The Counsellor

by J. J. Connington

  “I might,” said the inspector sourly. “But if she’s been kidnapped by anyone, I don’t just see them tying her up to the gas-meter; so I don’t see how I’d find her, even if I did get into the house.”

  “Something in that,” The Counsellor admitted. “Well, the resources of civilisation are not exhausted, as Gladstone said in 1866—or some other year. We must think of something else.”

  “What’s worrying me, sir, isn’t kidnapping, but something worse. Kidnapping’s all very well in thrillers. But when it comes to real life, how’re you going to persuade a girl like Miss Treverton to go off with anyone? And when they’ve got her, how’re they going to keep her secure? There’s servants, for one thing, about the house. They’d see something and talk about it, for sure. No, what I’m afraid of is her being dead and buried by this time. But then you come back to a motive; and I’m blest if I can see any. Why should anyone want to kidnap her? Fine-looking girl, I admit. But you simply can’t swallow any White Slave racket in such a case. You can’t drag a protesting girl about the countryside, you know.”

  “I could think of ways,” objected The Counsellor. “But I agree with you, Inspector. It doesn’t sound likely. Well, time’s getting on. I’ll let you know if anything fresh turns up.”

  After leaving the inspector, The Counsellor glanced at his watch and found it was near luncheon time. He strolled along the street to the Black Bull Inn and entered the dining-room. Querrin was at one of the tables; and The Counsellor, with a nod of recognition, drew out the second chair and sat down. Except for themselves and a waiter, the room was empty. The Counsellor gave his orders and waited until the waiter had gone out of the room.

  “Anything fresh?” he inquired in a low tone.

  Querrin shook his head.

  “Nothing. I’m getting damnably worried,” he admitted with a frown. “That inspector doesn’t seem to get a move on. He just looks wise and does nothing, so far as I can see. Somebody ought to ginger him up.”

  “Our police haven’t quite so free a hand as your ones in America,” The Counsellor pointed out, not without an ulterior object. “For instance, suppose he wanted to search some house where he suspected Miss Treverton might be detained. He can’t do that without swearing information before a magistrate and getting a warrant for whatever he does. Even so, he might not get his warrant if the magistrate wasn’t satisfied. If he acted without a warrant, he’d be a common burglar, more or less.”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly how it stands in the States, but I call that damned silly,” said Querrin. “You might as well blow a trumpet at the gate and warn them to conceal all suspicious articles.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to apply for the warrant publicly,” The Counsellor explained. “Still, I admit there are cases where the procedure is a bit hampering. What’s really wanted,” he added slyly, “is an unofficial person who wouldn’t bother about a warrant but just go and see for himself and take the consequences.”

  “D’you mean that?” demanded Querrin with a cock of his eyebrows. “Have you got any special place in your mind? I wouldn’t mind taking a risk myself, in this case, if it would do the least bit of good.”

  This was what The Counsellor had been angling for, but he showed no sign.

  “I’ve nothing in view,” he admitted. “But if anything does turn up, I’ll drop you a hint. But, remember, if you get nabbed, you take your medicine without squealing. I’m not going to be dragged into it—not at any price. That’s understood?”

  “Of course,” Querrin acquiesced. “This is my affair, not yours. By the way, I got your message. Miss Rainham’s here. Is she on the same game?”

  “No, not exactly,” parried The Counsellor. “She’s doing a bit of work for me. You’ve seen her?”

  “At breakfast. She went out shortly afterwards.”

  The return of the waiter interrupted their conversation, and The Counsellor switched the talk to indifferent subjects, as though he were speaking to a chance acquaintance. As they were finishing their meal, Sandra Rainham came into the room and took her place at another table. Behind the back of Querrin and the waiter, she gave The Counsellor a glance which, supplemented by a faint gesture told him that so far she had not been successful in her efforts. The Counsellor, making an excuse to Querrin, pulled out a loose-leaf notebook and scribbed a short message on it. He paid his bill with two notes and, while the waiter left the room to get change, he stepped over and dropped the note on the table before Sandra, retiring again to his own chair before the waiter returned. Sandra read the message, stowed it in her bag, and gave The Counsellor a glance to show that she had understood. Querrin was obviously curious about this by-play, but he asked no questions.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Troubles of a Typist

  SANDRA RAINHAM did not return to the office until well on in the forenoon of the following day. When she arrived, The Counsellor and Standish were in conference in Brand’s private office, but she had no hesitation in interrupting them.

  “Sorry to break into the pow-wow,” she apologised, as she shut the door behind her “but I expect you want to hear the results, Mark.”

  “Right, first guess,” confirmed The Counsellor. “What about it?”

  “Here’s your transfer, just to set your mind at ease.”

  Sandra produced the paper and handed it to The Counsellor, who passed it over to Standish.

  “Get it registered immediately, Wolf. Time’s getting short. Yes, Sandra?”

  “Will you have it short and snappy, or long and detailed?”

  “Make it as short as you can, but keep in all the details,” said The Counsellor, with the air of one making a just decision. “All the important details,” he added hastily, as he saw a gleam of mischief in Sandra’s eye.

  “Very well. This is how it is,” she began, borrowing one of The Counsellor’s favourite openings. “I didn’t see myself going down there and simply asking one of these girls point-blank to sell her share. Too crude, that, for my taste; and apt to cause chatter. Besides, I wanted an excuse for a general look-round. You and Wolf have been busy in the clue-hunting business, and I didn’t see why I should be left out in the cold. So I cast about for a suitable disguise. It’s quite simple. You just take a few of your visiting cards to a jobbing printer and get him to put the name of a good newspaper in the south-west corner. Then you sharpen some pencils at both ends and buy a notebook. And that converts you into the best kind of lady journalist on the hunt for copy, and gives you a free hand in asking all sorts of inquisitive questions which might be resented if you were a private person.”

  “Not so bad,” commented Standish. “Dishonest, of course; but one gets that way, in an office like this.”

  “I went down to the Black Bull and took a room for the night. As soon as I arrived, I interviewed the landlady and left her under the impression that I was the latest thing from Fleet Street. You know what these little places are? My profession would be all over the village before a hen could scratch twice.”

  “The rural touch,” commented The Counsellor. “Getting the atmosphere. Go on.”

  “I went up to Longstoke House, sent in my card, and asked for Mr. Albury. You’d seen the Whitgift man, so I thought I might begin with someone else. I saw him. He’s a big man with an eye for a smartly-dressed girl. An uncomfortable eye. Too much of the strip-tease act about it altogether, for my liking. I disliked him on sight, but that had nothing to do with the matter in hand. I explained that naturally Fleet Street was horrified at Mr. Treverton’s demise—yes, I said demise—and was burning for a few anecdotes about his life and character. I also said a word or two in praise of the products of the Ravenscourt Press—it’s lucky I know something about them and could talk coherently on the subject. Then, after a little, I asked him if he could throw any light on Treverton’s death. No, he couldn’t. He’d no theories about it at all. Mind a complete blank on the subject, it seemed. As for anecdotes of the deceased’s career, he couldn’t re
member any, except one about a row he had had with him, which wasn’t very interesting. All I gathered was that they didn’t hit it off together, and of course Treverton was always in the wrong. There’s no de mortuis nil nisi bonum nonsense about Mr. Albury. So then, casually, I asked a question about Miss Treverton, and got more from the same tap. She thought a deal too much of herself, it seems, and so on. I gathered, vaguely, that she’d given Mr. Albury a downright good snubbing, at one time or other, and he hadn’t liked it. Take him over all, I didn’t care for Mr. Albury. He wanted to stand me a lunch, but I excused myself—courteously but firmly.”

  “So then?” prompted The Counsellor.

  “So then I asked for Mr. Whitgift. You’ve seen him yourself, Mark; but for Wolf’s benefit I’ll say that he’s not quite ‘it’, but he’s got some manners and a nice smile. He gave me some notes which might have been useful if I’d been a journalist, and they put Treverton in a rather better light than Albury did. Whitgift set all the bad temper and so on down to nerves, overwork, worry, and some financial trouble. He wouldn’t say it straight out, but it was plain enough that he thought the man had worried himself into a bad state of mind, and the suicide happened when he was a bit unstrung. As an instance of how things had been banking up lately, he mentioned Treverton’s quarrelling with his niece. Before that, they had got on very smoothly, but within the last few months they seemed to have got on each other’s nerves, for some reason or other. It was only on that subject that he had a hard word to say about Treverton. You were quite right, Mark. He seems to have more than a fancy for that girl. He couldn’t conceal it, even when talking to a journalist; it leaked out all over. So I asked what he thought had happened to her. Oh, she’d gone off with that American, of course. Driven from home by the Wicked Uncle. And no wonder, considering the home atmosphere in recent days. And so on, all given off with an expression as if he were chewing a pickle while he spoke. Finally, I asked to see Mr. Barrington. But Mr. Barrington was out, apparently. However, I managed to interview the housekeeper, a nice old thing.”

  “You seem to have been full of zeal,” commented Standish ironically. “By that time you’d fairly covered your trail. If I hadn’t seen that transfer, I’d conclude that you completely lost yourself in the journalist and forgot all about the real business.”

  “Wet blankets don’t damp me,” retorted Sandra. “I scorn ’em. Well, I interviewed this Mrs. Yerbury. She took me into that room you saw, Mark, the one with the stucco ceiling and the Monet reproduction. She wanted to show me a portrait of Miss Treverton, on the desk there. I think I could make a friend of that girl. She looks the right kind. And this old Mrs. Yerbury couldn’t say too much in her favour.”

  “She gave me the same harangue,” interjected The Counsellor. “Skip it.”

  “Well, it seems she’s completely bemused about the girl’s disappearance, simply can’t make head or tail of it. Miss T. was the last person to do anything underhand; and I gather that runaway matches come under that heading in Mrs. Yerbury’s opinion. So she just opens her eyes wide, lifts her eyebrows, and makes nothing of it, except that she does hope nothing’s happened to the poor young lady. I gathered that no one has bothered to tell her about your finding EZ 1113, so I kept quiet about that myself. No use disturbing the poor old thing further, was there?”

  “Anything more?” demanded The Counsellor.

  “Lots. As I’d gathered already, the girl and her uncle got on quite well with each other until quite recently. Then something seems to have gone askew. The old lady shied at putting it into words, but she spelt it M-O-N-E-Y for me, apparently thinking that this might put eavesdroppers off the scent. Then I switched to Mr. T. Apparently this ‘working after dinner’ business was something of a fraud. At least, I elicited that more often than not he simply went up to his study or office or whatever it was to have a good nap and forget his troubles. And at last she did say something that caught my attention.”

  “Sensation!” interjected Standish.

  “Not just quite exactly, so to speak. So calm yourself, Wolf. Still, it’s interesting. You remember that she went up to the study after dinner, the night that Treverton finished himself? Mark got that from Pagnell. But Pagnell didn’t mention—perhaps he didn’t know—that when the maid went up to tidy the study next morning she noticed that the key was on the outside of the door. So he must have transferred it from the inside to the outside just as he was going down to finish himself in the garage; because Mrs. Yerbury found him locked in the study when she went up about ten o’clock at night. I can’t think why he should do that; but there it is, quite definite.”

  “Well, pass that,” said The Counsellor after a moment’s reflection. “What next?”

  “I asked if I could see Miss Wickwood, the senior typist. After a bit, she turned up. She isn’t exactly a dream of beauty, poor thing. Sallow, with lank hair, too long in the spine and too short in the leg. She somehow reminded me of a lizard in the back view. And the front view’s mostly tortoiseshell specs. But by a merciful compensation of Providence, she seems to think a lot of herself and her looks. And she’s got a most suspicious mind. In fact, she nearly penetrated my disguise, confound her! Instead of my questioning her, it was the other way about. She wanted to know where my office was—luckily I remembered that all right. Did I get well paid? (That with a look at my clothes which suggested depths of infamy in the way I supplemented my modest screw). Was I a ‘feature writer’ (whatever that is) or just a reporter? And so on and so forth, before I could get a word in edgewise, with a sort of sniff at every answer I gave her. A most irritating female, altogether. I hadn’t spoken to her for two minutes before I realised that it was no good trying any games with her in the matter of her share. She’d have suspected something at once, if I’d tried that on. So I left it at that, and went after anything else of interest. I’d no difficulty in getting her to talk about the men about the place. She’s a typical repressed spinster. Mr. Treverton had been quite a good boss, a bit hasty in temper at times, of course, but easy to get on with, really. Mr. Whitgift was “a very nice gentleman and very clever.” I got a vague impression that she associated him with Mendelssohn and Wagner, bridesmaids and bouquets. Fallen for him, completely, in fact. But ‘he keeps himself to himself’, apparently. Albury hasn’t got her approval. ‘I’m always telling Miss Lydbrook that a girl can’t be too careful with gentlemen.’ And so on. Very dull. However, she brisked up when I mentioned Miss Treverton. ‘One of these quiet ones. Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But we know what we know.’ She hadn’t been a bit surprised by Miss T.’s disappearance. ‘She’s treated poor Mr. Whitgift cruel, I think. If she didn’t want him, she shouldn’t have kept him hanging around her skirts like she did, and her with another man after her all the time.’ Jealousy, of course, poor creature. As to the disappearance, ‘those that live longest will hear most’ about it; but nothing would surprise her when it all came out. As for Querrin, she hadn’t liked what she saw of him, but then she never did like foreigners of any description. One had to be very careful, what with White Slavers and so forth going about looking for young good-looking girls. (She’ll never see 35 again.) But if girls got into strangers’ clutches, well, that was their own look-out and no one could pity them, could they? I’ll cut out the rest.”

  She took a cigarette from The Counsellor’s box and lit it before continuing.

  “Then I got her on to Barrington. He’s the accountant of the show, it seems. And from him she wandered back, by some association of ideas to the finances of Treverton and his niece. It was all a bit confused and mixed up with verbal dabs at Miss Treverton, but the gist of it was that Miss T. for a long time had been lending money to her uncle, and he’d been using these loans to keep the Press solvent—or at least nominally in debt to himself. You remember the size of the item ‘Sundry creditors’? I didn’t gather how this woman had nosed the thing out, but she was that kind of person and I believe she had solid grounds for what she sai
d. You must remember she detested Miss T. and was all out to find anything against her. So by her way of it, the row between niece and uncle was owing to Miss T. demanding her money back, and her uncle being put in a tight corner on that account. ‘And now he’s gone, poor gentleman, fair driven to it by his own flesh and blood; and she’s next of kin and gets everything he had.’”

  “Mostly bad debts, apparently,” commented Standish. “She didn’t suggest that Miss Treverton murdered him to get her claws on them, did she?”

  “Not exactly. But she quoted Whitgift—as Gospel—that the Press could be made to pay if it were run on sensible lines. ‘And of course Miss T. knew that, well enough, for she’d heard him tell her so, herself.’”

  “That fits in well enough,” The Counsellor conceded. “Anything else?”

  “Not from her,” Sandra admitted. “I got tired of her pretty soon. Then I went off to lunch at the Black Bull. I saw Mr. Querrin there, along with a funny-looking little man in loud tweeds. He reminded me strongly of you, Mark, but I didn’t give him a second glance.”

  “You seemed a bit down in the mouth at lunch,” said The Counsellor, “so I gathered you hadn’t made much of things up to that point. Hence my note.”

  “Telling me to offer the typist a job, in case she felt she’d be in awkward hole at Longstoke House after she’d sold the share? I saw the point of that. But I didn’t see the bit about this Abode of Light affair. Was that just some more of your ‘satiable curtiosity?”

  “More or less,” admitted The Counsellor. “Go on.”

  “Well, I didn’t think it advisable to go back to Longstoke House a second time and ask to see the Lydbrook girl, especially with the chance of the Wickwood specimen butting into our conversation. So I filled in the afternoon by loafing about the hotel, talking to the landlady, and in a run out to the Trulocks’ place to have a look at it and this Abode of Light at Grendon Manor. I tried to get into the Abode of Light, but they don’t want journalists on the premises, it seems. Inhospitable beasts! There was a tough-looking fellow at the lodge to stop all cars. Mine was one of them. There’s no getting past him on the nod, I found. Even the glad eye fails. An implacable Cerberus, that. I didn’t like the look of him.”