confessed, the liturgy of complaints might have been worth listening to, because the bank was chockfull of potential suspects, and a number of customers with grudges would have come into the reckoning as well. Dispiriting for a keen detective, there was no question that Routledge had fired the fatal shot. Forensic confirmed his statement. By Friday, Diamond was so bored with the business that he told Julie Hargreaves to finish up at Saltford without him. He spent the day in the office attacking the stack of paper that was spilling off his intray and across the desk.
Late in the morning he took a phone call from Dorchester. John Croxley was formerly one of the murder squad at Bath, a pushy young inspector with an ego like a hotair balloon. His naked ambition had grated on the nerves of everyone. He had transferred to Dorset CID in the period Diamond was away, a sideways move that had been greeted with relief in Avon and Somerset.
'Thought I'd give you a call, Mr. Diamond.' The voice made a show of sounding casual. 'I heard you were back. This isn't a busy moment, I hope?'
'Rushed off my feet-but carry on.'
'Are you handling the Penny Black case, then?'
'Not at this minute. I'm on the phone to you, aren't I? Must keep it short, I'm afraid. How are things down there in Dorset? Statistics perking up no end since you arrived, I bet.'
'To be perfectly honest, it's not entirely what I expected,' Croxley confided. 'I hadn't appreciated how much more rural this county is than Avon and Somerset.'
'More what?'
'Rural. You know, countrified.'
'You mean sheep-shagging?'
There was a pause. 'I don't know about that. I'm not getting much work in the field of murder.'
Diamond chuckled and said insensitively, 'Plenty in the field of turnips, however.'
'Not so much turnips as cattle, Mr. Diamond,' Croxley said with total seriousness. His sense of humor had never blossomed. 'My main job just now is noseprints.'
'Is what?'
'Noseprints. It isn't widely known that every bovine noseprint is unique to the individual, like a fingerprint. You coat the animal's nose with printing ink and then press a sheet of paper against it.'
'You wouldn't be having me on, John?'
'I wouldn't do that, Mr. Diamond. It's a scheme we've set up with the Dorset County Landowners' Association to combat the rustling of cattle. We've processed seven hundred cows already.'
Diamond was containing himself with difficulty. 'You get noseprints from cows? Go on, John.'
'Well, that's all there is to it. They've recently put me in charge. I don't know why. It isn't as if I was brought up in the country. And I don't see much prospect in it.'
'I don't know,' said Diamond, tears of amusement sliding down his cheeks. 'Things could be worse.'
'Do you think so?'
'If it's their noses you deal with, you're out in front, aren't you?'
'I suppose so.'
'Good thing you're not taking prints from the other end.'
'I hadn't thought of that, Mr. Diamond.'
'Think of it when you're feeling low, John. This is new technology, and you're the man who does it. Get your noseprints on the computer. You can set up-what is it they call it? — a database on all the cows in Dorset. You asked about prospects. You've got unlimited prospects, I would think. Ypu could go on doing this for years.'
'That's what I'm afraid of,' said Croxley bleakly. 'I was wondering if-with so much interest in the Penny Black business- you might be mounting a major inquiry, recruiting extra detectives.'
'You'd be willing to give up your exciting new job?'
'If there was half a chance.'
'No chance at all, I'm afraid. You know how it is with budgets as they are. I'd stick with the cows, if I were you. You could be the world's foremost authority on bovine noseprints.'
When he put down the phone, he sat back and rocked with laughter for the first time in a week. He could hardly wait to tell Steph at the end of the day. But something else later that afternoon put it clean out of his mind.
On BBC Radio Bristol after the four o'clock news headlines, the presenter said, 'Something different here. I've just been handed a note that my producer believes could link up with that cryptic verse we gave you last Monday morning. Remember? The one the police later said was almost certainly linked to the million-pound stamp theft from the Bath Postal Museum. The Penny Black, right? Well, this looks like another poetic effort from the cryptic cat burglar. It's printed on a sheet of A4 paper with no covering note. Came with the afternoon post, I gather. See what you make of this. Is it a hoax, or could it be a genuine clue? We'll be handing it pronto to the Old Bill, listeners, but you'll be able to say you heard it first on Radio Bristol. Are you ready with pen and paper?
' 'Whither Victoria and with whom-
The Grand Old Queen?
Look for the lady in the locked room
At seventeen.'
'That's all. We know who or what Victoria is this time, I think, but do we know of any locked rooms? And how does the number seventeen come into it? I'm sure we'll get some calls about this. If you have any brilliant suggestions before the end of the program, we'll be pleased to pass them on. I'll repeat the verse one more time.'
The producer had diplomatically phoned the Bath police before the item was broadcast, so a radio was tuned in, and the entire control room heard it, including Diamond, whose sixth sense had told him something was afoot and got him from behind his desk at the critical time. The only notable absentee was John Wigfull, listening privately on a separate radio upstairs.
'This gets more and more like party games,' a detective sergeant commented morosely.
'Is it genuine?' someone else asked.
'Who can say? It's got to be taken seriously after the first one.'
'Yes, but why would they do this? Mr. Wigfull was expecting a ransom demand, not another riddle.'
'Maybe they don't want a ransom. This could be some kind of publicity stunt, couldn't it? When is the university rag week?'
'Too early in the year for that. The students have only just gone back. If it is a stunt, then my money is on some smartarse member of the glitterati.'
'The what?'
'The rich and beautiful. The incrowd. Hooray Henrys. Leading the Old Bill up the garden path is their idea of fun.'
The debate was taken a stage further at a special meeting of senior staff convened by the Assistant Chief Constable. 'Since we are bound to treat this development seriously,' he said in preamble, 'I decided to pool our wits and experience. If the riddle is anything like the first one, it may involve knowledge of Bath, and any one of you may have the piece of information that clarifies everything.'
From the expressions around the oval table no one was confident of clarifying anything.
'John, this is your inquiry,' the ACC said to Wigfull with a motioning of the upturned palm, 'so why don't you give us your immediate thoughts?'
Wigfull cleared his throat. 'Well, sir, we can reasonably assume that the Victoria referred to is the cover.'
'The what?'
'The missing stamp, sir.'
'Why not call a stamp a stamp?'
'Because it's attached to an envelope. There's a datemark. The whole thing is known as a cover. Like the first-day covers they sell in the post office each time a new set of stamps is issued.'
'That sort of cover,' said the ACC, as if he'd known all along. 'Carry on.'
Wigfull referred to his notes. 'The first two lines:
'Whither Victoria and with whom-
The Grand Old Queen?' must surely be a coded way of telling us that he is referring to the cover. I think we
