The Man Who Killed Himself (17 page)

‘You’ve caught him?’

‘I doubt we shall ever catch him now,’ Coverdale said with a glance of meaningful directness. ‘But the first question is this. Did you ever meet Easonby Mellon?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Absolutely no question of it? You got that, Sergeant?’ Amies had been making notes, and now made another. ‘I want a positive answer, Brownjohn.’

‘I’ve given it, haven’t I? Damn you, how many more times?’

‘Then how do you explain this?’ A letter was thumped down on the table. He bent over it, unable at first to see anything more than the signature, ‘Arthur Brownjohn’ on the Lektreks paper. He began to read: ‘I have known Major Mellon for several years, and it is my opinion that he will prove a reliable and respectable tenant…’ It was the letter he had written long ago to the owners of the Romany House block as a reference. Who would have imagined that it still existed or that it would have come into the hands of the police? When he looked up his face was stricken.

‘Credit where credit’s due,’ Coverdale said. ‘Sergeant Amies spotted this.’

Amies had got up. ‘Come on. Explain it.’ They were both standing, one on either side of him. If ever a man looked guilty, the Sergeant said later to the Inspector, this wretched little figure looked guilty then. They asked questions in turn, so that his head moved first this way and then that, Coverdale’s voice confiding, Amies’ creaking with an occasional shrillness as if the teeth of a saw were being run over metal.

‘On your firm’s paper.’

‘And your signature. We’ve had handwriting experts on the job.’

‘So when did you first meet him? In the army?’

‘No point in holding back any longer.’

‘If you feel like making a statement now.’

‘Make us do it the hard way and we’ll be hard too. You wouldn’t like it. How much did you pay him?’

The little man surprised them then. He got up, pushed past them, took one of the paintings off the wall (a hill, clouds, a house or two, they all looked much the same) and began to stamp on it. He burst into tears, his face contorted like a child’s and suddenly grotesquely red. ‘Lies, lies,’ he cried out. ‘The world’s not like that, it’s filthy.’ He got his heel on to the pretty little picture and screwed it round. Coverdale, no art lover, felt quite upset. They stopped him as he was reaching for another picture. ‘Steady on, now.’

Amies was not to be moved. He poked a bony finger into Brownjohn’s chest. ‘How much did you pay him?’

‘Lies, all lies.’ The voice was a scream. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sit down.’ They had to push him into the chair. Coverdale said: ‘Begin at the beginning. This letter. It was typed on your office machine. Your letterhead. Your signature.’ Coverdale felt – well, hardly nonplussed but a little taken aback – when Brownjohn denied all knowledge of the letter. A simple denial is often the most effective defence an accused man can make in the face of what may seem overwhelming facts. Here the facts were powerful enough, but the man’s admission of them would be extremely helpful. Instead he sat there blubbering and refusing to admit the obvious. Now he had put his head on his arms and was saying something unintelligible.

‘What was that?’

‘Go away. I’m not going to talk any more.’ Just like a small child.

‘Just as I said, sir, we’ll have to take him along. No use doing it here.’

He looked up, showing a little tear-stained red face. ‘Along?’

‘To the station. To help us with our inquiries.’

‘No.’

‘It’s no use getting into a tantrum.’ With one hand Amies began to pull him up from the table.

‘Stop it. You’ve got nothing against me. What do you want me
for
?’

Coverdale put his lumpy face close to Brownjohn’s tear-stained one. ‘I’m going to tell you what happened. I’ll tell you our conclusions, and the evidence they’re based on. Cards on the table. When you’ve heard us you can decide whether you want to make a statement or not. Fair enough?’ Brownjohn sniffed, found a handkerchief and blew his nose.

‘First of all, you wanted to get rid of your wife. You were too cowardly and too careful to do it yourself. So you hired a man to do it, a man you knew named Easonby Mellon. He ran a shady matrimonial agency, and the proof you knew about it is the reference you gave him. The idea, a clever one I admit, was that Mellon should write some letters pretending to have a love affair with your wife. You paid him to kill her.’

Brownjohn’s fingers moved to his bald scalp, caressed it. ‘That hotel in Weybridge – you told me Clare was there with him.’

‘Mellon was there, but not with your wife. The woman with him wore a veil, but we’ve shown the hotel clerk pictures of your wife and he’s sure that the woman at the hotel was a good deal younger. And we’ve never been able to find any other occasion when they met. Funny that, don’t you think? Looks like a put-up job.’ He waited for a comment but none came. ‘Now, Sergeant Amies has been doing quite a bit of work on your affairs. You drew out five hundred pounds from your joint account in March – you drew it, not your wife. Why?’

‘I –’ Brownjohn fluttered his hands ineffectually. ‘It was for Tubbs. For his invention. The car cream.’

‘But you said you had nothing to do with that, you said it was no good.’

‘It
was
no good, but I put some money in it. I was stupid. I bought – bought a share of the cream, I paid him the money, a solicitor named Eversholt drew up the agreement.’

Coverdale nodded, and Amies nodded in time with him. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. You may be surprised to know that Sergeant Amies has talked to Eversholt.’

Amies took it up. ‘He said the whole idea was so obviously potty he couldn’t understand anyone with any sense putting money in it. He told you something to that effect, I believe.’ Brownjohn fluttered his hands again. ‘It was a cover, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘When anyone asked why you’d paid out the money you’d tell them this story. It was a cover for the murder money, right?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Then I’ll tell you.’ Amies thrust his razor nose within six inches of Brownjohn’s rabbity one. ‘Tubbs
was
Easonby Mellon.’

Brownjohn began to laugh. He stopped and then started again upon a higher note. Amies brought his hand round in a semi-circle. There was a sharp crack as it struck Brownjohn’s cheek. The laughter stopped. Brownjohn put a hand to his cheek, nursed it. His reproachful eyes went from one of them to the other.

‘The Sergeant had to do that, he didn’t want to,’ Coverdale said gently. The wounded eyes looked at Amies, who appeared ready to repeat the slap. ‘And let’s be frank about this, there’s no proof of what we’re saying. We know it’s true, mind you, because of what happened afterwards, but there are no pictures of Mellon, and the only ones we’ve got of Tubbs are the prison pictures. So Eversholt can’t help, and though we’ve shown the shots to people where Mellon had his office the results – I’m being frank – are inconclusive. Of course they’re old pictures. We’ve got no positive identification. This is conjecture.’

‘But it’s impossible.’

Brownjohn looked as if he were about to giggle again, stopped when Amies asked sharply: ‘Why?’

‘We don’t have any doubt that Mellon killed your wife, but we can’t prove that you were an accessory. Can we, Sergeant?’ Amies muttered something, got up from his chair and rubbed his bottom. ‘But what we can prove is that you knew Mellon years before your wife’s death, knew him well enough to give him a reference. And that he visited you here.’

‘That he
what
?’ Brownjohn took his hand away from his cheek. ‘You must be mad.’

‘The evidence, Sergeant.’

‘Couple named Brodzky, live just up the road. They were walking past one evening – not September 30th, a few days earlier – and saw this man in the garden. Very good description they gave, brownish or reddish hair, beard, ginger tweed suit. They realised who it might be at the time, being interested in the case, and they made a report to the local police.’

Coverdale coughed. ‘Unfortunately it was ignored.’

‘They were mistaken.’

‘Oh no, they weren’t. Mellon, or Tubbs whichever you like to call him, was here. You disposed of his clothes, didn’t you, got rid of that ginger suit. Or you thought you’d got rid of it. You’ve got the doings in your briefcase outside, Sergeant, haven’t you?’

While Amies was out of the room Arthur stared at the face of the Inspector as if he were examining the physical features of some unknown country which held the secret of his fate. Below thick dark-silvery hair a low forehead and then that worn knobbly face with its shallow bloodshot eyes, cheeks and chin full of unexpected promontories, the whole a mottled red in colour and bordered by a pair of ears so incongruously small, neat and pale that they might have been made of wax. Was it possible that this coarse and clumsy figure – the body below such a face would be clumsy, the feet certainly clodhoppers – could be in charge of his future? When he tried to move his left leg he was alarmed to feel that it was paralysed. He had the sensation, common to those who have lost a limb, of making an attempt at movement and at the same time being aware of its impossibility. He bent down so that he could look under the table. His leg was moving when he gave it instructions! It moved quite definitely, made a little twirl in the air, twitched as though a jumping bean were inside it. Why did he feel that it was not moving at all, why was it dissociated from him?

‘The Sergeant took a bit of a liberty. While you were out on your painting expeditions I mean.’ That was Coverdale, his mouth opening and closing like a dummy’s. He did not hear the next words properly because he was conscious of the fact that his leg was still moving although he had given it instructions to be still. He caught the last phrase: ‘…in your incinerator.’

It startled him. ‘What is that? What did you say?’

To his bewilderment they did not answer. Instead the Sergeant, with a smile like a shark’s, drew something slowly out of a black briefcase. He watched fearfully until the thing was right out and then relaxed. It was only a sheet of paper! Then with a pounce Amies had put the thing in front of him and asked if he recognised it.

He stared at it, seeing a large photograph of what appeared to be some kind of medal, with a fragment of a flag (was it a flag?) adhering to it. He looked up questioningly.

‘Come
on
now.’ That was Amies, a nasty customer. ‘Look at it, man, look.’

The thing he had taken for a medal was a button. There were letters on it and he spelt them out soundlessly. I-N-C-H-&-B-U. What did the ampersand mean? Then he looked up.

‘I see you’ve got it. Corefinch and Burleigh. High class firm, they put their name on the fly buttons. And the material, recognise that? High class again, they knew the customer it was made for. Guess who? Easonby Mellon.’

‘Fly buttons,’ Coverdale said meditatively. ‘Old-fashioned now, everyone wears zips, but they’re old-fashioned tailors.’

‘You know where it came from.’ That was Amies, and it was not a question. ‘
Look at me
.’

He looked, at Amies’ dead sallow face and Coverdale’s bumpy one, and saw no help in them. Then he glanced down. Below the table his leg kept up its jigging without prompting from him. He put a hand to his face and felt nothing, although he knew that finger must have touched cheek.

Amies had his hand in the briefcase again. Another photograph was put in front of him. He turned his face away and refused to look, until Amies raised a menacing fist like a parent threatening a child. Then he did not understand what he saw.

‘Bit of sacking,’ the Sergeant said. ‘From the incinerator. Careless you were, just a few inches not burned, but enough. Stain on it –
there –
look.’ He did not look. ‘Marvellous what the boys can do now. They say it’s blood, group AB, very unusual. Know what Tubbs’ blood group was? AB.’

Sacking, sacking? He remembered the sacking in the car, but it belonged to another time. He glanced down again. His leg had stopped twitching, his limbs were dead.

‘Let’s recapitulate,’ Coverdale said. ‘We believe you hired Mellon to kill your wife and that afterwards he tried to blackmail you. We believe that, but we can’t prove it. This is what we can prove. You knew Mellon years before your wife’s death, and you lied about it. You paid Mellon or Tubbs, whichever you like to call him, money for a completely useless invention. Mellon came here to see you – we’ve got witnesses to that. You were seen to meet him in Brighton on the night of September 30th. You burned the clothes Mellon was known to wear in your incinerator, and you burned the sacking with bloodstains that are the same blood group as Tubbs’ on it. Your car was positively identified a mile from where Tubbs went into the river, and almost as positively identified at the very bridge. Mellon and Tubbs have both been here, we can prove it. There’s a strong presumption they were the same person. If you say they’re not, you’ve got to answer one question.
Where is Easonby Mellon
?’

The Sergeant echoed the question, and he knew he could not answer it. Beyond Amies, directly behind his head, was one of the little thin paintings on the wall, but it gave him no help. There was no way out.

He opened his mouth. ‘I –’ He was unable to go on. He felt the paralysis creeping up his body.

‘I think he’s ready to make a statement now, sir.’

His hand clasped his throat, plucked at it to release the words that at last came up. ‘I killed Easonby Mellon.’

Coverdale let out breath in a sigh and said gently, ‘Come along with us.’ They lifted him, but when they tried to stand him up he slipped sideways like a rag doll. In the end they had almost to carry him out to the car. He appeared to have lost the use of his legs.

Arthur Brownjohn did not stand trial. He was found unfit to plead under the McNaughten Rules on insanity and this, as Coverdale said to Amies, was just as well, because the medical evidence about the blow and some of the other evidence too was distinctly shaky. The temporary hysterical paralysis he had suffered from soon passed away, and in Broadmoor he was a quiet tractable inmate who spent a great deal of time in painting. Most of his paintings were watercolours of imaginary Sussex landscapes, and some of them were displayed in prisoners’ art shows. His work in oils, however, was quite different. It depicted scenes in which a lusty naked man with thick hair and curling beard, rather like a Rubens satyr, stabbed or strangled a naked woman who limply submitted to her fate. These pictures obviously excited him considerably, and they interested the doctors, but they were not thought suitable for exhibition. As time passed he painted fewer of them, and at length he stopped asking for oil paints. He ate voraciously, grew fat and seemed quite happy.