Smallbone Deceased (9 page)

As Hazlerigg said this he contemplated for a moment the uncomfortable specter which must haunt all policemen. He thought of Chief Inspector Aspinall and Inspector Hervey scouring the Midlands for a man who specialized in the murder of six-year-old girls. A man who might be a clerk or a labourer. A lay preacher or a lawyer or a Lord Mayor. A kindly father, an indulgent elder brother, a rational man for twenty-nine days out of thirty. And on the thirtieth – a creature, in the hunting of whom there was no logic and in the hanging of whom no satisfaction.

He shook his head angrily. “I'll believe in a madman if I have to,” he said. “Not till then. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Bohun.

He walked home across the darkening square, his mind astir with alarming fancies.

Chapter Six

… Friday …

PRELIMINARY INQUIRIES

But above all, those judicious Collectors of bright parts and flowers and observanda's are to be nicely dwelt on; by some called the sieves and boulters of learning; tho' it is left undetermined, whether they dealt in pearls or Meal; and consequently whether they are more value to that which passed thro' or what staid behind.

Swift:
Tale of a Tub

“Bohun seems to spend a lot of his time chattering to that policeman,” said Mr. Birley.

“Which policeman?” It seemed to Mr. Craine that the office was full of policemen. Already he had been forced to postpone visits from one ducal and two lesser clients.

“The one who asks all the questions.”

“Oh, yes. The chief inspector.”

“Chief inspector? I don't think the fellow's even a gentleman.” Mr. Birley himself had been to Sherborne.

“Oh, well,” said Mr. Craine, tolerantly, “I expect the fact is that heer—rose from the ranks: or whatever they do in the police force. We mustn't mind his questions. He's got his job to do.”

“I don't mind
him
doing
his
job,” said Mr. Birley. “It's Bohun spending all day chattering to him. If he wants advice why doesn't he come to me? Bohun can't know much about things. He only joined us this week.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“We don't pay him a large salary for him to spend all his time chattering with policemen.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Craine. “I'll have a word with him about it. By the way, let me see, what do we pay him?”

“Four hundred and fifty a year,” said Mr. Birley without a blush.

II

“The trouble with you,” said Inspector Hazlerigg, “is that you read too many detective stories.”

He pivoted slowly round in the Horniman swivel chair.

“How do you make that out?” said Bohun.

“Admit,” said Hazlerigg, “that you expect me to spend my time sitting here asking a million questions. Occasionally moving round the office in a catlike manner, popping up unexpectedly when people are talking to each other, stooping to pick up minute scraps of paper and invisible threads of wool; all the time smoking a foul pipe or playing on a mouth organ or quoting Thucydides in order to establish a character for originality with the book reviewers—”

“Well—”

“Then, at the end of about seventy-five thousand words I shall collect you all into this room, and inaugurate a sort of verbal game of grandmother's steps, creeping up behind each of the suspects in turn and saying Boo! to them in order to make them jump. At the end of which, when everybody is exhausted, including the reader,! shall produce a revolver, confess that I committed the crime, and shoot myself in front of you all.”

“Well,” said Bohun, “omitting the melodramatic conclusion, isn't that just about how it's done?”

“As a practical method of detection,” said Hazlerigg, “it would be about as much use as leaving an open creel beside a trout stream and expecting fish to jump into it.” He scratched his nose thoughtfully, watched a small girl teasing a cat on the other side of New Square, and went on: “So far as I've found out, there are only two ways of fishing for men. One is to drop a grenade into the water: you might call that fishery by shock. The drawback is that you haven't always a grenade of the appropriate size and power ready to your hand. The other method is more laborious but just as certain. You weave a net. And you drag it across the pool, backward and forward. You won't get everything at first, but if your mesh is fine enough and you drag deeply enough, everything must come up in the end.”

“Well,” said Bohun. “I can quite understand why the detective-story writers don't set about it in your way. They'd never get any readers.”

“You're right,” said Hazlerigg. “It's a damned dull process.”

III

But even as he spoke the process was beginning.

Hazlerigg's orders to his assistants, given the night before, had been explicit.

To Mr. Hoffman he had said: “I want you to go through the accounts and the papers of the firm. First I want to find out if they are solvent. They look solvent, I agree, but you never know. And even if they're solvent I want to know how their profits at the present day compare with their profits—let's say, ten years ago. I don't want you to confine yourself strictly or solely to the money side of it. It's wider than that. I want a note of any bit of business which is reflected in their papers and records which seems in any way out of the ordinary; any references which aren't self-explanatory; anything which doesn't quite fit in.”

Mr. Hoffman nodded. He was a qualified accountant attached to the Fraud Squad. A man who hunted down facts with the passionless pleasure of a butterfly collector and pinned them to his board with the same cold precision. His last six months had been spent investigating the affairs of two Poles who specialized in treading that narrow path which runs between bankruptcy and favorable compositions with creditors. Mr. Hoffman had dropped both these overingenious gentlemen into his killing jar the week before, and was therefore luckily available to help Hazlerigg.

“I've given instructions,” went on the chief inspector, “that you're to be treated as one of the firm's auditors. Any books or papers you want will be shown to you. Of course, if you find that anything is being kept from you—that'll be helpful, too.”

Mr. Hoffman nodded again.

To other gentlemen Hazlerigg entrusted the detailed investigation into the lives and habits, the pasts and the presents of all the members of the firm who figured on Colley's List Two.

Into the life history of William Hatchard Birley. a Bachelor of Laws of Oxford University, who lived in a large sunless house in St. George's Square. Pimlico, and spent a surprising proportion of his income on patent medicines.

Into the daily round of Tristram Craine, possessor of the Military Cross, father of two children and the owner of a house at Epsom.

Into the doings of Robert Andrew Horniman of Harrow School and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, the passion of whose otherwise dull life was the sailing of small boats in dangerous waters.

Down into the questionable genesis of Eric Duxford, the colours of whose old school tie proved puzzling to the pundits of the Burlington Arcade, and whose expenditure seemed, contrary to Mr. Micawber's well-known dictum, to exceed his income without diminishing his bank balance.

Into the vivid past of John Ambrey Cove, whose public school had grown reluctantly but definitely tired of him in 1935, and who had spent the succeeding three years, before he became articled to Horniman, Birley and Craine, in a series of halfhearted jobs in the United States of America, Canada and Japan; who had had a markedly successful war, moving from staff to staff, keeping a step ahead of Providence and the Postings Branch of the War Office.

Into the career of Eustace Cockerill, late a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, a member of the Corps of Commissionaires, who expended such tender care over the fuchsias in the garden of his house in Muswell Hill, and had, as appeared later, another and more surprising hobby.

Nor were the ladies forgotten. From Elizabeth Cornel, of Sevenoaks, that participator in women's golf championships, via Anne Mildmay, daughter of a celebrated father, to Cissie Chittering who lived in Dulwich and spent her evenings in country dancing and decorative poker work, and Florence Bellbas, who lived in Golders Green but apparently had no other hobbies.

To Sergeant Plumptree, in whose unspectacular methods he had great confidence, Hazlerigg allotted an important part of the routine.

“I want to find out more about Smallbone,” he said. “I want to know what sort of man he was. We've had one picture from the people who did his business for him in this office, and quite a different one from his landlady. I expect you noticed that. Which one was the truth? I want you to find out. Talk to his friends and family—”

“I don't think he's got any family, sir.”

“If you go back as far as the twelfth century,” said Hazlerigg gravely, “you will find that everyone in England is related to everybody else in England in at least one hundred and thirty-five different ways.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Sergeant Plumptree insubordinately.

He started his investigation by revisiting Wellingboro' Road; but beyond another cup of strong tea he got little that was new from Mrs. Tasker. She suggested that Sergeant Plumptree might try at some of the museums. Mr. Smallbone had been quite an enthusiast for museums. Apparently he'd often spend his whole day there.

This did not seem to be an outstandingly hopeful idea, but for want of anything better the sergeant started on a tour of the many large museums which lie in a compact belt along the southern edge of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. He paid particular attention to the china and pottery sections. None of their custodians could give him any help. It appeared that ail museums are full of small, earnest, elderly men who spend timeless days drifting from exhibit to exhibit, along the marble aisles.

It was late in the afternoon, and Sergeant Plumptree was very tired indeed when he arrived, on his pilgrimage from west to east, at the last and greatest of all the museums: and here he had both an inspiration and a piece of luck. At the reading room he exhibited his card and was soon in conversation with the senior librarian. Indexes and files were produced, and with a speed which any Horniman disciple might have envied, the name of Marcus Smallbone was unearthed.

“We make them register,” said the librarian, “when they first come here; a matter of routine. We can't have just anyone at all wandering in and out. And we take a reference, one reference, at least. Some of the books are valuable, you know. Can't be too careful.”

In the section of the card devoted to Mr. Smallbone's references Sergeant Plumptree noted with quickening interest the names of Abel Horniman and the Reverend Eustace Evander, Vicar of St. Cuthbert's – Within-the-Minories, E.C. The librarian obligingly departed in search of an up-to-date Crockford. Sergeant Plumptree had a momentary presentiment that the Reverend Eustace might have died or been promoted Bishop of Hawaii. However, all was well. He was apparently still at his post. Plumptree took a bus for the City.

Evensong at St. Cuthbert's takes place early, to suit the convenience of the few City workers who can be induced to attend, and it was just finishing as the sergeant arrived.

The Reverend Eustace, a vast red man who had taken his college eight to the head of the river in '08, sinking outright two of the four boats which stood in his way, and had been treating the powers of darkness in the same summary manner ever since, welcomed Sergeant Plumptree with a paralysing handshake and invited him round to a cup of cocoa.

Ten minutes later they were seated in his snuggery, which was liberally adorned with school and college groups, cross-laced with oars and topped with the head of a water buffalo which had been rash enough to cross the Reverend Eustace's path on a holiday in South Africa. Sergeant Plumptree sipped at his mug of scalding cocoa and manoeuvred his notebook on to his knee so that he could write unobtrusively.

“First of all,” said the priest, “what is it all about?”

There seemed to be no object in suppressing the facts, so Sergeant Plumptree related the essentials of the case to his host and summarized the information that Hazlerigg had asked him to obtain.

“Well,” said the clergyman, “I haven't seen Smallbone for more than a year. Tell you why in a minute. But if you want to know what sort of man he was, then I can probably give you as much help as anyone alive. I've known Marcus Smallbone for more than thirty years. We first met at the university—we were both up together at Angelus. Our tastes were rather different, but we happened to live on the same staircase, and on one occasion” – the Reverend Eustace smiled reminiscently – “I saved him from being immersed in an ornamental fountain. Six against one seemed to me heavy odds so I weighed in and-er-lent him a hand. Dear me, yes. That was a long time ago. After we had both come down we still corresponded occasionally. When I had my first London living I looked him up, and we met once or twice for a meal.” He got to his feet, kicked a bull terrier off the sofa and resumed. “The chief thing wrong with Marcus was a small settled income. Big enough to save him the trouble of earning his living, but not big enough to keep him busy looking after it. He had too much time. He used to spend a good deal of it over his collections. One year it was first editions, then it was Toby jugs. Lately, I believe, it's been pottery. He never stayed in any one branch long enough to acquire any real knowledge of it. Well, that's a harmless enough pursuit. But there was a worse side to it, I'm afraid—there's nothing to be gained by not being absolutely frank—he had rather a small and uncomfortable mind. Possibly, again, this was due to having too much time on his hands. He loved writing to the papers, you know, to expose the errors of authors, or to call rather malicious attention to discrepancies in the statements of public men. These people were fair enough game, I suppose, but it didn't stop there. I can only give you one example of this, because it's the only one that came personally to my knowledge, but about two years ago a fellow parson of mine got into bad trouble with the bishop. He was lucky to keep his cloth. I won't tell you the details—but the information on which the bishop acted came from Smallbone—”

Sergeant Plumptree nodded. He didn't need to be told that this information was important. It opened, in fact, a startling vista. But there was a question which had to be asked and he found it difficult to frame it. The Reverend Evander saved him the trouble.

“I know what you're thinking,” he said, “and you can put it right out of your mind. Smallbone was
not
a blackmailer. That wasn't the way his mind worked at all. He'd ferret around unearthing these awkward and unsavoury facts, but he didn't expose them for gain. I don't know why he did it. It's a question that won't be answered now, this side of Judgment. Get off that sofa. Bungy, or I'll brain you. Partly, as I said, it was not having enough to occupy himself with. It's a terribly true tag about Satan and idle hands. Partly, I think, it was because that sort of business gratifies an overdeveloped sense of self-importance. Have another mug of cocoa, sergeant? That's right. I can't think why people should glorify beer at the expense of cocoa. It was that hearty vulgarian, Chesterton, who started it—”