The Man Who Killed Himself

by Julian Symons

  Coverdale tapped the paper. ‘Why did Robertson report an incident like this?’

  ‘I gather Sussex asked for reports of anything out of the way near the Ouse in the week before they found chummy. It meant nothing much to them but it does to us, wouldn’t you agree, sir? I mean we know he hasn’t got a wife for a start.’

  ‘We certainly know that,’ Coverdale said cautiously.

  ‘And the bridge at this place Southease is only about a mile from Rodmell.’

  ‘It’s all a bit conjectural.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I wonder, how would it be if I went down and had a look round for a day or two, see what I can dig up. In co-operation with Sussex, of course.’

  So that was the way it was done. Amies in fact took a little more than a week, but the result fully justified it, and Coverdale went so far as to congratulate the Sergeant on the skill with which he had followed up the leads he had discovered. It was time for action. Strictly speaking it was a Sussex affair since the body had been found in that county, but the circumstances were exceptional, and co-operation presented no problem. So it was Coverdale and Amies who walked to the garage as Arthur was putting in the Triumph.

  He was carrying his easel and paints. He stopped when he saw them. ‘You’ve got some news?’

  ‘We may have, Sir, and we may not,’ Coverdale said heavily. ‘We thought we’d stop by to have a chat.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you’ve had to wait. If you’d let me know –’ He opened the front door.

  ‘Perfectly all right. We’ve been admiring the scenery. As a matter of fact the Sergeant here has spent the last few days in this part of the world.’

  Brownjohn led the way into the living-room, where he put down his painting things. ‘Very tidy,’ Coverdale said approvingly. He looked at the pictures. ‘Local scenes. Are they yours?’

  ‘No. My mother painted them. Years ago. Will you have a drink?’

  ‘Nothing to drink, thank you.’ Both men sat down, Amies in a circular chair, the Inspector in one of modern design which suddenly tilted back, taking his legs off the ground. Brownjohn gave a giggle bitten off like a hiccup. Neither policeman laughed. Amies looked for somewhere to put his hat and placed it carefully on the floor, then took out notebook and pencil.

  ‘So sorry, I should have warned you. About the chair I mean.’ He went to a cupboard made in some light wood, opened it. They watched in silence while he poured whisky. ‘Made this myself. Turning into a handyman. Inside compartment too.’ He opened it to show them. ‘Had a faulty catch, but I’ve put it right now.’

  He sat down and sipped his whisky. His face and his bald head were shiny, his nostrils twitched. He looked like a rabbit, and about him there was as always the air of being slightly lost, unable to cope with the pace and roughness of life. It was not easy to imagine him hurting anybody.

  A great deal might depend on the way in which the interrogation was conducted, the order in which things were said. Coverdale had discussed this at length with Amies, and they had settled both their tactics and their technique. With the most casual possible air like a centre forward beginning a game of football by a pass tapped only inches to his inside left, Coverdale said: ‘I wonder, do you know a man who goes by the name of Clennery Tubbs?’

  It was a fine evening. Behind the two policemen little chips of white cloud scudded across a blue sky. Outside there was the garden, beyond the garden a road, a hill, freedom. Inside these walls was the force that threatened freedom. Arthur could feel it emanating from the lumpy Inspector and his sharp-nosed Sergeant. He knew that battle was being joined, and that his fate might depend upon the quickness of his reaction.

  First move, time-wasting evasion. ‘Has he something to do with my wife’s death?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  A pause. Amies spoke. ‘Clennery Tubbs, unusual name, you wouldn’t forget it.’

  ‘I was just trying to – your saying goes by the name of, you see, rather – let me think. Yes. I remember. I met him at a demonstration some months ago, when I was showing one of my inventions, a dish washer.’ He was conscious of waffling. ‘He tried to interest me in an invention of his own, a car cream. I looked into it, but it was no good. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You haven’t seen him recently?’ A shake of the head. ‘He was fished out of the river a few days ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Though I can’t say I cared for him.’ Self-possession recovered.

  ‘He was a bad boy,’ Coverdale said. ‘Went inside seven years ago for frauds on women. Prints on file, that’s how we traced him.’

  ‘Our information is that you saw him recently. Just before his death. Which took place on or about September 30th.’ That was the Sergeant, sharpish.

  ‘Met him?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us what you did on that day. Not so long ago. Just over two weeks.’

  ‘I’ll need to look at – I’ve got a calendar in my kitchen.’ Amies went to the kitchen door and stood there while he stared at a calendar on the wall. Then he came back and they all sat down again. ‘Of course. I should have remembered, I went to Brighton. Somebody told me about a club called the Robin Hood and I went in there and played roulette. I won some money. Then I left and came home.’

  ‘You left?’ Amies said. ‘You were thrown out, weren’t you?’

  A flicker of alarm stirred in Arthur’s stomach. They had traced his movements in Brighton.

  ‘My information is that you attacked a Mrs Hester Green, tore off and broke her necklace and had to be escorted out.’

  ‘I had a little too much to drink.’ He pushed away the whisky glass. ‘I can’t be quite sure about my movements afterwards.’

  ‘I suggest that you met the man Tubbs.’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m quite sure I didn’t.’

  ‘Mrs Green saw you talking to a man resembling him outside the club.’

  Just as firmly he said, ‘She’s mistaken. Or telling lies.’

  He felt the tension in the other men, and relaxed a little. They were guessing, they only had Hester’s word for it that he had met Tubbs, there could be no proof that he had visited the bungalow.

  At the same time Coverdale, in his ridiculous tilting chair, knew that a trick had been lost. Amies should have phrased his questions differently, he had failed to maintain the pressure, they were not exactly back to square one but they would have to approach from a different angle. As Amies began to ask another question the Inspector cut him short.

  ‘You agree that you attacked Mrs Green?’

  ‘Oh no, Inspector, of course not.’ Brownjohn laughed, moved his chair nearer to the table in the middle of the room, rested his arm on it. ‘I’d met her – I didn’t even know that was her name – earlier in the day in the antique shop she runs, and when I saw her again in the club it was natural to buy her a drink.’ Amies tried to interrupt and Coverdale checked him, saying that they must let Mr Brownjohn speak. ‘I didn’t attack her – what happened was that I lurched across the table because I’d had one too many, slipped and caught my hand in her necklace. It’s true that she was angry, but I assure you it was an accident.’

  ‘It’s not important,’ Coverdale said soothingly. ‘And after that you can’t remember driving home?’

  ‘That’s right. But I did.’

  ‘You left the club at about nine o’clock, right, Amies?’ The Sergeant nodded sulkily.

  ‘Did you drive straight back?’

  Arthur thought: you’ve telegraphed your punch, my dear Inspector. That damned policeman on the motorbike has reported seeing me. ‘I just don’t know. I know I got home, but I don’t know the time.’

  ‘Your car was seen near Rodmell, a few miles south of Lewes, by a policeman. He stopped you and talked to you, and you showed him your driving licence. You had a dud rear light. This was just before eleven o’clock. Two hours to get from Brighton to Rodmell, which isn’t more than twelve miles. How, do you explain that?’

  ‘I can’t.
I told you I had too much to drink. I just drove around, or at least I suppose so. I do have a vague recollection of talking to a policeman.’ He actually smiled and asked if they would like a drink now. He was pouring another for himself after they had shaken their heads when the Inspector said that if there was such a thing as a bottle of beer in the house, he did feel thirsty. As Arthur got up to fetch it he saw the surprised, almost hostile glance that Amies gave his superior, and thought: I’ve convinced the Inspector, he’s on my side now, I just have this surly brute to deal with. Amies said: ‘He was thrown into the river at Southease Bridge, not far from where the policeman stopped you.’

  He did not falter in pouring the beer, but he thought: how can they know that? The Sergeant provided the answer, in his voice that sounded like chalk on a blackboard. ‘You wonder how we know? Because one of his shoes was left beside the bridge, that’s why.’

  The tug I felt when I got him out of the car, he thought. Amies went on.

  ‘You were seen on the bridge. By a lorry driver. You’d just thrown the body over.’

  He felt mildly contemptuous. Really, the man’s modus operandi was crude. ‘That isn’t true.’

  ‘If you were so drunk, how do you know? If you were drunk, why didn’t PC Robertson notice it?’

  He shrugged and decided that it was time to move on to the attack. ‘I think you’ll agree that I’ve answered your questions patiently, but now I’m going to refuse to say anything more until you tell me why you’re asking them.’

  A short silence. Then Coverdale. ‘All right, sir. Tubbs was thrown into the river. He was dead when he went in.’ Another silence. Should he comment? Better not. ‘He had a slight heart condition, but the cause of his death was a blow on the head which fractured his skull.’

  ‘A blow on the head.’ He wanted to say that Tubbs had hit his head against the table, but of course that wouldn’t do.

  ‘Might have been from your stick.’ That was Amies, who now fetched the stick from the hall, thwacked his palm with the loaded end, nodded.

  Indignation came up like bile. ‘How did you know my stick was there? You’ve been inside this house. Illegal entry.’

  ‘I happened to notice it as we came in.’ Amies laughed in his face as he spoke, unpleasant. ‘Handy weapon.’

  ‘Outrageous,’ he said. ‘Outrageous.’

  Coverdale finished his beer and said pacifically: ‘Let’s not get heated. Cards on the table is my motto. Your car was stopped a mile away from where Tubbs went into the river, it was identified by a lorry driver beside the actual bridge.’

  ‘He was mistaken.’

  ‘I’ll be frank. What he saw was a figure near the bridge and a Triumph Herald car. He didn’t get the number. Cards on the table. We were justified in asking questions, don’t you agree?’

  ‘And I’ve answered them.’ Clouds were rolling up the sky, darkness softened the outlines of the room. The two figures sat like squat bugs in their chairs. He rose, turned on a standard lamp, drew the curtains across the windows, looked at his watch. ‘If there’s nothing more –’

  ‘Just another couple of questions,’ Coverdale said apologetically. ‘About Mellon.’

  ‘You’ve caught him?’

  ‘I doubt we shall ever catch him now,’ Coverdale said with a glance of meaningful directness. ‘But the first question is this. Did you ever meet Easonby Mellon?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Absolutely no question of it? You got that, Sergeant?’ Amies had been making notes, and now made another. ‘I want a positive answer, Brownjohn.’

  ‘I’ve given it, haven’t I? Damn you, how many more times?’

  ‘Then how do you explain this?’ A letter was thumped down on the table. He bent over it, unable at first to see anything more than the signature, ‘Arthur Brownjohn’ on the Lektreks paper. He began to read: ‘I have known Major Mellon for several years, and it is my opinion that he will prove a reliable and respectable tenant…’ It was the letter he had written long ago to the owners of the Romany House block as a reference. Who would have imagined that it still existed or that it would have come into the hands of the police? When he looked up his face was stricken.

  ‘Credit where credit’s due,’ Coverdale said. ‘Sergeant Amies spotted this.’

  Amies had got up. ‘Come on. Explain it.’ They were both standing, one on either side of him. If ever a man looked guilty, the Sergeant said later to the Inspector, this wretched little figure looked guilty then. They asked questions in turn, so that his head moved first this way and then that, Coverdale’s voice confiding, Amies’ creaking with an occasional shrillness as if the teeth of a saw were being run over metal.

  ‘On your firm’s paper.’

  ‘And your signature. We’ve had handwriting experts on the job.’

  ‘So when did you first meet him? In the army?’

  ‘No point in holding back any longer.’

  ‘If you feel like making a statement now.’

  ‘Make us do it the hard way and we’ll be hard too. You wouldn’t like it. How much did you pay him?’

  The little man surprised them then. He got up, pushed past them, took one of the paintings off the wall (a hill, clouds, a house or two, they all looked much the same) and began to stamp on it. He burst into tears, his face contorted like a child’s and suddenly grotesquely red. ‘Lies, lies,’ he cried out. ‘The world’s not like that, it’s filthy.’ He got his heel on to the pretty little picture and screwed it round. Coverdale, no art lover, felt quite upset. They stopped him as he was reaching for another picture. ‘Steady on, now.’

  Amies was not to be moved. He poked a bony finger into Brownjohn’s chest. ‘How much did you pay him?’

  ‘Lies, all lies.’ The voice was a scream. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Sit down.’ They had to push him into the chair. Coverdale said: ‘Begin at the beginning. This letter. It was typed on your office machine. Your letterhead. Your signature.’ Coverdale felt – well, hardly nonplussed but a little taken aback – when Brownjohn denied all knowledge of the letter. A simple denial is often the most effective defence an accused man can make in the face of what may seem overwhelming facts. Here the facts were powerful enough, but the man’s admission of them would be extremely helpful. Instead he sat there blubbering and refusing to admit the obvious. Now he had put his head on his arms and was saying something unintelligible.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Go away. I’m not going to talk any more.’ Just like a small child.

  ‘Just as I said, sir, we’ll have to take him along. No use doing it here.’

  He looked up, showing a little tear-stained red face. ‘Along?’

  ‘To the station. To help us with our inquiries.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s no use getting into a tantrum.’ With one hand Amies began to pull him up from the table.

  ‘Stop it. You’ve got nothing against me. What do you want me for?’

  Coverdale put his lumpy face close to Brownjohn’s tear-stained one. ‘I’m going to tell you what happened. I’ll tell you our conclusions, and the evidence they’re based on. Cards on the table. When you’ve heard us you can decide whether you want to make a statement or not. Fair enough?’ Brownjohn sniffed, found a handkerchief and blew his nose.

  ‘First of all, you wanted to get rid of your wife. You were too cowardly and too careful to do it yourself. So you hired a man to do it, a man you knew named Easonby Mellon. He ran a shady matrimonial agency, and the proof you knew about it is the reference you gave him. The idea, a clever one I admit, was that Mellon should write some letters pretending to have a love affair with your wife. You paid him to kill her.’

  Brownjohn’s fingers moved to his bald scalp, caressed it. ‘That hotel in Weybridge – you told me Clare was there with him.’

  ‘Mellon was there, but not with your wife. The woman with him wore a veil, but we’ve shown the hotel clerk pictures of your wife a
nd he’s sure that the woman at the hotel was a good deal younger. And we’ve never been able to find any other occasion when they met. Funny that, don’t you think? Looks like a put-up job.’ He waited for a comment but none came. ‘Now, Sergeant Amies has been doing quite a bit of work on your affairs. You drew out five hundred pounds from your joint account in March – you drew it, not your wife. Why?’

  ‘I –’ Brownjohn fluttered his hands ineffectually. ‘It was for Tubbs. For his invention. The car cream.’

  ‘But you said you had nothing to do with that, you said it was no good.’

  ‘It was no good, but I put some money in it. I was stupid. I bought – bought a share of the cream, I paid him the money, a solicitor named Eversholt drew up the agreement.’

  Coverdale nodded, and Amies nodded in time with him. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. You may be surprised to know that Sergeant Amies has talked to Eversholt.’

  Amies took it up. ‘He said the whole idea was so obviously potty he couldn’t understand anyone with any sense putting money in it. He told you something to that effect, I believe.’ Brownjohn fluttered his hands again. ‘It was a cover, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘When anyone asked why you’d paid out the money you’d tell them this story. It was a cover for the murder money, right?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ Amies thrust his razor nose within six inches of Brownjohn’s rabbity one. ‘Tubbs was Easonby Mellon.’

  Brownjohn began to laugh. He stopped and then started again upon a higher note. Amies brought his hand round in a semi-circle. There was a sharp crack as it struck Brownjohn’s cheek. The laughter stopped. Brownjohn put a hand to his cheek, nursed it. His reproachful eyes went from one of them to the other.