by James Lear
IT WAS TIME FOR ME TO LEAVE LONDON. I WAS NOT DUE back at work until Friday, but I could no longer stay in a town where painful associations seemed to lurk around every corner, waiting to jump out at me. The ghosts of happier times, perhaps. Or my own fears for the future.
Morgan came home that evening, after the police had taken Hugh Trent and Arthur Tippett into custody. I left with Jack McDermott and Sean Durran. Walter Ross declined the offer of company and took a cab by himself, looking very sick. I did not have a chance to talk to him. When Morgan returned, only Belinda was there to greet him. That was exactly as it should have been. I wanted nothing more than to take him in my arms, to kiss him, and to tell him that I had never stopped believing in his innocence—but that was not true. Only one person had done that—his wife. Only she had earned the right to welcome him home.
The case was closed, the villains apprehended, the innocent freed, and I was the hero of the hour. I did not feel heroic—if anything, I felt saddened by the whole ghastly affair. But there was some consolation: McDermott and Durran were both eager to celebrate, and to hear exactly how I had come to realize that Bartlett’s death was a conspiracy between his employee Tippett and his brother-in-law, Trent. To that end, they had booked a large room at a hotel in Bayswater—the two whores, one high-class, the other rough trade, must have pooled a fair proportion of their immoral earnings to afford it, but they would not hear of compensation.
We waited with beers in the bar for the rest of the party to arrive, talking of this and that, the two of them bravely resisting the urge to ask questions until we were all here. By nine, the party was complete: Bert was here, and, when he finally got off duty, Stan Knight. And last of all, invited on a whim, Tabib and Osborne from the Parthenon.
We made a strange group, as the porter showed us up to our room, wheeling a trolley full of drinks ahead of him. His eyes were popping out of his head. Tabib, I noticed, was making a full inventory of the young man’s assets; perhaps, when he came to refresh our supplies, he would be joining the party.
But before pleasure, there were questions to be asked and answers to be given.
“What I don’t understand,” said Durran, opening the proceedings, “is how Trent and Tippett knew that Bartlett would find me that night. That was taking a big gamble.”
“Not really,” I said. “Arthur Tippett was the perfect secretary. He knew everything about Bartlett’s movements. He had made himself invaluable, and Bartlett had come to rely on him without thinking. It was inevitable that he would know that Bartlett was planning to spend the weekend with Morgan in Wimbledon, even if they pretended that business, rather than pleasure, was their aim.”
“But Bartlett wanted to spend the weekend with Morgan,” said Bert. “They were in love, weren’t they? Why would he want to go out looking for trade?”
“Because he’d been told to. The blackmailer’s final letter to him, delivered to the office on the Friday afternoon, just as the office was about to close, told him that his plans were known, and that if he wanted to keep his affairs secret, he was to go to the White Bear pub in Wimbledon, where he would be given further instructions. He was to do whatever the man he met told him to do. If he did not, then certain letters would be placed in the hands of the police and the newspapers.”
“Letters between Bartlett and Morgan?” asked McDermott.
“Precisely.”
McDermott frowned. “I’ve done the same thing myself. God, I regret it.”
“Bartlett never knew who was blackmailing him,” I continued. “Maybe, at first, he suspected it was you, Jack, but after a while he must have realized that he was up against a much more sophisticated criminal operation. The demands appeared in the office as if by magic. How? He would never have suspected Tippett—the good and faithful servant, the one who understood his need for discretion, who kept such careful note of all the money he’d spent, who had such sympathy for his master’s predicament. And of course he would never in a million years have suspected Trent—his own brother-in-law, the person who had moved heaven and earth to extricate him from an earlier entanglement. Trent made a point of letting me know that he’d borrowed money on his own account to pay off Bartlett’s original blackmailer—that’s you, McDermott—so it was simply inconceivable that he would add to Bartlett’s troubles by blackmailing him in his own right.”
“The two people closest to him,” said Stan Knight. “It’s horrible.”
“Yes, almost. There was Walter Ross, of course. At first I thought it might be him. And there was Vivien Bartlett herself. The angry business partner and the wronged wife. I thought, perhaps, this was a conspiracy between the two of them. What could be more natural than for a woman in Mrs. Bartlett’s position, starved of affection, to turn for comfort to her husband’s business partner? An understanding would develop between the two of them, and out of that understanding, a plan. They would punish Bartlett for his infidelity, and then they would fleece him of his money, and to make sure of that, they would arrange for his death. The blame would be put on Morgan, the last will invalidated, the money would go where it always should have gone—to the widow—and Ross could wind up the company, put the blame on Bartlett, and look forward to a very prosperous retirement.”
“My head is spinning,” said Bert. “I wish we could stop talking, and start fucking.”
“That’s exactly what I thought last night, Bert, and it’s thanks to you and your huge cock that I realized what had really happened. It came to me, I suppose, in the music hall, when you were fingering me.”
“What?” they chorused.
“It was the false whiskers that finally made me realize. The girl on the stage of the Duchess Theatre, who appeared, at a distance, to have such a fine moustache and sideburns, and then suddenly, off they came and she was transformed. All along, I’d been looking for the man who gave Sean his instructions—and we couldn’t find him anywhere. A handsome man, older than Jack, looked like Douglas Fairbanks. Clean-shaven. That didn’t fit anyone involved in the case. But then, it suddenly occurred to me that false whiskers could be put on as a disguise—but real whiskers could also be shaved off. Nothing changes a man’s appearance more. When Trent hatched the plan to use Sean as the final straw that would break Bartlett’s back, he knew he had to adopt a disguise. So he shaved off his characteristic whiskers, and appeared to Sean barefaced. And then, returning home, he put on a set of false whiskers which he had had specially made to conceal the change. In time, perhaps, the genuine article would grow back—or, when all this had blown over, he’d announce his decision to go clean-shaven. But for now, he disguised the original disguise—and he did it so well that even his own sister did not notice the deception.”
“I suppose it was Frank himself who gave him the idea,” said McDermott, gloomily. “Excessively fond of shaving, was Frank.”
“Perhaps it was,” I said, “or perhaps it was all just a horrible coincidence. It will all come out in the trial.”
“They played me like a fiddle,” said Sean. “I feel such a bloody fool.”
“Nobody’s blaming you, Sean.”
“I must say,” said Stan, “it was a bloody clever plot. I take my hat off to them. Had me fooled. I’m still not sure that I understand it. I felt certain that there was something wrong with Mr. Morgan.”
“And that’s exactly what you were meant to think. It was impossible to produce any single piece of evidence that would convict him—but the whole thing added up to one hell of a nasty stink, all of it coming from the general direction of Boy Morgan. And in a case like this, with so much at stake—a big City law firm, the reputation of a bank, and the scandal it would cause for Bartlett’s family—it was better to pin it on Morgan and get the whole thing over and done with. That’s what Trent and Tippett counted on, and they nearly got away with it.”
“How did they ever dream it up in the first place?” asked McDermott.
“I don’t know, for sure, whose idea it was originally. It could
have been Trent, jealous of his brother-in-law’s success, disgusted by his open infidelity, in need of money himself. Trent’s broke; he’s lost all his money, and his wife’s, on one failed business scheme after another. They send their son to the most expensive private schools, desperately trying to keep up appearances, and they needed money—fast. I suppose Trent saw what Bartlett had, and he thought he was fair game, because he was queer.”
“But his own brother-in-law,” said Durran. “His wife’s husband!”
“He was desperate, and all he saw was the money. But then again, it could have been Tippett’s idea. Meek little Arthur Tippett, the perfect confidential clerk, lives with his dear old ma, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But Tippett had a secret life, didn’t he, Sean?”
“He certainly did. He liked it rough.”
“Tippett had been seeing Sean on a regular basis—and, I’m guessing, a number of other young men. That’s an expensive hobby for a young man on a clerk’s wages. He told me that he couldn’t afford to have any fun—but the minute I got my cock up his ass, he was like a wildcat. This wasn’t some tight little virgin I was fucking; this was someone with a taste for cock, who knew exactly what to do with it. I didn’t figure it out at first; I just thought I was such a damn good fuck that I’d converted him on the spot, as it were. But no—Tippett was just as experienced as the rest of us.”
“Good God,” said Stan. “And to look at him…”
“Appearances can be deceptive. I mean, you’d never think that Bert, here, likes it up the ass as much as he does, would you? But take it from me—and Bert certainly did—he’s a natural.”
Bert cuffed me on the shoulder. “Go on,” he said, but he didn’t deny it. I’d already noticed him throwing lustful glances at Tabib. I hoped the ceiling below our room was well fortified.
“In any case,” I said, “Tippett and Trent between them had ample motive for blackmailing Bartlett. His money represented a way out of all their problems. And they both knew that he was vulnerable. They exploited that knowledge, when they should have been the ones to protect him. So they started their little operation—Tippett would slip the blackmail letters in with the office mail, undetected, while Trent would arrange for the collection of the money. Bartlett suspected neither—but, sharing information from his home life and his work life, they had him covered. There was no escape. And they were doing very nicely out of him, until Morgan came along.”
“And Bartlett fell in love,” said Bert, a sentimental soul at heart.
“Exactly. And love made him brave—reckless, perhaps. He wanted to shake off these unknown parasites, to face the world—and if that meant divorcing his wife and starting again with Morgan, so be it. I think he was probably ready to do it, even though Morgan clearly wasn’t. And I think Trent realized that, if Bartlett followed his heart, the game was up. And when Bartlett changed his will, leaving the bulk of his estate to Morgan, they made their final, deadly plan.
“Tippett would have found out about the will; Walter Ross was an executor, and Tippett only had to look through the files when he was alone in the office to find out what had been done. He told Trent, Trent was outraged—but then they realized that this gave them the perfect cover. They could get their hands on everything, all in one move, and they would never be suspected.
“Trent knew that his sister had not made a will, and that he, as her next of kin, would automatically inherit everything if she died intestate. So first, Bartlett had to die—and then, Vivien.”
“My God,” said McDermott. “That’s vile.”
“He was poisoning her with mercury oxide. Much smaller doses than the one administered per ano to her husband, but enough, over time, to kill her. But I’ll come to that. Trent and Tippett worked out a way of killing Bartlett, making it look like suicide on the surface, but leaving enough clues around the place to arouse police suspicion. And if there was enough suspicion, they calculated that it would fall on the most obvious suspect—Morgan, Bartlett’s lover, the beneficiary of this outrageous new will. Who else could possibly wish him to die? Certainly not Trent, his own brother-in-law. Certainly not Tippett, who stood to lose his job if the company went under. No, there was one obvious culprit—the man in whose house Bartlett died. The man whom the police arrested and questioned. Morgan.”
“But how did they get him to cut his wrists? And why the business with all the different poisons?”
“I think I’ve worked it out, Stan. They knew that Bartlett was close to the edge, that they’d been threatening him so much he was in a tight spot. They guessed that his relationship with Morgan was at the breaking point, and that Bartlett was desperate to hold on to him. So they escalated their demands, asking for more and more money, making terrible threats—possibly threatening to hurt Vivien, or even Morgan himself, if Bartlett did not play ball. But they knew he wouldn’t; they knew that Bartlett had the courage to stand up to them. He wouldn’t cave in; they were counting on it. The one thing that gave him courage was the one thing they couldn’t stand—his love for Morgan. Trent hated it because it threatened his standing with the family; Tippett hated it because it was something he knew, in his coward’s heart, he could never have. He would pay to be treated roughly by men like Sean, but he would never have the courage to love another man. And that knowledge turned him bad.
“So they put into motion their final, most horrible plan. Tippett knew that Sean was reliable, so he told Trent to meet them in the Ship at a certain time. Some sign must have passed between them—and Trent went over to talk to Sean, giving the impression that he was cutting in on Tippett. He was the shy type, right?”
“Yes,” said Sean. “Took him ages to work up to it.”
“So Trent appears in his clean-shaven disguise, gives Sean the money, and tells him to pick up Frank Bartlett in the White Bear on Saturday night. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” said Sean. “I saw them on the Common first, and asked for a light; that was the arrangement, so that he’d know me later in the pub. We got talking in the toilet, and he asked me if I was the man he was meant to be meeting, and I said I was. He asked me what he was to do, and I said, You’ve to take me home and do whatever you want to do. He looked at me funny, but said he’d go along with it. So we go to Morgan’s house, I stick the thing up his arse, give him the letter and the message. That’s all.”
“ ‘Don’t forget,’ wasn’t it?”
“That’s it. Don’t forget. Don’t forget what?”
“That if Bartlett refused to do as he was told, the consequences would be bad for him. So Sean played his part, not knowing that, one way or another, he was killing Frank Bartlett. The suppository was poisoned. And as the poison got to work, undermining Bartlett’s reason, he read the letter. And what he read in that letter pushed him over the edge.”
“What did it say?”
“I suppose,” I said, “that it revealed the identity of his blackmailer. I can think of nothing else that, at that terrible moment, as the poison worked through Bartlett’s system, sending him into a fever, would drive him to suicide.”
“You mean,” said Stan, “that Tippett and Trent showed their hand?”
“No,” I said. “I think, even then, they lied. They used as a weapon against Bartlett the one thing that should have been his greatest defense. His love for Morgan.”
“Oh my God,” said Stan. “The letter told him that Morgan was the one who was blackmailing him?”
“Exactly. What else could it possibly have been? What else would make Bartlett lock the bathroom door, shutting out the man he believed he loved, and take his own life in that terrible way? And, by doing so, he threw suspicion exactly where his killers wanted it. A queer affair—a suspicion of blackmail, or extortion—a suicide. It all falls so neatly into place.”
“So why did they bother with the poison?” said Durran. “Why did I have to do that?”
“And the mouthwash?” said Stan. “It’s madness.”
“They thought it all through
. That was their mistake. They left nothing to chance. The mercury oxide alone would have killed Bartlett. There’s a good chance that the letter alone would have driven him to suicide. In combination, it was a sure thing. But then they laced the mouthwash as well—easy to do, given Bartlett’s habits. If, for some reason, Sean failed to deliver the fatal suppository, and Bartlett was not driven to suicide, then without doubt his dental hygiene routine would do the job. Anyone who knew Bartlett well—and who knew him better than his own brother-in-law?—knew that the last thing he did at night was rinse his mouth out with Fresh-O.”
“Yes,” said McDermott. “Every time a coconut. I used to tease him about it. He always said that he wanted fresh breath for when he kissed me in the morning.”
“So the killers had their perfect trap. If all else failed, the mouthwash would kill him. If the poisoned suppository and the razor did their job, then the strychnine would be another way of throwing suspicion on Morgan. The inconsistencies in the toxicology report would have been glossed over, I suspect. Judges don’t look too much further than the ends of their noses in cases like this. Mercury oxide, strychnine—it’s all poison to them, however different it looks in the pathology lab. Poison in the body, poison in the bottle, cuts on the wrists, and, as the finishing touch, Morgan’s fingerprints all over the razor.”
“It was a lucky day for Morgan when he met you, Mitch,” said Bert. “You’ve saved his life.”
“He’s done the same for me.”
“And how did you work it all out? Where did you even begin?”
“I said that, at first, I suspected Walter Ross. But then he begged me to clear Bartlett’s name, to save Morgan—and, however hard I tried, I couldn’t make that fit into a killer’s plan. So I looked elsewhere. Who was left? A lot of people, it seemed, but there was one man I really didn’t like, so I thought I’d try to pin it on him.”
“Hugh Trent,” said Bert. “Just because he wasn’t interested in fucking you.”
“Exactly. Everyone else… Well, let’s just say he wasn’t my favorite person. But I couldn’t get anywhere with that, either. He seemed to be exactly what he appeared to be—a slightly pompous family man who doesn’t like our type but wouldn’t go so far as to kill us. But then there was that business in the music hall, and while Bert was fucking me, I started to remember the strangest things. Trent pulling away when little Margaret and Teddy tried to grab his whiskers. Trent running out of the room in confusion when I accidentally nudged his elbow and caused him to spill his drink over his face. He must have rushed off to the bathroom to fix his whiskers back in place—the whiskey in the glass would have dissolved the glue. Hence that little bit of business in Morgan’s drawing room yesterday.”