‘After that you have nothing to do with it. Leave it to Pat. She can size ’em up in ten minutes. The ones we want are married, out for a bit of fun on the side. They have their fun, but they pay for it. What’s fairer than that?’ Parker was in high good humour.
When they had gone he sat in the little office with his head on the table. The humiliation of watching them go through his files and read the letters on his desk was somehow the worst thing of all. The business he had built was dishonest, yet he took a pride in it and felt it to be something he had created. That he should have been forced to allow these crooks to use what he had done as a basis for their filthy game was hard to bear. He realised that this was what Parker had intended from the start, and that if he had agreed to pay twenty pounds a week something more would have been demanded of him. It was his list of gulls they were after, to make some quick killings. The future was foreseeable. The Parkers might bring off half a dozen coups, but at some time they would choose the wrong person and one of their marks would go to the police. They might be arrested or they might get away, but either way he would be dragged into it, and his complicity would be obvious. And of course his double life would be revealed by any serious police investigation. What sentence was likely for bigamy? In the general wreck of his fortunes that did not seem particularly important. Whichever way he looked, disaster lay ahead.
The Solution
The solution was simple enough in its essential elements, and it occurred to him almost immediately. It was that he must say goodbye to Major Easonby Mellon. What was he, after all, but a wig, a beard, some loud suits and an accompanying loud manner? If he were to disappear tomorrow who would be the wiser? The clients of Matrimonial Assistance would write letters, come to the office, and eventually no doubt report his absence to the company that ran Romany House. The company would write to him and get in touch with his bank, but he would have drawn out all except a nominal fragment of the money he had in credit. Joan might be approached, but what could she say except some tales about UGLI 3 and – a nice confirmatory touch – about the man who had come to see him? And who would suffer? Honesty compelled him to admit that Joan would be left high and dry. He felt sorry for her, but was able to console himself with the thought that she was the kind of woman who would always, somehow and somewhere, find a man. To live with men and be deceived by them was her destiny. No, the real sufferer would be – himself. If he was to go on living with Clare the emotional release afforded by Easonby Mellon was a necessity. And the suffering would not only be emotional. If Matrimonial Assistance closed down, what would Clare say when he told her that he could no longer pay the expenses of the household? He shivered at the thought of her endless wrath. The solution so simple in its essential elements was thus no solution at all.
On Thursday morning he sat brooding in the Lektreks office over a volume dealing with the James Camb case. Camb, a steward with the Union Castle had been accused of strangling a girl in her cabin and then pushing her body out of the porthole. He had no doubt relied upon the absence of a body, but he was found guilty just the same. If only, Arthur reflected, he could make Clare magically disappear so that her money came to him! But of course it was not possible. He closed the book with a sigh at the very moment that a knock sounded on the door. He opened it expecting to see the caretaker and was disconcerted to be confronted by the fine white teeth of – it took him a moment even to remember the man’s name – Elsom, the engineering executive.
‘Hallo there.’ Almost imperceptibly Elsom was in the room, which he stared at quite frankly, his gaze passing like a rake over the dusty box files, the single desk with its typewriter, the gas ring for making tea, the blueprints of the Everlasting Torch and its successor the Hammerless Screw Inserter, the notices on the walls certifying that Lektreks was incorporated as a company and that Arthur was a member of the Society of Inventors. Elsom, carefully regarded, was an objectionable-looking man. He had close-cut sandy hair and a sandy moustache, vertical nostrils which seemed distended by curiosity, almost lashless eyes and extremely large square competent-looking hands. He was the sort of man who in that quick glance round would have photographed and permanently recorded anything possibly useful to him. ‘So this is where you tuck yourself away,’ Elsom said. ‘I was passing by and thought I’d look in to see if you were free for a spot of lunch.’
Arthur intended to say that he was not, but reconsidered. He felt certain that something lay behind Elsom’s casual dropping-in. If he was put off he might drop in again or become a pest on the telephone. There had been occasions, although they could be counted on the fingers of both hands, when people from Fraycut had visited the office, and Arthur had always firmly stressed that it was no more than a receiving place for correspondence, and had got them out of it as quickly as possible. Clare herself had been to the office only twice, conveying both her contempt for it and her astonishment that he was able to make a living from such a place. She had conceded that it was a good address, but the whole ambience was obviously a wretched one when put beside the Slattery connection. Arthur felt that it would be a good idea to get this grinning bristly Elsom out of the office and also to damp any curiosity he might be feeling. He said that a spot of lunch would be very nice.
They ate in a pub not far away. Elsom was known in the Grill Room. He took charge of the meal, giving particular instructions about the way in which their steaks should be done, and going into details about the wine. It struck Arthur that he was being treated with some attention. When the steaks came Elsom attacked his savagely, and kept up a flow of conversation about people in Fraycut until he had eaten the last scrap. Then he asked how things were going.
‘Going? Oh, business you mean. I mustn’t grumble.’ He added untruthfully, ‘Very glad you found me.’
‘You don’t put up much of a front.’
‘What would be the point?’ Arthur had countered this remark before. ‘My business isn’t done in London, it’s personal.’
Most people left it at that but Elsom, at the same time that he gestured to a waiter to bring a tray with the puddings on it, said out of the side of his mouth, ‘No girl to take messages.’
‘It’s difficult to get efficient staff. I use an answering service.’
Elsom nodded and transferred his interest to the trolley, ordering what proved to be a huge portion of trifle. He disposed of it in a few gulps and Arthur, toying uneasily with crême caramel, had the feeling that his companion needed something crunchy on which to sharpen his teeth. No wonder that a trifle was quickly disposed of. Elsom’s next remark took him by surprise.
‘Can’t help feeling a bit sorry for old Clare.’
‘You mean her illness? She was much better when I left yesterday.’
‘Don’t mean that. Being the grass widow was what I had in mind. I mean, you’re away three, four nights a week.’
‘Oh, not always. It varies.’
‘If I were you I’d be feeling worried.’ The words were alarming. What did the man mean? ‘She’s damned attractive, your good lady.’
‘Clare?’
‘I wouldn’t go off and leave her half the week, I know that.’ Elsom took a mouthful of scalding coffee and roared with laughter. ‘Just pulling your leg, old man. Perhaps it’s the other way round, eh? A few home comforts up in the Midlands?’ He laughed again.
Those were the vital words, although their possible implications were not borne in upon him at the time. It had never crossed his mind that anybody could think Clare particularly attractive. ‘You don’t really mean that you think Clare is –’
‘Not a bit of it. Shouldn’t have said anything of the sort, schoolboy sense of humour, it’s got me into trouble before. Still, I expect you’d like to get home a bit more often.’ He leaned over the table. ‘GBD might make it possible.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll lay it on the line. We’re interested in acquiring firms that are going concerns but aren’t, how shall I put it, flourishing quite as they were. That doesn’t matter, positive advantage in fact. Don’t ask me why, it’s one of these financial fiddles about stock distribution, I don’t understand it except that after every little takeover the directors get richer on paper. Well, Lektreks sounds like a candidate to me.’
‘For takeover?’
‘Hardly that, old boy. Not much to take over, is there? It would be acquisition, absorption, call it what you like. Where do you come in, you ask? No taste in nothing, we all know that.’ He showed his teeth. ‘This is all unofficial, you understand, but I think you’d get a parcel of stock in GBD.’
‘I should?’
‘And then, this is my own idea entirely, but I think we’d like to put you on the payroll. That glass cleaning device was damned clever. I know it didn’t work out, but perhaps the next one will.’ It was strange to have repeated to him the things he had told himself for years as consolation. Surely this was all too good to be true? Elsom’s next words made this plain. ‘The boys with slide rules.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that.’
‘I said, talking about terms, the boys with slide rules will settle all that.’
Arthur was unused to such terminology. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Accountants. We all have to do what they tell us, more’s the pity. They come in, look at the books, fix a price. You can use your own chaps of course, but GBD will give you a square deal.’
‘I see.’ And he should have seen at once, should have known that it was impossible. The accountants would report that Lektreks did only a few thousand pounds’ worth of business a year, and was worth almost nothing. When their report came through Elsom would see it and wonder where Arthur Brownjohn got his money. A whole trail of inquiry would be set up. GBD was not a promise but a menace. ‘I shall have to think about it.’
‘Do that. I think you’ll find it will be to everybody’s advantage.’
Elsom insisted on walking back to the office with him, telling him what a splendid outfit GBD was, and saying that independence was a wonderful thing and it was a shame the little man was going to the wall, but you couldn’t hold out against the winds of change for ever. He left with protestations of goodwill and an assurance of not losing touch. Back in the office Arthur slumped in his chair and gave himself up to total gloom. Elsom was a fool, no doubt, look at the way he’d talked about Clare having a lover, but he was the kind of fool who didn’t easily let go of an idea once he had hold of it. He had managed to conceal the Camb volume when Elsom came in and now he put it back on the shelf and took down a book in which he never failed to take delight, the account of the Wallace case. The beautifully logical complication of its structure somehow resembled music or chess. Wallace, a Liverpool insurance agent, had been accused of murdering his wife. His defence was an alibi based upon a telephone call from a man named Qualtrough which had taken him wandering round Liverpool in search of a non-existent address. Had Wallace made the call himself and murdered his wife after stripping naked, as the prosecution suggested, or did Qualtrough really exist, was he the pseudonym of a shadowy figure thus dimly and momentarily seen, who then disappeared for ever?
He felt his eyes closing, and remembered that he had drunk half a bottle of wine. And then something jerked open his lids as though he had been given a small electric shock. The nerve ends of his body seemed to be tingling. Two completely separate ideas had come together in his mind. Major Easonby Mellon had to disappear. Clare also had to disappear. Why should they not run away together? Clare was thought by Elsom to be the kind of woman who might conceivably take a lover. In fact Clare would be dead, and her body would be buried in some conveniently undiscoverable spot, but it would seem that she was having an affair with Mellon and had gone off with him. There would be letters left to prove it. And the beauty of the idea was that Easonby was no Qualtrough, no mere name without a body. When the police investigated him they would find that he had an office, a business, a wife and a home. His existence was as real as that of Arthur Brownjohn.
That was the beginning of the idea. He thought about it with rising excitement that afternoon and all the next day. Its prime requisite, of course, was the creation of a relationship, in fact a love affair, between Easonby Mellon and Clare. He bought a copy of
The Man Who Never Was,
which told the story of the deliberate creation during the war of a non-existent character, supported by all sorts of documents. Its use had been to deceive the Germans, Easonby Mellon’s function here would be to deceive the police, and he had one immense advantage over the organisers of that realistic spoof, in the sense that Mellon was an established figure. On the other hand, there were difficulties which the secret service had not encountered.
The first of them was the question of Clare running away with the man. When a wife disappears, even though she may only have gone off for a week’s holiday, her husband is likely to be suspected of killing her. How, to put it crudely, was her body to be disposed of? He did not drive a car, and he really could not imagine himself digging a hole in the garden and staggering out at night with a great wrapped bundle, even had such a procedure seemed judicious. To hide it inside the house or to dig up the garage floor would be dangerous as well as uncongenial. After a day’s thought he gave up the elopement and decided on a bolder course. Clare’s body should be discovered. She must be seen quite plainly to be a murder victim, and her murderer must be seen just as clearly to be Easonby Mellon.
Other problems to be solved, or relationships to be established, occurred to him. The project filled his mind completely. He jotted them down under three headings:
(1) Eliminate any link between EM and AB.
(2) Establish relationship of EM and CB over period of time. First met in childhood?
(3) Decide precisely how project to be accomplished. EM is to be wiped out. How?
Under these main headings he made a number of notes. When he was sure that he had absorbed what was in the notes he burned them. The burning was a kind of smoke signal. It was time for action.