Last Respects Part 24

"Mundill wouldn't have the coffin screwed down." The exhumation of Celia Mundill had begun that morning. A loose coffin lid had been the first thing that they had found.

"Ted Boiler didn't give it much thought but he did happen to mention it to his cousin."

"Horace Boiler."

"Precisely, sir. It probably didn't mean anything to Horace either until he saw the girl beside her aunt's grave on Tuesday afternoon and realised how near the water it was."

"And so he put two and two together?"

"He probably just thought he would tackle Mundill about it."

Leeyes nodded. "By then, of course, Mundill will have got an appet.i.te for murder."

"It grows," said Sloan. That was one area where policemen and psychologists were at one. An appet.i.te for murder grew on itself. "Besides, sir, he couldn't risk Boiler raising any doubts about Celia Mundill just when he was concentrating on keeping suspicion away from the body in the water."

"Talking of the body in the water, Sloan, what I can't understand is why Mundill broke the boathouse doors open. That just drew attention to the place."

"If," said Sloan, "anyone had found that body in there at any time without the outer boathouse doors having been prised open, they would know that Mundill had put the body there."

"And why not leave it there, Sloan, safely in the boat-house? Tell me that."

"Because, sir," said Sloan, "the girl's father was expected back from South America and he liked his little bit of fis.h.i.+ng. The boathouse would be the first place he'd make for. We were told that right at the beginning."

They'd been told almost everything; it was just a matter of sorting it all out. That was all...

"There's another thing, Sloan."

"Sir?"

"Those copper things that were found in their pockets..."

Brenda Ridgeford said, "I still don't understand about those copper things in their pockets, Brian."

"They were meant to put us off the scent," said her husband in a lordly fas.h.i.+on, "but they didn't."

"You mean The Clarembald wasn't anything to do with the murders?"

"Nothing," said Brian Ridgeford.

"But..."

"Mundill"-yesterday Brian Ridgeford wouldn't have dreamed of calling the architect anything except Mr. Mundill, but today the man was reduced to the ranks of common criminals-"simply took them from Mr. Manton's farm when he was over there."

Alec Manton was still ent.i.tled to be called "Mr."

Alec Manton and his amateur underwater research group had been investigating the trailings caught up by a trawler. That was how, explained Ridgeford, they had come on The Clarembald. They had proceeded to excavate the wreck.

In good faith and secrecy.

It had been the secrecy which had baffled Basil Jensen. When news of the great discovery was brought to the notice of an excited archeological world the name of the curator would be nowhere to be found.

"The biggest ever find on his patch," said Ridgeford, "and he wasn't being allowed a hand in it." He searched about in his mind for a parallel. "It would be like not letting me in on an armed raid in Edsway, Brenda."

"I don't want you in on any armed raids anywhere," said his wife. "Professional death comes in two ways, you know."

"They'd got a load of those copper ingots ash.o.r.e," said the constable, "and we reckon Mundill spotted them one day at the farm. They didn't need keeping underwater, you see."

The sheep-dipping tank at Lea Farm had yielded a bizarre collection of wooden objects-a sea chest, a fid bound with lead, a table and something called a dead-eye.

"Used for extending the shrouds," Alec Manton had explained helpfully.

Brian Ridgeford had been no wiser.

"Poor Mr. Jensen," said Brenda Ridgeford. "Left out in the cold like that."

"Yes," said Brian Ridgeford uneasily. Far from leaving the museum curator out in the cold, he'd very nearly taken him into custody yesterday. "He's waving a protection order at Mr. Manton now."

"A piece of paper isn't going to save anything," said Mrs. Ridgeford.

Constable Ridgeford wasn't so sure about that. "With the strong arm of the law behind it..."

"There's ways round the strong arm of the law, Brian Ridgeford," she said provocatively, "I can tell you."

"That's as may be, my girl," he said with dignity, "but only when the law allows it."

"I suppose, Inspector," said Elizabeth Busby shakily, "that I have to thank you for saving my life."

"No, miss, you don't." Sloan was sitting on the window-seat in the hall of Collerton House again.

"He was going to kill me," she said, "because I knew about the picture."

"Murder's a dangerous game," said Sloan sententiously, "especially once the novelty's worn off."

"Poor, poor Aunt Celia."

Detective Inspector Sloan bowed his head in a tribute to a woman he had never seen alive. Dr. Dabbe was doing another post-mortem now-to make a.s.surance doubly sure. Inquest-sure, too.

"The old, old story," she said bitterly.

"The eternal triangle," agreed Sloan. He'd read something once that put it very well... "The actors are, it seems, the usual three. Husband, wife and lover." It practically amounted to a prescription for murder. Aloud he went on, "And then murder once done..."

"Peter... poor Peter, too."

"He'd stumbled on your aunt's murder," said Sloan.

"He'd always been fascinated by crime," she said. "He read a lot about it."

"It was very clever of him."

"So he had to go, too," she said tightly.

"He had to be silenced," said Sloan. He coughed. "I take it that he'd have gone easily enough to have a look at the multi-storey car park if invited?"

"I did, didn't I?" She shuddered. "Frank sounded so reasonable and I really did think he had something there to show me. And there's no one up there on early closing day."

Sloan nodded. He could imagine Frank Mundill being plausible. "It was a perfect place," he said. "A double helix round a central light well, with a parapet at the top and a door at the bottom."

"A door with a key," she said.

"Mundill had a key, all right," he said. "And to the car park exit gate. He had done the original specification, remember. He had no problems in that direction. He had access to everything he wanted. He could come back at night for the body."

"It all fits, doesn't it?" she said.

All the pieces of the jigsaw were there now. Sloan would have to lock them together for his report but they were there. Elizabeth Busby didn't have to know about all of them. There was no point, for instance, in her being told about the blood that they'd found inside the light well of the car park, blood that wasn't Frank Mundill's. He did need to tell her about a photograph of Peter Hinton that had been superimposed on a photograph of a dead young man in Dr. Dabbe's mortuary.

And about a sure and certain dentist.

Sloan said nothing into the silence that followed his telling her.

Presently she said, "And Horace Boiler?"

"He put two and two together about your aunt." Perhaps it hadn't been such a perfect murder after all. "He couldn't have known what really happened. Just that there was something wrong."

"And he paid the price."

"He knew what he was doing, miss." For Horace Boiler anyway Sloan didn't feel too much pity...

Detective Constable Crosby was waiting in the car for him outside Collerton House. Sloan climbed into the pa.s.senger seat and shut the door with quite unnecessary vigour.

"A nasty case," he said.

Crosby started up the engine.

"Three murders,' said Sloan. The only saving grace had been that a wicked man's cupidity had not succeeded...

"Mr. Basil Jensen," said Detective Constable Crosby, "wants us to meet him over at Marby."

Detection demanded many things of a man. A working knowledge of eighteenth-century s.h.i.+ps was obviously going to be called for.

"All right," growled Sloan. "Get going then."

Crosby pulled the car away from the front door of Collerton House and settled himself at the wheel. He put a respectable distance behind him before he spoke.

"Sir..."

"What is it now?"

"What sits at the bottom of the sea and s.h.i.+vers?"

In the grip of powerful emotion and with an awful fascination Sloan heard himself saying, "I don't know what sits at the bottom of the sea and s.h.i.+vers."

"A nervous wreck."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publis.h.i.+ng The Religious Body-a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre's most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who?, A Most Contagious Game, Parting Breath and Last Respects have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury.

The Very Best of Catherine Aird.

Henrietta Who?

His Burial Too A Late Phoenix.

A Most Contagious Game Pa.s.sing Strange.

The Religious Body.

Slight Mourning Some Die Eloquent Stately Home Murder.

Parting Breath.