by Roger Bax
Geoffrey tapped his pipe out into the palm of his hand, and carefully threw the dottle overboard. “Count me in, by all means. I shan’t be out of the Service for a few months yet – you know I was on radar work, fighter direction, and I’ve been pulled in to give a course of lectures at the Staff College during the winter. A quite exceptional compliment to the R.N.V.R. As a matter of fact, I’m rather looking forward to it. After that we’ll get together. We’ll paint the town red.”
Hollison looked earnestly at his son. “You’re quite sure? If there’s anything else you want to do—”
“Well, of course,” said Geoffrey, “I’d rather like to travel ...” He saw the quick flicker of anxiety on his father’s face and repented. “It’s too bad to pull your leg, isn’t it? The fact is, I’m so cheerful today I can hardly be serious about anything. Honestly, there’s nothing else I want to do; my ideal job at the moment is just something quiet and steady like making paint.”
“Splendid,” said Hollison. “Now what about you, Arthur? I’ve missed you at the Works, you know. It seems an age since you were with us, but I’ve never forgotten how you were always turning up with new schemes. The ‘ideas’ man! We need a quick, fertile brain, particularly if we’ve got to go on squeezing permits out of civil servants.”
“You flatter me,” said Arthur. “I must say it’s very tempting.”
“There’s no need for an immediate decision, of course,” said Hollison, who had clearly made up his mind that he was going to have his own way. “Heaven knows I don’t want to worry you about it. But it’s a good chance, and there’s plenty of money in it. But perhaps you’ve got other plans?”
Arthur smiled – a faint sardonic flicker of a smile – and shook his head. “None worth talking about,” he said. He allowed honesty to get the better of him. “I feel a bit lost,” he said. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like to do a day’s hard work voluntarily. I’m flat broke, of course. Just how much money is there in this job?”
“I suggest two thousand a year,” said Hollison, “for each of you.”
Arthur sat silent. He was wondering, again, just how much money the old man had.
Geoffrey nudged him. “Come on, Arthur, it’s a living wage!”
Hollison seemed a shade bewildered. “It’s quite a lot of money, even for these days. But I’m determined that you shan’t either of you be troubled with financial worries. This is the way I look at it. From the worldly point of view, both of you have virtually sacrificed six or seven years of your lives – years when normally you’d have been making your way and building up your fortunes. We’ve got to make up for that. I’m a rich man. I was before the war, and I’ve made a lot more during the war without particularly trying – in spite of E.P.T.”
“I hope you’re ashamed of yourself,” said Geoffrey.
“Naturally – and that brings me to my last point. As you know, I’ve no one in the world except you two. All through the war I’ve been telling myself that if you survived I’d do everything I could to make it up to you when peace came.”
He paused. Arthur, on edge, lit another cigarette and ground the old stub under his heel.
“Of course,” Hollison went on, “I’m not suggesting that money will make you happy – and I’m not suggesting, either, that it would be a good thing for you to have a lot of money now – just to throw around. But I dare say both of you will be happy to feel that there’s something substantial at the back of you. So, to cut a long story short, I thought of seeing old Hetherstone this week. You’d hardly recognize him now, Geoffrey, he’s such a frail old chap. He’ll bring my will up to date. Apart from a few small bequests, you, Geoffrey, and you, Arthur, will be the beneficiaries. I don’t suppose that’ll surprise you, but I thought you’d probably like to know. Though, mind you, I’m good for a great many years yet. Well, there it is.” And Hollison leaned back against the bulkhead, as though conscious of a load off his chest and a long-planned duty performed.
A burden was rolling away from Arthur, too. Two thousand a year, with strings attached to it in the way of work, would not have helped him much. The uncertain prospect of being an ultimate beneficiary would not have been much good, either. But here was certainty – and the chance of quick returns. In a few days’ time he, Arthur Cross, would be co-heir to a considerable fortune. And if Uncle Charles died the fortune would be available right away.
As Arthur gazed across the boat at Hollison’s hairless scalp, he thought he had never seen a head that so obviously asked to be bashed in! One well-directed blow should do it nicely.
He felt much better now. His highest hopes had been realized. The thought of action, after all his anxiety and fear, strengthened him like a blood transfusion. He was going to get what he wanted, what he needed – a lot of cash, a plane to South America, and a new life. But from now on he must play his cards very carefully.
He said: “It’s really frightfully good of you, Uncle Charles. I must say I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. After all, Geoffrey’s your son, but I – well, I know you’ve always treated us the same, but I really haven’t any claim on you. Anyway, that’s all in the future – far in the future, eh, Geoffrey? And I’ll be glad to come back into the business. I’ll do the best I can. If you find I’ve lost my grip, you can always fire me. I’ll start as soon as you like.”
“I’m delighted,” said Hollison. “Then that’s all fixed. Now where are you going to live, Arthur? There are several spare rooms at home, in addition to Geoffrey’s, and you’ll be very welcome. In fact, I should be glad of the extra company. Mrs. Armstrong is a good soul, bless her heart, but she’s a bit austere. I’d like to see some life in the house – a girl or two – it’s time you young fellows were thinking about settling down, you know.”
“Give us a chance,” said Arthur. “Geoffrey, you’d better invite some Wrens over, and throw a party.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” said Hollison, beaming. “I can provide a bottle or two—”
“A port in every girl,” murmured Geoffrey, “the nautical touch.” He laughed boisterously. “Sorry!”
“So you ought to be,” said Arthur. “Oh, about the house, Uncle. I’d be glad to come along for a while, if I may, but you know I’ve a flat at Twickenham, with all my books and furniture in it. I’d like to get it back if I can. I’ve still the old hankering for a dug-out of my own.”
“Just as you like, my boy, but the house is always open to you. At least, I hope the three of us will be able to get together regularly.”
“Of course,” said Arthur.
“Well, that’s that. Now I vote we go home and get some tea,” said Hollison. “The sun’s not as hot as it was.” He sighed happily. “What a day it’s been!”
Geoffrey washed up the wine-glasses in the neat little galley, and left things ship-shape in the cabin. They climbed back into the dinghy and this time Geoffrey took the oars. As they slid away from Truant on the tide, Geoffrey found himself admiring yet again the thrusting bow and graceful flare of the yacht.
“I suppose you know,” said Arthur, “that you have an idiotic smile on your face.”
“I dare say,” said Geoffrey. “Truant is my pin-up girl.”
“What a sailor!” said Arthur.
CHAPTER II
Cross began at once to plan the murder of his uncle. He was troubled by no pangs of conscience – his conscience had died slowly, painfully, in the concentration camp, like the nerve of a rotting tooth. He felt no affection or pity for Hollison, nor any dislike. There were quite a lot of ordinary human emotions which Cross no longer shared with other people. His strongest impulse now was fear. He had watched so many people die, and he had no desire to die himself. He was going to live, and enjoy all that the world had to offer.
He did not know, of course, just how much money he would get by his uncle’s death, but he knew that Hollison had been very prosperous for many years and that he had lived modestly. There was certainly nothing luxurious about his h
ouse near Richmond; the domestic staff consisted only of the housekeeper and a girl who lived out; even Truant was hardly the luxury yacht that the old man could so easily have afforded. The fact was that Hollison had built up his business, knew the value of money, and didn’t like wasting it. So this should be a really lucrative murder.
From the very beginning Cross set himself to prepare his blueprint methodically. He had to make quite sure that he had a fool-proof plan, and then stick to it exactly. It must cover all contingencies, like the solution of a chess problem. Day after day he turned ideas over in his mind as he sat in his office down at the Works. It might be that he was taking on staff, or interviewing a buyer, or dictating a letter, but all these things were done only with the surface of his mind. When, after a week or two, he obtained possession of his flat, he began to shut himself up for hours on end, smoking and thinking. It was there, on an evening late in October, that the main outlines of the problem were sketched.
It seemed to him, as he lay sprawled on a settee three floors up in Alum Court, that one outstanding danger threatened any scheme, and must somehow be overcome before he could proceed. In whatever circumstances Uncle Charles met his death, suspicion would inevitably fall on himself and Geoffrey as the beneficiaries. And on Cross first of all, because nephews were notoriously more prone to kill rich uncles than sons rich fathers. The suspicion might be only faint, but it would colour the investigation. If the police had an unsolved murder on their hands, they would dig and probe until they found something either to justify or to destroy their suspicion. The murder, therefore, must be committed in such a way that the police would have to rule him out from the beginning. He must have an unbreakable alibi. And if Geoffrey didn’t have an alibi, so much the better. That was a possible refinement that could be considered later.
There was one expedient which Cross did not exclude without close examination. If the death could be made to appear accidental, an alibi would not be necessary. Cross pondered the possibilities of such a murder, and was not attracted by them. There were many methods, but none was reliable. Poison taken by mistake; a fall downstairs; a slip into the river from Truant’s wet deck. But to engineer such an accident would mean taking great risks. Poisons were difficult to get and tricky to handle; and there was always an expert witness to say that a particular injury could hardly have been caused by a fall. Cross considered many alternatives, and finally decided to reject this approach altogether.
So back to the alibi. In real life, as in crime stories, faked alibis always seemed to come to grief in the end. And an alibi that went wrong would be far worse than none at all. Those delicate manipulations of watches and clocks, for instance. ... Cross decided at once that he would have nothing to do with that sort of thing.
What, he asked himself, were the qualities that made up a good faked alibi? First of all, of course, the time of death would have to be established within narrow limits – and arrangements would have to be made to see that it was so established. That should be fairly simple.
Then there must be good witnesses. They must be disinterested; they must be reasonably normal people, not eccentrics; they must be sober at the time, and in good mental health. And there must be at least two of them, for safety.
They must be able to swear that they were with the suspect throughout the period during which the murder could have been committed. ... No, that was impossible with a phoney alibi, since the murder had to be committed, and there must, therefore, be a period, however brief, when they would have to admit that they were not with the suspect. Unless, of course, they could be persuaded by some device that the suspect had never left their presence. Cross’s thoughts floated away into the realms of fantasy for a moment or two, and then jerked back to realities.
Put the thing another way! The period of the murder – the few minutes of crucial danger to the whole structure – must be covered by the absolute knowledge of the witnesses – not belief, but knowledge – that the brief absence of the suspect occurred so far from the scene of the crime that the absentee could not possibly have had anything to do with it. A five-minutes’ absence, say, could safely take place at a spot half an hour or so from the scene of the murder by the quickest route.
To establish the perfect alibi, therefore, it was necessary somehow to give two normally intelligent and honest witnesses the unshakable conviction that they and the suspect were in one place, when, in fact, they were in another.
Cross was pleased with the neat logic of that proposition, and had a whisky on the strength of it. But as a practical step it got him no further. He ran a nervous hand through his hair. If only he could have had a couple of hours with Mussfeld, his old chess partner at the camp. Mussfeld, sitting back with his steel-rimmed glasses up on his forehead and a looted Havana between his thick lips, would have worked something out in no time. Odd how easy it had been to kill thousands of people, Cross reflected, and how risky it was to kill one. His thoughts were off on an old track now, and the lines deepened in his dissolute face.
On and off, for the best part of a fortnight, Cross chewed over this problem of the alibi. Unless he could solve it, there seemed no sense in going on with his plans. The need for speed was urgent, but there was no sense in courting one danger to escape another. There must be an answer. It was a straightforward enough question – how to be in two places at once? Just a problem in logistics!
What would convince an ordinary sensible person that he was somewhere where he was not? And not merely an ordinary person, but the sceptical police? Surely only some very substantial material thing – something very much more than suggestion. Not just the evidence of the senses – it wouldn’t be enough for the witness to say “I know I was there because I heard something” – like a factory hooter or a tram bell. There was too much room for honest error. Or “I smelt something” – like a brewery, or wet timber, or a bonfire. These things wouldn’t identify a place with sufficient certainty to save a man’s neck. The only sense that juries took much account of was the sense of sight. The witness must be able to say “I know I was there because I saw”. A particular neon light, perhaps, or a building, or the name of a fish-shop. But how could a witness be made to see something which wasn’t there? A murderer could hardly be expected to erect a neon light or open a fish-shop specially for the occasion. Or could he? At least no one would ever suspect him of having done it. Cross was groping vaguely, but was there not the germ of an idea here? Camouflage. Many a bomb-aimer had released his bombs on to a dummy target, and been convinced that he had demolished his objective. If a familiar scene could somehow be transformed ...
This central problem, the foundation of the whole enterprise, proved the most difficult of all to overcome. The answer came to Cross by accident one afternoon when he was out on the business of the firm, and it came because the soil of his mind was fertile. Uncle Charles had bought for his use – though nominally it was the firm’s property – an almost new Vauxhall 14, and Cross had driven over to Epsom to see a client who lived at a place called Mulberry Drive. He had a lot of trouble finding the place, and twice stopped passers-by to ask the way. Finally he turned into the road to which he had been directed only to find, to his extreme annoyance, that it was called Acacia Drive.
He drew up by the kerb, and waited for a young woman to overtake him. He caught a glimpse of her in the driving-mirror, and saw that she was pretty and desirable. He thought he might kill two birds with one stone. He opened the car door as she approached and called out: “Excuse me, but can you tell me where Mulberry Drive is? I seem to be going round in circles.”
“This is Mulberry Drive,” said the girl, smiling.
“But it says Acacia Drive.”
“I know. The name’s been changed. There’s an Acacia Lane on the other side of the hill and people got mixed up. They haven’t got around to changing the name-plate yet, that’s all. There’ve been a lot of complaints.”
“Thanks very much,” said Cross. He held the door open. “Can I giv
e you a lift?”
“No, thanks – I live quite near.” Cross watched her walk away with regret. After all, there were things in life besides murder.
Even then the seed nearly failed to germinate. It was thinking about the girl again, late that same evening, that took his mind back to Mulberry Drive. And suddenly, in a flash, he had the answer to his problem.
If he and his two hypothetical witnesses had been in that road that afternoon, and had not talked to anyone, they would certainly have believed that they were in Acacia Drive. People naturally believed they were in the street which was named on the plate at the corner of the street. If two people were to swear in court that at a certain time they were in a certain street, which they had identified by the name-plate, the jury would accept their testimony.
If only it were possible to alter the name-plate of a street!
Over supper in the comfortable restaurant on the ground-floor of Alum Court – the block where he lived – Cross took the problem a little further. This new idea might seem fanciful at first, but the more fantastic a plan was, the less likely was it that it would occur to the police. Who would ever imagine that in order to commit a murder a criminal would temporarily change the name of a street? Provided there was no material evidence, the thought would never occur to anyone. It was a brilliant scheme, a stroke of genius!
There remained the technical difficulty, and it might prove insuperable. Even with a car it would be most difficult and dangerous to detach and re-fix a couple of street name-plates, and to carry them about unobserved. It might be possible to make and substitute a dummy, instead of exchanging two existing ones, but it would still be necessary to do a lot of work actually in the street. And it would be fatal to be seen, for the whole point would be to make sure that no one knew the change had been made. Besides, not all name-plates were accessible. Some were high up on walls, though they varied from district to district.