The Dreaming Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  Harriet stooped down nearer to her.

  ‘And you did find him again, didn’t you?’ she said as softly as a priest in a confessional. ‘You found him. You did listen to his preaching. You went to hear him again and again. And then you joined that little circle of people close to him. You joined the cousin he lived with, Harish Nair, and someone very different from you, the Undersheriff of Birrshire, Mr Calverte, and little Miss Knott, the teacher, and poor crippled Barney Trapnell and that street trader, Sydney Bigod. You joined all of them. They helped the Boy, each in their different way. But what did you do for him, Mrs Brownlow?’

  Bubsy Brownlow considered. Harriet could almost see her ranging back to those distant days.

  And perhaps back to one evening on one of those days in particular. To the two hours and more during which she had been with those five, and one other, the journalist Marcus Fairchild, restlessly waiting in the foyer outside the Imperial Hotel’s fantastically decorated ballroom for the Boy Preacher to emerge from his state of meditation.

  But, no, it seemed, it had not been back to that fateful Monday evening that Bubsy’s thoughts had sent her. It had been to the time when she had been most enthralled by the curious power that emanated from the youthful Krishna Kumaramangalam.

  ‘I did what I could,’ she said. ‘I know they all thought it wasn’t much. But what could the likes of me do for him? I wasn’t even strong like that Barney. I wasn’t a gentleman like Mr Lucas, I wasn’t sharp like Syd. But I did what I could, and I listened. When he preached I listened and listened.’

  In the shabby cane-work chair she suddenly went into a fit of shuddering.

  Damn it, have I gone too far? Harriet asked herself in momentary panic. She’s meant to be over that illness, whatever it was, but what if she isn’t? What if I’ve sent her back into it?

  ‘Are — Are you all right, Mrs Brownlow?’

  ‘All right? All right? I thought I was. I thought when the time came that I could tell my Ted I was having his baby, I thought I was all right for ever then. And when we got married I thought I was even more all right, and with every single one of the little darlings that came along I thought I was more and more all right. And with the grandchilder, it was the same. I was all right. All right.’

  From the eyes that were no longer dull there came a glare of pure hatred directed up at Harriet as she stood leaning over.

  ‘And now it’s not all right.’

  Is she going to tell me why? Harriet asked herself, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘It’s not all right? Mrs Brownlow, will you tell me what happened when you went into the ballroom that night? Tell me.’

  A very faint flush appeared on the moon surface of the big face just below.

  ‘I didn’t never go in. I didn’t. Not never, that night.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A blank denial. It was the last thing Harriet had expected. She had been by no means sure that, when she asked Bubsy what happened when she went into the ballroom, she would get a confession to having strangled the meditating Boy Preacher. But a total denial of ever having entered that fantastically elaborate room, uttered with a vigour that seemed to spring from the simple truth, was as far as could be from what she thought she would hear.

  ‘You did not go into the ballroom that night after the Boy had begun his meditation?’

  ‘No. No, I never.’

  Harriet looked at her.

  ‘But, Bubsy,’ she said reproachfully, ‘more than one of the people there have told me it was you who shouted out that the Boy was dead. How could you have known that unless you had been in the ballroom?’

  Bubsy looked from side to side as if seeking a way of escape from the little greenhouse made for her by her cheerful Ted, E. Brownlow, building repairs promptly executed.

  ‘How could you know?’ Harriet repeated, still as quietly as before.

  ‘I — I was told.’

  ‘Told? Told by somebody who had come out of the ballroom while you were near one of the doors?’

  It was possible. Just possible that, concealed by chance from the other five in the foyer, perhaps by the flourishing pot of pampas grass in the middle of the round bench there, Bubsy had done no more than see someone emerge. If they had told her that the Boy was dead, Bubsy, his worshipper, might have yelled out in horror.

  But who was it, if that was so, who had come out of the ballroom? Who, almost beyond doubt, had just a few minutes earlier strangled the Boy Preacher?

  ‘Bubsy, who was it who told you? Who, Bubsy?’

  ‘It was — It was that Harritch.’

  ‘Harritch? Harritch? Do you — Do you mean Harish Nair, the Boy’s cousin?’

  ‘Yeh. Harritch.’

  Harriet felt herself caught in a dizzying downspinning whirlpool of dismay.

  Harish. The only one of Michael Meadowcraft’s Seven Suspects for whom from the start she had felt whole-hearted sympathy. Harish Nair, on whose shirt Dr Passmore had detected ample traces of the Boy’s saliva. It was, after all, possible that his daisy-dotted pale green shirt could have been impregnated twice with the Boy’s spittle. It could have happened once when he had had an epileptic fit on the Sunday, and again when he had been throttled to death that Monday night.

  And now Bubsy, whether she realized it or not, was saying in effect that it had been Harish Nair who had killed the Boy Preacher

  Harriet took a deep breath.

  Then, forcing herself, she began digging for any confirmation from the heavy-set woman slumped in the cane-work chair in front of her.

  ‘Bubsy, if it was Harish Nair who told you that night that the Boy was dead, do you remember, afterwards, when you were questioned by Detective Chief Inspector Kenworthy? Do you remember him questioning you?’

  ‘Yeh. Yeh, that Mr Kenworthy.’

  ‘Right, when he was questioning you do you remember why you didn’t tell him that you had seen Harish Nair come out of the ballroom, and that it had been him who told you the Boy was dead? You didn’t say a word about it, you know. If you had, Detective Chief Inspector Kenworthy would have written it down.’

  Bubsy thought.

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything because,’ she said slowly, ‘if that Harritch had gone in there and strangled the Boy what he was like a father to, he would of done it for a good reason. He wasn’t the sort to go about everywhere strangling and killing, old Harritch. No, he’d have had his good reason to do it. Every murder ain’t a wicked act, you know. Not every one.’

  So, yes, Bubsy was saying that Harish Nair had committed the murder.

  Harriet experienced a flood-wave of sheer disbelief. Harish Nair was not a murderer. He was not. And, immediately, she told herself that, with a woman like Bubsy, whose powers of reasoning seemed almost nonexistent, such an unlikely thought process could well have taken place in her confused head. It was possible, even quite likely, that she was simply not telling the truth when she had virtually accused Harish. She was producing pure and purposeless fiction.

  Bubsy, she saw now, had slumped back in her chair, and her face, which had earlier taken on that momentary faint flush, was now yet paler, glistening yet more lard-whitely.

  Harriet glanced back at silent Pip Steadman, standing by the door. He, too, was looking at Bubsy with marked concern.

  ‘Bubsy, Mrs Brownlow, are you all right?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘Funny. Feel funny.’

  The words were hardly distinguishable.

  ‘Pip, go and fetch the husband, quick.’

  Harriet knelt in front of her, reached for a plump wrist and after a moment found the pulse beneath. There was a beat there. But it was faint, and worryingly intermittent. There she stayed kneeling, her face within inches of the bright black and red cotton skirt Bubsy was wearing beneath her long pink summer coat. A mingled odour of cloying talcum powder, sharp body sweat and a tinge of urine came to her nostrils.

  Then at last she heard the rapid pounding of footsteps on the stairs outside, and
an instant later Ted Brownlow burst in.

  ‘Bubsy, Bubsy. You all right?’

  ‘Now you’ve come I’m all right again, my old Teddy. Just tired, ever so tired.’

  *

  When Harriet got back to her office, the first thing she saw, right in the centre of the old table that occupied most of the little cubbyhole, was a memo form, kept in place by a box of paperclips. On it, clear to be seen: From the Chief Constable, Greater Birchester Police. She was unsurprised to see that the message below was yet another request to be kept informed of any progress.

  She snatched up the telephone and got through to Mr Newcomen’s dithery secretary, Pansy Balfour.

  ‘Could you tell Mr Newbr — Could you tell Mr Newcomen that I have nothing to report at the present time? As soon as there is anything I shall be careful to let him know.’

  Then, sitting either side of the little table, she and Pip, with much of the morning still before them, settled down to review the situation.

  ‘Tell me truthfully,’ Harriet said, ‘do you think I’m right to feel that all Bubsy said about Harish Nair was somehow distorted? That she’s more muddled than seems possible?’

  Pip, bright blue eyes intent, sat in silent thought.

  ‘I know what you mean, ma’am,’ he said eventually. ‘I met people like her when I was in the mental ward after — After, you know ... ’

  ‘After your experience that seems increasingly now to be of service.’

  ‘Well, yes. Yes, ma’am. I suppose so, though I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Well, except when I suggested that any of the people there outside the ballroom thirty years ago could have, well, expunged that whole time from their memories.’

  ‘Yes. An insight, I’ll grant you that. But you haven’t really answered my question. Do you think I’m right in distrusting Bubsy Brownlow?’

  Again Pip considered.

  Or perhaps felt obliged to appear to be doing so, because in almost no time at all he came up with his answer.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I don’t think you’re wrong to discount, at least to some extent, what she told us up there in that sort of greenhouse.’

  ‘Right. And happily, we’ve got another account of those few minutes, that minute or two even, before everyone in the foyer knew the Boy had been strangled and Lucas Calverte called out to have the police telephoned.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Sydney Aslough. He told me, very vaguely I admit, that he saw that tart Bubsy — his words — come out of the ballroom screaming that the Boy was dead. And, right, he’ll be there now at his showroom in Norwich, he’ll be at the end of the telephone.’

  She pulled out her notebook, riffled through the pages, found the number she had seen displayed underneath that bright red lettering proclaiming Bargains! Bargains! Bargains! and stabbed it out.

  The phone was answered with promptness. Harriet thought she recognized the voice of the girl in the red outfit whom she had cunningly told she was Mrs Piddock.

  ‘Mr Aslough, please,’ she said briskly.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Aslough isn’t available. Can I assist you?’

  ‘No. No, I wanted Mr Aslough himself. When will he be — available?’

  ‘I’m sure I couldn’t say. He’s on the Continent, purchasing.’

  ‘Over in Europe? But when will he be back?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. He left in a big hurry, and he never says how long he’ll be over there. It’s just a day or two sometimes, and a week or more at others. Are you sure I can’t help you?’

  ‘Yes, quite. Thank you. But let me give you my number. It’s Detective Superintendent Martens, Greater Birchester Police. As soon as Mr Aslough gets back, will you let me know?’

  She dictated the number, put down the handset, and looked across at Pip.

  ‘Foiled again.’

  He grinned. ‘But not for long, Holmes, I trust.’

  Harriet had a reply on her lips, putting Pip into the shoes of Dr Watson, when a sudden flood of doubts swept into her mind.

  Aslough. Could something I said to him there in his office have eventually put a fear in his mind? A fear that, after thirty years of safety, the trail he had believed successfully smudged over was being step by step re-opened? Had that sent a murderer, however cheerfully innocent-seeming, scuttling off to Europe? The praise that he, very surprisingly, poured out for the Boy there in Norwich, was it no more than a thrusting-away of possible suspicion? Is Sydney Aslough, after all, the killer?

  She had hardly pulled herself up enough to dismiss the idea, and to prevent herself passing this wild notion on to Pip, of whose judgment she was a little in awe, when the phone rang.

  She grabbed it, gratefully.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Martens.’

  And found herself battered by an entirely unexpected torrent of rage issuing from the instrument.

  ‘Mr Newcomen here. I want an explanation from you, Superintendent. I have just had my post put before me, and what have I found? A letter in which the writer says, in plain terms, that Greater Birchester Police have re-opened the inquiry into the murder of the so-called Boy Preacher. Now I thought I had made it plain to you, Miss Martens, that nothing, nothing at all, was to be said about the inquiry having been reopened. I did not want, I do not want, at any cost, the media getting hold of the information and then holding us up to ridicule if we do not produce an immediate result. And you, it seems, have flagrantly ignored my instructions. I want your explanation.’

  Harriet, while the tea-cup tempest raged, rapidly reviewed everything she had said and done that might have let anybody likely to pass it on know for certain that she was actively investigating the Boy Preacher murder. And she exonerated herself.

  She looked across now at Pip. Had he at the early stages, despite her warnings, gone too far with somebody somewhere? It was possible. But she was not going to tell Mr Newbroom that.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, now that there seemed to be a lull in the storm, let me make it quite plain. I did not at any time say anything to anybody that would indicate the Boy Preacher inquiry has been re-opened. May I ask who it is who has told you that it has been?’

  ‘It — I — The letter was an anonymous communication.’

  Harriet fought down a spurt of anger.

  A bloody anonymous letter and the man chooses to believe I am responsible for the leak, without so much as considering whether it’s possible news of his wretched publicity-seeking move has got about in some other way. Christ.

  ‘Perhaps, sir, I could see this — this communication. If we could get some sort of clue as to the writer, we could better assess the strength of his allegation.’

  A long silence at the other end.

  ‘Very well, Superintendent. I will have it sent down to you.’

  Harriet thought she had better forbear asking how much the letter had been handled. Even if it had got Newbroom prints all over it, it was unlikely that any overlaid ones would be those of someone on file.

  *

  Five minutes later Pansy Balfour came teetering in, holding a plain white envelope between thumb and forefinger. Harriet noted at once that it was the kind that could be bought at any W. H. Smith or supermarket.

  She got Pansy to slide the envelope flat on to the table, and with her own silver ballpoint slid out the letter.

  It read: Now Greater Birchester Police are looking once more for who killed that Boy Preacher back in 1969 why don’t you take a good look at Undersherrif Lucas Calverte. He’s not and never has been the gentleman he likes to make people think he is.

  That and no more.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Handwriting not up to much, and Undersheriff spelt incorrectly. All the signs of a pure and simple mischief-maker. But Mr Newcomen’s right about one thing. Whoever put this together is plainly quite sure we are re-investigating the case.’

  She sat up and looked straight across at Pip.

  ‘Was it you?’

  Under the tidy triangular cat’s-cradle
of white hair on his face she saw a deep redness come swelling up. A blush of shame? Or a reaction to a baseless accusation?

  It was a moment or two before he replied.

  ‘No, ma’am. No, I never said anything to anybody that could have given them any clue that the inquiry was being re-opened. I never said any more than the sort of guarded words I’ve heard you use, about looking into the possibility of re-opening various unresolved investigations.’

  ‘Very well, DC. I believe you. Unreservedly. So take this to Fingerprints. It’s a thousand-to-one chance there’ll be any marks on it that are on record. But I’m not laying myself open to any more criticism from above.’

  ‘Thank — Thank you, ma’am,’ Pip stuttered.

  He eased the envelope — it was addressed simply to The Chief Constable, Greater Birchester Police — into an evidence folder and added the letter.

  ‘You know, Pip,’ she said, ‘I’ve always had a niggling doubt about Lucas Calverte. It’s quite possible that whoever wrote saying he isn’t the gentleman he likes to make people think he is does know something about his early life. And another thing. I noticed when I first read Who Killed the Preacher?, though it didn’t seem significant at the time, that, although Michael Meadow-craft produced his neat little potted biographies of all of his Seven Suspects, the one on Calverte failed to say where and when he was born.’

  ‘Yes, that does seem odd.’

  ‘It does indeed. So, I’m putting aside finding out who wrote the letter, something all too likely to take a hell of a lot of time and effort and wind up nowhere. No, what I’d like to do now is find out the strength of the claim in it. It may, after all, be a final pointer to Lucas Calverte.’

  ‘Do you really think so, ma’am?’

  ‘I said may be. And that’s what I meant. But take the damn letter to Fingerprints now.’

  When Pip had scuttled away Harriet gave herself to thought.

  Yes, I need to know whether there’s anything iffy about Calverte. It’s my duty. But — But the truth is I still believe Harish Nair did not murder his cousin, despite what Bubsy said before she collapsed. Why should he have done, after all? There’s never been the least indication that he had any motive. All right, I haven’t found any reason why Calverte should have strangled him either. But I can see a man like him, a man who thinks he knows best and does not hesitate to say what it is, coming close to the point of murder.