Surfeit of Suspects

by George Bellairs

  ‘But as the companies’ lawyer, he must have been fully conversant with what was going on.’

  Ash changed colour and slumped in his chair. He looked almost as ill as Fred Hoop, who was still sitting miserably there as though he were the accused, being tried by the rest.

  ‘And now we come to the Excelsior affair.’

  None of the audience, except the police, looked comfortable about it. It was as though they were all well aware of their own parts in the sordid Evingden tragedy and were anxious to hide them.

  ‘A small-town bookie named Scriboma watched the building of a new branch bank from his office windows, and saw the safes arrive as temporary means of holding cash and securities until the strong room could be completed. He knew a man who he thought could easily open those cash safes and he got in touch with him. This friend of Scriboma was suffering from undue interest by the police, but he agreed to try his hand provided Scriboma could obtain the necessary explosive. This didn’t deter Scriboma. He knew where and how he could get it. His brother-in-law, Oswald Bugler…’

  ‘Who?’

  Fred Hoop suddenly sat up and took notice. The name of Bugler might have been a firework exploding under his seat.

  ‘Bugler. Your cashier at Excelsior.’

  ‘But… Oh, never mind…’

  Telephone. That, too, made them all jump again, including Littlejohn. Everyone was on tenterhooks.

  ‘It’s for you…’

  Ash handed the instrument to Tattersall. There was a brief conversation, mainly at the other end of the line. Tattersall seemed very amused. He scribbled a message on a piece of paper and handed it to Littlejohn.

  ‘Oh dear. We might have avoided this.’

  But he didn’t tell the rest what it was all about. He handed the note to Cromwell and left the others to wonder.

  ‘To supplement his meagre and uncertain income from Excelsior, Mr. Bugler acted as bookie’s runner for Scriboma and almost every week called at Rosealba quarries to collect bets and pay out winnings. Scriboma, who was in a position to blackmail his brother-in-law into doing what he wished, told him to obtain dynamite from the stores there, Bugler managed to steal enough, and more, for the bank job. Scriboma’s safe-cracking friend used two sticks of it; Bugler had stolen four. The bank robbery was a miserable flop. Scriboma, left with the remainder of the explosive, held on to it for a while, but a few days ago, hearing that his safe-breaker had been arrested, got cold feet and handed it back to Bugler, telling him to dispose of it.’

  Everybody wondered what was coming next, including Vintner who tried to look bored with it all, but didn’t succeed.

  ‘Bugler received the dynamite on the morning of the day of the Excelsior explosion.’

  ‘So, it was Bugler who had an accident and blew the place up!’

  Vintner looked around for approval at his deduction.

  ‘No. He put the sticks of dynamite in an old box and hid them in the filing cabinet in his office. He intended disposing of them as soon as he could in the safest spot he could think of – the sea. Whilst the explosive was there Bugler had visitors. First, Mr. Tom Hoop arrived. He wanted the time-sheets for checking. They were kept in the drawer of the cabinet in which Bugler had hidden the dynamite, and, as was his custom, Mr. Hoop went straight to the drawer and took out the sheets. He didn’t mention the dynamite, and Bugler didn’t know whether or not he had noticed it.’

  Fred Hoop suddenly awoke again.

  ‘My father was right, then, and all the time I thought he was rambling in his speech because he’d been ill. I hurried him off home. Then…’

  ‘Your father wasn’t well when he visited Bugler’s office and left with you the enquiry about the dynamite. As he left the works, your father asked you to return the time-sheets to their proper place. You delayed for some time and then you went to Bugler’s office. He was out and the cabinet was locked. You held a spare key, opened the drawer, but found no explosive there. This confirmed your view that your father had been talking rather deliriously. Actually, your father did see the dynamite, but between his telling you and your entering Bugler’s office, it had been taken by a visitor who arrived between your father’s and your own entry.’

  Bella sat rigidly in her chair like a pillar of salt. Her mouth was open in stupefaction, too. Vintner had forgotten his notebook. Now he searched frantically for it, found it on the floor, and started to hunt for the thread of his narrative again.

  ‘The visitor was Alderman Vintner.’

  A great sigh from Bella, as though she’d been principal suspect and was now vindicated. But before anyone else could react, Fred Hoop leapt from his chair, crossed to Vintner, and seized him wildly by the throat.

  ‘So, it was you! You swine. I’ll…’

  The chair on which Vintner was sitting collapsed under the tension of the scuffle, but Fred Hoop still hung on. Finally, Cromwell lifted him out of the wreckage by the seat of his trousers and sat him in a corner on the floor.

  ‘Behave yourself or I’ll put the handcuffs on you.’

  Vintner sorted himself out of the mess, refusing all help, beside himself with fury. He pointed to Hartley Ash.

  ‘You’re my lawyer, Ash. You’ll represent me in this affair.’

  Ash looked blankly at him, unable to fathom which affair, the assault by Fred or the accusation by Littlejohn.

  ‘I deny that I was in Bugler’s office on the day mentioned and your first job, Ash, will be to issue a writ for slander against Littlejohn.’

  Littlejohn lit his pipe.

  ‘I have ample proof that you were at Excelsior works and in Bugler’s office at the time. I intended Bugler should be here. Unfortunately, he’s in hospital. The telephone message was from the police station. Scriboma has beaten up Bugler and is now in gaol himself. But to resume…’

  Vintner went to the chair Fred Hoop had vacated and sat on it.

  ‘I’m waiting. You’re taking a note of all this, Ash?’

  Ash drew a pad and pencil towards him just to show willing.

  ‘You arrived at the main offices at Excelsior to demand from Dodd payment of a large and long overdue account. You were going to threaten him with proceedings which would break the firm. He was your enemy. He was your son-in-law and had treated your daughter very badly. He’d dragged your good name in the mud of Evingden…’

  ‘Never mind my good name. I’m well able to look after that, as you’ll soon discover. And keep my daughter out of this.’

  ‘I will. But the domestic quarrel between you and Dodd was very embarrassing to you. He knew all about your premature disclosures of the council’s plans for the new town and the development projects which would cause a rise in the land prices which you had bought or caused your friends, including Dodd, to buy. He was in a position to blackmail you. But he didn’t choose that way. He decided to make money on his own account.’

  Bella was listening with intense concentration to the narrative of Dodd’s adventure. She fanned herself with a handkerchief from time to time and smiled now and then, as though Dodd were still alive and she was proud of him.

  ‘It seems to have been the practice for Alderman Vintner to pass on information to Roper, who explored the financial side and then arranged with Dodd to assess the value and attend to the purchase of the properties which would rise in value…’

  Vintner remained silent. He wrote something in his notebook and raised his eyes in the direction of Ash to make sure he was noticing what was said.

  ‘One day Roper received information through the usual channels that the corporation of Evingden proposed to acquire the site of Excelsior works for the construction of a bus station. They would pay perhaps £15,000 for it. Roper at once saw salvation in it. The property, including the land, belonged to the Misses Jonas who let it at a nominal rental to Excelsior. There was in the lease, however, an option for the co
mpany to buy the property for £5,000. If Excelsior exercised their option and paid £5,000, which Roper would find for them, they’d make a cool profit of £10,000 on the deal. More than enough to repay the company’s loan to the Home Counties Bank and relieve Roper of a burden which worried him to death. He told Dodd the news and explained his proposition and together they arranged to by-pass Vintner and put through the deal themselves.’

  ‘All lies! But go on. You’re only incriminating yourself more and more in front of witnesses. This will break you, Littlejohn.’

  ‘To return to the day of the explosion. You called to threaten Dodd, Alderman, about an overdue account. When you arrived at the office, he was telephoning. So, you waited outside, unseen and listening to the conversation. It was between Dodd and Mrs. Fred Hoop. I’ve arranged for Mrs. Hoop and Mrs. Sandman to be present so that there will be no mistake about this. Dodd informed Mrs. Hoop that his wife was going to sue for divorce. Dodd suggested that Fred Hoop might be inclined to do the same, in which case they could…’

  Fred Hoop, until then sitting disconsolately in the corner on the carpet, began to struggle to his feet.

  ‘I’ll murder Dodd for this,’ he shouted; and then he remembered that there was no need to do so. He sank back, put his head between his knees and began to sob. This was a chance for more melodrama from Bella. She rose to minister to him, but her mother seized her by the arm and flung her back in her chair.

  ‘Stay where you are. You’ve done quite enough to Fred. You ought to be ashamed…’

  It was Bella’s turn to dissolve into weeping now. Tears ran down her cheeks and made runnels in the deep make-up. Cromwell filled a glass with brackish-looking water from a decanter on Ash’s desk and gave it to Fred, who automatically drained it in one. Then he looked surprised at what he’d done.

  Littlejohn had to raise his voice above the noise of sobbing.

  ‘As he finished the conversation Dodd told Mrs. Hoop that his fortune looked like being greatly improved through the sale of Excelsior properties. He asked her to meet him at the office at eight o’clock that night as they couldn’t discuss the future over the telephone. The alderman had heard enough. He quietly removed himself and went to browbeat Bugler about the account due. In Bugler’s office, he saw the drawer of a cabinet open. It contained a box which had once held screws supplied, as the label stated, by a firm of Vintner’s trade rivals, Forest and Hedley. Eager to see how Excelsior stock of ironmongery was faring, Vintner opened the box whilst Bugler’s back was turned. He found the dynamite. He was in the frame of mind for killing Dodd, but didn’t know how. The dynamite gave him an idea. He pocketed it. Then he left.’

  ‘Ha! That’s a good one. How did you concoct that bit of cleverness?’

  ‘You told Bugler that you would stop Excelsior credit with Forest and Hedley. How did you know who was giving them credit? You’d seen the name when you unearthed the box.’

  The sobbing had subsided and Bella was now flashing her tearful eyes in Fred’s direction in a manner hinting at reconciliation. Fred’s stomach agitated by his too sudden drink of water, revolted… Or it may have been the sight of Bella’s approaches… At any rate, he showed urgent signs of being sick, and Ash, anxious about the carpet, rushed him off to an appropriate place and left him there. When Ash returned, he took up his pencil again to reassure Vintner, who, by now seemed to have forgotten all about him. He was inclined to laugh off the situation. He sniggered unpleasantly.

  ‘So you’re going to arrest me for stealing dynamite, are you? How are you going to prove it? How are you going to prove anything? I’ll deny it. It would be very inconvenient for you if you arrested me just now.’

  ‘No, Alderman Vintner, it will be a more important and serious charge than that. It will be murder. Between Mr. Tom Hoop’s arrival in Bugler’s office, when he found the dynamite was in the drawer, and Mr. Fred’s visit, when he found the dynamite had gone, you had been there. The only other visitor.’

  ‘Very clever and convincing.’

  But now Vintner was sweating. He daren’t mop his brow and call attention to it and the beads formed a thread which ran off his forehead and down the sides of his fat face.

  Littlejohn, too, was perspiring and he daren’t show it either. He was luckier than Vintner, however. He could feel the beads running down his back. Much depended on the next few minutes. Tattersall looked bewildered and puzzled and Cromwell knew that the Superintendent was playing a hunch.

  ‘On the night of the crime, you were there, Alderman, at eight o’clock, with the dynamite in your pocket. You thought Dodd and Mrs. Hoop had an assignation in the office. What you didn’t know was that Dodd had cancelled it. He’d called, instead, a hasty directors’ meeting to arrange for the purchase of their property for £5,000 by the Excelsior company. Or, he might have intended some other slick way of dealing with the transaction to his own advantage. Tom Hoop was too ill to attend; Fred wasn’t about, and Dodd regarded him as a nonentity in any case. He’d called the other two directors, Fallows and Piper, there to form a quorum and start the ball rolling by agreeing to take up the option…’

  Bella Hoop started to weep again, this time a loud boohooing, quickly to be silenced by her mother, who pushed her so hard in the back that she almost fell from her chair.

  ‘Be quiet!’

  ‘You determined to dispose of Dodd, and the woman with whom he was betraying your daughter. Also he was planning to double-cross you on one of the biggest of your shady property deals. You had confirmed his betrayal by calling on Roper and bullying out of him what the big deal was that you’d heard about whilst eavesdropping on Dodd’s morning telephone call to Mrs. Hoop. I might add, that your treatment of Roper that morning largely contributed to his suicide…’

  Vintner seemed unable to control himself further under the weight of evidence and humiliation piling upon him. He rose, his face livid, and pointed his heavy stick viciously at Littlejohn.

  ‘And I suppose now, you’re going to say I crept out at night, went in the cellar of Excelsior offices, and blew up the whole place with dynamite. You can’t prove a thing. I deny it all. I’m going, and you can’t stop me.’

  He paused as though waiting for an answer. None came. Dead silence. The outstretched stick slowly performed an arc and trembled to the floor.

  It was Tattersall who rose and spoke first.

  ‘Only our forensic experts and the police here know that the dynamite was exploded in the cellar, Alderman. The newspapers and the rest of the public think it was flung in through the window, which sounds a bit more picturesque. How did you know…?’

  Another pause. Bella Hoop screamed. Vintner seemed to disintegrate before their eyes. He slowly crumpled from the feet upwards, his eyes staring out of his head, his mouth loose and askew. Then he pitched forward and fell heavily to the floor. At the same time, the door opened and Fred Hoop appeared in the doorway, a sorrier sight than ever.

  ‘Can I go? I’m not feeling so good.’

  Alderman Vintner never even faced the charge of murdering three men. He remained in hospital, totally paralysed, for three weeks, and then he died. The police, on examining Vintner’s office at the shop, found the remains of the old screw box, torn in many pieces, among the waste paper.

  ‘Why did you have the women at the interview?’ Tattersall asked Littlejohn later.

  ‘In the first place, it enabled us to get them all together without much trouble. Vintner thought himself a very clever fellow. In the presence of women, he tried to be more clever than ever. You, yourself, told me he had a reputation for showing off and indiscretion, especially in front of women. He ran true to form and committed his habitual blunder.’

  ‘What would you have done, if he hadn’t, but continued to bluff it out?’

  ‘It would have been awkward, but we’d have had to charge and arrest him. There was plenty of circumstantial evidence. We c
ould have made a good case, backed as it was by clear proof of his corrupt practices in municipal affairs.’

  ‘I liked your nerve.’

  ‘Just a hunch he would finally break down… I admired one thing about Vintner. His love for his daughter. He and her brothers insisted on Dodd marrying her after he’d seduced her. Then, Vintner did his best for Dodd. He let him into the secret and partnership of his corrupt practices. And Dodd betrayed him on both counts: his daughter and their shady business association.’

  Fred Hoop divorced Bella, who, almost right away became engaged to an Italian count she met on holiday. Fred, with the money from the bus station project, which went through, set up as a local undertaker and married his housekeeper.

  Oswald Bugler got away with a fine of £10 for stealing dynamite. Compared with some of the crimes recently current in Evingden, the magistrates regarded Bugler’s effort as a minor one. He got himself a job somewhere in Australia, for Mr. Scriboma is in gaol for two years and Bugler doesn’t know what mood he will be in when he gets out.