Dead Water (20 page)

‘Ah!’ said Sergeant Pender who had listened to all this with the liveliest attention. ‘So, she did then, and hunted the poor chap merciless, didn’t she, Ciss?’

‘Aw, you do be awful, George Pender,’ said Cissy, with spirit.

‘Couldn’t help herself, no doubt, and not to be blamed for it,’ he conceded.

Alleyn again asked Cissy if Miss Cost had any close women friends. Mrs Carstairs? Or Mrs Barrimore, for instance?

Cissy made a prim face that was also, in some indefinable way, furtive. ‘She weren’t terrible struck on Mrs Barrimore,’ she said. ‘She didn’t hold with her.’

‘Oh? Why was that, do you suppose?’

‘She reckoned she were sly,’ said Cissy and was not to be drawn any further.

‘Did Miss Cost keep a diary, do you know?’ Alleyn asked, and as Cissy looked blank, he added: ‘A book. A record of day-to-day happenings?’

Cissy said Miss Cost was always writing in a book of an evening but kept it away careful-like, she didn’t know where. Asked if she had noticed any change in Miss Cost’s behaviour over the last three weeks, Cissy gaped at Alleyn for a second or two and then said Miss Cost had been kind of funny.

‘In what way, funny?’

‘Laughing,’ said Cissy. ‘She took fits to laugh, suddenlike. I never see nothing to make her.’

‘As if she was – what? Amused? Excited?’

‘Axcited. Powerful pleased too. Sly-like.’

‘Did you happen to notice if she sent any letters to London?’

Miss Cost had on several occasions put her own letters in the mailbag but Cissy hadn’t got a look at them. Evidently, Alleyn decided, Miss Cost’s manner had intrigued her assistant. It was on these occasions that Miss Cost laughed.

At this juncture, Cissy was required at the switchboard. Alleyn asked Pender to follow him into the back room. He shut the door and said he thought the time had come for Miss Pollock to return to her home. She lived on the Island, it appeared, in one of the Fisherman’s Bay cottages. Alleyn suggested that Pender had better see her to her door as the storm was so bad. They could be shown how to work the switchboard during his absence.

When they had gone, Alleyn retired to the parlour and began operations upon Miss Cost’s desk which, on first inspection, appeared to be a monument to the dimmest kind of disorder. Bills, dockets, trade-leaflets and business communications were jumbled together in ill-running drawers and overcrowded pigeon-holes. He sorted them into heaps and secured them with rubber bands.

He called out to Fox, who was in the kitchen: ‘As far as I can make out she was doing very nicely indeed, thank you. There’s a crack-pot sort of day-book. No outstanding debts and an extremely healthy bank statement. We’ll get at her financial position through the income-tax people, of course. What’ve you got?’

‘Nothing to rave about,’ Fox said.

‘Newspapers?’

‘Not yet. It’s a coal range, though.’

‘Damn.’

They worked on in silence. Bailey reported a good set of impressions from a tumbler by the bed and Thompson, relieved of the switchboard, photographed them. Fox put on his mackintosh and retired with a torch to an outhouse, admitting, briefly, the cold and uproar of the storm. After an interval he returned, bland with success, and bearing a coal-grimed, wet, crumpled and scorched fragment of newsprint.

‘This might be something,’ he said and laid it out for Alleyn’s inspection.

It was part of a sheet from the local paper from which a narrow strip had been cleanly excised. The remainder of a headline read: ‘ – to Well-known Beauty Spot’ and underneath: ‘The Natural Amenities Association. At a meeting held at Dunlowman on Wednesday it was resolved to lodge a protest at the threat to Hatcherds Common where it is proposed to build –’

‘That’s it, I’m sure,’ Alleyn said. ‘Same type. The original messages are in my desk, blast it, but one of them reads “Threat” (in these capitals) “to close You are warned”: a good enough indication that she was responsible. Any more?’

‘No. This was in the ash-bin. Fallen into the grate, most likely, when she burnt the lot. I don’t think there’s anything else but I’ll take another look by daylight. She’s got a bit of a darkroom rigged up out there. Quite well-equipped, too, by the look of it.’

‘Has she now? Like to take a slant at it, Thompson?’

Thompson went out and presently returned to say it was indeed a handy little job of a place and he wouldn’t mind using it. ‘I’ve got that stuff we shot up at the Spring,’ he said. ‘How about it, sir?’

‘I don’t see why not. Away you go. Good. Fox, you might penetrate to the bedchamber. I can’t find her blasted diary anywhere.’

Fox retired to the bedroom. Pender came back and said it was rougher than ever out of doors and he didn’t see himself getting back to the village. Would it be all right if he spent the rest of the night on Miss Cost’s bed? ‘When vacant, in a manner of speaking,’ he added, being aware of Fox’s activities. He emerged from a pitchpine
wardrobe, obviously scandalized by Sergeant Pender’s unconventional approach, but Alleyn said he saw nothing against the suggestion and set Pender to tend the switchboard and help Thompson.

He returned to his own job. The parlour was a sort of unfinished echo of the front shop. Rows of plastic ladies, awaiting coats of green, yellow and pink paint, smirked blankly from the shelves. There were stacks of rhyme-sheets and stationery and piles of jerkins, still to be sewn up the sides. Through the open door he could see the kitchen table with a jug and sugar-basin and a dirty cup with a sodden crust in its saucer. Miss Cost would have washed them up, no doubt, if she had returned from early service and not gone walking through the rain to her death.

In a large envelope he came across a number of photographs. A group of village maidens, Cissy prominent among them, with their arms upraised in what was clearly intended for corybantic ecstasy. Wally, showing his hands. Wally with his mouth open. Miss Cost herself, in a looking-glass with her thumb on the camera trigger and smiling dreadfully. Several snapshots, obviously taken in the grounds of the nursing home, with Dr Maine caught in moments of reluctance shading into irritation. Views of the Spring and one of a dark foreign-looking lady with an intense expression.

He heard Fox pull a heavy piece of furniture across the wooden floor and then give an ejaculation.

‘Anything?’ Alleyn asked.

‘Might be. Behind the bed-head. A locked cupboard. Solid, mortise job. Now, where’d she have stowed the key?’

‘Not in her bag. Where do spinsters hide keys?’

‘I’ll try the chest of drawers for a start,’ said Fox.

‘You jolly well do. A favourite cache. Association of ideas. Freud would have something to say about it.’

Drawers were wrenched open, one after another.

‘By gum!’ Fox presently exclaimed. ‘You’re right, Mr Alleyn. Two keys. Here we are.’

‘Where?’

‘Wrapped up in her combs.’

‘In the absence of a chastity belt, no doubt.’

‘What’s that, Mr Alleyn?’

‘No matter. Either of them fit?’

‘Hold on. The thing’s down by the skirting board. Yes. Yes, I do believe – here we are.’

A lock clicked.

‘Well?’

‘Two cash boxes, so far,’ Fox said, his voice strangely muffled.

Alleyn walked into the bedroom and was confronted by his colleague’s stern, up-ended beneath an illuminated legend which read:

‘Jog on, jog on the footpath way And merrily hent the stile-a.’

This was supported by a bookshelf on which the works of Algernon Blackwood and Dennis Wheatley predominated.

Fox was on his knees with his head to the floor and his arm in a cupboard. He extracted two japanned boxes and put them on the unmade bed, across which lay a rumpled nightgown embroidered with lazy daisies.

‘The small key’s the job for both,’ he said. ‘There you are, sir.’

The first box contained rolled bundles of bank notes and a well-filled cashbag; the second, a number of papers. Alleyn began to examine them. The top sheet was a carbon copy with a perforated edge. It showed, in type, a list of dates and times covering the past twelve months.

There were twenty entries. Two, placed apart from the others, and dated the preceding year, were heavily underlined. ‘22nd July, 5 p.m.’ and ‘30th September, 8.45.’

‘From a duplicating book in her desk,’ Alleyn said, ‘a page has been cut out. It’ll be the top copy of this one.’

‘Typewritten,’ Fox commented.

‘There’s a decrepit machine in the parlour. We’ll check but I think this’ll be it.’

‘Do the dates mean anything to you, Mr Alleyn?’

‘The underlined item does. Year before last. July 22nd 5 p.m. That’s the date and time of the Wally’s Warts affair. Yesterday was the second anniversary.’

‘Would the others be notes of later cures? Was any record kept?’

‘Not to begin with. There is now. The book’s on view at Wally’s Cottage. We can check, but I don’t think that’s the answer. The dates are too closely bunched. They give – let’s see; they give three entries for August of last year, one for September, and then nothing until 27th April of this year. Then a regular sequence over the last three months up to – yes, by George! – up to a fortnight ago. What do you make of it, Br’er Fox? Any ideas?’

‘Only that they’re all within licensing hours. Very nice bitter, they serve up at The Boy-and-Lobster. It wouldn’t go down too badly. Warm in here, isn’t it?’

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him. ‘You’re perfectly right,’ he said. He went into the shop. ‘Pender,’ he called out, ‘who’s the bartender in the evenings at The Boy-and-Lobster?’

‘In the old days, sir, it were always the Major hisself. Since these yurr princely extensions, however, there be a barmaid in the main premises and the Major serves in a little wee fancy kind of a place behind the lounge.’

‘Always?’

‘When he’m capable,’ said Pender dryly, ‘which is pretty well always. He’m a masterpiece for holding his liquor.’

Pender returned to the shop. ‘There’s one other thing,’ Alleyn said to Fox. ‘The actual times she’s got here grow later as the days grow longer.’

‘So they do,’ Fox said. ‘That’s right. So they do.’

‘Well: let it simmer. What’s next? Exhibit two.’

It was an envelope containing an exposed piece of film and a single print. Alleyn was about to lay the print on Miss Cost’s pillow. This bore the impress of her head and a single grey hair. He looked at it briefly, turned aside, and dropped the print on her dressing-table. Fox joined him.

It was a dull, indifferent snapshot: a tangle of bracken, a downward slope of broken ground and the top of a large boulder. In the foreground out of focus was the image of wire-netting.

‘Above the Spring,’ Alleyn said. ‘Taken from the hillside. Look here, Fox.’

Fox adjusted his spectacles. ‘Feet,’ he said. ‘Two pairs. Courting couple.’

‘Very much so. Miss Cost’s anathema. I’m afraid Miss Cost begins to emerge as a progressively unattractive character.’

‘Shutter-peeping,’ said Fox. ‘You don’t get it so often among women.’

Alleyn turned it over. Neatly written across the back was the current year and ‘17th June. 7.30 p.m.’

‘Last month,’ Alleyn said. ‘Bailey!’ he called out. ‘Here, a minute, would you?’ Bailey came in. ‘Take a look at this. Use a lens. I want you to tell me if you think the man’s shoes in this shot might tally with anything you saw at the Spring. It’s a tall order, I know.’

Bailey put the snapshot under a lamp and bent over it. Presently he said: ‘Can I have a word with Thompson, sir?’ Sergeant Thompson was summoned from outer darkness. ‘How would this blow up?’ Bailey asked him.

‘Here’s the neg.’

‘It’s a shocking neg,’ Thompson said, and added grudgingly, ‘she’s got an enlarger.’

Alleyn said: ‘On the face of it, do you think there’s any hope of a correspondence, Bailey?’

Bailey, still using his lens said: ‘Can’t really say, sir. The casts are in my room at the pub.’

‘What about you, Thompson? Got your shots of the prints?’

‘They’re in the dish now.’

‘Well, take this out and see what you make of it. Have you found her camera?’

‘Yes. Lovely job,’ Thompson said. ‘You wouldn’t have expected it. Very fast.’ He named the make with reverence.

‘Pender,’ Alleyn said, re-entering the shop. ‘Do you know anything about Miss Cost’s camera?’

Pender shook his head and then did what actors call a double-take. ‘Yes, I do, though,’ he said. ‘It was give her in gratitude by a foreign lady that was cured of a terrible bad rash. She was a patient up to hospital and Miss Cost talked her into the Spring.’

‘I see. Thompson, would it get results round about seven-thirty on a summer evening?’

‘Certainly would. Better than this affair, if properly handled.’

‘All right. See what you can do.’

Bailey and Thompson went away and Alleyn rejoined Fox in the bedroom.

‘Fox,’ Alleyn said distastefully, ‘I don’t know whose feet the male pair may prove to be but I’m damn’ sure I’ve recognized the female’s.’

‘Really, Mr Alleyn?’

‘Yes. Very good buckskin shoes with very good buckles. She wore them to the Festival. I’m afraid it’s Mrs Barrimore.’

‘Fancy!’ said Fox, after a pause, and he added with his air of simplicity: ‘Well, then, it’s to be hoped the others turn out to be the Major’s.’

There were no other papers and no diary in either of the boxes.

‘Did you reach to the end of the cupboard?’ Alleyn asked Fox.

‘No, I didn’t. It’s uncommonly deep. Extends through the wall and under the counter in the shop,’ Fox grumbled.

‘Let me try.’

Alleyn lay on the bedroom floor and reached his long arm into the cupboard. His fingers touched something – a book. ‘She must have used her brolly to fish it out,’ he grunted. ‘Hold on. There are two of them – no, three. Here they come: I think – yes. Yes. Br’er Fox. This is
it.’

They were large commercial diaries and were held together with a rubber band. He took them into the parlour and laid them out on Miss Cost’s desk. When he opened the first he found page after page covered in Miss Cost’s small skeleton handwriting. He read an entry at random: