Nobody's Perfect

by Douglas Clark

  “You’ve helped a lot,” said Masters as they passed together into the P.A.’s office.

  Bale said, “Don’t butter me up. I’ll be surprised if I’ve saved you five minutes. Call on me for anything you want.”

  Bale went, taking his sergeant with him. Masters turned to Hill and Brant. “Everything,” he said laconically. It was all they needed. Hill, the fingerprint expert, carried a portable laboratory. Brant was the photographer — among other things — and carried a large amount of equipment. The stuff Mablethorpe hadn’t wanted to let into the lift. Between them, Masters knew, they could search a room, find fingerprints, record them, and unearth the trivia of material fact which so often helped him, but the discovery of which he himself found so boring.

  Huth’s fingerprints were taken, and the body photographed from various angles. The contents of the pockets were lined up on the desk.

  “Get him covered,” said Masters. “I’ll ring for them to fetch him. I’ve a feeling the body will tell us nothing except the exact poison he took. And I expect there’s enough of every sort of dope in this place to kill half London.”

  Brant went in search of a sheet to cover the corpse. Masters rang Bale.

  “These glasses,” said Hill, “they’ve got Huth’s prints on them.”

  “Where did you find them?”

  “In the desk cupboard.”

  “Have they been used for drink?”

  “The big one for brandy. The other for sherry, I think. He’s got a private store here in the desk.” The left-hand pedestal was drawers, the right-hand a cupboard. Hill opened it for Masters to see. The inside of the door had two small brass galleries for holding glasses. The cupboard shelves held the bottles. Hill said, “This was for secret drinking. I expect he kept the cocktail cabinet in the corner for when he had visitors.”

  “Everything ready to hand,” said Masters, squatting with difficulty between the dead man’s chair and the cupboard door, which was prevented by a patent check from swinging open more than ninety degrees. “Hennessy, Bristol Milk, Gordon’s, Bell’s, genuine D.O.M. — just about everything, but only one glass of each type. It begins to look as if our friend was a bit of a toper.” He straightened up, red in the face. “When were those two glasses used?”

  “My guess is yesterday. They’re not dry yet. Look obliquely at where the stems join the bowls. See?”

  “Faint brownish marks.”

  “Refraction of light. The tiniest little drop left will give you that effect.”

  Brant came in. “Trying to find a sheet in this place is as bad as trying to get Inspector Green to vote for Moseley. First of all I got into trouble for trying to pinch a tablecloth from the directors’ dining-room. Would you believe it, they’ve got a butler down there? Pin-stripe trousers, black waistcoat, and garters round his arms to keep his shirt sleeves up. It’s a fact.”

  “Where did you eventually get the sheet?”

  “The women’s rest room, Chief. I got some funny looks from a crowd waiting for a lift on the third floor when they saw me coming out of there, I can tell you. I was lucky there wasn’t a bit of capurtle in there with the collywobbles, otherwise you’d have had to bail me out. I don’t think anybody could get away with much in this place without being spotted.”

  “I wonder if whoever did this bloke in was seen?” said Hill as he helped spread the sheet over Huth.

  “Seen? Or noticed?” asked Masters. “People see but don’t notice familiar faces in familiar places. Brant was noticed because everything about him was wrong. Wrong face, wrong sex for that particular room and wrong article to be carrying in this building. By the way, does anybody know where Miss Krick is at the moment?”

  “His P.A.?” asked Hill. “She’s next door in the conference room. Superintendent Bale put her in there to wait for you.”

  Masters went through the P.A.’s office and through the connecting door to the boardroom. At the far end of the long, polished table was Huth’s personal assistant, typing listlessly. She was copying from a tape on a Grundig recorder. The earphone and voice on the tape prevented her from hearing his approach over the thick carpet. She looked up in surprise when she sensed him towering above her. She took her foot from the control and the headset off.

  “Are you a policeman?” She asked without apparent interest, merely for something to say.

  “Masters, Scotland Yard,” he said, as if giving the question the small attention it deserved. He was watching her face, noting the eyes puffy from weeping, and the droop of the full, petulant lips. He took a seat on the table. She grew uncomfortable at his nearness and the way he stared.

  She said: “You’ll know me next time, won’t you?” It was a pert, defensive little crack that he thought she would never have dreamt of using in different circumstances. The sort of thing she might have said when she was ten years old. By this time he had sized her up, as a sculptor soaks up detail. She wasn’t too bad, he thought. Mature in age but immature in appearance. Full cheeks, baby blue eyes made more blue by eye shadow, and hair — too pale to be pure gold — swept up at the back in a tortoise-shell comb. He pigeon-holed her as a pretty-pretty giglet rather than a woman with beauty of character; but, he added to himself, all right for a tumble if you liked them pneumatic.

  “How many P.A.s are there in Barugt House?”

  It was a habit he had consciously cultivated — to ask a question he knew would be totally unexpected — when he wasn’t quite sure how to begin. He felt clever because of it and enjoyed seeing surprise appear on the faces of people he was questioning. This way he felt he got an initial moral ascendancy. He was not disappointed this time. She was taken aback and had to think for a few seconds. “Four. Perhaps five. It’s a big company and status changes happen every day. I can’t be expected to remember them all.”

  She was on the defensive. Making excuses for not knowing. He wondered why. When it came to murder, he thought, and you don’t know who’s done it, and the woman nearest the victim starts making excuses about nothing, there’s only one thing to do. Keep asking embarrassing questions and see how she reacts.

  “Are they all as good-looking as you, or is the most beautiful reserved for the chairman?”

  He thought most modern girls would have accepted it as a compliment, and come back at him with some wisecrack. Krick didn’t. She flamed into colour and answered stiffly, “I got my job purely on secretarial merit.” It rang true, but thin. She didn’t look like somebody who would normally have objected to his question. He felt he was getting warm.

  “You’ve been crying. Why? A girl who’s nothing more than an efficient secretary never becomes emotionally involved with her boss, does she? Or does she?”

  “I’m sorry Mr Huth is dead. That’s all.”

  “Was he married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Happily?”

  She looked down and touched the bar of the typewriter with one finger. “I don’t know.”

  “You must know. Was he so wrapped up in his business he had no time to spare for his home? Did he ever ring his wife from the office? Did she ever ring him? Did he ever talk about family life, or his kids, if he had any?”

  “He was a very busy man.” Now she was adamant, trying to head him off.

  He said, “So his private life was not entirely happy. What happened? Did he look for comfort somewhere else? Were you, by any chance, his mistress?”

  Now she was angry. Too angry, he thought. Not a simple denial. In fact, no denial at all. “I don’t like that word. It’s mucky.”

  “Call it what you like. It doesn’t matter to me, and I’m not asking out of vulgar curiosity. But I’d still like to know the answer.”

  She said nothing. It was good enough as far as he was concerned. He could draw his own conclusion. He said: “For how long?”

  She was defeated. He got the truth. “For the last two years. Not really often, though.”

  He wasn’t absolutely sure what she meant. He asked, “How often?�
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  “Only now and again. When we had to go away on conferences together.”

  He straightened up and eased his shoulders. He wondered how many people knew of the affair. He said, “Don’t get cross with me for asking, but were there any others? Were you being, or had you been, replaced by some other woman?”

  “Not that I know of.” Now there was a touch of defiance. He wondered about it. Truth? Or pride?

  “He enjoyed you while he still had a wife,” he reminded her. “What happened once could happen often.”

  This time she sounded sincere. The baby mouth trembled. “I don’t think so. In fact, I’m sure he wasn’t like that. He was a kind man, not really a …”

  She didn’t know how to put it. He helped her. “A womanizer?”

  “If you like. He was always nice and considerate but, well, you know what some men are like. I’m sure he only came to me for a change, not because he wanted me.”

  “A change? Who from? His wife?”

  She stood up and walked slowly to the window. He stayed where he was, not knowing whether she wanted time to think, or to get away from him. There was silence for a minute or so. This told him she was trying to make up her mind how to say whatever it was she wanted him to know. At last, with her back to him, she said: “You wouldn’t call an honest man a thief if he used the company’s paper and envelopes for his private correspondence now and again, would you?”

  “You know I wouldn’t. They’re usually looked on as legitimate office perks.”

  She turned round quickly. “That’s what I was to Mr Huth. An office perk.” She said more slowly: “He didn’t go out and steal … steal more paper and envelopes from somewhere else.”

  She sounded weary. He began to feel sorry for her. Well-disposed sorrow because by now she’d given him some help; and slightly pitying sorrow because he now saw she was far less attractive than he had at first thought. She was a different woman standing up from sitting down. Her bustline, he thought, was at least three inches too big for her height. And, for his liking, her legs in the short skirt were too thin. He envisaged her in a few years’ time as a matronly pouter pigeon who would emphasize her top-heaviness by wearing vast neck furs. He felt a moment of pity for all girls with conventional but unremarkable prettiness. He felt they faded too quickly. The Krick woman had deteriorated sadly under the double blows of Huth’s death and her own confession.

  “Come and sit down.” He said it quietly, trying to be kind. She did as she was told and drooped into the chair.

  “Who found the body?”

  She burst into tears and leaned forward on the typewriter. She made a miserable job of her sorrow. When he offered her his white silk handkerchief she snuffled her thanks but couldn’t raise her head because she’d depressed some of the keys and the half-raised letters had tangled with her hair. Getting her free was a ticklish job which he thought he might have tried to make the most of at any ordinary time. But not now. When she looked up at him the blue eye shadow and mascara had smudged, and loose wisps of hair hung down her wet cheeks.

  “You found him?”

  She nodded and dabbed at her nostrils prissily.

  He said, “It was a shock. Forget it. What time do you have lunch?”

  “Any time between twelve and one. But I don’t want anything to eat today. It would choke me.”

  “No it wouldn’t. There’s a staff restaurant, isn’t there? I’ll send one of my men down to get you a tray and you can eat here.”

  He went into the P.A.’s office and told Hill to find the canteen and fetch soup and fruit. “And while you’re there,” he added, “tell the manager to reserve us a table for half past one.”

  He sent Brant to the ground floor. “Lock all the exits except the front. Tell the constable I want to know which executives go out and when they come back.”

  Next he went into Huth’s office. He came out carrying a glass of brandy and went back to Miss Krick. She protested, but he insisted she should drink it while waiting for the tray. When Hill came back to keep an eye on her, Masters went in search of Green. So far he hadn’t given much thought as to what his subordinate might have found, but Green had been away so long he thought he must have either turned up something important or drawn a complete blank and was still searching. Either way he merited a visit.

  The lift filled up on its way down. He asked for the Personnel Department and was told it was on the first floor. The lift emptied at his stop, and he found himself in the middle of a steady stream of employees. He guessed they were going to the canteen. The smell of onions and fried fish hung about the corridor, mixed with the sickly smell of paper in the mass. The first door he tried was that of a stationery stock room as big as a football pitch. The Personnel general office was next to it. He went in. One girl, about seventeen, was on telephone watch while the others ate. She was dressed very much in the teenage fashion, but was as slovenly as only ill-kept, way-out garments can make a gawky girl. She was reading a magazine and eating a Mars bar out of the paper. Without looking up she said: “They’ve gone to dinner. Back about har’ past one.” She took another bite at her chocolate. He took the paper from her hands.

  He said, “Where is Inspector Green?”

  “How should I know? I don’t know him. What d’you think you’re doing with my True Love?”

  “You’ll get it back if you behave yourself. Inspector Green came down here over an hour ago to look at some records. Where is he now?”

  “Oh, the cop! He’s with old Torr.”

  “The Personnel Manager?”

  “Thass right. Are you a cop, too?”

  “The boss cop.”

  “Isn’t it exciting about old Huth?”

  There was no emotion in her voice: no regret at the death other employer. Masters thought that youngsters with her choice in reading would look on sudden death as commonplace. This one found it so unremarkable as not to stir the sludge of her mind, even when it happened on her own doorstep.

  He said, “Did you like Mr Huth?”

  “Didn’t know him.” She unhooked a bit of sticky sweet from a tooth with a none-too-clean fingernail. “Never met him. Never seen him even.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Over a year now. I left my other job as soon as I’d had my holidays last summer. I couldn’t stick it. In July that was. We went to Spain. Fab. Italy this year. There was a feller there …”

  Masters knew he was jealous. He wanted to smack her silly face. He thought of how rarely he found time for a holiday of more than three days at once, and how few hard-working cops could ever afford to go abroad. He threw the magazine into her lap.

  “Where’s Mr Torr’s office?”

  “Just along the corridor. You can’t miss it. It’s got his name on the door.”

  Green was still with the Personnel Manager, and not liking it from the look on his face. Masters understood why. Torr insisted on shaking hands, and he was obviously the type Green had been worried about. He looked thirty-five: too old to be imitating the Americans. He was tall, with a chin running to a point as if his face had been carved from a swede. He had close-cropped hair and rimless spectacles, and he stank of He Man male cosmetics. He wore a cream shirt, harlequin tie and a suit — the colour of cold gravy — made of satin-faced drill with buttons covered in olive drab crochet.

  The voice had a harshness, distorted by nasal resonance. Masters guessed Torr had come from within twenty miles of the centre of Birmingham.

  Masters said to Green: “Found anything interesting?”

  “Maybe. There’s only been a few sackings. Typists come and go at a merry rate, of course, but it’s of their own choice.”

  “We’re a good firm to work for,” said Torr. “I spend a lot of time and energy keeping people happy. That’s how A.A. liked it. We’ll miss him now he’s gone.”

  “I’m sure you will,” said Masters. “If people stay here, it must mean you treat them well. Any union trouble?”

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nbsp; “No unions here. In the factory. But not here at Head Office.”

  “In that case how do you decide on pay? Union rates, or is it decided on merit?”

  “Definitely on merit. Every employee is an individual to us here in Barugt House.”

  Masters was getting bored. Torr was too plummy. The answers came too pat, with none of the loquacious explanations most people use for trying to qualify their answers. He thought he’d test Torr. “I’ll see the records of every typist under twenty-two so I can see how you work.”

  “Now why should you want to do that?”

  It was a tactical refusal. Masters wondered why. He decided to press the point. “Because I want to see the range of wages.”

  Torr leaned forward across the desk. “Now listen, Inspector, those documents are confidential.”

  “Chief Inspector. And there’s nothing about wages that’s so confidential I can’t see it. I’m the soul of discretion, and so is Inspector Green.”

  “I’m not empowered to show them to you.”

  Masters felt happy. He had purposely not demanded the cards, just to see how far Torr would dig his toes in. It was now clear that for some reason Torr didn’t want to show them. Masters felt it was nice to know that.

  “I’ll inspect every sheet of paper in Barugt House if I want to. How do you retrieve data? Vibrator machine? Or computer?”

  “Elliot Automation Special Selector.”

  “I’ll trouble you to get what I want, or I’ll get it myself.”

  Torr gave in reluctantly. He fed a heap of yellow cards into the hopper of a machine in a deep alcove. Selected cards advanced along a plastic belt towards the container. Masters put his hand down and a score piled up in his fingers. He inspected them. “Three categories,” he said.

  “We have to have some categorization.”

  “You told me you paid by merit. These categories are by age; and every girl in each category earns exactly the same wage. Are you telling me that they all have equal typing ability, timekeeping and absentee characteristics, length of service, and so on?”