'He, or she, took it from the display cabinet some time before seven o'clock this morning. And I'm afraid that the police are only too likely to take the view that he knew it was there because, yesterday before luncheon, I myself showed it to him.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ten minutes later Roma, Ivo and Cordelia stood at the drawing-room window and looked down over the terrace to the landing stage. All three of them were now outwardly calm. The first shock had been replaced by a restlessness, almost an unhealthy, prurient excitement which they recognized in themselves and each other and which was as shaming as it was unexpected. They had all resisted the temptation to take alcohol, perhaps feeling that it would be unwise to face the police with its smell on their breath. But Munter had served strong coffee in the drawing-room and it had been almost as effective.
Now they watched as the two heavily loaded launches rocked dangerously at the quayside, the passengers in their evening clothes crowding to one side like a gaudily clad cargo of aristocratic refugees fleeing from some republican holocaust. Ambrose was talking to them, with Munter standing at his shoulder like a second line of defence. There was a great deal of gesticulating. Even at this distance, Ambrose's pose, the slightly bent head, the spread hands, conveyed regret, distress and some embarrassment. But he was standing firm. The sound of chattering came to them, faint but high like the squeaking of distant starlings. Cordelia said to Ivo:
'They look restless. I expect they want to stretch their legs.' 'Want to pee I expect, poor dears.'
'There's someone standing up on the gunwale taking photographs. If he's not careful, he'll go overboard.'
. 'That's Marcus Fleming. He's supposed to be taking the pictures to illustrate my article. Oh well, he'll be able to phone a scoop of sorts to London if they don't capsize with excitement before they reach shore.'
'The fat lady seems very determined, the one in mauve.'
'That's Lady Cottringham, the formidable dowager. Ambrose had better watch her. If she gets one foot on the quay there'll be no holding her. She'll dash in to give poor Clarissa the once-over, subject us all to third-degree and solve the crime before the police get here. Ah, victory for Ambrose! The launches are pulling away.'
Roma said quietly:
'And here come the police.'
Round the corner of the island came four bright wings of spray. Two sleek, dark-blue launches were approaching, their long wakes feathering the paler blue of the sea. Roma said:
'Odd that one feels so apprehensive. Stupid, too. It's like being a schoolgirl again. One always felt and looked most guilty when one was totally innocent.'
Ivo said:
'Totally? That's an enviable state. I've never managed to achieve it. But I shouldn't worry. The police have a formula for these occasions. The suspects are ranked in strict order of priority; first, the husband, then the heirs, then the family, then close friends and acquaintances.'
Roma said dryly:
'As I'm both an heir and a relation, I can hardly find that reassuring.'
They watched in silence as the two brightly laden launches drew clumsily away and those sleek blue hulls came rapidly closer.
r
PART FOUR. The Professionals
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sergeant Robert Buckley was young, good-looking and intelligent and well aware of these advantages. Less commonly, he was also aware of their limitations. He had gained three A-level subjects with respectable grades at the end of his two years in the sixth, an achievement which would have justified going on to university in company with friends similarly qualified. But it wouldn't have been the university of his choice. He suspected that his intelligence, although keen, was superficial, that he couldn't compete with real scholars, and he had no intention of joining the over-educated unemployed at the end of another three years of mildly boring academic grind. He judged that success would come quickest in a job for which he was over- rather than under-qualified and where he would be competing with men who were less rather than better educated than himself. He recognized in himself a streak of sadism which found a certain mild satisfaction in the pain of others without necessarily needing actively to inflict it. He was an only child of elderly parents who had begun by doting on him, moved on to admiring him and had ended by being a little afraid of him. That, too, he found agreeable. His choice of career had been natural and easy, the final decision made while he was loping with long, easy strides over the Purbeck hills, watching the earth move in streaks of fawn and green. There had only been two possibilities, the Army or the Police, and he had quickly rejected the first. He was aware of some social insecurity; there were traditions, mores, a public school ethos about the Army for which he felt a wary distrust. This was an alien world which might expose him, even reject him, before he had had a chance to master it. The Police, on the other hand, given what he had to offer, ought to be pleased to have him. And to do them justice, they had been pleased.
Sitting now in the bow of the launch, he felt satisfied with the world and with himself. He made a practice of concealing his enthusiasm as he did his imagination. Both were like fascinating but wayward friends, to be enjoyed rarely and with caution since they had about them the taint of treachery. But as he watched Courcy Island steadily taking form and colour across a dazzle of sea, he was aware of a heady mixture of exultation and fear. He exulted at the promise that here, at last, was the murder case of which he had dreamed since he had gained his sergeant's stripes. He feared that it might yet collapse; that they would be met at the jetty with those depressingly familiar words:
'He's waiting for you upstairs. We've got someone watching him. He's in a terrible state. He says he doesn't know what came over him.'
They never did know what came over them, those self-confessed murderers, as pathetic in defeat as they were incompetent in their killing. Murder, the unique and ultimate crime, was seldom the most interesting forensically or the most difficult to solve. But when you did get a good one there was no excitement like it; the heady combination of a man-hunt with a puzzle, the smell of fear in the air, strong as the metallic smell of blood, the sense of randy well-being, the fascinating way in which confidence, personality, morale subtly changed and deteriorated under its contaminating impact. A good murder was what police work was about. And this promised to be a good one.
He glanced across to where his chief sat, his red hair glinting in the sun. Grogan looked as he always did before a case, silent and withdrawn, the eyes hooded but wary, the muscles tensed under the well-cut tweed, the whole of that powerful body gathering its energies for action like the predator he was. When Buckley had been introduced to him three years earlier he had been at once reminded of pictures in his boyhood comics of an Indian brave and had mentally crowned that carved and ruddy head with ceremonial feathers. But the comparison had in some subtle way been inaccurate. Grogan was too large a man, too English and too complicated for so uncompromisingly simple an image. Buckley had only once been invited briefly into the stone cottage outside Speymouth where, separated from his wife, Grogan lived alone. It was rumoured that he had a son and that there was some trouble with the boy; what exactly no one seemed to know. The cottage had revealed nothing. There were no pictures, no mementoes of old cases, no photographs of family or colleagues, few books apart from what looked like a complete set of the Famous Trials series, little but bare stone walls and a bank of expensive stereo equipment. Grogan could have packed his bags and been out of it in half an hour leaving nothing of himself behind. Buckley still didn't understand him although after two years of working under him he knew what to expect; the alternate taciturnity and volubility during which he would use his sergeant as a sounding-board; the occasional sarcasm, the ruthlessness and the impatience. He only partly resented being used as a combination of clerk, shorthand writer, pupil and audience. Grogan did too much of the work himself. But you could learn from him; he got results; he wasn't tainted with failure and he was fair. And he was nearing retirement; only two years to go. Buckley took what he wanted from him and bided his time.