A Gentleman's Murder

by Christopher Huang

  He breakfasted in the club’s dining room and sat down in his Usual Armchair with his reading. He was thinking, mostly, about the contents of Benson’s box. What could those disparate objects add up to? Perhaps it would all become clear once Wolfe fulfilled his part of the bet. Wolfe had to know already that he was capable of the task, which made it almost certain that he’d emerge the victor. Still, there was always a first time for everything. Eric found himself rather hoping that, for once, Wolfe would fall a few inches short of his claim, and that he’d have a good view of Wolfe’s face when it happened.

  At a quarter to twelve, Eric put aside his reading and contemplated the possibility of shepherd’s pie. Oh yes, tender chunks of lamb under a warm layer of mash delicately crisped on top … the Britannia’s kitchen added a sprinkling of grated cheddar and parsley over the top of its shepherd’s pie. Eric considered that most things were improved tenfold with the addition of cheese, and shepherd’s pie was no exception.

  Eric looked up to see Jacob Bradshaw approaching the fireplace with a copy of the Times under one arm. “Hullo, Peterkin,” he said, smiling warmly behind his snow-white beard as he settled into an armchair. “Aldershott told me about this newest wager of Wolfe’s and suggested I drop by. Club security, you know.”

  Bradshaw was the club secretary, another of the club’s board officers, and the longest-serving officer of the lot. He’d been club secretary when Eric first joined, and it looked very much as though he’d continue for several years yet, whatever happened to the rest of the board. It was simply that he Got Things Done: he was efficient, remarkably so, and over the course of his career, he’d collected a network of contacts stretching twice around the Empire. Anything you needed done, they said, Bradshaw knew a man to do it. Eric always thought Bradshaw looked more than a bit like Father Christmas, and it was hard to imagine him as company sergeant major at the Sussex training camp where he’d served. CSMs, in Eric’s experience, tended to be a queer combination of fatherly—which Bradshaw had down pat—and nightmarishly tough. But Bradshaw never seemed to raise his voice, and always seemed to have a kind word for everyone.

  “Who do you expect will win the bet?” Eric asked, putting his manuscript aside. “I’ve learnt not to underestimate Wolfe, but you never know.”

  “He isn’t here yet, is he?” Here, Bradshaw cast a glance at the clock. “And neither are Aldershott and Benson. I know Aldershott, at least, wouldn’t want to miss this. Perhaps his work is keeping him. I don’t know about Benson.”

  “I got the impression he was staying the night with Saxon. He’ll have to hop to Saxon’s schedule.”

  “I wonder how he and Saxon came to be friendly,” Bradshaw said. “I admit I was surprised, pleasantly so, when Saxon proposed him as a member and spoke up for his service as a stretcher-bearer. I was more than happy to have him—it’s no secret I think these membership restrictions just a little too restrictive—but talking Aldershott around took some doing. In the end, we put it to a vote, and Wolfe was the only holdout. And as you know, it takes two officers to block or boot a member. Wolfe was furious, though heaven knows why. I know a little of what Benson went through, and he deserves his place here as much as anyone else.”

  Eric nodded. He still remembered what Benson had told him the night before about the perils of being on the battlefield in a noncombat capacity. “I expect this whole wager was Wolfe’s way of getting back at Benson, then. Make him look a bit of a fool.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Aldershott strode up to them as they both looked up at the clock. It was five minutes to the hour. “Are neither Wolfe nor Benson here yet?” he said, frowning. “It’s nearly time.”

  Eric replied, “I expect Wolfe to sweep in with fifteen seconds to spare, deposit the prize on the table, and then calmly sit back and light a cigarette while the rest of us squawk in wonder and consternation.”

  “That does rather seem like his style,” Bradshaw said, and let out a low chuckle.

  They turned to watch the clock, Aldershott tapping his foot impatiently. Outside, a particularly fierce gust of wind rattled the windows. As the second hand of the clock swept past the nine, the lounge doors swung open to admit Mortimer Wolfe. He had a Cheshire cat smile on his face, and a small linen-wrapped bundle tucked carelessly under one arm. He swaggered up to the gathered men, dropped the bundle unceremoniously on the table, and threw himself into an armchair. “Benson not here yet?” he drawled as he lit up a cigarette. “That does rather spoil the effect.”

  Aldershott eyed the bundle and said, “I suppose I owe you a quid. Unless Peterkin here can swear that this is not one of the items from Benson’s safe-deposit box. Peterkin?”

  “Let’s wait for Benson.” It was only fair, though Eric could tell from the shape of the bundle that it was probably the pair of surgical scissors. An odd choice, Eric thought, but either way, it looked as though Wolfe had made good on the wager. Waiting for Benson was a mere formality.

  “Bother Benson,” said Aldershott. “It’s past noon, and I’m fairly certain that nobody ever said anything about everyone having to be in attendance for the grand unveiling. Wolfe, let’s see what you’ve got there.”

  “As you wish.” Wolfe stood up and whipped off the linen wrapping with a flourish to reveal the pair of surgical scissors, as Eric had expected, glinting in the light. All eyes turned to Eric for confirmation.

  “That looks like one of Benson’s prizes,” Eric said. He turned to Wolfe. “I’d have taken the photograph, personally, as being more distinctive and easier to carry around than the medical report, but, unless you’ve gone and picked this up from Harrods, this looks about right.”

  Wolfe frowned. “I don’t know what you mean about any photograph or medical report. That box just held this and an old hypodermic kit. And I don’t like your tone, Peterkin. If you want to see if I’d really taken this from Benson’s box, you have only to go look at it yourself: you’ll find only the hypodermic kit there, where I left it. As it so happens, I did choose this because it was easier to tuck into a pocket without leaving an unsightly bulge, but perhaps I’d have done better to take the kit instead. It had a nicely distinctive monogram engraved on its lid, as I recall.”

  “No one’s doubting you,” Bradshaw said, but Eric was uneasy. Benson had said that those four items should right some great wrong, and Wolfe’s claim that only two of the four were in the box suggested nothing good. And where was Benson?

  Eric stood up. “I think we should inspect the box,” he said, earning a hard glare from Wolfe. “If there’s a master key for the boxes—”

  “No need for that,” Wolfe snapped, also standing. “I left the box conveniently open on the table so everyone could see just how shoddy the security around here really is.” He shot Eric a hostile glare. “Honestly, Peterkin, you people have no shame. I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”

  Eric ignored him. He was already on his way to the lounge doors, and the others, swept up in the moment, followed behind him. They grabbed Old Faithful as they passed the reception desk in the lobby, and the group of them—Eric in the lead, followed by Old Faithful, Aldershott, Bradshaw, and Wolfe—trooped down to the vault’s antechamber.

  It was deathly still. Some of the fog had got in from the night before and never left; Eric could smell a faint tinge of sulphur in the air, and … copper? The uneasiness he’d felt earlier redoubled as Old Faithful, asking no questions, began dutifully turning the wheel of the vault door. A moment later, the door swung open, and a hush fell on the assembly.

  Albert Benson lay crumpled on the floor, half under the table in the vault. He was barefoot; his shirt and trousers appeared to have been thrown on in haste, and his braces hung loose at his sides. His head was turned just so, and he was looking right at Eric.

  And for a moment, Lieutenant Eric Peterkin was not in the vault of the Britannia, staring into the eyes of Albert Benson. Instead it was his first day in Flanders, and he was looking out across the wir
e to no-man’s-land, right into the eye of a corpse not ten feet away. Mud and rot rendered the body the same colour as the field in which it lay, but that eye was still a startling pale blue that pierced his very soul—much as Benson’s pale blue eyes now did.

  Protruding from the side of Benson’s neck was the decorative handle of a small knife. Too fancy for Flanders, Eric found himself thinking. There was something familiar about it, and with a start, Eric recognised it for the letter opener that normally sat on the desk of Aldershott’s office upstairs.

  Blood had splashed a good distance out from Benson’s wound, in a fountain spray across the mosaic motto on the floor. It seeped into the grout, decorum est now outlined in Benson’s cruor.

  It is honourable …

  Above, the clinical white glare of the electric light bathed the room in contrasts. The clean white walls, the polished steel, the gleaming tiles—these things were a mercifully far cry from the murky, muddy shadows of the trenches.

  Beside him, the others began to stir.

  Old Faithful took a step forward, but Wolfe pulled him back. “Don’t. Don’t bother; he’s clearly beyond help. Call the police.”

  THE INSPECTOR

  OLD FAITHFUL PUSHED past to hurry up the stairs, and Aldershott, spreading his arms, drove the other men out of the vault. Both he and Bradshaw had slipped back into their old Army mindsets: Aldershott’s expression was even stonier than usual, and Bradshaw had lost his affability. This was, of course, a crisis, and each and every one of them had been taught to deal with a crisis in terse, impersonal terms.

  “That’s your letter opener,” Bradshaw told Aldershott, with a nod towards the knife handle. His voice was unusually steady. “Better check your office.”

  “In good time, Mr. Bradshaw,” Aldershott snapped back. Eric had never heard Aldershott address Bradshaw as “Mister” before.

  Meanwhile, Wolfe had turned around and begun to climb the stairs.

  “Captain Wolfe!” Aldershott barked. “You are not to leave the premises! Return at once!”

  Wolfe stopped at the top of the stairs and only half turned back towards the club president. His face was white and his voice was almost a caricature of its usual smug, superior tone. “You’re not my commanding officer, Mr. Aldershott. I know perfectly well how this looks now, and how much worse it would look if I were to run. But I refuse to spend the next hour standing about in that filthy little room with a body rotting not five feet away. If you need me, I will be in the lounge.”

  And with that: exit Wolfe, stage right.

  Eric glanced around at the other two men. Bradshaw’s beard was beginning to quiver with uncertainty as the man recalled the complications of dealing with civilian crime. Aldershott looked determined to stand here until he was relieved, whenever that might be.

  “Wolfe is right,” Eric said. “There’s no sense in waiting around down here. We’d better wait for the police up in the lounge. And tell the attendants not to let anyone leave the building.”

  Aldershott rounded on him as though this were all his fault. “Don’t presume to tell me how to run my club, Peterkin,” he snapped. He made an inarticulate sound of frustration, then brusquely gestured to Bradshaw to proceed.

  Bradshaw gave Eric a curt nod, then hurried up the stairs to call the police and make sure no one left the building. Not that it would do much good, Eric thought, his mind already working through the facts of this very real murder mystery. If he had to guess, he’d say Benson was killed several hours ago, certainly before Old Faithful came on duty and the Britannia began to wake up. Someone would have seen Benson coming down from his room otherwise. Whoever the killer was, he would have had ample time to make his escape, and might be halfway to the Hebrides by now, for all they knew.

  Unless it was Wolfe. But would Wolfe’s excessive pride allow him to leave such a messy crime scene? Even if the encounter had occurred on the spur of the moment, Wolfe was sure to have found a way to keep it tidy.

  The office of the club president was no more than five feet from the door to the vault stairwell. Aldershott paid Eric no mind as he ascended the stairs and made straight for the office door, then uttered an oath when he found it unlocked. No, not unlocked, but forced: someone had taken a fireplace poker to it and cracked the frame. The poker itself lay discarded in a corner of the office, while all the drawers of Aldershott’s desk had been pulled out and rummaged through. The floor and desktop were littered with papers, which Aldershott, after letting out a grunt of frustration, began sorting into tidy little piles.

  Eric pulled to a halt at the doorway and said, “Aldershott! What are you doing? You shouldn’t touch anything!”

  “Shut it, Peterkin.”

  “But the police will want to look at this. Whatever’s happened here has to be connected to what’s happened downstairs. I mean, the letter opener—”

  “I told you to leave things to your betters,” Aldershott snarled, shaking a handful of papers at Eric. “Previous presidents may have used this room as a place in which to nap, but I use it for important business! These documents represent interests in a hundred different investments related to the members of the club. Not that I expect you to know anything about such things.” Aldershott shoved the handful of papers into one drawer and slammed it shut. “If the police want anything, the poker’s right there, and I can tell them where my letter opener’s usually kept: right here on top of my desk blotter. There is nothing, Peterkin, to be gained from leaving sensitive documents lying about for all to see.”

  Eric briefly considered wrestling Aldershott away from the room, or calling for someone to help him do so, but reflected that this would only further disturb the scene. If he couldn’t stop Aldershott from cleaning up the office, he could at least take a minute to study it before it got completely ruined.

  The passage of past presidents, each with his own peculiarities, had left its imprint here: there were cheap prints pulled from art folios, newspaper clippings of forgotten exploits, a dead fern that had yet to be thrown out, and a rather alarming African mask. The wallpaper was a patchwork of faded rectangles where pictures had been put up and taken down again. Through the window, one could look out onto the utility court that ran along the side of the building and the bare brick wall opposite; Eric could see the catch on the window casement was in the locked position, and nothing there appeared to have been touched. The transom pane above was wide open, letting the cold air in, but climbing in and out through it seemed like an unlikely prospect.

  By the desk, a wastepaper basket contained a few torn envelopes and some brown paper, the remnants of yesterday’s post. An ashtray had been knocked from the desk, scattering a full complement of cigarette stubs and ash over the floor. A table in the corner held a decanter of brandy, and here Eric noticed a slight grease stain on the lip of two of the glasses beside it.

  “Hello,” he said, “it looks like someone’s been at the brandy. You’ll want to not touch those. There’ll be fingerprints—”

  “Of course someone’s been at the brandy! It’s my office, so who do you think that might be?”

  Eric gave the room another look around—nothing in the fireplace grate, nothing out of place except for the poker and the papers thrown haphazardly from the drawers of the desk. He’d seen, perhaps, everything there was to see. It was time to make a retreat, before Aldershott really got upset.

  He bumped into Bradshaw a few steps down the corridor. Behind him, Aldershott had gone back to tidying up his office, cursing all the way.

  “The police should be here very shortly,” Bradshaw said. “Aldershott will want to know.”

  “You’d better be the one to tell him,” Eric replied. “He isn’t too happy with me right this minute. You’d better tell him to leave off cleaning his office, too. Someone ransacked it last night, and the police will want to look at it.”

  Bradshaw nodded and ambled past Eric to give Aldershott the word. Eric noted that Aldershott seemed far more amenable to Bradshaw�
�s persuasion: the sound of rustling papers and slamming drawers ceased, to be replaced by a whispered discussion between the two men. But perhaps it was only that they’d worked together before and knew each other better. Or so Eric told himself.

  Back in the lounge, Wolfe had secluded himself in a corner of the bar and was nursing a drink with every appearance of normalcy. It wasn’t in Wolfe to let on that anything was amiss: if his upper lip were any stiffer, he’d need surgery to eat his dinner. There were very few other club members in the lounge at the moment, thankfully, and a handful more in the dining room downstairs. They all seemed quite oblivious to the crisis as yet, but Eric took the precaution of noting who was here, just in case.

  Was it just half an hour ago that he’d been thinking of a nice helping of shepherd’s pie for his dinner? The thought of food right now made him … not precisely ill, because he was almost never ill, but certainly unsettled. The sense of unease that had begun with Wolfe’s unveiling of his prize hadn’t left him, even after the discovery of Benson’s corpse.

  Corpse.

  That word belonged out in the trenches of Flanders, not within the comforting confines of the Britannia Club. A corpse was a thing rotting in front of the trenches, half sunk into the mud, too close to ignore but too far away to do anything about. A corpse was a limp, gas-drowned body—certainly not your mate of five minutes ago—flung into the back of a wagon. A corpse was not a thing found within the polished, hallowed halls of the Britannia Club. If you threw someone over the club bar in a brawl, it was supposed to end with the both of you uproariously drunk and sworn to be brothers in arms forever. Not with one of you bleeding out on the floor with a knife in your neck.