Ellery Queen's Double Dozen, page 12
“I will, if you think it advisable.”
“Hang on while I ask him.” He put down the receiver noisily and “. . .Nothing doing. Your uncle said he’s too tired.”
“Did he? It’s very unlike him to admit it.”
“It was a bit of a shake-up for him. For me, too—but I thought you’d like to know at once.”
Lorna accepted his news. Her chatter about it would not be factual evidence, but it would be good color.
Next: move the body before daylight. That would mean going back to London for his car. There was a train at 6:20 from Thaleham. He glanced at his watch—twelve minutes past six. It was of great importance that he should catch that train and it was at least five minutes walk to the station, maybe a bit extra lugging the large deedbox.
He felt no emotion while he possessed himself of the dead man’s latchkey, but it took time—and more time to detach the key from the bunch. It was now fourteen minutes past six.
The deedbox was upside down, spreadeagled, about half its contents scattered. It would take, say, another minute to collect the papers—and he would probably miss the 6:20.
“If anyone comes into this house before I’ve moved the body I’m sunk, whatever I do,” he said aloud. “The deedbox can wait until I come back. Good murderers don’t panic.”
What about the lights? Better put them out. Before switching off in the hall he observed that the stamped letter was no longer on the tray—posted, presumably, by Mrs. Harbutt. No concern of his.
“If anyone sees me leaving he may wonder why there was no light in the hall. That’s the sort of risk I shall have to keep on taking.”
As he reached the end of the drive and was about to step onto the road a light flashed in his face—from the lamp of a bicycle.
“Why, it’s Mr. Harry Finchmoor! You haven’t forgotten George Dobson, Mr. Harry?”
“Of course I remember you, George!” Again he had beaten off panic. Here was merely another witness that he was leaving Thaleham at this time. “I’ll be down again next week and we must have a drink. As it is, I have to hurry for the 6:20.”
“You won’t make it.” George was looking over the valley and could see the lights of the train at the bend. “I’d say you’ve only got three minutes. Here, you take the bike, Mr. Harry, and I’ll pick it up at the station.”
Finchmoor thanked him profusely and accepted the offer. In this business of cop dodging, luck cut both ways and would tend to cancel itself out. He had not ridden a bicycle since boyhood. The first twenty yards were perilous, but at worst it was faster than walking—if he could stick on.
The train was at the platform and the stationmaster was holding a door open for him.
“Hop in, Mr. Harry. Any luck?”
“Smiles all the way, Mr. Hawkins,” grinned Finchmoor.
More color. But did the police take any notice of color?
In the train he contemplated the problem of hiding the corpse. He could return after the village had gone to bed. There was always a little through traffic at night. Barring accidents, it would be easy enough to get away.
And then? This would be the difficult bit. He was no hand with a spade. What a pity he could not consult Lorna.
Lorna!
You grabbed me in an outworked gravel pit—That gravel pit was in the Wey Valley, about fifteen miles from Thaleham—off the main road on a patch of derelict land with a “cliff” of about twenty feet and a thick undergrowth of brambles. Just what he needed!
What about Lorna’s own reactions when that gravel pit came into the news? Risky—but not half so risky as cruising about the countryside in the dark, looking for somewhere to hide his cargo.
Arrived in London, he dined at his club—signing his bill, as did most members, to be settled by monthly check. He chose a single table so that he could elaborate the Blueprint, which seemed to him to be shaping up very well. All the details were arranging themselves neatly. Rain had started, but he always carried rubbers and a plastic mackintosh in the car. By eleven he was turning into the short drive of the manor house.
He entered the house with a certain complacency, but when he had replaced the latchkey on its ring he had a sharp reaction of self-pity. An abominable thing had happened to him, causing him to prowl at night, performing ghoulish acts in order to erect a barrier of deceit between himself and the kind of people he respected and liked—the men he met in business—at the club—women like Lorna Brendwright. Well, at least he would do the job intelligently—so that the whole horror could be forgotten in a week or two.
He thought it as simple as that because he had never interested himself in the literature of crime and knew nothing of the subsidiary problems facing a murderer, and he knew next to nothing of the methods of the police—except that they used fingerprints. In a couple of minutes his complacency returned and he proceeded to make one mistake after another—mistakes that did not have to be made.
He went to the kitchen quarters, first pulling on a pair of light gloves. His fingerprints in the dining room and the hall would be expected, but there must be none elsewhere.
He found Mrs. Harbutt’s cottage pie on a shelf in the gas cooker. He turned the regulator to full heat and then, some what awkwardly in gloves, applied a match. When the potato crust had been browned, he served a portion on a plate and then flushed the portion, leaving a dirtied plate and fork on the table. According to the Blueprint this would convince the police that Brendwright had been alive at midday on Wednesday. Later, Mrs. Harbutt, of course, was able to assure the police that if anyone had eaten part of the pie it was certainly not Mr. Brendwright—and the police noted an attempt to fake a “time” clue.
Finchmoor had thought of Mrs. Harbutt only in connection with the Victorian bell-rope whose absence from the wall she would be certain to notice. He removed the rope from the body—some eight feet of it with a large tassel at the bottom and a large rosette at the top. The bell-rope, he discovered, was a dummy, secured with four wall-plugs, one of which was missing. He cobbled the rope back into position without it. Later, police routine found the missing wall-plug in the fringe of the hearth rug. Routine, too, led from the wall-plug to the wall, then to the bell-rope, which was detached and sent to Laboratory. Thus, Finchmoor’s little flourish made the police a present of the murder weapon and of an attempt to fake a clue as to “place.”
He collected his papers from the floor, locked the deedbox, and put it in the car. Then came the labor of stowing the body and hiding it from passing lights. He returned to the house for a final check-up, though there was really nothing, in Harry’s opinion, to check. He dawdled, as if he were reluctant to leave a superstitious feeling, perhaps, that everything was proving too easy.
He drove the fifteen miles to the outworked gravel pit and stowed the body in the brambles.
By four in the morning he was back in his flat in Wengrove Square, which is in West London. The square is an open car park and he was as confident as he was entitled to be that no one in London had observed his movements with the car.
The Blueprint gave place to a formula—that on the Tues day afternoon Brendwright had accepted Finchmoor’s detailed offer. Thus, on the following morning, Wednesday, Finchmoor went to his office as usual. After returning the deedbox to the Safe Deposit he instructed his lawyer to start the ball rolling.
On Thursday morning his secretary handed him a telephoned message from Lorna: Re Thaleham: please ring my flat. He guessed her news Re Thaleham. He did not ring. In half an hour he was on his way to her Hat in West Kensington.
“Uncle John is missing.” She spoke as if telling him gently that he had bungled. “Mrs. Harbutt rang me before I left for the office.” Presently she was describing the functions of Mrs. Harbutt.
“She’s a very sensible woman. This morning she found the house empty. There was some rigmarole I couldn’t follow about a pie which he had or had not eaten. For some reason the pie incident upset her. His bed had not been slept in Wednesday night—she poked about and found that he must have left the house in the clothes he was wearing. So I rang the local police and told them what I suspected.”
That revealed to him some of his mistakes.
“And what do you suspect?”
He had to wait for her answer.
“This is going to be difficult, Harry. Please be patient with me,” she pleaded. “I was staggered when you told me on the telephone that he had accepted your offer. You had been in the house for less than two hours. In that short time you cured him of his obsession. I tried to believe it.”
“Go on,” he invited. This was getting very near the knuckle. “What did you believe instead?”
“That he was putting on an act. He saw that the land would be taken from him—your payments would seem to him a sort of sellout of his honor. I believe his mind was upset and that he went out and drowned himself.”
She would soon learn that it had not been suicide. And she would still not believe that he had talked the old man over. His position would need some strengthening.
“I don’t think suicide was in his mind,” he said weightily, “but I think death was. Perhaps that doctor really did scare him. Anyway, he said that if he were to die while our deal was still being dolled up by the lawyers I must promise to transfer the whole deal to you, as beneficiary. I gave him my promise.”
Like the traditional pirate, he was dumping some of his cargo in the hope of shaking off his pursuers. Not as a bribe—you couldn’t bribe Lorna. He was paying—say, £12,000—to give his statement the color of truth.
“He was a pathetic old dreamer!” There was compassion in her voice and gentleness in her eyes. “The obsession again! Like Mother, I am his ‘kinswoman.’ He wanted to provide for me in this left-handed way.”
“Very sensible of him, I’d say.”
“Uncle John was not very sane. And of course I shall not hold you to that promise.”
“You could not hold me to that promise and you cannot release me,” he said. He had come near to bluffing himself that he was behaving in an honorable and generous manner. “My lawyers will handle it—if your uncle really is dead.”
He expected her to protest that she would refuse the money.
But she did not.
“I see that was a foolish remark of mine—I apologize,” she said. “I will not obstruct your lawyers.”
Not even a thank-you. Very reasonable, in view of the explanation he had given her. Most women, he felt, would have fluttered a little—stammering out something about an honorable and generous act. But not Lorna.
After lunch he told his lawyers the little tale about the promise. It would be better, he said, to embody the reversion to Lorna in the Agreement.
On Saturday the local police called in Scotland Yard. On the following Thursday a local constable, patrolling the Wey Valley with a dog, found the body. It missed the evening editions—Finchmoor heard about it from a radio news flash and hurried home to await the police. But his only caller that evening was Lorna.
“I was wrong about suicide,” she said, in a tone in which she might have remarked on the weather.
“Come inside, first. You look tired out.”
She stopped in the doorway of the sitting room.
“He has been murdered—strangled.” Her voice was thin and uncontrolled. “He was found—Harry, the body was found in an outworked gravel pit in the Wey Valley.”
“Steady!” He led her to a chair and gave her brandy.
She sipped and put down the glass. “I don’t know why I behaved like that. It did not occur to me that it might be our gravel pit until I came into this room.”
She meant that she had suddenly glimpsed the possibility that he might be the murderer, even if she had already put the thought aside. She could suspect him if she liked—the police certainly would. But nobody could now prove the exact time of death.
“Let’s stare this in the face,” he said. “There are at least a couple of hundred ex-gravel pits in that stretch of the valley. Still, it might turn out to be our gravel pit. But can we call it our gravel pit? I don’t really feel sentimental about my act of youthful loutishness.”
“You’re quite right,” she said. “We’ve met again as adults as different persons.” She talked about her interview with the police. “A Chief Inspector Karslake—a pleasant enough man but asking wearisome questions about Uncle John. Oh!—he asked me if anyone profited by his death and I said I thought you did.”
“Actually, I don’t—but it doesn’t matter—the police will come to see me anyway.”
Karslake called in the morning—at Finchmoor’s flat, before he left for the office. He began by asking the effect of Brendwright’s death on the land development scheme.
“No effect at all on my interest in the deal.” He brought in the little tale about Lorna as beneficiary. “If you want the details, my solicitors will give you the layout.” He could not resist adding another bit of color. “The truth is, Mr. Karslake, the murderer came too late to be of any use to me.”
He was equally ready to account for his movements.
“In my mind the saga begins when I had lunch with Miss Brendwright on Tuesday, when she warned me the Compulsory Purchase was threatening. From the Besc Chinar to the Safe Deposit to collect relevant documents—then Thaleham by train, catching the 6:20 back—dinner at my club—then home, to work into the small hours. Between then and now—office—deedbox back to Safe Deposit—lunch—solicitors—office—home—late work again. Oh, yes, one morning visit to Miss Brendwright’s flat.”
There were gaps, of course, which Karslake probed but without finding a sensitive spot. In short, the alibi stood up.
If Finchmoor had no motive for the murder, who had? Beginning with the owner of the village pub, Karslake found about fifty persons who would benefit, indirectly, but certainly, from the building scheme which Brendwright was known to be opposing.
The medical evidence boiled down to the opinion that death had occurred within twenty-four hours of midday on Wednesday. Police work had established that the murder had been committed in the house, after Mrs. Harbutt had left it at about five on Tuesday afternoon and before she returned at eight on Thursday morning.
There was evidence that clues of time and place had been faked but no evidence of the identity of the faker. There was no evidence that death had been inflicted before Finchmoor left the house on Tuesday evening—nor that his account of his subsequent movements was untrue in any particular.
Moreover, it would have been physically impossible for the same person—say, Finchmoor—to have committed the murder, obtained the use of a car, transported the body fifteen miles and hidden it, and then returned to Thaleham in time to catch the 6:20 train to London.
By the end of a month every line of inquiry had been fol lowed to its end. The dossier was sent to the Department of Dead Ends, together with the Victorian bell-rope and the laboratory report stating that glandular deposits had been present on the rope which would be consistent with the theory that the rope had been used for strangulation.
Detective Inspector Rason was fascinated by the bell-rope, considered as a murder weapon. Some liked a gun, a knife, or a cosh, but this one liked a nice bit o’ bell-rope. It looked more like a woman’s trick.
The dossier lent little support to the suggestion that Lorna Brendwright had strangled her uncle and removed the body. Rason thought no more about the case until a five-line paragraph appeared seven months later in an evening paper. It was headed Thaleham Mystery Echo and stated that the restoration of Rose Cottage had been interrupted by Mr. Harry Finchmoor, who had ordered its immediate demolition. The echo may have been faint, but Rason—as not infrequently happened—heard it as a bellow. . .
In those seven months there had been no hitch in what we may call the business side of the murder. The financial company had allotted 50,000 one-pound shares to Finchmoor, of which he had assigned 12,000 to Lorna Brendwright—effected through lawyers, with no personal acknowledgment by Lorna. The separate sale of the mortgaged manor house—to be used as a club house in the housing development—brought Lorna next to nothing. Rose Cottage, which the developing company did not want, since it was on an isolated site on the other side of the village, remained Finchmoor’s property.
As murders go, this one had turned out very well. Finch moor congratulated himself on—roughly—everything. There was now no reason why he should not proceed to have a good time. But there was no good time. Instead, there was Lorna though she never deliberately did him any harm. In the sense in which Brendwright had provoked his own death, Finchmoor groomed Lorna as “the fatal woman”—a role for which she was singularly unsuited.
The self-congratulation soon staled, if only because he did not value success as a criminal. He was not deeply in love with Lorna and could easily have kept his distance. It would seem that he regarded Lorna’s company at a restaurant or theater as a passport to the civilization he had never wished to repudiate. Even so, her intelligent chatter had a bitter-sweet quality.
She was apt to speak suddenly of the death of her uncle, as if it were always at the back of her thoughts.
“Uncle John actually paid that fifty pounds to start restoring Rose Cottage. I feel I have the duty to him to go on with it. Will you sell me the cottage, Harry?”
“Certainly not!” He said it with a smile. “I will restore it to your specifications. I’ll be your landlord, and your rent will be a real peppercorn placed in my hand in the presence of witnesses—it’s probably never been done before.”
At the back of his mind was the thought that they would marry and use it on weekends. Similar thoughts about her were always at the back of his mind. He now rather liked her slight bossiness. Physically she attracted him, though he was not yet ready to make love—he was waiting for something which he failed to define.
