A Sprig of Sea Lavender Read online

  *

  Piet took the pictures himself to the forensic laboratory. The scientists were not specialists in art work but they were used to being asked to turn their hands to anything. Moreover, the chief chemist was a man of international reputation in devising techniques for small-particle analysis and Piet was confident that he could deal with the pictures without damaging them. And Piet wanted to keep investigation of the pictures in his own hands for the moment – to send them to one of the recognised experts in the analysis of pigments and canvas might invite the sort of questions he did not want raised.

  He got back to his office a few minutes after five o’clock, just not too late, he thought, to see if he could get hold of the young solicitor who appeared to have befriended the dead woman on her last journey. An interview might turn out to be largely a waste of time, but there were questions that he did not think had been asked, and where there was so little to go on nothing could be safely neglected.

  So he rang the offices of Messrs. Collard and Wellspade at Twickenham. The girl at the switchboard thought that Mr Tomlinson might still be in his office, but he was very busy. Was the caller a client? Piet had to admit that he was not, but when he explained that he was a police officer speaking from Scotland Yard the girl agreed to put him through.

  Keith Tomlinson was not pleased that his small Good Samaritan act on the train should intrude on his affairs yet again. ‘I thought all that was finished with,’ he said when Piet explained why he was calling. ‘I really do know nothing at all about the woman. I gave evidence at the inquest, and honestly, there’s absolutely nothing more that I can say.’

  Piet was gentle and tactful. ‘I do realise what a pest it is to be involved fortuitously in an affair like this – particularly when you acted out of simple kindliness,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t be bothering you if I didn’t think it necessary, and as an officer of the law yourself you will understand that a witness may not always appreciate the importance of some little thing he may have noticed. There are a number of questions that I should like to ask you and I should like to see you as soon as possible. I’m not asking you to come to Scotland Yard – I’ll gladly call on you wherever you suggest.’

  Tomlinson was somewhat mollified. ‘Well, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a good bit to do still before I can leave the office, but I should be home soon after seven. If you like to come to 53 Canopy Court, Richmond, at seven thirty, I’ll see you then. But please try to make this the last time that I have to be interviewed about that unhappy woman.’

  Piet re-read Tomlinson’s statement to the railway police and the depositions at the inquest. His story seemed quite consistent. He had helped the woman onto the train at Sudbury, he had bought her ticket for her at Mark’s Tey and he had helped to find her a seat on the London train. She had appeared to go to sleep and was still asleep when the train reached Liverpool Street. He had tried to wake her, realised that something was wrong and called to a porter on the platform for help. He had never seen her before she got on the train at Sudbury and had no idea who she was.

  It was not a promising statement for cross-examination, but, Piet reflected, you can’t always choose the straw when you have to make bricks.

  *

  Piet was rather taken by the young solicitor – intelligent, he thought, but not in the least slick, and would develop into the traditional sort of sound family lawyer. A good type, kept himself fit, and probably played rugger. Put into words, this guess turned out to be right. Tomlinson was a trifle surprised to be asked if he played rugger, but admitted that he did. ‘I managed to play for Cambridge,’ he said. ‘Still turn out when I can for the local club, though I find I’ve got less and less time nowadays. But you didn’t come to talk about rugger.’ He took Piet’s card and studied it. ‘Top brass, I see.’

  ‘Not very top – somewhere about an army major, perhaps,’ Piet said. ‘But police work is so different from the Services that you can’t really equate our ranks with anything else. It’s good of you to see me.’

  ‘I don’t think I had much choice. I thought it was rather nice of you to come here, instead of summoning me to Scotland Yard. I’ve tried to explain, though, that there’s absolutely nothing I can tell you. What do you want to ask me?’

  Piet was in no hurry to begin questioning Tomlinson on his statement. ‘Nice flat you’ve got here,’ he said. ‘Do you live alone?’

  ‘I do now. I used to live with my mother, until she died about eighteen months ago. The flat’s really too big for me, but it’s so difficult to find anywhere that I kept it on. It’s convenient for my office and I was brought up in this part of London.’

  ‘My home was in Greenwich, so we’ve got the river in common. Do you often go to Suffolk?’

  ‘Three or four times a year. My mother’s sister – my aunt – lives at Long Melford. She’s my only fairly close relation and I try to keep in touch with her. I saw her more often when I was at Cambridge. It’s not all that far from Long Melford and she used to drive over to see me. She was younger then, of course.’

  ‘Do you normally go by train?’

  ‘As a rule, yes. I’m not all that fond of driving across London, and the trains from Liverpool Street are pretty good. My aunt has a car and she meets me at Mark’s Tey.’

  ‘But she didn’t drive you back to Mark’s Tey.’

  ‘No. She’s getting on and she suffers quite a bit from migraine. She had a baddish turn on the Sunday evening and I didn’t want her to have to turn out early on Monday morning. So I got a taxi to Sudbury station.’

  ‘The girl wasn’t there when you got to the station?’

  ‘No. I’ve explained about that. She only just caught the train – it had started moving when she flung herself at it. I was standing at the carriage door, the window was down and I was looking out. It’s a sort of ghost station. I hadn’t been there before and I was interested, I suppose. I wish now I hadn’t gone there at all. But it was a good thing for her that I was at the train door, for if I hadn’t grabbed her I think she’d have fallen off and perhaps been killed.’

  ‘She was dying, anyway.’

  ‘I suppose she was. She didn’t look dying then. But when we got to Mark’s Tey she looked really ill. That’s why I helped her.’

  ‘She died of an overdose of a barbiturate drug. So far we don’t know when or how she took it. It was a fairly massive overdose and it couldn’t have been very long before she went off to sleep. Could she have taken it on the Sudbury train?’

  ‘I suppose she could, but I don’t know because I wasn’t looking at her. It was a new bit of line to me and I was looking out of the window. The run to Mark’s Tey doesn’t take long, just over twenty minutes. She wouldn’t have had much time – I mean, to get as ill as she was when we got to Mark’s Tey. But I don’t know how quickly these things act. If it was a sleeping pill doesn’t it take a bit of time to get drowsy and go off?’

  ‘That depends on all sorts of things. Even if you weren’t looking at her, you might have noticed some movement if she took pills on the train. No container was found on her. It doesn’t follow, of course, that she didn’t have the pills with her, for she might have been carrying them loose. But it seems more probable that she took them just before running for the train. The effort of running might have had two effects – if it was important to her to catch the train it might have kept her going for a little by sheer willpower, and afterwards it would probably have accelerated the action of the drug.’

  ‘It was important to her to catch the train. When she thanked me for helping her on she said something like, “I don’t know what would have happened if I’d missed it.” ’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about that in your statement.’

  ‘I wasn’t asked.’

  ‘So you see, Mr Tomlinson, it is worth going over people’s statements, even if they don’t think they have anything to add. Now I want to ask you about her ticket. Why did you get a single for her and not a return?’


  ‘I haven’t really thought about it. Let me see – I’d carried her portfolio over the bridge. When we got to the main line platform she sat on a bench, gasping, rather. Then she got up to go to the booking office window. There were several people ahead of her and as she stood in the queue she swayed, and I thought she was going to fall. I had a return ticket for myself because I’d come to Mark’s Tey, but I asked if she’d like me to get a ticket for her. She was obviously grateful, muttered something about my being kind and went to sit down again. I think I must have asked, “Are you going to London?” and she nodded. Anyway, she gave me a five-pound note and I got her a single to Liverpool Street. I remember thinking that we were too early for a cheap day return – it was a commuter train, you see. I suppose I got a single because I didn’t know anything about her, how she planned to come back, or whether she would be staying in London. I just got the ticket and gave it to her.’

  ‘So the single was really your idea, not hers?’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘It’s important because we’re still trying to find out who she was. The fact that she had no luggage with her rather suggests that she lived in Suffolk, but the single ticket rather implies that she didn’t. Now you’ve cleared that up and we can discount whatever evidence there seemed to be in the single ticket.’

  Tomlison was getting very interested. ‘I’m sorry I was fed up when you telephoned,’ he said. ‘I thought your visit was just another waste of time, but the way you put things it isn’t.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t finished yet. One of the puzzling things about the case is that she apparently had no handbag. Could she possibly have dropped a handbag when you were helping her on board the train?’

  ‘She could, I suppose. But I don’t remember seeing any handbag. She had one arm round that great portfolio and her other hand was grabbing at the door. She might have had a bag slung from her shoulder, but I think I’d have remembered seeing it. And if she had dropped her bag, wouldn’t you expect her to say something like, “Oh, my bag!” when she was on the train? Most women would be upset at losing a handbag. All I can say is that she wasn’t, or didn’t appear to be.’

  ‘That’s a good point.’

  ‘I think there’s another indication that she didn’t have a bag. When she gave me the money for her ticket she didn’t have to search for it. I didn’t notice at the time where she got the five-pound note from, but she must have taken it from a pocket. If she’d lost her bag she’d probably have lost her money. Of course, she might have had some spare money in a pocket, but I think women generally carry money in their bags.’

  ‘Yes. How on earth did you get that portfolio on the train?’

  ‘Goodness knows. I got the door open for her and I think one hand was grabbing at the sill of the open window. It was a bloody dangerous situation. I got my left arm round her and just heaved. The portfolio half-jammed in the doorway, but as I got her up with my left arm I managed to get my right arm round the portfolio and hauled her in, with the portfolio. It was brute force more than anything else.’

  ‘And the experience of the rugger field. It was good work, Mr Tomlinson.’

  III

  ‘A Thread of John Constable’s Life’

  LATE AS IT was when he got away from Richmond, Piet went back to the Yard. There he found that a telephone message had come for him from Detective-Sergeant Williams. The message form was not explicit – it said simply that Sergeant Williams had telephoned the Chief Inspector and would ring again in the morning. Piet short-circuited this by getting Sergeant Williams’s home number from the internal directory and ringing him. ‘Sorry to bother you so late,’ he said when the sergeant answered the phone, ‘but I’ve only just got your message.’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t know that you’ll think it worth ringing up at all,’ Williams replied apologetically. ‘But you said I was to telephone if I thought of anything, and there is one thing that I’m afraid I forgot to tell you about. But it may have nothing whatever to do with the case?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘When I searched the carriage looking for the young woman’s handbag I found a tiny scrap of some sort of wild flower underneath the seat. I put it in an envelope and I’ve still got it. Would you like me to bring it to you?’

  ‘I’d like to see it, certainly. But there’s no need for you to come to the Yard. I’ve decided to go down to Suffolk tomorrow and I can easily call at your station on the way. What time do you get in?’

  ‘I’m due on at nine o’clock in the morning, sir.’

  ‘Good. Well, I’ll see you as soon after nine as I can make it through the early morning traffic.’

  *

  That settled, Piet turned to the matter that had brought him back to the Yard – the condition of the outside of the portfolio. After hearing Tomlinson’s account of the struggle he had had to get it through the train door he wanted to examine it closely.

  The portfolio was constructed of two big sheets of cardboard covered in black plastic sheeting. The sheeting was of good quality, for although it was scratched in several places it was not torn. A stick-on label attached to the plastic was, however, torn in two, the tear jagged and untidy – consistent with being dragged roughly through a doorway. Piet had no reason to doubt the young solicitor’s story, but it was useful to have physical confirmation of it, and the torn label and scratches on the portfolio did tend to confirm it.

  There was, of course, no proof that the label had been torn during the struggle, but it seemed a reasonable assumption. If so, was there any chance that the remains of the label might still be there to be found? It was an exceptionally dry summer and there had been no rain since the woman’s last journey. If the torn part of the label had fallen on the platform it would doubtless have been trodden into illegibility, but it was just possible that it had fallen between the train and the platform and that a search might recover it. The remaining word ‘Suffolk’ indicated that the label had once borne an address, and if it could be found the problem of the woman’s identity might be solved forthwith.

  Piet considered asking the Suffolk police to undertake a search, but decided that he might just as well go himself. He had a firsthand description of the girl’s struggle to board the train and while this did not make him any better qualified as a searcher after scraps of paper, it did help his imagination. Moreover, he’d already decided to visit Sudbury when he spoke to Sergeant Williams. He did not know what he could hope to learn from a visit to a country railway station which had figured briefly and incidentally in the lifestory of one of its passengers, but the girl’s departure from Sudbury on that Monday morning was one of the few facts known about her. The station was at least a starting point and Piet wanted to see it for himself. He tended to think visually, and his mind needed a picture of the station. The hunt for a scrap of torn label was an additional reason for going there.

  Piet had a one-bedroom flat off Ebury Street. It was enough for him, because he still thought of his mother’s house at Greenwich as home, kept most of his possessions there and went home as often as he could. But Greenwich was too far from New Scotland Yard to fit the odd hours of his work. The flat was within walking distance and he could be on hand whenever he was needed.

  He walked there now, enjoying the summer night and wondering as he always did what private loves and hates, hopes and fears brought so many people to Victoria Station and to the airways’ terminal across the road. When he got in he remembered that he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast save the sandwich in the pub with Sergeant Williams. He cooked himself an omelette and felt better for it.

  *

  The CID office at Sergeant William’s police station was a barrack-like room in a comfortless Victorian building. Piet reflected, not for the first time, on the contrast between the lavish offices of the makers of money and the conditions in which the guardians of society too often had to work. Without the police the whole fabric would come tumbling down but most people – until
they needed a policeman – seemed content to regard the police as belonging in some way to the servants’ quarters. Well, the police were not alone in that – until there was a war the army was commonly regarded as a waste of money, and until you needed an operation you were quite likely to think of surgeons as overpaid. Society had strange values. It was a good thing that the idea of service never quite faded out – each generation produced some men and women ready to work without thinking of material reward as the prime purpose in life, ready to spend themselves in an effort to keep the world clean.

  If the physical surroundings of the CID office were cheerless, the human spirit there could be felt as brisk and alert. Sergeant Williams seemed genuinely glad to see him. ‘You made good time, sir,’ he said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Piet didn’t want any tea, but he accepted the offer. ‘What’s the current case load?’ he asked.

  ‘Fourteen – no, fifteen – breaking and entering, three robbery with violence, couple of suspected arson, nasty piece of work by someone who attempted to interfere with a child on the way home from school. Fortunately the child screamed and he ran off, but we’ve got to catch him before he does something worse. And an ugly affair outside a pub with a man stabbed – he’s badly ill in hospital, but expected to recover. We’ve got the chap who did it, though. He’s coming up in court this morning.’

  ‘And the mysterious affair of a young woman found dead in a train.’

  ‘That too, of course, sir. I’ll just get the tea and then I’ll show you what I telephoned about.’

  Piet declined sugar and would have preferred to decline milk, but it was already in the teacup. While he pretended to welcome the tea – and did welcome the hospitality it symbolised – Sergeant Williams went to a safe and came back with a small brown envelope. ‘I’m afraid this is all it is, sir,’ he said.