Death and the Visiting Fireman

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Who’s that? I say, who’s that? Where are you?’

  Smithers kept silent, still.

  ‘What the devil do you mean by it? Who are you?’

  Still, silent.

  Footsteps.

  ‘Are you there?’

  The steps stopped.

  ‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’

  A long silence.

  Then slow steps again. Moving away, round the corner, back in the direction of the inn.

  Carefully Smithers eased himself up and peered in the direction Wemyss had gone. Nothing to be seen. Very quietly he walked off in the opposite direction. At the mouth of the alley he stopped and stood quietly for three minutes. Then he stepped cautiously out. The deserted street. A chocolate-box scene in the moonlight.

  Smithers slipped the bulky envelope he had taken from Wemyss into an inner pocket. He made no attempt to look at it. Quickly but quietly he set off up the street. He took the first corner, stopped and listened. No sound. He set off again. Another corner, another wait. Still no sound. He headed for the outskirts of the town.

  Not until he was clear of buildings did he stop again. Then he sat down on a roadside bank and took the envelope from his pocket. It was large, stiff, and expensive-looking, sealed with a heavy blob of green wax. It appeared to contain half a dozen documents. On it were written just three words: Miss Kristen Kett.

  Smithers recognized the writing at once. He had seen several letters signed in the same large ornate hand. Signed George Hamyadis.

  Making no attempt to open the envelope Smithers sat for a quarter of an hour holding it in front of him as if mesmerized.

  When he got to his feet his face wore a hint of a smile.

  He set off to walk through the moonlit countryside. He was walking at the first hint of day, and walking when the sun rose into a cloudless sky. When he got back to the hotel breakfast was almost due.

  Smithers went straight to the reception desk and rang. When the clerk appeared - the washed-out cotton dress, a pattern of small flowers almost faded away - he said he had something he wanted to put into the hotel safe. The girl took him to the little office where he had talked with Inspector Parker just before his trip to London. She opened a small safe let into the wall and Smithers asked for an envelope. The girl found a dusty buff one lying on the table. Smithers put Hamyadis’s large white envelope into it, wrote his own name on the outside, and handed it to the girl. He watched until the safe door was shut and then went upstairs, washed, and shaved. He was down to breakfast on time.

  At this meal late arrivals caused no comment, but no one ever missed it entirely, not even Kristen who ate nothing and sometimes did not even finish a single cup of tea. And each newcomer had their question. This morning when Smithers entered the room he found Fremitt there alone.

  ‘I slept all the night,’ Fremitt said. ‘You didn’t wake up and hear anything, I suppose?’

  ‘As far as I am concerned the night brought no news,’ said Smithers.

  ‘I didn’t really mean that. Or perhaps I did. This business is upsetting, thoroughly upsetting. Or at any rate I find it so.’

  Next Daisy came in.

  ‘Good morning. Anything happened?’

  ‘I was just asking the same thing, more or less,’ said Fremitt.

  ‘The answer’s a blank as usual.’

  After Daisy, Schlemberger.

  ‘Here we are at another day. I sure hope the police get somewhere today. There was talk of dragging the river to look for the gun, seems a mite crazy to me. Still, they must do something. I guess they don’t work nights, or do they?’

  ‘They seemed to be quite alert the night Dagg left us,’ Smithers said.

  Next the major.

  ‘Bit late on parade, I see. Overslept. Hope everyone else managed to get off. No night alarms, eh? *

  ‘We’re just where we were,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Ah well, another day, new hopes. Nil desperandum’

  Richard Wemyss. White, drawn, not well shaved.

  ‘Morning. Nobody asked for me I suppose? Where’s Kristen?’

  ‘Not down yet, I think,’ said Smithers.

  Wemyss said nothing. Everybody ate. A little later the door opened and Kristen came in.

  ‘Hell, I feel lousy,’ she said. ‘Any letters for me?’

  ‘I didn’t see any,’ said Fremitt.

  ‘No,’ said Kristen. ‘You’re not very good at seeing letters, are you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must confess to getting one every morning myself,’ Fremitt said. ‘Mrs Fremitt is an excellent correspondent. And then of course she is worried too.’

  He spoke quickly.

  ‘I suppose you didn’t see any letters for me, Richie?’ said Kristen.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do than run around after you,’ Wemyss said. ‘It’s time you understood that. I’m not here to obey your every whim. I’m here because you asked me to come and like a fool I agreed. And now look at me.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Kristen said. ‘I may have asked you to come, but you were damned glad to take the job.’

  ‘I was nothing of the sort. I did you a favour and it’s the last one I’m going to do you. Do you understand that?’

  ‘I think I do,’ said Kristen. ‘I think I understand very well. You’ve let me down.’

  ‘Let you down ...’

  Abruptly Wemyss checked himself.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘there was nothing for me to let you down about. Nothing at all. Get that into your stupid head. And if you take my advice you won’t go discussing your private affairs in public’

  ‘My private affairs, I like that, I shall discuss what I want to, where and when I want to.’

  ‘All right then. Let’s begin. There are one or two quite amusing things to discuss. Names for instance.’

  For a moment Kristen was silent.

  ‘Now don’t start that,’ she said. ‘Georgie used to play that game.’

  ‘And look what happened to him,’ said Wemyss. ‘Are you saying I killed him?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Wemyss. ‘I’m not such a fool as to say that to anybody’s face. All that I was saying is that you’ve got something you wouldn’t want talked about in public’

  ‘You’re only saying that to make them all suspect me. To think I trusted you, Richard Wemyss. But you’re not right, I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Oh, haven’t you, Christine Kettle,’ said Wemyss.

  Kristen put down her cup with a rattle. Tea spilt in the saucer.

  ‘How did you know?’ Kristen said. ‘Nobody was meant to know. They said it would spoil my career. I hate you.’

  She jumped up and ran from the room.

  ‘Silly idiot,’ said Wemyss.

  Too forcefully.

  ‘She pesters me,’ Wemyss said. ‘She’s pestered me ever since we began this damn trip, and I can’t stand it any longer.’

  He got up and left them.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Smithers to Daisy, who was sitting between him and the major, ‘how silly is she?’

  ‘Silly enough, I think, to believe that if she did become a star she could keep that secret, and that it would matter very much if it came out.’

  ‘You know,’ said Schlemberger, ‘that I find interesting. Exceedingly interesting.’

  ‘In our profession, Schlemberger, we’re accustomed to dealing with businessmen who know more or less what they’re doing,’ said Fremitt. ‘But elsewhere it doesn’t do to credit everybody with as much common sense as one trusts one has oneself.’

  ‘That’s not exactly why I found Miss Miller’s observation interesting, though,’ Schlemberger said. ‘I was rather reflecting that what wouldn’t on the face of it appear to be a motive for murder might, given it was believed by someone in the lower intelligence brackets, possibly become such a motive.’

  ‘My dear chap,’ said Fremitt, ‘I don’t think we need go looking any further for the person the police want. It’s surely stretching th
ings a bit far to abandon someone who, after all, has absconded, in favour of any theory, however ingenious.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Smithers, ‘we are cast for our role of decoys again this morning.’

  ‘I was asked to have the coach ready by ten again,’ said the major.

  ‘Don’t hurry, major,’ said Schlemberger. ‘With all due deference to my distinguished English colleague I strongly suspect that after I’ve had a word with Inspector Parker the coach idea will go.’

  ‘I suppose it is evidence in a way,’ said Daisy. ‘Though I’m sure there was something in a play I once did on tour about evidence not being what anyone was heard to say. But perhaps I’ve got muddled.’

  ‘I’m afraid you have a little, dear lady,’ said the major. ‘The police will certainly want to hear our good friend Schlemberger’s theory. Though whether they will altogether welcome another likely suspect I can’t say.’

  But the major appeared to be wrong.

  Before Schlemberger had had time to get in touch with Inspector Parker he appeared in the dining room himself and inquired for Kristen.

  ‘I’ve one or two things I want to ask her,’ he said.

  ‘She’s up in her room, I expect,’ Smithers said. ‘She left us rather hurriedly just now, and she frequently complains of feeling ill.’

  ‘I’ll go up and see if she’s available,’ the inspector said.

  He turned and left them among the breakfast debris. Broken toast, half-emptied cups, plates sticky with marmalade, the smell of grilled bacon no longer fresh. As he reached the door he said:

  ‘Oh, by the way, Mr Smithers, we found your boy. The village constable recognized him at once from your description. The lad says he was given the note by a boy he had never seen before and dared to hand it to you. In the circumstances I’m giving up the decoy business.’

  ‘I had imagined a liquorice bootlace or some such must have changed hands,’ Smithers said. ‘But Peter is evidently economical.’

  The inspector closed the door.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Daisy, ‘yesterday I got the distinct impression that Nosey Parker didn’t believe a word you were saying about that boy and the note. I was so cross that I hadn’t seen whether there had been a boy or not: I would have loved to have known if you were lying. You did it so well.’

  ‘No,’ Smithers said, ‘I’m afraid I have no talent for acting. Beyond perhaps deceiving a fourth form into thinking I am “in a wax”. You were hearing no more than the literal truth, and even that apparently did not sound altogether convincing.’

  ‘We discussed you as a murderer behind your back,’ Daisy said. ‘The others were being reluctantly convinced, and I was wondering whether it was really best to have the murder committed by someone you liked, so that it could be done for a good reason, or whether it should be someone you didn’t mind about and no reason in particular.’

  ‘Now I must disassociate myself from every word of that,’ the major said. ‘I won’t deny to you, Smithers, that I considered the possibility. It was thrust upon one. But never let it be said that I plumped for you. I have been at pains, I hope, to plump for no one.’

  ‘I have observed your scrupulous fairness, major,’ said Smithers. ‘I’m glad its scope extended to myself.’

  ‘I’m sure Miss Miller was joking,’ Fremitt said. ‘That is, joking about us. Her sentiments about the identity of the murderer are such that they must have occurred to us all, more or less.’

  ‘Anyhow,’ said Daisy, ‘now you know what it’s like, Mr Smithers. And so do I for that matter. Tell me, what did everybody think about my piece of mysteriousness? Were they all just waiting for the arrest?’

  ‘It was certainly a factor that had to be taken into account,’ said Schlemberger. ‘I guess I’m in a better position to see the ins and outs of an affair like this than most. After all whether it’s a case of murder or suspected arson it’s all a question of detecting fraud. Now there’s one principle you’ve got to stick to right hard when it comes to a fraud case: and that’s that everything must fit in. Your piece of mysteriousness, as you called it, certainly did worry me at times, Miss Miller.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re happy about it now,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Miss Miller,’ said Smithers, ‘I think we all owe you a debt. It was high time we had this conversation.’

  ‘You mean you think it might give us some clues?’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘You still feel the need of clues then?’ asked Fremitt.

  ‘I haven’t arrived at anything more than a strong hypothesis,’ said Schlemberger. ‘There’s an awful lot of facts unaccounted for. Miss Miller has been good enough to remind us that she is still a figure of mystery, and there are other things.’

  ‘And I thought you had forgotten that I hadn’t explained,’ said Daisy.

  ‘I take it,’ said Smithers, ‘that you don’t feel yet that you can.’

  ‘I don’t see why she should,’ the major said. ‘A woman is entitled to her mystery.’

  ‘That’s a fine sentiment, major,’ said Schlemberger, ‘but perhaps just a little British.’

  ‘As I see it,’ Smithers said, ‘it’s a question of whether one is prepared to accept Miss Miller’s assurance that her reticence has nothing to do with the murder. It’s a decision for each to take for themselves.’

  ‘Though I may add’, said Fremitt, ‘that the decision can be made easier if one has other facts at one’s disposal which may tend to minimize its importance. And there are facts, which may or may not be relevant, which are known to some of us and not to others.’

  ‘If one is convinced these facts are not relevant and if they concern someone else it would not be right to reveal them,’ said Smithers.

  ‘No, I disagree,’ Fremitt said. ‘I have half wished for some plain speaking for a long time now. The opportunity has arisen. I am determined to clear the air.’

  ‘Let us then confine ourselves to facts,’ said Smithers. ‘To tangible facts and their explanation.’

  ‘Certainly. And here is one fact. The second night after Hamyadis’s death Smithers and I met some time after midnight in a downpour of rain in the vicinity of the coach house. The boy, Peter, was with Smithers.’

  ‘I grant that fact,’ said Smithers. ‘And I concede that both of us ought to offer explanations of such unlikely conduct following so quickly on a murder.’

  ‘Are you prepared to do that now?’ asked Fremitt.

  ‘I think so,’ said Smithers. ‘But I am a little worried by the way you have put your initial proposition.’

  ‘Very well,’ Fremitt said, ‘then let me add that Smithers and the boy saw me break the little window at the back of the coach house and that I intended to enter it. Now, why were you there, Smithers?’

  ‘Simply because I had been there the night before and had seen two separate people attempt to enter the coach house,’ Smithers said. ‘One of them was obviously determined to find the automatic used to kill Hamyadis. As a matter of fact I found it myself later and it was then stolen from my room the same night. But that is not the point at issue. The question that worried me was what the second intruder wanted. So I watched again.’

  ‘I was not that second intruder,’ Fremitt said. ‘Do you believe I was?’

  ‘I don’t know. One of the attempts on the first night was made by a woman, but you could have been the man I half saw.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Daisy, ‘did you know it was a woman because of her scent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wondered why the inspector asked me about my scent. He was so off-handed.’

  ‘Or Kristen Kett,’ said Schlemberger. ‘It begins to add up.’

  ‘Fremitt,’ Smithers said, ‘have you any comment to make now?’

  A pause.

  ‘Yes, I think perhaps it would be fairest if I did. I think I ought to tell you that Miss Kett asked me to find something -I won’t say what it was, except that it wasn’t a gun - on the coach. I failed as you have
heard.’

  ‘So if we were looking at it as a matter of strict logic,’ said the major, ‘it could have been the Kett girl herself searching the coach on the first night. But if she had preferred to ask someone to act for her, then the case against Miss Miller looks stronger.’

  ‘Let me ask the question,’ Smithers said. ‘Did anyone here act for Miss Kett on that first night?’ Silence.

  ‘Young Wemyss is most likely I guess,’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘I certainly think he ought to be asked,’ Smithers said.

  As they left the room in a body the major, glancing round to see if there was anybody to overhear, said:

  ‘There’s a possibility I don’t think we should neglect. It’s conceivable that the girl looked for the gun herself and provided this other business as a red herring.’

  ‘I wonder what that inspector’s asking her up there?’ Schlemberger said.

  They walked in a group through the downstairs rooms of the inn. Wemyss was sitting outside the windows of the lounge on one of the benches in the cobbled yard. They went out and assembled round him.

  ‘We’re having a bit of a talk,’ Schlemberger said. ‘I proposed the idea before but everyone walked out on me then. Still, better late than never.’

  ‘If you mean you’re bandying accusations,’ said Wemyss, ‘I’ve not changed my opinion. I’ve nothing to say about this business and I don’t wish to hear anything about it.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Smithers, sitting down beside Wemyss and looking up at the others, ‘it is a matter which concerns you. And so I propose to continue our conversation and you can listen or not as you like. But let us be fair and pursue some line you are not immediately connected with.’

  Wemyss looked up. None of the others moved. Wemyss took up his paper again.

  A poor actor.

  ‘Major,’ said Smithers, ‘in the light of our present talk have you anything to tell us about your attempt to confess to killing Hamyadis?’

  ‘I suppose the inference is that since I confessed falsely to the murder I must know who was responsible and wish to take the blame from them,’ the major said. ‘Dulce et decorum, eh? That must be what you’ve all been thinking these last few days.’