He knew, of course, now, who had done the murder: why they had done it, how they had done it and when they had done it. Whether he would be able to demonstrate this in court was another matter.
There was also the judge to consider. Mr. Justice Arbuthnot was a good judge and a likable person. But he was not a man you took liberties with. Macrea had upset him once already. Once was more than enough. None of this was betrayed by his well-trained face as he rose.
“My lord, members of the jury, I had intended to begin the proceedings with my final address. In the interim – to be precise at ten minutes to midnight last night – information of such importance reached me that I realised I should not be doing my duty to my client – or to yourselves – if I did not make some especial effort to present this to you. My difficulty has been how to do so. Particularly since most of this information concerns what I may call the French side of this case, and the witnesses who could speak to it are either dead or not easily available.
“In the event, I have asked the co-operation of the prosecution – and I must place it on record that this co-operation has been very generously given.”
He smiled at Mr. Summers who smiled back thinly. He had been roused from his bed by telephone to a conference at six o’clock in the morning and he was not feeling at his best.
“I have decided, with your lordship’s permission, to recall three of the prosecution witnesses. Their attendance here has been arranged. I have further asked – as would be normal when they were giving evidence in chief – that none of them be in court when the others are giving evidence. That has also been agreed.”
“I have no objection,” said Mr. Justice Arbuthnot warily. “Are the matters on which you wish to question them connected with their previous testimony?”
“I shall ask them nothing, my lord, which could not properly have been put to them on the previous occasion.”
“Very well.”
“Call Major Ammon.”
“Major Ammon, in your evidence you stated that you were responsible for the English end of Major Thoseby’s operations in Occupied France?”
“I and others.”
“Were you also responsible for dispatching Lieutenant Wells?”
“I certainly knew he was being sent, and assisted in some of the preliminaries. I didn’t actually brief him myself.”
“Now, Major Ammon. When Lieutenant Wells was parachuted into France did he – I want to be particularly careful not to lead you on this – did he take anything with him beyond the usual outfit which a man on such a mission would take?”
“Did he—oh, I see what you’re getting at—yes—”
“I am afraid I must interrupt you,” said Macrea with a smile which robbed the words of their sting. “I’m not ‘getting at’ anything. You must just answer my question.”
“Very well. Yes, certainly. He took a great deal of money.”
“Perhaps you could tell us why he took this money.”
“Yes. We thought it important – particularly at that time, you know, when the Resistance Movement was beginning to get the support of the better class of Frenchman – we insisted that everything taken should be properly paid for.”
“I quite understand.”
“It was necessary to replenish funds from time to time and it so happened that Lieutenant Wells was selected as a carrier.”
“In what form was money carried?”
“Sometimes in franc notes. Sometimes in gold.”
“In this case?”
“To the best of my knowledge and belief, in gold.”
“Can you give us any idea how much he carried?”
“Yes. The gold was cast in thin tablets each weighing exactly seven ounces. The carrier had a special belt, with slots to contain a great many of these tablets. One man could carry approximately eight thousand pounds sterling in gold without discomfort. I am speaking, of course, of gold as it was then. It would be worth more now.”
“Have you any idea what happened to this gold?”
“We presumed that it had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo.”
“All of it?”
“Certainly. Wells, so far as we know, had no contact with anybody, between the time he landed in France and the time he was captured, to whom he would have been authorised to hand the gold. The supposition was that it was all on him when he was taken.”
“The gold was never traced?”
“Never to my knowledge.”
“Thank you, Major Ammon. I do not know if my learned friend—?”
“No questions,” said Mr. Summers.
“I am afraid that I do not quite follow all this,” said the judge. “If this gold never reached Major Thoseby, Mr. Macrea, surely it could not constitute a motive for Major Thoseby’s murder?”
“I agree with your lordship,” said Macrea smoothly. “It might, however, constitute a motive for the murder of Lieutenant Wells.”
“Point one slipped across,” thought Mr. Rumbold.
Monsieur le Commissaire Lode was then called.
“Monsieur Lode,” said Macrea, “when you were giving evidence you spoke about your work on the Tracing Staff at Arolsen. Can you tell us something more about it?”
“What exactly is it you would like to know?”
“Well, perhaps you could explain to the court, roughly, the lines on which the bureau worked.”
“The work was complex. We were an international team of investigators. Our first object was to trace the victims of the war. Inquiries reached us from all parts of the world, about displaced persons, victims of the racial persecutions, prisoners of the Gestapo—”
“Let us take the latter type of case, then. Your organisation would be able, in time, to determine the fate of a Gestapo prisoner?”
“It was usually able to do so.”
“How did you work?”
“In many ways. We had the records of the prisoners – and even when the records of a prison had been destroyed there were often duplicate records, kept by a higher authority that we were able to consult. The German passion for order and method were very useful to us there.”
“I see.”
“In many cases, also, we were able to interrogate the prison staffs themselves. Unless they happened to be accused of war crimes, they had no incentive to suppress the truth. Then, their stories could be cross-checked.”
“In short, Monsieur Lode, a thorough use of the investigating machinery at Arolsen would most often produce a positive result?”
“Almost always.”
“And you said, I think, that Major Thoseby was pursuing his inquiries through your channels?”
“That is so.”
“Let me put this to you then – as a hypothetical case. If Major Thoseby was looking for traces of some Gestapo prisoner – for the sake of argument, let us say, if he was looking for Lieutenant Wells – and if, after diligent inquiry he failed to find any trace of him, what conclusion would you come to?”
“You say that he had made careful inquiry—?”
“Yes. Over a number of years.”
“And the prison in which Lieutenant Wells was supposed to have been confined was, of course, known?”
“Yes.”
“Then I should say that it was almost certain that Lieutenant Wells never fell into the hands of the Gestapo at all.”
“Thank you.”
The judge said gravely, “I should like to be quite clear, Mr. Macrea, exactly what it is you are suggesting to the court.”
“I am suggesting,” said Macrea, “that Lieutenant Wells was murdered for the gold in his belt. I am further suggesting that Major Thoseby, slowly, cautiously – reluctantly, perhaps – had at last reached the conclusion that Wells had been murdered. I am suggesting that when you find the men who murdered Lieutenant Wells you will not have to look any further for the murderers of Major Thoseby.”
“I see.” Mr. Justice Arbuthnot thought this out. The silence in court was uncanny. “You wish to call
one further witness, I understand?”
“If you please. I have some questions now that I should like to ask Monsieur Sainte.”
An usher went out; minutes passed but the swinging doors remained closed. Then the usher reappeared and spoke to one of the policemen, who also went out. Another minute passed, and the burly figure of Inspector Partridge was seen, pushing his way through the crowd at the door.
Macrea’s voice rode over the rising tide of conjecture.
“If Monsieur Sainte is not here,” he said, “then perhaps his waiter, Camino, could assist us.”
Nobody seemed able to do much about this, either.
A very long minute passed.
The public in the gallery were showing signs of getting out of hand, whilst the press were clearly torn between a desire to reach a telephone and an urge to see the matter through to its conclusion.
Claudian Summers was observed to be in consultation with the clerk to the court, who got to his feet and spoke to the judge.
Mr. Justice Arbuthnot nodded briskly, and a sudden silence fell as he addressed counsel.
“It would appear, Mr. Macrea, that neither of the witnesses you have named can, at the moment, be found.”
“You surprise me, my lord,” said Macrea, untruthfully.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“All right,” said Inspector Hazlerigg. “All right, all right. You were right and we were wrong – Inspector Partridge was wrong. But don’t gloat about it.”
“I’m not gloating,” said Angus McCann. “I’m just glad that Miss Lamartine got off, that’s all. The crowd gave her quite a reception, didn’t they?”
“I’m surprised they didn’t come along the Embankment and break a few windows at Scotland Yard,” said Hazlerigg sourly.
“Oh, I don’t think they felt like that at all,” said McCann. “They were just glad that a nice girl like Miss Lamartine hadn’t got to be hanged and that the villains turned out to be a couple of foreigners – that’s always satisfactory, too. Where are Sainte and Camino now, by the way?”
“Somewhere in France. They slid out down one of their two-way gold-smuggling routes, I should think.”
“It did occur to me to wonder why they weren’t arrested when Macrea gave Inspector Partridge the news early that morning.”
“You’re not the only person who’s wondered about that,” said Hazlerigg shortly.
Silence fell again in Hazlerigg’s office. It was McCann who broke it.
“You know,” he said, “the whole thing was too logical. That’s why people didn’t see it at once. You don’t expect crime to be logical. Everything that happened in England depended on what had happened five years before in France. Once you knew what really did take place near Langeais in September, 1943, you could see exactly what must have taken place in London this spring. There are a few gaps, still, of course. Do you know if Sainte and Camino really were brothers?”
“We know a certain amount about them now,” said Hazlerigg. “They were both Italian citizens – we’ve traced them under the name of Santi – who came to France in the thirties. They took the name of Marquis and ran the Ferme du Grand Puits as brothers. They may have been brothers, or it may just have suited their book to pretend they were. When they came over here they changed roles and became hotel proprietor and waiter. Either way the deception was liable to be useful to them. They were born criminals.”
“They had their nerves in the right place,” said McCann. “In France, during the Occupation, they posed as moderately loyal Maquisards, but I can’t help thinking that that Gestapo raid on the Père Chaise Farm was a little too well timed.”
“You mean they had them tipped off that Wells was there?”
“Yes. I think so. The Gestapo drill, as Lode explained in evidence, was to raid at dusk. So the brothers Marquis went down with a farm cart and took Wells away at about four in the afternoon. They took him straight up to their farm—then waited to see what transpired. When the Germans shot Père Chaise and the other men in the farm and picked up Miss Lamartine there was no single outsider left who knew where Wells was. So they quietly cut his throat and dropped him down the well. As soon as they decently could after the war they sold the farm and decamped. They used a crooked attorney in Angers, Maître Gimelet, to do the job, and killed two birds with one stone, because he was also contact man for the French side of the gold-running crowd. They needed professional help to dispose of the gold. When they got to England they used some of the money to buy the Family Hotel, and they must have been making quite a nice thing out of it. There were only two snags. The first was that the English end of the gold-running crowd thought that they were worth watching and installed Mrs. Roper to keep an eye on them. They couldn’t object to that. They were still realising the gold, piece by piece, and it all had to be done on the black market.”
“And the other snag?”
“The other snag,” said McCann, “might be described as the possible conjunction of Miss Lamartine and Major Thoseby. It must have been intensely irritating to them. They were so nearly safe. If only Wells hadn’t been so damnably attractive to – and attracted by – small brunettes. If only the Gestapo had finished Vicky off when they had her. If only she hadn’t been devoted to the ghost of Julian Wells. If only Major Thoseby hadn’t been such a painstaking investigator. There they were, miles from the scene of the crime, the body disposed of in one of the deepest dry wells in France, the gold almost all realised, many of the actors dead. Yet all the time, week by week and month by month retribution was coming up on them. Vicky Lamartine and Eric Thoseby. Of course, they had always realised that Vicky might be a nuisance. That’s why they got her a job in the hotel – to keep an eye on her. What they hadn’t foreseen was that Thoseby, working from another angle, was going to be equally dangerous. It only needed those two to have ten minutes’ conversation – mention their suspicions to each other – and the truth would have been out.”
“I suppose that’s right,” said Hazlerigg. “I shouldn’t have thought it would have been easy for anybody to pin it on to the brothers Marquis after all that time.”
“Not just anybody – no,” said McCann. “I think that’s the whole point. As I see it, there were three bits of information needed, and you had to have them all. The first’s just guesswork. If the brothers were going to remove Wells they had to have some sort of conveyance to remove him in. Motor cars were nonexistent. They were all requisitioned or hidden away. And, anyway, it would have been too risky.”
“A farm cart,” suggested Hazlerigg.
“Surely, with a load of hay in the back to hide him under. But they couldn’t hope to take a farm cart from up at Grand Puits all the way to Père Chaise without meeting a few people. That was fact one. They must have been seen on the road. Miss Lamartine probably saw them, herself, though they meant nothing to her at the time. Now take fact two – which was known only to the Germans at first, but had recently, by long and patient research, become known also to Major Thoseby: that Wells was no longer at the Père Chaise Farm by the time it was raided. Miss Lamartine, remember, had left him there after lunch.”
“And your third fact?”
“The third fact,” said McCann, “was one which was entirely harmless by itself, but which might assume a certain significance if it was considered alongside the other two. It was simply that Miss Lamartine knew that the brothers Marquis had been, rather unexpectedly, absent from their farm from before three o’clock until after seven o’clock. It had been arranged for her to meet them there, you will remember. Well, there was nothing much in any of those by themselves, but put them together and a certain pattern begins to emerge. A clear enough pattern to make it worth while instituting a little search at the Ferme du Grand Puits. And it would have been inevitable that one of the first places to be searched would have been the well. And once the body had been discovered the hunt would have been up. Photographs of the brothers Marquis in all the papers—”
“Yes,” said Haz
lerigg. “And they still had some of the stolen gold undisposed of. Very uncomfortable for them. So the long and short of it was, they had to take vigorous steps to prevent Miss Lamartine and Thoseby from meeting.”
“Vigorous and logical. There was something almost classical about the way in which they set the two menaces to cancel each other out. Thoseby wished to come to the hotel. Very well, he should be encouraged to do so. Vicky mustn’t see him at once. All right, then, tell her that Thoseby wasn’t arriving till eleven o’clock. I don’t know what devious and damnable alternative plans they had hatched. It all turned on when Thoseby went up to his room. He’d been allotted that room on purpose, of course. In fact, he went up before Vicky came back. That was all that mattered. At about twenty past ten – he would leave it as late as possible so that the medical evidence wouldn’t conflict – Sainte walks from his office, through the reception desk, upstairs, knocks at Thoseby’s door, goes in, says something conventional about he hopes Major Thoseby has everything and is quite comfortable. Perfectly comfortable, says Thoseby. Splendid, says Sainte, here’s one thing more. Whips out the knife he’s been holding in his gloved hand – a kitchen knife which he knows is already well covered with Vicky’s fingerprints – and good-bye Thoseby.”
“And then?”
The next bit’s quite easy, too. Macrea had most of it in his summing-up. Thoseby slides gently to the floor. Mrs. Roper’s wireless would drown any noise there was. Sainte pushes the knife down the back of the sofa, walks out of the bedroom and locks himself into the bathroom opposite. Then he sits – and waits.”
“Yes. There was nothing wrong with his nerve, as you said. What exactly is he waiting for?”
“Why, the signal that Vicky is in the reception desk and the front hall is clear.”
“And the signal is given by—?”
“Camino, of course, from the kitchen. At about twenty to eleven. That was your mysterious Benny. They were both Italians, and in a moment of stress they naturally spoke in Italian. Camino simply whispers up to his brother that the way is clear and all is well. A Frenchman would have said ‘Bien.’ Camino says ‘Bene.’ Sainte, when he gets the signal goes back into Thoseby’s room – still gloved – and simply presses the bell. Then he comes out again quickly and walks down the passage – it’s only conjecture, but it seems reasonable – as far as the empty bedroom. Vicky comes upstairs, along the passage, goes into Thoseby’s room, and – somewhat naturally – screams. Sainte is well placed to pretend to be coming up the stairs attracted by her screams. We’ve only got Camino’s word that he was ever seen on the actual staircase.”
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