Off the Record

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Which is the story in the newspapers was essentially true,’ said Ferguson with a shrug. ‘Gerard Carrington believes Mr Otterbourne committed suicide. I can see why my stepfather approached Gerard Carrington. He’s a scientist at the University of London and, in many ways, a much better bet than his father. He’s not as brilliant as the Professor, perhaps, but he’s a much more reasonable type. He’s the ideal man – perhaps the only man – to bring the new machine to a point where it’s ready for production.’

  ‘Couldn’t that be why your stepfather’s so pleased?’ suggested Jack. ‘I mean, I don’t know much about science and so on, but to get someone to step into the breach like that must have been a huge weight off his mind.’

  Ferguson glanced up. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? However, Gerard Carrington is nobody’s fool and he’s arguing the toss about the contract. I expected my stepfather to be furious, but he isn’t. He’s completely and utterly smug. Somehow, in some way, things have worked out for him. He’s as pleased as punch. I can’t get to the bottom of it, but I’m sure there’s something funny going on.’

  Jack looked at Ferguson thoughtfully. He was alive with anxiety. ‘What’s eating you? There’s more to this than a suspicion that your stepfather has brought off a smart piece of business.’

  Ferguson took a deep breath. ‘It’s the Stoke Horam suicides, Haldean. Two men died in very peculiar circumstances.’ There were white lines etched round his mouth and his eyes were narrow with tension. ‘My stepfather’s ruthless. And he’s very happy.’ His meaning was obvious.

  ‘Do you think he’s responsible?’ asked Jack, quietly.

  ‘I don’t know!’ exploded Ferguson. He made a chopping motion with his hand as if to physically fend off the suggestion. ‘Charles Otterbourne and Professor Carrington committed suicide. The coroner said so.’ He stopped, catching his breath. ‘I know,’ he added wearily. ‘Anything else sounds ridiculous.’ He met Jack’s eyes squarely. ‘I said I didn’t like him. I admit that, but I know what he’s capable of. I don’t know what he did or how he engineered it, but I’m sure the full truth hasn’t come to light. I don’t know what to do. Everything seems so cut and dried but it’s wrong.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to the police?’

  ‘And tell them what?’ demanded Ferguson. ‘I haven’t got any evidence. I’d be laughed at or, worse than that, be accused of having my own axe to grind.’

  Jack finished his cigarette in silence. ‘What if I have a word with my friend, Bill Rackham? He’s a Scotland Yard man. He’ll be discreet, I know.’

  Ferguson looked relieved. ‘I’d be very grateful. I might be barking up the wrong tree. If my stepfather’s innocent, I’ll be glad to hear it. It’s just that I can’t get it out of my mind that he might not be.’

  ‘The Charles Otterbourne case?’ said Inspector William Rackham thoughtfully.

  Jack had abandoned his plans both for the pub and the park to follow up his promise to Ferguson. They were in Rackham’s rooms off Russell Square, the upper floor of an inconvenient but beautifully proportioned Georgian building. The sash windows stood open, the last of the evening sun gilding the well-worn carpet and comfortable chairs.

  ‘Help yourself to whisky, Jack,’ Rackham said, gesturing to the decanter on the sideboard, ‘or there’s beer, if you’d rather.’ He moved a heap of newspapers off the sofa and sat down. ‘It’s certainly a puzzle about Dunbar. I don’t know why he should be so happy.’

  Jack took the cork out of a bottle of Bass and, pouring out a glass, sat down in the opposite chair. He and Bill Rackham, a big, untidy ginger-haired Northerner, were good friends, and Jack trusted his judgement. ‘So you don’t think there’s anything in it?’

  ‘I don’t know what there can be,’ said Bill. ‘I’d have said Dunbar was very much a loser from the affair. I went into the Otterbourne case fairly closely at the time as I had a hunch – incorrectly as it turned out – that we would be called in. After you telephoned I looked up my notes. The coroner brought in a verdict of suicide on Charles Otterbourne, I know, but in the first instance it looked as if Otterbourne had been murdered by Professor Carrington.’

  ‘The Professor hanged himself while he was under arrest, didn’t he?’

  Rackham nodded. ‘That’s right. Gibson, the officer in charge of the case, had to endure a reprimand from the coroner which, I think, was probably deserved. After all, Professor Carrington was clearly unstable and shouldn’t have been left alone. His son said as much, and so did his doctor. I did wonder, though, if the Professor’s suicide made the coroner’s verdict a bit more sympathetic than it might have been.’

  ‘You mean Professor Carrington could have murdered Otterbourne after all?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? However, the coroner heard the evidence and, although there didn’t seem any real reason to doubt his verdict, it all seemed a bit neat.’

  ‘It’s got a closed-off quality about it, hasn’t it?’ agreed Jack. He stretched his legs out on the footstool with relief.

  ‘How’s your leg?’ asked Rackham, seeing his mouth contract briefly. Jack had had a slight limp for as long as Rackham had known him, a souvenir of the war, but he had recently broken his leg badly and, although the bone had healed, the limp had worsened.

  ‘Not bad,’ Jack said dismissively.

  ‘Come off it,’ said Rackham, seeing the lines of strain on his friend’s dark, rather gypsy-like face. ‘It looks like it’s giving you the pip.’

  Jack smiled broadly. ‘All right, Mister Detective-Inspector, sir, you’ve got me bang to rights. I’m being a brave little soldier. I hope you’re suitably impressed. My wretched leg hurts like sin and I’ve been on my feet for ages. I did a bit of digging in Fleet Street before I came to see you. Stanhope gave me the background to the case.’

  ‘Stanhope of The Messenger?’

  ‘That’s the lad. Stanhope was disappointed with the Stoke Horam case. He was all geared up to shock us with sensational revelations, when it more or less petered out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it had petered out, Jack,’ countered Rackham. ‘The papers were full of it for weeks. With the not-so-saintly Mr Otterbourne on the one hand and a genuine mad scientist on the other, the press had a field day. Ernest Stanhope doesn’t know when he’s well off.’

  ‘He meant as a crime,’ said Jack. ‘Like you, he thought the verdict on Charles Otterbourne was very sympathetic to Professor Carrington. His money’s on the Professor for murder. However, that’s not what’s eating my pal, Hector Ferguson. He didn’t want to come right out and say it, but he’s worried, granted how pleased Dunbar is, that his stepfather might be the real villain of the piece.’

  Rackham’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Dunbar murdered Charles Otterbourne, you mean?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Can you rely on Ferguson? It sounds as if he may have it in for his stepfather.’

  ‘He admitted he didn’t like him,’ said Jack with a shrug. ‘He said he was a ruthless beggar. I had the impression Ferguson was trying to be objective. He’s a very thoughtful Scot. You know the type, Bill. He’ll worry away at a thing for ages before he comes to a conclusion, but when he has worked something out, you can be sure he’s got a rock-solid line of argument to back him up. He’s not someone to make an accusation lightly and, to be fair to him, he hasn’t done that.’

  ‘And Andrew Dunbar is happy with the way things have worked out.’ Bill took a cigarette from the box. ‘That’s interesting, but I can’t see it adds up. Dunbar was hoping Charles Otterbourne was going to buy his firm. Therefore it’s to Dunbar’s advantage that Otterbourne was alive to put the deal through. So on that count, Dunbar’s out of it, yes?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Jack.

  ‘Now, as I understand it, Professor Carrington was Dunbar’s star prize. He’d agreed to make this marvellous machine at a knockdown price for Dunbar. I can’t see why Dunbar would kill Otterbourne
and he certainly wouldn’t do it so as to incriminate the Professor. Professor Carrington wouldn’t be any use to Dunbar if he was tried and hanged.’

  ‘Could Gerard Carrington be in league with Dunbar, perhaps? No, that won’t work, not if he’s trying to negotiate a fairer contract.’

  ‘Exactly, Jack. Dunbar would hardly conspire to murder if it meant he was going to be out of pocket over the deal. I suppose Gerard Carrington could have turned nasty afterwards,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, but Dunbar wouldn’t be happy about that, would he? He’d be hopping mad.’

  ‘True enough,’ agreed Rackham with a frown.

  ‘Say Charles Otterbourne didn’t commit suicide,’ said Jack. ‘Is there anyone else in the running, apart from the Professor?’

  ‘There’s the servants, of course. They gave evidence at the inquest, but I can’t see they’d have anything to gain. Gerard Carrington, but we’ve more or less covered him. I can’t see why he’d murder Charles Otterbourne. It could be to his advantage that his father died, perhaps, but I don’t see how he could have done it, as his father was in a cell at the police station. Professor Carrington was certainly alive when he left. Inspector Gibson testified to that effect.’

  ‘So he’s out of it.’ Jack ran a hand through his dark hair in a dissatisfied way. ‘Anyone else? Chuck the lighter over, Bill. What about the bloke who caused a sensation in court when he blew the gaff about Mr Otterbourne’s jiggery-pokery with the pension funds?’

  ‘That’s Hugo Ragnall, the secretary, but not only didn’t he have anything to gain, he wasn’t there. He’d discovered the fraud the night before. The following morning he told Stephen Lewis, Otterbourne’s son-in-law, what he’d found and the pair of them had decided to confront Mr Otterbourne after Professor Carrington and Dunbar had gone. Neither man wanted to be around during the day. Stephen Lewis said that the thought of trying to act naturally with the bombshell of the pension funds hanging over them was too much, so they made their excuses and disappeared.’

  ‘Yes, I can see it would be difficult,’ agreed Jack. ‘Do you know where they got to?’

  ‘Lewis went off to his uncle’s, a Colonel Willoughby, and Ragnall came up to London for the day.’

  ‘Stanhope mentioned Stephen Lewis,’ said Jack. ‘He’s pitched in and saved the firm. It looked as if the company might go under but Lewis turned it round. According to Stanhope, Lewis restored a lot of confidence in the business and it looks as if it’s going to pull through. What about Mr Otterbourne’s daughter?’

  ‘She was knocked sideways by her father’s death, by all accounts. He was a dictatorial sort of beggar though, and she might have resented it. Having said that, there was no particular reason why she and her husband should continue living with her father if she didn’t want to. It seems a bit extreme to bump him off when all she had to do was move out. Besides that, she was in the kitchen talking to the cook when it happened.’ Rackham shook his head. ‘It was an odd case altogether, Jack. There’s all sorts of threads that could have lead somewhere but it all seemed to be done and dusted. With the two verdicts of suicide it was never put under the spotlight as a murder investigation would have been, but if it was murder, then the chief suspect has to be Professor Carrington.’

  ‘But there’s the happy Mr Dunbar.’

  ‘I’m blowed if I know what he’s so happy about.’ Rackham ran his hand round his chin. ‘Leave it with me. I don’t know what I can do, but I can look at the files again. You never know, they might suggest something.’

  Steve Lewis and Gerry Carrington looked up as Molly came in to the study. ‘I wondered if you had finished?’ she asked with a smile. She glanced at the clock. ‘Would you like to join us for dinner, Gerry?’

  For the last five weeks, Gerry Carrington had been a regular visitor at the flat. Steve, after that surprisingly acute moment of insight, never mentioned his fears again. Not that, thought Molly, looking at her big, fair-haired husband affectionately, there was anything to be jealous about. She’d allowed herself to be silly about Gerry, which was stupid of her. It didn’t stop Gerry being as pleasant, as rumpled and as undoubtedly brilliant as ever, but it didn’t mean anything to her now. He was simply Steve’s cousin and friend. That was it, she told herself, stamping on the odd wayward contradiction her mind threw up.

  Steve welcomed her acceptance of Gerry with frank relief. Gerry was, according to Steve, the only man on earth who could change Professor Carrington’s work from a heap of wood and wires and reams of indecipherable diagrams into a useable machine. And, if only they could negotiate a deal with Dunbar, that machine would make Otterbourne’s profitable again. The two men had been working since lunchtime. They were meeting Dunbar tomorrow, and Steve hoped that would result in a concrete deal.

  Gerry Carrington stood up. ‘I won’t stop for dinner, thanks. It’s very kind of you, but no. I think I’d like an early night.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘By jingo, I’m tired.’

  ‘You’re not the only one, old man,’ said Steve, trying not to yawn in turn. He stood up from the table, stretching his shoulders. ‘Still, I think we’ve got something concrete to show Dunbar. That was a very worthwhile session, Gerry.’ He glanced at the papers on the table. ‘I’ll go through these this evening and put our ideas in some sort of order. I want to check the figures with Ragnall but, with any luck, we’ve got a workable scheme to present to Dunbar tomorrow.’ He walked to the sideboard. ‘Have a drink before you go, Gerry,’ he said hospitably. ‘Sherry for you, Molly?’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking the glass from him. ‘I’m glad it’s gone well. What are you going to say to Mr Dunbar?’

  Steve and Gerry exchanged looks and laughed. ‘We’re going to tell him he can’t have it all his own way,’ said Gerry. He tapped the folder with his forefinger. ‘With these plans I can produce a commercial model but I’m jolly well not going to unless Dunbar puts some more money on the table.’ He let out a worried breath. ‘I can’t tell you how wary I feel about Dunbar. The last few times I’ve met him he’s been unbearable.’

  Steve looked at him quickly. ‘So you’ve noticed that, have you?’

  Gerry Carrington nodded. ‘It’s unmistakable. He’s horribly smug about something. Maybe he thinks he can get one over on me, but I’ve told him I’m not going to be bound by that disgraceful contract he signed with my poor father. He’s got something up his sleeve, but I don’t know what. I don’t trust him.’

  ‘I don’t trust him either, but what I want to ensure is that once Dunbar has got the machine, he doesn’t simply up and sell his firm to one of the big boys such as H.M.V. or Victrola. Otterbourne’s hasn’t had a new product for years. We need your machine, Gerry,’

  Molly wrinkled her forehead, puzzled. ‘I don’t understand. No one seems to like Mr Dunbar so why doesn’t Gerry simply make the machine and sell it to us? Or to H.M.V. or whomever,’ she added. She looked at Gerry. ‘I’d rather you sold it to us, of course, but I suppose you can sell it to anyone you like.’

  ‘Because Dunbar’s got the original model,’ said Gerry. ‘It belongs to him. Unfortunately, there’s no two ways about that. There’s also a question of patents. Dunbar got my father to take out a patent on certain important components that I’ve used. And, although I could say that the two machines are different, the lawyers would have a field day arguing about it in court. Besides that,’ he added, in a different voice, ‘I want people to know it was my father’s machine.’ His voice was very quiet and Molly’s heart gave an unexpected little tug. ‘It was his machine, you know. I’ve tidied it up and made it useable, but he was the brains behind it. He lived for his work and I’d like him to be remembered for that.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘Incidentally, talking about my father, I had a letter from Colonel Willoughby about him a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t got round to replying. I’ve been busy, I know, but I can’t really think what to say.’

  ‘Colonel Willoughby?’ repeated Steve. ‘Uncle Maurice, you mean?’r />
  ‘Yes. I don’t know what to make of it. It was a very stiff and proper letter. He said he offered his sympathies. As he loathed my father, I’m not so sure he was offering anything of the sort.’

  Steve grinned. ‘He’s a ferocious old devil but his bark’s worse than his bite. He expects life to be conducted on military lines. I’m quite fond of him in an odd sort of way. You’ve never met him, have you, Gerry?’

  ‘No. The family quarrel goes back years.’

  ‘What was it about?’ asked Steve. ‘I never knew the details.’ He paused, delicately. ‘Faults on both sides, perhaps?’

  Gerry laughed ruefully. ‘Not really. I know the guv’nor could quarrel with virtually anyone but this wasn’t down to him. My grandfather was a Lithuanian. He was terribly clever but as poor as church mouse. After my grandmother died he found it a real struggle to look after my father. He worked for Sir Josiah Carrington, who owned a string of coal mines. He saved him a fortune by improving his pumping engines and Sir Josiah, as a reward, more or less adopted my father.’ He grinned. ‘Unfortunately, from my point of view, Sir Josiah had very strict views about inherited wealth. He left all his money to found Carrington Hall, Cambridge, but he did provide for my father’s education and bestowed his surname on him.’

  ‘So your name isn’t really Carrington at all?’ asked Molly. For some reason, that disturbed her. It seemed dishonest, somehow, to have one name and call yourself another.

  A spark of resentment showed in Gerry’s eyes. ‘It’s the name I’ve always used. The family name has about nineteen syllables in it, so I don’t intend to change. Part of the trouble was that my father looked so foreign and the Willoughbys don’t marry foreigners. When my mother did marry my father, all hell broke loose. My mother’s name was scored out of the family Bible and so on and so forth. I can’t think why the colonel wrote to me.’