should focus our interest on the third and fourth lines:
'Look for the lady in the locked room
At seventeen.'
'I venture to ask three questions: Which lady? Which locked room? And which seventeen? The lady may, of course, be another reference to Victoria, the cover, but we should not exclude other possibilities. Does it link up with the last line, giving us a lady of seventeen? Do we know of any seventeen-year-old ladies in the present or the past who may be connected with the case in some way?'
Nobody spoke.
'The locked room may help to fix it,' Wigfull went on. 'If there was a local memory or story of some young woman kept locked up, for example. A prisoner. A mental patient. A nun, even. These are my immediate thoughts.'
'Any response?' asked the ACC of the blank faces around the table.
Tom Ray said, 'I was thinking along different lines, sir. The seventeen could be part of an address.'
'That's rather good,' the ACC commented, seeming to imply that not one of Wigfull's theories was even half good.
'Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, lived at number seventeen, the Royal Crescent. There's a plaque outside.'
'What's he got to do with this?' Peter Diamond asked. 'Did he have a seventeen-year-old sex slave?'
'I rather doubt it,' said the ACC frigidly. 'I happen to know a little about Pitman. He was a man of the highest principles. Like me he was a teetotaller, a vegetarian, and a nonsmoker.'
There was an uneasy pause. Not even Diamond was going to press the matter of Isaac Pitman's sex life, or the ACC's.
'It was a long shot,' admitted Ray.
Another theory was advanced by Keith Halliwell. 'Is it possible that the seventeen refers to a time, like five P.M., or seventeen hundred hours?'
'If it does, we've missed it by ten minutes,' said Diamond, glancing at the clock on the wall. 'Personally I don't think this joker has given us enough to catch him. He wouldn't, would he? It's like that book The Thirty-Nine Steps. It's no good looking for the blessed steps. You know you're there when you find them. I mean, we could rabbit on all evening about seventeen this and that. Seventeen-horsepower cars; seventeen trees in a row; the seventeenth day of the month; or fifteen rugby players and two reserves. It gets you nowhere without more information.'
'So your advice would be…'
'Ignore it. Continue with the other lines of inquiry.'
'What lines?' murmured Ray.
Wigfull said, 'We've been extremely thorough.'
'With what result?'
'Investigations can't be rushed.'
'I don't know,' said Ray. 'Peter Diamond nicks a bloke for murder two minutes after getting to the scene.'
The ACC drew a deep breath, and said, 'Gentlemen, let's confine this to discussion of the stamp theft. To ignore this new development would, I think, be negligent. Peter may be right in saying that the thief won't give much away, but if we can make any sense of the riddle, it may link up with other evidence.'
'Was this character seen at all on Monday morning?' Diamond asked. 'Did anybody spot the ladder against the window?' '
Unfortunately, no,' Wigfull answered. 'But we have six, or seven descriptions of window cleaners near the scene reported as suspicious.'
'Have you ever seen a window cleaner who doesn't look suspicious? What about forensic? Are they any help?'
'The thief seems to have used gloves. We've got an impressive list of fibers and hairs found in the room, but with so many people going through the museum by day, they could come from many sources. The display cabinet was forced with a rusty claw hammer. That's about it.'
'And about the museum staff?'
'They're volunteers. Local stamp enthusiasts. They take turns to man the museum, at least two at a time. We've interviewed them all except two, who are away. Nobody seems to remember anyone casing the place in advance of the crime- but as several of them reasonably pointed out, how could you tell?'
Diamond let the meeting run its course without any more input from him. It was Bumblebee territory, and he didn't intend to get involved. They broke up shortly after six. 'Have a good weekend, gentlemen,' he said as he went out.
'Aren't you coming in?' Ray asked.
'No need. My murder is put to bed.'
'So how will you spend the time?'
'House-training a new cat, if my wife can be believed.'
Chapter Eleven
Shirley-Ann was better prepared when she turned up at St. Michael's for the next meeting of the Bloodhounds on Monday evening. Rummaging one afternoon through a carton of books in the Dorothy House shop she had pulled out The Blessington Method, a dogeared and rare Penguin of some of Stanley Ellin's short stories. Having missed her turn the week before, she was sure to be asked to speak about a book she could recommend, and Ellin seemed an ideal, uncontroversial choice. He was one of the American writers she admired most, particularly for his short fiction. She could hardly wait to discover how many of the group were familiar with his work. If any of them objected to short stories she would pluck up courage to remind them that Poe, Conan Doyle and Chesterton had laid the foundations of modern crime fiction with their short stories.
It must have been a lucky day, because she had also found a thick-knit purple jumper as good as new in Dorothy House for only a pound and she was wearing that tonight with a black corduroy skirt from War on Want.
The evening was distinctly colder than the previous Monday, but dry. Down in the crypt the warmth from the central heating wafted pleasantly over her face the moment she entered. Miss Chilmark, who seemed to make a point of getting there early, said the place was like a furnace, and she was going to speak to the caretaker. She marched past Shirley-Ann with a determined look, but it turned out that she was only on her way to the cloakroom. If there was a complaint about the heating, it wouldn't get Shirley-Ann's support. Being so skinny- Bert called her slinky, which she rather liked-she could never get enough heat.
Jessica too was there already, snappily dressed in a charcoal-gray woollen dress. A wine-red scarf was draped with casual elegance across her shoulders and clipped with a huge silver buckle like a kilt fastening. 'Glad you've come,' she said, and seemed to mean it. 'You're going to make such a difference.'
Polly Wycherley waved a small, plump hand from across the room. She had already taken her place inside the circle and was removing things from her briefcase, determined to make amends for her lateness the previous week. 'Who are we missing?'
'Only Milo,' said Jessica.
'Rupert.' Someone else spoke up. Chameleonlike, Sid in his fawn raincoat was standing against a stone wall. He had an uncanny ability to merge with the surroundings. 'Rupert is always late.'
An entire, unsolicited sentence from Sid. Perhaps he felt more comfortable with no other males present.
The door of the ladies' room opened, and Miss Chilmark came out reeking of some musky perfume. She was no longer complaining about the central heating. 'I intend to make a stand on that dog tonight,' she announced.
'Bareback riding?' murmured Jessica.
Miss Chilmark hadn't heard. 'If it misbehaves, I shall tell Rupert I want it removed, and I expect the rest of
