Chapter and Hearse (15 page)

Detective Inspector Sloan murmured something anodyne but sympathetic about troubles never coming singly.

‘Singly!' echoed Johnny Hedger bitterly. ‘If only they'd come singly it would have been all right.'

‘Battalions?' suggested Sloan, a latent memory of his schoolday Shakespeare lessons coming back to him.

Johnny Hedger looked puzzled. ‘No. It was a cricket club party that we had in the functions room.'

‘Ah…'

‘We catered for a hundred and fifty – popular local team, you know. Valuable booking too, but I wish now we'd never taken it. So does the wife…' He glanced in the direction of the stairs. ‘I had to get the doctor to her in the night. It didn't surprise him, because he'd been called out a dozen times already by other people who'd eaten here. And he said he was sorry but that he would have to tell the authorities about it because food poisoning is a notifiable medical condition under some Public Health Act or other.'

‘Bad luck,' said Sloan sympathetically.

‘She's still proper poorly. Says she doesn't want to face food or drink ever again.'

‘Food poisoning,' opined Sloan, ‘leaves you like that.'

‘Too right, Inspector.' Hedger acknowledged this with a jerk of his head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘They say it was the Queen of Puddings that did it.' He passed a hand over his damp brow. ‘Don't ask me to tell you how they found that out, but everyone who chose it was ill.'

‘They have their methods,' said Sloan. He very nearly brought in a neat reference to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson but thought better of it. Johnny Hedger was in no mood today for light relief.

The landlord glanced down at something written on the back of an envelope and frowned. ‘The pathologist called it
Typhimurium,
if that makes any sense to you.'

‘No,' said Sloan comfortably, ‘but doctors like to use words that no one else understands. Makes them feel more in control.'

‘One of our lecturers,' offered Detective Constable Crosby, not long out of the police training college, ‘called the using of words that only an in-group could understand “Badges of Belonging”.'

Johnny Hedger was not interested in either psychology or semantics. ‘These people say they think whatever it was that did it was in the duck eggs used in the pudding topping. We get the eggs from the farm up the road, you know…'

‘Ah…'

‘They gave the soup and the turkey salad a clean bill of health – which is more,' added Hedger spiritedly, ‘than the Health and Safety people will give the Ornum Arms until we've been practically taken to pieces and fumigated.'

‘Dangerous things, duck eggs,' observed Sloan sapiently. ‘Salmonella bacilli like living in them.'

‘You're telling me,' said Johnny Hedger.

‘Especially when they're not hard-boiled…' The working knowledge required by a Detective Inspector had always bordered on the arcane, but there was one thing he did remember about Queen of Puddings from his childhood that might be relevant. ‘Meringue, made from white of egg, whipped on top?'

‘And raspberry jam,' put in Detective Constable Crosby, anxious to help.

‘But not in the oven for very long?' There was the rub, Sloan thought.

‘That's the one,' sighed the landlord heavily. ‘Not that we can do anything about it now. The Health and Safety people have closed us down until further notice.'

‘There's no arguing with that lot,' said Crosby, still a little unsure of his own authority as an officer of the law but aware of others in the wider world who had even greater powers – powers against which there was no appeal.

Hedger winced as he shifted his bulk in response to a twinge of pain. ‘I've had to send all the domestic staff home this morning.'

‘You wouldn't have had many customers anyway,' said Sloan, ‘not with Environmental Health around.'

‘They've been crawling everywhere since first thing.' Hedger gave a melancholy smile. ‘It's just as well that the chef's off sick too. He wouldn't like to see them there, poking into everything. Very territorial about his kitchen is our Melvyn.'

‘It's your kitchen we've come about,' Sloan reminded him. ‘Or, rather, goods continually stolen therefrom…'

‘I could wish now that someone had taken those duck eggs,' said the landlord feelingly, ‘never mind the ham and cheese that's always going missing.'

‘The high-value items,' observed Sloan.

‘To say nothing of the meat,' said Mine Host.

Detective Inspector Sloan pointed to the array of bottles behind the bar. ‘But not the wines and spirits?'

‘Not a drop,' said Johnny Hedger. ‘Mind you, it's under lock and key when the bar's closed and there's always someone here when it isn't.'

‘But kitchen's aren't usually secure,' murmured Sloan.

‘No, and my accountant says that, according to the figures for the provisions we buy in, we should be making much more profit on the catering side than we do.' Hedger sighed. ‘How he knows beats me, but there you are.'

‘Clever chaps, accountants,' said Sloan. It was a view endorsed time and time again by his colleagues in the Fraud Squad.

‘I suppose they know all the wrinkles,' said Detective Constable Crosby naïvely.

‘Nearly all of them,' remarked Sloan. The Fraud Squad had one or two up their sleeves too, but this wasn't the time or place to say so. He got back to the matter in hand. ‘What does your chef say – assuming it isn't him that's half-inching the goods, of course.'

Johnny Hedger frowned. ‘Melvyn says it could be any of the kitchen staff. Or all of them. And that
I
can look into their handbags when they go home if I like, but he's not going to.'

‘Chicken, isn't he!' pronounced Crosby, who had yet to encounter a really cross middle-aged woman with a genuine grievance.

‘He says he's too young to die,' said the landlord.

‘They'd take umbrage as quickly as they'd take a joint of beef, I suppose?' said Sloan more realistically.

‘Quicker,' said the landlord gloomily. ‘And take themselves off too, I dare say.'

‘As good cooks go,' murmured Sloan.

Hedger rolled his eyes. ‘They very nearly walked out on me when I stopped them eating when they were working here.'

‘Even the leftovers?' asked Crosby.

‘What's a leftover?' demanded Hedger rhetorically.

‘Ah…' said Sloan, a man who in his day had spent a lot of time in court listening to lawyers splitting hairs. ‘That's a point.'

‘At least the accountant saved me from that one,' said Hedger. He sniffed. ‘Makes a change from him costing me, which he does. An arm and a leg, usually.'

‘How come?' enquired Crosby, evincing some interest at last.

‘Said if I fed the staff here – that is, allowed them to eat my food on my premises while they were working here without charging them the going rate – then it would have to show in the books.'

‘Which shut them up pretty quickly, I expect,' said Sloan, who knew a thing or two about mixing human nature with money both not in hand and taxable to boot.

‘I'll say,' said Johnny, with something of his old energy returning. ‘They didn't like that one little bit.'

‘So if they want it, the staff have to steal the food rather than eat it here,' concluded Crosby simply.

‘But it doesn't apply to you,' pointed out Sloan to the landlord. ‘You must have eaten some of the pudding…'

‘The accountant allows in the books for the wife and me consuming the restaurant food whether we do or not,' agreed Johnny, ‘it not being considered natural that it should be otherwise.'

‘Or,' persisted Sloan, ‘you wouldn't both have been ill too.'

‘That's true,' said Johnny uneasily.

‘There's a thief in the house, all the same,' said Crosby.

‘You find him, then,' said the landlord wearily. ‘Or her. You're the detectives. Not me.'

‘Someone must be taking the goods,' said Sloan, briskly, ‘if there's food missing from the place on a regular basis.' Somewhere at the back of his mind was lurking the proper distinction between groceries and provisions, but this was not the moment either for such verbal niceties. The all-embracing word ‘goods' would have to do.

‘But how to find out who?' asked Hedger.

‘And how to prove it,' added Detective Inspector Sloan. The trouble with all the animadversions of Superintendent Leeyes was that they stuck in the mind. As he had said, identifying the guilty was only half the problem these days … Evidence – preferably of the watertight variety – came into it as well.

‘I just want the losses stopped.' Hedger shrugged. ‘It's quite difficult enough making a place like this pay without having the ground cut from under your feet by thieves in the night.'

‘Not in the night,' put in Detective Constable Crosby, who was of a literal turn of mind. ‘In the day.'

‘You're right there,' admitted Johnny Hedger. ‘It must be in the day. The deep freezers and the refrigerator are all locked when Melvyn goes home to Luston. He gives me the keys.'

‘Melvyn's off sick too, you said,' remarked Sloan casually.

‘Can't keep a thing down, his family say,' said Hedger with patent sympathy. ‘None of them can. They've had to have the doctor to him. Just like me and the wife…' His voice trailed away as he was struck by the significance of the words he had uttered.

‘Just so,' said Detective Inspector Sloan sedately.

‘I think I see your drift,' Hedger went on lamely.

‘I don't,' began Crosby, then he stopped. ‘Oh, yes, I do.'

‘Good,' said Sloan drily.

The Detective Constable said, ‘Your chef could be suffering from half-baked duck eggs too, Johnny.'

Sloan pointed to the envelope which Hedger had shown them. ‘Yes, or more accurately what the doctors have called whatever it is that caused the food poisoning.
Typhimurium,
did you say it was?'

‘Which he must have got from pinching the duck eggs,' deduced the Detective Constable, a trifle belatedly.

‘Well, I can tell you he didn't buy them from the farmer,' said Johnny Hedger. ‘The Health and Safety people have checked on all the customers who've bought eggs from him. First thing they did.'

‘Though whether Melvyn got his food poisoning from pinching the duck eggs,' amended Sloan. ‘is something which remains to be proved…'

‘Beyond reasonable doubt,' put in Johnny Hedger, veteran of the odd pub fracas and therefore no stranger to the magistrates' court. He looked up as a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman came in, her coat over her arm. ‘Thank goodness you've arrived, Margaret,' he said to her. ‘You can take over the bar – drinks only to be served today – and I can put my feet up for a bit.' He gave the two policemen a strained smile. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, I must take a look at the wife too.'

Detective Constable Crosby turned to Sloan and said, ‘Can we go over to Luston now, sir, and finger the chef – this Melvyn fellow?'

‘On what charge?' asked Sloan mildly. Luston was right over the other side of the county and he was well aware that the constable liked driving fast cars fast.

‘Theft,' said Crosby promptly. ‘He didn't just take a bite while he was here, because his whole family is ill. He must have taken either a load of the eggs or enough of the pudding for the lot of them.'

‘Very probably. But what are you going to use for evidence? Real evidence, Crosby – the sort that the Superintendent likes, not the circumstantial variety.'

‘The eggshells?'

‘Gone long ago, I'll be bound.'

He frowned. ‘What you said, sir? The
Typhimurium?
'

‘And how are you going to prove that?'

Crosby's face fell.

‘Think, man,' adjured Sloan. ‘Think.'

Crosby scratched his head. ‘Send in the food police?'

‘Better than that. Try again.'

The Detective Constable's face looked quite blank.

‘Shall we assume,' said Sloan patiently, ‘that Melvyn's doctor has also diagnosed food poisoning and…'

‘And notified it!' Crosby's hand smacked down on the table. ‘Like the doctor here did.'

‘Exactly. A different doctor in a different part of the county certifying that Melvyn and his family are suffering from the identical strain of the bacillus present in the food causing the trouble here should help your case no end.'

‘My case, sir?' the Detective Constable's face turned pink with pleasure. ‘Thank you, sir.'

‘After all,' said Sloan, since food was the essence of the case here, ‘dog doesn't eat dog.'

Child's Play

Henry Tyler wouldn't admit it, even to himself, but he was – there was no doubt about it – panting ever so slightly as he approached the Beacon Hotel. But he wasn't disappointed with what he found. He'd been drawn to the place in the first instance by its address – the sound of Tea Garden Lane had an attractive ring to any walker. So did the name of the area where it was situated – Happy Valley.

And then he'd spotted the building itself from halfway across the opposite hillside and immediately realized that the view from its terrace would be well worth the climb up. In theory, visiting High Rocks had been next on his agenda, but the hotel and luncheon called. High Rocks would have to wait.

He paused on the hill just below the hotel itself, ostensibly to admire that selfsame view but actually to get his breath back properly before he presented himself at the bar. A walking tour was all very well in its way, but it came hard to a civil servant who normally spent his working days at a desk in Whitehall.

Henry had passed the weekend before with his married sister, her husband and their two children in the small market town of Berebury, in rural Calleshire, by way of both winding down from the cares of state and limbering up for his break from routine. This plan had worked up to a point, even though the children had clamoured for his attention almost all the time they were awake. But meeting their demands had not exactly been preparation for striding through the steep lanes of the delightful border country of Kent and Sussex round Tunbridge Wells in high summer.