be done for Mrs Powell.'

‘In writing?'

‘Aye, man. In writing.' The bushy eyebrows became even more prominent. ‘Ye'll be interested to know that in Beaumont's opinion – and I may say he's a man greatly respected within the profession – as well as in my own, the patient was well beyond aid. That good enough for you?'

Chapter Eight

And plant fresh laurels where they kill

‘Very difficult to say at this stage, sir.' Detective Inspector Sloan had next been driven by Detective Constable Crosby to the home of Lionel and Julia Powell on the other side of the county. He was addressing Lionel Powell.

The two policemen might have left Dr Browne's consulting rooms behind at Larking but Sloan anyway had not quite abandoned the medical mode of doling out only such information as was absolutely necessary for his own purposes.

‘Later, perhaps, sir.' Indeed, it had occurred to Sloan as he sat in the comfort of the Powells' sitting room that the amount of strictly accurate knowledge given out by the police to anyone involved in an investigation – including the press – was every bit as carefully controlled as that released by a skilled medical practitioner with bad news to impart to a patient.

Knowledge was power all right.

‘You will understand, Inspector,' said Lionel Powell, ‘that we need to know where we go from here.'

‘You can't just leave things hanging in the air like this, Inspector,' supplemented Julia Powell. ‘It's not right.'

‘I can assure you we're doing our best, madam.' Sloan supposed the doctor, too, could always utter this comfortable platitude. Both professionals, though, could choose to release news – good and bad – in their own time and that was what mattered. In the handling of a difficult situation timing could be of the essence. Having the timing in one's own hands was power, too.

Lionel Powell underlined his wife's remark. ‘Obviously certain matters must be attended to as soon as possible.'

‘That is one of the things we are looking into,' murmured Sloan. Dr Browne, he imagined, might say something very similar about the significant result of an X-ray which the doctor already knew and the patient didn't. He, on much the same basis, did know what the immediate outcome of the postmortem on Mrs Powell, senior, had been, and it was a good deal too inconclusive for his liking.

‘My mother-in-law's funeral can't be postponed indefinitely,' said Julia Powell more specifically. ‘It isn't seemly.'

‘Indeed not, madam,' lied Sloan.

He forbore to say that it could be postponed just as long as the law wished. One thing was certain, anyway, and that was that the deceased wasn't going to be buried until he, Sloan, knew whether or not Gertrude Powell had been murdered, and if so, preferably only after he had found out by whom.

And why.

‘And since I'm also one of her executors,' advanced Lionel, ‘there are now a number of other circumstances which must be taken into consideration before we can begin the winding up of her financial affairs.' He gave silent thanks that the executors weren't expected to wind up affairs of the heart.

‘I do appreciate that, sir.' And Sloan did. He knew that where there was a will, as well as there being a way, there was almost always a relative or two or three. And nothing – but nothing – split heirs like a will. ‘But you must remember that we are talking about the possibility of murder … your late mother, for one, thought so.'

‘Quite, quite,' mumbled Powell, caving in suspiciously soon. ‘I didn't mean to…'

‘So there are one or two facts we should first like to establish about your mother's past,' continued Sloan smoothly.

Lionel Powell stiffened. ‘My mother was always very reticent about her early days.'

‘Indeed, sir?' The policeman in Sloan was sorry to hear it; the man in him wasn't. Quite a few crimes of passion would have been avoided by a decent reticence on the part of all those concerned.

‘Never spoke of them at all,' said the civil servant repressively.

‘And you never asked?' put in Detective Constable Crosby. He'd been shown to a stiff chair with a spoonbill back and was getting bored.

‘Naturally,' Powell said awkwardly, ‘I used to try to get her to tell me about when she was young but she would never talk about later on.'

‘Later on?' Sloan seized on this.

‘The war,' said Lionel Powell. ‘Donald Tulloch – he was her first husband – was killed in action in North Africa. He survived the famous Tinchel at Wadi el Gebra but…'

‘Tinchel?'

‘That was what the Fearnshires called the battle there.' He frowned. ‘I believe it's something Scottish to do with a circle of hunters driving deer together by gradually closing in on them.'

Julia Powell gave a shudder. ‘How horrid!'

Lionel Powell said, ‘The Regiment added it to their battle honours afterwards. It was where the Fearnshires held out against overwhelming odds.'

‘Fought to the last man, did they?' asked Crosby, wriggling in his chair in an attempt to make himself more comfortable, and far, far removed in time, distance, experience and imagination from any battlefield.

Powell gave him an odd look. ‘Not quite. Donald Tulloch was among those who survived – but he was killed at Tobruk a month or so afterwards.' Powell hurried on, seized by a sudden idea that police resources might be helpful in the matter. ‘I always understood from my mother that she had then got married again but we don't know to whom. It was on the rebound, she said, and the marriage didn't last.'

‘Funny, that,' remarked Detective Constable Crosby.

‘It's a bit of a mystery,' conceded Lionel Powell, ‘our not knowing whom she married, that's all.'

The effect of this deliberately low-key exchange was completely undermined by Julia Powell, who said tartly, ‘You can say that again.'

*   *   *

‘You'd better come to my sitting room,' said Muriel Peden to Sloan and Crosby when they reached Almstone again. She grimaced. ‘It's about the only place in the whole Manor that you could call really private.'

‘No peace for the wicked…' began Crosby.

‘That will do very nicely, Matron, thank you,' said Sloan quickly. That would do from Crosby, too … wickedness was a matter for careful judgement. He should know by now that the duty of the police was only to establish what had happened and how; whether an action was wicked was something for Parliament – or the parson – to decide.

‘And then,' said Sloan, ‘perhaps I might see Mrs Forbes.' Someone here who just wouldn't die must be worth checking on.

‘Poor Mrs Forbes,' said the Matron. ‘Yes, I really think she'll be the next to go and one cannot be too sorry about that.'

They were soon all ensconced in a room at once cosy and quite stylish. The Matron favoured pale green Dralon upholstery and curtains, the effect considerably enlivened by Kaffe Fassett-coloured cushions. A half-worked tapestry of a design of dusky pink and red roses stood on a frame by her chair, loose ends of wool hanging down from the canvas.

Mrs Peden appeared relieved to be talking to the policemen. ‘I'm sorry. I realize now I should have said something straight away…'

Sloan said nothing.

She hurried on. ‘You see, before it didn't seem terribly important that someone had been in Mrs Powell's room, Inspector, but after what happened at the funeral I thought you ought to know as soon as possible.'

‘And how did you yourself know, madam?'

She stirred restlessly in her chair. ‘When I went in there at first after she'd died it just struck me that some of her things had been moved about a little. Not very far, you understand, but I'm sure they weren't exactly where they had been, especially a funny little Egyptian ornament she was always very fond of. It was there but it wasn't in its usual place.'

‘Go on.'

‘I didn't say anything at the time to anyone because I didn't know that anything was missing, you understand.' She searched his face anxiously as if to make sure that he did understand. ‘Not then, that is…'

‘When?' It would be the first thing that Superintendent Leeyes would want to know. That, and why old ladies couldn't die quietly without adding to the workload of F Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary.

‘When we first cleared the room. That was after Mrs Powell's son said he had been very much hoping that his late mother's letters would be there.'

‘And they weren't?' put in Crosby, who had settled himself very comfortably on the Matron's sofa, plumping up a generous cushion as he did so.

‘Not that we could see.' She hesitated. ‘Mr Powell said it was quite important. What made it more worrying was that Hazel Finch was sure they had been there before she died.'

‘Ah.' Sloan made a note. What made it more worrying for him was that Lionel Powell had made no mention of any missing letters to the police. The letter that the police did know about with its allegations of murder had already been dispatched to Forensic, and a copy and a specimen of Gertrude Powell's handwriting had gone post-haste to a specialist in that arcane subject.

The Matron added, ‘In an old chocolate box.'

Detective Inspector Christopher Dennis Sloan, much-married man, made another note. Some things never changed. He knew that, foolishly sentimental or not, his own wife, Margaret, kept his letters to her in the very first chocolate box he had given her. Right at the far back of a locked drawer. ‘Tied up in pink ribbon?' he asked.

‘No.' She smiled faintly. ‘But with a picture of roses on the lid. Hazel said the box had always been kept just inside the top drawer of her dressing table.'

‘I take it that Mrs Powell wouldn't have been able to get to them to destroy them herself?'

‘Oh no, Inspector. She was unconscious for several days before she died.'

‘And she hadn't asked anyone else to burn them unread after she'd gone?' Too deep for words was his own wife's illogical conviction that the only person in the whole world who must never read their love letters to each other was their own son.

‘Hazel says not her, anyway. And,' the Matron chose her words with obvious care, ‘I've always found her a very truthful girl.'

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. ‘The other staff?'

‘Hadn't been in there at all after Mrs Powell died,' said the Matron promptly. ‘I don't, of course, know about before.'

‘But afterwards?'

‘I locked the door of her room myself while we were waiting for the undertakers.'

‘The keys?'

‘Hanging in the office.'

Sloan sighed. ‘How accessible?'

‘Very, I'm afraid, Inspector. You must remember that this is meant to be a home from home, not a prisoner of war camp,' she gave a tolerant smile, ‘for all that the residents do have what they call an Escape Committee.'

‘Me, I don't blame them.' Crosby hitched himself up on the sofa cushions and looked round. ‘Well, they are here for the duration, aren't they?'

‘The Escape Committee is for arranging outings and excursions,' protested Mrs Peden feebly. ‘To the theatre and open gardens in the summer and so forth.'