The Rynox Mystery

by Philip MacDonald

  Miss Winter did not smile. ‘You certainly are at the office, Mr Salisbury.’

  ‘And would you mind telling me, Miss Winter, what these things are that I’m treading on?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Salisbury. Bundles of one-pound notes, not very clean, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m going back to my room to sit down,’ said the President. ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming in again in a few minutes, Miss Winter, and telling me all over again what there is in those sacks, I should be very much obliged. Also you might empty the sacks and find out if there is anything else in them except … except … well, except bundles of one-pound notes!’

  ‘Very well, Mr Salisbury. And would it not be as well, perhaps, if I also ring up Crickford’s and see whether I can ascertain who is the sender of this, er … of this, er …’ Even Miss Winter for once was at a loss for words.

  ‘Do! Do!’ said the President. ‘And don’t forget: come in and tell me all about it all over again!’

  ‘Very well, Mr Salisbury.’

  3

  ‘If,’ said F. MacDowell Salisbury to his friend Thurston Mitchell, who was Vice-President of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation, ‘you can beat that, I shall be much surprised.’

  Mr Mitchell could not beat it. He said so. ‘If I hadn’t,’ said Mr Mitchell, ‘seen the damn’ stuff with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe you now, Salisbury … What did Crickford’s say when Winter got on to them?’

  ‘Crickford’s,’ said Mr Salisbury, ‘agreed to make inquiries of their branches. They did. This package was delivered yesterday evening at their Balham Receiving Office. The customer, who did not give his name, paid the proper rate for delivery, asked when that delivery would be made, and …’ Mr Salisbury shrugged his plump shoulders despairingly, ‘… just went.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘According to what Crickford’s managing director told me on the phone, the clerk said that the sender was a “tall, foreign-looking gentleman.” Little beard, broken English, rather exaggerated clothes—that sort of thing. Came in a car.’

  ‘Car, did he?’ said Mr Mitchell. ‘Now did they …’

  Mr Salisbury shook his head sadly. ‘Mitchell, they did not. They couldn’t tell me whether that car was blue or green, open or closed, English or American. They couldn’t tell anything. After all, poor devils, why should they?’

  Mr Thurston Mitchell paced the Presidential room with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, and a frown drawing his eyebrows together into a rigid bar across his high-bridged nose. He said:

  ‘And there wasn’t anything, Salisbury? Nothing in those sacks except money?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the President. ‘Nothing, Mitchell, of any description—except one grain of corn which I have here upon my desk. I thought I’d better keep it as a souvenir.’

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the Vice-President.

  ‘Quite,’ said the President, ‘probably … Yes, Miss Winter, what is it?’

  Miss Winter came to the Presidential desk. There was about her a certain excitement, intensely restrained, but discernible nevertheless. She bore, rather in the manner of an inexperienced but imaginative recruit carrying a bomb, a small, oblong brown-paper parcel. She placed it upon the Presidential table. She said:

  ‘This has just come, Mr Salisbury. By registered post. I thought I’d better let you have it at once because … well, because I fancy that the printing on it is the same as the printing on the sack label.’

  The President stared. The Vice-President came to his shoulder and did the same thing.

  ‘By Jove!’ said the President. ‘It is! Here, Mitchell, you open it. You haven’t had a thrill today.’

  The Vice-President, having borrowed Miss Winter’s penknife, cut the parcel string, unwrapped three separate coverings of brown paper and found at last a stout, small, deal box. It had a sliding lid like a child’s pencil-box. The Vice-President slid away the lid. He looked, and put the box down before the President. He said:

  ‘Look here, Salisbury, if any more of this goes on, I shall go and see a doctor. Look at that!’

  Mr Salisbury looked at that. What he saw was a sheet of white paper, and in the centre of the sheet of white paper a new halfpenny …

  ‘Don’t,’ said the Vice-President, ‘look like that, Salisbury. Damn it, you don’t want any more money!’

  The President removed the halfpenny and the sheet of paper. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, ‘whether I want it or not!’

  Underneath the sheet of paper were, in three lines of little round stacks, forty-six new pennies. They were counted, with a composure really terrific, by Miss Winter. And underneath them was another piece of plain white paper. But this piece of plain white paper bore in its centre—neatly printed with a thick pen and in thick black ink:

  ‘THIS IS THE BALANCE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

  Total: £287,499 3s. 10½d …

  (Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety-nine pounds, three shillings and tenpence halfpenny.)

  N.B.—Not for Personal Use. For the coffers of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation.’

  The President looked at the Vice-President. Both looked at Miss Winter.

  ‘Miss Winter,’ said the President, ‘would you be so very kind as to leave the room? I’m sure that in one moment Mr Mitchell will say something which it would be better for you not to hear.’

  END OF EPILOGUE

  REEL ONE

  SEQUENCE THE FIRST

  Thursday, 28th March, 193— 9 a.m. to 12 noon

  ENTWHISTLE, the Fordfield postman, pushed his bicycle up the steep hill into Little Ockleton. The sack upon his back was heavy and grew heavier. The March sun, even at half-past eight this morning, seemed to carry the heat of July. Entwhistle stopped, puffed and mopped his head. He thought, as he thought every morning, that something ought to be done by the authorities about this hill. He pushed on again and at last was able to mount.

  It was so rarely that he had a letter for Pond Cottage that he was nearly a hundred yards past it when he remembered that not only did he have a letter for Pond Cottage but that he had an unstamped letter for Pond Cottage. That meant collecting no less than threepence from Pond Cottage’s occupier. The extra hundred yards which he had given himself was alleviated by the thought that at last—if indeed Mr Marsh were at home—he would see Mr Marsh and talk to Mr Marsh. He had heard so many stories about Mr Marsh and never had occasion to add one of his own to the many, that the prospect was almost pleasing. He dismounted, rested his bicycle against the little green paling and went through the gate and up the untidy, overgrown, flagged path.

  Mr Marsh, it seemed, was at home. In any event, the leaded windows of the room upstairs stood wide.

  Entwhistle knocked with his knuckles upon the door … No reply. He fumbled in his satchel until he found the offending, stampless letter … He knocked again. Again no answer came. Perhaps after all he was not going to see and talk with the exciting Mr Marsh. Still, one more knock couldn’t do any harm! He gave it and this time an answer did come—from above his head. An answer in a deep guttural voice which seemed to have a curious and foreign and throaty trouble with its r’s.

  ‘Put the dratted letters down!’ said the voice. ‘Leave ’em on the step. I’ll fetch ’em.’

  Entwhistle bent back, tilting his head until from under the peak of his hat he could see peering down at him from that open window the dark-spectacled, dark-complexioned and somewhat uncomfortable face of Mr Marsh. Mr Marsh’s grey moustache and little pointed grey beard seemed, as Entwhistle had so often heard they did, to bristle with fury.

  He coughed, clearing his throat. ‘Carn’ do that, sir,’ he said. ‘Letter ’ere without a stamp. I’ll ’ave to trouble you for threepence, sir.’

  ‘You’ll have to trouble me for … What the hell are you talking about? Put the damn letters down, I say, and get your ugly face out of here. Standing there
! You look like a … Put the letters down and be off.’

  Very savage, the voice was.

  Entwhistle began to experience a doubt as to whether it would be quite as amusing to see and talk to Mr Marsh as he had supposed. But he stuck to his guns.

  ‘Carn’ do that, sir. Letter ’ere unstamped. ’Ave to trouble you for threepence, sir.’

  ‘Dios!’ said the voice at the window, or some sound like that. The window shut with a slam. Involuntarily Entwhistle took a backward step. He half-expected, so violent had been the sound, to have a pane of glass upon his hat. He stood back a little from the doorstep. He could hear quite distinctly steps coming down the creaking staircase and then the door was flung open. In the doorway stood a tall, bulky figure wrapped in a shabby brown dressing gown. Its feet were in shabbier slippers of red leather. The hair was black, streaked with grey. The moustache and little beard were almost white. The tinted glasses staring straight into Entwhistle’s Nordic and bewildered eyes frightened Entwhistle. They gave to Entwhistle, though he could not have expressed this, a curious uneasy feeling that perhaps there were no eyes behind them.

  ‘Where’s this damn letter? Come on, man, come on! Don’t keep me standing about here all day. It’s cold!’ The bulk of Mr Marsh shivered inside his dressing-gown. He thrust out an imperious hand.

  Into this hand, Entwhistle put the letter. It was twitched from his fingers.

  ‘I’ll ’ave to trouble you for threepence, I’m afraid, sir.’

  Mr Marsh made a noise in his throat; a savage animal noise; so fierce a noise that Entwhistle involuntarily backed two steps. But he stayed there. He stuck to his guns. He was, as he was overfond of saying, a man who knoo his dooty.

  Mr Marsh was staring down at the envelope in his hands. A frown just showed above the tinted spectacles; white teeth below them glared out in a wild snarl. Mr Marsh was saying:

  ‘Damn greaser!’ and then a string of violent-sounding and most unpleasing words. He put his thumb, as Entwhistle watched, under the flap of the envelope and with a savage jerk freed its contents; a single sheet of typewritten paper. Mr Marsh read.

  ‘F. X. Benedik,’ growled Mr Marsh. And then another word. This time an English word which Entwhistle omitted when telling of the adventure to Mrs Entwhistle.

  ‘I’ll ’ave,’ began Entwhistle bravely, ‘to trouble you for …’ There was a flurry within the door. It slammed. The violence of the slamming detached a large flake of rotting timber which fell at Entwhistle’s feet.

  Entwhistle pushed the postman’s hat forward on to the bridge of his snub nose. The stumpy fingers of his right hand scratched his back hair. What, he wondered, was he to do now? It did not, it must be noted, occur to him to knock at the door again. Mr Marsh might be good gossip, but Mr Marsh was most obviously not the sort of man for a peace-loving postman to annoy. But there was the excess fee and when he got to Fordfield he would have to account for that. Well, threepence isn’t much, but threepence is a half of Mild …

  He was still debating within his slow mind when something—some hard, small, ringing thing—hit the peak of his cap with sharp violence. He started. The cap, dislodged by his jerk, fell off; rolled to the path. Bewildered, he looked down at it; stooped ponderously to pick it up. There beside it, glinting against a mossy flag, was a florin. Still squatting, Entwhistle looked up. The upstairs window was open again. From it there glared out Mr Marsh’s face. ‘It was,’ said Entwhistle to Mrs Entwhistle that evening, ‘like the face of a feen in ’uman shape. And,’ said Entwhistle, ‘he was laughin’. To ’ear that laugh would make any man’s blood run cold, and I don’t care ’oo ’e was. Laughin’ he was; laughin’ fit to burst hisself. What did I do? Well, I picks up the two-bob and me hat and I says as dignified like as I can: “You’ll be requirin’ your change, sir.” Just like that I said it, just to show him I wasn’t ’avin’ no nonsense. What does ’e say? When he’s finished laughin’ a few minutes later, he says; “You can keep the something change and swallow it!” Funny sort of voice he’s got—a violent sort of voice. That’s what he says; “You can keep the something change and you can something well swallow it!” What did I say? Well, I says, still calm and collected like: “D’you know, sir, throwin’ money like that, you might ’ave ’it me in the face,” and then ’e says: “Damn bad luck I didn’t!” just like that: “Damn bad luck I didn’t! You something off now or I’ll chuck something a bit heavier.”.’

  Thus the indignant Entwhistle to his wife. Thus, later that same evening, the histrionic Entwhistle in the bar of The Coach and Horses. Thus the important Entwhistle in the Fordfield police station three days later.

  2

  James Wilberforce Burgess Junior was whipping his top upon the cement path outside Ockleton station booking office.

  James Wilberforce Burgess Senior, Ockleton’s stationmaster, porter and level-crossing operator, watched for a moment with fatherly pride and then turned away to enter the hutch which was his booking office. He came out of the hutch a moment later a good deal faster than he had gone in. A sudden howl from James Wilberforce Junior had torn wailing way through the sunny morning.

  James Wilberforce Junior was huddled against the wall with one hand at his ear and the other rubbing at his eyes. His top and his whip lay at his feet. Just within the doorless entrance was ‘that there Mr Marsh.’

  The Ockleton Burgesses have not, for many generations, been renowned for physical courage. Some fathers—however big, however sinister-seeming, the assaulter of their innocent child—would have hit first and spoken afterwards. Burgess did not hit at all. He said, instead, a great deal. That there Mr Marsh stood in the shadow, the odd, pointed black hat tilted forward upon his head. The dark glasses made pits in his face instead of eyes; his white teeth gleamed when he smiled his savage, humourless and twisted smile. He seemed to Burgess, no less than previously to Entwhistle, ‘a feen in ’uman shape.’ He cut presently across the whiningly indignant outburst of outraged fatherhood. He said:

  ‘Cut it out! Cut it right out! I want a ticket for London.’ His deep, somehow foreign voice boomed round the tiny brick box.

  ‘Goin’ about,’ said James Wilberforce Burgess Senior, ‘strikin’ defenceless children! Don’t you know it’s dangerous to ’it a child on the yeerole?’

  Mr Marsh took a step forward. Mr Burgess took three steps backwards. Mr Marsh pointed to the door of the ticket hutch. Mr Marsh said, and Mr Burgess swore afterwards that his teeth did not part when he said it:

  ‘Into the kennel you go, little puppy. And give me a ticket for London.’

  Here Mr Marsh, Burgess reported, put his hand into his pocket and pulled out half a crown which, with a half-turn of his body, he threw to the still snivelling James Wilberforce Junior.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’ll buy him a new ear! Blasted kid!’

  ‘All very well, sir,’ said Burgess, now speaking through the pigeon-hole, ‘walking about, striking defenceless children …’

  Into the pigeon-hole Mr Marsh thrust his dark face.

  ‘Give me,’ said Mr Burgess afterwards, ‘a fair turn, sort of as if the devil was looking at you through a ’ole.’

  Mr Marsh received his ticket. Mr Marsh was presently borne away by the 9.10 Slow Up from Ockleton. He had bought a day-return ticket.

  Upon the Ockleton platform that night, there waited for Mr Marsh’s return not only James Wilberforce Burgess Senior but James Wilberforce Burgess Senior’s sister’s husband, one Arthur Widgery. This was a big and beery person whose only joy in life, after beer, was performing the series of actions which he invariably described as ‘drawin’ off of ’im and pastin’ ’im one alongside the jaw!’

  But Mr Marsh did not take advantage of the return half of his ticket.

  3

  Mr Basil Musgrove, who had charge of the booking office of the Royal Theatre, was this morning presenting an even more than usually bored exterior to the world. Last night Mr Musgrove had been out with a set of persons to whom he refe
rred as the boys. Consequently Mr Musgrove, underneath his patent leather hair, had a head which was red hot and bumping.

  Mr Musgrove said into the telephone: ‘No, meddam. We do not book any seats at all under three shillings!’

  Mr Musgrove said, to a purply-powdered face peering in through his pigeon-hole: ‘No, meddam, we have no stalls whatsoever for this evening’s performance. I am sorry.’

  Mr Musgrove, when the face had vanished, put his head upon his hand and wished that the boys would not, quite so consistently, be boys. Mr Musgrove’s heavy lids dropped over his eyes. Mr Musgrove slept.

  Mr Musgrove was awakened most rudely. Something cold and sharp and painful kept rapping against the end of his nose. Mr Musgrove put up feeble hands to brush this annoyance away, but, instead of being brushed away, its rappings grew more frequent and really so discomfortable that Mr Musgrove’s eyes were forced to open. With the opening of his eyes, the world came back with a rush. Mr Musgrove had been sleeping at his job! He saw now what it was that had awakened him. It was the ferrule of an ebony walking-stick. He looked down this stick. The ferrule was now hovering barely half an inch from the end of his nose. Peering round the stick, he saw a strange unusual sight; a pair of dark goggling, blank eyes set in a face which, he told some of those boys the next night, was just like Old Nick looking at you …

  Mr Musgrove drew back with a start. His chair tilted underneath him and he narrowly escaped a fall.

  The walking-stick was withdrawn. The window now was filled with this devil’s head under the strange, pointed black hat; there were dark glasses; a little grey block of beard; a white, twisted, inimical smile.

  ‘Er …’ said Mr Musgrove, ‘er … er … I beg … er …’

  The stranger said a word. And then: ‘Any stalls tomorrow night?’

  ‘No. No,’ said Mr Musgrove, ‘no, no, no!’

  ‘I heard,’ said the stranger, ‘what you said the first time.’

  Mr Musgrove strove to collect his scattered wits. ‘No, sir. No. We are entirely full for both the matinee and the evening performance today.’