The Valentine Estate

by Stanley Ellin

  ‘If you’re asking me to change my mind about it –’

  ‘I am, while there’s still time to change it. Tomorrow may be too late for that. Be reasonable, man. We can be at the consulate before any of that gang suspect what you’re up to. It may even lead to Scotland Yard’s laying the mystery man by the heels. It would at least be a step in that direction.’

  It was a temptation, but only the briefest one.

  ‘No,’ Chris said, ‘I’ll do it my way.’

  ‘I see,’ Warburton said, not unsympathetically. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help –’

  ‘You can. A little while back you said something about in for a penny, in for a pound. I can use that pound now. I’m almost out of what small change I had, and I don’t know where I’ll wind up tomorrow or how much I’ll need to make a getaway from there.’

  ‘Then better make it five pounds at least.’ Warburton drew out a billfold. ‘You know,’ he grimly remarked as he handed over the money, ‘I have no right to be doing this. When all’s said and done, I feel exactly like someone giving a man a length of rope with which to hang himself.’

  8

  Michael opened the door of number 4 Merivale Street without musical accompaniment this time, and Chris saw that he was in a really ugly mood. That was no surprise. Michael had been assigned to assist Baby in disposing of him permanently, had been warned by Teodorescu that a double-cross might be in the wind, and now, because of Baby’s stalling tactics, he had his nose to the wind.

  ‘You’ve been gone long enough,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘What about it?’ said Chris. ‘You didn’t tell me I had to check in here every hour, did you?’

  ‘Didn’t I? Well, I’m bloody well telling it to you now, see?’

  It was a mood, Chris noted while the three of them were at their evening meal, that Baby herself must have realized could be dangerous to her plans and decided to do something about. She was not only perceptibly softer in her manner towards Michael, but put on a show, as she worked around the kitchen, which would have made a lungfish horny. A series of apparently innocent bending and stretching exercises which, performed in a very tight skirt and low-cut blouse, almost had Michael stab himself in the cheek once or twice with his fork. And the scent of perfume in the kitchen was enough to overpower even the smell of burnt sausage.

  Under other circumstances, it might have been funny. But, Chris found, as a demonstration of what was intended to take place at breakfast where, as a finale, Michael would be left for dead on the kitchen floor, there wasn’t a laugh in it. He had been wondering whether or not to play a card he had up his own sleeve. The vivid picture in his mind of that scene in the kitchen next morning settled all his doubts. It was a dangerous card because, depending on Baby’s reaction, it could lose the game as well as win it, but it had to be played.

  When Michael had quit the table, and the blare of the television set in the sitting-room announced he was back at his favourite activity, Chris motioned Baby into the pantry where even with the kitchen door open they were well out of Michael’s earshot.

  ‘What’s bothering you?’ Baby said.

  ‘Something I just found out. I took a long walk over to where they keep the court records about estates and had them look up Valentine’s estate. Do you know how much he left? Nothing! Not one lousy cent.’

  Baby’s face darkened ominously.

  ‘You mean you’ve been snooping around without anybody’s say-so?’

  ‘That’s right. What surprised him was her being upset by his seeking the information, not by the information itself. ‘Now I want to know what the hell you’re trying to pull on me. What’s the sense of my knocking off Michael and signing a lot of papers if the estate isn’t worth anything?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Monte.’ Baby’s manner was that of a weary parent addressing a wilful child. ‘That estate is worth over a million bucks in take-home pay, no matter what it says in the records.’

  ‘So you say. There’s no million dollars marked down in the inventory.’

  ‘Sure not. Because they don’t know where to look for it. But Mookerjee does. So do I. You can stop knocking your brains out about it and leave it all up to us.’

  ‘Does anybody else know where it is?’

  ‘Don’t let that bother you either. First come, first served, it says in the rule-book. You just put away Michael tomorrow morning, and I’ll guarantee you’re a winner. And if you didn’t stick your nose where you shouldn’t, you wouldn’t have to worry about it in the first place.’

  For the rest of the evening and while he lay sleepless in bed he went over and over that conversation in his mind. There was no will, but there was an estate. Baby’s flat assurance about it had been too convincing to doubt. A million dollars take-home pay, she had said, which meant there would be that much left after Mookerjee settled the taxes on it. And if Mookerjee expected to be stuck with those taxes, it meant, in turn, that the money wasn’t hidden away underground where it could be secretly dug up and hauled away without tax collectors on its trail. It was probably stashed away in various banks under a code name Mookerjee and the rest of the gang knew. The name of Lucas Jones, Beth’s father?

  On the other hand, Chris reflected, maybe he was reading the wrong meaning into that, ‘take-home pay’. It didn’t have to mean cash in the bank. It could just as well mean that somewhere was hidden away a stock of the enormously valuable contraband the gang had dealt in, whatever it was. Hidden away, possibly, right there in Valentine’s place in Sunningdale. Or in that locked-up building in London the Valentine Society had leased to store its printing and engraving equipment.

  Printing and engraving equipment.

  The shock of revelation hit him like a galvanic charge. He sat bolt upright in the bed.

  Printing and engraving equipment, Warburton had remarked, dismissing it lightly, and, Jesus, how wrong he had been!

  And how right that stewardess aboard the plane to London had been. The stately Miss Green. A big trade in smuggled currency, she. had said, but you couldn’t hide enough in a shoe to make it worthwhile that way? No, you couldn’t. But you could hire some trusting accomplices to transport the goods that way and then tip off the police to it. After that, the police would be concentrating on shoes, not on the beautifully bound literary works you were shipping all over the world. And even better than stuffing those bindings with real currency and taking your profit from the rate of exchange, you could stuff them with currency you manufactured yourself.

  He switched on the bed lamp to look at his watch. It was after one. By now, Michael, no reader in bed or any place else for that matter, should be asleep. Chris switched off the light, then got out of bed and made his way bare-footed through the darkness of the room to the door. He opened it with care and looked out into the hall. The small night light at the head of the staircase was so dim it barely lit the hall, but at least, he saw gratefully, it would keep one from going headlong down the stairs. It did nothing about muffling the creaking of the stairs though, and he took them very slowly, resting his weight on the balustrade each step of the way.

  He was afraid to turn on the bright light in the kitchen, so it took a long time to finally lay hold of the small, sharp-bladed knife he was searching for. Then he climbed back one flight of stairs to the library.

  Here, after closing the door behind him, he had no choice but to turn on the light. The procedure ahead was simplicity itself. BOTT and SFR were the only sets of initials on Prendergast’s index cards he remembered with assurance, so Blasts of the Trumpet and Swiss Family Robinson were going back with him to his room where, behind the locked door, they would be autopsied. Too bad that a knife had to be driven into that beautifully worked leather, but better that than into him. And if he found what he suspected he would find under the leather, he could drive a bargain with Big Brother. They would get the evidence he had unearthed; he would get their testimony on his behalf. Q.E.D.

  He pulled Blasts of the Tru
mpet from the shelves, hunted back and forth until he located The Swiss Family Robinson, and, clutching them to his chest like a lover, headed back to the door. He was almost there when he heard the heavy-footed steps quickly descending the stairway from the top floor to the third and then start down the next flight. Michael must have heard him on those creaking stairs and was on the prowl.

  He instantly turned off the light and waited there for trouble. But the footsteps passed by and continued full tilt down to the ground floor.

  It was easy to picture Michael’s activities from the sounds below. The testing of bolts and locks, the look around to see that everything was in order, the return up the stairway. It was even more unnerving than the downward trip because this time the steps were slow and stealthy. And there was no way at all, Chris realized, of getting those two hefty books which he clutched to his chest so fervently back to their places on the shelves without turning on the light again. If he could be sure it wouldn’t show under the door –

  Then, to his dizzying relief, the footsteps continued upward. He leaned against the door, his ear to it, until there was a total silence ringing in it, and a realization that a pair of pyjama pants alone was hardly sufficient clothing against the chill of a springtime morning in London. With a feeling that the best way to do it was to get it over with quickly, he opened the door and started up the staircase. He was halfway up when he heard the sound from Baby’s room. It was as if Baby had blown up a small paper bag and jammed her fist into it. A muffled pop, and then silence again. He froze there for a second, but whatever the sound was it hadn’t brought Michael out to investigate. But it was a bothersome sound. Somehow he felt uneasy about it.

  When he reached the landing the uneasiness grew. Baby’s door was open but her room was unlit. He padded into it, but could make out nothing in the darkness.

  ‘Baby?’ he whispered.

  Then he detected the unpleasantly reminiscent odour, an acrid smell sharp in his nostrils even through the scent of Baby’s perfume. He had last met it in a cellar where two men were lying bullet-riddled on the floor.

  ‘Baby!’ he said.

  It was no zap, you’re disintegrated this time, he knew an instant too late. There was a red flash hardly an arm’s length away, that same popping noise he had heard on the stairs, and it was as if a gigantic sledgehammer had been swung full force into his chest, shattering every rib, smashing him back so hard against the wall with its impact that he rebounded and went face down on the floor, the wind knocked completely out of him.

  He lay there stunned and paralysed, heard his assailant move past him, heard the footsteps thudding down the stairs, and knew with dread that sooner or later he was going to have to try to move at least a fingertip to see if the bullet had really touched the spine, had really locked him in this paralysis for life. He finally nerved himself to do it and found that the finger moved, then the hand, then painful life was coming back to his whole body.

  When he reached out the hand it encountered a chair, and with its help he dragged himself upright.

  The room light went on, momentarily blinding him. He blinked to clear his vision and saw a long-haired girl standing in the doorway aiming a gun at him. No, it wasn’t a girl. It was Michael in robe and slippers, and he was staring at the bed.

  ‘Ah, damn,’ said Michael.

  Chris looked at the bed. Baby lay there on her back, the blanket drawn up to her chin. Her lips were parted prettily, her eyes stared up at the ceiling, and centred squarely in the middle of her forehead was a small black hole with dirty smudges radiating from it. If it weren’t for the leaden pallor which made the freckles stand out in relief or the red wetness spreading out from beneath the head on the pillow, it would be hard to realize what that black hole and those smudges meant. Chris looked closer and saw that the gun must have been fired only inches away, and, even with its silencer, had left powder burns. He wanted to close those staring eyes but couldn’t bring himself to touch them. Instead, he started to draw the blanket up over the grey, dead face.

  ‘No, don’t bother,’ Michael said. ‘Just leave everything the way it is.’

  He was not the same Michael. Shoulder-length hair and all, he somehow looked older, and his manner was different enough to be confusing. And there was not the slightest trace of Cockney in the voice now.

  ‘You’re not any strong-arm man for Teodorescu,’ Chris said. ‘You’re a plant here, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am, Mr Monte, and don’t make light of it. It took me three very unpleasant years to win my way into Mr Teodorescu’s heart.’

  ‘Are you a private detective?’

  ‘No, I’m attached to an antique, makeshift sort of international police project called Operation Cupid, which, I’m sorry to say, any of the governments supporting it would disavow at the drop of a hat. I’m second generation in it. And I’d say you are undoubtedly the luckiest bastard ever born, judging from that trademark on you.’

  Chris looked down at his chest. The rectangular outline of a large book was imprinted on it as neatly as if stamped by a die, and the area was already purpling. Considering that and the discoloration of the shoulder left by a lead pipe, he had to admit Michael hadn’t overstated the case.

  He reached down and picked up the two books that had saved his life. The bullet had completely penetrated one and, since there was only an entry hole in the other, must still be embedded in it.

  ‘Big calibre stuff,’ Michael said, ‘but not the biggest.’ He might have been talking about the weather. ‘Otherwise, even that literary armourplate mightn’t have helped. Are you all right now? Can you move about?’

  ‘Yes. But if you didn’t do it, who did?’

  ‘That’s what we’ll look into now. Upstairs is the place.’

  Chris nodded towards the object on the bed while keeping his eyes averted from it.

  ‘You mean you’re going to leave her like that?’

  ‘For the present. Don’t fret about it. Everything will be nicely taken care of.’

  The tone of almost cheerful indifference to death by violence was hard to take. What made it bearable at all, Chris knew, was the realization that there wasn’t going to be any frame-up for Zucker’s murder now. It was like having a thundercloud roll away. The skies remaining were still uncertain, but at least the worst of the clouds in it was gone for good.

  Michael’s room reminded him of the one Beth had occupied back in that house on Commonwealth Street what with its naked lack of decoration. But here there was an expensive-looking phonograph in a handsome leather case.

  Michael lifted the phonograph out of the case and displayed the transmitter-receiver set it had hidden.

  ‘Now we’ll see what our man across the street has to say.’ He flicked the microphone with his fingernail a few times, then addressed himself to it. ‘This is Pollux. Pollux speaking. Wake up out there in radio land.’

  The response was immediate. ‘Castor here. Who was the late hour visitor? I’ve been calling you about him.’

  ‘Then you didn’t recognize him?’ Michael said.

  ‘I saw him ring and be let in, and I saw him scurry out a few minutes later, but it was too damn shadowy over there to recognize him. From the outline, he was no one in the book. What’s it all about, son?’

  ‘Damn it, I think I had my hands on Number One and let him get away. He used the buzzer code, same rhythm as Teodorescu’s and all, so I ran down to let him in and he caught me over the head with a gun butt as soon as the door was open. Left me stretched out right there in the foyer. He had to step over me when he walked out. And I never got a look at him. Hat down, collar up, dark foyer, quick gun butt, and God knows when we’ll ever have another chance at him like that. A cunning, murderous bastard, that one.’

  ‘Murderous?’ said the voice over the receiver.

  ‘He got Aphrodite,’ Michael said. ‘Damn near got Telemachus too, but our boy had his usual luck. He’s here with me now.’

  ‘Oh?’ said the voice ove
r the transmitter with obvious interest. ‘Break the big news to him yet?’

  ‘Not yet. I will now.’

  ‘It’s your verdict to render, laddie. You’ll be getting him away from there at once, I suppose. I’ll keep close watch until you’re back. I believe I read somewhere or other that the murderer always returned to the scene of his crime.’

  ‘Not bloody likely in this case,’ Michael said. ‘Are all the Olympians buttoned down?’

  ‘At midnight report, yes. Watch your health, son.’

  Michael flipped the switch on the transmitter and placed the phonograph over it in the case.

  ‘What was that about?’ said Chris.

  ‘Was it that cryptic?’

  ‘Not all of it. I gather that Baby is – was – Aphrodite and I’m Telemachus. And that you think the number one man of the gang who nobody knows walked in here and pulled the trigger. Is that right?’

  ‘It is. Also, according to our daily report, the pieces on the other side of the board in this curious game still occupy the squares they did yesterday. Miss Danska in Prague, Mr Teodorescu at Cap D’Antibes where he has been making a great show of his presence, Mr Prendergast and family in New York City, and Mr Mookerjee in Freeport, the Bahamas. This is vital to know, because, by process of elimination, it means our murderer tonight must be Number One himself, the only person besides those four to know the signal that had me unlock the door downstairs. The Man, to use Baby’s succinct term. He is what this game is all about, and I had him and lost him at the same instant. I am not happy about it.’

  ‘I can understand that. What I don’t understand is that crack your pal made about breaking the news to me. What news?’

  ‘Oh, stale news really. All of us on both sides of the board have known it for a long time.’

  ‘Known what?’