Clutch of Constables (24 page)

“Fair enough,” he said. “She was wearing them and there’s another pair in her cabin.”

“American type, low-heeled walking jobs.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Good Gawd!” Tillottson loudly exclaimed. “She went in there to hide and—Good Gawd!”

But Alleyn and Bailey paid no attention to Tillottson and Fox said: “Wait on, Bert.”

The wapentake field had turned towards a rising moon and was illuminated. The mist had now retired upon its source and wound like a cottonwool snake between the river banks. The landscape had changed and lightened.

Alleyn had thrown off his overcoat and was working at the rubble with his gloved hands.

“Bear a hand,” he said. “We’re too late but bear a hand.”

The other men joined him. They mounted their torches where they shone on the rubble and went hard to work.

“Very painstaking,” Alleyn grunted. “But not quite painstaking enough. Something—a stone, a bit of broken wood from the rubble—something—has been scuffed over the ground. Prints of the woman’s shoes have been left. Right up to where the rubble has lapped over them and pointing towards the excavation. But the surrounding patches of soil have been scuffed. We are meant to think what you thought, Bert.”

Superintendent Tillottson peered sideways at PC Cape as if longing for a better view.

“You hear that?” he said. “You understand what’s been said? You know what you’ve allowed to be done, you disgusting chap?”

Alleyn said: “All right, Cape, you’ll have to take what’s coming, won’t you?”

He squatted back on his heels. “This is no good,” he said and turned to the two constables: “Go down to the lockhouse and get spades. There’s not a hope, now, but we’ve got to act as if there was. And bring something — pieces of wood — galvanised iron — anything to cover these prints. Quick as you can. Thompson, have you got a flash? All right. Go ahead.”

Sergeant Thompson moved in with the hand-held camera he used in emergencies. His light flashed intermittently. The wretched Cape and his opposite number thundered downhill.

“We’d better continue to go through the motions,” Alleyn said: “As I recollect there were two props. One may have been used to knock away the other. He’d have a second or two to jump clear. Or there may have been a spare timber lying around.”

Fox said: “What’s the form, Mr Alleyn? About that lot down there in the lock? There’s nobody missing?” He jerked his head at the rubble. ”Apart from her?”

“The Skipper says not but we’ll have to see them. Look Bert, will you go down there? Ring your local police surgeon. My compliments and he’ll be needed again, with the ambulance and the usual equipment. Give him the story and tell him it’s suspected homicide. Then get yourself aboard the
Zodiac
. We won’t raise her until we’ve checked and then only when we can muster a closer guard. We’ve got a tough little clutch of villains down there and the big double-barrel himself.”

“I’ll go, then. And if they
are
all there?”

“Call off the general search and bring the men in to Ramsdyke.”

“See you in a wee while, then,” Tillottson said.

Bailey and Thompson went back to the car to fetch their heavy gear and Alleyn and Fox were left together: a tall elegant figure and a large thickset one incongruously moonlit in the wapentake field and scraping like dogs with their forepaws at gravelly rubble.

“This is quite a big case,” Fox remarked.

“You are the king of meiosis. Take an international triple murderer fresh from his latest kill, and pen him up with his associates in a pleasure craft at the bottom of a lock. Flavour with at least three innocent beings and leave to explode. And you call it quite a big case.”

“I suppose,” Fox said, disregarding this, “it was all done under—” He stopped short. “How do you work it out?” he said. “A put-up job, the whole thing? What?”

“She was blowing up for trouble when we had that last interview. She may have threatened to grass on them. Perhaps, the Jampot saw how she shaped up, and offered to get her away. Or—,” Alleyn panted as he shifted a largish boulder, “or she may simply have bolted. Whichever way it was, she raised a rumpus—screeching and on-going. When that ass Cape flung himself aboard, off she lit in the fog, pursued I don’t mind betting by the Jampot. In a matter of minutes they were over the embankment and into the pit. And that was it.”

“I like that one best.”

“It has a Foljambe smack about it, you think?”

“Suppose,” Fox said, “she’s not here. Suppose she and whoever-it-was came up here this afternoon and she poked into this excavation and came out again and it collapsed later?”

“No prints to suggest a return. And why did whoever-it-was try to obliterate his own prints?”

“There’s that, of course. And you make out that while the commotion in the
Zodiac
still continued he went straight back and was all present and correct when that silly chump Cape and the Skipper started counting heads in the saloon?”

“That’s it.” They worked for some time in silence.

“I don’t know,” Fox said presently. “I don’t somehow feel too certain she’s here.”

“Don’t you?” Alleyn said with a change of voice.

Fox let out an oath and drew back his hand.

From under a counterpane of soil that might have been withdrawn by a sleeping hand, a foot stuck up, rigid in its well-made American walking shoe.

The two constables came up the hill, swinging a lantern and carrying shovels. Bailey and Thompson returned with their gear. In a very little while they had uncovered Miss Hewson. Her print dress was up round her neck and contained her arms: Her body and legs clad in their sensible undergarments were shockingly displayed and so was her face: open eyes and open mouth filled with sandy soil and the cheekbones cut about with gravel.

“But not congested,” Fox said and added loudly: “That’s not a suffocated face. Is it?”

“Oh, no,” Alleyn said. “No. Did you expect it would be, Br’er Fox? It’s hopeless but we’ll try artificial respiration.”

One of the local men took off his helmet and knelt down.

“The old carotid job?” Fox mused.

“That’s what I expect. We’ll see what the doctor says.”

Fox made a movement of his head towards the hidden
Zodiac
.

“Not, of course—him?”

“No. No. And yet—After all, why not? Why not, indeed.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps better not,” he said and turned to Bailey and Thompson. “The lot,” he said. “Get going.”

He and Fox moved to where the roof had originally overhung the excavation. Here they looked down on the whole subsidence. Tiny runnels of friable soil trickled and started at their foot-fall. They found no footprints or traces of obliteration.

Alleyn said: “I think you’d better take over here, Br’er Fox, if you will. Meet the doctor when he comes and when he’s finished bring him down to the lock.”

As he went down the hill Thompson’s flash-lamp blinked and blinked again.

The River was still misted but when Alleyn looked into the lock, there was the roof of the
Zodiac
’s wheel-house, her deck and the tarpaulin cover, the top of a helmet, shoulders, a stomach and a pair of regulation boots.

Light from the saloon shone on the wet walls of the lock. He could hear voices.

“Hallo,” he said. The constable looked up and saluted. He was the man who had been on duty by the pub.

“There’s a ladder at the lockhouse, sir,” he said.

“I’ll drop, thank you.”

He managed this feat and for what turned out to be the last time, met the
Zodiac
passengers in the
Zodiac
saloon.

-4-

They were in what Fox liked to call
déshabillé
and looking none the better for it with the exception of Dr Natouche who wore a dressing-gown of sombre grandeur, scarlet kid slippers and a scarf that bore witness as did none of his other garments, to an exotic taste for colour. He was, indeed, himself an exotic, sitting apart at a corner table, upright, black and without expression. Troy would have liked to paint him, Alleyn thought, as he was now. What a pity she couldn’t.

The Skipper also sat apart, looking watchful. Mr Tillottson was back at his former table and the passengers were in the semi-circular seat under the windows. Hewson at once began a heated protest. His sister! Where was his sister! What was the meaning of all this! Did Alleyn realise that he and his sister were American citizens and as such were entitled to protest to their Ambassador in London? Did he appreciate—

Alleyn let it run for a minute and then clamped down.

“I think,” he said, “that we do have a rough idea of the situation, Mr Hewson. We’re in touch with the Federal Bureau in New York. They’ve been very helpful.”

Hewson changed colour, opened his mouth and shut it again.

Alleyn said: “Do you really not know where your sister has gone?”

“I know,” he said, “she’s been real scared by you guys acting like you thought—” he stopped, got to his feet and looked from Tillottson to Alleyn. “Say, what is all this?” he said. “What’s with you guys? What’s happened to Sis?” He fumbled with his hearing aid and thrust his deaf ear towards Alleyn. “C’mon,” he said. “C’mon. Give, can’t you?”

Alleyn said clearly, “Something very bad, I’m afraid.”

“Like what? Hell, can’t you talk like it makes sense? What’s happened?” And then, it seemed with flat incredulity, he said: “Are you telling me she’s dead? Sis? Dead? Are you telling me that?”

Lazenby walked over to Hewson and put his arm across his shoulders: “Hold hard, old man,” he fluted. “Stick it out, boy. Steady. Steady.”

Hewson looked at him. “You make me sick,” he said. “Christ Almighty, you make me sick to my stomach.” He turned on Alleyn. “Where?” he said. “What was it? What happened?”

Alleyn told him where she had been found. He listened with his head slanted and his face screwed up as if he still had difficulty in hearing.

“Smothered,” he said. “Smothered, huh?”

Alleyn said nothing. There was an immense stillness in the saloon as if everybody waited for a climax.

“Why don’t you all say something?” Hewson suddenly demanded. “Sitting round like you were dumbbells. God damn you. Say something.”

“What can we say?” Caley Bard murmured. “There’s nothing we can say.”

“You,” Hewson said. And as if he had to find some object upon which to focus an undefined misery and resentment he leant forward and shook his finger at Caley Bard. “You sit around!” he stammered. “You act like nothing mattered! For Pete’s sake, what sort of a monster do you figure
you
are?”

“I’m sorry,” Caley said.

“Pardon me?” Hewson shouted angrily with his hand cupped round his ear. “What’s that? Pardon?”

“I’m sorry,” Caley shouted in return.

“Sorry?
Sorry
, hell! He says he’s sorry!”

Pollock intervened. “There you are,” he said. “That’s what happens. That’s the way our wonderful police get to work. Scare the daylights out of some poor woman so she scarpers and gets herself smothered in a gravel-pit. All in the day’s work.”

“In our opinion,” Alleyn said, “Miss Hewson was not smothered in the gravel-pit. She was buried there.”

“My dear Superintendent—” Lazenby ,exclaimed, “what
do
you mean by that? That’s a shocking statement.”

“We think that she was murdered in the same way as Miss Rickerby-Carrick was murdered on Tuesday night and a man called Andropulos was murdered last Saturday. And we think it highly probable that one of you is responsible.”

“Do you know,” Caley said, “I had a strong premonition you were going to say that. But
why
? Why should you suppose one of
us
—? I mean we’re a cross-section of middle-class people from four different countries of origin who have never met before. We none of us knew that unfortunate eccentric before she, to speak frankly, bored the pants off us in the
Zodiac
. With the exception of her brother we’d none of us ever set eyes on Miss Hewson. Earlier tonight, Alleyn, you seemed to be suggesting there was some kind of conspiracy at work among us. All this carry-on about people being overheard muttering together in a side street in Tollardwark. And then you started a line about Miss Rickerby-Carrick having been robbed of a Fabergé bibelot. And what’s the strength of the bit about Pollock and his doodles? I must, apologise,” Caley said with a change of tone. “I didn’t mean to address the meeting at such length, but really, Alleyn, when you coolly announce that one of us is a murderer it’s bloody frightening and I for one want to know what it’s all about.”

Alleyn waited for a little and then said: “Yes. Of course. I’m sure you do. Under ordinary conditions it wouldn’t be proper for me to tell you but in several ways this is an extra-ordinary case and I propose to be a damn’ sight more candid than I dare say I ought to be.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Caley said wryly.

Alleyn said, “Here goes, then. Conspiracy? Yes. We think there is a conspiracy at work in the
Zodiac
and we think all but one of the passengers is involved. Murder? Yes. We think one of you is a murderer and hope to prove it. His name? Foljambe, alias the Jampot. At present, however, known by the name of another person. And his record? International bad-lot with at least five homicides to his discredit.”

The silence that followed was broken by Pollock. “You must be barmy,” he said.

“Conspiracy,” Alleyn went on. “Briefly, it involves the painting by you, Mr Pollock, of extremely accomplished Constable forgeries. The general idea, we think, went something like this. You made the forgeries. Your young friends on the motor-bike, working under Foljambe’s orders, were to plant them about this countryside where Constable once painted. The general principle of ‘salting’ the non-existent mine. The first discovery by Mr and Miss Hewson (if that is their name) in Bagg’s yard was to be given exactly the right amount of publicity. If necessary the circumstances surrounding the lucky find would be authenticated by Bagg himself, by my wife and Miss Rickerby-Carrick and the only other unimplicated passenger. There was to be an immediate bogus hunt throughout the countryside by: a) Mr Lazenby better known in the Antipodes, we incline to believe, as Dinky Dickson: b) Mr and Miss Hewson or Ed and Sally-Lou Moran as the case may be, and c)—ineffable cheek—by you yourself, Mr Pollock, in hot pursuit of your own forgeries.”