by Jerry eBooks
Henry Ansell, in addition to being a pawnbroker and fence, had another and more respectable activity: he did valuations of jewelry for probate purposes. It was in connection with this latter activity that Langley came in touch with him from time to time.
It was Ansell’s habit to keep in touch with people over whom he had some hold, so he nodded in friendly fashion to Langley when visiting the latter’s office. Once, leaving the office together in the late afternoon, Ansell broke the ice and invited Langley to come home with him for a drink.
Henry Ansell’s heel of Achilles was drink. He hated to drink alone, but feared to drink in public places, Jest Liquor should loosen his tongue and lead him into some indiscretion. So he did his drinking mostly alone at his small house in Hallgrove Gardens, Willesden. Edward Langley accepted the invitation with alacrity. The idea of drinking at the other’s expense appealed to him, and there was always the possibility that something useful might emerge from the contact.
“You and me must see more of each other, boy,” said Henry Ansell later that evening as, somewhat glassyeyed, he escorted his guest to the front door and held at bay two ferocious Alsatian dogs. “Mewtchiily advantageous, see what I mean?”
Langley endeared himself to Ansell by obtaining—through a wine-merchant client of his firm—a case of very old Scotch whisky at a reasonable price. He further ingratiated himself by giving the other advance information of a kind easily translatable into money. The evenings spent drinking in Willesden became more frequent and the two men more intimate. Then one night Ansell—who was old enough to have more sense—had a few more drinks than usual and became boastful. Angered by Langley’s unconcealed disbelief, he opened his safe and showed the other a diamond necklace, a photograph of which had recently appeared in the press with a large reward offered for its return.
On Ansell’s part, this was a grave mistake. Indeed, as things turned out, it was a fatal mistake, for Langley’s cupidity had been aroused by the sight of valuable jewelry and big stacks of currency, presumably the proceeds of illicit transactions on which no income tax had been paid.
It was at around this time that, his imagination fired by the possibilities, Langley began to widen the gulf between his dual identities until he schooled himself to think of Edward Langley and Stewart McWatt as separate and distinct personalities. For example, Stewart McWatt bought a small car, which he garaged in the East End. It was never driven by Edward Langley, whose salary was too small to run a car. When Stewart McWatt awakened in the East End, he did not confuse himself with Edward Langley, and the discipline thus imposed made the illusion of a twin identity most convincing. Let us, therefore, think of these two as having entirely individual existences.
In the cold brain of Edward Langley, whose greed would not let him forget the contents of the safe, Henry Ansell had already been condemned to death. The question was merely how the sentence was to be carried out. So he set to work to plan the perfect murder.
Ansell, by the nature of his calling, was a lonely man without friends, for implicit in friendship is trust, and he trusted nobody. He did not have to trust Langley, whom he knew to be a thief, believing that he held the younger man in the hollow of his hand. But then, how was Ansell to know that Langley was ready to commit murder in order to gain his ends?
Langley, except for occasional furtive people who came in the night, was almost the only visitor to Ansell’s little house. The neighbors knew him well by sight. When he saw them mowing the lawn, trimming the hedge or at some other homely task, he made a point of slopping and chatting with them. He carried a huge silver cigarette case which held fifty cigarettes. Having once seen it, nobody could forget it, but to make assurance doubly sure, there was engraved on the inside—clearly visible when the case was offered—the legend TO EDWARD LANGLEY WITH MABEL’S LOVE.
That Mabel was nonexistent was unimportant. All that mattered was that anyone to whom the case had been proffered should remember it and the engraved legend.
Two or three evenings weekly Langley was a visitor at Henry Ansell’s house. They drank until about eight o’clock, when they ate a cold meal left by the latter’s housekeeper, or something like a stew, easily warmed. Then they drank and talked some more. The talk, like the two men concerned, seldom strayed far from the nefarious enterprises so dear to both their hearts.
On the evening which was destined to be his last on earth, Henry Ansell had an appointment with a thief. Langley knew what they were going to discuss, but was not present at the conversation. Thieves dislike to talk in front of witnesses—a matter of principle among men otherwise lacking in principle. While the two others disappeared into the room which Ansell called his study, Langley went out into the street to chat with a neighbor who was taking his dog for a walk. Later the neighbor would be able to testify with certainty that he had seen Edward Langley enter Henry Ansell’s house at a stated time.
Back in the living room of the house, Langley poured himself a stiff whisky and, taking from his pocket a vial of a colorless liquid, emptied it into the whisky decanter. Ansell, who never drank before bargaining with a thief, would waste no time helping himself to a drink when the bargaining was done, and protocol would demand that he offer one to the thief also.
This is precisely what happened. Ansell poured out a large whisky for himself and a smaller one for the thief.
“I’ll play these,” said Langley, who still nursed a glass of whisky taken from the decanter before it was doctored.
Presently, some fifteen minutes after having swallowed his first drink, the thief yawned.
“Bit stuffy in here,” said Ansell thickly. “Let’s open the window.” It was the last thing he ever said.
When the others were quite unconscious, Langley set about his tasks with cold deliberation. It was a Saturday evening. The woman who looked after An Hall did not come on Sundays, so there was no hurry.
It was no coincidence that the thief was of roughly the same age and build as Edward Langley. It required some fifteen minutes to change clothes with him, to destroy the other’s papers and put into his pockets the identity papers and cigarette case belonging to Edward Langley. Since all the evidence would point to the fact that Edward Langley had perished in the house, nobody would have any incentive to prove the contrary. Likewise, when Edward Langley failed to show up where he lived and worked, the presumption of his death, already strong, would be strengthened.
The two Alsatians, which now accepted Langley, sat and watched while he fumbled in Ansell’s pockets for the safe key and opened the safe. Most of the space was taken by bundles of currency in small denominations. There was not time to count it, but at a rough estimate there was between fifteen and twenty thousand pounds. In a cigar box were precious stones which had been ripped out of their settings. These, presumably, were “hot” and would fetch only a fractional part of their value. But even so, they represented a fortune. Closing and relocking the safe, Langley put the key back in Ansell’s pocket.
Nobody need ever know that there had been a robbery. The loot just filled a medium-sized suitcase.
In the basement of the house Henry Ansell had stored a vast amount of odds and ends, mostly unredeemed pledges of small value. With them were a dozen crates of toys and other highly flammable articles. These were immediately underneath the room in which Ansell and the thief lay in their drugged sleep.
Taking a small pile of wood shavings, Langley went into the basement storeroom where the crates of toys were kept. With the shavings, some tinder-dry furniture and a bottle of cleaning fluid, a brisk fire was soon blazing. An electric fan, turned full blast on the blaze, insured that it would quickly spread. It was time to go.
Taking the suitcase, Edward Langley left the house hurriedly by the rear exit, which led onto a narrow lane between high walls. He had to take the risk of meeting someone who knew him, but there was nobody about.
In a street some two hundred yards distant Stewart McWatt’s car was parked, and as he put the heavy suitcas
e on the rear seat and started the engine, Edward Langley for all practical purposes ceased to exist. His old haunts, his home, his office, would never see him again and, if the fire proved as effective as he hoped, there would not even be a mystery. There might be a query as to why Henry Ansell and the thief had not smelled smoke and given the alarm. But that would soon be answered, for Edward Langley had allowed the neighbors to learn that he and Henry Ansell were heavy drinkers. It would be assumed, therefore, that they had been overcome by smoke while in a drunken stupor.
Stewart McWatt drove at a leisurely pace down to the East End and shortly after midnight brewed himself a pot of tea, which he drank while studying the road maps of France and Italy, As his neighbors knew, Stewart McWatt planned a Continental motoring holiday.
Some four days later, a coroner’s jury, called to inquire into the deaths of Henry Ansell and Edward Langley, brought in a verdict of accidental death. A lawyer representing a fire-insurance company established to the great satisfaction of his principals that highly flammable goods had been stored in the basement, thus invalidating the policy. The owner of the cases came forward to testify as to their contents, stating that they had been pledged with Ansell as security for a loan.
That was that. There was no mystery, no suspicion and, it followed, no further investigation, because there was no least suggestion that a crime of any kind had been committed.
Edward Langley had committed the perfect murder and it now remained for Stewart McWatt to Live comfortably on its proceeds. This dual identity had existed now for close on nine years, and it now remained to put the seal of reality upon it. Hitherto, Stewart McWatt had been at best a somewhat nebulous person.
It was in holiday mood that Stewart McWatt, three days after the inquest, drove to Dover, put his car upon the Channel ferry and drove southward from Calais. He paused in Paris to pick up some cheap francs, for which he had made an illegal sterling payment in London, and went on toward Fontainebleau and to the River Yonne, which leads into Burgundy, where the signposts read like a wine list: Pouilly, Chablis, Montrachet, Beaune, Nuits St. Georges and Mâcon.
There were still risks, of course, but time and ordinary prudence would minimize these. The first and obvious risk was that of running into someone who had known Edward Langley, who had been clean-shaven, with long hair, whereas Stewart McWatt—who had finally left his East End lodgings—would return to England with short-cropped hair and a somewhat untidy walrus mustache. There were not yet enough people who knew Stewart McWatt to confound anyone who suspected him of being Edward Langley, There would be, of course, but in the meanwhile he had to guard against an unpredictable encounter which might upset everything. It would be some while before Stewart McWatt’s antecedents would bear much investigation. Like the wild creatures, he had to acquire Nature’s art of protective coloring to enable him to merge inconspicuously with his background.
If it should ever come to the ears of the police that Edward Langley was still alive, three questions would be asked: (1) Who was the person whose body bad been found that night with Henry Ansell? (2) Why, since Edward Langley was known to have been in the house earlier, had he not come forward at the inquest? (3) Where had he been since and, particularly, why?
Over a bottle of excellent Mâcon wine Stewart McWatt decided that even if by some remote mischance he should be identified as Edward Langley and questioned, there was still no great danger. He would say that he had feared to come forward—just that and nothing more. The onus of proof would be on the accusers, and a good lawyer would soon make accusations look foolish. It would be unpleasant, of course, but no more, and, after all, one could not expect to commit the perfect murder without some slight risk of annoyance and inconvenience.
Arrived on the Riviera, McWatt went to stay at one of the lesser hotels in Monte Carlo, which has been called a sunny place for shady people. Here the least expected thing happened: he fell in love. Staying in the same hotel was Marjorie Walters, an English girl who was convalescing after a long illness. She is relevant to this story only because she proves that Stewart McWatt, despite the weight of evidence to the contrary, was subject to the ordinary laws which govern other human beings.
These two explored small places in the mountains, gambled mildly, discovered—or at least thought they discovered—restaurants all along the coast. In the pleasant company of Marjorie Walters, who was an altogether wholesome girl, Stewart McWatt achieved the nearest he was ever destined to achieve to contentment of mind. The fact that his alter ego was a cold-blooded murderer receded into the background of consciousness until it assumed an unreality that was most comforting.
Then Marjorie Walters returned to England by train and McWatt was once more alone with himself and his thoughts. Her going emphasized his isolation. He felt it keenly that this Stewart McWatt. the creature of his own creation, had no friends, no enemies even, no habits, no clearly formed tastes, no associations, nobody dependent on him and nobody who cared a curse whether he lived or died. He was a man standing on a cold and lonely pinnacle, gazing into a blue void of nothingness and finding no comfort.
The comic opera of Monte Carlo began to pall. Packing his bags, McWatt took off into the high mountains, intending to return to England via the French Alps, Switzerland and the Jura.
Some four hours after leaving the coast, McWatt drove into a tremendous thunderstorm. Forked lightning rent the skies while the thunderclaps were deafening in their intensity and seemingly immediately overhead. Then the rain began to fall, cutting visibility down to twenty or thirty yards at most. Once, missing the road, McWatt just braked the car to a standstill on the brink of a precipice. The narrowness of his escape unnerved him.
When, some twenty minutes later, a hotel sign loomed out of the driving rain, he drove thankfully into the courtyard and asked for a room. There was no difficulty about this, for it was the off Beason and he was the only guest. Later in the evening others might take refuge from the weather, but until then he had the hotel to himself. It is a quality of hotels that to be tolerable they should hum with life; empty they are chill and comfortless places.
Several times after darkness had fallen the lightning caused the electric fuses to blow, plunging the hotel into darkness. A Burly girl brought candles. Thereafter the lightning affected the antiquated French telephone installation, so that with every flash the bell tinkled feebly. Nobody troubled to answer it until a long ring suggested that a call was coming through.
A foreigner in France, hearing a French person on the telephone, has the illusion that he or she is using the telephone for the first time. The volume of sound unleashed is tremendous, and so it seemed to McWatt, to whom it was doubly irritating because he knew no more French than the average English schoolboy knows, which is not much.
Then, after the hotel had been filled with sound and fury for some twenty minutes, someone came on the line and there came from the office downstairs more high-pitched shouting. Steps sounded on the uncarpeted stairs—the steps of someone in a breathless hurry. They came along the corridor and stopped outside McWatt’s door, on which there was a thunderous knocking.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in English.
“On vous demande au téléphone, monsieur,” said the agitated voice of the proprietor’s daughter. McWatt had enough French to know that this meant he was wanted on the phone.
“Don’t talk silly nonsense!” he said irritably. “How could anyone want me when nobody knows I’m here? Why, I don’t even know where I am myself.”
But the girl would not take no for an answer. Somebody, she insisted, wanted him. Meanwhile, from the office downstairs came the proprietor’s angry bellowings, which vied with the storm still raging outside. When it became apparent to McWatt that the hotelkeeper and his daughter would give him no peace until he went down to the telephone, he consented with poor grace and followed the girl down to the office.
With a mixture of triumph and despair and the Gallic genius for making a drama out of a
trifle, the proprietor thrust the receiver at him, making it clear that he now washed his hands of the whole distasteful business.
“Hullo,” said McWatt in English. “Who is it that you want?”
Then, the blood draining out of his face, and his eyes rounded with sheer terror, he staggered as though under the impact of a blow.
“It isn’t true,” he muttered. “It can’t be true. Nobody knows I’m here. It’s impossible. He’s dead, I tell you; dead and buried and forgotten. Why ask me?”
Two people had their eyes fixed on McWatt during these momenta of stress and, as they testified later, they watched as he allowed the telephone instrument to drop from his limp hand, wondering as they did so what horrific message had come to him through the stormy night. Then, demented with terror, he staggered out into the driving rain, climbed into the car and, racing the engine madly, disappeared into the night. About four miles distant, at the bottom of a steep hill, the car went into a skid and was brought to a stop by sideswiping a tree. Dazed by the concussion, Stewart McWatt got out of the car and, disregarding the torrential rain, staggered away into the darkness.
There was nobody to Bee him, for the accident had occurred in a remote spot and there was no human habitation within three miles. He ran down a steep goat track into the valley, obsessed by the idea of putting as much distance as possible between himself and the accursed telephone.
A shepherd found McWatt some twelve hours later, shivering and in a raging fever. The police, who had learned something from the hotel proprietor and had found the damaged car with British registration, decided that here was something for the British consul to deal with. Accordingly, the consular authorities were notified and an ambulance took McWatt down to the coast and deposited him in the British-American Hospital in Nice. Here, his ravings being in English, they were understood, and the more loudly he denied being Edward Langley, the more strange it appeared. Over and over again, he persisted, “My name is Stewart McWatt, I tell you. Edward Langley’s dead, dead, do you hear?”
