Bloodhounds

by Peter Lovesey

  Late in the morning he took a phone call from Dorchester. John Croxley was formerly one of the murder squad at Bath, a pushy young inspector with an ego like a hotair balloon. His naked ambition had grated on the nerves of everyone. He had transferred to Dorset CID in the period Diamond was away, a sideways move that had been greeted with relief in Avon and Somerset.

  "Thought I'd give you a call, Mr. Diamond." The voice made a show of sounding casual. "I heard you were back. This isn't a busy moment, I hope?"

  "Rushed off my feet—but carry on."

  "Are you handling the Penny Black case, then?"

  "Not at this minute. I'm on the phone to you, aren't I? Must keep it short, I'm afraid. How are things down there in Dorset? Statistics perking up no end since you arrived, I bet."

  "To be perfectly honest, it's not entirely what I expected," Croxley confided. "I hadn't appreciated how much more rural this county is than Avon and Somerset."

  "More what?"

  "Rural. You know, countrified."

  "You mean sheep-shagging?"

  There was a pause. "I don't know about that. I'm not getting much work in the field of murder."

  Diamond chuckled and said insensitively, "Plenty in the field of turnips, however."

  "Not so much turnips as cattle, Mr. Diamond," Croxley said with total seriousness. His sense of humor had never blossomed. "My main job just now is noseprints."

  "Is what?"

  "Noseprints. It isn't widely known that every bovine noseprint is unique to the individual, like a fingerprint. You coat the animal's nose with printing ink and then press a sheet of paper against it."

  "You wouldn't be having me on, John?"

  "I wouldn't do that, Mr. Diamond. It's a scheme we've set up with the Dorset County Landowners' Association to combat the rustling of cattle. We've processed seven hundred cows already."

  Diamond was containing himself with difficulty. "You get noseprints from cows? Go on, John."

  "Well, that's all there is to it. They've recently put me in charge. I don't know why. It isn't as if I was brought up in the country. And I don't see much prospect in it."

  "I don't know," said Diamond, tears of amusement sliding down his cheeks. "Things could be worse."

  "Do you think so?"

  "If it's their noses you deal with, you're out in front, aren't you?"

  "I suppose so."

  "Good thing you're not taking prints from the other end."

  "I hadn't thought of that, Mr. Diamond."

  "Think of it when you're feeling low, John. This is new technology, and you're the man who does it. Get your noseprints on the computer. You can set up—what is it they call it?—a database on all the cows in Dorset. You asked about prospects. You've got unlimited prospects, I would think. Ypu could go on doing this for years."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," said Croxley bleakly. "I was wondering if—with so much interest in the Penny Black business— you might be mounting a major inquiry, recruiting extra detectives."

  "You'd be willing to give up your exciting new job?"

  "If there was half a chance."

  "No chance at all, I'm afraid. You know how it is with budgets as they are. I'd stick with the cows, if I were you. You could be the world's foremost authority on bovine noseprints."

  When he put down the phone, he sat back and rocked with laughter for the first time in a week. He could hardly wait to tell Steph at the end of the day. But something else later that afternoon put it clean out of his mind.

  On BBC Radio Bristol after the four o'clock news headlines, the presenter said, "Something different here. I've just been handed a note that my producer believes could link up with that cryptic verse we gave you last Monday morning. Remember? The one the police later said was almost certainly linked to the million-pound stamp theft from the Bath Postal Museum. The Penny Black, right? Well, this looks like another poetic effort from the cryptic cat burglar. It's printed on a sheet of A4 paper with no covering note. Came with the afternoon post, I gather. See what you make of this. Is it a hoax, or could it be a genuine clue? We'll be handing it pronto to the Old Bill, listeners, but you'll be able to say you heard it first on Radio Bristol. Are you ready with pen and paper?

  " 'Whither Victoria and with whom—

  The Grand Old Queen?

  Look for the lady in the locked room

  At seventeen.'

  "That's all. We know who or what Victoria is this time, I think, but do we know of any locked rooms? And how does the number seventeen come into it? I'm sure we'll get some calls about this. If you have any brilliant suggestions before the end of the program, we'll be pleased to pass them on. I'll repeat the verse one more time."

  The producer had diplomatically phoned the Bath police before the item was broadcast, so a radio was tuned in, and the entire control room heard it, including Diamond, whose sixth sense had told him something was afoot and got him from behind his desk at the critical time. The only notable absentee was John Wigfull, listening privately on a separate radio upstairs.

  "This gets more and more like party games," a detective sergeant commented morosely.

  "Is it genuine?" someone else asked.

  "Who can say? It's got to be taken seriously after the first one."

  "Yes, but why would they do this? Mr. Wigfull was expecting a ransom demand, not another riddle."

  "Maybe they don't want a ransom. This could be some kind of publicity stunt, couldn't it? When is the university rag week?"

  "Too early in the year for that. The students have only just gone back. If it is a stunt, then my money is on some smartarse member of the glitterati."

  "The what?"

  "The rich and beautiful. The incrowd. Hooray Henrys. Leading the Old Bill up the garden path is their idea of fun."

  The debate was taken a stage further at a special meeting of senior staff convened by the Assistant Chief Constable. "Since we are bound to treat this development seriously," he said in preamble, "I decided to pool our wits and experience. If the riddle is anything like the first one, it may involve knowledge of Bath, and any one of you may have the piece of information that clarifies everything."

  From the expressions around the oval table no one was confident of clarifying anything.

  "John, this is your inquiry," the ACC said to Wigfull with a motioning of the upturned palm, "so why don't you give us your immediate thoughts?"

  Wigfull cleared his throat. "Well, sir, we can reasonably assume that the Victoria referred to is the cover."

  "The what?"

  "The missing stamp, sir."

  "Why not call a stamp a stamp?"

  "Because it's attached to an envelope. There's a datemark. The whole thing is known as a cover. Like the first-day covers they sell in the post office each time a new set of stamps is issued."

  "That sort of cover," said the ACC, as if he'd known all along. "Carry on."

  Wigfull referred to his notes. "The first two lines:

  'Whither Victoria and with whom—

  The Grand Old Queen?'

  must surely be a coded way of telling us that he is referring to the cover. I think we should focus our interest on the third and fourth lines:

  'Look for the lady in the locked room

  At seventeen.'

  "I venture to ask three questions: Which lady? Which locked room? And which seventeen? The lady may, of course, be another reference to Victoria, the cover, but we should not exclude other possibilities. Does it link up with the last line, giving us a lady of seventeen? Do we know of any seventeen-year-old ladies in the present or the past who may be connected with the case in some way?"

  Nobody spoke.

  "The locked room may help to fix it," Wigfull went on. "If there was a local memory or story of some young woman kept locked up, for example. A prisoner. A mental patient. A nun, even. These are my immediate thoughts."

  "Any response?" asked the ACC of the blank faces around the table.

  Tom Ray said, "I was
thinking along different lines, sir. The seventeen could be part of an address."

  "That's rather good," the ACC commented, seeming to imply that not one of Wigfull's theories was even half good.

  "Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, lived at number seventeen, the Royal Crescent. There's a plaque outside."

  "What's he got to do with this?" Peter Diamond asked. "Did he have a seventeen-year-old sex slave?"

  "I rather doubt it," said the ACC frigidly. "I happen to know a little about Pitman. He was a man of the highest principles. Like me he was a teetotaller, a vegetarian, and a nonsmoker."

  There was an uneasy pause. Not even Diamond was going to press the matter of Isaac Pitman's sex life, or the ACC's.

  "It was a long shot," admitted Ray.

  Another theory was advanced by Keith Halliwell. "Is it possible that the seventeen refers to a time, like five P.M., or seventeen hundred hours?"

  "If it does, we've missed it by ten minutes," said Diamond, glancing at the clock on the wall. "Personally I don't think this joker has given us enough to catch him. He wouldn't, would he? It's like that book The Thirty-Nine Steps. It's no good looking for the blessed steps. You know you're there when you find them. I mean, we could rabbit on all evening about seventeen this and that. Seventeen-horsepower cars; seventeen trees in a row; the seventeenth day of the month; or fifteen rugby players and two reserves. It gets you nowhere without more information."

  "So your advice would be . . ."

  "Ignore it. Continue with the other lines of inquiry."

  "What lines?" murmured Ray.

  Wigfull said, "We've been extremely thorough."

  "With what result?"

  "Investigations can't be rushed."

  "I don't know," said Ray. "Peter Diamond nicks a bloke for murder two minutes after getting to the scene."

  The ACC drew a deep breath, and said, "Gentlemen, let's confine this to discussion of the stamp theft. To ignore this new development would, I think, be negligent. Peter may be right in saying that the thief won't give much away, but if we can make any sense of the riddle, it may link up with other evidence."

  "Was this character seen at all on Monday morning?" Diamond asked. "Did anybody spot the ladder against the window?" "

  Unfortunately, no," Wigfull answered. "But we have six ,or seven descriptions of window cleaners near the scene reported as suspicious."

  "Have you ever seen a window cleaner who doesn't look suspicious? What about forensic? Are they any help?"

  "The thief seems to have used gloves. We've got an impressive list of fibers and hairs found in the room, but with so many people going through the museum by day, they could come from many sources. The display cabinet was forced with a rusty claw hammer. That's about it."

  "And about the museum staff?"

  "They're volunteers. Local stamp enthusiasts. They take turns to man the museum, at least two at a time. We've interviewed them all except two, who are away. Nobody seems to remember anyone casing the place in advance of the crime— but as several of them reasonably pointed out, how could you tell?"

  Diamond let the meeting run its course without any more input from him. It was Bumblebee territory, and he didn't intend to get involved. They broke up shortly after six. "Have a good weekend, gentlemen," he said as he went out.

  "Aren't you coming in?" Ray asked.

  "No need. My murder is put to bed."

  "So how will you spend the time?"

  "House-training a new cat, if my wife can be believed."

  Chapter Eleven

  Shirley-Ann was better prepared when she turned up at St. Michael's for the next meeting of the Bloodhounds on Monday evening. Rummaging one afternoon through a carton of books in the Dorothy House shop she had pulled out The Blessington Method, a dogeared and rare Penguin of some of Stanley Ellin's short stories. Having missed her turn the week before, she was sure to be asked to speak about a book she could recommend, and Ellin seemed an ideal, uncontroversial choice. He was one of the American writers she admired most, particularly for his short fiction. She could hardly wait to discover how many of the group were familiar with his work. If any of them objected to short stories she would pluck up courage to remind them that Poe, Conan Doyle and Chesterton had laid the foundations of modern crime fiction with their short stories.

  It must have been a lucky day, because she had also found a thick-knit purple jumper as good as new in Dorothy House for only a pound and she was wearing that tonight with a black corduroy skirt from War on Want.

  The evening was distinctly colder than the previous Monday, but dry. Down in the crypt the warmth from the central heating wafted pleasantly over her face the moment she entered. Miss Chilmark, who seemed to make a point of getting there early, said the place was like a furnace, and she was going to speak to the caretaker. She marched past Shirley-Ann with a determined look, but it turned out that she was only on her way to the cloakroom. If there was a complaint about the heating, it wouldn't get Shirley-Ann's support. Being so skinny— Bert called her slinky, which she rather liked—she could never get enough heat.

  Jessica too was there already, snappily dressed in a charcoal-gray woollen dress. A wine-red scarf was draped with casual elegance across her shoulders and clipped with a huge silver buckle like a kilt fastening. "Glad you've come," she said, and seemed to mean it. "You're going to make such a difference."

  Polly Wycherley waved a small, plump hand from across the room. She had already taken her place inside the circle and was removing things from her briefcase, determined to make amends for her lateness the previous week. "Who are we missing?"

  "Only Milo," said Jessica.

  "Rupert." Someone else spoke up. Chameleonlike, Sid in his fawn raincoat was standing against a stone wall. He had an uncanny ability to merge with the surroundings. "Rupert is always late."

  An entire, unsolicited sentence from Sid. Perhaps he felt more comfortable with no other males present.

  The door of the ladies' room opened, and Miss Chilmark came out reeking of some musky perfume. She was no longer complaining about the central heating. "I intend to make a stand on that dog tonight," she announced.

  "Bareback riding?" murmured Jessica.

  Miss Chilmark hadn't heard. "If it misbehaves, I shall tell Rupert I want it removed, and I expect the rest of you to support me."

  A click from Jessica's tongue showed that she, for one, would not be included. "It only shook itself. Poor thing, it was wet. It's not as if it crapped on the carpet."

  "You don't have to be vulgar. I was drenched. We had to interrupt the meeting. Don't you remember?"

  "Well, it isn't raining tonight, Miss Chilrriark."

  "That's no guarantee of anything."

  As if she hadn't heard a word about Rupert's dog, Polly remarked, "Milo isn't usually late."

  "Hardly ever," said Miss Chilmark, scarcely aware that she had been diverted. She took her place opposite Polly. "Milo and I attach a lot of importance to good timekeeping. We are always the first to arrive."

  "Perhaps he's ill," said Polly, fumbling in her case. "Once before when he was ill and couldn't come, he phoned me the evening before. I've got his number in my diary. I can phone him."

  "Good idea," said Miss Chilmark. "I'll take over in the chair until you get back. Let's get under way before the dog arrives and ruins it."

  "For heaven's sake," said Jessica. "It's ridiculous to phone the poor man. It's only five past seven."

  After everyone was seated, there was a short debate about whether Polly would be justified in making the phone call. The consensus was that Milo was a grown-up and didn't have to be accounted for. Jessica gave Shirley-Ann a grateful look that said sanity had won the day, and shortly after, Milo came in, full of apologies. A lorry had broken down on Brassknocker Hill, and the traffic had been held up.

  "Have we started, then?" said Miss Chilmark in a tone implying that she would have run the meeting more efficiently.

  "I suppose we have,
" said Polly.

  "Because I have a suggestion," Miss Chilmark went on. "I don't know who else has been following the reports of this stolen stamp."

  "The Penny Black?" said Shirley-Ann. "Just across the street from here. Isn't it exciting?"

  "That isn't the word I would choose," said Miss Chilmark, "particularly as it shows our city in such a bad light, but, yes, that is what I had in mind. I thought for a change it would be an interesting exercise to address ourselves to a real crime."

  "We're readers, not detectives," Polly pointed out, quick to suspect that this might be a takeover. "We discuss fiction, not real crime."

  "We talk about real crime most of the time, if you ask me," asserted Miss Chilmark. "Rupert is forever haranguing us about what happens on the streets. Well, now that something has happened on the streets that tests the intellect a little, let's see if our experience as readers is any help in solving it."

  Jessica said cynically, "You mean set William of Baskerville onto the case?"

  "Who's he?" Polly asked vaguely.

  "The detective figure in The Name of the Rose."

  "Oh, yes." Polly looked annoyed with herself for having to be reminded.

  Miss Chilmark said stiffly, "Mock me if you wish, but his methods stand the test of time."

  Shirley-Ann wondered if this was the moment to mention—after the put-down she had got the previous week from Miss Chilmark—that she had checked the date of publication of Il Nome della Rose, and it was 1981, a full four years after the first of the Brother Cadfael series. But it didn't seem the right time for settling scores. She saved it up.

  "Personally, I think you've made a marvelous suggestion," said Milo, galloping to the support of Miss Chilmark. Theirs was a strange alliance, the elderly gay and the starchy spinster. Apparently, all that they had in common was that they usually arrived before anyone else. "I'm fascinated to know if we can throw any light on the stamp theft. How about the rest of you?"