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

‘And another thing,’ invisibly screamed Mrs Bagg. ‘What was them two Americans doing nosey-parkering about the place last-week-was a-month-back, taking photers and never letting-on they was the same as before.’

Alleyn set himself to bawl again and thought better of it. ‘What does she mean?’ he asked Mr Bagg.

‘You don’t have to notice,’ he said. ‘But it’s correct, all right. They been here before, see, taking photographs and Mum recognized them. She wouldn’t have made nothink of it only for suspecting they done us.’

‘When were they here? Where did they stay?’

‘In the spring. May. Late April: I wouldn’t know. But it was them all right. They made out, when I says weren’t they here before, they was that taken with the place they come back for more.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Don’t be funny,’ Mr Bagg said. ‘Course I’m sure. This way, for Gawd’s sake.’

They went out. Mr Bagg had re-addressed himself to the door when Alleyn said: ‘Can you tell us anything about these motorcyclists?’

‘Them? Couple of mods. Staying up at the Star in Chantry Street. Tearing about the country all hours and disturbing people. Tuesday evening Mum ’eard something in our yard and caught the chap nosing round. Looking for old chain he said, but she didn’t fancy him. She took against him very strong, did Mum, and anyway we ain’t got no old chain. Chain!’

‘Why,’ began Mr Tillottson on a note of anguish, ‘didn’t you mention –’

‘I never give it a thought. You can’t think of everything.’

‘Nor you can,’ Alleyn hurriedly intervened. ‘But now you have thought, can you tell us what drew Mrs Bagg’s attention to the chap in the yard?’

‘Like I said, she ’eard something.’

‘What, though?’

‘Some sort of screech. I ’eard it too.’

‘You did!’

‘But I was engaged with a customer,’ Mr Bagg said majestically, ‘in my shop.’

‘Could the screech have been made by the door in the sideboard?’

Mr Bagg peered into Alleyn’s face as if into that of an oracle. ‘Mister,’ he said, ‘it not only could but it did.’ He took thought and burst into protestation.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I want an explanation. If I been done I want to know how I been done. If I been in possession of a valuable article and sold this article for a gift without being fully informed I want to get it back, fair and proper. Now.’

They left him discontentedly pursuing this thought but not loudly enough to arouse the curiosity of old Mrs Bagg. The door shrieked and slammed and they heard the bolts shoot home on the inside.

‘Star Inn,’ Alleyn said as they got in the car but when they reached the inn it was to find that the motorbicyclists had paid their bill the previous evening and set off for an unknown destination. They had registered as Mr and Mrs John Smith.

IV

The motorbicycle had been parked in a dampish yard behind the pub and the tyre-tracks were easy enough to pick up. Alleyn took measurements, made a sketch of the prints and had them covered, pending the arrival of Bailey and Thompson. He thought that when they examined Fox’s find under the hedgerow above Crossdyke they would find an exact correspondence. An outside man at the Star remembered the make of vehicle – Route-Rocket – but nobody could give the number.

Alleyn telephoned Troy at the Percy Arms in Norminster and asked her if by any chance she could recall it.

She sat on the edge of her bed with the receiver at her ear and tried to summon up her draughtsman’s memory of the scene on the quay at Norminster last Monday morning. Miss Rickerby-Carrick squatted on her suitcase, writing. Caley Bard and Dr Natouche were down by The River. Pollock limped off in a sulk. The Bishop’s car was in the lane with Lazenby inside. The two riders lounged against their machine, their oiled heads and black leather gear softly glistening in the sun. She had wanted to draw them, booted legs, easy, insolent pose, gum-chewing faces, gloved hands. And the machine. She screwed her memory to the sticking point, waited and then heard her own voice.

‘I think,’ said her voice, ‘it was XKL-460.’

‘Now, there!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘See what a girl I’ve got! Thank you, my love, and goodnight.’ He hung up. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We set up a general call. They’ll be God knows where by now but they’ve got to be somewhere and by God we’ll fetch them in.’

He, Fox and Tillottson were in the superintendent’s office at the Tollardwark police station where, on Monday night, Troy had first encountered Mr Tillottson. The sergeant set up the call. In a matter of minutes all divisions throughout the country and all police personnel were alerted for a Route-Rocket, XKL-460, black, with either one or two riders, mod-types, leather clothes, dark, long hair, calf-boots. Retain for questioning and report in.

‘And by now,’ Fox observed, ‘they’ve repainted their bike, cut their hair and gone into rompers.’

‘Always the little sunbeam,’ Alleyn muttered, absently. He had covered a table in the office with newspaper and now very carefully they laid upon it an old-fashioned hide suitcase, saturated with river water, blotched, disreputable, with one end of its handle detached from its ring. A length of cord had been firmly knotted through both rings.

‘We opened it,’ Tillottson said, ‘and checked the contents as they lay. We left them for a doing-over and re-closed the lot. You can see what happened. The other end of the cord was secured round her waist. The slack had been passed two or three times under the handle and round the case. When the handle came away at one end the slack paid out and instead of being anchored on the river bed, the body rose to the surface but remained fastened to the weighted case. As it was when we recovered it.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘You can see where the turns of rope bit into the leather.’

Fox, who was bent over the cord, said: ‘Clothes-line. Did they pinch it or had they got it?’ and sighed heavily. ‘We’ll inquire,’ he said.

‘They might have had it,’ Tillottson said. ‘In their kit, you know. Easily they might. Or what-say,’ he added, brightening, ‘they picked it up in Jo’s yard? How’s that?’

‘That might or might not argue premeditation,’ Alleyn said. ‘For the moment it can wait. We’d better take another look inside.’

The case was unlocked but fastened with strong old-fashioned hasps and a strap. The saturated leather was slimy to the touch. He opened and laid back the lid.

A jumble of clothes that had been stuffed into the case. Three pairs of shoes which spoke with dreadful eloquence of the feet that had distorted them. A seedy comb and hairbrush with straggles of grey hairs still engaged in them.

‘And the whole lot stowed away in a hurry and not by her. No hope of prints, he’s a damn’ sight too fly for that, but we’ll have to try. Hallo, what’s here?’

Five stones of varying sizes. A half-brick. Two handfuls of gravel. Underneath all these, a sponge-bag containing a half-empty bottle of aspirins (Troy’s, thought Alleyn) a tooth brush and a tube of paste and, in a state of disintegration, Hazel Rickerby-Carrick’s ‘self-propelling confessional’.

‘The diary,’ Alleyn said. ‘And to misuse a nastily appropriate line: “lift it up tenderly, treat it with care”. You never know: it may turn out to be a guide-book.’

CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_0a2d58f9-e0f8-5bbc-95dd-673a6c95c9f2)

Routine Continued (#ulink_0a2d58f9-e0f8-5bbc-95dd-673a6c95c9f2)

‘At this point,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m going to jump the gun and show you a photograph of post-mortem marks across the back at waist level and diagonally across the shoulder-blades of the body. Here are her wrists, similarly scarred. These marks were classed as having been inflicted after death. As you see they have all the characteristics of post-mortem scarring. What do they suggest? Yes?’

‘The cord, sir,’ ventured Carmichael in the second row. ‘The cord that attached the bawdy to the suitcase.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not quite accurate. These grooves are narrow and deep and only appear on the back. Now look at this. That’s the cord, laid beside the marks. You can see it tallies. So far you are right, Carmichael. But you see that the higher marks cross each other in the form of an X with a line underneath. Have another shot. What are they?’

From somewhere towards the back a doubtful voice uttered the word ‘flagellation’ and followed it with an apologetic little cough. Someone else made the noise ‘gatcha’ upon which there was a muffled guffaw.

‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ Alleyn said. ‘However: to press on with Mr Fox’s investigations. He found nothing else of interest at the Crossdyke end and moved to the stretch of river below Ramsdyke weir where the body was found. Above Ramsdyke near the hollow called Wapentake Pot, the road from Crossdyke and Tollardwark was undergoing repairs. There were loose stones and rubble. It crosses Dyke Way and Dyke Way leads down to a bridge over The River where the Roman canal joins it. Downstream from here is the weir with its own bridge, a narrow affair with a single handrail. It’s here that the effluent from a factory enters the mainstream and brews a great mass of detergent foam over the lower reaches.

‘The weir bridge is narrow, green, wet and slithery with foam blown back from the fall. It is approached from the road by concrete steps and a cinder path.

‘Along this path, Mr Fox again found a thread or two of dark blue synthetic caught on a bramble. Here’s the photograph. And I may tell you that a close search of the pyjamas revealed a triangular gap that matched the fragment from Crossdyke. Classic stuff.