Death with Blue Ribbon (18 page)

Carolus noted the formality of this but followed one of the CID men from the room without speaking.

He led the way to another back office in which there was a spiral staircase of iron. They climbed this to another small room also rather bare though one wall was covered with tightly filled bookshelves and the floor was thickly carpeted. As he crossed a landing Carolus had time to notice a Sheraton table, a painting by Francis Bacon and more books in eighteenth-century bindings.

They entered a large bedroom, large enough to make an immense Jacobean four-poster bed stand without appearing to fill the area. On it was a man, his face turned away. He looked as though he had thrown himself down in his clothes and gone to sleep.

Carolus walked round the bed and saw that the man was Bridger. The face had been brutally knocked about and was only just recognisable and the grin which had characterised Bridger in life now grotesquely stretched the lips.

‘Strangled—or hanged,' the CID man said. ‘Do you know him?'

‘Yes. I can identify him.'

‘Better come down to the Super then,' the CID man said placidly. ‘We shall want his name for the charge sheet, probably. Though there's plenty more on which to hold this lot. We'll go down by the open staircase. I don't fancy climbing down that helter-skelter.'

As they did so they saw Humbledon hanging about on the landing.

‘You can wait downstairs,' the CID man said briefly.

Carolus joined John Moore.

‘I can identify the dead man. He has been working at the Fleur-de-Lys Hotel, Farringforth, as assistant
chef
under the name of Tom Bridger.'

‘Anything more?'

‘A car he borrowed on the day before yesterday from the
chef,
Vauxhall Victor YYY808, is in the Bevin Road Garage round the corner from here.'

‘I should like you to come with me to make a statement,' said Moore, curtly, and Carolus nodded agreement.

‘Get these into the van,' Moore ordered. ‘I'll follow with Mr Deene. Leave two men here.'

Carolus was surprised that no protest came from Montreith. There was nothing of the traditional or mythical ‘it's-a-fair-cop' in his attitude. His face remained expressionless, indeed he gave the impression of having anticipated these events and prepared for them. Of the three men the most visibly shaken was Rivers; his fleshy face had taken on a curious pallor.

Only when the whole group, but for two men in uniform, had left the room, did John Moore permit himself to give Carolus a grim smile.

But Carolus did not return it. He was wondering how far he was responsible for the death of Bridger.

On the following day, which was the eve of the new term at the Queen's School, Newminster, Carolus prepared to entertain John Moore and Mr Gorringer to dinner, after which he proposed to give them some account of his activities during the past weeks and explain any mystery that remained.

He found his housekeeper unexpectedly sympathetic to the project.

‘As long as it's the headmaster coming,' she said, the clause serving her as an acquiescent sentence in itself.

‘Yes. And Mr Moore. You remember him.'

‘I'm not saying I don't,' said Mrs Stick cautiously. ‘What were you thinking of giving them?'

‘I leave that to you, Mrs Stick. Something simple. I've had so much pretentious food lately that I never want to see the word
scampi
again.'

Mrs Stick surprised him.

‘How about a dozen Whitstable oysters, sirloin of Scotch beef with Yorkshire pudding and Stilton cheese?'

‘What could be better?' asked Carolus, not altogether rhetorically.

The headmaster was the first to arrive.

‘Ah, Deene,' he said, ‘I made a point of coming early because I wanted a word with you. Is it your intention to
reveal to the Detective Superintendent that it was your headmaster who effected the crucial telephone call to his office?'

‘Just as you like.'

‘There is much to be said on both sides. While it would doubtless strengthen your case if he was made aware that the mysterious caller was none other than myself, it would be more than unfortunate if I were involved in the processes of the law which will follow. I should perhaps tell you that in addition to wearing a pair of shaded spectacles I felt it behoved me to assume a somewhat foreign accent in speaking to him. I gave the name of Chaminade, a lady composer of note I believe.'

‘You did?'

‘It will perhaps provide some wry amusement to a senior officer in the Criminal Investigation Department to know that he was so effectively misled.'

‘I daresay it will.'

But when John Moore came breezily into the room and Carolus said, ‘You know Mr Gorringer, of course?' he replied with a grin, ‘Alias M. Chaminade, I think?'

Mr Gorringer took it in good part.

‘I am delighted,' he announced, ‘to find that a member of our excellent police force is so perspicacious.'

His good humour lasted throughout dinner, but when the three men had sunk into armchairs by the fire he spoke with more gravity.

‘We must not forget,' he said, ‘that a human life has been lost. While we have co-operated in the apprehension of a most dangerous gang of criminals on which we can certainly congratulate ourselves, there is this more sombre side of the picture. I hope that Deene will set our minds at rest.'

‘I was very half-hearted about the case at first,' Carolus
recalled. ‘I did not like Rolland or what he stood for. But blackmail is an abominable thing whoever suffers from it and, as I told Rolland, goes hand-in-glove with murder as often as not. My curiosity was roused too by the monstrous personality of Imogen Marvell and almost before I realised it I became involved.'

He described how he had concealed himself in the back of the car in which Rivers and Gray had driven to Montreith's offices and so discovered the headquarters of the gang.

He did not conceal from them that he had appropriated Rivers's wallet in the hope that it would produce information.

‘While I am the first to realise that the criminal must be fought with his own weapons,' put in Mr Gorringer, ‘I cannot but feel that the thought of my senior history master taking a wallet from the pocket of an unconscious man fills me with disquietude.'

‘There wasn't a shred of information in it,' Carolus told him. ‘Only seventeen pound notes which I dropped in the nearest Poor Box.'

Carolus went on to explain how he had first deduced from Dave Paton's story of having been sent by Bridger to speak to Mandeville that Bridger was in some way connected with the gang and wanted to divert suspicion from himself. This was confirmed when Mrs Boot told him he had been in conversation with Mandeville in the Spinning Wheel Cafe on the afternoon before Imogen Marvell died. ‘I was sure enough to bluff Bridger into admitting to me that he had been responsible for Imogen Marvell's food poisoning,' said Carolus.

‘But he told me something more valuable than that. I warned him that he could not trust me to keep him out of the thing, that I intended to report everything I knew. “You can only
trust me not to let your friends know where I got the information,” I remember saying. I stuck to that, but he didn't, poor wretch. Moreover I begged him to get away although his absence would have weakened my case. But he was broke and expecting money from Montreith, and foolishly stayed on.

‘Mrs Boot heard the Old Cygnet Restaurant mentioned when Bridger was called from London, so I suppose it was the proprietor of this who told Montreith about my making enquiries. From that he guessed that Bridger had talked—but it was only a guess and if Bridger had kept his head he might have saved himself.

‘Bridger tried to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He wasn't a brave man and on his first visit to Gaitskell Mansions they showed him someone who had been badly beaten up. He fell for that and once involved, accepting their offer of £100 for putting an emetic in the food, he left himself no escape. The first step in agreeing to take part in a conspiracy of that kind is the fatal one. From the moment he agreed to do what they wanted whatever the inducement or threat, he began walking to his death. I daresay, John, you will find there were others like him. His body was probably waiting to be taken away and put in an acid bath and if there have been other such disappearances the bodies were given the same treatment. But you know all that.'

‘What I don't know from you,' said John Moore rather sternly, ‘is—who are the two restaurant proprietors who have been paying protection money? You have mentioned the Old Cygnet. Was this one of them?'

Carolus told him about the John Bullish Mr Porter of the Old Cygnet and the more spirited Mr Leroy of the Tourterelle.

‘They'll both talk,' he predicted. ‘As soon as they know that Montreith, Rivers and Gray are charged with murder. Leroy actually promised me he would. And I'm sure they're not the only ones. You'll have them all running to you once the danger is removed. Gaming club owners, strip club proprietors, brothel owners (or those who live on immoral earnings, as we more politely call them), fruit machine owners, betting shops, bookmakers—Montreith's net was wide. I should not be in the least surprised if you found a few drug-carriers caught in it, importers of marihuana and the rest. I doubt if Montreith would have neglected such a lucrative source of income.'

‘You mean …' Mr Gorringer sounded exultant. ‘That we have not only smashed a gang of blackmailers and murderers but curtailed their activity in a more insidious form of crime, the dissemination of dangerous narcotics? We can indeed congratulate ourselves.'

Moore said nothing, but Carolus felt that he knew a good deal more than he was prepared to discuss.

‘As for what the headmaster calls the gang of blackmailers and murderers, unless you, John, have been pretty busy today, as I expect you have, there must remain a number to take in. Montreith could not have achieved what he did without a good many free-lance bullies and extortioners, some of whom probably did not know for whom they were working. It is not difficult or expensive to have a rich man intimidated especially when in criminal terms there is something screwy about his business already. You will probably have a few thoroughly unpleasant thugs to put in the dock with Montreith.'

Moore nodded.

‘As for the manner of Bridger's death, I prefer not to know details,' went on Carolus, ‘though I daresay you have these by
now. Or even whether there will be other murder charges. I know you can't answer questions but I should like to know whether the man who called himself Mandeville has been charged.'

‘Oh yes,' said Moore. ‘There's no secret about that. His name is Smith, as a matter of fact.'

Carolus asked no more.

‘The character of Montreith interests me,' he said. ‘Although the professional man who turns criminal is a favourite figure in novels and the outpourings of so-called crime reporters, he is still very rare in real life. I don't mean among young tearaways, but among serious and dedicated law-breakers. I should like to know how Montreith began, whether he was ever a seriously practising solicitor, and all the rest of it. He was self-indulgent—we know that—also cruel and vicious. What background did he come from? How did he start? How successful was he?'

‘Doubtless you will know all in time,' suggested Mr Gorringer ponderously. ‘Our national newspapers show no reluctance to provide us with details of the kind you mention. But there is another matter, my dear Deene, on which you have scarcely touched, and one I should have thought of considerable interest both to me and the Detective Superintendent. Namely, the untimely death of Miss Imogen Marvell.'

‘Marvell? Oh, she was murdered, of course,' said Carolus off-handedly.

‘You cannot be serious, Deene. A woman of world-wide reputation in the useful field of domestic science! An eminent authoress on gastronomical subjects! A household word in household management! Yet you suggest that she was murdered as though it were a commonplace. Where is your sense of proportion, man?'

‘Murder is never a commonplace, headmaster, and I did not mean to suggest it, even of Imogen Marvell's murder.'

‘Then please elucidate,' said Mr Gorringer. ‘If this crime has been committed we—and the world—are entitled to the knowledge of who is guilty. Let him be put in the pillory, tried, and punished.'

‘I doubt if there will ever be a trial or any punishment more than that being suffered already. I can produce no proof and no more than the most circumstantial of evidence. The coroner and presumably the police were satisfied that she died naturally. But for what it is worth I will tell you how I think it happened.

‘She was, as you know, a woman who aroused much dislike—in fact hatred would not be too strong a word. Her success was as you say phenomenal and based on a flair for self-advertisement supported by the efforts of other people. Her sister claimed to have taught her all she knew about food, and her secretary, I have been told by her housekeeper, Mrs de Mornay, did most of her writing. Her husband and she had been separated for years and there were people in her profession who were bitterly jealous of her. Moreover, it seemed, as the informative Mrs Boot pointed out to me, that anyone on the spot could have been responsible for her death.

‘There was a pretty collection of what are called suspects. Connected with the hotel there was Rolland himself, Anthony Brown known as Antoine the
chef,
Gloria Gee, Bridger, Stephen Digby, known as Stefan the head waiter, Dave Paton the apprentice, Ali and Abdul the Moroccan waiters, Molt, the wine waiter, and if you want to stretch possibilities to the farthest, Mrs Boot.

‘Connected with Imogen Marvell there was her secretary,
Maud Trudge, her husband, Dudley Smithers, her sister, Grace Marvell, her chauffeur, Richard Biskett, and again stretching it perhaps, Dr Jyves.