He knew exactly what he was looking for. He took out his torch and flashed it over every wheel. Many tyres were quickly discounted, being in a state of poor repair or even dangerously worn down. The one or two that were evidently recent, showing crisp Dunlop grooves, he subjected to a minute examination, hopefully holding the bottle of orange sand in one hand as a check. After a fruitless hour, he straightened his back and sighed. They were assuming Tyrrell had thought to return the piece of property to its place after going on a killing rampage. How likely was that? And yet—queer folk, these students. They had their code. If he’d borrowed a bike from a friend, he might out of natural loyalty have done just that. Even berserking Vikings looked after their mates.
Thoday fought back unsettling notions that he’d been sent out of the station on a wild goose chase and scowled.
As he was leaving, his eye was caught by the gleam of a silver mudguard at the end of what, in the gloom, he had taken to be an alcove. Further inspection showed it to be a sort of annex. If you pushed your bike a few yards down straight ahead instead of turning left, you found yourself in a smaller version of the previous space. There was room here for twenty bikes. Ten were present. Thoday discounted three staid old sit-up-and-beg bikes from before the war. Though well maintained, they had 28-inch wheels, and their tyres did not fit his profile. A quick glance over the remaining seven told him that he was in the presence of thoroughbreds. Almost all were new, or at least postwar. Some still bore the metal tag of the distributor—a well-known Cambridge supplier. The models made Thoday’s mouth water: a Rudge-Whitworth—“Britain’s Best Bicycle”—a Coventry, three Raleighs, an Imperial Triumph Roadster. Lastly, he ran an envious finger over a French Peugeot of the kind that had won last year’s Tour de France with 36-year-old Firmin Lambot aboard.
So this was where the dons hid their secret longings away! Except that they weren’t longings. They were very real. Tyrrell, a mere student, would never have dared help himself to one of these. He almost walked away, but the thrill of being in contact with the shining speed machines held him back. He took out his torch and bottle and set to work.
The newest of the Raleighs was a last year’s model, a Raleigh Superbe Roadster with Dunlop tyres. And trapped in the indentations of the brand-new rear tyre were a good number of grains of sand the same colour as the sample he held in his hand. Thoday realised he was panting with excitement. He took a sample bag from his pocket and carefully scraped half of the deposit into it. With that safely back in his pocket he took the time to think. This bike had been ridden closely behind the girl who was found murdered very soon after. Whose fingerprints were on the handlebars? He knew that he would have to report it and a crew would be sent along to lift the prints. But whose bike was this?
The dealer’s nameplate was still attached. Varsity Cycles. He took down the details, including the stock number, and prepared to speed along to the Mill Road to make them turn out their records. Then he could, with a modest smile, place the name of the murderer on the desk right under Redfyre’s nose.
Moments later he was bidding a smiling farewell to the porter.
He must have been exuding more charm than he was aware of, he thought, when the porter called him back.
“Sergeant! You were asking about bikes just now . . . I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning, but after young Mr. Tyrrell had left me—on foot—and set off back down Market Hill, a cyclist came steaming down the passage about five minutes later. He turned up the street away from the market. I would never have taken notice of some young tearaway on a bike round here, but this one was going like the clappers. On a slippery road. Maniac! I was going to shout a warning, but he’d already disappeared. Type of bike? No idea. Just the usual two wheels and a saddle job.”
Thoday thought joyfully, It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t bloody matter! and clutched his pocket. Tucked away in there was a notebook, the last page of which contained a series of numbers, and an envelope containing a few grains of sand that could hang a man. This is what matters!
“Doctor Philips is expecting me.”
Redfyre was recognised at once and shown through to the lab where the scientist was at work. The young man smiled in welcome.
“So glad you could come. I’ll make this swift. Under some pressure at the moment. Over here, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
He picked up a steel specimen box and led Redfyre to a microscope. “Take a look at the object I’m going to display. It’s the silver inhaler. There, do you see the marks? Wonderful bit of design and engraving. The assay office has stamped it carefully to intrude as little as possible on the design. Luckily, the design itself is pretty florid and you could easily miss it. You can see the London stamp—the leopard’s head, next to it the lion passant, which is a guarantee of quality, and on the right of that, the head of Queen Victoria.”
“The initial ‘S’?” Redfyre asked. “I don’t carry the dates table in my head!”
“I looked it up. It’s 1873. And next to that, you’ve got the maker’s mark—Charles Asprey and Son, as they were in that year.”
“This plunges us back into Victorian London, with its ladies swooning from heat and tight corsets. This would have been made for a lady, I expect.”
“I’ve never heard of a gentleman using one,” Philips agreed. “But there’s a clue as to the identity of the owner. Wait a minute.” He took off his green lab coat, the gesture revealing a tweed jacket and Fair-Isle jumper that made him instantly less intimidating. “Take a stroll with me in the court, will you?”
They went to sit on a bench in a sunlit corner. A thoughtful and suddenly reticent Philips took out a pipe and began to fiddle with it, to Redfyre’s annoyance. He recognised this time-wasting activity as a device to put off embarking on a distasteful or difficult subject and looked on patiently. After two unsuccessful attempts to raise a glow in his wad of tobacco, Philips gave up and began to explain himself. “I exceeded the directions, I’m afraid. Strayed into the area the detective occupies. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m about to mark your card. Doesn’t have any significance for me, but you may well be able to put an interpretation on it.”
Redfyre made encouraging noises and took out his notebook.
“You’ll have noticed the bit of engraving that wasn’t meant to be hidden under an Art Nouveau curlicue? The initials?”
“CR, I think.”
“That’s right. I took the liberty of ringing up Aspreys and discussing it with them. Frightfully helpful. And their records go way back in time. They said they’d investigate and call back. To my surprise, they did.”
At this point, his flow seized up and he hesitated. Redfyre remained silent.
“Well, upshot is—they found the order and a record of payment. Fifty years on, and I can tell you that the lady it was crafted for was a Miss Clara Rumbelowe. I don’t have an address for her, but I can tell you who commissioned the design and manufacture and paid the bill. For a sum so large I can only suppose it must have been an engagement or a wedding present.”
He took a sheet of notepaper from his pocket. “I jotted down the name and the London address of the generous donor. You’ll see why I’m indulging in all this hocus-pocus, hole-and-corner stuff. Not my style at all! But the way things are turning a bit ugly in Cambridge . . . well, I thought you might prefer a bit of discretion when it comes to bandying about a well-respected local name. I say—are you all right?”
Redfyre gazed blankly at the page he held in his hand. “It’s getting a bit cold of a sudden,” he said with a shudder. “Shall we go back inside?”
Chapter 22
Redfyre had borrowed the station Riley to drive himself out to Melford. In the end, he hadn’t needed to ask. MacFarlane had pressed it on him. He would sign it out, he declared, as a “necessary tool for the conveyance of arrested murder suspect in custody” back to CID headquarters. The superintendent had even offered an unde
rcover officer to accompany him.
“Look, I know it’s a bunch of wimmin you’re tangling with, and you tell me they’re going to be present in force at a sort of saturnalian rout. Music? Dancing? Jazzing even—you know what those Strettons are like . . . Strong drink will doubtless feature, heightening emotions and reducing inhibitions. You’ll be needing some backup. Don’t ask for Thoday. They’ve clocked him. And that moustache of his has an admiration society of its own. Take Toseland. He’s not yet had the pleasure. Stick him in a penguin suit and tell him to mind his manners.”
“Let’s not get carried away! They’re hardly raving worshippers of Bacchus, sir! They won’t tear me to shreds. And it’s not them I have to be wary of. It’s the predator who’s trailing them. Juno, Earwig, Suzannah, my aunt—they could all be on his list. In fact, if what my aunt suggests is correct, his list could well be longer than ours. We’re restricting ourselves to the characters in the photograph, but remember, ‘cloud of midges’ was the phrase Hetty used to hint at its form and extent. They could be anywhere and everywhere. Mrs. Mac—do you really know where she spends her Thursday evenings? But I have to decline, Toseland. A copper would stand out and be uncomfortable in that company. I feel uncomfortable in that company!”
“Well at least, thanks to some sharp forensics work, we have an idea of this tiger’s identity. We have a name! Even though I can’t quite square it with some of the known facts. We seem to have a candidate who cannot, according to the physical facts, be responsible, but who, according to the forensic evidence, definitely is. There’s something we’re missing, Redfyre, but I’ve bowed to your pressure and I’ve obtained an arrest warrant, duly signed. And that was bloody hard! The duty magistrate took one look at the subject and had to be revived. If we’ve got it wrong, Redfyre, we’ll both be queuing at the work exchange next Monday morning.”
For once, the inspector didn’t charge his superior with exaggeration. His grim smile said that he was well aware of and accepted the prospect of instant dismissal. He was more concerned about the future of his boss, a married man with several children, and he admired—as always—the man’s gruff readiness to do the decent thing.
MacFarlane handed over the document as though it were the last remaining copy of the Magna Carta, his eyes not leaving it until it disappeared into Redfyre’s inner pocket.
“Anyhow, I’m saying we’re going with the evidence we have in hand and under our microscopes. When this one comes to court, I want a series of gents in white coats passing through the witness box, telling the jury what’s what with benefit of Science. Thanks to a bit of good bookkeeping and a print in the sand, we’ve got this joker by the tail!”
“Let’s not forget the medical insight and advice from Doctor Beaufort, sir.”
“I don’t. I just don’t mention it, Redfyre. And I require you to do the same! This must be the last reference, even between ourselves. The doctor opened a door for us that I don’t normally dare knock at. I think he twigged what was going on before we did.”
“He was heartily sickened by the succession of girls to the slaughter. He took a risk, though.”
“Don’t I know it! I haven’t even pressed him on the favours he must have called in or the pressure he must have exerted on his intractable colleagues to come up with one name on a very short list. He could be wrong, Redfyre. We could all be wrong. But I’ll tell you this—no egg ends up on the doctor’s face. Got that?”
“You don’t need to say that, sir. But, if he’s right, we’ve got the killer and we know his motive. We’ve got a box full of forensic evidence. We have the warrant. We have the handcuffs. All we need is the customer.”
MacFarlane’s doubt bobbed to the surface again. “How certain can you be that he’ll be there at the party? This is a smart feller. Is he likely to just walk into a trap? Is it even a trap? And is my best officer the tethered goat?”
“I’m pretty certain he’ll turn up. His job is not done. I know that he’s close to at least one of the girls. Consciously or unconsciously, one of them has been keeping him abreast of the group’s strategy. It’s clear that our man suffers from a visceral misogyny, loathing women to the point of destruction of individuals whom he sees as a threat to his ordered masculine world. Has this been an aspect of his psychological nature all his life, or has it just come to the surface, triggered by the provoking behaviour of one particular girl or group of girls?”
“A bout of visceral misogyny, eh? Is that to be preferred to a dose of Cambridge cholera? Gerraway! He’s just gone up the hill to Doo Lally! Nutty as a fruit cake!” MacFarlane calmed himself and suggested more soberly: “I’m no expert, but I’d guess what we have to deal with is something akin to neurasthenia. Would you say? Battle and shell shock? Changing his personality and freeing him to indulge in hitherto submerged impulses and skills? Chaps come out of neurasthenic attacks speaking in foreign tongues to their nurses and composing symphonies, I hear. Strange things happen when the brain rots. Our bloke probably isn’t all-out gaga. This is a man who can control, or at least time, his urges. He’s suppressed them for years. He may decide to delay his next outburst, keep us waiting another decade?” MacFarlane was suddenly sounding uncharacteristically doubtful. “Better to call the whole thing off, Redfyre?”
“You can try telling that to Earwig, sir. I was unsuccessful. She claims that the madness will just erupt again at a later date when they’re less prepared to resist. Why not lure him out in the open?”
“I’m not happy about any of those girls—young Juno especially—being used as bait. She’s suffered enough.”
“She knows what’s what, sir, Earwig says, and will do whatever’s necessary for the cause.”
MacFarlane had groaned and signed the chit for the Riley.
Redfyre glanced back over his shoulder at the back seat reserved for the guilty party and the stout steel ring and chain fixed to the left side partition. He could not bring himself to conjure up a picture of the prisoner. He distracted himself by checking that the statutory handcuffs (two pairs) and the big, ugly station Browning 1910 semi-automatic (loaded) were in their place in the glove locker and drove on.
He approached the house slowly. He always did. It took his breath away in any season, but there was something especially dramatic about its lines when they were freed from the leafy canopy of bosomy oaks and set against a winter sun sinking in blood-red wreaths of cloud below the horizon. The shortest day of the year. And it was certainly going to be the longest night.
Earwig had telephoned him in great excitement after his aunt’s visit to say how thrilled she was that he was prepared to “put old quarrels aside and help out the family in its need.” He was unsure which quarrels and which need she had in mind, but he let her gush on. She’d asked if he would come out early. The invitations had proved wildly popular and people were bringing friends, arriving early, arriving late, she explained. It was turning into a lunch party, followed by tea and finishing with the evening celebration they had originally planned for. “You know how it is!” she said. “Open house, I’m afraid. We’d so love it if you could arrive at teatime and be here ready to help with the party guests when they come flooding in. Oh—on your way, could you possibly call by daddy’s wine shop and collect an extra crate of champagne? The one he likes. They’re putting one out for you, but they’d like you to pick it up before four o’clock. We probably have enough, but . . . well, with the announcements and the toasts and all that, you never know! And Madame Flora Fontaine drinks it by the bucket.”
Redfyre didn’t ask.
And here he was, dramatically evening-suited, perfectly tied white-tie, gardenia in buttonhole, Beretta 418 tucked up in his inside pocket next to the arrest warrant and a dozen merry widow Clicquots nicely chilled on the back seat.
He patted himself down, checking again. Spare handkerchief in left trouser pocket? Yes. Cigarette case in right jacket pocket? Yes. On second though
ts, he fished out the Beretta. An Englishman’s tailcoat was simply not designed to accommodate a gun, even one so unemphatic as this Italian-designed piece. It had been a birthday present from his well-meaning but whimsical mother. The year before, he’d received a sword stick. It was a worrying business, having a youngest son who’d insisted against all good advice on fighting crime. He looked scornfully at the tiny ladies’ gun, barely as big as his hand, and imagined himself drawing it on Wulfie. The man would catch the bullets in his teeth and die of laughing. He slipped it into the glove locker with the Browning.
He reminded himself that whatever disfavour the old Riley did to the eighteenth century façade of the grand house, he must insist that it stayed parked by the front door, facing outwards, starting handle at the ready. He had just managed to convey these instructions to a manservant when he was swept down upon by Clarissa Stretton.
Earwig’s mother, the soon-to-be-widow, enveloped him in a cloud of eau de cologne, warm arms and a voluminous stole of cloth of gold. Phantom pecks on his cheeks confirmed him a member of her close circle; this was something she had never done before, and he wondered if his status had changed in some way since they last met. If it had, the change was due to Earwig or her brother Wulfie’s information. Neither prospect filled him with joy.
“My darling boy! Don’t worry—I’m not going to say how you’ve grown! I said that the last time we met. I will say how you have matured. Oh my! Quite the handsome young man about Cambridge. Earwig, for once, did not exaggerate! . . . Put the champagne with the others in the still room, will you Frank?”
Clarissa was a tall, fair woman. Her blonde hair was thick and showed not a sign of grey. Redfyre remembered it as always hanging in plaits, one over each shoulder in a defiantly bohemian flourish. The plaits were still there but now coiled around each ear, giving her a medieval air. Add a wimple and you’d have something approaching the fairy Lady of Shalott, he thought, waiting for death among whitening willows and shivering aspens.
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