'Punch and Judy.'
Chapter 10
IF THE PIRATES caught you,' I explained, 'they chained you to an oar and rubbed chillis in your eyes to keep you awake. Unless you were a woman in which case they sold you into slavery.'
Calamity stood in front of the map of Borneo and studied the route of my great-great-uncle.
'What makes you so sure she didn't drown?'
'She probably did.'
Calamity unwrapped a sugar lolly. 'So you just sit here staring at your uncle?'
'It's the second rule of being a private eye.'
She looked at me with interest. 'How does it go?'
'Look after your shoes.'
She frowned.
'It means don't waste shoe leather walking around all over the place when a lot of things can be worked out with your head.'
'What's the first rule of being a private eye?'
'Don't be one.'
She frowned again. 'And the third?'
'I'll tell you later.'
'You mean you haven't thought of it yet.'
I laughed. 'Come on, get your coat, it's time to violate the second rule.'
In Venice a nobleman would arrive at the Duke's palace in furs and silks and half an hour later would exit the back way over the Bridge of Sighs to prison. With Iolo Davies the way led over Trefechan Bridge but the symbolism was the same. For years he had basked in the warm glow of Aberystwyth respectability. Not a duke or a lord, perhaps, but a man occupying an eminent position, enjoying the esteem of the movers and shakers of his little world. Invited every year to the Golf Club Summer Ball and the Rotary Club Christmas Party; holder of a seat on the St Luddite's School board of governors; advisor to the examining boards; publisher of several pieces of research into the lost art of whalebone corsetry. A proud man who had his suits tailored in Swansea, and bespoke aftershave mixed to a personal recipe by the perfumers of Gwent. A man of culture now forced to scratch a living putting on marionette performances in the back rooms of pubs.
Aberaeron was the centre of the Punch and Judy circuit and as we drove south along the coast road, we talked more about Hermione Wilberforce. I explained how years later Bartholomew's journal was found in the jungle. It recorded how his guides and bearers abandoned him one by one, until finally he ploughed on alone; how his last weeks were spent racked by fever and madness. And how in the final delirium before he died he described the day when, alone in the jungle and too ill to move, he was visited by Hermione.
'The thing is,' said Calamity, the lolly still in her mouth, 'that doesn't prove anything, does it?'
'Nope.'
'It could just have been a hallucination.'
'Of course.'
'Or an orang-utan. Or he could have just made it up.'
'Except for one thing.'
There was a slight pause. Calamity looked at me sensing the mild air of melodrama in my voice.
'What?'
'He took a camera with him.'
I could sense her interest quicken.
'It was one of the very first ones — the size of a step-ladder and he lugged it all the way to Borneo and then upriver. He was the first person ever to record images of the headhunting tribes. He once described how he arranged a photo session and had to wait an hour for the women of the tribe to get ready. He said women were the same all over the world.'
Calamity snorted.
'Most of the film was eaten by insects but a few plates survived.'
'Where are they?'
'Sydney University.'
'You're not going to tell me he took a picture of Hermione?'
'I don't know. That's the fascinating thing: the camera was never found — they found his journal and other effects but not the camera. Then fifteen years later it turned up, or so the story goes, in a junk shop in Hong Kong. An American merchant bought it and there was a plate still inside. They say he had it developed and although partially ruined you could still make out the ghostly image of a European woman in the midst of the rainforest.'
'What happened to the picture?'
'He lost it.'
It was late afternoon when we drove into the fishing village of Aberaeron. I pulled up and parked outside the butcher's shop on the main street. A fawn Allegro pulled in and parked about thirty yards behind me. It had been following us most of the way from Aberystwyth.
'How many pubs are there in this town?' Calamity asked.
'Loads.'
'How are we gong to find the right one?'
'Third rule of being a private eye. When confronted with a mystery, don't ask what's the answer, ask what's the question.'
Calamity considered that one for a second. 'That's a good one; better than the first two.'
'Can you see the fawn Allegro behind us?'
'It's been following us since Southgate.'
I squinted at the driver in the rear-view mirror. Trench coat and trilby, beard, dark glasses, newspaper balanced on the steering wheel, it didn't prove anything, but when did an innocent person ever dress like that?
'So what's the question?'
'The question is: not which pub will he be in tonight, but which of these two butchers' shops will he be getting his sausages from.'
Calamity considered this new approach to detective work.
I took out the pamphlet on the history of the Museum that I had picked up from the library. 'Whatever else I know or don't know, I know you can't do Punch and Judy without sausages. There's always a bit where the Chinaman falls into the sausage machine and comes out as a yellow sausage with a pigtail.'
In the list of contributors at the back of the booklet there was a picture of Iolo Davies. They may have removed his portrait from the Museum cafe but they had done nothing more painstaking than that. Chubby red cheeks, a toothbrush moustache which he may have shaved off and bushy eyebrows which he probably hadn't.
He turned up shortly before closing time at about 5.20pm, sauntering down the sunlit street with the air of someone who has just woken up. The once-sharply tailored suit was now dirty and torn. Both knees were patched with the sort of big ugly stitching you normally only saw on clown's trousers; the handmade shoes were scuffed and open to reveal his toes. He walked into the shop and came out a few minutes later with a bag of sausages under his arm. As he walked off down the street, I eased the car out into the traffic and followed. He walked down the High Street, across the pelican crossing and into a pub overlooking the harbour called the Jolly Roger. I drove a couple of blocks and let Calamity out at the lights. The plan was for her to double back and keep an eye on the pub; I would carry on and try to lose the tail. We agreed to rendezvous at 7.30pm. I drove on and parked on an embankment overlooking the harbour; there was time to kill and the way to do it was wind down the window, let the muggy late-afternoon air in, and snooze to the muted cries of the gulls. The Allegro overtook and turned into a side street.
I awoke at the time when the town was poised between the edge of day and the beginning of night. The shopkeepers and office workers had all walked the few minutes it took them to get home and it would be a while before anyone set out for an early-evening pint. The sky in the west was mauve and one or two street lights were beginning to flicker orange and pink. The scent of fried onions drifted through the car window.
It was a five-minute walk down the main road to the pub, but I took a longer route on foot through the harbour. By early evening it was a deserted stretch of nets, lobster pots and boats hoisted out of the water. The air
