Reckoning in Ice, page 23
‘He was quite nice to us on Saturday. He killed her after lunch on Sunday. She was lying on a sofa. He said, “There has been a little accident. She knew too much – we could not trust a silly girl”. And I – God forgive me – he made me come with him in the car that night and help to – help to – put her out. She had bought that dress for the last time we had gone away together.’
He was again silent for a long time. But he seemed detached rather than moved. He went on.
‘You will want to know about the process. Yes, we took it from the safe, but we did not go there to steal the process.’ He paused again, then spoke directly to me.
‘You are quite clever Dick, but there is a lot that you have not found out, and I don’t think you ever would. You see I am clever, too, in my own way perhaps cleverer than you. I have had a lot of money from the company. It passed all your auditing. He wanted money for his Clydach works, and for other things. I had to get it. I introduced cross-licensing – you know, I think, where a firm in some other country, using an IM process, would give IM rights in some patent of its own. If our patent were more valuable than theirs, a balance of royalties had to be paid to us. Well, many of those royalties were paid to me. I have no time to explain how. Perhaps you will find out now. There was – a lot of money.
‘I defeated your auditors. I did not think anyone could ever find out. But something the old man – your father, Miss Villeneuve – said one day worried me a little. I told Rhys Jenkins. He said that we must tap the old man’s telephone – so that we would know if anything was wrong. He was a genius in that way. I went up with Reggio by train and he came by car. Rhys Jenkins gave me some stuff, not poison, but to make people sleep. I put it in both glasses – Reggio’s and the old man’s. The old man went off to bed first, then Reggio said that he was tired. I left them a little while and looked at their rooms. They were both asleep. Then I let in Rhys Jenkins through the front door.
‘He fixed the telephone and another thing to hear what was said in the study. Then he saw the safe “What is in there?” he asked me. I said the old man’s papers. He said we must have a look. I didn’t want to but he made me. He gave me gloves and told me to get the key from the old man’s room. I was terrified, but he was fast asleep. Rhys Jenkins opened the safe himself – he had gloves the whole time, too, special thin gloves that he could do his electrical wiring in. He looked through the files. Then he said, “Good God, Gil, do you know about this?” I didn’t – the old man was very secretive. I did know that we had not yet tried to market it. Rhys Jenkins said it was worth more than all we had ever had. It was typical of him that he had brought a camera, a beautiful miniature camera. I told him not to bother with it – “We can just take the notes,” I said. He wouldn’t have this – said that if we photographed them the old man need never know about it. So he did. It seemed to take ages. I had to take out the notes for each page to be photographed separately. He put them one by one on the old man’s desk and I had to press the edges to keep them quite flat. I wasn’t as used to gloves as he was, and I moved one page while he was photographing it. He cursed me horribly, but he did it again. He wouldn’t hurry – said that what he’d given them would keep them out for hours. At last he was finished. I put back all the pages, locked the safe and took back the old man’s key. Rhys Jenkins went off and I went to bed.
‘The trouble was to sell the process. It was too big, really – but he had a plan. I had called you in, Dick, to show that I was not afraid of auditors. He thought that we could use you . . .’
His voice had been growing fainter and he seemed about to lose consciousness again. The doctor went to him and felt his pulse. ‘He lives still.’ He motioned to the nurse who gave him a sip of water. There was so much that I wanted to know, but I had to be fair to the policeman. He had generously let me do all the talking, but there was his own crime to be unravelled. After a rest, Morgan-Jones opened his eyes again.
‘What about the boat?’ I asked.
‘Oh, that.’ He did not seem to think it of much importance. ‘Rhys Jenkins came back – after meeting you. He was very angry – with you and with me. We had had a message from the Hee House tapes saying that the old man had put some papers about the process in a New York bank. That worried us. We had to conclude a deal here in Greenland. That is why I brought all the papers. And then there was an advertisement about Agdalite. We thought it might be you, but we were not sure. You had gone to Greece, and but for Caroline’s warning . . . We did not know, you might still have drunk some coffee. By next week all would have been settled. Rhys Jenkins thought you – or somebody else –might as well be sent here next week. You could have done nothing then – it would have been too late.’ His voice wandered off.
‘The boat,’ I said.
‘We had to get back my papers. Rhys Jenkins said you could not have gone far, and the naval boat was so much faster. He was a wonderful engineer – he was sure he could work it. So we took one of the small fishing boats and went on board last night – no, the night before last night – he forgot – he forgot about the ice.’
Morgan-Jones slumped over on the pillows. The doctor and nurse lifted him back, and the nurse gave him another sip of water. I did not think that he could say much more, but he was still alive and might recover consciousness again. I asked the nurse if there was a typewriter in the hospital office. Puzzled she said that there was. I asked Paula to type out her shorthand as quickly as she could. The policeman nodded. ‘That will be good,’ he said.
The nurse took Paula to the office and came back at once. We stood around the bed. Very faintly I could hear the sound of a typewriter, but that was because I was listening for it. The room was still. The man in the bed had clearly exhausted himself. He lay with his eyes shut, but he was still breathing. I said quietly, ‘You have not told us why you did all this for Rhys Jenkins.’
I thought he had not taken in the question, for he said nothing. Then, without opening his eyes, he began muttering, more to himself than to us.
‘He was an evil man. And I . . . I did not think I was evil . . . I didn’t mean to hurt Megan, but she died . . . it was partly my fault. He said I could go to prison. He wanted money . . . always more money . . .’ His voice trailed off again.
Paula came back with a sheaf of typescript. ‘It was a Danish keyboard,’ she said. ‘This is not well typed.’
‘It will do,’ I said. ‘You’ve been marvellously quick.’
I went close to Morgan-Jones and bent over him.
‘Try to listen,’ I said. ‘This is very important. I’m going to read out what you’ve said, and if you agree you must try to make a mark or sign it.’ I read through the typescript quickly. At first I thought he was taking no notice, but suddenly he tried to sit up. The nurse put an arm round his shoulders. The policeman came forward with a ballpoint pen. Morgan-Jones opened his eyes. ‘It is true,’ he said, sharply and quite distinctly. The policeman held his hand with the pen and he scrawled something approaching a signature. Then he gave a sort of long sigh, and his hand, still holding the pen, slipped off the bed. The pen fell with a small clatter on the linoleum of the hospital floor. The doctor put his arm back on the bed. ‘There is no more to do,’ he said. The nurse drew down the window blind.
*
My shoulder was hurting, but mercifully everybody else seemed to have forgotten about it. The policeman had a brief conversation in Danish with the doctor, and then Paula and I found ourselves walking away from the hospital with the policeman.
‘You have done well,’ I said. ‘Several English crimes and the theft of your navy’s boat, all cleared up. And at least you have the body of one of the criminals.’
He nodded. ‘I have to thank you – and the lady,’ he said. We could see that he was pleased. His superiors would obviously be pleased, too.
As we were going out of the hospital drive we met a tall man coming in. Paula went up to him, ‘Why, Mr Reggio,’ she said.
He seemed stunned, but lifted his hat politely. ‘Miss Paula – of all people – what on earth—’ he said.
Paula was completely cool. ‘There’s a lot to explain – for both of us, I think,’ she said. ‘But we can’t talk now. We can meet later. It’s no use going to the hospital. Mr Morgan-Jones is dead.’
The policeman and I had been hovering a little in the background. Paula beckoned to us to walk on, and she took my arm. Reggio didn’t know what to do. He stood undecided for a moment and then went on towards the hospital.
The policeman left us to go to his police station. I felt an empty sense of anti-climax. ‘I suppose we might as well go back to Gudrid,’ I said.
Gudrid was still tied up to the quay. Paula went down the ladder first, and helped me down. I noticed the bulletmarks in Gudrid’s woodwork. In the cabin we both avoided Paula’s berth – where Morgan-Jones had been lying such a little time before. We sat beside each other on my berth.
‘Paula,’ I said, ‘Can we go back to something we said yesterday? If you still feel like that, will you marry me?’
‘I should think so indeed! After all this time on your boat you’ll just have to make an honest woman of me,’ she said primly.
I forgot how much my shoulder hurt and took her in my arms.
We were brought back to the world by a hail from the quay. ‘Miss Paula, Miss Paula,’ a voice called.
‘Damn,’ I said.
‘That will be Reggio,’ said Paula. ‘Oh, Richard, you’ve made a frightful mess of my hair.’
She went to the little mirror on the cabin bulkhead and I went to the hatch. Reggio was standing at the top of the iron ladder. ‘Can you come down?’ I said.
He came on board and Paula introduced me. ‘This is my fiancé, Richard Garston,’ she said. ‘Would you like a drink or shall I make some coffee?’
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ said Reggio, in a nice American drawl, ‘I need Scotch.’
‘We have no ice,’ said Paula.
‘Forget about the ice. Just concentrate on the Scotch.’ He smiled. It was a pleasing smile.
Paula produced three fairly generous helpings of Glen Morangie. Reggio took a drink. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there are still some things you Britishers can do. Now can you tell me what it’s all about?’
‘Perhaps you could tell us why you have come to Greenland,’ I said.
He looked at me sharply. ‘Business,’ he said.
‘Well, we’re just here on business too,’ said Paula.
He laughed. ‘Guess we shall have to trust each other a bit more,’ he said. ‘It’s a long story, but Lake Erie Chemicals is fixing up a deal in connection with a mineral called Agdalite.’
‘Yes, I know. You want it for a process to extract protein from oil,’ I said casually.
He seemed bewildered. ‘The process is not generally known,’ he said.
‘But we know about it because it’s my father’s process,’ Paula explained. ‘The details were stolen from his safe on the night that you and Mr Morgan-Jones visited us.’
‘We have a statement made by Morgan-Jones before he died exonerating you,’ I put in quickly. ‘You and Mr Villeneuve were apparently both drugged that night, to send you off to sleep.’
‘What a fool I’ve been,’ Reggio said slowly.
*
He told us his side of the story. He had spent about three weeks in England at the time of his abortive negotiations with International Metals, and a few days before he’d gone back to the States Morgan-Jones had come to see him at his hotel. He explained that a man called Rhys Jenkins who had his own engineering company – Clydach Engineering –had invented a process which seemed potentially valuable. Clydach Engineering was too small to develop the process itself, and had offered it to International Metals. But IM did not want to take it on – not that it had any reason to doubt the process, but it did not fit in with its own schedule of development over the next few years. Rhys Jenkins and Clydach Engineering were vouched for by a reputable firm of accountants – he gave the name of my own firm. Would Lake Erie Chemicals be interested?
Reggio said that he’d have a look at the documents and when he saw the extract of particulars about the process its enormous potential value struck him at once. He’d met Rhys Jenkins, who seemed technically familiar with all the details, and negotiated a provisional agreement. Lake Erie Chemicals would have first to evaluate the process. If it stood up to its claims, Lake Erie would buy exclusive rights in the process for £2 million in cash, plus a royalty to Jenkins on every ton of protein ultimately produced.
‘It did stand up,’ Reggio said. ‘It is an elegant, sweetly simple process. I suppose we ought to have spotted the Villeneuve hand. But why should we suspect Morgan-Jones, the managing director of your father’s own company?’
Having agreed to acquire the process, Lake Erie naturally wanted to exploit it in every way possible, and an obvious step was to secure long-term rights over the Agdalite deposits before anyone else woke up to their importance. Negotiations with the Danish Government, however, brought difficulties that he had not envisaged. The Danes were ready enough to discuss Agdalite concessions, but they wanted to know why an apparently worthless mineral should suddenly be of such interest to one of the largest chemical combines in the world. Lake Erie was reluctant to disclose its hand and had put its own technologists to work to try to devise some practical use for Agdalite that did not involve Platinum N. They had come up with an experimental fertiliser. ‘And it might even work, up to a point,’ Reggio added reflectively.
But the Danish Government also had able scientists, and they were not easily convinced. However, they had at last been satisfied and an agreement was to be signed in Greenland tomorrow. He had come in a charter plane from Godthaab, and the Danish officials were to be flown in by the Navy.
No money had yet been paid to Rhys Jenkins. He had been growing more and more restive, but Lake Erie did not want to make a final agreement with him until it was sure of its position over Agdalite. Now that had been settled they were ready to pay. Rhys Jenkins had insisted on coming to Greenland, with an ultimatum that if he were not paid the £2 million in cash he would feel free to sell the process elsewhere. Reggio agreed to meet him. Rhys Jenkins had undertaken to produce all the notes of his original research on the process and to sign a binding agreement transferring rights to Lake Erie Chemicals in return of £2 million. ‘I have bearer bonds for the money with me – he insisted on bearer bonds,’ Reggio said. ‘I was to meet him today and sign up with the Danes tomorrow.’
Paula got Morgan-Jones’s briefcase. ‘Photocopies of the notes are in here,’ she said. ‘You will see that they are all in my father’s handwriting.’
Reggio whistled slowly. ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘I wonder . . .’ He considered for a moment. ‘Why would he bring those damning photographs?’ He went on. ‘The other copy’s all right, and the better for being handwritten – makes it look more original. That’s what I was to hand over £2 million for. Plus signature of an agreement that I’ve got with me, assigning all rights to us. But why the photographs?’
‘There are some other documents in the briefcase,’ Paula said. She handed Reggio a statement signed by Morgan-Jones alleging that the photographs of the notes had been found in my room.
‘I can’t see this being given to me with the notes,’ Reggio said. ‘It wouldn’t make sense. I was paying for original work by Rhys Jenkins – not for something stolen from Mr Villeneuve.’
‘We can’t be absolutely sure that Rhys Jenkins knew what was in the briefcase,’ I suggested. ‘Suppose he’d told Morgan-Jones to make a handwritten copy of the notes – it’s just the sort of chore he would have put on him. And then suppose that Morgan-Jones gave you the photocopies instead – and followed that up with the document accusing me. That would have made things awkward for Rhys Jenkins – at the least he’d have had to explain how he came to be dealing in stolen property. You might not have known straightaway that the notes were in Villeneuve’s handwriting, but if Morgan-Jones said so – well you might have hesitated to hand over the money until things were cleared up.’
‘I’m damned sure I’d have hesitated.’
‘It could be cleared up only in one way,’ said Paula. ‘It would be easy enough to prove that the notes are in Daddy’s writing.’
‘Then perhaps – perhaps Morgan-Jones intended making an effort to free himself from Rhys Jenkins,’ I said. ‘The statement about me doesn’t mean much by itself. It belongs with the letters typed on my typewriter vouching for Rhys Jenkins – an escape route if you did smell a rat. But that statement in conjunction with the photocopies, now . . .’
‘We shall never know,’ said Paula. ‘I hope he was meaning to dish Rhys Jenkins – it would be his revenge for Caroline.’
We all had some more whisky.
‘Well, where are we now?’ asked Reggio. ‘It looks as if I’ve got no process. But by this time tomorrow I shall have an Agdalite concession. That is, if I go ahead with the Danes. Do I go ahead?’
‘Since the process is bound to be developed by someone, the Agdalite concession is bound to be valuable,’ I observed.
‘But if you cornered Agdalite,’ said Paula, ‘it would be because of stolen knowledge.’
Reggio looked unhappy. ‘That would be so, Miss Paula,’ he said slowly. ‘And I don’t deal in stolen knowledge.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t think we can get any farther now. You don’t have any legal rights in the process, but you’ve worked on it, and on Agdalite, for nearly a year. You acted in good faith – you didn’t know that the process was stolen. I’m an accountant, and I can see the point of not giving everything away to the Danish Government at this stage. But Agdalite is going to be enormously valuable – I don’t altogether like getting hold of a long term concession on, well, what is not exactly the whole truth. Go ahead and meet the Danes tomorrow, but initial the agreement only, don’t sign it. Say that your scientists have found other possibilities in Agdalite – that you can’t be sure of them, but they may exist. Say that you regard the concession as a partnership – that if Agdalite turns out to be more valuable than at present envisaged, you want the Danes to have a fair cut. Suggest a sliding scale royalty, so much a ton on the realised value of the mineral. It should go down well, and if you are going to have long-term relations with the Danish Government and the local Greenlanders, they’ll be all the better for acting generously. Ask for the agreement to be amended on those terms. That will win a little time.
