Murder at Swann's Lake (19 page)

“That would explain it then,” Woodend replied, making no effort to sound as if he believed the reporter for a minute.

Dawson swayed a little. “Thing is, does it have anything to do with the murder?”

“He's been charged with breakin' into private property,” Woodend said evenly.

“And has he explained
why
he did it?”

“Yes sir,” Woodend lied. “He said he was lookin' for somethin'.”

Dawson gulped. “Did he say what?”

“That's as far as I'm prepared to go at the moment,” Woodend told him.

Dawson shook his head, as if he were trying to clear his fuzzy thought process. “Well, if you'll excuse me,” he said, slurring his words, “I'd better get off home.”

“You do that. An' drive carefully,” Woodend advised him.

But Dawson didn't head for the door. Instead he went back to the bar and ordered himself another double whisky.

“What did you make of that, Bob?” Woodend asked.

“He's very worried indeed about what Fairbright might have said,” Rutter suggested.

“Aye, he is, isn't he?” Woodend agreed. “An' I'll tell you somethin' else for nothin'. If we want to find out who made the first, botched attempt to break into Peterson's office, we'll not have to look much further than Mr Harold-bloody-Dawson.”

“W
ell, I must say it was easier getting into Yorkshire today than it was the last time,” Rutter said as the police Wolsey approached the sign which welcomed it to Doncaster. “Passport control hardly looked at us, and there was absolutely no trouble at the customs' post.”

“Sarcastic young bugger,” Woodend growled – but he was pleased that his sergeant seemed to be in good enough spirits to be able to make a joke.

The Wolsey turned into Hatton Gardens, and Woodend saw two men standing on the footpath outside Number 7. One of them was a white-haired sergeant. The other, the police locksmith, was wearing a khaki storeman's coat and carried a tool box in his hand.

“So that's your Sergeant Dash, is it?” Woodend asked Rutter. “Looks like a good lad – for a Yorkshireman.”

The Chief Inspector and the uniformed Sergeant shook hands. “Have you found out anythin' that's goin' to be useful to me, Sergeant?” Woodend said.

“Yes an' no, sir,” Dash answered. “We know that at least one Alexander Conway of the right age exists. Somerset House has confirmed he was born in Huyton, Liverpool, in June 1910. But that's as far as the trail goes. He's not registered with the National Health, the Inland Revenue hasn't got any record of him, and he doesn't have a file in Scotland Yard. The Liverpool police haven't come up with anythin' either, but they're are still workin' on it.”

Woodend frowned. “Hmm,” he said. “Have you tried the War Office?”

“Yes, sir. They've never heard of him either.”

Woodend handed the cigarettes around. “How about your investigations here in Doncaster?” he asked.

“We talked to the feller Conway bought the flat from. They never met. It was all done through Conway's solicitors, and they're claimin' client confidentiality.”

“They would,” Woodend said gruffly. “An' did you get any results from the door-to-door?”

“Quite a few of the neighbours confirm Miss Tufton's description of him – about five eleven, blond hair etcetera – but they've really not much more to add. They may have nodded to him in the street, but we couldn't find anybody who'd actually had a conversation with him.”

He was a slippery customer all right, Woodend thought, but given the game he was in, that was hardly surprising. “Have you got the paperwork with you?” he asked Sergeant Dash.

Dash patted his pocket. “Right here, sir.”

“Then let's get started.”

The four men walked up the path to the front door. Rutter rang Conway's bell first, but as on the last visit there was no response.

“Have to be the old biddy who lets us in then,” Woodend said.

Miss Tufton was overwhelmed to find
four
men standing on the doorstep. She was quite pleased to see the nice young detective again, though she was less enthusiastic about the reappearance of the uniformed sergeant who seemed to be obsessed with television licences. And she simply didn't know what to make of the man in the hairy sports coat and the other one carrying a toolbox.

“Have you seen Mr Conway since the last time I was here?” the nice young detective asked her.

“No, I haven't” Miss Tufton confessed. “And I'm getting quite worried about him.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, you got me thinking,” Miss Tufton explained. “I don't actually count the number of days he's gone, but after your visit I did try to remember the last time he was here, and I have this feeling he's been away for much longer than normal.”

“He sounds like he's big enough to take care of himself,” Woodend said.

Miss Tufton gave the man in the hairy sports coat a look of mild dislike. “Mr Conway is a very gentle man,” she said.

“I'm sure he is,” Woodend agreed.

“Far too gentle for the wicked world which seems to have grown up since the War,” Miss Tufton added.

“I'm . . . er . . . afraid we are going to have to have a look around his flat,” Rutter said. “We'll try not to make too much noise.”

“Oh dear,” Miss Tufton said. “Have you got a search warrant?”

Woodend shot Rutter a questioning look, as if to ask how the old girl knew about anything as technical as a search warrant. “Miss Tufton's a big fan of
No Hiding Place
,” the Sergeant explained.

“Yes, we do have a warrant,” the Chief Inspector said. “Would you like to see it?”

“Good heavens, no,” Miss Tufton replied. “But I'd quite like it if you'd wave it in front of my face, like they do on television.”

“Anything to oblige, madam,” Woodend said, thinking to himself that if he was running some kind of criminal activity, he couldn't think of a better person to live above than an innocent, confused old dear like Miss Tufton.

It took the police locksmith a good five minutes to pick the lock on the door to Alex Conway's flat. “Beautiful workmanship,” he said when he'd finished. “Almost a pity to mess about with it.”

The main door opened straight into the lounge. It was a square room, with a leather three-piece suite dominating the centre of it. A radiogram stood against one wall, and even a cursory glance was enough to tell Woodend that Conway had quite a collection of records. Facing the radiogram was a bookcase, and it seemed that in addition to being a music lover, Conway was a voracious reader. The Chief Inspector looked around and took in the rest of the details. The carpet had a muted floral pattern, and the curtains were plain, and corn gold. It was a pleasant room – a restful room with a definite feminine touch – and Woodend, who had been half-hoping to find several thousand cartons of stolen cigarettes stacked up against the wall, felt vaguely disappointed.

“Where shall we start, sir?” Rutter asked.

“You an' me'll take the record collection,” Woodend said. “Sergeant Dash, check to see if any of them books is stuffed full of used fivers.”

Woodend and Rutter knelt down beside the radiogram. The Chief Inspector flicked through the records. They were all classical. He went through them again, more slowly this time, noting the titles. “What do you make of this, Sergeant Rutter?” he asked.

“Not a great deal,” Rutter admitted. “What
should
I have made of it?”

“How about the way they're filed?”

“They're not alphabetical,” Rutter said, “so judging by the wear and tear on the sleeves at the left hand, and the shininess of the ones on the right, I'd say they were filed according to when he bought them.”

“You're gettin' there,” Woodend said, “but you've missed the main point, which is
the order
he chose to buy them in.”

“You've lost me again, sir,” Rutter confessed.

“Look at the records he bought first. Strauss and Rossini. Now go to the other end. Bruckner and Sibelius.”

“I still don't get it.”

Woodend sighed. “Rock ‘n' roll is here to stay,” he said, with mild contempt. “I don't know much about classical music – jazz is more my sort of thing – but I do know enough to realise that Strauss is what they call light classical, an' Sibelius is much heavier stuff.
Now
do you get it?”

“He's been educating himself,” Rutter said. “Starting with easy pieces, then moving on to the more difficult ones.”

“Go to the top of the class.” Woodend stood up. “I don't think there'll be anything hidden in the record sleeves,” he said. “But you'd better check anyway. I'll go an' see how Sergeant Dash is gettin' on with Conway's book collection.”

Dash was holding a large book by the spine, and shaking it to see if anything fell out. When nothing did, he replaced on the shelf, picked up the next one, glanced briefly at the title, then gave that a good shaking, too.

“Found anythin' interestin'?” Woodend asked.

“There's nothing hidden between the pages of the books, if that's what you mean, sir” the Sergeant replied. “But the books themselves might be of interest.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“Go through most people's bookcases an' you'd be bound to find Zane Grey, Ellery Queen an' Dennis Wheatley,” Dash said. “But there's none of that here. They're all what I suppose you might call ‘quality' books.”

“Quality books?”

“Yes, sir. History, literature, stuff like that. He seems especially enthusiastic about paintin'. There are a lot of books about Italian artists.”

“Canaletto, Titian, fellers like that?” Woodend asked.

“Yes, sir,” Dash said, with a hint of surprise in his voice. “Know about art, do you?”

“Oh, I like a good picture,” Woodend said. “Thing is, Sergeant, apart from tellin' us that Conway's more cultured than your average villain, I don't see where this is leadin' us.”

“About a dozen of the paintin' books are from one of the sub-branches of the Doncaster library, if that's any help,” Dash said.

“About a dozen?” Woodend repeated. “How many books are you normally allowed to take out of your library, Sergeant?”

“Three or four I think,” Dash said. “But most of these books haven't been taken out in the normal way.” He opened one and showed it to Woodend. “See, it's still got its little card inside. That should have been filed back at the library when Conway withdrew the book.”

“Now that
is
interesting,” Woodend reflected.

Alexander Conway's kitchen was well equipped with pots and pans, but there was no evidence of food, in either the fridge or the cupboards.

“Seems our Mr Conway isn't much of a one for throwin' dinner parties,” Woodend said.

There were two bedrooms. The wardrobe in the smaller of the two was empty and the bed was stripped down to the bare mattress.

“Still, it must be handy when he has a visitors – like his mate Robbie Peterson, from Cheshire,” the Chief Inspector commented.

The larger bedroom was very tidy, but obviously lived in. Woodend opened the wardrobe and saw that it was full of suits. “He won't have bought any of these down at the fifty-shillin' tailors,” he said to his sergeant.

“No,” Rutter agreed, running the cloth of one of the jackets through his fingers. “These are expensive. Tasteful, too. The sort of clothes a chief inspector might be seen wear—” He stopped, suddenly. “I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to suggest—”

“I know exactly what you meant,” Woodend assured him. “An' you're quite right. It's the sort of clobber you'd wear if you were tryin' to impress somebody. Now let's put all this stuff on the bed, so we can see exactly what we've got.”

They spread all the clothes out over the counterpane. In addition to the suits there were over a dozen shirts, three ties, underwear, socks, two pairs of casual trousers and a couple of pullovers. Rutter checked through every garment which had pockets and came up empty-handed.

“There's two things that bother me about this lot,” Woodend said thoughtfully.

“And what are they, sir?”

“First of all, wouldn't you say that wardrobe was almost full to burstin' when we first opened it?”

“Yes, I would,” Rutter agreed.

“An' that Conway would be really pushed to fit much more inside?”

“I suppose so.”

“So where does he keep the clothes he takes with him when he's off travellin'?”

“Maybe he usually stores them in the wardrobe in the guest room,” Rutter speculated.

“Maybe he does,” Woodend agreed. “But wouldn't that suggest, since he chooses to separate them like that, that they're not the same
kind
of clothes.”

“How would they be different?”

Woodend shrugged. “I'm not sure. Like you said, what he keeps in this room is all top-quality stuff. Perhaps he dresses down when he's away from Doncaster.”

“Most people take their best clothes with them when they go away,” Rutter pointed out.

“You're right,” the Chief Inspector said. “It's all a bit of a mystery, isn't it?”

“You said there was something else bothering you,” Rutter reminded him.

“Oh aye,” Woodend said. “This bloke Conway's got a lot more clothes than I have – he could go a fortnight without doin' any washin' if he wanted to – but there's one thing he hasn't got multiples of.”

“His shoes!” Rutter said.

“Exactly. Where are his spare pairs of shoes?”

Maria was aware of time passing since the doctor had put something over her mouth and told her to take short, deep breaths, but whether that was an hour earlier, or a day – or even a year – she had no way of knowing. What she
did
know was that she was lying flat on her back.