The Best of British Crime omnibus (20 page)

He threw out his hands, rather wistfully. ‘Young, pretty, with fair hair – long on her shoulders and cut in a fringe. A nice girl – I was sorry our relationship was so commercial. I never learned her name. She worked, I think, for VOKS.'

I nodded. ‘I suppose you don't happen to know who the stamps were for?'

‘Obviously for a foreigner, but the name… ? No, I don't know.'

‘Did you get a good price?'

He smiled. ‘I am not a philatelist – until then I had never been interested in the value of postage stamps. I can tell you this –
she
was satisfied with the bargain, for she asked me if I knew the names of other collectors in Moscow, and I was able to give her one or two from a notebook of my father's. Yes, and I was satisfied, too. I received a tin of American butter, nearly a kilo, and four tins of meat – spam, I think it was called, very good indeed – and two pairs of nylon stockings which I sold for a fabulous sum in roubles, and a pair of trousers, which I wore. As a matter of fact, I still have the trousers.'

‘You have! Would it be possible, do you think… ?'

He laughed. ‘You would like to see them?
Pazhaluista!'
He rummaged in the chest of drawers and presently produced them. They were an ordinary pair of cloth trousers, of a light herring-bone tweed, and at one time had no doubt been part of a suit. Now they were threadbare, patched and darned, and a little stained. By the cut, I judged they were not of Russian make. There was no tailor's mark, but just inside the waistband there was what looked like an old laundry or dry-cleaning mark, now barely decipherable.

Liefschitz held them up against him. ‘They were too long for me,' he said, ‘but that was not difficult to remedy. They have given me good service. Now, alas, they are no longer fit to wear.'

‘They would still be of great value to me,' I told him. ‘If I paid you enough roubles to buy a new Russian pair, would you allow me to take them?'

‘But that is absurd,' he said. ‘If you want them, you can have them with pleasure, but do not talk of payment. They are worn out, my friend.'

‘You know I can't take them for nothing, and there's no reason why I should. As it is, you will be doing me a great favour.'

He shrugged and smiled. ‘Very well, if you insist.' He folded them up carefully and then turned to me with a slightly worried look. ‘All this makes me very curious.'

‘Yes, it must do.' I debated what to say. ‘The thing is, I'd like to tell you what it's all about, and if you insist I will tell you, for you have the right to know. It will be better, though, if I don't. You see, in some strange way this envelope and the girl who took it from you and these trousers have all got mixed up in a case of murder.'

‘Murder!' He looked at me with a startled expression and then shook his head. ‘You are right, I am not interested in murder. There are enough problems already. Better not to tell me.' He stood hesitating. ‘Shall we meet again, perhaps?'

‘It would be unwise. I'm immensely grateful for your hospitality and your help and it's been delightful to talk to you – but to see each other again would be most dangerous. For you, and for me. You must believe me.'

‘Of course,' he said sadly. ‘It is always the same. We open a little window, and a breath of fresh air comes in, a ray of light, and then quickly we have to slam it lest something horrible happens to us.'

He wrapped up the trousers in an old newspaper and I put a thousand-rouble note on the table. I don't think he even noticed. He helped me on with my
shuba
and I thanked him again and we walked to the outer door.

‘Good-bye, my friend,' he said, leaning over the stair rail as I began to descend. His voice dropped to a murmur. ‘You are very fortunate – to be English.'

What Leifschitz had told me seemed to put a very different complexion on the case. Until now, I had taken it for granted that the motive for Mullett's murder had been a personal one – hatred, perhaps, or revenge, or fear. Now there was a hint, if no more, of a possible financial angle. I was far from seeing how this new element fitted into the known picture, but as I scrunched my way back through the snow to the Astoria I certainly had plenty of food for thought. I wondered just how much money
had
been at stake.

All that I knew about philately would have gone easily on to a Penny Black, but you didn't have to be an expert to know that stamp collections could be valuable, and Liefschitz's foreigner had had exceptional opportunities. Russia had for years been virtually cut off from normal interchanges with the outside world and there must have been an unusually rich treasure-house to rifle. The fact that Liefschitz had been no haphazard contract but one of a systematically exploited chain showed that the enterprise had been on a considerable scale, and the care with which the collections had evidently been sifted was the mark of an expert who knew his values. The business must have been all the more lucrative since the stamps had been obtained in return for what, to a foreigner, must have seemed
trivial –
the surplus items of wardrobe and larder which he could have replenished with no great difficulty. For that negligible outlay, it seemed to me, he might well have amassed a collection of hand-picked stamps which would have been worth a small fortune after the war in the free markets of the western world.

He had been, evidently, a discreet as well as a not over-scrupulous person. A foreigner, making his own contacts and doing his own trading with Russians on such a scale, would most likely have drawn unfavourable attention to himself in the end. The authorities, quite understandably, had never liked the ‘trinkets for copra' method of trade. But with Tanya to act as his go-between, he would have been able to sit back securely and wait for the wealth to pour in. I wondered just how much Tanya herself had got out of it all. No more, probably, than a good share of imported luxuries, but to a young girl in wartime Moscow that would have meant all the difference between privation and affluence.

The main thing now was to discover what, if any, the connection had been between this nine-year-old racket and the present murder. That there was some link, I felt sure. Tanya had been deep in the stamp business; Tanya had allowed the murderer to pass through her room; and an envelope that related to the same stamp business had been found among Mullett's papers. Surely there was significance in that chain of events? At the same time, it was very much in my mind that the stamp racketeer's loot would have had no value as long as it was kept in Russia, and that he would therefore have taken it out with him at the first opportunity – and sold it. If the treasure had been liquidated, where did the financial motive come in?

There was another thing. If the stamps had been removed from the country and sold, by what strange accident had that old envelope reappeared in Moscow after all this time? Had it perhaps been tucked away in some old wallet, or suit and been brought to light again more of less fortuitously? It was possible, but surely unlikely? Again, how had Mullett, of all people, come to be connected with it? One explanation was obvious; but I found it even more difficult to imagine a man of Mullett's character and interests as an avaricious buyer-up of underpriced goods than as an agent of MI5.

All the same, the possibility that he had been a secret philatelist had to be explored, and the only place to search for indications was, once again, his room. I noticed, as I approached along the corridor, that the watchdog had been withdrawn. Presumably the police felt that they no longer had anything to hide.

Getting into Mullett's room was now simple routine. I broke the seals just before midnight and a few moments later I was standing once more on the bloodstained carpet. No one had taken the trouble to seal Mullett's doors up again, and the appearance of the place was, if anything, more untidy and neglected than when I had last been there. Apparently the hotel people proposed to leave the room undisturbed until the time came for the delegation to depart.

My search of Muller's effects was far more leisurely and detailed than on my first visit. I was necessarily a little vague about what, specifically, I was looking for; I simply had the feeling that it was somehow unlikely – supposing Mullett to have been interested in stamps – that that one envelope would be the only sign. Philatelists, like other enthusiasts, tended to carry some signs of their hobby around with them. If there had been any of the heavier impedimenta – catalogues or magazines or albums – I should already have seen them, but I thought that there might be some notebook among his effects, with tell-tale entries; some reference in a diary,perhaps, to a successful purchase; even, maybe, a loose stamp or two. It took me more than an hour to turn out all his drawers and cases, with their now familiar contents, and to examine all his small possessions one by one. At the end of it, I'd drawn a complete blank. Apart from that nine-year-old envelope, there was nothing.

I felt baffled. After my talk with Liefschitz I'd really begun to feel there was a chance that I might break the case open, but now I seemed to have lost the trail again. I sat down moodily on a chair arm and lit a cigarette, thinking that quiet contemplation of the scene might assist the flow of ideas. Almost with exasperation, I saw in my mind's eye that envelope lying among the papers. It had been as out of place there as an inkstand on a luncheon table.
Who
had put it there, and
why?

When I stubbed out my cigarette ten minutes later I was as far from an answer as ever and there seemed no point in sticking around. Perhaps Jeff would be able to suggest something in the morning. I crossed the room and was just going to switch off the light when, as my eye traversed the enigmatic countenance of Stalin above the divan, something about the picture struck me as odd, and I paused. The heavy gilt frame, which before had hung slightly askew, was now quite straight. Of the many objects in the room which had contributed to the general appearance of disorder, only the picture of the Great Leader and Teacher had received attention.

I smiled. Perhaps one of the policemen had had an unusually precise eye, or had sensed
lese-majeste
in the crooked frame. It was a small thing, but as I considered it I felt intrigued. In any ordinary room I wouldn't have given the matter a second thought, but this was a murder room, and the tiniest thing might be significant. A picture, after all, might hide something – or, shifted out of place, reveal something. My thoughts at this stage dwelt vaguely on concealed microphones, which were reputed to be sprinkled about the Astoria in fair numbers, and on camouflaged cupboards, and similar melodramatic devices. Anyway, there was no harm in looking. Standing on the divan, I lifted the picture off its hook and laid it carefully face downwards at my feet. Then I examined the wall, tapping the plaster with my fingertips in the hope of discovering a hollow place. I was very thorough, but found nothing at all suspicious. My imagination was running away with me, I decided.

I bent to lift the picture, and was about to re-hang it when something else caught my attention. The frame was old, with the dust of years gathered in its mouldings; the glass was dirty. Everything spoke of neglect. But the back of the picture, which consisted of three widths of thin plywood held in place by sprigs driven lightly into the frame, looked as though it had recently been opened. There were marks on the wood where some tool had been used to gouge out the sprigs – and the marks were definitely fresh.

My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused. Not merely was this no ordinary room, but the picture, evidently, was no ordinary picture. The straightening of it on its hook no longer struck me as a touching tribute to the Leader – it suggested, rather, a desire to make the thing as inconspicuous as possible and so to conceal the fact that the back had been opened. Obviously I had to investigate further.

I fetched a pair of scissors from Mullet's toilet set and got to work. After a little difficulty, and some more scoring of the wood, I managed to dig out enough of the sprigs to release one section of the plywood. What I saw, when I cautiously eased it from the frame, drew a long whistle from me. Clearly outlined against the grey-white back of the canvas was a slightly paler rectangle about twelve inches long and nine broad. On the inside of the plywood itself, corresponding in position to the rectangle though with less sharply-defined edges, was a faint but unmistakable indentation. Some large, flattish object had evidently been held there under pressure between the canvas and the plywood – and for a very long time. Only the passage of years, of many years, could have produced those marks.

I thrust aside the temptation to leap ahead, and tried to look at the facts squarely. Something had been cached here for a long while. It had been taken out very recently and a murder had occurred, so there was probably some connection between the two things. About the time that it was removed, the stamped envelope had appeared on Mullett's table. The object concealed could have been, from its size and shape, a large packet filled with stamps. There was no other kind of secret hoard that I could think of from which that incongruous envelope could have been detached. The chain of argument seemed sound. To all appearances, and against all reasonable expectation, the racketeer's stamp collection had been hidden behind this picture since 1942. As it had now disappeared, the conclusion seemed inescapable that the murder of Mullett had resulted from an attempt – a successful attempt – to steal it or recover it.

I turned that over for a while. To steal or recover – which? My thoughts reverted to the possibility that Mullett himself might have been the original racketeer. This was his first trip to Moscow since the war, and he might have come with the specific intention of regaining his booty. He might, for that purpose, have asked to be put back into the room he had occupied during the war – as Islwyn Thomas had done in the case of
his
room, for less concrete reasons. Having achieved that, he might have told Tanya, his former associate, that the stamps were in his possession again. She, in turn, might have told someone else and helped that someone to plan a theft and murder.