Mad About the Boy?

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘Let him go!’ yelled Ashley.

  Stanton caught hold of Isabelle as Haldean led the way out of the window at a run. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ she said in a croak, clutching her throat. ‘Come on! After him!’

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time they got out of the house, Smith-Fennimore had vanished. ‘Split up!’ roared Ashley. ‘We’ll take the front of the house.’ He turned on the two policemen following Stanton. ‘You there! Let him go! Smith-Fennimore’s the one we’re after.’

  Haldean set off at a run, Isabelle and Stanton behind him. He expected Smith-Fennimore to go for his car and, as he reached the old stables, there was the growl of an engine and the Bentley shot past them, nearly clipping the wall of the yard.

  Haldean swore and made a leap for his car. By the time he had started the engine Isabelle had scrambled into the front seat and Stanton had bundled into the back. Screaming down the drive in fourth, he was just in time to see the Bentley turn left through the gates and lurch wildly out on to the road.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ yelled Stanton from the back.

  ‘I don’t know,’ called back Haldean, hunched over the wheel. ‘Not the village, thank God. It might be the coast road.’

  The coast road. There was something about the name that tugged at Stanton’s memory but his mind remained infuriatingly blank. The road twisted and curved and for a time they lost sight of the car in front. A cart loomed up in front of them and Haldean swerved, misjudged his distance, and ended up with a wheel on the grass. He revved the engine again and they shot off, desperate for a sight of the Bentley.

  ‘Look down the side roads as we pass!’ shouted Haldean. ‘He might turn off.’

  ‘No, there he is, look!’ called Isabelle. The road straightened out and they were running along an open stretch with hedges on one side and the sea on the other. The Bentley was just visible as it went over a dip and started to climb the other side.

  Stanton suddenly realized he had been this way before. Then, desperate for shelter, he had held on to the hedge while the sea raged over the wall, terrified by the roar of the thunder and the violence of the lightning. The lightning! He had a quick, vivid, terrifying picture of lightning forking down and a road which reared up like an angry horse. ‘Slow down, Jack!’ he yelled. ‘The road’s wrecked!’

  Haldean saw a barrier across the road at the top of the hill, a flash of white as Smith-Fennimore turned to look at them, followed by a hideous howling squeal from the brakes of the Bentley as the big car slid sideways through the barrier. For a moment Haldean thought the car was safe. It seemed to settle on the edge of the cliff, then, with a ghastly inevitability, toppled over and with a roaring crash fell lazily end over end down to the beach. Smith-Fennimore was flung free and clung desperately to the cliff edge, hands scrabbling in the chalk. Haldean stood on the brakes and skidded to a halt beside the hedge. He switched off the engine and in the silence came a sound he never wanted to hear again: a scream followed by the repeated thud of a man’s body, falling.

  Haldean scrambled out of the car and ran as if demons were after him, looking for a way down to the beach. There was just one possible path and he half climbed, half fell down, choking with impatience, utterly heedless of broken nails and bleeding hands. Then he was on the beach, the soft sand clogging his heels, running to the body twisted at the base of the cliffs.

  He flung himself down on his knees beside Smith-Fennimore. He had seen too many flying accidents to doubt the outcome. From the way the legs were bent back it looked as if the spinal cord was snapped at the hips. ‘Malcolm!’ he cried. ‘Malcolm!’

  Smith-Fennimore’s eyes flickered open. His voice came in little painful gasps. ‘Jack?’ Haldean reached out and grasped his hand. ‘I haven’t long. I know. You were right. I killed Lyvenden. I asked him if he’d taken care of Tim and he boasted about it. He thought I was pleased. He’d never be found out, never, and we were safe. Hated him.’ His hand tightened and his face contorted. ‘I wanted to help Russia. I loved Russia so much. They’re going to have a perfect world. I wanted to help. But . . . but the things they did . . . and I knew. They were ruthless. I didn’t stop them. I went rotten inside.’ His eyes closed momentarily. ‘Why you, Jack? I liked you.’

  Haldean swallowed. ‘I had to help Arthur.’

  The hand trembled in Haldean’s. ‘Stanton. Jealous of Stanton. Isabelle loved him. I knew that. Barriers. You’re right. I crossed a barrier. Rotten . . . inside. Yashin tried to kill you. I wouldn’t let him.’ His face contorted once more. ‘He said you were dangerous. You were. You knew, didn’t you? I thought I could fool you. Told Yashin I’d fool you. Argued . . . I was so damn pleased when I saw you alive. Didn’t want you to die. Thought I’d fooled you.’

  ‘You did for a time,’ said Haldean softly. ‘Then I realized it had to be you, despite everything, even the cigarette burns.’

  ‘Morphine. Took morphine. Didn’t hurt. Yashin did it. Thought it’d work.’

  ‘It nearly did,’ said. Haldean unsteadily. ‘But Malcolm, it was a hell of a risk. What if we hadn’t got there?’

  The ghost of a smile flickered and was gone. ‘Always liked risk . . . and . . . and it didn’t matter. Not after what I’d done.’ He twisted in agony. ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ He coughed blood and Haldean held his head.

  A voice beside him said softly, ‘I’m here, Malcolm.’ It was Isabelle. She knelt down and took the twitching hand from Haldean’s grasp. In a convulsive movement Smith-Fennimore held her hand to his cheek and kissed it.

  His breathing grew harsher and then, with a judder, his head rolled back and he was still.

  Isabelle leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Blindly, she turned to Stanton standing behind her. ‘Take me home, Arthur. Please take me home.’

  Haldean remained kneeling by the broken body. Time seemed frozen. The sea creamed in and out behind him, the gentle surge of the waves like the far-off breathing of a living thing; and he grieved for the man who might have been.

  Eventually he became vaguely aware of other figures on the beach, looking at him, talking about Malcolm – endless talk – and men cautiously approaching the burnt-out wreck of the Bentley many yards away. Then strong, kind hands lifted him to his feet, a blanket was wrapped round his shoulders and a flask of brandy put to his lips. The sharp, pungent taste made him blink and choke. When he looked, he saw that it was his uncle holding the brandy, smiling at him encouragingly. ‘It’s all right now,’ he managed to say, his voice sounding like that of a drunken man. ‘Let’s go home. It’s over.’

  It was nine o’clock in the evening the next day. Haldean hadn’t wanted to talk at all when he had been brought back from the wrecked Bentley at the foot of the cliffs and, rising early, he’d spent most of the day in London. He’d got back shortly before dinner. Now, dinner over, everyone was in the drawing room. Haldean, Isabelle was relieved to see, had lost that awful haunted look.

  The telephone rang in the hall and Isabelle went answer it ‘That was Mr Ashley,’ she said when she came back into the room. ‘He wanted to tell us that the last of the gang from the Paradise Club have been arrested.’

  Haldean gave a sigh of satisfaction. ‘That was today’s task. Ashley and I have spent the day in Scotland Yard. I hoped they’d get the lot and it sounds as if they have.’

  ‘And a good thing, too,’ said Sir Philip, putting down his newspaper. ‘Mind you,’ he added, looking at Haldean and Stanton, ‘from what you told me, it seems remarkable that there was anyone left to arrest. They seemed to be killing each other off nicely.’

  ‘Did they get Vargen Yashin?’ asked Haldean. ‘The one they called The Boss?’

  She shook her head. ‘He shot himself before they could arrest him.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Sir Philip with quiet triumph. ‘It’s a great pity he didn’t shoot himself first. It would have saved us all a good deal of trouble.’ He shuddered. ‘My word, when I t
hink of that night they came here . . .’

  ‘Things might have worked out differently for that poor devil, Malcolm, if Yashin hadn’t been involved,’ said Haldean, reflectively.

  Sir Philip gazed at him. ‘That poor devil?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘What the deuce d’you mean, Jack?’

  Haldean smiled. ‘Don’t you see what a tantalizing prize Malcolm must have been? Not only was he rich and sympathetic to the cause, he had over a million pounds of Tsarist gold in his bank. Apparently this bloke, Yashin, was a very persuasive character. I bet Yashin made a point of cultivating Malcolm.’

  ‘I think part of what made Malcolm do what he did went back to his friend, Jimmy Chilton,’ said Isabelle. ‘You remember how I told you about that? He said how rotten things were here, that a man like that should be left to die of cold. The Communists say that they want to make life better and fairer for everyone.’ Sir Philip made an impatient noise and Isabelle turned to him. ‘I don’t know I believe them, Dad, but it can sound very attractive.’

  Haldean nodded. ‘It can. And to someone who loved Russia as Malcolm did, it must have been compelling. He felt things very strongly. And to be fair to him, he didn’t want to hurt you or me. Anything but.’

  ‘He didn’t seem to mind what happened to me,’ said Stanton.

  Lady Rivers nodded in vigorous agreement. ‘I can understand him wanting to revenge his friend. I don’t agree with private revenge but it’s understandable. What was truly wrong was him throwing the blame on Arthur.’

  ‘The whole wretched business was wrong from beginning to end,’ said Sir Philip. ‘What beats me, Jack, is how on earth you got to the bottom of it all. I mean, why were you so sure that young Preston hadn’t killed himself?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Haldean. Walking to the sideboard he poured himself a whisky and soda. ‘Tim hadn’t been depressed or suicidal when I met him and I couldn’t see why he should suddenly become so. Then Arthur found the famous disappearing cigarette packet and I overheard Lyvenden and Mrs Strachan going at it hammer and tongs about secret papers and so on, on Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘I was convinced Tim had killed himself,’ Stanton said thoughtfully. ‘The idea of him being murdered seemed so bizarre.’ He sat up straight. ‘I’ve just remembered it! Really remembered it, I mean. How Tim looked when he was telling me about the money he owed and what I said and everything.’

  Isabelle put her hand over his. ‘It’ll all come back to you, Arthur. I’m sure it will. Tim told you he’d seen some secret papers, didn’t he, Jack?’

  Haldean nodded. ‘That’s right. Lyvenden obviously had some sort of Russian connection, because of that bloke, Yuri Gerasimov, who turned up on Sunday morning. So whatever these secret papers were, I was willing to bet they had something to do with Russia. I must say that Mr Charnock’s Slav, or Ukrainian, to give him his proper nationality, rather obscured the issue, as did Mr Charnock himself. And, by picking a fight with Gerasimov and taking the man’s knife, Mr Charnock gave Malcolm a weapon for murder.’

  He sat down and looked at the light reflected through his glass. ‘Have you remembered what happened on Tuesday yet, Arthur?’

  Stanton shook his head. ‘I keep getting odd flashes of things. I remember you finding the knife in my drawer, but not much else. I was so bewildered by it. I couldn’t think how on earth it had got there.’

  ‘It had got there because Malcolm had put it there,’ said Haldean. ‘And my word, his plan nearly worked. The sight of you in Lyvenden’s room was overwhelming as, of course, it was meant to be.’ He sipped his whisky thoughtfully. ‘I’m sorry to have to admit it, Arthur, but I really did wonder if you’d flipped and killed him. I thought the effect of seeing Lyvenden – remember you were meant to have a knife in your hand as well – could have pushed you over the edge. Fennimore was there when you found out that Lyvenden was Victor Todd and, like me, thought you had a compelling motive for murder. I really did have to think about it. Isabelle never doubted you for a moment, though.’

  ‘I just knew you could never do anything like that,’ said Isabelle.

  ‘And you were right, Belle,’ agreed Haldean, ‘but things looked very black.’ He looked at Stanton apologetically. ‘After all, if you hadn’t killed Lyvenden, who had? Had someone tried to frame you, or had you simply blundered on the scene? And why on earth didn’t you come and get help? As I said to Belie, it was an unlocked room mystery.’

  ‘That’s something I don’t understand,’ said Isabelle. ‘I know why Arthur didn’t come and get us, of course, because the door was wedged solid, but how could Malcolm be so sure it would work? He didn’t know poor Arthur was going to lose his memory. If we’d opened the door and Arthur had told us Malcolm had trapped him in there, we’d have been very suspicious of Malcolm’s part in things.’

  Haldean sat down again. ‘We would, certainly, Belle, but how would the police look at it? Arthur had a very strong motive to kill Lyvenden, he’d been seen with what I was prepared to swear was the murder weapon, and he’d had the opportunity. And I don’t suppose for a moment Malcolm opened the door and shoved Arthur into the room by main force. He probably said something to the tune of “After you, old man,” and quietly shut the door once Arthur was inside. But, and this is the clever bit, because it wasn’t locked when we all came to see what the fuss was about, it seemed for all the world as if Arthur had slipped his moorings altogether, stabbed Lyvenden, had forty fits and remained keening over the body. And what could Arthur say? That Lyvenden was dead when he found him and the door had stuck? It wasn’t stuck when we tried it and the implication is that Arthur is a liar. No. It was a very strong circumstantial case and if it had come to trial, you wouldn’t have had a chance, old son. I didn’t think it would change a thing if you could remember everything perfectly. I believed Malcolm would have taken care to see it wouldn’t. Ashley thought it was worth a shot, though.’

  He lit a cigarette. ‘Oddly enough, it was something Malcolm said to me that made me think. He’d said that Mr Charnock’s knife was very rare, but I knew that wasn’t so. They’re very commonplace. What if there were two knives? And if there were two knives, then there were two murderers, if you see what I mean. Arthur, the false one, and, in the background, the real one. And the real murderer had held the knife whilst wearing gloves. Arthur didn’t have any gloves and there weren’t any bloodstained gloves in the room. It was a very messy murder and the murderer must have got a good deal of blood on him. He would hardly have walked down the hall covered in blood, so that meant he’d gone out by the windows. Ashley and I searched high and low but couldn’t find the key. That made me fairly sure that you’d been put on the spot. The key was always left in the lock and there was no reason for the murderer to lock the windows and take the key unless he wanted to stop you escaping through them.’ Haldean grinned. ‘You solved that problem very effectively, I must say.’

  Stanton returned the smile. ‘D’you know, I’m beginning to remember bits of that, too.’

  ‘What made you suspect Malcolm?’ asked Isabelle.

  ‘I didn’t, at first,’ said Haldean with a shrug. ‘Then he staged his own kidnapping. He’d made a phone call to the Paradise Club in the afternoon and could have contacted them again when we were in the Grand in Brighton. However, what he didn’t bargain for was that they’d not only try to kill me – I suppose Vargen Yashin must have heard how I worked things out in the Breedenbrook fête business and wasn’t leaving anything to chance – but were horribly careless about the possibility of killing you, Isabelle.’

  Haldean took a long drink. ‘I wish to God I hadn’t liked Malcolm so much. He wasn’t responsible for some of the things that happened. He went barmy when he saw you were in danger, didn’t he, Belle? And judging from the way the Russians cracked him over the head, they couldn’t give a damn about him, only what he could do for them. He might have used them, but by God, they used him. Anyway, I wasn’t killed, but the knock on the head must have done me some good,
because the next morning I tumbled to it. I read a bit in the newspaper about a long leather coat being washed up on the beach and suddenly everything fell into place. Of course, the murderer needed some protection, and a motoring coat was just the thing. Motoring suggested Malcolm, and I realized how he’d managed to fool around with time.’

  ‘I remember you looking as if you’d seen a ghost,’ said Isabelle.

  Haldean ran his finger round the top of his glass. ‘In a way I had. If you assume two knives, the murder could have taken place at any time after Adamson had left his master. Malcolm could have easily done it. But I knew that Malcolm hadn’t killed Tim and as soon as I asked the question I knew the answer. Lyvenden had murdered Tim and Malcolm had killed Lyvenden in revenge. Once I guessed how Malcolm could have done it, I sort of saw him do it and it turned me over to think of Arthur being cold-bloodedly framed.’ He drank his whisky thoughtfully. ‘However, having the grues was no good to anyone. I needed some evidence. Now Adamson had stated that Malcolm had brought the Argentine papers into Lyvenden’s room in a big briefcase and left the case behind.’

  He leaned forward. ‘The file was there but the briefcase wasn’t. I’d thought earlier it was odd that such a slim file needed a large briefcase, but it had to be large to contain the coat. And if it had contained the coat, it wouldn’t be in the room because the murderer would have to take it away with him. The notion it contained gloves as well seemed reasonable. That’s when I knew I was on to something. And now I began to get a line on what the secret might be. If both Lyvenden and Malcolm were involved, then the betting was it concerned money. Bring Russia into the picture and you immediately get the idea that these two business partners – bankers – were involved in an illicit scheme to transfer money to Russia. Then I twigged the significance of what Lyvenden’s Russian, Gerasimov, said on Sunday about learning something of value. He must have recognized Malcolm, Vargen Yashin’s star prize, and for the first time linked him up with Lyvenden. Not that the knowledge did Gerasimov any good. He was shot. Malcolm looked really shaken when I told him Gerasimov’s body had been found. It was obvious that Yashin only told Malcolm part of what they did. Anyway, we knew this Russian deal had been referred to in either papers or a paper. Ashley and I came across Malcolm searching Lyvenden’s room, ostensibly to find the Argentine document. But if Lyvenden had been working on the Argentine document just before he died, then it would have been on top of the heap. So what had Malcolm been looking for? The Russian paper, obviously, and he didn’t find it after Ashley and I came into the room. I think Lyvenden had had other papers with him and I wouldn’t be surprised if Malcolm had taken them out of Lyvenden’s room on the Sunday morning, Arthur, when the three of us were in there. I don’t suppose you remember it, but Malcolm was really disturbed by the files he’d found. I bet one of them at least contained documents about the Russian deal. He said he was going to talk to Lyvenden about it and I imagine one of the things he said was to point out how dangerous it was to leave them lying around. He probably saw Lyvenden put the key document into his cigarette case.’