Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

The shed was no bigger than seven by five and it took me no longer than ten seconds to find what I was after. There had been no attempt to conceal anything. I used another couple of polythene bags, closed and locked the door behind me and made my way back to the car. Soon afterwards I parked the car in Hartnell’s driveway. Hartnell answered the doorbell.

“That didn’t take you long, Cavell,” he said cheerfully as he led me into the lounge. “What was–” His smile died away as he saw my face. “Was there – is there something wrong?”

“I’m afraid there is,” I said coldly. “Something very far wrong. You’re in trouble, Dr. Hartnell. I’m afraid it looks to me like pretty bad trouble. Would you care to tell me about it?”

“Trouble?” His face tightened, but there was the shadow of fear in his eyes. “What the devil are you talking about, Cavell?”

“Come off it,” I said. “I put some value on my time if you don’t on yours. And it’s because I refuse to waste my time that I’m not going to hunt around for any fancy gentlemanly words to express myself. To be brief and blunt, Hartnell, you’re a fluent liar.”

“You’ve gone too far, damn you, Cavell!” His face was pale, his fists were clenched and you could see that he was actively considering having a go at me which, as a medical man forty pounds lighter than I was, he should have recognised as an unpromising course of action. “I won’t take that line of talk from any man.”

“You’ll have to take it from the prosecuting counsel in the Old Bailey, so you might as well have some practice in getting used to it. If you saw The Golden Cavaliers last night, as you claimed, you must have had the TV set balanced on the handlebars of your scooter. The police constable who saw you passing through Hailem late last night made no mention of a TV set.”

“I assure you, Cavell, I haven’t the faintest idea–”

“You make me ill,” I said disgustedly. “Lies I can forgive but stupidity, in a man of your calibre, no.” I looked at Mary. “About this play, The Golden Cavaliers ? ”

She lifted her shoulders, in discomfort and distress. “All TV broadcasts in southern England were badly affected by electrical disturbances last night. There were three breakdowns in the play and it didn’t finish until twenty minutes to twelve.”

“You must have a very special TV set indeed,” I said to Hartnell. I crossed to a magazine stand and picked up a copy of the Radio Times, but before I could open it Hartnell’s wife spoke, a tremor in her voice.

“You needn’t bother, Mr. Cavell. Last night’s play was a repeat of Sunday afternoon’s. We saw the play on Sunday.” She turned to her husband. “Come on, Tom, you’ll only make it worse for yourself.”

Hartnell stared miserably at her, turned away, slumped down in a chair and drained his glass in a couple of gulps. He didn’t offer me any but I didn’t add lack of hospitality to his list of faults, maybe the time wasn’t right. He said, “I was out last night. I left here just after ten-thirty. I had a phone call from a man asking me to meet him in Alfringham.”

“Who was the man?”

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t see him – he wasn’t there when I arrived.”

“It wouldn’t have been our old pal Ten-per-cent Tuffnell of Tuffnell and Hanbury, Consultants-at-Law?”

He stared at me. “Tuffnell – do you know Tuffnell?”

“The ancient legal firm of Tuffnell and Hanbury is known to the police of a dozen counties. They style themselves ‘Consultants-at-Law.’ Anybody can call themselves ‘Consultants-at-Law.’ There’s no sueh thing so the bona-fide legal eagles can’t take any action against them. Tuffnell’s only knowledge of law comes from the fairly frequent occasions on which he had been hauled before the Assize judges, usually on charges of bribery and corruption. They’re one of the biggest money-lending firms in the country and by all odds the most ruthless.”

“But how – how did you guess–?”

“No guess that it was Tuffnell. A certainty. Only a man with a powerful hold over you could have got you out at that time of night and Tuffnell has that hold. He not only holds the mortgage on your house but also your note of hand for another £500.”

“Who told you that?” Hartnell whispered.

“No one. I found out for myself. You don’t think you’re employed in the laboratory with the highest security rating in Britain without our knowing everything about you. We know more about your own past than you know yourself. That’s the literal truth. Tuffnell it was, eh?”

Hartnell nodded. “He told me he wanted to see me at eleven sharp. I protested, naturally, but he said that unless I did what I was told he’d not only foreclose on the mortgage but he’d have me in the bankruptcy court for that five hundred pounds.”

I shook my head. “You scientists are all the same. Outside the four walls of your lab you ought to be locked up. A man who lends you money does so at his own risk and has no legal recourse. So he wasn’t there?”

“No. I waited a quarter of an hour, then went to his house – a whacking great mansion with tennis courts, swimming pool and what have you,” Hartnell said bitterly. “I thought he might have made a mistake about the meeting place. He wasn’t there. There was nobody there. I went back to the Aifringham office and waited a little longer then came home. About midnight, it was.”

“Anybody see you? You see anybody? Anybody who can vouch for your story.”

“Nobody. Nobody at all. It was late at night and the roads were deserted – it was bitterly cold.” He paused, then brightened. “That policeman – he saw me.” His voice seemed to falter on the last words.

“If he saw you in Hailem you could equally well have turned off for Mordon after leaving it.” I sighed. “Besides, there was no policeman. You’re not the only one who tells lies. So you see the spot you’re in, Hartnell? A phone call for which we have only your word – no trace of the man alleged to have made it. Sixteen miles on your scooter, including a wait in a normally busy little town – and not a living soul saw you. Finally, you’re deeply and desperately in debt – so desperate that you would be willing to do anything. Even break into Mordon, if the financial inducements were high enough.”

He was silent for a moment, then pushed himself wearily to his feet. “I’m completely innocent, Cavell. But I see how it is – and I’m not all that a fool. So I’m going to be – what do you call it – detained in custody?”

I said, “What do you think, Mrs. Hartnell?”

She gave me a troubled half-smile and said hesitantly, “I don’t think so. I – well, I don’t know how a police officer talks to a man he’s about to arrest for murder, but you don’t talk the way I should imagine they do.”

I said dryly, “Maybe you should be working in number one lab instead of your husband. As an alibi, Hartnell, your story is too ridiculously feeble for words. Nobody in their right minds would believe it for an instant, which means maybe that I’m not in my right mind. I believe it.”

Hartnell exhaled a long sigh of relief, but his wife said with a strange mixture of hesitancy and shrewdness, “It could be a trap. You could think Tom guilty and be lulling him into–”

“Mrs. Hartnell,” I said. “With respects, you are abysmally ignorant of the facts of life as they appertain to the wilds of Wiltshire. Your husband may think no one saw him, but I can assure you that the way between here and Alfringham is alive with people between 10.30 and 11 p.m. – courting couples, gentlemen between pubs and homes upending their last bottles to prepare themselves for wifely wrath, old ladies and some not so old peering between not-quite-closed curtains. With a squad of detectives I could turn up a score of people by noon tomorrow – I’ll wager a dozen Alfringham citizens saw Dr. Hartnell waiting outside Tuffnell’s office last night. I’m not even going to bother finding out.”