“To hell with dead insurance agents, fancy clocks and screaming girls! Let’s hear about you, Colin. I thought you’d finished with this part of the world. And here you are wandering about the back streets of Crowdean. No scope for a marine biologist at Crowdean, I can assure you.”
“Don’t you sneer at marine biology, Dick. It’s a very useful subject. The mere mention of it so bores people and they’re so afraid you’re going to talk about it, that you never have to explain yourself further.”
“No chance of giving yourself away, eh?”
“You forget,” I said coldly, “that I am a marine biologist. I took a degree in it at Cambridge. Not a very good degree, but a degree. It’s a very interesting subject, and one day I’m going back to it.”
“I know what you’ve been working on, of course,” said Hardcastle. “And congratulations to you. Larkin’s trial comes on next month, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Amazing the way he managed to carry on passing stuff out for so long. You’d think somebody would have suspected.”
“They didn’t, you know. When you’ve got it into your head that a fellow is a thoroughly good chap, it doesn’t occur to you that he mightn’t be.”
“He must have been clever,” Dick commented.
I shook my head.
“No, I don’t think he was, really. I think he just did as he was told. He had access to very important documents. He walked out with them, they were photographed and returned to him, and they were back again where they belonged the same day. Good organization there. He made a habit of lunching at different places every day. We think that he hung up his overcoat where there was always an overcoat exactly like it—though the man who wore the other overcoat wasn’t always the same man. The overcoats were switched, but the man who switched them never spoke to Larkin, and Larkin never spoke to him. We’d like to know a good deal more about the mechanics of it. It was all very well-planned with perfect timing. Somebody had brains.”
“And that’s why you’re still hanging round the Naval Station at Portlebury?”
“Yes, we know the Naval end of it and we know the London end. We know just when and where Larkin got his pay and how. But there’s a gap. In between the two there’s a very pretty little bit of organization. That’s the part we’d like to know more about, because that’s the part where the brains are. Somewhere there’s a very good headquarters, with excellent planning, which leaves a trail that is confused not once but probably seven or eight times.”
“What did Larkin do it for?” asked Hardcastle, curiously. “Political idealist? Boosting his ego? Or plain money?”
“He was no idealist,” I said. “Just money, I’d say.”
“Couldn’t you have got on to him sooner that way? He spent the money, didn’t he? He didn’t salt it away.”
“Oh, no, he splashed it about all right. Actually, we got on to him a little sooner than we’re admitting.”
Hardcastle nodded his head understandingly.
“I see. You tumbled and then you used him for a bit. Is that it?”
“More or less. He had passed out some quite valuable information before we got on to him, so we let him pass out more information, also apparently valuable. In the Service I belong to, we have to resign ourselves to looking fools now and again.”
“I don’t think I’d care for your job, Colin,” said Hardcastle thoughtfully.
“It’s not the exciting job that people think it is,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it’s usually remarkably tedious. But there’s something beyond that. Nowadays one gets to feeling that nothing really is secret. We know Their secrets and They know our secrets. Our agents are often Their agents, too, and Their agents are very often our agents. And in the end who is double-crossing who becomes a kind of nightmare! Sometimes I think that everybody knows everybody else’s secrets and that they enter into a kind of conspiracy to pretend that they don’t.”
“I see what you mean,” Dick said thoughtfully.
Then he looked at me curiously.
“I can see why you should still be hanging around Portlebury. But Crowdean’s a good ten miles from Portlebury.”
“What I’m really after,” I said, “are Crescents.”
“Crescents?” Hardcastle looked puzzled.
“Yes. Or alternatively, moons. New moons, rising moons and so on. I started my quest in Portlebury itself. There’s a pub there called The Crescent Moon. I wasted a long time over that. It sounded ideal. Then there’s The Moon and Stars. The Rising Moon, The Jolly Sickle, The Cross and the Crescent—that was in a little place called Seamede. Nothing doing. Then I abandoned moons and started on Crescents. Several Crescents in Portlebury. Lansbury Crescent, Aldridge Crescent, Livermead Crescent, Victoria Crescent.”
I caught sight of Dick’s bewildered face and began to laugh.
“Don’t look so much at sea, Dick. I had something tangible to start me off.”
I took out my wallet, extracted a sheet of paper and passed it over to him. It was a single sheet of hotel writing paper on which a rough sketch had been drawn.
“A chap called Hanbury had this in his wallet. Hanbury did a lot of work in the Larkin case. He was good—very good. He was run over by a hit and run car in London. Nobody got its number. I don’t know what this means, but it’s something that Hanbury jotted down, or copied, because he thought it was important. Some idea that he had? Or something that he’d seen or heard? Something to do with a moon or crescent, the number 61 and the initial M. I took over after his death. I don’t know what I’m looking for yet, but I’m pretty sure there’s something to find. I don’t know what 61 means. I don’t know what M means. I’ve been working in a radius from Portlebury outwards. Three weeks of unremitting and unrewarding toil. Crowdean is on my route. That’s all there is to it. Frankly, Dick, I didn’t expect very much of Crowdean. There’s only one Crescent here. That’s Wilbraham Crescent. I was going to have a walk along Wilbraham Crescent and see what I thought of Number 61 before asking you if you’d got any dope that could help me. That’s what I was doing this afternoon—but I couldn’t find Number 61.”
“As I told you, 61 is occupied by a local builder.”
“And that’s not what I’m after. Have they got a foreign help of any kind?”
“Could be. A good many people do nowadays. If so, she’ll be registered. I’ll look it up for you by tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Dick.”
“I’ll be making routine inquiries tomorrow at the two houses on either side of 19. Whether they saw anyone come to the house, etcetera. I might include the houses directly behind 19, the ones whose gardens adjoin it. I rather think that 61 is almost directly behind 19. I could take you along with me if you liked.”
I closed with the offer greedily.
“I’ll be your Sergeant Lamb and take shorthand notes.”
We agreed that I should come to the police station at nine thirty the following morning.
II
I arrived the next morning promptly at the agreed hour and found my friend literally fuming with rage.
When he had dismissed an unhappy subordinate, I inquired delicately what had happened.
For a moment Hardcastle seemed unable to speak. Then he spluttered out: “Those damned clocks!”
“The clocks again? What’s happened now?”
“One of them is missing.”
“Missing? Which one?”
“The leather travelling clock. The one with ‘Rosemary’ across the corner.”
I whistled.
“That seems very extraordinary. How did it come about?”
“The damned fools—I’m one of them really, I suppose—” (Dick was a very honest man) “—One’s got to remember to cross every t and dot every i or things go wrong. Well, the clocks were there all right yesterday in the sitting room. I got Miss Pebmarsh to feel them all to see if they felt familiar. She couldn’t help. Then they came to remove the body.”
“Yes???
?
“I went out to the gate to supervise, then I came back to the house, spoke to Miss Pebmarsh who was in the kitchen, and said I must take the clocks away and would give her a receipt for them.”
“I remember. I heard you.”
“Then I told the girl I’d send her home in one of our cars, and I asked you to see her into it.”
“Yes.”
“I gave Miss Pebmarsh the receipt though she said it wasn’t necessary since the clocks weren’t hers. Then I joined you. I told Edwards I wanted the clocks in the sitting room packed up carefully and brought here. All of them except the cuckoo clock and, of course, the grandfather. And that’s where I went wrong. I should have said, quite definitely, four clocks. Edwards says he went in at once and did as I told him. He insists there were only three clocks other than the two fixtures.”
“That doesn’t give much time,” I said. “It means—”
“The Pebmarsh woman could have done it. She could have picked up the clock after I left the room and gone straight to the kitchen with it.”
“True enough. But why?”
“We’ve got a lot to learn. Is there anybody else? Could the girl have done it?”
I reflected. “I don’t think so. I—” I stopped, remembering something.
“So she did,” said Hardcastle. “Go on. When was it?”
“We were just going out to the police car,” I said unhappily. “She’d left her gloves behind. I said, ‘I’ll get them for you’ and she said, ‘Oh, I know just where I must have dropped them. I don’t mind going into that room now that the body’s gone’ and she ran back into the house. But she was only gone a minute—”
“Did she have her gloves on, or in her hand when she rejoined you?”
I hesitated. “Yes—yes, I think she did.”
“Obviously she didn’t,” said Hardcastle, “or you wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“She probably stuffed them in her bag.”
“The trouble is,” said Hardcastle in an accusing manner, “you’ve fallen for that girl.”
“Don’t be idiotic,” I defended myself vigorously. “I saw her for the first time yesterday afternoon, and it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a romantic introduction.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Hardcastle. “It isn’t every day that young men have girls falling into their arms screaming for help in the approved Victorian fashion. Makes a man feel a hero and a gallant protector. Only you’ve got to stop protecting her. That’s all. So far as you know, that girl may be up to the neck in this murder business.”
“Are you saying that this slip of a girl stuck a knife into a man, hid it somewhere so carefully that none of your sleuths could find it, then deliberately rushed out of the house and did a screaming act all over me?”
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve seen in my time,” said Hardcastle darkly.
“Don’t you realize,” I demanded, indignantly, “that my life has been full of beautiful spies of every nationality? All of them with vital statistics that would make an American private eye forget all about the shot of rye in his collar drawer. I’m immune to all female allurements.”
“Everybody meets his Waterloo in the end,” said Hardcastle. “It all depends on the type. Sheila Webb seems to be your type.”
“Anyway, I can’t see why you’re so set on fastening it on her.”
Hardcastle sighed.
“I’m not fastening it on her—but I’ve got to start somewhere. The body was found in Pebmarsh’s house. That involves her. The body was found by the Webb girl—I don’t need to tell you how often the first person to find a dead body is the same as the person who last saw him alive. Until more facts turn up, those two remain in the picture.”
“When I went into that room at just after three o’clock, the body had been dead at least half an hour, probably longer. How about that?”
“Sheila Webb had her lunch hour from 1:30 to 2:30.”
I looked at him in exasperation.
“What have you found out about Curry?”
Hardcastle said with unexpected bitterness: “Nothing!”
“What do you mean—nothing?”
“Just that he doesn’t exist—there’s no such person.”
“What do the Metropolis Insurance Company say?”
“They’ve nothing to say either, because there’s no such thing. The Metropolis and Provincial Insurance Company doesn’t exist. As far as Mr. Curry from Denvers Street goes, there’s no Mr. Curry, no Denvers Street, Number 7 or any other number.”
“Interesting,” I said. “You mean he just had some bogus cards printed with a bogus name, address and insurance company?”
“Presumably.”
“What is the big idea, do you think?”
Hardcastle shrugged his shoulders.
“At the moment it’s guesswork. Perhaps he collected bogus premiums. Perhaps it was a way of introducing himself into houses and working some confidence trick. He may have been a swindler or a confidence trickster or a picker-up of unconsidered trifles or a private inquiry agent. We just don’t know.”
“But you’ll find out.”
“Oh, yes, we’ll know in the end. We sent up his fingerprints to see if he’s got a record of any kind. If he has it’ll be a big step on the way. If he hasn’t, it’ll be rather more difficult.”
“A private dick,” I said thoughtfully. “I rather like that. It opens up—possibilities.”
“Possibilities are all we’ve got so far.”
“When’s the inquest?”
“Day after tomorrow. Purely formal and an adjournment.”
“What’s the medical evidence?”
“Oh, stabbed with a sharp instrument. Something like a kitchen vegetable knife.”
“That rather lets out Miss Pebmarsh, doesn’t it?” I said thoughtfully. “A blind woman would hardly be able to stab a man. She really is blind, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, she’s blind. We checked up. And she’s exactly what she says she is. She was a teacher of mathematics in a North Country school—lost her sight about sixteen years ago—took up training in Braille, etc., and finally got a post with the Aaronberg Institute here.”
“She could be mental, I suppose?”
“With a fixation on clocks and insurance agents?”
“It really is all too fantastic for words.” I couldn’t help speaking with some enthusiasm. “Like Ariadne Oliver in her worst moments, or the late Garry Gregson at the top of his form—”
“Go on—enjoy yourself. You’re not the wretched D.I. in charge. You haven’t got to satisfy a superintendent or a chief constable and all the rest of it.”
“Oh well! Perhaps we’ll get something useful out of the neighbours.”
“I doubt it,” said Hardcastle bitterly. “If that man was stabbed in the front garden and two masked men carried him into the house—nobody would have looked out of the window or seen anything. This isn’t a village, worse luck. Wilbraham Crescent is a genteel residential road. By one o’clock, daily women who might have seen something have gone home. There’s not even a pram being wheeled along—”
“No elderly invalid who sits all day by the window?”
“That’s what we want—but that’s not what we’ve got.”
“What about numbers 18 and 20?”
“18 is occupied by Mr. Waterhouse, Managing Clerk to Gainsford and Swettenham, Solicitors, and his sister who spends her spare time managing him. All I know about 20 is that the woman who lives there keeps about twenty cats. I don’t like cats—”
I told him that a policeman’s life was a hard one, and we started off.
Seven
Mr. Waterhouse, hovering uncertainly on the steps of 18, Wilbraham Crescent, looked back nervously at his sister.
“You’re quite sure you’ll be all right?” said Mr. Waterhouse.
Miss Waterhouse snorted with some indignation.
“I really don’t know what you mean, James.”
&
nbsp; Mr. Waterhouse looked apologetic. He had to look apologetic so often that it was practically his prevailing cast of countenance.
“Well, I just meant, my dear, considering what happened next door yesterday….”
Mr. Waterhouse was prepared for departure to the solicitors’ office where he worked. He was a neat, grey-haired man with slightly stooping shoulders and a face that was also grey rather than pink, though not in the least unhealthy looking.
Miss Waterhouse was tall, angular, and the kind of woman with no nonsense about her who is extremely intolerant of nonsense in others.
“Is there any reason, James, because someone was murdered in the next door house that I shall be murdered today?”
“Well, Edith,” said Mr. Waterhouse, “it depends so much, does it not, by whom the murder was committed?”
“You think, in fact, that there’s someone going up and down Wilbraham Crescent selecting a victim from every house? Really, James, that is almost blasphemous.”
“Blasphemous, Edith?” said Mr. Waterhouse in lively surprise. Such an aspect of his remark would never have occurred to him.
“Reminiscent of the Passover,” said Miss Waterhouse. “Which, let me remind you, is Holy Writ.”
“That is a little farfetched I think, Edith,” said Mr. Waterhouse.
“I should like to see anyone coming here, trying to murder me,” said Miss Waterhouse with spirit.
Her brother reflected to himself that it did seem highly unlikely. If he himself had been choosing a victim he would not have chosen his sister. If anyone were to attempt such a thing it was far more likely that the attacker would be knocked out by a poker or a lead doorstop and delivered over to the police in a bleeding and humiliated condition.
“I just meant,” he said, the apologetic air deepening, “that there are—well—clearly undesirable characters about.”
“We don’t know very much about what did happen yet,” said Miss Waterhouse. “All sorts of rumours are going about. Mrs. Head had some extraordinary stories this morning.”
“I expect so, I expect so,” said Mr. Waterhouse. He looked at his watch. He had no real desire to hear the stories brought in by their loquacious daily help. His sister never lost time in debunking these lurid flights of fancy, but nevertheless enjoyed them.