Some Die Eloquent (21 page)

‘Jack-in-the-Green,' she said absently.

‘What?'

‘The Green Man. The pagan touch.'

‘Oh yes, of course.' Their little Red Book of advice on having babies had been strong on humouring.

‘Maypoles, and all that,' she said enigmatically.

The red light gave way to amber and then green while the little green man facing pedestrians was succeeded by the red one. The red man reminded Sloan of the devil but he didn't say so. It didn't seem to be the right moment to mention the Prince of Darkness. He set off down the road again at a more decorous pace than hitherto. The urgency of his journey had given way to a thought even more terrifying than that of birth on the way to the hospital.

False alarm?

Their way led down a hill towards the deserted town centre. The hospital was the other side of that. The road went past the police station, its blue light the only sign of wakefulness in sight.

‘I spy blue,' said Margaret Sloan. It had been how she greeted him when they were first engaged.

‘I spy black,' chanted Sloan.

‘I spy a copper with a …' She caught her breath suddenly and broke off in mid-speech, bending forwards. He couldn't see her face.

He took his left hand off the steering-wheel and put it over her white knuckles. And he put his right foot on the accelerator.

‘Sorry.' She took a deep breath and then said, ‘I'm all right now.'

‘It won't take long to get there this time of night.'

‘And at this rate,' she said shakily.

He slowed down.

But only for a moment.

If there is one type of suspect which all the police forces the world over find less difficulty in tracking down than any other it is the escapee with nowhere to go. Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but with the earths of home and family well and truly stopped a man on the run is a vulnerable man.

Detective-Inspector Sloan found that expectant fathers were similarly without anywhere immediate to go. The journey to the Berebury District General Hospital duly accomplished and the sanctuary of the maternity ward achieved at last, Sloan himself was now at something of a loose end.

At the door of the ward it had been quite kindly suggested to him that he go away and have a cup of tea for half an hour or so. As there had been no information about where he could procure such a commodity in the middle of the night Sloan rightly interpreted this as telling him he wasn't wanted for a little while.

He decided as a first step to park his car.

He steered it round to the visitors' car park, switched off the ignition, and made himself think about that other soul with nowhere to go – Nicholas Petforth. This required quite an effort as his whole inclination was to let his thoughts dwell exclusively on Margaret Sloan. Nicholas Petforth had to all intents and purposes disappeared as surely as if he had been touched by a conjurer's wand. He had not returned to the house of squatters in Luston, he had not been near the motorway site beyond the Calleford Road, he had not been back to Fleming Ward.

Sloan was quite sure of this last.

Detective-Constable Crosby had been admitted to the ward with a bandage on his head and a personal radio in his pyjama pocket. And though the girl herself didn't know it, another policeman was keeping a watchful eye on Briony Petforth in the Nurses' Home. Nick Petforth, though, concluded Sloan, must be somewhere. And as it was by no means a warm night that somewhere was probably under cover. By October even a fugitive from justice needed a roof over his head during the hours of darkness.

Sloan looked at his watch: another twenty-five minutes before he could go back to the ward.

He wound the window of the driver's door down and sniffed the night air. It was distinctly chilly. Not that he was contemplating going for a walk. No policeman who had once done his years on the beat ever voluntarily put one foot in front of the other again except in the line of duty. Sloan had done his share of two and a half miles to the hour, fourteen miles to the day, in his time. More than his share, probably, or did everyone always think that?

‘And,' his old sergeant had said grittily to him on his first day, ‘if you come back saying you're dead beat I'll run you out of town.'

So he hadn't.

He'd finished his first foot patrol and reported instead that as days went it had taken a lot of beating …

A raw constable learned a lot from his first sergeant.

Like the importance of finding out where to get a cup of tea any hour of the night or day.

‘Unless you're a good kitchen-range finder, my lad,' Sloan could hear him saying even now, his first sergeant, ‘you'll never make a good copper because you'll always be thirsty. And that's a bad thing.'

Sloan wound the window of his car up again and started the engine. He was a pretty poor policeman if he couldn't find a cup of tea somewhere. He turned out of the car park and headed for the town centre again. The blue lamp of the law was still shining above the police station doorway.

The night duty officer greeted him ironically. ‘We never close.'

More importantly, neither did the canteen.

A couple of Inspector Harpe's night duty traffic patrol having their rest break nodded to him without curiosity. They knew that the Criminal Investigation Department worked at night too. The phrase ‘ungodly hours' was no mere slip of the tongue.

Sloan settled himself down in a corner of the canteen with a cup of tea. There was one thing to be said for being here at the police station in the middle of the night as opposed to the middle of the day. Superintendent Leeyes was not usually around in the night on the look-out for fools not to suffer gladly. For some reason the notion of fools set up another train of thought in Sloan's mind. He hoped that they weren't being fools in the case of Beatrice Gwendoline Wansdyke.

The neat elderly spinster and her dog who had inhabited the neat ordinary house in Ridley Road seemed very far removed from exotic sums of money. And yet the neat elderly spinster and her dog were both dead and the neat ordinary house empty …

Sloan set his cup down.

The neat ordinary house was empty.

He pushed his tea-cup away and got to his feet. There was just time for him to slip round to Ridley Road before he went back to the hospital and check.

It might not be empty.

Mrs Margaret Sloan had her cup of tea brought to her bedside. She was in a nightdress now and lying back in bed.

‘More comfortable now, are you, dear?' she was asked.

‘Yes, thank you.' Her face was quite flushed all the same.

‘How's the pain?'

‘Not too bad.' Her concentrated expression belied the words.

The midwife nodded. ‘We'll give you something for it.'

Non-verbal communication ranked high in hospitals. Heightened colour never went unnoticed either.

‘Thank you.' She caught her breath. ‘That would help.'

‘Just relax as much as you can.'

Margaret Sloan managed a short derisive laugh.

‘I know, dear,' said the nurse patiently, ‘but do try to save your strength all the same. You're going to need it later.' She straightened the bedclothes with an automatic twitch in the true Florence Nightingale tradition and went on, ‘You could probably get a little sleep, too, you know, if you put your mind to it.'

‘Sleep!' echoed the patient in patent disbelief.

The midwife was too wise to argue. She changed the subject instead. ‘Your husband'll be back presently.'

‘I don't know about that,' said Mrs Margaret Sloan. ‘He's a policeman.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan's car was the only one about in Ridley Road, Berebury. He stopped well short of Miss Wansdyke's house and let himself quietly out of his car. He padded noiselessly along the pavement and went straight past the house, noting what he could without turning his head. Save that the window curtains were undrawn, it looked just as did the neighbouring houses. The only immediate difference that sprang to the eye was that there were no empty milk bottles outside the door.

Milk bottles reminded him of home.

And duty.

He took a quick look at his luminous watch. He mustn't be too long about this. He was due back at the hospital pretty promptly. He turned when he got to the end of the road and walked back towards No. 59. The gate did not creak and he was standing outside the front door in a moment.

He still had a key.

So, he reminded himself, did a number of other people.

The lock slid back easily and he was soon inside the hall. He shone his torch very briefly to get his bearings. He went swiftly through the downstairs rooms first. He wasn't going to have anyone hitting him from behind. That had been a lesson learned a long time ago. He flashed his torch quickly over the kitchen sink and drainingboard. Traces of human occupation showed up there more often than anywhere else. That had been another lesson learned.

Both sink and draining-board here were quite bare. So either there was no one in the house or else they were being very careful indeed. Admittedly the place had the feel of desertion. His torch swept over a dog's food bowl near the stove. Nobody had moved that away yet. Not, he conceded at once, that there had been a lot of time for any tidying up to be done. George Wansdyke, sole executor, had a big business to run, especially with his partner away. An aunt's affairs would have to take their turn.

Sloan moved out of the kitchen and back through the hall. He would take a quick look round upstairs and then get back to the hospital. He put his hand on the newel post and felt with his foot for the first step.

‘Don't come any further,' said a voice from the top of the stairs.

CHAPTER XVI

Go where they may, a man can always tell

Such people by their pungent brimstone smell.

‘How is the pain now, dear?' the midwife enquired of Mrs Margaret Sloan.

There was a significant pause before she could speak. Then she managed to say, ‘Not too good.'

The midwife nodded with the briskness of one not in pain and at once brought into play a piece of equipment which was standing beside the bed. ‘Take a deep breath of this,' she commanded, ‘when you feel a pain coming on.'

Mrs Sloan reached out hungrily for the proffered mask. Plunging her face deeply into it, she sucked the anaesthetic gas and air mixture with avidity.

‘That better?' asked the nurse encouragingly.

She nodded, still clutching the face mask.

When the pain had passed she removed it and asked, ‘Is my husband back yet?'

‘Not yet,' said the midwife, adding with uncanny – but quite unwitting – prescience, ‘I expect he's been held up somewhere.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan, father-to-be, swung back to the side of the stairs and out of the direct line of whoever was above. He transferred his torch to his left hand, keeping his right free. The voice had been a youngish one. He decided to provoke it into speech again. He tapped the side of the banister rail with the handle of his torch.

‘Don't move,' said the voice at once.

Sloan did move. Noisily.

‘Don't move, I said,' came the voice again. Less assuredly this time.

Sloan stepped round in front of the staircase again. There was a certain amount of thin light coming from an uncurtained window near the landing at the top of the stairs. When he got round far enough to see up in that direction, though, he was disappointed. All he could make out was a shape standing in a position of vantage at the head of the stairs.

He paused for thought.

There was no chance of rushing someone standing eight feet above ground level. He knew that. Especially with stairs only wide enough for one person at a time. Builders of medieval castles had known what they were about when they designed their tiny turret staircases inside their towers. One man with a sword standing at the top of one of these could keep an army at bay. Besides, he, Christopher Dennis Sloan, Detective-Inspector, who should know better, had committed the cardinal sin of coming here alone, and without leaving word of what he was about.

So if he failed there would be bureaucratic trouble. Going it alone was only countenanced in the police force when married to success. Hunches could be played by police officers all right – but they had to be winning hunches.

Or else.

Very cautiously he advanced and put his foot on the bottom step of the staircase.

It creaked.

It would.

The figure at the top of the stairs promptly took a step downwards. Sloan could see now that the man's right hand had something in it. It could have been a poker. He decided on a change of tactics.

‘Suppose,' said Sloan amiably, ‘you tell me your name.'

This arrested the descent.

‘Suppose,' countered the voice at the top of the stairs, ‘you tell me yours.'

‘Police,' said Sloan.

A short laugh came from above. ‘I thought it was either cops or robbers and the silver's not worth stealing.'

‘Your name,' said Sloan again. The Superintendent was a great believer in maintaining the initiative and it rubbed off.

‘Legion,' said the voice promptly.

‘I think,' said Sloan quietly, ‘that it's Nicholas Petforth.'

‘And if it is?' challenged the voice.

‘Then we've been looking for you.'

‘We seek him here,' came mockingly out of the darkness, ‘we seek him there.'

‘You're wanted for questioning,' said Sloan more prosaically.

‘I didn't think it was for a dog licence.'

‘No,' said Sloan, ‘it wasn't.' The beginnings of an idea had come to him.

‘Coming for me at the squat and then hounding me at work.'

‘The hospital,' Sloan reminded him. In the dim light he was trying to count the number of stairs.

‘There, too,' said the voice with a distinct note of grievance.