The 12.30 from Croydon (12 page)

And this man, Charles thought, good, conscientious worker as he was, was going to be turned away and have his burden increased by unemployment. He would have to give up his house, and what would happen to his children? And this was one isolated case. Doubtless there were scores more to whom the loss of the job would mean utter ruin.

And all this misery threatened because he, Charles, had not the backbone to take a remedy which he feared and hated. Well, if he didn’t, he himself would be in the same boat as these men.
He
would be unemployed.
He
would be without home or means.
He
would lose his prospective wife. Could he face it?

From that moment the die was cast. Though he would not admit to himself what he proposed to do, in his secret heart he knew. It was one useless life against a number of valuable ones. Andrew Crowther must die.

Deliberately closing his mind to the awfulness of his act, Charles returned to his office and set to work on the preliminaries of his plan. Precautions were necessary, very detailed and carefully thought out precautions, if that absolute safety he required were to be achieved. He would take things slowly so as not to risk making a mistake.

All the remainder of the morning he sat at his desk developing his plans, and by lunch time he had a pretty clear idea of what he was going to do. The first part of his scheme was threefold: he had to create outside confidence in his financial stability; he had to convey the impression that he was personally overworked and not very well, so that he could go away for a holiday; and he had by hook or by crook to raise some ready money to carry him through till the event took place.

As it happened, nothing could more powerfully have helped his first object, the creation of confidence, than the two steps he had already taken. There was first the statement he had made to Witheroe when lodging Andrew’s cheque for £1,000: that he had come to an arrangement with his uncle whereby he hoped to weather the storm and that the thousand was only an earnest of what was still to come. Secondly, his prompt payment on the previous day of all the small accounts sent by the local firms would undoubtedly make a strong impression. He did not doubt that the rumour of his insolvency was already in a fair way to being scotched.

That this was indeed so he felt assured when he reached the club and noticed the subtle difference in the manner of his fellow lunchers. Yesterday there had been constraint in the atmosphere. Unobtrusively he had been avoided. Members had somehow failed to meet his eye. To-day all that was changed. Indeed a sort of forced cordiality seemed to suggest an apology for having harboured evil and unjustifiable thoughts. His words were listened to with attention and his opinion appealed to with deference.

This was a good beginning, but Charles did not let it stand there. After lunch he made it his business to have a word with both Witheroe and Bostock. To both he referred vaguely to the help which his uncle was giving him, adding to Bostock that he therefore no longer required the loan about which he had been speaking. To both he said that he was immediately ordering his new machines.

This had a further reassuring effect, and when Charles returned to the works he felt that this part of his edifice had been well and truly laid. He had now only to carry on as if unlimited money was behind him, and all would be well.

At the same time he had to simulate weariness and worry. Indeed, in this he had not to do much simulation. He really was tired and worried, and he had only to allow his genuine feelings to come to the surface. But he was careful not to overdo the symptoms.

During the afternoon he called Sandy Macpherson into the office and delighted him by there and then deciding to issue orders for the three new machines. They had always dealt with a Sheffield firm, and Macpherson wanted to place the order as hitherto. But Charles wished for an excuse to visit Town. He therefore pointed out that a Reading firm made similar machinery, and said that before coming to a decision he would see what they had to offer. If their machines seemed better than those of the Sheffield company, Macpherson could join him at Reading and they would then come to a decision.

To both Macpherson and Gairns Charles said that all reductions of staff would be postponed. To both he contrived to suggest, without actually putting it into words, that these changes of policy were due to his uncle’s action. To both also he hinted that the last few weeks had been a strain, and that now that his anxiety was over he would take a short holiday.

The third preliminary was the raising of more cash, and here Charles saw his way clearly. During his later years his father had developed a taste for art, and, being comfortably off, he had gratified it by buying some pictures. They were not Old Masters, but they were good of their kind and had cost a couple of hundred or more apiece. There were fourteen in all, and Charles estimated that they were worth about three thousand pounds. He now proposed to pawn them and he thought he should get at least fifteen hundred for them.

He had, of course, during the past few weeks frequently considered selling these pictures, but it happened that Una admired them and would have at once noticed their disappearance. She would have demanded an explanation and then the fat would have been in the fire. Pawning them, however, was a different matter. She need never know they had been removed. He would be able to redeem them before having her to the house, particularly as he was going on a holiday.

Next morning was Sunday, which Charles spent in his usual way at tennis, but on Monday he carried out the first item of his programme: a journey to Town. Before starting he got Rollins to pack the fourteen pictures in his car, on the ground that he was taking them to be cleaned. He also had lunch put up, saying that this would enable him to have it when he liked, instead of having to fit in a call at some hotel. While Rollins was engaged elsewhere he secretly slipped into the car his portable typewriter, with two ribbons, its own purple and a spare black. To these he added a kitbag containing a lounge suit with black coat and waistcoat and grey striped trousers – what he called ‘Town business clothes’ – a pair of black shoes and a hairbrush. Then, having given notice at the works that he would be away for a couple of days, he set off.

He had worked out an intensive programme by which he hoped to get all that he wanted done in the short time available, and had looked up the necessary firms and addresses in the directory at the club. Besides the visit to Reading, which was the ostensible reason for the trip, and the pawning of the pictures, which he wished to keep private, though not necessarily secret, he had a number of other errands. With these latter he must not under any circumstances become connected. None of them must ever be traced home to him.

From this point of view he had given the question of a disguise a good deal of thought. A proper make-up he would not attempt. He realized that a poor disguise was more dangerous than no disguise at all. But he intended at least to dress in clothes unlike his ordinary wear, put on horn-rimmed spectacles, and do his hair in a different fashion.

It was another delightful day, though there was a slight haze from the heat. The fine spell had brought out the holiday-makers, and all England seemed to be on wheels. Charles drove fast, as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself. If he could get into Town early enough he might carry through the picture negotiations that afternoon.

He was surprised to find that in spite of the terrible decision he had taken, he was feeling light-hearted and in good form. The mere fact indeed that he had come to a decision was a relief. The misery of uncertainty was gone. And if his scheme was dangerous; well, the very risk added to the thrill.

He did the run of about two hundred miles in well under six hours, arriving in London between three and four in the afternoon. He had selected the name of Jamieson & Truelove from the formidable list of pawnbrokers in the directory because they advertised themselves as dealers in objects of art. Now he stopped in a nearby park and walked round to their premises in Arundel Street.

A statement of his business brought him at once to Mr Truelove’s private office. Mr Truelove was an elderly gentleman with a Jewish cast of countenance and an oily manner. He begged Charles to be seated, and, rubbing his hands, inquired what he could have the pleasure of doing for him.

Charles told him. He wished to raise some money on pictures. If that was in Mr Truelove’s line, Mr Truelove might care to see what he had brought; if not, perhaps he could direct him where to apply.

It appeared that the advancing of money on pictures was Mr Truelove’s heart’s joy, and it would delight him to examine Mr Swinburn’s property. Charles thereupon superintended the removal of the pictures to Mr Truelove’s room. Truelove looked at them with an air of polite disparagement, and asked how long Charles proposed to leave them. Charles did not exactly know, but suggested six months.

‘We can certainly allow you something on them, Mr Swinburn,’ Truelove said at last. ‘They are not valuable, as you no doubt know, but we can allow something.’

‘Values are relative, as you no doubt know,’ Charles returned dryly. ‘What amount will you allow?’

Truelove spread out deprecating hands. Much he regretted that he was not himself a connoisseur. The pictures would have to be valued by his expert. Could Mr Swinburn come back?

Charles could come back on the following afternoon.

That, Mr Truelove explained, would do admirably. He would have a proposal to lay before, he hoped he might say, his client, and in the meantime here was a receipt for the pictures. And might he add that all their business was conducted with the utmost possible discretion?

So far as it went, this all seemed satisfactory to Charles. The offices looked large and prosperous, and he thought he would probably do as well there as anywhere else.

Charles’s next business was secret, and systematically he took all the precautions he had thought out to prevent his proceedings being traced. Returning to his car, he took from it the kitbag. He left the car parked where it was, and going to Aldwych Tube Station took the train to Holborn. There he alighted and walked westwards till in one of the streets off New Oxford Street he came to a second-hand clothes shop. It was a superior sort of place, which would exactly suit his purpose.

There he bought a good though worn suit of inconspicuous brown, which he rolled up and stowed in the kitbag. In the next block there was a hat shop, and he bought there a grey Homburg hat. A third shop supplied a tie of unostentatious pattern.

His fourth purchase he dared not make while dressed in his ordinary clothes. Slipping therefore into a street lavatory, he changed his suit, tie, shoes and hat. At the same time he brushed up his moustache, eyebrows and hair into unwonted styles. Glancing at himself in a mirror as he came out, he was delighted to find his appearance was really considerably altered.

With a good deal more self-confidence he entered a theatrical supplies shop in Shaftesbury Avenue and bought a pair of plain glass horn-rimmed spectacles ‘for a part he was doing at a children’s show’. With these on he felt his disguise was good enough. He was ready for the first definite act of his dreadful drama.

In Charing Cross Road he drifted into a second-hand bookshop devoted to scientific works and began an outwardly desultory examination of the shelves.

He wanted a book, but his difficulty was that he didn’t know exactly what book he wanted. It was a book about poisons, and it must tell not only the effects of various poisons, but the amounts required to ensure death. Also it must indicate how or where the substances in question were to be obtained. In taking his degree of Bachelor of Science Charles had worked through a fairly advanced course in chemistry. He had not, however, specialized in poisons, though, of course, he knew something about them. He felt sure that some book would give the required information, if he could only light on it.

In a leisurely way he ran his eye along the shelves. The books were classified by subject, and he was able to drift quickly past astronomical and botanical works, treatises on chemistry and daltonism, electricity, and ferro-concrete construction. He was hurrying on to the ‘P’s’, but in passing the ‘M’s’ he halted suddenly.

Medical jurisprudence! Was that not what he wanted?

He was only vaguely conscious of what medical jurisprudence really encompassed, and with some hesitation he began to take down and glance through one bulky volume after another. Yes, it looked as if he were on the right track. These were books about the evidence which doctors might give in cases of crime. They gave the signs for which doctors should look: the post-mortem appearance of bodies murdered in various ways, the causes which produced various results…

Charles fingered book after book, hastening though with slow outward movements, so as not to attract the attention of the assistants. The assistants, however, were busy, and as a number of other persons were standing at the shelves looking through the books just as Charles was, he was not disturbed.

Suddenly he experienced a little thrill of satisfaction. Surely this was what he required! In the second volume of Taylor’s
Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence
there was a huge section headed
Poisoning and Toxicology,
with sub-sections on
Dangerous Drugs, The Action of Poisons
and
Diagnosis of Poisoning.

Charles picked out the two large volumes. They were second-hand, and he thought them cheap at thirty shillings. Wrapped in paper, he took them out under his arm. The purchase had attracted no attention from the rather bored and overworked assistant who had attended to him, and Charles was certain that it could never be brought home to him.

Twice Charles repeated his manœuvre. In two other bookshops he made purchases with similar precautions. First he bought
The Extra Pharmacopoeia,
by Martindale and Westcott, which he remembered from the days of his science course as the dispensing chemists’ Bible, Secondly, he picked up a good elementary book on sleight-of-hand.