Smallbone Deceased

by Michael Gilbert

  'Goodness,' said Miss Cornel, 'he's got an Italian residence as well.'

  'I expect he has,' said Mrs Tasker. A remarkable man, Mr Smallbone. The things he's got in that room of his, you'd be surprised. Valuable. But there, I have to get in to dust over them.' With this remark, which seemed to be in part an excuse and in part an explanation, Mrs Tasker drew a key from the mysteries of her upper garment and unlocked the door.

  The contents of the room were certainly unexpected. Round three of the walls stood glass-fronted cases containing coins, medals, a few cameos and intaglios, and a number of objects which looked like large fishbones. On top of the cases, and on shelves which stood out from them were rows of statuettes, figurines and uninspiring clay pots of the dimmer shades of umber and burnt sienna.

  'Where on earth does the man sit down?'

  'He had his meals in his bedroom.' Mrs Tasker sounded quite unsurprised. She was indeed hardened to the vagaries of her lodgers. One of them kept parrots and another belonged to the Brotherhood of Welsh Buddhists.

  'When'll he be back?'

  'I couldn't say,' said Mrs Tasker.

  'Well, when did he go away?' asked Miss Cornel patiently.

  'About two months ago.'

  'What? I mean, didn't he—doesn't he tell you when he's going away? What about his rent?'

  'Oh, if it's his rent you're worrying about,' said Mrs Tasker complacently, 'you needn't. Six months in advance he pays. Has his own meters, too. I don't care where he goes or when he goes. It's all the same to me. Why, last year he was away for three months—'

  Miss Cornel nodded. She remembered it well. Mr Horniman had been moving heaven and earth to get his signature to a Trust document.

  Another thought struck her.

  'What about his letters?'

  Mrs Tasker pointed to a little heap on the sideboard.

  'There's a few come for him,' she said. 'Mostly bills.'

  Miss Cornel looked through them quickly. Three of the cleaner envelopes were, she guessed, Messrs Rumbold & Carter's communications of the 23rd February, the 16th ultimo and the 8th instant. The rest were, in fact, circulars and bills.

  'Well,' she said rather hopelessly. 'You might ask him to

  telephone us as soon as he turns up. It's rather important.' 'I'll tell him,' said Mrs Tasker.

  Chapter Three

  WEDNESDAY MORNING

  A Capital Asset Comes to Light

  The body (or corpus) of the trust estate will normally be invested in approved and easily realisable securities.

  Apart from the Roman Church, who are acknowledged experts in human behaviour, there is nobody quicker than a solicitor at detecting the first faint stirrings of a scandal: that distinctive, that elusive odour of Something which is not Quite as it Should Be.

  Mr Birley was only voicing the uneasiness of all his colleagues when he said to Mr Craine next morning:

  'The fellow can't have disappeared. He'll have to be found.'

  'It's awkward,' said Mr Craine. 'By the way, who are the other trustees?'

  'As a matter of fact,' said Bob apologetically, 'there isn't another. Father was one trustee, you know, Mr Smallbone was the other.'

  'Wasn't another trustee appointed when Abel died?'

  'Well no. That is, not yet.'

  'Who has the power to appoint?'

  'I think the surviving trustee—'

  'So it amounts to this—that unless we can induce Small-bone to come back to England we shall probably have the expense of going to the court—'

  'I don't know that Mr Smallbone's gone abroad,' said Bob. 'His landlady only said that he'd gone away. She said he went to Italy last year—'

  'It's perfectly absurd. He must have left an address. People don't walk out into the blue. Not if they're trustees.'

  'Well, that's what he seems to have done,' said Bob. He always found Mr Birley alarming; and the fact that they were now, in theory, equal members of the partnership had not gone very far towards alleviating that feeling. 'Perhaps if we wait for a few weeks—'

  'With half a million pounds' worth of securities,' said Mr Birley. 'This isn't a post office savings account. There must be questions of reinvestment cropping up every day. I wonder you've managed to get by for as long as you have—'

  Bob flushed at the obvious implication of this remark. Mr Craine came to his rescue.

  'Wouldn't it be a good thing,' he said, 'to take this opportunity of going through the securities? We'll have to appoint a new trustee and that will mean an assignment. We'll get a broker's opinion on any necessary reinvestments at the same time.'

  'I'll do that,' said Bob gratefully.

  'Where are the securities?' asked Mr Birley.

  'They're in the muniments room. I'll get Sergeant Cockerill to bring them up.'

  'You might get the trust accounts out of the box, too, and run through them,' suggested Mr Craine.

  'All right,' said Bob. 'But—I'm sure there's nothing wrong.'

  'Why should there be anything wrong?' said Mr Birley, looking up sharply.

  'About Mr Smallbone, I mean. He often used to disappear like this. Miss Cornel was telling me about him. He's a bit of a crank.'

  'Fact is, the fellow ought never to have been appointed a trustee,' said Mr Birley. 'But Stokes was mad for years before he died. None of his relations had the guts to say so. Served them all right when he left his money on charitable trusts—'

  'Only he might have chosen his trustees a bit better,' agreed Mr Craine. 'Now then, about this death duty scheme of Lord Haltwhistle . . . ' Bob stole gratefully away.

  About half an hour later when Lord Haltwhistle's death duties had been partially mitigated Mr Birley broke off what he was saying to come round suddenly on a fresh tack. 'You remember,' he said, 'we were talking yesterday about this new fellow Bohun—'

  'Yes.'

  'I thought you'd be interested in something I heard at the club yesterday—from Colonel Bristow. He got slung out of the army.'

  'Good heavens!' said Mr Craine. 'I thought they retired the old boy on half-pay.'

  'Not Colonel Bristow. Bohun.'

  'Oh.' Mr Craine sounded only mildly interested. 'What for?'

  'Bristow didn't know. Bohun was attached to his staff in the Middle East and the War Office removed him. Medical reasons, they said.'

  'Perhaps that was what it was,' suggested Mr Craine.

  'Chap looks fit enough to me,' Mr Birley stopped and lifted his head. 'What the devil are they making all that noise about out there?' he said. 'Is that someone screaming?'

  II

  At about eleven o'clock that morning Henry Bohun sat back in his swivel-chair said 'Ouch!' and sat forward again quickly.

  'Don't say I didn't warn you,' said John Cove, looking up from the study of a crossword puzzle. 'When I shared this room with Eric Duxford it was my lot, as the junior, to sit in that chair.'

  'What's wrong with it?' said Henry, massaging his back. 'It is possessed,' said John, 'by an active and malignant spirit, a sort of legal gremlin which leans out and pinches you when you are least expecting it.'

  Henry upended the chair on his desk. 'It's the join in the back piece,' he announced. 'The support's worked loose. If I had a screwdriver I could fix it—'

  'Sergeant Cockerill will have a screwdriver. He keeps things like that. Can you think of a town in Bessarabia in ten letters?'

  'Not at the moment.'

  When Henry came back he brought Sergeant Cockerill with him. The sergeant assessed the damage with an expert eye, grasped the back of the chair firmly in his right hand, picked up a screwdriver and gave some exploratory twists.

  'Screw's worked right loose. I'll have to plug it first.'

  'Azerbaijan,' said John.

  'Take the chair away with you if you like,' said Henry. T can use this spare one.

  'Where's Mrs Porter going to sit,' said John, 'on your knee?'

  'I'll fix you up, sir. There's a spare in the tea-room.' The sergeant picked up the
swivel chair in one surprisingly muscular hand and departed.

  'I'm afraid it can't be Azerbaijan,' said John, 'or we shall have to find a word beginning JV—'

  'Anyway, I don't believe Azerbaijan is in Bessarabia.'

  'Delendum est. By the way, what's wrong with the Chittering this morning?'

  'I don't know,' said Henry. 'Now that you mention it, she did look a bit cool when I said good morning to her.'

  'Cool! That's an understatement. She's behaving like the young lady in Handel's aria. You know: where'er she walks cool gales shall fan the glade—

  'I believe she's annoyed about something La Cornel said. She cast aspersions on the parentage of her dressing-case. Said that it wasn't crocodile, or alternatively, if crocodile not Congo crocodile.'

  'Girls, girls.'

  'Upon which Miss Chittering cast counter-aspersions upon Miss Cornel's fur coat—'

  'What an awful thing it must be,' said John complacently, 'to have a quarrelsome nature. I have always managed to look on the lighter side of these unfortunate differences which, we must face it, do crop up from time to time. I remember when I was expelled from Rugby at the age of seventeen. . . . However, I won't distract you, for I see you want to work.'

  'I am getting things a bit more sorted out.' Henry picked up a letter. 'I still can't quite see what the Duke of Hampshire actually wants us to do.'

  'Doesn't he say? They do sometimes, if you read the letters right through. The gist of it's usually in the ducal postscripts.'

  'It's plain enough. He wants us to realise the securities in his marriage settlement and reinvest them in the construction of a Channel tunnel. We seem to have written a number of letters to him pointing out—'

  'Oh, he's quite mad,' said John. 'I believe his grandfather got a red-hot tip from Disraeli and cleared a packet on the Suez Canal. Gave the family rather a fixe about short cuts and transportation stock.'

  'Yes,' said Henry, 'but what do I say to him?'

  'Say you're consulting the brokers and what are the prospects for the salmon fishing this summer.'

  'All right,' said Henry doubtfully.

  At least ten minutes were devoted to work before the door opened again. Henry saw that it was the man whom he had noticed sitting next to Anne Mildmay at the staff dinner.

  'What do you want?' said John. 'If you've come to borrow the Law List it's not here. If you want your copy of Tristram and Coote, I've lent it to Bob.'

  'Thought I'd drop in and say hello,' said the newcomer, ignoring this. 'If John won't introduce me, old fellow, I'd better do it myself. I'm Eric Duxford.' He clicked on a smile.

  'Rise,' said John to Bohun, 'fall forward on both knees, and knock your forehead seven times on the floor.'

  'Very good of you to bother,' said Henry. T gather that you used to share this room with John.'

  'Yes,' said Duxford. 'Yes, I did.' It did not need much discernment to see that Eric Duxford disliked John Cove perhaps even a shade more than John disliked him.

  'We were a famous pair,' said John. 'Blest pair of sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy. Sphere-born harmonious brothers. Debenham and Freebody, Fortnum and Mason, Duxford and Cove. . . . Inseparable—'

  'Yes. Well, you must come and have lunch with me, Bohun; we'll run up to my club.'

  'It's not an easy club to run up to,' said John, 'since it occupies a basement in Fleet Street. The United Philatelists and Numismatists. It shares the premises with the P.P.P. or Pornographic Photographic Publications, and the S.S.S. or—'

  'You mustn't pay too much attention to Cove,' said Duxford coldly. 'He suffers from a suppressed inferiority complex. That's why he talks so much. Actually I belong to the Public Schools—'

  'I'd love to have lunch with you some day,' said Henry hastily, forestalling a perfectly outrageous remark by John. 'Very good of you to bother.'

  'Not at all,' said Duxford. 'We must all muck in and help one another, eh? That's what makes the world go round.'

  'Well,' said John, when the door had closed on their visitor. 'Now you've plumbed the depths. If you want to get out, the emergency hatch is under the pilot's seat—'

  'Oh, come on,' said Henry, 'he isn't as bad as that. A bit hearty.'

  'You haven't had to live with him yet,' said John. 'If you had you wouldn't be so tolerant. To start with, as you have appreciated, he is a line-shooter. There are line-shooters and line-shooters. Eric is the line-shooter. He is the man about whom the phrase was invented. He literally never stops shooting lines. Of course,' John grinned, 'it's a profession which is not devoid of danger. Sometimes it plunges him into deep waters. There was the time when he took the Town and Country Planning Act under his wing—you remember that it was rather the fashion in early '48. He read a couple of very simple articles about it, and of course took the next opportunity of cornering an inoffensive stranger at lunch and giving him a dissertation on some of the finer points of the Act. Sheer bad luck that he should have happened to have picked on Megarry.' 'Oh, no!'

  'Even funnier, in a quiet way, was the time when he took up golf—a chap must take exercise, you know, keeps a fellow fit, you know. One meets a lot of interesting chaps at the club too, doesn't one? I think his handicap at this time was about thirty-six with the wind behind him. . . . Well, who should he pick on to give a little lecture to on the mysteries of the game but La Cornel. Thanks to Providence I was in here when he started. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. She took it without batting an eyelid. "Yes, Mr Duxford. No, Mr Duxford. How interesting, Mr Duxford. Now what was it you said you called that club with the curly end, Mr Duxford?" It was terrific. . . . When she'd gone out I told him the joke.'

  Seeing Henry looking a bit blank he added: 'Didn't you know? She's terrifically hot. She reached the last four in the Women's Open. She'd have gone to America with the British Women's Team before the war if Abel hadn't been stingy about letting her have the time off—'

  'That's it,' said Henry. 'I thought her face was familiar. I must have seen it in one of the illustrated papers. . . . What on earth was that?'

  'It sounded,' said John, 'like a scream, didn't it?'

  Ill

  It is undeniable that the morning had not started well in the partners' secretaries room.

  Though it would have been difficult to have selected three more diverse types than Miss Cornel, Miss Mildmay and Miss Chittering, they managed to get along in an easy enough way on a basis of working-day tolerance helped out by the fact that they were all really kept rather busy. It must be remembered that in addition to the normal duties of taking down letters, typing them, engrossing, fair copying, taking telephone calls, heading off awkward clients and trying to arrange definite appointments with the less clearheaded members of the aristocracy, they had also (that nothing might be wanting) to cope with the Horniman cross-filing system.

  However, that particular morning was an unhappy one. Anne Mildmay had arrived late. She was flying storm signals and had a look in her eye which would have been recognised at once by anyone who had served in a ship under her father, the celebrated 'Conk' Mildmay (the only man who ever told Beatty what he thought of him and got away with both ears).

  'Good morning,' said Miss Chittering brightly. 'You'll be qualifying for the D.C.M. if you arrive at this hour.'

  'The what?'

  'The Don't Come Monday.' 'Oh.'

  Miss Mildmay ripped off the cover of her typewriter, sorted out a sheet of demi, a carbon and a flimsy, stuffed them together and banged them into her machine.

  'Well, anyway,' she said. 'Old Birley doesn't chase me round telling me I don't know my job, and suggesting I find out how to do it from Miss Cornel.' In an incautious moment Miss Chittering had repeated Mr Birley's strictures of the day before.

  'Well, I'm sure,' she said. 'There's no need to be unpleasant. I was only having a joke.'

  'So was I,' said Miss Mildmay.

  There was silence for some time after this, broken only by the flagellation of three typewriters.


  Miss Chittering, however, was not a person who was able to keep silent for very long. It was perhaps unfortunate that she had to address all her remarks to Anne, since she was still not on speaking terms with Miss Cornel owing to certain heresies on the subject of genuine crocodile dressing-cases.

  'Poor Mr Horniman,' she said. 'I think he's getting thinner every day. Worry, that's what it is.'

  'What's he got to worry about?' said Anne.

  'Well, I expect it's all the new work—and the responsibility.'

  'He gets paid for it.'

  'And the hours he works. He's always here last thing at night.'

  'It won't kill him', Anne sounded so unnecessarily bitter that Miss Cornel looked up curiously.

  'He says the strangest things, too.'

  'Like, "O.B.E., Esquire",' suggested Miss Cornel unkindly from her corner. Fortunately, before any further hostilities could be provoked, the signal bell gave a buzz. Miss Cornel collected her shorthand notebook and went out.

  'Some people,' announced Miss Chittering to no one in particular, 'think that because they've been here a long time they can say anything they like.'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Anne. 'How many r's in referred?'

  The typewriters resumed their clatter.

  Meanwhile in Bob Horniman's room he and Miss Cornel were looking rather hopelessly at a large black deed box labelled Ichabod Stokes.

  'He can't have lost the key,' said Miss Cornel. 'He kept them all together on one ring. Let me have another look. Consequential, Marquis of Curragh, Lady Burberry, General Pugh—he always kept twelve boxes on this rack and six more under the bookshelf. That's eighteen.' She counted the keys again. 'You're quite right,' she said. 'There are only seventeen keys here. Stokes is missing—'

  'First the trustee, then the key,' groaned Bob. T knew it. I knew it. The next thing we shall find is that half the securities are gone.'

  Miss Cornel looked at him sharply. 'The securities aren't kept in here,' she said. 'They're with Sergeant Cockerill in the strong-room. There's nothing in this box but old files and papers and trust accounts.'