“Yes,” said Sloan with perfect truth. Nobody had been spared that story. Recitals of the superintendent’s wartime experiences were well known and were to be avoided at all costs. He didn’t even “stoppeth one in three.” Every officer on station got them.
“Bit of a splash,” said Leeyes with the celebrated British understatement favoured by men of action in a tight corner.
Detective Inspector Sloan could see where this was leading, too. In another two minutes Superintendent Leeyes would have constituted himself Berebury’s currently ranking expert on underwater archeology. And then where would they be?
“I’ll see Ridgeford presently, sir,” Sloan said firmly, “and find out about the ship’s bell too.”
“And this dinghy that he keeps on about over at Marby,” said Leeyes. “You won’t forget that, will you, Sloan?”
“No, sir, I’ll see about that as soon as I can…” But before that, come wind, come weather, he had every intention of going up the River Calle.
A little later a police car with Detective Constable Crosby at the wheel and Detective Inspector Sloan in the front passenger seat swept out of the police station at Berebury for the second time that afternoon. The driver negotiated the traffic islands with impatience and then steered past the town’s multi-storey car park. Eventually he swung the car onto the open road and out into the Calleshire countryside. In a wallet on the back seat of the police car was a hastily drawn-up list of everyone who lived beside the River Calle on both sides of the river east of Billing Bridge.
“There’s a note of the riparian owners, too, sir,” said Detective Constable Crosby, “whoever they are when they’re at home.”
“The fishing rights belong to them,” said Sloan.
“Oh, the fishing…” said Crosby, putting his foot down.
“There’s no hurry,” said Sloan as the car picked up speed.
“Got a catch a murderer,” said Crosby, “haven’t we?”
That, at least, decided Sloan to himself, had the merit of reducing the case to its simplest. And he had to admit that that was not unwelcome after a session with Superintendent Leeyes…
“Chance would be a fine thing,” he said aloud.
“Someone did for him,” said the constable. “He didn’t get the way he was and where he was on his own.”
“True.” As inductive logic went it wasn’t a very grand conclusion but it would do. “Can you go any further?”
“We’ve got to get back to the water,” said Crosby, crouching forward at the wheel like Toad of Toad Hall.
Sloan nodded. In all fairness he had to admit that what Crosby had said was true. All the action so far had been in water… He said, “What do we know so far?”
“Very little, sir.”
It was not the right answer from pupil to mentor.
In the Army mounting a campaign was based on the useful trio of “information, intention, method.” He wasn’t going to get very far discussing these with Crosby if the detective constable baulked at “information.”
“Could you,” said Sloan with a hortatory cough, “try to think of why a body killed in a fall should be found in water?”
“Because it couldn’t be left where it fell,” responded Crosby promptly.
“Good. Go on.”
“I don’t know why it couldn’t be left where it fell, sir,” said the constable. “But if it could have been left, then it would have been, wouldn’t it?”
“True.”
“Heavy things, bodies…”
Sloan nodded. What Crosby had just said was simple and irrefutable but it wasn’t enough. “Keep going,” he said.
Crosby’s eyebrows came together in a formidable frown. “Where it fell could have been too public,” he said.
“That’s a point,” said Sloan.
“And it might have been found too soon,” suggested Crosby after further thought.
“Very true,” said Sloan. “Anything else?”
“Where it was found might give us a lead on who killed him.”
“Good, good,” said Sloan encouragingly. “Now, why put the body in the water?”
But Crosby’s fickle interest had evaporated.
“Why,” repeated Sloan peremptorily, “put the body in the water?”
Crosby took a hand off the steering wheel and waved it. “Saves digging a hole,” he said simply.
“Anything else?” said Sloan.
Crosby thought in silence.
“Are there,” said Sloan tenaciously, “any other good reasons why a body should be put in the water?” It looked as if they were going to have to make bricks without straw in this case anyway…
Crosby continued to frown prodigiously but to no effect.
“It is virtually impossible to hide a grave,” pronounced Detective Inspector Sloan academically.
“Yes, sir.”
“And,” continued Sloan, “the disposal of a murdered body therefore presents a great problem to the murderer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It often,” declared Sloan in a textbook manner, “presents a greater problem than committing the actual murder.”
“Murder’s easy,” said Crosby largely.
“Not of an able-bodied young man,” Sloan reminded him. “Of women and children and the old, perhaps.” He considered the tempting vista opened up by this thought—but unless you were psychotic you murdered for a reason, and reason and easy victim did not always go hand in hand.
The constable changed gear while Sloan considered the various ways in which someone could be persuaded into falling from a height. “He must have been taken by surprise on the edge of somewhere,” he said aloud.
“Pushed, anyway,” said Crosby.
“Yes,” agreed Sloan. “If he’d fallen accidentally, he could have been left where he fell.”
“Shoved when he wasn’t looking, then,” concluded Crosby.
“We have to look for a height with a concealed bottom…”
“Pussy’s down the well,” chanted Crosby.
“And not too conspicuous a top,” said Sloan.
“Somewhere where the victim would have a reason for going with the murderer,” suggested Crosby.
“He’d have had to have been pretty near the brink of somewhere even then,” said Sloan. “That’s what parapets are for.”
“With someone he trusted then,” said Crosby.
“With someone he didn’t think there was any need to be afraid of,” said Sloan with greater precision. He reached over to the back seat for the list of riparian owners. He wasn’t expecting any trouble from them. Fishing in muddy waters was a police prerogative and he didn’t care who knew it.
Horace Boiler was as near to being contented with his day as he ever allowed himself to be. As he pushed his rowing boat off from the shore at Edsway—Horace had never paid a mooring fee in his life—he reflected on how an ill wind always blew somebody good.
He would have known that his two passengers were policemen even if the older one hadn’t said so straightaway. There was a certain crispness about him that augured the backing of an institution. Horace Boiler was an old hand at discerning those whose brief authority was bolstered by the hidden reserves of an organisation like the police force and the Army—the vicar came in a class of his own—and those who threw their weight about because they were merely rich.
Horace had quite a lot to do with the merely rich on Saturdays and Sundays. The rich who liked sailing were very important in the economy of Edsway. From Monday to Friday ihey disappeared from Horace’s ken—presumably to get richer still in a mysterious place known simply as the city. Horace himself had never been there and when someone had once equated the city with London—which he had been to—Horace’s mind failed to make the connection.
Nevertheless Sunday evenings always saw a great exodus of weekenders, albeit tired and happy and sometimes quite weather-beaten, from Edsway back to the city. The following Friday evening—in summertime anyway—saw them return, pale and exhausted, from their labours in the town and raring for a weekend’s pleasure—and sunburn in the country. Horace, whose own skin bore a close resemblance to old and rather dirty creased leather, could never decide whether sunburn was a pleasure or a pain for the weekenders.