A reasonable hope, thought Sally, in spite of the lifts. Toby’s leg had been very tired indeed.
Toby was looking slightly embarrassed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He told me to take it easy. One rather did as he said.’
‘That was one of his greatest assets. Incidentally, when I was silly enough to tell him that I knew the canteen period wasn’t the crucial one, he saw at once that your alibi was now useless and that you might be made another red herring. He remembered that Brown had been out of the hall for a few minutes round about half past seven, and so probably wouldn’t be able to say you’d gone out.’
‘And if I hadn’t gone out to telephone, I could have rigged the trap.’
‘Quite so. His own story was that when you had left him, he looked for a man called Carfrae, on the Daily Echo, found him, apparently, with some difficulty, had a chat with him, and rejoined you in the entrance hall. I imagine it’s perfectly possible to spend ten minutes or a quarter of an hour looking for someone in Echo House.
‘In fact he went straight up to Peex by the back lift, and it was then that he asked Morningside for the Reflector cutting — for the first and only time. He said he wanted it at once, so when Morningside told Miss Quimper that Brigadier Camberley was in a hurry for it, he meant it quite literally.
‘As soon as the trap was sprung Camberley left by the glass hatch — which the murderer would be expected to have done — and returned the cutting to its file. Evidently, he knew enough about the system to do that quickly and accurately, and he had to do it. The cutting was on his subject and might be a pointer to him if it were found on Morningside’s body or in his office. When he’d replaced it, he went straight down and found Carfrae. That was just before twenty to eight, according to Carfrae, and he stayed till five minutes to. Two minutes later he was in the entrance hall.’
‘Stop a minute,’ said Toby. ‘Why didn’t he remove the neg from Morningside’s hand — the one you say he used as bait?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ve an idea he felt that he oughtn’t to disturb the body or the negs or anything else, in case he made the scene look unnatural. No one must be allowed to guess that the murderer had been there at the time Morningside died, and he was afraid he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture. It’s said that a lot of murderers are caught because they can’t let well alone. And that neg pointed to no one. It was a group of students at some technical college or other.’
‘And the Pirates neg,’ said Toby, ‘was found by Camberley when he did the murder?’
‘Found by a surprising coincidence, and no doubt destroyed. I dare say he smashed it beyond recognition and added it to the broken negs on the floor. But he must have known, when he found it on Morningside’s desk, that he was only just in time. Morningside could have had no interest in the Policemen’s Chorus unless he had recognised someone in it. If Camberley hadn’t found it, I don’t know what he’d have done. He wouldn’t have had time to go through the box before he rigged the trap, or the surviving negs afterwards, though he could have checked the remaining boxes at his leisure. But I think he’d have let it go, once Morningside was dead. I saw a copy at Scotland Yard this afternoon, and if I hadn’t known it was Camberley, I’d never have recognised it in a hundred years.’
Johnny stopped and relit his pipe. Then he said, ‘Miss Quimper’s murder was simpler. On the evening he killed her he had been with Silcutt — persuading him to come across with the Dowd story. From Silcutt’s office he went, by pure chance, to Morningside’s, to look for some pix. He admitted that the next morning, inadvertently, though he didn’t mention the time. He overheard Miss Quimper talking to Sally, and he heard her say that Morningside had been looking for a cutting which Camberley had wanted in a hurry. Miss Quimper evidently never understood that Camberley was actually waiting for the cutting in Peex. But one can understand that when he overheard her report of the incident, he was anxious. He had had no idea Morningside had spoken to anyone during those few minutes in Cuts. He didn’t know exactly what Morningside had said to Miss Quimper, and he was afraid to let her be questioned closely about it. He knew too that she might remember the Pirates neg. So he killed her.’
‘Did he really believe,’ asked Sally, ‘that the doctors wouldn’t know she hadn’t been pushed off the path?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. I fancy he hoped to give the impression of an ill-informed murderer — which he wasn’t.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Toby after a minute.
‘His general behaviour. He was extremely nice to Sally and me and made things easy for us all along. He wasn’t going to arouse our suspicions by obstructing us, and it was to his advantage to keep in with us and hear everything we discovered. He didn’t take us very seriously, I imagine, and I’m afraid he was right, because if he hadn’t slipped up over The Pirates, we’d never have got him at all. And most of the case against him is pure conjecture, you know. We could probably never have proved it.’
Camberley himself must have realised that, thought Sally. But the merciless certainty in Johnny’s eyes, the determination in his face, and most of all, perhaps, his conversion of Wigram, had shown the man he would never get away with it. A jury might find him innocent, but these men would break him by smashing the legend of James Camberley. Forty-eight hours ago she would have found it impossible not to like him. But last night she had seen not James Camberley but William Smith — the man who had battered a middle-aged woman over the head with a poker, and later murdered two tiresome but innocent people to cover his tracks.
‘The only person who saw through him,’ said Johnny, ‘was Michael Knox. I had a drink with him this evening, after I’d been to Scotland Yard. Until a few months ago he admired Camberley enormously — that was why he told him the Dowd story. Then, for no other reason than that he knows his world and has as few illusions as anyone in it, he began to realise that the man was bogus. That, for him, is the unforgivable sin, and that was why he attacked Camberley in the Reflector. What’s more, he guessed long before I did that Camberley was the murderer.’
There was a long silence. Then Johnny said he was dry and was going down to get some beer.
When the door had shut behind him, Toby stirred restlessly on the sofa and shifted his lame leg. There was a curious expression on his face, and for a minute or two he talked rapidly about nothing in particular. Sally watched him with affectionate amusement while he made up his mind.
At last he said abruptly, ‘I wanted to tell you, Sally. It seems incredible, but Selina says she’ll marry me. We’ll wait a bit, of course, before we announce it. But — well, it seems to have really happened.’
‘I’m so glad, Toby, darling,’ said Sally. ‘You’ll be very good for each other.’
‘I’m still not at all sure I ought to,’ said Toby anxiously. ‘With this leg, I mean. I’m not much of a match for anyone as beautiful as she is.’
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Sally. ‘After all, you might have had some serious disability. You might have been selfish, or bad-tempered, or stupid.’
The colour came into Toby’s thin cheeks. He scrambled to his feet, took Sally’s hand, and kissed it with an awkward gentleness which she found very touching. Then Johnny came in with the beer, and they drank Toby’s and Selina’s health.
Death at One Blow
Henrietta Hamilton
Prologue
Sally Heldar glanced at her watch. It was five minutes to six. Johnny would be home any time now; after a day like this he would have left the shop as soon as he decently could. It had been hot enough in the flat; in his narrow second-floor office, overlooking the traffic of the Charing Cross Road, it must have been nearly intolerable. It would have been nice to get out of town, but after a month’s honeymoon in March and April, he couldn’t go away again before the autumn.
She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Johnny would want beer this evening, and she could do with some herself. She collected two bottles and a couple of tu
mblers, went back to the sitting-room, and set the tray down on the rosewood table which had been Uncle Charles Heldar’s wedding present. Then she heard Johnny’s key in the front door.
He was very tall and broad in the shoulders, with thick brown hair and big features. Sally had never paused to consider whether he was good-looking or not, and, in her experience, no one else had paused either. There was something in his eyes which took one immediately beyond such considerations: authority, humour, kindness, and a suggestion of other worthwhile things. He gave a general impression of strength and gentleness in equal parts.
He held her very tightly for a moment, as he always did—as if he had been wondering if she mightn’t have vanished during his absence. But his kiss was firm and assured. For a few moments neither of them remembered the heat. Then Sally said: ‘Beer and then a cold bath, or a cold bath and then beer?’
‘Beer first, I think,’ said Johnny. ‘After that I may have enough energy to get into a bath.’ He took off his coat and slung it on to a chair.
When they were sitting on the sofa, he drank deeply and sighed. Then he looked at her and said, ‘Would you like to get out of town for a fortnight or so?’
‘What — now?’
‘Yes. Not a holiday, though it would be a nice change. A job — a rush job.’
Sally understood. ‘Somebody’s library?’
Johnny nodded, and drank again. ‘It’s an exceedingly complicated story, and my brain isn’t at its best this evening, but I’ll try to be lucid. You know old Mercator?’
Sally knew Sir Mark quite well. He had a fine library, and, as a partner in one of the biggest firms of merchant bankers in Europe, the means to enlarge it, and he had been a customer of Heldar Brothers for many years. He visited the shop frequently, and in the days when she had worked there had been unfailingly charming and courteous to her. He had always been attached to Johnny and had paid a special call of congratulation when their engagement had appeared in The Times. They had dined with him at the Savoy, and he had sent them a fine pair of Queen Anne candlesticks and come as a most welcome guest to their wedding.
Johnny went slowly on. ‘I don’t know if you knew that his wife was a Thaxton—one of the Hampshire lot. He courted her sometime in the early years of the century, and though money was beginning to come into its own then, the Thaxtons had no need of it, and her father stuck in his aristocratic toes at the thought of a Jewish man. Mercator behaved extremely well — so Grandfather says; I got this bit of gossip from him this afternoon — and spent a year patiently trying to bring the old man round. Then he gave it up and organised a thoroughly business-like and respectable elopement. It was a very successful marriage, and they were both so much liked that they didn’t suffer socially. They had no son — only one daughter, who came to a tragic end. She married a German count and ended up in a concentration camp. The Count made trouble about it and disappeared too. There were no children, mercifully. A good many other Mercator connections went the same way, and ultimately Mark was left with only one relative: his late wife’s great-nephew, Richard Thaxton.’
‘Richard Thaxton,’ repeated Sally. ‘I’ve seen that name somewhere. There’s the Thaxton Library, of course, isn’t there? But I’ve seen the name quite recently.’
‘I expect you have. I’m coming to that. Richard must now be thirtyish. I’ve never met him, but he had the reputation of being a bit of a waster, and it was said he didn’t get on with his father. Anyhow, he stayed on in the RAF after the war, and he was out in Korea, with one of the Sunderland Flying Boat Squadrons, when his old man characteristically broke his neck in the hunting-field. A matter of months after that, Richard himself was shot down. There must have been a certain amount of sheer bad luck in it, because a Sunderland isn’t easy to shoot down, but at any rate it crashed, and he was reported killed in action. By that time, he was an Acting Squadron-Leader, so he must have done extremely well. He had no heir, but he left everything — including the family seat — to his fiancée. I don’t know who she is.
‘But there had been three deaths within a very short time of each other — Richard’s grandfather, another Richard, died at a ripish old age in forty-eight — and the fiancée was forced to sell to cover the death duties. This is where Mercator stepped in. He told Grandfather he liked the family seat — it’s Westwater Manor, near Fanchester — and he was going to retire from business and was looking round for a country house. He wanted to keep it as nearly as possible in the family, too. Possibly he also wanted to help Richard’s girl out. So he bought it, with its contents — I believe there’s some beautiful furniture. And, of course, there’s the Thaxton Library, collected chiefly by Grandfather Richard. It’s a very fine library, as you probably know. There’s a 1510 Flambury, among other things, and a First Percival.
‘Well, Mercator gradually transferred himself from London to Westwater. He spent a lot of money on the place and made a lot of improvements. He took his own library down and merged it with the Thaxton Library. He intended to have all the books together valued for insurance when he had finally settled in. A month ago, he sold his house in Hampstead and went down to Westwater, as he thought, for good and all. Then, two days ago, the Chinese announced that they were magnanimously releasing four RAF men who, they said, had been shot down over Chinese territory while dropping germs. A pretty gesture, of course, in view of the forthcoming Foreign Ministers’ Conference. And one of those RAF men, as you have already guessed, is Richard Thaxton.’
Sally took her head in her hands. ‘How are they ever going to sort it out?’ she asked.
‘I’m not a lawyer,’ said Johnny, ‘thank God. I just don’t know what happens, but I imagine it’s a quite incredibly complicated business. Mercifully it’s all in the family, so to speak. Mercator’s one idea is to help Richard back to his own, and he says that Westwater is of course Richard’s home from the moment he gets back, which will probably be in another fortnight or three weeks. Which is where we come in. Mercator wants to get the two libraries sorted out, and that’s more or less a skilled job. He’s never used a book-plate, and there’s no Thaxton plate either, so there’s no simple means of distinguishing the books. It’s got to be done from the catalogues, and it’ll be a bit tricky here and here. Mercator could do it himself, but his eyesight isn’t very good, and anyway he’s rushing about dealing with lawyers and trying to communicate with Richard. So, we’ve got to take it on. What’s more, he wants both the libraries revalued for insurance at the same time, so as to get the whole job over at once. He got Richard’s authority to have the Thaxton Library revalued before Richard was shot down. And he wants it all done before Richard gets back. That’s understandable; he wouldn’t want people in the house at that time.
‘Well, if it had been almost anyone else, we’d have said we couldn’t do it at such short notice, in the middle of the holiday season. But Mercator is such a valued customer and such an old friend that we felt we’d got to oblige him. Now, Grandfather can’t get away, and Uncle Charles is in Cornwall, so I’ve got to take it on. But I’ve got to have help if I’m to do it in the time—it’s a very big job. We talked it over with Mercator, and it was finally agreed that you should be asked to come down with me. He’s asked us both to go as his guests, and I think it ought to be rather fun. Is it all right with you?’
‘Very much so,’ said Sally. ‘But is it really all right with the firm? I’m not on the staff any longer.’
‘Would you rather I took Miss Jennings?’ asked Johnny solemnly.
‘Would you like to take Miss Jennings, darling?’
Johnny shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, it would be a change, wouldn’t it?’
‘You brute,’ said Sally.
Johnny grinned. ‘I could take her, but she wouldn’t be nearly as good as you. From any point of view. So I think you’d better come. You get your old salary, by the way.’
‘For living in the lap of luxury, and—and working with you?’
‘You’ve never worked
with me yet. You may find you simply loathe it.’
‘There’s always that,’ said Sally.
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