The Bath Mysteries

by E. R. Punshon

  “I don’t mean caution in speculating, though there’s that, too,” Lawrence answered. “I mean caution towards our clients, so as to be sure they understand what they are doing. We don’t want to give them any chance of turning round and declaring they only intended to buy gilt-edged. Then we have to be sure as well that they have the money and that it is their own.” For the first time his dry, hard voice, harsh as in a mechanical reproduction, became touched with what seemed human emotion as he went on: “We do not want the client who turns out to be the bank clerk using his employer’s money – or the trustee using trust funds or anything like that, you understand,” and now again his voice had gone back to its previous dull monotony.

  “I think 1 remember,” Bobby remarked, ‘‘Dr. Beale said something about trust funds while we were talking.”

  “Very probably,” observed Lawrence. “It was a trust fund he wished to operate. He was very excited about it. He had a very carefully thought-out scheme. I had to tell him we could not possibly accept dealings in trust funds unless he gave us an indemnity. That was what annoyed him so. He seemed to think it insulting, a reflection on his honesty. Of course, that wasn’t meant. We’ve no knowledge of the terms of the trust. It may give him full authority, as he said. It may not. We don’t know; we can’t know. We must protect ourselves.”

  “What indemnity did you suggest?” Bobby asked, a little catch in his voice, for already he felt he knew the answer.

  “We suggested his taking out an insurance on his life in our favour for 20,000,” Lawrence answered. “I expect you heard Dr. Beale say so.”

  There was a silence then, for Bobby made no comment and Lawrence seemed sunk once more in his former dim contemplation. Bobby got to his feet and went to the window. He had begun to perspire again, for he found the room still intolerably hot, so that breathing had become difficult.

  “May I?” he asked, and, without waiting for the permission, he pushed the window up and leaned forward, glad to breathe the pure fresh air without.

  He felt a little dizzy. He felt as if with those last words all the monstrous horrors he had before suspected had begun again to accumulate in this quiet office, to surround with an aura of terror and of dread unspeakable this dull, slow- spoken man with the lined face, the expressionless eyes, so set aside it seemed from all common humanity.

  “You feel the room too hot still?” Lawrence asked. “I am sorry. Clients often complain. It seems that now I am always cold. Even in the sunshine 1 am cold.”

  Bobby was certain the temperature in the room was close on a hundred, and how Lawrence could bear it he could not imagine. Standing there by the window, grateful for the fresh breeze blowing in, the fresh breeze that blew across a thousand scenes of sport and traffic of every kind all through the land, that told him life was still sane and normal, he said:

  “Mr. Lawrence, do you know I think I have seen you before?”

  Lawrence made no answer, seemed to have fallen into his former state of not noticing what was said to him.

  “Mr. Lawrence,” Bobby said, “does your firm often suggest to clients that they should insure their lives in your favour for £20,000?”

  “It happens when it happens,” Lawrence answered.

  “And then... do they die, and does your firm collect the money?”

  Lawrence looked at him now. After a moment or two he answered with the one word:

  “Sometimes.”

  Bobby came back from the window to the chair he had occupied before. Lawrence said:

  “A life insurance policy is the most easily negotiated financial instrument you can have.”

  “So I am told,” Bobby agreed. He leaned forward. “Mr. Lawrence,” he asked, “has your life been recently insured for £20,000?”

  “If you know that, as I suppose you do, why ask?” Lawrence retorted, unmoved as ever.

  “We know a good deal,” Bobby muttered.

  “Then you need ask fewer questions,” answered Lawrence.

  “I’ll ask one more,” Bobby said slowly. “What is the name of your principal?”

  Silently Lawrence handed him a sheet of notepaper. It bore the name and address of the syndicate, and across the top left-hand corner the words:

  “Percy Lawrence. Manager and Sole Proprietor.”

  Bobby took it, read it, laid it down again.

  “I am asking for the actual facts,” he said; “for the names of the people behind you, the people finding the money.”

  Lawrence made no answer. He seemed sunk again in his mood of gloomy contemplation of the past, in which it appeared as if he lived so much and so entirely he had difficulty in drawing himself back again to the present. One felt that in that past there were memories from which he could not free himself, memories more real by far than the events that passed around him. Bobby got to his feet. He felt baffled. He told himself he must take time for reflection and for obtaining advice. Besides, it was possible that another day he might find this strange enigma of a man in another mood. But he made one more effort.

  “Mr. Lawrence,” he said, speaking deliberately and slowly, with all the emphasis he could command, “an insurance of £20,000 is a considerable fact. Is there anyone who has a real interest in your life to that extent?”

  This time Lawrence, though with a palpable effort, drew himself sufficiently back to awareness of the present to be able to answer.

  “Apparently,” he said, “since the premium has been paid.”

  “Insurance,” Bobby told him in the same grave tones, “is very literally an affair of life and death. Suppose I told you I had reason to believe your own life is in danger?”

  Lawrence turned his slow, dull, far-off gaze on Bobby. He remained quite unmoved. He said nothing, made no comment, only continued staring fixedly at his visitor, but not somehow very much as if he saw him.

  “Don’t you believe it?” Bobby asked.

  “Life,” Lawrence muttered, “life is for men and women, not for things.”

  CHAPTER 10

  A BARGAIN

  It was in a very puzzled, slightly disconcerted mood that Bobby left the office of the Berry, Quick Syndicate.

  He did not in the least know what to make of his visit. He knew still less what to make of the personality of Lawrence, with his manner of indifference to his surroundings, his air of being plunged in a perpetual aimless contemplation of the past, as though for neither present nor future had he any care. It was, Bobby thought, as if something had happened to him that had squeezed from him every drop of vitality, so that he was left a mere automaton – and yet not that either, for automata do not suffer, and about Lawrence there hung, so to say, a kind of suggestion or aura of continued torment. Bobby even entertained for a moment the idea that it might be the memory of these past murders, if he were in fact responsible for them either wholly or in part, that was troubling him. But that was not an idea that seemed to fit either psychologically or the facts, since the operations of the firm appeared to be continuing in full activity.

  There was the little typist girl, too, and her behaviour, not easy to account for, with the suggestion in it that she recognized in Bobby both potential enemy to be dreaded and potential saviour to whom appeal might perhaps be made for help. Nor did Bobby feel any too satisfied with the way in which he had conducted the interview.

  One thing alone seemed clear: that if from this quiet-looking business office in a modern London building a highly efficient murder machinery was being operated, then both Lawrence and the girl were as queer and unexpected inmates of it as could be well imagined.

  Again Bobby told himself there must be a very different and probably far more formidable personality hidden behind those two. He wondered, also, what Dr. Beale would say if he knew the nature of the danger from which apparently his fit of temper had saved him. Bobby had been careful to slip Dr. Beale’s card into his pocket. As soon as possible he would pay him a visit and obtain full details of the additional tragedy he had spoken of. It was a lin
e of inquiry that Bobby thought might well prove useful, even decisive.

  On the ground floor, when the elevator deposited him there, he sought out at once the row of telephone booths in the entrance hall and thence called up Scotland Yard. With as brief explanation as possible, and promising to make a full report in person later on, he asked that two plainclothes men might be sent to follow home both Lawrence and the typist.

  “They knew at once who I was,” he explained. “That means they’ll realize inquiries are being made, and more than likely they’ll do a bolt. I got fingerprints of Lawrence. I’m nearly sure I’ve seen him before, I think in the dock at the Old Bailey, but I can’t quite place him and I may be wrong. If snaps could be taken both of him and of the girl, it might be useful. The whole thing looks to me as if it might turn out a pretty sensational sort of affair. Already I’ve had a hint of another death of the same sort – on the Continent this time.”

  The Yard listened, uttered various expressions of incredulity and contempt, warned him not to let his imagination run away with him as he was only too apt to do, rebuked him severely for allowing his identity to become known, and expressed the opinion that this carelessness might compromise the whole investigation – it was the firm belief of headquarters that no member of the police force could ever be so recognized by any member of the public save by the police officer’s grave fault – promised reluctantly that the measures asked for should be carried out, and finally reminded him very sternly that his full report, together with complete and satisfactory explanation and justification of this sudden demand for the services of two men from the most notoriously starved, under-staffed, and neglected department in the public service, would be awaited with interest.

  “Some of you youngsters,” growled the discontented voice over the line, “seem to think there’s nothing for us to do but run about after any mare’s nest they’ve run their silly heads into. Besides,” added the voice, with more than a touch of venom, “aren’t you supposed to be on some private stunt of your own?”

  Hanging a humbled head, Bobby replaced the receiver – he knew better than to attempt any reply to a senior in a bad temper at having to tell off for unexpected duty two men no doubt badly wanted for other work – and then took a bus to the West End, alighting near the small antique shop in an unobtrusive by-street where his cousin, Chris Owen, conducted his business.

  The shop itself was a tiny little place, though there were extensive storerooms on the top floor of the building. The window contained little of real value or interest, the chief object in it being an old meat-dish on which was piled a huddle of odds and ends marked magnificently: “Your choice at five shillings each for all in this heap,” though, indeed, there was hardly any one article worth as much, and most would have been dear at half a crown. But Chris depended very little on chance trade, and, in fact, carried out here but few of his bigger deals. The shop was useful as an address, even though the counter trade barely paid the rent, and, of course, storerooms conveniently to hand were a necessity, but what Chris depended on were sales and purchases made privately. The collector known to be interested in colour prints would be fairly certain sooner or later to meet Chris on the golf links or dining in a restaurant, or possibly at the theatre and cinema first nights Chris made a point of attending, and there be tactfully informed that a wonderful portfolio could be seen at Chris’s flat – not for sale, of course; the owner did not wish to part, but open to the inspection of anyone really interested. And if that interest ran to a check drawn and signed then and there, Chris would generally take the responsibility of accepting it. Or the man furnishing his house anew would be apt to hear that some fine Chippendale chairs were in Chris Owen’s storeroom, and could be seen as a favour.

  It was not, therefore, very often that Chris was at this shop of his, but this time Bobby was in luck, for he found his cousin there in the tiny room behind, and found him, too, in a very good humour. He was handling lovingly a small piece of Chelsea china – a shepherd and shepherdess by a gate with flowers growing over it.

  “Bought that piece,” Chris told Bobby proudly, “for a ten-shilling note. Just sold it to Lady Endbury for a hundred guineas.”

  He held it up against the light and looked at it lovingly, for he had a real appreciation of form and colour and could at a glance, almost instinctively indeed, tell good stuff from bad, just as a cricketer can tell from the way the new man handles his bat or swings his bowling arm whether he is good class or not.

  “Seems a good profit,” Bobby commented.

  “If you ask me,” declared Chris, shaking his head at himself in grave reproach, “I’ve let the thing go too cheap. I believe it would fetch fifty at Christie’s any day. Still, it doesn’t do to hang out for top prices all the time – got to let your clients have a bit for themselves.”

  “So long as it’s not too big a bit,” suggested Bobby drily.

  “No, of course,” agreed Chris, and then, scenting perhaps a note of irony – or even perhaps of envy – in Bobby’s voice, he added: “It’s not so often it works out like that; generally it’s the other way round. You buy for a hundred on a rising market and then the fashion changes, bottom drops out of your market, and you’re glad to sell for ten bob. Why, not so long ago I had a firm commission from an American banker to buy Adam fireplaces from old houses they were pulling down here. I got some jolly fine specimens, paid six hundred cash and my own costs of removal and cartage, cabled America at once, got back word my client was in jail charged with fraud and embezzlement, and there’s my Adam fireplaces on my hands. Best offer I’ve had since the slump set in was from a man who said he would cart them away at his own expense if I liked and would promise to do him a good turn some day.”

  “Hard luck," agreed Bobby.

  “Nearly did me in; it was as near as that,” said Chris reminiscently. “Only thing that saved me was that two thousand poor old Ronnie gave me after he had his lucky stroke with the gold mine. You remember?”

  “Was that a gift? I thought it was a loan,” Bobby asked.

  Chris looked at him sharply and suspiciously.

  “Mrs. Ronnie been talking to you about it?” he demanded. “It was a loan in a sense. What Ronnie said was: ‘Pay it back if and when you can, but not till then.’ Lord knows, Mrs. Ronnie should have it tomorrow if I had it to give her. But it’s God’s truth, I couldn’t raise two thousand just now if I sold up. Mind you, the book value is a lot more – five or ten times as much – but book value and cash returns from a forced sale –”

  With a sweeping gesture he indicated how enormous was the distance, as from equator to pole, that separated book value from cash returns, and Bobby nodded thoughtfully.

  “I can understand that,” he agreed, still thoughtful, for an unpleasant idea was creeping into his mind.

  “The truth is,” declared Chris, “I’m over-bought. So is nearly everyone else in the antique business. The slump caught us all; it came like a skid when the surface changes without your knowing it; one moment bowling along a straight, clear road and the next in the ditch and lucky if you’re still alive.”

  Again Bobby nodded. It was, he remembered, an odd repercussion of that same slump when men had left their offices on Saturday, well off and prosperous, to return bankrupt on Monday morning, that had brought about the disclosure of the scandal in which Ronnie had been so unhappily involved.

  “What I came for,” he said presently, “was to ask you for Dick Norris’s address. He was Ronnie’s closest friend. Someone must surely have known where he was and what he was doing. If only I could find that out, I might be able to get a clue to who these people were who drew his life insurance money.”

  “Ronnie kept out of everyone’s way on purpose,” Chris answered. “It was all rather hard luck on him. He never meant it the way it turned out, and when it did he felt it a lot. He played the fool, but he was fooled as well, and afterwards the one thing he wanted was to cut himself off entirely from everyone who had known hi
m before. I’m sure of that. You can ask Norris, but you’ll find he’ll tell you just the same.”

  “Ronnie had hardly any money with him when he disappeared,” Bobby remarked. “Yet he must have got hold of some somehow. The evidence at the inquest showed he was in business for himself – unless that was faked, too. Anyhow, he had to have money to live on.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that,” Chris said.

  “He never asked you for any of that two thousand, I suppose?”

  “He did not,” Chris snapped. “What’s more, I don’t believe he would have if he had been starving. Ronnie always stuck to what he said; never budged an inch from it. That’s Norris’s address, but you can save yourself the trouble. He won’t be able to help you, either. Ronnie deliberately cut himself off from everyone who knew him.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE NEW BATHROOM

  This last sentence hung oddly in Bobby’s mind as, leaving the little antique shop, he walked briskly on to the address Chris had mentioned. Had those others, too, he wondered, who had met their deaths in a manner so strangely similar, also deliberately cut themselves off, like Ronnie, from all their friends? If that were so, it was easier to understand why there had been comparatively little investigation into the circumstances of their deaths, if there had been no friend or relative to press for further inquiry. But, then, that seemed to suggest they had all been carefully sought out and chosen, and again Bobby was aware that his blood ran chill at this suggestion that continually seemed to force itself upon him – of a carefully prepared, widely spread organization of death, working in a strange and dreadful secrecy. But, then, how was it possible to find over and over again men who had deliberately made themselves alone in the world, and for whom, therefore, no inquiry – at any rate no immediate inquiry – was likely? One could hardly advertise openly for such unfortunates, and it would be difficult to pick them out from those likely to answer any ordinary advertisement – or even to make certain any of them would be among the applicants. There was, of course, the Thames Embankment, that goal of the lost, home of the homeless, refuge of the solitary. Possibly cautious search and inquiry along there for such lost creatures might have been successful.