The Casebook of Augustus Maltravers

by Robert Richardson

  “Yes. Most of us have evensong and some of those who have to travel a fair distance have already left.” Maltravers realised that the numbers had been slowly thinning out.

  “In fact,” the rector gulped his remaining tea with unseemly haste from such a container, “…if you will excuse me, I’d better be off.”

  Evensong at the cathedral was at half past six and by five past the garden was deserted again, its occupants having left no visible trace of their presence. Tess, Maltravers, Michael and Melissa were on the terrace saying goodbye.

  “Thank you so much, Dean,” Michael said. “It has been delightful but I really must get over to the cathedral.”

  “Of course,” replied the Dean. “But I must say goodbye to Miss Porter. Where is she? I had to leave her a little while ago when the Bishop left and…” He looked at them with polite inquiry and there was an air of slight puzzlement as their glances swept over the empty garden.

  “I saw her a few minutes ago,” said Tess. “She was down there.” She pointed towards the trees at the bottom of the garden.

  “Who was she with?” asked Maltravers.

  “I don’t know. I think she was on her own but I didn’t really notice.”

  “Perhaps she’s in the house,” said the Dean’s wife briskly. “No, you stay here and I’ll go and find her.”

  As they waited on the terrace, a bank of cloud drifted across the slow-falling sun and brightness went out of the garden. Tess took Maltravers’ arm and shivered slightly.

  “Chilly,” she said with a small smile.

  “Well, she’s not in there.” Returning through the French windows, the Dean’s wife sounded slightly put out; one of her guests was behaving badly.

  A search of the gardens by Maltravers and an increasingly impatient Michael revealed nothing and finally, with suitable apologies, they left, the Dean dismissive and understanding, his wife clearly far from pleased.

  “Where the hell is she?” Maltravers demanded as they left the house.

  “Perhaps she’s gone back to Punt Yard,” said Tess.

  “Not without saying goodbye,” he said firmly.

  Diana was not at Punt Yard although her suitcase, ready packed for her return to London, was still in the hall. One of Melissa’s friends, who had brought her own daughter round to play with Rebecca while they were out, had not seen her. They waited for a quarter of an hour before Maltravers became impatient and set off to look without having any real idea of where to go. He walked round to the cathedral but the verger on the west door assured him that Diana had not been there. Then he went back to the river and the ruined church. Diana had never been to Vercaster before and there were very few places she had seen.

  “This is getting ridiculous!” he snapped when he returned to Punt Yard and found she had not turned up in his absence.

  “Where’s Diana?” Rebecca asked suddenly, looking up from where she was playing on the floor.

  “Did Diana say bye-bye to you?” Melissa asked her.

  “No,” said the child simply and the three adults stared at each other.

  Maltravers took a drink proffered by his sister and lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke noisily and agitatedly through his teeth.

  “Now, let’s get this straight,” he said. “You say you saw her, Tess, standing near the trees at…what?...sometime after six o’clock. None of us saw her after that. And you say there was nobody with her.”

  “I don’t remember seeing anyone. But they could have been hidden by the trees.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Just standing there.”

  “Talking?”

  Tess thought for a moment. “No. But if there had been someone I couldn’t see, she might have been listening.”

  “All right,” said Maltravers. “Can she have gone back to town? Her case is still here.”

  “She had her handbag,” said Tess. “Her train ticket was in there along with her purse.”

  “So…no that’s stupid. She’s not said goodbye to anybody. Not even Rebecca. Where the devil is she?”

  Nobody had any answers and Diana’s disappearance lay about them as Rebecca was put to bed. Michael returned and they ate a cold supper at the end of which Maltravers announced he was going to ring Diana’s London flat. He returned after a few minutes to say there was no reply.

  “Do you think we should tell the police?” Melissa asked.

  “What are they going to do? Not launch a manhunt for what appears to be no more than inexplicable bad manners.”

  “Her case is still here,” observed Tess.

  “Precisely. She could just be wandering round the town somewhere. It’s totally unlike her, but I don’t think the police are going to get too excited.”

  They spent the rest of the evening watching television in an abstracted sort of way with Maltravers making regular calls to Diana’s flat and various friends without success. Finally, at nearly midnight, he did call the police.

  The duty sergeant listened to everything he had to say, then asked a series of questions which took them over the same ground again.

  “Have you tried all her friends?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s a lot of people and I don’t know them all. I’ve tried about a dozen so far.”

  “I think that’s the best thing to do at the moment, sir,” said the sergeant. “Just a minute. You say she came up by train. Have you checked at the station?”

  “No, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Well, we can do that, sir. Can you tell me what the young lady was wearing?”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know. Hang on.” Maltravers called Tess to the phone who supplied the details then handed the receiver back to him.

  “Right, sir, you keep trying her friends and I’ll let you know if there’s any news from the station. If you can give me your number.” Maltravers read it from the dial. “All right. Thank you. I don’t imagine there’s anything to worry about but I’ll pass this on. You just make what inquiries you can for the time being.”

  As he rang off, Maltravers realised it was no time of night to be ringing people to see if they knew where Diana was, but decided to try anyway. He managed three calls, met with varying degrees of politeness, before the sergeant came back to him to say there had been no sign of Diana at the station.

  “I’m sure the young lady will turn up quite safe, sir, but let us know first thing in the morning if there’s no news. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Goodnight, sir.”

  After reluctantly going to bed, Maltravers lay in the darkness thinking. His bedroom door opened quietly and Tess came in.

  “Move over,” she said, crossing to the bed. “Damn the proprieties, I’m not leaving you on your own tonight.” She settled down and put her arm around him. “She’ll turn up. It will be all right in the morning.”

  But it wasn’t. Maltravers rang Diana’s flat again first thing but there was still no reply. He tried a few other calls without success, then rang the police again. It was the same sergeant on duty.

  “Nothing at all, sir? Just a moment, I’m putting you through to the duty Inspector. She knows the background.”

  As various clicks sounded down the line into Maltravers’ ear, Diana’s disappearance ceased to be a minor problem and became a police matter, sweeping Maltravers and the others along on the rising tide of an official investigation. The Inspector, female, crisp and businesslike, took what little new information there was then told Maltravers to remain at the house until an officer arrived; in fact it was Jackson again. Maltravers, who had imagined that the police would take little interest in an adult who had disappeared for less than twenty-four hours, was at first impressed, then alarmed, by the level of their activity.

  “A few years ago it might have been different,” Jackson told him. “Now we press the panic buttons much sooner.”

  He began close questioning Maltravers and Tess as the people who knew Diana best. Had she seemed depressed? Unusually excited? Was she wo
rrying about anything? Had she ever talked about taking her life? Maltravers stared at him.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped.

  “It’s not stupid. It’s an obvious line of inquiry. Can you give me her exact address in London please.”

  “What for?”

  “We’ll want to talk to the neighbours. And we’ll want to get in there.”

  “What the hell do you expect to find?”

  “We expect nothing. But we might find Miss Porter.”

  “She’s not there. I’ve told you how many times I’ve rung.”

  “Perhaps she can’t answer the phone,” Jackson said levelly.

  “Why not, for Christ’s sake?”

  Jackson paused, sighed and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to spell this out,” he said. “Miss Porter is a well-known person, but in these circumstances we’d do the same whoever it was. She has disappeared without explanation and we have to look at all the possibilities. You say she didn’t appear suicidal but some people don’t give any indication. I don’t want to add alarm or distress to the situation because I appreciate that you are increasingly worried, but the simple fact is that she may be in her flat and unable to answer the phone because she has taken her own life. I don’t expect you to accept the possibility but it is one that the police have got to consider.”

  “You can’t just break into her flat,” Maltravers objected.

  “We can with a warrant. And, believe me, in these circumstances we’ll get one.”

  Maltravers slumped back in his chair, defeated by police procedures and Jackson’s reasonableness. He remembered Diana’s elation after her performance, her laughter at the garden party, her total air of being relaxed and happy. But that was meaningless to the police; people who vanished followed certain statistical patterns of behaviour offering a finite series of options. He realised that all he could do was to co-operate.

  “I’ve just remembered something,” he said. “Diana had an appointment in London this morning. I don’t know where but her agent will. Shall I ring him?”

  Jackson nodded with an air of excessive patience.

  “If you would,” he said.

  Joe Goldman metaphorically leapt at Maltravers down the phone.

  “Gus!” he shouted. “Where the hell’s Diana?”

  “You’ve not heard from her?”

  “No! We’re due at the BBC in ten minutes. I’ve tried her flat but she doesn’t answer. Vanished? What do you mean vanished? Suddenly she’s a conjuring act? Jokes I don’t need, Gus.”

  “It’s no joke. We’ve got the police up here.”

  “The fuzz? Diana Porter disappears at a vicarage garden party and now the police are in on it?” His voice began to rise through uniquely Jewish octaves. “It’s big break country at the BBC, Gus! Today’s visit cost me three lunches. Find the bloody stupid cow!”

  Maltravers, his own emotions rising, did all he could to calm him down but without effect.

  “You find her and I want to be the second person to know,” yelled Joe. “I’ll put the Beeb off with some story but get her here!” The phone slammed down at the other end.

  When Maltravers returned to Jackson another policeman had arrived.

  “You said that was Miss Porter’s case in the hall? This officer will need a piece of her clothing from it for the dogs.”

  “Dogs? What dogs?”

  “They’re at the Dean’s at the moment and are starting a search of the garden, although with the numbers of people there I’m not too optimistic.” Jackson noticed the look of amazement on Maltravers’ face. “There’s a team of frogmen on their way to the Verta as well,” he added. “Miss Davy, would you be so kind as to open Miss Porter’s case for this officer and find something suitable?

  “The only other thing at the moment,” he continued, “is are you aware of any threats that may have been made against Miss Porter?” Maltravers shook his head. “All right, we’ll see if there’s anything in her flat or if her neighbours know anything. We’ll need full statements from you and everybody else who was at the garden party. Try to remember everything, who she talked to, anything she said. And in your case, anything from the time she arrived in Vercaster up to the time she disappeared. However insignificant, it might help. You don’t happen to have a picture of her do you?”

  “Not here. Why?”

  “Well, we’re obviously going to have to release this to the Press, although they probably have pictures on file anyway.”

  “Look, aren’t you going a bit overboard on this?” asked Maltravers.

  “It’s like your Latimer Mercy,” said Jackson. “We’re going to warn all ports to watch out for her, we’re going to inform other police forces. What do you want us to do? Shrug our shoulders and hope she’ll turn up and then discover we’ve made some dreadful error of judgement? We get a lot of stick for doing that. If it turns out that we’ve over-reacted there’s nothing lost. But there’s going to be a lot of egg on our faces if it turns out we failed to take the proper steps.”

  The rest of the morning was resonant with the increasing crescendo of the proper steps: an outraged Dean’s wife as her garden was invaded by large boots and trotting paws, balanced by a concerned and sympathetic Dean; curious sightseers watching the frogmen ruffling the slow waters of the Verta; the relentless ringing of the telephone; Joe Goldman increasingly agitated and unreasonable; Miss Targett alarmed and inquisitive; the Bishop shocked; reporters who had somehow traced Maltravers; never news of Diana.

  To provide their official statements, Maltravers and the others searched their memories for details of events they had hardly noticed, while the same process was going on throughout the diocese with all the rest of the Dean’s guests. By mid-afternoon, frustrated by his own inertia in the midst of all the activity, his initial mystification about Diana’s disappearance climbing a rising scale of worry, Maltravers was pacing the house and chain smoking.

  “What about loss of memory?” Tess said suddenly. “It happens.”

  “Now there’s something we haven’t tried,” he said. “She could be anywhere. Checked in under a false name in a Frinton guest house. Caught a plane to Outer Mongolia. Entered a bloody nunnery.”

  “I’m trying to help!” Tess snapped.

  “What sort of goddamned help is loss of memory?”

  “Stop it, the pair of you!” Melissa interrupted. “I know Diana was your friend and you’re both worried, but she was also a guest in our home and, even though we hardly knew her, we happened to like her very much. This is bad enough for everyone without you two starting a slanging match.” She glared at them as they both apologised. “That’s better. Now, it may not seem very important to you at the moment, but the festival is still going on and it’s the first of the Mystery Plays tonight. You both said you’d come and you may as well let it take your minds off all this for a while and let the police get on with their job. Now just find something to do for a couple of hours.”

  Tess went to wash her hair and have a bath while Maltravers looked in Michael’s study for a book to occupy his mind. Passing over the shelves of religious and ecclesiastical volumes, he picked up a copy of Brewer’s Phrase and Fable and flicked idly through until he spotted a section on misprinted Bibles. The Latimer Mercy theft had been completely driven from his mind but, as he read the list of variously erroneous editions, he turned over the possibility of a connection between the theft and Diana’s disappearance but could see none. His mind was still considering it as he told Melissa he was going for a stroll round the cathedral.

  He was pounced on by Miss Targett, who leapt out from behind the tourists’ shop stall as he entered the south transept, the phrases of concern, heightened by her brief meeting with Diana, rushing at him like a torrent. As he made suitable responses in what fleeting intervals she afforded him, he glanced round for a means of escape and suddenly saw the Succentor.

  “Mr Webster!” he called in desperation and relief. “I
f you have a moment? If you’ll forgive me Miss Targett, I really must…” and he made a swift retreat to where Webster was looking towards him in a puzzled manner.

  “Sorry about that,” he said as he reached him. “You were a passing means of salvation from Miss Targett.”

  Webster smiled understandingly. “She can be a little trying,” he said. “Let’s go this way.” They walked towards the Lady Chapel end of the cathedral, out of sight of Miss Targett.

  “I’ve just been giving a statement to the police about Miss Porter,” Webster continued. “I remember talking to her at the garden party but I don’t think I was able to give them any useful information. This must be dreadfully worrying for you all. What with this and the Latimer Mercy business I don’t think there have ever been so many policemen about the cathedral.”

  “I’m afraid this latest business is causing a great deal of upset all over the place,” Maltravers replied. Then, as the reason for his going to the cathedral was to try and stop dwelling on the subject of Diana, he turned the conversation back to the Latimer Mercy.

  “I’ve just been reading about misprinted Bibles and I didn’t realise there were so many,” he said. “I knew about the Wicked Bible which left ‘not’ out of the seventh Commandment, giving divine approval to adultery, but I’ve never heard of the Wife Hater Bible of 1810 which quoted…Luke was it?...as ‘If any man come to me and hate not his father and his mother, yea and his wife also’ instead of ‘life’; or the one which said ‘sin on more’ instead of ‘sin no more’. Actually the one I liked best was the Printers Bible which had David complaining ‘Printers have persecuted me without cause’ instead of ‘Princes’. I thought it would go rather well on the desk of the Editor of the Guardian.”

  Webster smiled thinly. “Yes, I expect so, although the Bible is the word of God and personally I feel that misprinted editions are regrettable.” Maltravers, remembering his reputation for sincerity, decided that further conversation on the topic would be impolite. He found clerics who could not laugh at their faith difficult.