The Dreaming Detective

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘But you’ve no more reason for saying that than — what? — mere dislike?’

  ‘Oh, no. Sydney Aslough ain’t so stupid as that, an’ Sydney Bigod weren’t neither. No, you could tell Lukey-boy weren’t sweet as a flower from the way he ordered everybody about. Mind, it wasn’t no Do this, do that. Nah, he was cleverer than that. But he was preaching to you, preaching to everybody, all of the time. But sort of subtly, you know. It was I’ve always found it best if ... and Don’t you think we ought to ... But what we did ought to have done was just what old Lukey wanted done. For him.’

  So, Sydney here is not quite the jokey, all-on-the-surface street vendor and car salesman he seems to be. No, an acute brain there, when he’s persuaded to show it. Then where does that leave me? Thinking that Undersheriff Lucas Calverte’s a more likely murderer than I’d believed. Certainly. But it leaves me, too, thinking Sydney Bigod is every bit sharp enough to be a calculating killer. If I could only get a line on why he would have needed to kill.

  But I can’t do that sitting talking to him here. No, what’s needed is some hard digging back in Birchester, or some hard interrogation eventually in an interview room somewhere. Worth going on talking, though. I’m impressed by Sydney Aslough’s insights.

  ‘All right, so what do you remember about — shall we say? — Marcus Fairchild?’

  ‘Marcus who?’

  ‘Marcus Fairchild, the journalist who said he was from The Times.’

  ‘Yeah, there was a guy there said that, or something like it. Never really took no notice of him. So he was there in that foyer place that night, was he?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But you don’t remember him from then, is that it?’

  ‘That’s it. Lot happens in thirty years, you know. Drives things out of your mind.’

  ‘Has all that’s happened driven, say, Bubsy Willson out of your mind.’

  ‘No. No, not if that was what that ugly-looking tart was called. You should have seen that face of hers, flat as a pancake an’ one what ain’t been cooked either. And hairs. Dirty great black hairs sticking up all over it. Gawd knows why she’d got herself in with that lot. She’d got no interest in people like them, far as I could see. She’d have been happier opening her legs somewhere down by the canal. In the dark. They haven’t filled up that old canal, back in Birchester, have they?’

  ‘No, that’s still with us. And so is someone who still lives near it. Do you remember Barney Trapnell?’

  ‘Yeah. Cripple fellow, some sort of metal contraption on one of his legs. But strong. Strong, mind you. Don’t remember much about him, though, only that he could lift the Boy up like he was a feather. Which, of course, he was. Sort of. Not quite here in this world, know what I mean? A feather floating in the wind. An’, you know what? No feather ought to get theirselves scrunched out like that.’

  ‘I agree. But, tell me, why was it that you came to be as close to him as you were? Full member of the Clique, Michael Meadowcraft said.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s a funny story, that is. None o’ my pals down here’d believe it for a moment. Not of naughty old Syd.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Yeah, well, this was the way of it. It was right at the beginning of it all, matter o’ fact. In them days the Boy didn’t have no great big what they called mass meetings. Nah. Just took to doing a bit o’ preaching at a chapel. Chapel where old Harish used to give out the good words, in fact. And one day I’d set up my pitch right opposite. Doing the old records, I was then. You remember ‘em? Vinyl, big twelve-inch discs of vinyl. All the pop music was on ‘em. Wasn’t hardly nothing else then. An’ it was a nice, hot day. So the customers was in a good mood. I remember that, doing good business I was. But the doors of that chapel had been pushed wide open. Give the would-be-goods inside a bit of air. And then the people round the stall began to go over an’ listen to that voice coming sort of fluting out into the street, quiet like, but somehow telling you, going through an’ through you. More an’ more of ‘em went. So in the end I went across meself. Just to take a gander, see what it was all about.’

  He fell silent.

  Looking at him across his desk, Harriet realized he was sitting there, in his smart many-buttoned shirt, seeing once again that scene of more than thirty years ago.

  ‘And that was it?’ she said at last.

  ‘Yeah. From then on I thought I’d better stick by the Boy, much as I could. Had a living to make, didn’t I? But I reckoned he needed someone to look after him, the sort of hundred per cent innocent that he was. Someone to see no one was taking advantage while he told the world what they ought to hear. Because he did that, you know, he did that.’

  Yes, another unexpected tribute to the power of that Boy’s preaching to set beside that of his other unlikely adherent, Marcus Fairchild, the Trufflehound. But, no, power isn’t the word. From what the two of them have said about the preaching it was more like a quietly embracing flow of — Of what? Of goodness, yes. Goodness it would have to have been.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘You seem to have been haring around all over the place,’ John said to Harriet as they sat over the last of their supper. ‘Aren’t you paying rather too much attention to beating your Mr Newbroom? He’s largely a figment of your imagination, you know.’

  ‘No, I do not know. That man’s real enough, Mr Newcomen, just appointed Chief Constable of the Greater Birchester Police. The interview I had with him was real enough, too. The bloody little cupboard of an office at Headquarters he’s pushed me into is real enough. The DC he’s attached to me is a real-enough officer, one hardly recovered from a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘All right, all right. I dare say Mr Newcomen’s taken a dislike to you for some reason. Probably, as you suggested, because he thinks you’re some sort of a publicity hound. But all the same that doesn’t really make it any more reasonable for you to have gone racing up to London yesterday and rushing over to Norwich today.’

  ‘Oh, come. My trip today was well worthwhile, by any standards. One, I confirmed that the Sydney Bigod who was one of the seven people in the foyer of the Imperial Hotel ballroom when the Boy Preacher was murdered is the same person as a Sydney Aslough, motor dealer in Norwich. And, two, he actually told me a lot about the others in that foyer with him. He’s given me plenty of food for thought. He said, very shrewdly I think, that the former Undersheriff for the County of Birrshire, Lucas Calverte, is not exactly the decent English gentleman he purports to be. You know, when I went to see him on Monday, I felt at the back of my mind that there was something ... something, I don’t know, not quite right about him. Well, now I’ve got some extra evidence, if you can call it evidence. And before much longer I’m going to have another word with Mr Lucas Calverte.’

  ‘Lady protesting too much?’

  ‘No, she’s not. I learnt a good deal more about Michael Meadowcraft’s Seven Suspects today, a whole lot more.’

  But on John’s face there had appeared a big reminiscent grin.

  ‘I read the whole of Who Killed the Preacher? this evening, before you got back,’ he said. ‘That final thunderous phrase is still ringing in my head. So there we leave the Seven Suspects who alone could have committed what is perhaps the most mysterious murder ever to he laid to rest, unsolved, in the annals of British crime.’

  ‘Oh, gosh, that wretched book. I’d better have it back. If I don’t return it to Mr Newbroom’s Pansy Balfour, I’ll find myself accused of stealing it.’

  ‘If you really think so. But, in any case, all that luscious prose must have given you absolutely everything you could want to know.’

  ‘Oh, have your joke. But the fact is I didn’t learn a single thing from Newbroom’s kindly and highly inaccurate loan, or not anything that’s going to be of the least help. But I did learn things from Sydney Aslough. Not only about Calverte, but about Marcus Fairchild, confirming on the whole that he was up here in Birch-ester purely and simply because of the way the Boy had, despite himself, gripped his imagination.
And I learnt something about that awful-sounding girl, Bubsy Willson. That she was always more interested in sex than in preaching. Trust a man like Bigod to see that. And, more, I found out from what he said about Barney Ttapnell being a very strong young man, despite the calliper on his leg, that the Boy frequently needed to be lifted up. So I’ve been wondering if the Boy didn’t have something wrong with him. Wrong in body, that is. Not that it’s necessarily significant.’

  ‘Okay, you’ve made out a case for whizzing off to Norwich so far, if a bit of a flimsy one.’

  ‘Flimsy? You — ’

  ‘Wait, wait. It’s just that I’d have been more impressed if you’d said to me that your facts-full informant had been able to tell you just what went on in the foyer of the Imperial’s ballroom. I danced there once, before I knew you. And I’d especially have wanted to learn who was where in the foyer in, say, the quarter of an hour before the body was discovered.’

  ‘Okay, I’d have liked that, too. Wouldn’t I just. But I didn’t get to hear. It was all a long time ago, don’t forget, and it’s hardly likely that Bigod or Aslough, call him which you like, would remember details. In fact, when I asked, he recalled just one thing, and that was pretty vague, something he said as he was seeing me out.’

  ‘But it was ... ?’

  ‘It was, as he put it, that the tart Bubsy came screaming out of the ballroom to say the Boy was dead.’

  ‘Well, that’s a piece of hard evidence for you. You never said your Mr Kenworthy got that out of him.’

  ‘No. He didn’t. You know what an interview between a senior police officer and a dodgy street trader’s going to be like. Antagonistic. So Bigod wasn’t giving anything away he didn’t have to, then.’

  ‘But with senior officer Harriet Martens it was a different matter?’

  ‘It might have been, yes. I certainly wasn’t hard on him, or not after the first few minutes. And besides a lot of time has passed since Kenworthy interviewed him, and perhaps now he has a more mellow view of the police. But, however it came about, I got even more out of him than that recollection about Bubsy, which, as I told you, was somewhat vague to say the least. There’s also what he said — ’

  She came to a halt.

  ‘Oh, and I’ve just remembered, I’ve got a nice joky little titbit from Norwich that should be right up your street. But be warned, you won’t get fed it unless you’re prepared to admit that my case, when you’ve heard it all, is by no means flimsy.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Right. Then from Aslough’s happy chatter, and, you know, I do like him. He’s —’

  ‘Favourites again. I warned you about your nice Harish Nair the other day. Now you’re doing it again.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Okay, I liked Aslough, and I like the sound of Harish Nair from all that I’ve heard about him. But I’m not assuming anything about either of them. I’m a better detective than that, damn it.’

  ‘If you say so. But let’s hear the rest of what you learnt from your much-liked motor trader. I want my titbit, whatever it is.’

  ‘Okay. But listen properly. If you put on your dismissive face, you’ll get nothing at all. And I think you’ll really like it, actually.’

  ‘Proceed, Detective Superintendent.’

  ‘Right. This is what Aslough told me about Bubsy Willson, or Barbara as Meadowcraft liked to call her. Aslough said, and I think it fits in well with Kenworthy’s notes, that she wasn’t really one of the Boy’s inner circle, that she didn’t seem to know why she was there and that she’d rather be having sex down by the canal than listening to him preaching.’

  ‘Noted. If not fully accepted.’

  ‘Your privilege, Judge. But listen to what he said about the last of them, Priscilla Knott. You know, on the whole everything that I’ve learnt about her has been favourable, to her as a person at least. But Aslough had a different view of her. He said she was the sort of lady who would do anything if she thought it was the right thing. She used to preach at them all, he said. To preach much harder than the Boy, and with ... with something like venom. So I think it’s not impossible she could have decided that some part of the Boy’s preaching was wrong, and that in the end the only remedy was to — Right, to put him to death.’

  ‘Tough talk. And I suppose it could all have happened. You’ve certainly not produced any better motive for any of them.’

  He gave her a mockingly sly smile.

  ‘So titbit time?’

  ‘All right, I suppose you’ve earned it. So, this is what it is. In Norwich, just next to the premises of Aslough Car Sales there is a chapel, one of the evangelical or even charismatic sort. Outside it they have placed a big poster in stark red lettering saying just the three words, God is Light. And on that — it just caught my eye as I went past — someone has taken a thick felt pen and scrawled, Then switch it off.

  John gave a long, loud laugh.

  ‘But, you know,’ he said, sobering up, ‘all of what you’ve been telling me could fall away to dust.’

  ‘You mean when the lab at Cherry Fettleham simply reports, on good DNA evidence, that X throttled the Boy to death and there’s no evidence pointing to anyone else? But that won’t be for two weeks or more, three from now.’

  *

  Next morning, however, Harriet found her supposition had been quite wrong. On her table when, a few minutes earlier than usual, she entered her poky, ill-painted office there lay a bulky envelope with at its top left-hand corner, plain to see, the printed designation Forensic Science Service, Cherry Fettleham Laboratory.

  Oh, she thought as she walked over to snap it up, the voice of Newbroom is the voice of power, definitely. I’d never have thought, after my carefully presented message, that Dr Passmore down there would take the least bit of notice of that absurd claim for urgent treatment. Or has Newbroom telephoned them himself with all the authority of a much-praised Chief Constable? Because it seems that the death of the Boy Preacher in 1969 is, after all, ‘a current murder inquiry’.

  But what’s this packet going to say? Whose garment was spattered with the Boy’s saliva?

  She ripped open the envelope, tugged the bulky sheets out, lifted them up and began flicking past the necessary opening bureaucratic notes and disclaimers.

  Or — a momentary hope, or fear — will Dr Passmore finally state there is no reliable evidence from any of the specimens?

  Then, at last, she found the paragraph headed in bold type: Conclusion.

  Of the garments submitted for analysis only one showed identifiable traces of saliva corresponding to that of the victim. This was No. 5.

  Blast him. Why can’t he just say the name? The name.

  Where’s that list of garments? Turn back, turn back. Yes. No. Damn it. Yes. Yes, here it is.

  She read.

  5. Cotton shirt labelled as having been worn by Harish Nair.

  No. No, it can’t be. No, I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Not nice Harish. It’s impossible. I know that man. Aslough knew him, knew him to speak to, day after day, and he thought he couldn’t possibly have killed the Boy. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, he said. Everybody who had had anything to do with him had only the nicest things to say about him.

  But John. Didn’t John warn me just last night not to have favourites? And didn’t I say then, scarcely twelve hours ago, I’m not assuming anything ... I’m a better detective than that?

  Right, it seems I’m not. Because, whatever I said, whatever I thought I was doing, I was assuming that someone as nice, as good, damn it, as Harish Nair was not going to strangle a person like the Boy Preacher, the quiet youth who even that cynical Trufflehound, Marcus Fairchild, found himself constrained to compare with — who were they? — yes, Mohammed, Gandhi, Churchill and, odd addition perhaps, that marvellous cellist, Jacqueline du Pre.

  But, here in my hands are the words of a report from the Forensic Science laboratory, no less, stating positively that garment No. 5, Harish’s sweet daisy-covered, pale green shirt,
singing, damn it, all the goodness of summer, was spattered thirty years ago with spittle forced from the mouth of that extraordinary boy. The boy whose preaching reduced a professional hard-case like the Trufflehound to compare him with those super-human beings.

  And I cannot believe what those scientists have said.

  She stood moment after moment looking unseeingly at the report clutched in both her hands and feeling nothing but that state of non-believing.

  And then ... Then a tiny gleam shot through the heavy cloud overwhelming her.

  The speed with which Dr Passmore had worked on those thirty-year-old garments. Had he, in order to produce the swift response he had been asked for by a demanding Chief Constable, treated them with less than the scientific exactitude he would normally have employed? Can he be someone like that? What do I know about him after all? Nothing. He’s just a name down there in Cherry Fettleham. So did he fail to understand as well as I had hoped my deliberately toned-down version of Newbroom’s request? Is he the sort of bloody idiot who would take it as a distinct instruction from the Chief Constable of a major force?

  Or ... Or is it what I wondered about just now? Did Mr Newcomen personally telephone, say, the chief officer at the lab and repeat his request, not trusting me to pass it on? And was Dr Passmore then ordered to make it a rush job?

  So, could there after all be a loophole in the conclusion here, however clearly it’s been put?

  Right, one thing. I’m not going to accept that conclusion without going into how it was actually arrived at. And I’m not going to let Mr Newcomen know the report’s arrived. Not until I’ve been down to Cherry Fettleham and put that Dr Passmore through every hoop I can find for him. Harish Nair did not kill the Boy Preacher. I know that. And, damn it, I’m going to find proof that he did not.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Harriet took the lab at Cherry Fettleham by storm. She had made the journey across into Lincolnshire in a little over two hours, foot pressed hard on the gas pedal, furiously cursing any slow driver ahead. Resolutely she refused to let herself think about the report now locked in her cupboard back in Birchester. At last, when a pair of lumbering farm machinery vehicles blocked her on the lane leading to Cherry Fettleham itself and the laboratory just beyond, her fury was checked when she abruptly remembered the dream she had had of nearly being crushed by two huge oncoming fantastic vehicles.