The Case of the Missing Bronte (19 page)

‘Perry, what on earth is happening? Suddenly you start muttering like a madman and then you go off the line. Are you trying to drive me crazy or something?'

I told her what had been going on, and where I now was.

‘Poor old thing,' said Jan. ‘It sounds as if you've practically driven her over the brink.'

‘OK — poor old thing. But why should middle-class people expect the sort of kid-glove treatment which they'd hate us to give your average street thug? She did everything except remind me that she paid her taxes. Most people seem to regard that as exempting them from suspicion. At best this old duck was silly. At worst — well, she's an intelligent woman, or she couldn't do the job she does do. Don't tell me she didn't know what she was doing when she agreed to do the job for the Scands. Did she think it was all in a day's work when she agreed to receive the manuscript in the way she did? And when she found that it was old, and probably valuable — didn't she have a faint whiff of suspicion? I bet they offered her a mint of money for doing it.'

‘So they ought to have. But it's obvious she was feeling guilty even before you came.'

‘Nervous, anyway. All right — probably guilty too. The dregs of the good old British Nonconformist conscience. When that sort of conscience is really reduced to the dregs it goes batty, and starts frequenting places like the
Tabernacle of the Risen Moses. That's the thing I'm most afraid of: that Miss Boothroyd has opened her heart to the dreadful Amos. I refuse to call it confession. Blabbing might be the word.'

‘You don't think he's given up?'

‘I do not. I think he'd come after it. That is, if he isn't in it with James L. Parfitt himself. That's something I just can't make up my mind about.'

‘But, Perry, are you going to stick around there like a stuffed owl all night? What's the point?'

‘I'm not. I'm just waiting till dark.'

‘Then what?'

‘Oh, then I'm going in.'

‘You're not, Perry! Without a warrant?'

‘Warrants take time. I've been told,' I said carefully, ‘that they don't worry too much about the rule book, in Leeds.'

‘But, Perry, it could be dangerous. You might — '

But I put down the phone on that. Of course I intended to take all precautions. But I felt that at last I had the case under control, and from now on I was going to make the running. Now all I had to do was wait until dark.

But nothing is slower in coming than night on a summer evening. I dallied in the telephone booth for a bit, but before long another user appeared. I strolled up and down Jubilee Parade, loitered on the corners, inspected the houses and gardens as if I were interested in buying property. Gradually the lawn-mowers ceased to hum, and were cleaned and put away in garages and sheds. More television sets started winking in the windows as more people settled down in front of the evening news, to get their statistics on unemployment and inflation, the chirpings of comfort and doom from politicians. The odd car drove up, bringing people from pubs and cinemas. A few upstairs lights went on as children were put to bed.
Finally cloud began to come up, to hasten the twilight process. The light became tenuous, the air heavy. I walked round to my parked car, and fetched a torch. In those final minutes before night fell I strolled once more along Jubilee Parade, hell of a casual, and then pushed open the sticky gate of No. 45 and let myself into the gloomy garden.

The late-Victorian middle-classes certainly had a way with a garden. It was all very well for Wordsworth to babble about the spiritual benefits of one impulse from a vernal wood. He never tried it with a suburban shrubbery. As I crept along the front of the house all sorts of heavy, green-black leaves, shiny and unpleasant, brushed my face. The darkness suddenly seemed impenetrable. I had to duck to avoid sudden, unexpected overhanging branches. Round the side of the house the overgrowth thinned a little, and I could just see, through a gap, the living-room of the house next door. The family were crouched in front of one of those American police series where the credit titles are so long and arty that it's time for the commercial break before they're over. I didn't think I needed to fear interference from that quarter.

I parted fronds, and plodded cautiously ahead to the back garden. A weedy tentacle caught my foot, and I went sprawling into a mass of nettles. I repressed the blasphemy that rose to my lips (who said one was close to God in a garden?) and ploughed on. At the back of the house there was an overgrown lawn, but by now it was as totally dark as the front. Totally dark and still. So it was too on the other side of the house. I lingered on the lawn. The back garden seemed to abut on a similar garden on another street. I needn't, presumably, expect any incursions from that direction. The house was completely dark. The problem now was how to get in.

The obvious way was to start trying the windows. Miss
Boothroyd had left in a hurry and a state of hysteria, and was all too likely to have left one unfastened. On the other hand, the vision of myself doing a sneak-in similar to that of Amos Macklehose at Miss Wing's cottage was not an enticing one. If I knew Miss Boothroyd, she was a typical middle-class householder, and as a policeman I know that your typical middle-class householder usually has a spare key hidden somewhere. Somewhere, be it said, where any burglar with half a brain can find it. And what any burglar can do, any burglarious policeman can do too. So much more dignified, I thought, to go in through the front door. I edged my way back through the undergrowth, towards the front of the house.

There I was much more exposed than at the back. There was a street-light no more than a few yards up the road. I lingered under an evergreen of a particularly aggressive kind. The light enabled me to get a good look at the front porch. The usual resort of the feeble-minded was the front-door mat. Miss Boothroyd was not so silly. Over the door, on the top ledge, was a possibility. But she was not that tall, and I guessed she would only just be able to reach there. There were two geranium pots on either side of the porch. Those seemed very good bets. What say she would put it under the one to her right hand as she came out of the front door?

I strolled up to the porch, raised the pot with an air of casual authority, felt under it, extracted the key, and let myself in by the front door as if I were a helpful friend, come to water the pot plants. Easy as winking.

But inside was pitch dark. I was fairly sure I had not been seen coming in, so there was no point in advertising my presence. Miss Boothroyd could well have phoned a neighbour and asked her to keep an eye on the place. I had not been able to get a look at the hall through the crack in the door Miss Boothroyd had vouchsafed me on our interview. I had to switch on my torch. Cautiously I
played it round the walls. It was very much the sort of place one would expect: a chiming clock, ticking authoritatively and showing the wrong time; lots of dark varnish; and the sort of wall-paper that seems to be aspiring to the condition of dark varnish.

I flashed the torch along, keeping the beam close to the floor. To the right, the front room. The best room, no doubt. Miss Boothroyd certainly had not been typing there — the noise had come from further off. I advanced a few steps. To the left was the staircase. Shabby carpeting, getting stringy and dangerous in places. I went further forwards. Two other doorways: to the left, the kitchen, to the right — what? The other living-room, probably — doubling, perhaps, as a study, to save on heating? This seemed to be the best bet. I pushed open the door. Through the window, sailing above the acacias and laurels, the moon gazed pale and solemn through the window. I extinguished the torch and went over to pull the curtains. They were heavy and old, velvet with worn pile. I tugged the cord at their side and they slid closed. Now I felt well shut in, insulated. I put the torch on again and flashed it with more confidence.

It was a big room, damp and chill. Dark too, at the best of times, I guessed. The armchairs were deep, heavy and springy: you could see the round marks of the springs through the covers. The desk was not by the window but near the door, facing the wall. No distraction, no deviation from the work in hand — unless one could call a mildewed print of Landseer's
Hawking in the Olden Time
a distraction. In the centre of the desk an upright, heavy, manual typewriter. And on either side . . . I went over to it, my heart beating.

On the right side, face downwards, was the transcript. Two hundred and fifty pages of it. Industrious Miss Boothroyd! Money-hungry Miss Boothroyd! On either end of the desk, two piles — one large, one small. Square,
brown, aged sheets of paper, folded and roughly torn at the edges. As I gazed at them, Miss Boothroyd's dark room, Jubilee Parade, Leeds itself, faded to nothingness, and I remembered seeing other tiny manuscript books on that visit to Haworth Parsonage; and as my mind went back to that July visit two years ago I remembered the moors outside, and that endless purple blanket of heather, its blinding, incongruously regal splendour.

My heart seemed to contract, my whole body stand still, as if I had caught a first glimpse of something or somebody overwhelmingly beautiful. I took the large pile in my hands. A feeling flowed through me that was almost sexual. I turned over the sheets of the typescript. She had done the first three-quarters or so of the novel, with only twenty-odd sheets left in the small pile of manuscript. There was no title, but the words Chapter I were written at the top of the page. I brought my torch closer and peered at the opening words:

That summer, the summer of my twenty-second year, was the last summer of my content. July and August had been hot, with blazing sun and a heavy air . . .

Suddenly my torch was no longer the only light in the room. Two shafts of light from the door illuminated an automatic and a long, gleaming knife. And above the knife was the impassive, Mongolian face of the Norwegian Finn, his eyes sparkling in the torchlight.

‘Ah, Mr Police. I said I would know you again.'

‘Put it down, Mr Police,' said Knut Ratikainen. ‘Put it down on the desk where you got it from.'

He had a soft, silky voice, almost a purr. You didn't have to dislike cats to dislike his voice.

‘And then put your hands on head,' said Rolf Tingvold. ‘You done enough trouble for today.'

I meditated some kind of action with my feet. There seemed a choice between kicking at the knife and getting a bullet in my ribs, and kicking at the gun and getting a knife in my ribs. Both feet at once was the sort of Bruce Lee stuff I couldn't manage. I put my hands on my head and decided to delay things with a little light conversation, in the traditional manner.

‘Trouble?' I said. ‘What kind of trouble was that? Upset Miss Boothroyd before she had finished the job, I suppose? Very worrying for you. Mr Parfitt will not be pleased.'

‘All those names, just like before. We never heard of this guy. You talk nonsenses. Is not important, anyway. Plenty of typists in the world.'

‘Lucky she'd got so far,' I said. ‘Fast worker she must be.'

‘With us to hurry her up,' said Ratikainen, with a nasty snigger.

‘Oh, you've been here all the time, have you? That must have been cosy for her. She looked the type who'd really appreciate having chaps like you in her house.'

‘Two days,' said Tingvold. ‘Since we knew we'd shaken off your people. We thought we might as well keep a
watch over our property. Keep the work going well.'

‘That rather explains her nervous condition, then. Anyway, why worry about that? Mr Parfitt will be proud of you. Millionaires like employees who keep their noses to the grindstone.'

‘What's this about noses? You talk riddles, as usual. We do this for ourselves. For our love of literature, eh, Knut? Still, it's nice to have a little chat. Cosy, like you say. We been waiting for this.'

‘I been waiting for it,' said Ratikainen.

‘Knut's been waiting. Knut, he's very good with little chats. But in this case we don't expect much from you. You haven't got anything we want.'

‘Unlike Tetterfield,' I said.

‘Unlike poor old Tetterfield. What a brave man! Even the best Knut could do was not enough. He never told us anything. We had to find the thing ourselves.'

‘With Tetterfield you struck lucky,' I said. ‘He wouldn't talk to us.'

‘He thought he still got it,' said Tingvold, with a sneer. ‘He laid in that hospital and he thought he still got it. He thought it was worth going through all that.'

‘Tetterfield was different,' said Ratikainen, flicking his tongue round his lips. ‘I had to be sure Tetterfield didn't die.'

I didn't like the unspoken corollary.

‘Well, well,' said Tingvold. ‘We don't think we leave till maybe two, three in the night. Very dark. Everybody sleep. That give us four, five hours, right? We can have fun, eh?'

‘Anyone for Scrabble?' I said, feeling a bit like Albert Campion.

‘Where shall we take him, Rolf?' said Ratikainen. ‘What say we take him upstairs? We can put the light on in the landing. Nobody see. Then Mr Police can see what happen to him. Watch it all in slow motion, like the
football on the television. Perhaps we put him in the bath, eh, Rolf? I like the bath game.'

‘Whatever you say, Knut,' said his obedient side-kick. ‘I always enjoy your shows. What say we tie him up first? Truss him up like a chicken, eh?'

‘Just the hands, Rolf. Maybe a gag, so he don't make too much noise. Not that it matters much. If he does, the neighbours think it's the television. Nice gangster show. I tie him up, Rolf.'

He took his knife firmly in his hand and came towards me. If it had been him left covering me I might have tried something. But the revolver glimmered in the torchlight, and there is something very final about a revolver. Ratikainen took the collar of my jacket in his left hand and slit it down the back with his knife. Then he pulled it over my head. He went out into the kitchen to fetch some rope. He jerked my hands down, and tied them behind my back. It was coarse, hairy rope. It would be. It chafed like hell. The really nasty thing was when he came round in front of me again and looked into my face. The broad, impassive face was changed: he was practically slobbering with anticipation. Then he went into the kitchen again, and fetched a tea-towel. He tied it tightly round and in my mouth. It smelt of stale food, and seemed to be going right down my throat. I retched with nausea. Ratikainen kicked me, as if I ought to be showing gratitude.