A Gentleman's Murder

by Christopher Huang

  Eric returned to the crowd of dustbins and looked up. He could see a pair of bricked-up windows on the floor above the back door, and higher up still was the single window belonging to the room Benson had occupied.

  The door itself seemed quite sturdy, and was fitted with a Bramah lock. Famously, the Bramah lock had been counted unpickable for decades, until the Great Exhibition of 1851, when an American locksmith named Hobbs took up the challenge and picked it—in fifty-one hours. Anyone wanting to pick this lock would have needed a good deal of practice, and would doubtless have made a name for himself as a lockpick before now. Only Wolfe had anything approaching such a reputation.

  Eric knocked on the door and waited. It was answered in a moment by the sandy-haired attendant he’d seen earlier.

  “I know you,” the attendant said. “You’re a member, aye? You’ll be wanting the front door.”

  Eric held up a shilling, which disappeared along with the attendant’s reservations.

  “Then again, what do I know,” the attendant said, letting Eric in. The door closed behind him and locked itself with a click.

  “Those dustbins outside,” Eric said, “do you recall if they’d been moved, the morning that Mr. Benson was found?” He was thinking now of Norris, whose real alibi lay in whether or not he could dispose of any clothes after getting Benson’s blood all over them. It occurred to Eric that the simplest way for this would be to drop them into the dustbins and let the dustmen take care of the rest. The back door looked as though it opened easily enough from the inside, though it locked itself on closing; but the dustbins were near enough that one had only to keep the door wedged open for a few seconds. There’d be no risk of the night attendants happening on the wedged-open door and closing it while one was away.

  “The dustbins?” said the attendant, raising an incredulous brow. “What d’you care about the dustbins?”

  Eric held up another shilling. It disappeared after the first one, and the attendant’s lips loosened significantly.

  “Ah, service with a smile, says I. That day were a Saturday, weren’t it? There’s no dustman comes on a Saturday. It’s Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, five o’clock in the morning and no earlier.”

  “No earlier? Why no earlier?”

  This time, it was apprehension that stopped the flow of information, and it took half a crown to start it up again.

  “They think the court is haunted, that’s why. But it ain’t the court; it’s the room upstairs. That room ain’t popular with the gentlemen on account of the alley noise, so old Cully lets people what ain’t members spend the night there sometimes. Tramps, mostly—dirty beggars with nowhere to lay their heads, and no wonder. Some of them howl in their sleep like you wouldn’t believe, and the things what come out of their mouths when they’re dead asleep would wake them as is actually dead. The doors and walls are thick enough so you don’t hear them inside, but in the summer, when they sleeps with the window open, you hear it out in the court, and I still get chills though I knows what’s really doing it. There’s no one dares set foot in there after dark because of the howling.”

  Old Faithful’s service to the Britannia Club was supposedly impeccable, and it surprised Eric that he should do anything to risk incurring the displeasure of the membership.

  The attendant said, “You won’t let on that it was me what told you, will you? Especially to old Cully. Fellow would have me skinned alive.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of bearing any tales.” Eric thanked him with an additional shilling, and the attendant bounded up the half flight of stairs to disappear through the lone door on the landing.

  That would be the staff room. Before the door closed, Eric caught a glimpse of plain plaster walls, boards covered with pinned notices, and another attendant lounging about with his collar open. The way into the rest of the club’s ground floor would be through that staff room, Eric knew, and there was a narrow stairway from it up to the little flat Old Faithful used. There wasn’t much chance of someone slipping through that way on the night in question, not if a pair of attendants had been cooling their heels there the whole time. On the other hand, the stairs also continued down to the basement, and Eric could smell … bacon?

  Yes, bacon. Bacon and sausages and fried bread. Of course. The kitchen was in the basement, and there was a way up to the dining room from there. Eric followed his nose into the scullery, where the smells were somewhat more pungent and less pleasant. From there, he hurried through to the kitchen proper, where the single cook on duty gave him the evil eye. It looked to be an exceptionally slow day, but Eric was an unexpected interloper in the servants’ domain, and the toast had been burnt yet again.

  A little lost, Eric tried the nearest door; but this was to the boiler room, and it was locked and bolted. The cook pointed him brusquely to another set of stairs, which took him up to the serving pantry. Here, Eric stopped by the cabinet of silverware and looked around. He was still in the way, to judge by the looks the waiters were giving him, but the dining room was just through the open doorway, and it wasn’t the first time a club member had ducked into the pantry for some reason or other.

  Eric was sure Wolfe must have found a way through the back door, avoiding the night attendants by taking the detour through the kitchen, pantry, and dining room. There would be nobody in these rooms at that time of night. But there wouldn’t be anything to show it: these rooms were used so much and so often, any potential clues would have been cleaned away thrice over by now.

  There were just two diners, young bachelors nursing hangovers. They made no comment on Eric’s arrival via the pantry; they were still in their evening clothes, and to comment was to invite comment. The usual crowds had yet to return to the Britannia, which explained the reduced staff downstairs—finding themselves useless, the rest must have skived off somewhere for a smoke and a drink. The white linen finery, unused, gave the dining room an air of having been left at the altar.

  Eric passed through to the lobby, where his footsteps seemed to echo more loudly into the emptiness than ever before. There’d be no clues here, either, Eric thought, but did there need to be? Once Wolfe or Benson’s murderer had made it up here, it should have been plain sailing but for the door to the vault stairwell and everything that came after.

  Someone had broken into Aldershott’s office as well, Eric remembered—forced the door with a poker. He’d heard mention that the poker had been taken from the public reception room, and a glance inside showed a brand-new set of andirons in gleaming brass, a shining art deco element in an otherwise Victorian room.

  In the dining room, one diner got up to leave, and the other didn’t seem intent on staying very much longer. Eric found himself wondering if anyone was in the lounge upstairs.

  “Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

  Eric looked around. Old Faithful had stepped out from behind the reception desk and seemed anxious to be of service.

  “Cully,” said Eric, keeping his voice low, “I just heard the oddest rumour, that you were letting in men off the street to spend the night in the club lodgings—”

  “Hush! They were one of us, weren’t they? They fought, and now they’re down on their luck, and here we’ve got an empty room. A soul or two a night, no harm in that, is there? You can’t say they don’t deserve better than they’ve got.”

  Eric was hard-pressed to disagree. These ex-servicemen plagued with nightmares, and “down on their luck” besides—which was another way of saying that they couldn’t get readjusted to life on civvy street … None of his men had ended up like this, had they?

  He said, “Does Aldershott know about this?”

  “That’s how it started, sir. Captain Aldershott had a few men from his regiment who needed a place to lay their heads, and he brought them in as guests. That was three years ago, and it’s gone on from there.”

  So Aldershott really wasn’t the stiff, unyielding martinet he pretended to be. One had to respect the compassion. It made Eric
wonder, once again, about his men, the ones with whom he’d lost touch. Thompson and Clark never seemed to have anything to come home to. Once, waiting in the lull between salvos, Clark had even expressed a wish that the fighting go on forever. It hadn’t been bloodthirst, judging by his expression; Eric wondered if he were afraid of what he’d find back home.

  Eric shook his head. Better get back to the task at hand. If he was to find out how someone had broken into the vault, it would be useful to know exactly how the vault and its attendant processes worked. And the best way to do that would be to get a box.

  Old Faithful seemed relieved that Eric didn’t intend to pursue the matter of the lodging room. “Sure,” he said, “and there’s been a lot of boxes made vacant since last week—”

  “Can I get box 13?”

  Old Faithful stopped and peered at him. “Well … yes and no. That box is supposed to belong to … to the officers, but of course Captain Aldershott let that Mr. Benson have it, and—”

  “Was it actually Aldershott’s, then?”

  Old Faithful reluctantly admitted that it was, and that, since the murder, its key had been returned to the key box and was theoretically available to whoever wanted it—Aldershott certainly didn’t.

  Eric did indeed want it, and Old Faithful accordingly filled out the paperwork.

  They made their way down to the vault, where Old Faithful once again turned the wheel of the vault door to unlock it, and let Eric in.

  It had been a week since the murder. Benson’s body was gone now, of course. The mosaic tiles on the floor gleamed more brightly than Eric remembered; they’d been scrubbed and scoured, and one could smell a strong odour of the sort of disinfectant normally found in hospitals. But under the table, the words decorum est seemed to stand out from the rest of the inlaid motto—the grout around those letters was darker than elsewhere.

  “We’ve had a time getting rid of the blood,” Old Faithful said. “Almost as if it didn’t want to be gone.”

  Taking his key, Eric went across to the bank of boxes and unlocked the compartment door to box 13. He removed the box and placed it on the table—just as Benson had done one week ago. Eric could almost see the old objects he’d had in the box: Parker’s medical report, the pair of surgical scissors, the hypodermic kit, and the photograph of Mrs. Benson. It was still a mystery what they meant, but Eric thought he was getting closer now.

  Turning back to the bank of boxes, Eric took out the small electric torch he’d brought for this purpose and shone it into the recesses of the empty compartment. The back of it was a rough brick wall; there was perhaps half an inch between that and the steel frame that held the individual boxes in place. The top and bottom were flat steel sheets, but the sides were open. Only a single steel bar on each side separated one compartment from its neighbour.

  Eric reached in and felt around the screws holding the bars in place. He said, “Wolfe had box 12, didn’t he?”

  Old Faithful stared at him. “He did! Still does. However can you know that?”

  “The screws between 13 and 12 have been loosened, and you can feel where someone’s been at them with something sharp recently. I’ll bet this was how Wolfe got into Benson’s box for that wager they had: he unscrewed the bar between 12 and 13, then slid Benson’s box out through his own compartment.” All he needed now was confirmation that Wolfe knew box 13 to have been Aldershott’s.

  “Oh! That is clever, sir. But if I may, why this sudden interest in the vault and how Captain Wolfe might have got in?”

  “It’s to do with the murder, Cully. One of ours was murdered, and I intend to find out how it was done.”

  Eric pictured in his mind, again, the scene that had greeted them when the vault door was opened the previous Saturday: Benson, crumpled up by the table, with Aldershott’s letter opener in his neck, his blood splashed across the words decorum est. It seemed like either a pronouncement or a challenge.

  “Mr. Benson, you mean.” Old Faithful’s Irish lilt rang with a clear note of contempt, and it made Eric look up sharply. “Begging your pardon, but as I understand it, Mr. Benson was never properly ‘one of us.’ He never fought.”

  Eric had never detected so much as a hint of prejudice in the Britannia Club’s faithful porter until now. But it seemed the old man’s obsequiousness was reserved for the British warrior caste. That included Eric Peterkin and the down-on-their-luck ex-servicemen of London; everyone else, to use a vulgarity, could go suck eggs.

  “But Benson was a stretcher-bearer,” he said. “He was in Flanders long enough to be wounded.”

  “So was the Red Cross, and you don’t see us opening our doors to the likes of them. No, sir, it’s not the same thing at all.”

  “Well, even if he wasn’t ‘one of us,’ we still owe it to him to find out what happened. And we owe it to ourselves. The man was killed on our watch.”

  Old Faithful gave him a queer, wondering look. “A matter of honour, you mean? Yes, I expect so … It’s what your father would say. He was the one who told me what the Latin words there meant, you know. The ‘decorum est’ part means ‘it is honourable,’ doesn’t it?”

  Eric raised a questioning brow. The twinkling blue eyes seemed to be regarding him from across a gulf of years. “Cully,” Eric said gently, “is there anything you can tell me about the vault boxes? It could be helpful to clearing our names.”

  Abruptly, the blue eyes looked away, and Old Faithful said, “The board officers all have their own boxes reserved. Mr. Bradshaw’s had number 11 since the day they started doing that. The president usually takes number 13, as no one else wants it and he can keep his things in his office if he likes. The rest sort it out among themselves. You know about Captain Wolfe. Lieutenant Saxon is 14, and Lieutenant Norris is 15. Captain Aldershott, as president, also has a master key to all the boxes, and I have another.”

  Eric was not expecting the sudden volunteering of information. He said, “That seems a bit of a waste, doesn’t it? I mean, do the officers actually use their boxes?”

  “They do, but …” Old Faithful cocked his head to look up the stairwell. “I’m not supposed to be telling you any of this, sir. It’s only because … well, your father was a great man, and I see him in you. It’s more than just the Peterkin eyebrows, sir.” Blushing at the show of sentimentality, he cleared his throat and said, “You won’t let on that I told you anything, will you? I don’t think there’s much that’ll make or break the Empire, but still.”

  Eric nodded. It seemed to him that if there were any ghosts about, it would not be Benson’s vengeful spirit, but old Colonel Berkeley Peterkin looking on with interest at the proceedings.

  They went to box 11 first. Bradshaw’s. Old Faithful said, “Mr. Bradshaw uses his from time to time. He usually leaves it to me to handle, so you can check the register to see what he’s put in. But once or twice he’s done it himself, so we’ve no records of that.”

  Touching a finger to his lips, Old Faithful winked and produced his copy of the master key. Bradshaw’s box was empty.

  Number 12 was Wolfe’s, as Eric had guessed. “Captain Wolfe came in twice last month. I don’t know what he put in, or if it’s still there. He was very secretive about it, and he really didn’t want me to see what he had.”

  The box contained a “Red 9” Mauser just like the one Eric had seen in Aldershott’s study the night before. It smelled of gun oil and gleamed in the light of the vault’s one light bulb.

  “A lot of gentlemen keep their war souvenirs here,” Old Faithful commented.

  “Has Wolfe come by here since the murder?” Eric was thinking of his mysterious gunman of the night before. Wolfe had been with him for the first shot, but what if that really had been a motorcar backfire? Wolfe could still have fired the subsequent shots.

  Old Faithful shook his head, and Eric carefully returned the box to its compartment.

  Number 13 was Eric’s, but it had been Aldershott’s before. “Captain Aldershott had a brown paper package i
n there from the day he was elected, and I reckon he might have forgotten he had it. He uses his own office for everything.”

  Number 14, Saxon. “Lieutenant Saxon came in four months ago with a stack of books, and took them out again just three weeks ago. I think they were supposed to be returned to a lending library, only they were months overdue, and Lieutenant Saxon was terribly snappish as a result.”

  Saxon had been in again almost immediately after the murder, and his box now contained a long cylindrical key that Old Faithful identified as belonging to the back door.

  “He roomed here for nearly three years after the War,” Old Faithful said, “and he used to keep such odd hours that someone decided it would be easier to let him have his own key. By the time he got his own lodgings, the officers had changed and no one remembered to make him give it back.”

  “And he still uses it, apparently.” Eric remembered Saxon being manhandled up the stairs that last Saturday. “Though perhaps not this week. I gather he doesn’t normally keep the key here.”

  Old Faithful shook his head. “Not until after the murder.”

  Finally, number 15. Norris. “Lieutenant Norris has never used his. Mind you, he was in Italy for three months right after his election, so maybe he’s forgotten he ever had a box here.”

  Box 15 was indeed empty.

  Eric looked thoughtfully at the row of boxes. This might be useful, or it might not. In any case, the next thing to consider was the vault door.

  Old Faithful took a moment to run up the stairs and check for witnesses and close the stairwell door. When he returned, he said, “You want to be careful with the vault door, sir: it looks heavy, but it’s balanced like the scales of justice, and all it takes is a gentle tap to slam it shut. Mr. Bradshaw changes the combination every time there’s a new president. He tells me and the new president with an official memo.”