But Jammy gleaned little from their unguarded chatter.
And then over their heads he saw a face that made him pause. A fair face
with light lashes and the look of a rather kind terrier. He knew that man.
His name was Sanger. And the last time he had seen him was sitting at a desk
in Scotland Yard.
So Grant had had a little imagination after all!
Jammy flung his hat disgustedly on and went out to think things over.
GRANT had imagination, yes. But it was not Jammy’s kind. It
would never have occurred to him to waste the time of a perfectly good
detective by sending him to look at an audience for two hours. Sanger was at
the Ewes Hall because his job for the moment was to tail Jason Harmer.
He brought back an account of the afternoon’s drama, and reported that
Harmer had been, as far as he could see, quite unmoved. He, Jason, had been
accosted by Hopkins from the
Clarion
directly afterwards; but Hopkins
didn’t seem to get very far with him.
“Yes?” said Grant, lifting an eyebrow. “If he’s a match for Hopkins, we
must begin to consider him again. Cleverer than I thought!” And Sanger
grinned.
On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Erskine telephoned to say that the fish had
bitten. What he said, of course, was that “the line of investigation
suggested by Inspector Grant had, it would appear, proved unexpectedly
successful,” but what he meant was that the fish had risen. Would Grant come
along as soon as he could to inspect a document which Mr. Erskine was anxious
to show him?
Grant would! In twelve minutes he was in the little green-lighted
room.
Erskine, his hand trembling a little more than usual, gave him a letter to
read.
Sir,
Having seen your advertisement saying that if Herbert Gotobed will call at
your office he will hear of something to his advantage, I beg to state that I
am unable to come personally but if you will communicate your news to me by
letter to 5, Threadle Street, Canterbury, I will get the letter.
Yours faithfully,
HERBERT GOTOBED
“Canterbury!” Grant’s eyes lighted. He handled the letter lovingly. The
paper was cheap, and the ink poor. The style and the writing vaguely
illiterate. Grant remembered Christine’s letter with its easy sentences and
its individual hand, and marveled for the thousandth time at the mystery of
breeding.
“Canterbury! It’s almost too good to be true. An accommodation address. I
wonder why? Is our Herbert ‘wanted,’ by any chance? The Yard certainly don’t
know him. Not by that name. Pity we haven’t got a photograph of him.
“And what is our next move, Inspector?”
“You write saying that if he doesn’t put in a personal appearance you have
no guarantee that he is Herbert Gotobed, and that it is therefore necessary
for him to come to your offices!”
“Yes. Yes, certainly. That would be quite in order.”
As if it mattered a hoot whether it was in order, Grant thought. How did
these fellows imagine criminals were caught? Not by wondering what would be
in order, that was certain!
“If you post it straightaway, it will be in Canterbury tonight. I’ll go
down tomorrow morning and be waiting for the bird when he arrives. May I use
your telephone?”
He called the Yard and asked, “Are you sure that none of the list of
‘wanted’ men has a passion for preaching or otherwise indulging in
theatricality?”
The Yard said no, only Holy Mike, and everyone in the force had known him
for years. He was reported from Plymouth, by the way.
“How appropriate!” Grant said, and hung up. “Strange!” he said to Erskine.
“If he isn’t wanted, why lie low? If he has nothing on his
conscience—no, he hasn’t a conscience. I mean, if we have nothing on
him, I should have thought the same lad would have been in your office by
return of post. He’d do almost anything for money. Clay knew where to hurt
him when she left him that shilling.”
“Lady Edward was a shrewd judge of character. She had, I think, been
brought up in a hard school, and the fact helped her to discriminate.”
Grant asked if he had known her well.
“No, I regret to say, no. A very charming woman. A little impatient of
orthodox form, but otherwise—”
Yes. Grant could almost hear her saying, “And in plain English what does
that mean?” She, too, must have suffered from Mr. Erskine.
Grant took his leave, warned Williams to be ready to accompany him next
morning to Canterbury, arranged for a substitute in the absence of them both,
and went home and slept for ten hours. In the morning, very early, he and
Williams left a London not yet awake and arrived in a Canterbury shrouded in
the smoke of breakfast.
The accommodation address proved to be, as Grant had expected, a small
newsagent in a side street. Grant considered it, and said: “I don’t suppose
our friend will show up this end of the day, but one never knows. You go
across to the pub over the way, engage that room above the saloon door, and
have breakfast sent up to you. Don’t leave the window, and keep an eye on
everyone who comes. I’m going inside. When I want you I’ll sign from the shop
window.”
“Aren’t you going to have breakfast, sir?”
“I’ve had it. You can order lunch for one o’clock, though. It doesn’t look
the kind of place that would have a chop in the house.”
Grant lingered until he saw Williams come to the upper window. Then he
turned into the small shop. A round bald man with a heavy black mustache was
transferring cartons of cigarettes from a cardboard box to a glass case.
“Good morning. Are you Mr. Rickett?”
“That’s me,” Mr. Rickett said, with caution.
“I understand that you sometimes use these premises as an accommodation
address?”
Mr. Rickett looked him over. His experienced eye asked, Customer or
police? and decided correctly.
“And what if I do? Nothing wrong in that, is there?”
“Not a thing!” Grant answered cheerfully. “I wanted to know whether you
knew a Mr. Herbert Gotobed?”
“This a joke?”
“Certainly not. He gave your shop as an address for letters, and I
wondered if you knew him.”
“Not me. I don’t take no interest in the people who has letters. They pay
their fee when they come for them, and that finishes it as far as I am
concerned.”
“I see. Well, I want you to help me. I want you to let me stay in your
shop until Mr. Gotobed comes to claim his letter. You have a letter for
him?”
“Yes, I have a letter. It came last night. But—you police?”
“Scotland Yard,” Grant showed his credentials.
“Yes. Well, I don’t want no arrests on my premises. This is a respectable
business, this is, even if I do a little on the side. I don’t want no bad
name hanging around my business.”
Grant assured him that no arrest was contemplated. All he wanted was to
meet Mr. Gotobed. He wanted information from him.
Oh, well, if that was all.
So Grant was established behind the little tower of cheap editions at the
end of the counter, and found the morning passing not so slowly as he had
feared. Humanity, even after all his years in the force, still had a lively
interest in Grant’s eyes—except in moments of depression—and
interest proved plentiful. It was Williams, watching a very ordinary
small-town street, who was bored. He welcomed the half hour of conversation
behind the books when Grant went to lunch, and went back reluctantly to the
frowsy room above the saloon. The long summer afternoon, clouded and warm,
wore away into a misty evening, and a too early dusk. The first lights
appeared, very pale in the daylight.
“What time do you close?” Grant asked anxiously.
“Oh, tennish.”
There was still plenty of time.
And then, about half-past nine, Grant became aware of a presence in the
shop. There had been no warning of footsteps, no announcement at all except a
swish of drapery. Grant looked up to see a man in monk’s garb.
A high-pitched peevish voice said, “You have a letter addressed to Mr.
Herbert—”
A light movement on Grant’s part called attention to his presence.
Without a moment’s pause the man turned and disappeared, leaving his
sentence unfinished.
The apparition had been so unexpected, the disappearance so abrupt, that
it was a second or two before mortal wits could cope with the situation. But
Grant was out of the shop before the stranger was more than a few yards down
the street. He saw the figure turn into an alley, and he ran. It was a little
back court of two storey houses, all the doors open to the warm evening, and
two transverse alleys leading out of it. The man had disappeared. He turned
to find Williams, a little breathless, at his back.
“Good man!” he said. “But it isn’t much use. You take that alley and I’ll
take this one. A monk of sorts!”
“I saw him!” Williams said, making off. But it was no good. In ten minutes
they met at the newsagent’s, blank.
“Who was that?” Grant demanded of Mr. Rickett.
“Don’t know. Never saw him before as far as I know.”
“Is there a monastery here?”
“In Canterbury? No!”
“Well, in the district?”
“Not as I knows.”
A woman behind them put down sixpence on the counter. “Goldflake,” she
said. “You looking for a monastery? There’s that brotherhood place in Bligh
Vennel. They’re by way of being monks. Ropes around their middles and bare
heads.”
“Where is—what is it? Bligh Vennel?” Grant asked. “Far from
here?”
“No. ‘Bout two streets. Less as the crow flies, but that won’t be much
good to you in Canterbury. It’s in the lanes behind the Cock and Pheasant.
I’d show you myself, if Jim wasn’t waiting for his smoke. A sixpenny packet,
Mr. Rickett, please.”
“After hours,” said Mr. Rickett, gruffly, avoiding the detective’s eye.
The woman’s confidence was a conviction in itself.
She looked surprised, and before she should commit herself further Grant
pulled his own cigarette case from his pocket. “Madam, they say a nation gets
the laws it deserves. It is not in my weak power to obtain the sixpenny
packet for you, but please let me repay your help by providing Jim’s smoke.”
He poured his cigarettes into her astonished hands, and dismissed her,
protesting.
“And now,” he said to Rickett, “about this brotherhood or whatever it is.
Do you know it?”
“No. There is such a thing, now I remember. But I don’t know where they
hang out. You heard what she said. Behind the Cock and Pheasant. Half the
cranks in the world has branches here, if it comes to that. I’m shutting up
now.”
“I should,” Grant said. “People wanting cigarettes are a nuisance.”
Mr. Rickett growled.
“Come on, Williams. And remember, Rickett, not a word of this to anyone.
You’ll probably see us tomorrow.”
Rickett was understood to say that if he never saw them again it would be
too soon.
“This is a rum go, sir,” Williams said, as they set off down the street.
“What’s the program now?”
“I’m going to call on the brotherhood. I don’t think you had better come
along, Williams. Your good healthy Worcestershire face doesn’t suggest any
yearning after the life ascetic.”
“You mean I look like a cop. I know, sir. It’s worried me often. Bad for
business. You don’t know how I envy you your looks, sir. People think ‘Army’
the minute they see you. It’s a great help always to be taken for Army.”
“Considering all the dud checks on Cox’s, I find that surprising! No, I
wasn’t considering your looks, Williams, not that way. I was just talking
‘thoughtless.’ It’s a one-man party, this. You’d better go back to the
aspidistra and wait for me. Have a meal.”
They found the place after some search. A row of first-storey windows
looked down upon the alley, but the only opening on the ground floor was a
narrow door, heavy and studded. The building apparently faced into a court or
garden. There was neither plate nor inscription at the door to give
information to the curious. But there was a bell.
Grant rang, and after a long pause there was the sound, faint through the
heavy door, of footsteps on a stone floor. A small grill in the door shot
back, and a man asked Grant’s business.
Grant asked to see the principal.
“
Whom
do you wish to see?”
“The principal,” said Grant firmly. He didn’t know whether they called
their Number One abbot or prior; principal seemed to him good enough.
“The Reverend Father does not give audience at this hour.”
“Will you give the Reverend Father my card,” Grant said, handing the
little square through the grill, “and tell him that I shall be grateful if he
would see me on a matter of importance.”
“No worldly matter is of importance.”
“The Reverend Father may decide differently when you have given him my
card.”
The grill shot back with an effect which might in a community less saintly
have been described as snappish, and Grant was left in the darkening street.
Williams saluted silently from some paces’ distance and turned away. The
distant voices of children playing came clearly from adjoining streets, but
there was no traffic in the alley. Williams’s footsteps had faded out of
hearing long before there was the sound of returning ones in the passage
beyond the door. Then there was the creak of bolts being drawn and a key
turned. (What did they shut out? Grant wondered. Life? Or were the bars to
keep straying wills indoors?) The door was opened sufficiently to admit him,
and the man bade him enter.
“Peace be with you and with all Christian souls and the blessing of the
Lord God go with you now and for ever, amen,” gabbled the man as he shot the
bolts again and turned the key. If he had hummed a line of “Sing to Me
Sometimes” the effect would have been exactly similar, Grant thought.
“The Reverend Father in his graciousness will see you,” the man said, and
led the way up the stone passage, his sandals slapping with a slovenly effect
on the flags. He ushered Grant into a small whitewashed room, bare except for
a table, chairs, and a Crucifix, said “Peace be with you,” and shut the door,
leaving Grant alone. It was very chilly there, and Grant hoped that the
Reverend Father would not discipline him by leaving him there too long.