The Comfortable Coffin

by Richard S. Prather

  “You need a few hundred more?” she asked, panicky. “I’m afraid I haven’t got it.”

  “You will have—and lots more,” he said, patting her shoulder. “There’s a ten-thousand-dollar reward for recovering this loot, ma’am. And it’s all yours.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, trying to keep all these figures straight. “But if you need more, that ten thousand won’t help Gerald. I’ve already spent that much today. You see, I bought this house right out from under Mrs. Martin. I know the real estate man won’t give me back any of the money.”

  She dabbed at her teary eyes and sniffed disconsolately.

  “Poor Gerald,” she sighed. “Such a good boy, and I can’t do a thing for him. Well, anyhow,” she brightened, “someday he’ll have Papa’s watch to remember me by.”

  Mr. Portway’s Practice

  Michael Gilbert

  I qualified as a solicitor before the war, and in 1937 I bought a share in a small partnership in the City. Then the war came along, and I joined the Infantry. I was already thirty-five and it didn’t look as if I was going to see much active service, so I cashed in on my knowledge of German and joined the Intelligence Corps. That was fun, too.

  When the war finished, I got back to London and found our old office bombed and the other partner dead. As far as a legal practice can, it had disappeared. I got a job without any difficulty in a firm in Bedford Row, but I didn’t enjoy it. The work was easy enough, but there was no real future in it. So I quit and joined the Legal Branch of Inland Revenue.

  This may seem even duller than private practice, but in fact it wasn’t. As soon as I had finished the subsidiary training in accountancy that all revenue officials have to take, I was invited to join a very select outfit known as I.B.A. or Investigation Branch (Active).

  If you ask a revenue official about I.B.A. he’ll tell you it doesn’t exist. This may simply mean that he hasn’t heard of it. Most ordinary revenue investigation is done by accountants who examine balance sheets and profit and loss accounts and vouchers and receipts and ask questions and go on asking questions until the truth emerges.

  Some cases can’t be treated like that. They need active investigation. Someone has got to go and find out the facts. That’s where I.B.A. comes in.

  It isn’t all big cases involving millions of pounds. The revenue reckons to achieve the best results by making a few shrewd examples in the right places. One or our most spectacular coups was achieved when a member of the department opened a greengrocer’s shop in Crouch End—but that’s by the way.

  When the name of Mr. Portway cropped up in I.B.A. records, it was natural that the dossier should get pushed across to me. For Mr. Portway was a solicitor. I can’t remember precisely how he first came to our notice. You’d be surprised what casual items can set I.B.A. in motion. A conversation in a railway carriage; a hint from an insurance assessor; a bit of loud-voiced boasting in a pub. We don’t go in for phone tapping. It’s inefficient, and, from our point of view, quite unnecessary.

  The thing about Mr. Portway was simply this. That he seemed to make a very substantial amount of money without working for it.

  The first real confirmation came from a disgruntled girl who had been hired to look after his books and was fired for inefficiency. Mr. Portway ran a good car, she said. Dressed well. Spent hundreds of pounds at the wine merchant (she’d seen one of his bills) and conducted an old-fashioned one-man practice which, by every law of economics, should have left him broke.

  Some days he had no clients at all, she said, and spent the morning in his room reading a book (detective stories chiefly); then took two hours off for lunch, snoozed a little on his return, had a cup of tea, and went home. Other days, a client or two would trickle in. The business was almost entirely buying and selling of houses and leases and mortgages and sale agreements. Mr. Portway did it all himself. He had one girl to do the typing and look after the outer office, and another (our informant) to keep the books.

  I don’t suppose you know anything about solicitors’ accounting, and I’m not proposing to give you a dissertation on it, but the fact is that solicitors are bound by very strict rules indeed. Rules imposed by Act of Parliament and jealously enforced by the Law Society. And quite right, too. Solicitors handle a lot of other people’s money.

  When we’d made a quiet check to see if Mr. Portway had any private means of his own (he didn’t), we decided that this was the sort of case we ought to have a look at. It wasn’t difficult. Mr. Portway knew nothing about figures. However small his staff he had to have someone with the rudiments of accountancy, or he couldn’t have got through his annual audit. We watched the periodicals until we saw his advertisement, and I applied for the job.

  I don’t know if there were any other applicants, but I’m sure I was the only one who professed both law and bookkeeping and who was prepared to accept the mouse-like salary that he was offering.

  Mr. Portway was a small, round, pink-cheeked, white-haired man. One would have said Pickwickian, except that he didn’t wear glasses, nor was there anything in the least owl-like about his face. So far as any comparison suggested itself, he looked like a tortoise. It was a sardonic, leathery, indestructible face, with the long upper lip of a philosopher.

  He greeted me warmly and showed me my room. The office occupied the ground floor and basement of the house. On the right as you came in, and overlooking the paved courtyard and fountain which is all that remains of the old Lombards Inn, was Mr. Portway’s sanctum, a very nice room, on the small side, and made smaller by the rows of bookcases full of bound reports. In fact, the whole suite of offices was tiny, a box-like affair.

  I have given you some idea of the scale of things so that you can gather how easy I thought my job was going to be. My guess was that a week would be quite enough for me to detect any funny business that was going on.

  I was quite wrong.

  A week was enough to convince me that something was wrong. But by the end of a month I hadn’t got a step nearer to finding out what it was.

  My predecessor hadn’t kept the books awfully well, but that was inefficiency, not dishonesty.

  I reported my findings to my superiors.

  “Mr. Portway,” I said, “has a business which appears to produce, in costs, just about enough to pay the salaries of his two assistants, the rent, rates, lighting and other outgoings, and to leave him no personal profit at all. Indeed, in some instances, he has had to make up, from his own pocket, small deficiencies in the office account. Nor does this money come from private means. It is part of my duty as accountant to make Mr. Portway’s own private tax returns—” (this, it is fair to him to say, was at his own suggestion) “—and apart from a very small holding in War Stock and occasional casual earnings for articles on wine, on which he is an acknowledged expert, he has—or at least declares—no outside resources at all. Nevertheless, enjoying as he does a ‘minus’ income, he lives well, appears to deny himself little in the way of comfort. He is not extravagant, but I could not estimate his expenditure on himself at less than two thousand pounds per annum.”

  My masters found this report so unsatisfactory that I was summoned to an interview. The head of the department at that time, Dai Evans, was a tubby and mercurial Welshman, like Lloyd George without the moustache. He was on Christian-name terms with all his staff; but he wasn’t a good man to cross.

  “Are you asking me to believe in miracles, Michael?” he said. “How can a man have a wallet full of notes to spend on himself each week if he doesn’t earn them from somewhere?”

  “Perhaps he makes them,” I suggested.

  Dai elected to take this seriously. “A forger, you mean. I wouldn’t have thought it likely.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t quite mean that.” (I knew as well as anyone that the skill and organization, to say nothing of the supplies of special paper necessary for bank-note forgery were far beyond the resources of an ordinary citizen.) “I thought he might have a hoard. Some people
do, you know. There’s nothing intrinsically illegal in it.”

  Dai grunted. “Why should he trouble to keep up an office? You say it costs him money. Why wouldn’t he shift his hoard to a safe deposit? That way he’d save himself money and work. I don’t like it, Michael. We’re on to something here, boy. Don’t let it go.”

  So I returned to Lombards Inn, and kept my eyes and ears open. And as the weeks passed, the mystery grew more irritating and more insoluble.

  I made a careful calculation during the month which ensued. In the course of it Mr. Portway acted in the purchase of one house for £5,000, and the sale of another at about the same price. He drafted a lease of an office in the City. And fixed up a mortgage for an old lady with a building society. The costs he received for these transactions totalled £171 5s. Od. And that was around five pounds less than he paid out, to keep the office going for the same period.

  One day, about three o’clock in the afternoon, I took some papers into him. I found him sitting in the chair beside the fireplace, The Times (which he read every day from cover to cover) in one hand, and in the other a glass.

  He said, “You find me indulging in my secret vice. I’m one of the old school, who thinks that claret should be drunk after lunch and burgundy after dinner.”

  I am fond of French wines myself, and he must have seen the quick glance I gave the bottle.

  “It’s a Pontet Canet,” he said. “Of 1943. Certainly the best of the war years, and almost the best Chateau of that year. You’ll find a glass in the filing cabinet.”

  You can’t drink wine standing up. Before I knew what I was doing, we were seated on either side of the fireplace with the bottle between us. After a second glass, Mr. Portway fell into a mood of reminiscence. I kept my ears open, of course, for any useful information, but only half of me, at that moment, was playing the spy. The other half was enjoying an excellent claret, and the company of a philosopher.

  It appeared that Mr. Portway had come late to the law. He had studied art under Bertolozzi, the great Florentine engraver, and had spent a couple of years in the workshops of Herr Groener, who specialized in intaglios—and metal relief work. He took down from the mantel shelf a beautiful little reproduction in copper of the Papal Colophon which he had made himself. Then the First World War, most of which he had spent in Egypt and Palestine, had disoriented him.

  “I felt need,” he said, “of something a little more tangible in my life than the art of metal relievo.” He had tried, and failed, to become an architect. And had then chosen law, to oblige an uncle who had no son.

  “There have been Portways,” he said, “in Lombards Inn for two centuries. I fear I shall be the last.”

  Then the telephone broke up our talk, and I went back to my room.

  As I thought about things that night, I came to the conclusion that Mr. Portway had presented me with the answer to one problem, in the act of setting me another. I was being driven, step by step, to the only logical conclusion. That he had found some method, some perfectly safe and private method, of manufacturing money.

  But not forgery, as the word is usually understood. Despite his bland admissions of an engraver’s training, the difficulties were too great. Where would he get his paper? And such notes as I had seen did not look in the least like forgeries.

  I had come to one other conclusion. The heart of the secret lay in the strong room. This was the one room that no one but Mr. Portway ever visited; the room of which he alone had the key. Try as I would, I had never even seen inside the door. If he wanted a deed out of it, Mr. Portway would wait until I was at lunch before he went in to fetch it. And he was always last away from the office when we closed.

  The door of the strong room was a heavy, old-fashioned affair, and if you have time to study it, and are patient enough, you can get the measure of any lock in the end. I had twice glimpsed the actual key, too, and that is a great help. It wasn’t long before I had equipped myself with keys which I was pretty sure would open the door. The next thing was to find an opportunity to use them.

  In the end, I hit on quite a simple plan.

  At about three o’clock one afternoon, I announced that I had an appointment with the local Inspector of Taxes. I thought it would take an hour or ninety minutes. Would it be all right if I went straight home? Mr. Portway agreed. He was in the middle of drafting a complicated conveyance, and looked safely anchored in his chair.

  I went back to my room, picked up my hat, raincoat, and briefcase, and tiptoed down to the basement. The secretarial staff was massacring a typewriter in the outer office.

  Quietly I opened the door of one of the basement storage rooms; I had used my last few lunch breaks, when I was alone in the office, to construct myself a hideaway by moving a rampart of deed boxes a couple of feet out from the wall, and building up the top with bundles of old papers. Now I shut the door behind me and carefully squeezed into my lair. Apart from the fact that the fresh dust I had disturbed made me want to sneeze, it wasn’t too bad. Soon the dust particles resettled themselves, and I fell into a state of somnolence.

  It was five o’clock before I heard Mr. Portway moving. His footsteps came down the passage outside and stopped. I heard him open the door of the other strong room, opposite. A pause. The door shut again. The next moment my door opened, and the lights sprung on.

  I held my breath. The lights went out and the door shut. I heard the click of the key in the lock. Then the footsteps moved away.

  He was certainly, thorough. I even heard him look into the lavatory. (My first plan had been to lock myself in it. I was glad now that I had not.) At last the steps moved away upstairs; more pottering about, the big outer door slammed shut, and silence came down like a blanket.

  I let it wait for an hour or two. The trouble was the cleaner, an erratic lady called Gertie. She had a key of her own, and sometimes she came in the evening, and sometimes early in the morning. “I had studied her movements for several weeks. The latest she had ever left the premises was a quarter to eight at night.

  By half-past eight I felt it was safe for me to start moving.

  The room door presented no difficulties. The lock was on my side, and I simply unscrewed it. The strong-room door was a different matter. I had got what is known in the trade as a set of “approximates”; which are blank keys of the type and, roughly, the shape to open a given lock. My job was to find the one that worked best, and then file it down and fiddle with it until it would open the lock. (You can’t do this with a modern lock, which is tooled to a hundredth of an inch, but old locks, which rely on complicated convolutions and strong springs, though they look formidable, are actually much easier.)

  By half-past ten I heard the sweet click which means success, and I swung the steel door open, turned on the light switch and stepped in.

  It was a small vault with walls of whitewashed brick, with a run of wooden shelves round two of the sides, carrying a line of black deed boxes. I didn’t waste much time on them. I guessed the sort of things they would contain.

  On the left, behind the door, was a table. On the table stood a heavy, brass-bound teak box; the sort of thing that might have been built to contain a microscope, only larger. It was locked, and this was a small, Bramah-type lode, which none of my implements were really designed to cope with.

  I worked for some time at it, but without a lot of hope. The only solution seemed to be to lug the box away with me—it was very heavy, but just portable—and get someone to work on it. I reflected that I should look pretty silly if it did turn out to be a valuable microscope that one of old Portway’s clients had left with him for safekeeping.

  Then I had an idea. On the shelf inside the door was a small black tin box with E. Portway. Personal painted on the front. It was the sort of thing a careful man might keep his War Savings Certificates and passport in. It too was locked, but with an ordinary deed-box lock, which one of the keys on my ring fitted. I opened it, and, sure enough, lying on top of the stacked papers in it, the fi
rst thing that caught my eye was a worn leather keyholder containing a single brass Bramah key.

  I suddenly felt a little breathless. Perhaps the ventilation in that underground room was not all that it should have been. Moving with deliberation, I fitted the brass key into the tiny keyhole, pressed home, and twisted. Then I lifted the top of the box. And came face to face with Mr. Portway’s secret.

  At first sight it was disappointing. It looked like nothing more than a handpress. The sort of thing you use for impressing a company seal, only larger. I lifted it out, picked up a piece of clean white paper off the shelf, slid it in, and pressed down the handle. Then I released it, and extracted the paper.

  Imprinted on it was a neat orange revenue stamp for £20. I went back to the box. Inside was a tray, and arranged in it were stamps of various denominations, starting at 10s., £1, £2 and £5 and so on upwards. The largest was for a hundred pounds.

  I picked one out and held it up to the light. It was beautifully made. Mr. Portway had not wasted his time at Bertolozzi’s Florentine atelier. There was even an arrangement of cogs behind each stamp by which the three figures of the date could be set; tiny, delicate wheels, each a masterpiece of the watchmaker’s art.

  I heard the footsteps crossing the courtyard, and Mr. Portway was through the door before I even had time to put down the seal I was holding.

  “What are you doing here?” I said stupidly.

  “When anyone turns on the strong room light,” he said, “it turns on the light in my office, too. I’ve got a private arrangement with the caretaker of the big block at the end who keeps an eye open for me. If she sees my light on, she telephones me.”

  “I see,” I said. Once I had got over the actual shock of seeing him there I wasn’t alarmed. I was half his age, and twice his size. “I’ve just been admiring your homework. Every man his own stamp office. A lovely piece of work.”