Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 9: Clutch of Constables, When in Rome, Tied Up in Tinsel. Ngaio Marsh

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       CHAPTER 7

       Routine

      ‘– And so,’ Alleyn said, ‘we set up the appropriate routine and went to work in the usual way. Tillottson was under-staffed – the familiar story – but he was able to let us have half a dozen uniformed men. He and the Super at Longminster – Mr Bonney – did all they could to co-operate. But once we’d caught that whiff of the Jampot it became essentially our job with strong European and American connections.

      ‘We did a big line with Interpol and the appropriate countries but although they were dead keen they weren’t all that much of a help. Throughout his lamentable career the Jampot had only made one blunder: and that, as far as we could ferret it out, was because an associate at the Bolivian end of his drug racket had grassed. The associate was found dead by quick attack from behind on the carotids: the method that Foljambe had certainly employed in Paris and was later to employ upon the wretched Andropulos. But for reasons about which the Bolivian police were uncommonly cagey, the Jampot was not accused by them of murder but of smuggling. Bribery is a little word we are not supposed to use when in communication with our brothers in anti-crime.

      ‘It’s worth noticing that whereas other big-shots in his world employ their staffs of salaried killers the Jampot believes in the do-it-yourself kit and is unique in this as in many other respects.

      ‘Apart from routine field-work the immediate task, as I saw it, was to lay out the bits of information as provided by my wife and try to discover which fitted and which were extraneous. I suggest that you treat yourselves to the same exercise.’

      The man in the second row could almost be seen to lay back his ears.

      ‘We found nothing to help us on deck,’ continued Alleyn. ‘Her mattress had been deflated and stowed away and so had her blankets and the deck had been hosed down in the normal course of routine.

      ‘But the tow-path and adjacent terrain turned up a show of colour. At the Crossdyke end, and you’ll remember it was during the night at Crossdyke that the murdered woman disappeared, Mr Fox’s party found on the riverbank at the site of the Zodiac’s moorings, a number of indentations, made either by a woman’s cuban heel or those of the kind of “gear” boots currently fashionable in Carnaby Street. They overlapped and their general type and characteristics suggested that the wearer had moved forwards with ease and then backwards under a heavy load. Here’s a blow-up of Detective-Sergeant Thompson’s photographs.

      ‘There had either been some attempt to flatten these marks or else a heavy object had been dragged across them at right angles to the riverbank.

      ‘The tow-path was too hard to offer anything useful, and the path from there up to the road was tar-sealed and provided nothing. Nor did a muddy track along the waterfront. If the heels had gone that way we would certainly have picked them up so the main road must have been the route. Mr Fox, who is probably the most meticulous clue-hound in the Force, had a long hard look at the road. Here are some blown-up shots of what he found. Footprints. A patch of oil on the verge under a hedgerow not far from the moorings. Accompanying tyre marks suggest that a motorbike had been parked there for some time. He found identical tracks on the road above Ramsdyke. At Crossdyke on an overhanging hawthorn twig – look at this close-up – there was a scrap of a dark blue synthetic material corresponding in colour and type with deceased’s pyjamas.

      ‘Right. Question now arose: if deceased came this way was she alive or dead at the time of transit? Yes, Carmichael?’

      The man in the second row passed his paddle of a hand over the back of his sandy head.

      ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘It would appear from the character of the footprints, the marks on the bank, the evidence at the braeside and the wee wispies of cloth, that the leddy was at the least of it, unconscious and carried from the craft to the bike. Further than that, sir, I would not care to venture.’

      The rest of the class stirred irritably.

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