“He wasn’t shot. His throat was cut.”
“That’s Ruppy for you. Always goes to extremes.” She listened eagerly as Sam went through the story again and again; she kept on asking him to repeat certain details, or remind her of what he had said before. “What colour was his blood?” she asked him.
“Well, red of course.”
“You never know.”
He was just about to elaborate upon his description of the amber knife when his mother walked in. He was surprised to see her.
Julie looked up at her, puzzled. “Can I help you?”
“Good morning, Sam. Yes. I think you can help me, Julie.”
“How do you—?”
“My son told me. Sam told me …”
“I didn’t know he had a mother.”
Sally laughed. “You may know me better as Sally Palliser.”
Julie was astonished. “What? Are you here?” She rose to her feet, and then abruptly sat down again. “I never expected to
see
you in all my life.”
“And I never expected to be here with you. And Sam. Life has a way of tricking us, doesn’t it?”
Sam looked at both of them with curiosity. “Do you want me to wait outside?” He was very demure.
“Not at all,” his mother replied. “You have to know this. Asher Ruppta took me in when I was in trouble. We had a child together. A boy. You never knew about this, Julie.”
“I
thought
there was something,” Julie said. “He used to be
driven down to this school. He said he was on the board of governors.”
“He is. Well, was. I’m going down there today. To pick up Andrew.” She glanced at Sam. “That is why we must find the will, Julie. I want to make sure that Andrew is protected.”
Sam sensed the presence of something shuddering in the room, coming not from any one of them but from the three of them in combination.
“If there is a will,” Julie was saying, “then George Flom will have it.”
“His lawyer?”
“His so-called lawyer, yes. His office is in Gresham Street. Above the shirt shop.”
His mother turned to Sam. “Will you go there? Explain everything to Mr. Flom. Tell him to get the papers ready.”
On the following day the police questioned Julie Armitage in the office, and took away a stack of Asher Ruppta’s files. Julie seemed agitated after the interview, and was strangely abrupt. “You should have told me about your mother,” she said to Sam. “What have you got to hide?”
“Nothing at all, Julie.”
“Shake the other one. Go on. Ring those bells.” She suddenly relented her tone. “I haven’t told them everything I know,” she told him. She looked him in the face, almost greedily. “What a can of worms.”
When Sally explained to him the details of her relationship with Ruppta and the birth of a son, Sam was delighted. He had sensed that there was some connection between himself and Ruppta, but now that had been proved in the most unexpected manner. When he went to see his mother, three days later, he found the house empty. She opened the front door
herself. “The girls have gone,” she told him. “They understood.” She led him to the small room with the blue vase of flowers. And there, to his surprise, sat a boy of thirteen or fourteen years. He was wearing a grey school blazer, and grey trousers. He looked up at Sam with a calm and steady gaze. “This is Andrew,” she said. “Andrew, say hello to Sam.”
“Hello, Sam.” The boy stood up and gravely shook his hand.
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“It
was
rather awkward. Mother and I are in a bit of a spot, to put it mildly. But my chums rallied round. And my housemaster has been an absolute
brick
.” He looked calmly at Sam. “Half-brother,” he said. He pronounced it very carefully. “My word. It came as rather a shock. Following my father, if you see what I mean—” He burst into tears, but then quickly recovered. “Sorry about that.”
“Under the circumstances—”
“I gather that you worked for him.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Did he strike you as being a fair-minded sort of person?”
“I think so.”
“Do you only
think
so?” He did not wait for an answer. “I believe that my father was not properly understood. He was the soul of charity, you know. Grants to institutions and so forth. But he was a little too diffident for his own good. He was, like me, rather an introvert.” Sam noticed the boy’s hair that consisted of tight black curls, as if his personality had somehow boiled over. “Still, I mustn’t gabble on.”
“There is something I want to tell you, Sam.” Sally sat down at the table behind them, and took out a cigarette. “Asher has left his business to me. To turn it over to Andrew when he is twenty-one. So, you see, you will be working for me. You and Julie will have to teach me all the tricks.”
“I don’t think there will be any
tricks
, Mother.”
“It’s just a phrase, Andrew.”
“Still, Mother, we must start as we mean to go on. That’s another phrase.”
Over the next few days Sam, Julie and Sally sat down together in order to go through Ruppta’s investments and properties. Sally was intent upon all of the details—who paid through a bank account and who paid in cash? Who paid weekly or monthly? What was the condition of each flat and house?
“You cannot observe and measure at the same time,” Sam said to her. “If you measure you cannot observe and, if you observe, you cannot measure. I can measure all the rooms and all the incomes for you. But if I observe instead, I see a picture of human misery.”
His mother looked at him in astonishment. “Well, Sam, you have set me thinking. You know how these tenants live, don’t you?”
“Mainly they live from day to day. They scrape by. They worry about paying me the rent each week. They struggle.”
“I know that Asher made a lot of money out of his flats.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” Julie’s eyes were very bright. “We’re supposed to make money, aren’t we? It’s all very well for Sam to say that they struggle. We all struggle. I struggle. If Mr. Ruppta had not paid me a wage, I would have been in the poorhouse. Where did he get the money to pay me that wage? It stands to reason. From the money you collected, Sam.” She slammed her hand, palm down, onto the table. Sam was surprised by her vehemence, but he chose not to argue with her. He would speak to his mother privately, to see what could be done for the poorer tenants.
On the following day he was asked to go to the police station for a formal interview about the afternoon he found Asher Ruppta’s body. He was questioned by the same inspector who had come to the house. “We have learned a lot more
since I last saw you.” Inspector Sutherland had a soft voice and tremulous eyes. “We know, if I may say so, a lot more about you.” He was polite, almost deferential, to Sam as if he were in some way intimidated by him. Sam sensed this, too, and was bewildered by it. “You are Sally’s son, are you not?” Sam nodded. “And your mother had—was close to Mr. Ruppta? Would that be a fair thing to say?”
“I didn’t know about that. Until after.”
“Naturally not. Very understandable.” They were facing each other, across a table, in a small boxlike room without windows. “You were right about the amber dagger, by the way. You seemed to know about it. I was impressed.”
“It was the only dagger I could see.”
“But how did you guess that he had been killed by that dagger specifically? That was an inspired choice. Hole in one. Was it you who told me that he had fallen down the stairs before his throat had been cut?”
Sam was puzzled. “No.”
“Funny. I thought it was you. No. Of course not. How could you know such a thing? As it happens, he fell
after
his throat was cut. Some spatters of blood were found on the wall at the top of the stairs. Did he fall or was he pushed? What do you think, Sam?” Sam shrugged his shoulders. “But if you were a betting man, what would you fancy? Go on. Have a flutter.” Inspector Sutherland looked imploringly at Sam; his expression seemed almost comical. Then he laughed himself, as if appreciating the joke. Sam laughed, too, despite the fact that he was not feeling very comfortable with the tone of Sutherland’s questions. “I suspect that the deceased—” Here he adjusted his tie. “That the deceased knew his attacker. There is no sign of a forced entry, you see. No sign of a struggle. He might have been having a quiet chat on the landing of the staircase. I can see it, can’t you? It’s a lovely house, it really is. I’ve read the will. Your mother gets it.”
“She gets the business, too.”
“Oh yes. Naturally.”
“In trust for her son.”
“Not you of course. The other one.”
“I also have two brothers.”
“Oh?” He seemed interested in this suddenly presented fact. “Do they know—”
“They don’t.”
“Let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, this has been a most satisfactory conversation.” Sutherland rubbed the palms of his hands together and smiled cheerfully before jumping to his feet. “I know where to find you. If I should need you again.”
Sam was thoughtful, and a little apprehensive, as he made his way back to Camden Town. A bird fluttered and flew out of a hedge on the road home, startling him. He arrived home at twilight. It was that period, in late October, when the clocks were put backwards by an hour. So the evenings had become darker earlier. He entered the empty house with a sigh, but he did not put on the light. He preferred to sit in the front room until his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom and he could see the familiar objects around him. He did not care for the unnatural light of the electric bulb; it lent a false brightness to the world, and made him uneasy.
Someone knocked very loudly at the door. He hesitated, and then went out. It was his mother. “I thought you must have been in the kitchen,” she said. “There was no light.”
“I was just sitting.”
“May I come in?” He made way for her, and followed her into the front room before switching on the light. “I haven’t been here since—since it happened. Nothing much has changed, has it?”
“Dad didn’t do much to it. No.”
“Still that old radio. It must be an antique by now. Are you still in your old room?”
“I’m in Harry’s.”
“Treating yourself.” She stepped into the kitchen. “It’s smaller than I remembered it.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel the world closing in.”
“Sam, that’s one of the reasons I’m here. I’d like you to move in with us. Andrew is away at school for some of the time, so you would make good company. You would be much more comfortable in Borough. And we can set up the business there. I’ve given it a lot of thought. There’s no need to be in the middle of town. It’s a tiring place.”
“What about his house in Highgate?”
“I’m selling it. Andrew wants me to.” She sat down at the kitchen table. “Make me a cup of tea, will you?” She was silent as he prepared and poured the tea. “Who do you think killed him, Sam?”
“I think he may have been blackmailing people.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me.” She sipped her tea. “What do you think of Julie?”
“What?”
“There’s something odd about her. I can’t put my finger on it. Don’t you think it funny that, on the day Asher died, she was visiting her sister in Folkestone? She told me that her sister was a bit dotty. Forgetful.”
“What are you getting at, Mum?”
“The dotty sister makes a good alibi, doesn’t she?”
“Why on earth would Julie want to murder Mr. Ruppta?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Ants in your pants
W
HEN
H
ARRY
Hanway broke the news of Asher Ruppta’s murder to Sir Martin Flaxman, his father-in-law crowed with delight. “The crook has been killed, has he? How was it done?”
“I’m trying to find out the details now.”
“Now’s the time to go after him. Print everything you’ve got. Nothing wrong with fucking the dead. You can’t catch anything.”
Harry Hanway noted, as he put down the telephone, that Sir Martin seemed to have recovered his good humour.
Lady Flaxman came for dinner that night at Mount Street. “Pass me the rat poison,” she said almost as soon as she had entered the house. “The kraken wakes.”
“What do you mean, Mummy?”
“I mean your father. The old fool has come back to life. Jesus wept.” She elaborated on this theme over dinner. “I knew he was getting better when he swore at me. And he kicked out with his foot. With his foot.” She repeated the phrase very slowly and distinctly.
“What else would he use, Mummy?”
“Nothing is beyond that man. And he has gone red again. Like a cockataw or whatever the horrible creature is called.”
“Cockatoo.”
“More like a lobster. Revolting, actually.” She looked down at a piece of shrivelled meat upon her plate. “I see we have very slim pickings.” Mrs. A. entered the room at this moment. “Ah, my good woman.” Lady Flaxman greeted her with what seemed to Harry to be artificial warmth.
“I am not your good woman. I will not be called a good woman in this house.”
“Only a turn of phrase.”
“There are turns of phrases and there are turns of phrases.” Mrs. A. picked up Lady Flaxman’s plate and returned to the kitchen, delighted with her sally.
“Your father,” Lady Flaxman said, “happened to mention something about retirement.” Harry began to listen more intently. “Absolute nonsense of course. Is he a shy violet?”
“He is about as shy as King Kong,” Guinevere replied.
“Precisely my point.”
Over the next few days Harry found out more about Asher Ruppta’s death; he also learned that “Miss Sally Palliser” had inherited the business until Ruppta’s son reached the age of twenty-one. He was anxious that her married name should not be published, so he decided to steer the story of Ruppta’s death in a more sensational direction. He had not forgotten his discovery of the financial relationship between Asher Ruppta and Cormac Webb. Now, with Ruppta gone, Flaxman had more or less invited him to pursue the story with additional vigour. Harry’s enthusiasm had been quickened by the fact that Webb had found himself again in government as parliamentary under-secretary at the Home Office. So Harry called in James Thorn, now chief political correspondent of the
Chronicle
.