Ten Little Herrings

by L. C. Tyler

  Twenty-five

  . . . and out into the street.

  ‘Oh, shit! We still need the key!’ The possessor of a large male brain stopped suddenly in his tracks.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What a shame we didn’t think of that before. Still, maybe I can find you one.’

  ‘You know where it is?’

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  My certainty may surprise you, but my reasoning was as follows. During the few moments that he had been out of my sight, Herbie boy had hidden the key somewhere that nobody could easily find it, but from where he could retrieve it quickly. The police had established that it was neither on nor (alas) inside his person. So, if he ever had it, he must have disposed of it rapidly right there in the lane. To be quite honest, the lane was composed of just three things:

  1. Wall

  2. Lane

  3. Dog shit

  He could not have dug up the tarmac so that left:

  1. Wall

  3. Dog shit

  I thought I’d probably check the wall out first. I examined it carefully. It was another one of those examples of old-time craftsmanship that my father always used to go on about – frankly, it was a miracle that it was still standing. The pointing had long since parted company with the brickwork, leaving plentiful vertical and horizontal crevices of varying depth. I squatted down to see if I could see any glint of silver deep in any of the joints. At first there was nothing to catch the eye, then I noticed that a joint lower down was inexplicably and rather improbably stuffed up with dirt. Silly boy, Herbie. I took out my room key and scratched away for a bit. Almost immediately metal struck metal and I was able to extract a small device for opening lockers, with a round tag bearing the number ‘045’.

  I held the key aloft in triumph.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Ethelred.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s a completely different left-luggage locker key. The wall is full of them. Why don’t you see how many you can find?’

  Ethelred looked at it. ‘You realize he could never have swallowed it with that tag attached?’ he asked.

  I was about to argue that stranger things had happened when Ethelred said: ‘Well done, but I think we should get moving before the police notice we’re missing.’

  This seemed as good a plan as any. We got moving.

  In daylight the railway station looked kinder and friendlier. It was one of those rather functional fifties buildings – lots of concrete, but quite homely with its green-tiled roof, white walls and small casement windows. We felt conspicuous as we crossed the open space in front of it and even more conspicuous as we entered the left-luggage room. The room was lined with steel cabinets of two different sizes, all numbered and most with their keys still in the locks. To each key there was attached a disc of a perfectly swallowable size. Apart from us, the room was deserted. There was a desk in one corner, belonging presumably to the guardian of this self-service facility, but it was unoccupied. It was not exactly high-security, but it probably did not need to be. We counted along the row of smaller lockers until we got to ‘045’. We put the key into the lock and turned it.

  At first I thought that the locker was empty, but then I saw, right at the back, a small, greyish bundle. I had a premonition we were about to discover something interesting. Ethelred looked ready to pounce, but my hand got there first, as it so often does – it’s something you need to practise. The small bundle proved to be an old bag made of velvet – once, doubtless, a rich blue but now a washed-out blue-grey. Embroidered on it in silver was a double-headed eagle. The bag was pleasingly soft to the touch, but contained something harder. I knew instinctively that I was going to love what I found inside. I took a deep breath, loosened the drawstrings and peered into the aperture.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said. In reply, several million pounds’ worth of gemstones winked back at me. I knew that they wanted to be my friends. ‘Hello, little diamonds,’ I said. ‘I’m your new mummy.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Ethelred over my shoulder. He’d evidently clocked them too. ‘I’ve never even seen diamonds that size.’

  I smiled modestly. Every mother likes to hear her children praised.

  ‘Elsie,’ said Ethelred, ‘you know you can’t keep those, don’t you?’

  A vision of myself striding into the London Book Fair in a necklace composed of diamonds the size of plovers’ eggs faded. It faded very, very slowly, but it faded all the same.

  ‘Maybe just one? Just the runt of the litter? I reckon I could prise that one out of the setting, and it would never really be missed.’ The dazzling reflection from even the smallest of these, I reckoned, could blind any publisher who tried to get the better of me.

  ‘No,’ said the spoilsport beside me.

  ‘Let’s get these babies back to the hotel anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘You mean in respect of my taking several million pounds’ worth of stolen diamonds back to a hotel crawling with police who are looking for them?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  I thought about it and conceded he might have a point.

  ‘You mean we could get arrested before we have a chance to explain that we’re the good guys?’

  Ethelred considered. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Something like that.’

  I ran through the logic of this again. There was a flaw in it somewhere, but we were at least agreed on not having the police seize the necklace and arrest us.

  ‘If we leave it here, though,’ I said, ‘there’s a danger Herbie will come back for them. People must lose keys all the time, so it won’t be too difficult for him to get somebody to open the locker up for him. We could bury the loot at the crossroads at the dead of night, but we’ve got a few hours to wait before it will be quite dead enough.’

  ‘Slightly more prosaically,’ said Ethelred, ‘we could simply switch lockers – to that one over there, say . . .’

  It was the work of a moment to find a new home for my diamonds in 051, leaving an empty 045.

  We left the station clutching two keys.

  ‘Stop looking round all the time,’ I hissed at Ethelred as we started back towards the hotel.

  ‘There could be somebody following us,’ he said.

  ‘Nobody knows we’re here,’ I said. ‘Relax. It’s the perfect crime.’

  ‘It’s only a crime,’ said Ethelred, ‘if you’re planning to keep the diamonds for yourself.’

  ‘It’s clearly Czarist stuff,’ I pointed out. ‘The Czar’s dead. That means it’s finders keepers.’

  ‘It just happens to be in a bag with a double-headed eagle on it. It could be Austro-Hungarian for all you know. Europe in those days was awash with mutant birds of prey. Anyway, finders keepers is not an established legal principle.’

  ‘Don’t the poor little diamonds get any say in all this?’

  ‘No.’

  Ethelred can be really unreasonable at times.

  We approached the garden wall cautiously, but there was no policeman outside. The side street was deserted. We paused briefly as a car passed by on the main road, then I crouched down and replaced Herbie’s key in the wall, and stopped up the crack with fresh dirt.

  Yes, it had all been a bit too easy.

  Still, nobody stopped us as we re-entered the hotel. Nobody questioned us as we went into the bar. Herbie was already there, clutching the smallest beer on earth. I was tempted to phone the Guinness Book of Records. We nodded to him in a friendly way. He oiled across the room to us, his grip still firmly on his drink.

  ‘I get the impression,’ he said in a low voice, ‘that we are not being watched as closely as we were.’

  I couldn’t see that I owed Herbie any favours, so I replied non-committally.

  He looked from side to side. ‘See anyone out there in the garden?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I said.

  ‘Still, I reckon the old security’s not as tight as it was.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said.

&
nbsp; ‘I do say so, Elsie. I might just take a stroll round,’ he said with what he could have imagined was devious cunning. ‘Get some fresh air.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ I said.

  After he’d gone, Ethelred looked at me as though I was an idiot. ‘Why didn’t you say you thought we were still being watched? He’ll be digging the key out of the wall and off to the station straight away.’

  ‘And I’d like to see his face when he gets there,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see him opening the locker and finding nothing.’

  ‘It was still silly,’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Not when I have the right key safely in my pocket,’ I said.

  I removed it and placed it on the table.

  ‘There we are,’ I said. ‘Key number 051.’

  We both looked at it with some interest.

  ‘That’s key number 045,’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Good point,’ I said. ‘So it is.’

  I bought Ethelred a large brandy. It was the least I could do. I then sneaked off back to my room, while Ethelred was still merely speechless with rage. I reckoned that the mellowing influence of twenty-year-old cognac would not have its full effect for a good half-hour, after which it might be safe to return and discuss the next step in a rational manner.

  As I walked up the stairs, however, I began to mull things over. Obviously, by now Herbie was either clutching my poor baby diamonds or had already hidden them rather better than last time. I was resigned to that. But thinking about it, hadn’t Ethelred’s behaviour been a bit odd? I mean, he was the one who thought that the diamonds should be returned to their proper, legal owners. So, the best way to do this was to hide them in another left-luggage locker, a few feet to the left of the first one? No, on reflection, probably not. Obviously, I had thought concealment was a good plan, but shouldn’t Ethelred be handing the diamonds over to the police round about now, while they praised him for being the upright citizen that he was? And shouldn’t he, now that things had not gone quite according to Plan A, be alerting the police to the fact that a weasel was heading for the station with key 051 in his hand and malign intent? Obviously Herbie could be stopped, but Ethelred wasn’t figuring to stop him any time soon. Was Plan B to let Herbie have the diamonds anyway? These, then, were the things I was pondering as I made my way back along the gloomy corridor to my room at the remote end of the hotel.

  And I would have gone on pondering for a while, had a hand not emerged unexpectedly from the shadows and dragged me by the neck into a secluded alcove. As my head smashed sickeningly against the flock wallpaper, it briefly occurred to me that things really weren’t going my way.

  Twenty-six

  As you probably know, when your head is smashed against the flock wallpaper of a damp and gloomy hotel in the Loire valley, a number of thoughts go through your mind:

  1. Mmm, flock wallpaper – I didn’t know they made that anymore.

  2. I wonder who is doing this to me?

  3. And why?

  4. Ouch.

  5. Mmm, flock wallpaper – I didn’t—

  I was probably out cold only for a few seconds, but it was long enough to forget why I had decided to lie on the floor. Herbie Proctor’s face hovering a few inches above my own was a puzzling phenomenon that I could link only tenuously with the blinding headache that I had somehow acquired.

  ‘Get up!’ he hissed, dragging me to my feet.

  I was still a bit woozy, so I fell back against a wall, which somebody had thoughtfully placed behind me. Somebody (the same person or another) needed to explain to me what was going on. It was like one of those quizzes where you have to think of as many capital cities as you can beginning with ‘T’ (say) in thirty seconds and suddenly you realize you can’t think of any. What you need is another couple of minutes to get your act together but thirty seconds is all you’ve got. And my thirty seconds (or whatever the rules were) was suddenly up.

  Herbie had one sweaty paw on my arm and the other covering my mouth. I wondered if it was the fleur-de-lys pattern on the wallpaper that was making me feel sick. I needed to think fast.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ he said.

  Up to that point I had not considered screaming, though I had thought quite seriously about throwing up.

  ‘Wherrrr sherr dherrr shrerr,’ I said, not unreasonably.

  He took his hand off my mouth.

  ‘Why should I scream?’ I asked.

  Actually, the main reason for screaming was that he was now pinning me against the wall in a way that was getting just a bit too personal.

  ‘Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a pistol,’ he said.

  He was looking at me with distaste, but perhaps he just didn’t like Mae West quotes. And I was still reasonably sure that the bulge was his mobile phone.

  ‘You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?’ snapped Herbie.

  I tried to remember – I thought the answer was probably ‘Yes’ but I wasn’t sure. What game were we playing? If this was a pub quiz, I really needed Ethelred there.

  ‘I don’t think I know what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘My head hurts too much.’

  ‘I’m talking about this,’ snarled Herbie. A small key was waved in front of my face. It was sort of familiar. It bore the number 051.

  ‘It’s a key,’ I said. It wasn’t much of a guess, but my head was thumping and I was fairly sure that I had the pattern of the flock wallpaper imprinted on my forehead.

  ‘But it’s not my key,’ said Herbie. ‘Did you think you’d get away with it? Did you think I wouldn’t check? My key was numbered 045. Somebody replaced the key that I had hidden with this key. So, I wondered . . . who could have seen me hiding the key? Who would have taken my key and replaced it with this one? Who would that be, Elsie?’

  I was still sufficiently dazed that I wanted to know too.

  ‘Me?’ I suggested. The clue seemed to be in the question.

  ‘Yes, you,’ he said.

  I closed my eyes to see if the pain would go away, just a little. It didn’t. To make things worse, when I opened my eyes, I was staring at a small revolver. This spoilt the mobile phone theory. I was more worried that the gun might go off accidentally than that Herbie would actually shoot me, but I was a bit worried about the actual shooting thing too.

  ‘The moment I discovered the keys had been switched,’ Herbie was saying, ‘I knew it was you. So, I came straight back to retrieve what was mine. Now – since this is your key – where exactly have you hidden mine? If you think you’re Mae West, it’s probably down the front of that blouse.’

  The possibility that he might test this hypothesis empirically concentrated my mind. Suddenly I was able to focus on matters at hand.

  ‘It’s in my pocket,’ I said.

  ‘Hand it over.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  He released the safety catch on the revolver. OK, so now it could go off accidentally. In one sense, Herbie’s threat was as empty as his locker. His gun, even to my untrained eye, lacked a silencer. It would make a loud bang when he fired it. While I was not keen on loud bangs at present, even a single gunshot would prove fatal to his own plans. He wouldn’t get to the stairs before a number of resident policemen converged on this corridor, curious to learn who was shooting at whom. But for these to be valid considerations, your gunman has to be behaving rationally. There was no indication that Herbie was. The thought occurred to me that these could be my last minutes – in just a moment I could be lying in the corridor of a third-rate hotel with a hole in my head. I wasn’t keen on either the time or place.

  The good news was that my brain’s reflex action was to beg for mercy. The bad news was that my mouth was too dry to be able to pass on the message to the man with the gun.

  Herbie Proctor pressed the barrel against my right temple. It was uncomfortable, but that didn’t seem to bother him. I wondered what it would feel like as the bullet entered my
brain. Not good, probably. I summoned up my reserve supply of saliva.

  ‘OK,’ I said, though not in a voice I recognized. ‘You win, Mr Proctor. We’ll swap keys.’

  I felt in my pocket and handed him key 045. He smiled, and the safety catch clicked again.

  ‘And there is your key,’ he said, almost as an afterthought, handing me 051. ‘Now, since we both have our own keys again, I will go on my way.’

  I pocketed 051. I tried to look really sad. Even with a splitting head, I suspected I must be smirking.

  Herbie regarded me with contempt. ‘You must think I’m really stupid,’ he said.

  ‘Piss off,’ I said, ‘and leave me and my headache alone.’

  After he had gone I checked the key again. The number on the ring was still 051. Well, that had almost been worth the pain.

  I went to find Ethelred.

  He looked at me curiously as I entered the room.

  ‘Why do you have a fleur-de-lys imprinted on your forehead?’ he asked.

  ‘I ran into a wall,’ I said.

  ‘OK.’ He returned to reading his paper.

  ‘I’d hoped for some evidence of sympathy,’ I said.

  ‘Poor wall,’ he replied without looking up.

  I produced key number 051 and dangled it in front of his eyes.

  ‘What is the number on this key?’ I asked.

  He leaned back to get a better focus and almost choked.

  ‘How did you get that?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how did you get that?’

  ‘I met up with Herbie Proctor in the corridor,’ I said. ‘There was a bit of a scuffle, and I came away with this.’

  Well, that seemed a truthful summary of what had happened. No point in overburdening Ethelred with detail.

  ‘You didn’t hurt him?’ Ethelred asked anxiously.

  ‘I’m marked for ever with French heraldry and you’re asking after Herbie’s health?’

  ‘I don’t want you arrested for assault – at least, not until you get my credit cards back for me.’

  ‘He’s fine. He’s heading for the station with key 045.’