Bloodhounds (18 page)

"We'll clean it off," said AJ.

"I didn't notice it as I came in," said Shirley-Ann. "And nobody was talking about it. I think this must have been done after the party started."

"With the lighting as it is, you don't notice it from inside," said Barnaby, quick to chime in with the reassurance. "I couldn't tell you when it was done."

AJ. rubbed at one of the letters with his fingertip.

"Don't do that," said Jessica.

He said, "I'm just seeing if it's still wet."

"We don't want your fingerprints on it if we call the police."

"Is that what you want to do—call the police?" asked Barnaby. "Is that wise?"

"What do you mean—is it wise?"

"Jess, my dear, it's a rotten thing somebody has done, but it's hardly a serious matter in the eyes of the law."

"It's vile," said Jessica.

"Yes, it is, but you're not going to get much redress. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they took more interest in what's written here than in catching the bastard. It will bring you more grief than satisfaction. My advice is to rub the window clean and forget about this."

"Look," said A.J., "why don't you go back to your guests and leave this to me? I can clean it up before anyone else sees it."

She said through gritted teeth, "I want to know who did this. Someone must have seen."

"Not necessarily," said Barnaby. "It wouldn't take more than a few seconds with one of those cans. The writing is rough. It's obviously been done in haste."

Jessica turned to Shirley-Ann. "What's your opinion?"

A difficult one. "If it were me," she said after a moment's consideration, "I think I'd rather it was cleaned off now. It's going to ruin the party if you call the police. And it's bound to get in the papers."

Jessica sighed. "I can't win. All right. Rub it off."

Chapter Twenty-three

Julie was keen for some human contact after her long session with the Police National Computer. "Ready to demonstrate your sleuthing skills, Mr. Diamond? Let's match you against the PNC. Which one of the Bloodhounds has a police record?"

"Only one?"

"That's all."

"The fellow with the mean-streets dog. Rupert Darby."

She shrugged and smiled. "You could have saved me nearly two hours of eye strain. Two prison terms, of six months and eighteen months, for obtaining money by deception. Seven fines for drunkenness and one for indecency."

"When was this?" Diamond asked.

"The indecency?"

"No, the bird."

"In 1977 and 1983."

"Long time ago. What was the scam?"

"I don't know. The PNC doesn't go into the details."

"But you will, won't you, Julie? That's where the human brain scores over the computer."

"It isn't the brain," she said. "It's hard slog."

"Put a hard slogger on the job, then. Delegate, Julie. I do. And
get
the facts on the indecency, will you? That could mean anything from streaking at a test match to pissing in a shop doorway."

She didn't complain. She wouldn't have told Diamond, but she was encouraged that the murder inquiry was back on track.

Diamond was off on another tack. "Funny idea," he said, "calling a dog after a character in a book. We've got a cat— well, a kitten, really. Steph brought it home. Haven't thought of a name for it yet. I wouldn't call it Marlowe."

"That wouldn't do," Julie agreed. "Is it a torn?"

"Yes."

"You could call it Sherlock, or Wimsey, or Father Brown."

He pulled a face. "It'll let us know."

Sitting in bed, clutching a mug of cocoa, Shirley-Ann told Bert about the writing on the Walsingham Gallery window. And why shouldn't she? It wasn't as if she had been asked to keep the incident to herself, though she appreciated that the words had been cleaned off in the hope that no one else would find out. She always told Bert everything. It would have made her feel furtive not to have spoken to him.

"Who did it, then?" he asked, yawning. He was already horizontal, physically tired. So much of his day was spent doing sport that if the truth were told he wasn't much of a sport at night.

"Wrote the words on the window? I've no idea," said Shirley-Ann, with energy still to burn. Even the weekends were filled with football refereeing that tired Bert. "It could be anybody. Milo was at the party and so was Rupert, but I wouldn't read anything into that. It may have been done by someone who didn't come."

"Someone bitter about not being invited?"

"Well, yes."

"Who, for instance?"

"I didn't see Polly or Miss Chilmark there. I suppose either of them could have sneaked up and got busy with a spray can."

"Just out of spite?"

"I don't know them all that well, but I wouldn't put it past one of them. They're formidable ladies, those two. The only thing I doubt is whether they'd use that way to register a protest."

"It doesn't have to be one of the Bloodhounds," Bert pointed out.

"Do you think so?" Shirley-Ann said dubiously.

"It could be some artist with a grudge. Someone whose work wasn't included in the exhibition."

"I suppose that's possible," she admitted, disinclined as she was to look outside the Bloodhounds.

"Someone who knows about the Narrowboat Murder," said Bert. "The thing that was written
does
refer to the murder, doesn't it?"

"I'm sure it does."

"Plenty of people in Bath must have read the papers or seen something on TV. All the reports mentioned that the victim was at the Bloodhounds meeting earlier in the evening. Almost anyone could have linked Jessica to the murder."

"So?"

He said wearily, "So is there any point in trying to work it out?"

She was silent for a while. However, she remained sitting up, taking sips of the cocoa. Eventually she said, "Bert, do you think there's anything in it?"

Bert twitched. He had almost dozed off. "What?"

"I said, do you think there's anything in it? Is it possible that she did for Sid?"

"Who—Jessica?"

"Mm."

He said, "I'm pretty tired, you know."

"It isn't fair asking you," said Shirley-Ann, with more consideration. "You haven't met her, so how can you have an opinion?"

There was an ironic laugh from under the quilt. "You've told me enough about her. You never stop talking about that lot. If you want my opinion, yes, I think she's well capable of murder."

"You
do? Jessica?"

"All she had to do was follow the bloke—what's his name?"

"Sid."

"Follow Sid after the meeting that night, catch him off guard, and crack him over the head with some heavy object. A woman could do that as well as a man if she crept up behind him."

"Why? Why would she do it?"

"Why would anyone do it? Nobody knows. All I'm saying is that she's as capable of clocking the bloke as anyone else. What age is she?"

"Around thirty, I'd guess."

"Well, I tell you this. Most of the women in my over-forties group tonight could lay a man out cold with a blow on the skull, no problem. I wouldn't like to tangle with some of them."

"But she liked Sid. She took him into the Moon and Six-pence a few times, she told me. She knew quite a bit about him, his job and everything. She said he had guts to come to the Bloodhounds. She admired him."

"That doesn't mean she's innocent. She had a high opinion of him, you're saying. She believed he was all right. That's exactly the sort of person who gets angry and homicidal when it turns out they were mistaken."

"I don't see Jessica like that at all, Bert. She isn't hot-headed."

"Ice-cool, is she?"

"She's well in control, anyway."

"Calculating?"

"Now you're twisting my words."

For a time, no more was said. Bert began to breathe more evenly, while Shirley-Ann weighed Jessica's capacity to kill. She finished her cocoa and put her Snow White mug on the bedside table. The clock showed it was past midnight. Bloody nuisance. Bert had really set her brain into overdrive, yet she needed her sleep in case she was offered another chance as tour guide in the morning. She spoke her thoughts aloud. "I suppose if she found out there was another side to him . . . if he wasn't the placid, unassuming bloke she took him for, and she caught him in the act of letting himself into Milo's boat— which meant that he, Sid, of all people, was the stamp thief— then she might have got mad with him, but I still don't see it. Not Jessica. She's too intelligent. She operates in far more subtle ways. No, the only way I see Jessica getting violent is if. . ." She caught her breath at the idea, at the same time bending her legs to her chest and clasping her hands around her knees. "That's it! They were in cahoots. They worked together. Are you listening, Bert? Jessica and Sid worked out this brilliant scheme to amaze the Bloodhounds. Sid was a security man, right? He knew how to beat the video cameras and special locks at the Postal Museum. And he had some way of getting into Milo's boat as well. I don't think he'd have done it by himself. It was Jessica who put him up to it. At those meetings at the Moon and Sixpence, they planned the Penny Black job. Sid's expertise and Jessica's intelligence—quite a combination. I reckon she made up those riddles. And together they devised a way of getting into Milo's narrowboat and placing the stamp in his copy of
The Hollow Man
so that it turned up at the meeting. Okay, what they did was dangerous and illegal, but they returned the stamp and they didn't expect anyone to work out how it was done. Only something went wrong. For some reason Sid decided to go back to the boat. Maybe he thought it was an opportunity to do some real burglary while Milo was talking to the police. Or he could have left some trace that he thought they were sure to find. Jessica was suspicious and followed him. She was furious. The perfect crime she'd planned was about to be undermined by Sid. She hit him over the head, locked him in, and left. That's it, Bert! . . . Bert, are you listening?"

She grabbed Bert's shoulder and gave him a shake. He had drifted into a shallow sleep and heard nothing. He said from a long way off, "Yes?"

"I said she did it, Bert. Jessica did for Sid." .

"All right," muttered Bert apathetically.

"Only somebody worked it out and tried to make it public tonight. I wonder who."

"Who what?"

"Who sprayed the words over Jessica's gallery window."

"Someone with one of those aerosols, I expect," said Bert in an interval of clarity.

"Well, you don't have to tell me that," she said.

"Must have got some on their clothes," added Bert. "You can't use one of those things outdoors without some of the spray getting on your clothes." It was his last contribution that night.

She pondered that for a time. Then something stirred in her memory that would keep her awake another two hours. She pressed her hands to her face and said, "I thought it was dandruff. Well, would you ever?"

Chapter Twenty-four

So comprehensively has Bath been facelifted in the last twenty years that it is quite a treat to discover streets that have escaped the restorers and stonewashers. One charmingly down-at-heel example is Hay Hill, north of the center, which is actually just a convenient shortcut from Lansdown Road to the Vineyards and the Paragon. A shortcut for pedestrians, that is to say, for no cars run through it. You know that Hay Hill will give some relief from Georgian formality as soon as you reach the betting office on the corner of Lansdown Road. A strip of worn paving descends between undistinguished eighteenth-century artisan houses. The dozen or so dwellings are irregular in style, height, and coloring, and the railings fronting most of them supply only a semblance of order. The rest of the iron-work on view—basement grills, inspection covers, lampposts, and drainpipes—is a hotchpotch. Few of the windows match in style; in fact, some have been bricked up. Here and there graffiti scar the walls, but it might be argued that the people who painted one of the buildings in layers of pink, yellow, and brown, like a monstrous cake, were guilty of vandalism before the marker pen writers got to work.

To Hay Hill, then, came Diamond and Julie Hargreaves the next morning to call on Rupert Darby. Rupert's house was the one with more flake and crumble than any other, and with weeds growing up the walls.

The bell push on the door may have been working; it was difficult to hear for the noise of traffic cruising down Lansdown Road. Anyway, there was no response. Diamond tried rattling the letter flap and instantly wished he hadn't. It was a plastic thing that fell off. A low, vibrating noise like a power drill driving into wood came from inside. As he bent to look through the gap there was an almighty thump against the door, and he found himself inches from the bared teeth of a large dog.

He stepped back and turned his attention to the window, which was coated in dust. A faded gingham curtain blocked any view of the interior. After some unproductive tapping on the glass—the main panel had a crack the width of the frame— he went back to the door, tried the handle, and discovered that it opened.

Julie warned, "I wouldn't if I were you."

But he had a confident way with dogs. Opening the door a fraction, he presented the back of his right hand for inspection. There was some sniffing, some contact with a moist nose, and then a reassuring warm lick. He increased the gap just enough for Marlowe's brown head to look out. With German shepherd in its genes, this beast wasn't going to roll over and have its chest scratched, but it had quit growling.

"Show him your hand, Julie."

This sounded like an order. He thought of adding, "Trust me," but he wasn't certain she would take encouragement from that.

She had two dogs of her own, and she knew enough to be cautious in a situation like this. After some hesitation she did as Diamond had done. There was no rending of flesh. By degrees Diamond opened the door fully, and Marlowe padded out to the pavement. The big dog didn't growl anymore, but neither did it make any concessions to friendship. It sniffed at their shoes, circled them, trotted to the house opposite, and sprayed the neighbors' wall. Diamond took this as approval. He stepped through the open door.

A first impression of the interior was that this place was more of a crash pad than a home. It smelled of stale beer and old socks and dog. The board floor was littered with clothes, books, papers, crockery, beer cans, and cardboard boxes. In the far corner was a mattress, and on it a body was lying covered by an army greatcoat.

Julie went to the window to admit more light. Dust peppered her hands when she tugged at the curtain. It hadn't been disturbed in months.

The body under the greatcoat spoke. A voice as mellifluous as Gielgud's, totally out of keeping with the surroundings, told them, "Please go away, whoever you are, and try again at some civilized hour."

Diamond said, "It's gone ten, Mr. Darby, and we're the police."

Marlowe heard his master's voice and lolloped in from the street. Picking up a tin plate between his teeth, the big dog carried it across the room, leaped on the mattress, and put in a claim for breakfast. There was a clang as the plate struck Rupert's head.

Rupert misinterpreted the knock. "I can report you for this," he said without stirring. "It's police brutality, and it's outrageous."

"It's your dog," Diamond told him. "It's asking for food."

"The hell with it. What's a dog for, if it doesn't keep the fuzz from marching into one's home?"

"Do you want us to feed it while you wash?"

"If you can find one of his cans. There might be some under the window." Rupert gave a moan and stretched. One of his feet, wearing a striped sock, appeared from under the great-coat. He propped himself up on one elbow, rubbed his eyes, and said, "Is it the state of my head, or is one of you wearing a skirt?"

Diamond formally spoke their ranks and names. Expecting the usual snide remarks about female cops, Julie busied herself locating some tins of Pal under a beret and opening one for Marlowe.

Rupert was too sleepy for snide remarks. He needed all his concentration to stand up. His night attire (and no doubt the basis of his day attire also) was a T-shirt and boxer shorts. He tottered to an open doorway that must have led to whatever passed for a bathroom in this unedifying setup.

Diamond warned him, "We haven't got all day."

Rupert riposted over the sound of running water, "My day doesn't start till noon."

He emerged after a few minutes wrapped in a gray blanket and cradling a mug of coffee. "I'd offer you some, but I can't find a spare cup. You're welcome to look if you wish."

Diamond spoke for them both. "I don't think we want any. What we'd appreciate is a place to sit down."

Two chairs had to be cleared of the items heaped on them. Rupert found his beret and jammed it on his head. Apparently it was a vital accessory, though like everything else in this place it looked shabby, speckled with white particles that he didn't bother to brush off. He squatted on his mattress wrapped in the blanket, looking like an exotic species of toadstool.

"Convenient place you have here," Diamond said politely, since there was nothing polite he could say about the way it looked.

"You mean with the Lansdown Arms at one end and the Paragon Bar and Bistro at the other?" said Rupert, with a grin. "Yes, that was a consideration, I admit. Tell me what this is about."

"We're inquiring into the death of Sidney Towers."

His face lit up. "Thank God for that. I thought it was something I'd done."

"Isn't it?" said Diamond.

"Certainly not." The shrill note in his voice made it sound as if he were the last person you ought to suspect of anything.

"You're one of this group who call themselves Bloodhounds, right?"

"That's no crime, is it?" said Rupert, now ready to defend his reputation. "Well, the name may be a crime, I grant you. A gift for the gutter press. It wasn't my suggestion, officer. If I had my way, we'd call it the Crime Noir Club and attract a different class of member."

"When did you join?"

"At least three years ago. I think only Polly Wycherley and Milo were ahead of me. No, I tell a lie. The Grand Duchess was already in."

"You must mean Miss Chilmark."

He smiled. "She who must be indulged."

"And Sid?"

"Joined six months after me, though you would hardly have noticed. He made being inconspicuous into an art form."

"You don't sound all that enamored of the other members, Mr. Darby, yet you stuck with the club. Why?"

"Oh, it gets me out of my local for a couple of hours." Rupert gave his smile that resembled a country churchyard. "And I have a mission. I want to persuade those poor, blinkered bastards to read some books that deal with the real crimes of our time and the misery and despair that they engender. You can't make converts overnight. They're fixated by ancient puzzle stories with maps in the front and snobbish characters suffering from xenophobia."

"What's that?"

Julie murmured, "Hatred of foreigners."

Rupert went on. "And they also talk endlessly about timetables." Without more preamble, he launched into an extraordinary monologue. " 'By your leave, my lord,' declared the inspector, with a deferential cough. 'There is only one possible killer. He left here at seven ten and got to the station by seven fourteen to catch the seven fifteen, but the seven fifteen was delayed because of the fog, and the first train in was the seven seven, running twelve minutes later. On the seven fifteen, which actually arrived at seven thirty-two, he would have missed his connection at seven twenty-seven, but the seven seven got him to Crewe by seven twenty-five, and he caught the seven twenty-seven and was in Little Fartington precisely at eight.' " Rupert paused and grinned wickedly. " 'Or so he believed. Actually it was still only seven o'clock. He knew how to use a timetable, but
he didn't know about British Summer Time,
so the murderer has to be the German, Herr Von Krapp.' "

This earned some genuine laughter. "Did you make that up, or was it done from memory?" Diamond asked.

"I'm still pissed from last night," Rupert said, without answering the question. "My point is that these people know nothing of real crime."

"And you're well qualified to tutor them."

Diamond got a sharp look for that. "If you mean that I read books that give it to you straight," said Rupert, "with the smell of blood and the pain and the suffering, yes."

Tempting as it was to go into Rupert's criminal record, Diamond held off. At this stage he needed the man in good humor. "Tell me about the meeting last Monday," he said. "You were late, I believe."

"Very likely," said Rupert airily. "I'm not much of a timekeeper. When I got there, Marlowe—that's my dog"—Marlowe lifted his head from the plate of Pal and looked around—"Marlowe happened to go in ahead of me. He likes the meetings. As far as I can gather, the poor animal—who's just an overgrown puppy—well, look at him—unwittingly caused a panic by showing affection to that old bat, Miss Chilmark. I don't know why. She's never done a blessed thing to deserve a friendly lick from Marlowe or anyone else, for that matter. A more disagreeable old crone would be hard to find. When I got in, she was acting up, making a big production number out of it and having hysterics. It took a bag over her face to calm her down. Thank God for Jessica. Jessica Shaw."

"We know Mrs. Shaw," said Diamond.

"Capable woman. I didn't see the end of this performance. I had to take Marlowe next door to the Saracen's Head and settle him there with some drinking chums of mine. Of course he was no trouble at all. When I got back to the crypt, order was restored. Well, of course it was. Milady manufactured the whole melodrama so that she should have her way. You should have seen the triumphant look she gave me."

"And then?"

"Oh, the new woman read us a short story."

"The new woman?"

"Shirley-Ann Miller," said Julie.

"Is that her name?" said Rupert. "I never discovered. She joined a couple of weeks ago." He chuckled. "And regrets it now, no doubt. As I was saying, she read us something by Stanley Ellin, an American with a nice gift for the macabre. After that, I made some innocent remark that Polly took personally, silly old coot. They're such wimps, these people. What's wrong with some lively confrontation? Milo attempted to calm us down with his piece on the locked room puzzle. We all resigned ourselves to being bored out of our skulls for the rest of the evening—well, / did—and then, of course, he gobsmacked us all by opening his book and finding the bloody stamp."

"Good. I'd like to hear more about that," said Diamond. "Can you remember what was said?"

"Give me a break; I'm barely awake yet!" He took a sip of coffee. "As far as I recollect, Milo went crimson and kept saying what happened was impossible. I found it excruciatingly funny and said so. I remember trying to rib Milo about it, but he was far too shaken to take a joke. His first comment was that one of us must have planted the stamp on him somehow. Then he backtracked a bit. After all, whoever pinched it in the first place had committed a serious crime. Milo had to admit that he hadn't let the book leave his hands, not even when Miss Chilmark was throwing her tantrum. So without a clue as to how the thing was done, we got around to talking about what to do next. Polly—our top banana—said firmly that Milo should go straight to the police."

"Polly made this suggestion?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, Polly. Does that remove her from your list of suspects? Have you met her?"

"Not yet," said Diamond.

"Watch her eyes when she smiles. They don't change at all. But Milo was reluctant to throw himself on the mercy of the Old Bill. He expected a workover from you people. Well, he's more fruit than vegetable, isn't he? I'm sure you treated him with the utmost consideration, but there was solidarity from some of us. I was willing to keep quiet, and said so. So was Jessica. As for the new woman, Sally . . . ?"

"Shirley-Ann."

"Thank you. I may be muddled about the name, but I've got her number all right: the sort of bright-eyed little body who wears a knitted hat and knows about homeopathy. She suggested he send the stamp back by post. Good thinking. He might have got away with that. The trouble was, as Jessica pointed out, we all had to agree to button our lips, and two of the company weren't willing to do that."

"Polly and who else?"

"Who do you think?"

"Miss Chilmark?" said Diamond.

"Right. The Grand Duchess."

"How about Sid? Did anyone ask him?"

"Yes. He said he could stay quiet." Rupert threw back his head and guffawed. "Sid offering to stay quiet! It was the funniest thing all evening. He should have taken a bow for that. None of them saw the joke except me. So there it was. Two in favor of blowing the whistle and four against. But of course, to work, the vote had to be unanimous. Milo isn't slow on the uptake. He could see that. He marched off to do his duty as a responsible member of the public."