The Bath Conspiracy

by Jeanne M. Dams

  Both men smiled. ‘Right you are, my dear. At least that’s my working hypothesis. It’s possible, of course, that we’re wrong about his origin.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I remember now. He did say he was from London, when he told us his name. Your head was buried in the guidebook, Alan, but he distinctly said it. And then we went on to talk about accents and how he guessed I was American. So he’s a Londoner, all right. And that means he’s operating under an alias, and that probably means he’s a crook!’

  ‘Not so fast!’ Alan raised a hand in the stop gesture. ‘It’s not illegal to use an assumed name, and there are lots of reasons people do. We can’t condemn him on that count alone.’

  ‘Then we have to find out who he really is. And that shouldn’t be hard. We have – well, Rob, you have – all those fingerprints, from the loot.’

  Both men looked startled. ‘Do you have some reason, Dorothy, to connect Simon Caine with the “loot”, as you put it?’ Rob asked.

  ‘No, actually I don’t. It’s only that he’s persistently been there when so many things happened. He was at the Roman Baths shortly before the jewellery was stolen from their gift shop. He was there again, his hands full of stuff he’d bought – or at least I assumed he’d bought it. And Alan, I just thought of this, but would you swear he wasn’t at the garage the day our car was vandalized?’

  Alan raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Really, Dorothy! Your favourite reading material has softened your brain. What on earth makes you imagine he was there?’

  We were not alone. I held on to my temper. ‘There were a number of people there. One customer in the garage was having a set-to with one of the workers. His voice was loud, to carry over the other noise in the place. He had a London accent, and his general build was about right. And you remember I thought there was something familiar about him when we first met.’

  Alan shook his head. ‘Awfully thin, you know. How many million men are there in the UK with London accents?’

  ‘And how many of them are in Bath?’ I retorted. ‘I know it’s not evidence. I just think it’s worth checking out. Surely it would be easy enough to find out if Simon Caine had his car worked on at that garage.’

  ‘And we will check, Dorothy.’ Rob spoke up quickly. I think he scented the beginnings of a row and wanted to stop it before it started. ‘That’s easy. One quick phone call. The fingerprint question, on the other hand, may be a little more difficult. With departments all over the country seriously understaffed, the Met may not take kindly to a request to check unidentified prints against their enormous database. If it were a question of murder, or some other major crime, yes. But a few petty thefts …’

  I gritted my teeth but said nothing.

  ‘I’m sure you realize that Dorothy and I don’t consider them quite so petty,’ said Alan, in a voice calculated to placate me. ‘We have been used, or at least our car has been used, as unwitting accessories to this series of crimes. We want them solved. I do understand your problem about the fingerprints. Believe me, I do!’

  I could hear years of dealing with understaffed and underfunded forces in his tone. ‘Would it help at all,’ I asked tentatively, ‘if we could somehow obtain Simon Caine’s prints? To use the only name we know.’

  ‘Of course it would help, but how do you propose to do that? Invite him over for a drink? You don’t even know his name, let alone his address or phone number.’

  ‘Oh!’

  They both turned to stare at me. ‘Something wrong, love?’ Alan asked anxiously.

  ‘No, something’s very much right! At least I think so. Alan, I can’t get out of this couch. Hand me my purse, would you?’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ He’d got it. Rob looked mystified.

  ‘And is there a tissue, or a napkin or something handy, Rob?’

  He reached over to the coffee tray and handed me a lovely piece of damask.

  Carefully, I dumped the contents of my purse on the cushion next to me. Carefully I sorted through the pile, using the napkin to move things aside till I found what I wanted and handed it to Rob, encased in the napkin.

  Alan was grinning as Rob carefully unfolded the napkin to reveal a small mirror.

  ‘I almost never use it,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know why I still carry it in my purse. But I do, and it fell out when Caine and I collided.’ I explained that incident briefly. ‘And he was the one who picked it up and dropped it back in the purse. So it might have some old fingerprints of mine, but the ones on top, the fresh ones, will be his.’ I sat back, feeling as smug as if I’d planned the whole thing.

  Rob slowly shook his head. ‘Were you born under some special star?’ he finally asked. ‘Or have you just been so truly virtuous all your life that your guardian angel hands you gifts like this?’

  ‘No, it’s my benevolent influence,’ said Alan. ‘She was never so lucky before she married me. Unfortunately it doesn’t carry over to things like picking winners at the racecourse.’

  ‘Since we never go to the racecourse,’ I agreed, giving Alan a Look. ‘Seriously, though, you could maybe compare these prints with the ones from the loot. Or somebody could. Then if there aren’t any matches we can pretty well take Mr Unknown off our list of suspects, right?’

  ‘Dorothy, my dear, you need to remember that he isn’t officially on our list of suspects.’

  Sometimes Alan sounds annoyingly like a policeman. ‘For that matter, if you’re going to be pedantic about it, we don’t have a list at all, just some vague suspicions about a couple of people who are probably perfect citizens, next in line for knighthood. But since there’s no one else even in our field of vision—’

  I was interrupted by Rob’s phone, which had a rather strident ring tone. He listened for a moment, spoke a couple of words, and rang off. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. Nothing to do with this problem, but urgent. I’ll be in touch.’ He strode to the kitchen where we heard him tell Sylvie to expect him when she saw him, and was out the back door.

  It is a trifle disconcerting when one’s host disappears with scant ceremony, and creates an interesting social dilemma. Were we supposed to stay and finish our coffee as if nothing had happened? Or get up and leave quietly? Or what?

  Sylvia solved our problem. She came into the room, placid and unruffled, and sat down. ‘I’ll wager you’re accustomed to this, too, Dorothy. Your man up and leaving you, I mean.’

  ‘No, actually, Alan was in an administrative position when I first met him, and has been retired for years, now. We were both widowed when we met, you see. My first husband taught biology in a university in Indiana. Very little drama.’

  ‘Helen, my first wife, did have to suffer through it, though,’ Alan said. ‘She learned to cook only food that could be kept warm or reheated. Sometimes the next day.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Casseroles. Soups and stews. One does long for a lovely roast or chops, but we can enjoy that sort of thing only on holiday.’

  ‘Will Rob – er, Cedric – be retiring soon?’

  Sylvie laughed. ‘Oh, Rob, please. He hates his given name. He always says his mother was frightened by a picture of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Actually, his grandmother apparently loved the book, and had a hand in naming him, poor kid.’

  ‘Poor kid, indeed! I’ll bet he was bullied at school.’

  ‘Actually, no. He was always lean but tough and wiry, and the first time some of the louts tried to give him trouble, he taught them the error of their ways.’ She chuckled. ‘And of course he soon showed how good he was at sport, and that took care of the problem once and for all. He was Rob then and forever.

  ‘And as for retirement, he could, in a couple of years, with full pension. Certainly he’s thought about it, and I’ve tried to encourage him, but the fact is that he loves what he does and hates the thought of giving it up. I’m sure you can understand that, Alan.’ She smiled sweetly at him.

  ‘Dorothy will tell you I’ve never quite given it up. Maybe by fate, maybe by some mysterious working of our own
wills, she and I have become involved in a number of investigations, often when we’ve been off on what were meant to be peaceful holidays. Like this one.’ He made a face.

  ‘Yes, Rob’s told me about this particular problem that you’ve fallen into. And I might be able to help just a little. I volunteer at the abbey gift shop from time to time, and I’ve come to know Sammy rather well.’

  ‘Oh, good grief! Here I was making all these would-be subtle approaches to people who might tell me about him, and here you were all the time. I suppose Rob would have told us, in time.’

  ‘He would if he had known you had a particular interest in Sammy. And if he’d known how well I know the poor lad. Though I don’t know why I call him that. We may think of him as handicapped or disadvantaged, but most of the time he’s quite happy and doesn’t feel sorry for himself at all.’

  ‘Oh, I absolutely agree with you,’ I said vehemently, ‘as I was saying to Alan just a few days ago. But you say you might have some information about Sammy that we could use?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly. Sammy and I get on very well, and he talks more to me than to some people, I think because he knows I like him and will take him seriously. The trouble is that he doesn’t communicate at all clearly.’

  ‘Garbled speech?’ asked Alan.

  ‘Yes, to some degree, but it’s more the inability to string thoughts together in any logical order. He just says whatever is in his mind at that second, and the idea may be derailed by almost anything: another thought, something pretty that he sees or hears, a voice in the distance – anything.’

  I nodded. Exactly the kind of thing I’d often observed with the schoolchildren in Indiana all those years ago.

  ‘So it’s not so much anything Sammy has told me, as a kind of feeling I’ve noticed in him lately. He’s been excited, in a way. As if he’s hugging to himself some lovely secret. He’ll start to say something, smiling that infectious smile, and then clap his hands over his mouth and shake his head, but never losing the smile.

  ‘I asked him once if something nice was going to happen. And he shouted “Yes!” and then shut down completely, hands over mouth and shaking his head violently. I could see tears in his eyes, so of course I changed the subject at once to something about the shop, I forget what. And he was all smiles again, the bad moment forgotten, but I couldn’t help speculating. I did ask the manager to look up his personnel record, to see if he had a birthday coming up, but no, it was back in March.’

  ‘And this happened … when?’ asked Alan.

  ‘Let me think. Mid-October, I believe.’

  So not long before we found the loot in our car. ‘Did you have any idea of what the secret might be?’ I asked. ‘Since it wasn’t anything to do with his birthday?’

  ‘Not a hint. Except that he was extremely pleased about it.’

  ‘Sylvie, what kind of thing pleases him, in your experience?’ Alan leaned forward.

  ‘Oh, almost anything. A candy bar. A sweet puppy. A compliment. A new and interesting task to do. As I’ve said, he’s a very happy boy.’

  ‘But would he make a secret of any of those things?’ Alan persisted.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, no. He’s usually very … I suppose transparent would be the word.’

  ‘So this was something different.’

  ‘Is something different. I saw him yesterday, and he was … I’m not sure what the right word is. Glowing, perhaps.’

  ‘And yet today,’ I said, ‘he broke into tears when he laid eyes on me.’

  Sylvie looked astonished. ‘But why? What did you say to him?’

  ‘Not a thing. I walked into the shop at the Austen Centre. Sammy was in the shop, I think arranging a display. The moment he set eyes on me, he fell apart.’

  ‘But that makes no kind of sense!’

  Alan sighed. ‘Nothing about this matter, from the very beginning, has made sense. Truly I begin to wonder if we’ve lost our collective minds, or been removed by aliens to some parallel universe.’

  Sylvie laughed at that. ‘I don’t suppose it’s either of those things. You both seem to me to be extraordinarily sane. Nor do I believe my husband has suddenly gone round the twist. There must be a pattern somewhere.’

  So we sat and hashed out everything we knew, everything we had guessed, trying to weave the wildly disparate threads into a tough, resilient fabric that would help us wrap up a crook. We didn’t succeed.

  Sylvia had made pot after pot of tea until my trips to the loo had nearly worn a path in the carpet. She had brought out luscious scones and jam tarts to fuel our weary brains. Nothing helped. We had talked ourselves to a standstill, and Alan and I had exchanged ‘time to go’ looks, when Sylvie’s phone rang. She left the room and came back just a few moments later. ‘That was Rob. He’s going to be tied up with this new matter until dinner time. He’d like us to meet him for a meal and talk about some new ideas.’

  ‘When?’ I said cautiously. It was late afternoon by now, and I was in urgent need of a nap.

  ‘Eight or so, he said, at The Scallop Shell. It’s a fish and chips place, not fancy, but the best fish you’d find anywhere.’

  ‘That sounds great! I’m tired of fancy restaurant food.’

  Sylvie gave Alan the address. He programmed it into his phone, and we drove home for what we felt was a well-earned respite.

  EIGHTEEN

  Eight o’clock found us in a bright, modern room, cheery and crowded with people enjoying themselves and their meals. Rob insisted on our sharing a plate of mussels with our drinks; Sylvia and I opted for cider while the men had beer.

  ‘All right,’ I said finally, after the small talk had petered out, ‘I’m dying by inches. What was your new case about, and how come you think it might be useful to us?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said maddeningly, neatly extracting the last mussel from its shell, ‘well you might ask.’

  ‘I am asking, and I warn you I’m growing dangerous!’

  ‘My new case, as you put it, was nothing more exciting than a traffic accident.’

  ‘C’mon! They don’t call men of your rank in to deal with traffic accidents.’

  ‘Not ordinarily, no. However, this one was a bit out of the ordinary.’

  Alan covered my hand with his, silencing me as I was about to blow. ‘All right, Rob, you’ve teased us long enough. Tell us.’

  He sobered. He had enjoyed playing with us, but it was time to stop playing and get down to business. Serious business. ‘They called me in because the accident appeared not to be an accident at all, but a deliberate attempt at harm. And also because the car and driver who were indeed harmed turned out to be the Rolls Royce limousine owned by the Royal George Hotel and its driver, Andrew Williams.’

  ‘No! Not Andrew! Is he okay?’

  ‘They took him to hospital, but the latest report is that he’s not seriously injured. A broken right arm seems to be the worst of it, along with cuts and bruises. No internal injuries, amazingly, nothing life-threatening. The car, on the other hand, may not survive. The other car ran a stop light and rammed into the limo as Williams was attempting a right turn. It didn’t hit the driver’s side square on, thanks be, or Williams would probably not be with us. The limo was clipped on the right rear wing, which spun it about so that it crashed into a shop on the other side of the intersection, causing extensive damage to the left flank of the vehicle. The insurance people will probably write it off completely.’

  I brushed off that information. ‘I don’t care about the car! That hotel can afford to buy a new one, even if the insurance doesn’t pay a cent. But why would anyone try to kill Andrew? They – you – do think it was a murder attempt, right?’

  ‘We do. The car that rammed him had stopped at the light, according to witnesses, and then revved hard as the Rolls made the turn. It was not accidental.’ Rob’s mouth set in a hard line. This one had roused his ire.

  ‘I assume the criminal’s car was also badly damaged,’ Alan commente
d. ‘That should make it, and the driver, easily found.’

  Rob shook his head. ‘The car was certainly damaged, to the point of being inoperable. That may be one reason why its driver simply left it where it stood, blocking the intersection, and fled.’

  ‘Registration? Licence plate?’

  ‘The car was reported stolen about a half-hour before the incident. From a deacon at the abbey,’ he added before we could ask.

  Our meal, for which we no longer had much appetite, was delivered just then. The waitress observed our glum silence and asked, ‘Is something wrong? Can I get you anything else?’

  ‘No, no, this is splendid, thank you,’ said Rob, and she went away, unsatisfied.

  I picked at my fried plaice, which looked and smelled delicious, and poured some vinegar on the chips. ‘And why,’ I asked, after biting into a chip and finding it cardboard, ‘did you think this crime somehow involved us and our problem? Aside from the fact that we stayed at the hotel when we first came to Bath, and had made use of the limo?’

  ‘Because Andrew mentioned your name, Dorothy,’ he said, putting down his fork. ‘When they were putting him in the ambulance, he beckoned me over and said, “Tell Mrs Martin to be very careful. Very careful! There’s more than we know.”’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’ I demanded. ‘More than we know about what?’

  ‘I don’t know. They jostled his arm just then, getting him in, and pain cut him off. By the time he could speak again they’d closed the door. I couldn’t follow him to the hospital immediately; there was too much to do at the site. Of course, other cars had been damaged, and that all had to be seen to, reports taken and so on, and traffic diverted, and the owner of the damaged shop interviewed. I did send a man to keep watch on Williams, in case there’s another attempt on his life, but he’ll be under sedation for most of the evening, while they deal with his arm. It’s a clean break, but it will be extremely painful for a while. He won’t be talking until morning at the earliest.’

  ‘And you’ll be there.’

  ‘Probably not, Dorothy. There are too many other details to attend to. But I’ll be sure the man on duty is told to note everything he says, verbatim, and to ask him some questions if he’s well enough. Our first priority, though, as I’m sure you’ll understand, is to keep his would-be murderer from making a second try.’