The Singing Sands ag-6

by Josephine Tey

  No, of course he was not sorry that he had heard of Bill Kenrick. He was Bill Kenrick’s debtor as long as he lived, and if it took him till the end of his days he would find out what had changed Bill Kenrick into Charles Martin. But if only he could clear up this thing before he was swamped by that demanding life that was waiting for him on Monday.

  He asked how Daphne was, and Tad said that as a female companion she had one enormous advantage over everyone he had ever known: she was pleased with very little. If you gave her a bunch of violets she was as pleased as most girls are with orchids. It was Tad’s considered opinion that she had never heard of orchids, and he, personally, had no intention of bringing them to her notice.

  ‘She sounds the domestic type. You take care, Tad, or she’ll be going back to the Middle East with you.’

  ‘Not while I’m conscious,’ Tad said. ‘No female is going back East with me. I’m not having any little-woman-round-the-house cluttering up our bungalow. I mean, my bun—. I mean—’ His voice died away.

  The conversation became suddenly broken-backed, and Grant rang off after promising to call him as soon as he had anything to report or an idea to share.

  He went out into the wet haze, bought himself an evening paper, and found a taxi to take him home. The paper was a Signal, and the sight of the familiar heading took him back to that breakfast at Scoone four weeks ago. He thought again how constant in kind the headlines were. The Cabinet row, the dead body of the blonde in Maida Vale, the Customs prosecution, the hold-up, the arrival of an American actor, the street accident. Even ‘PLANE CRASH IN ALPS’ was common enough to rank as a constant.

  ‘Yesterday evening the dwellers in the high valleys of Chamonix saw a rose of flame break out on the icy summit of Mont Blanc—’

  The Signal’s style was constant too.

  The only thing waiting for him at 19 Tenby Court was a letter from Pat, which said:

  Dear Alan, they say you must have marjuns but I think marjuns is havers. waste not want not. this is a fly I made for you. it was not done in time before you went. it may not be any good for those english rivers but you better have it anyway your affectionate cousin Patrick.

  This production cheered Grant considerably, and while he ate his dinner he considered alternately the economy, in capitals as well as in margins, and the enclosed lure. The fly exceeded in originality even that remarkable affair which he had been lent at Clune. He decided to use it on the Severn on a day when they would ‘take’ a piece of red rubber hot-water-bottle, so that he could write honestly to Pat and report that the Rankin fly had landed a big one.

  The typical Scots insularity in ‘those English rivers’ made him hope that Laura would not wait too long before sending Pat away to his English school. The quality of Scotchness was a highly concentrated essence, and should always be diluted. As an ingredient it was admirable; neat, it was as abominable as ammonia.

  He stuck the fly above the calendar on his desk, so that he might go on being amused by its catholicity and warmed by his young cousin’s devotion, and got thankfully into pyjamas and a dressing-gown. There was at least one consolation for being in town when he might still be in the country: he could get into a dressing-gown and put his feet on the mantelpiece in the sure and certain knowledge that no telephone call from Whitehall 1212 would intrude on his leisure.

  But he had not had his feet up for twenty minutes when Whitehall 1212 was on the telephone.

  It was Cartwright.

  ‘Did I understand you to say that you had had a bet on Flair?’ said Cartwright’s voice.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it but I have an idea that your horse has won,’ said Cartwright. He added, very silky and sweet like a Broadcasting Aunt: ‘Good night, sir,’ and hung up.

  ‘Hey!’ said Grant, and jiggled the telephone key. ‘Hey!’

  But Cartwright had gone. And it would be no use trying to bring him to the telephone any more tonight. This amiable piece of teasing was Cartwright’s come-back; his charge for doing a couple of buckshee jobs.

  Grant went back to his Runyon, but he could no longer keep his attention on that strictly legit character, Judge Henry G. Blake. Blast Cartwright and his little jokes. Now he would have to go to the Yard first thing in the morning.

  But in the morning he forgot all about Cartwright.

  By eight o’clock in the morning Cartwright had sunk back into the great ocean of incidentals that bear us on from one day to the next, unremarkable in their plankton swarming.

  The morning began as it always did, with the rattle of china and the voice of Mrs Tinker as she set down his early-morning tea. This was the preliminary to four glorious minutes during which he lay still more asleep than awake and let his tea cool, so Mrs Tinker’s voice came to him down a long tunnel that led to life and the daylight but need not yet be traversed.

  ‘Just listen to it,’ Mrs Tinker’s voice said, referring apparently to the steady beat of the rain. ‘Stair rods, cats and dogs, reservoyers. Niagara also ran. Seems they’ve bin and found Shangri-la. I could do with a spot of Shangri-la myself this morning.’

  The word turned over in his sleepy mind like a weed in calm water. Shangri-la. Very soporific. Very soporific. Shangri-la. Some place in a film. In a novel. Some unspoiled Eden. Shut away from the world.

  ‘According to this mornin’s papers they never ’ave no rain at all there.’

  ‘Where?’ he said, to show that he was awake.

  ‘Arabia, so it seems.’

  He heard the door close and dropped a little further under the surface of things for the enjoyment of those four minutes. Arabia. Arabia. Another soporific. They had found Shangri-la in Arabia. They—

  Arabia!

  In one great whirl of blankets he came to the surface and reached for the papers. There were two, but it was the Clarion that came to his hand first because it was the Clarion whose headlines constituted Mrs Tinker’s daily dose of reading.

  He did not have to search for it. It was there on the front page. It was the best front-page stuff that any newspaper had had since Crippen.

  SHANGRI–LA REALLY EXISTS. SENSATIONAL DISCOVERY. HISTORIC FIND IN ARABIA.

  He glanced over the hysterically excited paragraphs and discarded the paper impatiently for the more trustworthy Morning News. But the Morning News was almost as excited as the Clarion. KINSEY-HEWITT’S GREAT FIND, said the Morning News. ASTOUNDING NEWS FROM ARABIA.

  ‘We print, with great pride, Paul Kinsey-Hewitt’s own despatch,’ said the Morning News. ‘As our readers will see his discovery had been vouched for by three R.A.F. planes sent to locate the place after Mr Kinsey-Hewitt’s arrival at Makallah.’ The Morning News had had a contract with Kinsey-Hewitt for a series of articles on his present journey, when that journey should be completed, and was now delirious with pleasure at its unexpected luck.

  He skipped the Morning News on its own triumph and went on to the far soberer prose of the triumphant explorer himself.

  ‘We were in the Empty Quarter on scientific errands…no thought in our minds of human history either factual or legendary…a well-explored country…bare mountains that no one had ever considered climbing…a waste of time between one well and the next…in a land where water is life no one turns aside to climb precipitous heights…attention caught by a plane that came twice in five days and spent some time circling low above the mountains…occurred to us that some plane had crashed…possible rescue…conference…Rory Hallard and I to search while Daoud went on to the well at Zaruba and brought a load of water back to meet us…no entrance apparent…walls like the Garbh Coire on Braeriach…giving up…Rory…a track that even a goat would baulk at…two hours to the ridge…a valley of astounding beauty…green almost shocking…kind of tamarisk…architecture reminiscent of Greece rather than Arabia…colonnades…light-skinned Persian type with fine eyes…the grace and small bones of an inbred race…very friendly…greatly excited by the appearance of the plane which t
hey seemed to have taken to be some kind of bird…paved squares and streets…oddly metropolitan…isolation due not to the difficulties of the mountain track but to lack of animal transport to carry water…desert impassable without that…in the position of a small island in an ocean of desert…as unaware what lay beyond that desert or how far it might extend as the Ancients were of what lay beyond the Atlantic…tradition of disaster, but owing to language difficulties this is surmise, being a translation of sign-talk rather than…strip cultivation…monkey god in stone…Wabar…volcanic convulsion…Wabar…Wabar….’

  The Morning News had inset a neat outline map of Arabia with crosses in the appropriate place.

  Grant lay and stared at it.

  So that was what Bill Kenrick had seen.

  He had come out of the shouting heart of the storm, out of the whirling sand and the darkness, and looked down at that green civilised valley lying among the rocks. Not much wonder that he had come back looking ‘concussed’, looking as if his mind were ‘still back there’. He had not quite believed it himself. He had gone back to search; to look for, and eventually look at, this place that appeared on no map. This—this—was his Paradise.

  This was what he had been writing about on the blank space of an evening paper.

  This was what he had come to England to—

  To Heron Lloyd to—

  To Heron Lloyd—!

  He flung the News away and leaped out of bed.

  ‘Tink!’ he called as he turned on the bath-water. ‘Tink, never mind breakfast. Get me some coffee.’

  ‘But you can’t go out on a morning like this with just a cup of—’

  ‘Don’t argue! Get me some coffee!’

  The water roared into the bath. The liar. The god-damned smooth heartless lime-hogging liar. The vain vicious murdering liar. How had he done it?

  By God, he would see that he hanged for this.

  ‘On what evidence?’ said his inner voice, nasty-polite.

  ‘You shut up! I’ll get the evidence if I have to discover a whole new continent to find it! “Poor boy! Poor boy!” said he, shaking his head over so sad a fate. Sweet Christ, I’ll hang for him myself if I can’t kill him any other way!’

  ‘Calm down, calm down. That’s no mood to interview a suspect in.’

  ‘I’m not interviewing a suspect, blast your police mind. I’m going to tell Heron Lloyd what I think of him. I’m not a police-officer until after I’ve dealt personally with Lloyd.’

  ‘You can’t hit a man of sixty.’

  ‘I’m not going to hit him. I’m going to half-murder him. The ethics of hitting or not hitting don’t enter into the matter at all.’

  ‘He may be worth hanging for but not worth being requested to resign for.’

  ‘“I found him delightful,” said he, kind and patronising. The bastard. The smooth vain murdering bastard. The—’

  From the wells of his experience he dredged up words to serve his need. But his anger went on consuming him like a furnace.

  He flung out of the house after two mouthfuls of toast and three gulps of coffee, and went round to the garage at the double. It was too early to hope for a taxi; the quickest way was to use his car.

  Would Lloyd have read the papers yet?

  If he did not normally leave the house before eleven o’clock, then surely breakfast could not be until nine. He would like very much to be at 5 Britt Lane before Lloyd opened his morning paper. It would be sweet, consoling sweet, satisfying sweet, to watch Lloyd take the news. He had murdered to keep that secret his own, to ensure that the glory should be his, and now the secret was front-page news and the glory belonged to his rival. Oh, Sweet Jesus, let him not have read about it yet.

  He rang twice at 5 Britt Lane before his summons was answered, and then it was answered not by the amiable Mahmoud but by a large woman in felt slippers.

  ‘Mr Lloyd?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Mr Lloyd’s up in Cumberland for a day or two.’

  ‘Cumberland! When did he go to Cumberland?’

  ‘Thursday afternoon.’

  ‘When do you expect him back?’

  ‘Oh, they’ve just gone for a day or two.’

  ‘They? Mahmoud too.’

  ‘Of course Mahmoud too. Mr Lloyd he doesn’t go anywhere without Mahmoud goes with him.’

  ‘I see. Can you give me his address?’

  ‘I’d give it you if I had it. But they don’t bother with re-addressing when they go for only a day or two. Will you leave a message? Or will you call back, perhaps? They’ll like as not arrive back this afternoon.’

  No, he would not leave a message. He would come back. His name did not matter.

  He felt like someone who has braked too suddenly and been hit in the wind. As he went out to his car he remembered that Tad Cullen would read that story in a few minutes’ time; if he had not read it already. He went back to the flat and was met in the lobby by a relieved Mrs Tinker.

  ‘Thank heaven you’re back. That American boy’s been on the phone and goin’ on somethink awful. I can’t make ’ead or tail of what ’e thinks he’s talkin’ about. Ravin’ mad, ’e is. I says: Mr Grant’ll ring you, I says, the minute ’e come in, but ’e can’t leave the phone alone. Just puts it down an’ picks it up again. I bin running backwards and forwards between the sink and the phone like a—’ The telephone rang. ‘There you are! There ’e is again!’

  Grant picked up the receiver. It was indeed Tad, and he was all that Mrs Tinker had said. He was incoherent with rage.

  ‘But he lied!’ he kept saying. ‘That guy lied. Of course Bill told him all that!’

  ‘Yes, of course he did. Listen Tad…Listen…No, you can’t go and beat him to a jelly…Yes, of course you can find his house for yourself; I don’t doubt it, but…Listen, Tad!…I’ve been to his house…Oh, yes, even at this hour of the morning. I read my papers earlier than you do…No, I didn’t beat him up. I couldn’t…No, not because I’m windy but because he’s in Cumberland…Yes. Since Thursday…I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. Give me until lunch-time. Do you trust my judgement on things in general?…Well, you’ll have to trust it in this. I must have time to think…To think up some evidence, of course…It’s customary…I’ll tell my story to the Yard, of course, and of course they will believe me. I mean, my story of Bill’s visit to Lloyd, and Lloyd’s lies to me. But proving that Charles Martin was Bill Kenrick is quite a different matter. Until lunch-time I shall be writing out a statement for the Yard. Come about one o’clock and we can have lunch together. In the afternoon I must turn the whole thing over to the authorities.’

  He hated the thought. This was his own private fight. It had been his own private fight from the very beginning. From that moment when he had looked down through the open compartment door on to the dead face of an unknown boy. It was a thousand times more his private fight since his meeting with Lloyd.

  He had begun to write, when he remembered that he had not yet picked up the papers he had left with Cartwright. He lifted the receiver, dialled the number, and asked for Cartwright’s extension. Could Cartwright possibly find a messenger to send round with those papers? He, Grant, was frantically busy. It was Saturday, and he was clearing up before going back to work on Monday. He would be very grateful.

  He went back to his writing, and became so absorbed that he was conscious only in a dim way that Mrs Tinker had brought in the second post: the noon one. It was when he raised his glance from the paper to search his mind for a word, that his eye fell on the envelope she had laid beside him on the desk. It was a foolscap envelope, rather stiff and expensive, well-filled, and addressed in a thin, angular cramped hand that managed to be at once finicking and flamboyant.

  Grant had never seen Heron Lloyd’s handwriting. He recognised it instantly.

  He put down his pen; cautiously, as if the strange letter was a bomb and any undue vibration might send it off.

  He wiped his palms down the thighs of his trousers in a gesture he
had not used since he was a child, the gesture of a small boy facing the incalculable, and put out his hand for the envelope.

  It had been posted in London.

  14

  The letter was dated Thursday morning.

  My Dear Mr Grant,

  Or should I say Inspector? Oh, yes, I know about that. It did not take me long to find out. My excellent Mahmoud is a better detective than any of your well-meaning amateurs on the Embankment. But I shall not give you your rank, because this is a social communication. I write to you as one unique human being to another worthy of his attention. Indeed, it is because you are the only Englishman who has ever moved me to even a momentary admiration that I present these facts to you and not to the Press.

  And because, of course, I am sure of your interest.

  I have this morning had a letter from my follower, Paul Kinsey-Hewitt, announcing his discovery in Arabia. The letter was sent from the Morning News office at his request, to anticipate the publication of the news tomorrow morning. A piece of courtesy for which I am grateful to him. It is ironic that it should have been the Kenrick youth who was responsible for bringing to him, too, the knowledge of the valley’s existence. I saw a great deal of the Kenrick youth while he was in London and I could find nothing in him worthy of so great a destiny. He was a very common-place young man. He spent his days flying a mechanical contraption mindlessly across deserts that men had conquered only with suffering and resolution. He was full of a plan whereby I should provide the transport and he should lead me to this find of his. But that of course was absurd. I have not lived my life and made a great name in the desert to be led to discovery by an instrument-watcher from the back streets of Portsmouth; to be a transport provider, a camel-hirer, for some other man’s convenience. It was not to be thought of that a youth who by a climatic hazard, a geographical accident, had stumbled on one of the great discoveries of the world should be allowed to profit by it at the expense of men who had given their lives to exploration.

  As far as I could judge, the young man’s only virtue (why do you waste your interest on so dull a piece of human mass-production?) was a capacity for continence. In speech, of course; please don’t misunderstand me. And it was important from my point of view that the tongue which he had held with so rare a continence should go on being unwagged.