by Cyril Hare
Mallett took two steps towards the door and then turned.
“On the whole,” he said, “I think I’ll go round and see Mr. Dickinson myself about the matter. There’s always a chance I may be mistaken.”
“Go round yourself?” said the sergeant in surprise.
“Yes. This Parsons business may be important. When is the inquest, by the way?”
“It’s been adjourned till today week.”
“Plenty of time, then. I’ll let you know if this is the right man and anything I can find out about Mr. Johnson. Meanwhile, you needn’t do anything about the Midchester police until you hear from me. Thanks for the pill.”
And the inspector returned to his room, leaving behind him a sadly puzzled Sergeant Weekes.
Back at his desk once more, Mallett pulled out the file labelled “Re Dickinson,” which had reposed there since his unconventional talk with Stephen nearly a fortnight before. During the interval it had received one addition only; namely, from the Markshire police to the letter which he had written on the same day. The only matter of interest which this letter contained was a list of the residents at the hotel on the night of Mr. Dickinson’s death and a note of the times of their arrivals and departures. This he examined afresh with rather more attention than he had done when he first received it. He ran his broad forefinger down the list until it reached the name of Parsons.
“That’ll be him,” he said to himself. “Well, it seems simple enough. The boy sets to work to trace all the possible people who could have killed his father, and in due course goes to see Parsons. Parsons has a guilty conscience, thinks he’s come after him in connexion with his embezzlements, loses his head and kills himself. I’m afraid young Dickinson will find himself in an awkward position when he has to explain all that at the inquest, though. Not to mention Mr. Martin Johnson. I haven’t heard of him before. Friend of the family, I suppose.”
In the ordinary way he might well, at this point, have put the matter from his mind altogether, but whether it was the after effect of indigestion or some other cause, his thoughts continued obstinately to revolve round the question. He remained for some time brooding over the list of names, trying to fit them to the faces which he dimly remembered having seen at the hotel.
“But did Parsons kill himself simply for fear of his thefts being exposed?” he murmured. “The confession only relates to that, it’s true, but perhaps that’s only natural. Was there something else which the lad has found out—some connexion between him and his father, for instance? Well, he’ll be able to tell me that. It can’t have been a very obvious one, or he’d have gone for him straight away, instead of waiting for nearly two weeks. Parsons’ death has made it a good deal harder to prove the case, unless he’s left something tangible behind him in the way of papers. It might be worth while asking the Midchester police. . . .”
Almost without realizing it, the inspector had completely changed his attitude of mind towards the riddle of Leonard Dickinson’s death. His talk with Stephen must have impressed him far more deeply than he had known at the time, for now that his attention was once more focused on the problem he found himself accepting almost as a matter of course the theory which he had then refused to entertain.
“Let me see, now. . . .” Mallett tilted his chair back and closed his eyes. He saw once more the face of old Mr. Dickinson, heard his low, depressed tones. He reviewed again the short and apparently conclusive evidence at the inquest. There was nothing new in what he remembered, but this time he looked at it from a different angle altogether.
“But . . .” he added. “But . . . there are objections to the son’s theory all the same. Or if not objections, limitations. If the old man was murdered in this particular place, in this particular way, that implies two or three things.” He enumerated them to himself. “Now, if I had been conducting this investigation in his place, I should have gone on those lines, in any case. It would have narrowed things down considerably. But I wasn’t conducting this investigation,” he concluded with a sigh.
Then Mallett performed a feat which was quite usual for him, but of which he was none the less justifiably proud. Taking up his pen, he proceeded to write down from memory the heads of the conversation which he had had with Stephen twelve days before. He had made no notes at the time, and during the interval his brain had been occupied with a dozen other matters, many of them of urgent importance. Nevertheless, when he had done, the salient points of their discussion were recorded on the paper before him, as accurately and completely as though they had been written down contemporaneously.
He contemplated the result with satisfaction. Then he marked with a pencil certain points in it which struck him as important. Finally, he looked from it to the type-written sheet supplied by the Markshire police and back again, tugging thoughtfully at the ends of his moustache. At last, he pulled himself together.
“This is theorizing without the facts, if you like!” he told himself. “And a most irrational theory at that. All the same, assuming that young Dickinson was right—just assuming. . . . It might be worth looking into. . . . It ought to be worth looking into. . . .”
He put the list into his pocket and returned the file to the drawer with his new page of notes as its only contents.
* * *
Despite his airy assurance to Sergeant Weekes that he would look into the matter of Stephen Dickinson himself, it took the inspector some time to persuade the Assistant Commissioner who ruled his days to allow him to leave his regular work in order that he might follow an investigation of his own. But Mallett was a man who had earned the confidence of his superiors and when he had asked for an indulgence in the past it had usually been justified by the event. So it was that on this occasion he found himself free to devote at least the afternoon to an inquiry on his own lines, and thereafter, if it seemed likely to bear fruit, to pursue the matter to a conclusion.
Nothing ever pleased him more than the prospect of working on his own. He came back from seeing the Assistant Commissioner with a broad smile on his face. Sergeant Weekes, whom he encountered on the way, saw in his expression merely another triumph for the tablets.
“They’ve done the trick, I see,” he said.
“Eh?” answered Mallett, absent-mindedly.
“That indigestion of yours—it’s gone?”
“Indigestion? Oh, yes, I’d quite forgotten. I had a twinge of something, didn’t I? Yes, thanks, it’s all right now. I suppose it’s because I’ve been too busy to think about it. Well, I must hurry now, I want to get out to my lunch.”
There was, the sergeant reflected gloomily, no such thing as gratitude in the world.
Chapter Nineteen
Stephen Decides
Thursday, August 31st
“Mind you,” Martin was saying, “that solicitor fellow was pretty definite about it. And I’m bound to say, he struck me as a pretty knowing sort of fellow. I mean, he seemed to know what he was talking about.”
Stephen groaned.
“I seem to have heard you say that at least half a dozen times since yesterday afternoon,” he said.
“We’ve all said everything over and over again,” Anne pointed out. “And we’re no nearer deciding anything than we were yesterday. My mind’s made up, anyhow. What on earth is the good of beating about the bush any longer?”
“We’ve got till Monday, anyway,” said Martin. “That gives us three clear days. Counting Sunday, of course.”
“Your arithmetic is wonderful,” Stephen remarked.
“Stop bickering,” commanded Anne. “Mother, you’re as much concerned in this as any of us. Don’t you agree with us? You’ve heard everything that’s been done, and how futile it’s all been. Don’t you think it would be sheer folly not to take what we can get now, while we can get it, in view of what Mr. Dedman says?”
Mrs. Dickinson had been a more or less silent auditor of the discussion that had raged almost without interruption the whole morning. Appealed to now, she seemed rel
uctant to speak.
“My dear,” she said at last in her low, musical voice, “I gave my opinion about this a long time ago, I have been poor before, and I’m not afraid to be poor again. I don’t think that either you or Stephen—particularly Stephen—would enjoy it very much. That is why I left the whole matter in your hands in the first place. Now, I understand, it is a choice between taking a small amount of money at once and gambling on getting a large sum in the future. I know quite well which I should do, if the choice was mine, but then I have never been particularly fond of gambling. You must make up your own minds about this.”
“Just a minute,” said Martin. “In point of fact, Mrs. Dickinson, you and Steve are the two executors of the will, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that is so.”
“Well, I may be wrong, but I suppose the executors are the people who will have to make the claim on the insurance chaps, if anybody does. In that case, the people who have to make up their minds about what’s to be done are you two, and not us at all.”
“And what happens if the executors don’t agree?” Stephen asked.
“Heaven knows! I suppose Dedman could tell us.”
“I don’t think that question will arise,” said Mrs. Dickinson. “As I have said, I am not making any decision about this. I shall agree with whatever my fellow executor says.”
“Then that settles it!” said Stephen resolutely.
“No, it doesn’t!” cried Anne. “Look here, Stephen, I don’t care what the lawyers may say, but we are all in this together. You’ve simply got to listen to me!”
“I seem to have done quite a lot of that lately,” was Stephen’s comment.
“You’ve not heard everything yet, by a long way.” She looked at her mother as she spoke.
Mrs. Dickinson accepted the glance as a hint and rose to her feet. “I don’t think I can help you any further,” she said. “Besides, there are two or three things I must attend to before lunch. Let me know what you have decided and I promise that I shall not quarrel with it.”
She went out. The door had hardly closed behind her, and Martin had not had time to begin filling a pipe which automatically appeared in his hand upon her departure, before Anne rounded on Stephen. She stood in the middle of the room, leaning on one arm against a table. Her fingers were trembling slightly and her face had gone quite white.
“Look here!” she began in a low voice. “This thing has got to stop! Do you understand me, Stephen? It’s got to stop!”
“You’re very earnest, all of a sudden,” said Stephen coldly.
“Earnest? My God, can’t you understand? Can’t you see what a horrible thing we’ve been meddling with all this time? And now, when there’s a chance of getting out of it you still want to go on, all for the sake of—”
“For the sake of twenty-five thousand pounds. I must say, it seems quite a consideration to me.”
“Oh, damn the money!” Anne exclaimed bitterly, stamping her foot on the floor. “It’s all you ever think about!”
“Very well, damn the money by all means, if you really feel inclined to. But what about you? Who was it who always insisted that Father hadn’t killed himself? What about your wonderful notion of putting things right with him by clearing his memory? I must say you are about the last person to—”
“Just as you like. I know I’m responsible for this as much as anybody. I didn’t know then just what a thing like this led to, that’s all. I do now. And that’s why I say we’ve got to drop it. Lord, what fools we’ve been with our bungling amateur detection. Here we’ve been talking of suspects and clues, nosing about ever so pleased with ourselves, and what’s been the result?”
“Very little, I admit.”
“Little? You’ve driven one man to his death already, and you call that little? Stephen, I tell you this. Unless we bury the whole of this business as quickly and decently as we can, something perfectly horrible is going to happen. Of that, I feel absolutely certain!”
She turned suddenly to Martin.
“You understand what I’m talking about, don’t you, Martin?” she appealed to him. “Don’t you see how fearfully important this is for all of us? Please, please help me to persuade Stephen to be sensible.”
“Just a minute, before you answer that one, Martin.” Stephen’s voice, with a raw edge to it that told of strained nerves, cut across his sister’s plea. “I don’t profess to know all about all your affairs, but just tell me this: Are you prepared to marry Anne on what you’ve got, plus her share of the insurance company’s offer?”
Martin took two deep puffs at his pipe before he answered.
“No,” he said at last. “I’m not.”
“Very well, then—”
“I don’t care,” cried Anne. “I’d rather not be married at all than go on like this!”
There was a long pause before Martin spoke again.
“I think Annie’s right,” he said.
“You mean—” Stephen left his question unfinished.
“I mean that we’ve done enough harm already. And after all, if I get on, we can always get married some time—if Annie will have me, that is.”
Anne said nothing. She was looking at Stephen. Stephen looked at neither of them. He remained for a short time staring straight in front of him, and then said slowly: “I see. Well, I suppose I must agree, then.”
“You mean it?” said Anne, all her relief showing in her face.
“Of course I mean it,” Stephen answered in an irritated tone. “Otherwise I should not have said it.”
“Will you let Mr. Dedman know he’s to accept the insurance people’s offer?”
“Certainly. I’ll do it now, if you like.”
The telephone was in the study, where this conference had taken place. Stephen went towards the instrument, and as he put out his hand to take up the receiver the bell began to ring.
“Curse!” he said perfunctorily, and answered the call.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Speaking. Who? Oh, I see. Yes. I’ll hold on. Yes. Yes, I say, this is Mr. Dickinson speaking. What? No, I hadn’t seen this morning. I say, I didn’t look to see this morning. Have they? What? But look here, that’s impossible! Oh, no, I take your word for it, but . . . Anyhow, that’s obviously only a temporary reaction. Oh, you think so, do you? Yes, of course I understand it’s pretty serious. I know, I know. But you see, just at the present moment I . . . Well, I shall have to arrange something, that’s all. But don’t you think you could . . .”
The conversation went on a good deal longer. Various words kept on recurring again and again. “Contango” was one. “Carry over” and “Account” were others. “Margin” and “options” also occurred more than once. At last, the call came to an end. Stephen put down the receiver and turned round to display a very pale face.
“And that,” he said, “is that.”
“What has happened?” Anne asked him.
“Nothing very much. Simply that I am broke, that’s all. Completely and absolutely broke. Unless”—he set his teeth—“unless I can find a very considerable amount of money in a very short space of time.”
“Rotten luck,” murmured Martin.
“Yes, isn’t it? And it’s going to be dam’ rotten luck for somebody else too, I can tell you that!”
“What do you mean?” said Anne sharply.
“I mean that I’m going on with this show.”
“But, Stephen, you can’t! Not after what you’ve just said! You promised—”
“Promised, hell! Can’t you understand plain English? I’ve got to lay my hands on more money than I’m worth by next Monday, or I shall be made bankrupt. That’s the long and short of it. And I’m not going to be jockeyed out of the chance of it by you or anyone else. That’s final.”
“Stephen—you can’t—you can’t!” Quite suddenly Anne’s self-control broke down altogether. Bursting into tears, she made for the door. Martin tried to stop her, but she pushed him on one side and ran from the room.
<
br /> After she had gone, the two men looked at each other in silence for a moment or two. Then Martin said, “On the whole, I think perhaps I’d better not stay for lunch.”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ll call round after tea. I dare say a spin in the car then might do her good.”
“Yes, do.”
In the result, Stephen lunched alone with his mother. Anne remained upstairs in her room. Consequently, she was not present when Inspector Mallett called in the afternoon. It was perhaps just as well.
* * *
The inspector was at his most genial during the interview. Sitting in the big arm-chair in the study, he resembled nothing so much as a very large cat, purring contentedly in the sun. Unlike a cat, however, he seemed to be genuinely apologetic for his presence.
“I am really sorry to bother you, Mr. Dickinson,” he began. “But somebody had to do it, and in all the circumstances, I thought it had better be me. It all arises out of this event at Midchester. You were at Midchester on Monday night, were you not?”
“Yes, I was.”
“I thought it must have been you. You and a Mr. Johnson?”
“Yes, that’s my sister’s fiancé.”
“Your sister’s fiancé?” The inspector seemed surprisingly interested in this piece of information. “Your sister’s fiancé?” he repeated. “Just so. That would explain it, of course.”
“Explain what?” asked Stephen, somewhat provocatively.
“I mean, explain his presence in this affair. I suppose I am right in thinking that your visit to Midchester was in connexion with the inquiries you were proposing to make when we last met?”
“Certainly. And I suppose I am right in thinking that your visit here is in connexion with the same business?”
“Not exactly. Not in the way you might imagine, that is. You see, Mr. Dickinson, as you may know, rather an unfortunate thing happened just after you and Mr. Johnson left Midchester on Tuesday morning, and your names have been associated with it.”