A Six-Letter Word for Death

by Patricia Moyes

  “Your guest, sir?” The boy’s eyes grew round with wonder and delight.

  “Yes. And afterwards I’ll have somebody show you around the Yard if you’d like that.”

  “Oh, yes, please, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Several eyebrows were raised at the sight of Detective Chief Superintendent Tibbett treating a shabbily dressed youth to lunch at Scotland Yard, but any amused questioners were simply told that the boy was a key witness.

  Meanwhile, in his office, Henry had no little satisfaction in sending a constable to bring Mr. Grafton and the headwaiter of the Explorers Club to the Yard for questioning. It took very little to get the truth out of them, once they heard of Perkins’s treachery. Each admitted to having received a “small honorarium” from Professor Vandike for what seemed no more than a harmless prank. Henry berated them soundly, frightened them badly, and finally let them go with their tails between their legs. It made him feel better, but got him no further in real terms. The question remained—where was Harold Vandike?

  Later, the superintendent from Wales called. Vandike and his young friend had arrived ten days previously at the Mountainside Hotel. They had come by train, and had been driven to the hotel in the local taxi. The young man, Talbot, was wearing tweeds, and the professor a dark gray suit. Each had had a large suitcase and a knapsack. Since then, they had been out climbing every day, dressed in regulation climbing gear—they seemed well equipped—and had changed into informal clothes for dinner. Nobody had seen Vandike leave the hotel on Tuesday morning, as he was up and off early. His luggage was still at the hotel, but there was no sign of the gray suit. His climbing gear and clothes were missing, as might be expected. Also his knapsack.

  The hotel, a favorite resort for climbers, stood at the foot of the mountain, and no transport was necessary to reach the most popular climbs. However, the hotel maintained a fleet of bicycles for the convenience of guests. Nobody at the railway station remembered the professor boarding the early train for London, but the small station was deserted at that hour, apart from the ticket clerk in his little cubicle, and if Vandike had had a return ticket, he might well not have been seen. The search parties were continuing.

  “Last time I told you to call them off,” said Henry, “I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that I was right. Now I am.” He outlined his recent interviews with the employees of the Explorers Club. “So for heaven’s sake don’t risk any more lives or injuries. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.” The superintendent paused and then said, “Must be a proper joker, this professor chap, to go to all that trouble just for a leg-pull.”

  “I don’t think,” said Henry, “that this was just a leg-pull.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HENRY WAS IN a state of indecision. He had work to do at Scotland Yard, and he did not want to waste any more days of his precious leave allowance. A chief superintendent of the C.I.D. had no business shoving his nose into the disappearance of a mountaineering professor, a disappearance that was in any case being handled by the local force. It was much later in the afternoon when he had an idea. There was no danger in it, after all. Just some discreet inquiries that might help. He telephoned Emmy.

  “Will you do something for me, darling?”

  “Of course. Anything that I can.” Emmy sounded surprised.

  “Then telephone the Mountainside Hotel at Aberpriddy and book a room for a couple of nights, starting tomorrow. Pack a suitcase with a few essentials and look up the trains—no, better still, ask the hotel. They’re bound to know the best way to get there from London. You’re off on a short holiday.”

  “Alone?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’ll explain this evening what I want you to do.”

  Henry then telephoned his friend the superintendent at Aberwithy—the small town whose police area included Aberpriddy—and explained the somewhat unusual situation: that Mrs. Tibbett was coming to the Mountainside purely as a visitor, but with instructions to keep her eyes and ears open. She might, Henry remarked soothingly, be able to pick up information that a local policeman could not. On the other hand, she might possibly need some assistance, and if she did…

  “She’ll call me, of course, sir,” said the superintendent promptly. “I much look forward to meeting your lady. Just tell her to ask for Superintendent Evans.”

  The next morning, Emmy set out by train at the indecently early hour of half past six, and having passed through Reading, Bristol, and the Severn Tunnel, and changed twice at small junctions with long names that seemed to consist entirely of L’s and W’s, she arrived at Aberpriddy Halt at midday, just as Harry Vandike and Roger Talbot had done two weeks earlier. Like them, she took the only taxi from the station to the Mountainside Hotel.

  For a Welshman, the driver was garrulous. “Was you ever hearing such a terrible thing as the poor professor? Rode in this very cab, sitting where you are now, very smart in his London suit,” he began with some relish.

  “You know him quite well, do you?” Emmy ventured.

  “Knew him. Ah, knew him. He’s no more, and we’ll not see his like again.”

  “You think there’s no hope, then?”

  “Not from Devil’s Chimney. They say the devil claims one man’s life in each ten years. It was due.” The driver hardly seemed in a merry mood. Emmy pressed on.

  “What I mean is, Professor Vandike used to come here often?”

  “Every year. Every year since I left the pits and took to my taxi, which is ten if it’s a day.”

  “And he was an expert climber?”

  “He…” the driver was suddenly silent. Then he said, “You one of these journalists, then?”

  “No, no,” Emmy assured him.

  “That’s good. We don’t want any of them in the valley.” But all the same, the driver unaccountably clammed up, and no more was said until the wheezing vehicle drew up outside the forbidding gray stone building that was the Mountainside Hotel.

  Emmy obtained a room with no difficulty. Professor Vandike’s accident had evidently put a damper on business, since the clientele consisted entirely of climbers. That Emmy should have arrived on her own, without climbing gear, was enough to set the village talking, and the taxi driver’s suspicion that she might be a newspaperwoman in disguise was widely held. However, by sitting quietly in a corner of the bar before lunch, and at an inconspicuous table in the dining room during it, she was able to sample a slice of local gossip.

  Two things emerged. One was that Professor Vandike had been well known and admired, but not greatly liked. His constantly changing retinue of young men was looked at askance. The second fact was that his death was taken absolutely for granted. More than once she heard the story of the devil exacting his due of a human life each decade, and people were already talking about the second cross to be erected near the ravine.

  She also learned that Roger Talbot, Vandike’s young friend, had left the previous day to complete his vacation elsewhere. He had been very upset and, not surprisingly, had lost his enthusiasm for mountain climbing. He had also, apparently, lost his driving license, which had annoyed him greatly, even though he was leaving Aberpriddy by train.

  “Going on as if we had something to do with it,” remarked the proprietress to Emmy tartly. “My belief is he left it at home, and home’s where he’ll find it. I didn’t want to bother you before you’d had your dinner, Mrs. Tibbett, but I’d be grateful if you’d look into the office and sign the register when you have time.”

  This was a moment that Emmy had been waiting for. After lunch the office was quiet and there was no sign of Mrs. Jenkins, the proprietress, whose sharp little black eyes missed nothing. A bored teenaged girl pushed the guest register over the desk to Emmy, and returned to her magazine.

  Quickly, Emmy flipped back the pages. There were the two signatures. Harry Vandike had penned his name in an illegible but characteristic scrawl, but immediately underneath it, Roger Talbot had signed in a fine italic hand. Obviously he was a student of ca
lligraphy.

  The girl looked up from her love story, and Emmy quickly turned to the current page of the register and wrote her own entry. Then she said, “I thought I might hire a car while I’m here. Can you tell me how to set about it?”

  The girl looked at her as if she thought Emmy were mad. “People don’t hire cars here,” she said. “They go climbing. Or bicycle. The hotel has bicycles.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  Not wishing to telephone from the hotel, Emmy walked down to the village. It was a depressing little place, gray and dark and dwarfed by the majestic but menacing mountains around it. A place to eat and sleep in, and then to get away from, up to the summits and the sun.

  Little shops sold souvenirs but didn’t seem to have their hearts in it. There was the usual grocery and butcher’s shop. The only prosperous-looking establishments were the ones that sold and rented climbing gear and equipment, and the pharmacy, which provided first aid to wounded mountaineers. However, there was a post office, and outside it a public call box. Emmy went in and dialed the number of Superintendent Evans in Aberwithy.

  Evans was all affability, and told Emmy at once that a world-famous car-rental firm had an office in the town. He suggested that she should take the bus (“Stops right outside the post office”) for the ten-minute drive. “You could take the train,” he added, “just one stop, but there’s none till this evening.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Will you be wanting help from the force, madam?”

  “I don’t know,” said Emmy. “I’ll try to manage on my own. But I’d very much like to come and meet you, if I may.”

  “Of course, madam. Of course. I’ll be in my office. Anybody will direct you.”

  Emmy was lucky. A bus arrived within a few minutes, and the car-rental office was empty except for a girl in a bright green uniform. They had plenty of cars. The summer season was ending, and trade was very slow. The girl gave Emmy the details and prices.

  Thumbing through the catalogue, Emmy remarked, “Tragic business about Professor Vandike, wasn’t it?”

  “Vandike? Oh, the chap who fell off the mountain. Well, they will do it. Bring it on themselves, if you ask me…” Aberwithy was evidently not taking the affair to heart in the same way as Aberpriddy.

  “I believe he hired a car from you while he was here,” said Emmy.

  The green-uniformed girl looked surprised. “Vandike? Oh, I don’t think so. We don’t get people from Aberpriddy. Climbing’s all they think of.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. Well, I’d like a Fiat Panda for twenty-four hours—now until tomorrow afternoon. What do I have to do?”

  “Just fill in this form and show me your driving license. Got a credit card? Good, you won’t have to pay a deposit.” The girl pushed a complicated-looking form toward Emmy, who, in turn, fished her driving license out of her handbag.

  British driving licenses must be among the last in the world that do not require a photograph of the holder. However, they have to be signed, and for this reason, car-rental firms scrutinize the signature on the form carefully to make sure it matches the one on the license.

  When the formalities had been completed and Emmy had the keys of the car in her hand, she said, “I was recommended to you by a friend of mine—Mr. Roger Talbot. I think he hired a car last week.”

  “Not that I know of. But then, I was on my holiday.”

  “Oh, I see…thank you.”

  Emmy drove the Panda to the parking lot in the middle of the small town, and then made her way on foot to the police station.

  The superintendent seemed genuinely delighted to see her. He immediately agreed to her request to speak to Henry at the Yard.

  “Henry? I’m in Superintendent Evans’s office. I’ve hired a car—there’s only one firm. The girl knew nothing about Vandike, but she was on holiday last week, so that doesn’t help. I also mentioned Roger Talbot, but that didn’t ring a bell either.”

  “Why did you mention him?” Henry asked, surprised.

  Emmy said, “I saw their signatures in the hotel register. Vandike’s is the usual scribble, but Roger Talbot’s is in that italic script—”

  “The same as the crossword clues!”

  “Exactly. And he left the hotel yesterday complaining that he had lost his driving license!”

  “How very interesting,” said Henry. “Anything else?”

  “Not much. Everybody assumes that Vandike is dead, and that his body will never be found. There’s a superstition that the Devil’s Chimney claims a life every ten years, and one was due. Oh—and the hotel has bicycles, which they lend to their visitors. Just a moment, the superintendent wants to say something…”

  “Then put him on the line, will you, darling? And then get back to me yourself.”

  “Okay. Superintendent?” Emmy handed over the phone.

  Quickly, and with some excitement, Evans said, “Mrs. Tibbett mentioned the hotel bicycles, sir. Well, they reported one missing, maybe stolen, on Wednesday last. We found it that same day in the parking lot here in town. It never crossed my mind until—”

  “Why should it have?” said Henry. “But it’s interesting all the same, don’t you think? Now, my wife has done her best with these car-rental people, but we’ll need your help. I don’t want to get them alarmed. You’d better send a uniformed constable around to the office with a story about hired-car thefts. The main thing is to be able to take a look at the records for last week. I want to know if a car was hired out to a Mr. Roger Talbot, and if so, get his license number and a good look at his signature, and make a report. I know you can’t describe a signature, but I think this one may be distinctive. Do you know what’s called the italic hand?”

  Evans looked blank. “Something they write in Italy, would it be, sir?”

  “No. It’s a sort of formal and very flowery handwriting, like a…like you get on a diploma or a citation or something. I think Roger Talbot’s signature may be something like that. Now what’s become of Professor Vandike’s belongings?”

  “As far as I know, the hotel has them, sir. Officially, you see, we haven’t given up hope…and anyway, we don’t know the next of kin.”

  “Find a pretext and go through them,” said Henry.

  “Looking for something special, sir?”

  “Yes. His driving license.”

  “That’s all, sir?”

  “That’s all,” said Henry, “unless, of course, you come across anything else interesting. An inventory would be useful. My wife will come and see you tomorrow before she leaves, and she can bring it.”

  “Right, sir. I’ll put you on to Mrs. Tibbett again.”

  Emmy said, “I’m afraid I haven’t been able to do much, darling.”

  “You’ve done a great deal.”

  “Nothing that Superintendent Evans couldn’t have—”

  “Ah, but you did it privately, anonymously. Now take a drive, enjoy the scenery, and spend the night at the hotel. Tomorrow afternoon, hand back the car, get whatever data the superintendent has been able to muster, and come home. It’ll probably mean a night journey. Did the hotel give you a rail timetable?”

  “Yes, they did. Wait a moment, I think it’s in my bag. Yes, here it is. Aberpriddy Halt, 6:15 P.M. Aberwithy, 6:22. Change at those unpronounceable places. Leave Bristol 8:30, arrive London, Paddington, 1:20 A.M. That seems to be it.”

  “I’ll meet you at the train,” Henry said, “unless I hear from you.”

  “Oh, Henry, that’s not necessary. I’ll just take a cab—”

  “I’ll meet you,” said Henry firmly. “I hope we’ve been able to do this unobtrusively, but you can never be sure.”

  “It all sounds to me,” Emmy said, “like another of Harry Vandike’s little practical jokes.”

  “I hope it is,” said Henry. “But I’m afraid this time the joke may be on him. See you tomorrow night. Take care.”

  Emmy spent an enjoyable couple of hours driving up to a beautiful spot recommended by Evans and admi
ring the glory of a mountain sunset. Then she went back to the hotel.

  The bar was deserted, having only just opened. Mrs. Jenkins herself was presiding behind it in obvious boredom. “That Mary’s late again. I don’t know what young people are coming to.” She seemed glad of a chat with Emmy, agreeing to join her in a half-pint of bitter.

  “Thank you very much, my dear. I hope you had a pleasant day.”

  “Very,” said Emmy. “I hired a car and drove up to St. David’s Rock.”

  “Beautiful view from there,” remarked Mrs. Jenkins. Then, after a pause, “I thought you might have been to look at Devil’s Chimney. Not to climb it, I mean—oh, goodness me, no. But to get a story for your newspaper.”

  “Newspaper?”

  Mrs. Jenkins leaned confidentially across the bar. “Now, dear, you can’t fool me. People don’t come to this hotel except to climb, and you’re not one of those. Well, you’ll not find out a lot about poor Professor Vandike, but you can always send them what’s called an atmosphere piece, can’t you? But there’s no sense in thinking he’ll come back, because he won’t. Not from the Chimney, not after all this time.”

  It suddenly occurred to Emmy that it might be useful not to deny that she was a journalist. She gave a rueful smile and said, “Well, Mrs. Jenkins, you seem to have found me out. Now that we’re alone for a moment, is there anything you can tell me about the professor that might be useful to me?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, useful or not,” said Mrs. Jenkins, snappily. “His bill’s not been paid, and all his things are still in the room. The young gentleman, Mr. Talbot, he took his own stuff, of course, but what am I to do with Professor Vandike’s things, that’s what I’d like to know. Suppose I want to let the room again? Well, I know we’re not full, but it’s the best room in the hotel, and some of our regulars are very particular about having it.” She paused for breath and a drink of beer. “I’ve a good mind to ask the police to come and take them away. After all, they’d keep them safe, wouldn’t they, in case he did come back—which he won’t.”