Ngaio Marsh - Clutch of Constables

They left the mist-shrouded Zodiac and drove up the lane through the Constable landscape. When they reached the intersection a policeman on a motor-cycle saluted.

“My chap,” Tillottson said.

“Yes. I’m still uneasy, though. You’re sure this specimen can’t break for the open country and lie doggo?”

“I’ve got three chaps on the intersections and two down at the lock. No one’ll get off that boat tonight: I’ll guarantee it.”

“I suppose not. All right. Press on,” Alleyn said.

The evening had begun to close in when they reached Tollardwark and Ferry Lane. They left their car in the Market Square and followed Troy’s route downhill to the premises of Jno. Bagg.

“Pretty tumbledown dump,” Tillottson said. “But he’s honest enough as dealers go. Not a local man. Southerner. Previous owner died and this chap Jo Bagg, bought the show as it stood. We’ve nothing against him in Records. He’s a rum character, though, is Jo Bagg.”

The premises consisted of a cottage, a lean-to and a yard, which was partly sheltered by a sort of ramshackle cloister pieced together from scrap iron and linoleum. The yard gate was locked. Through it Alleyn saw copious disjecta membra of Mr Bagg’s operations. A shop window in the cottage wall dingily faced the lane. It was into this window that Troy had found the Hewsons peering last Monday night.

Tillottson said. “He’ll be in bed as like as not. They go to bed early in these parts.”

“Stir him up,” Alleyn rejoined and jerked at a cord that dangled from a hole near the door. A bell jangled inside. No response. “Up you get,” Alleyn muttered and jerked again. Tillottson banged on the door.

“If you lads don’t want to be given in charge,” bawled a voice within, “you better ’op it. Go on. Get out of it. I’ll murder you one of these nights, see if I don’t.”

“It’s me, Jo,” Tillottson shouted through the keyhole. “Tillottson. Police. Spare us a moment, will you?”

“ Who ?”

“Tillottson: Toll’ark Police.”

Silence. A light was turned on somewhere behind the dirty window. They heard shuffling steps and the elaborate unchaining and unbolting of the door which was finally dragged open with a screech to reveal a small, dirty man wearing pyjamas and an unspeakable overcoat.

“What’s it all about?” he complained. “I’m going to bed. What’s the idea?”

“We won’t keep you, Jo. If we can just come in for half a sec.”

He muttered and stood aside. “In there, then,” he said and dragged and banged the door shut. “In the shop.”

They walked into what passed for a shop: a low room crammed to its ceiling and so ill-lit that nothing came out into the open or declared itself in its character of table, hat-rack or mouldering chair. Rather, everything lurked in menacing anonymity and it really was going too far in the macabre for Jno. Bagg to suspend a doll from one of the rafters by a cord round its broken neck.

“This,” said Mr Tillottson, “is Superintendent Alleyn of the CID, Jo. He wonders if you can help him.”

“‘Ere,” said Mr Bagg, “that’s a type of remark I never expected to have thrown at me on me own premises. Help the police. We all know what that one leads to.”

“No, you don’t, Jo. Listen, Jo—”

Alleyn intervened. “Mr Bagg,” he said, “you can take my word for it there is no question of anything being held against you in any way whatever. I’ll come to the point at once. We are anxious to trace the origin of a picture which was sold by you yesterday to an American lady and her brother. We have reason to believe—”

“Don’t you start making out I’m a fence. Don’t you come at that one, mister. Me! A fence—!”

“I don’t for one moment suggest you’re anything of the sort. Do pay attention like a good chap. I have reason to believe that this picture may have been dumped on your premises and I want to find out if that could be so.”

“Dumped! You joking?”

“Not at all. Now, listen. The picture, as you will remember, was in a bundle of old prints and scraps and the lady found it when she opened the door of a cupboard in your yard. The bundle was rolled up and tied with string and very dirty. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched for donkey’s years. You told the lady you didn’t know you had it and you sold it to her unexamined for ten bob and nobody’s complaining or blaming you or suspecting you of anything.”

“Are you telling me,” Mr Bagg said with a change of manner, “that she struck it lucky? Is that the lay?”

“It may be a valuable painting and it may be a forgery.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“Now, all I want to know, and I hope you’ll see your way to telling me, is whether, on thinking it over, you can remember seeing the roll of prints in that cupboard before yesterday.”

“What I meantersay, no. No, I can’t. No.”

“Had you never opened the cupboard, or sideboard is it, since you bought it?”

“No. I can’t say fairer than that, mister, can I? No. Not me, I never.”

“May I look at it?” He grumbled a little but finally led them out to his yard where the very dregs of his collection mouldered. The sideboard was a vast Edwardian piece executed in pitchpine with the cupboard in the middle. Alleyn tried the door which had warped and only opened to a hard wrench and a screech that compared favourably with that of the front door.

“She was nosey,” Mr Bagg offered. “Had to open everything she saw. Had a job with that one. Still nothing would do—nosey.”

“And there it was.”

“That’s correct, mister. There it was. And there it wasn’t if you can understand, three days before.”

“ What?”

“Which I won’t deceive you, mister. While my old woman was looking over the stock out here, Monday, she opened that cupboard and she mentions the same to me when them two Yanks had gone and she says it wasn’t there then.”

“Why couldn’t you tell us at once, Jo?” Mr Tillottson asked more in resignation than in anger.

“You arst, you know you did, or this gentleman which is all one, arst if I never opened the cupboard and I answered truthfully that I never. Now then!”

“All right, Jo, all right. That’s all we wanted to know.”

“Not quite,” Alleyn said. “I wonder, Mr Bagg, if you’ve any idea of how the bundle could have got there. Have you anybody working for you? A boy?”

“Boy! Don’t mention Boy to me. Runaway knockers and ringers, the lot of them. I wouldn’t have Boys on me property, not if they paid me .”

“Is the gate from this yard to the road unlocked during the day?”

“Yes, it is unlocked. To oblige.”

“Have many people been in over the last two days, would you say?”

Not many, it appeared. His customers, as a general rule came into the shop. All the stuff in the yard was of a size or worthlessness that made it unpilferable. It was evident that anybody with a mind to it could wander round the yard without Mr Bagg being aware of their presence. Under persuasion he recalled one or two locals who had drifted in and bought nothing.

Alleyn delicately suggested that perhaps Mrs Bagg—?

“Mrs Bagg,” said Mr Bagg, “is in bed and asleep which game to rouse her, I am not. No more would you be if you knew how she can shape up.”

“But if your wife—”

“Wife? Do me a favour! She’s my mum.”

“Oh.”

As if to confirm the general trend of thought a female voice like a saw screamed from inside the cottage that its owner wanted to know what the hell Mr Bagg thought he was doing creating a nuisance in the middle of the night.

“There you are,” he said. “Now, see what you done.” He approached a window at the rear of the cottage and tapped on it. “It’s me,” he mumbled. “It’s not the middle of the night, Mum, it’s early. It’s Mr Tillottson of the Police, Mum, and a gentleman friend. They was inquiring about them Yanks what bought that stuff.”