Death on Doomsday

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  The A.C. grunted rather dubiously.

  “I’m having him shadowed from the time I contact him, sir,” added Pollard, interpreting the sound.

  “Well, as I said before, it’s up to you. By the way, I’ve picked up another interesting bit of gossip from my brother — the one who was up at Oxford with Lambrooke. Lambrooke had a girlfriend, and rumour went round that they were secretly engaged. I expect you can put a name to her?”

  “Good Lord!” Pollard exclaimed involuntarily. “Mrs. Giles Tirle! So she was up at the time.”

  “That’s it. Somerville. Felicity Openshaw then, according to your file. Intriguing, isn’t it? If she recognised Lambrooke last week, she must have had the hell of a shock.”

  “If she did,” said Pollard thoughtfully, “it could explain why no door was found open on the morning after Lambrooke was killed. She might have locked up after Corden, imagining that Lambrooke had been in the house during the night, and gone off again. Her one aim would have been to remove all traces of the visit.”

  “That makes sense,” agreed the A.C. “It’s a fascinating case, Pollard. Sorry if you’re finding it heavy going. Do you know what particularly appeals to me about it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The thought of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue being done out of a round of death duties.”

  Pollard went out with a grin which faded abruptly at the prospect of the immediate future. He found Sergeant Longman waiting for him with Toye. Longman had been doing a reconnaissance in Robertson Road. He reported pricey houses of an old-fashioned sort, which had been tarted up and turned into flats.

  “Corden’s got the first floor of Number 11,” he reported. “The people below are on holiday in Majorca till the end of next week. I got that from the milkman. There’s an old lady and her companion on the top floor. A fire escape runs down the back of the house into a yard. No garage. Corden garages in Morley Mews, round the corner. He’s hiring a black Austin 1100 till he gets his own car back, he’s given out, according to a chauffeur chap I chatted up. Baker’s just gone along to keep the house under observation, and Laxton will join him when he’s followed Corden back from the office.”

  “Always assuming he goes home from the office. Is Croot outside the office with Laxton by now?”

  “Yes, sir, with a car at the ready.”

  “Fine,” said Pollard. “You’ve done damn well, Longman. Now then, I’m going to take a calculated risk, and ring Corden.”

  His call was put through with surprisingly little delay.

  “You probably won’t remember my name, Mr. Corden,” he said pleasantly. “We met very briefly at Brent last week. Detective-Superintendent Pollard. I’m ringing to ask you if you could manage to spare me a few minutes later this evening. This is quite off the record, but I’ve been trying to get some information about security at Brent during the pre-opening period from Mr. Giles Tirle, and found it a bit difficult to pin him down. He happened to mention that you were working with him at one stage, so I thought I’d try you.”

  A gust of laughter came over the line. Pollard found himself visualising Maurice Corden’s dark head thrown back.

  “I remember you all right. It was the morning after they’d found their corpse in the priest’s hole, wasn’t it? I’d dashed over from the Ormistons’ place to try and buck up poor old Roger Seton. My God, you’re telling me about Brother Giles! Can you imagine yourself trying to draw up the Brent guide book with him against time? Would you care to drop in on me this evening? I’ve got to take work home from the office, worse luck. It’s 11 Robertson Road, W8. Start bearing left from Kensington Church Street.”

  Pollard thanked him, promised not to take up a lot of time, and rang off after arranging to call at about nine.

  “So far, so good, I rather think,” he said. “Now then, have we got everything taped? We leave here at half-past eight. I drop you both off near the place, and arrive alone. Let’s hope there’s somewhere reasonably near to park. I go in, and chat with Corden for about fifteen minutes. Then you two come along, and ring his bell. Hold him as long as you can. For one thing, I’ve got a hunch that the loot is in his flat, and want to see what security measures he’s taken. Even a couple of minutes would be better than nothing. Have you thought up anything yet?”

  “We’re local residents about informed rumours that the Ministry of Transport’s planning to use Robertson Road as a diversion route for heavy lorries,” Longman told him. “We’re getting up a petition. Almost anyone in a posh area rises to that one.”

  “It’s an idea. OK, then. Zero hour’s eight-thirty.”

  When Toye and Longman had gone, Pollard tried to concentrate on arrears of work unconnected with the Brent case, but without much success. He was worried and depressed by the continuing failure to find Maurice Corden’s car. It really seemed incredible that an Austin Princess could apparently vanish into thin air in a well-populated area of southern England. There was the feeling, too, of being up against a man possessed of an extremely competent brain, and unusual resource and coolness. And the whole case had had an elusive quality from the word go…

  As always, however, when the moment for action arrived he was able to shake off his anxieties, and live only in the present. Reports had come in to say that Maurice Corden had left the Stately Homes office at his usual time, and driven himself home, discreetly followed by Croot and Laxton in a police car. He had shown no sign of going out again. Punctually at half-past eight Pollard started off with Toye and Longman. In the roaring tide of traffic at Hyde Park Corner the excitement of the chase suddenly returned to him. They made good time, and Toye, an excellent driver, unhesitatingly navigated a succession of side roads beyond Kensington Church Street. As they turned into Robertson Road he slowed, and late Victorian houses with an air of prosperity began to glide past.

  “This’ll do,” Pollard said. “We won’t risk being seen together. When I come out, I’ll drive down to the far end and pick you up just round the corner. If there’s no answer when you come to knock up Corden, take what steps you think advisable,” he added with a grin.

  “We’ll be around,” Toye said doggedly. “Not so as anyone’d notice.”

  They all three synchronised their watches, and Pollard took over the car. He cruised gently down the road, and manoeuvred into a vacant space just past Number 11. Looking up, he saw lights in the first-floor windows. A short length of path brought him to the front door. He rang a bell under Maurice Corden’s name in a neat brass slot, and waited.

  Almost at once quick steps sounded on the stairs, and the door was flung open.

  “Superintendent Pollard? Good show. Found a parking lot? Oh, fine. No meters here yet, thank God. Come along up.”

  The flats were pricey, all right, Pollard thought as he followed. Haircord carpet on the stairs. Fresh white walls and adequate lighting. No concrete and dank smells here.

  The room into which he was led was unexpected. A wide archway had been cut in the wall originally separating front and back bedrooms. The result was a pleasing spaciousness. Pollard quickly registered modem basic furniture of good design, and a selection of attractive Victoriana softening the general effect with small intimate touches. There were good watercolours in gilt frames, and charming china figures on wall brackets.

  It was a useful opening to the interview. Maurice Corden was gratified by his interest.

  “Of course, anything remotely central and architecturally tops is utterly prohibitive,” he explained. “So I decided to plump for something sound and tum-of-the-century, and then try to infuse just the right degree of restrained vitality into the excessive decorum. What will you drink? Or not?”

  “Not, I’m afraid,” replied Pollard, “but please don’t be deterred yourself, will you?”

  While a drink was being mixed he concentrated with all his powers on the room and its contents. Through the archway he could see an outsize kneehole desk under the far window. An anglepoise lamp directed a widening sh
aft of light on scattered papers. There were bookcases in both sections of the room, some containing obvious reference books. The one nearest to him held modern novels, paperbacks, and an old AA book in its vivid yellow cover. Various newspapers and periodicals, including Country Life, lay on a small table.

  Maurice Corden came and sat down facing him, glass in hand.

  “Smoke at least, won’t you?” he said, holding out a cigarette box. “What can I possibly do for you? Naturally I’m consumed with curiosity about the whole extraordinary business, being so involved with gorgeous, gorgeous Brent.”

  Pollard crossed his legs, and hoped that he appeared relaxed.

  “Then you’ll have followed the case in the Press,” he said. “Considering the melodramatic start, the reporting’s been pretty sound, on the whole. Of course, it’s been obvious from the start that two chaps were involved, Peplow, and the one who did him.”

  Maurice Corden contrived to raise his glass with an astonishingly sardonic gesture.

  “Cheers!” he said. “Do go on.”

  Pollard talked easily, giving nothing away, and closely observing the other as he did so. An interesting, but decidedly not a pleasing face, he thought. The eyes were slightly hooded, the nose too exploratory, the lips too thin. The lounging body in plum-coloured slacks, pale green shirt and black leather sandals of extravagant design somehow contrived to suggest calculation. Yet one could sense a latent nervous excitability.

  “I’m afraid I’m in Lord Seton’s bad books for making endless enquiries about security and keys,” Pollard said, raising a humorous eyebrow, a gesture at once reciprocated by Maurice Corden. “There’s no suggestion of casualness at the present time, but we’ve been thinking that there were probably a good many people around during the period when the house was being got ready for the opening. I gather quite a lot had to be done. When I heard that Mr. Giles Tirle had been largely responsible for the various alterations, I went along to see him, the result being that I’m still thinking on the same lines, only more so.”

  “My God,” said Maurice Corden with feeling. “I only wish you could have been there to see it all. Brother Giles is probably the greatest contemporary authority on English domestic architecture and interiors, but he’s also a single-minded excitable enthusiast, quite madly perfectionist where his shop goes. In all other departments of life he’s utterly woolly and vague, and leaves everything to that terrifyingly competent wife of his. Once he got the bit between his teeth over opening Brent, there was simply no holding him. Roger Seton, who’s a businessman, as you’ve doubtless realised, soon saw that if the place was ever to open at all, something had got to be done. He came to see me at the office, and we talked it over, and in the end I agreed to go down in August, when the rest of them were seizing their last chance of a family holiday in Scotland. I had the hell of a time, I can tell you.”

  “I can believe that Mr. Giles Tirle wouldn’t be the ideal colleague if you were working against time,” Pollard remarked.

  “Sure you won’t change your mind?” Maurice Corden asked, getting up to fetch himself another drink. “Well, somehow I got the furniture and pictures merry-go-round stopped, so that the guide book could be drafted, and then thankfully handed over to Roger Seton, who cut his holiday short.”

  “He must have been exceedingly grateful. With all this shunting round of stuff, I suppose keys were often in circulation?”

  “Continually. There was redecorating going on, too. And it wasn’t only a question of humping furniture and pictures. Giles had got a sort of general post of the contents of the showcases in progress as well. He was supposed to lock and unlock everything himself — there’s some very valuable stuff at Brent, you know — but it certainly didn’t work out that way. In fact, he swore like a trooper at anyone who interrupted him, chucked the keys at them, and told them to get on with whatever it was.”

  “Were the various sets of keys on different rings?” Pollard asked, trying to spin out the conversation. Surely Toye and Longman would be along soon?

  “Some were on rings with labels. The room keys — damn! Who on earth’s that at the door? Sorry — I won’t be a minute.”

  Pollard moved swiftly into the other part of the room. The windows giving on to the fire escape were closed, and fitted with efficient safety locks. The door leading on to the landing had not been bricked up, but had a burglar-proof lock, and a stout bolt on the inside. A corpulent green baize draught excluder had been provided. Pollard prodded it with a sudden flash of excitement. It was rigid and heavy, but there was no time to investigate further now. Returning to where they had been sitting, he could hear voices actively engaged in conversation. The chaps were doing their stuff all right, but at any moment Corden could be back. He stood running his eyes systematically round the room. They lighted on a pile of Ordnance Survey maps on the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

  He was on his knees in a flash. They were hellishly slippery things… Taunton and Lyme Regis … Bude … Lancaster and Kendal … Salisbury … the conversation downstairs had an unmistakably penultimate note … The Dukeries.

  He found what he was looking for at the bottom of the pile. As the front door shut, he was sitting in his chair with the Crockmouth and Fulminster sheets in his coat pocket.

  “Can you believe it?” Maurice Corden demanded as he came into the room. “That was a couple of chaps from further down the road. They’ve heard on good authority that the blasted Ministry of Transport’s planning to divert heavy lorries along here.”

  Pollard listened, commiserated, agreed that a petition was well worthwhile. Presently the conversation reverted to Brent. According to Maurice Corden keys had passed freely from hand to hand, including his own, he added with a laugh.

  “Old Giles knows his stuff for sure, and he’s a decent sort. Doesn’t look down his nose at you, anyway. But I must say I got thoroughly fed up with him. If he’d had to make his own way like me, he damn well couldn’t have afforded this vague scholar-artist line. All right if you’re born in the purple. Eton and Oxford — the whole bloody lot chucked in your lap.”

  Pollard made an assenting noise and waited. He looked up to find Maurice Corden looking at him with an expression of such vindictive malice that he experienced a momentary shock.

  “I suppose the obvious explanation’s inadmissible, the precious Tirles being who they are?”

  “Sorry?” Pollard replied. “I’m not with you.”

  “For heaven’s sake! Of course you can’t be, officially, but between these four walls… It’s simple enough, surely? Peplow was a damn fool of an amateur, who hadn’t even got the sense to keep off the drink while he was on the job. He knocked back a flask of whisky, got fuddled, and came out like a lumbering elephant, making such a row that somebody heard and came along to see what was up. There was a scrap, in the course of which he went over backwards and fractured his skull. Whoever landed him the kick decided that the best thing was to shut the panel on him, and know nothing about it. Only as somebody happens to be thought blue-blooded, you people have to dish up a lot of tripe about a second chap having been in on the job, and ending up by bashing Peplow.”

  “Who have you cast for somebody?” asked Pollard. “Lord Seton?”

  “Seton?” Maurice Corden almost shouted. “Good God, no! Can you see that suave hard-boiled little tycoon losing his head like that? I mean that damned awful woman, Giles’s wife. Surely it sticks out a mile? Don’t you know she was in the Resistance in Occupied France? Decorated, what’s more. Why don’t you ask her how many Germans she shot, or knifed, or blew up? But she’s a woman, for all that, and out of practice after all this time. Hence the panic.”

  “If you’ve been a licensed killer, like a soldier or a Resistance fighter,” Pollard observed, “I don’t think you’d ever get out of practice, you know, either technically or psychologically. Just as you never forget how to swim or ride a bike, even if you haven’t done it for years. To my mind this is the main objection to your reconstr
uction, which we’ve gone into pretty thoroughly, by the way. But there’s a touch of the Amazon about the lady, I grant you.”

  “If ever there was a bitch… You should have heard her baiting me. Didn’t think I was good enough to sit at table with them, I suppose. Arminel Tirle treated me like dirt, too, but at least she belongs to the set-up. The other one’s no more blue-blooded than I am.”

  Pollard wondered if he had ever heard a more psychologically revealing remark.

  “Well,” he said, deciding to bring down the temperature, “with all its snags you’ve created an extremely interesting job for yourself, and a much more pleasant one than mine. You actually founded Stately Homes, didn’t you?”

  Maurice suddenly reverted to good humour.

  “Positively my own brain child,” he replied. “I saw the possibilities when the Opening racket was getting under way in the fifties. I borrowed some cash and plunged in at the deep end. There’s some competition now, but things aren’t going too badly with the enormous development of coach tours taking people to see places. It’s an incentive to owners to open. One day I’ll be doing it myself, with any luck. Get hold of a small period place that’s been let go to seed, and restore it. My God, don’t I know the ropes! All I want’s the necessary capital.”

  He spoke with a kind of fierce determination. Pollard showed intelligent interest, and let the conversation run on. At last he glanced at his watch.

  “I’d no idea it was so late. Too bad when you’ve got work on hand.”

  “Not to worry,” Maurice Corden said, as they stood up. “But I wish you people would find my car. Hiring’s blue ruin, and I can’t get a penny out of my insurance company at this stage. I simply must have a car. I’ve got to vet a place in Sussex this week, and another on the Welsh border the week after.”

  For sheer audacity… Pollard thought, following him downstairs. He must have got everything absolutely sewn up. It was a disturbing thought.