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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Sloan and Crosby
- Sprache: Englisch
When Mike Wakefield's business partner absconds with their printing firm's money, Detective Inspector Sloan is tasked with what appears to be a cut-and-dry case of embezzlement. However, unsettling events - tyres slashed, bricks through windows - make it clear that someone is really gunning for Mike. There is just one print job to put to bed in time for a lavish launch party at Ornum House. All goes according to plan until one of Mike's employees is found dead . And he wasn't the only casualty. DI Sloan and DC Crosby have a tangled set of motives and some devious chicanery to unpick to discover a killer.
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Seitenzahl: 328
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Constable Country
CATHERINE AIRD
For Sebastian Sharp with love and in memory of Theresa, Wayne, Miranda and Carol
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Stephanie Wakefield was never to forget that day.
Ever.
The first inkling she’d had that something was wrong came when her husband had got back from work that afternoon, although she didn’t appreciate quite how very wrong things were until later that evening. She had begun to suspect it, though, when Michael was late coming through from his study for their supper. She’d heard his car turn in to the Old Rectory drive at Little Missal after he’d come home rather earlier than usual but then he’d gone straight into his study – in reality it was more studio than study – as soon as he had entered the house. And that was without coming into the kitchen to deliver his customary kiss whilst she was getting their evening meal ready, which was quite unusual.
As Michael Wakefield went into his study, she had heard him shut the door behind him much more firmly and noisily than was necessary. This was always a signal that he didn’t want to be disturbed whilst he was in there. And she never did. He hated to be interrupted, especially if he had brought work home with him. He was the graphic design specialist at their printing firm and sometimes needed to concentrate in peace and quiet rather than in the bustle of the workplace and its noisy machinery. Especially when there was a publishing deadline involved.
That was only the first sign that something was wrong.
The second could be seen when he finally emerged from the other room. He wasn’t an old man, but his back was bent like that of one, with all his customary aplomb gone. He asked her if she’d already uncorked that evening’s wine.
‘Of course,’ she said, surprised. She always uncorked the wine about an hour beforehand for their evening meal. ‘It’s a Portuguese red. You like it.’
When he groaned aloud at this, she was even more certain that something was awry. She said lightly, ‘We’re having a nice piece of topside tonight but you’re not getting any pudding. You know what the doctor said about your substantial paunch.’
His only response was to go back into his study.
‘Is your tummy all right, Mike?’ she called out after him. That at least might explain his strange behaviour.
‘Nothing’s all right,’ her husband said to her as he closed the study door behind him even more forcefully than before, ‘and never will be ever again,’ he added under his breath.
She took another look at him later when they were sitting at the dinner table and noticed that he did indeed look a little whey-faced round the gills. He had certainly lost his appetite, protesting when she tried to put a third slice of beef on his plate. ‘We can always have it cold tomorrow,’ he said, refilling his glass for the second time.
So it wasn’t his tummy that was troubling him, she decided. Something was, though, and something also told her not to mention the beef casserole she was already planning for their meal the next day.
‘By the way,’ she remarked presently when, unusually for him, he hadn’t made any effort at all at making conversation about his day, ‘Christine rang this afternoon to say that they won’t be coming to lunch on Sunday after all.’
Christine Forres was the wife of her husband’s business partner, Malcolm, and the couple were in the habit of coming to lunch with the Wakefields at the Old Rectory on a Sunday every now and again through the year.
‘They’ll never be coming to lunch at this house again,’ her husband responded savagely. ‘Ever.’
‘What on earth do you mean, Mike?’ she said, surprised.
‘Exactly what I said.’
Stephanie murmured, ‘Actually, she didn’t say anything about them being away on holiday on Sunday.’
‘They aren’t,’ he snapped.
His wife frowned. ‘Now I come to think of it, though, the telephone call did say it was an international one. That’s odd, isn’t it, dear, if she and Malcolm aren’t on holiday?’She tried to offer him some more roast beef but he waved her hand away. ‘Perhaps Malcolm’s gone on a business trip and taken Christine with him. You did say something about looking for good leather abroad, didn’t you?’
‘It’s not odd at all,’ he came back quickly.
‘But surely,’ she persisted, puzzled, ‘you’d have known at the office if they’d been going away.’ The premises of the firm of Wakefield and Forres were in a business park on the outskirts of the market town of Berebury and not all that far away from the popular village of Little Missal, where they lived.
This time he came back even more smartly to what she had said. ‘Running away is exactly what I would have expected of the pair of them in the circumstances.’
‘Running away? What circumstances, Mike? Tell me.’
‘Malcolm Forres and his precious wife, Christine, not to put too fine a point on it, Steph, have scarpered, leaving me to hold the baby.’
‘What baby?’
He didn’t answer this. Instead, he said thickly, ‘They’ll have fled the country by now, I shouldn’t wonder. If you ask me, it’s the only thing they could possibly have done in the circumstances.’
‘Fled the country? And in what circumstances, anyway? What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I expect Interpol are already looking for them by now,’ he muttered into his glass.
‘Interpol?’ Her eyebrows shot up.
‘Simon Puckle advised me to tell the police and so I did.’ Simon Puckle was the senior partner of the firm of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, Solicitors and Notaries Public, of Berebury. Wakefield reached for the wine bottle again. ‘Much good that will do to them – or us, come to that,’ he added mordantly.
‘The police?’ She was really worried now. ‘Mike,’ she implored him, ‘in heaven’s name, whatever’s the matter? You must tell me.’
‘Joint and several liability, that’s what’s the matter, Stephanie,’ he explained in a morose tone, swallowing another mouthful of wine, ‘and I can’t do anything at all about it. Not a single bloody thing.’
‘What thing? I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.’
He didn’t answer her directly. Instead, he carried on. ‘Simon Puckle says the government are planning to change the law introducing an option to turn it into something called an LLP, whatever that might be, but they haven’t got round to it yet – governments are as slow as lawyers in actually doing anything.’
‘Anything about what?’ she said insistently.
He ignored this, too. ‘And anyway, it’s too late to do us any good now, even if they did.’
She still didn’t know what he was talking about and said so now, adding firmly, ‘Michael Wakefield, are you drunk?’
‘No, but I’m hoping to be any minute now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ he said in a sudden burst of frankness, ‘I’ve got to tell you something quite ghastly and I don’t know how I’m going to do it. That’s why.’
She looked up, suddenly stricken, blood draining instantly from her cheeks. ‘Oh, Mike, not one of the children?’
He shook his head. ‘No, Toby and Fiona are both all right – for the time being anyway, that is.’
She let out a long sigh of relief. ‘That’s all right, then.’
‘No, it’s not all right, Stephanie. What I meant was that their school fees are paid up to the end of the year but that’s all.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘What I’ve got to tell you, my dear,’ he said, sinking his head in his hands, ‘is, in a nutshell, that we’re ruined. Absolutely ruined.’
She stared at him, her complexion slowly returning to normal after her fright over the children. She shook her head and said, ‘I don’t believe you. You’re talking nonsense now.’
‘No, I’m not,’ he said bleakly. ‘I only wish I were. We’re absolutely and completely ruined.’
‘Who says so?’
‘Fixby and Fixby – well, actually not Herbert Fixby himself. It’s their new girl who gave me the bad news today. She’s called Kate Booth.’ He steadied himself and reached for the wine bottle again. ‘Good stuff, this,’ he said, reading the label. ‘Pity we shan’t be having any more of it ever again.’
‘Michael Wakefield,’ she said, dangerously calm now that she knew their two children were safe, ‘will you please tell me in the name of goodness what you’re talking about. And what has somebody called Kate Booth got to do with it?’ She reached across the table and removed the bottle of red wine out of his reach.
‘Fixby and Fixby are our accountants, long time.’
‘I do know that much, thank you,’ she said crisply. ‘And?’
‘And old Herbert’s a bit past it these days and his son, Jason, has proved to be a bit of a disappointment to the firm and so neither of them really kept an eye on the ball properly.’
‘What ball?’
‘Our partnership’s finances.’
Stephanie didn’t pretend to understand the world of business but even she knew what questions to ask. ‘Isn’t that what all accountants are supposed to do?’
‘It is,’ he said wearily. ‘They took on this new girl, Kate Booth, because of Herbert’s being over the hill nowadays and his son Jason being somewhat unreliable …’
‘I heard that it was gambling,’ remarked Stephanie. ‘Or was it the horses?’
‘Well, this Kate Booth, she spotted it as soon as she took a good look at the books.’
‘Spotted what?’
‘That Malcolm Forres has been robbing the firm blind for years.’
‘Malcolm?’ She stared at him. ‘Are you mad? I don’t believe it.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘I didn’t believe it either myself at first. Then, after this young woman Kate Booth spelt it out to me this morning, I had to.’
‘Can’t Simon Puckle sort it all out for you?’ The firm of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, Solicitors and Notaries Public, had always acted for the Wakefield family as well as the firm of Forres and Wakefield.
‘Not for just me, Steph – you come into this whole mess, too. It’s for both of us, actually, but, no, he can’t.’
‘Simon’s a very good lawyer. Everyone says so.’
‘I know that but the answer I’m afraid is still no, he can’t. Simon told me so himself this afternoon.’
Wakefield drained his glass and looked hopefully across the dining table towards the wine bottle. When she shook her head, he said, ‘That’s where the “jointly and severally” comes from. Simon Puckle said it was in our partnership agreement.’
‘What was?’
‘The words “jointly and severally”,’ repeated her husband, more in sorrow than in anger now, ‘which means that I’m liable for what Malcolm’s taken from the firm.’
‘Taken?’
‘Stolen, if you like.’
‘Stolen? Malcolm? I don’t believe it. You’re quite sure, Mike, aren’t you?’
‘What’s more to the point, Fixby and Fixby are. I’ve been talking with them all morning and with Simon Puckle all afternoon, too. Simon says he’ll do all he can but not to hope for anything much being left after everything’s been wound up.’
‘And what exactly does that mean?’
‘Going broke,’ he said starkly. ‘Bankrupt, if you like. That’s what happens when you haven’t got any money and you owe everybody lots and lots.’
She looked really dismayed now. ‘But being bankrupt means losing everything, doesn’t it?’
‘Not quite.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘They leave you with the tools of your trade and much good that will do me because all the partnership’s assets will have to be sold to pay what we owe. It seems that he’s been robbing us blind for a long time.’
Stephanie stared round their comfortable dining room, taking it in as if she were seeing it for the first time. Her gaze rested on the walnut sideboard, then on the cut-glass decanter set on it and the polished dining table with its set of six matching Georgian mahogany chairs that had been her first exciting purchase at an auction ever. Her eyes finally reached the red Turkish carpet that had been a wedding present from her parents. ‘Not everything?’ she whispered.
He nodded, being altogether without speech now.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Couldn’t it all be deemed just a civil matter between business partners?’ suggested Superintendent Leeyes hopefully. It was later the next morning and he was sitting comfortably at his desk in the police station in Berebury, home of ‘F’ Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary. Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan was in attendance, the superintendent reading the message sheet in front of him the while. ‘Then their lawyers could sort the whole thing out between themselves on a commercial basis without bothering us.’
The superintendent didn’t like dealing with white-collar crime, which his subordinates suspected was because he didn’t understand it.
‘Then in that case, Sloan,’ Leeyes concluded, ‘we wouldn’t have to.’
The detective inspector, sitting opposite him, shook his head regretfully. ‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ he said, although he was quite busy enough himself already. Being able to take no action in the case of Forres and Wakefield would have suited him very well, too.
The superintendent sighed. ‘And why not, might I ask?’
‘Because the complainant’s solicitor had already advised the injured party to get in touch with us straight away.’ The inspector was the head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of ‘F’ Division and all such crime as was committed there came within his remit.
‘Oh, he had, had he?’ grunted Leeyes, who didn’t have a lot of time for the legal profession in any shape or form at the best of times. He considered it quite unreasonable that whilst the police always strove to uphold the law on behalf of honest citizens, defence lawyers were always seeking to find ways round it on behalf of those who had broken it. It was this last that was the rub.
‘Michael Wakefield – that’s the name of the victim, sir – also said to us,’ went on Sloan carefully, ‘that he’d been told, according to one of this man’s neighbours out at Peverton village, Wakefield’s business partner – that’s a man called Malcolm Forres—’
‘The villain of the piece, I take it,’ interrupted the superintendent with a fine disregard for police impartiality and such matters that were still unproven.
‘—had apparently left his residence in the village out there,’ carried on Sloan, ‘together with his wife in a great hurry very late indeed the night before last.’
The superintendent grunted again.
‘Thus, doing what we would in other circumstances have called “a moonlight flit”,’ finished Sloan, distancing the move from that of a common or garden non-payment of rent to a cheated landlord.
‘Do I understand you to mean, Sloan,’ the superintendent came back smartly, ‘that I am meant to believe that this Forres fellow actually told these neighbours that he was fleeing the country in a great hurry after dark because he’d fleeced his business partner?’
‘There was a cat, sir.’
‘So, he’s not all bad? That’s what you’re trying to tell me, is it? That being an animal lover should make you exempt from police pursuit?’ The superintendent was known to hold the simple view about animals that if you couldn’t eat them, then you shouldn’t keep them.
‘No, sir. Not at all,’ said Sloan hastily. ‘I’m merely passing on what Michael Wakefield is reported to have been told that Malcolm Forres had said to the neighbours.’ Sloan smothered a sigh. Sometimes the superintendent could be altogether too keen on chapter and verse.
‘Which was?’
‘That he and Forres’ wife, Christine, were responding to a sudden family emergency and had to leave their home in Peverton village as quickly as possible in order that they could to get there in time and would the neighbours be kind enough to feed the cat until they got back.’
Leeyes, never an animal lover at the best of times, sniffed.
‘And that they would come back home as soon as they possibly could,’ finished Sloan. He planned to talk to the Forres’ next-door neighbour over at Peverton himself as soon as he could.
‘Which, therefore, could be said to be true as far as it went,’ said Leeyes, adding sarcastically, ‘I suppose it’s too much to ask if they mentioned a destination to this neighbour.’
‘No, sir, I’m afraid they didn’t.’
‘And what exactly, may I ask,’ said Leeyes, as always sounding rather like Lady Bracknell, ‘have you done about this man, Forres, and his wife apparently absconding after allegedly defrauding a business partner but still caring about the welfare of a cat?’
‘We alerted the usual ports and aircraft terminals immediately,’ said Sloan, trying not to sound too defensive, ‘although I imagine it will have been a little late for that because the pair of them would almost certainly have been able to be well out of the country by the time we did so. Michael Wakefield – that’s the man who’s reported it to us—’
‘The injured party, I take it,’ said Leeyes.
‘Him,’ said Sloan cogently. ‘This man Wakefield also seemed to think it would have been too late because he only became aware that his partner had scarpered because the man hadn’t turned up at their place of work yesterday morning for an important annual accounts meeting.’ Sloan glanced down at his notebook. ‘That was when Fixby and Fixby, their accountants, brought Wakefield up to speed on the supposed theft.’
‘Which means that this Malcolm Forres had had plenty of time to make good his disappearance,’ concluded Leeyes, seizing as always on what mattered to the police. ‘And to destroy any incriminating evidence as well, I suppose,’ he added automatically.
‘I can only assume that the meeting being arranged for the next day is what will have brought matters to a head over there at Peverton that night, sir.’
Leeyes grunted.
The detective inspector hurried on. ‘It had been arranged as was customary at this time of the year by their accountants—’
‘Fixby and Fixby.’ Leeyes nodded.
‘To take place at Forres and Wakefield’s offices at the firm in the business park in Berebury at eleven o’clock the next morning.’
‘Yesterday,’ said Leeyes.
‘Yes, sir. That meeting was presumably known by both the partners to be for the signing off, together with their accountants, of the business’s annual accounts, as was normal at this time every year.’
‘It’s usually when a firm’s accounts aren’t ready to be signed off at the usual time of the year that you get real trouble,’ remarked Leeyes sagely. ‘It’s a sure sign that something’s wrong with the business.’
‘Obviously,’ ventured Sloan, keeping a wary eye on the expression on his superior officer’s face, ‘if this partner Forres is the guilty party, he wouldn’t have wanted to be sitting around waiting for any denouement by the firm’s accountants.’
‘And at the same time, the rest of them who were there were presumably going to be told that everything wasn’t hunky-dory,’ concluded the superintendent. ‘That’s what started the whole messy caboodle off, I take it?’
‘Yes, sir. There is one other rather worrying thing …’
The superintendent adjusted his position in his office chair for greater comfort. ‘Go on.’
‘The only possible conclusion that I can draw, sir, is that Malcom Forres didn’t show up because he had somehow or other got wind of the fact that the balloon was about to go up that morning and therefore made very sure that he wasn’t there when it did. And that his wife wasn’t available either.’
‘He would have known that the accounts were to be presented, surely,’ objected Leeyes. ‘After all, he is a partner, and if he had had anything to do with any shortfall he would have known about it anyway long before that.’
‘I admit that’s a bit of a puzzle, sir.’
‘Doesn’t make sense to me,’ said Leeyes flatly.
‘But he might not necessarily have known that the defalcation would come to light just then,’ suggested Sloan. The word ‘defalcation’ had only been mentioned once as a crime during his training and he relished the opportunity of using it now.
‘Explain yourself, man.’
‘For all we know he might have been getting away with robbery at a lesser level in previous years, sir.’ Sloan had already made a note that this possibility had to be considered but not necessarily explored at this stage.
‘How could he have done that?’ Leeyes asked at once.
‘I don’t really know, sir. Perhaps by stealing less at a time before then. I understand he’s actually taken the lot this year – if it is him,’ he added hastily, mindful that nothing had yet been proven. ‘But it might not have been the first time.’ He paused as another uneasy thought crossed his mind. ‘And if young Fixby was in dire need of money, I’m afraid that – theoretically at least – he could have been hand-in-glove with Forres in helping him in robbing the firm and then covering it up in the books. In which case Forres wouldn’t have expected the annual meeting to have presented any problem to him.’
‘Many a mickle makes a muckle,’ observed Leeyes obscurely.
‘The word on the street, I understand, sir, is that old Herbert Fixby, the accountant, is not the man he was and young Jason Fixby, his son, isn’t up to it either as well as having taken to the horses.’
‘The most dangerous animal known to man for money,’ said Leeyes, ‘and second only to polar bears for lives.’
‘Really, sir?’ said Sloan, trying to keep to the point.‘And in theory it’s always possible that this man Malcolm Forres might not have known that Fixby and Fixby had taken a smart young cookie on the staff.’ He chose not to volunteer the information that the smart young cookie was a woman, the superintendent being distinctly behind the times when it came to women’s progress within the professions.
The superintendent leant back in his chair and twiddled his pen. ‘So, Sloan, you’re suggesting, are you, that someone in Fixby’s office might have tipped the wink to Malcolm Forres that the balloon was about to go up, so that then he could make a getaway in time?’
‘I’m only saying that someone might have done, sir.’
Leeyes stroked his chin. ‘As you say, even young Fixby himself, perhaps. If he’s strapped for cash and wanted Forres to hand over some readies in exchange for a timely tip-off, he might have done rather well.’
‘Could be,’ said Sloan, who had already lived long enough to know that there was some clay in the feet of all men. ‘Or it could be just plain inefficiency before they took on this new employee. Lax procedures, perhaps,’ he suggested, greatly daring. Keeping to long-established – not to say outdated – practices at Berebury Police Station was something the rank and file on the strength didn’t like.
‘Or someone in Forres and Wakefield’s own firm, perhaps?’ suggested Leeyes. ‘They could have guessed or even known something was up, too.’
‘That I don’t know either at this stage, sir, not knowing yet who works there, but I shall certainly look into it.’ Knowing who could have – might have – tipped the wink to the guilty party before the police got to them was always something that mattered in every investigation. At the very least it implied a disrespect for the law but more usually improper complicity, if not actual collaboration. Or even misguided sympathy, sob stories sometimes having unexpected outcomes.
‘Better get on with that, then, Sloan,’ said Leeyes. ‘Although in my own experience, money people are usually quite cagey about what they tell other people and aren’t given to letting cats out of bags before they should.’ He paused and, mindful of some still unsolved cases in his patch, added thoughtfully, ‘If ever.’
‘What we don’t know yet either, sir,’ went on Sloan, ‘is exactly when Forres knew that the balloon was about to go up, let alone who told him. This Michael Wakefield – as I said, he’s the injured party, big time – told the solicitor that the whole debacle had been news to him until the point when their accountant spelt it all out to him at yesterday morning’s annual meeting.’ The Sloan family finances were kept on a rather shorter rein as their mortgage payments fell due once a month. And it would seem kept on a rather tighter rein, too, than some.
‘Ah, and so in theory this man Forres shouldn’t have known anything was missing before his partner, Michael Wakefield, did,’ concluded the superintendent smartly. ‘Or, come to that, anyone else either.’
‘Exactly, sir,’ said Sloan. ‘No one else at all except the accountants who had no reason to talk to anyone else. Besides, it would have been quite unprofessional of them anyway if in the event they had done so.’
‘But presumably this partner – Malcolm Forres, did you say he was called? – could have already worked out that this annual meeting might well be the point when the cat would be let out of the bag.’
‘Could be, sir,’ admitted Sloan.
‘And so I suppose he had already taken off together with his wife before anything became known.’ Leeyes gave a thin smile. ‘Leaving their live cat behind and not in any bag.’
Sloan acknowledged this witticism with a nod. ‘Presumably, sir.’ He didn’t like white-collar crime any more than the superintendent did: give him a simple case of assault any day. You knew where you were with physical violence and injury to real persons – that is, if you couldn’t have burglars in striped shirts carrying bags labelled ‘Swag’ as you had done in the comics of his boyhood.
Leeyes drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Which suggests to me, Sloan, that the Forres family’s absence might be going to be a prolonged one. Especially if they had already created a well-funded bolt hole in some unknown country abroad.’ He scowled, foreign administrations without extradition treaties always being an anathema to him.
‘Quite so, sir. And I’m afraid,’ he said practically, ‘it also has the effect of leaving Christine Forres unavailable for us to interview.’ Wives might not in theory have to give information about their husbands to the police – and have it all discounted in court anyway if they did – but it was a very clever woman indeed who never revealed anything at all in response to skilled police questioning.
‘This injured party – how injured, Sloan? What sort of scale are we talking about?’
‘Mega. Simon Puckle, as I said, he’s the firm’s solicitor, at this stage is calling the whole affair misappropriation of the firm’s assets without specifying how much has been taken or by whom.’
‘Cagey blighter.’
‘Yes, sir.’ In Sloan’s experience, solicitors usually were.
‘There are a lot of fancy names for one party stealing from another,’ pronounced the superintendent weightily, ‘but it all comes to the same thing in the end. Larceny was a popular name for it in my day.’
‘It sounds to have been grand larceny to me, sir,’ said Sloan, consulting his notebook. ‘For starters all the liquid assets of the firm have disappeared overnight. Working capital, bank reserves, advance payments, paper assets and so forth, all gone. We don’t know exactly where yet,’ he added, conscious that the police would sooner or later have to find out. He looked down at his notebook. ‘Oh, and the title deeds to the firm’s property are missing from the office safe.’
‘An inside job, then,’ concluded Leeyes.
‘Possibly so, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s too soon to say.’
‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Sloan.’
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘And what may I ask does this outfit …’
‘Forres and Wakefield,’ supplied Sloan.
‘Do to earn their daily crust?’
‘They’re printers of top-notch illustrated books for upmarket publishing firms. Wakefield took care of the artistic element and Forres saw to the business side.’
‘Which he seems to have done to his own satisfaction, if nobody else’s,’ observed Leeyes neatly.
‘Yes, sir.’ White-collar crime hadn’t ever been Sloan’s favourite subject either and it certainly wasn’t now.
Leeyes sighed and fingered the paper on his desk. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better do what you can, Sloan,’ said the superintendent, offloading the message sheet and therefore the problem across his desk to his subordinate. ‘You might as well take that boy Crosby with you out to the Wakefields’ house at Little Missal. He’s as dim as an inkle-weaver. At least if you do that it’ll get him out from under everybody’s feet here today and that’s always something on the credit side seeing as we’re talking about balance sheets.’
The sigh on the part of Detective Inspector Sloan was unexpressed but no less heartfelt. He suppressed the thought that a chocolate teapot would have been more useful in most of the cases Crosby had had any part in in his short career in the force. Detective Constable William Edward Crosby was the youngest and most jejune policeman in ‘F’ Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary and prone to making faux pas in plenty.
The superintendent sniffed. ‘I’m told he’s been asking Inspector Harpe if he could transfer to Traffic Division because he says there’s not enough excitement in the detection branch.’
Sloan said that he didn’t suppose for one moment that a white-collar crime such as this one appeared to be at this stage would provide the detective constable with any excitement whatsoever.
He had seldom been so wrong.
CHAPTER THREE
Stephanie Wakefield hadn’t slept any better than her husband had done the night before. They’d talked until two o’clock in the morning, Stephanie herself falling into a fitful sleep about three. When she awoke and came downstairs to make their breakfast, she found Michael already sitting at the kitchen table, cradling a mug of coffee. He had dressed for work.
‘You’re still going in as usual?’ she said, slightly surprised. ‘Somehow I didn’t think that you’d be going over to the works this morning.’
‘I’ve got to. I must be there,’ he said, ‘because whatever happens I’ve got to sign off the proofs of the Almstone Press book today. The earl will be very disappointed if his precious autobiography isn’t published on time and his publishing firm will lose a lot of money and so will we.’ The Earl of Ornum had recently committed to paper some reminiscences of his life and family under the title of Muniments and Their Hanapers. ‘Besides,’ went on the printer, ‘he’s got this socking great launch party arranged at Ornum House at the weekend. Don’t forget we’re both invited, will you? Les Moran and his wife are still on their world cruise and so they can’t go.’
Stephanie stirred her coffee mug and, forgetful for a moment of her own troubles, said, ‘If the earl would only write something about those two daughters of his instead, I reckon it would sell a great deal better.’
‘Very true, it would,’ agreed her husband, starting to get to his feet. ‘I don’t know which of them causes the more trouble – Mary or Victoria.’
‘Victoria,’ said Stephanie promptly. ‘At least that’s what I heard although I must say Lady Mary runs her a close second.’ The antics of the young Ornum twins were a byword in the county. ‘The Twindles, they call themselves.’
‘They would.’ Her husband was already shovelling some papers into his briefcase and said, ‘I must get going, dear. Gilbert told me that the publishers delivered the corrected page proofs to us yesterday afternoon.’ He swallowed the last of his coffee, and set the mug back on the table, saying, ‘At least everyone in the firm knows that that book needs seeing through the press as soon as possible no matter what.’
She did know that. Gilbert Hull was their production manager as well as being a highly skilled printer himself and responsible for getting books printed on time. Wakefield carried on, ‘And you know what they’re like over there at the Almstone Press.’
Stephanie did indeed know what the private press people were like – especially the Almstone one. High-class luxury printing, fore-edge painting, gold tooling and leather casing didn’t come cheap and moreover demanded highly skilled workmanship. The firm produced books that were meant to be shown off to and admired by a small coterie of learned bibliophiles or deposited in national and wealthy aristocratic libraries: something the printing experts at Forres and Wakefield were only too cognisant of. And if they hadn’t been, then the publisher was usually on hand to remind them, especially when that publisher was Almstone Press, owned by the very demanding Leslie Moran.
Stephanie wanted to ask her husband who he had in mind when using the word ‘us’ in today’s circumstances but thought better of it and only nodded. ‘What will you say to Gilbert and the rest of the staff about Malcolm when you get in?’ she said instead. ‘Gilbert’s certainly not going to be happy when he finds out what’s happened to the firm.’
‘I haven’t decided yet. I wouldn’t really want to brief him ahead of everyone else,’ said Wakefield uneasily. ‘You know how quickly rumours start. In fact, I’m not at all sure that Kay Harris hasn’t already spotted that something’s wrong. She’s always in early and although I locked Malcolm’s office door as soon as I realised what had happened, I can’t be sure that she hadn’t already been in there and spotted something was up, too. You know what she’s like.’
‘Inquisitive,’ said Stephanie promptly. Kay Harris was their in-house layout specialist and fiendishly pernickety guardian of grammar in all their publications.
‘Having the Almstone Press people breathing down our necks is quite enough on my plate already today,’ said her husband, ‘without my needing any more hassle.’
‘I can understand that.’ Stephanie nodded. ‘There would be a lot of talk. Bound to be.’
Her husband went on, ‘And you know what Leslie Moran over at Almstone can be like if everything isn’t up to snuff. The manuscript had to be ready for us to start printing today or it wouldn’t be on schedule for delivery on Friday and then there’d have been hell to pay all round.’
His wife nodded, still fearful of saying the wrong thing, but glad that Mike was still concentrating on his work.
‘And that book’s going to be a real winner, Steph.’
‘Good,’ she said warmly.
‘From the earl’s point of view, anyway, if nobody else’s. He’s very pleased with it so far and so he should be.’ Wakefield always took the view that the contents of the books they printed were none of his concern. It was the physical book that mattered to him.
‘Good,’ she said again.
‘I must say Forres and Wakefield have made a thoroughly good job of it.’ Wakefield had vowed never to mention Malcolm Forres’ name ever again and so he went on hastily, ‘Gilbert’s done exceptionally well with all the illustrations.’ Gilbert Hull was a dab hand at dealing with those. And with photographs.
‘But did you get it past Kay all right?’
She knew that Mrs Kay Harris was also their proofreader par excellence, quite prepared to hold up production over a semi-colon and ready to deliver her renowned disquisition on the Oxford comma at any time.
He managed a half-smile and a nod.
‘Will you still be able to start printing it today, though?’ Stephanie asked dubiously. ‘That’s if the firm isn’t yours any longer? Technically, I mean, of course,’ she added hurriedly, catching sight of the expression on his face.
‘I think so since it’s work in progress. Leslie Moran’ll be pretty upset if we can’t,’ her husband replied. ‘Seeing as the Ornums have got this enormous launch party lined up for it over at Ornum House with the local press and all coming, to say nothing of the great and the good of the whole county.’
‘And the twins,’ pointed out Stephanie.
He grimaced. ‘It does mean, though, that I’ll have to come to some arrangement with the bank pretty smartly so that we can keep going on a day-to-day basis. I’m going to go and see them as soon as I possibly can. We’ll need the money for the wages by the end of the month. And more paper, too.’ He downed the last of his coffee as he shrugged his shoulders into his coat. ‘Luckily, we’d just paid the ink people.’
‘Then you haven’t told the staff anything at all?’ she persisted.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to risk anyone walking out on us – I mean, me – before this book gets printed.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Breakfast at Ornum House was more traditional than that which was usually eaten elsewhere in the county of Calleshire. Nothing out of cardboard boxes graced the table there. Serving dishes at Ornum were still laid out in the old-fashioned way on the long sideboard in the dining room with the family helping themselves to whatever they wanted as and when they appeared downstairs.
‘Now that damn printer, Michael Wakefield, won’t even let me have marble endpapers in my book,’ complained Jonas Augustus Bonamy Cremond, 15th Earl of Ornum, casting an opened letter down on the breakfast table with a gesture of disdain.
His wife, Letitia, murmured, ‘How tiresome of him, dear,’ but didn’t look up from her study of the Births, Marriages and Deaths columns in the daily newspaper.
‘The man seems to forget who’s paying the bill for printing my book.’ The earl puffed his chest out and said, ‘After all, I am the author.’
‘And how,’ muttered his daughter Victoria under her breath.
‘What’s marbling?’ asked his other daughter, Mary, her twin.
‘A nice design inside both the front and back covers of a book,’ said her father. ‘The endpapers, they call them.’
‘Wavy lines,’ pronounced Victoria.
‘In colour,’ added her father.
‘Usually just shades of dark blue,’ said Victoria. She was the elder twin and inclined to make much of it. ‘Mixed with red.’
‘Blue and red is mauve,’ said Mary.
‘T’isn’t,’ said her sister.
‘Blue with a touch of red, then,’ came back Mary.
‘Don’t argue,’ said her mother automatically. ‘By the way, darlings, who’s coming for the weekend?’
