by Ellis Peters
‘We could hang around here, though, within call. If you were in trouble, you’d only have to yell.’
‘I’m not going to be in trouble, and I don’t want you hanging about, you’d attract attention, lurking about here in a quiet back lane like this. What you’ve got to do is get on the bus and go home, and keep everything looking normal, otherwise it’s all wasted. If I’m lucky, and find something out in time to nip out again before night, I will, and I’ll go straight home and tell them. I’m not looking for trouble, all I want is a chance to go over the ground without anyone else knowing, and then it’s up to the police. Now I’m going. And you’d better push off, too.’
And in the end, unhappily and reluctantly, they did as they were instructed. They were so used to thinking of him as the brains of the outfit that they feared to make any alteration to his planning, in case they wrecked the show. Ginger looked back from the bend in the lane. The loose pale in the tall manorial fence was back in position, there was no rustling or movement among the bushes of the shrubbery within. Bossie had vanished, with his pocket torch, borrowed from Philip Mason under fearful oaths of secrecy, his collection of left-over sandwiches, one apple, and a pork pie from Cough’s, in case he really had to stay out all night. Ginger shook his head forebodingly, and all the way home on the bus he said never a word, and even Spuggy Price caught the habit of silence, and stared glumly out of the window.
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
No,’ sighed George, in response to Bunty’s unasked questions. ‘Not a step further forward than we were this morning. Several more reports of dented wings, none of ’em relevant. Rainbow played golf with his foursome, sure enough, and locked a briefcase firmly away while he did it, but as far as we can discover, no one even remotely connected with him was playing at the same time, even if they could have got at his case, which they couldn’t without grave risk, because the traffic in and out was brisk, and you don’t play tricks with lockers unless you’re fairly sure of being undisturbed. At the gallery on Saturday he was among the local artists, who aren’t really his cup of tea, and at the Music Hall show all the trade was present, and he might have let something drop to somebody, but if so, none of those we’ve interviewed got a whiff of it.’
‘So it’s as open as ever,’ said Bunty, dishing up in the kitchen. ‘It’s what we could have expected. He wasn’t a man who generated passions about him. Something quite cold, like greed, knocked Rainbow off. Greed trips over itself sooner or later, or trips over something else quite harmless and incidental. Like Bossie, for instance?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ owned George, relaxing into a tired man’s enjoyment of his dinner, after a long day of having no time to be hungry, ‘I was thinking of going up and having another session with Bossie, now he’s home and easy, and his exploits are out in the open. He’s had time now to let things relax, and let’s hope they’ve relaxed into focus, not out. There just may be something more he can tell us.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Bunty abstractedly. ‘Thespis is back in town! You remember Toby Malcolm’s travelling theatre? They’ve got a three-day stand from tomorrow, in the Grammar School grounds. They were just getting that odd contraption of theirs fitted up when I came by before tea.’
‘Really?’ Mention of this one glowing success always cheered George, who had seen a lot of failures in his time. ‘I might just drop in and have a natter with Toby on the way. He cuts a lot of ice with Bossie. Senior and junior partners in crime once upon a time – it has to count for something when the big boy turns legitimate.’
In the grounds of Comerbourne’s oldest and most illustrious school, still obstinately referred to as the Grammar School though it was well advanced in the process of going comprehensive, there was ample room for Toby’s three wagons that put together into a rather ramshackle sort of enclosure, and when George arrived there in the dusk the assembly was already complete. October is too late for outdoor theatre in the evenings, and the season of little festivals is over. Presumably schools would have to provide the bulk of support for the rest of the viable travelling year, until Thespis holed up for the winter in some small, friendly town, where at least a few shows could hope for support around Christmas. The seven people, four young men and three girls, who ran the enterprise were shuttling between their odd little theatre and their living van with mute, daemonic purpose, doing mysterious things, and carrying about with them items of costume and equipment even more mysterious. They looked rapt and happy, as people do who are doing, at no matter what material cost to themselves, exactly what they want to do.
Toby came out from the door of the auditorium, which incorporated a ticket-office more restricted than any sentry-box, and saw George crossing from the car-park. He came to meet him at a joyful trot, a coil of cable in one hand and a cassette deck in the other, his thick brown hair bouncing over one blue eye, and a broad, benevolent smile spreading from ear to ear.
‘Mr Felse – hullo! Are you after a play-bill? I’m sure Mrs Felse would show one for us, I nearly gave her one this afternoon. But I was stuck like the Colossus of Rhodes at the time, trying to link the third van on. D’you like our set-up? Come and have a look round inside, it’s quite safe now. Bounces a bit, but it won’t when we’ve got an audience in.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll wait until we come to the show. Actually I’m thinking of running up to see the Jarvises at Abbot’s Bale, and I wondered if you’d be free by this time to come with me.’
‘No, really?’ Toby beamed satisfaction. ‘You must be reading my mind. I’ve already promised to go up and stay overnight, now we’ve got this outfit all set up. I should have been on my way in about ten minutes more. But what with the price of petrol, and all that, I’d just as soon leave the old bike behind, and be driven up there in style. D’you mean it?’
‘Of course I mean it. But what about getting back in the morning, if you’re staying over?’
‘Oh, not to worry about that! I’m sure Sam will drive me down, and drop off Bossie in Mottisham on the way, give the school bus a miss for once. Hang on a couple of minutes, and I’ll get rid of this stuff.’ And Toby turned and galloped enthusiastically to the company’s living van and leaped into it like a faun, to reappear in a few moments, hauling on his wind-jacket as he ran.
‘I always try to see Sam and Jenny whenever I can. Anyhow, it’s home really – apart from that old heap over there, which is home, too, in its way. I’m hawking tickets, by the way, you won’t escape. With luck Jenny might plant a few for us up the valley.’
‘You get me a real lead out of Bossie,’ promised George, as he started the car and drove out from the school gates, ‘and I’ll buy tickets for every night. You playing in person?’
‘Yep! Edgar in Venus Observed. Fry’s supposed to be old hat, but we always do well with him, and he’s such a joy to speak. Edgar “hangs in abeyance”, if you remember. That’s usually my fate, partly because I’m the handiest dog’s-body we’ve got behind the scenes.’
He would be a charming, slightly ominous Edgar, with infinite potentialities. Very suitable casting, George considered.
‘That was our Perpetua you saw trotting across with her arms full of curtains – the one in the tattered jeans. Face like a perverted elf, but she can speak verse like nobody’s business. But what did you mean about getting you a lead out of Bossie? He’s not in any trouble with the law, is he?’ His voice, though light, was also slightly anxious. You never knew what an eccentric genius like Bossie might turn his hand to.
‘Certainly not with the law. You probably haven’t been following the local press, and in any case it was only a five-line paragraph. Bossie got knocked down by a car – no, don’t worry, he’s fine, nothing but bruises.’
‘I didn’t know!’ said Toby, concerned. ‘Sam never said a word about it when I called this morning.’
‘No, well, he’d be leaving it until you could see for yourself there was no damage. You’d have heard all about it tonight. But
the thing is, there’s a possibility – in fact, we’re treating it as a very strong possibility – that his accident was no accident. Bossie happens to have come much too close to this case that’s bugging us. You’ll have read, at any rate, about Rainbow’s murder?’
Toby was gaping at him, aghast. ‘Well, yes, of course, I’ve seen all the headlines. But— You’re not seriously saying that somebody tried to run Bossie down with a car? On purpose?’
‘I’m saying just that. It so happens that Bossie played a certain trick on Rainbow, using a faked antique as bait, and through watching to see what effect his plans were having, he actually saw Rainbow fall, and saw his murderer go to make sure he was dead, and plunder the body. Bossie hasn’t been able to identify the murderer, or give us any hint that will help us to finger him. It was a very dark night. Unfortunately,’ said George grimly, ‘we have good reason to be sure that the murderer was able to identify Bossie! Hence the attempt on him. We’ve suppressed any mention of that, naturally, and every care is being taken of him from now on, though it wouldn’t do to make that too obvious. What I’m hoping is that now, being further from the event, and in talking to you, not answering police questions, however tactfully phrased, he may pop up with something he doesn’t even realise he knows, something that will give us a lead. I’ll gladly make myself scarce, if that will help, and leave you to see what you can do with him in the safe surroundings of home. He thinks a lot of you.’
‘So do I of him,’ said Toby in a small, shocked voice, and sat and thought about this indigestible revelation for some minutes in silence. ‘Obviously I’ll do anything that may help,’ he said at last, dazedly. ‘But how in the world did he get himself into such a jam? Good lord, what does Bossie know about faking antiques? The man was a dealer, and knowledgeable, it would be tough going to fool him, even for a pro. Bossie didn’t have anything he could even make halfway presentable for a job like that.’
‘Apparently he did. He told us all about it quite frankly, except that he said he’d found it among the old magazines and papers in a chest in the church tower. That we doubt. There seems no reason at all why just one leaf should be there, when the rest is nineteenth-century trivia, but he sticks to his story. All he did was doctor it up a little, and clearly it did engage Rainbow’s attention – and someone else’s, too – not because of Bessie’s effort, but in spite of it.’
‘Leaf!’ whispered Toby, enlightened and appalled.
‘A single leaf of vellum. It bore characters we’re led to believe might date back to the thirteenth century. And we’re fairly sure it never came from among the old copies of Pears’ Annual and Ivy Leaves up there in the tower. Though why he should tell us everything else, but clam up on where he got it, is more than I can work out.’
‘Oh, help!’ said Toby childishly, in a very small voice indeed. ‘Now isn’t that just like him, the idiot! I’m afraid I know where he got it. And why he wouldn’t tell you. It’s got to be the same one. I know where he got it, because I gave it to him. And I know why he wouldn’t tell you that. Because I pinched it, and he knows it, and he probably thinks you’d run me in for it like a shot, even now, if he blew the gaff on me. Bossie would never split on a pal. Oh, now we may really be able to get something more out of him, if he sees it’s all come out, and nobody’s after my blood. Hell, it was years ago, when I was young and daft.’
‘Tell me all!’ invited George with interest. ‘This is the first lucky break we’ve had. This was while you were at school up there?’
‘The last year. I never turned down a dare in those days, they only had to throw one at me and I did it, however idiotic. I can’t remember who it was, but one of the kids bet me I couldn’t break into Mottisham Abbey and get out again without anyone knowing. So of course I did. It was easy, anyhow, I’d broken into far trickier places than that. I brought this bit of parchment out with me just to prove I’d really been there, I didn’t consider it was of any value, or that I was pinching anything that mattered. It was a trophy, that’s all. I gave it to Bossie as a souvenir, and of course he was sworn to secrecy. Silly kid’s stuff, but then, I was a silly kid!’
‘Well, he certainly kept his oath.’ George drew hopeful breath. ‘Who knows, it may be a load off his mind to know it’s all out in the open, and nobody’s putting handcuffs on you for it. It may even sharpen up his memory to produce a clue for me. So that’s where it came from – the abbey! We ought to have thought of that possibility.’
‘I don’t know why. There never was any word said about any records surviving there, the place has always been reckoned a dead loss, without a history.’
‘Yet this came from there. And it really looks as if Rainbow was killed to get possession of it. Not for itself alone, no doubt – for what further it might lead to. Bossie didn’t know his own strength!’ They were already through Mottisham, and heading for Abbot’s Bale on an almost deserted road. George accelerated purposefully. The sooner they got to Bossie now, and relieved him of the fear of disloyalty to his idol if he talked freely, the sooner they might move on to pursue the real provenance of the membrane that had been the death of Rainbow.
‘Do you remember exactly where you picked up this leaf? Was it in the house itself?’
‘No. I did get into the house, mind you,’ owned Toby candidly, ‘I had to, that was the dare. But I didn’t like to take anything from inside there, not even to prove it. No, this was in the stables, in the rubble and weeds under the one wall. I took it for granted it was rubbish, lying there among old junk of planks and mortar, and yet it was something special. I thought it would do nicely.’
It had done nicely for Rainbow, and brought Bossie Jarvis into considerable danger.
‘Is there really something so important about it? Now you’ve had time to get it vetted…?’
‘We’ve never even seen it,’ said George. ‘We know of it from Bossie, and from one person to whom Rainbow showed it, and that’s all. If there’s one thing certain, it is that at this moment the murderer has it.’
They passed the first cottages of Abbot’s Bale, rounded the wall of the churchyard, and turned into the comparative darkness of the lane where Bossie had suffered his adventure. ‘This,’ said George, ‘is just about where he was hit.’
‘That funny, fool kid!’ sighed Toby thankfully. ‘Praise the lord, you’ve got a thumb firmly on him now, he can’t get himself into any more trouble.’
At about this time Bossie was just threading a wary way through the shrubberies, where he had been holed up comfortably enough in a derelict shed with his provender, and had eaten most of it. The students measuring and brushing and marking had gone on working as long as even a gleam of light remained, but they were all gone now, and the whole enclave was silent.
Bossie emerged where the bushes came closest to the brick walls of the stable-block, and allowed him to peer out from cover towards the archway. He remembered the pattern of the gate clearly, and considered that he had two ways of getting to the inner side. One, the bars might very well be wide enough apart to allow him to wriggle through; he was small-boned and agile, and cats can get through wherever their whiskers will pass, as every student knows. Two, the gate did not reach to the summit of the archway, and its surmounting spikes were purely decorative, and could be circumvented with ease. He had no doubt that he could climb it if necessary.
The shadowy bulks of walls and trees loomed immense in the remnant of the light. It appeared to Bossie as still fairly light, for his eyes had grown accustomed to it, having spent some waiting hours adjusting as twilight fell and night came on. But in fact it was a very respectable darkness, as large and awe-inspiring as the silence that was its natural music. There was nothing stirring, not a soul living but himself, and the infinitesimal, furtive night-life of bird and beast. The shrubbery at his back felt like a forest, virgin and strange, but not unfriendly. He was not afraid. When he had stood motionless for some minutes, listening and watching, and was sure he was solitary, he slipped acros
s to the solid reassurance of the wall, worked his way along it to the archway, and slid into the deep embrasure to consider his mode of entry. It was almost disappointingly simple. On the cat principle, he was convinced he could go wherever his head could go, and his head passed between the bars with ease. Sideways, lissom as an eel, Bossie followed his head into the cloister.
It was annoying, after that achievement, to discover that the gate, though meticulously latched, had been unlocked all the time!
Willie Swayne’s Land-Rover was parked in the drive of Sam Jarvis’s cottage, filling the narrow space from clipped hedge to grass-verged rose-bed. The front door of the house was open, and several people were involved in obviously valedictory exchanges just within. George drew up behind the Land-Rover and got out of the car, with Toby hard on his heels.
Barbara Rainbow, with a cotton scarf wreathed round her curls, and her long, elegant body swathed in clinging sweater and black slacks, was talking and laughing in evident familiarity with Jenny Jarvis, as if they had known each other for years. And Jenny was holding before her a small, elaborate casket of polished wood and delicate gilt, and shaking her head deprecatingly over it. Behind them Sam and Willie hovered, complacent.
‘He doesn’t deserve it,’ Jenny was saying, turning the musical box about admiringly in her hands, ‘and you only promised to show it to him, not to give it! I should think better of it now, if I were you.’
She had her own ideas as to why Barbara had created this occasion to call on Bossie again, and bring Willie the Twig with her. A pity they’d picked this particular night, and missed him. Bossie was transparent, for all his intellect, and Barbara was a clever woman. Being in love at Bossie’s age can be excruciating, but is sometimes surprisingly easily cured. At twelve nobody breaks his heart on the unattainable, and one glance at Willie the Twig in sole possession would have ended that episode. Barbara had even gone to some trouble to ditch all her glamour, though the result happened to be every bit as alluring as when she was in full war-paint.
