‘Is she a great friend of your niece’s?’
‘Well, not particularly,’ said Mrs Lawton. ‘I mean they work in the same office and all that, but she’s rather a dull girl. Not very bright and she and Sheila aren’t particular friends. In fact, I wondered why she was so keen to see Sheila tonight. She said it was something she couldn’t understand and that she wanted to ask Sheila about it.’
‘She didn’t tell you what it was?’
‘No, she said it would keep and it didn’t matter.’
‘I see. Well, I must be going.’
‘It’s odd,’ said Mrs Lawton, ‘that Sheila hasn’t telephoned. She usually does if she’s late, because the professor sometimes asks her to stay to dinner. Ah, well, I expect she’ll be here any moment now. There are a lot of bus queues sometimes and the Curlew Hotel is quite a good way along the Esplanade. There’s nothing-no message-you want to leave for Sheila?’
‘I think not,’ said the inspector.
As he went out he asked, ‘By the way, who chose your niece’s Christian names, Rosemary and Sheila? Your sister or yourself?’
‘Sheila was our mother’s name. Rosemary was my sister’s choice. Funny name to choose really. Fanciful. And yet my sister wasn’t fanciful or sentimental in any way.’
‘Well, good night, Mrs Lawton.’
As the inspector turned the corner from the gateway into the street he thought, ‘Rosemary-hm…Rosemary for remembrance. Romantic remembrance? Or-something quite different?’
Chapter 13
Colin Lamb’s Narrative
I walked up Charing Cross Road and turned into the maze of streets that twist their way between New Oxford Street and Covent Garden. All sorts of unsuspected shops did business there, antique shops, a dolls’ hospital, ballet shoes, foreign delicatessen shops.
I resisted the lure of the dolls’ hospital with its various pairs of blue or brown glass eyes, and came at last to my objective. It was a small dingy bookshop in a side street not far from the British Museum. It had the usual trays of books outside. Ancient novels, old text books, odds and ends of all kinds, labelled 3d., 6d., 1s., even some aristocrats which had nearly all their pages, and occasionally even their binding intact.
I sidled through the doorway. It was necessary to sidle since precariously arranged books impinged more and more every day on the passageway from the street. Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down. The distance between bookshelves was so narrow that you could only get along with great difficulty. There were piles of books perched on every shelf or table. On a stool in a corner, hemmed in by books, was an old man in a pork-pie hat with a large flat face like a stuffed fish. He had the air of one who has given up an unequal struggle. He had attempted to master the books, but the books had obviously succeeded in mastering him. He was a kind of King Canute of the book world, retreating before the advancing book tide. If he ordered it to retreat it would have been with the sure and hopeless certainty that it would not do so. This was Mr Solomon, proprietor of the shop. He recognized me, his fishlike stare softened for a moment and he nodded.
‘Got anything in my line?’ I asked.
‘You’ll have to go up and see, Mr Lamb. Still on seaweeds and that stuff?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, you know where they are. Marine biology, fossils, Antarctica-second floor. I had a new parcel in day before yesterday. I started to unpack ’em but I haven’t got round to it properly yet. You’ll find them in a corner up there.’
I nodded and sidled my way onwards to where a small rather rickety and very dirty staircase led up from the back of the shop. On the first floor were Orientalia, art books, medicine, and French classics. In this room was a rather interesting little curtained corner not known to the general public, but accessible to experts, where what is called ‘odd’ or ‘curious’ volumes reposed. I passed them and went on up to the second floor.
Here archaeological, natural history, and other respectable volumes were rather inadequately sorted into categories. I steered my way through students and elderly colonels and clergymen, passed round the angle of a bookcase, stepped over various gaping parcels of books on the floor and found my further progress barred by two students of opposite sexes lost to the world in a closely knit embrace. They stood there swaying to and fro. I said:
‘Excuse me,’ pushed them firmly aside, raised a curtain which masked a door, and slipping a key from my pocket, turned it in the lock and passed through. I found myself incongruously in a kind of vestibule with cleanly distempered walls hung with prints of Highland cattle, and a door with a highly polished knocker on it. I manipulated the knocker discreetly and the door was opened by an elderly woman with grey hair, spectacles of a particularly old-fashioned kind, a black skirt and a rather unexpected peppermint-striped jumper.
‘It’s you, is it?’ she said without any other form of greeting. ‘He was asking about you only yesterday. He wasn’t pleased.’ She shook her head at me, rather as an elderly governess might do at a disappointing child. ‘You’ll have to try and do better,’ she said.
‘Oh, come off it, Nanny,’ I said.
‘And don’t call me Nanny,’ said the lady. ‘It’s a cheek. I’ve told you so before.’
‘It’s your fault,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t talk to me as if I were a small boy.’
‘Time you grew up. You’d better go in and get it over.’
She pressed a buzzer, picked up a telephone from the desk, and said:
‘Mr Colin…Yes, I’m sending him in.’ She put it down and nodded to me.
I went through a door at the end of the room into another room which was so full of cigar smoke that it was difficult to see anything at all. After my smarting eyes had cleared, I beheld the ample proportions of my chief sitting back in an aged, derelict grandfather chair, by the arm of which was an old-fashioned reading- or writing-desk on a swivel.
Colonel Beck took off his spectacles, pushed aside the reading-desk on which was a vast tome and looked disapprovingly at me.
‘So it’s you at last?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘Got anything?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Ah! Well, it won’t do, Colin, d’you hear? Won’t do. Crescents indeed!’
‘I still think,’ I began.
‘All right. You still think. But we can’t wait for ever while you’re thinking.’
‘I’ll admit it was only a hunch,’ I said.
‘No harm in that,’ said Colonel Beck.
He was a contradictory man.
‘Best jobs I’ve ever done have been hunches. Only this hunch of yours doesn’t seem to be working out. Finished with the pubs?’
‘Yes, sir. As I told you I’ve started on Crescents. Houses in crescents is what I mean.’
‘I didn’t suppose you meant bakers’ shops with French rolls in them, though, come to think of it, there’s no reason why not. Some of these places make an absolute fetish of producing French croissants that aren’t really French. Keep ’em in a deep freeze nowadays like everything else. That’s why nothing tastes of anything nowadays.’
I waited to see whether the old boy would enlarge upon this topic. It was a favourite one of his. But seeing that I was expecting him to do so, Colonel Beck refrained.
‘Wash out all round?’ he demanded.
‘Almost. I’ve still got a little way to go.’
‘You want more time, is that it?’
‘I want more time, yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to move on to another place this minute. There’s been a kind of coincidence and it might-only might -mean something.’
‘Don’t waffle. Give me facts.’
‘Subject of investigation, Wilbraham Crescent.’
‘And you drew a blank! Or didn’t you?’
‘I’
m not sure.’
‘Define yourself, define yourself, boy.’
‘The coincidence is that a man was murdered in Wilbraham Crescent.’
‘Who was murdered?’
‘As yet he’s unknown. Had a card with a name and address in his pocket, but that was bogus.’
‘Hm. Yes. Suggestive. Tie up in any way?’
‘I can’t see that it does, sir, but all the same…’
‘I know, I know. All the same…Well, what have you come for? Come for permission to go on nosing about Wilbraham Crescent-wherever that absurd-sounding place is?’
‘It’s a place called Crowdean. Ten miles from Portlebury.’
‘Yes, yes. Very good locality. But what are you here for? You don’t usually ask permission. You go your own pigheaded way, don’t you?’
‘That’s right, sir, I’m afraid I do.’
‘Well, then, what is it?’
‘There are a couple of people I want vetted.’
With a sigh Colonel Beck drew his reading-desk back into position, took a ball-pen from his pocket, blew on it and looked at me.
‘Well?’
‘House called Diana Lodge. Actually, 20, Wilbraham Crescent. Woman called Mrs Hemming and about eighteen cats live there.’
‘Diana? Hm,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘Moon goddess! Diana Lodge. Right. What does she do, this Mrs Hemming?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘she’s absorbed in her cats.’
‘Damned good cover, I dare say,’ said Beck appreciatively. ‘Certainly could be. Is that all?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s a man called Ramsay. Lives at 62, Wilbraham Crescent. Said to be a construction engineer, whatever that is. Goes abroad a good deal.’
‘I like the sound of that,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘I like the sound of that very much. You want to know about him, do you? All right.’
‘He’s got a wife,’ I said. ‘Quite a nice wife, and two obstreperous children-boys.’
‘Well, he might have,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘It has been known. You remember Pendleton? He had a wife and children. Very nice wife. Stupidest woman I’ve ever come across. No idea in her head that her husband wasn’t a pillar of respectability in oriental book dealing. Come to think of it, now I remember, Pendleton had a German wife as well, and a couple of daughters. And he also had a wife in Switzerland. I don’t know what the wives were-his private excesses or just camouflage. He’dsay of course that they were camouflage. Well, anyway, you want to know about Mr Ramsay. Anything else?’
‘I’m not sure. There’s a couple at 63. Retired professor. McNaughton by name. Scottish. Elderly. Spends his time gardening. No reason to think he and his wife are not all right-but-’
‘All right. We’ll check. We’ll put ’em through the machine to make sure. What are all these people, by the way?’
‘They’re people whose gardens verge on or touch the garden of the house where the murder was committed.’
‘Sounds like a French exercise,’ said Beck. ‘Where is the dead body of my uncle? In the garden of the cousin of my aunt. What about Number 19 itself?’
‘A blind woman, a former school teacher, lives there. She works in an institute for the blind and she’s been thoroughly investigated by the local police.’
‘Live by herself?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what is your idea about all these other people?’
‘My idea is,’ I said, ‘that if a murder was committed by any of these other people in any of these other houses that I have mentioned to you, it would be perfectly easy, though risky, to convey the dead body into Number 19 at a suitable time of day. It’s a mere possibility, that’s all. And there’s something I’d like to show you.This.’
Beck took the earthstained coin I held out to him.
‘A Czech Haller? Where did you find it?’
‘I didn’t. But it was found in the back garden of Number 19.’
‘Interesting. You may have something after all in your persistent fixation on crescents and rising moons.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘There’s a pub called The Rising Moon in the next street to this. Why don’t you go and try your luck there?’
‘I’ve been there already,’ I said.
‘You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you?’ said Colonel Beck. ‘Have a cigar?’
I shook my head. ‘Thank you-no time today.’
‘Going back to Crowdean?’
‘Yes. There’s the inquest to attend.’
‘It will only be adjourned. Sure it’s not some girl you’re running after in Crowdean?’
‘Certainly not,’ I said sharply.
Colonel Beck began to chuckle unexpectedly.
‘You mind your step, my boy! Sex rearing its ugly head as usual. How long have you known her?’
‘There isn’t any-I mean-well-there was a girl who discovered the body.’
‘What did she do when she discovered it?’
‘Screamed.’
‘Very nice too,’ said the colonel. ‘She rushed to you, cried on your shoulder and told you about it. Is that it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said coldly. ‘Have a look at these.’
I gave him a selection of the police photographs.
‘Who’s this?’ demanded Colonel Beck.
‘The dead man.’
‘Ten to one this girl you’re so keen about killed him. The whole story sounds very fishy to me.’
‘You haven’t even heard it yet,’ I said. ‘I haven’t told it to you.’
‘I don’t need telling,’ Colonel Beck waved his cigar. ‘Go away to your inquest, my boy, and look out for that girl. Is her name Diana, or Artemis, or anything crescenty or moonlike?’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Well, remember that it might be!’
Chapter 14
Colin Lamb’s Narrative
It had been quite a long time since I had visited Whitehaven Mansions. Some years ago it had been an outstanding building of modern flats. Now there were many other more imposing and even more modern blocks of buildings flanking it on either side. Inside, I noted, it had recently had a face lift. It had been repainted in pale shades of yellow and green.
I went up in the lift and pressed the bell of Number 203. It was opened to me by that impeccable man-servant, George. A smile of welcome came to his face.
‘Mr Colin! It’s a long time since we’ve seen you here.’
‘Yes, I know. How are you, George?’
‘I am in good health, I am thankful to say, sir.’
I lowered my voice. ‘And how’s he?’
George lowered his own voice, though that was hardly necessary since it had been pitched in a most discreet key from the beginning of our conversation.
‘I think, sir, that sometimes he gets a little depressed.’
I nodded sympathetically.
‘If you will come this way, sir-’ He relieved me of my hat.
‘Announce me, please, as Mr Colin Lamb.’
‘Very good, sir.’ He opened a door and spoke in a clear voice. ‘Mr Colin Lamb to see you, sir.’
He drew back to allow me to pass him and I went into the room.
My friend, Hercule Poirot, was sitting in his usual large, square armchair in front of the fireplace. I noted that one bar of the rectangular electric fire glowed red. It was early September, the weather was warm, but Poirot was one of the first men to recognize the autumn chill, and to take precautions against it. On either side of him on the floor was a neat pile of books. More books stood on the table at his left side. At his right hand was a cup from which steam rose. A tisane, I suspected. He was fond of tisanes and often urged them on me. They were nauseating to taste and pungent to smell.
‘Don’t get up,’ I said, but Poirot was already on his feet. He came towards me on twinkling, patent-leather shod feet with outstretched hands.
‘Aha, so it is you, it is you, my friend! My young friend Colin. But why do you call yourself by the name of
Lamb? Let me think now. There is a proverb or a saying. Something about mutton dressed as lamb. No. That is what is said of elderly ladies who are trying to appear younger than they are. That does not apply to you. Aha, I have it. You are a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Is that it?’
‘Not even that,’ I said. ‘It’s just that in my line of business I thought my own name might be rather a mistake, that it might be connected too much with my old man. Hence Lamb. Short, simple, easily remembered. Suiting, I flatter myself, my personality.’
‘Of that I cannot be sure,’ said Poirot. ‘And how is my good friend, your father?’
‘The old man’s fine,’ I said. ‘Very busy with his hollyhocks-or is it chrysanthemums? The seasons go by so fast I can never remember what it is at the moment.’
‘He busies himself then, with the horticulture?’
‘Everyone seems to come to that in the end,’ I said.
‘Not me,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Once the vegetable marrows, yes-but never again. If you want the best flowers, why not go to the florist’s shop? I thought the good Superintendent was going to write his memoirs?’
‘He started,’ I said, ‘but he found that so much would have to be left out that he finally came to the conclusion that what was left in would be so unbearably tame as not to be worth writing.’
‘One has to have the discretion, yes. It is unfortunate,’ said Poirot, ‘because your father could tell some very interesting things. I have much admiration for him. I always had. You know, his methods were to me very interesting. He was so straightforward. He used the obvious as no man has used it before. He would set the trap, the very obvious trap and the people he wished to catch would say “it is too obvious, that. It cannot be true” and so they fell into it!’
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