by John Creasey
‘Oh, but look here, he’s one of the best,’ said Freddie loudly. ‘It’s all nonsense. I’d better go and see them –’
He had no idea what he would say if he did see them, but had a desperate urge to do and say something. Hang it, even the police had sense, and to arrest a man like Uncle Matthew was crazy. Haywire. Freddie started manfully for the door.
‘Sir!’ Bennet’s voice was pitiable.
‘All right, Bennet, I won’t do anything rash.’
‘It isn’t that, sir. It’s – Mr Matthew asked me to – to give you these papers, sir. Whatever happens you are to keep them, sir. There – there’s a letter from him as well.’
Bennet, speaking in a whisper that only just reached the younger man’s ears, was holding out two envelopes. Freddie turned resolutely from the door.
‘When did he give you these?’
‘He – he told me you were to have them if the police came sir. You were to hide them – the letter –’
Bennet was obviously incapable of coherent thought. Poor blighter, he had worked for Matthew for fifteen years, Freddie reminded himself. Damned blow, to find the man you work for wanted by the police on a murder charge. But it was absurd, no man in his right senses would suspect Uncle Matthew of any crime. As for the murder of that cove Doriennet, why, Uncle Matt had been in the house all the time.
Freddie forgot that he was not sure how long Doriennet had been dead. He scowled as he took the papers.
‘You – you aren’t to say a word, sir, to anyone.’
‘Right-ho, Bennet, don’t you worry. But hang it, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go along and see those idiots!’
‘I – I should read the letter first, sir.’
Freddie hesitated, and then ripped open the smaller envelope. The other was heavily sealed, and the only writing on it was in the top left hand corner, where three letters had been written, with three figures following:
UMY – 854
‘Odd,’ decided Freddie.
He did not see the cunning gleam in Bennet’s eyes as the butler slipped out of the room. He turned the paper from the small envelope over twice, and scowled. For there was no letter. Only a few words were written on the paper, and Uncle Matt’s easily recognisable initials were scrawled beneath.
Keep these until called for by
someone quoting UMY – 854. Ask
no questions. M.H.
‘Well – I’m – damned!’ decided Freddie.
He stared down at the sealed envelope, and then wondered what the devil would happen if the police found them in his possession. Well, he had the letter to show that he had not kept them for long. It was not dated though, unusual for Uncle Matthew, who usually dated everything, from a pay envelope to a memo about the wastage of pencil leads in the general office.
Freddie almost fell a victim to a ravenous curiosity. Above all things he wanted to know what was in the envelope, what the mysterious papers contained. Did they hold the solution of the murder?
If they did, should he not go to the police?
That loyalty which Lois Dacre had read in Freddie Kingham’s face showed itself again. Damn it, he was half-assuming that Uncle Matt did know something about Doriennet’s murder, and that was silly.
He had never before realised just how unpleasant and yet intriguing it was to hide something from the police. There was a spice of danger and adventure in it. Adventure! He – but where should he put it? If the police took Uncle Matt, he reasoned, they would search the house pretty thoroughly. No use putting stuff like that in the lining of his suit, for instance. Oh, Lord, and he had not been to see Uncle Matt yet.
Freddie considered a hiding place thoughtfully.
He dismissed several possibilities as too obvious. It was surprisingly difficult to find a place where you could hide an envelope of any size. And he could not put it anywhere in the grounds, because of that crowd of police, or whoever they were.
Freddie Kingham suddenly remembered the grim-faced man Kerr. If Kerr should come after him –
‘Blast it!’ snapped Freddie aloud. ‘I’ll keep it in my pocket, they probably won’t search me. I’ll make ’em get a warrant before they do, anyhow.’
Annoyed, pugnacious, a little scared and vastly intrigued, Kingham tucked both envelopes in his pocket and hurried out of the room. He saw two plain-clothes men, actually Department Z agents, in the hall. They seemed to be guarding the drawing-room door. Freddie walked towards them.
‘Sorry, son. The room is engaged for a few minutes.’
The speaker was a tall, cumbersome-looking man named Loftus, one of Craigie’s brightest young agents.
Freddie frowned. The ‘son’ went right under his skin.
‘It’s my house,’ he said mildly.
‘Well – Mr Horn’s, shall we say?’
That was the last straw. Freddie glared at the man, pushed past him, and had the handle of the door turning before Loftus could stop him. Loftus grabbed the youngster’s arm, and Freddie, who had one big art – that of self-defence – sent a surprisingly fast short-arm jab towards Loftus’s middle.
But Loftus was not there to take it.
He dodged and, being large, simply lifted Freddie off his feet. Kingham struggled, and as he did so the envelope, with the lettering ‘UMY – 854’, dropped with a loud plop on to the floor.
Chapter 12
Bad for Matthew Horn
Five hours sleep, a moderately satisfying meal, treatment of minor burns, and cold compresses on a twisted ankle, did a great deal to make Bob Kerr feel capable of working.
He asked for his clothes so that he could get up. The nurse and the doctor refused. He was not well enough to get up: it would in fact be madness for him to get up, and if he put any weight on the injured ankle he would be in bed for a week.
Without a trace of that delirium that had worried Craigie, Kerr eased himself up in bed and regarded both nurse and doctor.
‘I’m getting up,’ he said. ‘If my clothes aren’t here within three minutes, I’ll get up without them. You’re probably quite right and I’m probably a ruddy fool, but I’m getting up.’
The doctor wanted to swear at him. Sir Wilfred Mayer had gone off duty, and the other had no idea who Kerr was. He had been told he was the famous flying ace, but fame outside medical research meant nothing to that earnest physician.
‘Now, Mr Kerr –’
Kerr flung the bedclothes off, and climbed out of bed, careful to stand only on his left foot. He grabbed a small chair, and using it as a walking stick he started for the door.
The doctor shrugged helplessly.
‘All right. As we’re short of strait-jackets you may have your clothes. But I take no responsibility.’
Kerr smiled disarmingly.
‘I really do appreciate your efforts. I’m all wrong, I know, but I can get about at a pinch, and I’ve a desperately urgent reason for wanting to be off right now. By the way, my friends in the other ward – Davidson and Carruthers.’
The doctor unbent a little, and the nurse slipped out for Kerr’s clothes and a crutch. What an astonishing change in the man when he smiled!
‘Mr Davidson will be all right, there’s no question of it. Three or four days here, and then a week or two’s rest. Mr Carruthers – well, there’s every chance, but he’s not out of danger yet. The throat wound went very deep. I wonder’ – the doctor looked at Kerr curiously – ‘how it happened. Not suicide, surely?’
Kerr laughed.
‘Certainly not suicide, doctor. Murder attempted but murder not done, thank heavens. Ah, nurse, you’re a friend in a thousand.’
She helped him dress, and he hobbled out of the ward with the help of a crutch. He felt damned silly, but he supposed it was wise to use the thing. He spent five minutes in Wally Davidson’s ward, thankful to find Davidson able to speak and smile.
‘What happened at Criff’s, Wally?’
‘That blasted little runt of a servant,’ said Davidson with a s
cowl. ‘I’ve told Trale. Carry and I took the beggar for granted, I’m afraid, and he pulled a gun on us. A couple of minutes later that Kryn fellow came in, and a brace of others. We were hit over the head so effectively that we neither saw nor felt what happened next.’
Kerr looked grim.
‘You know they got Criff?’
‘Yes. How’re things?’
‘With the aid of my crutch I’m going to find out,’ said Kerr with a grin. ‘Keep it up, old man.’
Davidson gave the ghost of a grin as Kerr hobbled out. A porter fetched him a taxi, and at eight o’clock, when darkness had just settled over London, Kerr reached Craigie’s office.
Craigie was in.
* * *
‘And so it looks bad for Matthew Horn,’ said Gordon Craigie some half-an-hour afterwards. ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that he had the papers, and they prove his complicity with Criff up to the hilt.’
‘Hmn,’ said Kerr. ‘Horn says he didn’t give them to the butler, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes. But Bennet seems genuine, he’s worked for Horn for fifteen years. Young Kingham admits that the initials are in his uncle’s writing, and he’s obviously dying to say they’re not. And remember Bettin mentioned Horn.’
‘I suppose Bettin had learned something and was holding out on you,’ grunted Kerr.
‘Looks like it, poor fellow. And of course Kryn knew he knew, and aimed to stop him passing the news on. It’s a bad show altogether.’
‘Where’s Horn now?’
‘We brought him up to Cannon Street.’
‘Did he know of Bettin’s murder beforehand?’
‘Well – he said not. But he came precious near to giving himself away. I taxed him with it, and – well, it was just an impression. I think he either knew or expected it.’
‘And yet he won’t say a word?’
‘He says plenty. Chiefly that he did not give the papers to Bennet, that he does not know what ‘UMY – 854’ means, that he has never had any business with Adam Criff, private or otherwise.’
Kerr lit a cigarette, and propped his foot a little higher on a stool in front of him.
‘And “UMY – 854” is the number that Stefan Vonovitch, who murdered Prell, is registered with at the Soviet Secret Service. The papers comprise a list of Criff’s activities in organising the gang at Grattle Street, an outline of the arrangements to kill Doriennet, your humble servant, and others. All past events, Gordon. If I’d been Horn I’d have burned the damned things.’
‘There were suggestions for further work,’ said Craigie, ‘but they don’t mean much. They foreshadow the blockade against English goods, too. But there’s no apparent reason why Horn should have kept them, and sent them with the message to young Kingham.’
Kerr shook his head.
‘I don’t like it, Gordon, it looks like a frame-up. Supposing someone else gave them to Bennet, with the instructions to pass them on as he did? It saves the other fellow, and it covers everything by putting Horn on the spot. Who else have we got to consider down there, now?’
‘Young Kingham, and his father.’
‘An ineffective but pleasant youngster, and a feckless artist, both dependent on Matthew Horn for a livelihood. Then there’s Bennet, and the other servants, while I met a queer customer named Browning the other day. Did you see him?’
‘Queer’s the word,’ said Craigie. ‘But harmless. Shell-shock.’
‘People have called me harmless,’ Kerr said with a grin. ‘I see that the Press have labelled Bettin’s murder as the end of a private feud. A good idea, but I’ll bet it wasn’t Wishart’s.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Craigie, drily. ‘Now, Bob. It’s reasonable to assume that Bettin had been in touch with Matthew Horn, or had reason to believe Horn was in the affair. And to stop him from talking, he was killed. Prell was killed in Baj in exactly the same way and for the same reason. Now Bettin either had the wrong end of the stick, or Horn does know something.’
‘I’d like to see him,’ said Kerr. ‘Can we have him here? By the way, have you heard from Lois lately?’
Craigie telephoned for Matthew Horn to be brought over – Superintendent Miller was still on duty and would look after it in person – and then answered the second question.
‘Lois is doing very well, Bob. She discovered that Mondell was working for Criff, and that she fell in love with young Falling, as he did with her. Now that he’s dead, Mondell is prepared to do anything to avenge him. Her own words. We shall probably find her very useful, as she’s been asked to carry on with the other side.’
Kerr’s eyes gleamed.
‘And is she going to?’
‘She says she will. I daren’t give her too much information, of course, in case she talks under pressure, but when you get over to Baj it will be useful to have her there.’
Kerr grimaced.
‘At this rate I’ll be in Baj in a month’s time, when the shindy’s over. Joking apart, it will be three days before I can stand on both feet decently.’
Craigie shrugged his shoulders.
‘It can’t be helped. I want you to go, and I’ve a feeling that things will quieten down for a bit. Well now – how does it strike you, as far as we’ve gone?’
Kerr said it struck him as being the most unholy mess ever, with odds and ends everywhere. But when he and Craigie had worked it out, they realised the odds and ends were not so many, and the answers to a few pertinent questions would cover all the other irrelevancies.
Things like Doriennet’s murder, Falling’s death, the chasing about London, the fire at Devennet Court, Bettin’s assassination together with Prell’s, were all smaller factors in the major questions. And the major questions were:
1.For whom had Criff been working?
2.How many of the members of the organisation still remained in England?
3.Why were trade relations being broken between England and Vallena, and if the answer was the obvious one – for individuals to profit by the trade that would be taken by someone else – who was most likely to benefit?
4.Was Horn telling the truth?
5.Were there any reasons for suspecting that the original political possibilities of civil war in Vallena still existed?
6.If so, what effect would the cessation of English trade have on such a war?
7.Apart from (a) civil war possibilities and (b) individual profit-making by persons unknown, was anything happening that might be calculated to make England alter her attitude towards the mid-European situation?
8.(And to Craigie the most important). Was some other power behind the Vallenian organisation, and had that power any ill-intent towards England?
‘And if it isn’t political, covering items 5, 6, 7 and 8,’ said Bob Kerr, ‘why did they fear that we would butt in? They must have known that what they were doing would attract our attention or they would not have gone bald-headed for us.’
‘That’s exactly what we said after you’d seen Doriennet,’ said Craigie rather wearily. ‘And – here’s someone.’
The little green light in the mantelpiece showed, and a few seconds later Miller came in with Matthew Horn.
Despite a harassing time – bordering, he claimed, on third degree – Horn still spoke with that surprisingly unflurried voice. He steadfastly denied having given Bennet the papers. On the other hand he said that Bennet had given him fifteen years of first-class service.
Kerr asked a few questions, some trivial and some important, but could not shake the story. Horn was taken away, apparently convinced that he was the victim of a frame-up.
‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s telling the truth,’ said Kerr. ‘You’re having Bennet and young Kingham watched? And the father?’
‘Yes. Freddie Kingham’s worked up about the whole affair,’ said Craigie with a slow smile. ‘His father’s a different sort. A pontifical old devil, and his chief concern seems to be what will happen to him if his brother is convicted of murder.’
&nbs
p; ‘Does Horn keep him altogether?’
‘Practically. Kingham sells a few pictures occasionally, but it amounts to no more than beer money. He’s well known in practically every Camberley pub.’
‘Hm,’ said Kerr, ‘Horn seems a generous type of fellow.’
Craigie shrugged.
‘He’s done well, his in-laws haven’t. A man with a family conscience complex. All his staff have been with him for years. A cook told me that he was extremely fond of his sister, Kingham’s wife, and kept the family because of her. There was a quarrel three years ago, but apparently it was patched up.’
‘Who’s she favour?’ demanded Kerr.
‘She’s devoted to Horn – all the servants are – and she likes Freddie. She’s no time for Joshua Kingham, whom she calls a sponging wastrel. She also says that the other Kingham brother, Samuel, is as bad as his father. He has a bad reputation with women.’
Kerr’s slanting brows raised.
‘Hm. And that caused the one quarrel.’
‘Apparently. Samuel was upsetting the maids, and he acted badly by one or two of them. On the understanding that he went to the colonies, Matthew Horn continued his allowance, and also looked after the other two. Samuel Kingham’s in Africa, and they hear from him once a month, when he acknowledges his allowance. On the surface of it, they’re the last family in the world to be mixed up in a show like this, but I can’t see how we can let them out altogether. Horn must know something or Bettin would not have mentioned him.’
‘Unless,’ said Kerr, harping back on the old line, ‘Bettin had wrong information. Oh well, I’ll get back. If I nurse the ankle for a day, and start for Baj, say, on Wednesday morning, it should be usable by the time I get there.’
Craigie nodded, and half-smiled.
‘Think Lois would like a trip?’
‘I took it for granted,’ Kerr said with a cheerful grin.
But making his way laboriously to 77g, Brook Street, Kerr was filled with a nagging anxiety.
If they weren’t damned careful, there would be a flare-up of some kind, involving England deeply and dangerously. It did not look like a war stunt: but if it robbed England of several hundred millions of trade per annum, it was big enough to justify the trouble that had already been stirred.
