Luck had half turned in his chair and Tim could see his face now. It was not pretty.
‘I’ve heard some unwarranted attacks on the police in my time,’ he said at last. ‘But for sheer impertinence I think that beats the band.’
He was so angry he sounded almost human.
‘Possibly I’ve got a warped mind,’ agreed Tim. ‘But then, you must remember, I spent some time in Palestine. I remember one case particularly – an Inspector Kilmartin – the old racket. Pretended to be protecting the Arabs from the Jews, but actually robbed them indiscriminately. He made quite a pile before he got found out. Both parties hated him. The Jews got him first. Threw him over the Gehazai bridge with a live hand grenade in both pockets. You ought to ask Gattie about him. He knows the details.’
II
‘I’m glad you could all get here,’ said Liz. ‘I had to bring the practice forward to Monday, because they’re starting on the heating tomorrow, and you know what a row that makes.’
‘Couldn’t be worse than us,’ murmured Tim to Sue. He had quietly transferred himself to MacMorris’ place leaving Lucy Mallory to Sergeant Gattie.
Sue frowned and opened her anthem sheet ostentatiously.
‘There’s one new hymn for Sunday. At least, not a new hymn but a new tune. It’s Bax. Modern, but good.’ She sketched it through on the harmonium. ‘I particularly want it to go well, because all the old diehards will be saying “That’s not the right tune”. Let’s try it through. Take the last verse. Mezzo forte.’
The choir took the last verse. Liz listened, her head on one side. The parts were all right. Hedges reliable. Gattie very firm in the tenor. Lucy and Sue improving. Only the trebles were weak, almost to non-existence.
‘Trebles only,’ she decreed.
Her worst fears were justified. Rupert and Maurice were hardly trying. The other four were trying but were getting nowhere.
She looked at them speculatively. Maurice was red-eyed but defiant. Jim had said to her, ‘I can’t make nothing of him. Never known him like that before.’ Rupert was whiter than usual but composed.
‘What’s happened to your voice, Rupert?’ she said.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got rather a sore throat,’ he said politely.
‘Pity,’ said Liz. ‘Too sore to come on the outing on Wednesday?’
‘Not so sore as that,’ said Rupert quickly, and the Hedges children laughed. Even Maurice looked a little happier.
‘What’s this outing, Mrs. Artside?’ said Gattie. ‘Do I qualify for it?’
‘You certainly qualify if you want to come,’ said Liz. ‘In fact you’re very welcome. I’m afraid the older members mostly regard it as something to be got out of.’ She looked severely at Tim, who grinned. ‘We have a joint excursion every autumn with the Bramshott and Barnboro’ choirs. About thirty children and any grown-ups who can be induced to come along and give a hand.’
‘Well, I’ll see,’ said Gattie. ‘We’re a hard-worked force in this area.’
‘The bus leaves at nine o’clock from Barnboro’ Town Hall, calls at Bramshott first, and then here. We’re all going down to Belmouth. It’s a bit off season, but the children like the fun fair. Incidentally, how many of you are coming. Jim?’
Too much to do myself,’ said Jim, firmly.
‘Lucy, you’re coming aren’t you? And Sue?’ Sue nodded.
‘Count me in too,’ said Tim promptly.
‘That makes four of us. Five if the sergeant can come. What about you, young Hedges?’
Four hands shot up. Maurice looked doubtful.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ said Liz. ‘Got a date with your young lady that day?’
Maurice wriggled. Liz sensed an undercurrent of something she didn’t understand.
‘What about you, Rupert?’ she said.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Rupert.
Maurice’s relief was patent. ‘I shall be coming, Mrs. Artside,’ he said.
That’s all right then,’ said Liz. ‘Same arrangements as last year. Bring sandwiches for lunch and we’ll have high tea at the Pavilion. And don’t wear your best suits. Remember what happened last year on the dodgems. Now let’s give the Anthem a run through, and see if we can’t do it really well this time. On the tenth beat. A nice firm “Come”.’
It wasn’t bad. The thought of Belmouth seemed to have stimulated Rupert. If Rupert sang they all sang. It was one of the scant and occasional returns for months of unrewarding work that occasionally, very occasionally, a dozen ordinary-to-bad singers contrived to produce a total which was better than the sum of their individual parts.
She hoped it might be so on the great day.
After practice Tim walked home with Sue. He had a lot to tell her.
‘What does it all mean?’ asked Sue at the end of it.
‘Search me,’ said Tim. ‘Some of it’s clear enough but nothing like the whole picture.’
‘None of it’s clear to me,’ said Sue. ‘Who is the Captain? And his friends at this restaurant? Where do they come into it? And why did they try to beat you up? And what are the police doing about it?’
‘The Captain and his boyfriends are a hardworking crowd of professional receivers of stolen goods. They specialise in jewellery, and gold and silver. They sell it abroad. The police haven’t disturbed them up to date because they found it more useful to watch them and get a line on the various people who were bringing them stuff – the actual thieves. Though I rather fancy, after my spirited but incautious performance, that this phase may be over. They’re about ready to gather in this little lot.’
Sue laughed. ‘I should love to have seen that drunk pouring the brandy on the fire,’ she said. ‘What fun you do have.’
‘It wasn’t funny at the time,’ said Tim.
‘Still, I suppose a lot of your jobs are like that?’
Tim said, ‘Well – as a matter of fact—’
‘I know,’ said Sue. ‘Very hush-hush. I oughtn’t to have mentioned it. But one can’t help having ideas. I apologise.’
‘Please don’t apologise,’ said Tim unhappily.
‘Tell me some more about this business,’ said Sue. ‘There’s no reason I shouldn’t know about that. What have these receivers got to do with us at Brimberley?’
‘That’s the sixty-four dollar question,’ said Tim. ‘The way I see it at the moment is this. Somewhere in this district – or somehow connected with this district – I can’t be any more definite than that – is a person who makes a living – a second living, because they must have some ostensible and above-board job – by occasional, well-planned raids on country houses. The country houses are scattered over the south of England. The base is here. So much seems certain. This person – this burglar—’
‘Why are you being so cagey about it?’ said Sue suddenly. ‘You’re carefully keeping off calling him a man or saying “he” or “him”. Do you think it’s a woman?’
‘Must be unconscious caution,’ said Tim. ‘All right. This man works absolutely on his own. His nearest and dearest may know nothing about it. That’s the pattern in these cases, you see. He may only operate on two nights in the year. He does his own reconnaissance, makes his own rules, plays his own hand. The one thing he’s got to have help over is disposing of the goods. That’s where the Captain comes in. He keeps a restaurant. Very handy. You go and have lunch there – perhaps only once a year. You leave a parcel with your hat and coat in the cloak room. When you’ve finished lunch you pick it up again. Only it isn’t the same parcel. When you went in it was the proceeds of your last three robberies. When you come out it’s full of pound notes. Transaction completed.’
‘I see,’ said Sue. ‘Awkward if someone took your parcel by mistake.’
‘I doubt if the attendant would let them,’ said Tim. ‘They’re all in it. A very efficient crowd, really.’
‘Go on,’ said Sue. ‘Let’s walk as far as the first milestone and then turn back. I want to know it all. How did MacMorris come into it
?’
There’s no real proof about that,’ said Tim. ‘But I’ve not much doubt about it, either. He contrived to find out – probably some slip at the receiving end – the real life identity of the man who was doing these jobs. That was his meal ticket. Blackmail. Spoil the spoiler. He came down here to live on it. More comfortable than hanging round the West End stage. More dangerous, though.’
‘So it was the burglar who blew him up,’ said Sue thoughtfully. ‘Do you know, I’m not sure I blame him.’
‘Not if he’d stopped there,’ said Tim. ‘I didn’t much like him trying to pitch my mother off her motor-bike, though, when her inquiries got too near the mark. That’s the trouble with these people. As long as no one suspects them they’re smooth as silk. But they’ll go any length to preserve their anonymity. They’ll kill to preserve it, make no mistake, you and me and the lot of us.’
‘Tim,’ said Sue, stopping suddenly. ‘Do you know who it is?’
‘Well, no,’ said Tim. ‘But I’ve got a very fair idea. That’s what makes it so damned awkward,’ he added.
Sue said, ‘Let’s go back.’ She said nothing more until they got to Melliker Lane. She seemed almost afraid to speak.
They turned down into the lane, and stopped outside the gate.
Tim put his hand up to open the gate and found it on Sue’s arm. He left it there for a moment. Before he could open his mouth Sue said, just as if she was concluding a conversation on a totally different subject, ‘There’s one thing more you ought to know. On Saturday when we were staying at Clamboys I went out for an early morning ride with Bob. He asked me to marry him.’
‘Bob—’ said Tim. ‘Why—what—’
‘I didn’t have a chance to say yes or no, really,’ said Sue. ‘Bolo’s an awful brute in the early morning and at that moment he bolted. By the time Bob got him back again the moment seemed to have passed.’
‘Yes, but—’ said Tim. ‘I mean – would you—’
‘How should I know,’ said Sue crossly. ‘Good night.’ She stalked off up the driveway and Tim waited until he heard the door shut.
He stood for a minute or two, unmoving, in the dark. Round him the hundred noises of the night clicked and slurred and scuttered. Tim did not trouble himself about them. There were no dangerous ghosts in Melliker Lane that night.
A quarter of a mile away Constable Queen sat in his cottage parlour whilst his wife busied herself about his supper. He was a big, blond, serious young man, and at that moment his face was set into an almost terrifying concentration of thought.
It certainly scared his wife, who came back into the room at that moment, and had to put the tray she was carrying down on to the table before she spoke.
‘Why, Stan,’ she said, ‘whatever’s up?’
He turned his troubled face to her. ‘If you know something,’ he said, ‘but can’t tell it without getting someone else into trouble, and if you don’t want to get them into trouble – it’s difficult, see.’
Mrs. Queen saw nothing. She knew nothing; but being a woman did not allow this deficiency to affect her judgement.
‘Eat your supper whilst it’s hot,’ she said. ‘And stop thinking about it. It’ll all come out a lot easier in the morning.’
Chapter Thirteen
THE CHOIR RELAXES
Costard: ‘And travelling along this coast, I here am come by chance—’
Constable Queen was not a man who thought quickly or easily. He turned things over in his mind. Scraps of what he had learned at police training school jostled with the loyalty of his class to his class; personal friendship, the dislike of interfering; and, in the last resort, that sort of fundamental honesty that you either pick up at your mother’s knee or stay quit of for life.
He thought about it for all of thirty-six hours before he moved.
Wednesday was just another lovely day in that outstandingly fine autumn. Queen, who had been up and busy since five o’clock, came back to his cottage, kissed his wife, and ate his breakfast in silence. After breakfast he put a call through to Bramshott police station and found out that Inspector Luck would be in his office at ten.
Shortly afterwards he jumped on to his bicycle and pedalled off along the Bramshott road. Nobody watching him pass could have guessed that he was about to unlock mysteries which had so long confounded better brains than his.
‘Well, Queen?’ said Luck.
‘I’ve been thinking, sir,’ said Queen, ‘that I ought to have a word with you if I could. It’s not exactly in the line of duty, and yet, in a way, it is. I’ve been very upset about it.’
Luck sighed, but quietly. It was in just such a way that trouble started. Bribery? Women? Queen’s wife? A nice girl, he had always thought, and more sensible than most.
‘—on Friday night,’ went on Queen. ‘You know I was out with Sergeant Gattie most of the night, watching that house in Melliker Lane where they’d had the trouble.’
‘I remember,’ said Luck (got home unexpectedly early? cuckoo in the nest?)
‘Well, we didn’t.’
‘Didn’t what?’ said the Inspector blankly.
‘Didn’t stand watch together. The sergeant went off. I stopped.’
‘Oh,’ said Luck, softly. It hadn’t penetrated yet, though. ‘Where did he go?’
‘He drove off in the car,’ said Luck. ‘Said there was a girl he was courting over at Mallards Cross, and if anyone said anything, I was to say he’d been with me all night.’
Queen stopped, but Luck did not interrupt. There was more to come.
‘A good deal later,’ said Queen, ‘I took a stroll myself. There wasn’t nothing happening and I was getting cold. I went by the path – that one that goes back from the end of Melliker Lane over the hill to the old barn.’
‘Fagg’s barn,’ said Luck.
‘That’s right. It’s tumble-down now. Stands at the end of a bit of lane that takes you back to the road. I thought I’d go down the lane, and make the whole circuit, see. Come back to the house from the other end. When I stepped into the lane I nearly broke my shins on it.’
‘On what?’ said Luck with sharp suspicion.
‘On the car,’ said Queen softly. ‘Our car.’
There was a very long and very uncomfortable silence. Then the Inspector looked at the watch on his wrist and said, ‘Come along, you’d better show me the place.’
Ten minutes later they were both peering down at a patch of oil. It was the same patch that Tim had looked at two days before, still undisturbed. No one seemed to use the lane. The tumble-down barn was quiet.
‘I wonder,’ said Luck. He walked across and circled the barn. Though decrepit, it proved curiously difficult to make an entry. The window spaces were filled with fallen stone and sealed with brambles. The remains of the door lay across the opening at an angle that effectively blocked it, without offering any suggestion that it could be opened. Luck shone his torch through the gap. It aroused a family of bats.
Queen called from the other side of the barn. There was a small, stone outbuilding. It might have served as a fodder store when the barn was in use.
‘Been someone here more than once,’ said Queen. ‘They been careful too, but you can see the marks. There, and there. And the stones at the end, they’ve been unpiled, and piled again.’
‘We’ll have ‘em down,’ said Luck.
Together they lifted the stones which formed the end of the lean-to. They came away cleanly, without any dust or rubble between them.
‘Been moved more’n once,’ said Queen.
Luck said nothing. He was sweating. He shone his torch into the neat space which they had opened.
It was covered by a tarpaulin, but Luck had a sick feeling that he knew what was under it.
‘Open her up carefully,’ he said.
It was a motor-cycle, a newish Wolf-Ashton, fast and well cared for. The most noticeable feature was the double wicker pannier, like a dispatch rider’s satchel. Luck put gloves on to open it. Rolled
up in a canvas hold-all at the bottom was as neat a housebreaker’s kit as Luck in his experience had ever seen. Leather loops holding an array of neat and shining implements. One pair of loops was empty. The rear loop was larger than the front one and they lay about six inches apart.
‘Plenty of room for the loot, too,’ said Queen, looking at the empty panniers.
‘Travelling burglar’s shop,’ agreed Luck shortly. He was re-fastening the straps. Together they pushed the machine back and covered it. Then they built the stones back into position. It was difficult to see that anything had ever been moved.
‘I don’t need to tell you,’ he said, ‘that you keep quiet about this.’
‘Quiet as the grave,’ said Queen.
Luck thought about those two loops, six inches apart, one larger than the other.
‘As the grave,’ he agreed. Another thought was teasing him. ‘Who owns this piece?’ he said. ‘The gate’s kept locked – or meant to be. It isn’t a public right of way. I had an idea—’
‘I could easily find out, sir,’ said Queen. ‘Petch and Porter handle most of the properties round here. I could look at their estate map.’
‘All right,’ said Luck, ‘you do that. And telephone me at the station. If I’m out, go on trying till you get me.’
Queen knew young Mr. Petch well and was shown in without delay.
‘What is it this time,’ said Sam Petch resignedly. ‘Car on the wrong side of the road?’
‘You can help me this time,’ said Queen. He described the position of the barn.
‘Fagg’s Barn,’ said Mr. Petch. ‘It’s still called that, though old Fagg’s been dead more than fifty years. Dad just remembers him. Used to come in here every market day and drink himself unconscious in the “Farmers Glory.” The landlord rolled him under the bar to sleep it off. Wonderful days. Now let me see, I don’t know that I can help. We don’t handle that side of the road now. Masons of Sunningdale took it over before the war. They’d know. Would you like me to telephone Fred Mason?’
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