Appleby Talking (24 page)

“Your cousin’s body is naturally at Sheercliff, Mr Borlase. It has been adequately identified. And this gentleman is not my son” – Appleby smiled faintly – “but Mr Derry Fisher, who happened to travel up from Sheercliff this morning in circumstances which give him an interest in your cousin’s death.”

“From Sheercliff this morning? How do you do.” And Mark Borlase gave Derry a smile which, for some reason, sent a prickling sensation down the young man’s spine. “You were a friend of poor Stephen’s?”

“No – nothing of that sort. I never knew him. It’s just that on the train I ran across a – another passenger who’d had a queer experience – one that seems to connect up with Sir Stephen’s death. That’s why the police are interested in me.”

“Indeed.” Mark Borlase did not appear to find this ingenuous explanation sufficiently significant to hold his attention. He turned his mild gaze again to Appleby. “They say, you know, that there were times when Stephen wasn’t quite himself.”

“But you have no personal experience of that?”

“I didn’t see him very often. Of course, we corresponded occasionally.”

“About what?”

Mark Borlase seemed momentarily at a loss. “Well – don’t you know – this and that.”

“You said a moment ago that you and Sir Stephen had nothing at all to say to each other. Can you be a little more specific about the this and that which occupied your letters?”

“As a matter of fact” – and Mark Borlase hesitated – “Stephen got me to look at things for him from time to time.”

“Things, Mr Borlase?”

“Articles in Russian. It’s my subject.”

“I see.” And Appleby nodded. “Articles, that would be, in learned and scientific journals? Sir Stephen’s own stuff?”

“Dear me, no.” Mark Borlase evinced a sort of absent-minded amusement. “I’m a literary person, and would be no good on anything technical. Stephen had his own experts to do all that sort of thing, as a matter of course.”

“Philosophy, then – and sociology and so forth? He used you to acquaint himself with untranslated writings of – well, an ideological cast?”

Mark Borlase’s hand moved uneasily. “Is this what they call a security check? But it
was
matter of that sort. Stephen had an intermittent – but occasionally intense – interest in Communist theory and the like. I’m bound to confess that it irritated me very much. Not the doctrine – I don’t give twopence for one political doctrine or another – but the style. I like my Russian good.”

“You would have viewed with indifference your cousin’s entering upon treasonable courses, but would have deprecated his continued concern with inelegant Russian prose?”

Rather surprisingly, Mark Borlase was on his feet and flushing darkly. “Damn it all, man, you understand the conversation of gentlemen better than that. I don’t give a tinker’s curse, I say, for one or another sort of hot air. But of course I wouldn’t have a kinsman make a fool of himself and disgrace the family if I could help it. I used to translate or explain whatever rubbish Stephen in these occasional fits sent along – and do my best to laugh at him for his pains.”

“And you were never seriously uneasy?”

Mark Borlase’s hesitation was just perceptible. “Never. I realise there has been a certain amount of sinister talk. Stephen himself told me that some fool of a Cabinet Minister had decided he was a dangerously split personality, and that he had been plagued with a lot of nonsense as a result. For all I know of the present facts, such idiocy may have driven Stephen to suicide.”

“I sincerely hope not.” Appleby’s tone was sober. “And I am sorry, Mr Borlase, to have had to sound you on some rather unpleasant ground. It was good of you to come along so quickly. One of my assistants may want a little routine information at your convenience in a day or two. At the moment, I have only one further question. When did you see your cousin last?”

This time Mark Borlase answered promptly. “Six weeks ago. And he was perfectly well. I’m at the Junior Wessex, by the way, should you want me.”

“Thank you very much.”

For some moments after the door closed on Mark Borlase there was silence. Appleby sat quite still, lost in thought. Then he turned to Derry. “Well?”

“I’ve seen him before.”

“
What!
”

“I’ve seen him before. It came to me when he smiled. I’ve seen him quite recently.”

“Be careful, man.” Appleby had sat up at his desk, square and severe. “This sort of thing is new to you – and sometimes it sets people fancying things. We don’t want a false scent. So think.”

Derry’s mouth was dry and he guessed that he looked queer. For a full minute he, too, sat quite still. “I
know
I’ve seen him recently – and it connects with Sheercliff.”

“Mark may be like Stephen in personal appearance. And you may have caught a glimpse of Stephen down there in the streets.”

“No – I’ve seen
him
.” Derry felt his heart pounding. “In a taxi…smiling…driving out of Waterloo today.”

Sir John Appleby appeared quite unsurprised. “That is capital. It looks as if we are on the track of something at last. Let us suppose that you are not mistaken. The overwhelmingly probable inference is that Mark Borlase has himself been down to Sheercliff, and indeed travelled back by the same train as yourself.”

“Then he lied, didn’t he? He said he hadn’t seen his cousin for six weeks.”

“It certainly sounded like a lie. But he may have gone down intending to see Stephen, and then for some reason changed his mind. You didn’t manage to see how he was dressed?”

Derry shook his head. “I’m afraid not. He may have been in those tweeds of Stephen’s. All I saw was his face – leaning forward, and rather amused that I had to skip out of the way of his cab. But look here, sir” – Derry was suddenly urgent – “it was the cab immediately behind the girl’s.
Could
he have followed it, and tracked her down? Can one really tell a taxi-driver to do that? It’s always happening in stories.”

Appleby smiled. “Certainly you can. Men occasionally want to follow girls without necessarily having it in mind to commit murder. You can imagine cases in which the motive might even be laudable. And most taxi-drivers wouldn’t mind a bit of a chase. Try it, some time.”

Derry, although accustomed by now to the intermittent levity of the Assistant Commissioner, was rather shocked. “But, sir, oughtn’t we… I mean, if there’s a chance he knows where to find her–”

“Quite so. One or two arrangements must certainly be made.” Appleby was scribbling as he spoke, and now he touched a bell. “Here they are.” He held up a sheet of paper and then handed it to his secretary. “See that this is acted on at once, Hunt, please. And are there any developments?”

“Captain Meritt just arrived, sir.”

“Excellent. Show him in.” Appleby turned to Derry. “The man who knows all about the Sheercliff end. It will be a bad business if we don’t get somewhere now.” He frowned. “And also, perhaps, if we do.”

Captain Meritt was military, brisk, and (Derry suspected) inwardly somewhat shattered. He listened to what Appleby had to say, nodded an introduction to the young man, and plunged straight into his own narrative.

“I waited in Sheercliff for the doctors to make up their minds. It seems there can be no doubt about what happened, and that the local man’s notion of suicide is all wrong. Borlase was killed by a terrific blow on the head, and then within a few minutes was pitched over the cliff. I’ve tried to get medical help on the clothes. You know how scalp wounds, even when only superficial, bleed in a profuse and alarming way? I wondered if the clothes he was actually wearing when killed would by any chance remain wearable and presentable.”

Appleby nodded. “A good point.”

“But the leeches won’t be positive one way or the other. It isn’t certain there would have been any great mess. It’s my bet now that the murderer stripped the dead man of his clothes and got him into the ones he was found in.”

“I agree.” Appleby was incisive. “But why? What was the situation?”

“
I
was the situation, if you ask me.” And Meritt laughed, but without much effect of mirth. “As I see it now, the murder happened not on a second trip of Sir Stephen’s to Merlin Head, but on the first and only trip. I saw Sir Stephen go up there. I thought I saw him come down. But all I really saw was his clothes. In fact, I came a first-class crash.”

“It’s certainly a possibility.” Appleby spoke with a hint of professional commiseration. “And can you name the man who fooled you?”

“Krauss.”

Appleby nodded. “I gather he may be involved. The Minister made a great point of it when he contacted me this morning.”

“You see, Krauss–” Meritt hesitated. “Is Mr Fisher here interested in Krauss?”

Appleby smiled. “I don’t think it will much endanger the country, Mr Fisher, to tell you about Krauss. He is a foreign agent whom we suspect of specialising in approaching scientists with the object of extracting secret information from them. Krauss’ is the ideological and not the venal approach. We don’t know that he has ever had much success. But it is believed that he keeps on trying. And Captain Meritt is perfectly correct in saying that Krauss is supposed to have been on the track of Sir Stephen Borlase. So Krauss is a likely suspect enough.” Appleby turned his back to his colleague. “Fisher and I, as it happens, have another one. But carry on.”

“Another suspect?” Meritt was startled.

“Not a bad one. But first come, first served. So continue.”

Meritt laughed. “Very well. Here is the crime as I see it. Stephen Borlase was an unstable fellow, with fits in which he didn’t very well know his own mind on certain vital matters. As a result, Krauss got a long way with him – got, in fact, as far as Merlin Head in the small hours of this morning. He persuaded Borlase to an appointment there – to a moonlight confabulation, you may say, in the little shelter by the cliff edge. The meeting, however, was a failure. Borlase was not disposed, after all, to see treason as a piece of higher duty. Conceivably he never was. These, after all, are jumpy times. If they were not, some of us would be out of a job.”

“Quite so.”

“Krauss, then, was stuck. And, being stuck, he struck.” Meritt paused, as if mildly surprised at his own command of the resources of English. “Primarily he was out to suborn Borlase. But there was this other possibility. Borlase carried on his person notes that were the vital growing-point of his researches. These would be enormously worth stealing – and particularly if the brain capable of producing them could simultaneously be destroyed for ever. That is why Krauss killed Borlase.”

“If he did.”

“I’m only putting a case.” Meritt was patient. “Now, what would be the first thing one would do after committing murder and robbery? I think one would scout around. Krauss took a peer out from that cliff shelter – and just glimpsed me at the far end of the path leading to it. He would realise the situation in a flash, and see that it was pretty grim.”

“Grim enough to take the fantastic risk of donning Borlase’s clothes and hoping to evade you that way?”

“Yes. And it wasn’t really so fantastic. He would know I was being as unobtrusive as possible, and that I would keep well back. So he chanced it.”

“It’s a first-class hypothesis.” Appleby drummed absently on the desk before him. “But one point worries me. Borlase was found in
entirely
strange clothes? And why a
complete
exchange? And why bother to re-dress the corpse at all?”

“Krauss suddenly tumbled to the significance of the cliff, the sea, and the currents. With luck, he could get rid of the body for days or weeks. That would be valuable in itself. Moreover, if it was then recovered entirely unidentifiable, either in its own person or by any of its clothes, the eminent Sir Stephen Borlase would simply have disappeared without explanation. There was a neat little propaganda trick to take in that.”

“Very well. Krauss – or another – effects this change of clothes, and then pitches the body into the sea. Or rather,
not
into the sea. It lands on a small outcrop of rock. And so the murderer’s plan – as you see it, that is – partly fails. Now, there is a point that occurs to me there. Suppose that the murderer, for some reason, was – so to speak – aiming not at the sea but at that rock. Would it have been a practical target? Could he have reckoned on keeping the body
from
the sea?”

Meritt frowned. “I’m not clear about the bearing of your question.”

“Conceivably it has none. But one ought, I think, to consider the question
Accident or
design?
on every occasion that one possibly can.”

“I entirely agree.” Meritt thought for a moment. “Yes, I think the rock would prove, if one experimented, a reasonably easy target.”

“Well, then – let’s go on. The disguised Krauss, with Borlase’s notebook happily in his pocket, does succeed in getting past you.”

“I’m afraid so. But he is by no means out of the wood. There I am, discreetly behind him. If he wants to avoid suspicion, there is only one natural thing for him to do at the end of this nocturnal stroll. He must return to Borlase’s hotel. He must accept the risk of being confronted, face on, by a night porter. Moreover, he probably has no more than Borlase’s key as a clue to what room he must make for. And he must find it before I, in my turn, regain the Metropole.”

“In fact, it was all pretty sticky – all the time and without knowing it – he had made that ghastly slip-up over the shoes, and was now wearing one of Borlase’s and one of his own.”

“Exactly. But he did get to Borlase’s suite quite safely. Later he crept out again, and took the first train to Town. He can’t, I think, have had any base in Sheercliff, or he would have made for it first and got into other clothes.”

Derry Fisher had listened fascinated to this hypothetical reconstruction of events in which he himself had been obscurely involved. Now he broke in. “This man Krauss, sir – have you ever seen him?”

Meritt nodded. “Certainly. I was given an unobtrusive view of a good many of his kidney when I took on my present job.”