The Crime and the Crystal

by E. X. Ferrars

  The young man seemed to pause unwillingly—indeed for a moment it looked as if he were considering bolting for the door—but then he turned, came to the table and held out a hand to Andrew.

  “Good evening,” he said in a tone of great politeness. “I hope you had a pleasant journey.”

  His voice was unmistakably English. Upper-class English. Perhaps even Eton.

  “This is Dudley Blair,” Jan said. “He’s been making jewellery. We sell it at the shop. Very successfully too. It’s really beautiful. You must come and see it.”

  The young man gave an uneasy smile. “I shouldn’t bother. It’s nothing special. Goodbye, Professor. I hope you enjoy your stay. Good night, Jan, and thanks again. Good night, Tony.”

  This time he made it successfully to the door, went out and closed it behind him.

  “What was that you gave him?” Tony asked.

  “Only a beach towel,” Jan answered. “I saw him on the beach the other day and the thing he called a towel was just a disgusting old rag. So I said if he’d call in this evening I’d lend him another.”

  “Lend it, did you say?” Tony said. “You’ll never see it again.”

  “Does that matter? We’ve got plenty.”

  “You let him get away with too much.”

  “Well, he needs someone to look after him. And he’s talented, you know, he really is. I might not bother about him if I didn’t think he was.”

  “He’s English, isn’t he?” Andrew said. “Where does he come from?”

  “He’s English and I believe he’s an Honourable, or something like that, though he gets annoyed if that’s ever mentioned,” Jan replied. “But I’m not sure where he actually comes from. He turned up here two or three years ago and he lives on the dole and when the mood takes him he makes some really beautiful silverwork. He used simply to give it away because he couldn’t be bothered with all the business of selling it, till Sara—Sara Massingham, she’s my boss—took him in hand and persuaded him to bring his things to her. But I don’t think he cares much about that. Suddenly he’ll disappear and just go walking about the country like an Aboriginal, all over Australia, or he’ll get a job of work, picking grapes, perhaps, and make enough extra money to keep him going for some time. He’s a strange creature, but he’s gentle and generous and I’m really very fond of him.”

  “The silly young fool smokes pot when he can get it,” Tony said.

  “So do a lot of the kids, the kind who bring their stuff in to us,” Jan answered back. “Not much, because they can’t afford it, but mostly they grow out of it before long. I suppose a few of them turn into real addicts and go on to heroin, but in general I think it’s just a phase they go through.”

  “Where do they get the stuff?” Andrew asked.

  Tony shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose the word goes around somehow. We’ve quite a drug problem in Australia. It mostly comes in from Indonesia and every so often you hear of the police making a big haul, but I suppose there are always consignments that get through.”

  Andrew thought of the dog that had sniffed his luggage at the airport, a precaution he had never encountered at Heathrow, though Britain had its drug problems too.

  “But that boy’s work is really good, is it?” he said to Jan. He thought of all the students he had known whose work at first had seemed to show great promise, but who had then obviously lost interest in it, perhaps because they found that they had chosen the wrong career, or because they wanted a shortcut to making money, or were simply lazy.

  “It will be good if he really gets down to working at it,” Jan answered, “but I’m not sure if he’s got the stamina to do that. At present, I admit, he’s still an amateur, doing things that sometimes really come off but sometimes are just a mess.”

  “Anyway, why can’t he wash his own towels?” Tony asked.

  Jan laughed. “You know you don’t mind what I give him. You rather like him yourself. You don’t mind it when I try to feed him up occasionally.”

  Jan and Tony exchanged a long look. There was amusement and a great deal of affection in her strange, over-large eyes, and after a moment he responded with a smile. Yet there was something in their attitude to one another that worried Andrew. It seemed to him that there was something artificial in it, almost as if they wanted to display their affection to make sure that he was aware of it.

  “Like it or not, I know I’ve got to put up with him,” Tony said. “Now let’s have some coffee. I’ll make it.”

  He got up and went to the kitchen end of the room, filled and plugged in a kettle and poured coffee beans into a grinder. Jan stood up too and began clearing the table and stacking the dishes and glasses in the dishwasher. Andrew tried to help, but gathered that he was only in the way. All at once his fatigue had returned and he was longing to go back to bed. Jan and Tony saw it, and as soon as the coffee had been made and he had had a cup of it they insisted that he should go. They were showing themselves to be considerate and perceptive hosts, and as presently he sank once more into sleep, it struck him how fantastic it was that their lives should ever have been darkened by the long shadow of murder.

  Next morning Jan brought Andrew his breakfast on a tray and told him that both she and Tony had to go to their work, but that they would be back, at least for a time, for lunch. In case Andrew wanted to go out during the morning for a swim she gave him a key to the house and directed him to the beach. Though he was still heavy with sleep, he thought that a swim was just what he needed. After a while, when he got up, he put on his swimming shorts and a shirt, took the key and a gaily coloured towel that Jan had put out for him, and set off for the beach.

  It was a straight, narrow stretch of sand, with Norfolk Island pines planted along its edge, their dark cone shapes making them look like a row of watchful, uniformed sentinels. Where there had once been dunes and now were bungalows a rocky wall had been built to keep the sand at bay. The sea was calm, with the small breakers along its edge sending only a light frill of foam up the beach.

  There were not many people about. Some children were playing cricket and during the next few days Andrew discovered that at whatever time he arrived for a swim there were always children playing cricket. There was also a steady procession of joggers, who, like all joggers, had melancholy faces, their expressions inward-looking and detached from everyday life. There were also a number of people walking dogs, though a notice beside the steps that led down from the road to the sandy shore stated that dogs were not permitted on the beach.

  A day after his arrival one of these dogs, which seemed to have lost its owner, took a deep interest in Andrew as he stretched himself out on the beach after a swim. The animal planted itself about six feet away and simply stared at him. Andrew attempted exchanging greetings with it. It did not respond but only went on staring. It made Andrew wonder if the animal did not understand English and was the pet of one of the Greek or Italian families who had recently settled in Australia. But the probability was, he thought, as at last the dog got up and walked away, that in spite of the showers that he had had and the number of times that he had been into the sea, strange foreign smells still lingered about his person in which the dog had been interested.

  Yet already, Andrew realized, he did not feel foreign. Later in the day he took a walk along the main street of Betty Hill, where there were shops, a great many of them for takeaway foods, and restaurants and a hotel or two. There were also a remarkable number of obese people. They were of all ages, from the adolescent to the elderly, and surprised him because he had always had a picture in his mind of Australians as lean, stringy people, as their soldiers had been, muscular and tough. Perhaps, he thought, such people were to be found in other parts of the country among miners and graziers and sheep-shearers. But in the clement air of Betty Hill, ideal for tourists, which was plainly what most of these people were, they certainly did seem to run to fat.

  Going into a stationer’s, he bought a newspaper, and the man who sold it to him inst
ructed him kindly to have a nice weekend. Andrew thanked him and made his way back to the Gardiners’ bungalow.

  He had a very nice weekend. Since Tony and Jan did not have to go to their work on Saturday or Sunday, they joined him in his morning swim, then on Saturday afternoon took him strolling through the Botanic Garden in the city, where he made his first acquaintance with the enormous Morton Bay figs. Two rows of them made a shady avenue and were so grotesquely shaped that they reminded him of Arthur Rackham trees that he had seen in picture books in his childhood, from the roots of which gnomes, or it might be good fairies with wands and wings, would suddenly pop out to impart secrets much to the advantage of some wandering prince.

  There was a lily pond with great pink lilies just coming into flower and there were trees which at a slight distance looked like commonplace conifers, but, on being approached, revealed themselves as belonging to the enormous family of eucalypts and as being quite unlike anything ever seen in Europe. For almost the first time Andrew began to feel how very far away Europe was. The twenty-four hours that he had spent in the plane began to take on a new meaning. A world that was really intensely strange to him, even if its inhabitants behaved and spoke in ways that were more or less familiar, was spread out round him and delighted him.

  Next day, after swimming and eating lunch in the garden, Tony and Jan took him for a drive into the hills that surrounded Adelaide. They took him to the top of Mount Lofty, which had been the highest point that had been seen from the sea by some early explorers, and because of this had been given its name. On the way they passed a number of burnt-out shells of houses which had succumbed to a raging fire the year before. Whole hillsides had been turned black in that disaster when fires had swept down to the very edges of the city. But it was amazing and encouraging to see that trees were already beginning to regenerate and had tufts of green appearing on their blackened trunks.

  At the top of Mount Lofty the three of them got out of the car and stood looking across the great sweep of fertile countryside, with Adelaide in the distance and a narrow blue ribbon of sea beyond it. Andrew thought how good it was to experience the sense of sheer spaciousness that this country gave you. When he was at home and had had more than he wanted of the company of his fellow creatures, there was nothing that he could do but retire into the small private world of his flat and make sure that he had closed the door behind him. But here it would be easy to discover all kinds of splendid solitudes. The thought thrilled him, even though he knew that the truth about himself was that he was able to endure isolation happily for only a few days at a time. He was really a gregarious man and would not for anything have lived anywhere but in London.

  He enjoyed these trips, yet there was something about them that had produced a curious discomfort in him. It was the sense he had of a strange tension between Jan and Tony. They were restrained with one another in a manner that was not in the least typical of Tony, who was normally a forthcoming, self-confident young man. He seemed to Andrew now to be acting the part of a happy man rather than being one simply and naturally. Jan seemed more genuinely contented, yet even she sometimes cast sidelong glances at her husband, as if she were anxious about the impression that she was making on him.

  Tony gave no sign of having observed the glances and always treated her with a loving gentleness that should have reassured her, except for the fact that it did not seem wholly spontaneous. Andrew tried to convince himself that he was mistaken in what he thought he perceived, but the suspicion that he was not would not leave him. He enjoyed Tony’s company most when he had him to himself. Then Tony talked about his work, as he had in the old days, grew enthusiastic and seemed to forget that he had problems unrelated to it on his mind.

  The day after the trip to Mount Lofty, Jan and Tony went back to work and Andrew went down to the beach alone. The tide was low, which meant that when he went into the sea to swim he had first to walk a long way before the water was even up to his thighs. But at that point he plunged in and swam straight out to sea, still finding the slope of the sand under him so gradual that he had swum as far as he wanted before he was out of his depth. Presently he returned to the beach, spread out the gaily coloured towel that Jan had given him and lay down on it to enjoy the sunshine.

  The sun had already caught him a little. His skin was tingling and he supposed that he ought to be careful not to overdo it or he would find himself roasted and peeling. But he thought it too pleasant there, stimulated by the swim and relaxing after it, to think of putting on his shirt as a protective measure. Slipping into a dreamy sense of well-being, he might have dozed if he had not suddenly been roused by the sound of an aeroplane somewhere surprisingly close overhead.

  Opening his eyes, he looked up. A very small aeroplane was flying low down, parallel to the beach. It had a long trailer behind it which had on it an advertisement for somebody’s rum as well as the statement that it was a shark patrol. Sharks. No one had said anything about them to Andrew since he had arrived at Betty Hill, which meant, he supposed, that they could not be any very serious menace. He would try to remember to ask Jan and Tony about it and was about to turn over and give his back a dose of sunshine when a jogger passed close to him, and he was almost sure that it was Dudley Blair.

  The reason that Andrew was not quite sure about this was that when he had seen the young man before he had taken more notice of his clothes than of his features. He would have recognized the disintegrating pullover anywhere. But this figure, tall and emaciated enough to be Dudley Blair, with ribs showing almost bare of flesh in his chest, was wearing only the briefest of shorts. True, they were dirty enough to be what he was likely to wear and he was barefooted, but he had passed Andrew too quickly for him to see if this man had varnish on his toenails.

  He looked as sad as most joggers do, with his thoughts withdrawn into some private world which for certain was not very inspiriting, or it would not have made him look so gravely remote from the scene around him. He either did not see Andrew or did not recognize him.

  Soon after he had gone by, Andrew had a second swim, and when he returned to where he had left his towel and shoes saw to his surprise that Jan was sitting there. She had left for work at the usual time that morning and was not due home for lunch for another hour.

  “Hallo,” he said. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I recognized the towel.” She had just lit a cigarette. Moving a little, she made room for him to sit down on the towel too. “Have you had a nice morning?”

  “Fine,” he said as he sat down. “Tell me, are there sharks in these waters?”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Then why do they have a shark patrol?”

  “I don’t know. They’ve had one ever since I’ve lived here, but I’ve never heard of one being sighted.”

  “What would they do if they did spot one?”

  “I believe they sound a siren.”

  “What kind of siren?” He thought of sirens in the war, the alarmist sound of the one that warned of the enemy approaching and the peace-bringing sound of the all-clear. “Would one be able to tell the difference between it and an ambulance, say, or police or a fire engine?”

  “I really don’t know. I’ve never heard one.” She smiled at him. “But I don’t think you need worry.”

  “I’m not worrying, I’m just curious,” Andrew said. “You’re home early, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I—I’ve had an upsetting morning and I thought I’d come home.”

  “I’m sorry. Was it anything serious?”

  “I suppose so, yes. Yes, of course it was.” She picked up a pebble and began to draw lines on the sand with it, looking at the result as if she were really concentrating on it. “That bloody man has been pestering me again. He goes on and on.” She tossed the pebble aside. “Why can’t he leave me alone?”

  “Do you mean someone from the police?”

  She gave a slight nod of her head.

  “And they�
�ve been questioning you again about the death of your first husband?”

  She closed her lips so firmly that it looked as if she did not intend to answer, but then she nodded again. Her fair ponytail bobbed up and down. Andrew realized that she was very near tears.

  “But do you mean the man came to the shop and cornered you there among your friends?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s what he did. Sergeant Ross. But I told him I wouldn’t say a thing to him there. If he wanted to talk to me he’d got to come to the house where we could be by ourselves. So he said, ‘All right,’ and that’s where we’ve been for the last hour, till I couldn’t stand it any more and told him to go. He really hadn’t anything new to say to me, it’s just that he thinks that if he goes on and on doing this sort of thing, I’ll break down and tell him something that matters. I won’t, because there’s nothing to tell, but sometimes I feel like making something up, just to stop him doing this kind of thing. Perhaps he’s counting on that happening, because then he could say he’d solved the case and forget all about it. It wouldn’t matter to him that it wasn’t true.”

  Andrew supposed that that kind of thing could happen, though he was inclined to believe that it did so less often than it had recently become fashionable to think.

  “Has this man any special reason for coming to see you today?” he asked.

  She looked thoughtful, as if she were not really sure that she wanted to take him into her confidence. She drew almost fiercely on her cigarette. Then she said, “Tony told you the whole story when you got here, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Of course, I don’t know how much he may have left out.”

  “No.” She had picked up another pebble and was drawing a strange, abstract pattern with it on the sand. “Did he tell you about my alibi?”

  “I rather gathered you hadn’t got one.”

  “That’s right. But it wouldn’t have been if that old devil, Preston, had told the truth. He runs a hardware store in Hartwell. And that morning—the morning Luke was killed—I went into the shop and I bought some plastic bags for the freezer. I did that about nine o’clock, then I walked home. Luke had dropped me off at the store, then driven on to the quarry. And if Preston had told the truth about when I went into his place, they’d know I couldn’t possibly have done the murder, because even if I’d really driven to the quarry with Luke, how could I have got back to the shop almost as soon as it opened? But Preston’s stuck to it all along that I didn’t go into the shop till about twelve o’clock, which simply isn’t true. But if it were, you see, it means that I could just conceivably have done the murder, walked back at high speed—it would be about a three hours’ walk—and then done my shopping.”