Josephine Tey - To Love and Be Wise

'No. But it would be comforting, not to say illuminating, to know the state of the skull bones.

'Any evidence that Searle was interested in the girl?

'He had one of her gloves in his collar drawer.

Bryce grunted. 'I thought that sort of thing went out with valentines, he said, unconsciously paraphrasing Sergeant Williams.

'I showed it to her and she took it well. Said that he had probably picked it up and meant to give it back to her.

'And now I'll tell one, commented the Superintendent.

'She's a nice girl, Grant said, mildly.

'So was Madeleine Smith. Any second favourite in the suspect stakes?

'No. Just the field. The men who had no reason to love Searle, and had the opportunity and no satisfactory alibi.

'Are there many? Bryce said, surprised by the plural.

'There's Toby Tullis, who is still sick at the snubbing Searle administered. Tullis lives on the river-bank and has a boat. His alibi depends on the word of an infatuated follower. There's Serge Ratoff the dancer, who loathed Searle because of the attention Toby paid him. Serge, according to himself, was dancing on the greensward by the river's rim on Wednesday night. There's Silas Weekley, the distinguished English novelist, who lives in the lane down which Searle disappeared from human ken on Wednesday night. Silas has a thing about beauty; has a constant urge to destroy it. He was working in a hut at the end of the garden that night, so he says.

'No bets on the field?

'N-o. I think not. A saver on Weekley, perhaps. He is the type that might go over the borderline any day, and spend the rest of his life happily typing away in Broadmoor. But Tullis wouldn't jeopardise all he has built up by a silly murder like this. He is much too shrewd. As for Ratoff, I can imagine him setting off to do a murder, but long before he was half-way there he would have another fine idea and forget what he originally set out to do.

'Is this village entirely inhabited by crack-pots?

'It has been «discovered», unfortunately. The aborigines are sane enough.

'Well, I suppose there is nothing we can do until the body turns up.

' If it turns up.

'They usually do, in time.

'According to the local police, five people have been drowned in the Rushmere in the last forty years. That is, leaving Mere Harbour and the shipping part out of the reckoning. Two were drowned higher up than Salcott and three lower down. The three who were drowned lower down than Salcott all turned up within a day or two. The two who were drowned above the village have never turned up at all.

'It's a nice look-out for Walter Whitmore, Bryce commented.

'Yes, Grant said, thinking it over. 'They weren't very kind to him this morning.

'The papers? No. Awfully good-mannered and discreet but they couldn't have made pleasant reading for Bunny-Boy. A nasty spot to be in. No accusation, so no possible defence. Not that he has any, he added.

He was silent for a little, tapping his teeth with his pipe as was his habit when cogitating.

'Well, I suppose there is nothing we can do at the moment. You make a neat shipshape report and we'll see what the Commissioner says. But I don't see that there is anything more we can do. Death by drowning, no evidence so far to show whether accidental or otherwise. That's your conclusion, isn't it?

As Grant did not answer immediately, he looked up and said sharply: 'Isn't it?

Now you see it, now you don't.

Something wrong in the set-up.

Don't let your flair ride you, Grant.

Something phoney somewhere.

Now you see it, now you don't.

Conjurer's patter.

The trick of the distracted attention.

You could get away with anything if you distracted the attention.

Something phoney somewhere….

'Grant!

He came back to the realisation of his chief's surprise. What was he to say? Acquiesce and let it go? Stick to the facts and the evidence, and stay on the safe side?

With a detached regret he heard his own voice saying: 'Have you ever seen a lady sawn in half, sir?

'I have, Bryce said, eyeing him with a wary disapproval.

'It seems to me that there is a strong aroma of sawn-lady about this case, Grant said; and then remembered that this was the metaphor he had used to Sergeant Williams.

But Bryce's reaction was very different from the Sergeant's.

'Oh, my God ! he groaned. 'You're not going to do a Lamont on us, are you, Grant?

Years ago Grant had gone into the farthest Highlands after a man and had brought him back; brought him back sewn up in a case so fault-proof that only the sentence remained to be said; and had handed him over with the remark that on the whole he thought they had got the wrong man. (They had.) The Yard had never forgotten it, and any wild opinion in contradiction to the evidence was still known as 'doing a Lamont'.

The sudden mention of Jerry Lamont heartened Grant. It had been even more absurd to feel that Jerry Lamont was innocent, in the face of an unbreakable case, than it was to smell 'sawn-lady' in a simple drowning.

'Grant!

'There's something very odd about the set-up, Grant said stubbornly.

'What is odd?

'If I knew that it would be down in my report. It isn't any one thing. It's the-the whole set-up. The atmosphere. The smell of it. It doesn't smell right.

'Couldn't you just explain to an ordinary hard-working policeman what smells so wrong about it?

Grant ignored the Superintendent's heavy-handedness, and said:

'It's all wrong from the beginning, don't you see. Searle's walking in from nowhere, into the party. Yes, I know that we know about him. That he is who he says he is, and all that. We even know that he came to England just as he says he did. Via Paris. His place was booked by the American Express office at the Madeleine. But that doesn't alter the fact that the whole episode has something queer about it. Was it so likely that he would be all that keen to meet Walter just because they were both friends of Cooney Wiggin?

'Don't ask me! Was it?

'Why this need to meet Walter?

'Perhaps he had seen him broadcast and just couldn't wait.

'And he had no letters.

'Who hadn't?

'Searle. He had no letters all the time he was at Salcott.

'Perhaps he is allergic to the gum on envelopes. Or I have heard that people leave letters lying at their bank to be called for.

'That's another thing. None of the usual American banks or agencies has ever heard of him. And there is one tiny thing that seems odd to me out of all proportion to its actual value. Actual value to this case, I mean. He had a tin box, rather like an outsize paint-box, that he used to hold all his photographic stuff. Something is gone out of the box. Something roughly 9 inches by 3–1/2 by 4, that was packed in the lower compartment (it has a tray like a paint-box with a deeper space below). Nothing that is now among his belongings fits the space, and no one can suggest what the thing could have been.

'And what is so odd about that? There must be a hundred and one things that might have been packed in a space that size.

'As what, for instance, sir?

'Well-well, I can't think off-hand, but there must be dozens.

'There is ample space in his other cases for anything he wanted to pack. So it wouldn't be clothes, or ordinary possessions. Whatever was there, in the tin box, was something that he kept where only he would be likely to handle it.

Bryce's attention grew more sober at that.

'Now it is missing. It is of no obvious importance in this case. No importance at all, perhaps. It is just an oddity and it sticks in my mind.

'What do you think he might have been after at Trimmings? Blackmail? Bryce asked, with interest at last.