“I’d thought of that,” admitted Brant. “A really properly written, scientific study to explode the myth may have struck Newsom as a good idea. It’s the sort of publication which could well attract a lot of popular attention. That would get Newsom’s name in lights without his treading on any scientific toes in the process. And it wouldn’t destroy his silly-ass image if, as I guess, he wears it to cloak the iron purpose underneath. What better way to get topsides with his colleagues than a popular paper with which no true scientist would disagree?”
“Good point,” growled Green, slipping his legs to the floor. “I’m going for a jimmy, not having been born under the sign of Aquarius the water carrier.”
“Carry on,” said Masters after this interruption. “That is, if you intend to disregard what you have just said and produce some arcane motive for Newsom’s activities.
“I have to, Chief. If his paper is really going to be a scientific debunking of astrology, we can’t include him on the list of suspects. But he may have an ulterior motive—bearing in mind he’s an ambitious man. Ambition often seeks to remove anything or anybody standing in its way.”
“True. You think Silk, Redruth and Mailer could have been on the rungs of the ladder just above Newsom?”
“As to that, Chief, I can’t say. But I wouldn’t have thought that top scientists were so thick on the ground that getting rid of three or four of them wouldn’t thin the field considerably.”
Green returned. “You reckon he did knock ’em off, do you?”
“For the purposes of this discussion I am assuming so.”
“How? He’s not a mountaineer.”
“Couldn’t that be a point in favour of suspecting him? Nobody was near any of those three men when they fell, so why does it have to be a mountaineer who culled them? Couldn’t we be meant to look hard at the climbing fraternity and disregard the non-climbers?”
“Point taken. Are you going to give him a motive?”
“Turn what I’ve said about the paper he’s preparing about face. If a debunking report would gain a lot of publicity, think how much more a really serious, scientific study supporting astrology would attract.”
“I don’t get it,” said Green. “You’re wanting it both ways.”
“Am I? Scientific papers are based on facts and case histories and so on. Say Newsom was able to prove that certain horoscopes foretold a sticky end for certain people, and those people were actually cut off in their prime. Think of the sensation that would cause.”
“One moment,” said Masters. “Is your point that Newsom has prepared horoscopes for everybody in Pottersby—secretly, of course—and then actually caused to happen what he had worked out?”
“In three specific and dramatic instances, yes, Chief. He may have tried it on others—on Bullock, for instance. When he found a horoscope which indicated that the owner was scheduled for untimely death, he decided to make the prediction happen. He found a way of doing it among mountaineers. He succeeded three times and failed at least once and, as far as we know, hasn’t got round to operating on non-climbers yet. But you must admit it would add a bit of spice to a report.”
“This,” said Green, “beats the band. I said we’d need to know the second law of thermodynamics to crack this case. I was wrong. We need to know the planets and their movements.”
“The big thing,” said Masters, “would seem to be to discover whether any or all of our three victims had the dread malefics at the wrong places in their charts.”
“Mally who?”
“Baleful stellar influences—one of the jargon words of the cult.”
“Oh, is it? And which of us is going to decide if they had or not?”
“None of us,” said Masters. “And I’ll tell you why. One point I can’t get out of my mind is that the three dead men all came from the same group. It would be too much of a further coincidence to believe that star charts would pick out three victims so closely linked by circumstances. So I’m not prepared to waste time on learning birth times—actual or sidereal—and discovering which planets exerted an influence on those three lives—not yet, at any rate. If we have to do so later, so be it. We’ll get an expert who can read houses and sign/planet relationships.”
“So we disregard Newsom.”
“No. If he’s our man, he’ll offer us much more material motives than those from ephemeris. That’s what we need. I don’t fancy going into a witness box to answer questions on the zodiac and astrological tables.”
Green grunted assent.
“After all,” said Masters, “we’ve got lots to work on. DI Green got an eye-witness account of one of the falls. Several things spring to mind there. First, to get a second account of the same fall from somebody who was in the base camp and compare the two. Second, try to get eye-witness accounts of the other two falls for comparison. Third, get lists of the people in the base camps each time—if that was the usual way they played things.”
“And lists of the people on the trips from Widow Twankey,” added Green.
“Agreed. Can you and Hill start on those items tomorrow? Brant, I want you to chase up this wager your woman doctor was on about. Cultivate her a lot more. She may be able to introduce you to some useful contacts.”
“Right, Chief.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Green.
“Me?” asked Masters. “I’m going to turn nuclear physicist and sniff around the labs. I also want to get hold of all the medical evidence. We’ve got to drive this one on a loose rein. My feeling is there’s something intrinsically wrong here. But I’ll admit that there’s probably something wrong in any closed community such as this. You can’t box-up hundreds of egg-heads and not get animosities flaring and fits of tantrums sparking off all the time. And it may simply be some of these relatively minor conflicts that are causing my nose to twitch. But it could be the big thing, and that’s what we’re here to discover—if it exists.”
“Widow Twankey thinks it doesn’t.”
“But according to your version of his conversation, he said he was going to call us in.”
“He talks as he warms. I’m talking about what he thinks, not what he said.”
“Are you sure?”
“He was putting up an umbrella for himself when he said he would have asked for us. But this is his patch. He doesn’t want anything to be wrong.”
“Reasonable enough,” said Hill. “But I wonder if he knew Alec Bullock was having it off with Mrs Mailer?”
“Why should he?”
“He gives me the impression he thinks he knows everything that goes on here. If he could miss that little bit of scandal it could be that he misses quite a lot of other things. Like Alec Bullock nearly being a fourth faller.”
“See what you mean,” said Green. “We can trust Widow’s lists and any other bureaucratic information he’s got, but we can’t rely on him for pay dirt. I’m agreeing with you.”
“That seems reasonable,” said Masters. “For instance, I notice that they have public call-booths in the corridor outside the mess. Anybody here can bypass the Centre’s switchboard.”
“People must be allowed to make a private call. And if they couldn’t do it inside the compound, they’d do it outside.”
“Quite. But it is still a loophole which Toinquet could not hope to plug unless he has wire-tappers and recorders attached to each one. It merely illustrates how difficult total security is to achieve.” Masters got to his feet and stretched. “Right. That’s enough for tonight.”
Green yawned openly. “Time for kip in my little barrack bed. I wonder if they’ll give us boiled liver for breakfast like they used to sometimes in the army?”
Hill shuddered realistically.
“Good, it was, son. With little bits of onion floating in the jizzer-rizzer. Used to mop it up with that purple bread we got in those days. Just the job at half-six in the morning when snow was on the ground.”
“Get out,” ordered Masters. “The lot of you. And
thank heaven for Mister Kellogg before you go to sleep.”
Chapter 4
“I thought I’d take you round myself,” said Crome. The Director had come into the dining room and stopped by Masters’ chair just as the Superintendent was finishing breakfast. “That is, if you want to visit the laboratories.”
“I was intending to visit Group Six,” admitted Masters. “Just me. Not the whole crowd of us.”
Crome sat down. Masters noted the strain in his eyes—far greater than the evening before—and diagnosed a sleepless night. He wondered why. Offhand he could think of two reasons. The first, that though he was trying to play it cool, Crome felt himself tremendously involved in this investigation. Probably he had at last realised how much the tragedy and the inevitable scandal could affect his own career. The second was equally obvious: guilt. A man with a conscience, Masters knew, can screw himself up to the point where he will take a certain course of action and, even when it has been completed, still believe it to have been the right course. But conscience is subject to neither rhyme nor reason. Once roused, it becomes the ever-present voice of condemnation, fostering mental unease. It dispels sleep and quietness of mind, even if it does not always make a coward of its host. Whichever of the two reasons was the one which was now occupying the scientist’s mind, it was this, Masters guessed, which had driven him to leave his own flat in the main house to come over to the mess so early on a Monday morning to see for himself what the Yard team was planning. The offer of a conducted tour coming from so busy a man could only be an excuse for activity dictated by worry.
“Just you? What are your colleagues doing?”
“This and that. Getting to know who was present when each of your men was killed. That sort of thing.” Masters got to his feet. “Ready when you are, Director.”
“It’s a quarter of a mile to the Group Six laboratory. Shall I get a car? Or do you mind walking?”
“I’d like to walk.”
Masters guessed that Crome wished to talk as well as walk. When they left the mess building and started on a path which led across the grounds he was proved right.
“I hear you are a very successful detective, Mr Masters.”
“As you’ve obviously been checking up on me, Director, there’s little point in a show of mock modesty on my part.”
Crome reddened. “It seemed right to me to know the type of man with whom I was dealing.”
“Don’t apologise. Making enquiries about people one comes into business contact with is an unexceptional, everyday precaution many of us take.”
“That sounds as if you’ve been checking up on me.”
“Could I do otherwise, Director? But I promise you this. I don’t know if you’re married, have a family, the state of your bank balance, your political leanings, the state of your health, or any of those things which either do not concern me or are irrelevant as far as this case is concerned.”
“Thank you for that at any rate. But I was saying that you are, by reputation, a man who completes enquiries successfully. By that, I mean, neatly, cleanly and quickly. I am praying for your success here, but I confess to being nervous of it.”
“Please tell me why.”
“Because I think I could undergo a breach of security here without it affecting me as a person. It would be a thing apart from me. But the idea that murder literally stalks these compounds for which I am responsible; that at least one of my colleagues is homicidal; and that three of my staff have already been killed—well that doesn’t leave me unmoved. Already, in my imagination, I am seeing horror.”
“Director, it would be impertinent of me to tell you not to worry. But I feel I must just say that the mind is unpredictable. As a scientist, you know that only too well. And all the minds in this place are extraordinary—they’re sharper and more carefully balanced than those in an average cross-section of people. Unpredictable means incapable of being forecast—and that applies to ordinary men and women. Extraordinary means out of the usual course. So when one of the great minds among your colleagues does go slightly off balance, the effects are likely to be surprisingly difficult to prophesy. But you must grasp the fact that, as like as not, there is no consciousness of great evil in this mind. It is probably adhering strictly to the logic that training and experience have imposed upon it. In other words, your attitude—until you know different—should be that one of these clever minds has gone a little too far in—shall we say—removing obstacles from its path. The pity is the obstacles were human beings.”
“What you are saying is that the crime is merely one of degree.”
“Only in so far as the guilty person is concerned. Not, of course, to the families and friends of the dead men, nor to me as the policeman faced with the job of resolving the problem.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“Accepting that a mind has run off the rails. Accepting it logically if superficially. Sorrow for a short time if you must. Be on your guard for the future. Be aware of the signs that indicate such a thing might happen again. But don’t let this diminish you personally.”
“Thank you.”
“As for the handling of the matter, I promise you it will be done as circumspectly as possible.”
They walked on in silence for a moment or two. The morning was still grey, but the cold wind had dropped considerably. The temperature was comfortable for their exercise. But in Masters’ mind there was just a nag of discomfort. He was wondering, somewhat guiltily, whether he had not gone a little further than wisdom dictated in speaking in this fashion to Crome. It was one thing to offer seemingly experienced—if banal—comfort and advice to the Director, but it was an entirely different matter if, in doing so, he had given the impression that Crome himself was regarded as above suspicion. It was a private rule in the Masters code that no suspect should ever knowingly be lulled into a belief of total security until this was proven. For Masters, there was something infinitely distasteful in the thought of incriminating a man who, until the moment he was taken, knew himself to be safe, and so was off-guard mentally as well as physically when that moment came. That he, himself, should be the reason for such assurance on the part of a suspect was anathema to him. He would prefer—like Green with Toinquet—to give the impression that he was looking harder at a suspect than was in fact the case—rather than the reverse. He was wondering exactly what to say to dispel all doubt and set the record straight when Crome reopened the conversation.
“I didn’t expect you to regard your case in this way, Superintendent.”
“Is there another way?”
“I expected your investigation to be heavy-handed. Not because I thought either you or your colleagues would be particularly ham-fisted, but because it is simply another job to you.”
“True enough, Director. But it is an unusual job. Don’t they say, these days, that get a man off the production line where every movement is the same, day in, day out, and put him on to a succession of jobs with variety and you increase his interest, his output, and the quality of his work?”
“How exactly do you work in order to maintain interest and increase variety?” asked Crome. “I’m asking because, judging by what you say, you policemen must have much in common with us scientists.”
“Except that we usually have a body first,” replied Masters drily. “You don’t have any such tangible and urgent goal towards which to direct your research.”
“Sometimes we do. Some of our opportunity targets are very urgent indeed, and not every project is open-ended. And even if there is no specific goal, we lay down a protocol—a record of the propositions agreed before we start work. Directives within groups spring from such protocols. Thereafter there may be a certain licence—a liberty of action conceded to each researcher, but only in order to try to make sure that unexpected opportunities shall not be lost.”
“We are less formal, Director. We cast around much more. Within limits, of course, but even those are elastic.”
“How do you
cast? Planned sweep and search procedure?”
“Each case varies.”
“This time? Here, where you are not absolutely sure you have a case to investigate and—supposing you are satisfied you have—there are possibly hundreds of suspects?”
“We talk to people. As I’m talking to you now. Making no effort to disguise the fact that we are sniffing around for a scent. We get the background and we try to find inconsistencies.”
“It must be very difficult. One of your team hears some minute fact which—though he does not realise it—may be inconsistent with an equally minute fact heard by another. How do you marry them up for comparison? By the written word? So much of a conversation—nuances and emphases—must be missed if committed subsequently to paper.”
Masters smiled. “I had a brain-storming session last night which lasted into the early hours.”
“Brain storms are usually recorded.”
“Not mine. We don’t allow the sessions to spill over into total irrelevancies as per the book. We keep our eye on the goal. But we do have flights of fancy which spark ideas in others. Fortunately my people have good memories, so, as I said, we don’t record.”
“Have they near total recall?”
“At certain times. A built-in tape recorder that switches itself on when the policeman’s special instinct whispers the word ‘important’. It is not absolutely infallible, but it serves very well in a surprisingly high number of cases.”
Crome smiled in a tired fashion. “You’re refreshing to have around, Mr Masters. If we take this little path it leads us to the Group Six door. They share this complex with Groups Two and Seven both of which need certain services common to all three. Each has its own private door so that we can isolate one part if needs be.”
“For security reasons?”
“Mainly. At its simplest it means that if one group wishes to work late the other areas can be locked up. But safety also comes into it.”
“Does Toinquet keep a custodian permanently in the complex?”
“Three. But it’s like gardening. If you plant nothing but roses in your flower beds you know that everything else that comes up is a weed. We report every lab closed when it is unoccupied. Any activity in it thereafter must be suspect.”
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