Then, with a violent shudder, I moved away from the window. The invisible line had become solid, tangible, horribly real. And along it had travelled something far worse than the logic of how a murder had been committed. Fear had coursed suddenly and irresistibly into my mind. Why had Malahide been killed? There could surely only be one reason. Lizzie Thaxter’s letter. The letter of which I too possessed a copy.
Alice was staring at her father’s dead body, motionless with shock, disabled by incomprehension. ‘I never thought anything like this would happen,’ she murmured. ‘It was just … just one of his wheezes. Did somebody kill him because of a forged letter from a woman who strung herself up twelve years ago?’
‘Do you know of any other reason?’
She shook her head. ‘He had enemies. He deserved to have enemies, Gawd knows. But, they’d have given him a walloping, not … Maybe in a fight, maybe in the heat of the moment, somebody could have killed him. But not … not like this … Like he’s been … executed.’ She left her chair and knelt beside him. ‘Poor old Dad. At least it looks like it was quick, but … The poor old bugger.’
She was about to cry. Desperate to prevent her, I blurted out my theory of how he had been killed. ‘A rifle fired from the railway bank is my guess. See the bullet-hole in the window? Probably at night. The light’s on, you see?’ She looked dumbly from her father’s face to the window, to the bulb, then back to her father. ‘Who else did he sell letters to, Alice?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. I only know there were three.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Thursday. The kiddy’s birthday. When he brought the bricks. Wrapped in red crêpe paper.’ She stifled a sob. ‘He was full of himself. Carried away with his cleverness. Excited fit to burst.’
‘Excited about what?’
‘The money he’d been paid, I suppose. There wasn’t anything—’ She broke off and frowned with the effort of recollection. ‘Hold on …’
‘What is it?’
She pushed herself upright and moved slowly back to the chair. ‘There was something. Of course there was, I just thought … Well, it was one of his regular stories. I’d heard it a dozen times before. But, this time, he really seemed to think … Gawd, that must be it.’
‘What must be?’
‘Who’d have thought it after all these years? Who’d have bloody thought it?’
‘Thought what?’
She took a deep breath and summoned her concentration. ‘How much d’you know about what he was sent down for twelve years ago?’
‘The theft of Bank of England bill paper from a mill at Ross-on-Wye. He and two accomplices, Joe Burridge and Peter Thaxter, now both dead.’
‘Two. That’s right. Except that’s not right, not according to Dad. He always said there was a fourth in it, somebody who put up the money, who told Joe Burridge that the mill printed bill paper for the Bank of England, that it’d be dead easy to steal. Burridge would never say who he was. He was the only one of the gang who had any contact with him. He reckoned this … fourth man … would see them all right when they got out, would share the proceeds with them.’
‘What proceeds?’
‘Burridge had delivered some finished notes to him – to the fourth man, I mean. I don’t know how many or what value. I don’t even know if it was true. Dad believed it – or said he did. It could just have been another of his dreams. I always thought it was. Till now.’
‘Burridge died in prison without identifying this person?’
‘That’s right. But Dad had seen him once, he said, just once. He’d gone to Burridge’s place in Brum and this bloke had been leaving at the same time. Burridge never admitted it was him, but Dad was sure it was. Of course, with Burridge dead, he had no way of finding him. He didn’t know his name or anything about him. Except his face. He said he’d never forget that. He said, if he ever saw him again, he’d know him at once. And then he’d settle with him.’
‘Settle with him?’
‘He was going on about it on Thursday, but different, not the same. He was cheerful, you see, cheerful like … Well, I paid him no attention, but, looking back, I can’t explain his mood unless …’
‘Unless he’d seen the fourth man?’
‘Yeh. That’s it. It was just like … like he’d found him at last.’
I looked down at Malahide’s taut, immobile face and remembered the grin with which he had left me at Southwark Bridge, remembered also the words with which he had cut short my questions. ‘Maybe I thought I recognized him, but, now you’ve put a name to him, I reckon I must have been wrong.’ No, he had not been wrong. I knew that now and so, too late, did he. Major Royston Turnbull was the fourth man. And, three days after learning from me who and what and where he was, Malahide had been murdered.
‘What do we do now?’
‘I … I beg your pardon?’
‘About Dad, I mean. Call the police?’
The police. Yes, soon they would be here, eager to know what connection I had with the dead man, what this business of forged letters was all about, of what interest it might be to the officers handling the prosecution of Consuela Caswell. What I had paid Malahide specifically to avoid, his murder would inevitably achieve. And vague allegations concerning former accomplices would swiftly be overriden. Unless, of course, my part in his discovery was never known.
‘Wait a moment, Alice,’ I said. ‘Do you realize what calling the police will mean?’
‘Eh?’
‘I’ll have to tell them about the letters. And you’ll have to admit aiding and abetting him. He’ll be written off as a blackmailer who got too greedy for his own good. And you’ll be seen as his accomplice. Do you want that to happen?’
A fear of the consequences of her father’s death was now added to her shock at the fact of it. ‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘’Course not.’
‘Then listen to me. We must find his copy of the letter and I must be elsewhere when the police arrive. I must have nothing to do with the case. Do you understand?’
‘Yeh. Reckon I do.’
‘Do you know where the letter would be?’
‘His jacket. He always kept it on him.’
I knelt beside the body and gingerly raised the jacket by tugging gently at the lapel. There was something small but bulky in the breast pocket. With my other hand, I reached in and pulled it out. It was a greasy leather wallet, thickly filled with five pound notes. There must have been at least thirty of them. I heard Alice gasp at the sight and wondered if they were the ones I had given him. Folded behind the notes was a sheet of paper: Lizzie’s letter in a rough hand I took to be Malahide’s. When I held it up, Alice nodded and I thrust it into my pocket. I removed the money, leaving only a ten shilling note, hesitated, then offered it to her.
She recoiled. ‘I don’t want that.’
‘You may as well take it. The police will keep it if you don’t. And it’ll make them more suspicious. Besides, in a sense you’ve earned it.’
‘I can’t. It’s stealing from the dead.’
‘He’d have wanted you to have it, surely?’
‘Well … I suppose so … But …’
‘You said you needed it. And I’m sure you do. So, take it.’ Still she shook her head. ‘This is the only chance you’ll have.’
‘Hundreds of quid just like that? What would Charlie say?’
‘Does it matter? I can’t leave it here, Alice. You must understand. One of us has to take it.’ And my conscience, I refrained from adding, would be the easier if it were her.
Suddenly, her disgust at the idea faltered. There were children to be fed, after all, tallymen to be kept at bay. She reached out and accepted the money.
‘I must go now.’
‘I know.’
‘Wait five minutes after I’ve left, then tell Mrs Rudd and go to the nearest police station. Say you were worried because he hadn’t come to see you as expected and called to see if he was unwell. Say nothin
g about the letters. Or the fourth man, if it comes to the point.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I know what to do.’
‘Good. In that case, I’ll leave.’ I moved to the door, paused and looked back at her. ‘I’m sorry, Alice, really I am. He didn’t deserve this.’
‘You’ve been kind,’ she murmured. ‘But you can go now. I’ll see to him.’
I decided not to tell Imry about Malahide’s death. I had shared my experiences and discoveries with him every step of the way, but now murder, sudden and clinical, had blocked my path. From this point on, for Imry’s sake as well as my own, I knew I must be my own counsellor. He would not have approved of leaving Alice Ryan to cope alone. And he would certainly not have approved of what I proposed to do next. Therefore, I simply reported that I had been unable to trace Malahide beyond Croad’s building site and had been forced to abandon the search.
Imry had meanwhile been labouring industriously on my behalf. Martindale, Clutton & Fyffe had agreed that my belongings could be collected from Suffolk Terrace on Saturday morning; they would be packed and ready at eleven o’clock. As for accommodation, he had found a mews flat near Lancaster Gate which he thought would suit me and was, moreover, available immediately; I could view it the following morning. He had also made an appointment for me with Hugh Fellows-Smith, the partner in our solicitor’s practice who specialized in divorce.
That night, on the sofa-bed at Sunnylea, I lay awake for many hours thinking about Malahide, seeing again his yellow-toothed grin and sharp-eyed gaze, then, blotting them all out, the pale, drawn, sightless face that death had left him with. Who had killed him? The third buyer of his faked letter? Or the fourth accomplice in the Peto’s Paper Mill robbery of thirteen years before? If the latter, did that mean Major Royston Turnbull? I badly wanted to believe it did, but I was cautious of my own desire, rooted as it was in a jealousy I did not care to acknowledge.
Next morning, I travelled into London alone. I had bought a clutch of newspapers at Wendover station and it was on an inner page of the Daily Telegraph that I found the report I sought.
LOCKED ROOM MURDER MYSTERY
Mr Thomas Malahide, a fifty-four-year-old jobbing carpenter, was found shot dead at his lodgings in Buckley Street, Rotherhithe, yesterday afternoon. He had suffered a fatal rifle-wound to the head. No weapon was found on the premises, which were locked from the inside. The body was discovered by Mrs Alice Ryan, the deceased’s daughter. A police spokesman said that damage to a window of the Lodgings was consistent with Mr Malahide having been shot from a railway embankment on the other side of the road, probably under cover of darkness. The body is thought to have lain undiscovered for several days. Mr Malahide was last seen alive on Saturday. A more precise indication of the date and time of death and of the range from which the fatal shot was fired is expected to be yielded by the post mortem examination, but the police believe they are dealing with a case of cold-blooded murder. Mr Malahide is understood to have had criminal associations and to have served at least one term of imprisonment for robbery.
I had never liked Malahide, yet it seemed to me that he deserved a better obituary than these perfunctory lines. I thought of the room he had died in – its shape, its contents, its frowstily ominous odour – and of the way he had died – as sudden as it was violent, as brutal as it was unceremonious. Then I thought of the thousands who must idly have scanned the account of his death without carrying in their heads a close and graphic recollection of the scene. To them it was less significant than the mood their employer was in, the state of the weather, the prompt arrival of their train. To them every man was an island. And the bell always tolled for another.
As a pied-à-terre, the flat Imry had found for me in Hyde Park Gardens Mews seemed as good as any I was likely to find for myself; I rented it on the spot. Then I hurried to the office and from there telephoned Luckham Place. Bassett answered.
‘Bassett, this is Geoffrey Staddon.’
‘Oh, Mr Geoffrey.’ He sounded suitably embarrassed. ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘I’d like to speak to Major Turnbull.’
‘Ah. I’m afraid you can’t, sir. He’s no longer here.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘Um … Friday.’
‘With my wife?’
‘Well, I can’t … That is …’
‘But Angela has left?’
‘Yes, sir. She has.’
A Thursday afternoon which did not find my wife sipping tea and swapping gossip in Maudie Davenport’s drawing-room would be rare enough to warrant special mention in the almanacs. I calculated therefore that by loitering halfway along the route she invariably followed from Suffolk Terrace – a distance too short even for her to cover by taxi – I would have a better chance of speaking to her than by telephoning or calling at what I still thought of as my home.
Nor was I disappointed. Angela remained faithful to her habits if to nothing else and rounded the bend where I was waiting shortly before three o’clock. She was wearing the outfit in which she had gone driving with Turnbull at Luckham Place – doubtless in the hope of arousing Maudie’s envy – and a look of the most perfectly groomed contentment. Her expression altered, however, when she saw me.
‘Geoffrey! What is the meaning of this?’
‘I might have asked you the same when I found my own front door locked against me. But I didn’t get the chance, did I?’
‘Have you been lying in wait for me here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you’ve wasted your time. I’ve no intention of discussing our private affairs in the street.’ She made to walk past me, but I stepped into her path. She stared coldly at me for a moment, then said: ‘Kindly stand aside.’
‘Not until you answer a few questions.’
‘I shall call out for assistance if you persist with this, Geoffrey.’
‘Where’s Turnbull?’
She looked past me. ‘I can see a constable walking towards us. Do you want me to summon him?’
‘Just tell me where Turnbull is.’
‘You leave me no choice.’ She raised her hand and opened her mouth, as if to cry out. But then I grabbed her wrist so tightly that she was shocked into momentary silence.
‘He’s a murderer, Angela. He’s killed – or had killed – a man called Malahide, who was threatening to expose him as an accomplice in a robbery near Clouds Frome thirteen years ago.’
‘Major Turnbull? This is absurd.’
‘Ask him what he knows about the robbery at Peto’s Paper Mill. Ask him whether he’s still spending some of the proceeds.’
‘I shall do no such thing.’
‘I’m warning you for your own good. The man’s a thief and a murderer.’
‘Let go of me at once!’ She spat the words out, angry now where she had merely been alarmed before. Glancing over my shoulder and seeing the policeman bearing down upon us, I released her. ‘Major Turnbull has returned to Cap Ferrat,’ she said icily. ‘Happily, he will not need to be troubled by your ludicrous allegations.’
‘Are you sure they’re ludicrous?’
But there was no glimmer of doubt in Angela’s gaze, none at all events that was not eclipsed by the scorn she felt for me. ‘If I had any reservations about divorcing you, Geoffrey, this tasteless exhibition has entirely dispelled them.’
‘You won’t win on the grounds you’ve chosen. I don’t mind giving you a divorce, but I won’t be branded a wife-beater. I’ll counter-sue, citing Turnbull as co-respondent.’
‘You wouldn’t dare. You’d be laughed out of court.’
‘Would I? That depends on what the private detectives turn up between now and a hearing, doesn’t it?’ I saw her confidence falter fractionally. ‘It all becomes very grubby from this point on, Angela. Didn’t Turnbull warn you to expect that?’
‘This has nothing to do with Major Turnbull.’ As the policeman loomed alongside, she turned towards him. ‘Constable!’ He pulled up.<
br />
‘Yes, ma’am?’
She glanced at me, then back at him. ‘This gentleman is seeking directions to St Barnabas’ Church. I wonder if you could help him. I’m in rather a hurry.’ With that, and one more parting glance, she swept away.
The policeman frowned at me. ‘St Barnabas, did the lady say, sir?’
‘Yes. But don’t worry.’ I smiled. ‘I think I know my way from here.’
The truth, whatever I might pretend for the benefit of others, was that the future – and my part in it – seemed less hopeful than ever. My suspicions of Turnbull could not be substantiated and carrying out my threat of involving him in a counter-suit against Angela would only muddy the already murky waters. Besides, even if I could prove he had played a part in the Peto’s Paper Mill robbery, it would do precisely nothing to help Consuela. Her pending trial stood now at the centre of my thoughts. To its outcome my marital problems and Turnbull’s criminal past seemed wholly irrelevant. It was thus in a mood amounting almost to indifference that I kept my appointment with Fellows-Smith the following morning at his offices in Aldgate.
He was a small, precise, expressionless man of almost albino paleness, with a habit I found annoying of smoking a cigarette in such a way as to make his enjoyment of it unduly obvious. He had received a letter from Martindale, Clutton & Fyffe, and led me through its implications amidst many a savoured lungful of smoke.
‘The incident at Luckham Place on the, ah, thirty-first of December, Mr Staddon. You are alleged to have struck your wife to the floor. There were, ah, three witnesses. Is the assault admitted?’
‘If you mean did I hit her, the answer’s yes.’
‘Ah. Thank you. That simplifies the position.’
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever laid a hand on her.’
‘Not according to this letter. Complaints by Mrs Staddon to her family about your, ah, violence, over several years. And witnesses who are prepared to testify that they have seen her more than once with, ah, facial bruises.’
‘They’re lying.’
‘Quite possibly, but lies about minor assaults are apt to be believed when the major assault is admitted. You see our difficulty, I trust.’
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