“Thank you, Tiny,” said Paddy gratefully. “That pays for your lunch.”
2
The London office of the ‘Stalagmite’ stands in Fetter Lane, along with other important Insurance Corporations. The style is late nineteenth-century functional, but it has something – a sort of four-square assertive consequence – which saves it from mere ugliness, like an unrepentant old parvenu, thought Paddy, who had acquired, by time alone, a thin veneer of respectability.
Before the war (when manpower was no object), it had taken two employees their whole morning to clean the mighty brass letters of the firm’s name which ran from corner to corner across the building.
“Stalagmite Fire and Accident Insurance Corporation”, followed by the motto: – “Firm as the Rock Whence it was Hewed”, and the corporation’s trade mark, a convex boulder with five undeniable stalagmites sprouting from it – a symbol known to two generations of irreverent Londoners as “the inverted udder”.
Pushing through the great swing-doors Paddy found himself inside a temple of modern industry. The air was hushed, and if not actually incense-laden was at any rate heavy with the mixed odours of floor polish, brass polish and hot sealing wax which have always distinguished the best city counting houses. Along aisles and transepts hurried acolytes on noiseless feet and over to the left could be seen the sacred enclosure where forty sleek young men bowed their heads beneath forty green reading lamps.
Tiny Anstruther looked up and made what, at that distance, appeared to be the V-sign.
Paddy was aware of a majestic figure standing beside him in a state of interrogation.
“I wish to see Miss Pocock,” he said.
“Certainly, sir. Room Number 140. On the first floor–”
It was really surprisingly easy. Miss Pocock, who proved to be a corn-blonde with a crop which would have gladdened the heart of any home trader, showed herself to be all that Tiny had said, and more.
“I’ve got no sort of an appointment,” he had concluded. “But if you’ll just tell him that it’s about Mr Britten–”
“Why certainly,” said Miss Pocock. “This is always a good time of day to see our Mr Legate – before I take him his evening letters to sign. You’re a friend of Tiny’s aren’t you – Mr Anstruther, I should say.”
“I think I can qualify for that title. I have put him to bed twice, and I remembered to take his boots off on both occasions.”
“You men,” said Miss Pocock, tossing her blonde mane and somehow contriving to look both scornful and admiring at the same time. She pattered away.
Paddy was left with his thoughts.
The reasons that had brought him there were obscure, even to himself.
He was not the sort of man to poke his nose readily or willingly into other people’s affairs. One of the few things he had learned in four years at an expensive English public school was that it paid, on the whole, to let the other fellow work out his own worries for himself.
On the other hand, he had a proper share of natural inquisitiveness, an active conscience and a strong sense of fair play. And there were certain – well, certain aspects of Mr Britten’s decease which rather stuck in his throat.
If it had been an accident – then he was to blame. He and no other had got the poor little man tight. From the best motives, no doubt. But not much comfort in that.
Again – suppose it was suicide. Wasn’t that the very thing which he had set out to stop? And which, through sheer inefficiency, he had failed to stop?
His meditations were interrupted by the return of Miss Pocock.
“Mr Legate will be free in a minute,” she said. “Across the corridor and the second door on the left. Just go straight in.”
“Here, wait a minute,” said Paddy, “How shall I know when he’s ready?”
“Silly me,” said Miss Pocock. “I forgot to tell you. Just watch that panel. The light will come on when Mr Legate’s free. Ta-ta for now.”
“Ta-ta,” said Paddy. “Nice girl.” He sat down and tried to pick up his train of thought.
Mr Britten. The River. Accident? Suicide?
A head thrust itself in the door and said, “Have you seen Mr Lindgrum?”
“No,” said Paddy truthfully.
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were Bootle.” The head withdrew.
The disappearance of the wallet, thought Paddy. Rather a funny coincidence. Just a shade too coincidental, perhaps. The Inspector hadn’t made much of it. And then, that matter of the light in the living-room.
The panel flickered and glowed.
Paddy jumped to his feet, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, and was immediately faced with a difficulty.
There was another door directly opposite. Now Miss Pocock had said, “Across the corridor, the second door on the left.” Did she count the one opposite as the first – in which case the next one would be the second. Or did she mean the second along from the one opposite?
All the doors looked equally imposing. Paddy selected the middle one at random. A tall man was sitting at a desk. He was wearing a green shade over his eyes which combined with a hooked nose and an actor’s blue chin to give him the appearance of a night editor in an American film. He looked up from a ledger and said, “Yes – what do you want?” in no very pleasant tone of voice.
“Mr Legate?”
“Next door on your left. Have you got an appointment?”
“You’ll excuse me saying so, I’m sure,” said Paddy, “but I can’t see what the hell that’s got to do with you.”
The man stared at him for a moment, and then returned to his work. Paddy backed out and shut the door quickly.
He knocked at the next door and opened it cautiously. This, he saw at once, was the right place. It was a larger room. Lighter, better furnished – from the grey pile carpet on the floor to the Mornon etching of the North-West Corner of Hyde Park over the mantelpiece. A shortish, square, middle-aged man rose to shake hands with him.
“Mr Yeatman-Carter? Sit down, won’t you. I understand that you want to see me about Britten?”
Paddy got several quick initial impressions of Mr Legate from the manner of his speech. He had the unmistakable tight-shaven “executive” face. The easy address of a man who spent his working hours coping with his fellows. He said “Britten” and not “Mr Britten” because he thought of the late cashier as a junior subordinate. But he said it naturally and without affectation. Also he refrained from saying “the late Mr Britten” – or worse “poor Britten”. He had no personal feelings in the matter and he pretended to none. On the whole Paddy liked him for it.
“Yes,” said Paddy. He was within an ace of saying “Yes, sir,” but decided to cling to what little moral advantage he had. “Yes. I was with him the night he – the night he went into the river.”
“Then you must be the young man who took him into the public house. The police called you ‘Mr Carter’. I wasn’t certain.”
“You’ve heard all about it then?”
“Of course,” said Mr Legate. “They phoned me immediately.”
“Well, in some ways, that makes it easier.”
Paddy embarked on his story and found Mr Legate a good listener. Fragments of his conversation with Mr Britten came back readily to his tongue. He had thought it over so often that he could reproduce it almost verbatim. When he came to the incident of the two slips of paper, Mr Legate interrupted him for the first time.
“Can you describe them a little more fully, please?” he said.
Paddy thought back. One of his assets was a good visual memory.
“They were typewritten sheets,” he said. “They both looked identical to me – but apparently I was wrong – Britten said so, anyway. On each of them were three columns of numbers – all of them six-figure numbers, and I fancy consecutive, or nearly so.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Almost certain. The first four figures were the same in each case. The last two I’m not so sure abou
t.”
“And were the columns the same length?”
“Not quite. The middle column, I remember, was shorter. At a rough guess the right and left hand columns contained fifteen numbers each. The centre one, perhaps only a dozen.”
“I see. And the numbers stood alone? I mean, they had no letters before or after them.”
“No – yes. Wait a minute. There were letters – opposite the first number in each column. I can see them now. I remember what struck me about them. They weren’t written consecutively, but one above the other.”
“Like this?” Mr Legate scribbled on his blotting-pad.
“Yes – that’s it.”
“Well, that’s one point cleared up. They were fire insurance policy numbers.” Mr Legate opened a drawer and took out a printed form – “That’s one of our trade marks,” he said.
Paddy saw that the number was printed D/K 46702. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s how it was.”
“Can you remember anything else about the papers?”
“Only one thing. Each column was headed with three letters – but written in the ordinary way. The first two columns I happen to remember. One was headed ABC, and the other CBA. The same letters but the other way round, you see.”
“If I may say so,” said Mr Legate, “you did very well. You must have a natural aptitude for observation. After all, by your account you only saw the papers for a few seconds.”
He leaned back in his chair, looked at Paddy directly, and without any change in his tone of voice, said, “What’s worrying you?”
“Two things,” said Paddy. “I’ll finish my story and you’ll see them for yourself.”
“The light in the front window,” suggested Mr Legate, when he had done.
“That’s one of them. The Inspector thinks that Britten must have left it on, by mistake, when he went to the office in the morning. Now I know that’s not possible.”
“Expound,” said Mr Legate.
“I know his house as well as I know my own. Literally. All those buildings in Sunset Avenue were poured from the same mould. The room which the light came from is the long front living-room. A drawing-room and dining-room combined. It runs into the kitchen at the back – there’s a sliding partition and a serving hatch between them. Apart from the entrance hall, and a few cupboards and closets, that makes up the whole of the ground floor. Now the next thing. When I saw the light I saw it as a chink of light between the two curtains. The curtains were drawn. Tell me how a man can come down in the morning and leave the curtains drawn and the light on in his breakfast-room. And even if he skips breakfast there are ninety-nine things which he would have wanted to fetch before going to the office. And even if his breakfast was just a cup of coffee in the kitchen, you can see through into the other room, as I explained.”
“Yes. I’m not saying you’re wrong. But suppose he came down early – left the house before it was light. He’d have the electric light on for breakfast. He might leave it on when he went.”
“No good,” said Paddy. “We caught the same train for town – on that and every morning.”
“Then you’re suggesting–?”
“Someone turned on the light that night. Maybe Mr Britten himself. Well, at any rate that would dispose of the accident theory. But it goes further. I should say, practically, that it would dispose of any idea of suicide, too.”
Mr Legate looked up at him quietly and then resumed his study of the blotting-pad.
“You know how it is,” Paddy went on – “When you come home with a skinful. At least – I take it you’re not a teetotaller.”
“You may assume that I have all the ordinary vices,” said Mr Legate with a fractional smile. “Carry on.”
“Well, then – imagine Mr Britten reaching home in the condition in which I left him – and the night air wouldn’t have improved matters – it’s a dollar to a dime he would have gone straight to sleep – possibly without even going through the formality of undressing first. Would he have got up, gone out into the bitter night and chucked himself into the river? Not Pygmalion likely. The first thing he’d have known would have been the morning sun, a raging thirst and a head like something halfway between a pneumatic drill and an electric toaster.”
“I see you speak from experience,” said Mr Legate. “Now let me see if I’ve got this quite straight,” he went on. “Mr Britten lived alone? Quite so. Did his own housework, I take it. A woman came in every weekend? I see. So that his house would normally be empty from the time he left for the office until the time he got back.”
“Certainly – and during the daytime my mother would have noticed any visitor. Those houses practically look down each other’s throats.”
“Very well. And from your knowledge of the structure of his house you say that it’s not possible to come down in the morning and leave the curtains drawn and the light on in the living-room without noticing it.”
“It’s not impossible,” said Paddy slowly. “But I think it’s so improbable that it calls for some alternative explanation.”
“I agree. And from this line of reasoning you infer that, since you saw the light on, someone must have turned it on, and turned it on that night. Did your mother see it, by the way?”
“No,” said Paddy. “But you wouldn’t from inside the house. It was only a chink of light, between the front curtains. I saw it because I looked for it – you see I was wondering at the time whether–”
“Exactly. Then you go on to say that if Britten turned the light on himself, he must have reached home safely. Therefore he didn’t fall into the river by accident.”
“Correct.”
“And if he once reached home safely, it would be the highest degree unlikely that he would go out again before morning – in the condition he was in.”
“Right again.”
“Then,” said Mr Legate softly, “since your reasoning would seem to show that it was not Mr Britten who turned on the light in his living-room – who did?”
“His murderer,” said Paddy boldly.
Mr Legate accepted this outrageous statement without visible reactions. Nevertheless he sounded a little shaken as he said, “Have you got any reason for such an extraordinary assumption?”
“Nothing that would stand up in a court of law,” said Paddy. “Except for this. When Mr Britten showed me those papers he took them out of his wallet. And when he’d finished with them he put them back. Now on both occasions I noticed how tight his jacket was, and how difficult he found it to get the wallet out of his inner pocket.”
“I see. When the Inspector failed to find the wallet, did he actually suggest to you that it might have slipped out into the river? Was that what he thought?”
“I’m not sure,” said Paddy. “He may have done. Or he may simply not have believed me.”
“What?”
“Well, you know, I’m not sure that he went for my story at all. I could see it sticking out a mile that he thought I might have pushed the old boy into the river myself.”
“You didn’t – I take it,” said Mr Legate.
It was hard to tell from his candid expression whether he was joking or not.
“No,” said Paddy shortly.
“But you suggest that someone else did. Someone who had a motive to conceal or destroy those two papers in the wallet. A motive strong enough to support a murder.”
“I know – I know. It sounds horribly unlikely when you put it like that. But yes, that’s what I did think.”
“And whom, may I ask, had you cast for the role of murderer?”
“I hadn’t got quite so far as that,” said Paddy, “but one of the villains of the piece was to be your head cashier.”
“Good God!” Mr Legate looked genuinely startled for the first time in the interview. “Brandison.”
“Is that his name? I didn’t know. Mr Britten spoke of the head of his department.”
“That’s Brandison. William Brandison. Our head cashier. A most respe
ctable man; and, if I may say so, Mr Carter, a most unlikely murderer.”
“He mightn’t have done it himself. He might have–”
“Hired an assassin,” suggested Mr Legate.
“Yes,” said Paddy. “It all sounds incredibly naïve when you fetch it out in the light of day. But such things have happened. By the way, was Brandison away from work about – let me see – about five or six weeks ago?”
“Yes, he was. Neuritis, I understand. In fact, since we are on the point, it was during his absence that Britten’s shortcomings came to light.”
“What had he done? I mean, don’t tell me if it’s a matter of confidence.”
“No – I should hardly call it that. It’ll have to come out at the inquest anyway. You probably know that we underwrite a number of our policies. There’s a good deal of mutual reinsurance goes on between the big companies in that way. It’s one of my jobs to select any potentially hazardous or unsound policies and get them covered. Britten had to do the paperwork. One day he had a list of policies to copy and he made two mistakes – just copying mistakes. The result was that two policies were not covered at all – and as ill luck would have it we had to pay out heavily on both of them. The directors weren’t best pleased, of course. They ordered a general investigation of Britten’s work. A lot of little errors came to light. None of them definitely dishonest but some of them a little near the bone.”
“I see,” said Paddy. “That explains the papers, of course. They were probably copies of that list of policies he’d slipped up over.”
“Might be,” said Mr Legate.
“And there’s never been any similar question about Brandison?”
“Never. His record here is absolutely clear. A most reliable man. I mean financially, of course. We haven’t the staff or the time to check up the private lives of our employees – though I believe some of the banks do so.”
“Then there might, just possibly, have been some private secret of Brandison’s which Britten had discovered?”
“It’s feasible, of course,” said Mr Legate. “We’ve all got a skeleton tucked away somewhere. But how would you expect Britten to find evidence of it in the books of the firm? I say again, financially Brandison’s beyond reproach. He has to be. You know something of this business, Mr Carter. Our weekly dividend turnover is nearly half a million pounds. We can’t afford to take any risks with money of that sort. We use the Stassen-Caulfield internal checking system – and our accounts have a full quarterly audit from Broomfields.”
The Doors Open Page 3
