The Crocus List

31

The East Coast of America is dominated by the big cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington all exert such a gravitational pull that the smaller towns are sucked into an orbit of dependency on the nearest city sun. In the Midwest, not even Chicago exerts such influence, and St Louis very little at all. Across the plains on either side of the Mississippi and Missouri, it is as if a giant city planet had exploded, leaving a random scatter of asteroid towns frozen in their wanderings but uncommitted to an urban star.

Never quite random, of course. Some grew up on river crossings, at water-holes on the westward trails, and a remarkable number-Matson included-on the railroads or, thanks to founding fathers with a keen eye for land values, where they deduced the railroads must come. Robert Julius Matson had guessed right: the first train had come through just nine years after the town was founded in 1858, pulling behind it the fertiliser works, the corn mill, the seed-corn warehouse, and with them the quiet prosperity that spawned the first Masonic lodge in 1871, a voluntary fire brigade in '75, the telephone in '84 and the first sewer in 1920. All this-and a lot more-Maxim learnt from a centennial booklet in the town library, just one floor up from the town offices.

Already he had spent an hour wandering around the town-it needed no more time than that-trying to get the feel of the place. This wasn't easy, because it was clearly a private town: self-contained within its white wooden houses that seemed as well-rooted on their green lawns as the tall trees of Elm Street, Pine, Walnut, Chestnut… the usual street names of such towns, not unimaginative, just because you built houses like that and named streets likethat. If you wanted to be different, you could find a big city at the end of the railroad and be different there. He guessed a lot of young people had: the few faces on the street seemed of retirement age. He realised why when he walked down to where Main Street crossed the railroad tracks and saw the grass-grown rails, the deserted depot and the dusty windows of the empty fertiliser works.

Robert Julius had been right, but only for just over a hundred years. The railroad giveth and the railroad taketh away, and when it stops giving and taking, a lot more stops as well. Maxim stood on the rails and tried to imagine the bustle as a train panted in, of the steam glowing the lamplight at night, of the sense of distance and connection… but it was trying to imagine the broken chimes of a clock you never heard.

Nobody had even thought to throw stones through the windows of the fertiliser works.

The Maison Sentinelhad died, too, just a few years before, and the bound copies of its back numbers were also in the library. Maxim leafed through them because-as he was forced to admit to himself- he had no idea of how to approach Clare Hall. Surrounding himself with local knowledge was a form of entrenchment; if you dig in and stare at a hill you can often persuade yourself you know what's going on behind it. Confidence wins battles; even false confidence has won a few.

(This is not a battle, he reprimanded himself. Alan James Winterbotham does not fight battles.)

The woman librarian finished a murmured telephone call and drifted across. "Are you finding what you wanted?"

"Just pottering," Maxim (Winterbotham) said. "Seeing America by bus on my way home. As far as Minneapolis, anyway. My car busted there."

Her indifference told him he had explained too much (but maybe Canadians, or Winterbothams, did explain too much). "Looking up the town history? It's kind of quiet these days, since the railroad pulled out. Mostly folk retired off the farms around here."

She had the Midwestern accent that is usually called 'flat' because the Midwest doesn't believe that emotionalemphasis makes the corn grow taller. Her tall thin elegance was camouflaged by a loose, dark woollen dress and heavy glasses, but restored by her prematurely grey hair-she was about Maxim's age-that was cut in simple elegant sweeps over her ears. Perhaps she was playing the part of a small-town librarian but hoping not to be taken too seriously.

"Anything more you'd like to know, just ask." She drifted away to the shelves, shuffling a book here and there.

County Board Approves Salary Hikes, Maxim learnt, along with Maison Mothers' Club Makes Donation. This is not telling me much about the far side of the hill, he thought. Hold on, now. If Mothers' Club Donation makes the front page, how about Local Rector's Son Kidnapped, Murdered, In Italy?

Since he wasn't sure of the date, it took a little time, but there was no missing it when he found the right volume. It ran across three weekly issues, and was blatantly lifted from the big city papers and radio, but the editorial comment was strictly home town. If any Matson citizen had taken an Italian holiday that year, he would have kept very quiet about it.

He read carefully, starting with the last issue where the facts would be most accurate, and working back. He took no notes-why would Winterbotham bother?-but he had been trained to memorise map references and other details of a mission. The SASdidn't like its people getting captured with pockets full of data. There was, of course, a picture of Arnold Tatham himself, much younger than when he had died, and of his daughter Clare. She, too, was younger and dark-haired-but unmistakably the librarian.

The room seemed very quiet as he closed the volume and selected another and made himself turn its unseen pages for ten more minutes. She was back at the desk when he stood up, stretched elaborately, and said: "Guess I'll get myself a cup of coffee."

"If you're coming back, we close for lunch around half twelve."

The centre of Matson was brick-built, a few buildings rising to three storeys, a few of them whitewashed but therest left the whisky colour of the local clay. Somehow the roads managed to be the same colour, but several tones lighter. The drug-store, where he had breakfasted late, was around the corner on Walnut Street, a deep dim-lit room with a counter and stools midway down one side, after the racks of maga7ines and trinkets. He bought a magazine and flipped its pages while he drank the coffee.

Perhaps he had been stupid, but had he actually done any damage? She would recognise him when he made his approach, would know he had been behaving deviously -but he would be straight into devious matters anyway. And the accounts of Tatham's kidnapping and death had been very worthwhile reading. A woman walked in and sat at the middle of the counter-Maxim had chosen the furthest end. She wore a bulky mock-leather jacket of much the same colour as the local brick, a tweed skirt and even in that light, wrap-around sunglasses. Apart from that, she was Agnes Algar.

Maxim felt a moment of total disorientation before he realised that something must have gone badly wrong, that because she had not greeted him he must stay being Winterbotham, that because they were strangers he must make the first move. She had lit a cigarette and was alternating puffs with nibbling on a Danish pastry and sipping coffee. He went and bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine behind him, searched his pockets, then asked: "Could I trouble you for a light, Miss?"

She snapped her lighter. "Can't give it up, either, hey?"

"I've tried." He drew on the first cigarette for eight years, nearly choked, and wheezed: "First today, anyway. Thank you. You don't sound local."

"I'm British, just passing through. You don't sound as if you were a native, either."

"I was born in London, I moved to Canada, oh, twelve years ago. Are you from London?"

"Not by birth, but I worked there. Don't we all?"

The druggist, a bird-like little man in his fifties who longed to repeat his father's reputation as town matchmaker, but had so little chance since the youngsters who hadn't moved out permanently were commuting to biggertowns, was delighted to see two mature strangers getting together over coffee. In his view, friendships made over alcohol-as in the Star Bar around the corner-seldom lasted. He threw his own span into the bridge he saw a-building.

"Now, isn't that a funny thing?-I get two people meeting in a town like this, and wouldn't you know it?-their paths have crossed before. Isn't that a funny thing?"

"London's a big town," Agnes said coolly.

"It sure is, I visited there five years back, with my wife-now, would you know the Bedford Hotel? Wouldn't it be something if you both knew that?"

"I think I used to drink there with a man called George Harbinger," Maxim invented, knowing how George loathed tourist territory. "A fat man. He was something in the Civil Service."

"I don't think I ever heard of him," Agnes said.

The druggist surreptitiously slid Maxim's coffee along the counter, fixing him next to Agnes. "Lady, do you mind my asking if you have an eye problem? With the dark glasses in here, like… I could recommend some medication, or-"

"I got mugged," Agnes said bleakly. She pushed the glasses up, giving Maxim a glimpse of the purple bruise under her left eye.

"That is terrible," the druggist pronounced. "I mean truly terrible. It surely wasn't-"

"Not here."

"Terrible. You should get a doctor… Mister, you should tell her she should get a doctor."

There was a huge anger welling in Maxim that choked off anything he might have said, a yearning to reach that mugger and snap his arms, which he could do so easily, then kick the helpless manhood out of him…

I love her.

He had no idea whether that was a decision or a revelation. It was just a fact, whose origins no longer mattered. He shook his head slowly, to show some reaction, staring past the druggist at the dark handcrafted old shelving, wondering if he should remember every detail of thisplace, and sadly realising he would only remember the huge can of chilli that appeared on the menu board as Home Made.

"Dreadful," he managed to say.

A customer came past to the pharmacy, counter at the back and the druggist said: "Excuse me, folks…"

Agnes touched his hand on the counter, quickly and secretly.

"Calm down, Harry. I'm all right. Really."

"Was it Them?"

"Them. They got the Clare Hall address and that you're here; I was drafting a report… I should never have put anything on record in that place…"

"I led them to you."

"Not you. I think they must have had a bleeper on my car; I never checked, and they'd have taken it away when they caught up-damn it, it's what I'd have done: a simple radio bleeper with a magnet, you can stick it on in two seconds. We probably lost them on the Beltway, and they'd been chasing round the Virginia countryside trying to pick me up… those things only have a range of about three miles."

"I led them to your car. I should have been there."

"I wished you were-but they'd probably have killed you."

"They could have tried."

"You aren't armed, Harry. And they could try again."

"I wasn't going to ring you until I'd got something to say…"

"I know. Would you care to walk me around the block?" The druggist was heading back purposefully.

In fact, they just walked around the corner and got into Agnes's rented car.

"Are you really all right?" Maxim demanded.

"It just shook me up. By now I'm mostly tired, I was driving most of the night. The closest I could get last night was a flight to Chicago."

"What will London say?"

"I'll dream up something for them later. Now, have you contacted Clare Hall yet?"

"Well, sort of…" Rather shamefacedly, he told about the library.

"At least we know she's not at home," Agnes said. "The Bravoes may not want to go around asking questions, they'll probably just stake out her house. We'll pick her up when she goes for lunch-and we've got something to say, now, even if it's just Run for the hills, lady."

"We've got a little more than that. Reading up about Tatham's death…"