The Man Who Didn't Fly

by Margot Bennett

  “Yes, we’re satisfied,” Wade said.

  “Then I think there’s no doubt that Ferguson was on that plane,” Lewis said regretfully, feeling, perhaps, that of the four men concerned, Joe, the most reputable, should, by some moral law, have been the man to escape.

  “So it’s Harry or Morgan,” Prudence said in a taut voice. She put her hand in her pocket again and clutched the brooch tightly. She wanted to fling it on the table and run out of the room. Explanations were rising as far as her throat and sinking again. It was a time for nonchalance; she was sure she would blush. She had an important piece of evidence; they would all be grateful. She couldn’t endure the thought of being attacked as her father and Marryatt had been attacked. It was important that the brooch should be produced and the discussion finished before Marryatt came back. The door opened, and Marryatt was back already.

  “Is everything finished?” he asked. “Was it Harry? Was it Morgan?”

  “I’m about to explain,” Lewis said, sighing.

  Marryatt looked at Hester. “Let’s get it over quickly,” he suggested.

  “I was waiting for you, Mr Marryatt. I wanted to ask you—when you met Harry Walters on Friday, he told you he was having lunch under a haystack. He wasn’t more explicit? He didn’t tell you where he was going to eat his lunch.”

  “No.”

  “We’ve interviewed the woman in the village shop,” Lewis said, blinking at Hester. “She says he bought coffee, processed Stilton cheese, wrapped in silver paper, packed in a round cardboard box, with a yellow label; a pound of tomatoes; and some cream cracker biscuits in a blue paper carton. All on your account, Miss Wade. She remembers it clearly because afterwards she thought he should have said on Mr Wade’s account. She also thought he should have paid cash.”

  “Oh, you keep nibbling away at Harry’s reputation,” Hester said wildly. “You don’t have to do it. Everything’s admitted. Harry wasn’t reliable. I know all about Harry.”

  “But do you, Miss Wade? And I’m not here to attack his character. What I was wondering, was he a tidy kind of man?”

  “He wasn’t,” Hester said shortly.

  “Then he might have left that cardboard box and the blue paper carton lying around where he ate his lunch. It might just follow—I’m not saying necessarily it would—that we could find if there’s some place, not in this house, that he had reason to be interested in.”

  “I think—” Prudence began.

  “One minute, please, until I’ve finished what I have to say. I have some notes here, taken from a statement made by a man called Murray, the editor of a poetry magazine. He was a friend of Harry Walters’ and his statement may add to your knowledge of that young man. What he has to say is that Harry cultivated the society of criminals. He wanted to be—where is it? What was it, Sergeant Young?”

  “François Villon, sir.”

  Lewis looked over the papers at Hester.

  “You know about this François Villon?”

  “I know who he was.”

  Lewis looked relieved. “Then I needn’t explain. You understand that your friend Harry had some idea of becoming one of these criminals. It seems he actually arranged to take part in a train mailbag robbery, but he missed the train. You know about this?”

  Hester shook her head.

  “Incidentally, the attempt failed, and the gang was caught, but not because he informed on them. We’ve checked on this. Murray came to us because he was afraid the gang had held Harry responsible and might have—retaliated. But we needn’t go into that, although it’s possible the men concerned may still wrongly suppose that Harry was responsible for their failure.”

  “And why are you telling us this, if we needn’t go into it?” Hester demanded.

  “I’m trying to fit your Jackie into the picture. I’ve already arranged to have his description sent out—we won’t have much trouble in finding him. But, Miss Wade, Mr Wade, you should have known this isn’t the kind of place, nor yet the kind of house, that attracts men like this Jackie. There’s a chance, you know, he came here for a purpose.”

  “You wouldn’t like to cut a straight line through all those circumlocutions?” Marryatt asked. “If you know which went on that plane, Morgan or Harry, why not tell us now?”

  Lewis held up a warning hand. “There’s a possibility that Jackie chose this house and place by accident. There’s another that he came here deliberately, or was sent by others, to find out what he could about Harry, or Morgan. Wait. When the thoroughly confused statement made by this editor, Murray, is laid alongside Miss Wade’s evidence, a most significant point emerges. Murray explains that Harry was shown a photograph of the man who got away with the Sackford diamonds. You know about that? It was one of the biggest robberies of this generation. It was a classic affair. All the jewels were out of the bank for the Sackford girl’s coming-out dance. The dance of the year, the papers said it was going to be. The Duchess and her three daughters were going to shine like Blackpool on Bank Holiday night. In the middle of the afternoon, in broad daylight, when the family was playing croquet on the lawn or whatever families like that do in the afternoon, someone walked into the house, coshed a detective at one end of a corridor; gagged a housemaid, tapped a footman on the head, lifted the jewel boxes, and walked away. He had five minutes to do it in, while detective number two was downstairs getting himself a cup of tea, so we’re certain that the someone was at least three men. And that was the end of the Sackford diamonds. The insurance company was offering ten thousand, but the diamonds didn’t turn up through the usual fences. The first fact we’ve had on it is Murray’s statement. One man got away with the diamonds and left his two friends out in the cold. These two have been looking for him ever since. They show everyone his photograph, and they showed Harry. Shall I tell you when that robbery took place? In June, two years ago. Two years and two months ago.” He looked at Hester. “Does that make anything in your mind stir?”

  “How could it? What could we have to do with a diamond robbery? You don’t mean that Harry had anything to do with it?” she asked in a terrified whisper, as though she was speaking across a death-bed.

  “No, he doesn’t. And we’ve had enough of this,” Marryatt said loudly. “Why don’t you come right out and say what you mean? If Harry had anything to do with it, it was only because he’d seen the photograph. Two years and two months. Hester, don’t you remember what you told us about Morgan? He said he’d been alone for two years and two months.”

  “Morgan! Do you mean that Morgan stole these jewels?”

  “I told you,” Marryatt said to Prudence. “I told you that he was hiding something and Harry was after it. And don’t get this wrong again,” he said angrily to Hester. “Harry had seen the photograph. He came down here with the Fergusons, met your lot, recognised Morgan. It’s a million to one he was only after the insurance. He wanted to marry you and he’d no money, and no other chance of getting any.”

  “He should have come to us,” Inspector Lewis said bitterly. “All he had to do was to come to the police. If he’d told us he knew the man who had the Sackford diamonds, we’d have had them within twenty-four hours, and he’d have had his reward as well. But he had to go plunging round with his idiotic stratagems, playing his infantile games with death watch beetles and guns, until he had this Morgan Price in such an alcoholic panic that he took the terrible risk of arranging to leave the country, which is what he’d have done long ago if he hadn’t been afraid of being spotted at the ports. When Morgan heard that a plane was leaving from an obscure airfield for Ireland, he was driven by fear of Harry to take the chance. Remember, there are no passports needed for Ireland.”

  Wade began to run a hand back and forward across his forehead, quickly, like a man trying to rub out his thoughts.

  “So I’ve been harbouring a thief in my house,” he said. “Oh, this is terrible. I knew he was hiding some
thing. No, I didn’t. It’s not true. I thought he was mentally ill. I thought he drank. I thought anything, but I never thought he was a thief. I wouldn’t have had him here. Can’t you understand what this means to me? A thief!”

  “Don’t, Father. It’s all over. Morgan has gone. He’ll never come back. It’s not your fault, Father. How were you to know? And you were right. He was mentally ill. He’d been hiding for two years. Hiding from the police, hiding from the men he’d betrayed, in the end hiding from Harry.”

  Marryatt looked belligerently at the inspector. “Let’s get on with it. You know, I suppose. Was Morgan the man who didn’t fly?”

  “I can answer the question,” Lewis said shortly. “If we’re right about the rest, it’s the most obvious point of all. But first I’d like to add something to what Miss Wade has said. Morgan Price had someone else to hide from. And that was Jackie.”

  “Jackie!” Wade repeated numbly.

  “Jackie. You’ve made it plain enough in your statements. From the moment Jackie came into the house, Morgan was afraid to come out of his room. He wouldn’t come downstairs to telephone until Miss Wade promised to keep Jackie and Harry in the kitchen. He wouldn’t come downstairs for meals.”

  “But he did come out,” Prudence protested suddenly. “He came out to the chapel, when I was there with Harry, on Thursday morning.”

  “I think you’ll find Jackie was busy in the kitchen at that point. Morgan took the risk and came out the front way. But if I’m right, it was a risk, or he saw it as one. But he took that risk—to get to the chapel, and Harry.”

  Hester made a restless movement with her hands, then forced them into stillness again, and sat rigid.

  “If you’re not going to get on with this, I will,” Marryatt said violently. “What about that brooch, Prudence?”

  “I’m so glad you reminded me,” Prudence said graciously. “This is the brooch Jackie lent me, Inspector. I thought you might be interested in it.” She put her hand in her pocket and held the brooch out to him, with an amused, disparaging smile, like one collector showing another a trivial piece unwisely acquired in the sale-room.

  He took it, and held it in his thick, scrubbed hand, turning it a little, to let the light enter the hard heart of the stones. He stared at it, bemused and angry, like a peasant examining the countess’s jewels. He took a list from his pocket, and looked at it, and nodded.

  “It’s not my subject,” he said cautiously, “but if it’s as real as it looks, then Jackie was in this up to his neck.” He scowled as he spoke the last few words. “He found where Morgan Price had hidden the lot, even if Harry didn’t. He wouldn’t have tried to give the brooch away if he hadn’t found the rest. Very generous, these crooks are, on impulse, but not to the point of giving away all they’ve got.”

  “But, Inspector Lewis, surely he wouldn’t give away anything valuable,” Hester said.

  “It’s part of the pattern. Don’t ask me why they do it. I can only tell you that again and again we catch them because they do. I’ll keep this brooch. Miss Prudence will perhaps be prepared to sign a statement declaring how it came into her possession.”

  “Oh, gladly,” Prudence said, dejection spreading across her face.

  “And now, Mr Marryatt, as you’re so determined, we’ll get on with it. If we take the evidence of this numerologist, Benson, the man who remembered someone’s name began with M. He wasn’t listening, he wouldn’t have heard anything if he hadn’t once been an under-manager at Woolworth’s. But as it happens, his ear was caught by the familiar name.”

  He stopped, took out the sheaf of papers, and looked through the typescript once again. “This is what he heard: ‘Woolworth’s! what do you think about that?’ And the second man said: ‘I’m afraid I can’t think anything. I didn’t see it.’ And the third man said: ‘Woolworth’s! What’s all this? When did it happen?’ And that’s all.” Inspector Lewis folded the papers again carefully, and returned them to his pocket. “After that, the grocer went on with his astrology, and neither of them heard another word that could usefully be called evidence.”

  “And the conversation could only refer to the brooch. If you’re going to take the word of a crazy numerologist as proof, I’m not,” Marryatt said.

  “Take it easy, Mr Marryatt. A man can be a numerologist or an astrologist and be just as sane as any member of the Stock Exchange, or any dealer in farm machinery, when it comes to that. People take up these things as a way of passing the time, or explaining the universe, two things we’re all concerned with, in our own way. I’m prepared to take the word of this numerologist because he’s an honest man, who was clearly not prepared to manufacture evidence to oblige. You know what it proves, do you?

  “You think it proves that Morgan went on the aeroplane, because there were only two of these four men who didn’t see the brooch that night, Morgan and Maurice Reid, and there were two men at Brickford who said or implied they didn’t see it. You think it proves that either Harry or Joe Ferguson is the missing man, because they had both seen the brooch, but only one of the three who flew had seen it. And as you’re already satisfied that Ferguson was on the plane, you’re satisfied that Harry was the man who didn’t fly.”

  “Harry? Harry alive?” Hester said faintly. “Oh, why didn’t you say so before?”

  “They didn’t say because they’re not sure. That’s why,” Marryatt said. “And I don’t accept that evidence. I don’t accept this reported conversation.”

  Lewis looked at him speculatively, searching for a vulnerable point.

  “You accepted the evidence of reported conversation when it established the fact that Maurice Reid flew in the aeroplane. When it established a point that it was in your own interests to accept.”

  Marryatt was standing up now. His strong, challenging face dominated the room.

  “Then I was wrong. But my views, right or wrong, are of no importance,” he said, while the intensity of his belief in himself radiated from his face like an almost visible force. “I don’t accept the fact that this Harry, who had no money, should get hold of fifteen pounds, spend it on buying a passage to Ireland, and then abandon the idea of flying and say goodbye to the only fifteen pounds he had in the world.”

  “Why are you so anxious Harry should be dead?” Hester asked angrily.

  He glared at her. “Because I want this matter cleared up. And no one can tell me that any court will accept the mixture of parables and logical problems that’s been brought up here.”

  Inspector Lewis heaved himself up and gathered the sergeant in with his glance.

  “We must go,” he said. “I am very grateful for the help you have all so freely given. You are right, you know, Mr Marryatt, but this matter isn’t going to court as it stands. There is no criminal case to bring forward. There will eventually be an inquest. All we have been trying to do here is discover in a friendly way what kind of proof of identity might be offered at the inquest. Also, if one of those four men didn’t fly in that aeroplane, it’s obvious that he must be somewhere else. It’s easier to look for one man than four, and what has happened here has been quite enough to convince me that Harry Walters is the man to look for. I think we’ll find him,” he said significantly. “Where are you going to be for the next few days, Mr Marryatt?”

  “I’ll stay at The Running Fox,” Marryatt said, looking at Hester, who was absorbed in some private calculation, and scarcely seemed to hear him.

  “Then goodbye for the present. If you happen to see Jackie, don’t forget we’d like to get in touch with him.”

  They went, and a few minutes later Prudence had the great pleasure of showing Marryatt out.

  Proof (1)

  For the first part of the night Hester allowed herself to think of Harry, to recreate his face and remember the few words of love he had spoken, to dream of the plans she had made to save him and believe again in his genius.
She struggled with unreality, desperately injecting life into it, and won a guilty victory. She offered herself to his memory, and fell asleep believing she would dream of him.

  She woke early in the morning with a shock of unhappiness and terror, convinced that she had heard an anguished voice calling to her. Desperate fancies and premonitions bred in her mind like bacteria in an open wound: she lay in agony, trying somehow to find the strength to control her own thoughts. She saw Harry’s face again, and angrily pushed the picture away. He had gone, he had left her; to try to live with his memory was like nurturing corruption and decay.

  She forced herself to rise and dress, to think of her father and her sister, and of the fact that they needed her. She thought bitterly that she no longer needed them. The last few days had forced her into an existence that was quite apart from theirs; she had her private life, her secret thoughts; she couldn’t relapse into being a member of her father’s house. She would live alone for ever.

  She went downstairs and found Prudence in the kitchen.

  “Hello,” Prudence said. “I thought if I peeled the potatoes now you wouldn’t mind if I went swimming.”

  “Swimming!” Hester repeated. “Oh, I’m very glad that you are able to enjoy yourself again. You’re not worried about what people will think?”

  “Don’t say people when you mean you,” Prudence advised. She threw the potatoes into the sink, viciously, as though she wanted to knock the bottom out of it. “We can’t let this go on for ever, that’s what I think. Why shouldn’t we just behave? Let’s get some pleasure before the summer’s over. If Father didn’t stop that cheque I’ll probably have to go and be a kitchen girl among the cockroaches in some ramshackle hotel where people murder each other in the third floor back.”

  “He sent a wire last night. He won’t know till this evening or tomorrow if the cheque has been paid in already. It’s more than likely that it has—in that letter Maurice gave Uncle Joe to post. Now, Prudence, could we stop talking, just stop talking for the rest of the day? Go swimming. Do what you want. But whatever you do don’t go on talking for ever and ever and ever like this making me think of everything all over again.”