Death of a Commuter (5 page)

“Is Manor Lane a cul-de-sac?” asked Carolus.

“It doesn't lead to anywhere,” he was told. “There's a couple of houses beyond the Manor and that's all.”

“Could have been someone who'd been calling on one of the
houses in the Lane. Sure it wasn't a delivery van, Gobler?”

“No. It wasn't a van. I could see that.”

“What colour was it?”

“That's what the policeman asked me. Came round this morning. I said to him, ‘how d'you expect me to say what colour it was? I was flat out on my back at the time.' He started to get on his high horse then. ‘All right,' I said, ‘you tell me what colour it was. You're the police, aren't you?' D'you know what he said then? I should have noticed the number! Did you ever hear anything so bloody silly in your life?”

The recital was interrupted by the entrance from the saloon bar of a sturdy intelligent-looking man in his forties. It soon became apparent that this was a doctor.

“Come on, Gobler,” he said in a friendly way. “I'm going to give you a lift home. I told you to lie up for a few days.”

“I was just telling them what you said, doctor. I've got contusion.”

“You'll have worse than that if you go running about the place. Now come on, you old sinner.”

While Gobler was finishing his pint, Carolus asked the doctor if his name was Sporlott and hearing that it was told him who he was.

“Oh, yes. Magnus Parador phoned me. Like to come in for a drink this evening? About nine?”

“Thanks.”

Carolus and Priggley reached the dining-room just in time.

“Another ten minutes and you'd have had it,” said a very superior head-waiter regretfully.

“Why were you so interested in the ancient mariner with the bruised bottom?” asked Priggley.

“Because the car didn't stop.”

“Lots of cars don't stop after accidents.”

“Not in circumstances like that It must have been travelling very slowly. Perhaps with sidelights only. When the driver saw the old fellow he braked and swerved of course, and by the time he hit him he had almost stopped, otherwise the old man wouldn't be alive now. He heard Gobler swearing, so knew there
couldn't be much wrong.
Any
driver, unless he had some very good reason not to, would have stopped. Drivers know what a chance they take by not stopping after an accident. It automatically makes them to blame. Yet this one drove on.”

“I see your point,” said Priggley. “Gobler said he'd nearly crossed so it must have been the onside bumper that hit him. Think the police will find the car?”

“Could be. But it may not have dented the bumper at all.”

“If so, what will happen to the chap who was driving?”

Carolus looked steadily at Priggley.

“Why ‘the chap' who was driving? What makes you so sure it was a man?”

“Gobler said…”

“No, he didn't. He assumed as you did that it was a man. He never even saw the driver.”

“That's true. What do we do this afternoon. Wait. Give me three guesses. Interview a suspect?”

“There aren't any. There isn't even a crime.”

“But there damn soon will be with you around.”

“We go to have a look at this landmark they call The Great Ring. That's where the body, the only body we've got, was found.”

Carolus had no difficulty, after lunch, in booking two rooms for the night After Priggley had brought their suitcases in they set off.

The Great Ring lay half-way between Brenstead and Buttsfield, another great dormitory town being built to out-match Brenstead in population. The distances were approximately equal, ten miles from Buttsfield to The Great Ring and between ten and eleven from The Great Ring to Brenstead.

Carolus passed The Three Thistles Inn and thought its closed doors had a slightly self-righteous look at three o'clock in the afternoon as though saying ‘
we
would never let anyone in After Hours. You know
us.'
He took the narrower road to the left at a National Monuments sign indicating that it led to The Great Ring. He went up an incline to the car park and found about a dozen cars there.

Even from here there was a stupendous view of the countryside, broken as it was by tree-tops.

“Let's see the thing itself,” said Carolus.

It had all been laid out by the County or the Rural District or Arts Council, or the National Trust or someone, neat little concrete steps with a hand-rail and iron seats every twenty steps.

“I wonder if that shocker behind the bar has climbed this one,” said Priggley as they reached the last flight of steps.

The Ring itself was disappointing, a circle of stones no taller than a man among which the occupants of the cars parked below wandered admiringly like people at an exhibition of modern sculpture.

“Ever so heavy they must have been to bring right up here,” remarked a large woman stertorously.

“I expect they knew what they were doing,” said her comfortable companion.

“Must of,” said the first.

Rupert Priggley had gone outside the circle and was looking at the astonishingly vast stretch of country beneath them.

“There is something odd about this place, sir,” he said.” But I'll tell you something—I had the same feeling in Brenstead itself today.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I don't quite know. All those ghastly houses. People trying to perpetuate themselves by building. It's all so futile.”

“I shouldn't call those stones futile.”

“What? I suppose they were intended for some kind of worship. Look at them now. I don't know quite what I do mean.”

“I agree there's something almost macabre about Brenstead. Forty-thousand dwelling-places built in a few years and packed tight like a honeycomb. A lot more eerie than this. I could believe in anything happening there. You don't make people conform to a pattern by putting them in uniform houses. Outwardly, perhaps, but only outwardly. I think we're going to find some very odd things in Brenstead since you mention oddity.”

“Behind those tidy house-fronts?” grinned Rupert.

“Exactly,” said Carolus and they returned to the car.

W
HEN
H
E
R
EACHED THE
H
OTEL
C
AROLUS
T
ELEPHONED TO
T
HRIVER
and was surprised to find the solicitor wanted to see him as soon as possible. He had anticipated difficulty in seeing him at all, in spite of Magnus's introduction.

“Come round at once, if you like,” Thriver said in his rather high-pitched voice. “We live in Lower Manor Lane. Take no notice of any name you may see on the gate. It's number 12.”

Priggley stared at the crimson brief-case which Carolus carried when he prepared to set out.

“What's that for?” he asked. But without waiting for an answer, said, “I'm going to have a cruise round the town. See you at breakfast”

“Don't…” began Carolus but stopped. What was the good?

He found out why he was to ignore anything but the number on Thriver's mock-Elizabethan villa. Some previous owner had called it Kumyu-in.

The lawyer came to the door himself and showed Carolus into a room like a law office. Thriver was a rat-like man, shifty-eyed and sharp-featured. Rat-like was so very much the word that
Carolus was fascinated to think his squeaky voice rat-like, even his little white claw-like hands. His mouth, too, thin-lipped and toothy had a gnawing look about it.

“Whisky or brandy?” he asked without preamble in a sharp, business-like way.

Carolus told him.

“I'm glad you've come. I've been trying to get Magnus over, but he's a lazy fellow. I'm in some difficulty.”

This was the first time he had heard a solicitor make any such admission, Carolus thought.

“I know all about you,” Thriver continued. “And you have full authority from Magnus. So I shan't beat about the bush. On the very day of his death—if he died before midnight, that is—Felix came to my office and put his signature to a new will I had drawn up for him and took it away with him.”

“In his pocket?”

“No. In a … Why that's the very brief-case!”

“I'm afraid not. It's the twin. Magnus Parador lent it to me. He bought two originally and gave one to Felix.”

“I see. I thought I recognised it. I wish it were, because it would mean that the will had been found.”

“Felix had made a will before the one he signed that day?”

“Oh, several. He had a rich man's privilege of changing his mind.”

“Were the provisions of the new one very much changed?”

“Not the basic provisions. The bulk of his fortune still went to his wife and brother. They were not affected. But some of the smaller legacies, if you call five thousand pounds a small legacy, were … well, two were cut out altogether.”

“Yes?”

“I tried to dissuade Felix. It seemed so unlike him to avenge two paltry quarrels. But he did not like his word disputed, you know. In many ways a very obstinate man. He could be generous, yes, but he could also be petty. He cut out Dr. Sporlott because of an argument they had. Sporlott openly laughed at his views, I believe. The other was Hopelady. He was godfather to one of Hopelady's five children. A boy named Matthew. He had left a
large sum to Hopelady for this boy's benefit but he put it out of the father's reach. The boy was to inherit it when he was twenty-two unless it could be shown that he had in any way anticipated his inheritance.”

“I see. Were those the only two unlucky ones, the doctor and the vicar?”

“Yes.”

“Any new beneficiaries?”

“Yes. That's the point. That's where the difficulty arises. A woman named Henrietta Ballard. An actress, I understand, whom he had met through his wife. He had been … maintaining her for three years. He had bought her a house at Buttsfield, about twenty miles away. He left her a thousand a year for life. That was why his will was such a secret. No one was to know of this, least of all Elspeth. That's understandable, of course.”

“Oh quite. And no one does know?”

“No one. My confidential clerk who has been with me twenty years, an entirely dependable man who knows none of the people concerned and cares less, typed it. Otherwise no one knows that it was ever made.”

“Unless Parador told anyone.”

“It's scarcely likely, is it?”

“He might have told the girl Henrietta Ballard that he was going to look after her.”

“She's been abroad for two months. Comes back tomorrow, I believe.”

“It's not impossible, though.”

“Very unlikely. Felix specifically told me that no one knew what he was doing.”

“Who witnessed his signature?”

“My confidential clerk. Felix had known him for years. Old Tasman is a very proper old chap and Felix pulled his leg. That afternoon he pulled out his pocket flask of whisky and poured out two measures. Old Tasman had to drink one—he knows I never drink in the office. It emptied his flask, and Tasman was quite flushed up. But as for him repeating anything he learned in the office—impossible! Quite impossible!”

“I see.”

“The question is, where is this will now?”

“If Parador committed suicide …”

“Of course he did.”

“You are sure of that, Mr. Thriver?”

“Absolutely. I know what made him do it. He was convinced he had cancer. That was the cause of his quarrel with Sporlott Some charlatan of a foreign doctor told him so a year ago.”

“Had he any symptoms?”

“I understand he suffered from digestive troubles, chest pains, heartburn and so on. I haven't discussed it with Sportlott. But people have killed themselves before now by making themselves believe they have cancer. He killed himself because of it.”

“You sound very positive. Perhaps you know why he chose that particular time and place?”

“His choice of time I understand. He was only waiting to sign his will. I told you he was both a generous and a vindictive man. He wanted to look after his mistress. And I'm afraid he also wanted to make sure the two men who had angered him did not benefit.”

“Yet he was so careless about the will that he kept it with him and left it either in his pocket or his dispatch-case when he took his overdose?”

“Probably the risk never occurred to him.”

“You also know his reason for choosing the place?”

“Oh yes. That's quite plain. You must remember that his family and mine lived here before Brenstead became a dormitory town. We used to cycle out to The Great Ring as boys. It was a favourite picnic place for us before it became a tourist stop. A few people came to see it in those days, but very few. Poor Felix was simply returning, as so many men do in a time of crisis, to his boyhood.”

“I don't say you're wrong,” said Carolus, “but it's all a bit too neat and tied up and tidy for me. Of course I didn't know Parador. But Magnus tells me he was very fond of his wife. Wouldn't he have wanted to save her feelings?”

“So far as possible, he did. She has told me how he rang her up that afternoon to say he wasn't coming home. He meant the first news she would have of it to come when the body was found. It was the best he could do.”

“I see what you mean. I still don't like it, though.”

Thriver seemed to become a little rambling.

“I've known the brothers Parador since boyhood. We grew up together, in fact. I'm by no means a sentimental or a superstitious man, but I have certain presentiments. I
knew
that evening there was something wrong.”

“Had there been anything to notice about Felix's manner that afternoon?”

“No. No. He was quite himself—cheerful, in fact. It wasn't that. It was a presentiment. I felt it so strongly that during the evening I decided to go round to see him. I got out the car and drove round.”