A Sprig of Sea Lavender Read online

  With his destination still unknown, at least the journey had started. Piet now had time to feel hungry. Having to take Sally to Greenwich before going on to keep his appointment with Mr Constantine, they’d made do with a sandwich in a pub for lunch, and that seemed almost a lifetime ago. There was a restaurant car on the train and the fact that he could have a meal made Piet hungrier still, but he decided that he could not risk it. It seemed more than likely that the woman would go to the restaurant car and if Piet were there she would almost certainly recognise him. A policeman’s lot, Piet reflected, traditionally is not a happy one, and it wasn’t the first time that he’d had to go hungry on duty, and probably it wouldn’t be the last. Worse than being hungry was his anxiety about Sally. He had told her that he would telephone during the evening to let her know what was happening; he had warned her that he might get so involved that he couldn’t manage to phone, but that wasn’t much comfort, because no one without actual experience of police work can really understand that there are occasions when it is just impossible to find the few minutes needed for a phone call. Sally would be worried, and uncertain about her class at Lavenham tomorrow. But there was nothing he could do about it until he left the train, and since he had to try to follow the woman to her destination it might still be hours before he could safely take time off to find a telephone. Mentally he kicked himself for not having his police radio with him – alas, that was in his car. Thinking that he was going to overhear a conversation between the art dealer and the woman he knew as Mrs Vincent of Moat Cottage, he had not envisaged any need to follow her when she left the building, he had not thought of a situation in which he might be left completely cut off. That was a bad mark against him – he ought to have thought about it, and although he was in plain clothes he ought to have had his radio. In his defence, he told himself, there would not have been much opportunity of using it. There wasn’t time before he left Mr Constantine’s office because he had to go after the woman at once, he couldn’t have used it in the taxi without telling the woman that she was a suspect, and he could scarcely have used it at Liverpool Street without drawing attention to himself. He had a defence of sorts, but he didn’t think much of it and convicted himself of a bad piece of carelessness, of taking too much for granted.

  What else was he taking for granted? He ought to have paid more attention to Sally’s evidence that Mrs Vincent might not have been in London the day before yesterday, but having seen what was apparently her card in the art dealer’s possession he had discounted the possibility that Sally could be right. He went back over his conversation with Sally. Mrs Vincent’s assistant, the man called Wilson, was an absentee from Moat Cottage, but unless he was a brilliant performer at female disguise he could not have been the woman who had called twice on Mr Constantine. Sex is not always easy to determine, but Piet had no practical doubt that the woman he was now following, the woman he had listened to in the art dealer’s office, the woman with whom he had shared a taxi, was indeed a woman. Had Sally told him anything else about the Moat Cottage crew the significance of which he might have missed? He didn’t think so. They had ignored the students, which was perhaps unwise, but there had not been time to go into the movements of everybody, and whatever was being done with the pseudo-Constable paintings was not a casual matter, likely to relate to the students and holiday makers who came and went. Then he thought of a chance remark of Sally’s which had no obvious bearing on anything else. Reporting Mrs Vincent’s reference to the cleaning woman, Mrs Marshall, she had described her as coming from somewhere on the coast – it was the sea air in her girlhood which kept her well. Why not? It was just the kind of remark that one woman chatting to another might make. Mrs Vincent had been speaking of her fears lest the invaluable cleaning woman should fall ill, and comforted herself with the reflection that Suffolk folk are tough, adding a particular reason for toughness in Mrs Marshall’s case. Again, why not? But it was another curious link between the Moat Cottage group at Lavenham and the coast, like the sprig of sea lavender that already seemed to link them. Could Mrs Marshall ever have had anything to do with Poplar’s Fen? It was possible, but even if she had spent her youth around Walberswick or Dunwich, what could it matter? Apparently she had been living at Lavenham for years, and it was hard to see that her place of birth could have any significance whatever. Nevertheless, Piet was so shaken by his earlier neglect of Sally’s observation that he decided it would be just as well to go into Mrs Marshall’s background. That could be done easily enough by the local police. It certainly couldn’t be done now.

  The train’s first stop was at Norwich, a run of some two hours and twenty minutes. When the ticket inspector came round he said that they were running a bit late – there had been a hold-up caused by the derailment of some goods wagons earlier in the day and he was afraid that it would be nearer three hours before they made Norwich, and they might be nearly an hour late at Yarmouth. This did not particularly matter to Piet as far as following the woman was concerned, but it worried him because it would make it later than ever before he had a chance to telephone. However, there was nothing to be done about it, and at least his mental criticism of himself gave him something to think about and made the time pass relatively quickly. When they did draw into Norwich he did as he had done at Liverpool Street – opened the carriage door and stood behind it to watch the people getting out from farther up the train. It was getting late in the evening and the light, even on the lighted platform, was not all that good, but Piet was reasonably confident of seeing the big parcel of the picture, and he was satisfied that the woman had not left the train at Norwich.

  After Norwich the train ceased to be an express and stopped at a number of country stations – Brundall, Lingwood and Acle. Not many people got out at any of them, and although it was dark the platforms were lighted, and Piet was sure that the woman was not among the passengers leaving the train.

  By the time they reached Yarmouth it was close on eleven p.m. Piet adopted different tactics here: he was out of the train before it had quite stopped moving, and through the barrier at the exit before any other passengers got there. Beyond the barrier, and a few yards to one side of it, was an automatic vending machine, dispensing chocolate. Piet stood against the wall on the far side of the machine, confident that he could see everybody coming through without himself being noticeable. The woman with her picture-parcel was among the last group of people to emerge –presumably the awkward parcel had prevented her from walking quickly. Piet watched her go out of the station and then followed. In the station yard was a queue of about half a dozen people waiting for taxis. The woman took her place at the end of the queue.

  The taxi trade seemed fairly brisk and the queue cleared in about ten minutes. It was a nuisance that the woman was at the end of the queue, because it meant that Piet could not join the queue with a safeguarding knot of people between him and the woman, but in another way it helped, because when her turn came two taxis drew up at almost the same moment. Piet slipped behind the second taxi and was near enough to hear the woman tell the driver of the first, ‘Can you take me to the Yare Haven, please?’ She got in and the cab drove off. Piet got into the second cab, asking for the Yare Haven, too. There was not much traffic at that time of night, and for most of the way he could see the lights of the leading cab ahead of them. For a few minutes another car came between them, but it didn’t matter because Piet knew where the woman’s cab was going. Indeed, he thought that probably it was rather a good thing, in case the woman should be looking back, though he had no reason to suppose that she had any idea that she was being followed.

  The town of Yarmouth is really on an island, or rather, on what was once an island, a long thin finger of higher ground in the complex of shoals and sandbanks off the mouth of the River Yare. The river curls southwards to get round this strip of land and the town is, as it were, between the river and the sea, providing splendid shelter for the lower reaches of the river. The Haven, sought thankfully by seamen sin
ce Saxon times, and probably by our prehistoric forebears fishing from coracles, is really in the river. It is a busy port now, its traditional trade in fish and timber augmented by supply ships serving the oil-rigs in the North Sea. There are fine quays along the river, with bollards for the mooring of ships.

  The woman’s taxi stopped at a gate leading to one of the quays. Reckoning that a woman, having to get money from her handbag, takes longer to pay a cab driver than a man, who has simply to take money from his pocket, and that this woman, having to struggle with her big parcel, would take longer still, Piet asked his taxi driver to go past. ‘I really want the next gate,’ he said.

  That was at the end of a row of sheds, about a hundred yards ahead. Piet paid his man quickly, with a generous tip, and doubled back in the darkness of the wall of sheds. He was right in his calculations, for he had almost reached the other gate by the time the woman had finished paying off her taxi. Not wanting to be caught in the headlights of the cab, he pressed himself against the wall, turning away his head so that the whiteness of his face should not show up. As soon as the cab had gone he ran to the gate.

  The main gates, for vehicles, were closed for the night, but a little wicket-gate, for people on foot, was unlocked. He had not lost much by having to wait for the departure of the cab, for the woman had to put down her parcel to open the wicket-gate and he got there a few seconds after she had gone through it. He could see her walking a few yards ahead and then turn right along the quay in front of the sheds. As soon as she was clear of his direct line of sight he followed her through the gate, turned right also, and picked her up again about twenty yards in front of him. She went about halfway along the quay and then made for the waterfront.

  There were vessels moored all along the quay, but it was near low water and there was no sign of a boat where the woman went. Astern was a bigger vessel, her superstructure still above the line of the quay. Piet slipped into the shadow of this and looked ahead. Moored below where the woman was standing was a motor-cruiser – the cruiser, he was sure, from Poplar’s Fen. The cabin portholes were curtained, but light was showing through them.

  At low water the deck of the cruiser was several feet below the quayside. Rungs of vertical iron steps, set into the wall of the quay, made it easy enough to go on board, but the woman did not make for them. Instead, she hunted about on the ground, found a pebble or small stone and threw it on to the cruiser’s cabin-top. A moment later the door leading aft to the cockpit opened and a man came out. Piet was near enough to hear everything. ‘You’re dreadfully late, Trish. I was getting very worried about you,’ the man said.

  ‘The damned train was late. And I’ve had to bring back the picture. Can you help me get it down?’

  ‘What went wrong? But you can tell me about it later. Hold on, and I’ll come up and you can hand the thing to me.’

  The man climbed a few rungs of the iron ladder, took the picture from the woman and laid it carefully in the cockpit. ‘You’d better take my bag, too, and then I’ll come down. I need both hands for the ladder,’ she said. A few moments later she was on board. ‘God, I need a drink. I’ve had a hellish day.’ She almost spat out the words. Without even bothering to collect her handbag she went into the cabin. The man, still holding the bag, picked up the picture and followed her, shutting the door after him.

  There seemed no sign of the cruiser’s imminent departure, and in any case Piet doubted if they would leave at night. But they would have to be watched. He couldn’t stay on the quay all night by himself, and there were many thing that he wanted to do. He had noticed a phone box near the entrance to the quay, and as the occupants of the cruiser were presumably having a drink and discussing the day’s events, he reckoned that it would be safe to leave them for a few minutes. He telephoned Yarmouth police station and explained who he was. The precautions taken by the Yard paid off. ‘Yes, we had a message about you from the Metropolitan Police a couple of days back, asking us to give you any assistance you might need,’ the duty officer said. ‘What can we do for you, sir?’

  ‘I’m speaking from a box on the quay at Yare Haven, just inside Gate No. 3. It’s imperative to maintain a watch on a boat moored here. Can you send an officer to take over from me, and a car to take me to your station?’

  ‘Do you want the watch all night?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

  ‘And do you want a uniformed man, or a man in plain clothes?’

  ‘Plain clothes would be better.’

  ‘Right, sir. I won’t call a patrol car, but send one of the duty men from here, with a driver to bring you back. He should be with you in about a quarter of an hour. Where can he meet you?’

  ‘At Gate No. 3. It’s locked at night so the car won’t be able to come onto the quay, but that’s just as well, for we don’t want to show ourselves. You can get onto the quay on foot through a side gate. I’ll be waiting just through the gate.’

  ‘I know those gates. Very good, sir. We’ll get a man to you as soon as possible.’

  Piet was tempted to telephone Sally at Greenwich, but he’d been away from the cruiser for several minutes and although he didn’t think that anything much could be happening on board, he wanted to get back. He returned to his old post in the shadow of the ship astern. There were still lights in the cabin of the cruiser, but he could hear nothing. He waited for ten minutes and then walked to the gate. Yarmouth police were as good as their word. In slightly under the promised quarter of an hour a car drew up at the gate and a CID man in plain clothes met Piet on the quay.

  ‘Chief Inspector Deventer?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, and very glad to see you,’ Piet said.

  ‘I’m Detective-Constable Hart. The duty officer said I’d get instructions from you.’

  ‘About halfway along the quay there’s a motor-cruiser moored – I’ll take you to her in a minute. There’s quite a good observation post in the shadow of a bigger vessel lying astern. On board the cruiser are a man and a woman – as far as I know they’re the only people on board, but I can’t be absolutely sure. The woman’s Christian name is Trish – for Patricia, I suppose – and the man is called Malcolm. The surname is Winterer, or something like that. We suspect them of being concerned in an elaborate art fraud, and possibly implicated in murder. I want you to keep an eye on the cruiser. If she shows any signs of leaving, telephone your HQ and the harbour authorities at once. If either the man or the woman comes ashore without carrying anything, it will probably be to telephone. Do what you can to make out the number dialled and to overhear anything of the conversation. You probably won’t be able to do much about either, but if you can pick up anything it will be useful. If either of them comes ashore carrying a picture in a big parcel, about a yard square, follow whoever it is and try to discover where he or she goes.

  ‘But I don’t expect either of them to come ashore, and I doubt if the boat will leave before daylight. I’ll be back, I hope with some help and another boat, well before then. I’m afraid you’ll probably have a dull few hours of just watching. But you know how it is – and this is a job that’s just got to be done.’

  ‘I understand, sir, and of course I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, and I’m very grateful to you. I’ll show you the boat and then I’ll use your car to get to your police station. The sooner I can get there, the sooner I’ll be back to relieve you.’

  *

  Somewhat to his embarrassment Piet was taken to the Superintendent’s office where he found a small reception committee awaiting him. The duty officer explained. ‘This is Superintendent Barnes and the other gentleman is Detective-Inspector Lennard,’ he said. ‘In all the circumstances I thought I’d better inform the Superintendent of your call, and he decided to come down.’

  ‘And I picked up Lennard on the way,’ the Superintendent added.

  ‘Lord, I’m sorry to have got you out of bed,’ Piet said.

  ‘Not the first time, my boy.’ Superintendent Barnes wa
s a kindly, much-liked officer, within a year or so of retirement. ‘Tell us about it, and we’ll see if we can help. Wait a minute, though – you look a bit done in. When did you last have anything to eat?’

  ‘Oh, some time this morning.’

  ‘You mean yesterday morning – it’s well after midnight. We don’t have the canteen staff on at night, but at least we can manage a cup of tea and a couple of cheese rolls, though it will have to be yesterday’s bread. Slip up to the canteen, Bill, and see what you can get,’ he said to the duty officer. ‘Make a big pot of tea – we could all do with a cup.’

  When the man had gone he said to Piet, ‘We had a message from the Metropolitan Police saying that a Chief Inspector Deventer would be pursuing inquiries in our area in connection with a case in London, and asking us to assist if he called upon us. Are you Chief Inspector Deventer?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not really poaching on your manor.’

  ‘Come off it, young man! Sorry, I ought to have said Chief Inspector, but you must make allowances for age and length of service. What’s it all about?’

  The tea came, and with it a plate with a cheese roll and a small pork pie. ‘I’m not listening to a word more until you’ve eaten something,’ the Superintendent said.

  Piet was thankful for the food and ate it quickly. Over a cup of tea he gave a brief outline of the finding of the dead girl in a train at Liverpool Street, of the inquiries that led to her identification, of the curious colony at Poplar’s Fen and of the pursuit that had brought him to Yarmouth. ‘It’s a horribly complex case,’ he went on. ‘The girl was undoubtedly murdered. The fact that no container of any sort for pills was found points to murder rather than suicide, though that alone is not enough to rule out suicide. The arsenic revealed by the autopsy seems to make it certain that someone intended to kill her. The pictures she had with her, and the other picture taken to London by the woman I followed this evening, suggest a carefully worked out scheme for dealing in either stolen or forged paintings. One would think that the girl’s death was related to the art frauds, but I’m afraid I have no evidence yet to explain how. On the other hand, I think I am in a position to make an arrest, though it will have to be on a holding charge.’