Clutch of Constables

Chapter 3 – Tollardwark

“At that time,” Alleyn said, “I was on my way to Chicago and from there to San Francisco. We were setting up a joint plan of action with U.S.A. to cope with an international blow-up in the art-forgery world. We were pretty certain, though not positive, that the Jampot was well in the phoney picture trade and that the same group was combining it with a two-way drug racket. My wife’s letters to me from her river cruise missed me in New York and were forwarded to Chicago and thence to San Francisco.

“On reading them I put through a call to the Yard.”

-1-

-2-

They had berthed on the outskirts of the little market-town and after dinner the passengers explored it. Troy sensed frontal attacks from Miss Rickerby-Carrick and possibly Caley Bard so, having a plan of her own, she slipped away early. There was an office on the wharf with a telephone booth at the disposal of the passengers. As it was open and nobody seemed to be about, she went straight in.

There was one thing about that number, Troy thought, you did get through quickly. In seconds she was saying: “Is Inspector Fox in the office? Could I speak to him? It’s Mrs Roderick Alleyn,” and almost immediately: “Br’er Fox? Troy Alleyn. Listen. I expect you all know: but in case you don’t:—It’s about the Soho thing in this morning’s paper. The man was to have been a passenger in the—” She got it out as tidily and succinctly as she could, but she had only given the briefest outline when he cut in.

“Now, that’s very kind of.you, Mrs Alleyn,” the familiar paddy voice said. “That’s very interesting. I happen to be working on that job. And you’re speaking from Tollardwark? And you’ve got the vacant cabin? And you’re talking from a phone box? From where?… I see… Yes.” A pause. “Yes. We heard yesterday from New York and he’s having a very pleasant time.”

“What?” Troy ejaculated. “Who? You mean Rory?”

“That’s right, Mrs Alleyn. Very nice indeed to have heard from you. We’ll let you know, of course, if there’s any change of plan. I think it might be as well if you didn’t say very much at your end,” Mr Fox blandly continued. “I expect I’m being unduly cautious, indeed I’m sure I am, but if you can do so without drawing attention to it, I wonder if you could drop in at our place in Tollardwark in about half an hour or so? It could be, if necessary, to ask if that fur you lost at your exhibition has been found. Very nice to hear from you. My godson well? Good-bye, then.”

Troy hung up abruptly and turned. Through the obscured-glass door panel which had a hole in one corner, she saw a distorted figure move quickly backwards. She came out and found Mr Lazenby standing by the outside entrance.

“You’ve finished your call, Mrs Alleyn?” he jovially asked. “Good-oh. I’ll just make mine then. Bishopscourt at Norminster. I spent the week there and this will let me off my bread-and-butter stint. You don’t know the Bishop, I suppose? Of Norminster? No? Wonderfully hospitable old boy. Gave the dim Aussie parson a memorable time. Car, chauffeur, the lot. Going to explore?”

Yes, Troy said, she thought she would explore. Mr Lazenby replied that he understood from the Bishop that the parish church was most interesting. And he went into the telephone booth.

Troy, strangely perturbed, walked up a narrow, cobbled street into the market square of Tollardwark.

She found it enchanting. It had none of the self-consciousness that settles upon too many carefully preserved places in the Home Counties, although, so the Zodiac brochure said, it had in fact been lovingly rescued from the clumsy botching of Victorian meddlers. But no care, added the brochure, could replace in their niches the delicate heads, hands, leaves and curlicues knocked off by Cromwell’s clean-living wreckers. But the fourteenth-century inn had been wakened from neglect, a monstrous weather-cock removed from the crest of the Eleanor Cross and Lady Godiva’s endowed church of St Crispin-in-the-Fields was in good heart. As if to prove this, it being practice-night for the bell-ringers, cascades of orderly rumpus were shaken out of the belfry as Troy crossed the square.

There were not many people about. She felt some hesitation in asking her way to the police station. She walked round the square and at intervals caught sight of her fellow-passengers. There, down a very dark alley were Mr and Miss Hewson, peering in at an unlit Tudor window in a darkened shop. Mr Pollock was in the act of disappearing round a corner near the church where, moving backwards through a lychgate, was Miss Rickerby-Carrick. It struck Troy that the whole set had an air of commedia dell’arte about them and that the Market Square might be their painted backdrop. She was again plagued by the vague feeling that somewhere, somehow a masquerade of sorts was being acted out and that she was involved in it. “The people of the Zodiac,” she thought, ”all moving in their courses and I with them, but for the life of me I don’t know where we’re going.”

She suspected that Caley Bard had thought it would be pleasant if they explored Tollardwark together and she was not surprised to see him across the square, turning, with a disconsolate air, into the Northumberland Arms. She would have enjoyed his company, other things being equal. She had almost completed her walk round the Market Square and wondered which of the few passers-by she should accost when she came to the last of the entrances into the square and looking down it, she saw the familiar blue lamp.

The door swung-to behind her, shutting out the voices of the bells, and she was in another world smelling of linoleum, disinfectant and uniforms. The Sergeant on duty said at once: “Mrs Alleyn would it be? I thought so. The Superintendent’s expecting you, Mrs Alleyn. I’ll just:—oh, here you are, sir. Mrs Alleyn.”

He was the predictable large, hard-muscled man just beginning to run to overweight, with extremely bright eyes and a sort of occupational joviality about him.

He shook Troy warmly by the hand. “Tillottson,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Mrs Alleyn,” and took her into his office.

“Very pleased,” said Superintendent Tillottson, “to meet Roderick Alleyn’s good lady. His textbook’s known as the Scourge of the Service in these parts and I wouldn’t mind if you passed that on to him.”

He laughed very heartily at this joke, placed the palms of his hands on his desk and said: “Yes. Well now, I’ve been talking to Mr Fox at Head Office, Mrs Alleyn, and he suggested it might be quite an idea if we had a little chat. So, if it’s not putting you to too much trouble—”

He led Troy, very adroitly, through the past eight hours and she was surprised that he should be so particular as to details. Evidently he was aware of this reaction because when she had finished he said he supposed she would like to know what it was all about and proceeded to give her a neat report.

“This character, this K. G. Z. Andropulos, was mixed up in quite a bit of trouble: trouble to the Yard, Mrs Alleyn, before and after the Yard got alongside him. He was, as you may have supposed, of Greek origin and he’s been involved in quite a number of lines: a bit of drug-running here, a bit of receiving there, some interest in the antique lay, a picture-dealing business in Cyprus Street, Soho, above which he lived in the flat where his body was found yesterday evening. He wasn’t what you’d call a key-figure but he became useful to the Yard by turning informer from spite, having fallen out with a much bigger man than himself. A very big man indeed in the international underworld, as people like to call it, a character called Foljambe and known as the Jampot, in whom we are very, very interested.”

“I’ve heard about him,” Troy said. “From Rory.”

“I’ll be bound. Now, it’s a guinea to a gooseberry, to our way of thinking, that this leading character—this Jampot—is behind the business in Cyprus Street and therefore the Department is more than ordinarily concerned to get to the bottom of it and anything that connects with Andropulos, however slightly, has to be followed up.”

“Even to Cabin 7 in the rivercraft Zodiac?”

“That’s right. We’d like to know, d’you see, Mrs Alleyn, just why this chap Andropulos took the freakish notion to book himself in and when he did it. And, very particularly, we’d like to know whether any of the other passengers had any kind of link with him. Now Teddy Fox—”

“Who!” Troy exclaimed.

“Inspector Fox, Mrs Alleyn. He and I were in the uniformed branch together. Edward Walter Fox, he is.”

“I suppose I knew,” Troy mused. “Yes, of course I knew. We always call him Br’er Fox. He’s a great friend.”

“So I understood. Yes. Well, he’s a wee bit concerned about you going with this lot in the Zodiac. He’s wondering what the Chief-Super—your good man, Mrs Alleyn—would make of it. He’s on his way to this conference in Chicago and Ted Fox wonders if he shouldn’t try and talk to him.”

“Oh, no!” Troy ejaculated. “Surely not.”

“Well now, frankly it seems a bit far-fetched to me but there it is. Ted Fox cut you short, in a manner of speaking, when you rang him from the Waterways office down there and he did so on the general principle that you can’t be too careful on the public phone. He’s a careful sort of character himself, as you probably know, and, by gum, he’s thorough.”

“He is, indeed.”

“Yes. That’s so. Yes. Now Ted’s just been called out of London, following a line on the Andropulos business. It may take him across the Channel. In the meantime he’s asked me to keep an eye on your little affair. So what we’d like to do is take a wee look at the passenger list. In the meantime I just wonder about these two incidents you’ve mentioned. Now, what are they? First of all you get the impression that someone, you’re not sure who, got a fright or a shock or a peculiar reaction when you said there were Constables all over the place. And second: you see this bit about Andropulos in the paper, you drop the paper on the seat and go to your cabin. You get the idea it might be pleasanter for all concerned not to spread the information that an intended passenger has been murdered. You go back for the purpose of confiscating the paper and find it’s disappeared. Right? Yes. Now, for the first of these incidents, I just wonder if it wouldn’t be natural for any little gathering of passengers waiting in a quiet lock in peaceful surroundings to get a bit of a jolt when somebody suddenly says there are police personnel all over the place. Swarming, I think you said was the expression you used. And clutch. Swarming with a clutch of Constables. You meaning the artist. They assuming the police.”

“Well—yes. But they didn’t all exclaim at once. They didn’t all say: ‘Where, where, what do you mean, policemen?’ or—things like that. Miss Rickerby-Carrick did and I think Miss Hewson did a bit and I rather fancy Mr Caley Bard said something like: ‘What can you mean?’ But I felt terribly strongly that someone had had a shock. I—Oh,” Troy said impatiently, “how silly that sounds! Pay no attention to it. Really.”

“Shall we take a wee look at the second item, then? The disappearance of the newspaper? Isn’t it possible, Mrs Alleyn, that one of them saw you were put out and when you went to your cabin picked up the paper to see what could have upset you? And found the paragraph? And had the same reaction as you did: don’t put it about in case it upsets people? Or maybe, didn’t notice your reaction but read the paragraph and thought it’d be nice if you didn’t know you’d got a cabin that was to have been given to a murder victim? Or they might all have come to that conclusion? Or, the simplest of all, the staff might just have tidied the paper away?”

“I feel remarkably foolish,” Troy said. “How right you are. I wish I’d shut up about it and not bothered poor Br’er Fox.”

“Oh no,” Tillottson said quickly. “Not at all. No. We’re very glad to have this bit about the booking of Cabin 7. Very glad indeed. We’d very much like to know why Andropulos fancied a waterways cruise. Of course we’d have learnt about it before long but it can’t be too soon for us and we’re much obliged to you.”

“Mr Tillottson, you don’t think, do you, that any of them could have had anything to do with that man? Andropulos? Why should they have?”

Tillottson looked fixedly at the top of his desk. “No,” he said after a pause. “No reason at all. You stay at Toll’ark tonight, don’t you? Yes. Crossdyke tomorrow? And the following day and night at Longminster? Right? And I’ve got the passenger list from you and just to please Mr Fox we’ll let him have it and also do a wee bit of inquiring at our end. The clerical gentleman’s been staying with the Bishop at Norminster, you say? And he’s an Australian? Fine. And the lady with the double name comes from Birmingham? Mr S. H. Caley Bard lives in London, S.W.3 and collects butterflies. And—er—this Mr Pollock’s a Londoner but he came up from Birmingham where he stayed, you said—? Yes, ta. The Osborn. And the Americans were at The Tabard at Stratford. Just a tick, if you don’t mind.”

He went to the door and said: “Sarge. Rickerby-Carrick. Hazel: Miss. Birmingham. Natouche: Doctor. G. F. Liverpool. S. H. Caley Bard, S.W.3. London. Pollock, Saturday and Sunday, Osborn Hotel, Birmingham. Hewson. Americans. Two. Tabard. Stratford. Yes. Check, will you?”

“I mustn’t keep you,” Troy said and stood up.

“If you don’t mind waiting, Mrs Alleyn. Just another tick.”

He consulted a directory and dialled a number. “Bishopscourt?” he said. “Yes. Toll’ark Police Station here. Sorry to trouble you, but we’ve had an Australian passport handed in at our office. Name of Bollinger. I understand an Australian gentleman—oh. Oh, yes? Lazenby? All last week? I see. Not his, then. Very sorry to trouble you. Thank you.”

He hung up, beamed at Troy and asked if she could give him any help as to the place of origin of the remaining passengers. She had heard the Hewsons speak of Apollo, Kansas and of a Hotel Balmoral in the Cromwell Road, and she rather fancied Caley Bard did tutorial cramming work. Mr Stanley P. K. Pollock was a Cockney and owned property in London: where, she had no idea. The Superintendent made notes and the Sergeant came in to say he’d checked his items and they were all O.K. Dr Natouche had been in his present practice in Liverpool for about seven years. He had appeared for the police in a road fatality case last week and had been called in at the site of another one last Sunday. Miss Rickerby-Carrick was a well-known member of a voluntary social workers’ organisation. The other passengers had all been where they had said they had been. The Superintendent said there you were, you see, for what it was worth. As Troy shook hands with him he said there was a police station in the village of Crossdyke, a mile from Crossdyke Lock, and if, before tomorrow night, anything at all out of the way occurred he’d be very glad if she’d drop in at the station and give him a call or, if he was free, he might pop over himself in case she did look in.

“Don’t,” said Mr Tillottson apparently as an afterthought, “if I may make a suggestion, begin thinking everybody’s behaving suspiciously, Mrs Alleyn. It’d be rather easy to do that and it’d spoil your holiday. Going to take a look round Toll’ark? I’m afraid I’ve used up some of your time. Good night, then, and much obliged, I do assure you.”

Troy went out into the street. The church bells had stopped ringing and the town was quiet. So quiet that she quite jumped when some distance away a motor-cycle engine started up explosively. It belched and puttered with a now familiar diminuendo into the distance and into silence.

“But I suppose,” Troy thought, “all these infernal machines sound exactly alike.”

-3-

Evening was now advanced in Tollardwark. The Market Square had filled with shadow and only the top of St Crispin’s tower caught a fugitive glint of day. Footsteps sounded loud and hollow in the darkling streets and the voices of the few people who were abroad underlined rather than diminished the sense of emptiness. Some of the shop-windows had all-night lamps in them but most were unlit and their contents hard to distinguish.

Troy loved to be in a strange town at nightfall. She would have chosen always to arrive, anywhere, at dusk. None of the other passengers was in sight and she supposed they had gone back to the Zodiac. Except Caley Bard, perhaps, who might still be taking out his sight-seeing in The Northumberland Arms, which glowed with classic geniality behind its red-curtained windows. The church windows also glowed: with kaleidoscopic richness.

She crossed the square, went through the lychgate up a short path and entered the west porch. There were the usual notices about parish meetings and restoration funds and the usual collection boxes. When she passed into the church itself she saw that it was beautiful: a soaring place with a feeling of certainty and aliveness not always to be found in churches.

They were saying compline by candlelight to a tiny congregation amongst whom Troy spotted the backs of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s and Mr Lazenby’s heads. As she slipped into a pew at the rear of the nave, a disembodied alto voice admonished its handful of listeners.

“Be sober, be vigilant:” said the lonely voice, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”

She waited until almost the end and then slipped away as unobtrusively as she had come. “If it were all true,” she thought, “and if the devil really was out and about in the streets of Tollardwark! What a thing that would be to be sure!”

She chose to return down a different street from the one she had come up by. It was very narrow, indeed an alleyway rather than a street, and roughly cobbled. She saw a glimmer of The River at the bottom and knew she couldn’t lose her way. At first she passed between old adjoining houses, one or two of them being half-timbered with overhanging upper stories. There was an echo, here, she thought, of her own steps. After a minute or two she stopped to listen. The other footfall stopped too but was it an echo or was someone else abroad in the alley? She looked behind her but it was now quite dark and she could see nobody. So she went on again, walking a little faster, and the echo, if it had been an echo, did not follow her.

Perhaps this was because the houses had thinned out and there were open places on either side as if buildings had been demolished. The alley seemed unconscionably long. The moon rose. Instead of being one of general darkness the picture was now, Troy thought, set out in ink and luminous paint: it glittered with light and swam with shadows and through it the river ran like quicksilver. The downhill slope was steep and Troy walked still faster. She made out the ramshackle shape of a house or shed at the bottom where the alley ended in another lane that stretched along the river-front.

The footfalls began again, some way behind her now but coming nearer and certainly not an echo.

Her way might have been uphill rather than down so senselessly hard-fetched was her heartbeat.

She had reminded herself of Mr Tillottson’s injunction and had resisted an impulse to break into a run when she came to the building at the bottom of the alley. As she did this two persons moved out of the shadow into her path. Troy caught back her breath in a single cry.

“Gee, Mrs Alleyn, is that you?” Miss Hewson said. “Earl, it’s Mrs Alleyn!”

“Why, so it is,” agreed her brother. “So it is. Hallo, there, Mrs Alleyn. Kind of murky down here, isn’t it? I guess the progressive elements in Tollardwark haven’t caught up with street-lighting. Still in the linkman phase.”

“Golly,” Troy said, “you made me jump.”

They broke into an apology. If they had known it was Troy they would have hailed her as she approached. Miss Hewson herself was nervous in the dark and wouldn’t stir without Brother. Miss Hewson, Mr Hewson said, was a crazy hunter after old-time souvenirs and this place looked like it was some kind of trash shop and yard and nothing would do but they must try and peer in at the windows. And, interjected his sister, they had made out a number of delectable objects. The cutest kind of work-box on legs. Heaps of portfolios. And then—it was the darndest thing—their flashlamp had gone dead on them.

“It’s old pictures,” Miss Hewson cried, “that I just can’t keep my hands off, Mrs Alleyn. Prints. Illustrations from Victorian publications. Those cute little girls with kittens and nosegays? Military pieces? Know what I mean?”

“Sis makes screens,” Mr Hewson explained tolerantly. “Real pretty, too. I guess, back home, she’s gotten to be famous for her screens.”

“Listen to you!” his sister exclaimed, “talking about my screens to Mrs Alleyn!” Troy, whose heart had stopped behaving like a water-ram, said she too admired Victorian screens and reminded the Hewsons that they would be able to explore Tollardwark on the return trip.

“I guess Sis ‘ll be heading for this antique joint,” Mr Hewson said, “before we’re tied up. Come on, now, girls, why don’t we go?”

He had taken their arms when the footsteps broke out again, quite near at hand. Mr Hewson swung his ladies round to face them. An invisible man strode towards them through the dark: a set of pale garments and shoes without face or hands. Miss Hewson let out a sharp little scream but Troy exclaimed: “Dr Natouche!”

“I am so sorry,” the great voice boomed. “I have alarmed you. I would have called out back there before the moon rose but did not know if you were a stranger or not. I waited for you to get away from me. Then, just now, I heard your voice. I am so very sorry.”

“No harm done I guess, Doctor,” Mr Hewson said stiffly.

“Of course not,” Troy said. “I was in the same case as you, Dr Natouche. I wondered about calling out and then thought you might be an affronted local inhabitant or a sinister prowler.”

Dr Natouche had produced a pocket torch no bigger than a giant pencil. “The moon has risen,” he said, “but it’s dark down here.” The light darted about like a firefly and for a moment a name flashed out: “Jno. Bagg: licensed dealer,” on a small dilapidated sign above a door.

“Well,” Miss Hewson said to her brother. “C’mon. Let’s go.

He took her arm again and turned invitingly to Troy. “We can’t walk four-abreast,” Troy said. “You two lead the way.”

They did so and she fell in beside Dr Natouche.

The bottom lane turned out to be treacherous underfoot. Some kind of slippery lichen or river-weed had crept over the cobblestones. Miss Hewson slithered, clung to her brother and let out a yelp that flushed a company of ducks who raised their own rumpus and left indignantly by water.

The Hewsons exclaimed upon the vagaries of nature and stumbled on. Troy slipped and was stayed up expertly by Dr Natouche.

“I think perhaps you should take my arm,” he said. “My shoes seem to be unaffected. We have chosen a bad way home.”

His arm felt professional: steady and very hard. He moved with perfect ease as his forefathers might have moved, Troy thought, barefoot across some unimaginable landscape. When she slipped, as she did once or twice, his hand closed for a moment about her forearm and she saw his long fingers pressed into the white sleeve.

The surface of the lane improved but she felt it would be uncivil to withdraw her arm at once. Dr Natouche spoke placidly of the beauties of Tollardwark. He talked, Troy thought indulgently, rather like the ship’s brochure. She experienced a great contentment. What on earth, she thought gaily, have I been fussing about: I’m loving my cruise.

Miss Hewson turned to look back at Troy, peered, hesitated, and said: “O.K., Mrs Alleyn?”

“Grand, thank you.”

“There’s the Zodiac,” Mr Hewson said. “Girls—we’re home.”

She looked welcoming indeed, with her riding lights and glowing red-curtained windows. “Lovely!” Troy said light-heartedly. Dr Natouche’s arm contracted very slightly and then relaxed and withdrew, closely observed by the Hewsons. Mr Hewson handed the ladies aboard and accompanied them down to the saloon which was deserted.

Miss Hewson carefully lowering her voice said cosily: “Now, dear, I hope you were not too much embarrassed: we couldn’t do one thing, could we, Earl?” She may have seen a look of astonishment in Troy’s face. “Of course,” she added, “we don’t just know how you Britishers feel—”

“I don’t feel anything,” Troy said inaccurately. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well!” Mr Hewson said, “You don’t aim to tell us, Mrs Alleyn, that there’s no distinction made in Britain? Now, only last week I was reading—”

“I’m sure you were, Mr Hewson, but honestly, we don’t all behave like that. Or believe like that. Really.”

“Is that so?” he said. “Is—that so? You wait awhile, Mrs Alleyn. You wait until you’ve a comparable problem. You haven’t seen anything yet. Not a thing.”

“I guess we’ll just leave it, dear,” Miss Hewson said. “Am I looking forward to my bed! Boy, oh boy!”

“We’ll say good night then, Mrs Alleyn,” Mr Hewson said rather stiffly. “It’s a privilege to make your acquaintance.”

Troy found herself saying good night with much more effusiveness than she normally displayed and this, she supposed, was because she wanted everything to be pleasant in the Zodiac. The Hewsons seemed to cheer up very much at these signs of cordiality and went to bed saying that it took all sorts to make a world.

Troy waited for a moment and then climbed the little companionway and looked over the half-door.

Dr Natouche stood at the after-end of the deck looking, it appeared, at the silhouette of Tollardwark against the night-sky. He has a gift, Troy thought, for isolating himself in space.

“Good night, Dr Natouche,” she said, quietly.

“Good night. Good night, Mrs Alleyn,” he returned, speaking as low as his enormous voice permitted. It was as if he played softly on a drum.

Troy wrote a letter to her husband which she would post before they left Tollard Lock in the morning and it was almost midnight when she had finished it.

What a long, long day, she thought as she climbed into her bed.

-4-

She fell asleep within half a minute and was fathoms deep when noises lugged her to the surface. On the way up she dreamed of sawmills, of road-drills and of dentists. As she awoke her dream persisted: the rhythmic hullabaloo was close at hand, behind her head, coming in at her porthole—everywhere. Her cabin was suffused in moonlight reflected off the river. It looked like a sanctuary for peace itself but on the other side of the wall Miss Rickerby-Carrick in Cabin 8 snored with a virtuosity that exceeded anything Troy had ever heard before. The pandemonium she released no more resembled normal snoring than the “1812 Overture” resembles the “Harmonious Blacksmith.” It was monstrous. It was insupportable.

Troy lay in a sort of incredulous panic, half-giggling, half-appalled as whistles succeeded snorts, and plosives followed upon whistles. A door on the far side of the passage angrily banged. She thought it was Caley Bard’s. Then Mr Hewson, in Cabin 6 on Troy’s left, thudded out of bed, crossed the passage to his sister’s room and knocked.

“Sis! Hey Sis!” Troy heard him wail. “For Pete’s sake! Sis!” Troy reached out and opened her own door a crack.

Evidently, Miss Hewson was awake. Brother and sister consulted piteously together in the passage. Troy heard Miss Hewson say: “O.K., dear. O.K. Go right ahead. Rouse her up. But don’t bring me into it.”

Another door, No 5, Troy thought, had been opened and the admonitory sound: “Ssh!” was sharply projected into the passage. The same door was then smartly shut. Mr Lazenby. Finally Mr Pollock unmistakably erupted into the mélée.

“Does everybody mind!” Mr Pollock asked in a fury. “Do me a favour, ladies and gents. I got the funny habit of liking to sleep at night!” A pause, sumptuously filled by Miss Rickerby-Carrick. “Gawd!” Mr Pollock said. “Has it been offered to the Zoo?”

Troy suddenly thumped the wall. Miss Rickerby-Carrick trumpeted, said “Wh-a-a?” and fell silent. After perhaps thirty wary, listening seconds her fellow-passengers returned to their beds and as she remained tacit, all, presumably, went to sleep.

Troy again slept deeply for what seemed to her to be a very long time and was sickeningly roused by Miss Rickerby-Carrick herself, standing like the first Mrs Rochester beside her bed and looking, Troy felt, not dissimilar. Her cold was heavy on her.

“Dear Mrs Alleyn,” Miss Rickerby-Carrick whispered. “Do, do, do forgive me. I’m so dreadfully sorry but I simply can not get off! Hour after hour and wide awake. I—I had a shock. In Tollardwark. I can’t tell you—at least—I—might. Tomorrow. But I can’t sleep and I can’t find my pills. I can—not—lay my hands upon my pills. Have you by any chance an aspirin? I feel so dreadful, waking you, but I get quite frantic when I can’t sleep—I—I’ve had a shock. I’ve had an awful shock.”

Troy said: “It’s all right. Yes. I’ve got some aspirin. Would you turn on the light?”

When she had done this, Miss Rickerby-Carrick came back to the bed and leant over Troy. She wore a dull magenta dressing-gown; dark blue pyjamas. Something depended from her not very delicious neck. It swung forward and hit Troy on the nose.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I am so sorry.”

“It’s all right. If you’ll just let me up, I’ll find the aspirins.” While Troy did this Miss Rickerby-Carrick whispered indefatigably. “You’ll wonder what it is. That thing. I’ll tell you. It’s a romantic story, no denying it. Never leaves me. You’ll be surprised,” the strange whisper gustily confided. “No kidding. An heirloom. Honestly. My grandfather — surgeon — Czar — Fabergé. I promise you!” Troy had found the aspirin.

“Here they are. I really think you shouldn’t tell people about it, you know.”

“Oh — but you!”

“I wouldn’t — really. Why don’t you put it in safe-keeping?”

“You’re talking like the insurance people.”

“I can well believe it.”

“It’s my Luck,” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick. “That’s how I feel about it. I can’t be without my Luck. I did try once, and immediately fell down a flight of concrete steps. There, now!”

“Well, I wouldn’t talk about it if I were you.”

“That’s what Miss Hewson said. ”

“For Heaven’s sake!” Troy exclaimed and gave up.

“Well, she’s awfully interested in antiques.”

“Have you shown it to her?”

She nodded coyly, wagging her ungainly head up and down and biting her lower lip. “You’ll never guess,” she said, “what it is. The design I mean. Talk about coincidence!” She put her face close to Troy’s and whispered. “In diamonds and emeralds and rubies. The Signs of the Zodiac. Now!”

“Hadn’t you better go to bed?” Troy asked wearily.

Miss Rickerby-Carrick stared fixedly at her and then bolted.

When Mrs Tretheway at eight o’clock brought her a cup of tea, Troy felt as if the incidents of the night had been part of her dreams. At breakfast Mr Pollock and the Hewsons had a muttering session about Miss Rickerby-Carrick. Caley Bard openly asked Troy if she was keen on “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik” and Mr Lazenby told him not to be naughty. As usual Dr Natouche took no part in this general, if furtive, conversation. Miss Rickerby-Carrick herself retired at mid-morning to a corner of the deck where, snuffling dreadfully and looking greatly perturbed, she kept up her diary.

The Zodiac cruised tranquilly through the morning. After luncheon Mr Lazenby occasioned some surprise by appearing in a bathing slip, blowing up an inflatable mattress and sun-bathing on deck. “Once an Aussie, always an Aussie,” he observed. Mr and Miss Hewson were so far encouraged as to change into Hawaiian shorts and floral tops. Dr Natouche had already appeared in immaculate blue linen and Caley Bard in conservative slacks and cotton shirt. Troy settled at a table in the saloon, finished her drawing and treated it to a lovely blush of aquarelle crayons which she had bought for fun and because they were easy to carry. Each of the signs now bore a crazy resemblance to the person she had assigned to it. Caley Bard’s slew-eyed glance looked out of the Scorpion’s head. Virgo was a kind of ethereal whiff of what Miss Rickerby-Carrick might have been. The Hewsons, stylisées, put their heads together for the Twins. Mr Lazenby, naked, blindfold—and in elegant retreat, displayed the Scales. Something about the stalked eyes of the Crab quoted Mr Pollock’s rather prominent stare. Mrs Tretheway, translated into classic splendour, presented the Fish on a celestial platter. The Ram had a steering wheel between his hoofs and the boy, Tom—Aquarius, carried water in a ship’s bucket. Troy’s short dark locks tumbled about the brow of the Goat, while her husband glanced ironically through the Lion’s mask. The Bull, vainglorious, rode his motor-bike. Splendidly alone, the dark Archer drew his bow. Troy was amused with her picture but sighed at the thought of doing the lettering.

The Hewsons, passing through the saloon, devoured by curiosity and swathed in tact, asked if they might have a peep.

This led to everybody, except Dr Natouche, gathering round her. “Just see what you’ve done with children’s chalks and a drop of ink!” Caley Bard exclaimed. “What magic!” He gave a little crowing sound, burst out laughing and looked round at his fellow-passengers. “Do you see!” he cried. “Do you see what she’s done?”

After some reflection they did, each recognising the others more readily than him—or her—self. It appeared that Troy had been lucky in three of her choices. The Hewsons were, in fact, twins and, by an extraordinarily felicitous chance, had been born under Gemini while Miss Rickerby-Carrick confessed, with mantling cheeks and conscious looks, as Caley Bard afterwards put it, to Virgo. She still seemed frightened and stared fixedly at Troy.

“Natouche,” Caley Bard called up the companionway, “you must come down and see this.”

He came down at once. Troy gave him the drawing and for the second time heard his laugh. “It is beautiful and it is comical,” he said presently and handed it back to Troy. “I know, of course, that one must not frivolously compare the work of one great artist with another but may I say that Erni is perhaps your only contemporary who would have approached the subject like this.”

“Very perceptive of you,” said Caley Bard.

“I want to put the rhyme in the middle,” Troy said, “but my lettering’s hopeless: it takes ages to do and is awful when it’s finished. I suppose nobody here would do a nice neo-classic job of lettering?”

“I would,” said Mr Pollock. He was close behind Troy, staring over her arm at the drawing. “I—” he paused and, most unaccountably, Troy was revisited by yesterday’s impression of an impending crisis. “I started in that business,” Pollock said and there seemed to be a note of apology in his voice. “Commercial art. You know? Gave it up for real estate. I—if you show me what you’d like—the type of lettering—I’ll give satisfaction.”

He was looking at the drawing with the oddest expression in his barrow-boy face: sharp, appreciative and somehow—what?—shamefaced? Or—could Mr Pollock possibly be frightened?

Troy said, cordially. “Will you really? Thank you so much. It just wants to be a sort of Garamond face. A bit fantasticated if you like.”

Dr Natouche had a book in his hand with the dust-jacket titled in Garamond. “That sort of thing,” Troy said pointing to it.

Mr Pollock looked reluctantly but sharply at it and then bent over the drawing. “I could do that,” he said. “I don’t know anything about fantasticate,” and added under his breath something that sounded like: “I can copy anything.”

Mr Lazenby said loudly: “You’re very sure of yourself, Mr Pollock, aren’t you?” and Caley Bard ejaculated: “Honestly, Pollock, how you dare!”

There followed a brief silence. Pollock mumbled: “Only a suggestion, isn’t it? No need to take it up, is there?”

“I’d be very glad to take it up,” Troy said. “There you are: it’s all yours.”

She moved away from the table and after a moment’s hesitation he sat down at it.

Troy went up on deck where she was soon joined by Caley Bard.

“You didn’t half snub that little man,” she said.

“He irritates me. And he’s a damn sight too cool about your work.”

“Oh come!”

“Yes, he is. Breathing down your neck. My God, you’re you. You’re ‘Troy’. How he dares!”

“Do come off it.”

“Have you noticed how rude he is to Natouche?”

“Well, that—yes. But you know I really think direct antagonism must be more supportable than the ‘don’t let’s be beastly’ line.”

“The Rickerby-Carrick line, in fact?”

“If you like. Yes.”

“You know,” he said, “if you weren’t a passenger in the good ship Zodiac I think I’d rat.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s not. Where did you get to last night?”

“I had a telephone call to make.”

“It couldn’t have taken you all evening.”

Remembering Fox’s suggestion Troy, who was a poor liar, lied. “It was about a fur I left at the gallery. I had to go to the police station.”

“And then?”

“I went to the church.”

“You’d much better have come on a one-pub-crawl with me,” he grumbled. “Will you dine tomorrow night in Longminster?”

Before Troy could reply, Miss Rickerby-Carrick, looking scared, came up from below, attired in her magenta wrapper. Her legs were bare and her arthritic toes emerged like roots from her sandals. She wore dark glasses and a panama hat and she carried her Li-lo and her diary. She paused by the wheel-house for her usual chat with the Skipper, continued on her way and to Troy’s extreme mortification avoided her and Bard with the kind of tact that breaks the sound-barrier, bestowing on them as she passed an understanding smile. She disappeared behind a stack of chairs covered by a tarpaulin, at the far end of the deck.

Troy said: “Not true, is she? Just a myth?”

“What’s she writing?”

“A journal. She calls it her self-propelling confessional.”

“Would you like to read it?”

“Isn’t it awful — but, yes, I can’t say I wouldn’t fancy a little peep.”

“How about tomorrow night? Dinner ashore, boys, and hey for the rollicking bun.”

“Could we decide a bit later?”

“In case something more interesting turns up, you cautious beast.”

“Not altogether that.”

Well — what?”

“We don’t know what everybody will be doing,” Troy said feebly and then: “I know. Why don’t we ask Dr Natouche to come?”

“We shall do nothing of the sort and I must say I think that’s a pretty cool suggestion. I invite you to dine, tête-à-tête and—”

Miss Rickerby-Carrick screamed.

It was a positive, abrupt and piercing scream and it brought everybody on deck.

She was leaning over the after-taffrail, her wrapper in wild disarray. She gesticulated and exclaimed and made strange grimaces.

“My diary! Oh stop! Oh please! My diary!” cried Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

Somehow or another she had dropped it overboard. She made confused statements to the effect that she had been observing the depths, had leant over too far, had lost her grip. She lamented with catarrhal extravagance, she pointed aft where indeed the diary was to be seen, open and fairly rapidly submerging. Her nose and eyes ran copiously.

The Tretheways behaved with the greatest address. The Skipper put the Zodiac into slow-astern, Tom produced a kind of long-handled curved hook used for clearing river-weed and Mrs Tretheway, placidity itself, emerged from below and attempted to calm Miss Rickerby-Carrick

The engine was switched off and the craft, on her own momentum came alongside Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s diary. Tom climbed over the taffrail, held to it with his left hand and with his right, prepared to angle.

“But no!” screamed Miss Rickerby-Carrick. “Not with that thing! You’ll destroy it! Don’t, don’t, don’t! Oh please. Oh please.”

“Stone the crows!” Mr Lazenby astonishingly ejaculated.

With an air of hardy resignation he rose from his Li-lo, turned his back on the company, removed his spectacles and placed them on the deck. He then climbed over the taffrail and neatly dived into The River. Miss Rickerby-Carrick screamed again, the other passengers ejaculated and, with the precision of naval ratings, lined the port side to gaze at Mr Lazenby. He was submerged but quickly reappeared with his long hair plastered over his eyes and the diary in his hand.

The Skipper instructed him to go ashore and walk a couple of chains downstream where it was deep enough for the Zodiac to come alongside. He did so, holding the diary clear of the water. He climbed the bank and squatted there, shaking the book gently and separating and turning over the leaves. His hair hung to one side like a caricature of a Carnaby Street fringe, completely obscuring the left eye.

Miss Rickerby-Carrick began to give out plaintive little cries interspersed with gusts of apologetic laughter and incoherent remarks upon the waterproof nature of her self-propelling pen. She could not wait for Mr Lazenby to come aboard but leant out at a dangerous angle to receive the book from him. The little lump of leather, Troy saw, still dangled from her neck.

“Oh ho, ho!” she laughed, “my poor old confidante. Alas, alas!”

She thanked Mr Lazenby with incoherent effusion and begged him not to catch cold. He reassured her, accepted his dark glasses from Troy who had rescued them and turned aside to put them on. When he faced them all again it really seemed as if in some off-beat fashion and without benefit of dog-collar, he had resumed his canonicals. He even made a little parsonic noise: “N’yer I’ll just get out of my wet bathers,” he said. ”There’s not the same heat in the English sun: not like Bondi.” And retired below.

“Well!” said Caley Bard. “Who says the Church is effete?”

There was a general appreciative murmur in which Troy did not join.

Had she or had she not seen for a fractional moment, in Mr Lazenby’s left hand, a piece of wet paper with the marks of a propelling pencil across it?

While Troy still mused over this, Miss Rickerby-Carrick who squatted on the deck examining with plaintive cries the ruin of her journal, suddenly exclaimed with much greater emphasis.

The others broke off and looked at her with that particular kind of patient endurance that she so pathetically inspired.

This time, however, there was something in her face that none of them had seen before: a look, not of anxiety or excitement but, for a second or two Troy could have sworn, of sheer panic. The dun skin had bleached under its freckles and round the jawline. The busy mouth was flaccid. She stared at her open diary. Her hands trembled. She shut the drenched book and steadied them by clutching it.

Miss Hewson said: “Miss Rickerby-Carrick, are you O.K.?”

She nodded once or twice, scrambled to her feet and incontinently bolted across the deck and down the companionway to the cabins.

“And now,” Troy said to herself. “What about that one? Am I still imagining?”

Again she had sensed a kind of stillness, of immense constraint and again she was unable to tell from whom it emanated.

“Like it or lump it,” Troy thought, “Superintendent Tillottson’s going to hear about that lot and we’ll see what he makes of it. In the meantime—”

In the meantime, she went to her cabin and wrote another letter to her husband.

Half an hour later the Zodiac tied up for the afternoon and night at Crossdyke.