Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

I was met at the door of Dr. MacDonald’s house by his housekeeper. She was in her middle thirties, more than passably goodlooking and gave her name as Mrs. Turpin. Her face was like thunder, the face of the faithful retainer powerless to defend her master’s property against ravage and assault. When I showed my false credentials and asked to be allowed in she said bitterly that another prying nosy-parker more or less couldn’t do any harm now.

The house appeared to be alive with plainclothes policemen. I identified myself to the man in charge, a detective-sergeant by the name of Carlisle.

“Found anything interesting yet, Sergeant?”

“Hard to say. Been here over an hour, starting from the top, and we’ve found nothing that strikes me as suspicious in itself. Dr. MacDonald does seem to do himself pretty well, I must say. And one of my men, Campbell, who’s dead keen on all this art rubbish says that a lot of the pictures, pottery and other junk about the place is worth a fair bit of anyone’s money. And you ought to see the dark-room he has in the attic: there’s a thousand quid’s worth of photographic equipment there if there’s a penny’s worth.”

“Dark-room? That might be interesting. Never heard that Dr. MacDonald was interested in photography.”

“Lord bless my soul, yes. He’s one of the best amateur photographers in the country. He’s the president of our photographic club in Alfringham. There’s a cabinet through in his study there that’s fair loaded with trophies. He makes no secret of that, I can assure you, sir.”

I left him and his men to their search – if they couldn’t find anything neither could I – and went upstairs to the dark-room. Carlisle hadn’t exaggerated any, Dr. MacDonald did himself as well in the way of cameras as he did in the other material things of life. But I didn’t spend much time there, I didn’t see how cameras came into the business at all. I made a mental note to bring an expert police photographer down from London to check the equipment in the one in a thousand chance that something might turn up, and then went down stairs to see Mrs. Turpin.

“I’m really most sorry about all this upset, Mrs. Turpin,” I said pleasantly. “Just pure routine, you know. Must be a pleasure for you to look after a beautiful place like this.”

“If you’ve got any questions to ask, ask them,” she snapped, “and none of your smart-alecky beating about the bush.”

That didn’t leave much room for finesse. I said, “How many years have you been with Dr. MacDonald?”

“Four. Ever since he came here. A finer gentleman you wouldn’t find anywhere. Why do you ask?”

“He has a great deal of valuable stuff here.” I listed about a dozen items, ranging from the magnificent carpeting to the paintings. “How long has he had those?”

“I don’t have to answer any questions, Mr. Inspector.” The helpful type.

“No,” I admitted. “You don’t. Especially if you wish to make things unpleasant for your employer.”

She glared at me, hesitated, then answered my questions. At least half the stuff MacDonald had brought with him four years ago. The rest he had bought at fairly regular intervals since. Mrs. Turpin was one of those formidable women with a photographic memory for all the more monumental irrelevancies of life, and she could more or less quote the date, hour and the weather conditions at the time of the delivery of each item. I knew I’d be wasting my time even trying to confirm her statements. If Mrs. Turpin said such and such was so and so, then it was and that was all there was to it.

This certainly helped to set MacDonald in the clear. No sudden suspicious influx of wealth in recent weeks or months, he’d been buying on this lavish scale over a period of years. Where he got the wherewithal to buy on this lavish scale I couldn’t guess, but it hardly seemed important now. As he’d said himself, as an independent bachelor without relatives, he could afford to live it up.

I moved back into the sitting-room and saw Carlisle coming towards me with a couple of large files in his hands.

“We’re giving Dr. MacDonald’s study a thorough going-over now, sir. Listing everything, of course, but I thought these might interest you. Seems to be some sort of official correspondence.”

It did interest me, but not in the way I expected. The more I turned up about MacDonald, the more innocuous he seemed. The file contained carbon copies of his letters to and replies from fellow-scientists and various scientific organisations throughout Europe, mainly the World Health Organisation. There was no doubt from these letters that MacDonald was a highly gifted and highly respected chemist and microbiologist, one of the top men in his own field. Almost half of his letters were addressed to certain affiliations of the W.H.O., particularly in Paris, Stockholm, Bonn and Rome. Nothing sinister or unpatriotic about that, this would be unclassified stuff and the frequent co-signature of Dr. Baxter on the carbon was guarantee enough of that. Besides, although it was supposed to be a secret, all the scientists in Mordon knew that their mail was under constant censorship. I glanced through the file again and put it aside as the phone rang.

It was Hardanger and he sounded fairly grim. What he had to say made me feel grim, too. A phone call to Alfringham had stated that if police investigations weren’t suspended for twenty-four hours something very unpleasant was going to happen to Pierre Cavell, who, as they would be aware, had disappeared. Proof that the caller knew where Cavell was would be forthcoming if police investigations were not halted by six o’clock that evening.

It wasn’t the first part of it that made me feel grim. I said, “Well, we were expecting something like it. With all the threats I was dropping at the crack of dawn today they must have thought that I was making too much progress for their comfort.”

“You flatter yourself, my friend,” Hardanger said in his gravelly voice. “You’re only a pawn. The call wasn’t made to the police but to your wife at the Waggoner’s Rest, telling her that if the General – he gave his full name, rank and address – didn’t pull in his horns then she, Mary, would receive a pair of ears in the mail tomorrow. The caller said that he was sure that though she had been married only a couple of months she would still be able to recognise her husband’s ears when she saw them.”

I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck and that had nothing to do with any imagined sensation of ear-cropping. I said carefully, “There are three things, Hardanger. The number of people in those parts who know we have been married only two months must be pretty few. The number of people who know that Mary is the General’s daughter must be even fewer. But the number of people who know the General’s true identity, apart from yourself and myself, can be counted on one hand. How in God’s name could any criminal in the land know the General’s true identity?”

“You tell me,” Hardanger said heavily. “This is the nastiest development of the lot. This man not only knows who the General is but knows that Mary is his only child and the apple of his eye, the one person in the world who might be able to bring pressure to bear on him. And she’d bring the pressure, all right: the abstract ideals of justice don’t matter a damn to women when their men’s lives are in danger. The whole thing stinks, Cavell.”

“To high heaven,” I agreed slowly. “Of treason – and treason in high places.”

“I don’t think we’d better talk about it over the phone,” Hardanger said quickly.

“No. Tried tracing the call?”

“Not yet. But I might as well waste time that way as any other.”