by Cyril Hare
But Hilda would not, or could not, be precise in the matter at all. She could only repeat in general terms that she was sure that if a potential murderer was among the circuit household, it could be no other than Beamish.
“And it is no good suggesting that he could not have written the second letter,” she concluded. “I am sure he knew all about the accident as soon as it happened. The lawyer isn’t born who could keep a secret from his clerk.”
Mallett did not attempt to dispute this piece of legal lore, but continued to press for concrete facts.
“Can you recall any occasion at the period of these incidents in which Beamish’s behaviour struck you as suspicious or unusual in any way?” he asked.
“I can,” said Derek. “The night of the business at Wimblingham.”
He went on to describe his painful encounter with Beamish in the passage and his reasons for thinking that the clerk had not in fact been in bed and asleep when the household was roused.
“I can still feel the place in my ribs where he kicked me,” he concluded.
“There you are!” said Hilda, triumphantly, turning to the Inspector. “I always knew there was something fishy about that man, and now we’ve proved it!”
“It certainly sounds strange,” said Mallett doubtfully. “But you say, Mr. Marshall, that apart from the long ulster you mention you can’t say how he was dressed?”
“No. I took no notice at the time. It was only next day that I began to try to think things out.”
“I think I can help you there,” Hilda said. “I remember next day the Judge saying to me how comic Beamish looked with a pair of green pyjama trouser legs showing underneath his overcoat. Oh!” she added, in a disappointed tone. “That’s rather against our case, isn’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” said Mallett. “It is just what one would expect in the case of a man, fully dressed, who wants to look as if he has just got out of bed. He pulls on his pyjamas over his outdoor clothes and then puts an overcoat on top to hide what he doesn’t want to show.”
“That’s all right, then,” said Hilda.
“What troubles me,” the Inspector continued, “is the very fact that originally started Mr. Marshall’s suspicions. I mean the boots, or shoes, which did the damage. If a man is going to creep about the house in which he is sleeping to commit a crime one would not expect him to wear outdoor footgear. He would be much more likely to put on soft, rubber-soled shoes, if he had them, and if not, to go about in his stockinged feet. No, I’m afraid that Beamish’s clothes tell against the theory of his being the person who assaulted you, Lady Barber.”
“Then what was he doing being dressed at all at that hour in the morning?” Lady Barber demanded.
“That is another question altogether, which may have all sorts of interesting answers. All I am saying is that it is not an argument in favour of his having committed this particular crime.”
“Really!” said Hilda pettishly. “I thought that you were coming here to help us, Inspector. Instead, you seem to do nothing but raise difficulties all the time.”
“I am sorry you should think that, my lady. As I said, all that I have been doing is to test the probabilities of different theories, and I am afraid that that is bound to give the impression of raising difficulties, as you put it. You see”—here the Inspector rose to his feet and began to pace the room with long strides—“you see, this isn’t an ordinary case, by any means. In the general way, we are called in when a crime has already been committed and it is our job simply to identify the person who is guilty of the crime. Sometimes we have reason to think that someone is contemplating a crime and we have to keep an eye on him and see that he doesn’t put his design into execution. But here is something more indefinite—a great deal more indefinite. What are we being asked to do? To prevent someone, unknown, from doing something, we don’t know what. It isn’t easy, you know. But we’ll do our best.”
And then, almost before they were aware of it, this big, substantial man had melted away, leaving Hilda and Derek alone in the room.
Derek left the club about ten minutes later. The ten minutes were occupied by a good deal of somewhat inconsequent conversation, during which the same ground was covered again and again without any tangible progress being made. Before he left, Hilda once more exacted and he reiterated his promise to help her in guarding the Judge from all the perils which might beset him. But he found it impossible to recapture any of the emotion which had accompanied the first giving of the promise. In the dry light of Inspector Mallett’s reasoning, the whole affair seemed to have dwindled to a rather tiresome problem to which the Inspector might find the key but which was obviously insoluble to him. As he came out of the club into the growing darkness of Piccadilly Derek’s thoughts were mainly occupied with the reflection that he was going to earn his daily two guineas more hardly than he had been led to understand when he consented to become Marshal to Mr. Justice Barber.
Chapter 11
WHISKY AND REMINISCENCE
Derek bumped into somebody on the pavement as he turned from saying good-bye to Lady Barber. Automatically he murmured an apology and passed on, but he had not taken two steps before he felt his arm gripped, and a voice said quietly in his ear, “Not a word! We may be observed!”
Looking round Derek saw that it was Pettigrew. He held one finger to his lips in the manner of a stage conspirator. Then he glanced over his shoulder, still keeping his hold on Derek’s arm, and went on in his natural voice,
“It’s all right! She’s getting into a taxi. Now we can go and have a drink.”
“It’s awfully kind of you,” said Derek in some confusion, “but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got to get to Waterloo to catch a train.”
“Nonsense! There are plenty of trains from Waterloo, and it can’t be of any consequence to you which you catch. You will be travelling in the black-out in any case, so it won’t make a ha’p’orth of difference. Is your presence very urgently required at wherever it is?”
Derek, the memory of his disappointing holiday strong within him, felt impelled to answer, “No.”
“Very good. Well, your presence is urgently required by me. Because I am going to have a drink. Several drinks. In fact, by the end of the evening I should not be surprised if I were verging on the blotto, in a quite gentlemanly way, of course, but definitely verging.”
“But——” said Derek.
“I know what you are going to say. As a purist, not to say an idealist, you object that a verge cannot be definite. And you are, of course, perfectly right. Nothing could be less definite than this particular verge. I have often tried myself to distinguish the precise moment when one goes over it, but in vain. At one moment you are depressingly, stupidly sober, at the next you are gloriously, happily tight. But where exactly the transformation takes place, I never can determine. And goodness knows, I have tried often enough.
“However,” Pettigrew continued, hurrying Derek along and completely disregarding his attempts to protest, “I am not asking you to accompany me as far as the verge. For one thing, a young man of your obvious attainments will almost certainly have a very good head for liquor, and it would be much too expensive. For another, the spectacle of their seniors upon the verge or—who knows what the evening may bring?—actually over it, is not good for persons of your age. All that I require from you is your company on the first stage of the journey. I always find”, he said, turning a corner, going up a flight of steps and pushing open a door, “that the first few drinks of the evening are cold and unsatisfying affairs unless one has a friend to share them. Later—put your hat and coat over there—a man is his own best company, perhaps. That depends on the man of course. I can only speak for myself, and even then without much assurance. I am having a double whisky. What about you?”
Derek found himself in a comfortable arm-chair in the smoking-room of what was evidently Pettigrew’s club—a shabby little place about as different from the smart establishment which he had just
left as could well be imagined. While the drinks were being brought, he had for the first time the opportunity of seeing clearly the face of his host. Pettigrew’s flow of words had come to an abrupt end. He looked tired, Derek thought, and wore an expression of discouragement which he had not seen before. He sat silently, staring into the fire, as if he had forgotten the existence of the guest upon whom he had forced himself a moment or two ago.
The appearance of the whisky recalled Pettigrew to his surroundings.
“Your health!” he said, taking a long drink. “And how are the ideals? Still as rampant as ever?”
“I haven’t lost them yet, anyhow,” said Derek.
“Quite right. I had them too at your age. Ideals and ambitions and oh! lots of things. They don’t last, though. Have you seen the evening paper, by any chance?”
“No. Is there anything about ideals in it?”
“Not exactly. About ambitions, though. I don’t mean your ambitions, of course. I expect they are front page stuff with headlines. This is very small beer—merely a small paragraph in a corner somewhere.”
He took another drink.
“They’ve gone and made Jefferson a County Court Judge,” he said.
Derek tried to look intelligent.
“Jefferson!” Pettigrew repeated in a tone of contempt.
“Was that a job you—I mean, had you expected——?” Derek began diffidently.
“Had I applied for the job? is what you are trying to say. Certainly I had. It’s an ingrained habit of mine. To be accurate, it is the fifth County Court Judgeship which I have applied for. The fifth and last.”
Pettigrew put down an empty glass.
“Oh, well,” Derek said, “I don’t see why it should be the last. It’s rotten luck, of course, but next time——”
“No!” said Pettigrew in an irritated tone. “My young and unlearned friend, you miss the entire point. (Just touch the bell beside you, will you?) It is not the fact that I haven’t got the job that distresses me and causes me to drink, but the fact that Jefferson has. Now do you see?”
“Not knowing Jefferson, I can’t say that I do.”
“Quite right. In not knowing Jefferson you have a very decided advantage over me. (Two more double whiskies, please, waiter.) But I don’t want to prejudice you against him. After all, you are thinking of coming to the Bar and may have to appear before him. The essential odiousness of Jefferson—and he is odious—is not the point. Neither is the fact that the public has been presented with a thundering bad judge when it might have had an average good one. The point is that nobody, not even the rummiest Lord Chancellor, is ever going to make me a County Court Judge after Jefferson. D’you see? If he and I are on a list of possibles together and they choose him, with all his imperfections on his wig and five years my junior, well, it simply means that next time I’m not a possible at all. If only because, as you will have occasion to observe one day, one does not grow any younger. It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose, but I had rather it was anybody than Jefferson. (Thank you, waiter.) Well, let’s forget about him.”
He raised his second glass to his lips.
Derek did not often drink two whiskies so close together, and he found that their effect, at first at any rate, was to produce an unusual clarity of mind. He was not particularly interested in Jefferson, but he was interested in Pettigrew and in a good many things with which Pettigrew was in some way connected; and this seemed to be a good opportunity for improving his knowledge of them. His host’s next words gave turn the opening he sought.
“Well,” he said, “and how is her ladyship? Have you been enjoying an afternoon’s poodle-faking?”
“She is quite well,” said Derek. “But rather badly worried.”
“That I can quite believe. A black eye is a very worrying thing for a good-looking woman.”
“How did you know about that?” Derek asked in surprise. The events at Wimblingham had, at the Judge’s particular request, not been made public in any way.
Pettigrew grinned.
“Things do get about you know,” he said. “Besides, I was at Wimblingham myself.”
“I know,” said Derek rather uncomfortably. “But of course it isn’t only the black eye that is worrying Lady Barber.”
“No. One way and another Father William has been having a fairly uncomfortable circuit. What does Hilda think about it all?”
“She thinks that there is someone behind it all.”
“All?”
“Yes—the letters, the chocolates, her black eye. She thinks that one person is responsible for them.”
“M-m.” Pettigrew wrinkled his nose. The second half of his whisky remained forgotten at his elbow. “Well, that’s always possible, of course. And who does she think this one person is?”
“Well, the first name she suggested to the detective was Heppenstall.”
“The detective? So this wasn’t a tête-à-tête? Scotland Yard was represented too?”
“Yes. A fellow called Mallett came along.”
“Oho! That looks as if somebody was really worried. And what did Mallett think about Heppenstall?”
“Not very much. In fact, he didn’t seem to be very much impressed by the whole theory. But I found it all very difficult to follow, I’m so much in the dark. I wish you’d tell me who this Heppenstall is. His name seems to keep on cropping up and I don’t know what it’s all about.”
Pettigrew emptied his glass and leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out, looking at the fire. He seemed to be seeing something there and to be intent on what he saw.
“Just ring the bell again,” he said. “This confounded waiter never seems to be about when you want him. Thanks. Heppenstall? Oh, he was just a solicitor who went wrong. He misappropriated some of his client’s money, came up before Father William at the Old Bailey, and got a pretty stiff sentence. That’s all.”
“Oh,” said Derek in a disappointed tone.
“Yes. Oh, here you are, waiter. Will you have another? Well, perhaps you are wise. One more double, then, please. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, Heppenstall. A sad case, as these cases always are.”
Nothing further was said until the fresh whisky had been brought. Pettigrew put into it the smallest possible dash of soda, drank it off at a gulp, set down the glass and said violently, “No!”
Derek looked at him in surprise and began to wonder whether the “verge” had been reached. But Pettigrew was now talking as collectedly as ever, though, if possible, with even greater fluency.
“There is something about the third glass of whisky,” he said, “which makes it quite impossible to tell a lie, even by implication. For me, at any rate, the third glass is the third degree. The last barriers go down and I come clean—or dirty, as the case may be, but at least I come true. I told you a thumping lie, just now.”
“About Heppenstall?”
“Yes. He was a solicitor and he was sentenced by the Shaver for pinching his client’s money. But that’s not all, by a very long chalk. If it were, nobody would be bothering about him. I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you about it. If I don’t somebody else will, and I can do it very much better than anyone who is likely to talk about it. And since you are more or less mixed up in his affairs, I’m not at all sure that it’s not my duty to tell you.”
Pettigrew lit a cigarette.
“Heppenstall was a client of mine in my early days,” he said, idly watching the smoke curl upwards. “I rather liked him. He was smart—in both senses of the word—clever at his profession and by way of being a man about town, both the City and the West End. He put quite a lot of work in my way. It was mostly small stuff, but Heppenstall was a small man then. I was in the same chambers as the Shaver. The head of them was—but that wouldn’t interest you. The Shaver was senior to me and a cut above the kind of stuff Heppenstall was handing out then. Well, the war came, and of course I went. It was while I was away that his practice really began to grow.”
&n
bsp; “Whose practice do you mean?” asked Derek. “Heppenstall’s or Barber’s?”
“Both. Simultaneously and conjointly. Heppenstall began to get into a really big class of business. He acquired some important City clients, and at the same time managed to collect some flashy society litigation of the kind that makes a splash in the newspapers. And my clerk—who was also, of course, the Shaver’s clerk—saw to it that he remained faithful to the chambers. Not that he wanted much persuading, I fancy, after the first two or three briefs had been dealt with. The Shaver did him well—and Heppenstall did the Shaver well. It’s not too much to say that Heppenstall made him. He came along at just the critical moment, you see, when the Shaver was too senior to be seen messing about with the small stuff which I had been only too glad to do, but hadn’t properly established himself among the heavy-weight juniors. It was Heppenstall who just gave him the push that put him where he belonged, among the people who counted. And when the big boom in litigation developed immediately after the war, the pair of them were right in the thick of it, and Heppenstall must have put thousands of pounds into the Shaver’s pockets while it lasted.”
He yawned and threw his cigarette into the fire.
“I was back from the war by then, of course,” he said. “Naturally I went back into the old chambers—of which the Shaver was the head by then—but I didn’t stay there long. I—I didn’t find it altogether agreeable, so I took myself off elsewhere. I never had another brief from Heppenstall again. I can’t blame him—he was very well off where he was. And when the Shaver took silk, there was another perfectly competent junior in the same stable to carry on. However, that is neither here nor there. This isn’t my history, but Heppenstall’s. After the Shaver went into the front row, he continued to brief him. He dined and wined with him, he held Hilda’s hand after dinner, discussing, no doubt, the Rule in Shelley’s Case and other subjects dear to the heart of that learned lady——”
“And all the time he was stealing his client’s money?” said Derek, horrified.