The Theft of Magna Carta Read online

  9

  Night Call

  My God! Roger thought some two hours later, she’s beautiful. He kept his face set as if not at all impressed and looked at Stephenson; he had a faint feeling of revulsion which he seldom felt for a man. It was perhaps the very fair hair and near-albino lashes. The freckles. The unfinished look of his nose and lips. Had he been badly burned and been patched up by a brilliant plastic surgeon? No, Roger decided, the mass of freckles would not be there if that were so. But he had never seen a less suited couple, if appearances were anything to go by.

  “This is disgraceful,” Sarah Stephenson said coldly. She had an accent which was neither American nor Canadian; perhaps she was English but had lived on the other side of the Atlantic for a long time. Her phraseology and her icy manner were undoubtedly English. “You have no right to invade our privacy at this hour.”

  Stephenson grunted: “It’s an insult, that’s what I call it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Roger said briskly. “I hope you will answer our questions here, but if you would prefer to get dressed and come to the police station, I’ve no objection. We have more facilities there.” He was deliberately aggressive, wanting to push them as far as he could.

  He had an odd suspicion: that the woman approved; there was a glint of what might be admiration in her eyes. But that was probably imagination. She had made up for the night, had on no powder but only night cream, yet her features could stand that. Her quilted dressing gown, pale blue in colour, brought out the pale grey of her eyes.

  “What do you want to know?” asked Stephenson in a sulky, complaining way.

  Roger said sharply: “Inspector. Your notebook at the ready, please. Mr. Stephenson – were you at Leech’s picture gallery in Salisbury on Tuesday morning?”

  “Sure.”

  “What time, please?”

  “Oh, I guess—well, maybe around half-past nine until half-past ten.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “What’s that? What did you say?” The man both looked and sounded vague.

  “I said, why did you go there?”

  “To see some paintings, I guess.”

  “Why, Mr. Stephenson?” Roger’s voice hardened. There was a limit to how far he could push in this arbitrary manner, but he felt confident so far. Stephenson gave the impression that he didn’t even know he was being pushed. The woman, sitting in a small needlework or nursing chair, was also opposite him, and any admiration she had shown had gone. Her gaze was as icy as her manner.

  “I heard there was to be an auction and there might be some bargains.”

  “Who told you?”

  “A friend—an old acquaintance of mine.”

  “His name, please.”

  Just for a moment something happened to the man. It was as if his mask of pretending that he did not know what all the fuss was about dropped, and there was a hint of triumph in his eyes as he answered.

  “Frank Caldicott.”

  “C-A-L-D-I-C-O-T-T?”

  “Sure, I guess that’s how you spell it.” The mask was down again; the man’s voice even sounded different: diffident.

  “Where does Mr. Caldicott live, Mr. Stephenson?”

  “At Whiteside Court. Number 27, Whiteside Court, St. John’s Wood.” Stephenson gave the “saint” its full pronunciation, did not contract it in the English way. Moreover, it was Caldicott’s right address.

  “And you just went to the gallery to look?” Roger put a lash of scepticism in his tone.

  “Sure, sure,” Stephenson muttered, and then he flared up. “Say—what is this? Can’t a man go and look at some paintings without being hauled out of bed in the middle of the night? Is it a crime in Merrie England to look at works of art or something?” He made the last word sound like “sumpun” but his indignation seemed real. “So I went to the Leech Gallery to look at some paintings Frankie told me might be easy to buy. He said he thought there was a genuine Gainsborough and a genuine Turner. If that had been true and I could have bought them at a good price that would have been quite a day. Yes, sir, quite a day. But when I got there what do you think?” Wadderyertink. “There were so many dealers you couldn’t even breathe. Those prices would have hit heaven itself. So we got out. Why, we had so much time on our hands we went to look at the cathedral, and I’m not the world’s hottest cathedral buff. No, sir.” He glanced at the woman, who hadn’t stirred and now showed no expression at all. “Let me tell you something, Superintendent, let me tell you this. If it hadn’t been for my wife I wouldn’t have put my nose inside that cathedral. Not even my nose. No, sir.” He drew back and threw his arms up shoulder high. “Did I commit any crime, Superintendent? You tell me that: did I commit any crime?”

  At last, he stopped.

  A glint of satisfaction showed in the woman’s eyes, as if she felt he had ended on a note of triumph. Kempton, in Roger’s view, kept a straight face but obviously felt disappointed. Roger turned away from Stephenson as if acknowledging that his challenge had failed. He glanced at the bedside table, at a man’s watch and some coins in neat piles, keys, a pigskin wallet. He saw a thin book lying face downward, and the title read: Salisbury Cathedral. He wondered what page it was open at, edged toward the table, and looked again at Stephenson, whose “Did I commit a crime?” still hovered on its ring of indignation.

  Roger said coldly: “I don’t know.”

  Stephenson gasped: “You don’t know what?” The words came out as if they were whining out of a punctured balloon.

  “I have no idea what you did after you left Salisbury,” Roger replied coldly.

  Stephenson looked at him, mouth agape, speechless. Roger seemed to stumble, and put out a hand to save himself. The woman said in ice-cold anger: “That is insulting.” Roger pushed the bedside table and grabbed at the head of the bed. Money, wallet, keys, and book all slid toward the floor. Stephenson was still too dazed to help, no one else was near enough. Roger caught the book but could not save the other things. And a smaller book, in green, fell out; he had seen the book when Batten had taken him around the cathedral; it was called The Sarum Magna Carta. Genuinely unsteady, Roger straightened up and dropped onto the bed, putting the books on a pillow. He looked shaken as he stared down at a rug which he had rucked up. For a few moments the scene was like a tableau, all the four standing or sitting absolutely still. Both the woman and Stephenson were glaring at Roger, and the woman’s lips seemed to be quivering with rage.

  Roger looked up, as if baffled.

  “Clumsy oaf! I am sorry!” He moved from the bed quickly and bent down to pick up first the wallet, then the coins. Kempton rounded the bed to help him and after a few moments Stephenson joined in, too. Sarah stood aloof until the last coin had been picked up and Stephenson had placed the money in little piles – pennies, new halfpennies, two-, five-, and ten-pence pieces and some fifty-pence pieces. “I am sorry,” repeated Roger. “All fingers and thumbs today. It’s been a rough day. Mr. Stephenson, did you see this woman yesterday?”

  He took a photograph from his pocket and held it out, his fingers were deliberately unsteady. It was one of the prints Batten had given him of Linda Prell’s face superimposed on the model’s face. Stephenson, jolted out of his earlier mood, glanced down. He did not move a muscle of his face, and there was a noticeable pause before he answered.

  “Yes. She—”

  “A moment, please.” Roger became much less aggressive but was still authoritative. He thrust the picture in front of Sarah, who looked down at it, eyes still frosty. Unlike the man, she reacted noticeably; she was startled.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Where, please?”

  “She was in the gallery yesterday morning.”

  “That’s right, she was,” Stephenson remembered. “She was quite a woman.”

  “Have you see
n her since?” asked Roger.

  “Since?” echoed Stephenson. “Hell, no.”

  “Why should he have seen her since?” demanded Sarah. “Isn’t it time you told us what—” She broke off, catching her breath, and to Roger she seemed to be overacting very slightly. “Is that the—the missing policewoman? We heard about her on the radio.”

  “Policewoman?” echoed Stephenson. “You mean— Jeeze! That girl.”

  “She disappeared after leaving the gallery,” Roger said. “Are you sure you didn’t see her again?”

  “What are you insinuating?” demanded Stephenson, in the sharpest voice he had yet used. “That I’d forget a woman like that? Are you crazy?”

  “I see what you mean,” Roger said, putting the photograph back into his pocket. “She left the gallery just after you, and we haven’t seen her since. We hoped you had.”

  “No, sir!” asserted Stephenson.

  “What do you think has happened to her?” asked Sarah.

  “We don’t yet know,” Roger said grimly. “We only know that she was in the gallery to take photographs of the people at the preview, and disappeared.”

  “I only wish I could help,” Stephenson said. “I surely do. I didn’t see any camera, though.”

  “I still don’t understand why you had to come here about this as late as it is,” Sarah said coldly before Roger could comment. “Is there any special reason, Superintendent?”

  “We have to catch up with everybody who wasn’t identified at the gallery,” Roger replied, and then flashed a smile for the first time since he had arrived here. “Forgive me if I’ve been too brusque, Mr. Stephenson, I’m very pressed for time and worried about that young woman.” He paused and then asked a mollified Stephenson: “Can you remember exactly what you did after you left the gallery? And whom you saw. That might help a great deal.”

  “Why, sure,” Stephenson said. “I’ve got a good memory, there isn’t much I forget. Eh, honey?” He told Roger exactly what he had done, omitting only his brief talk first with Sarah, then with Ledbetter. He mentioned passers-by, mostly approaching Leech’s. He seemed much more in control of himself and anxious to show that he had taken no offence.

  It was half-past twelve before Roger and Kempton left.

  Neither Stephenson nor Sarah spoke for a few moments, just stood staring at each other. At last Stephenson went to the door, took the “Do Not Disturb” sign from the inside handle and opened and hung it outside. No one was in the passage. Stephenson locked the door and went to the window, standing to one side and peering out. The two policemen were crossing the road toward a parked car: Roger’s Rover. They got in and the car moved off.

  At last, Stephenson said: “I could cut their throats!”

  “It’s as well you didn’t,” Sarah remarked dryly.

  “Next time,” Stephenson rasped.

  “Do you think they know—” Sarah began.

  “They don’t know a thing but they may guess plenty,” Stephenson answered. “He’s got a mind, that West. He wanted to jump us into saying more than we did. You did fine, honey, real fine.”

  “I don’t understand why he came to us,” Sarah said.

  “Because the woman followed us and someone noticed,” answered Stephenson. “And maybe Caldicott made them take notice. But no one can tie us in with Ledbetter and his pal, you don’t have to worry. Ledbetter’s just a rental-car man and who would recognise him down here? We won’t hear from the cops any more.” He put his arm round Sarah’s shoulders and eased the dressing gown off their pale smoothness. His hands looked repellent against the soft skin. “Honey, they sure did wake me up. How about helping me to get to sleep tonight?”

  She said: “If that’s what you want.”

  For a moment, gown and nightdress on the floor by her feet, she looked like a marble statue. But she did not stay like a statue for long.

  Roger went to the Bath police station, which he had visited on his way to the hotel as a courtesy. The senior officer on duty had been called out on a suspected hijacking of a lorry load of cigarettes, so Roger did not stay. He drove toward Warminster and Salisbury without saying much. Bath itself was deserted but the great terraces of streets on the hills were shown by the clear street lamps, and lights dotted among the trees in and up the side of the valley.

  Soon they were on the winding road which climbed steadily upward, making fair speed because the headlights of oncoming cars gave them good warning. They were on a straight stretch when Roger asked: “Anything strike you as noteworthy, Alan?”

  “Well—” Kempton began, but didn’t finish.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, you would certainly have made them crack if—” Kemptom floundered. “I—er—I suppose the truth is that I didn’t quite understand what you were after, sir.”

  “Alan,” Roger said. “That pair is hiding a lot. Whether it’s to do with Linda Prell’s disappearance I don’t know but they are certainly hiding a lot. When I showed the photograph to Stephenson he didn’t move a muscle.”

  “I noticed that,” Kempton answered.

  “So he was keeping himself under rigid self-control,” Roger declared. “The woman did a better job in her way, even though she was a long time realising that the sensible thing was to recognise the girl of the photograph. We shook them badly, but they didn’t crack.” He slowed down for a corner, and then went on: “Did you see the guidebook?”

  “The one on Salisbury Cathedral?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they’re certainly touring the district,” Kempton pointed out. “Aren’t they?”

  “Obviously. Sarah Stephenson made him go to the cathedral, he says.”

  “You would be surprised where my wife drags me sometimes,” Kempton said, only half-laughing.

  “And he took the book to bed with him.”

  After a pause, Kempton said gruffly: “I see what you mean.”

  “Spell it out,” Roger urged.

  “He was apparently very interested although pretending to be uninterested.”

  “That’s my guess too,” Roger said. “I would give a lot to know why they were really in Salisbury and why they’re staying in the area.” He drove on for a few minutes before going on: “I want to see Caldicott in the morning. If I drive straight up to London I can get a few hours’ sleep, talk to him and be back in Salisbury by midday. I’ll drop you off at the King’s Arms, as Salisbury’s on a direct road to town. Will that suit you?”

  “Just right,” Kempton said, and stifled a yawn. Then he said: “She was one in a million, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a woman like that can see in a man like that I can’t begin to guess.”

  “A kind of beauty-and-the-beast magnetism could be the answer,” Roger remarked. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “But he’s such a repellent-looking beggar.”

  “Not all women would think so,” Roger said, and went on with a note of laughter: “Of course, there could be another reason: money.”

  “Money?”

  “She wore an engagement ring worth thousands of pounds, that dressing gown was Italian silk, even her slippers were jewelled. She lives and sleeps in money. A lot of women will overcome repugnance now and again if they have everything else they want. And don’t imagine she’s always as cold as she looked tonight,” Roger said. “I want you to make out a report covering this jaunt by noon tomorrow.”

  “I’ll have it ready,” promised Kempton.

  At about one-fifteen Roger dropped him at the hotel. A little more than two hours later he drew up outside the house in Bell Street, Chelsea. The street lights were on and here and there lights shone at windows but there was only darkness at his own house. As he put the car in the garage he reflected that when Janet was at home she always left a light
on in the hallway; usually the boys did, too. The dark emptiness was somehow disheartening, but it wasn’t only that. He wasn’t sure that he hadn’t made another mistake. There were some cases which one mishandled from the beginning: could this be one of them? He put on lights on his way to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door. There was cold milk, three-days-old cold meat, cheese which had been left in the icebox far too long. Nothing had any flavour except the milk, which was so cold it hurt his gullet as he swallowed. He ought to have made tea or coffee. He wasn’t prepared to do so now, and went upstairs. Not even deliberate recollection of the conversation with Coppell cheered him. There was something wrong about this case. He simply didn’t know what it was yet.

  And he would feel uneasy till they knew what had happened to the missing girl.

  He went to bed at four o’clock and woke without knowing what time it was, but to broad daylight and the ringing of the telephone by his side. He sat upright and took the receiver off but did not answer until he was comfortable. He thought: they’ve found the girl’s body, and his spirits were as low as when he had gone to bed.

  “West here,” he said at last.

  “Good morning, sir.” It was recently promoted Detective Sergeant Venables, the tall, ungainly man in the office next to his, a notoriously early riser. “A cable’s in from New York and as it’s turned eight o’clock I thought I ought to call you.”

  The bedside clock, Roger now saw, said three minutes past eight. But his heart leaped at the news of the cable coupled with the fact that Venables wouldn’t have called unless he had thought the news important.

  “What’s it say?” asked Roger.

  “It was in code, sir, but I’ve decoded it. It’s from Captain Goodison of New York Police Headquarters, and it says: ‘Stephenson potentially dangerous stop also contact man for rare art and paintings for some museums and public galleries also suspected of being contact man for secret buyers of stolen treasures.’ “ Venables gave a little cough. “I double-checked the word ‘treasures’, sir. No doubt it’s the right one. Very interesting, isn’t it?”