Footsteps in the Dark (27 page)

"Thank you," he said gravely. "Where was I? Oh yes! Well, these notes went on circulating, and to make it more difhicult they were not all of one denomination, as is generally the case. The Surete is pretty good at its job, you know, but it was completely baffled. Whenever the police thought they were on the right track it led them to a blank wall. The man who eventually discovered the key to the mystery was a Customs official at Boulogne, who knew nothing whatever about it. There was a man called Alphonse Martin who was employed by a firm of manufacturers of cheap goods outside Paris. They turn out quantities of so-called Parisian novelties, such as you'll see in any second-class linen-draper's. Pocket combs, studded with paste, puff boxes, and all that sort of meretricious junk that's designed to catch the eyes of city typists, and domestic servants. As you probably know, one of the chief markets for that particular class of' goods is England. Most firms deal through an agent - a middleman - or rather, they used to before the war. But the middleman, though he still exists, had been getting more and more squeezed out of late years, since manufacturers have discovered that he isn't necessary, and it pays them far better to sell direct to the various stores. One of the foreign firms who had tried this, and found it was a success, was this firm for which Martin worked. Martin was a man of about thirty-five, and had been employed by the firm for years. Married man, with children, who lived at Neuilly, led a very respectable sort of life, was well known to any number of people, and was altogether above suspicion. He was a man of fair education, and he had the advantage of being able to speak English through having lived over here for some years when he was in his early twenties. This qualification, coupled with his good record, and the fact that he was apparently a very capable salesman, got him promoted to the job of acting as the firm's chief agent for England. He was known to most of the buyers of London and provincial stores, and he used to come over from time to time with suitcases full of samples. The Customs officials all got to know him, he never tried to smuggle anything through, and after a bit his baggage was never searched except in a perfunctory way.

"This might have gone on for ever if a new Customs officer hadn't been sent to the Douane at Boulogne to take the place of someone who was leaving. The fellow was a young chap, very keen to show himself smart at the job, and he didn't know Martin from Adam. Unfortunately for him Martin fell into his hands on the last of his journeys from London back to Paris. Whether the new official found anything irregular amongst the goods Martin was carrying, or whether he was merely being officious, I don't know, but at all events, he took exception to something or other, and made Martin unpack the whole of one suitcase. This is where the douanier really did show that he was a smart fellow, for in the course of his suspicious search through the suitcase, he noticed that the cubic content of the inside didn't correspond with the size of the case on the outside. In fact, he discovered that the suitcase had a false bottom and false sides. Martin put up some story of a specially strengthened frame; it didn't entirely satisfy the douanier and he talked of making further investigations. Then Martin lost his head, and tried to bolt. After that the game was up, of course. He was caught, the suitcase was examined, and a whole consignment of Banque de France notes was found to be lining the bottom and the sides. Same with the two other cases he had.

"That put the Surete on to the right track at last. Martin, like the other man, refused to talk, and there was nothing found on him to give the police any further clue. Or so they thought. They sent a man over to London, and this is where the C.I.D. steps in."

"Did you take it on then?" Margaret inquired.

"No, another man was put on to it at first, but after a bit they had to transfer him to another job, and I took over."

"You mean," Celia said shrewdly, "the other man failed to solve it, don't you?"

He reddened. "I expect he'd have solved it if he'd had more time, Mrs. Malcolm."

"That's all right, Celia," her husband said. "This is the man behind the scenes in that big murder case you used to read religiously in all the evening papers about six months ago. He's only being bashful. Go on, Draycott: how did you get on to this place?"

"Oh, that was really a slice of luck!" Michael assured them. "When I went through everything Martin had had on him at the time of his capture, I found just one thing that looked as though it might be worth following up. He had his order-book, his passport, and licence, and various papers connected with his business. They didn't help. The only other things he had were a London hotel bill, a letter from his wife, a local time-table, and a small account-book in which he kept a check of his running expenses. I had a look at the time-table first. It was one of those rotten little paper books you buy for twopence at the railway station. It was a time-table of trains on the line that runs through Manfield to Norchester. Now Norchester's not a very likely spot for a traveller in Parisian novelties, and as you know, it's the only place of any size on this line. Still, it was quite possible that there was some shop there that stocked these goods.

"The next thing I got on to was the account-book. Martin was a very methodical man, and he didn't just jot down his expenses roughly. Obviously his instinct was to write down exactly what he'd spent every penny on, and the book was full of items such as "'Bus to Shepherds Bush, so much," and "Cigarettes, so much." Also he kept a strict account of his railway fares. Usually he put down the town he went to, but sometimes it was just: "Train fare, so much." At first this didn't seem to lead anywhere, but I studied the book very closely, and I found after wading through pages of that sort of stuff that though he sometimes put down "Fare to Birmingham," and sometimes only "Fare to B," or even just "train fare, so much," there was one train fare that kept on recurring and never had anything more against it than the words "train fare." The sum was six and eight pence, and by good luck it was the only six and eight penny fare he ever had. I tabulated all his various journeys, and found that there was no mention in his accounts of any town on this particular line. So then I got down to it, and studied his time-table. It took in the Tillingford junction areas as well, so there was a fair field. I noted the names of all the stations you could get to for six and eight pence, and those that had cheap day returns at that price. In the end I got it down to five, of which Manfield was one."

"I call that most ingenious!" said Mrs. Bosanquet, who had been listening enthralled. "But wasn't it still very difficult?"

" It wasn't so much difficult as boring," Michael replied. "It was a case of nosing about at pubs, and such-like places, and trying to find out whether there were any suspicious people in any of these places. When I worked round to Manfield it was just at the time that you were moving into this house, and there was a fair amount of talk about it. When I learned that the house had been empty for years, and was supposed to be haunted, I thought I was getting warm, and I moved on to Framley. Fripp followed me, and between us we soon found out enough to make us feel we'd hit on the place we were looking for. Only' - he smiled - "you'd taken possession of the house, your servants were already here, and it was very difficult for me to do much. But I managed to pick up a good deal of information one way and another, and when I heard of previous tenants being frightened away, and of a cowled figure being seen, I was as sure as a man can be that the Priory was the source of the false banknotes."

"Not happening to believe in ghosts," said Charles, with an eye on his aunt.

She was quite equal to it, and answered with complete composure: "This has been a lesson to all of us not to be credulous, I am sure. If you remember, Charles, from the very first I said that you were imagining things. Pray continue, Mr. Draycott."

Charles seemed incapable of speech. Michael went on: "I got on to Inspector Tomlinson at Manfield, and he was exceedingly helpful. Through him I learned what there was to know about most of the people here. Naturally Duval was the most suspicious character. I won't bore you with the stages at which I arrived at the conclusion that there was an underground passage. Suffice it that I did arrive at it. Finding that opening into the well clinched the matter. And I hit on the moving stone. That didn't lead to much, but a visit, on the off chance, to the British Museum library disclosed one significant fact."

"We know!" Peter interrupted. "Two pages torn out of the history of this house!"

"Oh, did you get on to that too? Yes, that was it. That same day I went to visit your solicitor, to find out whether anyone had tried to get you to sell the house, and if so, who he was, and where he came from."

"I found that out," Margaret said. "You don't know how it worried me."

"Did it? I'm sorry." He smiled down at her, and Celia caught her husband's eye significantly. "I drew a blank, except that I found someone had tried to buy the place. I next got on to Wilkes."

"Yes, what made you suspect him?" Peter asked. "Was it that electric-plant of his?"

"Not at first. It was just one little thing after another. I found that when you traced all the Priory ghost stories back they generally came from the same source: Wilkes. The very day you arrived' - he nodded at Charles - 'Wilkes spun a very fine yarn about having seen the Monk. I don't know if you remember, but Fripp was in the bar at the time, and he recounted the whole story to me. It was a good story I thought, and there was only one flaw. Wilkes couldn't be content to confine himself to eerie feelings and shadowy figures: he had to strain after an effect, which he doubtless thought very terrifying, and say he saw the Monk standing behind him. And he then committed the crowning error of saying the Monk just vanished into thin air. That was going a bit too far, and it set me on to his tracks. Then there was Duval. He used to come every day to the Bell, and he wasn't exactly the sort of customer a landlord of Wilkes' type encourages as a general rule. When he was drunk he got talkative, and rather abusive, but so far from throwing him out Wilkes always seemed anxious to humour him. The electric light plant I couldn't get a glimpse offor quite some time, but one thing I did see: Nearly every night, at opening-time, most of the village turns up at the Bell, as you probably know. They're in and out the whole evening; and the bar's usually pretty full. I kept a watch on the various habitues, and I noticed that two of the men who went in I never saw come out again. Moreover, Wilkes was never visible in the early morning, and it looked very much as though he was in the habit of keeping remarkably late hours. That gave me the idea that there might be a way down to the underground passage from the Inn. As you know, the Bell is very old, and it may well have been some sort of an annexe to the original monastery. The difficulty was to locate this possible entrance, and that's not an easy matter in a public inn. You never know whom you'll run into if you start prowling about. However, I got a chance to go down into the cellars unperceived yesterday, and I seized it. It's full of bins, and I managed to hide myself successfully. It was one of the most uncomfortable evenings I ever spent, for once down I didn't dare come up again till I'd discovered all I hoped to. I saw Wilkes, Spindle and two other men come down soon after closing time, and I watched them shift a big cask that stood on top of the trap-door. All but Spindle went down, and when he had replaced the cask over the trap, Spindle went off again. He's obviously the look-out man. The night Duval was murdered, and you came to the Bell, Malcolm - do you remember what a time it took for Wilkes to materialise?"

"I do indeed," Charles said.

"Spindle, didn't go upstairs to wake him. He nipped down the back stairs, gave the signal that would summon Wilkes - there's an electric bell just inside the trap door, by the way - and nipped up again. Wilkes came hurrying back, went up the back stairs, and came down the front fully dressed. You thought that was what had taken him so long.

"But I'm wandering from the point. Where was I?"

"Behind a beer-barrel," said Charles. "Come to think of it, you might have chosen a worse hiding-place. Go on."

"I wish I'd thought of that earlier," Michael said. "I thought it a rotten spot. I stayed there till about four o'clock when Wilkes and Co returned. Still, I was repaid, for the two strangers were full of something that had happened. Evidently they hadn't been able to give vent to their feelings down below, and they meant to talk it all over with Wilkes before they left the Inn. Duval was mentioned, and apparently neither of them had the smallest doubt that the Monk had done him in. They were in a great way about that, partly out of fear of the Monk, partly because they thought Duval's death would bring the police down on them. Then one of them said that it wasn't that so much as "what's happened tonight." They both agreed about that, and the other one said that it was too thick, and he wouldn't be a party to murder. Wilkes tried to soothe him by saying there'd be no murder, but it was plain that the milder one of the pair wasn't satisfied. He kept on saying that he wouldn't stand for it, until the other one turned on him and told him to go and tell the Monk so if he dared. He replied if he knew who the Monk was, he would, and be damned to the lot of them, and then they both roundedd on Wilkes, and accused him of knowing the Monk's identity. The ferocious one said that it was his belief Duval had found "where the Monk goes," and he'd half a mind to have a shot at doing the same thing. Wilkes managed to pacify him, and I learned from what he said that the Monk meant to clear out as "soon as the run's finished," things having got suddenly dangerous. That was you, of course, but I didn't know that at the time. After a bit more palaver they all cleared out, and as soon as I dared I went up to my room, ascertained that Wilkes had gone to bed, got hold of Fripp and a perfectly good disguise - hired from Clarkson's, by the way - and went down to see what I could discover. The rest you know." He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Tomlinson ought to be arriving at any moment now, and as soon as he comes I want to investigate the rest of that staircase."