Clutch of Constables (7 page)

He went to the door and said: “Sarge. Rickerby-Carrick. Hazel: Miss. Birmingham. Natouche: Doctor. G. F. Liverpool. S. H. Caley Bard, S.W.3. London. Pollock, Saturday and Sunday, Osborn Hotel, Birmingham. Hewson. Americans. Two. Tabard. Stratford. Yes. Check, will you?”

“I mustn’t keep you,” Troy said and stood up.

“If you don’t mind waiting, Mrs Alleyn. Just another tick.”

He consulted a directory and dialled a number. “Bishopscourt?” he said. “Yes. Toll’ark Police Station here. Sorry to trouble you, but we’ve had an Australian passport handed in at our office. Name of Bollinger. I understand an Australian gentleman—oh. Oh, yes? Lazenby? All last week? I see. Not his, then. Very sorry to trouble you. Thank you.”

He hung up, beamed at Troy and asked if she could give him any help as to the place of origin of the remaining passengers. She had heard the Hewsons speak of Apollo, Kansas and of a Hotel Balmoral in the Cromwell Road, and she rather fancied Caley Bard did tutorial cramming work. Mr Stanley P. K. Pollock was a Cockney and owned property in London: where, she had no idea. The Superintendent made notes and the Sergeant came in to say he’d checked his items and they were all O.K. Dr Natouche had been in his present practice in Liverpool for about seven years. He had appeared for the police in a road fatality case last week and had been called in at the site of another one last Sunday. Miss Rickerby-Carrick was a well-known member of a voluntary social workers’ organisation. The other passengers had all been where they had said they had been. The Superintendent said there you were, you see, for what it was worth. As Troy shook hands with him he said there was a police station in the village of Crossdyke, a mile from Crossdyke Lock, and if, before tomorrow night, anything at all out of the way occurred he’d be very glad if she’d drop in at the station and give him a call or, if he was free, he might pop over himself in case she did look in.

“Don’t,” said Mr Tillottson apparently as an afterthought, “if I may make a suggestion, begin thinking everybody’s behaving suspiciously, Mrs Alleyn. It’d be rather easy to do that and it’d spoil your holiday. Going to take a look round Toll’ark? I’m afraid I’ve used up some of your time. Good night, then, and much obliged, I do assure you.”

Troy went out into the street. The church bells had stopped ringing and the town was quiet. So quiet that she quite jumped when some distance away a motor-cycle engine started up explosively. It belched and puttered with a now familiar diminuendo into the distance and into silence.

“But I suppose,” Troy thought, “all these infernal machines sound exactly alike.”

-3-

Evening was now advanced in Tollardwark. The Market Square had filled with shadow and only the top of St Crispin’s tower caught a fugitive glint of day. Footsteps sounded loud and hollow in the darkling streets and the voices of the few people who were abroad underlined rather than diminished the sense of emptiness. Some of the shop-windows had all-night lamps in them but most were unlit and their contents hard to distinguish.

Troy loved to be in a strange town at nightfall. She would have chosen always to arrive, anywhere, at dusk. None of the other passengers was in sight and she supposed they had gone back to the
Zodiac
. Except Caley Bard, perhaps, who might still be taking out his sight-seeing in The Northumberland Arms, which glowed with classic geniality behind its red-curtained windows. The church windows also glowed: with kaleidoscopic richness.

She crossed the square, went through the lychgate up a short path and entered the west porch. There were the usual notices about parish meetings and restoration funds and the usual collection boxes. When she passed into the church itself she saw that it was beautiful: a soaring place with a feeling of certainty and aliveness not always to be found in churches.

They were saying compline by candlelight to a tiny congregation amongst whom Troy spotted the backs of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s and Mr Lazenby’s heads. As she slipped into a pew at the rear of the nave, a disembodied alto voice admonished its handful of listeners.

“Be sober, be vigilant:” said the lonely voice, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”

She waited until almost the end and then slipped away as unobtrusively as she had come. “If it were all true,” she thought, “and if the devil really was out and about in the streets of Tollardwark! What a thing
that
would be to be sure!”

She chose to return down a different street from the one she had come up by. It was very narrow, indeed an alleyway rather than a street, and roughly cobbled. She saw a glimmer of The River at the bottom and knew she couldn’t lose her way. At first she passed between old adjoining houses, one or two of them being half-timbered with overhanging upper stories. There was an echo, here, she thought, of her own steps. After a minute or two she stopped to listen. The other footfall stopped too but was it an echo or was someone else abroad in the alley? She looked behind her but it was now quite dark and she could see nobody. So she went on again, walking a little faster, and the echo, if it had been an echo, did not follow her.

Perhaps this was because the houses had thinned out and there were open places on either side as if buildings had been demolished. The alley seemed unconscionably long. The moon rose. Instead of being one of general darkness the picture was now, Troy thought, set out in ink and luminous paint: it glittered with light and swam with shadows and through it the river ran like quicksilver. The downhill slope was steep and Troy walked still faster. She made out the ramshackle shape of a house or shed at the bottom where the alley ended in another lane that stretched along the river-front.

The footfalls began again, some way behind her now but coming nearer and certainly not an echo.

Her way might have been uphill rather than down so senselessly hard-fetched was her heartbeat.

She had reminded herself of Mr Tillottson’s injunction and had resisted an impulse to break into a run when she came to the building at the bottom of the alley. As she did this two persons moved out of the shadow into her path. Troy caught back her breath in a single cry.

“Gee, Mrs Alleyn, is that you?” Miss Hewson said. “Earl, it’s Mrs Alleyn!”

“Why, so it is,” agreed her brother. “So it is. Hallo, there, Mrs Alleyn. Kind of murky down here, isn’t it? I guess the progressive elements in Tollardwark haven’t caught up with street-lighting. Still in the linkman phase.”

“Golly,” Troy said, “you made me jump.”

They broke into an apology. If they had known it was Troy they would have hailed her as she approached. Miss Hewson herself was nervous in the dark and wouldn’t stir without Brother. Miss Hewson, Mr Hewson said, was a crazy hunter after old-time souvenirs and this place looked like it was some kind of trash shop and yard and nothing would do but they must try and peer in at the windows. And, interjected his sister, they had made out a number of delectable objects. The cutest kind of work-box on legs. Heaps of portfolios. And then—it was the darndest thing—their flashlamp had gone dead on them.

“It’s old pictures,” Miss Hewson cried, “that I just can’t keep my hands off, Mrs Alleyn. Prints. Illustrations from Victorian publications. Those cute little girls with kittens and nosegays? Military pieces? Know what I mean?”

“Sis makes screens,” Mr Hewson explained tolerantly. “Real pretty, too. I guess, back home, she’s gotten to be famous for her screens.”

“Listen to you!” his sister exclaimed, “talking about my screens to Mrs Alleyn!” Troy, whose heart had stopped behaving like a water-ram, said she too admired Victorian screens and reminded the Hewsons that they would be able to explore Tollardwark on the return trip.

“I guess Sis ‘ll be heading for this antique joint,” Mr Hewson said, “before we’re tied up. Come on, now, girls, why don’t we go?”

He had taken their arms when the footsteps broke out again, quite near at hand. Mr Hewson swung his ladies round to face them. An invisible man strode towards them through the dark: a set of pale garments and shoes without face or hands. Miss Hewson let out a sharp little scream but Troy exclaimed: “Dr Natouche!”

“I am so sorry,” the great voice boomed. “I have alarmed you. I would have called out back there before the moon rose but did not know if you were a stranger or not. I waited for you to get away from me. Then, just now, I heard your voice. I am so very sorry.”

“No harm done I guess, Doctor,” Mr Hewson said stiffly.

“Of course not,” Troy said. “I was in the same case as you, Dr Natouche. I wondered about calling out and then thought you might be an affronted local inhabitant or a sinister prowler.”

Dr Natouche had produced a pocket torch no bigger than a giant pencil. “The moon has risen,” he said, “but it’s dark down here.” The light darted about like a firefly and for a moment a name flashed out: “Jno. Bagg: licensed dealer,” on a small dilapidated sign above a door.

“Well,” Miss Hewson said to her brother. “C’mon. Let’s go.

He took her arm again and turned invitingly to Troy. “We can’t walk four-abreast,” Troy said. “You two lead the way.”

They did so and she fell in beside Dr Natouche.

The bottom lane turned out to be treacherous underfoot. Some kind of slippery lichen or river-weed had crept over the cobblestones. Miss Hewson slithered, clung to her brother and let out a yelp that flushed a company of ducks who raised their own rumpus and left indignantly by water.

The Hewsons exclaimed upon the vagaries of nature and stumbled on. Troy slipped and was stayed up expertly by Dr Natouche.

“I think perhaps you should take my arm,” he said. “My shoes seem to be unaffected. We have chosen a bad way home.”

His arm felt professional: steady and very hard. He moved with perfect ease as his forefathers might have moved, Troy thought, barefoot across some unimaginable landscape. When she slipped, as she did once or twice, his hand closed for a moment about her forearm and she saw his long fingers pressed into the white sleeve.

The surface of the lane improved but she felt it would be uncivil to withdraw her arm at once. Dr Natouche spoke placidly of the beauties of Tollardwark. He talked, Troy thought indulgently, rather like the ship’s brochure. She experienced a great contentment. What on earth, she thought gaily, have I been fussing about: I’m loving my cruise.

Miss Hewson turned to look back at Troy, peered, hesitated, and said: “O.K., Mrs Alleyn?”

“Grand, thank you.”

“There’s the
Zodiac
,” Mr Hewson said. “Girls—we’re home.”

She looked welcoming indeed, with her riding lights and glowing red-curtained windows. “Lovely!” Troy said light-heartedly. Dr Natouche’s arm contracted very slightly and then relaxed and withdrew, closely observed by the Hewsons. Mr Hewson handed the ladies aboard and accompanied them down to the saloon which was deserted.

Miss Hewson carefully lowering her voice said cosily: “Now, dear, I hope you were not too much embarrassed: we couldn’t do one thing, could we, Earl?” She may have seen a look of astonishment in Troy’s face. “Of course,” she added, “we don’t just know how you Britishers feel—”

“I don’t feel anything,” Troy said inaccurately. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well!” Mr Hewson said, “You don’t aim to tell us, Mrs Alleyn, that there’s no distinction made in Britain? Now, only last week I was reading—”

“I’m sure you were, Mr Hewson, but honestly, we don’t all behave like that. Or believe like that. Really.”

“Is that so?” he said. “Is—that so? You wait awhile, Mrs Alleyn. You wait until you’ve a comparable problem. You haven’t seen anything yet. Not a thing.”

“I guess we’ll just leave it, dear,” Miss Hewson said. “Am I looking forward to my bed! Boy, oh boy!”

“We’ll say good night then, Mrs Alleyn,” Mr Hewson said rather stiffly. “It’s a privilege to make your acquaintance.”

Troy found herself saying good night with much more effusiveness than she normally displayed and this, she supposed, was because she wanted everything to be pleasant in the
Zodiac
. The Hewsons seemed to cheer up very much at these signs of cordiality and went to bed saying that it took all sorts to make a world.

Troy waited for a moment and then climbed the little companionway and looked over the half-door.

Dr Natouche stood at the after-end of the deck looking, it appeared, at the silhouette of Tollardwark against the night-sky. He has a gift, Troy thought, for isolating himself in space.

“Good night, Dr Natouche,” she said, quietly.

“Good night. Good night, Mrs Alleyn,” he returned, speaking as low as his enormous voice permitted. It was as if he played softly on a drum.

Troy wrote a letter to her husband which she would post before they left Tollard Lock in the morning and it was almost midnight when she had finished it.

What a long, long day, she thought as she climbed into her bed.

-4-

She fell asleep within half a minute and was fathoms deep when noises lugged her to the surface. On the way up she dreamed of sawmills, of road-drills and of dentists. As she awoke her dream persisted: the rhythmic hullabaloo was close at hand, behind her head, coming in at her porthole—everywhere. Her cabin was suffused in moonlight reflected off the river. It looked like a sanctuary for peace itself but on the other side of the wall Miss Rickerby-Carrick in Cabin 8 snored with a virtuosity that exceeded anything Troy had ever heard before. The pandemonium she released no more resembled normal snoring than the “1812 Overture” resembles the “Harmonious Blacksmith.” It was monstrous. It was insupportable.

Troy lay in a sort of incredulous panic, half-giggling, half-appalled as whistles succeeded snorts, and plosives followed upon whistles. A door on the far side of the passage angrily banged. She thought it was Caley Bard’s. Then Mr Hewson, in Cabin 6 on Troy’s left, thudded out of bed, crossed the passage to his sister’s room and knocked.

“Sis! Hey Sis!” Troy heard him wail. “For Pete’s sake! Sis!” Troy reached out and opened her own door a crack.