The Moving Toyshop (14 page)

“So you went home,” Fen put in quietly. “And jolly sensible too.”

“I’ve been an awful coward,” Sally said.

“Nonsense. In your position, I should have fled the country. Was there anything else?”

“No, that was really all. I’ve told it very badly. Oh, I think the man with the bandages round his face was a doctor: and one of the others called him ‘Berlin’. It’s one of the names in the advertisement, you know. Those men you chased away told me he’d found something that would clear me. I had to go with them. I remember he was very thin.”

Fen nodded. “What about the other two?”

“I was really too frightened to notice them much. The woman was plump and oldish, and the man was a weedy, undersized creature. Of course I couldn’t see their faces.”

“Sharman?” Cadogan suggested.

“Probably,” said Fen. That covers Berlin, and Mold, and Leeds—presumably the woman, and Ryde—yourself, Sally—and leaves only West out of account. Can you tell us anything about times?”

Sally shook her head. “I’m sorry. It was all some time between eleven and twelve—I heard midnight striking as I walked home.”

There was a long silence. Then Cadogan said to Fen: “What do you think happened?”

Fen shrugged. “Fairly obviously a plot on the part of certain of the residuary legatees, Rosseter abetting, to kill Miss Tardy and prevent her claiming the inheritance. Once she was dead the body would be disposed of, and presumably has been, and everything would go according to plan. You, Sally, were to take Miss Tardy to the toyshop, to avoid any of the actual conspirators being even thus remotely implicated should anything ever be suspected; and afterwards”—he smiled grimly—“well, you wouldn’t think anything more of it, would you? If you did, Rosseter would deny he wrote you that letter, deny everything. In those circumstances, and with no and no toyshop, what sort of a case could be made out against anyone, and for what crime? Unfortunately it all went wrong:
(a)
you stayed in the shop instead of going away;
(b) 
Cadogan here blundered in and found the body; and
(c) 
Cadogan was afterwards seen chasing after you with obvious intent to get information. That being the case, you couldn’t be left at large; you had to disappear, too. And you very nearly did. The only thing that mystifies me is why Rosseter should have been so shaken, and why he should have thought you might have killed the woman. It rather suggests… No, I don’t know what it suggests. Anyway, I’m going back to Oxford to have another talk with Rosseter—and I shall stop at the college on the way to collect a gun.”

There was one interruption, however, before he was able to carry out this plan. The five of them squeezed into Lily Christine III with great difficulty. Sally sat on Cadogan’s knee, which Cadogan rather liked, and they set off, with Fen driving, on a hurried, nerve-tearing passage of the narrow road, bouncing over bridges like a scenic railway, and missing stray livestock and pedestrians by inches. How they failed to mutilate or kill the A.A. man at the junction with the Banbury road Cadogan was never able to imagine; they left him staring after them, too horrified even to call out. Cadogan, in telegrammatic, broken sentences, acquainted Sally and Mr. Hoskins with what they knew of the case so far.

“Golly,” said Sally when he had finished; and added a little shyly: “You do believe what I told you, don’t you? I know it sounds fantastic, but—”

“My dear Sally, this is such a wild business I’d believe you if you said you were the Lady of Shalott.”

“You do talk funnily, don’t you?” But the words were swept away in the rush of wind and the din of the engine.

“What?” said Cadogan.

Wilkes turned round in the front seat. He could hear better when there was a noise going on. “She says you talk funnily.”

“Do I?” It had not previously occurred to Cadogan that he talked funnily: the thought disturbed him.

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Sally said “What do you do? What’s your job, I mean?”

“I’m a poet.”

“Golly.” Sally was impressed. “I’ve never met a poet before. You don’t look like one.”

“I don’t feel like one.”

“I used to read poetry at school,” Sally continued reminiscently. “There was one bit I liked. It went:

‘Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.’

“I haven’t the foggiest what it means, but it sounds nice, anyway. It was in a book called
Poetry For the Middle Forms
… I’m not sitting too hard on you, am I?”

“No, I like it.”

“It must be jolly good fun being a poet,” Sally mused. “No one to boss you about, and no one to make you work when you don’t want to.”

“It’d be all right if one earned any money at it,” Cadogan replied.

“Go on. How much do you earn?”

“From being a poet? About two pounds a week.”

“Golly, that isn’t much. Perhaps you aren’t very important yet.”

“I think that’s probably it.”

This seemed to satisfy Sally, for she sang happily to herself until Fen’s mounting a pavement with two wheels while taking a particularly sharp corner diverted all their minds from the subject.

It was shortly after this that the interruption occurred. As they neared Oxford, shops began to appear, traffic increased, and the signs of undergraduate habitation became more numerous. Just before they arrived at the turning which leads off to Lady Margaret Hall, Cadogan, who had been staring vacantly at the landscape, suddenly shouted to Fen to stop, and Fen did this so suddenly that they were nearly overwhelmed by a following car, which fortunately circumvented them, though not without abuse. Fen twisted round in his seat and said:

“What in God’s name is the matter?”

Cadogan pointed, and their eyes followed the direction of his arm. A hundred yards or so behind where they had stopped was a toyshop.

“I
think
it’s the same one,” said Cadogan, clambering out of the car. “In fact, I’m almost sure…” The others followed him, and they clustered round the window.

“Yes,” said Cadogan. “Because I remember thinking how ugly that doll with the cracked face looked.”

“I remember it, too,” said Sally.

“And there’s that box of balloons I knocked over… Anyway, it looks like it.” Cadogan searched for the name above the shop. It was “Helston”, in faded white letters, elaborately scrolled.

He and Fen went inside. The shop was inhabited only by a dusty young man with a shock of red hair.

“Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, sir,” he said. “What can I do for you? A doll’s house for the little girl?” He had been reading a manual on salesmanship.

“What little girl?” said Fen blankly.

“Or a box of bricks or some toy soldiers?” Cadogan bought a balloon and went outside to present it to Sally.

“Is the owner of the shop in? It’s a Miss Alice Winkworth isn’t it?”Fen asked.

“Yes, sir, Miss Winkworth. No, sir, I’m afraid she’s not in. Anything I can do for you…”

“No, I wanted to see her personally. You haven’t her address, I suppose?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t. You see, I’ve only been here a short while. She doesn’t live on the premises. I know that.”

So there was really nothing more to be said. But as he was leaving, Fen asked:

“Did you notice anything unusual about the shop when you opened this morning?”

“Well, sir, it’s funny you should say that, because several things seemed out of place, like. I was afraid there’d been a burglary, but then there was no sign of breaking in, and nothing that I could see was missing…”

When they were in the car again, and heading for St. Christopher’s: “Obviously that’s the normal habitat of the toyshop,” Fen said. “It’s interesting, though not unexpected, to find that this Winkworth woman owns it. She seems to have provided the scenery for the whole affair. I suppose she’s Leeds.”

“We ought to have buried Danny,” said Sally suddenly. ‘We oughtn’t to have left him like that.” They drove in silence to the front gate of St. Christopher’s.

Parsons, the porter, hailed them as they passed through the lodge. “The police have been a third time for Mr. Cadogan,” he said sombrely. “They’re getting rather angry. They went and had a look in your room, Professor Fen. I saw to it they didn’t disturb anything.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Said I didn’t know anything about it.
Perjury.”
Parsons retired, grumbling, to study the
Daily Mirror.

They all crossed the two quadrangles to Fen’s room. “What do the police want him for?” Sally whispered to Fen.

“Pornographic books,” 
said Fen impressively.

“No, seriously.”

“He stole some food from the grocer’s—when we were looking round this morning.”

“Golly, what a stupid thing to do.”

Fen’s room proved to contain an occupant. Mr. Erwin Spode, of Spode, Nutling, and Orlick, publishers of high-class literature, rose to his feet in a twitter of nervousness as they came in.

“Hello, Erwin,” said Cadogan in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Mr. Spode coughed nervously. “In point of fact, I was looking for you. I was in Oxford, so I thought I’d look you up. About that American lecture tour.”

Cadogan groaned. “Let me introduce you,” he said. “Mr. Spode, my publisher: Professor Fen, Miss Carstairs, Mr. Hoskins, Dr. Wilkes.”

“I thought that as this was your college I should perhaps find you here.” Mr. Spode addressed himself to Fen. “I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion.” His semicircular profile bore marks of anxiety, and his thin hair was ruffled. He rubbed his face with a handkerchief. “It’s hot,” he complained.

It certainly was hot. The sun was falling lower in the heavens, but it still blazed with unabated strength. The green and cream of the room were cooling, and all the windows were flung wide, but it was still hot. Cadogan felt he could do with a bathe.

“When did you arrive?” he asked Mr. Spode, less because he wanted to know than because he could think of nothing else to say.

“Last night,” said Mr. Spode with something very like frank dismay.

“Oh?” 
Cadogan’s interest was abruptly aroused. “But you said when you left me you were going back to Caxton’s Folly.”

Mr. Spode became more unhappy than ever; he coughed repeatedly. “I called in at my office on the way back, and found a message asking me to come up here at once. I drove. I would have given you a lift, but when I rang up you’d already left. I’m staying at the ‘Mace and Sceptre’,” he concluded defensively, as if this both explained and excused everything.

Fen, who had been arranging about tea for them all with an elderly, mirthless individual who proved to be his scout, returned to the room, unlocked a drawer in his untidy desk, and took out a small automatic pistol. For a moment conversation was still: something of the implication of that act was borne in on everyone present.

“I’m sorry I shall have to desert you,” he said. “But this interview really won’t wait. Make yourselves at home. Sally, don’t budge from here until I get back—remember you’re still very dangerous to these people. Mr. Hoskins, don’t take your eyes off Sally for a moment.”

“I find it practically impossible to do so already, sir,” said Mr. Hoskins gallantly. Sally favoured him with an impish grin.

Curiosity, and the desire for tea, were conducting a mimic battle in Cadogan’s brain; curiosity emerged triumphant. “I’m coming too,” he announced.

“I don’t want you,” said Fen. “Remember what happened last time.”

“But if I stay here,” Cadogan argued, “the police will find me.” (“And about time too,” Fen muttered.) “Besides that, I’m curious.”

“Oh, my dear paws,” was Fen’s comment. “I suppose it’s useless to try and stop you.”

“I think I might go to the station first, though, and collect my bag: there’s a gun in it.”

“No,” said Fen rudely. “We don’t want you blazing away like a cowboy all over the streets of Oxford. Besides, think what would happen if you were arrested with it on you… Stop arguing and come along.” Such was the force of Fen’s personality that Cadogan stopped arguing and went along.

“I’m not sorry to have escaped Spode,” he told Fen as they walked towards Mr. Rosseter’s office.

“Why?”

“He wants me to lecture in America on modern English poetry.”

“No one ever asks me to lecture in America on anything,” said Fen gloomily. “You ought to be glad. I should be.” His temperament was inclined to be mercurial. “What do you think of the girl, Sally?”

“Beautiful.”

“No, you old lecher,” said Fen affectionately. “I mean, is she telling the truth?”

“I’m pretty sure of it. aren’t you?”

“I should think so, but I have a distrustful nature just the same. After all, it’s a somewhat unusual business, isn’t it?”

“So unusual that no one in his senses would invent it.”

“Yes, you may be right there. You know it occurs to me—somewhat belatedly—that the time-limit hasn”t much significance after all. Miss Tardy had to be got rid of before she could start kicking up a fuss about her claim, that’s all. And, of course, it was preferable that she should disappear before anyone knew she was in England. I wonder when exactly she arrived, and if she stayed the night anywhere, or visited anyone before she came to Oxford. I should rather guess not—that would leave too many obvious traces; in those circumstances getting rid of her would be a risk.”

“What do you think’s happened to the body?”

Fen shrugged. “A furnace, perhaps—or someone’s back garden. It”ll probably be impossible to trace at this stage.”

They passed the Church of St. Michael, standing almost opposite the shop where Sally worked, crossed the Cornmarket, and made their way past the Clarendon Hotel towards Mr. Rosseter’s office. The rush of traffic was abating. Cadogan felt extremely hungry, and his head was beginning to ache again; he was also conscious that he had had too much beer at the ‘Mace and Sceptre’.

“I feel like Gerontius,” he said gloomily, breaking a long silence.

“Gerontius?”

“
‘This emptying out of each constituent
…’
Sick, I mean.”

“Never mind. We’ll have some tea at Fuller’s when we’ve seen Rosseter… Here we are.”