Choice of Evils (12 page)

Andrew began to turn the pages more carefully. He began at the beginning, wondering what he was supposed to find. None of the names there meant anything to him. He had reached the letter C and was reading the address
and telephone number of Edward Clarke when a man came hurriedly into the room, bent down over Mayhew and muttered something into his ear. Whatever it was brought Mayhew immediately to his feet.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, already on his way to the door. 'Something important's come up.’

He left the room.

Andrew stayed where he was, continuing to turn the pages of the address book. After a time he took a small notebook out of his pocket and jotted down in it a name and address. Soon afterwards he closed the book, held it for a moment, looking at it thoughtfully, laid it down on the table, then he stood up and made his way out of the room and down the stairs to the entrance.

He spoke to the constable behind the counter there.

‘Can you tell me the way to Linwood Drive?’ he asked.

As he asked it the telephone on the counter began to ring, and at the same moment two men came hurrying down the stairs and out of the door to the street. Then another man came in at the door and went striding to a door that opened into a room in which there were already a number of men. The sound of a loud, clear voice reached Andrew, which seemed to him to be giving orders. As the constable put the telephone down, having answered it briefly, Andrew repeated his question.

‘Can you tell me the way to Linwood Drive?’

The man looked at him as if he could not think what he was doing there, and found it difficult to bring his mind back from whatever it was that the telephone call had done to it. In fact, it was obvious that Andrew had chosen a very bad time for his question. Something of far greater importance was absorbing everybody. He had a chilly feeling that he knew what it was.

‘Linwood Drive?’ the constable said at last. ‘Hm, yes, straight down till you reach the church, then turn left, then go on till you pass Marks and Spencer, then right,
then cross the square and the road straight ahead of you is the one you want.’

Ts it far?’ Andrew asked.

The man looked him up and down as if measuring what meaning the word might have for someone of Andrew's age. But he seemed reassured by what he saw, for he said, ‘About ten minutes’ walk.’

At that moment the telephone began to ring again, so Andrew only said a quiet, 'Thank you,’ and went out into the street.

It took him rather more than ten minutes to reach Linwood Drive, for the directions that he had been given, though accurate, were hard to remember. Finding his way at last to the square, he found the street he wanted leading out of it. Walking along it slowly, he took his notebook out of his pocket and checked what he had written in it.

‘C.W. Wale, 37 Linwood Drive. Tel 932875.’

The house for which he was looking was in a Victorian terrace of small houses, some of which had been rejuvenated with bright paint, and some of which looked as if they were quietly decaying. They had what had once been small front gardens, but most of which had been covered with gravel, with only an odd shrub or two appearing here and there. Number 37 had neither been brightened up with new paint nor entered yet into a state of decay. It looked neat and modestly unnoticeable.

Andrew crossed the little gravelled yard in front of it and rang the bell.

After a short pause he heard footsteps inside and the door was opened. A small woman who looked as if she was about fifty stood there, looking at him curiously before giving him a smile and saying, ‘Yes?’

She was dressed in dark blue slacks and a bright blue and white striped sweater. Her grey hair was cut short, with a curly fringe falling forward over her forehead. Her eyes were a clear blue.

‘Miss Wale?’ Andrew asked.

‘Mrs,’ she answered.

‘I'm sorry - Mrs Wale. There are a few questions I would like to ask you concerning Mrs Amory, if you can spare me a little time.’

She did not answer at once, but studied him thoughtfully.

‘You
look
respectable,’ she announced at length.

‘Thank you,’ Andrew said.

‘And you're not police, you're over the age limit.’

‘Indeed I am.’

‘Then you'd better come in. Only - you aren't some kind of private detective, are you?’

Andrew hesitated for a moment, because although he was not by profession a detective of any kind, he was at the moment engaged in a sort of detective work. He avoided the question by asking another.

‘Have the police been to see you, then?’

‘Yes, only a little while ago,’ she said. ‘But come in. If you're going to ask as many questions as they did, we don't want to stay on the doorstep.’

She stood aside for him to enter, closing the door behind him, and took him into a small, cosy room with a bow window, neatly shrouded in net, overlooking the street, a flowered wallpaper, several comfortable chairs covered in bright cretonne, a desk with a typewriter on it, and what Andrew presumed was her dining-table, though there was only one chair drawn up to it. If a Mr Wale existed, it did not look as if he lived here.

‘Well, get ahead with it,’ she said when they were both seated on either side of the gas fire. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘You're a typist, aren't you?’ Andrew said.

‘You could call me that, yes.’ She nodded her head. T don't do it regularly. I just take in the odd job from time to time.’

‘Did you ever do any odd jobs for MrsAmory?’

‘Mrs Amory?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘The police wanted to know if I ever did any work for Mr Amory.’

‘And did you?’

‘No. But I did a couple of jobs for his wife before she died. I typed a couple of novels for her. But I don't think either of them ever got published. They weren't so very good, in my humble opinion. But she was a nice woman. I thought her death was awfully sad.’

‘Was either of the novels you typed called
Death Come Quickly
!’

She gave him a puzzled look. 'That's a film.’

‘But it started life as a novel. Did you type it for her?’

She shook her head. ‘Definitely not.’

‘Nor for Mr Amory?’

‘I told you, I never did any work for him.’

‘Do you remember how you got in touch with his wife?’

‘I believe it was through Miss Todhunter. The lady who runs the bookshop. Yes, that's how it was. I've done one or two jobs for her. I believe she did a good deal of writing in the old days, but nowadays she seems to have given up. But when Mrs Amory took to writing and wanted a typist. Miss Todhunter recommended me. I can't remember how I first met Miss Todhunter. It was several years ago.’ She pushed a hand through her curly hair, disarranging her fringe. ‘Now will you tell me why you're asking these questions? Seems to me I've answered enough.’

‘Thank you, you're being very helpful. Well, I was shown an address book this morning by the police which was said to have belonged to Mrs Amory, and it had your name in it, but not under W. It was under T. For typist, you see. And it struck me as curious, because to the best of my knowledge Mrs Amory had never done any writing. Her husband took to it after her death, and now of course
he's famous, but I've never heard any word of her trying her hand at it. As you've explained it to me, however, she did try, but without any success, and that's why your name is in her address book.’

‘Looks like it,’ she agreed.

‘When she brought her manuscripts to you, were they just handwritten?’

‘That's right, but quite easy to read, I was glad to find. Now will you tell me just what you've got to do with all this? I know there was a murder up at Amory's place, and I've had the police here, asking me just the questions you've been asking me now, but I don't know who you are or how you come into all this. Are you going to tell me?’

‘My name's Basnett,’ Andrew replied, ‘and I came down to Gallmouth for a short change and a rest and I happened to run into a nephew of mine called Peter Dilly, also a writer, who's staying with Mr Amory for the moment. I'm staying at the Dolphin. And it was my nephew who discovered the dead body in the summerhouse, at a time when there was no one else in the house. So it's natural, I suppose, that he should come under a certain amount of suspicion, and so I'm doing what I can to solve a few of the problems connected with the case, to help to clear him.’

‘You're certain then that he had nothing to do with the murder?’

‘Quite certain.’

She gave him a quizzical look. ‘Of course you would be. But what's the reason for worrying about my typing?’

‘Only that several manuscripts, apparently by Mr Amory, which he kept in a drawer of his desk in the summerhouse, seem to have been removed by the murderer. Or by somebody. And when the police showed me an address book with your name in it entered under
"Typist", I thought you might be able to tell me a little about those manuscripts. As you have.’

‘Well, I'm sure I'm very glad if I've been any help, but I don't see just how I have,’ she said.

Andrew stood up. ‘Oh, I think you have, and I'm very grateful.’

But the truth was that as Andrew walked back to the Dolphin he felt a good deal confused. He wanted very much to talk to Peter and resolved to telephone him to arrange a meeting as soon as he reached the hotel. But as soon as he did so he was intercepted by a white-faced receptionist who looked as if she would have liked to throw herself into his arms for protection from something or other, and who gasped out sharply, ‘Oh, Professor Basnett, isn't it terrible? Nothing,
nothing
, like it has ever happened to us before!’

‘Oh, I'm sure you're right,’ he said. ‘But just what's happened?’

‘They haven't told you?’

‘They?’

‘The police. I thought you went to the police station this morning.’

So she was not above listening on the internal telephone system. Not that it mattered. It occurred to him too that the police had become 'they’ to everyone who had had anything to do with them over the weekend, a curious abstraction, anonymous, faceless, hardly human.

‘They didn't tell me much, they only asked me questions,’ he said.

'So you don't know that they've found Miss Braile - or Mrs Nicholl, as I believe she's really called.’

‘No.’

‘At the foot of the cliff, not ten minutes’ walk from here, her body mostly in the water, but she wasn't drowned. Her neck was broken.’

‘That's indeed terrible.’ Andrew remembered the chill
that he had felt in the police station when everyone had seemed suddenly to be propelled into urgent action, so that he was merely something in the way, and he recognized that it had been fear of some outcome such as this that he had sensed. ‘Where's Mr Nicholl?’

T think he's still at the police station,’ the woman said. 'They came for him to tell him his wife's body had been found. Some children found it; isn't that dreadful? She'd fallen on to the rocks and was killed stone dead. It's a puzzle, because they say it must have been daylight when she fell, and the path there isn't dangerous.’

‘It was from the cliff on this side of the town, was it, not the other side of the bridge?’ Andrew asked.

He remembered the cliff path on the near cliff quite clearly from earlier visits to Gallmouth. It began almost opposite the entrance to the Dolphin and rose steeply, curving to the left where the strip of beech trees began and lying between them and the edge of the cliff, running parallel to the main road up which Peter had driven Andrew when they were on their way to Simon Amory's house.

‘That's right,’ the woman said. 'The children shouldn't have been playing where they were, it's not safe scrambling about on those rocks, but Mrs Nicholl can't have been doing that. She must have fallen over the edge of the cliff. I wonder if she was short-sighted and didn't like to wear spectacles because she thought they made her look old. A lot of people are like that.’

‘Perhaps,’ Andrew said. ‘Perhaps. If anyone should want me, I'll be in my room. There's a telephone call I want to make.’

He turned towards the lift and summoned it from an upper floor, stepped into it and a moment later stepped out and went to his room. Picking up the telephone, he dialled Amory's number, of which he had made a note, and when he was answered by a man's voice belonging,
he thought, to the man who had waited on the table at Amory's dinner party, said that he wanted to speak to Mr Dilly. He was told to wait a minute and after only a brief wait, Peter's voice said, ‘Hallo.’

‘Peter?’ Andrew said. ‘Can you come down here to lunch with me?’

‘I'm not sure that I can,’ Peter said. 'The place is swarming with policemen and I've a feeling I may be wanted. You've heard of the discovery of Magda Braile's body?’

‘Yes, but it's about something quite different that I want to talk to you.’

‘Can't you do it on the telephone?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I'll see what I can do. There may be no problem about it. But you see, when she was discovered there was that age-old question, did she fall or was she pushed? And it's probable that it happened, so I understand, around the same time, or not long after, Rachel Rayne was shot. Can't you give me some idea what it is you want to talk to me about?’

‘About a case of fraud, as you yourself suggested. A fairly major fraud. It's complicated, however, and I may be quite wrong. But if I'm right it may explain a number of things that have been puzzling us. But I need to talk it over with someone. So come if you can.’

He put down the telephone, went out and summoned the lift once more, went down to the ground floor and on into the bar.

Peter did not come. Andrew waited in the bar for nearly half an hour, then went into the dining-room and ordered lunch.

He took his time over it, but still Peter did not come. A feeling of apprehension grew in Andrew. Why did he not come? It could only be because he was being prevented, but why should that be? Andrew could not seriously believe that Peter was suspected of being involved in Rachel Rayne's murder, or in that of Magda Braile, if that should turn out to be murder. Yet after all, why should he not be suspected by strangers? And why, if it came to that, should he not be suspected by Andrew?