Rolling Stone

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Am I quiet?”

  Mr. Ridgefield turned a little in his seat, surveyed her through his monocle, and said in solicitous tone,

  “Yes, my dear. What is the matter—didn’t you enjoy yourself?”

  Terry looked round at him quickly, and then back again at the road. How extraordinarily like Uncle Basil to be surprised if you hadn’t enjoyed yourself, when there had been a burglary, and policemen all over the place. That sort of thing didn’t disturb anyone else. He would be sorry that the Cresswells should lose a picture they valued, and he had displayed a charming sympathy, but being sorry and sympathetic was just as much a part of his social manner as saying good-morning or how do you do, and it meant as little. Terry had a feeling that it wouldn’t have meant much more if the Cresswells had lost a child instead of a picture. Uncle Basil had lovely manners for every occasion, but she had sometimes wondered what would happen if you could strip the lovely manners off. Was there anything underneath that could laugh, and cry, and feel, and love and hate as Terry herself could, or would there be only a little grey, dry, shrivelled thing like the withered kernel of a nut?

  Terry wondered, and was smitten with compunction, because he was always so kind to her, and when people got over fifty perhaps you couldn’t expect them to have real feelings any more. Perhaps when Terry Clive was fifty—(help!)—all the living, tumultuous feelings which were her would be withered away to something all grey and quiet—“And one might just as well be dead!” said Terry passionately to herself.

  Her eyes sparkled, but she didn’t look round again.

  “Do you enjoy burglaries and policemen, Uncle Basil?”

  Mr. Ridgefield laughed.

  “Well, my dear, you will think it very shocking of me, but in a way I do—I should say I did. But I beg that you will not tell the Cresswells. You see, I was afraid that I was going to be bored. Norah Margesson bores me. She expects me to make love to her. You have probably noticed that she expects every man to make love to her, and a dozen years ago a good many of us were quite willing to oblige. Now—” he shrugged his shoulders—“I am quite determined to remain young, and I find that exceptionally boring. And as for the rest of the party, Pearla Yorke is a lovely creature, but James Cresswell really should not allow her to play bridge. She revoked three times when she was playing with me, and only once with James, which I consider unfair. It would bore me to play bridge with Helen of Troy if she revoked. And James Cresswell is in a frame of mind in which he would bore anyone. So, you see, I feared the worst. The burglary was really quite a god-send, but it seems to have disturbed you—rather unduly, I think. May I ask why?”

  Terry said, “Yes”; and then, “I was going to tell you, Uncle Basil.”

  Mr. Ridgefield said, “Dear me, this sounds very portentous.”

  “Oh,” said Terry, “it’s horrid. I didn’t think anything could be so horrid.”

  “My dear child—”

  Terry looked round for a moment, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “You see, I really do love Emily. I know she bores you, but I love her. I wouldn’t mind if it was only Mr. Cresswell, because I don’t think he treats her at all nicely, and he’s got lots of money, so he could buy another picture.”

  Basil Ridgefield gazed at her in mild horror.

  “My dear Terry, you can’t just go out and buy Turners.”

  “Well, I don’t care,” said Terry. “It’s Emily I’m thinking about, and she’d hate to have a scandal and one of her guests dragged in—and having to go into a witness-box and swear things, and so should I. So we thought it was a beautiful plan, and I thought it would be quite easy. But it wasn’t—it was quite frightfully horrid.”

  Mr. Ridgefield took out his eyeglass, polished it carefully, and put it back again.

  “Do you mind being a little more lucid? I don’t really seem to know what you are talking about.”

  “That’s because it’s so horrid,” said Terry in a drooping voice. “It’s easy enough to say things when they’re nice, but the horrid ones seem to get all tangled up.”

  “I’ve noticed that. You had better try and disentangle them.”

  “I am trying. The trouble is that there’s a bit at the beginning I don’t want to tell anyone ever—” she saw a small, vivid picture in her own mind of Norah Margesson under the hall lamp with Emily’s pearls in her hands—“and there’s a bit at the end that I don’t want to tell anyone till Tuesday, so I have to begin right in the middle, and that’s what makes it difficult.”

  “I can see that. Well, suppose you begin wherever you want to and tell me as much as you can.”

  Terry nodded.

  “Yes. I woke up in the night—”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes. I woke up and I couldn’t go to sleep again, so I went and looked out of the window. It must have been somewhere round about two, because a clock struck afterwards. And I looked out of the window, and I saw something.”

  Mr. Ridgefield looked at her curiously.

  “What did you see?”

  Terry flashed him a glance.

  “That’s what I’m not telling—not to anyone—not till Tuesday.”

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Ridgefield. “Not very lucid—are you? I suppose you couldn’t make it all a little clearer?”

  Terry blinked fiercely. You can’t drive a car and cry at the same time. Anyhow, what was there to cry about? She didn’t know, but it would have been very comforting to weep on a kind shoulder. She said despising things to herself and blinked again.

  “That was the plan,” she said. “You see, I saw something—out of the window—and I thought if I told everyone, then the person who had taken the picture would know that I knew, and if the picture came back, I wouldn’t say anything ever, but if it didn’t come back, then I should have to go to the police on Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Day after tomorrow?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Really—my dear child! May one ask why day after tomorrow?”

  “To give the person who took the picture the chance of sending it back.”

  Mr. Ridgefield gazed with astonishment.

  “Terry—are you serious?”

  “Oh yes,” said Terry, in a tone of heartfelt unhappiness.

  “You really saw something?”

  “I really saw something.”

  Mr. Ridgefield assumed a brisk matter-of-fact tone.

  “Well, my dear, what did you see?”

  Terry shook her head.

  “I can’t tell anyone—not till Tuesday. You see, it wouldn’t be fair, because I’ve told them all I wouldn’t.”

  “You have told them all?”

  “Yes—Emily, Norah, Mrs. Yorke, Fabian, and Mr. Applegarth.”

  “But, my dear child, this is monstrous! It amounts to saying that one of these people took the picture.”

  “Someone did.”

  “A burglar, my dear. The police said at once it was an outside job.”

  Terry shook her head.

  “No.”

  Mr. Ridgefield leaned back in his corner. He said coldly,

  “I find all this a little fantastic—a little, shall we say, hysterical. If you really think you saw something you should make a statement to the police. They might, or might not, attach importance to it. If you would honour me with your confidence, I should feel better able to advise you.”

  Terry choked down a sob.

  “Oh, Uncle Basil, I can’t!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  At half past twelve on Sunday night Colonel Garrett switched out his bedside light, put his head on his pillow, and prepared to plunge into the deep, unbroken slumber which would last until seven o’clock on Monday morning. But scarcely had he closed his eyes, when the telephone bell rang.

  Garrett looked forward to a period of retirement in which the telephone would ring itself black in the face and he could tell it to go to blazes. Tha
t time had not yet arrived. He flung back the bed-clothes, snapped on the light, and padded barefoot across the hall into the glorified cupboard which he called his study. It had a loud-patterned linoleum on the floor, and contained an office chair, an office table, and the telephone.

  The bell rang again as he came in and slammed the door. Garrett scowled at it, jammed the receiver against his ear, and barked “Hullo!”

  A voice from the grave answered him. It said,

  “Needless to ask if it is you, cher maître.”

  Garrett stared. Both voice and language belonged to Peter Talbot who had been buried three days ago in Brussels. Fanny Talbot had sent a wreath, Garrett himself had sent a wreath. Fanny Talbot had with difficulty been dissuaded from going to the funeral. Her solicitor had attended instead.

  “Who’s that?” said Garrett in a voice with a very sharp edge to it.

  The voice of Mr. Peter Talbot sounded pained.

  “Is this the way to receive a call from the Other Side? A little decent joy is indicated, cher maître.”

  The gritting of Garrett’s teeth was plainly audible. He rapped out an unparliamentary word.

  “If you’re Peter Talbot you’ve got something to explain.”

  “Oh, no, we never mention him, his name is never heard, our lips are now forbidden to speak that once familiar word. But you are quite right, I have lots to explain. Can I come along and do it?”

  “Now?” said Garrett.

  “I am afraid so. I’d like my beauty-sleep too, but I really think we’ll both have to cut it out. You see, I’m not in a position to come and see you by day.”

  Garrett scowled again.

  “All right, come along. I’ll let you in.”

  He went back to his room and put on a luridly checked coat over his pink and orange striped pyjamas.

  It was exactly seven minutes before the knock he was waiting for fell gently on the outer door of the flat. He opened it with a jerk, and saw Peter Talbot with a soft black hat on his head and a voluminous dark muffler about his neck. He was unwinding it as he stepped inside the hall. He slipped out of a Burberry, took off his hat with a flourish, and said,

  “Well, well, it isn’t every day you get me back from the grave—is it?”

  Garrett had closed the door—gently for once.

  “What have you been up to?” he growled.

  “What have I not been up to! Produce a drink and a decent chair and you shall hear all. Honestly, Frank, it’s about time somebody did hear all, because I’m beginning to have a horrid suspicion that the people who are running this show have cast me for the part of a scapegoat. I don’t know, you know, but there’s just the horrid possibility, so I took a risk and rang you up.”

  Garrett gave him a hard, frowning look, turned his back, and marched into the sitting room, where he threw a log on a fire that still had some life in it and produced the required drink. The chairs were shabby but comfortable. The room smelt of books and shag and wood smoke.

  Garrett got out a frightful old pipe and lighted it. Then he shot his first question at Peter.

  “Whose funeral have you been getting away with?”

  “Oh, Spike Reilly’s. I hope you sent a wreath.”

  Garrett glowered.

  “Your Aunt Fanny did. Fanny is a good deal more cut up than you deserve.”

  “Yes—I’m sorry about that. But think how she’ll enjoy getting me back. Now listen. You got my letter saying I was just moving over to Spike Reilly’s pub?”

  “Yes, I got it.”

  “Well, I went there, and I got the room next to his. And there he was, in a high fever, delirious and obviously going to peg out. I told the people in the hotel to get him a doctor, and then I went through his things. Well, I found the cipher he was using and his last lot of instructions. He was to go to England. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I felt like taking his place. He talked all the time, and said some funny things. And then he died before any doctor came, and I swopped his papers with mine and came over here as Spike Reilly.”

  “A bit of a risk,” said Garrett with a lift of the eyebrows.

  “So so. But he was working under orders from a king-pin over here. Hadn’t ever seen him—didn’t know who he was. That came out from what he said. He’d no end of a grouse on about only being used as a postman and not getting enough pay. He seemed to think the king-pin was making the hell of a lot of money, and he wanted a better rake-off for himself. The instructions I got hold of promised him better pay and bonuses, and they told him to go to Preedo’s Library on Friday at twelve noon and wait for a telephone call. You got my note about that?”

  Garrett nodded.

  “Yes—passed it to Scotland Yard. Their pigeon. They couldn’t trace any likely call.”

  Peter grinned.

  “There wasn’t one. They’re leery, you know. I had to tell the woman at the desk I was expecting a call and give her my name, and she told me to sit down and wait. Well, there was an old boy next to me, all beard and eyebrows. He dropped a book—I picked it up. And what was it? Her Great Romance, no less. And that was the book Spike Reilly had for decoding his instructions. Boy—did I jump! I gave it back to him, and he said it wasn’t any good and he was changing it, and he trickled up to the desk, palavered there for a bit, and then went out of the shop. And I picked up the book he had left in his chair and hared after him, but there wasn’t a sign. I came back, and they didn’t know anything about him—said he’d only been asking about subscription rates. So there I was, with a thing called The Corpse in the Copper, and a new lot of instructions inside it.”

  Peter continued his story, brought it down to Saturday night, and gave a lively and detailed account of the doings at Heathacres.

  Garrett snapped out an occasional question, but sat for the most part in silence, not smoking, but with his pipe sometimes in his hand, sometimes clenched between strong, discoloured teeth. When Peter had finished, the gimlet eyes took a prodding glance at him.

  “A nice mess of hot water you’ve got yourself into, I must say.”

  “Out of the frying-pan into the fire, and a pretty kettle of fish,” responded Peter affably. “And whilst we are playing proverbs, here’s another—‘A burnt child dreads the fire.’ Which is why I’m here.”

  Colonel Garrett scowled and said bitterly,

  “You got buried under a false death certificate, you travelled on a fraudulent passport, you’ve been a receiver of stolen pearls, and you are actually at this moment in possession of a burgled picture which has entirely destroyed the week-end repose of Scotland Yard.”

  Peter smiled engagingly.

  “All with the best of motives, cher maître.”

  “And if you call me that again, I’ll throw you to them!”

  “Well, it makes quite a good password, don’t you think? None genuine without this label. So look out for it if I have to call you up. I’ve a feeling we’ll do better without names.” His voice took a sudden serious tone. “You know, Frank, there’s something uncommon nasty about this. If you don’t mind listening to what may be pure fancy on my part, I’d rather like to tell you what I think.”

  “Go ahead,” growled Garrett.

  Peter took out a pocket-book, opened it, and extracted Mr. Spike Reilly’s passport. He handed it to Garrett and said,

  “Just take a look at the visas, will you—the last three. I came over on Thursday, so that one’s mine. But Spike Reilly was over here on his own passport the week before, and he went back to Belgium via France last Sunday, which was when I picked him up. Now Solly Oppenstein’s picture was attempted, and Solly Oppenstein’s butler was shot, on that Saturday night. I’m not saying that Spike Reilly started to lift the picture or shot the butler—I don’t think he did. All his complaint when he was delirious was that they only used him as a postman, and that he didn’t get paid enough. I think I’m prepared to say that I’m certain he hadn’t any active part in the Oppenstein affair. But he was in England at the time—I
think you will find he hadn’t got an alibi for the time. I’ve got an idea that the reason he was over here was because someone thought he would do nicely for a scapegoat if anything went wrong. Or he may have come over on his postman’s job just in the ordinary way of business, and the scapegoat idea may have cropped up later when something had gone wrong and they found themselves with a murder on their hands. How does that seem to you?”

  Garrett’s face was frowningly intent. He jerked a hand and said,

  “Possible. Anything’s possible in crime. Any more?”

  Peter said, “Lots.” He laughed, reached for his drink, and finished it. “When I was waiting for the show to begin at Heathacres I had the nasty thought that, Spike Reilly being no more, I was now public scapegoat number one. If I had really been a criminal I should have legged it back to my car and gone away in a hurry, because what hit me right between the eyes was this. Here was the whole country humming over the Oppenstein business—was it sense to stage another picture theft so soon, knowing as they must know perfectly well that to be found out, or even to be suspected over the Cresswell affair must mean being involved right up to the neck in the Oppenstein murder. And right there I began to see a lot of horrid cold daylight. Spike Reilly was in England when Solly Oppenstein’s butler was shot. If Spike Reilly was pinched a week later with another valuable picture in the boot of his car, don’t you think it would be apt to result in Mr. Reilly standing his trial for murder? Mind you, he couldn’t give anyone away, because he didn’t know who he was working for—that came out quite clearly. He was all set to do a spot of mole work and find out. Now what do you think of that?”