‘Well, thanks for your filling-in, Mr Sandford,’ he said. ‘Now, may we have your alibi for the afternoon and evening of November the nineteenth?’
The astonishment and deflation in Bill Sandford’s face was so reminiscent of his son Andrew’s reactions to anticipation of a try-on that Pollard suppressed a grin with difficulty. It was only a fleeting expression, however.
‘Sure, Superintendent. Didn’t Swinburne or somebody say that even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea? Now, let me think… On leaving the Chapter House, I proceeded — there’s a real one hundred per cent fuzz-word for you — to the Dean Street car park, got into my car, and drove to Westbridge. I got there at a quarter to two, just in time for a pint and a meat pie at the Man-o’-War, my favourite pub. It’s down by the docks, and its patrons are a super crowd: even my vocabulary’s been enlarged since I took to going there. After the landlord booted us out I drove to my current girlfriend’s flat, 17b Wentworth Road. She was at work, but I have a latchkey. Time of arrival: about 2.25 p.m. Witness: Mrs Trevor-Montley, widow, who observed it as usual from behind the net curtains of her ground-floor flat, number 17a. My girlfriend is Miss Angela Barrow, employed as a secretary by Mr Tomkinson, senior partner of Messrs Tomkinson, Heriot and Tomkinson, Solicitors, of Portway, Westbridge. She returned home at approximately 5.15 p.m., and we spent an enjoyable evening and night in each other’s company. On the following morning we left together, Angela to her job, and I to come back here and get on with that illuminated address over there. I do a bit of calligraphy to help out. The first I heard about poor old Ethel was when I got back from work on Friday afternoon, and it seemed a good idea to clear out again at once. Angela’s firm is a bit Establishment, and I wanted time to think.’
‘Got all the relevant facts, Inspector?’ Pollard asked Toye without comment.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. Well, I think that’s all for the moment, Mr Sandford, thank you.’
He got up to go, but paused at the table.
‘Nice job,’ he commented. ‘Did you do that list of Ambercombe vicars in the church?’
‘Yea.’ Bill Sandford sounded surprised. ‘Kids’ stuff, that: just plain. This sort of thing’s a lot dicier, especially the gold leaf on the Roman capitals.’
At the door Pollard looked back, and met a pair of humorous but wary blue eyes.
‘Shall we say honours easy, Mr Sandford?’ he asked.
Out of earshot Toye snorted in disapproval.
‘Wasting the time of the police like that! It’s an offence. He’s up to the neck in something all right. It sticks out a mile.’
‘Your metaphors are a bit mixed, but I absolutely agree,’ Pollard replied. ‘As you imply, he’s doing an Aldridge on us.’
‘How many more dead ends are we going to land up in?’ Toye demanded rhetorically. ‘What about the List C people we haven’t got round to yet?’
‘My remark about the case being two jobs for the price of one seems to have been an underestimate,’ Pollard agreed. ‘Nothing for it but slogging on, though. We’ll collect the chit from the Rectory, and then head for Westbridge. Check Sandford’s alibi which will be perfectly sound, and then get that plate box from the bank.’
Chapter 8
‘My position is simply intolerable, Superintendent,’ Mrs Trevor-Montley assured Pollard, her full cheeks quivering with impotent indignation. ‘After my husband died — he was a consultant at one of our leading hospitals before he retired — this house was too big for me. I wanted to stay in my old home with all its happy memories, so I sold the first floor to a man called Blount, for conversion into a flat, and kept the ground floor as a flat for myself, with the dear garden. Blount undertook to make the sort of flat that would attract really nice people, but he turned out to be completely unreliable. He made two cheap little flats and let them to people that one has absolutely nothing in common with. As far as the Hutchinsons go, I might be a great deal worse off: they’re a quite inoffensive retired couple from somewhere in the Midlands, I believe. But the Barrow girl is a very different matter. Blount is absolutely uncooperative in the matter, and my solicitor tells me that I can get no redress from the law, unbelievable though it seems.’
The room was overheated, and crowded with furniture, china and silver. Pollard controlled his irritation with difficulty. He was convinced of the genuineness of Bill Sandford’s alibi, and it was maddening to have to listen to this querulous verbiage for the sake of getting unnecessary confirmation for the record.
‘You’re referring, I take it, to the man who visits Miss Barrow here?’ he prompted.
Mrs Trevor-Montley sighed heavily, and made a despairing gesture with pudgy hands.
‘I am. I have spoken to her as if she were my daughter, reasoned with her, and finally suggested that her conduct is most unsuitable in a house in a good residential district like this. On every occasion she has been coolly insolent. Yes, coolly insolent,’ Mrs Trevor-Montley repeated, as if savouring the phrase with satisfaction. ‘She informed me that she had no intention of leaving her flat, and that her way of life was her affair and not mine. And to think that she is secretary to one of the partners in a very reputable firm of solicitors. I asked my own solicitor if it were not my duty to warn them about Miss Barrow’s morals, but he advised against it.’
‘That was sound advice,’ Pollard told her. ‘The laws of slander and libel are very dicey, you know. I wonder now, Mrs Trevor-Montley, if you can help us by thinking back to the afternoon of Wednesday, November the nineteenth. Last Wednesday week.’
‘As it happens I remember it very well. The behaviour of that pair upstairs was particularly outrageous. I was just getting up from my afternoon rest at about half past two when the man arrived in his noisy dilapidated car, and parked it immediately outside. He then played a flourish on the horn. This was simply to annoy me, as he knew perfectly well that Miss Barrow would not have come home at that hour.’
‘Did he go up to her flat?’
‘He did. I happened to glance out of the window and saw him come in. A few moments later her front door slammed and he began to tramp about overhead. He has a key. As I said just now, it is a disgraceful situation.’
‘Did he leave the flat in the course of the afternoon?’
‘He did not. At intervals he made a lot of unnecessary noise overhead. Friends who were having tea with me remarked how inconsiderate he was. And after Miss Barrow came back at about a quarter past five the noise was even worse, and went on at intervals all through the evening, with a record player going as well. The man left the flat — with Miss Barrow — at twenty minutes to nine on the following morning.’
Having delivered this final piece of information in a portentous tone, Mrs Trevor-Montley compressed her lips and sat with closed eyes. Pollard risked a wink at Toye.
‘Well, Mrs Trevor-Montley,’ he said, ‘your detailed information has been helpful. It’s possible that we may want you to sign a written version of what you have told us, but I don’t think it will be necessary.’
‘The very last thing I want is to be mixed up in police proceedings. It would be most distasteful.’ She stared at him with wide-open and resentful eyes.
‘Actually,’ Pollard told her, ‘your evidence has saved you from being mixed up in some sensation publicity. It has cleared Miss Barrow’s visitor of all possibility of being involved in the Ambercombe murder.’
Mrs Trevor-Montley uttered a small scream, but rallied quickly. ‘It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if he had been,’ she said vindictively.
As the police car moved off a few minutes later Pollard turned round. As he expected, its departure was being observed from behind net curtains.
‘Let’s give her a tootle on the horn,’ he remarked to Toye. ‘Much though I’d like to kick that blighter Sandford’s bottom for trying to hold out on us last night, I’ve got some fellow feeling for him at this moment. Let’s head for the bank before it packs it in for the weekend.
’
The bank manager’s severely functional room was a relief after Mrs Trevor-Montley’s stuffy congested flat. The manager, a Mr Calthrop, was a donnish type given to economy of speech. He listened to Pollard’s statement of his business, read Robert Hoyle’s authorisation of the removal of the Ambercombe plate box, and summoned a Mr Parry over his intercom.
‘This is our Mr Parry,’ he informed Pollard, when a middle-aged man appeared. ‘He has special responsibility for client’s property deposited with us for safe custody. Detective Superintendent Pollard and Detective Inspector Toye, Mr Parry. They have an authorisation from Mr Hoyle to remove the plate box belonging to Ambercombe church. Would you get it for us?’
Mr Parry placed Pollard and Toye in the context of the Ambercombe murder, glanced at them with fascinated speculation, and withdrew with a decorous murmur of ‘Certainly, Mr Calthrop.’
‘As far as I can remember the plate is withdrawn regularly for the chief church festivals,’ the latter said. ‘In my early days here Mr Viney himself used to collect it. You’ll have heard all about him, of course. A most remarkable old chap.’
‘Was the late Miss Ethel Ridd one of your clients?’ Pollard asked.
‘No, she wasn’t. Nor did she come in on Mr Viney’s business, it seems. The staff were talking about it after she was murdered, poor woman. After he couldn’t get a renewal of his driving licence, someone from Ambercombe used to bring in his cheques to be cashed, with a covering note. Isn’t that right, Mr Parry?’
‘Yes, Mr Calthrop,’ the cashier replied, depositing a battered leather-covered box on a side table. ‘A youngish gentleman used to come: the same one who withdrew this plate box for Mr Viney on one occasion.’
Pollard experienced the mental equivalent of a sudden electric shock.
‘Do you by any chance keep those notes authorising the bearer to withdraw things from your strong room?’ he asked.
‘Certainly we do.’ A look of disquiet came into Mr Calthrop’s face as he stared at Pollard. ‘And also, of course, the receipts signed by the person making the withdrawal.’
‘May I see the ones relating to this box, then?’
Mr Parry vanished again in response to a nod.
‘Does this mean that you suspect that somebody took this box out on a forged authorisation?’ Mr Calthrop demanded, by now looking appalled.
‘I think it’s possible,’ Pollard said cautiously.
‘But what on earth for? Mr Viney said more than once that the plate was of no great value.’
‘The official plate isn’t — or so I’ve been informed. But you may remember that at the Consistory Court of the petition for a faculty to sell it. Miss Ridd insisted that there was another chalice, of which there’s no record and no trace. She stated that it had “jewels stuck in it”.’
While Mr Calthrop was momentarily speechless, Mr Parry returned with a folder which he placed before Pollard.
‘I think you’ll find everything in order, sir.’
In a tense silence Pollard and Toye worked back through the recent notes authorising the removal of the plate box, each with a signed receipt attached. The first one in Barnabas Viney’s elderly but perfectly legible handwriting was dated 30 May 1974, and had been presented by Margaret Gillard. She had also withdrawn the box before Easter in the same year, and on 13 December 1973. The next receipt, dated 8 August 1973, however, was signed by W. R. Sandford, in whose name the accompanying letter of authorisation was made out. Pollard extracted it, and passed it over to Mr Calthrop.
‘What do you make of this?’ he asked.
The bank manager studied it at length with a magnifying glass. Finally he looked up with a grim expression.
‘Almost certainly a forgery, but I couldn’t swear to it, of course. I’m not a handwriting expert.’
‘Neither am I,’ Pollard replied. ‘We must get one on to it at once.’
As he expected, Mr Calthrop demurred at handing over papers belonging to the bank without reference to higher authority, but finally agreed to do so.
‘I’ll give you a receipt,’ Pollard said. ‘By the way, there’s no question of a valuable chalice having been stolen from the plate box in August 1973. Assuming that Miss Ridd was speaking the truth in the Consistory Court, Mr Viney used it on the morning of June the eleventh, 1974, just before he died.’
‘God only knows what the bank’s liability could turn out to be, all the same,’ Mr Calthrop said gloomily. ‘I suppose W. R. Sandford wanted a good look at it to see if it was worth pinching at a convenient moment. Didn’t they find old Viney dead on the floor of his church after a service?’
‘They did,’ Pollard replied, as he got up to go. ‘But anything connected with this alleged unrecorded chalice is pure guesswork at the moment. Apart from that one remark of Ethel Ridd’s there’s no definite evidence that it ever existed. We’ll let you know what the handwriting Johnny says about this authorisation, and if he’s prepared to give an opinion in court that it’s a forgery, we’ll be confronting Sandford with it, of course. Meanwhile, I know we can rely on your discretion.’
As the Hillman nosed its way through the traffic Toye remarked glumly that they seemed to be heading for square one.
‘Sandford couldn’t have killed Ridd. But it’s beginning to look as though he lifted the chalice, and if he did, bang goes the idea that the thief was the murderer.’
‘I couldn’t have put it more devastatingly clearly myself, old man,’ Pollard answered. ‘Still, if we’re on the wrong track, the only thing to do is to get off it, p.d.q. I suppose there’s a chance that we may get the chalice back.’
He spoke bracingly, but was feeling increasingly frustrated by his lack of progress. There was absolutely no dodging the fact that the elimination of Bill Sandford had left them without a single likely suspect, despite the limited field. It simply must be someone knowing the ground and her routine, he thought, as Toye turned into the car park at the police station.
The staff of Westbridge’s small forensic department reacted enthusiastically to the prospect of doing another job for Detective Superintendent Tom Pollard of the Yard. Toye unlocked the plate box with the key lent by Robert Hoyle, and raised its hinged lid.
‘Bit of a makeshift job,’ Detective Sergeant Ringer commented.
It was clear that the box had not been made for the express purpose of holding Ambercombe’s Georgian plate. There were no slots to keep the various pieces in place, and these, rather sketchily wrapped in chamois leather, were loose inside and did not quite fill it. The padded velvet lining had once been white, but was now yellowed with age.
‘You want us to see if there’s any sign of another item having been fitted in with this little lot, sir?’ Sergeant Ringer summed up.
‘That’s the idea,’ Pollard replied. ‘It would have been there for some years, and until seventeen months ago. Don’t bother about dabs. Both the box and the plate have been handled by any number of people. We’ll look in again later.’
Inspector Frost was located without much delay, but putting him into the picture was time-consuming, and it transpired that the nearest accredited handwriting expert was at Marchester. A telephone call produced the information that he was at a conference in London, and would not be available until mid-morning on the following day. All that could be done was to despatch the documents from the bank by car, accompanied by an urgent request for the expert’s attention at the earliest possible moment.
‘Let’s get back to the lab,’ Pollard said as they extricated themselves from Inspector Frost’s room. ‘Not that I should think there’s a hope in hell that they’ve managed to get anything from that bloody box,’ he added, with an uncharacteristic edge to his voice.
Followed by Toye he went in quietly, and stood by the door. There was an atmosphere of absorbed concentration. Powerful lights were focused on the plate box, now empty and upended, and Sergeant Ringer was engaged in close-up photography of its interior. No one spoke. Pollard was aware of a quick
ened heartbeat. Then the shutter of the camera clicked and the Sergeant straightened up.
‘You’re bang on, sir,’ he said. ‘Come and take a look for yourself. The items were fitted in quite differently, long enough for the sharp edges to make these grooves in the velvet. That gave enough room for the missing object to lie diagonally in this top left-hand corner. See, sir?’
Pollard and Toye, poring over the plate box, saw. The large, rather clumsy Georgian chalice, the two matching cruets and the pair of candlesticks had also been wedged in diagonally.
‘From these marks up here in the corner, what sort of a missing object would you say it was, Sergeant?’ Pollard asked, trying to suppress his excitement.
‘I’d say it was another of these tall cups, sir. Chalices, aren’t they? Much smaller, though. Quite a little ’un … give us that rule, Jim… Say five inches tall, sir. There’s where the edge of the cup cut in, and there’s the circular mark of the foot.’
Catching sight of the expression on Pollard’s face, Sergeant Ringer grinned broadly.
‘Have we told you what you wanted to hear, sir? Mind you, we’ll have to measure up accurately for our official report.’
‘Man,’ Pollard assured him, ‘you’ve given us the best bit of news we’ve had since we were sent down here.’
Back in their room Pollard flung himself down on a chair. He sat with hands clasped behind his head and long legs stretched out under the table for nearly a minute. Finally he looked across at Toye with the air of having arrived at a decision.
‘I’ll buy it, provisionally,’ he said.
Toye expressed cautious agreement.
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