by Roy Vickers
The Merthyr was hung in a prominent position in the Bladlow’s drawing-room, to Aileen’s secret disgruntlement. When Miss Henson visited them—midday dinner on Sundays and tea on Wednesdays—she would sit where her glance fell easily on the picture. In three months they had settled into a regime. From the start, it worked better than might have been expected, helped by Aileen’s forbearance. There were small daily contacts which she found irksome. Bladlow noticed a loss of sweetness in her temper but assured himself that she would soon get over it.
The thirty-one thousand pounds had been transferred to an account in his own name. He bought gilt-edged securities while he deliberated over Miss Henson’s financial future. She was obviously unfit to have control of her capital. For some months, he contemplated creating a trust. Then he thought he would rid her and himself of all further anxiety by using the whole sum for purchase of a life annuity.
Miss Henson smiled and nodded, but was not very receptive, while he tried to explain the nature of an insurance company and a life annuity. Some weeks later, he was on the point of deciding to sell the gilt-edged securities and buy her the annuity, when Miss Henson herself torpedoed the whole idea.
She had read, it appeared, a ‘piece in the paper’ anent the folly of not making a will. For sixpence she had bought a will form, with printed instructions on the back, which she had imperfectly assimiliated.
“There are only two persons in the world who are dear to me, in any personal sense,” she told him, “Mrs. Bladlow and yourself! So of course I shall leave to you all I don’t spend.” (He could never make her understand that she was not ‘spending’ her capital). “I would not have told you, only it says a will has to have two witnesses.”
Bladlow kept his head, though his philosophy had been turned inside out, for he had never contemplated profiting from her otherwise than through legitimate fees and perquisites, and even these had begun to seem illegitimate. He explained the law concerning witnesses and called in the cook and the gardener to sign.
When he told Aileen, she was not as impressed as he had expected.
“Don’t kid yourself, Jim, that it’s any more than a ticket in a sweepstake. You might win a big prize. But you might forget to pass the salt one day, and then she’d make another will.”
A pity Aileen was getting like that, he thought. Miss Henson would not make another will. Outside art, she was a simple, childlike creature who trusted him absolutely. In the normal course of nature the thirty-one thousand pounds—increased by his careful management—would be his before many years had passed. He shivered with horror as he remembered how nearly he had defeated Miss Henson’s generous intention by buying her an annuity.
That she would, in the future, hit on that very idea herself was beyond his imagination.
In fact, in Aileen’s words, he kidded himself that the fortune was as good as his. While he was waiting for nature to co-operate, he had unrestricted control. Feeling what we may call the shadow of ownership of the capital, he invested ten thousand in the purchase of a house agency in central London, putting a manager into the Chelsea office. Further, he bought and sold several properties in Shaldon, developing his local agency. With every movement of capital he wrote a letter to himself, approving the transaction, which Miss Henson signed. She became well accustomed to signing as many as half a dozen letters at a sitting, without giving more than nominal attention to their purport.
None of his investments were wild-cat. But in a couple of years, about a third of the capital was tied up in securities, sound enough in themselves, which were not immediately negotiable.
In the meantime, life at The Cedars achieved a smooth routine. Aileen, though she had many grievances, remained amiable. Miss Henson would go to London regularly for the art exhibitions and often to the auction sales at Christie’s. She would take her sketch-book and make line notes of any object of special interest to her, adding details of history, price and purchaser as methodically as an art agent.
On one of these expeditions—in February 1934—she made an impetuous decision. She had her hair cut short and waved.
The girl who attended her had a boy friend who was an insurance agent.
“Do you remember, Mr. Bladlow—” an attempt had been made to introduce first names, but Miss Henson forgot so often that it was tacitly abandoned—“do you remember explaining to me all about insurance companies and annuities? I was very stupid at the time. I didn’t see that it would save you all that bother of looking after my money.”
She meant, he realised, that it would save her the bother of signing letters and pretending to understand them. He had blundered.
The hairdresser girl, on the other hand, had not blundered. The idea of an annuity was firmly implanted. It was doubtful whether he could achieve anything by explaining that an annuity would make waste paper of her will. The fortune was flying out of the window. Aileen would say she had told him so. Moreover, the life-long gratitude and the unbounded admiration, which had nourished her personality, would perish in the inevitable misunderstanding about those unnegotiable securities.
There was, he decided, only one possible answer.
“I think it is a very good idea, Miss Henson. If you remember, I was in favour of it from the first. The agent can see me, and we’ll fix it up.”
In that moment, Bladlow stepped over the line. No good doing things by halves. He turned to her, with a marked change of expression—so marked, indeed, that a sophisticated woman would have laughed.
“If I am not being impertinent, Miss Henson—your hair!—that new way of doing it suits you wonderfully.”
“For my part, Mr. Bladlow,” said Miss Henson, sedately daring, “I hoped you would make that remark.”
When the hairdresser girl’s boy friend called, Bladlow told him that Miss Henson, who did not understand her own affairs, possessed a life interest, only, in her income and had no capital with which to buy an annuity.
Bladlow’s firm, like most of its kind, were agents for the leading insurance companies. Under the letterhead of the Metropolitan & Colonial Assurance Society, he wrote to Miss Henson, enclosing a form of application, and later sent a letter of acceptance and a receipt for thirty-one thousand pounds. It was easy enough to reclaim both letters and the receipt and burn them.
The routine of life at The Cedars remained unbroken, except that he no longer took business letters to Miss Henson to be signed. Instead, he paid one thousand one hundred and fifty pounds, in equal half-yearly payments, into Miss Henson’s account at the local branch, deemed to equal her annuity after deduction of income tax.
After the second of these half-yearly payments, the feeling that he had stepped over the line passed away. He had deceived her, but only in the sense in which one deceives a child, because a full explanation would not be understood—notably the explanation of the good but unnegotiable securities. He had not robbed her, for she was receiving the same income as she would have received had an annuity been purchased. As to the practical position, the little deception about the insurance company could not be proved, so there was no possibility of a criminal charge.
True that in personal relations it had been difficult to retreat from the moment in which he had affected to admire her hair, but the situation was still manageable, if irksome.
Miss Henson continued to attend the art exhibitions and the sales at Christie’s until August 1936, when she was murdered.
Chapter Four
Aileen had insisted that the family should have its summer holiday unaccompanied by Miss Henson. She had been firm about this from the beginning. For this year, they had made reservations at an hotel in Bournemouth and intended to travel down on the Saturday.
On Friday evening, Bladlow went up to the flat for a goodbye chat with Miss Henson.
“It’s a shame to talk to you about business when you’re in holiday mood” she apologised, “but I’ve had such a funny letter from the Metropolitan & Colonial Assurance Society—the people who pay my annu
ity, if you remember.”
Bladlow gave no outward sign. In his subconsciousness he had known that he must always be prepared for the million-to-one chance. She was chattering about her late doctor’s widow with whom she had travelled up to Town last week. He held out his hand for the letter.
Dear Madam,
In reply to your letter of yesterday we suggest that you are under some misapprehension of fact. This Society has made no payments to you under an annuity scheme, nor is your name on our books.
“—and when I told her how well it was working in my case she said it would not suit her, because she wanted to leave some money to her married son, who is in the Navy and gets very little.
And I didn’t want to bother you—in the circumstances— I mean, as you knew I had made a will in your favour—”
In short, Miss Henson had written to the Society to ask if it were true that, when she herself died, the Society would ‘keep all her money,’ so that her will would be meaningless.
Again, Bladlow kept his head. By a simple lie he would gain a little time. But only a little. For any one of a dozen benevolent reasons she might renew contact with the Society.
“I see what’s happened,” he smiled. “They’ve got their files crossed. We’ve had this trouble before. Now, on Monday, if you can spare the time, you and I will go together to the head office—”
“But you’ll be at Bournemouth—”
“Not until Wednesday. I have an important auction on Tuesday.”
“But is it true, Mr. Bladlow, that the money—that my will—?”
He could turn this question to advantage—strengthen her faith in him by merely stating what had once been true.
“Yes. I know what you will say next. Why did I encourage you to take the annuity when I knew that it made your will valueless? I can only say that in my mind your interests came first and that I—I had never associated our coming together with the idea of monetary gain to myself.”
Fear drove out self-contempt. He saw with relief that his little speech was taken at its face value.
“On Monday, then. We’ll do our business in the morning, and leave time for a leisurely lunch in the West End.” He contrived a certain awkwardness of manner. “I wonder, Miss Henson, whether—whether you will be wearing that dress you wore last Wednesday! Forgive me—I oughtn’t to have said that!”
On the way downstairs his thoughts formed the words ‘Winterbourne Manor—in the garage.’ Through his local branch he had recently bought the manor, which had been empty for nearly a year. Round it, he had built his whole plan before he reached the hall.
With a little pantomime at the telephone he prepared the ground for telling Aileen that he would be unable to join herself and Cedric at Bournemouth until Wednesday.
In a short period of clarity during a sleepless night he realised that his ethical being had been poisoned by that will, which had turned his imagination to the idea of possessing Miss Henson’s fortune. But the clarity passed and he whipped his resolution with the argument that he had to consider the greatest good for the greatest number. There was Aileen and Cedric, to say nothing of himself. As for Miss Henson, she had had four years of great happiness. She would never understand the nature of his investments on her behalf, and would believe he had cheated her. That would make her intensely miserable. She would demand the return of her property—and would fall into the hands of a crook. Her remaining years could hold nothing but stark misery.
On Saturday morning Aileen departed for Bournemouth with Cedric, after last minute instructions to the cook and housemaid concerning her husband’s comfort. Bladlow went upstairs and knocked at the door of the flat.
“My grass widowhood has just begun,” he said. “This morning I am going to inspect Winterbourne Manor. It’s an 18th century manor and, apart from that, it has some panelling on which I would very much like to have your opinion—if you have nothing better to do.”
Miss Henson seemed to be behaving oddly, almost as if she were alarmed.
“The Nefeld panels!” she murmured. “They’re quite well known.” She hesitated and he feared a lengthy disquisition. To his relief she added: “Thank you very much, Mr. Bladlow, I would be delighted.”
The manor—actually, of course, Miss Henson’s manor—stood in five acres of its own on the fringe of the suburb. When they arrived, Bladlow decided that he must waste a few minutes on the panelling. But Miss Henson hardly bestowed a glance.
“I did not know you had bought this house, Mr. Bladlow, or I would have mentioned the panels before. The fact is, I have a confession to make.” She was a little breathless about it arid inclined to be arch. “To begin at the beginning, my father tried to buy the panels. That was in 1913, when the Nefeld family fell on evil days …”
In his state of tension he could not endure one of her interminable art stories. He put his hand on her arm, which surprised her, not unpleasantly, into silence.
“If you don’t want to look at the panels, I don’t either. I have something in the garage that will interest you.”
As she did not protest, he kept hold of her arm and led her out of the house.
“The garage,” said Bladlow, “was, of course, the stables. It was converted about 1900.” He unlocked the padlock on the sliding door and entered with her. “In those early days, the car required expert attention after every run. So every private garage had to have its own observation pit.” As if absent mindedly, he closed the sliding door behind them. “As the car improved and became more reliable, the pits were filled in. But not in this case. Look!”
He stooped and removed a sufficiency of boards covering the pit. “I want to show you—, if you’ll come to the edge you’ll see what I mean—”
He shot her twice in the back, replaced the boards and relocked the garage. Late that evening he returned, bringing in his car a wheelbarrow and spade. Throughout the hours of darkness, he loaded earth on to the body, filling the pit.
He spent Sunday inside the garage. He was planing the boards getting them down to an inch below floor level. A fortnight later he procured cement and covered the boards. When this had hardened, leaving a very noticeable patch, he gradually recemented the whole of the floor of the garage.
This work was not completed for more than six weeks. In the interval his arrangements had been thorough. On the Monday morning he had called at a local Repository and instructed them to move the furniture from the flat on the following day. Miss Henson had suddenly left his house, he explained, implying a quarrel. He would pay all expenses and six months’ rent.
A quarrel. No explanation beyond that to anyone. On the premise of a quarrel, the Merthyr in his drawing-room, Miss Henson’s gift, would be an anomaly. He removed it from the wall. He would lock it up and eventually sell it—for a hundred pounds or more.
But this, on reflection, seemed rather hucksterish behaviour. After all, it had been a very personal gift—a symbol of a happy and ennobling relationship. As a gesture of respect—presumably to impress himself—he took it upstairs to the flat, to be removed with her furniture.
He went through all her possessions, found three diaries, which he destroyed. Otherwise, only a sketch-book and a litter of charcoal drawings—no letters, no documents. Miss Henson had no roots extending beyond the Bladlow family.
On Wednesday he joined his family at the hotel in Bournemouth.
“You were right,” he told Aileen. “In your absence—well, I couldn’t manage her. I’m not going to give you the details and I don’t suppose you want them. I had to be pretty firm. She said she was grossly insulted. Walked out of the house with a suitcase. Her furniture has gone—stored at Mentall’s.
“I’m glad, in a way,” said Aileen. “And, you know I was never counting on that will!”
“That will,” he said, “is in a safe at the office. Unless she definitely makes another, it will stand.”
Chapter Five
On December quarter day he paid the half-yearly instalment into
Miss Henson’s local account, taking, as usual, the bank’s receipt.
In the first few weeks there had been a dozen or so casual inquiries. He answered only that Miss Henson had left suddenly and that he did not know her address. To their own circle he explained further that, in Aileen’s absence, Miss Henson had felt herself insulted by a remark he had considered it necessary to make and had walked out of the house with a single suitcase. To this he added nothing. His very reticence suggested that the quarrel had been of an embarrassing nature. People wagged their heads contentedly. Old maids, they loved to believe, were like that sometimes.
The December quarter day ended the phase of anxiety. To the casual glance the floor of the garage bore no trace of once having been fitted with an observation pit. Since August he had stalled four prospective purchasers. He was now ready to accept the next offer. As a good business man, he had the panels removed, and was gratified to receive four hundred pounds for them from a dealer. The house was sold in January.
Mathematically, his chance of being hanged for murder, he calculated, was very substantially smaller than his chance of being killed in a road accident, a fire or shipwreck. It would be as foolish to worry about the one as about the other.
His security lay in the fact that it was nobody’s special business to inquire into the whereabouts of Miss Henson. Nobody had any recognisable interest which would justify an application to the courts to presume death. Even if some freak application were to be made he would not oppose it. He would produce the will, which gave him everything.
He had nothing to fear from the prying of an accountant. Miss Henson’s capital was intact, with a file of letters signed by herself, sanctioning his various investments. The money was, in effect, already his. He was not an ostentatious man—felt no temptation to arouse Aileen’s suspicion by flinging money about.