Chapter Nineteen
Open-top tour buses are a feature of Bath that most residents accept with good grace in a city that welcomes tourists. The two companies in competition are distinguished by their colors: Ryan's Citytour in red and white and Badgerline's Bath Tour in green and cream. Citytours operate from Terrace Walk, near the Abbey. The Badgerline tours leave every thirty minutes from the bus station and are named after city worthies like Prince Bladud, King Edgar, Ralph Allen, John Wood, and Dr. William Oliver. All the buses stop at convenient points to allow ticketholders to get off and explore, continuing the tour on another bus if desired.
Miss Chilmark was one of the minority who disapproved of the open-tops of whatever color. For one thing she had a house on the route and was convinced that people on the upper deck looked into bedrooms. And for another, as a person of refined literary taste, she found it deplorable that Jane Austen's name was on the back of a bus. You may imagine the shock she received when crossing Pierrepont Street at ten thirty in the morning to hear her own name spoken, amplified, from one of these despised vehicles.
'Miss Chilmark!'
It must have been audible right across Parade Gardens.
She froze and tried to take an interest in a shop window, telling herself she couldn't have heard correctly.
'Miss Chilmark!' Louder still and unmistakable, like a summons to the Last Judgment.
Deeply alarmed, she turned her head enough to see a female figure speaking into a microphone on the upper deck of a Badgerline called Beau Nash. Twenty or more interested faces were staring down.
'Miss Chilmark, this is Shirley-Ann Miller, from the Bloodhounds. Could I talk to you?'
Miss Chilmark was in no position to stop her from talking, but she had enough spirit to answer, 'What gives you the right…?'
She wasn't heard. Shirley-Ann's amplified voice drowned hers. 'Shall we say eleven, by the Abbey door? Please be there if you possibly can.'
The bus started to move off. The commentary continued, 'Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. Personal. I happened to spot someone I know and it is rather an emergency. If you look to your left now you will see the archway leading to Pierrepont Place. At Number One from 1764 to 1771 lived the Linley family, and Mrs. Linley once had a maidservant called Emma Lyon, later to become famous as Emma Hamilton. To your right across the street at Number Two is the house occupied for many years as a winter home by the Nelson family- yes, that Nelson. Unfortunately for romantics like me, the dates are wrong. It is most unlikely that Emma and Horatio met in Bath, but there is a romantic story about the dazzlingly lovely daughter of the Linleys, Elizabeth, who eloped…'
Miss Chilmark, her mind closed to the commentary, turned unsteadily along North Parade Passage, pink with the indignity. Not once in her life had she been hailed from the top of a bus. Generations of Chilmarks had lived with dignity and decorum in this city. She was mortified to have been singled out for such public humiliation. She needed a strong coffee and a Sally Lunn to take away the shock.
'Yes, I'm awfully sorry about that,' Shirley-Ann told her when they met. 'I didn't mean to alarm you. I'm not very used to the public address system. Usually my job is handing out the leaflets, but today they were short- staffed, so I stood in for someone. It's a chance you don't turn down. A marvelous opportunity for me and only the second time I've done it. When I spotted you, I forgot I was holding the mike and it was live. And I desperately wanted to speak to you. Look, shall we sit down? You look dreadfully pale.' She was wondering what to do if Miss Chilmark had another attack of hyperventilation. She didn't have a paper bag with her.
They went over to sit on one of the benches in the Abbey churchyard. A busker facing them was playing the recorder to an orchestral backing from a portable cassette player, but it wasn't any bar to conversation. 'I like giving the commentary, and I think I'm rather good at it,' Shirley-Ann said, giving a commentary to Miss Chilmark. '% get a real buzz when I'm up there with the mike switched on and all those faces turned my way. They hear more from me than any other guide gives them. I must admit I depart from the script a bit. And today I was fairly bombarding them with information, more than I intended to say. I'm in a bit of a state myself, to be honest. We're all in a state, and no wonder.'
'What do you want?' Miss Chilmark asked.
'Just a few words.'
'A few!'
What Shirley-Ann wanted was the chance to talk over the developments since Monday evening. It was right against her nature to suffer in silence. She had a chronic need to share her anxieties with some other woman. She couldn't trouble Polly again so soon after meeting her in the Bath Bun, and she didn't like to call at Jessica's art gallery in case the man A.J. was there. Miss Chilmark wasn't an obvious choice for a tete-a-tete, but she was the only choice left. Spotting her from the bus had seemed like destiny intervening.
'You must have heard about poor Sid?'
Miss Chilmark gave a nod. She was wearing a small version of Robin Hood's hat with a feather, and the feather was vibrating, whether with rage or the breeze it was impossible to judge.
Shirley-Ann did what she could to make this seem like a shared concern. 'I heard the news from Polly. She had the police round yesterday morning. Well, so did I later. I dare say you did. But Polly is terribly upset. She cares so much about the Bloodhounds. We're like her own family to her.'
Miss Chilmark said acidly, 'If that's her idea of a family, she must have had a deprived upbringing.'
'Well, you must know what I'm trying to say. The police are bound to think of us as suspects. This was a locked room murder-the very topic we were about to discuss on Monday evening.'
'Not at my suggestion,' Miss Chilmark was quick to point out.
Shirley-Ann sighed. 'It doesn't really matter who suggested it. We all knew that Milo was going to read from the book, and we're all under suspicion. Did the police visit you?'
Grudgingly, Miss Chilmark said, 'They did call briefly.'
'You drive, don't you?'
'I beg your pardon.'
'You have a car of your own?'
'I do.'
'Then it's perfectly possible for you to have driven to the boatyard after the meeting finished. You're a suspect.' Shirley-Ann added with more tact, 'We all have cars, so far as I know.'
Outrage had spread ominously across the suspect Miss Chilmark's features, and the feather was positively flapping.
Shirley-Ann said, 'The detective who came to interview me made the point that it was the crime of someone of high intelligence.'
Miss Chilmark looked a mite less outraged. 'Low cunning, more like. I know whom I suspect.'
'Rupert?'
'Who else?'
'But why? Why would he want to kill Sid? They weren't enemies.'
'How can you tell?' said Miss Chilmark, her eyes on the Abbey front. 'Sid-Mr. Towers as I prefer to think of him- was a quiet man. Who can say what his private opinions were? He wasn't the sort to articulate them at one of our meetings.'
'But Rupert isn't a man to bottle up his feelings-and I can't recall him saying an unkind word about Sid, ever.'
'He's a degenerate.'
'Rupert?'
'You only have to look at him. That face.'
'Now that really is unfair.'
'Evil.'
'I don't think of him as evil. Rather hollow-cheeked, I grant you, and he could do with some more teeth. He's no oil painting, but I find it a very watchable face. Anyway, it would be terrible if people were judged on their looks.'
'His are clearly the result of many years of bad living.'