The Maltese Herring

by L. C. Tyler

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ethelred

  The side door was unlocked, though I was certain I had locked it when I left the house.

  ‘Or you stupidly forgot,’ said Elsie supportively.

  ‘No, I’m sure.’

  ‘Like you were sure Fay was in danger? That sort of sure?’

  ‘They must have used a key,’ I said. ‘I noticed that a spare key for this door was missing a few days ago. I keep it for guests – it’s usually with the other keys in the box in the hall. I meant to ask you if you had it.’

  ‘A bit late asking me now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You think somebody decided that the treasure could be hidden in the house rather than the garden and lifted the key when he or she visited?’

  ‘It looks like it, doesn’t it? I was sure I’d have spotted it if Joyner had hidden anything inside. But it should still have occurred to us that somebody else might think differently.’

  ‘Should have occurred to you,’ said Elsie. ‘I wasn’t there when this occurring was going on.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope they haven’t made too much of a mess. I’ll check the annex and the sitting room. You check the bedrooms. Then we’ll know the worst.’

  Actually, it was not as bad as it might have been. The intruder had been systematically through every room in the house, opening drawers, pulling out jerseys and socks and shirts, checking behind books. But it was just a matter of folding and replacing and restoring in alphabetical order of author. A small stash of euros in my bedside table was untouched. So, unfortunately, was my aunt’s Victorian silver teapot and milk jug, for which I’ve never found a use or the resolve to sell. It is well insured and is always left in a position in which an intruder could not possibly miss it.

  ‘Well, I at least have the consolation that I was right,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t in the house. If they’d found what they were searching for they’d have stopped searching and gone off with the loot. They’ve clearly tried every room in the house, which suggests they almost certainly didn’t discover it.’

  ‘Do you reckon it was Sammartini?’

  ‘That’s my guess. He or his much larger friend pocketed the key when they visited. It’s true that other people might have taken it, but I can’t see anyone else setting the whole thing up as they did – the fake text to get me away from the house for a few hours, the recorded message. The text genuinely seemed to come from Fay. My other recent visitors – Sly or Henry Polgreen or Iris – wouldn’t have had Fay’s address. But Sammartini was in touch with both her and Cox.’

  ‘So, Sammartini had maybe three hours to throw your socks around and found nothing – what would he do next?’

  ‘Back to the garden,’ I said.

  Sure enough, they had also toured the garden, digging in the flower beds, even removing a new section of turf that I had put in in the spring. They were, after all, a cleaning and gardening company.

  ‘They didn’t have as much time in the garden,’ said Elsie. ‘But we know they were interrupted. Maybe your intruder was onto something. Could it still be here somewhere?’

  For a while we searched amongst the bushes but without success.

  ‘Let’s just stand back from it all for a moment,’ I said. ‘If he was going to hide it, it had to be somewhere that nobody would look for a while and from which he could easily retrieve it. He’d worked out that people might search his room or elsewhere in the house, so he looks for the most obscure place in the garden.’

  ‘A shed?’

  ‘Both locked on the morning he was here.’

  ‘The compost heap?’

  Not willing to risk damaging an antique statue with a track record of putting curses on people it didn’t like, I donned gloves and emptied the bin by hand. There was nothing other than vegetation in varying stages of stench and decay.

  ‘What are we missing?’ I asked. ‘What is it that we can see but that we haven’t thought of searching?’

  As I spoke a car drew into my drive. Iris got out.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve caught you,’ she said. ‘Sammartini’s around in the village. You tipped me off last time. I thought I’d return the compliment.’

  ‘I already know,’ I said. ‘He’s just turned the house over. But I don’t think he found what he was looking for.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Iris. ‘Though it doesn’t look as if you have either.’

  ‘I’ll make you a coffee,’ I said.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ she said.

  We were seated in the garden again, overlooking Sammartini’s excavations. Even the longest summer day comes to an end, and the sky was growing red over the coastguard cottages, beyond the garden hedge.

  ‘Joe thought that Joyner might have hidden the statue at the Priory,’ I said.

  ‘That’s your policeman friend? Yes, the same thought had occurred to me. Once the police tape was down, I conducted as thorough a search of the grounds as I could. Joyner can’t have gone far from the well – one of us would have seen him – so I focused on that part of the garden, and the ice house. I found a pair of secateurs that I lost the year before last and a pound coin – the old sort, not a new one – but no Madonna. With her reputation for being able to mess things up, I wasn’t too sorry she was elsewhere. I always kept her in the ice house when I had her. I would check it occasionally by torchlight to make sure nobody had taken the statue away. I had mixed feelings every time I found she was still there. The family has been cursed since my grandfather found it. I don’t regard it as any coincidence that, having taken it from its resting place, I find my life is now in the mess that it’s in, with another dead body in the well and a pair of American gangsters prowling the village. That’s what it does best. Barclay-Wood was spot on there. You say he found it in 1902. Up to that point, his career as a clergyman was quite successful – not exactly what he wanted, but perfectly OK. It was after that that it went so badly wrong. He died bitter and forgotten, over forty years later, having gratuitously thrown away his only chance of promotion by quite needlessly libelling the Bishop and Dean.’

  ‘It seems that the churchwarden at Selsey insisted that the Madonna – and another statue – should stay in the church, when Barclay-Wood wanted to get rid of them,’ I said. ‘He died in the war – volunteered as a firefighter, went off to London and never came back. There was no need for him to do it. He could have lived out the war quite happily in Sussex. Even the Madonna’s friends were not immune to the curse, it would seem.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ she said. ‘Everyone who gets too close to that pretty little object ends up unnecessarily dead. I’m pleased you don’t appear to have it either. You’ve avoided a lot of bad luck.’

  ‘I’m not sure that having your house broken into is especially good luck,’ I said.

  ‘What was the churchwarden’s name?’ asked Elsie. ‘The one who died?’

  ‘Cornwallis,’ I said. ‘Mrs Hardcastle said that was her maiden name – and I think it’s what Barclay-Wood calls him in the book. Does that have any relevance?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Elsie. ‘I have a hunch.’

  She took out her phone and made a note.

  ‘Making the definitive list of everyone the statue’s killed or ruined?’ asked Iris.

  ‘Just the one,’ said Elsie.

  ‘If we ever find it, you could always give the statue to Sly,’ I said to Iris. ‘He’d have no hesitation in taking it.’

  ‘And pass the bad luck back to his family? That has its attractions.’

  ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘He thinks – quite wrongly – that my grandfather killed his grandfather. But, and this is indisputable, his grandmother killed my grandmother. She went round to see my grandfather and gave him a heart attack. She probably left him dying on the floor, in the full knowledge that my grandmother was upstairs with nobody else to look after her or stop her wandering off on her own. It was months before they found my grandmo
ther, and God knows what she went through in the days and possibly weeks after that, drifting, lost and confused on the Downs. I hope it was quick for her, but she did get an awful long way before she finally lay down to die of exposure.’

  ‘That’s not his fault.’

  ‘No, nor is his general character his fault, most likely. Partly hereditary. Partly watching reality television. He has a genuine interest in the Abbey. And he’d work as hard for it as Henry has – harder, probably. Sometimes I think, why not let him be chair of the committee after Henry steps down? Nobody else really wants the job. He deserves it, just for the hours he’s put in. Then I think, no – he’d just turn it into Disney World with students and out-of-work actors dressed as monks in polyester robes and fake tonsures. Well, he can stay as secretary, if he wants to, typing up the minutes and sending out circulars. That’s what he’s good for.’

  ‘Does he know all that?’

  ‘Oh yes, I made myself very clear when he and Henry came over the other day. The discussion got quite heated. He told me that I was a perfect example of middle-class entitlement and privilege. He told me his grandfather was worth ten of mine – not that I ever had any plans to have more than two. Well, I gave as good as I got, I can promise you. I doubt he’ll be paying to visit the garden in aid of the hospice next year.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that may be clear, but I’ve still no idea how the statue got from Selsey to the Priory between 1940, when Barclay-Wood was trying to sell it, and 1959, when it was found. And what happened to the second statue?’

  ‘I don’t think the second statue was ever at the Priory. I’m pretty sure my grandfather would have found it with the other treasure.’

  ‘Where did it go, then?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I need to check,’ said Elsie. ‘I think I have an idea.’ She put her phone away and smiled at us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ethelred

  I didn’t recognise the mobile phone number. I answered the call with a certain resignation, wondering what wild goose chase I’d be sent on this time.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Ethelred Tressider here.’

  ‘It’s Anthony Cox. Don’t hang up, Ethelred. Whatever Fay Tomlinson may have told you, we’re on the same side, you and I.’

  ‘She’s told me very little,’ I said.

  ‘Really? Fine. Just hear me out.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’ve got five minutes to convince me of whatever it is you wish to convince me of.’

  ‘Sorry, Ethelred, it will take a bit longer than that. We need to meet.’

  ‘Professor Cox, it’s not that I no longer trust you. It’s more that I no longer trust anyone. But if you wish to come to my house, then I’d be happy to make coffee for you.’

  ‘That won’t be possible. My colleagues and I are worried that your house is being watched.’

  ‘By Sammartini?’

  ‘No, Sammartini is one of my colleagues.’

  ‘Sammartini has just turned my house over.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Sometime yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Not possible. He wasn’t in West Wittering yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  ‘I agree we’ve done nothing to earn your trust. But, as I say, we’d still very much like to meet you. To explain. To discuss things. To agree certain things. But not at your house. It’s not safe.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘Where would you suggest?’

  ‘The beach,’ I said.

  ‘Is it secluded enough?’

  ‘The far end of it is. Even in summer not many people go there.’

  There was a whispered conversation.

  ‘Right, we can be there in twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘I’ll give you instructions.’

  ‘No need. One of my colleagues knows it well. He says we’ll spot each other easily enough.’

  He hung up. I looked at my watch. I could just about walk there in twenty-five minutes if I left straight away. I thought I’d rather be there first if I possibly could. I wasn’t expecting an ambush, but from now on I was ruling nothing out at all.

  I saw their shapes in the distance. The tall figure of Professor Cox. The very much smaller one of Sammartini. His assistant, Einstein, shambling ape-like behind them. And then, off to one side, as if he’d coincidentally just decided to take a stroll out that way, Henry Polgreen.

  It was one of those high summer mornings when the sky seems limitless and the thirty-foot dunes the narrowest of lines between the sky and the sea. It was low tide, and the hard, dark, rippling sands shone unevenly in the sun, neither land nor sea. A breeze gusted off the Channel. Small sandstorms skipped across the drying surface, rising eagerly then dissipating into nothing. As I had predicted, the beach by the car park had been crowded, but out here at the far end of East Head the family groups were sparsely scattered, sheltering anonymously behind colourful windbreaks. Their voices were vague and distant. The strolling dog walkers were further out still, where the retreating salt water lapped gently against the damp sand.

  Slowly the little group approached, and I was able to admire Sammartini’s immaculate pinstriped suit, perhaps the only one that the beach had seen that summer. He wore a white shirt and paisley-patterned tie, with a gold tiepin large enough to be seen even at the distance. From time to time he took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his brow. Cox was wearing red cotton drill trousers, a dark-blue polo shirt and a very white panama hat with a black band. Polgreen looked as if he had come straight from gardening, which he probably had.

  It was Sammartini who held out his well-manicured hand in greeting.

  ‘I am very pleased to see you, Mr Tressider,’ he said. ‘You have a fine beach here. A very fine beach, sir. I congratulate you on your fine beach.’

  I nodded, taking full credit for the work of the local wind and waves, and shook hands with the man who had disarranged my library.

  ‘I assume you didn’t find what you were looking for yesterday?’ I said.

  ‘As Professor Cox explained to you, Mr Tressider, that wasn’t us. I’m pleased, however, that whoever did search your house failed to find anything. It means that they probably don’t have it and are still looking. As indeed we are.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to tell us what happened, Ethelred,’ said Cox. ‘Then we can decide what we all do.’

  I gave them a brief and slightly selective account of the text, purportedly from Fay, and my journey to Oxford.

  Cox nodded. ‘You see, Ethelred,’ he said, ‘the sides have shifted a little. On the side of truth and light, as it were, we have myself and Mr Sammartini and your friend Henry Polgreen. On the side of darkness, we have Fay Tomlinson and Tertius Sly. Fay has been negotiating with another possible purchaser, letting me have as little information as she could without arousing my suspicions. She has now made her move. But she needed an ally here – somebody who could help her track down the missing Madonna. Fay had said to me at one point, when we were still supposedly colleagues, that she was working on the most gullible and easily seduced of those involved in this case, in the hope of getting his cooperation. I must apologise for having thought that might be yourself. But Mr Sly’s vanity, credulity and desire to be accepted would have been far more susceptible to her unsubtle charms. She probably persuaded him that, once they’d sold the Madonna, the two of them would go off to the West Indies or somewhere together.’ He laughed, inviting me to share the joke.

  I nodded. I probably wouldn’t tell Elsie any part of that.

  ‘Having heard your account,’ he continued, ‘I think I can see what happened. You say the text message sounded exactly like Fay. That’s because it came from Fay, who would also, of course, know her own address, unlike Mr Sammartini here. She could have got your mobile number from Sly.’

  ‘I’ve never given it to him,’ I said.

  ‘It’s on your application to join the committee,’ said Polg
reen.

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Cox. ‘But neither Mr Sammartini nor I have it. As you are aware, I have only your landline number. If you just consider these simple facts, you can see that few combinations of people, other than Fay and Tertius Sly, could have tricked you as they did. Once you’d texted to say you were on your way, she alerted Mr Sly, who had already hired a white van and purchased some cheap magnetic signs to stick onto the side – easily done. He drove round and entered using a key that he or Fay had taken from you on a previous visit. Had either been here recently?’

  ‘Yes, both,’ I said.

  ‘But Fay hasn’t just been complicit in turning over your house,’ said Cox. ‘I am afraid that I lied to the police on the day that Hilary Joyner died. I told them Fay and I were together the whole time. We weren’t. She engineered an argument with me and then stormed off. I didn’t see her again until just before we all met up on the terrace. I think she may have killed Hilary.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I doubt that her deal with Sly was her first attempt to cut me out of the sale of the Madonna. I think that she was already plotting with Hilary. You see, that theft of the Madonna from my safe – it’s true Hilary had a key, but I doubt that he sneaked in regularly to check the contents, just in case. So, how did he know it was there to be stolen? Because Fay had told him. I think that Fay went back to talk to Hilary by the well and discovered that Hilary’s plans were rather different from her own.’

  ‘He wanted publicity, she wanted cash?’

  ‘What Hilary wanted desperately was one successful book. A secret deal with a museum would not have appealed to him. He may have omitted to explain that to her.’

  ‘So, she killed him?’

  ‘I imagine there was an argument, in the course of which Hilary stumbled against the wellhead and fell in. Or something like that. It was, as people have constantly reminded us, rather dark in there.’