'Me, actually,' said Mrs Fulljames with a short, hard look at Doris. 'I was the one in terror.'
'Screaming
’
said Minnie with a sort of satisfaction. 'In the passage.'
'Why?' asked Mod. 'I'm afraid I don't understand.'
'Nor me
’
protested Davies. 'What's it all in aid of?'
'You understand right enough
’
said Mrs Fulljames. But now a little doubt sounded in her voice. 'Don't tell me
you
didn't put that terrible thing up at my window.' Emotion engulfed her again and she half missed the next plate with a ladle-load of lamb stew. 'Oh,' she seethed, scraping it up. 'Oh!'
Davies rose chivalrously and procured a cloth from the kitchen. 'Here
’
he said with solicitude. 'Let me do it
’
He passed the cloth to Mod who made one or two ineffectual dabbing movements over the spilled stew before it was forcibly reclaimed by Mrs Fulljames.
Uncertainty, Davies could see, however, had set in. 'Do you swear to me, on your honour as a police officer, and as a man, that you had
nothing whatever
to do with what occurred in the night?'
'I do
’
answered Davies blatantly. 'I still haven't been told
what
indeed did occur.'
Doris said tartly: 'Somebody put a head, a head and a hat, up to Mrs Fulljames's window. At four o'clock this morning.'
'A head?' inquired Mod. He looked askance at Davies. 'A hat?'
'Whose head?' put in Davies. 'What hat?'
'Don't, don't,' pleaded Mrs Fulljames. 'Please start your meal. I don't want to remember it.' Sharply, she turned to Davies. 'Never in my life have I been so upset,' she said. Her voice began to vibrate again. 'Not even when that horse somehow got into the house.'
'Ah, that horse,' said Davies, nodding at Mod.
'That was a business,' said Mod.
Mrs Fulljames, spoon poised, gave each of them an edged look. 'Exactly,' she said. 'And so was this a business. A painted face
...
like a mad clown
...
tapping at my window.'
Davies appeared aghast. 'Really,' he remarked inadequately.
'...
A mad clown eh?' His concerned eyes travelled to Mod. Mr Smeeton, the Complete Home Entertainer, had said nothing and was minutely trying to extricate a morsel of lamb from a bone.
'Clowns,' said Mod. 'Sounds more l
ike Mr Smee
ton's line of country.'
The entertainer raised profoundly injured eyes. 'I was in my bed, Mr Lewis,' he replied. He resumed his quest. 'Asleep.'
'So were most of us,' said Doris with her sniff. 'But you two weren't.'
'Indeed,' agreed Davies. 'We were absent.'
'Where?' asked Mrs Fulljames.
Davies finished a piece of gravied swede and slid a carrot down his throat like a magician swallowing a goldfish. 'Mrs Fulljames
’
he eventually told her. 'I am sure you will appreciate that as an officer of the law I am unable to inform you about many things. Where I was, and indeed where Mr Lewis was last night
should
be one of them .
..'
'He's
not an officer of the law,' pointed out Mr Smeeton spitefully. 'Not Lewis.'
'Last night,' reiterated Davies,
'should
be one of them. However, since my whereabouts,
our
whereabouts, seem to be so crucial to this matter, I think I would be permitted to tell you that I was at an all-night drug party. Mr Lewis was with me.'
'Drugs?' whispered Doris. Her eyes bolted about the table.
'I was the undercover man,' said Mod, attempting to appear mysterious.
Davies added hurriedly: 'It was necessary for a witness to be present who was not a policeman.'
There was silence, apart from spoons and forks striking plates. 'Are you sure?' said Mrs Fulljames. 'I
could
ring the station.'
'That would
not
be advisable,' said Davies quickly again. 'If you so much as intimated that you knew something about this matter, the drugs squad would be turning this place over before we'd finished our pudding.' Mrs Fulljames gasped. Davies pushed aside his plate, the bone of the single piece of lamb crouched on it like a skeleton in a desert. Reflectively, he knocked it about with his fork. 'A mad clown,' he murmured. 'I don't think I've ever come across a mad clown.'
Edwin Curl was sitting in his gatehouse, his head just visible over the sill, when Davies unloaded the box containing the clown's head from the Vanguard.
'Ah, you've brought him back,' he enthused, getting up and going to help. 'I'm glad he's come home. I can't imagine why you wanted to take him.'
'Nor me,' admitted Davies. 'It was the Scotch. I'm afraid.'
'Oh yes, the Scotch. We drank quite a drop, didn't we? Up there.'
'It's certainly an interesting place,' said Davies. He sat on the edge of Curl's table. 'Never seen anywhere quite like it.' He had fixed Curl with his eye. Curl tried to look away but was not strong enough.
'Go up there more or less every night, do you, Edwin?'
The little security man looked abashed. 'Now, Mr Davies,' he said like a plea for fair play. 'I don't know how much I talked last night. It all got a bit out of hand. The drink and that
'Do you go up there every night?' repeated Davies. 'To that store?'
'No, not every
...
Not now.'
'Not since they took Snow White away?'
Curl looked sulky. 'Now you're taking the piss,' he said in a hurt voice. 'That's easy. I might have said something I shouldn't have said but
Leaning towards him, Davies gently took the collar of the uniform shirt between finger and thumb. 'Edwin,' he said remorselessly. 'You
were
up there, weren't you, with Snow White on the night last October when that man died in the canal? Lofty Brock.'
Misery crowded into the security guard's miniature face. The little head nodded. 'All right,' he answered throatily. 'I was up there with her. Nearly all night.'
Thoughtfully, he drove back to The Babe In Arms. Rain was coming down steadily but it lacked the discomforting edge of winter rain for the season was moving on. Mod was established at their table. Jemma came in from her choral practice.
When he had sat down with a drink before him, Davies said slowly: 'Edwin Curl, the man who was supposed to be guarding the gate of the industrial estate, had absented himself on the night of October 6th last year.'
'What was he doing?' asked Jemma.
'Embracing Snow White,' said Davies simply.
Her expressive eyebrows arched, but before she could ask questions, Mod took a ragged portion of newspaper from his overcoat pocket. 'I'd overlooked this
’
he said, leaning across the table. 'I seem to remember taking it from a paper at Harry's last night.' He looked up. Their faces were only half-expectant. 'I'll read it
’
he said.
'Please
’
invited Davies. 'I'm on edge.'
Mod put his unwieldy glasses on his face. 'It's only a paragraph
’
he said. 'It says: "Dorset Police have identified a body washed ashore at Chesil Bank, near Weymouth, on October 7th last year, as Sigmund Dietrich, an executive of the Becker Pharmaceutical Corporation, of Zurich, the resumed inquest at Dorchester was told yesterday. An open verdict was recorded."'
'October 7th. The same day as Lofty was found,' breathed Davies. He reached for the scrap of newsprint.
'And
a pharmaceutical executive.'
'It needn't mean a thing,' said Mod, but obviously pleased. 'But it may.' He wagged a fat and none-too-clean finger. 'You know we've always thought of Frau Harrer, who
also
works for a pharmaceutical company, as German. But she could easily be Swiss. After all we call her the Jungfrau but where
is
the Jungfrau?'
'In Switzerland,' said Jemma.
14
Spring was edging its green way through the countryside. Even the ancient Vanguard seemed to know this, for it produced several roaring spurts which, at times, swung the speedometer beyond the fifty-miles-an-hour mark.
'Steady
’
cautioned Jemma. 'If this falls to bits, it's going to cost a fortune to have it cleared from the motorway.'
'Hampshire
’
enthused Davies. 'Look at the catkins.'
A great bruised cloud moved across the sun and soon it began to rain briskly. She held on to his arm above the elbow. 'We're on holiday,' she breathed. 'Just think, we're on our first holiday together.'
'Compulsory leave it's called,' corrected Davies. 'In my case. Only one better than being suspended. Compulsory leave while the Metropolitan Police makes up its mind whether or not to kick me out of the force.'
'If they do,' she said decisively, 'then I'll pack up as well.'
'We could come down to Hampshire,' he said. 'And grow catkins.'
She looked at her watch. 'Eleven o'clock,' she said enthusiastically. 'What shall we do when we get there?'
'I'm treading carefully
’
he said. 'I can't go around asking too many questions, acting like a copper. The Dorset police could really cook my goose, providing there's a goose left.'
She pouted. 'I didn't mean that
’
she said. 'I meant like walking together on the beach or sharing a bottle of wine
’
'Ah, that as well,' he said. 'Both in fact.'
They reached the end of the motorway where the road by-passed Winchester and curved gradually west. The Hampshire fields with their reappearing rivers gave way to the New Forest brushland. They crossed into Dorset. Jemma said: 'You'll be very disappointed, won't you, Dangerous, if none of this works out?'
'Very,' he nodded. 'If there was no crime then I'm never going to find one, that's for sure. I could go on raking old ashes for ever.' They drove in silence until they reached Wimborne. 'We keep finding disjoined pieces, don't we?' he said eventually. He was trying to reassure himself. 'Every time something turns up, it adds something to it. Lofty Brock, for example, is now Billy Dobson.' He looked at her sideways, beseechingly. 'Don't say that doesn't mean he was murdered.'
'I wasn't going to,' she assured quietly. 'But it doesn't.' She half turned, consolingly touching his hand on the steering wheel. 'You've been finding things, Dangerous,' she said. 'But they're bits of history. Bits of crimes long ago, secrets and everything. But
...'
'But what?
But
I still haven't discovered whether it
was
a murder much less
who
did it, if it
was
in the first place. Nor the motive - if there ever was a motive.'
'That's the nearest thing to double Dutch I've heard, even from you,' she laughed.
He grinned at her. 'When sober that is,' he said. He looked out at the low, old Dorset roofs. 'Let's have a drink,' he suggested. 'They seem to keep sensible opening hours down here.'
The car was turned into the courtyard of a whitewashed inn with a powerful tower of a church rising beyond its roof. The engine died with a sigh of relief. Davies hurried from the driving seat and with massive courtesy opened the passenger door for Jemma. She was wearing a green sweater and slim white trousers. As they went into the bar, Jemma first, a man who was balancing across the floor with a full tankard let it slip in his fingers and slop over. The barman, his attention also fixed on Jemma, kept pulling the pump handle long after the glass beneath was brimming over. There were three other men in the room and they sat entranced. 'They don't see many girls in green sweaters down here,' suggested Davies in a whisper.
'Especially black girls,' she whispered.
They advanced on the bar. "Morning,' said the barman, still looking at her. 'Nice day for travelling.'
Jemma ordered a glass of wine, Davies had a pint of beer. 'How did you know we were travelling?' asked Davies.
'I knew you weren't from around here,' said the barman. 'I'd have noticed.' He looked up uncertainly. 'Deduction,' he said. 'I used to be a policeman. In London.'
'Retired to peace and quiet, have you?' said Davies easily. He took the drinks. 'Not a lot of crime around here, is there?'
'We have our share,' said the man. Davies asked if he would like a drink and he accepted. 'Across the back here
...'
He nodded over his shoulder. 'In the graveyard, there's one of the great unsolved mysteries.'
'What's that?'
'The burial place of the man they reckon was Jack-the-Ripper. The prime suspect. Montague John Druitt. Nobody will ever know now, of course. It's too far gone.'