by George Sims
‘Funny about that cheque,’ Hanson said. ‘We’ve been in touch with Mr De Jong and as far as he knows it’s got nothing to do with the business. So I tried to take it a step further. Our people contacted the Swiss Trade Credit Bank and came up against the proverbial brick wall. The bank could not divulge the payee. You see, under their federal rule on secrecy, Article 47B, money can be credited to an account known only by a number.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Doesn’t make our work easier, a thing like that.’
‘It’s possible that Mr Weiss sold something in Zurich,’ Balfour volunteered. ‘He collected pictures, curios, and he did get some valuable things. Never spent a great deal but he had a wonderful eye…’
Hanson cleared his throat as though he was not impressed with this. ‘No other ideas, suggestions? Any reason why he should keep the cheque and not bank it? Was he usually punctual, business-like?’
‘Oh yes. Meticulous. Hated to owe anyone a penny. Every bill was paid the day it came in. Rather an obsession with him.’
‘So, you see. That’s exactly what I heard from Mr De Jong. It’s not in character. Puzzling…Then this diary. Naturally I’ve been through it closely. Shows an interesting mind—sensitive I thought. But you’ll see there are no entries after the 18th July and a gap of more than two days is otherwise rare. And there’s one older entry I thought I should mention. Now where is it? 24th March, I think. Yes, this.’
Balfour looked at the diary and read in Weiss’s even, sharply sloping hand:
The Rose is red. ye Gras
is green: the Days are past
Which I have seen All ye yt
on me Cast & Eye: as you are
now So once was I but as I
am now So shall ye be Pre
pare for Death and follow
me
Balfour shook his head decisively. ‘No. For once I can be helpful in a negative way. That has no significance. Just an old epitaph. He had been collecting them for years, was compiling an anthology of unusual ones. I’ve often written one down for him on my travels.’
‘A rather morbid interest, isn’t it?’
‘Not really. He looked on it purely as a form of art. They can be quite fascinating.’
‘Right,’ Hanson said. ‘That is useful. You see—together with the Aventyl tablets it rather had me going for a while.’ Balfour got the impression that it had been in a direction which Hanson had already abandoned before this interview: he would have liked to ask pointblank what Hanson’s present theory was but knew it would be useless.
‘This typed note,’ Hanson went on, holding up a quarto sheet with some lines eccentrically typed at the top, ‘I found in the diary, folded up and inserted at the last entry.’
The page contained instructions:
Go to the office of the Registrar of Companies in City Road. Pay your shilling and get handed a form.
Look up the firm you want to study in the index. It appears under the first letter of its first name (thus Bertram Kittredge Ltd would be under ‘B’).
Write the number on your form and hand it in. In exchange you will be given a numbered disc. The number corresponds to a desk, at which, in five minutes or so, the file of the relevant company will be deposited. What the file contains will depend on the nature of the company. Articles of Association will be there. Names, addresses and occupation of directors are given.
‘It looks,’ Hanson said, ‘as if he might be checking up on some company. He hadn’t mentioned to you any dodgy investment, buying shares? Anything like that?’
‘Never. As far as I know he didn’t own a share.’
‘O.K.’ Hanson made another note. ‘And the place where it happened, this Bowdon Court. Naturally the first thing Sergeant Lowther did, he asked round to see if anyone living there knew Mr Weiss, but he drew a blank. You can’t help about that?’
‘I’m afraid not. I didn’t know it existed.’
‘Oh, quite a largish block of flats. Fronts on to Norfolk Square which is busy enough. But the side where it happened is in a cul-de-sac.’
‘I—wanted to ask you if you thought there was any chance of it being an accident?’
Hanson gave Balfour a brief sympathetic look. With a fingertip he thoughtfully traced an unapparent line in his forehead. ‘Shouldn’t think so. Because of the window—“They were never opened” the porter said, but how do we know it wasn’t open this time?—it’s just possible. But it’s stretching coincidence a bit. A man with vertigo climbs ten floors and then has an attack in front of a window that by some freak chance is open. Then again from the position of the body it looks as if he had moved along a ledge beneath the window before he fell.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, many thanks for all your help.’
Balfour thought he was being dismissed and began to move in his chair, but Hanson said, ‘I must keep you a minute more. They won’t let you out of here till I’ve signed that form they gave you.’
Balfour looked in his pocket, finding it scrawled up with another piece of paper. ‘God!’ he exclaimed, ‘I nearly forgot, you’ll think I’m an idiot. I brought this along to show you. It’s the cable I received in Corsica from Weiss before I had another one from my wife to say that he was dead.’
Hanson threw him an unmasked look in which there was a mixture of surprise, irritation and contempt. He seemed to hover on the edge of an exclamation but when he spoke it was in a slow, slightly sarcastic voice: ‘Thank you. I should like to see it.’
He examined the cable form intently, then said: ‘Well, I’m glad you remembered this. Better late than never. No, that’s not fair. Bit of luck you kept it. You won’t mind if I hang on to it for the time being?’
Chapter XI
Balfour woke with a gasp and a movement of revulsion away from a vision of a falling body hitting the ground with a jarring, sickening thud. He had consciously made an effort to avoid thinking of this subject but his unconscious had represented it to him, like a horrid meal that had to be eaten up. Sir Thomas Browne had written, ‘We are more than ourselves in sleep, and the slumber of the Body seems to be but the waking of the Soul’, and Balfour had often found that dreams served him up with a slightly altered version of a day-time problem. He knew he had no reason for feeling guilty about Weiss’s death, but all the same it seemed certain he would not be released from this unease until he at least understood why it happened.
As he began to shave he was struck by an idea and, face half-covered in lather, he phoned Inquiries to see if there was a telephone exchange called ‘Knowl Green’ but without success. He had already checked Garratt’s assertion that the place was not listed in a gazetteer. Continuing his shave, he realized that the image of the falling body was not of Weiss but had come back to him from a film he had seen years before about the Eiffel Tower. One of the incidents shown in the history of the tower was the attempt of a man to fly in the early 1900’s with large bird-like wings made of canes and feathers attached to his arms. There had been some badly lit preliminary shots, spotted with ‘rain’, showing his friends moving about jerkily, making preparations, pointing dramatically, giving him encouragement and advice. Then there was a touching close-up of the poor devil, hovering alone by the parapet, fear apparent in his staring eyes, unable for some moments to summon up courage for the take-off. A blurred image followed—the horrifying instant when he leapt, pathetically moving his cumbersome wings before they twisted round him like a shroud. Then a shot taken from the ground, showing him plummeting down like an ungainly giant moth. Finally the early moving camera, to the mildly ironical commentary by Alexander Woollcott, inspected the foot-deep dent in the tarmac made by the ‘bird-man’.
As Balfour made muesli and coffee, fragments from his talk with Superintendent Hanson returned to him against his will. After leaving Scotland Yard he had returned to Jermyn Street and dictated business letters, doing a good deal of routine
work before setting out on a deliberate programme of swimming and playing squash to leave himself so tired that he could get to sleep without thinking about the interview. But now the inexplicable matters of the unpaid £1,000 cheque, the typed note about research on Companies at the City Road registry, recurred uselessly. He wondered about the significance of Hanson’s questions about Sam’s trips abroad. In a way his contribution to the police inquiries had been inadequate, but anything else he could have volunteered would have been based purely on his own opinions and therefore of debatable value. He could have assured Hanson, on that basis alone, that there was no possibility of Sam being mixed up in smuggling or anything else illegal, but what value could Hanson put on such a statement?
When he reached his office Balfour felt more inclined to settle to his own work. He accepted now that his friends did not know of any cause for the death, and if anyone was going to unravel the mystery it would have to be the police. Hanson seemed a dogged and very capable person to conduct the inquiry.
Jane Lupton was busy with the addressograph files, working on the list of changes of address. She said, ‘Miss Bowyer’s at the British Museum. Doing some research on that imperfect fourteenth-century manuscript. Said it was no more difficult than the Synoptic problem.’
‘Oh yes,’ Balfour moved off into his own room and shut the door. He knew very little about early manuscripts and nothing about the problem of the Synoptic Gospels, but he liked to keep this position fairly vague as far as Miss Lupton was concerned. It was understood that early material was Miss Bowyer’s province, but there was no point in underlining his own ignorance of the subject. The fact that Patricia Bowyer was so efficient and practically capable of running the business by herself was one of the reasons for his losing interest in it to some degree. Another important factor was the comparative ease with which they now made money. They had some good and a few excellent customers—they seemed to attract more without advertising and had no difficulty in finding enough material; it was all a little too easy now. Despite what people like James Henderson said, he had never used his wife’s money and in the early years it had been a struggle—he had enjoyed it then.
Balfour adjusted the mechanical calendar on his desk to 4/8/66. In two days he would be forty-three. A typical Leo, vain and conceited—‘The man who always reaches for the bill in a restaurant.’ He had reached middle age, the period of sensing one’s limitations and rapidly dwindling perspectives, without achieving much.
He opened the Daily Telegraph and read an account of the previous day’s sale at Christie’s, noting that Max Weber Ltd had acquired paintings by Carel Fabritius, Nicolaes Muys and Hendrik Rietschoof. His own success was nothing when compared with Max’s, but Max’s ambition knew no limits whereas his own was practically non-existent. He had no idea what he really wanted from life.
Jane Lupton knocked and put her head round the door. ‘Sorry, but I forgot a phone message. From Mr Garratt. Said to tell you it might be Knoll Green. A green knoll struck a chord. O.K.?’ She made a shrugging gesture to imply that she took no responsibility for the sanity of Garratt’s suggestions.
‘Yes. Thanks. That’s O.K., I know what he means. Oh, by the way, make an address plate for Leonard Cato Esq. Ennismore Gardens, Kensington, I think. But if he’s not listed in the phone-book simply send it to Toller, Cato, in the City somewhere.’
Balfour did not bother to write down Garratt’s revised text. He had remembered that he must phone Miss Phelips. He could indulge in as much self-congratulation as he liked about the thriving state of his business, but if he lost Miss Phelips’ custom the position would be rather different. And of course it pleased a Leo to be able to walk into Sotheby’s or Parke-Bernet when an important poetical manuscript was being sold knowing that he could come decisively into the bidding at a late stage—in that at least he resembled Max.
The Roehampton number was answered by Miss Leighton who was Miss Phelips’ secretary and companion. She worked part-time on the manuscript collection and was genuinely keen about it, often commenting about things ‘being saved from going to the States’. She sounded as cheerful and friendly as usual and went off humming. Balfour heard her clicking retreating steps on the parquet floor and a snatch of All I want is a room somewhere.
But as soon as Olivia Phelips came on the phone he knew something was wrong. She asked him if he could come to see her right away and he agreed to go that afternoon. She said, ‘Between four and five?’ instead of her usual suggestion that he should stay for tea. Her tone was definitely cool. There was no inquiry about his holiday, no comment on the fact that he had returned before the day Miss Bowyer had mentioned. To his ear, usually fairly sensitive to people’s reactions, there was the subtle suggestion of a reproach in her tone. He replaced the phone after a brief leave-taking and said quietly, ‘Yikes.’
He was baffled by this situation. If Olivia Malise Phelips was his idea of the perfect customer, it was equally plain the firm of T. Edward Balfour respected that and made every effort to keep her happy. What could they possibly have done to annoy her? She must realize the care with which they handled her requests. Then apart from the business side of their relationship there was, he had thought, a genuine friendship. He found her sympathetic and attractive and had always imagined that she was reasonably fond of him. It was true they had argued about a number of things. She was more politically inclined than he was, and contributed funds to the Liberal Party; a devout Quaker where he was an agnostic. She was a pacifist while he thought some things were worth fighting for. But these were differences between friends who respected each other’s point of view. And for people with such widely differing backgrounds—his childhood had been a middle-class London suburban one in the 20s and 30s, whereas hers was Victorian and Edwardian in the patrician atmosphere of Crabbe’s Park’s Jacobean brick, crow-stepped gables and coffered ceilings—they had many interests in common.
Balfour thought back to the last time he had driven Olivia to Malmesbury. She took a coquettish delight in the speed with which they crossed the Cotswolds. ‘This really is a rather splendid, dashing car,’ she had said about his Lancia. It had been a glorious June day when they had walked first amongst the ruins of the house, still smelling of mildew, soot and damp plaster, and then in the parkland with its great summer trees, the towering oaks and elms haunted by birds. Silently they had made their way beyond the trees to a stream where they had seen yellow wagtails and the occasional exciting blue flash of the kingfisher.
On the south side of the ruined house there was a small ornamental lake, edged at one side with a weathered brick wall and the ramshackle remains of a disintegrating boathouse. She looked about her with a sad expression and Balfour could sense how redolent of memories this former pleasure-ground must be—the laughter and voices which would still echo for her about the lily-covered water now frequented only by fat carp and golden orphe and green whirring dragon-flies. Finally they had picnicked on a hill overlooking the house, on a thin skin of turf as much thyme as grass, with a sky resonant with larks. From that vantage point the ruins were even more impressive. The house of honey-coloured stone had been largely destroyed by fire in 1946, and years of disuse since then had seen further roof-fallings so that its only possible future was demolition. For the time being it was a memorial to the evanescence of human hopes and endeavours. The generations of the proud Phelips family, Jacobeans, Georgians, Edwardians, what had they been but insubstantial shadows silhouetted against the background of eternity, so soon to be engulfed forever? It was plain that Olivia Phelips felt this too. She had smiled wryly and quoted Tennyson, ‘The woods decay, the woods decay and fall…’
‘Can I speak to Mr Balfour?’ In his pleasant day-dream about Crabbe’s Park the phone must have rung and he had picked it up without being aware of doing so.
‘Yes. This is Balfour.’
‘Mr T. E. Balfour?’
Balfour’s second affirmation was rather
impatient.
‘All right old lad, I had to check.’ The voice at the other end was slow and noticeably short-breathed, perhaps asthmatic. Balfour asked who was speaking.
‘Never mind about that. Have you seen Steiner?’
It was a name well calculated to excite Balfour’s interest. Various ideas raced through his head. So Garratt had been right about the name Steiner at least. He found it difficult to decide what to say and tried ‘No. Why? Should I have seen him?’
There was no comment on this and for a moment he feared that the man had rung off. But listening intently he picked up a very faint consultation going, an exchange between the breathy voice and a quiet one that chattered like a monkey. He could make no sense of what they said. Then there was a sound as if a bellows was being pumped and the laboured breathing and slow talking began again. ‘Right, then. Do you want to hear about Steiner?’ Balfour agreed to this without thinking it through, mainly to keep the conversation going. He began to formulate questions but dropped them when the anonymous voice asked him how long it would take him ‘to get to Felton Road, leading into Edgware Road, near Marble Arch’.
Balfour glanced at his watch. It was 10.40. ‘I can make it by eleven.’
‘O.K. then. 12B Felton Road it is. We’ll have a little chat.’
Before Balfour could say anything else the line went dead. He dropped the phone, went through Jane Lupton’s room without saying anything, and had run along to Lower Regent Street within a minute.
Chapter XII
‘THE CALEY PROPERTY CO.’ was the type-written name on the grubby card thumb-tacked by the bell to No. 12B Felton Road. It was at the side of a seedy looking Indian restaurant. There was no response when Balfour rang the bell, so after a minute he walked up the uncarpeted splintering wooden stairs. The cream plaster walls he passed were bare apart from some pencilled graffiti. The Caley Company’s sign was stencilled in black on a shabby, pale green door which hung open. He knocked and then walked into an empty room. There was not a single piece of furniture in the place and only a small mirror and a calendar decorated with a nude girl on the wall. The green lino-covered floor was filthy, littered with cigarette ends, used matches and odd scraps of paper. He went to the window and looked out into the empty street. A phone began to ring and he realized it was coming from behind another door which he had taken to be a cupboard. He opened it and found another, very small room, again bare apart from a large carton and a phone on the floor. He picked up the phone tentatively, holding it a little way from his ear as if it might explode, noticing that the wall facing him bore a number of phone numbers and had a pattern of small holes where it had been used for darts. The carton contained a large number of empty bottles. The room stank of beer and stale cigarette smoke.