Sky High (14 page)

She looked inquiringly at the Inspector who opened his mouth and closed it again slowly, exactly like a fish at feeding time.

‘The second point is even simpler. What did he live on?’

‘As to that,’ began Inspector Luck judgmatically, ‘I take it—’

‘I suppose you’re going to suggest that he came into money.’

The words thus neatly whisked out of his very mouth, the Inspector was forced to fall back on looking cross and inscrutable.

‘The poor old actor,’ said Liz, ‘who hasn’t had a part in six months. Last pair of shoes worn out staggering through the snow, from agency to agency, now staying in bed to keep warm and preserve his only suit. Enter the family lawyer. “Mr. Trefingle? Your aunt, Lady Trefingle, has died and left you a hundred thousand pounds. Here’s five hundred on account. Apply to me as soon as you want some more.” Corn. If you can believe that you can believe anything.’

‘I didn’t say—’

‘And suppose he had come into money – some real steady settled income – dividends, that sort of thing. Then tell me this. Why didn’t he have a bank account?’

‘How on earth,’ said the Inspector, ‘can you know that he didn’t?’

‘Well, I don’t know it. I haven’t been inquiring round the banks. Not that they’d have told me anything if I had. But I do happen to know that he paid all his local bills in cash. Even quite large ones. And don’t ask me how I know
that.
I do know it. I’ve got friends.’

It was then that the Inspector decided to come off whatever high horse he had been riding. He said, and without too much stuffiness in his voice: ‘So what do you make of it?’

‘There, now,’ said Liz. ‘That’s a fair question. I’ve had longer to think about it than you so I’ll give you my idea first. I think he must have found a gimmick. That would account for the money, and it would explain why he came down here to keep an eye on it. You’ve got to nurse a gimmick, or, like the Snark, it fades away.’

‘A—?’

‘American expression. It doesn’t translate into one word in English. It means—it means some secret source which produces a steady income which you don’t have to work for. Sometimes it’s just a trick – like knowing how to make three lemons come up together on the fruit machine. But it can be even easier than that. You know something, and someone is prepared to pay you not to say it. Then it really is money for nothing. Like famous film stars, who get paid large sums for
not
acting.’

‘Then the supposition would be—that someone in this area – yes, I see. It’s a bit vague, isn’t it?’

These things are always vague to start with. What you have to do is get busy and trace MacMorris’ friends. Who came to see him? Who did he call on, openly? Who did he visit secretly? Who knew him
but pretended not to?’

‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. He did not sound very happy about it.

‘Isn’t that right?’

‘I suppose so. Yes. He’s been here six or seven years, you see.’

‘He wasn’t very social man,’ said Liz. ‘He was in the choir – and just what we’re going to do for a tenor for our Harvest Festival Anthem I don’t like to think. He played a little tennis – Lucy Mallory used to partner him. He knew General Palling, and the Vicar. He sometimes rode Bob Cleeve’s horses and he once tried to buy a car off Jim Hedges. He knew me – I wouldn’t have described him as a friend.’

‘Yes,’ said the Inspector again. ‘Well, it’s been very good of you. Thank you very much.’

‘That sounds like a brush-off,’ said Liz. ‘Give me a straight answer to a straight question. Are you going to follow up what I’ve told you?’

‘I don’t think,’ said the Inspector in an exceedingly reasonable tone of voice, ‘that I’d be at liberty to discuss actual police plans with you.’

‘Fair enough. But I warn you. When I was a girl my headmistress wrote on my report “Has little brain, but when she does get an idea she sticks to it.” And just so that you won’t think I’m doing anything behind your back, I’m warning you. My next call this morning is on Tom Pearce.’

When she had gone the Inspector went across to the shelf and got down his well-thumbed dictionary. First he tried the ‘G’s’; then the ‘J’s’. He didn’t have any luck in either.

Pearce (whose Christian name was Cecil, but a fellow Devonian at Peel House had called him Tom, and the name had followed him round ever since) looked like a successful banker. He was, in cold fact, a successful Chief Constable; which is a role in which real success is a good deal harder to come by than in any bank.

He attended to all that Liz had to say, without interrupting, coiling it all away in the orderly recesses of his mind.

At the conclusion of it he turned his candid, grey eyes full on to her and said, ‘Tell me, Mrs. Artside, are you dissatisfied with the Inspector’s handling of this matter?’

This was such a sharp jab below the belt that it took Liz a little time to get her breath back.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t—I mean to say, I think he’s made the right moves so far. I expect he would have found out about MacMorris’ past soon enough. I wouldn’t have got it myself without outrageous luck.’

‘Then—’

‘All the same, it’s not quite fair to ask me if I’m happy about his handling of the case. He hasn’t really started to handle it yet. And I’ve got a feeling – no more – that he’s going to backpedal on it.’

‘Luck doesn’t give one the impression that he’s over-flowing with mental alertness or bursting with vigour,’ agreed the Chief Constable. ‘All the same, in my view, he’s a good policeman of a rather old-fashioned sort. And I don’t think it’s fair to prejudge him.’

‘All right,’ said Liz. ‘Just so long as he hasn’t prejudged the case. MacMorris was a cracksman. MacMorris had cordite. MacMorris blew himself up. End of cracksman. End of case.’

The Chief Constable opened his eyes slightly.

‘Did Luck tell you that? About MacMorris being a cracksman?’

Liz hesitated.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t he supposed to?’

‘So long as he had every confidence in your discretion,’ said the Chief Constable with a smile that travelled almost all the way up to his eyes. ‘I don’t suppose any great harm was done.’

‘It’s like trying to swim through a treacle pudding,’ said Liz.

‘Never tried it,’ said Cleeve. ‘Sounds a bit dispiriting.’

‘It is dispiriting. But there’s a broad distinction between being dispirited and being choked off. I refuse to be choked off.’

‘That’s the stuff.’

‘And don’t you dare blow your silly moustache at me and give me your “poor little woman” routine. Because I warn you, I’m serious.’

‘You’re not only serious,’ said Cleeve, blinking at her. ‘You’re terrifying.’

‘Then instead of trying to gammon me, just explain what it’s all about?’

‘Don’t want to appear obstructive. But what’s all
what
about?’

‘You know as well as I do. Why is it that everyone has made up their mind to sit heavily on this case? Why is it being played down? Even the papers are calling it an accident now. Not that anyone has troubled to explain just why a retired Major (alleged) should have enough cordite in his attic to blow his house into two bits. Maybe a public brought up on Giles and Low thinks that
all
retired Majors keep explosives round the house. And there’s nothing about the anonymous letter, I observe.’

‘The anonymous letter,’ said Cleeve. ‘Yes, it’s a real puzzler, that. I honestly think, if the truth were known, MacMorris wrote it himself.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s one of the things that’s giving Tom Pearce and his boys a headache.’

‘All right. I accept that the police may want to keep quiet about the letter, particularly if they think it was a fake. But why are they conditioning themselves into thinking that the whole thing was an accident? And don’t tell me they aren’t. I had an hour of Luck this morning and I could hear the needle going round in the grooves. MacMorris was a burglar. MacMorris blew himself up. Good riddance.’

‘Hmph.’

‘Do you think it was an accident?’

The Chairman turned the light of his countenance fully upon Liz. His washed blue eyes were the colour of the clear evening sky after a blatter of rain; and just about as communicative.

‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I honestly don’t know. Twenty-four hours ago I should have said, “Yes.” Now I’m not sure.’

‘Because of what I unearthed in London?’

‘Partly because of that.’

‘Was it you who told Luck he could tell me about MacMorris’ past?’

‘Yes,’ said Cleeve, without even blinking.

‘Because you guessed I’d scuttle round and find something out for you quick.’

‘Yes.’

‘I did, too,’ said Liz.

‘And now I’m going to say something to you, in return,’ said Cleeve. ‘Something you’ll have to keep quite quiet about.
If
we can succeed in persuading everyone that the MacMorris case is closed,
if
people can be induced to stop thinking about it, and think, instead, about the Harvest Festival Anthem, and Guy Fawkes and their Christmas shopping, then, and only then, we may be able to do something useful.’

‘I don’t quite see—’

‘My dear Liz,’ said Cleeve gently, ‘You know this part of the world. They’re quite level-headed folk. But just what sort of crisis do you think we should provoke if they realised that there was someone living among them who was capable of blowing up any one of them, in their beds, to-night? Particularly as the police can’t offer much protection until they discover just
who
is gunning for
whom
and
why.’

When Tim got home that night he cracked his shins on the dining-room table, which had been moved out into the hall, and, when he had edged past it and into the dining-room he found the chairs arranged in two rows and the portable harmonium blocking the sideboard, and it came to his mind that Monday was treble practice night.

This reminded him of something else, and he went to look for his mother, who was in the kitchen, with Anna, icing cakes.

‘Have we found another tenor yet?’ he asked.

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Liz. ‘I think we may have. Thanks to Luck.’

‘Luck?’

‘Not luck, Luck. When I saw him this morning he happened to mention that Sergeant Gattie was the absolute mainstay of their police choral society. Gattie was very modest about it when I saw him, but I really think he might do it for us.’

‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ said Tim. ‘Singing that tenor solo was not one of the things I was looking forward to most. Come to think of it, this will be the second time Gattie has saved my bacon.’ When Liz looked inquiring, he added, ‘In Jerusalem, in 1947, he shot a gentleman in a bowler hat who was on the point of tossing a hand grenade into the back of a car I was driving. What are we doing about supper?’

I’ll think about that when I’ve got rid of the trebles. Why don’t you go down to the church and give a hand with the flowers?’

‘Because I don’t know the first thing about flowers.’

‘I don’t imagine Sue is all that expert, either. Couldn’t you hump round the heavy lectern vases whilst she does the actual arranging?’

‘Why, yes. I could do that,’ said Tim. ‘Yes. I could certainly do that.’

‘I thought you might be able to,’ said his mother.

There were lights in the church, and voices. As Tim opened the door it was plain that he interrupted an argument.

Lucy Mallory stood by the lectern, clasping an armful of early-autumn foliage. Sue was in the pulpit. She had a bunch of white asters in one hand, some straggly gypsophila in the other and a flush on her cheek.

‘Why, hullo, Mr. Artside,’ said Lucy.

‘Hullo, Tim,’ said Sue. ‘If you dare do it, I shall probably never speak to you again.’

Tim looked slightly taken aback but discovered that this broadside was aimed at Lucy.

‘What nonsense,’ said Lucy. ‘Anyway I’m sure Mr. Artside hasn’t come here to listen to us girls quarrelling.’

‘I’m not quarrelling,’ said Sue, giving the asters an angry shake. ‘And as he’s involved he’s got a perfect right to know about it.’

‘How’s he involved?’

‘He’s in the choir, isn’t he? Until we find out who did it we’re all involved.’ She shook the asters again, and Tim, who had been conscious that it reminded him of something, realised that it was exactly the way old Canon Bessemer used to shake his finger when he spoke of sin.

Tell me all,’ he said.

‘Hand me those two vases then,’ said Sue. ‘I suppose you came here to help, not just to gossip. It’s about Maurice.’

‘Maurice Hedges?’

‘Who else?’

‘What’s he been up to now?’

Maurice was the eldest of the Hedges children, a boy with a long, serious, Hanoverian face and the gravity that went with the headship of a large family.

‘That’s just what we don’t know,’ said Sue, ‘but Lucy caught him in Mrs. Simpson’s shop trying to change a ten shilling note.’

‘It doesn’t sound a desperate crime,’ said Tim.

‘That’s not all of it,’ said Sue. ‘You’d better tell him, Lucy. If you’re determined to split to the Vicar it’ll have to come out, anyway.’

‘When Maurice saw me come into the shop,’ said Lucy, ‘he bolted. It looked so fishy I asked Mrs. Simpson what it was all about. She was a bit surprised too. Apparently he came in, put down this ten shilling note, and asked for some sweets. None of those kids ever have any money of their own. If his mother had sent him down with a big order of groceries she might have given him a ten shilling note, you see. But if it was just sweet money it would have been a bob, or half-a-crown at the most.’

‘Still doesn’t seem enough to hang him on,’ said Tim. ‘Did Maurice actually succeed in changing the note? I didn’t quite get that bit.’

‘No. As soon as he saw me he picked the note up and bolted. But I saw, and I asked Mrs. Simpson and she’d noticed too – it wasn’t a new ten shilling note. It was one of those purpley ones – they stopped making them before the war, when they brought in the brown sort. You remember them?’’I remember them all right,’ said Tim. ‘You don’t see many of them about now, but as far as I know they’re still legal tender.’