Below the Clock

by J. V. Turner

  ‘I’m not falling for that theory. Not by a mile. I know some folks have got the nasty habit of wetting their finger and thumb as they turn pages, but only one person in ten would ever do it. If I am right the odds would be ten to one against Reardon doing it. And men planning murder don’t gamble as wildly as that. No, no, no, it won’t do at all. I see what you’re getting at—that the corners of the pages are coated with strophantin, but no man in his senses would expect to be successful with a trap like that. We know enough about the murderer to know that he was a cunning devil.’

  ‘He certainly was. So far, Ripple, you’ve only got half the story. The corners were coated with strophantin. But that was not all. I’ll tell you exactly how it was done. Then you’ll see that there was no ten-to-one shot about it. First of all, let us bear two things in mind. One, Reardon was nervous on Budget Day, as the murderer knew only too well. He had gambled on the Stock Exchange, abused his position, risked everything for money, and wouldn’t be feeling too happy when he started his address. That is not a theory. No man with the load he had on his mind could have faced that House without feeling shaky, nervous and apprehensive. About that you must agree.’

  ‘Nobody could argue about that, knowing what we know now. He must have been in a pretty bad state.’

  ‘And the murderer knew it. Right. That’s the first step. Now we move to the second. The first hour of a Budget Speech is of relatively little importance. The Chancellor makes his annual review during that time, and the interest is small. All the Members and the general public know roughly how the national finances have fared during the year. What they all want to know, what industry is standing still for, what the Stock Exchange is waiting for, what Mr Everyman is worried about, what politicians want to make capital from, is the Government’s plan of taxation for the coming year. Once again, Ripple, you’ll admit that that is the vital portion of the speech?’

  ‘Can’t be any doubt about that. Go ahead.’

  ‘Very well. Edgar Reardon progressed splendidly through his review of past events. I listened to him, as you know. He was nervous, and seemed to become a little more apprehensive as he approached the scheme for new taxation. At last he finished his review, and the House waited more or less breathlessly. They knew he had arrived at the kernel of the address. Now, for a second, I am going back to point something out to you. Watch me turn the pages of the earlier sections of this speech.’

  Petrie flicked them over rapidly with finger and thumb. There was no hesitating pause, no fumbling, no difficulty. At last he arrived at the fourth section. Then he stopped.

  ‘This is where we make a little experiment, Ripple. Stand up for a minute as though you are making the Budget speech. Here is the fourth section. I will take the fifth chapter. Wait one moment now.’

  The little man placed the fatal section on the desk, pressed on the bottom right-hand corner of it with the palm of his hand. Then he pushed it across the desk, placing it underneath the fourth section. Ripple watched the moves with wrinkles corrugating his brow.

  ‘Now make a start. Turn those pages just as you would if you were making the speech. But for the love of God stop for a moment when you’ve come to the end of that section.’

  Ripple turned them without difficulty, each page rising between his finger and thumb smoothly. At last he reached the end of the section and laid it on one side to leave the next chapter on top. He turned to Petrie and waited.

  ‘Just place yourself now in the position of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. You have arrived at the vital part of your speech. The whole House is waiting. So far I haven’t told you the important part of this murder, the almost uncanny cunning of the man who arranged it. That can wait for a minute while you make this small experiment first. I want you to turn those pages as you did the others. But don’t wet your fingers. If you do you’ll die.’

  Ripple nodded and placed a thumb and finger on the first sheet. He frowned. It would not move. He couldn’t separate it. His hand rose towards his mouth. Petrie jumped from his chair.

  ‘Wait, man, you’re doing just what Reardon did! Try the pages all you like, but keep your fingers away from your mouth.’

  Ripple shivered. A chill mounted from his jaws to the roots of his hair. Petrie wiped his face with his handkerchief. After another attempt Ripple managed to turn the first sheet over. But the next page gave him more trouble and it was half a minute before he could separate it.

  ‘That will do,’ said Amos. ‘Sit down now while I explain things to you. The murderer knew that Reardon under normal circumstances would not wet his fingers. So he devised a plan, a double plan, to ensure that he would lick that strophanthin into his mouth. He painted the corners of the pages with a substratum of gum and mixed the strophantin in the gum. When Reardon reached that portion of his speech he found that the pages were sticking together slightly. Of course they were. The murderer had fastened them just as easily as I did a moment ago. That is one half of the trap by which Reardon was caught. Clever, eh?’

  ‘Phew! it makes me sweat to think about it. Who the hell would think out anything like that? And you say that’s only one half of the arrangements for the murder? If that is only part of it I’m glad the man wasn’t trying to see me off the globe!’

  ‘The other part, I think, is even more ingenious than the actual murder itself. Before I explain it to you I want you to bear in mind all the time that the murderer knew precisely what mental troubles were afflicting Reardon, knew that his heart would be bumping, his nerves gnawing him, his conscience worrying him, all through the speech. He would be wondering if he was going to get away with his deceit, with his gross treachery, whether he would be unmasked, whether any eleventh hour episode would occur that might blow his life, his hopes, everything, sky high. Just bear that in mind and then you’ll appreciate the skill, the brilliance, the forethought with which the whole thing was arranged.

  ‘Reardon completes his reading of section four. He turns his attention to the section on which he has gambled his all. Suddenly he stops. To say that he was staggered would be gross understatement. The man’s world must have slipped from under his feet. The first page he had never seen before. The taxes referred to he had never heard of! Let your mind rest on that for a minute.’

  Ripple was too stunned to speak. His mouth opened and closed like a distressed goldfish. He stared at the page before him until his eyes protruded. He pulled himself together when he heard Amos:

  ‘Let me put the thoughts of that man before you. I think I can guess them fairly well. A Chancellor in normal circumstances would instantly have halted his speech, wouldn’t he? Immediately he saw that the material had been tampered with the House would have been adjourned while the essential inquiries were made. That is obvious. Ripple, the murderer was no mean student of human nature. Long before Budget Day he had envisaged the track along which Reardon’s mind would travel. That is the track along which I am going to take you now. I’m sure it is more fact than guesswork.

  ‘Reardon knew that he had sold the Budget secrets for a mess of pottage. He knew that he had betrayed the nation for money. He was a political Judas. His nerves were racked before he reached that fatal section. When his eyes told his brain that a fraudulent series of taxes had been transposed for his own, what would be the first thought to flood his mind? Just this: “I have been betrayed!”

  ‘Probably a dozen wild ideas swamped his brain. If he revealed the fraud would everything be disclosed? Could he remember the new taxes with sufficient confidence to abandon the speech and announce them from memory? Was the criminal supposing that the fraudulent taxes would be announced as a price for his silence? Was it a cruel hoax? Had some financial interests in the City bribed someone to break him as a result of his pre-Budget gamble? The more he stared at the page, the more restless the House became. The more restless the Members grew, the more panic-stricken Edgar Reardon became. You don’t need much imagination to draw aside the curtains from his mind.

  ‘Suddenl
y he saw one ray of hope, a ray dim and distant. Perhaps the page had been inserted by some unfortunate accident, or some unfeeling joke. There was one way in which he could discover the truth. He could look at the following sheets. Perhaps below he might find his original manuscript. His nervous fingers clutched the page. He could not raise it. The House became more restless, impatience was turning to anger. Frantic, almost demented, Reardon licked his fingers and flicked over the page with an effort. His hopes fell. The second page, also, was bogus. It contained material he had never seen before. Voices of protest rose round him. Nervously he licked his fingers, clutched the next page, stared at it with anxiety stabbing at his senses. Again the sheet was false. His panic grew, his brain was failing to act.

  ‘The noise of rising voices buzzed in his ears and he licked his fingers again and groped for the next page. By now the typescript was swaying in drunken lines before his glazing eyes. He groped for another sheet. Pain seized his heart, a wall of blackness was mounting before his sight, the mutter of voices now meant nothing to him, the Budget was something without meaning, the world and all it meant was passing from him. Then—Edgar Reardon was dead!’

  Petrie stopped abruptly. Ripple wiped globules of sweat from his face. His hands felt cold and clammy. The Yard man was not squeamish, but before his eyes was a picture of the frantic Reardon, blundering in panic towards death. He could see the increasing redness in the Chancellor’s face, the fixed brightness of his eyes, almost hear the increasing heaviness of breath, as the man plunged to his end in a frenzy of bewilderment.

  ‘And that,’ remarked the little man, ‘is all that can be said about the way in which he was murdered. Horribly ingenious, eh?’

  Ripple shivered, looked again at the speech, quite fascinated.

  ‘When did you first find this out?’ he asked.

  ‘In the early hours of this morning. I knew that Reardon had not been murdered by a miracle. I knew that the claret and soda had not been tampered with and that he touched nothing else—other than the speech—within an hour of his death. I had looked at the speech, but had not read it. The error on my part is beyond excuse. So I rectified it by reading the stuff. You remember I’d taken it home with me. I was brought up with a jerk when I reached the start of that fifth section. I had read in the newspapers the Budget speech made by the Prime Minister. It was made from a carbon copy of the original speech. It was then I noticed that the new taxes were not those typed on the speech Reardon took into the House.

  ‘After that I started to examine the pages. Like you, I saw those slight smears. I took a look at them under a magnifying glass and came to the conclusion that gum had been painted on the corners. The rest was simple. I took the speech along to the Home Office this morning and after lunch I got the report I expected. The gum was heavily impregnated with strophanthin. There ends that part of the story. It all seems so simple now we know the truth.’

  ‘Damnable! But it seems to land us more into the mire than ever. We know how the murder was done. But that’s all we do know. How on earth do we reckon to make any headway now?’

  ‘You’re wrong, Sunshine. We know a lot more than that. There are one or two important points that you’ve overlooked. We know that this fraudulent section did not in any way resemble the original manuscript in material, that the words and figures were all wrong. In fact the section was wrong in everything except one thing—it was not wrong in appearance. Follow me?’

  ‘I think I do. That thought had occurred to me.’

  ‘Very, very important, Ripple. But for that the murderer might just as well have used a selection from the Bab Ballads. Let me see if I can lighten the clouds for you, Angel. For the time being don’t bother about what the murderer didn’t know, or pretended not to know. Instead, let us look carefully at the precise information he had got, let us examine what he did know. Obviously this imitation section was prepared some time before it was inserted in the speech. That means this: He must have known how the Budget speech was to be prepared and assembled. Think that over.

  ‘I’m willing to assume, Ripple, that any Member of the House of Commons might have guessed that the notes of Reardon’s speech would be typed on notepaper taken from the House of Commons. It is certainly less likely any Member would have guessed that the speech would be typed on paper of this particular size. The murderer knew it, though.

  ‘And that isn’t the extent of his knowledge. He knew that the speech would be divided into sections, and that each section would be clipped separately. You have to remember that the whole scheme of substituting one section for another rested on that knowledge. Without this particular information the substitution could not have been made in the time available to any of the potential murderers. I am reducing to an impossibility the idea that it might have been done at the Cabinet meeting.’

  ‘I don’t see why you should, but I’m glad to hear you say so.’

  ‘I wipe that out because Reardon would have been poring over that one section at the meeting. It would have been impossible for him to work with them and hide the fact that he wasn’t looking at his own notes. And if he had discovered the fraud he would never have taken them into the House. We can wipe that out entirely.’

  ‘Thank the Lord there is something we don’t have to worry about.’

  ‘We’ve got more than enough to keep us awake. It seems to me—’

  Petrie stopped. Ripple picked up the little man’s timetable and waved it excitedly in the air. Then he crashed a fist down on the desk. Amos smiled. The Yard man rarely showed any emotion other than permanent depression and misery.

  ‘My oath!’ he exclaimed. ‘Ferguson! That man is everything that opens and shuts. He fills the whole bill. Just think. He had the draft of Reardon’s speech in his possession for a whole night. He was at the Cabinet meeting. He was in Reardon’s private room at the House. He even offered to show the speech to Mrs Reardon so he had access to it. And he was the last person to be alone with Reardon.’

  ‘I know all about it, little one. And you didn’t even add then that he knew quite a lot about Reardon’s private affairs. But I’m not so certain. I’d feel much more excited about him if there were not others who could have done it equally well. Think of Paling. He was with Reardon all the time the speech was being prepared. He motored up with him on Budget Day. He was with him in his room shortly before the speech was made. You could build a monumental case against him. Then there’s Watson. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the dead man and shows very clearly that he’s most hopelessly in love with the widow. There are other considerations.’

  ‘If he had anything to do with it Ferguson must have given him an almighty shock when he offered to show the speech to Mrs Reardon.’

  Petrie seized the telephone and dialled for Ferguson. A minute later he jumped from his seat and grabbed his hat.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?’ asked the startled Yard man.

  ‘Hold the fort here until I come back. Ferguson is out of town. He has gone to Brockenhurst. And Watson has gone with him! I’m going down to join the party. I’ll slip over to Milford while I’m there. Try to get Paling to talk while I’ve gone.’

  The door slammed. Amos Petrie was on his way.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE ODD AFFAIR AT MILFORD

  PETRIE’S chauffeur piloted him down to Brockenhurst, but the little man met with an early disappointment. At the hotel he was informed that Ferguson, Watson, ‘and the rest of the party,’ had gone out for the day, leaving behind a message stating that they would not be back until late in the evening. Surprised, Amos inquired the names of the remaining members of the party. He was shown the register, and his surprise increased. Watson and Ferguson were with Lola Reardon and her father!

  Amos left his case at the hotel, ate a hurried snack, and ordered the chauffeur to drive him into Milford. It was dark when he arrived at the hotel in which Reardon and Paling had stayed. At first Petrie found the proprietress somewhat difficult. After te
n minutes’ conversation the little man found her more amenable. She led the way into a private sitting-room and he ordered drinks for both. It seemed that the prospect of refreshment removed the last barrier of the woman’s reserve. Amos decided that nothing could be gained by beating about the bush. He told her bluntly who he was and why he’d called. The woman was startled, but a double whisky seemed to soothe her nerves.

  ‘Did you notice anything odd about them while you were keeping your eye on the hotel?’ he asked.

  The woman’s massive bosom heaved and she nodded her head.

  ‘I’ve never had folks like them staying here before and I never want anything like them again. They might call themselves gentlemen but that they could never be? Disgraceful, it was.’

  Amos inclined his head appreciatively and sipped his beer.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that. What was the trouble?’

  ‘Trouble? Enough to send any poor woman stark, raving mad. How would you like to be told that your wine was pig swill?’

  ‘A most ungracious thing to say. Who told you that, madame?’

  ‘Mr Reardon said it was and Mr Paling said it was worse.’

  ‘Most distressing, I’m sure. Would you mind telling me all about it?’

  ‘But that’s not all, sir. Somebody had put poison in it!’

  Amos sat bolt upright and almost dropped his tankard.

  ‘They did what?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘They put poison in it,’ she asserted. Petrie pulled out his handkerchief of many colours and rubbed his hands. Then he dived for his tankard before speaking again.

  ‘Start from the very beginning and let me know all about it.’

  The woman gulped down some whisky, straightened her frock.

  ‘It was the night after they got here, sir. They had their meals in my private dining-room. We’d served them with dinner and about ten minutes afterwards there was such a noise going on in their room that I thought the place was on fire. I’ve never heard such a rumpus in my life. It was terrible. I got frightened. It sounded almost as though they might be fighting. I didn’t want anything like that happening in my hotel so I went to the room to see if I could quieten them a bit.