Common Murder (17 page)

“Can I help you?” she inquired.

“I'm due to see Mr. Mallard,” Lindsay explained. “My name's Lindsay Gordon.”

“Oh yes, he's expecting you. Do come through.” The woman raised a flap in the counter and showed Lindsay through into Mallard's own office. He got up as Lindsay was ushered in and genially indicated a chair. Mallard was a short, chubby man in his fifties, almost completely bald. He wore large, gold-rimmed spectacles and tufts of gray hair stuck out above his ears, making him look like a rather cherubic owl. He smiled winningly at Lindsay. “Now, young lady,” he said cheerfully, “you're a reporter, I think you said?”

“That's right. But I'm not just looking for stories. I believe Carlton Stanhope rang to pass on Superintendent Rigano's request?”

“He did indeed.” He smiled. “Always delighted to help an attractive, young lady like yourself. Mr. Stanhope tells me you've been able to give the police some assistance concerning dear Rupert's death? A dreadful tragedy, quite, quite dreadful.”

Lindsay decided she did not care for this bouncing chauvinist piglet. But his seeming garrulity might be something she could turn to her advantage. She smiled at him. “Absolutely. I have been able to come up with some quite useful information so far. And of course, not all of it is passed directly to the police. I mean, a lot emerges in these affairs that has no bearing on the main issue. It would be a pity to cloud matters with irrelevant information, wouldn't it? So if people are open with me, I can often get to the bottom of things that would otherwise cause a lot of wasted police time. If you see what I mean?” She let the question hang in the air.

“So you want to find out how well I knew Rupert, who his friends were, if he made enemies through RABD, that sort of thing? That's what Mr. Stanhope said,” Mallard replied hastily.

“Not exactly,” Lindsay replied. “Though I would like to look through the RABD records. I think Mr. Stanhope arranged that with you?”

Mallard nodded vigorously. “They're all upstairs in a little office I put at the disposal of the organization. You can take as long as you want, you'll have the place to yourself. We've got nothing to hide, you know, though obviously we don't want our future plans made public. That would put an end to our strategies against those . . . those harpies down there,” he said, his geniality slipping as he referred to the peace women.

“I rather thought there were one or two matters you'd prefer to keep to yourself, Mr. Mallard,” Lindsay remarked idly.

“No, no, we're not at all secretive. We're perfectly open, no conspiracies here.”

An odd thing to say, Lindsay thought. “No conspiracies, perhaps, but one or two disagreements.”

“Disagreements?” He looked apprehensive.

“Paul Warminster?”

“Oh, that,” he muttered, looking uncomfortable. “Yes, that was a little unfortunate. But then, it only supports what I was saying to you about being open. We're not extremists in RABD, just people concerned about our local community and the environment our families live in. We don't want to be involved in anything at all violent. That's what Paul Warminster felt we should be doing. He wanted us to be some kind of vigilante band, driving these awful women away by force. We
were glad Rupert had the strength to stand up to him. That sort of woman isn't going to go away because you throw them out physically. If we'd gone ahead and taken violent action, the next day there would have been twice as many of them. No, Rupert was right.”

“And do you think Paul Warminster resented what he did?”

“No question about that, young lady. He was furious.”

“Furious enough for murder?”

Mallard's smile this time was sickly. “I'm sure nobody in our circle, not even someone with Paul Warminster's views, would resort to murder.” He made it sound like a social solecism.

“But someone in Rupert Crabtree's circle did just that.”

Mallard shook his head. “No. Those women are to blame. It certainly wasn't Paul Warminster. He had nothing to gain. Even with Rupert out of the way, he'll never win control of RABD and its membership. He must know that. He's not a fool.”

“I'm happy to take your word for it,” Lindsay flattered. “Now, if I might see those papers?” She got to her feet.

“Of course, of course,” he said, rising and bustling her out of the room. They climbed two flights of stairs, Mallard chatting continuously about the property market and the deplorable effect the peace camp was having on house prices in the neighborhood of the common.

“But houses at Brownlow seem about the same price as similar houses near by,” Lindsay commented.

“Oh yes, but they used to be the most highly sought-after in the area, and the most expensive. Now it takes a lot of persuasion to shift them. Well, here we are.”

They entered a small office containing a battered desk, several upright chairs, and a filing cabinet. “Here you are, m'dear,” Mallard waved vaguely around him. He unlocked the filing cabinet. “Chairman's files and my files in the top drawers. Minutes in the second. Correspondence in the third and stationery in the bottom drawer. Look at anything you please, we've no guilty secrets.”

“Will you be in your office for a while? I might come across some things I want to clarify.”

“Of course, of course. I shall be there till half past twelve. I'm sure you'll be finished by then. I'm at your disposal.” He twinkled another seemingly sincere smile at her and vanished downstairs.

Lindsay sighed deeply and extracted two bulging manila folders from the top drawer of the filing cabinet. They were both labeled “Ratepayers Against Brownlow's Destruction. Chairman's File.” In red pen, the same hand had written “1” and “2” on them. She sat down at the desk and opened her briefcase. She took out a large notepad, pen, and her Walkman. She slotted in a Django Reinhardt tape and started to plow through the papers.

The first file yielded nothing that Lindsay could see. She stuffed the papers back into it and opened the second file. As she pulled the documents out, a cassette tape clattered on to the desk. Curious, she picked it up. The handwritten label, not in Crabtree's by now familiar script, said, “Sting:
The Dream of The Blue Turtles.”
Surprised, Lindsay put it to one side and carried on working. When her own tape reached the end, she decided to have a change and inserted the Sting tape. But instead of the familiar opening chords she heard an alien sequence of hisses, bleeps, and sounds like radio interference. Lindsay knew very little about information technology. But she knew enough to realize that although this tape was mislabeled, it was actually a computer program on tape. And fed into the right computer, it might explain precisely what it was doing in Rupert Crabtree's RABD file. She remembered the computers she had seen downstairs and wondered if that was where Mallard stored the real information about RABD's finances.

She worked her way quickly through the financial records, making a few notes as she went. It seemed to be in order, though the book-keeping system seemed unnecessarily complex. Finally she skimmed through the minutes and correspondence. “Waste of bloody time,” she muttered to herself as she neatly replaced everything. The cassette tape caught her eye, and she wondered again if it might hold the key to the questions Crabtree had been asking about money. She threw the computer tape into her briefcase along with her own bits and pieces and headed downstairs for the confrontation she'd been geared up to since breakfast. As she rounded the corner of the stairs, she noticed a man coming out of Mallard's office. From above, she could see little except the top of his head of graying, gingery hair and the shoulders of his tweed jacket. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, he had gone.

Mallard's office door was ajar and she stuck her head round. “Can I come in?” she asked.

“Of course, of course, m'dear,” he answered her, beaming. “I expect you've had a very boring morning with our papers.”

“It has been hard work,” Lindsay admitted. “I'm surprised you haven't got the lot on computer, with Simon Crabtree being in that line of business.”

Mallard nodded. “Couldn't agree more, m'dear. But Rupert wouldn't hear of it. Lawyers, you see. Very conservative in their methods. Not like us. Our front office may look very traditional. But all the work gets done in the big office at the back—where our computers are. The latest thing—IBM-compatible hard-disk drives. I actually bought them on Simon's advice. But Rupert didn't trust them. He said you could lose all your work at the touch of a button and he felt happier with bits of paper that didn't vanish into thin air. Typical lawyer—wanted everything in black and white.”

“There was one other thing I wanted to ask you about.”

“Ask away, m'dear, ask away.”

“Why was Rupert Crabtree going to raise your handling of RABD funds at the next meeting?”

Mallard flushed, but managed to freeze his smile in place as he replied, “Was he?”

“You know he was. The two of you had a row about it, and he said the association should decide.”

“I don't know where you've got your information from, young lady, but I can assure you nothing of the sort took place.” Mallard attempted to stand on his dignity. “We had a very harmonious relationship.”

“Not according to my sources. Two separate people have told me the whole story, and I believe the police are aware of it. I already have enough to write a story. It's obviously doing the rounds locally. Hadn't you better put the record straight, give me your version of events before your reputation gets shredded beyond repair?”

He dropped the geniality and looked shrewdly at Lindsay. “Young lady, even if
you
seem blissfully unaware, I'm sure your newspaper has lawyers who understand all about libel. If you are thinking of printing any sort of story about me, you had better be extremely careful.”

“We don't have to print a story about you for your reputation to be destroyed. Local gossip will see to that. All I have to write is that police are investigating alleged misappropriation of funds by one of the
officials of a local organization in connection with Rupert Crabtree's death,” Lindsay replied.

Mallard paused, sizing her up. Then, after a long enough pause to render himself unconvincing, he smiled again and said, “Really, there's no need for all of this. I've told you that we've got nothing to hide in RABD. That goes for me personally too. Now, you've obviously heard some grossly distorted version of a conversation between Rupert and me. There's no reason on earth why I should attempt to explain to you, but because I'm concerned there should be no misunderstanding, I'll tell you all about it.

“We hold a substantial amount of money on behalf of our members. Most of it is for legal expenses and printing costs. As treasurer, I'm responsible for the money, and I know how important it is these days to make money work. Obviously, the more money we have, the better able we are to fight the good fight. Now, Rupert was checking something on the bank statements and he realized there was far less in the account than he thought there should be. He was always prone to jump to conclusions, so he came round here in a great taking-on, demanding to know where the money was. I explained that I had moved it into the currency markets, an area I know rather a lot about. I was simply maximizing our returns. Rupert was perfectly satisfied with my explanation. And so he should have been since I had succeeded in making a substantial profit.”

“Then why was he raising the matter at the next meeting?”

“Why? So that I could pass on the good news to the membership, of course. Rupert felt it was a matter for congratulation, m'dear.”

His glibness lowered his credibility still further in Lindsay's eyes. She was determined to get him on the run, and she racked her brains to find some leverage in what Stanhope or Alexandra had said. “But how did you move the money without Crabtree's knowledge? Surely that needed his signature?”

A momentary gleam of hatred flashed at Lindsay. “Of course, of course, my dear girl. But Rupert had actually signed it among a pile of other papers for his signature and had simply not registered what it was. Easy to do that when you're signing several bits of paper.”

“I wouldn't have thought that was the action of a conscientious lawyer. But you seem to have an answer for everything, Mr. Mallard.”

His smile was genuine this time. “That's because I have nothing to hide, m'dear. Now, if that is all, I do have work to do . . .”

“One more thing. Since you've nothing to hide, perhaps you could tell me where you were on Sunday night from about ten?”

This time, Mallard couldn't keep the smile in place. “That's none of your business,” he snapped.

“You're right. But I expect you've told the police already? No? Oh well, I'm sure they'll be round soon to ask. Superintendent Rigano's very interested in who I've been talking to . . .”

Lindsay felt she was doing battle. Mallard gave in. “I was at home all evening.”

“Which is where, exactly?”

He shifted in his seat. “Brownlow Common Cottages. Four doors away from the Crabtrees actually.”