Dead to the World

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Keep a sharp look-out and communicate immediately with me or with the police if you think you see him again.’

  ‘Very well, Monsieur Holt. Au revoir.’

  The fair-haired student bowed, walked quickly down the drive, and pedalled away on an old bicycle which had been propped at the kerbside.

  Holt was stopped by the reception clerk when he entered the hotel. Once satisfied that Holt had encountered the young man with the foreign accent who had just been asking for him, the clerk passed on one other message. Would Mr Holt please contact Miss Sanders as soon as he got in?

  Holt smiled to himself. She wants to see how much is left of me after being ‘eaten alive’ by Antoinette Sheen, he thought. With a slight twinge of pique at Ruth’s shrewd prediction of events he hurried to his room to wash faint traces of lipstick from his face and brush the collar of his jacket before striding down the corridor and tapping on Ruth’s door.

  He scowled when a male voice called out, inviting him to enter.

  ‘Don’t glare at me like that, Holt,’ said Inspector Hyde jovially when Holt turned the door handle and looked in. ‘Ruth’s room is far more comfortable than mine.’

  Holt’s scowl dissolved into a grin and he stepped inside, shutting the door firmly behind him.

  ‘I got down here soon after lunch,’ the Inspector explained. ‘There’s nothing new on the Curly murder, I’m afraid. Ruth’s been filling me in on your visit to the College and the brake-cutting at Birling Gap. I’m very glad to see you both alive.’

  Holt nodded grimly. ‘It was a neat job, done by an expert. Both the hydraulic tubes had been cut – if only one had been done we’d still have been able to brake.’

  Ruth was scrutinising him. ‘What does Miss Sheen have to say about the accident?’

  ‘She claims to know nothing about it.’

  ‘Even though she lives right near by?’

  ‘Well, to be fair, it wasn’t a very noisy accident, was it?’

  ‘I see,’ Ruth said dryly. ‘And I suppose she also claims to know nothing whatsoever about what happened in Vance Scranton’s study last week?’

  Holt took out a cigarette, caught Ruth’s eye again, and did not light it. ‘I haven’t quite weighed her up yet. She’s convinced that it was Vance who was killed, but she swears black and blue she had no part in it.’

  It was obvious from Ruth’s expression that she had already weighed up Miss Sheen and was forming a pretty accurate reconstruction of the recent scene at the bungalow. She managed to convey her disapproval without saying anything more cutting than, ‘And did the curvaceous Antoinette manage to convince you of that, Philip?’

  ‘Spare the chap’s blushes!’ Hyde intervened. ‘Your boss may be of the male sex, but he’s nobody’s fool. Tell us what you found out, dear chap.’

  ‘Before I do that, I must tell you about something odd that happened in the hotel drive just now.’

  The Inspector and Ruth craned forward as he recounted his meeting with Henri Legere.

  ‘That makes three people who claim they’ve seen him,’ Hyde said. ‘The boy’s mother, Mr Wade the undertaker, and now a College friend. And yet Antoinette, you say, is quite sure he’s dead. I wonder why she’s so sure?’

  ‘I can think of a very good reason,’ suggested Ruth with meaning.

  Ignoring her, the Inspector said, ‘Well, now, Holt, you were going to give us an account of your visit and your impressions of the lady.’

  Holt nodded and now lit his cigarette in silence. Then he began ticking off each item on his fingers. ‘My impressions are as follows: One: she’s stunning to look at. Two: she’s astoundingly frank. Three: she’s a first-class painter and knows a lot about art. Four: she’s got an excellent brain; I’d almost guess an academically-trained brain. She can quote Talleyrand and Voltaire without seeming pompous. And another thing – those books she writes. I haven’t read any of them, but I admit I had some pre-conceived notions about her. A quick perusal of her bookshelf rather changed all that.’

  ‘Heavens above!’ Ruth interrupted, her face flushed. ‘She really has twirled you around her little finger, hasn’t she?’

  Hyde attempted to be constructive. ‘So you think she’s in the clear so far as the murder is concerned, and you don’t think she had anything to do with the brake-fixing?’

  ‘She may quite well have done both – especially the latter,’ Holt said unexpectedly. He described the clothes Antoinette had been wearing.

  ‘Well,’ Ruth burst out, ‘what more evidence do you want!’

  ‘All right!’ he snapped. ‘So we saw someone in jodhpurs and a flash of yellow! But if she did it, why didn’t she bother to change before I called on her?’

  ‘Bluff! Pure bluff!’ said Ruth heatedly.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ the Inspector interrupted diplomatically. ‘You said she might have an academically-trained mind, Holt. Was that pure guesswork, or did you know that she has two University degrees?’

  Holt sat up straight. ‘In History and Economics, by any chance?’

  ‘Exactly. Then you did know?’

  ‘No, but I’ve been putting two and two together. I’ll even go so far as to tell you who Prospero is.’

  ‘Be careful, you’re likely to slip up here,’ Hyde warned him good-naturedly.

  ‘No, I’m not! It all fits. Antoinette is hot stuff on history – she must be to write a pile of books like that and get them published by a decent publishing house. But it’s not her only line of country. She writes those spicy historical romances to pay her grocery bills, but she’s got the brains and knowledge to do more, in a field closely associated with history: namely, politics and economics!’

  ‘Where does all this get us, then?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Simply this: know thine enemy. Antoinette Sheen rates high on the list of suspects for murder. I’d been led to expect a feather-brained sex-bomb, but the truth is we’re dealing with a cool, astute, and highly intelligent woman.’

  ‘Who writes political articles for a highbrow weekly under the pen-name of Prospero?’ Hyde suggested.

  ‘No, I don’t imagine it’s quite like that. Naturally, I’m only guessing, but I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Prospero is Professor Dalesford’s pseudonym.’

  ‘Dalesford?’

  ‘Yes. You see, nobody is going to pay serious attention to articles like that if it’s known they’re being written by a woman novelist, the author of lurid romances. So Dalesford – who strikes me as a vain fool – takes the glory, while Antoinette does the donkey-work. I don’t know who collects the cash – they probably share it between them.’

  Hyde stood up to stretch his legs and started to fill his pipe. ‘Now that’s inspired guesswork, Holt, because as it happens you’ve hit the nail on the head! Certain information we’ve been able to obtain confirms everything you’ve said. Dalesford is Prospero. And I have further news: the Yard’s calligraphy experts say it’s ninety per cent certain that the person who wrote that poison-pen note in green ink in the New Feature was Julie Benson.’

  Holt nodded. ‘That fits. Who but his own secretary would know that the Professor doesn’t actually write the stuff himself? Julie wants to point the finger of suspicion at Antoinette, whom she hates like poison for having taken Vance from her …’

  Ruth’s tone of voice had a slight touch of frost about it when she filled the pause that followed, but she spoke seriously and gained attention. ‘It could just be that Julie does know something, don’t you think? Maybe she’s got a few facts tucked up her sleeve which she’s not yet told. Isn’t it just possible that it’s Julie Benson who’s speaking the truth?’

  The Inspector cleared his throat and exchanged a guilty look with Holt. ‘Ruth’s right, as usual. It’s perfectly possible,’ he acknowledged. ‘I shall have to tackle Miss Benson again. For one thing, she’s got to answer for sending anonymous accusations through the post.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to
have Antoinette on the carpet, too, Inspector,’ Holt said, taking the envelope out of his pocket. ‘She claims this letter was sent to her yesterday, with Vance Scranton’s signet ring inside it. The ring is probably genuine – Julie or Vance’s parents can confirm that – but I have my doubts about the typewritten letter and the way she says it came to her.’

  Hyde took the ring eagerly and examined it. ‘Now we may be getting somewhere at last! Did you look at it carefully, Holt?’

  ‘No, I’ve had no time.’

  Hyde handed it back. ‘Well, what do you make of the insignia on it?’ Holt turned it this way and that, viewing it from every angle. ‘It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? Just Vance Scranton’s initials, with the V planted over the S.’

  ‘Right! I can see that now. But on the Christopher postcard … Here, take a look for yourself.’ He took from his wallet a photostat copy of the card which had been sent to Vance. ‘This is what our cypher department have been able to produce.’

  Ruth’s face lit up as she and Holt bent over the photostat. The message that had once clearly read ‘HAVING A WONDERFUL TIME. REGARDS FROM CHRISTOPHER’ was now distorted by a series of capital letters appearing between the innocent words, and the Vance Scranton symbol was self-evident. The complete message read:

  ‘Was this a code message written in special ink?’ Ruth asked, warmth and excitement flooding back into her voice.

  Hyde nodded. ‘We had the cards treated. This code came to light on the first card, the one that was sent directly to Vance just before he died. But there was no concealed message on the second card.’

  ‘The one Jimmy Wade produced?’

  ‘Yes. One might be forgiven for wondering if the second is a fake.’

  ‘Black mark for Jimmy the Undertaker,’ said Ruth. ‘Doesn’t the V and the S at the beginning of each group look like a dollar sign?’

  ‘That’s exactly what misled me,’ Hyde agreed. ‘But now that we have the ring it’s perfectly clear what the V crossed by an S means. And the boy’s involvement in this strange business appears to be proven beyond doubt.’

  ‘But what does the code mean?’ Ruth wanted to know.

  ‘Our experts haven’t come up with the answer to that yet. The trouble is, these three and four-letter blocks are so simple they could mean any one of a thousand things. Give our eggheads a really knotty description of the latest nuclear rocket written in cyrillic script by a foreign spy and they’ll have the answer for you inside half an hour.’

  Ruth’s enthusiasm was so obviously dashed by Hyde’s words that he felt compelled to add a spot of encouragement. ‘In one direction we’ve taken a step forward, though. Those snapshots you got from the back of Curly’s mini-bus look like amounting to something.’

  ‘I thought they were too blurred,’ she said.

  ‘Not a bit of it. We had them enlarged to a considerable size and sent some copies to Interpol. The two men in the van were burnt to cinders, as you know, so your photographs were all we had to identify them by. Interpol came back with a theory – which hasn’t yet been confirmed, mind – that the two men were petty French criminals.’

  ‘French?’ she said with surprise.

  ‘Yes. Petty criminals wanted on a charge of operating an illegal printing press in Paris. But before you jump to the conclusion that this means counterfeit bank notes, listen to the rest of the puzzle. They weren’t printers of forged money, apparently – all they seem to have printed were old French newspapers!’

  ‘How old were the newspapers supposed to be?’ Holt enquired.

  ‘Anything from eighty to ninety-five years. Odd, isn’t it? Why reprint exact replicas of Parisian newspapers of the 1870s and 1880s?’

  Holt paused. ‘I require notice of that question.’

  The Inspector smiled. ‘Fair enough. When you come up with some more of your inspired guesswork on this little conundrum I’ll be delighted to hear from you.’

  Holt nodded. ‘It’ll give me something to think about while I’m waiting for Professor Dalesford to douse the lights at the College tonight.’

  Chapter Eight

  The chimes of midnight floated across the moonlit Downs and reached Philip Holt’s ears as he stood waiting in the deep shadow of the copse. Despite his warm clothing he shivered slightly. Nearly an hour had gone by since the last boisterous shouts from students on their way to bed had echoed over the ground and the last lights of the College had been extinguished. He had forced himself to wait before making his entry, although all was quiet; there would be no possible explanation if he were caught snooping around Scholars’ Row at this hour of the night.

  He had no clear idea what he was looking for, nor quite why he preferred to make his search in elaborate secrecy when Inspector Hyde could easily have arranged for him to visit Vance Scranton’s study by daylight. It was partly a strong intuitive feeling that had made him want to return, and partly the impression that Dalesford had hustled him through the room with suspicious abruptness. Holt did not take kindly to being hustled.

  He peered at his watch and judged it time to go. Checking his pockets once again to make sure that nothing such as keys or loose change could jangle and make his presence known, he stole from the shadows of the elms and moved noiselessly on rubber-soled shoes across the close-cropped lawn. The moon seemed unusually bright. It obviated the need of a torch, but he was glad he had taken the precaution of blackening his face and wearing dark clothing; it made him feel less conspicuous.

  The first shock came when he found the door to Scholars’ Row was locked. This was not on the programme. Until the time of the murder, he knew, it had been usual for it to be left open.

  There was nothing for it but to break in by a window. He was not sure of his ability to pick out Vance’s study from outside, but here the brilliant moonlight helped him. It shone at an oblique angle into the row of ground-floor rooms and at his second inspection he was able to single out a picture on the wall which he remembered noticing during his brief morning visit. It was a good copy in oils of Leyster’s The Jester, the original of which hung in the Rijks Museum. Holt guessed that this was another example of Antoinette’s work.

  He unwrapped a penknife and a strong piece of perspex from his handkerchief, and forced the window-catch without much difficulty. It was fortunate that the outer shutters had not been closed, he thought grimly, as he hoisted himself over the sill and dropped silently to the carpeted floor. For a moment he was tempted to close the shutters and switch on the light; they were of solid wood and would probably let no glimmer through. But he soon abandoned the idea, realising that, however well the shutters might protect him from discovery from the outside, he could easily be betrayed by a crack of light under the study door.

  For a moment or two he stood in the centre of the room, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the shadows and strange moonlit shapes, almost sniffing like a wary dog, probing with all his senses. In this room a murder had been committed … Who had stood there, gun in hand, as a body holding two glasses and a bottle of port had slipped to the floor?… Had it been a blue-eyed blonde, a cantankerous Professor, a bird-like undertaker. Had it been a beautiful and brainy authoress? Or Vance Scranton himself? Or had it, in fact, been none of these?

  No flash of inspiration, no weird telepathic communication reached him. No face swam with clarity into his mind, not even a conviction as to the murderer’s sex. One thing only was certain: whoever it was, man or woman, had been a supremely confident person, a cool, calculating thinker possessed of iron nerves and an above-average brain.

  He took out his pocket torch and dimmed its beam with his handkerchief. Then, moving with the utmost caution, he began to examine the room.

  He concentrated first on the desk. It was here that he had hoped to find something of importance. To his annoyance he found all the drawers empty; Dalesford had evidently taken it upon himself to put Vance’s papers under lock and key.

  Scrutinising the walls, he found nothing unusual. He took the
picture from its hook and looked at the back of the canvas. He had been right, it had been painted by Antoinette and she had scrawled a message in black ink to accompany her gift. ‘To Van, from Antoinette, in the hope that one day you will learn to laugh like this.’ The inscription was dated in the summer of that year; about the time, Holt reckoned, when their affair would have been coming to an end. She had not succeeded in getting him to laugh like Leyster’s gay fool, and they had parted. As friends?… Or as bitter enemies?

  There were no other pictures or ornaments on the walls, apart from a calendar significantly halted at the date on which the body had been found. Methodically he moved about the room, inspecting the various items of furniture and personal possessions but learning nothing new.

  There were a vast number of books – too many to be accommodated solely by the bookshelves – and the surplus volumes were stacked in piles on the floor wherever there was room. The choice of subjects was varied: there were scholarly tomes on history, politics, economics; works of general interest, much ultra-modern fiction; large quantities of magazines, most of them French, a number of Antoinette’s novels, and a series of handsomely illustrated volumes on Art. The fields of interest were indeed widely-spread, but there was nothing strikingly out of place. Holt kneeled and took Antoinette’s novels from the shelf to glance at their fly-leaves. Flippant, affectionate messages were written on each, but again nothing untoward caught his eye. Next he pulled out one of the heavy Art books – it happened to be devoted to Claude Monet – and opened it at random. A torn scrap of yellowing paper fluttered to the floor. As there was nothing written on it he assumed it had been a place-marker and crushed it in his palm.

  It was then that he became aware of faint footsteps. In a flash he had jammed the book back into place and darted to the window.

  Above the thumping of his heart he heard a heavy key being fitted into a massive lock – undoubtedly the entrance door to Scholars’ Row. Holding his breath he listened to the door at the end of the corridor creaking open. Then, as footsteps sounded in an approaching crescendo, he leapt over the sill, fastened the window behind him, and dropped silently onto the grass below.