by Leo Bruce
Carolus thought of his school class, the Lower Sixth, and nodded.
“So Rathbone became engaged to Miss Bright through the Amateur Dramatic Society?”
“Indirectly, yes. But not during Mr Bright’s lifetime. There was a lot of trouble about it because they met about a year before Herbert Bright died, as he did quite suddenly of ptomaine poisoning, I believe. He was very upset about it. He was devoted to his daughter and not at all pleased when he found that she was receiving attention from Rathbone. Rathbone was ten years older than she was and looked more; he had no money of his own and very small prospects. Herbert Bright had always had big ideas for his daughter. She was, I can’t help saying, rather a plain young woman, meager and not very healthy-looking. But her father adored her and complained bitterly to Mr Tonkins that an attachment had been allowed to begin and grow during the rehearsals for . . . let’s see, The Dover Road was the play that year. Mr Tonkins was very upset about it, too, and the annual play was discontinued. However, when Herbert died and his daughter inherited, Rathbone lost no time at all. Within a year of the funeral the two were married and Rathbone gave up his position here, presumably to live on his wife’s money.”
“Did you find the attachment extraordinary?”
“For my own part, yes. But, strange as it may seem, this man Rathbone had an extraordinary attraction for a certain kind of woman. I even heard it described as mesmeric. He had rather strange eyes, with an expression hurt, watchful, timid, I scarcely know, yet seemingly able to achieve a quite hypnotic effect. The men here were surprised, but the women claimed to have foreseen it.”
“I understand. You have a very good memory, Mr Villiers. May I try your patience a little further? There are several more questions I want to ask.”
“By all means.”
“First, where did Herbert Bright live?”
“Somewhere north of London. Watford, Bushey, Enfield, Potter’s Bar, I forget exactly. I live in Surrey myself.”
“Did Rathbone go to his home?”
“During his lifetime? I should think almost certainly not. Herbert Bright couldn’t bear him.”
“And—this is probably asking too much—where did Rathbone live?”
“I can tell you exactly,” said Mr Villiers. “Not very far from here. At a private hotel, as it called itself, at Barnes. The Athlone, or was it the Connaught? No, the Lascelles. Here it is: the Lascelles Private Hotel, St Andrew’s Avenue. It was in reality a boarding-house with pretensions. Rathbone lived there for many years, I believe.”
“You knew it?”
“On one occasion I found it necessary to call on Rathbone. I was not then a director of this firm, you understand. Yes, I saw the place. Rathbone could go almost from door to door by bus.”
“And after the time of his marriage you saw no more of him?”
“No. I seem to remember hearing that he was living at Bolderton, but that is all.”
“Now here is something which I want to ask you, Mr Villiers, which you may not feel inclined to answer. I know very little of your business, but I take it that like other wholesale chemists you handle what are called dangerous drugs?”
“We do, of course.”
“And without going into toxicological details there are many that are poisonous?”
“In certain conditions, yes.”
“Had Rathbone access to such?”
“Access, perhaps. But access is one thing, the facility to abstract is another. We flatter ourselves on a checking system which is impregnable. No irregularity was reported during the whole of Rathbone’s time with us. Handling chemicals as we do, we have learned to take the most scrupulous care.”
“Still, again speaking as a layman, I should have thought it impossible to be absolutely certain.”
“If you are interested, I will show you our system.”
“No. It’s very kind of you, but I will certainly accept your word.”
“I could not, of course, go into Court and say under oath that it would be impossible for an employee to remove sufficient of one chemical or another to cause death. I can only say that our system makes it extremely unlikely. Things which would be on the poison list of any retail chemist are kept with special safeguards and Rathbone would have had no means of defeating these. But do you suspect him of having done so?”
“I think you will find that the police will, Mr Villiers. I should be surprised if you are not asked to explain that system of yours to someone with more technical knowledge than mine. Someone who, perhaps, might be able to pick holes in it.”
“That I very much doubt.”
“I am most grateful to you for all your help and information. It is most unusual to obtain such lucid details of events fifteen years ago.”
“In matters that affect our staff here, I believe my memory is reliable. In a large firm like this there are always problems and I make it my business to know as much as possible of our employees. It would take a clever man or woman to escape my eye in anything that might be deleterious to the firm.”
“I’m sure it would.”
“And what I see, I remember. I am glad to have been of assistance to you.”
As Carolus was about to leave the building, the disembodied voice from the pigeon-hole asked: “Get what you wanted?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“I thought you would. There’s nothing he doesn’t know. Talk about snooping!”
“Really?”
“Chronic,” said the voice. “Ta-ta, then.”
Carolus wondered whether “Be seeing you” would be a suitable form of leave-taking, but in the circumstances decided against it.
12
THIS was all very well, thought Carolus as he drove the short distance to Barnes, but where was it going to stop? It was useful to find Rathbone so clearly remembered by people as different as Miss Ramble and Villiers but each of them sent him farther back into Rathbone’s past till at last, if he was not careful, he would find himself hearing details of childhood and parents or even become embroiled in the complications of heredity.
Yet how could he neglect the Lascelles Private Hotel? Doubtless there would be a garrulous proprietress who would be set on giving him recollections of Rathbone’s diet and table manners, but there might be something far more relevant, as there had been among the oddments remembered by Mr Villiers. And secretly he had a faint hope, based on little more than guesswork and intuition, that he might hear something more recent about Rathbone. At all events he could not afford to pass over the place, though he was determined to regard it as the last outpost on the road to the past. If he was told about the family home from which Rathbone had moved to the Lascelles Private Hotel as a young man he would ignore it.
He found it, in the words of Villiers, “a boarding-house with pretensions”. The pretensions consisted, on the outside, of large gilt lettering running across the face of the house next door as well (doubtless by arrangement with its owner) and gilt tops to the iron railings. In a small room labelled “Residents’ Lounge” he faced the proprietress.
“Oh but we’ve only been here about a year,” she said, faintly amused at his question. “You’re going back into history. The people before us didn’t have it more than three years, I believe, so goodness knows who was here fifteen years ago.”
“I could not expect my luck to continue forever,” smiled Carolus, rising. “I’ve been very fortunate so far in tracing the man I want.”
“Sorry I can’t help you, but we’re not quite ante-diluvian, you know.”
As Carolus was leaving, the proprietress remembered something. “Now I come to think of it, I believe there is a chance,” she said. “We’ve got an old Colonel here now. He’s only been with us a week or so, but he came because he had stayed here, he said, in the old days. Colonel Hood. You could ask him if you like.”
“Is he in?”
“Not at the minute. But he’ll be in before lunch, which is at one-thirty. They never miss meals,” added the proprietr
ess with a touch of asperity. “As a matter of fact he’s the only one who has lunch here at the moment. All the rest are bed and breakfast people who go to work.”
“It’s twenty to one now.”
“Then he won’t be long. You may depend on that. Why don’t you sit down and wait?”
“It’s very kind of you.”
The proprietress was right. Not ten minutes later a jaunty figure in an Anthony Eden hat passed the window and entered. Carolus heard him greeted.
“Oh there you are, Colonel Hood. There’s a gentleman in the lounge waiting to see you.”
A cheerful voice said, “Thank you, Mrs D,” and the Colonel entered.
Carolus recognized him at once. The sharp white military moustache, the monocle cord, the striped tie which would have delighted Mr Lofting, the neat dark clothes and the padded chest did not disguise the person of Rathbone.
Carolus could not resist a touch of old melodrama.
“So we meet again,” he said.
Rathbone quickly shut the door behind him and did what “Old Maree” was determined not to do—crumpled.
“How did you find me?” he said brokenly.
“I told you it would be easy when the time came.”
Carolus was pleased that his luck was running, after all. It had occurred to him as a remote possibility that Rathbone, whose knowledge of other cities could not be extensive, would probably be in London and might conceivably have gravitated to the place in which he had previously lived. But that “Colonel Hood” would be Rathbone himself had never entered his mind.
“They say that murderers return to the scenes of their crimes,” went on Carolus, “so perhaps widowers return to the scenes of their bachelordom. You are a widower, aren’t you, Rathbone?”
“What right have you to ask me?”
“None. But I’m very curious. I’m going to ask you quite a lot before I leave. If I do leave without you.”
Rathbone stood up shakily.
“You’re not a policeman,” he said.
“No. But that can very easily be remedied if you prefer talking to the police. I told you they would search Glose Cottage.”
A hint of triumph was in Rathbone’s voice as he turned on Carolus.
“And what did they find?” he asked defiantly.
Carolus watched him.
“A pair of ear-rings,” he said quietly.
Rathbone crumpled again.
“They also looked for fingerprints,” said Carolus.
“And didn’t find any!”
“That’s the point. Like the dog that barked in the night. There were no fingerprints.”
Rathbone sat looking at the floor. Presently he said—“Are they looking for me?”
“I don’t know. I’m not in their confidence. They hadn’t been to Hastings when I was there.”
A sound like a groan came from Rathbone. “Hastings?” he repeated.
“Miss Ramble is still there. She has the liveliest of recollections of your stay there with the lady whom I must describe as your second wife. Nor, I think, have the police interviewed ‘Old Maree’.” Watching Rathbone, Carolus thought this name had entirely misfired. “About Frenchy, I mean, and Cara.” That went home all right.
“You . . . you . . .”
“I haven’t wasted my time looking for you, Rathbone. I’ve gone back, not forward. Back to Coleshill Lodge.” That really struck.
“I didn’t kill her,” Rathbone murmured suddenly.
“Whom didn’t you kill?”
“Anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. Oh, God!”
Was the man going to faint again?
“Relax,” said Carolus. “Why don’t you go and get it all off your chest? You needn’t tell me anything. But the police will soon know all I do, and more. I can’t see what good you do yourself by trying to live under a disguise.”
There was no answer.
“You know the police dug up every possible patch of ground at Glose Cottage. They’ll do the same at Coleshill Lodge when they get on to it.”
This was the most critical moment in the interview and at first Carolus thought the careful words had been ineffective. But no. The face which Rathbone turned up to him had an expression of sheer agony and the man had a paroxysm of trembling.
“So why not get it over?” ended Carolus.
Still no reply.
“You see, Rathbone, you are dealing with a very determined woman in Mrs Chalk. In order to obtain their inheritance for her children, she won’t hesitate to let you hang.”
The moustache, so slick and jaunty a few minutes ago, seemed to have sagged with Rathbone’s whole body. It was hard not to feel some pity for the man.
“Why did you give up your job with Tonkins when you married?” asked Carolus more casually.
“I hated it.”
“The firm, you mean?”
“No the work. I have always hated work.” Carolus realized that he was hearing the cardinal fact about this man. It was almost Rathbone’s religion. “I never meant to do another day’s work in my life. And I sha’n’t.”
Interesting, that. It had put real animation into Rathbone for a moment.
“When did you first see your wife’s sister Charlotte?”
“When Annie was ill at Bolderton. She came down. Annie had kept in touch with her, secretly of course. If her father had known, he would have been furious. Annie asked me to send for her.”
“And when did you see her last?”
Rathbone thought carefully.
“Alive, never,” he said. “We saw her in the mortuary.”
“So far as you could tell in death, was she much changed? It was four years after her visit to Bolderton.”
Rathbone seemed puzzled by this question, or perhaps he was trying to guess Carolus’s reason for asking it.
“No,” he replied. “So far as one could tell, very little.”
Carolus nodded.
“You never met her friend Cara then?”
“Cara? No. We met none of her associates.”
“How do you account for the fact that everyone at Bolderton remembers your wife as being small and almost emaciated, everyone at Hastings as heavy and round-cheeked, everyone at Bluefield as tall, perpetually smiling and elderly?”
The answer when it came was so absurd that Carolus had to suppress a smile. Yet it seemed to him in the circumstances the only possible answer.
“People change,” said Rathbone.
“Their height—in middle age?”
“Shoes,” said Rathbone. “High heels.”
It was the turn of Carolus to say nothing. When he spoke, it was on quite another matter.
“Why were you so upset when Mrs Luggett heard you’d lived at Hastings? Since you had nothing to hide, as you say, why should that have worried you?”
Rathbone muttered something about other people minding their own business. Then said bitterly to Carolus: “You must have been busy. All these details!”
“I have,” said Carolus. “But I haven’t finished yet. I’m going to get the whole story from the beginning to . . . to the very unpleasant end. I know a good deal more than when we met before, but still not enough. I notice, for instance, that you have had your teeth attended to. Was that part of your make-up as Colonel Hood?”
“I suppose so.”
“But why bother with all this, Rathbone? You must have known you would be found quickly enough when the time came.”
“How did you find me?” asked Rathbone sombrely.
“Schmidt is still at Tonkins. His name is Villiers now that he’s a director. He knew where you lived when you worked there.”
“But I don’t see how you could guess I should return. It’s uncanny.”
“Are you a Christian Scientist?” asked Carolus suddenly.
“I? No. Why?”
“You were at Hastings.”
“A fad of my wife’s. Soon disappeared.”
“As she did.”
“For a time,
yes.”
“Somehow Christian Science and Church at Bluefield don’t fit very well. Nor does the song over which you quarrelled with Miss Ramble.”
“That was ridiculous. There was nothing in the song. She was a narrow-minded woman.”
“Yes. I dare say. But your wife’s character seems to have changed almost as often as her height and weight. The only thing that remained unchanged was her signature. But I suppose that was the main thing.”
“You’re wrong,” said Rathbone. “I was very fond of Annie.”
“But you hated work?”
“Yes.”
“There were other inconsistencies, you know. At Bolderton your wife was so abstemious that she had the greatest difficulty in swallowing a little milk-stout when the doctor ordered it for her. At Hastings she drank ‘more than was good for her’ and went often to the Star and Mitre. At Bluefield she was TT again. How come?”
“Sea air,” said Rathbone gloomily.
“Sea air my foot! Then there was her health. At Bolderton she was suffering from pernicious anaemia and was regarded as a chronic invalid. At Hastings she was rubicund and cheerful and at Bluefield she never had a day’s illness. How do you think you’re going to explain all this to the police? They’re not complete nitwits, you know. People’s memories are long. Admittedly at Hastings you lived between two ferocious old gossip-mongers, Miss Ramble and Mrs Bishop. But Mrs Richards who worked for you at Bolderton is no fool and does not exaggerate ‘nor set down aught in malice’. Then Villiers, ex-Schmidt, delights in remembering everything for the sake of it. So does Potter, the clerk in Mumford’s office. You were too recently at Bluefield to be out of anyone’s recollection. How do you think you’re going to get away with it?”
Rathbone made silence and resignation his refuge. Then Carolus fired a question at him of a different, a far more direct kind while he watched his face.