Death on Doomsday

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  When he returned from a conversation with Inspector Diplock, he found that Toye had finished typing Dick White’s statement. The young man was reading it through, looking depressed.

  “Brace up,” Pollard adjured him. “You know, it’s a hundred to one that the car which biffed your van had a necking couple on board, and was nothing whatever to do with our case. Do you agree that this statement’s a fair record of what you’ve told us?”

  “It’s fair enough,” Dick White replied, signing his name in a large round hand. “Better keep me fingers crossed that it don’t have to come out, though. Job suits me, and they aren’t all that easy to come by. Rosalie and me want to get married in the spring, what’s more.”

  After further reassurance from Pollard, and undertakings to put in a word with the firm if necessary, he went off, looking on the whole relieved. Half an hour later the Yard men managed to extricate themselves, having had a hasty snack on trays in the Chief Superintendent’s office, and caught an early afternoon train back to London.

  It was far from full, and they secured a compartment to themselves.

  “Don’t kid yourself that all these developments mean we’re getting anywhere,” Pollard remarked, subsiding into his corner. “We’re just reducing the list of possible suspects. The Emmetts’ ten p.m. caller can be crossed off the list now. So what?”

  “There’s the grey car,” replied Toye, taking this rhetorical question at its face value. “Could be that Peplow had another chap with him after all. And there’s the chance of a link-up with these other robberies.”

  He glanced at his briefcase which contained one of the files which they had brought with them to read through in the train.

  “Glutton for work, aren’t you? Here, chuck over my case. I suppose we may as well take a look at the stuff; it’s about the only line open to us at the moment.”

  The police officers in charge of the enquiries, however, had carried them out exhaustively. As the train began to run through the outer suburbs of London, Toye remarked that the chaps seemed to have gone to town on the job, and got nowhere.

  “The only hope is to make a detailed analysis of the finding of the whole lot,” Pollard replied, stuffing a file back into his briefcase. “I’ll have a go at home tomorrow. You can do with some time off. We needn’t go down to Crockmouth till lateish.”

  This programme was duly carried out. On Sunday morning, while Jane and the Italian au pair occupied themselves with domestic ploys, Pollard withdrew to the dining-room, and proceeded to cover the table with heaps of typescript. He then took a large sheet of paper, ruled columns, and thought out a series of headings such as House, Owner, Date of Robbery, Objects Stolen, Insurance, Methods Employed, Distance From London, Open To Public? The last and widest column he headed comprehensively Remarks. He then worked systematically at transferring all the known facts about the five robberies and the attempted one at Brent from the files to his columns. Finally he settled down to consider his data.

  Jane, coming in just before twelve, remarked that it looked like a school timetable in the making.

  “Very definitely Stately,” she said, reading over his shoulder. “Wonbridge Castle, Sir Matthew Dent. Coin collection. Corridon Manor. The Hon. Mrs. James Crabtree. Two small icons. I’m not quite so sure about Mr. S. Rothstein of Yarndown House and his Chinese jade, though… Are you getting anywhere?”

  “Not really,” he said, stretching. “It’s obvious that the jobs are all run from a base in London. They’re all within easy driving distance. All the stuff lifted is relatively small and possible to carry off on the person, and none of it has turned up, as far as we know. Three of the houses are open to the public, and in each of these the thief seems to have gone in as a visitor and managed to hide till the place was closed for the night. In the others there was forced entry through a very cleverly chosen weak spot. All this suggests detailed previous knowledge of the ground. But as for making useful deductions from all this — nil. The only thing to do is to go on hopefully combing the blasted files, I suppose.”

  “The significant thing probably isn’t in them at all,” Jane said. “That’s how it would be in a detective novel. Then the sleuth gets a blinding flash of inspiration in his bath, and in the last chapter a colleague draws him aside and mutters about promotion rumours. Listen to your son yelling with hunger and rage. Are you coming to help spoon in veal dinners? Mariella’s off at twelve today. I thought we’d eat in peace later, when the children are fed.”

  Pollard thankfully abandoned the files and joined the family party in the kitchen. He was allotted Rose, as being slightly more amenable than her brother. At first she concentrated on her food intake, but soon began to watch Andrew, and imitate his attempts to grab the spoon. A sudden coup landed a dollop of veal dinner in Pollard’s face. His anguished exclamation was greeted with delighted crowing from the twins.

  “They’re ganging up on us already,” he remarked as he mopped. “Didn’t you see them exchange meaningful glances?”

  After lunch and coffee in the garden he went back to the analysis. It was a hot afternoon, and the somnolent droning of bees came drifting in at the open windows. Another unproductive hour went by, and he became depressed by the feeling that he must be flogging a dead horse. Presently his ears caught the clinking of china, and he got up and looked out of the window. The twins had woken up from their afternoon sleep, and were lying on a rug under a tree, attired only in nappies. They were working their arms and legs energetically, pausing at intervals to take note of each other’s existence, and gaze up at the green tracery overhead. Going into the kitchen he found Jane filling the teapot, and picked up the tray.

  Some time later the summer afternoon was shattered by the ringing of the telephone.

  “Blast and damn,” Pollard said, heaving himself out of a deck chair, and going towards the house.

  As he had expected, it was a call from the Yard. A Mr. George Snell was demanding to see the officer in charge of the Brent case, and refusing to talk to anyone else.

  “Another crackpot, you can bet your bottom dollar. What’s made you ring me about him?”

  “He says he’s just flown in from Buenos Aires, sir. We rang Heathrow, and his name was on a Pan Am passenger list.”

  “OK,” said Pollard, feeling slightly taken aback. “I’ll be along. Get hold of Sergeant Toye, will you?”

  As he returned to the garden Jane raised her eyebrows, indicating resignation. “I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies,” she remarked. “It’s been a good day up to now. What is it?”

  He told her.

  “I’ve got a feeling this could be important,” she said, beginning to stack the tea things. “It’s all right, you know. I realised life would be like this when I married you. Suppose you’d just been ordered to Vietnam? Bring them in for me, will you? I’ll take the tray.”

  Pollard stooped to gather up a twin under each arm, and carried them carefully into the house. Andrew fought furiously. Rose appeared to find the experience amusing.

  Pollard’s first impression of George Snell was favourable. He found a middle-aged man of above average height, a rugged weather-beaten face, and keen blue eyes. His manner of speech was slow and deliberate, and Pollard fancied he could detect a west country drawl under the transatlantic twang. Not another crackpot, if I’m any judge of a chap, he decided, during preliminary general conversation. He learnt that George Snell had first gone out to the Argentine after the war on an engineering contract and liked the life so much that he had worked there ever since.

  “It’s the climate and the crowds get me down back here,” he said. “You kinda feel you can’t breathe. Not here in London, anyway. I expect I’ll be back when I start cracking up, all the same. Maybe you’ll care to take a look at these.”

  He passed over a British passport and a professional card describing him as a consultant engineer.

  “Thanks,” said Pollard, returning them. “Well, Mr. Snell, you’ve come a long way,
and it can’t be a cheap trip, either. Do I take it you’ve something to tell us about Raymond Peplow? By the way, you mayn’t know that we’ve found out that Raymond Peplow wasn’t his real name.”

  “Yeah, I know,” replied George Snell. “The English papers get flown out these days. But let’s call him that, or we’ll get snarled up.” He paused, and stared fixedly at some object on the top of Pollard’s desk. “You’ve got Peplow wrong, you guys here,” he said abruptly. “He wasn’t a crook, and he wasn’t running with ’em, either. You can take it from me.”

  “No?” queried Pollard. “Then how do you explain the fact that he was found in hiding at Brent, in a room frill of valuables, with housebreaking kit on him?”

  There was a lengthy pause.

  “There was a bet,” George Snell said heavily. “I guess Peplow’s death’s on me.”

  Pollard’s immediate reaction was exasperation. He’s a crank after all, he thought impatiently. He was on the point of speaking when he caught sight of the expression on the other’s face, and checked himself.

  “Hadn’t you better begin at the beginning?” he suggested. “How long had you known Peplow?”

  The story came out slowly, but coherently. The two men had chanced to meet soon after George Snell had first gone out to the Argentine. At first he had regarded Peplow with the contempt of a fighting man for someone who’d managed to dodge the call-up to the armed forces. Then, after a bit, he’d come to realise that whatever Peplow’s motives had been, he was no coward or cissy, and hadn’t stayed out of it to line his pockets while other chaps took the rap.

  “He was an anti-war guy. A genuine one. Most of ’em kid themselves, but he was OK.”

  “I suppose you got to know him well over the years?” prompted Pollard.

  “Depends what you mean by well. Better than anybody else out there, but we weren’t buddies. He was an odd chap, old Peppy. Kept himself to himself, and clear of women, except on a strictly business footing. But he was real good company when he felt that way. We had some swell times together. We took some trips camping in the Cordilleras and up in the Chaco, hunting and fishing. He didn’t have any use for the stuffed shirt parties the British colony put on, any more than I do. My old man was a gas fitter.”

  “What about Peplow’s old man?” Pollard asked, watching George Snell keenly.

  “I wouldn’t know. He never talked about his people, or why he’d come out, and I never asked. It wasn’t my business. Maybe that’s why we got on. Mind you, he was class. You can’t miss it. But he sure had it in for the stuffed shirts. I figured he’d cut loose.”

  “What about politics? Had he extreme Leftist views?”

  “Not he. Red — Black — Big Business — he said the boss class was the same the world over, and he hated its guts.”

  Pollard considered.

  “Mr. Snell,” he said, “I’m not contesting what you’ve told me, but it doesn’t altogether tally with what we’ve learnt from the authorities. For instance, he seems to have made quite a nice bit of money, and qualified for the boss class himself, to some extent. They say he was a lone wolf, and couldn’t do with ordinary conventional social life. We understand that he entertained in quite a big way at times.”

  George Snell flung himself back in his chair, folded his arms, and stared straight at Pollard. “This is it. Peplow didn’t add up. It sometimes seemed to me he’d never properly grown up, either, in some ways. Don’t get me wrong. He was on the spot, for sure. You’ve only got to look at some of his deals. But he’d kick out at things like a teenager. Things like stuffed shirts, and armaments and underdogs anywhere. And yet he’d throw a swell party to the manner born. Stag parties, mostly, ending up with the chaps getting a bit high, and daft bets being made. Nearly led to trouble, some of ’em.”

  “Was the bet you mentioned just now one of these?”

  “Yeah. I’ll blame myself for the rest of my life. Not that I ever thought he’d taken me seriously.”

  George Snell relapsed into silence.

  “How did Brent come into it? It’s a pretty far cry.”

  “I’ll tell you, and I’m damn glad I’ve got proof in writing. About six weeks back I came on Peplow looking at a British magazine. It was an advertising stunt, to get tourists over here. A posh glossy affair, full of pictures. He showed me a big piece about this place Brent, and this earl chap it belongs to, and how you could go in for five bob a time, and see round the house and garden. There was a lot about the swell pictures, and a sort of locket which Charles II had given to the family, with a picture of himself inside. It seemed OK to me if you like that sort of thing, but Peplow blew his top. He went on about it being a scandal, and that the poor had paid for the place being put up, hundreds of years ago, and now they were being fooled into paying to keep it going. A bloody racket, he called it, and a lot more. I got fed up with him in the end, and told him to belt up, and come and have a drink. I never thought any more about it until he threw a dinner for a crowd of us a week or two later. We sure made a night of it, and on the way home — he was giving me a lift as my bus was in dock — he’d got to the arguing stage. He’d tried to get some of the chaps to stage a hold-up, just for the hell of it. They’d cried off, and he went on about people’s lack of guts all the way back in the car, and how he’d take on any bet offered him, anytime. I said I’d bet him a hundred quid he wouldn’t go over and pinch that locket he’d been bellyaching about, and suggested he could sell it to a fence, and give the cash to Oxfam. I was a bit sozzled myself, come to that, but I swear I only meant it as a joke, or thought he’d take it as anything else, once he’d sobered up.”

  “What was the next development?” Pollard asked.

  “I went off first thing next morning to a site a thousand miles down south, and didn’t come back for ten days. When I showed up again, I heard Peplow’d flown to London on a business trip. I wasn’t all that surprised. He’d been launching out into tourist hotel sites. Then I got this, postmarked here a week ago today.”

  Pollard took the air letter held out to him. It was merely headed London, and consisted of only a few lines. The writer had had a good trip over, and would be flying back by the end of the week. There followed some pithy remarks about changes for the worse in Britain. Finally, George Snell was advised to watch the English papers for the disappearance of an historic object from a Stately Home. The letter was signed R.P.

  “Even then, I took it for granted he was kidding. Keeping up the joke we’d had that night.”

  “I’ll have to ask you to leave this with us,” Pollard said. “I’ll give you a receipt, of course. If it’s genuine — and I’m not suggesting it isn’t — it confirms what you’ve just told me. We can check the handwriting with the signature on the passport.”

  “OK by me,” George Snell replied wearily. “It’s genuine, all right. Say, I’d like to see old Peplow put away decently. What’s the drill?”

  “The resumed inquest’s tomorrow, down at Crockmouth. There’ll be legal complications, of course, because of the fresh information about identity, but there’s no doubt that the coroner will issue a burial certificate, and as there are no relatives, an offer from you to make the funeral arrangements would certainly be accepted.”

  “I guess I’ll come along, then, and try to get it fixed up for Tuesday, if folk can move that fast back here. Maybe I’ll take a look at this dump Brent. Say, are you guys going to get the chap that did poor old Peppy?”

  “I hope so,” said Pollard gravely. “Mr. Snell, I don’t think you should blame yourself for what happened.”

  “Thanks a lot,” George Snell replied. “I wish I could feel that way myself.” He turned and looked at Toye who was emerging from the back of the room with his notebook. “Say, will all this have to come out in evidence tomorrow?”

  “No,” Pollard told him. “You’ll certainly be asked to give evidence of identity, and I’m afraid that’ll mean viewing the body, but we shall then ask for a further adjournment, which I�
��m sure will be granted in view of the very unusual circumstances.”

  George Snell’s unexpected appearance and its repercussions delayed the start for Crockmouth, but even so the Sunday evening traffic on the roads was heavy, and the journey a slow one. Although irritated by hold-ups, petrol fumes and the constant stream of passing cars on the upstream side of the road, Pollard was glad of a chance to do some uninterrupted thinking on the way down.

  A Yard handwriting expert had unhesitatingly pronounced that the signature on the Raymond Peplow passport and the air letter received by George Snell had been written by the same hand. Officially, of course, the acceptance of the letter’s evidence awaited confirmation of his bona fides, and his relations with Peplow, but Pollard found that he had no doubt whatever of its validity. So one more piece of the jigsaw had slipped into position. Not that it helped much, if at all, in the search for the killer. Or did it, perhaps, by making the Peplow/Lambrooke identity swop even more credible, turn one’s thoughts to the Tirles again? To Lord Seton with his indisputable know-how, or to the formidable Mrs. Giles Tirle?

  Pollard shifted his position, made a caustic remark to Toye about a driver who overtook them just below a blind crest, and settled down to his thinking once more.

  The grounds on which he had decided that Lord Seton and Mrs. Tirle were above suspicion still held good. So, too, did his conviction that Emmett was not the assailant, although he might conceivably have been bribed to let someone in and/or out. Dick White was obviously in the clear. It was all so very negative, but on the other hand, negative conclusions about all the known suspects must surely point clearly to X, the Person Unknown? But then mustn’t X somehow tie up with Peplow-Lambrooke, and so far not the faintest trace of any connection had come to light.

  As they approached Crockmouth, he summarised the results of his meditations to Toye, and found that the latter, a rather slow but very pertinacious thinker, had arrived at much the same point.