The African Poison Murders (21 page)

“Go ahead, doctor. We’d better have it straight.”

Dr Lawson polished his spectacles carefully before replying. “I don’t like it,” he said finally.

“But I feel it’s my duty to help. I’m afraid I rather let you down over that autopsy … Well, all right, my patient was Mrs West.”

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“How on earth,” Prettyman wondered, “did the writer of that anonymous note know about Mrs West’s sleepingdraught? That’s what I can’t make out. After all, people don’t go about advertising things like that. It must have been someone who knew her jolly well.”

Vachell sighed, and ground out his cigarette in an ashtray. He had been unresponsive to Prettyman’s speculations since Dr Lawson left. The young inspector looked at him, quizzically, thinking: wonder if he’s fallen for her too. He doesn’t seem to like the way everything’s working out. She certainly knows how to bowl ‘em over.

“Munson wasn’t killed with chloral hydrate,”

Vachell pointed out.

“No, this anonymous bloke slipped up there. He evidently knew about the chloral and jumped to the wrong conclusion that she’d used it on Munson.

But he’d got the right idea about Munson going to keep a date in that shed….”

“Do you have any letters from Mrs Innocent on your file?” Vachell asked.

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Prettyman looked surprised. “Cautious Clara?

Yes, I expect so, sir.”

“Fetch one along,” Vachell said.

Prettyman went into the other room and rummaged about among the files. He came back with a letter in his hand, and switched on the light.

“Past gin-time and still at work,” he remarked.

“They ought to give us a bonus for this. Here’s a letter about a boy who pinched the roof off old Hammond’s house while he was away, and sold it to the railway. Mrs Innocent defended him, and he got off on some legal point or other, as usual. That do?”

“Sure,” Vachell said. He pulled out his wallet and extracted a flimsy sheet of typescript. “Here’s the anonymous note. Look them over.”

Prettyman walked to the light and held the two sheets of paper close to the naked bulb. He looked from one to the other, a frown on his fair-skinned, pink face.

“Gosh, sir, they do look alike,” he exclaimed.

“It’s the same size type, bigger than a portable, and purple ribbon, and the a’s and e’s and o’s want cleaning … By God, you’re right.” He looked so astounded that Vachell grinned and said: “For my next little experiment I shall require a gold watch, a solar topee and one thousand pounds sterling in single currency bills, and will some gentleman kindly put out the light … It’s easy when you know the trick.”

Prettyman looked at his superior with a new 216

respect. “You pulled a fast one that time, sir. I’d never have thought of Clara Innocent, if she’d been the last person on earth. But how on earth did she know so much about it? And why write a note? She could have told us just as well.”

Vachell picked his hat off the table and walked to the door. “This case has long arid stretches,” he observed. “You have things in common with this anonymous guy.”

“Who me? What?”

“Conclusion-jumping again.”

“Oh,” Prettyman said, dubiously. “Well, for God’s sake let’s go home and have a drink.”

They dined in Prettyman’s bungalow, late and tired. Vachell thought with a pang of his meals at the Wests’. The food at his new host’s was poor, and badly cooked; no salads enticed him with their crispness, the vegetables were soggy and overboiled.

A young bachelor’s household was the Mecca of lazy and dishonest cooks. Whisky after a long day went a little to Prettyman’s head, and he told a long story about a girl he had met on the boat going home on his last leave, a bubble-dancer from a cabaret in Singapore.

They were still drinking coffee outside after the meal when twin beams of light suddenly flooded the short driveway and the wooden steps leading up to the veranda, and a car swung through the gate and came to a standstill in front of the house. A man got out, and a voice hailed them from the darkness. It was Edward Corcoran’s drawl, but 217

tonight it lacked the self-assurance that went with that sort of voice.

Vachell unfolded his long legs and emerged upright from the chair in the flick of a lizard’s tail.

“Anything wrong?” he called. There was anxiety in his tone.

Corcoran switched off the headlamps, and came up the steps. He had on a white shirt that showed up against the starlit darkness.

“Not exactly,” he answered. “I mean, nothing fresh.”

“Have a drink,” Prettyman invited. “Boy! Bring whisky-soda.”

“Thanks,” Corcoran said. “I hope I’m not butting in. As a matter of fact, I came to see you, Mr Vachell. That is, I wondered if I could have a word with you. It’s rather a — well, a confidential matter.”

Prettyman took the hint. “I’ll be in the diningroom if you want me, sir,” he said. “I’ve got to catch up on some reports.”

The houseboy brought the drinks and a lamp, and put them down. Corcoran was not at all at ease.

His dark face, with its clear-cut, even features, was worried, and he kept running a nervous hand over his well-shaped chin. He was handsome as an extra, Vachell thought; finely built with a perfectly proportioned head, and a dark Gable moustache.

“I’ve probably come on a hopeless errand,” he began, cupping his glass with both hands. “I don’t 218

suppose you’ll listen to me, sir, and I don’t really know why you should. But at least it’s worth a try.”

“I’ll listen anyway,” Vachell said.

Corcoran laughed; he had an attractive, infectious smile.

“I’m afraid that was badly put. Well, sir, I don’t suppose it’s any use beating about the bush. You probably know what I’ve come for, so I’ll put it to you straight out. I know it’s no good asking for them back, but would you agree to burn them, and forget about the whole thing?”

“Burn what?” Vachell inquired.

Corcoran laughed again. “I hoped you wouldn’t take that line, sir. After all, it’s no good either of us trying to pretend, is it — you that you didn’t find them in the roof (God knows how you knew where he’d put them) or me that we weren’t sick as mud when they disappeared.”

Vachell did not reply until he had lit another cigarette. Then he said:

“Why do you want them burnt?”

“We want to let the whole thing drop,” Corcoran said eagerly. “That is, my aunt does — it isn’t my pigeon at all. It was all my uncle’s idea. You know what he was like, obstinate as the devil, and when he got this idea into his head nothing would make him budge. But now that he’s dead the whole thing’s washed out, and I don’t suppose you fellows are interested in the least. I told Wendtland as much, but he’s in a hell of a stew, and won’t be satisfied till he actually sees them go up in smoke.”

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“So it’s Wendtland who wants the papers burnt.”

Corcoran looked up at Vachell over his glass.

The anxiety in his face had gone; his dark eyes were dancing with the amusement that seemed to come to him as readily as song to a bird’s throat.

“Well, if you’ve read them, sir, I should think you’d understand. That sort of stuff is a bit embarrassing for any man to see on paper, I shouldn’t like it myself; I’m glad no one has ever gone through my past with such a fine comb. But if, on top of all that, one’s boss had such very strong ideas…”

Corcoran shrugged his shoulders and drained his drink. “Well, it would cook his goose, of course.”

“And why,” Vachell inquired, “keeping this on a culinary basis, do you expect me to save his bacon?”

Corcoran grimaced, and helped himself to another shot of whisky. “You’ve hit on the weak point,” he said, with candour. “To be quite frank, I can’t think of any good reason. It’s nothing to the Chania police what happens to Wendtland, and though of course the information isn’t of any value to you, I suppose you like to put everything in a file … In fact, there’s only one bait I can think of.”

“I’m still listening” Vachell said.

Corcoran hesitated, and swished his drink around in the glass. “You probably think my position is a bit, well, peculiar,” he ventured, hesitation in his voice. “I’d rather like to explain. Technically I’m a British subject, but my mother’s German and my father’s Irish, and I was brought up largely among 220

the South African Dutch, so I haven’t got much loyalty to King and Empire running in my veins.”

“I can imagine that,” Vachell agreed.

“There’s a lot of feeling against my uncle in the district, and I get the backwash. I don’t give a damn what they think, I don’t owe anything to the British and if their bloody empire doesn’t go on paying ten per cent it’s not my funeral. They can do their own dirty work.”

“They generally do,” Vachell remarked. “What is this, a political meeting?”

“The point I’m getting at is, I’m not a Nazi. I’m not anything. The whole lousy game means nothing to me, but if the Nazis want to have their little secrets, it isn’t up to me to blab them all to the British.”

“But you might be interested in a trade.”

Corcoran looked up with a rather sheepish expression. “That’s more or less the idea,” he said.

He laughed a little uncomfortably, and finished off his second drink.

“That sounds pretty dirty, doesn’t it? The fact is, Wendtland’s a friend of mine, and if I can help him get those lousy affidavits destroyed, I will. I don’t know what you mean to do with them, but he’ll go on sweating in his boots until he gets them. You can’t be expected to hand them over without getting something in return, I realize that. All I’ve got to offer is information about the local Nazis’ organization and so on here, but I think you’d find it useful.

I’ve got pretty complete information about the set221

up, and I don’t really mind passing it on, because although I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the Nazis, I’d hate to see them taking over this country. That would mean the push for anyone who isn’t actually a German, including me.”

Vachell smoked for a few moments in silence, considering this remarkable offer. Irish logic, he thought, would justify the horns off a bull.

“What makes you think I have the papers that Wendtland wants?” he asked at last.

“Well, of course you’ve got them,” Corcoran said.

“Who else could? By God, I cursed myself for a bloody halfwit for not thinking of that space above the ceiling in my uncle’s room. How did you know they were there?”

“Clairvoyance,” Vachell answered. “You weren’t around at the time they were found.”

“No, I’d had a row with my aunt — my God, she dropped bombs all over me like a VickersWellington with a bellyache — and I went off to Karuna and got blind. When I came back she was in a tail-spin about the missing papers. As soon as she knew Uncle Karl was dead she’d collared all his papers — or so she thought — and left everything dealing with the Bund at Mrs Innocent’s office for Wendtland to pick up. She wanted to get shot of the whole Bund row. Of course she thought everything was there, but it wasn’t, so poor old Wendtland rushed over to our place in a hell of a stew. He and my aunt looked everywhere, but drew blank. He’d no sooner gone than she found the hole 222

in the ceiling and realized someone had pinched them from under her nose, more or less while she and Wendtland had been in committee about it next door. That made her wild, I can tell you. We talked it over, and realized that it must have been you. It was neat, if you’ll allow me to say so.”

“Easy when you know the trick” Vachell said modestly. “Help yourself to another. What was Mrs Munson’s position?”

“Oh, she’d been against my uncle in this from the start. He’d sweated blood to keep the organization going when it was nobody’s baby, and then when Berlin sent out Wendtland to take over and make things hum, he was as jealous as a cat. I didn’t blame him myself, but he couldn’t realize that he’d shot his bolt. Even if he’d got Wendtland thrown out, he’d never have stood a chance of getting back into the saddle. My aunt saw that, and tried to stop him. She knew Berlin would never forget his part in getting Wendtland unstuck. They might have had to act on the information, but Wendtland was one of their blue-eyed boys, and they wouldn’t have liked it one little bit.”

“How did your uncle get the dope?” Vachell asked casually.

“Through my mother, mostly. She unearthed that Jo’burg—” Corcoran put down his glass abruptly and stared at Vachell. “Look here, what are you getting at? It’s all in that letter she …

You’re not double-crossing me, are you? You can’t — no, of course not, I’m going crazy.” He rubbed 223

a hand over his face. “Well, what about it? Are you going to play?”

He got up and looked across with a question in his eyes.

“I’ll think it over,” Vachell said. “The decision isn’t in my hands.”

Corcoran tilted back his head and laughed. “I’d forgotten you were a Government man,” he said.

“I’ve never heard one of ‘em give any other answer.

Do you have to refer this back to the Secretary of State?”

“I’ll be out tomorrow. I’ll give you an answer then.”

“Okay,” Corcoran said. “I’ll have everything ready for a bonfire. You won’t regret it if you agree.”

Vachell leant against the veranda rail and watched the tail-light of the car recede out of the gate. For the time it took to smoke a cigarette he tried to roast Corcoran’s story, driving out a steam of fiction to leave a residue of fact. There was a lot of solid matter left at the end. He wondered where the papers that Wendtland was so anxious to recover were spending the night. And what Wendtland would do if he discovered that a third party had cleared the board.

Later on he got out his notebook, and thumbed over the pages by the light of the petrol lamp. A sausage-beetle came and hurled itself repeatedly against the lampshade, hitting the glass with such force that it was a mystery why either the shade or the insect didn’t break. It was a still, windless night, 224

and the moon rose late. Prettyman came out to say goodnight, but seeing that the superintendent had one of his silent fits he went off to bed without trying to start a conversation. Vachell sat on until the moon came up, deep in a chair, smoking and scribbling doodles on a loose page of his notebook, trying to get the tangled threads sorted out.