“And?” said Sloan. Cachexia was a condition, not a disease.
“Due to carcinoma of the stomach,” continued Crosby. “It’s signed by Gregory Tebot—he’s the general practitioner out there.”
Crosby made Collerton sound like Outer Mongolia.
Sloan assimilated his information about Peter Hinton too.
Soon he was telling the reporter from the county newspaper that he couldn’t have a photograph of the dead man.
“We might get an artist’s impression done for you,” he said, “but definitely not a photograph.”
“Like that, is it?” said the reporter, jerking his head.
“It is,” said Sloan heavily. “But you can say that we would like to have any information about anyone answering to this description who’s been missing for a bit.”
“Will do,” said the reporter laconically. He shut his notebook with a snap. If there was no name, there was no story. It was sad but true that human interest needed a name.
“So,” he said, “there’s just the widower…”
“Frank Mundill.”
“And a niece…”
“Elizabeth Busby.”
“And there was a boy-friend,” said Sloan.
“Peter Hinton.”
“It wouldn’t do any harm,” said Sloan slowly, “to check on Celia Mundill’s will.”
Crosby made an obedient note.
“Though,” said Sloan irascibly, “what it’s all got to do with the body in the water I really don’t know.”
“No, sir.”
“And Crosby…”
“Sir?”
“While you’re about it, we’d better just check that Collerton House wasn’t where our body fell from. I don’t think it’s quite high enough. And there are shrubs under nearly all the windows. They wouldn’t have healed.”
In time Nature healed all scars but even Nature took her time…
Frank Mundill was ready and waiting at Collerton House when Sloan and Crosby arrived at the appointed time.
“We’ve just heard about the body that they’ve found in the estuary,” he said. “Someone in one of the shops told my niece this morning.”
Sloan was deliberately vague. “We don’t know yet, sir, if there is any connection with it and the boat that was taken.”
The architect shuddered. “I hope not. I wouldn’t like to think of anyone coming to any harm even if they had broken in.”
“The inquest will be on Friday,” Sloan informed him. “We may know a little more by then.”
Once over at Marby the architect confirmed that the boat beached beside the lifeboat had come from Collerton House.
“No doubt about that at all, Inspector,” he said readily. “It’s been in that boathouse ever since I was married and for many a long year before that, I daresay.”
Crosby made a note in the background.
Mundill gave the bow a light tap. “She’s good enough for a few more fishing trips, I should say. She’s hardly damaged at all, is she?”
It was true. The boat had dried out quite a lot overnight and in spite of its obvious age looked quite serviceable now.
“I suppose,” said Mundill, “that I can see about getting it back to Collerton now?”
“Not just yet, sir,” said Sloan. “Our scientific laboratory people will have to go over it first.”
Mundill nodded intelligently. “I understand. For clues.”
“For evidence,” said Sloan sternly.
There was a world of difference between the two.
“Then I can collect it after that?”
“Oh,” said Sloan easily, “I daresay they’ll drop it back to the boathouse for you.”
“When?”
“Is it important?”
“No, no, Inspector, not at all. I just wondered, that’s all. It doesn’t matter a bit…”
Elizabeth Busby had hardly slept at all that night. And when she had at last drifted off, sleep had not been a refreshment from the cares of the day but an uneasy business of inconclusive dreams.
Waking had been no better.
She came back to consciousness with her mind a blank and then suddenly full recollection came flooding back and with it the now familiar sensation that she was physically shouldering a heavy burden. The strange thing was that this burden seemed not only to extend to an area just above her eyes but to weigh her down from all angles. At least, she thought, Christian in
Propped beside her bedside lamp was Peter Hinton’s slide rule. She had considered this again in the cold light of day. And got no further forward than she had done the evening before. It really was very odd that Peter should have taken a water-colour painting of a beach and left his slide rule behind him.
As she had got dressed she viewed the prospect of another day ahead of her without relish. It wasn’t that she wanted to spend her whole life wandering in the delicate plain called Ease, just that she could have done without its being spent so much in the Slough of Despond. She had eventually got the day started to a kind of mantra of her own. It was based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem
The whole day stretched before her like a clean page.
True, there were the finishing touches to be put to the spring-cleaning of the spare room and today was the day that the dustbin had to be put out, but otherwise there were no landmarks in the day to distinguish it from any others in an endless succession of unmemorable days.
By the time Frank Mundill had gone off in the police car to Marby she found herself with the spare room finished and the dustbin duly put out. That still left a great deal of the day to be got through and she turned over in her mind a list of other things that might be done.
For some reason—perhaps subconsciously to do with the finding of the slide rule—she was drawn back to the hall. Perhaps she would tackle that next in her vigorous spring-cleaning campaign. She stood in the middle of the space assessing what needed to be done. Quite a lot, she decided. This year’s regular cleaning had completely gone by the board because of Celia Mundill’s illness.
She stiffened.
She had resolved not to think about that…
Mop, duster, vacuum cleaner, step-ladder, polish… a list of her requirements ran through her mind before she went back to the kitchen to assemble them. All she needed was there save the big step-ladder. That lived in the shed and she would need it to reach the picture rail that ran round high up on the hall wall.
She dumped all her equipment in the middle of the floor and went off to the shed to get the step-ladder. It was leaning up against the wall in its accustomed place, standing amongst a conglomeration of gardening tools and old apple boxes. She moved the lawn-mower first and then a wheelbarrow. That left her nearer the steps but not quite near enough. She bent down to shift a pile of empty apple boxes…
It was curious that when she first caught sight of the shoe it didn’t occur to her that there would be a foot in it. It was an old shoe and a dirty one at that and her first thought was that it was one of a pair kept there for gardening. That had been before she saw a piece of dishevelled sock protruding from it.
With dreadful deliberation she bent down and moved another layer of apple boxes.
