“There’s gratitude for you. Shunning those that clothed you and fed you.”
Fell went through and phoned for a cab. When it arrived, he went out and paid the driver. “I suppose you’ll be wanting your furniture back” were Aunt Agnes’s last words.
“Keep it.” Fell slammed the cab door on her and returned indoors to Maggie.
“It wasn’t really her fault,” said Maggie awkwardly when Fell sank down in a chair and buried his face in his hands. “I mean, she didn’t keep the money from you or bring you up.”
Fell took his hands away from his face. “I suppose not. Let’s get back to these wretched notes. The trouble about that lottery business is that Johnny Tremp is such an ideal suspect. He’s a nasty bit of work and brutal enough to have been in on the robbery. All we’ve got is one police inspector with an expensive daughter.”
Maggie was to regret her next words. “I suppose we could just go and ask him.”
Fell stared at her.
Maggie laughed. “I’m being ridiculous.”
“I don’t know. You know, Maggie, why not? Why not just ask? We could watch the house until we see the daughter leave and get him on his own. No witnesses.”
“Fell, it won’t do. He’ll just get angry and deny the whole thing.”
“But don’t you see, it’s worth a try? Until we get an idea who’s after us, we’ll never get another quiet moment. If he thinks it’s all ridiculous, I think we’ll be able to tell if he’s telling the truth.”
“I don’t really want to go.”
“Then you wait here. I’ll go.”
“No, we may as well stick together. Do you want to go now?”
“We’ll wait until this evening. We’ll start watching about six o’clock.”
¦
During the rest of the afternoon, Maggie tried to talk Fell out of the idea, but his face was grim and set. He was determined to go.
To add to Maggie’s fears, Dunwiddy phoned to say they were short of men and he had called off their guard.
They set out just before six. The air was hot and clammy and from far away came the distant rumble of thunder.
Maggie parked at the end of the street. “If we wait here,” she said, “we can see her if she drives past.” And in her heart of hearts, Maggie prayed that she would not drive past, or that if she did, she would have the inspector in the passenger seat and then they could go home and she would have time to talk Fell out of this crazy idea.
Seven o’clock came and went. Then eight. Maggie began to relax. The thunder crashed overhead and fat raindrops began to splash on the windscreen. Maggie switched on the wipers. By the time nine o’clock shone greenly from the clock on the dashboard, Maggie opened her mouth to suggest they should go home, but Fell suddenly hissed, “Car coming.”
They both crouched down and peered over the dashboard. A grey Mercedes passed them. Despite the pouring rain, they could briefly make out Gloria Lewis behind the wheel.
“Let’s go,” said Fell.
Maggie drove forward and parked opposite the inspector’s villa. “I haven’t an umbrella.”
“Come on,” said Fell. “A little bit of rain never hurt anyone.”
Maggie switched off the engine and got out of the car, gasping as the rain struck down on her. Lightning lit up the front of the villa. Thunder rolled and crashed overhead. They both ran up the drive to the front door. Fell, water running down his face, rang the bell.
They waited. He rang again. Again they waited.
“Well, that’s that,” said Maggie. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll walk round the side of the house and see if there’s a light on,” said Fell. “He may not be answering the door.”
Maggie groaned inwardly. But she followed Fell through the shrubbery and round the side of the house. “Look,” hissed Fell, clutching her arm. Light was streaming out from a window at the back of the garden.
They walked up to the window. Inspector Rudfern was sitting watching television.
Fell rapped on the French window. The inspector heaved himself to his feet.
“The gun,” whispered Maggie urgently. “What if he’s got Andy Briggs’s gun?”
Rudfern opened the window. “Who’s out there?”
“Fell Dolphin.”
“I might have known. Come in.”
Fell and Maggie walked inside. The inspector tugged at a cord and a Venetian blind dropped down to hide the window. Then he locked it.
“Sit down,” he said.
“We’re a bit wet.” Fell looked anxiously towards the now closed window. A huge crack of thunder reverberated through the room.
Rudfern said nothing, merely sitting down again.
Maggie and Fell sat down opposite him. Maggie could feel her wet clothes sticking to her. Droplets of rainwater were running down her face.
“Well?” prompted Rudfern.
Fell opened his mouth to say weakly that they had just dropped by to talk about the train robbery but found himself blurting out, “We think you did it.”
Rudfern looked wearily at him. “And what gives you that idea?”
Fell took a deep breath. “It’s all wild guessing. But your daughter was seen wearing a Versace dress. How could she afford it? Secondly, the police think there was Semtex put in our car engine in an attempt to blow us up. There was a raid on some IRA members ten years ago, and among other things a quantity of Semtex was seized. You would have been in an ideal position to take some.”
Rudfern looked at him quizzically. “And that’s it?”
“Yes, but all the same – ”
“Have you talked to Dunwiddy about this?”
“No, but we’re going to.”
He studied them for some minutes and then unexpectedly quoted King Lear. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
Silence.
Maggie wanted to say, “We’d better be going, then.” Somewhere out there was a safe and normal world and she wanted to return to it.
But Rudfern suddenly started speaking again. “I had planned to wait a couple or more years and then leave the country. Get a nice villa somewhere sunny with a view of the sea, but she couldn’t wait.”
“Gloria? Your daughter?” asked Fell.
“Who else? She’d married a rich man and the marriage had come unstuck. But she’d had a taste of high living and she wanted it back. I loved her. My wife had died and she was all I had. I would have given her the world. But I’d always been an honest copper and had no intention of changing when I got the news that a trainload of currency was going to be passing through Buss. I got a bit tight one evening at the Rotary club and told this Colonel Wakeham all about it.”
“You said a military man had planned it all,” said Fell miserably. “So the colonel was a crook.”
“That old buffer? No. But he liked crosswords and detective stories and so he began, as a joke, to map out the perfect robbery. He wrote down copious notes and gave them to me.”
“I still didn’t think about doing anything about it when Tarry Briggs was brought in for questioning over an armed robbery at a building society in the High Street. I lied and said I had proof that he’d done it. He said he wanted to do a deal and would only talk to me. I switched off the tape recorder and then I was alone in the interview room with him. I thought he was going to give me a tip-off of some other burglaries or put his hands up to more and do a deal that way, but it turned out he knew about the Post Office money. He said it could be taken easily. He said he could recruit three others. If I took part, I would get the lion’s share.”
“He must have known you could be corrupted,” said Fell.
“No, he didn’t. He was desperate not to go to prison again. But I had the colonel’s plan. And who would ever
