Josephine Tey - The Singing Sands

The Morning News had inset a neat outline map of Arabia with crosses in the appropriate place.

Grant lay and stared at it.

So that was what Bill Kenrick had seen.

He had come out of the shouting heart of the storm, out of the whirling sand and the darkness, and looked down at that green civilised valley lying among the rocks. Not much wonder that he had come back looking ‘concussed’, looking as if his mind were ‘still back there’. He had not quite believed it himself. He had gone back to search; to look for, and eventually look at, this place that appeared on no map. This— this —was his Paradise.

This was what he had been writing about on the blank space of an evening paper.

This was what he had come to England to—

To Heron Lloyd to—

To Heron Lloyd —!

He flung the News away and leaped out of bed.

‘Tink!’ he called as he turned on the bath-water. ‘Tink, never mind breakfast. Get me some coffee.’

‘But you can’t go out on a morning like this with just a cup of—’

‘ Don’t argue! Get me some coffee!’

The water roared into the bath. The liar. The god-damned smooth heartless lime-hogging liar. The vain vicious murdering liar. How had he done it?

By God, he would see that he hanged for this.

‘On what evidence?’ said his inner voice, nasty-polite.

‘You shut up! I’ll get the evidence if I have to discover a whole new continent to find it! “Poor boy! Poor boy!” said he, shaking his head over so sad a fate. Sweet Christ, I’ll hang for him myself if I can’t kill him any other way!’

‘Calm down, calm down. That’s no mood to interview a suspect in.’

‘I’m not interviewing a suspect, blast your police mind. I’m going to tell Heron Lloyd what I think of him. I’m not a police-officer until after I’ve dealt personally with Lloyd.’

‘You can’t hit a man of sixty.’

‘I’m not going to hit him. I’m going to half-murder him. The ethics of hitting or not hitting don’t enter into the matter at all.’

‘He may be worth hanging for but not worth being requested to resign for.’

‘“I found him delightful,” said he, kind and patronising. The bastard. The smooth vain murdering bastard. The—’

From the wells of his experience he dredged up words to serve his need. But his anger went on consuming him like a furnace.

He flung out of the house after two mouthfuls of toast and three gulps of coffee, and went round to the garage at the double. It was too early to hope for a taxi; the quickest way was to use his car.

Would Lloyd have read the papers yet?

If he did not normally leave the house before eleven o’clock, then surely breakfast could not be until nine. He would like very much to be at 5 Britt Lane before Lloyd opened his morning paper. It would be sweet, consoling sweet, satisfying sweet, to watch Lloyd take the news. He had murdered to keep that secret his own, to ensure that the glory should be his, and now the secret was front-page news and the glory belonged to his rival. Oh, Sweet Jesus, let him not have read about it yet.

He rang twice at 5 Britt Lane before his summons was answered, and then it was answered not by the amiable Mahmoud but by a large woman in felt slippers.

‘Mr Lloyd?’ he asked.

‘Oh, Mr Lloyd’s up in Cumberland for a day or two.’

‘Cumberland! When did he go to Cumberland?’

‘Thursday afternoon.’

‘When do you expect him back?’

‘Oh, they’ve just gone for a day or two.’

‘They? Mahmoud too.’

‘Of course Mahmoud too. Mr Lloyd he doesn’t go anywhere without Mahmoud goes with him.’

‘I see. Can you give me his address?’

‘I’d give it you if I had it. But they don’t bother with re-addressing when they go for only a day or two. Will you leave a message? Or will you call back, perhaps? They’ll like as not arrive back this afternoon.’

No, he would not leave a message. He would come back. His name did not matter.

He felt like someone who has braked too suddenly and been hit in the wind. As he went out to his car he remembered that Tad Cullen would read that story in a few minutes’ time; if he had not read it already. He went back to the flat and was met in the lobby by a relieved Mrs Tinker.

‘Thank heaven you’re back. That American boy’s been on the phone and goin’ on somethink awful. I can’t make ’ead or tail of what ’e thinks he’s talkin’ about. Ravin’ mad, ’e is. I says: Mr Grant’ll ring you, I says, the minute ’e come in, but ’e can’t leave the phone alone. Just puts it down an’ picks it up again. I bin running backwards and forwards between the sink and the phone like a—’ The telephone rang. ‘There you are! There ’e is again!’

Grant picked up the receiver. It was indeed Tad, and he was all that Mrs Tinker had said. He was incoherent with rage.

‘But he lied!’ he kept saying. ‘That guy lied. Of course Bill told him all that!’

‘Yes, of course he did. Listen Tad…Listen…No, you can’t go and beat him to a jelly…Yes, of course you can find his house for yourself; I don’t doubt it, but… Listen , Tad!…I’ve been to his house…Oh, yes, even at this hour of the morning. I read my papers earlier than you do…No, I didn’t beat him up. I couldn’t…No, not because I’m windy but because he’s in Cumberland…Yes. Since Thursday…I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. Give me until lunch-time. Do you trust my judgement on things in general?…Well, you’ll have to trust it in this. I must have time to think…To think up some evidence, of course…It’s customary…I’ll tell my story to the Yard, of course, and of course they will believe me. I mean, my story of Bill’s visit to Lloyd, and Lloyd’s lies to me. But proving that Charles Martin was Bill Kenrick is quite a different matter. Until lunch-time I shall be writing out a statement for the Yard. Come about one o’clock and we can have lunch together. In the afternoon I must turn the whole thing over to the authorities.’

He hated the thought. This was his own private fight. It had been his own private fight from the very beginning. From that moment when he had looked down through the open compartment door on to the dead face of an unknown boy. It was a thousand times more his private fight since his meeting with Lloyd.

He had begun to write, when he remembered that he had not yet picked up the papers he had left with Cartwright. He lifted the receiver, dialled the number, and asked for Cartwright’s extension. Could Cartwright possibly find a messenger to send round with those papers? He, Grant, was frantically busy. It was Saturday, and he was clearing up before going back to work on Monday. He would be very grateful.

He went back to his writing, and became so absorbed that he was conscious only in a dim way that Mrs Tinker had brought in the second post: the noon one. It was when he raised his glance from the paper to search his mind for a word, that his eye fell on the envelope she had laid beside him on the desk. It was a foolscap envelope, rather stiff and expensive, well-filled, and addressed in a thin, angular cramped hand that managed to be at once finicking and flamboyant.

Grant had never seen Heron Lloyd’s handwriting. He recognised it instantly.

He put down his pen; cautiously, as if the strange letter was a bomb and any undue vibration might send it off.

He wiped his palms down the thighs of his trousers in a gesture he had not used since he was a child, the gesture of a small boy facing the incalculable, and put out his hand for the envelope.

It had been posted in London.