Smallbone Deceased (16 page)

“What about the price?”

Henry grinned. “I know quite well,” he said, “that you've got your own means of finding out anything you want to know in that line. You don't need my opinion.”

“Perhaps not,” said his father, “but let's have it.”

“I think,” said Henry slowly, “that it would be a fair gamble. They're not gilt-edged. If they were you wouldn't get four-tenths of the equity being offered for twenty thousand.”

“No,” said his father. “I don't think you would. All right. I'll have a look at it. One of the conditions, of course, will be that you stay in the firm. I shall be investing the money in you as much as in Horniman, Birley and What's—it.”

“Very handsome of you,” said Henry. “I'm going to get myself some lunch. I suppose it's no good asking you to come out.”

“Never have lunch,” said Mr. Bohun. “Waste of time. By the way, I suppose you haven't got any idea who did these murders? Not,” he added hastily, “that I'm being inquisitive but it might make a difference to my offer.”

“I've no idea at all,” said Henry truthfully.

V

“Well, now, Mr. Hoffman,” said Hazlerigg. “I understand that you've finished the first part of your work and can give me a general report on the financial position.”

“An interim report,” said Mr. Hoffman. “Then, if you consider that any particular aspect of it wants detailed analysis—”

“Let's start with the general picture, if you don't mind.”

Thereupon Mr. Hoffman spoke for an hour, with very little interruption from Hazlerigg. He had a sheaf of notes but he did not refer to them much. It was in his head.

He spoke of capital assets and of invisible assets, of fixed assets and floating assets; of goodwill and the professional index; of the solicitor – client relationship; of the ratio of incomings to outgoings; of over – all balance; and of the law of diminishing returns. And every point which he established was nailed to the table with figures-pounds and shillings, and years and months, and percentages and fractions.

When he had done, Hazlerigg said: “Thank you very much.” Then he said: “I take it you will be letting me have the gist of that in writing.” Mr. Hoffman nodded. “Absolutely off the record and without prejudice, what does it add up to?”

Mr. Hoffman considered the question. Then he parcelled his papers neatly back into his briefcase, screwed on the top of his fountain pen, replaced his pen in his inside pocket (where it lived with three coloured propelling pencils) and leaned back in his chair with a relaxed smile; a parting of the lips which, in a man less austere, might almost have been called a grin.

“I always think,” he said, “that starting a business is very like lighting the drawing-room fire. First, you stack up the sticks and paper and coal in the grate, and then, at the favourable moment, you apply your match. There's an immediate and beautiful blaze. The paper burns away and the sticks crackle and you put on more and more coal—that's your working capital—and you get precious little real heat by way of return. Then, in every fire, and in every business, there comes a moment when you know if the thing is going to go or not; and
if
the fuel is dry and
if
the draft is right, and
if
you've laid the thing properly, you'll get a decent fire. If anything's wrong, then you can prod it and puff it and pile on fuel till you're black in the face. You'll get nothing but smoke, stink and a hearth full of charred paper. But once the thing's alight there's nothing more to it. The office boy can keep it going. He's only got to drop an occasional lump of coal on. Incidentally that's one of the things people don't think of when they moan about the boss sitting back and taking the profits while they do all the work. Anyone can look after a fire
when it's alight
”

“Agreed,” said Hazlerigg. “What then?”

“That's all obvious, isn't it,” said Mr. Hoffman. “Anyone who thinks about it can see it. But what people don't always realize is that it works the other way round as well. A good fire, you know, will go on burning and glowing and giving out heat for a long time
after
you've stopped putting on any fuel. And if you put on a little from time to time—not enough to replace what's being burned, but a lump or two—well, it'll go on burning for a very long time. That, as nearly as I can explain it, is what was happening in Horniman, Birley and Craine in about 1939 and 1940. I don't think anyone could have spotted it from outside—but the fuel supply was giving out. Partly,” went on Mr. Hoffman, “I expect it was the war. Partly the fact that the system they use here, though an excellent one, isn't productive of very quick or profitable returns. It would be admirably suited” – Mr. Hoffman did not intend this satirically – “to a government office. But chiefly, I think, it was the fact that while the incomings were decreasing the liabilities were increasing—especially Abel Horniman's liabilities. They must have been. He had his big house in London and his country house and farm in the country, and he was beginning to attain a certain position, a position which needed money to keep it up; money, and then more money.”

“I thought his bank account was rather a modest document,” said Hazlerigg.

“I'll give you one example of the sort of thing they were driven to. This building is leasehold. Not a very long lease. Every well-run business which operates on leasehold premises puts aside a fund against the day when the lease expires—for repairs and dilapidations, to say nothing of the premium that they may have to pay to get the lease renewed. Horniman, Birley and Craine had been building up a leasehold depreciation fund for a great many years. Well, in 1939 they stopped adding to it. In 1940 and 1941 they drew it out and spent it.” Mr. Hoffman paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts, then went on: “What happened next is the most difficult of all to explain. But sometime, about the end of 1941, the firm had a blood transfusion.”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. There was no doubt about his interest now. “Please go on.”

“Abel Horniman got his hands, somehow, on quite a large capital sum. It isn't obvious—but when you look for it you can see it. That leasehold depreciation account was built up again. The very heavy mortgages on both of Abel's properties were reduced. And more than that, certain expenditure which should normally have come out of income, was made out of capital, which meant, of course, that what income there was went further, and everything looked much more healthy all round.”

“A blood transfusion, you said?”

“That was the metaphor that occurred to me.” Mr. Hoffman sounded apologetic, as if he realized that an accountant had no business to dabble in metaphors, let alone mixed metaphors. “But it really does explain in the simplest way that I can think of exactly what happened. Somewhere—and I may say that I haven't the very least idea where—Abel Horniman got hold of this money. I can only tell you one thing about it. It came from outside. Maybe someone died and left it to him—only you'd have imagined we should have known about it. Possibly he robbed a bank.”

“Well, he may even have done that,” agreed Hazlerigg without a smile. “This sum of money—can you estimate how much it was?”

“Oh, quite a lot,” said Mr. Hoffman. “Ten thousand pounds, at least.”

VI

“After all,” said Miss Bellbas. “Murder's a serious thing. It might be one of us next.”

“Even so,” said Anne Mildmay. “It seems to me rather like sneaking.”

“Oh, be your age, Anne,” said Miss Cornel crossly. “This isn't the sixth form at St. Ethelfredas. I agree with Florrie. This is serious.”

“Well, you can tell him, if you like,” said Miss Mildmay. “It just doesn't seem to me to be any of our business.”

“I think we should,” said Miss Bellbas.

“I'm going to,” said Miss Cornel.

Hazlerigg was on the point of leaving when Miss Cornel came in. He was on his way back to the Yard for an interview with Dr. Bland, the pathologist.

“Look here,” she said. “I won't keep you long. It's about that letter. The one that was found under my desk.”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg.

“I might as well admit,” said Miss Cornel, “that there's been a certain amount of difference of opinion about telling you this. But the general idea was that we ought to. It was something we all noticed at the time.”

“Something about the letter?”

“Yes. This mayn't seem much to you—but if you remember it started ‘Dear Mr. Horniman.' Well, that wasn't the way Mr. Smallbone ever wrote to Abel Horniman. It was always ‘Dear Horniman,' or ‘My Dear Horniman.' There's quite a nice etiquette about these things, you know. When you get friendly, you drop the ‘Mr.' and when you get more friendly still you add the ‘my.' It's not a thing you'd be likely to get wrong.”

“No,” said Hazlerigg. “I appreciate that. Well, thank you very much for telling me. I don't really see,” he added with a smile, “why you should have been so reluctant to let me have this information.”

His mind must have been working at half speed that morning. It wasn't until he was halfway to Scotland Yard that he saw the implication.

Chapter Twelve

… Thursday P.M. …

£48 2
s
. 6
d
.

Cloud rolls over cloud: one train of thought suggests and is driven away by another: theory after theory is spun out of the bowels of his brain, not like the spider's web, compact and round – a citadel and a snare, built for mischief and for use, but like the gossamer … flitting in the idle air and glittering only in the ray of fancy.

Hazlitt:
The Plain Speaker

“You're asking me,” said Dr. Bland, “to be scientific about something that has no real scientific basis.”

“In other words,” said Hazlerigg, “we're asking you to perform the impossible.”

“That's it.”

“And, as usual, you are going to oblige.”

“Soft soap,” said Dr. Bland. “All right. So long as you don't expect me to get up in court and explain it all to a jury.”

“That's the last thing I shall ask,” said Hazlerigg. “All I want you to do is to narrow the field. If you can indicate that certain Saturdays are more likely than other Saturdays, then we can concentrate, first, on the people who were in the office on those days.”

Dr. Bland raised a tufted eyebrow at the chief inspector.

“So long as you're not arguing
ex hypothesi,
” he said.

“What the devil do you mean?”

“You wouldn't perhaps have some particular person in mind already?”

“James Bland,” said Hazlerigg, “You've got a damned diagnosing mind. Yes. I am thinking of one particular person.”

“Then this may be helpful.”

He unfolded on to Hazlerigg's desk an enormous sheet of graph paper ruled with the usual axes and traversed by nine or ten very attractive apical curves, each one of a different colour.

“They all start,” explained the pathologist, “from the zone of maximum improbability—that is zero on the vertical axis, and move upward toward maximum probability. The horizontal line is a time line, covering the four weeks in question.”

“I see,” said Hazlerigg. “I think. What are the different colours?”

“Different parts of the body deteriorate, after death, at different speeds. The speed of deterioration of any part depends on a number of constant factors, such as the temperature and the humidity of the atmosphere and equally on a number of accidental circumstances. For instance, if the stomach happens to be full at death—”

“All right,” said Hazlerigg hastily, “you can skip that one. These lines, I take it, are the various items you have selected—”

“Test points, yes. The mauve, for instance, shows the degree of separation of the fingernails from the hand. The yellow is the bladder wall.”

“What's the purple one?”

“Toenails.”

“I see. And the positioning of the curve enables you to see the likeliest time of death according to each individual symptom.”

“That's about it,” said the doctor. “As I said at the beginning, there's nothing very scientific about it all. I've just represented, graphically, the points which have influenced me in coining to a certain decision. Generally speaking, I have been helped a great deal by the fact that the body remained—or so I have assumed—in the same very confined place and at a fairly constant temperature.”

“And your decision?”

“From the moment of discovery, not less than six weeks, not more than eight.”

Hazlerigg took up his desk diary and ran a finger back through the pages.

“It's April twenty-second today,” he said. “We found the body on the fourteenth. Just over a week ago. Six weeks back from there brings us to—yes. And eight weeks—hum!”

“Does the answer come out right?” said Dr. Bland.

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “Yes, I do believe it's beginning to.”

II

Chaffham is on the coast of Norfolk. It is not a very large or a very prosperous place, and its principal feature, indeed the chief reason for its existence, is the deep-water inlet which affords anchorage here for a hundred or more craft great and small.

Inspector Hazlerigg, who had travelled down by police car, arrived at Chaffham at half-past three that afternoon. The sun would have done no discredit to a day of June. The water sparkled, as a light wind chased the clouds, and the grey, fiat unlovely land did its best to simulate a smile.

Hazlerigg stood in the single main street which sloped to the jetty and the “hard.” He looked at the grey-walled, grey-roofed shops, and behind them at the whale-backed hill where only the thorn trees seemed tough enough to outface the savagery of the North Sea. And he felt, deep down inside him, the contentment which even the most unpromising county can bring to her own sons. For he was a Norfolk man; and thirty-two hard years in London had not served to overlay it.

A telephone message had gone ahead of him, and a sergeant of the Norfolk Constabulary was in the main street when the car stopped. Five minutes later Hazlerigg was seated in Chaffham police station, which was, in fact, the front room in Sergeant Rolles's cottage, studying a large-scale map of the district.

“If he's a visitor,” said Sergeant Rolles, “a summer visitor, or a yachtsman, he'll not live in Chaffham. He'll have one of the houses along Station Road or Sea Wall.”

The sergeant ran his thumbnail along the two roads, roughly parallel, which joined the station to the village street, following the south bank of the inlet, and forming the crosspiece of a “T” to which the main street was the upright.

“You know all the people who live up and down this street, I expect,” said Hazlerigg.

“And their fathers and their grandfathers,” said Sergeant Rolles. “But the visitors—well, they come and go. I know the regulars. Let's see that name again. Horniman. Young chap, would it be? Dark hair, wears glasses. Was in the navy—the R.N.V.R., I should say. That's him, then. Keeps a little place almost at the end of Sea Wall. Comes down most weekends. It's shut up now, I expect.”

“Has he got local help?”

“Mrs. Mullet does for him,” said the sergeant. “Cleans the place, and gets in his stores. He telephones her when he's coming down and she opens the house. I call it a house. It's a bungalow really. The Cabin, or some name like that.”

“What's she like?”

“Mrs. Mullet? A most respectable woman. Her father used to keep the Three Lords Hunting. But he's been dead fifteen years. Fell down his cellar flap on New Year's Eve and cracked his skull. She's all right, sir. Her husband's as deaf as a post. He's a wicked old man.”

“I think I'll have a word with Mrs. Mullet, if you're agreeable,” said Hazlerigg.

“Help yourself,” said the sergeant.

Mrs. Mullet received the inspector, with proper Norfolk caution, in a dim kitchen. Her husband sat in a high chair beside the range. His bright eyes moved from speaker to speaker, but he took no part in the opening formalities.

“It's like this, Mrs. Mullet,” said Hazlerigg. “I'm very anxious to check exactly when Mr. Horniman arrived at his cottage each weekend. More particularly” – he took a quick glance at his notebook – “on the weekend of February 27th.”

“Well, now, I don't know,” said Mrs. Mullet.

“Does he come down here every weekend?”

“Oh, no. Not every weekend. Not until the summer. He was down here at the end of February—like you said. That was his first visit this year. Then again at the end of March, and last weekend.”

“Well, then,” said Hazlerigg. “If February 27th was his first trip, surely that's some reason for it to stick in your memory.”

“I can remember it all right,” said Mrs. Mullet. “The thing I don't know is whether I ought to tell you anything about it.”

Hazlerigg said: “Well, ma'am, I need hardly remind you that it's your duty—”

“If I'm brought to court,” said Mrs. Mullet, “that's one thing. If I'm brought to court I shall say what I know. But until then—”

Mr. Mullet swivelled his bright eyes on to the inspector to see how he would play this one.

“I must warn you,” said Hazlerigg, “that you may be guilty of obstructing—”

“It's not a thing I approve of,” said Mrs. Mullet. “But yooman nature is yooman nature, and all the divorce courts in the world can't stop it.”

A sudden warm glow of comprehension irradiated the inspector. It was as if the sun had come out in the Mullet kitchen.

“I don't think you quite understand,” he said gently. “I'm investigating a murder.”

This got home all right. Mr. Mullet sat up in his chair and said quite sharply: “What's that? Murder! 'As Mr. 'Orniman been murdered?”

Mrs. Mullet said weakly: “Are you a police detective?”

“Well, yes,” said Hazlerigg. “I'm not a private detective, if that's what you mean. And I'm not trying to get evidence for a divorce.”

“Well, then,” said Mrs. Mullet. “I'm sure I'll tell you what I can.”

Chaffham, it appeared, though difficult of access by road, had the advantage of being less than a mile from the direct London–Cramer railway line, and an excellent afternoon train left King's Cross at two o'clock and reached Chaffham Halt at four. Bob Horniman, said Mrs. Mullet, used to catch this train, which was met by a single-decker bus (the Chaffham Bumper) driven by a one-eyed mechanic (the Chaffham Terror). This bus, barring enditchment and like accidents, reached the crossroads nearest to The Cabin at ten past four.

“Nice time for tea,” said Mrs. Mullet.

“And that was always how he came?”

“That's right. I'd have a fire in and a meal ready. And not before he could do with it, I expect. After tea he'd go and look at his boat. He keeps it in Albert Tugg's yard, when he's not using it. Then he'd have a drink at the Lords. Highly popular, he was, with the gentlemen there. Then he'd go to bed. Sunday, he'd go sailing, and catch the six o'clock train from the Halt. He'd leave the key with me as he went past to catch his bus. Then I'd go in on Monday morning and clean up.”

It sounded a harmless and indeed rather a pleasant weekend. Hazlerigg reflected that you never really know a man until you meet him on holiday. He would not have visualized the quiet, bespectacled Bob Horniman as the life and soul of the public bar at Three Lords Hunting.

After a few more general questions he took his departure.

As soon as he had gone Mr. Mullet, who wasn't half as deaf as he liked to make out, surfaced briskly and hobbled across to the cupboard. From the top shelf he took down a much-folded copy of his favourite Sunday newspaper and turned to the centre page.

“It be that Lincoln's Inn murder,” he observed. “Thought it must be the same 'Orniman. A firm of lawyers. Found a body in a box. Fairly rotted away, it says.”

“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Mullet. “What will they do next! Such a nice-looking young man, too.”

“Lawyers,” said Mr. Mullet. “Good riddance if they all killed each other, I say. Snake eat snake.”

At about the same time that Mr. Mullet was making these uncharitable remarks, Inspector Hazlerigg had reached the end of the Sea Wall and was taking a quick look at Bob Horniman's weekend cottage.

It was shuttered and deserted. Over a strip of sand-blown garden and rank lawn he saw the jetty, and the halyards of a little flagstaff. The sun had gone, merging sea and land in uniform unfriendly grey. With the evening a cold wind had arrived.

Hazlerigg walked back to the police station. It occurred to him that he had an urgent telephone call to make.

III

Sergeant Plumptree sat at Hazlerigg's desk. In front of him he had a list. It had nearly three hundred names on it, and to almost each name was annexed a telephone number. Sergeant Plumptree looked at the list and sighed. He had already rung fifty-five of the numbers and he was feeling very tired. His eardrums were buzzing with infernal dialing tones and his throat was sore with enforced bonhomie. He recollected a story he had once read about the wife of the President of the United States who had shaken hands with three thousand guests at a State reception and, when her husband said “Good morning” to her at breakfast, had started screaming hysterically.

He understood exactly how she had felt.

He dialed the next number. “Mrs. Freestone? Oh, it's Mrs. Freestone's maid. Could I have a word with Mrs. Freestone? I'm speaking on behalf of Horniman, Birley and Craine. Oh—hello, Mrs. Freestone. I'm very sorry to trouble you. We are trying to trace a telephone call which the firm had some time ago—at the end of February. Saturday, February 27th, to be exact. Can you remember if you rang the firm up about that time? Yes, it is rather a long time ago—but being a Saturday morning we thought it might have stuck in your memory—No-Yes-No, of course you couldn't be expected to remember every telephone call you made two months ago. Very sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Freestone.”

Another tick on the list.

“Hullo. Is that Sir Henry Rollaway—h, it's Sir Henry's man. Would you tell Sir Henry that Horniman, Birley and Craine—”

IV

That same afternoon, Bohun put down the draft will he was perusing and hit the desk softly with the open palm of his hand.

“Of course,” he said. “I knew it meant something.”

“Knew what meant something?” asked John Cove.

“Forty-eight pounds, two shillings and sixpence.”

“Don't be silly,” said John.

“That's because you haven't had an actuarial training,” said Bohun. “Every figure has a meaning. To the discerning eye there is all the difference in the world between a seductive little multiplicand and a sinister prime.”

After a few minutes' thought he went to look for Mr. Hoffman, whom he found at a table in Mr. Waugh's room. Mr. Hoffman was thumbing through a batch of cancelled checks with absentminded enthusiasm.