The Moving Toyshop (17 page)

“So the poor misguided creature left you money for faking ectoplasm. Go on. You own the shop in Iffley Road and the one in the Banbury Road, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you responsible for changing the stock?”

“Yes. I took the toys down from the Banbury Road to the Iffley Road in my car. It wasn’t very difficult. We put all the groceries into the back of the other shop and left the toys in their place. The blinds were down over both shops, so an outsider wouldn’t notice the change.”

“You know,” Fen said to Cadogan, “there’s something richly comic in the thought of these criminal lunatics lugging toys and groceries about at dead of night. I agree with Rosseter—one can scarcely imagine a more childish scheme.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” said the woman venomously. The police wouldn’t believe your friend here when he talked about his precious toyshop.”

“It didn’t work for long. A toyshop that stays where it is is an unsuspicious object enough, but one that moves… Good heavens! The thing cries out for investigation. By the way, how did you hear about Cadogan and the police?”

“Mr. Rosseter found out. He rang up and told me.”

“I see. Who was responsible for getting the toys back to the other shop afterwards?”

“Whoever got rid of the body.”

“And that was—?”

“I don’t know,” said the woman surprisingly. “They drew lots for it.”

“What?”

“I’ve told you: they drew lots. It was a dangerous job, and no one would volunteer. They drew lots.”

“This goes from comedy to farce,” said Fen drily. ‘Not that there isn’t a grain of sense in it. And who got the fatal card?”

“They weren’t to say. I don’t know. Whoever did it was to take back the toys as well. I left my car, and the keys of both shops. The car was to be left in a certain place—I found it this morning—and the keys returned to me by registered post. Then I went away. I don’t know who stayed behind.”

“What time was this?”

“I suppose I left about half past midnight.”

“Ah,” said Fen. He turned to Cadogan. “And you blundered
in medias res
shortly after one. You must have given the body-snatcher a nasty shock.”

“He gave me one,” Cadogan grumbled.

They stopped talking as the waitress came over to clear away the tea things and give them their bill. When she had departed again:

“And who precisely was involved in this thing?” Fen asked.

“Me and Mr. Rosseter and the two men called Mold and Berlin.”

“What were they like?”

“One of them was—well, undersized; the other was very thin. That one—the one we called Berlin—was a doctor.”

“All right.” Fen tapped the ash from his cigarette into a convenient saucer. “Now let’s hear precisely what happened.”

Miss Winkworth was sullen. “I’m not going to tell any more. You can’t make me.”

“No? In that case, We’ll go along to the police. They”ll make you, all right.”

“I’ve got my rights—”

“A criminal has no rights in any sane society.” Cadogan had never known Fen so harsh before; it was a new and unfamiliar aspect of his character. Or was it merely an expedient pose? “Do you think that after your filthy little conspiracy to murder a deaf, helpless woman anyone is going to trouble himself about your rights? You’ll do better to keep out of the way—and not put them to the test.”

Miss Winkworth put her handkerchief to her pudgy nose and blew. “We didn’t mean to murder her,” she said.

“One of you did.”

“It wasn’t me, I tell you!” The woman raised her voice, so that the proprietor of the
café
stared.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Fen. “Talk more quietly if you don’t want the whole world to know about it.”

“I—I—You won’t let me get into trouble, will you? I didn’t mean any harm. We weren’t going to hurt her.” The voice was a small, poisoned whine. “I—I think it was about a quarter past ten when we finished arranging the shop. Then we all went upstairs. Mr. Rosseter and Mold and me went into one of the back rooms, and the man called Berlin stayed out to meet the old woman. He’d got bandages round his face, so he wouldn’t be recognized again. Mr. Rosseter was in charge of everything—he said he’d tell us what to do and how to do it. We were paying him money to help us.”

In memory, Cadogan was back in that dark, ugly little place; the linoleum-floored passage with the rickety table where he had left his torch, the two bedrooms at the back, the two sitting-rooms at the front; steep, narrow, uncarpeted stairs; the smell of dust and the gritty feel of it on the fingertips; the curtained windows, the cheap sideboard and leather armchairs; the sticky warmth and the faint smell of blood and the blue, puffy face of the body on the floor…

Then the girl brought in the woman and went away again—or so we thought. We heard the man called Berlin talking to the woman for a bit, and then he came back to us. Then Mr. Rosseter said he’d need to talk to the woman, and we must wait. I thought that was funny, because he wasn’t wearing a mask, but I didn’t say anything at the time. Before he went out he told us we’d better separate and wait in different rooms. The man called Mold asked why—he’d been drinking and he was aggressive—but the other one told him to be quiet and do what he was told; he said he’d discussed the whole thing with Mr. Rosseter, and it was essential to the plan. I thought Mr. Rosseter looked a bit surprised at that, but he nodded. Berlin went into the other room at the front, and I stayed where I was, and Mold went into the second bedroom. Then after a while Berlin came in and joined me, and a bit later Mr. Rosseter—”

“Just a moment,” Fen interposed. “Where was Rosseter all this time?”

“He was with the woman. I saw him go in.”

“Was she alive when he came out?”

“Yes. I heard her voice, saying something to him as he closed the door.”

“Did anyone else go in while he was there?”

“No. I had the door open and I could see.”

“And when he left he came straight back to your room?”

“That’s right. He told Berlin and me it was going to be a job to frighten her, and he and Berlin argued for a bit about something, and I said if they didn’t shut the door she’d hear them. So they shut it.”

“Then Sharman must have murdered her,” Cadogan interposed.

“Hold on a moment,” Fen said. ‘What were they arguing about?”

“It was something legal, about witnessing and so on. I didn’t understand it Then about five minutes after, the other man—Mold—came in and said he thought there was someone prowling round the shop, and we’d better keep quiet for a bit, and we did. I wondered if the woman wouldn’t get away in the meantime, but Mr. Rosseter whispered it was all right, because she wasn’t frightened yet and that he’d told her he had some papers to prepare which might take a certain time. Well, we stayed quiet for quite a time, and I remembered towards the end of it hearing one of the town clocks strike a quarter to twelve. Finally, Mr. Rosseter and Berlin began arguing again, and said it was all a false alarm, and Mr. Rosseter gave the man Mold a gun and a legal paper and told him to go and get on with it.”

“Just a minute. you’d all been together in that room from the time Mold came in and told you someone was prowling around?”

“Yes.”

“No one left it for even a moment?”

“No.”

“How long would you say you all waited there?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“All right. Go on.”

“This man Mold seemed to be the one they’d chosen to do the job. He said he’d call us in when we were needed, and then he went away. But after about a minute he came back and said there was no light in the room where the woman was. Someone had taken the bulb out. He thought the woman had gone, and he was groping about looking for a candle he knew was there when he fell over her, lying on the floor. We went back there with a torch and she was dead, all puffy with a string tied round her neck. The man called Berlin said he was a doctor, and bent down to look at her. Mr. Rosseter seemed all yellow and frightened. He said someone from outside must have done it, and we’d better look in the shop downstairs. Just as we were going down, we saw a girl who was hiding there. Mr. Rosseter showed her the body, and said something to her which frightened her, and sent her away. We didn’t like that, but he said we were masked, so she wouldn’t recognize us again, and she’d keep quiet for her own good. Berlin got up from the body and looked at us queerly and said suddenly: ‘No one here did this.’ Mr. Rosseter said: ‘Don’t be a damned fool. Who else could have done it? You’ll all be suspected if it ever comes out.’ Then Mold said: ‘We’ve got to keep it quiet,’ and I agreed. It was then they decided to draw lots about who should get rid of the body.”

Abruptly, the woman stopped. The recital had been, physically, a strain, but Cadogan saw no sign of any moral appreciation of the acts she had been recounting. She talked about murder as she might have talked about the weather—being far too selfish, thick-skinned, and unimaginative to see the implications either of that final, irrevocable act or of her own position.

“We get nearer the heart of things,” said Fen dreamily. “Personnel: Mold (equals our Mr. Sharman), Berlin (the doctor, unidentified), Leeds (this creature here), Ryde (Sally), and West—where does the enigmatical West come into it, I wonder? Did he claim his inheritance? Rosseter said nothing about him. The impression one gets is that there was a great deal of fumbling and failure all round—except in one instance, of course. God knows what nonsense Rosseter told Sharman and the doctor, or what their precious plan was; it’s of no importance now, anyway. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, either, how Rosseter proposed to contrive his murder and frame-up; that went astray, too. The real point is not who
intended
to kill the woman, but who
did.
I confess I shall be interested to discover what the doctor meant when he said no one there could have done it—it links up with Rosseter’s talk about an impossible murder.” He turned again to the woman, who was sniffing at a small yellow bottle of sal volatile; Cadogan noticed that her finger-nails were ringed with dirt. “Would it have been possible for anyone to have been hiding in the flat or the shop before you arrived?”

“No. It was locked, and, anyway, we had a good look round.”

“Could anyone have got through the window of the room Miss Tardy was in?”

“No, it was nailed up. They all were. I haven’t used the flat for a year.”

“Which lets West out,” said Fen “If anyone had come through the shop Sally would have said, and there’s no other way up to the flat except by the staircase from the shop, is there?”

“No.”

“No fire-escape, for instance?”

“No. It’s my belief,” said the woman suddenly, “that that girl did it.”

“As far as we’ve got at present, it’s quite possible,” Fen admitted. “Except,” he added to Cadogan, “that I don’t think she’d have been so ready to tell us things if she had. A bluff like that would have needed colossal nerve, and in any case it wasn’t necessary for her to say anything at all. We shall see.” He glanced at his watch. “Five-twenty—we must go. I want to make sure Sally’s all right, and then go on to the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ to wait for a message from Mr. Hoskins. We shall have to return by devious routes; if that constable’s done his job, half the police of Oxford will be running about looking for us by now.” He stood up.

“Listen,” said the woman urgently. “you’ll keep my name out of it, won’t you? won’t you?”

“Good heavens, no,” said Fen, whose habitual cheerfulness seemed to be restored. “Your evidence is far too important. You never really thought I should, did you?”

“You bastard,” she said. “You bloody bastard.”

“Language,” said Fen benevolently. “Language. don’t try to leave Oxford, by the way; you’ll only be caught. Good afternoon.”

“Listen to me—”

“Good afternoon to you.”

The sun’s rays no longer shone directly into the room at New College; it was cool and pleasant. The Uccello Martyrdom which hung over the fireplace was almost in shadow. First editions were disposed without ostentation on the shelves. The armchairs were deep and comfortable, each attended by an immense brass ashtray, and on the mahogany sideboard decanters and glasses winked. The owner of the room, Mr. Adrian Barnaby, reclined at his ease, holding a glass of madeira, eating iced cake, and listening with distaste to the conversation of the other under­graduates who infested his room. These Restoration tea-and-madeira parties, he reflected, would be all very well if they did not involve people coming in only imperfectly washed and dressed after their exertions on the river; and now he came to examine the matter, there were a number of people who, he was sure, he had not invited; and for the matter of that, never even seen before. A faint movement of indignation stirred within him. His eyes lighting on a hairy youth who stood nearby, wolfing buttered scones, he leaned forward with the air of one about to impart a confidence and said:

“Who are you?”

“Oh, that’s all right, you know,” said the youth. “I came with Rabbit, you know. He said you wouldn’t mind.”