Charters and Caldicott (8 page)

Charters and Caldicott exchanged anxious glances. They could almost hear the cell door clanging shut behind them. They propelled Inspector Snow across the lobby, past the ever-watchful eye of Venables who was pretending to read a newspaper and out onto the steps. But just as they hoped to be rid of him, Snow stopped. ‘You'll be going to the funeral?'

‘Shall we?' Charters looked at Caldicott.

‘I hadn't thought. What's the form?'

‘The form of what?' Snow asked.

‘When peripherally involved with murder. Is it usual to pay one's respects to the unfortunate victim?'

Snow gave him an odd look. ‘It is if you're friends of the family.'

Embarrassment, plus the fear that a fellow member, descending the Club steps, may have overheard some of this, threw Charters and Caldicott into confusion. Worse still, another member, about to enter the Club, stopped to talk to the departing member only a few feet from where Charters, Caldicott and Snow were standing.

Caldicott gave the pair a hideous, glassy smile. ‘Quite,' he said desperately.

‘I'll send you the details,' said Snow.

‘Do. Most grateful.' To allay the imagined suspicions of his fellow Club members, Caldicott went on more loudly, ‘Well, goodbye, Snow, old chap.'

‘Cheerio, Snow,' said Charters, backing him up.

To their immense relief, Snow nodded and seemed about to take his leave at last. Then he turned back again with yet another final thought. ‘Tell me, had Colonel Beevers quarrelled with his daughter, do you happen to know?'

‘Not to my knowledge,' said Charters. ‘It's some years since we actually met, of course.'

‘I'll tell you why I ask. As you were saying, Mr Caldicott, he was a great hoarder. There must be enough snapshots in that trunk to fill a dozen family albums.'

‘I don't doubt it.'

‘And yet there isn't one single, solitary photograph of the murdered girl, his daughter. Odd, that, isn't it?'

Charters and Caldicott exchanged worried glances. ‘Very,' Caldicott gulped, finally.

Josh Darrell buzzed through to his secretary on the intercom and summoned her, plus notebook, to his office. ‘And ask Mr St Clair if he can give me three more minutes.'

Cecil St Clair, who had followed Jenny into Darrell's outer office and had since been patiently reading the
Financial Times
, half rose. ‘That's quite all right. I have all the time in the world.'

The secretary picked up her notebook and departed. Jenny watched the door close behind her, then glanced over to St Clair. She caught his eye and they both smiled. With assumed nonchalance, Jenny walked over to the filing cabinet, opened one of the drawers and searched through the files. Finding the one she was looking for she took it out, cast a wary look at Darrell's office door and a disarming smile at St Clair, and began to go through its contents. Unnoticed by Jenny, St Clair watched with great interest.

Charters and Caldicott repaired to the Club bar for a much­needed restorative aperitif. ‘ “Mix Well and Serve,”' said Charters thoughtfully as the barman poured them two dry sherries.

The barman looked up in surprise. ‘Not the sherry, Eric,' said Caldicott. ‘Mr Charters was just thinking aloud.'

Charters signed the chit and when the barman had moved out of earshot, said, ‘What was the idea of claiming it was a catchphrase?'

‘Because
he
thought it was a coded message between the three of us. He was just on the verge of accusing us of taking Moscow gold.'

Charters snorted. ‘Easier to make
that
kind of accusation against the dead! I still can't credit that yarn, Caldicott.'

‘I wish
I
couldn't, Charters – but thinking about it, you know, Jock Beevers did move in mysterious ways. And how do we account for the forged passport? There can only be one explanation.'

‘There could be two. That he was an agent for
them
, as Inspector Snow professes to believe, or, as
I
prefer to believe, an agent for us.'

‘That's what Jenny thinks, if you recall. Whichever way round it is, it could certainly explain why he was bumped off and why all the world and his wife were hell-bent on getting hold of that trunk.'

‘It could even explain why that wretched Helen Appleyard was murdered in mistake for poor Jenny.'

‘Why “poor” Jenny?'

‘Well – if she hears about this Russian spy nonsense.'

‘Need she?'

‘You're right, Caldicott. Not a word.'

Caldicott mused in his turn upon Jock Beevers' odd message. ‘“Mix Well and Serve.” He was trying to tell us something, you know Charters.'

‘Yes, I realise that, Caldicott. I'm not a complete dunderhead, you know.'

‘Or, more specifically, asking us to do something, in the event of his not getting here. “Just in case my plane nosedives or the old ticker packs up before I get there – Mix Well and Serve.”'

Charters produced his own photocopy and studied it. ‘Do you know what, Caldicott? I'm pretty sure this is one of Jock's little games.'

‘I've gathered that, Charters. Nor am
I
a complete dunderhead.'

‘We were neither of us a match for Jock Beevers, with his conundrums and teasers and riddles, were we?'

‘What was that thing he always used to catch me with? Brothers and sisters have I none but my wife's mother is my uncle's son – no, that's not it. Now how does it go?'

Charters had been scribbling on the back of his copy of the letter. ‘Rex ends Mall view,' he said.

‘Come again?'

‘Anagram of Mix Well and Serve. Rex ends Mall view.'

‘That's brilliant!'

‘Just a knack,' said Charters modestly.

‘Rex ends Mall view. What does it mean?'

‘How the devil should I know?'

‘Then we're back where we started.'

‘Not quite, Caldicott. I shall make a close study of this. I have a hunch that in setting this puzzle Jock Beevers was relying on my expertise with the
Times
crossword.'

‘We
both
do the
Times
crossword, Charters,' said Caldicott, hurt.

‘Of course we do, old fellow. Of course we do. Let's have another sherry. Eric!'

‘I say, Charters, you don't suppose Inspector Snow suspects, do you? I mean, that his body isn't really Jenny Beevers? Or that we're holding something back?'

‘No, no, no – hasn't got the imagination. Policeman Plod, that's his mark.'

‘Yes, he does carry an aura of size eleven boots, doesn't he?' Caldicott agreed, comforted.

The purpose of St Clair's visit has been puzzling Grimes. In Caldicott's absence, he decided to do a little snooping on his own account to see if he could find out what was so interesting about the flat. Moving gingerly from room to room, looking for he knew not what, he was startled to find himself suddenly face to face with Inspector Snow.

‘Left the door open, didn't we?' said Snow.

‘No reason why it should be locked,' said Grimes, making a quick recovery.

‘Every reason why it shouldn't be. Anyone comes back unexpectedly, it's just a case of having popped in to see if everything is all right, isn't it? Heard a strange noise, taps running, breaking glass, smell of burning. Which was it?'

‘I
am
the resident caretaker, Inspector Snow,' said Grimes with attempted dignity.

‘Yes, I know. I'm asking which was it. What are you doing in Mr Caldicott's flat?'

‘Just checking, sir.'

Inspector Snow went over to an antique table. ‘Checked this, have you?' He made as if to wrench open the drawer.

‘Careful, sir! There's a knack of opening that.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I've seen Mr Caldicott do it.'

‘Oh yes? Has you round, does he? Social occasion? Glass of sherry?'

Grimes licked his lips nervously. Snow, in no hurry, looked round the room. ‘So what are you looking for, Grimes?'

‘Nothing – swear to God.'

‘Now that's a silly reply, that is, isn't it. What are you looking for?'

‘I don't know, sir.'

‘That's better. I can believe that.'

‘There
has
been a murder, Inspector. Just call it natural curiosity.'

‘No, I won't call it that. I'll call it something that'll look good on a charge sheet. If I have to, that is. Shall we have another chat, Mr Grimes?' Inspector Snow, with all the time in the world, produced his notebook and two pens and laid them neatly on a side table, then he plumped up the cushions in an armchair until they suited him.

Grimes watched aghast. ‘We can't talk here, Inspector. What if Mr Caldicott comes back?'

‘Caught me red-handed, you could try him on,' said Snow, his attention distracted by two matching vases on the mantelpiece. One of them was a fraction out of place. Snow adjusted it, stepped back to confirm that the arrangement was now exact, then turned again to Grimes. ‘Let's go back to the day of the murder, shall we, Mr Grimes? Mr Caldicott paying you to keep your mouth shut, is he, or do you have reasons of your own?'

 

The funeral of ‘Jenny Beevers' took place in a large, forlorn-looking, deserted cemetery. Inspector Snow waited alone outside the chapel, watching the unaccompanied hearse approach down the long avenue that led from the gates through rows of neglected graves. Only when the undertakers' men were preparing to carry the coffin into the chapel did he move inside. Charters and Caldicott, soberly dressed in dark suits, their bowler hats at their feet, were the only other mourners. Snow took a seat across the aisle from them in the front row. When the simple coffin had been placed on trestles before the altar and the pallbearers had retreated to the back of the chapel, there was an unexpected addition to the congregation. Venables, approaching on tiptoe, took the pew next to Charters and bent his head in prayer. Charters stared at him and nudged Caldicott. Seething with indignation and curiosity, the pair were forced to keep quiet and wait until Venables completed his devotions.

Charters allowed a decent interval to elapse after Venables had straightened up, then hissed, ‘Venables?'

‘Caldicott,' Venables whispered back.

‘Charters!'

‘My mistake.'

‘I wasn't aware you knew Jock Beevers.'

‘I didn't.'

‘Much less his daughter.'

‘No.'

Charters felt that an explanation was called for. While he waited for one, Caldicott, to his exasperation, leaned across and said, ‘In that case, Venables, decent of you to swell our numbers.'

‘Not at all. It was my duty.'

Charters bristled. ‘What do you mean?' But before Venables could answer, the verger called upon those present to rise, the duty clergyman bustled in and, without any preliminaries, began to read the funeral service from the Alternative Service book. Poor ‘Jenny' was just one more on the day's production line to him.

The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing,

He will make me lie down in green pastures, and lead me beside still waters

He will refresh my soul, and guide me in right pathways for his name's sake...

As the words rolled on, Charters and Caldicott became increasingly restless. This was not the way they liked their funeral services to be conducted. 

‘Modernistic claptrap,' Charters muttered, finally irritated beyond endurance. ‘I don't approve of this at all, Caldicott.'

‘Nor I. From religious trendies may the Good Lord preserve us.'

‘Ssh! Respect for the dead, chaps,' said Venables mischievously. Caldicott looked contrite, Charters seethed and the clergyman read on.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

For you are with me,

Your rod and your staff comfort me,

You spread a table before me

In the face of those who trouble me...

The service ended and the clergyman led the small procession out of the chapel and along one of the straight paths that cut through the cemetery. He glanced surreptitiously at his watch, then stepped up the pace a little to remain on schedule. Charters and Caldicott dropped back and took up a position one on either side of Venables.

‘Venables,' said Charters, ‘This is neither the time nor the place but we have a question to ask. And before you answer, I'd like you to be clear that my name is not Caldicott.'

‘No, your name is Charters,' said Venables obligingly.

‘
My
name is Caldicott,' said Caldicott, anxious that there should be no room for misunderstanding.

‘Agreed.'

‘Then that's established. Now 1et's establish something else. What's your game?' asked Charters bluntly.

‘Game, Caldicott? Charters, I should say.'

‘What are you up to?'

‘Why are you here, if that's not a leading question?' said the more conciliatory Caldicott.

‘Ah. For my sins I happen to be the Official Mourner.'

Charters glared at him. ‘Official Mourner? What's that?'

‘Appointed by the Home Office. Unpaid, of course, though one receives a small honorarium against expenses – black tie allowance and so on.'

‘So you're with the Home Office, Venables,' said Caldicott. ‘We've often wondered what you did.'

‘I wouldn't say
with
the Home Office. One's merely called in from time to time. When some unfortunate leaves this mortal coil with no kith or kin to pay their last respects, it falls to the Official Mourner to act in
loco bereavis
.'

‘
Bereavis!
There's no such word, man!' Charters snorted.

‘Latin was never my strong point.'

‘Furthermore, Venables, I happen to be well versed in public life and this is the first time I've ever heard of such an appointment as Public Mourner. ‘