A Gun for Sale (12 page)

‘Probably wrong,’ the superintendent said. ‘Here you are.
All
he remembers is that she carried two suitcases. It’s something, of course, but it’s not worth much.’

‘Oh, one could make guesses from that,’ Mather said. ‘Don’t you think so?’ He didn’t believe in making himself too clever in front of the provincial police; he needed their co-operation. ‘She was coming for a long stay (a woman can get a lot in one suitcase) or else, if she was carrying his case too, he was the dominant one. Believes in treating her rough and making her do all the physical labour. That fits in with Raven’s character. As for the girl –’

‘In these gangster stories,’ the superintendent said, ‘they call her a moll.’

‘Well, this moll,’ Mather said, ‘is one of those girls who like being treated rough. Sort of clinging and avaricious, I picture her. If she had more spirit he’d carry one of the suitcases or else she’d split on him.’

‘I thought this Raven was about as ugly as they are made.’

‘That fits too,’ Mather said. ‘Perhaps she likes ’em ugly. Perhaps it gives her a thrill.’

The superintendent laughed. ‘You’ve got a lot out of those suitcases. Read the report and you’ll be giving me her photograph. Here you are. But he doesn’t remember a thing about her, not even what she was wearing.’

Mather read it. He read it slowly. He said nothing, but something in his manner of shock and incredulity was conveyed to the superintendent. He said, ‘Is anything wrong? There’s nothing
there
, surely?’

‘You said I’d be giving you her photograph,’ Mather said. He took a slip of newspaper from the back of his watch. ‘There it is, sir. You’d better circulate that to all stations in the city and to the Press.’

‘But there’s nothing in the report,’ the superintendent said.

‘Everybody remembers something. It wasn’t anything you could have spotted. I seem to have private information about this crime, but I didn’t know it till now.’

The superintendent said, ‘He doesn’t remember a thing. Except the suitcases.’

‘Thank God for those,’ Mather said. ‘It may mean … You see he says here that one of the reasons he remembers her – he calls it remembering her – is that she was the only woman who got out of the train at Nottwich. And this girl I happen to know was travelling by it. She’d got an engagement at the theatre here.’

The superintendent said bluntly – he didn’t realize the full extent of the shock, ‘And is she of the type you said? Likes ’em ugly?’

‘I thought she liked them plain,’ Mather said, staring out through the window at a world going to work through the cold early day.

‘Sort of clinging and avaricious?’

‘No, damn it.’

‘But if she’d had more spirit –’ the superintendent mocked; he thought Mather was disturbed because his guesses were wrong.

‘She had all the spirit there was,’ Mather said. He turned back from the window. He forgot the superintendent was his superior officer; he forgot you had to be tactful to these provincial police officers; he said, ‘God damn it, don’t you see? He didn’t carry his suitcase because he had to keep her covered. He
made
her walk out to the housing estate.’ He said, ‘I’ve got to go out there. He meant to murder her.’

‘No, no,’ the superintendent said. ‘You are forgetting: she paid the money to Green and walked out of the house with him alone. He saw her off the estate.’

‘But I’d swear,’ Mather said, ‘she isn’t in this. It’s absurd. It doesn’t make sense.’ He said, ‘We’re engaged to be married.’

‘That’s tough,’ the superintendent said. He hesitated, picked up a dead match and cleaned a nail, then he pushed the photograph back. ‘Put it away,’ he said. ‘We’ll go about this differently.’

‘No,’ Mather said. ‘I’m on this case. Have it printed. It’s a bad smudged photo.’ He wouldn’t look at it. ‘It doesn’t do her justice. But I’ll wire home for a better likeness. I’ve got a whole strip of Photomatons at home. Her face from every
angle
. You couldn’t have a better lot of photos for newspaper purposes.’

‘I’m sorry, Mather,’ the superintendent said. ‘Hadn’t I better speak to the Yard? Get another man sent?’

‘You couldn’t have a better on the case,’ Mather said. ‘I know her. If she’s to be found, I’ll find her. I’m going out to the house now. You see, your man may miss something. I
know
her.’

‘There may be an explanation,’ the superintendent said.

‘Don’t you see,’ Mather said, ‘that if there’s an explanation it means – why, that she’s in danger, she may even be –’

‘We’d have found her body.’

‘We haven’t even found a living man,’ Mather said. ‘Would you ask Saunders to follow me out? What’s the address?’ He wrote it carefully down; he always noted facts; he didn’t trust his brain for more than theories, guesses.

It was a long drive out to the housing estate. He had time to think of many possibilities. She might have fallen asleep and been carried on to York. She might not have taken the train … and there was nothing in the little hideous house to contradict him. He found a plainclothes man in what would one day be the best front room; in its flashy fireplace, its dark brown picture rail and the cheap oak of its wainscoting, it bore already the suggestion of heavy unused furniture, dark curtains and Gosse china. ‘There’s nothing,’ the detective said, ‘nothing at all. You can see, of course, that someone’s been here. The dust has been disturbed. But there wasn’t enough dust to make a footprint. There’s nothing to be got here.’

‘There’s always something,’ Mather said. ‘Where did you find traces? All the rooms?’

‘No, not all of them. But that’s not evidence. There was no sign in this room, but the dust isn’t as thick here. Maybe the builders swept up better. You can’t say no one was in here.’

‘How did she get in?’

‘The lock of the back door’s busted.’

‘Could a girl do that?’

‘A cat could do it. A determined cat.’

‘Green says he came in at the front. Just opened the door of
this
room and then took the other fellow straight upstairs, into the best bedroom. The girl joined them there just as he was going to show the rest of the house. Then they all went straight down and out of the house except the girl went into the kitchen and picked up her suitcases. He’d left the front door open and thought she’d followed them in.’

‘She was in the kitchen all right. And in the bathroom.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Up the stairs and round to the left.’

The two men, they were both large, nearly filled the cramped bathroom. ‘Looks as if she heard them coming,’ the detective said, ‘and hid in here.’

‘What brought her up? If she was in the kitchen she had only to slip out at the back.’ Mather stood in the tiny room between the bath and the lavatory seat and thought:
she
was here yesterday. It was incredible. It didn’t fit in at any point with what he knew of her. They had been engaged for six months; she couldn’t have disguised herself so completely: on the bus ride from Kew that evening, humming the song – what was it? – something about a snowflower; the night they sat two programmes round at the cinema because he’d spent his week’s pay and hadn’t been able to give her dinner. She never complained as the hard mechanized voices began all over again, ‘A wise guy, huh?’ ‘Baby, you’re swell.’ ‘Siddown, won’t you?’ ‘Thenks’, at the edge of their consciousness. She was straight, she was loyal, he could swear that; but the alternative was a danger he hardly dared contemplate. Raven was desperate. He heard himself saying with harsh conviction, ‘Raven was here. He drove her up at the point of his pistol. He was going to shut her in here – or maybe shoot her. Then he heard voices. He gave her the notes and told her to get rid of the other fellows. If she tried anything on, he’d have shot her. Damn it, isn’t it plain?’ but the detective only repeated the substance of the superintendent’s criticism, ‘She walked right out of the place alone with Green. There was nothing to prevent her going to the police station.’

‘He may have followed at a distance.’

‘It looks to me,’ the detective said, ‘as if you are taking the
most
unlikely
theory,’ and Mather could tell from his manner how puzzled he was at the Yard man’s attitude: these Londoners were a little too ingenious: he believed in good sound Midland common sense. It angered Mather in his professional pride; he even felt a small chill of hatred against Anne for putting him in a position where his affection warped his judgement. He said, ‘We’ve no proof that she didn’t try to tell the police,’ and he wondered: do I want her dead and innocent or alive and guilty? He began to examine the bathroom with meticulous care. He even pushed his finger up the taps in case … He had a wild idea that if it were really Anne who had stood here, she would have wanted to leave a message. He straightened himself impatiently. ‘There’s nothing here.’ He remembered there was a test: she might have missed her train. ‘I want a telephone,’ he said.

‘There’ll be one down the road at the agent’s.’

Mather rang up the theatre. There was no one there except a caretaker, but as it happened she could tell him that no one had been absent from rehearsal. The producer, Mr Collier, always posted absentees on the board inside the stage door. He was great on discipline, Mr Collier. Yes, and she remembered that there
was
a new girl. She happened to see her going out with a man at dinner-time after the rehearsal just as she came back to the theatre to tidy up a bit and thought: ‘that’s a new face’. She didn’t know who the man was. He might be one of the backers. ‘Wait a moment, wait a moment,’ Mather said; he had to think what to do next; she
was
the girl who gave the agent the stolen notes; he had to forget that she was Anne who had so wildly wished that they could marry before Christmas, who had hated the promiscuity of her job, who had promised him that night on the bus from Kew that she would keep out of the way of all rich business backers and stage-door loungers. He said: ‘Mr Collier? Where can I find him?’

‘He’ll be at the theatre tonight. There’s a rehearsal at eight.’

‘I want to see him at once.’

‘You can’t. He’s gone up to York with Mr Bleek.’

‘Where can I find any of the girls who were at the rehearsal?’

‘I dunno. I don’t have the address book. They’ll be all over town.’

‘There must be
someone
who was there last night –’

‘You could find Miss Maydew, of course.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know where she’s staying. But you’ve only got to look at the posters of the jumble.’

‘The jumble? What do you mean?’

‘She’s opening the jumble up at St Luke’s at two.’

Through the window of the agent’s office Mather saw Saunders coming up the frozen mud of the track between the Cozyholmes. He rang off and intercepted him. ‘Any news come in?’

‘Yes,’ Saunders said. The superintendent had told him everything, and he was deeply distressed. He liked Mather. He owed everything to Mather; it was Mather who had brought him up every stage of promotion in the police force, who had persuaded the authorities that a man who stammered could be as good a policeman as the champion reciter at police concerts. But he would have loved him anyway for a quality of idealism, for believing so implicitly in what he did.

‘Well? Let’s have it.’

‘It’s about your g-girl. She’s disappeared.’ He took the news at a run, getting it out in one breath. ‘Her landlady rang up the station, said she was out all night and never came back.’

‘Run away,’ Mather said.

Saunders said, ‘D-don’t you believe it. You t-t-t-told her to take that train. She wasn’t going till the m-m-m-m-morning.’

‘You’re right,’ Mather said. ‘I’d forgotten that. Meeting him must have been an accident. But it’s a miserable choice, Saunders. She may be dead now.’

‘Why should he do that? We’ve only got a theft on him. What are you going to do next?’

‘Back to the station. And then at two,’ he smiled miserably, ‘a jumble sale.’

3

The vicar was worried. He wouldn’t listen to what Mather had to say; he had too much to think about himself. It was the curate, the new bright broad-minded curate from a London east-end parish, who had suggested inviting Miss Maydew to open the jumble sale. He thought it would be a draw, but as the vicar explained to Mather, holding him pinned there in the pitch-pine ante-room of St Luke’s Hall, a jumble was always a draw. There was a queue fifty yards long of women with baskets waiting for the door to open; they hadn’t come to see Miss Maydew; they had come for bargains. St Luke’s jumble sales were famous all over Nottwich.

A dry perky woman with a cameo brooch put her head in at the door. ‘Henry,’ she said, ‘the committee are rifling the stalls again. Can’t you
do
something about it? There’ll be nothing left when the sale starts.’

‘Where’s Mander? It’s
his
business,’ the vicar said.

‘Mr Mander, of course, is off fetching Miss Maydew.’ The perky woman blew her nose and crying ‘Constance, Constance!’ disappeared into the hall.

‘You can’t really do anything about it,’ the vicar said. ‘It happens every year. These good women give their time voluntarily. The Altar Society would be in a very bad way without them. They
expect
to have first choice of everything that’s sent in. Of course the trouble is:
they
fix the prices.’

‘Henry,’ the perky woman said, appearing again in the doorway, ‘you
must
interfere. Mrs Penny has priced that very good hat Lady Cundifer sent at eighteen pence and bought it herself.’

‘My dear, how can I say anything? They’d never volunteer again. You must remember they’ve given time and trouble …’ but he was addressing a closed door. ‘What worries me,’ he said to Mather, ‘is that this young lady will expect an ovation. She won’t understand that nobody’s interested in
who
opens a jumble sale. Things are so different in London.’

‘She’s late,’ Mather said.

‘They are quite capable of storming the doors,’ the vicar said with a nervous glance through the window at the lengthening queue. ‘I must confess to a little stratagem. After all she is our guest. She is giving time and trouble.’ Time and trouble were the gifts of which the vicar was always most conscious. They were given more readily than coppers in the collection. He went on, ‘Did you see any young boys outside?’