Clutch of Constables ra-25

by Ngaio Marsh

  Tillottson said. “He’ll be in bed as like as not. They go to bed early in these parts.”

  “Stir him up,” Alleyn rejoined and jerked at a cord that dangled from a hole near the door. A bell jangled inside. No response. “Up you get,” Alleyn muttered and jerked again. Tillottson banged on the door.

  “If you lads don’t want to be given in charge,” bawled a voice within, “you better ’op it. Go on. Get out of it. I’ll murder you one of these nights, see if I don’t.”

  “It’s me, Jo,” Tillottson shouted through the keyhole. “Tillottson. Police. Spare us a moment, will you?”

  “Who?”

  “Tillottson: Toll’ark Police.”

  Silence. A light was turned on somewhere behind the dirty window. They heard shuffling steps and the elaborate unchaining and unbolting of the door which was finally dragged open with a screech to reveal a small, dirty man wearing pyjamas and an unspeakable overcoat.

  “What’s it all about?” he complained. “I’m going to bed. What’s the idea?”

  “We won’t keep you, Jo. If we can just come in for half a sec.”

  He muttered and stood aside. “In there, then,” he said and dragged and banged the door shut. “In the shop.”

  They walked into what passed for a shop: a low room crammed to its ceiling and so ill-lit that nothing came out into the open or declared itself in its character of table, hat-rack or mouldering chair. Rather, everything lurked in menacing anonymity and it really was going too far in the macabre for Jno. Bagg to suspend a doll from one of the rafters by a cord round its broken neck.

  “This,” said Mr Tillottson, “is Superintendent Alleyn of the CID, Jo. He wonders if you can help him.”

  “‘Ere,” said Mr Bagg, “that’s a type of remark I never expected to have thrown at me on me own premises. Help the police. We all know what that one leads to.”

  “No, you don’t, Jo. Listen, Jo—”

  Alleyn intervened. “Mr Bagg,” he said, “you can take my word for it there is no question of anything being held against you in any way whatever. I’ll come to the point at once. We are anxious to trace the origin of a picture which was sold by you yesterday to an American lady and her brother. We have reason to believe—”

  “Don’t you start making out I’m a fence. Don’t you come at that one, mister. Me! A fence—!”

  “I don’t for one moment suggest you’re anything of the sort. Do pay attention like a good chap. I have reason to believe that this picture may have been dumped on your premises and I want to find out if that could be so.”

  “Dumped! You joking?”

  “Not at all. Now, listen. The picture, as you will remember, was in a bundle of old prints and scraps and the lady found it when she opened the door of a cupboard in your yard. The bundle was rolled up and tied with string and very dirty. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched for donkey’s years. You told the lady you didn’t know you had it and you sold it to her unexamined for ten bob and nobody’s complaining or blaming you or suspecting you of anything.”

  “Are you telling me,” Mr Bagg said with a change of manner, “that she struck it lucky? Is that the lay?”

  “It may be a valuable painting and it may be a forgery.”

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “Now, all I want to know, and I hope you’ll see your way to telling me, is whether, on thinking it over, you can remember seeing the roll of prints in that cupboard before yesterday.”

  “What I meantersay, no. No, I can’t. No.”

  “Had you never opened the cupboard, or sideboard is it, since you bought it?”

  “No. I can’t say fairer than that, mister, can I? No. Not me, I never.”

  “May I look at it?” He grumbled a little but finally led them out to his yard where the very dregs of his collection mouldered. The sideboard was a vast Edwardian piece executed in pitchpine with the cupboard in the middle. Alleyn tried the door which had warped and only opened to a hard wrench and a screech that compared favourably with that of the front door.

  “She was nosey,” Mr Bagg offered. “Had to open everything she saw. Had a job with that one. Still nothing would do—nosey.”

  “And there it was.”

  “That’s correct, mister. There it was. And there it wasn’t if you can understand, three days before.”

  “ What?”

  “Which I won’t deceive you, mister. While my old woman was looking over the stock out here, Monday, she opened that cupboard and she mentions the same to me when them two Yanks had gone and she says it wasn’t there then.”

  “Why couldn’t you tell us at once, Jo?” Mr Tillottson asked more in resignation than in anger.

  “You arst, you know you did, or this gentleman which is all one, arst if I never opened the cupboard and I answered truthfully that I never. Now then!”

  “All right, Jo, all right. That’s all we wanted to know.”

  “Not quite,” Alleyn said. “I wonder, Mr Bagg, if you’ve any idea of how the bundle could have got there. Have you anybody working for you? A boy?”

  “Boy! Don’t mention Boy to me. Runaway knockers and ringers, the lot of them. I wouldn’t have Boys on me property, not if they paid me.”

  “Is the gate from this yard to the road unlocked during the day?”

  “Yes, it is unlocked. To oblige.”

  “Have many people been in over the last two days, would you say?”

  Not many, it appeared. His customers, as a general rule came into the shop. All the stuff in the yard was of a size or worthlessness that made it unpilferable. It was evident that anybody with a mind to it could wander round the yard without Mr Bagg being aware of their presence. Under persuasion he recalled one or two locals who had drifted in and bought nothing.

  Alleyn delicately suggested that perhaps Mrs Bagg—?

  “Mrs Bagg,” said Mr Bagg, “is in bed and asleep which game to rouse her, I am not. No more would you be if you knew how she can shape up.”

  “But if your wife—”

  “Wife? Do me a favour! She’s my mum.”

  “Oh.”

  As if to confirm the general trend of thought a female voice like a saw screamed from inside the cottage that its owner wanted to know what the hell Mr Bagg thought he was doing creating a nuisance in the middle of the night.

  “There you are,” he said. “Now, see what you done.” He approached a window at the rear of the cottage and tapped on it. “It’s me,” he mumbled. “It’s not the middle of the night, Mum, it’s early. It’s Mr Tillottson of the Police, Mum, and a gentleman friend. They was inquiring about them Yanks what bought that stuff.”

  “I can’t hear you. Police! Did you say Police? ’Ere! Come round ’ere this instant-moment, Jo Bagg, and explain yerself: Police.”

  “I better go,” he said and re-entered the cottage.

  “The old lady,” Mr Tillottson said, “is a wee bit difficult.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “They make out she’s nearly a hundred.”

  “But she’s got the stamina?”

  “My oath!”

  The Baggs were in conversation beyond the window but at a subdued level and nothing could be made of it. When Mr Bagg re-emerged he spoke in a whisper.

  “Do me a favour, gents,” he whispered. “Move away.”

  They withdrew into the shop and from thence to the front door.

  “She’s deaf,” Mr Bagg said, “but there are times when you wouldn’t credit it. She don’t know anything about nothing but she worked it out that if this picture you mention is a valuable antique it’s been taken off us by false pretences and we ought to get it back.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s the view she takes. And so,” Mr Bagg added loyally, “do I. Now!”

  “I dare say you do,” Mr Tillottson readily conceded. “Very natural. And she’s no ideas about how it got there?”

  “No more nor the Holy Saints in Heaven, and she’s a Catholic,” Mr Bagg sai
d unexpectedly.

  “Well, we’ll bid you good night, Jo. Unless Mr Alleyn has anything further?”

  “Not at the moment, thank you. Mr Bagg.”

  Mr Bagg wrenched open the front door to the inevitable screech which was at once echoed from the back bedroom.

  “You ask them Police,” screamed old Mrs Bagg, “why they don’t do something about them motor-biking Beasts instead of making night hijjus on their own accounts.”

  “What motor-biking beasts?” Alleyn suddenly yelled into the darkness.

  “You know. And if you don’t you ought to. Back-firing up and down the streets at all hours and hanging round up to no good. Jo! Show them out and get to bed.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “And another thing,” invisibly screamed Mrs Bagg. “What was them two Americans doing nosey-parkering about the place last week was a month back, taking photers and never letting on they was the same as before.”

  Alleyn set himself to bawl again and thought better of it. “What does she mean?” he asked Mr Bagg.

  “You don’t have to notice,” he said. “But it’s correct, all right. They been here before, see, taking photographs and Mum recognised them. She wouldn’t have made nothink of it only for suspecting they done us.”

  “When were they here? Where did they stay?”

  “In the spring. May. Late April: I wouldn’t know. But it was them all right. They made out, when I says weren’t they here before, they was that taken with the place they come back for more.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Don’t be funny,” Mr Bagg said. “Course I’m sure. This way, for Gawd’s sake.”

  They went out. Mr Bagg had re-addressed himself to the door when Alleyn said: “Can you tell us anything about these motor-cyclists?”

  “Them? Couple of mods. Staying up at the Star in Chantry Street. Tearing about the country all hours and disturbing people. Tuesday evening Mum ’eard something in our yard and caught the chap nosing round. Looking for old chain he said, but she didn’t fancy him. She took against him very strong, did Mum, and anyway we ain’t got no old chain. Chain!”

  “Why,” began Mr Tillottson on a note of anguish, “didn’t you mention—”

  “I never give it a thought. You can’t think of everything.”

  “Nor you can,” Alleyn hurriedly intervened. “But now you have thought, can you tell us what drew Mrs Bagg’s attention to the chap in the yard?”

  “Like I said, she ’eard something.”

  “What, though?”

  “Some sort of screech. I ’eard it too.”

  “You did!”

  “But I was engaged with a customer,” Mr Bagg said majestically, “in my shop.”

  “Could the screech have been made by the door in the sideboard?” Mr Bagg peered into Alleyn’s face as if into that of an oracle.

  “Mister,” he said, “it not only could but it did.” He took thought and burst into protestation.

  “Look,” he said. “I want an explanation. If I been done I want to know how I been done. If I been in possession of a valuable article and sold this article for a gift without being fully informed I want to get it back, fair and proper. Now.”

  They left him discontentedly pursuing this thought but not loudly enough to arouse the curiosity of old Mrs Bagg. The door shrieked and slammed and they heard the bolts shoot home on the inside.

  “Star Inn,” Alleyn said as they got in the car but when they reached the inn it was to find that the motor-bicyclists had paid their bill the previous evening and set off for an unknown destination. They had registered as Mr and Mrs John Smith.

  -4-

  The motor-bicycle had been parked in a dampish yard behind the pub and the tyre-tracks were easy enough to pick up. Alleyn took measurements, made a sketch of the prints and had them covered, pending the arrival of Bailey and Thompson. He thought that when they examined Fox’s find under the hedgerow above Crossdyke they would find an exact correspondence. An outside man at the Star remembered the make of vehicle—Route-Rocket—but nobody could give the number.

  Alleyn telephoned Troy at The Percy Arms in Norminster and asked her if by any chance she could recall it.

  She sat on the edge of her bed with the receiver at her ear and tried to summon up her draughtsman’s memory of the scene on the quay at Norminster last Monday morning. Miss Rickerby-Carrick squatted on her suitcase, writing. Caley Bard and Dr Natouche were down by The River. Pollock limped off in a sulk. The Bishop’s car was in the lane with Lazenby inside. The two riders lounged against their machine, their oiled heads and black leather gear softly glistening in the sun. She had wanted to draw them, booted legs, easy, indolent pose, gum-chewing faces, gloved hands. And the machine. She screwed her memory to the sticking point, waited and then heard her own voice.

  “I think,” said her voice, “it was XKL-460.”

  “Now, there!” Alleyn exclaimed. “See what a girl I’ve got! Thank you, my love, and good night.” He hung up. “All right,” he said. “We set up a general call. They’ll be God knows where by now but they’ve got to be somewhere and by God we’ll fetch them in.”

  He, Fox and Tillottson were in the superintendent’s office at the Tollardwark police-station where, on Monday night, Troy had first encountered Mr Tillottson. The sergeant set up the call. In a matter of minutes all divisions throughout the country and all police personnel were alerted for a Route-Rocket, XKL-460, black, with either one or two riders, mod-types, leather clothes, dark, long hair, calf-boots. Retain for questioning and report in.

  “And by now,” Fox observed, “they’ve repainted their bike, cut their hair and gone into rompers.”

  “Always the little sunbeam,” Alleyn muttered, absently. He had covered a table in the office with newspaper and now very carefully they laid upon it an old-fashioned hide suitcase, saturated with river-water, blotched, disreputable, with one end of its handle detached from its ring. A length of cord had been firmly knotted through both rings.

  “We opened it,” Tillottson said, “and checked the contents as they lay. We left them for a doing-over and re-closed the lot. You can see what happened. The other end of the cord was secured round her waist. The slack had been passed two or three times under the handle and round the case. When the handle came away at one end the slack paid out and instead of being anchored on the river bed, the body rose to the surface but remained fastened to the weighted case. As it was when we recovered it.”

  “Yes,” Alleyn agreed. “You can see where the turns of rope bit into the leather.”

  Fox, who was bent over the cord, said: “Clothes-line. Did they pinch it or had they got it?” and sighed heavily. “We’ll inquire,” he said.

  “They might have had it,” Tillottson said. “In their kit, you know. Easily they might. Or what-say,” he added, brightening, “they picked it up in Jo’s yard? How’s that?”

  “That might or might not argue premeditation,” Alleyn said. “For the moment it can wait. We’d better take another look inside.”

  The case was unlocked but fastened with strong old-fashioned hasps and a strap. The saturated leather was slimy to the touch. He opened and laid back the lid.

  A jumble of clothes that had been stuffed into the case. Three pairs of shoes which spoke with dreadful eloquence of the feet that had distorted them. A seedy comb and hairbrush with straggles of grey hairs still engaged in them.

  “And the whole lot stowed away in a hurry and not by her. No hope of prints, he’s a damn’ sight too fly for that, but we’ll have to try. Hallo, what’s here?”

  Five stones of varying sizes. A half brick. Two handfuls of gravel. Underneath all these, a sponge-bag containing a half-empty bottle of aspirins (Troy’s, thought Alleyn), a tooth brush and a tube of paste and, in a state of disintegration, Hazel Rickerby-Carrick’s “self-propelling confessional.”

  “The diary,” Alleyn said. “And to misuse a nastily appropriate line: ‘lift it up tenderly, treat it with
care’. You never know—it may turn out to be a guide-book.”

  Chapter 8 – Routine continued

  “At this point,” Alleyn said, “I’m going to jump the gun and show you a photograph of post-mortem marks across the back at waist level and diagonally across the shoulder-blades of the body. Here are her wrists, similarly scarred. These marks were classed as having been inflicted after death. As you see they have all the characteristics of post-mortem scarring. What do they suggest? Yes?”

  “The cord, sir,” ventured Carmichael in the second row. “The cord that attached the bawdy to the suitcase.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not quite accurate. These grooves are narrow and deep and only appear on the back. Now look at this. That’s the cord, laid beside the marks. You can see it tallies. So far you are right, Carmichael. But you see that the higher marks cross each other in the form of an X with a line underneath. Have another shot. What are they?”

  From somewhere towards the back a doubtful voice uttered the word ‘flagellation’ and followed it with an apologetic little cough. Someone else made the noise ‘gatcha’ upon which there was a muffled guffaw.

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Alleyn said. “However: to press on with Mr Fox’s investigations. He found nothing else of interest at the Crossdyke end and moved to the stretch of river below Ramsdyke weir where the body was found. Above Ramsdyke near the hollow called Wapentake Pot, the road from Crossdyke and Tollardwark was undergoing repairs. There were loose stones and rubble. It crosses Dyke Way and Dyke Way leads down to a bridge over The River where the Roman canal joins it. Downstream from here is the weir with its own bridge, a narrow affair with a single handrail. It’s here that the effluent from a factory enters the mainstream and brews a great mass of detergent foam over the lower reaches.

  “The weir bridge is narrow, green, wet and slithery with foam blown back from the fall. It is approached from the road by concrete steps and a cinder path.