by Ruth Edwards
***
He was in bed reading when Sunil arrived.
‘Evening, Robert.’
‘Evening, Sunil. How are you?’
‘Fine, honestly. Nothing to worry about. I think I exorcised poor old Blenkinsop’s corpse tonight, working on an essay on nineteenth-century protectionism. It was really interesting.’ He sat at the end of Amiss’s bed, put his briefcase on his knees and opened it. He took out a pile of papers, dumped them on the bed and pulled out his computer. ‘It’s an absolute dream working with this, Robert. I could play with it all night. I’ll be able to do my essays on it now Harry’s going to get me a printer.’ He stood up and carried the machine over to the chair by his bed and came back and picked up his papers. He removed several photocopies and put them by his bed. He began to put the rest of the pile back in his briefcase.
‘What’s that magazine, Sunil?’ asked Amiss suddenly.
‘Magazine? Oh, that’s The Economist. D’you want to borrow it? I’m nearly finished.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘In the waste-paper basket in the library. Why?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. When?’
‘The other night.’
‘You mean the night you found Blenkinsop?’
‘Just before. I went in to borrow a book from those shelves down the end on the right where they’ve actually got some serious Victorian novels and poetry.’
‘Yep.’
‘I had assumed the place was empty, as usual. I got what I wanted, turned round, saw The Economist sticking out of the waste-paper basket and put it in my case along with the book. And then I was just going when I saw Blenkinsop.’
‘Well, well,’ said Amiss. ‘D’you know something, Sunil. As a scavenger you’re having a really bad week.’
Chapter Twenty-six
‘No fingerprints, except Sunil Gupta’s.’
‘Shit!’ Milton banged his fists together in frustration. Then he shrugged. ‘It was too much to hope for. No one would have been crazy enough to discard a murder weapon so openly if it was going to incriminate him.’
‘Damn it. We should have thought of checking them for gloves that night.’
‘The murderer wasn’t necessarily wearing gloves,’ said WDC Hutton. ‘There are quite a lot of fudged prints on the cover. Someone could have just wiped the magazine vigorously after use. Sorry we couldn’t help.’
‘Thank you anyway, Melinda. You can go now.’
‘Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, Ellis.’ Pooley was too preoccupied even to notice her departure. He began to stride up and down. ‘It wasn’t really much of a risk, if you think about it, sir. For a start, we wouldn’t have been likely to look twice at a magazine in a waste-paper basket. It wasn’t as if it was rolled up or anything. Sunil said it was quite flat. And look at it. There’s only that one line near the binding that shows it’s been rolled up and that slight squashing at the top.’
‘I think you’re being over-influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Ellis. I’ll bet you’re thinking of the envelope that was hidden from the police by being displayed openly on the mantelpiece.’
‘“The Case of the Purloined Letter,” sir? Well, yes. I was thinking of that.’
‘I always thought that was nonsensical. It entirely relies on the assumption that people don’t look for evidence in the obvious places, whereas I’m sure that’s only true of imaginative folk like yourself. Now with due deference to our colleagues, many of them are extremely thick and can be utterly relied upon to go for the blindingly obvious.’
He rang the bell. Amiss was with them within half a minute. ‘Christ!’ he said, ‘I thought you’d never call me.’
‘How about some coffee, Robert?’
‘In a minute, in a minute. What’s the score?’
‘Still three-love,’ said Milton gloomily. ‘No useful fingerprints on the The Economist.’
‘Shit!’
‘That’s what I said. Ellis, you must have covered about half a mile by now. Slow up. You’re making me feel tired.’
‘Robert,’ said Pooley, ‘would you think the odds were good that Blenkinsop wouldn’t be found until the morning?’
‘Excellent, I’d have said. None of the members was likely to use the place. They’d all have tootled off to bed and it would have been Ramsbum’s job to switch off the lights, not to look around. He could easily have missed him.’
‘And by that time someone could have rescued the magazine, couldn’t he?’
‘Sure, even if they went up to bed at the same time. They’d only have to pop down in the lift, collect the offending item and destroy it. Come to think of it, they’d only have to burn it in the Smoking Room. There was a fire there that night.’
‘That’s probably what was intended.’
‘So the murderer was taking a calculated risk,’ said Milton, ‘not an outrageous one.’
‘The sort of risk Cully Chatterton would take,’ said Amiss.
‘Yes. And he was physically capable of doing the job. However, after exhaustive conversations with his doctor it still seems definite that he couldn’t have done Meredith-Lee, let alone Trueman.’
‘Two different murderers?’ suggested Amiss. ‘Or a conspiracy? Or back to Glastonbury holding the dynamite?’
‘Just because Chatterton and Glastonbury are friends doesn’t mean they have to be partners in murder,’ said Milton. ‘Fagg and Chatterton seem much more likely—Chatterton providing the brains and Fagg the brawn. And they certainly seem to be the ones with the most to lose, judging by what we dug up yesterday. Robert, will you for Christ’s sake get the fucking coffee.’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll get the fucking coffee.’ Amiss left reluctantly. He was back in five minutes. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I’ve even got you biscuits. How’s that for coals of fire?’ He poured out three cups of coffee, sat down in an armchair and sipped his.
‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ asked Milton.
‘Being interviewed. That’s what I just told Gooseneck. Now come on. Just give me the headlines. What did you find out yesterday? And if you don’t come across I won’t find you any more clues, so there.’
‘You’re a great man for your pound of flesh,’ said Pooley.
‘Pound of flesh, pound of flesh. You deposit me in this stinking mausoleum and leave me to rot from boredom and frustration while you’re whooping it up with your mates at the Yard.’
‘Now chaps, now chaps,’ said Milton. ‘Stop squabbling. You’re like a pair of kids.’
‘Sorry, Vicar.’ Amiss got up and refilled his coffee cup.
***
‘You won’t be surprised to hear,’ said Pooley, ‘that they’re all in a pretty parlous financial state. Except Glastonbury, that is. He’s comfortable.’
‘What’s comfortable these days?’
‘Quarter of a million pounds of capital which keeps increasing because he rarely spends anything. It’s all in a building society. He showed us his savings book.’
‘Yes,’ said Milton wearily, ‘and explained at enormous length that he did enjoy going to the building society and they were all so nice there and it was a little treat for him, quite a little outing. Really, the only thing that he did do outside ffeatherstonehaugh’s, except his little bit of gardening.’
‘Gardening? What gardening?’
‘He looks after his mother’s grave in Highgate Cemetery. He explained at equally great length that Mother had decided that she wanted to be buried in London so that he could look after her, but that arrangements had been made at her request that on his death both she and he would go back to Derbyshire to be buried with Father.’
‘And Nanny,’ said Pooley.
‘Quite right, Ellis. How could I have forgotten? Apparently, the grave’s looking very nice at the moment. Pansies.’
‘Seems appropriate,’ said Amiss.
‘So he could afford to live in a relatively luxurious old people’s home,’ said Pooley. ‘His motive is therefore rather slim.�
��
‘Except that he’d have to leave here and Cully.’
‘With that amount of money he’d probably have enough to keep Cully in an old people’s home as well.’
‘What’s interesting,’ said Milton, ‘is that Glastonbury was apparently the only honest one of them, but he’s also the only one that’s reasonably well off.’
‘Unless they’ve been salting it away in Swiss bank accounts,’ said Amiss.
‘No,’ said Milton. ‘They were too careful for that. You see, they weren’t actually stealing. What we inferred from the Admiral’s notes was correct. Chatterton’s had about fifteen to twenty thousand a year for travelling and accommodation, Fishbane somewhere about five to ten thousand for hospitality.’
‘Christ! That’s a lot of whores,’ said Amiss.
‘Perhaps just a few expensive ones. Sammy was too delicate to ask.’
‘Sammy?’
‘Yes. Sammy did the interviews yesterday. Except for Glas tonbury. We kept him till this morning because we didn’t want him upset by a stranger.’
‘How can so soft-hearted a policeman get to be a chief superintendent?’
‘Because I pretend to be a brute.’
Pooley looked impatient. ‘They were all reasonably open with Sammy about money, except Fagg, but he apparently gave in when Sammy threatened to arrest him. All he claims to have is his old-age pension and the interest on about twenty thousand quid. Fishbane has no capital at all and a pension of about ten thousand a year. Chatterton’s got about the same. Outlook grim outside ffeatherstonehaugh’s, eh?’
‘Very. Why isn’t Fagg claiming anything?’
‘He has no outside interests. But he is ripping the club off more than the others in the sense that he is the driving force behind the sheer gluttony of the place. The others humour him and there isn’t anything else he wants. But, in so far as we can understand the Admiral’s notes, the club is running at a loss of over a hundred thousand a year, despite the very generous ffeatherstonehaugh endowment, and losses are rising steadily because of the lack of new members and the wholesale subsidising of the old. Hence the wine sales and what turned out to be substantial library sales as well. Fishbane admitted quite cheerfully that in his official capacity he’s been selling off some of the club’s greatest treasures—including the Rochester manuscript.’
‘Which one? I didn’t know we’d had one.’
‘It’s allegedly his farewell. Written in his own hand, it is claimed.’
‘My God! How suitable,’ said Amiss. ‘How marvellously suitable. I’ve learnt quite a bit of it off by heart. I was thinking it should be carved on the Admiral’s grave.’
‘Well, go on. Recite it,’ said Milton.
Amiss jumped up and struck an attitude.
‘Tired with the noisome follies of the age
And weary of my part, I quit the stage:
For who in life’s dull farce a part would bear,
Where rogues, whores, bawds, all the head actors are?
Long I with charitable malice strove,
Lashing the court, those vermin to remove,
But thriving vice under the rod still grew,
As aged leachers whipped, their lust renew;
Yet though my life hath unsuccessful been,
(For who can this Augaean stable clean),
My generous end I will pursue in death,
And at mankind rail with my parting breath.’
Both members of his audience clapped. ‘Excellent, Robert,’ said Milton. ‘Delivered con brio. And in the Rochester Room too.’
‘Mind you, it’s a bit general. A pedant would want to change it from “mankind” to the “members of the general committee” and “parting breath” to lap-top computer. But that would lack a certain je ne sais quoi, I feel.’
Pooley was tapping his foot. ‘Anyway, that manuscript went, along with quite a lot of first editions, drawings and even a Toulouse-Lautrec.’
‘What about the stuff in Fishbane’s bedroom?’ asked Amiss.
‘Some is apparently his own, but he quite cheerfully admits that quite a lot of it belongs to the club. Said he just borrowed it.’
‘Anything more on backgrounds?’
Milton sighed. ‘Nothing significant. We’re still digging. In fact, now that we’ve seen Glastonbury and you, we’re going to bugger back to the Yard and continue.’
‘D’you know what I’d like to do, Jim?’ said Pooley.
‘No.’
‘Just read through everything all over again, starting with Trueman. Just to see if I can take a fresh view.’
‘If you can find the time, Ellis. Come on. Bye, Robert.’
‘When will I see you?’ wailed Amiss.
‘Oh, Christ! Don’t panic. Ring one of us this afternoon. We’ll make a date. And keep yourself busy. Pick some brains.’
‘If I can find any to pick in this dump,’ said Amiss. ‘Another few days of this and I might be prepared to go back to the Civil Service.’
‘I don’t know if that would be wise,’ said Milton. ‘The food isn’t as good.’
‘And you don’t get living accommodation,’ said Pooley.
‘Oh, push off,’ said Amiss. ‘And leave me alone in Château Despair.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
During the next few hours evidence began to pile up against Chatterton. First, there was the telephone call from Paris from Milton’s friend in the Sûreté, Philippe Daguerre.
One of Milton’s strengths was his ability to circumvent the bureaucratic process: his loathing of the byzantine procedures of Interpol had caused him to develop his own relationships with like-minded individuals in the major European police forces. Daguerre owed him a considerable favour for the work Milton had done in nailing a French killer who had been pleading a London alibi: he delivered.
‘Your friend Chatterton has problems, it seems.’
‘What sort of problems?’
‘He has no money. In fact, he has a debt of more than a million francs to someone very unpleasant.’
Milton was quivering with eagerness, but he knew better than to cramp Daguerre’s style, which included a liking for teasing introductions and dramatic pauses. ‘How interesting, Philippe. Congratulations. Tell me more.’
‘I have a very good friend in Monte Carlo. It wasn’t a problem to find out about Chatterton. It is unusual in a casino to see an old man with a metal support at four o’clock in the morning. And the risks he was taking! There was much comment.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘Also, this was not typical.’
‘Sorry, Philippe. You’ve lost me.’
‘My friend found a croupier who remembered Chatterton from a preceding visit. He remarked how his style was changed. He had been a courageous but safe gambler. This last time he is not prudent. In all, my friend thinks, he probably won six million francs and lost seven.’
‘Good grief! And he owes the missing million to whom? The casino?’
‘No, no. You do not have the bills with a casino. It is not a restaurant. I am told the debt was paid by an habitué who is not a nice person. Very strange company for an English gentleman—and, I believe, well-educated.’
‘You intrigue me greatly, Philippe.’
‘I am pleased, Jim. Now this unpleasant person is well known to us. He is a gambler whose activities are financed by drugs.’
‘As you say, very strange company for Mr. Chatterton. Does your undesirable gambler want his money back?’
‘Always he will want his money or services furnished in exchange. I think that your Mr. Chatterton was of some service.’
‘Jesus!’ said Milton. ‘Drugs in his zimmer!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You have given me an idea, Philippe, which I must now pursue. I’m extremely grateful.’
‘It is nothing, Jim.’
***
‘Ellis, just a quick word.’
‘Yes, Robert.’
�
�Chatterton was in the library in the middle of the night that Blenkinsop died. Could have been trying to retrieve the magazine.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Gooseneck saw him. He’d stayed up late. After he’d put Sunil to bed, he went off to the kitchen, where he sat reading and sipping port. He was feeling a bit unsettled so he didn’t go to bed until one o’clock and on his way he stopped by the Smoking Room to pick up a newspaper to read in bed. He was in there when he heard the lift. He didn’t want any confrontation, so he stayed in the background and saw Chatterton swinging down the gallery to the library. Apparently, he was in there only for a half a minute and then straight back into the lift and upstairs—not carrying a book. That’s what Gooseneck found a bit odd.’
‘Mmmm. Thank you, Robert. Food for thought.’
‘See yer.’
‘See you.’
***
‘I’ve tracked down the zimmer, sir. I’ve sent McGuire around to pick it up from the hospital. They’re certain it’s the same one.’
‘It’s going to be a waste of time, Ellis. Chatterton’s not a fool.’
‘People do slip up, sir.’
‘What a fatuous remark. Oh, for God’s sake, Ellis, stop looking like a wounded puppy. You’re so fucking thin-skinned. Go ahead, of course, but ten to one you’ll find a perfectly ordinary frame with no special compartments. He’ll have done a swap.’
‘I’m more of an optimist than you are, sir.’
‘I know that, Ellis. That’s why it’s nice to have you around.’
***
‘Really, Mr. Milton, you’re putting pressure on me to agree that a man of seventy-six, while three-quarters crippled with two serious fractures and unable to walk except with the support of a zimmer, could construct a bomb and strap it to the underside of a table.’
‘No, I am not, Mr. Selwood. I’m asking you to come to the scene of the crime and watch somebody going through the motions of planting the device—with an open mind.’
‘I’m a very busy man.’ Milton said nothing. ‘Oh, very well. When d’you want me?’
