by HRF Keating
Miss Tritton thought. Harriet could almost see the process running through her mind. Safe to show the Minutes again to this persistent police officer? Or not? What had been in them?
‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘I can see no objection to that.’
Damn, Harriet thought, she’s calculated there’s nothing there conceivably leading to that ultimatum letter. My blackbird has hopped out of claw-reach.
But, handed the heavy black-bound Minutes Book now, she had to look through that entry for Tuesday, March 16. She did her best to find something that hinted at any illegal activity, but there was nothing under the Future Activities item that gave her the least toe-hold. Members Present? Yes, inserted there now there’s Miss B Farr, Aunty Beryl, and with an addition. Left meeting at 8.06 p.m. Yes, didn’t John say something about her not liking to be out late at night? Very precise minute-keeping at WAGI. Oh, and, now that I know the surname, here’s Miss M Quirke too, Christopher’s girl and actually a member of WAGI’s Council.
So ask about her?
At once a better thought.
No. If I say anything to Gwendoline Tritton that shows I know about the secret Maggie Quirke may have got out of Christopher — deliberately or just by chance in the course of a lovers’ tiff — then it will alert this formidable old woman. So, look for some other opportunity.
But isn’t this in any case one more indication that WAGI could have the CA 534 in its possession? Because if Maggie’s a full Council member, rather than just some hanger-on, as I had thought up to now, can’t I see her standing in the dark outside Heronsgate House, a large wad of twenty-pound notes in her hand, waiting to pay for a small cardboard box just taken from Dr Lennox’s security cabinet? Much more likely her than aged Gwendoline Tritton.
So have I found out all I need to know?
Then, abrupt descent of hopes. No, damn and blast it. What I’m looking at is in fact the very evidence that Maggie cannot have been there for that hand-over. There’s the simple statement here at the end of the page, Meeting concluded at 12.35 a.m., that infantile boast about how long it went on, how important were its discussions. But nonetheless evidence, and reasonably good, that the hand-over of that box, if it took place at all, was not made immediately after the break-in, which happened shortly before midnight.
All right, it’s possible that one of those criminal heavies came here next day with the box and went away with pockets stuffed with money. But it’s pretty unlikely. Gwendoline Tritton would have expected the break-in to be reported as soon as it was discovered, which, thanks to those two inept Birchester Watchmen, it was not. She would then never have risked a visitor of that sort being seen at The Willows.
So, not-so-clever Harriet. All I’ve done by coming here is to make the case against WAGI that much less convincing. And in the meanwhile, perhaps, the Faceless Ones have found Professor Wichmann and even got a confession out of him.
*
It had been an embarrassing ten minutes getting away from Gwendoline Tritton and that long trestle table. She had had to produce duff questions such as ‘What is the agenda for the forthcoming meeting at the Little Theatre in Boreham?’
‘I shall,’ Miss Tritton had answered, tapping her breastbone, ‘be addressing the meeting myself and taking questions, but no more.’ Then, more desperately, she had asked if the next issue of WAGI Wags A Finger had gone out, and who, if anyone, the finger had been wagged at.
Eventually she had got away, conscious that, as she had turned to take a last look at the tall facade of the big house, its chimney stacks ranged against pale blue, almost wintry sky, WAGI’s ferocious Chair had drawn herself up at the door in full triumph.
In the car she had driven off a short way and then used her mobile to report to Mr Brown what she had been told by Christopher Alexander, and how what had looked a likely way forward with WAGI had ended in complete lack of success.
Will he think I’m not really up to the task he’s given me, she had asked herself, as she dabbed at the numbers.
‘All right, Harriet,’ his dry answer came, ‘we can’t expect to beat our friends from London as easily as that. And, forbye, they may be the ones on the right track, rather than us. Not that they’ve located their professor yet, so I gather.’
‘Have you any suggestions how I can get at WAGI some other way, sir? Should I get hold of this Maggie Quirke and see if she’s a softer target than Gwendoline Tritton?’
‘She’ll be there when we want her, Harriet. And perhaps we should give the hunters on the Cumbrian hills a wee while longer. So, go home now. I dare say you’ll want to visit young Malcolm again this afternoon.’
‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’
*
She drove away, too depressed at the prospect of nothing to do once more to pay much attention to where she was going.
So it came as a slight surprise to see that the vehicle ahead of her was a double-decker bus moving at a good speed along a wide main road.
Jesus, where am I? What’s the number of that bus? Can’t see from the rear. Oh, right, yes. Yes, I can. It’s a 17. Now, where …?
Can’t think.
Oh, yes, I can, though. The 17s go to Birchester Central Station. Fat Mrs Elworthy told me so, when she saw old Wichmann making his getaway. Not that this one ahead is going to the station. It’s on its way from there to — I don’t know. It’s pulling up at a stop now, though. Perhaps when I’ve gone past I’ll —
It was then, just as she began to pull out, that she saw a familiar figure getting down from the bus. An old, white-haired man with, on his back, an ancient leather knapsack.
She brought the car to a screeching halt, its rear still half-slewed out into the road, flung off her seat-belt, slid across the passenger-seat, tumbled out and, in moments, had fixed a hand firmly on Professor Wichmann’s right elbow.
He looked round in sudden fright.
‘It — it — but it’s Detective Superintendent Martens.’
He had spoken with such unperturbed simplicity that she almost released her grip.
‘But you —’ she shot out. ‘What are you doing here? You were —’
‘Well, I have been taking a short holiday,’ he replied quite cheerfully. ‘However, just this morning, I realised that, for I believe the first time ever, I had left home without telling my good friend, Mr Chaudhuri, where I was going. So I decided I had better come back.’
Then he chuckled, china-white tombstone teeth glinting.
Harriet at last let go of his arm.
‘Perhaps it is a good thing I came back,’ he said. ‘Because, you see, I did not go where I was going.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You do not understand? I can well believe that. Let me tell you what happened.’
And there and then on the wide pavement of University Boulevard he told his story.
‘I had decided, as I said, to take a little walking holiday. To be plain, it was in part because of yourself. You remember I told you about my early days in Germany, and of how the threat of the Gestapo … But, never mind that. It was all long, long ago. But it has left me even now, I am sorry to say, with a fixed distrust of the police. Of any police. Even of you, my dear lady. So I thought I would go for a few days to walk in my favourite place, the Lake District.’
‘Yes,’ Harriet could not stop herself breaking in. ‘I was right; you left your house at just the time to catch that train that ends up at Windermere.’
‘So I did. So I intended to do, my dear Superintendent. I see you gave my affairs some most scholarly thought. If I left my flat at precisely nine-fifteen, you must have calculated, I could walk to the station in time for that train. But what you could not have known was that as I was walking along University Boulevard one of those sudden showers began, the ones that can become so heavy. And just then I saw a bus coming to a halt at the stop on the other side of the road. So I quickly crossed and jumped on it.’
A little toss of the head at the memory of his fleet-foot
edness.
‘But, sitting on the top deck, as I love to do,’ he went on, ‘watching the rain splashing down, I found I was thinking about a time long ago when, walking with my father in the Schwartzwald one day, we were caught in an Aprilwetter, and while we were sheltering under a tree from that heavy rain my father repeated to me a poem by Goethe set in that very forest, “Der Erlkonig”. You know about that malevolent little fellow, the Erlkonig?’
‘No,’ Harriet admitted, wondering what the point of this long account would turn out to be.
‘So you do not speak any German? If you did, you would be bound to know that famous poem.’
‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t.’
What on earth is he on about?
‘Very good. I will try to give you a version in English. It may not be very fine poetry. But I would like you to know what was in my head that day. So, listen.’
A solemn, throat-clearing cough. Then, standing there in the middle of the broad pavement with the stiff breeze tossing his halo of white hair, he proclaimed:
‘Who rides so late through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy well in his arms.
He grips him that way, he holds him warm.
My son, what makes you look so scared?
Do not you see, Father, the Erlkonig?
The Erlkonig with crown and —’
Professor Wichmann, arms wide in full flow, came to a halt.
‘No, no, dear lady. This is not at all good. In English it would need many changes to have its true effect. Perhaps I should have made Erlkonig into Elf King. Yes. So now I will just go on to the finish. You see, the father promises his son all kinds of nice things at the journey’s end. But the boy says … Yes, this is it:
‘My father, my father, now he has me fast,
The Elf King has me in the mournful land.
The father shudders, on he rides.
He holds in his arms the eight-year-old.
He reaches the Court in pain and distress.
In his arms the child is dead.’
There were tears in the old man’s eyes now. Tears, and something more. Fear? Was it long-remembered fear? And why not? There was certainly something of dark menace in that poem he had heard as a child, clumsily though it had been told now.
‘When that Aprilwetter there in the Schwartzwald was over,’ Professor Wichmann went on, ‘I wanted to take Vati by the hand. But he would not let me. You must learn to be brave, he told me.’
Harriet saw then that the old man had recalled that Black Forest walk so vividly that he was still actually trembling with fear, the fear, as he stood there now on the everyday pavement, of being snatched away by the Erlkonig, the Elf King.
And suddenly she realised who the Elf King was for this eighty-year-old man. It was Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens, the threatening.
Should I …? Can I …?
But in a moment Professor Wichmann gave another little chuckle, and returned to his account of the day he had fled from Birchester.
‘When that bus arrived at its destination, you see, the shower had not altogether come to an end. So I sat there on the top deck, all alone, reciting to myself Goethe’s poem, more than once. And remembering. Then I found — well, I found I had missed my train.’
Harriet laughed.
‘But I think I know what you did then,’ she said. ‘You took the next train going to a place where you could go walking. You took the train that went right the way down to Brighton.’
‘Yes, and I had some splendid days on the wonderful Sussex Downs. Until I remembered I had not mentioned to Mr Chaudhuri that I was going away.’
Should I tell him, Harriet asked herself. Should I tell him that even at this moment he is being hunted high and low across the hills of the Lake District? No. No, I won’t. Why revive, even more acutely than my visits to him did, all his implanted fears of being suddenly arrested for no reason that he knows of?
She drove him then the short distance back to Bulstrode Road, and left him explaining to Mr Chaudhuri what had happened, at even greater length than he had explained it to her and with even more chuckling delight.
Turning at last in the right direction for home, after giving Mr Brown the news about Professor Wichmann, she became abruptly conscious of that little irritating lost thought that had come to her, like a shred of something between two teeth. But when?
The time it had done so was at least easier to remember than what it had been that had put that annoying little shred between her teeth. Yes, the time had been just after she had told John about her maddening visit to Aunty Beryl.
Ah, well, she thought, if he’s at home for lunch, I can ask him about her as soon as I get in. And that may well bring back what it is that’s been worrying me in this way.
*
John was at home. But what he immediately said as she came through the door, put all lesser concerns out of her head.
‘Darling, I’m glad you’re back. Listen, I was going to take the afternoon off. Crisis at Majestic resolved, thank goodness. A good deal of awkward negotiating by arch-negotiator John Piddock. So I thought why not go down to London and see Malcolm? You know my theory, when there’s nothing to be done, do nothing. Well, there is nothing to be done for Malcolm at the moment; I phoned and asked. But all the same I thought I wouldn’t for once, I’d do something. I’d buzz off down there and see him.’
He gave her a slightly shamefaced grin.
‘But now you’re here … You haven’t got to go gadding off again, have you?’
‘No. No, there’s, if you like, nothing to be done by me here. So I can do something, with you. And we ought to go to Malcolm. He may be lying there, brooding and brooding over Graham. We ought to go. At once.’
‘Well, I think a bite of lunch would be in order before we actually set off. I bought a sort of quiche thing on my way from the office, if that’ll do. There’ll be enough for two.’
The ‘sort of quiche thing’ rapidly disposed of, they were in John’s car barely half an hour later.
But now, as she sat there beside him, what nagged at her was the notion that there had been something she had wanted to ask John, something she could not in the least remember.
Then, as they entered the ward at St Mary’s, all thoughts of everything else vanished as if they had been just something skimmed over in a newspaper, thoughts of Aunty Beryl — yes, something to do with her fantasies of persecution — of Professor Wichmann, not after all fleeing from justice, of WAGI and her defeat there.
Malcolm was not sitting up absorbed in his Dick Francis nor looking at the endless parade of trivia on the TV screen on the wall opposite. He was lying flat on his back and his face seemed as pale as it had been when they had peered at him through the glass of the intensive care ward.
A relapse, she thought. Or … Or, worse, is it what bloody Beryl taunted me with? Has he fallen victim to MRSA, that bug — she was right — that doesn’t yield to any antibiotic?
She looked up and down the ward for a nurse to ask.
And found that John — when there’s something to be done, do it — had already slipped away and found someone in the glassed-off section at the far end.
Trying not to run, she joined him.
‘No,’ the nurse was saying, ‘he’s just suffering from temporary exhaustion. You know, when anyone’s been as badly injured as he was, they’re bound to have bad days as well as better ones.’
‘Yes,’ John said, ‘I’d told myself that might be all that was the matter. But you know how it is, a parent’s anxiety.’
So, back they went to Malcolm’s bed, and hardly had they fetched chairs and sat quietly beside him than his eyes flickered open and a twitch of a smile appeared on his lips. But that was all he was able to manage and, after staying there for twenty minutes or so, by mutual consent they left.
It was as they were passing through the reception area that the sight of the burly security m
an there sent suddenly through Harriet’s head a lightning trail of reasoning, or instinctive logic. It began with a recollection of the security men at Heronsgate House. Click, click, click: what they had said to her, how they had looked, became present in her mind. She saw the two of them, the big-boned Irishman and his heavy-built, indolent-looking partner, approaching from round the corner of the house. The quick looks they had exchanged when she had introduced herself as from the police came up on her inner screen. Then the odd reluctance of Winston Something — yes, Earl — to show the bruise on his face flicked up. Next she heard the Irishman, O’Dowd, say how nearly he had become ‘a burnt corpse’. Then Winston’s sheepishness about his overnight hospital visit. Or had that been about the way he had tamely handed over his keys? But no doubt about O’Dowd’s pushful insistence that his coat should be sniffed at for the petrol smell remaining on it.
Don’t all those things say something to me? Something perhaps that, still suffering as I was that morning from the immediate shock of Graham’s death, I brushed aside, out of a sort of fellow feeling for those two apparently shocked Birchester Watchmen.
But ‘apparently’ is surely the word.
Wasn’t the whole pattern of their behaviour as exaggerated as Aunty Beryl’s was when I went to see her? With her wild fear of drunks in the street, of violence, of stalkers and, of all things, rape?
So, yes, that’s why I kept being nagged at by that irritating shred of thought between the teeth, there but seemingly impossible to locate properly. This was it.
But, think now. Why were those two putting on that act? In plain words, lying to me from start to finish?
All right, I’m going to find out.
Chapter Fourteen
Harriet, being driven home by John, sat going over in her mind the whole train of thought that had come to her at the sight of the security man at St Mary’s. When she was sure the pattern she had seen was no wavering will-o’-the-wisp darting over the wide marshes of her ignorance about what had gone on when the CA 534 was stolen, she spoke.
‘John, could you go by St Oswald’s when we get into Birchester?’