A Sprig of Sea Lavender Read online

  ‘Right,’ said the Chief Superintendent. ‘You’ve got your plate full, young man, but I’m happy about it. If the Assistant Commissioner agrees, I’ll fix it with the Divisional people through the proper channels, and if you want any help that I can give, it’s there for the asking. I think you deserve a pat on the back for a fine piece of detection in identifying the girl and I can only wish you good luck with the rest of the case.’

  The Assistant Commissioner did agree. Piet’s own Superintendent was delighted at the way things had gone.

  V

  Lost Property

  ‘YOU’LL HAVE TO get another car,’ Sally said.

  Piet got back to Greenwich around eight o’clock, in time to have supper with his mother and Sally. It seemed strange to find something to enjoy when he was so much involved with the dark of life, but he did enjoy the evening, and he thought that Sally did, too.

  Piet’s mother went to bed early and when he and Sally were alone together after supper he asked whether she could get him into the Poplar’s Fen colony for a few days. ‘I’d like to go there as a painter,’ he said. ‘I can take a paint box and a sketching pad, and I think I’m just about good enough not to raise any awkward questions.’

  ‘Your mother has been showing me some of your work, and I think it’s a pity you decided to be a policeman; you’re better than anybody else there at the moment,’ she replied. ‘There wouldn’t be any problem about getting you in – the arrangements are pretty casual. If I say that you’re an artist and a friend of mine, I don’t think anybody will bother. And with Sandra . . . well, with Sandra gone . . .’ her voice faltered ‘. . . there’d be room on the boat I’m living on. I was thinking of not going back, but if you come I shan’t mind so much.’

  ‘I could be quite useful. You wouldn’t have to get three buses to go to Lavenham, because I could take you there.’

  ‘Yes, but not in that car – it’s much too good for the kind of artist who goes to Poplar’s Fen. It wouldn’t look right.’

  It was a good point. Piet had just got a new Saab, which was admirable for his job, but he agreed with Sally – it didn’t fit the part of an artist coming to join a slightly hippy art colony. ‘I must have a car,’ he said, ‘but I see what you mean. I’ll get hold of something else. And I’ve got a fair collection of old clothes – you must tell me what looks most suitable.’

  She managed a little laugh, which Piet found oddly comforting. ‘Famous detective selects his disguise,’ she said.

  ‘Not a bit. I sail a boat when I can, I go for camping holidays, dammit, I still am half an artist,’ he argued indignantly. ‘All I meant was that you must tell me what the art colony is wearing so that I don’t look out of place.’

  ‘Why do you want to go to Poplar’s Fen at all?’ she asked.

  Piet realised suddenly that although Sally knew of Sandra’s death, she knew nothing of the pictures she had with her when she died. How much was it safe to tell her? Had he any right to tell her anything about the case? He knew remarkably little of her background – it was conceivable that she was on the other side and that anything he told her would be relayed to the very people he was out to catch, making it unlikely that he would ever catch them. On the other hand, she knew vastly more about Sandra Telford and her associates than he did and if she was on his side her help would be invaluable. His instinct was to trust her, but backing instincts could be a dangerous gamble.

  ‘You’re taking a long time to answer,’ she said.

  ‘I’m taking a long time, Sally, because I don’t know what to say to you,’ he replied frankly. ‘If Sandra Telford was murdered, do you want whoever murdered her caught?’

  ‘I thought that was why I was here.’

  The remark surprised him. If he’d analysed his motives in bringing Sally home he would have said it was because he was sorry for her and also somewhat uneasy about her safety in the curious community at Poplar’s Fen. That she thought of herself as playing a direct part in trying to solve the puzzle of Sandra’s death had not occurred to him. It was a good mark to her and he felt rather ashamed of himself.

  ‘I’ll be as honest as I can,’ he said, ‘but it isn’t easy. There are a lot of other things that may be connected with Sandra’s death that I haven’t told you about and I’m not sure whether I ought to tell you.’

  ‘Because you don’t know anything about me and you don’t know how far I can be trusted. I understand. Poor Piet,’ she said. ‘Well, I’m showing a certain amount of trust in you by being here. You don’t have to tell me anything. I’ll arrange for you to stay at Poplar’s Fen and you can get on with your job on your own – I shan’t let you down. Sandra was my friend, I think she was probably my best friend, and if anybody poisoned her it was a horrible, horrible business. Quite apart from killing her it’s robbed the world of someone who would have been – already was, I think – a great artist. I’m not a nice person about Sandra – I’m all for vengeance. You may or may not solve your case. You can do what you like. But if you don’t solve it perhaps I shall. I’m not going to give up.’

  Piet made up his mind to do what he really wanted to do, anyway. ‘I told you that you were too clever to be Dr Watson,’ he said. ‘You’d make a much better Holmes. Yes, I was wondering whether I could trust you. I’m not bothered about that any more. It’s a longish story – here it is.’ Impulsively he put out his hand to her. She took it and held it for a moment. ‘Detective and detective’s mate,’ she said. ‘Or should I be your sergeant?’

  *

  ‘There are several things that occur to me,’ Sally said when he’d finished telling her about the pictures. ‘First, if Sandra was mixed up in anything like that it wasn’t because she wanted to be. There’s a side of her life that I don’t know about. After her exhibition last year she was on top of the world. I didn’t see her for a bit because she went away for a holiday – the exhibition made some money for her – and when I did see her again she’d changed, somehow. She wasn’t happy any more. I think that’s really why I went down to Poplar’s Fen, to hold her hand for a bit. It wasn’t any good –she was fearfully withdrawn. She was certainly doing some work, but I don’t know what it was, because it was at the top of the old mill and she never asked me up there. If someone with a hold on her had made her fake pictures, do you think she was killed because she wanted to get out? I mean, could she have been taking the pictures to London to tell someone about them?’

  ‘She could. But if the pathologist is right about the arsenic found in her body – and I don’t see how he can be wrong – someone had been trying to kill her for some time. Arsenic is a cumulative poison. If you go on giving it you’ll kill whoever you’re giving it to in time. It’s a cold-blooded, dreadful form of poisoning. Something happened which made whoever was slowly poisoning her decide that she must be killed at once. Or do you think she could have taken an overdose of sleeping pills to kill herself?’

  ‘I don’t – I don’t think she ever took sleeping pills. And I don’t think Sandra would ever have killed herself. She had too much courage and she wanted to paint. She used to say that there’d never be time to paint all the things she wanted. Someone knew she was taking the pictures to London and decided to stop her.’

  ‘There are a lot of difficulties there, Sally. Did Sandra have a car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how did she get to the station at Sudbury?’

  ‘Someone must have given her a lift. Most of the people at Moat Cottage have cars.’

  ‘What was she doing at Moat Cottage? She caught an early train, remember.’

  ‘Bit of a problem, that. She told me on the Sunday morning that she was going to London on Monday, but I didn’t see her go off because I wasn’t there. I went to see some friends at Colchester and the Sunday buses were so awkward that they put me up for the night. But Sandra quite often went to Moat Cottage because Shirley – that’s Mrs Vincent –used to buy her pictures.’

  ‘Right. Someone drove her fro
m Moat Cottage into Sudbury. And she had that big portfolio with her. You were expecting her back. Wouldn’t she have made some arrangement to be met? And wouldn’t whoever went to meet her have been puzzled when she didn’t turn up and said something to somebody? That is, if the person who gave her a lift was innocent of anything to do with the pictures. The other possibility is that whoever gave her a lift was mixed up in the picture business. If so, why let her go off with the portfolio?’

  ‘Because he didn’t know what pictures were inside it. She may have said they were just some of her own paintings which she was taking to London.’

  ‘That’s one thing which does seem to fit. The break-in at the studio in Finsbury Park rather suggests that someone is looking for the pictures, which means he didn’t know at the time that Sandra took them with her on the train, but found out afterwards. Whoever it is will be very anxious to find them and get them back.’

  ‘I’m afraid I quite forgot. Did you tell Ben and Stella Morrison about Sandra?’

  ‘Yes, I just had time to get to Finsbury Park before coming home. They’re very upset about her. I asked them to say nothing to anybody else and I think they understood how important it is not to. They were able to help me, too – they gave me the name of a dentist Sandra had been to a couple of times, the dentist they go to themselves. I don’t want to distress you, but teeth are important when it comes to identification. There’s no doubt in my mind about your recognition of the photographs, but legal identification requires rather more. The Divisional police arranged for a plaster cast to be made of Sandra’s teeth and now that we know her dentist it should be possible to settle things finally. I phoned the Yard to have the cast sent round and we should know definitely some time in the morning.

  ‘Your Ben and Stella don’t know anything about the pictures, of course. The mess from the burglary in their own house has been tidied up, but Sandra’s studio has been left as it was. There are signs of a considerable search, but not knowing what was there to start with, there’s no means of telling what may have been taken.’

  ‘There’s just a hint, I think, that they didn’t find what they were looking for in the studio. If they did, why break into Ben and Stella’s part of the house?’

  ‘That’s a good bit of detective work, Sally. You’re probably right. It seems unlikely that they broke into the house before the studio.’

  ‘It’s like a horrible sort of crossword puzzle. You’ve got to work out the pattern of the words before you find any clues . . . Good lord, have you noticed the time?’

  It was nearly two a.m.

  *

  Piet had an odd sense of playing truant when he left Greenwich on Monday morning to drive down with Sally to Poplar’s Fen. Sally had occupied herself by making flower arrangements for Piet’s mother, but Piet had spent most of the time at Scotland Yard. The dentist had examined the plaster cast of Sandra’s teeth and reported that he positively recognised his own work and that his records showed that the teeth were those of his patient Miss Sandra Telford, who had visited him twice during the past twelve months. In view of this Piet decided to postpone visiting the old woman at Dulwich. She would have to be told of her great-niece’s death at some time, but at least she could spared the ordeal of looking at photographs of the dead girl.

  Then he had to arrange about another car. He went to see the sergeant in charge of the police garage and explained what he wanted. The sergeant, who managed to retain a passionate enthusiasm for cars in spite of a working lifetime spent in dealing with the appalling behaviour of those who use them, had a soft spot for Piet. Like everybody else who wanted a car he always wanted it at once, but he was polite about it, understood that transport departments have their difficulties and did his best to help. The Saab was Piet’s own car. ‘I’d like to leave my car here,’ he said, ‘and take something older and a bit battered. That is,’ he added hastily, ‘if you ever have such a thing as a battered car.’

  ‘Well, not exactly battered, perhaps,’ the sergeant smiled. ‘But I think I can do something for you. What about my old Riley? It’s a Riley Riley, made in the days when people actually built cars instead of throwing them together on conveyor belts. She could do with a respray, but everything that matters in her is tip-top. You’ll enjoy driving her. I wouldn’t lend her to everybody, mind.’ Piet decided that the old Riley would do very well.

  The next thing that happened was a telephone call from Sergeant Williams. ‘May not have anything to do with the case,’ he said, ‘but I thought I’d better report it. We haven’t had any luck with coming across anyone asking for that portfolio, but there’s been an attempt to break into the Lost Property office at Liverpool Street. Chap didn’t get in because he was spotted and ran off. The railway police are dealing with it.’

  ‘Could the portfolio have been in the Lost Property office?’ Piet asked.

  ‘Well it might, sir, and it might not. In the ordinary way things that people leave behind on trains and at stations –and it’s astonishing what they do leave – go to the Lost Property office at the station where they’ve been found for a bit. That’s to give time for the owner to come back and ask about them. But lost property isn’t held locally for very long. After a bit, if things aren’t claimed they go to the main Lost Property depot. If they’re never claimed they can be sold. Whoever tried to break in at Liverpool Street might just have been out for what he could get – that’s the most likely thing, I’d think. Or he might have been looking for something definite, not knowing whether it would still be at Liverpool Street, but reckoning that it was worth taking a chance.’

  ‘You’re quite right to report it – thank you very much. It’s long odds whether it has anything to do with the girl, but I think I’ll go down to Liverpool Street and have a word with the railway men.’

  *

  Piet saw the railway sergeant. ‘It seems a small matter to bring you along from Scotland Yard,’ the sergeant said, ‘but I understand you think it may be connected with the queer case of that dead girl in the train.’

  ‘I’d scarcely go so far as to say that,’ Piet said, ‘but we can’t ignore even the remote possibility. That portfolio contained some exceedingly valuable pictures and we’ve some reason for thinking that they were stolen. Nothing was said about them at the inquest and whoever is concerned with them must be getting pretty desperate to find out where they are. The Lost Property office is one place where they could be, I suppose.’

  ‘It probably wouldn’t be after all this time, but you’re right sir, they mightn’t know that. It was a funny sort of attempt at breaking in. It was last night, around eleven o’clock. A ticket collector going off duty passed the Lost Property office and saw a woman standing by the door, and a man a few yards away. He doesn’t know why he looked back, but he did and he saw the woman fiddling with the lock. He went over to her but she must have heard him coming for she ran off. He shouted and chased after her and then the man who’d been standing nearby, perhaps keeping a lookout, came at him and tripped him up. There weren’t a lot of people around just then and by the time the ticket collector got to his feet they’d both run off. We examined the lock and there are clear traces of some sort of wax on it, as if someone had been trying to get an impression for a key. Of course that may have been done earlier – the ticket collector thinks he heard a scraping sound as if a key was being put in the lock. He thinks it may have been that which made him look back.

  ‘He thinks he’d probably recognise the woman, but he didn’t get much of a chance to see the man, and apart from saying that he seemed rather tall and thin and might have been wearing an anorak he can’t give a description of him. Here’s his description of the woman – “Medium height, age around thirty, wearing dark-coloured slacks, a dark jumper and with a scarf or something round her head.” We’ve changed the locks, of course, but with such poor descriptions to go on there’s not much that we can do. You can’t blame the ticket collector. He was pretty shaken by his fall and in the circumstances
I think he did quite well.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. I don’t suppose that I can get any more out of him than you have already, but since I’ve come here it would tidy my own report if I could have a word with him. Is there any chance of his being on duty?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he is. Most people nowadays would have taken a few days off after a fall like that, but he’s one of the old school – joined the London and North Eastern company as a boy before it was nationalised and puts what he still calls “the company” first. I saw him when I came on and asked how he was feeling. He said he’d had a night’s rest, and reckoned he was all right to come on duty. If you care to hang on here for a few minutes, sir, I’ll go and get him.’

  Ticket Collector George Wright was grey-haired but walked without a trace of stoop and wore his uniform like a guardsman. Getting near retirement, Piet thought, and then he noticed something else. Like many of the older railwaymen, Ticket Collector Wright sported a buttonhole. It was a sprig of sea lavender.

  Piet said a few nice things about the ticket collector’s presence of mind in going after the woman last night and questioned him briefly about the incident. He got the same story that he had heard from the police. Then he said, ‘That’s a nice buttonhole you’re wearing. Didn’t come from your garden, though.’

  The man, pleased at Piet’s interest, glanced down at it. ‘You know something about wild flowers, then,’ he said. ‘No, it didn’t come from the garden – it came from Liverpool Street station! I picked it up after my tumble. I lived near Aldeburgh as a kid, and recognised it as a nice bit of sea lavender. Grows all over the marshes there and it’s wonderful stuff – the old people used to say that the flowers stay fresh for a twelvemonth. So when I saw this lying there I picked it up and put it in my buttonhole.’