The Bath Mysteries (30 page)

“That's right,” Chris answered. “I've been over in France with him. He didn't want it known. He's buying a lot of stuff from a johnny near Bordeaux – a big wine merchant who's hard hit, and wants to realize without anyone knowing what he's doing, or else all his creditors will be getting the wind up. Westland wanted expert advice, so I went along. You can ask him.”

“That's all right, then,” Bobby said. “By the way, Norris told me once you were on the board of the company owning that block of flats – he said you had been investing rather big sums?”

“No business of his,” grumbled Chris. “Nosing round in what didn't concern him. It's Westland's money, really – I'm acting as his nominee. You can ask him that, too, if you want to, only don't go telling everyone. He wants it kept quiet. ”

“That's all right,” Bobby repeated. “There is one thing turned up we rather wanted to ask you about – a bit of Chelsea china you sold Lady Endbury?”

“What about it?” asked Chris sharply. “I happened to see it in a flat in the building where Ronnie was living. Nothing to do with him, or with what happened afterwards. I saw it there and liked it, and bought. In my line, you have to keep your eyes open. Why?”

“You didn't tell us you knew where Ronnie was living? I suppose you did know? It wasn't chance you were there?”

“No-o,” answered Chris hesitatingly, very much as if he would have said “Yes” had he dared. “I knew where Ronnie was all right, but only by accident, and I never dreamed it was murder or any suspicion of it, or anything like it. The verdict was ‘Death by Misadventure,' and that's what I thought it was, and, anyhow, buying a bit of china in the flat underneath his couldn't have anything to do with it one way or another.”

“I don't see why you didn't say something when you knew murder was suspected,” Bobby said. “If people hold things back, they can't complain if we wonder why.”

Chris muttered something inaudible. He got up and took a turn or two about the room. Finally he said:

“I suppose it doesn't matter so much now. I was seeing rather a lot of Mrs. Barton at the time – you know – awfully nice woman, but somehow we've drifted a bit apart recently. It's Scales Barton who is her husband, the K.C. Well, it was this way. She took a little flat on her own round about where Ronnie was living. The idea was, her friends could visit her there without any gossip going on. In the afternoon, you understand, or at the week-end, when she was supposed to be visiting her sister in the country. The thing is, everybody knew we were great pals, and if it came out I had been wandering round a place like Islington where nobody ever goes – well, Scales Barton had been asking questions already, and he might have put two and two together and misunderstood things and then there would have been hell to pay. I promised her I would hold my tongue. And I didn't see why not. I hadn't an idea in the world there was anything behind the verdict or anything queer about poor old Ronnie's death. Look here, hang it all, it won't have to come out about Mrs. Barton, will it? There wasn't anything to come out, you understand, but – well – you know how people talk.”

“So they do,” agreed Bobby. “I don't see that anything need be said now – and I suppose it really wouldn't have made any difference at the time. It was all done so neatly, and so cleverly, I don't know even yet there's any proof we can dig up. Always, it's not the knowing but the proving that we trip over. But I think the man who killed Ronnie may hang for another job, and, if it turns out that way, there'll be no object in carrying on. A man can only hang once.”

Chris looked, and was, very relieved. He added, with a touch of defiance, that, if he had to, he was fully prepared to deny on oath all he had just told Bobby about the Mrs. Scales Barton adventure that was now ancient history.

“I hope it won't be necessary,” Bobby said, “but if it is, and you try that, you will probably tie yourself up in awful tangles. By the way, have you seen Cora recently?”

Chris shook his head.

“She's at Torquay,” he said. “Didn't you know? Been there some days now.”

“I wanted to be sure,” Bobby said, “she had no idea whereabouts Ronnie was living in Islington.”

“I am sure she hadn't,” Chris answered. “After she put her advertisement in the paper she told you about, it was Charing Cross where they met.”

“They did meet, then?” Bobby asked quickly. “She didn't tell us that.”

“She told me long ago,” Chris answered. “You mean she didn't say anything about it that day she told us she thought he had been murdered. Why should she? There was no connection, was there? She was a bit overwrought, too. After the advertisement he put in in reply to hers, he rang her up and asked her to meet him at Charing Cross, to talk. And she did. That was when she gave him the signet ring. He took nothing with him when he disappeared, you know – nothing at all. But she brought the ring with her when she went to meet him that day, and gave it him as a kind of token, and that made it all the worse when after that she never heard anything more.” Bobby frowned. He felt he ought to have noticed the tiny discrepancy between the statement that Ronnie had taken nothing away with him and his possession of the signet ring, and have endeavoured earlier to clear it up. Not that it mattered much, only it would have saved certain faint, troubling doubts that had thus been unnecessarily added to his worries; and then, before he could say anything more, word came that he was to present himself at the opening of the attaché case now about to be undertaken in the Assistant Commissioner's room.

A little group of senior officers had assembled for the opening of the attaché case, most of them eagerly expectant, one or two plainly incredulous. The Assistant Commissioner himself presided. A portly superintendent, who had not altogether forgotten certain exploits of his younger days, enjoyed himself with a bit of bent wire and the locks, and had little trouble in getting them open. Within were various bundles of papers, neatly tied up and docketed, and – what took the eye more dramatically – a rubber truncheon. With careful precautions it was lifted out, and the Assistant Commissioner said:

“Sort of thing you could lay anyone out with and nothing much to show. Better have it examined – we have Beale's fingerprints, haven't we? The doctors had better be asked to take another look at Norris's body, too; they may spot something if they know what to look for.”

The truncheon was duly taken off for testing and examination, and the Assistant Commissioner turned his attention to the papers. They were in folders, neatly endorsed, and the Assistant Commissioner whistled softly as he picked each up in turn.

“Details of how Beale worked it all, apparently,” he said. “This one, marked ‘A,' deals with the Ronnie Owen affair, apparently, and the other folders with the other cases. They'll have to be gone through and checked. Hullo, here's one with nothing in it marked ‘Percy Lawrence.'”

“There's an endorsement, sir,” someone pointed out.

“So there is,” agreed the Assistant Commissioner. He read it aloud: “‘P. L. seems half-witted, apparently neither knows nor wants to know anything.' Um-m. Where is Lawrence, by the way?”

“He was told he might go home, sir, but to stay there and be ready if we wanted him for further questioning,” answered a chief inspector. “It was thought best, if you remember, sir.”

The Assistant Commissioner nodded. He knew well, he shared it himself, that the one nightmare of Scotland Yard, the one thing calculated to reduce all there to dithering despair, was the thought that possibly they might have arrested an innocent man. The mere suggestion was enough to set them all positively grovelling. Nothing is too good for anyone believed to have been unjustly suspected: Lawrence, for instance, had been taken home in one of the Yard's cars in the company of an officer who had positively oozed friendliness and affection the whole way, though Lawrence himself, lost now, not in apathy, but in a tumult of conflicting thoughts, had remained quite unaware of any change in the official atmosphere.

“Looks,” said the elderly superintendent who had opened the attaché case, “looks as if Norris had the goods on Beale all O.K.”

“Looks,” commented someone else, “as if that was why Beale did him in.”

“If Norris suspected what was up,” asked the Assistant Commissioner, “why didn't he come to us? There's more than enough here to take action on.”

“The insurance companies have paid out something like £60,000,” the elderly superintendent pointed out, repeating independently the explanation Bobby had already heard. “That's a lot of money, sir, and though overheads were pretty high, no doubt, there must be a good share left. I suggest Norris may have meant to blackmail Beale into parting with some of that money.”

“Look at this other folder, sir,” another man said, holding it out. “It's endorsed: ‘Notes of attempts to get me insured and to take charge of L.B. & S.C. office. Getting warm. Got to look out. R.N.' ”

“He evidently had his suspicions,” agreed the Assistant Commissioner. “The same old idea, I suppose – insured to cover risk of loss to partner if death occurred. Evidently Norris had tumbled to it, and it does look as if he thought he could fleece Beale and get a share of the plunder. Played with fire, did Mr. Norris, and got burned. Only, if Beale knew, and knew himself cornered, and went to such lengths to get possession of the evidence Norris had collected, why is he so calm about it? He must have found out by now he has the wrong attaché case, and that the right one may be opened and examined any minute. Yet he doesn't seem at all uneasy. How's that? A bit of a snag, isn't it?”

As all his seniors seemed to think so, too, and none offered any explanation, but only looked doubtful and worried, Bobby ventured to say:

“Isn't it on the cards, sir, that he actually does not know? There is a report of a man having been seen to drop an attaché case over Southwark Bridge into the river. The bus Beale and Meg were in was going to Cannon Street. Southwark Bridge isn't far. Beale would be keen on getting rid of such compromising material at once; it must have felt like a bomb in his pocket with the safety pin drawn. He may have never spotted the substitution Magotty Meg managed, and he dropped the attaché case into the river in the full belief that he was getting rid of all Norris's evidence forever.”

“It might be that,” agreed the Assistant Commissioner, who had listened attentively. “He may believe all Norris's evidence is at the bottom of the river.”

“And, instead, it's on the table here before us,” commented somebody in an undertone.

They were interrupted by a report from the Fingerprint Department to the effect that fingerprints within the attaché case and on the rubber truncheon were identical with Dr. Ambrose Beale's, and a further note was added that on the truncheon there appeared to be human hairs of a colour corresponding to Norris's hair, though closer examination would be necessary before identity could be established with absolute certainty.

“Hardly necessary to wait for that,” said the Assistant Commissioner. “Quite enough to bring in Beale; better not wait either. Slippery gentleman, by all accounts. The sooner we get him, the better.”

Late though it was by now, an expedition started out at once, by car, to effect the arrest. Bobby was allowed to accompany the party – he was the only one who had met Beale and could identify him – and on arrival the party went first to the local police station, already warned by phone to expect them. The inspector in charge seemed a little worried.

“I've got three men watching Beale's place," he said. “I had one there, and I sent two more when your message came through. We had just had a report in that a visitor from London had arrived. He seems to answer the description of Lawrence, and our man thought he heard that was the name he gave when the door was opened after he knocked. It rather looked to me as if he might have come to warn Beale and they might be meaning to clear off together.”

The little party from Scotland Yard exchanged uncomfortable glances. It was a most disturbing suggestion. If it turned out to be correct, and the story got about that there had been released from custody a suspected person who had immediately taken advantage of that indulgence to convey a warning to his associates, then a whole lot of things would be said, mostly unpleasant.

“If the papers got hold of a yarn like that...” murmured one man, wriggling at the thought.

“It isn't the papers, it's the Commissioner,” murmured another man, wriggling still more as he pronounced that last dread word, and everyone looked very hard and very severely at Bobby.

“What you said was that Lawrence had nothing to do with it, and nothing to do with Beale, either?” they accused him, almost simultaneously.

“If it's like that, what's Lawrence rushing off to see Beale about?” demanded the third of the party.

“If they've made a getaway together...” said the first speaker, and had no need to add in words what his manner made so plain – that the fault and full responsibility would be Bobby's alone.

The others all agreed with him wholeheartedly, and, if looks could have done it, the glances bestowed on Bobby would instantly have reduced him to no more than a mere shrivelled remnant of humanity. “Immediate return to uniform duty,” was the least thing their looks suggested.

The local inspector, by way of cheering them up, chimed in:

“A million to one, as they've had everything so carefully thought out, they've got some nice little hide-away all ready where they'll be as safe as houses.”

They all agreed that that was more than likely, and then they all tumbled into the car again, with the local inspector as guide to direct them to Dr. Beale's house, and the disgraced Bobby, making himself as small as he could, in the back seat.