You cannot ask questions about a vague tramp who, you think, may have stolen a coat. But to look for a china-mender is quite a legitimate search, involving no surprise or suspicion in the minds of the questioned. It took Erica only ninety minutes to come face-to-face with Harrogate. It would have taken her less, but the tent was a long way from any made road; first up a cart track through woods, a track impassable even for the versatile Tinny, then across an open piece of gorse land with far views of the Medway valley, and into a second wood to a clearing at its further edge, where a stream ran down to a dark pool.
Erica wished that the tent had not been in a wood. From her earliest childhood she had been fearless by nature (the kind of child of whom older people say out hunting: not a nerve in her body), but there was no denying that she didn’t like woods. She liked to see a long way away. And though the stream ran bright and clear and merry in the sunlight, the pool in the hollow was still and deep and forbidding. One of those sudden, secret cups of black water more common in Sussex than in Kent.
As she came across the clearing carrying the little dancer in her hand, a dog rushed out at her, shattering the quiet with hysterical protest. And at the noise a woman came to the tent door and stood there watching Erica as she came. She was a very tall woman, broad-shouldered and straight, and Erica had the mad feeling that this long approach to her over an open floor should end in a curtsey.
“Good afternoon,” she called, cheerfully, above the clamor of the dog. But the woman waited without moving. “I have a piece of china—can’t you make that dog be quiet?” She was face-to-face with her now, only the noise of the dog between them.
The woman lifted a foot to the animal’s ribs, and the high yelling died into silence. The murmur of the stream came back.
Erica showed the broken porcelain figure.
“Harry!” called the woman, her black inquisitive eyes not leaving Erica. And Harry came to the tent door: a small weaselish man with bloodshot eyes, and evidently in the worst of tempers. “A job for you.”
“I’m not working,” said Harry, and spat.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I heard you were very good at mending things.”
The woman took the figure and broken piece from Erica’s hands. “He’s working, all right,” she said.
Harry spat again, and took the pieces. “Have you the money to pay?” he asked, angrily.
“How much will it be?”
“Two shillings.”
“Two and six,” said the woman.
“Oh, yes, I have that much.”
He went back into the tent, and the woman stood in the way so that Erica could neither follow nor see. Unconsciously she had, in imagining this moment, always placed herself inside the tent—with the coat folded up in the corner. Now she was not even to be allowed to see inside.
“He won’t be long,” Queenie said. “By the time you’ve cut a whistle from the ash tree, it’ll be ready.”
Erica’s small sober face broke into one of its rare smiles. “You thought I couldn’t do that, didn’t you?” For the woman’s phrase had been a flick in the face of a supposed town dweller.
She cut the wood with her pocketknife, shaped it, nicked it, and damped it in the stream, hoping that a preoccupation might disarm Queenie and her partner. She even hoped that the last processes of whistle manufacture might be made in friendly company with the mending of china. But the moment she moved back to the tent, Queenie came from her desultory stick gathering in the wood to stand guard. And Erica found her whistle finished and the mended figure in her hands, without being one whit wiser or richer than she was when she left the car in the road. She could have cried.
She produced her small purse (Erica hated a bag) and paid her half crown, and the sight of the folded notes in the little back partition all waiting to do their work of rescue, drove her to desperation. Without any warning and without knowing she was going to say it, she asked the man:
“What did you do with the coat you took at Dymchurch?”
There was a moment of complete stillness, and Erica rushed on:
“I don’t want to do anything about it. Prosecuting, or anything like that, I mean. But I do want that coat awfully bad. I’ll buy it back from you if you still have it. Or if you’ve pawned it—”
“You’re a nice one!” the man burst out. “Coming here to have a job of work done and then accusing a man of battle and blue murder. You be out of here before I lose my temper good and proper and crack you one on the side of the jaw. Impudent little—with your loose tongue. I’ve a good mind to twist it out of your bloody head, and what’s more I—”
The woman pushed him aside and stood over Erica, tall and intimidating.
“What makes you think my man took a coat?”
“The coat he had when Jake, the lorry driver, gave him a lift a week last Tuesday was taken from a car at Dymchurch. We know that.” She hoped the “we” sounded well. And she hoped she didn’t sound as doubtful as she felt. They were both very innocent and indignant-looking. “But it isn’t a matter of making a case. We only want the coat back. I’ll give you a pound for it,” she added, as they were about to break in on her again.
She saw their eyes change. And in spite of her predicament a great relief flooded her. The man was the man. They knew what coat she was talking about.
“And if you’ve pawned it, I’ll give you ten shillings to tell me where.”
“What do you get out of this?” the woman said. “What do you want with a man’s coat?”
“I didn’t say anything about it being a man’s.” Triumph ran through her like an electric shock.
“Oh, never mind!” Queenie dismissed with rough impatience any further pretense. “What is it to you?”
If she mentioned murder they would both panic, and deny with their last breath any knowledge of the coat. She knew well, thanks to her father’s monologues, the petty offender’s horror of major crime. They would go to almost any lengths to avoid being mixed up, even remotely, in a capital charge.
“It’s to get Hart out of trouble,” she said. “He shouldn’t have left the car unattended. The owner is coming back tomorrow, and if the coat isn’t found by then Hart will lose his job.”
“Who’s Art?” asked the woman. “Your brother?”
“No. Our chauffeur.”
“Chauffeur!” Harry gave a high skirl of laughter that had little amusement in it. “That’s a good one. I suppose you have two Rolls-Royces and five Bentleys.” His little red eyes ran over her worn and outgrown clothes.
“No. Just a Lanchester and my old Morris.” As their disbelief penetrated: “My name is Erica Burgoyne. My father is Chief Constable.”
“Ye’? My name is John D. Rockefeller, and my father was the Duke of Wellington.”
Erica whipped up her short tweed skirt, gripped the elastic waistband of the gym knickers she wore summer and winter, and pushed the inner side of it towards him on an extended thumb.
“Can you read?” she said.
“Erica M. Burgoyne” read the astonished man, in red on a Cash’s label.
“It’s a great mistake to be too skeptical,” she said, letting the elastic snap back into place.
“So you’re doing it for a chauffeur, eh?” Harry leered at her, trying to get back his lost ground. “You’re very concerned about a chauffeur, aren’t you?”
“I’m desperately in love with him,” Erica said, in the tone in which one says: “And a box of matches, please.” At school theatricals Erica had always had charge of the curtains.
But it passed. Their minds were too full of speculation to be concerned with emotion.
“How much?” said the woman.
“For the coat?”
“No. For telling you where to find it.”
“I told you, I’ll give you ten shillings.”
“Not enough.”
“But how do I know you’ll tell me the truth?”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
&nb
sp; “All right, I’ll give you a pound. I shall still have to buy it from the pawnshop, you know.”
“It isn’t in a pawnshop,” the man said. “I sold it to a stone-breaker.”
“W-h-a-t!” cried Erica in a despairing wail. “Do I have to begin looking for someone else?”
“Oh, no need to look, no need at all. You hand over the cash, and I’ll tell you where to find the bloke.”
Erica took out a pound note and showed it to him. “Well?”
“He’s working at the Five Wents crossroad, Paddock Wood way. And if he ain’t there, he lives in a cottage in Capel. Near the church.”
Erica held out the note. But the woman had seen the contents of the purse.
“Wait, Harry! She’ll pay more.” She moved between Erica and the path through the wood.
“I won’t give you a penny more,” Erica said incisively. Indignation overcame her awareness of the black pool, the silence, and her dislike of woods. “That’s cheating.”
The woman grabbed at her purse; but Erica had played lacrosse for her school only last winter. Queenie’s eager hand, to her great astonishment, met not the purse but Erica’s other arm, and came up and hit her own face with surprising violence. And Erica was around her stately bulk and running across the clearing, as she had swerved and run, half-bored, half-pleased, through many winter afternoons.
She heard them come after her, and wondered what they would do to her if they caught up with her. She wasn’t afraid of the woman, but the man was small and light, and for all his drinking might be speedy. And he knew the path. In the shade of the trees, after the bright sunlight, she could hardly see a path at all. She wished she had said that someone was waiting for her in the car. It would have been—
Her foot caught in a root, and she rolled over and over.
She heard him coming thudding down the soft path, and as she sat up his face appeared, as if it were swimming towards her, above the undergrowth. In a few seconds he would be on her. She had fallen heavily because she was still clutching something in either hand. She looked to see what she was holding. In one hand was the china figure; in the other her purse and—the whistle.
The whistle! She put it to her mouth and blew a sort of tattoo. Long and short, like a code. A signal.
At the sound the man stopped, only a few yards from her, doubtfully.
“Hart!” she called with all the force of her very good lungs. “Hart!” And whistled again.
“All right,” said the man, “all right! You can have your—Hart. Someday I’ll tell your pa what’s going on around his house. And I’ll bet you pay me more than a few quid then, me lady!”
“Good-bye,” said Erica. “Thank your wife from me for the whistle.”
Chapter 14
And of course, what you want, Inspector, is a rest. A little relaxation.” The Chief Constable heaved himself into his raincoat. “Overworking yourself disgracefully. That never got a man anywhere. Except into his grave. Here it is Friday, and I dare swear you haven’t had a night’s sleep or a proper meal this week. Ridiculous! Mustn’t take the thing to heart like that. Criminals have escaped before and will escape again.”
“Not from me.”
“Overdue, then. That’s all I can say. Very overdue. Everyone makes mistakes. Who was to think a door in a bedroom was a fire escape, anyhow?”
“I should have looked in the cupboards.”
“Oh, my dear good sir—!”
“The first one opened towards me, so that I could see inside. And by the time he came to the second he had lulled me into—”
“I told you you were losing your sense of proportion! If you don’t get away for a little, you’ll be seeing cupboards everywhere. You’ll be what your Sergeant Williams calls ’falling down on the job.’ You are coming back to dinner with me. You needn’t ’but’ me! It’s only twenty miles.”
“But meanwhile something may—”
“We have a telephone. Erica said I was to bring you. Said something about ordering ices specially. You fond of ices? Anyhow, she said she had something to show you.”
“Puppies?” Grant smiled.
“Don’t know. Probably. Never a moment in the year, it seems to me, when there isn’t a litter of sort at Steynes. Here is your excellent substitute. Good evening, Sergeant.”
“Good evening, sir,” said Williams, rosily pink from his high tea.
“I’m taking Inspector Grant home to dinner with me.”
“Very glad, sir. It’ll do the Inspector good to eat a proper meal.”
“That’s my telephone number, in case you want him.”
Grant’s smile broadened as he watched the spirit that won the empire in full blast. He was very tired. The week had been a long purgatory. The thought of sitting down to a meal in a quiet room among leisured people was like regaining some happier sphere of existence that he had known a long time ago and half-forgotten about. Automatically he put together the papers on the desk.
“To quote one of Sergeant Williams’s favorite sayings: ’As a detective I’m a grand farmer.’ Thank you, I’d like to come to dinner. Kind of Miss Erica to think of me.” He reached for his hat.
“Thinks a lot of you, Erica. Not impressionable as a rule. But you are the big chief, it seems.”
“I have a picturesque rival, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, yes. Olympia. I remember. I don’t know much about bringing up children, you know, Grant,” he said as they went out to the car. “Erica’s my only one. Her mother died when she was born, and I made her a sort of companion instead of letting her grow up in the nursery. Her old nurse and I were always having words about it. Great stickler for the comme il faut and all that, Nannie. Then she went to school. Must find your own level, that’s all education is: learning to deal with people. She didn’t like it, but she stuck it. A good plucked ’un, she is.”
“I think she is a charming child,” Grant said heartily, answering the “justifying” tone and the Colonel’s worried look.
“That’s just it, Grant, that’s just it! She isn’t a child any longer. She should be coming out. Going to dances. Staying with her aunts in town and meeting people. But she doesn’t want to. Just stays at home and runs wild. Doesn’t care for clothes or pretties or any of the things she should care about at her age. She’s seventeen, you know. It worries me. She’s taken to gadding about all over the place in that little car of hers. I don’t know where she has been half the time. Not that she doesn’t tell me if I ask. Always a truthful child. But it worries me.”
“I don’t think it need, sir. She’ll make her own happiness. You’ll see. It’s rare to meet anyone of that age who has so sure a knowledge of what she wants.”
“Hrrmp!” said the Colonel. “And gets it! George will be there for dinner,” he added. “George Meir. Cousin of my wife’s. Perhaps you know him? Nerve specialist.”
“I know him well by reputation, but I’ve never met him.”
“That’s Erica’s doing. Nice fellow, George, but a bit of a bore. Don’t understand what he’s talking about half the time. Reactions, and things. But Erica seems to understand the lingo. Good shot, though: George. Nice fellow.
Sir George was a nice fellow. Grant liked him at sight, and noticing his narrow cheekbones, felt that some other attribute in him must weigh very strongly with Erica to overcome his physical characteristics. He was certainly a pleasant person, with neither the slight flamboyance nor the condescension so common in Wimpole Street. That he could commiserate with Grant on his nonsuccess without making Grant want to hit him, was a test of his worth. Grant, in fact, turned to him in his sore state, as to someone who would understand. This was a man to whom human failure must be a very ordinary affair.
Colonel Burgoyne had forbidden mention of the Clay affair during dinner, but he might as well have bidden the tides cease. They were all talking Tisdall, Colonel included, before the fish had disappeared. All but Erica, who sat at the end of the table in her demure school-supper white dress, liste
ning quietly. She had powdered her nose, but looked no more grown up than she did by day.
“We never picked up his trail at all,” Grant said in answer to a question of Meir. “He just disappeared from the moment he left the hotel. Oh, there were dozens of accounts of men like him, of course. But they all led to nothing. We don’t know a thing more than we did last Monday. He might have been sleeping out, the first three nights. But you know what last night was like. Torrents. Not even an animal could have stayed out in it. He must have found shelter somewhere, if he’s still alive. It wasn’t local, the storm. There are floods from here to the Tyne. And yet another whole day has gone past and not a hint of him.”
“No chance of his escaping by sea?”
“Not likely. Curiously enough, not one criminal in a thousand escapes that way.”
“So much for our island race!” laughed Meir. “The sea’s the last thing they think of. You know, Inspector, I don’t know if you know it, but you have made the man very vivid in the half hour we’ve been talking. And there’s something else you’ve made clear, I think; something you probably are not aware of yourself.”
“What is that?”
“You were surprised in your heart of hearts that he had done it. Perhaps even sorry. You hadn’t believed it.”
“Yes, I think that’s true. You’d have been sorry yourself, Sir George,” Grant grinned. “He’s very plausible. And he stuck to truth as far as it served him. As I told you, we’ve checked his statement from beginning to end. It’s true as far as it can be checked. But that thin story about stealing the car! And losing his coat—the all-important coat!”
“Curiously enough, I don’t think the stealing episode is as incredible as it sounds. His main thought for the past few weeks had been escape. Escape from the disgrace of his spent fortune, from the crowd (whom he seems to have begun to value at their proper worth), from the necessity of earning his living again (tramping was just as mad a notion, in the case of a boy with influential connections, as stealing a car: the escape motif again), and latterly escape from the equivocal situation at the cottage. He must have looked forward, you know, with subconscious dread to the leave-taking that was due in a day or two. He was in a highly emotional condition due to his self-disgust and self-questioning (at bottom what he wanted to escape from was himself). At a moment of low vitality (six in the morning) he is presented with the means of physical escape. A deserted countryside and abandoned car. He is possessed for the time being. When he recovers he is horrified, just as he says. He turns the car without having to think twice, and comes back at the best speed he can make. To his dying day he’ll never understand what made him steal the car.”