Last Respects by Catherine Aird

Author:Catherine Aird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

CHAPTER 10

To be hang’d with you.

What at this moment was interesting the police—the police as personified by Superintendent Leeyes, that is—was something quite different.

‘Ridgeford rang in,’ said Leeyes to Detective-Inspector Sloan across his office desk, ‘excited as a schoolgirl.’

‘What about?’ It wouldn’t do, of course. Sloan was agreed about that. Being as excited as anybody wouldn’t do at all if Ridgeford was going to make a good policeman. Sometimes the very calm of the police officer was the only thing going for him in a really tight situation.

‘The wreck off Marby,’ said Leeyes.

Sloan’s head came up with a jerk. If a certain copper ingot had come from there too then Sloan was prepared to be interested in it as well.

‘The Clarembald,’ said Leeyes, ‘wrecked by the people of Marby in olden times.’

‘At least,’ said Sloan, ‘that’s one crime we don’t have to worry about now.’ Idly he wondered what the exact wording of the charge against the wrecker would have been. There hadn’t been a lot of call for it down at the station since sail went out and steam came in. Perhaps it wasn’t even in the book any more. ‘Lighting beacons with intent to deceive’ didn’t quite seem to fit the gravity of the crime.

‘The ship’s bell has come ashore,’ Leeyes told him.

‘Has it indeed?’ said Sloan. ‘Well, well.’

‘As well as that brass weight you said was on the dead body …’

‘Copper ingot,’ murmured Sloan, his mind on other things. ‘How long ago do you suppose the Clarembald was found?’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ responded Leeyes irritably. ‘All I can tell you is that Ridgeford’s only just come across the bell.’

‘I should have thought,’ said Sloan slowly, ‘that we should have heard, sir, if it wasn’t very lately.’

Leeyes grunted. ‘Good news gets about.’

‘We mostly do hear,’ said Sloan. It was true. The police usually heard about good fortune as well as bad. For one thing, good fortune could be as dangerous to the recipient as the reverse … Sloan pulled himself up with a jerk. He was beginning to think like a latter-day Samuel Smiles now.

Leeyes grunted again.

‘Besides, sir, presumably the Coroner would have had to know if anything had been found, wouldn’t he?’

‘Coroners,’ pronounced Leeyes obscurely, ‘only know what they’re told.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And all I know,’ said Leeyes flatly, ‘is what my officers choose to tell me.’

‘Quite so, sir.’

‘And that’s not a lot, Sloan, is it?’

‘The young man’s body was put into the river where the water is fresh,’ responded Sloan absently, answering the implication rather than the question.

‘And if that’s not enough,’ continued Leeyes aggrieved, ‘we’ve got Ridgeford playing pirates.’

‘He’s having quite a day for a beginner, isn’t he?’ said Sloan. ‘A body and buried treasure.’

‘Hrrrumph,’ said Leeyes.

‘He’ll have to remember today, won’t he,’ said Sloan, ‘when the routine begins to bite.’

Leeyes sniffed. ‘He’d have me out there, Sloan, if he could.’

Sloan didn’t say anything at all to that.

‘Mind you, Sloan, with my background I’ve always been interested in the sea.’

Sloan could see where this was leading.

‘Did

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