“All right,” said Bohun. “That’s clear enough.” As he spoke he was making a series of marks after each of the names on the paper.
“Bill Bayes would know about your schooldays. And even if he wasn’t in the same unit, he would almost certainly know about the Catterick episode. He might also have found out about the dogs. But you mentioned that you’d got over your fear of darkness before you went to school. He couldn’t have known about that.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Mr. Taylor, unwillingly. He seemed to find Bohun’s analytical method somewhat disconcerting.
“Finally,” said Bohun, “there is your fiancée. Here there are no rules. I should imagine that a man might tell his fiancée almost anything. There’s a certain sporting flavour about getting drunk and falling off a billiard table. And the fear of darkness, especially if conquered a long time ago. The matter of dogs – well – possibly it would be better to explain it than to have her find out for herself. I should have thought, however, that a schoolboy episode which reflected no credit – however, I’m theorising unnecessarily. You can tell me yourself. Which of them did she know about?”
“Look here,” said Mr. Taylor, uncomfortably. “I don’t like this. I’m not at all sure I want to go on with it.”
“Come along,” said Bohun. “We’re nearly finished. What was it? The first three and not the last?”
“I suppose so. I certainly never talked about school to her.”
“In that case,” said Bohun, cheerfully, “we have a most interesting equation.” He drew a line under his calculations. “Of the three people who might have written the notes, no one of them has all the necessary knowledge. All three persons probably knew two facts out of four. Two of them might have known three. But none of them can have known all. And I think we call dismiss any idea that two of them collaborated. Unthinkable? I agree.”
Mr. Taylor nodded miserably.
‘“It’s just like a problem in H.C.F. You remember H.C.F.? The highest common factor. You take three numbers – say 48, 24, and 18. Problem, to find the highest common factor of all of them. In that case 6. You see? In other cases it wasn’t a matter of the highest common factor but of finding any common factor at all. That’s the situation here in a nutshell, isn’t it? Four totals. Three possible factors. Only no one of the factors will go into all the totals.”
Mr. Taylor seemed to be beyond speech.
“However,” said Bohun, “don’t despair. Mathematics is a marvellous science. There is a number that will go into any other number.”
He finished his calculations with flourish, and passed it across the table. Mr. Taylor stared at the paper blindly, grasped his hat, and stumbled, out of the room.
“I’m afraid I’ve lost us a client,” said Bohun to his partner, Mr. Craine. He had been recounting the events of the morning.
“I don’t see it yet,” said Craine. “What number will go into any other number?”
“One, of course,” said Bohun. “It’s the universal common factor.”
“You mean—?”
“He’d written all the notes to himself. Must have. Don’t ask me why. Might have planned to get Bayes in trouble. Might have been an expression of hostility to his sister. Remember that lady client of yours who used to write herself love letters? Unaccountable thing, human nature. Give me mathematics every time.”
London Evening Standard, November 1, 1954.
AN APPEALING PAIR OF LEGS
NORMALLY BOHUN HAD NO PROBLEM at all about getting home from work. His office was in New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, and his flat was off Chancery Lane. That summer, however, he had been lent a pretty little bungalow near Farningham. It was undoubtedly nice to get away from the thrice-used air of central London, and to see roses growing on bushes instead of in barrows; but it did sometimes occur to him to wonder whether it was worth all the bother.
His terminus was Victoria. It offered him a choice of three trains home: the 6:16 which was a little early and invariably jampacked; the 7:16 which was a little late and carried only a moderate number of passengers; and the 8:16 which was almost empty but much too late.
For some weeks now he had been compromising haste with comfort by catching the 7:16. His first-class season ticket entitled him to a degree of elbow room and his normal travelling companions were three in number.
Number One: a middle-aged man with whitish hair and a bright red face – his name, Bohun gathered, was Conyers.
Number Two: a tall, depressed looking man, name unknown, who spoke little, invariably called Conyers “sir,” and was in some way dependent on him. Not in the same office, Bohun guessed, but in the same general line of business.
Number Three: a hard, brisk, cheerful man who always smoked a pipe, talked constantly, and called Conyers “Mr. Conyers” and, Bohun was sure, disliked him heartily; and who, in turn, was called “Sam” by Number Two, the tall unhappy man. Number Three’s second name was probably Blessingham – inferred by Bohun from having once spotted that name on the label of a suitcase Number Three was carrying. The inference was confirmed by the fact that the brisk, pipe-smoking man’s brief case had the initials S. B. on it.
Bohun sometimes speculated about the three men – about their homes of which he knew little, except that they all got out at different stations along the line; about their businesses, of which a certain amount did seep out from their talk. Conyers was managing director of a large group of magazines; the tall man had something to do with advertising – which would account for his servility towards Conyers, since Conyers evidently placed considerable advertising for his magazines; and Sam, the pipe-smoker, was a senior executive on the printing side – whether directly under Conyers or not, it was hard to say.
More intriguing, perhaps, were Bohun’s glimpses of their backgrounds, as revealed by their daily reading. Conyers: The Financial Times. Tall, dejected man: Home Gardening and – during the newspaper strike – The Three Musketeers. Sam: Daily Mirror and Printing Trades Gazette. In the evening they all read newspapers – the London Evening Standard.
It was a fact, however, that although Bohun could no more help observing than he could stop breathing, his interest in his fellow passengers was only casual until the day he saw Conyers die.
He was forced to recall the events of that particular evening for the benefit of his friend, Superintendent Hazlerigg, and Bohun’s excellent visual memory supplied him, after a short period of concentration, with all the necessary details.
“I got to Victoria,” he recalled, “just behind Conyers. I’ve done that before – in fact, we sometimes catch the same bus, a No. 11, which he picks up on Fleet Street and I catch at Temple Bar. Conyers bought his evening paper, as I’ve often seen him do, from the man with the pitch under the clock. We reached our first-class carriage at about the same time. The tall chap—what did you say his name was, Ruddock?—he was already there. Sam Blessingham came along almost immediately afterward. There were quite a few people on the train but we had the four corner seats and no one else butted in.”
“Exactly where were the four of you sitting?”
“I was directly opposite Conyers. He had his back to the engine and I was facing it – on the outer side. Blessingham was on the same side as me, with Ruddock opposite him on the corridor side. The seats between us were empty.”
“Any talk?”
“We don’t talk much on the way home. Just four tired businessmen, browsing through their Evening Standards. Incidentally, my eye for detail told me we’d all got different editions. Ruddock had a midday one. Blessingham had the lunch edition – I could see the list of “Runners and Jockeys” on the back page. I had one that I’d bought earlier to read with my tea. It was like the one Conyers had bought in the station, labelled “Final Night Extra,” but his, I noticed, was a later version than mine. His had the most tantalising pair of legs – I saw them sticking up in the air—”
“Legs?”
“A drawing of a very beautiful and appealing p
air of feminine legs. Advertising, I suppose – Messrs. Somebody-or-Other’s fully-fashioned nylon stockings. I couldn’t see the top of it – the paper was folded. That’s why I saw the legs upside down.”
“They seem to have made quite an impression on you.”
“You may sneer,” said Bohun, “but they were works of art. I searched for them in my edition. But alas, I could find no sign of them.”
“Suppose you get on with the story,” said Hazlerigg, impatiently.
“Well, a few minutes later we ran into the tunnel. There’s no lighting in those carriages, so we sat in darkness. It lasts about half a minute. By the time we came out again, poor old Conyers was either dying or dead. He sat rigid in his seat, face white, lips blue – the obvious symptoms of a violent heart attack. Luckily we were running up to a station. I pulled the emergency cord, and the rest you know.”
“Yes,” said Hazlerigg, “the rest, I know. You say you were sitting directly opposite Conyers?”
“Our knees were almost touching.”
“If either of the others had moved up to him would you have felt them?”
Bohun considered.
“Yes, I am almost certain that I should,” he said. “It’s just possible – just barely possible – that Ruddock might have moved along their seat, in the darkness, and back again, without my knowing. But Blessingham couldn’t possibly have done so. Why?”
“The autopsy,” said Hazlerigg, “confirms that Conyers died of heart failure caused by violent shock. I’ve just been talking to Simcock, who performed the autopsy. He says that Conyers had a bad heart – hence, incidentally, his high colour. But it wasn’t as bad as all that. Simcock swears that something must have happened to set him off – something, perhaps, almost physical. As if some practical joker had pulled his chair away from under him as he was about to sit down, or suddenly produced a luminous hand floating in the air, or touched off a firecracker just behind him – something like that.”
“But,” said Bohun, blankly, “it’s impossible! Or are you implying that Ruddock might have slid along their seat and stuck a pin into him, or given him some kind of violent electric shock?”
“That might have done it. Only it didn’t. A pin would have left a puncture. And any sort of violent electric shock would have burned him. Conyers’s body was absolutely unmarked.”
“It’s crazy,” said Bohun. “And anyway, why?”
“Both men had good reasons for wishing him dead. Conyers was on the point of taking the whole of his group’s advertising away from Ruddock. He had formed the opinion that Ruddock was inefficient.”
“If Ruddock was the murderer,” said Bohun, “there was nothing inefficient about his performance.”
“I agree. Blessingham was head of the group’s printing works. He’d had a personal row with Conyers and was on his way out – and he knew it. On the other hand, if something happened to Conyers, he’d probably not lose his job. So his livelihood was at stake.”
“There was a bit of personal hate there too,” said Bohun. “It was concealed, but you couldn’t mistake it … Which one was it? And how did he do it?”
“If we knew how, we’d know which one,” said Hazlerigg.
Bohun took the mystery home with him that night. He travelled on the 8:16, and had the carriage entirely to himself. In his brief case he had seven different editions of the Evening Standard, which his secretary had rounded up for him throughout the day. He spread them all over the empty seats, and pored over them. The ticket collector looked in at Bromley and said, “Ar. A competition. They give big prizes for ’em.”
“There’s no prize for this one,” said Bohun, gathering up the newspapers.
Since there was no time to waste, he rang Hazlerigg from the Station-master’s Office.
“It was Conyers’s newspaper,” he said. “I knew there was something wrong with it. They change a good many things from edition to edition – but they never change the advertisements!”
“Good lord,” said Hazlerigg, “I believe you’re right.”
“If you know how, you know who,” said Bohun. “Blessingham is a printer – that makes it him. If you get round to his house quickly, you may still find some evidence.”
He heard the end of the story two days later.
“It was Blessingham, all right,” said Hazlerigg. “He faked up a copy of the Standard with a phony centre page – and persuaded the chap at Victoria to sell Conyers that copy. Said it was a joke on a friend. The newspaper vender has identified Blessingham – so we’re in the clear.”
“And I suppose he exchanged his own paper for the bogus one in the confusion after coming out of the tunnel.”
“I guess so – and destroyed the phony. And broke up the form he’d printed it from, in a shed back of his house. Only he forgot that he’d taken a couple of trial pulls and we found one of them. Most of it was genuine – all but the stocking advertisement from an old edition, to fill space, and one news item which was entirely the product of Blessingham’s malice. Cashier Held by French Police, it was headed. I’ll let you see it some time – it’s rather well done. And nicely timed too. The head cashier of Conyers’s group is actually on holiday in France right now. This fake news item says that the French police are holding him and that he’s already confessed to ‘substantial defalcations which might involve other persons in the group.’ Conyers must have reached that item just before the tunnel.”
“Yes,” said Bohun, thoughtfully. “Not good medicine for a dicky heart. Clever, too. If it came off, it seemed foolproof. If it didn’t, it was just a joke in doubtful taste, in very doubtful taste.”
Then Bohun added, “I have noticed that there are two sorts of people: those who talk on trains and those who listen. If Blessingham had listened more and talked less, he might have learned from Ruddock that it doesn’t always pay to advertise.”
London Evening Standard, September 22, 1955.
MONEY IS HONEY
“FOR THE DEAR LORD’S SAKE go down and deal with Mallet direct,” said Mr. Craine, senior partner of Horniman, Birley and Craine, solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn, to his young partner Mr. Bohun. “He was on the telephone to me yesterday afternoon for two hours. My left ear still feels the size of a watermelon. You know as much about his blasted companies as I do. Ask yourself down to lunch. It’s only ninety minutes out of Liverpool Street. You’ll like Humble Bee House. It sounds a sort of stockbroker Gothic joke; actually it’s early Victorian and rather nice—”
Further telephoning followed, and at half past twelve Henry Bohun stood at the wrought iron gates of Humble Bee House. He saw at once what Craine had meant. The place had been built as a gentleman’s residence at a very bad period of English domestic architecture, but time and nature had dealt kindly with it. Myrtle, privet and laurustinus had lost planned formality and had run together to turn the driveway into a funnel of light and shade. Halfway along, on the left of the drive, a formal sunken garden had slipped back to the simple grassy glade from which it had been hewed; its ledges supported a colony of blue-and-white hives, eight or ten small ones clustered round a large one. In the September sunlight the bees were pottering about, making their last preparations for winter.
Next moment he was startled to see a fox look out at him. He stopped. The fox grinned, crossed the drive, and disappeared silently. Bohun wondered if he ought to do something about it. Would it be correct to shout View Halloo! He was too much of a Londoner to feel any certainty about the matter.
The door was opened by a middle-aged maid. He announced his business, and was shown into a large, dark room intersected with bookcases, and branching out into unexpected window seats and embrasures, so that it had the appearance of three or four separate rooms in one.
“By the way,” said Bohun, as the maid was about to withdraw, “I don’t know if you knew – but you’ve got a fox in your front garden.”
“There’s a badger, too,” said the maid. “They belong to Master Norman. I’ll ask if Mr. Mal
let can see you.”
Reflecting that he had come all the way from London at Mr. Mallet’s express invitation, it seemed to Bohun conceivable that he might. However, he merely nodded and sat down. The maid withdrew and Bohun opened his briefcase and sorted out the papers dealing with the Mallet-Sobieski Trustee and Debenture Corporation.
Click-click-click-click. Clickety-click.
Bohun looked up from his papers.
Click-click. Clickety-click-click-click.
Too regular for a cricket. Too loud for a death-watch beetle.
After standing it for a few minutes he put down his papers and moved softly across the carpet. The noise seemed to come from behind a parapet of bookshelves in the far corner of the room.
When he rounded the corner he was surprised to find that he had not been alone in the room after all. A tall man with a thick moustache and one eye was sitting on the edge of the window-seat. He was rattling three dice in his large, brown right hand, and turning them out on to the table in front of him.
“Morning,” he said. “You the lawyer?”
“That’s right,” said Bohun.
“Bloody house, isn’t it? Poker dice. Fancy a game? My name’s Rix – Major Rix.”
“Mine’s Bohun,” said Bohun. “No, thank you. I’m just waiting to see Mr. Mallet.”
“Doubt if you’ll be able to,” said Rix. “He’s pretty ill, you know.”
Bohun looked surprised.
“It must have been very sudden,” he said. “He spent most of yesterday afternoon talking to my partner on the telephone. I gather he was in rather strong form.”
It was Rix’s turn to look surprised. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “He’s been in bed for a week. Had a stroke or something. Oh, there’s that bloody man Morgan. Morgan, I say—”
“Sir?”
Although he had heard nothing the voice came from directly behind Bohun’s right shoulder. A middle-aged man, in dark clothes, had come quietly into the room and added himself to the party.
The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries Page 8