Billy’s glance went back to the dashboard. Three miles now. According to the map he’d studied before setting out, they would shortly be linking up with the main road to Reading. It was far enough. He looked for a place to turn round and noticed a signboard on the road ahead. It bore a name – Waltham Manor – printed in gold against a green background, and below that, in smaller letters, the words ‘Members Only’.
‘What’s this, then?’ he asked, braking to turn onto a strip of dirt road. Ahead of him he saw a pair of gates standing open in a high stone wall.
Constable Crawley, who hadn’t said a word for the past half hour, though his stomach had been audible, now produced a sound that in other circumstances Billy might have taken for a snigger.
‘Constable?’
‘It’s a sort of club, Sarge. They call themselves gym… gymnos
… gym somethings…’ He was quaking with suppressed laughter.
‘What are you trying to say?’ Billy demanded. Christ! Where did they find them? ‘What sort of club? What do they do?’
Crawley let out a hoot of laughter. ‘They take their clothes off…’ he gurgled.
‘You mean it’s a nudists’ club?’
The constable nodded, wordless now. His downy cheeks had turned bright red.
Billy stopped the car and stared at him. He shook his head, then started to reverse, intending to back onto the paved road, but at once felt a heavy drag on the steering wheel.
‘Bloody hell!’
They got out. Just as Billy suspected, the front near-side tyre had punctured on a sharp stone. A few moments later, having opened the boot, they made a further discovery.
‘There’s no jack,’ Crawley announced.
‘Brilliant deduction, Holmes.’ Billy kicked the flat tyre in frustration. He was thinking of the long drive he still had back to London. ‘Come on…’
Beyond the gates of Waltham Manor, where a sign warned them this was private property and trespassers would be prosecuted, an elm-lined drive led to an imposing stone mansion with a handsome portico. A further sign, marked ‘Reception’, directed them to a gravelled parking area at the side of the house from which point a long white paling fence was visible.
‘Is that where they take their clothes off?’ Billy asked. There were only a dozen or so cars in the parking lot. Business must be slack, he thought.
The constable nodded. ‘There’s a lot of ground fenced in at the back of the house. You can’t see in from any side. When they started up they used the whole garden, I was told. But then the local lads began shinning up the wall to peep over, so they had to build that fence.’ He emitted his peculiar hooting laugh. ‘Now everything goes on inside there and they’ve let the rest go.’ He nodded towards the parkland further off, where the bushes had grown into tangled thickets and the grass, uncut, was knee high.
A brick path at the end of the parking area led to a door in the side of the house. Billy opened it and was startled to see a young man, apparently wearing nothing, sitting at a long table in the middle of the room, reading a magazine. He glanced up as they entered, his bored expression changing to one of consternation at the sight of Crawley’s uniform.
‘My name’s Styles. Detective Sergeant Styles.’ Billy showed him his warrant card. ‘We’ve had a puncture outside your gates and we’ve got no jack. I was wondering if someone here could help.’
‘I’ll have to ask Dorrie,’ the young man said, getting to his feet; he was, after all, wearing bathing trunks. ‘Just a mo…’
He disappeared through a door at the back of the room, leaving them alone.
‘Cor! What do you think of that, Sarge?’ Crawley was grinning from ear to ear.
Billy ignored him. Instead he turned his attention to a framed scroll got up to look like parchment that was hanging on the wall behind the table. Headed The Gymnosophist’s Creed, it went on for several paragraphs.
The door opened and a young woman entered, wearing a white linen robe, belted at the waist and reaching to her knees. She had short brown hair, fashioned into rolls at the back of her neck, and a quick, birdlike glance.
‘Hullo, boys. What’s the problem?’ She grinned, as though to excuse the familiarity.
Billy explained their predicament again.
‘Sergeant, is it?’ Smiling, she eyed him with interest.
‘Yes… Styles. And this is Constable Crawley.’
‘My name’s Doris… Doris Jenner.’ She held out her hand to Billy and as she did so her gown fell open and one of her breasts, quite bare, was revealed for a moment. Unflustered, she covered it swiftly. ‘Sorry about that… you get careless working here.’ She remained smiling. ‘It’s a jack you need, then? Mr Rainey would have one – he’s the manager – but he’s out at present. Tell you what, I’ll see if one of the members can help. Wait here.’ Her glance shifted for an instant to the constable, beside Billy, and she smothered a laugh. Then she turned and went out.
Billy looked at the young PC. He was staring after her, mouth hanging open, face the colour of a ripe tomato.
‘For Christ’s sake, Constable!’ Billy’s patience snapped. ‘Pull yourself together. Haven’t you seen a naked woman before?’
‘No, Sarge, I haven’t.’
‘Bloody hell!’
A minute later Doris Jenner returned with a set of keys and they went outside into the parking area where she retrieved a jack from the boot of one of the parked cars. Billy handed it to the constable.
‘Off you go. Change the tyre, then bring the car up here.’ He felt a compelling need to dispense with the other’s company, if only for a quarter of an hour.
‘What, me, Sarge?’
‘Yes, you, Crawley.’ A sudden suspicion struck Billy. ‘You can drive, can’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ The young man was affronted.
‘Get on with it, then.’
Hands on hips, Billy watched him stride off, boots crunching on the gravel. He turned to find Doris Jenner observing them with a crooked grin.
‘How’d you get landed with that one?’
Unable to think of a fitting response, he changed the subject. ‘You wouldn’t have such a thing as a cup of tea, would you?’
‘Of course, Sergeant. Come inside.’
She led him through the outer room, where the young man in the bathing trunks had resumed his place at the table, into an adjoining office furnished with a desk and some easy chairs grouped around a low table. The walls were hung with paintings showing men and women as God made them dancing in the open air or stretched out on the grass in decorative poses.
‘Nymphs and shepherds,’ Miss Jenner said drily, cocking an eye at them. ‘Make yourself at home. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Billy used the time she was away to run through in his mind the results of the day’s inquiries. They were scant. He felt he could report to Sinclair with some assurance that the circumstances surrounding Susan Barlow’s death were suspicious enough to warrant further investigation. But beyond that he could only offer speculation unsupported by evidence.
‘Is this your first time in a nudists’ club?’ Doris Jenner had returned with a tea tray and a plate of biscuits. She declined Billy’s offer of a cigarette, but pushed an ashtray over to his side of the glass-topped table.
‘Yes, but I’ve read about them.’ Billy reached out for his cup. ‘I thought the fad was dying out.’
‘It is.’ She’d seated herself opposite him, modestly drawing the robe tightly around her, but tucking her bare feet up on the chair so that Billy found himself gazing at a pair of rosy knees. There was a teasing look in her eye and he was glad he wouldn’t have to report this encounter to Elsie Osgood, who had a jealous streak which he didn’t take lightly. ‘A couple of years ago the parking lot would have been packed. We were turning people away. I give them another year at most.’