The Moving Toyshop

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘So there you are,’ it said. ‘What the hell do you think you’re up to? As far as I can make out, you and this madman Cadogan have witnessed a murder and just run away.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Fen unsympathetically. ‘You should have listened to me in the first place.’

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘No. I should be finding out now if you weren’t wasting my time with idiotic telephone calls. Was a brief-case found near the body?’

  ‘What do you want to know for? No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘I thought it wouldn’t be,’ said Fen placidly. ‘Has the news of Rosseter’s murder got about yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Certain?’

  ‘Of course I’m certain. They’re not releasing it till tomorrow. No one but you and this Cadogan maniac and the police know anything about it. Now, listen to me. I’m coming into town and I want to see you. Stay where you are, do you hear? You ought to be locked up – and your precious friend. I’ve had about enough. I wouldn’t put it past you to have killed this solicitor creature yourself.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking over that you were saying about Measure for Measure – ’

  ‘Pah,’ said the Chief Constable, and rang off.

  ‘Fire in the windlass,’ Fen sang cheerfully as he replaced the receiver. ‘Fire down below. So fetch a bucket of water, boys, there’s f – By the way, Sally, I suppose no one came through the shop while you were hiding there?’

  ‘Golly, no.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. I should have been scared out of my wits if anyone had.’

  ‘Well, tell us what’s been going on,’ said Wilkes testily. ‘Not going to keep it to yourself, are you? Heh, Detective?’

  ‘Mr Rosseter,’ said Fen, regarding Wilkes with a jaundiced eye, ‘has received the due reward of his deeds. We know something of what went on in that shop, but not enough to tell yet who killed Miss Tardy. Rosseter intended to, but didn’t. The others had some plan of intimidating her into signing away the money. We’ve met the owner of the toyshop – as nasty a creature as you could hope to find.’

  ‘Mr Hoskins has gone off to look for the doctor,’ said Sally.

  ‘Yes. Why did Spode leave?’

  ‘Dunno. I expect he had an engagement or something. He just gulped down a cup of tea and went.’

  ‘Nothing else happened – no visitors or phone calls?’

  An undergrad left an essay for you. I’ve been reading it. It’s called’ – Sally puckered up her attractive forehead – ‘“The Influence of Sir Gawain on Arnold’s Empedocles on Etna”.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ Fen groaned. ‘That must be Larkin: the most indefatigable searcher-out of pointless correspondences the world has ever known. Still, we can’t bother about that now. I’ve got a seminar on Hamlet at a quarter to six and it’s nearly that now. I shall have to cancel it if the police aren’t to catch up with me. Wait a minute.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘God help us all,’ said Wilkes with feeling.

  ‘Lily Christine’s still outside, isn’t she?’ Fen asked Cadogan, who nodded bewilderedly.

  ‘Good,’ said Fen. ‘Now we’ll all go down to this seminar except you, Wilkes,’ he added hastily.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ said Wilkes with determination.

  ‘Why are you always so tiresome?’ said Fen irritably. ‘One’s never rid of you.’

  ‘Do let him come, Professor Fen,’ Sally pleaded. ‘He’s been so sweet.’

  ‘Sweet,’ said Fen meaningly, but seeing no alternative, gave in with an ill grace. He got his hat and a raincoat from a cupboard and they all trooped out, Cadogan wondering what on earth Fen was proposing to do. He soon knew.

  The lecture-hall in which Fen’s seminar was to be held was a small one. That it pertained normally to the classical faculty was indicated by a dun-coloured photographic reproduction of the Hermes of Praxiteles at one end, and a companion picture of an Aphrodite Kallipygos at the other. Upon this, in moments of tedium, the male students were accustomed wistfully to gaze. An incredibly ruinous edition of Liddell and Scott lay on a table raised on a slight dais at the front. On the wooden benches about twenty undergraduates sat, the women, gowned, chattering feverishly, and the men, ungowned, staring absently about them. Their texts and notebooks lay scattered on the desks.

  When Fen came in, followed by the others, there was an expectant hush. He climbed the dais and regarded them for a moment before speaking. Then he said:

  ‘It is my troublesome duty to discuss with you this evening Hamlet, by the well-known English playwright, William Shakespeare. Perhaps I had better say it should be my troublesome duty, since I have, as things are, no intention of doing anything of the sort. You may recall that the name character in that play makes at one point a remark to the effect that the native hue of resolution is too often sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and that moreover enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action. More briefly though less accurately (and remember, please, that poetry is nothing if not accurate), this means “Cut the cackle and get down to the horses.” That, with the assistance of two gentlemen here present, I propose to do now.’

  Poetry nothing if not accurate, the women wrote in their books.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Fen proceeded dramatically, ‘I am being pursued by the police.’ Everyone looked interested. ‘Not for any crime I have committed, but simply because, in their innocence, they do not know that I am tracking down the perpetrator of a particularly cold-blooded and brutal murder.’ Here there was some tentative applause from the back. Fen bowed.

  ‘Thank you. Perhaps the first thing I’d better do is to introduce these other people to you.’ He looked round with distaste. ‘This bedraggled-looking object here is Mr Richard Cadogan, the eminent poet.’

  Loud, embarrassing cheers.

  ‘This is Dr Wilkes, who was dug up when the foundations of the New Bodleian were laid.’

  More cheers, rather louder. (‘New Bodleian,’ Wilkes commented benevolently. ‘Horrid erection.’)

  ‘And this is an attractive woman called Sally.’

  Very loud cheers from the male undergraduates, and some shouts of ‘Telephone number?’ Sally grinned, rather shyly.

  ‘They are my companions,’ Fen continued sententiously. ‘I might almost say my allies.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ Wilkes put in suddenly. ‘We can’t hang about here all night while you perorate. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Be quiet, Wilkes,’ said Fen irritably. ‘I’m coming to that … Mr Scott,’ he called to a tall, lanky young man sitting at the back of the room.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ said Mr Scott, standing up.

  ‘Do you drive a car, Mr Scott?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Mr Scott, are you prepared to risk losing your dinner by impersonating me?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  ‘You’ll require a great deal of resource, Mr Scott.’

  ‘I have boundless resource, sir.’

  ‘Good – admirable. If you understand me, you’ll have to look like me trying to disguise myself.’ Fen produced a pair of dark glasses from his pocket. ‘If you’ll put these on – and my hat and coat – ’

  Mr Scott did so. He strode experimentally up and down the lecture-room. At a short distance, the resemblance proved to be quite deceptive. Fen nodded his approval.

  ‘We now need someone to impersonate Mr Cadogan,’ he announced. ‘Mr Beavis, you’re about the right height. But you ought to have a hat and coat and dark glasses, too.’ He considered. ‘Sally dear, would you go up to my room? You’ll find the hat and coat in my wardrobe – any ones will do – and the dark glasses in the left-hand top drawer of my desk. I wonder if a false beard … No, perhaps not.’

  Sally ran off.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, what I want you to do is this. In a few minutes the police will be he
re, searching for me and Mr Cadogan. You know my car?’

  ‘Couldn’t mistake it, sir.’

  ‘No. I see what you mean. It’s standing near the main gate – not locked, or anything. As the police arrive, I want you gentlemen to get into it and drive off as fast as you can go. It will need rather careful timing if you’re to induce them to follow you and at the same time get a sufficient start.’

  ‘You want us to decoy them away, sir?’ said Mr Scott.

  ‘That’s it. And lead them any sort of dance you like, all over the country. I leave that to your ingenuity. There’s plenty of petrol in the tank, and Lily Christine will go very fast. Obviously, they musn’t catch up with you and discover you’re not us.’

  ‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ Mr Beavis remarked with some apprehension.

  ‘It will work,’ Fen responded confidently, ‘because no one expects this sort of trick outside a book. I should add that I’ll pay your fines for breaking the speed limit and get you out of any other variety of trouble you may land in. By a bit later this evening I hope to have everything cleared up, but in the meantime I must have the police out of my way. Well, are you game?’

  Mr Scott and Mr Beavis looked at one another. Then they nodded. Sally returned with hat, coat, and glasses, and helped Mr Beavis on with them.

  ‘He doesn’t look like me,’ said Cadogan.

  ‘He looks very like you indeed,’ said Fen. ‘That same shuffling, furtive gait … Thank you all for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. This seminar is now concluded. Next time,’ he added, suddenly mindful of his duties, ‘we will return to Hamlet and discuss it in relation to sources, particularly the no-longer-extant earlier version. You will find that a splendid field for wild surmise … Now. If everything is ready – ’

  The undergraduates, now that the spell was broken, took their departure, chattering excitedly the while. Mr Scott and Mr Beavis, conferring in low tones, went to take up their station.

  ‘I don’t think much of her figure,’ said Sally, who was examining the Aphrodite.

  ‘Let’s all go up to the tower,’ said Fen. ‘There’s a window there, and we can see what happens.’

  They had not long to wait. A black police car drove up, and from it emerged the Chief Constable, with iron-grey hair and moustache, a sergeant, and a constable. They looked very purposeful and grim. Mr Scott and Mr Beavis waited until they were about to enter at the main gate, and then darted from a nearby doorway and flung themselves into Lily Christine III. There was a horrifying moment when Cadogan thought the car was not going to start, and then they were off with a roar and a rush down the Woodstock Road, where, had they only known it, Dr Reginald Havering was at that moment confronting his destiny. The noise attracted the Chief Constable’s attention just as he was stepping inside.

  ‘There they go!’ he shouted in a paroxysm of annoyance. ‘Get after them, you fools!’ All three men precipitated themselves back into the police car, and in another moment it was moving off.

  Fen sighed with relief. ‘My poor friend,’ he commented. ‘Now perhaps we can have some peace for a little while. Come along, everyone. We’re going to the “Mace and Sceptre’ I’m expecting a message from Mr Hoskins there.’

  In those halcyon times, when the rivers ran with strong ale and the supply of spirits was inexhaustible, the bar of the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ opened at 5.30 in the afternoon. It was just on six when Fen, Sally, Cadogan, and Wilkes arrived. The young man with the glasses and the long neck was sitting in his corner finishing Nightmare Abbey, but the only other inhabitant of those Gothic splendours was Mr Sharman, now familiar to them under the name of Mold, rabbittoothed and muffled as ever, and looking as though he had not moved since they left him to search among the shop-girls of Oxford. He waved to them as they came in, and then shrank back in his chair as he saw Sally, his face suddenly pinched, mean, and frightened.

  ‘Just the man I wanted to see,’ Fen said amiably, striding towards him. ‘Richard, get us all something to drink, will you?’ He towered over puny Mr Sharman. ‘Well, Mr Sharman, I expect you remember Miss Carstairs, your co-heir, whom you saw last night in the Iffley Road?’

  Mr Sharman licked dry lips. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Come, come.’ Fen pulled up a chair for Sally, and then sat down himself. Wilkes was at the bar, helping Cadogan with drinks. ‘We’ve discovered a great deal about things since we saw you last. Far too much for you to keep up the pretence any longer. Rosseter has talked. Miss Winkworth has talked.’ Fen assumed a sinister expression. ‘And now you’re going to talk.’

  ‘I tell you I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never seen this girl in my life. Now, get away from me.’

  ‘In fact, Miss Winkworth – whom you know as Leeds – told us she saw you kill Miss Tardy.’

  Mr Sharman panicked. ‘That’s a lie!’ he shouted.

  ‘Still, you do know she was killed, don’t you,’ Fen pointed out mildly. ‘Which means you must have been there.’

  ‘I – ’

  ‘Let’s have your account of exactly what happened. It had better be a true account, because we have means of checking it.’

  ‘You’re not going to get a word out of me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, we are,’ said Fen placidly. ‘A great many words, in fact.’ He paused as Wilkes and Cadogan appeared with beer, whisky, and a cider for Sally. ‘Go on, Mr Sharman.’

  But Mr Sharman was gaining confidence. His long teeth were revealed in what was almost a smile. ‘You’re not the police,’ he said. ‘You’ve no right to ask me questions.’

  ‘In that case we’ll take you along to the police-station, and they’ll ask you questions.’

  ‘You’ve no right to take me anywhere.’

  ‘In point of fact, we have. Every citizen has a right – and a duty – to arrest a criminal found committing a felony. Conspiracy to murder is a felony, you know.’ Fen beamed engagingly.

  ‘Prove it,’ said Mr Sharman tensely.

  Fen regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Where murder’s concerned, one’s bound to put humanitarian feelings on one side, isn’t one? Hence the third degree in America. In a case like this one does somehow feel it’s justified.’

  Fear was in Mr Sharman’s red-rimmed eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we might take you away somewhere and hurt you rather a lot.’

  Mr Sharman started to get up from his chair. Cadogan, who had been following the exchange with interest, kicked him hard on the shin. He gave a little yelp and subsided again. ‘F – you,’ Mr Sharman said viciously.

  ‘Are you going to tell us what you know?’ Fen said.

  Mr Sharman was thinking. ‘A confession made under threats isn’t any good in a court of law,’ he said. ‘And not a soul can testify I was involved in any conspiracy. Yes, I’ll tell you, and you can make what you like of it.’

  ‘That’s more sensible.’

  Some newcomers entered the bar, and Mr Sharman lowered his voice. ‘I went to the shop and helped shift those bloody toys about – since you’re so clever, you’ll know why. Then we waited for the woman to turn up. After she did, Rosseter put us all in different rooms and talked to her for a bit. Then the other three got together – Rosseter and Berlin and the woman – and after a bit I heard someone walking softly round the shop, so I went to warn them. We stayed quiet for a while. Then I went in to see the woman and found the light out and her dead. That’s all. Make what you like of it. If it ever comes to the point, I shall deny the lot.’

  ‘Parturiunt montes,’ said Fen, ‘nascetur ridiculus mus. Well, well, that’s quite enlightening, all the same. Did you dispose of the body and knock out Cadogan here?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Rosseter or Berlin must have done. Now go away and leave me in peace.’ Mr Sharman wiped a dirty hand across his straggling eyebrows.

  A page-boy came into the bar. ‘Telephone call for Mr T. S. Eliot!’ he piped. ‘Mr T. S. Eliot?’

  To everyone’s
surprise, Fen said ‘That’s me,’ got up, and went out, pursued by the interested gaze of the other persons in the bar. In the telephone-box he talked to Mr Hoskins, who was sadly out of breath, and with his normal equanimity gravely deranged.

  ‘The fox is away, sir,’ he panted into the instrument. ‘In the open, and making for cover.’

  ‘View halloo,’ said Fen. ‘What direction is he going?’

  ‘If you can get round to St Christopher’s you may head him off. He’s on a bicycle. Some of my friends are after him. I’m talking from his house. You’ll have to be quick.’ Mr Hoskins rang off.

  Fen reappeared apocalyptically at the door of the bar and beckoned furiously to the others. ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Quick!’ Cadogan, who had a mouthful of beer, choked terribly. They rushed to join Fen, leaving Mr Sharman to his own sordid reflections.

  ‘They’ve got the doctor,’ Fen explained excitedly. ‘He’s out and away. We must run. Oh for Lily Christine!’

  They rushed through the revolving doors. Wilkes, whose athletic days were over, seized the only bicycle within sight (needless to say, it was not his) and wobbled unsteadily away on it, while Fen, Cadogan, and Sally ran – like dervishes: down George Street, round the corner by Taphouse’s music shop, over the entrance to Beaumont Street (a bus nearly got them here), past the Taylorian, past the Bird and Baby … And there they stopped, gasping for breath, to contemplate the amazing spectacle which confronted them.

  Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe, and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins.