The Case of the Four Friends

by J. C. Masterman

  It was Gresham’s turn to interrupt.

  ‘I’ve followed all that, Brendel,’ he said, ‘but one thing’s worrying me. I cannot for the life of me see how Bannister, who was clearly shrewd, experienced, and clever, can have had anything in common with your “splendid animal”. Still less can I understand how Gradon could agree to join a tolerably respectable and rather humdrum party of four golfing and bridge-playing friends. It doesn’t seem to me to make sense.’

  Brendel nodded. ‘The explanation is quite simple. Of course, there was the family connexion to begin with, for Gradon’s father had married a half-sister of Bannister’s, and I suppose therefore that Gradon was one of the few who knew of Bannister’s illegitimacy, and that for that reason Bannister had always courted his nephew’s goodwill. You can think, if you wish, of the blackmailer being himself blackmailed in a minor way – but it was much, much more than that. Piers Gradon, as I said, was a social success; he had the entrée everywhere in London, and in the cant phrase he “knew everyone”. It was through him, then, that Bannister met and became acquainted with those people who ultimately became his clients, or, if you prefer the phrase, his victims. I very much doubt if any of them would have fallen into his clutches if he had not first been introduced to them by his nephew. So, you see, he had every reason to cultivate Gradon’s friendship, and still more the acquaintance of Gradon’s friends. On the other side, the explanation is even more simple. Bannister was wealthy, perhaps very wealthy, and Piers Gradon had a need for money which could not be satisfied. He had drawn a great deal from his bachelor uncle in the past, but he was well disposed to obtain more, and a party for the New Year was, to him, an admirable opportunity to fortify his banking account. He had never, I think, had the faintest suspicion of the reasons which made Bannister so easy to touch for money. To him Bannister was a sort of golden goose whose laying powers had never been found wanting. That, as I see it, was the relationship between the two, and that explains both why Bannister had asked Gradon to join the party and why Gradon had accepted, if not with enthusiasm, at least with alacrity.

  ‘When Pier’s call was put through to Bannister’s private room, he picked up the receiver with some vague premonition that something might have gone wrong with the arrangements which they had made, but his first question and the answer put this out of his mind.

  ‘ “Hullo, Piers, everything’s in order for tomorrow, I hope?”

  ‘ “Yes, of course, all O.K. I shall come round for you in the car as we arranged. Be prepared for some speeding – I want to see how short a time I can do that run in, and this car really does move.”

  ‘ “Good, then I’ll expect you about eleven.” He was just about to hang up, wondering why his nephew had taken the trouble to ring, when Piers’s voice spoke again.

  ‘ “By the way, all hell’s loose at the Club today. Poor old Jack Cordingly has shot himself.”

  ‘ “What do you mean?”

  ‘ “Just what I said. He shot himself late last night, unless of course someone bumped him off – the very last chap to commit suicide, I should have thought; he enjoyed life as much as anyone I know. But they’re saying here that he got into the grip of some filthy blackmailer. My God, if I knew who it was I’d break him into pieces with my own hands. Poor old ‘Accordingly’.”

  ‘ “Are you sure about this?” Bannister was conscious that his voice shook a little.

  ‘ “Of course I’m sure; the hell is that I’m an executor and that’ll give me all sorts of trouble. But I’m bloody well not going to worry about it until I get back from our holiday, whatever the lawyers try to make me do.”

  ‘Bannister was very pale as he hung up the receiver. Of a sudden, as it seemed, a great black cloud had appeared in a blue sky. Lord Cordingly was one of those friends of Piers Gradon’s who had become at first a friend, then a client in that he had borrowed money, and finally a victim of blackmail. He had been a source of revenue for some time, and perhaps Bannister had pressed him a little hard of late. Probably, almost certainly, he had not been the only person to whom Cordingly had applied for money, however, for he would never have pressed his demands to this danger point. Some other practitioner must have squeezed the orange too much. Well, there must be casualties, of course, but this was much worse. Never before had such an accident happened in his well-ordered affairs. His own discretion he could trust, but what of Cordingly’s? Supposing that among his papers there was something which pointed, even if indirectly, at the identity of the blackmailer? And Piers was an executor! He knew enough of his nephew to realize that his were no empty threats, and that he was indeed capable of murder if his passions were roused. Slowly, carefully, man by man, Bannister considered those from whom he had drawn and was drawing blood-money; one and all they had come to him through Piers. Very well, then, that connexion must cease. It had served its purpose, now it must go. Like a good commander in the field, Bannister realized when a tactical plan had either been completed or had failed and must be abandoned. Then and there he decided to scrap his whole plan of campaign; better to sacrifice income than to run the smallest risk of exposure. But was the danger removed, even so? Granted that Piers was both unsuspicious and obtuse, was it not yet possible that he would, as he delved into Cordingly’s papers, stumble upon the truth? Might he not even learn more from some of the other victims, stirred into action by Cordingly’s suicide? Bannister was no man to deceive himself; carefully and coolly he made his appreciation of the situation, and without a pang of remorse or pity he made his decision. He must talk to Piers and probe his mind, and if he seemed to be too near to the truth there was one way of safety and one only. There was a little hard smile on his lips as he got up from his chair. He unlocked his safe, and from an inner drawer took out a pill-box. That box had survived from his Lisbon days – from days when the means of a quick or immediate death had always lain ready to his hand. Now, however, he was not thinking of using poison to end his own life as he had been then. A glance satisfied him that its contents had not been disturbed and, the smile still hard on his lips, he locked up the box in his attaché-case. Wild threats from Piers Gradon; twisted thoughts in the mind of Bannister; could not murder grow from either – or both?’

  Chapter Five

  ‘So there,’ said Brendel, ‘were my four friends – or four suspects as they were to become in my mind. You must think of them travelling on the last day of December to the Magnifico – two of them in the express from Paddington, the other two in Gradon’s car, speeding westward across England. Afterwards I thought how much trouble I might have saved myself had I been really omniscient about the characters in my story. Had I, for example, been able to overhear the conversation of the two pairs of travellers I should, I think, have been able to put all the pieces together. Perhaps, indeed, they did not talk very much, but I surmise that Cordingly’s suicide was the chief topic of one pair, and that the other attempted rather to confine the conversation to topics which did not directly touch on their personal interests. But I’m conjecturing too much – are you sure that you have the quartet clear in your minds?’

  ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure that I have,’ Prendergast replied. ‘There’s the elderly solicitor whose daughter is just about to be married, an ageing homosexual as I gather – his name’s Sandham. Then there’s his younger partner Barrick, who has embezzled the firm’s money and, since the millionairess has jilted him, is threatened with exposure and disgrace – that’s Barrick. Then on the other side, so to speak, there is Bannister, the cold-blooded blackmailer and financial adventurer, and his nephew – let me think – yes, Gradon – the honourable or dishonourable gentleman who has already committed two near-murders and whom you described, I fancy, as a splendid animal. I must say that your four friends were a pretty ugly crowd: I shouldn’t have liked to have much to do with them. Have I got them all right?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ cried Brendel, ‘You have got them all wrong. You will never understand if you approach them like that. We are conc
erned with murder or rather with the planning of a murder, and so I have to draw attention to all the worst qualities, all the failings and weaknesses and sordid details connected with these men, but if you think only of these things you will make a wholly false picture of all four men in your mind. So far as most people knew, all of them were happy, respectable, even rather distinguished persons, and I believe that all of them were regarded as thoroughly good fellows, whom it would be a pleasure and a privilege to meet. Very likely if I gave you their real names you would find that you knew or at least had met them. Indeed, I am almost sure that you would know at least one of them, for he was a member of this great College. If you had met any or all of them I’m convinced that you would have liked them (or three of them at least), and that you would simply pooh-pooh the idea that there could be a murderer among them. In the conventional British atmosphere in which you live you would never allow yourself to imagine for a moment that they could be guilty of crime. Again and again I have to stress the fact that these were men of your own kidney and indeed of your own type; it was just that which made the whole affair difficult. And again I repeat that it is just because I am a foreigner that I can admit to myself without shock or surprise that a man of your class and upbringing is just as likely to commit a crime as anyone else. Theoretically you would take the same line, but in practice you would not agree for a moment. Alas! is there any one of us who has no skeletons in his cupboard, anyone who is wholly free from the weaknesses and errors of other men? I fear not, but the sad fact is that in this case the dark side has to be brought to light and explored in detail. But don’t let that obscure your judgement. I repeat, the four friends were fundamentally “good fellows”, as you would phrase it; to three of them, anyhow, I think a German would apply the epithet solide. You’ll never understand my story if you run away with the impression that it concerns four men of a criminal type.’

  Prendergast laughed. ‘Very well, then, for the sake of argument I’ll agree that your four friends were really good companions and pillars of society, who had certain internal structural weaknesses, though I hope that I should have had sufficient acumen to see through them if I had had the pleasure of their acquaintance. Carry on, I won’t interrupt again. Anyhow, I have quite a clear picture of each of the four.’

  Gresham, however, who had followed the descriptions of the four friends with growing interest, was not content.

  ‘I appreciate the double-sided nature of these men,’ he said, ‘and in my observation that sort of Jekyll and Hyde nature is more common than we readily admit, but one thing bothers me. I followed your exposition of the heaven-sent privileges of the storyteller, and his assumed knowledge of the motives of his characters, but I did clearly understand that you were yourself involved in this story, and I cannot for the life of me understand how it came about that you were, even though you were acquainted with the four friends.’

  Brendel held up his hands in assumed horror. ‘How right you are, my dear Gresham, and how unerringly you express my deficiencies as a narrator. Of course, of course that is the essential point, what your Wodehouse would call the “nub of the matter”. How can I have omitted to make that one essential fact clear at the start? Well, I must do so now. First and foremost I was myself staying at the Magnifico for the New Year, and had in fact already been there for a couple of days when the four friends arrived. It was something of – what do you call it in that curious phrase? Yes – a busman’s holiday, for I was meeting an international lawyer of repute to discuss a rather knotty legal problem during my visit. But do tell me what is the origin of the phrase, a “busman’s holiday” – its meaning, of course, I know.’

  ‘When you have finished your story, I’ll tell you,’ said the General, ‘but not before.’

  Brendel sighed. ‘Very well, then; I was taking my busman’s holiday at the Magnifico, and was therefore there when the four friends arrived. But there’s more to it than that, for I knew a little, though not much, about their personal troubles: Let me see, it happened like this. You’ll remember that I told you that Mary Sandham, Charles’s wife, was an old and a trusted friend of mine. I admired her courage after her accident, and I valued her judgement and her keen interest in everything that occurred round about her. In England you breed these middle-aged women of taste and intelligence, with whom conversation is always agreeable and generally profitable. Well, it was a habit of mine to call every few weeks on Mary Sandham, and I’ve spent long and happy hours talking by the side of her invalid’s couch.’

  He turned his face towards the General. ‘I think I’m always happy, you know, when I’m talking, but that is by the way. It happened then quite naturally that I acquired the habit of discussing her family and domestic affairs with her, and we had enjoyed very happy discussions about Enid’s marriage and the wedding arrangements and all that. An elderly bachelor finds that sort of conversation in the highest degree stimulating, and he likes to think that he is not really out in the cold when the next generation is being settled into its place in the general pattern. I had discussed Enid’s fiancé with Mary half a dozen times, and what I did not know about the furnishing of the flat where the newly married couple were to live was not worth knowing. It was all friendly and interesting and homely, and I believe that our talks did me as much good as they did the invalid.

  ‘When I had fixed my visit to the Magnifico I made a resolve not to go away without paying Mary a visit, and so I called on her a few days after Christmas – in fact, on the day before I was to leave London. To my surprise she seemed wholly unlike herself – she was worried and distrait and, as it seemed to me, unhappy. Finally I asked her outright what was the matter, for I had an uneasy suspicion that something must have gone wrong with Enid’s plans for her marriage. Mary summoned up a sad little smile when she replied.

  ‘ “Oh no, Doctor,” she said (she always called me “Doctor”), “I’ve no trouble about Enid. Really I could not have done better if I had been allowed to choose my son-in-law myself. But I’m hopelessly worried about Charles.”

  ‘ “About Charles! I should have thought that he was less likely to cause anxiety than anyone else in the world. Or do you mean that his specialist has given you warnings about his health?”

  ‘Her answer came a little slowly, as though she was not satisfied with her own treatment of the situation.

  ‘ “Well, I did make him see a specialist,” she replied, “and the verdict was not all that I could have hoped for. Charles ought to go a little more slowly and not take quite so much physical exercise when he’s on holiday. But I can’t really complain of that. Dear old Charles – he’s sixty-four and it’s in the nature of things that he can’t play the youthful lead for ever. But he’s sensible and will understand very well how to save himself a lot, and how to enjoy his life, even if he has to drive for part of the time in a lower gear. No, it’s not that – I wish it was.”

  ‘I thought for a moment that she was going to say no more, and was wondering whether I had been tactless in broaching the subject at all, when suddenly she made up her mind to confide in me.

  ‘ “Doctor,” she said, “I’m sure there’s something terribly wrong. In the last few days Charles has changed beyond belief. If I speak about the business he changes the subject as quickly as he can – almost as though he had something which he wants to hide. If I talk to Toby, it’s even worse; I have the feeling that something has come between them, or that there is something which one means to conceal from the other. It’s just the same if Evelyn Bannister is mentioned. You know that he’s Charles’s oldest and best friend, and yet Charles seems almost – well, almost afraid to speak of him. Lying here, I can’t, I just can’t, tell what all the trouble is, but I’m as sure as I can be of anything that there is some trouble, and some bad trouble. What hurts me is that Charles won’t confide in me. What is the use of a wife if she cannot help her husband if he’s in difficulties – even if she is a wretched invalid? Oh, Doctor, if only I knew what it was all about,
I’m sure that I could help him. Is it some business trouble, or – or can he have done something that – that he’s ashamed of – or has he quarrelled with his friends – or what is it? I know I’m only basing what I say on intuition, but it’s a woman’s intuition, and a wife’s, and I’m terribly, horribly certain that I’m not exaggerating.”