There was a pause. Eventually the colonel cracked. ‘Six hundred and eighty votes have been received so far. No votes have been received from Marlow or Fakenham.’
‘Thank you, Colonel, thank you very much indeed.’
PART THREE
11
Inspector Grime pounded the table with his fist when Lady Lucy and Powerscourt told him the news. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘You’ve managed to find out what a police Inspector, a headmaster and a bloody Bishop couldn’t manage, you’ve got us a description. Now we can get going!’
He shouted for his sergeant and strode over to a map of Norfolk on his wall. ‘Now then, Sergeant Morris,’ he began. ‘First of all I want a house-to-house search of Fakenham and the surrounding villages. Does anybody remember seeing a man, middle thirties, average height with a great black beard on the days before the murder or on the day itself? Suspect may have had foreign accent but we can’t be sure. Blighter must have got here the day before. Blighter must have stayed somewhere. All hotels, boarding houses, you know the drill. Blighter must have got here somehow. God knows where he came from, we’ll just have to try all stations. Cromer, Holt, Swaffham, King’s Lynn, Norwich, I want signs put up in all those places asking anybody who remembers seeing our bearded friend on the day of the murder or, more likely, the day before to report to their local police station. I’ll send a wire to all those stations directly after this meeting.’ Inspector Grime stopped. ‘Is that clear? Any questions?’
‘Only this,’ said his sergeant. ‘We know he came here to kill the bursar. But he must have gone away too. Should we ask people who were on the trains if they saw him leaving too? Same journey, only both ways? Travelling on a return ticket, if you like?’
‘You’d better include that,’ said the Inspector grumpily, reluctant to admit he might have forgotten something important. ‘Please amend the instructions accordingly.’
The sergeant departed to organize the manhunt. Only the police had the manpower to undertake such a search, Powerscourt said to himself. But he did wonder if they hadn’t missed the obvious point. The murderer might have been sporting a large black beard on the fatal day. How long had it taken him to grow it? In other words, how long before the event had he known that he was going to come to the school and kill the bursar? And, more important still, did the murderer still have the beard? Or had he shaved it off? He mentioned his reservations to Lady Lucy as they walked back to the hotel. He didn’t say anything to Inspector Grime. He didn’t want to spoil his enthusiasm. As he took a cup of tea, another thought struck him. If you were the murderer, maybe you would suppose the police’s first assumption would be that the killer would shave the beard off. But suppose the murderer was playing double bluff? Suppose he was still wandering around with a great black beard, reckoning that the police were now looking for a cleanshaven man. Maybe the beard would be his best form of disguise after all.
Johnny Fitzgerald had been approaching the old men of the Jesus Hospital one at a time. He had become a familiar figure in the almshouse, popping his head round a door one moment, inviting an elderly resident for coffee or lunch at his hotel the next. He had realized by now that you could discount the first ten, maybe the first fifteen minutes of any conversation with a silkman resident at the Jesus Hospital. Once he had uttered the familiar words how are you, the man would be off. It reminded Johnny of cavalry officers he had known in his army days who always spent the first part of any conversation talking about their horses. So he knew by now that Nathaniel Jones, Number Five, known as Jones the Steam from his days as an engine driver, was troubled with the gout, not that he drank a lot, only four or five pints a night and a couple of whisky chasers, and that he had trouble sleeping. There followed a list of all possible remedies from counting sheep to listing the names of all your classmates in your last year at school. Christy Butler, Number Thirteen, had trouble with his back. Sitting down for meals, he told Johnny, had become very difficult. Maybe he would have to eat standing up. But he couldn’t go to sleep standing up, could he? That Dr Ragg, he was no more use than a teetotaller in a saloon bar, he never gave you proper medicine. William Taylor, Number Sixteen, usually referred to as Pretty Billy, a nickname that had followed him throughout his life, true in his youth, ironic in old age, said he just felt ill most of the time. He ached. He sweated. He limped. He had headaches. He was, he told Johnny, like some old engine that has been run for too long and is just about to collapse. Looking at him, Johnny thought Number Sixteen was probably right.
There was one topic Johnny always came round to in these conversations. He never approached it head on, he came in from the side or from the back, he never knocked on the front door. On the question of the Silkworkers’ vote — Devereux had passed on the news about the dates — Johnny found opinion undecided. He noticed a reserve in the old men, as if some further injunction had been added to the earlier demands for silence.
That evening Johnny was at his usual position at the table in the Rose and Crown nearest the bar. This was where the old men liked to sit, closest to where the pretty barmaid would be as she pulled pints for the silkmen. The talk was of minor ailments at first. When he judged that all were present who were going to come, Johnny took the initiative.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I would like to ask you about something that has been troubling me. You see, I have a relative in the Silkworkers Company up in London and he has been telling me about the vote that’s coming up. Now, it’s for you to decide how to cast your vote, obviously, but I think there is a risk that you could make a terrible mistake. But I can only say that when I know how you are going to vote. I think most of you were against it when Number Twenty was with us. Is that still how it is today?’
Silence fell over the saloon bar. The old men looked at each other but did not speak. The barmaid even looked in from the public to see if one of the old gentlemen had actually died halfway down a pint of Wethered’s Best Bitter. Eventually Jack Miller, Number Three, the former bank clerk, broke with the discretion of a lifetime and spoke up.
‘We’re not meant to speak to anybody about this,’ he began.
‘Who says so?’ said Johnny, draining his glass.
‘Well, it’s Warden Monk, Mr Fitzgerald, sir, but seeing as it’s you, I think we can make an exception.’
‘Has he been saying this all along, or only recently, the Warden?’
‘Well, he did say it at the start, but he repeated it very definitely only the other day.’
Curiouser and curiouser, Johnny said to himself. Sir Peregrine comes to the hotel at night. Monk puts the frighteners on about speaking to anybody the next morning. What else had Monk and Sir Peregrine been cooking up in the ornate splendour of the Elysian Fields?
‘That’s very interesting,’ he said, ‘but tell me, are you still of the same mind? To oppose the changes, I mean?’
One or two of the old men glowered at each other. Johnny wondered if they might come to blows. Even the barmaid pulling another round failed to distract them in the usual way.
‘It’s like this, see.’ John Watkins, Number Fifteen, who had lost two fingers of his left hand in some battle long ago, rarely spoke and was therefore regarded as a fount of very deep wisdom by his fellow silkmen. ‘Some people have changed their minds, and that’s a fact. I shall mention no names and no numbers. I leave that to others. But I do believe that there are special circumstances regarding those who have changed their minds and betrayed all our futures for thirty pieces of silver. I shall say no more.’ Number Fifteen returned to his tankard.