As if by Magic

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  Jack looked round the room in a dissatisfied way. ‘I don’t suppose there is.’

  ‘What’s happened to Walsh’s body?’ asked Rackham the next morning, pouring out a cup of coffee and handing it to Jack. They were in Rackham’s rooms off Russell Square, the Sunday sound of church bells and the occasional car coming faintly through the window. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Just milk, thanks,’ said Jack, stretching his long legs out towards the fire. ‘The doctor took charge and I imagine the body’s filed away in the mortuary until it’s released to the undertakers for the funeral. That will be next week, I imagine. I dunno, Bill. The doctor didn’t find anything fishy, but I don’t like those cigarette ends. There was one short stub and one longer one. They suggested someone had been in the room with him.’

  ‘They might do,’ said Rackham, unconvinced. ‘I’m not so sure. The trouble is, Jack,’ he added, stirring his coffee, the doctor was quite right. If this bloke Walsh had a ropy heart and keeled over, that’s natural causes, not suicide or murder, no matter how many fag-ends were in the ashtray. If Dr Moorhouse had reported it to the Essex police he’d have got a very formal flea in his ear.’ He sat down in the chair across from Jack. ‘He had a heart attack, something that was very much on the cards. You said yourself he looked a real crock. If, as you say, he was sneaking round like something out of a spy thriller, I bet he was jumping with nerves. He probably smoked a couple of cigarettes on the strength of it.’ He grinned. ‘It sounds as if that could have seen him off from what you’ve told me.’

  ‘But he only smoked on social occasions,’ countered Jack.

  ‘So David Lassiter says. I don’t imagine Walsh consulted him every time he lit a cigarette. The doctor said he died of natural causes,’ repeated Rackham patiently.

  ‘Look, Doubting Thomas, the doctor said Culverton died of natural causes,’ pointed out Jack.

  ‘Yes, damn it, so he did, but natural causes didn’t take his clothes off, cave his face in and dump him in the river, did they? That’s very unnatural indeed. Incidentally, we got the result of the fingerprints I took from the bottle in the washroom. The body in the Thames was Culverton, all right.’

  ‘Did you doubt it?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Not really,’ said Rackham, ‘but it’s always as well to be sure. The point is, we know there’s been some funny business with Culverton. Apart from these cigarette ends there’s nothing to show there’s anything amiss about Walsh.’ He looked at Jack’s face and sighed. ‘Okay. Let your imagination rip. What d’you think happened?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Jack in irritation. ‘I can’t see what can have happened. On the one hand, there are those two cigarette ends and an odd discrepancy in times.’ Rackham looked up, enquiringly. ‘Walsh left Eden Street about five o’clock and died about seven. The train journey takes approximately forty-five minutes. Now, even leaving him a generous allowance for walking to and from the station at either end, he’s got at least half an hour unaccounted for. What was he doing in that time? He wasn’t searching Nigel Lassiter’s office. I don’t think he’d been in there. What was he up to?’

  ‘Smoking cigarettes by the sound of it,’ muttered Rackham. ‘Perhaps the train was late.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, the trains were running fine last night. I checked.’

  ‘Well, maybe he stopped off for a drink somewhere to steady his nerves.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jack. ‘Yes, I suppose he could have done that.’

  Rackham frowned. ‘The trouble is, there could be any number of reasons. I bet Dr Moorhouse didn’t give seven o’clock as an absolute, did he? All these times of death are always very approximate. You want to argue, I take it, given that he publicly hoped Walsh would drop dead, that Nigel Lassiter bumped him off, yes? The motive, presumably, being that Walsh was on the right lines in thinking Nigel Lassiter had a shady deal with Culverton.’

  ‘I don’t know as I want to do anything of the sort,’ said Jack, plaintively. ‘Nigel Lassiter was vile to Walsh but he can’t be the bumper-offer. He was hosting a highly publicized and well-attended dinner at the Savoy last night – it’s mentioned in the newspaper this morning – in the presence of Dr Maguire, a sprinkling of investment bankers and a couple of luminaries such as Sholto Bierce, the MP. It was the fact that Nigel was so safely engaged elsewhere that drew Walsh to the factory in the first place. Nigel and all his guests really were at the Savoy,’ he added. ‘I checked that, too. I called in on my way here.’

  ‘That was very keen of you,’ said Rackham. ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s odd, damn it!’ Jack sighed in exasperation, then relaxed, picking up his coffee once more. He grinned ruefully. ‘Sorry. I’m probably barking up the wrong tree but it feels wrong.’

  Rackham raised his eyes to heaven. ‘There’s enough to think about without you having feelings. What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Working. Why?’

  ‘Because I hope that, come tomorrow, I’ll find out what was in that rosewood box we found in Culverton’s office. Following your suggestion, I intend to see if Culverton had been caught making trouble with any of his female staff, too. I thought, as you were in on it, I’d bring you up to date.’

  ‘Cheers, Bill,’ said Jack. ‘We could go for a quick one in the Heroes in the evening if you like. Look, I know you’re busy, but if you could find time to call on Marchbolt’s, George would be really grateful.’

  ‘I’ll do it first thing,’ promised Rackham.

  The next morning Rackham, as promised, went to see Mr Marchbolt, the senior partner of Marchbolt, Lawson and Marchbolt. Mr Marchbolt, keen to dissociate his firm from any suggestion of fraud, was eager to help.

  The firm’s first action on being called upon to execute Rosemary Belmont’s will had been to write to the address in South Africa, but the letter had been returned marked Gone Away. They had written to a Mr George Lassiter of Mayfair, London, whose address they had found in the telephone directory, to see if he was, by any chance, the man they were looking for but Mr Lassiter had not replied.

  ‘We can only request information,’ said Mr Marchbolt, steepling his fingers, ‘not compel it.’ If Inspector Rackham would care to see, the correspondence was still contained in the file.

  Their next move was to advertise in the South African press and that did bring a result. The legacy had been claimed by a George Alfred Lassiter in February 1921 who enclosed his birth certificate for identification. Mr Marchbolt examined George’s birth certificate but was unable to say if it was the same document which the firm had seen earlier. Marchbolt, Lawson and Marchbolt, he informed Rackham, were not in the habit of marking personal documents. He was able to produce the letter they had received but Rackham could glean nothing from it. It was a neat, typewritten document from the Faulkner Hotel, Cape Town, signed in the name of George Lassiter. The signature didn’t look like Lassiter’s, but Rackham hadn’t expected it to.

  What was interesting about it was that whoever had written the letter obviously had some knowledge of Rosemary Belmont. Rosemary Belmont, so the letter said, had been married to the writer’s father, Charles Lassiter, and, after her divorce, had married Jerome Belmont in Deauville in 1902.

  Mr Marchbolt, although he had never met Mrs Belmont, she being one of the clients inherited from his father when he took over the practice in 1911, was able to confirm that the details were correct and added to them from the information they had in Mrs Belmont’s papers. Mrs Belmont’s will, said Mr Marchbolt, had been drawn up shortly after her marriage. After Belmont’s death in 1915, caused by a too-free indulgence in absinthe, Mrs Belmont had taken to drink, isolated in France by the outbreak of war.

  Old long before her time, she had spent the last three years of her life being cared for by the nuns of the convent of St Germain-des-Prés, Mantes, who specialized in such cases. The first that Mr Marchbolt knew of Rosemary Belmont’s death was a letter from the Mother Superior of the convent, detailing what
the Reverend Mother knew of their patient’s life and the fact that Mrs Belmont had been incapable of any form of rational communication for the last year she spent in their care. The Reverend Mother believed, she added, that Mrs Belmont had no living family. Certainly she had had no visitors. Her only possessions had been a cardboard box full of letters, old theatre programmes and invitations. A letter from Marchbolt’s, dated 1902, confirming the drawing up of the new will, was the reason why the Mother Superior had written.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Jack, when Rackham told him the results of the interview on the telephone later on. ‘You’re sure that letter – the one from the Mother Superior, I mean – was genuine?’

  ‘It certainly was,’ said Rackham, recalling the spidery French of the Mother Superior’s communication. ‘I can’t see Marchbolt’s being on the fiddle either, Jack. I mean, if they were, Mr Marchbolt wouldn’t have given me all that information.’

  Jack let his breath out slowly. ‘At this rate I’m going to convince myself that George claimed the money then forgot all about it. That’s a joke, by the way. But where do we go now, Bill? If the information didn’t come from Rosemary Belmont and Marchbolt’s are squeaky-clean, how the dickens did anyone know that there was any loot in the offing? Did the nuns know she was rich?’

  ‘The Mother Superior was aware that she’d been married to an artist but all she knew about him was that he’d killed himself with absinthe. She certainly didn’t know Mrs Belmont had a small fortune tucked away. That was obvious.’

  ‘Then it has to be the solicitors,’ said Jack. ‘There’s nowhere else the information could have come from.’

  Rackham’s voice was doubtful. ‘What can I do? I’ve seen Mr Marchbolt and he’s convinced the firm acted properly. On the evidence he has, they’re in the clear. I suppose I could write to the South African police.’

  Jack sounded unimpressed. ‘That’ll tell us what, exactly? That a George Lassiter stayed at the Faulkner Hotel, Cape Town, about two years ago? I suppose it’s worth doing but I can’t see it’s going to get us much further.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ admitted Rackham, ‘but you never know.’

  Rackham, without much hope of success, wrote to the South African police and there, for the time being, the matter rested.

  Chapter Seven

  At eight o’clock that evening, Jack was standing by the bar in the Heroes of Waterloo. He looked up with a smile as Bill Rackham came into the snug. ‘Ah, Bill. I’ve only just arrived. I’ve nabbed a table by the fire. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rackham, tersely, taking off his hat and unbuttoning his coat. He didn’t smile back but rubbed a weary hand over his freckled face. His eyes had shadows underneath them and he looked, thought Jack, whacked out. ‘I’ll have a pint of Young’s, thanks.’ He looked round the oak and brass interior of the pub, saw the table Jack indicated, walked across the room and sank gratefully on to the wooden settle. Jack picked up the two pewter mugs and carried them across to his friend. There was obviously something wrong. When he’d spoken to Bill earlier that day, he’d been fine. Now he looked washed out and, more than that, angry. Jack put the drinks on the table and sat down.

  Apart from a group of young men who looked like bank clerks and were cheerfully and loudly analysing Arsenal’s performance on Saturday, they had the snug to themselves. There was no danger of them being overheard. ‘What is it, Bill?’ he asked quietly.

  Rackham heaved a deep sigh and took a long drink. ‘You were right,’ he said simply.

  Jack frowned. ‘What about?’

  ‘You were right about him,’ said Rackham. ‘Culverton,’ he added bitterly. ‘The big boss, the big cheese, the friend of cabinet ministers and just about the worst eighteen carat gold-plated swine it’s ever been my fortune to run up against.’ He shook his head. ‘I said you were good at guessing. What did you say? That Culverton was unpleasant? You took one look at those pictures in his office on Friday and you had him nailed.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Jack. He knew he hadn’t been mistaken about that face in the pictures in Culverton’s office. He put his cigarettes on the table and waited for Rackham to speak. He had never seen Bill look so grim.

  Rackham gave a shudder, ran his hand through his ginger hair and took a cigarette from the case, tapping it on the table. He was obviously finding it hard to put his thoughts in order. A burst of laughter came from the group of football supporters and Jack suddenly wished that he, too, had nothing more to think about than the everyday pleasures of life. Whatever Rackham had to tell him, it had clearly shaken his friend.

  ‘Culverton,’ said Rackham eventually. ‘Let’s take the public man first. He seems to have had genuine ability. Gilchrist Lloyd admired him. He’s been with him from the beginning. During the war Culverton set up a transport company, buying and repairing old commercial vehicles and selling them to the government at a very healthy profit. And, of course, with any vehicle, however clapped out, being shipped to France, he finished the war a great deal better off than when he started. He sold out just before the Armistice and got a huge price on the deal. As soon as the Armistice was declared he started nosing around after old aeroplanes and dropped lucky. He bought two aircraft for next to nothing and spent some money in fitting them up. Then, as soon as civilian flying was permitted again, he was there. He made a real killing. He got married at the end of 1919 and, with Mrs Culverton’s money behind him, went from strength to strength.’

  Rackham rolled his cigarette between his fingers. ‘He was a big personality, Jack. I’ve got to give him that. I’ve had a long talk with Mrs Culverton today and she found him overwhelming. He could charm, too. It was his energy, she thinks, that really attracted her.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ asked Jack.

  ‘He did. You know that rosewood box you found in his desk? Well, after I’d been to Marchbolt’s this morning and spoken to you, I was able to examine the contents. You know you thought he might have caused trouble with the female staff? That box proved it. It contained a couple of packets of grubby photographs – the sort you get offered in Paris – a few newspaper cuttings and three letters from a girl called Katherine Forrest. After I’d read the letters I went round to see Gilchrist Lloyd, as it was obvious that Katherine Forrest had worked for Culverton at one time. Gilchrist Lloyd remembered her. She was a pretty, amiable girl who’d been Culverton’s stenographer about three years ago. She wasn’t, thought Lloyd, outstandingly bright, but she was pleasant enough. She resigned and Lloyd had no idea what had happened to her.’

  ‘I presume Culverton had an affair with her,’ said Jack. ‘Did she land up in trouble?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’ Rackham took a deep breath. ‘And if that was all, it would be bad enough but that’s the way of things, Jack. No, it was everything else that turned my stomach. You see, Culverton didn’t merely get the poor girl pregnant.’ He leaned forward, his voice low. ‘He also gave her syphilis.’

  Jack stared at him. ‘The bastard.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Rackham looked at him with hooded eyes. ‘The last letter was a plea for help. It would have melted a heart of stone. It was written from Charing Cross Hospital. I went to Charing Cross and got the whole sorry story. The baby was stillborn and Katherine Forrest died shortly afterwards. By that stage, you see, the disease was far too advanced to be cured.’ Jack made a noise in his throat. ‘The hospital,’ continued Rackham, ‘said that she seemed to have no friends or relations. He left her to die, Jack. How anyone after reading those letters could leave the girl to die without offering a single shred of comfort, I don’t know.’

  Jack covered his eyes with his hand. It was a long time before he spoke. At the other end of the snug the bank clerks were talking, drinking, smoking and laughing, swapping stories, being happy in ordinary, everyday ways. Why the hell – why the bloody hell – couldn’t Culverton have been happy like them? There must have been some reason Culverton kept those letters. He had made no move to help the g
irl and, given that the letters were with a packet of obscene photographs, they hadn’t been kept as a goad to his conscience. No; they were a record of one of his conquests. ‘What then?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I went back to the offices on Cooper Street. Lloyd had told me that Mrs Culverton would be there this afternoon and I wanted to see her.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her about Katherine Forrest, did you?’ said Jack, startled.

  ‘I did, Jack. I was angry, you see, blisteringly angry. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that before. Mrs Culverton had never heard of Katherine Forrest. She was appalled.’

  ‘Well, she would be,’ said Jack. ‘How d’you expect the poor woman to react? What on earth did she say?’

  ‘It helped that she’d been a nurse.’ Rackham took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘That meant I could state things clearly without beating around the bush. She was shocked – disgusted might be a better description – but she wasn’t surprised.’

  Jack looked up sharply. ‘No?’

  ‘No. She knew what her husband was like. However, she didn’t realize he’d had syphilis. Not that she doubted it, mind you. “I should have known,” she said. “I should have guessed.” She remembered him going to Maguire for treatment. Culverton told her he was suffering from overwork but the symptoms fitted those of syphilis. We checked the dates with his old appointment diaries. Culverton had been seeing Maguire for some time when Katherine Forrest joined the firm. I saw Maguire to confirm the dates and the diagnosis. He said he’d warned Culverton about the importance of not passing the disease on.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Of course he would.’

  ‘Maguire treated him with a course of intramuscular injections of mercurial cream and, apart from an enlargement of his aortic valve, a common side-effect of syphilis, Culverton made a good recovery. One fact that Mrs Culverton found significant with hindsight was that it was about then Culverton complained of heart trouble. She also said that his personality began to alter and that, too, can be a symptom.’