Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky (12 page)

    It wasn’t the sort of hideaway I’d pictured for Dune-Harrigan. A determinedly modern glass and chrome, flying saucer of a monstrosity that flaunted wealth and bad taste – and scraped against Nature’s land and seascape like a gigantic white lobster-pot.

    I knocked at the silver-painted door until my knuckles were almost raw. The joker wasn’t home! But I wasn’t about to go away empty-handed, so I took a stroll around the house to see how I could best break in.

    No joy! The house was built on two levels, the upper level surrounded on three sides by a glassed-in verandah that was not only just out of reach but had no doors or windows that could be accessed from outside.

    So here I was, back at the front door! I examined the lock. It was a familiar deadlock, so called because if you locked it with your key, there was no way an intruder could easily break in with a set of skeleton keys or even crash through the hard way with chisel and hammer. But – nothing ventured, nothing gained! – I tried the lock anyway. To my surprise, it turned a quarter revolution. This meant the professor hadn’t set the deadlock, but had simply slammed the door on his way out. No need to! He was obviously coming back quick smart.

    Hell! I weighed the situation up for a few seconds, but I couldn’t resist picking such an easy lock. So what if the good professor found me in his house when he returned? For once, I’d have the advantage!

    As it turned out, the lock wasn’t half as easy as I’d imagined. I was out of practice. But I did have it open in no less than eighteen minutes, although I could have halved that time if I hadn’t kept stopping work to listen for the sound of a car coming up the grade.

    But at last I was inside!

    Another surprise! It wasn’t your typical professor’s lodging at all, but a clinically sterile place. No character. None! Presumably the good professor was renting it, fully furnished. It was airy enough with all those windows overlooking the bay, but the rooms looked too empty and the sparse furniture too new. Except for a modest library, there was absolutely nothing to show that Dune-Harrigan was a leading Egyptologist. And, despite his denial, he had a big TV set too. Brand new.

    I walked out on to a glassed-in verandah, at the end of which another door gave access to a little balcony, open to the weather. A great view certainly: Blue horizon, a green-wooded little island in the inlet, an old barge of some sort on the opposite shore, river waters gurgling over rocks straight ahead, muddy water fronting a green park on the left and a pebbly beach glinting in the sun on the right.

    Although I’d deliberately left the front door open, there was still no sound or sight of a car. The birds had resumed their “I’m here, where are you?” calls in the trees, and way down and almost immediately below on the rocks, seagulls were cawing and flapping over some refuse.

    Oh, my God! I raced back to the living room to retrieve the binoculars I’d noticed on the glass-topped coffee table.

    I had to hold my hand over my mouth to stop myself retching. There was no mistaking the scarred, mottled bronze of that ugly bald head. The body of Professor Carmichael Dune-Harrigan lay smashed and sprawled on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff!

    My first instinct was to flee – to get myself the hell out of the place! Instead, I marched myself back into the living room and sat down by the phone.

    It must have taken an hour or two for the shock to wear off, but I wasn’t really conscious of time. It wasn’t until the sun reached the glass-topped table that I started to pull myself together. Why hadn’t I phoned the police straight away? Oh, my god, whichever way you looked at it, I was in a hell of a mess. I’d told everyone I was gunning for him, and that stupid guard had seen us fighting in the uni museum. And now I’d broken into his home. My fingerprints were all over the place. It wouldn’t take the police long to discover that we were enemies from way-back-when. Admittedly, not even Disneyland could hold all Dune-Harrigan’s enemies, but I was Johnny-on-the-spot! I’d pushed the good professor over the balcony. There was no way our everything-to-live-for professor could have jumped himself or fallen by accident.

    Of course, if I could manage to wipe the house clean and take the chance that no-one had spotted me or my old Ford, I could get away safe and sound. True, the police would home in on me eventually, but I was just one of a thousand. Dune-Harrigan had made scores of enemies every year of his life!

    But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just leave him out there on the rocks. God knows how long he’d been there already! Why hadn’t someone spotted him from the road or from one of the other houses on the hill?

    It’s possible the police were already on their way.

    In any case, the police would get to me eventually and I was not going to spend the next couple of months jumping every time the phone rang, or letting myself in for a heart attack whenever I heard the doorbell…

They were a long time coming. A hell of a long time! And when I finally opened the door to them, I was seized with panic. There were three of them, headed by a sour-pussed guy who introduced himself as Sergeant Michaelson. However, I had no reason to complain. Manning and Michaelson would have made a nice team. He was a competent officer, neither rude nor courteous, who took down my statement with a kind of resentful efficiency, as if I had broken into his hard-earned leisure time, or called him away just as he was about to play a winning hand in the back room at the precinct station.

    It must have taken a half-hour or more for Michaelson to write down my statement in longhand in his pocket-sized notebook. And then he insisted on reading it back to me: “Your name is Merryll Mycroft Manning. You are an ex-policeman, currently employed as a security officer at Kenovarnie’s TV Studios… Suspecting that the deceased was still writing threatening notes to the employees of said studio, you decided to visit the professor who was well known to you from your college days. When he failed to answer the door, you broke into his house. When you confirmed he was not at home, you decided to wait for his return. While waiting, you discovered his body on the rocks below. You immediately phoned for the police.” He pushed the notebook towards me. “Here, sign it. With the time and date.”

    “There are several things I don’t like. In the first place, I didn’t immediately phone for the police. I sat down right here. I was in a state of shock.”

    “That’s neither here nor there. I’m doing you a favor.”

    “What’s more important, you’ve left out everything I told you about the professor buying smuggled Ancient Egyptian relics.”

    “Look here, it’s been a long day. I’m tired. You’re tired. Why complicate things?”

    “Because it has a direct bearing on his death. He owed the smugglers money he couldn’t pay! He thought he would have a certain $8,000 in his hands – and he almost did!”

    “Come off it, Manning. There’s no suggestion of murder. The position of the body indicates that the deceased fell from the balcony right here. Sure, the coroner will order an autopsy, but what with the fall, the rocks, the water and the birds, there’s not much left to work on, so I’ll tell you right now what the verdict will be – accidental death! He was an old man. For some old mannish reason, he leaned too far over the balcony and he fell. End of story.”

    “He was going to disappear – that’s how frightened he was! And he told me that himself. These are big people. Smuggling ancient relics out of Egypt is a highly organized international racket.”

    “If that’s so, where are these relics? They’re not in this house, that’s for sure! We’ve searched it from top to bottom.”

    “
I
didn’t even bother looking,” I told him. “Ancient relics don’t like this moist, salt air. They’ll simply crumble into dust. They’ve got to be kept warm and dry, so the professor has them stashed away some place else.”

    “And where might that be?”

    “I’m not sure, but I can prove part of what I’m saying. The professor showed me a few Ancient Egyptian pieces he’d purchased just recently. They’re in his office at the university.” Despite my better judgment – and despite all the day’s disturbing events – I couldn’t help a little smile of triumph.

    Michaelson was angry. “Even if what you say is true, a few pieces don’t prove anything. He was a professor, you’ve told us, so naturally he’d have a few pieces of his own. Or maybe they actually belonged to the university?”

    “Not when they’re disguised as cheap metal paperweights, they don’t belong to any university! Pick them up and then go and get them examined by an expert. I’m an expert, but you don’t have to believe me. Get them examined by someone you trust. He’ll tell you they’re worth anything from fifty to two hundred thousand dollars.”

    One of Michaelson’s offsiders let out a whistle, and that sure didn’t make him any happier – in fact it forced him to stick to his guns. “It’s still a waste of time,” he maintained. “Even if everything you say is true. He was an old man. He fell.”

    “Why am I opening up and telling you all this? It’s so much simpler for me if he just fell. But if it was no accident, then I’m making myself a suspect and can look forward to having cops under my feet, day and night.”

    Michaelson didn’t waste any more of his valuable time in persuading me to sign his record of interview. He waved me to the door. “You’ll be hearing from us,” he said. “Don’t leave town without our permission.”                                                                  

16

With Peter Tunning’s $8,000, I could pay off all my debts, and that would still leave me with a nice $2,000 in the clear. If the police wished to believe that Dune-Harrigan’s death was an accident, why should I try to disillusion them? In the meantime, I put that death to advantage by phoning the good news to Peter. To my surprise, he did not seem to be at all impressed. But maybe I’d phoned him at an inconvenient time?

    Come Monday, I was knocking on the door of Boss Kent’s office even before the great man himself arrived at the studio. So I waited for him in the corridor for fully half-an-hour and did Kent thank me? No, sir!

    “God damn it, Manning! I was ringing you all day yesterday. Where in hell were you? And what’s the use of having a mobile if you have it turned off all the time?”

    “Police business,” I answered. “Dune-Harrigan is dead.”

    “Who cares about Dune-Harrigan? I’ve just been talking to our lawyer. He tells me Brunsdon’s still all steamed up about his damned crossbow.”

    “It’s still missing?” I asked – even though I knew full well it was!

    But Kent didn’t rise to the bait. “Claims it’s some cockamamie antique. Planning to sue us for five thousand dollars. God damn it! I want you to find that thing, Manning. Call out the palace guard! Tear the place apart!”

    “A waste of time and manpower,” I suggested. “We won’t find it anywhere on the premises. Some strong-fingered, bulky overcoated member of the audience probably swiped it.”

    “That’s just where you’re wrong, Manning. Just where you’re wrong! Why do I have to do everything here myself? Why doesn’t someone else ask the questions and furnish the answers? Frobisher tells me the thing was still on the stage after the audience left. Just lying there with Brunsdon’s other junk.”

    “That was not my impression,” I countered.

    But Kent ignored me. “Crossbow lying on the stage! You know what that means, don’t you?”

    “One of the technicians took it.”

    “Congratulations!” So saying, Kent entered his office and slammed the door in my face. He didn’t even give me a chance to tell him that Brunsdon’s crossbow would have to wait. I was off to the university to interview Doctor Ainslee Norman, professor of Archaeology.

Although considerably shocked to hear of Dune-Harrigan’s demise, Doctor Norman took a lot of convincing before she agreed to open up the museum and assist me to turn the place upside down.

    I’d spent half the night puzzling it out and I’d finally hit on the solution. Dune-Harrigan had hidden his contraband in the museum. Where else to hide a tree but in a forest? The place was air-conditioned too. Nothing could be sweeter!

    We recovered the paperweights from Dune-Harrigan’s desk and Doctor Norman confirmed the garish paint disguised a genuine article. The figurines would all have to be cleaned before their true worth could be established, but at a guess she dated them from the late dynastic period and they were thus far less valuable than I thought. As it turned out, this limited success was the only joy I had from the day. Not only was Dune-Harrigan’s desk ransacked, but every display case was prized open, and every shelf and plinth thoroughly searched. Despite our earlier success with the paperweights, we turned up nothing but the dusty, documented, long-time museum junk.

    What was worse, if Dune-Harrigan had another address, he’d kept it secret from the uni. He’d lived at the Palm Beach place for the past twelve years or so, except for a short period when he had the old house torn down and the new monstrosity erected in its stead.