Death and the Visiting Fireman

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘I thought it was a bit strange,’ said Kristen. ‘Have you read my one too?’

  ‘I have,’ said Smithers. ‘And I enjoyed it.’

  ‘We must have a nice chat about it one day,’ said Kristen. ‘Or perhaps not really. Good night.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Smithers.

  All the others had left.

  At the door Kristen poked her head back in again and said:

  ‘I would have liked to have watched to see if anybody went out of the front door instead of going up to bed, but I suppose they were all in a bunch.’

  ‘I confess to the same curiosity,’ said Smithers.

  ‘Are you getting more human ? Or am I just suddenly feeling a little better?’

  Without waiting for an answer Kristen left.

  During the conversation Smithers had been looking round the room for his book without success. Now he began a thorough search. It took him six minutes to find the volume tucked under the cushion of a small chair in the far corner of the room.

  ‘Now why ...?’ he said aloud as he went to collect the key of his bedroom from the hall board.

  He reached for the now familiar hook. Nothing hung from it.

  For four seconds he stared at the empty hook as if in a dream. Then he dropped his Gibbon, ran at a loping pace along a corridor and out by the back way into the yard. He turned sharply and increasing his pace followed the wall until he came to a small disused stable where a few oddments of garden tools were kept. By the fading daylight Smithers was able to see a short ladder propped in a corner. It had a rung missing about half-way along, but looked otherwise sound.

  Smithers seized it and ran back along the length of the hotel. The ladder over his shoulder swayed crazily.

  About half-way between the tool store and the back door of the inn Smithers stopped. He took a deep breath and then set his ladder up against the wall. He climbed it carefully. It creaked heavily at the top rung but two. But it served Smithers’s purpose. With a heave but no serious danger he was able to get himself on to the gently sloping tiles running immediately under his own and some other rooms.

  He stood for a moment leaning slightly forward to counterbalance the slope and trying to get his bearings. Then he set out on tiptoe.

  His own window was wide open as he had left it earlier in the day. Cautiously he approached and stood beside it. He peered in.

  And quickly drew back.

  For as long as it takes to count ten he waited and then peered round the corner again. This time he acted quickly.

  He put a foot across the sill and into the room, ducked down, and swung the rest of his body in. Then he side-stepped smartly and stood upright with his back solidly against the bedroom wall.

  ‘Well, Wemyss,’ he said, ‘I thought I might find you here.’

  Eighteen

  Wemyss was kneeling with his back to the window, rummaging through the chest of drawers. The room was in disorder. Every drawer had been wrenched open and the contents flung out. The wardrobe had had all the coats and suits taken out and they were lying in a pile with the pockets protruding. The other seven volumes of The Decline and Fall were in a heap on the floor lying open and face down.

  When Smithers spoke Wemyss wheeled round, lost his balance, and went sprawling against the wall behind him.

  ‘It’s not here in any case,’ Smithers said. ‘I’ve already lost one valuable piece of evidence from my room. You don’t think I’d make the same mistake twice, do you?’

  ‘It isn’t valuable evidence,’ Wemyss said.

  ‘Well, not positive evidence I grant you,’ said Smithers. ‘But that packet has caused enough trouble during this business to have acquired the right to special protection.’

  Wemyss got to his feet. Suddenly like a gymnast.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said.

  ‘Safely locked away,’ said Smithers.

  ‘You’ve sent it away,’ Wemyss said.

  An accusation.

  ‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’ said Smithers. ‘After all it wasn’t addressed to you. You seem to be taking the business much more to heart than I would have thought likely. Relations between yourself and Miss Kett in the last few days seemed to preclude this unusual devotion to her interests, if I may say so. Or was the whole quarrel this evening an elaborate deceit? You know, people must have been thinking as much. Before Hamyadis died there was such open courtship and since there has been such obvious quarrelling.’

  ‘There wasn’t any deceit,’ Wemyss said.

  He pouted.

  ‘Then why all this?’

  Smithers pointed at the pile of Gibbon.

  Wemyss looked at him, calculating.

  ‘What proof have you got that you ever took the packet?’ he said.

  ‘Proof? None at all. Why should I have? I’d have been much happier if no one had ever known that I’d got it.’

  ‘I suppose so. And you did look put out when the boy blew the gaff in that way.’

  ‘Did I? I must be careful to show less of my feelings.’

  Wemyss stood looking at Smithers. Smithers looked back.

  At last Wemyss said:

  ‘Look, you’ve read those letters. What are you going to do about them?’

  ‘Do about them?’

  ‘Yes, do about me? You know. What use do you mean to make of your knowledge?’

  ‘Ah, I see. Forgive me for being so slow. The ingenious Miss Kett told you there was something in those letters in the packet to your disadvantage, did she? No wonder you were so active on her behalf.’

  ‘You mean there isn’t anything about me in them?’

  ‘My dear chap, as you well know, the packet was addressed to Miss Kett. I didn’t think she could be trusted with it so I kept it. But I haven’t opened it.’

  ‘You haven’t... You bloody fool.’

  ‘Our standards, as I have so often suspected, differ.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Wemyss.

  He took three paces across the room till he was near Smithers’

  ‘Listen. That packet contains information that is of vital interest to me. I want it. I want to get hold of it and destroy it. Are you going to let me have it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Smithers.

  He made no move.

  Wemyss came two steps nearer. He was now only an arm’s length away.

  ‘You will send for that packet at once,’ he said, ‘Or else ...’

  ‘Or else what?’ said Smithers. ‘Don’t be silly, my good man. You don’t imagine physical violence will serve your ends, do you?’

  ‘It might,’ said Wemyss.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Smithers. ‘At present the police know nothing about those letters. I didn’t think they concerned them, and in the circumstances I decided to keep them until it proved necessary to hand them over. But if you were to assault me I would have no alternative but to mention the whole matter to Inspector Parker.’

  Wemyss unclenched his fist.

  ‘I wouldn’t have struck an older man,’ he said. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Observation of the behaviour of schoolboys has given me certain general concepts about human nature,’ Smithers said.

  Wemyss sat on the end of the bed.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve got several wrong ideas. Let’s talk them over, shall we?’

  Smithers stayed where he was and said nothing.

  ‘You think I hate you, don’t you?’ Wemyss said. ‘You don’t trust me, I can see that.’

  ‘I don’t trust you, no, but if you go beyond that, you flatter yourself.’

  ‘All right. Never mind that. You have your ideas; I have mine. But that’s not the point. What we’ve got to discuss is something quite different.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Wemyss looked at Smithers speculatively.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you haven’t read those letters. You say so, and I’m quite prepared to believe you. Well, without reading the
m you can’t know what’s in them, can you? As it happens I do know, or at least I’ve a pretty shrewd idea. Hamyadis was not a nice man you know. I don’t suppose you’ve any idea, shut up there in your neat public-school world, of the sort of things a man like that can do. They would never even occur to you.’

  ‘I hope they wouldn’t,’ Smithers said.

  ‘No, exactly. You know really you were very wise not to open that packet.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It might have upset your faith in human nature.’

  ‘You told me you were at Harrow, I think,’ Smithers said.

  ‘I was, but that has got precious little to do with what we’re talking about now. This is the real world. It’s a nasty place, Mr Smithers.’

  Smithers smiled.

  ‘I suppose you think that the masters at Harrow had no idea of the sort of thoughts that you had while you were there,’ he said. ‘And of the sort of things you did, if you thought you could get away with them.’

  ‘What do you know about me?’ said Wemyss.

  A glint of fear.

  ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t been having a confidential exchange of information with your housemaster or anything,’ Smithers said. ‘I was simply applying general principles. Not without success, it appears.’

  Wemyss jumped up again.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t try to be too clever.’

  ‘Now,’ said Smithers, ‘stop that. For various reasons I’m prepared to listen to what you’ve got to say. But any bluster of that sort, and I’ll have no mercy.’

  ‘You keep on getting me wrong,’ Wemyss said, sitting down again. ‘There’s no question of threats. I’m just trying to explain the essence of the situation to you. You haven’t read the letters; you don’t know what it’s all about.’

  ‘Now there’, said Smithers, ‘[you’re wrong. I have a very good idea what’s in that packet. You have only to make a few observations to see. Take certain obvious facts about Miss Kett, add Hamyadis’s somewhat transparent character, and it isn’t difficult to decide what he would put in a packet and hide from her.’

  ‘If you’re so clever,’ Wemyss said, ‘tell me what he did put in it then?’

  ‘I’m clever enough not to fall for that. No, if you can’t put two and two together for yourself I shall do nothing to spread a secret that one of the parties is very anxious, naturally, to keep.’

  ‘Kristen gave me a different idea of the packet when she asked me to find it for her,’ Wemyss said.

  He looked up at Smithers interrogatively.

  Smithers said nothing.

  ‘She told me’, Wemyss went on, ‘that she had said a lot to him about me. That she had used me to ...’

  He paused.

  Words, one by one on the table.

  Smithers stayed silent.

  ‘She used me in a certain context’, Wemyss said, ‘to try and regain her influence over that man, Hamyadis. You realize, of course, that she was on her way out with him.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Smithers said, ‘though I regret the lack of sensibility the phrase reveals. I think you are probably more or less right too. Except that the situation was rather more complicated, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Wemyss, ‘so you notice things like that, do you?’

  ‘They were very obvious.’

  ‘Well, all right. That makes it easier to tell you in a way. Kristen told me that he had hidden the letters she had written to him on the coach somewhere. It was his form of humour. He said she could have them back if she could find them.’

  ‘Exactly. That wasn’t difficult to guess.’

  Wemyss shifted his feet, moved the position of his hands on the bed.

  ‘As I told you,’ he said, ‘she had put things in the letters about me. They weren’t true. That was why Hamyadis took it so badly when he heard I wasn’t Kris’s brother. So you can see why I want to get hold of those letters and destroy them. The bitch.’

  A sudden tautening of the muscles, a convulsive gesture.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ Smithers said, ‘that your opinion of her, unfortunately expressed though it is, cannot be more generally known. If you and she are not exactly friends, you would appear to have had no motive for killing Hamyadis. As it is, your display of attentive gallantry in those first days has been assumed to be sincere, as you intended it to appear. And you have suffered accordingly.’

  ‘You seem to know a good bit about me,’ said Wemyss. ‘It’s rather unfair. Either I am supposed to be a murderer, or I have to confess that I’m not interested in all this sex business. And some people think that that’s worse than murder.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Smithers.

  ‘Well, anyhow,’ Wemyss said, ‘I owe nothing to that precious Kristen. All I was doing was getting her letters. And I was damned unlucky not to succeed. In any case, now you see the position she’s put me in, you’ll let me have them, won’t you?’

  ‘They can stay where they are.’

  ‘But you said ...’

  ‘I said nothing of the sort. Those letters may yet play a necessary part in this business of Hamyadis’s death, and they are staying where I put them.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘I don’t think you need worry too much about them though. It was shrewd of Miss Kett to tell you she had mentioned you in them. But you know Hamyadis registered a very genuine blank when your name was first mentioned to him.’

  ‘I didn’t notice that.’

  ‘I would have been surprised if you had allowed yourself to,’ said Smithers. ‘But accept the word of a disinterested observer. Until the start of our coach trip Hamyadis had never heard of you.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’ said Wemyss.

  He pushed his legs out in front of him. Relaxed.

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘It’s odd. But I suppose it’s quite possible. He was never really in the theatre, you know. A sort of hanger-on. Mostly night club entertaining, with the odd nude-show tour. And Kris thought she’d try and kid me those letters were full of stuff about me.’

  He smiled again.

  ‘She’s all sorts of a bitch, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘Trying to trick me into doing her dirty work for her. I suppose she thought she was going to get away with it too. You wouldn’t believe the sheer duplicity you come across in people like that.’

  ‘People like that?’

  ‘Yes, you know, accent breaking down a bit when she gets excited. Heaven knows what her background is.’

  ‘I don’t think duplicity is exactly confined to people with the wrong accent.’

  ‘Oh, I grant you the occasional black sheep. But Kristen’s type almost always ends up on the windy side of the law somewhere.’

  ‘A spot of blackmail or something like that?’ said Smithers.

  ‘Yes, that sort of thing.’

  ‘A practice which you yourself would find quite impossible?’

  ‘Well, I don’t claim to be a paragon of virtue or anything, but I don’t see myself as a blackmailer since you ask.’

  ‘I see. You’re not the sort of person, for instance, to take advantage of any information you may have come across in regard to this business of Hamyadis to make some money?’

  As he spoke Smithers saw Wemyss’s fingers, spread wide on the bed, go rigid.

  Wemyss made no reply.

  ‘Haven’t I said enough?’ Smithers asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come, don’t be stupid. You know perfectly well that I must be aware of your unsavoury dealings with Mr Schlemberger. Don’t try to pretend that you don’t understand me.’

  ‘But that... That isn’t blackmail,’ said Wemyss.

  He slewed round on the bed to face Smithers.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘But the man’s keeping information from the police. I’m simply letting him off lightly.’

  ‘And if he is withholding information what right have you to do that? And fill you
r own pockets at the same time?’

  ‘It isn’t a question of my own pockets. I decided that it wasn’t fair to go to the police, but I didn’t want him to get away with it scot-free.’

  ‘I suppose it didn’t occur to you that someone who might have committed one murder would quite possibly not stop there.’

  ‘I can take care of myself, thanks.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt you do take care of yourself, but what about other people? Have you given as much as a thought to them? Of course you haven’t.’

  ‘It’s all very well to go on at me like that,’ Wemyss said. ‘But it isn’t as if I’ve done anything very serious. What about that man Schlemberger? He probably shot Hamyadis after all. No doubt he was completely in his power and we all knew Schlemberger couldn’t afford a scandal.’

  ‘What you have found out about Mr Schlemberger is a matter for the police,’ Smithers said. ‘And so is what I have found out about you. Only up till now I’ve thought it might not have to go as far as that.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Blackmail is considered a very serious offence, and quite rightly so.’

  ‘But if I’ve caught a murderer?’

  ‘If you’ve caught a murderer: you haven’t up to now seemed particularly anxious to pass on your information to Inspector Parker.’

  ‘You seem pretty keen to see Schlemberger hung.’

  ‘I’m anxious to see justice done. It’s the best society can manage to tidy up the messes it produces.’

  ‘Oh well, I don’t know about that sort of stuff. But, look here, you can’t go to Inspector Parker and tell him I’m a blackmailer.’

  ‘I quite easily could. It’s the truth, after all. And I’m not sure that I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Can’t we come to some arrangement?’

  ‘Perhaps. That depends on you.’

  ‘On me?’

  ‘Yes. Tell Schlemberger that there’s no question of you accepting money, and then tell him that he ought to let the police know everything about his connexion with Hamyadis. You can add that there would scarcely be any question of proceedings against him now.’

  ‘But what if he tries to have a go at me? If he is the murderer,’ Wemyss said.

  ‘I think you claimed you could take care of yourself.’