by Hugh Canham
‘I see,’ said Hector heavily. ‘Suppose Michael refuses to move out – are you going to try and force him?’
‘It’ll be part of the negotiations. Anyway, enough of that. I gather you’re a sole practitioner like me. If you ever have anyone wanting to know about horses, racing stables and that sort of thing, that’s one of my areas of specialism. I’ll give you one of my cards. I was a partner in a very large firm but there was a huge row and I had to leave – with as many of their clients, of course, as I could. If you think I’m hard, you’re right – I am. I’ve had to be. I gather you just walked into your father’s practice when he died. Very nice too. By the way, they gave me your address to send the share sale agreement to.’
‘It’s very tough on Michael to be pushed out in this way,’ said Hector, doggedly returning to the subject that was still uppermost in his mind. ‘Is there no compromise solution?’
‘No, not in my opinion. But being forced out may buck him up a bit. Life is a tough business. I was pushed out of my former partnership. I survived. And in fact I’m happier now on my own. Perhaps Michael will be. He’s been running the farm very inefficiently, you know. You can see it by the figures and looking round a bit.’
‘You did know his wife had been ill and died?’
‘Yes, I knew that. There are always excuses. I sympathise, but business is business. If you must know, one of the reasons I was chucked out of my previous firm was because they said I was devoting too much time to my hobby, even though I only ever did it in the evenings. These big firms think they own you and your time completely.’
‘May I ask what the hobby was?’
‘Ballroom dancing. My partner and I were set to be national champions before the rumpus.’
‘And now?’
‘Ah well, I don’t have the time for it any more. I do a bit, but nothing serious. My former dancing partner was, of course, very upset when I threw in the towel, but I just told him to get a new partner. It’s been a year now since I started up my own law practice.’
‘Your office is in Covent Garden I see. Would you like me to drop you there?’
‘Yes please. I live over the office.’
They were now crossing Waterloo Bridge, and after various twists and turns, Hector located the street in which Sally’s office was. As they drove down the street, Sally became somewhat agitated.
‘Oh damn and blast,’ she muttered. ‘Look, just drop me here would you. There’s someone ahead I don’t want to meet.’
Hector stopped, whereupon she leapt out of the car, pausing only briefly to swivel her skirt back in place before running up the road and disappearing swiftly through a door that must have led to her flat. On the ground floor next to the door was a large window with ‘S. Koy & Co. Solicitors’ in gold letters across it and a Venetian blind behind it.
As he drove back to St. James’s, Hector reflected that Sally was rather a nice girl underneath the tough exterior and that her legs were wonderful. Even better than Lucasta’s, he thought. But as he got nearer St. James’s he noticed that his left foot, which had been quite painless while he’d been talking to Sally, was starting to throb badly again. In fact it was hurting so much as he drove into the square that he decided to park the car there at a meter and take it to the car park later, as it was a few streets further on. But as he reversed into the parking space, he noticed that Sally had left her coat and briefcase on the back seat. He gathered them up along with his own overnight bag and briefcase that were in the boot and resolved to ring Sally’s office number and tell her that he’d got them. But as he came into the entrance hall, he realised that something had happened because Jolly was there waiting for him and looking anxious.
‘I took the liberty of telephoning the clients, sir, and they informed me that you had left the meeting and were on your way back to London. I’m so glad you’re back – Miss Lucasta wants to talk to you very urgently. She seems very worried about something.’
‘Well, tell her to come and see me in my office if she wants. Oh, and bring me a cup of tea ASAP, Jolly, would you please.’
Hector felt very bad-tempered as he entered his office. He dumped the bag and Sally’s coat and briefcase, removed his left shoe, swore and said to himself, ‘Well, I’ll never get Sally Koy to change her mind about anything. Do I tell Michael now or later?’
At this point, Lucasta entered his office breathlessly. She’d obviously run from the library and her bosom was heaving most appealingly, he thought.
‘Hector, you’ve not going to believe this – first, the painting under the cherub is thought to be a Raphael, and secondly, I’ve had an antiquarian bookseller in. He looked at the books I’d laid out on the table and then he got so interested he demanded to see some of the rest. Hector, he says they’re worth a fortune!’
‘Good Lord,’ responded Hector in a somewhat subdued way. ‘Really?’
‘Well, you don’t seem very excited.’
‘No, I just want a cup of tea and a couple more painkillers. And if you’re going to stay and tell me more about these remarkable events, do you think you could speak more quietly? Shouting excitedly makes my foot hurt you see.’ He pointed to his left foot that he had placed on the bottom drawer of his desk which he’d pulled out for the purpose.
Lucasta shook her head and pulled up a chair to the side of Hector’s desk so she could tell him more about the things that had happened. As she did so, she noticed that his sock had a large hole in the big toe.
It was half past five when Hector remembered that his car was parked outside and that he had Sally Koy’s briefcase and coat. He phoned her office, but only connected with an answering machine saying that the office was closed. He must get Jolly to move the car, he supposed. He picked up Sally’s overcoat and briefcase to put them on the top of his filing cabinet, but as he picked up the coat, he noticed a delightful smell, particularly from around the collar. Perhaps he really ought to make the effort to take Sally’s briefcase back to her tonight. It seemed rather heavy and might have some important papers in it that she’d be wanting first thing in the morning. . .
When he had hobbled to the Rolls, he saw that, predictably, it had a parking ticket stuck on the windscreen, which he picked off in annoyance and put in his pocket. He then drove slowly and thoughtfully to Covent Garden through the rush-hour traffic. He thought that if Lucasta’s bookseller was right, his finances were looking up even though he supposed he’d have to come clean with the Inland Revenue and tell them that his father’s books were worth more than the thousand he’d estimated when the old man died. And then there was the Raphael. This seemed so unlikely, he could hardly believe it, but even so, he had persuaded Lucasta to telephone Gloria to tell her the good news. Gloria’s reaction he knew would be predictable. Even a small painting by Raphael, he assumed, would be worth a great deal, and no doubt Gloria would be on the first plane to London. He really didn’t think he could stand seeing her at present. He parked the Rolls round the corner from Sally’s office and flat in a road that seemed strangely to be devoid of parked cars. Sally’s office was definitely closed as there was no light on in it, so he thought he would try her flat. He rang the bell, but there was no answer. Then he noticed that the door leading up to it from the street wasn’t properly shut, so pushed it wide open and shouted up the flight of stairs, ‘Miss Koy, are you there?’ But of course she couldn’t hear him up a flight of stairs. So he climbed the stairs painfully. They led to another door, also ajar. He knocked on this and shouted again. Still no reply. How very odd for both the doors to be open, he thought. He pushed the flat door open and went in and shouted for Sally again. There was silence. It was obviously the sitting room that he was in, and he wondered if he should just leave the briefcase and coat there and go, but thought better of it, as she might be ill or something. He pushed open the door of the next room. It smelt very scented in there – just like the overcoat. It was obviously her bedroom. It was illuminated by the street lights as the curtains were not drawn
, and he could make out a figure on the bed. The shapely legs were unmistakable – but Sally was fully clothed. She must have gone to sleep, Hector thought. He tiptoed over to the bed, where he noticed that Sally appeared to be in a very strange position for sleeping. He looked at her face and realised with horror that it was red and puffy. He found the main light switch and flicked it on. He had never in his life fainted, but now he felt his head spinning and his legs giving way. He sat down on the bed and tried to control his body. Not only did he feel faint, but he thought he was going to be sick. Slowly, he forced himself to look at Sally again. He was appalled. Her glasses lay broken on the pillow beside her head, and from the red weals round her neck he knew that she’d undoubtedly been strangled. Had she struggled at all, he wondered, or had she been attacked while asleep? Her skirt was still pulled down, so it did not seem that she had been sexually assaulted. But one of her shoes was on the floor beside the bed. She had looked so lovely in his car that afternoon and so alive; and now she was very dead. And Michael’s last words came immediately to his mind: ‘I could strangle her!’
‘Just sit down, sir, and tell me once again clearly and slowly how you came to be in this flat.’
Hector explained again. Chief Inspector Burke looked at him very suspiciously. Burke was a bombastic little man in his mid-fifties, balding and moustached, who obviously took himself and his work very seriously.
‘I see. And you just found the street door ajar? Didn’t you think that strange?’
‘I did – a bit.’
‘And you say you had never met the deceased before today? Is that correct?’
‘Perfectly correct, Inspector.’
‘It seems strange that you came home together in your car when you told me there’d been such a disagreement at the meeting.’
‘Well, as I told you, Inspector, my client Michael Ashmold asked me if I would give Miss Koy a lift to try and persuade her to change her advice to her client, Mr Olsen.’
‘A bit irregular, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘And did you get her to change her mind?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘So you had a row in the car?’
‘Not at all, Inspector. In fact, we got on rather well!’
‘Ah, I see. The deceased is, or rather was, a very attractive woman?’
‘She was indeed.’
‘And you were attracted to her?’
‘A little, I suppose. She was very hard at the meeting, but I could see when I talked to her that that was only her professional persona.’
‘I see. I put it to you, sir, that she could have left her things in the back of the car in the hope that you would deliver them back to her later.’
‘I think that is a ridiculous suggestion, Inspector.’
‘Why?’
‘She left them in my car because when we drove into this street, she saw someone she knew and said she wanted to avoid, so she got me to stop the car before we got to them and then she jumped out and ran to her flat door and disappeared, forgetting about her coat and briefcase in her haste.’
‘Why should she do that? If she’d wanted to avoid this person she could have asked you to drive on and come back later.’
‘I don’t know, Inspector.’
‘Who was the person she didn’t want to meet?’
‘Once again, I don’t know, Inspector. I think it was a man. Maybe if I saw him again I would remember him.’
Hector was beginning to dislike Chief Inspector Burke greatly. He had obviously modelled himself on the fictional TV detective Hector liked least. He now hovered over Hector, who was seated in a small upright chair feeling very uncomfortable, his left big toe throbbing constantly. He felt all of this was most unfair. He had only tried to do the decent thing and return Sally’s things to her, and here he was being treated as a criminal!
The chief inspector had broken off the questioning for a minute or two while he shouted orders to two uniformed officers who appeared to be ransacking the flat for clues, and to some men with a stretcher who were taking away Sally’s body. But now he’d returned and stood threateningly once again over Hector.
‘You’re sure Miss Koy was dead when you entered the flat?’
‘Positive. Look, Inspector, if you think I strangled her, would I really have then telephoned for the police and waited here? No, I’d have done a bunk and been on the run!’
‘In my experience, sir, criminals do strange things after committing crimes, but it’s very interesting you should say what you’ve just said because my colleagues in Kent have visited the Ashmolds’ farm and it would seem that Michael Ashmold has disappeared – done a bunk, as you might say. His sister says that shortly after the meeting ended, he uttered certain threats against Miss Koy, among them that he could strangle her. Do you recall him saying that?’
‘Ah yes, he said that to me, Inspector, but I’m sure he didn’t mean it literally.’
‘Why are you so sure, sir?’
And so the questioning went on and on. Eventually Hector, who’d not eaten anything since breakfast time and was in pain and very tired, said, ‘May I suggest, Inspector, that rather than questioning me interminably when there is nothing else I can add to what I’ve told you already, you and your colleagues direct your energies to finding Mr Ashmold? I am a solicitor. You have my address. I’m not feeling well, as I told you, because I have an attack of gout and I should like to go home to bed.’
Surprisingly, this speech appeared to deflate the bombastic chief inspector, who, after a long silence, agreed that Hector could go home after he’d signed a statement.
When Hector left the flat, feeling free at last and gratefully breathing in a few deep breaths of night air, he saw from his watch that it was just past midnight. He limped towards where he had parked his car – to find that it was not there! At first he thought it must have been stolen, but then he saw a large notice affixed to a lamppost which announced that roadworks would be commencing and that any vehicle parked in the street would be removed. He had of course not seen it when he’d parked, although he remembered that he’d thought it strange that there were no parked cars in the road.
He was eventually able to hail a taxi that took him home. In the small and little-used kitchen off his sitting room, he found nothing to eat but a small tin of baked beans and a sliced loaf. He opened the can of beans, cutting himself neatly in the process, and heated the beans and ate them on a piece of buttered toast. With this, he had two large whiskies and two more painkillers. It had not been a good day, he thought as he climbed the stairs and lay down on his bed. But then he remembered about the Raphael, and better still, his father’s old books. ‘Worth a small fortune,’ Lucasta had said. He wondered what exactly ‘a small fortune’ was. He slowly undressed and gently inserted his left foot into the bedclothes, having taken off his shoe with some difficulty. It did somehow ease the pain taking off the shoe and knowing that the books were worth a great deal . . . but, oh dear, the baked beans were giving him terrible wind . . .
‘Look, Jolly, I must see Hector. It’s very urgent!’
‘I’m very sorry, Miss Lucasta, but I’m afraid you cannot. Mr Hector is in his bed and appears to be very ill. In fact, I’ve called the doctor.’
‘But what’s the matter with him?’
‘We think it’s a very bad attack of gout. At least we hope it is nothing more serious.’
‘Well, he had what he called “a touch” of gout yesterday – but Jolly, I must insist. If he’s only got gout he can speak to me!’
‘Can it not wait until after the doctor’s called?’
‘I know all about doctors calling – we could wait all day! Look, his rooms are one floor up, aren’t they? I’m going to see him!’
At which Lucasta determinedly climbed the elegant staircase up to the first floor with Jolly in pursuit muttering, ‘I think this is most unwise.’
‘Which way now, Jolly?’
�
�To the right, miss. That’s the sitting room and then, if you really must, his bedroom is up the staircase inside the room. But I really think I’d better go up first.’
Lucasta ignored all this, noting briefly that the sitting room was lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves and books. It reminded her of the smoking room in a gentlemen’s club in Pall Mall where she had once been admitted on some sort of special occasion. She pushed past Jolly before he could stop her, and ascended the flight of stairs leading to the bedroom.
Hector was lying unshaven and propped up in bed with his eyes closed. He opened them a fraction as Lucasta entered the room and groaned.
‘Good God, Lucasta, what are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to ask you two things that I’m afraid can’t wait,’ announced Lucasta.
‘Could you please speak very quietly? It hurts when you shout, as I’ve told you before.’
‘I’m not shouting!’
‘Well you have a very piercing voice then. Could you please speak very, very softly? Bring that chair up near the bed, sit on it and just whisper will you if you must say something.’
Lowering her voice to a stage whisper, Lucasta spoke: ‘Jolly says your gout’s worse.’
‘It would appear so.’
‘And it’s laid you low.’
‘Have you never heard the story of Pitt who, when asked to be Prime Minister, declined because he had the gout?’
‘Vaguely. Look Hector, I’m very sorry you’re not well, but I have two pressing problems that can’t wait. First, I telephoned, as instructed, your friend Gloria, who, predictably, will be here on the first available plane. She’ll be staying at the Dorchester, she informs me, and will be “right over to see you”, as she put it. Secondly, the first antiquarian bookseller who said your father’s old books were worth a small fortune is pressing strongly to come back with a second antiquarian bookseller who’s a friend of his and look through the whole cupboard with a view to their making a joint offer for the lot. The first antiquarian bookseller says he will have to take out a large mortgage on his home, his shop and his stock if he wanted to buy all the books himself. Now what shall I do?’
