by Diane Janes
‘Well, there’s no real damage done. You can tell the committee that you did represent the society because you always intended to hand them over – which you can, because we’ve read them now.’
‘Which is presumably what Hugh Allonby’s got a problem with.’
‘Quite. But they can hardly chuck you off the committee if you say that you thought you were doing the right thing: saving the papers before they got thrown on the fire. Just tell them that it didn’t occur to you to run it past the committee first.’
‘I don’t much care if they do chuck me off the committee,’ Fran said. ‘It’s Hugh Allonby’s reaction that interests me. He’s obviously really keen to get his hands on those papers, and so is Sarah Ingoldsby. They’re in it together. I know they are.’
‘Don’t forget how proprietorial they both are about all things Barnaby. I still can’t help thinking about the Dryden family. They’re the ones with the really strong financial motive. Do you think—’
‘There’s also Stephen Latchford,’ she interrupted.
‘I know you’ve got a bit of a thing about old Stephen-with-a-ph,’ Tom said gently, ‘but I can’t really see where you’re going with that. I know you don’t like the guy and he’s a bit of a creep, but apart from that, what have we got on him? Anyway, we need to get our story straight about how you come to have these papers. It’ll be obvious that I know about them, because it was me who went sniffing round the museum and put Little Miss Sulky Face in a huff.’
‘You know, Tom, I really don’t care. Let Hugh Allonby throw me out. The committee’s pointless anyway. They all just do whatever he says.’
‘But if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, we can do it more easily from the inside. And think of me still stuck on the committee without you – you’re the only person who makes the meetings bearable.’
Fran sucked in a gulp of air. ‘I suppose so,’ she conceded.
‘I suggest we say that it became obvious at the funeral that Linda’s family weren’t interested in the Barnaby stuff and, because you’d struck up a rapport with the sister, you thought an informal approach would be most likely to succeed and I agreed. Once you got hold of the papers, you fully intended to hand them on to Sarah Ingoldsby, as society archivist, at the next committee meeting. You didn’t bother mentioning it before because it’s hardly an urgent matter.’
‘Good idea – sort of … Where’s the fire?’
‘Exactly. That might calm him down, and even if it doesn’t, he won’t want to make too much fuss just in case anyone else starts to suspect that there could be something important in those papers. Anyway, Allonby has asked for our views, so I’m going to write to him now, but I suggest that you leave it until tomorrow. That way the letters won’t arrive together and it might look less like a collaboration.’
After Tom rang off, she read the letter again. Although her gut instinct was to tell Hugh Allonby that he was a pompous fool and could go to hell, it was still humiliating to think of the rest of the committee reading an accusation of impropriety. Good grief, she thought. Did none of them have any sense of perspective? It wasn’t as if she’d run off with the subscriptions or something. To all intents and purposes, the fuss amounted to the contents of a few old notebooks about a long-dead children’s author. It wasn’t something serious, like finding a dead body on a railway line.
She let her mind run back to the weekend of the conference. When Linda had first been missed, someone had suggested checking to see if she was still in her room and Hugh Allonby had gone off to look for her, but he hadn’t known which room to look in – he’d had to ask John James. Mr James had handled the bookings in cooperation with the hotel, so he had a list of who was staying in which room. Could Hugh Allonby’s asking for the room number have been a double bluff? Delegates would not normally know which room anyone else was in, but whoever had abducted Linda must have known where to find her. However, if Hugh Allonby was responsible, he wouldn’t have wanted to let on that he knew which room she was in.
‘Excuse me, Mum.’ Ada had appeared in the doorway with her outdoor coat and hat on. ‘Should I feed the cat, Mum, before I go, only she’s been asking these past twenty minutes.’
‘It’s all right, Ada. You had better go or you’ll miss your bus. I’ll take care of the cat.’
After she had dealt with Mrs Snegglington’s requirements, Fran gave in to temptation and poured herself a large gin. She carried it into the parlour and set it down on the desk while she consulted her membership list for John James’s telephone number.
The operator connected the call swiftly and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, during which he sounded unmistakably surprised to hear from her, she said, ‘Mr James, I hope you don’t mind my calling you like this, but I was just curious about something. When the conference was being organized this year, I wondered how the room allocation worked. Am I right in thinking that the society looks after all that?’
‘That’s right. The bookings officer – that was me this year – does it all. Apparently it’s always been done like that, so that friends who want to share a room or be adjacent to one another can be put together. It saves the hotel having to bother with it.’
‘So people sometimes know which rooms their friends are in?’
‘Sometimes.’ His tone had become cagey.
‘Does the hotel know who’s in which room?’
‘Of course. I gave them a complete list. For billing purposes. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, no particular reason.’
‘You don’t ask questions like this without a reason.’ John James’s voice had turned cold. ‘I don’t think I want to discuss this with you any further. There’s already some trouble over you getting hold of Mrs Dexter’s papers, isn’t there?’
‘What makes you think that the letter’s about me?’
‘Well, it isn’t going to be Miss Robertson or Miss Winterton who’s involved, is it? And I can’t imagine our chairman sending out a letter like that if everyone’s favourite archivist was involved.’
‘Did Mr Allonby know which delegate was in which room?’ Fran asked.
‘What is this, Mrs Black? No, wait – I get the picture. You fancy yourself with a pipe and deerstalker, don’t you?’ His obvious derision cut her like a knife. ‘Well, if you want to know anything else regarding the arrangements, I suggest you raise it in the committee. I know Robert Barnaby wrote for children but that doesn’t mean we all have to behave like one. May I suggest you just grow up, stop playing detectives and leave the police to get on with their job?’
The line went dead. Fran realized that her cheeks were burning as hard as they had been when she’d first read Hugh Allonby’s letter. She steadied herself with a couple of gulps of gin.
She had gone too far in ringing John James, a man she had met only twice before, first at the conference and then at the subsequent committee meeting. And his words, while wounding her, had also been a wake-up call. She and Tom were trying to solve a mystery which was already under investigation by a professional police force, who probably had heaps of evidence about which she and Tom knew absolutely nothing. It really was childish to imagine that they could team up and solve the case, like Mickey and Ronald in the Two Boy Detectives series. She thought about Mo’s comment earlier that afternoon: ‘… You may think you’re playing Watson to his Sherlock Holmes, but at the end of the day, he’s a red-blooded chap. Don’t fool yourself that there isn’t an ulterior motive.’
Did Tom have an ulterior motive? What was a married man doing, leaving his wife and son at home while he went chasing around after clues with another woman? If he was interested in having an affair, he hadn’t so far done anything to initiate one. Then another conversation came back to her, when Tom himself had mentioned that he’d had a room in that same downstairs corridor from which Linda had gone missing. She went into the kitchen and topped up her glass again, finding that it had unaccountably emptied itself. It would really be much more convenient to
have a cocktail cabinet in the sitting room as she and Michael had once done, she thought. Civilized people did not keep their gin in the pantry.
Back in the sitting room, she reverted to her previous line of thought. Suppose you had abducted and murdered someone and you thought that some other person was getting too interested in finding out what had happened … wouldn’t it make sense to pretend to help, so that you could keep an eye on what they were finding out?
It wasn’t as if she had particularly good judgement when it came to men. Right from school, she had been attracted to the wrong sort. Her first love had been an unrequited passion for a boy down the road, who had gone on to be a charming, feckless bounder who’d found brief notoriety after embezzling the local Liberal Club funds. There had been that short-lived romance with a local solicitor, who’d had wandering hands and a drink problem, to say nothing of the cheater she had eventually married. Good God, she must have some sort of beacon which attracted them, like a silent dog whistle.
TWENTY-FOUR
Tom had evidently managed to get his letter into the last collection of the evening, for she received a copy of it the following morning.
Dear Fellow Committee Members,
It is generally accepted that one of the central themes of Robert Barnaby’s work is fair play, so I assume that none of us would wish to be party to a situation in which pressure was placed upon a committee member to resign without there having first been a proper investigation into whatever offence that person was supposed to have committed.
As it happens, I am aware of what has occurred in this instance, and I hope Mr Allonby will not be offended when I say that I believe he has completely misunderstood the situation in regard to the late Mrs Dexter’s papers.
As you are all aware, Mrs Black and I represented the society at Mrs Dexter’s funeral, where we met her sister, Mrs Christina Harper. Mrs Harper told us that the vast majority of the late Mrs Dexter’s possessions were shortly going to be turned over to a house clearance firm, and that as she had no interest in her sister’s research on Robert Barnaby, if we wished to acquire it on behalf of the society, we were welcome to do so. While we did not suppose that the items involved would be of any particular value, given a choice between acquiring them for the society or standing by while they were disposed of, it seemed sensible to accept them on the society’s behalf, and I assume that any other committee member faced with this situation would have done the same thing.
Mrs Black and I agreed that as she happens to live within a few miles of Mrs Harper, it was more practical that she should be the one to undertake the collection of the notebooks, etc., and bring them to the next committee meeting. It did not occur to either of us that there was any urgency about this, or that one member’s unwanted notebooks were capable of causing such a storm in a teacup. Under the circumstances, talk of misleading anyone or offering resignations seems completely inappropriate.
Tom Dod
By the next day, Fran had received a copy of a note circulated by Jean Robertson.
Dear Fellow Committee Members,
In the light of Mr Dod’s explanation, I think we can all see that he and Mrs Black believed that they were acting for the best, and that talk of resignations is not appropriate in this case.
J. E. Robertson
Tom rang that evening to tell her that Ruth Winterton and the journal editor Richard Finney had both contacted him in support. Even John James, from whom Fran had half expected a degree of hostility after their recent conversation, had telephoned Tom, saying that he did not consider there was any need for talk of people standing down.
Fran felt like cheering. Hugh Allonby had attempted to get the committee to gang up on her and it hadn’t worked. Well done, Tom. The only note of dissent came from Sarah Ingoldsby, who had circulated a rather rambling letter suggesting that it was always best if members made sure that the ‘proper people’ were kept informed, and that when it came to the acquisition of papers, as society archivist she was self-evidently that person. ‘Pompous little prig,’ Fran said aloud on reading it.
‘Do you think those two were just infuriated because they like to be in control of everything?’ Fran asked. ‘Or do you think Hugh Allonby really does want to suppress Linda’s research?’
‘Well, he certainly won’t like what’s in those notebooks. The general upshot is that his own research was pretty shoddy. That doesn’t make him a murderer, though.’
‘He didn’t exactly seem sorry when Linda didn’t turn up to give her paper.’
‘You’re right there.’ The line went quiet for a moment. Tom was obviously thinking.
Fran breached the pause, saying, ‘You know, we should both watch our backs. Hugh Allonby doesn’t like to be gainsaid and you can bet that he’s smarting over this defeat. It must be the first time in years that his executive committee hasn’t backed him up.’
‘What could he possibly do?’
‘Nothing, I suppose,’ Fran said. But she could not help recalling that the last person who had attempted to cross him over something to do with Robert Barnaby had ended up dead on a railway line.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was three days before she heard from Tom again, and in the meantime Fran had received her telephone bill. It seemed a staggering amount – all those trunk calls to Tom, probably – and she blanched as she wrote the cheque. The trouble was, she thought, that this whole business over Linda Dexter and the Barnaby Society had become the most interesting thing going on in her life – something to focus on over and above the humdrum day-to-day activities like shopping and gardening and changing her library books. It was only like having a very expensive hobby, she thought as she folded the cheque into an envelope, then glanced across at her shiny black telephone, of which she was rather proud as it was one of the new designs with a handset which combined both mouthpiece and earpiece, making it much easier to use than the old candlestick models.
It was different for Tom Dod, of course. He must be very busy, with his job and his wife and son, all of them living in the tall mews house, where several flights of stairs separated his study from the ground floor, and where she supposed that Veronica gave instructions to their cook, planned little family outings and received callers. She wondered if Tom’s wife minded about all the time he spent on the Barnaby Society and the Linda Dexter mystery. Did they talk about it together? He never really mentioned his wife. But then, why should he?
Mo called in on her way home from a trip to see her dressmaker in Grange, and once the obligatory tea had been provided (it was too early for cocktails), she curled her legs beneath her on Fran’s sofa and leaned back luxuriantly. ‘Come on, then. Let’s have the latest on the crime of the century … No, no, get down, Mrs Snegs. I’m too full of cake to have a cat on my lap.’
‘Well, my list of suspects isn’t getting any shorter. In fact, if anything, it’s getting longer.’
‘Go on.’
‘Stephen Latchford. He telephoned me again yesterday evening, asking if it was convenient to come round and discuss a Barnaby Society matter. I can’t believe that he called again after I had slammed the receiver down on him and told him to leave me alone, but he behaved as if that had never happened. How much plainer can one be? Anyway, I said it wasn’t convenient and couldn’t he put whatever it is in a letter or just tell me about whatever it was there and then, on the telephone, but he wouldn’t. He said he would call me again in a day or so. It’s hard to explain, but somehow he sort of made it sound like a threat. He’s got this really peculiar way of … oh, I don’t know … manipulating the conversation somehow so that the sort of polite disinterest which would discourage other people makes me sound as if I’m being rude or unreasonable. And he just won’t take no for an answer.’ She found it difficult to explain, even to Mo, how unnerving she had found the call.
‘Very well then. The chap has obviously taken a fancy to you, but what’s his connection to the victim?’
‘None, really. Except that until
recently he lived quite near to Linda Dexter. Oh, yes, and he mentioned that the police had asked him if he heard anything suspicious that night because his room in the hotel was opposite to Linda’s. Of course, if he intended to abduct Linda, I don’t know how he could have found out in advance which room she was in.’
‘I should think that would be quite easy,’ Mo said. ‘If I wanted to know what room someone else was staying in, I would just ask at the front desk.’
‘That’s a bit chancey if you are up to no good. Suppose someone remembered afterwards that you’d asked about her room? It’s drawing attention to yourself.’
‘Well, so is starting to make a nuisance of yourself to someone else immediately after you’ve just done away with your first victim.’
‘Yes and no. Linda’s death might be passed off as suicide. And, of course, there’s no evidence that he was bothering her.’
‘Would she have told anyone?’
‘I suppose not. I mean, who does one tell? It’s not as though we have a member responsible for policing the behaviour of other members. No one in the society knows that he’s been bothering me. Well, only Tom, and I don’t think even he takes it all that seriously.’
‘Mmm,’ said Mo. ‘What about your other suspects?’
‘Well, Tom’s a bit of a suspect too.’
‘What? Mr Death in several Scandinavian languages? I thought you had cast Tom as Bulldog Drummond, the detective hero?’
‘His room was on that downstairs corridor too.’
‘But that isn’t very much to go on, is it? I mean, just being on the same corridor. As you’ve already said, that doesn’t mean you would know where the intended victim’s room was. And anyway, your Tom’s a thoroughly good guy – well, except for flirting with you when he is married.’
‘He hasn’t – ever – flirted with me. But I agree that his being married and somehow never mentioning it, is … well … maybe part of what makes me wonder.’
‘Who else is on the list?’