“I'm sure you did. But even you couldn't be expected to isolate and identify the person who was delivering these blackmail demands to the office. Perhaps they were posted and delivered by the postman. Perhaps they were brought by messenger. It's impossible to keep track of everything in a busy City law firm, isn't it?”
“If I had any idea who it was, I would have told you,” said Tippett. “But I know no more about it than Mr. Bartlett knew. Or Mr. Ross.”
“I assure you,” said Ross, “I kept my nose out of Bartlett's private affairs.”
“Like the good friend you were,” I said. “But not everyone was so uninterested, or should I say disinterested, in Frank Bartlett's private affairs. Were they, Trent?”
“I should think not,” said Trent, taking a swig of whiskey and smoothing down his moustache. “My poor sister had to put up with a great deal. She tried to turn a blind eye, but there came a point when there was so much money being paid that she couldn't help but notice. The staff's wages weren't being paid.”
“Imagine that.” I said. “And what did you advise?”
“Oh, I've never had any influence over Vivie,” said Trent. “She's very much her own woman. I advised her against marrying Bartlett in the first place, and when we found out that the leopard hadn't changed his spots, as she rather hoped he might, then I advised her to leave him. But she didn't. She's a loyal old stick, my sister. I suppose, in her way, she loved him.”
“She certainly enjoyed the material benefits of being married to him.”
“That's a rotten thing to say.”
“Maybe. But true nonetheless. There wasn't a great deal of money in your family, was there? I don't imagine your sister was too sorry to make such an advantageous match, whatever Bartlett's tastes.”
“If you're implying that she married him for money, you're very wrong.”
“All right. We'll call it a love match, if you prefer. Or a civilized arrangement between two mature adults. Perhaps it suited your sister to have a certain amount of freedomâ”
“How dare you! Are you implying that Vivie was unfaithful?”
“Maybe. Or perhaps she was simply glad to be undisturbed at night.”
“That's a disgraceful suggestion.”
“They never had children, did they?”
“No. Thank God.”
“No heirs at all, in fact.”
“No.” Trent looked a little nervous.
“So when Bartlett died, his entire estate passed to his wife, and when she dies⦠What do you know of your sister's will, Mr. Trent?”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
“Well, then, I have the advantage. Mr. Ross has been kind enough to give us the detailsâ”
“Under police duress,” said Ross, flushing dark with anger. “This is all most abnormal.”
“The whole case is abnormal, from beginning to end,” I said, “but not in the way you may think.”
“Soâwhat did her will say?”
“Nothing, Mr. Trent. There is no will. Mrs. Bartlett has never got around to making one.”
“Despite my constant suggestions that she should,” said Ross. “It's ridiculous for a woman of her means to die without proper testamentary dispositions.”
“Like most of us, I suppose, Mrs. Bartlett has no thought of death. The years go by, and these things slip and slide.”
“So?” said Trent. “There's plenty of time to remedy that. She's a wealthy woman.”
“Or will be,” I said, “when Bartlett's last will is overturned and Morgan goes to prison. She will inherit everything. But she's also a very sick woman, as you keep telling us. I certainly hope the shock of her husband's death doesn't kill her. What would happen, Mr. Ross, if Mrs. Bartlett were to die intestate?”
“The estate would pass to her next of kin.”
“Of course. And that would beâ¦?”
“Her brother.” He looked at Hugh Trent.
“This is ridiculous. Vivie's not going to die. She'll buck up in a few days. The shock has knocked her back, but she'll get over it. Bartlett's not such a great loss.”
“And she has all that lovely money to console herself with.”
This was too much for Trent, who stood up and made for the door. “I've had enough of this. The poor woman has just lost her husband under the most distressing circumstances, and you're suggestingâ”
“Stop there, please, Mr. Trent,” said Weston. “Let's calm down and sit down, shall we?”
This was not what I wanted him to do at all. It suited my purposes to wind Trent up to the highest pitch of anger, in order to justify my next move.
“Your sister is nothing more than a money-grubbing cheat,” I said. “If the blackmailer didn't drive Bartlett to his death, his wife would have done it herself.”
“How dare you!”
“In fact, I half suspect that she was the person behind the letters, the demands for moneyâ”
“That is an outrageous suggestion.”
“Outrageous? Or the most natural thing in the world? A woman disappointed, who sees money slipping out of her hands, and who discovers that she has been finally disinheritedâin favor of a man? A queer? Like her husband?”
Trent lost his temper, pulled back his arm, and aimed for my jaw. I ducked just in time, but the blow struck me on the ear, and it hurt like hell. In pain and shock, I picked up my glass of whiskeyâI'd filled it right up to the brim with neat scotchâand threw it directly in Trent's face.
“Now, Stan!” I yelled, and the door burst open.
Trent was spluttering, dripping with whiskey, wiping the stinging liquid from his eyes. But before he could move, Stan was behind him, grabbing his arms, securing them with
handcuffs. Trent shouted and cursed, but he could do little more than struggle.
“Good God,” said McDermott, who was the first to notice what was happening. “Look at the feller's moustache!”
All eyes focused on Trent's upper lip, where his splendid moustache, that feature that marked him so strongly as a man of property and propriety, was peeling away from his face.
Slowly, slowly, it came unstuck, finally hanging on by a corner, dangling down over his chin like a very large, bedraggled caterpillar. Trent watched it, cross-eyed. Finally, after clinging on for what seemed like an age, it fell to his lapel, and thence to the floor. Weston sprang forward, picked it up, and put it between the folds of a clean handkerchief.
“I'll take care of that for you,” he said. “And the side-whiskers too, when they come off.”
He was right: Trent's splendid sideburns were starting to curl up at the edges, as the whiskey dissolved the spirit gum that held them in place.
“Now,” I said, stepping up to him and running my fingers through his hair, “we only have to do this”âI brushed the hair forward, changed the center parting to a side parting, arranged it roughly, and stepped backâ“and I think we will all agree that Mr. Hugh Trent looks completely different.”
“Jesus,” said Sean Durran. “It's him.”
“The resemblance to Douglas Fairbanks is striking, isn't it? Congratulations, Mr. Trent. You could have been a movie star. You could have made it in Hollywood. Instead you chose to be a murderer.”
“You can't prove a thing,” said Trent, looking guilty and ridiculous in equal parts.
“Oh, but I can. Durran here recognizes you, don't you Durran? Is this the man who gave you the letter and the capsule and the message for Bartlett? The man who told you
where you could find him, and when? Who gave you fifteen pounds for your troublesâmore than you could make from a dozen or more gentlemen?”
“It is. I swear to God it's him.”
“You lying bastardâ”
“Shut the fuck up, Trent,” I said, fighting back an urge to punch him hard in the stomach and knee him in the groin. “You've said enough. Save it for the courtroom.”
“So, you mean,” said Ross, “that it was this man who drove his own brother-in-law to suicide? Who arranged for his death?”
“Yes. But he had an accomplice. Do you recognize anyone else in the room, Sean?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Who?”
“Him.” He pointed at Tippett. “The one at the Ship I told you about. Nervous type. One of my regulars. He was there the night that I met Mr. Trent.”
Tippett was looking desperately around the room, like a trapped rat. “No! I never did a thing!”
“You told Trent about the original blackmail, didn't you, Arthur? You gave him the idea of carrying it on, and throwing the suspicion on Morgan. Yes, you know all about Morgan. You noticed the spark between them the very first time he walked into the office. You knew that Frank Bartlett was in love with Harry Morganâand you realized that this was an opportunity. You knew that Trent was jealous of Bartlett's money, that he'd do anything he could to get his hands on it, so the two of you cooked up this plot to drive the man to his death and to send Morgan to the gallows.”
This was the only hypothesis I'd been able to come up with, during the long dark night with Bert snoring beside me. It seemed ludicrous, nightmarish to me thenâbut, in the cold light of day I could think of nothing better, and when I outlined it to DS Weston at the police station, he
didn't seem to think it was so ridiculous at all.
From the look on Arthur Tippett's face, Weston was right. I'd scored a bull's-eye.
“There's nowhere to run, Tippett,” said Weston. “The house is surrounded.”
“Do you have nothing to say for yourself, man?” said Ross. Tippett hung his head and kept quiet.
Trent, however, had other plans. Wriggling like an eel, he broke free from Stan's grasp, kicked open the living room door, and ran crazily across the hall. There was a shout, a crash, and a terrible thud, followed by the sound of wheezing and whimpering.
“It's all right, Mitch,” came Bert's voice from the hall, where I'd stationed him in case we needed a bit of extra muscle. “I'm sitting on him.”
Weston walked briskly into the hall.
“Hugh Trent, you are under arrest for the murder of Frank Bartlett. And for the attempted murder of your sister, Mrs. Vivien Bartlett.”
Ross, McDermott, Godley, and Durran goggled in astonishment.
“Don't worry, Trent,” I said. “The doctors are with her now. They think they found her in time. The mercury oxide you have been feeding her for the last forty-eight hours has not been enough to kill her. Not quite.”
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS TIME FOR ME TO LEAVE LONDON. I WAS NOT DUE back at work until Friday, but I could no longer stay in a town where painful associations seemed to lurk around every corner, waiting to jump out at me. The ghosts of happier times, perhaps. Or my own fears for the future.
Morgan came home that evening, after the police had taken Hugh Trent and Arthur Tippett into custody. I left with Jack McDermott and Sean Durran. Walter Ross declined the offer of company and took a cab by himself, looking very sick. I did not have a chance to talk to him. When Morgan returned, only Belinda was there to greet him. That was exactly as it should have been. I wanted nothing more than to take him in my arms, to kiss him, and to tell him that I had never stopped believing in his innocenceâbut that was not true. Only one person had done thatâhis wife. Only she had earned the right to welcome him home.
The case was closed, the villains apprehended, the innocent freed, and I was the hero of the hour. I did not feel heroicâif anything, I felt saddened by the whole ghastly
affair. But there was some consolation: McDermott and Durran were both eager to celebrate, and to hear exactly how I had come to realize that Bartlett's death was a conspiracy between his employee Tippett and his brother-in-law, Trent. To that end, they had booked a large room at a hotel in Bayswaterâthe two whores, one high-class, the other rough trade, must have pooled a fair proportion of their immoral earnings to afford it, but they would not hear of compensation.
We waited with beers in the bar for the rest of the party to arrive, talking of this and that, the two of them bravely resisting the urge to ask questions until we were all here. By nine, the party was complete: Bert was here, and, when he finally got off duty, Stan Knight. And last of all, invited on a whim, Tabib and Osborne from the Parthenon.
We made a strange group, as the porter showed us up to our room, wheeling a trolley full of drinks ahead of him. His eyes were popping out of his head. Tabib, I noticed, was making a full inventory of the young man's assets; perhaps, when he came to refresh our supplies, he would be joining the party.
But before pleasure, there were questions to be asked and answers to be given.
“What I don't understand,” said Durran, opening the proceedings, “is how Trent and Tippett knew that Bartlett would find me that night. That was taking a big gamble.”
“Not really,” I said. “Arthur Tippett was the perfect secretary. He knew everything about Bartlett's movements. He had made himself invaluable, and Bartlett had come to rely on him without thinking. It was inevitable that he would know that Bartlett was planning to spend the weekend with Morgan in Wimbledon, even if they pretended that business, rather than pleasure, was their aim.”
“But Bartlett wanted to spend the weekend with Morgan,” said Bert. “They were in love, weren't they? Why
would he want to go out looking for trade?”
“Because he'd been told to. The blackmailer's final letter to him, delivered to the office on the Friday afternoon, just as the office was about to close, told him that his plans were known, and that if he wanted to keep his affairs secret, he was to go to the White Bear pub in Wimbledon, where he would be given further instructions. He was to do whatever the man he met told him to do. If he did not, then certain letters would be placed in the hands of the police and the newspapers.”