Death and the Visiting Firemen

by H. R. F. Keating

  A pause for an answer.

  No answers.

  ‘I suppose you think it means an opportunity to serve the ends of justice, to right a wrong. Not at all. It means a glorious chance to tabulate a few more facts about some more helpless citizens. He had the damned impudence yesterday to ask for my fingerprints.’

  ‘And did you give them to him?’ Smithers asked.

  The major looked at him.

  ‘As a matter of fact I did,’ he said. ‘I’ve lived too long to think I’ve got any rights left. I simply kotowed. It’s what we all come to in the end.’

  ‘I certainly am glad to hear you say this, major,’ Schlemberger said. ‘Since I’ve been over here I’ve heard a good deal about how corrupt the cops are in the States: I’m frankly delighted to hear your British policemen aren’t quite so wonderful after all. I reckon we have the edge on you when it comes to being human.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the major, ‘I’ll say nothing about the American police force. I’ve never been to America and I don’t know about it. But wherever else I’ve met policemen they’ve been just the same. It’s a disease among the higher ranks everywhere. A disease that drove me out of the Indian Army, sir. I had the experience once of knowing a man was guilty and seeing nothing done about tracing him because people in authority had committed themselves by showing trust in him. That’s officialdom for you.’

  ‘That Inspector Parker,’ Joe Dagg said. ‘What right has he to ask about things that happened years ago? Things best forgotten.’

  Sudden emergence from the long absorbed silence.

  ‘None at all,’ said the major. ‘And the man hasn’t an idea about this business. You know what he asked me yesterday? If I could tell him where Hamyadis’s flat was. He said he didn’t know. All he had to do was to look it up in the telephone book and he asks me, and waits till yesterday to do it.’

  ‘Ah, there you’re wrong, dear,’ Daisy Miller said. ‘It isn’t as easy as all that. Nobody knows where the flat is. It isn’t on the telephone, if you wanted to write to him he gave you his office address, and when he entertained he did it at one of his clubs. It was a complete secret. I don’t believe a soul knew.’

  ‘I don’t think Georgie was as secretive as all that,’ said Kristen Kett. ‘He told me an awful lot.’

  ‘Did he tell you his address?’ Schlemberger asked.

  Kristen looked like a pert schoolgirl.

  ‘That’s just what the police asked me,’ she said. ‘And so I said “No”. I think the major’s right. They’re not so clever.’

  ‘Of course I’m right,’ said the major. ‘I can tell you now just exactly what’s going to happen over this business. The police are going to keep us here as long as they dare, and make life as unpleasant for us as they can. And then they’ll let us go, and after that no one will hear a word more about “the coaching death” as those wretched newspapers call it. The whole affair will be quietly forgotten. And no one will think of it enough to blame the police. I’ve seen it happen before.’

  ‘Well, I wish they’d get on with it,’ Wemyss said. ‘I’m beginning to need a haircut pretty badly and that blasted inspector keeps on putting off choosing a time for me to slip up to town.’

  ‘It’s all very well,’ Schlemberger said, ‘but I can’t afford to have a thing like this hanging over me. It must be solved.’

  ‘I suggest one step that ought to be taken,’ Smithers said. ‘Miss Kett, I recommend you to give Inspector Parker that address.’

  ‘But I told you it was never given to me,’ Kristen said.

  A flounce.

  ‘Come,’ said Smithers, ‘this is simply prevaricating. Hamyadis took you to this flat I’ve no doubt. You know where it is even if you were never given the address. It’s your duty to help the police.’

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ said Kristen. ‘When I’m ready to. But I just wanted to pay the inspector out. He wasn’t at all nice to me.’

  ‘That’s pretty clever, Mr Smithers,’ said Schlemberger. ‘But you’ll permit a businessman to have his doubts? That’s business, you know, to have doubts about everybody and everything. I’d be better prepared to believe Miss Kett’s claim if she told me exactly where this flat is.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Kristen. ‘It’s so easy, but it fooled everyone. It’s just at the back of one of his clubs: the Red Cockatoo. He used to say “Well, I’m off home” and get a taxi. Then he’d drive round about for a bit and end up just round the corner. The flat was above a dry cleaner’s and he had it under another name.’

  ‘Guess you win,’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘All the same,’ Fremitt said, ‘my sympathies are with Miss Kett.’ His long silence broken.

  ‘At least they are with her in so far as she does not deliberately hinder the process of law. I must say that. But, on the other hand, I cannot help resenting the attitude Inspector Parker takes. Of course, we have become involved in a murder, I know that, but all the same he pries. There is no other word, or at least I don’t think so. And one must do something to defend one’s privacy, or anyhow one feels very much inclined to do so.’

  ‘My point exactly, sir,’ said the major. ‘Though I doubt if you’ll have much success.’

  ‘It brings me to something I have been feeling I ought to tell you all,’ Fremitt said.

  Smithers leaned forward. Polite attention.

  ‘I have taken the liberty of carrying out a quite small investigation on my own behalf,’ Fremitt said. ‘There were one or two things I wasn’t satisfied about.’

  ‘Well, Mr Schlemberger, you’re not the only one,’ Wemyss said. ‘We’re to have no peace.’

  Schlemberger did not reply. His knife tracing the pattern of the tablecloth.

  ‘You carry on,’ said the major. ‘Though, if you find anything out, don’t expect the police to thank you.’

  ‘But have you found anything out?’ said Daisy. ‘If I had, I’d behave just like you. I’d hug it to myself as long as I could and then give out hints. Only, of course, when I made my revelation it would turn out to be something everybody had known all along.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ Fremitt said. ‘I haven’t done more, so far, than half confirm some faint suspicions. I don’t think it would be fair to put it more strongly than that. I’m afraid the reason I mentioned the matter at all was much less dramatic. I’m not altogether the dramatic type, if you’ll excuse my saying so.’

  ‘Well, what was the reason?’ Joe Dagg said. ‘You’ve got me jittery, colonel. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, straight I don’t. I’ve got the feeling a copper’s going to pop out of that sideboard there and take me off.’

  They looked at the sideboard. The doors closed. The tomato ketchup oozing from the top of the bottle.

  ‘It’s simply that, while I was having a look at the coach house last night, Mr Smithers here and young Peter happened to come by. They caught me making my investigation.’

  ‘Oh, lord,’ Kristen Kett said, ‘I feel so ill.’

  She pushed back her chair and rushed out of the room.

  Fremitt began to follow her and changed his mind. The others left the table and looked embarrassed. Only Schlemberger stayed where he was.

  ‘Do you think she’ll be all right, the poor kid?’ said Daisy.

  ‘We can scarcely intrude on her,’ Smithers said. ‘She has a bell in her room if she feels really ill. Let’s hope we see her at tea.’

  ‘I expect we shall,’ Daisy said.

  With unexpected confidence.

  ‘I doubt if you’ll see me,’ said Wemyss. ‘I’m getting more than a bit sick of these little reunions over food.’

  But when the gong called them for tea Wemyss was there. So was Kristen Kett, looking pale but no worse. One by one they all trooped in. Bees at a honey pot. Waiting to hear something. In they all trooped, all but Foster P. Schlemberger, president of the American Institution for the Investigation of Incendiarism Incorporated.

  Nine
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br />   It was Wemyss who spoke about it first.

  ‘For an American Schlemberger is unusually fond of his tea,’ he said.

  No one answered.

  ‘Is,’ said Wemyss, ‘or should I say was?’

  ‘Was?’

  Kristen was quick. ‘Has something happened to him?’

  ‘Well,’ Wemyss said. ‘He’s not here and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be. So you can draw your own conclusion: something’s happened to him, or more likely he’s taken certain action of his own.’

  ‘Certain action?’ said Smithers.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Wemyss said.

  ‘I prefer to hear it in your own words.’

  ‘All right then. I’m not afraid to call a spade a spade. If you ask me Schlemberger’s realized that he’s not going to get away with this murder after all. He’s on his way out of the country. I warned you all, but none of you would take any notice.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Daisy Miller, ‘and it’s only by pure chance I haven’t been late for a meal so far. It’s bad enough coming in and seeing everybody standing up in the middle of what they’re eating but if you know they’ve just been wondering if you were the one …’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Smithers. ‘One is free not to eat.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ the major said. ‘But I tell you what none of us is free to do: to go without information. Look at Joe, look at Miss Kett. They hardly eat a thing, but do they ever miss a meal? I think Wemyss is right.’

  ‘You make out a good case, major,’ said Fremitt. ‘Though of course Miss Miller spoke with her usual good sense, if I may say so. Ought we to do anything, I wonder.’

  ‘Yes we ought,’ said Major Mortenson.

  He jumped to his feet. The man of action.

  ‘Waiter,’ he called.

  The old head waiter appeared from round a corner. Quickly. Very quickly for an old man.

  ‘You called, sir?’

  ‘Get them to ring Mr Schlemberger’s room,’ said the major. ‘I want to know if he’s in the inn, and sharply.’

  A bark.

  The major stayed standing while the sedate old man hurried away. With a natural shambling trot, awkward, aroused, un-waiterlike.

  The others sat silent. Wemyss ate some tomato sandwiches.

  But everybody knew that sooner or later they would be told that Schlemberger was nowhere to be found.

  As they were.

  ‘Very well,’ said Smithers. ‘I will telephone Inspector Parker.’

  ‘You sound a little grudging, Mr Smithers,’ said the inspector, appearing round the corner that had concealed the head waiter.

  ‘I was not very anxious to waste your time, inspector,’ Smithers said. ‘It seems that Mr Schlemberger isn’t in the inn and Mr Wemyss here and others thought it was a matter for you.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’ asked Nosey Parker.

  ‘I didn’t when it was simply a question of his being a few minutes late for tea,’ Smithers said. ‘But now I’m glad that you know.’

  ‘I hope the delay wasn’t too long, inspector,’ Wemyss said. ‘But I imagine calls to the airports and docks will do the trick.’

  The inspector smiled.

  ‘I suppose there was some link between them over in America years ago,’ Wemyss said.

  ‘You have a very flattering conception of police efficiency,’ said the inspector. ‘But, you know, it takes time to find out that sort of thing. It’s only forty-eight hours since Mr Hamyadis met his death. We’ve found out a lot since then’ – the nose twitched – ‘but there’s a lot more we’ll have to find out yet.’

  Wemyss sat down again and smiled. Faintly, with superiority.

  ‘It was to find out a little bit more that I came up here,’ said Nosey Parker. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to ask most of you a lot more questions.’

  The nose darted, pointed, quivered.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘who had I better see first? Ah, Mr Smithers, I think. Would you come this way? I’ve arranged to use the office here so as not to take up too much time.’

  Smithers followed him without a word into the hotel office.

  At the door they were joined by a uniformed constable, notebook in hand.

  The inspector stood for a moment, looking round the small room. A vacuum cleaner sucking up every fact: the leather-topped table, the exact extent of the bare patch at one of its corners where the black leather had rolled back; the varnished oak desk in the corner, and the likely length of time before the broken slat of its roll top would fall off; the swivel chair, the three hard chairs relegated from the dining room, the piles of papers on two of them; the green metal shade for the light; the vase of overblown roses, variety White Moss; the signs of abandoned activity, remote, prosaic, uninspired.

  Smithers flicked at the waistcoat of his tired tweed suit with an impatient gesture.

  ‘I take it, then,’ he said, ‘that you’re not as sanguine as my young friend Wemyss.’

  The inspector turned swiftly round. He motioned Smithers to the vacant dining chair and took the swivel one himself. The constable lifted the pile of papers from one of the other chairs and propped his notebook on his crossed knee. The inspector offered Smithers a cigarette. He refused.

  With elbows on the table and hands clasped in the air Inspector Parker said slowly:

  ‘It’s very natural, Mr Smithers, for the public to make mistakes when they become involved with the police investigating a murder case. The mistakes vary. Mr Wemyss makes rather obvious ones, if I may say so. You are quick to spot them. But don’t let that blind you to the fact that you are making mistakes yourself.’

  He plunged his nose into the cavity formed by his hands and stared at Smithers above the linked fingers.

  ‘I never feel obliged’, he said, ‘to give a running commentary on an investigation. But I’m going to tell you one thing. At present I have very little reason to believe Mr Schlemberger was in any way involved. And I will tell you why. Because he has been extremely frank with me. There’s not a question I’ve asked that he hasn’t given a full, a very full, reply to.’

  ‘I take it, then, you know where he is,’ said Smithers.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Inspector Parker said. ‘And I’m not particularly worried. What I do know is that he is very anxious to join the rest of his conference in London. He’s concerned about the arrangements. And I’ve no doubt that what’s happened is that he’s taken French leave. But I trust him. Now, what about Miss Kett?’

  The long sword dance, the sudden jab.

  ‘Miss Kett?’ said Smithers. ‘I first met her three days ago. Though I had heard of her, but not by name, earlier on from Mr Hamyadis. Since then on the whole I have spoken very little with her. She has told me nothing that I recall of herself, except that I did learn that she has a brother, Charles, I think his name is.’

  Then silence.

  ‘Very well,’ said Nosey Parker. ‘If you won’t satisfy my curiosity on your own, I shall have to prompt you. You persuaded her earlier today to tell me a certain fact she had hitherto concealed. Now, what exactly is the relationship between the two of you?’

  ‘Just what I have told you, inspector,’ said Smithers. ‘I take it you have made some inquiries about me. What is the point then of this pretence of not believing my statements? Surely you know I am the sort of person who tells the truth to the police.’

  ‘I would put that last phrase a little differently,’ said Nosey Parker. ‘Shall we say: who tells the truth to the police or who stays silent?’

  ‘Well, if we must bandy definitions I would put it at its most finickity: who tells the truth and no more than the truth however unpleasant it might conceivably be to him.’

  ‘As you like,’ said Parker. ‘I will bear all that in mind as I listen to your answer.’

  ‘Very well. There is simply nothing mysterious about my persuading Miss Kett to come and see you. She was foolish enough at lunch to boast of tricking you by using words th
at appeared to tell the truth while concealing it. I did with her what it is my duty to do with countless fourth formers who preen themselves on the same trick. I pointed out to her that it ended to her own disadvantage.’

  ‘I see. Just that. She was being naughty and you made her own up. And the scents business? What schoolteacher’s trick of the trade was that?’

  ‘I will reply to that as carefully and precisely as I can,’ said Smithers. ‘But first I must warn you, inspector, that I don’t at all like the tone of your remarks. If I am to be treated in this hostile fashion I shall have to ask to have a solicitor present. Now, my answer. A simple matter of logic. When I first told you that I had noticed a woman’s scent shortly after an attempt was made to remove something from the coach, I had no idea what scent Miss Kett wore. It had not escaped my attention that the presence of such a scent pointed to Miss Kett equally with Miss Miller, but I felt it my duty to hand a fact of that nature on to you.’

  ‘But it did escape your notice that your description of the speed of the mysterious woman’s flight pointed very clearly to Miss Kett?’

  Smithers sat in silence.

  ‘I suppose that does point to her,’ he said at last. ‘It had escaped my notice. But, you know, you may not be right. After all, Daisy Miller was in her prime an accomplished dancer as well as a singer. She is on the stage still, though I have not seen her for years. She may very likely be in pretty good training.’

  The inspector looked at the splotched pink blotter in front of him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all possible, but it’s all – shall we say? – a little unlikely.’

  He sat again without speaking. Slowly his glance travelled up and down the blotter, the spade nose moving methodically. A mine detector.

  ‘Mr Smithers, I want to apologize to you,’ he said when the whole blotter had been examined. ‘I have rubbed you up the wrong way. It was the very last thing I wanted to do. I’ve no doubt you’ve told me everything I could reasonably ask you to. Have your solicitor by all means if you want to, but if you do it’s very unlikely that I shall have anything more to ask you.’