Clutch of Constables (18 page)

“Are you telling me,” Mr Bagg said with a change of manner, “that she struck it lucky? Is that the lay?”

“It may be a valuable painting and it may be a forgery.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“Now, all I want to know, and I hope you’ll see your way to telling me, is whether, on thinking it over, you can remember seeing the roll of prints in that cupboard before yesterday.”

“What I meantersay, no. No, I can’t. No.”

“Had you never opened the cupboard, or sideboard is it, since you bought it?”

“No. I can’t say fairer than that, mister, can I? No. Not me, I never.”

“May I look at it?” He grumbled a little but finally led them out to his yard where the very dregs of his collection mouldered. The sideboard was a vast Edwardian piece executed in pitchpine with the cupboard in the middle. Alleyn tried the door which had warped and only opened to a hard wrench and a screech that compared favourably with that of the front door.

“She was nosey,” Mr Bagg offered. “Had to open everything she saw. Had a job with that one. Still nothing would do—nosey.”

“And there it was.”

“That’s correct, mister. There it was. And there it wasn’t if you can understand, three days before.”

“ What?”

“Which I won’t deceive you, mister. While my old woman was looking over the stock out here, Monday, she opened that cupboard and she mentions the same to me when them two Yanks had gone and she says it wasn’t there then.”

“Why couldn’t you tell us at once, Jo?” Mr Tillottson asked more in resignation than in anger.

“You arst, you know you did, or this gentleman which is all one, arst if
I
never opened the cupboard and I answered truthfully that I never. Now then!”

“All right, Jo, all right. That’s all we wanted to know.”

“Not quite,” Alleyn said. “I wonder, Mr Bagg, if you’ve any idea of how the bundle could have got there. Have you anybody working for you? A boy?”

“Boy! Don’t mention Boy to me. Runaway knockers and ringers, the lot of them. I wouldn’t have Boys on me property, not if
they
paid
me
.”

“Is the gate from this yard to the road unlocked during the day?”

“Yes, it is unlocked. To oblige.”

“Have many people been in over the last two days, would you say?”

Not many, it appeared. His customers, as a general rule came into the shop. All the stuff in the yard was of a size or worthlessness that made it unpilferable. It was evident that anybody with a mind to it could wander round the yard without Mr Bagg being aware of their presence. Under persuasion he recalled one or two locals who had drifted in and bought nothing.

Alleyn delicately suggested that perhaps Mrs Bagg—?

“Mrs Bagg,” said Mr Bagg, “is in bed and asleep which game to rouse her, I am not. No more would you be if you knew how she can shape up.”

“But if your wife—”

“Wife? Do me a favour! She’s my mum.”

“Oh.”

As if to confirm the general trend of thought a female voice like a saw screamed from inside the cottage that its owner wanted to know what the hell Mr Bagg thought he was doing creating a nuisance in the middle of the night.

“There you are,” he said. “Now, see what you done.” He approached a window at the rear of the cottage and tapped on it. “It’s me,” he mumbled. “It’s not the middle of the night, Mum, it’s early. It’s Mr Tillottson of the Police, Mum, and a gentleman friend. They was inquiring about them Yanks what bought that stuff.”

“I can’t hear you. Police! Did you say Police? ’Ere! Come round ’ere this instant-moment, Jo Bagg, and explain yerself:
Police
.”

“I better go,” he said and re-entered the cottage.

“The old lady,” Mr Tillottson said, “is a wee bit difficult.”

“So it would seem.”

“They make out she’s nearly a hundred.”

“But she’s got the stamina?”

“My oath!”

The Baggs were in conversation beyond the window but at a subdued level and nothing could be made of it. When Mr Bagg re-emerged he spoke in a whisper.

“Do me a favour, gents,” he whispered. “Move away.”

They withdrew into the shop and from thence to the front door.

“She’s deaf,” Mr Bagg said, “but there are times when you wouldn’t credit it. She don’t know anything about nothing but she worked it out that if this picture you mention is a valuable antique it’s been taken off us by false pretences and we ought to get it back.”

“Oh.”

“That’s the view she takes. And so,” Mr Bagg added loyally, “do I. Now!”

“I dare say you do,” Mr Tillottson readily conceded. “Very natural. And she’s no ideas about how it got there?”

“No more nor the Holy Saints in Heaven, and she’s a Catholic,” Mr Bagg said unexpectedly.

“Well, we’ll bid you good night, Jo. Unless Mr Alleyn has anything further?”

“Not at the moment, thank you. Mr Bagg.”

Mr Bagg wrenched open the front door to the inevitable screech which was at once echoed from the back bedroom.

“You ask them Police,” screamed old Mrs Bagg, “why they don’t do something about them motor-biking Beasts instead of making night hijjus on their own accounts.”

“What motor-biking beasts?” Alleyn suddenly yelled into the darkness.

“You know. And if you don’t you ought to. Back-firing up and down the streets at all hours and hanging round up to no good. Jo! Show them out and get to bed.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“And another thing,” invisibly screamed Mrs Bagg. “What was them two Americans doing nosey-parkering about the place last week was a month back, taking photers and never letting on they was the same as before.”

Alleyn set himself to bawl again and thought better of it. “What does she mean?” he asked Mr Bagg.

“You don’t have to notice,” he said. “But it’s correct, all right. They been here before, see, taking photographs and Mum recognised them. She wouldn’t have made nothink of it only for suspecting they done us.”

“When were they here? Where did they stay?”

“In the spring. May. Late April: I wouldn’t know. But it was them all right. They made out, when I says weren’t they here before, they was that taken with the place they come back for more.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Don’t be funny,” Mr Bagg said. “Course I’m sure. This way, for Gawd’s sake.”

They went out. Mr Bagg had re-addressed himself to the door when Alleyn said: “Can you tell us anything about these motor-cyclists?”

“Them? Couple of mods. Staying up at the Star in Chantry Street. Tearing about the country all hours and disturbing people. Tuesday evening Mum ’eard something in our yard and caught the chap nosing round. Looking for old chain he said, but she didn’t fancy him. She took against him very strong, did Mum, and anyway we ain’t got no old chain.
Chain
!”

“Why,” began Mr Tillottson on a note of anguish, “didn’t you mention—”

“I never give it a thought. You can’t think of everything.”

“Nor you can,” Alleyn hurriedly intervened. “But now you have thought, can you tell us what drew Mrs Bagg’s attention to the chap in the yard?”

“Like I said, she ’eard something.”

“What, though?”

“Some sort of screech. I ’eard it too.”

“You did!”

“But I was engaged with a customer,” Mr Bagg said majestically, “in my shop.”

“Could the screech have been made by the door in the sideboard?” Mr Bagg peered into Alleyn’s face as if into that of an oracle.

“Mister,” he said, “it not only could but it did.” He took thought and burst into protestation.

“Look,” he said. “I want an explanation. If I been done I want to know how I been done. If I been in possession of a valuable article and sold this article for a gift without being fully informed I want to get it back, fair and proper. Now.”

They left him discontentedly pursuing this thought but not loudly enough to arouse the curiosity of old Mrs Bagg. The door shrieked and slammed and they heard the bolts shoot home on the inside.

“Star Inn,” Alleyn said as they got in the car but when they reached the inn it was to find that the motor-bicyclists had paid their bill the previous evening and set off for an unknown destination. They had registered as Mr and Mrs John Smith.

-4-

The motor-bicycle had been parked in a dampish yard behind the pub and the tyre-tracks were easy enough to pick up. Alleyn took measurements, made a sketch of the prints and had them covered, pending the arrival of Bailey and Thompson. He thought that when they examined Fox’s find under the hedgerow above Crossdyke they would find an exact correspondence. An outside man at the Star remembered the make of vehicle—Route-Rocket—but nobody could give the number.

Alleyn telephoned Troy at The Percy Arms in Norminster and asked her if by any chance she could recall it.

She sat on the edge of her bed with the receiver at her ear and tried to summon up her draughtsman’s memory of the scene on the quay at Norminster last Monday morning. Miss Rickerby-Carrick squatted on her suitcase, writing. Caley Bard and Dr Natouche were down by The River. Pollock limped off in a sulk. The Bishop’s car was in the lane with Lazenby inside. The two riders lounged against their machine, their oiled heads and black leather gear softly glistening in the sun. She had wanted to draw them, booted legs, easy, indolent pose, gum-chewing faces, gloved hands. And the machine. She screwed her memory to the sticking point, waited and then heard her own voice.

“I think,” said her voice, “it was XKL-460.”

“Now, there!” Alleyn exclaimed. “See what a girl I’ve got! Thank you, my love, and good night.” He hung up. “All right,” he said. “We set up a general call. They’ll be God knows where by now but they’ve got to be somewhere and by God we’ll fetch them in.”

He, Fox and Tillottson were in the superintendent’s office at the Tollardwark police-station where, on Monday night, Troy had first encountered Mr Tillottson. The sergeant set up the call. In a matter of minutes all divisions throughout the country and all police personnel were alerted for a Route-Rocket, XKL-460, black, with either one or two riders, mod-types, leather clothes, dark, long hair, calf-boots. Retain for questioning and report in.

“And by now,” Fox observed, “they’ve repainted their bike, cut their hair and gone into rompers.”

“Always the little sunbeam,” Alleyn muttered, absently. He had covered a table in the office with newspaper and now very carefully they laid upon it an old-fashioned hide suitcase, saturated with river-water, blotched, disreputable, with one end of its handle detached from its ring. A length of cord had been firmly knotted through both rings.

“We opened it,” Tillottson said, “and checked the contents as they lay. We left them for a doing-over and re-closed the lot. You can see what happened. The other end of the cord was secured round her waist. The slack had been passed two or three times under the handle and round the case. When the handle came away at one end the slack paid out and instead of being anchored on the river bed, the body rose to the surface but remained fastened to the weighted case. As it was when we recovered it.”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed. “You can see where the turns of rope bit into the leather.”

Fox, who was bent over the cord, said: “Clothes-line. Did they pinch it or had they got it?” and sighed heavily. “We’ll inquire,” he said.

“They might have had it,” Tillottson said. “In their kit, you know. Easily they might. Or what-say,” he added, brightening, “they picked it up in Jo’s yard? How’s that?”

“That might or might not argue premeditation,” Alleyn said. “For the moment it can wait. We’d better take another look inside.”

The case was unlocked but fastened with strong old-fashioned hasps and a strap. The saturated leather was slimy to the touch. He opened and laid back the lid.

A jumble of clothes that had been stuffed into the case. Three pairs of shoes which spoke with dreadful eloquence of the feet that had distorted them. A seedy comb and hairbrush with straggles of grey hairs still engaged in them.

“And the whole lot stowed away in a hurry and not by her. No hope of prints, he’s a damn’ sight too fly for that, but we’ll have to try. Hallo, what’s here?”

Five stones of varying sizes. A half brick. Two handfuls of gravel. Underneath all these, a sponge-bag containing a half-empty bottle of aspirins (Troy’s, thought Alleyn), a tooth brush and a tube of paste and, in a state of disintegration, Hazel Rickerby-Carrick’s “self-propelling confessional.”

“The diary,” Alleyn said. “And to misuse a nastily appropriate line: ‘lift it up tenderly, treat it with care’. You never know—it may turn out to be a guide-book.”

“At this point,” Alleyn said, “I’m going to jump the gun and show you a photograph of post-mortem marks across the back at waist level and diagonally across the shoulder-blades of the body. Here are her wrists, similarly scarred. These marks were classed as having been inflicted after death. As you see they have all the characteristics of post-mortem scarring. What do they suggest? Yes?”

“The cord, sir,” ventured Carmichael in the second row. “The cord that attached the bawdy to the suitcase.”

“I’m afraid that’s not quite accurate. These grooves are narrow and deep and only appear on the back. Now look at this. That’s the cord, laid beside the marks. You can see it tallies. So far you are right, Carmichael. But you see that the higher marks cross each other in the form of an X with a line underneath. Have another shot. What are they?”

From somewhere towards the back a doubtful voice uttered the word ‘flagellation’ and followed it with an apologetic little cough. Someone else made the noise ‘gatcha’ upon which there was a muffled guffaw.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Alleyn said. “However: to press on with Mr Fox’s investigations. He found nothing else of interest at the Crossdyke end and moved to the stretch of river below Ramsdyke weir where the body was found. Above Ramsdyke near the hollow called Wapentake Pot, the road from Crossdyke and Tollardwark was undergoing repairs. There were loose stones and rubble. It crosses Dyke Way and Dyke Way leads down to a bridge over The River where the Roman canal joins it. Downstream from here is the weir with its own bridge, a narrow affair with a single handrail. It’s here that the effluent from a factory enters the mainstream and brews a great mass of detergent foam over the lower reaches.

“The weir bridge is narrow, green, wet and slithery with foam blown back from the fall. It is approached from the road by concrete steps and a cinder path.

“Along this path, Mr Fox again found a thread or two of dark blue synthetic caught on a bramble. Here’s the photograph. And I may tell you that a close search of the pyjamas revealed a triangular gap that matched the fragment from Crossdyke. Classic stuff.

“The path is bordered on one side by a very old wall from which a number of bricks had worked loose.

“Now for the weir bridge. Nearly three days had passed between the night she disappeared and our work on it. A pretty dense film of detergent had been blown back and it was a particularly awkward job to examine it without destroying any evidence there might be. However. There was a notice warning people that it was dangerous to use the bridge and the lock-keeper said he didn’t think anyone had been on it for at least a week.

“Mr. Fox found some evidence of recent gloved hand-holds on the rail. No prints were obtainable. For a distance of about twelve feet from the bank the actual footway looked to be less thickly encrusted than the remaining stretch of the bridge. Mr Fox reckoned that there was a sort of family resemblance between the appearance of the bridge and the drag over the heel prints on the bank at Crossdyke. Here are Thompson’s blow-ups for comparison. You can see how bad, from our point of view, the conditions were on the bridge.

“Now, out of all this, what sort of picture do you begin to get. Yes? All right, Carmichael?”

Carmichael rose, fixed Alleyn with his blue stare and delivered.

“To re-cap, sir,” Carmichael began ominously. “As a wur-r-r—king hypothesis, it could be argued that the bawdy of the deceased had been passed from the deck of the vessel into the possession of the persons who received it and that it had maybe been drawped and dragged in the process, sir, thus pairtially obleeterating the heel prints. Furthermore it could be reasonably deduced, sir, that the bawdy was transported by means of the motor-bike to Ramsdyke where it was conveyed by hand to the weir bridge, dragged some twelve feet along it and consigned to the watter.”

He stopped, cleared his throat and raised his hand: “As a rider to the above, sir, and proceeding out of it, “ he said. ”A suitcase, being the personal property of deceased, and packed with her effects, was removed from her cabin and transferred by the means already detailed, with the bawdy, to the said weir and there, weighted with stones and gravel and a half-brick, attached to the bawdy by the cord produced. The bawdy and the suitcase were then as detailed consigned to the watter.”

He resumed his seat and gave Alleyn a modest smile.

“Yes, Carmichael, yes,” Alleyn said, “and what about the post-mortem marks of the cord?”

Carmichael rose again.

“For want of an alternative,” he said with the utmost complacency, “I would assume as a wurrking premiss, sir, that the deed bawdy was lashed to the person of the cyclist thus rendering the spurious appearance of a pillion-rider.”

“Revolting as the picture you conjure up may be,” Alleyn said. “I’m afraid you’re right, Carmichael.”

“Shall we say deed right, sir?” Carmichael suggested with an odiously pawky grin.

“We shall do nothing of the sort, Carmichael. Sit down.”

-1-

“It’s a horrid picture that begins to emerge, isn’t it?” Alleyn said as he eased the diary out of the sponge-bag and laid it with elaborate care on a folded towel. “The body is lashed to the cyclist’s back and over it is dragged the dull magenta gown, hiding the cord. The arms are pulled round his waist and the wrists tied. The head, one must suppose, lolls forward on the rider’s shoulder.

“And if anyone was abroad in the night on the road from Crossdyke to Ramsdyke they might have seen an antic show: a man on a Route-Rocket with what seemed to be either a very affectionate or a very drunken rider on his pillion: a rider whose head lolled and jerked preposterously and who seemed to be glued to his back.”

“What about the suitcase?” asked Tillottson.

“Made fast. It’s not weighted at this stage. The stones were collected at the weir.”

“Roadside heap,” Fox put in. “Loose brick. Shingle. We’ve got all that.”

“Exactly, Br’er Fox. Fish out a sponge from my bag, would you?”

Fox did so. Alleyn pressed it over the surfaces of the diary, mopping up the water that seeped out. “It’s when he gets to Ramsdyke,” he went on, “that the cyclist’s toughest job begins. Presumably he’s single-handed. He has to dismount, carry his burden, a ghastly pick-a-back, presumably, down to the weir. He unlooses and dumps it, returns for the case, puts in the stones and shingle, humps the case to the body, adds a loose half-brick, ties the body to the case and pushes both of them far enough along the footbridge to topple them into the weir.”

“Do I,” Fox blandly inquired, “hear the little word conjecture?”

“If you do you can shut up about it. But you don’t hear it all that clearly, old boy. Find me another theory that fits the facts and I’ll eat the dust.”

“I won’t give you the satisfaction, Mr Alleyn.”

“Find something to slide under the diary, will you? I want to turn it over. A stiff card will do. Good. Here we go. Now, the sponge again. Yes. Well, from here, the sinister cyclist and his moll begin to set-up their disappearing act. All we know is that they had paid their bill at the Star and that they lit off some time that night or early next morning. Presumably with a fabulous Fabergé bibelot representing the Signs of the
Zodiac
in their possession.”

“Hi!” Tillottson ejaculated. “D’you reckon?”

“This really
is
conjecture,” Alleyn said. “But I don’t mind betting we do
not
find the damned jewel on board the
Zodiac
.”

“River bed? Swept of the body, like?”

“I don’t see him leaving it on the body, you know.”

“I suppose not. No.”

“It may have been the motive,” Fox said. “If it’s all that fabulous.”

“Or it may have been a particularly lush extra: a kind of bonus in the general scheme of awards.”

Tillottson said: “You don’t lean to the notion that this cyclist character—”

“Call him Smith,” Fox suggested sourly. “I’ll bet nobody else ever has.”

“This Smith, then. You don’t fancy he did the killing?”

“No,” Alleyn said. “I don’t. I think she was killed on board the
Zodiac
. I think the body was handed over to Smith together with the suitcase and probably the Fabergé jewel. Now, dare we take a look inside this diary.”

It had deteriorated since poor Hazel Rickerby-Carrick had examined it after its first immersion. The block of pages had parted company with the spine and had broken into sections. The binding was pulpy and the paper softened.

“Should we dry it out first?” Fox asked.

“I’ll try one gingerly fiddle. Got a broadish knife in the station?”

Tillottson produced a bread knife. With infinite caution Alleyn introduced it into the diary at the place where the condition of the edges suggested a division between the much used and still unused sections. He followed the knife blade up with a wider piece of card and finally turned the top section back.

Blotched, mottled, in places blistered and in others torn, it was still for the most part legible.

“Waterproof ink,” Alleyn said. “God bless the self-propelling pencil.”

And like the writer, when she sat in her cabin on the last day of her life, Alleyn read the final entry in her diary.

“
I’m at it again. Trying too hard, as usual
—”

And like her, having read it, he turned the page and drew a blank.

-2-

“So there it is,” Alleyn said. “She writes that she returned from compline at St Crispin-in-the-Fields to the motor-vessel
Zodiac
. She doesn’t say by what road but as Troy followed the same procedure and returned by Ferry Lane and did not encounter her, it may be that she took a different route.”

“She could,” Tillottson said. “Easily. Weyland Street, it’d have to be.”

“All right. She was wearing rubber-sole shoes. At some stage in her return trip she retired into a dark shop-entry to remove a pebble or something from one of her sneakers. From this position, she overheard a conversation between two or more — from the context I would think more—people that, quote, ‘froze’ and ‘riveted’ her. One of the voices; it was a whisper, she failed to identify. The other—or others—she no doubt revealed on the subsequent page which has been torn out of the diary. Now. My wife has told me that after Lazenby rescued the diary she thought she saw, for a fractional moment, paper with writing on it, clutched in his left hand. That evening at Crossdyke, Miss Rickerby-Carrick, who was in a state of violent excitement, intimated that she wanted urgently to confide in Troy, to ask her advice. No doubt she would have done so—but Troy got a migraine and instead of exploring Crossdyke went early to bed. Miss R-C. joined the others and inspected the ruins and was shown how to catch butterflies by Caley Bard. Troy, who was feeling better, saw this episode through her porthole.

“She also saw Miss Rickerby-Carrick peel off from the main party, run down the hill and excitedly latch on to Dr. Natouche who was walking down the lane. She seemed to show him something that she held in the palm of her hand. Troy couldn’t see what it was.”

“That’s interesting,” said Fox.

“Dr Natouche has subsequently told Troy that she asked him about some sort of tranquilliser pill she’d been given by Miss Hewson. He did not, I think, actually say that she showed him this pill when they were in the lane: Troy simply supposes that was what it was.”

“Might it,” Tillottson ventured, “have been this what you call it—furbished jewel?”

“Fah-ber-zhay,” murmured Mr Fox who spoke French. “And she wore that round her neck on a cord, Bert.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, leaving it, “that night she disappeared and in my opinion, that night, very late, she was murdered.

“The next day, Natouche told Troy he was concerned about Miss Rickerby-Carrick. He didn’t say in so many words that he thought she might commit suicide but Troy got the impression that he did in fact fear it.

“I’ll round up the rest of the bits and pieces gleaned by my wife, most of which, but I think not all, you have already heard, Tillottson.”

“Er — well — yerse.”

“Here they are, piecemeal. Pollock started life as a commercial artist and changed to real estate. He does a beautiful job of lettering when told exactly what’s wanted.

“Natouche makes pretty maps.

“Miss Hewson was shown the Fabergé bibelot by its owner.

“Miss Hewson seems to be very keen on handing out pills.

“The Hewsons were disproportionately annoyed when they heard that the return visit to Tollardwark would be on early-closing day. They hired a car from Longminster to do their shop-crawl in Tollardwark and on that trip bought their stuff at Jo Bagg’s in Ferry Lane.

“In their loot was an oil painting, purporting to be a signed Constable. Hewson said they’d posted it on to their address in London but I saw it in one of their suitcases.

“The cyclists watched the
Zodiac
sail from Norminster and re-appeared that evening at Ramsdyke. Troy thought she heard them—but says of course she might be wrong—during the night in Tollardwark.

“Mrs Bagg complains about cyclists hanging round their yard on Tuesday. A screech, as of the cupboard door, attracted her attention.

“The Baggs say the roll of prints was not in the cupboard a few days before the Hewsons found it there.

“Lazenby is a one-eyed man and conceals the condition. Troy, who can give no valid reason, thinks he’s not a parson, an opinion that evidently is not shared by the Bishop of Norminster who had him to stay and sent him in the episcopal car to the
Zodiac
. He says he’s an Australian. We send his prints and a description to the Australian police. We also send the Hewsons’ over to the FBI in New York.”

Fox made a note of it.

“The Hewsons,” Alleyn continued, “are expensively equipped photographers.