“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.
As a rule therefore Horace Boiler only had Saturdays and Sundays in which to pursue the important business of getting rich himself. This accounted for his contentment this day which was neither a Saturday nor a Sunday. Extra money for one trip on a weekday and at the expense of Her Majesty’s Government to boot was a good thing; extra money twice was a cause for rejoicing. Not that anyone would have guessed this from Horace Boiler’s facial expression. His countenance bore its usual surly look and his mind was totally bent on the business of deriving as much financial benefit as he could from this particular expedition—as it was on every other excursion which he undertook.
He gave his starboard oar an expert twist to get the boat properly out into the water and then set about the important business of settling the oars comfortably in the rowlocks. Some weekend sailors, rich and poor, conceded Boiler to himself, also threw their weight about because they knew what they were doing in a boat—but they were few and far between.
He didn’t know for certain yet if his two passengers were sailors or not, although he already had his doubts about the younger man. Both men had distributed themselves carefully about the boat in a seaman-like manner and had actually managed not to rock the boat while clambering into it. They had even accomplished this without getting their feet wet, which was something of an achievement, and was connected, although his passengers did not know this, with the fact that Horace was sure of getting a handsome fee for the outing. Doubtful payers and those who were so misguided as to attempt to undertip the boatman always got their feet wet.
The question of a fee for the journey they were about to undertake was very much on Detective Inspector Sloan’s mind too. The payment—whatever it amounted to—would eventually have to come out of the Berebury Division imprest account. This was guarded by Superintendent Leeyes with a devotion to duty and tenacity of purpose that would have done credit to a Cerberus.
“Take you to where I found the poor man?” Horace nodded his comprehension. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Detective Inspector Sloan, detaching his mind with an effort from an unhappy vision of Superintendent Leeyes standing like a stag at bay over the petty cash at Berebury Police Station. “Can you do that for us?”
“Certainly, gentlemen,” said Horace readily, even though he already knew that they were policemen not gentlemen; Horace’s usage of modes of address was a nicely calculated affair and closely linked with the expectation of future reward. “No trouble at all.”
Sloan settled himself at the bow of the boat, reminding himself that any hassle to come over payment for their trip should take second place to tangling with a murderer. He only hoped Superintendent Leeyes would feel the same.
For the fourth time that day the boatman began to row out into the estuary of the River Calle. Detective Inspector Sloan looked about him with interest. Seeing a map of the estuary with a cross marking the spot where the body had been found was one thing, but it was quite a different matter seeing the spot for oneself. He’d have to trust the boatman that it was the same spot though—he’d tried to rustle up Constable Ridgeford to get him to come with them, but according to Mrs. Ridgeford he’d had to go off on his bicycle to see to something. And so they had had to put to sea without him. Just, thought Sloan to himself, a distant memory stirring, the Owl and the Pussy- cat… except that Boiler’s old boat wasn’t a beautiful pea green…
Horace Boiler had bent to the oars with practised ease and was rowing in a silence designed to save his breath. Then…
“You’re going out to sea,” observed Sloan sharply. “I thought you’d found him ferther up river.”
“Got to get round Billy’s Finger, haven’t I?” responded Boiler resentfully.
“I see…” began Sloan.
“And pick up the tide.” Nobody could be surlier than Boiler when he wanted to be.
“Of course.”
“I’m an old man now,” said Boiler, hunching his shoulders and allowing a whine to creep into his voice. “I can’t go up river like I used to do.”
“Naturally,” said Sloan, crisply, nevertheless taking a good look at his watch. “Let me see now—what time was it exactly when we left?”
“I go by St. Peter’s clock myself,” snapped Boiler. “Always keeps good time, does St. Peter’s.”
“Splendid,” said Sloan warmly. “That’ll make everything easier…” He settled back onto his hard seat. A warning shot fired across the bows never came amiss…
Presently the rowing boat did turn up river. Rowing against the eddies was not such hard work for Horace Boiler as it would have been for most other men because he came of river people and knew every stretch of quiet water that there was. This did not stop him giving an artful pant as he eventually shipped his oars and caught a patch of slack water.
“ ’Bout here it was, gentlemen,” he said, histrionically drooping himself over the oars as if at the end of a fast trip from Putney to Mortlake against another crew.
Detective Inspector Sloan was concentrating on the water. “How far does the tide come up the estuary?”
