“Well, sir, now that you come to mention it…”
“An architect is something of an artist certainly but he’s something of an engineer too.”
A policeman, thought Sloan, was something of a diplomat.
“As well as being a craftsman and a draughtsman, of course.”
A policeman was something of a martinet, of course. He had to be.
“And, Inspector, if he’s any good as an architect he’s something of a visionary, too.”
If a policeman was any good as a policeman he was something of a philosopher too. It didn’t do not to be in the police force.
Mundill waved a tapered hand. “However…”
Then it came to Sloan where it was that he had seen the man’s face before. “Your photograph was in the local paper last week, sir, wasn’t it?”
The architect squinted modestly down his nose. “You saw it, Inspector, did you?”
“I did indeed,” said Sloan handsomely. “The opening of the new fire station, wasn’t it?”
“A very ordinary job, I’m afraid,” said Mundill deprecatingly.
In the police force very ordinary jobs had a lot to be said for them. Out of the ordinary ones usually came up nasty.
“It is difficult,” continued the architect easily, “to be other than strictly utilitarian when you’re designing a hose tower.”
“Quite so,” said Sloan.
“We had site problems, of course,” continued Frank Mundill smoothly, “it being right in the middle of the town.”
Sloan nodded. Site problems would be to architects what identity problems were to the police, obstacles to be overcome.
“Mind you, Inspector, I have designed buildings in Berebury where there’s been a little more scope than down at the fire station.”
Municipal buildings being what they were Sloan was glad to hear it.
“There was the junior school,” said Mundill.
“Split level,” said Sloan, who had been there.
“Petty crime,” added Crosby professionally. He had been there too.
“Plenty of site leeway in that case,” said Mundill.
There was precious little leeway with an unknown body. Where did you start if “Missing Persons” didn’t come up with anyone fitting the description of the body you had? The architect was warming to his theme. “There’s more freedom with a school than there is with some domestic stuff.”
Sloan looked up. “You do ordinary house plans, too, sir, do you?”
“Oh, yes, Inspector.” He smiled thinly. “I do my share of the domestic side, all right.”
All policemen did their share of the domestic side. “Domestics” were what new constables on the beat cut their wisdom teeth on. It aged them more quickly than anything else.
Sloan took a final look round the boathouse, and said formally, “I’ll be in touch with you again, sir, about this break-in. In due course. Come along, Crosby…”
He turned to go but as he did so his ear caught the inimitable sound of the splash of oars. Sloan leaned out over the path and looked downstream as far as he could. He recognised Horace Boiler and his boat quite easily. He had to screw up his eyes to see who his passenger was. And then he recognised him too. It was Mr. Basil Jensen, the curator of the Calleford Museum…
“Terry?” Miss Blandford pursed her lips. “Terry, did you say?”
“I did.” Police Constable Brian Ridgeford had begun his search for a boy named Terry at the village school at Edsway.
School was over for the day but the head teacher was still there. “Have you got any boys called Terry?”
“The trouble,” said Miss Blandford, “is that we’ve got more than one.”
“Tell me,” invited Ridgefbrd, undaunted.
She opened the school register. “There’s Terry Waters…”
“And what sort of a lad is Terry Waters?”
“Choirboy type,” she said succinctly.
Ridgeford frowned.
“The ‘butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth’ sort of boy,” amplified the teacher.
Ridgeford’s frown cleared.
She waved a hand. “If you know what I mean?”
Ridgeford knew what she meant. The manner of boy to whom benches of magistrates in juvenile courts—who should know better—almost automatically gave the benefit of the doubt…
“You probably passed him on your way here,” said Miss Blandford. “He only lives down the road.”
Ridgeford shook his head. “Not Terry Waters then.”
He wasn’t expecting Terry or his friend to be Edsway boys. Mrs. Boiler would have recognised Edsway boys when they had brought the ship’s bell into her shop. Children from all the other villages roundabout, though, came into Edsway school every day by bus. “What about the others?” he asked.
“There’s Terry Wilkins.”
Ridgeford got out his notebook. “Where does he hail from?”
“Collerton.” She hesitated. “He’s not a bad boy but easily led.”
Ridgeford knew that sort. A boy who wouldn’t take to crime unless the opportunity presented itself. There was a whole school of academic thought that saw crime as opportunity. Remove the opportunity, they said, and you removed the crime. If that didn’t work you removed the criminal and called it preventive detention.
Miss Blandford said, “With Terry Wilkins it would depend on the temptation.”
Constable Ridgeford nodded sagely. Who said Adam and Eve was nonsense? Temptation had had to begin somewhere. It didn’t matter that it had only been an apple to begin with. It was the principle of the thing. “Go on,” he said.
“There’s Terry Goddard.” The head teacher’s face became as near to benign-looking as Ridgeford had seen it. “He’s a worker.”
“Ah.”
“Not clever, mind you, but a worker.”
Everyone liked a worker. Being a worker evidently exonerated Terry Goddard in Miss Blandford’s eyes from any activity the police were likely to be mixed up in. Perhaps being a worker meant you weren’t idle and that removed you a stage farther from temptation. Ridgeford tried to think of some industrious criminals.
Henri Landru must have been quite busy.
In the nature of things eleven murders took time.
Dr. Marcel Petiot couldn’t have been much of a layabout either. He hadn’t kept a stroke record of the murders he had committed but the French police thought sixty-five—give or take a few.
“That the lot, miss?” he said aloud. “I’d been hoping for someone from Marby.”
“There’s Terry Dykes.” She looked Brian Ridgeford straight in the eye and said, “I don’t know what you want your Terry for, Constable, but I wouldn’t put anything past this one.”
Ridgeford put the name down in his notebook. There was no point in asking expert opinion if you didn’t take account of it. He took down a Marby address with a certain amount of satisfaction, then he asked Miss Blandford if Terry Dykes had got a sidekick.
“I beg your pardon, Constable?”
Ridgeford searched in his mind for the right expression. “A best friend, miss.” Bosom chum sounded distinctly old-fashioned but that was what he meant.
“Oh, yes.” Her brow cleared. “Melvin Bates.”
Ridgeford wrote that name down too.
“Melvin Bates hangs on Terry Dykes’s every word, so,” she gave a quick nod and said realistically, “I daresay that’s two of them up to no good.”
Police Constable Brian Ridgeford took his leave of the head teacher and applied himself to his bicycle and
