“What can they afford?”
“The money they paid to me, and to you. I didn’t refuse my share, and I notice that you didn’t either.”
I stubbed out my cigarette. “Once and for all, Mrs. Meakin,” I said, “I will not have you making these insinuations. Northburn Films has done nothing that is not perfectly above board and legal. That claim…”
She interrupted me. “Both policies, yours and mine,” she said, “depended on certain conditions. To qualify, Bob’s death had to take place when he was in the employment of your company, and not to be due to any previous illness or weakness of Bob’s. Do you agree?”
“Certainly I do. There is no dispute about any of those things. The coroner went out of his way to emphasize that Bob was in perfect health…”
She smiled. “Oh, I know all that,” she said. “The only thing is—he was not, strictly speaking, in the employment of Northburn Films when he died.”
“He was not—what?” This really astounded me. Then I remembered the scribbling pad in Bob’s dressing room, and I felt cold with fright. Could it be that Sonia Meakin was right? I became aware that she was still talking.
“Bob was really upset by Fiametta Fettini, you know. He told me that she was simply using him to bolster up an unsavory publicity campaign of her own, and he had already made up his mind to walk out if she made another scene, whether or not it meant breaking his contract. I warned him that you’d sue him for thumping damages, but he said, ‘They haven’t the money for a law suit. They’re practically broke already.’ Between ourselves, he’d had a very good offer from Superba Films to star in the musical of Oedipus Rex.” Sonia Meakin leaned across the table toward me, speaking softly but with immense conviction. “Mr. Croombe-Peters, I spent the last night of Bob’s life with him, in the Mount Street house, and the whole of the next morning. He told me he’d made up his mind. He said he’d only managed to keep his temper and get through the previous day’s shooting by sitting in his dressing room drafting his letter of resignation to Sam Potman. I know all this, you see. That’s why there can’t be any question of a forgery.”
“A forgery of what?”
Sonia Meakin looked straight at me. “Margery Phipps,” she said, “showed me a letter, or rather a draft note in Bob’s handwriting. She said she found it in his dressing room. It was an unequivocal letter of resignation. Something about not liking to break a contract, but that it had become impossible to work under the sort of conditions that had arisen, and so forth. The letter is dated August 15th, and on top of it Bob had scribbled, ‘This is a copy of my letter to Sam Potman.’ I need hardly point out to you that it was on August 16th that Bob died.”
I lit a cigarette. I kept reminding myself that there was no need to panic. When I spoke, I tried hard to keep my voice very calm.
“Mrs. Meakin,” I said, “I can quite understand your anxiety, but I can assure you that it is unfounded. Margery Phipps evidently got hold of the draft which your husband told you he had written the day before he died. But there is no reason to suppose that he actually wrote out a fair copy and handed it to Mr. Potman. If he had, Mr. Potman would have said so.”
“Would he?” The cool blue eyes looked at me contemptuously.
Ignoring this, I went on. “I think I can tell you what must have happened. I have no doubt that Mr. Meakin was angry and upset, as you say, and may have decided to walk out on us. He might even have written the letter, intending to deliver it to Sam Potman during the afternoon. But I can testify personally as to what happened. When Bob arrived at the location, there was a—a little scene with Fiametta, which obviously fanned his resentment to a boiling point. However, Sam Potman and Biddy Brennan can be extraordinarily persuasive when they try, and my guess is that they calmed Bob down to such an extent that he thought better of delivering his note. After all,” I concluded reasonably, “the moment Mr. Potman received that note, he would have suspended shooting and had a talk with Bob and…”
I became uncomfortably aware of the steady gaze of the blue eyes, and found myself floundering for words. There was a moment of silence, while I tried to sort my tongue out from my ganglia, and then Sonia Meakin said, “You are a very brave man, Mr. Croombe-Peters.”
“What do you mean?” I had seldom felt less brave.
“You are banking on the fact that even if that draft letter fell into the hands of the insurance company they would take no action but would allow the claims to stand. You are so confident that you are prepared to risk the possibility that someone—maybe the police, maybe a relative of the Phipps girl—will find it in her flat and put two and two together. You are absolutely confident that, in a court of law, you could demolish the validity of that letter, and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Bob was still in the employment of Northburn Films when…”
“I’m reasonably confident that I could, yes,” I said. “I certainly won’t be intimidated into…”
Sonia Meakin gave what sounded exactly like a genuine sigh of relief. “Oh, well,” she said, “if you really feel like that, then I needn’t worry, need I? After all, we’re both in this together. Either both our insurance claims stand or they both fall. I have seen and handled that letter. I know that it is in Bob’s handwriting, and I know that it is in Margery Phipps’s flat. I even know where to look for it, and I doubt whether the police have found it. But since you’re convinced that it’s of no importance at all, then I can relax; how wonderful.” She smiled dazzlingly at me. She was like someone who has consulted an expert on a torturing problem and been reassured that there are no grounds for anxiety. Her sudden switch to my point of view made me extremely uneasy. I had been putting up a bluffing defense to what I thought was attempted blackmail. Now, for the first time, it occurred to me that what she had said was true. We were both in it together. None of us could sleep easily until that letter was destroyed. The insurance company would certainly take action, and even if we won, the law suit would cripple us.
It was at that moment that I realized that Sonia Meakin herself had provided the solution to the problem. It was she who had pointed out that, as a friend and companion of Henry Tibbett, I would have a good chance of bluffing my way back into that apartment and finding the letter for myself. There was no need, I told myself, to make any sort of fuss. Once I had got rid of this tiresome woman, I would go quietly to Chelsea Mansions, get the key from the porter, and all would be simple. Except, of course, that I had no idea where the miserable letter was hidden.
“I dare say,” said Sonia Meakin softly, “that you think I am a very silly woman to get so worried; but then, perhaps you don’t know what it means to me.”
“I can guess,” I said.
She stood up. “Thank you for a very nice cup of coffee, Mr. Croombe-Peters,” she said. “The letter is on top of the curtain valance over the kitchen window.”
“The kitchen window!” My exclamation was involuntary, and I could have cut my tongue out for allowing it to escape. Sonia Meakin gave me a curious, cool look.
“Yes,” she said. “The kitchen window. Good-bye, Mr. Croombe-Peters. And thank you. You have saved me so much trouble.”
She turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving me to pay the bill. As a matter of fact, I hardly noticed her leave. My head was full of this new idea. If Margery’s cache of incriminating documents—or even some of them—had been kept in that particular hiding place, then her death became very much more understandable. Climbing up onto that narrow sill to get something, slipping, the window unlatched, flying open—for the first time, it all made sense. Then I remembered the forged suicide note. If it really was forged, if Henry Tibbett was not barking up the wrong tree with typically ham-handed enthusiasm, if, if…
I pulled myself together. All this was pure speculation, and meanwhile there was work to be done, and quickly. I paid the bill and went out into the street.
There was no sign of Sonia Meakin. King’s Road, Chelsea, was milling with its usual evening throng, a mixtur
e of well-to-do residents hurrying home from work, and dissipated beats crawling out into the evening sunshine to start their night’s career. I was glad to turn off into the comparative peace of Flaxman Avenue. I walked the few hundred yards up its shady pavement, and arrived at the main entrance of Chelsea Mansions.
My luck was in. The foyer was busy, for, as I have indicated, it was the hour when late-comers returning from work tend to collide in the hall with early diners-out; but I spotted the porter who had the key.
The porter was poring over some sort of a register of parcels received for residents, but he straightened at once when I spoke to him—from his general smartness and turn-out, I had already written him down as an ex-NCO—and he saluted respectfully and asked what I wanted. It was all most reassuring. I reminded him that I had called earlier in the day with Chief Inspector Tibbett, and he replied that he remembered me very well. I then said, with as much plausibility as I could muster, that I was sorry to bother him, but that the Chief Inspector had left a document behind in the apartment, and had asked me to drop in and collect it for him, so if I might have the keys for a few minutes?
He made no bones at all about it, the splendid fellow. No awkward questions or hesitations. He grinned, said, “Certainly, sir,” produced the keys, saluted me again, and remarked that if by any chance he should have gone off duty when I came down, I should leave the keys with his colleague. It was all absurdly easy, and I think I whistled a little to myself as I waited for the lift.
Margery Phipps’s flat looked exactly as it had done after lunch, except that the low-slanting westward sun was now gilding the windows and throwing its rosy fingers of light into the living room, giving a pinky-gold tinge to the white carpet. The whole effect was, I suppose, very attractive; but I was in no mood to hang about. I made straight for the kitchen, pulled out the stool, and climbed onto it. I am not very tall—about the same height as Margery had been—and even from the stool I could not see up onto the top of the valance board. I had to stand on tiptoe and run my hand along the dusty board to find whatever might be there. Twice I felt carefully all along the length of the window. There appeared to be nothing up there at all, and the thickness of the dust and dirt did not suggest that the valance had recently been used as a shelf. At the third attempt, however, my fingers came into contact with something at the very furthermost end—a piece of paper. I had just managed to get a grip on it without overbalancing onto the electric stove when I heard a key turning in the front door lock.
I froze into immobility. So far as I knew, only the management of the block of flats had access to the apartment. Surely, I told myself in desperation, this must be some porter dropping in for a routine check, or to read the meters, or—my invention failed. I could not imagine why anybody should possibly want to enter the apartment for any legitimate reason. I tried to keep my head. Whoever it was and whatever they wanted, there was no particular reason why they should come into the kitchen. If I stayed perfectly still, I might remain undetected.
The front door closed quietly behind the newcomer, and I heard footsteps coming into the living room. Then came the unmistakeable sounds of a search. Drawers were being opened and closed, books pulled out from shelves, papers sorted. The person, whoever it was, moved quietly and without hurry. I tried to stop breathing, horribly aware that my heartbeats sounded like a drum tattoo, at least in my own ears.
My head was in such a position that I was gazing down through the window into the street, but such was my absorption in my own predicament that it was several minutes before I registered a curious fact. I was, in fact, looking straight down onto the façade of the New Forum Cinema. So Biddy had not only been in Chelsea but very close to Chelsea Mansions when Margery died.
I suppose it was the fact that my mind was diverted onto this fresh line of thought that made me relax my concentration for a moment. Anyhow, just at the moment when the search next door was drawing to a close, and I was beginning to feel that the intruder would surely beat a retreat, a bit of fluff got up my nose, and before I knew what I was doing I sneezed loudly.
For a moment there was dead silence. Then purposeful footsteps came toward the kitchen door, and a very determined voice said, “ ’O’s that? Come out at once, if you please.”
I knew who it was before the door opened and the shabby black hat came accusingly around it. “Mrs. Arbuthnot!” I said.
She stood there, looking up at me. I felt a considerable fool, perched on a kitchen stool, faced by this small, relentless figure. Mrs. Arbuthnot was grasping an umbrella in a menacing sort of way, and I felt that tact and charm were called for if I was to extricate myself undamaged. Unfortunately I could think of nothing to say. We eyed each other with mutual suspicion for some moments.
“Well,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot at last, “so you know my name, eh? Most interesting. Now, if I may be so bold, who the hell are you and how did you get in ’ere?”
It was clear that Mrs. Arbuthnot scorned the use of either tact or charm, and it suddenly occurred to me that attack might be the best form of defense. My conversation with Henry Tibbett had put me in a strong position with regard to inside information on my opponent.
“I think, Mrs. Arbuthnot,” I said, as suavely as I could manage, “it is you rather than I who should explain what you are doing here.”
I made a move to come down from the stool, but she foiled it with a quick jab of her umbrella, which caught me painfully in the calf. “You stay where you are,” she said savagely. “Don’t think you can come that on me. This is my daughter’s flat and I’m ’er sole heir and I’ve got me own key. I’ve got every right to be here, not like some.”
Well, of course, I had to admit the force of her argument, but having committed myself to the policy of attack, there was nothing for it but to follow it up. “It so happens,” I said with cool dignity, “that I am working with Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett of the C.I.D. I understand that you know him.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot snorted. “Tibbett!” she said. “About as much use as a sick headache. He knows as well as I do that Margery copped it. Someone did her in, that’s what, but Mr. High-and-Mighty Tibbett is too busy to worry. Oh, yes. And what about me, that’s what I want to know?”
“Did Inspector Tibbett give you permission to come to this apartment?” I asked. I began to ease myself slowly down from the stool.
“Did ’e you?” she riposted.
“I was here with him this afternoon,” I said. “You can check with the porter.”
This seemed to impress her. She made another jab with the umbrella, but it was half-hearted and ineffectual. I managed to lower myself to the floor without further let or hindrance.
“I’ve more right to be here than you,” she said, but I could tell from the surly and slightly whining note in her voice that she had moved onto the defensive. I decided to press home my advantage.
“You must realize, Mrs. Arbuthnot,” I said, “that we in the police force have to be careful. After all, your long association with the late Mr. Arbuthnot—or should I say James Boswell—hardly qualifies you to be regarded as one hundred percent trustworthy by ordinary decent citizens.”
This went home, all right. She turned and snarled at me. “Bloody perlicemen,” she said, making what looked like an obscene gesture with her umbrella. “All alike. Prying nosey-parkers, busybodies…” and so on, a lot more in the same vein. But the great thing was that she no longer questioned either my identity or my right to be in Margery’s apartment. I felt, I must say, justifiably pleased with myself. Intelligence, after all, will always triumph over mere cunning, however unpromising the circumstances.
I cut short the stream of abuse to say sharply, “And now, I should like an explanation of what you are doing here.”
She gave me a scowl and said, “I’ve every right. I’m the legal heir. The solicitor said so.”
“You were looking for something.”
“What if I was?”
“What was it?”
; “None of your business.”
“Did you find it?”
Mrs. Arbuthnot’s thin mouth clamped into a stubborn line. “I’m saying no more. It’s none of your business.”
“Mrs. Arbuthnot, you seem to think that your daughter was murdered. You may be right. We are investigating the case. We can’t do it if you don’t co-operate with us.” I had switched to what I hoped was a convincing imitation of Tibbett in one of his beguiling moods, but I seemed to lack his touch. She remained uncharmed, merely shaking her head so that the dusty black feathers in her hat quivered in the sunset and said, “I’m saying nothing.”
I decided to have one more try. “If you will do nothing to help me in my inquiries,” I said coldly, “I shall have to get in touch with Inspector Tibbett and…”
“That won’t be necessary,” said a voice from the doorway. I looked up breathless with horror. Henry Tibbett was standing there. He did not look amused.
“I was just…” I began.
Tibbett ignored me, and addressed himself to Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Good evening, Mrs. Arbuthnot,” he said, “I see that you have met Mr. Croombe-Peters.”
“Yes, I ’ave, and I can tell you I’ve got as much right to be here as he has.”
“You have every right,” said Henry gravely. “If Mr. Croombe-Peters said you hadn’t, he was mistaken. All that I have asked of you, as you know, is that you shouldn’t remove any of your daughter’s possessions without my permission. That’s clear, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Arbuthnot looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Inspector,” she said.
I could not resist putting in a word. “She was searching for something, Tibbett,” I said. “I heard her. She…”
“Well,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot with an air of finality, “I’ll be getting along then.”
She shot me a look brimful of malice, and directed her quivering hat out through the front door. Henry and I looked at each other. There was a lengthy pause.
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