Clutch of Constables ra-25

by Ngaio Marsh

  Caley Bard walked over and looked at him as if he was something nasty he’d caught in his butterfly net.

  “You bloody little tit,” he said. “Will you shut up, you perfectly bloody little tit?”

  Pollock stared at him with a kind of shrinking defiance that was extremely unpleasant to see.

  “Sorry,” Caley said to Alleyn and returned to his seat.

  “—as if you yourself had painted it,” Alleyn repeated. “Did you paint it, Mr Pollock?”

  “No. And that’s it. No.”

  And that was it as far as Mr Pollock was concerned. He might have gone stone deaf and blind for all the response he made to anything else that was said to him.

  “It’s very hot in here,” said Mr Lazenby.

  It was indeed. The summer night had grown sultry. There were rumours of thunder in the air and sheet-lightning made occasional irrelevant gestures somewhere a long way beyond Norminster.

  Mr Lazenby pulled the curtain back from one of the windows and exposed a white blank. The Creeper had risen.

  “Very close,” Mr Lazenby said and ran his finger under his dog-collar. “I think,” said he in his slightly parsonic, slightly Australian accents, “that we’re entitled to an explanation, Superintendent. We’ve all experienced a big shock, you know. We’ve found ourselves alongside a terrible tragedy in the death and subsequent discovery of this poor girl. I’m sure there’s not one of us doesn’t want to see the whole thing cleared up and settled. If you reckon all this business about a painting picked up in a yard has something to do with the death of the poor girl, well: good on you. Go ahead. But, fair dinkum. I don’t myself see how there can be the remotest connection.”

  “With which observation,” Mr Hewson said loudly, “I certainly concur. Yes, sir.”

  “The connection,” Alleyn said, “if there is one, will I hope declare itself as the investigation develops. In the meantime, if you don’t mind, we’ll push along with preliminaries. Will you cast your minds back to Monday night when you all explored Toll’ark?”

  The group at the table eyed him warily. From behind his book Caley said: “O.K. I’ve cast mine, such as it is, back.”

  “Good. What did you do in Toll’ark?”

  “Thwarted of my original intention which was to ask your wife if she’d explore the antiquities with me, I sat in the Northumberland Arms drinking mild-and-bitter and listening to the dullest brand of Mummerset-type gossip it would be possible to conceive. When the pub closed I returned, more pensive than pickled, to our gallant craft.”

  “By which route?”

  “By a precipitous, rather smelly and cobbled alley laughingly called Something Street—wait—It was on a shop wall. I’ve got it. Weyland Street.”

  “Meet any of the other passengers?”

  “I don’t think so. Did we?” Caley asked them.

  They slightly shook their heads.

  “You, Mr Lazenby, attended compline in the church. Did you return alone to the Zodiac?”

  “No,” he said easily. “Not all the way. I ran into Stan and we went back together. Didn’t we, Stan?”

  Mr Pollock, answering to his first name, nodded glumly.

  “We know that Mr and Miss Hewson, followed by my wife and then by Dr Natouche returned to The River by way of Ferry Lane where they all met, outside Bagg’s second-hand premises. We also know,” Alleyn said, “that Miss Rickerby-Carrick returned alone, presumably not by Ferry Lane. As Weyland Street is the only other direct road down to The River it seems probable that she took that way home. Did either of you see her?”

  “No,” Pollock said instantly and very loudly.

  “No,” Lazenby agreed.

  “Mr Lazenby,” Alleyn said, taking a sudden and outrageous risk, “what did you do with the papers you tore out of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s diary?”

  A gust of misted air moved the curtain over an open window on the starboard side and the trees above Ramsdyke Lock soughed and were silent again.

  “I don’t think that’s a very nice way of talking,” said Mr Lazenby.

  Miss Hewson had begun quietly to cry.

  “There are ways and ways of putting things,” Mr Lazenby continued, “and that way was offensive.”

  “Why?” Alleyn asked. “Do you say you didn’t tear them out?”

  “By a mishap, I may have done something of the sort. Naturally. I rescued the diary from a watery grave,” he said, attempting some kind of irony.

  “Which was more than anybody did for its owner,” Caley Bard remarked. They looked at him with consternation.

  “It was a very, very prompt and praiseworthy undertaking,” said Mr Hewson stuffily. “She was very, very grateful to the Reverend. It was the Action of a Man. Yes, sir. A Man.”

  “As we could see for ourselves,” Caley remarked and bowed slightly to Mr Lazenby.

  “It was nothing, really,” Mr Lazenby protested. “I’m a Sydneysider, don’t forget and I was in my bathers.”

  “As I have already indicated,” Caley said.

  “The pages,” Alleyn said, “were in your left hand when you sat on the bank just before the Zodiac picked you up. You had turned the leaves of the diary over while you waited.”

  Mr Pollock broke his self-imposed silence. “Anybody like to make a guess where all this information came from?” he asked. “Marvellous, isn’t it? Quite a family affair.”

  “Shut up,” Caley said and turned to Alleyn. “You’re right, of course, about this. I remember—I expect we all do—that the Padre had got a loose page in his hand. But, Alleyn, I do think there’s a very obvious explanation—the one that he has in fact given you. The damn’ diary was soaked to a sop and probably disintegrated in his hands.”

  “It’s not in quite as bad shape as that.”

  “Well—all right. But it had opened in the water, you know. And when he grabbed it, surely he might have loosened a couple of pages or more.”

  “But,” Alleyn said mildly, “I haven’t for a moment suggested anything else. I only asked Mr Lazenby what he did with the loose page or pages.”

  “Mr Bard is right. I did not tear them out. They came out.”

  “Cometer pieces in ’is ’ands, like,” Caley explained.

  “Very funny,” said Mr Pollock. “I don’t think.”

  “I do not know,” Mr Lazenby announced with hauteur, “what I did with any pieces of pulpy paper that may or may not have come away in my hand. I remember nothing about it.”

  “Did you read them?”

  “That suggestion, Superintendent, is unworthy of you.”

  Alleyn said: “Last Monday night on your way to the Zodiac you and Mr Pollock stopped near a dark entry in Weyland Street. What did you talk about?”

  And now, he saw with satisfaction, they were unmistakably rattled. “They’re asking themselves,” he thought, “just how much I am bluffing. They know Troy couldn’t have told me about this one. They’re asking themselves where I could have picked it up and the only answer is the Rickerby-Carrick diary. I’ll stake my oath, Lazenby read whatever was on the missing pages and Pollock knows about it. What’s more they probably know the diary was in the suitcase and that we must have seen it. They’re dead scared we’ve found something which I wish to hell we had. If they’re as fly as I believe they are, there’s only one line for them to take and I hope they don’t take it.”

  They took it, however. “I’m not making any more bloody statements,” Mr Pollock suddenly shouted, “till I’ve seen a lawyer and that’s my advice to all and sundry.”

  “Dead right,” Mr Lazenby applauded. “Good on you.” And feeling perhaps that his style was inappropriate, he added, “We shall be absolutely within our rights to adopt this attitude. In my opinion it is entirely proper for us to do so.”

  “Reverend Lazenby,” Mr Hewson said with fervour, “you said it. Boy, you certainly said it.”

  Miss Hewson, who had been furtively dabbing at her eyes and nose gave a shatteringly profound sob.

>   “Ah, for Pete’s sake, Sis,” said Hewson.

  “No! No! No!” she cried out on a note of real terror. “Don’t touch me. I’m not staying here. I’m going to my room. I’m going to bed.”

  “Do,” Alleyn said politely. “Why not take one of your own pills?”

  She caught her breath, stared at him and then blundered down the companionway to the lower deck.

  “Poor girl,” said Mr Lazenby. “Poor dear girl.”

  “There’s one other question,” Alleyn said. “In view of your decision of a moment ago you may not feel inclined to answer it. Unless—?” he smiled at Caley Bard.

  “At the moment,” Caley said, “I’m not sending for my solicitor or taking vows of silence.”

  “Good. Well, then, here it is. Miss Rickerby-Carrick wore on a cord round her neck, an extremely valuable jewel. She told Miss Hewson and my wife about it. It has not been found.”

  “Washed off?” Caley suggested.

  “Possible, of course. If necessary we’ll search the river-bed.”

  Caley thought for a moment. “Look,” he then said. “She was a pretty scatty individual. I gather she was sleeping on deck or trying to sleep. She said she suffered from insomnia. My God, if she did it was fully orchestrated but that’s by the way. Suppose in the dead of night she was awake and suppose she took a hike along the tow-path in her navy pi-jams and her magenta gown with her bit of Fabergé tat around her neck? Grotesque it may sound but it would be entirely in character.”

  “How,” Alleyn said, “do you know it was Fabergé, Mr Bard?”

  “Because, for God’s sake, she told me. When we thundered about the Crossdyke ruins, butterfly hunting. I dare say she told everybody. She was scatty as a hen, poor wretch.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, and suppose she met an unsavoury character who grabbed the bauble and when she cut up rough, throttled her and shoved her in the river?”

  “First collecting her suitcase from her cabin in the Zodiac?”

  “Damn!” said Caley. “You would bring that up, wouldn’t you.”

  “All the same,” Alleyn said, turning to the group round the table, “we can’t overlook the possibility of interference of some sort from outside.”

  “Like who?” Hewson demanded.

  “Like, for instance, a motor-cyclist and his girl who seem to have rather haunted the course of the Zodiac. Do you all know who I mean?”

  Silence.

  “Oh really!” Caley exclaimed, “this is too much! Of course we all know who you mean. They’ve turned up from time to time like prologues to the omens coming on in an early Cocteau film.” He addressed his fellow-passengers. “We’ve seen them, we’ve remarked upon them, why the hell shouldn’t we say so?”

  They stirred uneasily. Lazenby said: “You’re right, of course, Mr Bard. No reason at all. A couple of young mods—we used to call them bodgies in Aussie—with I dare say no harm in them. They seem to be cobbers of young Tom’s.”

  “Have any of you ever spoken to them?”

  Nobody answered.

  “You better ask the coloured gentleman,” Hewson said and Alleyn thought he heard a note of fear in his voice.

  “Dr Natouche has spoken to them, you think?”

  “I don’t think. I know. The first day when we went through the lock here. They were on the bridge and he came down the road from this helluva whatsit in the hillside. These two hobos shouted something and he walked up to them and said something and they kinda laughed and kicked up their machine and roared off.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Me? Walking up the hill with the mob.”

  Hewson shifted his position slightly and continued, with considerable finesse, to emphasise the already richly offensive tone of his behaviour. “Mrs Alleyn,” he said, “was in the whatsit with the deceased. She’d been there for quite some time before the deceased got there. So’d he. Natouche. Yes, sir. Quite some time.”

  This was said so objectionably that Alleyn felt the short hair rise on the back of his scalp. Fox, who had performed his usual trick of making his bulk inconspicuous while he took notes, let out a slight exclamation and at once stifled it.

  Hewson, after a look at Alleyn’s face said in a great hurry: “Don’t get me wrong. Take it easy. Hell, Superintendent, I didn’t mean a thing.”

  Alleyn raised his eyebrows at Fox who soundlessly formed the word ‘Tom?” and went below. Alleyn climbed the companionway leading to the upper deck and looked over the half-door. Dr Natouche leant on the port taffrail. He was wreathed in mist. His hands were clasped and his head bent as if he stared at them.

  “Dr Natouche, can I trouble you again for a moment?”

  “Certainly. Shall I come down?”

  “If you please.” When he had come down, blinking a little in the light, Alleyn, watching Pollock and the Hewsons and Lazenby, was reminded of Troy’s first letter. These passengers, she had written, eyed Natouche with something that seemed very like fear.

  He asked Natouche what had passed between him and the motor-cyclists. He waited for a moment or two and then said the young man had asked him if he was a passenger in the Zodiac. He thought from his manner that the question was intended as a covert insult of some sort, Dr Natouche said tranquilly, but he had answered that he was and the girl had burst out laughing.

  “I walked away,” he said, “and the young man gave one of those cries—I think they are known as catcalls. It was not an unusual incident.”

  “Can you remember them clearly? They sound sufficiently objectionable to be remembered.”

  “They were dressed in black leather. The man was rather older than one expected. They both had long, very dark hair falling from their helmets to their shoulders. The man’s hair was oily. He had a broad face, small, deep-set eyes and a slightly prognathic jaw. The girl was sallow. She had large eyes and an outbreak of acne on her chin.”

  Pollock made his standard remark. “Isn’t it marvellous?” and gave his little sneering laugh.

  “Thank you,” Alleyn said. “That’s very useful.”

  Pollock now took action. He got up from the table, lounged across the saloon and stood with his hands in his pockets and his head on one side, quite close to Natouche.

  “Ere,” he said. “You! ‘Doctor’. What’s the big idea?”

  “I don’t understand you. I’m sorry.”

  You don’t? I think you do. I see you talking to the ton-up combo and I never took the impression they was slinging off at you. I think that’s just your story like you lot always trot out: ‘Oh, dear, aren’t they all insultin’ to us noble martyrs’. I took a different impression. I took the impression you knew them two before. See?”

  “You are mistaken.”

  Alleyn said: “Did anyone else get such an impression?”

  Hewson said: “Yeah, I guess I did. Yeah, sure I did.”

  “Mr Lazenby?”

  “I’m very loath to jump to conclusions. I’m not prepared to say positively. I must confess—”

  “Well?”

  “We were some way away, Superintendent, on the wapentake slope. I don’t think an impression at that distance has much value. But—well, yes I thought—vaguely, you know—that perhaps the Doctor had found some friends. Only a vague idea.”

  “Mr Bard? What about you?”

  Caley Bard drove his fingers through his hair and swore under his breath. He then said “I agree that any impression one may have taken at that remove is absolutely valueless. We could hear nothing that was said. Dr Natouche’s explanation fits as well as any other.”

  “If he never seen them before how’s he remember all this stuff about jaws and pimples?” Pollock demanded. “After half a minute! Not likely!”

  “But I fancy,” Alleyn said, “that in common with all the rest of you, Dr Natouche had ample opportunity to observe them at Norminster on the morning you embarked.”

  “Here!” Pollock shouted. “What price this for a theory? What price him and
them knocked it up between them? What price they did the clobbering and he handled the suitcase? Now then!”

  He stared in front of him, sneering vaingloriously and contriving at the same time to look frightened. Natouche’s face was closed like a wall.

  “I thought,” Caley said to Pollock, “you’d settled to keep your mouth shut until you got a solicitor. Why the devil can’t you follow your own advice and belt up?”

  “Here, ’ere, ’ere!”

  Fox returned with young Tom who, tousled with sleep and naked to the waist, looked very young indeed and rather frightened.

  “Sorry to knock you up like this, Tom,” Alleyn said. “Mr Fox will have told you what it’s all about.”

  Tom nodded.

  “We just want to know if you can tell us anything about the ton-up couple. Friends of yours?”

  Tom showed the whites of his eyes and said not to say friends exactly. He shifted his feet, curled his toes, looked everywhere but at Alleyn and answered in monosyllables. The passengers listened avidly. Alleyn wondered if he was wise to conduct this one-sided interview in front of them and thought that on the whole, it would probably pay off. He extracted, by slow degrees, that Tom had hobnobbed with the ton-up pair some time ago in a coffee-bar in Norminster. When? He couldn’t say exactly. Some time back. Early in the cruising season? Yes. Early on. He hadn’t seen them again until this cruise. Names? He wouldn’t know the surnames. The chap got called Pluggy and his girlfriend was Glenys. Did they live in the district? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t say where they lived.

  This was heavy going. Caley sighed and took up his book. Dr Natouche had the air of politely attending a function that did not interest him. Pollock bit his nails. Lazenby assumed a tolerant smile and Hewson stared at Tom with glazed intensity.

  Alleyn said: “Did they talk to you first or did you make up to them? In the coffee-bar?”

  “They did,” Tom mumbled. “They wanted to know about places.”

  “What sort of places?”

  “Along The River. Back of The River.”

  “Just any old places?”

  No. It appeared, not quite that. They were interested in the second-hand trade. They wanted to know where there were junk shops or yards or used-parts dumps. Yes, he’d told them about Jo Bagg.