Thirteen

COLIN LAMB’S NARRATIVE

I walked up Charing Cross Road and turned into the maze of streets thattwist their way between New Oxford Street and Covent Garden. All sortsof unsuspected shops did business there, antique shops, a dolls’ hospital,ballet shoes, foreign delicatessen shops.

I resisted the lure of the dolls’ hospital with its various pairs of blue orbrown glass eyes, and came at last to my objective. It was a small dingybookshop in a side street not far from the British Museum. It had the usualtrays of books outside. Ancient novels, old text books, odds and ends of allkinds, labelled 3d., 6d., 1s., even some aristocrats which had nearly alltheir pages, and occasionally even their binding intact.

I sidled through the doorway. It was necessary to sidle since precari-ously arranged books impinged more and more every day on the passage-way from the street. Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shoprather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and takenpossession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lackingany strong hand to keep them down. The distance between bookshelveswas so narrow that you could only get along with great difficulty. Therewere piles of books perched on every shelf or table. On a stool in a corner,hemmed in by books, was an old man in a pork-pie hat with a large flatface like a stuffed fish. He had the air of one who has given up an unequalstruggle. He had attempted to master the books, but the books had obvi-ously succeeded in mastering him. He was a kind of King Canute of thebook world, retreating before the advancing book tide. If he ordered it toretreat it would have been with the sure and hopeless certainty that itwould not do so. This was Mr. Solomon, proprietor of the shop. He recog-nized me, his fishlike stare softened for a moment and he nodded.

“Got anything in my line?” I asked.

“You’ll have to go up and see, Mr. Lamb. Still on seaweeds and thatstuff?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you know where they are. Marine biology, fossils, Antarctica—second floor. I had a new parcel in day before yesterday. I started to un-pack ’em but I haven’t got round to it properly yet. You’ll find them in acorner up there.”

I nodded and sidled my way onwards to where a small rather ricketyand very dirty staircase led up from the back of the shop. On the first floorwere Orientalia, art books, medicine, and French classics. In this roomwas a rather interesting little curtained corner not known to the generalpublic, but accessible to experts, where what is called “odd” or “curious”

volumes reposed. I passed them and went on up to the second floor.

Here archaeological, natural history, and other respectable volumeswere rather inadequately sorted into categories. I steered my way throughstudents and elderly colonels and clergymen, passed round the angle of abookcase, stepped over various gaping parcels of books on the floor andfound my further progress barred by two students of opposite sexes lost tothe world in a closely knit embrace. They stood there swaying to and fro. Isaid:

“Excuse me,” pushed them firmly aside, raised a curtain which maskeda door, and slipping a key from my pocket, turned it in the lock and passedthrough. I found myself incongruously in a kind of vestibule with cleanlydistempered walls hung with prints of Highland cattle, and a door with ahighly polished knocker on it. I manipulated the knocker discreetly andthe door was opened by an elderly woman with grey hair, spectacles of aparticularly old-fashioned kind, a black skirt and a rather unexpected pep-permint-striped jumper.

“It’s you, is it?” she said without any other form of greeting. “He wasasking about you only yesterday. He wasn’t pleased.” She shook her headat me, rather as an elderly governess might do at a disappointing child.

“You’ll have to try and do better,” she said.

“Oh, come off it, Nanny,” I said.

“And don’t call me Nanny,” said the lady. “It’s a cheek. I’ve told you sobefore.”

“It’s your fault,” I said. “You mustn’t talk to me as if I were a small boy.”

“Time you grew up. You’d better go in and get it over.”

She pressed a buzzer, picked up a telephone from the desk, and said:

“Mr. Colin … Yes, I’m sending him in.” She put it down and nodded tome.

I went through a door at the end of the room into another room whichwas so full of cigar smoke that it was difficult to see anything at all. Aftermy smarting eyes had cleared, I beheld the ample proportions of my chiefsitting back in an aged, derelict grandfather chair, by the arm of whichwas an old-fashioned reading or writing desk on a swivel.

Colonel Beck took off his spectacles, pushed aside the reading desk onwhich was a vast tome and looked disapprovingly at me.

“So it’s you at last?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Got anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah! Well, it won’t do, Colin, d’you hear? Won’t do. Crescents indeed!”

“I still think,” I began.

“All right. You still think. But we can’t wait forever while you’re think-ing.”

“I’ll admit it was only a hunch,” I said.

“No harm in that,” said Colonel Beck.

He was a contradictory man.

“Best jobs I’ve ever done have been hunches. Only this hunch of yoursdoesn’t seem to be working out. Finished with the pubs?”

“Yes, sir. As I told you I’ve started on Crescents. Houses in crescents iswhat I mean.”

“I didn’t suppose you meant bakers’ shops with French rolls in them,though, come to think of it, there’s no reason why not. Some of theseplaces make an absolute fetish of producing French croissants that aren’treally French. Keep ’em in a deep freeze nowadays like everything else.

That’s why nothing tastes of anything nowadays.”

I waited to see whether the old boy would enlarge upon this topic. It wasa favourite one of his. But seeing that I was expecting him to do so, ColonelBeck refrained.

“Wash out all round?” he demanded.

“Almost. I’ve still got a little way to go.”

“You want more time, is that it?”

“I want more time, yes,” I said. “But I don’t want to move on to anotherplace this minute. There’s been a kind of coincidence and it might—onlymight—mean something.”

“Don’t waffle. Give me facts.”

“Subject of investigation, Wilbraham Crescent.”

“And you drew a blank! Or didn’t you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Define yourself, define yourself, boy.”

“The coincidence is that a man was murdered in Wilbraham Crescent.”

“Who was murdered?”

“As yet he’s unknown. Had a card with a name and address in hispocket, but that was bogus.”

“Hm. Yes. Suggestive. Tie up in any way?”

“I can’t see that it does, sir, but all the same….”

“I know, I know. All the same … Well, what have you come for? Comefor permission to go on nosing about Wilbraham Crescent—wherever thatabsurd-sounding place is?”

“It’s a place called Crowdean. Ten miles from Portlebury.”

“Yes, yes. Very good locality. But what are you here for? You don’t usu-ally ask permission. You go your own pigheaded way, don’t you?”

“That’s right, sir, I’m afraid I do.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

“There are a couple of people I want vetted.”

With a sigh Colonel Beck drew his reading desk back into position, tooka ball-pen from his pocket, blew on it and looked at me.

“Well?”

“House called Diana Lodge. Actually, 20, Wilbraham Crescent. Womancalled Mrs. Hemming and about eighteen cats live there.”

“Diana? Hm,” said Colonel Beck. “Moon goddess! Diana Lodge. Right.

What does she do, this Mrs. Hemming?”

“Nothing,” I said, “she’s absorbed in her cats.”

“Damned good cover, I dare say,” said Beck appreciatively. “Certainlycould be. Is that all?”

“No,” I said. “There’s a man called Ramsay. Lives at 62, Wilbraham Cres-cent. Said to be a construction engineer, whatever that is. Goes abroad agood deal.”

“I like the sound of that,” said Colonel Beck. “I like the sound of that verymuch. You want to know about him, do you? All right.”

“He’s got a wife,” I said. “Quite a nice wife, and two obstreperous chil-dren—boys.”

“Well, he might have,” said Colonel Beck. “It has been known. You re-member Pendleton? He had a wife and children. Very nice wife. Stupidestwoman I’ve ever come across. No idea in her head that her husbandwasn’t a pillar of respectability in oriental book dealing. Come to think ofit, now I remember, Pendleton had a German wife as well, and a couple ofdaughters. And he also had a wife in Switzerland. I don’t know what thewives were—his private excesses or just camouflage. He’d say of coursethat they were camouflage. Well, anyway, you want to know about Mr.

Ramsay. Anything else?”

“I’m not sure. There’s a couple at 63. Retired professor. McNaughton byname. Scottish. Elderly. Spends his time gardening. No reason to think heand his wife are not all right—but—”

“All right. We’ll check. We’ll put ’em through the machine to make sure.

What are all these people, by the way?”

“They’re people whose gardens verge on or touch the garden of thehouse where the murder was committed.”

“Sounds like a French exercise,” said Beck. “Where is the dead body ofmy uncle? In the garden of the cousin of my aunt. What about Number 19itself?”

“A blind woman, a former school teacher, lives there. She works in aninstitute for the blind and she’s been thoroughly investigated by the localpolice.”

“Live by herself?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your idea about all these other people?”

“My idea is,” I said, “that if a murder was committed by any of theseother people in any of these other houses that I have mentioned to you, itwould be perfectly easy, though risky, to convey the dead body into Num-ber 19 at a suitable time of day. It’s a mere possibility, that’s all. Andthere’s something I’d like to show you. This.”

Beck took the earthstained coin I held out to him.

“A Czech Haller? Where did you find it?”

“I didn’t. But it was found in the back garden of Number 19.”

“Interesting. You may have something after all in your persistent fixa-tion on crescents and rising moons.” He added thoughtfully, “There’s apub called The Rising Moon in the next street to this. Why don’t you goand try your luck there?”

“I’ve been there already,” I said.

“You’ve always got an answer, haven’t you?” said Colonel Beck. “Have acigar?”

I shook my head. “Thank you—no time today.”

“Going back to Crowdean?”

“Yes. There’s the inquest to attend.”

“It will only be adjourned. Sure it’s not some girl you’re running after inCrowdean?”

“Certainly not,” I said sharply.

Colonel Beck began to chuckle unexpectedly.

“You mind your step, my boy! Sex rearing its ugly head as usual. Howlong have you known her?”

“There isn’t any—I mean—well—there was a girl who discovered thebody.”

“What did she do when she discovered it?”

“Screamed.”

“Very nice too,” said the colonel. “She rushed to you, cried on yourshoulder and told you about it. Is that it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said coldly. “Have a look atthese.”

I gave him a selection of the police photographs.

“Who’s this?” demanded Colonel Beck.

“The dead man.”

“Ten to one this girl you’re so keen about killed him. The whole storysounds very fishy to me.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet,” I said. “I haven’t told it to you.”

“I don’t need telling,” Colonel Beck waved his cigar. “Go away to your in-quest, my boy, and look out for that girl. Is her name Diana, or Artemis, oranything crescenty or moonlike?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well, remember that it might be!”