Clutch of Constables

Chapter 10 – Closed File

“And that,” Alleyn said, laying down his file, “was virtually the end of the Jampot. He is now, together with his chums, serving a life sentence and good behaviour is not likely to release him in the foreseeable future. I understand he finds it particularly irksome not to be able to lepidopterise on Dartmoor where, as we know from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there are butterflies. Or perhaps none of you has read The Hound of the Baskervilles. All right, Carmichael, I dare say you have.

“A little time before Foljambe arrived in England the real Caley Bard, who is a gifted amateur of the net and killing-bottle, had advertised in The Times for a fellow-lepidopterist who would share expenses on a butterfly hunt in South America. Foljambe’s agents in England—Messrs. Dinky Dickson alias the Reverend Mr Lazenby and Stanley Pollock—noted this circumstance. Further discreet inquiries satisfied them that Mr Bard had left for a protracted visit to South America, that he was something of a recluse and had private means fortified by occasional coaching in mathematics for tutorial organisations. So it was decided that the mantle of Lepidoptery should descend upon the Jampot’s shoulders. Lepidoptery was his hobby as a schoolboy and he knew enough to pass muster with a casual enthusiast. If, by an outlandish chance, he had encountered an expert or an acquaintance of his original he would have exclaimed: ”Me? oh, no, not that Caley Bard. I wish I were!” or words to that effect. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was that the real Caley Bard should return, two months before his time, having picked up an unpleasant bug in the country beyond La Paz.

“So that when, at my suggestion, one of our chaps called at the address they found the house occupied by an extremely irate little man whom they promptly flew by helicopter to Tollardwark for what I am obliged to call a confrontation.

“There was, of course, no doubt about his identity and guilt, once we had established alibis for the others in the Andropulos business. However, he did make a mistake. He talked about Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s bit of Fabergé before he should have known it was anything of the sort. A rare thing, though, for him to slip up. He’s a brilliant villain.

“He presented himself to my wife in exactly the light best calculated to produce a tolerant and amused acceptance. She was not likely, as he realised, to succumb to his well-tested but, to a man, inexplicable charms but she found him companionable and entertaining. I am told that a swivel-eye is, to many people, sexually alluring. The Jampot’s swivel-eye was the result of a punch-up, or a jab-up, with a rival gang in Santa Cruz. He subsequently underwent a bit of very efficient plastic surgery. Lazenby—Dickson to you—had lost his eye, by the way, in the Second World War where he was an Australian army chaplain until they found him out. He was born in the West Indies, went to a European mission-school and had in fact been ordained and unfrocked. He had no difficulty at all in passing himself off to the Bishop of Norminster who was very cross about it.

“That, more or less, is it. I’ll be glad to answer questions.” Carmichael’s instant boots had already scraped the floor when Alleyn caught the eye of a quiet-looking type in the back row.

“Yes?” he said. “Something?”

“Sir. I would like to ask, sir, if the missing pages from the diary ever came to hand?”

“No. We searched, of course, but it was a hopeless job. Lazenby probably reduced them to pulp and put them down the lavatory.”

“Sir. Having read them when he sat on the bank, sir, and torn them out as a consequence?”

“That’s it. Before the trial he ratted in the hope of reducing his sentence and will live in terror of the Jampot for the rest of his days. He told us the missing pages contained an account of the conversation Miss Rickerby-Carrick overheard in Tollardwark. Between—”

Carmichael’s boots became agitated.

“—between,” Alleyn loudly went on, “Foljambe, Lazenby and Pollock. About—All right, Carmichael, all right. You tell us.”

“About your leddy-wife maybe,” Carmichael said, “sir. And maybe they touched on the matter of the planted picture, sir. And their liaison with cyclists, and so on and so forth.”

“Perhaps. But according to the wretched Lazenby it was mostly about Andropulos. When Miss Rickerby-Carrick tried to confide in my wife, she was very agitated. She kept saying ‘And—And—’ and ‘Oh God. Wait’. I think—we shall never know, of course—she was trying to remember his name. Lazenby intervened as the Jampot did when Pollock became altogether too interested in my wife’s drawing and altogether too ready to assist. The Jampot let it appear that he resented Pollock’s over-familiarity. So he did, but not for reasons of gallantry.”

Carmichael resumed his seat.

“Any more? Yes?” It was the same man in the back row.

“I was wondering, sir, exactly what did happen on the night in question. At Crossdyke, sir?”

“The autopsy showed Miss Rickerby-Carrick had taken a pretty massive barbiturate. One of Miss Hewson’s pills no doubt. She slept on deck at the after-end behind a heap of chairs covered by a tarpaulin. Foljambe’s cabin, No. 1, was next to the companionway. When all was quiet he went up through the saloon to the deck and, because she knew too much, killed her, took the Fabergé jewel and handed it and the body over to the cyclist — his name by the way is Smith — who had been ordered to wait ashore for it and was given his instructions. My wife remembered that, at sometime in the night, she had heard the motor-bike engine. Yes?”

A man in the third row said, “Sir: Did they all know, sir? About the murder, sir. Except the doctor?”

“According to Lazenby (I’ll still call him that) not beforehand. When Lazenby told Foljambe about the diary Foljambe merely said he would deal with the situation and ordered Lazenby to keep his mouth shut, which he did. No doubt in the sequel they all knew or guessed. But he was not a confiding type, even with his closest associates.”

“And—the way they carried on, sir. Bickering and all that among themselves. Was that a put-up show, then, sir?”

“Ah!” Alleyn said. “That’s what my wife asked me the next night in Norminster.”

-1-

“It was all a put-up job, then?” Troy asked. “The way Caley — he — I still think of him as that — the way he blazed away at Pollock and the way those three seemed to dislike and fight shy of him and abuse him — well — the whole interrelationship as it was displayed to us? All an act?”

“My love, yes.”

“But, Hewson’s distress over his sister—” she turned to Dr Natouche. ”You said he was distressed, didn’t you?”

“I thought so, certainly.”

“He was distressed all right and he was deadly frightened into the bargain,” Alleyn grunted and after a moment he said: “You were among counterfeiters, darling, and very expert hands at that. Do fill up your glass, Natouche.”

“Thank you. I suppose,” Dr Natouche said, “they looked upon me as a sort of windfall. They could all combine to throw suspicion upon me. Bard was particularly adroit. I must apologise, by the way, for losing my temper. It was when he lied about my going below during the uproar. He knew perfectly well that I went below. We ran into each other at the stairhead. When he lied I behaved like the savage they all thought me.” He turned to Troy. “I am glad you did not see it,” he said.

Alleyn remembered the uplifted ebony arms, the curved hands and the naked fury of the face and he thought Troy might have seen an element in Dr Natouche’s rage that he would never suspect her of finding.