As the train eventually reached the approaches to Paddington, rushing over one set of points after another, Pollard stood in his dream on a seashore, watching the breakers coming in in rapid succession, sweeping white fragments of foam towards him. In his distress at being unable to grasp any of these he woke to see Toye bringing their suitcases down from the rack. He gave an immense yawn and stretched.
‘So what?’ he said. ‘We’ll call in at the Yard, get the machinery switched on, and make for home.’
By half past nine on the following morning Pollard was back at his desk, preparatory to embarking upon the stage in a case which he heartily disliked.
‘I can’t take this business of being a sort of ruddy computer,’ he complained to Toye. ‘Sitting here on my bottom and being programmed with data I can’t verify myself, and being expected to spit out the right answer at the end of it. And you needn’t go all reasonable and start pointing out that we couldn’t cover the ground ourselves in the time.’
Toye grinned and enquired about the report from the ballistics experts which had just come in.
‘I’ll admit that it’s more definite than we expected. They say it’s a 70:30 likelihood that the bullet was fired by the Colt .38. Quite a useful straw in the wind, in fact. We’d better start on an interim report for the AC now, and then fill in time clearing up arrears while we’re hanging about.’
Further items of information came in at intervals as the hours passed. The shoes retrieved from the quarry pool were identified as a make popular with the outdoor man in the States. Starting from the date of Hugh Redshaw’s birth given as 1922, a searcher located his birth certificate. He had been born at Mitcham, son of Leonard Redshaw, grocer, and his wife Ena. Enquiries were proceeding at Mitcham. Superintendent Bosworth reported from Marchester that Hugh Redshaw’s suggested witness of his alleged arrival in the bar of the Cathedral House had turned out to be an old dodderer, adding that either side could make mincemeat of him in court, if it came to that. Enquiries at the public library were proceeding. Then, after a static early afternoon, there was a sudden invitation to go along to the forensic laboratory which was dealing with the scrap of paper discovered by Toye in the thicket above the old quarry at Ambercombe. Responding with alacrity, they found one of the senior scientists and a couple of young technicians clustered round a brightly lit area on a bench, and were greeted with the usual contumely.
‘All right, all right,’ Pollard retorted. ‘We’ll take it as read, Blake, that it was an impossible job which only the brilliance and tenacity of you and your minions could have pulled off. What — if anything of the slightest use — have you managed to bring up?’
‘Look for yourselves,’ Richard Blake, a friend of long standing replied. ‘If you can understand a blown-up photograph, that is.’
The magnified paper appeared to consist of large chunks of straw and other substances which mysteriously held together.
The page number 44 stood out clearly. Faintly discernible but legible were the opening words of five lines of print:
corrugated iron roo
and crawled ve
St Roche-le-Haut
coiling from its chimneys
Time was moving
As Pollard stared at the photograph he became aware of suppressed hilarity.
‘Got it?’ enquired the scientist.
‘Got what?’
‘Don’t you ever open a book, man? It’s a bit of Redshaw’s Backdrop, that Resistance thriller that sent him up to the top of the charts. We spotted the name of the place: St Roche-le-Haut-Clocher, and sent out for a copy. Here, have a look.’
Pollard took the paperback handed to him, open at page 44, and read:
corrugated iron roof of the hut. Emerging on hands and knees he kept low and crawled very cautiously to the gap. Below lay St Roche-le-Haut Clocher apparently deserted but with smoke coiling from its chimneys.
Time was moving fast, and action of some sort was…
‘As it happens,’ he said, returning the paperback, ‘you chaps have stumbled on something by sheer accident that could be quite useful. Glad we were able to find a job to keep you occupied.’
During the next forty-eight hours information continued to trickle in slowly, the most important item being the news that the Redshaw family had moved from Mitcham to the holiday resort of Whitecliffe Bay on the south coast in 1924.
‘Not so good,’ Pollard commented. ‘It’s a place that’s grown enormously, with a big influx of population. There must have been a lot of redevelopment. If Redshaw père opened a shop there in 1924, it’s probably been demolished by now. They won’t be easy to trace.’
More encouragingly a jubilant Superintendent Bosworth rang from Marchester to say that they had bust Hugh Redshaw’s alibi at the public library wide open. No one was prepared to swear to the exact time of his arrival, but there was agreement that it was during the lunch hour, and well before two o’clock. As a local celebrity he was accorded certain privileges, among them that of taking reference books to a small room on the first floor used for storage, so that he could work undisturbed. It had a door on to an outside escape, and questioning had brought to light the fact that a cleaner had found this unbolted a couple of days later. She had not reported it, being afraid that she had forgotten to shoot the bolt herself on her last visit, when she had opened the fire escape door to shake out her duster. It had also been noticed that the books Hugh Redshaw had asked for had not been brought back to the main library, but left in the room, a departure from his usual practice.
‘Useful,’ Toye said, incorporating this report into the file.
Pollard, who was beginning to feel the nervous strain of waiting and continued inaction, gave an assenting grunt. At the back of his mind was a teasing suspicion that even now some unpredictable development would mean altering the whole course of the enquiry.
The first real breakthrough came just as they returned from lunch. Investigations at Whitecliffe Bay had unearthed a reliable source of information about the Redshaw family. Both the CID sergeant working in Whitecliffe and the local police felt that it would be worthwhile for Mr Pollard to come down.
‘We’ll go by train,’ Pollard said, buzzing his secretary. ‘There’s a good service, and it’ll be quicker than by road.’
The reliable source of information proved to be the Reverend John Morley, formerly vicar of St Faith’s, the old parish church of Whitecliffe Bay, now a widower, and living in a bungalow provided by the diocesan authorities for their retired clergy.
‘If he’s another Barnabas Viney, I’ll be sending in my resignation,’ Pollard remarked, as they rang the bell and waited on the doorstep of the little bungalow.
Any apprehensions of this kind were quickly dispelled by an alert glance from the small white-haired figure who opened the door and greeted them.
‘That nice fellow Inspector Pye came to say that you’d be calling,’ the old man said. ‘Come inside. It’s a bit small, but very snug.’
The little sitting room into which they were ushered had a masculine cosiness, with well-filled bookcases, shabby but comfortable chairs, and photographs of groups of various types of humanity on the walls. A tabby cat asleep in front of a gas fire raised its head to give the callers a critical glance, and returned to its slumbers.
‘I suggest a cup of tea and a Garibaldi biscuit,’ Mr Morley said. ‘I always have one about now, and I don’t mind saying that I make a very good cup of tea. In fact, I’ve become quite handy in the kitchen since I lost my dear wife two years ago.’
‘A cup of tea’s just what we’re feeling like,’ Pollard said, ‘and I haven’t had a Garibaldi biscuit for years, have you, Toye?’
The tea was quickly forthcoming, and was hot and good.
‘Now, I wonder why you’ve come to me about the Redshaws,’ Mr Morley said, giving his visitors a shrewd glance. ‘You’d have had no difficulty in finding Hugh, now that he’s so well-known. Surely it can’t be poor Douglas after all these y
ears?’
Pollard felt a sudden stillness go through him.
‘Douglas, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes, yes. The adopted son. Perhaps they were a little precipitate in adopting a child, but they were terribly disappointed at not having a family of their own, and the doctors said they couldn’t hold out any hope. Then Hugh came along, you see, a couple of years later. It was almost bound to cause difficulties as the boys grew up.’
A clear picture of the Redshaw ménage emerged with the help of an occasional question from Pollard. John Morley had come to Whitecliffe Bay in 1935 as Rector of St Faith’s, and found the family among the regular members of his congregation. By that time Leonard Redshaw had built up a thriving grocery business, and both boys were at the local grammar school.
‘It was a good sound home,’ John Morley pursued. ‘An educated one, up to a certain standard, with books in it, and Mrs Redshaw was a splendid manager. The only trouble was the tension between Douglas and Hugh. You see, Hugh resented Douglas — there’d never been any secret about the adoption — and always wanted to go one better, although he was two years younger. I mean, if Douglas got into a team, Hugh was like a bear with a sore head until he won a cup for something, and so on. It was the same over their school work. Naturally Douglas went all out to keep ahead, but as he moved into his adolescent stage he began to react differently, and gave the parents a lot of worry. He was difficult at home, and took up with not very desirable boys, and girls too, I’m afraid. His work went off, and he left school at sixteen and started drifting in and out of jobs. Meanwhile Hugh left with a good School Certificate and went into one of the local banks. Then, of course, the war came, and they were both called up… Do let me give you second cups.’
Both boys came through the war. Hugh returned to the bank, but Douglas left home, saying he’d found a job in London.
He kept more or less in touch, but the Redshaws could not find out exactly what he was doing, and were worried about him. Finally he got into bad company, and was wanted by the police in connection with robbery with violence in a London suburb, in the course of which an elderly man was coshed and killed. He contrived to give them the slip, and had never been traced.
‘It was a most terrible business for the Redshaws,’ John Morley went on. ‘They were such a respectable family, and you can imagine the talk. Whitecliffe was a much smaller place then, and everybody knew everybody else’s affairs. And Leonard and Ena Redshaw were genuinely fond of Douglas, with all his failings. So was I. In fact I liked him a lot better than Hugh, who was always so preoccupied with getting on. And so he has, of course. I believe he started writing as a side-line, and did so well that he was able to give up a career in banking and became a full-time author.’
Both Redshaw parents had died in the nineteen-fifties, leaving the grocery business to Hugh, who by this time had a post in a London branch of his bank. He had sold the shop premises and goodwill, and disappeared from the Whitecliffe scene. There had been several subsequent changes of ownership, and recently a supermarket chain had bought out the current proprietor, as well as several of his neighbours, in order to demolish a sufficient number of buildings to redevelop extensively and open on a large scale in Whitecliffe.
Pollard sat thoughtfully drinking a third cup of tea as John Morley filled in these details.
‘What did Douglas Redshaw look like, sir?’ he asked presently.
For the first time the old priest was slightly at a loss. There had been nothing very special about the lad’s appearance, he said. Perhaps a bit below average height. Not a hefty chap, but wiry. Good at games and handy with a boat. The usual sort of brown hair. ‘It’s all a long time ago, and my memory isn’t what it was,’ he said apologetically, ‘especially for faces. Of course, it’s fifteen years since I retired, and I’m getting on. I’m afraid I haven’t been a great deal of help, and I can’t think of anyone who’s likely to remember the Redshaws any better. People move about so much these days.’
Pollard assured him that he had been a great deal of help, but it was clear that this source of information had run dry, and after a short interval said that it was time he and Toye made for their train back to London.
‘If this Douglas Redshaw was the hiker,’ Toye said as they walked away, ‘how do you suppose he got to the States, as seems likely from his accent and the shoes?’
‘No real difficulty there, I should think, at that particular time. There must have been quite a brisk traffic in passports just after the war. My guess is that he bought a Yank one and got it duly tarted up. He was in with the criminal class.’
‘What brought him back after all these years, do you suppose?’
‘This is the question, isn’t it? Perhaps he came on one of Hugh’s books over there, and realised from the jacket blurb that his brother by adoption was making a packet from film rights and whatever. He can hardly have expected a handout from all accounts, so it does look as though a spot of blackmail was the idea.’
‘Fits in with the way they met up,’ Toye agreed. ‘In the middle of nowhere, you might say, instead of Douglas going to the house. Jacket blurbs often say more or less where a writer lives, don’t they? I reckon the meeting place was fixed up by that telephone call from North Pyrford.’
‘The odd thing is, though,’ Pollard said, ‘that instead of Douglas Redshaw being in a position to blackmail Hugh, it looks as though the boot was on the other leg. After all, Douglas was a fugitive from justice, in connection with armed robbery and a homicide. Whereas Hugh, on the face of it, has had a blameless life as a bank official and writer of improbable whodunits. In other words, this unspeakable case is standing on its head yet again. Always assuming the hiker was Douglas Redshaw, as you say.’
The following days were devoted to a follow-up of the information gathered at Whitecliffe Bay. Toye investigated police records of the robbery and homicide in which Douglas Redshaw had been involved, including the subsequent histories of his two associates who had been arrested and ultimately sentenced. In spite of all efforts Douglas Redshaw had managed to slip through the net and vanish without trace. In the opinion of the police he had provided the necessary brain power for the crime and had cleared off leaving the other two to carry the can in complete ignorance of his escape route. The United States immigration authorities had no record of anyone of the name of Douglas Redshaw entering the country by the official channels, and similar information came through from Canada. Further co-operation was promised, but it was pointed out, in the Yard’s view unnecessarily, that there was very little to go on.
In the meantime Pollard concentrated on Hugh Redshaw’s past with the aim of uncovering any activities lending themselves to blackmail at a later date. In this he met with no success whatever. The bank which had employed him produced a record of efficient reliable service, and added that his resignation had been received with regret. The landlady in whose house he had lodged on first coming to London was traced, and also the proprietress of a private hotel in Kensington to which he had subsequently moved. Nothing to his discredit emerged beyond the opinion that he was a selfish type and keener on Number One than anything else. Approaching Thrale’s, Hugh Redshaw’s publishers, clearly presented difficulties. Pollard finally decided to send along a promising young CID sergeant with literary tastes in the guise of a freelance writer, working on a study of crime fiction in the post-war period. His modest request to check up on the publication dates of Hugh Redshaw’s early books led on to some friendly chat about the author, one of Thrale’s top sellers. However, little that was new emerged beyond the fact that he had married into the money all right. Miranda Redshaw was pretty well-heeled in her own right, and her sob-stuff verses brought in a packet, believe it or not. Of course, Thrale’s didn’t handle that sort of thing…
Finally, with the not unfamiliar feeling of being up against a brick wall, Pollard compiled a detailed report for his Assistant Commissioner, setting out the case against Hugh Redshaw as far as it could be taken on th
e evidence available.
‘That’s that,’ he remarked to Toye, after reading through the pages of typescript and signing the last one with a defiant flourish. ‘What’s the betting that we’re called off within the next day or two?’
All that remained seemed to be to cultivate a philosophical attitude, and when summoned to the Assistant Commissioner’s office a couple of days later, he went along more or less reconciled to an inevitable shelving of the case.
‘I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this,’ the AC told him, indicating the report lying on his desk. ‘One of your disproportionately large numbers of interesting cases, Pollard, even if the answer looks like being a lemon. There’s one factual error in your report, by the way.’
‘Sir?’ Nettled, Pollard hastily searched his memory.
‘Yes. You say Hugh Redshaw’s first book, Deadly Venom, came out in 1958. Actually it was first published in ’48, under a pen name and different title. I picked up a copy on a second-hand book stall some years ago, and recognised the plot at once.’
Pollard had a sudden sense of groping in the dark, together with astonishment at the AC’s literary taste.
‘I’m surprised that you read whodunits, sir,’ he said feebly.
‘Indeed?’ To Pollard’s further astonishment an impish expression flickered briefly across the normally impassive official countenance. ‘I’ve a collection of well over a thousand at home. When I retire I’m going to write a book on crime fiction. Not one of these encyclopaedic affairs, but a devastating study of popular fictional detectives. God knows I’ve suffered enough from the genuine article.’
‘Sir,’ Pollard broke in, hardly listening, ‘who published that ’48 edition?’
Unhappy Returns Page 17
