It didn’t take them long to go through the sparse furnishings. The contents told them nothing but what they knew already: Arthur McCutcheon was mired in his work and had little interest in much of anything else.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Nick asked as he rummaged through a shoebox full of old papers he had found in the top of the wardrobe.
“I don’t know exactly. Anything that would show a connection between McCutcheon and Lincoln or Constance. Besides Farlinford, of course.”
Nick opened an envelope and looked at the slip of paper inside. “It seems Mr. McCutcheon’s debt to the Winchester Bank & Trust in the amount of twenty pounds was paid in full on the twenty-seventh day of April, 1931.” He put the slip back into the box and took out an engraved invitation. “Elizabeth Myrtle Cubbins and James Arthur Davies requested the honor of his presence at their marriage this past February.”
“More to the point, if you please,” Drew prompted as he rifled through the drawer of the writing desk, and then he picked up a stern-looking tome that must have belonged to a student of the law sometime in the past fifty years. “Hullo.”
Nick looked up. “What?”
“Very interesting,” Drew said, scanning the book. “It’s marked at the part about blackmail and the penalties therefor.”
Nick looked over his shoulder at the underlined passage. “Hardly a coincidence after what’s happened with Lincoln, eh? Do you think it’s motive for murder?”
Drew frowned again. “I don’t see how, if McCutcheon was locked up in his lab when the benzene spilled. I don’t know. Shall we talk to Mrs. Newton here and then have a quick look at Farlinford?”
Mrs. Newton made it perfectly clear that her tenants’ personal entanglements were their own business and none of her own, just as she had told the police. She could say nothing of Mr. McCutcheon except that he was a man of quiet habits who paid his rent on time and caused her no trouble. That seen to, Drew and Nick made their way to McCutcheon’s office, which was a little more than two miles from the flat.
Drew told Mr. Baumann, the third floor manager, that he just wanted to look at McCutcheon’s laboratory, just to see it for himself, and Baumann obliged.
Once he and Nick were left on their own, Drew looked for a place to start. The room was very typical of the research labs at Farlinford, all white and stainless steel, cabinets filled with files and notebooks, worktables covered with test tubes and chemicals marked with ominous warning labels. It looked as if nothing had been disturbed since McCutcheon had last been at work.
“According to the police, McCutcheon typically holed up in here all day with the door locked,” Drew said. “Everyone says he was one of those intense chaps who lived for his job and always claimed he was on the verge of something big. When the benzene spilled, he couldn’t get the door unlocked before it killed him.”
Nick made a face. “Ghastly way to go west, if you ask me. But suppose it was murder. Suppose he found out about Lincoln somehow and was going to report him. Perhaps Lincoln would kill him to shut him up, but how would he manage it in here?”
“The police say this Adams who has the office next door heard McCutcheon fall, heard him trying to get out and rushed right over. They had to break down the door.” Drew took hold of a piece of wrought iron that barred the window and gave it a firm shake. It didn’t budge. “There aren’t any other ways in or out. McCutcheon’s is the last door in this wing, so no one could have gotten out without Adams or Baumann or someone seeing him.”
“Still, suppose someone spilled it on purpose.”
“Rather an odd way to dispose of someone, but I guess it would work in this environment, especially if it was meant to look as though an accident. But there’s the getting in and out to be accounted for.” Drew considered for a moment. “We’ve been through McCutcheon’s flat. Nothing there to speak of, apart from that law book, and that may not have anything to do with anything. Maybe there’s something in his files or tucked away in a drawer that will shed some light on things.”
“The police went through it all and found nothing of note,” Nick reminded him.
Drew opened another cabinet. “Maybe they didn’t know what to look for.”
“Right,” Nick said. “They’re just the police. What would they know about solving crimes?”
“Quiet, you.”
The two of them searched through the remaining cabinets and drawers and found nothing of interest.
“You’d best start on that filing cabinet in the corner,” Drew said. “I’ll look through these notebooks.”
Nick’s shoulders sagged. “It’ll take a week to get through all that.”
“Then you’d best get at it, old man.”
Nick trudged over to the filing cabinet. “I thought detecting was supposed to be all mysterious and exciting,” he muttered as he yanked open the top drawer.
Overbalanced, the heavy cabinet began to topple, and Nick just managed to catch it.
“I say! A little help here!”
Drew hurried over to lend a hand, but stopped short, staring at the floor behind the files.
“Good heavens.”
“Drew,” Nick urged. “This is heavy.”
“Oh, right. Right.”
They pushed the drawer back in and made sure the filing cabinet was stable. Then they pulled it away from the wall again, and Drew bent to retrieve the object he had seen.
“Looks as if the police weren’t quite as thorough as advertised.”
He handed Nick an old photograph of a young woman. A young woman whose clothes and hairstyle would have been fashionable a quarter of a century earlier. It wasn’t the same picture as the one in Lincoln’s bag, but it was of the same girl. Taken the same day as the other too, judging by the clothes and the room.
“That’s the girl. Marielle.” Nick turned it over, but the back of this one was blank. “What would McCutcheon be doing with this?”
Drew reclaimed the photo and studied the woman’s face, searching for something familiar in it, something that resonated with the image he saw in his own mirror. She was smiling this time, and there was a hint of a dimple at the corner of her mouth. Any man might be led astray by such a smile and such a dimple, even a good one. Drew slipped the picture into his coat pocket.
“For now, we need to see what else the police might have overlooked. This cabinet shouldn’t have tipped over so easily.”
He bent down and opened the bottom drawer. It was empty.
“Curious,” Nick said. “The police didn’t say anything about this in their investigation, did they?”
“Not to me. But I haven’t really asked them about McCutcheon yet. Birdsong may not wish to discuss it with me, at any rate.”
“Can’t hurt to ask, can it?”
“I’ll give it a go next time I see him, but for now let’s check the desk. There’s precious little else in the room we can look behind.”
With Nick’s help, Drew pulled the desk away from the wall. Other than some paper clips and a long-forgotten fountain pen, there was nothing behind it.
“Dash it all,” Nick said. “I was hoping to find the killer’s confession, complete with gory details, back here somewhere.”
Drew narrowed his eyes, staring for a moment, and then he ran his hand over the wall.
“Didn’t Father Knox have something to say about secret passages?”
“What?”
Drew showed Nick a crevice in the wall, a barely visible crack that ran from the baseboard up the wall about three feet and then turned at a right angle to go about two feet across and then, with another right angle, back down to the baseboard. It would have never been noticeable with the desk in its proper place.
“No,” Nick said, with an incredulous shake of his head. “It’s probably some sort of access for workmen. You know, electrical or something to do with the plant.”
“If it is, it’s deuced inconvenient to get to. Besides, we’ll never know if we don’t try it.”
Drew presse
d on the wall near the top right corner of the crevice. Nothing happened. He was equally unsuccessful no matter where he pressed.
“Must open from the inside,” he concluded.
“Or it’s just a badly done patch for when some experiment went wrong and blew a hole in the wall. Or . . .” Nick produced his penknife. “Perhaps it opens outwards.”
“Ah.”
Drew took the knife and pried the blade into the crevice. With one quick twist, the panel popped out, exposing a small crawl space.
Nick picked up the panel, inspecting it. “Handle on the inside. Makes it easy to close it after one’s gone in.”
“Shall we?” Drew asked.
“I suppose we fairly much have to at this point, but I will register a formal objection.” Nick pulled out his list of commandments. “There aren’t to be secret passages, and if there must be one, it should be in a place that is likely to have such a thing. This isn’t the sort of place at all.”
“Your objection is noted but irrelevant. With or without Father Knox’s approval, there is a secret passage that could have been used in dispatching McCutcheon, and I plan to find out where it goes.”
“Perhaps we should put the desk back in place,” Nick suggested. “No need to be found out before we get a few answers.”
“Capital idea.”
They centered the desk back over the opening. Then Drew crawled under it and into the passage.
“It’s rather dark,” he called. “I don’t suppose you thought to bring a torch.”
“I didn’t expect I’d need one in a laboratory,” Nick called back. “Shall I see if there’s one somewhere about?”
Drew backed out from under the desk, his hands grimy and the knees of his crisp white trousers smudged with dirt. “That seems to be in order. Heaven knows what might be in there, but at first glance it reminds me of nothing so much as the much-vaunted outer darkness.”
“Back in a jiff,” Nick promised, and he was, bringing a torch with him.
“Ah,” Drew said. “Success.”
“I got it from one of the stenographers. She keeps it in her desk in case the electricity goes out.”
Drew nodded. “Clever girl. Now back into outer darkness.”
He crawled under the desk and into the passage with Nick at his heels.
“I don’t envy you explaining the state of your clothing to Dad once we get out of this mess,” Nick said as he pulled the panel closed behind them.
Drew grimaced. “It is a bit dusty. I don’t suppose the charwoman gets by here much. But do keep your voice down. It’s hardly worth having a secret passage if one announces it to the world, you know.”
He was relieved to find the crawl space ended just a few feet farther on, and the passage, though only wide enough to wriggle through, became high enough for them to stand up.
“That’s better,” he whispered. “Now, where exactly are we?”
He shone the torchlight on the wall in front of him. It was painted and had a decorative molding at the ceiling. At about eye level there was a rectangular space that was brighter and less worn-looking than the rest.
“There was a picture or something hanging here once,” he said, fingering the nail hole at the top of the rectangle. “This used to be the front side of a wall. Probably original to the building.”
With some difficulty he managed to twist himself around to look at the wall at his back. “Ah. And this one is new and obviously faces out the other way.”
“Didn’t they have the offices remodeled a bit a few weeks ago?” Nick asked, his voice barely audible.
“Precisely. Perfect opportunity for someone to add some custom features. Now, just where does this go?” Drew flashed the torch ahead of them and saw that the passage stopped at a dead end. “Not there, obviously.”
“Unless the door there is disguised,” Nick offered, but Drew shook his head.
“Why would anyone conceal a door inside the passage? But . . .” He turned the torch downward. “Why not something similar to what we’ve just come through?”
There were three handles in the newer wall, about twelve feet apart, and one at the far end of the passage in the opposite wall. All of them were only about two feet from the floor.
“Well, well,” Drew mused. “Which shall it be? The lady or the tiger?”
“I say the one by itself there,” Nick suggested, pointing to the handle in the older wall. “The other three likely go to the same sort of place. This one’s different.”
“Vive la différence, eh?” Drew put a cautioning finger to his lips and listened at the wall. “I don’t hear anything,” he whispered. “Let’s just take a quiet little look.”
He switched off the torch and, without a sound, opened the panel little by little until he could see into the room beyond. Then he pulled it silently shut again.
“What did you see?” Nick asked, his voice soft and urgent.
Drew switched the torch back on. “It’s rather what I thought. The accounting department. The panel opens under a desk as in McCutcheon’s lab. That means access to all the ledgers and other records. Now let’s see where the other doors lead.”
“Well, don’t stand about all day. It’s beastly stuffy in here. Pick one.”
“I say it’s wise to take the middle course,” Drew said.
Once he had plunged them back into total darkness, Drew cautiously opened the center panel in the recently built wall and found himself in darkness still. He covered the end of the torch with his left hand to block most of the light and switched it on again. He was staring at the hem of a gentleman’s overcoat. He pushed it to one side, and after crawling over a pair of what he considered rather shabby dress pumps and a sturdy pair of galoshes, he stood up.
He was still for another moment, listening, and then, finding a doorknob, he turned it and stepped noiselessly into an office. He immediately recognized the man at the desk with his back to him.
“Good afternoon,” he said as he switched off the torch.
With an audible gasp, Rushford spun to face him. “My word! Where did you come from?”
“Your coat closet, I believe, sir,” Drew said sunnily. “I hope you don’t mind. Oh, and I’ve brought a guest.” He went back to the closet. “Come on through, Nick, old man.”
“My word!” Rushford repeated as Nick emerged from the darkness. “What were you doing in there? And how in the world did you get in?” He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “My word.”
“We came from McCutcheon’s laboratory,” Drew answered. “Did you know there’s a passageway back behind your office?”
“No,” Rushford said, startled patches of red on each of his pale cheeks. “Behind my office? But whatever for?”
“That is precisely what we are attempting to ascertain. Would you care to see?” Drew asked. He pulled back the overcoat and shone the torch toward the small opening in the back of the closet.
Rushford blinked a few times. “You came through there? I could never do it, even if I managed to fit. It would be too ghastly in a tiny, dark hole like that.”
Drew refrained from smiling. Rushford was not a particularly large man, but he was shaped rather like a grape. The passage might be a bit of a tight fit for him at that.
“I understand your office was recently redone,” Drew said. “Was that your idea?”
“Mine?” Rushford’s laugh was a little unsteady. “Not as such, no. Parker and I had talked about it for some time, but nothing ever came of it. Then we decided it would be something good for Lincoln to see to. Keep him out of mischief and all.” He blotted his upper lip with his already-sodden handkerchief. “Well, one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but he could be rather a trial when he had a notion to come up here and work.”
“Yes,” Drew said, “I’ve heard my stepfather mention that. Do you happen to know the firm he engaged to do the work?”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember. It wasn’t really much to do with me. I was in York tha
t week on business. Somebody and Son, I daresay, but then it’s always an ‘and son,’ isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is,” Drew replied.
“Would someone in accounting have a record of it?” Nick asked.
“Oh, certainly,” Rushford assured them. “Go and see a Mr. Evans in disbursements. He can show you everything from the original estimate to the final payment. They’re quite particular about that sort of thing, though I’m not usually in on the details of each minor transaction.”
“That’s all right,” Drew assured him. “My father always said the only thing the owner of a business has to know is how to find the right people. The rest will take care of itself.”
“Too true,” Rushford agreed. “Too true. Still, it seems harder every day to find someone who can be trusted.”
The red patches had faded into his cheeks, and he seemed to have recovered from his fright.
Drew nodded. “Alas, that is also too true.”
It was past teatime when Drew and Nick returned to Farthering Place. The door to the library was open, and Drew could see Madeline sitting on the divan, reading.
“She’s not going to be pleased with you, old man,” Nick said, half under his breath. “Not when she finds out where we’ve been.”
“She’s not going to find out.”
“No?”
“You’re not going to say anything,” Drew said, his expression firm. “And I know I won’t.”
Nick laughed softly. “You’re still a hound.”
“Yes, but I don’t mean her to find that out quite yet.” Grinning, Drew straightened his tie and strode into the library. “Hullo, darling. Did you have a pleasant afternoon?”
She glanced up, smiling briefly, and then turned again to her book. “Yes, we did, actually. Uncle Mason and I had a very nice talk. You have some beautiful horses.”
“They are fine, aren’t they?” He sat on the divan next to her. “Did you see Charlemagne?”
“Hmmm?” She didn’t look up.
“Charlemagne. My Arabian. Did you see him?”
She turned the page. “Mm-hmm. Very nice.”
Frowning, he stood up again. “I won’t interrupt your reading, then.”
Rules of Murder Page 14