The Moving Toyshop

by Edmund Crispin

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Fen impatiently. ‘We know about all that. And you guessed she was leaving you something in her will?’

  ‘She called me Berlin,’ Havering said, ‘because of some fool rhyme or other. Yes.’ He hesitated, seeming for the moment at a loss as to how to proceed. ‘I found out Rosseter was her solicitor, and some time after she died I went to see him. I left it for a while, because I didn’t want to reopen the past. But she had money, that old woman. She might leave me a lot, and I wanted to know.’ He stared at them, and Cadogan could see the twilight reflected from the water into his eyes. ‘It’s funny when you come to think of it – that I should have wanted the money so much. I wasn’t badly off, and I wasn’t in debt, and I wasn’t being blackmailed. I just wanted money – a lot of it. I saw men with a lot of money in America – not the sort of money you get by just working.’ He laughed shakily. ‘You’d think when you got to my age you wouldn’t be worrying about buying women and luxury, wouldn’t you? But that was what I wanted.’

  He stared at them again. It was a kind of feeble bid for understanding and sympathy, but it made Cadogan’s blood run cold. On the bank, a colony of crickets had begun their incessant, metallic cry.

  ‘That’s what lots of men have wanted,’ Fen commented drily. ‘The prison cemeteries are crowded with them.’

  Havering almost shouted: ‘I didn’t kill her! They can’t hang me!’ Then, quietening a little: ‘Hanging’s a filthy business. When I was a police doctor I saw an execution at Pentonville. A woman. She screamed and struggled and they took five minutes just putting the rope round her neck. Her nerve had gone, you see. I wondered what it would be like, waiting for the boards to give way under you … ’ He put his face in his hands.

  ‘Go on with what you were telling us,’ Fen said immediately. There was not a trace of emotion of any kind in his voice.

  Havering pulled himself together. ‘I – saw Rosseter, and told him I knew who he was. He wouldn’t admit it at first, but he couldn’t hold out long. He told me the provisions of the will – do you know about that?’

  ‘Yes. We know. Go on.’

  ‘We planned to get the Tardy woman to sign away the money. Rosseter said she’d easily be frightened.’

  ‘Not exactly what he told us,’ Cadogan interposed.

  ‘No,’ said Fen. ‘But in the circumstances that was to be expected.’

  ‘I wish I’d had nothing to do with it,’ Havering said bitterly. ‘Much use I shall have for the legacy. That damned old woman’s to blame, with her idiotic schemes.’ He paused. ‘Rosseter brought in two of the other legatees. I didn’t want that, but he said we’d arrange things so that if anything ever came out they’d get the blame. That wasn’t so bad. Then the night came, and we got everything ready at that place in the Iffley Road. Rosseter didn’t want the woman to see him, because, although she didn’t know us, she did know him, and might recognize him. So we arranged that I should put bandages round my face; that would disguise me, but not obviously, because I could say I’d had an accident. Then after I’d sent the girl away the other man – we called him Mold – was to get on with the real business.’

  Again Havering paused, glancing round at his auditors. ‘I was nervous. I must have been nervous, or I should have seen at once what it meant when Rosseter said he was going in to see the woman. He said, too, that he wanted us to separate to different rooms. I thought that was part of the plan to incriminate the others, so I backed him up. And then when I was alone I suddenly realized that he must be intending to kill her if he was letting himself be seen, and that this separating was to incriminate one of us.’ He relit his cigarette, which had gone out. ‘It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? And it was fantastic. I think we all knew there was something odd and wrong about it, but the trouble was, we’d left things too much in Rosseter’s hands, and now I knew he was double-crossing us. I went to the woman in the other room – to give myself an alibi. Then after a while Rosseter came back. I expected him to have killed her, but he hadn’t, because I heard her say something to him as he left the room, about troublesome legal formalities.’

  ‘Just a minute. What time was this? Do you know?’

  ‘Yes, I happened to look at my watch. It was twenty-five past eleven.’

  ‘So she was still alive then. Have you any idea what Rosseter was talking to her about, and why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think perhaps he was setting his stage somehow. You could ask him.’

  Cadogan glanced quickly at his companions. The same thought was in all their minds. Was this a neatly contrived bluff, a pretended ignorance of Rosseter’s death, or was it the real thing? For the life of him Cadogan could not tell. The remark had been made before it was possible to attend to the facial expression or the inflection of Havering’s toneless voice. Wilkes sat placidly in the bow, a small, old figure lighting a battered pipe.

  ‘Rosseter said the woman wasn’t going to be as easy to frighten as he’d thought, and that perhaps we ought to abandon the whole scheme as being too dangerous. I argued with him about that for a while, but it was more for form’s sake than anything else; I knew he was going to kill her, but I didn’t want him to know I knew yet. Then the other man – Mold – came in from his room and said there was someone walking about the shop. We put out the light and stayed quiet for a while – quite a long while. Finally we decided it must be a false alarm, and Rosseter gave the other man a gun and told him to go and get on with the job.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘About a quarter or ten to midnight. After a short while he came back and said the woman was dead.’

  There was a tiny pause. Euthanasia, Cadogan thought: they all regard it as that, and not as wilful slaughter, not as the violent cutting-off of an irreplaceable compact of passion and desire and affection and will; not as a thrust into unimagined and illimitable darkness. He tried to see Havering’s face, but it was only a lean silhouette in the fading light. Something took root in him that in a week, a month, a year perhaps, would become poetry. He was suddenly excited and oddly content. The words of his predecessors in the great Art came to his mind. ‘They are all gone into the world of light.’ ‘I that in heill was and in gladnesse.’ ‘Dust hath closed Helen’s eye … ’ The vast and terrifying significance of death closed round him for a moment like the petals of a dark flower.

  ‘I went and examined her,’ Havering was saying. ‘There was a thin cord round her neck, with the usual bruising. Death, of course, due to asphyxia. It was while I was doing that that the girl appeared. She had been all the time in the shop below. Rosseter sent her away and promised she would keep quiet about what she had seen. He was unnerved, and that surprised me, because I thought he’d killed the woman. We were all unnerved, and wanted to get out, but someone had to get rid of the body and get the toys back to the other shop. We arranged how it was to be done, and then we three men drew lots for it, and it came out that I had to do it. I stayed there for a while, thinking. I was frightened, and afraid I should be caught with the body.

  ‘Then someone came into the shop below.’ He looked at Cadogan. ‘It was you. What happened you know. I knocked you out and put you in that closet place downstairs. I locked the door so that you wouldn’t be able to get into the shop again, and see that it had been changed, but I left the window open so that you could get away. I knew that you’d go to the police, but I thought that if they came back and found the body gone, there would be nothing they could do. I – I didn’t want to injure you, you understand – ’

  ‘Never mind the apologies,’ Fen said. ‘What happened to the body?’

  ‘I got it out into the car the woman had left. It was heavy, and I’m not a strong man, so it took a long time. It was beginning to get stiff by then, and I had to push the head and arms about to move it through the car door. That was horrible. I took it to the river and put stones inside the clothes and pushed it in. I thought it was deep there, but it wasn’t, and the thing just lay wallowing on the edge,
lying in the mud and stones. I had to pick it out again, and carry it somewhere else. It was dark, and once it slipped and the wet arms fell round my neck … Then I had to take the stones out again because it was too heavy … ’ A second time Havering put his face in his hands.

  ‘Where did you put it in the end? Fen asked.

  ‘A little way up the river from here. There are three willows close together at the edge.’

  In the twilight a bat was flying; the piercing, strident chatter of the crickets never ceased; and far away in the town the clocks were striking half past seven. The river water was black now, and the small fishes would be clinging to the woman’s eyes. In the punt they were no more than silhouettes, the obscurity pierced only by the glowing ends of their cigarettes.

  Fen said: ‘After her handsbag – what happened to that?’

  ‘Rosseter took it away with him. I don’t know what he did with it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was wet and filthy, but I had to go back and get those toys away and replace the groceries and change the flat round. By the time I’d finished it was nearly light. I heard you go’ – this to Cadogan – ‘and I pushed some stores into the closet and went away myself. I don’t think anyone saw me.’ The toneless voice degenerated to a whine. ‘No one can prove anything.’

  ‘How do you mean “changed the flat round”?’ Cadogan demanded.

  ‘I cleaned it up and moved the furniture and oiled the door. I knew you’d only seen one room. I thought you’d imagine you’d mistaken the place.’

  ‘You were quite right,’ Cadogan conceded. ‘For a time I did. But why was the shop-door left open?’

  Havering’s face darkened. ‘It was those other fools – when they left. I didn’t know it was open. If it hadn’t been, none of this would have happened.’

  Fen stretched out his long legs and smoothed his hair. ‘While we’re on the subject of your going home, would anyone have known you were away last night?’

  ‘No one,’ Havering replied sulkily. ‘My servant sleeps out. She leaves at nine o’clock at night and doesn’t return till 7.30 in the morning.’

  ‘By which time, no doubt, you were in bed and asleep. What were you doing between 4.30 and 5 this afternoon?’

  ‘What?’ Havering stared. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind that. Answer the question.’

  ‘I was – I was returning home from my afternoon round of visits.’

  ‘What time did you get in?’

  ‘A little after five. I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘Did anyone see you come in?’

  ‘The maid. But why – ’

  ‘What time did you leave your last patient?’

  ‘Damn it, I can’t remember,’ Havering exclaimed. ‘What does it matter, anyway? It’s got nothing to do with last night. Listen: I didn’t kill that woman, and you can’t prove I did. I’m not going to hang. I’m a sick man, and I can’t stand much more of this.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Fen said. ‘Was it you who set those two men to follow Cadogan and myself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘I got a man I knew in London to send them down. They were prepared to do anything, and ask no questions, if they were only paid well enough.’

  ‘What happened exactly?’

  Havering spoke to Cadogan. ‘Rosseter rang me up and said you’d been to see him. He described you, and asked if I knew how you’d come to be meddling in the business. I recognized you as the man in the shop. I was alarmed. I sent Weaver and Faulkes to follow you and prevent you talking to anyone who might give the game away – especially the girl.’

  ‘So when we seemed likely to catch up with her, they disposed of us and took her away to stop her mouth once and for all.’

  ‘I gave no orders to kill – ’

  ‘Don’t quibble, please. The cottage they took her to belonged to Miss Winkworth. How did they know to take her there?’

  ‘I knew her. I recognized her last night in spite of the mask, and she recognized me. I rang up to tell her the girl was dangerous and would have to be shut up for a few hours. She suggested the cottage near Wootton.’

  ‘Knowing, no doubt, what the euphemism “shut up for a few hours” meant.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘The girl would have traced the owner afterwards, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘We arranged for Weaver and Faulkes to break in. Then no responsibility could fall on her.’

  ‘Let it pass. It’s as good an evasion as any. And now’ – Fen leaned forward – ‘we arrive at the most important point of the lot. Precisely what did you see when you examined the body which made you say no one who was present could have killed Miss Tardy?’

  Havering drew a deep breath. ‘Ah, you heard that, did you? Well, it’s true. I’ve been a police doctor, as I told you. You can’t ever tell exactly how long a person’s been dead, but the quicker you get to the body the more accurate you can be. I examined it at about nine minutes to midnight. And I’m willing to swear that that woman died not later than 11.45 and not earlier than 11.35. Do you see what that means?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Fen answered placidly. ‘As a matter of interest, did you inform any of the others of this fact?’

  ‘I told Rosseter.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ In the darkness Fen smiled. ‘Between 11.35 and 11.45 you were all together in a different room. No one could have got in from the outside, either.’

  Havering was shivering and half hysterical. ‘So unless the girl killed her,’ he said, ‘no one did, because the thing’s impossible.’

  12. The Episode of the Missing Link

  ‘Damn!’ said Sally. ‘It’s beginning to rain.’

  Unfortunately, it was. Dark rain-clouds made the night sky darker, and there were no longer any stars visible. The drops hissed and spattered in the leaves.

  ‘There used to be a summer-house at the end of the garden,’ Cadogan answered. ‘Come on. Let’s run for it.’

  It was still there, and in another moment they were stumbling breathlessly up the steps to shelter. Cadogan struck a match, and the light showed a dusty, comfortless interior, with deck-chairs stacked against the walls, a few garden tools, and a large square box which contained a set of bowling woods. An oak seat faced the doorway, and they sat down on it. Cadogan peered about him in the gloom.

  ‘This gives me the creeps,’ he observed; adding without much relevance: ‘When I was an undergraduate I made love to a girl in here.’

  ‘Pretty?’

  ‘No, not particularly. She had rather fat legs and her name was – was – Damn, I’ve quite forgotten. Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe. I remember I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t put much zest into the business. I don’t suppose she enjoyed it especially, poor thing.’

  It was an hour since Havering had made his confession on the river, and he was now, apathetic and as though drugged, temporarily immured in a room adjoining Fen’s. Fen himself had driven them out because, as he said, he wanted to think. From where they had been strolling on the lawn they could see the lights of his room, and all the lights of the garden front of St Christopher’s. Mr Hoskins had gone off with Wilkes to the latter’s rooms for a drink, since Fen’s whisky proved to be exhausted. So for the moment all – apart from the strains of jazz which issued from an undergraduate chamber – was peace.

  ‘One does extraordinary things,’ said Cadogan reflectively. ‘But on the whole, not as extraordinary as the things other people do. Look at Miss Snaith. Look at Rosseter. Look at’ – he became rather gloomy – ‘Fen.’

  ‘D’you spend all your time chasing about after murderers with him?’

  ‘I?’ Cadogan chuckled suddenly. ‘No – God be praised. But it really is comic.’

  ‘What’s comic?’

  ‘Last night – only last night – I was craving for adventure, for excitement: anything to stave off middle age. Goethe said that you ought to be very careful what you wish
for, because you’ll probably get it. How right he was. I wanted to be delivered from dullness, and the gods have taken me at my word.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d have led a dull life.’

  ‘I do, though. Seeing the same people, doing the same things. Trying to make what I like doing and what people will pay me for overlap a bit more.’

  ‘But you’re famous,’ Sally objected. ‘Professor Fen said you were, and I’ve just remembered where I’ve seen your face before. It was in the Radio Times.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Cadogan without much enthusiasm. ‘I wish they wouldn’t publish these things without asking one first. It looked like a mystic trying to communicate with the Infinite and tackle a severe bout of indigestion at the same time.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Do? Oh, I see what you mean. I read poetry.’

  ‘What poetry?’

  ‘Some of my own.’

  Sally grinned in the half-darkness. ‘I still can’t imagine you writing poetry. For one thing, you’re too easy to get on with.’

  Cadogan sat up. ‘You know, that cheers me. I was afraid I was degenerating into a mere word-spinner, one Wormius hight.’

  ‘Of course, your saying things like that rather ruins it.’

  ‘Sorry. It was a quotation from Pope.’

  ‘I don’t care who it was a quotation from. It’s really rather rude to quote when you know I shan’t understand. Like talking about someone in a language they don’t know.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Cadogan was penitent. ‘Honestly, it’s just habit. And anyway, it’d be far ruder if I were to talk down to you, as if you were a child.’

  Sally was still considering the improbability of Cadogan’s pretensions to poetry. She felt put out by his saturnine but unremarkable appearance. ‘You ought to look different, too.’

  ‘Why?’ said Cadogan. He lit a cigarette and gave her one too. ‘There’s no reason why poets should look like anything in particular. Wordsworth resembled a horse with powerful convictions; Chesterton was wholly Falstaffian; Whitman was as strong and hairy as a goldrush prospector. The fact is, there’s no such thing as a poetic type. Chaucer was a Government official, Sidney a soldier, Villon a thief, Marvell an M.P., Burns a ploughboy, Housman a don. You can be any sort of man and still be a poet. You can be as conceited as Wordsworth or as modest as Hardy; as rich as Byron or as poor as Francis Thompson; as religious as Cowper or as pagan as Carew. It doesn’t matter what you believe; Shelley believed every lunatic idea under the sun. Keats was certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections. And I’m willing to bet, my dear Sally, that you could pass Shakespeare on the way to work every morning for twenty years without noticing him once … Good Lord, this is developing into a lecture.’