Clutch of Constables

While Agatha Troy Alleyn is on a river cruise and enjoys true Constable landscapes, her husband Superintendent Alleyn has to investigate a murder most foul amidst the same clutch of Constables...  

“There was nothing fancy about the Jampot,” Alleyn said. “The word ‘Jobs’ is entirely appropriate to his activities. He planned carefully, left as little as possible to chance, took a satisfaction in his work and accepted, without dwelling upon them, the occupational hazards which it involved. Retention or abolishment of capital punishment made no difference at all to his professional behaviour: I daresay he looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform, as tiresome and regrettable necessities.

“His talents were appropriate to his employment. They included manual dexterity, a passion for accuracy, a really exceptional intelligence of mathematical precision and a useful imagination offset by a complete blank where nervous anxiety might be expected. Above all he was a superb mimic. Mimics are born not made. From his childhood the Jampot showed an uncanny talent in reflecting not only the mannerisms, speech habits and social behaviour of an extraordinary diversity of persons but of knowing, apparently by instinct, how they would react to given circumstances. Small wonder,” Alleyn said, “that he led us up the garden path for so long. He was a masterpiece.”

He looked round his audience. Six rows of sharp-cropped heads. Were the dumb-looking ones as dumb as their wrinkled foreheads, lack-lustre eyes and slackish mouths seemed to suggest? Was the forward-leaning one in the second row, who had come up from the uniformed branch with an outstanding report, as good as his promise? Protectors of the people, Alleyn thought. If only the people would recognise them as such. He went on.

“I’ve chosen the Jampot for your consideration,” he said, “because he’s a kind of bonus in crime. He combines in himself the ingredients that you find singly in other homicides and hands you the lot in a mixed grill. His real name, believe it or not, is Foljambe.”

The forward-leaning, sandy-coloured recruit gave a laugh which he stifled. Several of his companions grinned doubtfully and wiped their mouths. Two looked startled and the rest uneasy.

“At all events,” Alleyn said, “that’s what he says it is and as he hasn’t got any other name, Foljambe let the Jampot be.

“He was born in Johannesburg, received a good education and is said to have read medicine for two years but would appear to have been from birth what used to be known as a ‘wrong-un’. His nickname was given him by his South African associates in crime and has been adopted by the police on both sides of the Atlantic. In Paris, I understand he is known as Le Folichon or ‘the frisky bloke’.

“I’d like to pick up his story at the time of his highly ingenious escape from gaol which took place on the 7th May the year before last in Bolivia…”

One or two of his hearers wrote this down. He was giving an address by invitation to a ten-week-course at the Police College. “By an outlandish coincidence,” Alleyn said and his deep voice took on the note of continuous narrative, “I was personally involved in this affair: by personally, I mean, as a private individual as well as a policeman. It so happened that my wife—”

-1-

“—above all it must be said of this most distinguished exhibition, that while in scope it is retrospective it is by no means definitive. The painter, one feels, above all her contemporaries, will continue to explore and penetrate: for her own and our sustained enjoyment.”

The painter in question muttered: “O Lord, O Lord,” and laid aside the morning paper as stealthily as if she had stolen it. She left the dining-room, paid her bill, arranged to pick up her luggage in time to catch the London train and went for a stroll. Her hotel was not far from the river. Summer sunshine defined alike ranks of unbudgingly Victorian mercantile buildings broken at irregular intervals by vast up-ended waffle-irons. Gothic spires, and a ham-fisted Town Hall poked up through the early mist. She turned her back on them and made downhill for the river.

As she drew near to it the character of the streets changed. They grew narrower and were cobbled. She passed a rope-walk and a shop called “Rutherfords, Riverview Chandlers”, a bakery smelling of new bread, a pawnbroker’s and a second-hand machine-parts shop. The river itself now glinted through gaps in the buildings and at the end of passages. When she finally came within full view of it she thought it beautiful. Not picturesque or grandiloquent but alive and positive, curving in and out of the city with historical authority. It was, she thought, a thing in its own right and the streets and wharves that attended upon it belonged to it and to themselves. “Wharf Lane” she read, and took her way down it to the front. Rivercraft of all kinds were moored along the foreshore.

Half-way down the lane she came upon the offices of The Pleasure Craft and Riverage Company. In their window were faded notices of sailing dates and various kinds of cruises. While she was reading these a man in shirt sleeves, looking larger than life in the confined space, edged his way towards the window and attached to its surface with sticky paper, a freshly-written card.

He caught sight of her, gave her a tentative smile and backed out of the window.

She read the card.

Placed about the window were photographs of M.V.
Zodiac
in transit and of the places she visited. In the background hung a map of the river and the canals that articulated with it: Ramsdyke. Bullsdyke. Crossdyke. A five day cruise from Norminster to Longminster and back was offered. Passengers slept and ate on board. The countryside, said a pamphlet that lay on the floor, was rich in historical associations. Someone with a taste for fanciful phrases had added: “For Five Days you Step out of Time.”

She had had a gruelling summer, working for her one-man show and was due in a few weeks to see it launched in Paris and afterwards New York. Her husband was in America and her son was taking a course at Grenoble. She thought of the long train journey south, the gritty arrival, the summer stifle of London and the empty stuffy house. It seemed to her, afterwards, that she behaved like a child in a fairytale. She opened the door and as she did so she heard something say within her head: “For five days I step out of time.”

-2-

“There is,” wrote Miss Rickerby-Carrick, “no bottom, none, to my unquenchable infamy.”

She glanced absently at the tip of her propelling pencil and, in falsetto, cleared her throat.

“For instance,” she wrote, “let us examine my philanthropy. Or rather, since I have no distaste for colloquialism, my dogoodery. No!” she exclaimed aloud, “That won’t wash. That is a vile phrase. Dogoodery is a vile phrase.” She paused again, greatly put out by the suspicion that these observations were not entirely original. She stared about her and caught the eye of a thin lady in dark blue linen who, like herself, sat on her own suitcase.

“ ‘Dogoodery’,” Miss Rickerby-Carrick repeated. “Is that a facetious word? Do you find it so?”

“Well—It depends, I suppose, on the context.”

“You look startled.”

“Do I?” said Troy Alleyn, looking startled indeed. “Sorry. I was a thousand miles away.”

“I wish I were. Or no,” amended Miss Rickerby-Carrick. “Wrong again. Correction. I wish I were a thousand miles away from me. From myself. No kidding,” she added. “To try out another colloquialism.”

She wrote again in her book.

Her companion looked attentively at her and might have been said, after her own fashion, also to make notes. She saw a figure, not exactly of fun, but of confusion. There was no co-ordination. The claret-coloured suit, the disheartened jumper, above all the knitted jockey-cap, all looked to have been thrown at their wearer and fortuitously to have stuck. She had a strange trick with her mouth, letting it fly apart over her teeth and turn up at the corners so that she seemed to grin when in fact she did nothing of the sort. The hand that clutched her propelling pencil was arthritic.

Overhead, clouds bowled slowly across a midsummer sky. A light wind fiddled with the river and one or two small boats bumped at their moorings. The pleasure-craft
Zodiac
had not appeared but was due at noon.

“My name,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick, “is Rickerby-Carrick. Hazel. ‘Spinster of this parish’. What’s yours?”

“Alleyn.”

“Mrs?”

“Yes.” After a moment’s hesitation Troy, since it was obviously expected of her, uncomfortably added her first name. “Agatha,” she mumbled.

“Agatharallen,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick sharply. “That’s funny. I thought you must be K. G. Z. Andropulos, Cabin 7.”

“The cabin was taken by somebody called Andropulos. I believe, but the booking was cancelled at the last moment. This morning, in fact. I happened to be here on—on business and I saw it advertised in the Company’s window, so I took it,” said Troy, “on impulse.”

“Just like that. Fancy.” A longish pause followed. “So we’re ship-mates? ‘Water wanderers?’ ” Miss Rickerby-Carrick concluded, quoting the brochure.

“In the
Zodiac
? Yes,” Troy agreed and hoped she sounded friendly enough. Miss Rickerby-Carrick crinkled her eyes and stripped her teeth. “Jolly good show,” she said. She gazed at Troy for some time and then returned to her writing. An affluent-looking car drove half-way down the cobbled passage. Its uniformed driver got out, walked to the quay, looked superciliously at nothing in particular, returned, spoke through the rear window to an indistinguishable occupant and resumed his place at the wheel.

“When I examine in depth the motives by which I am activated,” wrote Miss Rickerby-Carrick in her book. “I am appalled. For instance. I have a reputation, within my circle (admittedly a limited one) for niceness, for kindness, for charity. I adore my reputation. People come to me in their trouble. They cast themselves upon my bosom and weep. I love it. I’m awfully good at being good. I think to myself that they must all tell each other how good I am. ‘Hay Rickerby-Carrick,’ I know they say, ‘She’s so
good
.’ And so I am. I am. I put myself out in order to keep up my reputation. I make sacrifices. I am unselfish in buses, upstanding in tubes and I relinquish my places in queues. I visit the aged, I comfort the bereaved and if they don’t like it they can lump it. I am filled with amazement when I think about my niceness. O misery, misery, misery me,” she wrote with enormous relish.

Two drops fell upon her open notebook. She gave a loud, succulent and complacent sniff.

Troy thought: “Will she go on like this for five days? Is she dotty? O God, has she got a cold!”

“Sorry,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick. “I’ve god a bid of cold. Dur,” she added making a catarrhal clicking sound and allowing her mouth to fall slightly open. Troy began to wonder if there was a good train to London before evening.

“You wonder,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick in a thick voice, “why I sit on my suitcase and write. I have lately taken to a diary. My self-propelling confessional, I call it.”

“Do you?” Troy said helplessly.

Down the cobbled lane walked a pleasant-looking man in an ancient knickerbocker suit of Donegal tweed and a cloth cap. He carried, beside a rucksack, a square box on a shoulder-strap and a canvas-covered object that might, Troy thought, almost be a grossly misshapen tennis racket. He took off his cap when he saw the ladies and kept it off. He was of a sandy complexion with a not unattractive cast in one of his blue eyes, a freckled countenance and a tentative smile.

“Good morning,” he said. “We must be fellow-travellers.” Troy agreed. Miss Rickerby-Carrick, blurred about the eyes and nose, nodded, smiled and sniffed. She was an industrious nodder.

“No signs of the
Zodiac
as yet,” said the newcomer. “Dear me,” he added, “that’s a pit-fall of a joke isn’t it? We shall all be making it as punctually as the tides, I daresay.” Miss Rickerby-Carrick after a moment’s thought, was consumed with laughter. He looked briefly at her and attentively at Troy. “My name’s Caley Bard,” he said.

“I’m Troy Alleyn and this is Miss Rickerby-Carrick.”

“You said you were Agatha,” Miss Rickerby-Carrick pointed out. “You said Agatharallen,” and Troy felt herself blushing.

“So I am,” she muttered, “the other’s just a sort of a joke — my husband—” her voice died away. She was now extremely conscious of Mr Bard’s scrutiny and particularly aware of its dwelling speculatively on the veteran paintbox at her feet. All he said, however, was, “Dear me,” in a donnish tone. When she looked her apprehension he tipped her a wink. This was disconcerting.

She was relieved by the arrival on an apocalyptic motor-bicycle of a young man and his girl. The noonday sun pricked at their metal studs and turned the surface of their leather suits and calf-high boots into toffee. From under crash helmets, hair, veiled in oil and dust, fell unevenly to their shoulders. Their machine belched past the stationary chauffeur-driven car and came to a halt. They put their booted feet to the ground and lounged, chewing, against their bicycle. “There is nothing,” Troy thought, “as insolent as a gum-chewing face,” and at the same time she itched to make a sharp, black drawing of the riders.

“Do you suppose—?” she ventured in a low voice.

“I hardly think water-wandering would present a very alluring prospect,” Mr Bard rejoined.

“In any case, they have no luggage.”

“They may not need any. They may bed down as they are.”

“Oh, do you think so? All those steel knobs.”

“There is that, of course,” Mr Bard agreed.

The young people lit cigarettes, inhaled deeply, stared at nothing and exhaled vapour. They had not spoken.

Miss Rickerby-Carrick gazed raptly at them and then wrote in her book.

“—two of our Young Independents,” she noted. “Is it to gladiators that one should compare them? Would they like it if one did? Would I be able to get on with them? Would they like me? Would they find me
sympática
or is it
sympático
? Alas, there I go again. Incorrigible, hopeless old Me!” She stabbed down an ejaculation mark, clicked off her pencil with an air of quizzical finality, and said to Troy: “How did you get here? I came by bus: from good old Brummers.”