by Heron Carvic
Chief Superintendent Gosslin, present as always at such a conference to act as a buffer for his subordinates, tried to give Delphick time to collect his thoughts. He grunted.
The assistant commissioner ignored him and continued to watch Delphick with inquiry.
How the hell, thought Delphick, did you explain to the A.C. thoughts and feelings that were so vague that you had difficulty in putting them into words for yourself? The chief knew him. They’d worked together long enough, trusted each other, and old Gosslin would always let him have his head to a reasonable extent without having to dot all the “i’s” or cross every little “t.” But that wasn’t going to do here. The A.C. was determined to probe.
“I’m afraid it’s very nebulous, sir,” he began.
“Feelings always are,” agreed the assistant commissioner. “Nebulous as in the work of Gerard Croiset?”
Delphick was so taken aback that he gasped. Be double damned. Realizing that he was gaping like a freshly landed cod, he laughed.
“You find the analogy amusing?”
“No, sir, far from it. It was the surprise at finding you ahead of me when I was still groping for words to explain.”
Gosslin cleared his throat. “Well, speaking for myself, I’m not even under starter’s orders. Who’s this Gerard Whoosit, sir? Never heard of him.”
“No reason why you should,” replied Sir Hubert. “He’s a Dutch clairvoyant, medium, or whatever you like to call it, who’s consulted a lot by the Continental police on tricky cases!” Gosslin snorted. “Of course we don’t go in for that sort of thing here, not officially. We don’t believe in it, or say we don’t.” He returned to Delphick. “It was some drawings which she did during a case in which she got involved accidentally last year that gave you this idea, I understand.”
“Yes, sir. Though, unlike Croiset, in Miss Seeton’s case I think it’s more or less unconscious. I imagine she would be most indignant if you suggested she was in any way psychic. She’d think it wasn’t quite nice. The most that she would ever admit was that drawing people helped her to understand them.”
“Quite.” Sir Hubert nodded. “From the reports I read at the time, if my memory serves me, that is all her sketches showed, generally speaking; an acute understanding of human nature. Probably translations into her own medium of the impact of a personality rather than any manifestation of any latent psychic powers. No”—he overrode Delphick’s attempt to speak—“that’s a comment, not a criticism, so far. If Chief Superintendent Gosslin approves . . .?” He looked at Delphick’s immediate superior.
Gosslin hunched his bulk forward in his chair. “It’s all a bit—well, I suppose you might say a bit above my head, sir. If a man’s proved himself a good officer I think he should be allowed to follow his own line. Unless there’s good reason against it. But feelings and fancies aren’t my strong point and half the time I don’t pretend to understand ’em. When it comes to drawing conclusions from evidence I know where I am and I think I’m as good as most. But when it comes to drawing pictures—from no evidence—well, that’s just not up my street. But that’s the point here. There is no evidence. In this particular selection of child killings we’ve got to admit we’ve nothing to go on worth a damn. Apart from knowing he must be cracked we’re no further forward than when the first one happened. I’ve got to the pitch where any idea that might turn up something’s worth thinking about. However farfetched.”
“Even,” mused the assistant commissioner, “so far as this gruesome idea of Delphick’s to fetch an elderly and inoffensive lady to a mortuary, force her to look at a child’s corpse and then expect her to make a sketch of it. In the hope, presumably, that the answer to his murder will be stamped all over his face, or thereabouts.”
Damn, decided Delphick, that put paid to it. After the second killing, realizing that he was up against a nut case, he’d decided that he needed to study up on nuts and methods of cracking them. He’d weighed the advantages of consulting an alienist, but finally he had gone down to the small private nursing home outside Plummergen for an interview with Dr. Knight whom he had met and liked during Miss Seeton’s escapades the previous summer. Before his retirement to the country for reasons of health, Dr. Knight had been London’s leading neurologist. The doctor had been interested in Delphick’s problem and interested in exposition, but, returning to London in a whirl of psychomotor epilepsy—which appeared to be what he had always thought of as schizophrenia—and schizophrenia, which apparently was not, Delphick had ruefully concluded that he would have done as well to continue into the village for a conference with Miss Seeton, who might have thrown in a drawing of the murderer for good measure. The idea had stuck. After the third and fourth killings the idea had become an obsession—a possible, a just barely possible, means of getting some clue to work on. And then this evening at Lewisham suddenly he’d been certain. Back in his office he’d tried to reason it out coldly and logically before consulting his chief and had only succeeded in convincing himself that it was the logical answer. But now—no. The A.C. was right. To think of dragging Miss Seeton in to make a drawing of a dead child she’d never even seen . . . Granted last year, when she’d stopped being a public menace with her umbrella and taken up her pencil, she’d given him several clues to people and their doings, whether it was insight, intuition, thought transference or plain psychic, but they’d all been drawings of characters she’d seen, spoken to, or had dealings with. But just from a dead body—what could she be expected to get from that? In any case he hadn’t thought enough of the effect on the old girl herself. She’d probably end up in hospital. And to have got the chief to set up this conference . . . Idiocy born of desperation. It would put a black mark against him with the A.C. Quite mad.
“Quite mad,” pursued Sir Hubert. “Which, as we’re all agreed that we’re up against a madman, has, I suppose, a logic of its own. If other police forces can employ Croiset and his ilk, I see no reason why we should lag behind. Particularly if we have a home-grown product of our own—no expensive plane fares to account for—and even more particularly if we don’t have to admit to what we’re doing. We can employ her in the ordinary way, purely as an artist. I’ll have a word with the receiver and arrange about a suitable fee. And expenses, within reason. Is she in London?”
Gosslin humphed. “No such luck. We got on to the school in Hampstead where she teaches but of course it’s Easter and they said she’s down in Kent. Some cottage she was left, Delphick knows it, in that little village where she got up to all those shenanigans last year.”
Delphick realized that he must stop this before it went any further. “But after what you said, sir, I do see now . . .”
“Is the moment?” took up Sir Hubert. “I agree. You’d better get down there at once. Let’s see, she’s met your sergeant, hasn’t she?”
Remembering, Delphick was forced to grin. “Yes, sir, but . . .”
The assistant commissioner became brisk. “You’d better take him with you then as driver; you’ll need your wits about you when you arrive. Is there somewhere where you can stay?”
“Well, sir,” it was getting out of hand, “last time we stayed at the George and Dragon, but I . . .”
“Book rooms there then, see Miss Seeton tonight and if you can persuade her bring her back with you in the morning.” Sir Hubert opened a diary on his desk.
Delphick glanced at his chief for help, but Gosslin was looking elsewhere. “Excuse me, sir.” He must be definite. “You, yourself . . .”
“Yes, yes, of course,” interrupted Sir Hubert. He turned a page in the diary. “Now, let me see—shall we say tomorrow at four o’clock? No, I may not be through by then. Better make it half past, if you think that will give her time enough. Will she want to do the drawing at the mortuary, do you know, or does she work from memory?”
“From memory I think mostly, sir. At least the sketches of hers I’ve seen have all been done that way.”
The assistant commissioner nodded. �
�Well, I imagine you’ll be kept busy at Lewisham during the early part of the afternoon, so you’d better leave her in charge of your sergeant. He can give her lunch and bring her back here; they can use your room. That won’t worry or upset her, will it?”
In spite of himself, Delphick laughed. “I—er—shouldn’t think so, sir. From what I remember of Miss Seeton, very little worries her. And the only thing that upset her was the newspaper publicity. She considered it vulgar. It’d be Sergeant Ranger who’d worry. She made him feel like Alice in Wonderland—a bit out of his depth.”
“Right.” Sir Hubert closed his diary and pushed it aside. “Then unless I hear from you to the contrary, we’ll make it here at four-thirty tomorrow. I’ll lay on tea. Your sergeant had better join the party. Unorthodox, but then the whole thing’s unprecedented so we may as well keep it as informal as possible. Make her feel more at home,” he surveyed his office, “or less far from it. Oh, yes, and one other thing,” he continued as Delphick was about to speak. “I’d better know in advance your reason for getting Miss Seeton to sketch dead bodies instead of the normal procedure of employing a photographer. What excuse are you making to her—and, incidentally, to the Lewisham Division?”
Delphick’s chance had come. “Personally I . . .”
“Excellent,” cut in Sir Huburt. “Personality. Yes, that should hold water, or nearly. Even the cleverest photographs of dead bodies are no more than just that. If the eyes are closed they look dead and if the eyes are open they look as if they belonged on a fishmonger’s slab. No personality whatever.”
Desperate, Delphick stood up. “Sir—”
“Yes?”
“Listening to you earlier on—”
“You flatter me,” broke in Sir Hubert. “I’d no idea people did. I thought they just let me ramble on while paying no attention, or very little.”
Delphick refused to be deflected. “You said that my idea was mad.”
“I did,” agreed the assistant commissioner. “And had you been listening as closely as you suggest you would have noted that I added that that very madness carried a possible advantage.”
Delphick stuck with it. “But you see, sir, I hadn’t considered . . .”
Sir Hubert raised a hand. He looked astonished. “Not considered? My dear Superintendent, I hope you’re not trying to tell me at this stage that this whole concept of yours was some impulsive whim. That you had not considered what you were doing when you consulted Chief Superintendent Gosslin. That you had not considered what you were doing when, being a question of finance as well as policy, the buck was passed to me and the chief superintendent arranged this meeting, at a moment’s notice, keeping me overtime, for which, incidentally, I’m not paid, so that I might listen to your proposal and allow myself to be persuaded by your arguments. I do hope, Superintendent, that you’re not now trying to tell me that none of this was considered. That it was just a passing caprice.”
“No, sir, of course not. I . . .”
“Of course not. I apologize for the thought. Such a lack of consideration would have been,” he measured his words, “quite inexcusable. And now, get off to Kent at once or your Miss Seeton will have gone to bed before you get there.” Sir Hubert nodded dismissal, took a file from his desk, opened it, and began to read.
Dazed, Delphick left.
Gosslin harrumphed. “I kept out of it, sir, but you don’t think you were a bit hard on the Oracle, shoving him along like that? He was beginning to get cold feet about this way-out notion of his.”
“Beginning?” Sir Hubert dropped his file back on his desk. “I should’ve called it advanced frostbite. But he hadn’t, you know, considered it, not from this woman’s angle. And I thought he should. This case is getting on top of him. After that, if I hadn’t administered a gentle shove, to borrow from your elegance in phraseology, it would have ended with my being forced to adopt his brainchild myself and order him to carry it out. Which wouldn’t have suited me, or not as well.”
“You mean,” Gosslin blew out his cheeks, “you go for all this psychic stuff? You think this Seeton woman’ll really cough up something? You believe in it?”
“Do I?” The assistant commissioner was thoughtful. “No, I can’t say I do, or very little. No, my motives were quite other, or largely. Judging from the police and press reports of her adventures last year, I should say that the woman is undoubtedly a catalyst.” His eyes flickered to Gosslin.
The chief superintendent grinned. “Something that changes metals, sir.”
“Well, yes,” acknowledged Sir Hubert. “Generally speaking it does that, of course. But the dictionary definition is ‘a substance which, added to other substances, facilitates a chemical reaction in which it is, itself, not consumed.’ The case of these child killings is at a standstill on our side. It needs a change, or change of approach. By dropping a catalyst into it I’m hoping to get a reaction. In other words, although Miss Seeton may, almost certainly will, remain the same, the case, more than likely, will not.”
The car forked left in Brettenden. On seeing the sign, Plummergen Road, Sergeant Ranger had a thought.
“Sir?”
“M’m?”
“You know what that village is like and how they natter. And they always get hold of the wrong end of the stick. If we stay overnight at the pub and then take Miss Seeton away with us in the morning, half the place will probably think she’s been arrested.”
“Damn,” said Delphick, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
chapter
~2~
“IF YOU ASK ME, she’s been arrested. And a pound of apples, please.”
In a city a local newspaper will keep the public abreast of locational affairs from day to day. In a village such a publication would be uneconomic, but public-spirited persons will always be found to shoulder the burden and to relay news items of parochial interest from hour to hour.
In Plummergen the undisputed directors of this voluntary broadcasting system are a Miss Erica Nuttel and a Mrs. Norah—Bunny to her friend—Blaine, vegetarian ladies, known as the Nuts. The house which they share, inevitably the Nut House, although the name on the gate reads “Lilikot,” has large plate-glass windows, and is the most modern of the patchwork of styles and periods which line the Street. Since Plummergen has only the one street, Lilikot’s situation in the centre of it, opposite Crabbe’s garage, ensures that there is little that the two ladies miss, if much they misinterpret, of the comings and goings of the inhabitants.
Perhaps the quickest and most satisfying method of spreading news is to go shopping. Plummergen has five shops: a tiny bakery, a small butcher’s, and three rival stores: the grocer’s, the draper’s, and the post office. Of these last the post office has become the most important: more up-to-date than its competitors, with a wider range of groceries than the grocer, a more comprehensive selection of clothes than the draper, and three deep freezers instead of one.
“Arrested? Of course, Eric, you’re too right,” agreed Norah Blaine. She picked up a tin of mock meatballs and studied the colorful imagery on the wrapper: brown spheres flecked with green mildew, floating on crimson lake. “It’s too obvious what’s happened and it doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s only what I’ve said all along. I mean people don’t get mixed up in murders and things unless there’s more in it than meets the eye. Well, I mean, do they?”
Unfortunately for her, Miss Seeton had. Before her arrival the previous summer after the death of Mrs. Bannet, her godmother and only relative, to assess her inheritance of a cottage and a diminutive income, Miss Seeton had had the mischance to be the sole witness of a murder in London and the ramifications of the case, which had followed her down to Kent, had been treated by the villagers as a rare show put on for their entertainment.
Miss Nuttel pronounced judgment. “Shouldn’t’ve thought so. Don’t get mixed up in murders myself.”
“Exactly,” triumphed Mrs. Blaine. “That proves it. After all, she’s only been back here two o
r three days. School holidays indeed.” She tittered. “More likely to be . . .”
“Running away?” suggested Miss Nuttel.
“Well, naturally, we don’t know anything. And I would be the last to make any accusation. But it’s too clear what’s happened. The police in London must have found out something, so she’s come back here to get away and they’ve followed her down and arrested her. And high time too in my opinion after what happened yesterday. Knocking little Effie Goffer down in the middle of the road and nearly getting her run over. And the car drove straight on without stopping. These hit-and-run drivers are too careless, it shouldn’t be allowed. And Miss Seeton ought to be ashamed of herself.”
A ripple of excitement shimmered through other shoppers in the post office, who had unobtrusively drifted close in order to miss no revelation from that prime minister of the gossip according to Mrs. Blaine, in her new testament, unauthorized and abridged. The leader of the opposition had arrived and was standing only a few feet behind Miss Nuttel and her friend. It was known that Miss Treeves frowned on scandalmongering.
“Good morning, Miss Nuttel. Good morning, Mrs. Blaine.”
Norah Blaine started and nearly dropped the tin. The audience held a collective breath. Mrs. Blaine turned to smile at the vicar’s sister and decided that a frontal attack would be her best gambit.
“Oh, good morning, Miss Treeves, perhaps you could tell us. We were just wondering . . .”
“About Miss Seeton?” The tone was censorious. “So I heard.”
“Well, it does seem too . . .”
