The Man with a Load of Mischief (30 page)

“When did you last see that letter opener, Mr. Trueblood?”

He studied the ceiling for a moment, then said, “I can't say for sure. A couple of days ago, perhaps.”

“Do you often leave the shop unattended?”

“I pop into Scroggs's place, it's only just next door; yes, without locking up.”

“So this afternoon, anyone could have walked in and out again, and you'd have been none the wiser?”

“Yes, but why would anyone
want
to? Isn't there something called modus operandi, Inspector? I mean, why a knife, this time? The others were strangled.” Trueblood bethought himself. “Forgive me for putting it in just that way.”

“Not at all. Indeed, that's perceptive of you, Mr. Trueblood. I would assume the knife might serve the same purpose as did the book by Darrington left at the Swan with Two Necks: it would serve to implicate someone else. Who was in the shop today?”

“Well, Miss Crisp came over from her own sweat shop to see if she could palm off a few cheese-parings on me. I think that woman does business with the tinkers and then tries to tell me —
me
, mind you — the silver's Georgian. Gypsy would be more like it —”

Jury sighed. “If we could just stick to the point, please?”

“Sorry. And then there was a couple from Manchester, leaving trails of coal dust, looking for Art Deco, that ungodly stuff; then Lorraine, looking for Simon Matchett, who she must have been chasing down the High Street, then — I don't know.” He lit up a pink cigarette.

“When did you first miss the knife?”

“Letter opener, dear. This afternoon. After Lady A. came
over to Scroggs's and generally cleared the place out with her inimitable presence.”

Jury watched Trueblood's eye travel to the bracelet, look away, and then bend to peer at it. “Where'd you get that awful piece? Isn't that the Judd girl's?”

“You recognize it, then?”

“Yes. Tawdry bangle.” He leaned back and clapped his hand over his mouth in mock horror. “Probably just condemned myself out of my own mouth — well, what with my letter opener in the body of poor old Smith — it's a dead cert, isn't it?” Beneath the bantering tone, he did look a bit ashen.

“There's motive to consider, after all. Is there anything in your past, Mr. Trueblood, you'd prefer not to be made public?”

Trueblood looked genuinely astonished. “Are you kidding, old twig?”

J
ury and Plant sat in the bleak dawn of the Long Piddleton station. Jury stared down at the paper which he had taken from the vicar's desk and said, “If it wasn't notes for a sermon, what was it?”

Melrose Plant looked over Jury's shoulder. “ ‘God encompasseth us.' That doesn't sound like the Reverend Smith. For the first time in my life, I agree with my aunt.”

“Then it's a quotation, perhaps. Biblical?”

Plant took up the paper. “ ‘
Hirondelle.
' French for ‘swallow.' Swallow? Does that mean anything to you?”

Jury shook his head. They sat for a good five minutes looking at the words until Jury threw down his pen in disgust. “I guess I'm just dim. But I can't make it out. He picked up his cigarettes, took one and lit it, saying around the draw, “I'm simply going to assume — though I could be dead wrong — that the murderer might have come to pay a ‘friendly' call on Mr. Smith to see if he could get any information out of him. He wanted to find out how much the vicar knew. And that while they talked, it occurred to the vicar that this caller might be guilty of these
murders. So he sat quietly at his desk making these notes. Why not simply write down the name of the guilty party? It must have been Smith thought his life was in danger, and that the murderer would certainly have gone about removing anything incriminating from the premises. I think we've been underrating Mr. Smith. And I only hope he hasn't overrated
us
. He was hoping we'd be smart enough to hit on something the murderer couldn't.” Jury smoked and thought. “Well, that theory's possible. Anyway, I've nothing to lose by assuming the note meant something. But perhaps quite a bit to lose if I ignore it.” He got up and stretched. Then he tossed the paper to Melrose Plant. “There. You can do the
Times
crossword in fifteen minutes. Then you can figure this out.”

Plant's reply was interrupted by the
brr-brr
of the telephone.

“Jury here.”

“Inspector Jury,” said Chief Superintendent Racer with extravagant politeness, “there have been three more murders since you've got there. What've you been doing? Advertising?”

Jury sighed inwardly, and started looking through Pluck's desk drawers for something to eat. He found a package of stale digestive biscuits. “Ah, Superintendent Racer. I was hoping you'd call.” He munched a biscuit.

“Oh, weren't you
just
, Jury.
I've called every day since you've been there, lad
. And got no reply — you're chewing in my ear, Jury! Can't you forgo the food and drink long enough to report, lad? A publican, a caterer, that's what you should've been! Well, this tears it, Jury. You can expect me in Northants at noon tomorrow. No, that would be noon
today
. The way I make it out is this, Jury. Today is the twenty-seventh. You got there on the twenty-second. Not counting today, that would average out to approximately two-thirds of a murder for every day you've been there!”

“Yes, sir. I suppose it does rather work out that way. Fraction-wise.” Jury doodled little replicas of inn signs on Pluck's blotter while Racer went through the litany of punishments which awaited his chief inspector. These ranged from being drawn and quartered, and his head stuck up on Tower Bridge, to being put back together again so that he could be delivered in a
wagon to a place of public execution. The superintendent's punishments always leaned toward the medieval.

“Sorry so little progress has been made, sir. But it's difficult enough having
one
murder; remember, I've got four here.”

“If you can carry the calf, you can carry the cow, Jury.”

“It's doubly difficult, sir, it being Christmas —”

“Christmas?
Christmas?”
Racer made it sound like a new holiday only recently forced into the calendar by Parliament. Then, softly, he continued. “Strange, isn't it, Jury, how sex maniacs are still prowling the woods on Christmas. Did the Ripper stop for Christmas, Jury? Did Crippen?”

Jury took the opportunity. “I don't actually believe Jack the Ripper was in the alleys on Christmas Day, sir. As I remember it—”

Silence. “Are you being funny, Jury?”

“Oh, no. It's hardly a joking matter, is it?”

Another silence. Then Racer snapped. “Expect me there on the noon train. And Briscoe's coming with me, too.”

“Very well, then, sir. If you insist.” Jury started doodling a tiny engine with a puffing smokestack crashing head-on into another train. Jury was holding the receiver a few inches from his ear, and the strident voice of Racer darted into the room.

“And furthermore, I don't want a bed in any of your roach-ridden pubs or flash houses, either. Get me digs in the best place around —” He dropped his voice. “— And try to find one where I won't be throttled in my sleep. With only
you
to protect me, I'm nervous, lad. And make sure the place has a decent menu and stocks its wine cellar. And, preferably” — the lasciviousness in his voice was palpable — “has a decent-looking wench at the bar.”

How about a Hell Fire Club? wondered Jury.

“. . . Though I expect in a one-eyed town like that you can't have everything. I'll see you later.” Racer slammed down the telephone.

“Yes, sir,” said Jury, yawning into the dead receiver. As he dropped it back in place, Plant said:

“Friend of yours?”

“Chief Superintendent Racer. He doesn't care for the way I'm
handling the case. Coming here himself and wants to be put up — at the Savoy, actually. Wants the best place in the village.” Jury grinned wickedly.

“Well, look, old chap, I'd be happy to give Ruthven a jingle —”

Jury was shaking his head and moving the phone toward Plant. “I wasn't thinking of Ardry End.”

Melrose stopped in the process of lighting a cigar and grinned at Jury through the smoke. “I think I take your meaning.” He dialed, waited a longish while, and there came an answering squawk. “Aunt Agatha? Sorry to get you up so early. But Inspector Jury wonders, would you do him a big favor . . . ?”

 • • • 

An hour later they were still going back over the vicar's notes, when Wiggins and Pluck came in, shaking a light dust of snow from their coats. “She's here, sir,” said Wiggins. “Daisy Trump.”

Pluck broke in: “We've put her up at the Bag o' Nails just outside Dorking Dean. Wouldn't stay at any of the other inns, she wouldn't, and I can't say's I blame her. And we left a local copper with hex, you never know what's the next inn'll be hit, now, do you?” Pluck was clearly enjoying his role in all of this.

“Who's Daisy Trump?” asked Plant.

Wiggins was about to answer, and seeing he might be divulging privileged information, shut up like a drawer.

“It's all right, Constable. Mr. Plant's been helping me.” Then he turned to Melrose. “Let's go along there, then, to the inn.”

“You want
me
to go?”

“Yes, if you wouldn't mind. Wiggins can man the fort, here. And Constable Pluck can drive.”

Pluck beamed and saluted.

 • • • 

Miss Trump, according to the waitress who served them their coffee at the Bag o' Nails, had gone up to her room just to have a wash and would be with the gentlemen directly.

“Daisy Trump,” said Jury, spooning sugar in his coffee, “worked at the Goat and Compasses. Funny name, that. It's no wonder your aunt can't get our English names straight.
Bister-Strawn
instead of
Bicester-Strachan
, that sort of thing.”

Plant smiled. “And
Ruthven, Ruthven, Ruthven
, instead of
Rivv'n.”
Plant caught his breath and stared at Jury. “Pluck.”

Jury grinned. “Oh, I think even your aunt can say
Pluck.”

Plant was not smiling. He merely said, once again. “Pluck!”

Jury stared at him.

“Get Pluck in here, man!”

Jury was so unused to Plant's giving him orders, that he did as he was bid. In a few moments he was back with the puzzled Constable Pluck in tow.

“Say it again, Pluck!” ordered Melrose, without preamble, his green eyes glittering.

Poor Pluck stood there, bunching his cap in his hands, like a man just called up for poaching on his lordship's acreage. “Say what, my lord?”

“What you said before. When you and Sergeant Wiggins came into the station. Go on, man, go on!”

Pluck looked at Jury for support. Jury merely shrugged, but said, “You said you'd got Daisy Trump, and. . . ” Jury's voice trailed off.

Melrose was nodding. “Right,
and
you put her up —” He was nodding at Pluck, trying to wrench the words out of him.

Pluck scratched his head stupidly. “Yessir. I said we put her up at the Bag o' Nails.”

Melrose looked at Jury, but Jury was as blank as Pluck.

“That's it! That's it!” said Plant, closing his eyes and mouthing words silently. Lady Ardry would have pointed this out, no doubt, as the habitual manner of crazy Melrose.

“Yes, that's it! How could I have been so stupid!” Melrose's usually sober face split in a broad grin. “Say it again, Pluck.”

“Ah, you mean Bag o' Nails, sir?”

“You hear it, Inspector? It's that it sounds differently when Pluck says it, since his diction — you'll pardon me, Constable — is not quite precise. He slurred it a bit. Come on, Inspector.
‘Bag o' Nails.' ”

Jury suddenly clapped his hand to his head. “My God.
Bacchanals!”
He looked at Pluck, who seemed straight out of it, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. Just as well, since Jury didn't want the Town Crier wise to the business. “Constable, go back
to the station and tell Sergeant Wiggins to sit by the telephone. I'll probably be calling him.”

Pluck saluted, turned smartly, and left.

“And now, Inspector,” said Melrose Plant, “the Goat and Compasses. Say that two or three times and slur it.”

Jury did so, silently mouthing the words. “God encompasseth us! Matchett. It's Matchett! Those were two of the inns. But what was the third. There's no inn named ‘Hirondelle.' ”

“Of course not. It's a derivative name, like the others. Good lord, no wonder the vicar thought you might be able to pick up on the message. He'd been talking to us about inn signs. You were right, we did underrate him. How damnably clever.”

“And brave. How many people would have that presence of mind?”

“What was the name of Matchett's third inn?”

Jury was already looking through the papers he'd brought with him, the folder on the Matchett case. “. . . Goat and Compasses. Devon, Devon . . . here it is. Well, I'll be damned.”

“What's the name?”

“The Iron Devil.”

 • • • 

Daisy Trump was in her early fifties or thereabouts — a round little person, like a ball about to bounce away. She could not, she said, imagine what Scotland Yard would want with the likes of her, but she seemed to be regarding all of this as a holiday, with the government paying expenses. Her hair looked newly permed.

“You've lived in Yorkshire how long, Miss Trump?”