“It’s the famous school for harridans you have in mind, isn’t it?”
“An excellent establishment! And it could well be this girl’s old school. It’s a thread to pull on, anyway. Where’s the nearest telephone?”
“We’ve been using the one in the vicar’s parlour. See the church over there?”
“All Souls?”
“If you say so. The vicar had his lights on. They get up early to officiate or whatever it is they do, even in this weather. He said we could make free with his instrument in the name of the law. He’s got quite pally with our constable—oh, Lord!” he broke off, his attention distracted by a stirring and a shouting on the towpath. “Now what? Look behind you, Redfyre. Isn’t that the body-finder and his dog? Coming back, and at a fast trot. He’s waving frantically, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’ll head him off,” Redfyre said, and loped down the towpath to intercept him.
“Ahoy there! Told you he was a good hound! He’s just made his second strike of the day. We’d gone about a couple of hundred yards—got just past St. Barnabas boathouse when he slung his anchor out and wouldn’t budge an inch. Dragged me over to the side of the path, making his seeking noise the whole time. I finally let him run his course and found this!”
He reached inside his overcoat and, from a concealed poacher’s pocket, pulled out a handbag.
“Good Lord, man! Do you remember where he found it, exactly?”
“Course! Some lout had stuck it upside down on one of those white hitching posts by the towpath. Just opened up the bag and jammed it on top. You could have missed it in the dark, but certainly not in the daylight; it wasn’t exactly hidden. It’s that post down there, in line with the bottom of de Montfort Avenue where it comes out on the river. I tied my hanky ’round it to it to mark it out. Red, with spots one. You can’t miss it.”
Redfyre took the bag and slapped him on the shoulder in delight. “Well done! You and Toby have done a dashed good day’s work already, and the sun’s not even up!”
“Glad to be of help, officer. Has the Force thought of equipping itself with a squad of bassets?”
“‘Scent hound times six: detective officers for the use of.’ It’ll be on the next requisition list,” Redfyre assured him.
“Stroke of good luck?” the doctor said, cocking a questioning eyebrow when Redfyre showed him the bag.
“Nothing to do with luck, I think,” Redfyre said, affirming his colleague’s suspicions aloud.
“A setup? It would have been simpler to chuck it in the river with the body. Why leave a marker? A message? A taunt? Couldn’t it just have been found by a third party, emptied and abandoned? ”
“I’ll settle for all of those for the moment. Let’s take a look inside, shall we?”
Redfyre slipped on his gloves and handled the bag with care. Before he opened it, both men took a long stare at it.
“Goes well with the victim’s outfit,” Beaufort commented. “Sleek. Expensive. That’s crocodile skin, and the fittings are silver. Distinctive. A lot of people would recognise it, I’m sure.”
Redfyre clicked it open and they peered inside.
“Cheeky bugger!” Redfyre growled. “He’s emptied it of whatever the contents were. Purse? Compact? Not even a bus ticket stub. Nothing!”
“Odd, that!” said Beaufort. “Bag like this, girl like this, you’d expect the contents to be worth making off with. And I’m sure we’re expected to assume it’s a common or garden robbery that turned violent. But any criminal type would recognise the value of the bag itself. Worth a quid or two or even ten in any back street pawnbroker’s. Probably worth more than the contents, unless she was carrying something really special with her.”
“Hang on! He’s left us with one item.” Redfyre drew an envelope from a side pocket inside the bag. “It’s used. There’s no letter inside. It’s addressed to Miss L. Lawrence, Midsummer View, de Montfort Avenue.” He looked up, his grey eyes glinting in the winter sun with an edge of steel that made the doctor look aside in concern. “Arrogant shit!” Redfyre spat. “When we examine that post, do you suppose we’ll find a helpful arrow chalked in, directing us up the road to de Montfort? ‘This way, Plod! You’re nearly there!’”
The doctor turned and looked about him carefully. “Wouldn’t be surprised. And I’ll tell you something else—at this moment, I’d bet you a fiver he’s watching us!”
“Second sight, doc? Cold trickle of foreboding, eh?”
“Put it down to experience. I call it my graveyard intuition. Because, on at least six occasions that I’m aware of, the bastard has been at the scene of a murder or even present at the funeral. In the graveyard—lurking, watching, enjoying his moment while he still can. One of the blokes who eventually confessed to the murder had actually hefted the coffin at one of these sad events! Yes, a coffin bearer! Getting close to his victim for the last time. Concealing his villainy behind a pious face and a strained shoulder.”
Redfyre, spooked by the doctor’s evident unease, swept a glance about him and groaned. “Don’t look now but we’re about to be accosted by a villain with a pious face. And the voice of a sergeant-major. You know my governor, DS MacFarlane, I think.”
Beaufort grinned. “We’ve worked with—and against—each other on many a case. Good officer, I always say. You could do a lot worse, believe me!”
The three men exchanged grunts and nods of recognition and settled on their haunches to examine the victim in silence. Having taken in the scene, MacFarlane shot out a series of questions to which he received convincing answers. When he asked what progress they had made on establishing identity, Redfyre replied levelly, without a flicker of triumph in his voice, that they knew who she was and she most probably lived a hundred yards away across the road in the avenue. He produced the evidence of the handbag.
“It was where? Good Lord! You happy with that, Inspector?”
“No. Relieved—but suspicious—to have the information so soon.” His voice trailed off and he looked again at the river, remembering its direction and trying to calculate its speed of flow.
“Makes no sense to me, but then, I’m a rational man,” MacFarlane offered. “Get into his head, Redfyre! Why waste time and go to all the bother of heaving her body into the river? It’s not as if he was trying to disguise it as a drowning by suicide or accident. He could have just left her to be found on the bank where he killed her. He didn’t need to mark the spot with the bag. He didn’t need to leave that envelope in there. He wanted us to know who she was, and what happened and where.”
“But not when,” Redfyre said thoughtfully.
“So why the hell put her in the water?”
Redfyre continued to stare at the river. “He wasn’t calculating on a sharp-nosed hound and inquisitive riverman on the other end of the lead passing by. I’m not sure yet, and I’ll sketch it out when I’ve had a chance to do a bit more ferreting. But whoever did this made a miscalculation, I’m thinking. His victim was discovered before she’d completed her journey. Another half hour and he’d have made his point, I fear.”
“Mmm.” MacFarlane had learned not to push his inspector when he had that introspective look on his face. “But you think you have a sure handle on her ID?”
“Yes. Apart from the envelope, we were well on the way to tracking her down via her school.” He explained the name tape on the item of underwear. “And would have got there even without the beaten path he offered us. But, like you, sir, I feel we’re being made monkeys of.”
“Right. So get me the organ-grinder and I’ll have his guts for garters. Next thing: a trip down de Montfort Avenue. I’ve shanghaied a sergeant to help you. Thoday was just coming on duty, so I nabbed him. He should be finished parking the car.” He stood, put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. “Here he comes. He’s a sound bloke; you can leave him in charge of things here. You’ll want to ch
eck for footprints around the hitching post, I expect. Fat chance of finding anything! Ground’s frozen, but go through the motions. He may have dropped a calling card in his excitement.”
MacFarlane broke off and stared again at the dead girl. He gathered their attention and spoke more deliberately. “Look here, I want this poor lass taken straight to the hospital where her family can attend for purposes of identification. They’ll clean the river filth off her and comb her hair. Make her look pretty again. Damned if I’m going to drag anybody who was fond of her out to this miserable scene. I mean, look at it! It’s the entrance to Hades!” He added in stricken tones, “‘The wide, silent places of the night where Jupiter has buried the sky in shadow and black night has drained the colour from things.’” He ground to a halt in embarrassment. “Or something like that . . .”
The doctor had looked up, alarmed by the change in tone, but relaxed on receiving a reassuring wink from Redfyre. With a natural Yorkshire aversion to expressing sensitive feelings and a meager working vocabulary, the super would, on the rare occasions when emotion caught him out, dredge up something remembered from his classical schooling to supply his deficiencies. As he usually did, Redfyre covered for him by picking up the baton and running with it, capping his quotations. “Right on, sir! I expect any moment to see the grim ferryman, dreadful in his squalor, sticking out his awful old hand to relieve the wailing dead of their pennies.”
The doctor shivered. “Know what you mean. A good thought, superintendent. It would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Hard enough to lose a child in any circumstances, but we can at least spare them this hellish sight. I’ll summon up the blokes and escort her to the police morgue. I’ll do my best. All we can do now.”
Reverting to his customary no-nonsense tone, MacFarlane gave his final order. “Inspector, you go and break it to the parents or whatever poor sods are waking up now in that nice house over the way. You’ve got more words than I have, and they come out smoother. Take the bag with you for them to ID.”
After exchanging a few words with Sergeant Thoday, he set off back to his car.
Redfyre left his bicycle in the care of the sergeant and set off across the river bank, striking out not for de Montfort Avenue, but for the welcoming lights in the church of All Souls. Putting off the inevitable? Wasting time? He was always ready to accuse himself of these shortcomings, but countered by telling himself firmly that a few minutes given over to reconnaissance and preparation were rarely wasted.
The vicar answered his halloo from the open door at once and understood what he wanted. No, the inspector would not be detaining him. He was staying on anyway to greet Mrs. Andrews and her ladies, who were bringing in the greenery to decorate the church for Christmas. Redfyre was invited to follow the Reverend Denton through to his office, where a telephone could be placed at his disposal. He declined a polite offer to take his hat and coat; the temperature in the stone-walled cell of a room next to the vestry where they fetched up struck him as lower than that in the frosty realm outside.
But the warmth of the welcome took the chill off. A cushion was plumped up and put onto a chair in front of the telephone, which was sitting at the ready on the right hand side of a tidy desk. A notepad and pencil were at hand. “Glad to be able to help in the dreadful circumstances,” murmured the vicar. Responding quickly to the slight unease in Redfyre’s expression, he hurried to add, “Not that I know a great deal about the circumstances—let me assure you that your constable was the soul of professional discretion. And so, I may say, am I! Nonetheless, I shall make myself scarce while you conduct your conversation. The best I can do, I’d say, is fetch you a mug of the coffee from the flask my wife sent me out with this cold morning. It’s Old Brown Java from Matthews in King Street. Will that do you? Milk? Sugar, if I can lay hands on some?”
Redfyre decided this was a man after his own heart. He even liked the eccentric look of him, or the little he could see. Ecclesiastical robes seemed to have been flung on over a furry brown dressing gown, and a red woolly comforter was tied around his neck. A pair of mud-stained gum boots completed the picture. The face belonging to this teddy bear in fancy dress was appropriately round and benignly smiling. He returned the smile. “Ah! It’ll be the best thing that happens to me today!” he said. “Just black, please. Nothing with.”
“Another man who’s learned to do without the frills!” The simple words told a fellow soldier that Denton had been an army padre. Coffee of uncertain provenance was sometimes available to the men, but milk, hardly ever and sugar, never. The vicar was in early middle age, Redfyre reckoned, and as well as being a coffee-lover, the man had the energy and confidence to carry on unabashed and without apology when caught in a doubtful state of dress at an unearthly hour.
He reached gratefully for the telephone.
The operator put him through at once to his number. A cool and youthful female voice answered.
“Hello. This is Saint Agatha’s School, Cambridge, and this is the headmistress speaking.”
“Miss Sturdy? So glad you’re at your desk already! Detective Inspector Redfyre here.”
“John Redfyre! How good to hear from you again. Though, on second thoughts, I can’t imagine why I’ve said that! I don’t suppose you’re ringing to wish me a happy Christmas?”
“You’re right, as usual. Look here, I have a question or two to ask, and the answers may lead to a sadness for the school, but if there is bad news, at least I shall be the one who delivers it. And I know you’re not in the habit of shooting messengers.”
There was a gusty sigh from the other end. “Go ahead. My best hope would be that Lettice Rumboldt has been caught shoplifting again but I’d guess from your tone that it’s more serious than a few stolen sherbert squibs.”
“Indeed. And I only wish it were something I could solve as simply, but I’m afraid this case involves the discovery earlier this morning of a young woman who was murdered. Her body was fished out of the Cam. We’re trying to establish her identity from a couple of clues we’ve turned up. My first question is, can you tell me if one of the houses in your school is named Shelley?”
“Shelley, the poet? Sorry, no. My predecessor opted for an inspiration of scientists. We have Curie, Herschel, Anning and Garrett-Anderson.”
“Oh, dear! Wrong girls’ school . . . I’m sorry to have troubled you, though pleased not to be burdening you with bad news.”
“Hold on a moment. Shelley? Mmm—it’s possible you’re looking in the wrong place. I’m acquainted with a school that has Shelley as one of its four houses. The others are Byron, Jonson and Rochester.”
“A dissolute foursome! I’m surprised to hear you keep such company, Miss Sturdy.”
Suzannah Sturdy gave a blast of hearty laughter. “I try not to imagine the conversation of that rackety lot assembled around a dinner table comparing notes in Heaven! I hardly need to tell you that it’s not a school for girls. It’s one of those scandalous co-educational boarding school establishments that are all the go at the moment. Boys and girls occupying the same building, mixed staff, pick and choose your own syllabus—you know the sort of thing. The one that comes to mind is in Surrey, in a fold of the hills near the village of Shere. It’s called Branscombe School, after the founder. But I’m too harsh. Friends of mine have sent their offspring there and been delighted with it.”
After a pause she asked, “Do you have a name for this poor girl?”
“Tentatively. She could be a Louise Lawrence. A local girl. We have an address in de Montfort Avenue.”
“Lawrence! Oh, no, not the Lawrences!”
Alarmed by the sudden silence following this outburst, Redfyre waited.
She reined in her emotions and the response came, tight-lipped. “The pharmacologist Lawrence is a well-to-do businessman, you’ll find. We have the two younger daughters here in school—boarders, both. Read what you like into that. They’re d
ue to be going home for the vacation next week. They adore their older sister. Listen, if there’s anything I can do or say to help—”
“I’ll let the parents communicate with you—once the identification is complete. We could just be jumping the gun; it’s information I need at the moment.”
“Of course. The girls’ older sister, Louise, I have met once or twice. She was never a pupil here. She refused to be interviewed for a place back in the days of the old headmistress. She is a—er, a strong character, apparently, and insisted that her parents send her to a mixed boarding school a longish way from home. One of her older cousins was an alumnus and sang its praises. A determined young lady by all accounts. In retrospect, I’m sure she made the right decision for everyone concerned. Oh, dear! So it is to be bad news for the school after all . . .”
“Suzannah . . .”
“It’s all right. I understand. Please offer my condolences if the moment ever seems right. I shall say nothing to anyone until you or her father communicate with me further. What a tragedy! What a waste of talent! I can’t bear it. Oh, I’m so sorry, John. What an unpleasant task you have before you!”
“I’ll say all the right things, don’t worry. It’s never easy breaking the news, but—I’ve never said this before, and it’s an odd thought—the bereaved can be unbelievably considerate and generous. They try to set me at my ease, understanding through their own grief and shock that the messenger too must be suffering. Others, of course, try to punch me on the nose. I shall just have to hope that Mr. Lawrence is of the former persuasion.”
“Good luck, and let me know what I can do. Oh, there’s the assembly bell! Must fly. I toast crumpets at five every day, if you can manage—oh, dear!”
The phone went dead on a suppressed wail, and Redfyre was replacing the receiver with a gentle smile when the Reverend Denton coughed loudly from the doorway and came in carrying a fragrant mug of coffee.
“So, it’s the Lawrence girl, is it? Dear, dear! Oh . . . I was loitering by the door trying to judge the right moment to come in, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t hear. This is no time for silly etiquette. Look, inspector, if you’re going to take off for the Lawrence house, there’s something you ought to know about that family before you go putting your foot in it. The two younger girls are wonderful, cheerful and thoroughly nice children—choir members, both. The father is agreeable enough, for a commercially-minded thrusting business man. But I ought not to speak in that pejorative way, since his business is a very worthwhile one, he tells me. He has built himself a laboratory to the northwest of the city, and there, with university cooperation, he is carrying out research and development of a number of drugs and treatments which the medical profession desperately needs. He won’t talk about it, apart from saying what a pity it is these medicaments were not available to mankind during the recent war. It is a valuable enterprise from which humanity will derive great benefit, I’m sure.”
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