A Blunt Instrument (11 page)

"By all means go down there," said Hannasyde. "I want the place kept under observation. Meanwhile, I've some inquiries to make about the state of Neville Fletcher's bank balance, Mr. North's movements on the night of the murder, and the expansive Mr. Budd's mysterious business with Fletcher."

"You'll have a busy morning," prophesied the Sergeant. "Growing, isn't it? We started off with one man, and we've now got one lady, one jealous husband, one outside broker, one dead cabaret-girl, one criminal and one suspicious-looking nephew implicated in it. And we've only been at work on it since 9.00 this morning. If it goes on at this rate, we shan't be able to move for suspects in a couple of days' time. You know, I often wonder what made me join the Force." He began to put his papers together. "If it weren't for the fact that murder doesn't seem to fit in with what we know of Charlie Carpenter, my money would be on him. Do you suppose he's been hunting the late Ernest down ever since he came out of gaol?"

"I don't know, but considering that not even your fair Lily knew who Angela's protector was, it seems quite possible."

"Or," said the Sergeant musingly, "he found out by accident, and thought he saw his way to putting the black on the late Ernest. Come to think of it, that theory goes nicely with Mrs. North's revised version - the bit about Ernest saying the man X had made a mistake. Well, one thing's certain: we've got to get hold of Carpenter."

"The Department can look after that. I'd like you to get down to Marley first thing tomorrow, and see what you can pick up." Hannasyde rose, adding with a twinkle: "By the way, if you should run across a forceful young woman with a monocle, God help you! She's Mrs. North's sister, and interested in crime. Writes detective stories."

"What?" said the Sergeant. "You mean to tell me I'm going to have an authoress tagging round after me?"

"I should think it's quite probable," replied Hannasyde gravely.

"Well, isn't that nice?" said the Sergeant with awful sarcasm. "You'd have thought Ichabod was a big enough cross for anyone to bear, wouldn't you? It just shows you: when Fate's got it in for you there's no limit to what you may have to put up with."

Hannasyde laughed. "Go home and study Havelock Ellis, or Freud, or whoever it is you do study. Perhaps that'll help you to cope with the situation."

"Study! I won't have time," said the Sergeant, reaching for his hat. "I'm going to be busy this evening."

"You'd better relax. You've had a pretty strenuous day. What are you going to do?"

"Mug up the Bible," said the Sergeant bitterly.

Chapter Seven

It was late when Hannasyde left his room at Scotland Yard, and when at last he went home he had learnt enough from his perusal of Ernest Fletcher's papers to make him visit the offices of Mr. Abraham Budd shortly after nine o'clock the following morning.

Mr. Budd did not keep him waiting. The typist who had carried his card in to her employer returned almost immediately, pop-eyed with curiosity, ready to dramatise, as soon as a suitable audience should present itself, this thrilling and sinister call, and invited him, in a fluttering voice, to follow her.

Mr. Budd, who rose from a swivel-chair behind his desk as Hannasyde was ushered in, and came eagerly forward to greet him, corresponded so exactly with Sergeant Hemingway's description of him, that Hannasyde had to bite back a smile. He was a short, fat man, with a certain oiliness of skin, and an air of open affability that was almost oppressive. He shook Hannasyde by the hand, pressed him into a chair, offered him a cigar, and said several times that he was very glad to see him.

"Very glad, I am, Superintendent," he said. "What a shocking tragedy! What a terrible affair! I have been most upset. As I told the Sergeant at Scotland Yard, it struck me all of a heap. All of a heap," he repeated impressively. "For I respected Mr. Fletcher. Yes, sir, I respected him. He had a Brain. He had a Grasp of Finance. Over and over again I've said it: Mr. Fletcher had a Flair. That's the word. And now he's gone."

"Yes," said Hannasyde unemotionally. "As you say. You did a good deal of business with him, I understand?"

Mr. Budd managed to convey by a glance out of his astute little eyes and a gesture of the hands which betrayed his race, an answer in which assent was mingled with deprecation.

"What kind of business?" said Hannasyde.

Mr. Budd leaned forward, resting his arms upon his desk, and replied in a confidential tone: "Strictly private, Mr. Hannasyde!" He looked slyly at Hannasyde. "You take my meaning? There isn't a soul in this world I'd discuss a client's affairs with, least of all Mr. Fletcher's, but when a thing like this happens, I see it's different. I'm discreet. I have to be discreet. If I weren't, where do you think I'd be? You don't know; I don't know, but it wouldn't be where I am today. But I'm on the side of law and order. I realise it's my duty to assist the police where and how I can. My duty as a citizen. That's why I'm going to make an exception to my rule of silence. Now, you're a broad-minded man, Mr. Hannasyde. You're a man of experience. You know that everything that goes on in the City doesn't get published in the Financial Yews." He shook with amusement, and added: "Not by a long chalk!"

"I am aware, certainly, that a not-over-scrupulous man in Mr. Fletcher's position - he was upon several boards, I think? - might find it convenient to employ an agent to buy on his behalf stocks which he would not like it to be known that he had bought," replied Hannasyde.

Mr. Budd's eyes twinkled at him. "You know everything, don't you, Mr. Hannasyde? But that's it. That's it in a nutshell. You may not approve of it, I may not approve of it, but what has it to do with us, after all?"

"It has this much to do with you, that Mr. Fletcher was in the habit of employing you in that manner."

Budd nodded. "Quite right. I don't deny it. Where would be the sense in that? My business is to obey my clients' instructions, and that's what I do, Mr. Hannasyde, asking no questions."

"Not always, I think," said Hannasyde.

Budd looked hurt. "Why, what do you mean? Now, that's a thing that has never been said to me yet. I don't like it, Mr. Hannasyde. No, I don't like it."

"Surely you told Sergeant Hemingway yesterday that you had failed to obey certain of Mr. Fletcher's instructions?"

The smile, which had vanished from Budd's face, reappeared. He leaned back in his chair, his mind apparently relieved, and said: "Oh now, now, now! That's an exaggeration. Oh yes, that's just a little exaggeration, I assure you! What I told the Sergeant was that there had been a misunderstanding between Mr. Fletcher and me."

"What was the misunderstanding?" asked Hannasyde.

Mr. Budd looked reproachful. "Now, Superintendent, have a heart! You don't expect a man in my position to disclose the nature of strictly confidential transactions. It wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be honourable."

"You are mistaken: I do expect just that. We shall probably save time if I tell you at once that Mr. Fletcher's private papers are at this moment in the possession of the police. Moreover, what you refuse to tell me your ledgers will no doubt show."

The look of reproach deepened. More in sorrow than in anger, Budd said gently: "Come, Superintendent, you know you can't act in that high-handed fashion. You're not a fool, I'm not a fool. Where's the sense in trying to get tough with me? Now, I ask you!"

"You will find that I have it in my power to get remarkably tough with you," replied Hannasyde brutally. "On your own showing, you visited Mr. Fletcher on the night of his murder; you admit that a quarrel took place -'

"Not a quarrel, Superintendent! Not a quarrel!"

"- between you; you can bring no evidence to prove that you left the house at the time you stated. Added to these facts, there is enough documentary evidence amongst Mr. Fletcher's papers to justify my applying for a warrant to search these premises."

Budd flung up a hand. "Don't let's have any unpleasantness! You're not treating me as you should, Superintendent. You've got nothing against me. Didn't I go round to Scotland Yard the moment I read the shocking news? Didn't I tell your Sergeant the whole truth? This isn't what I expected. No, it certainly is not what I expected. I've never been on the wrong side of the Law, never in my life. But what reward do I get for that?"

Hannasyde listened to this plaint with an unmoved countenance. Without troubling to reply to it, he said, consulting a paper he had in his hand: "On 10 June Mr. Fletcher wrote to you, instructing you to buy ten thousand shares in Huxton Industries."

"That's correct," said Budd, eyeing him with a little perturbation. "I don't deny it. Why should I?"

"It was what is known, I believe, as a dead market, was it not?"

Budd nodded.

"Did you buy those shares, Mr. Budd?"

The directness of the question startled Budd. He stared at Hannasyde for a moment, then said feebly: "That's a funny question to ask. I had my instructions, hadn't I? Perhaps I didn't approve of them; perhaps it didn't seem to me wise to invest in Huxton Industries; but was it my business to advise Mr. Fletcher?"

"Did you buy those shares?"

Budd did not answer immediately, but kept his troubled gaze on Hannasyde's face. It was plain that he was at a loss, perhaps uncertain of what Fletcher's papers might have revealed. He said uneasily: "Suppose I didn't? You know that a block like that isn't bought in the twinkling of an eye. It would look funny, wouldn't it? I know my business better than that."

"At the time when you received Mr. Fletcher's instructions to buy, Huxton Industries were not quoted?"

"Moribund company," said Budd tersely.

"The stock was, in your opinion, worthless?"

Budd shrugged.

"You were no doubt surprised at receiving instructions to buy such a large block of shares?"

"Maybe I was. It wasn't my business to be surprised. Mr. Fletcher may have had a tip."

"But your own opinion was that Mr. Fletcher had made a mistake?"

"If it was, that's neither here nor there. If Mr. Fletcher wanted the shares it wasn't anything to do with me. I bought them. Why, if you know so much you'll know that there's been considerable activity in Huxton Industries. That's me."

"Buying?"

"What else would I be doing, I should like to know?" said Budd, almost indulgently. "Now, I'm going to be frank with you, Mr. Hannasyde. There's no reason why I should be, not a ha'p'orth of reason, but I've nothing to hide, and I'm anxious to help the police in every way I can. Not that my dealings with Mr. Fletcher can help you, but I'm a reasonable man, and I realise that you want to know about this little deal. The fact is, the misunderstanding that took place between Mr. Fletcher and me occurred over these instructions. Now, it struck you as remarkable - I think we can say it was remarkable - that Mr. Fletcher should have wanted to buy ten thousand shares in a company which was dying. It struck me that way too. It would anyone, wouldn't it? I put it to you! Well, what do I do? I ask myself if there's been a mistake in the typing. Very easy to add an extra nought, isn't it? So I ring up my client, to verify. I ask him, am I to buy a thousand shares? He says yes. He's impatient: wants to know why I need to question my instructions. I don't get a chance to tell him. While I'm explaining, he rings off. Now where's the sense in trying to pull the wool over your eyes? There's none. I know that. I slipped up. Yes, Mr. Hannasyde, I slipped up. The first time in twenty years I've got to accuse myself of carelessness. I don't like admitting it. You wouldn't yourself. I ought to have got written confirmation from my client that a thousand shares was what he wanted. That's what I neglected to do. I bought a thousand shares on his behalf, in small packets. The shares rise as a result. Then I get a telephone call from my client. He's seen the record of the transactions on the ticker: he knows that's me. He rings up to know whether I've fulfilled instructions. I tell him yes. He's in a high good humour. Him and me have done business for years; I've obeyed orders, so he lets me in on the secret. That was his way: there wasn't anything mean about him. Not a thing! He tells me IPS Consolidated are taking over Huxton Industries, and if I want to buy, to buy quick, but discreetly. Get the idea? He tells me they'll go to fifteen shillings. That's the truest thing you know. Maybe they'll go higher. Then what happens? He says in his joking way, now did I think he was mad to buy ten thousand shares? Plain as I'm speaking now he said it. Ten thousand. You get it? Ten thousand, and I've got one thousand, and the shares have risen from half-acrown to seven-and-six. They aren't going to sink again, either. No sir, Huxton Industries is on the up and up. So where am I? What am I going to do? There's only one thing to be done. I do it. I go down to see Mr. Fletcher. He knows me; he trusts me; he'll believe what I say. Because it's the truth. Was he pleased? No, Mr. Hannasyde. Would you be? But he was a gentleman.. A perfect gentleman, he was. He sees it was the result of a misunderstanding. He's sore, but he's fair. We part on good terms. Forgive and forget. That's the truth in a nutshell."

Hannasyde, on whom this frank recital did not seem to have made quite the desired impression, said dampingly:

"Not quite, surely? How was it that Mr. Fletcher, who, you say, watched the records as they appeared on the ticker, failed to notice that the shares weren't rising as much as they must have done had you bought ten thousand?"

There was an uncomfortable silence. Mr. Budd pulled himself together, and said glibly: "Why, you don't suppose Mr. Fletcher had nothing better to do than to watch the ticker, do you, Superintendent? No, no, the little deal I was putting through for him was nothing more than a side-line for him."

"I should like to see your books," said Hannasyde.