Meanwhile, she decided to get on with some typing, which could easily have waited until Monday. She would, in fact, have been more usefully employed in going on with the knitting that she kept in her lower desk drawer, but she, too, believed in creating an impression. She intended to be busy with office work when the clients arrived. In that way, she could contrive to keep them waiting until she finished a line of typing. As far as possible, Susan modeled herself on Ambrose.
Actually, she had only been at work for about ten minutes when there was a tentative knock on the door that led from the main office of Quince, Quince, Quince and Quince. Susan stopped typing for long enough to call, “Come in!” and then resumed with intense concentration. The door opened, and a tall, gangling man with light brown hair and blue eyes came in, hesitantly. Susan recognized him from previous visits.
“Good morning,” he said nervously.
Susan finished a line, whipped the paper crisply from the machine, glanced it over, and then looked up. “Good morning, Mr, Finch. You’re very early.”
“Yes, I am a little,” Finch admitted guiltily.
“Your appointment isn’t until ten o’clock, you know. Mr. Quince isn’t in yet.”
“Er . . . half-past nine, actually,” murmured Simon Finch.
Susan flipped open her engagement book. “Ten o’clock,” she said.
“I . . . em . . . I had a message, you know. Nine-thirty . . .”
Susan had lost interest. “Please take a seat in the waiting room. I’ll let you know when Mr. Quince can see you.”
“Thank you very much,” said Simon Finch, humbly. He went into the waiting room and closed the door behind him. Susan attacked the typewriter with renewed vigor. It gave her a certain amount of satisfaction to think of Mr. Finch sitting for over half an hour with nothing to divert him but a year-old National Geographic magazine.
She was almost running out of material to type when, at ten o’clock on the dot, her office door opened and Harold Benson walked in. Susan looked up and smiled. She had taken to Mr. Benson the very first time he came to the office. So beautifully dressed, and such an assured, well-bred manner, even if he was an American.
“Good morning, Miss Benedict,” he said.
Typical of him, Susan thought, to have taken the trouble to find out her name. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Benson. Do take a seat in the waiting room. Mr. Finch is there already.”
Harold Benson stood quite still for a moment. Then he said, “Did you say Mr. Finch?”
“That’s right. He got here ever so early. I’ll let you know as soon as Mr. Quince can see you.”
Without a word, Benson went into the waiting room to join Simon Finch. Susan waited until the door was closed, and then pressed the buzzer that rang in Ambrose’s office. He had not buzzed her, so she was virtually certain that he had not yet arrived—but just in case, she tried. As she had expected, there was no reply.
It was perhaps a minute later that the door of the waiting room burst open, and Harold Benson came stumbling out, white faced. He gasped, “Miss Benedict . . . police . . . call the police . . .”
“Why, Mr. Benson, whatever’s the matter?”
Benson gesticulated toward the waiting room. “Dead. . .there’s a dead man in there . . .”
Susan did not lose her aplomb. “I’m sure you must be mistaken, Mr. Benson. That’s Mr. Finch.”
“I don’t care who he is, he’s dead!” shouted Benson, who seemed to be recovering from his shock. “Go and look for yourself!”
Susan Benedict was not squeamish. With no hesitation, she went into the waiting room, with Benson hovering at her back. Sure enough, Simon Finch was slumped in one of the two armchairs, his head lolling unnaturally and his face horribly contorted. It was perfectly obvious that he had been strangled, and that he was extremely dead. The morning edition of the Times was scattered on the floor around him.
“Oh, my goodness,” said Susan, who was not a great phrasemaker. “We must tell Mr. Quince!” She ran to the door to Ambrose’s office, and opened it, just as Ambrose came in from the corridor.
“Good morning, Susan,” he said. Then, “Whatever’s the matter?”
“Oh, Mr. Quince, I don’t know what to do! It’s Mr. Finch. Somebody’s killed him!”
Ambrose was always at his best in an emergency. Having inspected what remained of Simon Finch, and having satisfied himself that the poor fellow was really dead, he very competently set about telephoning Scotland Yard and his own doctor. He admonished Susan Benedict and Harold Benson not to touch anything, and when they both attempted to pour out their accounts of what had happened, he told them sternly that they must not discuss the matter with anybody except the police. Then he firmly closed both doors to the waiting room, and took Susan and Benson into his own office to await the arrival of the law.
Susan, full of adoring admiration for Mr. Quince’s handling of the situation, began to feel very much better and volunteered to go down to the cafe on the corner and get them all a nice cup of coffee. Ambrose, however, vetoed the idea.
“I don’t think any of us should leave the office,” he said, with a meaning look at Harold Benson. However, he did telephone to the coffee shop and ask them to send three cups up—a service that they were glad to perform if they were not too busy. The boy, Ambrose was careful to say, should come straight into his office through the door marked PRIVATE.
So it was that Ambrose Quince, Susan Benedict, and Harold Benson, Jr., were sipping hot black coffee in silence when a police siren in the street below announced the arrival of Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett of the CID, together with Detective Inspector Derek Reynolds, a police doctor and an ambulance crew, a photographer and a fingerprint expert, and all the panoply of a murder-investigation team. The thought uppermost in Ambrose’s mind at that moment was not pity for Simon Finch or distress that a murder should have taken place in his office; it was the realization that Simon Warwick would never come into his inheritance. He remembered the remarks he had made at his dinner party. All the people around that table might be said to have had a motive for murder. Most of all, over the rim of his coffee cup, he studied Harold Benson, Jr. If that man imagined, thought Ambrose, that Simon Finch’s death would somehow assist his own claim to be Simon Warwick, then he had another swift think coming.
6
Ambrose greeted Henry with a mixture of relief and enthusiasm.
“Chief Superintendent Tibbett! What a very fortunate chance. I am afraid this is a very distressing business.”
“Sudden death always is,” said Henry. “Especially if it appears to be murder, as I gather it does.”
“Well, you can see for yourself,” Ambrose said. “It’s pretty obvious the poor fellow was strangled, and it’s hard to see how that could have been accidental or self-inflicted. Your medical experts will be able to determine exactly what happened, of course, but my guess is that he was knocked unconscious and then throttled. Probably a karate chop to the back of the ear. Oh, please don’t think I’ve touched anything. I’m giving you my opinion just on what I saw.”
“Well. . .” said Henry, with deliberate vagueness. “Well, I’ll go and take a look at the body, and then come back here and you can introduce me to your friends.”
“I’m terribly sorry, old man. This is Miss Susan Benedict, my secretary. And this is Mr. Harold Benson, who”—Ambrose paused significantly—“who found the body. Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett of the CID.”
Henry said, “I’m delighted to meet you both. I’ll be back in a minute.” He went quickly through the door that separated Ambrose’s office from the waiting room.
The small, passagelike room was full of people. Photographers were taking pictures and fingerprint experts were busy with powder and brushes. Simon Finch’s body lay in exactly the same position as when Ambrose had seen it. A photographer’s arc lamp now bathed it in a pool of white light, but pending Henry’s arrival nothing had been touched.
Henry studied the lat
e Simon Finch, aware of the mixture of compassion and respect that he always felt in the presence of a creature dead by violence—whether it be a murdered human being or a cat hit by a car and thrown into a ditch. In the final, complete, and utter vulnerability of death, there was always the silent dignity, the paradoxical invulnerability of a being beyond pain or inquisition or any human power. For a moment, Henry was swept by a sense of the futility of his job, of all these busy people swarming like ants over the corpse. The man was dead. What did it matter who had killed him? Beside the simple fact of death, nothing seemed important. Then he pulled himself together. Of course it was important to find out who had killed this young man. Apart from any question of abstract justice, a person who has killed once may kill again.
Henry looked carefully at the body, and at the scattered pages of newspaper around it. He said to the photographer, “You’ve got all this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Inspector Reynolds, let’s have everything out of his pockets—protected for fingerprinting. Then you can take a look at him, Doctor, and take him away for an autopsy.”
The police doctor smiled wryly. “I should have thought even you could see that the man had been strangled, Tibbett.”
Henry said, “Expertly?”
“Depends what you mean by that. I should say he was knocked unconscious first. After that, it’s just a matter of applying pressure. We’ll let you know for certain soon. Finished, Reynolds? Good. We’ll keep the clothes for analysis, of course. Okay, chaps. Get him on the stretcher.”
On the table, beside the pile of National Geographic magazines, Inspector Reynolds laid out the contents of the dead man’s pockets—each item encased in transparent plastic. It was not a large collection. There was a key ring with a couple of latchkeys on it; a clean white handkerchief; the return half of a railway ticket from Westbourne to London, cheap day-return fare; and a letter from Ambrose Quince addressed to Simon Finch, Esq., 4 Seaview Gardens, Westbourne, Sussex. The letter was in crisp legalese, and requested Mr. Finch to be at Mr. Quince’s office at 10 A.M. on Saturday, January 14, in order to confront a rival claimant to the estate due to Simon Warwick. There was also an imitation-leather wallet containing eight pounds in notes and a few postage stamps. Apart from 35p. in small change and a checkbook from the Sussex National Bank, Westbourne branch, there was nothing else.
Henry said, “Secretive sort of chap.”
Reynolds grinned. “Fishy, if you ask me, sir. No driver’s license, no visiting cards, no nothing. Like as if his pockets had been spring-cleaned.”
“Maybe they were,” said Henry. “At any rate we have a name and an address, and Mr. Quince obviously knew him. You take over in here, Reynolds. I’ll have a word with the people next door.”
Ambrose Quince was slightly taken aback when he realized that he was not going to be the first to be interviewed. Henry’s quick and smooth explanation that he wanted to talk first to Miss Benedict, as she must have been the first to arrive at the office that morning, seemed a little thin to Ambrose. He felt that priority should go to seniority rather than to punctuality. However, he put a gracious face on things and allowed Henry to lead Susan off to the outer office, which had been set aside for interviewing.
Susan, pleased at being picked first and very much at ease, explained smilingly to Henry that she was Mr. Quince’s private secretary, and that there was nothing at all unusual about Mr. Quince receiving clients on Saturday morning.
“It’s always nice and quiet,” she explained, “and Mr. Quince isn’t being bothered with phone calls and so on. I’m always glad to come in on a Saturday if Mr. Quince wants me. It’s no trouble. Besides, he’s ever so generous about giving me time off to compensate.”
She described accurately and concisely the arrival of Mr. Finch. “Ever so early. Twenty past nine for a ten o’clock appointment. I told him he’d have to wait.”
Henry said, “He had to come up to London from Westbourne. I suppose there wasn’t a later train that he could conveniently catch.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Susan. “I think he was just muddleheaded. Said something about a nine-thirty appointment. Well, that’s nonsense. It’s down here in my book for ten.”
“Can you remember exactly what he said?”
Susan frowned. “Not really. I didn’t pay much attention—I wanted to get on with my typing. Oh, I think he mumbled something about a message, now I come to think of it.”
Henry was interested. “You mean, he said he had received a message changing the time of his appointment?”
“I don’t know what he said. I wasn’t really listening.”
“Please try to remember, Miss Benedict. It could be important.” There was a pause, and then Susan said, “Well, all I can say is that I’ve a vague sort of recollection of him using the word ‘message.’ And I do know that he seemed to imagine he was expected at nine-thirty.”
“That’s very helpful, Miss Benedict. So you showed him into the waiting room and went on with your work.”
“I didn’t exactly show him in. He knew where to go.”
“You had met Mr. Finch before, had you, Miss Benedict?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Here in the office, or socially?”
“Oh, only in the office, of course.” Susan sounded disdainful. “Can you tell me what his business was with Mr. Quince?” Susan’s eyebrows went up. “You mean you don’t know?”
“I know nothing except that I’ve been sent to investigate a murder in Mr. Quince’s waiting room,” said Henry.
With a good story to tell, Susan became voluble. “Why, Mr. Finch and Mr. Benson are the two claimants to Lord Charlton’s will. They both say they’re Simon Warwick. Mr. Quince went off to America to make inquiries about them, and when he came back he wrote to both of them arranging this meeting. You see, up till then each one of them thought he was the only claimant.”
“There aren’t any others?” Henry asked.
“Not serious. Just a few crackpot letters—you know.”
Henry said, “When Mr. Quince came back from America, did he tell you which claimant he fancied to be genuine?”
Susan hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. “No, he didn’t tell me anything. Just dictated a letter to each of them— exactly the same letter—telling them to be here this morning to confront a rival claimant.” She gave a little laugh. “Actually, Chief Superintendent, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it, myself.”
“You don’t?”
“Well, I mean, just ask yourself. First of all, little Simon Warwick was adopted by an American couple, but Mr. Finch was English as English. And then—well, Simon Warwick was the nephew of a lord, after all. You can see—I mean, you could see that Mr. Finch wasn’t out of the top drawer, if you know what I mean. But Mr. Benson, now—well, he’s different altogether. He’s American all right, and yet with it he’s a really superior sort of person. He’s Simon Warwick all right.”
“And yet,” Henry said, “it was Simon Finch who was murdered. I wonder why.”
“ Don’t ask me? said Susan, with distaste. “I suppose somebody didn’t like him.”
“That seems obvious,” said Henry.
His light irony was lost on Miss Benedict. She sniffed and said, “He’s the sort of person who would get murdered. I just wish he hadn’t done it in Mr. Quince’s waiting room.”
Henry let this pass. He said, “Right. Where were we?” He glanced at his notebook. “Mr. Finch arrived at twenty past nine, and went into the waiting room. What happened next?”
“Nothing happened. I went on with my typing.”
“You didn’t hear any sound from the waiting room?”
“Of course not. If I had, I’d have gone in to see what was happening. But I was typing fast, you see, and that makes enough noise so that I wouldn’t have heard anything through the door unless it had been really loud.”
Henry nodded. “I see. So what was the next thing that did happ
en?”
“Mr. Benson. He came just at ten, on the dot. He didn’t make any silly mistakes about his appointment. We exchanged a few words, and then he went into the waiting room.”
“Can you remember what was said?”
“Oh, nothing special, Just ‘good morning.’ And I told him that Mr. Finch was here already, and asked him to wait. That’s all.” Henry said, “So Mr. Benson went to join Mr. Finch in the waiting room. And then?”
“Well, I was pretty sure that Mr. Quince hadn’t arrived, because he hadn’t buzzed through to me, but I buzzed his office just in case he was there.”
“What’s all this buzzing?” Henry asked, and Susan explained the office communications system.
“And then,” she went on, “poor Mr. Benson came running out of the waiting room, terribly upset, and told me Mr. Finch was dead. I went in with him to have a look, and there he was—Mr. Finch, I mean. Luckily just then Mr. Quince arrived, and of course he took over and then everything was all right.”
Henry said,“You buzzed Mr. Quince’s office after Mr. Benson had gone into the waiting room?”
“Yes. I told you.”
“So some time elapsed before Mr. Benson came running out to tell you he had found the body?”
Susan was instantly on the defensive. “It doesn’t take much time to buzz.”
“And to get no reply?”
“Mr. Benson came out of there just as quick as he could.”
“Miss Benedict,” said Henry, “that waiting room is fairly small, and nobody could miss the sight of a dead body in the middle of it. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that Mr. Benson even went in at all? Wouldn’t he have seen Finch’s body from the doorway?” Definitely upset, Susan said, “It wasn’t more than a moment. I expect he just looked to see . . . maybe he thought Mr. Finch was just ill . . .”
“Maybe he did. Now, please Miss Benedict—tell me exactly how long Mr. Benson was in that room, in your estimation.”
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