Death in Dark Glasses (Inspector Littlejohn)

by George Bellairs

  "But Finloe died a natural death, sir."

  "Yes, but did Lysander?"

  "No. But Hunt had no grudge against him."

  "Not on the face of it. But, on inquiry from the Rodley police, I learned that Lysander had appropriated quite a lot of Finloe's funds after Finloe's death. I don't say it was right, I don't say it was wrong. But there you are. Hunt was impoverished; Lysander employed him in this forgery business and didn't pay him what Hunt thought were his dues. . . ."

  "How did you know that?"

  "Hunt told me. Allowed out on bail after your arrest of him, he hurried straight to me and asked me to undertake his defence. He made a clean breast of it all to me. . . ."

  Hazlett looked almost compassionate. The devil a saint, trying to save his own skin! Littlejohn was interested. He wondered what fantastic excuse this man was concocting to cover himself.

  " . . . He told me how he forged the letters for Lysander. He made a full confession of that. But he did not tell me he murdered Oates in the Isle of Man, which I'm sure he did to get the money. . . . "

  "Did he tell you how he sold Finloe Oates's house, too, sir, on a forged conveyance?"

  "Yes. . . . About the solicitors in the City . . ."

  "And how he disguised himself . . . ?"

  "Yes. In the dark glasses and ridiculous suit in which they found him after Fairclough had murdered him. Yes, he told me of that. He admitted all his part in the forgeries, but did not, of course, mention the murders . . . "

  "In the plural, sir?"

  "Of course . . . Gamaliel. He killed Gamaliel, I'm sure of that. You see, Gamaliel caught Oates . . . Lysander, I mean . . . right at it. Somehow or other, he got a letter written by Hunt to Lysander about a document Hunt was to work on. He started a nice little blackmail business. Naturally, when he found out the police were watching Gamaliel, he had to do something . . ."

  "Yes. Rather cunning to poison the grapes. . . ."

  "He did it that way? Most interesting."

  Littlejohn almost laughed at Cromwell's astonished expression. The audacity of Hazlett was staggering. Here he was, the killer himself, calmly seated in Scotland Yard, showing off in helping them to solve the crime he'd committed !

  "And now, sir, is there anything more you wish to know?"

  "I want you to find the money Hunt stole from Lysander Oates, of course. That belongs to the estate. As family lawyer, it's up to me to watch their interests, even if they are dead."

  "And what are those interests, if I may ask, sir?"

  "The legacies. Nellie Forty and others, and then, all Finloe's estate to that dreadful Judson woman . . ."

  "But you are not executor, sir . . . "

  "I am their lawyer. But we'll not discuss that now. I really called to urge you to find the money and to appease my curiosity about the state of the case. I suppose your investigations into Hunt's affairs will lead you right to him as murderer."

  "That depends, sir. You see, we've not got so far yet. We haven't looked into Hunt's affairs. . . . "

  "No doubt you'll see it the same way that I did when Hunt talked with me the other night. The poor man was off his head from worry. It just unhinged him. He committed murder under the spell of madness. His sister and his own frustration drove him to it . . ."

  "You think so, sir?"

  "I'm sure of it. And now I must be going, gentlemen. Perhaps you won't mind keeping me informed. I'm extremely interested in this case and the way you're handling it so competently, Inspector. The principal parties are my clients, you know. . . ."

  It was Cromwell's turn to smile. He thought of Mr. Teale. The massacre of the clients of Mathieson & Co.

  Mr. Hazlett fixed Cromwell with a stern eye.

  "I regret I don't see anything funny in it, sir. On the contrary. Neither do I see anything funny in your questioning my confidential clerk, Teale. I happened to pass the teashop where you were enjoying a meal with him and, no doubt, plying him with questions about my deceased clients. . . ."

  Mr. Hazlett clicked his tongue against his teeth.

  "I am surprised at you! Why not come to me? I would have told you. Instead, as Teale told me when I reproached him for it, you tried to get a picture of the Oateses and the Hunts from a mere clerk. As if he was any use! He almost fainted when I told him that his boon companion of the teashop was a policeman. . . . Come to me next time. . . . "

  Cromwell felt a glow of satisfaction inside him. Teale hadn't told Hazlett everything. That was certain. Especially the part about the lack of wages and the threat of the sack !

  Hazlett bared his long teeth in a smile and bowed himself out.

  "Seeing how the wind's blowing?" said Cromwell.

  "Making Hunt his scapegoat and at the same time, searching me—trying to plumb my thoughts. I trust he didn't succeed. There's a fascination about evil, you know. He's like a serpent and tried to make me like the mesmerised bird. To-morrow there'll be a showdown. We'll face him with incarnate good in the shape of the Reverend Caesar Kinrade—a saint if ever there was one. Then, we'll know. Meanwhile, we must wait on events, but see to it, and this is vital—see to it that the man who's tailing that serpent doesn't lose him. Make that quite plain. If you have to put half a dozen of them on the job, see that Hazlett's there to stand judgment to-morrow."

  18

  SIMPLE EQUATION

  THE sun was shining in Gedge Court as Littlejohn and Cromwell made their way to the offices of Mathieson & Co. The old carp lay immobile in the brown pool in the centre of the square and the old sundial indicated that it was about nine-thirty, although you could just hear Big Ben striking half-past ten. They were on their way to see Mr. Hazlett.

  They climbed the first flight of gloomy stairs to the general office, where they obeyed the notice to "Come In", and they found Mr. Teale anxiously peering round the screen to see who wanted them at that unearthly hour.

  "Good morning," said Teale mournfully. He was more like a melancholy hound than ever, for his face had lengthened and looked ready for copious tears. He gazed reproachfully at Cromwell, who himself had been doing some hard thinking on behalf of Mr. Teale the night before. In the room beyond, a typewriter was going hard at it, the little bell tinkling in record-breaking speed.

  "Good morning. Why didn't you tell me you were from the police, Mr. Pook . . . ?"

  Littlejohn grinned. Of all the names to choose! It was that of Cromwell's great-aunt from whom he said he had expectations!

  "The name's Cromwell, Mr. Teale."

  Poor Teale shrugged his shoulders as though it didn't matter much what Cromwell's name was after the great deception already perpetrated on him.

  "Mr. Hazlett saw us together yesterday. He put me through it when I got back, I can tell you. I didn't tell him much, but it's got me the sack. I'm on a month's notice. After all the years I've served this firm, to boot me out like that, just because I happened to be a bit friendly with a policeman! Although, mind you, you shouldn't have done it to me, Mr. Pook."

  "No other way, Mr. Teale. I'm sorry. But I expected this would happen after I heard your boss had seen us. So I've got you another job."

  "You what?"

  "The flats near me want a man in the office. . . . In fact to take charge. Somebody who knows, as you do, how to run property, collect rents, and with a bit of legal knowledge. . . . The very job for you. Three-fifty a year. . . . "

  "What! Hey! Miss Minter. . . ."

  He ran round the screen to break the news and you could hear him telling the invisible high-speed typist that he'd got a new job and you could hear Miss Minter making noises of wonder and joy, punctuated by the ringing of the little bell on her machine.

  Then Mr. Teale re-appeared. He had changed his jacket from a battered office coat to a seedy-looking black one. He was like a beetle busy moving house.

  "When do I start?"

  "Next Monday, if you're ready. . . ."

  "He'll never let me. Make me serve my month's notice or else pay up. . . ." />
  Mr. Teale pointed upwards either to indicate his employer or the Deity as resisting his hopes.

  "He won't," said Littlejohn ominously. And with that they asked Teale to let Mr. Hazlett know they had called. The clerk blew through a tube with a mouthpiece from which he first removed a sort of metal cork and you could hear someone at the other end shouting: "Whatissit?"

  Teale told them to go up and immediately started to clear up his drawers in which reposed the rubbish he had accumulated over nearly forty years.

  "Good morning," said Hazlett, rising from the table piled high with documents, books and papers. "This is an early call, gentlemen. Are there important developments in the Oates matter?"

  He indicated two decrepit chairs on which the two detectives rather gingerly seated themselves. The windows were all closed, the sun was shining in and making the air hot and heavy, and the place smelled of old papers, dust and floor polish. Mr. Hazlett gathered together the documents he had been reading and placed them under a paper-weight, a green glass jar filled with lead shot.

  "After your call yesterday, sir, I thought quite a lot about the case and I thought we'd better discuss it together again. I have a theory about it; I know you have one, too. Perhaps we could help each other. You stated much of yours yesterday. It implicated Hunt. Maybe, it was Hunt. In any case, I'd like to get the matter in proper sequence. . . ."

  Mr. Hazlett wasn't quite as comfortable this morning. In the first place, he wondered why two police officers had called this time. And again, he had an ominous feeling that the initiative had passed from him.

  "Pray go on, then. I'm all ears, Inspector. What is your theory? I have followed your cases closely in the past and am very gratified to see you actually at work."

  "In the first place, Mr. Hazlett, we might not have known anything about the Oates brothers and their untimely deaths even now, had it not been for a quite fortuitous bank fraud in Rodley. This necessitated the calling-in of handwriting experts who discovered that cheques withdrawing the balance of Finloe Oates's account had been forged. . . ."

  "I am well aware of that, Inspector. . . . "

  "I'm sure you are, sir."

  Hazlett cast a peculiar look at Littlejohn.

  "This eventually led to a search of the house, but instead of finding the bodies of either of the brothers, the police found instead that of a meter inspector, who had access to the place because Finloe Oates told him where to find the key if ever he and his wife were out and Fish-lock, the meter-man, called to read the meter. It looked to us to be one of two things. Either Fishlock was there when a third party, intent on no good, entered; or else the third party followed Fishlock in the house and killed him."

  "It must have been Lysander Oates. . . ."

  "No; Lysander had left the place before then."

  "Ah! Hunt."

  "But how did Hunt get there? What business had he there?"

  "He knew about the plot concocted by Lysander to realise and appropriate Finloe's estate. Hunt did the forging. He told me so."

  "For reasons of my own, mainly because I think Hunt quite incapable of working out and seeing to its end all this complicated plot and crime, I want to leave him out. Perhaps my argument will amount to what we used to call when I did Euclid, reductio ad absurdum, in which case, Hunt may be proved guilty, theoretically. Meanwhile, let's call our criminal 'X'."

  "Ah, solving the equation?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Very well. Go on, Inspector."

  "Let's begin right at the start, then. Finloe Oates becomes infatuated with the barmaid of the Naked Man at Netherby. He gets deeper and deeper in, and finally, poisons his wife to free himself."

  "How do you know that? I never heard such a monstrous accusation. . . ."

  "Come, come, sir. You know Mrs. Oates's body was exhumed, surely. They found enough arsenic . . . weedkiller, by the way . . . to kill a dozen."

  "I knew of the exhumation, but not that Finloe killed her. That is mere inference."

  "Let us take it as such, then. Mrs. Finloe is buried and he is free to marry Florrie, the barmaid. Suddenly, he vanishes. Florrie sees him no more, but cheques and letters start pouring in his bank at Rodley, realising and removing the funds. What has happened? I think you know, sir."

  "I know what Hunt told me. Finloe and Lysander, who called on him, had a row. . . . "

  "Yes; Lysander had himself been in love with Mrs. Finloe and kept a kindly eye on her even after her marriage to his brother. Lysander heard of his brother's philanderings with Florrie and had a vague notion of what might have happened. When he heard the dog had died the day that Mrs. Oates died, he dug up the body and had it examined. The animal must have eaten the remnants of the pork pie and arsenic which killed its mistress. Lysander went and accused Finloe who, having a bad heart, dropped dead. Lysander found himself in a quandary. . . ."

  "I could tell you the rest. Hunt told me. He said Lysander felt that Finloe would have left all he had to Florrie. He couldn't stand for that. To make sure, he wrote to the bank in Finloe's hand and got the Will. It was as he thought. He therefore did not disclose his brother's death, but hid the body and stood in his brother's shoes until he had collected all his estate. Then he fled."

  "But why did he flee so hastily?"

  "I do not know. Do you?"

  "I think he found someone else nosing on his trail; Mr. X."

  "Hunt?"

  "I grant Hunt knew about the forgery. Oates couldn't sustain all the forging; he sent for Hunt who made a hobby of it. But let us assume someone else found out what was happening, that Lysander was playing around with a small fortune in cash. . . . Someone who desperately needed funds, either to keep up his old state of living, or else to make good defalcations in other directions. . . ."

  "Hunt would fill the bill. . . ."

  " 'X', I said, sir. Now how did 'X' chance upon Lysander in the act of appropriating his brother's funds?"

  "He must have called at the house and found him there. It all ties up for Hunt. . . . "

  "Or for 'X', who might have called, shall we say with the deeds of Shenandoah, which Finloe asked for before he died. Or again, Lysander might have asked for the deeds. . . ."

  "But the deeds of Shenandoah were in the possession of my firm. Finloe asked for them by post and I sent them by post. I hear the house has been sold. Presumably another of Lysander's efforts. By the way . . ."

  Hazlett thrust out his face in Littlejohn's direction.

  "By the way. . . . You're not suggesting that 'X' might be me. Because, if you are, tell me your reasons and I'll refute them."

  His eyes lit up with an evil light. He had hedged himself round with logical excuses and reasons and he thought himself beyond suspicion.

  "No, sir. 'X' is, as yet, the unknown quantity. You yourself suggested him as the doubtful algebraic factor; the unknown, which juggling with the known might reveal. At any rate, 'X' discovered Lysander's game. He kept him under close watch; he might even have communicated with the bank from a privileged position and got to know that Finloe's funds had all been withdrawn. A friend of his might have told him that Lysander was operating vigorously in Netherby, seemed to be in the money, and was leading a strange life. . . . "

  "And who might Lysander's friend have been?"

  "A bookseller called Gamaliel. He played chess, inter alia, with Oates. He also did a trade in forged modern masters, which Oates painted and Gamaliel disposed of. 'X' called on Gamaliel to find out what was happening to Lysander. Gamaliel suspected 'X' of intervening for his own benefit and tried a little blackmail. 'X' reacted vigorously. He threatened Gamaliel, scared him to death, and as Gamaliel had a bad heart, gave him an attack of such terror that the fellow had to be taken to hospital. . . ."

  Hazlett was listening with rapt attention. He even clicked his tongue against his teeth in pity of poor Gamaliel.

  "Poor fellow. What did Hunt threaten to do to him?"

  " 'X' somehow had a key to the premises. He we
nt on the roof and threw slates and bricks down on Gamaliel. Then, when they'd put the bookseller out of harm's way in hospital, 'X' disguised himself as a parson, hid behind the screens of the next bed and, discovering that Gamaliel hadn't yet recovered enough to tell what he knew, he sent him poisoned fruit, including with it the official card of my colleague, which he took from Gamaliel's shop with the help of his key. How did he get that key? Could 'X' have had something to do with the property, or . . ?"

  "There was one hanging on a nail . . . tied to a bobbin with string, in the shop. Hunt must have taken it on one of his visits."

  "Maybe . . ."

  "My dear Inspector, you are a very stubborn man. The case against anyone here will be purely circumstantial. Everything points to Hunt. His poverty, his full knowledge of all that was going on, his collaboration with Lysander, and his resentment at the miserable sum he got as reward, his hatred of the Oates brothers on account of Marion whom he loved. He knew, too, where Lysander was likely to hide, because Oates had given him a picture of the place he always hoped he'd be able to buy in the Isle of Man and settle down in . . ."

  "Others knew of that place, too. There was a rough copy of Hunt's finished painting in Lysander's old rooms. Certain people inquired about that and where it was. . . ."

  "Who did that?"

  "We don't know. The landlady couldn't give a proper description. Certainly someone called and even copied it in pencil."

  "Rubbish. The woman's romancing. . . ."

  "That's what she told us. Someone copied it. . . ."

  Cromwell listened fascinated. It was a duel . . . a duel to the death for Hazlett. He admired the cool way in which Hazlett picked holes in Littlejohn's arguments, parried his thrusts, attacked in his own skilled forensic way. But Cromwell knew from the start who would be the winner. He hadn't been a colleague of Littlejohn for nearly twenty years without knowing all the signs of the coming deadly stroke.

  ". . . And, having discovered from someone or other where the cottage was situated, went there, found Lysander Oates hiding, and struck him down in cold blood. . . ."

  "Don't dramatise it, Inspector. It may not have been in cold blood. Lysander was no coward. He might have fought like the devil."