The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries

by Michael Gilbert

  “And which was that?” enquired Sir Hubert, politely.

  “Just a wartime reminiscence,” said Miller. “I won’t bore you with it now.”

  Bohun was not unduly sensitive but he could feel, almost as if it was something physical, the shock waves of emotion loosed by that innocent remark. Priday was staring fixedly into his empty glass. Craven had his back turned and was looking out of the window.

  “In that case,” said Sir Hubert, “I suggest we join the ladies.”

  One of the delights of Sir Hubert’s hospitality was its unexpectedness. Vanessa’s “Daddy, not carols” was based on experience. Sir Hubert was capable of asking his guests not only to listen to carols, but to sing them too.

  This time the ordeal in front of them was of a milder nature. Just after eleven o’clock he looked over his glasses. Bohun was doing his best with Lady Vambrill. Craven and Priday were deep in political shop. Captain Miller was gazing lovingly with one eye into a full glass of whisky and with the other at Vanessa. He seemed to be telling her a story.

  “Now,” said Sir Hubert. “I don’t want to disturb any of you—”

  “A sinister gambit,” observed Vanessa.

  “But if you’d like to come along with my wife and me, we’re just going down to the stables. You’ll need coats.”

  “A midnight steeplechase,” said Captain Miller. “I remember once in Ireland—”

  Sir Hubert cut him short with a charm and a ruthlessness which he must have learned from Balfour (who was, indeed, his ideal statesman). “Another time, Captain. We mustn’t keep our mummers waiting.”

  In the stables which were large, well appointed and, fortunately, adequately heated, they found the servants and quite a number of friends and neighbours. And there the mummers (whom Bohun found fascinating) performed their age-old ritual to the snorts of the horses, the lowing of the cattle and, more distantly, the outraged clucking of the hens.

  Bohun, finding himself next to Sir Hubert in an interval when the Dragon was removing his head in order to become St. George’s old mother in the final scene said, “I think I’ve guessed your secret, sir.”

  “Indeed,” said Sir Hubert, “then tell it to me.”

  “Isn’t there a tradition that on Christmas Eve the cattle all talk together in the stable? I believe you’re doing this to give them something to talk about.”

  Sir Hubert laughed immoderately; but Bohun saw him making a mental note and realised that he might have let some future house party in for a truly terrifying ordeal.

  Half an hour after midnight he was standing at the open window of his bedroom, drinking in the sharp air. Outside the white countryside was asleep. His bed looked most inviting. He hopped into it and turned out the lights.

  At first sleep seemed just round the corner, but the harder he wooed it the more firmly did it retreat. Something was worrying him. Some remark which had been made. The curious strain he had sensed earlier in the evening. After what Craven had told him, he had indeed expected a strain, but this, surely, had been of the wrong sort?

  One o’clock struck from the clock over the stable, and, as if echoing the note, a cock crowed, once, twice, three times, angrily. Later Bohun woke again. He was far from certain what had disturbed him. He looked at his watch. It was a minute after two. Then he heard it again, sharp and clear. The crowing of the cock.

  Into his sleep-drugged mind crept a line or two of Shakespeare, long known and loved.

  Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes

  Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

  The bird of dawning singeth all night long,

  And then they say …

  Sleep was crowding out thought.

  And then they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.

  No spirit. No angry spirit. None of the evil dangerous spirits released by the drunken Captain.

  He woke to broad daylight and someone shaking his arm. It was Priday, and he was white as paper.

  “Come quickly, Bohun,” he said. “Sir Hubert wants you. Better get some clothes on.”

  “If this is one of his bright ideas—”

  “It’s not a joke,” said Priday. “They’ve just found Miller. Hanging in the stable. He’s been dead for hours.”

  One of the things which normal people faced with murder tended to do, Bohun reflected, was to behave as if they were characters in a book. Reasonably so, since very few people had any real life experience to guide them. Bohun himself, fortuitously, had been concerned in more than one such episode, and Superintendent Monks soon realised that he had found in him an admirable, disinterested and observant witness. He therefore questioned him twice. Once at the beginning, and once at the end.

  It was at this second interrogation that Bohun was able to make a helpful suggestion.

  “I gather,” said Monks, in his slow, Midland voice, “from what you’ve told me and what Mr. Craven says, that you were brought down here with an object, as it were.”

  “I hope they welcomed me for my company too,” said Bohun. “But yes. There was the idea of keeping an eye on Miller.”

  “The idea being that he was playing fast and loose with the constituency funds.”

  It was clearly no time for reticence, and Bohun repeated all that Craven had said to him in the car on the way down.

  “Yes,” said Monks. “You see, it makes a sort of motive, if it’s true.”

  “Then you do think it was suicide?”

  “It’s possible. In fact, I’d say it’s very possible. Putting all the stories together, it’s clear that no one saw Captain Miller come back to the house at all. And he’d been drinking. If you add up all the drinks everyone said they saw him drinking it comes to quite a lot.”

  “You think he subsided gently into one of the mangers to sleep it off. Got overlooked, woke in that terrible, thin, time between midnight and dawn, when nothing looks worth it any more. Realised he was in an inescapable spot and hanged himself.”

  “Something like that,” said Monks. “It was a bit of rope out of the stable,” he added. “No doubt about that.”

  “There was one thing – it might have precipitated it – at dinner that night, Miller said something rather rude about accountants to Priday. And before Priday could stop himself he cracked back at him. To the effect that accountants had their uses. If Miller had a guilty conscience, don’t you see, that would be a pretty plain hint.”

  “Yes,” said Monks. “Well, we’ll know more when we get the pathologist’s report. I gather you’re all staying on over Boxing Day.”

  “That’s right,” said Bohun. “You’ll be able to keep all your suspects together quite painlessly.”

  By common consent the festivities of Christmas Day were abandoned. Sir Hubert retired to his study, and left his enforced guests to themselves. Lady Vambrill remained doggedly in the drawing room. She was unable to understand the fuss. Captain Miller was a tiresome little man, tolerated at Vambrill Court only on account of the office he held. She could not see that his taking his own life (a typical lower-middle-class piece of self-importance) should have caused such an upset.

  Bohun wandered down to the stables. A constable forbade him entrance sourly, but he was allowed to prowl around the outside. It was a well thought-out, composite block, with a range of stables and stalls all open to a first-storey hay loft, which, in its turn, gave on to a run of chicken houses at the back; and enabled one man to feed, water and look after all the livestock.

  As Bohun examined it, a first, uncomfortable, premonition formed at the back of his mind.

  It was late that afternoon that Priday sought him out. He was not a man who gave his confidence easily, and Bohun could see that he was making a considerable effort.

  “You’ve had experience of these—these sort of things,” he said. “So I wanted to ask you a question. If you knew something – or had done something – nothing to do with the ‘crime’ itself only it might lead to questions being asked – would you tell anyone abo
ut it, or would you keep quiet?”

  “There are rather a lot of if s about that,” said Bohun, “but I know enough about criminal investigation to have learned the First Rule. And that is, not to try and keep things back from the police. Unless you’re the murderer, of course. Then, I suppose you’ve got to do your best.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” said Priday, stiffly.

  “No, of course not,” said Bohun. “I’m sorry. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

  Priday said slowly, “I went down to the stables last night at about two o’clock. And I found Miller. He was quite dead. There was nothing I could do.”

  “Good God,” said Bohun, really startled and upset. “Do you mean you just left him?”

  “There was nothing I could do,” said Priday miserably.

  “How could you be sure—good heavens man!—artificial respiration—”

  “There was no question of that. He was cold. I can see now that it was silly. But I was sure it was suicide. And really, in a way, it seemed the best way out. Miller was facing a criminal prosecution. And there was the scandal—”

  Typical accountant’s outlook, thought Bohun. Balance against each other one political scandal, one criminal prosecution and one human life. And draw a firm red line.

  “Why did you go down?” he asked.

  “I noticed he hadn’t come back,” said Priday. “I think I was the only person who did notice. I thought he was drunk and a night in the hay wouldn’t do him any harm. Then I couldn’t get to sleep myself and started worrying. I mean, if he’d fallen down outside he might have died of cold—”

  Bohun remembered the strange, hard, white world he had seen from his window and nodded. “Well,” he said, “it was a Christian act. But I think, all the same, I should have cut him down and called for help. I don’t know. It’s easy to be wise after the event. One thing’s plain. You’ll have to tell the Superintendent all about this.”

  “I was just wondering,” said Priday, “whether you’d handle it for me. You’re a lawyer and used to telling stories.”

  “That might, perhaps, have been better put,” said Bohun. “But all right. He’s coming up after dinner this evening.”

  Monks took the story calmly. He almost looked as if he might have been expecting it. At the end he said, “I’ve got two new facts you might like to hear, sir. The first is that I’ve got the autopsy report. Miller died by hanging all right. No doubt of it. But the pathologist found enough sodium pentothal in the stomach to have put three men to sleep.”

  “Enough to kill?”

  “No. But enough to make Miller unconscious. Particularly on top of the alcohol he’d had already.”

  “And your idea from that,” said Bohun, “is that someone offered the Captain a nip – say from a flask – of brandy and pentothal, and then waited to see if anyone was going to notice his absence. If they did, no harm done. Captain Miller drunk again. But if they didn’t – how easy to slip down later and fake a hanging.”

  “Not easy,” said Monks. “Damned difficult to do. But possible, if the man was bigger than Miller.”

  “That hardly narrows the field,” said Bohun. “Priday, Craven, Sir Hubert and I are all tall men, and Miller was jockey-size.”

  “Agreed,” said Monks. “But only one of you left fingerprints all over the stall where he was hanging.”

  “And that, no doubt, was Priday, when he made his two o’clock visit.”

  “No doubt,” said Monks drily. “You don’t believe him then?”

  “I haven’t got as far as believing or disbelieving. I’ll just say I’m not very happy about it.”

  “Time of death?”

  “You know what doctors are like,” said Monks. “Any time between midnight and three.”

  “Motive?”

  “That’s where I was hoping you could help me, sir.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Bohun. “I was brought down here on the assumption that Miller was the villain of the piece. That he was embezzling money. Now that he’s turned out to be the victim, I’ve had to re-orientate my ideas. I think I see how it might work. But it’s only supposition. And I’m not sure how far it’s a breach of confidence. Would you mind if we had Craven in on it?”

  The Superintendent tilted his head on one side, and considered the idea. Then he said, “If you like, sir.”

  When he had been brought up to date, John Craven said, “The whole idea is mad. Mad and bad. Of course it was suicide. Why should Priday do such a thing?”

  Bohun said, so slowly that he might have been measuring and weighing each word, “You told me that Miller had been showing signs of affluence. I suggested that we should try somehow to get a sight of his bank passbook. And that if we found frequent credits to cash it would be proof that he had been fiddling the funds. But it could prove something different. Suppose Miller was blackmailing someone. Someone connected with the Constituency Association. Someone who knew of his unbusinesslike habit of drawing frequent large cheques to cash. And suppose that someone said to Miller, ‘All right. I’ll pay you,’ and took the precaution of paying the hush money in cash, each time at a different branch, into Miller’s account. Do you see?”

  Neither man said anything.

  Bohun went on. “It would be perfect cover, wouldn’t it. A fake suicide. That leads to an examination of Miller’s own bank book. We find all these sums being paid in all over the place. Clearly Miller’s a crook. He’s faced with exposure. He takes his own life.”

  Craven’s face took on an obstinate look that Bohun recognised of old.

  “Can you prove this?” he said.

  “I should think so,” said Bohun. “Bank clerks are trained observers. If I’m right, and the money was paid in in this way, and the police go round the various branches with a photograph, someone will be bound to pick Priday out.”

  Craven looked at the Superintendent, who nodded his head. “I’d say it was likely,” he agreed.

  “There is one other thing,” said Bohun. “It’s only a trifle, but if I can borrow a torch and get down to the stable I can probably prove it.”

  “Prove it and be damned,” said Craven, and slammed out of the room.

  Bohun sought out Lady Vambrill. She evinced no interest in his request but said she thought there was a torch in the cupboard in the gun room. There was; a large, nickel-plated affair. Bohun armed himself with it and he and the Superintendent stepped down the path towards the dark stable block. In the frosty distance church bells were ringing out a Christmas night peal.

  “I don’t know what you want the torch for,” said the Superintendent. “There’s electric light in all the outbuildings.”

  “The murderer wouldn’t turn the lights on,” said Bohun.

  After that no more was said. The police guard had gone, and they opened the big end door with difficulty. In the warm, hay-smelling interior, the animals snuffled and snorted and stamped. The two men made their way between the stalls to a ladder at the end, and Bohun motioned the Superintendent to climb first. A few minutes later they were kneeling in the darkness, a few feet from the beam from which Captain Miller had swung and jerked.

  “I think,” said Bohun quietly, “that the murderer would have to use his torch a little for this bit.”

  “Bound to,” grunted the Superintendent.

  Bohun pressed the switch and a white swathe of light cut the darkness. It revealed nothing but the dancing dust motes. The Superintendent was about to speak when Bohun laid his hand on his arm.

  Beyond the open-topped partition they heard a rustling. Then a muted clucking. Then suddenly, so loud that Bohun almost dropped the torch, the strident crowing of a cock. Once, twice, three times. Then almost as if it had been an echo, from the direction of the house, came the crack of a gun.

  “What the devil’s that?” said Monks, jumping to his feet.

  “I think,” said Bohun, steadily, “that the murderer has taken a very plain hint which I just gave him.”

  “Do y
ou mean to say,” said Vanessa very much later that night, “that John Craven was a murderer. And took his own life? I, for one, refuse to believe it.”

  “I’m passing no judgments,” said Bohun. “In fact, I’m sorry for him. But you can’t avoid the facts.”

  He was sitting in the library with Sir Hubert and his wife and daughter.

  “What facts?” said Sir Hubert. “Why should he do such a thing?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Bohun. “I know exactly what sort of motive it was, but I don’t know the details yet. Craven was a politician. And a part of his reputation was his war record. I’m as certain as I can be that Miller – they’d soldiered together remember – knew of some disgraceful secret – it may only have been a ludicrous secret. Some time when Craven, for once, didn’t behave quite as a soldier should.”

  “Then I’d guess,” said Sir Hubert, “that it was something that happened on a Christmas Day. Christmas 1944, I suppose, in Holland. That would account for his extraordinary remark at dinner last night.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Bohun. “Craven had been paying blackmail for two years. Ever since Miller demanded part of the price of his silence, the vacant job of agent. Craven had also made up his mind, in a general way, to kill him. As I explained to the Superintendent. But what he did was, I think, largely impromptu. I mean, the actual timing and staging of it. Possibly Miller’s drunken remark finally convinced him that he couldn’t afford to let him stay alive.”

  “Look here,” said Vanessa. “You’re saying all this just as if you were certain of it. Priday says he went down to the stable at two o’clock. He admits it. He left fingerprints. How do you know that any one else was there at all?”

  “I heard it happening,” said Bohun. “I heard the cock crowing. On two occasions. First at one o’clock when the murder was committed. Again at two o’clock when Priday went down. At the time I vaguely assumed that the chiming of the stable clock had woken up the cock and made him crow. But that was nonsense, of course. He heard the chimes every night. He wouldn’t take any notice of them. There was one thing, and one thing only that would make him open his beak. He saw the glow of the torch over the partition and sang out the news to the sleepy world that the sun was getting up once more in the east.”