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

I

There was no denying it, the cruise was much more enjoyable without Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

From Crossdyke to Longminster the sun shone upon fields, spinneys, villages and locks. It was the prettiest of journeys. Everybody seemed to expand. The Hewsons’ cameras clicked busily. Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock discovered a common interest in stamps and showed each other the contents of sad-looking envelopes. Caley Bard told Troy a great deal about butterflies but she refused, nevertheless, to look at the Death’s Head he had caught last evening on Crossdyke Hill. ‘Well,’ he said gaily, ‘don’t look at it if it’s going to set you against me. Why can’t you be more like Hay? She said she belonged to the SPCA but lepidoptera didn’t count.’

‘Do you call her Hay?’

‘No. Do you?’

‘No, but she asked me to.’

‘Stand-offish old you, as usual,’ he said and for no reason at all Troy burst out laughing. Her own apprehensions and Dr Natouche’s anxiety had receded in the pleasant atmosphere of the third day’s cruise.

Even Dr Natouche turned out to have a hobby. He liked to make maps. If anyone as tranquil and grave as Dr Natouche could be said to exhibit coyness, he did so when questioned by Troy and Bard about his cartography. He was, he confessed, attempting a chart of their cruise: it could not be called a true chart because it was not being scientifically constructed but he hoped to make something of it when he had consulted Ordnance maps. Troy wondered if persons of Dr Natouche’s complexion ever blushed and was sure, when he was persuaded to show them his little drawing, that he felt inclined to do so.

It was executed in very hard lead-pencil and was in the style of the sixteenth-century English cartographers with tiny drawings of churches and trees in their appropriate places and with extremely minute lettering.

Troy exclaimed with pleasure and said: ‘That we should have two calligraphers on board! Mr Pollock, do come and look at this.’

Pollock who had been talking to the Hewsons, hesitated, and then limped over and looked at the map but not at Dr Natouche.

‘Very nice,’ he said and returned to the Hewsons.

Troy had made a boldish move. Pollock, since the beginning of the cruise had only just kept on the hither side of insulting Dr Natouche. He had been prevented, not by any tactics that she and Caley Bard employed but rather by the behaviour of Dr Natouche himself who skilfully avoided giving Pollock any chance to exhibit ill-will. Somehow it came about that at mealtimes Dr Natouche was as far removed as possible from Mr Pollock. On deck, Dr Natouche had conveyed himself to the area farthest aft, which Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s mattress, deflated to the accompaniment of its own improper noises, by the boy Tom, had previously occupied.

So Dr Natouche had offered no opportunity for Mr Pollock to insult him and Mr Pollock had retired, as Caley Bard pointed out to Troy, upon a grumpy alliance with the Hewsons with whom he could be observed in ridiculously furtive conference, presumably about racial relations.

To these skirmishes and manoeuvres Mr Lazenby appeared to be oblivious. He swapped philatelic gossip with Mr Pollock, he discussed the tendencies of art in Australia with Troy when she was unable to escape him, and he made jovial, unimportant small-talk with Dr Natouche.

Perhaps the most effective deterrent to any overt display of racialism from Mr Pollock was an alliance he had formed with the Tretheways.

To Troy, it appeared that Mr Pollock, in common, she thought, with every other male in the Zodiac, was extremely conscious of Mrs Tretheway’s allure. That was not surprising. What did surprise was Mrs Tretheway’s fairly evident response to Mr Pollock’s offering of homage. Evidently, she found him attractive but not apparently to an extent that might cause the Skipper any concern since Troy heard them all planning to meet at a pub in Longminster. They were going to have a bit of an evening, they agreed.

Troy herself was in something of a predicament. She could not, without making a ridiculous issue of it, refuse either to lunch or dine with Caley Bard in Longminster and indeed she had no particular desire to refuse since she enjoyed his company and took his cock-eyed and purely verbal advances with the liberal pinch of salt that she felt sure he expected. So she agreed to dine with him but said she had appointments during the earlier part of the day.

Somehow or another, she must yet again visit a police station and commune with Superintendent Bonney whose personality, according to Superintendent Tillottson, she would find so very congenial. She could not help but feel that the legend of the lost fur had begun to wear thin but she supposed, unless some likelier device occurred to her, that she must continue to employ it. She told Caley Bard she’d have to make a final inquiry as they’d promised to let the Longminster police know if the wretched fur turned up and she also hinted at visits to the curator of the local gallery and a picture-dealer of some importance.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll accept your feeble excuses for the day and look forward to dinner. After all you are famous and allowances must be made.’

‘They are not feeble excuses,’ Troy shouted. Afterwards she determined at least to call on the curator and thus partially salve her conscience. She had arrived at this stage of muddled thinking when Dr Natouche approached her with an extremely formal invitation.

‘You have almost certainly made your own arrangements for today,’ he said. ‘In case you have not I must explain that I have invited a friend and his wife to luncheon at the Longminster Arms. He is Sir Leslie Fergus, a bio-chemist of some distinction, now dedicated to research. We were fellow-students. I would, of course, be delighted if by any fortunate chance you were able to come.’

Troy saw that, unlike Caley Bard who had cheerfully cornered and heckled her, Dr Natouche was scrupulous to leave her the easiest possible means of escape. She said at once that she would be delighted to lunch at the Longminster Arms.

‘I am so pleased,’ said Dr Natouche with his little bow and withdrew.

‘Well!’ ejaculated Caley who had unblushingly listened to this exchange. ‘You are a sly-boots!’

‘I don’t know why you should say that.’

‘You wouldn’t lunch with me.’

‘I’m dining with you,’ Troy said crossly.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m being a bore and unfunny. I won’t do it again. Thank you for dining. I hope it’ll be fun and I hope your luncheon is fabulous.’

She now began to have misgivings about Caley Bard’s dead set at her.

‘At my age,’ Troy thought, ‘this sort of thing can well become ridiculous. Am I in for a tricky party, I wonder.’

The day, however, turned out to be a success.

They reached Longminster at 10.30. Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock were going straight to the Minster itself and from there planned to follow the itinerary set out in the Zodiac’s leaflet. The Hewsons, who had intended to join them were thrown into a state of ferment when the Skipper happened to remark that it would be half-day closing in Tollardwark on the return journey. They would arrive there at noon.

Miss Hewson broke out in lamentation. The junk shops where she was persuaded she would find the most exciting and delectable bargains! Shut! Now wasn’t that just crazy planning on somebody’s part? To spend the afternoon in a closed town? In vain did the Tretheways explain that the object of the stay was a visit by special bus to a historic Abbey six miles out of Tollardwark. The Hewsons said in unison that they’d seen enough abbeys to last them the rest of their lives. What they desired was a lovely long shop-crawl. Why Miss Hewson had seen four of the cutest little old shops – one in particular – she appealed to Troy to witness how excited she had been.

They went on and on until at last Caley Bard, in exasperation, suggested that as it was only a few miles by road back to Tollardwark they might like to spend the day there. Mrs Tretheway said there were buses and the road was a very attractive one, actually passing the Abbey. The Skipper said there were good car-hire services, as witness the one that had rung through with Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s message.

The Hewsons went into a huffy conference from which they emerged with their chagrin somewhat abated. They settled on a car. They would spend half the day in Tollardwark and half in Longminster. One could see, Troy thought, the timeless charm of the waterways evaporating in the Hewsons’ esteem. They departed, mollified and asking each other if it didn’t seem kind of dopey to spend two days getting from one historic burg to another when you could take them both in between breakfast and dinner with time left over for shopping.

Caley Bard announced that he was going to have his hair cut and then go to the museum where the lepidoptera were said to be above average. Dr Natouche told Troy that he would expect her at one o’clock and the two men walked off together.

Troy changed into a linen suit, consulted Mr Tillottson’s map and found her way to the Longminster central police station and Superintendent Bonney.

Afterwards she was unable to make up her mind whether or not she had been surprised to find Mr Tillottson there.

He explained that he happened to be in Longminster on a routine call. He did not suggest that he had timed his visit to coincide with Troy’s. He merely shook hands again with his customary geniality and introduced her to Superintendent Bonney.

Mr Bonney was another large man but in his case seniority would have seemed to have run to bone rather than flesh. His bones were enormous. They were excessive behind his ears, under and above his eyes and at his wrists. His jaws were cadaverous and when he smiled, even his gums were knobbly. Troy would not have fallen in with Mr Tillottson’s description of his colleague as a lovely chap.

They were both very pleasant. Troy’s first question was as to her husband’s return. Was there any chance, did they think, that it might be earlier because if so –

They said, almost in unison, that Alleyn had rung through last evening: that he would have liked to talk to her this morning but would have missed his connection to New York. And that he hoped he might be home early next week but that depended upon a final conference. He sent his love, they said, beaming at her, and if she was still uneasy she was to abandon ship. ‘Perhaps a telegram from a sick friend –’ Mr Tillottson here suggested and Troy felt a strong inclination to laugh in his face and ask him if it should be signed ‘Mavis’.

She told them about Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

They listened with great attention saying: ‘Yerse. Yerse.’ and ‘Is that a fact?’ and ‘Fancy that, now.’ When she had finished Mr Bonney glanced at his desk pad where he had jotted down a note or two.

‘The Longminster Car Hire and Taxi Service, eh?’ he said. ‘Now, which would that be, I wonder, Bert? There’s Ackroyd’s and there’s Rutherford’s.’

‘We might make a wee check, Bob,’ Mr Tillottson ventured.

‘Yerse,’ Mr Bonney agreed. ‘We might at that.’

He made his calls while Troy, at their request, waited.

‘Ackroyd’s Car Hire Service? Just a little item about a telephone call. Eighty-thirty or thereabouts to Crossdyke Lockhouse. Message from a fare phoned by you to the Lock for Tretheway, Skipper, M.V. Zodiac. Could you check for us? Much obliged.’ A pause while Mr Bonney stared without interest at Mr Tillottson and Mr Tillottson stared without interest at nothing in particular.