Masters and Green Series Box Set

by Douglas Clark

  “Not easy. But it’s safer, in a murder case. She’d be able to work that out all right. So why not say so?”

  Masters grudgingly admitted that there was some logic behind Green’s argument. But it was all based on supposition. He decided to ignore it, and said no more until they reached Barugt House. Green had the keys to Huth’s suite. He opened up. The rooms were stuffy from overheating and too much stale smoke.

  Masters sat down in one of Huth’s armchairs. “We’re early. Nobody’ll start work here for another quarter of an hour, so we’ll get up to date among ourselves. What about Torr’s calls?”

  Brant took a list from his pocket. “He made five calls yesterday, all to the addresses on the postal slips.”

  “No others?”

  “Not by Torr. There were over a hundred outside calls altogether. They’ve all been checked. Four to wholesale chemists. Twenty-eight to retail chemists. Six to hospitals. Seventeen to doctors. One each to the Telegraph information bureau, a sound studio, an industrial photographer, a printing firm, and then a lot of private calls to all sorts of places — electricity showrooms, house agents, people’s own homes and so on. I don’t think there’s anything to interest us except Torr’s calls.”

  Masters said: “Good. That’ll save us a lot of bother.” He turned to Green. “Did the Yard have anything to say about those contacts of Torr’s?”

  “They phoned me at eleven last night,” grumbled Green. “They took their time about it.”

  Masters was irritated at the reply. He hoped Green had been in bed and had been obliged to get out to answer the phone. He asked, “What did they say?”

  “They liked it. They’ve known for the last three months that somebody’s been stopping dogs. There’s been a rash of it all over the country, but they’ve not got on to who’s doing it because whoever it is has been boxing clever. They’ve never nobbled a favourite.”

  “What the devil have they been doing then?”

  “Stopping second and third favourites.”

  “To make sure the favourites won?”

  “That’s the idea. It hasn’t always come off, but the chances of them winning have risen so much that a system of betting on favourites only would have more than paid off. And it’s made it a good thing for place betting on unnobbled outsiders at long odds.”

  Masters said, “Somebody was willing to take smaller but surer pickings over a long period rather than make just a few big killings before they were rumbled?”

  “You’re learning. There’s somebody with a little bit of brain behind this. Clever enough to see that little bits and pieces add up to a hell of a lot in time. And that’s not Dopey Cordner, nor anybody like him. They’d rush in for the easy money and give the game away in no time.”

  “But Cordner is implicated.”

  “There’s no proof yet. But he’s been getting about a bit more than usual these last few months. It took some time for the penny to drop with the course authorities. They don’t normally think there’s been any hanky-panky if the favourite wins, because the odds laid on favourites are small, and made smaller by any bets laid at the last minute, after the doping’s been done. Mobs don’t usually go to so much trouble for small returns. That’s why they’ve been getting away with it for so long.”

  “Does the squad know the drug that’s being used?”

  Green grinned in triumph. “Metathiazanone! I told you they were pleased. They hadn’t been able to trace the source, but they were on to what I told them like a sparrow on a crumb. They’ll sew it up now for sure.”

  “Who were the others Torr was in contact with besides Cordner?”

  “Chaps I’ve never heard of. But they’re known. A Pole called Janowski, a scrob Norwegian called Gudbjartssen, and a couple of cockneys, Symonds and Blair.”

  “Any of them likely to figure as the brains of the outfit?”

  “The squad says not. So Torr may be our boy, and if Huth had found out about him …”

  Masters interrupted: “Don’t let’s jump to conclusions.”

  Green said, “Hell, he’s a prime suspect.”

  “According to you, so was Mrs Huth a moment ago.”

  Hill said hurriedly: “I found the three files you told me to look for. Torr’s, Dieppe’s and Hunt’s.”

  “Anything in them?”

  “There’s nothing we want actually in the files, but there were some notes about all three of them on Huth’s desk diary for last Wednesday.”

  “Show me.”

  Hill brought over a loose-leaf, page-a-day diary on a wooden stand. He handed it to Masters. The messages were cryptic: “Hunt — sf starter. Gd ad orientation. Ideas. See? Promote.” “Dieppe — lacks responsibility. M coward. Pr Admin. Keep???” “Torr — missing ret products. Tape. Con Man???”

  Green looked over Masters’ shoulder and jabbed a stubby finger at the note about Torr. “See? Huth was on to him. Called him a con man. He’d found out about those Metathiazanone tablets and knew Torr had got them. How much would they be worth?”

  Masters said to Brant, “Give me that green medical folder from under the phones. We’ll find out the cost.” The literature gave the basic N.H.S. cost of a week’s treatment at three tablets a day as five and sixpence. Masters worked it out roughly and said, “A thousand tablets are worth just over thirteen pounds.”

  “Not much,” said Green. “But still the boss was on to him for having fiddled thirteen quids’ worth of stock, and was likely to ask awkward questions which were not only going to stop the racetrack game, but finish Torr’s cushy job as well. What about that? No boss keeps a chap he thinks is a con man.”

  Masters made no reply. Damn Green’s eyes! There was something in what he’d said, but it was too easy. Masters knew it and didn’t know what to say to shoot it down effectively.

  Fortunately Brant stepped in. He said, “Did Huth actually see Dieppe? Look at what’s written. If that’s what the boss actually thought about him I reckon he was going to be given the sack. Don’t forget he’s a chemist, so he’d know how to poison somebody. And if he really was a moral coward he might be the sort that’s easily panicked into murder.”

  Masters said, “So now we’ve got three suspects. Mrs Huth with a motive and a grievance, Torr discovered at his doping game, and Dieppe niggled at getting the sack. Anything else? Oh, yes. Huth’s car. What about that?”

  “It was here all night,” said Green. “They use Janus security men, and the one that’s doing the early stint this week says they check the car park at six and again at midnight. Huth had a Daimler two-and-a-half-litre V8. It’s parked under cover. There’s an open-fronted space for half a dozen directors’ wagons under the first floor. The Janus man found the Daimler at six. He was surprised because he’d already been round the building and knew Huth’s suite was locked and in darkness. So he felt the engine. It was stone cold. He thought it must have broken down and Huth had left it for repairs.”

  Masters said, “Lucky he felt the engine. It confirms Huth didn’t take it out in the afternoon and come back here later.”

  “And he didn’t fetch up at his meeting,” said Hill. “He ought to have done. He was supposed to chair it. The secretary said he didn’t ring through here and ask for Huth because he thought he was probably held up in traffic and would arrive soon after the meeting had started.”

  “Right,” said Masters. “He was here all afternoon.” He turned to Green. “Take Brant with you and trace the tin of Metathiazanone back to the start of its journey from the factory. Find out how Torr could have got hold of it.”

  Green relished the thought of putting Torr through the hoop. He went off rubbing his hands. Masters asked Hill to see if Miss Krick had arrived. Two minutes later he was sitting facing her. She looked more composed. The black suit she wore contrasted so strongly with her milk and roses complexion and her unnaturally pale hair that at first he thought she was wearing less makeup. He soon saw he was wrong. She had even more on.

  “How are you
this morning?”

  “Quite well, really, all things considered. Better than I thought I would be.”

  “That’s what early bed does for you. Ready to answer some questions?”

  Miss Krick settled herself in anticipation by wriggling her bottom into a more comfortable position and then holding her hands together in her lap to show she was ready. It reminded him of a matron of fifty or a child of five. The thought came to him that Krick was a mixture of the two. She looked up at him as if begging him not to be too severe, although, paradoxically, giving him the feeling that she might enjoy it if he were to be.

  He said, “How often did Mr Huth go to Association meetings?”

  “At least once a fortnight. They weren’t all full meetings, though. He was on some of the committees.”

  “Was the procedure in the office always the same on those days as it was the day before yesterday?”

  “Oh, yes. We had quite a strict little routine for meeting days.”

  “He always left about half past one?”

  “Well, perhaps not always, but I can’t remember a time when he didn’t.”

  “He never went up earlier and had lunch in London?”

  “Not since that entertainment law came in about three years ago. Anyhow, it was before I came. The Company won’t pay for lunches which can be got just as easily here. That’s why the dining-room has been made so nice: so that directors can entertain people here just as well as in a restaurant in London.”

  “Did you always take a full lunch-hour on meeting days?”

  “Yes.” She giggled. “I like to seize my opportunities.”

  He couldn’t see the joke. He said, “And when you got back Mr Huth had always gone?”

  “Not always. Mostly.”

  “How did you know if he had or not?”

  “If he was still here, his door would be unlocked and I’d look in.”

  “Did you always try the door?”

  “Every time I went into my room I tried it. If he was in I told him I’d arrived. If he was out but expected to come back I unlocked the door ready for him. If he wasn’t coming in, I just tested the door and left it locked.”

  Masters said, “This is very important, so I must get it right. You say if he wasn’t due back you always left the door locked?”

  “Oh, yes, definitely. I told you it had to be locked if Mr Huth and I were both out of the office. If I’d opened it up when I knew he wasn’t coming in I’d have had to lock it every time I went to powder my nose. I always left it locked so that I shouldn’t forget it. It was easier not to make a mistake like that.”

  He thought it seemed reasonable. She was the sort who would work out little safety routines for herself, and Joan Parker had said she was frightened of making a mistake. Whoever had poisoned Huth had counted on Krick not going into her employer’s office once the door had been locked and he was supposedly away.

  “Now for something else,” he said. “When I first saw you yesterday you were typing from a tape. Was it one of Mr Huth’s?”

  “He’d left several for me to do. I thought I’d better get on with them. I hope I didn’t do wrong? They were in my office. I didn’t take them from his.”

  “You were quite right to do them.”

  She smiled with relief. Her large bosom seemed to deflate slightly. “Oh, I’m so glad I haven’t been a nuisance.”

  “Did any part of what you’d typed — yesterday or earlier — deal with some returned supplies that had gone missing, or have anything to do with personal files and personnel matters?”

  “No. But I’d only got to the middle of the first one when you came in. There are three still to do.”

  “I want you to help Sergeant Hill listen to them all in a minute or two. Can you turn your Grundig to loud so that you can both hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “One more thing before I go. Yesterday, when I asked you how many P. A.s there were, you said status changes occur with monotonous regularity. What did you mean by that? I’ve heard this word status since then. It seems to be important in Barugt.”

  The question puzzled her. She looked towards Hill as if for help, but he remained wooden-faced. At last she replied: “I meant exactly what I said.”

  “Expand it. Tell me what you mean by status. How does it work, or affect work? Anything you can say about it.”

  “Well, this Company is awfully status-conscious. We actually have little books printed with everybody’s name and status in it. Directors have letters after their names and we others have numbers.” She giggled again. “I’m 007. All the P.A.s are. We’re the lowest grade of senior staff. Senior officers are 006. Then come all the managers in order.” She counted on her fingers. “Unit are 005, departmental 004, district 003, area 002, controller 001. It’s really too silly to be funny.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, yes. Status decides whether you’ll work in an open-plan office, share an office, have an office to yourself, have a carpet, a coatstand, a bit bigger carpet and a wardrobe, or wall-to-wall carpet and your own choice of decoration. It really is silly because the system doesn’t work for lots of reasons.”

  “Why? If, as you say, the Company is so status-conscious?”

  “Well, all us P.A.s are 007’s, which means we should work in open-plan offices, but we get offices to ourselves like departmental managers. That sort of thing goes on all the time. Even some little typists are put into private offices to keep the noise down, while their principals work in open-plan areas.”

  “I’ve seen it myself,” he said. “Christine Blake is the only woman manager, and they haven’t even managed to give her a cubby-hole of her own. But what about the status changes you mentioned?”

  “With us, you mean? The PA.s?”

  “Yes. Use yourselves as an example.”

  “If you earn under a thousand a year, you’re not on the senior staff list. None of the typists and secretaries get as much as a thousand, except the P.A.s. It’s nice to get on the list because, besides getting the pay, you get little privileges like not signing in and out each day. When girls first come, they’re usually taken on as typists, even though they can do shorthand and filing as well. After a bit they can become secretaries because girls are always leaving to get married and have babies. That means the typists go up in status on the junior staff list. If they stay long enough, and are good enough, they might be appointed as P.A.s to directors, and then they get the lowest form of senior staff status. Daft, isn’t it?”

  He asked, “You followed this route yourself?”

  “Oh, no. I came here as a fully trained P.A. for Mr Hath. He had to advertise when his previous one left because there was nobody he fancied for the job at the time. All the others worked their way up.”

  “I’ve only met one other P.A. Miss Parker. Wasn’t she here at the time?”

  “Yes, but she’d just become Mr Barraclough’s PA., and Mr Huth couldn’t snitch her away.”

  “Tell me her story to illustrate how the system works.”

  “It’s simple, really. She was a typist in the Pharmacy department first, I think, but I’m not absolutely sure because it was before I came. Then I think she was secretary to the controller of Research and Development. After that she became P.A. to Mr Barraclough, the Financial Director.”

  “And that’s typical of all the P.A.s?”

  “Except me.”

  He got up and said, “Thank you. Now would you let Sergeant Hill hear the tapes?”

  He left as Miss Krick started fussily to instruct the already knowledgeable Hill in the ways of tape recorders. He went into Huth’s office and looked up Hunt in the internal directory. The copywriter worked in Publicity on the fifth floor. Masters decided to walk down the back stairs. On the way from the stairs to the working area on the fifth he passed the door of the library, and outside it, in the passage, the Company museum. He paused to glance at the exhibits. Nothing more than examples of all the packs of every drug Barugt had ever
marketed. Nothing but a glass display case of limited interest, he thought as he moved away.

  The Publicity Department was plainly important in the life of Barugt. It occupied most of the fifth floor. Both sides were lined with offices with small pens for typists outside each one. The girls were queuing at the morning coffee trolley, each taking two cups. One for her boss and one for herself. They were too interested in choosing buns from the trays to notice him as he slipped past, glancing at the labels on the doors. He saw “Dark Room,” “Studio,” “Administration and Traffic,” “Publicity Director,” “Publicity Medical Adviser,” “Scheme Manager,” and then three copywriters’ offices. Hunt’s was the first of these.

  As soon as he went in, Masters sensed an air of normality he had found nowhere else in the building. Hunt was short and podgy, but still young and bouncy rather than leaden. His eyes twinkled behind round lenses, his mousey hair stood up in a coxcomb. His full cheeks were ruddy with health, and he smiled easily, genuinely and cheekily. He was in his shirt sleeves, grey slacks, and a pair of rubber-soled pigskin shoes that needed a brush. He danced silently round from behind the desk, where he was drawing stick men on an artist’s block, and held out his hand.

  “I know who you are,” he said gaily. “Earn yourself an honest penny, Chief Inspector. Come and be photographed in the studio. For an ad. Headline: ‘Whenever I search for the best remedy for any ailment, I find it at Barugt Products.’ It’d make the best testimonial ad I could possibly get for our non-ethicals.”

  Masters said, “I’ll take your offer up when I retire. But that won’t be for twenty-five years yet. Right now I want a chat with you.”

  Hunt gathered a heap of various coloured job bags from his visitor’s chair. “I’m always ready to forget mailings, dropouts, earpieces and what have you. Sit down. The trolley’s outside, so I’ll get you some coffee before we start.”

  When they were settled, Hunt sat back and lit a small cigar. He said, “I’m dead keen on knowing how I’m supposed to be connected — however remotely — with A.A.’s sudden departure.”