“What, more of your expert, Dr. Maclaren? Ah, England, England! Where would we be without your detective stories? This is very clever, Dr. Maclaren, but it is not police work. Pyotr Grigorievitch Kusitch was not killed with a yawl-rigged fishing craft. The main issue is unaffected by the suggestion that he was making inquiries for Mr. Meriden about his lost tender. Find me Kretchmann and Haller, Dr. Maclaren! Find me Kretchmann and Haller…”
Perhaps he would. He vowed, as he finished dressing, that he was certainly going to find out some more about the mysterious yawl before he volunteered any further information to Inspector Jordaens and Stock. He’d make them take notice of him before he was done with the case.
The annoying thing was that, in spite of his obvious contempt for the Coach Guide as a clue, Inspector Jordaens had insisted on taking it away with him. He had taken the cutting about Ruth Meriden, too.
As soon as he had bathed and dressed, Andrew went out and bought another copy of the Coach Guide. Then he looked up Cheriton Shawe on the map.
Seven
On the map, Cheriton Shawe looked like a small village not far from the Hertford Road. It appeared to be some distance off the coach route, but, short of hiring a car to get there, the Green Line Coach seemed to be the best means of reaching it. The nearest railway station was several miles away.
The coach was comfortable. It made good speed. And the conductor knew all about the way to get to Cheriton Shawe. “Your best route, sir, is by Wyminden Lane. That’s before we come to Waltham Cross.”
London sprawled out over the morning till you might have thought the suburbs reached to Aberdeen. They seemed endless. The road bent, squirmed, curved, shot off at tangents and doubled back on itself; but the coach knew its business. It got there.
“Wyminden Lane,” the conductor called.
Green patches had been a little more frequent among the bricks and mortar. At Wyminden Lane you had the feeling of being on the edge of town. There were houses on one side of the main road, fields on the other; and the lane, wide and newly paved, reached flatly out across the fields.
The coach sped on, leaving its one alighting passenger to a sense of loneliness and dismay. The hope he had had of picking up a taxi was immediately dashed. There was not a vehicle in sight, or any sign of a garage. Possibly he would find something along the lane. If not, it wasn’t far to Cheriton Shawe.
After walking for ten minutes, Andrew decided that the last statement needed some qualification. It wasn’t far to Cheriton Shawe on the map. Doubts began to assail him. The conductor may have put him on the wrong track. Andrew decided to wait and question a pedestrian who was coming along some distance behind him. He waited, but the pedestrian turned off into a bypath that led to an area of glasshouses. He walked on. On one side, there were rows and rows of glasshouses. They had vegetables growing in them and seemed deserted.
At last a car appeared. He signalled, but the driver drove on, ignoring him. Another driver stopped.
“Cheriton Shawe?” he said. “Hop in.”
He was a small man, dried up, gnome like. He drove slowly and grimly.
“What sort of place is Cheriton Shawe?” Andrew asked.
“I don’t like the pub,” the man answered after some thought.
“Know Walden House?”
“Never heard of it.”
He did not seem to care for conversation. When there was some indication that Andrew might ask another question, he reached out and switched on the car radio. An orchestra was playing Till Eulenspiegel. He reached out again and hastily changed the station. A military band grappled with a waltz.
Andrew still heard Till Eulenspiegel. He swivelled to peer through the rear window. Absurd? Of course it was absurd. Especially as the whistler in the night had passed on his way, possibly innocent of any design but to reach his own home. And if you were inclined to argue that the Hallers and the Kretchmanns would be likely to pick up a fragment of Strauss, you had to remember that the trick was also within the scope of the Bert Smiths and the Alf Browns. Any time you turned the knob of a wireless set you might get Till Eulenspiegel. It didn’t mean a thing in itself. To see anything significant in it, you had to be of a very suspicious turn of mind and perhaps a trifle neurotic.
Andrew looked back a second time.
“What’s the matter?” asked the gnome. “Police after you?” “I’m interested in greenhouses.”
“Wouldn’t put my money in glass. It’s too brittle. Here’s your village. Don’t say I didn’t warn you against the pub.”
Andrew used it merely to ask the way to Walden House. First to the left past the church, and you couldn’t miss it; the big place on the rise with the high garden wall.
The wall was very high indeed and had a tiled coping. There were patches where it was mouldering away, but on the whole it was standing up to time and still efficiently obstructing the view of anyone who might be curious about the house and grounds.
Andrew skirted quite fifty yards of wall before he came to an opening. There were heavy brick gateposts. No doubt there had been ornamental gates, but now the only barrier to straying cattle was a length of rusty chain. The left-hand pier had been hit by a steam roller or something of equivalent weight.
The entry showed signs of having been churned into a morass by heavy traffic, but that had been some time ago; it was now grass covered. The drive, defined by deep ruts in neglected gravel, was visible for a few yards. Then it withdrew behind a dank screen of trees and overgrown shrubs. A notice board, newly painted, swung from the chain. It said:
Andrew stepped over the chain and, walking on the gravel between the ruts, started down the drive.
There was nothing round the first bend, only another screen of trees and bushes. Then the wheel ruts got impatient and, leaving the drive to its own graceful meanderings, crashed on through the undergrowth in a straight line. Andrew followed them and came upon a vista that pulled him up sharply. Beyond a wide, tree-dotted expanse of grass that may once have been a lawn stood a house.
It was unquestionably modern. The original idea, perhaps, had been to re-create a small French chateau, but even more lunatic counsels had prevailed and features reminiscent of a Norman castle and trimmings from a Rhenish Schloss had been applied with an apple-cheeked Teutonic exuberance that defied criticism. The whole looked like something from a beer-house frieze. There were corbels and machicolations everywhere. Cone-topped turrets sprouted from the corners. The main entrance had the stark simplicity of one of Ludovic of Bavaria’s nightmares.
The house was not the only startling feature. The grassy area in front of it looked as if it were shared as storage space by a monumental mason and a medieval stonecutter. There were statues everywhere, and shaped building blocks of granite and sandstone. There were sections of fluted columns, bits of broken capitals, cornices and gargoyles strewn about as if Samson had been there brawling with the Philistines. But all this was as nothing compared with the staggering collection of statuary which cluttered the place. Venus rose from the sea of grass in a dozen different attitudes, Hercules flexed his muscles or bent a bow, Atlas stood braced under the weight of the world, Perseus flourished the head of Medusa, while dozens of nonentities looked on with blind-eyed approval.
Andrew found it impossible to believe that one frail girl with red hair could have accomplished all this work. She might be a most prolific sculptor, but she just could not have had the time in her short life. Was it possible, then, that she had acquired all this rubbish in order to study it at home? Then she must be mad, and mad without method. At least there was no detectable system in either the selection or the arrangement of it all. Tarnished metal pieces stood in close companionship with bits of marble, and strewn among them, peeping through trees and peering over bushes, were plaster casts of the more renowned classics. Inevitably the weather had made havoc. Rain had finally penetrated protective paint, sodden limbs had dropped off, weary feet of clay had given way, white bodies had fallen, and weeds had grown up to bury them. Chariot wheels had ground the dust of gods into the mire of Hertfordshire.
Chariot wheels or army truck tyres.
Andrew stepped forward cautiously. The Emperor Augustus stood up under a protecting oak, one arm flung
