by Howard Engel
Bell’s unaccustomed eloquence stirred the people in Major Ross’s office. Looks were exchanged; both Ross and M’Sween were looking uncomfortable, badly shaken in their principles.
“Sir,” said the Lord Advocate, “what you have said is no doubt a timely reminder of those precepts that should abide with every law officer of the Crown, and I thank you for putting your spur to any lapse in our sworn duties. Still, you have made only veiled accusations. If you have charges, bring them into court, make them known.”
“Then, I will charge Keir M’Sween with using his high office to try to cover the traces of a silly and careless investigation, with keeping silent about facts that would have freed Alan Lambert of the charges against him, with failing to provide to either counsel or prosecution all of the records in the case, a small number of which would have given the prisoner then at the bar a speedy deliverance. There is more: he used Inspector Webb as his instrument to terrorize and intimidate witnesses to be silent, to change their precognitions and to try to stop Doyle and myself from uncovering the truth. He has had criminal knowledge in this matter from the beginning. I will not mention the pressure he brought to bear upon Doyle, here, and myself.”
The room held its breath. The heavy mantel clock, with the mute plaster heads on either side of it, was the only sound. I myself was caught completely off-guard. Although I had been with my friend throughout the investigation, I had not expected this would be the result of our efforts. As soon as rational as well as irrational thought was possible, protests boomed out. The Procurator-Fiscal, his son, even Mr Veitch, whose bread one might have thought was buttered on the other side, shouted their objections to Bell’s charges. Major Ross demanded that he substantiate his accusations at once. Again, all eyes, including my own, were on my friend.
“Chief M’Sween, will you make your office available to an independent search? I have not had the opportunity of seeing the pebble thrown into the water, but from the circular waves I can see where it struck. If the chief himself did not order Webb to intimidate witnesses, then it was you. You were Webb’s superior officer. When Mr XYZ was cleared, as Bryce was told, it had to have been you who looked into his involvement, unless it was the chief.”
“Look here, sir,” said the old chief, “M’Sween has been carrying not only his own heavy and grave responsibilities, but, since my illness last year, most of mine as well. He is a capable, honest officer. He has helped, for very few shillings of the ratepayers’ money, to make private and public property and these streets safe after dark. He is a dedicated and frugal officer. If I have my way, he shall have my post when I retire.”
“What you are admitting, Chief, is that the force is hard-pressed and under-staffed. I make no argument against that. It is also under-financed. A good force is expensive. That is why M’Sween’s chase after the ‘fleeing’ suspect is so heinous. It was wasteful. I suspect, sir, that you would have been more than a little critical to learn of M’Sween’s blunder. It would have cost the force dear. Far better to have the culprit to show for the expense.”
“Dash it all, Dr Bell, you’re making a serious accusation, and I will support an independent investigation if only to prove that you are wrong,” said the old chief. “You name any competent person to undertake such a search, and I will back you.”
“What about Mr Andrew Burnham? He is a skilled administrator. He was able to detect the fiduciary irregularities in the accounts of Gordon Eward, the second murder victim. He helped to smooth away the irregularities in his books.”
“What’s this? I’ve never heard of such a thing!” said the Procurator-Fiscal, Sir William Burnham, with a sharp look at his son.
“Let me understand you, sir. Are you saying that Gordon Eward’s accounts were in disorder and that Andrew Burnham put them to rights with the connivance of the Procurator-Fiscal? This is insane! It wouldn’t be condoned for a moment!”
“Sir Alexander, I take it that you were ignorant of Andrew’s Good Samaritan gesture as well?”
“I certainly was. M’Sween, what do you know of this?”
M’Sween said nothing. He looked about to speak, but nothing could be heard. He was sweating so that his cheeks shone against the light.
“Doyle and I were told by Andrew himself that, with the blessing of the chief, the deputy chief and his father, the Procurator-Fiscal, Eward’s pilfering from the accounts under his care was covered from departments that had not spent their budgets. The number he mentioned was just under two hundred thousand pounds.”
“Two hundred thousand pounds!” echoed the chief with something of his old vigour. Sir William responded as well:
“This is as ridiculous as the rest of your rant, Dr Bell. What do you say for yourself, Andrew?”
“There were irregularities in Eward’s books, which, in the circumstance of his sudden death, I managed to cover with funds from elsewhere. In speaking to an outsider, I thought it best to suggest that there was a general agreement that this should be done.”
“This is most grave,” said the old chief, Sir Alexander Scobbie.
“I felt I was merely replacing the divot so that others might play through,” Andrew said directly to his father.
“Whatever your intentions were, my boy,” said Sir Alexander, “you were quite wrong to do it. Charges may follow for all I know. Certainly it must be looked into.”
“Sandy, you’re addressing my son!” said the Procurator-Fiscal.
“You think I say it with an easy heart, Sir William? I do not.”
“Unfortunately, fiduciary irregularities are only the smallest charges that are hanging over the head of Andrew Burnham,” said Bell. “Unfortunately, I am convinced that he is also guilty of the three murders we have been looking into. Aye, the young man is guilty enough, clever enough and desperate enough.”
Again Bell had achieved a sensation. Andrew Burnham’s face went white. The men in the room looked from Burnham to Bell and back again. Of the two, they would have preferred young Burnham. He was of their sort, after all, but there was something about the accusation, despite its audacity, that made the room grow silent once more after Burnham and his father had sputtered their objections. We all wanted to hear what came next.
TWENTY-NINE
“Have you ever seen this note, Sir William?” Bell passed a piece of paper to the shaken father of Andrew Burnham. I recognized it as the sketch Bell had made of the note found in Webb’s flat when we discovered his body. Sir William glanced at the paper, then let his arm fall, as though he had not the strength to compel it further. But something in it caught his attention, for he raised it again and studied it closely.
“The code words may be familiar to you from some time ago. I know it took me some days to recollect where I had seen them before. The drawings come from official staves held by county officials on ceremonial occasions in some English counties. The markings are runes going back to the Danes who introduced this clever sort of portable almanac. You may remember that the staff is called the Staffordshire Clogg. You come from Staffordshire, I believe, sir?”
“Aye, I come from there and I am familiar with the Staffordshire Clogg. You can see it in Camden’s Britannia in a good library.”
“Then you know that these little pictures represent dates, or more correctly, the name days of certain saints. St Crispian, patron of cobblers, is represented by two soles and so on. The note which was sent to Webb is signed by a diagonal cross. Have you any idea of what that might represent?”
“Why don’t you kill me all at once and forgo this torture, Dr Bell? We both know what it means.” The Procurator-Fiscal allowed the hand with the paper in it to fall to its full length, as though the message had been written in lead.
“Yes, the cross of St Andrew. After the letters ‘Yrs,’ which I take to mean ‘Yours’ as in ‘Yours sincerely,’ the complimentary closing of the note, the cross follows. This is the signature: ‘Andrew.’” The note was picked up from Sir William’s limp hand and passed to the
old chief.
“St Crispian, that is the Battle of Agincourt, the great victory of Henry V over the French knights, about a century after Bannockburn.”
“The date was 25 October, 1415. In the context of the note, the date is given October 25 minus 2, or 23 October, gentlemen, which is today. ‘Troubles over 23 October…’ That is, I believe, a reference to what was to have taken place here this morning: the execution of Alan Lambert. The second symbol, that axe-head-like figure, stands for St Mary Magdalen, whose feast is celebrated on 22 July. ‘Plans of 22 July less 1 well concluded.’ What happened on 21 July?”
“Need you ask? That was the date of the first two murders,” said Major Ross, who was certainly on top of the facts. “Mlle Clery of the Royal Opera and Gordon Eward of City Chambers.”
“The message concludes: ‘Meet me at 5 on… and then there is the image of a grid shaped like a leg. The symbol stands for St Luke on the Staffordshire Clog: 18 October, the Saturday Webb disappeared.” I thought he was going to say “the day we found Webb’s dead body,” but Bell had his wits about him.
The note commanded the attention that Bell could hardly summon when talking straightforwardly. It was passed from hand to hand as though it were a holy relic. Paper was solid evidence, even though it was only a copy. Just the same, M’Sween recognized it because he had seen the original. “So, Dr Bell,” prompted Major Ross, “what is your reading of the complete note?”
“My rendering would be as follows:
Troubles over 23 October (today, the day of the hanging). Take heart. Plans of 21 July (the date of the murders) well concluded. Meet me at 5 (that is 5 o’clock) on 18 October (the day of Webb’s disappearance).
Yours,
Andrew”
A hush followed this, broken at last by Andrew Burnham himself:
“What a gang of fools! Is there but one Andrew in all of Scotland? You look as though you have settled on my guilt. There’s no health in it. I warn you. I am well able to defend myself. You shan’t settle a noose around my neck on such flimsy testimony. I warn you all, I shall fight you! My father and I both will fight you. I bear the name of Burnham! It’s a name that counts for something in this country. We’ve done signal service in this shire for many years. I shall not be put away without making a—”
“Hoots, lad, be still. Hear to what the man has to say. We’ll protect you and the law will protect you. You have nowt to fear,” said the old chief, who, I gathered, had known the young man from his childhood.
“The note was found in Webb’s rooms. It connects Webb with guilty knowledge of the murders and to the murderer, Andrew Blank, shall we say, who then added Webb himself to his tally. From his point of view, it was a reasonable step to take: Webb had power over him because of what he knew. Far better to cut him off, thereby protecting himself from any chance of Webb changing his view of matters, whether by conscience or extortion. This note brought Webb to the rendezvous that resulted in his death. He invited himself to his victim’s flat. He could never have got a dead body up all those stairs undetected. He also must have known before the murder about Webb’s secret cupboard, where he kept various disguises, since he used it to hide the body in.”
“Dr Bell,” observed the Procurator-Fiscal, “you seem to be singularly well informed about these matters. Do you have an informer in fee at the station?”
“In time, you shall know all, sir. First, let me refer back to what I said earlier: we have all assumed that Mlle Clery was the intended victim of our murderer—even without the motive of robbery. I suggest to you that she was not. Eward, Gordon Eward, was the killer’s target. Mlle Clery a very useful diversion, a smokescreen.
“Why Eward? Why the colourless bookkeeper? Because he was a particular colourless bookkeeper. He was murdered because he knew that Andrew Burnham had been pilfering from the public chest for some time. He had been speculating in the Tay Bridge scheme. As an honourable man, he went to Burnham and asked what he intended to do about it. Andrew asked for more time, promised to set matters to rights, and then he called upon Eward at the flat of his mistress. With Eward out of his road, he was able to cover his steps and, when caught in the act, pretended that it was Eward whose finances were in disarray. It was almost the perfect crime. No one suspected that his intended victim was more than a by-blow, an unlucky chance. His removal made it easy to cover his tracks.”
“You have proofs for what you say, I hope, Doctor. You have made a serious allegation. Can you substantiate it?”
“Let me try.” Here Bell turned to Mr Lambert, the father of Graeme, Alan and Louise. “Mr Lambert, on an evening not quite a week ago, you paid a visit to the Burnham house after receiving a note about my blundering into this investigation. Could you tell us about that?”
“It was some wiseacre’s idea of a joke. It was a mistake. No one at the Burnham house was there to receive me. It was all ducks and drakes and to no purpose except to steal an hour of my peace.”
“And who had signed the note you got?”
“Well, I thought it came from young Andrew, but he later denied sending it. It wouldn’t have come from Sir William because we had had no conversation on the subject. Andrew has been most solicitous since Alan got in trouble. He assured me that everything possible was being done to save Alan and that amateurs—however well-meaning—might do more harm than good.”
“Doyle, you will remember our visit to Webb’s rooms? Here he turned to the old chief, and bowed. “I can see no harm in telling you this now, sir. We went to call upon Webb since he had been harassing us for some days. We knew that he was becoming worried about what we had uncovered so far.” Here he turned back to me.
“Yes, sir. I remember it very well.”
“Then you will recall that we discovered Webb’s camera, a Thornton-Picard, and several exposed photographic plates?”
“Yes, some were pictures taken of me in front of the Parliament House. They must have been taken during the trial, before we had actively started looking into the case.”
“Excellent! That coincides with my own memory exactly. At that time, before we had questioned the pawnbroker, which we did on the day the verdict was rendered, no one knew of our promise to help young Lambert, except Alan’s brother, Graeme, from whom the request to help came. Tell us, Graeme, whom did you tell?”
Graeme looked a little stunned, as though he had been suddenly roused from sleep. He caught his father’s face with the tail of his eye for a moment. “Why, I told my father and sister, Doctor.”
“No one else?”
“No one else.”
“Then, Mr Lambert, I turn to you. To whom did you impart this news?”
“I met Mr Burnham at my club. I knew his family of course. I was singularly touched by his greeting to me, under the circumstances. He asked if I had written to the Lord Advocate and I told him I had. I had just learned of Graeme’s appeal to Dr Bell, and told him that too. I didn’t see the harm, but he assured me that I would be blunting the edge of my appeal through normal channels. He suggested that bringing you into the matter would only put official backs up.”
“Good! I’d guessed as much.” Here he paused and looked from one face to the next until he had marshalled his remaining arguments. “You see, gentlemen, how often the name of Andrew Burnham comes into the story. It appears on a list of investors in his friend David M’Clung’s Firth of Tay Bridge Company. The name Gordon Eward does not. I have suggested Andrew’s motive. The company could not repay on schedule. His embezzlement had been discovered and would be exposed if he didn’t do something about young Eward.
“To test my theory, I cabled Tom Prentice, Mlle Clery’s former agent, in New York. I asked him to tell me the name of the man the police documents referred to as Mr XYZ. This is his reply, which I have not had time to read. Would you open the envelope and read the cable, Major Ross?”
The prison governor took the envelope from Bell and opened it while all of us watched. From it he removed a single piece of paper,
which he unfolded and read in a low, rather hoarse voice:
DR JOSEPH BELL
FACULTY OF MEDICINE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
THE NAME THAT HELENE ANDRE
MENTIONED ON NIGHT OF MURDER,
LATER CALLED MR XYZ BY POLICE,
WAS ANDREW BURNHAM, SON OF SIR
WILLIAM BURNHAM.
PRENTICE
THIRTY
The meeting in the gaol broke up shortly after the reading of the cable from Tom Prentice. Andrew Burnham was detained and, shortly afterwards, Keir M’Sween was swiftly relieved of his duties and likewise charged. He is now awaiting trial for complicity in concealing a crime and as an accessory after the fact. Andrew Burnham’s trial for murder has been carried over until the spring assizes. Competent accountants, I have been told, have gone over his books for the past several years. They have been compared with the originals of the records left by Gordon Eward. Sir William has secured the services of Sir Henry Mildrew, QC, LLD, to lead his defence. The Lord Advocate has declined to prosecute the case personally. Sir William retired from public life as soon as the press began retailing the details of what I have been trying to record here.
The Lamberts went away, on a Pacific cruise. They returned overland, spending some time in Japan, China and India. Louise wrote to me at first every week. I delighted in experiencing the marvels of Bali and Samoa through her eyes. Then the letters stopped quite suddenly and were replaced by postal cards sent at rarer intervals as the family pursued its progress across the Mongolian desert and through the high mountain passes leading to India. From St Petersburg she wrote that she had met an American businessman and that their friendship was rapidly becoming something more. I steeled myself for her next letter, and when it came, I found I was still unprepared for its news. The marriage is to take place in San Francisco, where her fiancé has a house overlooking the bay. I have no idea which bay the house overlooks, but I intend to look it up on a map of California one day.