The Vivero Letter. Desmond Bagley
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on to the desk. ‘And that’s your murder suspect.’
I said, ‘What about Halstead and Gatt?’
Dave shrugged. ‘What about them? Halstead’s an archeologist, too, of course. We didn’t dig too deeply into him.’ He grinned. ‘Pun not intended. Gatt hasn’t been checked yet.’
‘Halstead was one of Fallon’s students. Fallon doesn’t like him.’
Dave lifted his eyebrows. ‘Been playing detective? Look, Jemmy; as far as I am concerned I’m off the case as much as any police officer can be. That means I’m not specifically assigned to it. Anything I’m told I pass on to the top coppers in London; it’s their pigeon now, and I’m just a messenger boy. Let me give you a bit of advice. You can do all the speculating you like and there’ll be no harm done but don’t try to move in on the action like some half-baked hero in a detective story. The boys at Scotland Yard aren’t damned fools; they can put two and two together a sight faster than you can, they’ve got access to more sources than you have, and they’ve got the muscle to make it stick when they decide to make a move. Leave it to the professionals; there are no Roger Sherringhams or Peter Wimseys in real life.’
‘Don’t get over-heated,’ I said mildly.
‘It’s just that I don’t want you making a bloody idiot of yourself.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll get the tray – it’s in the safe.’
He left the office and I picked up the telex message and studied it. It was in pretty fair detail but it more or less boiled down to what Dave had said. It seemed highly improbable that a man like Fallon could have anything in common with a petty criminal like Niscemi. And yet there was the tray – they were both interested in that, and so were Halstead and Gatt. Four Americans and the tray.
Dave came back carrying it in his hands. He put it on the desk. ‘Hefty,’ he said. ‘Must be worth quite a bit if it really is gold.’
‘It is.’ I said. ‘But not too pure.’
He flicked the bottom of the tray with his thumbnail. ‘That’s not gold – it looks like copper.’
I picked up the tray and examined it closely for, perhaps, the first time in twenty years. It was about fifteen inches in diameter and circular; there was a three-inch rim all the way round consisting of an intricate pattern of vine leaves, all in gold, and the centre was nine inches in diameter and of smooth copper. I turned it over and found the back to be of solid gold.
‘You’d better have it wrapped,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll find some paper.’
‘Did you take any photographs of it?’ I asked.
‘Lots,’ he said. ‘And from every angle.’
‘What about letting me have a set of prints?’
He looked pained. ‘You seem to think the police are general dogsbodies for Jemmy Wheale. This isn’t Universal Aunts, you know.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, Jemmy; the negatives were sent to London.’
He rooted around and found an old newspaper and began to wrap up the tray. ‘Bob used to run his own darkroom. You have all the gear at home for taking your own snaps.’
That was true. Bob and I had been keen on photography as boys, he more than me. He’d stuck to it and I’d let it drop when I left home to go to university, but I thought I remembered enough to be able to shoot and develop a film and make some prints. I didn’t feel like letting anyone else do it. In view of the importance Fallon had attached to examining the tray I wanted to keep everything under my own hand.
As I was leaving, Dave said, ‘Remember what I said, Jemmy. If you feel any inclination to go off half-cocked come and see me first. My bosses wouldn’t like it if you put a spoke in their wheel.’
I went home and found Bob’s camera. I daresay he could have been called an advanced amateur and he had good equipment – a Pentax camera with a good range of lenses and a Durst enlarger with all the associated trimmings in a properly arranged darkroom. I found a spool of unexposed black and white film, loaded the camera and got to work. His fancy electronic flash gave me some trouble before I got the hang of it and twice it went off unexpectedly, but I finally shot off the whole spool and developed the film more or less successfully. I couldn’t make prints before the film dried, so I went to bed early. But not before I locked the tray in the safe.
III
The next morning I continued the battle with Jack Edgecombe who was putting up a stubborn resistance to new ideas. He said unhappily, ‘Eighty cows to a hundred acres is too many, Mr Wheale, sir; we’ve never done it like that before.’
I resisted the impulse to scream, and said patiently, ‘Look, Jack: up to now this farm has grown its own feedstuff for the cattle. Why?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s always been like that.’
That wasn’t an answer and he knew it. I said, ‘We can buy cattle feed for less than it costs us to grow it, so why the devil should we grow it?’ I again laid out the plan that had come from the computer, but giving reasons the computer hadn’t. ‘We increase the dairy herd to eighty head and we allocate this land which is pretty lush, and any extra feed we buy.’ I swept my hand over the map. ‘This hill area is good for nothing but sheep, so we let the sheep have it. I’d like to build up a nice flock of greyface. We can feed sheep economically by planting root crops on the flat by the river, and we alternate the roots with a cash crop such as malting barley. Best of all, we do away with all this market garden stuff. This is a farm, not an allotment; it takes too much time and we’re not near enough to a big town to make it pay.’
Jack looked uncomprehendingly stubborn. It wasn’t done that way, it never had been done that way, and he didn’t see why it should be done that way. I was in trouble because unless Jack saw it my way we could never get on together.
We were interrupted by Madge. ‘There’s a lady to see you, Mr Wheale.’
‘Did she give a name?’
‘It’s a Mrs Halstead.’
That gave me pause. Eventually I said, ‘Ask her to wait a few minutes, will you? Make her comfortable – ask her if she’d like a cuppa.’
I turned back to Jack. One thing at a time was my policy. I knew what was the matter with him. If he became farm manager and the policy of the farm changed radically, he’d have to take an awful lot of joshing from the neighbouring farmers. He had his reputation to consider.
I said, ‘Look at it this way, Jack: if we start on this thing, you’ll be farm manager and I’ll be the more-or-less absentee landlord. If the scheme falls down you can put all the blame on me because I’ll deserve it, and you’re only doing what I tell you to. If it’s a success – which it will be if we both work hard at it – then a lot of the credit will go to you because you’ll have been the one who made it work. You are the practical farmer, not me. I’m just the theoretical boy. But I reckon we can show the lads around here a thing or two.’
He contemplated that argument and brightened visibly – I’d offered him a way out with no damage to his selfesteem. He said slowly, ‘You know, I like that bit about doing away with the garden produce; it’s always been a lot of trouble – too much hard work, for one thing.’ He shuffled among the papers. ‘You know, sir, if we got rid of that I reckon we could work the farm with one less man.’
That had already been figured out – by the computer, not me – but I was perfectly prepared to let Jack take the credit for the idea. I said, ‘Hey, so we could! I have to go now, but you stay here and go through the whole thing again. If you come up with any more bright ideas like that then let me know.’
I left him to it and went to see Mrs Halstead. I walked into the living-room and said, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’ Then I stopped dead because Mrs Halstead was quite a woman – red hair,