Edmund Crispin - The Moving Toyshop

Fen gazed at him kindly. ‘Very nice, as far as it goes,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t explain the fundamental mystery of the business – why the grocery shop was turned into a toyshop in the first place.’

Cadogan had not thought of this.

‘You see,’ Fen continued, ‘they couldn’t have known you were going to blunder in. You’re the fly in the ointment. The groceries were removed, and the toys substituted, for some entirely different purpose. Then they had to be switched back again, in any case.’

Something like relief was coming back to Cadogan’s mind. For a while he almost wondered if he were, in fact, suffering from delusions. Belying all outward appearance, there was something extremely reliable about Fen. Cadogan assembled his sharp-cut, supercilious features into a frown.

‘But why?’ he asked.

‘I can think of several good reasons,’ said Fen gloomily. ‘But they’re probably all wrong.’

Cadogan stubbed out his cigarette and groped for a fresh one. As he did so his fingers came in contact with the scrap of paper he had picked up near the body. He was astonished to realize that he had forgotten all about it until this moment.

‘Here!’ he cried excitedly, pulling it out of his pocket. ‘Look! Tangible proof. I picked this up by the body. I didn’t remember I had it. I’d better go back to the police.’ He half rose, in some agitation, from his chair.

‘My dear fellow, calm yourself,’ said Fen, taking the scrap of paper from him. ‘Anyway, what is this thing tangible proof of?’ He read out the pencilled figures. ‘07691. A telephone number, apparently.’

‘Probably the number of the woman who was killed.’

‘Dear good Richard, what an extraordinary lack of perceptivity…One doesn’t carry one’s own telephone number about with one.’

‘She may have written it down for someone. Or it may not have been hers.’

‘No.’ Fen ruminated over the scrap of paper. ‘Since you seem to be forgetting rather a lot of things, I suppose you didn’t come across her handbag and look inside it?’

‘I’m certain it wasn’t there. Obviously, it’s the first thing I should have done.’

‘One never knows with poets.’ Fen sighed deeply and returned to the desk. ‘Well, there’s only one thing to be done with this number, and that is to ring it.’ He took off the receiver, dialled 07691, and waited. After a while there was an answer.

‘Hello.’ A rather tremulous woman’s voice.

‘Hello, Miss Scott,’ said Fen cheerfully. ‘How are you? Have you been long back from Baluchistan?’

Cadogan gazed at him blankly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice. ‘But I’m not Miss Scott.’

‘Oh.’ Fen gazed at the instrument in great dismay, as though he were expecting it to fall apart at any instant. ‘Who is that speaking, please?’

‘This is Mrs Wheatley. I’m afraid you have the wrong number.’

‘Why, so I have. Very stupid of me. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Good-bye.’ Fen seized the telephone directory and flipped over the pages.

‘Wheatley,’ he murmured. ‘Wheatley…Ah, here it is. Wheatley, Mrs J. H., 229 New Inn Hall Street, Oxford 07691. The lady seemed to be in very good health. And I suppose you realize, my dear Cadogan, that it might be any one of a thousand exchanges besides this?’

Cadogan nodded wearily. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘It’s hopeless, really.’

‘Look here, did you go round to the back of the shop with the police? The way you got out?’

‘Actually, no.’

‘Well, we’ll do that now. I want to have a look at the place, anyway.’ Fen considered. ‘I’ve got a tutorial at ten, but that can be put off.’ He scribbled a message on the back of an envelope and propped it up on the mantelpiece. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll drive.’

They drove. Driving with Fen was no pleasure to a man in Cadogan’s condition. It was all right in St Giles’ because St Giles’ is an immensely broad street where it is quite difficult to hit anything, except for the pedestrians who constantly scuttle across its expanses like startled hens, in a frantic and perilous gauntlet race. But they nearly smashed into a tradesman’s van in Broad Street, despite its width, they tore across the traffic lights by the King’s Arms just as they were changing, and they traversed Holywell Street and Long Wall Street in rather under a minute. Their eventual emergence into the thronged High Street Richard Cadogan describes as being by far the most horrifying episode of his entire adventure, for Fen was not the man to wait for anyone or anything. Cadogan stopped his eyes and ears and tried to meditate on the eternal verities. Yet somehow they did it, and were across Magdalen Bridge, and for the third time that morning he found himself in the Iffley Road.

Fen brought Lily Christine III to a shuddering standstill some way away from the location of the phantom toyshop.

‘You’ve been here before,’ he pointed out. ‘Someone might recognize you.’ The car backfired. ‘I wish it wouldn’t do that…I’m going to spy out the land. Wait till I come back.’ He climbed out.

‘All right,’ said Cadogan. ‘You’ll find it quite easily. Just opposite that church.’

‘When I get back, we’ll go round behind the shop.’ Fen strode off with his customary vigour.

The morning shopping rush had not yet begun, and the establishment of Winkworth, Family Grocer and Provisioner, was empty except for the grocer himself, a fat man swathed in priestly white, with a rotund and jolly face. Fen entered with a good deal of noise, observing, however, that the door did not squeak.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said the grocer amiably, ‘and what can I do for you?’

‘Oh,’ said Fen, who was looking curiously about him, ‘I want a pound of’ – he cast about in his mind for something suitable – ‘of sardines.’

Manifestly the grocer was somewhat taken aback. ‘I’m afraid we don’t sell them by weight, sir.’

‘A tin of rice, then.’ Fen frowned accusingly.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Are you Mr Winkworth?’ Fen hastily dismissed the subject of purchases.

‘Why, no, sir. I’m only the manager here. It’s Miss Winkworth as owns the shop – Miss Alice Winkworth.’

‘Oh. May I see her?’

‘I’m afraid she’s away from Oxford at the moment.’

‘Oh. Does she live above here, then?’

‘No, sir.’ The man looked at him oddly. ‘No one lives above here. And now, about your purchases—’

‘I think I’ll leave them till later,’ said Fen blandly. ‘Much later,’ he added.

‘I shall be at your service any time, sir,’ the grocer answered magniloquently.

‘A pity’ – Fen watched the man closely – ‘a pity you don’t sell toys.’

‘Toys!’ the grocer ejaculated, and it was obvious that his astonishment was genuine. ‘Well, sir, it’s hardly likely you’d find toys in a grocer’s shop, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t, is it?’ said Fen cheerfully. ‘Nor dead bodies either. Good morning to you.’ He went out.

‘It’s no good,’ he told Cadogan, who was sitting in Lily Christine III, trying to adjust his bandage and staring in front of him. ‘I’m convinced that man knows nothing about it. Though he did behave rather queerly when I asked about the owner of the shop. A Miss Alice Winkworth, apparently.’

Cadogan grunted ambiguously at this information. ‘Well, let’s go round to the back, if you think it will do any good.’ His tone indicated little confidence in this prospect.

‘And by the way,’ Fen added as they walked down the narrow, sloping alleyway which led to the back of the shops, ‘was there anyone about when you came with the police this morning?’