The Bath Mysteries (6 page)

A few minutes' walk took him to the building designated – one of those huge blocks of offices a simple-minded optimism caused to be erected in days when increase of business seemed nature's inevitable law, and only King Solomon's ignorance prevented him from adding purchasing demand as a fifth to his list of the four things that say not “It is enough.” This particular building was more prosperous than most, though, for it was occupied to nearly half its capacity. A lift took Bobby to the eighth or ninth floor, where, at the end of a corridor he had begun to think interminable – he had ascended by the northeast battery of lifts instead of by the southwest by west lot – he found two doors, one marked, “Berry, Quick Syndicate – Please Enter,” and the other, less hospitably, “Berry, Quick Syndicate – Mr. Percy Lawrence – Private.” Both doors were locked, and Bobby's knock remained unanswered. He was still standing there, deep in thought, and had been for longer than he realized, when he heard an approaching step. It was that of a man who was evidently a caretaker or watchman employed in the building, and who was now engaged in testing the various doors of the different offices to see that none had been left unlocked. To Bobby this man said: “Everyone on this floor gone home.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Bobby. “These Berry, Quick Syndicate people been here long?”

The caretaker put his head on one side and looked Bobby up and down very carefully.

“Police?” he asked.

“Why? What makes you ask that? Noticed anything wrong?”

“Not so as you would mention,” the caretaker answered, “only I know we had a bit of trouble over their refs. If you ask me, we wouldn't never have took 'em only for being that hard up for rentals we would take Old Nick himself if he paid a half-year in advance. But they haven't hardly any post, nor any callers neither, except for canvassers and suchlike you might as well try to keep out as keep flies from a sweet shop – and the office can say what it likes.”

“You don't think the syndicate does a great deal of business, then?”

“Well, there was something went wrong with the phones all along this side of the corridor – three suites vacant and the one the Berry, Quick Syndicate has – and never a complaint and nothing known about it for near a week. So there can't have been a call in or out all that time. It was the young lady in our private exchange told us that, her having thought all must be vacant along here.”

“Certainly doesn't sound as if business were booming,” agreed Bobby.

“It was what made me take notice of their post,” explained the caretaker. “We have to keep an eye on new rentals in case there's any funny work going on. Why, we had a case once when a bloke took an office next to a nudist propaganda company, and bored a hole in the party wall to see what was going on – which was nothing, and less than anyone can see any day on Brighton Beach.”

“Just as well to be careful,” agreed Bobby. “Do you know what staff is employed?”

“There's Mr. Lawrence what's the boss and a young lady typist. Very quiet gentleman, Mr. Lawrence, and, if you ask me, bit too fond of crooking his elbow – not that I've ever seen him with more than he could carry comfortable. Looks it though, if you see what I mean! sort of dazed-like, lost look to him. Young lady very smart, like all of 'em are; goes with the typing some way. Lumme, my missis says you can study the fashions here all right, and see the latest hats at nine a.m. and six p.m. long before the swagger shops up West are on 'em, especial this young lady when she first come, with her leopard-skin coat you could see the eyes of all the other girls bulge at the sight of, and never came from any typing machine, as my missis said herself, and Miss Andrews – her at our private phone exchange – said so, too.”

“I suppose leopard-skin coats are a bit expensive,” Bobby agreed, giving no sign of how much this second reference to a leopard-skin coat interested him. “Well, there's my card. You see, you were right. I am from the police.”

“Blooming sergeant, eh?” said the caretaker, reading the card with respect. “C.I.D. too. Lumme, I ain't seen a split since I got as near as maybe run in year before last when your chaps raided the ‘Slap Up' Club when I was having a quiet drink after hours. I was in a cupboard under the stairs like winking,” he added with satisfaction; “three hours there, and nearly smothered, too.”

“Oh, yes, we always try to be tactful,” agreed Bobby; “if we've got a good enough haul, that is. After all, three hours' stifling in a cupboard under the stairs does deserve some consideration.”

The caretaker looked gloomy at this point of view, and then asked, nodding towards the syndicate offices:

“Them lot been up to anything? If there is, we'd like to know.”

“Oh, no, it's only a case of making inquiries,” Bobby explained. “There's some information they may be able to give us. Nothing to do with them, so far as we are aware, but there are things they may be able to tell us. But, of course, that doesn't mean they are concerned themselves.”

“Of course it don't,” agreed the caretaker, obviously meaning that of course it did.

“Be careful not to say anything to anyone,” Bobby warned him sternly. “You understand all this is strictly confidential?”

“Not a word, you can trust me,” declared the caretaker, his eyes bright and eager, his lips visibly twitching, so that Bobby knew there was about as much chance of his keeping what he had heard to himself as of a wide-mouthed jug keeping its contents to itself when held upside down. Still, one had to try. Bobby took a ten-shilling note out of his pocket and smoothed it slowly between his fingers, while the caretaker watched with interest.

“I shall hope,” said Bobby thoughtfully, “to be satisfied by this day next week that nothing has been said to anyone.” Briskly he put the ten-shilling note back in his pocket, whither the eyes of the caretaker followed it longingly. “This day next week," he repeated.

“You can trust me,” the caretaker affirmed, with a note of gentle reproach in his voice. “Anyone could. I never was one to talk. Just like an oyster I am, and always have been.”

As Bobby's impression was the exact opposite, the ten- shilling note remained in his pocket, and he decided to try an additional curb.

“Very likely we're quite on the wrong track,” he said, “and there are such things as actions for slander – or complaints to bosses about spreading gossip.”

The caretaker looked very offended indeed.

“Such has never been with me,” he said stiffly. “Gossip is what none could ever say of me, however spiteful or wanting to be nasty. Why, my missis, she says: ‘Don't you never hear nothing spicy where you work?' and I says: ‘My dear, if so be I did, mum would be the word, same as duty calls.'”

“Then that's all right,” Bobby interrupted, “and I needn't worry. A careless word makes a lot of trouble sometimes, you know, even when it seems it couldn't possibly matter. Well, I must be off now. Elevator still working?”

“No, it ain't,” retorted viciously the still-offended caretaker. “You might get it on the fifth,” he added, relenting a little.

“Oh, well, if it's running that far, perhaps it'll come up here, too,” observed Bobby cheerfully.

The caretaker took himself off, still grumbling his offended dignity. The elevator duly arrived in answer to a pressed button, and, as he sank earthwards, Bobby's thoughts were very busy. It was too late to do anything more that day, and he was still deep in thought as he made his way homeward. Short as was the time since he had begun this investigation, he had already learned much. Impossible, he thought, that such a sequence of tragedies as this that he had heard of, all of sudden deaths of heavily insured persons, all occurring in baths, could have an innocent explanation. The arm of coincidence is not so long as that, and he remembered the “Brides in the Bath” case he had read about. There were resemblances between that case and this, though this seemed upon a bigger and a bolder scale, and though this time apparently all the victims were men, while in the other affair all had been women. Easier, he supposed, to secure heavy insurances upon a man.

But it was going to be very difficult to secure proof. Each time the death had been certified as accidental by verdict of a coroner's jury. One case was nearly three years old, one fifteen months, one six months – and in much less than six months clues are lost, witnesses disappear, facts get covered up, details forgotten. For guilt there is no cloak like the lapse of time.

It was true, careful examination of the different documents the different companies had promised to place at his disposal might provide additional information it would be possible to follow up. Already there were interesting and significant facts jotted down in his notebook. For instance, this Mr. Percy Lawrence had recently taken out a heavy insurance on his own life. Did that mean he was the next destined victim? Or did it, as Bobby grimly surmised, mean that somewhere another “Lawrence” waited unsuspectingly a fate for which preparations were already being made? Already Bobby felt sure a good deal of impersonation had been practised in these cases. It was certain, for instance, someone else must have taken Ronnie's place for the insurance company's medical examination.

Though if in fact Mr. Percy Lawrence were meant himself to be the next in this long trail of death, and if that could be demonstrated to him, the investigation would become easier. He would presumably know his life had been insured, and for whose benefit.

The history and identity of the wearer of the leopard-skin coat would have to be investigated, too.

Then the machinery of the Yard would have to be set to work in an attempt to discover the identity of the different victims. Probably all of them had lived – and died – under false names, as had Bobby's unfortunate cousin, Ronnie. The lists of men who disappear every year would have to be gone through carefully, though it was likely enough that they were all men who, as Ronnie had done, had cut themselves off for one reason or another from their former friends and acquaintances, and for whom, therefore, no inquiry had been made. To this day no one had been able to identify the body of the victim in the Rouse case; no one could say whose was the headless body found in a trunk at Brighton.

One thing seemed certain. Each of these deaths had been most carefully arranged.

That evening Bobby spent pouring over the notes he had made during the day, trying to co-ordinate them, comparing every detail, asking himself, for instance, if there were significance or mere coincidence in the fact that in two of the tragedies the names of one witness called had had “A. B.” for its initial letters. He noticed, too, how often the addresses mentioned were in Ealing, and how none of them seemed to be permanent but always of a lodging house or hotel of some sort or else of a vacated flat, while the address of the Islington flat had been given often. Then, too, there was the leopard-skin coat worn by the woman who had passed herself off as Ronnie's wife. Apparently a similar coat – or was it the same? – had been worn by the typist engaged by the Berry, Quick Syndicate that, according to the caretaker, did so little business it hardly needed a typist at all. No doubt, Bobby reflected, there were plenty of similar coats being worn by various women in London, but he was inclined to think this must be a fairly expensive one – probably, from the description, ocelot fur – or it would hardly have attracted such respectful attention from the sharp-eyed young City women whose comments had reached the ears of the caretaker.

But Bobby knew enough of the world to be well aware that some typists, like some chorus girls, seem to be able to afford expensive furs on salaries of forty or fifty shillings a week. It did not do to jump to conclusions, and very likely the fur coat meant nothing.

Again in the morning Bobby studied his notes, and one thing that seemed even more plain to him than before was the extraordinary difficulty caused by the lapse of time. What hope was there after so long an interval of obtaining, for example, any description of the personal appearance of those who had given evidence at these inquests, or been in any way concerned?

Always, Bobby told himself, time was the detective's greatest enemy; and, looking at the clock, was startled to observe that it was nearly the lunch-hour, so that he had spent the whole morning dreaming and musing over his notes when he ought to have been up and doing. Lapse of time the detective's greatest enemy indeed, and here he was allowing it to slip by unheeded. Feeling very guilty, he seized hat and stick and made off as fast as he could, though, in spite of his haste, it was after one when he reached the City. His own appetite was in good condition, and it is elementary that the well-lunched man is more likely to be communicative than the man still hungry. Bobby decided to wait, therefore, till lunch was over, and – for he still had enough to occupy his thoughts – he lingered for some time over his own coffee and cigarette. One computation he made was that the total involved in these different cases came to something like £70,000, a total that seemed bigger and more impressive to Bobby than it had done to the insurance company officials, more used to thinking in large sums. One of them had mentioned quite casually the previous afternoon that a client of theirs – a member of the House of Lords – was insured for £400,000.

And Bobby reflected that, with a profit of £70,000 in view – paid down in cash, too; none of your jewelry to be sold at a tenth of its value, none of your traceable securities to be dealt with only at risk and heavy discount – it was easy to understand the elaborate organization, the careful, long-distance planning, the trouble taken to provide all necessary documents, that these cases seemed to show.

But surely, Bobby thought, this Mr. Percy Lawrence, in charge, apparently, of the operations of the Berry, Quick Syndicate, would be only too ready, once he understood what apparent peril he himself stood in, to help to unravel what in Bobby's eyes was beginning to take on the semblance of a murder plot of an audacity and on a scale unparalleled. Lawrence would have to be handled with tact, since there was at least the possibility that he was implicated in the previous cases, in which event his own neck might be in danger. Nor are the officers of the Crown too eager to accept the evidence of an accomplice if doing so can possibly be avoided. But Bobby thought Lawrence much more likely to prove the new destined victim rather than a former accomplice, or why this heavy insurance on his life? There was, of course, the possibility that the insurance was merely a blind, and that Lawrence was in fact responsible for everything that had happened.