Stenness nodded indifferently.
“Go on.”
“I’m putting a hypothetical case, remember,” Sir Clinton cautioned him. “This is what might be said—I don’t necessarily accept it myself. I’m only trying to show you how it could be made to look, you understand? Well, then, this secretary, Richard Roe, sooner or later sees the chance which Providence has thrown in his way. His employer is in the habit of drawing bearer cheques for large amounts—some thousands—from time to time. And, rather carelessly, he has dropped into the way of getting his secretary to cash them for him and bring him the money. So the bank is accustomed to paying over these things to the secretary, and no questions asked.”
Stenness gave no sign of special interest. His normal reserve was sufficient to veil his thoughts.
“The secretary, we may assume, is an acute fellow. I think we may take it that he can see a chance when it comes his way. But forgery requires a certain amount of manual skill if it is carried out in some ways; and possibly the secretary is sufficiently acute to distrust his powers as a forger. But it’s always possible to trace a signature.”
Sir Clinton pulled out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette before going on. He seemed determined to infuse informality into the proceedings.
“It’s always possible to trace a signature,” he continued. “But one needs a model signature for that—a signature from a cheque, of course, because sensible people don’t use their letter signature on their cheques. They have a special one with some specific trick in it—the position of a dot, or something of the sort. I hope I’m not boring you with these elementary things.”
“Not at all,” said Stenness, with a certain show of polite interest.
“The model, in the case of the secretary Richard Roe,” went on Sir Clinton, “could easily be chosen from one of the old cheques returned by the bank. He had access to these, we may suppose. But then comes in a point which is sure to strike his acute mind. A man never writes his signature twice in precisely the same way; there’s always a faint difference between any two signatures. Hence, if two cheques turn up with identical signatures, a sharp detective might suspect something wrong. You follow me?”
Stenness nodded in silence.
“The acute secretary, Richard Roe, therefore traces his employer’s signature from one of these old cheques. And to cover his trail, to make certain that the thing cannot be shown to be a traced signature, he then destroys the old cheque. Thus there are not two identical signatures in existence; and the only thing missing is a cancelled cheque—not a thing anyone is likely to make a fuss about at the worst, even if its disappearance is noted. I make myself clear?”
“Quite,” said Stenness, still with his air of formal interest.
“So far, then,” Sir Clinton went on, “all is plain sailing. But now comes a sticky bit. In fact, the sticky bit of the whole affair. Every cheque has its counterfoil; and Mr. John Doe, the employer, has had an awkward habit of always filling in his counterfoils. Hence when Mr. Richard Roe traces his employer’s signature on, let us say, cheque No. 60073, he has to do something about the counterfoil of that cheque. If he leaves it blank, it will catch the attention of the good Mr. Doe the next time he uses the cheque-book. If the acute secretary fudges an entry on counterfoil No. 60073, then Mr. Doe, who is by no means a dull fellow, may spot the thing and cause trouble. What is to be done? The obvious thing is to remove counterfoil No. 60073 from the cheque-book and trust that its absence will not be noticed. I think that is the course I’d have followed myself if I had got into that fix.”
Sir Clinton seemed for a moment to lose interest in his narrative. He sat for a time in silence, eyeing the secretary as though he hoped to surprise something. But Stenness showed no sign of either guilt or confusion.
“I congratulate you on your nerves, Stenness,” Sir Clinton began once more. “Now that’s an hypothesis which I should not be very loath to adopt as an explanation of this affair of the cheques. It seems to me to cover the ground neatly. In fact, I’m quite convinced that it’s a good hypothesis as far as it goes. But some people might be prepared to carry it a stage further. I’ll just sketch out what they would say.”
At this point Stenness seemed to find some interest in the matter. He sat up and looked across at the Chief Constable.
“Please go on,” he requested.
“We have assumed that Richard Roe is an acute person. Now an alert mind might quite conceivably see a further step which would bring him on to safer ground. If things took their course, the forgery would be spotted in a very short time. One can’t take thousands out of a man’s account without raising inquiry. So, normally, the reasonable thing to do would be to bolt and chance getting out of the country with the cash. That’s what would occur to most people at once. But there’s another way of making sure of things.”
Sir Clinton’s voice took on a graver tone.
“Let us suppose that immediately the cheque has been cashed, the employer happens to die. What evidence of forgery is left then? None whatever, if the tracing of the signature has been decently executed. The supposed writer is dead; and no one else can deny his signature. And the cheque, we assume, has been cashed before the death takes place. On that basis, there would be no need for any flight on the part of the forger. He would simply have to sit tight and behave normally.”
Sir Clinton surprised a fresh look on Stenness’ face. It was only a fleeting change; but it was quite unmistakable. But the secretary remained obstinately mute and waited for the rest of the argument.
“That’s assuming a natural death of the employer. But such coincidences are rather rare. An acute mind would not count on a chance like that. However, rare as such coincidences may be, they are not beyond possibility, if a human agent should happen to take a hand in the business. Suppose that the acute Richard Roe perceived this, and decided that it was worth his while to produce that coincidence by murdering his employer. . . .”
Sir Clinton swung round in his chair, surprised by the opening of the door. Ardsley stood on the threshold, and a glance at his face showed that something serious had happened.
“It’s all up, Sir Clinton. They can pull down the blinds.”
“Miss Hawkhurst?” was all Sir Clinton could say.
Ardsley made a gesture of despair.
“Some things are beyond us,” he said despondently.
Chapter Fifteen
The Secretary’s Affairs
Sir Clinton received Ardsley’s news almost as if he had feared that the end was inevitable. He made no attempt to express his feelings, however.
“I think you’d better let the others know,” he suggested.
Ardsley agreed, with a faint grimace of reluctance for the task, and left the room.
Stenness had listened to the interchange between the two with an air of a man trying to persuade himself that he is in a dream and that by a violent effort he may be able to shake off his nightmare. At last he seemed to master his feelings.
“It’s all over, is it?” he asked in a choked voice, as though hoping even at the last moment to be reassured by good news.
“It’s all over,” Sir Clinton admitted, gravely.
Stenness seemed to pull himself together.
“Then in that case,” he said, “there seems to be no reason why I shouldn’t make a clean breast of things. Nothing matters much, now; and you may as well get the true story. It’ll make no difference to me.”
Sir Clinton made a vague gesture of assent, but refrained from speaking. After a moment or two, Stenness began.
“This is how it happened. Not so long ago, I was a cub with no near relations to look after me and keep me straight. I’m not whining; I’m simply explaining. I had a few thousands of capital; and naturally a good deal of it got frittered away. I learned something about the world in the process, so perhaps it wasn’t a total loss.”
Sir Clinton noticed that even at this stage Stenness retained his conciseness and stuck to the
main facts. The secretary was sparing him useless details; and, as he had said, he was not whining over his losses.
“When I had been at it for a year or two, I had run myself down to a little over five thousand pounds. That’s a good enough nest-egg. But I hadn’t the sense to see it in that light. I wanted a good deal more than three or four hundred a year. So I looked about for some way of increasing my capital.”
A faintly contemptuous expression crossed his face.
“I must have been a very green hand in those days. I had a sort of trustfulness which I’ve lost since then. To make a long story short I was swindled out of that five thousand. I was so green that at the time I didn’t realise who was at the back of the swindle. All I met were agents of the big fish in the background. They cleaned me out, almost completely.”
He shifted slightly in his chair as though the recollection made him uncomfortable.
“I had to do something for a living; and somehow I dropped into secretarial work—the kind where it’s more important that a man should have a decent appearance than that he should know his work. But by that time I realised that I’d have to work for a living, and I sobered up. I took things seriously and picked up all I could. I turned into quite a decently efficient secretary.”
Sir Clinton nodded. It was no more than Stenness’ due.
“I drifted about from post to post, until a couple of years ago I dropped into Roger Shandon’s place. I learned a lot with him. It was a perfect education—on certain lines.”
“I can quite imagine that,” Sir Clinton interjected.
“He was a damned scoundrel,” Stenness pronounced, without heat. “But I picked up a lot about the seamy side of affairs from things that passed through my hands. It was interesting, even at first. And then, it got more interesting.”
He shifted again in his chair so as to look Sir Clinton in the face.
“I came across a name in his correspondence, the name of one of the fellows who had helped to rook me of that last five thousand. That put me on the alert. I began to hunt things up. It took me a good while; and none of it was in any way explicit, you understand: but I had sense enough to put two and two together and fill up the blanks. My late employer was the man who had been behind the ramp that cleared me of the last of my cash.”
“You couldn’t have expected me to guess that,” Sir Clinton said, as though defending himself. “I knew there was more behind this business than appeared on the surface, but naturally I’d no inkling of anything of that sort.”
Stenness paid no attention to the interruption.
“I suppose my training under Roger Shandon had taken the refined edge off any honesty I had. Or else it had left the honesty but blunted my respect for the conventions, if you like it better that way. It seemed to me, anyhow, a simple enough state of affairs. This fellow Shandon had picked my pocket—at least that was what it amounted to in practice, though I doubt if I could have charged him with fraud and brought it home to him. Well, I saw no particular reason why he should get away with my money. He’d taken advantage of my stupidity or trustfulness, or whatever you like to call it. I decided to pay him back in his own coin. I might have milked him of a fair extra sum as a fine; but that didn’t suit my book. I’ve got a peculiar brand of conscience; and I made up my mind that I’d take precisely the cash that he cheated me out of. No doubt the odd figures on the cheque surprised you.”
“No,” Sir Clinton objected. “I simply took it that Shandon wasn’t in the habit of drawing cheques for round thousands and that you filled in an odd figure so as not to make the cheque look uncommon.”
“I’d have done that in any case, of course,” Stenness explained, “but as it happened, the exact sum he took from me originally made a likely enough figure; and I stuck to it. I didn’t even fine him a sovereign for his swindling. I contented myself with taking back exactly what I’d lost. I saw nothing wrong in it; and I see nothing wrong in it now. My conscience doesn’t trouble me a rap in the matter. Legally, of course, it’s quite a different question.”
“Quite,” said Sir Clinton, but his tone gave no clue to his views on the matter.
“As to the actual business, I needn’t go over it; for you put your finger on it quite correctly up to a point, not ten minutes ago. I forged his signature, destroyed the cancelled cheque, cut the counterfoil out of the cheque-book, and cashed the forged cheque. Nobody suspected anything.”
“There was no reason why they should—at the time.”
“No. But now I come to the point where you made a further suggestion. You brought out the idea that I’d murdered Shandon to cover the trail.”
“I suggested it as an hypothesis that some people might be inclined to put forward,” corrected Sir Clinton. “If you remember, I refrained from supporting it myself.”
Stenness reflected for a moment.
“That’s true. But murder never entered into my plans at all. Bear in mind that I don’t feel a criminal in this affair. All I’ve done is to take my own money out of the hand of a fellow who had picked my pocket. You’d recover your own purse if you caught a thief red-handed with it; and you wouldn’t call yourself a robber, for doing so. Well, no more do I.”
“Go on,” said Sir Clinton, in unconscious plagiarism.
“That being so,” Stenness continued, “murder was the last thing that would have entered my mind. Why should I murder him? I’d squared the account; I’d got my money back again. What would be the point in putting my neck into a noose? None whatever! All I needed was a clean get-away. I planned that carefully enough.”
“That’s no particular business of mine at present,” Sir Clinton reminded him. “But one might ask what you’re doing here, since it’s evidently not according to plan.”
“It’s easy to account for that. I had planned to get away on the evening of the day when the Shandons were murdered. I was in the middle of clearing up preparatory to a bolt . . . and suddenly came the affair in the Maze. Could I bolt then? Not likely. I’d have been marked down as the murderer if I’d stirred a step. And look what face would have been on things if I’d cleared out. It would have added the last touch of substance to the very hypothesis you put forward. The whole forgery business would have been raked up to furnish a motive. I couldn’t have faced it—for I hadn’t an alibi. Nobody could swear that I was in my room—I was packing up—at the time the murders were done. It would have been a clear enough case for any jury.”
Sir Clinton’s face showed that he agreed with this reading.
“There’s one point that hasn’t come out, though,” he said. “What’s the meaning of this sudden collapse on your part? If your conscience is clear—and I don’t doubt your account of it—why do you throw up the sponge like this? That’s not very clear.”
Stenness’ face showed that Sir Clinton had touched him on the raw. He had some difficulty with his voice as he replied.
“I may as well put all the cards on the table. You know what Miss Hawkhurst was like? Any man might have fallen in love with her. I did, at any rate.”
“Were you engaged?”
“No. I’ve got some sort of pride, even if I am a forger. Miss Hawkhurst had an income of her own. What had I? Nothing. Anyone might have supposed I was after her money.”
“Hardly the money alone, surely—Miss Hawkhurst herself would account for the attraction without that.”
“Well, I’m not that sort,” said Stenness, abruptly. “I’m not the kind of man who can live on his wife’s money. I can’t explain it. It is so.”
“Your conscience is a rum contrivance,” Sir Clinton commented, not unkindly.
“It’s in good working order, at any rate,” Stenness retorted. “Now, isn’t the thing clear enough to you? I meant to recover my money, clear out, work hard and make enough for my purposes. I reckoned that a couple of years would do it, if I took risks. And before I went, I was going to take the biggest risk of all. I was going to tell Sylvia the whole story and see what she had to say.�
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Sir Clinton could not repress his surprise.
“You’re a rum card, Stenness. Be thankful I’ve had a large experience of liars and know when a man’s speaking the truth; for that yarn wouldn’t be believed by one person in a hundred.”
“It’s the truth for all that,” returned Stenness, doggedly. “I’ve told you before that I see nothing wrong in what I’ve done—nothing morally wrong, I mean. He swindled me. I take my money back again. What’s wrong in that?”
“I wish I had your simple way of looking at things.” Sir Clinton sat in silence for a few moments, evidently pondering over the case.
“You’re a problem, Stenness,” he said at last. “I don’t really know what to do with you.”
“Oh, arrest me!” Stenness exclaimed, bitterly. “Nothing matters now. She’s dead. It’s all over; and I don’t much care what happens.”
“Pull yourself together, man,” said Sir Clinton, curtly. “That sort of chatter does all right on the stage. Nobody with a backbone takes a knock like that. If you wake up three years hence in a prison cell, you’ll look at things in a different light, and be very fed-up that you’ve lost your liberty as well as other things. Some things are inevitable. Others aren’t. Don’t behave like a child.”
Stenness took the rebuke sullenly.
“Well, what does it matter?” he demanded. “You have enough in your hands to convict me if you want to—and I don’t care. Do as you like. I’ll write it out for you now, if you think it’ll save you trouble. I’m not inclined to wriggle at the last moment.”
Sir Clinton gave no sign that he had heard him. Instead, he seemed engrossed on some problem. At last he lifted his head.
“I can’t follow that intricate conscience of yours, Stenness. It’s beyond me. But I can sympathise to some extent with your analogy of the pickpocket caught red-handed. That was very apt. I’m going to give you a chance. I know well enough that you’re speaking the truth about this business. Besides, I can get it checked if necessary. On the basis of ethics, I think you’ve some right to that money. You have it here in notes, I suppose?”
Murder in the Maze (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 20
