Lonelyheart 4122 f-3

by Colin Watson

  The commander nodded sympathetically. “So I let it go to one of father’s old business friends who had often sailed with him and was very keen to have it. I knew what the boat was worth, because it was in the valuation at two thousand three hundred pounds—and that was only just over half what it had cost two years before. But I also knew that Mr Cambridge wasn’t terribly well off, so...well, I made him take it for five hundred. He was quite pathetically pleased and insisted on giving me an undertaking that if ever he wished to part with the boat, it would—what is the word—revert?—it would revert to me for the same money.

  “Anyway, I received a letter from Mr Cambridge’s daughter. He is in hospital, poor man, and terribly worried about that silly promise. And strictly between ourselves, he needs the money desperately. I wrote at once and told her to sell the boat for as much as it would fetch, but not for a penny under two thousand...”

  An almost indetectable tremor passed over Trelawney’s face.

  “...and now back has come that dear, foolish woman’s reply. No—I must have the boat or no one else will. Final. Flat. Now can you understand how anyone could be so stubborn?”

  The commander’s expression said that he certainly could not.

  “Mind you,” Miss Teatime added, “I must admit that the temptation is almost irresistible. When I look at that water, I can just picture the Lucy—did I tell you he named it after me?—gliding along with that funny little thing on the mast going round and round...”

  “Do you mean to say it’s got radar?”

  “I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s something to do with being able to steer in fog. Anyway, she really is a beautiful little ship and there’s nothing I’d love so much as to...”

  She stopped, suddenly serious.

  “Yes?” Trelawney prompted. Boats had become an altogether fascinating topic.

  Miss Teatime remained silent.

  “I do believe,” he said, doing his best to be roguish again, “that you’ve let out that secret ambition of yours. It’s true, isn’t it? You want to cast off.”

  She nodded, but something seemed still to be troubling her.

  He asked: “Was it the Lucy you had in mind all the time?”

  “Oh, no. When I mentioned my...my ambition in that letter, I certainly was thinking of the sea and going to all those wonderful places like Naples and Marseilles and, and Mozambique—perhaps with someone to share the adventure. But it was only afterwards, when I got Miss Cambridge’s letter, that the idea of the Lucy came into my head. Oh, but no—no, it’s impossible. It would be like taking advantage of a sick old gentleman.”

  “Come now,” said Trelawney bluffly, “you mustn’t look at it like that. These old chaps are very proud; it wouldn’t be kind to go against what they believe to be right.”

  “Dear Jack,” she sighed, “you are so masculine and sensible about these problems. I suppose that comes of your having had to deal with—oh, I don’t know—storms and mutinies and all that sort of thing.”

  He laughed, and she was smiling, too, but in the next moment she looked glumly into the distance and murmured: “I don’t know why I’ve told you all this. You see, there is nothing I can do about it, in any case.”

  “Simple, my dear. Send Mr Cambridge the money. Ease his conscience.”

  “I am afraid you are wrong. It is not simple. I do not have the money.”

  Trelawney waved a careless hand. “How long would it take? A week?”

  “Oh, no, longer. Perhaps three. As I told you, my financial advisers are an old fashioned and you might say excessively fastidious firm. They have no faith in any process that takes less than a fortnight. And by then...well, it would be too late.”

  “How do you mean, too late? The man’s not dying, surely?”

  “Not dying. But in a serious condition in quite another sense. Something called a distress warrant has been applied for by some people to whom he owes money, apparently. Miss Cambridge says that unless the boat is sold within the next week it will be taken from him.”

  “Good lord!” Thoughtfully, the commander straightened up from his bollard and took her arm. They strolled in silence towards the lock gates beyond which lay the tidal stretch of the river.

  They had almost reached the lock when he stopped and faced her, frowning.

  “Suppose,” he said, “that I were to buy that boat...”

  She shook her head quickly. “He would never let it...”

  “Wait, though,” he interrupted. “Suppose, as I say, that I were to buy it—but in your name...”

  “I do not quite understand, dear.”

  “In other words, let him think that you are the buyer—at the agreed price, of course—five hundred pounds—when it’s really me who’s put up the money.”

  “But Jack, I could not ask you to do anything of the kind. You do not even know these people.”

  “I know you, Lucy, and I think I’m a fair judge of character.”

  She looked down modestly.

  He took her hand. “And what would you say if you saw the Lucy bearing down the river here with me at the wheel, eh? Would you be ready to board her for better or for worse?”

  “Jack!” Her eyes were shining.

  “As a matter of fact, that’s just about what I was going to ask you in any case today. About us, I mean. Sailing in convoy.”

  It was clear that Miss Teatime was much moved.

  The commander gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “And now,” he said, “I’m going to tell you a little secret. Do you know why I happen to have five hundred pounds handy for the doing of good turns to old gentlemen with motor boats?”

  He really was so droll. Miss Teatime could not suppress a little giggle.

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Trelawney. “Being a very confident cove, I said to myself as soon as I saw you: that dear lady is going to be your lawful wedded, and as such she will want to live in a little cottage in the country!—of course, I didn’t know then that you were a sailor! No, a cottage, I said to myself, is what that charming woman will want, and you, Jack, know the very place...”

  “Really?” exclaimed Miss Teatime.

  “Really. The said cottage is for sale and may be secured, as estate agents say—one did say so this very morning—for a deposit of five hundred pounds. So now you know the little piece of business that brought me into town so early-O!”

  “You’ve paid this deposit already?” She was quite flustered with excitement.

  “Not exactly. The cash won’t be available until tomorrow. But I came to a firm understanding with the agent. The channel’s clear, old girl, absolutely clear.”

  “Oh, Jack, how wonderful it sounds!” She paused. “But the money for the boat...I mean, how can you use it and still pay that deposit?”

  Trelawney took her arm.

  “That,” he said, “is something we shall have to have a little pow-wow about over lunch.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  After a meal which Commander Trelawney described as “confoundedly good messing”, he and Miss Teatime withdrew to a small deserted lounge where the proprietress of the Riverside Rest brought them coffee.

  Miss Teatime poured, watched by the fond and by now slightly indolent eye of her companion.

  “I love to see you do that,” he said. “Very womanly. Very homely.”

  “Very ordinary,” corrected Miss Teatime, looking pleased.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d spent your life between decks and had your tea handed to you in great slopping mugs by fellows looking like Robinson Crusoe.”

  “No, perhaps not.” She passed him a cup.

  Nothing of boats or cottages had been said during the meal, apart from an off hand request by Trelawney to be reminded of the valuation figure on the Lucy. Two thousand three hundred, was it? That’s right, she had said, with equal indifference.

  Now Trelawney scratched one of his long ears, smoothed back his pale, sand-coloured hair and said tha
t it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get down to a few plans.

  “The best thing,” he began, “would be for me to take the money down to your friend, Mr Cambridge—or his daughter, rather—together with a letter from you saying that I’m acting as your agent. Not cash, mind—it would be silly to carry all that much on a train journey—but a cheque signed by you...”

  “Oh, but the bank...”

  He raised a hand. “I know what you’re going to say, but I’ll deal with that in a minute. I’ll give Miss Cambridge the cheque, make sure the boat’s seaworthy and bring her up here. She’ll be your property of course...”

  “No, Jack. Yours.”

  Trelawney made a grimace of good natured reproof.

  “You’ll never be a business woman at that rate, my love. The deal will be in your name, so the Lucy will belong to you. For the time being, we’ll just look on the five hundred as a loan that I’m happy to make.

  “Now this point about the bank. You were going to say that you haven’t enough to cover the cheque, weren’t you? Well, this is what we’ll do.

  “There’s something called a joint account, you see. Lots of husbands and wives have one, and business partners and people like that. We’ll go round and open one at my bank, and tomorrow I’ll transfer into it the five hundred pounds I was going to use as a deposit on our cottage. Then you can sign the cheque for the boat and it will be drawn on that joint account, all shipshape and Bristol fashion. Do you see?”

  Miss Teatime said that indeed she did and thought him terribly good at managing such things. But what about...

  “The deposit on the cottage? Ah...” Trelawney beamed at her. “It so happens that the estate agent is quite an old friend of mine—that’s how I got to hear of the place, as a matter of fact—and he’ll be perfectly happy to reserve it for me on the strength of my post-dated cheque. That’s a cheque which is payable in, say, a month’s time. A sort of promise, really, and quite usual.”

  “You are sure, Jack? I should not like you to be placed in an awkward situation.”

  “Quite sure. And by the time the cheque has to be honoured, your money to repay the five hundred for the Lucy will have come through—you did say three weeks, didn’t you?—and been put into our joint account.”

  He leaned back, smiling. “Now then, what do you think of that?”

  “Well, it certainly does sound an excellent plan. I had no idea banks could be so accommodating. Mine seems so terribly unapproachable. Perhaps it is because I have never asked about such things.”

  “Probably,” Trelawney said.

  He looked at his watch.

  “I think we’ll just have nice time to go round and set things moving.”

  Inspector Purbright, blissfully unaware of the failure of the Pook-Love consortium, was looking into the windows of his favourite shops in Northgate as he made his way slowly towards the Oxmove mission hall.

  Long before he arrived there, the light breeze carried to his ear the eternal song of the blessed. Did they ever leave the hall for meals, he wondered, or were nutrients administered to them where they stood, as was done for the stalwart and single-minded bellringers of St Luke’s, Chalmsbury, into whose mouths were thrust sponges soaked in egg nog and set on sticks.

  He entered the gloom of the porch—a sort of corrugated iron Galilee chapel stuck on the main building—and felt for the farther door. Pushing this open, he was met and winded by the full force of the hymn.

  The light from three bare electric bulbs hung high in the garage-like roof was reflected stickily from match-boarding walls and from rows of benches that seemed to have been fashioned from treacle toffee. The air was cold and smelled like old women’s washstands.

  Having regard to the noise, the congregation was incredibly small—a knot of perhaps a dozen at the left front.

  Just beyond them, a woman wearing a big black hat jerked backwards and forwards before a harmonium. There was an air of desperation about her; she held down first one lot of keys, then another, then quickly submerged a third bunch—just as though they were a litter of black and white kittens, too numerous and too resilient to drown.

  The minister, the Reverend Leonard Leaper, stood by the harmonium, leaning lightly upon it and singing like mad.

  Purbright advanced a little way down the aisle. He made polite beckoning gestures towards Mr Leaper.

  Mr Leaper gave him a cheerful wave and sang even louder.

  The inspector again caught his attention and signalled more peremptorily. Leaper abandoned the harmonium and walked up to him. The congregation seemed not to notice the defection; it just went on bellowing on into God’s ear.

  “Hello there, brother,” greeted Leaper.

  Purbright merely nodded. He remembered Leaper’s previous existence, as a young newspaper reporter, when it had always been Hello, chief. Obnoxious modes of address seemed endemic to his nature.

  They went into the relatively hymn-proof porch.

  “I was wondering if you could help me, Len.”

  “Fire away, brother.”

  “Do you know a woman called Reckitt—Miss Martha Reckitt?”

  Leaper’s eyes crossed to regard the end of his long, spiky nose; it was his way of aiding thought. “Yes,” he said after a while, “I think I do.”

  “How well?”

  “I used to talk to her sometimes, try to offer her comfort and tidings, brother, tidings.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “Not of late, I should say. No, definitely not of late.”

  “You don’t happen to know of any friendships she might have struck up in the last couple of months or so? There’s been some mention of a clergyman. First name, Giles.”

  Again Leaper’s vision converged upon his nose tip, but this time to no avail. “Of a Giles I know nothing. Or a clergyman, so called? Nix, brother, nix.”

  “We understand that Miss Reckitt subscribed to an organization called Handclasp House, a sort of matrimonial bureau...”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Leaper proudly. “I advised her to.”

  “You, Len?”

  “I did, brother. And within scripture. Multiply, remember. That’s one way of looking at it. The widows of Sidon? Oh, yes, but I’m not to be caught on that. Do you know Sister Staunch?”

  “I have met her.”

  “A goodly woman. I am glad, brother, to help where I can.”

  Good lord, thought Purbright; was this tatter-minded pepperminty young man a Rasputin to the Staunch’s Tsarina? Absurd. Finding him a bit simple, she probably encouraged him to hang around in order to give the impression that her agency enjoyed church patronage.

  “And do you know if Miss Reckitt found a friend through this agency?”

  “I expect so. She is very deserving.”

  “But you don’t know for certain?”

  “Ah...No. To that one, no is the answer, brother, and I can’t say otherwise. How is Mr Kebble keeping?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “What a pity. I often wonder.”

  “Goodbye, Len. Many thanks.”

  “Likewise. Go in peace, brother, and cheer-ho.”

  At the police station, Purbright found pook and the sergeant waiting to make confession. He was still feeling the vague light headedness that had been induced by conversation with the Reverend Leaper, and it was a minute or two before he realized what Love, who spoke first, was talking about.

  “Oh, Christ, Sid—do you mean to say you’ve lost her again?”

  “It wasn’t me who lost her,” protested Love.

  “But I thought it was your job to follow her?”

  “She went out the wrong way again.”

  “That’s right,” said Pook. “Straight at me. And I hadn’t had any instructions.”

  “You were supposed to intimidate her, Mr Pook. Why didn’t you? You were the stopper.”

  “Well she didn’t stop.” Pook’s tone suggested a suspicion that the others had known quite well what
was going to happen. He had been reading a book lately about double agents.

  “And so?” prompted Purbright, more gently.

  “I followed her.” There was a short pause. “Until she lost me in a shop.”