Situation Tragedy (23 page)

He pieced it together slowly. Oh yes, it had started with that book Romney Kirkstall had had, the biography of Aurelia Howarth in which there had been a still from an aborted film called
Death Takes A Short Cut.
Then later Romney said he'd seen a copy of a book with that title in a Charing Cross Road bookshop Barton Rivers had recommended to him. So Charles had gone to the bookshop, been put in touch with Gregory Watts and . . . yes, yes, of course.

He took the brown padded package out. There was a little red plastic tag which would open the bag along a line of perforations.

He took hold of the tag and pulled it.

by
R. Q. Wilberforce

Maltravers Ratcliffe had risen and broken his fast early, so that he was already installed behind his desk, with a long black cigarette holder between his teeth, reading through his accumulated correspondence, when his wife appeared at the library door.

‘So my bonny has come back to me,' she announced with joy.

‘Over the sea to Skye,' he rejoined merrily, as he rose to greet her. ‘Except, in my case, it was over the sea and through the sky. I came on the aeroplane to Croydon. Podd brought the Bentley down to meet me at the ‘drome, and we fairly flew again as we drove back here!'

‘You should have wakened me on your arrival.'

‘No, no, Eithne my love. Even the nonpareil of beauty can reap benefit from a little beauty-sleep.'

Nor was his description fanciful: Eithne Ratcliffe was possessed of a beauty that would quicken the blood in any man's veins. Though slight, she was perfectly proportioned, and her carriage was superb. The golden hair that was her chiefest glory had been cut in the modern style, but its waves owed nothing to the artifice of coiffeurs. And her eyes! What eyes! Their hue of purest blue would have made a cornflower despondent; sapphires could offer but feeble comparison to them.

‘Was your business in Paris successfully concluded?' she enquired of her handsome spouse.

‘Successfully enough,' he conceded carelessly. ‘Although, as is ever the case, I trapped the small fry in the certain knowledge that the big fish swam away unscathed.'

‘Was it . . .?' Eithne questioned tremulously.

‘Our old enemy?' Maltravers nodded with gravity. ‘That same Teutonic devil was behind this latest outrage. Backed by an international conglomerate of Jewish bankers, he was planning to flood the gold bullion market with counterfeit ingots. Had he succeeded, he'd have crippled all the major economies of the Western world! Shares would have gone down to cat's meat prices and hundreds of perfectly decent small houses would have gone smash!'

‘But you prevented the swindle?' demanded Eithne, her wonderful eyes sparkling as she looked at her husband.

‘Oh yes, I scotched his scheme easily. It was like eating jam. Once I had worked out that someone must be manipulating prices on the Bourse, I found out who it was first pop. A little Jewish thimblerigger, who I may say won't be seeing much scenery except the inside of a prison for the next twenty years. The Sûreté were very grateful. I've been awarded one of their croix d'honneurs'.'

Charles' concentration on the words wavered, but his interest was fiercely aroused. He skimmed verbose description of Maltravers Ratcliffe's cricketing prowess and a long, somewhat precious discussion about where the couple should spend the weekend. This was resolved at the end of the first chapter . . .

With a merry laugh, Maltravers cried, ‘I've had my fill of crime for a while! Let's away to Derbyshire to play cricket. I happen to know Lord Wainscott fields a scratch team that's none so dusty. Tell Podd and Smithers to commence packing for us immediately! We'll take the Bentley and they can follow along in the Sunbeam. Oh, and tell Wallace to prepare a luncheon-basket, so that we are free to lunch where the scenery's good. Then we'll leap into the Bentley, my angel, point the bonnet towards Derbyshire, and be there in two twos!'

The second chapter assembled a house party of suspects at Wainscott Hall, in the time-honoured style of its genre. One of them, a foreign gentleman called Mr Akbar, did not endear himself to the rest of the guests . . .

The presence of this last personage was an unaccountable mystery. Neither his appearance nor his manners qualified him as a likely social acquaintance of Lord Wainscott, and yet the peer seemed ready, nay, eager, to welcome the foreigner into that proverbial castle of the Englishman, his home. Mr Akbar did not commend himself to the Ratcliffes by appearing at dinner in a silken cummerbund of the hue favoured by Romish cardinals and diamond studs of such ostentatious size that they might have looked less out of place amongst the regalia of a Babylonian Coronation! And Maltravers Ratcliffe, in front of whom the newcomer pushed as they proceeded to dinner, was not a little shocked to feel his nostrils assailed by a distinct whiff of perfume!

All that the book needed now, apart from a plan of the ground floor of Wainscott Hall (which soon appeared duly printed in the text), was a crime. After dinner Maltravers and Eithne Ratcliffe repaired to the billiard room . . .

‘You know, my love, there's something deuced rummy going on here,' mused Maltravers as he chalked his cue. ‘Deuced rummy. Something that makes my flesh creep. Do you feel it too?'

His wife answered in the affirmative.

‘It's something to do with that gigolo, Akbar. I've a feeling he's out to spoke somebody's wheel. And what's more . . . I've a feeling I've seen the bounder somewhere before.'

At that moment Maltravers Ratcliffe froze, his face suffused by a ghastly pallor, his eyes transfixed by some object on the floor.

‘Oh no, ‘he breathed. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no!'

He moved forward and picked up a monocle, whose silver setting was curiously wrought in the shape of a coiled snake. ‘See, he has left his visiting card.'

‘Are you sure?' murmured Eithne, unwilling to accept the sheer ugliness of the truth.

‘Sure, ‘her husband confirmed with unearthly calmness. ‘Yes, it's von Strutter!'

Eithne Ratcliffe gasped. Their arch-enemy! Here, at Wainscott Hall!

‘What's behind there?' Maltravers demanded, pointing to a door in front of which the monocle had lain.

‘That's where Lord Wainscott keeps his collection.'

‘Quick!'

He tried the door. It was locked, and there was no sign of a key. Fortunately he always carried a set of pick-locks, fashioned for him by the versatile Podd, and to open the door was a matter of moments.

One look inside sufficed to tell him all!

‘Don't look, my love, don't look!' he commanded Eithne as he entered the room.

The walls were hung with many splendours of the Orient, but he had eyes for none of these. All he saw was the ghastly spectacle staining the fine Turkey carpet in the middle of the room.

It was the offensive Mr Akbar, destined never more to give offence! He lay face down on the floor. Upright from the back of his coat rose the bloody blade of a Japanese samurai sword!

THE EFFECTS OF four pints of Guinness vanished. Charles's mind was working very clearly. And fast.

It was incongruous, and yet it might be true. Could the pattern to this apparently meaningless sequence of deaths lie in a series of forgotten detective stories?

There were too many coincidences for him to dismiss the idea with his customary cynicism. The old still from the never-completed film of
Death Takes A Short Cut
told him that Barton Rivers and Aurelia Howarth had once been cast as Maltravers and Eithne Ratcliffe, and the old man's bizarre dress and style of speech suggested that in some mad way he was still playing the part. It made sense of the white flannels and all the inconsequential cricketing jargon, as well as Barton's permanent air of demented gallantry.

But the greatest coincidence was in the name, von Strutter. There had to be some connection there. If somewhere in the fogs of Barton Rivers mind, he was convinced he had an arch-enemy called von Strutter, he might well seek revenge on a television series which was called
The Strutters.
It was lunatic logic, but it was the only form of logic Charles had so far been able to impose on the random accidents.

The most chilling thing he had read, though, was R. Q. Wilberforce's choice of murder weapon. The coincidence of a samurai sword in the book and in the script of the next day's
Strutters
episode seemed to offer too much temptation to Barton Rivers' insane motivation. The accident with the sword must be averted.

But Charles needed more information. All he had so far was an idea, a new theory into which some of the known facts fitted. Many more would have to fall into place before he could dignify the theory with the title of a solution.

That meant finding out a lot more about the books of R. Q. Wilberforce. He went to the payphone on the landing.

‘Hello. Gregory Watts.'

‘This is Charles Paris.'

‘Oh, good afternoon. Did you get the book all right?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘What else can I do for you?'

‘I seem to remember when we spoke, you said Wilberforce was still alive.'

‘Was last year, certainly.'

‘Look, I need to contact him very urgently. Have you got a phone number for him?'

‘No, I've got an address. Incidentally, when I wrote to him, I wrote to R. Q. Wilberforce, but his reply was very firmly signed in his real name, so perhaps you should use that.'

‘You mean R. Q. Wilberforce is a pseudonym?'

‘Certainly.' Watts laughed. ‘I can't imagine too many people are actually called R. Q. Wilberforce.'

‘It's possible.'

‘Oh yes. Mind you, his real name is pretty odd, too.'

‘Oh. What is it?'

‘Barton Rivers.' There was a long silence. ‘Are you still there, Mr Paris?'

‘Yes, I . . . yes. Good God.'

‘Shall I give you his address?'

‘Yes . . . no. I mean, no, I don't need it now.'

‘Oh, but I thought . . .'

‘No, what I do need are copies of his books. All of them. And fast.'

‘I told you, that's the only one I've got – or rather had. They're pretty rare.'

‘But they must exist somewhere. Don't you know of any libraries or. . . .'

‘I suppose they might be around in a library, but you could spend weeks looking.'

‘I've got to find them. It's really important.'

‘Hmm . . . Well, the only thing I can suggest – I don't know if any of them would have any – but there are one or two collectors who specialise in detective fiction. You could ask.'

‘Anything's worth trying.'

Gregory Watts gave him three names and phone numbers.

Stanley Harvey's cottage in Hampstead was, like his speech, precise to the point of being precious. On the telephone he had admitted with pride to being the possessor of an almost complete set of R. Q. Wilberforce, but he had been unwilling to have them inspected that evening. Charles had to use all his powers of persuasion and even resort to the phrase (for once used in a literal sense) ‘a matter of life and death', before he achieved grudging consent. ‘But I'm going out at eight,' said Stanley Harvey, ‘so you'll have to be through by then.'

And no, there was no possibility of Charles borrowing any of the books.

When he opened the front door, Stanley Harvey lived up to the impression of his voice and cottage. He was a dapper little man in his early sixties, with a white goatee beard. A tweed Norfolk jacket and a Meerschaum pipe gave a Sherlockian image, which was reinforced by prints on the walls, models and memorabilia of the great detective.

Stanley Harvey seemed unimpressed by Charles Paris. ‘This is really extremely inconvenient. I hope you meant what you said about it being important.'

‘You must believe me. It is. It's far too complicated to explain but it is important.'

Stanley Harvey sniffed. ‘I rang Gregory Watts and he confirmed that he had given you my number. Can't be too careful. The collection is pretty valuable and I can't let
just anyone
in.'

The emphasis, and the look that accompanied it, suggested he suspected Charles might be
just anyone
and still contemplated refusing admission. ‘Gregory Watts said you were an R. Q. Wilberforce collector.'

‘Hardly. I've only got one of the books.
Death Takes A Short Cut
.'

Stanley Harvey gave a superior smile. ‘Oh, I've got that, of course. I've got five of them, and there only ever were the six.'

‘First editions?' Charles felt he had to ask, only to give Stanley Harvey the satisfaction of saying a supercilious ‘Of course.'

It had been a good question, because now Stanley Harvey's desire to show off his collection was greater than his distrust of his visitor. ‘Come through,' he said curtly.

They went to the back of the cottage and through a passage to what appeared to be a modern extension. As they walked, Stanley Harvey continued to parade his knowledge. ‘Of course, the reason R. Q. Wilberforces are so rare is that so few were printed.'

‘Oh?' said Charles humbly.

‘Yes, he never really caught on as an author. He was too larky and the plotting was too slack, I believe. He had the books printed at his own expense.'

‘Really?'

‘Oh yes.' Stanley Harvey had perked up now he saw what a humble student he had to lecture. Yes, he must have been a schoolteacher, he obviously enjoyed pontificating so much. A schoolteacher who had come into money.