Smallbone Deceased Read online

  'Hullo, Dad,' said Henry. 'You aren't getting any thinner.'

  'No exercise,' said Mr Bohun. 'No excitement. In this firm we don't go in for excitement. Not like you lawyers. We keep papers in our deed boxes. By the way, I see you've been having more trouble lately.'

  'Yes,' said Henry. 'That's really one of the things I wanted to tell you about. Here's how it is. . . .'

  By the time he had finished, Mr Bohun had allowed his pipe to go out. He showed no other definite signs of interest.

  'What do you think about it yourself?' he said finally.

  'I'd like to do it,' said Henry. 'They're not a very happy firm at the moment, you could hardly expect them to be. But I think they're sound enough at heart. They've got a first-class connection and a lot of business. Perhaps they'll lose some of it over this tamasha, but it'll die down. People don't change their solicitors very easily.'

  'What about the price?'

  Henry grinned. 'I know quite well,' he said, 'that you've got your own means of finding out anything you want to know in that line. You don't need my opinion.'

  'Perhaps not,' said his father, 'but let's have it.'

  'I think,' said Henry slowly, 'that it would be a fair gamble. They're not gilt-edged. If they were you wouldn't get four-tenths of the enquiry being offered for twenty thousand.'

  'No,' said his father. 'I don't think you would. All right. I'll have a look at it. One of the conditions, of course, will be that you stay in the firm. I shall be investing the money in you as much as in Horniman, Birley and What's-it.'

  'Very handsome of you,' said Henry. 'I'm going to get myself some lunch. I suppose it's no good asking you to come out.'

  'Never have lunch,' said Mr Bohun. 'Waste of time. By the way, I suppose you haven't got any idea who did these murders? Not,' he added hastily, 'that I'm being inquisitive but it might make a difference to my offer.'

  'I've no idea at all,' said Henry truthfully.

  V

  'Well, now, Mr Hoffman,' said Hazlerigg. T understand that you've finished the first part of your work and can give me a general report on the financial position.'

  'An interim report,' said Mr Hoffman. 'Then, if you consider that my particular aspect of it wants detailed analysis—'

  'Let's start with the general picture, if you don't mind.'

  Thereupon Mr Hoffman spoke for an hour, with very little interruption from Hazlerigg. He had a sheaf of notes but he did not refer to them much. It was in his head.

  He spoke of capital assets and of invisible assets, of fixed assets and floating assets; of goodwill and the professional index; of the solicitor-client relationship; of the ratio of incomings to outgoings; of over-all balance; and of the law of diminishing returns. And every point which he established was nailed to the table with figures—pounds and shillings, and years and months, and percentages and fractions.

  When he had done, Hazlerigg said: 'Thank you very much.' Then he said: T take it you will be letting me have the gist of that in writing.' Mr Hoffman nodded. 'Absolutely off the record and without prejudice, what does it add up to?'

  Mr Hoffman considered the question. Then he parcelled his papers neatly back into his briefcase, screwed on the top of his fountain pen, replaced his pen in his inside pocket (where it lived with three coloured propelling pencils) and leaned back in his chair with a relaxed smile; a parting of the lips which, in a man less austere, might almost have been called a grin.

  'I always think,' he said, 'that starting a business is very like lighting the drawing-room fire. First, you stack up the sticks and paper and coal in the grate, and then, at the favourable moment, you apply your match. There's an immediate and beautiful blaze. The paper burns away and the sticks crackle and you put on more and more coal—that's your working capital—and you get precious little real heat by way of return. Then, in every fire, and in every business, there comes a moment when you know if the thing is going to go or not; and if the fuel is dry and if the draught is right, and if you've laid the thing properly, you'll get a decent fire. If anything's wrong, then you can prod it and puff it and pile on fuel till you're black in the face. You'll get nothing but smoke, stink and a hearth full of charred paper. But once the thing's alight there's nothing more to it. The office boy can keep it going. He's only got to drop an occasional lump of coal on. Incidentally that's one of the things people don't think of when they moan about the boss sitting back and taking the profits whilst they do all the work. Anyone can look after a fire when it's alight.'

  'Agreed,' said Hazlerigg. 'What then?'

  'That's all obvious, isn't it,' said Mr Hoffman. 'Anyone who thinks about it can see it. But what people don't always realise is that it works the other way round as well. A good fire, you know, will go on burning and glowing and giving out heat for a long time after you've stopped putting on any fuel. And if you put on a little from time to time—not enough to replace what's being burnt, but a lump or two— well, it'll go on burning for a very long time. That, as nearly as I can explain it, is what was happening in Horniman, Birley and Craine in about 1939 and 1940. I don't think anyone could have spotted it from outside—but the fuel supply was giving out. Partly,' went on Mr Hoffman, T expect it was the war. Partly the fact that the system they use here, though an excellent one, isn't productive of very quick or profitable returns. It would be admirably suited'—Mr Hoffman did not intend this satirically—'to a government office. But chiefly, I think, it was the fact that whilst the incomings were decreasing the liabilities were increasing— especially Abel Horniman's liabilities. They must have been. He had his big house in London and his country house and farm in the country, and he was beginning to attain a certain position, a position which needed money to keep it up; money, and then more money.'

  'I thought his bank account was rather a modest document,' said Hazlerigg.

  'I'll give you one example of the sort of thing they were driven to. This building is leasehold. Not a very long lease. Every well-run business which operates on leasehold premises puts aside a fund against the day when the lease expires—for repairs and dilapidations, to say nothing of the premium that they may have to pay to get the lease renewed. Horniman, Birley and Craine had been building up a leasehold depreciation fund for a great many years. Well, in 1939 they stopped adding to it. In 1940 and 1941 they drew it out and spent it.' Mr Hoffman paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts, then went on: 'What happened next is the most difficult of all to explain. But sometime, about the end of 1941, the firm had a blood transfusion.'

  'Yes,' said Hazlerigg. There was no doubt about his interest now. 'Please go on.'

  'Abel Horniman got his hands, somehow, on quite a large capital sum. It isn't obvious—but when you look for it you can see it. That leasehold depreciation account was built up again. The very heavy mortgages on both of Abel's properties were reduced. And more than that, certain expenditure which should normally have come out of income, was made out of capital, which meant, of course, that what income there was went further, and everything looked much more healthy all round.'

  'A blood transfusion, you said?'

  'That was the metaphor that occurred to me.' Mr Hoffman sounded apologetic, as if he realised that an accountant had no business to dabble in metaphors, let alone mixed metaphors. 'But it really does explain in the simplest way that I can think of exactly what happened. Somewhere—and I may say that I haven't the very least idea where—Abel Horniman got hold of this money. I can only tell you one thing about it. It came from outside. Maybe someone died and left it to him—only you'd have imagined we should have known about it. Possibly he robbed a bank.'

  'Well, he may even have done that,' agreed Hazlerigg without a smile. 'This sum of money—can you estimate how much it was?'

  'Oh, quite a lot,' said Mr Hoffman. 'Ten thousand pounds, at least.'

  VI

  'After all,' said Miss Bellbas. 'Murder's a serious thing. It might be one of us next.'

  'Even so,' said Anne Mildmay. 'It see
ms to me rather like sneaking.'

  'Oh, be your age, Anne,' said Miss Cornel crossly. 'This isn't the sixth form at St Ethelfredas. I agree with Florrie. This is serious.'

  'Well, you can tell him, if you like,' said Miss Mildmay. 'It just doesn't seem to me to be any of our business.'

  'I think we should,' said Miss Bellbas.

  'I'm going to,' said Miss Cornel.

  Hazlerigg was on the point of leaving when Miss Cornel came in. He was on his way back to the Yard for an interview with Dr Bland, the pathologist.

  'Look here,' she said. 'I won't keep you long. It's about that letter. The one that was found under my desk.'

  'Yes,' said Hazlerigg.

  'I might as well admit,' said Miss Cornel, 'that there's been a certain amount of difference of opinion about telling you this. But the general idea was that we ought to. It was something we all noticed at the time.'

  'Something about the letter?'

  'Yes. This mayn't seem much to you—but if you remember it started "Dear Mr Horniman". Well, that wasn't the way Mr Smallbone ever wrote to Abel Horniman. It was always "Dear Horniman", or "My Dear Horniman'. There's quite a nice etiquette about these things, you know. When you get friendly, you drop the "Mr" and when you get more friendly still you add the "my". It's not a thing you'd be likely to get wrong.'

  'No,' said Hazlerigg. T appreciate that. Well, thank you very much for telling me. I don't really see,' he added with a smile, 'why you should have been so reluctant to let me have this information.'

  His mind must have been working at half-speed that morning. It wasn't until he was half-way to Scotland Yard that he saw the implication.

  Chapter Twelve

  THURSDAY P.M.

  £48 2s. 6D.

  Cloud rolls over cloud: one train of thought suggests and is driven away by another: theory after theory is spun out of the bowels of his brain, not like the spider's web, compact and round—a citadel and a snare, built for mischief and for use, but like the gossamer. . . flitting in the idle air and glittering only in the ray of fancy.

  —HAZLITT: The Plain Speaker.

  'You're asking me,' said Dr Bland, 'to be scientific about something that has no real scientific basis.'

  'In other words,' said Hazlerigg, 'we're asking you to perform the impossible.'

  'That's it.'

  'And, as usual, you are going to oblige.'

  'Soft soap,' said Dr Bland. 'All right. So long as you don't expect me to get up in court and explain it all to a jury.'

  'That's the last thing I shall ask,' said Hazlerigg. 'All I want you to do is to narrow the field. If you can indicate that certain Saturdays are more likely than other Saturdays, then we can concentrate, first, on the people who were in the office on those days.'

  Dr Bland raised a tufted eyebrow at the chief inspector.

  'So long as you're not arguing ex hypothesis he said.

  'What the devil do you mean?'

  'You wouldn't perhaps have some particular person in mind already?'

  'James Bland,' said Hazlerigg, 'you've got a damned diagnosing mind. Yes. I am thinking of one particular person.'

  'Then this may be helpful.'

  He unfolded on to Hazlerigg's desk an enormous sheet of graph paper ruled with the usual axes and traversed by nine or ten very attractive apical curves, each one of a different colour.

  'They all start,' explained the pathologist, 'from the zone of maximum improbability—that is zero on the vertical axis, and move upwards towards maximum probability. The horizontal line is a time line, covering the four weeks in question.'

  'I see,' said Hazlerigg. 'I think. What are the different colours?'

  'Different parts of the body deteriorate, after death, at different speeds. The speed of deterioration of any part depends on a number of constant factors, such as the temperature and the humidity of the atmosphere and equally on a number of accidental circumstances. For instance, if the stomach happens to be full at death—'

  'All right,' said Hazlerigg hastily, 'you can skip that one. These lines, I take it, are the various items you have selected—'

  'Test points, yes. The mauve, for instance, shows the degree of separation of the finger-nails from the hand. The yellow is the bladder-wall.'

  'What's the purple one?'

  'Toe-nails.'

  T see. And the positioning of the curve enables you to see the likeliest time of death according to each individual symptom.'

  'That's about it,' said the doctor. 'As I said at the beginning, there's nothing very scientific about it all. I've just represented, graphically, the points which have influenced me in coming to a certain decision. Generally speaking, I have been helped a great deal by the fact that the body remained—or so I have assumed—in the same very confined place and at a fairly constant temperature.'

  'And your decision?'

  'From the moment of discovery, not less than six weeks, not more than eight.'

  Hazlerigg took up his desk diary and ran a finger back through the pages.

  'It's April twenty-second today,' he said. 'We found the body on the fourteenth. Just over a week ago. Six weeks back from there brings us to—yes. And eight weeks—hum!'

  'Does the answer come out right?' said Dr Bland.

  'Yes,' said Hazlerigg. 'Yes, I do believe it's beginning to.'

  II

  Chaffham is on the coast of Norfolk. It is not a very large or a very prosperous place, and its principal feature, indeed the chief reason for its existence, is the deep-water inlet which affords anchorage here for a hundred or more craft great and small.

  Inspector Hazlerigg, who had travelled down by police car, arrived at Chaffham at half-past three that afternoon. The sun would have done no discredit to a day of June. The water sparkled, as a light wind chased the clouds, and the grey, flat unlovely land did its best to simulate a smile.

  Hazlerigg stood in the single main street which sloped to the jetty and the 'hard'. He looked at the grey-walled, grey-roofed shops, and behind them at the whale-backed hill where only the thorn trees seemed tough enough to outface the savagery of the North Sea. And he felt, deep down inside him, the contentment which even the most unpromising county can bring to her own sons. For he was a Norfolk man; and thirty-two hard years in London had not served to overlay it. A telephone message had gone ahead of him, and a sergeant of the Norfolk Constabulary was in the main street when the car stopped. Five minutes later Hazlerigg was seated in Chaffham police station, which was, in fact, the front room in Sergeant Rolles's cottage, studying a large-scale map of the district.

  'If he's a visitor,' said Sergeant Rolles, 'a summer visitor, or a yachtsman, he'll live in Chaffham. He'll have one of the houses along Station Road

  or Sea Wall.'

  The sergeant ran his thumb-nail along the two roads, roughly parallel, which joined the station to the village street, following the south bank of the inlet, and forming the cross-piece of a'T' to which the main street was the upright.

  'You know all the people who live up and down this street, I expect,' said Hazlerigg.

  'And their fathers and their grandfathers,' said Sergeant Rolles. 'But the visitors—well, they come and go. I know the regulars. Let's see that name again. Horniman. Young chap, would it be? Dark hair, wears glasses. Was in the navy—the R.N.V.R., I should say. That's him, then. Keeps a little place almost at the end of Sea Wall. Comes down most weekends. It's shut up now, I expect.'

  'Has he got local help?'

  'Mrs Mullet does for him,' said the sergeant. 'Cleans the place, and gets in his stores. He telephones her when he's coming down and she opens the house. I call it a house. It's a bungalow really. The Cabin, or some name like that.'

  'What's she like?'

  'Mrs Mullet? A most respectable woman. Her father used to keep the Three Lords Hunting. But he's been dead fifteen years. Fell down his cellar flap on New Year's Eve and cracked his skull. She's all right, sir. Her husband's as deaf as a post. He's a wicked old man.'r />
  T think I'll have a word with Mrs Mullet, if you're agreeable,' said Hazlerigg.

  'Help yourself,' said the sergeant.

  Mrs Mullet received the inspector, with proper Norfolk caution, in a dim kitchen. Her husband sat in a high chair beside the range. His bright eyes moved from speaker to speaker, but he took no part in the opening formalities.

  'It's like this, Mrs Mullet,' said Hazlerigg. I’m very anxious to check exactly when Mr Horniman arrived at his cottage each weekend. More particularly'—he took a quick glance at his notebook—'on the weekend of February 27th.'

  'Well, now, I don't know,' said Mrs Mullet.

  'Does he come down here every weekend?'

  'Oh no. Not every weekend. Not until the summer. He was down here at the end of February—like you said. That was his first visit this year. Then again at the end of March, and last weekend.'

  'Well, then,' said Hazlerigg. If February 27th was his first trip, surely that's some reason for it to stick in your memory.'

  T can remember it all right,' said Mrs Mullet. 'The thing I don't know is whether I ought to tell you anything about it.'

  Hazlerigg said: 'Well, ma'am, I need hardly remind you that it's your duty—'

  If I'm brought to court,' said Mrs Mullet, 'that's one thing. If I'm brought to court I shall say what I know. But until then—'

  Mr Mullet swivelled his bright eyes on to the inspector to see how he would play this one.

  T must warn you,' said Hazlerigg, 'that you may be guilty of obstructing—'

  'It's not a thing I approve of,' said Mrs Mullet. 'But yooman nature is yooman nature, and all the divorce courts in the world can't stop it.'