“Aren’t you feeling very well?” Mrs. Whitney said. “Here, come and sit down.”
He sat down and allowed his eyes to wander, inventorying the apartment, while Dr. Whitney, looking puzzled, pushed a drink into his hand.
Everything was in place, everything was right. The olive-green rugs, the inlaid dining-room chairs, the pictures were all as Wes had described them on the tape recording. When Sidney’s brain began to clear, it suddenly occurred to him that if you want to make sure of getting a busy line, the simplest way is to dial your own number.
This was the apartment where Wes had spent the night of the murder, with a girl called Gail.
“Tell me,” Sidney said, shaking himself, “has Wes ever been to this apartment?”
“No, not that I know of,” Mrs. Whitney said. “Neither June nor Wes. We’re great friends of the Pagets—Marcia and I were at school together—but the only place we ever met Rupert’s children was at old Mrs. Beattie’s place.”
“Oh,” Sidney said. “Well, you’re going to think this is very strange, but I am going to ask you the traditional question. Where were you on the night of the murder?”
He grinned, and the Whitneys both laughed, a trifle dubiously.
“We’ve got a cast-iron alibi. We were in England,” the doctor said.
“We went over on one of those seventeen-day tours,” Mrs. Whitney added.
“And this apartment was vacant then?” Sidney asked.
“Why, no, it wasn’t, as a matter of fact,” Mrs. Whitney said. “By great good luck we managed to sublet it for two weeks. It helped no end to meet the cost of the trip.”
“Nothing of the kind,” the doctor said. “It just increased the cost by three hundred dollars, or more, if the truth were told. It made my wife feel too prosperous.”
“Uh—do you mind if I ask who you sublet it to?” Sidney said.
“No, not at all. It was a Mr. Beauclair, Aubrey Beauclair, an Englishman. He had to spend two weeks in Toronto, attending company meetings, and his wife simply loathes hotels. She has a regular thing about it. He said that a hotel suite would cost them at least forty dollars a night, and she would hate it, so he would much prefer to rent our apartment while we were away.”
“Is this Mr. Beauclair an old friend?” Sidney asked.
“No—a complete stranger. We only met him—no, we never did meet him. Somebody, at some cocktail party, told him about us. He had said to this person that he was going to advertise for the sublet of an apartment, and this person said why not call the Whitneys because we were going away. He took down our name, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember who recommended us. One never does remember names from a cocktail party.”
“But how could you rent it to him without seeing him?” Sidney asked.
“Oh, that was very funny. He was just heading for Malton to catch the plane to Montreal and meet his wife, who was coming by ship, and he wouldn’t return until after we’d left. But he seemed so anxious. He suggested that I should get some form of agreement, satisfactory to me, drawn up, and leave it with my bank manager, together with the keys. He would satisfy the bank manager and give him the rent, for deposit to my account, and he would post any bond necessary against breakages, et cetera. Well, it seemed a bit odd, but an extra three hundred isn’t to be sneezed at when you’re traveling.”
“No, I suppose not,” Sidney said.
“But Mr. Grant, what’s all this got to do with Wes Beattie?” the doctor said.
“Plenty,” Sidney replied. “Will both of you promise me that you won’t say a word—not even to the Pagets—if I tell you how this fits in?”
They both promised secrecy.
“All right,” Sidney said. “Your Mr. Beauclair was, I believe, either the murderer of Edgar Beattie, or an accomplice. He rented this place so that he could lure Wes here at the time of the murder.”
“You must be mad!” Dr. Whitney said.
“But it’s impossible. Mr. Beauclair comes from a fine old English family,” Mrs. Whitney said. “Why would he…”
“Darling, you never met the man,” the doctor said. “Have you got some reason for saying this?”
“Yes,” Sidney said. “Wes gave a most detailed description of the apartment where he claimed he was taken on the night of the murder. Everybody, psychiatrists included, thought he had made up some sort of composite apartment. But every single point of description fits this place. Right down to the Modigliani in the dining room.”
“But it isn’t a Modigliani,” Mrs. Whitney said. “It’s me, painted by Grant Macdonald, although I’m sure my neck isn’t so long and swanlike.”
“You say Wes has never been here?” Sidney said.
“Never. All kinds of people have mistaken that painting for a Modigliani,” she said. “Heavens—are you sure there isn’t a mistake?”
“Almost certain,” Sidney said. “So only your bank manager saw this Beauclair? Who is he?”
“Herb Jackson,” Dr. Whitney said. “He isn’t a manager any more. He was promoted to be a superintendent at head office. Want me to call him?”
“Sure,” Sidney said, “if it isn’t too late.”
Dr. Whitney made a phone call, but returned to say that Jackson was away in Vancouver, but was coming in on the jet flight and would be at the office in the morning. “How far are you from Edgar Beattie’s old apartment?” Sidney asked.
“Five minutes’ walk, no more,” the doctor said.
Sidney was taken on a guided tour and saw everything from the overhead door in the garage to the Renoir in the bedroom. He arranged that Dr. Milton Heber and a fingerprint expert should visit the house in the morning, and departed, still trembling from the almost physical shock of walking straight into the weird world of Wes Beattie in the most prosaic section of Moore Park.
One of the most significant finds had been a halfempty carton of Cokes—untouched since September, a legacy from Mr. Beauclair. Mrs. Whitney had remarked to her husband on the strangeness of the aristocratic Beauclairs drinking soda pop.
Fifteen
“NOW YOU’RE quite sure this is the truth?” Sidney said
“Sure. Gee!” Wes said. “He was lying on his side, and you could see where his skull had…gosh, I don’t like to talk about it. I can see it right now. I grabbed the phone and started dialing—then I heard Flo call out. All of a sudden I realized the fix I was in…”
“Wes, you tell it fairly well,” Sidney said. “And it is a great big fib. I don’t blame you. I put the words in your mouth.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Wes demanded angrily.
“Yes, Wesley, dear,” Sidney said. “But this is nothing new. Do you even know the truth? Wes, I’ve found the apartment where your little girl friend took you, and it’s all as you described it.”
“You found it?”
“Yes. Now what is the truth?”
“You found it! It was true, see? But I gave up hoping anyone would ever believe it. Gee, Mr. Grant, you’re…”
“Please! Now tell me, did you ever tell your Uncle Ralph about that apartment?”
“No. Just the police, and the headshrinkers. I never really talked much to the family after I was arrested.”
“Hum!” Sidney said. “Well, now I have to talk to a banker. Ever hear of Herb Jackson in the banking business?”
“Sure, he was my boss,” Wes said.
There was a long, long pause.
“Okay, okay,” Wes said. “He was my boss—manager of my branch. Why are you staring at me like that? What’s the trouble? Hey, Mr. Grant…”
It was some minutes before Sidney recovered his speech.
“Don’t worry about me, Wes,” he said. “The smell of jails before breakfast sometimes hits me that way. Now, we were talking about Herb Jackson. I want you right now to tell me all that you know about Herb Jackson. How you met him, all your dealings with him. It is now eight-fifteen. I will ride with you in the paddy wagon to City Hall. But talk.”
> “Old Herb?” Wes said. “Gee, he was a swell guy. A great friend of Grampa’s. Gramp used to curl with him—Gramp was skip of the rink and Herb was vice. I often heard Gramp say what a wag old Herb was, and I kind of wished I could work under a manager like that.”
“Oh, you did, did you?”
“Yes. Well, see, I heard that his branch needed a junior. So I went to the accountant at my own branch and said I wished I could get a transfer to Mr. Jackson’s branch. Well, he really came through. He said, ‘Wes, if you wanted a transfer to the North Pole, I’d help you get it.’ So I landed in there, just a while after Grampa died.
“Anyway, you don’t go running to the new manager and say you’re a grandson of his old friend. I mean that would be like real posterior saluting, so I never said a word, but I got to like this Herb character. He would come around and say, ‘Hi, Laddie. How’re things going?’ and kid along with the girls and make everyone feel good. But the accountant, my immediate boss, was a sourpuss sort of guy, always riding hell out of you and chewing you up. So I never told Mr. Jackson who I was until this check came along.”
“This check,” Sidney said. “There was, I take it, a check.”
“Oh, sure, and it was a very funny one. It was stale-dated, see? I mean it had been drawn the previous September, and this was about May, for gosh sake. And who do you think drew it? My grandfather, no less! See, there was this stupid girl. She brought the check to me and said, ‘What do I do with this?’ I looked at it, and it was made out ‘Pay to a lucky stiff called Ed Gowan,’ and it was signed by my grandfather—for a hundred and eighty bucks, yet!”
“And he was dead?”
“Sure. See, what happened was this. Grampa had lost this money to this man when he was recuperating in Arizona. I guess the guy was a Texas millionaire or something, and to him it was just peanuts. So after the poker game he stuck the check in his wallet and forgot it—maybe he was away in Europe or something for a while. Anyway, one day he must have noticed it and deposited it in his account in Phoenix, Arizona, in the Valley National Bank, I think it was. So it trickled through slowly to Toronto, via New York. But this girl said there was no account of Grampa’s, which was natural, him being dead.
“Well, I looked up his account in the closed-out accounts, and sure enough he’d had this current account which he closed out in January. He’d had a big overdraft, which he paid off—nearly four thousand bucks—and he closed the account the same day.
“So anyway the accountant, Mark Carter, was away, and I took this check right into the manager’s office and gave it to Mr. Jackson. I said I didn’t like to return this check ‘No Account,’ and should we inform the executors maybe and get the estate to pay it? He said okay, leave it with him. I said if it would be any help I would call Uncle Ralph and save a lot of trouble, and then he looked surprised and asked did I know this Mr. Beattie. Well, he was really surprised when I told him I was his grandson. He said, ‘Come in here and sit down, fella,’ and shook my hand and told me what a great old guy Grampa was, and he ended up taking me to lunch at the Victoria, where they have a buffet and you eat all you want, hot and cold. I wasn’t twenty-one at the time, but he bought me a Martini and a bottle of beer with my lunch and he told me all sorts of stories about Grampa.”
“And what did he do with this check?” Sidney asked.
“You’d never believe it,” Wes said. “He had the check with him, and he burnt it, right there in an ashtray. He said he felt he owed it to Grampa, because he’d bet him two hundred bucks that Argos would go right through to the Grey Cup, and of course Grampa was so sick by Grey Cup time that he never got a chance to pay up. He said he’d pay the check himself and give twenty bucks to the Salvation Army in Gramp’s name and then he’d feel a lot better. Gramp always liked the Sally Anns. Then he told me all about Gramp, and what a real sport he was. Grandma never went for this stuff, but Grampa was always playing the horses and the markets and betting on the World Series and the Stanley Cup, sometimes as much as a thousand bucks on a game, and he used to play poker at the club for big stakes and bridge for a dime a point and all that jazz. And the reason he kept this private account at our branch was to keep his gambling activities separate. Whenever he was down, he would run an overdraft till quarter day and then pay it off, so Gran wouldn’t know about it, and when he knew he was dying, he made arrangements to pay off his overdraft and close the account, because he figured it would hurt Gran to know he’d been keeping her in the dark.”
“Wes,” Sidney said. “During all your troubles, when we were looking for someone with a motive for ruining an obscure bank clerk, did it never occur to you that this funny little deal might have been at the root of it?”
“Well, I thought about it a couple of times,” Wes said, “but see, there couldn’t have been anything wrong, because there wasn’t any money in that account for anyone to steal. See, there was only an overdraft of about four gees, and that was paid off. I checked back through the account, and it never had a credit balance of more than fifteen hundred bucks or so. Actually, when I was checking through the account, Mr. Jackson came along and helped me and showed me like where Gramp had lost a thousand bucks on Philadelphia Eagles or won a thousand on Montreal Alouettes.”
“So you didn’t have to tell Uncle Ralph about that account?” Sidney said.
“Oh, heck no. He would have gone straight to Gran and spilled the beans. You know what an old fussbudget he is. Mr. Jackson said we really owed it to Gramp, like any other customer, to respect his wishes about privacy. He said it was one of a banker’s basic responsibilities. He said I had a great banking career ahead of me, and it was important that I grasp the fundamental principles right from the start, and the first one was that you just don’t gossip about customers’ business, period.”
“Oh.”
“He told me about a kid in the bank that was handling paper from the local jewelry store, and what does he come across but an installment payment bit for his sister’s engagement ring! He goes home and tells his sister that her fiancée bought the ring on installments, and she promptly breaks off the engagement. So then the fiancée sues the bank.”
“A fascinating story,” Sidney said. “Mr. Jackson seemed to be very keen on keeping this account away from Uncle Ralph.”
“Sure. Because he would feel it his duty to tell Gran, which was what Grampa wanted to avoid. So I said don’t worry, Uncle Ralph would never know. Gosh, he was acting like a real pill at the time, always nagging me. I said it wouldn’t hurt if Uncle Edgar knew, because he and Gramp were the same about this betting and stuff. He was away on the road at the time.”
“And did Mr. Jackson agree with that?”
“Well, he said it certainly wouldn’t hurt if Uncle Edgar knew, Edgar being a real sport, but still as a matter of principle it was better not to discuss it.”
“And just when did all this take place, Wes?” Sidney asked. “In relation to your being framed up on a theft charge?”
“Oh, a week before, maybe. About a week, I guess.”
“Wes,” Sidney said, “I see the gentlemen want you to go for a ride in the paddy wagon. All I wish to say is this: there is no gull so gullible as a chronic liar. When you have wedded yourself to the truth, once and for all, you will learn to recognize it, and its opposite. You will learn that nice, smooth-talking men are often your enemies, that nasty guys who bully you and make you do your job are often friends. You will recognize sweet reasonableness and flattery and mere superficial credibility for what they are, and you will know that truth is truth because it’s true, not because it’s agreeable. Now, where was that branch of yours? I won’t ride with you—I’ll take a cab.”
Wes gave him the address of the branch, and was led away, and Sidney hurried down to the jail office and phoned for a taxi.
Sidney rang the bell and was admitted to the bank, which was not yet open. He found Mark Carter, Wes’s old accountant, in the manager’s chair.
“Mr. Carter,” Sidney s
aid, “I’m in one hell of a rush, and I need your help. I’m Sidney Grant, and I’m defending your ex-employee Wes Beattie. Wes’s grandfather, Charles Beattie, kept an account here—a current account—which he closed out shortly before his death. He closed it out by paying off an overdraft of about four thousand dollars. Your predecessor, Jackson, was most anxious that Beattie’s relations and executors should know nothing about that account. I can’t see—any more than Wes can—how you could steal money from an overdrawn account, but…”
“Mr. Grant,” Carter said, “I am a banker. I have been a traveling auditor. I know that the faintest smell of anything queer always means something. In the situation you mention, my first move would be to look at the securities ledger and find out how that overdraft was secured. One moment, please.”
He pressed buttons, and people appeared. He asked for documents and ledgers, and one by one they arrived, while Sidney sat and fidgeted.
“Now then,” Carter said, “that account was closed out on Friday, January 13. The overdraft was secured by thirty thousand shares of Minerva Mines Limited, lodged with the bank—market value fourteen cents a share. Partially secured, I should say. Mr. Beattie’s name was good for several times that figure. I would guess that Mr. Beattie lodged those shares just for someplace to leave them. Jackson would have let him have the money on his signature.”
“So the shares were worth about four thousand dollars,” Sidney said.
“Were. I see you’re not a fan of the mining market,” Carter said. “Minerva, even in the present lousy market, is over nine bucks. It hit a peak of close to sixteen dollars. Now, if you want a suspicious circumstance, Minerva took off, as we say, on a famous Friday the thirteenth, when everybody along Bay Street was mourning because they hadn’t bought some. On that day, the stock rose from nineteen cents to over a dollar in the last half-hour of trading, and it opened at two dollars on Monday morning. By Wednesday it was trading at seven dollars. Is this what you want?”
The Weird World of Wes Beattie Page 18
