Last Laugh for the Baron

by John Creasey

  Montgomery Brie rang off before Mannering could say another word, and in a way Mannering was not at all sorry. He replaced his own receiver very slowly, and as he did so, there was a faint buzz. That would be Josh; he had probably been trying to get through for some time. Mannering picked up the receiver once again.

  “Yes?”

  “I have been over the tape-recorder with Smith very carefully,” Larraby reported. “I think whoever installed it must have worn gloves; only Smith’s prints were on the instrument.”

  “Thanks, Josh,” Mannering said, wondering why Larraby always called Aristide by his surname. It was not so of others once they had been fully accepted into the family of Quinns. “Is there anything else happening?”

  “One or two inquiries, sir, that is all.”

  “I think we’ll close at twelve,” Mannering said. “I’m going into the street in a moment to find out if anyone who was outside half-an-hour ago is still there. When I come back I’ll leave almost at once. See whether I’m followed, will you?”

  “I will brief Lionel Spencer,” promised Larraby.

  “Do that,” said Mannering.

  It seemed as if Larraby was troubled about Aristide, too, he thought. Worriedly, he went over all he recalled of the youngster’s recent activities. They had been satisfactory enough so far as his work was concerned.

  He went out into the shop.

  Aristide was on the far side, examining a wall-plaque type ikon through a lens and did not seem to notice Mannering go out. Mannering walked to the corner of New Bond Street and then into a gramophone record store near the Aeolean Hall. He bought a new recording of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto for Lorna, and went back to Quinns. In all he had been away for fifteen minutes or so, and had seen no one he recognised. In fact only for a moment had he paused, opposite an Indian carpet showroom which was fairly new in Hart Row, because a man coming out had seemed familiar; but, on taking a second look, he decided he had not seen him before.

  When he went into Quinns, Aristide hurried towards him, a picture of desolation and dismay.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the recorder, sir, or about everything, if it comes to that. I would do anything to help, Mr. Mannering—anything at all.”

  “Where will you be over the weekend?” asked Mannering.

  “At my flat. If you need me for anything, sir, I’ll come over like a shot. I shall only be messing about with my record-player or doing a bit of developing or some reading.

  “If you can help in any way at all, I’ll call on you,” Mannering promised.

  He was still not sure what he felt about Aristide, but at least, if the boy was genuine, he had reassured him. Leaving the locking up to Larraby, he left just after twelve o’clock, collecting his car – a pale-grey Allard – from a nearby car park. He did not notice anyone taking any special notice of him, and soon after he reached home there was a call from Larraby.

  “You were not followed, sir.”

  “Good,” said Mannering. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be here all the weekend, sir, if you should need anything.”

  “Josh?”

  “Sir?”

  “Check Aristide’s recent movements and friendships, will you?”

  “I will indeed,” said Larraby in a tone of such evident relief that Mannering no longer doubted that he too was worried about the boy.

  Lorna was out – he remembered she had been going to a semi-formal garden party to fete an artist from Italy. In normal circumstances he would have gone with her, but now he was only glad that Lorna wasn’t there. It was nearly twenty to one and he had good time to get to Bristow’s flat.

  His feeling of disquiet was growing more marked.

  Suddenly he went to a wardrobe in his and Lorna’s room, unlocked a drawer at its base, and then unlocked a secret compartment which would have fooled most people, it was so well concealed. Inside was a small automatic pistol, a knife and a few other oddments; tools which would have made the eyes of any policeman widen in astonishment. There, also, was a small but very professional make-up box.

  He took the box out, left the other things in the drawer and secured it again. Then he went into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and took out what seemed to be a very simple all-purpose tool kit for general household maintenance; it fitted flat and snug in his pocket.

  Had Lorna come in then and seen him and asked him why he was taking these precautions, he could not have explained. It was as if the laughing man and the strange incidents of the past twenty-four hours had filled him with both nostalgia and alarm.

  Going to his study to check the number of Bristow’s flat, he found, on his desk, a pencil sketch of Belle Danizon, Bruce, and the middle-aged man. So Lorna hadn’t forgotten after all, he thought gratefully.

  The likenesses were astonishingly good.

  Folding the paper carefully to avoid creasing the faces, he slipped it into his pocket book, turned up Bristow’s address, and went out. Once in the Allard, he drove swiftly on his way; no one appeared to follow, and yet he felt all the time as if unseen eyes were watching him.

  Oh – nonsense!

  But he knew that the feeling could not be dismissed so lightly. He had often been ‘warned’ in this way of approaching danger, and these warnings had always proved justified. Now, the warning had never been stronger, and was so compulsive that as he drove up Putney High Street towards the Heath, he knew that he could not go into Bristow’s apartment without taking certain precautions.

  There were taxis outside the Southern Region Station, near the junction, and he pulled into a parking place, left his car locked and took a taxi.

  “I just want to drive round High Tower Flats,” Mannering said.

  “Which building, sir?”

  “Number three, I think—or it could be five.”

  The taxi driver would presumably think that his fare had lost his memory.

  Three minutes later Mannering’s taxi turned into the driveway of the oldish, yellow brick building, and as the taxi slowed down by the main entrance he saw a young man sitting at the wheel of a white M.G. He was reading a newspaper, and might have been any young man waiting for a girl to come out to join him.

  Except that it wasn’t any young man; it was Bruce Danizon, the man who had been at the Charity Ball last night. Belle Danizon’s cousin.

  “Bill,” said Mannering into a telephone outside Putney Station, “I’m going to be a little late. I don’t want to be recognised when I come into the building. Don’t be surprised if I appear a little different, will you?”

  “So you’ve seen the man who is watching me,” Bristow said gruffly.

  He seemed to take it almost for granted . . . as if he were unaware of the irony of the fact that he, the Yard’s senior detective, was being watched. He did not even sound angry.

  Mannering went into the men’s cloakroom at Putney Station, went into a W.C. booth and opened the make-up case, placed it on the cistern and hung a small shaving mirror on the door. The light was poor but it would serve his purpose. He used make-up with the skill of long practice, etching in deep lines at the corners of his mouth, dark patches beneath his eyes, and lines at his nose so that his nostrils looked much broader than they were. He put powder on his hair, making himself look grey and older. Then he stuck on a wispy grey moustache.

  As he peered at himself in the mirror he felt certain that no one would recognise him at a distance, although close scrutiny might give his identity away.

  He hitched his trousers up very high, changing the way they hung, and slipped two pads under the shoulders of his coat. Five minutes later, he was waiting at a bus stop with two or three other people. A bus trundled up. He sat close to the exit and got off, with apparent physical effort, when he was opposite Bristow’s block. Then he walked in, splay-footed, shoulders
rounded.

  Bruce Danizon was still in the car, but hardly spared him a second look. To make doubly sure that he had no suspicions of him, Mannering paused in the lobby, watching him through the half-open door. Danizon went on reading. Satisfied he had been unrecognised, Mannering took the lift to the seventh and top floor.

  7

  BRISTOW AND MANNERING

  There were footsteps inside the flat almost as soon as the doorbell rang, and Bristow opened the door. Just for a moment he hesitated, as if not sure of the identity of his caller, but then he smiled wryly, and stood back.

  “Still the great disguise expert,” he remarked. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you today, John.” He closed the door, and shook hands, and it was almost a surprise that his handclasp was as firm and cool as ever, because Mannering was so shocked at Bristow’s appearance. It was only a few months since they had met, and yet the detective looked ten years older.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I know how I look.”

  “You look as if it’s time you retired,” Mannering made himself say, but the attempted joke fell flat.

  He followed Bristow into a large room with windows overlooking another block of flats, but with a side view of Putney Heath, the wide expanse of grass and trees stretching far out of sight. On a table between two armchairs were sandwiches, biscuits, Stilton and Cheddar cheese, a bottle of red wine, and beer.

  “Sit down,” Bristow said. “Short drink first?”

  “No, thanks—beer will be fine.”

  “Start in when you want to,” invited Bristow. He leaned back in his chair and studied Mannering intently, then laughed and for a moment looked much more his old self. “I hand it to you, John. If I hadn’t expected you I would have doubted whether it was you. If it weren’t for your eyes I’d doubt it this minute. What a lucky man you are!”

  “Lucky?” echoed Mannering.

  “You’ve had the luck of the devil,” declared Bristow. “Any other man with your—your past would have spent half his life in prison. No, no,” he added hastily, “I’m not being sour. Envious, perhaps, even—” the smile flashed again—”even a little admiring! But you have been lucky.”

  “Yes,” said Mannering, mildly. “Especially in the policeman who set out to get the Baron.”

  “It’s no use speculating,” Bristow said, leaning forward towards a bottle of beer. “But I wonder what would have happened if I had caught you and you’d been found guilty.”

  “I’d be a forgotten episode,” Mannering said. “Probably a kind of genteel Josh Larraby.”

  “Genteel—you!” Bristow laughed with great freedom, as if looking back had already done him good. “And a forgotten episode? I doubt it very much. You’d have found a way of hitting the headlines somehow, you’d probably have escaped!” He poured out beer as Mannering dug into the Stilton and spread it on a cracker. “As I said, it’s no use speculating on what might have happened if something else hadn’t, but it’s hard not to, sometimes. How is Lorna?”

  “Well—and as lovely as ever,” Mannering said with a sudden burst of feeling.

  Bristow nodded agreement.

  “She’s a remarkable woman, John. I don’t think I know another who would have married you knowing you were a jewel thief, I really don’t. How are her parents?”

  “Both are very old and not too well,” Mannering said. “She spends a lot of time with them.”

  “I can imagine. I often thought that old Fauntley knew—” Bristow broke off, frowning. “What on earth’s got into me, I’m talking as if I’m in my dotage and can only look back.” He cut a wedge of Cheddar cheese and buttered a biscuit liberally.

  “Not looking forward to retirement?” asked Mannering.

  After a long pause, Bristow answered: “I was, until a few weeks ago—five weeks and a day, to be precise. I was looking forward to it very much. Mary and I had decided not to move into the country. We like it here and I don’t think I could leave London for very long. But now—” He broke off once again, pushed his chair back, and leapt to his feet. Striding across the room, he paused by the window, and stood staring downwards. “Now I don’t even know that I shall be able to retire,” he went on gruffly, without turning his head. “I half-expect to be thrown out on my neck, with loss of pension and all privileges.”

  “What on earth are you talking about, Bill?” Mannering leaned back in his chair, looking utterly dumbfounded. “That’s absolute nonsense!”

  Bristow swung round to face him.

  “But it isn’t nonsense.”

  Mannering was silent for a few moments. Then: “What’s gone wrong?” he asked quietly.

  “There is a very real chance that I shall be accused of conniving at jewel robberies,” Bristow said flatly.

  “Bill, that is nonsense.”

  “Yes,” agreed Bristow, “and then in a way, it isn’t. I’ve known for a long time, we all have, that some jewel and fine art collectors buy stolen treasures and keep them hidden away. I could name a dozen of them here in London.”

  “There’s a whale of a difference between knowing it and proving it. You knew that I—” Mannering broke off in turn, and tried to eat, but suddenly he wasn’t so hungry. “How can I help?” he asked.

  Bristow said evenly: “Will you help?”

  “In every way I can.”

  “Even if—”

  “Even if it means that I might run into trouble?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Bristow, gruffly. “Yes. I knew—I knew you would. I’m not sure what I can ask you to do, I’m not sure of anything except that I can’t keep the damned business to myself any longer.” He came across and sat down again, drank some beer and went on: “Five weeks ago yesterday, John, Sir Stanton Frewin’s house was burgled. Nearly a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of jewellery was stolen. Frewin called the Yard in and asked that it be kept secret. We agreed—and I was assigned to the case. It seemed to the Commissioner, the A.C. and to me that this was a nice little job to round off my forty years at the Yard.”

  Mannering pretended not to notice the bitterness in Bristow’s voice.

  “Why wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “It looked as if Frewin’s son Eric had been involved,” said Bristow. “Certainly Frewin thought he had been, that was why he wanted it kept secret. But I haven’t been able to prove that Eric had anything to do with it. Instead of it being an easy investigation, it was very tough. And the next week – also a Friday – Carlos Rocco’s collection was stolen.”

  Mannering caught his breath, for Rocco was one of the best known judges of emeralds in the world and his collection, although small, was both valuable and famous.

  “And why did he want it kept quiet?” asked Mannering. Obviously Rocco, like Frewin, had asked for a confidential inquiry, or the newspapers would have had the story.

  “He feared that his daughter Maria was involved,” stated Bristow.

  Mannering had a vision of a small, strikingly attractive girl with raven black hair.

  “And wasn’t she?”

  “If she was I haven’t been able to establish it,” answered Bristow. Before Mannering could comment he went on: “There have been three others, and all hush-hush. Lady Gay Bennett, Lord Devon and Charles Clawson. In each case it looked as if the thief had inside help, in each case a member of the family was suspected, in each – each of five investigations, John – I have been able to prove nothing.”

  “And who is accusing you of conniving?” asked Mannering.

  Bristow looked at him very straightly.

  “The Commissioner himself. He hasn’t yet put it into words but by hints and innuendo, mostly passed on by the A.C., who is obviously suspicious, too, he makes it clear that he thinks one or more of the victims has paid me to keep what I’ve found out to myself.”

/>   “The bloody fool!” exploded Mannering.

  “It’s not quite as crazy as it looks,” Bristow said with obvious effort. “Both the Commissioner and the A.C. are fairly new. I’m one of the old brigade to them. And while I won’t do badly in retirement I don’t exactly join the ranks of the millionaires. One golden handshake, as it were, could almost double my income after I’ve retired, and all five victims are very rich indeed. Oh, I could prove to have feet of clay, don’t make any bones about that.”

  “What have you done?” asked Mannering, stonily.

  “Beyond the usual investigation – nothing. Obviously if any of the five were asked, he or she would deny having paid me anything, so a blunt denial on their parts wouldn’t help. It’s the very devil of a situation.”

  “Yes. What of the man outside?” asked Mannering.

  “I don’t know him. I do know that I’m being watched, and I think it’s by one of the C.I.D., a divisional man I wouldn’t recognise.”

  “I can tell you one thing,” Mannering said. “The youth in the M.G. is not a policeman.” As Bristow’s eyes lit up, he went on: “Don’t ask me who he is yet, Bill. I’d like to check one or two things first.”

  In fact, he found himself suddenly and vividly aware of a great and grave dilemma.

  If he told Bristow about the Danizons, it would surely do more harm than good. Bristow, knowing he was already involved, would be worried by the possibility that his superiors at the Yard would find that out. On the other hand if he did not tell Bristow now and Bristow himself discovered the truth later, it would be like a betrayal of trust. So he compromised with that ‘don’t ask me who he is yet, Bill’.

  “All right,” Bristow conceded. “But John—don’t keep too much to yourself in this. If my superiors find out I’ve consulted you—”

  “Bill,” interrupted Mannering, “they mustn’t know, at least until you want them to. But it’s a very interesting situation, and there isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t get in touch with all of the five victims.”