The Attic Murder

by S. Fowler Wright

  While he tried to control these impatient doubts, Mrs. Benson appeared to spread a cloth for the midday meal. He thought she looked at him in a sour way, as though she hesitated on the edge of saying things which he would not be pleased to hear, or asking questions to which it might not be easy to find reply.

  It was an attitude simple to understand, she thinking him to be what he was, or even something worse, and he having assured her that he was going out to draw money, which he had made no motion to do.

  He could have said that Miss Jones had kindly consented to call at the bank on his behalf, but he doubted the wisdom of that till he knew what the result of her adventure was. But would his silence annoy the woman into denouncing him to the police without waiting for the precarious chance of a reward which must be weighed against the certainty that she was feeding a lodger who did not pay? Would she conclude that his talk of a bank was no more than the ready tale of one who was practised in abusing the confidence of others as his conviction indicated?

  Vexed by these thoughts, to which no satisfactory answers appeared, he did not venture even to look directly at her, lest he should encourage the asking of questions to which he had no reply, and the attitude of dejection and anxiety which she observed actually had a different effect on her mind from that which his fears supposed.

  In fact, her vague horror of criminality, in whatever form, was not entirely proof against actual contact with one who, to the instincts by which those of undeveloped mentality are largely accustomed to rule their lives, did not appear to be of a repellent or hostile type.

  When she did speak, it was only to ask, as she laid for three on the dingy cloth: “I suppose Miss Jones didn’t happen to say whether she’d be coming in? She mostly does, or let’s me know if she won’t.”

  “No,” he said, with some hesitation, wishing neither to show what he knew, nor to be inconsistent with anything that Miss Jones might say on her return, “she might come in any time, as far as I understood.”

  “There’ll be Mr. Rabone, anyway,” the woman went on. “He said he’d be coming in, as he doesn’t do most days, not before-night.” She added, in a grumbling undertone: “I suppose my dinners aren’t good enough for the likes of him.” And then, in a more audible voice, but still in the tone of one who had a developed habit of muttering aloud, rather than conversing with others: “Not as she’d be more likely to come in for that.”

  As she spoke, there was the sound of a latchkey in the street-door, and the heavy step of the top-floor lodger sounded along the passage, and up the thinly-carpeted stairs.

  Francis Hammerton restrained a prudent or cowardly impulse to rise and withdraw to his own room. He had to face the difficulty of securing solitude in a crowded city, which is particularly great for one whose pockets are bare. Two minutes later, the opportunity had gone. William Rabone entered the room.

  Mrs. Benson, taking his appearance as a signal that the meal should be served, without longer waiting for her female lodger, had retreated to the kitchen to dish it up, and Francis was spared an introduction he did not desire.

  The man who entered was dark, large, heavily built, and of professional rather than commercial aspect, in spite of the absurd toothbrush on his upper lip, which appeared to understudy either Charlie Chaplin or the German Chancellor.

  He looked at Francis with unconcealed annoyance, for which there may have been sufficient reason in the fact that he had anticipated the presence of Mary Jones, and that she would be his sole company at the meal.

  But this first glance was casual in its hostility. The second was more intent.

  “Good morning, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, with some stress on the final word. Francis looked at him with an expression which he intended for indifferent surprise. “My name is Edwards.”

  “Glad to know.... I expect you think it’s best not to go out in this weather.”

  Francis was spared the necessity of reply by the arrival of Mrs. Benson with a tray bearing a boiled neck of mutton, and two dishes of vegetables; and before she retired, Mary Jones had also entered, and taken her seat at the table.

  Miss Jones said nothing, nor did she look at either of her fellow-guests, settling herself to her own meal as indifferently as though she were the only one there.

  It appeared that it was a table at which no one presided, its etiquette being that the dishes were passed or pushed toward each diner in turn, for the satisfaction of their own requirements. Jones accepted these services with monosyllabic thanks to those in whose existence she seemed otherwise uninterested.

  Conversation was slow to commence among three people who were alike in feeling that they were one too many, though they would have differed as to the one whose presence was not required.

  Mr. Rabone, who preferred better meals than Mrs. Benson provided, had come in with the sole object of indulging in the society of Miss Jones in a manner inappropriate to the presence of a third party: Francis had even more urgent, if not more important reason for wishing to talk to that lady alone: Mary Jones had a report to make which was not for Mr. Rabone’s ears. She also would have preferred that Francis should have been alone when she arrived, but, as Rabone was there, she had a modified satisfaction in the fact that she was not singly with him. But she told herself that this was mere cowardice, by which she thanked fate for postponing that which she had been active to bring about.

  The neck of mutton had been succeeded by apple-dumplings when Rabone addressed Miss Jones in a direct and serious way. His question was blunt to the edge of rudeness: “Shall you be going out this afternoon?”

  Her reply hesitated, as though the question were an embarrassment, and when she replied it was indirectly, and with a timidity of tone and manner very different from that in which she had conversed with Francis during the morning, and which reminded him again of the voice which he had first heard through the attic door. She said: “I expect I shall be in this evening.”

  Mr. Rabone considered this reply, on which he made no comment to her, but he looked at Francis to ask, in a manner which was more a direction than a request: “You will be going out after dark?”

  Francis restrained himself to answer: “Perhaps I shall.”

  Mr. Rabone said no more until the meal ended, and Miss Jones had risen and silently left the room. Then he turned to Francis with unfriendly and somewhat contemptuous eyes. “Staying here?” he asked curtly.

  “I may.”

  “I think not.”

  Francis made no answer to that. He saw that those who recognized him were now in a position to move him on, as a policeman deals with a tramp. But without money—without having the girl’s report of the errand in which she had so probably failed—

  Mr. Rabone spoke again: “Can you give me change for ten shillings?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “So I supposed.” He pulled out a pocket-book fat with notes. Evidently it was not poverty which caused him to choose that modest, if respectable lodging.

  He took out a pound-note, hesitated between that and one for half the amount, and finally selected two of ten shillings each, which he passed across the table.

  Francis looked at the money, letting it lie. The action was generous in itself, but it was evidently without goodwill. Its manner made it an insult, very hard not to refuse.

  But suppose that the girl had failed, as her delay in returning appeared to indicate? Suppose that she were waiting now for the opportunity to tell him quietly that he could not be too speedy to leave? There might be freedom in those two slips of coloured paper so contemptuously tossed over the cloth. There would surely be rest and food at an urgent need

  Anyway, he must learn to obey the orders of all men who could address him as Harold Vaughan, even though they offered no money to enforce their wills.

  He picked it up with a conventional word of thanks which did attempt pretence of gratitude, as for a friend’s aid, nor that he was in less than an utter need. He said: “We will call it a loan. You shall ha
ve it back during the next few days.”

  “Call it what you will. You must be gone from here when I get back. That’s at six tonight.”

  He rose, and went up to his room. Ten minutes later Francis heard him leave, and almost immediately after Miss Jones came down.

  She had her bag in her hand, from which she drew the cheque-book that he required.

  “Was it all right?” he asked. “I was afraid when you didn’t get back—”

  “I think so, but I’m not sure. I went to a cashier who was not occupied when I got to the counter, and gave him the note. He was reading it when another customer came up. The cashier looked at him, and then said to me: “Just a moment, please,” and went to the back.

  “I thought I should have some trouble to face, but when he returned he just gave me the book in the usual way. The man who came after me had pushed a cheque over to him for payment, and I looked back as I went out of the door, and the cashier wasn’t paying it, but talking to him, with it in his hand.

  “That looked as though he had gone behind to enquire something about him rather than me, when he first saw him come up, without wishing to do it so that he would be understood—perhaps to see what his balance was—and I felt easy; but after that I got an idea that I was being followed. It may have been only nervousness, but I went a good way round, to make sure.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes. I mean I’m sure no one followed me here.”

  Francis noticed the quiet confidence in her voice, and that she had been sufficiently conversant with banking methods to judge what had occurred in a cool and probable way. He asked: “You won’t mind going again? There’ll be just about time before they close.”

  She did not refuse, but neither did she agree. She said:

  “It seems rather a needless risk, if we could do it a better way.... I wonder whether you’d care to trust me with a cheque that I could get a firm I know to put through their account? We could get the money in a couple of days.”

  “But it could be traced through another bank?”

  “I don’t know that that would matter. You’ve got a right to draw cheques on your own account. They wouldn’t give you away.”

  He was slow to answer, and there was reserve in her voice when she spoke again: “But I expect you can think of a better plan. Anyway, you’ve got the cheque-book now.”

  He saw that he must have appeared distrustful of the offer, and even ungrateful for what she had already done. He was in danger of losing the one friend he had, at a time when friends were his greatest need. He said: “It isn’t that. The fact is I’ve just been told to clear out before six o’clock. Mr. Rabone knows who I am.”

  “What did he say?”

  He narrated the incident as exactly as possible.

  She frowned in thought over this, and then said: “It’s bad luck that he’s guessed, but I don’t think he’ll be in any hurry to let the police know. You needn’t worry much about that.”

  He asked with surprise: “You’d advise me to risk it, and stay on.”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s not easy to see what’s the safest way. But you might leave here and go somewhere that I could reach, if we thought out a plan.”

  “But you don’t think he’ll inform the police? You feel sure that he’s not that sort?

  She answered dryly: “No. He’s not that sort.”

  He attacked the position irritably from another angle: “I suppose he wanted to have you alone here this evening. That’s really why he wants me to clear.”

  She listened to this, and amusement came to her eyes. “I should call that a good guess.... But it isn’t that, all the same. Or not that alone. He thinks you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “If you’d only say what you mean!”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  He checked an impatient reply, and made the effort necessary to control a nervous impatience born of the precarious position in which he stood, and remained silent, waiting for her to say more. He was rewarded with: “You told me a good deal. I wonder whether it wouldn’t save trouble if I were to pay you back in the same coin.”

  He became conscious of the boorishness of his previous mood. What obligation had she to him? He said: “Don’t tell me anything you’re not sure I should know. There’s no reason you should. I’d rather trust you than that.”

  Indeed, if she were not worthy of trust, what hope could he have? He was in her hands, in more ways than one. If she sought to rob or betray him, it would be easy for her to tell a tale that he could not test. In his position, he must trust entirely, or not at all, and his choice was already made.

  But she had formed her own resolution, and his words did not change it, but rather confirmed her judgement that she could give a confidence which he would not betray.

  “Trust’s all right,” she said, “but it’s simpler to understand. I don’t think you’ll give me away to Mr. Rabone, and still less that you’ll set the police on him, though I shouldn’t care if you did, so long as my name wasn’t anywhere in the bill....

  “Mr. Rabone is a bank inspector. He’s on the staff of the London & Northern. Bank inspectors have to be men of good character. If they haven’t got private means, the bank expects them to live within their salaries, which are substantial, but nothing more.

  “Mr. Rabone is a man against whose financial record nothing is known. He is separated from his wife, but that’s understood not to be his fault. She’s said to drink like a fish. He has to contribute to her support.

  “He lives simply, in such lodgings as these. He takes expensive holidays, but not more so than his salary might cover, particularly if he was careful in earlier years which report says that he was.

  “But he gives the impression of having money under control. There was an occasion when he avoided scandal by paying what must have been a large sum, though we haven’t been able to find out yet what the figure was.

  “No one would have worried themselves to enquire into these matters but for the fact that the London & Northern Bank has been the victim of a succession of forgeries of such a character that there has been a growing suspicion that they could not have been carried out successfully without the assistance, if not the actual direction, of someone with inside knowledge, particularly of the balances lying in the accounts on which the forged cheques were drawn.

  “The Texall Enquiry Agency, of which I am one of the humbler members, was instructed, about a year ago, to make the most searching investigation into the records and occupations of about twenty of the bank staff, each of which could have assisted one or other of the robberies at different branches.

  “The trouble was that no one man could have been in touch with them all, and when we’d failed to discover anything to connect any of them with the incidents in question, though we’d stirred up some unexpected mud in one or two cases, we received instructions to investigate the private life and connections of some of the higher officials, who had been regarded as above such suspicion before.”

  “With Mr. Rabone top of the list? Well, I hope you’ll prove he’s in it up to the neck, as no doubt he is.”

  Miss Jones smiled. “You don’t love him. It’s easy to see that. Neither do I.... But we haven’t found anything yet, beyond that, if he’s really in with a criminal gang, as I think he is, he’s an exceptionally circumspect man.

  “The only really unpleasant thing that we should be able to prove as yet is that he has a habit of making friends with lonely girls in his lodgings, or when he goes on holidays, and in some other ways, and seducing them without telling them that he has a wife very much alive.

  “It was in connection with one of these incidents some years ago that he found it prudent to pay a sufficient sum to a girl, who had a baby coming, to go out to New Zealand with her mother without making a fuss. And when I tell you that, you’ll understand why I’m here.”

  “I should have thought it would have been a better reason for keeping a good dis
tance away.”

  “Then you didn’t listen when I told you what my profession is. I’m a poor girl who’s out of a job, and her money down to about ten shillings. I’m rather timid, and more frightened than attracted as yet, but he’s very patient and kind, and, in the end, when my money’s gone, and—well, what can a poor girl be expected to do...? He’s trying hard now to get me a job at the bank, but it’s a sure bet that he’ll fail in that.”

  She smiled slightly, and did not change her expression when she saw the lack of response on her hearer’s face.

  “I wonder,” he said, “that you can talk to the filthy beast.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said lightly. “Being seduced isn’t so bad, when it’s being done in a cautious way, and you’re playing the timid part.”

  “And so you’ve found out nothing yet?”

  “Not quite nothing. There have been two dark nights when he’s been visited by callers who come over the roof. The second time, I followed them back. Not closely enough to see who they were, but to find where they went. It was the fourth house from here toward Windsor Terrace. It’s quite easy to get along from roof to roof. There’s a parapet a foot high, and the dormer windows are close to its inner side.”

  “It must have been a very dangerous thing to do.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’s all in the day’s work, or perhaps night’s might be a better word.... But if you should see anyone knocking at the front door that you’re not anxious to meet, it might be worthwhile trying. I don’t know what sort of reception you’d have in the other house, but you might get down before anyone’d try to stop you, and they’re not likely to be the sort to call in the police.”