“Maybe they have. I asked you when they started.”
“About a week or ten days after Ian Carpenter made his complaint,” said Carlyle truculently.
“Was that before or after you had disciplined McRolfe?”
“Oh, after. I blasted him very soon after Carpenter spoke to me. I just took a couple of days to think how to handle the matter and then I went into action.”
“Thank you. Did it occur to you that McRolfe could have been the author of the letters?”
Carlyle was genuinely surprised. “McRolfe? Why the hell should it be he? Dammit, I’d done him a favour by warning him but not kicking him out for the most heinous crime in our particular calendar; and why in heaven’s name should he mention my giving away secrets? McRolfe would not want to remind me of that in case it made me remember him and hit on him as the author, by association.” He looked carefully at Masters. “Come on, now, George. You’ve got some bee in your bonnet. What about McRolfe?”
“Let me ask you a question, Hugh. Had you any idea who it was who sent those letters?”
“None.”
“Not even though they accused you of using other people’s inventions for your own purposes?”
“Oh, that! I told you I had just a hint of suspicion that a few minor ideas were going astray, but I had no certain proof that they were.”
“Yet you roasted McRolfe.”
“Without specifically accusing him. I was determined to plug the leak if there was a leak, so I told him he was responsible not only for keeping his own mouth shut but also for the integrity of his whole department.”
“So you told me.”
“Don’t sound so bloody sceptical, George. I thought those letters came from one of the scores of minor inventors who apply to us but whom we have been unable to help or, alternatively, one whose ideas had been superseded by somebody else in another set-up altogether.”
“So you went through the list of disappointed parties?”
Hugh laughed. “Of course not. It would take weeks to follow that up and I haven’t got time to spare for fun and games like that. Besides, I guessed they would stop, and they have.”
“After an attempt on your life had been made.”
Hugh laughed again. Margot gasped.
“We might as well tell you, Hugh, that in our opinion, your pool was fouled with leptospirae so that you would catch a raging fever which, in your condition, would almost certainly have been fatal. As it turned out, Carla Sanders went into the water before you had an opportunity to do so and, as a result of the melee that caused her immersion, the pool was cleaned and scrubbed before you went in next day. That saved your life.”
“Oh, no,” gasped Margot.
“Oh, yes, love,” said Green, “and it’s thanks to you that His Nibs here has managed to fathom the whole business.”
“Thanks to me?”
“Yes, love. You gave Wanda that letter to show him, where your old man was throwing them all away.” Green turned to Hugh. “Didn’t you ever take a close look at those letters and try to find some clue in them that would point to who had written them?”
“I read them, of course.”
Green sighed and turned to Masters. “You’d better tell him, George.”
Masters accepted the photostat of the letter from the file Tip was carrying and explained how he had come to the conclusion that it had been written by a Scot.
“But don’t you see,” said Hugh, “that the letters could have been written by Carpenter. He was the one who complained about his ideas being sold and he is also a Scot.”
“True. But that was where McRolfe tried to be clever. Somehow he must have become aware of the fact that Carpenter had entered with you a complaint about his leaking secrets about the infrared leveller.
“He is a very ambitious young man, and he wants power, money and position beyond what his own, not inconsiderable, abilities will afford him in the foreseeable future. He grafted for you to get as far as he could, then he saw the chance of selling a few secrets to earn him a bit more money. Finally, and you can judge this for yourselves, he made what I believe is today called a play for your daughter.”
“For Rosemary? She wouldn’t look at him,” said Hugh.
“She did look at him, sir,” countered Tip, quietly.
“So she did,” said Margot. “I put it down to a man’s silly infatuation for a young girl. After all, there was Tom.”
“He wasn’t very good at it, perhaps,” said Tip, “and Mr. Chesterton saw through it very easily. As did Mr. Carpenter. Put quite bluntly, if McRolfe could marry your daughter, he would have the Carlyle company in his pocket. Or so he thought, and that was his aim.”
“He never stood a chance,” laughed Hugh. “Not with Rosemary.”
“I’m sure you are right, sir,” continued Tip, “but the situation wasn’t quite as straightforward as all that. You see Miss Carlyle, as many young girls will, tried to play up Mr. Chesterton. She paid attention to McRolfe to make her boyfriend not jealous, exactly, but aware that he wasn’t the only one who fancied her and to show him he shouldn’t take her too much for granted.”
“That’s absolutely right,” said Margot. “I’d noticed it for myself and was a bit amused by it, actually, but I wasn’t in the least worried. I was certain nothing would come of it and …” she shuddered, “I had no idea there was anything sinister behind it.”
“Well, I’m damned,” said Hugh, with a laugh. “And I thought I knew most things that went on round here, but I never saw that bit of byplay.”
“Men!” uttered Margot, shaking her head sadly at Tip. “But what had the freezer bags to do with it all?”
“Could we just complete the bit we were on first—” said Masters. “We have told you something of McRolfe’s plans and how we think he decided it was Carpenter who had complained about him.”
“That’s easily explained,” said Hugh. “It was because he actually had sold Carpenter’s secrets that he guessed correctly who had shopped him.”
“Good idea, chum,” said Green.
“Whatever it was,” said Masters, “because of the roasting you had given him, with the possibility of dismissal looming large and the certainty of no further promotion in the firm as long as you were at its head, Hugh, he decided to kill you. You had bruised his oversized ego and you were blocking his progress. You had to go. I think it took him some little time to come to the decision and think it all through, during which time he had received Margot’s invitation to your party. By not telling her of the business about McRolfe and the leakage of secrets, you had not stopped her from including in the guest list somebody who, since the list was first formulated, had become persona non grata.”
“That’s right,” agreed Margot.
“But then McRolfe seemed to settle things very nicely by refusing the invitation on what I suspect were false grounds. A business meeting on a Saturday night! Presumably, you, Margot, told Hugh that McRolfe had declined and he, pleased it had turned out so well, still made no mention of the fact that he thought McRolfe to be disloyal.”
“Exactly right,” said Hugh. “It seemed all was well without need for explanations.”
“Quite. Then McRolfe formulated his plans. He would cause you to contract a fatal fever from bathing in your own pool. He had got the idea from Carpenter’s file. Weil’s disease. He simply had to put contaminated urine from rats surreptitiously into your pool and you would catch a fatal illness from causes which could only be considered natural and would not lay him open to suspicion.”
“But as well as nurturing a murderous hatred of you, Hugh, his feelings towards Carpenter were murderous, too. Then, I believe, he saw what he thought was a way of wreaking vengeance on both of you. He would make it seem that Carpenter was implicated in your death should anybody ever come to the conclusion that it was not simply accidental and totally natural.
“Foolishly, he thus complicated matters. Whilst he caught his infected rats …”
&
nbsp; “I’ve been going to ask you, Chief,” said Tip. “How would he do that? And know that they were infected, I mean?”
“I cannot, of course, give you the exact steps he took, but you must know from your reading that the reservoir of infection is in an animal population among which are infected individuals who, although healthy, are excreting leptospirae in their urine. Several types of animal are carriers, but up to forty-six or forty-seven percent of rats, in various locations, have been found to harbour these particular bugs. I suspect, therefore, that if you were to set traps in damp, rat-infested places, such as sewage farms, mines, canals, docks, farms, fish houses and so on, you could be pretty certain that almost one in every two would be infected, and perhaps even every one you caught would yield leptospirae.”
“As easy as that?” asked Hugh.
“I believe so. There must be some test for infection, of course, but why bother to do esoteric laboratory work when the chances are so high in your favour? However, I am fairly certain McRolfe would grow a culture in a broth of some sort for his own satisfaction, although total failure the first time would be immaterial. He could go on trying with different rats until successful. Theoretically, at any rate.
“So, he was proposing to use information that could easily be linked to Carpenter, but to make sure that link would be spotted should the need arise, he decided to write you anonymous letters, accusing you of malpractice and threatening your life, all with a hidden Scottish flavour to the language used. I say hidden, because obviously the likes of you and Margot did not latch on to it. But should those letters fall into the hands of professionals—among whom I include myself—then sooner or later the Scottish flavour was bound to come to light. Particularly if, Hugh, the recipient had enough common sense to keep the letters so that there were five or six of them to yield their clues instead of just one rescued by his wife.”
“Sorry,” said Hugh with a laugh. “But you know how it is, old boy. You can’t take things too seriously.”
“You must, sir,” said Tip severely. “They were part of a murder plan. Miss Sanders died, remember.”
“You’re quite right,” admitted Hugh. “I’ve been a dangerous fool.”
“We’ll get on,” said Masters. “McRolfe’s own Scots origins made sure the Scottishness was not too bogus. He was certain the hints would be picked up and Carpenter, a Scot who had complained of having his secrets sold, would almost certainly come under suspicion, particularly as the means used were particularly well known to him. And demonstrably so.
“But now McRolfe realised he had made a mistake in refusing Margot’s invitation to the party. He had to have some excuse to come to the house and get near the pool. So he did an almost unheard-of thing. He rang up and asked to be reinstated as a guest. He was in luck’s way. Margot, as you hadn’t been told of the ill feeling between Hugh and McRolfe, you immediately reissued the invitation. So he came to the party.
“He arrived, we are informed, in a sports jacket in heavy material. It was a warm night and all the other men were in shirt sleeves. According to Rosemary, McRolfe was feeling the heat, and though she invited him to take his jacket off, he declined to do so. Tom Chesterton said that it was a good jacket, but that it seemed to sit heavy on McRolfe’s shoulders.
“That information given us by your two young people confirmed something we had already surmised. That was that a fair supply of water, contaminated by leptospirae, had been brought to this house that night in plastic bags carried on somebody’s person. A heavily sitting jacket on a very hot night! We wanted to find plastic bags that would suit the purpose. Ones that would not balloon out when filled. We guessed at plastic bags because they would only need to be punctured and put into the water for the bugs to escape—as opposed to pouring a bottleful of the stuff into the pool.”
“Much easier,” agreed Hugh. “And clear plastic wouldn’t be noticed in the water.”
“We questioned both Mr. and Mrs. Hookham. Mr. H. had found a load of plastic blocking the drainage hole when he cleaned the pool. Mrs. H. had picked it up and thrown it away. So we knew we were on the right track.
“Tip had the opportunity to look round your kitchen, Margot. In admiration, not looking for clues. But she spotted some strong, gussetted plastic bags by the freezer. Bags divided into compartments so that they would lie flat when filled and fit into the pockets of a man’s jacket.”
“I saw you try that out.”
“Of course you did. And you told me those bags are a standard packing item in Hugh’s despatch department. In other words, much easier for McRolfe to get hold of than Carpenter.” Masters looked round. “And that is the present situation. We have a case. We now have to complete it. To that end you, Hugh, and you, Margot, will have to make full statements to my two sergeants. Tomorrow morning, please, and I will have to trouble you both to come to the Yard to do it. Can you come straight in, before going to the office? Both of you?”
“Of course,” said Margot. “I’ll come up with Hugh.”
Carlyle grinned. “Don’t want us meeting McRolfe before we give the evidence, eh?”
Masters shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think he will be in the office at all tomorrow.”
“I see. Arresting him tonight, are you?”
As they drove back to London, Berger, who was at the wheel, asked: “Are you picking up McRolfe tonight, Chief? What I mean is, you didn’t deny it when Mr. Carlyle suggested that was what you intended to do.”
“Tonight,” agreed Masters. “What is the time now?”
“Just gone half-past six,” said Tip. “That means McRolfe will be at home now, or will be very soon.”
“Just the hammer,” said Green. “Better to pick him up at home than create a fuss in Carlyle’s office.” He turned to Masters. “I know Carlyle said arrest, George, but all civilians talk about arrest when they really mean taking in for questioning.”
“Taking in,” agreed Masters. “But we must inspect his premises.”
“Looking for infected rats, you mean? Thanks very much.”
“We shan’t do that bit. I’ve laid on for a Senior Scientific Officer to be on call at Horseferry Road. I’m hoping it will be Harry Moller.”
“Dr. Moller who helped us in Ipswich, Chief?” asked Tip.
“The same, petal,” said Green, “and don’t go making goo-goo eyes at him. He’s happily married, remember.”
Tip turned and grinned. “But he is handsome, isn’t he? All that dark wavy hair and his lean and hungry look. Very sexy.”
“If you really think so, Tip, after we get to the Yard you can take the car on and pick up whoever has been told to stand by. You know where the government forensic department hangs out?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“And to think I used to like Dr. Moller before we set out on this trip,” groaned Berger. “Handsome! Very sexy! It makes you sick.”
“See what you’ve done now, sugar?” said Green. “Upset the lad. You’re doing a Rosemary Carlyle on him. Playing him up, and look where that’s landed us.”
Tip made no reply.
Some forty minutes later, Tip ushered Dr. Harry Moller into Masters’ office. The two had worked together on a number of occasions and were, by now, friendly above the cooperation needed in their respective jobs. As Tip had said, Moller, nearing forty, was a man whom most women would find attractive. He was tall and spare, but with good shoulders. He had naturally dark skin, as if permanently suntanned. His dark, wavy hair was beginning to show flecks of grey. The face was handsome, displaying something of his great intelligence and wide knowledge, but with no trace of arrogance. A likeable man, somewhat diffident with strangers, but affable with those he knew.
“Hello, Harry, I was hoping you’d make yourself available when you heard I was asking for forensic help.”
Moller smiled as he shook hands. “I never miss a case from your little lot if I can help it, George. They provide a bit of excitement in an otherwise humdrum existence. Even if it d
oes mean staying on at the office till all hours of the night.”
“Sorry about that. I’m sure Celia will forgive me for keeping you away from home. How is she, by the way?”
“She’s gone bird-watching with a crowd of elderly twitchers. A two-day stint down on the Dart estuary.”
“Good. So we are not causing her any domestic problems by keeping you out late.”
“None whatsoever. How’s Wanda?”
“Doing fine, thank you.”
“Doing?” queried Moller. “Has she been ill?”
“The lass is infantising, Harry,” said Green. “Hoping to enlarge the Masters’ household in six or eight months time.”
“I see. Congratulations, George, to both of you.”
“Thank you, Harry. Now to work. I’d better tell you what we are about.”
“I know it’s concerned with leptospirae. My boss told me that much. So I’ve mugged up on them.”
“I told him that much when I phoned to ask for help. Anyhow, here’s the problem.”
Masters spent some ten minutes briefing Moller. At the end of that time, he said: “You’ve had a synopsis only, Harry, I know that, but we can flesh it out in the car. Now I’d like to get going. How long will it take to get to McRolfe’s address in Teddington, Sergeant?”
“Anything up to an hour, Chief,” replied Berger, “but with any luck, half that time.”
“In that case, let’s get going.”
They drew up in front of what had once been a parade of shops set well back from the pavement. Not modern shops. Built, Masters guessed, before the first world war to serve the many streets of smaller houses round about. Now most of them were no longer the shops as originally intended. There was an Indian takeaway, a warehouse-type of establishment selling TV aerials and all manner of batteries, and various offices. It was above one of these that McRolfe had his flat. The upper stories where once the traders and their families had lived were now divided off for sale to young, first-time buyers. To get to the two of which McRolfe’s was one, Berger had to shin over a six-foot locked gate. Had he rung the numbered bell on the gatepost, McRolfe, had he been at home, would presumably have come down to let them in. Berger performed this chore. They entered an asphalted yard, half-covered by an old open-fronted lean-to, once meant for storing boxes of fruit and the like, but now devoted to holding dustbins with large numbers scrawled on them in white paint, odds and ends of timber and a few pieces of disused furniture. The door to the first of the flats was on ground level, opposite this eyesore.
Bitter Water Page 23
