Death of a Frightened Editor: A Golden Age Mystery

by E.

  “General clerk to Mr. Mortensen, sir. Four pound ten a week I’m getting—was getting,” he added, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “Hardly enough to keep body and soul together these days, me having an invalid wife. But nobody else would employ a clerk over 60. You have to take what you can get.”

  Jones said he supposed so; and was it worth keeping body and soul together these days, always supposing there was a soul.

  Silverman, a little dazed, replied that he hadn’t thought over the problem of a soul, really. The conversation seemed to be developing into a theological debate until Doctor Manson switched it away. He had been running his eyes over the contents of the table. A pile of letters was lying in the centre, neatly arranged. The top one, and presumably the remainder, was addressed, ‘The Editor, Society’.

  “Do you open these?” he asked.

  Silverman shot backwards at the suggestion. “No, sir, no indeed,” he said, “Goodness, not likely. I take them in to Mr. Mortensen when he arrives. Mr. Mortensen opened all letters addressed to the editor. Most strict he was about that, sir. The last clerk, he told me, was kicked out of the office because he opened a letter.”

  “Where is Mr. Mortensen’s room?”

  Silverman pointed to a door opposite. The Doctor walked across and tried the handle. The door was locked. Silverman unlocked the filing cabinet and took from it a key. He hesitated.

  “I can only use it in an emergency,” he announced.

  “This . . . emergency,” said Jones, and took it. He threw open the door and the two officers and Crispin stared into a thickly-carpeted room. A walnut desk stretched halfway across the apartment, centred in the room. Two leather armchairs and a settee, together with a wooden chair, leather-seated, formed the remainder of the furnishings, except for curtains at the window.

  The desk was glass-topped. A blotting-pad of virgin whiteness was set exactly in front of the swivel armchair. The chair itself was parallel to the desk’s cubby-hole, and a leg’s breadth away, but no more. To the right of the pad but at the back of the desk were wire baskets, and at the back centre a large ashtray, a quarter-full of ash, cigarette and cigar. Apart from that the desk was empty—and spotless.

  On a second table in the corner of the room papers of all kinds were lying, loosely and untidily.

  “Bit . . . change . . . from outside office,” said Jones, and started to walk in. Doctor Manson put out a restraining hand.

  “Just a minute, Old Fat Man,” he said.

  He was looking intently at the desk. There were wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, and creases across the broad forehead of his domed head. For half-a-minute he continued his inspection of the general layout of the room.

  Then: “All right,” he said; and the trio entered.

  Doctor Manson seemed to take little interest in the general contents of the room. Instead, he walked over to the desk and scrutinised it closely. Taking a lens from a waistcoat pocket he peered through it at an area of the desk to the right and left of the chair. From there he crossed to the filing cabinet, and finally he examined the arms of the chair and the surface of the safe which stood in a corner on the right-hand side of the room.

  Superintendent Jones after examining papers on the small table found himself in front of the safe. “Have to get this open, Doctor,” he said. “Better have his keys.”

  “If you can get hold of them, Fat Man,” Manson said. He gave a final look round. “This room has told us all it can tell.” The statement sounded cryptic. “But have Prints go over it.” He walked back into the outer room, Jones following. The door was locked, and the superintendent pocketed the key.

  Silverman was teetering about like a cat on hot bricks. Doctor Manson’s question again scared him. “Have you been in Mr. Mortensen’s room this morning?” he asked.

  “Me? No!” he squealed. He dabbed his drooling mouth with a handkerchief. “No,” he said again. “I never go in there without being called. Very strict about that Mr. Mortensen was. The clerk before the last one got the sack because Mr. Mortensen found him in that room.”

  “Did he now?” Jones appeared staggered by the rules and regulations of the office. “Sack . . . opening letters . . . sack again . . . going in room. Got leg-irons . . . handcuffs . . . fitted . . . desk?” The irony passed over Silverman’s head.

  “I wouldn’t dare,” he moaned.

  “No, I don’t think you would. Has the room been cleaned?”

  “No.”

  “Where are the printing machines?”

  Silverman peered round as though expecting them to materialise in front of his eyes. “We haven’t any printing machines,” he said.

  “Then how do you get the papers out?”

  “This is where I come in handy,” Crispin broke in. “The paper is probably printed by contract. Hi! Give me a copy,” he said.

  Silverman took one from the piles round the room, and the journalist turned to the imprint. “Yes, here it is, Doctor—‘Published by Society Newspapers, Ltd., Covent Garden, and printed by the Sesame Press, Commercial Road, London’.”

  Jones turned towards him. “You newspaper man,” he said. “Know . . . ’bout . . . paper?”

  “About paper? . . . Oh, I see. You’re talking your shorthand again. You mean THIS paper? Not much. Mortensen has been running it for several years . . .”

  “Was he a journalist?” Manson asked.

  “Oh, yes. He started like most of us, on a small country weekly, then on to a provincial daily, and in due course came to Fleet Street. He was a gossip writer on the old Pall Mall Gazette for a time, and then joined one of my rivals in the same capacity. Left it to start Society. He had a good starting background, you see, because most of his gossip writing had been about well-known people, and he had contacts.”

  “Is the paper a paying concern?”

  “Can’t say. But Mortensen lived pretty well, so I suppose it is. I might be able to work it out roughly, if you like.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He sat down at the table and drew sheets of notepaper forward. “What’s the circulation, Silverman?” he asked.

  “Dunno, sir. Can’t say.”

  “There isn’t much about your job that you DO know, is there?”

  “You didn’t know things here, sir,” Silverman retorted slowly. “People who knew things didn’t keep a job with Mr. Mortensen very long. He was the only one to know anything—if you were wise.”

  “Well, say the circulation is 20,000 a week—I’ve heard that figure mentioned at times. That’s 20,000 shillings, which is £1,000. Deduct a quarter of that for the wholesalers, which reduces it by £250 to £750. Then there are the advertisements. Give me a ruler.”

  Silverman passed it over and Crispin ran through the advertisement columns. It showed 400 inches. “What are the advertisement rates, Silverman?” he asked.

  “They vary. Sometimes more than 30s. an inch, sometimes less. Depends on . . .”

  “Position, I suppose?”

  “And what the advertiser could be induced to pay,” Silverman corrected.

  “What about classified?”

  “Shilling a line. Minimum five lines.”

  Crispin totted up his figures. “I reckon we can get a conservative estimate, Doctor, by lumping ’em all at 25s. an inch. That would make £500, and bring the revenue to £1,250. Off that, there’s type-setting, make-up and printing. I’ll have to guess at that. He has a good few photo reproductions, in half-tone blocks”—he looked through one of the editions of the paper. “Most of the faces, I reckon, are ‘stock’, used over again when the person comes into the news. I should say £50 would cover the rest. That leaves £1,200. Then, there’s newsprint. I reckon that will be put in with the printing contract like the distribution. My ‘rag’ has a weekly thing put out on contract, and I’m working along the same lines with this. Finally, there are overheads—rent, telephone and wages—warehouse space charges, and profits tax payment for contribution and odds and ends. I reckon a good
guess would be just over £100 a week net. It’s a guess, though. Not bad, eh? Better than gossip writing in Fleet Street, or crime reporting.”

  “Ever been inside Mortensen’s flat at Black Rock, Crispin?”

  “No, what’s that got to do with it?” Manson did not pursue the question.

  “What happens to me, gentlemen?” Silverman put the query. He was fluffing round like a hen which has lost her chickens.

  “Better carry on,” Jones said. “Can . . . get . . . paper out?”

  “What! Me?” Silverman broke into panic. “No. I’m not a journalist. I couldn’t do it.”

  Doctor Manson turned to Crispin with raised eyebrows. The journalist shrugged his shoulders.

  “I might be able to bring out a couple of issues in my spare time with the aid of another journalist,” he said. “That is, if it’s worth my while.”

  “I should think the estate could manage that until we find the heirs to Mortensen. It seems too good a property to let lapse.”

  “Then we’d better see the printers and let me get the hang of things.” Doctor Manson stuffed one or two editions of Society into his pockets before leaving.

  The printer was unable to give the police much help. He knew Mortensen only in a business sense, he said, from visits he had paid to the printing works.

  The paper was a good business proposition both to Mortensen and themselves. The circulation was a steady 20,000 a week; and the contract for printing and distribution was reasonably close to the estimate which Crispin showed he had worked out. The manager offered to continue the contract, at any rate for the present, and was even prepared to finance a few issues until money was forthcoming from the late owner’s estate.

  “I suppose I had better keep on the Covent Garden office, and Silverman, Doctor?” Crispin said, as they left the works.

  “Yes,” Manson looked thoughtful. “We’ll want to visit the office again and we’ll also want to know something from Silverman about Mortensen’s habits and business dealings. But don’t talk about the case, Crispin—just stick to business. And, again remember, don’t print anything in that paper of yours except the facts without letting me see it. Or there’ll be trouble.”

  “Didn’t get much out of Mortensen’s office, Doctor,” moaned Jones, as he and Manson signalled a passing taxi. “But there’s the safe to go through, yet.” He paused. “If it’s worth going through—for a suicide,” he added.

  Manson looked closely at his colleague with a long side glance. Jones, turning round to see why he had received no answer met a glance that was approaching the ferocious.

  “It won’t be worth going through, Jones,” the Doctor declared.

  “We were too late.”

  8

  Chief-Detective-Inspector Baxter lumbered into the laboratory. Lumbered is the word; he has the appearance more of a successful country farmer than that of a detective. Ruddy-faced, though he is hardly ever in the open air, and with large powerful hands, he was wearing his usual tweed suit with wide, baggy trousers. His looks belie him. The Chief-Inspector is the head of the Finger-prints Department of the Yard; and there is no other man in the world who knows more, or even as much, about finger-prints.

  “You want me, Doctor?” he asked, and came forward to the table. A bottle containing whisky, and two glasses, were standing there. His eyes twinkled.

  “Thanks. I don’t mind if I do!” he said.

  Merry edged him away. “We have priority, laddie.”

  “Meaning you’ve prints on them, eh?”

  Manson nodded.

  “Ah, well it’s the torture of Tantalus.” He produced a pair of miniature bellows and blew a few puffs of dark powder over the surfaces. Fingerprints appeared as though by magic.

  “Are they clear enough to code right away?” Manson asked.

  The inspector peered at the prints through a lens. “I think an enlargement would be better. Photograph them.” Wilkins, the Lab. assistant disappeared with the articles into the dark room.

  “What about comparisons—in Records?” Baxter asked.

  Doctor Manson took an envelope from a pocket and extracted the visiting cards handed over by the Pullman travellers. Baxter grinned.

  “Do they know about this? Want ’em permanent?”

  “Not necessarily. They’ll keep in the dark for what we may want.”

  “Then we’ll use nitrate of silver.” The Prints chief smeared a little liquid on the rollers of an apparatus resembling a miniature mangle and rolled each card in succession. Merry switched on a lamp, directing the beam on the cards. Five minutes later the whiteness of the cards was disfigured by black splodges.

  Wilkins returned with the wet enlargements of the prints on the bottle and glasses. Baxter studied them alongside the cards.

  “One of the card prints is on each of the two glasses,” he announced. He looked at the card. “That of Mr. Edgar. There are other prints on the one glass and on the bottle which do not correspond with any of the cards.”

  “Do they correspond with the prints on the bottle?” The inspector peered again.

  “Yes.”

  “Then those are the steward’s. Now what about the remaining print on the one glass?”

  “Not the steward’s and not from any of these card gents.”

  Doctor Manson took from a glass cupboard Mortensen’s cigarette case. It was dusted over with the sufflator. Baxter examined the brought-up prints. “Those are they,” he announced.

  “Then that identifies the glasses. Now, are there any other prints of any kind in addition to those on the cards, the bottle and the cigarette case?”

  “Nary a one, Doctor.” Baxter picked up the bottle, poured a finger of whisky into a measuring glass and gulped it down.

  “One and sixpence, please,” Manson said.

  “What!”

  “The whisky is the property of British Railways and has to be paid for. You’ve had 1s. 6d. worth.”

  “You feel all right?” Merry asked.

  “All right? Why shouldn’t I feel all right?”

  “Well, there is a suggestion that the whisky may have contained strychnine,” Manson answered, gravely. “You don’t feel that you are going to have convulsions, or anything like that?”

  “You . . . you let me drink that stuff knowing that . . .” Baxter’s voice died away and he swallowed hard.

  “The cause of Science must be served. You don’t feel . . .”

  “I feel sick,” said Baxter, and vanished.

  Merry chuckled. “Want these any more?” he asked waving a hand over the glasses.

  For answer the Doctor lifted the glasses on to the bench and from a capillary tube let a couple of drops of whisky fall into each. Merry nodded and mixed the drops with the sediment at the bottom of each of the glasses. He entered the contents into a couple of test tubes and added two further drops of liquid from a chemical bottle.

  “What have you used, Jim?”

  “Sulphuric acid.”

  “Then I’ll spot it with potassium dichromate.”

  The pair watched the clashing of the reagents. Doctor Manson dialled a number on the house phone.

  “Baxter here,” a voice said.

  “I’ll give you an antidote to that sickness of yours. There wasn’t any strychnine in the whisky.” He chuckled, and rang off.

  Merry put the bottle and glasses away. “That’s that,” he said. “There wasn’t anything in the drink Mortensen had. So that means he had nothing after the meal before five o’clock. That makes it nearly an hour before the poison took effect. It doesn’t make sense. A quarter-of-an-hour is the limit. We know that.”

  “We do, Jim,” Manson retorted. “But there seems to be something we don’t know.”

  9

  Albert Timmins walked into the outer office of the Nemo Insurance Society in the Strand. And a curious figure he presented to the staff. Mr. Timmins was a son of toil who had been in sewers as a youth and wore trousers of strong-smelling corduroy fastened
, as well as by braces, by a strap below each knee. Only the oldest of labourers wear straps below the knee these days so the reader will know that Mr. Timmins was getting on a bit.

  He was getting on in another sense, for becoming too old for sewers he had become a road-sweeper. And he had progressed in rank; the dust-stricken ancient bowler which crowned his appearance signified that he was a foreman road cleaner. (It is an odd psychological characteristic of those who work in manual trades that so soon as they rise to any little authority, the usual cloth cap gives way to a bowler-hat!).

  Mr. Timmins, having made his way to a desk dropped a bunch of keys with a clatter on the glass top and demanded in a loud voice: “Half a dollar, please.”

  The clerk consulted a metal tag on the bunch which promised to pay the finder of the keys, if lost, the sum of two shillings and sixpence for their return to the offices of the Nemo company. Details of the place of recovery having been taken, together with his address, Mr. Timmins was duly presented with the half-crown. He spat on it for luck, raised his bowler to the lady members of the staff, and departed to spend the windfall on beer.

  The clerk took down a ledger and checked on the number of the keyring. Then he chuckled. A typist at a desk near his elbow looked up.

  “Dunno where to send this bunch, now,” he explained. The girl crossed to his side and looked at the ledger.

  “Why, that’s the man who died in the Brighton train,” she said. “Poisoned, they say he was.”

  “He won’t want them himself now, that’s certain,” the clerk announced. “I’d better send them round to the office of Society.”

  “If I were you, I’d take them to the manager,” advised the typist, thereby demonstrating the higher degree of intelligence that most women possess over the male of the same age. “The police are making inquiries,” she added.

  Ten minutes later Inspector Kenway was round at the offices. He took the keys and hurried round to the address of Mr. Timmins. The man had not returned for his breakfast and bed, and Mrs. Timmins could not, she said, understand why. Inspector Kenway with a shrewd idea of where Mr. Timmins might be, hunted through the public houses of Kennington, before he ran him to earth in the ‘Plough’.