Trick of the Mind

by Cassandra Chan

  “Oh, right,” said Gibbons. “I can’t believe I forgot that.”

  “You’re not yourself,” said Bethancourt kindly, which provoked a rather wan glare from his friend. “So we believe you were thinking about the Haverford case, and you seem to have had an idea, or at least some thought as to how to approach the whole thing, right?”

  Gibbons nodded. “That’s a fair assumption,” he said.

  “So,” continued Bethancourt, “we know you didn’t return to the Yard, and we know you didn’t start for home.”

  Carmichael raised a bushy eyebrow at that. “We do?” he asked.

  “Well, I thought so,” said Bethancourt. “It’s a straight shot on the District line from St. James to Hammersmith. Even if one of the thieves was tramping about London leaving a trail of alexandrite gemstones behind him, why on earth should he be on that particular part of the District line at just the time Jack was heading home? It beggars belief.”

  Carmichael was amused. “When put like that,” he said, “it does rather. All right, go on with your theorizing.”

  Bethancourt sat up a little and cleared his throat, wishing for a cigarette. He was suddenly self-conscious.

  “I was only thinking,” he said, “that given Jack didn’t show up in Walworth until two hours later, he must have gone somewhere to either speak to someone, or possibly to look at the Haverford house again. Somewhere, at any rate, where he could encounter someone who said something suspicious, or see someone where they shouldn’t be.”

  “If I was all the way up in Southgate,” said Gibbons, “it would explain why it took me two hours to get to Walworth.”

  “But of course we don’t know how or when you picked up our mystery bloke’s trail,” said Carmichael. “I do wish that second cabbie would come forward.”

  “That’s the working theory, then?” asked Bethancourt. “That whoever Jack was following was the one who shot him?”

  Carmichael shrugged a little. “Not necessarily,” he replied. “I can think of other scenarios. But I think if he didn’t do it himself, he bloody well knows who did.”

  “So then,” said Bethancourt, “you believe what happened to Jack is connected to the Haverford case after all.”

  Carmichael narrowed his eyes in thought. “I always had that feeling,” he said in a moment. “Perhaps I’ve been relying too much on that—God knows I can’t be said to be very objective in this case.”

  Gibbons grinned faintly from his bed. “I’m glad of that, sir.”

  Carmichael smiled sheepishly back at him. “So am I, lad, so am I.” He cleared his throat, clearly discomfited by this display of emotion.

  “Although,” added Gibbons thoughtfully, “it’s odd that I rang you instead of Davies later. If it was to do with his case, I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t have left him a message instead.”

  “That’s the one thing that’s made me doubt my instincts,” admitted Carmichael.

  “You would have rung the chief inspector here if you thought Davies was up to some funny business,” said Bethancourt.

  Both policemen turned to stare at him, clearly taken aback by this suggestion.

  “I don’t know the man well,” said Carmichael, exchanging dubious looks with Gibbons, “but he has an excellent reputation. Really, it would be most unusual for a detective to turn coats—it’s the sort of thing that only happens in telly programs.”

  “I really can’t imagine,” said Gibbons, looking rather shocked, “that Inspector Davies would shoot me.”

  Carmichael burst into laughter. “Well, now,” he said. “That’s a solution to Constable Lemmy I hadn’t thought of.”

  The two younger men joined in his laughter.

  “In any case,” said Bethancourt, “it might not be Davies who shot you. He could have accomplices—and it certainly wasn’t Davies you were following that night.”

  “No,” agreed Carmichael, “our witness said it was a young man.” He ran a hand over his head. “I expect it’s something to consider,” he said, but not as though he were convinced of it.

  “It does explain why I rang you,” said Gibbons, but he, too, sounded doubtful. “And,” he added reluctantly, “it would also account for the fact that I made an appointment to speak with you the next morning, instead of ringing you directly.”

  “True,” said Carmichael. “I’ve been thinking that was an indication that, whatever you wanted, it wasn’t urgent. But it could equally well have been discretion on your part.”

  They looked at each other a little blankly.

  “It’s not the only possibility,” interposed Bethancourt, feeling as if he had set the cat among the pigeons. “Let’s go back to what you might have done when you left the pub.”

  “I can’t have gone to see Davies,” said Gibbons, frowning. “I would have gone back to the Yard to look for him, and we know I didn’t do that.”

  “And you can’t have tried to see Grenshaw,” said Bethancourt. “It was half-six—he would have left his office before that.”

  “I could have gone back to check something at the Haverford house,” said Gibbons. “Although none of these notes seem to refer to the scene of the crime.”

  “You might have wanted to ask the Colemans something,” suggested Bethancourt. “Or Colin James—he doesn’t strike me as the type who leaves the office promptly at five.”

  “Either of those is a good guess,” agreed Gibbons. “But for all we know, I could have met someone on my way from the pub to the tube and gone off with them to have some dinner.”

  “Well, yes,” said Bethancourt, feeling discouraged.

  “But in that case,” said Carmichael, “you have to think about how seeing someone from the case at a restaurant would have struck you as suspicious. You did follow someone, after all.”

  “Or,” said Bethancourt, “it could be what you told the cabbie was true: you knew the chap in the other taxi and the two of you simply didn’t want to arrive in the same car. In that case, the man you were following was an acquaintance with whom you had just dined.”

  Carmichael looked at him, slightly exasperated by this explanation.

  “Is there no instance you can’t spin a story for?” he demanded.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Bethancourt. “I’ll try to stick to the most likely scenarios.”

  “In any case,” said Gibbons, raising his voice slightly to assure he had their attention, “if that were true, it wouldn’t help us any. It would mean I had gone to Walworth with a friend and presumably been attacked by a random mugger.”

  “Who shoots his victims from a distance before robbing them?” asked Carmichael scornfully. “It’s hardly a very successful strategy, is it?”

  “It doesn’t seem very likely,” admitted Bethancourt with a smile.

  “So let’s return to the more plausible,” said Carmichael. “You went off to check on something about the case. If we’re all very lucky, you did not surprise Inspector Davies in the act of retrieving the stolen jewels—hold on a minute.”

  Carmichael, struck by a sudden thought, fell silent, a speculative look in his eyes. In a moment his focus slid sideways toward Bethancourt, who met his gaze, his own eyes alight with curiosity.

  “You suggested Gibbons might have gone to speak with the Colemans or with Colin James.”

  “Yes, sir,” acknowledged Bethancourt. “They were the first two names that popped into my head.”

  “And I believe,” said Carmichael slowly, as if he were still thinking the idea over, “that Davies and Colin James are quite friendly.”

  “Oh!” said Gibbons. His mouth remained open for a moment, as if he were going to add something, but then he closed it without speaking, looking rather stunned.

  “If the two of them colluded to steal the jewelry,” said Bethancourt, “they must also have a third accomplice: the man Jack was following on Tuesday night. Does James have a younger boyfriend?”

  None of them knew.

  “It’s only a hypothesis,” said
Carmichael firmly, relegating this flight of fancy to its proper sphere. “It’s even more likely that Gibbons went back to the Haverford house and found someone—a professional thief, perhaps—there before him, someone he then proceeded to follow.”

  “But then why did I ring you instead of Davies?” demanded Gibbons.

  And none of them had an answer to that, either.

  But Carmichael made up his mind that first thing tomorrow he would set about discovering where Davies had been on Tuesday evening.

  Bethancourt, leaving the hospital deep in thought, walked aimlessly down Gower Street before realizing he had left the car in the other direction. As he turned back, it dawned on him that it was late, likely much later than he had intended to leave. He pushed back his coat cuff and yelped as he saw the time.

  “Come along, Cerberus,” he said, quickening his pace. “I’m awfully late—it’s a wonder Marla hasn’t rung—oh, dear Lord.”

  This exclamation came as he remembered he had switched off his mobile phone upon entering the hospital. Anxiously, he fished it out of his pocket and turned it back on, swearing again as it announced to him that he had messages from three missed calls.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” he muttered as he listened to Marla’s increasingly irate messages. Glancing down at himself, he reflected that he could not possibly fulfill their evening engagements without first going home to change. “Well, at least I’ve got the car,” he told the dog. “It’s a pity the shops are shut,” he added as he dialed Marla’s number. “I could have just bought some things—it would have been faster.”

  “Where on earth have you been?” she demanded. “We’re going to be horribly late for dinner.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he apologized. “Jack and I got to talking and I lost track of time.”

  “Oh, how is he?” she asked.

  “I think he might be a bit better,” he told her. “At least, he seemed more alert and he stayed awake for longer. That’s why I’m so late.”

  “I’m glad he’s getting better,” she said, but she sounded distracted and he knew he had not entirely diverted her from his tardiness.

  “Look here,” he said, “how would it be if I met you at the restaurant?”

  “Deirdre and I are nearly at the restaurant now,” she snarled and he winced.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, I’ll be right along, then. It won’t take me a minute.”

  “Well, do hurry up, Phillip,” she replied. “Remember, we’ve got David’s party to go on to, so we can’t spend all night at dinner.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll be there in no time.”

  He sighed as he rang off and looked forlornly at Cerberus.

  “She’s going to murder me,” he said.

  David’s birthday party had been a huge success. The champagne had flowed, and had been accompanied by mini chocolate tortes and strawberry tarts instead of the usual hors d’oeuvres, an inspired innovation. It was no doubt the unusual combination, thought Bethancourt, that had him awake at 6:00 A.M., a scant two hours after he had fallen asleep, with a decidedly acid stomach.

  He was not a man who normally had much trouble that way, and he lay awake for several moments, listening to the rain against the windows, before tracing the complaint to its source.

  “Bother,” he muttered.

  Marla beside him was very still, burrowed beneath the duvet, apparently without digestive difficulties. This made his own discomfort all the more irritating. Sighing, he rolled over on his side, hitching his head a little farther up on the pillow, and wondered if he could go back to sleep or if he would be forced to rise and seek a remedy.

  The rain was coming down steadily outside, a peaceful drone that spoke of sleep. Bethancourt closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on it, but his brain refused to cooperate. Pleasant scenes from the recent party drifted through his mind, which he then found himself contrasting with the equally pleasant—if wildly different—scene of high tea with three generations of Burdalls.

  And that suddenly brought him wide awake, his eyes flying open in the darkness. Gibbons had not remembered the Burdalls, which meant he had not gone to interview them on Monday when he and Davies had been at the scene. It was possible, of course, that Inspector Davies had followed up with the Burdalls on Tuesday, but Bethancourt thought it unlikely; he had spent enough time around police investigations to know that an errand like that was usually given to a subordinate, not carried out by the officer in charge. Which in turn meant it was quite likely that when Nicky Burdall said her family had been interviewed by Scotland Yard, it was to Gibbons she was referring, and—since Gibbons had no memory of them—that the interview had taken place on Tuesday.

  In fact, thought Bethancourt, there was even that mysterious initial “B” in Gibbons’s notebook. It could well refer to the Burdalls, and if so, there was part of Gibbons’s time accounted for. Since that particular note was placed toward the end of what Gibbons had written that day, it was even possible that his interview with the Burdalls had taken place after his pint with O’Leary—the crucial missing time period.

  Between acid indigestion and detective excitement, sleep had become impossible. Reluctantly, Bethancourt slipped out of the bed without waking Marla, wrapped himself in his dressing gown, and sought out the kitchen. Milky tea and toast—his childhood nanny’s solution to upset stomachs—would probably do as well as anything to settle his innards and let him get back to sleep.

  18

  Cautious Distrust

  Carmichael saw his wife off to church on Sunday morning before leaving for the Yard. Ordinarily, he would have accompanied her unless events in a case were particularly pressing, but he was too worried about Davies’s possible malfeasance to do anything but go to work. During the night, the likelihood of Davies’s culpability had seemed to loom over him, seeming almost certain, and preventing his getting much sleep. But this morning over his first cuppa he had had another, more cheerful thought. If Colin James might have colluded with Davies to steal the jewels, it followed that another possibility was that James had stolen them himself, and might not have involved Davies at all other than to take advantage of the inspector’s trust.

  Carmichael liked this scenario so much better than the one that painted Davies as the criminal mastermind that he was, at heart, rather doubtful of it. Still, both possibilities would have to be looked into and it was going to take a great deal of tact to find out the truth without alarming (or, if innocent, insulting) either party.

  The end result of which was that Carmichael did not think he could possibly sit piously in church while an internal police investigation hung over him like Damocles’s sword.

  The day was gray, but not rainy, and it looked as though it might be clearing. Carmichael, who was heartily sick of the November weather, reflected that having the sun peep out—if it happened—could be taken as a good omen for his investigation.

  When he reached the Yard, Constable Lemmy was not in evidence, which Carmichael took as another good omen, though he found it nonetheless irritating. He got himself a coffee and settled in at his desk, taking a cigar from the drawer where he kept them and placing it above his blotter, like the promise of a reward. Then, with a knot in his stomach, he picked up the phone and dialed Inspector Davies’s mobile.

  Davies answered at once, as might be expected of a detective inspector involved in an ongoing investigation.

  Carmichael identified himself and then continued, “There’s just a detail I wanted to clear up, Inspector. Could Gibbons have got hold of you on Tuesday night if he had tried?”

  “Yes, of course,” replied Davies, sounding rather surprised at this question. “I spent the evening at home, but I had my mobile close at hand—I was hoping to hear from one of my contacts, in fact, but he didn’t ring until the next day. I understood, sir,” he added, “that we had the sergeant’s phone records. If he had tried to ring me, wouldn’t it have shown up there?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Carmichael
. “I was simply trying to reconstruct Gibbons’s thinking. I’m still rather perplexed that he rang me instead of you that night.”

  “I’ve always assumed, sir,” said Davies, “that there was a personal reason behind that. After all, the two of you have worked together for years and presumably he would turn to you if he felt the need of an older man’s advice.”

  “True enough,” responded Carmichael cheerfully. He did not point out that Gibbons had a perfectly serviceable father with whom he was on good terms and whom he could consult if need be. Or that young men in their twenties seldom felt the need for such advice at all. “In any case, I just wanted to make sure he could have spoken to you if something about the Haverford burglary had come up.”

  “I see,” said Davies, sounding distracted. “Excuse me, sir, but here’s my call from South Africa coming through—I must take it.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said Carmichael, and rang off.

  He replaced the receiver and frowned at the cigar. Davies, it seemed, had no alibi, unless one wanted to count his wife, and Carmichael didn’t. He had not realized how much he had been hoping that the inspector would produce an ironclad alibi, but he felt the disappointment keenly now. The knot in his stomach tightened another notch.

  “Damn it all,” he muttered under his breath, and leaned back in his chair to consider. Was the fact that Davies had immediately, without waiting to be asked, related his whereabouts that evening a suspicious occurrence or the opposite? Did it indicate a lie already prepared, or complete innocence? One could go round and round with that question, like a hamster on its wheel.

  “Let’s move on,” he said to himself. Next up was Colin James, and he was going to be a more difficult nut to crack; Carmichael had no ready-made excuse to ask him about his movements on Tuesday night. He didn’t fancy ringing James up in any case—not having encountered him previously, he preferred a face-to-face meeting so he might make his own assessment of the man. Perhaps, he decided, inspiration was best left to the moment.