After buying sandwiches and eating them on a bench outside the library, they returned to the voters’ roll.
It was approaching five o’clock and Fell was just pausing to rub his tired eyes when Maggie cried triumphantly, “Got it!”
“Where?”
“Right here. Jubilee Street. Number ten.”
“I saw a Jubilee Street recently,” said Fell. “I know, it was when we were walking to the railway station. It’s one of those roads just before you get to the station. Shall we go now? Or leave it until tomorrow?”
“May as well get it over with. We’ll take the car.”
They drove in silence towards Jubilee Street, each wanting to forget abut the whole thing now, but not wishing to back down in front of the other. Despite the heat, the nights were drawing in. Maggie no longer relished the idea of being out in the streets of Buss after dark.
“Turn left here,” said Fell. “This is Jubilee Street and there’s number ten.” Maggie stopped the car. The houses had been built for the railway workers in the last century, a row of red brick cottages. They all looked well- kept.
“But no signs of great wealth,” said Fell as they got out of the car.
They knocked at the door. A woman answered it. She had her hair tied up in a scarf. Fell judged her to be about the same age as himself. She had a pleasant open face.
“We’re looking for Mr. Flint.”
“Dad’s in the garden. What’s it about?”
Fell explained, bracing himself for a tirade, for no one else had been particularly friendly. But she smiled and said, “Oh, you’re that pair from the newspaper. I mean, I saw the story about you. Dad’ll be delighted to see you. He kept saying to me, he said, ‘I could tell that pair a thing or two’.”
They followed her through the dark little house and into a long garden at the back which was a blaze of colour. A hosepipe lay on the lawn and the flowerbeds had been recently watered. “Don’t you go telling the authorities I’ve been watering the plants,” she said. “I’m not going to sit by and see all my work ruined.”
There was an abundance of roses, hollyhocks, delphiniums, pansies, and gladioli crammed into flowerbeds, and in a glass-fronted shed at the bottom of the garden they could see an old man looking out at them.
“Dad, this is Dolphin’s son and his girl – you know, the couple you read about in the paper.”
He was a tortoise of a man, with a scrawny neck poking out of his shirt collar. He wore rimless glasses. Despite the heat of the day, his knees were covered by a rug.
“Come in,” he said. “Dottie, get a couple of chairs.”
“Do you mind if we sit just outside the door and talk to you?” pleaded Fell. “The heat is awful.”
“We’ll sit in the garden then.”
The daughter brought two kitchen chairs into the garden and then her father heaved himself to his feet by the aid of two sticks. When they were all seated, Fred Flint said, “So you’re wondering about that there robbery. Well, you’ve come to the right place.”
“You know who did it?” asked Fell eagerly.
“I do that. I know three of ‘em, anyway.”
“Who were they?”
“Dolphin, Johnny Tremp, and Tarry Briggs.”
“You mean my father…?”
“Came into money, didn’t you? Where d’ye think it came from?”
“I’ve been through the accounts and the lawyer can bear me out. My mother and father were misers and saved every penny. They had high-interest accounts and stocks and shares. So what gives you the idea my father was in on it?”
“He was in the signal box when he should have been having a day off, wasn’t he? He was the one that stopped the train.”
“But he wasn’t arrested and you have no proof!”
“Stands to reason he did it.”
“We know about Tarry Briggs. What about Johnny Tremp?”
“He was always an evil, nasty bastard. I never liked working with him. If ever there was a villain it was Johnny Tremp.”
Fell slumped in his hard little chair, suddenly weary. “But you have no real proof.”
The old man tapped the side of his nose. “I know,” he said.
“So who masterminded the whole thing?”
“One of those villains from London. They promised that precious three a cut of the robbery.”
“Why not you?”
“ ‘Cause I was always as honest as the day and they knew it.”
“But weren’t Johnny Tremp and Tarry Briggs at work that day?”
“That’s the thing. They weren’t. Tarry Briggs wasn’t due on duty until later and it was Johnny’s day off. Funny that, hey?”
Fell would have liked to make his escape then and there, but the old man began to reminisce about days on the railway until, after an hour, when Fell thought he couldn’t bear much more of it, Fred Flint fell asleep. Fell signalled to Maggie that they should leave. Dottie was working in the kitchen.
“Your father’s asleep,” said Fell, “and we’ve got another appointment.”
“I’d best go and help him to bed. You will call again, won’t you? The company does him good.”
Feeling guilty, Fell said they would call again although he had no intention of doing so.
“So what now?” asked Maggie.
“It’s dark now. We could go to Bramley-in-the-Hedges and watch Johnny Tremp’s for a little. Watch who comes and goes.”
“All right,” said Maggie, “but let’s find a place where we can’t be seen from his house. Those dogs terrify me.”
¦
They stopped a little away from Johnny Tremp’s house where they could watch the gates. Maggie had parked the car under a stand of trees whose branches all but blocked a view of the house, but the little they could see was enough. There was a bright security light above the door of the bungalow which lit up the front of the house and the drive.
They had been there an hour when suddenly Maggie became aware that Fell had covered his face with his hands and was shaking. “What is it, Fell?”
“I’m falling apart,” he said. “It’s all come down on me, Maggie. My birth, the robbery, Andy Briggs, the attempt on my life, everything.”
“We’re going home,” said Maggie. “It’s delayed shock. Hang on. I’ll soon have us back home.”
¦
Fell had lost his enthusiasm for cooking, so it was usually Maggie, armed with new cookery books, who prepared the meals. After they had eaten, she suggested that Fell go to bed. Just then the phone rang.
“If it’s Melissa, tell her I’m out,” said Fell quickly. “I don’t feel like talking business.”
Maggie picked up the phone. It was Peter.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” said Peter. “Don’t know what came over me, falling asleep like that. Must have been doing too much.”
Doing too much drinking, thought Maggie.
“Anyway,” Peter went on cheerfully, “I’m reporting on a fashion show over in Cheltenham Town Hall tomorrow afternoon. Too far off our track usually for the
“I don’t think so,” said Maggie. “I think Fell and I are doing something. Wait a minute.” She turned to Fell. “It’s Peter. He wants to take me to some fashion show at Cheltenham Town Hall tomorrow.”
“Then why not go?” asked Fell. “I wouldn’t mind a quiet day here.”
Maggie quickly masked her disappointment. “All right, Peter,” she said.
“Grand,” he said. “The photographer’s making his own way.”
