Vintage Crime Page 3

  “All right,” said Bohun. “It may be nothing.”

  The lamp was smoking again, and he got up to adjust it, first turning the flame right down, then carefully up again, talking as he worked. “The second question is, were the two deaths connected? I don’t necessarily mean, did the same person do both. But were they logically connected? And, if so, how? The third point seems to me to be the oddest of the lot. Suppose that the postmortem on Mallet shows that his stroke was a fake. Then what was the point of it? Mallet was a notorious joker, but his jokes always seemed to end with a big belly laugh for Mallet and someone else feeling all kinds of a fool. This one doesn’t seem to have worked out quite like that. What went wrong?

  “First report,” said Franks next morning, “from the doctor, on Mallet. No sign of any cerebral congestion or haemorrhage. In plain English, no stroke.”

  “So much for old Uncle Runcorn.”

  “Yes. Not very good. But there’s more to it than that. Equivalent of three grains of hyoscine or hyoscyamine in the stomach and digestive organs. Not materia medicastuit. Vegetable origin. Derived from distillation of the seeds of henbane, alias hogsbean, alias stinking nightshade. Probable that the dose was taken after Mallet had his evening meal but before midnight. To be continued.”

  “Quite enough to go on with,” said Bohun.

  “I thought you’d like it. Second report. Doctor on Morgan. Suicide barely possible, but most unlikely. Position of wounds – direction of wounds – powder burns, etc., etc. You can read it for yourself.”

  Bohun did so.” It certainly sounds acrobatic,” he agreed. “Muzzle at least twenty-four inches away from the head, but pointing practically straight at it. I really think you can rule out suicide.”

  “I had already done so,” agreed Franks. “Listen to this. Report number three. Absolutely no fingerprints on the gun of any sort. Morgan wasn’t wearing gloves. Tell me how he could shoot himself without leaving any prints on the gun.”

  “All right,” said Bohun. “That’s that. Anything else on Morgan?”

  “General state of health. State of clothing. Contents of pockets—”

  “Let’s have that one.”

  “Wallet, money, old letters, bills. Nothing recent. Handkerchief, packet of fags. Lighter. Large pocketknife. Key ring—”

  “Key ring?”

  “That checks up with Rix’s story. The key of the drink cupboard was missing – and we picked up half a possible Rix fingerprint on one of the other keys. He probably touched it when he was removing the first key.”

  “A cool customer,” said Bohun. “What other keys?”

  “Two house doors, cellar and two safe keys.”

  “Hmph,” said Bohun. “House. Cellar. Safe. Hmph?”

  “One other small point. He’d got three recent bee stings. Two on his right arm, one on his left wrist.”

  “Had he though?” said Bohun.

  He went off to telephone Craine.

  “You’d better stay down there,” said Craine. “I suppose there’s bound to be an inquest. When they’ve finished cutting him up perhaps you can get him buried. The instructions are in the envelope with the will.”

  After lunch Franks reappeared. He had a look in his eye which meant more news.

  “I’ve got a good identification of Morgan on his shopping expedition,” he said. “The shop assistant picked the photograph straight out of a dozen without even stopping to think, bless him. I’ll give you three guesses what he went up to London to buy.”

  “I’m not that good,” said Bohun. “You tell me.”

  “A dictaphone. The sort of thing a businessman keeps on his desk to breathe his secret thoughts into. Not very big” – Franks demonstrated with his hands – “a small dispatch-case would hold it. But powerful, and up to date. Records on a roll and the typist plays it back later into earphones.”

  Bohun digested this.

  “Have you found it yet?”

  “I’ve got every man I can lay hands on, busy now taking the house apart. If it’s there I’ll find it before dusk.” Dusk came. And dark. But no dictaphone.

  At one o’clock in the morning Bohun was sitting by himself in the wheel-back rocking chair in the coffee-room. He had got the wick of the lamp adjusted to a nicety now and the oil flame spread its low, warm, kind light over the dingy old room.

  He was not asleep, nor even sleepy, because he suffered from para-insomnia and rarely slept more than an hour in any night. None of the doctors who had examined him had agreed about any point in his rare complaint except that one day he would drop down dead.

  He knew, by experience, when he was due to sleep and until that moment it was a waste of time even to go near his bedroom. He found the night hours useful. Sometimes he wrote, sometimes he read, sometimes he thought – a luxury which few normal people can fit into their crowded waking lives.

  He was thinking at that moment and he was making quite reasonable progress. For example, he was certain, now, that the double murderer was Norman Mallet. He was the only man with a real motive. As Major Rix had pointed out, people often got angry over their family’s idiosyncrasies, but they very rarely killed each other on account of them. With Norman it was different. If he believed that his father was using his money to coerce Rachel into a loveless marriage with Rix, then he might well think it his duty to stop it. More particularly if he was convinced that his father was dying already. And most particularly if he saw a lawyer coming to the house. Lawyers meant settlements and new wills or codicils. From that point of view his own visit had probably timed the murder. It had set it off. And this despite the fact that both Norman’s assumptions were false. His father had not been dying, and Bohun’s visit had been nothing to do with his will.

  Where motives were concerned, as the Inspector had so truly remarked, it wasn’t what actually happened, but what people thought was going to happen that produced results.

  As for the killing of Morgan, Norman had given himself away at his very first meeting. Bohun had not observed the fact at the time, but had remembered it afterwards. Apologising for not coming to the station to fetch him, he had said, “Morgan always keeps the keys of the car on him.” Now that was not true. A search of Morgan’s body had shown a number of keys, but they were house keys, not the garage key, and not the car key. It seemed logical to suppose that the reason Norman had been unable to meet him was that he had been too busy murdering Morgan.

  Why he had done so, and what sort of connection it could have with the death of Mr. Mallet, was the final step in this tangled business.

  Franks had been right about that. There was a piece missing. It was the middle piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and when he saw it, all the other little edges and twists would fall into position, and a recognisable whole would appear.

  What had been the point of Mallet’s last great pointless practical joke?

  What connection had it, if any, with his previous jokes? His ridiculing of his children’s love of birds and animals and country life and country superstitions?

  What use had he for a dictaphone? Why had it to be obtained secretly? And where was it now if it wasn’t in Humble Bee House?

  How had Morgan managed to get his wrists and arms stung three times?

  There is enormous virtue in sequence. It is conceivable that if Bohun had asked himself these questions in any other order he might not have spotted the truth which, by now, was staring him in the face.

  Feeling a little shaken in spite of himself he got to his feet and made his way to his bedroom. From his suitcase he took a torch and from the pocket of his coat a pair of gloves. It would be dark but there would be light enough for his purpose. And in any event, night was the best time, as Morgan had no doubt discovered. As he was leaving the inn he saw, in the corner of the hall, a heavy stick, and after a moment’s hesitation he added this to his equipment.

 
Half an hour later he was standing once more at the gate of Humble Bee House. The driveway was a tunnel of darkness. It was the hour of false dawn, and, standing quite still, he could hear life moving in the thickets which bordered the drive. He opened the gate as quietly as he could, and the ghost of a wind set the leaves whispering, so that the news of his arrival seemed to run ahead of him up the drive.

  He went silently, on the turf edge, and presently he found himself by the glade of beehives. The large one in the middle was clearly the place. He could have wished that he knew more about bees.

  Putting down his torch and stick he grasped the roof very gently with both hands. It came up, in one piece, together with the top section of the hive. Underneath was nothing more alarming than a folded blanket.

  He listened very carefully, and in the stillness he sensed rather than saw the legion of sleeping bees. Very gently he raised the blanket and, sure enough, there was the dictaphone, a box-like affair above the first comb-section, with its receiver immediately behind the ventilation grille in front of the hive. Carefully he lifted it, carefully replaced the blanket and hive-top. Then he tiptoed away with his spoil into the thickest part of the shrubbery.

  A quarter of an hour later he was back in the bee glade. He lifted the top and replaced the dictaphone exactly where he had found it. He stood for a moment as if undecided. Then, with a quick, almost abrupt gesture, he pulled a pencil and notebook from his pocket and, using his torch guardedly, scribbled a note. When he had finished it, he tore out the page, folded it in four, and wrote a name on the outside. Then, with the paper in his hand, he made his way up the drive, towards the sleeping front of Humble Bee House.

  It was eleven o’clock on the following morning when Bohun reached Humble Bee House once again, and rang the front door bell. The door was opened by Placket, who had no word to say to him. The Inspector was behind her in the hall.

  “It’s all over,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better come up.”

  Norman and Rachel Mallet were sitting, upright, in chairs on either side of the empty hearth in their father’s room. It was difficult, in the shadows, to realise that they were dead, so quietly and calmly they sat. Almost as if they had been carefully preserved, thought Bohun, and put under glass. The words formed an echo in his head.

  “They took the same stuff as they gave the old man,” said Franks. “Norman left a note – just to say that he was responsible for both his father and Morgan. Not much explanation. He says it was him, not his sister, but she knew about it – afterwards. I don’t suppose we shall ever understand the whole of it now.”

  “On the contrary,” said Bohun. “If you’ll come out in the garden I’ll do my level best to explain it to you.”

  “I wouldn’t try to open it now, not unless you happen to be a skilled apiarist,” said Bohun. “But inside that large central hive you’ll find the dictaphone Mallet and Morgan bought for the consummation of their final stupendous joke.”

  “Joke?”

  “So elaborate. So funny. So much in character. What’s the best-known and oldest superstition about bees? That if there’s a death in the house, they must be the first to be told about it. Can’t you imagine it? After a week or ten days of preparation and preliminary fun, getting everyone in the mood for it, Morgan suddenly comes down last thing at night with the news that the master has had a second stroke and passed away. Chaos and confusion and the doctor to be sent for, and the lawyers to be telephoned. And in the middle of it all, Norman creeps down to the hive and whispers the news to the bees.”

  “I see,” said Franks. “And the message is picked up on the dictaphone.”

  “That’s right. To be preserved, forever and ever as the joke of a lifetime. I think it must have been due to take place that very evening. You can imagine Morgan’s feelings when he went along to arrange for the culmination of the jest – and found his master really dead.”

  Franks thought this out. He brushed off a bee which had settled on his coat.

  “Later,” said Bohun, “I don’t suppose he thought of it at once, but later. Perhaps in the early hours of next morning, when things had settled down, it did just occur to him to wonder. So he went off to the hive. The dictaphone had run down by that time, but he wound it back and listened in – and heard what I venture to think was one of the plainest and most singular confessions of murder which has ever been made – a confession unmistakably identified by a slight stutter.”

  “You mean to say,” said Franks, “that after he’d done the job Norman went off and told the bees all about it.”

  “Certainly,” said Bohun. “You must never keep anything from the bees.”

  Another bee came past, and settled on Franks’ sleeve. The Inspector looked at it in silence. The bee looked back, for a moment, impassively, then flew off.

  “After that,” went on Bohun, “Morgan re-hid the dictaphone in the safest place – back in the hive. The bees must have been a bit more active by then. I think that’s when he got stung.”

  “He got stung a lot harder when he tried to blackmail Norman next morning,” said Franks thoughtfully.

  “Yes. Bad tactics to blackmail a desperate man.”

  “That’s not entirely guesswork, I take it.” Franks nodded towards the hive.

  “I’m afraid not. I thought it all out last night. I’ve listened to the confession. You won’t find my fingerprints on the dictaphone, because I wore gloves. But I’m prepared to bet you’ll find Morgan’s.”

  “I see.” The Inspector sat, swinging his legs. He seemed to be in difficulties over something. At last he said, without looking up, “I take it you told him. Sent him a note or something.”

  “Without prejudice to my having to deny it later,” said Bohun, “and since you haven’t found it, I gather he must have destroyed it – yes, I did.”

  “I see,” said Franks. “Best way out, really. I don’t see much of this coming to light now. What exactly did you say to him?”

  Bohun got to his feet, and started down the drive with Inspector Franks beside him. They had reached the gate before he spoke.

  “It is a couple of lines of verse. I’ve known them all my life – though I couldn’t tell you, even now, who wrote them. They go like this:

  ‘Money is honey, my little sonny

  And a rich man’s joke is always funny.’”

  Behind them, Humble Bee House dozed in the morning sun.

  Strolling in the Square One Day

  Julian Symons

  Francis Quarles walked across Trafalgar Square on a clear blustery November day. Wind blew the fountains’ spray towards him, slightly wetting his suede shoes. Round his feet pigeons cooed and strutted. A small girl stood with arms outstretched holding food, unable to contain her laughter as the birds scrambled over her hands, shoulders and head.

  As Quarles watched, smiling benevolently, a pigeon jumped on to his own head. He stood in the Square, a big man wrapped in a teddy-bear overcoat, leaning on his walking stick, a pigeon perched on his head. A photographer clicked his camera.

  “Very nice, sir. Three for five shillings, post-card size. I’ll just take another to make sure.”

  Quarles waved his hand dismissively, shook off the pigeon, and walked away. Two minutes later he was in the lift going up to his office in Soames Buildings, overlooking the Square. He went in from the corridor entrance and pressed down the switch for Molly Player. She came in.

  “We have a visitor,” Molly announced. “Wants to see you, urgent, won’t give her name.”

  “What sort of woman?”

  “Late thirties, I should say. Elegant. You’ll like her.” Molly made a face. “Class. Money. Doesn’t know I exist. Looks familiar, somehow, but it may be just that air of breeding.”

  It was possible to tell a good deal about a woman’s education and background, Francis Quarles believed, by such small things as the w
ay she sat in a chair. The woman who now sat opposite his desk seemed perfectly at ease. The light from the big window that faced her showed smoothly classical features, a little inexpressive perhaps, but that might have been the result of her deliberate self-contained calm.

  She wore a plain blue suit, severe and simple. Yet the impression she produced was, curiously, one of controlled passion.

  An intelligent woman, Quarles concluded, and potentially a dangerous one.

  He offered her a cigarette. She took it and inhaled deeply.

  “Mr. Quarles? I have heard that you are the sort of man who doesn’t betray a confidence.” He merely nodded. “My name is Lesley Riverside.”

  “Of course. Silly of me.”

  Lord Riverside was Under Secretary to the Ministry of Home Security. He had married, about ten years ago, a woman much younger than himself, the beautiful Lesley Stoneham, who had had a reputation for gaiety and wildness. Her name had been linked with those of half a dozen young men; but all that, as far as Quarles knew, was in the past.

  “Mr. Quarles,” she said with faultless composure, “I have been very stupid. I want you to get back a photograph for me – a photograph showing me with a man. It is a perfectly innocent photograph. It was taken out there in the Square.”

  “In Trafalgar Square?”

  “Yes. We were standing under one of the Landseer lions. This little photographer came up to us, clicked his camera, and said that he had taken a snap. We told him that we didn’t want it.” She added in her even voice, “We should have smashed his camera.”

  “Nothing else happened? He took no second photograph?”

  “No. I want the negative of that photograph back, Mr. Quarles.”

  He met her gaze with one as steady as her own. “Why?”

  “It is embarrassing,” she said, but she showed no embarrassment. “Quite a long while ago I had an affair with a man named Tony Hartman. George – my husband – knew about it. I had to promise never to see Tony Hartman again. George is a jealous man – I might even say, pathologically jealous. He said that if I ever met Tony again he’d—”