‘I took to heart what you said, sir,’ he began. Alec was talking and we were sharing the earpiece, huddled with heads together making what Nanny Palmer used to call, with a shudder, nit bridges. ‘About there being official persons coming to sniff around after you had gone. I didn’t want Brunwick’s to look bad in their eyes, so I’ve spent the entire afternoon since you left making up the final lists. Lord, you want to hear those lady clerks grumbling about being put to the trouble, as though they’re not paid a perfectly good wage for taking the trouble. It’s not like the old days. Anyway, sir, I’m happy to report that there were no irregularities, none at all, so there’s a load off your mind.’
‘Ask him -’ I began in a whisper, but Alec was ahead of me this time.
‘Did you happen, I mean is it possible – do you cross-reference the last-minute stand-ins in any way? Is it possible to lay one’s hands on them without crosschecking the whole list?’
‘The last-minute stand-ins, sir?’ said the clerk. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Well, no,’ said Alec. ‘I daresay that’s not what you call them. I mean people who come along having bought a ticket at second-hand or who come along and wait in hopes of a berth becoming available. If it were the theatre we’d call them returns.’
The clerk spluttered, scandalized.
‘There would never, never be anything like that on a Brunwick’s ship. Stowaways, sir? Not nowadays, anyway. Different in the old days before the war, of course. Then you would have whole families turning up on the off-chance, to be sure, but not now. Every ticket has the name of the passport holder on it and both are checked at boarding and that’s what I’m saying. There were no irregularities at all.’
Alec, for all his quibbling earlier, looked quite as disappointed as I felt to have our latest theory scuppered in this way.
‘So,’ he said, ‘how many vacant places were there? In total? How many no-shows?’
‘None,’ cried the clerk. ‘As I’m saying to you, no irregularities at all. A perfectly orderly, smooth departure. We don’t send lady clerks to the boarding desk, you know.’
Alec and I pulled faces at each other and tried not to laugh. Despite our personal setback it was rather entertaining to hear this poor man talking himself into such a hole. It was beginning to look likely that there was the most glaring irregularity possible right there under his nose.
‘I wonder,’ said Alec, ‘since you’ve worked so hard to get the lists ready, is it possible to double-check on a particular entry? Are they accessible? Would it take long?’
‘They’re right here in front of me,’ said the clerk and we could hear the thump of him patting something with the flat of his hand. ‘What is the name of the passenger you’re interested in?’
‘Robert George Dudgeon,’ said Alec, and immediately we could hear a furious fluttering and snapping of pages at the other end of the line.
‘Robert George Dudgeon,’ said the clerk. ‘He’ll be rounding the Cape to Portugal now, sir, and his ears will be burning. Robert George Dudgeon. Here he is. Robert George Dudgeon, 1st June 1899, Cassilis, Dalmeny Boarded the ship at nine-oh-five pip emma, rather late but we won’t hold that against him. Anything else I can help you with, sir?’
Alec assured him that there was not and rang off.
‘So much for their marvellous system,’ he said. ‘I wonder if they’ll ever find out that he’s not there.’
‘I blame the lady clerks, naturally,’ I said. ‘Odd though, that they should have a time of boarding and everything, wasn’t it?’
‘Remind me never to sail with Brunwick, Allanson,’ said Alec and he dropped into a cruelly accurate approximation of the clerk’s voice. ‘“Lifeboats, sir? Oh plenty. I have the list right here. No irregularities at all with the lifeboats, sir.”’
‘Well, shall we call the inspector now, or leave it until tomorrow?’ I said. ‘I’m for leaving it, I must say, sleep on it all and see if we can make something a bit more consistent out of it tomorrow morning. At the moment it’s a dreadful lot of scraps and rags. X planned to leave but the plan fell through and we don’t know who he is or why he had to flee or why the Dudgeons helped him. And Robert died in the middle of it all for no particular reason.’
At that moment, as though to stop us worrying away at it any longer, we heard Cad hailing us from the bottom of the stairs – ‘Dandee? Alec? Tea!’ – and we both burst into fits of uncontrollable giggles.
‘Poor Cad!’ I managed to say finally. ‘Can’t you take him aside and tell him man-to-man, Alec?’
‘Tell him what, though?’ said Alec.
‘Well, for a start, not to halloo up the stairs like a nursery governess to tell guests that it’s teatime,’ I said.
‘But that would only teach him that one thing,’ said Alec, ‘and there’s no knowing what he’ll do next. If there were some general rule from which all behaviours could be deduced, I’d happily tell him what it was.’
‘Well, it’s getting desperate,’ I said. ‘Even Buttercup was laughing at him yesterday. He came through the yard at the other house and some of the laundry had blown out of its pegs in the breeze, so he picked it up and began to rehang it, then realizing that it was dry he took it all down instead and set off into the kitchens with the basket looking for someone to give it to. He is a love, actually,’ I concluded. ‘Even if you do work out the general rule don’t tell him, Alec. I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Not much chance of it,’ said Alec, glumly. ‘At least, I don’t seem in danger of stumbling over any organizing principles as a detective’s assistant, so I don’t suppose I’m suddenly going to see the light as a…’
‘Husband-trainer?’ I suggested. ‘But I think you can give yourself the title of detective, don’t you? Under-detective, anyway. I don’t think of you as an assistant.’ It gave me pause, if I am honest, to hear that he did. Or rather, to extrapolate from that point to the fact that as far as Alec was concerned I was the boss. I was in charge. I was not altogether sure that I liked the idea either. I had certainly had one or two flashes of inspiration in the last few days and if I were being kind to myself I should say I was bumbling a little less than I had on my first adventure, but still there were a great many trailing threads and no chance in sight of their being knotted and snipped any time soon. It was terribly deflating to be forced to hand it all over to the police in this ragged state.
We reached the ground floor and went out of the massive front door to join Cad and Buttercup who were sitting at tea in those peculiar American deck chairs with the very short legs, basking in the sunshine against the west wall.
‘Well?’ said Cad, rather breathlessly as we plumped down into the low seats and waited for our cups and scones. Cad himself, I was enchanted to notice, had given up on that particular little bit of authenticity and was holding a tall glass of milk in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
‘Well, we’ve found out what Dudgeon was up to,’ I said. ‘To a point, although not why. And we’ve found out enough to be able to conclude that it was either murder or a straight heart attack, one of the two; it wasn’t the drink. But we still don’t know who X is.’
‘Well, do tell all, Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘And don’t sound so jaded. It’s only been days. How are you getting on with the ham sandwich, for instance, if you can manage it without any gory details.’
‘Lunch in a pub, more than likely,’ I said and Buttercup’s face fell.
‘That’s hardly thrilling,’ she said. ‘What about the pen and ink?’
‘No idea,’ said Alec. ‘One of the many things that Inspector Cruickshank will have to get to the bottom of. Even if he needs to arrest Mrs Dudgeon to do so.’