“Did the lorry go east or west after it left the mansion grounds?” someone asked.
“East, back toward the central city,” Bushell said. “I personally saw that lorry leave, and I could not tell you of my own knowledge whether it turned right or left. I was concerned about Honest Dick, and paid the lorry little attention. The witnesses who did notice which way it went, though, unanimously say it turned right.”
A man with a military bearing gained his attention. “Up on this grassy knoll, sir: have they recovered the cartridge casings from the rifle that killed Honest Dick?”
“They hadn’t as of last night,” Bushell said. “At the moment, that’s all I know. I haven’t had the chance to speak with the New Liverpool constables today, and they are primarily responsible for investigating the murder. Our efforts - that is, those of the RAMs - will concentrate on recovering The Two Georges.”
“Why aren’t you looking into Tricky Dick’s murder yourself?” three reporters asked, while two others said, “It’s part of the same case, isn’t it?”
“Technically, no, it is not a part of the same case,” Bushell answered. “However much we believe the murder of the Steamer King and the theft of The Two Georgesto be related, we have not proved that to be so. And homicide without flight across provincial lines, even homicide by means of a firearm, is not a crime that comes under the jurisdiction of the Royal American Mounted Police. It falls under the authority of the constabulary of New Liverpool and of the province of Upper California.” He smiled wryly.
“Anyone who thinks we’re not going to be working very closely with the New Liverpool constabulary, though . . .”
After that, the questions began to get repetitive: reporters were looking for new ways to say old things. Finally, one overstuffed fellow with a monocle asked, “D’you you think Tricky Dick was involved in the plot to steal The Two Georges and killed to keep him quiet?”
“In a word, no,” Bushell said. “If you are reduced to questions of that sort, I think, the proceedings are at an end. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.” He stepped away from the podium. Lieutenant Thirkettle rushed up to spread a cloud of politeness over the press conference. He was good at what he did. By the time he’d finished, even the reporters whose questions Bushell hadn’t answered or to which he’d given short shrift were in a happy mood. They chattered among themselves as they hurried out of the briefing room to write and file their stories.
The vaults of the Bank of England did not hold enough gold sovereigns to make Bushell take over Thirkettle’s job.
When the last reporters were gone, the public information officer came up and said, “On the whole, that was very nicely done, Colonel, although I do wish you’d been a touch more ... diplomatic there at the end.”
“I was patient as long as I could manage,” Bushell said, meaning as long as I could stand. “I never have suffered fools gladly, though, and I didn’t aim to start with that fat donkey.”
“Er - yes.” Lieutenant Thirkettle looked pained. To carry out his assignment well, he had to get along with the press, which meant getting along with a certain number of fools and donkeys, which meant not referring to them - maybe not thinking of them - as fools and donkeys. Poor sorry devil. Bushell pulled out his pocket watch. It was after five. Yawning, he said, “Lieutenant, with your ever so gracious permission, I’m going upstairs to see how Major Rhodes is doing. Then I am going to go home and, God willing, go to bed. Running on an hour’s worth of sleep is not something I can do every day anymore.” He wanted to laugh at himself for implying once upon a time he’d been able to run on an hour of sleep a day.
Without waiting for Thirkettle’s reply, he headed for the stairs. When he got to Gordon Rhodes’s office, he was surprised not to find Samuel Stanley there. Rhodes said, “He went home about an hour ago, sir said he was so tired, he couldn’t see straight. The way he was acting, I believed him.”
“I know just how he feels,” Bushell said sincerely.
Major Rhodes handed him a manila envelope. “He picked these up for you from Judge Huygens. Says they’re a present to be used carefully.”
Bushell undid the metal clasp on the envelope. Inside were a dozen search warrants, all signed by the judge. The lines for the date and the name and place of the person to be served with the warrants were left bank. Bushell whistled softly. He asked Gordon Rhodes, “Have you seen these documents?”
“No, sir,” Rhodes answered. “What are they?”
“Never mind.” Bushell hadn’t seen many blank warrants, not in all his years as a RAM, and he’d never seen so many together at once. Judge Huygens had indeed given him a present. If any word ever got out about what sort of present it was, though, it would be useless - worse than useless, for it would turn into a weapon against him. If you used shortcuts in the legal system very often, pretty soon you wouldn’t have a legal system. But if you let yourself get hamstrung on time-wasting technicalities, you had problems of a different kind. Being trusted with blank warrants was a compliment, of sorts. Major Rhodes was a smart officer in more ways than one. Some men would have asked questions after that “Never mind,” and found out things they were better off not knowing officially. The only question Rhodes asked was, “What now, sir?”
“Now I’m going home and going to bed,” Bushell told him. “If Sam threw in the sponge an hour ago, I’m entitled to do it myself. That damned train is on the way here from Victoria. It’ll be here day after tomorrow, I expect, and I’ll have to be at my best to deal with Sir Horace and Sir Martin. See you in the morning.”
He almost fell asleep in his car, waiting for steam pressure to build so he could drive home. He drove carefully, as if he’d had too much to drink: not very fast, not very close to the car in front of him. He knew his reflexes weren’t all they might have been.
The early editions of the evening papers didn’t yet have his picture in them. One more day of anonymity, he thought. When he got home, he had to park down the street from his block of flats everyone else was returning from work, too. He picked up his mail - a couple of bills, a couple of advertising circulars, a letter from an old friend from his army days who by now assuredly would have heard about him if not from him - and went upstairs.
He busied himself in the flat’s little kitchen. After tossing a spud in the oven, he made a green salad and pan-broiled a beefsteak he took from the icebox. He also took out some ice, put it in a tumbler, and poured Jameson over it.
He had the tumbler about half empty by the time his supper was ready. The whiskey made him even more tired than he had been, undercutting the layer of alertness he’d borrowed from the coffee to get through the day. He no longer cared. “I made it,” he said to the wall. After he’d washed and dried and put away the dishes, he lit a cigar, pulled out a copy of Pope’s translation of the Iliad, and turned on the wireless. He spun the dial, looking for news. He skidded past a pianist playing theWaldstein sonata, an advertisement for Bovril, some syncopated electric Nawleans music that made him curl his lip, and the postmortem of a rugby match before he finally found some.