Henry glanced here and there while continuing his commentary. ‘We’ve got Lady Seton on the side here, spreading nicely.’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of the Vicarage. ‘No trouble. Extremely free habits and vigorous with it. Very popular in the area. Now let’s see if the rain’s done anything for Konrad Adenauer.’ It seemed to Treasure it would take more than a drop of rain . . . ‘Grow roses yourself?’ the Judge put in as an afterthought. ‘Know about them?’
‘Not much but I’m learning.’ The Treasures’ garden in Cheyne Walk was stone-flagged with a ground area smaller than their kitchen—hardly suitable for Lady Seton. ‘We tend to go for herbs,’ he added defensively. ‘Isn’t it early yet for roses?’ The price at Moyses Stevens shop in Berkeley Square suggested as much, and that was as close as he usually got to roses in the raw.
‘All to do with sun and shelter. Oh, and the right kind of dung. Those are the Adenauers, just inside the gate, with Lady Penzance behind. You’re right, though. Even the earlies need another two weeks.’
‘Lady Penzance is showing a bit.’ This was Treasure keeping his end up but not sedulously. It was 2.15 and he had returned to New Hall ten minutes earlier. The Judge’s rosy discourse was claiming only half his attention while he silently pondered on weightier considerations— like Albert Crutt.
Crutt had driven his wife and the Judge to the cathedral ahead of the others last evening. It followed he could have run into Spring before anyone else—or seen him at least.
But had Spring seen Crutt? If he had, wouldn’t he have turned tail before Treasure and the Crabthornes had come along?
If Crutt had recognized Spring he had the makings of his five year contract right there. If he threatened to tell the Judge his darling Anna’s first husband was alive and visiting, then Anna—along with her advice on Rigley & Herbert—might be very quickly abandoned.
But might Crutt have taken even sterner measures enduringly to placate rather than opportunely to coerce his putative new master? He had been a very long time parking the car: long enough to have cornered Spring—for discussions about insurance payouts, deals: long enough for the staging of accidents? The chap seemed timorous enough until you remembered his bold if rather fatuous ploy in bringing the Crabthornes to Panty: case of cherchez la femme perhaps—and you could hardly miss Bronwen.
It was not conceivable that Crabthorne would condone violence, but then there was no necessity for that. Almost certainly he had seen Spring at the cathedral at the same moment as Treasure. Thereafter Spring would have become a growing hazard until he was assured the danger had somehow but definitely been overcome—the man paid off, threatened with exposure . . . anyway neutralized. One would be careful not to suggest eliminated: it wasn’t that type of contract Crutt had been given, unless he had taken it upon himself to . . .
‘Wet under foot but the rain’s stopped for good.’ Nott-Herbert had drawn Treasure towards the gate and had halted to survey the sky and to dig his brogues into the loose gravelled drive like a golfer preparing to play out of a deep bunker. ‘Drains off fast enough, but we make ’em park cars in the road. Oh, forgot to tell you. Punch and Judy man’s coming. Rang me this morning. Emigrated to Canada. Found it too cold . . . or was it Australia too hot? Anyway, he’s back. Doing his show at three. Should be here shortly.’
Iffley’s parked car at The Popples: one had to accept it had seemed like the damning inconsistency. That was why Treasure hadn’t mentioned it to Anna who was already convinced enough about her lover’s treachery. If the man had not known about the Crabthornes, if Anna had failed to reach him, if he had not been available to help head off Spring, if he normally avoided being seen in the area, why had his car been parked where it was? It was arranged that Anna would pass over the money—the payoff Iffley so much resented. Nothing Anna had said implied she knew the policeman had been in St David’s, yet they had since talked on the telephone.
‘Ought to tell Handel Wodd shan’t be needing him after all. With the Punch and Judy here, best to give my performance a miss, don’t you think?’ The Judge waited in vain for protest from his preoccupied guest. ‘No point gilding the lily,’ he added ruefully and more or less to himself.
‘I’ll tell the Vicar. I’ll pop across now,’ said Treasure as though on impulse.
Constable Lewin had missed Spring outside the cathedral because he had been looking for a hairy clergyman. Otherwise he might have recognized him even though their first meeting had been brief and in the dark. Spring’s abandoning his disguise was, Treasure now considered, so significant as to be the key to the whole puzzle.
The Vicar was emptying the locked offertory box which was encased in a stone pillar at the back of the church—a necessary twice-daily precaution at holiday time, he explained. While there would be more visitors putting money into the box, this apparently increased the incidence of callers whose single unauthorized purpose was to attempt taking it out.
He was pleased to know he was no longer required as ventriloquist’s stooge and then readily agreed to perform the function begged by Treasure.
The banker had been loath to involve official authority in his plan. Thus it was gratifying that both the volunteers he had enlisted were providing somewhat curious services without benefit of explanation.
Back in the narrow road outside Constable Lewin was supervising the reversing of a large motor-coach full of eager Japanese. He was also trying to control the movements of a shoal of lesser vehicles while pretending not to hear the abuse being hurled in his direction by the immense and angry driver of a very small van.
‘I’ve come to entertain the frigging kids and they’re not going to be out here they’re going to be in frigging there. Frigging coppers!’ The huge, purple-faced complainant directed his last sally at Treasure more because he had moved within earshot than because he looked a likely source of aid.
‘Are you the Punch and Judy man?’ Treasure asked affably. Four double chins moved in grateful affirmation below signs of fading apoplexy. ‘Mr Lewin, I think we ought to squeeze this gentleman through with his van’ — and assuming it would afterwards be possible to extricate him from it—‘He’ll be wanted inside.’
Lewin held up an admonitory hand at the coach driver, swept an ‘I-dare-you’ look at the others and walked over towards the van. As he did so and behind his back Handel Wodd’s middle-aged estate-car slipped quietly out of the Vicarage gate, just scraped past the rear of the temporarily arrested coach and disappeared along the descending farm track beyond.
Half an hour later Treasure had stationed himself in the New Hall drive where Anna knew he would be, some yards from the gate. She was sitting behind a table in the gateway taking entrance money and issuing tickets for tea. There was a man’s briefcase on her lap. The table was decorated with posters for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Devalera was unwittingly performing stand-by sentinel duty. He was asleep in the back of the Mini Moke which Treasure had purposely left at a handy distance in the drive. In view of the press of parked cars outside, however, the possibility of being able to take even the tiny Moke anywhere seemed fairly remote. Lewin had long since been obliged to shift his constabulary duties to the end of the road which, he had explained to Treasure, normally rated as a cul-de-sac but which at church service times and for special events easily degenerated into a confusing car park—it seemed even when under supervision.
The steady trickle of garden visitors seemed not to have diminished in the half-hour since opening time.
Mrs Ogmore-Davies had earlier confided in Treasure that the tea was the attraction—but in a voice loud enough to have brought a delighted blush to the cheeks of Mrs Evans who was standing next to her on the terrace ready to fill cups and dispense confections from the long trestle table.
Both ladies were—somewhat self-consciously—dressed in traditional Welsh costume complete with woven shawls and black stove bonnets. Their garb had no particular relevance to the occasion but had been acquired for
a pageant earlier in the year. It had seemed a pity not to give it a second airing. Thus the two were delighting the Japanese almost as much as the photogenic appearance of the Judge in his Sherlock Holmes outfit.
An orderly queue of male Orientals had formed on the lawn outside the Punch and Judy booth which had been mistaken for a field latrine. This had been dispersed when the tent’s single bulbous occupant still engaged in erecting it from the inside (the evident cause of the misunderstanding) had thrust his head through the proscenium opening and shouted at those in line—‘Frig off, you!’ Standing nearby, Treasure had debated again whether the man was entirely well cast as a children’s entertainer.
Crabthorne, an early attendant, had advised that the other bus load of Sunfun Japanese would be along shortly, as soon—he had added bitterly—as they could be levered from their mass occupancy of the whirlpool. He had also volunteered that Patience had gone shopping in the High Street and would not be coming until later—an intelligence Treasure himself could have provided but with more accuracy.
Crutt, who had followed in Crabthorne’s wake, had also come without his wife. He had waved timidly as though uncertain his greeting would be acknowledged, and when it was, mumbled apologetically that he believed Bronwen was with Patience—a possibility Treasure thought highly unlikely.
It was clear Crabthorne and Crutt considered their presence a matter of duty to the Judge: a misplaced assessment if ever there was one. The banker had left them as—without any apparent enthusiasm for the task or for each other’s company—they had set off on a circuit of the garden.
It was at two minutes to three that Iffley appeared. He threaded his way through the mass of parked vehicles outside, then walked boldly over to Anna: he went through the motions of paying while conducting a rapid conversation with her. She several times shook her head, then motioned over her shoulder towards Treasure. Iffley stiffened momentarily. Next he followed Anna’s glance. After his gaze met Treasure’s he visibly relaxed and the characteristic half grin replaced a perplexed expression: it was Anna now who was doing all the talking.
The Inspector called a greeting and began to move towards Treasure. Simultaneously the banker picked up the throb of a motor-cycle close by and getting closer. The engine was being stifled then gunned alternately: it was an irritating noise.
There had been no one to notice that a few minutes earlier a man had entered the churchyard shed and that after a very short interval a woman had come out.
If anyone had been watching, it might have been observed the woman’s attire was inappropriate for what had become a brilliantly sunny afternoon. She was dressed in a yellow, overall motor-cycling suit, black gauntlet gloves and mid-calf boots. Big dark glasses and a red silk scarf covered those parts of her face unmasked by a white crash helmet and pulled-down visor. Indeed, the only definitive clue to the sex of the individual inside all the cocooning was the name Barbara emblazoned in flamboyant, coarse red lettering on the front of the helmet and the back of the suit.
The unremarkable lightweight motor-cycle had been parked just in from the High Street near the church gate. The over-dressed rider bestrode the machine, kick-started it, then threaded it through the mass of cars parked with almost perverse irregularity along the narrow road to the New Hall gate.
‘Windsor Castle,’ said the rider, ‘and pronto.’
Anna passed over the briefcase without hesitation as it was arranged she should. It was the same oddly high-pitched voice that had issued the instructions on the telephone.
Momentarily distracted by the approach of the Inspector, Treasure cursed himself for his fractionally slow reaction: so that was how it had been planned. ‘Quick, man. Stop the motor-bike,’ he snapped as he hurled himself past Iffley.
But already the machine was roaring away towards the farm track, and on a straight course with—remarkably— nothing parked to hinder it. Swiftly it disappeared around the rear end of the motor coach which had ultimately been backed to where it effectively closed the tapering road to everything else on four wheels.
Anna caught up with the two men who had raced past her to the end of the made-up road. She faced Iffley. ‘Why didn’t you run the other way when you had the chance, you bastard.’ She slapped him hard across the face.
‘Because, like I told you on the ”phone—’ he dropped his voice —‘I didn’t know anything had happened to Ralph. D’you think I’d have come here? I’d have stopped that bike if I’d known —’
‘Well here’s your chance,’ Treasure interrupted. ‘It’s coming back. This lane’s blocked solid further down.’ The Vicar’s car had done its job against even everything on two wheels.
It was the Inspector who made the bravest try. When the bike came up the lane at full throttle—the rider head down and determined—it swerved around Treasure who was standing ahead of the others. He grabbed at the pillion seat but failed to keep a grip.
Iffley was facing the machine after Treasure was outmanoeuvred and threw himself at the rider. Anna screamed as the bike swung round in a full circle with the policeman clutching at any handhold and ‘Barbara’ punching and kicking him while battling to keep the machine upright.
‘Jump, Anna!’ It was Treasure who shouted and who could see the bike’s thrashing back wheel skidding ominously towards her. It was the warning that distracted Iffley for a fateful moment: he lost his hold—and very nearly some fingers—as the rider countered the skid, gunned the engine to bursting-point, and broke free, leaving the Inspector lying flat in the lane, his right hand bleeding profusely, his face badly cut and suffused with pain.
‘Anna, look after him,’ Treasure called as he started back up the lane, confident there was no quick way out now, even for a motor-cycle.
The rider raced on around the parked coach and then along the clear way as far as the New Hall gate. Treasure’s prediction was even more accurate than he had imagined. A woman in charge of a wide pushchair bearing two-year-old twin girls bound for the Punch and Judy show was doing her best to angle the contraption through the only road space available.
The motor-cyclist swung into the drive of the big house accelerating across it and showering gravel in all directions: this was what woke Devalera. Next, without hesitation, the rider pointed the machine down the near, east side of the house barely reducing speed as the bike swerved between astonished visitors and crashed through the Lady Setons, horn blaring and Devalera barking in counterpoint as he brought up the rear, unsure of the game but happy to follow anything that went over flower-beds unadmonished.
The terrace gained, under the incredulous gaze of the Mesdames Evans and Ogmore-Davies (frozen, both of them, in mid-pouring), the fugitive and following hound then had a clear run down the three shallow stone steps between the rose-beds to the lawn.
If the Punch and Judy man had pitched his booth on the grass, as instructed, instead of on the dry gravel path leading from the lawn to the lower shrub walks, the thing would not have been snagged at one comer and upended by the thrusting machine: but he hadn’t, and it was. The audience, half children and half Osakan, was delighted by this turn in events. The Japanese, at least, assumed that running over the tent was part of the traditional performance.
The puppeteer, buried under collapsed canvas and flowering rhododendrons was first stupefied with rage but then fortunately rendered speechless with fright. When attempting to extricate himself from the tangle and while still on his back he found himself staring into the eyes of a gargantuan dog whose giant tongue was taste-testing his chin. Devalera had abandoned the new game in favour of cementing a predestined friendship with the largest human being it had ever been his good fortune to fall upon.
The Judge, who was standing nearby, being satisfied that no one was injured, singularly resigned about the passage of a careering, mad motor-cyclist through his garden on visiting day and disappointed in the reduced professional standard of the returned emigrant after a year in Canada (or was it Australia?), turned firmly towards the h
ouse. His mind was made up. He should have had the dummy on hand for an emergency performance after all. He set off to fetch his new toy, audibly repeating ‘Another fine mess you’ve got us into, Stanley. . .’
Further down the garden, the unexpected eruption of the fast moving motor-bike scattered the strollers on the narrow paths ahead like so much chaff before an Arctic wind.
Crutt and Crabthorne, taken completely unawares, together jumped backwards to land ankle deep in a just turned tump of rotted, wet compost: a not unsuitable fate for purveyors of foot deodorant.
The lower garden gate, the motor-cyclist’s evident objective, was set in the wall on the comer of the side road and the High Street. There was a Boy Scout in charge of it commissioned to direct outsiders to the main entrance further along but also to unlock it for visitors wanting to leave that way. On hearing—then seeing—the bike bearing down upon him he quickly prepared to meet its rider’s clear intention by throwing open the gate. The machine shot by him at a dangerous speed.
The driver of the second coach-load of Japanese, a Londoner, was on his first visit to the area. His instructions were to turn left at a church a mile east from the Sunfun Hotel on the edge of Panty proper. He was not exceeding any speed limit but he was late delivering his charges. He had only once driven the road—in the opposite direction—and he had it in his mind that the turning he wanted was beyond and not before the church.
The German tourist coming the other way in the large Mercedes was quite well aware he had to drive on the left in Britain—and had been doing so since Dover. Even so, he had been moving at a snail’s pace in the solid line of traffic going west for the last thirty minutes: in all that time no single vehicle had passed him heading east. The last part of Panty hill seemed to widen beyond the church on the right just ahead. Although he couldn’t quite see around the following bend he decided to risk it, pulled out, and accelerated.
Murder for Treasure Page 18