I said: “Clarence is having a breakdown. The appearance of Mr Plod with helmet and truncheon and blowing his whistle could take him over the edge. And Shirley with him. She must be our first priority.”
The Widow shrugged, reached for the sherry and poured herself another.
“Could all those random articles be a clue to where Clarence is taking her?” Fanny asked.
“I don’t think so. Clarence may have been in a volatile state, but I don’t think he’d give away the most vital piece of information. I think the articles must relate to something Shirley discovered when she was grabbed by Clarence upstairs.”
“But that could be anything,” Fanny said.
“Not anything. It must be something that Clarence revealed – perhaps that he had no choice about. Something which Shirley thinks is so important she was desperately trying to find a way to tell us. I think she meant us to take the articles as a code.”
“You mean we need to re-arrange the letters in each item to find the message?”
“I’m not sure. Take the first item – cheese grater. There must be dozens of anagrams.” I thought for a moment, “Such as ‘her geese cart’ but it doesn’t make any sense.”
“What about kitchen utensils?” Fanny asked.
I considered that one. “‘Let sunshine tick’ doesn’t get us anywhere. And I don’t think we’ll find a clue with the trussing needle.” Again, I thought for a few seconds. “‘Sentinels urged’ is a little more promising – except we don’t know which sentinels Shirley was talking about or what they were being urged to do.”
“So it’s hopeless,” Fanny said.
“Perhaps not,” I said. “It would be too complicated for Shirley to work out anagrams in the time she had. I think we have to take the initial letters of the items to make a word”
Fanny cocked her head to one side as she thought about that. “Cheese grater, C G, kitchen utensils, K U, trussing needle, T N doesn’t make any word I know.”
“No,” I said. “And if you take the first letters of each of the items, neither does C K T. But remember that right at the end Shirley gave two nods. I think she was trying to tell us that we need to take the first letter of the second word of each item.”
Fanny spelt it out. “G. U. N.”
“Yes,” I said. “Clarence has a gun.”
Chapter 21
“The gun explains how Clarence was able to capture Shirley,” I said.
We were in my MGB racing across town towards Clarence’s apartment. I jumped a red light in the Steine. Pressed my foot on the accelerator. The MGB’s exhaust roared. We shot past The Level where I’d followed Fanny two nights ago. Hurtled towards the Lewes Road. Dust from the road flurried in our wake.
I said: “Clarence may be a big man, but Shirley would’ve put up a doughty fight – but not with a weapon in play. The gun changes everything.”
“How would Clarence get a gun?” Fanny asked.
I’d been pondering that myself. “There are a couple of dealers of militaria among the antique shops in The Lanes,” I said. “I know there are rumours that one does an under-the-counter trade in firearms for customers who don’t plan to show them off in display cabinets. But the cops have never pinned anything on him.”
“Doesn’t that mean we should call in the police?”
“It’s an even stronger reason not to. Superintendent Tomkins is running the case. If he knows firearms are involved, he’ll charge in with all guns blazing. Like the death-and-glory brigade. Shirley’s death, his glory. I’m not having that.”
I glanced at Fanny. Her lips were pressed tight with tension. “The situation seems hopeless,” she said.
“Not hopeless. Clarence is crazy but that doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t listen to us. We may be able to talk him into letting Shirley go.”
“But he wants money. Where are we going to get ten thousand pounds?”
I shrugged. “Not from my Post Office account, that’s for sure.”
We drew up outside Clarence’s house three minutes later.
The street was quiet. Long shadows were creeping between the houses. An uneasy twilight was settling over the place. Or perhaps it was just my mood that was uneasy.
We scrambled out of the MGB and hurried up a short path to the front door. I pressed the bell.
“He won’t answer,” I said. “But we have to make sure.”
“What do we do then?”
“We’ll ask ourselves in.”
“You mean burgle the property?”
“Cracksman Colin and Fingersmith Fanny are on the case,” I said.
“You can’t be serious?”
“Let’s just say we’re going to pay an uninvited call.”
We’d waited for a minute. As I’d predicted, nobody appeared.
“Let’s go round to the back,” I said.
We wouldn’t be able to force our way through the front door without attracting too much attention. But when I’d taken Clarence out the back way to the pub in order to avoid Jim Houghton’s unwanted attentions, I’d noticed that there was a kitchen door which opened into a small yard. I remembered that Clarence had drawn back two heavy bolts on the inside to let us out. But there was something else about the door that made me believe I would be able to find a way in.
We entered the back yard through a tall gate and closed it quietly behind us. The twilight had now turned to dusk and I wished I’d brought a torch. The yard contained a sentry-box shed, an old mangle and a rusting bicycle. I crossed to the shed. The hinges squealed as I opened the door. The inside was covered in dust and heaped with rubbish that had been thrown out of the house over the years. A few tools hung from a small rack.
I took down a sturdy screwdriver and crossed to the backdoor. It was a conventional two-panel job with a pane of frosted glass in the top half and a panel of wood in the bottom.
“You’re not planning to take the door off its hinges?” Fanny asked.
I grinned. “They didn’t teach elementary carpentry at Roedean, then. That wouldn’t be possible. The screws in the hinges are always hidden when the door is closed.”
I squatted down on my haunches and prayed that my hunch was right. Some doors have the wooden panel fitted into the framework with a tongue-and-groove joint. There would be no way of removing that kind of panel without taking the framework to pieces. But I’d noticed when I’d been shepherding Clarence away from the advancing Houghton, that this back door was fitted with a cat flap. There was no sign of a moggie – and I guessed it had long gone the way of poor Marie Richmond’s career. But for the flap to be fitted, it was likely the bottom panel had been removed – then screwed back in. And what has been screwed in can be screwed out.
In the fast-fading light, I examined the panel while Fanny craned over my shoulder.
I was right. The panel was fixed into the frame with a screw in each corner. With the sturdy screwdriver, I had the panel out within a couple of minutes.
I turned to Fanny: “Normally, I’d say ladies first. But, under the circumstances, I’ll lead the way.”
She nodded. I stooped down and crawled through the hole in the bottom half of the door. Inside, I turned around and stuck my head out again. “The coast’s clear.”
Fanny scrambled through and clambered to her feet. “And before you say it, they don’t teach housebreaking at Roedean either,” she said.
“So not a practical curriculum,” I said.
She punched me on the arm. I looked around. We were in the kitchen. A few plates were piled in a drainer by the sink. A saucepan encrusted with dried-up gravy stood on the stove. A small worktop area held a packet of cornflakes, a pot of jam and a lone Oxo cube. The oily stench of rancid fat hung in the air.
I said: “We’ll have to risk putting some lights on – otherwise we simply won’t be able to see. I think anybody who spots the light will simply assume Clarence has come back. But we’ll need to keep our voices down. We don’t know how thick these walls are.”
>
We crept into the living room. The only sound was the ticking of a clock in the hall.
“What are we looking for?” asked Fanny.
“Anything that gives us a clue about where Clarence has taken Shirley. He’ll be looking for a place where he’s confident he’ll be private and undisturbed.”
“But that could be anywhere,” Fanny said. “It’s not even like looking for a needle in a haystack – because we don’t even know which is the right haystack.”
“I’m not so sure. Clarence has limited options. Besides, he’s not had much time to prepare – certainly not more than twenty-four hours before he cooked up this scheme. So he’ll have to choose somewhere that satisfies his private-and-undisturbed criteria – but which he can get to easily. There won’t be many places which fit the bill. Perhaps only one.”
Fanny shrugged. “You may be right. But it seems a long shot.”
“No matter how long, we have to try. Shirley’s life may depend on it.”
We started to search the room. It was like taking a journey back into the nineteen-thirties. The place had clearly been Marie Richmond’s domain. A chair covered in faded red velvet with a lacy antimacassar was pulled up to the fireplace. A sewing basket, overflowing with a confusion of needles and threads, sat on a small table by the chair. An old copy of the Chronicle was propped up against the table. I picked it up. It was dated the day before Marie died.
I’d expected to see photos and mementoes from Marie’s acting career. But there were none. It was as though she’d made a deliberate effort to wipe that part of her life from her memory. There was a bookshelf packed with paperbacks – mostly romantic potboilers. I pulled a couple off the shelf. Dust swirled in a little cloud as I flicked through the pages. On one of the shelves were a few photos in cheap frames. Clarence as a young boy, as a teenager with a bicycle. One of Marie looking surprisingly flirty as a pensioner in a bathing suit. And a surprise: a small print of the Orpen picture of Venetia which hung at Piddinghoe Grange. So perhaps Marie had harboured a scintilla of love for her sister despite the animosity between them.
But there was nothing here that would give us the clue we desperately needed.
On the other side of the room, Fanny was rummaging through a cupboard.
“Just glasses and a few bottles. Mostly sherry,” she said.
“Let’s try the bedrooms,” I said.
We crept into the hall. Three doors led off a short corridor. One opened into a bathroom. We ignored it. The second revealed Marie’s bedroom. We went in.
The sharp scent of cheap perfume made our nostrils twitch. The dressing table contained a couple of atomiser bottles, a hairbrush and comb, and a small vanity case, which I presumed was for make-up. The bed had been neatly made. It was covered in a bright counterpane that featured sprays of red roses.
The wardrobe was a monster in dark wood with two heavy doors. A full-length mirror had been let into one of the doors. I opened both doors and we peered in. At the height of her fame, Marie had dressed in the finest creations from Worth or Givenchy of Paris. (Or, more often, undressed from them). But the few clothes hanging on the rail looked dowdy and well-worn. This was the wardrobe of a skivvy rather than screen-siren.
“She’d put the world of haute couture behind her then,” Fanny said.
“You’ve forgotten – she was living on hand-outs. But what’s this?”
At the top of the wardrobe a shelf held a couple of cheap felt hats, a wrap thing like a dead fox, and what looked like a pile of papers. I reached up and hefted it down. It was a fat scrapbook.
I opened it and flipped through a few pages. The book had obviously been compiled as a labour of love. Each cutting was neatly clipped, carefully pasted in and labelled with its date and source of origin. Most of the cuttings had come from the Sussex Express, the weekly newspaper published in Lewes. But this wasn’t a scrapbook full of headlines about Marie’s triumphs on the stage and in the silent movies. Indeed, at first glance, I could see few cuttings about her. Most were about village life in and around Piddinghoe. The cuttings dated from before the war until a couple of years ago. I wondered why Marie wanted to collect cuttings about a place she rarely visited rather than about her own career.
But this was no time to ponder an answer to that question. We had more urgent business.
I said: “This won’t help now, but I’m taking it with us. Let’s try Clarence’s bedroom.”
We slipped silently back into the corridor and moved into his room. I flicked on the light switch and surveyed the room.
Clarence had not made his bed. It was strewn with discarded clothes. The dressing table was piled with stuff he’d left behind. I spotted an old shaving kit, a pair of hair brushes, a tin of shoe polish among the junk.
I rummaged among the stuff. And turned up a car logbook for a Hillman Minx.
“He left in a hurry and forgot this,” I said.
Fanny began to pick through the clothes on the bed. I moved to the bedside cabinet. The top of it hadn’t been dusted in weeks. The footprints of what looked like a couple of picture frames were outlined in the dust.
“He’s had some bedside photos here,” I said.
Fanny crossed the room and traced the outline of the frames in the dust with her forefinger. “He’s taken them with him,” she said.
“Possibly. But the room is a shambles. They could be anywhere. He wasn’t packing for a holiday. He was scrambling to get out of the flat as fast as possible.”
“I don’t see how that helps us,” Fanny said.
“Two pictures by the bedside. I reckon one of those must be his mother,” I said.
“So the second is his father.”
“I’m not so sure. Clarence’s father died back in the nineteen-twenties. Besides, Clarence is the mummy’s boy from hell. I wouldn’t be surprised if the second one doesn’t have some kind of link to her as well.”
“But we’ll never know.”
“Look at the room,” I said. “It’s like a tornado has passed through the place. For all we know, the pictures could be under the clothes on the bed, jumbled among that stuff on the dressing table or anywhere.”
We started at opposite ends of the room. We rummaged under clothes. Lifted up bedding. Peered down the back of furniture.
I found one of the photo frames five minutes later. It had slipped down behind the bedside cabinet – no doubt accidentally as Clarence rushed to pack his belongings.
“Look at this,” I said.
I held out the photo frame to Fanny.
“It’s a ship,” she said.
“No, it’s a houseboat,” I said. “People live on them.”
The picture showed an ungainly looking craft, a bit like a cross between a cabin cruiser and one of those narrowboats which sail Britain’s canals.
“I think this is where Clarence has taken Shirley,” I said.
“What makes you think that?”
“It meets his needs – private and undisturbed. But this is the clincher.” I pointed at the photo. “You can see the name of the boat painted on the prow.”
“Marie,” Fanny said.
“He didn’t take the picture with him because he’d lost it down the back of the cabinet. It was because he didn’t need a reminder of what it looked like. He was planning to be on it.”
“So he’s stuck on this boat – wherever it is.”
“Not necessarily. Houseboats don’t normally move from their moorings. But that doesn’t mean they can’t. After all, how did they get there in the first place?”
“You think he’s planning to move?”
“In his present state, he could be thinking of anything. He’s probably just mad enough to believe he could sail to safety in this vessel. We need to get to that houseboat before it weighs anchor and disappears out to sea.”
“But we don’t know where it’s moored,” Fanny said.
I pointed to something in the background of the photo. “See that bridge? It’s the foot
bridge across the River Adur. The boat is moored at Shoreham-by-Sea. Let’s go.”
Fanny hung back in the room. She looked anxiously from me to the bed to the dressing table. She said: “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
“The gun?”
“Yes. We could be walking into an ambush with an armed maniac. How are we going to defend ourselves?”
“I’ve had an idea about that,” I said.
A wet tongue licked my ear.
“Stop it,” I said. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
Fanny giggled.
We were in the MGB. We’d just passed Hove Lagoon on the coast road heading towards Shoreham, five miles to the west. I depressed the accelerator and the arrow in the speedo climbed past sixty. The road ahead narrowed. The four steaming chimneys of Southwick power station loomed out of the dark.
The wet tongue foraged in my ear again.
“I said ‘stop it’.”
“She’s just trying to get to know you,” Fanny said.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Poppy, Professor Pettigrew’s star poodle, fidgeted around in the jump seat, mouth open, tongue hanging out. She snuffled hopefully around the back of my neck.
“Now I know what people mean by dog days,” I said.
“Do you really think that Poppy can help?” Fanny asked.
“The first time I visited Clarence, I discovered he had a phobia about dogs. I don’t just mean that he doesn’t like them. He’s terrified of them. Even the softie of a mutt owned by the old lady across the hall put him in such a fright he nearly had to change his underwear. So, perhaps, Poppy may put him on the defensive and give us an edge. We need it.”
It hadn’t been easy persuading the professor to part with Poppy for a couple of hours. We’d barged into his dressing room like a couple of stage-door Johnnies just as he’d finished his last performance of the evening. He seemed surprised to see us. I could hardly blame him.
I’d pretended Fanny wanted to give Poppy a run on the beach. A little treat after a hard week treading the boards. Pettigrew didn’t seem too keen on the idea. Mumbled something about getting the dogs back to the digs. But, on our previous visit, I’d discovered that it wasn’t only the Pixilated Poodles who liked a little drop of port as a strengthener before a show. The professor did, too. Except that he also liked a drop after the show. And probably during it. I’d counted two empty bottles in his waste bin. I’d handed him a fiver to replenish supplies. And Fanny had promised on her Grandmama’s life we’d get Poppy back to the digs unharmed. Not perhaps the best choice of life to offer as a promissory note, I’d thought. If it hadn’t been for her Grandmama we wouldn’t have been here.
Stop Press Murder Page 22
