“I think I got that over to him. I also tried hard to convince him—I think with some measure of success—that I’m a friend of his clock, that I’m the man his clock has been waiting for, that it does a clock no good, standing idle.”
“So you found out how how to wind it?”
“Roughly. It’s mostly a question of getting weights up with pulleys. But having said that, it also seems to be a clock that knows its own master. There are a ratchet and pawl that stop the movement slipping back while you’re raising the weights. But they’re so worn out that you have to reach down and hold the claw firm with your left hand while you’re winding with your right. Peter Muller didn’t seem to think my arms are long enough to manage. He’s a great six-foot gangling sod, himself.”
Silence, while Beamish eased into the traffic stream on one of Bradburn’s outer ring road roundabouts.
“Inspector Mosley, I’m not having anything to do with this clock unless you can prove to my satisfaction that it is an essential part of our strategy in collaring the murderer of Beatrice Cater.”
“It’s going to be that, right enough, I’m afraid.”
“You’re afraid? Be more specific.”
“In due course.”
“I find that a lame answer.”
“I can see a skeleton, Beamish. Wait till I find the meat.”
Further silence, while Beamish considered whether to commit himself. The truth about Mosley’s strategy, surely, was that Priscilla Bladon had to be kept sweet at all costs.
“Anyway, you’ve already told Priscilla Bladon that you’ll do it,” Mosley said.
“I haven’t. I simply avoided insubordination in public.”
“Same thing.”
“You’re a persuasive old devil. As a matter of fact, I’ve thought of two possible ways in which it could be managed.”
“I knew you had it in you.”
“Electric motor, time-switch controlled, to haul up the weights. It will need a cam-operated arm to hold the pawl and ratchet thing steady.”
“Well done! The only thing is that the security people will do a thorough search of the tower before they seal it off. So I’m sorry—that’s out.”
“In that case, get Flavour Control, Ltd. to mix a potion that will distract the dogs.”
“Can’t allow that, Beamish. It would compromise the ploy they’ve got on for the Sheep Dog Trials. We mustn’t spoil that. It’s the one thing that will settle Bert Garside.”
“Well—if you think that that filthy footpath is more important than a village playing-field—”
“Bert Garside thinks he is bigger than community rights. That’s important, too. It wouldn’t work, anyway. The point is that Bert’s dog’s going to abandon the sheep to chase non-existent bitches. They may be using bitches to guard the tower.”
“So what happens when a bitch smells the bitch of bitches?”
“I don’t know, and I prefer not to experiment.”
“You prefer not to experiment?”
Beamish said the words quietly, incisively, bitterly: But if Mosley saw any irony in them, he did not comment on it.
“And what contribution to criminal detection did you make after you got rid of me?” Beamish asked him.
“I? Oh, I had a day with the innocents.”
“And none so innocent as ‘Crafty Jack,’ I suppose?”
“Sergeant Beamish, it is not the done thing to throw journalistic imbecilities at one’s colleagues.”
“Sorry.”
Which he was. Mosley was capable of being hurt—and even at his most exasperating, one did one’s best not to hurt him.
“Really. A day of innocents. You know how it is—or you ought to by now. What is the first gift a good fairy should give a detective at birth? The ability to know whether people are telling the truth or not.”
Beamish said nothing. Mosley was skirting round the dirty word intuition, and he did not want to be trapped into agreeing with the old man.
“There’s nothing magic about it. No need for witchcraft. I could break it down for you into signs and symptoms, if I didn’t think you knew them already. But there’s a lot more to it than sweaty palms and shifty eyes. There’s a blue-print built up in the bottom of your mind. You apply it to everybody that you talk to. Obviously the more you’ve got in the bottom of your mind, the more reliance you can put on it.”
“They set store by lie-detectors in the States.”
“That’s when you’ve got someone else to convince, besides yourself. I didn’t need electric terminals and a print-out on graph-paper to know that young Roger Somers is about as straight a dealer from the top of the pack as you’ll find on the County payroll. Three A Levels. Young family. Taking professional exams in his own time to advance himself. Everything to lose if he doesn’t keep his nose clean.”
“Beatrice Cater’s young friend—”
“And by God, did he hate the sight of her coming in at his door? What Hindle told us was true: she wasted no time in preliminaries. Offered him earners on her extension plans within a minute of walking into his office. Persistent, too. We know, don’t we, that she’d no finesse? In the end he left instructions that he was not available when she called. And you see the corollary of that, I take it?”
“That he has a loyal staff?”
“Oh, come on. Beamish—detect, detect, detect!”
“That she must have called in his office more often than the two occasions that Major Hindle told us about.”
“Saved yourself just in time, my lad! And one more rider?”
Beamish thought, but this time did not see what Mosley could be getting at.
“It wasn’t Roger Somers that she saw the last time Hindle delivered her to County Hall. Given which, it isn’t even certain that she was calling in the Planning Department every time she went there. And that might be important. Because it wasn’t in the Planning Department that she was given the desk diary. Somers was stymied by that. He runs a good office, he knows what’s in it, and he’s one of these men with a photographic memory. He’s been in charge for three years and one of the first things he did when he took over was to clear the junk out.”
“But a secretary’s old desk diary would not be in the general filing system. It might even have been her personal property.”
“Somers knew the former secretary: Sally Carver, now an honest married woman, Mrs. Wortham—who left the office four years ago. He knew her well, vouches for her integrity. Also swears that she had left nothing behind her when she resigned, that her desk and cupboards were cleared for her replacement.”
“Who might have kept her predecessor’s diary for her own guidance.”
“She did just that. For a year. We had her in and asked her. She distinctly remembered throwing it away. It had been no use to her—half the entries in it were scrawled abbreviations that she couldn’t read. She slung it in her wastepaper basket and never saw it again.”
“It could have been rescued by someone else in the office.”
“That’s a possibility, but I don’t know how we’d check it. There’s been a fair turnover of juniors in the last four years. Somers is going to put his ear to the ground, but I don’t think he’ll get anywhere.”
“So then you went slumming on the Dales Estate.”
“A nice young woman, Beamish. The sort who makes a chap like me conscious of his age, his paunch, his bald patch and the egg on his tie.”
“And she’s another of your honest types?”
“I’ve got to say I’m sure of it, Beamish. Another innocent.”
“We won’t argue about it.”
“Bewildered, though. It had been a disturbing experience, being interrogated by Beatrice Cater in hunting mood.”
“Being questioned about entries in the diary, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“And they were?”
“Two of them were hairdressing appointments. One was to remember somebody’s birthday. And two were engag
ements jotted down for Councillor Harry Whitcombe—so she’d know when the boss was going to be away.”
“Interesting?”
“One was an international local government conference at Scheveningen. One was a holiday in Corfu.”
“How many people did Mrs. Wortham tell about Mrs. Cater’s visit?”
“Her husband.”
“And who’s he?”
“Top systems man at Pooles in Bradcaster: computer science.”
“This is getting rather far away from Beatrice Cater, isn’t it? It looks to me as if mares’ nests were invented for her special benefit. Is it going to be worth the labour of trying to go into all this?”
“Dare we risk not doing? We might be lucky, Beamish. There’s a possible short cut.”
“And that is?”
“If we could find who else in Upper Marldale gave her a lift into Bradburn. She’s bound to have chattered in the car. She might even have tried to enlist another recruit.”
“Or we could put pressure on the coven to tell us what Mrs. Cater really did offer them over the liqueurs.”
“Exactly, Beamish. Fancy your chances, pressurizing Priscilla Bladon, do you?”
“Senior man’s privilege, I would have thought. I’ll have a go at Deirdre Harrison, if you like.”
“See what I mean about making the clock chime? That’s the only way to the hearts of those three.”
A few days ago, Beamish had never set foot in Upper Marldale. Now there was a familiarity that extended even to individual figures standing philosophically on pavement corners. They went into the Community Centre and left the street-door open. Mosley indulged in one of his pensive periods. Beamish was reduced to reading his own notebook.
“Are we waiting for anyone in particular?” he asked.
“Not much point in having an Incident Room if we never man it.”
No one came. They waited an hour, at the end of which Hardcastle staggered in with the gallon teapot. Beamish poured two cups, waited till the caretaker had withdrawn to his lair, then took them out and emptied them in the street gutter. Mosley signalled that he had had enough of the Incident Room.
“I’ve been thinking of something that you volunteered for, Sergeant Beamish. I think it might be quite a good idea.”
“What have I let myself in for now?”
“Deirdre Harrison. You might be able to make progress there. Take her out for a meal. Give her a good time.”
“If I can find her—”
“What’s today? Tuesday? Try the Juvenile Court at Pringle. But you can run me back to Bradburn first. I think it’s about time I went and parleyed with Harry Whitcombe.”
Chapter Twenty-two
He was tall, appeared to be in his well-preserved seventies—though he must have been younger—and he moved with a slow but ramrod-straight dignity, which accorded with the frightening perfection of his clothes. He gave the impression of being a man who would not deign to wear any garment more than once—not excluding his four hundred pounds’ worth of custom-built greatcoat. Moreover, he knew exactly where he was going and had plotted his course in straight lines, even through territory that he had never visited before. One of these courses took him diagonally across the outer office, without reference to the desk, and without deviation up the stairs towards the Chief’s room. The Duty Sergeant called him back without effect, made record time over the obstacle course of the counter-flap, caught up with him on the first landing and requested his identity and purpose in life.
“About time too. In the seven seconds that I have been inside this building I have placed four bombs, to say nothing of the havoc I have already wrought in your transport lines and bicycle shed.”
The visitor looked at Sergeant Ball down a nose that could have done duty as a ploughshare. Then suddenly he laughed, an orgasm of private mirth produced entirely through that organ, without assistance from any other vocal apparatus. And from somewhere hidden under the lapels of the archducal greatcoat he produced a walleted warrant-card at the sight of which the sergeant all but blenched.
It was seven-thirty in the morning and the visitor had arrived by taxi. Sergeant Ball judged that the only appropriate waiting-room for a caller of such distinction was the Chief’s office itself. He alerted the Night Inspector, who was in the wash-room plying his electric razor prior to going off duty. The Inspector crossed his fingers and rang the Chief in bed. The Chief insisted that all his ACCs be brought to their desks immediately. The youngest uniformed constable on the premises was sent upstairs to lay and light the Chief’s coal fire, while the visitor, now sitting at the Chief’s desk, read without nasal reaction a copy of Playboy that he had found in one of the Chief’s drawers. The most glamorous woman officer that the Inspector had been able to find in the building knocked and asked if the visitor wanted a cup of tea, to which he said, “No thank you,” as if he considered that he had just had a narrow escape.
Grimshaw was at the breakfast-table working his way down the strata of the day’s newsprint.
The centre of police interest in the case of the Marldale witches appears to have shifted to Bradburn’s exclusive Dales Estate. Urbane Mrs. Sarah Wortham, former Secretary to the Chairman of Bradburn’s Planning Committee, declined to comment after a four-hour interview yesterday with Crafty Jack.
Grimshaw closed his eyes. There seemed something remote in the early-morning sounds of his home: other people using the bathroom, the milkman on the doorstep, a blackbird in the garden warning her nestlings of a prowling cat. He opened his eyes again, and the newspaper was still there, its contents unaltered. Then the phone rang.
The Chief was immaculately schooled in the arts of professional conversation. He would not have dreamed of bringing anything of a business nature into the first five minutes of any one-to-one conference.
“Your first visit to Bradburn, sir? Try to find a minute to slip into St. Elfric’s. Marvellous angel roof. Try to avoid catching sight of the font, though.”
“Two good men you’ve got here,” the Assistant Commissioner (Terrorism) said.
“Glad to hear it. Good lot altogether.”
“Your Inspector Bream—”
The Chief had the feeling that it would not be long before he was out of his depth.
“And your Sergeant Moses.”
The Chief did not yet connect. He leaned forward across his tooled-leather blotting-pad.
“Perhaps we had better call in my Assistant Chief Constable (Crime). I always believe in keeping subordinates informed of new developments at the earliest possible stage.”
“I think we’ll keep this entre nous for the time being,” the AC(T) said.
“As you wish, sir.”
“Eighteen months ago an Iranian mole in the Israeli Embassy in Palace Green, Kensington, was found with his throat cut behind a pile of cardboard cartons in Westonbirt Gardens, NW6. A patrol was on the scene within minutes—”
The Chief had just arrived at the thought that it might be Mosley and Beamish that the Assistant Commissioner was talking about. He wondered what they had been doing in London, NW6. He did not remember ever having dealt with the necessary clearance.
“They found incontrovertible evidence that someone had had sexual intercourse in an adjacent carton, also within minutes of the crime. I won’t trouble you with how we come to be so certain of the timing. There is no need for me to go into what can be inferred from contraceptive detritus.”
“No need whatever,” the Chief said.
“It may seem a far cry from a political assassination in North West London to the murder of a South Coast Mayor while he was crowning his annual Rose Queen. You remember the case?”
“Vividly.”
“Shot with a sniper’s rifle from the steeple of a neighbouring church.”
“And no arrest was ever made.”
“That is unfortunately so. Though from our point of view we did gain valuable information. What the general public never knew was the reason for a brief and ar
hythmical tolling of the tenor bell whilst ambulance workers were still comforting the Queen’s infant attendants on the platform. Of course, people obsessed by the supernatural were able to come to facile conclusions. But again there was evidence—on which I will forbear to expand—that the same sort of thing had happened in the belfry as had gone on in the cardboard box. The couple must have been leaning against the tenor bell and their climactic excitement would appear to have activated its clapper. Only briefly, as I say. But it is an interesting point, and one which features in a number of subsequent case-histories, that they were prepared to jeopardize their finely timed escape to assuage appetites that many operators would have been content to postpone.”
“A passionate pair, I would imagine.”
“They must be. It takes a fair output of erotic abandon to agitate a two-ton bell. We tried reconstruction—stopping short, of course, of an actual peal. However, that’s beside the point. There have been other instances, mostly political. An Irish publican in Barking, liquidated, we think, by an Ulster faction for allowing his clientele to sing songs deriding the Black and Tans. The retired captain of a Fisheries Protection Vessel, stabbed on an allotment garden in Huddersfield—a revenge killing for something that happened during the Cod War. In some cases the differences settled were essentially private, you remember the electrocution-in-the-lift case?”
“Clearly.”
“Managing director of a leading travel firm, obviously obliterated at his wife’s instigation. In any number of files we have the same syndrome: extermination by contract, followed at once by procreative fervour. At Huddersfield that act was performed in a henhouse, in full view of a dozen Rhode Island Reds.”
“Disgraceful.”
“We are up against dangerous people, Chief Constable.”
“To tell you the truth,” the Chief said, “I have never fully understood how these contracting agents work. How do they tout for custom? Suppose that you or I had someone on the periphery of our lives who was becoming altogether too much for us: how would we set about appointing our proxy? Presumably it would be a question of consulting metaphorical Yellow Pages?”
Mists Over Mosley Page 15