by John Creasey
‘That’s very helpful, Miss Richardson,’ Roger said. ‘Is there anything else to help us?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did you know that your father was being threatened, and getting poison-pen letters and telephone calls?’
‘I didn’t know, although I was afraid it was something like that,’ answered Rose. ‘I did everything I could to find out what was worrying him, and yesterday and the day before I questioned all the foremen and department managers. I’ve been lying here and wondering whether that was why they attacked me.’
‘You mean, whether any one of them thought you had made some discovery which might incriminate him.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it as formally as that, but I suppose that’s what it amounts to,’ Rose answered. ‘I’ve been going over everything I said and everyone I talked to, and I can’t think of anything that will help.’
‘What we would like you to do is make a list of all the men you discussed this with, and as far as possible, a note of exactly what you said to them,’ Roger urged. ‘Also whether they answered freely, or showed any sign of resentment at being questioned. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘but not for some time. I arranged with Paul Key to come and fetch me and take me home this afternoon.’
‘This evening will be fine,’ Roger said briskly. ‘Will Sir Lancelot be at home with you?’
‘Yes,’ Rose answered. ‘I don’t feel that I can be there alone with mother, after this – not for a few days, anyhow. Peter and Paul will be staying, too. If they had stayed last night—’ She broke off, screwing up her eyes. In that moment she was remarkably like her mother, although Roger had never noticed the similarity before. ‘If there is anything at all I can do, please let me know.’
‘Believe me we will,’ promised Roger.
When he left, he was reminding himself that it had been almost as if he had been fated not to talk freely to Richardson before the man died, and the same kind of frustrating situation was building up with the Keys. He had hardly talked to them except at the hotel with Paul, and a few minutes with Peter Key when the younger member of the family had behaved so coolly and capably; he was a youth quite used to making quick decisions, and there was a kind of coldbloodedness about him which should not be overlooked. Now, however, Roger wanted to get back to Corby and talk to Soley again; and the Keys were coming to collect Rose.
The Keys would have to wait … One law for the rich?
What the hell was the matter with him? If he’d half the suspicions of the Keys that he had had of Blake, he would have had them here days ago. So Soley was next.
He changed his mind abruptly. Tenterden was having the farmhouse and the whole of the farm watched, and nothing about that need surprise Soley. There was the risk that some policeman friend of the farmer’s would let fall a word of warning or careless hint, but in any case Soley was too conspicuous a figure to get far without being noticed. All the roads leading from Corby were blocked, and there was a policeman on duty at the bus station and the railway station.
‘I’ll wait here and talk to the Keys,’ Roger said to Tenterden. ‘Would you rather get back to Corby?’
‘Much rather stay with you on this session,’ Tenterden said. It was then a quarter to one. ‘What did you think of Rose?’
‘I got a feeling that she suspects more than she’ll say,’ Roger told him, ‘but I haven’t any reason for thinking so. Everyone in Corby from your wife downwards knows more about the background to this case than I do. I wish—’
He broke off as Superintendent Clark drove into the hospital courtyard at a faster speed than he should have, jammed on the brake, got out and slammed the door, and contrived to give the impression of haste as well as emergency. Roger felt his nerves tautening as the man came striding towards him.
‘Just had a message from your office,’ he said to Tenterden. ‘There’s some trouble at Richardson and Key’s – that big order they were so worried about is all mucked up. I don’t know the rights of it, something to do with formes tampered with during the night. Sir Lancelot Key telephoned. He’s staying on the spot, with his sons, and he wants us to take Miss Richardson back to Corby. Like me to look after that while you get back to the works?’
‘We can’t get there soon enough,’ Roger said.
The journey took them forty minutes, for Tenterden could drive as fast as young Tom Cousins. They passed the van as they headed for the works gates, a little after two o’clock. Gordon the gatekeeper saluted them as they went by, and two Corby plain-clothes men were on duty at the gates. No one was about outside, and when Roger stepped into the works itself he was aware of a strange quiet, as if all the machines had stopped working. He saw Paul Key coming across the works yard, that sardonic smile curving his lips, and as he drew up he said: ‘I’m to take you to the scene of the latest crime, gentlemen. And although I say it myself, this one really is a beaut.’
Tenterden spoke with unexpected sharpness.
‘Do you really think that anything about this affair is a joking matter, Mr. Key?’
Paul looked surprised, drew in his breath as if to rasp a reply, then shrugged his shoulders and led them, stalking, towards the room beyond the Casting Room, the huge building with the countless tables, or stones, in it, each laden with the type formes locked ready for printing. The double doors leading to the flat-bed Machine Room were open, and beyond these were several tables, and round one of the tables a group of men, including Sir Lancelot Key and his son Peter.
Not a single machine was running; the works of Richardson and Key had been brought to a standstill.
Chapter Twenty-One
Standstill
Sir Lancelot Key stood by one of the big tables, one hand leaning against it, head raised, in a pose which had a kind of considered artiness. He was slightly shorter than Peter, whose eyes seemed to glitter, and who was clenching his right fist. Explosively, he said: ‘That’s cost us millions. Millions! My God, it’s time we put an end to this.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Paul, only just loud enough for Roger to hear.
‘Exactly what has happened?’ asked Roger, going forward a step ahead of Tenterden and Brown.
Sir Lancelot looked round at him, drew up to his full height, and in a curious way reminded Roger of Richardson; it was as if this man had also been driven to the limits of his endurance, and was controlling himself only by a great effort.
Peter rapped: ‘I thought the works was supposed to be watched and guarded.’
‘No unauthorised person has been in or out,’ Roger said as roughly.
‘Next thing you know you’ll be saying that this is our imagination,’ said Peter. His hands were still clenched tightly, he looked as if he would like to shriek out at someone handy, and the handiest person was Roger. ‘Well, it isn’t imagination. We shall lose the biggest single order that this company has ever received, a five-year contract for—’ He broke off, spluttering, and Roger was amazed at the change in him. Physical danger hadn’t affected him the other day, but mental stress knocked him to pieces.
‘Just how was it done?’ asked Roger quietly.
‘I don’t see that—’
‘We must co-operate with the police, Peter,’ Sir Lancelot said heavily. ‘All the doors were locked, remember, and a constant police patrol was kept on the outside of the works. No one was allowed inside. And yet during the night—’ He broke off, drew a deep breath, and then swung round towards a small pile of folded sheets, and a thinner pile of flat sheets. He opened a book at random, and thrust it in front of Roger’s nose. ‘Now do you understand?’
Roger looked down, and a moment or two were enough to tell him what had happened; words had been misspelt, sentences had been altered, to make nonsense. He turned to another page; here the alterations and absurdities in the text were fewer, but were still considerable. He flipped through several pages, and most of them had some spoiled words.
‘How was it done?’ he demanded.
‘Why the hell didn’t the Yard send someone who knew a bit about printing?’ Peter Key demanded.
‘This is how it happened,’ said his father, and turned and pushed past the little group of workmen gathered near, led Roger through into the room where all the bigger machines stood in their long rows. Again, that unnatural silence, silence as of the night, pervaded everything. Men and women, at a ratio of about three to one, were standing or sitting about idly. In one corner two girls and a man were giggling, but they stopped abruptly. In another several men were squatting on boxes, and playing cards. Everyone turned round when they saw the Keys and the police enter. Sir Lancelot went to one of the big machines, where three men were standing.
‘This is where the sabotage was discovered,’ he announced. ‘These men noticed it when reading some of the freshly printed sheets. You understand enough about the work to know that after the composing has been done the type is broken up into pages. These pages are then locked into these formes—’ He pointed to a big metal frame, in which the type was locked; there were about thirty different pages of it, with blocks which made the illustrations. ‘These are extremely delicate. In these formes, which contain thirty-two pages, they are placed on the machine and the machine then runs at a rate of two thousand an hour. The printed sheets of thirty-two pages each are then folded into a section of a book. There are four sections altogether, and as this work was extremely urgent, we were using four different machines. Someone who is familiar with the work came in here last night, and unlocked the formes, and reset many of the lines by altering words and letters on several lines. The machine minders check for flaws but not for reading sense; that isn’t their job. It so happened that one of them noticed acid damage on a stone – one of these tables – and examined a printed sheet more closely. It looks as if the man responsible found the task too slow, and thought of using acid, then realised that acid damage would be immediately noticeable.’
‘Could it all have been done last night?’ asked Roger.
‘If the man knew the work, and worked very hard, yes. Some of the work has already been bound – it was an order to which we were giving absolute priority,’ Sir Lancelot went on bitterly. ‘Several thousands of these have already been printed, too, and that loss in itself is a very grave one. And nearly every page will have to be reset. It means that all the expense so far involved in setting the work, putting it into formes and machining, all the paper, all the ink, everything except the binding, is wasted. I would not like to compute the amount without referring to the accountants, but it is several thousand pounds,. Far worse, there is the serious delay. None of these pages can be used. To put this right, a great deal – perhaps all – will have to be set on the Monotype again. You know’—he was speaking very quickly now; he gave Roger the impression that he had a blinding headache—’that a large number of spools already set by the operators were damaged. Those spools – for other important books – were being stored because absolute priority was given to this order. This other work was delayed, and—’
He broke off.
‘It will cost us three weeks’ production, as well as this order,’ Peter said chokily. ‘Delivery was part of the contract, and we cannot now meet it.’
Roger asked: ‘Does insurance cover any of this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘My co-director, Mr Richardson, handled that aspect of the business. Whether wilful damage is covered or not I cannot say. It is not the kind of risk one would expect to encounter. But we cannot insure the time. We cannot make up for the loss. It is one of the severest blows that this company could suffer, Superintendent.’ He glanced up at men and women who had gathered nearer; there were fifty or sixty all within earshot, all staring at him; even the card-players were turning round and looking towards their boss. ‘We shall have to stand off a considerable proportion of our staff. There will be no work in the main Machine Shop. There will be none in the bindery on this order – in fact, it amounts to two weeks’ complete shut down, and there will be a longer period for some of the departments.’
Someone said: ‘What a bloody mess.’
‘And you, the police, were supposed to be watching the works,’ Sir Lancelot said bitterly.
‘Yes,’ said Roger. ‘And we were watching it.’ He looked round at Tenterden. ‘Who was in charge here last night, Superintendent?’
‘Detective Inspector Maidment. I’ve sent for him,’ Tenterden said. ‘I’ve sent for all six officers who were on guard duty, Mr West, they should be here soon.’
‘Six,’ breathed Peter Key. ‘You mean to say that you had six men on duty, and they allowed—’ He broke off, raised his eyes towards the spidery steel girders of the roof, and added: ‘And we pay for the police.’
‘That’s right,’ said Roger brusquely, ‘and if you paid twice as much you might get twice as many, and then we’d have a chance to do our job properly. This additional damage done with acid was the same kind of sabotage as on the spools, but acid damage at this stage would have been noticed too quickly. Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘He has ears,’ muttered Peter Key.
‘And it could only have been done by someone who had a thorough knowledge of the works, and knew exactly how to get at and use the formes, and reset these words by hand.’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘Were these on the machines last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘So it had to be someone who was absolutely familiar with the various jobs and processes at the works.’
‘Yes,’ the older man answered again. ‘I don’t quite see—’
‘I can see what he’s up to,’ interrupted his younger son. ‘He’s trying to escape responsibility by saying that it was done by one of our staff – but no one was supposed to come in here, that’s what he doesn’t seem to understand.’
Tenterden said: ‘It would depend on what authority they had.’
‘What do you mean?’ flashed Peter.
‘I mean that your father, or you, and probably your brother would have been able to pass the police guard,’ Tenterden answered stolidly.
‘Are you suggesting that one of us—’ Peter broke off, as if too angry for words.
‘What Superintendent Tenterden is making obvious is that every act of sabotage in this works has been committed by someone who knows the works very well, who is familiar with the importance of and the processes of most if not all of the machines,’ Roger said. ‘He is also pointing out that the man or men concerned had keys. Charlie Blake’s access to the keys helped to make him an obvious suspect for the first murders, and there is very little doubt that he was the most likely suspect for that very reason – he was in a position to go in and out of all of the entrances to the works freely, he knew every department, not just one or two – as most men would – and he had personal reasons for wanting to kill Jensen and his own wife. However, Blake could hardly be in a position to attack Miss Rose, or to send the car over the cliff at Bracken Head – would you agree about that, Mr Key?’ He looked coldly at young Peter.
‘The police hit back,’ murmured Paul.
‘You know damned well that it couldn’t have been Blake,’ retorted Peter. ‘It doesn’t even need saying.’
‘Who else would be in quite such a convenient position?’ asked Roger, still coldly. ‘And who would have any reason to hate Blake enough to condemn him to his present ordeal? Who—’
He broke off, for there was a shout at a door leading to the next department. After a moment, a man screamed: ‘I tell you I didn’t!’ Then quite suddenly there was a crashing sound, as of breaking glass. Roger and Tenterden were the first to move, running towards the doorway. Roger was there way ahead of Tenterden, but Peter Key had made up for lost time, and was just behind him. Inside a smaller room where there were only two big machines, twenty or thirty men were rushing towards a corner, and on a platform in the corner, leading to some storage racks, stood a young man with big, dark eyes
and a very pale face.
Roger recognised the van driver, but could not remember his name.
‘Take the skin orf his back!’ a man shouted. ‘He did it all right.’
‘Why don’t we break his neck?’
‘Come down from there, Cousins, let’s see you squirm.’
‘I tell you I didn’t do it!’ Cousins screamed.
Roger and young Key, half-way to the back of the crowd, saw him brush the knees of his trousers, and noticed that they were ragged and torn – much as they might look if they had been burned with acid.
‘I tell you I handled an empty—’
A man flung a bottle. It missed Cousins by inches, and smashed against the wall behind him. Terrified, the young man stared round at it, and as he did so, three or four men rushed forward and up the iron steps to the platform. Others sprang up to the platform, and hauled themselves on to it. Next moment, the van driver was being held by the arms and shoulders, and his trousers were being dragged off him.
‘The bloody idiots,’ said Peter Key. He had lost much of his resentment, his voice reminded Roger of the way he had spoken at the cars the previous day. ‘Coming?’ he asked, but it was a casual word, flung off without thinking. Quite suddenly he jumped forward, hauled himself up to the platform, and laid about the other young men who were manhandling Cousins. It was a magnificent sight. Man after man went staggering away, one with an elbow in his stomach, another with a fist to his nose, another with a heel on his toe. Cousins dropped heavily. Then some of the men recovered from Key’s attack, but before they could do anything about it, Roger was on the platform, and Cousins was between him and young Key, who looked as if he had thoroughly enjoyed the fracas.
‘Any more of this, and I’ll have the lot of you inside, cooling your heels while waiting for a charge of assault,’ Roger said roughly. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘Coppers, I’d shoot ’em,’ a man shouted. ‘Look at his trousers! They’re burned away with acid, and acid was on those formes. We ought to break his neck. Half of us will be stood off for weeks because of this.’
