Rope's End, Rogue's End

by E. C. R. Lorac

“Am I to understand, sir, that you have no papers of any kind of Mr. Mallowood’s in your keeping?”

  “That is so, Chief Inspector. I have, of course, a signed receipt for his deed box. A clerk was sent to fetch it, following written instructions concerning it. I can give you those letters for examination.” The lawyer paused, and then added, “I do not mind telling you in confidence that Mr. Mallowood had a difference of opinion with me concerning certain litigation which he wished to set on foot. My advice to him was contrary to his own wishes. It is possible – though no statement was made to that effect – that he intended to entrust his interests to another firm.”

  “What was the nature of the litigation in question, sir?”

  “Nothing relevant to your business, Chief Inspector. It involved a dispute over building rights on a certain property which Mr. Mallowood had purchased.”

  Macdonald smiled, “As a lawyer of caution and experience you advised settling out of court, and Mr. Mallowood, as a man of quick temper and overbearing mind, wished to fight in the law courts?”

  “That was the position, roughly speaking, though it can be of no interest to Scotland Yard.”

  “I wish you would give me an opinion in confidence, sir, on certain evidence which I will put before you, also in confidence. When Mr. Mallowood went abroad, he had his flat dismantled, and given over to the decorators. He removed his deed box from your keeping. He also removed all his private papers from his city office. His bank holds share certificates and similar securities, but all his private belongings were placed in safe deposit, the keys of which were handed to him personally, with the combination of the lock which covers them. It is not going to be easy to get that vault opened. The whole system of the safe deposit company in question involves the presence of the depositor with his own keys in order to gain access. There were no keys on the body found in Tunis, neither has Mr. Mallowood’s baggage been recovered. It is a curious situation. He took two suitcases with him from Wulfstane Manor: one of these went with him on the plane: the other has disappeared. His bigger baggage was dispatched to Tunis earlier and was recovered by an agent from the shipping company, the agent giving up the appropriate vouchers. It is not known where Mr. Mallowood stayed in Tunis, but it was not at the hotel where reservations were made for him. What interpretation would you put on those facts?”

  The lawyer sat very still, and at length said, “I have no opinion to give which could be of any value to you, Chief Inspector. Your facts are susceptible to various curious interpretations. I can only tell you that in my experience of him I have found Mr. Mallowood a man of integrity: hasty in judgment at rare moments, perhaps, but as a rule, a man of cool and balanced mind.”

  “Given to occasional outbursts of temper when his judgment was liable to be at fault? In short, a man of able, calculating disposition, prone to rage when crossed, and also a man of very suspicious temperament?”

  “I do not make a study of psychology, Chief Inspector, but I think that your analysis is not at fault. I regret that I have no means of helping you in your present search. I can only suggest that you set the machinery of the law in motion to get the vault of the safe deposit opened.”

  For the only time in the interview a gleam of amusement flashed across the lawyer’s face.

  “It is a nice position,” he said meditatively. “You have presumption of death, but no proof: you have no charge to prefer against Mr. Paul Mallowood, and I give it as my opinion that the lawyers of the safe deposit company will be anxious to protect their client’s interests – until death be proved. A search warrant will not be easy to apply in this matter.”

  “It can be applied all right – but there may be delay in the process,” said Macdonald. “Now, sir, assuming that Mr. Paul Mallowood died intestate, am I right in assuming that his estate will be divided among his next of kin?”

  “That is so – his remaining brothers and his sister.”

  “The more the merrier – but the fewer the better fare,” said Macdonald. “You will have followed the Basil Mallowood case, sir?”

  “To some extent. Happily my practice is not often concerned with the criminal code. You have an interesting case in hand, Chief Inspector, but I know of nothing which can assist you.”

  “You can give no information concerning Mr. Paul Mallowood’s private life?”

  “I have no information about it at all. My knowledge of him covers nothing but business dealings, all strictly in conformity with law and custom.”

  Macdonald left the lawyer’s office with the only papers which Mr. Sootland could give him – the typewritten letter and receipt concerning the removal of the deed box. These were despatched to Scotland Yard for examination. From Bedford Row Macdonald went on to the city where he saw Mr. Bernard Lathom, who had been busy convening his “extraordinary meeting,” since it now appeared desirable to him to announce Mr. Paul Mallowood’s resignation from his directorship. Macdonald collected certain papers from Paul Mallowood’s desk and files, and asked for the loan of the latter’s confidential clerk – an astute young man named John Barberry. Macdonald wished to take the latter to Croydon to see the air port officials who had seen Paul Mallowood on to the plane when he left England. John Barberry was perfectly willing to talk. Once clear of the office, and removed from the gaze of Mr. Lathom’s forbidding eyes, the clerk opened out and chattered away volubly.

  “Is he really dead, sir?” was John Barberry’s first sentence, when he was seated beside Macdonald in the latter’s car.

  “Mr. Paul Mallowood? To the best of my belief, yes,” replied Macdonald. “In any case, you needn’t be afraid that anything you say to me will be repeated to your firm, if that’s what is in your mind.”

  “Well, it’s true I don’t want to get the sack, decent jobs being hard to come by,” replied the young man, “and it wouldn’t seem out of character for Mr. Mallowood to allow a report of his death to get around – and then to turn up again very much alive – like the way he used to say he was going away for a week and then coming back a couple of days later and nosing round. Funny, he was just born suspicious. It was in his blood. I knew a chap who was in Basil Mallowood’s office at one time, and Basil was just the same – always suspicious.”

  “Presumably Basil had his reasons for being suspicious,” said Macdonald. “He must have had some sleepless nights wondering when he’d be bowled out. The reckoning was bound to come.”

  “They say he was infernally clever, though,” said the clerk. “He’d cooked the books so that an average auditor didn’t spot any discrepancies. I’ve wondered time and again if our Paul didn’t play any tricks of the same kind. Mr. Lathom thought so, too, though he wouldn’t admit it to any one. He’s been working all night with the auditors, going into every tiny detail.”

  “Now I want you to think a bit about this job you’re out to do for me,” said Macdonald. ” According to the evidence, Mr. Paul Mallowood left Croydon by the 10.0 o’clock plane last Wednesday. I want you to talk to the passport official, the porter, steward, and any one else who’s concerned, and see if you can spot any discrepancies between the Paul Mallowood who left by plane and the man you’ve worked for in the office. Keep quiet and think for a bit. It’s not going to be easy, but you might think of something helpful.”

  They were silent as Macdonald drove the car through the South London traffic, and it was a quarter of an hour later that John Barberry spoke again.

  “I’ve thought of a few things,” he said. “He pinched his finger in the safe a few days before he left and his nail was turning black – the middle finger of his right hand. He’d got a mark – a birth mark I suppose – below his right ear. A sort of coffee-coloured patch. Also he’d got a cough – kind of chronic catarrh, really. He always coughed before he spoke. When he paid for anything, he used to chuck the money down. If it was notes he paid in he’d sort of flick it at you: if it was cash, he’d toss it down, all lordly like if you know what I mean. I’ve never know him to put money down quietly
, like other chaps do. He always seemed to chuck it at you – and he always waited for his exact change and counted it carefully. He’s sent me out to get things sometimes – papers or books or cigarettes – and if it was a sixpence he’d given he’d always count the coppers – suspicious again. That’s why I believe he wasn’t above doing other people, because he always expected to be done himself.”

  “Those are all good points you’ve thought of,” said Macdonald, “but it seems as though you didn’t like him overmuch.”

  “Me? I loathe him. All the fellows in the office do. He was bad tempered, high handed and suspicious, and he’d got a nasty tongue. Sarcastic. Never could stand sarcasm. If he’s got himself done in, I expect he earned it. I don’t know who’s going to weep over him, but I know I’m not.”

  Macdonald was both amused and interested to see the way that John Barberry tackled his job with the aerodrome personnel who had seen Paul Mallowood embark on the plane, and the steward who had served him en route. The clerk managed to elicit identifying facts without showing his own hand. He got the steward to state that Mr. Mallowood had had a piece of sticking plaster round the middle finger of his right hand, that he had a brown stain – a noticeable mark – below his right ear: that he had a cough, but not an ordinary sniffley cold: that he drank “Johnnie Walker” whisky and refused Black & White, and finally – a statement which surprised Barberry, that he was a generous tipper. The steward – an intelligent fellow – also mentioned the manner in which Paul Mallowood flicked a pound note at him, but he remembered him best as a generous tipper – an open-handed gentleman, as he put it. The steward then went on to say that he had seen Paul Mallowood on a previous trip, though he could not be certain of the date, but he could swear to his identity. On the previous flight, he averred, Mr. Mallowood had left an envelope at the side of his seat; it had been an empty envelope, but it had had the name Paul Mallowood typed on it, and the name had recurred to the steward’s memory immediately when Scotland Yard had instituted inquiries in the present case.

  The baggage man and the passport officer added their quota of description, all of which went to reinforce the seemingly inevitable assumption that Paul Mallowood, complete with birthmark, cough, and damaged finger-tip, had left Croydon by plane two and a half hours before Basil had been shot at Wulfstane. Macdonald had small doubts that equally clear evidence would show that Paul had changed planes at Lisbon, and had duly arrived at Tunis.

  Pondering over these facts, Macdonald sent John Barberry back to London while he himself interviewed the airport authorities, asking them to search their records to find any previous occasions when Paul Mallowood had travelled by plane from Croydon. This done he returned to Scotland Yard to see if any results had been achieved in the inquiries at the post office concerning cables delivered at Alvarley. In his own mind, Macdonald was very sceptical about the report of Paul Mallowood’s body having been discovered in Tunis. While it was possible to make more than one interpretation of the facts in this tangled case, it seemed to Macdonald that the assumption that Paul Mallowood had been killed in Tunis might be valuable to the plotters in any case. If Paul’s death in Tunis was accepted as a fact, one avenue of inquiry might be regarded as closed – but Macdonald did not intend to accept that closure. He had put Walsh, who was working in Tunis, in full possession of such facts as seemed relevant, and he was leaving him to continue the investigation there. Meantime, Macdonald very much wanted to know if any continental cables or long distance telephone calls had been put through to Alvarley, since it seemed to him that that house might have been used as a convenient spot for the interchange of communications. Whatever the explanation underlying the facts of the Wulfstane case – and Macdonald had quite discarded any idea that the explanation could be a simple one, dictated by face values – the C.I.D. man believed that a considerable amount of planning had prefaced the action. As Macdonald saw it, this business of a body found clad in Paul Mallowood’s clothes was no simple business of the murder of a rash foreigner prompted by profit for the benefit of some Tunisian cut-throat, but a step in an elaborate plot centred around the shooting tragedy at Wulfstane. Wherever Paul Mallowood might be, Macdonald did not believe that he had been killed in Tunis, but Macdonald did believe that the plotters had hoped that that simple explanation would be accepted.

  Enquiries had already been made at Wulfstane post office, and it was certain that neither foreign cables nor long distance telephone calls had been received at the Manor. It was obviously possible that such communications could have been sent to either Paul or Basil Mallowood’s town addresses or offices, but Macdonald argued that it would have been realised in advance that enquiries would be made at all these destinations. It was only by sheer good luck that Alvarley had been discovered, and that address might well have been considered a safe quarter for communications.

  When Macdonald arrived at Scotland Yard he found the information he had wanted awaiting him. A Hendon post office had transmitted two cables to a firm in Tunis, one sent off six weeks ago, one a fortnight ago. The name and address of the sender was Brownleigh, Alvarley, Varley Close. The first message ran, “Goods to be transmitted mid October.” The second one, “Goods will be forwarded Wednesday, October 10th, Awaiting further instructions.” As Macdonald read these messages, he was aware of a thrill of excitement pulsing through him. He always found that the most exciting moments in a case were not those of violent action, not even those culminating moments immediately preceding an arrest, but the times when he came aware that he had read aright the evidence he had studied, when he obtained confirmation that his mind had made contact, so to speak, with a mind which had plotted a crime.

  The next step was to pass on the address of the Tunis firm to Walsh, and it was when this had been arranged that Macdonald was told that Peter Vernon was asking to see him. The journalist was bidden to come up to Macdonald’s room, and the latter greeted him with:

  “Hullo, Peter. Come fishing, or complete with solution?”

  Vernon grinned. “Neither. I’ve got one or two oddments to tell you. I hear Paul Mallowood’s body has been found.”

  “So I’m told. They seem an unfortunate family.”

  “Umps… Have you also heard that Martin Mallowood’s been seen prowling in the woods below the park at Wulfstane?”

  Macdonald cocked an eye at the other.

  “Who by? You?”

  “No, laddie. By one of the farm hands at Willow Farm, Bidden by name. Bidden says he saw Martin strolling through Long Wood at dusk two days ago. He was frightened, was Bidden. Not sure if he’d seen a ghost. Didn’t your men down there get to hear of it?”

  “They did not. You seem to have a confidence evoking nature in the local bars. Out with it.”

  “It’s a humorous story. I’ve often been taken for a fool, but never before for a spook. Bidden saw me in Long Wood. Seemingly I’m Martin’s height and build: I’d got a blue muffler round my neck with the ends flying – seems Martin’s got a similar one he wears that way, and it was more than half dark. Any way, I know for a fact that I was at the very spot at the time Bidden says he saw Martin.”

  “So much for visual evidence,” said Macdonald. “The more often Bidden repeats that story, the more convinced will he be that he saw Martin – or Martin’s ghost. Go on. You haven’t finished your story yet. Incidentally, I’m glad you’re here – and not your ghost. It isn’t healthy to be mistaken for a Mallowood brother these days.”

  Vernon broke out laughing. “It certainly isn’t. Well, I gave the story twenty-four hours to get round. Marvellous how the news seeps round in the country, though the police are often the last to hear it. I thought I’d come and tell you about it, in case it might be useful.” He regarded Macdonald quizzically, his shrewd blue eyes studying the detective thoughtfully:

  “You’re damn careful not to give away your own ideas in this case, Jock, but it seems to me there’s some queer doings afoot in that crazy Mallowood family. Basil shot at Wulfstane, Pa
ul reported dead in Tunis. Martin off the map. Veronica living alone in that fantastic great house. Richard staying at the Inn. You heard how he turned up one morning, looking as though he’d been in a bonny scrap? His luggage was sent down by the gardener later in the day. He spends his time fishing and mooching around. Told me he was fed up with a house without servants, where he had to organise his own commissariat. Personally I believe he got wind-up – found his sister a spot too enlivening in the way of company.”

  Macdonald sat and pondered for a moment, and Vernon went on:

  “What’s the possibility that Paul, having organised his own death in Tunis, has come back to England to organise the finale of the story? If that notion’s got anything in it, it’s a poor look out for Martin and Veronica.”

  “I don’t see that that notion would work,” said Macdonald. “If Paul gets his death presumed, he can’t come back and claim Wulfstane, even though he succeeded in wiping out the rest of the family.”

  “Oh, he’ll buzz up again in Tunis or Morocco or Egypt, with some fine story of being held to ransom, and escaping from savage tribes. Afridis, Moors, Berbers, heretics and infidels. There are lots of variations you could work out along that theme.”

  Macdonald chuckled. “You’ve been using your imagination, laddy.”

  Vernon nodded cheerfully. “Haven’t you? I fail to see how you’re to get even with this case if you don’t apply a little imagination. If you accept the facts you’re faced with Basil as a straightforward suicide, and Paul as a victim of assassination in Tunis.”

  “You’ve rather veered away from your original theory that Veronica was responsible for the situation.”

  Vernou rubbed his head thoughtfully. “Whatever Veronica may or may not have done, she can’t have organised Paul’s death in Tunis.”

  “So you’re toying with the theory that Paul map be organising her death in England, while he has arranged an original sort of alibi for himself by leaving a corpse labelled with his own name.”