‘Major Elginbrodde went to the house on the coast, I suppose?’
‘Of course ’e did. The Gaffer ’ad to ’ave the Major with ’im to get about so silent. It was the Major’s house.’
‘Do you mean his home?’
‘Why yes, sir. He’d lived there as a kid. It was an old place, a kind of little stone castle. They would never have got up the rocks so quiet in the dark save that he knew the way. That’s why ’e was chosen. That’s how we come to go at all.’
‘What happened to the Major’s family?’
The ex-fisherman looked blank. ‘I don’t think there was but one old woman, ‘is granny. She went away and the Jerry left the place as it was. Then the spy we was after put ‘is lady there, but they never found the treasure. That was still there when we went, because the Major went to look.’
The inflection upon the operative word was not lost upon Geoffrey, but he had had some experience of the fighting man and his notions on ‘Treasure trove, its probable value’. As he glanced round the ill-assorted group in the cellar he thought he saw the whole story. Each face was solemn, engrossed, and avid. Treasure. The ancient word had worked its spell once again. It was holding them together as nothing else could ever have done, and was supporting them even while it sucked them dry.
Of them all, Doll was the most completely enthralled. His narrow lips were working. The fact that yet another pair of ears should have heard the tremendous news was agonizing to him. He was the basic material of which great fools are made, a country dolt tormented because of his deficiency, he had dreamed wildly of becoming a tyrant in a city paved with gold. He had achieved the tyranny and had certainly found the pavements. Nothing would convince him that the gold was not there also, if only he could get his hands on it. He saw plain evidence of it wherever he looked; in the great shops, on the painted women, in the hissing automobiles. Golden Treasure. Treasure meaning ‘after one has dreamed one’s fill, yet more’.
Geoffrey caught a glimpse of all this, yet he had no idea of the depth of the illusion.
‘The sergeant described it all to you, I suppose?’ he inquired good-humouredly.
His amusement was recognized and resented immediately. Nothing he could have said would have inflamed them more. The Treasure was sacred. It was the one thing they believed in in all the world. A murmur, ugly and irritable, escaped the whole group. It rumbled from these rags of humanity like a growl.
‘The Gaffer didn’t say too much. He was far too fly.’ Roly spoke bitterly. ‘But he knew all about it. He knew it was there, and you can bet he went back for it as soon as he knew the Major had got his packet. That’s the one certain thing.’
‘And ’e’s a-living on it now, with wine and motor-cars and pickles,’ burst out Tiddy Doll, unaware of any incongruity. ‘You can tell that from the way ‘is friend Duds was dressed up. That was proof, that was.’
‘I thought you couldn’t see ’im, Tiddy.’
‘Well, of course I see ’im. I see ’im when we was following ’im.’ The albino covered the slip and changed the subject adroitly. ‘There’s the Souvenirs. Don’t forget the Souvenirs. We know there was treasure there once. You all ’ad a taster, didn’t you?’
There was a moment of hesitation and then Roly went over to his brother and, after a muttered conversation, came back with a package wrapped in a rag.
‘Major Elginbrodde give us each a Souvenir,’ he explained to Geoffrey. ‘He brought them out with ’im in ’is pockets. The rest of us ’ave ’ad to part with ours at different times, but Tom’s kep’ ’is. ’E ’ad to. It was too valuable to sell. No one wouldn’t touch it.’
In complete silence he unfolded the parcel. He might have been about to display a holy relic. Under a rag there was a piece of coloured handkerchief, and beneath that a much-creased square of oiled silk. The final covering was a piece of lead paper off a tobacco package. Roly pressed it back, smoothing it with hands as black as his clothes. He held out the contents for Geoffrey to see.
It was an early miniature, beautifully painted on wood, a man’s head surrounded by a full wig of chestnut curls. Geoffrey was no expert, but he could see that it was fine work and obviously genuine. The treatment it was receiving was doing it very little good. The plaque was cracking and the paint flaking.
‘It used to have a frame. Solid gold, that was, set with little bits of coloured glass. A fellow in the Walworth Road gave Tom seven pounds ten for it.’
‘That was before I found yer,’ put in Doll furiously. ‘You was chiselled over that. Even a sovereign’s worth thirty-five bob today.’
‘Bill got twelve quid for his music box.’ Roly added the information hastily. ‘A little gold bird in a cage. Wind it up and it sung.’
‘You only got a fiver for your box,’ cut in Doll accusingly. ‘You told me so yourself scores of times. But that was painted, wasn’t it, just like this?’
This pathetic history was cut short by a curious interruption. At the far end of the room a folded newspaper suddenly appeared through the ceiling and floated down the wall. The cellar was built out some few feet under the roadway, and there was a grating there let into the pavement which was used as a letterbox by some obliging newsvendor.
‘Late Night Final,’ exclaimed the man with the cymbals cheerfully as he hurried off across the bricks to retrieve it.
‘Dog racing,’ said Tiddy with contempt. ‘A tanner each way on the dogs, that’s ‘is idea of romance, that is. Waste o’ money. Well, sir, I don’t know how you’re feeling about this ‘ere little mistake of ours?’
Geoffrey looked away from the miniature and Roly wrapped it up again very carefully, rubbing the fine work with his dirty but reverent hands.
‘What did you say the sergeant’s name was?’ Geoffrey had ignored Tiddy Doll’s question but he was gathering up his possessions from the box top.
‘Jack Hackett,’ said Roly. ‘At least, that was ’is Army name. I don’t know what ’e was borned with. ’E was a man with many names, I reckon.’
‘You can lay he won’t be Hackett now,’ put in Doll contemptuously. ‘’E’s a lord by this time. Perhaps you know ’im, sir? Perhaps you know ’im well and don’t know ’is history. You’ll hear it all right when we come up with him. What was you a-thinking of doing, sir?’
‘Doing?’
‘About our little mistake.’
‘I shall forget it.’ The educated authoritative voice carried conviction. Doll accepted the statement as he would have accepted no signature, however illustrious. But the performance was not complete. Geoffrey realized they expected a warning from him and he prepared to give them one.
‘But if I hear of any similar incident if you make a silly mistake again, Doll, then, of course, I shall consider myself free to speak. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It was a smart military answer and the man drew his heels together.
The absurdity of the situation was not really clear to either of them. No one was watching the man with the cymbals. He was sitting on a box, the late edition held close to his eyes, spelling out the Stop Press stencilled in the blank column on the back page. His startled burst of profanity shook everybody.
‘Bloke found murdered in Pump Path, W2. That’s Duds. ‘E’s a deader.’
‘That’s a lie.’ Tiddy Doll swung across the floor to him to peer at the crooked line of print at the foot of the column.
‘You done it, Tiddy.’ Roly’s face had become green and he had the others huddled together, shrinking from Doll. ‘You done it when you went back. ‘You said you give ’im something to go on with.’
The albino crushed the paper in his great hands. His brain worked much more quickly than theirs and he had courage.
‘Hold your mouths!’ he shouted. ‘If one of us done it, we all done it, that’s the law.’ He turned savagely and pointed at Geoffrey. ‘’Im as well.’
Geoffrey was just too late. There were eight men between him and the stairs.
‘Don’t be idi
ots!’ he cried out to them. ‘Don’t be fools. Pull yourselves together. If this is true, you’ve only got one hope. A statement to the police now, at once, it’s your only chance.’
‘That be damned!’ Tiddy’s roar filled the building and he bent his head for the charge.
CHAPTER 7
The Usurer
—
ACROSS THE CITY in St Petersgate Square it had been one of the most alarming interrogations of Sergeant Picot’s experience, but by eleven o’clock that evening he was prepared to admit that the Chief had known what he was doing when he let ‘the old parson’ have his head. He sat silent in the leather chair in the corner of the study in the rectory, his notebook decorously hidden in the folds of his raincoat, and reflected that if only the police were permitted the licence calmly assumed by the public, life would be infinitely more simple.
Canon Avril had either never heard of the Judges’ Rules or considered that in his own family they did not count. Impractical he might be, but as an extractor of the truth he was, as Picot was forced to admit, remarkably efficient.
They were getting on like a house on fire. He had begun with his nearest and dearest, and Meg Elginbrodde had been subjected to a catechism which had not only satisfied but scandalized the sergeant. Sam Drummock and his dear worried wife had received the same treatment. Miss Warburton, fetched in from her cottage next door, had been shaken up, shocked, and subjected. And now, after William Talisman, the verger, had exhibited a somewhat spineless innocence, his wife Mary stood before the Canon’s desk and at last they were getting somewhere.
Uncle Hubert had cleared the desk by sweeping its entire contents into a large dog basket which he kept beneath it, doubtless for just such an emergency. The sports coat in which Duds had died, folded lightly to hide the worst of the blood stains, lay upon its shabby leather top. The Canon’s spectacles were pushed up high on his broad forehead, and his eyes, naked and inexorable, looked out sternly from his kindly face.
‘This is what your husband has already told me,’ he was explaining, most improperly if the laws of evidence had carried any weight. ‘Will says that he’s fairly sure that he saw you wrapping up this jacket in a piece of brown paper on the kitchen table about a month ago. Don’t cry. How can I hear what you’re saying? And don’t lie any more. Lying wastes more time than anything else in the modern world. Think what bores the Nazis were.’
Mrs Talisman was plump, carefully girt and coiffured, and she possessed a little foolish pride which showed in her face. Her life was spent in waiting on the Canon, her husband, and her granddaughter, and because she had that privilege she thought herself a little better than other people. She had nursed the old man before her like a sick baby a score of times, and an ill-ironed wrinkle in his shirt stung her like the evidence of personal sin. A dirty back step or a wilting curtain in the basement window could worry her for a week, and she had once boxed the ears of a van-man from the stores who had observed in all innocence that times were changing and the clergy becoming of less and less account.
‘Oh, I did!’ she exclaimed at last, giving up in a flood of wretchedness. ‘I did. I took the old coat and I gave it away.’
‘Well, then.’ He sighed with exasperation. ‘Why couldn’t you say so before, you silly girl, instead of insisting you knew nothing about it? Did you ask me or Meg before you gave it away? I don’t remember being asked.’
It was perfectly clear to Sergeant Picot that no one would dream of asking the Canon before giving away any garment in the house.
He felt quite sympathetic towards the respectable old girl. She made no answer save to gulp, and Avril continued:
‘It’s so silly to give away something that is not your own,’ he said. ‘There seems to be a mania for it nowadays. But I should have thought it was obvious that the good you do on the one hand must be offset by the irritation you cause on the other. It’s woolly-minded, Mary, woolly-minded and short-sighted and gets none of us anywhere. Work for it first. Then give it away. To whom did you give it? Some poor fellow at the door?’
She hesitated and a flicker of temptation appeared in her red eyes. The Canon was on to it like a flash. Picot had to hand it to him, the old fellow seemed to spot deceit as if it reeked like a goat.
‘Ah, I see. It was someone you knew. Now who was that?’
Mrs Talisman made a helpless gesture with the palms of her hands.
‘I gave it to Mrs Cash.’
‘Mrs Cash?’ The listening Picot understood that this was a revelation. Avril was leaning back in his chair, his lips parted, his eyes comprehending, and also, unless the Sergeant was very much mistaken, dismayed.
Presently the old man rose and put his head out of the door.
‘Dot!’ he shouted.
‘Yes, Canon.’ Miss Warburton’s high, cheerful voice floated down the stairs from Meg’s room. ‘Coming.’
Picot waited her arrival with embarrassment. They had already had one session with her and she was not his kind of woman. It appeared that the Canon did not need her either, however, for he continued to shout instructions.
‘Please fetch Mrs Cash.’
‘She’ll be in bed, Hubert.’
A fresh outburst of weeping from poor Mrs Talisman distracted Uncle Hubert’s attention and he waved at her to be silent.
‘What was that, Dot.’
‘She’ll be in bed, dear.’ She was coming nearer and they could hear her shoes on the stairs.
‘Then fetch her out of it.’ He seemed astonished that she should not have thought of that way out herself. ‘Tell her to wrap up and not to stop to do her hair. She can put a cap on. Thank you very much, Dot.’
Having settled the matter with kindness and politeness, he shut the door firmly just as the lady reached the hall.
‘Now, Mary,’ he said as he reseated himself, ‘think this out very carefully and don’t upset yourself more than necessary. Do be quiet, my poor girl. Moderation. Moderation in all things. Did you offer this coat to Mrs Cash or did she ask for it?’
‘I – oh, I don’t know, sir.’
To the Sergeant’s astonishment, the old man seemed prepared to accept this statement literally.
‘A,’ he said, ‘yes, I see that. Did she say why she wanted it? No. No, she wouldn’t. Forget that. That was foolish of me. But listen, did Mrs Elginbrodde show you any of the photographs which she has been getting through the post?’
‘Of the Major? Yes, she did, sir. I told her I didn’t see how anybody could be quite sure.’
‘Didn’t you recognize this sports coat on the man in the photograph?’
‘I never thought. Oh, is that how it was done? Oh dear, it never came into my mind.’
‘Why didn’t it, Mary? It didn’t come into mine.’
‘I don’t know, unless it was the colour not being there, sir. It’s the colour that makes this jacket outstanding, and of course it wasn’t in the photo.’
‘I see. Now you go and make yourself a cup of tea and sit in the kitchen and drink it, and don’t move until I call you. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir. Yes I do. But oh, Canon Avril, if Mrs Cash – ’
‘Be off,’ commanded Uncle Hubert sternly, and he took a piece of sermon paper from the dog basket and began to write upon it in his fine neat hand.
Clearly this was the one signal of dismissal from which there was no appeal. Mrs Talisman made a gesture of resignation and, taking out her handkerchief once more, wept herself out of the room.
‘I don’t suppose you’d ever get another housekeeper like that these days, sir.’ The remark was wrung out of Picot. This selfless omnipotence was getting on his nerves. He felt someone ought to tell the old boy. It wasn’t fair, somehow. It wasn’t fair on the police.
‘Of course I shouldn’t. I’ve often thought that. How odd that it should strike you, my dear fellow. I should die in six months without that woman. She saves my life every January when I have bronchitis.’ Uncle Hubert was frank and even cheerful about it. ‘Th
e girl is a snob,’ he went on, ‘quite a dreadful snob. What an astonishing number of pitfalls there are, aren’t there? Have you noticed? We seem to be like those contortionists at fairs, boneless wonders they call them, able to fall down in absolutely every way conceivable. It’s very wonderful.’
Picot did not reply. His fresh-complexioned face was perfectly blank. He could not believe the old man was genuine, because people, especially of ‘that class’, never were. Every copper on the beat knew that. All the same, the old boy was unusual. Psychological, perhaps. A kink somewhere, that was about it. This Mrs Cash, now, he hadn’t wanted to discuss her with his housekeeper, and he had been taken aback when her name was mentioned. He wondered what there was between the two. He’d like to see the lady.
The desire was granted almost immediately. The front door opened with a squeak and a burst of Miss Warburton’s cheerful noise.
‘Come along, Mrs Cash, come along. In you go. There’s a nice fat policeman in there – oh dear, I hope he can’t hear me – so the Canon can’t eat you. How lucky you were up. I should have had to have fetched you, you know, whatever you were wearing, or weren’t. Come along.’
The study door shattered open and she came in. Miss Warburton was a middle-aged English gentlewoman who had had the misfortune to mould her social personality at a period when gay and feckless madcaps of the Paddy-the-next-best-thing variety were much in vogue. Her moulding had been slapdash and her basic type pronounced, so that the effect thirty years later was mildly embarrassing, as if a maiden aunt from the Edwardian stage had elected for a day to be untidy, offhand, and bright. However, the woman herself remained what she was bred to be, very feminine, very honest, very obstinate, innocent to the point of being uninstructable, and nearly always right.
‘Here she is, Canon,’ she said, ‘dr-r-ragged from her couch. Beauty sleep ruined. Do you want me to stay?’
Her nice eyes in her plain face were merry and her form, on which every garment always looked as if it was still on its hanger, was arch.
The Tiger In the Smoke Page 12