Craythorn got his information almost immediately and was ready with it when Sir Clinton had finished his inspection.
“It should have come by the four-o’clock delivery, sir, they say.”
“And actually it appeared in the box after the six-o’clock post had gone past, and Mrs. Hyson has no recollection of seeing it till you showed it to her later on in the evening. Please ring them up again, Inspector, and ask for the postman who actually carried out the delivery at 4 P.M. and 6 P.M. yesterday. Find out from him if he delivered any letters here on either of these rounds. And make sure, too, that he didn’t forget to deliver a letter and then came back unofficially to drop it into the letter-box after he’d completed his round. Sometimes a letter gets displaced amongst the pile they carry in their hands and they only come upon it when they’re long past the house where it should have been delivered.”
Craythorn went to the phone once more, but came back to say that the postman declared that no letters for the Hysons had been in either the four-o’clock or six-o’clock delivery. He had not gone near the house on either occasion.
“Then that leaves only one obvious possibility,” Sir Clinton declared. “Let me see the envelope of that letter. You have it in your pocket, I suppose?”
Craythorn produced it and Sir Clinton took a Coddington lens from his pocket. After a careful examination of the address on the letter he handed both lens and envelope to the inspector.
“We’ll need to put Mr. Duncannon wise to this latest poison-pen trick,” he pointed out. “You see what’s been done? The poison-pen pest is getting afraid of being caught posting these things. They’re now being delivered by hand, apparently. But in order to divert suspicion, they’re made to look as if they’d come through the post. Look at the address and you’ll see that the paper has been roughened with India-rubber. That letter was first of all addressed in pencil to the poison pest’s own address, probably with only a circular or something equally innocuous inside. If Mr. Duncannon’s trap had caught it being posted, it was quite innocent. When it was delivered at the poison pest’s house, the envelope was steamed open, the poison letter put into it instead of the circular, and then the pencil-writing was rubbed out and the Hyson address put on. Then the poison pest dropped it into the Hyson letter-box personally, so as to make it appear that the letter had come by the last postal delivery. That would keep Mr. Duncannon and his merry men still on the alert at the pillar-boxes and so divert them from the real channel of delivery. Quite neat. The same game used to be played by some S.P. betting sharks, to get the wrong postmark on the envelope.”
“That’s cute,” the inspector admitted.
“It looks to me,” Sir Clinton ruminated, “as if one of the essential things in this case is to get hold of that poison-pen pest. Half the stuff may be lies. It probably is. But there may be a grain of truth in it here and there. If we had the writer, we could soon sift out anything that would serve our turn. But in the meantime, let’s go on to Lockhurst’s office and see what’s to be dug out there. You’d better bring along all these documents. We may need them to check things up.”
Craythorn obediently collected the neat piles of letters which he had stacked on the desk and stowed them in the empty suit-case which he had brought with him.
“That’s everything we need, sir, I think,” he reported.
Chapter Twelve
The Defalcations
“WHO’S in charge here at present?” asked the Chief Constable as young Cadbury came forward to the counter to ask his business.
“Mr. Forbury, sir.”
“Give him my card, please, and ask him to be good enough to spare me a few minutes.”
Cadbury glanced at the card. Sir Clinton Driffield? Phew! The Hyson case, the sleuths on the track, and here he was, right in the middle of it. Perhaps they’d even ask him to give evidence. This was life!
“Are you really Sir Clinton Driffield, sir?” he demanded impulsively, so that his voice rose to a squeak with emotion.
The Chief Constable smiled at the obvious hero-worship in the boy’s face.
“I am, really. And this is Inspector Craythorn.”
Cadbury decided to stick to that visiting-card. It would be something to show to his friends as supporting evidence to any story he had to tell them.
“If you’ll just come this way, sir,” he requested, “Mr. Forbury’s in the private office.”
As Sir Clinton passed the barrier, he saw that the girl clerks had evidently caught Cadbury’s falsetto ejaculation. Three faces turned towards him, each with a different expression. The slight fair-haired girl was frankly interested to see a local celebrity at close quarters. The second girl examined him aloofly with an expression on her features as though she were saying: “Is that all?” to herself. The dark aquiline girl stared at him intently for a moment and then glanced down at the papers on her desk, making an obvious pretence of absorption in her work. But out of the tail of his eye as he walked on, he could see her look up again and give him a long suspicious survey.
Cadbury opened the door of the private office and announced with a flourish:
“Sir Clinton Driffield.”
Then he spoiled his effect by adding hurriedly:
“The Chief Constable, y’know, Mr. Forbury. And Inspector Craythorn.”
As Sir Clinton stepped into the room, followed by Craythorn, Forbury rose from his chair with just a shade of cringing in his manner. He looked even more untidy than usual in his shabby office coat and unchanged collar. With the usual haste of a nervous man, he broke silence without waiting for the Chief Constable to speak.
“This is an awful affair, sir.”
“You mean Mr. Hyson’s death?”
“I wasn’t thinking of him, sir,” said Forbury, simply. “It’s these things that I’ve found missing. That man has been playing Old Harry with everything since Mr. Lockhurst fell ill. And, of course, I’d no idea of what was going on. No idea at all. I’m not in the least to blame. He kept me from any hand in affairs. He took everything on his own shoulders and kept me completely in the dark. I give you my honest word, sir, I’m not responsible in the slightest. Thank God for that. But it’s simply dreadful. I don’t know what the auditors will say when they come to go through the thing.”
He took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped beads of perspiration from his brow without interrupting the stream of his lamentable explanation.
“I’ve been trying to get some idea of it all. There’s ever so much missing. Bearer bonds belonging to our clients — he’s cleared the safe of them. And he must have been forging as well. There’s nothing to show, nothing. It’s lucky Mr. Lockhurst didn’t live to see things come to this pass, sir. If I’d only had even an inkling of what was going on. A clean sweep, he’s made, nothing less. I don’t know but the business will have to go through Carey Street before all’s done. But I had no hand in it. I had nothing to do with it. You understand that? He kept me out of everything, once Mr. Lockhurst fell ill. It’s lucky I can say that now.”
Sir Clinton waited patiently until Forbury’s emotion exhausted itself. He could well believe that the clerk had spent himself over the examination of the situation. He looked a complete wreck. But there was something more than weariness in his eyes. There was fear as well. After all, that was hardly surprising. If the business foundered amid the results of Hyson’s embezzlements, Forbury would be out in the street. At his age, where would he find anyone eager for his services, especially with this record of catastrophe behind him? He would simply be another black-coated unemployable.
“Inspector Craythorn has some documents with him which may help to check part of the business,” Sir Clinton explained. “But in the meanwhile we’ve other things to look into. We can take it, from what you say, that Hyson has been playing ducks and drakes with whatever he could lay hands on. Leave that aside for the moment. I want to know something about this office in general. You needn’t tell me anything about Mr. Lockhurst. I knew him, sl
ightly. When he fell ill, what happened here? Who took his place, and so forth?”
“Hyson did, sir. I believe he got a power of attorney from Mr. Lockhurst. That made me a shade suspicious, at the time; for he really didn’t need such a thing for ordinary routine business. I found out why he wanted it when he threatened to dismiss me. He’s always wanted to get rid of me. And I’ve been with Mr. Lockhurst years longer than he had.”
Then Forbury laid bare to the officials the undercurrents of the office: Hyson’s favouring of Olive Lyndoch, the long struggle against the introduction of the Moon-Hopkins machine, the certainty that its adoption would lead to Forbury’s supersession and the promotion of Olive.
“And he treated me like a dog, sir. Always gibing and sneering in an overbearing kind of way. But what could I do? I’ve a wife and family depending on me, and I’m getting no younger as time goes on. I just had to sit down under it all and hope he’d stop short of actually pitching me into the street. But he was a ruthless brute and I knew that was coming.”
Forbury’s embittered voice showed that not even the death of his persecutor had effaced the grudge he bore. Sir Clinton deemed it wisest to lead him to other subjects.
“Has any news of this embezzlement got around yet?”
“Some people seem to have put two and two together,” Forbury admitted dejectedly. “I’ve had a couple of clients in this morning already. I think they’d smelt a rat when the news of Hyson’s suicide leaked out. There’s a paragraph about it in one of the local papers, I understand, this morning, and that’s quick work. By now, it’ll be all over the place. Bad news travels like lightning.”
Cadbury came into the private office, presented an envelope to Sir Clinton, and then retired lingeringly, staring back over his shoulder as he did so in order to prolong his examination of the local celebrity. The Chief Constable opened the envelope and drew from it a letter in its own envelope.
“Just look at that address, Mr. Forbury, please. Do you recognise the handwriting?”
“It’s addressed to Mr. Lockhurst,” Forbury commented, gazing at the writing as though he hardly knew what to make of it. “No, sir, I can’t just say I recognise it. That is, I can’t tell you who wrote it. It’s familiar — in a sort of a way — and yet I can’t place it. You know what I mean?”
“The writer makes a Greek ‘e’ like the letter ‘epsilon’ in the Greek alphabet,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “Which kind of ‘e’ do you make yourself, when you write with a pen?”
“Me?” ejaculated the clerk in a suspicious tone, as if he scented some trap. “You’re not suggesting I wrote that address, are you? I don’t know why you showed it to me, but I didn’t write it, I can swear to that. Look here, sir. Here’s a lot of notes of mine” — he picked up some papers from the desk — “just glance your eye over these and you’ll see there isn’t a trace of a likeness.”
Certainly Forbury’s minute, crabbed script bore not the least resemblance to the address on the envelope.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Sir Clinton said without ado. “Now think for a moment. Does anyone on your staff write with a Greek ‘e’?”
Forbury considered this question so long before replying that Craythorn almost made up his mind that the man must be lying. But when the explanation came, it was quite satisfactory.
“The bother is, sir, that I don’t see much of their handwriting,” Forbury pointed out. “It’s typescript they turn out for us, and it’s only now and again that I’ve ever seen anything they’ve written with a pen. That’s why it’s so hard to recall. One of them, I’m sure, does use a Greek ‘e.’ It’s not young Cadbury. He writes a schoolboy scrawl. Let me think. . . . It’s not Miss Nevern, I’m pretty sure of that. . . .”
“That leaves two of them, doesn’t it?” Sir Clinton had noted the number in the outer office as he came through. “H’m! Let’s see how we can get at it.”
He pondered for a minute or more, and then seemed to have solved his problem.
“Give me a sheet of paper, please.”
Forbury produced a sheet and Sir Clinton, sitting down at the desk, scribbled several lines at the top of the paper.
“This represents a statement you have made to us, you understand, Mr. Forbury? Or, at any rate, the last few lines of it. Quite innocuous, as you’ll see if you glance at it. Now we’ll call in your two typists. What are their names?”
“Miss Lyndoch and Miss Hinkley.”
“Well, they’ll be kind enough to witness your signature to this. The inspector and I, being officials, are hardly the right people to act as witnesses, you understand?”
When the two girls had been called in, Sir Clinton explained what they had to do:
“Just sign your names — your full names — on the left of Mr. Forbury’s and write ‘Witness’ after your signature, please.”
Effie Hinkley signed first, with the air of one carrying out a boring formality. Olive Lyndoch followed her, glanced at the lines in Sir Clinton’s writing at the head of the sheet with keen inquisitiveness which rather amused the Chief Constable. When she had signed, he dismissed them both.
“Now,” he said, picking up the paper. “There’s enough to go on. I was banking on the ‘e’ in ‘witness,’ but we’ve got an ‘e’ in Olive and two small ‘e’s’ in Miss Hinkley’s signature. She uses an ordinary English ‘e’ in each case. But Miss Lyndoch favours a Greek ‘e’ both in her signature and in ‘witness.’ It isn’t proof positive, but it’s interesting. When people start trying to disguise their handwriting, it’s just these little things that they’re apt to forget, simply because such trifles are second nature to them. They ignore them in the effort to make the general character of the script as unlike their normal writing as possible.”
He lifted some documents under which he had concealed the anonymous letter before the typists came into the room; and, handling the envelope very gingerly, he pulled out the letter to Lockhurst and spread it out on the desk for Forbury to read.
“Now tell us anything that this suggests to you,” he directed.
Forbury read through the accusation with a very troubled expression on his face.
“Well, Hyson’s dead,” he said at last with obvious reluctance, “but I wouldn’t have put it past him to do a thing like that. He was a bad lot, a real bad lot.”
“We know all about that,” Sir Clinton said bluntly. “What I want to know is the other half of it — who the girl was. Can you throw any light on that?”
Forbury’s reluctance obviously increased at this direct query.
“I don’t like to say anything that might hurt a girl . . .” he stumbled. “I don’t really know anything. . . .”
“When the police come in at the door, chivalry goes out of the window,” Sir Clinton affirmed. “We’re not at King Arthur’s Round Table here. If you have information, you ought to give it to us. Otherwise we shall have to suspect all three of these girls and that might be unfair to one or two of them. If it’s slander you’re afraid of, you can make yourself easy.”
“I’m not afraid in that way,” Forbury declared with more spirit than Craythorn had expected from him. “I’m thinking whether it’s fair to give you what’s no more than the merest suspicions. I don’t know of any such goings-on in this office. I never caught Hyson kissing any of the typists or anything of that sort. He was too clever for that, I may tell you, seeing how Mr. Lockhurst would have looked on things of that kind.”
“Well, you’ve some grounds for suspicion, anyhow,” said Sir Clinton impatiently. “You’ve made that plain. What are they? Out with it.”
Forbury was evidently torn between the desire to get some of his own back and the wish to be as fair as possible.
“Well, sir, I told you that Hyson and Miss Lyndoch were pretty friendly. In fact, he was doing his best to get in that Moon-Hopkins machine so that she would get a lift up in the office. That’s well known to all the staff, so I’m not saying anything I oughtn’t to, there. They were abso
lutely hand in glove in that matter. But as to what that letter says, I can’t tell you one way or another. What’s more, Miss Lyndoch’s been different lately and so has Hyson. She’s gone about as if she’d got a sick headache. I can’t describe it exactly. Perhaps she felt her nose out of joint, because Hyson took to favouring the junior typist, Miss Nevern.”
“That’s the little fair-haired girl?”
“Yes, sir. He’s been using her more than Miss Lyndoch, getting her to take his dictation in here, and so on. Mind you, sir, I’m not suggesting there’s anything funny in it. I’m just answering your question as best I can. All I mean is that there’s been a coolness between Hyson and Miss Lyndoch lately, and Miss Nevern’s been taking the place Miss Lyndoch used to have.”
“Look at the date on that letter — the postmark, I mean,” Sir Clinton directed. “Does this coolness you speak about fit in with that?”
“You mean did it start round about then? It did, so far as I can remember. But that’s just an impression.”
“What about the third typist, Miss Hinkley?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure about her, sir. She’s a bit sharp-tongued and doesn’t mind saying what she thinks of people. She had a sort of down on Hyson. One could see she didn’t like him in the least. When he took charge here, she called him ‘the new broom,’ and she was always making hits at him when she talked to the rest of us. She’s a very independent sort of girl, sir.”
“Ah! And what about Miss Nevern?”
“I’d say she’s rather a featherhead, sir, in some ways. Quite efficient in her work, but not much ballast. But I know nothing at all against her — against her private character, I mean. I’ve never seen her let Hyson take any liberties with her, or even try it on. And it’s no fault of hers if Hyson made her do the work Miss Lyndoch used to do. She had to do as she was told.”
“Naturally. Now just a formal question. Could you account for your movements on the night of Hyson’s death, say from the time you left the office up to half-past ten?”
Murder Will Speak Page 19
