Clutch of Constables (16 page)

“And in the meantime what’s the form? We’ve issued orders that they’re all to stay in that damned boat tonight, one of them almost certainly being the Rickerby-Carrick’s murderer and just possibly the toughest proposition in homicide on either side of the Atlantic. I can’t withdraw my wife and insist on keeping the others there. Well, can I? Can I?”

“It might be awkward,” said Fox. “But you could.”

They fell silent and as people do when they come to a blank wall in a conversation, stared vaguely about them. A lark sang, a faint breeze lifted the long grass and in the excavation below the wapentake, sand and gravel fell with a whisper of sound from the grassy overhang.

“That’s very dangerous,” Fox said absently. “That place. Kids might get in there. If they interfered with those props, anything could happen.” He stood up, eased his legs and looked down at The River. It was masked by a rising mist.

The
Zodiac
was moored for the night some distance above Ramsdyke Lock. The passengers were having their dinner, Mr Tillottson and his sergeant being provided for at an extra table. Alleyn had had a moment or two with Troy and had suggested that she might slip away and join them if an opportunity presented itself. If, however, she could not do so without attracting a lot of attention she was to go early to bed and lock her door. He would come to her later and she was to unlock it to nobody else. To which she had replied: “Well, naturally,” and he had said she knew damned well what he meant and they had broken into highly inappropriate laughter. He and Fox had then walked up to the wapentake where at least they were able to converse above a mutter.

“There is,” Alleyn said, “a vacant cabin, of course. Now.”

“That’s right.”

“I tell you what, Fox. We’ll have a word with the Skipper and take it over. We’ll search and we’ll need a warrant.”

“I picked one up on my way from the beak at Tollardwark. He didn’t altogether see it but changed his mind when I talked about the Foljambe connection.”

“As well he might. One of us could doss down in the cabin for the night if there’s any chance of a bit of kip which is not likely. It’d be a safety measure.”

“You,” said Fox, “if it suits. I’ve dumped a homicide bag at the Ramsdyke Arms.”

“Tillottson kept his head and had the cabin locked. He says it’s full of junk. We’ll get the key off him. Look who’s here.”

It was Troy, coming into the field from Dyke Way by the top gate. Alleyn thought: “I wonder how rare it is for a man’s heart to behave as mine does at the unexpected sight of his wife.”

Fox said: “I’ll nip along to the pub, shall I, and settle for my room and bring back your kit and something to eat. Then you can relieve Tillottson and start on the cabin. Will I ring the Yard and get the boys sent up?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Yes. Better do that. Thank you, Br’er Fox.” By “the boys” Mr Fox meant Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, finger-print and photograph experts, who normally worked with Alleyn.

“We’ll need a patrol,” Alleyn said, “along the river from Tollard Lock to where she was found and we’ll have to make a complete and no doubt fruitless search of the tow-path and surroundings. You’d better get on to that, Fox. Take the Sergeant with you. Particular attention to the moorings at Crossdyke and the area round Ramsdyke weir.”

“Right, I’ll be off, then.”

He started up the hill towards Troy looking, as always, exactly what he was. An incongruous figure was Mr Fox in that still medieval landscape. They met and spoke and Fox moved on to the gate.

Alleyn watched Troy come down the hill and went out of the wapentake to meet her.

“They’ve all gone ashore,” she said, “I
think
to talk about me. Except Dr Natouche who’s putting finishing touches to his map. They’re sitting in a huddle in the middle-distance of the view that inspired my original remark about Constables. I expect you must push on with routine mustn’t you? What haven’t I told you that you ought to know? Should I fill you in, as Miss Hewson would say, on some of the details?”

“Yes, darling, fill me in, do. I’ll ask questions, shall I? It might be quickest. And you add anything—anything at all—that you think might be, however remotely, to the point. Shall we go?”

“Fire ahead,” said Troy.

During this process Troy’s answers became more and more staccato and her face grew progressively whiter. Alleyn watched her with an attentiveness that she wondered if she dreaded and knew that she loved. She answered his final question and said in a voice that sounded shrilly in her own ears: “There. Now you know as much as I do. See.”

“What is it?” he asked. “Tell me.”

“She scratched on my door,” Troy said. “And when I opened it she’d gone away. She wanted to tell me something and I let Mr Lazenby rescue me because I had a migraine and because she was such a bore. She was unhappy and who can tell what might have been the outcome if I’d let her confide? Who can tell
that
?”

“I
think
I can. I don’t believe—and I promise you this—I don’t believe it would have made the smallest difference to what happened to her. And I’ll promise you as well, that if it turns out otherwise I shall say so.”

“I can’t forgive myself.”

“Yes, you can. Is one never to run away from a bore for fear she’ll be murdered?”

“Oh Rory.”

“All right, darling. I know. And I tell you what—I’m glad you had your migraine and I’m bloody glad she didn’t talk to you. Now, then. Better?”

“A bit.”

“Good. One more question. That junk-shop in Tollardwark where you encountered the Hewsons. Did you notice the name of the street?”

“I think it was Ferry Lane.”

“You wouldn’t know the name of the shop?”

“No,” Troy said doubtfully. “It was so dark. I don’t think I saw. But—wait a bit—yes: on a very dilapidated little sign in Dr Natouche’s torchlight. ‘Jno. Bagg: Licensed Dealer’.”

“Good. And it was there they made their haul?”

“That’s right. They went back there from Longminster. Yesterday.”

“Do you think it might be a Constable?”

“I’ve no idea. It’s in his manner and it’s extremely well painted.”

“What was the general reaction to the find?”

“The Hewsons are going to show it to an expert. If it’s genuine I think they plan to come back and scour the district for more. I rather fancy Lazenby’s got the same idea.”

“And you’ve doubts about him being a parson?”

“Yes. I don’t know why.”

“No eye in the left socket?”

“It was only a glimpse but I think so. Rory—?”

“Yes?”

“The man who killed Andropulos — Foljambe — the Jampot. Do you know what he looks like?”

“Not really. We’ve got a photograph but Santa Claus isn’t more heavily bearded and his hair, which looks fairish, covers his ears. It was taken over two years ago and is not a credit to the Bolivian photographer. He had both his eyes then but we have heard indirectly that he received some sort of injury after he escaped and lay doggo with it for a time. One report was that it was facial and another that it wasn’t. There was a third rumour thought to have originated in the South that he’d undergone an operation to change his appearance but none of this stuff was dependable. We think it likely that there is some sort of physical abnormality.”

“Please tell me, Rory.
Please
. Do you think he’s on board?”

And because Alleyn didn’t at once protest, she said: “You do. Don’t you? Why?”

“Before I got here, I would have said there was no solid reason to suppose it. On your letters and on general circumstances. Now, I’m less sure.”

“Is it because of — have you seen…?”

“The body? Yes, it’s largely because of that.”

“Then — what—?”

“We’ll have to wait for the autopsy. I don’t think they’ll find she drowned, Troy. I think she was killed in precisely the same way as Andropulos was killed. And I think it was done by the Jampot.”

“And so,” Alleyn said, “we set up the appropriate routine and went to work in the usual way. Tillottson was under-staffed—the familiar story—but he was able to let us have half a dozen uniformed men. He and the Super at Longminster—Mr Bonney—did all they could to co-operate. But once we’d caught that whiff of the Jampot it became essentially our job with strong European and American connections.

“We did a big line with Interpol and the appropriate countries but although they were dead keen they weren’t all that much of a help. Throughout his lamentable career the Jampot had only made one blunder: and that, as far as we could ferret it out, was because an associate at the Bolivian end of his drug racket had grassed. The associate was found dead by quick attack from behind on the carotids: the method that Foljambe had certainly employed in Paris and was later to employ upon the wretched Andropulos. But for reasons about which the Bolivian police were uncommonly cagey, the Jampot was not accused by them of murder but of smuggling. Bribery is a little word we are not supposed to use when in communication with our brothers in anti-crime.

“It’s worth noticing that whereas other big-shots in his world employ their staffs of salaried killers the Jampot believes in the do-it-yourself kit and is unique in this as in many other respects.

“Apart from routine field-work the immediate task, as I saw it, was to lay out the bits of information as provided by my wife and try to discover which fitted and which were extraneous. I suggest that you treat yourselves to the same exercise.”

The man in the second row could almost be seen to lay back his ears.

“We found nothing to help us on deck,” continued Alleyn. “Her mattress had been deflated and stowed away and so had her blankets and the deck had been hosed down in the normal course of routine.

“But the tow-path and adjacent terrain turned up a show of colour. At the Crossdyke end, and you’ll remember it was during the night at Crossdyke that the murdered woman disappeared, Mr Fox’s party found on the riverbank at the site of the Zodiac’s moorings, a number of indentations, made either by a woman’s cuban heel or those of the kind of ‘gear’ boots currently fashionable in Carnaby Street. They overlapped and their general type and characteristics suggested that the wearer had moved forwards with ease and then backwards under a heavy load. Here’s a blow-up of Detective-Sergeant Thompson’s photographs.

“There had either been some attempt to flatten these marks or else a heavy object had been dragged across them at right angles to the river-bank.

“The tow-path was too hard to offer anything useful, and the path from there up to the road was tar-sealed and provided nothing. Nor did a muddy track along the waterfront. If the heels had gone that way we would certainly have picked them up so the main road must have been the route. Mr Fox, who is probably the most meticulous clue-hound in the Force, had a long hard look at the road. Here are some blown-up shots of what he found. Footprints. A patch of oil on the verge under a hedgerow not far from the moorings. Accompanying tyre marks suggest that a motor-bike had been parked there for some time. He found identical tracks on the road above Ramsdyke. At Crossdyke on an overhanging hawthorn twig—look at this close-up—there was a scrap of a dark blue synthetic material corresponding in colour and type with deceased’s pyjamas.

“Right. Question now arose: if deceased came this way was she alive or dead at the time of transit? Yes, Carmichael?”

The man in the second row passed his paddle of a hand over the back of his sandy head.

“Sir,” he said. “It would appear from the character of the footprints, the marks on the bank, the evidence at the braeside and the wee wispies of cloth, that the leddy was at the least of it, unconscious and carried from the craft to the bike. Further than that, sir, I would not care to venture.”

The rest of the class stirred irritably.

“By and large,” Alleyn said, “you would be right. To continue—”

-1-

Alleyn and Troy returned together to the
Zodiac
. They found Dr Natouche reading on deck and the other passengers distantly visible in a seated group on the far hillside above the ford.

Natouche glanced up for a moment at Troy. She walked towards him and he stood up.

“Rory,” Troy said, “you’ve not heard how good Dr Natouche has been. He gave me a lovely lunch at Longminster and he was as kind as could be when I passed out this afternoon.”

Alleyn said: “We’re lucky, on all counts, to have you on board.”

“I have been privileged,” he replied with his little bow.

“I’ve told him,” Troy said, “how uneasy you were when she disappeared and how we talked it over.”

“It was not, of course, that I feared that any violence would be done to her. There was no reason to suppose that. It was because I thought her disturbed.”

“To the point,” Alleyn said, “where she might do violence upon herself?”

Dr Natouche folded his hands and looked at them. “No,” he said. “Not specifically. But she was, I thought, in a very unstable condition: a condition that is not incompatible with suicidal intention.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “I see. Oh dear.”

“You find something wrong, Mr Alleyn?”

“No, no. Not wrong. It’s just that I seem to hear you giving that opinion in the witness box.”

“For the defence?” he asked calmly.

“For the defence.”

“Well,” said Dr Natouche, “I daresay I should be obliged to qualify it under cross-examination. While I am about it, may I give you another opinion? I think your wife would be better away from the
Zodiac
. She has had a most unpleasant shock, she is subject to migraine and I think she is finding the prospect of staying in the ship a little hard to face.”

“No, no,” Troy said. “Not at all. Not now.”

“You mean not now your husband is here. Of course. But I think he will be very much occupied. You must forgive me for my persistence but—why not a room at the inn in Ramsdyke? Or even in Norminster? It is not far.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Alleyn said, “but there are difficulties. If my wife is given leave—”

“Some of us may also demand it? If you will allow me I’ll suggest that she should go immediately and I’ll say that as her medical adviser, I insisted.”

“Rory — would it be easier? It would, wouldn’t it? For you? For both of us?”

“Yes, darling, it would.”

“Well, then?”

She saw Alleyn give Natouche one utterly noncommittal look of which the doctor appeared to be perfectly unaware. “I think you are right,” Alleyn said. “I have been in two minds about it but I think you are right. How far is it by road to Norminster?”

“Six miles and three-eighths,” Natouche said.

“How very well-informed!”

“Dr Natouche is a map-maker,” Troy. said. “You must see what he’s doing.”

“Love to,” Alleyn agreed politely. “Where did you stay in Norminster, Troy? The Percy, was it?”

“Yes.”

“All right?”

“Perfectly.”

“I’ll ring it up from the lockhouse. If they’ve got a room I’ll send for a taxi. We’ll obey doctor’s orders.”

“All right. But—”

“What?”

“I’ll feel as if I’m ratting. So will they.”

“Let them.”

“All right.”

“Would you go down and pack, then?”

“Yes. All right.” They could say nothing to each other, Troy thought, but “all right”.

She went down to her cabin.

Natouche said: “I hope you didn’t mind my making this suggestion. Your wife commands an unusual degree of self-discipline, I think, but she really has had as much as she should be asked to take. I may say that some of the passengers would not be inclined to make matters any easier for her if she stayed.”

“No?”

“They are, I think, a little suspicious of the lost fur.”

“I can’t blame them,” Alleyn said dryly.

“Perhaps,” Natouche continued, “I should say this. If you find, as I think you will, that Miss Rickerby-Carrick was murdered I fully realise that I come into the field of suspects. Of course I do. I only mention this in case you should think that I try to put myself in an exclusive position by speaking as a doctor in respect of your wife.”

“Do you suppose,” Alleyn asked carefully, “that any of the others think it may be a case of homicide?”

“They do not confide in me, but I should undoubtedly think so. Yes.”

“And they suspect that they will come into the field of inquiry?”

“They would be extremely stupid if they did not expect to do so,” he said. “And by and large I don’t find they are stupid people. Although at least three of them will certainly begin to suspect me of killing Miss Rickerby-Carrick.”

“Why?”

“Briefly: because I am an Ethiopian and they would prefer that I, rather than a white member of the company, should be found guilty.”

Alleyn listened to the huge voice, looked at the impassive face and wondered if this was a manifestation of inverted racialism or of sober judgment.

“I hope you’re mistaken,” he said.

“And so, of course, do I,” said Dr Natouche.

“By the way, Troy tells me you found a scrap of material on deck.”

“Ah, yes. You would like to see it? It’s here.”

He took out his pocket-book and extracted an envelope. “Shall I show you where it was?” he asked.

“Please.”

They went to the after end of the deck.

“The mattress was inflated,” Natouche explained, “and lying where it had been when she used it. Mrs Alleyn noticed this fragment. It was caught under the edge of the pillow pocket. You will see that it is stained, presumably with river water. It seemed to me that Miss Rickerby-Carrick had probably taken her diary with her when she came up here to bed and that this piece of the cover, if it is that, became detached. The book was of course, saturated. I noted the cloth of its cover was torn when Lazenby rescued it. Your wife thought we should keep the fragment.”

“Yes, she told me. Thank you. I must get on with my unlovely job. I am very much obliged to you, Dr Natouche, for having taken care of Troy.”

“Please! I was most honoured that she placed a little confidence in me. I think,” he added, “that I shall stroll up to the wapentake. If you’ll excuse me.”

Alleyn watched him take an easy stride from the gunwale of the
Zodiac
to the grassy bank and noticed the perfect coordination of movement and the suggestion of unusual strength. Alleyn was visited by an odd notion: “Suppose,” he thought, “he just went on. Suppose he became an Ethiopian in a canary-coloured sweater striding over historic English fens and out of our field of inquiry. Ah well, he’s extremely conspicuous, after all.”

He looked downstream towards the weir and could see Fox and the local sergeant moving about the tow-path. Fox stooped over a wayside patch of bramble and presently righted himself with an air that Alleyn even at that distance, recognised as one of mild satisfaction. He turned, saw Alleyn and raised a hand, thumb up.

Alleyn went ashore, telephoned The Percy Hotel at Norminster, booked a room and ordered a taxi for Troy. When he returned to the
Zodiac
he found it deserted except for Troy who had packed her bags and was waiting for him in her cabin.

Half an hour later he put her in her taxi and she drove away from Ramsdyke. Her fellow-passengers, except for Dr Natouche, were sitting round an outdoor table at the pub. The Hewsons, Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock had their heads together. Caley Bard slouched back dejectedly in his chair and gazed into a beer pot.

She asked the driver to stop and got out. As she approached the men stood up, Caley Bard at once, the others rather mulishly.

Troy said: “I’ve been kicked out. Rory thinks I’ll be an embarrassment to the Force if I stay and I think he’s got something so I’m going to Norminster.”

Nobody spoke.

“I would rather have stayed,” she said, “but I do see the point and I hope very much that all of you do, too. Wives are not meant to muscle-in on police routine.”

Caley Bard put his arm across her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Of course we do,” he said. “Don’t be a donkey. Off you go to Norminster and good riddance.”

“Well!” Troy said, “that
is
handsome of you.”

Mr Lazenby said: “This is the course I suggested, if you remember, Mrs Alleyn. I said I thought you would be well advised to leave the
Zodiac
.”

“So you did,” Troy agreed.

“For
your
sake, you know. For your sake.”

“For whatever reason, you were right.”

Pollock said something under his breath to Mr Hewson who received it with a wry grin that Troy found rather more disagreeable than a shouted insult would have been. Miss Hewson laughed.

“Well,” Troy said. “We’ll all meet, I suppose. At the inquest. I just felt I’d like to explain. Good-bye.”

She went back to the taxi. Caley Bard caught her up. “I don’t know if your old man thinks this is a case of murder,” he said, “but you can take it from me I’d cheerfully lay that lot out. For God’s sake don’t let it hurt you. It’s not worth a second thought.”

“No,” Troy said. “Of course not. Good-bye.”

The car drove through the Constable landscape up the hill. When they got to the crest they found a policeman on duty at the entry to the main road. Troy looked back. There, down below, was The River with the
Zodiac
at her moorings. Fox had moved from the weir and Alleyn and Tillottson had met him. They seemed to examine something that Fox held in his hand. As if he felt her gaze upon him, Alleyn lifted his head and, across the Constable picture, they looked at each other and waved their hands.

Above The River on the far side was the wapentake and alone in its hollow like a resident deity sat a figure in a yellow sweater with a black face and hands.

It would be getting dark soon and the passengers would stroll back to the ship. For the last time they would go to bed in their cabins. The River and trees and fields would send up their night-time voices and scents and the countryside after its quiet habit, move into night. The seasonal mist which the Skipper had told them was called locally, The Creeper, had increased and already The River looked like a stream of hot water threading the low country.