VI

MISS MACDONALD’S STORY

THE MORNING PAPERS were full of Vivian Carolan’s latest speech. I’d never met him, but I’d heard him speak once, and there was no doubt that he could move people. Whether he moved them healthily or unhealthily is another matter. His theme was the fairly standard one for left-wing politicians of the need to abolish capital in private hands, but he added a strange brand of the narrowest form of nationalism, urging ‘Socialism for England now’. He didn’t approve of Celtic influence on what he called ‘the pure springs of Anglo-Saxon democracy’, holding that most of what had gone wrong with Britain over the past thousand years or so was the fault of ‘Celtic individualism’. He was all for England’s democracy and against any form of union with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, for which he seemed to have a particular dislike as ‘a nucleus of Celtic imagery’. His extreme Little-Englandism, however, was linked to World Socialism, and he argued that a truly Socialist independent England would lead the way to a truly Socialist world, independent alike of capitalism and Celtic individualism. Since he disapproved of any English links with Europe as much as he disapproved of links with Wales or Scotland, his world view seemed somewhat restricted. But woolly as his arguments were, they went down well with discontented people, and particularly with certain sections of the unemployed. That was what gave him his undoubted power in politics, and his loose organisation called the ‘Left is Right Group’ – kept carefully informal so that it could not be proscribed by any of the major parties – commanded the allegiance of a handful of MPs capable of being a thorn in the flesh to the Coalition Government if they were not placated. Obviously there was not much that any Government concerned in governing the United Kingdom could do to meet the wilder demands of the ‘Left is Right Group’, but, since it was never clear whether these were immediate demands or merely long-term hopes, Cabinet office for Carolan and Under-Secretaryships for one or two of his more articulate followers contrived to keep the group within the Parliamentary fold. Carolan’s appointment as Minister for Fine Arts was considered a good one, diverting his energies to extolling the peculiar merits of English painting, and to bringing ‘Pictures to the People’ in the form of travelling exhibitions. These were extremely well managed and arranged, for Carolan knew his subject, and if his reading of English political history was weird his enthusiasm for English painting was real.

Nevertheless, there had been some ugly incidents. Opening his travelling exhibitions gave Carolan plenty of opportunities to speak, and the ‘Left is Right Group’ ensured that he spoke to enthusiastic audiences of his followers. They wore no uniform, of course, but maintained a corps of stewards who could be exceedingly rough to anyone who dared to voice dissent at one of Carolan’s meetings. And the stewards did not perform only when Carolan was speaking. Parties of twenty or thirty of them were liable to turn up at any political gathering of which they disapproved, and their chant of ‘Left–is–Right’, added to their readiness to fight anyone who tried to restore order, broke up meeting after meeting.

Once or twice Carolan himself had hinted at the moral justification of force to secure the people’s just demands, but he was careful to remain within the law, and when challenged in Parliament would observe loftily that he spoke philosophically, and that he could trust the good sense of the English people to interpret his views correctly.

His latest speech seemed to go further than he had ever gone before in advocating force to achieve the kind of England he wanted. ‘A day may come – I do not say it will come, but that it may – when bands of Englishmen from the Tweed to the Tamar, sickened by the prevarifications of the capitalists and by the continued infiltration of Celtic elements into English life, will arise with guns in their hands. And should that day come – bear in mind that I say “should it come”, not “when it comes” – who shall blame them? A disciplined band of anti-capitalist men in every town, animated by the faith of Cromwell’s soldiers, could sweep away the rottenness that besets our country. So I say “Beware!” Patience is not inexhaustible, and the clean gun may yet need to be brought in to redress the corruption of our so-called democratic system.’

*

The leader writers and political correspondents went to town on this. Some of them said that Carolan was a kind of licensed political buffoon, not to be taken seriously, and that in some ways his wild oratory was a useful escape valve in a complex society. Others argued, however, that the man was straining political toleration too far, and that his nominal adherence to the Government was becoming absurd. ‘Is there no law that can disband a private army before it gets into uniform?’ one leader writer thundered.

*

All this made interesting reading over breakfast, but it didn’t seem to advance the hunt for Andrew Stavanger. There was a connection of sorts – Carolan was Stavanger’s son-in-law, but fathers are not responsible for the political views of the husbands of their daughters, and there was no evidence – apart from the election address in his desk – that Stavanger took much interest in the political life of the Carolans. How did Kate fit into the picture? She and Carolan had no children, but that was neither here nor there as an indication of matrimonial harmony nowadays. The Carolans were subject to much exposure in the press, and as far as I knew there had never been any newspaper gossip which even hinted at any sort of rift between them. Yet it seemed an odd relationship. Kate did not seem to play a great part in her husband’s political life: she appeared on platforms with him from time to time, but she was by no means an automatic member of his entourage. Carolan could hardly approve of the Ingard empire, and of her father’s involvement in it. According to Miss Macdonald it was at Kate’s insistence that her father had become involved with Ingard – but Miss Macdonald’s views on Kate were not necessarily accurate. I didn’t know enough about any of the personalities concerned to form any views of my own. Andrew Stavanger was beginning to emerge in my mind with a shadowy personality – as the best sort of successor to a family business, with a high sense of responsibility reinforced by his disciplined training at sea. Everything that I had so far learned about him – except the conflicting stories of his drinking habits – seemed diametrically opposed to the slick business morality of Ingard and his associates and to the way-out politics of his daughter’s husband. Perhaps drink was the true explanation of his so far inexplicable behaviour. It was certainly the simplest.

I couldn’t go on speculating on the might-have-beens of Stavanger’s life, for there was work to do. I had to show up again at Ingard House, and I also wanted to tidy up the loose ends of Miss Macdonald’s story of the dead man in the Thames. I rang Seddon at home before he left for New Scotland Yard and asked him to find out for me the names of the officers who had dealt with the Southwark Bridge case. He said he could do that in a few minutes after getting to his office, and I arranged to ring him later in the morning.

I got to Ingard House promptly at nine thirty, to find Henniker and his clerks already at work. ‘I don’t think I need to stay here much longer,’ Henniker said. ‘I’ve seen enough to convince me that the only recommendation I can make to the bank is that they should withdraw all financial facilities to the Ingard group forthwith. The accounts are in an appalling state.’

‘Your report will mean an immediate crisis on the Stock Exchange,’ I said.

‘I can’t help that. I am an accountant, I have been called in by the bank, and my duty is to the bank. Speaking personally, my own view is that reputable City institutions are far too ready to temper the wind to slick operators like Ingard. They really do present “the unacceptable face of capitalism”. But this is a personal view. What the bank does when I present my report is, of course, the bank’s business.’

‘The bank will act on it – there can be no doubt about that. And, also speaking personally, I agree with your view. But, as I think Sir Geoffrey Gillington explained, there are other matters concerning the Ingard empire which we haven’t yet got to the bottom of. I’ll have a word with Sir Geoffrey this morning. I’d like, if I may, to report your provisional findings, and to ask him to delay action on them for a week. It would help if, perhaps, you could take a few days longer to prepare a considered report.’

‘I could certainly do that – in any set of accounts as involved as these there is masses of formal work that could be undertaken. My doubt is whether any further delay is fair to the bank. As I see it, my duty is to report the state of things at once.’

‘If I report informally for you, you will have fulfilled that duty. And, as you say, what happens then is a matter for the bank. If Sir Geoffrey were to ask you to carry on for a bit longer, would you be willing to do so?’

‘Put like that, yes. But – with respect to you – I should need direct instructions from Sir Geoffrey.’

‘I shall ask him to provide them. I don’t want him to telephone here. If he sends a note by hand addressed to you at your own office, would that do?’

‘I’d much rather have written instructions than a telephone call.’

‘Good. I’ll go and talk to Sir Geoffrey now.’

*

The banker saw me straightaway. I wasn’t at all sure that I had any right to make the request that I proposed to make. Ingard shares were still quoted on the Stock Exchange, and we had evidence that they were more or less worthless. Was it fair to anybody to delay action which might hurt innocent investors? I decided that the only thing to do was to put my thoughts frankly to Sir Geoffrey.

‘We’ve made no headway towards finding out whether your suspicions of Mr Andrew Stavanger’s letter are justified. We don’t yet know where Mr Stavanger is, and such evidence as we’ve been able to discover so far is inconclusive,’ I said. ‘On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that some very strange things – possibly criminal – are happening within the Ingard group. We don’t yet know what these are, but for reasons which it wouldn’t be proper for me to go into we believe that we may know more about them in about a week. Mr Henniker is very unhappy. He doesn’t know of the possibly criminal activities which may be going on under the cover of the Ingard group – and I can’t at present discuss such matters with him. He does know from his preliminary investigation of the accounts that the group is virtually insolvent – and I have his permission to convey his findings to you. His own view is that the bank should withdraw all financial facilities to Ingard forthwith, which, of course, would provoke an immediate crisis in the group’s affairs. If this were to happen, our other inquiries would be severely prejudiced. Therefore, if it is at all possible, I should prefer nothing which would upset the group to emerge for another week.’

Sir Geoffrey nodded. ‘I understand the position, and it is clearly a very difficult one,’ he said. ‘I have, of course, contributed to the difficulty by taking my own suspicions to the police – I can’t blame you for wanting to get to the bottom of things. Can you give me any indication of the gravity of the investigation which, in your view, might justify me in deliberately withholding from the board information of direct importance to the bank’s shareholders?’

‘No. I can ask you to accept that I shouldn’t have come to you like this if I did not believe that the matter may turn out to be very grave indeed. I can’t tell you what it is, because we don’t yet know. Should there be an upheaval in the Ingard group now, I fear that we may never know.’

‘Can you say that there is a prima facie case for continued investigation?’

‘Most certainly. The mysterious disappearance of Mr Stavanger alone is something that needs to be cleared up. Looking at things squarely, I should say that most of the £5 million you have advanced to Ingard will have to be written off – and it doesn’t seem to me to make much difference to the bank whether this becomes open knowledge now, or in a week or so. A more serious consideration to my mind is the continued quotation of Ingard shares on the Stock Exchange. By any real assessment they must be largely worthless.’

The banker considered this for a moment. ‘Theoretically, you’re quite right – it is indeed improper to withhold such information from the Stock Exchange. In practice – I doubt if it makes much difference. It’s common knowledge that Ingard – in company with other speculators – is having difficulties, and his shares have been severely written down. There is very little market in them – existing holders can sell only at a heavy loss. It could be argued, I suppose, that by not forcing the issue until your investigations are complete we might actually be helping Ingard shareholders – by clearing up uncertainties which might otherwise damage their interests.’

‘You could argue that. In the circumstances, the argument wouldn’t impress me if I were a stockbroker.’

Sir Geoffrey laughed. ‘Nevertheless, it is an argument that could be used. Anyway, Colonel Blair, I’m going to trust you – never say that banks haven’t got a social conscience towards the whole community! What, exactly, do you want me to do?’

I explained about the note I wanted him to write to Henniker. ‘Don’t give any reasons,’ I said. ‘Just say that you are writing to confirm that you want a detailed report because the matter is of such importance to so many people, and are prepared to wait for it. He’ll understand.’

‘Very well, Colonel, it shall be as you wish. I feel a little as I felt when the only racehorse I’ve ever owned ran at Lincoln.’

‘I hope it did well.’

‘Actually, it won. But that was its first race. It did so badly afterwards that I decided racing was not for me. The first principle of success in any walk of life is to know when to cut your losses.’

I wasn’t at all sure what he meant.

*

Feeling remanded on bail rather than acquitted, I found a call box and rang Seddon. ‘I’ve got everything you want, I think,’ he said. ‘The man in charge of your case was Detective Inspector Ian Redpath, of the City Division. I’ve had a word with him on the phone, and told him to expect a call from you. It seems a very curious case – but Redpath will tell you all about it.’

Being already in the City I wasn’t far from the divisional HQ, and I went along in the hope of finding Redpath there. He was. I had to wait about ten minutes while he was interviewing someone in connection with a current case, and then I was taken to his room.

‘Assistant Commissioner Seddon told me to expect you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had to finish with the man I had with me. It was about the theft of registered mail – I think we’ve got it sewn up. The Assistant Commissioner didn’t go into details. He said you were from the Home Office. What can I do for you?’

‘I understand that you were in charge of a case involving a man found dead in the Thames in June.’

‘The Southwark Bridge case! Unhappily, yes. It was a rotten case – we never got anywhere with it. I worked in conjunction with the River Police.’

‘I’d like you to tell me everything you can about it.’

Redpath looked troubled. ‘You’ll excuse me, sir, I know, but I’d like to be sure exactly who I’m talking to. You haven’t got a police rank. I’m an ordinary detective-inspector, and I don’t as a rule have direct dealings with the Home Office. Please understand – it’s not that I’m doubting you in any way. But don’t you think you should see my Superintendent?’

‘I’ll gladly see your Superintendent if you think it necessary,’ I said. ‘But you are all busy people, and I really want to talk to you because you dealt with all the details. I’m not exactly a policeman, but I do belong to the Police Liaison Group under Sir Edmund Pusey, and I’m very much concerned with police work. Assistant Commissioner Seddon is my group’s special representative at New Scotland Yard. Why not ring Seddon now? Tell him that I’m with you, but that you’re not quite sure how much you ought to tell me. If you ring him you can be certain that your call really is to the Yard. When somebody rings you, there’s always a slight element of doubt about precisely who he is.’

‘Really, sir, I don’t think I quite need to do that.’

‘But I want you to! I very much respect your instincts, and I want you to be able to talk freely.’

Somewhat reluctantly he lifted the phone, and asked the operator to get him Assistant Commissioner Seddon at New Scotland Yard. The call was a few minutes in coming through – probably they had to look for Seddon at the other end. While waiting, I asked if he had many riverside cases. ‘Quite a few,’ he said. ‘The river’s part of my manor, but of course it also belongs to the River Police. You could say roughly that I deal with the bank, and they look after the stream.’

‘And this was a case of a man’s being found on the mud?’

‘Yes, it had some problems. But I like the River men. We get on all right.’

Then the phone rang. In a rather embarrassed way he told Seddon that I was in his office, and asked for instructions. When he put down the phone, he said, ‘Really, sir, you make me feel that I’m behaving like a suspect.’

‘Nonsense. What did he say?’

‘He could have given me a ticking off, considering that he’d gone to the trouble of telling me you were coming. But he didn’t. He was very nice. Said you were top brass and that I could talk to you as if you were the Commissioner himself.’

‘That was handsome of him! I’ll have to buy him a drink. Happier now?’

‘Of course, sir. Where do you want to begin?’

‘I’d better begin by telling you just why I’ve come to see you. A very odd case has come to my department – we always seem to get the odd ones – concerning the disappearance of the managing director of a shipping company. He’s a man called Andrew Stavanger, and his office is in Upper Thames Street – the very building, in fact, where the office cleaner who, I understand, discovered the body in your case worked. Now I don’t see that there’s likely to be any connection, but since we’re up against a brick wall in the Stavanger case I’ve come to pick your brains.’

‘Stavanger’s not on the list of any missing persons that’s come to me.’

‘He wouldn’t be, because he’s not officially missing. I told you it was an odd case. He’s disappeared, we don’t know whether voluntarily or not. He seems to have gone missing at about the time your body was discovered.’

‘You say you’re up against a brick wall – well, that’s just where we got to in the Southwark Bridge case. We don’t know who the man was, let alone how he came to be in the river. How much do you already know about it?’

‘Next to nothing, except that the body was found, and that you handled the case. I haven’t seen any papers.’

‘Well, you can have the file. It’s a fat one, and just about absolutely futile. There’s one matter that’s in the file, but which didn’t come out at the inquest. The inquest was only opened, of course – it had to be adjourned because we didn’t know the man’s identity. The coroner took evidence only of the discovery of the body and of the cause of death – apparently a blow on the head. The matter which didn’t come out was that the deceased’s pockets were full of live ammunition – standard army rifle bullets.’

I looked at the file – a painstaking record of hundreds of hours of police work, inquiries, interviews, medical and forensic reports, all getting nowhere. ‘Well, no one can say you haven’t tried,’ I said. ‘I’m particularly impressed by your study of tides, and estimates of where the body may have gone in the river. That seems to me outstanding work.’

He was pleased, and, I felt, thawed a little. I could understand his unease. Here was a case which had taken up an inordinate amount of time for no result, and here was I, some remote big-wig from the Home Office coming to cross-examine him about it. No wonder he was inclined to be defensive. ‘Tell me about the cartridges,’ I went on. ‘I think you were wise to make no public mention of them.’

‘Well, that wasn’t really my decision,’ he said frankly, ‘but the outcome of a CID conference. It could be argued that they might help to identify him, but it was felt that they might relate to another crime and that if we started talking about them it might put whoever was responsible on his guard. I agreed with the decision at the time, though since we haven’t managed to identify him I’m beginning to wonder if it was right. You’ll find a technical description of the cartridges in the file, but they seem to be quite ordinary army ammunition.’

I glanced at the file again. ‘They don’t seem to have come from the British Army.’

‘No. That’s what makes me think that the man may have been a foreigner – perhaps even killed on the other side of the Channel.’

‘Possibly – though if the medical evidence about the time of death is right it’s hard to see how he could have got to where he was in the time. Where is the body now?’

‘When it was clear that identifying him was going to be a long job – if, indeed, he could ever be identified – the coroner issued a burial certificate. We have, of course, a very full description, and photographs. And we took a plaster cast of the teeth.’

‘That was an excellent idea. Has it been shown to any dentists?’

‘The cast itself, no. The people in the forensic medical laboratory got out a technical description of the dental work on his teeth, and this was circulated. It didn’t produce anything. It was hardly practical to take the cast to every dentist in the country.’

‘Of course not. It’s more likely to be valuable as a check on identity, if we ever find anyone whose teeth they might have been. If I can find out who is Stavanger’s dentist, perhaps he could be shown the cast.’

‘I’d take it myself – I’d be thankful to make any sort of progress in the case. Do you seriously think there is a chance that the body might be your Mr Stavanger’s?’

‘I just don’t know. Age and general description seem about right – but they could apply to tens of thousands of men in their late fifties or early sixties. I haven’t got a photograph of Stavanger yet – as I explained, he’s not officially missing. It’s a delicate business.’

‘Are you at liberty to tell me anything about your case, sir?’

‘Certainly. You will understand that because of the big financial interests involved it’s important that rumours shouldn’t start flying about, but I’d be grateful for your views.’ I gave him a slightly edited account of the banker’s concern about Andrew Stavanger’s sudden transfer of his large personal deposit, and of his mysterious non-attendance at his office for over four months. I did not mention my own strange adventure on Winter Marsh, but I did describe Seddon’s and my experience at the flat in Yardarm Square. Redpath listened closely to every word. Then he said, ‘The Boxing and Coxing on the ships would only be possible for someone who controlled a shipping line. If he’s doing it himself there seems no reasonable explanation for it – unless the hints that he is slightly batty are true. If he’s dead, then someone is playing a dangerous game, and one that can’t go on for ever. But there isn’t any evidence that he’s dead, so one can only say “if”. Using that as a working theory, I’d say there was some sort of time limit involved – I mean, a time during which it is imperative for people not to know that he’s dead, but a time that comes to an end, after which it doesn’t matter so much.’

‘That’s a very good point. And it’s possible that the curious telephone conversation in the flat, with its reference to postponing something for a week, related to your time limit. The trouble is that we don’t know what that something is. And we’re back where we started in not knowing whether the man is dead or alive.’

‘If you can find out his dentist, at least we could settle whether he was the man in the Thames.’

‘I think I can do that. But probably not until this evening. Can you let me have a home phone number where I could get you this evening?’

He gave me his number, and said that he’d be in from eight o’clock onwards. I thanked him and left, taking with me copies of the statements in the Southwark Bridge case file.

*

Miss Macdonald, I thought, would probably know about Andrew Stavanger’s dentist – she might well have made appointments for him in the past. But I didn’t want to be seen talking to her in the office, so I should have to wait until she got home. I filled in the rest of that day by pretending to be busy with the audit. I didn’t have to pretend much – going through some of the accounts with Henniker, and listening to his shrewd comments, was remarkably interesting. He had got Sir Geoffrey’s note when he’d looked into his own office at lunchtime. He didn’t refer to it directly, but he did observe mildly, ‘You seem to be a power in the City. I hope you’re right.’

*

I thought of telephoning Miss Macdonald, but decided instead to call on her. The staff left Ingard House at five thirty, and I reckoned she would be home soon after six. Allowing for the inevitable delays of London traffic I rang the bell of her flat at six thirty.

She lived in one of those streets running from the Old Brompton Road more or less parallel with the edge of Brompton Cemetery, a territory that seems more or less taken over by typists’ collectives, where groups of girls band together to share flats whose rents none of them could afford individually. Somehow I didn’t see Miss Macdonald as Fourth Girl in a collective flat, and my instinct was right. Her own flat was a little three-roomed affair on the top floor of an old West London house, in what had once been servants’ bedrooms. She had made it an attractive place, beautifully decorated with light paint, and furnished with old pieces picked up at auctions with taste and considerable knowledge of antiques. She was surprised to see me, but also, I thought, rather excited. ‘Have you got news at last?’ she asked eagerly.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Macdonald, but I’m afraid I haven’t,’ I said. ‘But I want, if I may, to take you into my confidence. If we are to find Mr Stavanger we shall need your help.’

‘I would do anything in the world to help Mr Andrew. But what can I do?’ she said. She was obviously puzzled, but she invited me to sit down, and offered me a glass of sherry. I accepted the sherry and said, ‘You have a remarkably nice flat, and I admire your taste in furniture.’

‘I couldn’t possibly afford the flat if I were renting it now, but I got it on a long lease just after the war, when rents were much less than they are today,’ she said. ‘The furniture – well, it has been my hobby for many years. Again, I could not afford much of it if I were buying it now. But what has this to do with Mr Andrew?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I am simply making conversation while I decide whether to risk my job by telling you things that I certainly ought not to tell you.’

‘Don’t, then,’ she said. There was still a pleasant Scots lilt to her voice.

‘But I have to take calculated risks sometimes. And I have calculated that you would be on Mr Stavanger’s side through thick and thin. You see, I am not an accountant. I am a policeman.’

Her reaction surprised me. ‘Thank God,’ she said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because we need the police in that office! I owe nothing to Mr Ingard or Mr Lennis. I owe a very great deal to Mr Andrew, and his father. I have said nothing to anyone so far because I have never been quite sure how much it might affect Mr Andrew. Oh, I know that he would never have touched anything in the least underhand, but he is a director of the company, and he might be held responsible for things that were done without his knowledge. They think that I’m just a mousy old woman, and couldn’t possibly know what goes on – they’ve taken away all confidential work from me and Mr Lennis treats me as if I were a half-wit. But you can’t spend a lifetime in a shipping office without learning something about ships. Why have we changed from being liners to being tramps? What are the cargoes we pick up at short notice and deliver to out-of-the-way ports in Africa? What do we bring back to England? You tell me that, Mr Mottram!’

‘I can’t tell you, because I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. What do you think the cargoes are?’

‘I don’t know either,’ she said unhappily, ‘but they must be something illegal because of the bills of lading. This is what they think I don’t understand, but I do. Every ship must have a manifest for each port she calls at. In the old days it was quite simple. We would have a ship making scheduled passages from Rotterdam, say, to London. In Rotterdam she would be loaded with so many cases of Dutch cheese, or Dutch tomatoes, or those round white Dutch cabbages. Mr Andrew knew all the shipping agents, and he tried to ensure that every ship had a profitable cargo before she sailed. On scheduled passages, of course, you can’t always do this, but Mr Andrew and his father before him knew the trade so well that they generally managed it. From London we would carry general merchandise back to Rotterdam. Every ship has a ledger to herself, and the manifest for every voyage has to be entered in it, so that you know precisely what the returns from each voyage are. Or rather, that’s the way we used to do it. I’m not supposed to look after the ledgers now, but I do still keep the position-record for the ships, and sometimes I have to go to a ledger to check a sailing date. And I can’t help seeing the manifests – in any case, I’ve always been interested in them. Mr Mottram, our ships could not possibly be run on their present manifests!

‘Yes, I know that Mr Lennis has altered the system. It’s much sloppier than it used to be, and the ladings are not all priced as we used to price them. But I know roughly what the freight for so many tons, say, of bananas from the Canaries is worth, and we’re not getting enough trade to keep going. But we do keep going – the wages for the crews are paid, the ships go for their refits, and in the Ingard group’s annual report the ships are shown as making quite a lot of money – more than we used to make in the old days. The ships are keeping the group, Mr Mottram. How?’

*

Her quiet, controlled anger was impressive. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to do anything that might attract the least sort of suspicion to yourself, but could you, in the normal course of your work, make out a list of the voyages of your ships over the past year – just name of ship and masters, ports of call, and dates?’

‘Easily,’ she said. ‘I have it all in my Daily Position Report. There’s a file of that, of course, but I make it up from my working diary, and nobody will know if I make some extracts from the diary.’

‘How many ships are there?’

‘Before the war we had eleven, but we lost several in the war. In the rebuilding programme after the war we reduced the fleet to seven, but they were larger ships. Two were sold after the Ingard takeover, and now there are five – Charlotte, Josephine, Cynthia, Agnes and Susan. They all have the family name T – Charlotte T, Josephine T, and so on. Susan T is the oldest and smallest – she was actually called after me. There was a Katherine T after Mr Andrew’s daughter, but she was one of the ones they sold.’

‘Do they all make the same sort of voyages?’

‘Not exactly. Susan is the oldest, and she still has her old master, Captain Lomax. They keep her more or less on her old run, a regular freight service from Holland to London, with occasional trips to the Baltic. Charlotte has her old master, too, and she keeps fairly regularly to Bordeaux for wine, though at different times of the year she may go to Spain for oranges, or to the Canaries for new potatoes or bananas.

‘Agnes, Josephine and Cynthia are the real tramps. They have no regular runs and may go anywhere, often at short notice. They’ve all got masters appointed since the takeover. Agnes has the newest, Captain Lemming. He took over when she left London in June, on her present voyage. She’s not been home since, though she is due back soon. She’s the one you asked me about, the one now in Bilbao.’

‘Would a master know precisely what his ship was carrying?’

‘He’d know what was on the bills of lading. He wouldn’t necessarily know what was actually in all the crates. He couldn’t.’

I changed the subject slightly. ‘I’m also very much concerned with Mr Stavanger,’ I said. ‘Where do you think he is?’

Her quick, alert interest in the ships turned to distress. ‘I know only what I’ve been told – that he is on one of the ships,’ she said unhappily. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s so unlike him. It was unlike him to stay away from the office at all without telling me, though if something unexpected happened, I could understand that. But he wouldn’t have gone abroad without writing. He is the most considerate of men, and he’d know that I would be worried about him.’

‘His daughter doesn’t seem particularly worried.’

‘Oh, her! Mr Andrew has always been devoted to Kate, Mr Mottram, but I couldn’t say the same about her. It’s not my place to talk about her, anyway, but she is wrapped up in her own life, and her husband’s politics – she met him when she belonged to some very radical student group at Oxford. Yes, she had all the chances, but she didn’t even take a degree – threw herself into left-wing politics, and then got married. I can’t bring myself to say she doesn’t care about her father, but she doesn’t act as if she cared for him very much.’

‘But what can have happened to Mr Stavanger?’

‘I wonder, sometimes, if perhaps he’s dead.’ The handkerchief that she’d been twisting and untwisting at our first interview came out again, this time to go to her eyes. I could offer little comfort.

‘Mr Stavanger – Captain Stavanger, I should really say – had been in the Royal Navy. If – we must only think “if” – he met some accident while trying to investigate something he didn’t like on one of the ships, he will have died while doing what he felt to be his duty,’ I said.

‘Mr Andrew is a master mariner, of course,’ she said. ‘So was his father. But when they took over the firm they were always called “Mister” – to distinguish them from the other captains, perhaps. I don’t know. It was just part of our tradition.’ She paused. ‘I must face the possibility that Mr Andrew may be dead, but I can’t think of him as being dead.’

‘You are a brave woman. There’s one small piece of information you may be able to give. Do you know who was Mr Stavanger’s dentist?’

‘Does that mean you have found a body and are trying to identify it?’ Miss Macdonald had a sharp, quick mind.

‘No,’ I said, ‘but unidentified bodies are sometimes found. Teeth are an almost certain identification if any dental work has been done, and if the dentist concerned can be found. If I know the name of Mr Stavanger’s dentist the police can check quickly whether he has been the victim of any unexplained death.’

‘I understand – though I don’t like the implications of what you say. Yes, in the old days I always made his appointments for him.’ She gave me the name of a dentist in Wimpole Street, and I wrote it down.

*

I got up to go. ‘You have not asked me questions, and I appreciate your trust very much,’ I said. ‘It would be wrong for me to pretend that these problems can be solved quickly – if they can be solved at all. But, thanks to you, I feel that we are a good deal nearer solving them than we were yesterday. Justice is not always swift, but in ways we often cannot see in advance it is generally sure. I can promise you that the police will do everything they can to find Mr Stavanger, and to clear up the other matters we have been discussing.’

‘I can get that list of voyages you asked for tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘How shall I get it to you?’

‘Do you go out for lunch?’

‘Not always. It is very expensive, and I often take sandwiches to the office. But I can go out to lunch, of course.’

‘Could you go to the Upper Thames Street branch of the London Metropolitan Bank without its seeming unusual?’

‘Yes – I have my own personal account there, and I go there when I want to cash a cheque.’

‘Could you put the list in an envelope, address it to Mr Peter Mottram, c/o The Manager, and give it to the manager? I can arrange for him to see you at once when you ask for him.’

‘It shall be there by twelve thirty tomorrow.’