The Moving Toyshop (8 page)

“Hello, Evans,” he said. “Fen here… Yes, very well, thanks, my dear fellow, and how are you… ? I wonder if you’d look something up for me?”

An indistinct crackle.

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying… What I want is the details of the will of a Miss Snaith, Boar’s Hill, Oxford, who died about six months ago. It can’t have been proved until quite recently… What? Oh, well ring me back, will you? Yes… At the ‘Mace and Sceptre’. Yes. All right… Good-bye.”

“My soul cleaveth to the dust,” he sang without much humility as he jogged the receiver-rest, inserted two more pennies, and dialed a local number. Once again the telephone shrilled in the study of the Chief Constable of Oxford on Boar’s Hill.

“Well?” said that dignitary. “Oh, my God, is it you again? Not more about this Cadogan man?”

“No,” said Fen, hurt. “As a matter of fact, no. Though I must say I think you’re being most unhelpful.”

“It’s no use. The grocer’s kicking up a stink about it. You’d better keep out of the way. You know what happens when you start interfering in things.”

“Never mind that now. Have you any recollection of a Miss Snaith who lived near you?”

“Snaith? Snaith? Oh, yes, I know. Eccentric old lady.”

“Eccentric? How?”

“Oh, terrified of being murdered for her money. Lived in a sort of fortified grange, with damned great fierce mastiff dogs all over the shop. Died a short while ago. Why?”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“Oh, once or twice. Never really knew her. But what—”

“What sort of things was she interested in?”

“Interested 
in? Well—education, I believe. Oh, and she was always writing a lot of trashy books about spiritualism. Don’t know if she ever published them. Hope not. But she was terrified of dying—particularly of getting herself murdered—and I suppose it consoled her to think there was an after-life. Though I must say, if I’m going to come back after I’m dead and spell out idiotic messages on ouija boards, I’d rather not know about it beforehand.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, she was really quite a nice old thing, and very sensitive to kindness. But as I say, she was terrified people wanted to kill her. The only person she really trusted was some solicitor fellow—”

“Rosseter?”

“Come to think of it, that was the name. But look here, why—”

“I suppose there’s no doubt her death was an accident?”

“Lord, no. Run over by a bus. She just walked into it—there was no one else anywhere near her. You can imagine that, in view of the circumstances, we investigated pretty carefully.”

“Did she travel about much?”

“No, never—that was another odd thing. Stuck in Oxford all her life. Strange bird. By the way, Gervase, about
Measure for Measure—”

Fen rang off. He was not prepared to discuss
Measure for Measure 
at the moment. While he was considering what he had learned the bell rang in the call-box, and he lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” he said. “Yes, this is Fen. Oh, it’s you, Evans. You’ve been quick.”

“Traced it easily,” said the disembodied spokesman of Somerset House. “Elizabeth Ann Snaith, ‘Valhalla’, Boar’s Hill, Oxford. Will dated August 13th, 1937, and witnessed by R. A. Starkey and Jane Lee. Estate £937,642—tidy packet. Personalty, £740,760. A few small bequests—to servants, I imagine—but the bulk of it goes to ‘my niece, Emilia Tardy’, with a lot of queer provisions about advertising for her only in English papers, not communicating direct, and Lord knows what gallimaufry of rubbish. Oh, and a time limit of six months after the Snaith’s death to claim the bequest. Looks as if she was doing everything she could to prevent the miserable Tardy woman getting her paws on the money.”

“And what happens if she doesn’t claim it?”

At the other end there was a pause. “Half a tick, it’s over the page. Ah, yes. In that case, it all goes to a Mr. Aaron Rosseter, of 193A Cornmarket, Oxford. Lucky devil. That’s all, I think.”

“Ah.” Fen was thoughtful. Thanks, Evans. Thanks very much.”

“Any time,” said that official. “Give my love to Oxford.” He rang off.

Outside the call-box, Fen stood for a minute, and considered. The guests of the hotel drifted past him, stopping to ask the porter for timetables, taxis, newspapers. Ridley dealt with them with practised competence. In the dining-room the tables were being laid for lunch, and the head waiter was checking off reservations from a list pencilled on the back of a menu.

Unquestionably, Mr. Rosseter had a very good motive for murdering Miss Emilia Tardy. If he was only one of the executors of the will, he would have had no chance of cheating Miss Tardy out of her inheritance by failing to advertise for her. So when, in fact, she appeared… Fen shook his head. It didn’t really fit. For one thing, it was scarcely conceivable that Miss Snaith should have put such extraordinary powers into Mr. Rosseter’s hands, however much she trusted him; for another, if Mr. Rosseter had murdered Miss Tardy and knocked Cadogan on the head, why had he not recognized him, or, if he had, why had he been so extremely informative? Of course it was not necessarily the murderer who had knocked Cadogan on the head; possibly an accomplice… But, then, why the toyshop?

Fen sighed deeply and patted the book he was carrying. His spirits were extremely volatile, and at the moment he felt a trifle depressed. He waved to Ridley and went back to the bar. Cadogan and Mr. Sharman had reached a conversational
impasse;
 Mr. Sharman had by now voided the whole of his views on Jane Austen, and Cadogan could not think of any fresh topic. At present, however, Fen was intent on avoiding them; he addressed himself, instead, to the melancholy, raw-boned Mr. Hoskins.

Mr. Hoskins was not in any way a troublesome undergraduate: he did his work with efficiency if not zeal, refrained from drunkenness and comported himself in a gentlemanly manner. His only remarkable characteristic was the unfailing spell which he appeared to cast upon young women. At the moment he was sitting before his second small glass of pale sherry and urging black-haired Miriam to the further consumption of chocolates.

Excusing himself to the girl, who gazed up at him with a kind of holy awe, Fen got Mr. Hoskins outside.

“Mr. Hoskins,” said Fen with mild severity. “I shall not inquire why you are devoting the golden hours of your youth to the illegal consumption of sherry in that imitation of Chartres Cathedral—”

“I’m much obliged to you, sir,” said Mr. Hoskins without any special perturbation of spirit.

“I only wish to ask,” Fen proceeded, “if you will do me a service.”

Mr. Hoskins blinked and silently bowed

“Are you interested in the novels of Jane Austen, Mr. Hoskins?”

“It has always appeared to me, sir,” said Mr. Hoskins, “that the women characters are poorly drawn.”

“Well, you should know,” said Fen, grinning. “Anyway, there’s a dreary, sordid fellow in there who has a passion for Jane Austen. Could you keep him here for an hour or so?”

“Nothing easier,” said Mr. Hoskins with benign self-assurance. Though I think perhaps I had better go and pack my young woman off first.”

“Of course, of course,” said Fen hastily.

Mr. Hoskins bowed again, returned to the bar, and shortly reappeared, shepherding Miriam with soothing explanations to the door. There he pressed her hand warmly, waved after her, and returned to Fen.

“Tell me, Mr. Hoskins,” said Fen, seized by a sudden disinterested curiosity, “how do you explain your extraordinary attraction for women? Don’t answer if you think I’m being impertinent”

“Not at all.” Mr. Hoskins conveyed the impression that he found this query most gratifying. “It’s really very simple: I quieten their fears and give them sweet things to eat. It seems never to fail.”

“Oh,” said Fen, a little taken aback. “Oh. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Hoskins. And now, if you’ll come back to the bar…” He began to give instructions.

Cadogan was only too delighted to be released by Mr. Hoskins from his vigil. When he and Fen left the bar Mr. Hoskins and Mr. Sharman were already conversing most amicably.

“Well, what’s going on?” he inquired when they got outside. He was a trifle hazy after five pints of beer, but his head was aching much less.

Fen drew him down the passage and they sat down by the reception desk, in two hard wooden chairs of vaguely Assyrian design. Fen explained about the telephone calls.

“No, no,” he said peevishly, cutting short Cadogan’s startled outcry on the subject of Mr. Rosseter. “I really don’t think he can have done it.” He gave his reasons.

That’s mere quibbling,” Cadogan answered. “It’s only because you have these romantic fancies about that advertisement—”

“I was coming to that,” said Fen malevolently. He paused to examine a young and elaborate blonde who was walking by, clad in furs and with very high heels. “Because in fact there is a connection between that advertisement and Miss Snaith.”

“And what may it be?”

“This.” With something of a flourish, Fen brought forth the book he had been carrying; it was rather with the air of a prosecuting counsel who has some piece of particularly damaging evidence to reveal. Cadogan studied it without much comprehension. It was entitled
The Nonsense Poems of Edward Lear.

“You may recall,” Fen went on, waving his index finger didactically about in the air, “that Miss Snaith was interested in comic verse. This”—he tapped the book authoritatively—“is comic verse.”

“You amaze me.”

“Comic verse of the highest order, moreover.” Fen suddenly abandoned his instructive manner and became aggrieved. There are actually people who imagine that Lear was
incapable 
of making the last lines of his limericks different from the first; whereas the fact is—”

“Yes, yes,” said Cadogan impatiently, taking the newspaper cutting from his pocket book. “I see what you mean. ‘Ryde, Leeds, West, Mold, Berlin’. Some fantastic method of designating people by means of limericks.”

“M’m.” Fen scrabbled through the pages. “And I somehow darkly suspect that our Mr. Sharman is one of them. Look here—there was an Old Person of Mold who shrank from sensations of cold; so he purchased some muffs, some furs, and some fluffs, and wrapped himself up from the cold. In the picture he looks like a sort of globular bear. doesn’t that fit?”

“Yes, but—”

“Moreover, Mr. Sharman came into a substantial legacy
last night.
And so did some others, apparently.”

“Ryde, Leeds, West, and Berlin.”

“Exactly. The Old Man of the West, you remember, wore a pale, plum-coloured vest—”

“There was another, wasn’t there, who never could get any rest.”

“Yes, but they set him to spin on his nose and chin, and there’s nothing distinctive about that, except therapeutically.”

“Ah.” Cadogan paused and reflected that he had drunk too much. “What about Ryde?”

“There was a Young Lady of Ryde,” Fen read after some further search, “whose shoe-strings were seldom untied. She purchased some clogs and some small spotted dogs, and frequently walked about Ryde. It really isn’t uncommon, you know, for people’s shoe-strings to be seldom untied, and clogs are scarcely conceivable. Which leaves the small spotted dogs.”

“I remember Berlin.”

“So do I. He was an Old Man whose form was uncommonly thin…” For the first time Fen hesitated. “It does all sound a bit wild, doesn’t it?”

“Well, what’s your idea?”

“I haven’t any really.” Fen considered. “It’s just this rather shaky train of correspondences; Miss Snaith—comic verse—Rosseter—advertisement—Sharman’s inheritance. But I confess it had occurred to me that Sharman and the ‘others’ he talked about might be the legatees in case Miss Tardy didn’t put in her claim.”

“But they aren’t. Rosseter is.”

“On the face of it, yes.” Taking a cigarette from a gold case, Fen put it slowly into his mouth. “There are such things as secret trusts, you know. You leave your money to one person and direct him to pass it on to another—with certain safeguards to make sure he does. In that way the general public can’t find out who’s getting it.”

“But why on earth should Miss Snaith go in for such a rigmarole?”

“I don’t know.” Fen lit his cigarette and tried to blow a smoke-ring. “I dare say Rosseter could tell us, but he won’t. A heel,” he added, being somewhat prone to out-of-date Americanisms.

“Nor will Sharman,” Cadogan said gloomily. His face lightened as he observed a popular woman novelist stumble on getting into the lift. “I tried.”

“Oh, you’ve been blundering about, have you,” said Fen with interest, “like a bull in a china shop? Well, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t let anvthing out, anyway.”

“By the way, why did you foist him on that undergraduate?”

“Chiefly to keep him under surveillance while I was talking to you.”

“I see. Well, we’ve only got to find a man with a plum-coloured vest, a man who’s uncommonly thin, a girl with some small spotted dogs, a—by the way, what about Leeds?”

“Her head was infested with beads.”

“My dear Gervase,” said Cadogan, “it’s all quite fantastic and hopeless.”

But Fen shook his head. “Not entirely,” he said. “If we can discover a beautiful shop-girl with blue eyes and a small spotted dog… Let’s start now.”

“Start? Now?”

They started.

Considering the matter afterwards, tediously rehearsing it to bored or frankly incredulous audiences, Cadogan became eventually convinced that this was by far the most extraordinary and improbable episode of the entire business. It is true that his sense of the fitness of things was somewhat impaired by beer; it is also true that the improbable has less weight in the City of Oxford than in any other habitable quarter of the globe. But still, even at the time, he felt that a poet and a professor who insisted on combing the shops of the town for a blue-eyed, beautiful girl with a small spotted dog, in the hope that her discovery might throw some light on the disappearance of a toyshop from the Iffley Road, were hardly likely to remain long at large in a sane and self-respecting society. However, it was evident that Gervase Fen felt no such qualms; he was confident that Mr. Hoskins would cling on to Mr. Sharman for as long as he was left to his vigil; he was confident that Mr. Rosseter’s advertisement had something to do with the death of Miss Tardy, and that he had interpreted it rightly; he was confident that a beautiful, blue-eyed shop-girl with a small spotted dog could not long elude them in a town the size of Oxford (Cadogan, on the contrary, was of opinion that she could elude them indefinitely); and he appeared, in any case, to have nothing else in the world to do but look for her.