The Singing Sands ag-6

by Josephine Tey

  She hung around while Grant changed into his best town suit, doling out bits of gossip as they happened to occur to her. Then he shooed her back to her piece of self-indulgence with the spare bedroom, dealt with the small businesses that had piled up in his absence, and went out into the calm of the early April evening. He went round to the garage, answered questions about his fishing, listened to three fishing stories that he had listened to before he set out for the Highlands a month ago, and reclaimed the little two-seater that he used when on his own business.

  Number 5 Britt Lane took some finding. In this huddle of old houses all kinds of adaptation and conditioning had taken place. Stables had become cottages, kitchen wings had become houses, odd storeys had become maisonettes. Number 5 Britt Lane seemed to be just a number on a gate. The gate was in a brick wall, and its iron-studded oak seemed to Grant a little affected in so unpretentious a stretch of ordinary London brick. However, it was solid and in itself unexceptional, and it opened easily when asked to. It opened on to what had been a kitchen yard when Number 5 had been merely the back wing of a house in another street altogether. Now the yard was a small paved court with a fountain playing in the middle of it, and the one-time wing was a small flat stucco house of three storeys, painted cream with green window-sashes. As Grant crossed the little court to the doorway he noticed that the paving was of tiles, some of them old and many of them beautiful. The fountain too was beautiful. He mentally applauded Heron Lloyd for not having replaced the plain London electric bell-push by some more aesthetic piece of fancy-work; it augured a good taste that the inappropriate gate had left open to question.

  The interior of the house, too, had the Arab bareness and space without any suggestion that a piece of the East had been transported to London. Beyond the figure of the manservant who answered his ring, he could see the clean walls and the rich carpet; an idiom adapted, not a décor transposed. His respect for Heron Lloyd mounted.

  The manservant appeared to be Arab; an Arab of the towns, plumpish, lively-eyed and good-mannered. He listened to Grant’s inquiry and asked in a gentle too-correct English if he had an appointment. Grant said no, but that he would not detain Mr Lloyd more than a moment. Mr Lloyd could be of some help in giving information connected with Arabia.

  ‘If you will come in, please, and wait for a moment, I ask.’

  He ushered Grant into a tiny room just inside the front door which, judging from its limited space and scanty furnishing, was used for just this purpose of waiting. He supposed that someone like Heron Lloyd must be used to strangers appearing on his doorstep to claim his interest or help. Even perhaps just to ask for his autograph. A realisation that made his own intrusion less deplorable.

  Mr Lloyd had not debated his desirability very long, it seemed, for the man was back in a few moments.

  ‘Will you come, please? Mr Lloyd will be very happy to see you.’

  A formula, but such a pleasant formula. How good manners did cushion life, he thought as he followed the man up the narrow stairs and into the big room that occupied the whole of the first floor.

  ‘Mr Grant, hadji,’ said the man, standing aside to let him come. Grant caught the word and thought: That is the first piece of chi-chi: Englishmen don’t make the pilgrimage to Mecca, surely.

  Watching Heron Lloyd as he was made welcome, Grant wondered whether he had first thought of going to desert Arabia because he looked like a desert Arab, or whether he had come to look like a desert Arab after years in desert Arabia. Lloyd was the Arab of the desert idealised to the nth. He was, Grant thought with amusement, the Arab of the circulating libraries. It was across the saddle of Arabs like Heron Lloyd that blameless matrons in the Crescents and Drives and Avenues had been carried off to a fate worse than death. The black eyes, the lean brown face, the white teeth, the whip-lash body, the delicate hands, the graceful movements: it was all there, straight out of Page Seventeen of Miss Tilly Tally’s latest (two hundred and fifty-four thousand, new printing next week). Grant had to remind himself forcibly that he must not judge on looks.

  For this man had done journeys that had made history in the world of exploration, and had written about them in English which, even if a little lush (Grant had bought a copy of his latest in Scoone yesterday afternoon) was nevertheless recognisable as literature. Heron Lloyd was no parlour sheik.

  Lloyd was wearing orthodox London clothes and a manner to match. If one had never heard of him one would accept him as a Londoner of the well-to-do professional classes. One of the slightly more flamboyant classes, perhaps; an actor, or conceivably a Harley Street consultant or a Society photographer; but a Londoner of the orthodox professions, when all was considered.

  ‘Mr Grant,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘Mahmoud says that I can be of service to you.’

  His voice surprised Grant. It had no body and a faintly querulous tone that had nothing to do with the sense of the words or their mood. He took a box of cigarettes from the low coffee table and offered them. He did not smoke himself, he said, because he had adopted Mohammedan customs during his long life in the East, but he could recommend the cigarettes if Grant cared to try something that tasted a little out of the ordinary.

  Grant took the cigarette, as he took every new experience and sensation, with interest, and apologised for his intrusion. He wanted to know whether a young man called Charles Martin had applied to him at any time within the last year or so for information about Arabia.

  ‘Charles Martin? No. No, I don’t think so. Many people do come, of course, to see me about one thing and another. And I cannot always remember their names afterwards. But I think I should remember anyone with that simple name. You like that tobacco? I know the very half-acre where it is grown. A beautiful place that has not changed since Alexander the Macedonian passed that way.’ He smiled a little and added: ‘Except, of course, that they have learned how to grow this weed. The weed, I understand, goes very well with a not too dry sherry. Another of the grosser indulgences that I avoid; but I shall have a fruit drink to keep you company.’

  Grant thought that the desert tradition of hospitality to the stranger must come a little expensive in a London where you were a celebrity and all and sundry were free to drop in. He noticed that the label on the bottle that Lloyd had picked up was a guarantee as well as an announcement. It seemed that Lloyd was neither a pauper nor a piker.

  ‘Charles Martin was also known as Bill Kenrick,’ he said.

  Lloyd lowered the glass which he was about to fill, and said:

  ‘Kenrick! But he was here only the other day. Or rather, when I say only the other day, I mean a week or two ago. Quite lately, anyway. Why should he have an alias?’

  ‘I don’t know that myself. I am making inquiries about him on behalf of his friend. He was due to meet his friend in Paris at the beginning of March. On the 4th, to be exact. But he didn’t turn up. We have discovered that he died as the result of an accident on the very day that he should have turned up in Paris.’

  Lloyd put the glass slowly down on to the table.

  ‘So that is why he did not come back,’ he said in that querulous voice that did not mean to be querulous. ‘Poor boy. Poor boy.’

  ‘You had arranged to see him again?’

  ‘Yes. I thought him charming and very intelligent. He was bitten with the desert—but perhaps you know that. He had ideas about exploring. A few young men still have. There are still the adventurers, even in this hedged and garnished world. Of which one must be glad. What happened to Kenrick? A car smash?’

  ‘No. He had a fall on a train and fractured his skull.’

  ‘Poor wretch. Poor wretch. A pity. I could have supplied the jealous gods with a dozen more expendable in his place. An atrocious word: expendable. The expression of an idea that would not even have been conceivable a few years ago. So far have we progressed towards our ultimate barbarism. Why did you want to know if the Kenrick boy had come to see me?’

  ‘We wanted to pick up his trail. When he died he
was masquerading as Charles Martin, with a complete set of Charles Martin’s papers. We want to know at what stage he began to be Charles Martin. We were almost certain that, being bitten by the desert, he would come to see some authority on the subject in London, and since you, sir, are the ultimate authority we began with you.’

  ‘I see. Well, it was most certainly as Kenrick, Bill Kenrick I think, that he came to see me. A dark young man, very attractive. Tough, too, in a nice way. I mean, good manners covering unknown possibilities. I found him delightful.’

  ‘Had he come to you with any definite plans? I mean, with a specific proposition?’

  Lloyd smiled a little. ‘He came to me with one of the commonest of all the propositions that are habitually put to me. An expedition to the site of Wabar. Do you know about Wabar? It is the fabled city of Arabia. It is Arabia’s “cities of the plain”. How that pattern does repeat itself in legend. The human race feels eternally guilty when it is happy. We cannot even remark on our good health without touching wood or crossing our fingers or otherwise averting the gods’ anger at mortal well-being. So Arabia has its Wabar: the city that was destroyed by fire because of its wealth and its sins.’

  ‘And Kenrick thought that he had discovered the site.’

  ‘He was sure of it. Poor boy, I hope that I was not short-tempered with him.’

  ‘You think that he was wrong, then?’

  ‘Mr Grant, the legend of Wabar exists from the Red Sea clear across Arabia to the Persian Gulf, and for almost every mile of that distance there is a different alleged site for the city.’

  ‘And you don’t believe that perhaps someone might stumble on it by accident?’

  ‘By accident?’

  ‘Kenrick was a flyer. It is possible that he saw the place when blown off his course, isn’t it?’

  ‘Had he talked to his friend about it then?’

  ‘No. He had talked to no one that I know of. That was my own deduction. What is to hinder the discovery being made that way?’

  ‘Nothing, of course, nothing; if the place exists at all. I have said: it is a legend almost universal throughout the world. But where stories of ruins have been tracked to their source the “ruins” have always proved to be something else. Natural rock formation, mirage, cloud-formation even. I think what poor Kenrick saw was the crater of a meteor. I have seen the place myself. A predecessor of mine discovered it when he was looking for Wabar. It is unbelievably like a place made with hands. The thrown-up earth makes pinnacles and jagged ruinous-looking heights. I think I have a photograph somewhere. You might like to see it: it is a unique affair.’ He got up and slid back a panel in the bare painted-wood wall, disclosing shelves of books all the way from floor to ceiling. ‘It is, perhaps mercifully, not every day a meteor of any size falls on the earth.’

  He picked a photograph album from one of the lower shelves, and came back across the room looking for the place in the collection. And Grant was seized without warning by a strange sense of familiarity; a feeling of having met Lloyd somewhere before.

  He looked at the photograph that Lloyd laid before him. It was certainly an uncanny thing. An almost mocking pastiche of human achievement. But his mind was busy with that odd moment of recognition.

  Was it just that he had seen Heron Lloyd’s photograph somewhere? But if it had been that, if he had merely seen Lloyd’s face as adjunct to some description of his exploits, then the sense of recognition would have come when he had first walked into the room and seen him. It was not so much a recognition as a sense of having known Lloyd somewhere else. In some other surroundings.

  ‘You see?’ Lloyd was saying. ‘Even on the ground, one has to go close up to it before one can be sure that the thing is not a collection of human dwellings. How much more misleading it must be from the air.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Grant, and did not believe it. For one very good reason. From the air the crater would have been plainly visible. From the air it would have looked exactly what it was: a circular hollow surrounded by the thrown-up earth. But he was not going to say that to Lloyd. Let Lloyd talk. He was growing very interested in Lloyd.

  ‘That lies very close to the Kenrick boy’s route across the desert, as described by himself, and I think that that is what he saw.’

  ‘Did he pin-point the place, do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. But I should think he would. He struck me as being a very efficient and intelligent young man.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him for details?’

  ‘If someone told you, Mr Grant, that he had discovered a holly tree growing in the middle of Piccadilly immediately opposite the In and Out, would you be interested? Or would you just think that you must be patient with him? I know the Empty Quarter as well as you know Piccadilly.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Then it was not you who saw him off at the station?’

  ‘Mr Grant, I never see anyone off. A combination of masochism and sadism that I have always deplored. Off where, by the way?’

  ‘To Scoone.’

  ‘To the Highlands? I understood that he was longing for some gaiety. Why was he going to the Highlands?’

  ‘We don’t know. That is one of the things we are most anxious to find out. He said nothing to you that might provide a clue?’

  ‘No. He did suggest finding other backing. I mean, when I had proved a broken reed. Perhaps he had found a backer, or hoped to find a backer, who lives up there. I can’t think of any obvious one off-hand. There is Kinsey-Hewitt, of course. He has Scottish connections. But I think he is in Arabia at the moment.’

  Well, at least Lloyd had provided the first reasonable explanation of the flying visit north with an overnight case. To talk to a possible backer. He had found a backer at the last moment, when he was almost due to meet Tad Cullen in Paris, and had dashed north to see him. That fitted beautifully. They were getting on. But why as Charles Martin?

  As if the thought had been transferred, Lloyd said: ‘By the way, if the Kenrick boy was travelling as Charles Martin, how has he been identified as Kenrick?’

  ‘I travelled on that train to Scoone. I saw him when he was dead, and grew interested in some verse he had been scribbling.’

  ‘Scribbling? On what?’

  ‘On a blank bit of an evening paper,’ Grant said, wondering why it should matter what Kenrick had been writing on.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I was on holiday, with nothing else to do, so I amused myself with the clues provided.’

  ‘You played detective.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is your profession, Mr Grant?’

  ‘I’m a Civil Servant.’

  ‘Ah. I was going to suggest the Army.’ He smiled a little and picked up Grant’s glass to refill it. ‘The more rarefied ranks, of course.’

  ‘G.S.O. 1?’

  ‘No. An attaché, I think. Or Intelligence.’

  ‘I have done a spot of Intelligence during my Army career.’

  ‘So that is where you developed your taste for it. May I say, your flair.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It was no ordinary talent that identified Charles Martin as Bill Kenrick. Or had he Kenrick belongings that made the identification easy?’

  ‘No. He was buried as Charles Martin.’

  Lloyd paused as he was setting the filled glass down and said: ‘That is so typical of that careless Scottish way of dealing with sudden death. They are always very smug about their lack of inquests. Myself, I think Scotland must be an ideal place in which to get away with murder. If ever I plan one, I shall lure my victim north of the Border.’

  ‘There was an inquest, as it happens. The accident took place shortly after the train left Euston.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lloyd thought this over and then said: ‘Don’t you think that this should be reported to the police? I mean the fact that they have buried someone under a wrong name.’

  Grant was about to say: ‘The only proof we have that the dead Charles Martin was Ken
rick is my identification of a not very good snapshot.’ But something stopped him. Instead he said: ‘We should like first to know why he had Charles Martin’s papers.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I see. That of course is a sufficiently questionable matter. One doesn’t acquire a man’s papers without some—preliminaries. Does anyone know who Charles Martin is—or was?’

  ‘Yes. The police were satisfied on that score. There was no mystery.’

  ‘The only mystery is how Kenrick came by his papers. I see why you are reluctant to go to official sources. What about this man who saw him off? At Euston. Could he have been Charles Martin?’

  ‘He could, I suppose.’

  ‘The papers may merely have been lent. Kenrick somehow did not strike me as a—shall we say, nefarious type.’

  ‘No. On all the evidence, he wasn’t.’

  ‘It’s a very curious business altogether. This accident that you say he had: I suppose there is no doubt that it was an accident? No suggestion of a quarrel?’

  ‘No, it was just one of those things. A fall that might happen to anyone.’

  ‘Distressing. As I say, there are too few young men nowadays who have the combination of courage and intelligence. A great many come to me, indeed they travel great distances to see me—’

  He went on talking, and Grant sat watching and listening.

  Were there, in fact, so many who came? Lloyd seemed very pleased to sit and talk to a stranger. There was no suggestion that he had an engagement for the evening or guests coming to dinner. None of the convenient pauses that a host leaves in the conversation so that a casual guest may take his leave. Lloyd sat talking in that thin, fanatic’s voice and admiring the hands that lay in his lap. He continually changed the position of the hands, not as a gesture to emphasise a phrase, but as one making a new arrangement of some decoration. Grant found this Narcissus-like preoccupation fascinating. He listened to the silence of the little house, shut away from the town and its traffic. In that biography in Who’s Who there had been no mention of wife or children; possessions that the owners of both are habitually proud to mention; so the household no doubt consisted of Lloyd and his servants. Had he sufficient interests to compensate for that lack of human companionship?