The Singing Sands ag-6

by Josephine Tey

  He, Alan Grant, had a household just as bare of human warmth; but his life was so full of people that to come back to his empty flat was a luxury, a spiritual delight. Was Heron Lloyd’s life full and satisfying?

  Or did your true Narcissus ever need any company other than his own image?

  He wondered how old the man was. Older than he seemed, certainly; he was the doyen of Arabian exploration. Fifty-five or more. Probably nearer sixty. He had not given his date of birth in that biography, so the chances were that he was nearly sixty. There could not be many years of hard-living left to him, even given his good physique and condition. What would he do with the remaining years? Spend them admiring his hands?

  ‘The only true democracy in the world today,’ Lloyd was saying, ‘and it is being destroyed by the thing that we call civilisation.’

  And again Grant had that sense of familiarity, of recognition. Was it that he had met Lloyd before? Or was it that Lloyd reminded him of someone?

  If so, of whom?

  He must get away and think about this. It was time that he took his leave anyhow.

  ‘Did Kenrick tell you where he was staying?’ he asked as he began to take his leave.

  ‘No. We made no definite appointment to meet again, you understand. I asked him to come to see me again before he left London. When he did not come I believed that he was resentful, perhaps angry, at my lack of—sympathy, shall we say?’

  ‘Yes, it must have been a blow to him. Well, I have taken up a great deal of your time, and you have been very forbearing. I am most grateful.’

  ‘I am very glad to have been of help. I am afraid it has not been very valuable help. If there is anything else that I can do in the matter I hope very much that you will not hesitate to call on me.’

  ‘Well—there is one thing, but you have already been so kind that I hate to ask you. Especially since it is a little irrelevant.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘May I perhaps borrow the photograph?’

  ‘The photograph?’

  ‘The photograph of the meteor crater. I notice that the print is slotted into your album, not pasted. I should like very much to show it to Kenrick’s friend. I promise faithfully to return it. And in perfect—’

  ‘But of course you may have the photograph. And don’t bother to return it. I took the picture myself, and the negative is filed in the proper place. I can replace the print at any time with ease.’

  He manœuvred the print from its anchorage in the album, and handed it to Grant. He came downstairs with Grant and saw him to the door, talked a little about the little courtyard when Grant admired it, and waited courteously until Grant had reached the gate before closing the door on him.

  Grant opened the evening paper that was lying on the car cushions and laid the photograph carefully between its folds. Then he drove down to the river and along the Embankment.

  The old place looked very much as usual, he thought, as the hideous pile loomed up in the dusk. And so, too, did the finger-print department once he got there. Cartwright was stubbing out a cigarette in the saucer of a half-drunk cup of cold tea and admiring his latest handiwork: a complete set of left-hand prints.

  ‘Lovely, ’m?’ he said, looking up as Grant’s shadow fell across him. ‘These are going to hang Pinky Mason.’

  ‘Hadn’t Pinky the price of a pair of gloves?’

  ‘Huh! Pinky could have bought up Dents. He just couldn’t believe, clever little man Pinky, that the police would ever get round to thinking it anything but a suicide. Gloves are for small-time trash: burglars and such; not for master-minds like Pinky. You been away?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been fishing in the Highlands. If you’re not too busy could you do something off the cuff for me?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Oh, no. Tomorrow would do.’

  Cartwright looked at the clock. ‘I’ve nothing to do till I meet my wife at the theatre. We’re going to Marta Hallard’s new play. So I can do it now, if you like. Is it a difficult job?’

  ‘No. Dead easy. Just here, in the lower right-hand corner of this photograph, there is a beautiful thumb-print. And at the back I think you’ll find a nice set of finger-tips. I want to check them with the files.’

  ‘All right. Will you wait?’

  ‘I’m going to the library. I’ll come back.’

  In the library he took down Who’s Who, and looked up Kinsey-Hewitt. The paragraph on Kinsey-Hewitt was a very modest little affair compared with the half-column on Heron Lloyd. He was a much younger man, it seemed; married, with two children; and his address was a London one. The ‘Scottish connection’ that Lloyd had mentioned seemed to consist in the fact that he was the younger son of some Kinsey-Hewitt who had a place in Fife.

  Well, there was always the chance that he was now, or had been lately, in Scotland. Grant went to a telephone and called the London address. A woman with a pleasant voice answered, and said that her husband was not at home. No, he would not be at home for some time; he was in Arabia. He had been in Arabia since November and was not expected back until May at the earliest. Grant thanked her and hung up. It had not been to Kinsey-Hewitt that Bill Kenrick had gone. Tomorrow, he would have to go through the various authorities on Arabia, one by one, and ask them the question.

  He went back, after some coffee-housing with such friends as he happened to run into at that hour, to Cartwright.

  ‘Got the photograph or am I too early?’

  ‘I’ve not only got it but looked it up for you. The answer is no.’

  ‘No, I didn’t really think there would be anything. I was just clearing decks. But thank you, all the same. I’ll take the print with me. I thought the new Hallard show got awful notices.’

  ‘Did it? I never read ’em. Neither does Beryl. She just likes Marta Hallard. So do I, if it comes to that. Nice long legs. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, and thanks again.’

  12

  ‘You don’t seem awfully sweet on this guy,’ Tad Cullen said, when Grant had finished this story over the telephone.

  ‘Don’t I? Oh, well, perhaps it’s just that he doesn’t happen to be what we call my cup of tea. Look, Tad, you’re quite sure that you have no idea, even in the back of your mind, where Bill could have been staying?’

  ‘I haven’t got a back to my mind. I have just a small, narrow space in front where I keep all that’s useful to me. A few telephone numbers, and a prayer or two.’

  ‘Well, tomorrow I’d like you to do the round of the more obvious places, if you would.’

  ‘Yes, sure. I’ll do anything. Anything you say.’

  ‘All right. Have you got a pen? Here’s the list.’

  Grant gave him the names of twenty of the more likely places, going on the assumption that a young man from the wide open spaces and the small towns would look for a caravanserai that was both large and gay and not too expensive. And just for good measure he added a couple of the best-known expensive ones; young men with several months’ back-pay were liable to be extravagant.

  ‘I don’t think I’d bother with any more than that,’ he said.

  ‘Are there any more?’

  ‘If he didn’t stay in one of these, then we’re sunk, because if he didn’t stay in any of them we’d have to hunt every hotel in London to find him, to say nothing of the boarding-houses.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll start first thing in the morning. Mr Grant, I’d like to tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. Giving up your time to something that no one else could do; I mean, something the police wouldn’t touch. If it wasn’t for you—’

  ‘Listen, Tad. I’m not being benevolent. I’m being self-indulgent and typically nosey and I’m enjoying myself to the top of my bent. If I wasn’t, believe me I wouldn’t be in London. I’d be going to sleep tonight in Clune. So good night and sleep well. We’ll crack this thing between us.’

  He hung up and went to see what Mrs Tinker had left on the stove. It seemed to be a sort of shepherd
’s pie. He carried it into the living-room and ate it absent-mindedly, his thoughts still on Lloyd.

  What was familiar about Lloyd?

  He went back in his mind over the few moments before his first feeling of recognition. What had Lloyd been doing? Pulling open the panel of the book cupboard. Pulling it open with a gesture self-consciously graceful; faintly exhibitionist. What was there in that to provoke a sense of familiarity?

  And there was something even more curious.

  Why had Lloyd said ‘On what?’ when he had mentioned Kenrick’s scribbling?

  That, surely, was a most unnatural reaction.

  What exactly had he said to Lloyd? He had said that he became interested in Kenrick because of some verses he had been scribbling. The normal come-back to that was surely: ‘Verses?’ The operative word in the sentence was verses. That he was scribbling was entirely by the way.

  And that anyone’s reaction to the information should be to say ‘On what?’ was inexplicable.

  Except that no human reaction was inexplicable.

  It was Grant’s experience that it was the irrelevant, the unconsidered words in a statement that were important. Quite surprising and gratifying revelations lay in the gap between an assertion and a non-sequitur.

  Why had Lloyd said ‘On what?’

  He took the problem to bed with him, and fell asleep with it.

  In the morning he began his hunt through the authorities on Arabia, and finished it not at all astonished that it had produced no result. People who explored Arabia as a hobby very seldom had money to back anything. They were, on the contrary, usually prospecting for backing themselves. The only chance had been that some one of them had proved interested to the point of being willing to share his backing. But none of them had ever heard of either Charles Martin or Bill Kenrick.

  It was lunch-time before he finished, and he stood by the window waiting for Tad’s call and wondering whether to go out to luncheon or to let Mrs Tinker make him an omelette. It was another grey day but there was a slight breeze and a smell of damp earth that was queerly countrified. A fine fishing day, he noted. He wished for a moment that he was walking down over the moor to the river instead of wrestling with the London telephone system. It wouldn’t even have to be the river. He would settle for an afternoon on Lochan Dhu in a leaky boat with Pat for company.

  He turned to his desk and began to clear up the mess of this morning’s opened mail. He had stooped to throw the torn pages and the empty envelopes into the waste-paper basket, but he stopped with the action half spent.

  It had come to him.

  He knew now who it was that Heron Lloyd reminded him of.

  It was Wee Archie.

  This was so unexpected and so ridiculous that he sat down on the chair by his desk and began to laugh.

  What had Wee Archie in common with that elegant and sophisticated creature who was Heron Lloyd?

  Frustration? Of a surety not. The fact that he was an Auslander in the country of his devotion? No; too far-fetched. It was something nearer home than that.

  For it was of Wee Archie that Lloyd had reminded him. He had no doubt of that now. He was experiencing that inimitable relief that comes when one has remembered a name that has eluded one.

  Yes, it was Wee Archie.

  But why?

  What had that incongruous pair in common?

  Their gestures? No. Their physique? No. Their voices? Was that it?

  ‘Their vanity, you fool!’ said that inner voice in him.

  Yes; that was it. Their vanity. Their pathological vanity.

  He sat very still, considering this; not amused any longer.

  Vanity. The first requisite in wrong-doing. The constant factor in the criminal mind.

  Just supposing that—

  The telephone at his elbow gave its sudden purr.

  It was Tad. He had reached number eighteen, he said, and was now an old old man but the blood of pioneers was in his veins and he was pursuing the search.

  ‘Drop it for a little and come and eat with me somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had my lunch. I had a coupla bananas and a milk shake in Leicester Square.’

  ‘Merciful Heaven!’ said Grant.

  ‘What’s the matter with that?’

  ‘Starch; that’s what’s the matter with it.’

  ‘A little starch is fine when you’re ironed out. No luck your end?’

  ‘No. If it was a backer he was going North to see, then the backer was merely some amateur who had money; not anyone actively engaged in Arabian exploration.’

  ‘Oh. Well. I’ll be on my way. When shall I ring you next?’

  ‘As soon as you come to the end of the list. I’ll wait here for your call.’

  Grant decided to have the omelette, and while Mrs Tinker prepared it he walked about his living-room letting his mind soar into speculation and pulling it down instantly to a common-sense level, so that it behaved like telegraph lines outside a railway compartment; continually soaring and continually caught back.

  If only they had a starting-point. What if Tad came to the end of the likely hotels and still drew a blank? It was only a matter of days before he would have to go back to work. He stopped speculating on vanity and its possibilities and began to reckon how long it would take Tad to cover the remaining four hotels.

  But before his omelette was half finished Tad arrived in person. He was flushed and triumphant.

  ‘I don’t know how you ever thought of that dull little dump in connection with Bill,’ he said, ‘but you were right. That’s where he stayed all right.’

  ‘And which is the dull little dump?’

  ‘The Pentland. How did you think of that one?’

  ‘It has an international reputation.’

  ‘That one has?’

  ‘And English people go on going to it generation after generation.’

  ‘That’s what it looks like!’

  ‘So that is where Bill Kenrick stayed. I like him more than ever.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tad said more quietly. And the flush of triumph died away. ‘I wish you’d known Bill. I sure wish you’d known him. They don’t come any better than Bill.’

  ‘Sit down and have some coffee to settle your milk shake. Or would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’ll have coffee. It actually smells like coffee,’ he added in a surprised way. ‘Bill checked out on the 3rd. The 3rd of March.’

  ‘Did you ask about his luggage?’

  ‘Sure. They weren’t all that interested at first. But eventually they got out a ledger the size of the Judgement Book and said that Mr Kenrick had left nothing either in the box-room or the safe.’

  ‘That means that he took them to a cloak-room—to a left-luggage office, that is—to be ready to his hand when he came back from Scotland. If he meant to fly when he came back, then I suppose he would leave them at Euston to be picked up on his way to the airport. If he meant to go by sea, then he may have taken them to Victoria before going to Euston. Did he like the sea?’

  ‘So-so. He wasn’t daffy about it. But he had a mania for ferries.’

  ‘Ferries?’

  ‘Yes. Seems it began when he was a kid at a place called Pompey—know where that is?’ Grant nodded. ‘And he spent all his time on a penny ferry.’

  ‘A ha’penny one, it used to be.’

  ‘Well, anyway.’

  ‘So the train-ferry might have had an interest for him, you think. Well, we can but try. But if he was going to be late in meeting you, I should think he would fly over. Would you know the cases if you saw them?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Bill and I shared a Company bungalow. I helped pack them. In fact one of them’s mine, if it comes to that. He just took the two of them. He said if we bought many things we could buy a suitcase to—’ Tad’s voice died away suddenly and he buried his face in his coffee cup. It was a great flat bowl of a cup, willow-patterned in pink, which Marta Hallard had brought back from Sweden for Grant because he liked his
coffee out of large cups; and it made a very good screen for emotion.

  ‘We have no ticket to recover them with, you see. And I can’t use any official means. But I know most of the men on duty at the big terminuses, and can probably wangle our way behind the scenes. It will be up to you to spot the cases. Was Bill a labeller by nature, would you say?’

  ‘I expect he’d label things he was going to leave behind like that. Why, do you think, did he not have the left-luggage ticket in his pocket-book?’

  ‘I did think that someone else may have deposited those cases for him. The person who saw him off at Euston, for instance.’

  ‘The Martin guy?’

  ‘It might be. If he had borrowed papers for this odd masquerade, he would have to return them. Perhaps Martin was going to meet him at the airport, or at Victoria, or wherever it was that he had planned to leave England from, with the cases and collect his own papers.’

  ‘Yeah. That makes sense. I suppose we couldn’t Agony-advertise for this Martin?’

  ‘I don’t think that this Martin would be very willing to answer, having lent his papers for a piece of sharp practice and being now without identity.’

  ‘No. Perhaps you’re right. He wasn’t anyone who was staying at that hotel, anyway.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Grant, surprised.

  ‘I looked through the book: the register. When I was identifying Bill’s signature.’

  ‘You’re wasted in OCAL, Tad. You should come to us.’

  But Tad was not listening. ‘You’ve no idea what a queer feeling it was to see Bill’s writing suddenly like that, among all those strange names. It sort of stopped my breath.’

  Grant took Lloyd’s picture of the crater ‘ruins’ from his desk and brought it over to the table. ‘That is what Heron Lloyd thinks that Bill saw.’

  Tad looked at it with interest. ‘It sure is queer, isn’t it? Just like ruined sky-scrapers. You know, until I saw Arabia I thought the United States invented sky-scrapers. But some of those old Arab towns are just the Empire State on a smaller scale. But you say it couldn’t have been this that Bill saw.’