Clutch of Constables ra-25

by Ngaio Marsh

  “But who says this is a Jampot affair, may I ask?” Alleyn crossly interjected.

  “The A.C. works it out that this job up here, this river job, ought properly to be regarded as a possible lead on Foljambe. On account of the Andropulos connection. Having been made a monkey of,” Fox added with feeling, “by a faked-up false scent to Paris, I don’t say I reacted with enthusiasm to his theories but you have to look at these things with what I’ve heard you call a disparate eye.”

  “I entirely agree. And that, under the circumstances is something I cannot be expected to do. Look here, Fox. Here’s Troy, one of a group of people who, if this woman was murdered, and I’ll bet she was, come into the field of police investigation: right?”

  “The A.C. says it’ll be nicer for you to be here with her.”

  “That be damned! What? Me? Needle my wife? Give her the old one-two treatment if she doesn’t provide all the answers? Nicer?”

  “It won’t,” Fox said, “be as bad as that now, will it?”

  “I can’t tell you how much I dislike having her mixed up in any of our shows. I came here to get her out of it. Not to take on a bloody homicide job.”

  “I know that. It’s a natural reaction,” Mr Fox said. “Both of you being what you are.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “Suppose you didn’t take the case, Mr Alleyn. What’s the drill on that one? Somebody else comes up from the Yard and you hand him the file. And is his face red! He goes ahead and you clear out leaving Mrs Alleyn here to get through the routine as best she can.”

  “You know damn’ well that’s grotesque.”

  “Well, Mr Alleyn, the alternative’s not to your fancy either, is it?”

  “If you put it like that the only thing that remains for me to do is to retire in a hurry and to hell with the pension.”

  “Oh, now! Come, come!”

  “All right. All right. I’m unreasonable under this heading and we both know it.”

  Fox mildly contemplated his superior officer. “I can see it’s awkward,” he said. “It’s not what we’d choose. You’re thinking about her position and how it’ll appear to others and what say the Press get on to it, I daresay. But if you ask me it won’t be so bad. It’s only until the inquest.”

  “And in the meantime what’s the form? We’ve issued orders that they’re all to stay in that damned boat tonight, one of them almost certainly being the Rickerby-Carrick’s murderer and just possibly the toughest proposition in homicide on either side of the Atlantic. I can’t withdraw my wife and insist on keeping the others there. Well, can I? Can I?”

  “It might be awkward,” said Fox. “But you could.”

  They fell silent and as people do when they come to a blank wall in a conversation, stared vaguely about them. A lark sang, a faint breeze lifted the long grass and in the excavation below the wapentake, sand and gravel fell with a whisper of sound from the grassy overhang.

  “That’s very dangerous,” Fox said absently. “That place. Kids might get in there. If they interfered with those props, anything could happen.” He stood up, eased his legs and looked down at The River. It was masked by a rising mist.

  The Zodiac was moored for the night some distance above Ramsdyke Lock. The passengers were having their dinner, Mr Tillottson and his sergeant being provided for at an extra table. Alleyn had had a moment or two with Troy and had suggested that she might slip away and join them if an opportunity presented itself. If, however, she could not do so without attracting a lot of attention she was to go early to bed and lock her door. He would come to her later and she was to unlock it to nobody else. To which she had replied: “Well, naturally,” and he had said she knew damned well what he meant and they had broken into highly inappropriate laughter. He and Fox had then walked up to the wapentake where at least they were able to converse above a mutter.

  “There is,” Alleyn said, “a vacant cabin, of course. Now.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I tell you what, Fox. We’ll have a word with the Skipper and take it over. We’ll search and we’ll need a warrant.”

  “I picked one up on my way from the beak at Tollardwark. He didn’t altogether see it but changed his mind when I talked about the Foljambe connection.”

  “As well he might. One of us could doss down in the cabin for the night if there’s any chance of a bit of kip which is not likely. It’d be a safety measure.”

  “You,” said Fox, “if it suits. I’ve dumped a homicide bag at the Ramsdyke Arms.”

  “Tillottson kept his head and had the cabin locked. He says it’s full of junk. We’ll get the key off him. Look who’s here.”

  It was Troy, coming into the field from Dyke Way by the top gate. Alleyn thought: “I wonder how rare it is for a man’s heart to behave as mine does at the unexpected sight of his wife.”

  Fox said: “I’ll nip along to the pub, shall I, and settle for my room and bring back your kit and something to eat. Then you can relieve Tillottson and start on the cabin. Will I ring the Yard and get the boys sent up?”

  “Yes,” Alleyn said. “Yes. Better do that. Thank you, Br’er Fox.” By “the boys” Mr Fox meant Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, finger-print and photograph experts, who normally worked with Alleyn.

  “We’ll need a patrol,” Alleyn said, “along the river from Tollard Lock to where she was found and we’ll have to make a complete and no doubt fruitless search of the tow-path and surroundings. You’d better get on to that, Fox. Take the Sergeant with you. Particular attention to the moorings at Crossdyke and the area round Ramsdyke weir.”

  “Right, I’ll be off, then.”

  He started up the hill towards Troy looking, as always, exactly what he was. An incongruous figure was Mr Fox in that still medieval landscape. They met and spoke and Fox moved on to the gate.

  Alleyn watched Troy come down the hill and went out of the wapentake to meet her.

  “They’ve all gone ashore,” she said, “I think to talk about me. Except Dr Natouche who’s putting finishing touches to his map. They’re sitting in a huddle in the middle-distance of the view that inspired my original remark about Constables. I expect you must push on with routine mustn’t you? What haven’t I told you that you ought to know? Should I fill you in, as Miss Hewson would say, on some of the details?”

  “Yes, darling, fill me in, do. I’ll ask questions, shall I? It might be quickest. And you add anything—anything at all—that you think might be, however remotely, to the point. Shall we go?”

  “Fire ahead,” said Troy.

  During this process Troy’s answers became more and more staccato and her face grew progressively whiter. Alleyn watched her with an attentiveness that she wondered if she dreaded and knew that she loved. She answered his final question and said in a voice that sounded shrilly in her own ears: “There. Now you know as much as I do. See.”

  “What is it?” he asked. “Tell me.”

  “She scratched on my door,” Troy said. “And when I opened it she’d gone away. She wanted to tell me something and I let Mr Lazenby rescue me because I had a migraine and because she was such a bore. She was unhappy and who can tell what might have been the outcome if I’d let her confide? Who can tell that?”

  “I think I can. I don’t believe—and I promise you this—I don’t believe it would have made the smallest difference to what happened to her. And I’ll promise you as well, that if it turns out otherwise I shall say so.”

  “I can’t forgive myself.”

  “Yes, you can. Is one never to run away from a bore for fear she’ll be murdered?”

  “Oh Rory.”

  “All right, darling. I know. And I tell you what—I’m glad you had your migraine and I’m bloody glad she didn’t talk to you. Now, then. Better?”

  “A bit.”

  “Good. One more question. That junk-shop in Tollardwark where you encountered the Hewsons. Did you notice the name of the street?”

  “I think i
t was Ferry Lane.”

  “You wouldn’t know the name of the shop?”

  “No,” Troy said doubtfully. “It was so dark. I don’t think I saw. But—wait a bit—yes: on a very dilapidated little sign in Dr Natouche’s torchlight. ‘Jno. Bagg: Licensed Dealer’.”

  “Good. And it was there they made their haul?”

  “That’s right. They went back there from Longminster. Yesterday.”

  “Do you think it might be a Constable?”

  “I’ve no idea. It’s in his manner and it’s extremely well painted.”

  “What was the general reaction to the find?”

  “The Hewsons are going to show it to an expert. If it’s genuine I think they plan to come back and scour the district for more. I rather fancy Lazenby’s got the same idea.”

  “And you’ve doubts about him being a parson?”

  “Yes. I don’t know why.”

  “No eye in the left socket?”

  “It was only a glimpse but I think so. Rory—?”

  “Yes?”

  “The man who killed Andropulos — Foljambe — the Jampot. Do you know what he looks like?”

  “Not really. We’ve got a photograph but Santa Claus isn’t more heavily bearded and his hair, which looks fairish, covers his ears. It was taken over two years ago and is not a credit to the Bolivian photographer. He had both his eyes then but we have heard indirectly that he received some sort of injury after he escaped and lay doggo with it for a time. One report was that it was facial and another that it wasn’t. There was a third rumour thought to have originated in the South that he’d undergone an operation to change his appearance but none of this stuff was dependable. We think it likely that there is some sort of physical abnormality.”

  “Please tell me, Rory. Please. Do you think he’s on board?”

  And because Alleyn didn’t at once protest, she said: “You do. Don’t you? Why?”

  “Before I got here, I would have said there was no solid reason to suppose it. On your letters and on general circumstances. Now, I’m less sure.”

  “Is it because of — have you seen…?”

  “The body? Yes, it’s largely because of that.”

  “Then — what—?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy. I don’t think they’ll find she drowned, Troy. I think she was killed in precisely the same way as Andropulos was killed. And I think it was done by the Jampot.”

  Chapter 7 – Routine

  “And so,” Alleyn said, “we set up the appropriate routine and went to work in the usual way. Tillottson was under-staffed—the familiar story—but he was able to let us have half a dozen uniformed men. He and the Super at Longminster—Mr Bonney—did all they could to co-operate. But once we’d caught that whiff of the Jampot it became essentially our job with strong European and American connections.

  “We did a big line with Interpol and the appropriate countries but although they were dead keen they weren’t all that much of a help. Throughout his lamentable career the Jampot had only made one blunder: and that, as far as we could ferret it out, was because an associate at the Bolivian end of his drug racket had grassed. The associate was found dead by quick attack from behind on the carotids: the method that Foljambe had certainly employed in Paris and was later to employ upon the wretched Andropulos. But for reasons about which the Bolivian police were uncommonly cagey, the Jampot was not accused by them of murder but of smuggling. Bribery is a little word we are not supposed to use when in communication with our brothers in anti-crime.

  “It’s worth noticing that whereas other big-shots in his world employ their staffs of salaried killers the Jampot believes in the do-it-yourself kit and is unique in this as in many other respects.

  “Apart from routine field-work the immediate task, as I saw it, was to lay out the bits of information as provided by my wife and try to discover which fitted and which were extraneous. I suggest that you treat yourselves to the same exercise.”

  The man in the second row could almost be seen to lay back his ears.

  “We found nothing to help us on deck,” continued Alleyn. “Her mattress had been deflated and stowed away and so had her blankets and the deck had been hosed down in the normal course of routine.

  “But the tow-path and adjacent terrain turned up a show of colour. At the Crossdyke end, and you’ll remember it was during the night at Crossdyke that the murdered woman disappeared, Mr Fox’s party found on the riverbank at the site of the Zodiac’s moorings, a number of indentations, made either by a woman’s cuban heel or those of the kind of ‘gear’ boots currently fashionable in Carnaby Street. They overlapped and their general type and characteristics suggested that the wearer had moved forwards with ease and then backwards under a heavy load. Here’s a blow-up of Detective-Sergeant Thompson’s photographs.

  “There had either been some attempt to flatten these marks or else a heavy object had been dragged across them at right angles to the river-bank.

  “The tow-path was too hard to offer anything useful, and the path from there up to the road was tar-sealed and provided nothing. Nor did a muddy track along the waterfront. If the heels had gone that way we would certainly have picked them up so the main road must have been the route. Mr Fox, who is probably the most meticulous clue-hound in the Force, had a long hard look at the road. Here are some blown-up shots of what he found. Footprints. A patch of oil on the verge under a hedgerow not far from the moorings. Accompanying tyre marks suggest that a motor-bike had been parked there for some time. He found identical tracks on the road above Ramsdyke. At Crossdyke on an overhanging hawthorn twig—look at this close-up—there was a scrap of a dark blue synthetic material corresponding in colour and type with deceased’s pyjamas.

  “Right. Question now arose: if deceased came this way was she alive or dead at the time of transit? Yes, Carmichael?”

  The man in the second row passed his paddle of a hand over the back of his sandy head.

  “Sir,” he said. “It would appear from the character of the footprints, the marks on the bank, the evidence at the braeside and the wee wispies of cloth, that the leddy was at the least of it, unconscious and carried from the craft to the bike. Further than that, sir, I would not care to venture.”

  The rest of the class stirred irritably.

  “By and large,” Alleyn said, “you would be right. To continue—”

  -1-

  Alleyn and Troy returned together to the Zodiac. They found Dr Natouche reading on deck and the other passengers distantly visible in a seated group on the far hillside above the ford.

  Natouche glanced up for a moment at Troy. She walked towards him and he stood up.

  “Rory,” Troy said, “you’ve not heard how good Dr Natouche has been. He gave me a lovely lunch at Longminster and he was as kind as could be when I passed out this afternoon.”

  Alleyn said: “We’re lucky, on all counts, to have you on board.”

  “I have been privileged,” he replied with his little bow.

  “I’ve told him,” Troy said, “how uneasy you were when she disappeared and how we talked it over.”

  “It was not, of course, that I feared that any violence would be done to her. There was no reason to suppose that. It was because I thought her disturbed.”

  “To the point,” Alleyn said, “where she might do violence upon herself?”

  Dr Natouche folded his hands and looked at them. “No,” he said. “Not specifically. But she was, I thought, in a very unstable condition: a condition that is not incompatible with suicidal intention.”

  “Yes,” Alleyn said. “I see. Oh dear.”

  “You find something wrong, Mr Alleyn?”

  “No, no. Not wrong. It’s just that I seem to hear you giving that opinion in the witness box.”

  “For the defence?” he asked calmly.

  “For the defence.”

  “Well,” said Dr Natouche, “I daresay I should be obliged to qualify it under cross-examination. Whil
e I am about it, may I give you another opinion? I think your wife would be better away from the Zodiac. She has had a most unpleasant shock, she is subject to migraine and I think she is finding the prospect of staying in the ship a little hard to face.”

  “No, no,” Troy said. “Not at all. Not now.”

  “You mean not now your husband is here. Of course. But I think he will be very much occupied. You must forgive me for my persistence but—why not a room at the inn in Ramsdyke? Or even in Norminster? It is not far.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Alleyn said, “but there are difficulties. If my wife is given leave—”

  “Some of us may also demand it? If you will allow me I’ll suggest that she should go immediately and I’ll say that as her medical adviser, I insisted.”

  “Rory — would it be easier? It would, wouldn’t it? For you? For both of us?”

  “Yes, darling, it would.”

  “Well, then?”

  She saw Alleyn give Natouche one utterly noncommittal look of which the doctor appeared to be perfectly unaware. “I think you are right,” Alleyn said. “I have been in two minds about it but I think you are right. How far is it by road to Norminster?”

  “Six miles and three-eighths,” Natouche said.

  “How very well-informed!”

  “Dr Natouche is a map-maker,” Troy. said. “You must see what he’s doing.”

  “Love to,” Alleyn agreed politely. “Where did you stay in Norminster, Troy? The Percy, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “I’ll ring it up from the lockhouse. If they’ve got a room I’ll send for a taxi. We’ll obey doctor’s orders.”

  “All right. But—”

  “What?”

  “I’ll feel as if I’m ratting. So will they.”

  “Let them.”