The Maltese Herring Read online

  I smiled sweetly. If you’d seen me and a cute baby squirrel side by side, you’d have had difficulty saying which of us was a leading London literary agent.

  ‘Very well, I’m reporting you now,’ he said. ‘Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.’

  He seemed to think these words would magically move Mr Suitcase onto the rack, in spite of his vertigo. Obviously, if we looked at it like adults (always an option) we could each have two seats and share the glaring-at-commuters thing. But matters had passed the point where either of us was prepared to give way. Anyway, I needed all four. He didn’t.

  ‘You wouldn’t like this table,’ I said, giving the surface another wipe with my slimy finger. ‘There’s still wet sugar on it. You don’t like sugar. Or do you?’ I gave him my unblinking gaze and ran my tongue over my finger, very, very slowly.

  He swallowed hard, then visibly folded. I watched him go, a small rucksack over his shoulder and awkwardly dragging his suitcase behind him. It kept jamming against the seats. He hit one or two random legs. He did not apologise. He seemed quite cross with the world in general. So, perhaps it wasn’t anything I’d said, after all. It would take him a while to get to the other end of the train and with luck he might not come back. Nine times out of ten that was what happened in cases like this – at least in my experience.

  Mr Suitcase and I settled down again in our seats. I’d save the second jam doughnut until we got to Horsham, I decided. It was definitely too soon to eat an emergency reserve jam doughnut now, or no more than I had already. Wrong in every possible way. I opened my laptop. There were two emails from Ethelred that I thought I wouldn’t open just yet. He could tell me when I got there. There was also an email from Ethelred’s editor that needed some thought and carefully judged sarcasm.

  I licked some jam off my fingers and took a sip of coffee. Then I looked up and saw a linen jacket in front of me.

  He said something. I smiled sweetly. He said something else. I took the earphones out of my ears.

  ‘I’ve reported you to the guard,’ he said.

  ‘Is he married?’ I asked.

  I noticed genuine fear in his eyes this time. He went straight to the nearest empty seat and sat down, but he didn’t take out a computer or magazine or book. He just kept glancing at me, as if worried that I might follow him the length of the train until he suddenly found himself engaged to me, like Mrs Bardell and Mr Pickwick. Obviously, I had no plans for that until I’d finished both doughnuts, but the journey after Horsham can be dull, especially the flat bit round Arundel, so it was nice to have it as an option for later. After a while he took a can of premixed gin and tonic out of his bag and poured it into a plastic glass. Shortly after that he opened another.

  When the guard came round to check our tickets, he stopped by linen jacket first and they had a nice little whispered chat. Linen jacket pointed to me several times during their discussion. He was probably still pressing for me to be ejected from the train in some embarrassing way – maybe marooned at Three Bridges with just a bottle of rum, some sea biscuits and a parrot. I winked at them and undid the top button of my blouse in what I hoped was a sultry manner. The guard said nothing to me at all when I handed him my ticket and moved on very quickly. He did not raise the topic of the ownership of my table. That seemed to be a done deal.

  In the end, I did some reading after Horsham and completely forgot the possibility of having fun with linen jacket. When I did glance at him, I noticed a whole collection of cans in front of him. His gaze had become vacant. There was a slight smile on his lips. I was happy for him. Bit by bit the train emptied as it approached the coast. My needing four seats became less and less of an issue, even for the most unreasonable of my fellow passengers. Eventually, I noticed, linen jacket had four seats too. His larger bag was on the rack, but he now had his rucksack beside him, his arm round it in a protective manner, which Mr Suitcase and I thought was sweet.

  We had just come into Barnham when I looked up and observed that he was now on his feet, peering anxiously through the window. We’d stopped at a point, as sometimes happens, where you couldn’t easily see a station sign, which is fine if you’ve listened to the guard’s announcements or realised there was a computerised sign in the carriage saying ‘Barnham, next stop Chichester’. But he clearly hadn’t. He had, as an alternative, drunk six cans of gin and tonic and then started to panic. He glanced around. But, by this time, he and I were the only people in the carriage.

  He appealed to me in desperation. ‘Did they say this was Chichester?’ he asked, his speech slightly slurred. ‘I think they mentioned Chichester in the last announcement, but I wasn’t really listening.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said very slowly. You could almost hear the precious seconds slipping by before the doors closed. ‘Did they say Chichester?’

  He turned quickly to the window again then back to me. ‘We definitely should be there now.’ He looked at his watch.

  As usual we were running about ten minutes late, so his premise that we ought to be in Chichester was totally justified.

  ‘It certainly should be Chichester,’ I said.

  He hesitated, then quickly shouldered his rucksack, grabbed his other bag from the rack and made a bolt for the door. Just as it closed behind him, he heard two things: a guard’s whistle ringing through the air and a voice saying, ‘No, silly me, Chichester’s the next stop.’

  The train moved off, at first in that slow, patient, almost imperceptible way that only trains know how to do. I had plenty of time to observe him standing there, staring open-mouthed at the sign saying ‘Barnham’. He turned and, down the line and across the tracks, he would have been able to inspect a pub, a few houses, lots of fields, some cows and no cathedral. I reckoned that, even with half a dozen gin and tonics on board, he’d worked out for himself that this probably wasn’t the county town of West Sussex. We were now picking up speed, but he managed to flash me one final look of hatred before his face and the rest of the station became a blur.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Mr Suitcase. ‘The horrid man’s gone now.’

  I got out my phone and gave Ethelred a call to say I’d had an enjoyable journey but was running slightly late. I wasn’t expecting him to have his phone turned on and he did not disappoint me. Ten minutes later the train pulled into Chichester Station. I walked down the platform and found Ethelred waiting for me by the exit, fretting that the train might have taken a wrong turning or something.

  ‘So sweet of you to meet me,’ I said, stretching up and kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘You ordered me to,’ he said, taking my suitcase from me. ‘What on earth have you got in here?’

  ‘Just one or two outfits for the weekend,’ I said. ‘I like to be smart. We’re not all writers, you know – some of us don’t get to slop around in pyjamas until it’s time to take our agent out to a nice expensive lunch.’

  Ethelred did not attempt to contradict any part of this. ‘Did you see Dr Joyner?’ he asked.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘I emailed you to look out for him on the train. He’s also staying with me this weekend and said he’d be on the one you were catching.’

  ‘And how would I recognise him?’

  ‘Oh, a middle-aged academic. A bit prickly. Stubbly ginger hair.’

  We looked back along the platform. It was very empty. There were clearly no academics in sight. Maybe there was one in Barnham with a bit of foam round his mouth, but there were none right here on the platform in Chichester.

  ‘Perhaps he got off too soon,’ I said. ‘He was probably deep in thought, about some academic thing, then he suddenly realised he’d arrived at a station, jumped off and found he was in the wrong place. Maybe he’d also had a gin and tonic too many. It must happen all the time.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Ethelred. ‘That actually sounds very improbable. You’d hardly mistake Barnham for Chichester, however many drinks you’d had. More likely he just missed the train. Well,
we’re not waiting for the next one.’

  I got the impression that Ethelred was not totally displeased. At least, not for the moment.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘He could be anywhere at all, when you think about it. A bit like the Scarlet Pimpernel. Or Heisenberg. Let’s just go back to yours and you can make me a cappuccino. Three sugars. Chocolate biscuits. You can stop and buy some at the village store if you’ve run out. I tried calling you to put my order in, but your phone was turned off.’

  ‘Was it?’ he said. It’s always a surprise to Ethelred that phones don’t work if they are switched off.

  He fiddled with it, fifteen minutes too late, then stuffed it firmly in his pocket to punish it. A phone rang loudly just after he’d started driving me to West Wittering. It was the everyday ringtone of somebody who didn’t know or care that you can have other ringtones. I told him to keep his eyes on the road and not grope in his pocket to locate the phone amongst his collection of old receipts, bus tickets and fluff. There were several more incoming calls, eventually at thirty-second intervals, as we drove along.

  ‘Sounds like a nuisance caller.’ I said. ‘You get them all the time. They probably want to know if you’ve been in an accident lately, which, the way you’re driving, is not an entirely unfair question. Still, it’s best to ignore them until you do actually crash into somebody. And don’t forget to stop for biscuits.’

  It was sometime later that Ethelred checked who had been calling him and phoned back. There was a brief conversation.

  ‘You did what?’ said Ethelred. ‘Why? … Really? … That seems very unlikely. I’ve never encountered anyone who was deliberately as rude and selfish as that. What did she look like? … How fat exactly? … I suppose so. No, I’m not coming back into Chichester to collect you. You can get the 52 or 53 bus from the railway station. Yes, opposite the pub you are in. Tell the driver you want the Old House at Home in the centre of the village. Or get a taxi if you don’t want to wait. It’s about twenty pounds … Fine, whichever you prefer. I’ll see you later.’

  He switched off the phone. For a moment he looked at me suspiciously, but his very best suspicions were no match for my total indifference.

  ‘The man’s an idiot,’ he said eventually. ‘Or he’s been drinking. Got off at Barnham. Can you believe it? Had to wait for the next train. Trying to blame some poor woman who seems only to have been trying to help him. It sounds as if she wasn’t quite right in the head, to be fair, but he can sort himself out now he’s finally reached Chichester. Did you see a short, fat madwoman on the train?’

  ‘Not from where I was sitting,’ I said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ethelred

  Dr Joyner arrived hot and not in the best of tempers. His breath smelt somewhat of gin. I fear I was not as sympathetic as I should have been.

  ‘Well, at least you didn’t have to wait long at Barnham for another train,’ I said.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Then the guard was awkward about my ticket having already been stamped by the previous guard.’

  ‘It could have been worse.’

  ‘Then another forty minutes waiting for the bus.’

  ‘They are less frequent in the evening. Still, we’re lucky to have a regular service seven days a week. Many villages round here don’t. I’ve put you in the small bedroom at the front. My agent, Elsie, has already taken the much larger one overlooking the garden, having arrived somewhat before you.’

  It was at that point that Elsie made her entrance. She had changed into her seaside attire – a blue-and-white-striped dress, with a wide skirt supported by stiff petticoats, deep-red lipstick and sunglasses. She might have been dressing for a fashion shoot for a firm specialising in clothes for the shorter, fatter woman who wanted to be on trend without spending more than was absolutely necessary.

  Dr Joyner’s reaction largely confirmed what I had begun to suspect. He stared at her with a mixture of disbelief and contempt – understandable in many respects but never advisable. He was about to make his feelings clear in some way when Elsie tilted back her sunglasses and smiled.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she said, holding out a small, white-gloved hand. ‘Elsie Thirkettle. I’m Ethelred’s literary agent.’

  Joyner ignored both hand and glove.

  ‘I know who you are. You were on the train,’ he said. ‘You and your bloody suitcase.’ His speech was blurred at the edges but his recollections were painfully clear.

  Elsie looked puzzled and slightly hurt, though, if Joyner had known her better, he would have realised that proved nothing.

  ‘I was certainly on a train,’ she said. ‘That’s how I got here.’

  ‘You were on the same train as me,’ he spluttered. ‘At least, as far as Barnham. As you know very well, madam.’

  It would have been difficult not to detect Joyner’s rage. I could only admire Elsie’s response.

  ‘Oh, did you also travel down by train this evening, then?’ she asked conversationally.

  Joyner looked like a man who, descending a staircase, had missed not just the last, but the last three stairs.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He frowned. After a bit, he remembered to close his mouth.

  ‘But you clearly arrived on a later one than I did?’ said Elsie, ignoring the dribble on his chin. ‘Otherwise we’d have seen you at the station. Ethelred very sweetly came to meet me. So much easier than the bus. I’m sure he’d have given you a lift too, if you’d arrived on the same train. What a pity you didn’t.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joyner repeated. ‘But that’s my point, you see, you told me—’

  ‘Trains can be so tiresome, can’t they? And they can be crowded, at this time of year. Did you manage to get a nice seat? I do so hope that you did.’

  Joyner stared at Elsie, as if questioning his own sanity rather than hers. It was a feeling that I knew well. He had been about to say something to her. Something deeply felt. Something he really wanted to say. But suddenly he had a suspicion that the rules of logic, if not the laws of gravity, had been changed without anyone telling him.

  ‘So, we didn’t have a conversation on the train …?’ His voice tailed off as if it had nowhere left to go.

  ‘If we had, I’m sure I’d remember it.’

  ‘There was somebody on the train who looked almost identical … you might be twins …’

  Elsie smiled sweetly, in a way that she never did if she was merely sticking to the truth.

  ‘I’ll go and unpack,’ he said to me. ‘I’m suddenly feeling quite tired.’

  When he had gone, I said to Elsie, ‘What exactly was all that about?’

  ‘Oh, he thought I was some woman on the train who’d made him look like a total dickhead.’

  ‘If you didn’t see him at all, how could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Woman’s intuition. And, yes, there is such a thing. And, no, men are not allowed to question it in any way.’

  ‘So, did you make him look like a total dickhead?’

  ‘No need,’ said Elsie. ‘I just sat there and watched.’

  Dinner was a simple affair. Cold chicken, simply cooked. A green salad without dressing. Some peaches. Half a dozen Mars bars. Two or three Wall’s Cornettos.

  ‘Are you sure you two don’t want a Mars bar?’ said Elsie, opening the last one. ‘I think I’ve possibly had more than my share.’

  ‘I’m good,’ I said.

  ‘All that salad isn’t healthy,’ said Elsie. ‘It’s mainly water. Probably full of plastic. Did you see that David Attenborough programme? All water, everywhere, is about ninety per cent plastic bags. Fact. Really frightening.’

  ‘I’m not sure it applies to lettuce,’ I said.

  ‘I bet it does.’

  ‘Except, in real life, nobody has ever found any plastic bags in lettuce.’

  ‘They sure as hell haven’t found any in Mars bars,’ said Elsie. ‘If they had, David Attenborough would have told us all to eat Twix. And I honestly don’t
think he did. I watched one episode and recorded the rest, so I couldn’t possibly have missed it.’

  Fine, Mars bars were healthier than lettuce. I’d just have to remember that if I didn’t want this conversation again.

  ‘What is the plan for tomorrow?’ asked Joyner. ‘When do we see Mrs Munnings?’

  He had been relatively subdued at dinner, concentrating on his food, drinking only water and occasionally casting suspicious glances in Elsie’s direction.

  ‘Iris won’t see us until the afternoon,’ I said, ‘so I thought we could take a run over to Sidlesham first and look at the Abbey. Elsie’s curious to see it.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Joyner. ‘I’d like to take another look anyway. And maybe have a word with the idiot who runs it. He’s not being as cooperative as I’d like.’

  I was, in fact, a very good friend of the idiot who ran it, but I decided to let this go.

  ‘We are due at the Priory at two o’clock,’ I continued. ‘And not a moment before. Iris will be happy to talk about the house and the story of the theft back in the sixteenth century. Tell her as much or as little as you wish about your own project. But please don’t mention any possibility of excavations.’

  Joyner grunted non-committally. Well, if he raised the subject of digging, it might as well be for his own grave. Or for his book’s own grave.

  ‘I mean it,’ I said.

  ‘There’s been a new development,’ said Joyner. ‘Iris Munnings is no longer in the position of strength that she imagined she was. She will have to cooperate. I can make her do it.’ He looked at me as if wondering how much he could trust us with this information. Then he looked at Elsie and decided. He took a sip of coffee. Personally, I doubted he could influence Iris in any way at all, whatever he’d just found out. But I’d leave him to discover that for himself.

  ‘So, what is your new book about, Dr Joyner?’ asked Elsie.

  Joyner frowned as if fearing some new trick, but Elsie’s gaze seemed to convey nothing but genuine interest and admiration. ‘It’s a story of intrigue and deception,’ he said, cautiously, ‘dating back to the sixteenth century, but continuing today. Oh, yes, continuing up to this very minute. It is the story of death and hypocrisy and of how gold can corrupt.’