by Eric Ambler
Jordaens nodded comfortably.
“On an air journey one finds opportunities,” he commented. “It would seem that Mr. Kusitch was diligent enough to acquire Miss Meriden’s address.” He read the scrawl on the timetable. “Walden House, Cheriton Shawe, Hertfordshire. We shall see. We are investigating Miss Meriden in due course. Just as a matter of routine. We wish to question all the passengers who may have observed Kusitch or had contact with him.”
“He had no contact with the girl on the flight from Athens,” Andrew said.
“No doubt he was biding his time.” Jordaens brought the leer into play again for a moment. Then it vanished and he turned to Stock. “This inscription at the top, SS seven-two-nine-it could be a telephone number, no?”
“No.” The man from Scotland Yard was emphatic.
“Perhaps Dr. Maclaren has an explanation?”
“No. But, as a matter of fact, I did take it to an expert.”
“An expert? You have been doing some detective work yourself?” He turned to exchange glances with Scotland Yard. “England!” His hands flowed eloquently in the air. “The land of the roman policier, where every citizen is a policeman. And what did your expert conclude, Dr. Maclaren?”
“He didn’t conclude anything. He thinks the symbols may be the catalogue number of some sculpture.”
“Exactly my own thought. A catalogue number of an item by the personable Miss Meriden.” He put the clipping and the Coach Guide down on a coffee table at his side, rejecting, if not entirely spurning them. “Now let us be serious, Dr. Maclaren. I want you to make every effort to remember. Was there not something, a gesture, a sign, a little word from Kusitch, that would give us a clue to the purpose of his journey to England?” “I have told you, Inspector. His job was to track down war loot for his country.”
“We have been in touch with the Yugoslav authorities.” Jordaens managed to convey that those who gave information could expect to receive some in return. “What you say about his job is true. We learned that he had been quite successful at it. He was known favourably to important officers of the occupation in Germany and Austria, and, indeed, had had some acquaintance with my own superiors. There can be no question of his commission in general. It was authentic. He came and went for his government. But there seems to be considerable doubt, some mystery, about his final movements. He told you, Dr. Maclaren, that he had work to do in England. Are you sure he didn’t mention the nature of the work?”
“Positive. He was evasive about his trip. When I pressed him he said he had told me enough.”
“I thought so. It is all in accord.”
This satisfaction over negative evidence was puzzling.
“In accord with what?” Andrew asked.
Jordaens hesitated briefly, then made up his mind. “I think I may confide in you, Dr. Maclaren. The Yugoslav authorities were quite frank with us. Last week Kusitch applied to his superiors for a permit to go to Greece. He had, he said, information about some missing icons of great value. There was no reason to doubt his claim; he had proved his good faith many times. He was sent to Athens to investigate, and there, so far as Yugoslavia is concerned, he disappeared. What he did, from the time he reached Athens, was on his own responsibility and for himself. When he failed to report to an agent in Athens, he was set down as a deserter. The authorities are now satisfied that the icons never were in Greece. Kusitch ended his life as an absconder, a fugitive, misappropriating his expense money.”
Andrew remembered his own reservations about Kusitch’s good faith; but there were other factors.
“What about his wife and child in Dubrovnik?” he asked.
“The child does not exist. The wife he deserted years ago. She has now put forward the belief that Kusitch always wanted to establish himself again as an art dealer; that he made this opportunity to leave Yugoslavia for good.”
“With enough money for his purpose?” Andrew was incredulous.
“You are right to be sceptical,” Jordaens conceded. “He had little more than enough to take him to England. It is very mystifying. My own theory is that he had found some art treasure on a previous excursion; that he had sent it to England instead of restoring it to his country; that he deserted with the hope of selling his treasure. We do not know why he was murdered, but it is not impossible to imagine that he was involved with some dangerous types.”
Andrew remembered Kusitch’s own words. “It is inevitable in my trade that I make enemies.” But how could these enemies have known that he would spend that one night in Brussels? They-or one of them at least-must have been on the plane from Athens, keeping Kusitch in sight.
He put the question to Jordaens, who was ready with an answer. The assassins had been advised from Athens that Kusitch was a passenger to England. They had intended to pick him up on the Brussels-to-London flight that night, but the fog had revised their plans.
“This is the hypothesis,” Jordaens said. “It is supported circumstantially. Two men secured passage on the London plane in the afternoon. When the flight was cancelled, they demanded their money back; they said they would go by sea. They gave the names of Kretchmann and Haller. They were at the airport when your plane arrived from Athens. They did, in fact, leave by sea, but only yesterday. Had they delayed a few more hours, it might have been very difficult for them. We thought at first that one of them might have been the man following you in Brussels, but your description did not tally.”
“I was followed tonight, from the Holland Park tube station,” Andrew asserted. “You might have seen the fellow if you were observant. When you and Sergeant Stock came down the steps outside, he walked on past the house.”
The Inspector raised his eyebrows. “The cheerful-looking man who was whistling Strauss with a most imperfect ear?”
“Yes.” Andrew was surprised at this evidence of the Inspector’s acumen. His voice must have revealed the fact. The Inspector smiled.
“I have no wish to cast doubts, Dr. Maclaren. You are, I have remarked, a very intelligent man. As an intelligent man you would, of course, be careful to see that you did not allow yourself to be too much influenced by your imagination. Do you understand?”
Dr. Maclaren understood perfectly. He was being told not to be a timid fool; that no one had followed him from the Holland Park tube.
“In any case,” the Inspector added, “your Mr. Eulenspiegel was neither Kretchmann nor Haller. The one is very tall, with a spare frame; the other, Haller, is of medium height, heavily built. And I may tell you that they are very dangerous men. We know something of them in my department. They were in the German Army, and when the break up came they gave us trouble. There was a gang of them, with Kretchmann as their leader. We had Kretchmann and Haller in the box for a while. Later we pushed them across the frontier, but they returned to give us more trouble. Yes, Dr. Maclaren, I must impress on you that they are very dangerous men, and it would be exceedingly foolish for you to become involved with them.”
“Involved?”
“We believe these men have come to England and we are now trying to trace them through our good friends at Scotland Yard. They may have other names and false passports, but they will be just as dangerous. Be warned.” He wagged a finger roguishly and smiled. Then the smile went out. “And now, Doctor, I think we should go over your Brussels statement line by line. You may recall something fresh; an omission, perhaps, or a valuable thought.” “I’ve told you of all that happened,” Andrew protested. “I’ve given you the Coach Guide. There’s a clue for you.”
“What makes you think it is a clue?”
“Why should Kusitch have hidden it under the carpet if it were not important to him?”
Sergeant Stock reached across the coffee table for the Coach Guide, studied it as if he were intent on getting somewhere, then put it back on the table.
“It has come within my observation,” said the Inspector pompously, “that the mind of the secret agent acts in peculiar ways. Possibly Kusitch was used to
hiding things under carpets. He did not wish to carry the Guide with him, so…” He shrugged. “A timetable with an address, the catalogue number of a work of art, a pretty young girl, a secretive Yugoslav!” The Inspector was tolerant of human frailty. “Kusitch may have been jealous of you, Dr. Maclaren. He wished to retain the lady’s address for his own use.”
“I tell you the thing is important,” Andrew retorted. “It means something.”
“My dear Dr. Maclaren!” He was jocular now. “I yield place to no man in my admiration of your great Sherlock Holmes. I enjoy the exploits of your many justly famous private investigators, but you, as a man of science, should realise the weakness of intuitive reasoning.” He looked to Detective-Sergeant Stock for approval, and received a nod. “No, Dr. Maclaren. In police work we need facts, not fancies. A man has been murdered. I have in my possession the bullet with which he was slain. Find me the pistol from which that bullet came, and then we may be near to the hand that pulled the trigger. Meanwhile let us consider again your deposition.”
It was after three before it was over. Jordaens said: “I am afraid Detective-Sergeant Stock is growing tired. You look rather weary yourself, Dr. Maclaren. If there is anything else, we will communicate. Meanwhile, you had better get some sleep.”
The advice was not difficult to follow. As soon as they had gone he got into bed and was asleep before he could stretch out. Then, in a few minutes it seemed, the sun was streaming in and the doorbell was ringing. He cursed and turned over, but the doorbell was persistent. He got into his dressing gown, expecting a telegram or registered letter. It was neither. It was Charley Botten.
“Sleeping late?” Charley asked. “Or am I so early? Sorry if I’ve disturbed you, but I thought I’d look in on my way to the office. I had a brain wave about your riddle when I got home to the flat.”
Interest was slow to revive. “Come in,” Andrew said. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
“I should have recognised from the start that those symbols were the registration number of a fishing craft,” Charley said. “Perhaps it was just too simple.”
Andrew came fully awake. His jerking hand spilled ground coffee on the gas stove.
“Fishing craft!” he exclaimed.
“I had to do with them during the war,” Charley said. “I remembered that SS stood for St. Ives, so I telephoned to a man in Cornwall. I got quite a lot of information, and it ties up with Dubrovnik.”
Andrew forgot the coffee. Mr. Botten produced a page from a telephone pad on which he had made some notes.
“This friend in Cornwall called me back first thing this morning,” he explained. “The registration number tallies with a local craft, thirty foot long with a nine-foot beam. Her first owner was a man named Gurley and he bought her in the early twenties. Apparently she was quite well known round St. Ives as the Mary Isabella, a nice little job with a handy yawl rig and an auxiliary engine. Gurley did very well out of her for some years. Then things went wrong and finally he had to sell up everything he had. The yawl was in pretty bad shape by that time, and a couple of Falmouth youngsters-Jim and Dan Pascoe-bought her for a very small figure.”
“What’s the link with Dubrovnik?” Andrew demanded.
“I’m coming to that. It happened that my friend remembered the craft. He got Dan Pascoe on the phone and heard the rest of it. The boys bought the tub in 1938. They spent all the winter repairing her and fitting her out for a cruise, and next spring and summer they took her round Spain, through the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, and along the Dalmatian Coast.”
“Yugoslavia!” Andrew was conscious of the coffee percolator spouting behind him, but ignored it.
“Getting hot, isn’t it?” Charley Botten grinned. “The Pascoes ended their cruise at a place called Zavrana. That’s a few miles up the coast from Dubrovnik, if I know my geography. They had storm damage. They were afraid to tackle the return voyage without proper repairs. They gave the job to a small yard at Zavrana. Then it looked as if the war was going to break at any minute, and they wanted to get home as they were on the reserve. There was a motor yacht in the port, owned by a crazy Englishman with money to burn. The Pascoes got acquainted with him and sold him the yawl. It seems he had some cockeyed idea of using it as a tender for his yacht. Mad as a bandicoot. Wouldn’t hear of war. Had just bought a palace up in the hills behind Zavrana. The Pascoes came home by air. That’s the end of the story. They don’t know what happened to the yawl.”
Andrew was pacing the floor.
“Did your friend get the name of the Englishman, the fellow who bought the yawl?” he asked.
“Meriden,” Charley answered. “John Quayle Meriden. What’s the matter now?”
Andrew had the sensation of something bumping inside him. He didn’t like it. It was all very unprofessional, and the worst of it was he couldn’t control himself.
“There’s nothing the matter,” he answered. “I was just wondering why Kusitch had the number of this yawl.”
“Do you know Meriden? You jumped at the mention of him.”
“Just a coincidence.” Andrew struggled to give an appearance of nonchalance. “Someone of the same name. Couldn’t possibly be related. After all, it’s quite a common name.”
“Sure,” Charley agreed. “There’s this fellow with the yacht, and then there’s a place called Meriden in Connecticut. I went to all the trouble and expense of calling Dan Pascoe myself to find out if this John Quayle had given him any address. He had. I’ll let you have two guesses.”
“Cheriton Shawe.”
“You don’t need the second one. Your coffee’s boiling over.”
“I’ll get you a cup.”
“Thanks, I’ve had some. I have to be on my way.”
“Do you mind letting me have your notes on the yawl?”
“Not at all, if you can forgive the doodling.” He handed over the page from the pad. “Now that your puzzle is solved, Maclaren, you’d better forget all about it. Kusitch obviously had some business to transact over the yawl. He’ll turn up all right.”
“Kusitch is dead, murdered.”
Botten stared and asked questions. Andrew supplied the facts. Botten looked grave. “Keep your nose out of it,” he said. “Murder is a job for the police. They don’t take kindly to amateur interference. Neither do ex-SS men. You drink your coffee and forget about it.”
When he was alone Andrew examined the sheet from the telephone pad. It read:
SS 729-Mary Isabella-yawl 30 x 9 Gurley early twenties Gurley early Gurley auxiliary yes yes yes. NO!!! Sold Fal Pascoes Jimdan sailed Dubrovnik Zavrana. Bought for tender Englishman Jno. Quail Meriden-Quayle-to motor yacht. Repairs, war, last heard. Pascoes air-flighted home. War, war, war-God knows.
It was all there if you knew how to translate it. Andrew read it a second time as he prepared to shave. Then he thrust the scrap of paper into a pocket of his dressing gown.
The advice to keep his nose out of it was undoubtedly sound, and Jordaens would agree that the job was exclusively for the police, but leave it to Jordaens and it would never be done. The man was an ass. Imagine his reaction if he were now told about the yawl-rigged fishing craft that had been sailed down to Zavrana and there sold to John Quayle Meriden! Another ponderous homily on private investigators, no doubt.
“What, more of your expert, Dr. Maclaren? Ah, England, England! Where would we be without your detective stories? This is very clever, Dr. Maclaren, but it is not police work. Pyotr Grigorievitch Kusitch was not killed with a yawl-rigged fishing craft. The main issue is unaffected by the suggestion that he was making inquiries for Mr. Meriden about his lost tender. Find me Kretchmann and Haller, Dr. Maclaren! Find me Kretchmann and Haller…”
Perhaps he would. He vowed, as he finished dressing, that he was certainly going to find out some more about the mysterious yawl before he volunteered any further information to Inspector Jordaens and Stock. He’d make them take notice of him before he was done with the case.
The annoying thing was that, in spite of his obvious contempt for the Coach Guide as a clue, Inspector Jordaens had insisted on taking it away with him. He had taken the cutting about Ruth Meriden, too.
As soon as he had bathed and dressed, Andrew went out and bought another copy of the Coach Guide. Then he looked up Cheriton Shawe on the map.
Seven
On the map, Cheriton Shawe looked like a small village not far from the Hertford Road. It appeared to be some distance off the coach route, but, short of hiring a car to get there, the Green Line Coach seemed to be the best means of reaching it. The nearest railway station was several miles away.
The coach was comfortable. It made good speed. And the conductor knew all about the way to get to Cheriton Shawe. “Your best route, sir, is by Wyminden Lane. That’s before we come to Waltham Cross.”
London sprawled out over the morning till you might have thought the suburbs reached to Aberdeen. They seemed endless. The road bent, squirmed, curved, shot off at tangents and doubled back on itself; but the coach knew its business. It got there.
“Wyminden Lane,” the conductor called.
Green patches had been a little more frequent among the bricks and mortar. At Wyminden Lane you had the feeling of being on the edge of town. There were houses on one side of the main road, fields on the other; and the lane, wide and newly paved, reached flatly out across the fields.
The coach sped on, leaving its one alighting passenger to a sense of loneliness and dismay. The hope he had had of picking up a taxi was immediately dashed. There was not a vehicle in sight, or any sign of a garage. Possibly he would find something along the lane. If not, it wasn’t far to Cheriton Shawe.
After walking for ten minutes, Andrew decided that the last statement needed some qualification. It wasn’t far to Cheriton Shawe on the map. Doubts began to assail him. The conductor may have put him on the wrong track. Andrew decided to wait and question a pedestrian who was coming along some distance behind him. He waited, but the pedestrian turned off into a bypath that led to an area of glasshouses. He walked on. On one side, there were rows and rows of glasshouses. They had vegetables growing in them and seemed deserted.