‘And they didn’t know about the kidnap, what was in the bag, why Cruba was there?’
‘Not so far as I know. They were naturally concerned the victim was a VIP.’
‘Mmm. Of course the Surrey Police are bound to compare notes with them over what we passed off as a kidnap hoax. May have done already, except these things often take longer to filter through than one guesses.’
‘What’s the party line—to deny there was a kidnap?’ asked Freddy.
‘Not to say anything about it unless we’re obliged to, and if that happens I hope François Cruba’ll be well enough to make the decision himself. His reasons for avoiding telling anyone there’d been a kidnap still hold—more especially if it has to come out he parted with fifty thousand pounds.’
‘You think the police might agree to keep silent if they knew?’
‘Difficult, I’d have thought, even with a word from the FO. Don’t know where my Mr Gold and your Major Copper would stand.’ Treasure pulled himself up out of the chair. ‘I’ll go and ring the hospital. See if there’s any change.’
‘Then I must leave, Mark.’
The banker stopped on his way out of the room. ‘D’you think you could arrange a very confidential word with your Intelligence Chief?’
‘What, with the two of us?’ asked Freddy with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
‘No, just yourself. I don’t want to be involved.’
‘Yes, I should think so . . . I mean, if necessary.’
Molly wryly judged the speaker was hoping very much the necessity wouldn’t arise.
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS RAINING AGAIN ON TUESDAY MORNING. There were no natural pyrotechnics to keep cautious secretaries from using electric typewriters: no doom-laden darkness after dawn giving new hope to the banner-carrying ‘The End is Nigh’ fraternity, foiled again the day before. It just rained.
Clarence Miff and Hercules had made their fitful progress from Greywick Court Mansions to Strutton Ground under the shared protection of a large umbrella.
They were attached to each other by a leather lead, so both stopped while the dog performed his morning offices—in gutters, against favourite lamp-posts, some gates, and selected parking meters. If the urban topography did not allow for the brolly to cover both master and dog at all times, Miff being English, it always covered the dog. The reward was an unblinking, baleful canine stare immediately before and during the not always productive pauses.
For the rest, Hercules had plodded forward along the well-known route in the ‘seek and stalk’ posture. He kept close to the feet of the ruminating Miff—extremities which because of the animal’s failing eyesight (not any less worthy reason) he could scent better than see, even at close quarters.
They reached number fifty-two at five to eight: the changed appointment time was eight o’clock. When he awoke two hours before Miff had contemplated the coming interview with something approaching terror. He was still deeply apprehensive but somewhat more resigned: The brandy had done the trick.
It was early, even for Strutton Ground regulars. The shops were closed: the market stalls not yet assembled. The few human figures in view were hurrying about their business disaccommodated by the rain and the cars hissing through to Victoria Street.
Miff searched for his keys before noticing the big street door was already fastened back in its office-hours position. It surprised him that some other tenant must have arrived already. He undid the leash: Hercules lumbered into the building. The dog always started first up the stairs but finished last, usually a flight behind his master.
The Rudyard Trust Director continued to commune with himself as he began the ascent, inhaling deeply on what was left of the wet cigarette clamped between his lips. How desperately he needed Edna to be right: she usually was, except in this case he was certain it was the plausible Stephen Spotter’s judgement she had been using and not her own.
Even after yesterday’s visit from Jonkins—even after that Edna had gone on believing in Spotter. He shook his head. It was of no significance to him that neither he nor his wife had heard a news broadcast since six the previous evening: the morning paper, delivered to the flat, he had left there for Edna, unopened.
Hercules was taking his usual breather on the first-floor landing. ‘That’s a good boy. Keep going,’ his master uttered involuntarily.
Spotter was an over-confident fraud. Accepting he had been right about Cruba’s fearful donation, how could he have been certain the money would never reach the Rudyard? Had he been prepared to do something desperate to stop the transfer?
Nor had Spotter been the one who had schemed and hoodwinked, risked a professional status, lived a lie for years while manipulating the demise of the very institution he was employed to foster. He would never begin to know the mental burden that put on a man; even Edna made too little allowance.
And Spotter had not been the one presented with a sworn declaration yesterday predicting four years’ work had gone for nothing. Spotter believed in miracles—but he didn’t have a date in five minutes with a tycoon of a clearly different persuasion.
He paused on the second-floor landing. Edna had been content—even anxious—to let him go it alone at the Treasure meeting. She was convinced the two would be discussing what would shortly prove a fiction—Cruba’s gift. There was no reason why Edna needed to be there but several why she should avoid an encounter with the banker until it was unavoidable.
Miff searched for the time-switches that operated the lights over the next flight and the one he had just climbed. Not content with banning permanent lighting in common areas, a parsimonious landlord allowed regulated illumination for less time than it would have taken a dedicated jogger to progress from floor to floor. As a point of principle, Miff always re-lit the way behind for Hercules: it was a small satisfaction, although a comfort that went unrecognized by the dog.
Of course, both the Miffs knew there would eventually be some kind of showdown over the way the charity had been run. They had banked all along on this happening too late to affect the issue: now, who could tell? At least there had been no criminal action involved: Miff had been assuring himself of this regularly for years.
Naturally, eyebrows might be raised when it came out Edna was a Rudyard. There was still nothing in that nitpicking list of caveats in the Deed to stop Marmaduke’s relatives working for the Trust. Better: Edna had uncovered a precedent. Edward Rudyard, Marmaduke’s youngest son, had been Assistant Secretary at one of the Clubs in 1915 while waiting to come of age to join the army and get killed. He had been paid for the work: the records showed it.
Miff pushed at the door of the third floor WC as he passed. It swung open: the lock had broken again. ‘Come on, Hercules. Bikkies,’ he called back down the stairwell. The animal was thrusting onwards and upwards: you could hear his paws on the brass-edged steps. His master extinguished the cigarette, then walked along the corridor and up the steep flight to the attic floor. The stairs were differently placed from the others in the building, springing from the end and not the centre of the previous floor. They were unbroken by a half-landing, and had no light of their own.
He opened the door at the top with his Yale key, stepped into the outer office and turned to call again to the dog.
The savage blow to his neck came from behind. It was made with a heavy spanner wrapped in towelling. As he collapsed, he was spun about and thrust backwards down the stairs.
The back of his head hit the middle steps before his spreadeagled body bumped and rolled nearly to the bottom. He lay there quite still, a misshapen, oversized human bundle partly shrouded by a broken wet umbrella; the dog-lead had wrapped itself around one ankle. A hand had caught in the lower balustrading. Two triangular dog biscuits had fallen from his open palm onto the corridor floor.
Hercules sniffed at the hand, and glanced sideways at the rest of Miff. Then he ate the biscuits.
Treasure came upon Miff at eight-twenty-five: the ambulance men were first on t
he scene after his 999 call.
The leader of the stretcher team was optimistic. ‘He’s still warm. Could be a pulse. You haven’t moved him? Good. Get him to hospital quick, that’s the thing.’ It was all in the day’s work: words of comfort included. ‘Easy does it, George.’
As Miff was being expertly borne away a pert policewoman in her early twenties appeared from below. She was followed by a bulky, older male colleague.
WPC Wilson was all speed and efficiency. Treasure’s name and address were promptly noted, also his business with the Rudyard Trust. No, he could not positively identify Miff, but he knew who he had to be. No, he hadn’t witnessed the accident, only discovered and reported it. Yes, he could supply Miff’s address, and yes, he believed there was a Mrs Miff who would be the next of kin.
‘We’ll have to follow the ambulance, Mr Treasure. It’ll be St Thomas’s Hospital. See what happens then.’ The girl had snapped shut the notebook.
‘I think he’s a goner,’ the banker volunteered.
‘So do they, sir.’ She nodded in the direction of the departed ambulance men. ‘But we all have to keep to the book.’
‘I think I should try to reach Mrs Miff myself.’ That Treasure was spurred by a sense of responsibility, not enthusiasm, must have been clear from the tone.
‘If you’d rather leave that to us, sir,’ she offered obligingly. ‘Usually better in a case like this. If he’s alive we’ll get her to him, don’t worry.’
‘If not?’
‘We’ll see her anyway, sir.’ She glanced up at the open door to the office: a bunch of keys was hanging from the lock. ‘Would you be staying on here for a bit, sir?’
‘I’ll hold the fort till I hear from you.’
‘Good. Oh, and is this your dog, sir?’
‘Certainly not.’ The smell of Hercules was all-pervading. ‘There’s a tag on his collar. He belongs to Mr Miff. I’ll look after him, and the office.’
‘Thank you, sir. We’ll be back. Shouldn’t take long.’ Treasure first telephoned his secretary, Miss Gaunt— always at her desk by eight-thirty. He explained what had happened and left some instructions to be passed to Jonkins.
The files in the outer office yielded nothing of immediate interest except a testimony to their curator’s neatness and logical mind.
The floor safe in Miff’s office was late nineteenth-century, the size of a small refrigerator, and operated by two deadlocks: the keys were on the ring. Measured in quantity, there was not much inside. It was the quality of the material that plunged Treasure into a fury of study and calculation, interrupted by the return of WPC Wilson nearly an hour later.
‘Dead on arrival I’m afraid, sir,’ was the pretty ash-blonde’s sombre greeting. Treasure nodded gravely and motioned her to a seat. ‘We’ve been with Mrs Miff. She’s taken it very well—shocked, of course, but not the weepy type. She’s identified the body. You knew she worked here, sir?’
‘Not until a few minutes ago. Uses her maiden name.’ He nodded at the papers on Miff’s desk. ‘I’d come to look over all this stuff with the Director,’ he added fairly accurately and because some kind of explanation for his having ransacked the open and almost empty safe seemed appropriate.
‘Mrs Miff explained, sir. Said you were the boss man.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, we offered to get a neighbour in, but she said she’d be OK on her own. We did promise to take the dog home when we’re done here.’ The notebook was out again. ‘My partner’s seeing the other tenants. Just a few questions, if you don’t mind, sir. You arrived at?’
‘Eight-twenty-five. I was a bit early for my meeting with Mr Miff.’
The bright grey eyes looked up at him. ‘Mrs Miff thought your meeting was at eight.’
‘No, eight-thirty.’
‘She thought it’d been changed on the phone late last night.’
‘Not by me.’
‘She could have been wrong. She said so.’ The girl made a note, crossed, then recrossed her legs. He noticed they were very good legs enhanced by regulation black nylons. Somehow one didn’t associate black nylon with . . . ‘You came by taxi, sir?’ Impassively she had rearranged her skirt over her knees.
‘No, my chauffeur dropped me.’
‘Did he come in or wait outside?’
‘Neither. He’s meeting someone at Heathrow. Went straight off.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The Air Traffic Controllers’ go-slow. Delays again today at all airports. Did you see anyone else when you came into the building, sir?’
‘No one.’
‘And your first impression of the body, sir?’
‘Total surprise . . . and shock, obviously . . . and a nasty feeling he was dead already.’
‘And your first action?’
‘Was to shout like hell for help. Nobody came. I didn’t move him. Neck was at an extraordinary angle. Never seen a broken neck but . . .’
‘You don’t have to, to recognize one,’ the girl put in with the easy authority of an old hand. ‘So you thought his neck was broken?’
‘Mmm. Anyway, I left him as he was and dashed up here to telephone. Then I came back. Tried to see if he was breathing.’
‘Was he, sir?’
‘It didn’t seem so, and I couldn’t find a pulse.’
‘And what did you think had happened, sir?’
The honest answer to that question was one he was unprepared to offer anyone at the moment, and least of all a police officer.
‘I thought the poor chap had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck,’ he said. ‘The light there’s appalling. He could have tripped over something. The dog perhaps.'
‘You thought he’d tripped?’
‘That seemed the most likely thing, yes.’
‘The office door, sir. Was it closed or open?’
‘Open, with the keys in the lock. As it was when you arrived.’
WPC Wilson’s partner joined them as the banker was speaking. He was about forty, built like a front row forward, and sweating like one. ‘Phew, it’s sticky,’ he proffered amiably by way of greeting. He sat down in the only vacant chair, nodded at Treasure, then at the girl. ‘You OK, Countess? Good little worker, sir. Knows her stuff.’ It was the tone of a proud mentor.
‘Reckon your friend could’ve died of a heart attack,’ the policeman continued. ‘Those stairs are the limit. Been up and down three times. Trying to find anyone in the building before you got here, sir. Nobody.’ He removed his cap and wiped the glistening, horseshoe bald pate with a white handkerchief evidently used for the same purpose before—several times. ‘I’ve measured the steps on this flight too. Very high risers.’ He stood up, grasped the outside seams of his trousers, did a kind of wriggle with the lower half of his body, and sat down again. ‘Excuse me, all.’
‘Mrs Miff said her husband was poorly,’ the girl put in. She turned back the pages of her notebook. ‘He suffered from narcolepsy . . .’
‘Means he dropped off all the time, sir,’ the policeman interrupted helpfully. ‘New one on me, that. Probably you’ve come across it, sir?’ Treasure shook his head. ‘Wonder could he have gone to sleep at the top of the stairs?’
Neither of the others was ready to offer a view. ‘He was still in his raincoat, sir. Did it look as though he’d gone further than the door?’ asked WPC Wilson.
‘Difficult to say. I shouldn’t have thought so. There’s a coat cupboard close by.’
‘Climbed those stairs, taken by a seizure, fell back and broke his neck. That’ll be the size of it,’ said the constable firmly. ‘Anyway, post mortem will tell.’ He beamed. ‘Right, are you done, WPC Wilson?’
‘All done,’ she answered cheerfully. ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Treasure. Someone’ll be in touch about the inquest if you’re wanted. I should think you will be.’
Treasure walked through to the outer office with the two officers. Hercules, banned to that room earlier, stirred to his feet as they entered.
&
nbsp; ‘Three letters there, sir. Morning mail.’ The policeman pointed to the envelopes propped against the Mickey Mouse clock on the desk. ‘Brought ’em up with me. They were in a box in the hall downstairs. Wasn’t locked,’ he added in a mildly admonitory voice. ‘Seems Mr Miff was here before the postman. He comes around eight-fifteen. I checked. The deceased must have fastened back the street door too. That’s usually done by a gent on the first floor—unless someone else is in first. We’ve got to come back to see the only party on the ground floor. No answer there still.’ The constable smiled. ‘No stone unturned. That’s us. Good day, sir.’
‘Heel, Hercules,’ ordered the girl. After a glance at Treasure the dog unhesitatingly fell in behind her—and with a surprising turn of speed.
The banker closed the door. He picked up the three envelopes, decided someone else should deal with them, and put them down on top of the covered typewriter.
He sat again at Miff’s desk looking at the neat pile of files he had been analysing earlier. They would need closer study, but from what he had seen he knew what had been happening at the headquarters of the Rudyard Trust. He tried to imagine how Miff must have felt the previous afternoon when it became clear years of effort had gone for nothing.
The man’s wife said he was ill. Could he also have been an alcoholic? You almost had to be to knock back a significant amount of spirits before eight in the morning—enough for the smell still to be hanging about your dead body possibly twenty minutes after you had breathed your last. Treasure had seen no point in raising the reek of liquor with the police who seemed not to have noticed it: the post mortem could carry that tale.
Sickness, guilt, frustration, the hope of salvation dashed, the probability of exposure looming—Miff would have been abject despair personified. Treasure was sure the man had taken his own life—only the method perplexed him: the hit or miss possibility in the method. Hurling yourself down one flight of stairs left a good bit to chance even allowing for the strength of the impulse and the firmness of the resolution.
Copper, Gold and Treasure Page 15