“Is that the sarn’t’s bit of capurtle?” asked Green. “She’s not bad. Not bad at all.”
“She’d suit you,” agreed Hill. “She’s not the skinny type.”
“Get him away from her,” said Green. “He can’t compete with the matinee idol she’s got in tow.”
“Tell him yourself,” replied Hill. “He’s bringing them over.”
“Sin?” asked Green after the introductions had been made. “That’s not a bad name to have. It makes no demands. Nobody expects anything startling from a lass called Sin, an’ then when they see somebody as luscious as you, the effect’s devastating.”
His three colleagues stared in surprise. Green being gallant was something new and totally unexpected. Cynthia seemed to sense she had called forth an unusual and infrequent compliment.
“How very nice of you! My ideas concerning policemen are changing rapidly.”
“It’s in her stars,” explained Newsom. “Appreciative of authority. That’s what they say about her.”
“I’d like to be able to read the stars,” said Green. “It’d be a great help in our job.”
Newsom shook his head. “I’m not sure it would,” he said seriously. “In fact, I’m thinking of chucking it in.”
“Why?” asked Cynthia. “You only started your study about a month ago.”
Newsom accepted his drink from Brant. Masters asked quietly: “Has something frightened you, Doctor Newsom?”
Newsom nodded. “It was a joke. I thought it would be amusing to do a serious study of a fatuous subject.…”
“As a form of rebellion against what goes on in the Centre?”
“You’re a perceptive sort of character, aren’t you?”
“I’m paid to be.”
“Yes, well, I ran a cast on our three departed colleagues this morning.”
“And?”
“They overlapped. It was rubbish. Absolute rubbish, but so near the truth. What I mean is, anybody could have written it all at any time, but there was something nasty about the sixth and eighth houses of all three.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard houses mentioned in this context,” said Green. “What’s it mean?”
“Those parts of the charts dealing with specific aspects of life. In this case, health and death. The planets influencing these houses were pretty inauspicious. Saturn is death, you know, and Mars the sign of the knife. One or other figured in all three—not in exact opposition transit to their ascendants, but close enough to be uncomfortable in view of their deaths. Never a Venus or a Jupiter in sight, as it were. Nothing but what the guff calls unbenign influences. Now that’s too near the mark for the likes o’ me, rubbish or not.”
“Don’t meddle, son,” counselled Green. “A palmist once refused to read my hand because I’d got a short life-line. I was in uniform at the time and there was a war on. A pal who was with me had a life-line that said he would live long enough to get a telegram from the monarch. She told him all about it. Three weeks later he was dead. There was an OHMS telegram all right—to his parents from the War House.”
Cynthia Dexter turned to Brant. “You’ve never been to an astrologer, have you?”
“No.”
“Thank heaven for that.”
Green and Masters exchanged glances and moved away. “She’s hooked him,” growled Green. “She’s beginning to take over his welfare.”
“I came to the same conclusion.”
“It won’t work. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”
“Nothing to do with us. Let it run its course. Now, if you don’t mind coming into the dining room, let’s move. Doctor Clay has left her party and has gone in alone.”
“You mean we could share her table?”
“As to that, I think we should have to wait for an invitation. But if she is eating alone, I could use the occasion as an excuse for introducing you to her.”
Dorothy Clay made no move to invite them to join her table. She stood with a plate of food in her hand beside the seat she had chosen at an empty table and acknowledged Green monosyllabically. It was Green himself who forced the point.
“Mind if we sit with you for a minute or two, Doc? While you have your grub? A bit of different conversation’s a joy in a copper’s life. An’ a lady doctor of physics’s somebody I’ve never met before.”
“Oh! Yes … yes …”
“Fine.” Green pulled her chair out. “Sit you down.” He then took a seat himself. “You live in these barracks, yourself, do you?”
Dorothy Clay was evidently not prepared to start her meal in their presence, nor was she going to make the conversation easy. In fact it was hard work to keep the verbal ball rolling. At last Masters said: “Aren’t you going to eat, Doctor?”
“I’ll wait. A salad won’t get cold.”
Despite the chill reply, Masters went on: “In that case I’d like your opinion, Doctor.”
“What about?”
“Your three dead colleagues.”
“I know nothing about their falls. I was on all three expeditions, but I was miles away each time when they slipped.”
“Quite. I wasn’t going to ask you about their falls.”
“No? I thought you were investigating murder.”
“If murder has been done.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There is nothing to say the three men were murdered. We have to establish that there was foul play before we can regard these incidents as crimes.”
“What do you want my opinion on?”
“Just that. Were the three men killed by another’s hand?”
“How can I say?”
“You knew their characters; their strengths and weaknesses; their climbing abilities; their worries and successes at work. As a trained scientist, an expert at summing up evidence, would you say they slipped by accident? Did they commit suicide? Were they over-confident in their ability? Were they drunk? Did they lose concentration? Were the pitches unsafe—slippery after rain?”
“I would have said that probably all those things contributed in differing degrees. One may have been suicide …”
“Which one?”
“I was speaking generally.”
“I see. So you don’t think they were murdered?”
“No. The idea is preposterous.”
Green offered cigarettes across the table. “If you’re not going to eat, have a fag.” She accepted his offer. “One thing we can be sure of,” Green continued as he lit the Kensitas she had taken, “and that is that their equipment didn’t let them down.”
“I think I can assure you on that score.”
“That’s right. The Superintendent here told me that Doctor Winter let him glance into your store room. Full of praise, he was, for the lay-out and neatness and so on. He said it showed you took pretty good care of things.”
She blushed at the praise. “It is a simple system. The only practical one if you don’t want all the gear just slung in a heap. It also ensures that by handing out complete sets nobody arrives at a camp or climb without some vital piece of equipment.”
“Just like a well-run army Q store,” agreed Green. “Everything in its place. Issued against signatures and chitties. Pretty fool-proof and it means you don’t lose valuable stuff without knowing who’s responsible for losing it.”
Dorothy Clay blew out smoke and nodded agreement. She picked a speck of tobacco off her tongue with two fingers of the hand that held the cigarette.
“Don’t tell me you make your colleagues sign for what they draw up,” said Masters with a smile. “Issue ledgers and so forth.”
“I make them sign. Yes. It’s the only way. But I don’t use a ledger.”
“Oh?” Green sounded faintly disappointed.
“No. I had our printing department run me off five hundred little lists of what each set contains. Climbers sign one of these lists when they take gear. I hold the list until the gear is returned. Then they get their receipt back to destroy. That
way I have no bookwork.”
“A very efficient system,” said Masters. “Can I get you some coffee, Doctor Clay?”
“No thank you.” It was apparent the interview was at an end. They rose to their feet as she drew her plate towards her. “I must hurry as I have to get back to the lab. I had only intended to be here for a few minutes.”
“She’s cagey,” said Green, as they joined the queue at the serving counter. “Another who’s hiding something.”
“Frightened we suspect her beloved Doctor Winter, perhaps.”
“That’s what I thought. Trouble is, does she actually know something about him that she wants to keep from us, or is she just scared there might be something she doesn’t really know, but suspects?”
“Not very helpful either way, is it?”
“It could be a pointer. Her attitude, springing from whichever source, strengthens our belief that Winter is involved, and that’s damned helpful.”
“Maybe. But I’d like a few solid facts.”
“Hark who’s talking! As often as not on a case like this when I ask for facts, you turn your nose up.”
“True,” admitted Masters, holding out a plate for a serving of vegetables. “But once the thing starts to point in a definite direction—a direction we’ve inferred from deduction rather than from material fact—then we need to confirm our beliefs by tangible evidence. Here we are, fairly sure of our ground, but with nothing to back us up. Say we do look hard at Winter. What are the means, opportunity and motive?”
Green scratched one ear and followed Masters along the serving counter. “There aren’t any of ’em,” he muttered.
“Quite. Can you even suggest how they were coerced into falling off mountains?”
“Short of poison or booze, no.”
“Winter’s opportunity?”
“Seeing he was miles away at each critical time, no.”
“And his motive?”
“Well, now, that could be anything.”
“Exactly. What are we to do? Take our pick?”
Green grunted unhelpfully. As they reached their table they saw that Hill and Brant were eating at the same table as Cynthia Dexter and Gerald Newsom. Hill looked up and caught Green’s eye, acknowledging that the time had come to get back to work.
“That youngster and his stars!” said Green. “You’d think he had something better to do with his time with all this female talent about.”
“You pulled his leg about that palmist.”
“No more than you pulled Clay’s about us not knowing whether there is murder to investigate or not.”
Masters grinned. “I didn’t want to alarm her too much.”
“Rubbish. You wanted to catch her off guard, to see if she would drop Winter in the fertiliser.”
“Of course I did. Nor was I the only one. It was you who suggested she was Winter’s mistress—not to her face, but to Toinquet.”
“Do you deny it was a fair enough assumption?”
“No. But there is little point in making such an assumption—or rather, you wouldn’t have made it unless you thought we could make some use of it. Otherwise, it is only of such academic interest as not to be worthwhile commenting on these days.”
“This beef’s tough. Came off a Patagonian ox, I reckon. Bet it chased many a groucho round a tree before it got clobbered for human consumption.”
“You’re evading my point.”
“Of course I am. If I’d seen an opportunity to bring it up, I’d have been in there, punching. But she was like a clam. Sitting there not eating, with us questioning her! It just shouted police interrogation, and at police interrogations awkward questions are asked, so some people decide not to talk. The trouble was, it was not an interrogation—we couldn’t put the forcers on her.”
“What sort of an opening did you want?”
“What for? To ask a mature woman if she’s a boffin’s mistress? Or to get her to discuss Winter voluntarily?”
“The latter would be of more use to us.”
“Maybe,” admitted Green. “But if she’s besotted with the bloke, we’d have got a pretty biased view.”
“Would that have mattered?”
Green pushed his plate away. “Perhaps not—if we follow what you’re always spouting on about—turning even negative information into plus points. We’ve got it on good authority that he’s good but not startling in his work. If she’d told us he was outstanding …”
“Go on.”
“We’d have known she was laying it on.”
“And her feeling for him would have been clarified.”
“Up to a point. If we could have got a bit of pillow talk out of her—his aims and ambitions and how they’ve been thwarted, for instance—we might have learned he was jealous of these brighter, younger chaps who’ve died.”
Masters nodded. “That was my point in trying to find out how successful the Group Six project is likely to be, and who is working on which theory. If those three men were all following one line of research which looks like turning up trumps …”
“You’re right there. Bump ’em off an’ claim the credit for yourself. The bloke who does learn how to shield those reactors is going to make a name for himself. If the boss thinks he’s been passed over and it rankles, he could reckon this was his chance to put the record at what he thinks it ought to be.”
“It’s a thought. A word or two from Clay might have sufficed to turn idle speculation into something a little more concrete. Next time, perhaps.”
Green grunted and got to his feet, but he stayed by his chair.
“She must know something. Else why was she so cagey about Winter and his bets?”
“The thought had occurred to me that Winter really did stop betting because he felt guilty about Silk.”
“Meaning he has nothing to feel guilty about over the other two?”
“It could be.”
Green sucked his teeth.
“I always knew this case was going to be a bastard.”
Chapter 6
“Superintendent Masters?”
The nurse who had brought the coffee into the consulting room in the middle of the morning was waiting as Masters reached the hall of the old house after lunch.
“Yes?”
“Dr Partington asked me to find you and I really didn’t know where you were. I was asking John …” She nodded towards the custodian on duty.
“If ever you have to find me in future, always try Mr Toinquet. He usually knows where we are.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet he does.” The tone gave Masters an inkling of how Toinquet’s activities were viewed by the staff. Even by a pleasant young woman like this. She had a mature face. The sort that inspires confidence and sells goods on TV commercials. The youngish mum type who you just know will have nice kids, a nice husband and a nice house. He noticed she had nice legs, too, as she went up the stairs ahead of him. He decided that her uniform suited her.
Partington was busy filling in a number of record cards when Masters was shown in. He put them aside immediately.
“Dr William Brecon,” said Partington, “presumably referred to locally as Bill the Pill, was the gent who answered the call for medical help when Mailer fell. He’s one of the regular rescue team boys. He called through in his lunch hour.”
Masters sat down. “To say what?”
Partington referred to his desk pad. “Multiple fractures. Left arm and left leg broken. Back of rib-cage smashed in. Head injury with brain damage …”
“How would he know that on cursory examination?”
“He diagnosed it by the nystagmus.”
“Oh, lord!”
“Eye-rolling, to you. Mailer was lying on his back, seriously injured, but—as sometimes happens—his eyes were still open. Had his eyes been closed, Brecon might have guessed at heavy concussion. But as there was skull damage and the eyes were open, it was reasonable to suspect brain damage, especially as there was nystagmus which, itself, is a fair ind
ication that the brain has copped it.”
“Nothing more?”
“That’s the lot.”
Masters stretched his long legs. “Now where do I go for honey?”
“Up against it, are you?”
“Unless there was some sign of toxic substance in the body—yes.”
“The pathologist’s report will tell you that, but I’m doubtful whether there will be.”
“Me, too. The two previous post-mortems haven’t mentioned any. And this is the sort of case where I’m convinced I shan’t be third time lucky in that respect.”
“When do you expect to hear from the pathologist?”
“Later today. I’ve asked for a report from the doctor who attended him in hospital, too.”
“The one who received him was probably the Casualty Officer. A youngster doing the Sunday stint. They’re usually fairly inexperienced and always too overworked to pick up details such as you would like to hear. So don’t expect too much from that quarter.”
“I won’t.” Masters got to his feet. “Thanks for the help.”
“If it was any help, you’re entirely welcome.”
Green had decided it was time to ask some questions about Toinquet, and to this end he thought he would question the guards at the main gate. As he approached the lodge, one of the uniformed security men came out to intercept him.
“You going out on foot, Inspector? It’s a long way to the village.”
Green took an instant dislike to the man and his manner of speaking, but in the hope that he would get something useful from him, he replied urbanely enough.
“Not going out, son. I’ve come to speak to you.”
The guard’s eyes showed wariness. That alone caused Green’s old heart to sing. “Sorry, Inspector. No conversations allowed while on duty.”
“You’ve got a mate inside, haven’t you?”
“You’re not allowed in there, either. Not to gossip.”
“Look, lad, your oppo is on the phone right now to Toinquet.…”
The surprise in the guard’s eyes showed Green he had scored an easy bull.
“Tell your boss I want to speak to you two. In the line of duty. Special exception to the rules.”
Dread and Water Page 13
