by Cyril Hare
“That he was murdered,” said Stephen, in a tone expressive of his contempt for a man who could not call a spade a spade.
“Precisely. I think I am right, my dear young lady, in saying that the suggestion came as a shock to you?”
There are, it may be presumed, girls who like being addressed as dear young ladies by pseudo-elderly solicitors. Anne was not one of them. She flushed and said awkwardly, “Yes, I suppose it did.”
Mr. Jelks felt that he was getting on well. None of the other partners, he thought, neither his father nor uncle, not even that ferociously efficient fellow Dedman, could have handled the situation better.
“In that case,” he went on, sawing the air impressively with one hand, “you will appreciate what I meant when I said just now that your brother had taken—”
“Yes, we all understand that,” said Martin. “Point is, it seems to me, what do we do now?”
There was a pause in which Mr. Jelks struggled to find words. In the absence of any very definite thoughts, he found the search difficult.
“I mean to say,” Martin went on in his thick, unattractive voice, “the insurance chappie who has just gone out was very positive that it couldn’t be accident. Steve here, who’s read all the evidence and we haven’t, agreed with him. We thought he’d sold the pass—didn’t we, Annie? Then he came out with murder and gave us all a bit of a jump. Can’t say I like the idea very much myself. Suicide in the family’s bad enough, but murder’s a long sight worse. Personally, I’d be in favour of giving the whole show a miss. Yes, I would, Annie, honestly. And I’m sure Mrs. Dickinson doesn’t like the notion either. But of course I see Steve’s point of view. Since it can’t be accident and it mustn’t be suicide, it’s got to be murder. That’s how he looks at it, and of course I see his point. As I’ve said already.”
The solicitor turned to Stephen.
“Does that fairly indicate your attitude?” he asked.
“More or less,” was the reply. “And I know what you are going to say. ‘The wish is father to the thought.’ Well, perhaps it is. But the thought is there, just the same. You see, we none of us ever really believed that Father killed himself. Did we, Anne?”
“I didn’t, anyhow,” said his sister.
“Very good. Therefore, as Martin puts it, it’s got to be murder.”
Poor Mr. Jelks, whose practice had hitherto lain in the quiet reaches of conveyances and settlements, felt utterly at a loss.
“In that case—if you really think—” he stammered—“I should have thought the police—”
“The police are no good to us, at this stage at any rate. I’ve seen one policeman already, and I can tell you that. For that matter, we may never have to get so far as proving the case against anybody. I mean, criminal proof isn’t the same thing as civil proof, is it?”
Mr. Jelks began to feel on firmer ground again.
“You put it inaccurately,” he said, “but I see what you mean. If it should be necessary to sue the British Imperial Company on the policy—” Thank Heaven! he thought, Dedman is in charge of all the litigation in the office! “—the burden will be on the Company to prove that the case falls within the exception of the policy.”
“I’m not sure that I understand,” Mrs. Dickinson put in. “Do you mean that in any case we bring against them, it will be for them to prove my husband’s suicide all over again, in spite of what the coroner’s jury has already said?”
“Certainly. Though I must say that on the evidence so far I think they would succeed in doing so. But if, in some way that I confess I don’t yet understand, you are able to cast doubt upon the inquest verdict, by setting up a prima facie case of—” again he boggled at the word “—of the other thing, then you might succeed.”
“It makes a big difference,” said Martin, “if we haven’t got to pin the crime on anyone. Just show it could have been done, and so on. But how does one set about finding a primer whatd’ye call it of murder? That’s what I want to know.”
Mr. Jelks gave an embarrassed little laugh.
“Well! Really, you know, this is hardly in my line,” he said. “What is it the books say? Means, Motive, Opportunity: those are the three factors, aren’t they? I suppose you have to look about for some person or body of persons who had all three, and then try to—ah—implicate them. But you must beware of the law of defamation while you’re about it, you know,” he added hastily.
“Thanks,” said Stephen. “That’s very helpful indeed.”
“Oh, not at all, not at all,” answered Mr. Jelks, who was happily impervious to irony. “Well, Mrs. Dickinson, I think I should really be going now. If I can be of any further assistance—”
“I think you can,” Stephen interrupted him. “If we are to get any further in this business than talking about it, we have got to start investigating those three factors you mentioned just now. So far as opportunity goes, it was obviously confined to the people who happened to be in the hotel at the time.”
“Oh, obviously. I take it that this—this committee of detection, shall I say?”—his little witticism brought no answering gleam from any of the faces around him—“will begin by adjourning to Pendlebury Old Hall to inquire into the staff and residents there.”
“That’s just the trouble,” said Stephen. “I’ve been thinking about that, and so far as I’m concerned there’s every objection to my being seen nosing around Pendlebury. I don’t expect for a moment that the hotel people will be particularly anxious to help us—this sort of publicity would obviously be bad for them—and as soon as I gave my name they’d guess what was up and would shut up like oysters. The same objection applies to Anne going. I suppose Martin could, but—”
“I shouldn’t be any use,” said Martin at once. “The hotel people were all at the funeral, and someone’d be sure to spot me. Anyhow,” he added, “I don’t know that I’m so keen on all this investigating business. If Steve thinks there’s been a murder, can’t he prove it out of the evidence he’s got already?”
“No,” said Stephen. “Quite obviously I can’t. I can’t even disprove suicide, which is what we really have to do, though I can throw some doubt on it. If we’re going to do any good, there’s a lot of hard work in front of us. That’s why somebody must begin by going down to Pendlebury, as Mr. Jelks says. In fact, that’s where Mr. Jelks comes in.”
“Where I—I beg your pardon, Mr. Dickinson, but it was only a suggestion of mine. You can’t mean that I should—”
“I imagined this sort of thing was just in your line. Surely solicitors are always having to make inquiries at hotels and places, for divorce and so on?”
“Divorce?” said Mr. Jelks. “We never touch it! There are firms, of course, who specialize in that class of business.”
“Then I suppose we shall have to put our affairs in the hands of one of the firms who do.”
Mr. Jelks had horrid visions of his partners returning from their holidays to find that he had lost a client.
“That will not be necessary,” he said, hastily. “I think what you want is a good inquiry agent. This is hardly a lawyer’s business at all, you know. You couldn’t expect me . . .”
Stephen, looking at him, privately agreed that he could not.
“You can find me a man of that sort—at once?”
“Oh, certainly, yes. I have the very man in mind. I’ll tell him to ring you up and make an appointment.”
Mr. Jelks had not the faintest acquaintance with any inquiry agent, good or bad; but he was fairly confident that one of the managing clerks in the office would know where to find one. At the moment he was anxious above all things to get away from this persistent young man, who, not content with propounding the most hare-brained plot, was actually suggesting that he, Herbert Horatio Jelks, should help to put it into execution. The sooner he returned to the sweet sanities of Bedford Row, the better.
Before he went, he had one further thing to say.
“You will remember that the Company’s
offer, thanks, I may say, to my own intervention, remains open for fourteen days,” he said. “I shall receive confirmation of that in writing, no doubt, but we may take it that you have fourteen days before you need finally decide to reject it.”
“We have rejected it,” said Stephen, tight-lipped. “I don’t see what else there is to decide.”
“Wait a bit, though,” said Martin. “There is something in this, y’know. Fourteen days is quite a bit of time—long enough to find out if there is anything in Steve’s idea. I vote we give ourselves that time to prove our case, and if we can’t, then take the thirteen hundred quid and look grateful. What d’you say, Annie?”
Anne turned to Stephen.
“Do you really stand by what you said?” she asked. “You really think that someone killed Father?”
“Yes. I do.”
She passed her hands before her eyes.
“We seem to go from one horror to another,” she murmured. “I think Martin is right, Stephen. At least, we needn’t make a definite choice until then.”
“I must ask you to make up your own minds about it,” said Mr. Jelks, in a hurry to be gone. “It is a point that you should bear in mind, that is all. I expect Mr. Dickinson thinks nothing of the task of laying bare a criminal in a fortnight.”
And with this last and utterly ineffective witticism, he took his departure.
* * *
“Pompous ass!” was Stephen’s comment, as he watched the solicitor’s chubby form recede along the pavement outside the house. “I might have known he’d be no sort of use.”
“Decent sort of fellow, I thought,” said Martin. “Of course, it was a bit of a shock to him; couldn’t take it in at first; but no more could the rest of us. It is a tall order, y’know. Anyhow, I think the idea of a trial fortnight is a good one. After all, one can do a lot in a fortnight.”
“What seems to have escaped your notice is that we’ve got to do a lot in a fortnight. I have four weeks holiday and nearly two weeks of it have gone already. After that, things aren’t going to be so easy.”
“Jove, yes! I’m lucky, I’ve still got three weeks to play with, so I’m all right. And now I suppose there’s nothing we can do till the inquiry chappie has got to work. Not that I like this business of poking about in hotel registers. You never know what you might find.” He blinked solemnly behind his spectacles. “I’m short of exercise,” he announced. “Is anybody coming for a stroll on the Heath?”
Nobody else felt inclined to go with him, and he walked out alone. As soon as he was gone, Anne took Stephen on one side.
“There’s something I want to say to you,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yes. It’s just that I’m sorry.”
“What about?”
“About that beastly row we had the other night.”
“Good Lord! That! I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Well, I hadn’t. You see, it’s only just occurred to me that you must have just made up your mind that moment about this horrible business.”
“That Father’s death wasn’t accidental, you mean?”
“Yes. It was a pretty bad shock to me when you brought it out just now, and I can understand what it was for you when you tumbled to it all by yourself. Of course you were all on edge.”
“Say no more, sister. We both said some pretty silly things. Let’s forget them.”
The telephone bell rang. Stephen answered it. It was Mr. Jelks speaking from his office.
“I have got the man you want,” he said. “The name is Elderson. Will it suit you to go and see him tomorrow morning?” He added an address in Shaftesbury Avenue.
“Thank you,” said Stephen. He put down the receiver and began to laugh.
“What on earth is the matter?” Anne said.
“I—I’m sorry,” he said, struggling with gusts of uncontrollable giggling. “But it does seem a bub—bloody silly position, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t see anything funny about it at all.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I shall be sane tomorrow. Just now I—hoo, hoo, hoo!”
And so odd is the effect of overstrained nerves, that when Martin came in from his walk he found Anne also in the grip of mirthless laughter.
Chapter Eight
Two Sorts of Private Inquiry
Tuesday, August 22nd
“Jas. Elderson, Private Inquiry Agent,” said the notice in dirty yellow lettering on the dirty brown door. Stephen, as he stood collecting his breath on the landing after his climb up the steep staircase, tried to picture what manner of man Jas. Elderson would prove to be. He had never consciously set eyes on a private inquiry agent, but he imagined that a man could hardly be engaged in such a calling without having something more or less sleuth-like in his appearance. A lean, ferrety face, a sensitive nose that quivered slightly at the tip, small, beady eyes and a generally sly, cunning demeanour made up his idea of what a free-lance detective ought to be. If he did not expect to find all the features of his ideal compounded in Mr. Elderson, he did at least look to see some vestige of what he took to be the insignia of the profession. He would probably have been extremely nettled to be told, as was the fact, that his mental image was merely a reincarnation of the illustrations to a serial in a schoolboy’s magazine which he had devoured with gusto some fifteen years before.
The reality, as might have been expected, was a disappointment. Mr. Elderson proved to be a large, bluff individual with a loud voice and a self-confident manner. He had a good-looking face, slightly blurred in outline, and his general appearance vaguely suggested a policeman gone to seed. There was nothing particularly surprising in the latter fact, since it was only a few years ago that he had left the Force; whether the circumstances of his retirement were in any way connected with the faint aroma of whisky which made itself felt as soon as he began to speak was his own secret.
He greeted Stephen in tones that contrived to blend the obsequious with the hearty, and proceeded, as he put it, “to take Mr. Dickinson’s instructions.” Stephen found, however, somewhat to his annoyance, that Mr. Jelks had already told him in general terms what would be required of him, and the only instructions that he found it necessary to give were devoted to confining Elderson’s already ambitious programme. The delight with which the fellow had welcomed an investigation into a case of suspected murder was ludicrous and even somewhat pathetic.
“This is something like, Mr. Dickinson,” he repeated several times, rubbing his beefy hands together. “This is something like!”
He did not specify what it was like, but it was easily to be gathered that the attraction of the case to him lay precisely in the fact that it was utterly unlike the dreary round of private detective’s ordinary activities.
“If there was anything fishy about the people at that hotel,” he went on, “I can promise you I’m the man to find it for you. You’ve come to the right place, sir, I can tell you that! And when it comes to a question of following up inquiries, well, sir, you may not credit it to look at me, but I can make myself to all intents and purposes invisible—virtually, morally, in-vis-ible, sir!”
At various points in the monologue Stephen endeavored to interrupt, but always without success. At last, however, he contrived to interpose: “I’m not at all sure, Mr. Elderson, whether you understand exactly what I am instructing you to do for me.”
“But surely,” Elderson protested, “I’m to be allowed a free ’and in me plan of campaign? Believe me, sir, when you employ an expert it’s the only thing to do—a free hand.” (The aspirate emerged triumphantly this time in an aura of spirits.) “Subject, of course, to your approval in the matter of exes. And I’m always most careful on the question of exes, that I can assure you.”
Exes? Stephen blinked once or twice before he realized what was meant.
“We can discuss the question of expenses later,” he said. “The point is that I am only instructing you to do one specific thing, which for various reasons I can’t undertake
myself. The plan of campaign, if there is one after you have done it, is my own business.”
“Very good, sir,” said Elderson, crestfallen, “if you wish it, of course. Theirs not to reason why, as Shakespeare says. At the same time, I should have thought—”
“Please don’t undervalue what I am asking you to do,” said Stephen swiftly, determined not to relinquish his hardly won grip on the conversation. “Your work in the first place, Mr. Elderson—I can’t answer for the future—will be confined to ascertaining who was in the hotel the night that my father died, under what names they stayed, the addresses they gave, what rooms they occupied, and anything else about them that can be found out. Also any useful observations you can make about the staff at the place. I shall want a report on these matters as soon as possible—”
“Time is of the essence, sir; yes, I quite appreciate that,” said Elderson, smacking his lips over the phrase, which meant no more to him than it did to his client. “Of the essence—absolutely. I can start to-day. Now on this question of exes, sir . . .”
That all-important point having been discussed and satisfactorily settled, Stephen prepared to go. Before he left, however, he was subjected to one last appeal.
“I do ’ate working in the dark, sir. Don’t you think you could let me in on this a leetle bit more? If you follow what I mean, sir?”
“We are all working in the dark. That’s exactly why I have had to come to you.”
“But couldn’t you just give me a line, sir, on the way you want things to turn out? I mean, for instance, Motive. You’ve considered that point, no doubt, sir. I presoom there was some motive for somebody to do away with the gentleman. If you could let me have a wrinkle or two on what’s in your mind, then I should know the sort of somebody I’m wanted to find, and save us both a lot of trouble.”