Ngaio Marsh - Clutch of Constables

“I know,” he said, “she’s been real scared by you guys acting like you thought—” he stopped, got to his feet and looked from Tillottson to Alleyn. “Say, what is all this?” he said. “What’s with you guys? What’s happened to Sis?” He fumbled with his hearing aid and thrust his deaf ear towards Alleyn. “C’mon,” he said. “C’mon. Give, can’t you?”

Alleyn said clearly, “Something very bad, I’m afraid.”

“Like what? Hell, can’t you talk like it makes sense? What’s happened?” And then, it seemed with flat incredulity, he said: “Are you telling me she’s dead? Sis? Dead? Are you telling me that?”

Lazenby walked over to Hewson and put his arm across his shoulders: “Hold hard, old man,” he fluted. “Stick it out, boy. Steady. Steady.”

Hewson looked at him. “You make me sick,” he said. “Christ Almighty, you make me sick to my stomach.” He turned on Alleyn. “Where?” he said. “What was it? What happened?”

Alleyn told him where she had been found. He listened with his head slanted and his face screwed up as if he still had difficulty in hearing.

“Smothered,” he said. “Smothered, huh?”

Alleyn said nothing. There was an immense stillness in the saloon as if everybody waited for a climax.

“Why don’t you all say something?” Hewson suddenly demanded. “Sitting round like you were dumbbells. God damn you. Say something.”

“What can we say?” Caley Bard murmured. “There’s nothing we can say.”

“You,” Hewson said. And as if he had to find some object upon which to focus an undefined misery and resentment he leant forward and shook his finger at Caley Bard. “You sit around!” he stammered. “You act like nothing mattered! For Pete’s sake, what sort of a monster do you figure you are?”

“I’m sorry,” Caley said.

“Pardon me?” Hewson shouted angrily with his hand cupped round his ear. “What’s that? Pardon?”

“I’m sorry,” Caley shouted in return.

“Sorry? Sorry , hell! He says he’s sorry!”

Pollock intervened. “There you are,” he said. “That’s what happens. That’s the way our wonderful police get to work. Scare the daylights out of some poor woman so she scarpers and gets herself smothered in a gravel-pit. All in the day’s work.”

“In our opinion,” Alleyn said, “Miss Hewson was not smothered in the gravel-pit. She was buried there.”

“My dear Superintendent—” Lazenby ,exclaimed, “what do you mean by that? That’s a shocking statement.”

“We think that she was murdered in the same way as Miss Rickerby-Carrick was murdered on Tuesday night and a man called Andropulos was murdered last Saturday. And we think it highly probable that one of you is responsible.”

“Do you know,” Caley said, “I had a strong premonition you were going to say that. But why ? Why should you suppose one of us —? I mean we’re a cross-section of middle-class people from four different countries of origin who have never met before. We none of us knew that unfortunate eccentric before she, to speak frankly, bored the pants off us in the Zodiac . With the exception of her brother we’d none of us ever set eyes on Miss Hewson. Earlier tonight, Alleyn, you seemed to be suggesting there was some kind of conspiracy at work among us. All this carry-on about people being overheard muttering together in a side street in Tollardwark. And then you started a line about Miss Rickerby-Carrick having been robbed of a Fabergé bibelot. And what’s the strength of the bit about Pollock and his doodles? I must, apologise,” Caley said with a change of tone. “I didn’t mean to address the meeting at such length, but really, Alleyn, when you coolly announce that one of us is a murderer it’s bloody frightening and I for one want to know what it’s all about.”

Alleyn waited for a little and then said: “Yes. Of course. I’m sure you do. Under ordinary conditions it wouldn’t be proper for me to tell you but in several ways this is an extra-ordinary case and I propose to be a damn’ sight more candid than I dare say I ought to be.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Caley said wryly.

Alleyn said, “Here goes, then. Conspiracy? Yes. We think there is a conspiracy at work in the Zodiac and we think all but one of the passengers is involved. Murder? Yes. We think one of you is a murderer and hope to prove it. His name? Foljambe, alias the Jampot. At present, however, known by the name of another person. And his record? International bad-lot with at least five homicides to his discredit.”

The silence that followed was broken by Pollock. “You must be barmy,” he said.

“Conspiracy,” Alleyn went on. “Briefly, it involves the painting by you, Mr Pollock, of extremely accomplished Constable forgeries. The general idea, we think, went something like this. You made the forgeries. Your young friends on the motor-bike, working under Foljambe’s orders, were to plant them about this countryside where Constable once painted. The general principle of ‘salting’ the non-existent mine. The first discovery by Mr and Miss Hewson (if that is their name) in Bagg’s yard was to be given exactly the right amount of publicity. If necessary the circumstances surrounding the lucky find would be authenticated by Bagg himself, by my wife and Miss Rickerby-Carrick and the only other unimplicated passenger. There was to be an immediate bogus hunt throughout the countryside by: a) Mr Lazenby better known in the Antipodes, we incline to believe, as Dinky Dickson: b) Mr and Miss Hewson or Ed and Sally-Lou Moran as the case may be, and c)—ineffable cheek—by you yourself, Mr Pollock, in hot pursuit of your own forgeries.”

“You got to be dreaming,” said Mr Pollock.

“The result of this treasure-hunt would be — surprise! surprise! — a tidy haul of ‘Constables’ and a general melting away of the conspirators to sell them in the highest market. The whole operation was, we believe, in the nature of a trial run, observed by the key figures and designed for expansion, with appropriate modifications, into world-wide operations.”

“All of this,” said Lazenby breathlessly, “is untrue. It is wickedly and scandalously untrue.”

“Meanwhile,” Alleyn continued, “the terrain would have been thoroughly explored for the subsequent disposal (or we don’t know anything about our Jampot), of hard drugs by means of what is laughingly known in the racket as aerial top-dressing. The collectors would be at large among a swarm of Constable-seekers and would be accepted by the locals, with however marked a degree of exasperation, as such.”

“How do you like this fella? Do we have to sit around and take this?” Mr Hewson asked of no one in particular.

“You haven’t got much choice, have you?” Caley Bard said. And to Alleyn: “Go on, please.”

“Almost from the first things went askew. I again draw your attention to Mr K. G. Z. Andropulos who was to be a passenger in Cabin 7. He was a bit of wreckage from Greece who had a picture-dealing shop in Soho which may have been intended as a dispersal point for some of the forgeries. He turned nark on Foljambe, madly tried a spot of blackmail, and was murdered, exactly in the same way as the women. By the Jampot himself, about thirty-eight hours before he embarked in the Zodiac .”

The three men broke into simultaneous ejaculations. Alleyn raised his hand. “We’ll come to alibis,” he said, “in due course. They have been checked.”

“All I can say,” Caley said, “is Thank God and perhaps I’m being premature, at that.”

“Yes, and perhaps you bloody well are,” Pollock burst out. “Sitting there, like Jacky. How do we know—”