Theodore could not help himself. The man was spouting illogical nonsense that made Theodore want to throw a chair across the room in frustration. He took a deep breath, and remembered he was in the house of his daughter.
He let it all out in a long exhale and stalked out of the kitchen without saying another word. He headed straight for the railway station and took the very next train into Plymouth. Within the hour, he was hammering on the door of the offices of his old school friend Rhodes.
Rhodes was now the chief commissioner of police in this area, and Rhodes could drop Inspector Wilbred into the sea if Theodore asked him to.
“NO.”
Theodore leaned forward and jabbed his finger onto the wide desk that separated them. “But the man’s a complete incompetent,” he said with passion. “Remember old Jackson, the Latin master? Remember how we’d drop brandy into his tea? Send slinky Fitzgerald sliding up under the desk to do it while Jackson was blundering about at the board, writing up those interminable declensions? He’d drink his tea and fall asleep and then make us all promise not to tell anyone, as if it were his fault. He was an utter incompetent – why did he not wonder why he only fell asleep with us? Why did he not taste the brandy? He was a fool, and Inspector Wilbred is cut from the same cloth, I’m telling you.”
Rhodes laughed heartily at the memory. “Ah, Jackson – yes, I never learned a single word of Latin in all the years I spent there, but I did learn how hard it was to pick up a dead-drunk body and get him sitting back in his chair again. So that was useful when I came into this line of work, what!”
“I can imagine it was. Look, they’re saying Hartley Knight died from a blow to the head when he slipped but none of that makes sense.” Theodore jumped to his feet and began to act it out. “The stone steps go down, here, only four of them, and rather shallow. The man was found face down here – like this – ouf.” Theodore got to his knees and then gingerly sprawled himself on the rug in the large office. He pressed the side of his face into the carpet which smelled faintly of tea leaves and dust. “You see? How does a man end up fallen like this if he has slipped on the steps? You fall backwards, not face down. Natural instinct shoves all your body weight back.” He got up and brushed himself off. “I would very much like to see the body for myself.”
“You can see the files our medical officer wrote. He does query the blow himself, and there was something else in it. Poison, he was suggesting. But that makes no sense either,” Rhodes said, stroking his voluminous moustache thoughtfully. “Poisoning is what women do, but they do it in a man’s food or while he’s in his bed, sneaky, underhand, just like you’d expect. They don’t clobber a cove first, what!”
“Yet he does have a jilted, angry lover – Mrs Rush the housekeeper.”
“Indeed? But how could she have done it? Pushed him down the steps and then put a rag over his mouth?”
“That sounds exceedingly likely,” Theodore replied, not subscribing to Rhodes’s own particular view of the female sex. “He could have struggled, flipped over, got on his front to push himself up after being shoved down the steps, and then she could have been upon him with whatever you like – chloroform, anything. Hence my request to see the body. Mrs Rush is a hefty woman and if he were half-dazed from hitting his head, she’d win. If that woman sits on you when you’re not fully conscious – well, take it from me, you’re not getting up again easily. Don’t you see that it could have played out exactly like that?”
“It could but I really cannot make you into a policeman, Calaway; it doesn’t work like that. Can’t just stick a badge on you!”
“I am not asking to be a policeman. God, no. Shouldn’t dream of it. But when I was in York I was accepted as a kind of – I don’t know, independent detective? A specialist? The police do rely on the advice of professionals from outside the force. That’s not so unusual.”
“No, it’s not unusual, but the fact is, our own specialism ought to be the detecting.” Rhodes leaned back in his chair and it groaned as he shifted his bulk. He was as tall as he was wide, a massive man, running now to fat in his later years, but still not the sort of fellow you’d challenge in a fight. “However. You are right about Wilbred. I keep assigning him the rural cases in the hope he’ll get lost on the moors and not come back. Like a bad smell, he just oozes back into the station time after time. But I live in hope. Might get him transferred to Cornwall. They’ve got demonic dogs there, I hear. Black Shuck and all that.”
“Sounds promising.”
Rhodes came to a sudden decision. He snapped forward in the chair and grabbed a pen. “Here’s what we’ll do. Best of both worlds, what? Let Wilbred run the course – close the case – set it aside as an accident. But you carry on investigating. Here, have a letter of authority in my name, should open a few doors for you. I am happy to put my name to yours but don’t you dare bring me into disrepute or it’ll be you lost on the moors, trying to evade Black Shuck.”
They were old friends and Theodore had no doubt that Rhodes meant every word that he said; and every threat. He took the letter with gratitude and not a little trepidation. “Thank you.”
“Good to see
