Invitation to Die Read online

  The super signalled for him to stay in his place as he reached for his telephone. Thoday’s reward, apparently, for his quick unmasking was to be allowed to hear the clanking of her chains being applied as MacFarlane pursued his quarry up to Lincolnshire.

  “You were thinking, Sarge, do they have the telephone up there in the hotel at Woodleigh Spa? They certainly do! It’s in constant use! And always manned by the most discreet, plum-in-mouth desk staff. There is no way through their armour of reticence for the casual enquirer. I have established my own system of blasting through it.”

  “But why, sir, would you—”

  “Missing persons, Thoday. You’d be surprised how often they fetch up in Lincolnshire!”

  He turned his attention to the telephone. “Hello? Ah yes? Cambridge CID here, Superintendent MacFarlane. And your name is? Right, then, Benson. You have a guest at present, a Mrs. Edith Hardy, who is spending time with you. She checked in last evening. Come off it, Sonny! Now listen! I’m giving you a choice. Get her off the golf course, out of bed, prise her fingers off her gin and French—do whatever you need to do to deliver the message I’m about to dictate. The alternative—ask your manager. He knows the routine from experience. If I have to come for her myself, I shall arrive with a squad of policemen in an hour and a half. They will be resplendent in uniform and have big feet and loud voices. They will conduct a disruptive search of your most intimate recesses, Benson. While I am looking through the books . . . The message? ‘Edith, get yourself back to Cambridge police station at once. There’s a train at six-thirty, and an officer will meet you and escort you here. We have very serious news for you involving your husband.’ That’s all. Oh, just one other minor item—Mrs. Hardy’s companion? Benson, don’t be boring! At the moment I’m mildly amused, but if I have to galvanise my squad and come up there and turn over every stone . . . Indeed? Thank you for your cooperation, Benson. I’ll stand the men down.”

  “The train, sir? This officer . . . ?”

  MacFarlane beamed. “Mind doing a bit of overtime, Thoday? I rather thought you’d earned the job. She’ll be glad to see a familiar face when she arrives. Take her straight to the morgue, will you, Sarge? You know the drill. That should sober her up a bit.”

  Thoday had been allowed to use the station Riley to pick up Edith. To his relief, she was actually on the train. She recognised him, but was anxious and silent when he greeted her. She grew even more anxious when he told her they were to call in at the hospital morgue before going on to the police station in St. Andrew’s Street.

  The corpse who had been Dunstan, the tall, elegant man with the manicured feet, was lying ready for inspection when they were shown through into the morgue. An assistant turned back the sheet over the head and presented the face for inspection.

  Edith, pale but controlled, approached and looked intently at the waxen face. No shouts, protests or even tears. “Where’s he gone?” she whispered to herself.

  Thoday remembered his drill. “Mrs. Hardy, do you know the identity of the deceased?”

  “Yes. That used to be my husband. Mr. Abel Hardy. What happened to him?”

  “Thank you, madam. Will you step this way and sign a form to confirm identity, and then I’ll drive you to police headquarters, where Superintendent MacFarlane is waiting to answer your question and ask some of his own.”

  “Killed by a military man, I’d say, Edith. The old blood choke method.” MacFarlane demonstrated. “He won’t have suffered for longer than a few seconds. It was a very professional assassination.”

  “’arf a mo’, Super!” Edith said surprisingly. “I’ve been thinking about this. Abe may have been pushing fifty, but he kept himself in good shape. And he was quick on his pins. Had to be in his line of work . . . detecting, I mean. The types he had to work with! It would have taken some strength as well as knowledge of a stranglehold to get the better of him. Who was he with when it happened?”

  “You tell me, Mrs. Hardy. We’re thinking death occurred on Friday evening. Sometime after six o’clock, judging by his last meal.”

  “His last meal? What would that have been?” Edith was puzzled. “He didn’t eat it with me! I had to dine all by myself at the hotel. Not nice! Everybody stares! I was there—in the hotel dining room—from seven to eight. I expect that’s what you want to know. I have no idea who killed Abel.”

  “It was jellied eels. His last meal.”

  “Don’t be daft!” The green eyes scoffed at him. “There’s no way Abel would eat jellied eels!”

  “You seem less surprised that he got himself killed, however?”

  “I’m not surprised. Been expecting it for years. Went with the job, didn’t it? The types he mixed with! He was a detective, like you, except that my husband didn’t sit behind a desk all day putting the frighteners on innocent ladies. Like I told your man Thoday, he often wandered off. I did sometimes think he might never be coming home again except in a box.”

  “When were you married?”

  “Seven years ago. Look, are they going to let his body come home? I ought to get back and make some arrangements. He’s got no family, but he’s got businesses and a staff to think about. They’ll have to be told.” Pale with alarm, she shot to her feet, smoothed down her linen skirt and tugged up her gloves.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Hardy. This is a serious business. Murder has been done, possibly several murders, and you’re going to help me clear them up. The faster you tell me everything you know that’s relevant, the better it will be for you. As it stands at the moment, you were here with him, accompanying him on one of his ventures. A partner in crime is what a jury is going to think. Who could have known that the would-be killer was destined to become the has-been killed? You would, Mrs. Hardy. The accessory before and after, possibly during the event. And all the damp lace hankies in the world won’t deceive a Cambridge judge and jury, smart fellows that they are. Besides, when they enter, er . . . Philip—your office manager?—into the equation, who can predict how stony their attitude will be? This is a moral, Nonconformist part of the world, Edith. In this county, we have no Woodleigh Spas, no Brighton. They would not be understood or tolerated.”

  She was a smart woman. She made her calculations and caved in, but MacFarlane remained vigilant.

  “Abel was a soldier for most of his life. He retired after the war in South Africa—invalided out, wounded, he told me, with a bit of money saved and a pension of sorts. He put his money into one scheme after another, but they didn’t work out. In 1918 or thereabouts, when it was clear we were winning the war against the Germans and the men would be coming back home any minute, he had an idea—another idea! For a business. Starting out in a small way. Small indeed! Just Abel and his secretary. That was me! He was getting on a bit—forty-three?—and I was much younger, twenty-five. We started the agency from his mother’s front parlour. He had just enough savings to buy a typewriter and telephone and place an advertisement on the front page of the Times.”

  “What did the advert say?” MacFarlane asked.

  “Military Gentlemen desirous of reconnecting with old colleagues are invited to make use of our discreet and swift location services. Enquiries at . . .” she recited. “And he gave the phone number.” She smiled. “That wretched phone never stopped ringing! So many callers asked the same thing—‘Am I through to Enquiries At?’ The newspaper typesetters had spelled ‘at’ with a capital ‘A.’ People seemed happy to use it. It just stuck.

  “Just after the Kaiser’s war, it was. You know the chaos. Army units split up. Families, too. Men missing in the thousands. So easy to lose track of loved ones.” Her expression hardened. “Or hated ones.”

  “Bit off more than you could chew, did you?”

  “We got all sorts. Abe was very good at making connections. He greased a few palms, got to know the right people—clerks and record keepers and suchlike in the regiments. He could always be b
othered, Abel. Fell into a conversation as though he’d only just spoken to you the week before. People liked him. Told him their stories. The enquiries came in, and it paid well. He took on another girl to do the typing and I helped him with the tracking down.

  “And that’s when it got interesting! Some people didn’t want to be found. Were being tracked for sinister reasons, you can imagine. Unpaid debts, treachery, ‘that watch I lent him,’ ‘that sergeant who had it off with my wife while I was in Mesopotamia.’ It took some skill, but Abe caught on that he could charge a fee of those who didn’t want to be found, just to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Ouch!” said MacFarlane. “Asking for trouble, playing one side against the other.”

  “He was very good at it. He got caught once when the two sides compared notes and decided he needed to be taught a lesson. Lost a front tooth in that little spat. Still, he was always a good fighter in a dirty sort of way. Hard to lay a glove on Abe!

  “Then, one day, something peculiar happened. Abe was contacted by a very senior army officer who interviewed him from his leather armchair in a club in St. James’s. He wanted a man found—a fellow officer—and Abe got the feeling that it was for no good intent. The client clearly hated the bloke he was hunting for. Well, Abe located the bloke and reported back. The gent was delighted and paid up on the spot. With a bonus. Then he asked if Abe’s services extended that little bit further. Experienced military man that he was—oh yes, he’d taken the trouble to enquire into Abe’s records, which were impressive and ‘shall we say—a bit mixed,’ he suggested delicately. Could Abe see his way to being of further assistance?

  “Abe didn’t twig at first! Didn’t catch on, he swears he didn’t, but a week later, I caught him chortling at something in the Times. The bloke he’d run to earth had fallen off the top deck of a number fifty-two bus. The bit at the back. The fall alone might not have killed him, but the bus following on a few yards behind certainly did. Nasty! I couldn’t think why Abe was laughing. Ironic? Two days later, a messenger arrived at the office with a small parcel. When I opened it, out popped twenty lovely, brand-new five-pound notes and a typed note with them: Many thanks for discreet services rendered, it said.”

  “A hundred quid? Bloo . . . Well, I never!” said MacFarlane in astonishment. He kept Edith fixed with his dark, double-barrelled stare, his fingers were leading a life of their own, scribbling a short note to himself. “Have you a date for what we might call this ‘first contract’?”

  “Um . . . In 1919. It was the week before my birthday. So it would have been coming up to the seventh of April.” She fingered a row of pearls at her throat. “Abe peeled off one of the fivers and told me to get myself something nice.”

  MacFarlane’s fingers registered another thought.

  Her expression hardened. “Thinking you’re in the wrong job, Sunshine? You could be right. There’s a vacancy now. Interested? That’s when it all started up. The phone calls! ‘A friend of mine assures me that—in complete confidentiality, of course—proof of the undertaking will, naturally, be required.’”

  “Proof?” MacFarlane leapt to his feet in his agitation. “What sort of proof did they expect of cold-blooded murder? A foreskin, a right ear, a head on a plate?”

  “Nothing of the sort, Superintendent! Abe was never less than civilised. And by this time he was a dab hand with a pocket Kodak. He’d been involved with lots of domestic cases . . . you know, marital.” Edith’s chin went up defiantly. “The arrangement was that cash came in, half on requisition and the other half on completion. When the job was done, Abe would take a shot of the corpse—always identifiable and in a recognisable situation chosen by the client—as proof and put it in the post. They could never be traced back to him because he did all his own developing. He held on to the negatives in case he ever had trouble with a client not playing the game.”

  Trying for a calm he didn’t feel, MacFarlane asked, “And does he still have these gems on file somewhere?”

  “Yes. You’re bound to find them when you raid the premises, so I’ll earn a Brownie point and tell you—red metal file cabinet, northeast corner of the stockroom next to the bottom drawer. The key’s on Abe’s keyring. Did you find it?”

  “I’m sorry, no. It isn’t listed with Mr. Hardy’s effects. Taken from the scene by his murderer, we must assume. Now, Edith, regarding his attacker.” MacFarlane’s tone became less stiff, more confidential. He put down his pencil to indicate, with misleading intent, that her following statements would be off the record. “Think on, lass! I’m fancying his old army superior officer, Captain Richard Dunne—Dickie—for this one. Would that sound reasonable to you?”

  To his surprise, she burst out laughing. “Dickie Dunne? Kill one of his own men? Not likely! Look here, Superintendent. I’ve never met Dickie Dunne, but I’ve heard all about him.” She rolled her eyes. “Too much about him! Abe was very uncertain when it came to the Captain. Loved him and hated him. Dickie was always his superior—man as well as officer—and that stuck in Abe’s craw. I really think Abe’s desperate attempts to make something of his life—preferably a large pile of money—were driven by rivalry. He always wanted to brag to Dickie that he’d made a better go of it in real life outside the army. It was his only chance to outrank him. But there was something more than just the jealousy . . .”

  Her voice trailed away as she collated her memories and feelings. MacFarlane didn’t prompt her, realising that she was using him as a sane and sensible sounding board.

  “There was something in their experience that had marked Abe. Like a mental scar. Something he kept quiet about—something he held Dickie responsible for. I can’t be certain, but I do know that he never let him go. He kept tabs on him, you know. Watched his progress through India and his further exploits in the recent war. When the day came that he discovered the Captain had taken to the roads and abandoned career and life, he rejoiced. Drank a whole bottle of Islay malt. Oh, Abe might well have killed Dickie Dunne, yes, but the man Abe described to me and logged over the years would never have killed one of his own men. He saved all their necks, you know. In Pretoria. Do you know?”

  MacFarlane grunted, not wishing to stop her flow. “Carry on.”

  “The top brass were determined to set an example. The British were within sight of winning out in the province. Parading through townships, victorious. The men were seeing civilisation again with High Streets and shops full of things they couldn’t afford to buy. They had to get the military out of the country with a good clean record so the politicians would have a clear field, Abe said. Both sides had dirty secrets they wanted to draw a veil over—like the concentration camps, the treatment of the native Africans—do you remember that in the papers? Well, there was something that it was in their power to do. To show how upright the British Army was. Looting, because it affected the general civilian population, was taken as a cardinal sin, and swingeing punishment was handed out for it. Men were hanged, Superintendent, most of them innocent.”

  “I have the details of the men’s arrest and trial from KOYLI headquarters,” MacFarlane said.

  “Huh! What that won’t tell you is that they were innocent. Betrayed. In fact, ‘fitted up,’ to use Abe’s words. Some arsehole—also Abe’s vocabulary—had gone to the bother of nicking some trinkets, shiny stuff from a shop worth about tuppence ha’penny, and putting it away in the men’s lockers in barracks. Only the six in Abe’s old platoon. And whoever it was had informed the police section of the army. Anonymously? Or had a deal been done? Abe has always thought the latter. But Captain Dunne accepted responsibility for the whole shebang and answered up for them in court. There was quite a hoo-ha, and with some big guns on his side, Dunne got off with his life and his men with him. They were all out in a year.”

  “And you’re thinking . . . ?”

  “He saved his men from an unjust and terrible fate. A man like that would never throttle another s
oldier under his command. Not even a rogue like Abe, who certainly had it coming.”

  MacFarlane stirred uneasily in his chair. Her reasoning was faulty and showed how little she understood of the fighting man, but he was beginning to warm to Edith. Time to put her on ice and follow up some other leads he’d noted down. He told her she was being released into the care of the Regency Hotel for the next two days, and then, if all was well, she might make arrangements to transport the corpse home. After she’d finished explaining exactly who Philip Drew was and how he came to be caddying for her at Woodleigh Spa.

  The moment she had left, MacFarlane reached for his telephone.

  “Put me through to Scotland Yard, please, extension two-oh-seven? Jimmy! Mackie here. Could you check something for me in records? 1919, first week of April. A man died falling from the top deck of a number fifty-two bus. All I have is the initial news report, which is a bit thin. I can hold the line . . . Any witness statements? Could you read out the relevant bits? Relevant to my suspicious mind. Aha! ‘The victim was observed to be in an altercation—even struggling as physical contact was actually made—with another man . . . Tall, slim, raincoat, fedora pulled over face . . .’ No one ever arrested. Jimmy, mate, I owe you one! Would the murderer’s identity repay the favour?”

  Poor old Edith! MacFarlane wondered what vocabulary Abe would have called on to express duplicity and underhanded misrepresentation. A direct Hey, old girl, I’ve just had a spiffing offer! All I have to do is kill a man and get away with it and a hundred pounds will be my reward. What do you say? Beginnings of a tidy little business?” Nothing doing! But if the dirty deed had been done “accidentally” and the old girl had had a chance to riffle her fingers through those irresistible crisp napkin-sized fivers . . . MacFarlane decided the word he was looking for was unprintable, but “con trick” and “quackery” came fairly close. And, if Edith could be taken in by her own husband, how much more likely was it that she was wrong about Dickie Dunne, whom she’d never even met?