Sir Percy Crumble was in his office, about to leave for an important business luncheon, Henry was informed by a crisp secretarial voice. When asked if she were Sir Percy’s secretary, the voice replied brusquely that she was one of Sir Percy’s secretaries. Finally convinced by the magic invocation of Scotland Yard, the voice connected Henry with Sir Percy Crumble, who was predictably affable and ignorant.
“What? Me send a car to meet Mrs. Ruddy Benson at Loondon Airport? Are you crazy, Mr. Tibbett?… Yes, I remember meeting Reggie Colby at Rule’s… Did ’e? Well, if ’e did, I don’t recall… Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve an appointment…”
It was a bright, brisk February day, and Sir Percy waved aside his chauffeur-driven car and walked through the streets of Mayfair to the expensive restaurant where he was lunching, thus making easy the task of the plainclothes detective who was following him.
When Henry phoned, Lady Diana Crumble was at home, entertaining Miss Cecily Smeed to lunch—a social activity that would have displeased Sir Percy, had he known about it. The fact was that Diana found Cecily, with her infinite knowledge of Warwick Industries, extremely useful from time to time. She also found her quite amusing, and a mine of information on the doings of Barbara Telford, whom Diana had cordially disliked ever since the long-ago year of their debuts into London society. The two women, of course, never discussed the affairs of Amalgamated Textiles. That, Diana knew, would be classed by Cecily as disloyalty to her present employer.
Diana spoke to Henry on the telephone, and laughed uproariously at the idea that she might have ordered a car to meet Sally Benson at the airport.
“I had no idea when she was supposed to be arriving,” she said. “All I know is what you told us the other day—that she was planning to come over, and Benson was trying to stop her. Of course I’ve never met her—what a fantastic idea. What’s happening?… You’ve lost her? Now I do call that careless—whatever is Scotland Yard coming to? Wait till I tell Cecily… Yes, of course you may, if you want to…” Her voice grew faint as she spoke away from the telephone. “Cecily, Chief Inspector Tibbett wants a word with you… Don’t ask me… To make sure you’re really here, I suppose…”
“Chief Superintendent Tibbett? This is Cecily Smeed… Of course, if I can… But I told you the other day I never met Mary Warwick… Naturally I’m sure… I knew Mr. Dominic, of course, because he used to work in the office… Well, when I say work, he honored us with a visit from time to time. But after he got married, he didn’t consider us grand enough for… Yes, Diana, I’m coming. Please excuse me, Mr. Tibbett, I have to go. Luncheon is served.”
The pretty house on Down Street had a back door leading into a small cobbled mews, as well as the pale blue front door with the brass knocker in the form of a clenched fist; so it was watched by two detectives.
Mr. Denton Westbury was not at home, and the young Cockney voice that answered the Battersea telephone number sounded at once bored and cheeky. He’d no idea where Denton was. Up west with one of his la-di-dah friends, no doubt. Oh, yes, he’d be back all right, but when—? “Well, it’s no good asking me, chum. I don’t care if you are Scotland bloody Yard. Wot I don’t know I can’t tell. Get it?”
“Better have the Battersea house watched,” Henry said to Reynolds, “and get someone onto tracing Westbury. I know it won’t be easy. Let’s try the Hamstones.”
Bertram Hamstone was taking a sandwich lunch in his office, due to pressure of work. He had been there all morning and would be there all afternoon. He had nobody with him except his personal secretary, who was taking dictation of a confidential nature. There was, the switchboard at Sprott’s Bank informed Henry, absolutely no question of interrupting Mr. Hamstone. Another plainclothes detective took up his station.
The Surrey police reported with commendable speed. A constable had been sent round to The Hollyhocks on the pretext of a security check. The Rolls was outside the garage, being cleaned with loving care by Martin, the chauffeur. The driveway of the house was cluttered with cars, for the good reason that the fundraising committee of the local Church Ladies’ Society was being entertained to a buffet lunch by Mrs. Hamstone.
The telephone at Quince, Quince, Quince and Quince was answered by Mr. Silverstein’s secretary. Miss Benedict, she said, had taken an early lunch hour, on account of her mother being up from the country for some shopping. She should be back in the office around half-past one. Mr. Quince was in court all day. No, she really couldn’t say what case. She worked for Mr. Silverstein, not Mr. Quince. Miss Benedict could tell Inspector Reynolds all about it when she came back.
“That’s a nuisance,” said Henry, “I wanted to talk to Ambrose Quince. The girl didn’t know which court or what the case is?”
“She said she didn’t, sir.”
Henry thought for a moment, then dialed a number.
“Mrs. Quince? It’s Henry Tibbett. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to speak to your husband, and I understand he’s in court.”
“That’s right. The Westchester divorce case. Rather messy. It’s been going on the best part of a week.”
“Can you tell me which court it’s being heard in?” Henry asked.
“No, I’m afraid I… Oh, wait a minute. It’ll be in the paper. Just a moment while I look it up. Yes, here’s the report of yesterday’s proceedings. Let’s see. The Law Courts—that’s the place in the Strand, isn’t it? Court number five Mr. Justice Bilberry.”
“Thanks a lot, Mrs. Quince,” said Henry. “I think I’ll go along and see if I can talk to Ambrose during the luncheon recess.”
“Did that woman arrive, by the way?” Rosalie asked. “Benson’s wife?”
“I haven’t seen her,” said Henry, truthfully.
“I just wondered,” said Rosalie.
The London Metropole Hotel reported that they had a room reserved in the name of Mrs. Harold Benson, but that she had not yet checked in. As soon as she did, they would ask her to contact Chief Superintendent Tibbett or Inspector Reynolds at Scotland Yard.
Henry was just putting on his raincoat, with the idea of going to the Law Courts and seeking out Ambrose Quince, when Derek Reynolds came into his office, looking worried.
“I’ve just had the governor of Cragley Remand Center on the line, sir.”
“What’s happened? Is Benson—?”
“Oh, he’s all right, sir. Very pleased, the governor said. You see, there’s been a telegram.”
“A telegram?”
“For Benson—but naturally it had to go through the governor. Handed in at Charlottesville, Virginia. Message reads”—Reynolds consulted a paper in his hand—“ ‘Visit canceled love Sally.’ Name of sender, Mrs. Benson.”
Henry said, “Get Benson here right away.”
“If the woman who arrived wasn’t Mrs. Benson—” Reynolds began.
“Cables can be faked,” Henry said. “A phone call to a friend in the States…make some sort of plausible explanation…it’s not so difficult. Well, this clinches your kidnap theory. But for Emmy, people in the States would have assumed Sally Benson to be in England, while everyone here believed she’d stayed at home in Charlottesville. A huge hotel like the Metropole isn’t going to worry about a no-show. It would have been quite some time before anybody realized that the wretched woman was missing. Get Benson to my office at once.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FOR A MAN with a charge of murder hanging over his head, Harold Benson seemed surprisingly cheerful. When Henry had dismissed the escorting prison officer, and had assured Benson that they were quite alone and that their conversation was not being overheard or recorded, Benson sat down, smiled broadly, and said, “Thank you, Chief Superintendent.”
“What for?”
“For heading Sally off. I don’t know how you did it, but I sure am grateful. It’s a weight off my mind.”
Henry said, “I haven’t got time for this sort of nonsense, Benson. Why didn’t you tell me your wife was Simon Warwick?”
Benson’s jaw dropped in utter astonishment. At last, he said, “Now, that’s the most absurd—”
“It’s not absurd, and you know it. Simon Warwick—or rather, Simon Finch—had a sex-change operation and became Sally Finch. You married her. There’s no point in denying it, because I can easily enough check the record of your marriage in the States.”
This time, Benson said, “How in heaven’s name did you find out?”
“That doesn’t matter. What color are your wife’s eyes?”
“Oh,” said Benson. “Yes, I see. That’s the only thing we were afraid of—that somebody might know about the eyes.”
“I think,” said Henry, “that you’d better tell me about it from the beginning.”
“Okay.” Benson seemed more at ease. “Since you know, there can’t be any harm in it. Of course, I can only tell you what Sally told me. It seems that as far back as she can remember, she somehow knew that nature had made an awful mistake—had put a girl into a boy’s body. You may find that hard to believe, but I didn’t, when she told me, because Sally is just the most feminine person you can imagine. That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with her.”
“So Simon Finch had a pretty unhappy childhood,” Henry said.
“Miserable. She…or he, I suppose, but I just can’t think of Sally as anything but a girl…he was a bright child, but couldn’t get on with the other kids at school. Things weren’t made any easier by his father, who was a super-masculine thug with an artificial leg acquired in the war. Naturally, he wanted his son to be super-masculine, too, and do all the things he couldn’t. Finally, when he was fifteen, Simon had a complete breakdown. The father dismissed it as hysterical tantrums, but fortunately the mother decided to consult an analyst—a very advanced and perceptive man. He diagnosed the trouble—that is, he got Simon to trust him to the point where he could talk about his problem. The doctor spoke to Mrs. Finch, and advised two things. First, that Simon should be told that Finch was not his real father. That’s when Mrs. Finch showed Simon the Warwick passport, and told him who he really was. I don’t think she ever knew that Sally took it with her when she left home. It meant so much, you see. Secondly, the doctor advised the sex-change operation. It was rarer then than it is now, of course, but the doctor felt that this was a case in which the poor kid would never be able to lead any sort of a happy life as a boy. He said the sooner the change process was started, the better.”
“The change process? I thought it was an operation?”
“That’s only the final stage. It’s a long job. You can’t just walk into the hospital as a man and come out ten days later as a woman. There have to be years of hormone treatment, and gradual changeover, before surgery can be done. Sally was overjoyed at the idea. Mrs. Finch agreed. You can imagine the reaction of Captain Finch. He always called himself Captain, even though it was only a wartime rank. That was the sort of man he was.”
Henry nodded. “So what happened?”
“Well,” said Benson, “Sally’s mother told her the story of the adoption—including the fact that her real mother had had different-colored eyes. Apparently she got that information from some English attorney who had known the Warwicks, and had visited the Finches when Sally was a small child. Mrs. Finch did point out to Sally that she had a very rich bachelor uncle in England who might one day want to trace his nephew, and might be very put out to find a niece instead. Sal said she didn’t care. She wanted the operation anyway.
“If Finch had been a different sort of man, it would all have been easy. The whole family could have moved to a new neighborhood, and Sally could have started life there as a girl. But the captain wasn’t having any of that. If the boy wished to disgrace the family and drag his father’s name in the mud, he said, so much the worse for Simon. He could get out—leave home—never show his face again…you can imagine how it was. Finally it was decided that Simon should go and live in Washington—it’s only a few miles from McLean, over the river. There, he’d be close to home, and also within easy reach of the Baltimore hospital and the doctor who would eventually do the operation. Mrs. Finch kept in touch all the time, of course. But Captain Finch insisted on putting out the story that his rapscallion son had run away from home—and Mrs. Finch had to go along with it in front of anybody who had known Simon as a boy. The whole emphasis was on making a fresh start, you see.”
Henry said, “I had a feeling all along that Simon Finch wasn’t a runaway, but I must admit that nothing as bizarre as the real explanation ever occurred to me. Go on.”
“Well, Sally lived in an apartment in D.C. and took the hormone treatment and dressed as a girl. She was tremendously happy for the first time in her life. She got excellent grades in school, and after she graduated she had the operation. When she had fully recovered, she entered George Washington University—as a girl, of course, with a fresh set of papers showing that she was, and always had been, Sally Finch. Simon Finch had ceased to exist.”
Henry said, “You met at university, did you? You’re almost exactly the same age.”
“That’s right. And both our mothers were English—not that that was any rarity, for people of our generation. My mother used to call it reverse lend-lease—the stream of GI brides coming over from England at the end of the war. Anyhow, it made a sort of bond between us. We started dating, and finally I asked her to marry me. That was when she told me the truth. Nobody else in the world knew it, except her mother and her doctor. Captain Finch had died the year before.”
“Were you upset…shocked…?” Henry had forgotten that he was a policeman interviewing a murder suspect. He was quite simply fascinated by the story.
Harold Benson smiled, remembering. “I sure as hell was surprised,” he said. “As for being upset—well, that was only about myself, not about Sally.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, my first reaction was to suspect I must be a latent homosexual. I’d never felt any interest sexually in other guys—but now it seemed I was asking one to marry me. But Sally made me go and talk to her doctor, and he explained. A homosexual doesn’t want to be a woman, see? He enjoys being male, and making love to other men. A transsexual, like Sally, is quite different. He hates his male body. He—or rather she—is a complete, heterosexual woman after the operation. Even before it, a transsexual feels like a woman—but a woman trapped in a male body. That’s why it always leads to misery if a transsexual experiments with homosexuality. The two are completely different, just as transvestites are something else again.”
Henry said, “You’re quite an authority on the subject.”
Benson grinned. “I had to become one,” he said, “before we could get married. I had to be sure I knew what I was doing and felt easy about it. Of course, we can never have children of our own, so we decided from the beginning to adopt at least one. We waited to get married until I was offered this job in Charlottesville. We reckoned it was far enough away from anybody who might possibly have known Sally as Simon. Sally’s mother was marvelous to us. It broke Sal’s heart that she didn’t live to see us married.”
“She was killed in an air crash, wasn’t she?” said Henry.
“Yes. And Sally has always felt that it was her fault.”
“Her fault?”
“Not really, of course, but if it hadn’t been for Sally and our engagement, Mrs. Finch would never have been on that airplane. You see, with the wedding coming up, she began to think again about the legal position of Simon Warwick, and she decided to go over to England and consult with the lawyer who arranged the adoption in the first place.”
“Humberton?”
“I never knew his name, nor did Sally. However, Mrs. Finch said she was going to tell the attorney the whole story, and get his opinion on the legal situation, should Lord Charlton ever start looking for his nephew. I know she saw him, because she wrote us a very guarded letter from England, saying she would explain the position when she got back home. And then the plane crashed, and we never di
d find out what the attorney said.”
“But Ronald Goodman probably did,” said Henry. And then, “What did you think when you heard that your rival claimant was Simon Finch?”
“I didn’t,” Benson protested. “Quince never told me there was another claimant until that last letter he wrote, and then he didn’t give his name. The first time I heard it was from that dumb girl in the outer office. ‘Mr. Finch has already arrived,’ she said. It gave me almost as big a shock as when I found his body a few moments later. I just couldn’t figure it out, until you told me he was the attorney’s clerk.”
Henry said, “You knew he wasn’t Simon Warwick, and he knew that you weren’t. Quite an intriguing situation—but somebody made sure it didn’t develop.”
“Not me, Chief Superintendent. Not me.”
“We’ll see about that,” Henry said. “Meanwhile, how did you come to be making your own fraudulent claim?”
Benson said, “I don’t think you can call it fraudulent. Sally saw the advertisement as soon as it appeared, and we talked the whole thing over. We presumed that Lord Charlton knew about his nephew’s eyes, so he would have had to acknowledge Sally—but of course then the whole story would have come out, and can you imagine the publicity it would have gotten? Our lives would have been wrecked. But then Lord Charlton died. We talked it all over again. After all, Sally was the rightful heir, absolutely entitled to the money. We felt for our son’s sake we ought to try to claim it. I decided to have a shot at it.
“I had to gamble on the fact that nobody but Charlton knew about the eyes—if he’d told the attorney, then I’d have been thrown out at once. It was obvious from the advertisements that Quince didn’t know the name of the adoptive parents, so I guessed the other old attorney must be dead and the papers destroyed. I couldn’t call myself Finch, of course—I had to sort of graft Sal’s story onto my own childhood, which I knew could be checked. The birth date wasn’t quite right, but we thought up a story to cover that. It didn’t seem to us that it was really a deception. After all, Simon Warwick would have inherited Warwick Industries, which was what Lord Charlton wanted.”
Who Is Simon Warwick? Page 17
