Last Respects

He did not add that that someone was a schoolmistress. Some of Superintendent Leeyes’s responses were altogether too predictable.

Police Constable Brian Ridgeford was addressing himself to a mug of steaming hot tea. One thing Mrs. Ridgeford—good police wife that she was trying too hard to be—had learnt well. That was to put the kettle on the hob and leave it on.

He had dutifully made his report to his Headquarters at Berebury about the beached dinghy and was sitting back considering what to do next. He hadn’t forgotten that before he had been diverted over to Marby juxta Mare he had been going to walk up the river bank from the Edsway to Collerton, but before that there was his report to be written. One of the tenets at the Police Training School was that—as far as records went—the telephone was no substitute for pen and paper.

“Anything come in while I was out, love?” he asked, conscientiously pulling his report book towards him.

“Hopton’s rang,” said Mrs. Ridgeford, sitting back and joining him in some tea. She was still at that early stage in their police married life when handing over the message was synonymous with handing over the responsibility. Her sleepless nights would come later.

Brian Ridgeford said, “What’s up with Hopton’s?” As a rule his wife gave him any messages that had come in almost before he’d got his foot over the threshold, so this one couldn’t be too important.

“They want you down there.”

Ridgeford frowned. Hopton’s was always wanting him down there at the store. Every time a bunch of schoolchildren had been in Mrs. Hopton was convinced that they had stolen things. As far as the weekend sailors and fishermen were concerned—Hopton’s prices being distinctly on the high side—all the robbery was on the other side of the counter. And in daylight, too.

“Profits down or something?” he said.

“Boys,” said Mrs. Ridgeford succinctly.

So it was to the ship’s chandler by the shore in Edsway that Ridgeford made his way—not too quickly—after he’d had his tea and filled in his report about the dinghy.

Mrs. Hopton was vocal. “There were two of them,” she said. “And I had to deal with them myself on account of Hopton being the way he is.”

“What did they do?” enquired Ridgeford patiently. Mr. Hopton spent his life lurking in the little parlour at the back of the shop. He was a little man and his wife was a large woman. No doubt he was the way he was by virtue of being locked in holy wedlock to Mrs. Hopton. It wasn’t a fate that he, Brian Ridgeford, would have chosen either.

“Do?” she said, surprised. “They didn’t do anything.”

“Well, then…” Somebody had once tried to explain to his class of new constables the difference between crimes of commission and the sins of omission—the latter mostly, it seemed, to do with their notebooks—but Ridgeford hadn’t listened too hard.

“Unless,” carried on Mrs. Hopton, “you count trying to make me buy something that wasn’t theirs to sell.”

“Ah.” Ridgeford thought he was beginning to understand. The far end of the ship’s-chandler store was devoted to the sale of second-hand equipment.

“At my time of life!” said Mrs. Hopton with every appearance of remorse. “Well, they say there’s no fool like an old fool. I should have known better, shouldn’t I?”

“Well…” temporised the policeman. The theory that all were responsible for their own actions was highly important in law. It was apt to be overlooked in real life.

“Smelt a rat, I should have done, shouldn’t I,” she sniffed, “as soon as they said where they’d found it.”

“But you didn’t?” suggested Ridgeford for appearance’ sake.

“Not then,” said Mrs. Hopton.

“When?” prompted Ridgeford.

“Afterwards,” said Mrs. Hopton, challenging him to make something of that. “When they’d gone.”

“What made you wonder?”

“When I began to think about it.” She shifted her shoulders uneasily. “I wasn’t happy.”

“About what?”

“Them saying they found it up on the Cat’s Back.”

“The headland?”

She nodded. “Whoever heard of anyone finding a ship’s bell up there?”

“It is a funny place to find anything from a ship,” agreed Ridgeford, professionally interested. Common things took place most commonly—he knew that—but it was the uncommon that attracted most police attention. “A bell, did you say?” He imagined that—like policemen’s helmets—ships’ bells had a symbolic importance all of their own.

“It’s a bell all right,” said Mrs. Hopton heavily.

Police Constable Ridgeford shifted his gaze in the direction of the jumble of second-hand nautical gear at the end of the store. “Had I better have a look at it, then?”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I’ve got it safe in the parlour. My husband’s keeping an eye on it for me.”

Ridgeford was a puzzled man as she turned away.

When she came back it was with a very shabby and encrusted piece of metal and he was more puzzled still.

“It’s a bell all right,” he agreed after a moment or two, “but you couldn’t use it, could you? Not with that crack in its side.” There was evidence of some scraping too, from a penknife, he guessed.

“That’s what I told the boys,” said Mrs. Hopton. “No use to anyone, I said, it being the way it was.”

“So,” said Ridgeford a trifle impatiently, “what did you want me down here for then?”

“Ships’ bells,” she said impressively, “have the names of ships on them.”

“What about it?”

“They have them cut into the metal so that they last.”

“Well?” If Brian Ridgeford was any judge this one had had to last a long time.

“I was curious, you see,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “So I got out a piece of paper and a soft pencil…”

“You traced the name,” finished the policeman for her.

“Not all of it. Some of it’s too far gone.”

“You traced some of it,” said Ridgeford with heavy patience.

“That’s right.” Mrs. Hopton was above irony. “I traced some of it and came up with some letters.”

“Did you then?” said Ridgeford expressionlessly.

She pulled out a drawer behind the counter. “Do you want to see them?”

Police Constable Brian Ridgeford bent over a piece of grubby paper and read aloud the letters that were discernible. “E…M…B…A…L…D. EMBALD? Is that what it says?”

She gave him a nod of barely suppressed excitement. “I know what the other letters are. Don’t you?”

“No,” he said. “Tell me.” “C…L… A… R,” she said. She was speaking in lowered tones now. “To make Clarembald.”

“All right then,” he conceded. “If you say so—The Clarembald. What about it?”

She tossed her head. “I’d forgotten you were new here, Mr. Ridgeford.”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t know, I suppose?”

“No.”

“Everyone else knows.”

“Everyone else knows what?”

She delivered her punch line almost in a whisper. “The Clarembald was the name of the ship that went down off Marby all those years ago. Didn’t you know that?”

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