Agatha Christie - The Clocks (Poirot)

When we had put ourselves outside two good underdone steaks, washed down with draught beer, Dick Hardcastle gave a sigh of comfortable repletion, announced that he felt better and said:

To hell with dead insurance agents, fancy clocks and screaming girls! Lets hear about you, Colin. I thought youd finished with this part of the world. And here you are wandering about the back streets of Crowdean. No scope for a marine biologist at Crowdean, I can assure you.

Dont you sneer at marine biology, Dick. Its a very useful subject. The mere mention of it so bores people and theyre so afraid youre going to talk about it, that you never have to explain yourself further.

No chance of giving yourself away, eh?

You forget, I said coldly, that I am a marine biologist. I took a degree in it at Cambridge. Not a very good degree, but a degree. Its a very interesting subject, and one day Im going back to it.

I know what youve been working on, of course, said Hardcastle. And congratulations to you. Larkins trial comes on next month, doesnt it?

Yes.

Amazing the way he managed to carry on passing stuff out for so long. Youd think somebody would have suspected.

They didnt, you know. When youve got it into your head that a fellow is a thoroughly good chap, it doesnt occur to you that he mightnt be.

He must have been clever, Dick commented.

I shook my head.

No, I dont think he was, really. I think he just did as he was told. He had access to very important documents. He walked out with them, they were photographed and returned to him, and they were back again where they belonged the same day. Good organization there. He made a habit of lunching at different places every day. We think that he hung up his overcoat where there was always an overcoat exactly like itthough the man who wore the other overcoat wasnt always the same man. The overcoats were switched, but the man who switched them never spoke to Larkin, and Larkin never spoke to him. Wed like to know a good deal more about the mechanics of it. It was all very well planned with perfect timing. Somebody had brains.

And thats why youre still hanging round the Naval Station at Portlebury?

Yes, we know the Naval end of it and we know the London end. We know just when and where Larkin got his pay and how. But theres a gap. In between the two theres a very pretty little bit of organization. Thats the part wed like to know more about, because thats the part where the brains are. Somewhere theres a very good headquarters, with excellent planning, which leaves a trail that is confused not once but probably seven or eight times.

What did Larkin do it for? asked Hardcastle, curiously. Political idealist? Boosting his ego? Or plain money?

He was no idealist, I said. Just money, Id say.

Couldnt you have got on to him sooner that way? He spent the money, didnt he? He didnt salt it away.

Oh, no, he splashed it about all right. Actually, we got on to him a little sooner than were admitting.

Hardcastle nodded his head understandingly.

I see. You tumbled and then you used him for a bit. Is that it?

More or less. He had passed out some quite valuable information before we got on to him, so we let him pass out more information, also apparently valuable. In the Service I belong to, we have to resign ourselves to looking fools now and again.

I dont think Id care for your job, Colin, said Hardcastle thoughtfully.

Its not the exciting job that people think it is, I said. As a matter of fact, its usually remarkably tedious. But theres something beyond that. Nowadays one gets to feeling that nothing really is secret. We know Their secrets and They know our secrets. Our agents are often Their agents, too, and Their agents are very often our agents. And in the end who is double-crossing who becomes a kind of nightmare! Sometimes I think that everybody knows everybody elses secrets and that they enter into a kind of conspiracy to pretend that they dont.

I see what you mean, Dick said thoughtfully.

Then he looked at me curiously.

I can see why you should still be hanging around Portlebury. But Crowdeans a good ten miles from Portlebury.

What Im really after, I said, are Crescents.

Crescents? Hardcastle looked puzzled.

Yes. Or alternatively, moons. New moons, rising moons and so on. I started my quest in Portlebury itself. Theres a pub there called The Crescent Moon. I wasted a long time over that. It sounded ideal. Then theres The Moon and Stars. The Rising Moon, The Jolly Sickle, The Cross and the Crescentthat was in a little place called Seamede. Nothing doing. Then I abandoned moons and started on Crescents. Several Crescents in Portlebury. Lansbury Crescent, Aldridge Crescent, Livermead Crescent, Victoria Crescent.

I caught sight of Dicks bewildered face and began to laugh.

Dont look so much at sea, Dick. I had something tangible to start me off.

I took out my wallet, extracted a sheet of paper and passed it over to him. It was a single sheet of hotel writing paper on which a rough sketch had been drawn.

? INCLUDEPICTURE Illustrations\\TheClocks01.jpg \* MERGEFORMAT \d ???

A chap called Hanbury had this in his wallet. Hanbury did a lot of work in the Larkin case. He was goodvery good. He was run over by a hit and run car in London. Nobody got its number. I dont know what this means, but its something that Hanbury jotted down, or copied, because he thought it was important. Some idea that he had? Or something that hed seen or heard? Something to do with a moon or crescent, the number 61 and the initial M. I took over after his death. I dont know what Im looking for yet, but Im pretty sure theres something to find. I dont know what 61 means. I dont know what M means. Ive been working in a radius from Portlebury outwards. Three weeks of unremitting and unrewarding toil. Crowdean is on my route. Thats all there is to it. Frankly, Dick, I didnt expect very much of Crowdean. Theres only one Crescent here. Thats Wilbraham Crescent. I was going to have a walk along Wilbraham Crescent and see what I thought of Number 61 before asking you if youd got any dope that could help me. Thats what I was doing this afternoonbut I couldnt find Number 61.

As I told you, 61 is occupied by a local builder.

And thats not what Im after. Have they got a foreign help of any kind?

Could be. A good many people do nowadays. If so, shell be registered. Ill look it up for you by tomorrow.

Thanks, Dick.

Ill be making routine inquiries tomorrow at the two houses on either side of 19. Whether they saw anyone come to the house, et cetera. I might include the houses directly behind 19, the ones whose gardens adjoin it. I rather think that 61 is almost directly behind 19. I could take you along with me if you liked.

I closed with the offer greedily.

Ill be your Sergeant Lamb and take shorthand notes.

We agreed that I should come to the police station at nine thirty the following morning.