The Body Politic (21 page)

“That's your pigeon, too,” countered Dabbe, “but to whose benefit? No, what I have been doing is looking at the problem from the other end.” He pulled a sheet of paper towards him. “Let us suppose for the sake of argument that the pellet itself did not cause death.”

Sloan waited, attentive but silent.

“Injury,” amplified the pathologist, “or even metallic poisoning, would not have given rise to those signs.”

Sloan nodded.

“But suppose that a substance contained in the pellet did.”

“Like the ricin,” said Crosby.

Detective Inspector Sloan leaned forward. “You mean, Doctor, that the heart failure might have been the outcome of poisoning?”

“Precisely, Inspector, and yes, Constable. It is a theoretical possibility and therefore must be considered.”

“Scorpions?” asked Sloan swiftly.

“Not scorpions,” responded Dabbe. “Their sting is painful but not usually fatal.”

“What, then?”

“Sting-rays, venomous fishes, some newts, the kokoi frog …”

“In Calleshire?” said Crosby sceptically.

“Someone found some scorpions for Ted Sheard,” said Sloan quietly. He reached for his notebook. This was something a policeman could get to grips with. “And what poisons would have that effect, Doctor?”

“The sympathomimetic agents.”

Sloan subsided back into his chair without attempting to write anything down. He might have known that what the doctor would say wouldn't be simple. It seldom was.

Dabbe frowned. “All I can say is that it is a proposition that would account for both the pellet and the heart failure.” He essayed a quick smile across his desk. “I wouldn't go to the stake for it, Sloan. It's only what the scientific people would call a tenuous hypothesis.”

“These agents you mentioned, Doctor.”

“Epinephrine and its group of related drugs.”

The gardener in Sloan appreciated that drugs—like plants and people—came in families and had relations. The policeman in him took note that a working possibility of poisoning existed.

The pathologist squinted down at the sheet of paper on his desk and said with unusual care, “If we're talking about this sort of thing …”

“We are, aren't we?” said Crosby, suddenly alert.

“Then one would have to include the venoms, too.”

Crosby brightened still further. “Arrow poisons, you mean, Doctor?”

Sloan had often wondered if the Detective Constable's reading had ever got beyond the comic-paper stage.

The answer had to be wrung out of the pathologist. “I'm afraid we can't rule them out,” said Dr. Dabbe regretfully.

It was Detective Constable Crosby, though, who had the last word. “The evidence still doesn't amount to a hill of beans, does it?”

“Where have we got to so far, Crosby?” asked Detective Inspector Sloan presently.

“The railway station, sir,” responded the Constable from the driving seat of the police car and taking the question literally. “A bit to go yet to the police ditto.”

Sloan tried again. “And what have we got so far in the little matter of Regina
versus
whoever killed Alan Ottershaw?” His lips tightened. “If they did, that is.”

“An appetite,” said Crosby with fervour. “I could eat a horse.”

Detective Inspector Sloan, who had been trying not to dwell on the fact that his wife Margaret had promised him a home-made steak-and-kidney pudding for dinner, said, “We've got a pellet made of queremitte.”

“And that's all we have got,” responded Crosby morosely, “isn't it?”

“A queremitte pellet,” continued Detective Inspector Sloan in a minatory way, “found in the cremated ashes of a man who comes home from abroad and dies two days later.”

“Even that's not a lot, is it, sir?”

“We have also got an unconfirmed story—” meticulously Sloan corrected himself: “a story awaiting confirmation about a road accident that might or might not have been a genuine accident.”

“In foreign parts, though,” put in Crosby with a speed that would have done credit to Zeno himself.

“Where the victim of the road accident was already dead.”

“It happens,” said Crosby, quondam Traffic Division policeman, “all the time.”

“And where the car driver, just before he himself dies—”

“Or is murdered,” said Crosby changing gear.

“Or is murdered.”

“In another country,” said the xenophobe.

“In another country,” echoed Sloan irritably, as always reminded by the phrase of a hymn whose meaning teased his mother. It began easily enough with “I vow to thee, my country”; it was the start of verse two which had always puzzled her. The first line of this was “And there's another country I've heard of long ago” and arguments about it invariably ended inconclusively with Mrs. Sloan senior saying, “I'm sure the author had Heaven in mind but why doesn't he say so?”

Detective Constable Crosby hadn't had Heaven in mind. Nor, come to that, had Sloan. “In another country,” he said heavily, “from which the car driver just before he dies declares himself—on a tape-recorder—willing, even anxious, to go back to Lasserta to—er—face the music. Although,” he added because this seemed obscurely important, “his nearest and dearest do not appear to have known this.”

If Sloan had been telling all this to the Assistant Chief Constable, that pillar of the Establishment would have said “
Floreat Etona
” or something similar at this point, he being a great man for a Latin tag.

All Detective Constable Crosby said was: “Doesn't make sense, does it, sir?”

The trouble was that he said it nonchalantly waving a hand in the air while overtaking a bus in the face of an oncoming lorry.

“We have also got,” said Sloan between clenched teeth as the police car slid through a terrifyingly narrow gap, “a Member of Parliament who was being heckled by an unknown man, pursued by a character dressed as Death, being harassed by false calls to the ambulance service and narrowly escaping death from falling masonry.” He drew breath and said with mounting acerbity, “Does any of that strike you as at all strange, Crosby?”

“Politics,” responded Crosby dismissively. “All's fair in love, war, and politics.”

Major Puiver would have said the Constable had got the battle order right: Bertram Rauly might not have done. He suspected that Ted Sheard would have said he had got it wrong. With a man like Peter Corbishley you would never know.

Sloan pursued his catalogue of what might or might not be evidence in what might or might not be a murder case. “We have also got another Member of Parliament of the opposite persuasion who is similarly being subjected to death threats and who is being sent live scorpions in his mail.”

“Why not letter bombs?” asked Crosby. “Much more effective.”

“Why not, indeed?” murmured Sloan seriously. “That's something we should think about.”

“Sir, there's a good place to eat at——”

“And we've also got a highly eccentric landowner who has made no secret of the fact that he intends to burn down his historic house—it's almost a stately home—before he dies.”

The philistine at the wheel of the police car said, “Well, it's his, isn't it?”

“Miss Finch would say you have no soul, Crosby.”

Crosby said something almost as uncomplimentary about Miss Finch.

“The view of Miss Finch,” said Detective Inspector Sloan, “is that Mellamby Place is part of the heritage of the nation.”

“So are ruins,” said Crosby ineluctably.

“And Miss Finch is one of the few people to have known that it wasn't Bertram Rauly who was in the costume of William de Wilton but the aforementioned Alan Ottershaw, deceased.”

“Who may or may not have been murdered,” said Crosby, driving triumphantly under an imaginary chequered flag at the entrance to the Police Station car park.

The message that awaited them could not have been more bizarre.

SIXTEEN

And the Pride Must Fall

“Do you mind saying that again, sir?”

“Takes a bit of believing, Inspector, doesn't it?”

“Let's call it unusual, sir, shall we?” Both policemen were sitting in Peter Corbishley's house while the Member of Parliament repeated his story.

“I just went into Bert Swallow's barber's shop for my usual haircut.”

Sloan nodded. The Member was a short-back-and-sides man if ever he saw one. He said, “By usual, sir, do you mean regular?”

“Good point, Inspector. Yes, I do. As near to the first of the month as I can get there.”

“Rabbits,” said Crosby.

“Parliamentary duties permitting, of course,” continued the Member suavely.

“Quite so,” said Sloan. There were some callings where getting your hair cut was part of a man's duty.

“Besides,” the Member added drily, “my Agent likes it.”

“Your appearance?” Sloan had always suspected that in politics it was the image that counted more than the man.

“My listening to what Bert has to say. He calls it keeping in touch with the grass roots.”

“I understand,” said Sloan austerely, “that taxi drivers have influence, too.”

“My Agent sees Bert Swallow as the Calleshire equivalent of the man on the Clapham omnibus,” said Corbishley. “Bert always gives me the—er—state-of-the-art view of current affairs.” He hesitated. “That is one of the reasons why what has happened is so strange.”

“So you were known to go there, sir, and roughly when.”

“That is correct, Inspector.”

“And when you went there you were known?”

“Oh, yes.” The Member squared his shoulders. “It is still surprising in this day and age to learn that someone was willing, not to say anxious, to give Bert Swallow good money for keeping some of my hair after he had cut it and giving it to him.”

“Very strange,” conceded Sloan.

“But not funny. In fact it doesn't make sense.”

“No.”

“The man didn't want a lot of hair, Bert said, but he did need to be sure that it had come from my head.”

“And what did Bert say to him?”

“That he's got a good sharp open razor by him and he'd be willing to use it if the man so much as set foot in his shop again. On his throat.”

“Did he give you a description of the man?”

“Young and not very clean, he said, and in need of a haircut.”

“He would say that, wouldn't he?” said Crosby.

“Clothes?” asked Sloan steadily.

“Jeans and an old coat,” said Corbishley.

“No one that you can call to mind, sir?”

“No.”

“Or have reason to suspect?”

“No.”

“We'll go along and see Bert Swallow,” undertook Sloan, “and ask him if he'd know this person again.”

“Bert said he would recognise him by his walk,” said Peter Corbishley.

“That's something,” said Sloan. “Sir, there was something else we were going to ask you. Have you been invited to speak at the University of Calleshire lately?”

Peter Corbishley nodded. “Yes, indeed, Inspector. A group of Social Psychology students attending a seminar invited me to address them on the subject of ‘Conflict and Stress.' Why?”

“I just wondered,” said Sloan. He was struck by another thought. “One more thing, sir. When this character at the barber's asked Bert for your hair he didn't say anything to him about keeping quiet about it or not telling you, did he?”

“No.”

“Odd, that, sir,” said Sloan, “isn't it? When you come to think about it …”

The Member stared at him.

“It's all very well, Sloan,” Superintendent Leeyes was saying half an hour later, “for you to list what may look like the material factors in the case.”

“If there is a case.” Sloan put in his usual caveat with a certain astringency.

“But what I want to know, Sloan,” swept on Leeyes majestically, “is what you are going to do about it all.”

“Well, sir,” began Sloan cautiously, “first of all on the Parliamentary front, so to speak …”

“Yes?”

“I've sent Detective Constable Crosby to look into the availability in Calleshire of live scorpions.”

Leeyes grunted. “He can't do a lot of harm doing that, I suppose.”

“What is happening to those two Members of Parliament in the way of threats and so forth can't be coincidence. I'm sure of that.”

“There's no such thing as coincidence in police work,” pronounced Leeyes didactically. “I've told you that before, Sloan.”

“So you have, sir.” He hoped that the Superintendent would treat the remark as fact and not insubordination: he, Christopher Dennis Sloan, had his pension and a wife and son to think about. He hurried on. “They do, of course, belong to two different—two opposing—parties.”

“That could be a blind, Sloan.” Someone had once tried to explain the work of a true
agent provocateur
to the Superintendent and the concept had left its mark. “Just you watch it.”

“Yes, sir.” Grimly, he stuck to the point. “Neither Member of Parliament would appear to have felt really threatened or,” he added fairly, “at least, if they have, they haven't acted running scared.”

Leeyes sniffed. “Wouldn't do anything for their precious public images if they did, would it? Mind you, Sloan, if you ask me, half the electorate would vote for a dead ferret if it was wearing the right party colours.”

“Quite so, sir.” The History Man at Sloan's school had spent an unconscionable amount of teaching time on the passing of Lord Grey's Reform Bill of 1832. Even at this distance in time Sloan could see that the Bill couldn't have had an easy passage. Nothing, for instance, would have made a reformer out of Police Superintendent Leeyes.