Smallbone Deceased (8 page)

“Who has keys?”

“No one has keys except him, I understand. If he's away he hands them over to someone else. He's the locker-upper in chief. He looks after the strong room as well.”

“Supposing one of the partners wanted to get in after hours?”

“I'm not sure,” said Bohun. “I asked John Cove and he said that no partner in a fashionable firm of solicitors ever did work after hours—that sort of thing being left, one gathers, to the shirtsleeves brigade in the City. If a partner wanted to work late I suppose he would get the door keys from Sergeant Cockerill and do the locking up himself.”

“Even Abel Horniman didn't have the keys?”

“Not of the outer doors.”

“I see,” said Hazlerigg. “Well, that would seem to dispose of that. Not forgetting that any key can be copied—these big heavy door keys easier than most. Now what about Horniman's room.”

“In office hours,” said Bohun slowly, “there is one very serious obstacle, if you look at the layout you'll see that the partners' secretaries' room is really designed to control the entrance to all three of the partners' rooms. And at least one of the three secretaries—Miss Cornel, Miss Glittering or Miss Mildmay—had always to be in it.”

“You say they
have
to be in it,” said the inspector doubtfully. “How well was the rule observed?”

“Pretty well, I imagine,” said Bohun. “First of all, this was a Horniman office and system's the watchword. But apart from that, the partners' telephone exchange was in the secretaries' room, it was all part of the system for keeping irritating or unwanted clients at arm's length—which is a fairly important thing in any solicitor's office. The actual telephone exchange—the one that connects up with the outside world—is in the basement and is looked after by Sergeant Cockerill or his young stand-in, Charlie. When a call comes for one of the partners it is plugged through first to the partners' secretaries' room and vetted there before being put through to the partner concerned. It really does mean that one of the secretaries
has
to be there the whole time.”

“I see,” said the inspector. “And they'd have noticed at once if Mr. Smallbone had gone into Mr. Horniman's office?—”

“Not only would they have noticed it,” said Bohun, with a smile, “but they'd have made a note of it in the journal, and, when Smallbone finally left, the secretary concerned—Miss Cornel in this case—would have noted the length of time he'd been there—with a view to typing out an ‘attendance' on the subject later. How do you think we poor solicitors live?”

Hazlerigg thought about all this for some time, but made no comment. Finally, he said: “Well, then—that box.”

“That's more difficult still,” said Bohun. “You can see that it's a good lock—a five-lever-more like a strongbox than a deed box. It can be forced, as Sergeant Cockerill demonstrated—but it wouldn't be easy to pick, I should think—not without leaving traces.”

“Right,” said Hazlerigg. “And the keys.”

“The boxes were in sets. Each partner's room had a set. There was a master key for each set, with a ‘single variant' key for each box in the set. But no key of one set would fit another set. The partner concerned kept the ring of keys for his boxes, and the master key, in case he lost an individual key.”

“Wasn't that rather overelaborate?”

“You just didn't know Abel Horniman,” said Bohun. “It was right up his street. One key—one box—one client. I don't think the other partners enjoyed the system quite so much. Birley lost all his keys in the course of time and had to have a new set made. Craine, I know, keeps his boxes permanently unlocked. But that doesn't affect the point at issue, since none of their keys would Fit the Ichabod Stokes box, anyway. Only Abel Horniman had that key—and apparently he didn't have it either. I don't know what Bob Horniman's story is—but Miss Cornel says that he couldn't find either the key for this particular box, or the master. The other seventeen were there all right.”

“Thank you,” said Hazlerigg. “I think I'd better have a word with Bob Horniman.”

Bob could tell him very little about the keys.

“I was father's sole executor,” he explained. “And I took everything over. There
were
a lot of keys. House keys as well as office keys. I knew that this bunch belonged to the office, so I brought them here and kept them in my desk drawer. I never realized that one of them was missing. I used the others from time to time to open various boxes—”

“But, of course, you'd never had occasion to go to this particular box until this morning.”

“Well, no, I hadn't,” said Bob. “As a matter of fact I hadn't really done much about the Ichabod Stokes Trust at all. It had been on my conscience a bit—but a trust isn't like a conveyancing or litigation matter that has to be kept marching strictly along—and you know how it is. I was a bit rushed and the least urgent job went to the wall.”

“I quite understand,” said Hazlerigg. “Now, about your father. Can you give me some idea of his routine? When he arrived at the office, and so on. Particularly in the last months of his life.”

Bob looked faintly surprised, but said: “He had to take it quite easy. He was under doctor's orders for the last six months. I think they'd have been happier if he hadn't come to the office at all, but that was out of the question with Dad. The office was his life, you know. He used to get here at about half-past ten and leave at about half-past four.”

“I suppose that the rest of you arrived earlier than that.”

“Good Lord, yes,” said Bob. “Nine-thirty sharp. Even Mr. Craine was usually behind his desk before ten o'clock.”

“I see. Were you and your father living together?”

“No,” said Bob shortly. “I've got a flat.”

“I suppose that your father's house comes to you under the will. Are you going to live there now?”

Bob looked for a moment as if he was searching for some cause of offense in this question. In the end he said: “No. Certainly not. I couldn't possibly keep it up. It's a great barracks of a place in Kensington.”

IV

Sergeant Plumptree would have assented to this description. It wasn't an attractive house. In colour it was greyish-yellow. In size it was enormous. It was designed on the sound Victorian principle which kept the kitchen in the basement, the family on the ground and the first floor, the guests on the second floor, the servants on the third floor and the children in the attic.

A bearded lady with one stationary and one roving eye opened the door and showed Sergeant Plumptree into a morning room heavy with black satinwood and maroon chenille. She motioned him to a penitential chair, folded her plump white hands, and awaited in silence whatever indignities her interrogator might see fit to heap upon her.

“Well, ma'am,” said Sergeant Plumptree pleasantly. “It's a question of times—”

Without too much prompting he obtained the following information. It would have seemed that Abel Horniman was as much a creature of habit in his home as in his office, particularly during the last six months of his life. Everything had been done to render his course smooth. A nurse had always been in attendance. Sergeant Plumptree noted her name and address, feeling glad of a chance of corroborative evidence. Abel Horniman had got up at eight-thirty and had his breakfast at nine-fifteen and had read his
Times
and his
Financial Times
until the car came to fetch him at five past ten. In the evenings he had always been home by five o'clock for tea, and had then liked to sit and listen to the wireless before changing into a dinner jacket for his evening meal.

“Did he ever go out at that time?”

The housekeeper looked faintly surprised. “Certainly not,” she said.

“Never?” persisted the sergeant. “I'm sorry. It's just that we must be certain—”

“Mr. Horniman” – the housekeeper pursed her lips – “was a dying man. He
never
went out in the evenings.”

“Thank you. And then—”

“After that,” said the housekeeper, “at ten o'clock he retired to bed. The nurse had the bedroom across the passage and I had the room next to her. Between us we were certain to hear if he cried out. His attacks, you know—very sudden.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” said Sergeant Plumptree.

It seemed to him to be pretty conclusive. There would be just time, he thought, to call on the nurse, before reporting back to Inspector Hazlerigg.

V

Dr. Bland, the pathologist, was a dry man but an enthusiast. The photograph which he exhibited for Hazlerigg's attention looked, at first blink, like an aerial view of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. There were the innumerable fissile crevices running in from either side toward the centre, the gulfs and gullies, the potholes and pockmarks of the surrounding terrain; and there down the middle, as if ruled off by a draftsman, was the deep, steep-sided indenture of the canyon itself, and far down at the bottom the dark line of the stream.

“Effect of picture wire on the human neck,” said Dr. Bland. “Two hundred magnifications.”

“Extraordinary,” said Hazlerigg with distaste. “I suppose that dark line at the bottom is the—just so. You needn't explain. What does it all prove?”

“Quite a lot,” said the doctor. “Would you like a picture of the weapon? Subject to very slight possible errors, here it is. Take a short piece of ordinary seven—strand brass picture wire. Drive a small hole between the strands, about two-thirds of the way along—you could do that with a nail, or a sharp gimlet. Then thread one end of your wire through the hole. That gives you a nice smoothly-running noose, or slipknot. I suggest that you then fasten toggles of wood—anything to afford you a good grip—one at either end of your wire. There's an inexpensive, neat household model of the garroter's loop—”

“Inexpensive,” said Hazlerigg. “Neat, and untraceable.”

“Oh, quite,” said the pathologist. “It's a household weapon. Anybody could make one.”

“Thank you.”

“I haven't done yet,” said Dr. Bland. “That's a picture of the weapon. Would you like a picture of your murderer?”

“If it's not asking too much of you,” said Hazlerigg politely.

“Well, to a certain extent the weapon implies the user. He must be methodical, neat with his hands, with enough imagination to devise such a weapon, and enough ruthlessness to use it.”

“You surprise me,” said Hazlerigg.

“He is also, most probably, left-handed.”

“What!”

“Ah—I thought that might stir you out of your confounded dismal professional indifference,” said the pathologist. “That's a clue, isn't it? That's something to go on. Not just one of Jimmy Bland's pawky generalizations. I repeat, he was left-handed. I mean it in this sense—not that he was a man who only used his left hand, but he was a man whose left hand—or, at all events, his left wrist—was better developed and stronger than his right.”

“Where did you get all this from?”

“From the wire. From the enlarged photograph of the neck, which you so rudely threw back at me a moment ago.” Dr. Bland laid the photograph on the table again and ran the tip of his finger along some of the north bank tributaries of the Colorado. “Observe,” he said, “how all the creases on the right are drawn backward—that is, toward the spine. That means that when the murderer started to pull, he held the
right
handle of his machine steady, and exerted the actual pressure with his left hand. No other explanation will fit. Now for an ordinary, right-handed man, the tendency would have been just the opposite. He would have held steady with the left hand and done the pulling with the right. Cast your mind back to the last time you pulled a tight cork out of a bottle of old port—”

“Yes, I think I see what you mean.”

Hazlerigg went through the motions of garroting an imaginary victim, while the pathologist watched and nodded his approval.

“One other thing, doctor. You say ‘he' and ‘him' and ‘the man.' Is that certain? Could it have been a woman?”

“Certainly. A man or a woman. Using this little weapon all you need is the initial surprise, and a certain amount of luck. Consider now. I am going to strangle you.” He pushed the inspector into the late Abel Horniman's office chair. “You have no cause to suspect me. Right? I am standing quietly behind you. I put my hands round your throat. What do you do? Ah—as I thought. You put your own hands up and try to tear away my fingers. You find it difficult because, strong as you are, you're sitting down, your knees are under the desk, and you can't use your weight. But not impossibly difficult. You catch one of my little fingers and bend—all right—all right—you needn't be too realistic. You manage to break my grip. If you are a man and I am a woman you'd probably break out quite easily. But consider the murderer who is using a wire loop. It's strong, and it's as sharp as a cheese cutter, and it's an inch into your neck before you know what's happening. You can't shout. You're half paralysed with the shock of the attack and
there's nothing to catch hold of.
That's the crux of it. You can't get so much as the tip of a finger between the wire and your neck. Yes, yes. I think a woman could kill a man with a weapon like that.”

VI

Hazlerigg had a word with Bohun before he left the office that evening. He summed things up, principally for his own comfort and edification.

“Abel Horniman is out,” he said. “That's a pity, because he was our number one candidate. He was the man who
ought
to have committed this murder. He was the man who might have had every reason for removing Smallbone. But he didn't do it.”

He paused for a moment; then went on: “I don't say that we could get up in court and prove that it was impossible for him to have done it. It's difficult to prove a negative. I suppose he
might
have crept out of bed in the middle of the night and made his way to Lincoln's Inn. He might have got in without attracting attention, let himself into the office and killed Smallbone, though I can't imagine how he'd have got him there unnoticed. It's theoretically possible. But so improbable that I intend to disregard it. It's my experience that in real life criminals tend to do their jobs the easiest way. Not the most difficult or the most picturesque. They don't haul the corpses to the top of Nelson's Column or exhibit them in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's. Not unless they are mad.”