“Yes, but he took something out of it first. I came in when he was packing it up again. And if it’s something valuable, it’ll be in his private safe.”
“To which,” said Mr. Caversham, with a ghost of a smile, “you have, no doubt, a duplicate key.”
“No, I haven’t. But I know where he keeps his key. It’s in a stupid little so-called secret drawer in the desk. I found out about it months ago.”
“Few things remain hidden from an observant woman,” said Mr. Caversham. “Are you asking me to help you?”
“That’s just what I am asking.”
“I agree. Two heads are better than one. What I suggest is this – I’ll go down this evening and keep an eye on the bookshop. You have a look in the safe. I shouldn’t take anything – just look. We’ll meet later and add up what we’ve got. If it’s enough to put old Trembling away, we’ll let the police have it.”
“Could we talk out at your place?”
“It’s a bit off the beaten track.”
“All the better. I’ve got a car.”
“Eight o’clock, then,” said Mr. Caversham. “Nip back now. We don’t want to be seen together.”
He gave her two minutes start, paid the bill and walked back thoughtfully. Possibly he was wondering how Lucilla knew where he lived. He could not recollect that he had ever told her.
At twenty past five, Arthur Trembling walked through the front office, scattering a general “Good night” as he went. Mr. Caversham thought that he, too, looked preoccupied. Perhaps his Rotarian speech was weighing on his mind.
Mr. Caversham helped Mr. Belton to close down the front office, got out his car and drove it toward the station, parking it in the yard. The last bit, he thought, would be better done on foot. He had noticed a sidewalk café nearly opposite the bookshop. He took a seat in the bow window, ordered plaice and chips, opened an evening paper and settled down to watch.
In the first half hour, one old lady and one schoolboy entered the bookshop. Neither stayed more than three minutes. Shortly after six, Henry Trembling emerged, put the shutters up, padlocked an iron arm into place across the door and departed.
“And that,” said Mr. Caversham, “would appear to be that.”
Nevertheless he remained where he was. His interest had shifted to the office building next to the bookshop. This was a building with an entrance opening on the street, inside which he could see a board with names on it and a staircase which no doubt served the several offices in the building.
Mr. Caversham noted a number of men and women coming out. He also noted quite a few middle-aged and elderly men going in – a fact which seemed a little odd at that time of night. But what was odder still – none of them seemed to reappear.
Mr. Caversham scribbled a rough tally on the edge of his paper. ‘White hair, horn-rims, 6:18.’ ‘Fat, red carnation, 6:35.’ ‘Tall, thin, checked ulster, 6:50.’ By half past seven he had a list of eleven people, and had exhausted the patience of his waitress. He paid his bill and left. As he came out of the café, a twelfth man was disappearing into the office building.
Farther down the street, on the other side, a red-faced man was sitting at the wheel of an old grey Buick. There was, nothing odd about him except that Mr. Caversham, who missed little, had noticed him there when he went into the café nearly two hours earlier.
He walked back to his car and drove home.
The furnished cottage he had rented lay at the end of a short straight lane, rutted and dusty in summer, barely passable in winter. Some people might have found it lonely, but Mr. Caversham was fond of solitude. Now, in late spring, the trees were in full leaf and the approach to the cottage was a tunnel of shadow.
He touched on his headlights as he swung in off the main road, and braked just in time. The smart two-seater Fiat was parked in the middle of the drive, and not more than two yards in.
“Women!” said Mr. Caversham. He got out and approached the car cautiously. Lucilla was in the passenger seat. She did not turn her head as he came up. Mr. Caversham opened the door on the driver’s side. The opening of the door operated the interior light, which came on and showed him Lucilla more clearly.
She was dead, and had been dead, he guessed, for some time. Her face was already livid. She had been strangled, and the cord which had strangled her was still round her neck, cut so deep into the flesh that only the ends could be seen dangling at the front like a parody of a necktie.
Mr. Caversham got out of the car and closed the door softly. He stood in the drive, balanced squarely on his legs, his thick body bent forward, his arms hanging loosely. His head turned slowly, left and right. He looked like a Western gun-fighter at the moment of the draw.
Abruptly he swung round, returned to his own car, jumped in, backed it out into the road, and drove it a couple of hundred yards before turning through an open field gate and running in under the trees. He had switched off all the lights before he started. Now he locked the car, and ambled back at a gentle trot by the way he had come. At the comer of the lane he stopped again to look and listen. Dusk was giving way to dark. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the evening.
Mr. Caversham allowed a slow minute to elapse. Then he walked up to the car, opened the door and climbed in without a second glance at the dead girl. The ignition key, as he had noted, was in the lock. The engine, which was still warm, started at first touch. He backed the car out into the road. From the direction of Southampton a car was coming, fast. He could see the headlights as it roared over the humpback bridge beside Shotton.
Mr. Caversham grinned to himself unpleasantly, swung the little car away from Southampton and drove off.
Half a mile down the road, he turned into a drive and got out. It took him five minutes to shift the body into the back seat and then cover it with a rug. After that he switched on his sidelights and took to the road again. He drove quickly and surely, handling the strange car as though he had been driving it for months. A fast circuit of Southampton’s sprawling suburbs brought him into the town again from the west. A few minutes later he was examining the road signs in a large development, which seemed to have been laid out by a naval architect.
Beyond Hawke Road and Frobisher Drive, he found Howe Crescent. Number 17 was a pleasant, detached house, with a neat garden and a separate entrance to a fair-sized garage, Mr. Caversham drove straight in. The owners were, as he well knew, in Venice. He had himself sold them their tickets a fortnight before, and had helped them make arrangements for the boarding-out of their cat.
A bus ride and a few minutes’ walk brought Mr. Caversham back to the place where he had left his own car. He climbed in and drove it sedately toward Southampton. As he entered the car park of the cinema, he looked at his watch. It was just over three-quarters of an hour since he had found Lucilla. He seemed to have covered a lot of ground.
It was a cowboy film, and Mr. Caversham settled back to enjoy it.
The film finished at eleven o’clock and ten minutes later he was turning into the lane which led to his cottage. A police car was parked in front of his gate.
“Can I help you?” said Mr. Caversham. “Perhaps you have lost your way.”
“Is your name Caversham? We’d like a word with you.”
“Come in,” said Mr. Caversham. He opened the front door, which was not locked, turned on the lights and led the way in. The last time he had seen the red-faced man he had been seated behind the wheel of an old grey Buick, on the opposite side of the road to Henry Trembling’s bookshop.
The man said, “I’m Detective Sergeant Lowther of the Southampton Police. This is Detective Sergeant Pratt.”
“Good evening,” said Mr. Caversham. He managed to add a question mark at the end of it.
“We’ve come out here because we had a message that a girl’s body had been found in a car.”
“And had it?”
Sergeant Lowther looked at Mr. Caversham. It was not exactly a look of hostility, nor was it friendly. It was the sort of look that a boxer might give an opponent as he stepped into the ring.
He said, “Neither the body nor the car was here when we arrived.”
“And had it been here?”
“According to a boy who came past the end of the road at half-past seven, there was a car here. A Fiat. He happened to notice the number, too.”
“Boys often do notice these things. I expect you’ll be able to trace it.”
“We have traced it. It belongs to a Miss Lucilla Davies.” The sergeant paused. Mr. Caversham said nothing. “We contacted her lodging. She hasn’t been home.”
“The night,” said Mr, Caversham, “is still young.”
“Look—” said the sergeant. “I said—Lucilla Davies. Do you mean to say you don’t know her?”
“Of course I know her. She works in the same place that I do. On a rather superior level. She is Mr. Trembling’s secretary.”
“Then why didn’t you say so before?”
“Why should I?”
“Look,” said the sergeant, “do you mind telling us where you’ve been?”
“I’ve been to the cinema. The Rialto. The film was called
Two-finger Knave
, And just in case you think I’m not being entirely truthful, I should mention that the film broke down after the third reel and we had to wait five minutes while it was being mended. The manager came on the stage and apologised.”
“Look—” said the sergeant.
“And now, would you very much mind going away and letting me get to bed? If you will, I’ll consider forgiving you for entering my house without a warrant in my absence.”
“Entering—?”
“Well,” said Mr. Caversham, “I’m quite certain I didn’t make that muddy mark on the linoleum there. You can see it quite clearly. It looks to me like a boot, not a shoe.”
“Look—” said the sergeant.
“However, you did at least have the delicacy not to search my bedroom.”
Sergeant Lowther’s face got a shade redder than before. “Assuming,” he said, “for the sake of argument, but not admitting it – assuming that we had a look in here, just to see if you were at home, how would you know that we didn’t go upstairs as well?”
“I don’t think you could have.” Mr. Caversham whistled softly, and the great dog rose from the pool of shadow at the top of the stairs and came padding down, his tail a-cock, his amber eyes gleaming.
“Well, I’m damned,” said Sergeant Lowther. “Has he been lying there all the time?”
“All the time,” said Mr. Caversham. “And when you’re gone, I expect he’ll tell me all about you. I understand a lot of what he says – and he understands everything that I say.”
The dog’s mouth half opened in a derisory smile, revealing white teeth.
“He’s our man all right,” said Sergeant Lowther to Inspector Hamish next morning. “I didn’t like his attitude, not one little bit.”
“That dog of his,” said Sergeant Pratt. “Fair gives me the creeps to think he was lying there all the time, watching us, and never made a sound.”
Inspector Hamish was tall, bald, and cynical, with the tired, empty cynicism of a life devoted to police duties.
“Have you checked at the cinema?”
“Yes, and there was a break in the film, just like he said.”
“Then what makes you think he didn’t go to the cinema?”
“He was too damned cool. Too ready with all the answers.”
“You ask me,” said Sergeant Pratt, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you found he’d got a record.”
“Do you think he’s mixed up with Trembling’s little game?”
“Could easily be. He was hanging round watching the bookshop last night, like I told you.”
The telephone rang. Inspector Hamish answered it. His expression changed not at all. At the end he said, “All right, thank you.”
And to Sergeant Lowther, “We’re going out to seventeen Howe Crescent. The car’s there. The girl’s in the back.”
At about this time Mr. Caversham and Roger were opening up the front office at Trembling’s. Roger seemed to be suffering from a hangover. Mr. Caversham appeared to be normal.
“It was some party,” said Roger. “One of the old buffers who was on the first tour organised it. A reunion – can you imagine it?”
“I can,” said Mr. Caversham with a slight shudder.
“The idea was, we had a bottle of booze from each of the countries we’d visited. All nine of them. We finished them, too. And that girl I was telling you about – the one on the first tour—”
The bell behind Mr. Caversham’s desk rang.
“What does
he
want?” said Roger. “He’s never been in before ten o’clock since I’ve been here.”
The bell rang again. Mr. Caversham sighed, put down the three-colour triptych advertising an economy tour in the Costa Brava and made his way along the passage.
Mr. Trembling was sitting behind his desk. His face was half hidden by his hand. When he spoke his voice was under careful control.
“Have you any idea where Miss Davies is?”
“Hasn’t she got here yet?”
“No,” said Mr. Trembling. “I telephoned her house. The lady there was most upset. Lucilla hadn’t been back all night. They’ve just telephoned the police.”
“How
very
worrying,” said Mr. Caversham. “But I expect she’ll turn up. Mr. Foster was saying how sorry the Rotarians were to miss your speech last night.”
For a moment it seemed that Mr. Trembling hadn’t heard. Then he raised his head slowly, and Mr. Caversham saw his face. If he had not known what he did, he might have felt sorry for him.
“Yes,” said Mr. Trembling. “I was sorry to disappoint them. I felt unwell at the last moment. A touch of gastric trouble.”
“You ought to have gone straight home. Not come back to the office,” said Mr. Caversham severely. “There’s only one place when your stomach’s upset. In bed, with a hot water bottle.”
What was left of the colour in it had drained out of Mr. Trembling’s face. The pouches under his eyes were livid. Mr. Caversham thought for a moment that he might be going to faint, and took half a step forward.
“What do you mean?” It was a croak, barely audible.
In his most reasonable voice Mr. Caversham said, “I left my wallet in my desk and had to come back for it. I happened to see your car in the yard and a light on in the office. Are you sure you’re all right?”