‘Hardly that, old boy. Not much to take over, is there? It would be acquisition, absorption, call it what you like. Where do you come in, you ask? No taste in nothing, we all know that.’ He showed his teeth. ‘This is all unofficial, you understand, but I think you’d get a parcel of stock in GBD.’
‘I should?’
‘And then, this is my own idea entirely, but I think we’d like to put you on the payroll. That glass cleaning device was damned clever. I know it didn’t work out, but perhaps the next one will.’ It was strange to have repeated to him the things he had told himself for years as consolation. Surely this was all too good to be true? Elsom’s next words made this plain. ‘The boys with slide rules.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that.’
‘I said, talking about terms, the boys with slide rules will settle all that.’
Arthur was unused to such terminology. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Accountants. We all have to do what they tell us, more’s the pity. They come in, look at the books, fix a price. You can use your own chaps of course, but GBD will give you a square deal.’
‘I see.’ And he should have seen at once, should have known that it was impossible. The accountants would report that Lektreks did only a few thousand pounds’ worth of business a year, and was worth almost nothing. When their report came through Elsom would see it and wonder where Arthur Brownjohn got his money. A whole trail of inquiry would be set up. GBD was not a promise but a menace. ‘I shall have to think about it.’
‘Do that. I think you’ll find it will be to everybody’s advantage.’
Elsom insisted on walking back to the office with him, telling him what a splendid outfit GBD was, and saying that independence was a wonderful thing and it was a shame the little man was going to the wall, but you couldn’t hold out against the winds of change for ever. He left with protestations of goodwill and an assurance of not losing touch. Back in the office Arthur slumped in his chair and gave himself up to total gloom. Elsom was a fool, no doubt, look at the way he’d talked about Clare having a lover, but he was the kind of fool who didn’t easily let go of an idea once he had hold of it. He had managed to conceal the Camb volume when Elsom came in and now he put it back on the shelf and took down a book in which he never failed to take delight, the account of the Wallace case. The beautifully logical complication of its structure somehow resembled music or chess. Wallace, a Liverpool insurance agent, had been accused of murdering his wife. His defence was an alibi based upon a telephone call from a man named Qualtrough which had taken him wandering round Liverpool in search of a non-existent address. Had Wallace made the call himself and murdered his wife after stripping naked, as the prosecution suggested, or did Qualtrough really exist, was he the pseudonym of a shadowy figure thus dimly and momentarily seen, who then disappeared for ever?
He felt his eyes closing, and remembered that he had drunk half a bottle of wine. And then something jerked open his lids as though he had been given a small electric shock. The nerve ends of his body seemed to be tingling. Two completely separate ideas had come together in his mind. Major Easonby Mellon had to disappear. Clare also had to disappear. Why should they not run away together? Clare was thought by Elsom to be the kind of woman who might conceivably take a lover. In fact Clare would be dead, and her body would be buried in some conveniently undiscoverable spot, but it would seem that she was having an affair with Mellon and had gone off with him. There would be letters left to prove it. And the beauty of the idea was that Easonby was no Qualtrough, no mere name without a body. When the police investigated him they would find that he had an office, a business, a wife and a home. His existence was as real as that of Arthur Brownjohn.
That was the beginning of the idea. He thought about it with rising excitement that afternoon and all the next day. Its prime requisite, of course, was the creation of a relationship, in fact a love affair, between Easonby Mellon and Clare. He bought a copy of The Man Who Never Was, which told the story of the deliberate creation during the war of a non-existent character, supported by all sorts of documents. Its use had been to deceive the Germans, Easonby Mellon’s function here would be to deceive the police, and he had one immense advantage over the organisers of that realistic spoof, in the sense that Mellon was an established figure. On the other hand, there were difficulties which the secret service had not encountered.
The first of them was the question of Clare running away with the man. When a wife disappears, even though she may only have gone off for a week’s holiday, her husband is likely to be suspected of killing her. How, to put it crudely, was her body to be disposed of? He did not drive a car, and he really could not imagine himself digging a hole in the garden and staggering out at night with a great wrapped bundle, even had such a procedure seemed judicious. To hide it inside the house or to dig up the garage floor would be dangerous as well as uncongenial. After a day’s thought he gave up the elopement and decided on a bolder course. Clare’s body should be discovered. She must be seen quite plainly to be a murder victim, and her murderer must be seen just as clearly to be Easonby Mellon.
Other problems to be solved, or relationships to be established, occurred to him. The project filled his mind completely. He jotted them down under three headings:
(1) Eliminate any link between EM and AB.
(2) Establish relationship of EM and CB over period of time. First met in childhood?
(3) Decide precisely how project to be accomplished. EM is to be wiped out. How?
Under these main headings he made a number of notes. When he was sure that he had absorbed what was in the notes he burned them. The burning was a kind of smoke signal. It was time for action.
Chapter Nine
Preparations
May became June, and this was a fine June. The days were sunny, the nights mild. In the second week of the month he walked often in the Green Park, entering it from Piccadilly and then going through to Buckingham Palace, where he stared at the soldiers on duty as though they might have answers for some of the questions that still bothered him. On the way back he looked at the young couples who walked along oblivious of other people, like solicitor and client in consultation. He often had a feeling of isolation, sometimes doubted his own identity. He did not put it to himself in quite that way but the thought disturbed him, and once, when he was looking at the letters and postal orders for Matrimonial Assistance he asked aloud: ‘What am I like then? What am I really like?’ He was inorgiastic with Joan. He attributed this to the shock of discovering Pat Parker’s treachery and this was in a way consoling, but at times it seemed to him that his hold on existence itself was failing. Who was he trying to protect? Did he want to live out the rest of his days as Arthur Brownjohn?
From such vague depressing thoughts he was roused by the need for ingenuity and for action. When Easonby Mellon disappeared there must be nothing left that could possibly connect him with Arthur Brownjohn, and this meant that his fingerprints must be eliminated both from Mellon’s office and from the Clapham flat, in case some inquiring police officer noticed that the two were identical. This created a further problem because some prints must be left, at least in the office. How were they to be obtained?
He investigated the forgery of fingerprints. He found with pleasure that several methods were open to him. He could photograph a print in a book, have a rubber stamp made from the photograph, hold the stamp in his hand to impregnate it with body sweat, and thus leave impressions of the stamp in suitable places. Or he could have a print copied on to latex and glued to rubber gloves, using the gloves to leave prints. These methods had their dangers, however, since he would have to employ somebody to make the stamp or to have the prints copied, and he settled finally on a third method, involving the use of cellulose tape. He went out and bought a soapstone statuette of Buddha (‘soapstone,’ said one of the books he consulted, ‘is an excellent print-taking surface.’) He admired but did not touch it himself, and the dealer held the sta
tuette firmly while extolling its beauty. Afterwards he was in agony while the man was wrapping it in tissue. Supposing the prints were destroyed! They survived, however, and on the following day he bought a pair of rubber gloves and completely cleaned the office. He paid particular attention to everything on the desk, the chair and the files, but he did not forget the door handle, the window sill, and other places likely to bear traces of prints.
Then came the ticklish part of the operation, the ‘lifting’ of the prints on the statuette. He used for this purpose a roll of cellulose tape. By rolling this tape gently over the Buddha he obtained a number of reasonably good prints. The last part of the process involved pressing the tape on to the best print-taking surfaces he could find on his desk and the filing cabinet. These ‘roll-ons’ (a technical term which he had used in his own mind) became fainter with use, but he managed to take a few more which he dotted about the room. These were the presumptive fingerprints of Easonby Mellon. They were not likely to deceive any serious police examination with a hand-lens, but the beauty of the device was that in his particular case this was all to the good. ‘Ah ha,’ the fingerprint expert would say, ‘These prints are fakes. The man Mellon is obviously a criminal, trying to leave false prints.’ And the joy of the whole thing was that he wanted them to think just this. When he had done with the statuette he sold it in the Portobello Road for less than a quarter of what it had cost him.
The problem of his prints at the Clapham flat was less easily solved. He considered and rejected one shocking idea, and decided that something was bound to occur to him in a day or two. In the meantime he had to provide Easonby Mellon with a background that was so far lamentably lacking. He took Joan to see a film called The Eye of the Past, of which he had read reviews. It was about a business executive who had risen to be the president of a corporation. Unknown to his friends he was the son of a convicted murderer, and had been prone to fits of uncontrollable rage in his youth. He was afraid that at some moment of crisis he would be moved to injure somebody because of the bad streak in his heredity, and his concern about this was shown in several dream sequences in which he was shown committing violent actions through a kind of fog which swirled about the screen. Sure enough his secret became known to a subordinate, a man who nursed a grudge about having been passed over for promotion. He now tried to obtain his ends by blackmail, and up to a point succeeded. The president paid him money, but when the man demanded promotion as well the president hit the man with a tyre lever, drove his car on to a rubbish dump, and set light to it. The body was identified, however, and the president was implicated because he had been seen leaving the dump. He fled to his home town, where he went to see an old nanny, who was the only person who had been kind to him when he was at home. In the end he was captured in her sitting-room, where she had given him the cookies he had loved in childhood. Under the influence of a long speech from her he gave himself up peacefully instead of fighting it out with the police.
‘It was good,’ Joan said afterwards. ‘But very psychological. I mean, it couldn’t really happen.’
He was sober, even grave. ‘Something like it happened to me. My brother Chris went to prison. Robbery with violence. It killed our mother.’
‘Go on.’ Her mouth was agape. ‘You never told me. Where was that?’
‘In Canada. I left home when I was sixteen. Cut myself off.’
‘You don’t have any accent.’
‘It was a long time ago. I’ve often thought that was the thing that made me go into the Service. I’ve been alone ever since.’
‘E, you’ve got me.’ Joan threw herself into his arms. She had been making coffee, and the milk boiled over.
In bed later on he said, ‘Sometimes I read about Chris. Not Chris Mellon, that was just a name I took. He’s always in and out of prison. And I know I’ve got the same thing in me. Violence. I could be violent.’
She shivered delicately. ‘Well, you have been. That man you shot with the harpoon in Iceland.’
‘That was in the way of work. I meant personally. If it came to the point I’d use violence.’
She shivered again and held him close. He thought it was a conversation she would remember.
On the following day Major Easonby Mellon visited Weybridge. He wore a green tweed suit which contrasted markedly with his hair. He ate lunch at a good hotel, where he made himself unpopular by loud unfavourable comments on the food and service and then by questioning his bill. He asked the hotel porter, as he had already asked two publicans, if he could recommend a really discreet place. Such a hotel is not easily found in the respectable commuter land of Weybridge but eventually he was told that the Embassy, by the river, might be the sort of place he was looking for. The reception clerk proved to be a bored young man who booked without question a double room for the following Wednesday.
‘Just the one night, sir?’
‘Not sure we shall stay the night. I’ll pay for it, of course. May have to get back to London in the evening.’ The clerk nodded. He hammered the point home. ‘Been meeting elsewhere, you understand. Had to change because of damned snoopers. Must have discretion.’
‘I understand.’
He paid for the room in advance and returned to London well satisfied.
The most difficult part of this phase in the operation remained, and he proposed to take the daring step of using Pat Parker to help in it. When Parker came in to the office he broached the matter. Parker was not in a good temper. The names they had taken from the files had almost all proved to be duds. One of the elderly gentlemen with an independent income had proved to be a retired dustman, and another was a widower at Bournemouth who was anxious to see something of London’s famous night life. Others had written mere filth. There was only one possible mark, Parker said indignantly.
The Major shrugged. ‘You chose the names.’
‘You mean you’d have picked different ones.’
‘Perhaps. After a time you get to know who’s serious.’
‘You’d better find a few serious ones. Otherwise we’ll go back to the twenty a week, you wouldn’t like that, would you?’
‘How would Pat like to earn twenty-five pounds next Wednesday?’
Parker was smoking one of his cheroots. He took it from his mouth. ‘For what?’ When he was told he said suspiciously, ‘What’s the game?’
The Major hesitated, as though reluctant to confide. He saw Parker now with new eyes, a man of narrow vision who aspired to be nothing more than a petty crook living grubbily off a woman. In his new-found confidence he admitted that Pat would indirectly be helping him to nail a mark of his own. He did not go into details.
Parker was at sea. ‘It’s worth fifty.’
In the end they settled for forty, to be paid when the job had been done on the following Wednesday. Arthur Brownjohn travelled home in the train to Fraycut that Friday well pleased. In his briefcase were letters in Easonby Mellon’s erratic, dashing hand.
23 March
My dearest,
Next Wednesday then. Will it be like last Wed? You know it was marvellous, ecstasy, don’t know how to say it. I love you, love seeing you in our little room. Sorry you thought it was dingy, but we have to be careful. Don’t ask me about myself, can’t tell you, too complicated, I’ve made silly mistakes, can’t go back on them now. And you too? Is that what you meant when you talked about him?
E
2 April
Clare my darling,
Your body is white as the moon, your eyes are stars. If I were a poet I’d be able to write properly about it. After each meeting I feel more jealous of him and angry that he doesn’t appreciate the treasures he’s got. But I’m glad too, glad you don’t belong to him because then you wouldn’t belong utterly to me. I know you do.
Ever your devoted,
E
Dearest dearest C,
Dearest I was so upset, hurt and angry too – not angry for long, I never could be with you, but my anger when it comes is so inten
se it frightens me. What was there in my letters that made you tear them up? Why is it wrong to wish we could be together always? Don’t you know, dearest C, that I love you with every nerve and sinew in every possible way, mental and physical. I cannot bear to see you only once a week when you come to art class, it isn’t enough. Why should you worry about him, whether you are deceiving him or not, it does not matter since you say he doesn’t care. I don’t understand your feelings. I have ties too, I told you that, but you know I will break them as soon as you say, so that we can be together. And we shall be together, we must, I cannot bear it otherwise and I cannot bear to think of him with you. I’m sorry my darling for writing like this. It is not just physical, it is everything. You are so cool and calm it exasperates me but you know I love you always.
E
There were a dozen letters altogether. He had composed them after careful study of the letters written by Edith Thompson to her lover Frederick Bywaters. Did they show obvious signs of their origin? Reading them through again with the attempted objectivity of an artist looking at his own work, he did not think so. Would it be possible for a handwriting expert to recognise Arthur Brownjohn’s hand? A comparison with Mellon’s correspondence would show they had been written by him. Why should anyone seek to identify them with Arthur in view of that? Some of the sheets would have Clare’s prints on them, even though they might be blurred, because they came from a packet of blue Basildon Bond paper that she had bought and handled before she took a dislike to the colour. They would not show Easonby Mellon’s prints, but that could not be helped. He was pleased with the occasional irrelevancies he had put into the letters. ‘Do you remember that day in the little tea shop at Sevenoaks…you looked like raggy Maggie today but I loved you just the same…rather worried in case Jamie recognised you…you ask what we’ll live on darling, we’ll manage, lovers always do.’ He was pleased also with the increasing hysteria of the letters’ tone and the preoccupation which they showed with Arthur, referred to always as him. The last two or three letters were undated and the writing was much more erratic, to indicate excitement. It was obvious from them that Mellon had told her of his marriage and that Clare had refused to go away with him. His language became almost abusive:
The Man Who Killed Himself Page 8