Information Received E-Book

E. R. Punshon

• Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Description In his London townhouse, city magnate Sir Christopher Clarke is found lying murdered. At the other end of the house his safe hangs open and rifled, and earlier in the day he had visited his solicitors in order to make a drastic change in his will. Later it is discovered that there has been fraud connected with the dead man, and this is but one of the many complications with which Superintendent Mitchell is faced. Fortunately he has the assistance of young Constable Owen, a talented young Oxford graduate who, finding all other careers closed to him by the 'economic blizzard' of the early thirties, has joined the London Police force. Information Received is the first of E.R. Punshon's acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1933 and the start of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. "What is distinction? The few who achieve it step - plot or no plot - unquestioned into the first rank. We recognized it in Sherlock Holmes, and in Trent's Last Case, in The Mystery of the Villa Rose, in the Father Brown stories and in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time." Dorothy L. Sayers

Leseprobe

E.R. PUNSHONInformation Received

In his London townhouse, city magnate Sir Christopher Clarke is found lying murdered. At the other end of the house his safe hangs open and rifled, and earlier in the day he had visited his solicitors in order to make a drastic change in his will. Later it is discovered that there has been fraud connected with the dead man, and this is but one of the many complications with which Superintendent Mitchell is faced. Fortunately he has the assistance of young Constable Owen, a talented young Oxford graduate who, finding all other careers closed to him by the ‘economic blizzard’ of the early thirties, has joined the London Police force.

Information Received is the first of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1933 and the start of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels.

Introduction

When E.R. Punshon (1874-1956) launched his Bobby Owen mystery series in 1933 with the publication of Information Received, his new detective novel got from Dorothy L. Sayers, already one of England’s most renowned mystery writers, the kind of book review most novelists have only ever dreamed of getting. Excerpts from the Sayers review would emblazon the dust jackets of Punshon mysteries for the next twenty-three years, until Punshon’s death in 1956, one year before Sayers’s own passing.

“What is distinction,” Sayers asked rhetorically in her Sunday Times crime fiction column review of Information Received, before concluding that distinction’s name was Punshon. Sayers made clear that what she referred to here was not plotting distinction but literary distinction. It was literary distinction, she declared, that was “missed by scores of competent mystery writers who can construct impeccable plots. The few who achieve it step—plot or no plot—unquestioned into the first rank.” Sayers asserted that Punshon’s tales possessed qualities more important than those which arose from “the mere mechanics of puzzle-making,” namely “that elusive something which makes them count as literature” and “that enhanced and glorified reality which is the highest art.” The current Punshon mystery, Information Received, was, in Sayers’s view, “a real book, not assembled by a journeyman, but written, as a book ought to be, by a man who is a writer first and foremost.”

Dorothy L. Sayers’s review of E.R. Punshon’s Information Received was a career-making moment for the lesser-known mystery writer, an epochal event in the life of a man who in 1933 was nearly sixty years old and had been publishing novels since the year of Queen Victoria’s death. Punshon’s novel Earth’s Great Lord, a romance of the Australian outback, had appeared in 1901, to be followed in 1905 by Constance West, a romance of the Canadian wilderness. After publishing a third mainstream novel, Rhoda in Between (1907), Punshon gave an early hint of his penchant for mystery-mongering, producing a couple of crime tales, The Mystery of Lady Isobel (1907) and The Spin of the Coin (1908), both more notable for sensational melodrama than sober detection. “Thrill succeeds thrill,” observed The Bookman of The Mystery of Lady Isobel, while the Morning Leader confidently declared: “Lovers of sensation will rejoice over The Spin of the Coin.”

Of Punshon’s next dozen novels, at least four—Hidden Lives (1913), The Solitary House (1918), The Woman’s Footprint (1919) and The Bittermeads Mystery (1922)—can be characterized as crime novels, though to each still clings the heady aroma of Edwardian melodrama. Only in 1929 did Punshon make his bid as an author of more firmly puzzle-focused, fair play detective fiction in the modern, Jazz Age manner, with his Inspector Carter and Sergeant Bell mystery series, which ran through five novels into 1932. Although Dorothy L. Sayers had praised the Carter-Bell series as well, the plaudits she lavished on Information Received, Punshon’s first Bobby Owen detective novel, must have been, for both Punshon himself and his publisher, Ernest Benn, an unexpected blessing.

Why was Sayers so powerfully struck by Information Received? Certainly at the time Sayers reviewed the novel she had become, through her reviews in the Sunday Times and other critical writings, perhaps the most vocal British exponent of transforming the traditional puzzle-oriented detective story into more of a novel of manners with crime, a process which she believed would lead the genre out of what she deemed its body-in-the-library creative dead-end. She saw in Punshon’s books, particularly Information Received, a mystery writer who could really write, someone interested in creating compelling stories of crime as it impacts psychologically credible people rather than merely fabricating intricate puzzles involving clichéd, cardboard characters.

Information Received introduces a new series character, a handsome, modest young policeman named Bobby Owen, who features in all thirty-five mystery novels Punshon published under his own name between 1933 and his death in 1956 (he also published two mystery novels under a pseudonym, Robertson Halket, that do not feature Owen). Eventually attaining the rank of Commander, Bobby, as Punshon calls him, starts as a lowly constable in Information Received. An Oxford graduate (pass degree only), Bobby turned to the Metropolitan Police Service after finding before him “a world with but scanty openings to offer to young University graduates with only pass degrees.” At the start of Information Received, Bobby has served on the force for three years, during which “his most exciting experiences had been escorting old ladies across the road and satisfying the insatiable thirst of children for the right time.” Yet things are about to change, most drastically.

Bobby is on the scene shortly after financier Sir Christopher Clarke is found in his billiard room, fatally felled by a couple of gunshot wounds to the chest. (“Close by lay a revolver, and an acrid smell of powder still lingered in the room. From two round, burnt holes in the dead man’s chest bubbles of blood were oozing with a slow and dreadful regularity.”) Soon on the scene as well is Superintendent Mitchell of the Criminal Investigation Department, a big, bluff, garrulous man who serves as Bobby’s mentor and the lead investigator in the early novels in the series. Given to quirky pronouncements (“A good detective never forgets his sandwiches…. That’s the first law of all sound detective work—don’t forget the sandwiches. We may have to wait here all day.”), Mitchell nevertheless has a wise head on his shoulders.

Mitchell’s wise head is needed in the Sir Christopher Clarke murder case, where a goodly number of people seem to have had reasons for wanting the dead man permanently out of the picture. Although, to be sure, Information Received has a proto-Cluedo-style opening, with a rich man found murdered with a revolver in the billiard room, the ending is anything but a standard Golden Age device, drawing as it does on an older, richer literary source and Punshon’s “own keen insight into the characters of those under pressure,” as mystery scholar Nick Fuller has put it. As Dorothy L. Sayers wrote over eighty years ago, with Information Received E.R. Punshon crafted a detective novel of distinction—and even better ones were yet to come from the new mystery master’s hands.

Curtis Evans

CHAPTER 1TWO THEATRE TICKETS

Since that formidable personage, Sir Christopher Clarke, square built, square jawed, iron of fist and will, with fierce little eyes that gleamed from under bushy brows as though they sought whom they might devour next, was by far the most important and influential client of Messrs Marsden, Carsley, and Marsden, Lincoln’s Inn, the well-known and long-established firm of solicitors, it is perhaps no matter for surprise that a certain nervousness, or even more than that, was apparent in the manner of the senior partner of the firm as he rose to greet him.

But Sir Christopher was well used to seeing people nervous and uncomfortable in his presence. Was he not the strong, successful man, the man who knew what he wanted and saw that he got it; were not respect, deference, consideration, even fear, his rightful due? And if it was now even more than fear that peeped from the dark, sharp eyes of Basil Marsden, Sir Christopher took that more as a compliment than anything else. After all, is it not natural to fear the strong, and was he not strong with the strength of a quarter of a million in cash and a credit as high as that of any man in the City of London? Why, but for the recent slump he would have been a millionaire by now, and even the slump had affected him as little as any man.

So if he noticed the terror that seemed to show in the dark, sharp eyes, if he noticed a certain trembling in the white, well-cared-for hands that moved about the papers on the lawyer’s desk, he took no notice. He said:

‘About the Belfort Trust?’

‘I have the papers here,’ answered Mr Marsden. ‘The accounts show a total of a little over £20,000. A large sum,’ he smiled, ‘and as in these days of smash and grab raids, one never knows, I asked Carsley to go himself to the Safe Deposit to fetch it, and take two of the clerks with him, just so as to be on the safe side. It’s nearly all in bearer bonds, you remember. Better safe than sorry is a good motto. I think Carsley was almost disappointed nothing happened.’

‘Carsley is a partner now, isn’t he?’ Sir Christopher asked.

A little surprised at the question, Mr Marsden nodded.

‘Now he’s passed his examinations,’ he said, a trifle maliciously. ‘He didn’t find it too easy, I’m afraid.’

Sir Christopher made no comment but the tone in which this was said had not escaped his notice. It was perhaps not unnatural that Basil Marsden, who had had sole control of the firm for a good many years, was not altogether pleased at having to admit as a partner on equal terms young Peter Carsley, the son of the original Carsley. But as partner he had had to be admitted, or else bought out at a price it would not have been convenient to pay. So installed in a partner’s room young Peter Carsley sat, though as yet very insecurely in the saddle and with hardly more knowledge of the business than any junior clerk – and indeed as a very junior clerk Marsden seemed more than half inclined to treat him.

Now Marsden got up and opening the door called into an adjoining room:

‘Peter, bring me the Belfort Trust papers, will you? Securities and all. They’re in the safe, you know. Dickson has my key.’

Closing the door, he came back to his seat.

‘Carsley won’t be a minute,’ he said. ‘May I ask, is it the intention to close the Trust?’

‘You don’t want that, eh?’ chuckled Sir Christopher. ‘Pretty profitable bit of business, eh?’

Marsden laughed, too.

‘Well, we’ve had it a long time,’ he said. ‘I suppose old Mr Belfort ...?’

‘Fussing a bit,’ admitted Sir Christopher. ‘He wants to see all papers, bonds, securities, everything himself. Natural, in a way, as he is taking over now his brother’s died. I shall tell him if he can find another trustee to act in my place, I shall be grateful. I have quite enough on my hands, as it is, and the hundred a year I get as trustee doesn’t pay me for my time.”

Mr Marsden gave an acquiescent murmur though, as, to his certain knowledge, Sir Christopher had never given to the Trust more time than was required for the signing of an occasional paper now and again, he was inclined to think Sir Christopher earned his hundred easily enough. Still, it was true this old Mr Belfort, suddenly imported into the affair through the death of another trustee, seemed inclined to be officious. But then again Sir Christopher wouldn’t mind that, provided Mr Belfort confined his officiousness to worrying not his fellow trustee but the Trust’s solicitor. Probably Sir Christopher would not care if this fussy old man wanted to do everything himself, instead of leaving everything to the others, as his recently deceased brother had been content to do.

There was a pause while they still waited for Peter Carsley. Sir Christopher, little used to waiting, looked frowningly at the door, and Mr Marsden suddenly remembered.

‘Oh, Sir Christopher,’ he said, ‘a boy left your theatre tickets this morning – here they are.’

‘Theatre tickets?’ repeated Sir Christopher. ‘What theatre tickets?’

‘From the Regency,’ explained Mr Marsden, producing an envelope with the imprint of that well-known theatre and marked ‘Two stalls’. He added: ‘I went with a friend the other night. I had no idea Shakespeare was so interesting. I didn’t find it at all boring, not at all.’

He paused, for Sir Christopher was looking in a puzzled way at the envelope the lawyer had handed him.

‘Some mistake,’ he said. ‘I’ve not booked any seats anywhere. Who left it here?’

‘A boy from the theatre,’ Marsden explained, looking puzzled in his turn. ‘It’s addressed to you, in our care, so we thought it was all right.’

‘I see it’s my name,’ grunted Sir Christopher, opening the envelope. ‘Two stalls for to-night, apparently, but there’s no–’

He paused abruptly, and Marsden saw that he had become pale, that in his small, fierce eyes had crept what almost seemed a sudden terror. His hand shook that held the tickets, and all at once he looked a smaller, frailer man, as if in that one moment something had gone out of him, something that left him naked and afraid.

For the moment Marsden almost supposed that he was dreaming, for what could there be in two theatre tickets to throw into this sudden panic the strong, the successful, the prosperous wealthy man of business?

Sir Christopher got up suddenly and went to the window. He threw it open and leaned out, far out, as if he had great need of air, and for a moment Marsden played with the idea of creeping up behind and taking him by the legs and throwing him out.

A foolish, impracticable idea, of course. Besides, the Marsden, Carsley, and Marsden offices were on the first floor of the building and a fall would hardly have been fatal, not immediately fatal at any rate. Anyhow, the opportunity passed, for Sir Christopher turned back into the room and very slowly, very deliberately, tore envelope and tickets in half and threw them down on the floor.

‘Trying to frighten me,’ he said between his teeth, more to himself than to Marsden, and Marsden wondered bewilderedly why a gift of two stalls for a successful Shakespeare revival should be supposed to be an attempt to frighten a man like Sir Christopher. It was said that the finest performance of Hamlet for two generations was to be seen just now at the Regency, and what was there about that to alarm any man? But Sir Christopher was looking straight in front of him as grimly as though he saw there some strange enemy, and though his great clenched fist on the table before him was steady enough, there was still that dark look of terror in his eyes – of terror mastered and held down no doubt, but of terror all the same. He said heavily: ‘It doesn’t matter... it makes no difference... Marsden, I’ll make a fresh will.’

‘Now, to-day?’ stammered Marsden, more and more astonished.

‘Now, to-day,’ repeated Sir Christopher, glaring at him as if daring him to say a word, and the door opened and young Peter Carsley came in rather quickly, carrying a sealed packet in his hands.

‘I’m so sorry I’ve been so long,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t get the safe open at first.’

Peter was a tall, fair, good-looking youngster, with grey eyes, prominent, well-shaped nose, a strong, even obstinate-looking mouth and chin, and a direct, rather blunt manner. That he had had some difficulty in passing his final examinations is a fact that must not be concealed, but at any rate he had got through in the end, even though the intensive effort required had quite likely cost him his chance of representing England against Wales at Twickenham – and whether the gain was worth the sacrifice he was in his secret heart not quite sure.

He greeted Sir Christopher now with a certain restraint and Sir Christopher’s manner to him was far from cordial, indeed almost rude. Peter flushed a little, he had a trick of flushing, it was the secret shame of his inner life, and put down on the table the sealed packet he had brought with him.

‘This is the list of securities,’ he said, producing a typewritten document. ‘It’s not been checked yet.’

‘We’ll do that now,’ growled Sir Christopher. ‘Make sure they’re all there for Belfort to see. He’s coming to dinner to-night, and he can go through them afterwards to his heart’s content.’

‘Shall you be keeping them all night?’ Marsden asked, a little startled. ‘Isn’t that a trifle – dangerous? £20,000, almost all in negotiable stuff.’

‘I’ve a good safe,’ Sir Christopher retorted, ‘and I’m sorry for the burglar I lay hands on.’ He held out his hand as he spoke and certainly it looked one of which the grip would be formidable enough. ‘Besides, I keep a loaded six-shooter in my bedroom,’ he added.

‘But–’ began Marsden hesitatingly.

‘But what?’ grunted Sir Christopher. ‘I’ve had diamonds worth as much as that in the safe for three months now or longer – they’ve been all right.’

He had rather a grim look as he spoke, and indeed his square-set figure, his fierce, glittering eyes and great hooked nose all gave him the look of some huge bird of prey it would be best not to meddle with. One felt it would be a rash thief indeed who ventured within his reach.

Peter turned towards the door, and, as he did so, noticed the torn theatre tickets lying where Sir Christopher had thrown them down. He paused, surprised, and Sir Christopher said with an evident sneer:

‘Two stalls for a theatre. You can have them, if you like. I’m engaged.’

Looking still more surprised, Peter picked them up.

‘Oh, thank you,’ he said, with the gratitude a gift of theatre tickets always evokes, and then with a certain disappointment: ‘Oh, Shakespeare.’

‘Prefer a musical show?’ asked Sir Christopher.

‘Well, yes, I do,’ confessed Peter. ‘They ram Shakespeare down your throat so at school, you do get fed up with him.’

‘Better go,’ grunted Sir Christopher. ‘It’ll improve your mind. They’re for to-night.’

‘Oh, for to-night, sorry, I’m engaged to-night,’ Peter answered, and put down the tickets on the corner of the table from which, with an angry gesture, Sir Christopher swept them to the floor as the door closed behind Peter.

‘Young puppy, infernal young puppy,’ Sir Christopher snarled. ‘Did you hear that?– like his insolence. He meant he was engaged because he knows Jennie’s going to the Amherst ball and he’s going, too. Does the young fool think I’ll ever let her marry him?’

CHAPTER 2THE NEW WILL

Marsden judged it prudent to make no answer to this question, especially as it was evident that Sir Christopher did not expect one. That Peter had met Miss Jennie two or three times and had been duly smitten by her fresh young beauty, Marsden already knew. He had even heard that Miss Jennie seemed inclined to show his good-looking young partner rather more favour than as a rule she bestowed on the eager youths who dangled in her train. But obviously the idea of a marriage between the young solicitor, only just admitted to practise, and the daughter of a man of Sir Christopher’s wealth and standing – and ambition – was not one to be taken seriously. Very certainly Sir Christopher entertained quite other views for the disposal of his daughter’s hand. Indeed, Sir Christopher’s frowning brows and angry eyes told plainly how he regarded this project that he evidently knew the young lawyer had been rash enough and foolish enough to entertain.

But without saying anything more he drew the Belfort Trust documents towards him. Marsden had everything in order, everything clear and simple, and Sir Christopher was soon satisfied. The list of securities was checked and given back to Marsden, and the securities themselves, and the other documents, Sir Christopher thrust into his dispatch case, all ready for the inspection of old Mr Belfort that evening.

‘Nothing Belfort can find to grumble at there,’ he said. ‘If he wants to realize I shan’t object and it could be done at once – everything realizable at short notice. Now get my will. I’ll destroy it at once and I’ll give you instructions for a new one.’

‘I’ll go and get it myself,’ Marsden said.

It was kept in the strong room in the basement and Marsden was absent a few minutes. When he returned, he was surprised to find Sir Christopher had picked up the torn pieces of the theatre tickets and had put them together on the table before him. With so strange an intensity was he staring at them, as though they concealed some secret his angry and determined eyes were resolute to discover, that at first he did not hear Marsden re-enter the room. But when Marsden spoke, once again with that same angry gesture he had used before, he swept the tickets to the floor, almost as though defying them to do their worst.

‘Got it?’ he asked, holding out his hand for the will. ‘Humph, good many years since this was drawn up. Half to Jennie, half to Brenda.’ He looked up in his fierce, abrupt way, as if expecting a challenge and eager to reply to it. ‘Brenda’s nothing to complain of,’ he declared, almost with defiance. ‘Not everyone would leave his money equally between his own daughter and a stepdaughter, eh?’

‘I must say I thought it very generous to Miss Laing,’ agreed Marsden, who was far indeed from any intention of challenging anything whatever the firm’s most important client chose to say.

‘Bound to provide for her, of course,’ Sir Christopher went on. ‘But equal shares – that shows I meant to do the right thing. Different now she’s getting married, though.’

‘Shall I take your instructions, Sir Christopher?’ Marsden asked.

‘You know Brenda’s engaged to Mark Lester?’ continued Sir Christopher. ‘Clever young fellow, Mark, and has a very good post with Baily’s; his mother’s some relation of Mrs Baily. Excellent prospects. He writes poetry and plays and stuff, too, I’m told, and of course there’s not much harm in that so long as he keeps it just as a hobby – might make some money too, perhaps, you never know. Very much in love with Brenda, apparently.’

‘I heard something about it,’ Marsden answered cautiously, not quite sure yet how Sir Christopher viewed the engagement, but very certain that anyhow Miss Jennie would never have been permitted to engage herself to this young City clerk with literary tastes, however promising his prospects might be.

Rumour, indeed, said that Sir Christopher had done all in his power to bring their engagement about, so much so that it had been hinted he was anxious to be rid of his stepdaughter and for that reason was marrying her off to the first man he could find. But even if that were so, and he had rather imposed a husband upon Brenda than allowed her to choose for herself, at any rate she had seemed willing enough and no reasonable objection could be taken to Lester, who was a presentable young fellow with a career before him and good prospects. And then perhaps it was not altogether unnatural that Sir Christopher should wish to see his own daughter, now that she was of age, taking over the management of his house. Up to now, by virtue of her seven years’ seniority, and also possibly by reason of her more forceful character, the household reins had been quite naturally in Brenda’s hands, though that had never caused any disagreement or jealousy between the two girls. Jennie had never found anything to question in an arrangement that had always seemed to her the obvious one, and indeed, ever since her early childhood, when their mother had died, had been accustomed to look up to her big sister for help and sympathy, almost as to a second mother.

‘Everything to Jennie, this time,’ Sir Christopher said in his gruff, abrupt way. ‘The same executors, the same legacies, otherwise everything to Jennie for her sole use and benefit.’

‘But – Miss Laing?’ Marsden said, hesitatingly, not quite sure whether Sir Christopher had not forgotten her.

‘Just say,’ directed Sir Christopher, ‘that I have already provided for her in another way. I told her this morning what I meant to do for her – some people would have thought it generous. Anyhow, she knows. We’ll attend to that afterwards. At present, everything to Jennie – provided, provided,’ repeated Sir Christopher slowly, * that at my death she is unmarried. Make that clear. Everything to her if she is unmarried. If she is married, then – then everything to the King Edward Hospital Fund. Have I got to say it again?’ he barked suddenly, as Marsden sat and stared, very much astonished at so unexpected a conclusion.

‘No, no, I quite understand,’ he said hurriedly now. ‘Everything to Miss Jennie, provided she is unmarried. If she is married, everything to the King Edward Hospital Fund. A clause to say Miss Laing is otherwise provided for. All smaller legacies and everything else to stand.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sir Christopher. ‘Now draw up a deed of gift or settlement or whatever you call it transferring to Brenda the whole of my holding in the three and a half per cent War Loan–’

‘The whole of it?’ asked Marsden, more and more surprised at arrangements that seemed to him more and more eccentric.

‘Forty thousand, isn’t it?’ asked Sir Christopher.

‘A very large sum,’ commented Marsden.

‘No one shall say I didn’t do my duty by her,’ declared Sir Christopher, getting to his feet.

‘The money is to be settled on her absolutely?’ Marsden asked.

‘Absolutely, for her sole use and benefit,’ Sir Christopher replied. ‘For her to play drakes and ducks with, if she wants to. I shall consider my responsibility to her fully discharged.’

‘Very generously discharged indeed,’ murmured Marsden; and indeed was inclined to think it a generosity almost excessive.

‘No one shall be able to say she’s anything to complain of,’ Sir Christopher repeated.

He went across to the empty grate, and there, striking a match, put light to the old will and watched carefully to see that it was entirely destroyed. When the last little flame had flickered out, and the thing was utterly consumed, he collected hat, umbrella, gloves, nodded a good-bye to Marsden, and then, just as he was in the act of going out, he said:

‘Oh, by the way, let young Carsley help you draw up the new will. He may as well know about it.’

With that he went off and Marsden whistled softly to himself.

‘That’s that,’ he mused, ‘and that explains the will – puts a spoke in Mr Peter’s wheel very effectively indeed. Anyone who marries Miss Jennie now marries a pauper, unless and until the old man makes another will, which of course is what he’ll do as soon as he gets her safely off to someone he approves of. Meanwhile, checkmate to Mr Peter. But I wonder what’s making him so generous to the other girl? Jolly queer, not like him a bit; not many people, anyhow, would make marriage settlements on such a scale for a stepdaughter. Forty thousand in the three and a half per cents is a jolly nice wedding present.’

He went to the door and called to his young partner. ‘Old Clarke’s been giving me instructions for a fresh will,’ he said. ‘Everything to the Jennie girl, unless she is married at his death. If she is married, everything to charity. He specially mentioned that I was to tell you.’

There was a faint, malicious smile on Marsden’s lips as he said this, and for a moment or two Peter made no reply. Then he said slowly and deliberately:

‘We rather expected something of the sort.’

‘Who is “we”?’ demanded Marsden.

‘Jennie and I,’ Peter answered. ‘You see, we were married three weeks ago.’

‘What?’ shouted Marsden. ‘What?’

But Peter did not think it necessary to repeat what he had said.

‘Good Lord!’ said Marsden, slowly taking it in. ‘Does he know?’

‘I don’t suppose he knows,’ Peter answered. ‘I expect he has some idea.’

‘Well, I’m blessed,’ said Marsden, coming into the room and sitting down. ‘You young fool, you’ve done it now – the girl won’t get a penny.’

Peter said nothing, and Marsden sat staring and thinking till another and startling idea came to him.

‘Good Lord!’ he cried, ‘ten to one he’ll take it out of the firm – he’ll ruin the firm for this. You fool, you’ve done me in, too.’

‘I thought of that,’ answered Peter calmly, ‘so I’ll get out. You can tell him you’ve given me the sack, if you like. That’ll calm him down as far as you’re concerned. My wife’ – he flushed crimson, the words were still new to him, still wonderful and lovely – ‘my wife and I talked it all over. We expected something like this. That is one reason why we thought it better to get married privately – that can’t be undone, and Sir Christopher can do what he likes, but he can’t undo our marriage, so it will be no good his trying to bully Jennie. There’s no telling what he mightn’t have been up to before, but now he can’t do anything. But very likely he would try to get at me and perhaps at you as well, if I was still here. So I’ll get out. I shan’t be sorry to chuck the job, anyhow. I’m no good at it, and never shall be. I should never make a lawyer and don’t want to, either. I’ve talked it over with Willy Simmonds. He’s willing to buy me out and come in with you. It’ll be a good thing for you, he’s a jolly smart chap and he has lots of experience and a fair practice already.’

Marsden had become very pale. He said nothing, but his expression had become so strange that Peter was quite alarmed.

‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘I thought you would jump at the idea. You will get a clever brainy fellow as partner instead of a duffer at the job like me – you were cursing heaven only yesterday for having landed you with me for a partner. Simmonds is coming along to see you any time you like – what’s the matter? You don’t object to Simmonds, do you? You told me yourself last week you wished to the Lord you had someone like him to work with.’

‘You fool – you fool – you infernal fool,’ Marsden stammered, ‘you’ve ruined me and yourself, too.’

‘What on earth–?’ began Peter, but Marsden jumped to his feet in a fury.

‘You fool,’ he almost screamed, ‘you may as well know now, you would have sooner or later. There’s a deficiency of Lord knows how much – I don’t. I had to take money where I could get it to make up the Belfort Trust. I was afraid old Clarke would spot something was wrong, but I suppose as long as the totals were right, he didn’t care. I’ve had to take money from half a dozen other accounts and do you suppose Simmonds will buy without finding that out, and when he does–’

He left the sentence unfinished, and Peter tried hard to understand, but found it difficult.

‘Do you mean,’ he said in a whisper, in a low, awestricken whisper. ‘Embezzlement?’ he asked.

‘That’s what the courts would call it, I suppose,’ Marsden answered, laughing harshly. ‘I could have put the money back in time, I always have till now. It’s that Belfort Trust upset me – once I could get that back I should be all right. I could use it and carry on till I had got things square again, but now, you fool, you utter fool, you’ve ruined everything. If you stay with the firm Sir Christopher will smash it; and you can’t sell out and clear out – you’ve nothing to sell except your share in a bankrupt swindle.’

CHAPTER 3MURDER

Early that same evening, about the time when the great, daily tide of humanity ebbs from work to home, Police-Constable Robert Owen, B.A. (Oxon) – a pass degree only – took shelter from a light passing shower under one of the tall cedars that grew on either side of the gate admitting to the imposing Hampstead residence of Sir Christopher Clarke. The wide stretching arms of the trees, reaching out over the roadway, protected him well enough from the rain as he waited for his sergeant, who, in the ordinary routine, was due soon to meet him thereabouts.

As yet there was no sign of him, and, stifling a yawn, Bobby Owen reflected that a policeman’s lot, whether happy or not, was at any rate sufficiently dull. During the three years he had spent in the force his most exciting experiences had been escorting old ladies across the road and satisfying the insatiable thirst of children for the right time. Of course his luck had been atrociously bad. Any little turn up with Communists blazing to overthrow civilization, or with Irish more modestly content with the destruction of the British Empire, always took place when he was off duty. Smash and grab raids never happened on his beat, no burglar ever troubled his tranquillity, even motorists themselves seemed to suffer from an epidemic of good behaviour when he was near. Indeed Bobby was almost reduced to wishing that when, on coming down from Oxford, he had found a world with but scanty openings to offer to young University graduates with only pass degrees, he had decided to join the army instead of choosing the police – even though an army in peace time had always seemed to him the last word in futility.

Of course, his athletic record was good enough to have secured him a post on the staff of almost any school in the land, except the few where the standard is so high that besides the necessary athletics, some scholarship also is demanded. But towards the teaching profession he felt no attraction whatever – quite the reverse, indeed – and an offer of a post in the haberdashery department, known as ‘habys’, in one of the great London stores he had also declined in spite of the alluring prospect it held out of becoming in due course a super-Selfridge, of out-harroding Harrods, of aiding the flag of Kensington High Street to blaze yet more terrific through the advertisement columns of all the papers in the country.

So here he was in the police, very bored, and uncomfortably aware that he was not in too good odour with his superiors. For as soon as they realized that he was an old St George’s College man, he had been selected for night club work, and to that job he had shown his dislike so plainly that he had been at once shot out to Hampstead, there to be engaged on ordinary patrol duty. Not that his superiors really minded much, for there is no lack of good-looking young constables who can wear evening dress as though midnight had never seen them in any other attire, and who are perfectly prepared to spend a fiver of their country’s money on bad champagne and worse whisky. But all the same neither in ‘The Force’ nor anywhere else is it wise for the ambitious to get a reputation for being ‘difficult’.

So Bobby was not only a little bored, but also a little depressed, as he sheltered outside ‘The Cedars’, and waited for the sergeant who did not come. Indeed, no living creature was in sight till down the drive from the house pattered an elderly man whose air of bland dignity, of grave responsibility, stamped him instantly as either a bishop or a butler, the lack of gaiters on his nether limbs however tipping the scales of probability in favour of the second alternative.

He had on a mackintosh, carried an umbrella, and was evidently on his way to the post, for he carried two or three letters in his hand. Seeing Bobby, he stopped and commented gravely on the deplorable weather. Constables on duty are warned against entering into conversation with strangers, but also it is prudent for them to be acquainted as far as possible with the domestic staffs of the neighbourhood. For it is surprising how many interesting and occasionally curious events the apparently humdrum lives of butler and maid are brought into contact with.

So Bobby responded genially, learnt that the stranger was butler at ‘The Cedars’ and was named Lewis, and that he was on the way to post these letters himself, because ‘one of them was of some importance, being no other than Mr Lewis’s instructions to his turf agent with regard to backing a certain double at the race meeting beginning the next day. Being informed what this double was, Bobby gave it as his considered opinion that the choice was a good one and might well come off.

For Bobby was an expert on the form of race-horses, that is to say, he read every day the pronouncements, equally authoritative and contradictory, of Captain Go, Major Know, and ‘The Spotter’, and, having done so, selected when possible a horse none of the three had mentioned. In this way he had brought off some remarkable coups, and had the reputation of knowing a lot, so much so, indeed, that even an inspector had been known to ask him for a tip. Not that Bobby took any real interest in racing, but in police work it is sometimes necessary to open conversations with strangers or to win the confidence of reluctant witnesses, and for both purposes a brief discussion on the prospects of tomorrow’s three-thirty is the best possible introduction. Indeed it is quite certain that any observation on this subject is more likely to draw a prompt and instructed reply from any Englishman anywhere than is any other imaginable remark.

That his approval of the proposed double was based upon solid knowledge Bobby was thus able to demonstrate, and, much cheered, Mr Lewis trotted off to drop his letters into the pillar-box across the way. Coming back, he stopped again to speak to Bobby.

* You haven’t noticed a little old chap, thin face, long nose, grey whiskers, rather shabby, boots down at heels, hanging about here, have you?’ he asked. ‘If you do, you might keep an eye on him.’

‘Right,’ said Bobby. ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Been talking a bit wild,’ explained Lewis, ‘not using threats exactly but talking as if he meant to. Sir Christopher told me if he come again to make sure I saw him off the premises, but what’s the good of that? Nothing to stop him coming back.’

‘Sir Christopher your guv’nor?’ asked Bobby.

‘Yes,’ answered Lewis, ‘big City man – it’s him as nearly owns United Firms and he’s chairman of the City and Suburbs bank, too.’

‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Bobby. ‘Made a speech about getting back to gold the other day, didn’t he? Said gold was gold and when you had gold, why, then you had it. Made a big impression in the City, the papers said. What’s the trouble with the grey-whiskered bird?’

‘Expect,’ said Lewis with appreciation, ‘it’s someone the guv’nor’s done in the eye. Guv’nor told me, if he gave any trouble to clear him out quick and see he didn’t hang about the house or garden. But how can I stop that? Nothing to prevent him slipping back again any time he wants. We don’t keep the gate locked, and, if we did, he could go in next door now it’s empty and get over the wall, couldn’t he?’

Bobby agreed that that was possible, promised to keep on the watch for any elderly and grey-whiskered gentlemen who looked as if they might ‘give trouble’, and Lewis, apparently easier in his mind, returned to the house.

Even yet the sergeant had not put in an appearance and Bobby began to wonder if something had occurred to prevent him from coming. Bobby decided to stroll to the corner and see if any sign of his approach were visible. Coming back, for no sergeant was in sight, he saw across the road an elderly man who certainly appeared to be paying a somewhat unusual attention to ‘The Cedars’, as though for some reason he took a special interest in the house. True, he did not fully answer the description Lewis had given, for he was not a little man but of middle height and size, and he looked more prosperous than shabby. A glance Bobby gave at his boots showed that, far from being down at heel, they were quite new, and he noticed, too, that they were unusually long and narrow, though that was not a point which interested him at the moment or to which he thought of attaching any importance. Nor had he grey whiskers but, instead, a sandy beard. Still, even Bobby’s short experience in the police had taught him that personal descriptions offered by apparently trustworthy witnesses were often wildly inaccurate, and it was at least certain that this stranger was elderly and that he was showing an unusual degree of interest in ‘The Cedars’.

‘Elmhurst’, the next house to ‘The Cedars’, was empty, except for a caretaker, and stood also in a fairly large garden of about half an acre or more. Deciding that it might be as well to watch this elderly stranger for a time, Bobby pushed open the ‘Elmhurst’ gate and took up his position behind one of the trees lining the short drive that led to the house. And scarcely had he done so when he heard, coming from the direction of the empty house, the sound of angry shouts, of a dog barking, of running footsteps.

All this seemed to require investigation more pressingly than did the movements of the elderly stranger, and Bobby ran up the drive towards the house, where he met the caretaker, a man named Walters. Walters, it seemed, had seen from the kitchen window a strange man in the garden, in which there was a fair amount of fruit growing, unripe still, but all the same subject to many raids. At once, fearing for the fruit, Walters had dashed out in pursuit, armed with an over-ripe tomato his wife had just been indignantly displaying to him as having been foisted off upon her by a too enterprising greengrocer.

‘Chap was after the apples,’ complained Walters indignantly, for the produce of the garden he regarded as part of the emoluments of his office. ‘I saw him from the kitchen but he must have spotted me, too, for he ran like a good’un – off he was and over the wall in quick time, but I let him have the tomato and it took him clean in the middle of the back – spoilt his Sunday suit for him, I hope,’ said Walters, chuckling, ‘but the cheek of it and in broad daylight, too.’

He and Bobby walked down the garden together, but could not discover that any fruit had been taken or any damage done.

‘I spotted him too quick,’ said Walters with satisfaction. ‘Got to be on the look out all the time, so you have.’

He enlarged on his troubles with naughty little boys, as well as with more serious, older raiders, and declared that sometimes the very apples and pears and plums stolen from the garden were offered by the thieves to his ‘missis’ for purchase. Bobby listened and sympathized, and looking at the wall, he said:

‘Good height, topped with glass, too. The chap must have had a bit of a job to get over.’

‘Had to, else I’d have copped him,’ said Walters proudly.

They went along to the wall, and soon found the place where it had been scaled, for the flower bed beneath was badly trampled, and several flowers broken. Complaining loudly of the damage done, Walters fetched a rake to smooth the soft mould, while Bobby found a ladder, and, mounting it, examined the top of the wall. He said:

‘He cut his hand getting over, at least, it looks like blood on some of the broken glass.’

Walters, finishing his task of smoothing the mould of the flower bed, expressed a wish that the broken bits of glass had cut the intruder to mincemeat, and then Bobby returned to his post in the road. There was no sign now of the old man he had noticed before, no sign either of his sergeant, and more for the sake of having something to put in his notebook than because he thought the incident of any real importance, Bobby began to write a brief report of it. He noted the time, now a quarter to seven, and, deciding to give up waiting any longer for the sergeant, who must, he supposed, have been somehow detained, he was on the point of moving away to resume his patrol, when he heard someone crying out for help. Looking round he saw a man standing at the open French window of a room built out from ‘The Cedars’ on the ground level, and beckoning to him with a certain wildness and urgency of gesture. Bobby began to run; quickly and lightly he ran up the gravel drive towards that gesticulating figure, which now, seeing him coming, ceased to gesture but waited with hardly less of urge and concentration in its intense, still attitude.

‘Murder,’ this man said as Bobby, leaving the drive, came running across the lawn to him, ‘it’s murder – it’s Sir Christopher Clarke and he’s been murdered.’

CHAPTER 4THE BILLIARD-ROOM

When he had called out this, and seen that Bobby had heard and was coming as quickly as possible, the stranger went back into the room. Bobby followed him through the open French window. It was a billiard-room he found himself in, containing a full-sized table, and at one end three or four comfortable-looking chairs grouped before the fireplace. A game had apparently been in progress, for the balls, and one cue, were on the table, and another cue was lying on the ground. The scoring board showed thirty-four for one player, forty for the other. Between the head of the billiard-table and the chairs before the fireplace lay the body of Sir Christopher, supine and still. Only a glance was needed to tell that here was death, for there was that about the prostrate form which told that all rendering it significant had fled, leaving it void, a deserted habitation. Yet there was something, too, in the contorted features, and the eyes still glaring upward under those bushy brows, that seemed to say the soul had parted from the flesh in anger and tumult and most fierce hatred.

Close by lay a revolver, and an acrid smell of powder still lingered in the room. From two round, burnt holes in the dead man’s chest bubbles of blood were oozing with a slow and dreadful regularity. From some other room in the house came the sound of music, one of Wagner’s stormy pieces somebody was playing on the piano, and playing very well too, as even Bobby’s limited knowledge of music told him. The crashing, reverberating chords seemed somehow a fitting accompaniment to the tragic scene on which he was gazing.

He said to the man who had called him:

‘What do you know of this?’

‘Only that I found him lying here, and I remembered I had seen a policeman at the gate, so I thought I had better call you at once. My name’s Gregory,’ he went on, ‘Dr Gregory. I’m Sir Christopher’s medical attendant. I came across to-night to see him – my God, who can have done it?’ he broke off, as if with a fresh realization of the horror of the thing.

‘You didn’t see or hear anything else?’ Bobby asked, and when the doctor shook his head, he added: ‘No one else knows, you’ve told no one else?’

‘No,’ answered the doctor. ‘I came in by the window there. I saw it was open and I thought Sir Christopher might be here. As soon as I got into the room I saw him, like that, dead. Someone’s shot him.’

‘It couldn’t be suicide?’ Bobby asked, and then: ‘That doesn’t matter now. The first thing is to get help. I suppose they have a phone here I can use. Will you wait till I get back and make sure no one comes in? Please don’t touch anything, don’t even close the window. Just stand by and see no one comes in. I’ll lock the door behind me to stop anyone coming in that way. No one seems to have heard the shots. Has that music been going on all the time?’

‘I think so,’ Gregory answered. ‘It’s Miss Laing, I expect. I don’t think it’s ever stopped.’

Bobby didn’t wait to ask who Miss Laing might be. He went out into the corridor, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket. The music sounded more loudly here. Evidently it came from a room just across the passage in which he found himself. The door a few steps farther along was half open and looking in Bobby saw that it was a large, well-furnished apartment, the drawing-room apparently. At one end was a grand piano at which, with her back towards him, a woman was sitting. The crashing chords of the Wagnerian music she was playing seemed to fill all the air, and Bobby thought it was no wonder that the pistol shots had not been heard, or, if heard, had merely been taken for a specially vigorous outburst. The music swelled now into the notes of a triumphal march, played with something of the vigour and the passion that characterized the music itself, and Bobby wondered what the player would think if she knew of the dreadful event that had just taken place while she poured out these strains of victory. Without entering the room, he walked on and came to the large inner hall, where he found himself face to face with his recent acquaintance, Lewis, who looked very bewildered and surprised at his unexpected appearance.

‘He doesn’t know anything either of what has happened,’ Bobby thought, ‘that’s plain enough.’ Aloud he said: ‘There has been an accident. Have you a phone here? I want to use it at once, please.’

‘An accident?’ Lewis repeated. ‘Them motors, them motors,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘never know where you are with ’em. Is it bad?’

“Yes,’ said Bobby impatiently. ‘I must get help at once. You’ve got a phone?’

‘We’ve two,’ answered Lewis proudly. ‘One in the outer hall with an extension to my pantry, and Sir Christopher had one put in for himself. In his study, that is.’

‘I’ll use that one,’ said Bobby, thinking it would be more private. ‘Where’s the study?’

‘But Sir Christopher mightn’t like –’ protested Lewis. ‘Very particular gent, Sir Christopher.’

‘Not now,’ answered Bobby. ‘There’ll be no objection from him now. Show me the room, quick, don’t waste any more time.’

Impressed by Bobby’s manner, trained, too, by lifelong habit to obey the orders given him, Lewis led the way, though still a little uneasily, to a large comfortably furnished room, the principal features being an enormous writing-table in the middle of the apartment and a correspondingly enormous safe against one wall. The door of the safe hung open and the contents seemed somewhat disordered. The window, of the sash type, was open and the curtains pulled aside. As the house stood on a pronounced slope, the flooring on this, the east side, was not on a level with the ground as was the case on the west where the billiard-room was situated, but was raised several feet above the ground. On the big mahogany writing-table stood a phone. Bobby picked it up and called the police station.

‘Well, now,’ said Lewis, staring hard at the open safe, ‘I never knew the guv’nor leave that open before, I never did.’

Bobby was through now and briefly reported. He was told help would be sent at once and that meantime he must see nothing was interfered with. Lewis, hearing what was being said, stood as if utterly paralysed, till at last he burst out in a sort of shout:

‘Murdered? Sir Christopher? The guv’nor shot? Good God Almighty, who done that? Who...?’