And So To Murder (16 page)

Tilly’s voice.

For two days he had been taunted, tormented, and put upon thorns by the note of familiarity in that voice; the harsh and husky quality underlying; the thick sound, as though of a mouth full of pebbles; the eerie bawling which might have been a man’s or a woman’s. It was Tilly’s voice.

‘One other small point. You say in your letter to Sir Henry’ – Gagern moved his fingers sideways – ‘that Miss Stanton has been troubled with anonymous letters. How do the letters reach her?’

‘By hand, at the Merefield Country Club.’

‘So. That is interesting. And does Tilly Parsons also live at the Merefield Country Club?’

‘Yes; she has the room next to …’ Bill stopped. Anger, incredulity, bewilderment, all flooded over him with exactly the same effect as a sea-wave; and he spluttered. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

‘Why? Because you like the lady?’ asked Gagern. His face was full of cynicism; his eyes were turned inwards. ‘I have found that that is seldom a safe rule in life. In any case, I do not say that it
is
so. For I am convinced that one person, and only one, is behind all these events; and this woman cannot have been concerned in the first part of it. She may even be innocently concerned in it. I only say that she will require watching. Have you any suggestion, Sir Henry?’

Throughout this H.M. had been sleepily chewing the pen-holder and making noises.

‘I say,’ he repeated stubbornly, ‘that I’m interested in that missing film. And that’s all I’m interested in.’ He sat up and howled at them. ‘Don’t you think I got any work to do? Do you think I can sit crystal-gazin’ about your murders when what I want is that film? Now let me get something straight. You say the film was stolen at the same time as the sulphuric acid?’

‘No. I only tell you that we discovered their loss at the same time.’

‘Uh-huh. The acid was kept in the sound-stage, was it? Before it got pinched, I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘But the film wasn’t in the sound-stage, I gather?’

‘No, certainly not. It was in the “Library”, which is a big storage-room near the cutting and developing rooms in the east wing of the main building.’

‘And when, exactly, did you hear about it disappearing?’

‘About a quarter to five in the afternoon. Roger Baker rang through from the Library to the sound-stage and told me. I went straight to the Library: that was why nobody could find me. I found out it was true. I came back to the sound-stage about five minutes past five o’clock. Tom Hackett was standing by the door, searching everybody (for acid) who went out. I went straight to a telephone and rang you up; and we were still talking when I heard a window smash at ten minutes past five – the time of the acid-pouring. I did not tell Hackett about the loss of the film until later. He was upset enough as it was.’

‘And who has access to this Library?’

‘Anybody. We share it with Radiant Pictures and S.A.G.’

H.M. eyed him curiously. ‘You treat things sort of careless down in that part of the world, don’t you, son?’

‘Unfortunately, we do.’

‘Well,’ said H.M., ‘I’ve got only one thing to say to you. You two get together and you find me that film. I don’t care two hoots and a whistle for anything else. Now just you beetle off and let me get some work done. Only –’ His big face smoothed itself out. An eye, small and sharp and disconcerting, swung round to Bill Cartwright. ‘Was it her voice, son?’ he asked softly.

‘Whose voice?’

‘Was it Tilly Parsons’s voice you heard outside the window when somebody took a pot-shot at this gal?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bill abruptly. ‘I’m afraid it was.’

After a silence Bill turned to Gagern.

‘Monica’s downstairs now,’ he went on. ‘I suggest we all have a drink and go into this. I can’t believe that Tilly, of all people, is up to any funny business. But if she is – well, Monica’s the person who has got to know it.’

‘At your service,’ said Gagern.

Captain Blake took them out. The last thing they saw, before the door closed, was H.M. sitting like an impassive and ill-tempered idol, piled behind his desk; and both of them had an idea that H.M. was telling less than he knew. They were let out of the War Office by a different entrance from that by which they had come in, opening into a street parallel with Horse Guards Avenue on the other side; so that they had to walk all the way round the block to reach the main court-yard again. Big Ben was just striking the shock of four-thirty – a fact which later became important.

Monica was not in the ante-room.

They began to search, pushing among the crowd. They were still searching, frantically, when one of the messengers took pity on them.

‘The young lady, sir?’ he said to Bill. ‘Oh, she’s gone. She walked out of here not a minute after you went upstairs.’

3

Up in the little office above the court-yard, growing grey with afternoon light, Sir Henry Merrivale still sat behind his desk and stared at the door. The corner of one nostril seemed to have acquired a permanent twist, as though he were smelling a bad breakfast egg.

Captain Blake closed the door, sat down on the edge of the desk, and looked at him.

‘H.M.,’ he said, ‘what’s the game?’

‘Eh?’

‘I said,’ repeated his companion in a louder voice, ‘what’s the game?’

‘Oh, I was just sittin’ and thinkin’.’ H.M.’s eye wandered round the office, out into the court-yard, and over blank rows of windows. ‘Y’know, Ken – I’m not goin’ to be here much longer.’

‘Nonsense!’ said the other sharply.

‘It’s true, though. This is a young man’s war, Ken. I’m nearly seventy years old: did you know that?’

‘Bah.’

‘No, Ken; I’m not foolin’ this time. I’m surprised it’s lasted as long as this. In another week or so I’ll be gettin’ my walking-papers. And then what? I’ll tell you. As sure as you live and breathe, the hyena-souled bounders are goin’ to stick me straight into the House of Lords –’

Ken Blake interrupted him.

‘But see here, H.M.’ he argued, ‘I don’t see any reason for such a nightmare. Masters tells me you’ve been going on for a long time about being treacherously sand-bagged and shoved into the House of Lords. But why? After all, it’s not obligatory. Even if they do offer you a peerage, you can always politely refuse it, can’t you?’

H.M. regarded him with a dreary eye.

‘Oh, my son! – You’re married, aren’t you?’

‘H’m,’ said the other, enlightened.

‘Yes. In addition to which, I’ve got two marriageable daughters. Ken, what would happen to me at home if I refused a peerage just won’t bear thinkin’ about. It makes me wake up in a cold sweat at night when I dream about it.’

He reflected.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do, Ken,’ he declared quite seriously. ‘If they try any trick like that, I’ll tell you exactly what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going out east and enter a Trappist monastery.’

‘Don’t be an ass!’

‘I mean it, son. They got some vows I rather like. “Chastity, poverty, and silence.” I never was very keen about chastity or poverty; but, burn me, Ken, the silence would suit me right down to the ground. Besides –’

‘Besides what?’

H.M. squirmed. He glared at the pen-holder.

‘Well, Ken,’ he mumbled uncomfortably. ‘I mean, we’re none of us gettin’ any younger. It’s got to be in the nature of things. Three score years and ten. I mean to say, there comes a time in every bloke’s life when he’s got to think about dyin’; when he knows there can’t be many more years to –’

His companion was aghast. In all the moods of grousing which had ever beset H.M. – and the name of them was legion – he had never before gone as far as this.

‘Drop it,’ Captain Blake said sharply.

H.M. continued to shake his head.

‘Well, Ken, y’know –’

‘I said: “Drop it.” I know exactly what’s wrong with you. In the first place, they’re not going to retire you. Even if they do, you’ve still got more intelligence in that nut of yours than the whole crowd of them put together.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘In the second place, you had lunch with the Home Secretary; and that’s practically fatal. In the third place’ – here he looked hard at H.M. – ‘the final point is that you’d give your ears to go down to Pineham and find out what’s really going on in that film-studio.’

H.M. glowered at him.

‘That,’ insisted Captain Blake, ‘is why I asked you a minute ago: What’s the game?’

‘Game? There’s no game.’

‘H.M., that won’t do. I know you. You’re determined to be the Old Maestro if it chokes you. What exactly is up? This fellow Gagern, or Collins, for instance …’

‘Joe? What about him?’

‘Well, is this the double-twist? Do you think Gagern is the film-stealing serpent, and are you giving him a clean bill of health in order to catch him?’

H.M. shook his head. ‘No, son,’ he said seriously. ‘Joe is absolutely trustworthy: he’s no more a Nazi spy than I am. I was not thinkin’ about that. Only –’

‘Only what?’

H.M. pointed to the mass of loose papers on his desk. He ran his hands among them and threw them about him, scrabbling among them like an elderly cockerel in a barn-yard.

‘It’s rummy,’ he roared. ‘All this is. It smells of rumminess to high heaven. If there were ever a rummier case than this to come and pitch on my desk, this case is that case. Have you read any of this testimony?’

‘No.’

‘Have a look at it, then. At this. And this.’ Papers flew. ‘Y’know, Ken, I doubt if any of ’em down there has the ghost of an idea what’s really going on. And, if my notion happens to be right, it’s nasty. It’s uncommon nasty. I only hope this fellow Cartwright has got that gal safe and sound. Because the person behind this business has now stopped foolin’. It’ll be murder next, Ken: murder with the gloves off, and no mistake made when the punch goes home.’

‘What are you going to do?’

For a time H.M. did not speak. He sat back and twiddled his thumbs, his lowering gaze fixed on the door. The long afternoon light drew in across the court-yard of the War Office. Presently H.M. shook his head. He reached out and picked up the telephone.

‘Get me Scotland Yard,’ he said.

1

I
T
was nearly three o’clock when Monica Stanton walked out of the War Office.

Again truth must be told. At this moment she had no intention of going back to Pineham. She was in no mood for work. What she meant to do was: first, go to Bond Street and buy a lot of new clothes as balm for her angry soul; and, second, go to the Café Royal and get herself picked up by the first attractive man she met.

Why she thought of the Café Royal it would be difficult to say. Lady Astor herself would have difficulty in finding any wickedness at that innocent and indeed exemplary place. But Monica remembered that her Aunt Flossie had once spoken darkly of it. And at least you met a decent class of people there – whereas you never knew what trouble you might find if you went (for instance) to Soho.

‘Ee!’ said Monica to herself, in fury.

In other words, she had reached that state of mind in which no girl, of however lofty character, is safe to be allowed loose.

And Monica’s character, basically, was anything but lofty.

She hailed a taxi in Whitehall. Bill Cartwright had done this deliberately, of course, to humiliate her. He had known all along she would never be allowed into the War Office.

Her mind dwelt with hatred on the picture of Bill as he probably was now. He would be sitting in a spacious office, all mahogany and deep carpets, with bronze busts on bookcases, and an Adam fireplace. He would be drinking whisky and soda – Monica herself, when she reached the Café Royal, was going to have absinthe – and listening to some thrilling anecdote of the Secret Service, told by a tall grey man with a deep voice, who sat at a desk with his back to the Adam fireplace.

Every film-goer knows that this is a true picture of the Military Intelligence Department; and Monica elaborated it until pukka sahibs abounded.

For a second or two she considered the idea of rapping on the glass and asking the taxi-driver to take her to some place that was really low. She had heard that taxi-drivers knew about such things. And that she did not do this was due not to the training of Canon Stanton, but to a disquieting feeling that three o’clock in the afternoon was all wrong: it was unromantic: what she wanted was soft lights, and plush, and an Edwardian atmosphere.

And Bill Cartwright?

At Pineham, for instance –

This was the point at which Monica, her thoughts returning to Pineham for the first time in hours, sat up in the cab with a feeling of something like horror.

It was Wednesday afternoon.

For days, and even weeks, she had had an engagement for this Wednesday afternoon. For days, even weeks, it had been arranged that on Wednesday afternoon she should meet Mr Hackett and Mr Fisk in her office, to show them the script as far as she had written it. She had spoken about it to Howard Fisk on Monday night. The recollection struck her to sheer panic. Yet under the treacherous blandishments of Bill Cartwright, under the hypnosis of the Military Intelligence Department and the glory that went therewith, she had until this moment clean forgotten about it.

Monica flung open the glass panel of the taxi.

‘Marylebone Station, quick!’ she said to the driver.

2

There was no train, of course, until a quarter past four.

Monica paced the platform. She passed the bookstall so many times that she wondered whether the proprietor was beginning to suspect her of shoplifting designs on the Penguins. While the hands of the clock crawled from three-fifteen to three-thirty, she pictured Messrs Hackett and Fisk sitting at Pineham with their watches in front of them: getting madder and madder, and finally deciding to give her the sack.

She gulped a cup of tea in the buffet. She weighed herself. Finally, she remembered that the red-leather Victorian needlework-box, in which she kept cigarettes on the desk in her office, was now empty; and – a fact which was shortly to prove of the utmost importance – she bought cigarettes.