The Players And The Game (19 page)

Lawrence was waiting in the hall, a little anxious. He started to say something. Mouncer patted him on the shoulder.

‘Just you don’t worry, lad, and nobody’ll get hurt. Which is his room?’

‘I’ll show you.’ As they went up the staircase two men came out of another room into the hall, and stared at them with frank curiosity. ‘Do please be discreet.’

‘The sooner we start the sooner we’ll be away. This one, is it?’ Mouncer turned the handle gently, knocked. There was no reply. Paling whispered to Lawrence, ‘Call him.’

Lawrence said in a shaky voice, ‘Could I have a word with you, Paul?’ Silence.

Mouncer said to Lawrence, ‘Have you got a key?’ He did not bother to keep his voice down.

‘In the office downstairs. But if there’s a key inside you can’t–’

‘We’ll manage. Get it.’

When Lawrence came back, Mouncer took the key, dropped to his knees and fiddled with the lock. There was the sound of the key inside dropping to the floor. He put in the other key and turned it. The door opened. They went in.

The room was empty, or it appeared empty. It was Brill who saw the figure hanging behind the door, its face red, and swollen like that of a sufferer from bad toothache, a gaudy tie making a noose around the neck. They got him to the floor, took off the tie, Mouncer and Brill began to work on him. Paling stood aside with a look of distaste. Jay Burns Lawrence said ‘Good God,’ and kept repeating it.

‘Shut the door,’ Paling said.

Lawrence shut the door. He continued to stare at the body on the floor, shaking his head like a swimmer coming up after a dive. ‘Hanged himself. I’d never have believed it.’

‘Don’t stand there, man. Ring for a doctor.’

Lawrence went out, still shaking his head. Paling went to the window, looked out. ‘He saw us by the car.’ He picked up the envelope, which was addressed ‘To the police’, opened it.

Brill said, ‘No good,’ and rested back on his heels. Mouncer still worked away. Paling read what Vane had written.

I am writing this because in these last three months, since we moved to Rawley, my life has been ruined. Alice has left me. I have been sent to this extraordinary house on a kind of schoolboy training course, and I know that when I return Hartford is going to get me sacked. The police obviously suspect me of murder. My life as I know it is at an end. Can I start a new one? I don’t think so.

But I want to put the record straight. I did one stupid thing, and I lied to the police, but I have committed no crime.
Somebody has been persecuting me.

I now put down all I know about the Allbright case. (I suppose you might call it a statement for the police, but I shall probably never give it to them, I shall probably tear it up.) I told the absolute truth in my first statement. I hardly knew Louise Allbright. I took her home and kissed her, nothing more. When the police found out about the other girls they suspected me, but they were wrong. I know nothing about the letter done on my typewriter. I cannot explain it. I told the absolute truth about everything.

Until Friday night.

On Friday I came home, and Alice had gone. I had some drinks, went over the house and down into the cellar to see if she had taken her suitcases. She had. There was a space where they had stood, and the concrete there was cracked and broken. There was also a bad smell. I pushed away some of the broken concrete and found a body.

Who was it, how long had it been there, how did it get there? I have no idea. But I was frightened. I felt that I must get rid of it. I was being watched, there was a police car outside. I thought they would come in, find this body, and arrest me.

I got a spade, dug it out – the grave was very shallow, and the concreting over had been badly done. I put it in the car boot, with a sack over it and some clothes which were in the grave. I went to Green Common, parked there, put it down covered with the sacking, and covered it with leaves and branches.

It was a woman. I had nothing to do with her death.

So far she has not been found, but of course she will be, very soon. Then they will ask more questions. I can’t stand that.

Why has this happened to me?

Paul Vane

At the bottom a few more words were scrawled:

The police are here now, looking at the car. I can’t go through any more.

Mouncer stood up, wiped his forehead. ‘He’s had his last meal, that’s for sure. Got a nice little confession there, to make it all neat?’

‘No confession.’

‘But he did it all right. Or why string himself up? Nice tie too.’

Paling looked down at the figure on the floor. ‘I don’t know.’

Brill looked down too. ‘It’s one way of solving your problems,’ he said.

Monday, twelve-thirty hours. Bob Lowson beamed at Brian Hartford.

‘Sit down, Brian. Glad you could spare a minute. I thought you’d like to know that Joey Fiddick is out. The group’s no longer interested. Or rather, we’ve done a deal with them by which we get access to American outlets. We’re going into the States in a big way. It’s going to cost money, mind you, but it’s a good deal. It’s not what you had in mind.’

Denial would have been pointless. ‘No.’

‘It brings your position into question.’ Hartford thought he knew what was coming, but he was wrong. On the principle that a victor can afford to make concessions, Lowson suggested a shift and extension of Hartford’s empire, to include overall control of the new American set-up. He accepted immediately.

Sometimes it is a good idea to crush rebels, but often it is better to buy them. Bob Lowson was so pleased with himself that he rang and made an appointment with Dr Winstanley.

Monday, fourteen-thirty hours. Hazleton entered Plender’s office, slammed the door behind him. He looked as dangerous as a wild boar. ‘You’ve heard?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Vane saw them looking at his car, hanged himself. Shouldn’t happen, that kind of thing. Bloody stupid.’

‘He did it?’ Plender sounded disappointed.

‘He left a statement, admitted nothing except getting rid of the French girl’s body. Says he found her in the cellar and got the wind up.’ He noticed the pile of papers in front of the sergeant. ‘What the hell have you got there?’

‘It’s the file. I knew there was some word or phrase I’d read which meant something, it had been used by somebody in the case before.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Plender swallowed before he spoke. Hazleton realised that he was very excited. ‘Brill put in a very full report of your interview with Alberta Norman. Here’s one thing she said about this Alastair she talked about. “He was a layabout. And a pinchfist too.” Did she say that?’

‘Very likely. Why?’

‘It’s an unusual word, “pinchfist”, don’t you agree?’

‘What of it, Plender? It’s quite probable she invented this Alastair man as a cover up for something else. Come to the point, if there is one.’

‘Here’s a report I made on the questioning of a woman named Joan Brown. When I asked her why she left her job, she said the man was an old pinchfist.’ He pointed out the line. ‘Isn’t it remarkable that she should use the same word? What did this Norman woman look like, sir? No, let me tell you. Five-two or -three, rather dumpy, high forehead, nose with a bit of a droop at the tip–’ he sketched it – ‘rather thick legs, rather big feet.’

‘That nose is right. And you mean the frizzy hair and the make-up and glasses–’

‘Plain glass in them. Those were the things she could alter. The nose she couldn’t. I wish I hadn’t been off that afternoon. I’d have recognised her.’

Hazleton took the sheet on which Plender had put down his interview with Joan Brown, and read it. He remained unexcited. ‘It sounds as though you may be right. Does it help? Joan Brown disappeared and turned up again, but what then?’

You’ll see in this report she says she’d gone to her parents. I didn’t ring them then because there seemed no point. I called them today, talked to them both. Her mother said Joan came home in a state of collapse, screaming and crying that she’d done something terrible. Within a week she’d got over it and they started having rows, which I gather was as usual. The rows went on till she upped and left. She’d never got on with her parents since she was twelve and stopped going to church. They’re both strict Methodists, they spout hell fire and damnation even down the phone.’

‘Have they heard of her since?’

‘Yes. In the last month they’ve had two registered envelopes, each with fifty quid in it. No letter inside, just a note that said “Love, Joan”. Another thing. When she was fourteen she got into trouble. She caught a dog, tied it up, cut it all over till it bled to death.’ Hazleton stared at him. ‘She got very unpopular in the district after that, left as soon as she was out of school. They’ve only seen her occasionally since then.’

‘You think she took part in killing the French girl, got frightened and ran home, then decided she liked it and came back.’

‘It makes sense, sir, doesn’t it? Especially when you think about the dog.’

Hazleton agreed. ‘It makes sense. It’s all theory, mind you. The DCS would love it.’

Plender coughed apologetically. ‘That’s not all, sir.’

‘More theories? You don’t want to do too much fancy thinking, Harry. Gives you piles, keeping your arse glued too long to a chair.’

‘This isn’t theory. I’ve taken it over to the lab and they’ve checked it out. I happened to notice it going through the file.’ He tried to speak with becoming modesty. He put on the table the note typed to the postman Rogers and its accompanying envelope, then put beside it the estate agent’s typed particulars of Planter’s Place. The particulars had been issued by Borrowdale and Trapney. The lab had made a note of the similar characteristics between them. There could be no doubt that they had been typed on the same machine.

Bonnie. I can think about nothing else, write about nothing else. She has planted herself on me, this revolting pudding made in the shape of a woman. She says that we are together, that I must look after her. I have offered her the money from the magazine, not because I fear her but because she must
go away.
Take it, I said. She will not go. She wants us to go together, talks about assuming fresh identities, what she calls ‘starting up again’. She wants to find more girls.

I reject her utterly. I despise her. She is the flesh, I am the spirit.

I reject her. But she is in
my
home, her snout is stuck into
my
books, she giggles and snuffles and shows her body to me, asking for what I shall not give her. She talks about the past, which I refuse to remember. I belong to the future.

This miserable swine-snout has a revolver. Apparently she bought it through one of the boys in Dulwich, after a man came in and threatened her. That may be true. Anyway, she has a revolver and says she knows how to use it.

She sits in my room, filthy, sluttish, brooding on my books like a spider. I have taken this notebook away in case she sees it. She would give her meaningless fat laugh when she read it, would say it showed I was crazy.

She is under the impression that
she
is sane.

I can no longer tolerate her.

Comments and Reflections.
The man who started to keep this notebook no longer exists. That man wrote letters signed Abel, which was the mask of Bela, he was Count Dracula and played always a game of masks. His life was all a pretence, but I have turned pretence into reality, I have experienced in my own body and soul what the Master called the Transvaluation of All Values. When my troubles run deepest, and they are now very deep, I read his words and am comforted. I set down three quotations.

‘Morality is a way of turning one’s back on the will to existence.’

‘None of you has the courage to kill a man, or even to whip him.’

‘We resist the idea that all great human beings have been criminals (only in the grand and not in a miserable style), that crime belongs to greatness.’

I take all these words for my own. Such words were my deeds. ‘Pain is something different from pleasure – I mean it is
not its opposite,’
He said. Yet pleasure, and the will to power over others, is inextricably mixed with pain.

Because I say these things, and have fulfilled my words, should I be called mad? I can face the name.

He also became at last what the world calls mad. To Strindberg He signed himself Nietzsche Caesar, said that He had summoned a Council of Princes at Rome and would have the young Kaiser shot. He said that He had had Calaphas put in chains, and had abolished Bismarck and all anti-Semites. Or He believed himself to be the Godhead and promised to arrange good weather. These dream imaginings were possible only to a man who had abandoned all worldly masks.

From this moment I abandon them too. The Game and the Players belong to the past. I have endured, have suffered, have achieved the Transvaluation of All Values, I am Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Everything else in my life was a pretence.

‘Sergeant Plender I have met before, but a Chief Inspector,’ Mr Borrowdale said. ‘Dear me. I take it that you want to see me about the unhappy affair at Planter’s Place. Although what is unhappy for one may be happy for others. Do you know that I have sold the property? And that I had the pleasure of turning down two offers before accepting this one? Morbid curiosity is a wonderful thing. But how can I help you?’

He flexed his large hands, and his walnut-sized knuckles cracked. It struck Plender that he was uneasy, but he knew that many people are made uneasy by the presence of the police. Plender had spent a busy half-hour on the telephone finding out something about the estate agent. He was a widower, was looked after by a housekeeper, and had been for some years a member of the town council. There was no longer a Trapney, and his business was not flourishing. The general opinion was that he needed a partner.

Hazleton had decided on a direct, although not impolite approach. ‘Mr Borrowdale, I believe your firm uses or has used an Adler typewriter.’

‘Have we really? I didn’t know that. I’ll just ask Mrs Stephenson.’ He began to get up. Plender rose at the same moment.

‘I’ll do it if you don’t mind.’

A middle-aged woman and a young girl sat in the outer office. The woman was using a Remington typewriter, the girl was doing filing. Plender closed the door of Borrowdale’s office behind him. ‘Mrs Stephenson, I wonder if you’d mind answering one or two questions.’

Mrs Stephenson had a bosom like a shelf, and a militant look. She said to the girl, ‘Rose, you can have half an hour off for shopping.’

‘How do you mean? I don’t want any shopping.’

‘Go out, and don’t come back for half an hour.’

‘But it’s raining.’

‘Then go and stand in a doorway and watch the rain.’

‘Oh, I see. You don’t want me here.’ She put on her coat and went out.

Mrs Stephenson sighed. ‘Girls aren’t what they used to be, and the change is for the worse. Now, Sergeant, if you are going to ask questions about Mr Borrowdale’s affairs, I should prefer him to be present.’

‘I’ve asked him this same question, and he referred me to you. It’s very simple. Do you use an Adler typewriter, or have you had one in the past?’

‘No.’

Plender was taken aback. Mrs Stephenson looked the incarnation of the President of every Mothers’ Union. His surprise was obvious, and she took matronly pity on him.

‘I have worked for ten years in this office, and I have never used any machine except that one.’

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘There is another type-writer. Or there was. There must have been.’

‘Young man, are you calling me a liar?’ The thought was terrible. You may take my word for it that no other typewriter has been used here except this one. I call it Old Faithful.’

He gulped, and then produced the particulars of Planter’s Place. ‘Then where did this come from? It was issued by your firm, and typed on an Adler.’

She looked at the sheet as though it were unclean. ‘That was not typed in this office. Of course the property has been sold now, but these are the details we sent out.’ She crossed to the girl’s table, and brought back a sheet which she handed to him. The wording was almost identical, but the typewriter used was obviously a different one.

He ran a hand through his hair again. ‘Mr Borrowdale himself gave me that one. It’s got your letterhead at the top.’

The great plateau of Mrs Stephenson’s bosom almost touched him. ‘So it has. But it was not typed here. I can only suggest that you ask him where it came from.’ With motherly amusement she said, You might run a comb through your hair first. It’s standing on end.’

He returned to Borrowdale’s office in a slightly dazed condition, and gave the two sheets to Hazleton. ‘Mrs Stephenson says they’ve never had any typewriter but her Remington, which typed this one but not the other.’

Hazleton tapped the one typed on the Adler. ‘You say Mr Borrowdale gave you this one himself.’

‘That’s right.’

The DCI addressed Borrowdale. ‘Where did it come from?’

The estate agent flexed and cracked again. Then he grinned politely, showing yellow horse teeth. ‘Upon my word, I’m afraid I have no idea.’

Hazleton’s eyes popped dangerously. ‘You gave it to Sergeant Plender yourself.’

‘I did? Does it matter very much?’

‘Yes, Mr Borrowdale. Very much.’

‘It came from the cabinet behind you,’ Plender said. ‘Perhaps there are some more copies in there.’

‘I usually keep just one or two copies of particulars in here.’ He went to the cabinet. Plender stood behind him. ‘Yes, here we are. I gave you one, and here’s another. That’s the lot, I’m afraid.’

Plender looked at it. ‘But this is typed on your own Remington.’

‘I’ve had enough of this, Mr Borrowdale,’ Hazleton said. ‘I don’t think you’re being frank with us.’

Borrowdale now looked very nervous indeed. ‘Oh dear. May I have Mrs Stephenson in? I do rely on her a great deal, I’m afraid.’

Hazleton nodded. Mrs Stephenson entered the room, massive and imperturbable. Borrowdale’s voice had a distinct quaver. ‘Mrs Stephenson, these gentlemen want to know where these particulars came from, and I simply have no idea. Please do try to help.’

She folded massive arms. Not from this office.’

Hazleton’s voice rose slightly. ‘But it’s your letter-heading, woman, it was in your file.’

‘There is no need to shout.’ Plender was interested to see that her glance quelled the DCI. ‘Shouting will not help. This was not done while I was here.’ She put a hand to her chest. ‘My pneumonia.’

Plender dared not look to see Hazleton’s reaction.

‘Two years ago I had pneumonia. It was just about that time we became joint agents for Planter’s Place. These will be the old particulars.’

Mr Borrowdale tapped his bald forehead. ‘Foolish of me. Your pneumonia, of course, that’s the answer.’

The DC I’s voice throbbed like an engine being kept forcibly under control. ‘I may be foolish myself, but I don’t understand. What’s the answer? Do you mean that another agent handled Planter’s Place too?’

‘Certainly. It’s quite common. They had had the sole agency but hadn’t sold it, so Mr Medina decided to try us as well. It’s customary to share the commission in the event of a sale.’

Plender interrupted. ‘When I saw you before, you never told me that you were only joint agents.’

Mr Borrowdale stared at him, and then said simply, ‘You never asked me.’

‘So that this other agent would also have had keys, and access to Planter’s Place.’

‘Certainly.’

‘I still don’t see what Mrs Stephenson’s pneumonia had to do with it,’ Hazleton said.

‘I was away, so we got a temp in, but she wasn’t much good. The younger generation don’t like work. So to save some typing, the existing sheet was just put in the copying machine and a few copies made under our letterhead. Later on, after I returned, I typed out the particulars properly. Mr Borrowdale just happened to give you one of the old ones.’

‘So that the Adler typewriter belongs to the other firm, the joint agents. And who are they?’

Mr Borrowdale’s hands flexed, his knuckles cracked. ‘Darling’s, in Bishopsgate.’

Monday. Sixteen-hundred hours. Alice Vane put down the telephone. Her mother hovered like a kite-hawk.

‘That was the police. They telephoned instead of calling because they weren’t sure where to find me.’

‘He’s been arrested.’ Mrs Parkinson spoke as though she had been compelled to swallow some particularly nasty medicine.

‘Paul has hanged himself. It seems the police wanted to talk to him, and he thought – I don’t know what he thought. He was in Hampshire, taking a course of some kind.’

‘At least it was not at home.’ Alice looked hard at her mother. ‘I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but I can’t be a hypocrite. It’s a blessing in disguise. I always said he was no good.’

‘So you did, Mother. But do you have to say it again now?’ She took a piece of paper and began to make notes. They ran:
Tell Jennifer. Tell office. Inquest? Ask police.
Her mother was still standing there. ‘I shan’t need any help.’

She made her telephone calls, then went up to her room. She had brought away a photograph of Paul when she had first known him, eager, gay, to her eyes almost intolerably handsome. She turned over the frame. Then she began to cry. Outside rain drove on to the windows.

Monday. Sixteen-thirty hours. Bob Lowson had said the proper things to Alice, who sounded remarkably composed. Then he spent, as he afterwards told Valerie, a bad ten minutes while he wondered whether Paul’s death was in some degree his responsibility, whether he really had killed those girls, and whether the suicide would affect Timbals. After deciding that his conscience was clear and that serious repercussions were unlikely, he gave Brian Hartford the news.

Brian was silent. Then he said, ‘I should like to see Esther Malendine get the job. Would you have any objection?’

For a moment Lowson was disconcerted by this reaction. ‘I don’t think so.’

Hartford’s even tones came down the office telephone. ‘I had nothing against Vane, you know. He thought I had, but he was wrong. He was just out of date in dealing with personnel problems, that was all.’

These words, and Alice’s quickly-dried tears, were the nearest anybody got to an epitaph for Paul Vane.

Monday. Seventeen-thirty hours. The adenoidal girl in Darling’s office was operating a Royal typewriter, and knew nothing about an Adler. When she said that he had gone for the afternoon, Hazleton replied jovially that he was coming back after all, and had asked them to wait in his office.

There they found a good deal of correspondence about prospective sales of houses, but no safe, no locked drawers, and nothing relevant to the crimes until Plender, pulling out volumes of the
Estate Agent’s Review
from a bookcase, noticed that two or three of them were free from dust. Behind them he found a book covered in limp blue leather, of the kind that was once used for standard editions of famous novelists. He looked at one or two pages, then passed it over to Hazleton.

Monday. Eighteen-thirty hours. ‘Let’s have some light,’ Paling said. The rain had stopped, but the threat of thunder hung in dark clouds outside. Brill turned on the light. Paling finished reading the blue book, put it down, sighed.

‘The bugger’s daft,’ Hazleton said. ‘Right round the bend.’

‘He impressed you as sane enough when you saw him.’

‘And who’s this man he’s on about, this Nitchie?’

‘A German philosopher,’ Paling said loftily. He steepled his white fingers. ‘Odd, isn’t it, how when the right piece falls into place – and here it was learning that Darling had at one time been joint agent for Planter’s Place – everything becomes plain. Who is the man who knows where to get rid of a body, knows which houses are empty? An estate agent. And that explains the use of Vane’s typewriter. Darling spotted it at Bay Trees and made use of it. Then, when he and Brown had killed the French girl, he buried her in the cellar.’

Plender coughed, interrupted. ‘She wasn’t killed at Bay Trees.’

Hazleton moved restlessly. ‘We ought to be getting after him.’

Paling smiled pleasantly. ‘Bear with me. This won’t take five minutes, and it does have some point. Brown gets frightened, goes away, comes back, and Darling puts her in charge of his sex magazine. We don’t know anything about that, except that he started it for money, and then used it for murder. She dyes her hair, tarts herself up, puts on a pair of spectacles with clear glass, and there’s Alberta Norman. She’s tasted blood now, and she wants more.’ His fingers touched the limp leather, lingered on it. ‘Did you notice how she becomes the dominant figure after being the minor one at first, so that he’s in rebellion against her. Second murder, done in the empty house, Planter’s Place, body left there.’

There was a roll of thunder, distant. A fork of yellow light ran down the sky. Paling went on.

‘Third murder, the Wilberforce girl. Body found in Batchsted Farm pond, yet she wasn’t killed there. I can see you’re impatient, Hazleton, but this is the point. The first and third killings were done at some place where it wasn’t convenient to bury the bodies. For some reason the second one took place elsewhere. If we could find the place where those two murders were done, I have the feeling that’s where Alberta Norman is. And him too for that matter. Any suggestions?’ He smiled and looked round. He’s a clever devil when it comes to theory, you can’t deny it, Plender thought. ‘There are a lot of empty houses on Darling’s books, I don’t doubt. Perhaps we should make a list of them. He lives with his sister, so home I presume is out. What is it, Hazleton?’

‘The barn. Outside the house there’s a big barn. His sister’s fairly deaf. She wouldn’t hear what went on, no more would the neighbours.’

Brill thought it was time he said something. ‘Supposing there was something doing at the house the night the Allbright girl was killed, he’d have to take her somewhere else.’

Paling smiled and nodded, a teacher pleased with his pupil. ‘Precisely.’

Hazleton was rubbing his chin. ‘He offered to show me that barn on Saturday night.’

Paling laughed with genuine amusement. ‘That sounds just his line. I think if you’d said you’d like to see it he’d have made some excuse. Let’s get to the barn.’

Brill began to lay on the transport. Hazleton felt that he had stood a good deal of Paling’s pontification. The DCS had conveniently forgotten that only a few hours ago he had gone off to arrest Vane. ‘What about Vane?’

‘What about him?’

‘Where does he fit in?’

‘He doesn’t. It was stupid to try to get rid of the body. Otherwise he was unlucky, that’s all.’