The Hunter and the Trapped

by Josephine Bell

  “And selling them on through Mrs. Morris at black-market prices to addicts?”

  “Something of the sort. She’d get her cut, of course. Job for you here, Fred. Go round the doctors and find out how many samples they took and when.”

  “Which doctors? Did you get his beat?”

  “No. I don’t want to ditch him with his firm on what isn’t more than a mere suspicion at the moment. You’ll have to tail him for a bit and get an idea of the district he works. He hasn’t got a car as far as I know or a bicycle and he doesn’t leave London, so I’d guess he works entirely in the metropolis.”

  “That’s a big help, that is. What gives if I do find the doctors? Not that any of them’ll be in. Shouldn’t think they’d remember whether they took samples or not, will they?”

  “They’ll remember if they tried them on their patients. Otherwise they’ll still have them in their drug cupboards. I want to know why Mrs. Morris had this collection. It leads back to Nelson and it doesn’t require much imagination to think it might be a motive for her murder.”

  “If she found it more profitable to blackmail him for pinching them on forged signatures rather than selling them on?”

  “Something like that. But we’ve got to have evidence first that he did pinch them. That’s your job.”

  “O. K., Chief.”

  When Clay had gone, Mont locked up the samples and then took another long and careful look at the torn cheque. The simplest approach would be to Simon Fawcett, seeing the cheque was made out to him. But the Inspector had found Fawcett rather difficult to handle and besides there was every advantage in spreading the inquiry. So he rang up the bank named on the cheque and asked to speak to the manager. The latter was polite, but reserved.

  “You have found a handbag …” he repeated.

  “A handbag has been brought to us and in it there is a cheque drawn on your bank and signed with the name Penelope Dane. D-A-N-E. Can you tell me if you have an account in that name?”

  “Well, yes, we have Miss Dane’s account here.”

  “And can you tell me her address so that we can get in touch with her?”

  “If you will write to her care of the bank we will forward your communication,” said the manager, stiffly.

  “This is urgent. If you don’t want to give me her address can you tell me where else I can find her?”

  A silence followed. At last the manager said, “She is a student of London University. I really can’t say more than that.”

  Passing the buck, thought Mont, irritably. He thanked the bank manager, persuaded him to go one step further and give the name of Penelope’s college, and then rang off.

  A tiresome, time-wasting sequence followed. The university term had not yet begun. The bursar of the college passed Mont on to Hubert Dane, whose housekeeper referred him, with a curious frightened look in her eyes, to a Miss Caroline Feathers. The telephone directory gave him the address. Both girls were out. It was not until late that evening that he found Penelope at home.

  Her surprise, he noted, was genuine and total. She was not aware of Mrs. Morris’s death, which had not rated even a small paragraph in the newspaper he saw lying on her table. She was obviously speaking the truth when she explained, after hearing his description of the dead woman, that she had only seen her once.

  “If it really was Mrs. Morris I passed on the stairs,” she said.

  “It would not be her usual time for visiting the flats?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Mont wondered which of the tenants would know and put his money on Mr. Nelson.

  “You are not conversant with the domestic arrangements there then?”

  “I’ve only been there once,” Penelope answered, pleased to find she was not blushing. “We’d – I mean, I’d – just got back from France.”

  She stared defiantly, furious with herself for the inexcusable slip.

  “Had Mr. Fawcett been in France, too?” The Inspector’s voice was quite non-committal.

  “Yes. It was a college party. Twenty of us altogether.”

  “I see.”

  Mont held out to her the two pieces of the torn cheque.

  “This has come into our possession. I wonder if you can confirm that you wrote it.”

  Penelope gasped. The shock was too great, bringing back as it did the whole dreadful evening she had tried so hard to wipe out of her memory. Her forehead felt cold: the room blurred and swung round. But she forced herself to continue sitting upright, to stare back at the Inspector who was regarding her with quiet concentration. When she felt strong enough to speak she said, slowly, “Yes, I wrote it. Where did you find it?”

  Stupid Simon, she thought, to tear it up and throw it away in his room. For that was what he must have done. Only how had this detective got hold of the pieces? What had all his preliminary talk about Mrs. Morris to do with the cheque? She wished she had followed the case instead of being totally ignorant of it.

  Chief-inspector Mont ignored her question. Instead he asked her when she had written it and what it represented.

  “I wrote it that evening,” she said. “Before I left Mr. Fawcett’s flat to go home. It – it was my contribution to the expenses of our trip.”

  “You were paying for the holiday after it was over? Isn’t it more usual on these occasions to pay in advance?”

  “Well, yes,” said Penelope. Inventing desperately as she went along she added, “But actually, I was rather hard up when the others paid in, because my allowance – my father gives me an allowance – it wasn’t due till after – so Mr. Fawcett very kindly – anyway, I was paying back what I owed.”

  “But the cheque was never cashed,” said Mont, patiently. “How do you account for that?”

  Penelope was at the end of her endurance. She said, angrily, “Why should I? I gave it to him. He could do what he liked with it, couldn’t he? I wasn’t there to see, was I?”

  “I don’t know,” Mont told her, calmly. She had been white from shock, almost fainting, when she saw the cheque. Now she was flushed and angry. Obviously it had a far greater significance for her than a mere business transaction.

  “Well, I wasn’t,” Penelope snapped. The man seemed to have swallowed all her lies. She felt much more confident. “You still haven’t told me where you found it.” she said.

  “In Mrs. Morris’s handbag.”

  “Mrs. Morris’s … ?” She gave a great sigh of relief. “Why didn’t you say so before? Now I see the connection. Mrs. Morris! She must have got the pieces out of the waste-paper basket in Simon’s room. He must have decided not to let me pay. I know he put my name down on the list before the trip as having paid for my expenses in advance. Because he’d put up the money for me, as I told you. He’s very good to the students you know.”

  “So it appears.” Mont had noticed her use of Fawcett’s Christian name. It did not surprise him.

  “It was naughty of him, though. I shan’t know what to do now.”

  “I would prefer you to do nothing.”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. Surely it was none of his business.

  “I suppose I’ll have to insist on giving him another cheque,” she said, coldly, putting out a hand for the torn fragments.

  But Chief-inspector Mont put them back in his wallet and returned it to his pocket, saying as he did so, “I’d like you to come down to the Yard tomorrow morning, Miss Dane, to sign a statement on the lines of what you’ve just told me. I’ll get it made out and you can alter anything in it then if you don’t agree with what I’ve put.”

  He gave her a hard look as he spoke that made her curl up inwardly. She was not a good liar and she knew it. She was afraid he knew it, too.

  As soon as Mont was out of the flat Penelope rang up Simon. She had neither seen nor spoken to him since the night of their return from France. But the urgency of her message took away any embarrassment she felt and Simon’s cool acceptance of her news made it easy for her to explain what had happened.
In the end he commended her inventiveness, agreed that he really had torn up the cheque and thrown it away and said, quite calmly, that no doubt Mrs. Morris had taken it with the intention of blackmailing him or her or both of them.

  “Blackmail!” Penelope was horrified.

  “Don’t be so startled,” Simon answered, laughing a little. “She can’t do it now, can she?”

  “Do you think the Inspector knows …”

  “I think he knows a lot more about Mrs. M. than you or I are ever likely to,” he answered, gently. “But I’ll confirm all you told him and that should be that. How are you? I shall look forward to seeing you at the college when term begins. Ten days from now, isn’t it?”

  Penelope put back the receiver without answering. The nerve! The damned arrogant nerve of the man! And talking calmly like that about blackmail! She remembered stories Simon had told her, stories that had made her squirm a little, about depravities and crimes among people who were seldom suspected of them. She felt an icy chill gather about her heart. The stories must have been true if one of them had come close to her now. She decided to get hold of copies of the popular press of the last ten days and find out what had really happened to Mrs. Morris. After that, she would be able to decide if she need do any more to keep Simon and herself and her relations and friends from being drawn into this nightmare.

  Chief-inspector Mont was quite sure when he left the Dane girl that her first action would be to get on the phone to Fawcett. The matter of the cheque puzzled him. Perhaps he should have invited the girl to make her statement at once while he himself went off to see Fawcett. Probably it had no special significance, but only gave further proof of Mrs. Morris’s magpie disposition. But why then, the girl’s extreme reaction? Was that something to do with Fawcett, or something to do with the murder? Fawcett, he decided. He drove on to the Kilburn flats because the only rational follow-up he could attempt was confirmation of her story and that, he believed, awaited him there.

  He was right. But try as he would he could not make up his mind about the truth of it or otherwise. After all, what explanation could there be other than the one the girl had offered and with which Fawcett so blandly agreed? The two were probably having an affair but that made no difference to the matter of the cheque, though it might explain her agitation. He could think of several simple, and one or two dubious, reasons why a young girl might give or lend thirty pounds to an older man, but did they operate in the world to which these two belonged? Surely not? Certainly he could think of no reason at all for the cheque having been destroyed, not presented to the bank, except that of generosity on Fawcett’s part. Yet somehow, even on such a slight acquaintance as existed between them, he did not think Fawcett was a generous man. Glib, charming, friendly – up to a point. Kindly – again up to a point. But generous with money? You had only to look at his shabby room with its piles of books overflowing the inadequate bookcases to realise the man lived right up to his salary with nothing to spare for that sort of quixotic generosity. So what?

  Simon lay back in his usual armchair watching with amusement the serious-faced policeman trying to sum him up. He felt relaxed, in charge of the situation. He remembered, thankfully, that he had collected the money himself from the students for the trip to France and had paid it over at the college to the official organiser in a lump sum, drawn on his own bank. So this conscientious chap would not be able to trace Penelope’s real payment. The only records of that were in her bank account and his and the banks would not, and could not, be made to divulge them. When Mont began to ask him questions about himself he talked freely, happy in his sense of security.

  “I come from the west country,” he said. “The heart of England. Beltonston. In Shakespeare’s county. The real English countryside; fields, hedgerows, gentle rivers; the part of England where all the best revolts and rebellions were cooked up. So near Wales – a safe bolt hole – I suppose.”

  He laughed, partly at his own lyrical fluency, chiefly at the respectful confusion he saw in Mont’s face.

  “You have always taught, sir, I take it?” the latter said, in the hope of getting something tangible beyond the name of a birthplace.

  “Yes. I was at Oxford, a late entry after the war, and took a degree in history. Then Summermoor. Yorkshire grammar school.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Years! Seven, eight. You can work it out. I’ve been at the college six.”

  “When exactly were you at Oxford?”

  “Let me see. I’m so bad at dates. Sounds ridiculous for an historian, doesn’t it?”

  They both laughed but Mont persisted.

  “Well, then. Six and seven – I think it was seven – are thirteen and three – sixteen – and that takes us back to …”

  “Nineteen forty-six,” said Mont, promptly. “You went to Oxford in nineteen forty-six.”

  “I must have, mustn’t I?”

  “After the war?”

  “Oh yes, it was after the war.”

  “What was your war service, sir?”

  A cloud swept over Simon’s face but it was gone directly. “None. I didn’t pass the medical.”

  Mont was surprised.

  “You look very fit now, sir, if I may say so.”

  “Asthma,” Simon told him, his eyes, very dark now and curiously blank, searching the wall behind the Chief-inspector’s head. “That was what our doctor put on the certificate he sent to the Board.”

  This curious account of his illness baffled Mont.

  “But it was asthma, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “You were treated for it?”

  “Very successfully. I was always well at Oxford, and nearly always since.”

  He smiled and Mont was reassured. Naturally Fawcett didn’t like confessing to an illness that everyone knew was largely psychological. An illness that had allowed him to miss active service of any kind.

  Simon smiled again.

  “I’m sure I should have made a very bad soldier,” he said.

  This confirmed Mont’s own conclusion about him.

  “Were you treated at home or in hospital?” he asked, to complete his sources of further information, if such should be necessary.

  “At home.”

  “And your doctor’s name?”

  “Now that,” Simon said, with another happy smile, “is more difficult. So long ago. Would it be Gordon? Yes, I think perhaps it would. But I so seldom see a doctor.”

  “Yes, you told me that. You are lucky, aren’t you? I’ve always heard asthma is a chronic complaint, liable to come on again any time.”

  “Then I’m very lucky, aren’t I?”

  Impossible to spin out the interview any longer, Mont decided. The fellow seemed to be a confirmed bachelor, no close attachments, parents both dead, a few men friends, the college, the students, his work. One of these intellectuals. What did they call it? Ivory tower, wasn’t it? Shut themselves up with their books. Not likely to be much help over Mrs. Morris. Too vague. He’d never notice if she was robbing him under his very nose.

  Then he remembered. Fawcett had dismissed the woman. He had said so. Also he had evaded giving any reason for it.

  The Chief-inspector had risen from his chair as these thoughts passed quickly through his mind. Simon had risen, too, politely moving towards the door to open it for his visitor.

  “By the way,” Mont said, turning as he passed through, “you never told me exactly why you stood off Mrs. Morris.”

  “Didn’t I?” Simon, half a head shorter, lifted innocent eyes to his questioner. “She took things. Food, mostly. Books, sometimes. I can’t afford it. I told her so when I warned her. But it didn’t do any good. So last Friday – I made up my mind she must go.”

  Mont nodded and went out and down the stairs. Simon waited until he heard him cross the hall and go out into the street. Then he turned back into his own room, his head high, a little smile of satisfaction on his lips.

&nbs
p; Chapter Four

  Penelope spent the next twenty four hours wondering what the police had asked Simon and what he had said to them. She had gone to Scotland Yard to make her statement, hoping the details were the same as those she had invented the night before. It was a blessing, she thought, that she had decided in the end not to stop the cheque. There had been no statement from her bank since her return from France, so she had not been aware that he had not cashed it. Her explanation of that was as good as any. It was a simple one. Simon had accepted it quite calmly. Did that mean it was really a safe explanation?

  She tried to remember how the payments for the trip had been arranged. Certainly Simon had collected cheques from various students at their last meeting to arrange the details of the journey out. He had asked for cheques to be made out to him. Some of the students had given him cash. Presumably he had paid the organiser of their party in one cheque drawn on his own account. Would the police be able to go into all that? Would they be able to find out that she had really paid for her holiday before it began?

  After she left the Yard her conscience began to nag her. She had committed perjury. She had signed a statement that was untrue from beginning to end. They could put her in prison for that, couldn’t they? And apart from her own potential danger, wasn’t it likely to involve her, if the truth came out, with this sordid murder? Which was the very thing she was struggling to avoid.

  She walked up Whitehall, miserably going over again in her mind her brief warning telephone call to Simon. He had not seemed at all upset, but that was in keeping with his character as she knew it. He had always appeared curiously young and innocent over practical matters. It went strangely with his extreme sophistication in regard to people and their behaviour.