The Bath Conspiracy

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘Yes, it’s the main reason. Though the other is true as well. Unless you’ve ever tried to cope with everyday living with only one hand, you may not realize how maddening it is.’

  ‘I see.’

  She was silent, considering the matter. Despite the unsettling nature of what Alan has just told her, I thought she looked better, more interested and alive, than when we’d first come into the room.

  ‘I realize you might not want to take the risk, Mrs Campbell,’ I began, but she waved that aside impatiently.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, call me Judith. I loved my husband, but I’m no more a Campbell than you’re an Englishwoman. I was born right here in Bath. And in answer to your request, I’ll gladly open my home to your Andrew. He’s still here in the hospital, you said? Then I’ll go up and meet him and give him a proper invitation. He’d be in the orthopaedic ward?’

  ‘No, in a private room. I’ll go up with you, Judith.’

  And smooth the way, I thought, neatly diverting any officious nurses barring the way. ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ I said. This interview was going to go smoothly without any help from me.

  ‘You’ll wait right here. Siamese twins, remember? I won’t be long.’

  Before I sat down again I stopped at the admitting desk. ‘I know I can’t go in to see him, but can you tell me how Sammy’s doing? I’m not family, just a friend of his.’

  She smiled gently. ‘We don’t know very much yet. He’s holding his own. You can check back tomorrow.’

  And with that I had to be content.

  Alan came back smiling, as I was reasonably sure he would. ‘Mission accomplished,’ he said as we climbed into the car. ‘They got on like a house afire. I stopped at the nurses’ station with Judith, so she could provide the details. I was not going to subject her to that lump of indifference downstairs.’

  ‘Good. So that’s one problem solved, at least for the moment. I think he’ll be good for her. But oh, Alan! What if Sammy …?’

  ‘Sammy’s in good hands. He’s still alive. He might not have been. What do you want to do now?’

  ‘I want to have a meal and a drink and my bed. In that order, and quickly. This has been quite a day.’

  ‘Another one in our nice restful holiday. What sort of food?’

  ‘Plentiful.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  I didn’t remember any of my dreams when I woke in the morning, but I knew they hadn’t been happy ones. The room was so dark when I opened my eyes that I thought I’d wakened too early, but the clock said it was after eight thirty. Almost twelve hours of sleep. And I would still have turned over and burrowed into my pillow except for a nagging sense of responsibility.

  ‘Awake, Rip?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Then you’d better get a move on if you want breakfast.’

  I groaned. One of the worst things about staying in a hotel, or B&B or any place but home, is the breakfast schedule. At home if I want to sleep until ten I can, and the price is no more than guilt and a headache.

  Good coffee put a little brighter shine on the day. Over eggs and toast I finally worked up the nerve to ask, ‘How’s Sammy?’

  ‘“Doing as well as can be expected”,’ Alan quoted.

  ‘Which can mean anything from much improved to barely clinging to life.’

  ‘I think Judith would have called if there’d been any major change. We got quite chatty yesterday. I told her a little about the situation, and our suspicions, and she inferred a good deal more.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. She’s one sharp cookie. Any word from anybody else? Oh, and is Andrew settled yet?’

  ‘I imagine. Hospitals get an early start on the day, and they were eager to get him out of there and free up a bed.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  He glanced around at the room, still reasonably full of breakfasters who, like us, chose to sleep late on this damp, drizzly November of the soul. ‘Let’s go back upstairs and decide.’

  I took a cup of coffee with me, the stuff we could make in the room being decidedly inferior. Sitting by the minute table, I said, ‘Okay, sounds like you have some ideas you didn’t want to share with the world. Shoot.’

  He ran a hand down the back of his head. ‘Nothing terribly original. We’ve had two suspects, or near-suspects, for the thefts. One of them is now incapacitated for some time, and is under surveillance. The other, Simon Caine or whatever his name is, has not been seen for a while. I’m going to call Rob to see if they’ve made any progress with him.’

  A moment after he’d made the connection, he put his phone on speaker. ‘Rob, Dorothy is going to want to hear this, since it’s her triumph. Go ahead.’

  ‘Triumph? What—’ But Alan shushed me.

  ‘Yes, Dorothy,’ said Rob’s voice, ‘this is very much your doing. You remember the mirror you gave me? The one with our anonymous friend’s fingerprints on it?’

  ‘Oh! You don’t mean to say they’re actually useful!’

  ‘Very useful indeed. First of all, they do match some of the prints on the stolen hoard. Not all.’

  ‘The others, I’m assuming, are Sammy’s.’ Alan’s voice was sad.

  ‘We’ve never had any occasion to have Sammy printed.’ Rob’s tone of voice put an end to that avenue of discussion. ‘However, the match with “Simon” gave us the basis for asking for a search. We just got back the results; I would have called you if you hadn’t called me.’

  ‘All right, don’t make me beg,’ said Alan drily.

  ‘The prints match those of a petty crook from London. He has used several names. No one is quite sure which is the original, so for now the Met has settled on, if you can believe it, John Smith!’

  It was nice to have something to laugh about for a change.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any luck finding him,’ said Alan.

  ‘Not yet. I must say the Met found him very slippery. He was suspected in several smash-and-grabs and that sort of thing, and ratted on more than once. His colleagues in crime apparently didn’t care for him much. But he was actually arrested and charged only twice, and convicted only once. He is a master of the quiet disappearance when the climate grows a little too hot.’

  ‘Will you put out an APB, or whatever you call it in this country?’

  ‘An alert, yes. Unfortunately, since we have no firm evidence to connect him with anything more than petty theft, the various forces won’t take much notice. We’ve too much serious crime on our plates to worry about a minnow like Smith.’

  ‘And what about attempted murder? Is that also petty?’

  ‘Dorothy.’ Alan was not happy with me. ‘Remember the words “firm evidence”? There is no evidence whatever to link Smith with either the attack on Andrew or Sammy’s fall. We have assumed a number of connections, but theories and assumptions carry no weight in police investigations.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I know all that, and I’m sorry, Rob, for being snarky. I’m just frustrated. We have all these loose ends and no way to tie them together.’

  ‘We’re all frustrated, Dorothy. And there are two domestic violence cases in my inbox right now, and a stolen identity, along with one tourist assaulted in a park and a little boy’s bike stolen. So you see …’

  ‘Yes, I see. Again I apologize. Is there anything we can do to help matters along?’

  Rob’s laugh sounded weary. ‘Stay out of trouble. If Andrew’s instincts are right, that may be a full-time job for you. Let us deal with crime, even if we are a bit slow about it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Dorothy and me,’ Alan added. ‘We can look after ourselves. Keep us posted, and try not to work too hard. And say hello to Sylvie for us.’

  ‘Well.’ I sat on the bed debating about whether to climb back in. ‘Alan, I hate to say it, but maybe we should just go home and forget about the whole thing.’

  ‘We could certainly go home. How well do you think you’d get on with the forgetting?’

  I sat s
ilent.

  ‘My love, if you really want to go home, we can do that. I admit Bath is dreary and dismal just now, and a nice fire and some animals to curl up with sounds very appealing. It’s just that I’ve never known you to abandon a project, and I wonder if you wouldn’t have regrets.’

  ‘If there were anything productive we could do, of course I’d want to see it through, but the only things to be done are things the police can do better than we can. I have no idea how to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.’

  ‘There are ways. There are always ways. But for now, since Rob wants us to stay out of his hair, why don’t we find out if Sammy can be visited?’

  I made a doubtful face. ‘I don’t know, Alan. What if he’s still afraid of me? Breaking down in tears wouldn’t do him any good at all.’

  ‘Hmm. Good point. And the only way to know would be to present yourself to him. Risky. All right, how about going to see Judith?’

  ‘If she’s home. She might be at the hospital.’

  I was in the sort of negative mood that finds objections to everything.

  ‘That’s easy to find out, isn’t it?’ He consulted his phone and poked it a couple of times. ‘Ah, Judith, good morning. Alan Nesbitt here. Do you have a moment, or are you at the hospital?’ Pause. ‘Oh, good. Dorothy and I have been wondering how Sammy is getting on.’ Pause. ‘That’s good news. Would they let us visit, do you think?’ Pause. ‘Right. In about an hour, then? Good.’ He ended the call.

  ‘Right, you heard. There’s good news about Sammy. So far, at least, he doesn’t seem to be developing any serious infection from the water. I was told earlier that the doctors know what pathogens are in the water, so they can administer the specific antibiotics to deal with them.’

  ‘Well, then, fingers crossed, but so far, so good. And how is he generally?’

  ‘Judith wants to talk to us about that. She invited us over for coffee.’

  ‘Oh, good! Then we’ll get to see Andrew, too.’

  We passed the hour in making lists and reviewing the information we already had. We made no progress at all. I was glad to abandon the unprofitable exercise and leave for Judith’s house.

  It was Andrew who let us in. Apart from the cast on his arm, which was hanging in a sling, he looked reasonably normal.

  ‘Andrew, you are the most amazing man! Two days ago you were in a crash that might have killed you. Now here you are, walking around as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘I try to keep fit. That helped, I think.’

  ‘Pain?’ asked Alan.

  Andrew shrugged. ‘Some.’ He gestured us to chairs in the sitting room and left the room, presumably to help Judith with coffee.

  ‘That man is headed for a great career,’ I murmured to Alan. ‘Head of Scotland Yard in twenty years, want to bet?’

  ‘No bet. I agree. If that’s what he wants. Ah, Judith!’

  She had come in with a tray of cups and saucers and a plate of scones, Andrew following with a coffee pot. ‘I’m afraid I’d best not pour out for you,’ he said, laughing a little. ‘The coffee would end up in your lap. My left arm still refuses to do as it’s told.’

  He went back to the kitchen for a bowl of sugar, and then again with cream. ‘I cannot carry a tray yet,’ he explained.

  We sat with our coffee and treats and waited for Judith to begin. She looked awful, grey and weary and old.

  ‘I’m concerned about Sammy,’ she said without preliminaries. ‘You all know him. Perhaps you can help me work out what’s wrong.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘He’s conscious now, but he doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s out of the trauma unit and in a room. I insisted on a room. He’s too easily distracted by an unfamiliar environment, and the bustle of a ward would be too much for him. But every time I come into the room he turns away and makes little whimpering noises. He’s never acted like that before, not with me. Do you, any of you, have any ideas about what might be wrong?’

  ‘He has had a severe shock,’ said Andrew, with the patient air of having said the same thing several times before. ‘To the body and the mind. It takes time to recover from such things, and his mind will be slower to recover than some.’

  ‘Yes, you keep saying that, and it’s true. But I have watched when a nurse or doctor approaches him, and he says very little to them, but he doesn’t cringe as he does with me.’

  It was plainly hard for her to talk about this. She was deeply hurt that Sammy, whom she loved so devotedly, was quite literally turning away from her.

  Alan looked thoughtfully at her. ‘I’m looking at this like a parent, not a policeman. I remember when one of my children was young and had done something wrong, something for which he knew he should be punished, he would turn away from me in tears when I went to talk to him about it. He wasn’t afraid of me – we had an excellent relationship and still have – but just apprehensive about what was to come, even though it was never very terrible.

  ‘Now Sammy is in many ways still a young child. He could be afraid to tell you what happened at the Baths, lest you think it was his fault.’

  ‘Or, of course, he could be worrying about whatever was bothering him before all this happened, the thing he was afraid of telling you.’ I looked at Alan.

  He cleared his throat and said, ‘Judith, Dorothy and I think we may know what that is, Sammy’s secret.’ He told the story about the stolen objects found in our car and our attempts, along with Rob and the police, to identify the thief. ‘We believe that there were two people involved, one who instigated the thefts and one who actually performed them. We have identified one of them, a man we knew as Simon Caine, which is not his real name. His fingerprints were found on some of the stolen objects. He has apparently left Bath and has not yet been found, though the police are actively looking for him.

  ‘We think that he, Caine, was the instigator, and I’m sorry, Judith, but we believe that he persuaded Sammy to actually steal the things.’

  ‘Of course,’ I added, ‘as Alan would be the first to point out, there is no actual evidence pointing to Sammy. It’s all a question of inference. He works at almost all the places the stolen objects came from. He would have had the opportunity to take them. In a way, he had the best opportunity, because everyone likes and trusts him. And he in turn is a trusting soul. It would have been easy for an unscrupulous person to make use of him, in return for … what? Treats of some sort?’

  Judith sat silent for a full minute, which can seem a very long time. A tear slipped down her cheek. She made no move to brush it away. At last she sighed heavily. ‘Yes, that would explain his behaviour. His “secret”, that so delighted him at first and then began to trouble him.’ She thought about it for another minute or two, while we waited. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘That’s not easy to decide,’ said Alan. ‘It would be impossible to question Sammy in his present condition, and I’m not sure questioning would be productive at any time. The person we need to question is Caine, and at the moment he can’t be found.’

  ‘You won’t … the police won’t—’

  ‘No,’ said Alan firmly. ‘No one will make any attempt to charge Sammy, or take any legal action against him. The term is “diminished responsibility”. If Sammy was lured into illegal actions, it is the person who persuaded him who must answer for it.’

  Judith looked a little less grey. ‘What shall I tell him when I see him next?’

  ‘Anything you think might reassure him,’ I suggested. ‘Would it help to say that you have learned his secret and it’s all right? That you love him and everything will be all right?’

  She sighed. ‘It’s worth a try. It’s hard, sometimes, to know what he’s thinking and feeling. Even after all these years.’

  Alan smiled. ‘It was often hard for me to know what my children were thinking and feeling, and they had no developmental difficulties. It’s part of being a parent.’ He stood. ‘Thank you for the excellent coffee, and you make admirable scones. We’ll leave you now to
get on with your day. And good luck with Sammy.’

  Andrew stood too, a little awkwardly. ‘Drat. Even getting out of a plushy chair needs two arms. Judith, don’t worry about the tea things. I can put them away, if slowly.’ Judith ignored him, of course, and took the tray to the kitchen.

  He walked with us to the door and said quietly, ‘Are there any leads yet to our villain, whatever his name is?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard. I’m going to call Rob in a bit.’

  ‘Judith is more upset about this than she shows.’

  ‘Yes, we know,’ I said. ‘She’s a strong woman and doesn’t like to show weakness. Look after her, Andrew.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  And soothing words were all very well, I thought as we drove off, but as my grandmother might have said, fine words butter no parsnips. What we needed was action.

  A beautiful sunny day would have helped. I tried hard to overcome my black mood, but if coffee and scones and friends hadn’t helped, I thought I was stuck.

  Alan surprised me. Back in our room, the room I was beginning to detest because it represented inactivity and frustration, he said down on the bed and said, ‘Still got a clean page in your notebook?’

  I pulled it out of my purse and handed it over. ‘Lots of them. We haven’t had enough ideas to use up much paper.’

  ‘Well, I have one now. I’ll call Rob for an okay, but I propose to cast a lure.’

  I just looked at him.

  ‘We’re going to draw in our fish, my dear. With a big and gaudy lure. And you’re going to help me write it.’

  I got it, suddenly. ‘Oh! An ad?’

  ‘No. A small news item, if Rob will allow it. I propose to concoct a fiction that will draw Caine like a magnet.’

  ‘Something about a new source of goodies, maybe?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He wrote busily for a few minutes and then handed the notebook to me. ‘How’s this?’

  I read:

  Police in Bath today declined to investigate the matter of a cache of objects, possibly stolen from local shops, found in the cellar of a house in [insert street here]. It was apparent that the owner of the house, which is let out as flats, had no knowledge of the matter, nor did any of her tenants admit to knowing anything about it. ‘In any case,’ said [insert police name here], ‘the objects are of little or no intrinsic value. They might just possibly be of interest to a collector of ephemera, but there is no case here for the police.’ He suggested that the owner of the house might make an attempt to return the objects to the shops where they belonged, although, he said, ‘They’re very dusty and appear to have been in the cellar for quite some time. Truth be told, the shops may not want them returned.’ The homeowner said that she would consider the matter, but would probably simply consign them to the rubbish bin.