“I stand justly rebuked,” Wimsey said with every appearance of being chastened. “Or sit justly rebuked, anyway. Now tell all, do.”
“Sadly, there’s not much to tell,” Parker said as he took a glass of sherry from the silver tray proffered by Bunter.
“Trackin’ down the keyholders, weren’t you? How is the trackin’ business by the way? Thriving, I trust?”
“Not as well as I would have hoped,” Parker said with a worried air. “We’re up to twenty-eight now, all of whom we’ve interviewed, in person where possible and by telephone where not, and all of them have been able to produce an alibi for at least one of the murders.”
“Eliminate the impossible, old chap, and what remains must be the bally truth, no matter how improbable it may seem. I learned that from Sherlock Holmes when I was hardly off the mater’s knee. Ergo, there must still be at least one keyholder whom your chaps have not yet identified.”
“I know, I know,” Parker concurred, “but it’s the very devil tracking them down, Peter. The main lock hasn’t been changed for at least seven years, so technically anybody who lived there, or had any business there during that period is a suspect until eliminated.”
“Yes, it’s much more difficult than we imagined, Peter,” Harriet chipped in. “What worries me is that there may be someone who slips through the net and who we never even find out about. For example, tenants might have had lodgers or even just friends or family staying with them, and given them copies of the key which then were forgotten about, or discarded and picked up by other people.”
“There’s also the possibility, my lord,” Bunter interjected respectfully from his post by the sideboard, “that someone may have borrowed a key and had it cut without the keyholder even knowing about it.”
“True, oh trusted family retainer,” Wimsey acknowledged. “Truth be in the field. Let her and falsehood grapple. Oh, the deuce, Charles. I had no idea it would be so difficult.”
“We’ll continue with the enquiries, of course,” Parker assured him, “but it may be worth thinking about whether there may be other lines we could pursue as well. Apart from anything else, it may be difficult to keep up the troops’ morale much longer. Rightly or wrongly we were all expecting a quick result.”
“There’s always the grudge angle,” Wimsey reminded him. “Why did those particular items end up in that particular loft space? Were they dumped there randomly, in which case we are looking for a keyholder for whom it was just a convenient place to which they had access, or were they put there specifically?”
“And if specifically,” Harriet said, taking up the thread, “then for a specific purpose, which could only have been to throw suspicion on Clarke.”
Bunter caught a meaningful glance being thrown at him by Parker. “Excuse me, my lady,” he interjected, “but we may have overlooked something.”
“Go on, Bunter,” Parker urged him, glad that he had remembered his lines.
“Suppose it wasn’t Clarke on whom the murderer or his accomplice wanted to throw suspicion, sir, but someone else? After all, everyone in the house had access to that space, at least theoretically. It wasn’t locked, just a simple catch, that’s all.”
No-one spoke for a while and then Parker said “Damn” in a most credible fashion.
“Damn it is,” Wimsey agreed. “Bunter, perhaps it might have been better if you had stayed the night at Duke’s Denver.”
“Don’t be so disagreeable, Peter,” Harriet chided him. “Bunter has spotted something which should have occurred to all of us, that’s all. Well done, Bunter.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Bunter said calmly. “Though it does throw an unwelcome light on the matter.”
“Unwelcome indeed,” Wimsey replied. “It means that I may have made a complete ass of myself. My theory about someone indulging themselves in a grudge against Clarke may have been purest hogwash.”
“If so,” Parker said, “then no more of an ass than I made of myself by focusing on Clarke to the exclusion of other possibilities.
“After all,” he went on with a glance at Harriet, “that profiler chap said it couldn’t be Clarke. He was right and I should have listened to him.”
He and Harriet stared briefly at Wimsey to see what effect this sally might have, but none was evident. The great detective was staring rather crossly at the case papers on the table. “Hang on,” he said suddenly, and crossed the room. He flicked through the papers, stared intently at a few pages, and then returned to his chair. The others watched in silence as he steepled his fingers and stared evenly at Parker. “Charles,” he said at length, “tell me everything you can remember about discovering the evidence in the loft. Every little detail, no matter how unimportant it may seem.”
“If only you knew how many times I’d asked people that,” Parker replied with a rueful chuckle. He looked across with a smile, but Wimsey was still gazing at him impassively. “Well,” Parker began, “we’d been for a con with that pompous ass Alistair Partington and he said we’d no real evidence against Clarke other than the purely circumstantial, so Bob and I—that is to say my inspector and I went back to his flat and had a root around. We found nothing of course. It was really just a last desperate attempt, because we knew that the forensic chaps had already been over it with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Go on,” Wimsey said.
“We were just leaving,” Parker said, concentrating hard on remembering things exactly as they had occurred, “when we noticed the loft door over our heads on the landing. We wondered about how to get up there and then I remembered having seen a ladder, well, more just a set of steps really, so we went back and got them and then my inspector climbed up into the loft. He couldn’t find a light switch—”
“Hold your horses, old bird,” Wimsey cut in. “Not so fast. Tell me exactly how he got up into the loft.”
“He pulled himself up, I think,” Parker responded, with a glance at Bunter, who nodded.
“He pulled himself up?” Wimsey repeated. “So he couldn’t just reach up through the door or lean forward from the top of the ladder?”
“No, as I said, the ladder was quite short, just the sort of thing you have at home for changing a light bulb or reaching into the top of a wardrobe.”
“How tall is your inspector?”
“About six foot, I’d say,” Parker said with another glance at Bunter, who nodded again.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Wimsey murmured, shaking his head. He realised that everyone in the room was looking at him. “Gary Clarke was five feet eight inches,” he said sadly. “I’ve just looked it up. And I daresay he was a lot less athletic than your colleague, Charles. So it was most unlikely to have been him who put those things in the loft. He wouldn’t have been able to reach.”
“Perhaps he had a longer ladder somewhere,” Harriet said helplessly. “Oh dear, no, that won’t do. I’m clutching at straws, aren’t I?”
“Positively graspin’,” Wimsey agreed. “Though I suppose it’s theoretically possible. Was there any sign of another ladder anywhere in the building, Charles?”
“No, there wasn’t,” Parker said with a frown, “but I’ll have the whole place checked again tomorrow.”
“Well, assuming that no long ladder suddenly hoves into view,” Wimsey mused, “we have at least learned something useful this evening. It seems likely that whoever placed those objects in the loft—and let’s assume for the sake of argument that this person and our murderer are one and the same—must be at least six feet tall. That might narrow things down a bit, what?”
“Yes, it might,” Parker replied thoughtfully. “And I’ll tell you something else, Peter. It might also modify our conjecture that someone could have been trying to incriminate Clarke. After all, they would presumably have assumed that we would be intelligent in our approach, in which case we would have come to our present conclusion sooner rather than later.”
“Only if they knew that Clarke didn’t have access to a long ladder, sir,” Bunter pointed out. “In
which case it would have to be someone who didn’t know him very well, certainly someone who had never been inside his flat.”
“Or someone who wasn’t bright enough to put two and two together, or who simply didn’t care,” Harriet interjected.
“If it was someone who didn’t know him very well, what possible motive would they have for trying to incriminate him?” Parker asked.
“Oh dear.” Wimsey sighed. “Perhaps we’re not making as much progress as we thought.” He drank the last of his whisky and gazed reflectively into the glass. “Maybe I should come and visit you at the Yard tomorrow? Listen in to your morning briefin’, talk to the troops, that sort of thing?”
Harriet and Bunter both turned to Parker in sudden alarm.
“Actually, Peter, there’s something I need to tell you,” he began awkwardly. Unable to continue for the moment, he got up and paced towards the bookshelves. “Incidentally,” he said, glad to change the subject even if only temporarily, “I forgot to ask how you were getting on with your own research.”
“Slowly,” Wimsey said, looking somehow like a confused child. “I did make a start, but…” He gestured rather helplessly towards the stacked bookshelves.
“What an amazing collection,” Parker said as he ran his fingers lightly over the spines. “Why you must have just about every detective story ever written.”
“He has,” Harriet confirmed.
“I see you have the Martin Beck series,” Parker said. “That’s impressive. Not many people have even heard of them.” His fingers travelled over the books. Suddenly they stopped and went back in the opposite direction, coming to rest ruminatively on the fourth book in the series. “Oh, dear God,” he said quietly. “How stupid of me not to have thought of that.”
Harriet and Bunter looked at him questioningly but he did not elaborate.
“Peter, you old dog,” he said suddenly, “your research was much more advanced than you led me to believe. Why, I think this may be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for.”
“It is?” Wimsey asked, looking a little bewildered. “Jolly good.”
“I have something to ask you, though,” Parker said, “something which I am sure you will recognise as necessary from a police procedure point of view.”
“Ask away, old fruit,” Wimsey invited him vaguely.
“You have given us a lead which may well result in the case being solved. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, but I have to ask that you have no further contact with the case. Tiresome, I know, but the Yard’s getting rather hot on procedure these days. That extends to discussing it with us or indeed anyone else who is involved with the investigation. Your job is done now, and jolly well done too. You can leave the rest to us.”
“Right-oh, then,” Wimsey agreed readily.
“Just as well really, Peter,” Harriet said comfortingly. “I think the Foreign Office has another little job for you coming up in the Balkans.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Come on, guv,” Metcalfe urged. “What’s up? I’ve hardly been able to sleep all night wondering what you suddenly thought of.”
The three of them were sitting outside a small cafe in one of the little pedestrian alleys that run off Hampstead High Street, home to costume jewellery sellers and coffee shops.
“I’ve hardly been able to sleep either,” Collison confessed. “On one level it seems obvious, yet on another I can’t help worrying that I’m over-complicating things.”
“Over-complicating what?” Willis asked, with a certain measure of exasperation evident in her voice.
“Martin Beck,” Collison began, “was a fictional detective created by a husband and wife team called Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, though I’m not sure I’ve pronounced either of those names properly—they’re Swedish, and they both have those funny umlauty things or whatever you call them. Anyway, they wrote ten books together featuring this chap, Beck. The books are supposed to portray the decay of Swedish society from a socialist point of view, though I can’t say that I see that myself.”
He took a sip of coffee.
“I’ve always enjoyed the books and I was impressed when I saw them on Peter’s shelves because not many people outside Sweden have heard of them, let alone own them. As I was looking at them I was recalling the stories and when I got to The Laughing Policeman something suddenly hit me.”
Willis, who had read the books, puckered her eyes in concentration, but it was no good; she couldn’t remember.
“In that book,” Collison continued, “somebody gets on a bus and machine-guns the interior, killing several people. The police are baffled as to why this psychopath chose to slaughter so many innocent victims in this way for apparently no reason at all. But they’re looking in the wrong place. It turns out that the killer only wanted to murder one particular passenger but killed the others precisely so that the police would go off down the wrong track, looking for a psychopathic mass murderer.”
“Oh,” Metcalfe said slowly.
“Oh indeed,” Collison echoed grimly. “We’ve been looking for a psychopathic serial killer, someone who’s dangerously disturbed, despite potentially appearing normal. We asked Peter to profile a serial killer based on the available evidence. We allowed that profile to point us in a particular direction and it led us to Gary Clarke, who was tried and convicted as a serial killer but turned out not to be either. What if all the time our perpetrator wasn’t a psychopathic serial killer but rather a very dangerous and determined individual who wanted to eliminate one particular person, and was prepared to go to any lengths to throw us off the scent?”
“But how likely is that?” Willis asked dubiously. “We’ve found one example in fiction, but has it ever happened in real life that we know of? I don’t think so. Surely it’s much more likely that our perpetrator really is a serial killer, isn’t it?”
“I know, I know,” Collison said helplessly. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? Here I am, drafted into the enquiry to replace Tom Allen, a good old-fashioned copper who believes in gut instincts, and I’m falling prey to exactly the same thing.”
“Tom calls it his copper’s nose,” said Metcalfe. “I can think of a couple of occasions when he just said something out of the blue, and when I asked him how he knew he said ‘I just do.’ Problem is, he was usually right.”
“Well, he was right about Clarke, anyway,” Willis agreed reluctantly. “Though God knows how he knew.”
“But that’s it, isn’t it?” Collison replied. “He had an instinct and he was prepared to back it, even to the extent of doing an enormous amount of work in his own time until he finally had the evidence to prove that what he believed was true. I always thought that was the difference between him and me, yet here I am suggesting we do exactly the same thing.”
“Are we going to do the same thing?” Willis asked forthrightly. “After all, we may still turn something up with our keyholder enquiries.”
“That’s what’s tormenting me, to be honest,” Collison said candidly. “On the one hand I now have Tom’s copper’s nose nagging away at me. On the other, it would mean completely derailing the investigation and turning it in a different direction, and you can imagine how that might go down with the ACC.”
“How are things with the ACC?” Metcalfe asked cautiously.
Collison reflected on this, searching for the right answer. “A trifle tense,” he admitted finally. “He was less than impressed with our amateur dramatics. The worst part of it is that in his place I would feel exactly the same. In strict confidence, if I hadn’t agreed to have nothing further to do with Peter he would have taken me off the case. Thank God this Laughing Policeman idea came up literally at the last minute so I could exclude him from things without upsetting him. How is he, by the way, Karen?”
“Difficult to say. We’re in uncharted waters here. He seemed very quiet and thoughtful this morning. I think what you said about the profiler got through to him.”
“Well, let’s just hope that somet
hing comes of it,” Collison said.
“So what are we going to do?” Metcalfe asked persistently.
“Mais revenons à nos moutons,” Collison said and then, with a start, “Christ, I’m starting to talk like Lord Peter…”
Metcalfe looked puzzled, though he tried not to.
“I’m really not sure,” Collison continued. “I think we have to find some way of testing this theory, but I’ll just have to try to fudge things a little in the hope that Andrew Leach won’t go running off to the ACC with evidence of fresh insanity on my part.”
“I never did like a sneak,” Willis said determinedly.
“He’s acting under orders,” Collison reminded her. “If anything I think we should feel sorry for him. It can’t be very pleasant having to act as a spy in the cab on one’s colleagues.”
“I wonder,” she said slowly, “whether you might be able to slant this in a direction he might be inclined for us to take it anyway, sir?”
“I’m open to suggestions. What do you have in mind?”
“Well, wasn’t it him who was keen to follow the idea of someone having had a grudge against Clarke? Couldn’t you present this new line of enquiry as a sub-set of that?”
Collison pondered for a moment. “Good thinking in principle, but I’d discounted that possibility. It seems so unlikely.”
“Agreed. So suppose instead of having a grudge against Clarke, someone simply offered him up as a convenient scapegoat? Someone, for example, who might be prepared to murder a whole batch of people just to throw us off the scent of the one person he really wanted dead?”
“It might work,” Collison said, nodding. “It would explain why the knickers were hidden outside Clarke’s flat.”
“But who would have been able to predict that we would find them there?” Metcalfe objected. “After all, we nearly didn’t. They might have lain undiscovered for ever.”
There was a silence.
“Maybe they really were just hidden there at random,” Willis said in the end, though without much conviction.
“Synchronicity, you mean?” asked Metcalfe, recalling an earlier conversation. “Extreme coincidence. Someone just happens to dump some murder evidence right outside the flat of a man who is a tailor-made suspect?”
What Would Wimsey Do? Page 19