Trouble Brewing (33 page)

‘Larry killed the real John Marsden, you mean?' asked Pat, with a quaver in her voice.

Jack shrugged. ‘For what it's worth, I think so, but the Germans might have done it for him. In any event, John Marsden, complete with a total loss of memory and a clean sheet, was shipped off to Australia.'

‘What if he met someone who'd known the real Marsden?' asked Meredith.

‘What if he had?' said Jack. ‘Tyrell had been told by the doctors who'd treated him that his name was Marsden. It wasn't his fault if they'd got it wrong. He told us something of his life in Australia, and I'm inclined to believe most of his story was true. A lie's much more convincing if it's seasoned with truth. I did wonder, though, why, come last April or thereabouts, he left for Brazil. Obviously he wasn't trying to chase his forgotten past and, granted the sort of man he was, I thought there might be a more sinister reason.' He looked at Bill. ‘You agreed, didn't you?'

‘I did,' said Bill. ‘And, although we can't prove anything – as yet, anyway – I honestly think you've cracked it, Jack.'

‘I looked in at the British Museum,' said Jack, ‘and did some digging in the Australian Press. Tyrell mentioned a town called Mullgarrie in the Coolgardie Goldfields. In March
The Coolgardie Nugget
reported that three miners, who were rumoured to have made a strike, had been shot and killed at their camp at White Flag, which is about fifty miles or so from Mullgarrie. No gold was found at the camp and it's obvious they'd been killed for their finds. Two weeks later the
Nugget
reported that a shotgun belonging to one of the dead miners was sold in Mullgarrie. The police had a description of the man who sold it. He was about six foot tall, fair haired, bearded, and spoke with an English accent. He was never caught.'

Pat reached out for Jaggard's hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘Is that Larry?' she asked.

‘I think so,' said Bill. ‘When I heard Jack's theory, I cabled the Western Australia Police to see if there's more evidence. It fits. Triple murder is as good a reason as any for Tyrell to up and skip to Brazil. There's no British law and it's over ten thousand miles from Western Australia.'

‘Why did he turn up at the Hunt plantation?' demanded Meredith.

‘The irony of it?' suggested Jack. ‘Tyrell had a sense of humour and maybe he really did pick up a bottle of Royale Coffee. It wouldn't take him long to find out that Ariel Valdez was a crook. The fraud, orchestrated by Frederick Hunt and enthusiastically supported by Valdez, had been going on a long time.'

‘It's over three years now, Jack,' put in Meredith Smith. ‘Frederick Hunt's taken a packet out of the company.'

‘Absolutely. Inevitably, Tyrell wanted a piece of the pie. However, if Tyrell came in on the deal, that's so much less for Senhor Valdez. It doesn't take much imagination to see that they'd have words about it.'

He crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I'm absolutely certain that somewhere in Branca Preto is the undiscovered body of Ariel Valdez.'

‘Valdez was killed in
Brazil
?' said Jaggard. ‘But . . .'

‘Valdez was killed in Brazil,' repeated Jack. ‘Bill and I are sure of it. You see, it wasn't Valdez who came to London. It was Laurence Tyrell.'

‘My God,' whispered Pat. ‘I'm starting to understand.'

‘Tyrell would want to come to London very much. For a start, Valdez had the trip planned, and it was safer to let Valdez appear to be alive. He would also want to thresh things out with Frederick Hunt. A bottle of hair dye, glasses and a moustache made him look enough like Valdez to pass for the man on Valdez's passport. He might even have had a false passport made, and I think he'd picked up enough Portuguese to pass as a Brazilian. As far as the plantation was concerned, he was safe enough. He had De Oliveria handy to look after things while he was gone. All Tyrell had to do was write his reports and give them to Frederick Hunt to file away in London.'

‘This is absolutely horrible,' said Pat with a shudder. ‘Uncle Frederick
knew
?'

‘I'll say he knew. You'll remember the first meeting between Valdez and Frederick Hunt took place on the twenty-ninth of December, when your brother was away. Hunt wouldn't want Helston there and neither did Tyrell.'

He looked at Pat. ‘Did your Uncle Frederick ever meet Tyrell? When you were married, I mean?'

Pat shook her head. ‘No, he didn't.'

Jack nodded. ‘That's much as we thought. He wouldn't recognize him. Hunt would know immediately, of course, that Tyrell wasn't Valdez, but that needn't, in practical terms, make much difference. Hunt wanted the fraud to continue and Tyrell was a willing partner. I bet Tyrell wanted a sight more money than Valdez though. Tyrell had Hunt by the short hairs all right. All he had to do was to go back to Brazil and, as John Marsden, write an informative letter to H.R.H., and Frederick Hunt would've been dropped right in it. Tyrell left Hunt to think it over and went off to Paris for the New Year, having arranged to meet again on the ninth.'

‘Wasn't he taking a devil of a risk, Jack?' asked Meredith. ‘I mean, there's a good chance he'd bump into someone who used to know him.'

Jack shook his head. ‘It wasn't as risky as you'd think. Dark hair, glasses and a moustache are a fairly good disguise. It wouldn't wash for a minute with someone who'd known him well, but he wasn't going to meet
them
. That's why he went to Paris, among other reasons. Now in Paris, he saw you, Jag. You're a fairly well-known man and Tyrell knew exactly who you were. You were the bloke who'd married his wife.'

Jaggard flushed. ‘Can we skip over that bit? Please?'

‘Okay . . . but although that information wasn't of any use to him then, it was later on. Tyrell came back to London and, on the ninth of January, arrived at Hunt Coffee for his second meeting with Frederick Hunt.'

Pat swallowed hard. ‘That's when Mark came back.'

Jack nodded. ‘That's where it all went wrong. The meeting was already underway when your brother walked in. Tyrell probably tried to bluff it out, but it wouldn't work. Helston knew the real Valdez and also knew Laurence Tyrell.'

‘How did Tyrell get out of that?' asked Meredith.

‘I don't suppose we'll ever know the truth unless Frederick Hunt comes clean,' said Jack, ‘but Tyrell must have spun Helston enough of a yarn to keep him quiet. It was probably similar to the story he told us. He'd lost his memory, etcetera, etcetera, and, knowing his wife had married again, he'd turned up as Valdez to see how things were and if there was any chance for him. Pick up any popular magazine and you'll see a heartbreaking variant on the theme of a forgotten husband giving up all for his wife's greater good. I've even written a couple myself, God help me.'

‘And he'd believe it?' said Jaggard sceptically.

‘The secret's in the telling. And, to be fair to Helston, we believed a version of it. There's enough genuine cases of shell shock and loss of memory to make him hesitate. Helston was a decent man by all accounts, and the decency of gauging his sister's reaction before turning up out of the blue would probably appeal to him. After all, he didn't know Hunt and Tyrell were as crooked as corkscrews. He might be uneasy but he didn't
know
.'

‘Wouldn't the fact that Tyrell had borrowed Valdez's identity give him a clue?' asked Jaggard.

‘It obviously did make him think a bit, but, as an honest man himself, Helston gave him the benefit of the doubt, at least until that evening when they'd arranged to meet again.'

‘How on earth do you know all this?' asked Jaggard, turning his scepticism onto Jack.

‘Helston's reactions,' said Jack, reaching for another cigarette. ‘If he knew there was something really dodgy afoot, he'd have told H.R.H. and called the police into the bargain. He didn't do that, but he was uneasy.'

‘What happened after the meeting?' asked Pat.

‘Tyrell had a problem. Helston wouldn't keep quiet indefinitely. Helston had to go, but it's no joke removing a man as cared for as your brother. Tyrell would know if Helston was killed, both he and Hunt, as among the last people to see him, would be under suspicion. That might be all right for Hunt, but it's the last thing Tyrell wanted. His credentials would be blown immediately. However, if Mark Helston didn't die but merely disappeared, he could get away with it. So, with the connivance of Frederick Hunt, he worked out a plan.'

‘You mean Uncle Frederick
knew
Larry was going to murder Mark?' asked Pat.

‘He certainly knew about it afterwards, but beforehand . . . All I can say is, he probably guessed. Your Uncle Frederick strikes me as a man who can ignore a dickens of a lot if it's in his own interests. One thing which should have alerted him was that Tyrell took your brother's silver paperknife from the office. It made a very nice weapon. I don't know how long Tyrell took to dope out his scheme, but he certainly had everything in place by that afternoon.'

Jack blew out a deep mouthful of smoke. ‘I don't like this bit. None of it's nice but this is cold-blooded callousness. Tyrell looked for a man who would roughly fit the passport description of Valdez. He found one Richard Wainstall, poor devil, a man down on his luck. Presumably he persuaded him there was a job in prospect, and he told him to come, that afternoon of the ninth, to the house in Gower Street. The house must have seemed like a good place to leave a body, but he couldn't have possibly have known it was as good as it was. We only found it weeks afterwards because we looked for it.'

‘Because you looked for it,' put in Bill. ‘We didn't find it.'

‘The house stood out like a sore thumb, it was so neglected,' said Jack. ‘Presumably that's why Tyrell picked it. He forced a window and got in at the back. Then all he had to do was open the front door to Wainstall. I presume Wainstall had the patched or holed shoes – you remember how the footprints showed up, Bill? There was also the mark of the hip flask in the dust. I bet Tyrell gave Wainstall a drink. The drink would be drugged. When Wainstall was under the influence, Tyrell stripped off his clothes and stabbed him.'

‘Why drug him?' asked Jaggard.

‘Practicalities,' said Jack with a shrug. ‘It's easier to stab someone if they're insensible, and Tyrell wanted Wainstall's clothes without any blood on them. He'd need them for later. Taking the clothes, he went back to his hotel. At seven in the evening he left, having told the desk clerk he was going to meet a friend and might be out all night. He had with him a bag, which must have contained, amongst other things, Wainstall's clothes. By the way, Bill, that explains why he wasn't wearing evening dress. That puzzled us, remember? He couldn't leave the hotel with a suitcase, as he was only meant to be away for an evening, and the bag he had was full of Wainstall's things. He simply didn't have room for a complete change of kit, including shoes, to wear the next day. Once he'd left the Montague Court Hotel, it was essential he didn't return. Valdez was set to disappear as surely as Mark Helston. Considering the real Ariel Valdez's body must be somewhere in Branca Preto, to have him apparently vanish weeks after his death in London was a pretty neat trick.

‘Now this next bit is partly speculation, but I bet I'm right. Tyrell had arranged to meet Helston at Oddenino's, but made sure they didn't dine there. He must have known there was a chance Helston would mention the name of the restaurant to someone – he mentioned it to his valet, in fact – and Tyrell wanted Helston to disappear as completely as possible. So, probably using the fact he wasn't wearing evening dress as an excuse, I imagine he met Helston outside and suggested that they dine elsewhere. It would be a very respectable elsewhere to allay any anxiety Helston might feel. From what happened next, I'm certain it was a hotel of the calibre of Claridge's, the Savoy or the Ritz. He seemed to like the Ritz.'

‘How come you don't know which hotel it was?' asked Jaggard. ‘Can't you look in the hotel registers?'

‘We can,' said Jack, ‘and we have, but whatever name Tyrell was using, it wasn't his own or Marsden's. In a hotel, dinner can be served in the room, so there's no worry about evening dress and a private dinner, granted they were ostensibly there to talk about you, Pat, would seem perfectly reasonable to your brother.'

Pat Tyrell's lips were a thin line. ‘So Larry murdered Mark in a hotel?'

‘Not there and then. I think, as with Wainstall earlier, he must have drugged him. Chloral would be my choice. It's readily available as a sleeping draught, has a sweet, fairly pleasant taste which can easily be disguised in coffee or a liqueur, and an overdose results in a speedy, deep sleep from which the victim never awakes.'

He looked at Pat sympathetically. ‘If it's any consolation, it's a very peaceful way to go. Tyrell was a very clever man. He didn't leave unnecessary clues, but something like this
must
have happened. With Helston safely asleep, Tyrell dressed Helston in Wainstall's clothes, covering them up with Helston's own coat and hat. Then he'd ring the bell and ask for some help for getting his friend – who, unfortunately had a little too much to drink – into a taxi and home. Any decent hotel would ensure it was done very discreetly. Once in the taxi, Tyrell, very much the concerned friend, could ask to be put down on the Embankment at Blackfriars. Then, knowing that Helston would never wake up, he abandoned him.'

Jaggard put his arm round Pat and held her close.

‘It was a horrible night,' she said eventually. ‘The cold was bitter and there was sleet. I remember thinking so, afterwards.'

Jack nodded. ‘There wouldn't be many witnesses on a night like that. Tyrell was safe enough. He returned to his hotel and, on the afternoon of the tenth, set sail for Rio de Janeiro on the
Albion Star
. He travelled under the name of John Marsden, as he had a passport in that name. A visit to the barbers would take care of his moustache and hair colour. Not only is he on the passenger list, but Michael Lovell, a steward on board the
Albion Star
recognized his photograph from a selection I showed him yesterday. That's why I wanted Tyrell's picture, Pat, when I called the other day. It's that which gave the whole game away in the end, for John Marsden – if we believed what was recorded in the books at Hunt Coffee – should have been peacefully managing the plantation at Branca Preto.'