Silent at the window, Macdonald heard a box being placed against the side of the studio, very quietly. Then someone mounted it, and there came the tap of the line on the roof, then a tugging dragging sound: there was a little bumping and scuffling, a slithering as a bundle was dragged clear of the cowl and then a swish. A moment later the two men went back into the studio.
Macdonald heard the front door close behind them, and the light was switched on again. He was just about to go down the gallery steps to confront them, when a word from Bruce Manaton brought him to a halt. There was something else he wanted to know. Manaton was at the whisky bottle again: then he said suddenly:
“What about Rosanne?”
The other gave an exclamation of impatience.
“Rosanne? What about her? I told you, she’s not on in this act.”
Manaton spoke still more slowly, his voice dragging, stuttering a little.
“She was out there…in the black-out. How much does she know?… She guessed, you know… She looked in at the door once too often… If she’d only understand. I did it for Rosanne…”
His voice dragged out into silence, and Macdonald stood still, for the first time a sense of pity in his mind. The other man stood still, and then an ugly burst of profanity flowed from his lips.
“…Rosanne…if she lets us down, I’ll strangle her with my own hands, the…”
Macdonald took the stairs in one leap. He knew what was coming now. Manaton, drunk, beside himself, had seized the first weapon which came to his hand—the soda siphon which stood on the table. Before Macdonald could intervene, the other had wrenched the siphon away and brought it crashing down on the painter’s head. Blind drunken fury was behind the deadly blow. Bruce Manaton crumpled up, and Macdonald caught him as he fell, crashing against the red-daubed canvas with its portrait of a man in Cardinal’s robes.
III
Reeves always had a feeling of satisfaction that his evening ended up with the climax to a case. He had travelled back from Harrow cursing himself bitterly. Reeves was not by nature a boaster; he was a cautious, hard-working, reticent fellow. He could not forget his own voice saying “he shan’t outwit me.” He felt that he had been outwitted, properly, but there was also in his mind a conviction that Macdonald would not have been similarly defeated. “Our Jock will make sense of it,” was a firmly rooted belief in Reeves’ mind. He made his way from Finchley Road Station to Hollyberry Hill at a great pace and was just going to report at his “point”—the police call-box—when he heard a sound which made him tingle—the shrilling of a police whistle. “Things happening, by gum,” was his immediate reaction. On tiptoes, mentally as well as physically, Reeves advanced towards number 25. He heard the sounds of a scuffle in the garden and stamping of feet: a thud told him that someone had gone down in a melee, and he crouched a little, his elbows squared, fists at the ready, almost dancing in the shadows of the wall. He just saw the blackness of a heavy figure pounding along towards him, a man running for his life, grunting as he pounded along. Reeves closed in with a joyous sense of achievement, frustration fled. He tackled at the strategic spot, and the fugitive crashed down, thudding on to the slippery London pavement while Reeves recovered himself like an eel and bestraddled his captive. Drew’s voice came out of the darkness:
“Got him? The Chief’s inside.”
“Yes. I’ve got him,” said Reeves, “and by gum, I enjoyed getting him. This evening owed me something, but it’s all square now.”
IV
In the studio, a somewhat winded Jenkins found Macdonald.
“I collared him, but he got away—and ran straight into Reeves’ arms. That was that. He’s a tough lad, our Reeves. So was I, when I was his age. Hullo, he looks bad, Chief.”
“Yes. He’s finished.”
Macdonald stood looking down at Bruce Manaton’s body.
“I suppose I ought to have prevented that, Jenkins: I suppose I could have prevented it, but I didn’t want to. It’ll be easier for Rosanne this way.”
Jenkins nodded soberly.
“Yes. You’re right there—but I’ve no compunction about the other chap. I reckon it was his father he shot, and the world will be well quit of the pair of them. I’ve finished going through the old man’s papers. He was a hard old devil.”
“So, it seems, was his son,” replied Macdonald.
Chapter Fifteen
I
“So we were cast for the parts of the two mugs.”
Ian Mackellon voiced his disillusionment in a tone which made Macdonald chuckle.
“Few men like to feel that they have been fooled,” said the latter, “and Aberdonians like it less than most. You needn’t feel so bitter about it. Your presence was requested in the studio on that particular evening because you and Mr. Cavenish were obviously reliable, law-worthy and conscientious men. No police inspector worth his salt could have suspected either of you of corruption. Therein was your value.”
Macdonald was sitting in the studio, where he had acceded to Mackellon’s request for an exposition of the “Cardinal Crime,” as Mackellon called it. Sitting opposite one another across a chess-board, Cavenish and Mackellon listened.
“I think I’ll tell you the story from the detective’s point of view,” said Macdonald, and Cavenish put in gravely:
“We shall be indebted to you, Chief Inspector. It is good of you to spare us the time.”
Macdonald caught a glint of humour in Mackellon’s hazel eyes, and responded to that.
“Don’t be too grateful,” he said. “Mackellon will admit that all true Scots like talking—on occasion. We’re silent on occasion, especially when we have a job to do, but we talk all right at times. I’m through with a job of work, and I can relax a while—and talk.”
He puffed at his pipe for a moment and then began:
“I had the bare facts: an old man had been shot at close quarters in his bed. An empty cash-box and a pistol lay on the floor. A Canadian soldier had been arrested on the spot, and the Special Constable who arrested him said that the soldier had made a bee-line for this studio, as though for a deliberate reason. I sent the camera and fingerprint men into the house to do their job, and then I came in here to consider the assembled company. You remember my own entry on to this stage, I expect.”
Mackellon laughed. “I shall never forget it. I liked the manner in which you summed us all up.”
“It was an interesting occasion,” said Macdonald. “I quite understood why Mr. Verraby had felt that the party looked strange—capable of anything, as he expressed it. Delaunier, in his scarlet trappings, was so dramatic. Manaton so very much the temperamental painter, and the studio so bizarre in effect that the resulting impression was operatic, something far removed from the average of everyday experience. What struck me most was the contrast in type of the two pairs of men I saw there. Two were artists: two were reliable, hard-headed, and, it seemed to me, conscientious citizens.”
Mackellon put a word in here: “Are artists never reliable, or hard-headed, or conscientious?”
“Of course they are,” replied Macdonald, “but in this case, I summed up Manaton as being unstable: it was true that he behaved well and spoke reasonably, but it seemed to me that he made a deliberate effort, as though he were controlling himself with an end in view. It mattered to him that the impression he should make on me was a good one, though he hadn’t cared, apparently, to thus impress the special constable. Thinking it over afterwards, I found myself wondering if Manaton were drunk—quietly, unostentatiously drunk.”
Mackellon nodded. “Drunk—or doped. When he had drunk enough whisky to make most men insensible, I have heard Manaton talk and argue much more lucidly than when he was sober.”
Macdonald went on: “Delaunier was an actor: he acted deliberately, and it was difficult to judge the man behind the acting. Well, I saw Bruce Manaton’s portrait. It
was good—very good it seemed to me. I had just heard of Delaunier. I knew this—neither of the two was successful, an unknown painter, an obscure actor—but both men with energy and ability. In addition there was Manaton’s sister—reserved, cold, steady, and determined to say nothing at all. She watched, and waited—a difficult person to assess. Quite obviously, being Bruce Manaton’s sister, and at the same time being a woman of sensibility and orderliness, she must have had a hard life. Sisters of men like Bruce Manaton do have hard lives, if they try to retain their self-respect, as Rosanne Manaton did.” Macdonald paused: “I’m being long-winded over this, but I’m interested in my own recapitulation here. I saw this studio, and the kitchen there. I saw the efforts of one person to uphold the niceties and decencies of life—cleanliness, orderliness, grace—and on the other hand, squalor. The brother did not mind squalor. He was used to it. The sister was not.”
Cavenish spoke here, in his sober, conscientious way.
“I’m glad you saw all that. I did. Rosanne Manaton has struggled against heavy odds, but she never complained and never gave in.”
“Well, there it was,” said Macdonald. “I took your evidence: it amounted to the fact that you four men had been in the studio, within sight of one another, the whole evening. Delaunier was most emphatic over this: he even recapitulated the chess moves. However, during the evening’s sitting, Delaunier had moved about the studio occasionally—the chess players were used to that and took no notice. Also there was a lay figure on the floor. I merely noted the possibilities. Miss Manaton had looked inside the studio several times: she had also been outside to inspect the black-out. She had nothing to say—and the key of Mr. Folliner’s house was on the kitchen table.” Again Macdonald paused, and then went on: “I needn’t stress all the details of our search in the house: the outstanding facts were the pistol—old Folliner’s own—an empty cash-box, and a postcard from Neil Folliner saying he was calling to see his uncle that evening. The postcard I regarded as exhibit A. It dated the crime. The old man was shot that evening because his nephew was coming, and that nephew could act as scapegoat. It was an assumption on my part, but it was right. The man who left the postcard for us to find over-acted. It was a mistake. The first thing I asked myself was, ‘Who could have got hold of that postcard?’ The answers were obvious—Mrs. Tubbs, or the studio tenants. Very often in these days, when inexperienced people are delivering mails, letters for separate addresses may get delivered into one and the same letter-box. It was quite probable that the studio people could take letters from the new postman—or postwoman—and obtain both the studio mail and that for the house. It did look to me as though the studio people could have got hold of that postcard, while it was very improbable that Verraby could have. Another point about that postcard.” He turned to Cavenish. “You remember that I asked you to write down exactly what Neil Folliner had said while he was in the studio. I asked Mackellon to do the same thing. You both wrote down that Neil Folliner had said ‘I wrote to uncle and told him I was coming this evening.’ Bruce Manaton stated that Folliner had said ‘I sent uncle a postcard’—so somebody in the studio knew about that postcard.”
Mackellon nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It’s points like that give a liar away. I’ve always maintained that it’s very difficult to lie consistently and to get away with it.”
Macdonald nodded. “That’s quite true: it’s also true that it is on little points that a liar trips up. Well, here are two small points. Mrs. Tubbs had left the key of Mr. Folliner’s house in the studio not once but several times. An impression of it could have been made very easily. The studio people could have got hold of Neil Folliner’s postcard. Next, to get on with Mrs. Tubbs’ evidence. I liked Mrs. Tubbs—liked her at once and whole-heartedly. She will always embody for me the spirit which makes the wizened little Cockney one of the grandest characters in the world.”
Mackellon nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve often thought it’s Mrs. Tubbs who’s really beating Hitler. He doesn’t understand Mrs. Tubbs. You can call that sentiment if you like, but it’s true.”
“It’s true enough,” said Macdonald soberly. “Now Mrs. Tubbs had been keeping that old man alive because she couldn’t bear to think of him starving. I’ve Neil Folliner’s evidence that that is true—it wasn’t made up by Mrs. Tubbs. She would not have done that if she had suspected that the old man was wealthy. She knew he was a skinflint, and she said that she made him pay her something when he had got tenants in the studio. That was just: Mrs. Tubbs struck me as having her own clear ideas of justice, and not bad ideas either. I did not think it probable that she had kept an old man from starving in order to rob him and kill him: neither did I believe that she knew he was wealthy and had spread the news abroad among her own friends. She called him ‘the poor old misery,’ and that was her attitude to him, an attitude of compassion, and it rang true. Now Mrs. Tubbs told me one or two interesting things en passant, and one of the most interesting was that the previous tenant of the studio, a man named Stort, had painted a picture of old Mr. Folliner with his hands clutching money which he was counting over. ‘I did it from memory, Ma,’ said Stort—and Mrs. Tubbs resented the familiarity of that word ‘Ma’! She did not know how much interested I was in her recital. How had Stort seen old Folliner so that he could paint that picture from memory, and how had he got the idea of him counting money like a miser? Incidentally, I’ve got that painting to show in court—Reeves ran it to earth for me. Here is a photograph of it.”
Macdonald showed them the reproduction of “Peep-Show,” Mackellon exclaimed aloud:
“Good Lord! How did he get the detail?”
Macdonald replied, “The detail is absolutely accurate. That is a picture of old Folliner sitting up in his own bed, and it was painted by a man with an accurate memory. Stort saw old Folliner sitting up in bed counting his money, not once but many times.”
Macdonald then recounted how it was possible to see into Mr. Folliner’s bedroom from the gallery window of the studio.
“Of course, I’m putting the fact of finding the picture and of discovering the means of ‘peeping’ out of order in the time sequence of my own investigation, but Mrs. Tubbs told me about the picture on the evening of the murder.”
Mackellon smiled. “In fact your thoughts were directed more and more towards the studio.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I saw ever more clearly the value of the two incorruptible witnesses. As I heard Delaunier say later ‘the evidence stands.’ I won’t weary you with an account of my interview with Mr. Verraby. Concerning him, at least, I felt in agreement with Manaton when he said ‘We did not like him.’ I’ll leave him out for the moment. Jenkins worked well into the night examining deceased’s papers—and I did a lot of thinking. The next morning I saw Neil Folliner, and I then examined the house in detail in daylight. Three points of interest emerged: one was the existence of some portraits on the walls of the sitting-room. These portraits had been painted out very carefully and were obliterated: one was the existence of a decrepit grandfather clock, minus its weights and chains: one was the view of the studio roof from the first floor of the house, showing a collapsed flag pole and some yards of cord flapping around the studio walls and roof close by the disused chimney-pot.”
Cavenish put out a protesting hand. “This is where I get lost,” he said. “I’ve followed all your previous argument, and followed it with intense interest, but the three points you have just mentioned baffle me completely. I’m no good at puzzles.”
“If you had been doing my job, you would have asked yourself just the same questions as I did,” said Macdonald. “Obviously the first question was: Who was the murderer? Next, what had happened to the contents of his cash-box? As Inspector Jenkins worked through Mr. Folliner’s papers, it became increasingly evident that a large amount of money had disappeared.”
Ian Mackellon put in a word here. “Obviously one wondered about that,”
he said. “Assuming that the suspects were Neil Folliner and Mr. Verraby, as we did assume at first, it seemed plain that they would not have risked keeping the loot on them. They would have had to hide it somewhere.”
Macdonald nodded. “That was it. Now I did not limit my suspicions to Young Folliner and Verraby—for reasons I have told you in part. I suspected that the secret lay somewhere in the studio party, improbable though that may have seemed. The point was: where was the loot? I guessed that it would not be in any obvious place: it also seemed certain that only a very short time could have been spent on concealing it. How could a man secrete a large bundle of bank notes so that they could escape an expert search? I have known valuables concealed in a container like a thermos flask and sunk in a cistern—but that method was not used. Certainly not burying, nor the dug-out. Well, there was a disused chimney, as you can see for yourselves. It is blocked this end, but the wide cowl of the chimney was open. There was cord—from the flag post—and the weights of the grandfather clock were missing. It seemed to me that with time to fix a pulley in the chimney-pot, if the weights from the clock were attached to one end of the line and put inside the chimney-pot, those weights would be capable of hoisting up a packet attached to the other end of the line and pulling that packet into hiding inside the chimney-pot. It’s the grandfather clock idea, the weights do the work. Mechanically, it’s a simple contrivance. The pulley is fixed in the chimney and the weights will run down and hoist up a lesser weight than themselves: a sufficient over-plus of cord is necessary to have a length of line to secure outside the chimney-pot, so that it is possible to recover the package inside by hauling on the line.”
Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery Page 19