Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1)

by Ormerod, Roger

  Of course, I didn’t know he’d been guilty of embezzlement. In fact, I’d at first refused to accept it. But even if he had, surely it wouldn’t have been as simple as a direct transfer from a Fellowes and Simple account to five of his own, even in assumed names. It had all happened seven years before. Such an amateur arrangement would have been ferreted out years ago.

  It was obvious that I had to know more about this. My future actions depended entirely on how firmly I could hold down my conscience and proceed with a firm moral stance.

  I needed to see and study the bank statements on all these accounts for the past seven years. And I had an idea where I might find them.

  The door crashed open. Startled, I turned. Cornel stood there in his crouched Kojak stance, arms extended in a double-handed grip that was recognized as being most accurate with a Colt Magnum. But this was smaller. Still a pistol, but smaller.

  ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’ he shouted.

  ‘For God’s sake, Nell’ I said, trying to keep my voice down. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing? Shut the door, you fool, and give me that thing.’

  He did the one with his foot, and tossed me the gun. I caught it gingerly. He went and sat down, well away from me, abruptly silenced by the tone in my voice.

  I looked at it in my hand. It wasn’t a toy or a replica. It was real. I knew enough to be able to get out the magazine. It was full. I drew back the slide. Chamber empty. From the size of it and the small cartridges I guessed it was one of the hand pistols that women in the USA were beginning to tuck away in their shoulder bags. They were supposed not to be lethal, unless you got a vital spot, only painful. Discouraging. For a moment I wondered which vital spot Nel most cherished.

  I put it away in my shoulder bag, in two separate parts.

  ‘How did you manage to smuggle it in?’ I asked wearily.

  ‘Easy. The camera — I got it second-hand. It’s an old ’un, useta take glass plates. Can y’ imagine! But it’s got a metal body, and the gun goes inside. Don’t show on X-rays, see.’

  ‘Do you know what you were risking?’ I asked. ‘Just carrying a gun here, Nel — even if you’ve got a licence to own it — just carrying it could land you in the bin till your teeth rotted out of your gums. God, you are a fool. What’m I going to do with you, Nel? What?’

  He looked as though teacher had rapped his knuckles with a ruler. I sighed. He was hopeless.

  ‘Thought things could get tough,’ he admitted. ‘I did it for you, baby.’

  The idea of Nel hanging around when things got tough, and shooting little holes in people, was so fantastic that I nearly laughed. Or choked.

  ‘The situation’s not like that,’ I told him. ‘It’s all legal stuff. Calm and dignified. And you know how I hate violence.’

  For a hollow laugh, repeat that little speech to Oliver Simpson.

  ‘I wanted to help.’

  ‘I know you did, Nel. And I appreciate it. But you’re out of your depth here. The law’s different, the police are different, and quite frankly I’m different.’

  ‘Look like your usual lovely self, kiddo.’ He got to his feet and started moving around. It was something he had to do, in case one end of all that jumble of bonework lost touch with what the other end was doing. ‘So why don’tcha tell poppa all about it, an’ I’ll do some non-violent helping? Eh? What d’ya say? An’ it’s no good ringin’ down for a bourbon on the rocks, I tried it. Don’t they spikka da English in this dumb town?’

  ‘I wasn’t about to ring down for anything, Nel. I’ll bring you up-to-date, and then you can go out on the town and look for a topcoat long enough. What d’you say, pardner?’

  ‘They take American Express?’

  ‘Brother, they’ll take anything.’

  He sat again, this time beside me on the bed. I told him everything. He has that effect, like a psychiatrist. People tell him things. He has an intent way of listening, not just to the words but to the mood behind them, and their meaning way behind that. I told him the lot, producing the painting and the watch and the signet ring.

  ‘And Nel,’ I finished, this last in not much more than a whisper, ‘I’ve got this feeling — I’m convinced — he’s still alive, waiting for a sign, for something, from me. Is that very foolish and naïve of me?’

  It had taken a long while. He hadn’t said one word, hadn’t even nodded at me, but I knew he’d absorbed every word. Now he got to his feet. Something, I knew, had to be said face to face. He pointed a finger at me.

  ‘Now you lissen’a me,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to kid me you’ve gone all sentimental and floppy round the gills. I know you, Phillie. Through and through. An’ don’t try an’ tell me it’s all imagination. Look at it. Look at it head on, an’ with what’s been thrown at y’ and shoved under y’r nose, of course you’ve got to thinkin’ he’s still alive.’

  I noticed the vernacular was slipping a little. He couldn’t concentrate on it when he went all serious and sincere. This gives him away. I nodded, something in my throat stopping me from saying anything.

  He smiled his face-cracking smile. ‘And — correct me if I’m wrong, Phillie — the real clincher, the proof that’s really set you back on your heels, was that damn limey copper showing you how it couldn’t have been murder. Am I right? You bet y’r life I’m right. And…’ He stabbed the finger at me in case I wasn’t getting every word. ‘And because the guy behind the wheel hadda been driving it, then y’ reckon he couldn’a bin your Graham. You reckon, kiddo?’ It was slipping again.

  ‘I reckon just that.’

  ‘You betcha. Now… I’m goin’ to ask you to believe this, Phillie, though you’re gonna haveta take a deep breath… I ain’t in this for every dollar in sight. You get my meaning? I guess you thought I’d come flyin’ over that bloody great lake just ’cause you told me about the spendin’ money. Right? It’s natural. I always had an eye for it. But I’m askin’ you to believe that ain’t so. I’m askin’ you to believe your Nel Schmidt, your partner, came wingin’ in here to help you get it right. To straighten you out, cherub, an’ get you back to your desk all rarin’ to go. An’ to hell with the dollars. That’s what I say. You gettin’ this, sweetheart?’

  ‘From Bogart, it sounds real good to me.’

  ‘You’re ribbin’ me.’

  ‘No Nel. Strange to say, I believe what you say. You want to help. So okay. But how, Nel? How can you possibly help?’

  ‘I hadda get that clear before I told you how. Because when I tell you the next bit you’re like as not goin’ to assume it’s ’cause I’ve got green dollars floatin’ in my eyes. An’ that’s not true. I’m going to tell it for your own good and your peace of mind.’

  That sounded a bit ominous to me. I drew a deep breath. ‘Say it, Nel. Say it.’

  ‘What would you say if I told you I could explain how that guy in the car could’ve been murdered, and how he needn’t have been driving it?’

  He was offering me the chance to bury Graham. I managed to speak steadily.

  ‘I would say that it hadn’t crossed your mind that it would help save my life insurance money, which, at today’s price would be 158,000 dollars or so, and that if Graham’s satisfactorily dead, I’ll be happy to go back to New York with you, to hold your hand during the flight. You never gave it a thought.’

  ‘Ya got it.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t go back, you know. If you can prove he was killed, then I couldn’t rest until I’d found out who’d done it.’

  ‘That’s my gal!’ he said, rather to my surprise. ‘One step at a time. I tell you this, then we set to and find out who cooled him.’

  ‘Say it then, Nel. Then go out and buy yourself a raincoat.’

  He paced a bit more, paused to light a cigarette. Stared at it, then went on.

  ‘Here it is, then. Say I want to terminate you. Imagine it. I tap you on the head and drive you up that crappy old lane unconscious, an’ I get as far as that gate. I gotta imagine this, see. From
what you told me. Daren’t drive inside ’cause of the slope. Sudden-like. I can see it. But me, in that car, I don’t have to imagine it ’cause I know it. So I’ve come prepared. I’ve got some of that thick nylon rope with me. Thicker’n that stuff your Mr Plod was usin’. I loop it round the bumper of somethin’ at the back…’

  ‘There was a tow-bar,’ I said softly, holding my breath.

  ‘Right. Great. Y’re with me. An’ I loop it round a tree or one of the gate posts or both. But loop it, see. Not tie it to the auto. Loop. Give myself a bit of play. Then I can get in an’ drive it inside, till the rope’s tight, and…heh, you reckon it’d got recliners?’

  ‘It had reclining seats, Nel. It was my car. Remember?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Well…you recline the driver’s an’ wriggle inta the back. Then you recline the other an’ slide him across…’

  ‘A moment or two ago it was you doing it. Now it’s me.’

  ‘Either of us. Anybody. You ain’t listenin’.’

  ‘I am. Every word.’

  ‘Right. So you get him across behind the wheel. Rig the flamin’ seat belt, if that’s how y’ want it, unrecline both seats, an’ get outside. Then y’ got the car to grab hold of and work your way round to the rope an’ pull yourself up to the lane. Then all you’ve gotta do is cut the rope and the car slides away an’ the rope comes away in y’r hands. There — what d’you think?’

  He expected a direct and immediate reply. He had just shown me how my husband could have been killed — by either sex. He had just removed my precious belief that he might be alive. And he had done it after two minutes of thought when I, even with a length of nylon rope draped around me, hadn’t seen it. That, in itself, was humiliating. I nodded dumbly.

  ‘You make it sound very convincing,’ I admitted.

  ‘Always at your service, baby.’

  Baby! I could have killed him. ‘So will you please — now — go and buy yourself something suitable for the weather, and leave me to do some thinking.’

  He grinned, flapped his arms, and walked out, leaving the door swinging open. Sighing, I went and shut it.

  Some thinking! All I had to cling to now was the possibility that the man in the car wasn’t Graham, and that Graham was therefore unarguably a murderer. This could have been his final and positive method of laundering the money, that it should be transferred to me, and that he should later join me and help me to enjoy it. Which would make me — what? I didn’t know the proper legal description, but clearly it would carry a long term inside Holloway. Lovely.

  I went to stand at the window, watching the light finally fade and the streetlights flick on, watching the homegoers plodding the wet pavements. And every third man held his head like Graham, his shoulders like him, walked like him, dressed like him. Was him.

  I turned away, but the room, too, held him, if only in spirit. The painting taunted me, the ring, the watch. His presence was positive. I locked them away, but he was still in the room with me.

  Turn around, Philipa, I’m right behind you.

  In desperation, I went down to the lounge and ordered a pot of tea. With my back to the wall, he couldn’t be behind me, but my head jerked up whenever anybody entered.

  It was almost a relief when Catriona Steele came in and walked straight to my table.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  8

  I nodded, and tried my smile to see whether it would still operate. ‘Not at all.’

  She drew up a chair and tucked in her skirt. Completely at ease, confident, she illuminated that rather dingy lounge.

  ‘I think we ought to get together and have a little chat,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

  Not particularly, I thought. ‘Why not?’ I agreed. ‘I’ll order some more tea, and some sticky cakes.’

  ‘Hardly. I have to watch…you know.’

  Complete nonsense, of course. She was slim, about twenty, with a figure that ensured it’d get all the watching it needed. Now that I could get a good look at her, I saw she was really quite beautiful, and sensibly hadn’t taken much trouble to adorn it. Her dark hair seemed to lie naturally in exactly the correct shape to frame her elfin, almost pert face. She wore no eye make-up; those large blue eyes would shame it. No lipstick: the shape was perfect and the line needed no emphasis. All this was rising from a smooth column of neck. She had every reason to sail through life with confidence.

  There had been only one tiny flaw in the whole presentation, her voice. There was a definite bite behind it, and a slight slur that indicated she could slip easily into offensive sarcasm. I’d once wasted a vast amount of time and effort on a female client very like this, top executive material when you considered her brilliant intellect and her experience. But nobody wanted to work with her. They felt she was poised for attack every second, and they didn’t dare to venture a word in case she construed it as a slight.

  Catriona Steele was on the defensive. Perhaps her name was too easily shortened to Cat. She purred, but flexed her claws.

  At the moment I was getting the purr. She was determined to be friendly, in spite of herself. Because, make no mistake about it, she would know her own weaknesses fully, would hate them, but couldn’t control them.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘You have to watch your you know. Me too. But…and have you noticed this? …the more you watch things, the more they catch you out.’

  I’d guessed correctly. My phrasing had been deliberately intended to present a chance of misinterpretation. Which she dived headlong into. Her eyes flashed, that dainty mouth hardened. Then she controlled it.

  ‘I’ll bow to your experience,’ she said. ‘Heaven knows I need some advice.’

  I assumed this was a desperate change of subject. Squeezing the last drop of tea from the pot, I asked, ‘In what way?’

  ‘The situation. The background information. I’m completely confused, and I’ve got to admit it. Completely.’ She lifted her chin. It’d taken an effort to admit that.

  ‘We’re talking about Graham?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Our Graham?’

  ‘In so far as you could say we shared him.’

  ‘Did we? I didn’t know that at the time.’ My impression had been that I’d shared him with a drawerful of cosmetics.

  ‘Not in your time, of course.’

  ‘So you know what was my time?’ I asked equably. This was my interrogation procedure. No direct eye contact, in case it was taken as a challenge. Let the client do the work. Except that she wasn’t my client. I was determined not to ask what she had actually been.

  ‘I know that you were married to him when you were at Fellowes and Simple. I know that you lived with him at his cottage.’

  ‘Married people do,’ I murmured.

  She swept on, almost breathless. ‘And I know that you deserted him over three years ago. Left the firm, and went to America.’

  ‘Deserted? Strange word. I left him, yes. Shall we say we were incompatible.’

  ‘Another strange word. Incompatible. How could anybody be incompatible with Graham? He was sweet and charming, and full of life. And clever…no, brilliant. Always thoughtful, always kind. How anybody could…’ She shook her head, the hair dancing, her eyes bright.

  ‘You knew him well, then?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you do know that after I left him, another woman moved in?’

  ‘Oh yes. He told me everything. Everything.’

  ‘Anna Treadgold?’

  ‘Yes. Anna. I’ve seen her here. Don’t you just hate her?’

  ‘Not particularly. Life has played her a few dirty tricks.’

  ‘She didn’t love him. Couldn’t have done.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re in a position to discuss that.’

  ‘You might not be, but I am.’

  And determined to do so. I had to put a stop to all that. ‘I think you ought to know,’ I said, ‘that I’ve come back to England in order to settle his estate, no
t to sort out his love life.’

  ‘Then you’re the one I’ve got to see, to ask. I knew you’d be able to help me.’

  I sighed. One mention of Graham’s estate, and we’d hit the nub of it. ‘Help you in what way?’

  ‘Tell me what’s in it. The estate, they call it, these lawyers, as though it’s a great chunk of land with houses on it. How very quaint. But what it all comes down to is the money he’s left. That’s where you can help me.’

  There was no doubt she would always go directly to her objective. No messing about with social niceties.

  ‘And you think I’d discuss that?’ How gently I said it!

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  ‘Why? You should ask why. I ask you why. Why do you want to know? I mean, you’ve mentioned a close relationship with Graham, but there’re two of us between you and the estate. And,’ I went on steadily when she separated her dainty lips, ‘each of us with a prior claim. You have no claim on the estate, nor any right to know what it consists of.’ So there, I thought. Answer that one.

  She did. ‘Oh, you are being difficult. I need to know.’

  ‘Can you tell me why?’

  ‘If the money’s not there, I can go home and forget it.’

  ‘And forget Graham?’

  ‘How can I ever do that!’

  This, fortunately, didn’t seem to be a question. ‘Suppose you tell me all about it,’ I suggested.

  ‘You mean…you don’t know about us?’

  She spoke with complete and genuine astonishment. Their love affair, which was what she meant, would have shouted itself aloud from the treetops, or rooftops, wherever it’d been conducted, blaring its joyous message even across the Atlantic. Really she was emotionally immature, not yet too distant from her teens.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been abroad.’

  She bit her lip, her eyes huge. ‘I met him in Leicester Square, by that statue of Charlie Chaplin…’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. She’d begun it like an intended saga. ‘Would you go back a bit? I mean, the money’s been mentioned. You’re the daughter of Archer Steele…’ I left it there. She ought to be able to take it on, I thought.