Clutch of Constables (11 page)

They had cast off and the engine had started when Troy heard the telephone ringing in the lock-keeper’s office. A moment later his wife came out and ran along the tow-path towards them.

“Skipper! Hold on! Message for you.”

“O.K. Thanks.”

The engine fussed and stopped and the
Zodiac
moved back a little towards the wharf. The lock-keeper came out and arched his hands round his mouth. “Car Hire and Taxi Service, Longminster.” He called. “Message for you, Skipper. Miss something-or-another Carrick asked them to ring. She’s been called away to a sick friend. Hopes you’ll understand. O.K.?”

“O.K.”

“Ta-ta, then.”

“So long, then, Jim. Thanks.”

The Skipper returned to his wheelhouse doing ‘thumbs up’ to Troy on the way. The
Zodiac
moved out into mid-stream, bound for Longminster.

Dr Natouche had come on deck during this exchange. He said: “Mrs Alleyn, may I have one word with you?”

“Yes, of course,” Troy said. “Where? Is it private?”

“It is, rather. Perhaps if we moved aft.”

They moved aft round the tarpaulin-covered heap of extra chairs. There, lying on the deck, was an inflated, orange-coloured Li-lo mattress.

Dr Natouche, stooped, looked down at it and up at Troy. “Miss Rickerby-Carrick slept here last night, I think,” he said.

“She did?”

“Yes. That, at least, was her intention.”

Troy waited.

“Mrs Alleyn, you will excuse me, I hope, for asking this question. You will, of course, not answer it if you do not wish. Did Miss Rickerby-Carrick speak to you after she returned to the ship last evening?”

“No. I went very early to my cabin. I’d had a go of migraine.”

“I thought you seemed to be not very well.”

“It was soon over. I think she may have — sort of scratched — at my door. I fancy she did but I was asleep and by the time I opened my door there was nobody.”

“I see. She intimated to me that she had something to tell you.”

“I know. Oh, dear!” Troy said. “
Should
I have gone to her cabin, do you think?”

“Ah, no! No. It’s only that Miss Rickerby-Carrick has a very high opinion of you and I thought perhaps she intended—” He hesitated and then said firmly. “I think I must explain that this lady spoke to me last evening. About her insomnia. She had been given some tablets — American proprietary product — by Miss Hewson and she asked me what I thought of these tablets.”

“She offered me one.”

“Yes? I said that they were unknown to me and suggested that she should consult her own doctor if her insomnia was persistent. In view of her snoring performance on the previous night I felt it might, at least in part, be an imaginary condition. My reason for troubling you with the incident is this. I formed the opinion that Miss Rickerby-Carrick was overwrought, that she was experiencing some sort of emotional and nervous crisis. It was very noticeable—very marked. I felt some concern. You understand that she did not consult me on the score of this condition: if she had it would be improper for me to speak to you about it. I think she may have been on the point of doing so when she suddenly broke off, said something incoherent and left me.”

“Do you think she’s actually — well — mentally unbalanced?”

“That is a convenient phrase without real definition. I think she is disturbed—which is another such phrase. It is because I think so that I am a little worried about this departure in the middle of the night. Unnecessarily so, I dare say.”

“You heard the telephone message, just now?”

“Yes. A friend’s illness.”

“Can it,” Troy exclaimed, “be Mavis?”

She and Dr Natouche stared speculatively at each other. She saw the wraith of a smile on his mouth.

“No. Wait a bit,” Troy went on. “She walked up to the village with Mr Lazenby and me. My head was swinging with migraine and I scarcely listened. He might remember. Of course she talked incessantly about Mavis. I think she said Mavis is in the Highlands. I’m sure she did. Do you suppose Miss Rickerby-Carrick has shot off by taxi to the Highlands in the dead of night?”

“Perhaps only to Longminster and thence by train?”

“Who can tell! Did nobody hear anything?” Troy wondered. “I mean, somebody must have come on board with this news and roused her up. It would be a disturbance.”

“Here? At the stern? It’s far removed from our cabins.”

“Yes,” Troy said, “but how would they know she was back here?”

“She told me she would take her tablet and sleep on deck.”

Troy stooped down and after a moment, picked up a blotched, red scrap of cloth.

“What’s that?” she asked.

The long fingers that looked as if they had been imperfectly treated with black cork, turned it over and laid it in the pinkish palm. “Isn’t it from the cover of her diary?” Troy said.

“I believe you’re right.” He was about to drop it overboard but she said: “No—don’t.”

“No?”

“Well — only because—” Troy gave an apologetic laugh. “I’m a policeman’s wife,” she said. “Put it down to that.”

He took out a pocket-book and slipped the scrap of cloth into it.

“I expect we’re making a song about nothing,” Troy said.

Suddenly she felt an almost overwhelming impulse to tell Dr Natouche about her misgivings and the incidents that had prompted them. She had a vivid premonition of how he would look as she confided her perplexity. His head would be courteously inclined and his expression placid and a little withdrawn—a consulting-room manner of the most reassuring kind. It really would be a great relief to confide in Dr Natouche. An opening phrase had already shaped itself in her mind when she remembered another attentive listener.

“And by-the-way, Mrs Alleyn,” Superintendent Tillottson had said in his infuriatingly bland manner, “We won’t mention this little matter to anybody, shall we? Just a routine precaution.”

So she held her tongue.

“I suppose one of his greatest assets,” Alleyn said, “is his ability to instil confidence in the most unlikely people. An infuriated Bolivian policeman is supposed to have admitted that before he could stop himself he found he was telling the Jampot about his own trouble with a duodenal ulcer. This may not be a true story. If not, it was invented to illustrate the more winning facets in the Foljambe façade. The moral is: that it takes all sorts to make a thoroughly bad lot and it sometimes takes a conscientious police officer quite a long time to realise this simple fact of unsavoury life. You can’t type criminals. It’s just as misleading to talk about them as if they never behave out of character as it is to suppose the underworld is riddled with charmers who only cheat or kill by some kind of accident.

“Foljambe has been known to behave with perfect good-nature and also with ferocity. He is attracted by beauty at a high artistic level. His apartment in Paris is said to have been got up in the most impeccable taste. He likes money better than anything else in life and he enjoys making it by criminal practices. If he was left a million pounds it’s odds on he’d continue to operate the rackets. If people got in his way he would continue to remove them.

“I’ve told you that my wife’s letters missed me in New York and were forwarded to San Francisco. By the time they reached me her cruise in the Zodiac had only two nights to go. As you know I rang the Department and learnt that Mr Fox was in France, following what was hoped to be a hot line on Foljambe. I got through to Mr Tillottson who in view of this development was inclined to discount the Zodiac altogether. I was not so inclined.

“Those of you who are married,” Alleyn said, “will understand my position. In the Force our wives are not called upon to serve in female James-Bondage and I imagine most of you would agree that any notion of their involvement in our work would be outlandish, ludicrous and extremely unpalatable. My wife’s letters, though they made very little of her misgivings, were disturbing enough for me to wish her out of the Zodiac. I thought of asking Tillottson to get her to ring me up but I had missed her at Crossdyke and if I waited until she reached Longminster I myself would miss my connection from San Francisco. And if, by any fantastic and most improbable chance one of her fellow-passengers in some way tied in with the Andropulos-Jampot show, the last thing we would want to do was to alert him by sending police messages to lock-keepers asking her to leave the cruise. My wife is a celebrated painter who is known, poor thing, to be married to a policeman.”

The Scot in the second row smirked.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “in the upshot I told Tillottson I thought my present job might finish earlier than expected and I would get back as soon as I could. I would remind you that at this stage I had no knowledge of the disappearance of Miss Rickerby-Carrick. If I had heard that bit I would have taken a very much stronger line.

“As it was I told Tillotson—”

-1-

There was no denying it, the cruise was much more enjoyable without Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

From Crossdyke to Longminster the sun shone upon fields, spinneys, villages and locks. It was the prettiest of journeys. Everybody seemed to expand. The Hewsons’ cameras clicked busily. Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock discovered a common interest in stamps and showed each other the contents of sad-looking envelopes. Caley Bard told Troy a great deal about butterflies but she refused, nevertheless, to look at the Death’s Head he had caught last evening on Crossdyke Hill. “Well,” he said gaily, “Don’t look at it if it’s going to set you against me. Why can’t you be more like Hay? She said she belonged to the S.P.C.A. but lepidoptera didn’t count.”

“Do you call her Hay?”

“No. Do you?”

“No, but she asked me to.”

“Stand-offish old you, as usual,” he said and for no reason at all Troy burst out laughing. Her own apprehensions and Dr Natouche’s anxiety had receded in the pleasant atmosphere of the third day’s cruise.

Even Dr Natouche turned out to have a hobby. He liked to make maps. If anyone as tranquil and grave as Dr Natouche could be said to exhibit coyness, he did so when questioned by Troy and Bard about his cartography. He was, he confessed, attempting a chart of their cruise: it could not be called a true chart because it was not being scientifically constructed but he hoped to make something of it when he had consulted Ordnance maps. Troy wondered if persons of Dr Natouche’s complexion ever blushed and was sure, when he was persuaded to show them his little drawing, that he felt inclined to do so.

It was executed in very hard lead-pencil and was in the style of the sixteenth-century English cartographers with tiny drawings of churches and trees in their appropriate places and with extremely minute lettering.

Troy exclaimed with pleasure and said: “That we should have two calligraphers on board! Mr Pollock, do come and look at this.”

Pollock who had been talking to the Hewsons, hesitated, and then limped over and looked at the map but not at Dr Natouche.

“Very nice,” he said and returned to the Hewsons.

Troy had made a boldish move. Pollock, since the beginning of the cruise had only just kept on the hither side of insulting Dr Natouche. He had been prevented, not by any tactics that she and Caley Bard employed but rather by the behaviour of Dr Natouche himself who skilfully avoided giving Pollock any chance to exhibit ill-will. Somehow it came about that at meal-times Dr Natouche was as far removed as possible from Mr Pollock. On deck, Dr Natouche had conveyed himself to the area farthest aft, which Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s mattress, deflated to the accompaniment of its own improper noises, by the boy Tom, had previously occupied.

So Dr Natouche had offered no opportunity for Mr Pollock to insult him and Mr Pollock had retired, as Caley Bard pointed out to Troy, upon a grumpy alliance with the Hewsons with whom he could be observed in ridiculously furtive conference, presumably about racial relations.

To these skirmishes and manoeuvres Mr Lazenby appeared to be oblivious. He swapped philatelic gossip with Mr Pollock, he discussed the tendencies of art in Australia with Troy when she was unable to escape him, and he made jovial, unimportant small-talk with Dr Natouche.

Perhaps the most effective deterrent to any overt display of racialism from Mr Pollock was an alliance he had formed with the Tretheways.

To Troy, it appeared that Mr Pollock, in common, she thought, with every other male in the
Zodiac
, was extremely conscious of Mrs Tretheway’s allure. That was not surprising. What did surprise was Mrs Tretheway’s fairly evident response to Mr Pollock’s offering of homage. Evidently, she found him attractive but not apparently to an extent that might cause the Skipper any concern since Troy heard them all planning to meet at a pub in Longminster. They were going to have a bit of an evening, they agreed.

Troy herself was in something of a predicament. She could not, without making a ridiculous issue of it, refuse either to lunch or dine with Caley Bard in Longminster and indeed she had no particular desire to refuse since she enjoyed his company and took his cock-eyed and purely verbal advances with the liberal pinch of salt that she felt sure he expected. So she agreed to dine with him but said she had appointments during the earlier part of the day.

Somehow or another, she must yet again visit a police-station and commune with Superintendent Bonney whose personality, according to Superintendent Tillottson, she would find so very congenial. She could not help but feel that the legend of the lost fur had begun to wear thin but she supposed, unless some likelier device occurred to her, that she must continue to employ it. She told Caley Bard she’d have to make a final inquiry as they’d promised to let the Longminster police know if the wretched fur turned up and she also hinted at visits to the curator of the local gallery and a picture-dealer of some importance.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll accept your feeble excuses for the day and look forward to dinner. After all you
are
famous and allowances must be made.”

“They are
not
feeble excuses,” Troy shouted. Afterwards she determined at least to call on the curator and thus partially salve her conscience. She had arrived at this stage of muddled thinking when Dr Natouche approached her with an extremely formal invitation.

“You have almost certainly made your own arrangements for today,” he said. “In case you have not I must explain that I have invited a friend and his wife to luncheon at the Longminster Arms. He is Sir Leslie Fergus, a biochemist of some distinction, now dedicated to research. We were fellow-students. I would, of course, be delighted if by any fortunate chance you were able to come.”

Troy saw that, unlike Caley Bard who had cheerfully cornered and heckled her, Dr Natouche was scrupulous to leave her the easiest possible means of escape. She said at once that she would be delighted to lunch at the Longminster Arms.

“I am so pleased,” said Dr Natouche with his little bow and withdrew.

“Well!” ejaculated Caley who had unblushingly listened to this exchange. “You
are
a sly-boots!”

“I don’t know why you should say that.”

“You wouldn’t lunch with me.”

“I’m dining with you,” Troy said crossly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m being a bore and unfunny. I won’t do it again. Thank you for dining. I hope it’ll be fun and I hope your luncheon is fabulous.”

She now began to have misgivings about Caley Bard’s dead set at her.

“At my age,” Troy thought, “this sort of thing can well become ridiculous. Am I in for a tricky party, I wonder.”

The day, however, turned out to be a success. They reached Longminster at 10.30. Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock were going straight to the Minster itself and from there planned to follow the itinerary set out in the
Zodiac
’s leaflet. The Hewsons, who had intended to join them were thrown into a state of ferment when the Skipper happened to remark that it would be half-day closing in Tollardwark on the return journey. They would arrive there at noon.

Miss Hewson broke out in lamentation. The junk shops where she was persuaded she would find the most exciting and delectable bargains! Shut! Now wasn’t that just crazy planning on somebody’s part? To spend the afternoon in a closed town? In vain did the Tretheways explain that the object of the stay was a visit by special bus to a historic Abbey six miles out of Tollardwark. The Hewsons said in unison that they’d seen enough abbeys to last them the rest of their lives. What they desired was a lovely long shop-crawl. Why Miss Hewson had seen four of the cutest little old shops—one in particular—she appealed to Troy to witness how excited she had been.

They went on and on until at last Caley Bard, in exasperation, suggested that as it was only a few miles by road back to Tollardwark they might like to spend the day there. Mrs Tretheway said there were buses and the road was a very attractive one, actually passing the Abbey. The Skipper said there were good car-hire services, as witness the one that had rung through with Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s message.

The Hewsons went into a huffy conference from which they emerged with their chagrin somewhat abated. They settled on a car. They would spend half the day in Tollardwark and half in Longminster. One could see, Troy thought, the timeless charm of the waterways evaporating in the Hewsons’ esteem. They departed, mollified and asking each other if it didn’t seem kind of dopey to spend two days getting from one historic burg to another when you could take them both in between breakfast and dinner with time left over for shopping.

Caley Bard announced that he was going to have his hair cut and then go to the museum where the lepidoptera were said to be above average. Dr Natouche told Troy that he would expect her at one o’clock and the two men walked off together.

Troy changed into a linen suit, consulted Mr Tillottson’s map and found her way to the Longminster central police-station and Superintendent Bonney.

Afterwards she was unable to make up her mind whether or not she had been surprised to find Mr Tillottson there.

He explained that he happened to be in Longminster on a routine call. He did not suggest that he had timed his visit to coincide with Troy’s. He merely shook hands again with his customary geniality and introduced her to Superintendent Bonney.

Mr Bonney was another large man but in his case seniority would have seemed to have run to bone rather than flesh. His bones were enormous. They were excessive behind his ears, under and above his eyes and at his wrists. His jaws were cadaverous and when he smiled, even his gums were knobbly. Troy would not have fallen in with Mr Tillottson’s description of his colleague as a lovely chap.

They were both very pleasant. Troy’s first question was as to her husband’s return. Was there any chance, did they think, that it might be earlier because if so—

They said, almost in unison, that Alleyn had rung through last evening: that he would have liked to talk to her this morning but would have missed his connection to New York. And that he hoped he might be home early next week but that depended upon a final conference. He sent his love, they said, beaming at her, and if she was still uneasy she was to abandon ship. “Perhaps a telegram from a sick friend—” Mr Tillottson here suggested and Troy felt a strong inclination to laugh in his face and ask him if it should be signed “Mavis”.

She told them about Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

They listened with great attention saying: “Yerse. Yerse.” and “Is that a fact?” and “Fancy that, now.” When she had finished Mr Bonney glanced at his desk pad where he had jotted down a note or two.

“The Longminster Car Hire and Taxi Service, eh?” he said. “Now, which would that be, I wonder, Bert? There’s Ackroyd’s and there’s Rutherford’s.”

“We might make a wee check, Bob,” Mr. Tillottson ventured.

“Yerse,” Mr Bonney agreed. “We might at that.”

He made his calls while Troy, at their request, waited.