Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 9: Clutch of Constables, When in Rome, Tied Up in Tinsel

‘Why, so it is,’ agreed her brother. ‘So it is. Hallo, there, Mrs Alleyn. Kind of murky down here, isn’t it? I guess the progressive elements in Tollardwark haven’t caught up with street-lighting. Still in the linkman phase.’

‘Golly,’ Troy said, ‘you made me jump.’

They broke into an apology. If they had known it was Troy they would have hailed her as she approached. Miss Hewson herself was nervous in the dark and wouldn’t stir without Brother. Miss Hewson, Mr Hewson said, was a crazy hunter after old-time souvenirs and this place looked like it was some kind of trash shop and yard and nothing would do but they must try and peer in at the windows. And, interjected his sister, they had made out a number of delectable objects. The cutest kind of work-box on legs. Heaps of portfolios. And then – it was the darn’dest thing – their flashlamp had gone dead on them.

‘It’s old pictures,’ Miss Hewson cried, ‘that I just can’t keep my hands off, Mrs Alleyn. Prints. Illustrations from Victorian publications. Those cute little girls with kittens and nosegays? Military pieces? Know what I mean?’

‘Sis makes screens,’ Mr Hewson explained tolerantly. ‘Real pretty, too. I guess, back home, she’s gotten to be famous for her screens.’

‘Listen to you!’ his sister exclaimed, ‘talking about my screens to Mrs Alleyn!’

Troy, whose heart had stopped behaving like a water-ram, said she too admired Victorian screens and reminded the Hewsons that they would be able to explore Tollardwark on the return trip. ‘I guess Sis’ll be heading for this antique joint,’ Mr Hewson said, ‘before we’re tied up. Come on, now, girls, why don’t we go?’

He had taken their arms when the footsteps broke out again, quite near at hand. Mr Hewson swung his ladies round to face them.

An invisible man strode towards them through the dark: a set of pale garments and shoes without face or hands. Miss Hewson let out a sharp little scream but Troy exclaimed: ‘Dr Natouche!’

‘I am so sorry,’ the great voice boomed. ‘I have alarmed you. I would have called out back there before the moon rose but did not know if you were a stranger or not. I waited for you to get away from me. Then, just now, I heard your voice. I am so very sorry.’

‘No harm done I guess, Doctor,’ Mr Hewson said stiffly.

‘Of course not,’ Troy said. ‘I was in the same case as you, Dr Natouche. I wondered about calling out and then thought you might be an affronted local inhabitant or a sinister prowler.’

Dr Natouche had produced a pocket torch no bigger than a giant pencil. ‘The moon has risen,’ he said, ‘but it’s dark down here.’

The light darted about like a firefly and for a moment a name flashed out: ‘Jno. Bagg: licensed dealer,’ on a small dilapidated sign above a door.

‘Well,’ Miss Hewson said to her brother. ‘C’mon. Let’s go.’

He took her arm again and turned invitingly to Troy. ‘We can’t walk four-abreast,’ Troy said. ‘You two lead the way.’

They did so and she fell in beside Dr Natouche.

The bottom lane turned out to be treacherous underfoot. Some kind of slippery lichen or river-weed had crept over the cobblestones. Miss Hewson slithered, clung to her brother and let out a yelp that flushed a company of ducks who raised their own rumpus and left indignantly by water.

The Hewsons exclaimed upon the vagaries of nature and stumbled on. Troy slipped and was stayed up expertly by Dr Natouche.

‘I think perhaps you should take my arm,’ he said. ‘My shoes seem to be unaffected. We have chosen a bad way home.’

His arm felt professional: steady and very hard. He moved with perfect ease as his forefathers might have moved, Troy thought, barefoot across some unimaginable landscape. When she slipped, as she did once or twice, his hand closed for a moment about her forearm and she saw his long fingers pressed into the white sleeve.

The surface of the lane improved but she felt it would be uncivil to withdraw her arm at once. Dr Natouche spoke placidly of the beauties of Tollardwark. He talked, Troy thought indulgently, rather like the ship’s brochure. She experienced a great contentment. What on earth, she thought gaily, have I been fussing about: I’m loving my cruise.

Miss Hewson turned to look back at Troy, peered, hesitated, and said: ‘OK, Mrs Alleyn?’

‘Grand, thank you.’

‘There’s the Zodiac,’ Mr Hewson said. ‘Girls – we’re home.’

She looked welcoming indeed, with her riding lights and glowing red-curtained windows. ‘Lovely!’ Troy said light-heartedly. Dr Natouche’s arm contracted very slightly and then relaxed and withdrew, closely observed by the Hewsons. Mr Hewson handed the ladies aboard and accompanied them down to the saloon which was deserted.

Miss Hewson carefully lowering her voice said cosily: ‘Now, dear, I hope you were not too much embarrassed: we couldn’t do one thing, could we, Earl?’ She may have seen a look of astonishment in Troy’s face. ‘Of course,’ she added, ‘we don’t just know how you Britishers feel –’

‘I don’t feel anything,’ Troy said inaccurately. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Well!’ Mr Hewson said, ‘You don’t aim to tell us, Mrs Alleyn, that there’s no distinction made in Britain? Now, only last week I was reading –’

‘I’m sure you were, Mr Hewson, but honestly, we don’t all behave like that. Or believe like that. Really.’

‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Is – that so? You wait awhile, Mrs Alleyn. You wait until you’ve a comparable problem. You haven’t seen anything yet. Not a thing.’

‘I guess we’ll just leave it, dear,’ Miss Hewson said. ‘Am I looking forward to my bed! Boy, oh boy!’

‘We’ll say goodnight then, Mrs Alleyn,’ Mr Hewson said rather stiffly. ‘It’s a privilege to make your acquaintance.’

Troy found herself saying goodnight with much more effusiveness than she normally displayed and this, she supposed, was because she wanted everything to be pleasant in the Zodiac. The Hewsons seemed to cheer up very much at these signs of cordiality and went to bed saying that it took all sorts to make a world.

Troy waited for a moment and then climbed the little companion-way and looked over the half-door.

Dr Natouche stood at the after-end of the deck looking, it appeared, at the silhouette of Tollardwark against the night-sky. He has a gift, Troy thought, for isolating himself in space.

‘Goodnight, Dr Natouche,’ she said, quietly.

‘Goodnight. Goodnight, Mrs Alleyn,’ he returned, speaking as low as his enormous voice permitted. It was as if he played softly on a drum.

Troy wrote a letter to her husband which she would post before they left Tollard Lock in the morning and it was almost midnight when she had finished it.

What a long, long day, she thought as she climbed into her bed.

IV

She fell asleep within half a minute and was fathoms deep when noises lugged her to the surface. On the way up she dreamed of sawmills, of road-drills and of dentists. As she awoke her dream persisted: the rhythmic hullabaloo was close at hand, behind her head, coming in at her porthole – everywhere. Her cabin was suffused in moonlight reflected off the river. It looked like a sanctuary for peace itself but on the other side of the wall Miss Rickerby-Carrick in Cabin 8 snored with a virtuosity that exceeded anything Troy had ever heard before. The pandemonium she released no more resembled normal snoring than the ‘1812 Overture’ resembles the ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’. It was monstrous. It was insupportable.

Troy lay in a sort of incredulous panic, half-giggling, half-appalled as whistles succeeded snorts, and plosives followed upon whistles. A door on the far side of the passage angrily banged. She thought it was Caley Bard’s. Then Mr Hewson, in Cabin 6 on Troy’s left, thudded out of bed, crossed the passage to his sister’s room and knocked.

‘Sis! Hey Sis!’ Troy heard him wail. ‘For Pete’s sake! Sis!’ Troy reached out and opened her own door a crack.

Evidently, Miss Hewson was awake. Brother and sister consulted piteously together in the passage. Troy heard Miss Hewson say: ‘OK, dear. OK. Go right ahead. Rouse her up. But don’t bring me into it.’

Another door, No. 5, Troy thought, had been opened and the admonitory sound ‘Ssh!’ was sharply projected into the passage. The same door was then smartly shut. Mr Lazenby. Finally Mr Pollock unmistakably erupted into the mêlée.

‘Does everybody mind!’ Mr Pollock asked in a fury. ‘Do me a favour, ladies and gents. I got the funny habit of liking to sleep at night!’ A pause, sumptuously filled by Miss Rickerby-Carrick! ‘Gawd!’ Mr Pollock said. ‘Has it been offered to the Zoo?’

Troy suddenly thumped the wall.

Miss Rickerby-Carrick trumpeted, said ‘Wh-a-a?’ and fell silent. After perhaps thirty wary, listening seconds her fellow-passengers returned to their beds and as she remained tacit, all, presumably, went to sleep.

Troy again slept deeply for what seemed to her to be a very long time and was sickeningly roused by Miss Rickerby-Carrick herself, standing like the first Mrs Rochester beside her bed and looking, Troy felt, not dissimilar. Her cold was heavy on her.