A Dangerous Deceit (24 page)

Now they were gathered in Waterhouse's office, where there was enough room for the four of them: Sir Julian Scroope, Reardon, Gilmour, and Waterhouse himself, who had chosen to keep a silent watch over his domain from the background.

‘You told us you didn't know Wim Mauritz, Sir Julian.'

‘Well, yes. I do rather think that's what I may have led you to believe.'

Reardon waited.

‘What it is, I seem to have got myself into a bit of a fix through him,' Scroope drawled, shrugging his shoulders and not quite looking at any of the police officers from under his hooded lids, though if he was overwhelmed by such a police presence, that was the only way he was showing it. ‘He was an embarrassment to me, don't you see? To be more accurate, he took me to the cleaners, as they say. Scarcely something one wants to make public knowledge, hmm?'

‘Do I understand you are making a confession?'

‘If you put it that way, I suppose I am.' Prepared for this, he answered with a consciously rueful smile. ‘But by God no, I didn't kill him, if that's what you're thinking. The bastard – if you'll excuse me – was dead and buried, then found, long before I ever knew the extent of just what he'd done to me. Mind if I smoke?'

Reardon glanced at Waterhouse – it was his office – and received a nod. ‘If it's going to help you tell us the truth, go ahead.'

Julian spent some time extracting a cigarette from a monogrammed silver cigarette case, lighting it and then offering the case in a general direction. Everyone else declined. ‘As a matter of fact, I find it rather a ludicrous notion,' he observed lazily, ‘that I should be thought capable of killing
anyone
, much less someone of that size.'

Reardon inspected the man sitting in front of him, a slight man in well-tailored country tweeds, a soft Tattersall checked shirt, knitted silk tie. The no-doubt hand-made shoes shone with a deep, ox-blood polish. His cuff links were black, square-cut onyx and his hands were narrow and shapely, though disfigured by the nicotine stains and bitten nails. He was inclined to agree with Scroope's estimation of himself: he did not look like anyone who could overpower and kill a muscular man of more than six feet, much less dig a grave for him in half-frozen ground. Always supposing, Reardon thought, allowing himself a passing touch of humour, that he would even have known where spades were located at Maxstead Court. On the face of it, Sir Julian Scroope, baronet, wasn't a likely killer … but Reardon had known more unlikely ones, and above the brilliantine scent of his slicked-back yellow hair, he could also smell the scent of fear.

‘It would help if you were to start at the beginning and tell us what you know about all this, Sir Julian. First, how did you meet Mauritz?'

‘Well, actually, it was at Maxstead.' Fortified by the cigarette, he sat back, crossing his extended legs at the ankle.

‘Maxstead
Court,
I suppose you mean? The house? What was he doing there?'

‘He had come to see my mother.'

A quick look passed between Reardon and Joe, who was sitting at the end of the desk, his notebook open, pencil at the ready; Lady Maude, too, had denied ever having met Mauritz. ‘When was this?'

‘Oh, some months ago,' he answered vaguely, and then suddenly became more communicative. The fellow had come uninvited, he said, and in fact had been rather forcibly escorted from the house by himself, at his mother's request. Once outside, they had exchanged heated words, Sir Julian warning him to keep away from Maxstead. But far from leaving, Mauritz, undeterred, had suggested they try to talk more sensibly and resolve the situation. They could do so more comfortably if they went to sit in his car …

For some reason Sir Julian had agreed to do what Mauritz asked, and after a while the conversation had indeed taken a more amicable turn. In fact, one thing leading to another, it had ended up with Mauritz putting a proposition before Sir Julian, offering to put him in the way of some insider information regarding the flotation of shares in a newly formed South African copper-mining syndicate. ‘About which, he assured me,' he finished bitterly, ‘there was no risk involved, otherwise, well …'

‘Otherwise you would not have agreed,' Reardon finished drily.

‘I would have thought twice, certainly.' They had met two or three times after that, he went on, when the Julian Scroopes were down at Maxstead, and negotiations for buying shares in the company, though proceeding slowly, were, Mauritz had assured him, going well.

‘How did you contact him? Presumably you had his address?'

‘No. He telephoned me to arrange our meetings. In a pub called the Fighting Cocks, on the other side of Arms Green.'

Reardon knew it – noisy, anonymous, crowded, not a place where strangers would be remarked upon. ‘When was the last time?'

‘Early December. He said he would report back to me after the Christmas holiday as to how things were going, give me some indication of when I might expect some return. He'd promised he would take care of everything, and I have to say he impressed me enough to trust him implicitly. I'd told him how many shares to buy and handed him a cheque and – I'm afraid that was that.' The urbane mask slipped, his face suddenly twisted with held-in fury. It crossed Reardon's mind that he wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of Scroope's temper.

‘You heard nothing more from him?'

‘Nothing. Nor had I any idea how to get in contact with him. He simply disappeared – until he turned up dead. By that time I was worried sick about what was to happen to my investment. I'd actually engaged a private investigator to see what he could find out, but he didn't hold out much hope. Rightly so as it turns out,' he added bitterly. ‘Just a few days ago, I learned there was no company, no mine, nothing, that every brass farthing of my money was gone. To be frank, the whole bloody thing had been cooked up in that damned rogue and swindler's imagination. And now he's dead and my money's gone with him.'

There was a comprehensive silence when he had finished, his cigarette long since burned to ash. He lit another, with hands that were no longer quite so steady.

You had to wonder how anyone, given his advantages of birth and education, could be so incredibly gullible, stupid and – yes, selfish, in believing all that, in not taking into account the possible consequences to his wife and family. Though as far as Reardon knew, none of those things were confined to people of one class. Greed, pure and simple, had made fools of more than he.

‘Did he ever mention his wife?'

‘His
wife?
Mauritz? No, never.' Scroope's eyebrows rose disbelievingly. ‘Somehow, it's difficult to imagine him as being married. Why?' A ray of hope suddenly lit his face. ‘You think there could be any chance—?'

‘No. I should imagine she's back in South Africa by now.'

‘God, yes, I suppose she must be.' He looked bleaker than ever.

‘Let's go back to when you first met him. You omitted to mention why it was necessary for you to “escort” him from the house, as you said you did?'

‘Ah, well.' He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘To be frank, he was threatening my mother.'

‘Threatening? Really? How?'

‘Perhaps that's a bit strong, but he wouldn't take no for an answer when she …'

‘Go on.'

He took time to think before answering. At last he said, ‘He seemed to have believed … The fact is, he seemed to think she knew about something or other that had happened when she was in South Africa, though she told him plainly enough she didn't know what he was talking about. She could hardly be expected to remember everything that had happened twenty-five years and more ago after all. He as good as told her she was a liar. At any rate, that was what he implied.'

‘What sort of event, or happening, are we talking about?'

‘I really haven't the faintest idea. I only came into the room halfway through the conversation. He had this old photograph with him of a group of people, out in the country somewhere. He was pointing to some young woman that he said was my mother, but she denied it absolutely. I could see he was upsetting her. She became very agitated, and asked him to leave. When he still persisted, that was when I told the blighter to get out, and helped him on his way.'

‘And you still want us to believe that although you were so angry with him and turned him out of the house, you got into his car with him and let him persuade you into parting with your money in some shady deal?'

‘To begin with, it didn't sound shady. I have an expensive wife, many commitments. A house like Maxstead Court is a millstone … it seemed worth the risk. It was only when his body turned up that I knew I'd been duped.'

‘Yet you didn't think to come forward and tell us who he was.'

He shrugged. ‘You don't believe me.' He ground out his second cigarette.

‘Oh, I believe you, as far as it goes. Trouble is, it doesn't go far enough. Why, I ask myself, should this man whom your mother had dismissed and you had personally seen off the premises, suddenly offer you this seemingly golden opportunity? I'm intrigued.'

A faint line of sweat appeared on the baronet's forehead. Out of habit he fished for his cigarette case but this time didn't open it. His self-confidence was deserting him, the superciliousness had been wiped from his face to be replaced by another expression Reardon couldn't at first identify, until he recognized it as just the sort of look his new mongrel puppy had given him when she'd chewed his library book. Hangdog, they called it, appropriately enough. Shame.

‘This is where it gets difficult.'

‘Take your time.'

‘He said quite openly to me that he didn't believe my mother when she said she didn't recognize herself or anyone else in the picture. To be absolutely honest, I wasn't so sure either – the lady doth protest too much and all that – but that was my mother's business, if she chose not to speak of it.' He paused, then went on, speaking very rapidly. ‘Fact is, he said he could put me in the way of making a bit of money if I could find out from her what the truth was.'

Joe's pencil snapped. The tiny sound was like a pistol shot. Reardon said, deliberately expressionless, ‘And did you manage to do that?'

‘You don't know my mother.'

‘What about Mauritz? Did he give you no more to go on?'

‘I rather think he was fumbling about in the dark himself. When she had asked him who had given him the photo, why he had come to her, he clammed up and wouldn't say.' He looked anywhere but at the other men in the room. ‘But after he and I had talked, well, he said he would live in hope and that if I could get some information for him, he would keep his promises regarding the mine.'

‘He bribed you to get information from your mother.'

‘That's a nasty way of putting it. But in fact she wouldn't say a thing.'

Reardon's opinion of Lady Maude rose. ‘Presumably that wasn't the end of it. What happened next?'

‘Oh, well, later I remembered that when Symon – my brother – got engaged to Margaret Rees-Talbot, it had turned out that her father and my mother had actually met before, in South Africa during the war.'

‘You told Mauritz that?'

‘I did actually. Nothing wrong with that, was there?' He was beginning to bluster. ‘Margaret's father might have been able to help where my mother wasn't able to.'

Reardon bent his head and jotted a note on his pad. ‘Well, Sir Julian,' he said at last, ‘it's a sorry story. I hope you may sort your affairs out before long.'

He half rose from his chair. ‘I can go now?'

‘We'll need your signed statement first – and I fancy Sergeant Gilmour has something he wants to ask.'

Joe sprang to life. ‘What sort of car was Mauritz driving?'

‘Black four-door Morris Oxford, newish,' he replied with an alacrity that revealed an intimate acquaintance with anything on four wheels. ‘Low priced, but not bad, considering.'

Considering its comparison to the price of the yellow Alvis in which he'd arrived at the station, no doubt. No wonder the baronet was short of funds. No wonder he'd allowed himself to be taken in by promises that no one with any sense would have believed for a second.

‘That's it, that's Aston's,' Joe said, and Reardon turned to Scroope, asking him if he knew who Aston was.

‘Aston? Never heard of the feller, who is he?'

‘Arthur Aston, owner of a small light engineering works in Arms Green.'

‘Should that mean anything to me?'

‘I don't know, sir, I thought perhaps you could tell us. He had certain connections with Wim Mauritz.'

The baronet sat up. ‘He was one of Mauritz's associates? Does that mean there's still a chance of getting my money back?'

‘I'm afraid not. Arthur Aston is dead. He was murdered, too.'

Lady Maude sat at the piano, playing desultorily, just something to occupy herself with while she waited for Inspector Reardon to arrive. She was not doing it well, but then she had never had the right touch. She hit the notes correctly, as would anyone who had conscientiously practised her scales in childhood in order to attain a social accomplishment, but she knew Sir Lancelot had been right when he had teased her as having no true ear for music. Besides, Piers had been the musical one of the family, and the piano, alas long unplayed, needed tuning.

It didn't help that her fingers were cold in this little-used, unheated drawing room which overlooked the garden, where the fire was seldom lit nowadays through reasons of economy, not even today when the skies were again sunless and overcast. She had chosen to receive the inspector, not in the family snug but here in the blue and white drawing room, resplendent with gilt and mirrors, blue brocade upholstery, silk-panelled walls and the heirloom Aubusson carpet. It would not have been her first choice for the forthcoming interview but the maids were busy turning out more appropriate rooms elsewhere and in any case she had an odd fancy that this formality might help to keep the emotion out of what she had to say. Unaccustomed to dealing with such feelings, she had no intention of letting them get out of hand.