‘What? It’s no use, I can’t hear you, but get this. I kept warning my mother about you. She wouldn’t listen, but you won’t be pulling wool over my eyes. I want financial reports that add up. Especially covering my father’s trust fund. That capital is sacrosanct by law. You ought to know that. It was intact nine months ago at the last balance. I warn you, if I’m not satisfied I’ll call for an independent audit. Probably will anyway. Think on that. And another thing, you telex me how that Gas Board explains my mother’s death. I want their written report. Did you tell them she was on a strict diet? No cooked breakfast? No eggs? Couldn’t have blown herself up with a cooker she wasn’t using. There had to be a gas leak, Pitty. It’s their responsibility. There’ll be damages.’

  ‘Dr Brasset,’ Treasure cried determinedly. ‘For the last time, this isn’t Pitty. Is not Pitty,’ he repeated. ‘Am putting the phone down.’ He was just about to do so when the lawyer returned.

  ‘For me, is it?’ Pitty enquired lightly.

  Treasure handed him the instrument. ‘Awfully sorry, it’s Richard Brasset. Terrible line his end. He wouldn’t understand he wasn’t talking to you. I’ll be outside.’ He walked straight from the room.

  A few minutes later Pitty called his guest back from the landing hall. ‘Sorry about that. Expect you gathered he’s Louella’s son. Cantankerous cove.’ The bonhomie was overdone.

  ‘He seemed a bit upset, yes. Didn’t catch much of what he was saying.’ Evasion seemed the most tactful route.

  ‘Same last night,’ Pitty went on earnestly. ‘Runs a practice in some outback place. Very noble and all that, and pretty indispensable by all accounts. Appalling telephone link, though. Was it bad both ways with you?’ There was hope in the tone.

  ‘Mmm. Something about sending reports. By telex.’

  ‘Yes. Thank heaven someone there has a telex. Had my secretary in this morning bunging off some figures. On the Brasset Trust. Very complicated. Sounds as if they got mixed up in the sending.’

  ‘Oh, and I gathered he couldn’t get here for the funeral.’

  Pitty nodded, then lifted his eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t come to his mother’s funeral, but can’t wait to get chapter and verse on his inheritance. Odd chap, and inclined to be difficult.’

  ‘I see. Certainly sounded terse. Said something about a gas leak. That his mother was on a diet. Wouldn’t have used the cooker.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a bit garbled.’ There, he had virtually passed on the gist of what he’d heard without giving offence.

  ‘Absolute supposition, of course,’ said Pitty loftily. ‘The gas wallahs proved there was no leak. Louella could have come off her diet since she last wrote to Richard. Know what women are with diets. Table was laid. We both saw the egg pan.’

  ‘Might be worth a word to the police, I suppose. D’you think Dr Brasset’s going to raise it if you don’t?’

  They were both seated again. Pitty stared at the ceiling. ‘Yup. You’re right,’ he said. ‘No end of fuss if he started tub-thumping about it when the inquest’s over.’

  ‘Is the inquest likely to be before he gets here?’

  ‘Might be, although it’s not the kind that’ll hold up the funeral. Have to see about arranging that too. Soon as I’ve got the death certificate. No close relatives except Richard, of course. So, as Executor …’ He looked resigned. ‘By the way, no luck with that lease, I’m afraid. We’re remodelling the first floor. Dashed inconvenient. Moved a great wodge of documents to the branch office while it’s going on. That’s gone with them. Should have fetched it back already. I’m going to need it anyway. Get it first thing Monday. Send you a copy.’

  ‘I’ll be interested to read it. The Marshford Papers deserve a wider public. Sims, the librarian, he’s quite an authority.’

  ‘Thanks to Louella. He never showed any interest before she did.’

  ‘He’s a Marshford beneficiary.’

  Pitty smirked. ‘Gets a fiver every year for organizing a lecture. Few others in the town on the same sort of arrangement. Money involved hardly justifies the administration, I can tell you.’

  ‘You handle them all?’

  ‘For a pittance. Thinking of handing the lot back to Ribert’s where they came from.’

  ‘Is there anything in the Round House lease itself that accounted for Cynthia’s evident diffidence in parting with it?’ Treasure was working on the premise that since he was to get a copy the question was hardly improper.

  Pitty parted his hands. ‘To be honest, I’ve never read it.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Treasured eyed him steadily. ‘I’m pretty certain Cynthia just wanted to demonstrate loyalty.’ Pitty had reached for his glass and was now studying the ice cubes he was swirling about in it. ‘To parents and pupils. Latterly to Louella. Cynthia’s very strict on loyalty.’

  There was a moment’s embarrassed silence. ‘But she didn’t know about Lady Brasset’s crusade until very recently,’ said Treasure slowly.

  ‘No, as I said, it was primarily about doing the right thing by the pupils.’

  ‘So no prizes to the Canon for keeping the lease in the family till the bitter end?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. Do let me get you a drink.’

  ‘I should be off. Just a finger of Scotch. Lots of ice and soda.’ He handed his glass to the lawyer, who had got up. ‘Just one other thing. D’you think they’ll want me for the Jacks inquest?’ They had briefly discussed the accident when Treasure had first arrived.

  ‘Yes, but I’ll have a word with the Coroner for you,’ Pitty answered from the bar. ‘He’s a chum. Sort of. Solicitor in the town. Tends to do everything by the book though, I’m afraid. As I said, it was bad luck your being first on the scene. Gather from the police it could easily have been Elderberry’s doubtful privilege. Did he say what he was doing there?’

  ‘Delivering a book he’d borrowed from Lady Brasset.’

  Pitty looked sceptical. ‘Had he been inside the cottage, d’you know?’

  ‘He said not. Didn’t know where the spare key was.’

  ‘I’m surprised. Under the flower-pot. Everybody else knows. But it wasn’t there last night. She may have taken my advice about burglars at last.’

  ‘Jacks had a key. It was on his ring on the garage door. I used it to get in to phone.’

  ‘Elderberry might have used it too if he’d known it was there,’ said Pitty thoughtfully.

  ‘I’d have seen, I think. Was there a reason he’d have needed to get in?’

  The other paused. ‘None, and please forget I implied there might be. It was indiscreet of me.’

  ‘Well, it’s of no consequence to me.’ Treasure registered more indifference than he felt. ‘You’re right. I wish he’d found the body. You know Jacks had a lot of money on him?’

  ‘So the police told me. Racing winnings collected this morning, I’d guess. They’re checking the betting shops.’

  ‘And you’d seen Jacks today, you said.’

  ‘Yes, poor chap. He was the hopeful I mentioned at lunch. Came in wanting to consult me just as I was leaving for the Trings.’

  ‘But you didn’t accommodate him?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ This was followed by a shamed expression. ‘Wish I had now, of course. Bit much at the time, though. I gave him an appointment for Monday afternoon.’

  ‘Probably nothing very urgent.’

  Pitty nodded. ‘Said it would keep. Probably wanted to make a will.’

  Treasure, playing by instinct, remained silent. Both men glanced at the phone which had started to ring. Pitty took the call: it confirmed the banker’s dinner reservation.

  A few minutes later Treasure was seeing himself out of the house. There had been another phone call just as he had got up to leave. He had waved a farewell at Pitty who was engaged in a complicated exchange with an evidently muddled and French-speaking caller.

  On the first floor the banker noted the evidence of the remodelling. Pitty had left a door open there. At ground-floor level too: outside in the drive there was a builder’s skip close to where he had parked the Rolls. It was brimming with discarded impedimenta, pieces of cupboards, bits of carpet and linoleum, bulbous radiators and — a collector’s item — a WC pan of generous dimensions in white porcelain with a blue flower motif and a solid mahogany seat. He was examining this relic in the light of a nearby street lamp when he noticed it was resting on the remains of a frame door of much later vintage.

  The door belonged with some plywood office partitioning buried further down in the skip. Stuck to it was a black on white painted nameplate: ‘S.O. Smith. Managing Clerk’ it proclaimed.

  ‘Lots of those around,’ Pitty had said when Sydney Smith had been mentioned. Surely if his managing clerk had been a Sydney as well as a Smith he’d have admitted as much? Stephen, Stewart, Samuel, Stanley … there were endless other possibilities. Miss Gaunt had not mentioned another initial. Directors’ names were always given in full on statutory documents. Of course, she had been speaking from memory. She had recalled Sydney Smith easily enough because of the literary connection. Would the initials SOS have been just as memorable? To Miss Gaunt possibly not.

  He turned the car left along the seafront, which was almost deserted. A single young couple hurried against the wind into the comparative protection and certain privacy of a promenade shelter on the seaward side. It was still dry, with fleeting glimpses of the moon behind scurrying cloud. He glanced at the clock: 6.40, still loads of time to change and be in Arundel by eight.

  So had the postman really intended to consult a lawyer as suggested? The decision would have been a very swift one. And wouldn’t he have mentioned Treasure had sent him?

  Was it not much more likely Pitty had been approached so promptly not as a lawyer but as a Friday afternoon visitor to the cottage? Had Jacks simply asked him if he had told the police? Now there was an explanation that fitted the postman’s apparently impulsive action — as well as Pitty’s fabrication.

  And was it so impulsive? Had Jacks seen Mane before he saw Pitty — and then Pitty at the Commander’s instigation?

  ‘Ask anyone whose opinion you trust.’ Treasure remembered suggesting that as an alternative to seeing a lawyer — and he remembered why. Tracy had said ex-regulars went to her father for advice. Eddy Jacks had been ex-Navy.

  So the visit to Mane, innocently reported by Tracy, had possibly been prompted by Treasure. Had the Commander also failed to persuade Jacks to go to the police with his story? Had he also advised consulting a lawyer? — Pitty again?

  It was an explanation that fitted events — except that another fitted them just as well.

  Treasure had also told Jacks he ought to approach the two friends of Lady Brasset he’d recognized. Until Tracy had said her father drove a Metro the banker had assumed the Commander had been one of those friends. Now it seemed more likely he had been the unidentified caller — something he’d almost certainly have admitted to the postman, volunteering if he’d entered the cottage or smelled gas. It followed the Commander would have pressed Jacks to approach the two others for equally forthright accounts of their visits. That would have been the logical thing.

  And Jacks had seen Pitty. One kept coming back to Pitty — but in what capacity? If he had been a late visitor to the cottage why hadn’t he admitted it at lunch — and who was the other one?

  The banker parked the car in the Beachcomber forecourt. He sat in it a moment longer, considering the two courses of action open to him.

  Either he had to find the two people Jacks had seen or else he had to go to the police with the postman’s own story — a story that without corroboration still sounded malicious and thus potentially scandalous. Both ways a lot of Louella Brasset’s friends would be involved. He smiled at the memory of her: he owed her the effort. He would find those witnesses himself. Without knowing of Jacks’s experience, they could be totally unaware of the relevance of their own recollections.

  He got out and locked the Rolls. He needed to question Commander Mane too — and Tony Quaint, once he got the fellow to volunteer he had been at the cottage at all.

  There was still the need for circumspection. There was no quick route to his getting to the right people without alerting a possible dangerously wrong one.

  Jacks had used the quick route — but Jacks was dead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The knock at the door came as Treasure was putting on a shirt. He glanced at his watch: it was nearly seven — the time Tracy started her evening shift at the hotel.

  ‘Come in. It’s not locked.’

  Disappointingly, it was Lancelot Elderberry who appeared around the door, a study in woe. ‘Forgive me,’ he uttered dramatically as he stumbled into the room. A fist was clenched to his brow.

  He was soberly — for him — even sombrely dressed in a fluffy black jacket, grey trousers, a black tie, and a shirt that would have been plain white except for the flecks of yellow thread. He would just have passed muster at a funeral, allowing for the brown suede shoes. He had obviously done his best from a wardrobe unmatched to solemn occasions. What remained of his hair at the front had been parted just above the left ear. The few longish strands had been dampened and brushed across the fleshy, pink pate.

  ‘I’d have come sooner. Truly I would. Left a message I was to be sent for as soon as you returned. That is, after I knew … Mrs Daws just rang. I’m deeply sorry.’

  ‘What for?’ For the moment Treasure was at a loss. ‘D’you mean about Mr Jacks?’ he then added hurriedly.

  Elderberry nodded. ‘Leaving you like that. Such a shock. If it’d been me, I don’t believe my system would have stood it.’ He moved his head from side to side, his neck seemed to get shorter with every twist.

  ‘D’you want a chair?’ asked Treasure, more because the need seemed to be pressing than simply out of good manners.

  ‘Thanks.’ Elderberry sank into the bridal suite’s single easy chair.

  ‘You’ll forgive my going on dressing?’ The banker smiled.

  ‘I was in a panic, you see.’ The fat man wrapped his arms around a good deal of his torso. ‘You might as well know the truth. Sheer panic.’ He was breathing heavily — and filling the room with a smell of gin.

  ‘You didn’t show it. Did you know Jacks was dead or something?’

  ‘Panicked about my letter to Louella.’ Elderberry seemed not to have heard the question. ‘Your arriving like that. I thought you might unearth it. I’d been trying to pick the lock. And all the time that poor sod was lying there with his head cut off.’

  ‘Not quite. And surely you didn’t know that?’

  This time contact was established. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘How long had you really been there, before I arrived?’

  ‘About five minutes. Does it matter? It was pure selfishness. I’m riddled with it. My father always said so. He was right.’ His head had sunk down into his chest. ‘Did you know he was Primitive Methodist?’

  ‘Jacks?’

  ‘No, my father. Minister. Said I’d come to no good. If it hadn’t been for my mother …’ His eyes had clouded.

  ‘If you were only there five minutes you couldn’t have helped Jacks. He’d been dead for half an hour.’

  ‘That’s what the police said. You can’t tell, though, can you? And it might have been more than five minutes. “Death be not proud, though some have called thee” something or other.’ His voice had rallied for the quotation he’d half forgotten. ‘Too proud I was, you see. I nearly went to Jacks for a key. Too proud and appy … apprehensive about what he’d think. Could have spun him a tale. Canny for a postman, though.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘The spare key had gone.’

  ‘The one under the flower-pot?’

  Elderberry nodded. ‘Relying on that. Gone. What’s it matter what poor Jacks would have thought? Others knew at the time. Should have gone straight to Denis Pitty. Asked for the letter outright. Needn’t have gone to Louella’s at all today.’ He looked confused. ‘No, that’s not right. No business of Pitty’s. Should have gone to Louella’s. Got there earlier. Asked Jacks for the key. Saved his life, probably … Saved you from that terrible ordeal. Never forgive myself. You know that? Never.’

  Treasure was now dressed except for his jacket. He pulled out the upright chair and sat in it facing his visitor. ‘You were looking for a letter. What letter?’

  ‘The one that awful boy sent Louella. About me.’

  ‘Which awful boy? Bobby, or the one who drives machines, or …’

  ‘Another one. Malcolm. Quite wicked, and so ungrateful. All I did was befriend him. Then he wanted money.’ This seemed to be the besetting problem with Elderberry’s friends. ‘I had no money to give him. He threatened to write to people about me. My publishers and others,’ he added darkly. ‘He did write to Louella. Found out she was a friend.’

  ‘I assume he was alleging … misbehaviour of some kind?’ Treasure put the question as delicately as he could.

  ‘It was lies. A tissue of lies from beginning to end. God’s honour. But what could I do? All I’d done was give him shelter.’

  ‘How old was this Malcolm?’

  Elderberry swallowed. ‘Getting on for eighteen.’

  There was a difficult silence. ‘And Lady Brasset?’ Treasure asked eventually.

  ‘Absolutely marvellous. She saw him. I don’t know what was said — or done. Haven’t heard from Malcolm since, except …’ He stopped.

  ‘Except?’

  Elderberry shook his head. ‘Not at all. Louella made me promise I wouldn’t see him, so I didn’t. I wouldn’t have anyway, I don’t think.’ He sighed. ‘I was very fond of him. Despite his wickedness.’

  ‘But Lady Brasset kept the letter as — as a token of your good behaviour?’

  ‘She was going to give it to me in a year, to destroy. She believed me but said I had to be protected — from my better nature. She was right, of course.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Treasure looked graver than he felt.

  ‘It was especially embarrassing because Malcolm was only …’

  ‘Seventeen,’ the banker offered quietly. ‘How long ago was this?’

 

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