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

‘I’ll tell him,’ Dr Natouche offered and Caley Bard said: ‘There now! Don’t fuss. And do, like a good girl, stop bossing.’

Troy caught the familiar bantering tone and was comforted by it. She and Bard exchanged pallid grins.

‘I’ll be off,’ he said.

Dr Natouche said: ‘And I. I may be wanted. I think you should stay where you are, Mrs Alleyn.’

He had moved away when Troy, to her own astonishment, heard herself say. ‘Dr Natouche!’ and when he turned with his calmly polite air, ‘I – I should like to consult you, please, when you are free. Professionally.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘In the meantime these ladies will take care of you.’

They did. They ministered with hot-water bottles and with scalding tea. Troy only now realized that she was shivering like a puppy.

Miss Hewson was full of consolatory phrases and horrified speculation.

‘Gee,’ she gabbled, ‘isn’t this just awful? That poor girl and all of us asleep in our beds. What do you figure, Mrs Tretheway? She was kind of sudden in her reflexes wasn’t she? Now, could it add up this way? She was upset by this news about her girlfriend and she got up and dressed and packed her grip and wrote her little note on the newspaper and lit off for for wherever she fixed to meet up with her friends and in the dark she –’

Miss Hewson stopped as if jerked to a halt by her listeners’ incredulity.

‘Well – gee – well, maybe not,’ she said. ‘OK, OK. Maybe not.’

Mrs. Tretheway said: ‘I don’t fancy we do any good by wondering. Not till they know more. Whatever way it turns out, and it looks to me to be a proper mess, it’ll bring nothing but worry to us in the Zodiac: I know that much.’

She took the empty cup from Troy. ‘You’d best be left quiet,’ she said. ‘We’ll look in and see how you prosper.’

When they had gone Troy lay still and listened. The shivering had stopped. She felt at once drowsy, and horrified that she should be so.

By looking up slantways through her open porthole she could see a tree top. It remained where it was for the most part, only sliding out of its place and returning as the Zodiac moved with The River. She heard footfalls overhead and subdued voices and after an undefined interval, a police siren. It came nearer and stopped. More and heavier steps on deck. More and newer voices, very subdued. This continued for some time. She half-dozed, half-woke.

She was roused by something outside that jarred against the port wall of the Zodiac and by the clunk of oars in their rowlocks and the dip and drip of the blades.

‘Easy as you go, then,’ said a voice very close at hand. ‘Shove off a bit.’ The top of a helmet moved across the porthole. ‘That’s right. Just a wee bit over. Hold her at that, now. Careful now.’

Superintendent Tillottson. On the job.

Troy knew with terrible accuracy what was being done on the other side of the cabin wall. She was transfixed in her own vision and hag-ridden by a sick idea that there was some obligation upon her to stand on her bunk and look down into nightmare. She knew this idea was a fantasy but she was deadly afraid that she would obey its compulsion.

‘All right. Give way and easy. Easy as you go.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What? What?’

‘It’s foul of something.’

‘Here. Hold on.’

‘Look there, Super. Look.’

‘All right, all right. Hold steady again and I’ll see.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘A line. Cord. Round the waist and made fast to something.’

‘Will we cut it?’

‘Wait while I try a wee haul. Hold steady, I said. Now then.’

An interval with heavy breathing.

‘Coming up. Here she comes.’

‘Suitcase?’

‘That’s right. Now. Bear a hand to ship it. It’s bloody heavy. God, don’t do that, man. We don’t want any more disfigurement.’

A splash and then a thud.

‘Fair enough. Now, you can give way. Signal the ambulance, Sarge. Handsomely, now.’

The rhythmic clunk, dip and drip: receding.

Troy thought with horror: ‘They’re towing her. It’s Our Mutual Friend again. Through the detergent foam. They’ll lift her out, dripping foam, and put her on a stretcher and into an ambulance and drive her away. There’ll be an autopsy and an inquest and I’ll have to say what I saw and, please God, Rory will be back.’

The Zodiac trembled. Trees and blue sky with a wisp of cloud, moved across the porthole. For a minute or so they were under way and then she felt the slight familiar shock when the craft came up to her mooring.

Miss Hewson opened the door and looked in. She held a little bottle rather coyly between thumb and forefinger and put her head on one side like her brother.

‘Wide awake?’ she said. ‘I guess so. Now, look what I’ve brought!’

She tiptoed the one short pace between the door and the bunk and stooped. Her face really was like a bun, Troy thought, with currants for eyes and holes for nostrils and a bit of candy-peel for a mouth. She shrank back a little from Miss Hewson’s face.

‘I just knew how you’d be. All keyed-up like nobody’s business. And I brought you my Trankwitones. You needn’t feel any hesitation about using them, dear. They’re recommended by pretty well every darn’ doctor in the States and they just act –’

The voice droned on. Miss Hewson was pouring water into Troy’s glass.

‘Miss Hewson, you’re terribly kind but I don’t need anything like that. Really. I’m perfectly all right now and very much ashamed of myself.’

‘Now, listen dear –’

‘No, truly. Thank you very much but I’d rather not.’

‘You know something? Mama’s going to get real tough with baby –’

‘But, Miss Hewson, I promise you I don’t want –’

‘May I come in?’ said Dr Natouche.