The Two Hundred Ghost, page 11
‘Well, he might be capable of it. But I don’t think he’d have to, Johnny. He’s extremely rich.’ Sally hesitated. ‘But he did come in on Wednesday too. He wanted to see Butcher then, and he wouldn’t tell me what it was about — which isn’t like him. If Butcher wasn’t available he generally gave me a long and complicated message and stood over me while I wrote it down. Or else he saw Mr Charles.’
‘So his refusal to see Uncle Charles on Thursday wasn’t just a matter of habit.’
‘No. Definitely not. But there’s another point. I don’t want to pick holes, but I can’t fit Butcher satisfactorily into this theft. It seems to me that the theft itself would have to follow very quickly on Francis’ departure. The Colet might be sent back to the strongroom any minute. In fact, it might well be sent back the moment Francis had finished looking at it, in which case the thief couldn’t even attempt to take it. If he knew the shop, I should think he deliberately chose the hour between twelve and one, because the less experienced assistant would be on duty, and might be busy. But if the theft took place before one o’clock, and Butcher didn’t leave here till one, then he couldn’t have been the thief.’
‘I quite agree,’ said Johnny. ‘But, you know, I’ve had a feeling all along that Butcher wouldn’t have done any of this business in person; as you suggested the other night, he always assiduously avoided the forefront of the battle. And if he was using Francis — and I still think he may have been — he might have been using someone else too. The best qualified person to steal the Colet would be someone who could wander about Lincoln’s as he pleased without arousing the smallest suspicion, who was absolutely trusted, and who was such a familiar figure that when the loss was discovered he might hardly even be remembered. What’s more, as you’ve pointed out, this theft would be a very chancy business. It might easily not come off the first time; the thief might have no opportunity at all, or there might be no other customers in the shop, so that suspicion would be dangerously limited. That may possibly explain, incidentally, why, if Butcher was behind it, he let the Colet lie at Lincoln’s for six weeks or so, when it might have been sold any day. Incidentally, again, it was of course pure luck for them that the field of suspicion became so wide; they couldn’t have hoped that Miss Coates would forget to tell Barnet the Colet was there, and that consequently no one would notice it wasn’t. But to return to my original point, it would be very useful, supposing a first attempt failed, if the thief could wander in again a couple of days later without anyone’s giving two thoughts to it.’
‘Carlington?’ asked Sally.
‘It’s a pretty wild idea, and I don’t like to think he was in it. But he’s a weak creature, though decent-ish, and he must be very hard up. He was with Lincoln’s for years, and then somewhere in the ’thirties he was left a bit of money and started up on his own. He was never very successful; I gather he knows a lot about books but is a poor businessman. Then the house next door to him — on the other side from us — got a bomb, and some of his stock was irretrievably damaged. His business has never recovered, and Father William said the other day he doesn’t know how he keeps going at all.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Sally. Johnny’s theory was becoming rather convincing. ‘Yes, and if it didn’t come off the first time, Francis could have gone back too — once or twice anyhow. If he gave the impression he was thinking of buying the Colet, no one would suspect anything. Johnny — I’ve been wondering — could Butcher & Co have been responsible for the other rare book thefts too? The ones in the last two or three months?’
‘I’ve been wondering too,’ said Johnny. ‘The trouble about stealing rare books, as you probably know, is that they’re extremely difficult to dispose of. If a rare book is stolen, the shops which are likely to be offered it are informed at once, and in any case the thief takes a risk in offering it to any honest antiquarian bookseller who knows his stuff. The only rare books you can seriously hope to get away with, unless you’re either pretty lucky or an unusually convincing liar, are books of plates, because you can break them up and sell the plates separately — and incidentally, none of the recent thefts have been books of plates. Well, then, unless all of them have been perpetrated by casual thieves who have managed to get away with it one way or the other — which is beginning to seem unlikely — there are only two answers. One — and a perfectly possible one — is that the thief is a rabid collector who is adding to his private collection. The stolen books belong to different periods, and to different categories, except that they’re all English; they wouldn’t normally come into a single collector’s field. But he might be a kleptomaniac, in which case that wouldn’t necessarily matter. There was a dear old man called Jonathan Wilberforce — now deceased — who gently pocketed three of our Elzevirs and a couple of unusually rare seventeenth-century pamphlets of Quinling’s, over a period of three months or so, before it entered anyone’s head to suspect him. He was allowed to keep them — we all loved him — and never left alone in a room again. But to continue. The second answer to the problem is that the thief has a rather unusual market for the books. For that, he would have to know the trade. And we may note that, as all the recently stolen books are English, they would all come into Butcher’s department, and could all be of interest to some of the customers with whom he normally comes in contact.’
‘That’s true. But he’d find very few customers as ignorant and unquestioning as Pilton.’
‘Very few. But I don’t think, Sally, that ignorance would be the qualification for Butcher’s market. In fact, if he did intend to sell stolen goods to Pilton, I think he’d lost his head a bit. Perhaps success had made him overconfident. You said Pilton was the show-it-off-to-his-friends type. Well, what would happen if he showed the inscribed Colet to his friends? Sooner or later someone who really knew about books would hear of it, and then the whole book world would hear of it, and Lincoln’s would ask where the hell he’d got it from. I imagine Butcher thought that either he’d hold his tongue willingly, when he knew it had been stolen, or he could be scared into silence. A completely false estimate, I should say, but Butcher always was an extraordinarily bad psychologist. All the same, he may have chosen his other clients more wisely. There are collectors — though not many — who don’t care how they come by a book or, for that matter, what they pay for it, as long as they get it.’
‘Like Francis,’ said Sally. ‘Johnny. If Francis had knowingly received stolen goods from Butcher, Butcher could have blackmailed him into doing the job at Lincoln’s. One of the stolen books was the 1585 Mulberry — the Arcadia — from Soper’s. He might quite well have wanted that.’
‘And…let’s see…there was Grier’s Passionate Mistress — from Mumford’s. That was just about the end of last week. Is Francis at all interested in Restoration Drama? No, by God, perhaps he isn’t, but we know who is. Professor Harborne. And he’s another who refused to leave a message, and his manner was very peculiar.’
‘Yes, and he came back the next day, and when I told him Butcher was dead, I thought he was going to faint. And he wouldn’t see Mr Charles either.’
‘Interesting,’ said Johnny. ‘I wonder if Butcher’s Special Delivery letter came from Francis or Harborne. Well, anyhow, I doubt if Butcher would use Harborne as an accomplice in the thefts; he’d be far too nervous. But with Francis and Carlington and a bit of luck he might have gone quite a long way. Carlington wouldn’t have been so useful elsewhere as he would be at Lincoln’s, of course, but he’s quite well known in the trade, and he’d have the entrée almost anywhere.’
Sally nodded. Then she said slowly: ‘Could Butcher have been expecting Carlington on Tuesday evening? With the Colet? Could they have quarrelled — perhaps about Carlington’s cut?’
‘Possibly,’ said Johnny. ‘It would be quite safe for them to meet that way. But it doesn’t seem very likely that Carlington knew about the knife, and why leave it so late? Everyone would have left the shop by six-thirty at the very latest. Just cast your mind back to the evidence of Gladys the barmaid, Sally. Having left Heldar’s at approximately five-fifteen, Butcher entered The Bunch of Grapes at five-thirty-five or just after. He had presumably intended to leave Heldar’s a quarter of an hour or so before opening time, even if it hadn’t been forced upon him. And when he entered The Bunch of Grapes, he was looking like a cat that’s just been at the cream, and Gladys thought perhaps he’d just done a good bit of business. Supposing he visited Carlington’s shop on the way to the pub and collected the Colet then — Carlington has no assistant, by the way. That would be an extremely good bit of business, and I think it would be quite enough to restore his amour-propre. And don’t ask me what I think about the ghost now, because I require notice of that question.’
Chapter Eight
What happened on Monday morning remained in Sally’s mind, like a remembered nightmare, for a long time afterwards.
A little after half-past nine, Prescott and Stanton arrived, with another plain-clothes man. The Inspectors went into the office, where Mr Charles and Johnny were, as usual, discussing the morning’s mail with Father William. The third man remained in the passage, and his presence disquieted Sally. Since the day after Fred’s attempt at suicide Prescott had come alone to the shop. She wondered, with something like panic, if these reinforcements meant that he was going to make an arrest. Mrs Weldon, rather surprisingly, had come back to work this morning.
Miss Mundle came out of the office. She glanced briefly at the plain-clothes man, and then at Sally. Then she went through the door leading to the basement. Obviously, she had been temporarily dismissed.
The Inspectors were in the office for a quarter of an hour or so. Then they came out, and the partners with them. Father William’s shoulders were a little bowed. Mr Charles was deadly white — Mrs Weldon, thought Sally, had been his typist for years. Johnny’s face was curiously grim. He was behind the others, and he looked at Sally before he started upstairs. She thought he was trying to prepare her for something. The plain-clothes man followed the party up.
It seemed like several hours before they came down again. But only two customers came and went, and it was only about thirty-five minutes by the clock before she heard their footsteps.
Prescott appeared first, and then Stanton. Beside Stanton was Tim. He was wearing handcuffs, and he was as white as his father had been. He didn’t look at Sally. Prescott opened the door to the basement stairs and led the way on.
A little later Mr Charles came down in his overcoat, walking like an old man. He looked at Sally, and then said gently: ‘Don’t look like that, child. The boy’s innocent. It’s a mistake. They’ll let him go soon.’
‘Of course he’s innocent,’ said Sally. Her voice shook.
Mr Charles actually smiled at her. Then he went out of the shop, and she saw him looking round for a taxi. He was probably going to tell Tim’s mother.
Johnny went back to the office with Father William for a little while, but presently he came along to the shop. To Sally’s surprise, he put an arm round her shoulders, gripped her hard, and then let her go.
‘You want to know about it, of course,’ he said.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Yes. Well, it seems that up till Saturday afternoon Prescott’s pet suspect — as we all thought — was Mrs Weldon. The only thing that prevented him from arresting her was Alf’s evidence about finding the back door unlocked. He argued, as we did, that the door had probably been left unlocked to mislead the police, by someone who returned later in the evening with a key. But he wasn’t dead certain that Mrs Weldon herself hadn’t had a key, though of course she’d told him she hadn’t. Carlington hadn’t been able to swear that she had just turned the handle and walked in; he thought she was ringing the bell just before that, but she might have been unlocking the door. Prescott knew that if he could find a key to the back door in her possession, he’d have an open and shut case. So when she went to Brownlow’s funeral on Saturday afternoon, he searched her flat. And he found a key all right — in a drawer under some clothes. But he recognised it at once as Tim’s key to the front door — or rather, the key Tim borrowed from Uncle Charles. When he’d asked Tim on Wednesday morning if he had a key, Tim had actually shown it to him, and it has a little nick in the metal, half-way down the blade, which is practically unmistakable. He came and tried it in the front door, and it fitted.
‘Well, Mrs Weldon had entered by the back door, not the front. Besides, Tim had had his key on Wednesday morning, and if she had borrowed or pinched it, it didn’t seem very likely she’d had an opportunity of restoring it to him. You were all gathered in the shop, under the eye of the police, until you’d been interviewed. Finally, when Prescott went to the Lendicotts’ yesterday evening and confronted her with it, her demeanour, he said, convinced him that she knew nothing about it. He’d given her till then to get over the funeral — he had no fear of Tim’s running away, under the circumstances, and I fancy he was trying to gather in some further information about him. In any case, he was satisfied that there was only one answer. Tim had planted the key in her flat in the hope that the police would find it and believe that she was guilty. It was rather stupid of him, Prescott thought, to have planted a key to the wrong door, but obviously he hadn’t had a back-door key to plant, and he might have heard some garbled version of her visit to the shop which had made him think a front-door key would be acceptable. Prescott says the locks of the street door and her bedroom door show signs of having been tampered with, and he knows exactly when the job must have been done. Mrs Weldon left for the funeral at ten past two, and the plain-clothes man who had been watching the flat followed at a respectful distance in a taxi. Prescott didn’t arrive till about two-thirty. Tim lunched in town alone that day, for some domestic reason, at the Coventry Street Corner House, of all places. Not that I have anything against Corner Houses, but of course there wasn’t a hope of anyone remembering him there at lunchtime on a Saturday. He didn’t leave till after two, but he’ll never be able to prove it. He really is extraordinarily unlucky with his alibis.’
‘Someone must have taken his key,’ said Sally. ‘When did he last have it?’
‘He says, to the best of his recollection, when he came back from Christie’s on Friday afternoon, somewhere about three o’clock. On Saturday morning and this morning he and Uncle Charles arrived together, as usual, and Uncle Charles used his key. Tim had no idea he’d lost his own until Prescott produced it. He thought he’d left it in the pocket of his blue suit over the weekend. If someone pinched it, I suppose we must say it was someone here, and therefore it was done on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. But Tim says he didn’t leave it lying about. To his knowledge it was never out of his pocket.’
‘Then someone must have picked his pocket.’
‘Yes, we suggested that. But Prescott didn’t take very kindly to the idea of an expert pickpocket on the staff, and perhaps one can’t altogether blame him.’
‘Were there any fingerprints on the key?’
‘Apparently not. But if Tim had planted it, he’d have had the sense to wipe it.’
‘Could he conceivably have known it would turn out this way, and planted it to save Mrs Weldon?’
Johnny smiled faintly. ‘That’s about as likely as that he planted it to save himself. But no, Sally. I was there when Prescott confronted him with it, and I’ll swear he wasn’t expecting it.’
After a moment Sally said: ‘Then Prescott really does think that Tim’s behaviour on Friday afternoon was dictated by a subtle plot to make the police think he didn’t murder Butcher by pretending he did?’
‘I’m afraid he does. But not necessarily so very subtle — he hasn’t made the mistake of classing Tim with Machiavelli. If he’d heard everything Tim said to us, I think he’d have realised it wasn’t subtlety, but plain simple innocence. As it is, he thinks Tim just handed him a weak motive to distract his attention from a rather stronger one.’
‘But what? Tim had no real motive.’
‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘We know he hadn’t. But I suppose you’d better know this too, Sally. Tim got into a spot of trouble at Oxford last term — nothing really serious, but the sort of thing you don’t tell your people about if you can reasonably avoid it. Prescott discovered this in the course of checking up on everyone concerned in the case. He also discovered that Butcher had been in Oxford just after it happened, looking at Sir John Woolcot’s library. The coincidence struck him, and he asked Tim this morning if Butcher had found out about the spot of trouble. Tim, incurably truthful, said yes. Butcher came to see him in college and tried a little not very intelligent blackmail. Tim said: “Fine. Go ahead and tell my father, and I’ll tell him about this conversation,” and kicked him out. The attempt was not repeated. But of course Prescott doesn’t believe that.’
Prescott had been sufficiently tactful to take Tim away by the back door, but if the general public still didn’t know about his arrest, the staff did. Up in the ladies’ room at lunchtime, Betty and Miss Bates wept — evidently not for the first time. Little Liza’s eyes were red, but she had now passed into a real Cockney rage. Mrs Weldon was stonily silent. Downstairs, Alf looked stricken, and Little Billee terrified. Even Miss Mundle was obviously shaken. It was with her that Sally lunched, having managed to avoid the girls’ invitation. They couldn’t talk about the arrest, and neither of them could eat much. On the way back Miss Mundle stopped suddenly outside someone else’s bookshop and said savagely: ‘It’s impossible, Sally. I’ve known them all. The Grand Old Man, Father William, Mr Henry, young John and Dicky, Mr Charles, Johnny — and now Tim. I suppose they might have killed someone in a fit of anger — a lot of people might do that — though I doubt it. But not one of them could do a mean thing like this — and to a woman too. It isn’t in them.’
