Charters and Caldicott (2 page)

‘I wasn't there.'

‘Nor was I – but how many Miss Beevers' does one know? Presumably she's after Jock's bits and pieces.'

‘
I
have those,' Charters pointed out.

‘But does Janie know that?'

‘Not Janie – Jeannie.'

‘Jenny.'

‘Jenny. Of course. She must be all of – what? – twenty-five by now?'

‘When she turns up again we ought to take her out to dinner.'

‘Soho?' said Charters doubtfully.

‘Lunch?'

‘Tea, I would have thought. More appropriate... So you thought my little postscript on Jock hit the right note?'

‘Absolutely. Only one minor quibble, old boy.'

‘What?'

‘On a matter of the tiniest historical detail. I nearly wrote to
The Times
myself but I thought you might take offence.'

‘Not at all,' said Charters, offended. ‘These things are checked through and through by sub-editors, you know, Caldicott.'

‘They missed this one, Charters. In referring to Jock Beevers' cricket accomplishments, you said his school batting average had never been surpassed.'

‘Nor has it.'

‘By point three runs,' said Caldicott. ‘Nineteen seventy-nine. One Thistleton, G.R.W. Now plays for one of the minor counties.'

‘Yes, I've heard of him. Promising all-rounder. He wasn't at Grimchester – it would have been in the school rag.'

‘Expelled for pot-smoking the same term.'

‘I shall need proof of that.'

‘Do you doubt my word?'

‘My dear fellow, not in the least. I want to see if there's a footnote. Expulsion, especially in the summer term, may mean his average doesn't count.'

Caldicott began to get up. ‘Only one way to find out.'

‘Would you mind, Caldicott. I haven't had my welsh rarebit yet.'

Jenny Beevers made her way up to Caldicott's flat unchallenged and let herself in. She glanced diffidently round the sitting room, uncertain where to begin. Suddenly she froze, staring in terrified horror through the open bedroom door.

The Club's substantial and well-stocked library was more valued by members for its comfortably upholstered chairs and rule of silence than for its literary riches. But Charters and Caldicott were too early to disturb any post-prandial dozers as they searched the shelves with growing irritation. ‘I shall write to the library committee,' said Charters crossly from the top of a set of steps.

‘The one Wisden we need to settle the argument,' said Caldicott, glaring at the gap in the row of cricketers' almanacs.

Charters climbed down. ‘The notice is there, as plain as the nose of your face. “Rule 43B. No volume to be removed from the library under any circumstance except by arrangement.”'

‘Nonetheless, removed it has been. Now what's to be done?'

‘And that's where
our
rules come in. You lose by default, therefore you owe me a large port. Come along, there's just time.'

‘I don't think so, Charters. I don't think so at all! I tell you I can give you chapter and verse for that batting average!'

‘Chapter and verse maybe, but first find your volume!'

‘I shall. I have Wisden back at the flat going back to the year dot. As you know.'

‘You're not suggesting we traipse all the way back to Viceroy Mansions on such a trivial matter, Caldicott?'

‘Trivial, Charters?'

‘Well, we do have prior commitments, old chap,' Charters mumbled, shamefaced as a bishop caught speaking dismissively of the Bible. ‘Thought we'd agreed to see that film at the Empire, Leicester Square.'

‘You really should try to be more adaptable, old chap, if you don't mind me saying so. After all, there's such a thing as the Odeon, Kensington High Street.'

Charters accepted defeat.

‘Your porter conspicuous by his absence,' he said a little while later as the pair marched briskly across the lobby of Viceroy Mansions, brollies swinging in unison.

‘I expect he's round at his osteopath's. He has a slipped disc, you know,' said Caldicott, pressing the button to call the lift.

‘Does he?' said Charters, totally uninterested. They stepped into the lift.

‘All it needs now, of course, is to find that my Mrs Duggins­what-does has given my 1979 Wisden to the jumble sale,' said Caldicott, letting them into the flat and heading straight for the set of Wisdens in the sitting-room. ‘It's precisely the kind of thing she's capable of... Hello!'

‘She hasn't!'

‘No, it's there right enough – it's that door yonder I'm puzzling over. When I went out this morning I made a point of shutting it.'

‘Oh really – why?'

‘Because otherwise it creaks on its hinges, to the annoyance of the – what does it matter why, Charters? The point is – who opened it?'

‘Your Mrs Duggins-what-does?'

‘Not her day.'

Charters closed the offending bedroom door. Then he paused, frowning, his hand still on the doorknob while he belatedly registered what he had seen on the bedroom floor. ‘Caldicott,' he said finally, ‘There's a body in there.'

‘No there isn't, old chap.'

‘I think you'll find there is, old chap.' Charters opened the door. Caldicott glanced past him, then strode into the bedroom and bent over the body.

‘Stabbed,' Charters diagnosed.

‘Dead as a doornail.' Caldicott stood up and went to telephone for the police.

Charters heard Caldicott introduce himself over the telephone as he wandered in a bemused fashion over to the bookshelves. He reached instinctively for the 1979 Wisden and sought solace in its statistics.

 

Inspector Snow took charge of investigations. He was unexpectedly young, immaculately dressed and fastidious to the point of obsessiveness.

Leaving his sergeant to take care of the body in the bedroom, Snow concentrated his own inquiries on the activities of Charters and Caldicott. Standing side by side in front of the fireplace, hands behind their backs, ex-military men at ease, the pair watched as Snow laid out his notebook and pen with precise neatness on a side-table, then arranged round them the ashtray, a couple of ornaments and other bits and pieces that lay to hand in an exact, geometric pattern. Satisfied that everything was in order, Snow smoothed down the pages of his notebook, flicked open his ballpoint pen and glanced at his watch before writing his first note in a copperplate hand.

‘Two fifty-eight. Mr Caldicott and Mr Charters. Let me just get down what we've established so far. The knife belongs to you, Mr Caldicott.'

‘That's correct, Inspector.'

‘It's a Malayan kris, you say?'

‘Yes.'

‘How are you spelling that, Mr Caldicott?'

Caldicott's spelling was no better than his arithmetic. He appealed to Charters who obliged the inspector.

‘It's a souvenir of your travels which you now use as a paperknife?' Snow asked.

‘That's right.'

‘And you keep it sharpened for slitting open envelopes?'

‘I don't
keep
it sharpened, Inspector. I mean to say, it's never gone blunt.'

‘Now as to the body. You say you knew her, Mr Caldicott. You say you
think
you knew her, Mr Charters.'

‘No,
I
said I thought I knew her,' said Caldicott. ‘But I'm dashed if I can say from where.'

‘
I
may have said I knew her. What I meant was, I recognised her,' said Charters.

‘We both did, but we can't place her, d'you see?'

‘That's what we meant to say,' said Charters, satisfied they'd made themselves plain.

‘That's what you meant to say,' Snow repeated, wearily resigning himself to the prospect of a number of similar exchanges as the case progressed. ‘But you don't know who she is?'

Caldicott shook his head. ‘It's not even on the tip of my tongue.'

‘Nor mine,' said Charters. ‘It's someone we've met but we don't know where or when.'

Sergeant Tipper came out of the bedroom and put in front of Snow a plastic bag containing most of the contents of the dead girl's handbag. He handed her papers separately to the inspector who laid them down on the table with great care, touching only the edges. It wasn't the risk of smudging fingerprints that worried him but the fear of loitering germs.

‘Jenny Beevers,' Snow read. ‘Does that ring a bell?'

‘Good God!' and ‘Oh no! Poor girl!' Charters and Caldicott exclaimed together, shocked.

‘Then you did know her?' Snow asked. Caldicott agreed that they did. ‘A moment ago you said you didn't.'

‘We said we recognised her but we couldn't place her,' said Charters. ‘Not surprisingly – we haven't set eyes on her for, what, twelve years?'

‘She was only a schoolgirl last time we saw her,' said Caldicott.

‘Twelve or so years ago. Yet you don't seem altogether astonished that the body on your bedroom floor turns out to be her,' said Snow suspiciously.

‘Ah, but you see, I knew she was back in London and was trying to get hold of me,' said Caldicott.

‘Back in London from where?'

‘I don't know where she lives these days. Home base would be her father's place in Hong Kong. He died very recently.'

‘What was he doing in Hong Kong?'

‘He was in Trade.'

‘Shopkeeper?'

‘The British Trade Commission,' said Charters severely.

‘Your connection with him being what?'

‘We were at school together. If you want anything on his background, I did a short appreciation in
The Times
.' Charters produced his wallet hopefully and took a cutting from it.

Snow shook his head. ‘I'm more interested at the moment in what his daughter was doing in Mr Caldicott's flat.'

‘I can answer that, Inspector,' said Charters. ‘Her father was due to retire. He sent some of his books and papers for Mr Caldicott to keep in storage against his return.'

‘In the event,' said Caldicott, ‘I passed them on to Mr Charters. No room here, d'you see.'

‘Whereas I have a loft.'

‘So no doubt Miss Beevers was interested in reclaiming her late father's effects. Does that answer your question, Inspector Snow?'

‘Not really, Mr Caldicott. The question was, what was she doing here? In other words, how did she get in?'

‘Oh, I see! The porter, I expect. I'd told him if she came back while I was out and she cared to wait, he was to let her in.'

‘Yet when he
does
let her in – always supposing he did – and you find her body, it doesn't even cross your mind who it might be.'

‘But you see, I instructed Grimes that if Miss Beevers
did
turn up, he was to ring me at the Club at once. Since he did no such thing, I simply didn't put two and two together.'

‘Reliable, is he, this porter?'

‘No,' said Charters, bitterly.

‘Has Grimes surfaced yet, Sergeant Tipper?' Snow called through to the bedroom.

Tipper appeared in the doorway. ‘I've told the man on the door to send him straight up, guv. Due back any minute.'

‘From his osteopath's. He has a slipped disc,' said Caldicott.

‘I don't think Inspector Snow's interested in that, old chap,' Charters murmured.

‘Could I be the judge of that, sir?' said Snow, unwarily encouraging Caldicott to continue,

‘It gives him gyp, apparently.'

Snow, in truth as uninterested as Charters in Grimes' health, changed the subject. ‘Can we discuss your own movements today, gentlemen? Would anyone have had prior knowledge that you would be vacating the flat at lunchtime, Mr Caldicott?'

‘It's conceivable. They'd only have to notice it was the first Friday.'

The inspector looked blank. Charters explained. ‘When we have a standing lunch engagement.'

‘I see. Returning home generally about what time, Mr Caldicott?'

‘Sixish, as a rule.'

‘From lunch?' Snow asked, amazed.

‘We always go to the cinema. That's the main purpose of the exercise, truth to tell.'

‘You see, Inspector, neither of us has a television,' said Charters.

‘All right, so you meet on a regular basis and visit a cinema.'

Charters was anxious to avoid any misunderstanding. ‘A moment, Inspector. In case there's any doubt in your mind, perhaps I could make it clear that it's the
legitimate
cinema we're talking about.'

‘Oh, indeed yes!' said Caldicott. ‘None of your Soho junk. Those Agatha Christie films, that's about our mark. In fact, we'd made up our minds today to see that one at the Empire, Leicester Square.'

‘I think that should be on record, Inspector,' said Charters.

‘Mr Charters, Mr Caldicott – it's no concern of
mine
which cinema you intended to visit. What's more to the point is that whatever film you meant to see, you didn't.'

‘No, we had a change of plan and plumped for the Odeon, Kensington High Street,' said Caldicott.

‘Calling back at the flat on the way,' said Snow.

‘To settle an argument,' said Charters.

Snow pricked up his ears. ‘An argument? Who with?'

‘Each other,' said Caldicott. ‘Well, not so much an argument, more a difference of opinion. As to whether the late Jock Beevers' batting average in his last year at Grimchester still stands as a school record.'

‘I'm sure the Inspector doesn't want to concern himself with batting averages,' said Charters pompously.

‘I'm concerned with everything for the moment, Mr Charters. So you were discussing the late Mr Beevers?

‘Colonel, actually.'

Inspector Snow, a patient huntsman, had his prey in his sights and was anxious not to startle him. ‘You return to the flat and who should you find dead on the bedroom floor but this same Colonel Beevers' daughter, whom you haven't set eyes on for twelve or thirteen years.'